The problem is that in Russia, Moscow is the only place with actual economic opportunity. The wealth inequality of Moscow compared to the rest of Russia is something like 50:1 compared to 17:1 average for cities in the rest of the country. St. Petersburg is the only other place with any kind of economic potential. Everything flows through Moscow, and that is a major flaw in such a large country. Without economic decentralization (opportunity and growth outside of Moscow) the country will continue its precipitous decline.
That's exactly what I was thinking! The use of data mining and aggregate statistics to draw inferences about mass psychology is basically what Psychohistory was supposed to be. Wikilink: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictio nal)
Psychohistory is the name of a fictional science... which combined history, psychology and mathematical statistics to create a (nearly) exact science of the behavior of very large populations of people...
Actually, The Guardian (a UK newspaper on the left) reports the same statistic of 25,000 civilians but says that the coalition forces are only responsible for 37% of those deaths. The rest are from criminals, insurgents, and other problems. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,153215 7,00.html
Everyone has the right to assemble peaceably to protest what they consider a grievance against our duly elected and representative government.
The Boston Tea party did not protest against a democratic and elected government, but against a monarch taxing unrepresented citizens.
The Rodney King rioters damaged and looted the property of their fellow private citizens in protest of government action. That's completely unjust to those that had their homes and stores wrecked. A march, a rally, fiery public speeches, petitions, a sit-in at the court or city hall--all of these would have been acceptable. But the rioters damaged their neighbors in their anger at the government, and such action is rightfully stopped. It is one thing to protest against a monarch and another to protest against an elected and accountable government.
WTO protesters in Seattle were not uniformly non-violent. Many private citizens, once again, had to pay the price for someone else's anger at the government. That's fundamentally unjust, that I might have my property destroyed by someone angry, not at me, but at the government.
Tiananmen square was certainly peaceful to begin with, although I don't doubt that as it went on the protesters engaged in provocation with the police. But, you cannot draw equivalency between protest in a public square against a totalitarian government and protest in the streets of LA against an elected government's decision which involves destruction of private homes and stores. There is no moral equivalence there, whatsoever.
Yes, but if it only learns from sets of possible moves, won't the filter never pick an impossible move? If you only feed in actual games, in which the players stuck to the rules, the filter ought to do the same, in theory, without "knowing" the rules.
What would be more interesting, would be to feed in all of the known openings and closings that have been analyzed and collected over the years (comprehensive books on openings run over 750 pages in length). If you could teach it various openings, and then the various defenses to each opening, it might be a lot stronger than simply teaching it by random examples of past games.
Yeah, that would be very interesting in fact. Most economist's models are predicated on rational choice theory and make all sorts of assumptions about how humans are rational maximizers, etc. In reality, people are idiots and engage in spiteful, ill-informed, and illogical behavior. If they could set up an economic model within an online game setting, creating a market and rules with the ability to track exchanges and gather aggregate statistics, their models would be significantly more relevant to real life--moreso than some spare academic model built on unrealistic assumptions.
Plus, they could totally p\/\/nz0r some n00bz!!!1!1
True, sort of. Money *is* useful for one thing. But since Nixon closed the gold window, it's not useful for exchange into gold or any other commodity. The only thing our fiat money is useful for is paying the IRS our taxes. The IRS won't accept glod, or chickens, or a custom-built beowulf cluster--they only accept U.S. currency. So, because approximately 300 million people are required to pay the IRS in U.S. currency (or else do hard time) U.S. currency does have value. Each dollar you have is worth an amount of freedom: if you don't pay the IRS a percentage of all your dollars each year, they will take away an amount of freedom equivalent to your shortfall. See?
<georgebushvoice>Money is freedom. We have to fight for freedom. Freedom isn't free.</georgebushvoice>
I didn't mean "hilarious" in a denigrating manner. But I do have to admit that it does seem funny to me that given a virtual roleplaying environment in which the laws of economics function,/.ers begin to start talking like the op-ed page of the Financial Times.
Needless to say, I also found it ironic that the very same/.ers who get all self-righteous about the legality of filesharing (creating exact duplicates of songs/music/movies/programs) get anxious about a duping bug in their virtual roleplaying economy. That being said, I also fileshare, and I have to admit that the grandparent poster seem to think duping would balance out in the end.
Thus, it looks like WoW will be safe from the creation of a virtual *IAA to police duping...
Yes, just like in Jurassic Park, when they filled in the dino genome with frog DNA, Open Source folks could fill in the OS/2 code with Linux, thus creating OS/2nix (pron. Oh-Ess-Tunics). This idea can't fail!
