Yes, I have a computer and know enough about it to post on slashdot. I have a six-year-old computer, because as nice as it might be to get a new one, I can't justify the expense. That's not really a complaint, I have as much money as I need right now, but I do have to be somewhat choosy about entertainment expenses.
Yes, though I don't have much extra income right now, I could "dig up $600 for a console" if it was that important to me. But you're kind of presenting it as this all-or-nothing thing -- "this is how much entertainment you get, it is worth $600." Well, maybe. I'm actually inclined to say no, since you didn't factor the overpriced games into your hourly estimate, but it doesn't matter. In deciding to spend $600, I don't pretend that this is some segmented portion of my life and ask whether the entertainment justifies the expenditure -- I compare the entertainment I would get from the console to every other way I could possibly spend $600. Such as on an X-Box 360 and some games, or a Wii and even more games, or hell, a used PS2 and a box full of old games. Each of those choices would give me a better hourly entertainment rate than your "buy a PS3 because you can technically afford it" scheme.
Maybe a console would be worth $600 if that was the only option, but considering the many alternative ways to spend my $600 + $70 every month or two, many of which have as much or more longevity than most consoles, I'm going to pass.
(I am thinking about getting a Wii, though. I haven't bought a console since the SNES generation, but $200 for a system focused on actual entertainment, with plenty of downloadable nostalgia factor, is about my speed.)
The problem is that when the PS2 came out, there was still a significant portion of the population that didn't own a DVD player
The other problem is that the PS3 costs $300 more than the PS2. If the PS3 were in the $3-400 range and played bluray, people would be happy about it. But right now most of their audience doesn't even have a TV that can take advantage of bluray, so it's useless at any price, let alone at a $300 surcharge.
The PS2 had added DVD functionality, and had the same launch price as the PS1. That's the real difference here.
I agree with most of what you're saying, but "buy it now" and 1-click are very different. 1-click is a convenient but not particularly shocking way of shortening the checkout process when buying something. "Buy it now" has nothing to do with the checkout process, it's a way of specifying what up-front price you will accept to bypass an auction. Also not particularly shocking, but the two things are unrelated.
Re:*sighs* What's the problem really? Rules are Ru
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I'm sick of these kind of abstract economics cop-outs.
It is impossible (and not necessarily desirable) to come up with a legal code that completely forces moral behavior on businesses.
This does not mean it is inappropriate to get upset at a business for legal but immoral behavior. Perhaps they cannot be prosecuted for it (although if the abuse is bad enough, it might suggest useful legislation). This doesn't mean that no one should be informed of their behavior, or that people shouldn't be bothered by it.
Who are we to complain if a company executes a lawful policy?
Any regulations on large businesses had to actually be written at some point, and more will be written in the future. Morality is applicable to a much wider range of behavior than any fixed law. Complaining about lawful but immoral behavior should be the right of any citizen of a just society.
Now, on the other hand, I think my arguments here might be a little self-righteous for application in the present case, since it is two large and overly-litigious companies yelling threats at each other, and not some company lawfully abusing consumers or something. But the behavior is still disturbing, and just because it's legal doesn't mean we shouldn't criticize it.
In an abstract world where pure free market economies reach immediate equilibrium, maybe this is true, but that's completely discounting the real-world backlash of much of the gaming world and the terrible perception this gave people of Sony. Sure, there will still be people lining up to buy them on release, but for long afterward, people will still have bad associations going with this announcement. In the real world, you can't fix a PR fiasco like this just by lowering the price to a reasonable value (assuming they could even afford to).
Besides, even if they cut the price $100, it's still overpriced. And when you factor in that the 360 and Wii will also be undergoing price cuts over time, the PS3 is always going to be vastly overpriced compared to its competition. By the time the PS3 gets to $400, we'll be looking at Wii and 360 prices in the $150 and $250 range -- maybe even lower for the Wii, who knows.
This announcement had a much larger effect on the overall gaming world than just "Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait for the price to drop."
Probabaly would have solved a bunch of the early problems with massive back-orders and bad press from not being able to supply enough units.
There is no such thing as "bad press" from not being able to supply enough units. If the shortage is genuine rather than manufactured (cf. Apple's problems with IBM) then there can be economic down sides to a shortage, but tons of front-page articles talking about how 360s are flying off the shelves, they can't even keep them in stock... that's press you can't buy. (Well, scratch that, I guess they just did.) It's also a tactic that has been used in the console wars for decades, and quite successfully at that.
Have there been any major console launches since the NES where there weren't "supply shortages" at launch? I believe Nintendo was even known to do this sort of thing with their more hyped game franchises...
Alright, fair enough -- though I suspect the OP had wiretapping in mind as well. Either way, I suspect my comments still apply, since it seems likely that the new program is also illegal.
Why should we have to wait to decide if something is illegal, when the relevant laws are already public? This isn't an "innocent until proven guilty" situation where we need to wait for a jury to decide whether somebody did in fact do what they are accused of -- we know they did it, and the question of whether that implies breaking the law is fairly straightforward at that point.
Are you seriously saying the government should be able to do absolutely anything it wants, regardless of the law or constitution, without criticism based on their violating the law and the constitution, until judicial review confirms that that's what they're doing? Certain actions clearly violate the law, and we should be able to call our government officials on it. There certainly should be a judicial review, but I don't have to withhold criticism until its findings are complete.
Instead, you like so many others, have made a determination without allowing the institutions involved to do their jobs.
I am in fact calling on the institutions involved to do their jobs. And I think it is the responsibility of informed constituents to make determinations about their public officials.
How is that better than what the administration is doing? You're both trying to bypass the normal checks and balances, you just think your reason is right and the administration's is wrong.
Are you seriously saying that speaking out against the government's abuses is automatically equivalent to the government abuses themselves? I'm not trying to bypass normal checks and balances. I would be delighted if the government would abide by the normal checks and balances, and I fervently hope that the normal checks and balances will prevent further abuses. Now, if I were imprisoning government officials for years without trial, then we could talk about how I'm no different than they are. All I'm doing is asking them to stop violating our civil rights.
