Being fiscally conservative means only that you think that the government should spend less than it takes in until such time as the national debt is paid off.
But I think it would only be against the law for law enforcement to use such backdoors. I don't know that any existing law prohibits law enforcement agencies from the creation of such backdoors for possible future use.
If they can get a backdoor built into the compiler used to build the binaries for the general releases, the backdoor doesn't have to be anywhere in the source.
Going to an elite school is worth the price of admission for who you go to school with alone.
But, aside from that, the question presumes unlimited funds to go to school. For those without funds to go to school, most elite schools pick up the vast majority of the tab so long as those financially disadvantaged kids can make it in. This makes it a double-win.
Read Bacon, Newton, and Descartes. The "new science" (what we would call the scientific method) was first developed as an extension of the "new philosophy" which wa sitself the application of the theology of the Reformation applied to epistemology and metaphysic.
What you describe is not the scientific method but the basic process of trial and error. Approaching science in that way is the difference between a programmer and a computer scientist, between an alchemist and a chemist.
Uh, I think that in its present state, the house is a liablity rather than an asset. Were it not for the intervention of the police and other civil authorities, the owner of the property would be on the hook for paying someone to safely dispose of any explosives within the premises. Something tells me that the cost of doing so would vastly outstrip any loss from burning the place to the ground.
Sure, the landlord could go after the tenant to recoup the cost of cleaning out the property. But, in all likelyhood, the tenant is what they call "judgment proof." Even if the landlord wins in court, it is highly unlikely that the tenant will ever be in a position to pay any damages awarded by the court.
If the landlord is business saavy, he or she will have taken out appropriate insurance which will cover any losses.
But, even if this were not the case, why would it be incumbant on the powers that be to compensate the owner of the property? Presumably, the local municipalities have no interest in owning the property. They just want to ensure that no one gets harmed while the property is rendered safe.
In a free market, no one sets prices and determines desired profits. Rather prices are a function of market equilibrium and market equilibrium determines the normal profit in any given market segment.
Selling below cost distorts this process. A rational seller cannot consistantly sell below cost. A negative profit would drive him or her out of business over time.
What happens with loss leaders is that sellers are effectively using the market as advertising. They are hoping that buyers will be attracted by what is an irrational price. Sellers hope to recoup their losses on other commodities. Be that as it may, the practice distorts the price of the loss leader as a commodity. This is a market inefficiency. A free market, in the economic sense, theoretically weeds out such inefficiencies over time.
But that this practice distorts the free market should not be confused with whether or not the egents involved have the freedom to distort the market in such a way. That's a whole other discussion.
A free market where buyers and sellers are unimpeded in their buying and selling behavior is the intuitive definition of a free market but it is not the definition that economists used.
Economically speaking, a free market has certain defined attributes such as no one seller (and no one buyer) being able to affect the purchase price. Loss leaders are a distortion of the free market in this technical sense as goods are not being sold to produce a profit but are being used instrumentally as advertising to persuade people to purchase some other product. As such, the loss-leading price distorts the market equilibrium.
So while it's within the freedom of firms in the marketplace to engage in such behavior, if they choose to do so, it destroys the calculations that supply/demand price theory require in order to make neoclassical economics work.
That Apple had a good year isn't news. (Or at least it hasn't been news since the nineties.)
What is news is why it is that Apple had a good year when many other companies haven't had good years. At many companies, if releasing product line y will kill off sales of product line x, then y never goes to market. The Apple of today seems to not be scared of that even though the Apple of yesterday was enormously conscious of that. Consequently, Apple seems to be a rare breed in allowing for disruptive technology to disrupt its own product line.
IF that is what Apple is doing, I would like to see more companies do that. But I'm entirely convinced that Apple is actually doing that. As others have pointed out iPhone (and iPod Touch) sales aren't canabalizing iPod sales. Rather they are an upsell with increased profit margines. On the other hand, it may very well be the case that iPad sales are canabalizing Mac Book sales. I don't know enough about the respective profit margins of those two lines to determine if "canabalization" is the correct term. (FWIW, I bought an iPad to replace my G4 Powerbook that was stolen in late spring.) It could be that, long term, App Store revenues make iPads much more profitable than the Mac Book line. If so, then it isn't a case of canabalization but of upselling.
That said, the latest iteration of the Mac Book Air almost makes me wish that I had waited before buying an iPad. Yet, the iPad still offers far better battery life and a better form factor. (And with a bluetooth keyboard, a better keyboard.) Not to mention that I think Toshiba is on the right track with the AC100. If it had a touch screen, I think it would be a potential iPad killer. But it doesn't and Android is a rather user unfriendly platform when one doesn't have a touch screen.
