However, I can't help but say something. You laugh at sustainability, and then propose that we get our fossil fuels from... Jupiter?
Not to mention the ecological impact of actually importing atmospheric carbon from another planet. Even the best paid Exxon shill would have trouble dancing around that one. (In dinosaur times CO2 was much higher, it's natural, from another planet? Uhmmm...)
Not to mention the fact that getting such a balloon to Jupiter would almost certainly take more energy than it would bring back in potential energy in the form of methane. And then you have to get the methane to the surface of the earth... not clear on how you plan to do that.
But like I said, hopefully you were just being sarcastic.
Are you going to appologize for lying? We don't need your shilling for software companies on slashdot. Here is an selection from an RMS interview
JA: How do you react to the opinion that non-free software is justified as a means for raising dollars that can then be put into the development of completely new software, money that otherwise may not have been available, and thus creating software that may have never been developed?
Richard Stallman: This is no justification at all. A non-free program systematically denies the users the freedom to cooperate; it is the basis of an antisocial scheme to dominate people. The program is available lawfully only to those who will surrender their freedom. That's not a contribution to society, it's a social problem. It is better to develop no software than to develop non-free software.
So if you find yourself in that situation, please don't follow that path. Please don't write the non-free program--please do something else instead. We can wait till someone else has the chance to develop a free program to do the same job.
JA: What about the programmers...
Richard Stallman: What about them? The programmers writing non-free software? They are doing something antisocial. They should get some other job.
JA: Such as?
Richard Stallman: There are thousands of different jobs people can have in society without developing non-free software. You can even be a programmer. Most paid programmers are developing custom software--only a small fraction are developing non-free software. The small fraction of proprietary software jobs are not hard to avoid.
JA: What is the distinction there?
Richard Stallman: Non-free software is meant to be distributed to the public. Custom software is meant to be used by one client. There's no ethical problem with custom software as long as you're respecting your client's freedom.
The next point is that programmers are a tiny fraction of employment in the computer field. Suppose somebody developed an AI and no programmers were needed anymore. Would this be a disaster? Would all the people who are now programmers be doomed to unemployment for the rest of their lives? Obviously not, but this doesn't stop people from exaggerating the issue.
He doesn't say this, and you are intentionally lying or are just completely misinformed.
He says people shouldn't be paid to write software that is then sold under a non-free license.
He has no problem with people being paid to write custom software, so long as other people get a chance to add on to it or modify it.
He specifically recommends that programmers would be paid to maintain and operate, and modify software for business and other entities, by selling support plans and so on.
You don't want your words examined closely - then don't utter them in public.
lol
Frankly since we were both wrong on the only point you contended you are basically admitting my point. Besides, I was making a lighthearted joke. You decided it would be a good idea to try to knock my little joke down, probably because you don't know the difference.
ME: Heinlein is repeats themes... 20books * 500 pages. YOU: If you knew anything about heinlein you would know that he wrote 50 books not 20!!!!!!
I apologize if I offended your Heinlein sensibilities. Also, I'm sorry that your sense of humor is broken, jackass.
Since you claim that you can demonstrate that talking like a 30's gangster isn't in every heinlein book, please do so now. Saying 'demonstrably' is not a demonstration nor an argument.
Since you are such a dipshit you failed to see that my claim that 20 books * 500 pages was not meant to be an exact accounting of Heinleins works. Another way you might have determined that I was not trying to give a final accounting is that the length of my post was around 70 words (don't actually count them and give me a corrected number, asshat). You should also not point out that some of Heinlein's books have more than or less than 500 pages, in order to prove that I don't know the number of pages in Heinlein's books.
You claimed that I didn't know what I was talking about. I provided examples of each of my jocular claims about Heinlein. You have managed to dispute one, and even then I'll prove you wrong on that one. So the record so far is that I have given examples of each of my claims, without dispute, save one. You responded to my post by saying my claims were wrong, but now you are saying that my examples aren't good enough.
You said that my examples of Heinlein themes wasn't accurate. I have now pointed out the books that these examples come from! You are wrong. I know you can never accept that. Your world might implode if you ever were proven wrong. Well, guess what, I'm smarter than you are. You are wrong and I am right. Nanynany boo boo. You're trying to turn a little joke into some sort of heinlein dual, because my joke was a response to your post where you mock an author.
Now, as for "The Roads Must Roll", you say that the bad guy (Van Kleek) gives up because his army had been defeated and the station blah blah blah. You are completely wrong here, as Van Kleek doesn't give up, but rather is tackled and knocked out by Gaines, who goads him away from the self destruct switch he had set up by mocking him and poking at his insecurities. So, as it turns out, you're talking out of your ass, but I'm sure people say this too you all the time. "Derek is just talking out of his ass again" they probably say.
Please refrain from taking the microscope to my lighthearted banter in the future. Especially when the microscope is as cruddy as your memory.
TAANSTAFL - The moon is a harsh mistress. Free Love - Stranger in a Strange Land, Friday, Number of the Beast, Time Enough for Love, etc etc Cat's are Good - Door into Summer Sex with mothers with time machine - Number of Beast, Time Enough for Love Spacing Slavers - Time enough for love, Citizen of the Galaxy Talking like 30's gangsters - Every Heinlein book that there is, Especially Job at the end where the various Gods are debating. convince a bad guy to give up because of logical fallacy - The Roads Will Roll
Eat it pretender! Never question my heinlein bona fides!
inability to go more than a page or two without repeating a cultural reference already made twenty seven times (either in that work or earlier) or superimposing his political or computer biases - even when such references or superimpositions have nothing to do with the story at hand.
Sounds like Heinlein to me!
Seriously, did you ever read any of his books? TANSTAAFL and free love and cat's are good and let's have sex with our mothers by using a time machine, and then space some slavers. Next we'll talk like 30's gangsters because that's how people talk. After that we'll convince a bad guy to give up because we can prove him logically wrong. Wash, rinse, repeat for 500 pages * 20 books.
