So when are we going to be able to exchange platinum pieces in bureaux de change? And has anyone got a page showing the currency against the dollar/Euro?
But the idea of these virtual economies is quite interesting. How about using them to experiment with possible economic models? Why not set up a modern-day game with different shards representing economic models and see which one works best? The US government or the EU could fund it. Players could play for free and the government could see how they'd react to e.g. different interest rates.
OK, it's a bit stupid, but it would be a cool experiment.
Hmm. I'm trying to decide whether this post was a troll, or a collection of randomly-combined insults. Shall I bite? It's not as if I'll ever change anyone's views... well why not.
Fool, just for the record. This sentence makes no sense. Were you drunk when you wrote it?
How much do you think RB started with? IIRC he came from a rich family who supported him a lot in the early days. But Branson got to the top by ruthlessly discarding any friends or allies he'd used over the years and has a history of shady business dealings (including a short spell spent in jail.) But that's just a side note...
There's nothing stopping anyone going from almost nothing to millionaire besides ability and effort. And how many other examples can you name apart from RB? I've no idea where one could find the statistics for this sort of thing, but I'd bet that 90%+ of all millionaires started from a position of affluence. How many businesses are started up, after all, without capital (or at least a decent chunk of equity)? That is the central philosophy of capitalism, correct?
This is not a class war, if you think it is then explain inheritance tax. Again, this sentence makes little sense when combined with the rest of your post. Inheritance tax BTW is a tax paid on wealth one inherits.
Your attitude does more to hold people back that any capital conspiracy.
Who do you think you are helping with your tripe?
I wasn't trying to help anyone with my "tripe". I was merely making a two sentence observation.
If people on Merseyside et.al. knew they could make their way in the world instead of being spoon fed by the socialist pseudo intellectuals who infest their ranks they'd be a lot better off. They certainly get told enough that they can make their way in the world through the popular media, but for some reason many of them are still impoverished. Are you suggesting that they could all become owners of large multinationals? Who would work for them if they were all owners?
And did you imply that socialist pseudo-intellectuals is a tautology? I'm not a socialist, at least not in the way you probably think I am, but there have been a few socialists who were slightly more intellctual than you. Shall we start with Orwell and Einstein?
Your philosophy belongs in the 1800s I don't believe I mentioned my philosophy anywhere in my post.
Numbers? Yeah, OK. $200,000,000 is a more accurate figure. But that's still a big figure, and is likely to be a minimum of a quarter the cost of the hardware.
Your argument says that those that don't get a computer don't because they are foolish and they must be forced to take one.
Sure. Why not? People are already forced pay tax and conduct other governmental correspondence through vast amounts of paperwork. Why not make them do it online through their own, or a free government-supplied, computer? The government would save loads of cash because it would cut down on the resources needed for filing, archiving, form-checking etc.; hence reducing taxes which I somehow have the impression you'd be in favour of:)
And what about education? If you accept that parents are forced to provide education for their kids then it's not much of a step to make sure their kids have access to a computer, and accept a free one if they don't own one.
Or don't you think that users should have the right to choose their operating system?
If they want to pay for a Microsoft license, then no one's stopping the recipients of the computers from installing it. But if the government is providing computers, then they might as well install an OS that doesn't require them to buy a license.
hate paying money for software myself, but let's get the price of the software accurately placed. At a volume, and this one is a huge volume, the MS OS would probably cost less than $50 a platform, as even an OEM version of XP in the States cost just $149 at a retailer.
And if they just have a basic suite like Works, it would probably cost another $50, at the very most.
Er, $100 is a lot of cash when you're trying to get a license for everyone in the country.
Population of Belgium ~ 10,000,000
10,000,000 * $100 =
$1,000,000,000
A billion dollars. It would cost a fraction of the amount to copy 10 million Linux CDs. And then in two years time, Microsoft forced obsolecence means all the computers have to be upgraded...
