I wasn't claiming that it was impossible to build a machine that could run 64-bit XP problem free; nonetheless, Vista had a larger library of drivers than did XP-64 (which was sort of a bastard stepchild of the Windows desktop family). Additionally, not all software ran cleanly (or at all) in 64-bit XP, while Vista-64 expanded software compatibility substantially since it was a "mainstream" release.
For the average person, 20% is probably correct, though it may be closer to 80% for wealthy individuals. People with the highest incomes keep a disproportionate amount of money tied up -- they don't spend it -- which reduces cash flow (GDP). That means they could reduce their income substantially before it affected their spending habits. Ethical or moral issues aside, you're not likely to find an economist who believes that it's detrimental to the economy for wealthy people to pay higher taxes; *much* higher. If the Congress follows up on its promise to shield the "middle class" -- let's say the lower 60% of taxpayers -- from the expiration of Bush tax cuts, then I suspect each income range will remain at or below the peak, meaning tax revenues will still grow substantially.
I likewise have no doubt that many poor people could change their circumstances. I also believe that learned helplessness explains why they do not. The helplessness also transcends generations when the excuses of parents become the "reality" of children, when parents fail to emphasize or engage in the education of their children, or even discourage it outright. They twist maxims about the virtue of "honest" work to imply that education is worthless, or else they blame "the man" for keeping them down. That's not to say that they don't have a harder row to hoe, but things not coming easy does not equal them not coming at all.
I personally think we'd get more mileage from directly teaching the concepts and principles of free choice and overcoming obstacles -- as opposed to teaching them tangentially through other subjects -- than any improved teaching aids, textbooks, "media centers," or computers in the classroom combined. When someone has learned helplessness, it doesn't matter what tools you give them; they have predetermined that they will fail. OTOH, when someone has learned success through overcoming obstacles, it almost doesn't matter what you take away from them.
Piracy may not have killed existing projects, but lack of revenue may have prevented the production of others.
Maybe. But that's not important. The fact is that the system can tolerate some amount of freeloading, just as every workplace does. That's not to imply that freeloading (piracy) should be either condoned or tolerated, but at the same time, it will continue to exist, and taking extraordinary measures to eradicate it (DRM, lawsuits, etc.), ironically, only allows it to further sap resources. Some people will never contribute, some will contribute occasionally, and others will always contribute. That's just the way it is.
At the same time, trying to validate piracy is also counter-productive, because you're sticking yourself out where someone *has to* respond. It's like not only playing solitaire at work, but inviting all your co-workers around to watch, and then telling the boss to fuck off when he comes around. It draws negative attention (people don't like freeloaders, regardless of whether or not there was actual harm), and it focuses that attention squarely on piracy. You're screwing the people you seek to protect by putting them in the cross-hairs.
If you're going to do it, fine, but at least STFU about it and realize that even if you are not causing direct harm, neither are you contributing, and if everyone did the same there *would* be the results you describe. That's why piracy (or even the choice of paying) can never be legitimized across the board. If people were openly (rather than implicitly or de facto) given the choice of paying for a work or not, they would not. Radiohead's "experiment" aside, decades of Shareware have overwhelmingly shown that you can't make a living on voluntary donations. It might work the first time, or when people know that donating will send a message, but there's been zero evidence that it's a reliable business model, and plenty of evidence to show that it is not.
e.g. a women searching for "wagner" probably wants the 18th-century German composer
As would anyone taking or interested in Philosophy. Of course this is an example of a terrible search query, like searching for "strange" without specifying "quark", but I'll take the generalized results all the same, thanks. Please don't tell me what I want.
Increasing taxes generally has the effect of reducing economic activity (Laffer Curve).
The Laffer Curve (even if it were more than a thought experiment) implies no such thing; it only implies that there is an optimum taxation rate, much the way there is an optimum price point for any good or service, below or above which profit would decrease.
And for what it's worth -- nothing -- the Laffer Curve peaks at 50% taxation. Enjoy.
I just left your mom's basement, and while it was definitely deep, I don't think it was a record since I could still reach the bottom with my standard spelunking package.
Re:I Disagree with Some Parts of This Article
on
The End of Free
·
· Score: 1
Vista was actually a much better implementation of 64-bit than WinXP-64, and Vista's limited driver and software support was *nothing* compared to the wasteland that was XP-64. I realize there was a lot of pissing and moaning about Vista, but you probably would have experienced far less heartache by going that route in the Spring of '07 than "sticking with" XP (which you weren't actually doing anyway, since 64-bit XP comes from a separate codebase).
If only we had a publicly owned atomic clock, we could distribute time information using some sort of network protocol that compensates for latency and avoid all this fuss. We could even synchronize the time with satellites in orbit, and they, in turn, could transmit pulses at precise intervals.
I better write this down before someone else takes the credit.
Well it all comes down to risk management. On the one hand, "organic" foods may or may not have new changes (random mutations), while GE/GM foods are guaranteed to have known mutations, in addition to potential random mutations, but they're heavily scrutinized by manufacturers and regulatory agencies. From that perspective, it's clear that GM foods present a smaller risk to known threats -- production of known toxins, let's say -- with the tradeoff that they present a greater risk to unknown threats.
