Stop being a myopic PC developer with RAM means nothing -- there are other platforms where we actually care about RAM usage.
But you shouldn't except to be able to run PC programs on those platforms. It's not myopia to target the desktop rather than a netbook or an embedded device. After all, optimization requires developer time, which is not free, so sometimes the right choice is to let Moore's Law take care of it.
It's also perfectly aligned with the building of the Panama Canal and population decline of the bald eagle.
Both of which were also caused by industrialization.
You know what happened? Nothing. Sure, our lawns turned brown and there were some big-ass forest fires (see Bastrop TX), but for the most part, everything is still here.
Now make the conceptual leap from your withered lawn to withered wheat fields and think of the consequences.
Granted, I'm well aware that thousands of years of this weather can start to change things.
No, it only takes a few years of drought to start causing huge problems for agriculture, even in modern times. Also, warmer climate means more extreme weather (because there's more energy to drive storms and such), which in turns drives up the maintenance/repair costs for infrastructure (which is already slowly disintegrating as is), not to mention kills people.
Take the Sahara as an example. It used to be a green, lush paradise. Now, it's a friggin' big, hot, unforgiving desert. But it took thousands and thousands of years to become a big friggin' desert and it happened all on its own, before fire was ever invented and the first smoke stack was ever built.
It took thousands of years for the dry zone to expand to its current size (and it's still expanding). It didn't take thousands of years for any particular patch of land to dry out once the rains stopped.
Also, the "lush paradise" period of Sahara was from 8000 to 6000 years ago, while human control of fire dates to at last 125 000 years back, and actually predates the modern human species.
And if climatologist were around back then, I'm sure they would proudly point out the climate change was perfectly aligned with the modern cave painting era, and if we don't stop using mastodon blood as the color red, the world is going to end.
That world did end. Or do you see any mastodons or neanderthals around?
If you believe in the free market, then believe another news organization would form to take their place.
Free market would work a lot better if people stopped having semireligious faith in it. "Believe in the free market and everything will work out" is similar kind of statement than "believe in a shipping firm and you don't need insurance".
That's the problem with treating corporations like people. If you want to give them collective rights, then the people who work there have to accept collective responsibility.
The people who work in a corporation do not have any collective rights related to it. The people who own it do. Unless you're talking about some kind of commune, these are not the same group.
Of course, this also leads to an easy solution: remove ownership and all control of the company from its current owners and put the stocks on sale. And fire the top-level execs.
ax deductions are incentives. If it didn't exist, companies would give much less to charity, yes. So I don't see how removing the deduction is a good thing.
It simplifies tax code while allowing the government to rise more taxes, thus better funding social security and foreign aid, thus lessening the need for charity. Everyone wins, except the people looking for loopholes to decrease their overall payout.
Also, in this particular case, Murdoch is basically trying to make himself look good by doing nothing.
Do you need to be bribed to help your friends? The aristocrats, even if they fight for power amongst themselves, still side by each other against the peons.
Democracy is long dead. It's far past time to stop deluding ourselves and concentrate all efforts to develop various ways to circumvent control while it's still imperfect. Not just software, mind you, but hardware too - the current structure of the Internet makes it too easy to cut individuals or whole regions from it, so it needs to be augmented through mesh networks and ubiguitous open Wi-Fi. Freedom is far too precious to be left up to the goodwill of whoever happens to hold power at the time.
Failure will hasten ongoing collapse towards a new Dark Age, while a success just might arrest it.
Anybody got a car analogy or something which might put these numbers into a little better perspective for those of us who don't work on scales like this?
The planet loses mass at a somewhat lesser pace than humanity burns through oil (100,000 vs. 133,000 tons per second). Take that, alien sun!
A ton is a unit of mass and thus independent of gravity.
Actually, shouldn't an object have a little bit less mass when bound to a gravity well than in deep space since it has lost some of its potential energy (the binding energy of the system)?
For now. But things like navigators could certainly use them, for example to get weather and traffick information or download maps when you're going to a new area. And what happens when self-driving cars move out of prototype stage - wouldn't it be nice to be able to send instructions remotely?
Period. End of story.
Contrary to the popular misconception, saying "period" does not actually prove anything, nor does saying "end of story" mean that the world will actually stop changing.
There may be secure and reliable e-Voting machines someday, but certainly not with this iteration of the technology.
No, because there is no way of telling whether the particular e-Voting machine you're using is secure or a Diebold. You can't secure a computer against its owner, so when that owner has literally the whole world to win, you can't trust it.
The iPhone basically got one carrier to agree to this scheme, and everyone else has to go along with it because it's just that awesome (supposedly), and sells that much. But they aren't happy about it, and I'm sure they don't really want to let it happen again.
