As others have said, politics.slashdot.org is in fact a website about politics.
Second, can we quit with the childish "hindsight is 20-20" crap... Picking out the needle in the haystack AFTER the fact is meaningless, however. Their is even a technical term for this psychological error many people make - hindsight bias.
The problem with this statement is that it applies in any circumstances no matter what anyone did/didn't do. You aren't (or at least, it doesn't seem like you're) saying that in this particular case there was not enough practical intelligence to know in advance what was going to happen -- your statement could be applied, with almost no modification, to any situation where anyone is being held responsible for anything after the fact.
Let me take an extremist stance and suggest that there are some situations where people should be held responsible for their [lack of] actions. I'm actually not going to say this is one of them -- I think the actions taken after 9/11 are the real problem right now, and those before 9/11, while bad, shouldn't be pinned exclusively on Bush. But if you're going to object to this sort of article, you need a better argument than just "hindsight is 20-20," because since a lot of information was there you need to justify why this particular case is one of those instances you describe where a reasonably responsible person would not have done anything differently. Otherwise you're just hand-waving: there are also many situations where someone gets in trouble where a responsible person would have done something differently.
News like this (if it's really news, I mean we mostly knew this for a long time) is primarily significant, as far as I'm concerned, because of the issue with Clinton -- which only is an issue because of bizarre hypocritical conservatives (note before I am flamed: the preceding does not mean that all conservatives are bizarre and hypocritical, I am talking about a specific subset of conservatives here) who have tried to pin this on Clinton, even though Bush demonstrably ignored warnings to a much greater extent (that is, while Clinton could have perhaps done more, Bush didn't really do anything). This may not make it Bush's fault, but you damn well shouldn't defend Bush on this topic while slamming Clinton at the same time. (I know you weren't doing that, but some people are, and that's why this debate is relevant... sigh... again...)
Oh, I believed it was slashdotted (though it happened a lot quicker than usual)... but even slashdot summaries usually have more content than "But it turns out that there is SOMETHING SCARY going on! Click on the link!" with no hint at what the link contains. I mean, it's the only link in the whole summary, I think it's reasonable to expect some idea of what the story is about rather than this teaser nonsense...
Of course, other posters have now given mirrors, etc., as well as some pretty solid critiques suggesting that this really is more or less the vacuous FUD I suspected... but we should have at least had a hint at what FUD was going to be presented, since that's the whole point of the story...
1. Post vague, ominous anti-Apple FUD.
2. As evidence, cite a link that is already down -- people will assume it's slashdotted.
3. People don't know what you're claiming, but a negative cloud surrounds their image of Apple.
4. Next time, they'll buy a Zune! Yeah! (aka: profit)
To whoever modded me "troll": "Troll" does not mean "sarcastic." There was a large blatant bias in the post, which implicitly claimed that the most successful industry in history, that owns more politicians than any other, is somehow under "yet another assault," and it had evidently not yet recovered from the previous one, suggesting the oil industry is being persecuted and is unable to defend itself, rather than the truth, which is that it is pretty much the most heavily subsidized industry in the world. I think a claim like that is ridiculous, and worthy of parody.
I'm not even defending the law in question. Just pointing out that the playing field here is not really stacked so badly against the oil industry. Come on.
Developers can switch teams and/or projects any time they want, no questions asked; just say the word and the movers will show up the next day to put you in your new office with your new team.
Speaking as someone who has known a few Google employees, I don't believe this at all. Certainly Google is more accomodating than traditional firms, but I knew someone unhappy about his assignment who had to wait for quite a while (at least several months, not sure the exact length) before he could get it changed. It's a lot easier to promise something like this than to deliver it when you're actually developing something -- I think some of the "Aha! That's why Google never gets anything done!" posts are misplaced, since in practice, developers aren't (mostly) on a "merry-go-round." They're just not quite as static as a traditional company.
I'm glad there are finally actual numbers, since people in the forums have been consistently listing PS3 games at the hypothetical price of $70-100, which always seemed like FUD, and now we know. I assume these were the same people (or at least substantial overlap) claiming the Wii would be $150 -- which also seemed pretty absurd -- and then got upset when it wasn't.
I mean, I'm not going to buy a PS3 at that price, though I hope to buy a Wii, but I'd still rather have a little honesty in the numbers. When you can always tell which "side" a poster is on by which imaginary price they list for a system/game, the numbers are not being used productively.
Still smarting from California's recent enactment of emissions caps, the oil industry is confronting another assault...