Personally I'd rather have known threats eliminated, because eliminating potential new threats before they're identified is a fool's errand. You *might* be able to identify one before it causes harm -- if it exists -- but at the same time there's no guarantee that your "safe" organic food hasn't mutated in the interim. It's like looking left, right, and up before crossing the street in case a plane is trying to land. It might pay off, but it probably won't, and you might end up getting mugged and shot from behind while you're busy looking for threats ahead. There's just no way to eliminate risk.
Your unscientific anecdote is negated by my own equally unscientific anecdote:
I grew up on a bear reserve, and the only people who had bear attacks were living in town. I didn't even know what bears were; none of my friends or anyone in their family had seen them, until I started making friends with people who lived in town and had bear repellent and houses. THEY had bears.
The problem with this theory is that pollen levels are essentially zero during the winter, so *everybody* lives in a "super clean" environment during the winter, whilst only a few start developing allergic reactions in the springtime. Also "super clean" environments at home don't translate to clean environments at schools, where physical contact with others is perhaps higher than in all but the seediest adult venues, though hygiene and personal responsibility are certainly lower. In other words, kids are getting exposed to germs as much as ever. If they seem less sick than 50 or 60 years ago, it's because of immunizations.
Second, even the best filters don't prevent allergens from coming into the house. Opening doors and/or windows creates a constant supply of pollen and other particles. IIRC, a 50% reduction of allergens in indoor air is considered very good, which is a far cry from a clean room.
Third, allergens are typically not "something [the body] hasn't encountered before," but rather pollens and particles that the body *has* encountered before. Moving to a new region or continent with previously unknown pollens typically results in the reduction or elimination of allergic reactions in the short term (months or years), though symptoms usually return after time.
And finally -- though more of a comment on TFS than anything you said -- "increased immune function" is exactly what you *don't* want when it comes to allergies, because allergic reactions are nothing more than an overblown immune response.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, right, it was just a lame joke of opportunity. Forgive the mischaracterization.
We now resume your regularly scheduled programming.
I wasn't claiming that it was impossible to build a machine that could run 64-bit XP problem free; nonetheless, Vista had a larger library of drivers than did XP-64 (which was sort of a bastard stepchild of the Windows desktop family). Additionally, not all software ran cleanly (or at all) in 64-bit XP, while Vista-64 expanded software compatibility substantially since it was a "mainstream" release.
For the average person, 20% is probably correct, though it may be closer to 80% for wealthy individuals. People with the highest incomes keep a disproportionate amount of money tied up -- they don't spend it -- which reduces cash flow (GDP). That means they could reduce their income substantially before it affected their spending habits. Ethical or moral issues aside, you're not likely to find an economist who believes that it's detrimental to the economy for wealthy people to pay higher taxes; *much* higher. If the Congress follows up on its promise to shield the "middle class" -- let's say the lower 60% of taxpayers -- from the expiration of Bush tax cuts, then I suspect each income range will remain at or below the peak, meaning tax revenues will still grow substantially.
I likewise have no doubt that many poor people could change their circumstances. I also believe that learned helplessness explains why they do not. The helplessness also transcends generations when the excuses of parents become the "reality" of children, when parents fail to emphasize or engage in the education of their children, or even discourage it outright. They twist maxims about the virtue of "honest" work to imply that education is worthless, or else they blame "the man" for keeping them down. That's not to say that they don't have a harder row to hoe, but things not coming easy does not equal them not coming at all.
I personally think we'd get more mileage from directly teaching the concepts and principles of free choice and overcoming obstacles -- as opposed to teaching them tangentially through other subjects -- than any improved teaching aids, textbooks, "media centers," or computers in the classroom combined. When someone has learned helplessness, it doesn't matter what tools you give them; they have predetermined that they will fail. OTOH, when someone has learned success through overcoming obstacles, it almost doesn't matter what you take away from them.
Piracy may not have killed existing projects, but lack of revenue may have prevented the production of others.
Maybe. But that's not important. The fact is that the system can tolerate some amount of freeloading, just as every workplace does. That's not to imply that freeloading (piracy) should be either condoned or tolerated, but at the same time, it will continue to exist, and taking extraordinary measures to eradicate it (DRM, lawsuits, etc.), ironically, only allows it to further sap resources. Some people will never contribute, some will contribute occasionally, and others will always contribute. That's just the way it is.
At the same time, trying to validate piracy is also counter-productive, because you're sticking yourself out where someone *has to* respond. It's like not only playing solitaire at work, but inviting all your co-workers around to watch, and then telling the boss to fuck off when he comes around. It draws negative attention (people don't like freeloaders, regardless of whether or not there was actual harm), and it focuses that attention squarely on piracy. You're screwing the people you seek to protect by putting them in the cross-hairs.
