Washington DC has had roundabouts since 1791, when the city was built modeled on European cities.
If you're weird and actually read the article, you'll notice it *does* mention that:-
The US still has the older versions, called rotaries or circles, notably in New Jersey and Washington DC. [my emphasis] But they remain quite unpopular, a confusing sprawl of signals, stop signs and concentric lanes.
The point was that the article was specifically about the modern version first introduced in 1960s Britain, not those older types.
Because these are not mobile phones, they are mobile computers that just happen to also offer phone service.
FWIW, I'd say that they're as much the spiritual successor to the PDA as they are a phone. They're not called that because (a) PDAs kind of went of out fashion and declined commercially a while back and (b) they evolved from the direction of the phone market.
I'm not claiming that they're the same as a ten-year-old Palm. I'm saying that if the PDA market had continued to be successful, they would likely have mutated into something very similar to the iPhone et al anyway.
The fact that they're seen as "phones" reflects the market they evolved from, more than what they are now.
Meh, sounds like you have a bee in your bonnet you were just looking for an opportunity to vent on. The OP said nothing that would suggest the involvement of the state, only that he thought it was a crap deal.
Your only apparent reason for labelling him "statist" appears to be that he didn't accord the founders of the business the appropriate backside-licking respect. Nothing about libertarianism requires him to do that. They ran a company for their own self-interested reasons, he offered his services for (presumably) his own self-interested reasons, they employed him for their own self-interested reasons (doubt they were a charity, they wouldn't have employed him if they hadn't thought he was worth more to the business than he cost). He thought the deal was crap in retrospect. Sounds pretty free to me.
If you want to worship those people, that's your choice, just don't kid yourself that it's an integral part of libertarianism nor that anyone who doesn't do it is automatically a "statist".
How legal is this? I'm sure that the self-declared libertarians would say that it was adhering to the literal terms of the contract, but even in the uber-capitalist US there have always been limitations in what one can get away with in a contract and restrictions on what one can do when it comes to shares, as well as the concept of "good faith" in law.
I'm not an American, let alone an American lawyer, so I'm not saying that this isn't legal, but my gut instinct would be *not* to assume that it is. Of course, whether one can afford to pursue this line of investigation and prosecute the guy is another matter.
The FOUNDERS did exactly what their title says, they founded the company. Just because you were, frankly, too stupid to profit from THEIR hard work doesn't mean that they are at fault. Fuck you idiot statists who want to drag down all the smartest people around you because you want money for doing none of the real work needed to build a company. *THIS* is why I am a Libertarian, because fucking assholes like YOU want to live off MY hard work.
Did someone hold a gun to the "FOUNDERS" head and make them offer him stock options? I'm going to assume that they didn't.
You'll also note that the OP didn't suggest that the "FOUNDERS" had any moral obligation to him. He merely observed that it turned out to be a poor deal for him. He's quite entitled to do that.
It's funny how many people assume that because someone is free to accept or reject the terms of a deal (and does so) that they have no moral right to criticise that deal or the party who offered it. Wrong.
Assuming that you're not simply trolling, I'm really not sure what point you're trying to make here.
Or perhaps we should make any verbal explanation given to you also legally binding.
That would be awesome, but salesmen would throw a fit, because they often rely on being legally allowed to say one thing while writing the opposite on paper for you to sign.
Are you absolutely *sure* that they're not legally binding? I know that in the UK, verbal contracts are legally binding- the question is (a) what the situation is in the US and (b) how far such statements would be considered as counting towards a perceived contract (regardless of back-covering disclaimers the company might try to shove in their written contract/agreement, etc.).
I find it hard to believe that such verbal statements would have *no* legal weight whatsoever if they could be proven.
Of course, the emphasis is on "if they could be proven", because the obvious problem with verbal contracts is proving that they were made if the other side wants to dispute that fact!
Don't know about anyone else, but every time I see someone haul out the "Waaaaah!" (i.e. "you're such a baby") it always comes across as the cheap and easy attack of a bullying child.
Seriously, these two gentlemen are the laughing stock of the technology industry. I'd wager though that no one would say that to either of their identical faces; but isn't it worse knowing that no matter where you go your back is known as belonging to one of the leeches attempting to feed upon the technical creativity of other people?
Well, I'm sure that they'd claim that Zuckerberg was the one who'd leached off them. Might be true, might not. And I doubt they care about your exaggerated perception that they're a supposed "laughing stock" in the industry.
