This.
Any "pure" system tends to self destruct in a positive feedback loop, over time, even capitalism.
Under capitalism,the bottom line goal of business is to grow, and make maximum profit; and to do this, it must beat and/or reduce the competition.
The paradox is, capitalism only works when there IS competition. Corporations however, have a duty, so to speak, to "win", and this ultimately leads to buy-outs, hostile takeovers, and mergers, all of which eliminate competition. Without some measure of outside control, the system tends to be cannibalistic. This is why government regulations are necessary. Sorry, Libertarians, but it's true.. the Sherman Anti-trust act is proof of this.
The controversy is over how much regulation is too little or too much, and as with everything, moderation is the key, balance is difficult to achieve. The best system is a hybrid system, as that provides some checks and balances between government and the private sector. But that doesn't make it easy.
I don't even know what issues you're referring to, so they can't have been that prolific. I'm sure it affected far less customers than the shit Catalyst drivers AMD fumbles/fumbled out. I also had one of their cards die on me with a hardware issue.
I'm not "rooting" for AMD to fail, or for nvidia to "rule", because I'd much rather have good stiff competition to keep prices low.. but I've never had a problem with nvidia outside of compatibility with an older motherboard; AMD has given me nothing but problems, both times I tried them. Intel graphics are okay but they just aren't keeping up with the other two.
Pretty much, yep. Though I was surprised recently: I got Xfinity Internet about 3 weeks ago, but had lots of issues with signal strength, intermittent drops, etc.. I finally got a guy to come out to take a look outside, and he replaced the tap up on the pole and the ends at the ground block on the other end of the drop, nothing in the house was changed at all, and his work improved my signal strength *significantly* (upstream levels went from -57db/mv to -39db/mv, meaning my modem no longer had to scream at the top of its lungs to reach the CMTS).
But, because this was all within 30 days of getting the service, Comcast automatically billed me for "professional installation", about $60.
To be fair, the rep on the phone told me this would happen when I scheduled the tech to come out, and that I could dispute it with billing once the work was done and my internal wiring/splitter was cleared as the culprit.
I called them right after I saw the bill, and -after another brief inexplicable outage the day after my signals were fixed- (but this time TV went out as well) about 2 days later they sent a revised monthly bill with the $60 installation removed. I kind of didn't expect it to happen without having to make several more calls, which is a sad commentary, really, but maybe they are starting to improve. The latest poll shows they're no longer the most hated company in the US, they managed to move up a notch or two, but they're still far from loved.
I just switched from Verizon DSL to Comcast Xfinity 3 weeks ago, for Internet. Nothing but trouble. Granted, most of it appears to have been signal strength and yesterday a guy finally came out and changed out the tap, and my levels now look much better; but then today, everything, both Internet and TV crapped out, and when we called they tried to say it was our fault somehow because we just had a service call (??) A stern reminder that the service done was all outside the house (internal wiring and splitter are all new and done right) and suddenly 5 minutes later it's all working again.
They've gone full retard. Maybe in some nebulous distant future when actual AI is a real thing, but certainly not today. Not even Ray Kurweil would buy into this. Or would he?
Agreed. I don't know why she'd be in Ravenclaw, that's ridiculous. No politician belongs there, that's for scientists, philosophers, and artists. Slytherin is where they belong; the mere act of running for office is an ambition-driven reach for power. No one does "public servant" anymore.
That's what I was thinking (though IAMAL); ATT and Citigroup are two totally different fields, one being telecommunications and the other being finance. How could anyone get them confused?
Where's the evidence it's a hair piece? This sounds like more Gawker BS. I've seen photos of Trump when he was younger, as well current ones, and it sure looks to me like he had a scalp flap done. It's an old technique that predates hair transplants/plugs, where they took a wide strip of your hair from the side, cutting all but one side, and swung it over to the top/front of your head, like a flap. The procedure had issues though, such a bulge at the point of the pivot, and that the hair didn't grow in a natural direction, and it could leave a slight bald spot on the side of the head. All of these describe Trump's head pretty well. Scalp flaps are no longer performed because of these issues, including the worst one where the whole flap of hair would sometimes die.
The dude is a billionaire, why would he buy and wear a cheap rug, when he's not known to be miserly or cheap, but extravagant and narcissistic? There are rugs out there that look fairly convincing, look at Bill Shatner or Burt Reynolds, for example, and they don't have half his wealth. I think Trump's own pride prevented him from getting a toup, so he resorted to surgery instead, early on. So, when he says it's his own real hair, he can say that without lying, technically.
Because some nerds mistakenly think technology is the end all be all answer to everything.