If you're going to do it, fine, but at least STFU about it and realize that even if you are not causing direct harm, neither are you contributing, and if everyone did the same there *would* be the results you describe. That's why piracy (or even the choice of paying) can never be legitimized across the board. If people were openly (rather than implicitly or de facto) given the choice of paying for a work or not, they would not. Radiohead's "experiment" aside, decades of Shareware have overwhelmingly shown that you can't make a living on voluntary donations. It might work the first time, or when people know that donating will send a message, but there's been zero evidence that it's a reliable business model, and plenty of evidence to show that it is not.
e.g. a women searching for "wagner" probably wants the 18th-century German composer
As would anyone taking or interested in Philosophy. Of course this is an example of a terrible search query, like searching for "strange" without specifying "quark", but I'll take the generalized results all the same, thanks. Please don't tell me what I want.
Increasing taxes generally has the effect of reducing economic activity (Laffer Curve).
The Laffer Curve (even if it were more than a thought experiment) implies no such thing; it only implies that there is an optimum taxation rate, much the way there is an optimum price point for any good or service, below or above which profit would decrease.
And for what it's worth -- nothing -- the Laffer Curve peaks at 50% taxation. Enjoy.
you can always use your paper money as toilet paper.
Sure, and gold can be used as a lawn ornament.
If the reverse held true, you might be on to something.
I just left your mom's basement, and while it was definitely deep, I don't think it was a record since I could still reach the bottom with my standard spelunking package.
Free TV is not dead. Get a $20 antenna...
</irony>
In the event of a tie, any card that doesn't require Catalyst is a win in my book.
Vista was actually a much better implementation of 64-bit than WinXP-64, and Vista's limited driver and software support was *nothing* compared to the wasteland that was XP-64. I realize there was a lot of pissing and moaning about Vista, but you probably would have experienced far less heartache by going that route in the Spring of '07 than "sticking with" XP (which you weren't actually doing anyway, since 64-bit XP comes from a separate codebase).
Stanza for the iPhone already does exactly this. I personally find it annoying -- I'd prefer continuous vertical scroll -- but it's already done.
That's what he said, but what he's really looking for is an adaptor (even if he doesn't know it yet).
Venting that causes ...odors... that people tend to not want to be near.
No big deal.. Methane is actually one of the more pleasant odors in New York.
"Party blower" has an entirely different meaning in NYC.
If only we had a publicly owned atomic clock, we could distribute time information using some sort of network protocol that compensates for latency and avoid all this fuss. We could even synchronize the time with satellites in orbit, and they, in turn, could transmit pulses at precise intervals.
I better write this down before someone else takes the credit.
What's slashdot?
Only on the surface. When you get down to the core, it's actually positive.
Also the places you don't see the word cyber.
REPEAT 360 [FD 3 RT 1]
RT 90
PU
FD 100
PD
REPEAT 360 [FD 1 RT 1]
HIDE TURTLE
That's no LOGO factory -- it's a Death Star!
There's always kryptos; part 4 has yet to be decoded. Have fun.
Well it all comes down to risk management. On the one hand, "organic" foods may or may not have new changes (random mutations), while GE/GM foods are guaranteed to have known mutations, in addition to potential random mutations, but they're heavily scrutinized by manufacturers and regulatory agencies. From that perspective, it's clear that GM foods present a smaller risk to known threats -- production of known toxins, let's say -- with the tradeoff that they present a greater risk to unknown threats.
Personally I'd rather have known threats eliminated, because eliminating potential new threats before they're identified is a fool's errand. You *might* be able to identify one before it causes harm -- if it exists -- but at the same time there's no guarantee that your "safe" organic food hasn't mutated in the interim. It's like looking left, right, and up before crossing the street in case a plane is trying to land. It might pay off, but it probably won't, and you might end up getting mugged and shot from behind while you're busy looking for threats ahead. There's just no way to eliminate risk.
Your unscientific anecdote is negated by my own equally unscientific anecdote:
I grew up on a bear reserve, and the only people who had bear attacks were living in town. I didn't even know what bears were; none of my friends or anyone in their family had seen them, until I started making friends with people who lived in town and had bear repellent and houses. THEY had bears.
The problem with this theory is that pollen levels are essentially zero during the winter, so *everybody* lives in a "super clean" environment during the winter, whilst only a few start developing allergic reactions in the springtime. Also "super clean" environments at home don't translate to clean environments at schools, where physical contact with others is perhaps higher than in all but the seediest adult venues, though hygiene and personal responsibility are certainly lower. In other words, kids are getting exposed to germs as much as ever. If they seem less sick than 50 or 60 years ago, it's because of immunizations.
Second, even the best filters don't prevent allergens from coming into the house. Opening doors and/or windows creates a constant supply of pollen and other particles. IIRC, a 50% reduction of allergens in indoor air is considered very good, which is a far cry from a clean room.
Third, allergens are typically not "something [the body] hasn't encountered before," but rather pollens and particles that the body *has* encountered before. Moving to a new region or continent with previously unknown pollens typically results in the reduction or elimination of allergic reactions in the short term (months or years), though symptoms usually return after time.
And finally -- though more of a comment on TFS than anything you said -- "increased immune function" is exactly what you *don't* want when it comes to allergies, because allergic reactions are nothing more than an overblown immune response.