You're making it sound like everyone who opposes the wiretapping is in this monolithic block of people that all have the exact same extreme opinion. That's not really accurate, and I don't know why you'd pick that up from occasional Ben Franklin references, since there is at least some variety of opinion even in the relatively-polarized slashdot forums.
You want a rational argument: The information the NSA is getting is illegal. There is a very specific legal process for obtaining wiretaps, and they aren't using it. If they want to be able to do this, they should use the existing legal procedures, or the law should be changed to accomodate the new ones. If they can't obtain this ability through legitimate legislation, why should they be able to do it? Of course there is some degree of tradeoff between privacy and security, but large-scale wiretaps have not turned the tide in the war on terror, and they are illegal.
You seem to be convinced they're okay because stupid people are opposing them, which seems strange to me since there are plenty of stupid people in any large group, which includes both sides of most political debates, and often stupid arguments get the most airtime (and/or their proponents are the most vocal). For examples of stupid arguments in favor of the wiretapping, how about the government officials who keep insisting that their actions are not illegal? I don't know if you can call it "stupid" when it's just a blatant and easily checked falsehood, but come on. This is the best they can do?
There are checks and balances built into our system for a reason. The executive branch should not be able to disregard that in the name of security, because it is illegal, and any legitimate trade-off between privacy and security should be made in full view of the public and according to a democratic process. Why are we so insistent on spreading democracy to the rest of the world if we're so willing to bypass it ourselves when it's expedient?
Well, the Republicans aren't for obvious reasons -- even if there was no deliberate tampering (which I'm somewhat inclined to believe), it's hardly a good idea to say "Wow, the party that is completely in power got there through completely unreliable voting machines! Vote for them again, because they'll fix this problem!" It just brings up uncomfortable questions they don't even want people thinking about, at least not until they're out of power.
The Democrats aren't because it would be political suicide to make this a major platform issue -- even though having reliable voting machines is an extremely important and worthwhile goal, you know it will be spun into "AHH! The Democrats are saying the Republicans stole the election! They're just talking about 'fixing' the voting machines because they're sore losers!" and blah blah blah, even though if there was any integrity in politics this would be a major priority (albeit maybe not a campaign slogan) for both sides.
And, as other commenters already noted, it has been a platform for third parties, but with the air time they get who would ever know?
Amercians somehow believe losing their rights is helping terrorism, but in reality its not.
And that, my friend, is where you are mistaken... losing our rights has done more to help the terrorists than decades of low-grade American imperialism;)
(Okay, I know, it's a typo... just thought I'd make a point...)
So, all the packages they opened were in fact legal. The message to take away from this is that purchasing legal DVDs can get your packages searched, and cause possible legal trouble. You're better off just downloading a copy.
I'm joking... sort of. Honestly, what good is this going to do, besides pissing off legitimate customers, thereby contributing to the further decline of the MPAA... ahm... oh. Keep up the good work!
Why should there be more top American programmers in the world?
A reasonable question. I don't buy into the President's rhetoric about American ingenuity and how we're just inherently the best in the world, superior to everybody else. We have a temporary economic advantage that is very helpful to those who want to get a good education, but ultimately we are no better than anyone else at ingenuity or innovation, except insofar as we have a culture that fosters those qualities.
So, do we? I won't argue with the obvious fact that the overall educational standards in the US are much lower than they should be. There are many things that could be said about this, but right now we aren't talking about overall standards, we're talking about the standards at the highest level (the "top 48 programmers in the world"), so let's focus there.
Why should there be more top American programmers? Well, I'm not sure there should be, 20 years from now (i.e. given the direction we're headed), but right now I think the top tier of American science/math education is still the best. Not that there aren't also top schools elsewhere, but that the majority of the top schools are here -- this is easily seen by the fact that, while there are top scientists and mathematicians from all over the world, a disproportionate number of them got (substantial parts of) their educations in the US. People who already live here have an immediate leg up on obtaining those same educations, in terms of typical income, government funding of tuition, and just simple logistics when a top school is in easy driving distance. For now, at least, this means that at the top tier, there are a larger percentage of Americans than you'd expect by just dividing the US population by 6-odd billion.
I would like to emphasize that I don't think this is because Americans work harder, or are inherently better, or [insert offensive nationalistic prejudice here]. Why things are the way they are right now is a very long discussion about global culture and economics that, while interesting, isn't really my main point.
However, I think that, self-deprecation aside, the reasons given in the article are pretty accurate. I've talked to professors who dealt with admission at [Big-Name American CS School], and they would get a sizable number of applications from people in eastern Europe and Asia who would basically want to get in on the strength of their performance in [Big Math/Programming Competition X], with very little substance to the rest of their application. [BNACSS] didn't give much weight to such accomplishments unless there was other evidence of aptitude, since their typical experience was that those competitions weren't accurate indicators of real CS ability -- but at some schools, especially in the second tier, doing well in those competitions can get you an automatic free ride. A lot of people over there are putting tremendous energy into these competitions for that exact reason.
I also attended [BNACSS] myself, and was on their ACM programming team (reference the recent slashdot article bemoaning the poor American performance in that competition). It's the exact same situation: Most of the top American (and probably in general, western) students realize that the ACM competition isn't a good test of "real" CS ability, but it's still a lot of fun, and if you do well enough you get a free trip to the world finals in some exotic location (I missed the trip to Hawaii, sadly, but did get to go to Beverly Hills one year). But in a lot of eastern/african/asian countries, where a lot of students have the major goal of going to school/getting a job in the US, they take the contest very seriously, I'd argue to the detriment of a balanced CS education -- some of these teams would spend several hours a day practicing, all year long. At [BNACSS], we never took it nearly that seriously. We had practices every week or two, but the contest was never as important as our actual classes, it was a hobby. This meant that we
Some of you people bitching about the price are the same who drop $500 every year for the next video card from ATI or Nvidia.
The key word being "some." Most people, even most people on slashdot, don't spend that much money on video cards, and I'd suspect that the ones who do aren't the ones complaining the most.
