The only correct opinion regarding the state is the will of its subjects. But measuring that will is harder than you may think. For instance, when there are more than 3 options, plurality voting (i.e. select the one that gets the most votes) is completely broken, as it unfairly rewards the choice that is the most different from other choices (that is, it is subject to vote splitting).
And as what the previous poster called "tyranny of the majority", typical voting will weigh the votes of everyone equally, which doesn't work well for things where, for instance, a slight minority feels very strongly about something and a slight majority barely cares. Representative democracies mitigate this, by allowing a higher degree of negotiation ("ok, I will agree to vote your way on this if you will vote my way on that").
America's form of democracy is certainly representative, which is probably the only practical solution when you've got more than a dozen or so people. I'd argue it is still a democracy, if an imperfect one.
If (in my little fantasy world) the constitution had been written with the input from modern day game theorists and election theorists, I'd think it could be massively improved. For example, our destructive two party system is a simple (and unnecessary) by product of plurality voting. (example: http://karmatics.com/voting/twoparty.html )
This is like comparing a monarchy with anarchy, without acknowledging that there are in-between solutions that have advantages of their own. Democracy (and representative democracy) being one example.
Not saying the linux development community should be a democracy with everything voted on or whatnot, just saying that there may be creative approaches that have yet to be explored. You'd think smart people with a penchant for game theory would be working on it.
One, I think you are using "tautology" wrong. And two, by that definition it isn't magma anyway, since it's not beneath the surface of the earth. So there.
But I personally don't believe that there will ever be a system immune to betrayal. Immune? Probably not. The point is to make it better than the current one.
Slashdot's moderation system is good example of system that is difficult to game. Not impossible, but difficult. People will complain about it as well, but I'd like to see what people would think if Slashdot turned it off for a day and went back to "anything goes".
Comparitively, making healthcare hard to game is a problem of immense complexity. Doesn't mean it can't be addressed.
In my opinion it's outright impossible to find a reasonable tradeoff between health, profit and cost in such a system. Are you suggesting that the current system can't be improved? Or it's just not possible to improve it enough to meet your (presumably arbitrary) threshhold of "reasonable"?
Yes, I suppose humans are greedy (although I'm not sure relative to what). You can't change that. "Technology" (which, in the general sense, includes things like laws and law enforcement, locks, etc) keeps it in check. Some places have more room for improvement than others. Healthcare, in my opinion, being one of them.
I'm sorry you are sick, but it seems like you are not helping by simply blaming human nature and suggesting it is unsolvable.
But I'd suggest that proper application of game theory is key. Making a system that is hard to manipulate (i.e."game") is a very challenging problem, and frankly, I find it a lot more interesting one than the submitter seems to.
When Jobs came out with his "Thoughts on Music", I made all kinds of cynical comments saying that he was being disingenious for this or that reason. After all, Job's in incredibly successful and people all over the world laud him and his company's products, so he NEEDS to be brought down a notch.
I wish people would take more time to ensure they have lots of data to go on before saying they have found a "direct link" Even when you think that 1500 people a day are dying, and that there might be a very simple way of reducing that by 60%?
I feel confident I am getting enough sunlight and enough D in foods i consume. Based on what? The article says:
To achieve the vitamin D doses used for cancer prevention through foods, people would need to drink about three litres of milk a day, which is unrealistic.
The summary was horrible. I spent a couple minutes just trying to figure out what the case was about and trying to figure out who Ms. Lindor was and gave up.
Blah blah blah. Whatever. What was it that got Ebenezer Scrooge to repent and become a nice guy? The knowledge that if he didn't change his ways, people would celebrate his death.
Valenti is dead, and can't read our mean-spirited posts. Other potential Scrooges can.
Well, if you don't believe that people generally consider the long term peiorities equally to short term ones, please explain procrastination.
Same thing.
And by the way, either you were joking, or misunderstood the football field analogy. Maybe I should have said "had to walk ten blocks south and 2 blocks east". The tendency is to walk the direction that is most direct initially (the ten blocks), even though it doesn't get you there any quicker.
How can they produce a realistic "cost per page" if it is unknown how many pages it will print in its lifetime? All they can show is the marginal cost, not the average total cost.
I have real doubts they will be able to compete with that model. People's natural tendency is to seek the cheap (or easy) route now, giving far less weight to the long term.