I own every one of his books and they are all fantastic.
Ok, you don't even know the basic terms, don't lecture me.
I proved that the statement "every dataset is compressable" is false, using contradiction. In other words "there exists a dataset (possibly many) which cannot be compressed". These statements are logically identical.
To restate, there are some datasets which cannot be compressed. This directly proves your statement that every dataset can be generated by a pseudorandom number generator FALSE, at least in those cases where the pseudo random number generator can itself be described with less data than the dataset you are trying to produce.
To recap yet again, my proof shows that there are some datasets which cannot be created using a pseudorandom number generator of length less than that of the dataset, proving your assertion that there is such a generator for every possible dataset FALSE.
Once more: Your initial posting was incorrect. I corrected it and supplied a mathematical proof that it was incorrect, which you didn't (and apparently still do not) understand, regardless of your score on your quiz.
I'm pretty sure that a profitable company can do more than what you have listed. They can also:
Reasearch new fields and open up new markets.
Spin off companies.
Buy competitors.
Now, I do agree with you that companies which grow large enough end up being banks. There is no way to invest 40 billion dollars a year into your core business, unless that business is lending out said money. However, this is just an example of the failure of businesses in this position to understand what their goal should be. They should push any money they can't invest in core businesses out to investors as dividends. This is one reason taking a company private can be so profitable, any excess profit can be pocketed by the owner/operator. In a public corp. you have a board of directors which is selected by large investment funds. Most fund managers are stupid assholes. Therefore you end up with worthless boards of directors who do not represent the actual interests of shareholders.
Many more companies than you would like to believe are operated for the benefit of the people who are operating the company, rather than the owners/shareholders. Consider this: A large mutual fund owns a sizeable percentage of a corporation. The mutual fund manager or another executive at the investment bank votes the shares controlled by the fund and therefore has a large influence on the makeup of the companies board of directors. The fund manager has only an indirect interest in the profitability of this corporation, as he might get a bonus or other compensation if the fund which he manages performs well. The shareholders have a direct interest in the profitability of the company. Now, suppose the difference in bonus for the fund manager for an extra 100 million in profitability of this corporation amounts to $100,000. Now suppose that this fund manager happens to have a personal interest in another company, company B. Suppose an extra 1 million in profitability in company B would lead to $200,000 personal gain for the fund manager. The fund manager will use his influence to try to steer money toward company B (or C or D or E or any of the other companies he has a personal stake in). The board of directors only cares about the profits of the company so far as is necessary to keep up appearances. They also have personal interests in all sorts of companies. They hire a CEO who has a lot of influence over how the company is operated. Why do you suppose CEO's are given golden parachutes? That is the bribe they are payed to transfer the companies assets (which are owned by shareholders) to other entities (which are owned by other people).
Now, there are a million other ways that people put their personal wealth above honestly managing the wealth and business of others. The point is that that is what is going on much of the time. If companies were serious about making money for investors there would be no golden parachutes, since this merely rewards failure. A company which wanted to merely maximize value for investors would compensate CEO's and other executives with some sort of percentage average dividend in the period between their taking over the company and 10 years after they leave the company, with a clause that if the company stops being profitable at any point they lose all compensation until it is again profitable. (this is an unrefined version of what would likely be used). This is EXACTLY the compensation which a business owner experiences with a private company.
You're confused about a major point. Right wingers are cowards on their own. They crave a strong ruler to command them. Leftists are the ones who tend to go out into the woods and have revolution on their own.
Nobody cares about your baseless opinions unless you have some motivation we can relate too. It is like describing your poop, nobody cares about how big it is or what color since it doesn't help us to know random facts about your internal state. It doesn't really help us unless we are doing some sort of poll. We aren't doing a poll.
"I think soup is good." "I like trees." "I won't buy a tire that doesn't have white letters on the side." "I don't buy shareware that is crippled."
Congratulations on thinking something about something though.
The JRE doesn't effect the performance of your PC. It does run a background process which checks for updated versions of the JRE, but you can disable that, and it shouldn't effect performance.
Frankly, I beleive you are a 'ricer'. You should run gentoo.
ARG. Are you on some kind of medicine that makes you slow? Java is just as fast as any other language once you consider the quality of programming. A perfect C program is faster than a perfect Java program at the same task. Of course, a real world C program is never perfect, so you are VERY likely to see Java software which has better performance than natively compiled software.
Of course, how would you know? You're somehow morally opposed to software that runs 30% slower than some hypothetical ideal.
<sarcasm> I never run software that was written in C. I only run software written in Fortran, because the lack of pointers lets the compiler squeeze 2% better performance out of the code. I always decide on which software to run based on some esoteric implementation detail which doesn't effect me at all rather than how well the software solves the problem it is designed to solve. Where I work, getting things done is job 2! (Job 1: Making sure my computer isn't bogged down.) </sarcasm>
Ok, you don't understand my posting, but that is ok.
My proof does not specify any set size, therefore it is valid for a any size dataset. However, my proof does not claim what you think it claims. You think my proof says that you can't find a program to create a dataset which is smaller than the dataset, for some specified dataset X. Clearly this is false, as you can compress many datasets. However, there are some datasets which cannot be compressed at all using any method. My proof, although probably not nearly perfect, does show this.
Once again, suppose you could compress any dataset of length N to size N-M, where M >=1. This is just saying that you can shrink it by compressing it by at least one byte (the program used to compress the dataset should be included in the total length of the compressed dataset). Now you can repeat this process and get an even smaller dataset. By hypothesis, (this just means the thing we assumed to begin with, that is that we can compress to size N-M a dataset of size N) we can repeat this process and get a dataset of size N-M-M2, where M2 >= 1. Repeating this N times leaves us with a size of equal to or less than 0, proving that you cannot in fact compress any dataset.
