Of course many old companies are much larger and more competitive now than 100 years ago, but you've misunderstood the question: not a company, an industry.
First, gas (car petrol) is expensive outside of the US because it is heavily taxed - and that is a very good thing, but it doesn't have anything to do with the cost of producing oil.
Second, how we use gas - in leafblowers and whatnot - may be ludicrously inefficient considering it is a nonrenewable resource, but again that doesn't have anything to do with the cost of producing oil.
And third, gas is $75/barrel in a market that is controlled largely by OPEC - a shameless cartel - when according to the Wall Street Journal, "getting oil to the surface currently costs under $5 a barrel in Saudi Arabia, with the global average cost certainly under $15." The largest supplies are, conveniently, in Saudi, and when I lived in the Middle East a few years ago my oil engineer friends used to laugh at those figures, saying that the way oil is deposited in Saudi is so convenient that the actual cost of producing is closer to $1/barrel.
If that's not market failure, I don't know what is.
The exception, of course, are true monopolies which most people do agree should be subject to careful oversight.
While there are indeed still exceptions, there's no question it's getting harder and harder to find an industry where monopolies don't tend to form of their own volition in the absence of regulatory intervention. Local mom-and-pop shops, for example, are almost completely extinct now. Acquisitions and mergers are ensuring that the corporations who put small businesses under eventually get swallowed up by the biggest fish until there's only the one or two left.
Try to name, for example, an industry that was around 100 years ago that is still around today and is MORE competitive now than it was in 1907.
property owners could always build their own infrastructure on their property
I don't think that's an accurate assumption. There are a lot of things you're not allowed to do on your own property. You can't, for example, build roads or sewer pipes on your own property without permits. You can't even do your own plumbing work in many places because of unions. Things are heavily regulated, and since the regulators are in the pockets of corporate lobbyists, my guess is that you'd have a much harder time creating your own telecom structure than you might imagine.
You're right, of course, that regulation can just as often open the door for abuse as curtail it. However, I don't think anyone has ever made a very compelling case of giant corporations enhancing competition and transparency when left entirely to their own devices. A few people have tried - I think Friedman might be one of those economists who genuinely believes that all regulation is a bad thing. But again, my point about the systemic paradox stands irrespective of the effects of regulation.
While you're right, of course, about this being a story about government regulation, I don't see how that negates the contradiction I pointed out in my post. Without regulation, corporations would have even more leeway to stifle competition and transparency - examples of which abound, especially outside of western culture (example: the now richest guy in the world, the Mexican telecom magnate and his monopoly in Mexico).
This is just the latest piece of evidence for the case that completely unbridled market capitalism is not without flaws. The biggest shortcoming, in my opinion, is the inherent contradiction between what drives the market economy and how markets work:
Mainstream economic theory clearly states that free markets only work when they are both competitive and transparent, and yet, just as clearly, the profit motive drives companies to minimize both competition and transparency. Profit itself is therefore inherently at loggerheads with the two prerequisites of free markets. As competition and transparency decline, so does market efficiency, until at some point inefficiency yields to outright market failure. We already have market failure in many industries - oil, diamonds, OS and Office software, telecommunications - and now broadband too, it seems. It's funny this contradiction raises so few eyebrows...
Re:Lots of linux stories on the front page
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Hardening Linux
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If there's a bigger - and by bigger I mean more populated - Linux fanboy forum than slashdot, I'm not aware of it. All in all, I think it's probably a good thing though.
Unfortunately, marketing is a necessary evil. And not just in business. You have to sell yourself, you have to sell your merits, you have to promote and promulgate your ideas and your beliefs and your values, whether your a person or a business or any other kind of organization or institution.
But if by marketing you just mean the crap that's on TV intermixed with the shows, well, fair enough.
I'm no expert and I know this thing is tiny, but aren't laptop motherboards already pretty small? The motherboards in some of those tiny Sony Vaios must not be much bigger than this thing, and thinner too - and they've been around for a few years now.
Thorium good, but if possible, fusion even better.
