Considering that deflation has been one of the biggest threats to our economy ever since Lehman went belly-up, inflating our way out of debt looks like a win-win to me. The trick is getting them to stop at a healthy inflation rate of 2% per year once things stabilize.
The question is, do these invertebrates provide more value to the human species than the pipeline would? If they do not, it makes no sense for humans to protect them.
There is no one will in Anonymous, no more than there is a will in a beehive or in an anthill. There is simply a vast number of individuals, independently responding to stimuli based upon a common set of simple rules. These responses, however, do end up producing emergent behavior complex enough to be comparable to that of a unified will.
That performance has, however, already occurred. My decision to pay or not pay and my decision to experience the performance or not experience the performance have no impact on that particular performance or the ability of others to experience it. As such, no matter what I decide, I am not depriving anyone of anything they possessed or utilizing any kind of limited resource, and thus I cannot be said to have stolen anything from anyone.
When I approach a book, a game, or a music album, I acquire it in whichever manner is most convenient for me. If its quality is sufficient to make me interested in experiencing that creator's next performance, I make sure to pay for it if I haven't already, because I view it as a vote in favor of that type of content and a call for an encore from the performer.
Viscount Leverhulme famously said "Half my advertising money is wasted. The problem is that I don't know which half!" I believe that the same principle applies to funding scientific research.
You never know which approach is going to have the most commercial potential until you've gone and explored all the available approaches. Funding the ones that don't pan out is not a waste of money. It's part of the process that brings out the ones that do.
That would imply that that $150 is going to keep 10 workers fed in China at the cost of putting one worker on the street in the US. Looking at it that way, it would seem immoral not to move the work to China.
As for the economic loss you mention, it would cut both ways, significantly increasing the costs of said political embargo and thus decreasing the probability of its enactment. Anything that motivates the world's great powers to act in a more civil manner towards each other is a win in my book.
We produce more knowledge and export that. There isn't a limited amount of it to be had, you know.
Manufacturing is not the end of a society's economic development, no more than agriculture is. Industrialization is just one in a long series of steps a society takes to increase its power and improve the socioeconomic well-being of its populace. The US and the rest of the Western industrialized societies are now finishing the transition from an industrial, manufactruring-based economy, to a post-industrial, knowledge-based one. At the end of that transition, the engines of national wealth generation will be, to quote Stephenson, music, movies, microcode, and high-speed pizza delivery.
The people who would normally make their living in these manufacturing jobs are still making their living in these manufacturing jobs, they're just making that living in Fujian instead of Michigan. Personally, I don't see any reason why an unskilled laborer 3000 miles away from me deserves any more of my sympathies than an unskilled laborer 6000 miles away from me, particularly if the latter is offering to perform the same amount of labor for less cost.
The first time a friend explained to me how the US education system is set up, I laughed because I thought he was putting me on.
How could you possibly expect quality national education or social and economic mobility if people's only choice for public education is the local school, and the quality of that school is determined by the local property values? The lack of a national curriculum makes things even worse, since it condemns entire regions to inferior education.
The fact that the US has several different levels of government, each of which gets to impose taxes and initiate policies never really made much sense to me. Wouldn't it be a lot more logical and efficient if the national government was the only entity with the authority to impose taxes, the revenues from which it would then disburse to lower levels of bureaucracy to implement national policy at the local level?
If I'm going to be separated from the same amount of my hard-earned money either way, I'd rather it occur from as few sources and on as few occasions as possible. So, sure, if I have to pay local taxes, I'd rather have them subtracted from my payroll in one fell swoop and not get nickle and dimed for them each time I reach for my wallet.
I believe further study of Great Tits is necessary. I would gladly volunteer my time and effort to conducting a most thorough survey of Great Tits in many diverse geographical locations, but I seem to be having trouble securing funding.
Because we all know that movie script writers always do their homework to get their science right and never ever engage in simple-minded fearmongering.
From what I can tell from the article, the proposal was forwarded to the Communications Ministry, which replied with a rejection letter, citing the expense involved and lack of clear success metrics. There were also concerns over ghettoizing Russian IT industry away from the international mainstream.
Ponomoarev is not giving up, though, and is seeking direct dialogue between his parliamentary committee and representatives of the Ministry, and also considering discussing his proposal with other government agencies.
This is flamebait because it's calling people who put their lives on the line to fight our nation's enemies scumbags.
There are plenty of valid criticisms that can leveled at those to started the war or those who planned out (or failed to plan out) its execution. Attacking the people who actually got sent down there and served their country is indefensible, however.
Wait, what? How would someone in possession of a drawing be a child molester? Don't you need to, I dunno, molest a child in order to become a child molester?
Really, a browser could load everything the nanosecond I click on it, be mathematically proven to be perfectly secure, do my taxes, and give free hand jobs, but if it doesn't run Adblock Plus, it would still be inferior to Firefox as far as I'm concerned.
There's still SRPGs. For the PS3, Disgaea 3 and Valkyria Chronicles are both very much worth playing.
And speaking of the 1997-2000 boom, they just released a new Fallout game!
Slashdot Mirror
Funny, insightful, _and_ informative. Mod this man up!
Considering that deflation has been one of the biggest threats to our economy ever since Lehman went belly-up, inflating our way out of debt looks like a win-win to me. The trick is getting them to stop at a healthy inflation rate of 2% per year once things stabilize.
