Copyright infringement isn't theft, nothing was stolen.
Of course it was. The economic effect is literally no different to paying for a work legally, enjoying that work as allowed by the deal, but then stealing that money back from the person who provided it to you.
I'm not sure you understand what copyright infringement is nor its effects. Original law was all based on originators (authors) not having their works "stolen" by publishing houses (yes, even then they were unscrupulous) and having copies printed and sold without the author's consent nor compensating the author. Note this still wasn't theft. Heavy civil penalties might actually have made the punishment worse than other crimes, however, and for the time, large scale copyright infringement of even hundreds of copies could easily bankrupt a business and its owners.
Copyright law also protected the author from people effectively stealing their creative works (characters and story environments) and creating their own works from those (derivative works) significantly lowering their effort and riding on another's success. Copyright infringement of this type is what the law was originally combatting, not an individual creating their own copy for personal use, say copying a map for use on a boat while retaining the original at home.
Both of those cases effectively combatted others profiting from an originator's work. Copyright infringement today, I buy a blu-ray and copy it, legally I've committed copyright infringement if I chose a specific manner specified as illegal. However, no theft occurred, nor did the originator lose money. Now, I rent a disk and view it and return the disk. Is that denying the originator money? You can argue it both ways, and I know the MPAA wanted to remove that ability but hasn't figured out a way that consumers would accept. Hypothetically, I copy that rented disk and watch it later. Same scenario logically, only an extra step. It's now considered illegal and denying the originator money? Nope. If renting and watching is not denying the originator money, neither is renting, ripping and watching it later. Same scenario goes for borrowing a disk. This is 100% legal, and also something the MPAA would love to halt. Note that VOD actually is a consumer accepted version of both these end goals. Now, are those posting to torrent sites and the like breaking copyright law? I'd say yes, even in terms of the original 1790 act, because you are in fact publishing and/or vending works. Are the sites themselves breaking copyright law? No more or less than any other forum or medium that allows people to publish things as a start, but other activities may color it negatively. For instance, a torrent site that tracks multiple Linux distros is obviously not in violation. Someone posts the latest hit song. I'd argue the site is still not in violation. (DMCA states it needs a takedown mechanism, and if it institutes one, then its obviously in compliance)
These scenarios are why a lot of people believe copyright law as it stands today is completely broken and in contravention of its original intent.
Since DRM fails at its core stated purpose, I'd say there's something else afoot in providing for that revenue.
This is a common argument, but it's easily defeated. DRM is very effective at limiting casual infringement, and that is already a huge win for content creators in the modern digital world.
Casual copying of video and audio is so trivial, it doesn't even register as an obstacle. Audio was so trivial no one semi-intelligent even tries to DRM it anymore. Video DRM is completely broken, and always will be. The same non DMCA violating approach works for 4K (AACS2) as it does for regular HD video because, in the end, something has to signal the underlying system of pixel generating hardware. Now, I'll agree that that approach isn't commonly trivial, but 4K's AACS2 was already reportedly cracked b
OK, so can we also stop complaining when people refer to copyright infringement as fraud or theft
Copyright infringement isn't theft, nothing was stolen. It's not fraud, unless you present it as something it's not.
Because while applying DRM on works you're supplying as a permanent purchase is one thing, some form of restriction is necessary in practice for any business model that works on a less permanent basis.
DRM does nothing at all to prevent copying of visual/audible art by those that wish to copy. Thus it is defective by design.
Far from being exploitative, those business models have been some of the most successful of the Internet age at both providing sustainable revenues for producers and providing more, cheaper and more easily accessible content to consumers.
Since DRM fails at its core stated purpose, I'd say there's something else afoot in providing for that revenue. In music, especially, we have demonstrable proof in iTunes, Amazon, etc, that no DRM has actually caused increased legal sales. In gog, we have proof that people will pay for software with no DRM. So I'd say it's only a matter of time until the rest of the industry finally lets go of this archaic and anti-customer concept and just provide a product people will pay for.
