"Not quite. This thinking is the theoretical basis of the Marxist school of thought, which drew from the "Labor Theory of Value" written up by David Ricardo (see here). But it is essentially a flawed point of view -- and has been superseded by the Marginal Utility Theory of Value. The shortest rebutal I know to the Labor Theory of Value/Marxist view is this: "Pearls are not valuable because people dive for them, people dive for them because pearls are valuable"."
Ok, I was trying to keep things simple... But the main factor altering the COST of a good is the amount of labor it takes. Notice that I said MAIN, labor does not account for the entire cost, just for most of it. It is also a generalization, if you look hard enough, you'll find a few counter examples. Of all the production costs, labor is nowadays and on average the biggest one by far.
Of course, there are two factor affecting economical viability. Those are cost and value. If cost if smaller than value, the product is viable, otherwise it is not. Since the GP was talking about costs, I didn't talk about value, I tought that was implicit, maybe I was wrong.
And, Marxist?!? Me?!? Come on...
"Well from your own point of view one would think any amount of fuel it takes could be translated in "amount of labor to create/extract that fuel", so there would be no discrepancy at all, right ?
That is Marxist. And completely different from what I said.
You simply don't measure energy return and investments on labor. You measure it on energy (that is joules or BTU for you). Otherwise it would make no sense.
Getting that labor will take some energy (food, transportation), as all the capital inputs will also take energy (enthalphy and manufacturing). The products will be used to create work. The energy return over energy investiment is the amount of useful work done divided by the amount of energy from labor + capital.
In practice if one really could eliminate all subsidies/tax distortions *and* account for externalities (such as pollution) *and* assume a fairly competitive market (all three very hard to meet conditions, of course) *then* Energy Positive ~= economically viable.
No, it isn't. Energy positive != economicaly viable (I guess that by ~= you mean equivalent, it would make no sense otherwise). For why, read my post again.
Of course, if you don't take exeternalities/subsides into account, you can get fuels that are economicaly viable and not energy positive, otherwise that is impossible. But the main point is that a fuel can be energy positive and not economicaly viable.
"All joking aside, do we really need to verify that a large contingent of Slashdotters don't use IE?"
Yes. Every time we've done that in the past, that large contingent was much smaller than we tought.
Re:This is also the Pirate Party's stance
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Patents Don't Pay
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· Score: 1
Why the question? Compare that with other medical spendings of your government (even if you are from a small/poor country). And that is only for one governemnt, compare that to any UN program.
Re:This is also the Pirate Party's stance
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Patents Don't Pay
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· Score: 1
"The government typically only does one thing well, and that thing is 'screw things up beyond belief."
Oh, no. The governement is also one of the 2 entities able to do good research nowadays. The other is small companies/startups.
If your research is so expensive that a small company can't do it, or has little monetary return, you have only 1 entity able to do it...
The main factor determining the economic viability of a product is how much labor it takes. The main factor determining the energy return of a product is how much fuel it takes. See the discrepancy?
Theoreticaly, for any energy positive fuel, there is a price for fuel (all kinds) for what it is economicaly viable. In practice, oil is cheap.
"f it were just about the monetary cost of things even corn ethanol wins over oil, which would be $13/gallon or more if we started charging the oil companies for our military services."
But remember that fuel is an input to ethanol. And because corn ethanol has a low energy return, that means it needs a lot of fuel to produce, its price will go up acordingly.
Of course, it won't rise as much as oil, just some 1/1.3 = 77% of the oil raise (discounting inflation, that of course will affect both).
"Now that MS are the only ones who are allowed to change the standard"
They can't change the standard anymore. It's on fast-track, and the correction time has passed. Microsoft simply ignored all contradictions reported, making no correction.
Nobody can change it now, it will be accepted or rejected as is.