I recall a documentary about Star Trek TNG, where they said the writers had the same kind of mindset during the first seasons, but after a time started to realize how unrealistic that was. They also saw a dark side, tech can bring with it unbridled power too, and so they conceived the Borg to represent a society where technology is valued over individualism, art, and social interaction (as opposed to "hive" interaction). The Borg are introduced just about when the Federation is feeling pretty invulnerable.
I have a very good idea of what Christianity is. I was raised Baptist and even attended a 4 year baptist university. You see, I also know that extremit's are extremists no matter what colors they fly. If you don't think there are Christians out there who would have cheered on an act such as this, and that there are a lot more Muslims condemning attacks like this, then you are naive.
While baptists are the whackiest xtians of the bunch (or maybe that's Mormons, hard to tell) , I'm not seeing anyone cheering about this.
Maybe not dissimilar views, but it's a tenuous stretch to compare them, so it's important to realize this is "whataboutism". The christians may preach against homosexuality, say some dumb shit from time to time, and try to ban gays from getting married in churches (most have no issues with domestic partnerships or civil unions), but they don't go shooting up, arresting (for merely being gay), hanging, or throwing gays off buildings to their deaths, as is happening in the mideast. You have a handful of physically harmless but stupid hateful whackjobs in Westboro, and the only real religiously motivated killing in the US by christians of any relevant time frame has been against abortion clinics, which has killed all of 11 people since 1993. http://www.nytimes.com/interac...
No, not all muslims are crazy terrorists, the world would be on fire if they were, but there *is* a cancer growing within it that's making it far more dangerous than the other religions in the current age, and even Christopher Hitchens has attested to that.
This guy was an ISIS fanboi. The fact that the FBI cleared him just shows the FBI screwed up, possibly due to the threat of being accused of being "islamophobic" political pressure.
The potential for abuse is high, if that's all it takes. Just walk by someone with an iPhone 6 and yell that, and the iPhone owner is on the hook for making a fraudulent call..and ambulances are expensive, I doubt the hospital would just eat the cost of mobilizing it.
Someone should put some less drastic, silly command for Hey Siri or OK Google in a movie, and see how many in the theater it affects.
Jazz
Blues
Swing
Rock'n'Roll
Hollywood
Television
Numerous authors and poets: Too many to even list
Numerous artists: Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell, etc.
Culinary inventions:
Buffalo wings, Cheese-steaks, barbecued ribs, and the whole fast food industry, which has spread globally.. (well, I didn't say it was a healthy culture)
I've thought the same thing, but then remembered in the early universe, stars were probably a lot larger and hotter, and would've had dramatically shorter life spans than yellow darves.. some of those supergiants only last 10 million years. I guess the question is, how many supergiants were there to go supernova in the first billion years or so of the universe?
Another plausible scenario to the Fermi paradox is that our particular galaxy is just kinda dead. For all we know, Barnards Galaxy, or M32, or M33 are full of life.
It has been looked into but I think these guys are perhaps expecting too much of alien civilizations.
http://www.scientificamerican....
That's my problem with the entire public "shareholder" model. Too much gravitas. I'm no marxist, by any stretch, but certain aspects of capitalism can be self destructive if not held in check. Example one: competition is great, until enough mergers occur that there is no competition anymore; but this is the natural goal of business, to maximize profit; even today, decades after the Sherman anti-trust act, we are still saddled with monopolies, or very, very close to.
Example Two: I understand that business are in the business of making money, that's great; but they're *also* in business to provide a product or services. That's how I always saw it when I was younger, anyway. All too often now it seems the wants of the shareholders grossly outweigh the value of the customers, the employees, and sometimes even the product itself; even the combination of all three. A company could cannibalize itself like that.
I'm curious what this means, exactly. Years ago I had the idea of something like an e-ink display that could scroll up inside the phone, then be pulled out for a larger display when needed and held in place with an armature of sorts, like a projection screen type thing, without the projector. I mean, the rough idea, as in, wouldn't that be neat. I wonder if that's really going to be a thing.
Well, he didn't say he learned the classics to learn Latin, he explicitly said, "studying dead languages". When I went to high school, they offered latin as a language (along with spanish, french, and german), it wasn't a literature class. Though I disagree with his assessment of latin's modern value, you've actually changed his argument.
I also don't believe that human memory is infinite, its probably more like a huge FIFO stack (especially at my age).. but he should be able to push that old stuff out with new if he really wanted to.
Slashdot Mirror
"Google, Apple and Amazon have created disruptive technologies that changed the world, and ... they deserve to be highly profitable and successful,"
Disruption is usually something that's not considered deserving of reward.
This.
Any "pure" system tends to self destruct in a positive feedback loop, over time, even capitalism.
Under capitalism,the bottom line goal of business is to grow, and make maximum profit; and to do this, it must beat and/or reduce the competition.