And for the 5% that can't afford them, they probably have greater concerns than being able to play quake or download naked pictures Britney Spears.
Like voting online, or filling out their tax returns online (saving the government millions in bureaucracy), or doing better at school with all the extra information at their fingertips, or just learning to use the computer (giving the Belgians an advantage over every other country in terms of potential source of techies in the next generation).
This scheme is social activism at its worst.
Yeah, I'm sure the government will fall over it. They'll rue the day they ever decided to make sure everyone had a computer.
I suppose it's a matter of taste. I've tried to use KDE lots of times, but I find it ugly and unintuitive. Gnome can be slow, but I think Gnome is a lot better than KDE on a high-end machine. Nautilus is great if your box is fast enough to handle it. KDE always feels like a Windows wannabe to me (not a flame, just an opinion.) And maybe I'm just a complete imbecile when it comes to updating things, but I keep breaking apps in KDE.
Besides, I've fallen in love with Galeon. Much better than Explorer or Konqueror (does konqueror have tabbed browsing yet? haven't checked it out in a little while.) I'm currently running 0.11.3, and it's still more stable than Explorer. And on the two occasions it has crashed, it's restored my browsing state. Poetry.
Even the concept that the only other possibility is silicon-based life forms seems quite limiting.
If you're going to make statements like that, you ought to at least propose what could be used as a substitute for carbon/sillicon if you want to be taken seriously.
I hate to say this, but installing Linux isn't nearly as easy, fast, or reliable as Windows XP.
It depends on your setup. Last week I installed Windows XP and Redhat 7.2 on a box (dual-boot). I was very impressed with both of their install processes - practically all my weird hardware got installed without any input from me. XP, though, misconfigured my network card, whereas Redhat had no problems. It was an old card - perhaps MS couldn't be bothered to support it any more.
As for speed, both installs went quite quickly. XP was a bit faster I suppose, but how often do you need to do it?
Hmm. Does it still do that? Last time I had a problem with Win2k and it couldn't boot to the desktop, it flashed the error message for about 1/2 a picosecond and then rebooted... apparently the default is to restart rather than show an error message with certain system problems, which has to be the most ludicrous design decision of all time. I still don't know what the problem was, but after I managed to apply some first aid via the command line, the box was switched to Redhat.
Yes yes, Idylls of the King, I was feeling like shit and a bit confused (it was 2am); it was written in Wales though.
In Wales in the 5th century, they spoke Old Welsh. In Cornwall, they spoke Cornish
Not true, unless you have better sources than I do. Cornish isn't recognised as a separate language from Welsh until the 6th Century or so.
Different tribes, different cultures
Well I'd have to disagree with that. The differences between the tribes of Cornwall and Wales were no bigger than the differences between the tribes of Wales. At least from those of South-East Wales. The difference was blurred at best. Maybe Cornwall was more Romanized than most of Wales, but considering the amount of military power the Romans were forced to pour into Wales, in the South East the Britons there were probably more Romanized than those in Cornwall.
if you're going to inanely insist that the cultures are the same
I would argue that they were the same, not are the same, at least Cornish and Welsh in the 5th Century. As for the English, they didn't exist in the 5th Century. England was split between the tribes of Wales, Cornwall, and the Saxons - and it can hardly be claimed that the Arthurian legends came originally from the Saxons (he did fight against them after all.)
The Scots and Irish were at this time separate cultures, but not that much.
Besides, the whole story was about languages, not cultures, and I stand by my slightly simplified orignal argument that the legends came from Welsh, not Middle English.
you had better just call the whole batch British, and not Welsh.
Well they were. In the 5th Century the distinction is almost meaningles between British and Welsh and Cornish. I didn't use the term because of the confusion with the modern term (Welsh + English + Scots + etc.)
I think EmBaggins covered the Merlin problem rather well. The character, possible etymological derivations notwithstanding, is definitely a mixture of at least two totally different personalities.