Poor, poor oil executives:'(
Damn it people, when will you finally stand up and say "enough is enough?" These people already have to suffer through the uncertainty of how to spend billions in federal subsidies, and what to do with their record-breaking profits, higher than that of any other industry at any other time in human history... that's a lot of pressure! And now this?!
You cannot abolish something from existing, the basic knowledge of how an atom bomb works and even some of the engineering details are taught in undergraduate physics courses across the world. Given sufficient motivation and resources the simple knowledge that something is physically possible is all that is needed to do it.
Aha! Good point. Similarly, it is a waste of time trying to abolish world hunger, because you (apparently) cannot abolish something from existing, and people are taught how to make someone hungry, well before reaching college.
Yes, it's a different situation, but not that different. Just because we can't eliminate all nuclear weapons in the immediate future doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
Nuclear weapons, as illogical as it may sound, save lives.
Only so far. Did you actually read the article? Do you really think that nothing like that could ever happen again, maybe with a slightly less responsible officer in command? Do you trust a Bush appointee to make that sort of decision in similar circumstances, and if so, why?
Case in point. Japan started the fight and they would not surrender. Very conservative estimates of an invasion of Japan's homeland put American deaths at a million and Japanese deaths as a multiple of that. As horrific the destruction caused by the 2 atomic bombs, those bombs saved American and Japanese lives.
Another poster already pointed out that this isn't really accurate, but giving the benefit of the doubt and supposing it was, if not completely accurate, at least believed to be accurate by the people involved:
You just (sort of) justified dropping one nuclear bomb on Japan.
That depends on what you're going for -- we used a similar system (maybe it was that exact site, can't remember) when I did some grading in college. A 27% match we would have completely ignored -- that's the kind of correlation you can get from all kinds of reasons, depending on the assignment and on what other assignments are out there. We'd only check out matches like 98%, 99%, on which it's almost impossible to get a "false positive"...
it's likely that a sizable percentage of these students download copyrighted material from the Internet. Do you think any of them are concerned about IP rights then?
Oh come on now. It's not really necessary to put a stupid question after each post. Obviously the fact that a sizable percentage are dishonest in no way suggests that there is not a single one who is not.
The main issue here seems to be that the company keeps assignments indefinitely. By the time that becomes an issue, cheaters have already been caught -- that is, if turnitin.com didn't save their assignments, it wouldn't help them cheat in any way unless a large number of other schools also started making the same demands (even then maybe not, as long as there was still a good enough sampling of fake papers from elsewhere). The only way I can see that the students could still be dishonest about this is if they were hoping to sell the assignment or in other ways enable cheating by other students. Maybe that's the motivation behind this group, but I kind of doubt it.
The trick would be to join a narrow and wide end using walls that don't point more towards the wide end. But alas, that's an impossibility of geometry.
Ah, but only of Euclidean geometry, whereas General Relativity postulates that space is a closed Riemannian manifold, in which all planes intersect, even apparently parallel ones! Your very reasoning shows this is possible! I haven't read the paper, but I assume this is where the relativistic assumptions come in. Absolutely brilliant.
Of course, there could only ever be one of these engines, and it would occupy a significant fraction of the entire universe, but still... free power!
I partially agree with you, but there's an important word in your claim you aren't paying much attention to: "there's no practical reason to switch to e-voting."
The switch has already (essentially) been done. The debate here is whether to switch back, so close to the election. The primary person agitating for the change to paper ballots (the current governor) also has an extremely questionable history in the area of voting ethics (as pointed out by other posters), so the issue here is a lot more complicated than just "switching to e-voting," which I would (almost) always oppose. However, the governor is taking advantage of the distrust in e-voting in this mostly-Democratic state to push for his changes, and frankly, I doubt it's because he's had a sudden last-minute change of heart regarding his sketchy behavior of the last few years and is suddenly trying to look out for the average voter.
Which isn't to say that this "No, no one I know has ever had their computer freeze" defense of e-voting isn't downright pitiful.....
I've never been to a polling place that had all booths open, electric or otherwise.
I know what you mean. Last time I went to an election with punch-out paper ballots, some of the booths were blocked off with "out of order" signs -- the paper wasn't working in those ones. People complain about the unreliability of e-voting, but it's really not any worse than it used to be.
......
Okay, I'm making fun. A little. But really, have you never been to a polling location that had all boths open? Ever, using any (lack of) technology? Granted, I've only been through a few election cycles, but I haven't observed that at all.