I know I have a hard time bringing myself to, for instance, buy things in larger containers....I know it's cheaper in the long term, but I don't like putting out a bunch of cash now.
I also knowingly do other equally irrational things along the same lines....for instance, if I am standing at one corner of a football field, and have to get to the opposite corner without walking on the field, I will always walk along the long side first. It gets me closer to my destination quicker, even though the overall distance is the same. Irrational, but I can't help it.
I didn't say I was sure they wouldn't. I said I'm "not convinced" they will, and questioned the confidence in your "most certainly" comment. In other words, I don't take it as a given. I think it's possible, but the fact that they have not stated it, and they specifically said "it won't run apps" indicates they likely won't. (a widget is an app, albeit a small one)
And as I pointed out, others -- not just people on some message board, but editors from Macworld -- agree that it is far less than a given that it will run 3rd party widgets without Apple's blessing. ( once again: http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2007/01/ph onefix/index.php )
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2007/01/ph onefix/index.php
This wouldn't be so bad if the iPhone were open for third-party widget development. But it seems that, at least as of today, it's not. The only widget provider will be Apple, so in the short term, we'll have to make do with what they give us. In the long term, the iPhone will be much more successful if Apple allows developers to create amazing iPhone widgets that we can all use.
I don't see them providing support for their statement, nor you. I'm just saying I searched around, and found nothing other than crap like that. Show me where it says that they will allow arbitrary 3rd party widgets on the iPhone.
I like to open multiple windows at once, and drag links from one window to the other, so that I can see both the source window contents and destination window contents at the same time.
Problem is, if I try to drag one of the windows by its title bar, it will often, as soon as I let go, JUMP to the position of the other window.
It happens if I don't first click before dragging the window. Even though dragging brings it to the top, somehow firefox is confused and screws up.
To reproduce, open two FF windows, A and B. Make sure A is active. Drag B by its title bar. When you release, B is in the position of A, not where you dragged it.
I'm not at all convinced that widgets can be installed on the iPhone without Apple's blessing. Web apps, yeah (I think its safe to assume the browser will run javascript), but have you seen anything indicating you can arbitrarily install a 3rd party widget?
What makes the electric company a "natural monopoly"? What is so natural about it? What about phone service, cable, etc?
The OP foolishly stated that the government should never set prices, and that's just wrong.
If you are going to say that Microsoft is immune to government price intervention, I'd think you could equally argue the same about the electric company because people can run a generator.
Slashdot Mirror
And as what the previous poster called "tyranny of the majority", typical voting will weigh the votes of everyone equally, which doesn't work well for things where, for instance, a slight minority feels very strongly about something and a slight majority barely cares. Representative democracies mitigate this, by allowing a higher degree of negotiation ("ok, I will agree to vote your way on this if you will vote my way on that").
America's form of democracy is certainly representative, which is probably the only practical solution when you've got more than a dozen or so people. I'd argue it is still a democracy, if an imperfect one.
If (in my little fantasy world) the constitution had been written with the input from modern day game theorists and election theorists, I'd think it could be massively improved. For example, our destructive two party system is a simple (and unnecessary) by product of plurality voting. (example: http://karmatics.com/voting/twoparty.html )
This is like comparing a monarchy with anarchy, without acknowledging that there are in-between solutions that have advantages of their own. Democracy (and representative democracy) being one example.
Not saying the linux development community should be a democracy with everything voted on or whatnot, just saying that there may be creative approaches that have yet to be explored. You'd think smart people with a penchant for game theory would be working on it.
Food for thought.
My bad. Wasn't familiar with that usage.
One, I think you are using "tautology" wrong. And two, by that definition it isn't magma anyway, since it's not beneath the surface of the earth. So there.
Slashdot's moderation system is good example of system that is difficult to game. Not impossible, but difficult. People will complain about it as well, but I'd like to see what people would think if Slashdot turned it off for a day and went back to "anything goes".
Comparitively, making healthcare hard to game is a problem of immense complexity. Doesn't mean it can't be addressed. In my opinion it's outright impossible to find a reasonable tradeoff between health, profit and cost in such a system. Are you suggesting that the current system can't be improved? Or it's just not possible to improve it enough to meet your (presumably arbitrary) threshhold of "reasonable"?
So your solution is to fix humans?