Well... the legends came from Welsh more than anywhere I think. And considering the name comes from Welsh... after all, Hollywood has pretty much rewritten the Robin Hood legend many times over, but most people would consider it an English legend rather than an American one.
Err, about Morte d'Arthur... oops, I was confusing it with Idylls of the King.
Monmouth places Arthur in Cornwall, not Wales.
And what was the difference between Wales and Cornwall in the 5th Century? I'm talking culturally here, not geography. I didn't really want to get into the whole Welsh/Briton thing on Slashdot...
Arthur himself, if he existed? Cornish, Welsh, British, Breton
And the difference between British and Welsh in the 5th Century?
Same for Merlin. His origins are also rather obscure. You can't say he wasn't Welsh, but you also definitely cannot say that he _was_
Well, his name at least is Welsh-based. That seems to me that if you can say he's based on any legend, it's Welsh. Where else are you considering the legend comes from?
Nennius is no longer considered to be the author of Historia Brittonum...
Hmm. Despite a thorough googling, this seems to be in dispute; I only found one reference saying that he wasn't and many stating that he was the author.
Assuming all the other references are out of date, what other nationality could the author have been? Presumably British rather than Saxon, and in any case s/he states that Arthur was British.
Morte Darthur was not written in Wales.
Accepted... I had confused Idylls of the King and le Mort d'Arthur. Stupid, I know.
The historical Arthur was most likely either a Welshman or a Cornishman fighting invading Saxons in the 5th century AD
Er, how do you distinguish a Welshman from a Cornishman in the ~5th Century? I remember seeing a reference to Cornwall by the Saxons as late as ~1000AD as West Wales and the current Wales as North Wales.
to call the massive collection of traditions [...] "Welsh Legends" is a bombastic reductive statement.
Oh please stop being so anal. Originally Welsh legends I said, whilst still acknowledging the contribution of other writers. c.f. the original poster who said the legends came from Middle English.
What about all the Welsh names in the legends? If you can call them anything, they're Welsh legends.
But surely the earliest references to Arthur are Welsh? Uhhrr... Nennius the monk has the earliest reference to him IIRC, and I believe he was Welsh, or at least writing in Wales. And even Le Morte D'Arthur was written in Wales, incorporating some Welsh myths.
Obviously a great deal of the legend has been built up by English and French authors, but the man or men Arthur was based on was Welsh (or Breton) so I think it's reasonable to call them Welsh legends.
And you can hardly say that Merlin (Merddyn) wasn't Welsh...
Actually the original Arthurian myths, including Merlin et al. are from Welsh and other early Celtic cultures.
And incidentally, Elvish was actually based on Welsh and one of the Scandinavian languages (Finnish?), although he borrowed words from other languages as well. It's the hobbit & common languages that were based more on Anglo-Saxon.
It's interesting that none of these defenders of spam elect to publicly display their email. Perhaps they're not that keen on spam after all. You have to wonder how long their tolerance of spam would last if everyone who read their message decided to sell their address to a spam list.
People leech and feed from the profit of others when they can, and the only way other than (financial/material) incentives to make a population work is at the wrong end of a gun.
Whoever said that work was optional under a leftist system? Simple solution: you refuse people access to the resources of a community if they do not work when work is available (cf capitalism, where people do not get access to the resources of a community, even if there is an excess if they desire to work but cannot.) You are creating a straw man.
The profit of others is the whole point. Profit is made by exploiting other people. The central philosophy of capitalism is that money creates money; it by definition increases the wealth of the rich disproportionately to that of the poor. It is the most unfair economic system that exists (note economic, separate from the libertarian/totalitarianism axis.)
You are absolutely correct. After all, TVs can't show different TV programs, and they can't be copied digitally. CD/MP3/etc players can't play a wide range of music, neither is that music infinitely reproduceable. And with novels, scripts, reference works, news etc. the important thing is the medium, not the content.