An awful lot of people are saying this... I'm picturing the person making that decision in the store, coming home happily with their $300 console, plugging it in, turning it on, and waiting for something to happen because they didn't buy a game.
With one game, the price difference is $110, not $50. Be more honest.
Re:still supprised at the $250 price tag.
on
The Wii Takes NYC
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· Score: 1
So... $310 would have been reasonable (i.e. the expected price, for all you listed, if there was no bundled game), but $360 is not? I mean, no matter what game you bought first (say Zelda), you would likely expect to get at least a second game after a couple months -- now that second game can be Zelda, and you're breaking even except for the possible disappointment of not having Zelda be the very first thing you play.
I mean, obviously you can do whatever you want, I'm just a little surprised at what seems to be a pretty widespread negative reaction to exactly the expected price for the console, factoring in that it comes with a game (the Japanese version is exactly the same price all earlier consoles, without games, have launched, and the US version is exactly the same price as all previous launches plus the cost of one game).
the Virtual Boy proves Nintendo - like almost every company - doesn't always think things through as well as it should.
True -- but the new controller has been quite successful with everyone who's been lucky enough to actually try it out, and not just imagine it. If it was just an awkward gimmick, I wouldn't expect that.
And, if the Virtual Boy argument is still legitimate, then certainly so is the DS argument....
Holy shit! You're right! Pure speculation does suggest that the controller will be uncomfortable to use for long periods!
Damn... if only Nintendo had thought to test the controller for 30-40min consecutively, they could have noticed this problem and corrected it before release.... too late now....... why didn't you say something sooner?!
In fact, until very recently in the West it was considered common and desireable to live within ones means - and society very decidely didn't get ruined by centuries of this.
You have a poor grasp of history, unless you are taking the rather broad view that, historically speaking, all of capitalist society is "very recent" (which is true, but not useful for this discussion). Yes, it was always desireable to live within one's means -- it still is -- but it has not always been easy, or even possible, for certain segments of society, and a lot of corporate behavior was designed to get employees hopelessly into debt to their employers (cf. the industrial revolution). Some of this abuse led to better labor laws, but it is a frustrating and long-running American myth that anyone, from any background, in any economic or social segment of society, can accomplish anything as long as they work hard. Some people aren't taught how to work hard (or taught much at all for that matter), and some people still get screwed over regardless of how hard they work, because people with more money and power than them want to screw them over.
Personal responsibility is great. I'm a big fan of it. I'm also a big fan of making sure that everyone gets enough education and health care so that those who want to take personal responsibility for their lives are able to. It's no fair just using personal responsibility as a club to beat other people with, since most of the people doing the criticizing have never been in any position where they would even need to make the decision about whether to skip electricity or food this month.
Criticize the overconsuming middle class if you like (I openly admit that most of the people spending that 104% of their income are not doing so out of necessity), or heck, criticize the poor too, but don't extrapolate your ability to make and keep a personal budget (and your luck in having no expensive chronic health issues, and your presumably reasonably good education, etc.) to infer that everyone else ought to have those same abilities naturally, when a lot of public schools are struggling just to provide basic literacy.
That only happens if you have been stupid! If you live within your means, the chances of these problems drops dramatically.
Ah, America, the land where everyone has a first chance, and after that they're screwed for the rest of their lives no matter what. Is this what Freedom feels like?
Some are. My undergrad econ professor was a millionaire who consulted for major companies, but taught freshman-level econ anyway because he enjoyed it.
That may not be representative, but just because they're in academia doesn't mean there's no substance to what they're teaching. Some people just like teaching, or like the academic environment, or aren't interested in the sacrifices they'd have to make to really do well in business. Or have already done very well in business and are teaching from quasi-retirement, or whatever. You get the idea.
Oh come now. Did you really, honestly think that's what I was saying? You have to twist my words pretty badly to get that out of it.
"Premise" is not the same as "purpose." Sony's purpose with the PS3 is obviously what you said. What I meant by its premise is its primary justification for the particular form the machine takes -- that is, an extremely high-end (for a console, anyway), $600 piece of hardware. And Sony does claim that the reason for this is that it's delivering good value on things that serious gamers will demand, for example, HDMI and Blu-Ray.
Slashdot Mirror
As others have said, politics.slashdot.org is in fact a website about politics.
Second, can we quit with the childish "hindsight is 20-20" crap... Picking out the needle in the haystack AFTER the fact is meaningless, however. Their is even a technical term for this psychological error many people make - hindsight bias.
