As G. K. Chesterton put it in "The Man Who Was Thursday", the thief decidedly respects property. He just wishes to make the property his so that he can respect it more effectively. It is a much greater criminal, the anarchist, who does not respect property at all, who wants to eliminate the entire definition of property.
Let's see... when I was in college, I got a photocopy machine for $5, spent $100 fixing it up, and then put it in the AOE department for students to use. I left a small box (5 cents per copy), to cover the costs. Given the nature of our work there, it was quite useful to not have to go down to the chem-eng department to make copies... when it was available.
There were about 100 of us.
A large number of people used it well, and paid for their copies. A small number of people (1) photocopied their butts, (2) stole large amounts (like $10-$20) of cash from the box, (3) defaced or damaged the equipment. Eventually the unit broke, and I was only $20 to the good with a $120 bill. So I footed the rest, and tried again. The theft and defacement got worse.
The question is not whether it was obvious, but whether people wanted to steal.
---
Fast forward a few years.
A CEO / business owner was complaining about the welfare state, and how he had to pay millions in taxes, and should be able to round up the welfare recipients, and put them to work as slaves. All this time, most of the workers that I knew were *not* making a family wage. Consider that the family wage is the replacement cost for workers, and so is equivalent to a slave's wage. Paying less is paying *less* than a slave's wage. So he was using some slaves at least, but they weren't the welfare recipients: they were the people he depended on.
On the other hand, when one of his better workers complained about his division of the profits (much for him, little or none for the employees), he pulled the "risk" gambit: mortgage your house for the company, and I make you a full partner. So it wasn't just all greed, or a desire for slaves, or theft, or sociopathy. Whatever is going on is much more complicated than I can figure out.
---
Fast forward to more recently: a recent (and now fired) boss quite possibly was a sociopath. He definitely viewed the plant as his fiefdom, and was crooked in some ways. He also gutted the company while hiking his performance rating. Yet he also got destroyed by a temper, an overinflated sense of self worth, and an anger at his own boss.
All I can say, is that there isn't an easy equation for this kind of behavior. All I do know is that the system is moderately to severely broken, but there's nothing I can do to fix it.
Actually, I'd think that "Global Warming" is exactly the term, since "warming" describes the addition of heat into a system.
Now, the effect of warming in a simple system (water, 40 degrees F, on a stove) is a rise in temperature. That is because there is essentially one degree of freedom in the system: a change in temperature.
However, as you get to a more complex system (water, 212 degrees F), you get a number of options, including rise in temperature (near the bottom surface), a fall in temperature (near the top surface), and convective currents.
Raise the number of degrees of freedom still more (40 degrees, complex mixture of salt and fresh water, ice, air, and clouds; and currents in all the above; introduction of lifeforms, continental plate statics and dynamics; and so on), and global warming will not be directly tied to temperatures at all. Some parts will get much hotter. Some parts will get much colder. Ice growth will happen in some areas. Increased fuel usage will also happen in some areas, while decreased fuel usage will happen in others. Some lifeforms will be decimated naturally, or by other lifeforms... the list goes on. And all of that is essentially a function of global warming.
You see, temperature is a simple indicator of molecular degrees of freedom, and the degrees of freedom rise as the entropy rises, and the entropy rises as the heat is added (dQ= TdS). But all these other effects are the result of systemic entropy, which isn't well indicated by a single temperature.
Actually, I'll bet that you didn't do the experiment, and the guy who says the water height changes did do the experiment.
So you're reciting an article of faith (dogma based upon Archimedes' Principle), while he is using the actual scientific method.
Sometime, try it as he said. Fill the glass with ice cubes, then add water until it is just brimming.
As always, the details matter. There's a good chance some of those ice cubes aren't floating at all, but are resting a significant portion of their weight on the glass itself, at which point Archimedes' Principle doesn't apply because the preconditions aren't met... but the experiment is repeatable.
Gosh darn, I hate these fundamentalist "scientific theory" believers. I have to waste entirely too much time debunking their dogma.
(And yes, I am a Christian, and I do believe in Christ, and I do believe God is active as opposed to passive ("the watchmaker"), based upon observed phenomena. And no, that isn't scientific method there, scientific method requires a repeatable experiment. But it is a proper use of reason, nonetheless, far more proper than an emotional "I don't believe this or that, or do believe this or that because it appeared in my Science Knews Weakly".)
I might note that in RL we have long had farmers, who speak broken English, and make a tiny amount of money, and are discriminated against.
It's quite interesting that the management of WOW, corresponding quite nicely to the government of our country, is bowing to the discrimination, and attempting to remove the farmers (who in turn do provide a valuable service to the game, in making it more realistic).
Actually, for managing my stocks, had I any, I think I would much prefer the one who firmly believes money is the root of all evil.
You see, I've had some real bad experience with run-of-the-mill stock brokers at Merrill Lynch. So has my brother, in a separate incident. I can only guess that these guys thought that money was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and went out of their way to get extra by not-so-ethical means.
But I'd guess that a stockbroker who firmly believes that money is the root of all evil, (a) understands that evil is bad (b) understands that love of money can driver a person to that evil, (c) has strong beliefs that seem to be centered outside of himself (d) still finds himself in need of a job, and therefore (e) is bowing to authority and (f) is therefore probably in good control of himself, and has true authority within himself.
So I'd probably be less likely to be burned.
You see, one of the first things that evil does to its perpetrator, is that it blinds the perp to the truth about evil. So one who firmly believed money was the root of all evil at least isn't blind. Therefore, he probably isn't evil.