A physical good is not instantly transportable, infinitely reproduceable and generally doesn't stay the way it was during usage
Maybe not, but most goods require an input of some informational content. The big cost in medicinal drugs for example is in the research, not the production. Even in your car example, a huge amount of the work goes into the design of it. Like the article said:
In the last ten to twenty years Western societies started to base their material production and all of society more and more on information goods.
>There's no proof that global-warming is
> anything more than a theory
There's plenty of evidence; for a start, the temprature rise over the last few decades has been the fastest change in temperature, as far as we can measure in the last ten million years or so.
> Can you predict how the Earth's atmospheric
> trends will continue based on a minute
> fragment of incomplete information?
Hardly minute. We can accurately measure temperatures for the last several thousand years using dendochronology. And information going even further back, albeit less easily measured, can be found in ice cores.
But you don't need just evidence; simple chemistry & physics says that if you pump CO2 into the atmosphere, the world will get hotter. The exact predictions are still being worked on, but can you say qualitative logic?
>But you're no less a troll.
No doubt 95% or so of the world's climatologists are trolls too then.
So if you think that you know better than the vast majority of climatologists, perhaps you can give us your scientific evidence? For a start, perhaps you could tell us how much CO2 we would need to significantly affect the world temperature compare d to what we produce now.
Hell, even Bush accepts that global warming is a fact.
Yes, I do realise you're just trolling, but some half-asleep moderator is going to give you a +1 Insightful any minute now.
Slashdot Mirror
So when are we going to be able to exchange platinum pieces in bureaux de change? And has anyone got a page showing the currency against the dollar/Euro?
But the idea of these virtual economies is quite interesting. How about using them to experiment with possible economic models? Why not set up a modern-day game with different shards representing economic models and see which one works best? The US government or the EU could fund it. Players could play for free and the government could see how they'd react to e.g. different interest rates.
OK, it's a bit stupid, but it would be a cool experiment.
Yes true. I hold my hands up. I just did a subtraction. It was closer though :)
Er, assuming the birthdate you've got is correct, Brosnan is 49.
Hmm. I'm trying to decide whether this post was a troll, or a collection of randomly-combined insults. Shall I bite? It's not as if I'll ever change anyone's views... well why not.
Fool, just for the record.
This sentence makes no sense. Were you drunk when you wrote it?
How much do you think RB started with?
IIRC he came from a rich family who supported him a lot in the early days. But Branson got to the top by ruthlessly discarding any friends or allies he'd used over the years and has a history of shady business dealings (including a short spell spent in jail.) But that's just a side note...
There's nothing stopping anyone going from almost nothing to millionaire besides ability and effort.
And how many other examples can you name apart from RB? I've no idea where one could find the statistics for this sort of thing, but I'd bet that 90%+ of all millionaires started from a position of affluence. How many businesses are started up, after all, without capital (or at least a decent chunk of equity)? That is the central philosophy of capitalism, correct?
This is not a class war, if you think it is then explain inheritance tax.
Again, this sentence makes little sense when combined with the rest of your post. Inheritance tax BTW is a tax paid on wealth one inherits.
Your attitude does more to hold people back that any capital conspiracy.
Who do you think you are helping with your tripe?
I wasn't trying to help anyone with my "tripe". I was merely making a two sentence observation.
If people on Merseyside et.al. knew they could make their way in the world instead of being spoon fed by the socialist pseudo intellectuals who infest their ranks they'd be a lot better off.
They certainly get told enough that they can make their way in the world through the popular media, but for some reason many of them are still impoverished. Are you suggesting that they could all become owners of large multinationals? Who would work for them if they were all owners?
And did you imply that socialist pseudo-intellectuals is a tautology? I'm not a socialist, at least not in the way you probably think I am, but there have been a few socialists who were slightly more intellctual than you. Shall we start with Orwell and Einstein?
Your philosophy belongs in the 1800s
I don't believe I mentioned my philosophy anywhere in my post.
Please respond, I found your last post amusing.
