I already said in the top level comment above this one "I'm glad the Internet and some dude with a Japanese pseudonym have given them a new toy to exert their prodigious antisocial energies on." By all means, anyone who wants to can and should play with Bitcoin as much as they want.
Furthermore, I'm not discrediting anything, I have no authority. I am merely expressing my opinion about Bitcoin. Am I allowed to do that? Why is the expression of my negative opinion about Bitcoin predicated on an assumption that I have some desire or ability to shut it down? That is a false assumption on your part. I have no desire to shut it down. Calling Bitcoin stupid is just my opinion, there's no force or ability or desire to force anyone on anything with that opinion.
It's like this: I would never ride a motorcycle. There's far more comfortable ways to travel, and if you get in an accident in one, severe injury is likely. Every time I pass a guy on a motorcycle on the highway I thank him for ensuring a supply of organ donations. I think motorcycles are a sad need for some men in midlife crisis to express their manliness, which is never in doubt, expect because they feel such a need to defend it.
Now, having said that, in what way have I implied people can't or shouldn't ride motorcycles? Knock yourself out, ride a motorcycle. I'm going to think you are stupid. And that's just me and my single opinion. Am I allowed to have my opinion? Some other guy, or more importantly, some other chick, might think you are cool on your motorbike. So enjoy getting laid while I sit here typing negative opinions on Slashdot. Enjoy your Bitcoins while I sit here and sneer at Bitcoin enthusiasts.
Welcome to the crazy world called "everyone has a right to their own opinion".
Correct. True of social insects too. Army ants or killer bees will ignore you unless you get too close or hurt one of them. The resulting alarm pheromones will lead the colony to attack en masse.
My whole point was that the Sabu situation shouldn't discourage them or take up too much of their concern. Shrug it off and move on. Like a wasp colony or a Borg collective. The perfect expression of the social organization of Anonymous.
men could be more mature (no need to get in a divorce situation due to a driving urge to mount some other female) and be earning more money, thereby ensuring a more stable and financially sound basis for their household.
that the chance the kid might come out with biological issues is a slight increase. while a younger father has a significantly increased chance to still feel a need to sow the wild oats and not be earning a lot
not that older men can't be broke, and not that older men can't still cheat. but it helps to have all your sexual adventures when you are in your 20s, and not feel the need to do that when you are older. additionally, marrying older means the woman is more mature too, and you are more mature, and so the chance of your marriage lasting is greater because you understand the value of commitment over impulses, you are more interested in settling down, and you can pick the right spouse based on more ephemeral mature qualities rather than the mistakes you can easily make in your 20s and then feel like leaving the person later. all of this is of course better for kids: a stable home of mature parents who earn more money
in other words, this news is a big shrug: "so what." the beneficial factors for having kids in your thirties and forties vastly outweigh the slight genetic risks
and mosquitoes still live, and cockroaches still live, and termites still live. and ye kill them by the thousands. and they still suck your blood, eat your garbage, chew your house
Bitcoin's validity isn't ensured. By anything. Backed by nothing = value of nothing.
Null is null. I learned that from math.
Well... this isn't entirely true. The real equation is:
(value of some real society's currency) x (number of true believer asocial cranks using Bitcoin) = Bitcoin's current value.
The enthusiasm of the cranks are a conversion factor that allows this ghetto currency to have some shadow life and shadow value. But this is where the value ends.
If the value of the underlying currency goes up, Bitcoin is also more valuable as it is parasitically propped up by real currencies.
If the number of asocial cranks goes up, such as when a real society screws up it's banking system, Bitcoin is more valuable as a protest expression of distrust and disfaith in the mismanaged banking systems.
But notice that if you remove a real currency from the equation, Bitcoin has no value in and of itself. 0 x (any number of cranks) = 0.
In what world would there be no real currency, or a real currency has zero value? It's a hellish concept, but one certainty is true in such a world: if there is social breakdown, then there is no maintenance of the Internet. And so no trading in parasitical Bitcoins.
Bitcoins are a ghetto, a parasite shadow currency for true believer asocial cranks. It will limp along in this way for awhile. A fascinating toy for the asocial cranks to play with. That is all Bitcoin will ever be.
Just keep doing like you do. Us older nerds watched this TV show you might have read on your historical wiki pages: Star Trek. Not to be confused with the empty visceral current Hollywood movie incarnation.