That comes into play as soon as the inventor actually produces a working model. But fair enough, somewhere in between works for me. Anything along either proposal is better than the current situation.
a) I'd allowed for halting progress by limiting the "hold" period for up to 1 (2 or 3) years.
b) As for injunctions, why? If a company builds an infringing item, there are already means to recoup any lost revenue, including licensing (not everything needs to go through the courts, and a patent isn't a guarantee of "all your base belong to us" either, IMHO).
The trade-off for the protections has to be some limit on pre working copy restrictions, and having a working item as a sample should surely allow an inventor to rapidly complete his own (a flaw, now the inventor is copying a real item!). As soon as the inventor produces a working copy, the patent goes to active pending and is published.
Just my thoughts on something that is fair and workable.
He can file and it's on hold for a year. There has to be a limit, make it 2 years, or 3 years, but not much more. In the meantime nothing's leaked, but he doesn't get to submarine other's work 15 years down the line, like happens today with trolls.
To prevent a whole crap load of headaches, you could file, but it would be pending and "secret" until you've proven it. The filing date would be the active date, should the patent be granted. You are pressured to file early because of first to file, but until it is built, you gain no protection. Since the date is based on the application filing date, you are pressured to build a working model sooner than later. Perhaps a year in pending state before getting tossed would help the situation? Also, modifying the application still goes on the initial date, or you file a new application, with no protection from the earlier filing, setting a new date and allowing someone else to effectively "file first". Seems to address trolls quite well.
The famous cotton gin certainly was a product in and of itself, and going further back were printing presses, hemp, corn and grain processing or stone cutting and polishing machines. Seems like those were all things, and they date all the way back to the earliest patents.
I would go a step further, until you have a physical manifestation of your invention, you have nothing to patent. Anyone can have an idea (flying cars!) but until you build one IMNSHO you have nothing patentable.
You're one of those idiots who said all through the 70s as I grew of age that "Oh we will have blimps delivering everything here and there...."
Actually, I'm one of the people that still wish for flying cars, realizing that when they do arrive, they'll be quite a bit different than what was envisioned.
Let me ask you this since you are a frigging "Rocket Scientist, why the hell do you need an "income" if the entire damn world is automated to the point of nobody works anymore? Huh? It's ALL kumbaya free is what you keep telling me. What's up with this "income" bullshit?
Just riddle me that one?
How many houses are available on the cliffs overlooking that picturesque bay? How will you decide who gets one?
Besides the 2 specific anecdotal references to communities whose children lived together and married within their community, I also stated "In fact, most tribal communities practice this lifestyle, which means that for eons humans have lived more like this than not." Note that many towns and villages in history were under 200 people (the number you reference below) and in various areas were cloistered and separated into their own small communes. I know Westermarck listed large numbers of cases where communities wouldn't marry within their villages, but did he look at the other cases?
And it isn't exactly clear what those examples actually prove. No, I disagree there: even myriads of loose anecdotal 'evidence' has little weight, unless it's researched and analyzed well, including the possible variables. This goes both ways, btw, so I'm remaining consistent. There isn't exactly an overabundance of scientific evidence for the Westermarck effect, granted, but at least there is some, and it has more weight to random live examples where one really have no dataset for to even make a valid conclusion.
And I think this is where I agree with the latter papers questioning whether Westermarck was at all observing what he thought he was observing. It's little different than all the folks thinking the world was flat for a while or that phsycists in 1905 were correct about quantum mechanics, etc etc etc. Now, having said that, I have not carefully read and verified Westermarck's work. He presents a series of observations and makes statements, but no actual backing numbers or anything else that would be required to qualify as a scientific study today. It's more a philosophical work or presented as a logical premise with many many quotations of unknown quality. Given what we know about how much late 1800s science was incorrect about, especially regarding anthropology and sociology, it's likely easier to attempt to validate or discredit the supposed effect than it would be to make a case from his 1890s work.
if I recall correctly you need a minimum of 200 individuals who are fairly genetically distinct to each other to not suffer from any biological deterioration of the species.