My computer is six years old now (it was just enough to play Warcraft 3 decently before I gave up on current games). I have a very tight budget and can't spend much on superfluous hardware. This immediately rules out the PS3 for me, no matter how much I want one. Even the 360 would be a major expense for me right now. I am quite tempted by the Wii (okay, the name sucks) because they're offering rock-bottom price in exchange for a strong focus on games rather than hardware (what a concept). If they manage to deliver on that, I'll seriously think about getting one. But $500-600? For a console?
A PS3 would be cool, but it's not worth nearly that much to me, and I'm betting it's not worth nearly that much to 90% of Sony's target market. This launch is going to be a disaster -- early sellouts and the usual huge markups followed by the painful realization that they've only got 10% saturation and no one else is buying...
Where to begin... first, with "you liberals." You would probably consider me a liberal, but most liberals wouldn't, and in many respects I'm quite conservative. I never voted democrat until the most recent election.
Next, with "resort to bashing Fox News." I'm not sure what you mean by "resort to." It's not like I've been throwing my whole bag of tricks at somebody, and having been thwarted at every turn, I finally decided to bash Fox News to achieve my objectives. My comment mentioned that I consider Fox News the least reliable of the major news outlets. You might think I'm wrong, but my statement is not some kind of persecution, nor is it inherently "bashing" Fox News -- I wasn't trying to say it in an insulting or offensive way. It is completely legitimate for me to say that I think someone else is wrong about something. My comment also suggested that the demographic that watches Fox News is more likely to consider it the only trustworthy (or at least, clearly the most trustworthy) source of news. My opinion is borne out by multiple surveys, including the one this article is about. That comment is not "bashing" either. I think that trusting a single source for news is a bad idea, so in that sense it was a criticism, but again, I wasn't trying to be insulting. If you think there is evidence that my claim about this is wrong, then fine, that's a reasonable criticism and I'll listen to it.
I also want to point out that your criticism of my comment would apply, unaltered, regardless of which news source we were actually talking about. If it was the "News Anchors Eating Live Babies" network, everything you said would apply just the same -- I just shouldn't watch it. Obviously Fox isn't that bad, but it's disingenuous to say that I'm not allowed to criticize something I disagree with. It's not appropriate to say "just don't watch it, you don't have to actually talk about why you disagree with it." Though a lot of the debate is just opinion, there are also objective facts involved, that must be either true or false, and it strikes me as cowardly to say that I shouldn't come to a decision on which is the case, or admit that decision in a public forum.
I don't watch CBS, either.
And here's a clue... you will NEVER convince viewers of Fox to follow your socialist dogma.
Okay, I don't know where this came from. All I said was I don't trust Fox News. That's all. I didn't even name a single news source that I do trust, except maybe an implicit suggestion of the New York Times. I didn't say anything about my political opinions on any subject. But from this, you conclude that I'm a liberal Fox-basher who is trying to get Fox viewers to follow my socialist dogma. What? I wasn't, at the moment, trying to convince anyone of anything. I don't have a socialist dogma. I'm in favor of some government social programs, and against some others, and my opinions don't match up with the Republican or Democrat party line.
At the risk of more Fox bashing, I will at least point out that the instinctive persecution complex and artificial division of everything along liberal (bad) / conservative (good) lines is one of the reasons that Fox and its viewers have poor reputations, and one of the reasons I don't trust the station. You should realize that there is more diversity of opinion in the world than that.
He explicitly said "according to the summary." It wasn't an absolute statement of fact. And the summary does, in fact, just refer to the general population, so the GP was completely correct.
Clearly, despite the summary, this percentage is determined by a survey, and will thus have some error, probably on the order of a few percent depending on the sample size. But in general, assuming the survey was honestly conducted, the result is probably pretty close, and thus still useful for discussion. It isn't useful to prefix every statement about survey percentages by "Of the N people involved in survey X, conducted by organization Y..." You either decide that the survey was honest, and use it, or you decide it wasn't, and discard it. You don't just insult people for using standard shorthand terminology that is already understood in context.
It's frustrating when such blatant statistical nonsense gets into an article summary, and then there's a whole mini-flamewar about it ("See, Americans are stupid!"/"What's so bad about fox news?!") without any acknowledgment that the original claim is a sham.
I don't think it's surprising, or even depressing, that Fox is the most trusted single news source, at least not when it only got 11%. Fox tries to present itself as the only really honest news source, and people who actually watch it are more liable to buy that. The more "balanced":-P folks realize that you can't just trust one source for all your news, and are thus less likely to overwhelmingly go for one particular news source as the most trusted one. If you asked me that question, there are half a dozen sources that would spring to mind, none of which have a decisive advantage. I would rank Fox as my least trusted source (at least among the big players), but the most is much less defined.
All of which is just to say... among the Fox demographic, Fox news is likely to be the most trusted name. But among (say) the New York Times' demographic, there are a number of other news sources that would probably be similarly trusted. This isn't surprising, and I'm actually very encouraged that 89% trusts other sources more than Fox -- I'm rather cynical, and would have guessed a much lower number.
The only realistic argument here is that IE has a monopoly for somewhat unfair reasons..
A lot of the other responses have it slightly off, so let me address this point: that isn't really relevant to the current issue. Their monopoly might be for completely fair reasons, I don't feel like arguing about that one way or the other. But, when you take a monopoly in one domain (let's say web browsers), regardless of its fairness, and use it to try to build one in another domain (let's say search engines), that's against the law. You can criticize the mozilla/google connection, but of those two only google could be at all argued to have a monopoly, so mozilla's behavior is not illegal or particularly exploitative. In contrast, MS does have a monopoly on browsers (a slightly weakening one, but a monopoly nonetheless), and so using this to try to build one in search engines is exploitative and probably illegal.
Does someone who has not learned to read and write not have freedom of speech? No, they still have it, though there is a strong case to be made that we should do everything we can to teach reading and writing to those who want to learn how. That, however, is not a free speech issue, at least unless there is a government that is actively suppressing information about reading/writing.