In the TV show, they had this alien race called the Borg:
It was a notable work of fiction because of their social organization. Their ships were perfect cubes. You could beam onto them with a landing party, and they wouldn't care. You could kill, abduct, or otherwise maim a Borg crew member, they wouldn't care. None of these actions represented a threat. They are basically the fictional representation of the social order of siafu:
As long as enough people believe in their society, society will still function.
So why believe in society?
Because the alternative is far worse.
Currency is just a subset of this truth.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin isn't backed by any society. Therefore, it is simply a playground for that perennial sort, the cranks who have a hobbling deficit of trust or faith in anything. Bitcoin is a simply a new ghetto for such age-old types of fringe characters.
Well power to you crackpots. Have fun with your new toy. Just understand why Bitcoin will always just be a ghetto for the fringe and is not poised to take over the world. No sovereign society backs it.
Something like the Dollar, or the Euro, or the Renminbi is backed by a standing army and a society with a functional government and a banking industry. Governments and banking industries that engage in shenanigans and with horrible screw ups that test the patience and faith and trust of all of us. But I still trust in actual social institutions that actually represent the value behind an actual currency, then some protocol for fringe types who don't trust anyone or anything.
Bitcoin is not the dawn of a new stateless economy. Bitcoin is the dawn of a new ghetto for the kind of person with a high level of distrust in society. Distrust not born of actual experience, but the kind of distrust that is a function of that person's personality issues. Such people will always exist. I'm glad the Internet and some dude with a Japanese pseudonym have given them a new toy to exert their prodigious antisocial energies on.
Enjoy, fanboys, but please don't imagine your alternacurrency has more meaning than it actually does. It's a project for you to waste your antisocial frustrations on. Good for you. All hail the small but growing psychosocial ghetto called Bitcoin.
There are just people in this world with a hobbling deficit of trust in any social institution. Considering how the banksters have screwed up over the last decade, some of that distrust is earned. But there never is, and never will be, an alternative to an actual, real, social institution, no matter how badly it is mismanaged. The problem is in not understanding that, not understanding that your currency has to be backed by SOMETHING. Some people are just too antisocial to understand this.
So let the fools exert their energies on Bitcoin if it provides a harmless waste of time for them. This alternacurrency ghetto will bubble and pop and limp along, and eventually peter out into obscurity if and when someone responsible is actually able to take hold of our broken and mismanaged financial system.
Either that, or drug traffickers and other illicit activities will glom onto the idealistic fanboy's new toy, and then the authorities will go after Bitcoin ONLY FOR THAT REASON. But the paranoid crackpots will claim this is proof the state is out to crush anything good in this world, when the simple truth is there is always a lot of ugliness in this world, but there is a heck of a lot more ugliness without a strong government. Sorry fanboys.
what happens when mr. young stupid and poor ayn rand acolyte with no health insurance breaks his arm?
he avoids the bill or declares bankruptcy
then the hospital passes the unpaid bills on to the state and feds and WE pay, with our taxes, for the moron's "choice" not to be financially responsible for his own healthcare
to "choose" not to have health insurance is to choose to be freeloading shortsighted irresponsible asshole
health insurance must be mandatory
because too many assholes think freedom means freedom from responsibility
what you are proposing is a combative relationship with your doctor: "why did you order that test?" "i thought it was best" "but i can't afford it"
or "why didn't you order that test?" "i thought you didn't need it" "let me look up on wikipedia and make an uninformed opinion about your area of expertise..."
the point is, you are proposing a capitalist system where the usual supply/ demand creates discipline in a marketplace. except healthcare doesn't work like a capitalist system. some people, or some conditions, may require an expensive outlay
so then you require insurance, to spread the average costs out so one event doesn't decimate you financially. then you require everyone to have insurance, so uninsured don't avoid the bill and the rate for the insured (who get it because they are sick) isn't too high
"we need to get back to a system where the patient can take responsibility for the cost of their care."
no! this is insane, financially unsound, and destructive
So then you agree with me that healthcare insurance should be mandatory, right?
Because what happens is that the ayn rand acolyte 24 year old who breaks his arm and has no health insurance can't afford the bill and avoids it or declares bankruptcy
Then you and I pay that bill. This is not hypothetical. For decades hospitals have passed on unpaid bills to state and feds or else they would have to go bankrupt themselves.