The problem with this statement is that it applies in any circumstances no matter what anyone did/didn't do. You aren't (or at least, it doesn't seem like you're) saying that in this particular case there was not enough practical intelligence to know in advance what was going to happen -- your statement could be applied, with almost no modification, to any situation where anyone is being held responsible for anything after the fact.
Let me take an extremist stance and suggest that there are some situations where people should be held responsible for their [lack of] actions. I'm actually not going to say this is one of them -- I think the actions taken after 9/11 are the real problem right now, and those before 9/11, while bad, shouldn't be pinned exclusively on Bush. But if you're going to object to this sort of article, you need a better argument than just "hindsight is 20-20," because since a lot of information was there you need to justify why this particular case is one of those instances you describe where a reasonably responsible person would not have done anything differently. Otherwise you're just hand-waving: there are also many situations where someone gets in trouble where a responsible person would have done something differently.
News like this (if it's really news, I mean we mostly knew this for a long time) is primarily significant, as far as I'm concerned, because of the issue with Clinton -- which only is an issue because of bizarre hypocritical conservatives (note before I am flamed: the preceding does not mean that all conservatives are bizarre and hypocritical, I am talking about a specific subset of conservatives here) who have tried to pin this on Clinton, even though Bush demonstrably ignored warnings to a much greater extent (that is, while Clinton could have perhaps done more, Bush didn't really do anything). This may not make it Bush's fault, but you damn well shouldn't defend Bush on this topic while slamming Clinton at the same time. (I know you weren't doing that, but some people are, and that's why this debate is relevant... sigh... again...)
Oh, I believed it was slashdotted (though it happened a lot quicker than usual)... but even slashdot summaries usually have more content than "But it turns out that there is SOMETHING SCARY going on! Click on the link!" with no hint at what the link contains. I mean, it's the only link in the whole summary, I think it's reasonable to expect some idea of what the story is about rather than this teaser nonsense...
Of course, other posters have now given mirrors, etc., as well as some pretty solid critiques suggesting that this really is more or less the vacuous FUD I suspected... but we should have at least had a hint at what FUD was going to be presented, since that's the whole point of the story...
1. Post vague, ominous anti-Apple FUD.
2. As evidence, cite a link that is already down -- people will assume it's slashdotted.
3. People don't know what you're claiming, but a negative cloud surrounds their image of Apple.
4. Next time, they'll buy a Zune! Yeah! (aka: profit)
To whoever modded me "troll": "Troll" does not mean "sarcastic." There was a large blatant bias in the post, which implicitly claimed that the most successful industry in history, that owns more politicians than any other, is somehow under "yet another assault," and it had evidently not yet recovered from the previous one, suggesting the oil industry is being persecuted and is unable to defend itself, rather than the truth, which is that it is pretty much the most heavily subsidized industry in the world. I think a claim like that is ridiculous, and worthy of parody.
I'm not even defending the law in question. Just pointing out that the playing field here is not really stacked so badly against the oil industry. Come on.
Ah well...
Developers can switch teams and/or projects any time they want, no questions asked; just say the word and the movers will show up the next day to put you in your new office with your new team.
Speaking as someone who has known a few Google employees, I don't believe this at all. Certainly Google is more accomodating than traditional firms, but I knew someone unhappy about his assignment who had to wait for quite a while (at least several months, not sure the exact length) before he could get it changed. It's a lot easier to promise something like this than to deliver it when you're actually developing something -- I think some of the "Aha! That's why Google never gets anything done!" posts are misplaced, since in practice, developers aren't (mostly) on a "merry-go-round." They're just not quite as static as a traditional company.
I'm glad there are finally actual numbers, since people in the forums have been consistently listing PS3 games at the hypothetical price of $70-100, which always seemed like FUD, and now we know. I assume these were the same people (or at least substantial overlap) claiming the Wii would be $150 -- which also seemed pretty absurd -- and then got upset when it wasn't.
I mean, I'm not going to buy a PS3 at that price, though I hope to buy a Wii, but I'd still rather have a little honesty in the numbers. When you can always tell which "side" a poster is on by which imaginary price they list for a system/game, the numbers are not being used productively.
Still smarting from California's recent enactment of emissions caps, the oil industry is confronting another assault...