I don't know about the rest of you/.ers, but I think the parent comment is hilarious. Look at what we've done: we've created a virtual world with a virtual economy in which virtual objects have value. When a (sort of) economic exploit is found, people worry about the virtual economy. "If people can just duplicate things, requiring a rollback, what point is there to working?" This could be taken straight out of an econ textbook on inflation, deflation, marginal rates, etc. It puts additional insight into the effect duplication has on property rights--even though it's all virtual.
What is the taste difference between Coca-Cola and Pepsi?
Standard colas are usually flavoured with an orange-lemon-lime behind the vanilla, coca and kola tastes. Coke is more orange-biased while Pepsi is more lemon-flavoured. Also, the sugar and carbonation is different, with Pepsi being sweeter and a little flatter.
Where communism turns miserable is when foreign trade, capitalism and consumer choice are excluded
This is one of the most profoundly misguided things I think I've ever seen posted on Slashdot, or indeed any other forum, including the morons over at k5. Communism inherently excludes capitalism and consumer choice--these things are mutually exclusive by definition. Centralized planning and state ownership of property does not allow for any conceivable form of capitalism. Centralized planning also does not allow for actual consumer choice. Foreign trade happens (see things like COMECON), but because of centralized planning in each trading country, it doesn't function like anything that we're used to.
Organizations that exist under the UN rubric are often well-run: WHO, the IMF, the World Bank, etc. They are given de facto independence in their operations, and are not subject to extensive political control by the Secretariat's bureaucracy. This is one reason why they are efficient, and everything else about the UN is not.
In making a bid for UN political control of the internet, it is doubtful that they would turn around and make another organization (like WHO et al) that is not subject to overt UN political control. Giving the UN control of an organization that's not broken is essentially asking for it to be broken.
This is not about whether the Internet would be run better by the UN than by an independent subnational organization chartered by the U.S. This is about power, and trying to take away perceived U.S. power (ignoring completely the idea of subsidiarity, because in this case, it's convenient for the UN to do so). If it achieves enough media prominence, look for this story to become another "multilateralism good" and "unilateralism bad" ideological circus--regardless of facts or reality.
Parent is correct that China does not really redistribute wealth. Under Jiang Zemin, the CPC (mostly the Shanghai clique within the CPC) followed a policy of developing the coast before developing elsewhere in China. The income inequality grew very large. Hu Jintao, who has succeeded Jiang Zemin, is from rural areas, and is seen as more of a "man of the people." He is trying, haltingly, and largely without success, to redistribute and develop more of the rest of China.
China is not "stuffed to the gills with free markets" as parent would suggest, however. China does not even have internal free trade between its own provinces and administrative units. Imagine Virginia and Maryland not being able to trade with one another freely. Since China joined the WTO, it has been scaling back its protectionism both internally and externally, but it's not really a free market. External trade with the EU and U.S. is made quite free, comparatively.
When was the last time you heard of a group of radical atheists throwing a hand grenade into a tour bus?
Never heard of Bolsheviks? Never heard of the Jacobins? Never heard of the turn-of-the-century anarchists?
Crack open a history book Mr. Self Righteous Athiest.
Re:Leopard before Longhorn?
on
Longhorn Preview
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I think you're putting too much weight on Linux. It's not going to be ready for the desktop by 2006-2007. You may be putting too much weight on Apple even.
My bet is that 2006-7 will be a Microsoft vs. Microsoft competition: 98/2000/XP/2003 vs. Longhorn. My bet is that Longhorn will pull forward less users than XP did.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that in Russia, Moscow is the only place with actual economic opportunity. The wealth inequality of Moscow compared to the rest of Russia is something like 50:1 compared to 17:1 average for cities in the rest of the country. St. Petersburg is the only other place with any kind of economic potential. Everything flows through Moscow, and that is a major flaw in such a large country. Without economic decentralization (opportunity and growth outside of Moscow) the country will continue its precipitous decline.
Why would Microsoft want to name their OS after France?
Actually, The Guardian (a UK newspaper on the left) reports the same statistic of 25,000 civilians but says that the coalition forces are only responsible for 37% of those deaths. The rest are from criminals, insurgents, and other problems. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,153215 7,00.html
Everyone has the right to assemble peaceably to protest what they consider a grievance against our duly elected and representative government.
The Boston Tea party did not protest against a democratic and elected government, but against a monarch taxing unrepresented citizens.
The Rodney King rioters damaged and looted the property of their fellow private citizens in protest of government action. That's completely unjust to those that had their homes and stores wrecked. A march, a rally, fiery public speeches, petitions, a sit-in at the court or city hall--all of these would have been acceptable. But the rioters damaged their neighbors in their anger at the government, and such action is rightfully stopped. It is one thing to protest against a monarch and another to protest against an elected and accountable government.