"Humans achieve good compression on things like encyclopedia knowledge because we don't remember the words at all. We remember the idea, and we have our own dictionary in our heads, and we re-apply words to the idea to reconstruct the entry, rather than memorizing the data. That's why we get great compression; we throw out most of the data, and just remember the "gist" of it, the argument, the facts, in an internal structure of raw ideas stored independently of the words to explain them."
That achieves better compression, but there is a lot of redundancy at our language that we can take advantaje even with lossless algorithms. Lots of that redundancy is on repeated words and too many characters per word, as you noticed, but we already take advantaje of that. Hint: to see how a thesaurus-like indexing and cutting repeated strings compress, just zip some files.
Now, there is some redundancy we still don't take advantaje of. Some of it is on "simpe" (not quite simple, but still not strong AI) rules on our texts, and some of it need context understanding. What those contests are doing is using the "simple" rules, so next improvements will only be made by stong AI. And the fact that the results are public makes it easy for the first person that develops a strong AI to extend those powerfull compressors and prove his/her achievement.
"What we've seen so far is a far greater number of 1024x768 resolutions than anticipated."
Really, what definition did you expect? 1024X768 has being the defaul resolution for Linux for ages (X used to not work very well with anything else). It's being replaced with 1280X1024, but that doesn't happen overnight.
Also, Windows users that care to download GIMP would probably care to change their video mode.
"But the article obsesses with trying to argue that the keyboard is far superior to the mouse rather than saying the keyboard is better for applications that focus on text entry."
Strange... The article I read said that the keyboard was better for discrete data, while mouse was better for continuos.
And PowerPoint using includes both of them, just as gaming. Good gamers use the keyboard AND the mouse, because that gives them better control. But PowerPoint won't let you take full advantaje of the keyboard (as says TFA).
"Third, there is really only one thing I hate about KDE, and that is that if I move my mouse off of whatever form I want to type into (I.e., out of my fucking way) it loses focus. What dimwit came up with this stupid idea? Am I going to have to dig up the source and fix this glaring design ERROR myself?"
That's KDE... There is a config option to control anything:)
Open your control center, and take a look into window behaviour, I think it's there (I may be wrong, since I'm not on KDE now). It is also not the standard behaviour, you probably did set it by chosing "Unix behaviour" at the wisard that appears the first time you run it. Use the default "Windows behaviour" for a Windows like focus or fine set it (personaly, I dislike both).
"I would suggest that when you are writing code that is in excess of 80 columns you might be trying to do too much in one line."
Or you are writing Java code:) But I entirely agree (for most languages, there is a reason java has so many specific editors). When people decided to build 80 columns teletypes, they did it for a reason, and it was not because making wider paper was difficult.
Slashdot Mirror
And you say that the Linux comminity doesn't get it?
We have a problem. And this time it is not ourselves.
No needfor a violence demonstration... Just a tought crime will suffice.
The evidence we have up to today is completely inconclusive and points both ways.
Ok, I was trying to keep things simple... But the main factor altering the COST of a good is the amount of labor it takes. Notice that I said MAIN, labor does not account for the entire cost, just for most of it. It is also a generalization, if you look hard enough, you'll find a few counter examples. Of all the production costs, labor is nowadays and on average the biggest one by far.
Of course, there are two factor affecting economical viability. Those are cost and value. If cost if smaller than value, the product is viable, otherwise it is not. Since the GP was talking about costs, I didn't talk about value, I tought that was implicit, maybe I was wrong.
And, Marxist?!? Me?!? Come on...
That is Marxist. And completely different from what I said.
You simply don't measure energy return and investments on labor. You measure it on energy (that is joules or BTU for you). Otherwise it would make no sense.
Getting that labor will take some energy (food, transportation), as all the capital inputs will also take energy (enthalphy and manufacturing). The products will be used to create work. The energy return over energy investiment is the amount of useful work done divided by the amount of energy from labor + capital.
No, it isn't. Energy positive != economicaly viable (I guess that by ~= you mean equivalent, it would make no sense otherwise). For why, read my post again.