Well, the resolution isn't all that much better, since it's limited by the optical radius of the lens, and NASA hasn't figured out how to launch a larger satellite in 35 years.
However, as the digital technology advanced, they have much improved the filters for detecting and tracking tinfoil hats.
I partially agree with what you said, and I partially agree with what the Canadian poster said.
But I think I can add some information to this discussion. The shortage of doctors and resulting skyrocketing prices (an average of 15% increase in cost for the same service, per year, at least since the 70s) has nothing to do with the attractiveness of medicine.
It has to do with the AMA, which desired this exact situation, in order to make medical doctors' wages higher. When my late grandfather, Joseph F. Rudmin, was a health commissioner in NY (state), the state had a law that only AMA members could practice medicine there.
One year, he noticed an additional charge added to his annual dues, "for lobbying". Interested and politically active, he asked what they were lobbying for. The reply was that they were lobbying to reduce the number of doctors, so that there would be an increase in their salaries. He said he'd support no such thing, and he wasn't paying that fee for lobbying. They said it wasn't optional. He said that in that case, he was dropping out of the AMA. They said, in that case he wouldn't be able to practice medicine. He returned that they could explain in the papers why their most popular health commissioner could suddenly no longer practice medicine. They said that they were giving him honorary lifetime, dues-free membership.
Since that time, the lobbying was successful, the number of licensed doctors that the medical schools were permitted to graduate was decreased, and the prices started shooting up.
Welcome to Americas Socialist Redistributive Healthcare System. It's no less socialist than Canada's, and it is at least as bad. It's just that America's socialized medicine is rightwing.
That doesn't say that leftwing socialized medicine is good, either though. One of my personal friends, Ilona Daukas, was a Lithuanian. Lithuanians traditionally hunt mushrooms, and she was a great lover of mushrooms, but ate a false morel. The hospital she was taken to was a state hospital, and though they could have administered an antidote or pumped her stomach. They did neither, and she died. The basis of their reasoning was that the hospital couldn't afford more expensive treatments, and by law they couldn't offer them for a fee, since poorer patients would be adversely affected.
Regarding the redistributive system and taxation issue, I do think that the wealthy get far more service than the poor. The greatest service that they recieve is the protection of their property at the expense of taxpayers, under the multiple ownership (the state owns all property within the state, and defends it; the country owns all property within the country, and defends it; and the owner also owns all his own property. So the property is thrice-owned. But the state and nation also defend the owner's rights, as well.)
So based upon fee-for-service, it would be quite right to tax the wealthy far more than the poor. Indeed, there is little service given by the state in the labor contract. Therefore, the income tax is not well justified under that viewpoint. But that's all theory. Money is roughly equivalent to power; and we have what we have, and it's not going to change for the better. At least, until someone figures out how the powerless are going to use power to take power from the powerful, changes will generally be for the worse. And when someone does figure it out, I don't doubt that we'll have something as bad as the French Revolution, and then things will be much, much worse.
... that web page will take 2D photos and 2/1D movies of 4D (actually 3/1D) events, and then convert them to 2D web pages; subsequently, the browser will take the 2/1D web pages, convert them into 3D models using the CSS hints, and then use a renderer to convert the 3D models into a 2D page, and which point the user, in his 4D studio with surround sound, can then wonder what is the point of his expensive hardware when it's so slow and does so little?
And the VRML browser should do all this with an intuitive interface?
Actually, I have started my own business; I ran it for about 10 years, and it supported my family for about 3.
We prepublished physics study guides (Serway's Brooks-Cole/Harcourt/Saunders), Chemistry Lab Manuals (Hunt), and a large number of Instructor's Manuals.
The people we worked with (Harcourt's technical studies textbook crew) called us the best in the business. Having seen the results of other study guides, I'd say we were much better than the typical study guide. We did major rework on the Hunt Lab Manual; however, due to the author first being late, then getting run over by a car, and then demands by the publisher that we make the very real deadline of the school year, there were some significant problems with that.
I have reason to believe the the Physics study guides alone were million-dollar sellers. Much of that was due to the quality that we (myself and my employees) put into the books. Students typically have a set book budget, and have to pick between study guides. They'll typically grab the one that looks the most helpful for the least money. That was the one we were producing, and it made the book (again, in the words of the people we worked with) their top profit-maker. That said, the most we ever took in per year was $35,000; and that was when we had 3 employees to help eliminate the damage done by contracts specifying that we had to use MS Word (with all of its document corruption). At the time, though, we were living in Lithuania in order to save on expenses, so money stretched 3x as far.
So I have been there.
"My standard answer is that if you are going to make your way in life being an employee of someone else you need to realize that you in fact have very little power or value."
My experience says that even then, the things I said in the previous post still applied. We were not employees of someone else. We still had very little power. By the world's judgement, we had very little value. Harcourt seems to have outsourced the prepublishing (and editing, and checking, and artwork) to China via a Boston company.
Your comment appears very Ayn Randish. I find her to be a communist and libertine, not a libertarian, though. As far as I can tell, she was trying to shake the capitalist tree.
"What you make tends to be a function of what you bring to the table that has value. If you have unique skills that are in high demand, and you are a good negotiator then you can probably ask for and get a good reward for your work."