This is the glorious us system.
So you choose:
1. "Hi, before we treat your arm hanging at unnatural angle, do you have $10k in your bank account or do you have health insurance?" "Oh you don't? OK, go suffer on the street then."
2. Or "Hi, a free society is also a society of responsible people. And you need to be responsible for having health insurance, just like you can't drive unless you have car insurance. So stop being an ignorant freeloader on others and get some damn health insurance."
the NRA does not represent the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
The NRA represents gun manufacturers.
Gun manufacturers won't like upstart easy gun assembly, it hurts their business.
So watch the NRA come out against this.
Like many issues in America, a certain segment of the population is hoodwinked by corporate interests who hire demagogues and propaganda artists to talk a good talk, but underneath it all is corporate interests that in fact will happily stand against the common man when it comes to the bottom line.
I'm still waiting for this segment of the US population to wake up to how their easy to identify prejudices are being manipulated by financial interests that happily hurt them. Such as healthcare insurers who happily charge you more to live less than other industrialized countries, or fossil fuel multinationals who don't want to pay more to make their fuel burn cleaner. The common man suffers. But the common man is manipulated and pandered to to hurt themselves (destroyed environment, hurt health, curtailed rights), and aid the bottom line of some greed machine that does not even represent capitalism, but represents cronyism, nepotism, and monopolistic practices.
it's just a UI. it's not the end of the world. get used to it and move on
you are attaching so much contrived bullshit meaning to such a trifling issue
we're talking about a start menu and you're talking about a stratification of the stupid and the smart. this speaks more about some personality disorder of yours than a valid UI analysis
develop a real set of concerns. please. you're a hysteric
The desktop is our native environment. But the coming generation is exposed to computing via smartphone first. For them, the desktop-as-smartphone will be no big deal, it will feel natural.
So I actually agree with Microsoft on the Metro UI.
To me the complaints seem like a bunch of "get off my desktop lawn" old folk fist shaking. The complaints are not about usability, but familiarity.
well said. it would be immensely expensive, financially and socially, to destroy the neighborhoods you would have to to create the straightaways you need for high speed rail between major urban centers
however, it is the future of any modern country to have such connections between major urban centers. there is nothing superior in convenience and speed and cost (for commuter). the subsidies pay themselves off on the order of generations
the real problem is no one thinks long term, every political decision and opinion is short term
there's a certain deluded individualism in this country that would cut off the tree limb they are sitting on to spite the tree, thereby dooming themselves and the tree
yes, eminent domain has it's limited place. really
eminent domain has it's place. the community good is a valid concept for condemning private property
that it gets abused due to the relationship between corporations and government in this country should not mean that other countries get high speed rail while Americans get to sit in grid lock or cattle car airplanes
so is China herding poor people to open train lines
but Europe can do it fairly
i don't want to hear about eminent domain evils, i know about them. i want some assholes to admit that the community good is a valid concept and eminent domain does have it's rightful LIMITED place, such as high speed rail lines
if the tea party losers would shut up for a moment, you can get DOWNTOWN point A to DOWNTOWN point B in very fast time, faster than a plane taking into consideration the taxi to the two airports of point A and point B, and very luxuriously since the cost of another 5 feet of leg room contributes negligibly to the cost of moving the tons of steel
asia, europe, beyond the idiots in my country who want to live shorter lives and pay more for healthcare insurance so some insurance asshole can make more crony (not capitalist) profit, your high speed trains is what i admire about you the most. rail used to be something amazing in my country. we let it rot
granted, the USA is a lot less sparsely inhabited in the middle, but on the East Coast, and on the West Coast, it's dense enough to warrant high speed rail. hmmm.... and that's not where the tea party losers dominate, there's a chance just yet...
you want to talk about China beating the USA? salivate over this:
BEIJING - With its sparkling domed skylight, polished granite floor tiles, grand piano, and string of retail outlets such as Timberland and Nautica, the Beijing South Railway Station could compete with the world's finest for modernity and cleanliness.