Why? One would think that the carriers would enthusiastically support an update that makes the phone easier to use (and thus run up a phone bill).
Your point is wrong, because my original 50% ownership entitles me to 50% of the company, regardless of worth - so if you invest $1 to make the companies worth $2, then my share becomes $1.
No, because your original 50 cents investment entitled you to 50% of the company at the time it was made. If the rest of the shareholders hold sufficient power to override your will and accept more investment, your percentage of ownership will drop (and your investment stays valued at 50 cents). To do it otherwise would make it impossible for companies to rise more capital after the initial forming, because what would the new shares be backed by?
So yes, someone is stealing here because the issue is not that of original investment, its one of ownership of the company. You gave me 50% of the company in return for whatever my original investment was - that doesn't limit my entitlement to 50c of the company, it limits my entitlement to 50% of the company whatever that may be. If you cause my entitlement to drop below 50% without recompense, then you have stolen some of the company from me.
No. Your entitlement is limited to the shares you hold. These may represent 50%, 25% or even 1% ownership of the company at various times. This dilution of ownership is no more stealing than other companies taking market share from yours is, but rather a normal part of how the stock system works. Calling it stealing means that either you didn't bother making sufficient research before investing, and have no one but yourself to blame, or did, invested anyway, and are now whining because you didn't think the rules would really apply to you.
So yes, dilution is happening.
What's happening is that partial ownership of the company is being sold to a new investor in exchange for capital through a majority decision, which might not suite all old shareholders; however, that's the price they pay for being mere partial rather than sole owners.
So... the only thing we can do is topple their government and hold a knife to their throat there after so they'll behave? I really don't want to do that... but if we have no alternative... then we have no alternative.
I'm sure the Iranians appreciate you demonstrating their reasons for wanting nukes.
The purpose of the question is to determine if you're not a good fit for the kind of opportunities that are expected to be available at the company.
What they actually determine is whether the interviewee can correctly guess what the interviewer wants to hear. But even if they worked, would they really help you? After all, the goals of both people and organizations change, and long-term employment under the same employer is pretty rare nowadays.
If I had my own country, I would make reality TV illegal too.
Which would be a dumb move. A dictator stays in power by providing bread and circuses. The last thing he wants is an educated, intelligent population, because the last thing such population wants is him.
That's why this is a pretty surprising move on Chinese government's part. Have they started believing their own bullshit, or is "education" just a code word for "propaganda"?
Nope, that would be Mongolia, which, after all, conquered China. China is crippled by being too easily united and ruled by a dictator, who's natural inclination is to stop all progress to preserve the status quo. Or perhaps it might be Japan, which has also shown considerable ability to adapt the best practices from foreign countries and even contribute back to the world culture.
Of course, as long as we're talking about "natural masters", the real Supreme Overlord would be Europe, which combines large food production potential, easy trade between regions and numerous chokepoints that make it impossible to unite and thus ensure constant ongoing competition.
Cede Asia to China and we have no quarrel.
Who's "we"? China isn't a democracy, so there's no one who can actually represent it; at best you have the currently dominant warlord.
Also, China is trying to industralize, which means getting oil, which puts it in direct conflict with the civilized world, at least until said world upgrades to non-dependence on fossilized oil.
Anders Behring Breivik, the UtÃya shooter, is kept away from the other prisoners so they won't kill him. (A price tag has been put on his head) At the moment the prison is planning to build a high security department (article in norwegian) for him. So the problem is here but it's not as big as in the USA (yet).
Arguably, it's not the same problem - gang warfare - than in the US, but a different problem - even murderers needing someone to look down upon - altogether.
Alternatively, it's not a problem at all, but simply natural selection doing its work by weeding out a particularly defective sociopath.
The best way to understand a thing IMHO is to look at its core so what IS Linux, what is its design and function? Well at its heart its a whole bunch of different smaller applications designed to pass text between each other using pipes simply because there are so many different groups working on so many different things pipes is the one "universal language' they can all agree on. Now this design works great in servers where you have guys paid good money to learn and understand the language but folks have to remember the consumer is NOT a geek, will NEVER be a geek, have NO desire to learn your geek languages or customs, in short they have about as much in common as a current Linux desktop user as your backyard has in common with Europa.
That's nice. Now how does this differ in principle from OLE, DDE or other similar technologies underlying mainstream OS's?
The average user is NOT a geek, will NEVER be a geek, has NO desire to learn geek languages or customs, and consequently cares absolutely nothing about what Linux (actually Unix) is at core. All they care about is whether their applications work or not. They don't under Linux, so Linux isn't and won't be a mainstream OS unless Wine takes huge strides.