This is a complete proof that there exists some dataset which cannot be compressed using any method. In fact, this proves that there are infinitely many such sets, at least one of each size N. This of course assumes that you include the decompression program as a component of the length of the compressed dataset, which is reasonable because otherwise you could just have the decompression program copy the dataset, giving perfect compression (although this is highly dubious it might be argued by the pedantic).
This is false. There is not such a generator for any dataset, such that the generator can be described using less bytes than the size of the dataset in question. In more clear terms, the cardinality of the set of datasets of size N-bits is larger than the cardinality of the set of psuedo-random number generators which can be described using less than N-bits.
I'll even include a proof. Suppose you could find a psuedo random number generating program for any dataset of size N-bits, and each pseudo random number generator could be described in less than N-bits. Now take that psuedo number generator and take it to be the dataset, and repeat this process to find a smaller pseudo number generating program which generates this pseudo number generating program. Since by hypothesis this can be repeated for any dataset, and therefore any pseudo number generating program, by applying this process over and over we eventually get a program which is one byte long, or one bit long. This is clearly a contradiction.
I apologize for any embarrassment this posting may have caused.
Dells (or PCs) are 'good enough' is not crap, it's reality for most PC users. Otherwise they would have changed systems.
Did you even read my post? The entire point I made is that people think that PC's are 'good enough' because they have very little experience with anything else, and so they don't know about all the things they could use a computer for if they had a better one. Once they are able to do all the things a mac lets them do with the same skillset they will never want to use Windows again.
Once again, my father is an example. He hasn't bought a digital camera because he assumes (correctly) that he would have trouble getting it to work with his PC, and figuring out the software. He would rather just pay for prints and spend the extra time golfing. With his new mac he can have a digital camera and not worry about figuring out a bunch of arcane PC bullcrap.
Stop repeating the same crap people say every day. This 'conventional wisdom' that 'dells are good enough' is total crap.
What constitutes 'good enough'? Did their previous computer completely break, or are thy looking for something better? Wasn't there previous computer 'good enough' for 90% of possible tasks?
My 486 was 'good enough' to run netscape in 1995. It was 'good enough' to connect to the internet and run any programming language, windows 2000 or linux. However, I upgraded, not because my computer wasn't 'good enough' but because for X dollars I could get an (X+?) better experience, and since used the computer many hours a day, this improved my life. I wasn't looking for the least possible computer which would fit my set of requirements, I was looking for the computer that was the best computer I could get for the money I thought was reasonable to spend.
People like to buy things which they will enjoy using, whether it's a Dell or an Apple. That is why people buy leather couches (who could possibly say that cloth isn't 'good enough') and wide screen plasma TV's. That's why my wife picked out the Ethan Allen furniture instead of the stuff at Walmart. Nobody can say that a walmart bookshelf isn't 'good enough' to hold books. It does the job exactly as well as any other bookshelf. I'm probably a little stupid for spending orders of magnitude more. But I'm not dirt poor (anymore) and when I look at the furniture I got I am much happier sitting next to it day after day than I would be watching walmart pressboard slowly melt and chip away.
That is why I do much of my work on a powerbook. Sure, I could still be using my $1000 dollar Toshiba Satilite I bought in 2003. In every way it is 'good enough' to do everything I wanted to do. But it was hot, the screen resolution was low, and unlike my powerbook, it wasn't a joy to use. I find myself using the powerbook differently than I would have used the Toshiba (I gave it to a friend). I pull it out and am not as resistant to stopping work for short intervals. I can put it away without a lengthy shutdown procedure (close the lid and it is instantly in standby). I can pull it out and actually work from battery if I want to show someone something. It doesn't weight nearly as much, and it is far more durable.
That doesn't even take OS-X into account. It is fantastic. I now have the power of Bash and a unix environment, with python built in as well, with the ease of use and multimedia integration of Windows (although it is really several times better than Windows). And everyone in my family can use it without being taught to do every little thing.
I just 'sold' my mac mini to my father at a big loss (family discount?), but now he will actually be able to use his computer. He is the person you describe in your posting. His beige box duron I built for him before I knew better is 'good enough' to check email. He runs outlook express, and occasionally gets massive virus infections that i have to clean off (even though he has up to date virus scan). Despite this necessary expert help every few months, and the maintenance tasks it requires he considers it 'good enough'. He can't buy a digital camera because he wouldn't know how to set it up (he could easily do this with a mac) but that is 'good enough'. He can't accomplish anything on the computer besides pga.com and outlook express. That isn't good enough.
When people say that a dell is 'good enough' what they are really saying is a dell is 'good enough for what I know how to do on a computer'. Since the vast majority of people have only used windows, they only know how to do things they can already do on windows. My father is going to be very happy with his Mac Mini, because now he can use a digital camera, now he can avoid massive virus infections, now he can manage his computer without constant outside assistance. So although the old computer wasn't very good for him at all, he thought it was ok, because it allowed him to act within the bounds of computer use as he understood him.
The government does not have to regulate or run an industry in order to convince the industry to take certain actions. For example, Al Gore's project to increase broadband saturation in rural areas. It is just a small tax which subsidizes broadband internet in rural areas. Whether or not it is effective is not known to me, but it is unobtrusive in that it doesn't effect my service or choices, but it still encourages industry to extend service to people who might otherwise be left behind.
Medicare and Social Security aren't the kinds of government programs I have a problem with. These 'entitlement' type programs are just a way to pay money or benefits to people who qualify. If your social security check doesn't come you raise bloody hell. There is immediate and complete feedback which prevents any kind of corruption or major disruptions in service, and it is impossible to hide major problems. These are government programs that, while one might not like them on some kind of misguided 'role of government' basis, cannot be claimed to be inefficient or ineffective. However, with that said, they are highly mismanaged and not very good at their roles from the perspective of the 'customers'. For example, all applications for benefits under Social Security's disability program are routinely denied. In order to receive such benefits, you must hire a lawyer and sue Social Security. This eventually leads to backpay, but a portion of that backpay goes to the lawyer. The reason you must do this is that Social Security cannot effectively determine who actually deserves the benefit and who does not, so they rely on courts to do it. Why is this? It is because the government has no ability to set up an effective system, or to hire competent employees to do anything, except for mailing out checks (and it only does this well due to the feedback it immediately receives from the people who do not receive an expected check). You only have to resort to suing private insurance companies in extreme situations, and the burden is generally on them to show why they are denying you coverage.
