I do know that, which is why I have a long, complex password on my iPhone. (The fact that you do not know this is possible points out that you still know nothing of Apple's security.) You are committing the equivalent of submitting an article from 1995 as evidence against someone claiming that computers are faster today than they were in 1995.
So TFA says "iPhone security used to be terrible, but is now much better," and your response is basically, "No it's not: here's a 2 year old article that says that iPhone security is terrible." You haven't exactly disputed the article.
Isn't the iCloud stuff (specifically, the device backups) also AES encrypted with a key Apple doesn't have? I will have to dig up the article, but I'm pretty sure I saw that.
Sigh. OK, let me try this again. "Good" in "public good" doesn't mean what you think it does. You are using the definition that is similar to "nice," as opposed to the definition that is similar to "product." In economics, which is what is being discussed in this subthread, a "public good" is a kind of product or service, not something that is good, or even essential, to have. No one is disagreeing that it is good (in the sense of nice) to have clean, fresh water. The discussion is whether clean, fresh water is a public good (that is, a product or service which is non-rivalrous and non-excludeable). That has policy implications, of course, but those are not really being discussed. The second AC, who claimed that pricing mechanisms don't work because "[g]roundwater aquifers are rival [sic] and non-excludable goods" was obviously moving towards the policy implications, using the terminology of public goods (product, not nice) to set up an argument that therefore water (from aquifers at least) shouldn't be market priced, but he got it wrong.
Not really. "Public good" doesn't mean "good for the public to have" or even "if it exists, people are necessarily better off". A public good is a good (not as in nice, but as in providable product) that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. That is to say, a public good is non-rivalrous in that your possession of it does not preclude my possession of it. Consider light: the light bulb is rivalrous (if you have it I do not), but the light it casts is non-rivalrous (it is provided to anyone in range and arc). A public good is non-excludable in that you cannot be precluded from access to it. Consider national defense: if the country is defended and you are in the country, you are defended. A public good, in short, is something that is equally available to everyone by its very nature. Clean air is a public good. National defense is a public good. A rainstorm is a public good. But water is not: it is rivalrous (if I have the water, you do not) and excludable (I can keep you from getting it).
Uh, they're both rivalrous (if I use the water, you can't) and excludable (you can be prevented from using the water). Not sure where you picked up the words around public goods, but it might be wise to re-read it for improved understanding. In fact, this is a textbook example of how pricing mechanisms work. Consider:
Assume that the market for water from the aquifer is unregulated. If the cost of extracting water is $x/unit, then the price will be $x + p% per unit, where p% is the profit. This results in a certain level of demand.
Now, consider the case where the demand is quite high. This in turn reduces the supply of water in the aquifer, meaning that $x in turn will rise. This will have two effects. 1. More people will find alternatives to water from the aquifer. They might use less water, find alternate sources of fresh water, desalinate ocean water, move, buy bottled water or choose some other alternative. This will act to reduce demand, tending to bring the supply and demand back into equilibrium. 2. More people will be incentivized to extract water from the aquifer because the higher profits make it worth their while, thus increasing supply and tending to bring the supply and demand back into equilibrium.
Similarly, because the market is unregulated, if suppliers attempt to raise p%, it will cause both some flight from the market (reducing demand, and thus the actual monetary amounts generated as profit) and some level of increased competition (because new competitors would find it profitable to enter the market at a lower profit margin). The net effect is to eventually lower the profit margins to the smallest amount needed to stay in business, plus some premium for market entry costs (expensive equipment, skilled personnel and the like). In other words, it tends to make the cost of water as cheap as practical.
Taken together, these two effects mean that people who most need the water will get the most water, and that everyone will get the water at the cheapest possible price. The proper and useful role of government is to prevent monopolization of the resource or ancillary resources (like the ability to transport the water), to prevent cartelization, and to ensure that property rights are respected (as in, you can't undermine my house to get at the water). When the government goes beyond that, it distorts supply, demand and or price, generally leading to misallocation, reduced availability, artificially higher prices and other bad side effects. For true public goods (clean air, for instance, or national defense), these side effects are unavoidable, and the useful question is how much of the public good can the government and the wider economy afford to deliver. That doesn't apply to the example of an aquifer, though, because it's not actually a public good.
Identity is difficult. We have a mental model that says that a person is a person — a simple one to one correspondence that always holds the same. That is, I am always identical to myself in all aspects and particulars. This model is insufficient in at least four aspects: we are made up from and are a part of multiple identities; not all of our identities are directly connected; parts of our identities change over time; and we have different uses of identity which require different ideas about identity, but we treat them all as if they are the same.