It was here in December that we boarded China's new high-speed bullet train that whisked us off to Shanghai, more than 800 miles to the south, in just five hours. For efficiency and comfort at a relatively low price ($185 round-trip for second-class seats that were nicer than those on Amtrak's Acela), you can't beat it. Cruising at about 185 m.p.h., the bullet train provides a smooth, quiet ride through China's eastern industrial corridor as it snakes south through four provinces before reaching its terminus at Shanghai's Hongqiao Rail Station. This is like leaving Philadelphia's 30th Street Station at 10 a.m. and arriving in Atlanta by 3 p.m.
tea party morons: please shut up and die and allow the USA to become a modern country. thanks
Same in the USA: we have idiots who willfully do not want, for example, better and cheaper healthcare. Propagandized by healthcare financial interests who want to keep their parasitical rent seeking arrangement whereby they extract cash from the healthcare system and provide nothing in return. This is not capitalism, it's cronyism, but that won't stop the idiots from wanting to fight "evil socialism."
It's a shame, how here in the USA, Russia, China, anywhere, demagogues will appeal to the stupidest prejudices of the people, such as "Russia needs to be strong, like bear! GRUNT SNORT DROOL", "Profits for some decimillionaire who is not a capitalist, but a monopolist, are more important than my health and my own financial well-being GRUNT SNORT DROOL", and these idiots have made their societies weaker, poorer, stupider.
From the Czars, to the Reds, and now to Putin, you're still serfs, all these centuries later.
Oh I know, you look to "strength" in the Kremlin. Well you got your "strength": crush all dissent. Rendering you an antiseptic den of ass kissing and tyranny and oligarchs. You're greatest weakness is your "strength", fools.
Depressing. Pathetic. All hail imperial 17th century Russia, for all time apparently. Still playing at strong man games. The West moves on to Democracy, China gets rid of its warlords. But not you Russia: still stuck in the past with your lame belief in the big strong man, like a bear! Disgusting.
Unless you Russians actually fucking do something about it. Win your country. The Russian Revolution, take 2: democratic this time.
Charlie Bucket: But it didn't close forever, it's open right now. Mrs. Bucket: Ah, yes, well sometimes, when grown ups say "forever," they mean, "a very long time."
When businessmen and politicians say "forever" they mean... remember your children's stories.
Slashdot Mirror
I already said in the top level comment above this one "I'm glad the Internet and some dude with a Japanese pseudonym have given them a new toy to exert their prodigious antisocial energies on." By all means, anyone who wants to can and should play with Bitcoin as much as they want.
Furthermore, I'm not discrediting anything, I have no authority. I am merely expressing my opinion about Bitcoin. Am I allowed to do that? Why is the expression of my negative opinion about Bitcoin predicated on an assumption that I have some desire or ability to shut it down? That is a false assumption on your part. I have no desire to shut it down. Calling Bitcoin stupid is just my opinion, there's no force or ability or desire to force anyone on anything with that opinion.
It's like this: I would never ride a motorcycle. There's far more comfortable ways to travel, and if you get in an accident in one, severe injury is likely. Every time I pass a guy on a motorcycle on the highway I thank him for ensuring a supply of organ donations. I think motorcycles are a sad need for some men in midlife crisis to express their manliness, which is never in doubt, expect because they feel such a need to defend it.
Now, having said that, in what way have I implied people can't or shouldn't ride motorcycles? Knock yourself out, ride a motorcycle. I'm going to think you are stupid. And that's just me and my single opinion. Am I allowed to have my opinion? Some other guy, or more importantly, some other chick, might think you are cool on your motorbike. So enjoy getting laid while I sit here typing negative opinions on Slashdot. Enjoy your Bitcoins while I sit here and sneer at Bitcoin enthusiasts.
Welcome to the crazy world called "everyone has a right to their own opinion".
Correct. True of social insects too. Army ants or killer bees will ignore you unless you get too close or hurt one of them. The resulting alarm pheromones will lead the colony to attack en masse.