WTO protesters in Seattle were not uniformly non-violent. Many private citizens, once again, had to pay the price for someone else's anger at the government. That's fundamentally unjust, that I might have my property destroyed by someone angry, not at me, but at the government.
Tiananmen square was certainly peaceful to begin with, although I don't doubt that as it went on the protesters engaged in provocation with the police. But, you cannot draw equivalency between protest in a public square against a totalitarian government and protest in the streets of LA against an elected government's decision which involves destruction of private homes and stores. There is no moral equivalence there, whatsoever.
I think *you meant* to say "sex and nakedness are both Freedom. Yes, freedom. Just like the fries.
What would be more interesting, would be to feed in all of the known openings and closings that have been analyzed and collected over the years (comprehensive books on openings run over 750 pages in length). If you could teach it various openings, and then the various defenses to each opening, it might be a lot stronger than simply teaching it by random examples of past games.
See? By making fun of other people's pronunciation of English, you can fit yet another chess piece in...
WoWers will just create a Warcraft Industry Association of America (the WIAA) and add another *IAA to the list /.ers complain about.
Plus, they could totally p\/\/nz0r some n00bz!!!1!1
Needless to say, I also found it ironic that the very same /.ers who get all self-righteous about the legality of filesharing (creating exact duplicates of songs/music/movies/programs) get anxious about a duping bug in their virtual roleplaying economy. That being said, I also fileshare, and I have to admit that the grandparent poster seem to think duping would balance out in the end.
Thus, it looks like WoW will be safe from the creation of a virtual *IAA to police duping...
Yes, just like in Jurassic Park, when they filled in the dino genome with frog DNA, Open Source folks could fill in the OS/2 code with Linux, thus creating OS/2nix (pron. Oh-Ess-Tunics). This idea can't fail!
I don't know about the rest of you /.ers, but I think the parent comment is hilarious. Look at what we've done: we've created a virtual world with a virtual economy in which virtual objects have value. When a (sort of) economic exploit is found, people worry about the virtual economy. "If people can just duplicate things, requiring a rollback, what point is there to working?" This could be taken straight out of an econ textbook on inflation, deflation, marginal rates, etc. It puts additional insight into the effect duplication has on property rights--even though it's all virtual.
I hear the editors have been exploiting this bug for years on Slashdot...
From: Cola Fountain FAQ
This is one of the most profoundly misguided things I think I've ever seen posted on Slashdot, or indeed any other forum, including the morons over at k5. Communism inherently excludes capitalism and consumer choice--these things are mutually exclusive by definition. Centralized planning and state ownership of property does not allow for any conceivable form of capitalism. Centralized planning also does not allow for actual consumer choice. Foreign trade happens (see things like COMECON), but because of centralized planning in each trading country, it doesn't function like anything that we're used to.
In making a bid for UN political control of the internet, it is doubtful that they would turn around and make another organization (like WHO et al) that is not subject to overt UN political control. Giving the UN control of an organization that's not broken is essentially asking for it to be broken.
This is not about whether the Internet would be run better by the UN than by an independent subnational organization chartered by the U.S. This is about power, and trying to take away perceived U.S. power (ignoring completely the idea of subsidiarity, because in this case, it's convenient for the UN to do so). If it achieves enough media prominence, look for this story to become another "multilateralism good" and "unilateralism bad" ideological circus--regardless of facts or reality.
China is not "stuffed to the gills with free markets" as parent would suggest, however. China does not even have internal free trade between its own provinces and administrative units. Imagine Virginia and Maryland not being able to trade with one another freely. Since China joined the WTO, it has been scaling back its protectionism both internally and externally, but it's not really a free market. External trade with the EU and U.S. is made quite free, comparatively.
Yes, I am a firm believer in boarding schools for the children of at least 50% of the parents out there.
Never heard of Bolsheviks? Never heard of the Jacobins? Never heard of the turn-of-the-century anarchists?
Crack open a history book Mr. Self Righteous Athiest.
My bet is that 2006-7 will be a Microsoft vs. Microsoft competition: 98/2000/XP/2003 vs. Longhorn. My bet is that Longhorn will pull forward less users than XP did.
Look for "non-comedogenic" sunscreen (aka "non-occlusive" as well). Your pores ought to alright with that stuff.
"You were all for preserving Hitler's brain, but putting it inside a shark's body...THAT'S GOING TOO FAR!!" --Professor Farnsworth
That would be "shudder", parent.
My prediction? The grammar nazis will win every thread posted in response to this story.