Nothing is stopping anybody else from starting a large company
Except capital...
Besides, not everyone can run a large company.
Numbers? Yeah, OK. $200,000,000 is a more accurate figure. But that's still a big figure, and is likely to be a minimum of a quarter the cost of the hardware.
:)
Your argument says that those that don't get a computer don't because they are foolish and they must be forced to take one.
Sure. Why not? People are already forced pay tax and conduct other governmental correspondence through vast amounts of paperwork. Why not make them do it online through their own, or a free government-supplied, computer? The government would save loads of cash because it would cut down on the resources needed for filing, archiving, form-checking etc.; hence reducing taxes which I somehow have the impression you'd be in favour of
And what about education? If you accept that parents are forced to provide education for their kids then it's not much of a step to make sure their kids have access to a computer, and accept a free one if they don't own one.
Or don't you think that users should have the right to choose their operating system?
If they want to pay for a Microsoft license, then no one's stopping the recipients of the computers from installing it. But if the government is providing computers, then they might as well install an OS that doesn't require them to buy a license.
hate paying money for software myself, but let's get the price of the software accurately placed. At a volume, and this one is a huge volume, the MS OS would probably cost less than $50 a platform, as even an OEM version of XP in the States cost just $149 at a retailer.
And if they just have a basic suite like Works, it would probably cost another $50, at the very most.
Er, $100 is a lot of cash when you're trying to get a license for everyone in the country.
Population of Belgium ~ 10,000,000
10,000,000 * $100 =
$1,000,000,000
A billion dollars. It would cost a fraction of the amount to copy 10 million Linux CDs. And then in two years time, Microsoft forced obsolecence means all the computers have to be upgraded...
And for the 5% that can't afford them, they probably have greater concerns than being able to play quake or download naked pictures Britney Spears.
Like voting online, or filling out their tax returns online (saving the government millions in bureaucracy), or doing better at school with all the extra information at their fingertips, or just learning to use the computer (giving the Belgians an advantage over every other country in terms of potential source of techies in the next generation).
This scheme is social activism at its worst.
Yeah, I'm sure the government will fall over it. They'll rue the day they ever decided to make sure everyone had a computer.
What!? Interesting +1, Flamebait -1, Troll -1!?
I'm a troll now for posting an opinion!?
Your asses are going down in metamod you childish KDE partisans.
Mod me down again. I dare you.
You might like to know you've inspired me. My new goal in life is to code day and night for Gnome and destroy KDE! Up the revolution!
---
I suppose it's a matter of taste. I've tried to use KDE lots of times, but I find it ugly and unintuitive. Gnome can be slow, but I think Gnome is a lot better than KDE on a high-end machine. Nautilus is great if your box is fast enough to handle it. KDE always feels like a Windows wannabe to me (not a flame, just an opinion.) And maybe I'm just a complete imbecile when it comes to updating things, but I keep breaking apps in KDE.
Besides, I've fallen in love with Galeon. Much better than Explorer or Konqueror (does konqueror have tabbed browsing yet? haven't checked it out in a little while.) I'm currently running 0.11.3, and it's still more stable than Explorer. And on the two occasions it has crashed, it's restored my browsing state. Poetry.
Even the concept that the only other possibility is silicon-based life forms seems quite limiting.
If you're going to make statements like that, you ought to at least propose what could be used as a substitute for carbon/sillicon if you want to be taken seriously.
I hate to say this, but installing Linux isn't nearly as easy, fast, or reliable as Windows XP.
It depends on your setup. Last week I installed Windows XP and Redhat 7.2 on a box (dual-boot). I was very impressed with both of their install processes - practically all my weird hardware got installed without any input from me. XP, though, misconfigured my network card, whereas Redhat had no problems. It was an old card - perhaps MS couldn't be bothered to support it any more.
As for speed, both installs went quite quickly. XP was a bit faster I suppose, but how often do you need to do it?