Should open source software have more usable interfaces? Of course. For years, to change your profile in gaim you had to use the "Protocol Actions" submenu, which I understand, and which I'm sure the developer understood, but is that supposed to be meaningful to a typical AIM user? Should open source software, where possible, provide documentation and help educate users? Sure. The amount of OSS that just has a page saying "somebody should update the documentation for the latest version," or where most of the features are still poorly documented or undocumented entirely, is astronomical.
Are any of these examples issues of "freedom?" Nope. The article is being a little silly about its use of the word. But hey, it was still good enough to get a link from slashdot...
Walmart is already paying mutually agreed-upon wages for labor. You would have them pay above the market rate, which is equivalent to giving them charity.
But when one company controls enough of the labor market, there are monopoly effects -- i.e., work for that one company or go without a job, so you must work for much less money than you would in a competitive market. The principle behind capitalism is not (or shouldn't be) "Companies can do whatever they want." In the long term this principle means there can be no middle class. Capitalism has to involve competition or it loses its benefits. In some cases where there is not a direct way to encourage large-scale competition (Wal-Mart is an almost definitive example of this), it is appropriate to compensate for the not-especially-free market by placing limits on how much the company in question can use/abuse its power.
You say something is "mutually agreed-upon" as though there is no coercion involved. When Wal-Mart gives 90% of the demand for unskilled labor in an area, and you are unskilled, you're going to work at Wal-Mart pretty much regardless of what they're paying. The fact that a company can do whatever they want with desperate people does not make it a good thing to do, especially in light of the sleazy business tactics that they use to get control over those desperate people in the first place.
Re:Walmart bashing is really just anti-capitalism
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There are a lot of fallacies in this post. First, big-picture economic effects of Wal-Mart can be worrying, but a lot of people object to small-picture "they treat their employees like slaves" issues. Capitalism is great at making some processes more efficient, but this should not translate into "The person with the most money can treat people however he wants." So a lot of your comments don't address what is really bothering some people.
But, more specifically:
Walmart doesn't give the very best health benefits. But it beats having unemployment and medicaid.
False duality. The choices are not 1. Wal-Mart exists, lots of people have low pay and bad health benefits, and 2. Wal-mart does not exist, those same people are all unemployed. There is also 3. Wal-Mart gives better health benefits.
And if Walmart wasn't providing "low paying" jobs, we'd be paying for them in taxes, instead of collecting tax revenue from them.
Big red flag here: first, you're pretending that the only options are for Wal-Mart to exist in its current form, or not at all. Wal-Mart would still be making piles of money even if it was a little nicer to its employees, and a little more reluctant about large-scale sweatshop labor. Certainly, fixing all of people's complaints about Wal-Mart would seriously damage their business, but this is not an all-or-nothing question.
Second, you pretend that if Wal-Mart didn't exist, the rest of the world would be exactly the same except that everyone who works at Wal-Mart now would be unemployed and living off the state. This completely does not follow. If Wal-Mart didn't exist, things would be different in all kinds of ways -- some other entity or entities would be filling the economic niche that Wal-Mart does now (albeit probably in a different way), thereby providing jobs for many of the same people. It is more or less impossible to say for certain what the overall effect would have been on the economy or people who would have been Wal-Mart employees. You'll notice that when Wal-Mart moves in somewhere, a common effect is for lots of small shops to go out of business, thereby causing unemployment -- so many of the people who end up working at Wal-Mart already had jobs, and your "we would be paying for them anyway" claim is bunk.
Now, I know a lot of people say that these small shops were less efficient and therefore deserved to be put out of business. I disagree strongly, but I won't press the point. I'm just trying to say that you're making a couple of leaps in your argument that don't really follow -- if Wal-Mart didn't exist, it is not at all clear that this would magically increase everyone else's tax burden. Also, people who are "anti-Wal-Mart" aren't typically saying "Wal-Mart should completely vanish from the face of the Earth," they're saying that Wal-Mart is engaging in unacceptable behavior, and should stop. This is very much not the same thing.
I checked the Walmart page and Walmart was called "The great satan" in the first line. Why? Because they decided to sell inexpensive, yet usable goods to a mass market?
Well, no, because the extremists on both ends go too far. This doesn't invalidate the concern that the pro-Wal-Mart extremists (i.e. the people Wal-Mart is paying) are winning.
Because they show, better than anything, the hypocracy of anti-capitalist whiners. You know the type - those who complain that they are entitled to everything the world has to offer, for free from the government.
This seems like something I'd see in a troll comment, and is a complete straw-man... opposing Wal-Mart's business practices is not the same as saying I should have everything for free from the government. I find a lot of Wal-Mart's behavior (treatment of employees, manipulation of eminent domain via kickbacks, heavily anti-competitive behavior) extremely ethically troubling. What does this have to do with the government, or what I should receive from them? This is entirely a
Where do you get off deleting opposing points of view?
He didn't, according to his actual post... he moved what are by any reasonable measure "fringe" theories about 9/11 to the bottom of the article, rather than keeping them in the main body. Where do you get off injecting extreme speculation (the evidence you mention is far from complete) into the main body of an encyclopedia article, even a less formal one like Wikipedia? At least separate it a bit so you're more up-front about which elements are fact and which are speculation.
That includes highlighting theories and evidence that you don't agree with.
You can't "disagree" with evidence (it either exists or it doesn't... though which one is the case can itself be a point of disagreement) -- you can, however, disagree with a particular interpretation of the evidence. However, again judging by his post, it doesn't seem like he was concerned by particular evidence that was presented in the article, but by extremist theories. You seem to lump theories and evidence together, which isn't really appropriate. It is reasonable to say that all the evidence should be presented. It is not reasonable to say that every theory, regardless of the corresponding evidence, should be included in the main body of the article. You want to have a section that collects links to the more extreme conspiracy theories? Fine. But it is not "neutral" to collect every possible explanation in the main body of what should ideally be a serious fact-based article, and then pretend that all of them are on the same footing evidence-wise.