I agree with you that is the stated hypothetical minimum. No one knows for sure, however, as no one has ever experimentally verified it. And at least one significant exception to this: anything that does not reproduce sexually.
The closer related a community is, the more problems one gets, which is why first and second degree incest gives the worst results. It doesn't mean cousins and nieces don't suffer from the same fate eventually, though - even if it's partially true the first time it happens it may give pretty fit offspring, in repetition through generations it will deteriorate as well.
This is what has been observed, courtesy of the various European royal bloodlines most publicly.
If a small community is isolated, than sooner or later all individuals of that community will be too closely related. One may counter that by saying most communities are larger than 200 people, but if people are that unrelated, I would hardly call it inbreeding in the classical sense anymore.
There's a current hypothesis outside of the argument that we all sprang from 1 woman roughly 170K years ago that there were also perhaps as few as 1200 individuals in our direct ancestral line as recently as 80K years ago. I say direct, because at this point we've verified genetic contributions from 3 different cousins to homo sapiens, and there is evidence for at least 1 more branch, so far unidentified. I will guarantee you that 80K years ago, those groups of ancestors were small and living apart, with many likely not seeing other groups. We know several current ethnicities branched off at different times in the past 100K years and saw little to no inbreeding resulting in our current racial mixture, so it'd be an interesting question as to how many individuals were involved in each grouping. We'll likely never know.
To address the first only briefly, the real life examples, and an entire segment of human population / history can be considered anecdotal, for sure. However, I'm claiming that with so many potential cases countering your original position I took exception to:
Scientific research has already indicated humans get more insensitive (aka; the desire/rutting stage gets less) when they hang out around the same faces, and the more you hang out with them, the less the sexual attraction plays.
a paper making a statement that such inbreeding is the exception rather than the rule better have some significant data addressing a good portion of that human population/history. But, we can put those aside.
First, inbreeding probably needs to be defined just a bit here - it can be inbreeding among a community, which happens often today and throughout history. Inbreeding among a single family unit or first and second order descendants we hope happens seldom today, although we know historically it has happened, and likely happened often, given the amount of recessive genes expressed and/or homogeneity of genomes among a large number of distinct groups. Note that investigations have been done on groups such as the Icelandic, Finnish, Swedish, and various groups in the pacific, central and south america, Tibetans, and on and on wherever a unique culture and relatively isolated group exists.
There is a plethora of evidence for this, so one paper now claiming there is nothing to it, makes *that* paper pretty dubious, not all the others. In fact, if memory serves well, even sex-prone animals as bonobo's avoid child-parent incestuous behavior. And one can hardly claim it's a matter of culture in the animal kingdom.
I think first off, you're making a too narrow assumption about what inbreeding is defined as as far as making any case about it. There is far more than 1 paper raising questions regarding the Westermarck effect and whether any of the supposedly strongest "evidence" for it is actually valid. I'd strongly submit that there's no such "effect" at al, that what's being observed is entirely environmental, and that such behavior only came about when the human race evolved to the point that they lived long enough on average for such activity to even be possible on a regular basis. But that too is a mere hypothesis, and no more or less valid than Westermarck's observations / hypothesis, to be honest.
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
Branch Davidians
Both practice(d) intense communal living and intra-tribal style marriages. In fact, most tribal communities practice this lifestyle, which means that for eons humans have lived more like this than not.
And then there's the work of people like Greg Leavitt (and your referenced Eran Shor btw) who directly counter that the behavior is likely only environmental, not innate:
In this article, I not only challenge the commonly held notion that inbreeding is injurious, but also argue that inbreeding is often harmless and even fitness-enhancing. If so, Westermarck's hypothesis that children raised together naturally trigger selection mechanisms for sexual avoidance is highly questionable.
With Medicare specifically the issue is that health insurance costs will skyrocket over what anyone planned on, especially with the republicans attempting to almost double the cost for seniors. Note that only has effect until you're 65, as of today. If you have to plan on spending an additional 30K a year pre-tax on health insurance when they push that age upwards (and you know that's coming) I'd definitely call that punishment.