However, many government programs are complete wastes. Any program which tries to 'do something', whether it's research, defense, or determining who deserves a certain benefit, the government will fail in an expensive and corrupt way. Economists would likely say this is because the individuals who manage government programs do not have an incentive to do their job well, but rather they have an incentive to get promoted. If doing your job well does not play a major role in getting promoted (and how can it be when the people who are promoting you were promoted based on the same criteria) then there is no incentive at all.
You make several good points. I don't disagree with the practicality of government, but neither do I accept that government authority and scope action can be increased with any justification whatsoever. With government, the proof is always in the pudding, and this generally leads to problems. What I am saying here is that I don't believe that you can say the government doesn't have the right to expand into, for example, healthcare. This is perfectly ok, so long as the authority to expand comes from the people, as an election issue perhaps. However, if the government then goes on to make an absolute mess of this new power, then it was morally not legitimate for the government to expand in such a way, since they caused harm by doing so. This isn't a completely worked out theory, but I believe it is the only one which addresses government action in this way. Of course, most of the time the government will mess things up, so you can expect most government action, outside of it's minimal bounds, to be immoral in the end.
This totally ignores the really bad things governments do. Governments are run by people, and people with power will almost universally abuse that power. The simple proof of this is the amount of praise we heap on leaders who do not abuse their power. From Cincinatus to Washington, we remember and almost worship leaders who do not abuse their power. Now look at the long list of leaders who abuse power for their own gain. This list includes almost every king, queen, chief, etc who has ever lived. Often, and disgustingly, the primary gain leaders use power for is to remain in a position of power.
As for all the industries, telephone, airline, radio, telecom that you mention, the government has been a hinderance to each one. In telephone, the government gave a monopoly to AT&T. Later, it became apparent that AT&T was abusing that monopoly, and they were broken up, but only after doing much harm, destroying competition, and charging almost punitive rates. Look at international long distance charges. The countries with the highest charges are universally those countries with nationalized telecom industries. This is not a coincidence.
The airline industry was never run by the government, although it was heavily regulated. After the regulation went away flying continued to be safer every year, so it did not become dangerous as some predicted. Additionally, it is now economical to fly, where before deregulation it was very expensive. This doesn't take into account airports, but I think they can be considered to be like roads are for cars, infrastructure that is necessary, but not sufficient.
As for abuses by corporations, you have it completely wrong. Corporations exist at the pleasure of the government. It is a RESULT not a CAUSE of corruption in government that corporations have been able to act so terribly. Corporations do not have a right to exist. They exist only through statute and treaty. Tomorrow the congress could pass a law revoking all corporate charters and forcing all corporations to sell off their assets and transfer the proceeds to shareholders. Even a weak government could do this. However, our government is far too corrupt to do this, even in the most obvious cases.
A middle road solution would be to revoke the charter of any corporation which showed a pattern of intentional law breaking. Encode the specifics into a law, so that people could sue and the legal system could determine which corporations should be broken up.
The important part to remember is that corporations exist via statute, and can be unexisted via statute, and you do not need a strong government to pass such a law, just one which functions.
The link you gave says LENOVO right at the top. Lenovo bought the consumer IBM brand. So IBM is just branding at that point, it is produced by Lenovo, a chinese company.
You don't mention in your post the fact that you didn't know IBM produced supercomputers. You are uninformed and trying to win the argument by dancing around it.
The Army was able to handle logistics when they were keeping track of bullets and bags of corn. Now they have to keep track of thousands of different types of toner cartridges, and that is just the start. Plus the army was bad at it even when they did do it and it was simpler.
Now the problem with Haliburton isn't that it isn't possible to do a good job, it's why would they? Corporations only do things to make money better. If it doesn't improve the bottom line, it doesn't get done. And when you're on a government contract one thing that doesn't improve the bottom line is actually doing a good job or providing good service. What does improve the bottom line is bribing congressmen and producing slick power point presentations to impress idiot bureaucrats. This isn't because corporations can't or won't do a good job if pressed to do so, it is because the government is too corrupt and incompetent to actually make them do it. There are plenty of government contracts which actually perform. A friend of mine works for a NASA contractor, and they work closely with NASA scientists and produce the best result they possibly can, because they are expected to and are closely checked up on. The DOD can't even tell congress where it spends it's money.
It's like this. A guy pulls a dump truck full of money up to your house and asks you to dig a ditch from your house to the next county, by hand, in exchange for the money. You know for a fact he will never come back and check if you actually did it. You might start digging the ditch, but human nature being what it is, you will eventually give up, but keep the money. And if you decide to return the money and be honest, I promise that the next guy will just keep it. So the effect is the same.
You act as though the government was working just fine until these evil corporations came in and started taking all the money. Actually, the government NEVER worked that way. The government was far far smaller before WWII. After WWII, the government was much larger and dependent on the Military Industrial Complex. There has never been, in the US, a very large government program that wasn't really just supervising contractors (poorly). An exception might be Social Security, but it's size is an illusion, it is a very small program which shuffles large amounts of money around. (What I mean here is that the budget for Social Security is small compared to the amount of money that passes through the program and to people).
The fact of the matter is that Government does everything poorly, and one application of this rule is that the Government supervises contractors poorly.
Now, you claim that the (US) Government is good at some long term things. If you can name ONE I will subscribe to your newsletter.
Are you on drugs? Why is it that the mall can get power, the houses can get power, and every other building in the county can get power, and the NSA is having problems?
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, sarcasm? Maybe.
... Jupiter?
