Most prisons I've seen(in VA), the punishment is the monotony of nothing to do, ever. They're basically indoor cattle pens for people, and that's how the people in them feel.
You can see Morgan Spurlock go to a VA jail for a month in "30 Days", season 2, episode 6. Preview on Hulu and available on DVD and instant streaming on Netflix.
Lets says they put two of these in an ISP, thats 240TB. Netflix streams at about 2GB/hour. That means they could store 120,000 hours of content for ~$16K per ISP. That's not their whole library by far, but I would be willing to bet that's enough to store the top 95% of requested media at least.
Unless you've already written, called, and emailed your congressperson, stop bitching here.
I've told mine in no uncertain terms that if they support this extension, I will not only not vote for them in the next election but will do everything I can to convince others to do likewise.
Here's the letter I sent:
Senator ___,
It seems obvious that the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights is the basis for our great society and for inspiring other societies to be great.
In my opinion, The PATRIOT act has been the single worst piece of legislation in curtailing both the spirit and letter of those rights, and where it has been able to be challenged in court, the court agrees with me. Most provisions have not been able to be challenged in this way not due to their legality, but due to the secrecy that they are implemented under.
If liberty and justice are the founding principles of this country and the guiding principles of the Constitution and the 4th amendment, it is quite difficult to support a representative who would seek to extend this legislation.
For this reason, I believe the ending of the PATRIOT act is the most pressing issue we have, and if you act to extend the act without massive overhaul, not only will you not receive my vote come next election, I will do everything in my power to convince others to vote against you also.
Easy. You compare it to the 100% chance of large radiation releases from coal plants every year, the 100% chance that massive amounts of CO2, mercury, and fine particulate matter will be released, etc.
Totally. I was not responding to you at all, but to the parent of my comment, Grizzley9.
It's totally not "like taking out the hard drive and processor of a PC and saying here's your computer!" It's like saying "here's your computer, but monitor and power cord available separately."
And yes, I agree total cost (with keyboard, mouse, and USB hub/power adapter), will probably be higher than $25, and it still doesn't include a screen or network capability. You can't compare it to a complete laptop like OLPC. But that doesn't mean it's not a "real computer". Still, for people who already have a tv of any kind, this method is a cheap way to get a computer.
Except it is a complete computer, just no IO devices. This isn't a USB device to plug into a computer, but a computer with a USB host port for plugging in a keyboard.
In spirit, it's similar to the early Apple or Sinclair computers, using a TV you already own as the monitor.
Firefox 4, built in bartab. When you set browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs=0 , only tabs you click on get loaded.
If that's not good enough for you, get the same setup on lubuntu or similar lightweight Linux, or just go buy some more RAM and install it yourself. Should be $30-60 for 2 1-gig sticks depending on the type needed. If that's too much to expense or pay out of pocket, can't you help much.
You can claim it is opinion or claim it is untrue. You can't have it both ways.
I'm not claiming that it is opinion (unknowable and untestable) but debatable(evidence goes both ways, but most experts agree with me).
Therefore, to dissuade me, you need to prove that you are more knowledgeable than the experts, or that I am wrong about their legal opinion.
If you like, I'll modify it to this: "to maximize their market share and hence stockholder profits, which widely understood by business law experts to be the legal obligation of a publicly traded company in most states(Delaware notwithstanding)"
I fail to see how that differs significantly from my original statement.
If you read the papers, nowhere does it say that my view was nonsense. To the contrary, it claims that it is the majority opinion.
You are more cocksure then the strongest dissenters to the majority view, and you know much less. Legal opinion is much less clear and based on more factors then you seem to think. I've never gotten a response back from a laywer that didn't start, "Well, it depends..."
I've offered up papers written by legal experts that show that:
1) my original comment was the majority opinion, and 2) there was debate in the legal community.
If you said, "I don't agree", or "that is debatable" I would have no reason to argue with you. You said "How does this nonsense keep getting trotted out?"
This "nonsense keeps getting trotted out" because it is the majority opinion on a debatable legal matter. To quote John Stewart, "Take it down a notch, for America."