What you're overlooking is that there is less and less work to be had as automation takes over. Stop looking backwards and start looking forwards. For most lower level work, odds are high that 50+% of it will be automated within 20 years. Even burger flipping will be gone.
For a device like a router, turning off all unnecessary services, closing everything off and then opening things as needed, and only patching security vulnerabilities...
Is actually the correct answer for any device. Services that you don't need, like about 80% of those on a windows box, are just additional vectors begging for an incursion. Even XP can be locked down pretty tight to about 8 services. In that mode, and not running any MS applications, you're actually relatively secure for a windows system. But MS is about everything and the kitchen sink, now enforced in Win10, along with a forced new feature acceptance schedule. That's the opposite of being able to secure your system.
I personally would love to see the Tea party split off, and then the moderate centrist Republicans and Democrats create a new party, and the liberal left fold into its own party. with 2 or 3 centrist parties, we might finally get to a point where we have reasonable politics again, and a big error like Trump would not happen again.
Interesting then that the people most end up with are those they grew up with and even saw daily, instead of random people they meet in passing in grocery store or the like. Also interesting how most work relationships only happen after a lot of time spent in close quarters, after getting to know someone. In short, I'd question your assertions without some significant studies proving that people are less attracted to those they spend time with daily.
Once the tipping point where gen X and younger outnumber the boomers and older, there is going to be a bit of a revolution. Nothing too dramatic, just democracy at work, but those entitled asshats have set themselves up for a pretty hard fall.
Except by then all gen Xers will be on the same entitlement programs that you'd have to cut. Then again, they're already cut for gen Xers, by virtue of being delayed. The only thing I see making a difference will be the forced austerity when the receipts and bank are less than the obligations. I fully expect to get shafted again by the goal posts moving to 70 before I get there. Then again, I've made plans that don't include any government stipend for retirement. My main worry is that medicare/medicaid will be altered enough to punish me for being foresighted.
Really, honestly, house prices haven't risen that much in certain areas of the country, at least not compared to wages. What has changed is that the more affordable houses are in areas no one wants to live in.
Desire has its place, the workplace shouldn't be it.
Err...can you point me to the method to instantly turn off/on that hormone switch, and turn off my male sexually programmed brain?
Yes, whenever I see a woman, I instantly instinctually size her up with the question, "would I want to fuck her"?
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one that does this...it is evolution as another person put it.
So how does that work when you see your mom/sister/daughter/grandmother/etc?
I'd make the case that you're already being selective about when you even think those thoughts, and that you need to move yourself out of rutting stage when you're at work as well.
Desire has its place, the workplace shouldn't be it. Something about "don't crap where you eat" comes to mind. If some employees can't control themselves, then there's a door they can be shown.
The CPU in the Alienware is factory overclocked to 4.4GHz though. It is faster.
That would be quite a neat trick, considering the base is 2.9GHz for that CPU. Maybe they're advertising the max turbo mode? I don't know or care, really, because if they're really running that CPU at a base 4.4GHz, it'd a) be smoking hot b) be limited in life span, and c) be an indicator that the battery might last an hour. Also, I'd recommend an asbestos blanket for your lap.
Thanks for pointing that out. LPDDR3 is even slower than DDR3 making it just that much worse than DDR4. Oh and it's DOUBLE the DDR4.
And yet in performance benchmarks for things that matter - ie, real life work, LPDDR3 seems to have exactly 0 effect.
Most people don't carry their laptops everywhere with them. They tend to go in the car to and from home and work. For anything else we use our smartphones and tablets. My laptop is supposed to be a replacement for a full desktop PC, not some high price, low spec Macbook shit.
Then you are not the target audience for a MBP, so why are you commenting? The entire group of folks I deal with do take their laptops everywhere, and especially at work we move around with them. They are not desktops, but mobile work stations. The group of folks you're describing could just as well use a USB drive to transfer their work to and from their home desktop, saving themselves 9 pounds of carriage. If someone gave me an Alienware "laptop" I would sell it immediately and buy a real desktop or a replacement MBP, depending upon my needs. As for smartphones or tablets, yes, they're great to check email or do a 1 or 2 line reply, but absolutely horrible for more than that.