When I am typing on SlashDot, part of who I am comes through. This is not the same part that comes through when I'm with my family, nor are either of those the same as what comes through when I am at work. You can say that in some sense these are all the same, just with different aspects showing through, which is basically (not to troll, but just to make it easier to visualize) the same as the Christian conception of Diety in three parts, each distinct but also each identical. You can also say that these are in some sense different identities, linked by my mind and body. Normally, the distinction wouldn't matter, but there are cases where it does. For example, consider the case of multiple personalities. It's a rare disorder — far more rare than movies or criminal defendants would have you believe — but it does exist. In a true multiple personality case, even the memories accessible to different personalities can be wildly different, along with of course their personalities and behaviors. Online, this is frequently encountered, because people assume different characters in different contexts, and in the anonymizing world of online communities, these characters can be wildly divergent. Treating all of these as identical misses a lot of nuance that typically is not very meaningful in everyday life, but is meaningful in circumstances rare in everyday life but common on computers. The foremost example of this is that I don't want an online identity I don't completely control (my work login) having access to an online identity that I do completely control (my bank account) which has real-world, practical consequences if the two get mixed up in some fashion. And yet both of these identities are real, complete identities, each sufficient to grant me access to a different set of information with limited access.
It's actually even harder than the above would imply, because not all of our identities even overlap. Consider reputation. One of the reasons Anonymous Cowards are so frequently despised on SlashDot is that they have no reputation. You cannot believe that just because an AC tells you something interesting, true and not widely known in one context does not mean that that AC or a different one will not lie outrageously and slanderously in another context. My reputation here, or on Twitter, or in real life is in some sense connected to my other identities, in that it was my actions that partially formed that reputation, but they are not directly connected. Consider the case of negative political advertising, which is often so effective precisely because the attack is on the reputation of the target, and thus is not entirely within the control of the target. This makes it much harder a politician to defend himself, because those reputations can be changed beyond the control of the politicians themselves. Moreover, anyone who has ever done anything of note will likely have multiple reputations. Would anyone argue that Jimmy Carter's reputation among Republicans (formed largely by his foreign and economic policies and the contemporaneous condition of the outside world) is the same as his reputation among Democrats (formed largely by his humanitarian work after he left office)? These reputations do not directly connect to each other, and only in a tangential way do they connect to his reputation among family and friends. So it is with all of us, though usually less dramatically than that.
Every time I read crap like this (or equivalent crap from the partisan Right), I feel just a little more inclined against a broad-based popular vote. Sadly, the alternatives all tend to be worse even than uninformed, blinkered partisans voting.
First, the political damage is not that huge. Second, it's very likely that Romney has paid little income tax, though quite large amounts of other taxes, given that most of his income is from investments, which are taxed as capital gains. So given the current media's biases, what are the odds that, if that's correct, people will hear the full story, vice just hearing "Romney paid no taxes"?
Also, as an aside, I think Reid is traveling a dangerous road. Do we really want our political leaders decided on baseless rumors, guilt until the target proves innocence, and purely partisan/tribal cheerleading? Really? Because that's where Reid is going in service of the Obama campaign, and the immediate reaction on Twitter (thousands of tweets claiming Reid is a pederast, with as much evidence as Reid produced) may look funny now, but won't look all that funny when we reach the logical conclusions of such tactics.
Frankly, I don't care if people kill their own babies, except for the long-term demographic effect on society, but can we at least acknowledge that such a position means that we are not opposing infanticide? Giving it a new name doesn't change what it is, so calling it barbaric and grisly is hardly beyond the pale.
Yes, they could put more money into infrastructure, and probably should. But a microcell in every customer's home is insane. Not just the cost of rolling them out in the first place, but maintenance and support and such. The cost to support and maintain those devices would be immense, and thus the monthly bills would have to go up rather dramatically to make them worthwhile. And this is all assuming their customers would be willing to foot the bill for electricity and provide space.
Wait, what? Government legally mandates services and prices, granting monopolies to companies within those terms, and you think that's a failure of capitalism?
That can't be a serious answer (though of course, posting as AC gives that away from the start). I never said that one could make money from impossible things. I asked why the original AC assumed that "commercialization and profit motive" were incompatible with "technology and energy sources." The most charitable interpretation of your comment that I can come up with is that you misunderstood. More likely, you believe that the two are incompatible, and that commercialization and profit motive cannot in fact overcome large distances or the need for a large amount of energy, a view which is at odds with history and human nature. Certainly, the OP seemed to think that, which is why I asked the question in the first place.
There's no ability to have an argument or discussion if you can't even agree on terms. The AC was saying that Obama is not a socialist and that the only way to define Obama as a socialist was to ignore history, dictionaries and the like. OK, so then if he's going to ignore the definitions anyone else provides, he has to provide his own definitions, and we can then argue or discuss on those terms.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, bummer. One more reason not to move stuff over to iCloud (besides the use case issues).