Poor, poor oil executives :'(
Damn it people, when will you finally stand up and say "enough is enough?" These people already have to suffer through the uncertainty of how to spend billions in federal subsidies, and what to do with their record-breaking profits, higher than that of any other industry at any other time in human history... that's a lot of pressure! And now this?!
These people are true unsung heroes.
You cannot abolish something from existing, the basic knowledge of how an atom bomb works and even some of the engineering details are taught in undergraduate physics courses across the world. Given sufficient motivation and resources the simple knowledge that something is physically possible is all that is needed to do it.
Aha! Good point. Similarly, it is a waste of time trying to abolish world hunger, because you (apparently) cannot abolish something from existing, and people are taught how to make someone hungry, well before reaching college.
Yes, it's a different situation, but not that different. Just because we can't eliminate all nuclear weapons in the immediate future doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
Nuclear weapons, as illogical as it may sound, save lives.
Only so far. Did you actually read the article? Do you really think that nothing like that could ever happen again, maybe with a slightly less responsible officer in command? Do you trust a Bush appointee to make that sort of decision in similar circumstances, and if so, why?
Case in point. Japan started the fight and they would not surrender. Very conservative estimates of an invasion of Japan's homeland put American deaths at a million and Japanese deaths as a multiple of that. As horrific the destruction caused by the 2 atomic bombs, those bombs saved American and Japanese lives.
Another poster already pointed out that this isn't really accurate, but giving the benefit of the doubt and supposing it was, if not completely accurate, at least believed to be accurate by the people involved:
You just (sort of) justified dropping one nuclear bomb on Japan.
Care to take a stab at the second one?
That depends on what you're going for -- we used a similar system (maybe it was that exact site, can't remember) when I did some grading in college. A 27% match we would have completely ignored -- that's the kind of correlation you can get from all kinds of reasons, depending on the assignment and on what other assignments are out there. We'd only check out matches like 98%, 99%, on which it's almost impossible to get a "false positive"...
it's likely that a sizable percentage of these students download copyrighted material from the Internet. Do you think any of them are concerned about IP rights then?
Oh come on now. It's not really necessary to put a stupid question after each post. Obviously the fact that a sizable percentage are dishonest in no way suggests that there is not a single one who is not.
The main issue here seems to be that the company keeps assignments indefinitely. By the time that becomes an issue, cheaters have already been caught -- that is, if turnitin.com didn't save their assignments, it wouldn't help them cheat in any way unless a large number of other schools also started making the same demands (even then maybe not, as long as there was still a good enough sampling of fake papers from elsewhere). The only way I can see that the students could still be dishonest about this is if they were hoping to sell the assignment or in other ways enable cheating by other students. Maybe that's the motivation behind this group, but I kind of doubt it.
The trick would be to join a narrow and wide end using walls that don't point more towards the wide end. But alas, that's an impossibility of geometry.
Ah, but only of Euclidean geometry, whereas General Relativity postulates that space is a closed Riemannian manifold, in which all planes intersect, even apparently parallel ones! Your very reasoning shows this is possible! I haven't read the paper, but I assume this is where the relativistic assumptions come in. Absolutely brilliant.
Of course, there could only ever be one of these engines, and it would occupy a significant fraction of the entire universe, but still... free power!
I partially agree with you, but there's an important word in your claim you aren't paying much attention to: "there's no practical reason to switch to e-voting."
The switch has already (essentially) been done. The debate here is whether to switch back, so close to the election. The primary person agitating for the change to paper ballots (the current governor) also has an extremely questionable history in the area of voting ethics (as pointed out by other posters), so the issue here is a lot more complicated than just "switching to e-voting," which I would (almost) always oppose. However, the governor is taking advantage of the distrust in e-voting in this mostly-Democratic state to push for his changes, and frankly, I doubt it's because he's had a sudden last-minute change of heart regarding his sketchy behavior of the last few years and is suddenly trying to look out for the average voter.
Which isn't to say that this "No, no one I know has ever had their computer freeze" defense of e-voting isn't downright pitiful.....
I've never been to a polling place that had all booths open, electric or otherwise.
I know what you mean. Last time I went to an election with punch-out paper ballots, some of the booths were blocked off with "out of order" signs -- the paper wasn't working in those ones. People complain about the unreliability of e-voting, but it's really not any worse than it used to be.
......
Okay, I'm making fun. A little. But really, have you never been to a polling location that had all boths open? Ever, using any (lack of) technology? Granted, I've only been through a few election cycles, but I haven't observed that at all.