It's important to define 'better' here. Cost would seem to be an important consideration, for example. I don't know what the price tag of fusion is so far, but it's awfully, awfully high already and without a great deal to show for it. If we've already got a pretty good thing in thorium, and we already have the reactors, and there's enough thorium and uranium to keep us in electricity at present consumption rates for thousands of years, and it's non-polluting and all the rest, then how is fusion - a hugely expensive, so far unproductive technology - 'even better'. I'm not quibbling or trying to be antagonistic here - it's a serious question, and it needs a serious answer considering what's at stake: we need clean, non-polluting power that doesn't ultimately come from politically volatile parts of the world.
I was reading about thorium reactors recently. Seems like that's much closer to being rolled out, and its developers are claiming it solves a lot of the problems with existing reactors: it's more stable because thorium reactions don't chain the same way, it doesn't produce waste or plutonium, it can actually burn up other waste - including plutonium, and it can be used in some types of existing reactors (there are trials in Russian reactors right now).
You're clearly the expert here, so I don't doubt you for a second. Still, to my eye there was something flat about the lighting in particular in the demo clips compared to the depth of the CryEngine 2(and the Cryengine does all that real-time editing and rendering too, from what I've seen). I've been waiting a long time for really convincing lighting - the current generation doesn't do a very good job of looking 'realistic' to my eye, and it's mainly because of lighting, whereas the demos I've seen of Crysis are really starting to look like something you could actually get away with calling photo-realistic. Unreal 3 looks pretty good too, although it's harder to tell because the game setting is so cartoonish. I don't know technically why that is, I just know what my eye tells me.
Thanks - interesting stuff. In my opinion, the lighting doesn't look as realistic as the CryEngine's fancy new bump-mapping stuff. It almost looks like DX9 instead of DC10... Maybe it's just me. The textures don't pop, and I didn't see much in terms of depth of field or motion blurring or ambient lighting and occlusion effects. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
The article doesn't say much about the new engine. Does anyone know how it compares with the Unreal 3 engine or the CryEngine 2 (used in the upcoming Crysis)? Those engines look pretty amazing.
Like I said, I'm happy to give a full, logical explanation if anyone wants. But the situation isn't any more 'controversial' (as in 'teach the controversy') than 1+1=2. If you don't understand that 1+1=2, then, well, the fact is you're either stupid or ignorant. But I'm willing to go to the trouble of spelling out exactly why if you want.
If you don't think ID is complete hogwash on every conceivable level, and if you respect so-called biologists with that view, then you either aren't aware of all of the information available or don't understand the situation fully - or both (this is a kind way of saying you're either ignorant or stupid or both). Sorry fundies and moderates alike, them's the facts. If you want the open-and-closed case, just read Dawkins' stuff. If anyone wants a fuller explanation, just reply and I'll be happy to give it.
The bottom line is that it serves no real scientific purpose that can not be achieved better and cheaper with machines.
I hear this line of argument a lot, and I'm no expert so I don't make any claims one way or the other, but looking from examples here on Earth, why do we send scientists to Antarctica, say, or deep into deserts and jungles and other remote and inaccessible places? Obviously it's not as expensive to send people, but still - can't a scientist still do better work in person than a robot on a tether?
the habit of boiling water allowed urbanisation to increase dramatically, where hitherto cities had been limited by our frankly shocking approach to sanitation.
I think you'll find alcohol took care of the sterilization job long before boiling took off in 'western' cultures (it was widespread elsewhere long before). Throughout most of history, beer and wine were much safer to drink than fresh water. Milk is sterile enough straight from the tap but doesn't stay that way, whereas booze does. I think you'd have a much harder time making the 'tea made urbanization possible' argument than the 'beer made civilization possible' argument. Hopefully that puts things into perspective...