The question is, do these invertebrates provide more value to the human species than the pipeline would? If they do not, it makes no sense for humans to protect them.
By making them pay a fair market rate for their gas, and with actual money instead of IOUs at that?
There is no one will in Anonymous, no more than there is a will in a beehive or in an anthill. There is simply a vast number of individuals, independently responding to stimuli based upon a common set of simple rules. These responses, however, do end up producing emergent behavior complex enough to be comparable to that of a unified will.
They do say that information wants to be free...
That performance has, however, already occurred. My decision to pay or not pay and my decision to experience the performance or not experience the performance have no impact on that particular performance or the ability of others to experience it. As such, no matter what I decide, I am not depriving anyone of anything they possessed or utilizing any kind of limited resource, and thus I cannot be said to have stolen anything from anyone.
When I approach a book, a game, or a music album, I acquire it in whichever manner is most convenient for me. If its quality is sufficient to make me interested in experiencing that creator's next performance, I make sure to pay for it if I haven't already, because I view it as a vote in favor of that type of content and a call for an encore from the performer.
I haven't seen WW3. You're full of shit.
Do you seriously believe that US-Canada border guards get shot at more frequently than East German guards were?
Everyone runs a risk of getting shot at. That fact gives no one the right to act like a paranoid psychopath.
Viscount Leverhulme famously said "Half my advertising money is wasted. The problem is that I don't know which half!" I believe that the same principle applies to funding scientific research.
You never know which approach is going to have the most commercial potential until you've gone and explored all the available approaches. Funding the ones that don't pan out is not a waste of money. It's part of the process that brings out the ones that do.
That would imply that that $150 is going to keep 10 workers fed in China at the cost of putting one worker on the street in the US. Looking at it that way, it would seem immoral not to move the work to China.
As for the economic loss you mention, it would cut both ways, significantly increasing the costs of said political embargo and thus decreasing the probability of its enactment. Anything that motivates the world's great powers to act in a more civil manner towards each other is a win in my book.
We produce more knowledge and export that. There isn't a limited amount of it to be had, you know.
Manufacturing is not the end of a society's economic development, no more than agriculture is. Industrialization is just one in a long series of steps a society takes to increase its power and improve the socioeconomic well-being of its populace. The US and the rest of the Western industrialized societies are now finishing the transition from an industrial, manufactruring-based economy, to a post-industrial, knowledge-based one. At the end of that transition, the engines of national wealth generation will be, to quote Stephenson, music, movies, microcode, and high-speed pizza delivery.
The people who would normally make their living in these manufacturing jobs are still making their living in these manufacturing jobs, they're just making that living in Fujian instead of Michigan. Personally, I don't see any reason why an unskilled laborer 3000 miles away from me deserves any more of my sympathies than an unskilled laborer 6000 miles away from me, particularly if the latter is offering to perform the same amount of labor for less cost.
The first time a friend explained to me how the US education system is set up, I laughed because I thought he was putting me on. How could you possibly expect quality national education or social and economic mobility if people's only choice for public education is the local school, and the quality of that school is determined by the local property values? The lack of a national curriculum makes things even worse, since it condemns entire regions to inferior education.
The fact that the US has several different levels of government, each of which gets to impose taxes and initiate policies never really made much sense to me. Wouldn't it be a lot more logical and efficient if the national government was the only entity with the authority to impose taxes, the revenues from which it would then disburse to lower levels of bureaucracy to implement national policy at the local level?
If I'm going to be separated from the same amount of my hard-earned money either way, I'd rather it occur from as few sources and on as few occasions as possible. So, sure, if I have to pay local taxes, I'd rather have them subtracted from my payroll in one fell swoop and not get nickle and dimed for them each time I reach for my wallet.
How about we start spending less on our military than the entire military budgets of the rest of the world combined?
I believe further study of Great Tits is necessary. I would gladly volunteer my time and effort to conducting a most thorough survey of Great Tits in many diverse geographical locations, but I seem to be having trouble securing funding.
Because we all know that movie script writers always do their homework to get their science right and never ever engage in simple-minded fearmongering.
From what I can tell from the article, the proposal was forwarded to the Communications Ministry, which replied with a rejection letter, citing the expense involved and lack of clear success metrics. There were also concerns over ghettoizing Russian IT industry away from the international mainstream.
Ponomoarev is not giving up, though, and is seeking direct dialogue between his parliamentary committee and representatives of the Ministry, and also considering discussing his proposal with other government agencies.
This is flamebait because it's calling people who put their lives on the line to fight our nation's enemies scumbags.
There are plenty of valid criticisms that can leveled at those to started the war or those who planned out (or failed to plan out) its execution. Attacking the people who actually got sent down there and served their country is indefensible, however.
Wait, what? How would someone in possession of a drawing be a child molester? Don't you need to, I dunno, molest a child in order to become a child molester?
Really, a browser could load everything the nanosecond I click on it, be mathematically proven to be perfectly secure, do my taxes, and give free hand jobs, but if it doesn't run Adblock Plus, it would still be inferior to Firefox as far as I'm concerned.
There's still SRPGs. For the PS3, Disgaea 3 and Valkyria Chronicles are both very much worth playing. And speaking of the 1997-2000 boom, they just released a new Fallout game!
Considering that nowadays, Russians just use ) or ))) for the emoticon, programmers may have a problem here