Just because a group holds 90% of the wealth, in no way indicates they should be paying 90% of the taxes.
Of course they shouldn't. They should be paying 100% of the taxes. After all, they the controlling share of the society, so they should pay for its maintenance. This is especially true in a capitalistic society where owning things means receiving income from other people's work and where the group owning 90% of everything are basically parasites for the rest of us, so the least they can do is stop whining just because they get a little less luxuries they didn't work for (and even that's debatable - no matter how rich you are, you can only drink so much beer per day, and the 90% owners aren't bound by their wallet).
But taxing based on wealth changes the system for everyone in a way which punishes saving and rewards splurging on one's self.
Which it should. Using money as you receive it means a steady demand for consumer goods, which translates to reliable income for the employees and easy to estimate prospects for the enterpreneurs. Remember, the whole point of keeping up a steady inflation and avoiding deflation is to discourage saving.
The "free market" isn't a "one person one vote" thing. It's merely a term to describe a fantasy ideal where ownership is well-defined and absolute, i.e. ownership and owner of almost everything is somehow naturally obvious and the owner has sole say over the disposal of his property.
That, and everyone is free to trade their things with everyone else as they see fit, everyone has perfect data on who's buying or selling what on what prices (and the sufficient computing power to make optimal use of all this data), there are no monopolies (that is, there are many non-cooperating buyers and sellers for everything), there are no barriers for entry, there are no external costs (that is, if your product pollutes, it's reflected in the original price when it enters the market), no one needs to buy or sell at "any price" (food, for example),...
In short, it's an abstract model of a world that has never existed, does not exist, and can never exist. Useful as an approximation when aided by the legal system, but that's all.
The best solution to a problem isn't always the popular one.
"Best" by what measure? By achieving the most good for the most people? That seems to be implying that most people are too dumb to know their own best interests and need a firm, fatherly hand to guide them, which gets really ugly really soon. By causing the least harm to least people? That implies that most people are monsters willing to sacrifice others for their own good, which may well be true but if so is an argument against letting leaders implement unpopular policies since those leaders are no less likely to be monsters than anyone else. Or "best" by adhering to some (unpopular) ideology and sacrificing people and their interests for it? I am assuming that you weren't merely referring to the good old "there are exceptions to every rule" rule.
In the end you either gain popular support for your solution, or implement it anyway through force and are a tyrant for it, or fail to implement it at all. Those are the alternatives.
The rule of law requires the law to be respectable. It ceased to be so when it became for sale for the highest bidder. Trying to substitute fear for respect simply makes the law from disrespectable to outright despicable, making breaking and helping others break it at every opportunity not only acceptable but in fact a moral duty.
None of this is exactly news, but I guess that those with an authoritarian bent simply can't accept that there are limits to every form of power.
As many times as we have to tell you that they are being deprived of sales and income. Probably nowhere near 1 to 1, but they are being deprived.
Store A is deprived of sales and income if you shop at store B, and store B if you shop at store A. Thieves, thieves everywhere!
Like it or not, protection of a work is needed to keep the creative process going.
Bullshit. The need to create is innate in humans, as proven by our entire history, every piece of GPL'd code, every piece of art on DeviantArt or similar sites and every new meme that comes up on the Internet. People may or may not be able to make a career out of creating without copyright law (most likely they could - it's not like cl is obeyed as is), but they won't - can't - stop creating, any more than they can stop breathing.
Slashdot Mirror
But you shouldn't except to be able to run PC programs on those platforms. It's not myopia to target the desktop rather than a netbook or an embedded device. After all, optimization requires developer time, which is not free, so sometimes the right choice is to let Moore's Law take care of it.
Both of which were also caused by industrialization.
Now make the conceptual leap from your withered lawn to withered wheat fields and think of the consequences.
No, it only takes a few years of drought to start causing huge problems for agriculture, even in modern times. Also, warmer climate means more extreme weather (because there's more energy to drive storms and such), which in turns drives up the maintenance/repair costs for infrastructure (which is already slowly disintegrating as is), not to mention kills people.
It took thousands of years for the dry zone to expand to its current size (and it's still expanding). It didn't take thousands of years for any particular patch of land to dry out once the rains stopped.
Also, the "lush paradise" period of Sahara was from 8000 to 6000 years ago, while human control of fire dates to at last 125 000 years back, and actually predates the modern human species.
That world did end. Or do you see any mastodons or neanderthals around?
Free market would work a lot better if people stopped having semireligious faith in it. "Believe in the free market and everything will work out" is similar kind of statement than "believe in a shipping firm and you don't need insurance".