I looked at my usage patterns (mostly word processing and web browsing) and looked at my options for a replacement. After considering prices, weights, form factors, keyboards, and availability of software that does what I need software to do, I purchased an iPad.
Certainly, there are tradeoffs. Printing isn't that big of a deal for me. I just save my papers on Google docs and print them from a different terminal. The time spent printing, after all, is an insignificant fraction of the time I spend writing a paper. And, given that the iPad is a full pound lighter than the lightest of the alternatives and has a far better battery life, needing to log in to a different machine to print is a mild inconvenience.
The only think I really miss is that I used to play a flash version of a Scrabble clone with my mother. The iPad doesn't do flash so I can't do that anymore. In the grand scheme of things, that's not a huge loss. Far more relevant to me is the ability to spend an 8 hour session working on a paper no where near an electrical outlet.
But that's the way I use a computer. Not everyone has the same wants and needs as I do. For those that don't, an iPad may not fit their usage patterns. In those cases, I suggest those users look elsewhere. But for me, an iPad is a fully functional desktop replacement.
I was looking for a Firewire 400 to Firewire 800 cable. The salesman went into the back office to look up a product code, came back, and guided me to a rack with 4 pin to 6 pin Firewire 400 cables.
So I left, went to a a computer, fired up the web browser, pointed it at Amazon, and found the cable I needed in about sixty seconds.
When I'm shopping for books, I tend to have a similar experience. I'm always surprised when local shops have the titles that I want. But what is neat, though, is that with the Amazon Marketplace, nine times out of ten, I'm buying from a small bricks and mortar shop even though I'm purchasing from the 800 pound gorilla of e-merchants. Turns out that Amazon doesn't want to stock hardbound copies of Epictetus' Handbook or Farabi's Epistle on the Intellect. But their associates, small booksellers across the county that specialize in this or that, can do so and partner with Amazon to get national exposure.
Which is to say, Amazon's "unfair" advantage with regard to sales tax is a red herring.
It seems to me that both the things you mention would normally be subsumed into the areas I explicitly mentioned. Re-take policies, for example, would be normally covered under grading policies and/or attendance policies. Exam and quiz schedules would normally be covered with the normal schedule of content.
DePaul, St. Louis University, and Catholic University of America are three universities that I know that require professors to create a syllabus. I don't believe any of those three universities are "degree mills."
But perhaps you misunderstand what the syllabus states at most schools that require syllabi. The required elements are usually (a) how the grade will be assessed, (b) any policies that might affect the grade (e.g. attendance policies), (c) legal boilerplate from the university about honesty and disability policies, (d) office hours and contact information for the instructor. There is usually a line stating something to the effect that the schedule of what material will be covered when is subject to change at the discretion of the professor.
And, personally, I find having a schedule of what content will be covered when to be extremely useful.
The argument that property rights transcend death requires the supposition that (a) it is the soul that is the human person rather than the body and (b) the human soul survives the death of the body.
There are other latent assumptions in there as well, such as the body being property of any sort. But, for the present discussion, I think the presupposition of imortality is the most interesting.
Things like the stereo, etc. are generally covered by the auto insurer. WIth one exception (I left my backpack full of textbooks in my car overnight and it was stolen) most of the time when someone has broken into my car it was to steal the stereo, etc.
But, yes, were I to store personal possessions in my vehicle, that would be something to take up with my homeowner's insurer
Generally speaking, it's not cost-effective to carry comprehensive insurance on a vehicle more than two or three years old. Consequently, I only carry liability insurance on my vehicle.
But even if it were prudent for me to carry comprehensive insurance, whatever contents of the car that might get stolen would almost certainly be lower than the deductible while the price of replacing a broken window will almost certainly be higher than the deductible.
... that some users might weigh the costs of security against the costs of being insecure and opt to be insecure. As an example, I don't generally lock the doors of my car. I've found that if I do, people that want to get in when I'm not there break the windows and take what they want anyway. Locking my car doors merely causes the extra headache of replacing the glass alongside whatevever gets stolen. Yet the author of TFA would consider me a moron for being within the universe of people that have an intruder yet still refuse to lock their doors.
I would argue that if it actually deserved better, it would have received better from the market. While I'm not a free-market purist, I find it hard to blame the Zune's sales record on anything other than the Zune.
Slashdot Mirror
Page 3 will have to wait until the Android version comes along.
Being fiscally conservative means only that you think that the government should spend less than it takes in until such time as the national debt is paid off.
Perhaps you meant economically conservative.
But I think it would only be against the law for law enforcement to use such backdoors. I don't know that any existing law prohibits law enforcement agencies from the creation of such backdoors for possible future use.
If they can get a backdoor built into the compiler used to build the binaries for the general releases, the backdoor doesn't have to be anywhere in the source.