From what I've heard of the Winklevosses, they sound like a pair of overprivileged spoiled douchebags and on one level I'd be quite happy to see them go down in flames. But then I don't much like Zuckerberg either, and if he *did* rip off their idea, I wouldn't want to see him get away with that on principle.
Generally, I agree with the other guy who said that it's two sets of tossers with lots of money playing the legal games of the privileged. The best outcome would be for Facebook to go bankrupt (not going to happen, but whatever...!), the creepy twins get nothing more and every shred of information relating to the privacy-contemptious Zuckerberg's personal affairs leaked and sold to the highest bidder.
There isn't such thing as a universe time on which events can be noted to have happened.
What really baked my noodle was discovering that theoretically in certain cases, events can be seen occurring in a different order depending on one's viewpoint. And that (in the spirit of Relativity) both these orders are "correct", or rather, there is no definitive order more "correct" than the other.
This doesn't create problems with causality because it can (apparently) only happen in cases where the two events are separated by sufficient distance that neither could possibly have *caused* the other (since the effects of either event can never propogate to the location of the other faster than the speed of light).
Who else thought this would be more along the lines of about land-mines
Yeah, me to. I had visions of some nutcase booby-trapping paving slabs. Sounds like the contrived plot of an early-1980s computer game but stranger things have happened.
So each piece may only be worth $2, but he finds 400 of them, bringing the total to $800. So I doubt that personal property law would apply
Er... why would you think that? If we only have the OP's reporting of the law to go on (and it's correct) then in the absence of any law or regulation that would tie together otherwise unrelated incidences of lost-and-found (i.e. lost by different people) what legal basis would there be for being able to "add them up" like that instead of treating them separately? None, as far as I can see.
In all seriousness, the "Google good" thing was undeniably true a few years back when most Slashdotters' attitude towards them was almost 100% positive to the point where (in retrospect) it was fanboyish.
However, it's noticeable that this seems to have died down quite a lot in the past five years or so. Some may argue that Google still get cut too much slack here, but there's definitely a lot more scepticism about them now, and the blatant halo that Google seemed to have during the first half or so of the last decade no longer shines brightly enough to entirely deflect criticism, or at least scepticism.
How much real money are you paying the Slashdot editors for the constant stream of stories about this worthless new "money"?
Given that every discussion on bitcoins seems to end up pointing out the flaws in the system and generally acknowledging that it's massively weighted in favour of those who got in early, is barely worth the electricity needed to generate coins for those getting into it now and doesn't really give any compelling point in their favour... it's more likely that it's being paid for by people *opposed* to bitcoins.
But seriously, yeah. Everything I've heard suggests that bitcoins are an interesting but flawed experiment, and there's nothing new here. Smacks of someone realising (again) that the real money's to be made acting as a middleman to all the get-rich-quick gold rushers.
Edit; sorry, just realised that you meant those *bogus* "going out of business sales" that some companies repeatedly engage in as a part of their business model.
We had a chain here called "Bargain Books" that did something similar, constantly advertising as "CLOSING DOWN SALE" with "for refit" in smaller letters below (presumably because simply saying "closing down" all the time when they weren't would eventually have got them into trouble, at least in the UK. Then again, as there were never any signs of a notable "refit", they'd probably have still got slammed under that if the authorities had really wanted to push in that direction.)
The kind that are always advertising 75% off sales?
Yeah those are called "going out of business" sales.
Not necessarily. There was a business in the UK called "The Officers Club" that sold all their clothes at comparable "discounts" for years. It was obvious that the "original" prices were way above what anyone would have paid (obscure/imitation brands being quoted at designer-brand prices) and equally obvious that the "discounts" were just a sales technique integral to the business model.
Apparently the Office of Fair Trading eventually cracked down on this a few years before they went bankrupt.
Hey, Commodore! How could you let my investment ins skills die on the vine! Bring back the C64 and the Amiga!
Commodore is dead in all but a name that gets whored around various purveyors of random generic tat who wish to exploit the goodwill that is associated with it.
However, good news- you can still buy "Amiga" computers. Granted, they're massively overpriced and underpowered things designed to run the newest AmigaOS 4 (which came out in 2006, at least a decade after it might- at a stretch- have made any sense as anything other than a plaything for a few very obsessive hobbyists), and which AFAIK can't actually run the original binary Amiga software anyway. But they're still out there if you want them!
