Bullshit. The marginal costs of one copy are negligible. Even more so with corporate licenses, where you don't need to provide packaging, etc. Pricing in software can be completely arbitrarily and there is nothing bad about setting it at any level or even giving a 90% discount. Such discounts are common for academic users, for example. And in some cases certain groups of customers get the product for free. So MS has the right to give MS Office away - they are not dumping.
BTW, in the past courts (in the US) agreed that setting the price below average costs but above marginal costs is not dumping (I don't remember where and when the decision was made - read about that 2 weeks ago in a Macroeconomics textbook).
First, these requirements you are talking about are not mandatory. Some philosophers got away with not fulfilling them. Shall we mention Plato? Second, we haven't seen the Revolutions yet. You didn't expect a conclusion from a middle-part in the trilogy, did you?:)
Regarding Nick Bostrom, see my related post here. I'd like to think that he has some academic honesty (and I am grateful to him for writing/editing the Transhumanist FAQ), but his simulation ideas are bullshit, indeed.
It is highly regarded as one of the most accurate historical books of its time.
What a barefaced lie... An accurate historical book? BOOM!........ Sorry, fell off my chair laughing.:) Just for starters, it tells us how world was created in six days, which is obviously bullshit. It also tells us about this guy called Jesus Christ, but for some strange reason he (or she) is not mentioned anywhere else. The fucking son of god went to our planet and nobody bothered to write anything about it, not even a post-it note, until many years passed after he [supposedly] died. Isn't that strange?
Matrix doesn't say that our world is a simulation. It just gives the viewers some philosophical ideas in a form better suited for mass consumption than traditional philosophy books. And you are wrong to call it junk food. Real philosophy does not have to be boring. Of course, if some tedious cunt^H^H^H^HKant was writing, no normal person can read and enjoy it. But there have been many thinkers who were able to both entertain the reader and communicate their original and interesting ideas very clearly. I love how marxists in the early 20th century approached this. Their idea was (you wouldn't believe it) that they needed to teach workers (who were not particularly well-educated back then) philosophy (!) because that was an important prerequisite for class struggle. And somehow they managed to explain the ideas of Feuerbach, Kant and Gegel on accessible level.
If the philosophers of today don't want to do be accessible, we must be grateful that certain cinematographers are stepping in to fill this void.
Actually, Bostrom's "proof" has lots of errors, logical and others. Which is suprising, since he lists probability theory as one of his areas of expertise.
I've written a small essay with a more or less detailed explanation of the errors. Unfortunately, the final version is available only in Russian and only a rough draft is available in English.
You make good arguments and I tend to agree with most of them, but please do not shout about natural price. There is no such thing.:) There are supply and demand curves, there is equilibrium price, but there is no such thing as "natural price". People are simply making a new supply curve - practically infinite supply at practically zero price (suppliers/distributors do not bear the costs and are not paid).
Of course, this is just a poorly captured teaser taken from the game booth, but still. There is nothing new in it. Everything that this teaser shows, was already in either TTT or FotR. Except for some weird fireballs.Gimli fighting? Tired of it. Legolas shooting arrows? Oh, spare me. Gandalf kicking ass with his stick? Seen in the end of TTT. Theoden unsure about something? The whole TTT was about that. Some plains shot from helicopter? Enough of that. So, while poorly captured TTT teaser was cool and full of new and exciting things, this one is not.
What I don't understand in all the hype BT receives is how specifically it is better than ed2k network?
eDonkey also has hashes (and more conveniently it doesn't require hosting a.torrent file - ed2k text link is enough). eDonkey has chunk-based downloading and everything else that was mentioned in this discussion.
Is BitTorrent really better than ed2k? I understand that some groups of people may just stick to it, making certain kinds of content easier to obtain from BT (like anime fansubs already mentioned here), but are there any technical advantages?
If you discover illegal goodies on a machine, what should you do about it?
I would explain the owner of that machine the risks associated with having such files on his/her machine and give him some suggestions about reducing that risk, like storing the "goodies" on external drive and/or using encryption.
If his activities may negatively affect the company, I would suggest that he/she ceases them.