They are both just trying to do their best to maximize their market share and stock price, which is the legal obligation of a publicly traded company.
Expert opinion:
In the corporate law academy today in the United States, the dominant view is that corporate law requires managers to pursue a single aim: the maximization of stockholder profits.
If you're claiming the truth of your statement, you need to tell me either: 1) Why I should believe you have a better grasp of corporate law then most subject matter experts or 2) What proof you have that most subject matter experts agree with you. or 3) What disconnect you see between my statement and the majority subject matter expert opinion.
I am not a legal expert nor do I wish to devote my life to becoming one which is why I appeal to legal experts to back up my claims. I suggest you either become an expert, or listen to them.
Otherwise, you're just some loon with delusions of grandeur giving his opinion.
If you're claiming the truth of your statement, you need to tell me either: 1) Why I should believe you have a better grasp of corporate law then most subject matter experts or 2) What proof you have that most subject matter experts agree with you.
I am not a legal expert nor do I wish to devote my life to becoming one which is why I appeal to legal experts to back up my claims. I suggest you either become an expert, or listen to them.
Otherwise, you're just some loon with delusions of grandeur giving his opinion.
The misleading statement was the fact that you called it "nonsense". You didn't call it "debatable" or "murky" like the scholarly papers attacking the idea do. You made a knowledge claim against expert opinion, with no substantial proof.
If you wish to call the majority opinion "nonsense", the burden of proof is on you. If you want to say "I have evidence that that is not the majority opinion of exports" or "I'm not convinced" that's one thing. Calling things you are not an expert on "nonsense" when most experts disagree with you puts you in the same camp as cryptozoologists: The burden of proof is on you.
Let's recap. You said: "How does this nonsense keep getting trotted out?"
I said: This "nonsense" keeps getting trotted out because there is honest debate on whether you are right or not.
Even a paper that tries to disprove the point states as it's first sentence:
In the corporate law academy today in the United States, the dominant view is that corporate law requires managers to pursue a single aim: the maximization of stockholder profits.
If as a non-expert, you wish to dismiss as "nonsense" an opinion that is the dominant opinion of experts in the field, you must put forth overwhelming proof. That's the way it works, sorry.
If you say wish to say you "disagree" or "are not sure" you can get away with that. Calling something "nonsense" is a much stronger claim, and you are obviously not qualified to make that claim or willing to put forth the effort to support it.
Yes, I read it and was struck that someone making a case for the opposite admitted it was not the majority opinion, and that much caselaw can be construed to point to that goal.
Did you read the first line?
In the corporate law academy today in the United States, the dominant view is that corporate law requires managers to pursue a single aim: the maximization of stockholder profits.
This is my backing up of my case: Even the critics of the theory say that the majority of corporate law schools teach the view I espoused in my original post. For me , this means at minimum that JasperHW is misleading with his statement, "How does this nonsense keep getting trotted out?"
It keeps getting trotted out because most experts believe it, and even those who want to argue against it admit that.
There's plenty of citations in the paper I linked to. Here's a few:
See, e.g.,CAL. CORP. CODE tit. 1, 309(a) (2004) (“in the best interests of the corporation and its shareholders”); NY CLS BUS. CORP. art. 7, 717(b) (2004) (“the long-term and the short-term interests of the corporation and its shareholders”); NRS tit. 7, 138(1) (2004) (“interests of the corporation”); Illinois Business Corporation Act of 1983 8.85, 805 ILCS 5 (2004) (“best long term and short term interests of the corporation”); N.J. STAT. tit. 14A, 14A:6-1 (2004) (“best inerest of the corporation”).
As I stated above:
The statutes largely do require corporations to act in the best interest of the shareholders, and in a relationship where the transactions are almost strictly monetary, that is largely taken to mean they must maximize stock value. There is debate as to whether other goals are allowed, and they are allowed mostly due to their potential impact on long term stock value.
When a statement like the following is published without correction in a scholarly journal, the burden of proof is on the disbeliever:
In the corporate law academy today in the United States, the dominant view is that corporate law requires managers to pursue a single aim: the maximization of stockholder profits.