My whole point was that the Sabu situation shouldn't discourage them or take up too much of their concern. Shrug it off and move on. Like a wasp colony or a Borg collective. The perfect expression of the social organization of Anonymous.
men could be more mature (no need to get in a divorce situation due to a driving urge to mount some other female) and be earning more money, thereby ensuring a more stable and financially sound basis for their household.
that the chance the kid might come out with biological issues is a slight increase. while a younger father has a significantly increased chance to still feel a need to sow the wild oats and not be earning a lot
not that older men can't be broke, and not that older men can't still cheat. but it helps to have all your sexual adventures when you are in your 20s, and not feel the need to do that when you are older. additionally, marrying older means the woman is more mature too, and you are more mature, and so the chance of your marriage lasting is greater because you understand the value of commitment over impulses, you are more interested in settling down, and you can pick the right spouse based on more ephemeral mature qualities rather than the mistakes you can easily make in your 20s and then feel like leaving the person later. all of this is of course better for kids: a stable home of mature parents who earn more money
in other words, this news is a big shrug: "so what." the beneficial factors for having kids in your thirties and forties vastly outweigh the slight genetic risks
and mosquitoes still live, and cockroaches still live, and termites still live. and ye kill them by the thousands. and they still suck your blood, eat your garbage, chew your house
Bitcoin's validity isn't ensured. By anything. Backed by nothing = value of nothing.
Null is null. I learned that from math.
Well... this isn't entirely true. The real equation is:
(value of some real society's currency) x (number of true believer asocial cranks using Bitcoin) = Bitcoin's current value.
The enthusiasm of the cranks are a conversion factor that allows this ghetto currency to have some shadow life and shadow value. But this is where the value ends.
If the value of the underlying currency goes up, Bitcoin is also more valuable as it is parasitically propped up by real currencies.
If the number of asocial cranks goes up, such as when a real society screws up it's banking system, Bitcoin is more valuable as a protest expression of distrust and disfaith in the mismanaged banking systems.
But notice that if you remove a real currency from the equation, Bitcoin has no value in and of itself. 0 x (any number of cranks) = 0.
In what world would there be no real currency, or a real currency has zero value? It's a hellish concept, but one certainty is true in such a world: if there is social breakdown, then there is no maintenance of the Internet. And so no trading in parasitical Bitcoins.
Bitcoins are a ghetto, a parasite shadow currency for true believer asocial cranks. It will limp along in this way for awhile. A fascinating toy for the asocial cranks to play with. That is all Bitcoin will ever be.
Just keep doing like you do. Us older nerds watched this TV show you might have read on your historical wiki pages: Star Trek. Not to be confused with the empty visceral current Hollywood movie incarnation.
In the TV show, they had this alien race called the Borg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_(Star_Trek)
It was a notable work of fiction because of their social organization. Their ships were perfect cubes. You could beam onto them with a landing party, and they wouldn't care. You could kill, abduct, or otherwise maim a Borg crew member, they wouldn't care. None of these actions represented a threat. They are basically the fictional representation of the social order of siafu:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorylus
Or, of course, any social insect.
And of course:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)
"We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."
Do not change. Do not be discouraged. Do not give in. Adhere more exactingly to the social organization trait of social insects and the Borg.
Resistance is futile.
Well duh.
As long as enough people believe in their society, society will still function.
So why believe in society?
Because the alternative is far worse.
Currency is just a subset of this truth.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin isn't backed by any society. Therefore, it is simply a playground for that perennial sort, the cranks who have a hobbling deficit of trust or faith in anything. Bitcoin is a simply a new ghetto for such age-old types of fringe characters.
Well power to you crackpots. Have fun with your new toy. Just understand why Bitcoin will always just be a ghetto for the fringe and is not poised to take over the world. No sovereign society backs it.
An army props up a nation, which cares about the value of its currency.
Math doesn't care what your currency is worth.
Come around to what exactly that is not as I have described?
Something like the Dollar, or the Euro, or the Renminbi is backed by a standing army and a society with a functional government and a banking industry. Governments and banking industries that engage in shenanigans and with horrible screw ups that test the patience and faith and trust of all of us. But I still trust in actual social institutions that actually represent the value behind an actual currency, then some protocol for fringe types who don't trust anyone or anything.
Bitcoin is not the dawn of a new stateless economy. Bitcoin is the dawn of a new ghetto for the kind of person with a high level of distrust in society. Distrust not born of actual experience, but the kind of distrust that is a function of that person's personality issues. Such people will always exist. I'm glad the Internet and some dude with a Japanese pseudonym have given them a new toy to exert their prodigious antisocial energies on.
Enjoy, fanboys, but please don't imagine your alternacurrency has more meaning than it actually does. It's a project for you to waste your antisocial frustrations on. Good for you. All hail the small but growing psychosocial ghetto called Bitcoin.