The key is "and are a good negotiator". In fact, what I have seen is that good negotiators get good reward for their work. People with unique skills do not. Look at the situation of music artists. The good ones don't get published. The bad ones get tied into contracts that will deny them profits for their entire lifetime; if they are lucky, they can jump into some other field, as Tommy Hilfigure did. So we reward those who are good con artists. And that's what our nation empowers, and that's what our nation gets throughout its power structure. But that system is going to fail, ironically, as predicted by Rand, though not in the way she described.
For myself, I am an accomplished line artist, page editor, expert at writing for clarity, IT specialist, programmer in some of the now older languages, office manager (and typist). I have been a successful business manager -- though not a good salesman, I am effective at training crews to do work -- I have a strong practical grasp of physics, structural engineering (BS AOE/OE). My point is, I am speaking from experience that what you say just isn't practically true.
"If you have no unique skills and you are doing a job that any number of other people can do as well or better then chances are you wont be valued by your employer and your pay will suck. "
Umm... not just the pay. The pay, and the working conditions, the OSHA compliance, the INS compliance, the compliance with local codes, and so on and so forth. As I s
I would have to disagree with some of what you wrote. Most of the plaint was essentially a complaint about injustice.
As I understand it, a company in the US typically makes about $70k of profit for every employee it has. Those same employees (at the company where I work) make typically $10/hr for 2/3 of them, $14/hr for 1/3, and the top-level managers make some amount I am unaware of. Nor is this company having to compete with foreign based companies. So, $10/hr x 2000 hrs/yr (they do their best to minimnize OT these days) = $20k. In other words, the company makes more than 3 times the emplyee's wage off the employee's work. For $14k/hr employees, that's about twice the employees' wages. They make that for every single employee (except the managers).
Now, justice might say that they shouldn't be making more than the employee does off his own labor. So out of $90k, the employee should take $45k, or maybe $40k since he is unskilled. Definitely a family wage, and a bit more. Considering that it's a bit more, then maybe the employee would prefer to work only 30 hrs per week, for $30k, and have more time with his family. A well-run company should be able to handle that, by rotating its employees.
aaaah. But that would cut into the profit margin, and the investors have a right to maximize their profits!
No, that is injustice. But we do live in an unjust world. The next world won't be, but this one is, for the as Pilgrim's Progress stated, the worldly must have a time to spend their inheritance, while the patient wait. But the inheritance for the patient will not run out, for there is nothing to follow that. So I understand that we won't actually see a shorter work week, or economic justice in this world. But it is okay to point out that the current state of things is not good.
"We need stronger labor unions". I don't actually agree that we do, because it's choosing between two powerful unjust leaders. But I would agree with the base complaint: that the business leaders (as opposed to the union leaders) too often overvalue their own power, and undervalue their employees' efforts, time, and even lives. The mining disasters in America are a good example of that. But as far as I can tell, you and I are on the same page there.
Less debt: Debt can be a good thing. But enslavement from debt is always bad. It leads to choices being made by those who are not in a position to understand what the best choice is. So what I'd prefer to see is simply laws allowing any physical person to default on any loan, but for there to be a centralized list of all people who have defaulted on loans and not repaid them. In this way, people can choose to whom they should lend. Of course, this isn't going to work, because wealthy criminal people will continue to hold their debtors enslaved, through violence or other means. So it's a nice dream. In general, then, less debt is probably the best we can do. I'd have to agree.
"More respect for the environment". For me, I'd have to say this is the only completely impossible wish, though the problem does also result from injustice.
Usually, the one thing that is most destructive of the environment is the centralization of power. I don't care if it is in a company, or in a government. When peoples' first goal is to survive, and the only means of survival involves the destruction of their environment, then the environment is going down. But the centralization of power leads to just such a situation, because decisions get made by people who don't understand the effects of their decisions. Worse, the people who are making the decisions are the people who are emotionally driven to get to the top, usually because of a fear of not being in control. In other words, the lunatics are going to run the asylum. So the best answer is not to allow control, by not centralizing power in the first place.
But then, any group that *has* centralized its power is going to overrun you...
9/11 happened because God chose not to stop it. He did this as a warning to us. The same principles that applied to the early Israelites still apply to Christian nations today. And if we turn from Him, He is going to withhold his grace.
There is no way that the hijackers took God by surprise.
Indeed, to one NYC church He prepared them for it, ahead of time. Search "Sept. 2001 towers" here.
We cannot continue to scorn God's call to repentance, and hope to avoid the punishment that inherently accompanies rebellion. And the Gospel is not "believe in the Lord Jesus Christ", but "repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, unto the remission of sins." (Acts) Repent means to pull one's hand back, and a Christian has to do that all the time, in order to rightfully follow the Spirit, much less avoid sin and be saved.
When the rulers of a nation inherently revoke their authority (usually by rebelling themselves, one way of which involves trying to steal power), anarchy results.
What you are seeing is the result of rebellious lawmakers and presidents.
But it doesn't have to affect you. Those Christians who are not rebellious, who live within authority and honor all authorities, actually have their prayers to Christ answered. In other words, they still keep their authority.
Now, part of that is that the Holy Spirit sometimes edits one's prayers to make them acceptable. So it doesn't do any good to pray for a person's rehabilitation despite themselves, or their salvation for that matter.
In front of John the Baptist, Christ submitted to baptism; in front of Pontius Pilate, Christ said that his authority was given by God. In both cases He honored the authority that he had given. God still honors the authority he gives. That includes honoring our free will, as a primary example. Which means that He won't force rehabilitation on anyone. Which means that if you pray for that, He'll edit the prayer and return it for resubmission. But even that is an answer.