The paradox is, capitalism only works when there IS competition. Corporations however, have a duty, so to speak, to "win", and this ultimately leads to buy-outs, hostile takeovers, and mergers, all of which eliminate competition. Without some measure of outside control, the system tends to be cannibalistic. This is why government regulations are necessary. Sorry, Libertarians, but it's true.. the Sherman Anti-trust act is proof of this.
The controversy is over how much regulation is too little or too much, and as with everything, moderation is the key, balance is difficult to achieve. The best system is a hybrid system, as that provides some checks and balances between government and the private sector. But that doesn't make it easy.
I don't even know what issues you're referring to, so they can't have been that prolific. I'm sure it affected far less customers than the shit Catalyst drivers AMD fumbles/fumbled out. I also had one of their cards die on me with a hardware issue.
I'm not "rooting" for AMD to fail, or for nvidia to "rule", because I'd much rather have good stiff competition to keep prices low.. but I've never had a problem with nvidia outside of compatibility with an older motherboard; AMD has given me nothing but problems, both times I tried them. Intel graphics are okay but they just aren't keeping up with the other two.
Bingo. I've tried AMD Radeons twice in the past, never again. IIRC, at one point anyway, the Catalyst drivers required the .NET framework.. wtf?
How is that mistaken? It's all relative.
I was going to ask, just how fast can you modulate a fan motor? This seems more of a proof of concept but pretty useless in the real world.
Pretty much, yep. Though I was surprised recently: I got Xfinity Internet about 3 weeks ago, but had lots of issues with signal strength, intermittent drops, etc.. I finally got a guy to come out to take a look outside, and he replaced the tap up on the pole and the ends at the ground block on the other end of the drop, nothing in the house was changed at all, and his work improved my signal strength *significantly* (upstream levels went from -57db/mv to -39db/mv, meaning my modem no longer had to scream at the top of its lungs to reach the CMTS).
But, because this was all within 30 days of getting the service, Comcast automatically billed me for "professional installation", about $60.
To be fair, the rep on the phone told me this would happen when I scheduled the tech to come out, and that I could dispute it with billing once the work was done and my internal wiring/splitter was cleared as the culprit.
I called them right after I saw the bill, and -after another brief inexplicable outage the day after my signals were fixed- (but this time TV went out as well) about 2 days later they sent a revised monthly bill with the $60 installation removed. I kind of didn't expect it to happen without having to make several more calls, which is a sad commentary, really, but maybe they are starting to improve. The latest poll shows they're no longer the most hated company in the US, they managed to move up a notch or two, but they're still far from loved.
Slashdot ID /= age
I hope you're just kidding.
I just switched from Verizon DSL to Comcast Xfinity 3 weeks ago, for Internet. Nothing but trouble. Granted, most of it appears to have been signal strength and yesterday a guy finally came out and changed out the tap, and my levels now look much better; but then today, everything, both Internet and TV crapped out, and when we called they tried to say it was our fault somehow because we just had a service call (??) A stern reminder that the service done was all outside the house (internal wiring and splitter are all new and done right) and suddenly 5 minutes later it's all working again.
They've gone full retard. Maybe in some nebulous distant future when actual AI is a real thing, but certainly not today. Not even Ray Kurweil would buy into this. Or would he?
Agreed. I don't know why she'd be in Ravenclaw, that's ridiculous. No politician belongs there, that's for scientists, philosophers, and artists. Slytherin is where they belong; the mere act of running for office is an ambition-driven reach for power. No one does "public servant" anymore.
That's what I was thinking (though IAMAL); ATT and Citigroup are two totally different fields, one being telecommunications and the other being finance. How could anyone get them confused?
Where's the evidence it's a hair piece? This sounds like more Gawker BS. I've seen photos of Trump when he was younger, as well current ones, and it sure looks to me like he had a scalp flap done. It's an old technique that predates hair transplants/plugs, where they took a wide strip of your hair from the side, cutting all but one side, and swung it over to the top/front of your head, like a flap. The procedure had issues though, such a bulge at the point of the pivot, and that the hair didn't grow in a natural direction, and it could leave a slight bald spot on the side of the head. All of these describe Trump's head pretty well. Scalp flaps are no longer performed because of these issues, including the worst one where the whole flap of hair would sometimes die.
The dude is a billionaire, why would he buy and wear a cheap rug, when he's not known to be miserly or cheap, but extravagant and narcissistic? There are rugs out there that look fairly convincing, look at Bill Shatner or Burt Reynolds, for example, and they don't have half his wealth. I think Trump's own pride prevented him from getting a toup, so he resorted to surgery instead, early on. So, when he says it's his own real hair, he can say that without lying, technically.
Because some nerds mistakenly think technology is the end all be all answer to everything.