It doesn't ready industry standard epub format. If they wanted to "close the functionality gap" they would be supporting the industry standard format which would allow people to get their content from anywhere. They want to close the gap *as little as possible* and still grow their market share, and there's no telling which way they will go next.
Because there is honest debate about whether your point of view is correct or not.
The statutes largely do require corporations to act in the best interest of the shareholders, and in a relationship where the transactions are almost strictly monetary, that is largely taken to mean they must maximize stock value. There is debate as to whether other goals are allowed, and they are allowed mostly due to their potential impact on long term stock value.
Actions in a market with an already established leader and have to compete on merits are much different from greenfield markets where you want to be the market leader.
Yes, I do like Amazon more then my comment implies, but I am highly skeptical about how DRM and ebooks will play out. By the time Amazon started selling DRM-free mp3s, it was already certain that that was the only winning strategy. Not so yet with DRM ebooks.
I don't think Amazon is evil, but then again I don't think Microsoft is (or was) evil. They are both just trying to do their best to maximize their market share and stock price, which is the legal obligation of a publicly traded company.
Slashdot Mirror
US has free press and open courts.
China has controlled press and closed courts.
Otherwise, politicians try to get away with just as much crap in both countries.
Can you cite sources about the job claim?
Most prisons I've seen(in VA), the punishment is the monotony of nothing to do, ever. They're basically indoor cattle pens for people, and that's how the people in them feel.
You can see Morgan Spurlock go to a VA jail for a month in "30 Days", season 2, episode 6. Preview on Hulu and available on DVD and instant streaming on Netflix.
Using custom hardware, they could store about 120TB for ~$8,000.
I base that on this article, assuming that they use 3 GB drives instead of the 1.5 they used a few years ago.
http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/
Lets says they put two of these in an ISP, thats 240TB. Netflix streams at about 2GB/hour. That means they could store 120,000 hours of content for ~$16K per ISP. That's not their whole library by far, but I would be willing to bet that's enough to store the top 95% of requested media at least.
Unless you've already written, called, and emailed your congressperson, stop bitching here.
I've told mine in no uncertain terms that if they support this extension, I will not only not vote for them in the next election but will do everything I can to convince others to do likewise.
Here's the letter I sent:
Senator ___,
It seems obvious that the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights is the basis for our great society and for inspiring other societies to be great.
In my opinion, The PATRIOT act has been the single worst piece of legislation in curtailing both the spirit and letter of those rights, and where it has been able to be challenged in court, the court agrees with me. Most provisions have not been able to be challenged in this way not due to their legality, but due to the secrecy that they are implemented under.
If liberty and justice are the founding principles of this country and the guiding principles of the Constitution and the 4th amendment, it is quite difficult to support a representative who would seek to extend this legislation.
For this reason, I believe the ending of the PATRIOT act is the most pressing issue we have, and if you act to extend the act without massive overhaul, not only will you not receive my vote come next election, I will do everything in my power to convince others to vote against you also.
Steve Pinkham
Not Necessary.
A single 27" or larger, high resolution display would be fine too. ;-)
Of course, two 22" or 23" monitors would be cheaper.
Easy. You compare it to the 100% chance of large radiation releases from coal plants every year, the 100% chance that massive amounts of CO2, mercury, and fine particulate matter will be released, etc.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
I live about 11 miles from a nuke plant. I would not even consider living that close to a coal plant.
The gender of the adapter is simply a convention. There are many embedded systems where the USB port can be either a host or peripheral.
Totally. I was not responding to you at all, but to the parent of my comment, Grizzley9.
It's totally not "like taking out the hard drive and processor of a PC and saying here's your computer!" It's like saying "here's your computer, but monitor and power cord available separately."
And yes, I agree total cost (with keyboard, mouse, and USB hub/power adapter), will probably be higher than $25, and it still doesn't include a screen or network capability. You can't compare it to a complete laptop like OLPC. But that doesn't mean it's not a "real computer". Still, for people who already have a tv of any kind, this method is a cheap way to get a computer.
The HP 50G is actually an excellent replacement. I'll grant you that the 49 series was crap, but the 50G finally got it right.
