What's more, the "correct price" is almost always higher than the minimum price necessary to get everyone to buy the product. For example, a company could give away their product for free, and pretty much everyone who was offered it would take it, but the company would still make more money if they charged a million dollars for it and only one person bought one.
Governments do not lower taxes once they have established them.
So very true. My original home state of West Virginia instituted a food and clothing tax equal to the state sales tax (in other words, eliminated the sales tax exemption on those items) back in the 80s to solve a budget overrun. The tax at the time was touted as a temporary measure that would be rescinded as soon as the state's debt had been resolved. Of course, twenty-some-odd years later, that temporary tax is still firmly in place.
On the other hand, the WV state legislature did once pass a tree tax - you paid a tax if the number of trees on your property exceeded a certain number, an effort to surreptitiously tax those who might benefit from lumbering their land. The tax lasted about a month before public outcry over the stupidity of such a tax demanded that it be repealed.
But there is also a collective game being played, not by the individual but by the game's population as a whole, and it is disruptive to that collective game when transfers of wealth become partially dependent upon external monetary transactions.
While I like the idea of other companies not being allowed to collect or share personally-identifiable information without my explicit written consent, I think a more important stopgap measure is for the government to forbid companies from permitting credit or banking transactions where the identity of the individuals cannot be verified. (It would actually be a more complicated setup than that one sentence, to allow, for example, you to transfer funds between a bank account and a brokerage account once you've been verified as the owner of both.)
I also suggest that the government operate an independent "identity clearinghouse" of sorts. The process would go something like this:
1. Consumer requests (for example) a new line of credit from Bank X. In the process, Consumer provides contact information to Bank X. 2. Bank X contacts Government's Identity Clearinghouse (ICH) with the provided contact information. 3. ICH (a) compares the provided contact information with that in their records, and (b) uses that contact information to contact the consumer and verify that the credit request was valid. 4. ICH informs Bank X of the validity of the credit request.
To fund the system, a small charge would be paid by the consumer, the bank, or both. Other more secure measures (such as personal appearance at a local office) would be involved in changing the information in the clearinghouse. The consumer would then inform their bank(s)/utilities/whatever of their updated mailing information, and the bank would then ask the clearinghouse to verify the correctness of that info.
Remember that in MMOGs, while there are far more people playing the game than in the hypothetical game of Monopoly or chess, there are also far more people attempting to sell items/gold/characters/whatever. Each individual incident has little impact on the game, but they certainly add up.
Actually, I think the Monopoly analogy is far more apt than the steroid one. If you really have to use a sports analogy, though, then try this:
A person participates in the qualifying rounds of some sporting competition (qualifiers in an auto race, for example). After qualifying for a spot in the competition, they then decide to sell that spot to the highest bidder, presumably somebody who makes a lot of money and wants to participate in the main event without building up the personal skills and resources normally required. Should they be allowed to do this?
You'd think there would be a tremendous PR benefit to marketing the gene therapy vector by itself, so that when the vector is re-engineered for a specific purpose (like attacking cancerous cells), the marketing wonks can describe it as being derived from the earlier gene therapy vector. The marketing for the vector itself would of course indicate that the vast bulk of HIV's genes do not exist, and thus the vector avoids the stigma of the dangers of HIV, and the cancer treatment avoids mention of HIV altogether.
Hate to burst your bubble, but ID only requires the interference by an intelligent designer. Not continued interference. Your project is ID based.
The problem with that argument is that, with only an observation of a snapshot of a single organism in evolutionary time, you have no way to know whether the organism was designed or evolved. But we already know that natural selection does result in the evolution of organisms even today (which makes studying evolution worthwhile, while studying intelligent design is less so). So, if you are doing research in artificial evolution, it's perfectly fine to start with some known state without pontificating on whether that state was designed or evolved, and then let the evolutionary algorithm start with that state as its seed. (In other words, the point is moot.)
The reason for doing this is that, believe it or not, evolution is hard. In a well-understood underlying system, evolution is far harder than using preconceived notions about the system to design an agent capable of performing some behavior. I realize that "evolution is hard" is an argument used by creationists to disprove evolution, but extreme unlikelihood does not equal impossibility.
Hey, now, it's a lot of work grinding those babies up into powder. I'm sure as hell not gonna waste it trying to figure out something lame like whether water is wet or not.
No. Obviously, the point is to redirect pressure toward industrializing nations whose pollutant per dollar GDP is already huge. Failure to do that is why the Senate opposed Kyoto in 1998.
Actually, it's a matter of "I don't know jack crap about this, but I'm going to express my uninformed thoughts on it anyway without bothering to educate myself on the topic."
It is near-universally accepted outside the US that this is happening, and that humankind is responsible. But many smart Americans doubt this.
Even more Americans doubt that taking action to limit emissions in the U.S. will mean jack crap in the future, as China and India release pollutants like the U.S. did 30 or 40 years ago, except with ten times the population behind them. The result of those sorts of emissions will be disastrous.
Part of the problem is that no matter what game designers try to do, players will always gravitate toward the path of greatest reward for least effort, even if "least effort" involves mind-numbing boredom.