I recall a documentary about Star Trek TNG, where they said the writers had the same kind of mindset during the first seasons, but after a time started to realize how unrealistic that was. They also saw a dark side, tech can bring with it unbridled power too, and so they conceived the Borg to represent a society where technology is valued over individualism, art, and social interaction (as opposed to "hive" interaction). The Borg are introduced just about when the Federation is feeling pretty invulnerable.
I have a very good idea of what Christianity is. I was raised Baptist and even attended a 4 year baptist university. You see, I also know that extremit's are extremists no matter what colors they fly. If you don't think there are Christians out there who would have cheered on an act such as this, and that there are a lot more Muslims condemning attacks like this, then you are naive.
While baptists are the whackiest xtians of the bunch (or maybe that's Mormons, hard to tell) , I'm not seeing anyone cheering about this.
Maybe not dissimilar views, but it's a tenuous stretch to compare them, so it's important to realize this is "whataboutism". The christians may preach against homosexuality, say some dumb shit from time to time, and try to ban gays from getting married in churches (most have no issues with domestic partnerships or civil unions), but they don't go shooting up, arresting (for merely being gay), hanging, or throwing gays off buildings to their deaths, as is happening in the mideast.
You have a handful of physically harmless but stupid hateful whackjobs in Westboro, and the only real religiously motivated killing in the US by christians of any relevant time frame has been against abortion clinics, which has killed all of 11 people since 1993. http://www.nytimes.com/interac...
No, not all muslims are crazy terrorists, the world would be on fire if they were, but there *is* a cancer growing within it that's making it far more dangerous than the other religions in the current age, and even Christopher Hitchens has attested to that.
This guy was an ISIS fanboi. The fact that the FBI cleared him just shows the FBI screwed up, possibly due to the threat of being accused of being "islamophobic" political pressure.
The potential for abuse is high, if that's all it takes. Just walk by someone with an iPhone 6 and yell that, and the iPhone owner is on the hook for making a fraudulent call..and ambulances are expensive, I doubt the hospital would just eat the cost of mobilizing it.
Someone should put some less drastic, silly command for Hey Siri or OK Google in a movie, and see how many in the theater it affects.
Yep, no culture.
Jazz
Blues
Swing
Rock'n'Roll
Hollywood
Television
Numerous authors and poets: Too many to even list
Numerous artists: Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell, etc.
Culinary inventions:
Buffalo wings, Cheese-steaks, barbecued ribs, and the whole fast food industry, which has spread globally.. (well, I didn't say it was a healthy culture)
I've thought the same thing, but then remembered in the early universe, stars were probably a lot larger and hotter, and would've had dramatically shorter life spans than yellow darves.. some of those supergiants only last 10 million years. I guess the question is, how many supergiants were there to go supernova in the first billion years or so of the universe?
Another plausible scenario to the Fermi paradox is that our particular galaxy is just kinda dead. For all we know, Barnards Galaxy, or M32, or M33 are full of life.
It has been looked into but I think these guys are perhaps expecting too much of alien civilizations. http://www.scientificamerican....
But.. Bill Gates is an avowed liberal, or, he is nowadays. He's also behind much of the common core and PARC idiocy too.
That's my problem with the entire public "shareholder" model. Too much gravitas. I'm no marxist, by any stretch, but certain aspects of capitalism can be self destructive if not held in check. Example one: competition is great, until enough mergers occur that there is no competition anymore; but this is the natural goal of business, to maximize profit; even today, decades after the Sherman anti-trust act, we are still saddled with monopolies, or very, very close to.
Example Two: I understand that business are in the business of making money, that's great; but they're *also* in business to provide a product or services. That's how I always saw it when I was younger, anyway. All too often now it seems the wants of the shareholders grossly outweigh the value of the customers, the employees, and sometimes even the product itself; even the combination of all three. A company could cannibalize itself like that.
I'm curious what this means, exactly. Years ago I had the idea of something like an e-ink display that could scroll up inside the phone, then be pulled out for a larger display when needed and held in place with an armature of sorts, like a projection screen type thing, without the projector. I mean, the rough idea, as in, wouldn't that be neat. I wonder if that's really going to be a thing.
Get a little older.
No thanks.
Wait, I take that back! Damn, it's a catch-22.
Or maybe it was that "The Police" song from the '80s. I'm sure he's changed to password now to "Do Do Do".
Well, he didn't say he learned the classics to learn Latin, he explicitly said, "studying dead languages". When I went to high school, they offered latin as a language (along with spanish, french, and german), it wasn't a literature class. Though I disagree with his assessment of latin's modern value, you've actually changed his argument.
I also don't believe that human memory is infinite, its probably more like a huge FIFO stack (especially at my age).. but he should be able to push that old stuff out with new if he really wanted to.