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Copyright infringement isn't theft, nothing was stolen.
Of course it was. The economic effect is literally no different to paying for a work legally, enjoying that work as allowed by the deal, but then stealing that money back from the person who provided it to you.
I'm not sure you understand what copyright infringement is nor its effects. Original law was all based on originators (authors) not having their works "stolen" by publishing houses (yes, even then they were unscrupulous) and having copies printed and sold without the author's consent nor compensating the author. Note this still wasn't theft. Heavy civil penalties might actually have made the punishment worse than other crimes, however, and for the time, large scale copyright infringement of even hundreds of copies could easily bankrupt a business and its owners.
Copyright law also protected the author from people effectively stealing their creative works (characters and story environments) and creating their own works from those (derivative works) significantly lowering their effort and riding on another's success. Copyright infringement of this type is what the law was originally combatting, not an individual creating their own copy for personal use, say copying a map for use on a boat while retaining the original at home.
Both of those cases effectively combatted others profiting from an originator's work. Copyright infringement today, I buy a blu-ray and copy it, legally I've committed copyright infringement if I chose a specific manner specified as illegal. However, no theft occurred, nor did the originator lose money. Now, I rent a disk and view it and return the disk. Is that denying the originator money? You can argue it both ways, and I know the MPAA wanted to remove that ability but hasn't figured out a way that consumers would accept. Hypothetically, I copy that rented disk and watch it later. Same scenario logically, only an extra step. It's now considered illegal and denying the originator money? Nope. If renting and watching is not denying the originator money, neither is renting, ripping and watching it later. Same scenario goes for borrowing a disk. This is 100% legal, and also something the MPAA would love to halt. Note that VOD actually is a consumer accepted version of both these end goals. Now, are those posting to torrent sites and the like breaking copyright law? I'd say yes, even in terms of the original 1790 act, because you are in fact publishing and/or vending works. Are the sites themselves breaking copyright law? No more or less than any other forum or medium that allows people to publish things as a start, but other activities may color it negatively. For instance, a torrent site that tracks multiple Linux distros is obviously not in violation. Someone posts the latest hit song. I'd argue the site is still not in violation. (DMCA states it needs a takedown mechanism, and if it institutes one, then its obviously in compliance)
These scenarios are why a lot of people believe copyright law as it stands today is completely broken and in contravention of its original intent.
Since DRM fails at its core stated purpose, I'd say there's something else afoot in providing for that revenue.
This is a common argument, but it's easily defeated. DRM is very effective at limiting casual infringement, and that is already a huge win for content creators in the modern digital world.
Casual copying of video and audio is so trivial, it doesn't even register as an obstacle. Audio was so trivial no one semi-intelligent even tries to DRM it anymore. Video DRM is completely broken, and always will be. The same non DMCA violating approach works for 4K (AACS2) as it does for regular HD video because, in the end, something has to signal the underlying system of pixel generating hardware. Now, I'll agree that that approach isn't commonly trivial, but 4K's AACS2 was already reportedly cracked b
OK, so can we also stop complaining when people refer to copyright infringement as fraud or theft
Copyright infringement isn't theft, nothing was stolen. It's not fraud, unless you present it as something it's not.
Because while applying DRM on works you're supplying as a permanent purchase is one thing, some form of restriction is necessary in practice for any business model that works on a less permanent basis.
DRM does nothing at all to prevent copying of visual/audible art by those that wish to copy. Thus it is defective by design.
Far from being exploitative, those business models have been some of the most successful of the Internet age at both providing sustainable revenues for producers and providing more, cheaper and more easily accessible content to consumers.
Since DRM fails at its core stated purpose, I'd say there's something else afoot in providing for that revenue. In music, especially, we have demonstrable proof in iTunes, Amazon, etc, that no DRM has actually caused increased legal sales. In gog, we have proof that people will pay for software with no DRM. So I'd say it's only a matter of time until the rest of the industry finally lets go of this archaic and anti-customer concept and just provide a product people will pay for.