For an example, see SWG's original Jedi concept, where the process was designed to be incredibly difficult so that few would actually achieve it (i.e., zero reward, so zero reward-effort ratio). Even still, players were so intent upon opening their Jedi slots that they would grind professions they didn't even like in order to succeed (because a puny but nonzero reward-effort ratio is better than zero).
Remember the old episode with the 2 aliens, each being half white and half black. At the end of the show, you realize that they hate each other because they are white on different sides. Wow. That was an excellent metaphore for race relations.
I disagree. Intel's tack on the future of processors is to implement multiple cores per die. It is in Intel's best interest to do what they can to put a black eye on companies who would try to take advantage of that technology scheme. If Intel sits on its hands, soon it won't just be Oracle milking the public - it'll be every major software company out there. Once the operating costs increase enough, end users will begin looking for cheaper alternatives, possibly including switching processors or even architectures.
I'd just point out two benefits for Evolutionism becoming a religion:
1. Evolutionists are no longer expected to prove their beliefs to be true, as long as they publish those beliefs in nice leatherbound books. 2. Donations to the Church become tax-deductible.
Benjamin Franklin basically said your not free and your don't have liberties when you give away those freedoms under the guise of safety.
But then he goes on to say that those people also are unworthy of safety. Sure, it makes for a catchy quote, but it also implies that, for example, a person who supports gun control laws is undeserving of police protection against burglars.
I also find it laughable you would say Benjamin Franklin was full of dung as you put it. Is that how you cope with todays issues?
No. I cope with today's issues by wasting time posting to Slashdot.
Mod parent up. I was going to mention that illegal aliens are criminals, too, but this person did a far better job of explaining many more benefits I didn't even realize.
Generally, Congress dodges the states' rights issue by tying eligibility for federal funds to state compliance with federal rules. Since that's what they're doing here, I don't see the states having any recourse.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Ben Franklin was full of shit.
The Declaration of Independence says that "[all people] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
But Ben Franklin says that certain people actually don't deserve liberty. Which one is right?
There is a term for a government in which legistlation is passed for the mere convenience of law enforcement officers.
Well, the aforementioned laws aren't merely for the convenience of LEOs. They are there to help apprehend criminals, including those who have arrest warrants, those who attempt to fraudulently obtain a license in another state when their original license had been suspended, and those who enter the country illegally. In other words, the laws are for the greater public good, not simply for the good of the police.
Slashdot Mirror
What's more, the "correct price" is almost always higher than the minimum price necessary to get everyone to buy the product. For example, a company could give away their product for free, and pretty much everyone who was offered it would take it, but the company would still make more money if they charged a million dollars for it and only one person bought one.
Governments do not lower taxes once they have established them.
So very true. My original home state of West Virginia instituted a food and clothing tax equal to the state sales tax (in other words, eliminated the sales tax exemption on those items) back in the 80s to solve a budget overrun. The tax at the time was touted as a temporary measure that would be rescinded as soon as the state's debt had been resolved. Of course, twenty-some-odd years later, that temporary tax is still firmly in place.
On the other hand, the WV state legislature did once pass a tree tax - you paid a tax if the number of trees on your property exceeded a certain number, an effort to surreptitiously tax those who might benefit from lumbering their land. The tax lasted about a month before public outcry over the stupidity of such a tax demanded that it be repealed.
But there is also a collective game being played, not by the individual but by the game's population as a whole, and it is disruptive to that collective game when transfers of wealth become partially dependent upon external monetary transactions.
While I like the idea of other companies not being allowed to collect or share personally-identifiable information without my explicit written consent, I think a more important stopgap measure is for the government to forbid companies from permitting credit or banking transactions where the identity of the individuals cannot be verified. (It would actually be a more complicated setup than that one sentence, to allow, for example, you to transfer funds between a bank account and a brokerage account once you've been verified as the owner of both.)
I also suggest that the government operate an independent "identity clearinghouse" of sorts. The process would go something like this:
1. Consumer requests (for example) a new line of credit from Bank X. In the process, Consumer provides contact information to Bank X.
2. Bank X contacts Government's Identity Clearinghouse (ICH) with the provided contact information.
3. ICH (a) compares the provided contact information with that in their records, and (b) uses that contact information to contact the consumer and verify that the credit request was valid.
4. ICH informs Bank X of the validity of the credit request.
To fund the system, a small charge would be paid by the consumer, the bank, or both. Other more secure measures (such as personal appearance at a local office) would be involved in changing the information in the clearinghouse. The consumer would then inform their bank(s)/utilities/whatever of their updated mailing information, and the bank would then ask the clearinghouse to verify the correctness of that info.
Remember that in MMOGs, while there are far more people playing the game than in the hypothetical game of Monopoly or chess, there are also far more people attempting to sell items/gold/characters/whatever. Each individual incident has little impact on the game, but they certainly add up.
Actually, I think the Monopoly analogy is far more apt than the steroid one. If you really have to use a sports analogy, though, then try this:
A person participates in the qualifying rounds of some sporting competition (qualifiers in an auto race, for example). After qualifying for a spot in the competition, they then decide to sell that spot to the highest bidder, presumably somebody who makes a lot of money and wants to participate in the main event without building up the personal skills and resources normally required. Should they be allowed to do this?