I'm not so sure. I think it's possible to predict with certainty what big changes will occur, but not when. We can, for example, pretty safely predict that we will eliminate mortality, that AI will eventually be invented and that it will be integrated from the start directly into human beings (already happening - many of us couldn't solve problems we deal with every day without the use of our technology tools), and that shortly following the advent of AI the growth of our ability to control our environment will far outstrip the growth pace of the problems we've created on our planet. Further down the line, physical bodies lose their relevance as telepresence combines with virtual reality and with bionics (biological-machine interconnectivity). In the long, long run 'life' loses its fixed physical shell entirely and only the essence of it remains: information. You know, the whole energy-beings thing. The other major thing we can predict quite safely is that ALL of that will happen MUCH sooner than we think. Famous futurist Ray Kurzweil seems pretty convinced it'll all happen by 2150 or so. I'm not so sure.
But all of the tiny intermediate steps? The political and cultural changes? Those are almost impossible to predict, and any one of them could be the butterfly that starts typhoon.
See the other post by the Linux expert who has just filed a bug report because the Ubuntu installer does not explain that the default option will safely create a dual-boot system.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course many old companies are much larger and more competitive now than 100 years ago, but you've misunderstood the question: not a company, an industry.
First, gas (car petrol) is expensive outside of the US because it is heavily taxed - and that is a very good thing, but it doesn't have anything to do with the cost of producing oil.
Second, how we use gas - in leafblowers and whatnot - may be ludicrously inefficient considering it is a nonrenewable resource, but again that doesn't have anything to do with the cost of producing oil.
And third, gas is $75/barrel in a market that is controlled largely by OPEC - a shameless cartel - when according to the Wall Street Journal, "getting oil to the surface currently costs under $5 a barrel in Saudi Arabia, with the global average cost certainly under $15." The largest supplies are, conveniently, in Saudi, and when I lived in the Middle East a few years ago my oil engineer friends used to laugh at those figures, saying that the way oil is deposited in Saudi is so convenient that the actual cost of producing is closer to $1/barrel.
If that's not market failure, I don't know what is.
While there are indeed still exceptions, there's no question it's getting harder and harder to find an industry where monopolies don't tend to form of their own volition in the absence of regulatory intervention. Local mom-and-pop shops, for example, are almost completely extinct now. Acquisitions and mergers are ensuring that the corporations who put small businesses under eventually get swallowed up by the biggest fish until there's only the one or two left.
Try to name, for example, an industry that was around 100 years ago that is still around today and is MORE competitive now than it was in 1907.
I don't think that's an accurate assumption. There are a lot of things you're not allowed to do on your own property. You can't, for example, build roads or sewer pipes on your own property without permits. You can't even do your own plumbing work in many places because of unions. Things are heavily regulated, and since the regulators are in the pockets of corporate lobbyists, my guess is that you'd have a much harder time creating your own telecom structure than you might imagine.
You're right, of course, that regulation can just as often open the door for abuse as curtail it. However, I don't think anyone has ever made a very compelling case of giant corporations enhancing competition and transparency when left entirely to their own devices. A few people have tried - I think Friedman might be one of those economists who genuinely believes that all regulation is a bad thing. But again, my point about the systemic paradox stands irrespective of the effects of regulation.
While you're right, of course, about this being a story about government regulation, I don't see how that negates the contradiction I pointed out in my post. Without regulation, corporations would have even more leeway to stifle competition and transparency - examples of which abound, especially outside of western culture (example: the now richest guy in the world, the Mexican telecom magnate and his monopoly in Mexico).
Mainstream economic theory clearly states that free markets only work when they are both competitive and transparent, and yet, just as clearly, the profit motive drives companies to minimize both competition and transparency. Profit itself is therefore inherently at loggerheads with the two prerequisites of free markets. As competition and transparency decline, so does market efficiency, until at some point inefficiency yields to outright market failure. We already have market failure in many industries - oil, diamonds, OS and Office software, telecommunications - and now broadband too, it seems. It's funny this contradiction raises so few eyebrows...
If there's a bigger - and by bigger I mean more populated - Linux fanboy forum than slashdot, I'm not aware of it. All in all, I think it's probably a good thing though.
You mean like a giant alien robot made out of five smaller robots shaped like lions that wields a sword?