That comes into play as soon as the inventor actually produces a working model. But fair enough, somewhere in between works for me. Anything along either proposal is better than the current situation.
a) I'd allowed for halting progress by limiting the "hold" period for up to 1 (2 or 3) years.
b) As for injunctions, why? If a company builds an infringing item, there are already means to recoup any lost revenue, including licensing (not everything needs to go through the courts, and a patent isn't a guarantee of "all your base belong to us" either, IMHO).
The trade-off for the protections has to be some limit on pre working copy restrictions, and having a working item as a sample should surely allow an inventor to rapidly complete his own (a flaw, now the inventor is copying a real item!). As soon as the inventor produces a working copy, the patent goes to active pending and is published.
Just my thoughts on something that is fair and workable.
He can file and it's on hold for a year. There has to be a limit, make it 2 years, or 3 years, but not much more. In the meantime nothing's leaked, but he doesn't get to submarine other's work 15 years down the line, like happens today with trolls.
To prevent a whole crap load of headaches, you could file, but it would be pending and "secret" until you've proven it. The filing date would be the active date, should the patent be granted. You are pressured to file early because of first to file, but until it is built, you gain no protection. Since the date is based on the application filing date, you are pressured to build a working model sooner than later. Perhaps a year in pending state before getting tossed would help the situation? Also, modifying the application still goes on the initial date, or you file a new application, with no protection from the earlier filing, setting a new date and allowing someone else to effectively "file first". Seems to address trolls quite well.
The famous cotton gin certainly was a product in and of itself, and going further back were printing presses, hemp, corn and grain processing or stone cutting and polishing machines. Seems like those were all things, and they date all the way back to the earliest patents.
I would go a step further, until you have a physical manifestation of your invention, you have nothing to patent. Anyone can have an idea (flying cars!) but until you build one IMNSHO you have nothing patentable.
You're one of those idiots who said all through the 70s as I grew of age that "Oh we will have blimps delivering everything here and there...."
Actually, I'm one of the people that still wish for flying cars, realizing that when they do arrive, they'll be quite a bit different than what was envisioned.
Let me ask you this since you are a frigging "Rocket Scientist, why the hell do you need an "income" if the entire damn world is automated to the point of nobody works anymore? Huh? It's ALL kumbaya free is what you keep telling me. What's up with this "income" bullshit?
Just riddle me that one?
How many houses are available on the cliffs overlooking that picturesque bay? How will you decide who gets one?
The explicitly stated purpose for patents is to give a [temporary] monopoly in return for publicly documenting inventions.
These trolling ACs are hilarious, it's like they're detached from reality like... Trump.
I'd say that since Samsung used *copied* images from Apple's patents in their design docs....
So many? You gave two.
Besides the 2 specific anecdotal references to communities whose children lived together and married within their community, I also stated "In fact, most tribal communities practice this lifestyle, which means that for eons humans have lived more like this than not." Note that many towns and villages in history were under 200 people (the number you reference below) and in various areas were cloistered and separated into their own small communes. I know Westermarck listed large numbers of cases where communities wouldn't marry within their villages, but did he look at the other cases?
And it isn't exactly clear what those examples actually prove. No, I disagree there: even myriads of loose anecdotal 'evidence' has little weight, unless it's researched and analyzed well, including the possible variables. This goes both ways, btw, so I'm remaining consistent. There isn't exactly an overabundance of scientific evidence for the Westermarck effect, granted, but at least there is some, and it has more weight to random live examples where one really have no dataset for to even make a valid conclusion.
And I think this is where I agree with the latter papers questioning whether Westermarck was at all observing what he thought he was observing. It's little different than all the folks thinking the world was flat for a while or that phsycists in 1905 were correct about quantum mechanics, etc etc etc. Now, having said that, I have not carefully read and verified Westermarck's work. He presents a series of observations and makes statements, but no actual backing numbers or anything else that would be required to qualify as a scientific study today. It's more a philosophical work or presented as a logical premise with many many quotations of unknown quality. Given what we know about how much late 1800s science was incorrect about, especially regarding anthropology and sociology, it's likely easier to attempt to validate or discredit the supposed effect than it would be to make a case from his 1890s work.
if I recall correctly you need a minimum of 200 individuals who are fairly genetically distinct to each other to not suffer from any biological deterioration of the species.