All three of those have frozen up on me... you're thinking too high-tech: people in Linda's office don't use computers.
An awful lot of people are saying this... I'm picturing the person making that decision in the store, coming home happily with their $300 console, plugging it in, turning it on, and waiting for something to happen because they didn't buy a game.
With one game, the price difference is $110, not $50. Be more honest.
So... $310 would have been reasonable (i.e. the expected price, for all you listed, if there was no bundled game), but $360 is not? I mean, no matter what game you bought first (say Zelda), you would likely expect to get at least a second game after a couple months -- now that second game can be Zelda, and you're breaking even except for the possible disappointment of not having Zelda be the very first thing you play.
I mean, obviously you can do whatever you want, I'm just a little surprised at what seems to be a pretty widespread negative reaction to exactly the expected price for the console, factoring in that it comes with a game (the Japanese version is exactly the same price all earlier consoles, without games, have launched, and the US version is exactly the same price as all previous launches plus the cost of one game).
the Virtual Boy proves Nintendo - like almost every company - doesn't always think things through as well as it should.
True -- but the new controller has been quite successful with everyone who's been lucky enough to actually try it out, and not just imagine it. If it was just an awkward gimmick, I wouldn't expect that.
And, if the Virtual Boy argument is still legitimate, then certainly so is the DS argument....
Holy shit! You're right! Pure speculation does suggest that the controller will be uncomfortable to use for long periods!
Damn... if only Nintendo had thought to test the controller for 30-40min consecutively, they could have noticed this problem and corrected it before release.... too late now....... why didn't you say something sooner?!
Of course, it's also been a while since there was a bundled game with a Nintendo console. If that's true, it certainly explains a >$200 price.
Well, facebook generally doesn't make the backs of my eyeballs feel like they're on fire, the way the page design on myspace usually does...
Yeah, some of the students speculated about that... ;)
In fact, until very recently in the West it was considered common and desireable to live within ones means - and society very decidely didn't get ruined by centuries of this.
You have a poor grasp of history, unless you are taking the rather broad view that, historically speaking, all of capitalist society is "very recent" (which is true, but not useful for this discussion). Yes, it was always desireable to live within one's means -- it still is -- but it has not always been easy, or even possible, for certain segments of society, and a lot of corporate behavior was designed to get employees hopelessly into debt to their employers (cf. the industrial revolution). Some of this abuse led to better labor laws, but it is a frustrating and long-running American myth that anyone, from any background, in any economic or social segment of society, can accomplish anything as long as they work hard. Some people aren't taught how to work hard (or taught much at all for that matter), and some people still get screwed over regardless of how hard they work, because people with more money and power than them want to screw them over.
Personal responsibility is great. I'm a big fan of it. I'm also a big fan of making sure that everyone gets enough education and health care so that those who want to take personal responsibility for their lives are able to. It's no fair just using personal responsibility as a club to beat other people with, since most of the people doing the criticizing have never been in any position where they would even need to make the decision about whether to skip electricity or food this month.
Criticize the overconsuming middle class if you like (I openly admit that most of the people spending that 104% of their income are not doing so out of necessity), or heck, criticize the poor too, but don't extrapolate your ability to make and keep a personal budget (and your luck in having no expensive chronic health issues, and your presumably reasonably good education, etc.) to infer that everyone else ought to have those same abilities naturally, when a lot of public schools are struggling just to provide basic literacy.
That only happens if you have been stupid! If you live within your means, the chances of these problems drops dramatically.
Ah, America, the land where everyone has a first chance, and after that they're screwed for the rest of their lives no matter what. Is this what Freedom feels like?
Some are. My undergrad econ professor was a millionaire who consulted for major companies, but taught freshman-level econ anyway because he enjoyed it.
That may not be representative, but just because they're in academia doesn't mean there's no substance to what they're teaching. Some people just like teaching, or like the academic environment, or aren't interested in the sacrifices they'd have to make to really do well in business. Or have already done very well in business and are teaching from quasi-retirement, or whatever. You get the idea.
Oh come now. Did you really, honestly think that's what I was saying? You have to twist my words pretty badly to get that out of it.
"Premise" is not the same as "purpose." Sony's purpose with the PS3 is obviously what you said. What I meant by its premise is its primary justification for the particular form the machine takes -- that is, an extremely high-end (for a console, anyway), $600 piece of hardware. And Sony does claim that the reason for this is that it's delivering good value on things that serious gamers will demand, for example, HDMI and Blu-Ray.