Copyright infringement isn't theft. Anyone claiming it is automatically loses all credibility.
You mean, of course, "loses all credibility with the intentionally deaf?"
I'm sorry. I don't buy that argument. If you could argue that it isn't, using valid, rational arguments, then I might find your comment insightful.
But covering your ears and shouting "I can't heaaar you! I'm not LISTENING! OMMMMMMMMMMM!" is not.
As for me, I find both the enactment of intellectual property laws, and the breaking of the same, to be forms of theft. But since you aren't listening, I don't suppose I ought to waste the time explaining. I'll just say that I could consider that I was stolen from in the first instance, and since I don't steal in the second, I am also stolen from then.
Number zero is that javascript popup ad that comes up right in the middle of the screen. Gosh durn, I hate them things. If you click on it, even on the "close" in the upper right corner, you run the risk of activating the link. If you right-click it, you find that the browser doesn't recognize it as an actual window.
http://www.e-gold.com/currentexchange.html
What I get here is that paladium is a little more than half the price of gold per ounce. That's expensive, yes, but not extremely expensive.
You probably pay more than that for valentine's-day flowers, the spice saffron, or Hall-Mark Cards.
If you'd read Frederick Hayak's "Road to Serfdom", essentially when a government's control overwhelms a society, then gaming the system is the only thing that pays.
He doesn't use those words, exactly. He puts it into terms of working vs. petitioning, then escalates it into lobbying and finally violence of different sorts, but that is essentially what he is saying.
Therefore, the powerful do game the system, and it will be gamed, and nobody will be able to stop them.
That's happening right now -- indeed, for as long as I have lived it's been happening -- in our Senate, House, and judiciary. Now it's also happening in the presidency.
I'm sure it will also happen in the PTO if they do this, just as it's already happening there now. I'm just not sure it will matter.
As the system starts to get more and more gamed, things swing wild. They get unpredictable, and in the end, you find that you can't take care of yourself in the way that you thought you could.
If that does become the case, it's not going to matter if you gamed the patent system. Nor will it matter if you fought changes, or fought for changes that seemed to make sense to you.
If you're a engineer or a medical doctor, what will most likely matter, is whether or not you know how to dig ditches. Or repair shoes. I've seen it happen in Lithuania (the former USSR), and I don't doubt it can happen here.
Have a chinese friend translate it for you and help you pronounce it correctly. Drive/fly to Washington, DC. Stand in front of the Capital building and shout this, repeatedly, until you're sure someone official looking hear you.
You did mean, "stand in front of the Capital building in the free speech zone 3 miles away and shout this...", didn't you?
Because if you're shouting it while standing in the non-free-speech zone, I don't expect you'd get to China.
Not that the US is as bad as China on that count, at this moment. It isn't. But we are progressive, and our progress seems to be in that direction. It's probably no coincidence, either, that we are so eager for every bauble they can sell us. Probably there is some moral theorem that could come out of that.
You drive up to the fueling station. You get out, unlock your battery door, pull out the battery, swipe your credit card, put the old battery in the charger and take the newly unlocked battery out. Put it in your car, and go. Want to change three batteries? It's okay; that'll work.
Now, you'll say "aah, but there are several problems. First, batteries lose their ability to recharge. Second, the batteries would be too heavy."
Not so difficult. Each battery has a unique code and a sensor that tells what recharging and road conditions it was exposed to before exchange. That helps predict the battery life that was destroyed, and aids in the calculation of the cost. Also, the total weight of the batteries is not of concern. Rather of concern is that the batteries be sized right for easy insertion and removal. With mechanical assist, that could be 30 pounds. Without mechanical assist, 10 pounds is probably all you could handle. But Nimhs can hold an awful lot of energy in 10 pounds of battery.
Scene 2: You pull up to a red light. Your car automatically detects a charger unit, plugs in, gives its autoconnect code, and starts charging. . Yes, it's only 30 seconds of charge. But for your Magnesium Lithium Ion battery, 30 seconds of charge still helps -- especially when you get a bit of recharge at every single station. It also helps that when you get onto the EV Road, there's a continuous-charge barrier you can follow. Neat thing, that. Zero charge across the electrodes until your car gives its RSS-based request for power. Then you get a full 120-V on two electrodes spaced 6 feet apart, wheel-to-wheel.
Listen, I've been at *** for three years, and I quickly figured out that it's the Extended Warranties that we're selling. So now I don't even bother with the hardware. I just hit them up for the Extended Service Plan as soon as they walk in the door.
I've sold 22 ballpoint pens that way; and that's on the low end.
The thing to do is to keep the words "Extended Service Plan" or "Extended Warrenty" foremost in your mind. Think about palm trees, mint juleps, and extended warranties, and then ask in the most helpful voice, "good day, sir/maam. May I show you the extended warranty of the week?"
When they say "No, I actually came in hear for a CD Player", then you reply. Well, we do have those right over here. Now, they aren't on sale right now, so you won't get as good a price as if you time your purchase. But, on the other hand, we have a $240 Extended Service Plan on sale for only $220, and it comes with a free CD player thrown in!"
Now, that not only confuses them, but it makes them realize how much they could get for free, if they'd simply give up like you did, and start thinking "Extended Warranty". At that point, their main desire is actually for an extended warranty, and the least that you can do is provide them with it.
When they are happily satisfied, and you're sure that they understand what a good deal they're getting, that's the time to go for the big catch.
"Oh, and would you like a warranty on your Extended Service Plan?"