I agree with you that is the stated hypothetical minimum. No one knows for sure, however, as no one has ever experimentally verified it. And at least one significant exception to this: anything that does not reproduce sexually.
The closer related a community is, the more problems one gets, which is why first and second degree incest gives the worst results. It doesn't mean cousins and nieces don't suffer from the same fate eventually, though - even if it's partially true the first time it happens it may give pretty fit offspring, in repetition through generations it will deteriorate as well.
This is what has been observed, courtesy of the various European royal bloodlines most publicly.
If a small community is isolated, than sooner or later all individuals of that community will be too closely related. One may counter that by saying most communities are larger than 200 people, but if people are that unrelated, I would hardly call it inbreeding in the classical sense anymore.
There's a current hypothesis outside of the argument that we all sprang from 1 woman roughly 170K years ago that there were also perhaps as few as 1200 individuals in our direct ancestral line as recently as 80K years ago. I say direct, because at this point we've verified genetic contributions from 3 different cousins to homo sapiens, and there is evidence for at least 1 more branch, so far unidentified. I will guarantee you that 80K years ago, those groups of ancestors were small and living apart, with many likely not seeing other groups. We know several current ethnicities branched off at different times in the past 100K years and saw little to no inbreeding resulting in our current racial mixture, so it'd be an interesting question as to how many individuals were involved in each grouping. We'll likely never know.
To address the first only briefly, the real life examples, and an entire segment of human population / history can be considered anecdotal, for sure. However, I'm claiming that with so many potential cases countering your original position I took exception to:
a paper making a statement that such inbreeding is the exception rather than the rule better have some significant data addressing a good portion of that human population/history. But, we can put those aside.
First, inbreeding probably needs to be defined just a bit here - it can be inbreeding among a community, which happens often today and throughout history. Inbreeding among a single family unit or first and second order descendants we hope happens seldom today, although we know historically it has happened, and likely happened often, given the amount of recessive genes expressed and/or homogeneity of genomes among a large number of distinct groups. Note that investigations have been done on groups such as the Icelandic, Finnish, Swedish, and various groups in the pacific, central and south america, Tibetans, and on and on wherever a unique culture and relatively isolated group exists.
There is a plethora of evidence for this, so one paper now claiming there is nothing to it, makes *that* paper pretty dubious, not all the others. In fact, if memory serves well, even sex-prone animals as bonobo's avoid child-parent incestuous behavior. And one can hardly claim it's a matter of culture in the animal kingdom.
I think first off, you're making a too narrow assumption about what inbreeding is defined as as far as making any case about it. There is far more than 1 paper raising questions regarding the Westermarck effect and whether any of the supposedly strongest "evidence" for it is actually valid. I'd strongly submit that there's no such "effect" at al, that what's being observed is entirely environmental, and that such behavior only came about when the human race evolved to the point that they lived long enough on average for such activity to even be possible on a regular basis. But that too is a mere hypothesis, and no more or less valid than Westermarck's observations / hypothesis, to be honest.
Both practice(d) intense communal living and intra-tribal style marriages. In fact, most tribal communities practice this lifestyle, which means that for eons humans have lived more like this than not.
And then there's the work of people like Greg Leavitt (and your referenced Eran Shor btw) who directly counter that the behavior is likely only environmental, not innate:
With Medicare specifically the issue is that health insurance costs will skyrocket over what anyone planned on, especially with the republicans attempting to almost double the cost for seniors. Note that only has effect until you're 65, as of today. If you have to plan on spending an additional 30K a year pre-tax on health insurance when they push that age upwards (and you know that's coming) I'd definitely call that punishment.