You'd think there would be a tremendous PR benefit to marketing the gene therapy vector by itself, so that when the vector is re-engineered for a specific purpose (like attacking cancerous cells), the marketing wonks can describe it as being derived from the earlier gene therapy vector. The marketing for the vector itself would of course indicate that the vast bulk of HIV's genes do not exist, and thus the vector avoids the stigma of the dangers of HIV, and the cancer treatment avoids mention of HIV altogether.
Hate to burst your bubble, but ID only requires the interference by an intelligent designer. Not continued interference. Your project is ID based.
The problem with that argument is that, with only an observation of a snapshot of a single organism in evolutionary time, you have no way to know whether the organism was designed or evolved. But we already know that natural selection does result in the evolution of organisms even today (which makes studying evolution worthwhile, while studying intelligent design is less so). So, if you are doing research in artificial evolution, it's perfectly fine to start with some known state without pontificating on whether that state was designed or evolved, and then let the evolutionary algorithm start with that state as its seed. (In other words, the point is moot.)
The reason for doing this is that, believe it or not, evolution is hard. In a well-understood underlying system, evolution is far harder than using preconceived notions about the system to design an agent capable of performing some behavior. I realize that "evolution is hard" is an argument used by creationists to disprove evolution, but extreme unlikelihood does not equal impossibility.
pour a shitload of babypowder on a cup of water
Hey, now, it's a lot of work grinding those babies up into powder. I'm sure as hell not gonna waste it trying to figure out something lame like whether water is wet or not.
Cisco is becoming a security company - sort of like how Microsoft is becoming a security company.
No. Obviously, the point is to redirect pressure toward industrializing nations whose pollutant per dollar GDP is already huge. Failure to do that is why the Senate opposed Kyoto in 1998.
Actually, it's a matter of "I don't know jack crap about this, but I'm going to express my uninformed thoughts on it anyway without bothering to educate myself on the topic."
It is near-universally accepted outside the US that this is happening, and that humankind is responsible. But many smart Americans doubt this.
Even more Americans doubt that taking action to limit emissions in the U.S. will mean jack crap in the future, as China and India release pollutants like the U.S. did 30 or 40 years ago, except with ten times the population behind them. The result of those sorts of emissions will be disastrous.
Part of the problem is that no matter what game designers try to do, players will always gravitate toward the path of greatest reward for least effort, even if "least effort" involves mind-numbing boredom.
For an example, see SWG's original Jedi concept, where the process was designed to be incredibly difficult so that few would actually achieve it (i.e., zero reward, so zero reward-effort ratio). Even still, players were so intent upon opening their Jedi slots that they would grind professions they didn't even like in order to succeed (because a puny but nonzero reward-effort ratio is better than zero).
Remember the old episode with the 2 aliens, each being half white and half black. At the end of the show, you realize that they hate each other because they are white on different sides. Wow. That was an excellent metaphore for race relations.
I liked Babylon 5's Purple/Green better.
Sure, all that stuff sounds great when you leave out the "how".
What, are you some sort of Slashdot editor or something?
Maybe. But it's pretty hard to take seriously a church whose website includes a button labeled "Ordain Me".
I disagree. Intel's tack on the future of processors is to implement multiple cores per die. It is in Intel's best interest to do what they can to put a black eye on companies who would try to take advantage of that technology scheme. If Intel sits on its hands, soon it won't just be Oracle milking the public - it'll be every major software company out there. Once the operating costs increase enough, end users will begin looking for cheaper alternatives, possibly including switching processors or even architectures.
I'd just point out two benefits for Evolutionism becoming a religion:
1. Evolutionists are no longer expected to prove their beliefs to be true, as long as they publish those beliefs in nice leatherbound books.
2. Donations to the Church become tax-deductible.
Benjamin Franklin basically said your not free and your don't have liberties when you give away those freedoms under the guise of safety.
But then he goes on to say that those people also are unworthy of safety. Sure, it makes for a catchy quote, but it also implies that, for example, a person who supports gun control laws is undeserving of police protection against burglars.
I also find it laughable you would say Benjamin Franklin was full of dung as you put it. Is that how you cope with todays issues?
No. I cope with today's issues by wasting time posting to Slashdot.
Mod parent up. I was going to mention that illegal aliens are criminals, too, but this person did a far better job of explaining many more benefits I didn't even realize.
Generally, Congress dodges the states' rights issue by tying eligibility for federal funds to state compliance with federal rules. Since that's what they're doing here, I don't see the states having any recourse.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Ben Franklin was full of shit.
The Declaration of Independence says that "[all people] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
But Ben Franklin says that certain people actually don't deserve liberty. Which one is right?
There is a term for a government in which legistlation is passed for the mere convenience of law enforcement officers.
Well, the aforementioned laws aren't merely for the convenience of LEOs. They are there to help apprehend criminals, including those who have arrest warrants, those who attempt to fraudulently obtain a license in another state when their original license had been suspended, and those who enter the country illegally. In other words, the laws are for the greater public good, not simply for the good of the police.