Let's not even get onto the people trying to sell generic HTPC cases that have absolutely jack s*** to do with the Amiga using the Amiga name. (Actually, the rights to the name are a complete clusterfuck anyway- AFAIK the "Amigas" above are called "AmigaOne" for legal reasons while the shitty cases actually use the "Amiga" name.).
Regardless of who is correct about the tanks, your apparent expectation that such people can- and should- be solely responsible for the failure of such information to be disseminated is a ludicrously unreasonable burden to place on them for reasons I already described in the linked post.
If you are truly a historian, and know for a fact that a widely-held belief is incorrect, and can also easily prove this to be true - then you are, in fact, to blame for this widely held belief still being perpetuated.
If that's what you truly think, then you are grossly, *grossly* naive about how the world works.
There are countless historical, political, scientific, etc. etc. etc. inaccuracies out there that experts can- and do- authoritatively and comprehensively dispel until they're blue in the face, yet are still propagated. Propogated because people pass on what they "know" to be true as the "truth", or because it suits large vested interests to have people believe that, or simply because people don't like having their existing beliefs challenged and will frequently rationalise their dismissal of what would seem to be incontrovertible proof that they are wrong.
Honestly, your belief otherwise suggests either the naivity of a sheltered youth or that you are one of the ignorant "idiots"- and your low ID number suggests that you're probably too old to be excused as the former.
Slashdot Mirror
If it crashes, does it turn your barbecue into a literal firewall?
Why don't they just ban tobacco altogether?
And the "whoooooooooosh" going over the head of the clueless twonk who modded this obvious joke as a "troll" blows his barbecue over.... :-)
"Google profile"
For complex sales interactions I cannot see some computer trying to guess what I am thinking replacing a real live sales person / engineer.
Do you believe it is normal to be thinking replacing a real live sales person / engineer?
Washington DC has had roundabouts since 1791, when the city was built modeled on European cities.
If you're weird and actually read the article, you'll notice it *does* mention that:-
The US still has the older versions, called rotaries or circles, notably in New Jersey and Washington DC. [my emphasis] But they remain quite unpopular, a confusing sprawl of signals, stop signs and concentric lanes.
The point was that the article was specifically about the modern version first introduced in 1960s Britain, not those older types.
Because these are not mobile phones, they are mobile computers that just happen to also offer phone service.
FWIW, I'd say that they're as much the spiritual successor to the PDA as they are a phone. They're not called that because (a) PDAs kind of went of out fashion and declined commercially a while back and (b) they evolved from the direction of the phone market.
I'm not claiming that they're the same as a ten-year-old Palm. I'm saying that if the PDA market had continued to be successful, they would likely have mutated into something very similar to the iPhone et al anyway.
The fact that they're seen as "phones" reflects the market they evolved from, more than what they are now.
Meh, sounds like you have a bee in your bonnet you were just looking for an opportunity to vent on. The OP said nothing that would suggest the involvement of the state, only that he thought it was a crap deal.
Your only apparent reason for labelling him "statist" appears to be that he didn't accord the founders of the business the appropriate backside-licking respect. Nothing about libertarianism requires him to do that. They ran a company for their own self-interested reasons, he offered his services for (presumably) his own self-interested reasons, they employed him for their own self-interested reasons (doubt they were a charity, they wouldn't have employed him if they hadn't thought he was worth more to the business than he cost). He thought the deal was crap in retrospect. Sounds pretty free to me.
If you want to worship those people, that's your choice, just don't kid yourself that it's an integral part of libertarianism nor that anyone who doesn't do it is automatically a "statist".
How legal is this? I'm sure that the self-declared libertarians would say that it was adhering to the literal terms of the contract, but even in the uber-capitalist US there have always been limitations in what one can get away with in a contract and restrictions on what one can do when it comes to shares, as well as the concept of "good faith" in law.
I'm not an American, let alone an American lawyer, so I'm not saying that this isn't legal, but my gut instinct would be *not* to assume that it is. Of course, whether one can afford to pursue this line of investigation and prosecute the guy is another matter.
The FOUNDERS did exactly what their title says, they founded the company. Just because you were, frankly, too stupid to profit from THEIR hard work doesn't mean that they are at fault. Fuck you idiot statists who want to drag down all the smartest people around you because you want money for doing none of the real work needed to build a company. *THIS* is why I am a Libertarian, because fucking assholes like YOU want to live off MY hard work.