There are just people in this world with a hobbling deficit of trust in any social institution. Considering how the banksters have screwed up over the last decade, some of that distrust is earned. But there never is, and never will be, an alternative to an actual, real, social institution, no matter how badly it is mismanaged. The problem is in not understanding that, not understanding that your currency has to be backed by SOMETHING. Some people are just too antisocial to understand this.
So let the fools exert their energies on Bitcoin if it provides a harmless waste of time for them. This alternacurrency ghetto will bubble and pop and limp along, and eventually peter out into obscurity if and when someone responsible is actually able to take hold of our broken and mismanaged financial system.
Either that, or drug traffickers and other illicit activities will glom onto the idealistic fanboy's new toy, and then the authorities will go after Bitcoin ONLY FOR THAT REASON. But the paranoid crackpots will claim this is proof the state is out to crush anything good in this world, when the simple truth is there is always a lot of ugliness in this world, but there is a heck of a lot more ugliness without a strong government. Sorry fanboys.
what happens when mr. young stupid and poor ayn rand acolyte with no health insurance breaks his arm?
he avoids the bill or declares bankruptcy
then the hospital passes the unpaid bills on to the state and feds and WE pay, with our taxes, for the moron's "choice" not to be financially responsible for his own healthcare
to "choose" not to have health insurance is to choose to be freeloading shortsighted irresponsible asshole
health insurance must be mandatory
because too many assholes think freedom means freedom from responsibility
and train to be a doctor yourself?
what you are proposing is a combative relationship with your doctor: "why did you order that test?" "i thought it was best" "but i can't afford it"
or "why didn't you order that test?" "i thought you didn't need it" "let me look up on wikipedia and make an uninformed opinion about your area of expertise..."
the point is, you are proposing a capitalist system where the usual supply/ demand creates discipline in a marketplace. except healthcare doesn't work like a capitalist system. some people, or some conditions, may require an expensive outlay
so then you require insurance, to spread the average costs out so one event doesn't decimate you financially. then you require everyone to have insurance, so uninsured don't avoid the bill and the rate for the insured (who get it because they are sick) isn't too high
"we need to get back to a system where the patient can take responsibility for the cost of their care."
no! this is insane, financially unsound, and destructive
we need compulsory universal insurance
I agree
So then you agree with me that healthcare insurance should be mandatory, right?
Because what happens is that the ayn rand acolyte 24 year old who breaks his arm and has no health insurance can't afford the bill and avoids it or declares bankruptcy
Then you and I pay that bill. This is not hypothetical. For decades hospitals have passed on unpaid bills to state and feds or else they would have to go bankrupt themselves.
This is the glorious us system.
So you choose:
1. "Hi, before we treat your arm hanging at unnatural angle, do you have $10k in your bank account or do you have health insurance?" "Oh you don't? OK, go suffer on the street then."
2. Or "Hi, a free society is also a society of responsible people. And you need to be responsible for having health insurance, just like you can't drive unless you have car insurance. So stop being an ignorant freeloader on others and get some damn health insurance."
the NRA does not represent the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
The NRA represents gun manufacturers.
Gun manufacturers won't like upstart easy gun assembly, it hurts their business.
So watch the NRA come out against this.
Like many issues in America, a certain segment of the population is hoodwinked by corporate interests who hire demagogues and propaganda artists to talk a good talk, but underneath it all is corporate interests that in fact will happily stand against the common man when it comes to the bottom line.
I'm still waiting for this segment of the US population to wake up to how their easy to identify prejudices are being manipulated by financial interests that happily hurt them. Such as healthcare insurers who happily charge you more to live less than other industrialized countries, or fossil fuel multinationals who don't want to pay more to make their fuel burn cleaner. The common man suffers. But the common man is manipulated and pandered to to hurt themselves (destroyed environment, hurt health, curtailed rights), and aid the bottom line of some greed machine that does not even represent capitalism, but represents cronyism, nepotism, and monopolistic practices.
Wake up.
are you trying to be absurd?
it's just a UI. it's not the end of the world. get used to it and move on
you are attaching so much contrived bullshit meaning to such a trifling issue
we're talking about a start menu and you're talking about a stratification of the stupid and the smart. this speaks more about some personality disorder of yours than a valid UI analysis
develop a real set of concerns. please. you're a hysteric
The desktop is our native environment. But the coming generation is exposed to computing via smartphone first. For them, the desktop-as-smartphone will be no big deal, it will feel natural.