However, I can't help but say something. You laugh at sustainability, and then propose that we get our fossil fuels from
Not to mention the ecological impact of actually importing atmospheric carbon from another planet. Even the best paid Exxon shill would have trouble dancing around that one. (In dinosaur times CO2 was much higher, it's natural, from another planet? Uhmmm...)
Not to mention the fact that getting such a balloon to Jupiter would almost certainly take more energy than it would bring back in potential energy in the form of methane. And then you have to get the methane to the surface of the earth... not clear on how you plan to do that.
But like I said, hopefully you were just being sarcastic.
Are you going to appologize for lying? We don't need your shilling for software companies on slashdot. Here is an selection from an RMS interview
JA: How do you react to the opinion that non-free software is justified as a means for raising dollars that can then be put into the development of completely new software, money that otherwise may not have been available, and thus creating software that may have never been developed?
Richard Stallman: This is no justification at all. A non-free program systematically denies the users the freedom to cooperate; it is the basis of an antisocial scheme to dominate people. The program is available lawfully only to those who will surrender their freedom. That's not a contribution to society, it's a social problem. It is better to develop no software than to develop non-free software.
So if you find yourself in that situation, please don't follow that path. Please don't write the non-free program--please do something else instead. We can wait till someone else has the chance to develop a free program to do the same job.
JA: What about the programmers...
Richard Stallman: What about them? The programmers writing non-free software? They are doing something antisocial. They should get some other job.
JA: Such as?
Richard Stallman: There are thousands of different jobs people can have in society without developing non-free software. You can even be a programmer. Most paid programmers are developing custom software--only a small fraction are developing non-free software. The small fraction of proprietary software jobs are not hard to avoid.
JA: What is the distinction there?
Richard Stallman: Non-free software is meant to be distributed to the public. Custom software is meant to be used by one client. There's no ethical problem with custom software as long as you're respecting your client's freedom.
The next point is that programmers are a tiny fraction of employment in the computer field. Suppose somebody developed an AI and no programmers were needed anymore. Would this be a disaster? Would all the people who are now programmers be doomed to unemployment for the rest of their lives? Obviously not, but this doesn't stop people from exaggerating the issue.
He doesn't say this, and you are intentionally lying or are just completely misinformed.
He says people shouldn't be paid to write software that is then sold under a non-free license.
He has no problem with people being paid to write custom software, so long as other people get a chance to add on to it or modify it.
He specifically recommends that programmers would be paid to maintain and operate, and modify software for business and other entities, by selling support plans and so on.
lol
Frankly since we were both wrong on the only point you contended you are basically admitting my point. Besides, I was making a lighthearted joke. You decided it would be a good idea to try to knock my little joke down, probably because you don't know the difference.
ME: Heinlein is repeats themes... 20books * 500 pages.
YOU: If you knew anything about heinlein you would know that he wrote 50 books not 20!!!!!!
Come on. I mean, seriously.
I apologize if I offended your Heinlein sensibilities. Also, I'm sorry that your sense of humor is broken, jackass.
Since you claim that you can demonstrate that talking like a 30's gangster isn't in every heinlein book, please do so now. Saying 'demonstrably' is not a demonstration nor an argument.
Since you are such a dipshit you failed to see that my claim that 20 books * 500 pages was not meant to be an exact accounting of Heinleins works. Another way you might have determined that I was not trying to give a final accounting is that the length of my post was around 70 words (don't actually count them and give me a corrected number, asshat). You should also not point out that some of Heinlein's books have more than or less than 500 pages, in order to prove that I don't know the number of pages in Heinlein's books.
You claimed that I didn't know what I was talking about. I provided examples of each of my jocular claims about Heinlein. You have managed to dispute one, and even then I'll prove you wrong on that one. So the record so far is that I have given examples of each of my claims, without dispute, save one. You responded to my post by saying my claims were wrong, but now you are saying that my examples aren't good enough.
You said that my examples of Heinlein themes wasn't accurate. I have now pointed out the books that these examples come from! You are wrong. I know you can never accept that. Your world might implode if you ever were proven wrong. Well, guess what, I'm smarter than you are. You are wrong and I am right. Nanynany boo boo. You're trying to turn a little joke into some sort of heinlein dual, because my joke was a response to your post where you mock an author.
Now, as for "The Roads Must Roll", you say that the bad guy (Van Kleek) gives up because his army had been defeated and the station blah blah blah. You are completely wrong here, as Van Kleek doesn't give up, but rather is tackled and knocked out by Gaines, who goads him away from the self destruct switch he had set up by mocking him and poking at his insecurities. So, as it turns out, you're talking out of your ass, but I'm sure people say this too you all the time. "Derek is just talking out of his ass again" they probably say.
Please refrain from taking the microscope to my lighthearted banter in the future. Especially when the microscope is as cruddy as your memory.
TAANSTAFL - The moon is a harsh mistress.
Free Love - Stranger in a Strange Land, Friday, Number of the Beast, Time Enough for Love, etc etc
Cat's are Good - Door into Summer
Sex with mothers with time machine - Number of Beast, Time Enough for Love
Spacing Slavers - Time enough for love, Citizen of the Galaxy
Talking like 30's gangsters - Every Heinlein book that there is, Especially Job at the end where the various Gods are debating.
convince a bad guy to give up because of logical fallacy - The Roads Will Roll
Eat it pretender! Never question my heinlein bona fides!
inability to go more than a page or two without repeating a cultural reference already made twenty seven times (either in that work or earlier) or superimposing his political or computer biases - even when such references or superimpositions have nothing to do with the story at hand.
Sounds like Heinlein to me!
Seriously, did you ever read any of his books? TANSTAAFL and free love and cat's are good and let's have sex with our mothers by using a time machine, and then space some slavers. Next we'll talk like 30's gangsters because that's how people talk. After that we'll convince a bad guy to give up because we can prove him logically wrong. Wash, rinse, repeat for 500 pages * 20 books.
I own every one of his books and they are all fantastic.