We're probably very, very lucky terrorists aren't as smart as that.
But if by marketing you just mean the crap that's on TV intermixed with the shows, well, fair enough.
I'm no expert and I know this thing is tiny, but aren't laptop motherboards already pretty small? The motherboards in some of those tiny Sony Vaios must not be much bigger than this thing, and thinner too - and they've been around for a few years now.
It's important to define 'better' here. Cost would seem to be an important consideration, for example. I don't know what the price tag of fusion is so far, but it's awfully, awfully high already and without a great deal to show for it. If we've already got a pretty good thing in thorium, and we already have the reactors, and there's enough thorium and uranium to keep us in electricity at present consumption rates for thousands of years, and it's non-polluting and all the rest, then how is fusion - a hugely expensive, so far unproductive technology - 'even better'. I'm not quibbling or trying to be antagonistic here - it's a serious question, and it needs a serious answer considering what's at stake: we need clean, non-polluting power that doesn't ultimately come from politically volatile parts of the world.
Does anyone know any more about this?
You're clearly the expert here, so I don't doubt you for a second. Still, to my eye there was something flat about the lighting in particular in the demo clips compared to the depth of the CryEngine 2(and the Cryengine does all that real-time editing and rendering too, from what I've seen). I've been waiting a long time for really convincing lighting - the current generation doesn't do a very good job of looking 'realistic' to my eye, and it's mainly because of lighting, whereas the demos I've seen of Crysis are really starting to look like something you could actually get away with calling photo-realistic. Unreal 3 looks pretty good too, although it's harder to tell because the game setting is so cartoonish. I don't know technically why that is, I just know what my eye tells me.
Thanks - interesting stuff. In my opinion, the lighting doesn't look as realistic as the CryEngine's fancy new bump-mapping stuff. It almost looks like DX9 instead of DC10... Maybe it's just me. The textures don't pop, and I didn't see much in terms of depth of field or motion blurring or ambient lighting and occlusion effects. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
The article doesn't say much about the new engine. Does anyone know how it compares with the Unreal 3 engine or the CryEngine 2 (used in the upcoming Crysis)? Those engines look pretty amazing.
Like I said, I'm happy to give a full, logical explanation if anyone wants. But the situation isn't any more 'controversial' (as in 'teach the controversy') than 1+1=2. If you don't understand that 1+1=2, then, well, the fact is you're either stupid or ignorant. But I'm willing to go to the trouble of spelling out exactly why if you want.
If you don't think ID is complete hogwash on every conceivable level, and if you respect so-called biologists with that view, then you either aren't aware of all of the information available or don't understand the situation fully - or both (this is a kind way of saying you're either ignorant or stupid or both). Sorry fundies and moderates alike, them's the facts. If you want the open-and-closed case, just read Dawkins' stuff. If anyone wants a fuller explanation, just reply and I'll be happy to give it.
I hear this line of argument a lot, and I'm no expert so I don't make any claims one way or the other, but looking from examples here on Earth, why do we send scientists to Antarctica, say, or deep into deserts and jungles and other remote and inaccessible places? Obviously it's not as expensive to send people, but still - can't a scientist still do better work in person than a robot on a tether?
Anyone want to start laying bets on who lands a person on Mars first? It's looking more and more like the Chinese if you ask me.
I think you'll find alcohol took care of the sterilization job long before boiling took off in 'western' cultures (it was widespread elsewhere long before). Throughout most of history, beer and wine were much safer to drink than fresh water. Milk is sterile enough straight from the tap but doesn't stay that way, whereas booze does. I think you'd have a much harder time making the 'tea made urbanization possible' argument than the 'beer made civilization possible' argument. Hopefully that puts things into perspective...
But all of the tiny intermediate steps? The political and cultural changes? Those are almost impossible to predict, and any one of them could be the butterfly that starts typhoon.
Nobody is in that situation, so your example is pointless.
See the other post by the Linux expert who has just filed a bug report because the Ubuntu installer does not explain that the default option will safely create a dual-boot system.