Mandating what a monopoly does in no way encourages a free market. Rather, regulating monopolies is necessary only if we don't like the effects of the free market. Your post is so stupid that it boggles the mind. "No, they can't do whatever they want, because the market is free!" That's basically what you're saying right? Nice post.
About all Half-Life and Halo have in common is that their sci-fi themed FPS's which were extremely well done and extremely popular. The gameplay feels completely different. But then again, you'd know that if you weren't just a PC game fanboy troll.
Yes, god forbid that people be allowed to make games that people actually want to buy, so they can turn a profit. I would much rather the government decided what games were made. It's no surprise that games developed in China currently dominate the market. Imagine, without the profit motive how much work everyone would put into coming up with original and polished games! Surely once they can't make any money on it they'll do so much better. You know, because people are always more effective when they have no incentive to get anything done.
The only PS2 game to my knowledge to offer HD video is Gran Turismo 4, released in late 2004. There were other games which offered progressive scan output and/or widescreen mode, but for something to qualify as HD it has to be 720p or higher, which no game before GT4 did. Hence, the Xbox supported HD before the PS2.
Actually, the XBox was the first console to offer HD video, the Xbox 360 will be the first console to offer HD video in all games, and the PS3 will be the first console to play HD movies off of optical discs. I usually don't nitpick like that, but there seem to be a lot of misconceptions about the Xbox 360, so I thought it was worth pointing out.
Actually, the electoral college isn't particularly popular in the US, especially since 2000. The only reason it's still around I believe is because of the difficulty in getting a constitutional ammendment. Well, also the current administration is most likely in favor of the electoral college for obvious reasons. Honestly, I don't know the origins of the UK's system, so I can't comment on that. I believe much of the reason why the US has the electoral college is because a direct election over so many people and such a large area wasn't feasible at the time the system was put in place.
A closer analogy to the way representatives to the UN are chosen though would be if the governors of each state chose the congressmen, which certainly isn't the way it works and I don't think anyone except maybe governors would like it if it was.
Plato got away with comparing people and governments
I think the key phrase is got away with. But even setting aside my complaints about The Republic, my interpretation of the book was different. It seemed to me what he was doing was not trying to justify that the government should be that way because it is like the good person, but trying to make clearer his explanation of why the city would be good. His arguments about the city-state would not have been any more or less valid without the comparison to the good person, they just would've been harder to understand.
The analogy between a government of the people and a government of governments is weak anyway, unless you assume that more government is better. Otherwise, you run afoul of the argument that government is better when it is closer to the people. Instead of people voting on representatives to send to congress, such as in the US, governments would choose a person to send to the international body, and the way that these are determined would vary from being entirely undemocratic to perhaps an elected official, though I don't know how many democratic countries elect a representative to the UN, if any.
The function of government is to restrict freedom, theoritically to the benefit of everyone. If you add more governments there will be more ways in which they want to restrict freedom. It's possible that they could all negate each other, preventing anyone from getting any freedoms restricted, but the political process in practice doesn't work that way. Instead, if politican 1 wants to restrict freedom A, he will probably just agree to help politican 2 restrict freedom B in order to achieve his own goals.
For the average user, the freedom provided by OSS is like the freedom for me to speak Japanese. Sure, there's nothing legally stopping me from doing it. But I don't know how, and have no intention of learning, so I don't really care whether I'm allowed to or not. The average user will never choose an inferior product because it's open source. Maybe because it's free, but that's where pirated software comes in.
If an average user chooses an OSS product, it will be because of price or quality, because don't kid yourself, most users don't give a crap about the principles of the FSF. Hell, I've used Linux for years, have been programming for at least a decade, and I don't even give a crap.
Yeah, that explains why so many software companies have gone out of business due to competition from OSS... Err.. no, wait, I meant Microsoft. So then, I guess I don't agree with your post at all. Nevermind.
Jesus, this should be modded WAY down. When the "intellectual elite" talk this way about the "average" people, why shouldn't they hate you? Assuming you are in some way qualified to be considered in the intellectual elite. My experience is that most people who think they are so qualified, aren't particularly impressive. If intellectual elitists are going to talk about average people like they're chimps, a the way people on slashdot usually do, how can you blame anyone for not wanting to listen to what you have to say?