Of course, if you don't take exeternalities/subsides into account, you can get fuels that are economicaly viable and not energy positive, otherwise that is impossible. But the main point is that a fuel can be energy positive and not economicaly viable.
No wonder there is no answer... Apple people weren't able to receive any network package with all those iPhones around.
With added extra compatibility!
I really don't remember RMS saying Linux should change its licence...
That is because we are celebrating Internet Explorer's fall.
Yes. Every time we've done that in the past, that large contingent was much smaller than we tought.
Why the question? Compare that with other medical spendings of your government (even if you are from a small/poor country). And that is only for one governemnt, compare that to any UN program.
"The government typically only does one thing well, and that thing is 'screw things up beyond belief."
Oh, no. The governement is also one of the 2 entities able to do good research nowadays. The other is small companies/startups.
If your research is so expensive that a small company can't do it, or has little monetary return, you have only 1 entity able to do it...
The main factor determining the economic viability of a product is how much labor it takes. The main factor determining the energy return of a product is how much fuel it takes. See the discrepancy?
Theoreticaly, for any energy positive fuel, there is a price for fuel (all kinds) for what it is economicaly viable. In practice, oil is cheap.
But remember that fuel is an input to ethanol. And because corn ethanol has a low energy return, that means it needs a lot of fuel to produce, its price will go up acordingly.
Of course, it won't rise as much as oil, just some 1/1.3 = 77% of the oil raise (discounting inflation, that of course will affect both).
The fact that it is old also works against the clonning...
They can't change the standard anymore. It's on fast-track, and the correction time has passed. Microsoft simply ignored all contradictions reported, making no correction.
Nobody can change it now, it will be accepted or rejected as is.
Nice to know that Hotmail will only accept mail from Windows servers. With specific authorization from the ISP.
That achieves better compression, but there is a lot of redundancy at our language that we can take advantaje even with lossless algorithms. Lots of that redundancy is on repeated words and too many characters per word, as you noticed, but we already take advantaje of that. Hint: to see how a thesaurus-like indexing and cutting repeated strings compress, just zip some files.
Now, there is some redundancy we still don't take advantaje of. Some of it is on "simpe" (not quite simple, but still not strong AI) rules on our texts, and some of it need context understanding. What those contests are doing is using the "simple" rules, so next improvements will only be made by stong AI. And the fact that the results are public makes it easy for the first person that develops a strong AI to extend those powerfull compressors and prove his/her achievement.
One have the option of relicensing it into GPLv3.
Really, what definition did you expect? 1024X768 has being the defaul resolution for Linux for ages (X used to not work very well with anything else). It's being replaced with 1280X1024, but that doesn't happen overnight.
Also, Windows users that care to download GIMP would probably care to change their video mode.
Strange... The article I read said that the keyboard was better for discrete data, while mouse was better for continuos.
And PowerPoint using includes both of them, just as gaming. Good gamers use the keyboard AND the mouse, because that gives them better control. But PowerPoint won't let you take full advantaje of the keyboard (as says TFA).
That's KDE... There is a config option to control anything :)
Open your control center, and take a look into window behaviour, I think it's there (I may be wrong, since I'm not on KDE now). It is also not the standard behaviour, you probably did set it by chosing "Unix behaviour" at the wisard that appears the first time you run it. Use the default "Windows behaviour" for a Windows like focus or fine set it (personaly, I dislike both).
Yes, they can. No, most people (including geeks) don't seem wiling to mess with it.
There is no better way to start a day :)
And musicians, and (recently) video artists. We still are on the way to convince the writters that they shouldn't use Word.
Of course, what is missing from the above list is business-man. That is about to change, but I wouldn't bet on 2008 for them.
Or you are writing Java code :) But I entirely agree (for most languages, there is a reason java has so many specific editors). When people decided to build 80 columns teletypes, they did it for a reason, and it was not because making wider paper was difficult.