Ok, you don't even know the basic terms, don't lecture me.
I proved that the statement "every dataset is compressable" is false, using contradiction. In other words "there exists a dataset (possibly many) which cannot be compressed". These statements are logically identical.
To restate, there are some datasets which cannot be compressed. This directly proves your statement that every dataset can be generated by a pseudorandom number generator FALSE, at least in those cases where the pseudo random number generator can itself be described with less data than the dataset you are trying to produce.
To recap yet again, my proof shows that there are some datasets which cannot be created using a pseudorandom number generator of length less than that of the dataset, proving your assertion that there is such a generator for every possible dataset FALSE.
Once more: Your initial posting was incorrect. I corrected it and supplied a mathematical proof that it was incorrect, which you didn't (and apparently still do not) understand, regardless of your score on your quiz.
I'm pretty sure that a profitable company can do more than what you have listed. They can also:
Reasearch new fields and open up new markets.
Spin off companies.
Buy competitors.
Now, I do agree with you that companies which grow large enough end up being banks. There is no way to invest 40 billion dollars a year into your core business, unless that business is lending out said money. However, this is just an example of the failure of businesses in this position to understand what their goal should be. They should push any money they can't invest in core businesses out to investors as dividends. This is one reason taking a company private can be so profitable, any excess profit can be pocketed by the owner/operator. In a public corp. you have a board of directors which is selected by large investment funds. Most fund managers are stupid assholes. Therefore you end up with worthless boards of directors who do not represent the actual interests of shareholders.
Many more companies than you would like to believe are operated for the benefit of the people who are operating the company, rather than the owners/shareholders. Consider this: A large mutual fund owns a sizeable percentage of a corporation. The mutual fund manager or another executive at the investment bank votes the shares controlled by the fund and therefore has a large influence on the makeup of the companies board of directors. The fund manager has only an indirect interest in the profitability of this corporation, as he might get a bonus or other compensation if the fund which he manages performs well. The shareholders have a direct interest in the profitability of the company. Now, suppose the difference in bonus for the fund manager for an extra 100 million in profitability of this corporation amounts to $100,000. Now suppose that this fund manager happens to have a personal interest in another company, company B. Suppose an extra 1 million in profitability in company B would lead to $200,000 personal gain for the fund manager. The fund manager will use his influence to try to steer money toward company B (or C or D or E or any of the other companies he has a personal stake in). The board of directors only cares about the profits of the company so far as is necessary to keep up appearances. They also have personal interests in all sorts of companies. They hire a CEO who has a lot of influence over how the company is operated. Why do you suppose CEO's are given golden parachutes? That is the bribe they are payed to transfer the companies assets (which are owned by shareholders) to other entities (which are owned by other people).
Now, there are a million other ways that people put their personal wealth above honestly managing the wealth and business of others. The point is that that is what is going on much of the time. If companies were serious about making money for investors there would be no golden parachutes, since this merely rewards failure. A company which wanted to merely maximize value for investors would compensate CEO's and other executives with some sort of percentage average dividend in the period between their taking over the company and 10 years after they leave the company, with a clause that if the company stops being profitable at any point they lose all compensation until it is again profitable. (this is an unrefined version of what would likely be used). This is EXACTLY the compensation which a business owner experiences with a private company.
You're confused about a major point. Right wingers are cowards on their own. They crave a strong ruler to command them. Leftists are the ones who tend to go out into the woods and have revolution on their own.
Nobody cares about your baseless opinions unless you have some motivation we can relate too. It is like describing your poop, nobody cares about how big it is or what color since it doesn't help us to know random facts about your internal state. It doesn't really help us unless we are doing some sort of poll. We aren't doing a poll.
"I think soup is good." "I like trees." "I won't buy a tire that doesn't have white letters on the side." "I don't buy shareware that is crippled."
Congratulations on thinking something about something though.
The JRE doesn't effect the performance of your PC. It does run a background process which checks for updated versions of the JRE, but you can disable that, and it shouldn't effect performance.
Frankly, I beleive you are a 'ricer'. You should run gentoo.
Can I have her then?
ARG. Are you on some kind of medicine that makes you slow? Java is just as fast as any other language once you consider the quality of programming. A perfect C program is faster than a perfect Java program at the same task. Of course, a real world C program is never perfect, so you are VERY likely to see Java software which has better performance than natively compiled software.
Of course, how would you know? You're somehow morally opposed to software that runs 30% slower than some hypothetical ideal.
<sarcasm> I never run software that was written in C. I only run software written in Fortran, because the lack of pointers lets the compiler squeeze 2% better performance out of the code. I always decide on which software to run based on some esoteric implementation detail which doesn't effect me at all rather than how well the software solves the problem it is designed to solve. Where I work, getting things done is job 2! (Job 1: Making sure my computer isn't bogged down.) </sarcasm>
Ok, you don't understand my posting, but that is ok.
My proof does not specify any set size, therefore it is valid for a any size dataset. However, my proof does not claim what you think it claims. You think my proof says that you can't find a program to create a dataset which is smaller than the dataset, for some specified dataset X. Clearly this is false, as you can compress many datasets. However, there are some datasets which cannot be compressed at all using any method. My proof, although probably not nearly perfect, does show this.
Once again, suppose you could compress any dataset of length N to size N-M, where M >=1. This is just saying that you can shrink it by compressing it by at least one byte (the program used to compress the dataset should be included in the total length of the compressed dataset). Now you can repeat this process and get an even smaller dataset. By hypothesis, (this just means the thing we assumed to begin with, that is that we can compress to size N-M a dataset of size N) we can repeat this process and get a dataset of size N-M-M2, where M2 >= 1. Repeating this N times leaves us with a size of equal to or less than 0, proving that you cannot in fact compress any dataset.