I see the Nintendo controller being less approachable, like a sibling poster said, because even if non-gamers don't play games, they understand what the activity of playing video games involves. People associated video games with a controller, similar to the PS2. When they see people in best buy playing a demo system that has them making crazy looking motions with a DVD remote, how do people think that is going to make a non-gamer think fun? It seems to me like Nintendo said it will attract non-gamers, so everyone just took it for granted. I just don't see it happening.
Being part of an industry that only provides products which are useless makes me feel unclean. But if we don't even care if software developers charge money for a product they claim is useless, why should we hold them to any other kind of standard. My bad. I guess I should be happy. I always wanted to get paid for doing nothing.
So are you saying that doctors who screw up don't get smacked with higher insurance rates or are you saying that the threat of higher insurance rates don't encourage doctors to be more careful? Or are you talking out of your ass and saying absolutely nothing of substance? (Guess which one I think you're doing.)
I agree that individual programmers within a company shouldn't be liable, but your argument does absolutely nothing to say that software development companies or people who develop entire applications on their own shouldn't be liable. Besides which, if your code wasn't the source of the problem or your code was written to specifications, even if they were holding individual developers liable, then you'd still be fine.
Developers pay money, insurance companies get money, end users get screwed, politicians and executives get rich. This is called "building economic value".
How the hell did this get modded insightful? Your post was reasonably sane, if uninteresting until this point. Ok, developers pay money, insurance companies get money. So, how does this screw end users? Software developers would be forced to write more secure codes to avoid crippling insurance rates. How do politicians and executives get rich, any more than they do already? So are you upset that insurance executives would get rich instead of software executives? Also, if insurance companies could get a cap on liability (they haven't had too much luck doing it with other types of insurance yet), then the price of insurance would go down due to competition between insurance companies.
Besides which, if you don't want there to be liability, which seems to be what you're getting at, how is it worse if the liability is capped?
Not a great example indeed. How about if they manufactured a car which had locks which could easily be picked and built-in security systems which failed to go off when the locks were picked. If something isn't advertised as being secure (I don't remember any car manufacturers advertising that you couldn't slash the tires on their cars.), then it doesn't need to be secure.
If something is advertised as being secure, then it had better be secure. The same thing should apply to software. You should be responsible if you tell customers your software is secure, and it isn't. You should be free to sell software that isn't secure without being responsible though, as long as you don't claim you're selling something that you aren't.
Slashdot Mirror
Mandating what a monopoly does in no way encourages a free market. Rather, regulating monopolies is necessary only if we don't like the effects of the free market. Your post is so stupid that it boggles the mind. "No, they can't do whatever they want, because the market is free!" That's basically what you're saying right? Nice post.
This is a good technique for slashdot. Now people don't need to RTFA too know all that the article has to say about the topic at hand.
About all Half-Life and Halo have in common is that their sci-fi themed FPS's which were extremely well done and extremely popular. The gameplay feels completely different. But then again, you'd know that if you weren't just a PC game fanboy troll.
Yes, god forbid that people be allowed to make games that people actually want to buy, so they can turn a profit. I would much rather the government decided what games were made. It's no surprise that games developed in China currently dominate the market. Imagine, without the profit motive how much work everyone would put into coming up with original and polished games! Surely once they can't make any money on it they'll do so much better. You know, because people are always more effective when they have no incentive to get anything done.
If only someone would bite the bullet and port OS X or Linux to an Intel platform maybe Intel wouldn't be spreading all this propaganda.
I guess it's not fashionable to blame SCO anymore, huh?
So anyone who makes different investments than you would lacks sense?
The only PS2 game to my knowledge to offer HD video is Gran Turismo 4, released in late 2004. There were other games which offered progressive scan output and/or widescreen mode, but for something to qualify as HD it has to be 720p or higher, which no game before GT4 did. Hence, the Xbox supported HD before the PS2.
Actually, the XBox was the first console to offer HD video, the Xbox 360 will be the first console to offer HD video in all games, and the PS3 will be the first console to play HD movies off of optical discs. I usually don't nitpick like that, but there seem to be a lot of misconceptions about the Xbox 360, so I thought it was worth pointing out.