Also, perhaps this is just a phrasing issue, but even if (and I don't agree with this) a NPOV means you are obligated to mention all existing explanations, it does not mean you have to highlight (your word) the ones you disagree with. It is reasonable to distinguish between theories that are supported by a large amount of evidence or that are the simplest explanations, versus complicated conspiracy theories that are pieced together by obscure, contested partial evidence. It seems like this is exactly what he was doing -- distinguishing between theories that have different levels of support by the evidence, and not "suppressing" or "deleting" an opposing point of view.
Give us the facts, give us the evidence, give us theories (both mainstream and alternative) and let us -- the reader -- decide.
He did. Nothing you say here is incompatible with drawing an editorial distinction between the facts and evidence, and the theories, or between mainstream theories and theories involving heavy speculation.
If you don't like Wal-mart don't shop or work there.
It must be nice to be lucky enough (to say nothing of wealthy or well-educated) to be able to freely make both of those choices for yourself. I myself am similarly lucky, and I'm guessing your suggestion to your friends was kind of pointless, since they are probably also lucky and judging by their opinion already don't work there (if they do, then fair enough, your point has some merit). But it's a little disingenuous to suggest that everyone has that choice. When you are poor and desperate enough, you do whatever you have to to buy food and, hopefully, pay rent. If Wal-Mart is the biggest employer in your area, or perhaps more importantly, the only one that will hire someone relatively uneducated/unskilled, then you may have to work there whether you like it or not. These are the people who are the victims of Wal-Mart's strategy.
I don't shop or work at Wal-Mart. It is not illegitimate for me to nonetheless be concerned about the human cost of Wal-Mart's business model on behalf of those who have no option.
I could care less about being cool or hip, but it does bother me when extremely rich, powerful people take advantage of the poorest people in the country (and/or the world). Screw enlightenment, how about compassion?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, though I don't have much extra income right now, I could "dig up $600 for a console" if it was that important to me. But you're kind of presenting it as this all-or-nothing thing -- "this is how much entertainment you get, it is worth $600." Well, maybe. I'm actually inclined to say no, since you didn't factor the overpriced games into your hourly estimate, but it doesn't matter. In deciding to spend $600, I don't pretend that this is some segmented portion of my life and ask whether the entertainment justifies the expenditure -- I compare the entertainment I would get from the console to every other way I could possibly spend $600. Such as on an X-Box 360 and some games, or a Wii and even more games, or hell, a used PS2 and a box full of old games. Each of those choices would give me a better hourly entertainment rate than your "buy a PS3 because you can technically afford it" scheme.
Maybe a console would be worth $600 if that was the only option, but considering the many alternative ways to spend my $600 + $70 every month or two, many of which have as much or more longevity than most consoles, I'm going to pass.
(I am thinking about getting a Wii, though. I haven't bought a console since the SNES generation, but $200 for a system focused on actual entertainment, with plenty of downloadable nostalgia factor, is about my speed.)
The other problem is that the PS3 costs $300 more than the PS2. If the PS3 were in the $3-400 range and played bluray, people would be happy about it. But right now most of their audience doesn't even have a TV that can take advantage of bluray, so it's useless at any price, let alone at a $300 surcharge.
The PS2 had added DVD functionality, and had the same launch price as the PS1. That's the real difference here.
I agree with most of what you're saying, but "buy it now" and 1-click are very different. 1-click is a convenient but not particularly shocking way of shortening the checkout process when buying something. "Buy it now" has nothing to do with the checkout process, it's a way of specifying what up-front price you will accept to bypass an auction. Also not particularly shocking, but the two things are unrelated.
It is impossible (and not necessarily desirable) to come up with a legal code that completely forces moral behavior on businesses.
This does not mean it is inappropriate to get upset at a business for legal but immoral behavior. Perhaps they cannot be prosecuted for it (although if the abuse is bad enough, it might suggest useful legislation). This doesn't mean that no one should be informed of their behavior, or that people shouldn't be bothered by it.
Who are we to complain if a company executes a lawful policy?
Any regulations on large businesses had to actually be written at some point, and more will be written in the future. Morality is applicable to a much wider range of behavior than any fixed law. Complaining about lawful but immoral behavior should be the right of any citizen of a just society.
Now, on the other hand, I think my arguments here might be a little self-righteous for application in the present case, since it is two large and overly-litigious companies yelling threats at each other, and not some company lawfully abusing consumers or something. But the behavior is still disturbing, and just because it's legal doesn't mean we shouldn't criticize it.
Heh... yeah... good luck with that...
Besides, even if they cut the price $100, it's still overpriced. And when you factor in that the 360 and Wii will also be undergoing price cuts over time, the PS3 is always going to be vastly overpriced compared to its competition. By the time the PS3 gets to $400, we'll be looking at Wii and 360 prices in the $150 and $250 range -- maybe even lower for the Wii, who knows.
This announcement had a much larger effect on the overall gaming world than just "Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait for the price to drop."
There is no such thing as "bad press" from not being able to supply enough units. If the shortage is genuine rather than manufactured (cf. Apple's problems with IBM) then there can be economic down sides to a shortage, but tons of front-page articles talking about how 360s are flying off the shelves, they can't even keep them in stock... that's press you can't buy. (Well, scratch that, I guess they just did.) It's also a tactic that has been used in the console wars for decades, and quite successfully at that.
Have there been any major console launches since the NES where there weren't "supply shortages" at launch? I believe Nintendo was even known to do this sort of thing with their more hyped game franchises...
Alright, fair enough -- though I suspect the OP had wiretapping in mind as well. Either way, I suspect my comments still apply, since it seems likely that the new program is also illegal.
Are you seriously saying the government should be able to do absolutely anything it wants, regardless of the law or constitution, without criticism based on their violating the law and the constitution, until judicial review confirms that that's what they're doing? Certain actions clearly violate the law, and we should be able to call our government officials on it. There certainly should be a judicial review, but I don't have to withhold criticism until its findings are complete.
Instead, you like so many others, have made a determination without allowing the institutions involved to do their jobs.
I am in fact calling on the institutions involved to do their jobs. And I think it is the responsibility of informed constituents to make determinations about their public officials.