Hmm. Does it still do that? Last time I had a problem with Win2k and it couldn't boot to the desktop, it flashed the error message for about 1/2 a picosecond and then rebooted... apparently the default is to restart rather than show an error message with certain system problems, which has to be the most ludicrous design decision of all time. I still don't know what the problem was, but after I managed to apply some first aid via the command line, the box was switched to Redhat.
Yes yes, Idylls of the King, I was feeling like shit and a bit confused (it was 2am); it was written in Wales though.
In Wales in the 5th century, they spoke Old Welsh. In Cornwall, they spoke Cornish
Not true, unless you have better sources than I do. Cornish isn't recognised as a separate language from Welsh until the 6th Century or so.
Different tribes, different cultures
Well I'd have to disagree with that. The differences between the tribes of Cornwall and Wales were no bigger than the differences between the tribes of Wales. At least from those of South-East Wales. The difference was blurred at best. Maybe Cornwall was more Romanized than most of Wales, but considering the amount of military power the Romans were forced to pour into Wales, in the South East the Britons there were probably more Romanized than those in Cornwall.
if you're going to inanely insist that the cultures are the same
I would argue that they were the same, not are the same, at least Cornish and Welsh in the 5th Century. As for the English, they didn't exist in the 5th Century. England was split between the tribes of Wales, Cornwall, and the Saxons - and it can hardly be claimed that the Arthurian legends came originally from the Saxons (he did fight against them after all.)
The Scots and Irish were at this time separate cultures, but not that much.
Besides, the whole story was about languages, not cultures, and I stand by my slightly simplified orignal argument that the legends came from Welsh, not Middle English.
you had better just call the whole batch British, and not Welsh.
Well they were. In the 5th Century the distinction is almost meaningles between British and Welsh and Cornish. I didn't use the term because of the confusion with the modern term (Welsh + English + Scots + etc.)
I think EmBaggins covered the Merlin problem rather well. The character, possible etymological derivations notwithstanding, is definitely a mixture of at least two totally different personalities.
Well... the legends came from Welsh more than anywhere I think. And considering the name comes from Welsh... after all, Hollywood has pretty much rewritten the Robin Hood legend many times over, but most people would consider it an English legend rather than an American one.
Err, about Morte d'Arthur... oops, I was confusing it with Idylls of the King.
Monmouth places Arthur in Cornwall, not Wales.
And what was the difference between Wales and Cornwall in the 5th Century? I'm talking culturally here, not geography. I didn't really want to get into the whole Welsh/Briton thing on Slashdot...
Arthur himself, if he existed? Cornish, Welsh, British, Breton
And the difference between British and Welsh in the 5th Century?
Same for Merlin. His origins are also rather obscure. You can't say he wasn't Welsh, but you also definitely cannot say that he _was_
Well, his name at least is Welsh-based. That seems to me that if you can say he's based on any legend, it's Welsh. Where else are you considering the legend comes from?
Nennius is no longer considered to be the author of Historia Brittonum...
Hmm. Despite a thorough googling, this seems to be in dispute; I only found one reference saying that he wasn't and many stating that he was the author.
Assuming all the other references are out of date, what other nationality could the author have been? Presumably British rather than Saxon, and in any case s/he states that Arthur was British.
Morte Darthur was not written in Wales.
Accepted... I had confused Idylls of the King and le Mort d'Arthur. Stupid, I know.
The historical Arthur was most likely either a Welshman or a Cornishman fighting invading Saxons in the 5th century AD
Er, how do you distinguish a Welshman from a Cornishman in the ~5th Century? I remember seeing a reference to Cornwall by the Saxons as late as ~1000AD as West Wales and the current Wales as North Wales.
to call the massive collection of traditions [...] "Welsh Legends" is a bombastic reductive statement.
Oh please stop being so anal. Originally Welsh legends I said, whilst still acknowledging the contribution of other writers. c.f. the original poster who said the legends came from Middle English.