A closer analogy to the way representatives to the UN are chosen though would be if the governors of each state chose the congressmen, which certainly isn't the way it works and I don't think anyone except maybe governors would like it if it was.
I think the key phrase is got away with. But even setting aside my complaints about The Republic, my interpretation of the book was different. It seemed to me what he was doing was not trying to justify that the government should be that way because it is like the good person, but trying to make clearer his explanation of why the city would be good. His arguments about the city-state would not have been any more or less valid without the comparison to the good person, they just would've been harder to understand.
The analogy between a government of the people and a government of governments is weak anyway, unless you assume that more government is better. Otherwise, you run afoul of the argument that government is better when it is closer to the people. Instead of people voting on representatives to send to congress, such as in the US, governments would choose a person to send to the international body, and the way that these are determined would vary from being entirely undemocratic to perhaps an elected official, though I don't know how many democratic countries elect a representative to the UN, if any.
The function of government is to restrict freedom, theoritically to the benefit of everyone. If you add more governments there will be more ways in which they want to restrict freedom. It's possible that they could all negate each other, preventing anyone from getting any freedoms restricted, but the political process in practice doesn't work that way. Instead, if politican 1 wants to restrict freedom A, he will probably just agree to help politican 2 restrict freedom B in order to achieve his own goals.
Yes, how true. More governments being involved always means more freedom.
If an average user chooses an OSS product, it will be because of price or quality, because don't kid yourself, most users don't give a crap about the principles of the FSF. Hell, I've used Linux for years, have been programming for at least a decade, and I don't even give a crap.
Yeah, that explains why so many software companies have gone out of business due to competition from OSS... Err.. no, wait, I meant Microsoft. So then, I guess I don't agree with your post at all. Nevermind.
No, the vast improvements made to the code make it faster and more secure.
Jesus, this should be modded WAY down. When the "intellectual elite" talk this way about the "average" people, why shouldn't they hate you? Assuming you are in some way qualified to be considered in the intellectual elite. My experience is that most people who think they are so qualified, aren't particularly impressive. If intellectual elitists are going to talk about average people like they're chimps, a the way people on slashdot usually do, how can you blame anyone for not wanting to listen to what you have to say?
One could also make cases for the following:
I see the Nintendo controller being less approachable, like a sibling poster said, because even if non-gamers don't play games, they understand what the activity of playing video games involves. People associated video games with a controller, similar to the PS2. When they see people in best buy playing a demo system that has them making crazy looking motions with a DVD remote, how do people think that is going to make a non-gamer think fun? It seems to me like Nintendo said it will attract non-gamers, so everyone just took it for granted. I just don't see it happening.
Being part of an industry that only provides products which are useless makes me feel unclean. But if we don't even care if software developers charge money for a product they claim is useless, why should we hold them to any other kind of standard. My bad. I guess I should be happy. I always wanted to get paid for doing nothing.
So are you saying that doctors who screw up don't get smacked with higher insurance rates or are you saying that the threat of higher insurance rates don't encourage doctors to be more careful? Or are you talking out of your ass and saying absolutely nothing of substance? (Guess which one I think you're doing.)
I agree that individual programmers within a company shouldn't be liable, but your argument does absolutely nothing to say that software development companies or people who develop entire applications on their own shouldn't be liable. Besides which, if your code wasn't the source of the problem or your code was written to specifications, even if they were holding individual developers liable, then you'd still be fine.
Do you have any reason to think that they do collude other than typical paranoid slashdot bullshit?
How the hell did this get modded insightful? Your post was reasonably sane, if uninteresting until this point. Ok, developers pay money, insurance companies get money. So, how does this screw end users? Software developers would be forced to write more secure codes to avoid crippling insurance rates. How do politicians and executives get rich, any more than they do already? So are you upset that insurance executives would get rich instead of software executives? Also, if insurance companies could get a cap on liability (they haven't had too much luck doing it with other types of insurance yet), then the price of insurance would go down due to competition between insurance companies.
Besides which, if you don't want there to be liability, which seems to be what you're getting at, how is it worse if the liability is capped?
If something is advertised as being secure, then it had better be secure. The same thing should apply to software. You should be responsible if you tell customers your software is secure, and it isn't. You should be free to sell software that isn't secure without being responsible though, as long as you don't claim you're selling something that you aren't.