So, yeah, an audit isn't foolproof.
Going to an elite school is worth the price of admission for who you go to school with alone.
But, aside from that, the question presumes unlimited funds to go to school. For those without funds to go to school, most elite schools pick up the vast majority of the tab so long as those financially disadvantaged kids can make it in. This makes it a double-win.
Killing off Newt, Hicks and Bishop before the movie even started was a pretty ballsy move.
Alien Resurection, I like to think of as Buffy v. Aliens.
The scientific method is based on methodological materialism, an empirical epistemology, and certain metaphysical views.
We moderns grew up with these presumptions as part of our lives so we generally don't notice them or count them as ideologies.
It's kind of like the way that no one thinks they have an accent until they move somewhere where everyon talks just a bit differently.
Read Bacon, Newton, and Descartes. The "new science" (what we would call the scientific method) was first developed as an extension of the "new philosophy" which wa sitself the application of the theology of the Reformation applied to epistemology and metaphysic.
What you describe is not the scientific method but the basic process of trial and error. Approaching science in that way is the difference between a programmer and a computer scientist, between an alchemist and a chemist.
Let's presume that the house does need to be cleared of all explosives and toxic chemicals before it can be rented again.
Which is the higher amount:
The cost of hiring a private agency to safely remove and dispose of all the explosives on the premises
or:
The cost of totally writing off the property
I suspect that the owner will actually be ahead of the game if the property is destroyed in its entirety.
Uh, I think that in its present state, the house is a liablity rather than an asset. Were it not for the intervention of the police and other civil authorities, the owner of the property would be on the hook for paying someone to safely dispose of any explosives within the premises. Something tells me that the cost of doing so would vastly outstrip any loss from burning the place to the ground.
Sure, the landlord could go after the tenant to recoup the cost of cleaning out the property. But, in all likelyhood, the tenant is what they call "judgment proof." Even if the landlord wins in court, it is highly unlikely that the tenant will ever be in a position to pay any damages awarded by the court.
If the landlord is business saavy, he or she will have taken out appropriate insurance which will cover any losses.
But, even if this were not the case, why would it be incumbant on the powers that be to compensate the owner of the property? Presumably, the local municipalities have no interest in owning the property. They just want to ensure that no one gets harmed while the property is rendered safe.
In a free market, no one sets prices and determines desired profits. Rather prices are a function of market equilibrium and market equilibrium determines the normal profit in any given market segment.
Selling below cost distorts this process. A rational seller cannot consistantly sell below cost. A negative profit would drive him or her out of business over time.
What happens with loss leaders is that sellers are effectively using the market as advertising. They are hoping that buyers will be attracted by what is an irrational price. Sellers hope to recoup their losses on other commodities. Be that as it may, the practice distorts the price of the loss leader as a commodity. This is a market inefficiency. A free market, in the economic sense, theoretically weeds out such inefficiencies over time.
But that this practice distorts the free market should not be confused with whether or not the egents involved have the freedom to distort the market in such a way. That's a whole other discussion.
A free market where buyers and sellers are unimpeded in their buying and selling behavior is the intuitive definition of a free market but it is not the definition that economists used.
Economically speaking, a free market has certain defined attributes such as no one seller (and no one buyer) being able to affect the purchase price. Loss leaders are a distortion of the free market in this technical sense as goods are not being sold to produce a profit but are being used instrumentally as advertising to persuade people to purchase some other product. As such, the loss-leading price distorts the market equilibrium.
So while it's within the freedom of firms in the marketplace to engage in such behavior, if they choose to do so, it destroys the calculations that supply/demand price theory require in order to make neoclassical economics work.
That Apple had a good year isn't news. (Or at least it hasn't been news since the nineties.)
What is news is why it is that Apple had a good year when many other companies haven't had good years. At many companies, if releasing product line y will kill off sales of product line x, then y never goes to market. The Apple of today seems to not be scared of that even though the Apple of yesterday was enormously conscious of that. Consequently, Apple seems to be a rare breed in allowing for disruptive technology to disrupt its own product line.
IF that is what Apple is doing, I would like to see more companies do that. But I'm entirely convinced that Apple is actually doing that. As others have pointed out iPhone (and iPod Touch) sales aren't canabalizing iPod sales. Rather they are an upsell with increased profit margines. On the other hand, it may very well be the case that iPad sales are canabalizing Mac Book sales. I don't know enough about the respective profit margins of those two lines to determine if "canabalization" is the correct term. (FWIW, I bought an iPad to replace my G4 Powerbook that was stolen in late spring.) It could be that, long term, App Store revenues make iPads much more profitable than the Mac Book line. If so, then it isn't a case of canabalization but of upselling.