How is that better than what the administration is doing? You're both trying to bypass the normal checks and balances, you just think your reason is right and the administration's is wrong.
Are you seriously saying that speaking out against the government's abuses is automatically equivalent to the government abuses themselves? I'm not trying to bypass normal checks and balances. I would be delighted if the government would abide by the normal checks and balances, and I fervently hope that the normal checks and balances will prevent further abuses. Now, if I were imprisoning government officials for years without trial, then we could talk about how I'm no different than they are. All I'm doing is asking them to stop violating our civil rights.
You want a rational argument: The information the NSA is getting is illegal. There is a very specific legal process for obtaining wiretaps, and they aren't using it. If they want to be able to do this, they should use the existing legal procedures, or the law should be changed to accomodate the new ones. If they can't obtain this ability through legitimate legislation, why should they be able to do it? Of course there is some degree of tradeoff between privacy and security, but large-scale wiretaps have not turned the tide in the war on terror, and they are illegal.
You seem to be convinced they're okay because stupid people are opposing them, which seems strange to me since there are plenty of stupid people in any large group, which includes both sides of most political debates, and often stupid arguments get the most airtime (and/or their proponents are the most vocal). For examples of stupid arguments in favor of the wiretapping, how about the government officials who keep insisting that their actions are not illegal? I don't know if you can call it "stupid" when it's just a blatant and easily checked falsehood, but come on. This is the best they can do?
There are checks and balances built into our system for a reason. The executive branch should not be able to disregard that in the name of security, because it is illegal, and any legitimate trade-off between privacy and security should be made in full view of the public and according to a democratic process. Why are we so insistent on spreading democracy to the rest of the world if we're so willing to bypass it ourselves when it's expedient?
The Democrats aren't because it would be political suicide to make this a major platform issue -- even though having reliable voting machines is an extremely important and worthwhile goal, you know it will be spun into "AHH! The Democrats are saying the Republicans stole the election! They're just talking about 'fixing' the voting machines because they're sore losers!" and blah blah blah, even though if there was any integrity in politics this would be a major priority (albeit maybe not a campaign slogan) for both sides.
And, as other commenters already noted, it has been a platform for third parties, but with the air time they get who would ever know?
And that, my friend, is where you are mistaken... losing our rights has done more to help the terrorists than decades of low-grade American imperialism ;)
(Okay, I know, it's a typo... just thought I'd make a point...)
I'm joking... sort of. Honestly, what good is this going to do, besides pissing off legitimate customers, thereby contributing to the further decline of the MPAA... ahm... oh. Keep up the good work!
A reasonable question. I don't buy into the President's rhetoric about American ingenuity and how we're just inherently the best in the world, superior to everybody else. We have a temporary economic advantage that is very helpful to those who want to get a good education, but ultimately we are no better than anyone else at ingenuity or innovation, except insofar as we have a culture that fosters those qualities.
So, do we? I won't argue with the obvious fact that the overall educational standards in the US are much lower than they should be. There are many things that could be said about this, but right now we aren't talking about overall standards, we're talking about the standards at the highest level (the "top 48 programmers in the world"), so let's focus there.
Why should there be more top American programmers? Well, I'm not sure there should be, 20 years from now (i.e. given the direction we're headed), but right now I think the top tier of American science/math education is still the best. Not that there aren't also top schools elsewhere, but that the majority of the top schools are here -- this is easily seen by the fact that, while there are top scientists and mathematicians from all over the world, a disproportionate number of them got (substantial parts of) their educations in the US. People who already live here have an immediate leg up on obtaining those same educations, in terms of typical income, government funding of tuition, and just simple logistics when a top school is in easy driving distance. For now, at least, this means that at the top tier, there are a larger percentage of Americans than you'd expect by just dividing the US population by 6-odd billion.
I would like to emphasize that I don't think this is because Americans work harder, or are inherently better, or [insert offensive nationalistic prejudice here]. Why things are the way they are right now is a very long discussion about global culture and economics that, while interesting, isn't really my main point.
However, I think that, self-deprecation aside, the reasons given in the article are pretty accurate. I've talked to professors who dealt with admission at [Big-Name American CS School], and they would get a sizable number of applications from people in eastern Europe and Asia who would basically want to get in on the strength of their performance in [Big Math/Programming Competition X], with very little substance to the rest of their application. [BNACSS] didn't give much weight to such accomplishments unless there was other evidence of aptitude, since their typical experience was that those competitions weren't accurate indicators of real CS ability -- but at some schools, especially in the second tier, doing well in those competitions can get you an automatic free ride. A lot of people over there are putting tremendous energy into these competitions for that exact reason.
I also attended [BNACSS] myself, and was on their ACM programming team (reference the recent slashdot article bemoaning the poor American performance in that competition). It's the exact same situation: Most of the top American (and probably in general, western) students realize that the ACM competition isn't a good test of "real" CS ability, but it's still a lot of fun, and if you do well enough you get a free trip to the world finals in some exotic location (I missed the trip to Hawaii, sadly, but did get to go to Beverly Hills one year). But in a lot of eastern/african/asian countries, where a lot of students have the major goal of going to school/getting a job in the US, they take the contest very seriously, I'd argue to the detriment of a balanced CS education -- some of these teams would spend several hours a day practicing, all year long. At [BNACSS], we never took it nearly that seriously. We had practices every week or two, but the contest was never as important as our actual classes, it was a hobby. This meant that we
The key word being "some." Most people, even most people on slashdot, don't spend that much money on video cards, and I'd suspect that the ones who do aren't the ones complaining the most.
My computer is six years old now (it was just enough to play Warcraft 3 decently before I gave up on current games). I have a very tight budget and can't spend much on superfluous hardware. This immediately rules out the PS3 for me, no matter how much I want one. Even the 360 would be a major expense for me right now. I am quite tempted by the Wii (okay, the name sucks) because they're offering rock-bottom price in exchange for a strong focus on games rather than hardware (what a concept). If they manage to deliver on that, I'll seriously think about getting one. But $500-600? For a console?