Yes, I suppose humans are greedy (although I'm not sure relative to what). You can't change that. "Technology" (which, in the general sense, includes things like laws and law enforcement, locks, etc) keeps it in check. Some places have more room for improvement than others. Healthcare, in my opinion, being one of them.
I'm sorry you are sick, but it seems like you are not helping by simply blaming human nature and suggesting it is unsolvable.
But I'd suggest that proper application of game theory is key. Making a system that is hard to manipulate (i.e."game") is a very challenging problem, and frankly, I find it a lot more interesting one than the submitter seems to.
When Jobs came out with his "Thoughts on Music", I made all kinds of cynical comments saying that he was being disingenious for this or that reason. After all, Job's in incredibly successful and people all over the world laud him and his company's products, so he NEEDS to be brought down a notch.
Well now he's making me look like an ass.
To achieve the vitamin D doses used for cancer prevention through foods, people would need to drink about three litres of milk a day, which is unrealistic.
Do you have other information?
The summary was horrible. I spent a couple minutes just trying to figure out what the case was about and trying to figure out who Ms. Lindor was and gave up.
Blah blah blah. Whatever. What was it that got Ebenezer Scrooge to repent and become a nice guy? The knowledge that if he didn't change his ways, people would celebrate his death.
Valenti is dead, and can't read our mean-spirited posts. Other potential Scrooges can.
A human being died. Show some compassion.
Oh who am I kidding. He was an asshole.
Yes, I was talking about both, which seems the relevant figure. If you print lots of pages, Kodak's model is cheaper, if very few, HP's would be.
Well, if you don't believe that people generally consider the long term peiorities equally to short term ones, please explain procrastination.
Same thing.
And by the way, either you were joking, or misunderstood the football field analogy. Maybe I should have said "had to walk ten blocks south and 2 blocks east". The tendency is to walk the direction that is most direct initially (the ten blocks), even though it doesn't get you there any quicker.
How can they produce a realistic "cost per page" if it is unknown how many pages it will print in its lifetime? All they can show is the marginal cost, not the average total cost.
I have real doubts they will be able to compete with that model. People's natural tendency is to seek the cheap (or easy) route now, giving far less weight to the long term.
I know I have a hard time bringing myself to, for instance, buy things in larger containers....I know it's cheaper in the long term, but I don't like putting out a bunch of cash now.
I also knowingly do other equally irrational things along the same lines....for instance, if I am standing at one corner of a football field, and have to get to the opposite corner without walking on the field, I will always walk along the long side first. It gets me closer to my destination quicker, even though the overall distance is the same. Irrational, but I can't help it.
I didn't say I was sure they wouldn't. I said I'm "not convinced" they will, and questioned the confidence in your "most certainly" comment. In other words, I don't take it as a given. I think it's possible, but the fact that they have not stated it, and they specifically said "it won't run apps" indicates they likely won't. (a widget is an app, albeit a small one)
h onefix/index.php )
And as I pointed out, others -- not just people on some message board, but editors from Macworld -- agree that it is far less than a given that it will run 3rd party widgets without Apple's blessing. ( once again: http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2007/01/p
I don't see them providing support for their statement, nor you. I'm just saying I searched around, and found nothing other than crap like that. Show me where it says that they will allow arbitrary 3rd party widgets on the iPhone.
I like to open multiple windows at once, and drag links from one window to the other, so that I can see both the source window contents and destination window contents at the same time.
Problem is, if I try to drag one of the windows by its title bar, it will often, as soon as I let go, JUMP to the position of the other window.
It happens if I don't first click before dragging the window. Even though dragging brings it to the top, somehow firefox is confused and screws up.
To reproduce, open two FF windows, A and B. Make sure A is active. Drag B by its title bar. When you release, B is in the position of A, not where you dragged it.
I see that it will run widgets, but not that you will be able to install 3rd party widgets. And I see people debating whether it will be able to ( http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?t =134376 ) but no solid answer.
I'm not at all convinced that widgets can be installed on the iPhone without Apple's blessing. Web apps, yeah (I think its safe to assume the browser will run javascript), but have you seen anything indicating you can arbitrarily install a 3rd party widget?
What makes the electric company a "natural monopoly"? What is so natural about it? What about phone service, cable, etc?
The OP foolishly stated that the government should never set prices, and that's just wrong.
If you are going to say that Microsoft is immune to government price intervention, I'd think you could equally argue the same about the electric company because people can run a generator.