That said, the latest iteration of the Mac Book Air almost makes me wish that I had waited before buying an iPad. Yet, the iPad still offers far better battery life and a better form factor. (And with a bluetooth keyboard, a better keyboard.) Not to mention that I think Toshiba is on the right track with the AC100. If it had a touch screen, I think it would be a potential iPad killer. But it doesn't and Android is a rather user unfriendly platform when one doesn't have a touch screen.
I looked at my usage patterns (mostly word processing and web browsing) and looked at my options for a replacement. After considering prices, weights, form factors, keyboards, and availability of software that does what I need software to do, I purchased an iPad.
Certainly, there are tradeoffs. Printing isn't that big of a deal for me. I just save my papers on Google docs and print them from a different terminal. The time spent printing, after all, is an insignificant fraction of the time I spend writing a paper. And, given that the iPad is a full pound lighter than the lightest of the alternatives and has a far better battery life, needing to log in to a different machine to print is a mild inconvenience.
The only think I really miss is that I used to play a flash version of a Scrabble clone with my mother. The iPad doesn't do flash so I can't do that anymore. In the grand scheme of things, that's not a huge loss. Far more relevant to me is the ability to spend an 8 hour session working on a paper no where near an electrical outlet.
But that's the way I use a computer. Not everyone has the same wants and needs as I do. For those that don't, an iPad may not fit their usage patterns. In those cases, I suggest those users look elsewhere. But for me, an iPad is a fully functional desktop replacement.
I was looking for a Firewire 400 to Firewire 800 cable. The salesman went into the back office to look up a product code, came back, and guided me to a rack with 4 pin to 6 pin Firewire 400 cables.
So I left, went to a a computer, fired up the web browser, pointed it at Amazon, and found the cable I needed in about sixty seconds.
When I'm shopping for books, I tend to have a similar experience. I'm always surprised when local shops have the titles that I want. But what is neat, though, is that with the Amazon Marketplace, nine times out of ten, I'm buying from a small bricks and mortar shop even though I'm purchasing from the 800 pound gorilla of e-merchants. Turns out that Amazon doesn't want to stock hardbound copies of Epictetus' Handbook or Farabi's Epistle on the Intellect. But their associates, small booksellers across the county that specialize in this or that, can do so and partner with Amazon to get national exposure.
Which is to say, Amazon's "unfair" advantage with regard to sales tax is a red herring.
It seems to me that both the things you mention would normally be subsumed into the areas I explicitly mentioned. Re-take policies, for example, would be normally covered under grading policies and/or attendance policies. Exam and quiz schedules would normally be covered with the normal schedule of content.
DePaul, St. Louis University, and Catholic University of America are three universities that I know that require professors to create a syllabus. I don't believe any of those three universities are "degree mills."
But perhaps you misunderstand what the syllabus states at most schools that require syllabi. The required elements are usually (a) how the grade will be assessed, (b) any policies that might affect the grade (e.g. attendance policies), (c) legal boilerplate from the university about honesty and disability policies, (d) office hours and contact information for the instructor. There is usually a line stating something to the effect that the schedule of what material will be covered when is subject to change at the discretion of the professor.
And, personally, I find having a schedule of what content will be covered when to be extremely useful.
I would second Captain Sully.
And add Bear Grylls.
The argument that property rights transcend death requires the supposition that (a) it is the soul that is the human person rather than the body and (b) the human soul survives the death of the body.
There are other latent assumptions in there as well, such as the body being property of any sort. But, for the present discussion, I think the presupposition of imortality is the most interesting.
Like chicken.
Things like the stereo, etc. are generally covered by the auto insurer. WIth one exception (I left my backpack full of textbooks in my car overnight and it was stolen) most of the time when someone has broken into my car it was to steal the stereo, etc.
But, yes, were I to store personal possessions in my vehicle, that would be something to take up with my homeowner's insurer
Generally speaking, it's not cost-effective to carry comprehensive insurance on a vehicle more than two or three years old. Consequently, I only carry liability insurance on my vehicle.
But even if it were prudent for me to carry comprehensive insurance, whatever contents of the car that might get stolen would almost certainly be lower than the deductible while the price of replacing a broken window will almost certainly be higher than the deductible.
... that some users might weigh the costs of security against the costs of being insecure and opt to be insecure. As an example, I don't generally lock the doors of my car. I've found that if I do, people that want to get in when I'm not there break the windows and take what they want anyway. Locking my car doors merely causes the extra headache of replacing the glass alongside whatevever gets stolen. Yet the author of TFA would consider me a moron for being within the universe of people that have an intruder yet still refuse to lock their doors.
I would argue that if it actually deserved better, it would have received better from the market. While I'm not a free-market purist, I find it hard to blame the Zune's sales record on anything other than the Zune.