I do know that, which is why I have a long, complex password on my iPhone. (The fact that you do not know this is possible points out that you still know nothing of Apple's security.) You are committing the equivalent of submitting an article from 1995 as evidence against someone claiming that computers are faster today than they were in 1995.
So TFA says "iPhone security used to be terrible, but is now much better," and your response is basically, "No it's not: here's a 2 year old article that says that iPhone security is terrible." You haven't exactly disputed the article.
Isn't the iCloud stuff (specifically, the device backups) also AES encrypted with a key Apple doesn't have? I will have to dig up the article, but I'm pretty sure I saw that.
Sigh. OK, let me try this again. "Good" in "public good" doesn't mean what you think it does. You are using the definition that is similar to "nice," as opposed to the definition that is similar to "product." In economics, which is what is being discussed in this subthread, a "public good" is a kind of product or service, not something that is good, or even essential, to have. No one is disagreeing that it is good (in the sense of nice) to have clean, fresh water. The discussion is whether clean, fresh water is a public good (that is, a product or service which is non-rivalrous and non-excludeable). That has policy implications, of course, but those are not really being discussed. The second AC, who claimed that pricing mechanisms don't work because "[g]roundwater aquifers are rival [sic] and non-excludable goods" was obviously moving towards the policy implications, using the terminology of public goods (product, not nice) to set up an argument that therefore water (from aquifers at least) shouldn't be market priced, but he got it wrong.
The software problems aren't the problems. Direct democracies fail because they inevitably result in mob rule. That and attacking Syracuse.
None, because I don't regard children as pollution. However, I do have four wonderful sons, whom I wouldn't trade for anything.
You first.
Not really. "Public good" doesn't mean "good for the public to have" or even "if it exists, people are necessarily better off". A public good is a good (not as in nice, but as in providable product) that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. That is to say, a public good is non-rivalrous in that your possession of it does not preclude my possession of it. Consider light: the light bulb is rivalrous (if you have it I do not), but the light it casts is non-rivalrous (it is provided to anyone in range and arc). A public good is non-excludable in that you cannot be precluded from access to it. Consider national defense: if the country is defended and you are in the country, you are defended. A public good, in short, is something that is equally available to everyone by its very nature. Clean air is a public good. National defense is a public good. A rainstorm is a public good. But water is not: it is rivalrous (if I have the water, you do not) and excludable (I can keep you from getting it).
You want pictures?
Uh, they're both rivalrous (if I use the water, you can't) and excludable (you can be prevented from using the water). Not sure where you picked up the words around public goods, but it might be wise to re-read it for improved understanding. In fact, this is a textbook example of how pricing mechanisms work. Consider:
Assume that the market for water from the aquifer is unregulated. If the cost of extracting water is $x/unit, then the price will be $x + p% per unit, where p% is the profit. This results in a certain level of demand.
Now, consider the case where the demand is quite high. This in turn reduces the supply of water in the aquifer, meaning that $x in turn will rise. This will have two effects. 1. More people will find alternatives to water from the aquifer. They might use less water, find alternate sources of fresh water, desalinate ocean water, move, buy bottled water or choose some other alternative. This will act to reduce demand, tending to bring the supply and demand back into equilibrium. 2. More people will be incentivized to extract water from the aquifer because the higher profits make it worth their while, thus increasing supply and tending to bring the supply and demand back into equilibrium.
Similarly, because the market is unregulated, if suppliers attempt to raise p%, it will cause both some flight from the market (reducing demand, and thus the actual monetary amounts generated as profit) and some level of increased competition (because new competitors would find it profitable to enter the market at a lower profit margin). The net effect is to eventually lower the profit margins to the smallest amount needed to stay in business, plus some premium for market entry costs (expensive equipment, skilled personnel and the like). In other words, it tends to make the cost of water as cheap as practical.
Taken together, these two effects mean that people who most need the water will get the most water, and that everyone will get the water at the cheapest possible price. The proper and useful role of government is to prevent monopolization of the resource or ancillary resources (like the ability to transport the water), to prevent cartelization, and to ensure that property rights are respected (as in, you can't undermine my house to get at the water). When the government goes beyond that, it distorts supply, demand and or price, generally leading to misallocation, reduced availability, artificially higher prices and other bad side effects. For true public goods (clean air, for instance, or national defense), these side effects are unavoidable, and the useful question is how much of the public good can the government and the wider economy afford to deliver. That doesn't apply to the example of an aquifer, though, because it's not actually a public good.
Identity is difficult. We have a mental model that says that a person is a person — a simple one to one correspondence that always holds the same. That is, I am always identical to myself in all aspects and particulars. This model is insufficient in at least four aspects: we are made up from and are a part of multiple identities; not all of our identities are directly connected; parts of our identities change over time; and we have different uses of identity which require different ideas about identity, but we treat them all as if they are the same.