Slashdot Mirror
Mr. and Mrs. Dukes, and Oscar Baer
Of 17 West 4th St., Oyster Bay.
This is covered by patents #347060; 364922; 393903; 377831.
Thank you, and have a good day.
As G. K. Chesterton put it in "The Man Who Was Thursday", the thief decidedly respects property. He just wishes to make the property his so that he can respect it more effectively. It is a much greater criminal, the anarchist, who does not respect property at all, who wants to eliminate the entire definition of property.
Let's see... when I was in college, I got a photocopy machine for $5, spent $100 fixing it up, and then put it in the AOE department for students to use. I left a small box (5 cents per copy), to cover the costs. Given the nature of our work there, it was quite useful to not have to go down to the chem-eng department to make copies ... when it was available.
There were about 100 of us.
A large number of people used it well, and paid for their copies. A small number of people (1) photocopied their butts, (2) stole large amounts (like $10-$20) of cash from the box, (3) defaced or damaged the equipment. Eventually the unit broke, and I was only $20 to the good with a $120 bill. So I footed the rest, and tried again. The theft and defacement got worse.
The question is not whether it was obvious, but whether people wanted to steal.
---
Fast forward a few years.
A CEO / business owner was complaining about the welfare state, and how he had to pay millions in taxes, and should be able to round up the welfare recipients, and put them to work as slaves. All this time, most of the workers that I knew were *not* making a family wage. Consider that the family wage is the replacement cost for workers, and so is equivalent to a slave's wage. Paying less is paying *less* than a slave's wage. So he was using some slaves at least, but they weren't the welfare recipients: they were the people he depended on.
On the other hand, when one of his better workers complained about his division of the profits (much for him, little or none for the employees), he pulled the "risk" gambit: mortgage your house for the company, and I make you a full partner. So it wasn't just all greed, or a desire for slaves, or theft, or sociopathy. Whatever is going on is much more complicated than I can figure out.
---
Fast forward to more recently: a recent (and now fired) boss quite possibly was a sociopath. He definitely viewed the plant as his fiefdom, and was crooked in some ways. He also gutted the company while hiking his performance rating. Yet he also got destroyed by a temper, an overinflated sense of self worth, and an anger at his own boss.
All I can say, is that there isn't an easy equation for this kind of behavior. All I do know is that the system is moderately to severely broken, but there's nothing I can do to fix it.
Actually, I'd think that "Global Warming" is exactly the term, since "warming" describes the addition of heat into a system.
Now, the effect of warming in a simple system (water, 40 degrees F, on a stove) is a rise in temperature. That is because there is essentially one degree of freedom in the system: a change in temperature.
However, as you get to a more complex system (water, 212 degrees F), you get a number of options, including rise in temperature (near the bottom surface), a fall in temperature (near the top surface), and convective currents.
Raise the number of degrees of freedom still more (40 degrees, complex mixture of salt and fresh water, ice, air, and clouds; and currents in all the above; introduction of lifeforms, continental plate statics and dynamics; and so on), and global warming will not be directly tied to temperatures at all. Some parts will get much hotter. Some parts will get much colder. Ice growth will happen in some areas. Increased fuel usage will also happen in some areas, while decreased fuel usage will happen in others. Some lifeforms will be decimated naturally, or by other lifeforms... the list goes on. And all of that is essentially a function of global warming.
You see, temperature is a simple indicator of molecular degrees of freedom, and the degrees of freedom rise as the entropy rises, and the entropy rises as the heat is added (dQ= TdS). But all these other effects are the result of systemic entropy, which isn't well indicated by a single temperature.
Actually, I'll bet that you didn't do the experiment, and the guy who says the water height changes did do the experiment.
So you're reciting an article of faith (dogma based upon Archimedes' Principle), while he is using the actual scientific method.
Sometime, try it as he said. Fill the glass with ice cubes, then add water until it is just brimming.
As always, the details matter. There's a good chance some of those ice cubes aren't floating at all, but are resting a significant portion of their weight on the glass itself, at which point Archimedes' Principle doesn't apply because the preconditions aren't met... but the experiment is repeatable.
Gosh darn, I hate these fundamentalist "scientific theory" believers. I have to waste entirely too much time debunking their dogma.
(And yes, I am a Christian, and I do believe in Christ, and I do believe God is active as opposed to passive ("the watchmaker"), based upon observed phenomena. And no, that isn't scientific method there, scientific method requires a repeatable experiment. But it is a proper use of reason, nonetheless, far more proper than an emotional "I don't believe this or that, or do believe this or that because it appeared in my Science Knews Weakly".)
I might note that in RL we have long had farmers, who speak broken English, and make a tiny amount of money, and are discriminated against.
It's quite interesting that the management of WOW, corresponding quite nicely to the government of our country, is bowing to the discrimination, and attempting to remove the farmers (who in turn do provide a valuable service to the game, in making it more realistic).
Need I say more? Yes. Mystic Marathon.
Well, Abner, you should consider that you and Joab are both generals. And now that you are the better of equals, you've got to work with him.
Go on and shake his hand. What could it hurt?
Actually, for managing my stocks, had I any, I think I would much prefer the one who firmly believes money is the root of all evil.
You see, I've had some real bad experience with run-of-the-mill stock brokers at Merrill Lynch. So has my brother, in a separate incident. I can only guess that these guys thought that money was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and went out of their way to get extra by not-so-ethical means.