What you're overlooking is that there is less and less work to be had as automation takes over. Stop looking backwards and start looking forwards. For most lower level work, odds are high that 50+% of it will be automated within 20 years. Even burger flipping will be gone.
For a device like a router, turning off all unnecessary services, closing everything off and then opening things as needed, and only patching security vulnerabilities...
Is actually the correct answer for any device. Services that you don't need, like about 80% of those on a windows box, are just additional vectors begging for an incursion. Even XP can be locked down pretty tight to about 8 services. In that mode, and not running any MS applications, you're actually relatively secure for a windows system. But MS is about everything and the kitchen sink, now enforced in Win10, along with a forced new feature acceptance schedule. That's the opposite of being able to secure your system.
I personally would love to see the Tea party split off, and then the moderate centrist Republicans and Democrats create a new party, and the liberal left fold into its own party. with 2 or 3 centrist parties, we might finally get to a point where we have reasonable politics again, and a big error like Trump would not happen again.
Interesting then that the people most end up with are those they grew up with and even saw daily, instead of random people they meet in passing in grocery store or the like. Also interesting how most work relationships only happen after a lot of time spent in close quarters, after getting to know someone. In short, I'd question your assertions without some significant studies proving that people are less attracted to those they spend time with daily.
Once the tipping point where gen X and younger outnumber the boomers and older, there is going to be a bit of a revolution. Nothing too dramatic, just democracy at work, but those entitled asshats have set themselves up for a pretty hard fall.
Except by then all gen Xers will be on the same entitlement programs that you'd have to cut. Then again, they're already cut for gen Xers, by virtue of being delayed. The only thing I see making a difference will be the forced austerity when the receipts and bank are less than the obligations. I fully expect to get shafted again by the goal posts moving to 70 before I get there. Then again, I've made plans that don't include any government stipend for retirement. My main worry is that medicare/medicaid will be altered enough to punish me for being foresighted.
Really, honestly, house prices haven't risen that much in certain areas of the country, at least not compared to wages. What has changed is that the more affordable houses are in areas no one wants to live in.
Err...can you point me to the method to instantly turn off/on that hormone switch, and turn off my male sexually programmed brain?
Yes, whenever I see a woman, I instantly instinctually size her up with the question, "would I want to fuck her"?
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one that does this...it is evolution as another person put it.
So how does that work when you see your mom/sister/daughter/grandmother/etc?
I'd make the case that you're already being selective about when you even think those thoughts, and that you need to move yourself out of rutting stage when you're at work as well.
Desire has its place, the workplace shouldn't be it. Something about "don't crap where you eat" comes to mind. If some employees can't control themselves, then there's a door they can be shown.
The CPU in the Alienware is factory overclocked to 4.4GHz though. It is faster.
That would be quite a neat trick, considering the base is 2.9GHz for that CPU. Maybe they're advertising the max turbo mode? I don't know or care, really, because if they're really running that CPU at a base 4.4GHz, it'd a) be smoking hot b) be limited in life span, and c) be an indicator that the battery might last an hour. Also, I'd recommend an asbestos blanket for your lap.
Thanks for pointing that out. LPDDR3 is even slower than DDR3 making it just that much worse than DDR4. Oh and it's DOUBLE the DDR4.
And yet in performance benchmarks for things that matter - ie, real life work, LPDDR3 seems to have exactly 0 effect.
Most people don't carry their laptops everywhere with them. They tend to go in the car to and from home and work. For anything else we use our smartphones and tablets. My laptop is supposed to be a replacement for a full desktop PC, not some high price, low spec Macbook shit.
Then you are not the target audience for a MBP, so why are you commenting? The entire group of folks I deal with do take their laptops everywhere, and especially at work we move around with them. They are not desktops, but mobile work stations. The group of folks you're describing could just as well use a USB drive to transfer their work to and from their home desktop, saving themselves 9 pounds of carriage. If someone gave me an Alienware "laptop" I would sell it immediately and buy a real desktop or a replacement MBP, depending upon my needs. As for smartphones or tablets, yes, they're great to check email or do a 1 or 2 line reply, but absolutely horrible for more than that.