P.S. It's nobody's business what a person stored on his HDD/CDs. I don't think there is a need to check every CD thrown in the trash and every computer sent into service centre. The fact that it is accessible doesn't mean it's a right thing to check it. Do you look for porn magazines/videos when you visit your friend at his/her home to report them to his/her spouse? That would be a good first step to witch trials...
Good that you understand. Now the only difference between you and Al Gore is quantitative. And it is huge.;) He was the first and the most influencial politician who helped create the Internet. He also understood the importance of the high-speed data communications very early.
So does he deserve a credit for being a forward-thinking politician with a good understanding of technology? Yes. Do you? Probably not.
And does his statement about taking an initiative in creating Internet carry much more weight than a similar statement from you? Definitely yes.
When I was a kid, I lived in a 12-storey apartment building (that was not in the US). There was a huge yard shared by the people where kids could play (with their firends and puppies, if necessary) and be supervised from the kitchen or any other room. Contrary to what you may think, communicating with a child from your flat on the 10th floor is not difficult at all.:)
There is no reason why you can't have a nice community with 16+ storey apartment buildings and outstanding facilities for people to share.
P.S. And what about American obsession with front lawns? Do your kids play there with a puppy?
And what was the end-result? That even ineffective, corrupted and terribly dogmatic state socialism with a planned economy works better in Russia than a liberal and democratic market economy.
If someone had balls to try it again and again, taking into account the results of the previous experiments, sooner or later we would have a working communist utopia.
This is a very complex issue that requires a very detailed analysis. To sum it up, overall communism in the USSR had enough successes that discarding the model alltogether is stupid.
The Internet was not created in 1969. It was being continuously developed from 1960s to 2000s. We can only say that it is created now, but it is still not 100% complete.
Did Al Gore participated in this process of creation? Yes. Was he ordered to do it? No. Was it his initiative? Yes.
Is it true then that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet"? Yes, it seems that it is true.
Broken links are gone because the links are gone. Or, better to say, off-site links are gone. And believe me, when there are some off-site links they still have big chance to be dead. It's just that the Internet has evolved to rely less on the unreliable content.:( It would be much better if instead content was made more reliable.
It's possible to do - if you have the political will (and ability to do some long-term planning).
First make a decision to make the transition. It must be supported by a majority of people and everyone must be willing to be at least somewhat inconvenienced.
Then make a plan. Design the city with all the buildings, but without roads. Plan the mass transit (intercity and long-distance in-city). Plan the small-distance transit systems (trams, streetcars, automated PRT, etc.).
Build a prototype of the small-distance system in a university campus or some similar place.
Build long-distance systems that you are missing. Upgrade railroad stations, lay down extra tracks, connect the airport with the city by train, etc.
Implement temporarily solutions, like buses, taxis, car rentals, cargo transportation, etc. for the next ~5 years. Be generous.
Provide financial and other incentives for people to abandon their cars, car-pool, etc.
Build the infrastructure for the short-distance transit systems (control, maintenance, etc.).
Start replacing the roads with new transit systems.
The main problem, as I see it, is that noone is really motivated to do this. Most of elected officials are not adventurous enough and don't think long-term. Most people are happy with the status quo. Private companies lack resources to implement such project as an alternative to existing system and can't take the risks associated with hoping that people will switch in 5-10 years when the system is ready.
Well, it doesn't make much sense to put bullet-time slow-mo in the game. It is done in the movies to impress the viewers with the abilities of our super-heroes. If you are a super-hero yourself, you don't need to be impressed, you need to get a job done. Therefore something like a focus-time is used.
Imagine if they will have interactive environment a la Duke Nukem 3D, where you will be able to use computers on the levels to play computer games. Now you suddenly have one more level of reality...
Come on, can't you check the fucking spelling? It was written in the fucking writeup - it is spelled "Wachowski". And I don't know what were the moderators thinking - how a post that amounts to nothing more than a stream of consciousness was moderated to "5: Interesting"?
And next time you have time to use bold tags in your post, use it to check the spelling instead.