This is a complete proof that there exists some dataset which cannot be compressed using any method. In fact, this proves that there are infinitely many such sets, at least one of each size N. This of course assumes that you include the decompression program as a component of the length of the compressed dataset, which is reasonable because otherwise you could just have the decompression program copy the dataset, giving perfect compression (although this is highly dubious it might be argued by the pedantic).
This is false. There is not such a generator for any dataset, such that the generator can be described using less bytes than the size of the dataset in question. In more clear terms, the cardinality of the set of datasets of size N-bits is larger than the cardinality of the set of psuedo-random number generators which can be described using less than N-bits.
I'll even include a proof. Suppose you could find a psuedo random number generating program for any dataset of size N-bits, and each pseudo random number generator could be described in less than N-bits. Now take that psuedo number generator and take it to be the dataset, and repeat this process to find a smaller pseudo number generating program which generates this pseudo number generating program. Since by hypothesis this can be repeated for any dataset, and therefore any pseudo number generating program, by applying this process over and over we eventually get a program which is one byte long, or one bit long. This is clearly a contradiction.
I apologize for any embarrassment this posting may have caused.
I shouldn'ta hava to remind ya, every star trek techno babble contains a mention of the deflectors.
Did you even read my post? The entire point I made is that people think that PC's are 'good enough' because they have very little experience with anything else, and so they don't know about all the things they could use a computer for if they had a better one. Once they are able to do all the things a mac lets them do with the same skillset they will never want to use Windows again.
Once again, my father is an example. He hasn't bought a digital camera because he assumes (correctly) that he would have trouble getting it to work with his PC, and figuring out the software. He would rather just pay for prints and spend the extra time golfing. With his new mac he can have a digital camera and not worry about figuring out a bunch of arcane PC bullcrap.
Stop repeating the same crap people say every day. This 'conventional wisdom' that 'dells are good enough' is total crap.
What constitutes 'good enough'? Did their previous computer completely break, or are thy looking for something better? Wasn't there previous computer 'good enough' for 90% of possible tasks?
My 486 was 'good enough' to run netscape in 1995. It was 'good enough' to connect to the internet and run any programming language, windows 2000 or linux. However, I upgraded, not because my computer wasn't 'good enough' but because for X dollars I could get an (X+?) better experience, and since used the computer many hours a day, this improved my life. I wasn't looking for the least possible computer which would fit my set of requirements, I was looking for the computer that was the best computer I could get for the money I thought was reasonable to spend.
People like to buy things which they will enjoy using, whether it's a Dell or an Apple. That is why people buy leather couches (who could possibly say that cloth isn't 'good enough') and wide screen plasma TV's. That's why my wife picked out the Ethan Allen furniture instead of the stuff at Walmart. Nobody can say that a walmart bookshelf isn't 'good enough' to hold books. It does the job exactly as well as any other bookshelf. I'm probably a little stupid for spending orders of magnitude more. But I'm not dirt poor (anymore) and when I look at the furniture I got I am much happier sitting next to it day after day than I would be watching walmart pressboard slowly melt and chip away.
That is why I do much of my work on a powerbook. Sure, I could still be using my $1000 dollar Toshiba Satilite I bought in 2003. In every way it is 'good enough' to do everything I wanted to do. But it was hot, the screen resolution was low, and unlike my powerbook, it wasn't a joy to use. I find myself using the powerbook differently than I would have used the Toshiba (I gave it to a friend). I pull it out and am not as resistant to stopping work for short intervals. I can put it away without a lengthy shutdown procedure (close the lid and it is instantly in standby). I can pull it out and actually work from battery if I want to show someone something. It doesn't weight nearly as much, and it is far more durable.
That doesn't even take OS-X into account. It is fantastic. I now have the power of Bash and a unix environment, with python built in as well, with the ease of use and multimedia integration of Windows (although it is really several times better than Windows). And everyone in my family can use it without being taught to do every little thing.
I just 'sold' my mac mini to my father at a big loss (family discount?), but now he will actually be able to use his computer. He is the person you describe in your posting. His beige box duron I built for him before I knew better is 'good enough' to check email. He runs outlook express, and occasionally gets massive virus infections that i have to clean off (even though he has up to date virus scan). Despite this necessary expert help every few months, and the maintenance tasks it requires he considers it 'good enough'. He can't buy a digital camera because he wouldn't know how to set it up (he could easily do this with a mac) but that is 'good enough'. He can't accomplish anything on the computer besides pga.com and outlook express. That isn't good enough.
When people say that a dell is 'good enough' what they are really saying is a dell is 'good enough for what I know how to do on a computer'. Since the vast majority of people have only used windows, they only know how to do things they can already do on windows. My father is going to be very happy with his Mac Mini, because now he can use a digital camera, now he can avoid massive virus infections, now he can manage his computer without constant outside assistance. So although the old computer wasn't very good for him at all, he thought it was ok, because it allowed him to act within the bounds of computer use as he understood him.
Those bounds are about to be pushed way out.
And here I thought you were trying to have a meaningful debate. Oh well, I guess I'll have to lower my estimation of mankind one more notch.
The government does not have to regulate or run an industry in order to convince the industry to take certain actions. For example, Al Gore's project to increase broadband saturation in rural areas. It is just a small tax which subsidizes broadband internet in rural areas. Whether or not it is effective is not known to me, but it is unobtrusive in that it doesn't effect my service or choices, but it still encourages industry to extend service to people who might otherwise be left behind.
Medicare and Social Security aren't the kinds of government programs I have a problem with. These 'entitlement' type programs are just a way to pay money or benefits to people who qualify. If your social security check doesn't come you raise bloody hell. There is immediate and complete feedback which prevents any kind of corruption or major disruptions in service, and it is impossible to hide major problems. These are government programs that, while one might not like them on some kind of misguided 'role of government' basis, cannot be claimed to be inefficient or ineffective. However, with that said, they are highly mismanaged and not very good at their roles from the perspective of the 'customers'. For example, all applications for benefits under Social Security's disability program are routinely denied. In order to receive such benefits, you must hire a lawyer and sue Social Security. This eventually leads to backpay, but a portion of that backpay goes to the lawyer. The reason you must do this is that Social Security cannot effectively determine who actually deserves the benefit and who does not, so they rely on courts to do it. Why is this? It is because the government has no ability to set up an effective system, or to hire competent employees to do anything, except for mailing out checks (and it only does this well due to the feedback it immediately receives from the people who do not receive an expected check). You only have to resort to suing private insurance companies in extreme situations, and the burden is generally on them to show why they are denying you coverage.