What about all the Welsh names in the legends? If you can call them anything, they're Welsh legends.
>The grammar is terrible for a non-Finn
>I'm impressed but not surpised that Tolkein could
>speak Finnish though
Actually, it seems that Tolkien loved Finnish grammar. Check this essay out that I just googled.
Hmmm. Not according to Everything2; Finland can be considered to be part of Scandinavia, it just depends on your criteria.
>The grammar is terrible for a non-Finn to learn,
>but some have!
Tolkien, for a start.
But surely the earliest references to Arthur are Welsh? Uhhrr... Nennius the monk has the earliest reference to him IIRC, and I believe he was Welsh, or at least writing in Wales. And even Le Morte D'Arthur was written in Wales, incorporating some Welsh myths.
Obviously a great deal of the legend has been built up by English and French authors, but the man or men Arthur was based on was Welsh (or Breton) so I think it's reasonable to call them Welsh legends.
And you can hardly say that Merlin (Merddyn) wasn't Welsh...
Actually the original Arthurian myths, including Merlin et al. are from Welsh and other early Celtic cultures.
And incidentally, Elvish was actually based on Welsh and one of the Scandinavian languages (Finnish?), although he borrowed words from other languages as well. It's the hobbit & common languages that were based more on Anglo-Saxon.
I really wish that I didn't know the above BTW.
...hence the declassification...
It's interesting that none of these defenders of spam elect to publicly display their email. Perhaps they're not that keen on spam after all. You have to wonder how long their tolerance of spam would last if everyone who read their message decided to sell their address to a spam list.
People leech and feed from the profit of others when they can, and the only way other than (financial/material) incentives to make a population work is at the wrong end of a gun.
Whoever said that work was optional under a leftist system? Simple solution: you refuse people access to the resources of a community if they do not work when work is available (cf capitalism, where people do not get access to the resources of a community, even if there is an excess if they desire to work but cannot.) You are creating a straw man.
The profit of others is the whole point. Profit is made by exploiting other people. The central philosophy of capitalism is that money creates money; it by definition increases the wealth of the rich disproportionately to that of the poor. It is the most unfair economic system that exists (note economic, separate from the libertarian/totalitarianism axis.)
You are absolutely correct. After all, TVs can't show different TV programs, and they can't be copied digitally. CD/MP3/etc players can't play a wide range of music, neither is that music infinitely reproduceable. And with novels, scripts, reference works, news etc. the important thing is the medium, not the content.
A physical good is not instantly transportable, infinitely reproduceable and generally doesn't stay the way it was during usage
Maybe not, but most goods require an input of some informational content. The big cost in medicinal drugs for example is in the research, not the production. Even in your car example, a huge amount of the work goes into the design of it. Like the article said:
In the last ten to twenty years Western societies started to base their material production and all of society more and more on information goods.
>There's no proof that global-warming is
> anything more than a theory
There's plenty of evidence; for a start, the temprature rise over the last few decades has been the fastest change in temperature, as far as we can measure in the last ten million years or so.
> Can you predict how the Earth's atmospheric
> trends will continue based on a minute
> fragment of incomplete information?
Hardly minute. We can accurately measure temperatures for the last several thousand years using dendochronology. And information going even further back, albeit less easily measured, can be found in ice cores.
But you don't need just evidence; simple chemistry & physics says that if you pump CO2 into the atmosphere, the world will get hotter. The exact predictions are still being worked on, but can you say qualitative logic?
>But you're no less a troll.
No doubt 95% or so of the world's climatologists are trolls too then.
So if you think that you know better than the vast majority of climatologists, perhaps you can give us your scientific evidence? For a start, perhaps you could tell us how much CO2 we would need to significantly affect the world temperature compare d to what we produce now.
Hell, even Bush accepts that global warming is a fact.
Yes, I do realise you're just trolling, but some half-asleep moderator is going to give you a +1 Insightful any minute now.