Graphic input, like that using a mouse, can be more secure than typing. How are you going to sniff my mouse movements? Especially if the software introduces random changes to the mouse position, so that I have to use visual feedback (cursor position on the screen) to adjuse the mouse movements.
Unless you have a camera (and it is easier to spot than a keylogger) or record the output from the videocard (which requires helluva RAM, although with nanotube ram it's going to be easier to do, and a powerful device overall), you can't know what I clicked on.
The most touching story in a computer game ever. Everyone who played it cried in the end. Inevitably. The only problem that most people are turned off by it being an anime/hentai game.
But how can you prove that the e-mail really came from a white list and not from a spammer? The return address (and most of the headers) can be forged.
Slashdot Mirror
Bullshit. The marginal costs of one copy are negligible. Even more so with corporate licenses, where you don't need to provide packaging, etc. Pricing in software can be completely arbitrarily and there is nothing bad about setting it at any level or even giving a 90% discount. Such discounts are common for academic users, for example. And in some cases certain groups of customers get the product for free. So MS has the right to give MS Office away - they are not dumping.
BTW, in the past courts (in the US) agreed that setting the price below average costs but above marginal costs is not dumping (I don't remember where and when the decision was made - read about that 2 weeks ago in a Macroeconomics textbook).
Regarding Nick Bostrom, see my related post here. I'd like to think that he has some academic honesty (and I am grateful to him for writing/editing the Transhumanist FAQ), but his simulation ideas are bullshit , indeed.
What a barefaced lie... An accurate historical book? BOOM!........ Sorry, fell off my chair laughing. :) Just for starters, it tells us how world was created in six days, which is obviously bullshit. It also tells us about this guy called Jesus Christ, but for some strange reason he (or she) is not mentioned anywhere else. The fucking son of god went to our planet and nobody bothered to write anything about it, not even a post-it note, until many years passed after he [supposedly] died. Isn't that strange?
And the rest of the book is just as accurate. There are miriads of sources, here is just one of many:b ible/bible_authenticity.html
http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/Park/6443/
Matrix doesn't say that our world is a simulation. It just gives the viewers some philosophical ideas in a form better suited for mass consumption than traditional philosophy books. And you are wrong to call it junk food. Real philosophy does not have to be boring. Of course, if some tedious cunt^H^H^H^HKant was writing, no normal person can read and enjoy it. But there have been many thinkers who were able to both entertain the reader and communicate their original and interesting ideas very clearly. I love how marxists in the early 20th century approached this. Their idea was (you wouldn't believe it) that they needed to teach workers (who were not particularly well-educated back then) philosophy (!) because that was an important prerequisite for class struggle. And somehow they managed to explain the ideas of Feuerbach, Kant and Gegel on accessible level.
If the philosophers of today don't want to do be accessible, we must be grateful that certain cinematographers are stepping in to fill this void.
I've written a small essay with a more or less detailed explanation of the errors. Unfortunately, the final version is available only in Russian and only a rough draft is available in English.
You make good arguments and I tend to agree with most of them, but please do not shout about natural price. There is no such thing. :) There are supply and demand curves, there is equilibrium price, but there is no such thing as "natural price". People are simply making a new supply curve - practically infinite supply at practically zero price (suppliers/distributors do not bear the costs and are not paid).
Of course, this is just a poorly captured teaser taken from the game booth, but still. There is nothing new in it. Everything that this teaser shows, was already in either TTT or FotR. Except for some weird fireballs.Gimli fighting? Tired of it. Legolas shooting arrows? Oh, spare me. Gandalf kicking ass with his stick? Seen in the end of TTT. Theoden unsure about something? The whole TTT was about that. Some plains shot from helicopter? Enough of that. So, while poorly captured TTT teaser was cool and full of new and exciting things, this one is not.
What I don't understand in all the hype BT receives is how specifically it is better than ed2k network?
.torrent file - ed2k text link is enough). eDonkey has chunk-based downloading and everything else that was mentioned in this discussion.
eDonkey also has hashes (and more conveniently it doesn't require hosting a
Is BitTorrent really better than ed2k? I understand that some groups of people may just stick to it, making certain kinds of content easier to obtain from BT (like anime fansubs already mentioned here), but are there any technical advantages?