A PS3 would be cool, but it's not worth nearly that much to me, and I'm betting it's not worth nearly that much to 90% of Sony's target market. This launch is going to be a disaster -- early sellouts and the usual huge markups followed by the painful realization that they've only got 10% saturation and no one else is buying...
Next, with "resort to bashing Fox News." I'm not sure what you mean by "resort to." It's not like I've been throwing my whole bag of tricks at somebody, and having been thwarted at every turn, I finally decided to bash Fox News to achieve my objectives. My comment mentioned that I consider Fox News the least reliable of the major news outlets. You might think I'm wrong, but my statement is not some kind of persecution, nor is it inherently "bashing" Fox News -- I wasn't trying to say it in an insulting or offensive way. It is completely legitimate for me to say that I think someone else is wrong about something. My comment also suggested that the demographic that watches Fox News is more likely to consider it the only trustworthy (or at least, clearly the most trustworthy) source of news. My opinion is borne out by multiple surveys, including the one this article is about. That comment is not "bashing" either. I think that trusting a single source for news is a bad idea, so in that sense it was a criticism, but again, I wasn't trying to be insulting. If you think there is evidence that my claim about this is wrong, then fine, that's a reasonable criticism and I'll listen to it.
I also want to point out that your criticism of my comment would apply, unaltered, regardless of which news source we were actually talking about. If it was the "News Anchors Eating Live Babies" network, everything you said would apply just the same -- I just shouldn't watch it. Obviously Fox isn't that bad, but it's disingenuous to say that I'm not allowed to criticize something I disagree with. It's not appropriate to say "just don't watch it, you don't have to actually talk about why you disagree with it." Though a lot of the debate is just opinion, there are also objective facts involved, that must be either true or false, and it strikes me as cowardly to say that I shouldn't come to a decision on which is the case, or admit that decision in a public forum.
I don't watch CBS, either.
And here's a clue... you will NEVER convince viewers of Fox to follow your socialist dogma.
Okay, I don't know where this came from. All I said was I don't trust Fox News. That's all. I didn't even name a single news source that I do trust, except maybe an implicit suggestion of the New York Times. I didn't say anything about my political opinions on any subject. But from this, you conclude that I'm a liberal Fox-basher who is trying to get Fox viewers to follow my socialist dogma. What? I wasn't, at the moment, trying to convince anyone of anything. I don't have a socialist dogma. I'm in favor of some government social programs, and against some others, and my opinions don't match up with the Republican or Democrat party line.
At the risk of more Fox bashing, I will at least point out that the instinctive persecution complex and artificial division of everything along liberal (bad) / conservative (good) lines is one of the reasons that Fox and its viewers have poor reputations, and one of the reasons I don't trust the station. You should realize that there is more diversity of opinion in the world than that.
I hope I haven't just fed a troll...
Clearly, despite the summary, this percentage is determined by a survey, and will thus have some error, probably on the order of a few percent depending on the sample size. But in general, assuming the survey was honestly conducted, the result is probably pretty close, and thus still useful for discussion. It isn't useful to prefix every statement about survey percentages by "Of the N people involved in survey X, conducted by organization Y..." You either decide that the survey was honest, and use it, or you decide it wasn't, and discard it. You don't just insult people for using standard shorthand terminology that is already understood in context.
It's frustrating when such blatant statistical nonsense gets into an article summary, and then there's a whole mini-flamewar about it ("See, Americans are stupid!"/"What's so bad about fox news?!") without any acknowledgment that the original claim is a sham.
I don't think it's surprising, or even depressing, that Fox is the most trusted single news source, at least not when it only got 11%. Fox tries to present itself as the only really honest news source, and people who actually watch it are more liable to buy that. The more "balanced" :-P folks realize that you can't just trust one source for all your news, and are thus less likely to overwhelmingly go for one particular news source as the most trusted one. If you asked me that question, there are half a dozen sources that would spring to mind, none of which have a decisive advantage. I would rank Fox as my least trusted source (at least among the big players), but the most is much less defined.
All of which is just to say... among the Fox demographic, Fox news is likely to be the most trusted name. But among (say) the New York Times' demographic, there are a number of other news sources that would probably be similarly trusted. This isn't surprising, and I'm actually very encouraged that 89% trusts other sources more than Fox -- I'm rather cynical, and would have guessed a much lower number.
A lot of the other responses have it slightly off, so let me address this point: that isn't really relevant to the current issue. Their monopoly might be for completely fair reasons, I don't feel like arguing about that one way or the other. But, when you take a monopoly in one domain (let's say web browsers), regardless of its fairness, and use it to try to build one in another domain (let's say search engines), that's against the law. You can criticize the mozilla/google connection, but of those two only google could be at all argued to have a monopoly, so mozilla's behavior is not illegal or particularly exploitative. In contrast, MS does have a monopoly on browsers (a slightly weakening one, but a monopoly nonetheless), and so using this to try to build one in search engines is exploitative and probably illegal.
Should open source software have more usable interfaces? Of course. For years, to change your profile in gaim you had to use the "Protocol Actions" submenu, which I understand, and which I'm sure the developer understood, but is that supposed to be meaningful to a typical AIM user? Should open source software, where possible, provide documentation and help educate users? Sure. The amount of OSS that just has a page saying "somebody should update the documentation for the latest version," or where most of the features are still poorly documented or undocumented entirely, is astronomical.
Are any of these examples issues of "freedom?" Nope. The article is being a little silly about its use of the word. But hey, it was still good enough to get a link from slashdot...
Poor retarded shithead Tiny Tim :(
But when one company controls enough of the labor market, there are monopoly effects -- i.e., work for that one company or go without a job, so you must work for much less money than you would in a competitive market. The principle behind capitalism is not (or shouldn't be) "Companies can do whatever they want." In the long term this principle means there can be no middle class. Capitalism has to involve competition or it loses its benefits. In some cases where there is not a direct way to encourage large-scale competition (Wal-Mart is an almost definitive example of this), it is appropriate to compensate for the not-especially-free market by placing limits on how much the company in question can use/abuse its power.