Did someone hold a gun to the "FOUNDERS" head and make them offer him stock options? I'm going to assume that they didn't.
You'll also note that the OP didn't suggest that the "FOUNDERS" had any moral obligation to him. He merely observed that it turned out to be a poor deal for him. He's quite entitled to do that.
It's funny how many people assume that because someone is free to accept or reject the terms of a deal (and does so) that they have no moral right to criticise that deal or the party who offered it. Wrong.
Assuming that you're not simply trolling, I'm really not sure what point you're trying to make here.
Or perhaps we should make any verbal explanation given to you also legally binding.
That would be awesome, but salesmen would throw a fit, because they often rely on being legally allowed to say one thing while writing the opposite on paper for you to sign.
Are you absolutely *sure* that they're not legally binding? I know that in the UK, verbal contracts are legally binding- the question is (a) what the situation is in the US and (b) how far such statements would be considered as counting towards a perceived contract (regardless of back-covering disclaimers the company might try to shove in their written contract/agreement, etc.).
I find it hard to believe that such verbal statements would have *no* legal weight whatsoever if they could be proven.
Of course, the emphasis is on "if they could be proven", because the obvious problem with verbal contracts is proving that they were made if the other side wants to dispute that fact!
Seriously, these two gentlemen are the laughing stock of the technology industry. I'd wager though that no one would say that to either of their identical faces; but isn't it worse knowing that no matter where you go your back is known as belonging to one of the leeches attempting to feed upon the technical creativity of other people?
Well, I'm sure that they'd claim that Zuckerberg was the one who'd leached off them. Might be true, might not. And I doubt they care about your exaggerated perception that they're a supposed "laughing stock" in the industry.
From what I've heard of the Winklevosses, they sound like a pair of overprivileged spoiled douchebags and on one level I'd be quite happy to see them go down in flames. But then I don't much like Zuckerberg either, and if he *did* rip off their idea, I wouldn't want to see him get away with that on principle.
Generally, I agree with the other guy who said that it's two sets of tossers with lots of money playing the legal games of the privileged. The best outcome would be for Facebook to go bankrupt (not going to happen, but whatever...!), the creepy twins get nothing more and every shred of information relating to the privacy-contemptious Zuckerberg's personal affairs leaked and sold to the highest bidder.
There isn't such thing as a universe time on which events can be noted to have happened.
What really baked my noodle was discovering that theoretically in certain cases, events can be seen occurring in a different order depending on one's viewpoint. And that (in the spirit of Relativity) both these orders are "correct", or rather, there is no definitive order more "correct" than the other.
This doesn't create problems with causality because it can (apparently) only happen in cases where the two events are separated by sufficient distance that neither could possibly have *caused* the other (since the effects of either event can never propogate to the location of the other faster than the speed of light).
LOOK HARDER PAL. Seriously. There is a mod community.
Yeah, well until the rockers kick your f****** heads in, that is.
Easily pick off a SWAT cop? Body armor, assault rifles, and shotguns may beg to differ.
You haven't played the latest Call of Duty? Tells you just how to do it.
Because video games are *such* an excellent guide to real life combat.
It's not Call of Duty this guy has been using to train, it's *this* hostage/kidnap simulator.
Who else thought this would be more along the lines of about land-mines
Yeah, me to. I had visions of some nutcase booby-trapping paving slabs. Sounds like the contrived plot of an early-1980s computer game but stranger things have happened.
So each piece may only be worth $2, but he finds 400 of them, bringing the total to $800. So I doubt that personal property law would apply
Er... why would you think that? If we only have the OP's reporting of the law to go on (and it's correct) then in the absence of any law or regulation that would tie together otherwise unrelated incidences of lost-and-found (i.e. lost by different people) what legal basis would there be for being able to "add them up" like that instead of treating them separately? None, as far as I can see.
Oh great, now I have the Paul Simon song stuck in my head:
Hmm... that must be annoying. Let me replace it with something else:-
;-)
"Here's a little song I wrote,
You might want to sing it note for note,
Don't worry,
Be happy."
Oh, that's okay... not at all, don't mention it!
Google good. Apple bad.
In all seriousness, the "Google good" thing was undeniably true a few years back when most Slashdotters' attitude towards them was almost 100% positive to the point where (in retrospect) it was fanboyish.