If you discover illegal goodies on a machine, what should you do about it?
I would explain the owner of that machine the risks associated with having such files on his/her machine and give him some suggestions about reducing that risk, like storing the "goodies" on external drive and/or using encryption.
If his activities may negatively affect the company, I would suggest that he/she ceases them.
P.S. It's nobody's business what a person stored on his HDD/CDs. I don't think there is a need to check every CD thrown in the trash and every computer sent into service centre. The fact that it is accessible doesn't mean it's a right thing to check it. Do you look for porn magazines/videos when you visit your friend at his/her home to report them to his/her spouse? That would be a good first step to witch trials...
It was extremely nice to see a sane person here.
Good that you understand. Now the only difference between you and Al Gore is quantitative. And it is huge. ;) He was the first and the most influencial politician who helped create the Internet. He also understood the importance of the high-speed data communications very early.
So does he deserve a credit for being a forward-thinking politician with a good understanding of technology? Yes. Do you? Probably not.
And does his statement about taking an initiative in creating Internet carry much more weight than a similar statement from you? Definitely yes.
There is no reason why you can't have a nice community with 16+ storey apartment buildings and outstanding facilities for people to share.
P.S. And what about American obsession with front lawns? Do your kids play there with a puppy?
And what was the end-result? That even ineffective, corrupted and terribly dogmatic state socialism with a planned economy works better in Russia than a liberal and democratic market economy.
If someone had balls to try it again and again, taking into account the results of the previous experiments, sooner or later we would have a working communist utopia.
This is a very complex issue that requires a very detailed analysis. To sum it up, overall communism in the USSR had enough successes that discarding the model alltogether is stupid.
The Internet was not created in 1969. It was being continuously developed from 1960s to 2000s. We can only say that it is created now, but it is still not 100% complete.
Did Al Gore participated in this process of creation? Yes. Was he ordered to do it? No. Was it his initiative? Yes.
Is it true then that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet"? Yes, it seems that it is true.
Broken links are gone because the links are gone. Or, better to say, off-site links are gone. And believe me, when there are some off-site links they still have big chance to be dead. It's just that the Internet has evolved to rely less on the unreliable content. :( It would be much better if instead content was made more reliable.
The main problem, as I see it, is that noone is really motivated to do this. Most of elected officials are not adventurous enough and don't think long-term. Most people are happy with the status quo. Private companies lack resources to implement such project as an alternative to existing system and can't take the risks associated with hoping that people will switch in 5-10 years when the system is ready.
Well, it doesn't make much sense to put bullet-time slow-mo in the game. It is done in the movies to impress the viewers with the abilities of our super-heroes. If you are a super-hero yourself, you don't need to be impressed, you need to get a job done. Therefore something like a focus-time is used.
Imagine if they will have interactive environment a la Duke Nukem 3D, where you will be able to use computers on the levels to play computer games. Now you suddenly have one more level of reality...
Come on, can't you check the fucking spelling? It was written in the fucking writeup - it is spelled "Wachowski". And I don't know what were the moderators thinking - how a post that amounts to nothing more than a stream of consciousness was moderated to "5: Interesting"?
And next time you have time to use bold tags in your post, use it to check the spelling instead.
I'm just wondering, if all these lasers are so low-power, how safe would if be to stand in front of the laser beam or put a hand there....
Graphic input, like that using a mouse, can be more secure than typing. How are you going to sniff my mouse movements? Especially if the software introduces random changes to the mouse position, so that I have to use visual feedback (cursor position on the screen) to adjuse the mouse movements.
Unless you have a camera (and it is easier to spot than a keylogger) or record the output from the videocard (which requires helluva RAM, although with nanotube ram it's going to be easier to do, and a powerful device overall), you can't know what I clicked on.
Well, when computers will learn to understand English, that would not be considered an AI task anymore, would it? :)
Kana Little Sister @ MobyGames.
Mod the parent up. That is one of the most hilarious and scary things I ever read about the US.
But how can you prove that the e-mail really came from a white list and not from a spammer? The return address (and most of the headers) can be forged.