But I'd guess that a stockbroker who firmly believes that money is the root of all evil, (a) understands that evil is bad (b) understands that love of money can driver a person to that evil, (c) has strong beliefs that seem to be centered outside of himself (d) still finds himself in need of a job, and therefore (e) is bowing to authority and (f) is therefore probably in good control of himself, and has true authority within himself.
So I'd probably be less likely to be burned.
You see, one of the first things that evil does to its perpetrator, is that it blinds the perp to the truth about evil. So one who firmly believed money was the root of all evil at least isn't blind. Therefore, he probably isn't evil.
Well, the resolution isn't all that much better, since it's limited by the optical radius of the lens, and NASA hasn't figured out how to launch a larger satellite in 35 years.
However, as the digital technology advanced, they have much improved the filters for detecting and tracking tinfoil hats.
I partially agree with what you said, and I partially agree with what the Canadian poster said.
But I think I can add some information to this discussion. The shortage of doctors and resulting skyrocketing prices (an average of 15% increase in cost for the same service, per year, at least since the 70s) has nothing to do with the attractiveness of medicine.
It has to do with the AMA, which desired this exact situation, in order to make medical doctors' wages higher. When my late grandfather, Joseph F. Rudmin, was a health commissioner in NY (state), the state had a law that only AMA members could practice medicine there.
One year, he noticed an additional charge added to his annual dues, "for lobbying". Interested and politically active, he asked what they were lobbying for. The reply was that they were lobbying to reduce the number of doctors, so that there would be an increase in their salaries. He said he'd support no such thing, and he wasn't paying that fee for lobbying. They said it wasn't optional. He said that in that case, he was dropping out of the AMA. They said, in that case he wouldn't be able to practice medicine. He returned that they could explain in the papers why their most popular health commissioner could suddenly no longer practice medicine. They said that they were giving him honorary lifetime, dues-free membership.
Since that time, the lobbying was successful, the number of licensed doctors that the medical schools were permitted to graduate was decreased, and the prices started shooting up.
Welcome to Americas Socialist Redistributive Healthcare System. It's no less socialist than Canada's, and it is at least as bad. It's just that America's socialized medicine is rightwing.
That doesn't say that leftwing socialized medicine is good, either though. One of my personal friends, Ilona Daukas, was a Lithuanian. Lithuanians traditionally hunt mushrooms, and she was a great lover of mushrooms, but ate a false morel. The hospital she was taken to was a state hospital, and though they could have administered an antidote or pumped her stomach. They did neither, and she died. The basis of their reasoning was that the hospital couldn't afford more expensive treatments, and by law they couldn't offer them for a fee, since poorer patients would be adversely affected.
Regarding the redistributive system and taxation issue, I do think that the wealthy get far more service than the poor. The greatest service that they recieve is the protection of their property at the expense of taxpayers, under the multiple ownership (the state owns all property within the state, and defends it; the country owns all property within the country, and defends it; and the owner also owns all his own property. So the property is thrice-owned. But the state and nation also defend the owner's rights, as well.)
So based upon fee-for-service, it would be quite right to tax the wealthy far more than the poor.
Indeed, there is little service given by the state in the labor contract. Therefore, the income tax is not well justified under that viewpoint. But that's all theory. Money is roughly equivalent to power; and we have what we have, and it's not going to change for the better. At least, until someone figures out how the powerless are going to use power to take power from the powerful, changes will generally be for the worse. And when someone does figure it out, I don't doubt that we'll have something as bad as the French Revolution, and then things will be much, much worse.
And the VRML browser should do all this with an intuitive interface?
Actually, I have started my own business; I ran it for about 10 years, and it supported my family for about 3.
We prepublished physics study guides (Serway's Brooks-Cole/Harcourt/Saunders), Chemistry Lab Manuals (Hunt), and a large number of Instructor's Manuals.
The people we worked with (Harcourt's technical studies textbook crew) called us the best in the business. Having seen the results of other study guides, I'd say we were much better than the typical study guide. We did major rework on the Hunt Lab Manual; however, due to the author first being late, then getting run over by a car, and then demands by the publisher that we make the very real deadline of the school year, there were some significant problems with that.
I have reason to believe the the Physics study guides alone were million-dollar sellers. Much of that was due to the quality that we (myself and my employees) put into the books. Students typically have a set book budget, and have to pick between study guides. They'll typically grab the one that looks the most helpful for the least money. That was the one we were producing, and it made the book (again, in the words of the people we worked with) their top profit-maker. That said, the most we ever took in per year was $35,000; and that was when we had 3 employees to help eliminate the damage done by contracts specifying that we had to use MS Word (with all of its document corruption). At the time, though, we were living in Lithuania in order to save on expenses, so money stretched 3x as far.
So I have been there.
"My standard answer is that if you are going to make your way in life being an employee of someone else you need to realize that you in fact have very little power or value."
My experience says that even then, the things I said in the previous post still applied. We were not employees of someone else. We still had very little power. By the world's judgement, we had very little value. Harcourt seems to have outsourced the prepublishing (and editing, and checking, and artwork) to China via a Boston company.
Your comment appears very Ayn Randish. I find her to be a communist and libertine, not a libertarian, though. As far as I can tell, she was trying to shake the capitalist tree.
"What you make tends to be a function of what you bring to the table that has value. If you have unique skills that are in high demand, and you are a good negotiator then you can probably ask for and get a good reward for your work."