So I actually agree with Microsoft on the Metro UI.
To me the complaints seem like a bunch of "get off my desktop lawn" old folk fist shaking. The complaints are not about usability, but familiarity.
1. a. "i'm going to chop people's heads off"
b. authorities do nothing, guy chops heads off
c. "why didn't you anything!"
2. a. "i'm going to chop people's heads off"
b. authorities get involved
c. "it's just fantasy! orwell! freedom! WHARGARBBL"
well said. it would be immensely expensive, financially and socially, to destroy the neighborhoods you would have to to create the straightaways you need for high speed rail between major urban centers
however, it is the future of any modern country to have such connections between major urban centers. there is nothing superior in convenience and speed and cost (for commuter). the subsidies pay themselves off on the order of generations
the real problem is no one thinks long term, every political decision and opinion is short term
Step one: rational analysis not trumped up low iq hysterical lies
there's a certain deluded individualism in this country that would cut off the tree limb they are sitting on to spite the tree, thereby dooming themselves and the tree
yes, eminent domain has it's limited place. really
eminent domain has it's place. the community good is a valid concept for condemning private property
that it gets abused due to the relationship between corporations and government in this country should not mean that other countries get high speed rail while Americans get to sit in grid lock or cattle car airplanes
look, this shit is evil:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
so is China herding poor people to open train lines
but Europe can do it fairly
i don't want to hear about eminent domain evils, i know about them. i want some assholes to admit that the community good is a valid concept and eminent domain does have it's rightful LIMITED place, such as high speed rail lines
if the tea party losers would shut up for a moment, you can get DOWNTOWN point A to DOWNTOWN point B in very fast time, faster than a plane taking into consideration the taxi to the two airports of point A and point B, and very luxuriously since the cost of another 5 feet of leg room contributes negligibly to the cost of moving the tons of steel
asia, europe, beyond the idiots in my country who want to live shorter lives and pay more for healthcare insurance so some insurance asshole can make more crony (not capitalist) profit, your high speed trains is what i admire about you the most. rail used to be something amazing in my country. we let it rot
granted, the USA is a lot less sparsely inhabited in the middle, but on the East Coast, and on the West Coast, it's dense enough to warrant high speed rail. hmmm.... and that's not where the tea party losers dominate, there's a chance just yet...
you want to talk about China beating the USA? salivate over this:
http://articles.philly.com/2012-08-19/news/33273369_1_bullet-train-train-crashes-wenzhou
tea party morons: please shut up and die and allow the USA to become a modern country. thanks
Same in the USA: we have idiots who willfully do not want, for example, better and cheaper healthcare. Propagandized by healthcare financial interests who want to keep their parasitical rent seeking arrangement whereby they extract cash from the healthcare system and provide nothing in return. This is not capitalism, it's cronyism, but that won't stop the idiots from wanting to fight "evil socialism."
It's a shame, how here in the USA, Russia, China, anywhere, demagogues will appeal to the stupidest prejudices of the people, such as "Russia needs to be strong, like bear! GRUNT SNORT DROOL", "Profits for some decimillionaire who is not a capitalist, but a monopolist, are more important than my health and my own financial well-being GRUNT SNORT DROOL", and these idiots have made their societies weaker, poorer, stupider.
From the Czars, to the Reds, and now to Putin, you're still serfs, all these centuries later.
Oh I know, you look to "strength" in the Kremlin. Well you got your "strength": crush all dissent. Rendering you an antiseptic den of ass kissing and tyranny and oligarchs. You're greatest weakness is your "strength", fools.
Depressing. Pathetic. All hail imperial 17th century Russia, for all time apparently. Still playing at strong man games. The West moves on to Democracy, China gets rid of its warlords. But not you Russia: still stuck in the past with your lame belief in the big strong man, like a bear! Disgusting.
Unless you Russians actually fucking do something about it. Win your country. The Russian Revolution, take 2: democratic this time.
Don't be a fucking serf!
Charlie Bucket: But it didn't close forever, it's open right now.
Mrs. Bucket: Ah, yes, well sometimes, when grown ups say "forever," they mean, "a very long time."
When businessmen and politicians say "forever" they mean... remember your children's stories.