Except it is a complete computer, just no IO devices. This isn't a USB device to plug into a computer, but a computer with a USB host port for plugging in a keyboard.
In spirit, it's similar to the early Apple or Sinclair computers, using a TV you already own as the monitor.
Every review I've read says otherwise.
Here's one of the better ones:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/internet-explorer-9-chrome-10-opera-11,2897-11.html
If you'd like to disagree, please back it up with evidence.
For some supporting details, see: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/internet-explorer-9-chrome-10-opera-11,2897-11.html
Firefox 4, built in bartab. When you set browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs=0 , only tabs you click on get loaded.
If that's not good enough for you, get the same setup on lubuntu or similar lightweight Linux, or just go buy some more RAM and install it yourself. Should be $30-60 for 2 1-gig sticks depending on the type needed. If that's too much to expense or pay out of pocket, can't you help much.
Sure, and with 9 women you can make a baby in a month.
10 experts and 5 years would be more feasible. 5 experts and 10 years even more so.
Scaling is hard.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
You can claim it is opinion or claim it is untrue. You can't have it both ways.
I'm not claiming that it is opinion (unknowable and untestable) but debatable(evidence goes both ways, but most experts agree with me).
Therefore, to dissuade me, you need to prove that you are more knowledgeable than the experts, or that I am wrong about their legal opinion.
If you like, I'll modify it to this:
"to maximize their market share and hence stockholder profits, which widely understood by business law experts to be the legal obligation of a publicly traded company in most states(Delaware notwithstanding)"
I fail to see how that differs significantly from my original statement.
If you read the papers, nowhere does it say that my view was nonsense. To the contrary, it claims that it is the majority opinion.
You are more cocksure then the strongest dissenters to the majority view, and you know much less. Legal opinion is much less clear and based on more factors then you seem to think. I've never gotten a response back from a laywer that didn't start, "Well, it depends..."
I've offered up papers written by legal experts that show that:
1) my original comment was the majority opinion, and
2) there was debate in the legal community.
If you said, "I don't agree", or "that is debatable" I would have no reason to argue with you. You said "How does this nonsense keep getting trotted out?"
This "nonsense keeps getting trotted out" because it is the majority opinion on a debatable legal matter. To quote John Stewart, "Take it down a notch, for America."
My assertion:
They are both just trying to do their best to maximize their market share and stock price, which is the legal obligation of a publicly traded company.
Expert opinion:
In the corporate law academy today in the United States, the dominant view is that corporate
law requires managers to pursue a single aim: the maximization of stockholder profits.
If you're claiming the truth of your statement, you need to tell me either:
1) Why I should believe you have a better grasp of corporate law then most subject matter experts
or
2) What proof you have that most subject matter experts agree with you.
or
3) What disconnect you see between my statement and the majority subject matter expert opinion.
I am not a legal expert nor do I wish to devote my life to becoming one which is why I appeal to legal experts to back up my claims. I suggest you either become an expert, or listen to them.
Otherwise, you're just some loon with delusions of grandeur giving his opinion.
If you're claiming the truth of your statement, you need to tell me either:
1) Why I should believe you have a better grasp of corporate law then most subject matter experts
or
2) What proof you have that most subject matter experts agree with you.
I am not a legal expert nor do I wish to devote my life to becoming one which is why I appeal to legal experts to back up my claims. I suggest you either become an expert, or listen to them.
Otherwise, you're just some loon with delusions of grandeur giving his opinion.
The misleading statement was the fact that you called it "nonsense". You didn't call it "debatable" or "murky" like the scholarly papers attacking the idea do. You made a knowledge claim against expert opinion, with no substantial proof.
If you wish to call the majority opinion "nonsense", the burden of proof is on you. If you want to say "I have evidence that that is not the majority opinion of exports" or "I'm not convinced" that's one thing. Calling things you are not an expert on "nonsense" when most experts disagree with you puts you in the same camp as cryptozoologists: The burden of proof is on you.
Let's recap.
You said:
"How does this nonsense keep getting trotted out?"
I said: This "nonsense" keeps getting trotted out because there is honest debate on whether you are right or not.