The key is "and are a good negotiator". In fact, what I have seen is that good negotiators get good reward for their work. People with unique skills do not. Look at the situation of music artists. The good ones don't get published. The bad ones get tied into contracts that will deny them profits for their entire lifetime; if they are lucky, they can jump into some other field, as Tommy Hilfigure did. So we reward those who are good con artists. And that's what our nation empowers, and that's what our nation gets throughout its power structure. But that system is going to fail, ironically, as predicted by Rand, though not in the way she described.
For myself, I am an accomplished line artist, page editor, expert at writing for clarity, IT specialist, programmer in some of the now older languages, office manager (and typist). I have been a successful business manager -- though not a good salesman, I am effective at training crews to do work -- I have a strong practical grasp of physics, structural engineering (BS AOE/OE). My point is, I am speaking from experience that what you say just isn't practically true.
"If you have no unique skills and you are doing a job that any number of other people can do as well or better then chances are you wont be valued by your employer and your pay will suck. "
Umm... not just the pay. The pay, and the working conditions, the OSHA compliance, the INS compliance, the compliance with local codes, and so on and so forth. As I s
I would have to disagree with some of what you wrote. Most of the plaint was essentially a complaint about injustice.
As I understand it, a company in the US typically makes about $70k of profit for every employee it has. Those same employees (at the company where I work) make typically $10/hr for 2/3 of them, $14/hr for 1/3, and the top-level managers make some amount I am unaware of. Nor is this company having to compete with foreign based companies. So, $10/hr x 2000 hrs/yr (they do their best to minimnize OT these days) = $20k. In other words, the company makes more than 3 times the emplyee's wage off the employee's work. For $14k/hr employees, that's about twice the employees' wages. They make that for every single employee (except the managers).
Now, justice might say that they shouldn't be making more than the employee does off his own labor. So out of $90k, the employee should take $45k, or maybe $40k since he is unskilled. Definitely a family wage, and a bit more. Considering that it's a bit more, then maybe the employee would prefer to work only 30 hrs per week, for $30k, and have more time with his family. A well-run company should be able to handle that, by rotating its employees.
aaaah. But that would cut into the profit margin, and the investors have a right to maximize their profits!
No, that is injustice. But we do live in an unjust world. The next world won't be, but this one is, for the as Pilgrim's Progress stated, the worldly must have a time to spend their inheritance, while the patient wait. But the inheritance for the patient will not run out, for there is nothing to follow that. So I understand that we won't actually see a shorter work week, or economic justice in this world. But it is okay to point out that the current state of things is not good.
"We need stronger labor unions". I don't actually agree that we do, because it's choosing between two powerful unjust leaders. But I would agree with the base complaint: that the business leaders (as opposed to the union leaders) too often overvalue their own power, and undervalue their employees' efforts, time, and even lives. The mining disasters in America are a good example of that. But as far as I can tell, you and I are on the same page there.
Less debt: Debt can be a good thing. But enslavement from debt is always bad. It leads to choices being made by those who are not in a position to understand what the best choice is. So what I'd prefer to see is simply laws allowing any physical person to default on any loan, but for there to be a centralized list of all people who have defaulted on loans and not repaid them. In this way, people can choose to whom they should lend. Of course, this isn't going to work, because wealthy criminal people will continue to hold their debtors enslaved, through violence or other means. So it's a nice dream. In general, then, less debt is probably the best we can do. I'd have to agree.
"More respect for the environment". For me, I'd have to say this is the only completely impossible wish, though the problem does also result from injustice.
Usually, the one thing that is most destructive of the environment is the centralization of power. I don't care if it is in a company, or in a government. When peoples' first goal is to survive, and the only means of survival involves the destruction of their environment, then the environment is going down. But the centralization of power leads to just such a situation, because decisions get made by people who don't understand the effects of their decisions. Worse, the people who are making the decisions are the people who are emotionally driven to get to the top, usually because of a fear of not being in control. In other words, the lunatics are going to run the asylum. So the best answer is not to allow control, by not centralizing power in the first place.
But then, any group that *has* centralized its power is going to overrun you...
Sorry. Looks like the environment is going down.
9/11 happened because God chose not to stop it. He did this as a warning to us. The same principles that applied to the early Israelites still apply to Christian nations today. And if we turn from Him, He is going to withhold his grace.
There is no way that the hijackers took God by surprise.
Indeed, to one NYC church He prepared them for it, ahead of time. Search "Sept. 2001 towers" here.
We cannot continue to scorn God's call to repentance, and hope to avoid the punishment that inherently accompanies rebellion. And the Gospel is not "believe in the Lord Jesus Christ", but "repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, unto the remission of sins." (Acts) Repent means to pull one's hand back, and a Christian has to do that all the time, in order to rightfully follow the Spirit, much less avoid sin and be saved.
When the rulers of a nation inherently revoke their authority (usually by rebelling themselves, one way of which involves trying to steal power), anarchy results.
What you are seeing is the result of rebellious lawmakers and presidents.
But it doesn't have to affect you. Those Christians who are not rebellious, who live within authority and honor all authorities, actually have their prayers to Christ answered. In other words, they still keep their authority.
Now, part of that is that the Holy Spirit sometimes edits one's prayers to make them acceptable. So it doesn't do any good to pray for a person's rehabilitation despite themselves, or their salvation for that matter.
In front of John the Baptist, Christ submitted to baptism; in front of Pontius Pilate, Christ said that his authority was given by God. In both cases He honored the authority that he had given. God still honors the authority he gives. That includes honoring our free will, as a primary example. Which means that He won't force rehabilitation on anyone. Which means that if you pray for that, He'll edit the prayer and return it for resubmission. But even that is an answer.