However, many government programs are complete wastes. Any program which tries to 'do something', whether it's research, defense, or determining who deserves a certain benefit, the government will fail in an expensive and corrupt way. Economists would likely say this is because the individuals who manage government programs do not have an incentive to do their job well, but rather they have an incentive to get promoted. If doing your job well does not play a major role in getting promoted (and how can it be when the people who are promoting you were promoted based on the same criteria) then there is no incentive at all.
You make several good points. I don't disagree with the practicality of government, but neither do I accept that government authority and scope action can be increased with any justification whatsoever. With government, the proof is always in the pudding, and this generally leads to problems. What I am saying here is that I don't believe that you can say the government doesn't have the right to expand into, for example, healthcare. This is perfectly ok, so long as the authority to expand comes from the people, as an election issue perhaps. However, if the government then goes on to make an absolute mess of this new power, then it was morally not legitimate for the government to expand in such a way, since they caused harm by doing so. This isn't a completely worked out theory, but I believe it is the only one which addresses government action in this way. Of course, most of the time the government will mess things up, so you can expect most government action, outside of it's minimal bounds, to be immoral in the end.
This totally ignores the really bad things governments do. Governments are run by people, and people with power will almost universally abuse that power. The simple proof of this is the amount of praise we heap on leaders who do not abuse their power. From Cincinatus to Washington, we remember and almost worship leaders who do not abuse their power. Now look at the long list of leaders who abuse power for their own gain. This list includes almost every king, queen, chief, etc who has ever lived. Often, and disgustingly, the primary gain leaders use power for is to remain in a position of power.
As for all the industries, telephone, airline, radio, telecom that you mention, the government has been a hinderance to each one. In telephone, the government gave a monopoly to AT&T. Later, it became apparent that AT&T was abusing that monopoly, and they were broken up, but only after doing much harm, destroying competition, and charging almost punitive rates. Look at international long distance charges. The countries with the highest charges are universally those countries with nationalized telecom industries. This is not a coincidence.
The airline industry was never run by the government, although it was heavily regulated. After the regulation went away flying continued to be safer every year, so it did not become dangerous as some predicted. Additionally, it is now economical to fly, where before deregulation it was very expensive. This doesn't take into account airports, but I think they can be considered to be like roads are for cars, infrastructure that is necessary, but not sufficient.
As for abuses by corporations, you have it completely wrong. Corporations exist at the pleasure of the government. It is a RESULT not a CAUSE of corruption in government that corporations have been able to act so terribly. Corporations do not have a right to exist. They exist only through statute and treaty. Tomorrow the congress could pass a law revoking all corporate charters and forcing all corporations to sell off their assets and transfer the proceeds to shareholders. Even a weak government could do this. However, our government is far too corrupt to do this, even in the most obvious cases.
A middle road solution would be to revoke the charter of any corporation which showed a pattern of intentional law breaking. Encode the specifics into a law, so that people could sue and the legal system could determine which corporations should be broken up.
The important part to remember is that corporations exist via statute, and can be unexisted via statute, and you do not need a strong government to pass such a law, just one which functions.
The link you gave says LENOVO right at the top. Lenovo bought the consumer IBM brand. So IBM is just branding at that point, it is produced by Lenovo, a chinese company.
You don't mention in your post the fact that you didn't know IBM produced supercomputers. You are uninformed and trying to win the argument by dancing around it.
The Army was able to handle logistics when they were keeping track of bullets and bags of corn. Now they have to keep track of thousands of different types of toner cartridges, and that is just the start. Plus the army was bad at it even when they did do it and it was simpler.
Now the problem with Haliburton isn't that it isn't possible to do a good job, it's why would they? Corporations only do things to make money better. If it doesn't improve the bottom line, it doesn't get done. And when you're on a government contract one thing that doesn't improve the bottom line is actually doing a good job or providing good service. What does improve the bottom line is bribing congressmen and producing slick power point presentations to impress idiot bureaucrats. This isn't because corporations can't or won't do a good job if pressed to do so, it is because the government is too corrupt and incompetent to actually make them do it. There are plenty of government contracts which actually perform. A friend of mine works for a NASA contractor, and they work closely with NASA scientists and produce the best result they possibly can, because they are expected to and are closely checked up on. The DOD can't even tell congress where it spends it's money.
It's like this. A guy pulls a dump truck full of money up to your house and asks you to dig a ditch from your house to the next county, by hand, in exchange for the money. You know for a fact he will never come back and check if you actually did it. You might start digging the ditch, but human nature being what it is, you will eventually give up, but keep the money. And if you decide to return the money and be honest, I promise that the next guy will just keep it. So the effect is the same.
You act as though the government was working just fine until these evil corporations came in and started taking all the money. Actually, the government NEVER worked that way. The government was far far smaller before WWII. After WWII, the government was much larger and dependent on the Military Industrial Complex. There has never been, in the US, a very large government program that wasn't really just supervising contractors (poorly). An exception might be Social Security, but it's size is an illusion, it is a very small program which shuffles large amounts of money around. (What I mean here is that the budget for Social Security is small compared to the amount of money that passes through the program and to people).
The fact of the matter is that Government does everything poorly, and one application of this rule is that the Government supervises contractors poorly.
Now, you claim that the (US) Government is good at some long term things. If you can name ONE I will subscribe to your newsletter.
Are you on drugs? Why is it that the mall can get power, the houses can get power, and every other building in the county can get power, and the NSA is having problems?