Even a paper that tries to disprove the point states as it's first sentence:
In the corporate law academy today in the United States, the dominant view is that corporate
law requires managers to pursue a single aim: the maximization of stockholder profits.
If as a non-expert, you wish to dismiss as "nonsense" an opinion that is the dominant opinion of experts in the field, you must put forth overwhelming proof. That's the way it works, sorry.
If you say wish to say you "disagree" or "are not sure" you can get away with that. Calling something "nonsense" is a much stronger claim, and you are obviously not qualified to make that claim or willing to put forth the effort to support it.
Yes, I read it and was struck that someone making a case for the opposite admitted it was not the majority opinion, and that much caselaw can be construed to point to that goal.
Did you read the first line?
In the corporate law academy today in the United States, the dominant view is that corporate
law requires managers to pursue a single aim: the maximization of stockholder profits.
This is my backing up of my case: Even the critics of the theory say that the majority of corporate law schools teach the view I espoused in my original post.
For me , this means at minimum that JasperHW is misleading with his statement, "How does this nonsense keep getting trotted out?"
It keeps getting trotted out because most experts believe it, and even those who want to argue against it admit that.
There's plenty of citations in the paper I linked to.
Here's a few:
See, e.g.,CAL. CORP. CODE tit. 1, 309(a) (2004) (“in the best interests of the corporation and its
shareholders”); NY CLS BUS. CORP. art. 7, 717(b) (2004) (“the long-term and the short-term interests of
the corporation and its shareholders”); NRS tit. 7, 138(1) (2004) (“interests of the corporation”); Illinois
Business Corporation Act of 1983 8.85, 805 ILCS 5 (2004) (“best long term and short term interests of the
corporation”); N.J. STAT. tit. 14A, 14A:6-1 (2004) (“best inerest of the corporation”).
As I stated above:
The statutes largely do require corporations to act in the best interest of the shareholders, and in a relationship where the transactions are almost strictly monetary, that is largely taken to mean they must maximize stock value. There is debate as to whether other goals are allowed, and they are allowed mostly due to their potential impact on long term stock value.
When a statement like the following is published without correction in a scholarly journal, the burden of proof is on the disbeliever:
In the corporate law academy today in the United States, the dominant view is that corporate
law requires managers to pursue a single aim: the maximization of stockholder profits.
I won't quote the entire article except to say he's somewhat arguing for your side, and if you do want to make a case it's a good place to start ;-)
Better link:
http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2238&context=expresso&sei-redir=1#search="Corporate-Law-Profit-Maximization-and-the-Responsible-Shareholder"
Another similar discussion:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/elhauge/pdf/sacrificing_corporate_profits.pdf
I own a Kindle DX.
It's a great hardware device. Top notch.
It doesn't ready industry standard epub format. If they wanted to "close the functionality gap" they would be supporting the industry standard format which would allow people to get their content from anywhere. They want to close the gap *as little as possible* and still grow their market share, and there's no telling which way they will go next.
Because there is honest debate about whether your point of view is correct or not.
The statutes largely do require corporations to act in the best interest of the shareholders, and in a relationship where the transactions are almost strictly monetary, that is largely taken to mean they must maximize stock value. There is debate as to whether other goals are allowed, and they are allowed mostly due to their potential impact on long term stock value.
See this paper for a much closer look at the issue:
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/26568445/Corporate-Law-Profit-Maximization-and-the-Responsible-Shareholder
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. I may be wrong about legal matters, which is why I quote more scholarly articles.
Actions in a market with an already established leader and have to compete on merits are much different from greenfield markets where you want to be the market leader.
Yes, I do like Amazon more then my comment implies, but I am highly skeptical about how DRM and ebooks will play out. By the time Amazon started selling DRM-free mp3s, it was already certain that that was the only winning strategy. Not so yet with DRM ebooks.
I don't think Amazon is evil, but then again I don't think Microsoft is (or was) evil. They are both just trying to do their best to maximize their market share and stock price, which is the legal obligation of a publicly traded company.
No matter your feelings on the issue, you must read Seth Godin's post about market forces:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/04/the-free-market.html