You say something is "mutually agreed-upon" as though there is no coercion involved. When Wal-Mart gives 90% of the demand for unskilled labor in an area, and you are unskilled, you're going to work at Wal-Mart pretty much regardless of what they're paying. The fact that a company can do whatever they want with desperate people does not make it a good thing to do, especially in light of the sleazy business tactics that they use to get control over those desperate people in the first place.
But, more specifically:
Walmart doesn't give the very best health benefits. But it beats having unemployment and medicaid.
False duality. The choices are not 1. Wal-Mart exists, lots of people have low pay and bad health benefits, and 2. Wal-mart does not exist, those same people are all unemployed. There is also 3. Wal-Mart gives better health benefits.
And if Walmart wasn't providing "low paying" jobs, we'd be paying for them in taxes, instead of collecting tax revenue from them.
Big red flag here: first, you're pretending that the only options are for Wal-Mart to exist in its current form, or not at all. Wal-Mart would still be making piles of money even if it was a little nicer to its employees, and a little more reluctant about large-scale sweatshop labor. Certainly, fixing all of people's complaints about Wal-Mart would seriously damage their business, but this is not an all-or-nothing question.
Second, you pretend that if Wal-Mart didn't exist, the rest of the world would be exactly the same except that everyone who works at Wal-Mart now would be unemployed and living off the state. This completely does not follow. If Wal-Mart didn't exist, things would be different in all kinds of ways -- some other entity or entities would be filling the economic niche that Wal-Mart does now (albeit probably in a different way), thereby providing jobs for many of the same people. It is more or less impossible to say for certain what the overall effect would have been on the economy or people who would have been Wal-Mart employees. You'll notice that when Wal-Mart moves in somewhere, a common effect is for lots of small shops to go out of business, thereby causing unemployment -- so many of the people who end up working at Wal-Mart already had jobs, and your "we would be paying for them anyway" claim is bunk.
Now, I know a lot of people say that these small shops were less efficient and therefore deserved to be put out of business. I disagree strongly, but I won't press the point. I'm just trying to say that you're making a couple of leaps in your argument that don't really follow -- if Wal-Mart didn't exist, it is not at all clear that this would magically increase everyone else's tax burden. Also, people who are "anti-Wal-Mart" aren't typically saying "Wal-Mart should completely vanish from the face of the Earth," they're saying that Wal-Mart is engaging in unacceptable behavior, and should stop. This is very much not the same thing.
I checked the Walmart page and Walmart was called "The great satan" in the first line. Why? Because they decided to sell inexpensive, yet usable goods to a mass market?
Well, no, because the extremists on both ends go too far. This doesn't invalidate the concern that the pro-Wal-Mart extremists (i.e. the people Wal-Mart is paying) are winning.
Because they show, better than anything, the hypocracy of anti-capitalist whiners. You know the type - those who complain that they are entitled to everything the world has to offer, for free from the government.
This seems like something I'd see in a troll comment, and is a complete straw-man... opposing Wal-Mart's business practices is not the same as saying I should have everything for free from the government. I find a lot of Wal-Mart's behavior (treatment of employees, manipulation of eminent domain via kickbacks, heavily anti-competitive behavior) extremely ethically troubling. What does this have to do with the government, or what I should receive from them? This is entirely a
He didn't, according to his actual post... he moved what are by any reasonable measure "fringe" theories about 9/11 to the bottom of the article, rather than keeping them in the main body. Where do you get off injecting extreme speculation (the evidence you mention is far from complete) into the main body of an encyclopedia article, even a less formal one like Wikipedia? At least separate it a bit so you're more up-front about which elements are fact and which are speculation.
That includes highlighting theories and evidence that you don't agree with.
You can't "disagree" with evidence (it either exists or it doesn't... though which one is the case can itself be a point of disagreement) -- you can, however, disagree with a particular interpretation of the evidence. However, again judging by his post, it doesn't seem like he was concerned by particular evidence that was presented in the article, but by extremist theories. You seem to lump theories and evidence together, which isn't really appropriate. It is reasonable to say that all the evidence should be presented. It is not reasonable to say that every theory, regardless of the corresponding evidence, should be included in the main body of the article. You want to have a section that collects links to the more extreme conspiracy theories? Fine. But it is not "neutral" to collect every possible explanation in the main body of what should ideally be a serious fact-based article, and then pretend that all of them are on the same footing evidence-wise.
Also, perhaps this is just a phrasing issue, but even if (and I don't agree with this) a NPOV means you are obligated to mention all existing explanations, it does not mean you have to highlight (your word) the ones you disagree with. It is reasonable to distinguish between theories that are supported by a large amount of evidence or that are the simplest explanations, versus complicated conspiracy theories that are pieced together by obscure, contested partial evidence. It seems like this is exactly what he was doing -- distinguishing between theories that have different levels of support by the evidence, and not "suppressing" or "deleting" an opposing point of view.
Give us the facts, give us the evidence, give us theories (both mainstream and alternative) and let us -- the reader -- decide.
He did. Nothing you say here is incompatible with drawing an editorial distinction between the facts and evidence, and the theories, or between mainstream theories and theories involving heavy speculation.
It must be nice to be lucky enough (to say nothing of wealthy or well-educated) to be able to freely make both of those choices for yourself. I myself am similarly lucky, and I'm guessing your suggestion to your friends was kind of pointless, since they are probably also lucky and judging by their opinion already don't work there (if they do, then fair enough, your point has some merit). But it's a little disingenuous to suggest that everyone has that choice. When you are poor and desperate enough, you do whatever you have to to buy food and, hopefully, pay rent. If Wal-Mart is the biggest employer in your area, or perhaps more importantly, the only one that will hire someone relatively uneducated/unskilled, then you may have to work there whether you like it or not. These are the people who are the victims of Wal-Mart's strategy.
I don't shop or work at Wal-Mart. It is not illegitimate for me to nonetheless be concerned about the human cost of Wal-Mart's business model on behalf of those who have no option.
I could care less about being cool or hip, but it does bother me when extremely rich, powerful people take advantage of the poorest people in the country (and/or the world). Screw enlightenment, how about compassion?