Copyright infringement isn't theft. Anyone claiming it is automatically loses all credibility.
You mean, of course, "loses all credibility with the intentionally deaf?"
I'm sorry. I don't buy that argument. If you could argue that it isn't, using valid, rational arguments, then I might find your comment insightful.
But covering your ears and shouting "I can't heaaar you! I'm not LISTENING! OMMMMMMMMMMM!" is not.
As for me, I find both the enactment of intellectual property laws, and the breaking of the same, to be forms of theft. But since you aren't listening, I don't suppose I ought to waste the time explaining. I'll just say that I could consider that I was stolen from in the first instance, and since I don't steal in the second, I am also stolen from then.
Ooooh. What did I do to deserve that?
Well, the irony is delicious.
http://www.e-gold.com/currentexchange.html What I get here is that paladium is a little more than half the price of gold per ounce. That's expensive, yes, but not extremely expensive. You probably pay more than that for valentine's-day flowers, the spice saffron, or Hall-Mark Cards.
I always thought that the extremely small amounts of Tritium and Deuterium were a bigger obstacle.
If you'd read Frederick Hayak's "Road to Serfdom", essentially when a government's control overwhelms a society, then gaming the system is the only thing that pays.
He doesn't use those words, exactly. He puts it into terms of working vs. petitioning, then escalates it into lobbying and finally violence of different sorts, but that is essentially what he is saying.
Therefore, the powerful do game the system, and it will be gamed, and nobody will be able to stop them.
That's happening right now -- indeed, for as long as I have lived it's been happening -- in our Senate, House, and judiciary. Now it's also happening in the presidency.
I'm sure it will also happen in the PTO if they do this, just as it's already happening there now. I'm just not sure it will matter.
As the system starts to get more and more gamed, things swing wild. They get unpredictable, and in the end, you find that you can't take care of yourself in the way that you thought you could.
If that does become the case, it's not going to matter if you gamed the patent system. Nor will it matter if you fought changes, or fought for changes that seemed to make sense to you.
If you're a engineer or a medical doctor, what will most likely matter, is whether or not you know how to dig ditches. Or repair shoes. I've seen it happen in Lithuania (the former USSR), and I don't doubt it can happen here.
Have a chinese friend translate it for you and help you pronounce it correctly. Drive/fly to Washington, DC. Stand in front of the Capital building and shout this, repeatedly, until you're sure someone official looking hear you.
You did mean, "stand in front of the Capital building in the free speech zone 3 miles away and shout this...", didn't you?
Because if you're shouting it while standing in the non-free-speech zone, I don't expect you'd get to China.
Not that the US is as bad as China on that count, at this moment. It isn't. But we are progressive, and our progress seems to be in that direction. It's probably no coincidence, either, that we are so eager for every bauble they can sell us. Probably there is some moral theorem that could come out of that.
Actually, we have the technology right now.
You drive up to the fueling station. You get out, unlock your battery door, pull out the battery, swipe your credit card, put the old battery in the charger and take the newly unlocked battery out. Put it in your car, and go. Want to change three batteries? It's okay; that'll work.
Now, you'll say "aah, but there are several problems. First, batteries lose their ability to recharge. Second, the batteries would be too heavy."
Not so difficult. Each battery has a unique code and a sensor that tells what recharging and road conditions it was exposed to before exchange. That helps predict the battery life that was destroyed, and aids in the calculation of the cost. Also, the total weight of the batteries is not of concern. Rather of concern is that the batteries be sized right for easy insertion and removal. With mechanical assist, that could be 30 pounds. Without mechanical assist, 10 pounds is probably all you could handle. But Nimhs can hold an awful lot of energy in 10 pounds of battery.
Scene 2: You pull up to a red light. Your car automatically detects a charger unit, plugs in, gives its autoconnect code, and starts charging. . Yes, it's only 30 seconds of charge. But for your Magnesium Lithium Ion battery, 30 seconds of charge still helps -- especially when you get a bit of recharge at every single station. It also helps that when you get onto the EV Road, there's a continuous-charge barrier you can follow. Neat thing, that. Zero charge across the electrodes until your car gives its RSS-based request for power. Then you get a full 120-V on two electrodes spaced 6 feet apart, wheel-to-wheel.
Listen, I've been at *** for three years, and I quickly figured out that it's the Extended Warranties that we're selling. So now I don't even bother with the hardware. I just hit them up for the Extended Service Plan as soon as they walk in the door.
I've sold 22 ballpoint pens that way; and that's on the low end.
The thing to do is to keep the words "Extended Service Plan" or "Extended Warrenty" foremost in your mind. Think about palm trees, mint juleps, and extended warranties, and then ask in the most helpful voice, "good day, sir/maam. May I show you the extended warranty of the week?"
When they say "No, I actually came in hear for a CD Player", then you reply. Well, we do have those right over here. Now, they aren't on sale right now, so you won't get as good a price as if you time your purchase. But, on the other hand, we have a $240 Extended Service Plan on sale for only $220, and it comes with a free CD player thrown in!"
Now, that not only confuses them, but it makes them realize how much they could get for free, if they'd simply give up like you did, and start thinking "Extended Warranty". At that point, their main desire is actually for an extended warranty, and the least that you can do is provide them with it.
When they are happily satisfied, and you're sure that they understand what a good deal they're getting, that's the time to go for the big catch.
"Oh, and would you like a warranty on your Extended Service Plan?"