When I am typing on SlashDot, part of who I am comes through. This is not the same part that comes through when I'm with my family, nor are either of those the same as what comes through when I am at work. You can say that in some sense these are all the same, just with different aspects showing through, which is basically (not to troll, but just to make it easier to visualize) the same as the Christian conception of Diety in three parts, each distinct but also each identical. You can also say that these are in some sense different identities, linked by my mind and body. Normally, the distinction wouldn't matter, but there are cases where it does. For example, consider the case of multiple personalities. It's a rare disorder — far more rare than movies or criminal defendants would have you believe — but it does exist. In a true multiple personality case, even the memories accessible to different personalities can be wildly different, along with of course their personalities and behaviors. Online, this is frequently encountered, because people assume different characters in different contexts, and in the anonymizing world of online communities, these characters can be wildly divergent. Treating all of these as identical misses a lot of nuance that typically is not very meaningful in everyday life, but is meaningful in circumstances rare in everyday life but common on computers. The foremost example of this is that I don't want an online identity I don't completely control (my work login) having access to an online identity that I do completely control (my bank account) which has real-world, practical consequences if the two get mixed up in some fashion. And yet both of these identities are real, complete identities, each sufficient to grant me access to a different set of information with limited access.
It's actually even harder than the above would imply, because not all of our identities even overlap. Consider reputation. One of the reasons Anonymous Cowards are so frequently despised on SlashDot is that they have no reputation. You cannot believe that just because an AC tells you something interesting, true and not widely known in one context does not mean that that AC or a different one will not lie outrageously and slanderously in another context. My reputation here, or on Twitter, or in real life is in some sense connected to my other identities, in that it was my actions that partially formed that reputation, but they are not directly connected. Consider the case of negative political advertising, which is often so effective precisely because the attack is on the reputation of the target, and thus is not entirely within the control of the target. This makes it much harder a politician to defend himself, because those reputations can be changed beyond the control of the politicians themselves. Moreover, anyone who has ever done anything of note will likely have multiple reputations. Would anyone argue that Jimmy Carter's reputation among Republicans (formed largely by his foreign and economic policies and the contemporaneous condition of the outside world) is the same as his reputation among Democrats (formed largely by his humanitarian work after he left office)? These reputations do not directly connect to each other, and only in a tangential way do they connect to his reputation among family and friends. So it is with all of us, though usually less dramatically than that.
Our identities also change over time. Not
And this differs from Obama (before or during - and almost certainly after - his presidency) how exactly?
Every time I read crap like this (or equivalent crap from the partisan Right), I feel just a little more inclined against a broad-based popular vote. Sadly, the alternatives all tend to be worse even than uninformed, blinkered partisans voting.
Yes, that kind as well.
Also, as an aside, I think Reid is traveling a dangerous road. Do we really want our political leaders decided on baseless rumors, guilt until the target proves innocence, and purely partisan/tribal cheerleading? Really? Because that's where Reid is going in service of the Obama campaign, and the immediate reaction on Twitter (thousands of tweets claiming Reid is a pederast, with as much evidence as Reid produced) may look funny now, but won't look all that funny when we reach the logical conclusions of such tactics.
He's from Massachusetts. In Dante's Hell, the center is frozen. Coincidence? I think not!
Frankly, I don't care if people kill their own babies, except for the long-term demographic effect on society, but can we at least acknowledge that such a position means that we are not opposing infanticide? Giving it a new name doesn't change what it is, so calling it barbaric and grisly is hardly beyond the pale.
Yes, they could put more money into infrastructure, and probably should. But a microcell in every customer's home is insane. Not just the cost of rolling them out in the first place, but maintenance and support and such. The cost to support and maintain those devices would be immense, and thus the monthly bills would have to go up rather dramatically to make them worthwhile. And this is all assuming their customers would be willing to foot the bill for electricity and provide space.
Wait, what? Government legally mandates services and prices, granting monopolies to companies within those terms, and you think that's a failure of capitalism?
Math is hard!
That's a fine idea. Please ignore that your monthly cell costs are now $500 per device.
That can't be a serious answer (though of course, posting as AC gives that away from the start). I never said that one could make money from impossible things. I asked why the original AC assumed that "commercialization and profit motive" were incompatible with "technology and energy sources." The most charitable interpretation of your comment that I can come up with is that you misunderstood. More likely, you believe that the two are incompatible, and that commercialization and profit motive cannot in fact overcome large distances or the need for a large amount of energy, a view which is at odds with history and human nature. Certainly, the OP seemed to think that, which is why I asked the question in the first place.
There's no ability to have an argument or discussion if you can't even agree on terms. The AC was saying that Obama is not a socialist and that the only way to define Obama as a socialist was to ignore history, dictionaries and the like. OK, so then if he's going to ignore the definitions anyone else provides, he has to provide his own definitions, and we can then argue or discuss on those terms.
And in your next post, you are to decry "haters" and such?