However, it's noticeable that this seems to have died down quite a lot in the past five years or so. Some may argue that Google still get cut too much slack here, but there's definitely a lot more scepticism about them now, and the blatant halo that Google seemed to have during the first half or so of the last decade no longer shines brightly enough to entirely deflect criticism, or at least scepticism.
How much real money are you paying the Slashdot editors for the constant stream of stories about this worthless new "money"?
Given that every discussion on bitcoins seems to end up pointing out the flaws in the system and generally acknowledging that it's massively weighted in favour of those who got in early, is barely worth the electricity needed to generate coins for those getting into it now and doesn't really give any compelling point in their favour... it's more likely that it's being paid for by people *opposed* to bitcoins.
But seriously, yeah. Everything I've heard suggests that bitcoins are an interesting but flawed experiment, and there's nothing new here. Smacks of someone realising (again) that the real money's to be made acting as a middleman to all the get-rich-quick gold rushers.
Edit; sorry, just realised that you meant those *bogus* "going out of business sales" that some companies repeatedly engage in as a part of their business model.
We had a chain here called "Bargain Books" that did something similar, constantly advertising as "CLOSING DOWN SALE" with "for refit" in smaller letters below (presumably because simply saying "closing down" all the time when they weren't would eventually have got them into trouble, at least in the UK. Then again, as there were never any signs of a notable "refit", they'd probably have still got slammed under that if the authorities had really wanted to push in that direction.)
The kind that are always advertising 75% off sales?
Yeah those are called "going out of business" sales.
Not necessarily. There was a business in the UK called "The Officers Club" that sold all their clothes at comparable "discounts" for years. It was obvious that the "original" prices were way above what anyone would have paid (obscure/imitation brands being quoted at designer-brand prices) and equally obvious that the "discounts" were just a sales technique integral to the business model.
Apparently the Office of Fair Trading eventually cracked down on this a few years before they went bankrupt.
...'caus I think I just heard someone say "Sina Weeaboo"!
We-i-Bo! We-i-Bo!
Hey, Commodore! How could you let my investment ins skills die on the vine! Bring back the C64 and the Amiga!
Commodore is dead in all but a name that gets whored around various purveyors of random generic tat who wish to exploit the goodwill that is associated with it.
However, good news- you can still buy "Amiga" computers. Granted, they're massively overpriced and underpowered things designed to run the newest AmigaOS 4 (which came out in 2006, at least a decade after it might- at a stretch- have made any sense as anything other than a plaything for a few very obsessive hobbyists), and which AFAIK can't actually run the original binary Amiga software anyway. But they're still out there if you want them!
Let's not even get onto the people trying to sell generic HTPC cases that have absolutely jack s*** to do with the Amiga using the Amiga name. (Actually, the rights to the name are a complete clusterfuck anyway- AFAIK the "Amigas" above are called "AmigaOne" for legal reasons while the shitty cases actually use the "Amiga" name.).
If those who have it do not share it, then they are to blame for it not being widely known.
Your implication is that he knew this, yet kept it secret or did not share it.
The only apparent reason I can see for you believing this is that- if I read you correctly- you seem to think that if anyone in possession of the truth tells other people, then all inaccuracies and incorrectly-held beliefs will be dispelled. Thus the fact that this isn't the case *must* be clear evidence that circletimessquare is to blame for withholding the information.....?!!!
Regardless of who is correct about the tanks, your apparent expectation that such people can- and should- be solely responsible for the failure of such information to be disseminated is a ludicrously unreasonable burden to place on them for reasons I already described in the linked post.
If you are truly a historian, and know for a fact that a widely-held belief is incorrect, and can also easily prove this to be true - then you are, in fact, to blame for this widely held belief still being perpetuated.
If that's what you truly think, then you are grossly, *grossly* naive about how the world works.
There are countless historical, political, scientific, etc. etc. etc. inaccuracies out there that experts can- and do- authoritatively and comprehensively dispel until they're blue in the face, yet are still propagated. Propogated because people pass on what they "know" to be true as the "truth", or because it suits large vested interests to have people believe that, or simply because people don't like having their existing beliefs challenged and will frequently rationalise their dismissal of what would seem to be incontrovertible proof that they are wrong.
Honestly, your belief otherwise suggests either the naivity of a sheltered youth or that you are one of the ignorant "idiots"- and your low ID number suggests that you're probably too old to be excused as the former.