The people who work in a corporation do not have any collective rights related to it. The people who own it do. Unless you're talking about some kind of commune, these are not the same group.
Of course, this also leads to an easy solution: remove ownership and all control of the company from its current owners and put the stocks on sale. And fire the top-level execs.
It simplifies tax code while allowing the government to rise more taxes, thus better funding social security and foreign aid, thus lessening the need for charity. Everyone wins, except the people looking for loopholes to decrease their overall payout.
Also, in this particular case, Murdoch is basically trying to make himself look good by doing nothing.
Do you need to be bribed to help your friends? The aristocrats, even if they fight for power amongst themselves, still side by each other against the peons.
Democracy is long dead. It's far past time to stop deluding ourselves and concentrate all efforts to develop various ways to circumvent control while it's still imperfect. Not just software, mind you, but hardware too - the current structure of the Internet makes it too easy to cut individuals or whole regions from it, so it needs to be augmented through mesh networks and ubiguitous open Wi-Fi. Freedom is far too precious to be left up to the goodwill of whoever happens to hold power at the time.
Failure will hasten ongoing collapse towards a new Dark Age, while a success just might arrest it.
The planet loses mass at a somewhat lesser pace than humanity burns through oil (100,000 vs. 133,000 tons per second). Take that, alien sun!
Actually, shouldn't an object have a little bit less mass when bound to a gravity well than in deep space since it has lost some of its potential energy (the binding energy of the system)?
For now. But things like navigators could certainly use them, for example to get weather and traffick information or download maps when you're going to a new area. And what happens when self-driving cars move out of prototype stage - wouldn't it be nice to be able to send instructions remotely?
Contrary to the popular misconception, saying "period" does not actually prove anything, nor does saying "end of story" mean that the world will actually stop changing.
No, because there is no way of telling whether the particular e-Voting machine you're using is secure or a Diebold. You can't secure a computer against its owner, so when that owner has literally the whole world to win, you can't trust it.
So... Hitler did nothing wrong? Because he didn't do the killing, but simply ordered it done - a managerial role.
Such as building and running concentration camps?
Why? One would think that the carriers would enthusiastically support an update that makes the phone easier to use (and thus run up a phone bill).
No, because your original 50 cents investment entitled you to 50% of the company at the time it was made. If the rest of the shareholders hold sufficient power to override your will and accept more investment, your percentage of ownership will drop (and your investment stays valued at 50 cents). To do it otherwise would make it impossible for companies to rise more capital after the initial forming, because what would the new shares be backed by?
No. Your entitlement is limited to the shares you hold. These may represent 50%, 25% or even 1% ownership of the company at various times. This dilution of ownership is no more stealing than other companies taking market share from yours is, but rather a normal part of how the stock system works. Calling it stealing means that either you didn't bother making sufficient research before investing, and have no one but yourself to blame, or did, invested anyway, and are now whining because you didn't think the rules would really apply to you.
What's happening is that partial ownership of the company is being sold to a new investor in exchange for capital through a majority decision, which might not suite all old shareholders; however, that's the price they pay for being mere partial rather than sole owners.
A maritime cargo container.
I'm sure the Iranians appreciate you demonstrating their reasons for wanting nukes.
What they actually determine is whether the interviewee can correctly guess what the interviewer wants to hear. But even if they worked, would they really help you? After all, the goals of both people and organizations change, and long-term employment under the same employer is pretty rare nowadays.
Which would be a dumb move. A dictator stays in power by providing bread and circuses. The last thing he wants is an educated, intelligent population, because the last thing such population wants is him.
That's why this is a pretty surprising move on Chinese government's part. Have they started believing their own bullshit, or is "education" just a code word for "propaganda"?
Nope, that would be Mongolia, which, after all, conquered China. China is crippled by being too easily united and ruled by a dictator, who's natural inclination is to stop all progress to preserve the status quo. Or perhaps it might be Japan, which has also shown considerable ability to adapt the best practices from foreign countries and even contribute back to the world culture.
Of course, as long as we're talking about "natural masters", the real Supreme Overlord would be Europe, which combines large food production potential, easy trade between regions and numerous chokepoints that make it impossible to unite and thus ensure constant ongoing competition.
Who's "we"? China isn't a democracy, so there's no one who can actually represent it; at best you have the currently dominant warlord.
Also, China is trying to industralize, which means getting oil, which puts it in direct conflict with the civilized world, at least until said world upgrades to non-dependence on fossilized oil.
Arguably, it's not the same problem - gang warfare - than in the US, but a different problem - even murderers needing someone to look down upon - altogether.
Alternatively, it's not a problem at all, but simply natural selection doing its work by weeding out a particularly defective sociopath.
That kinda implies that Norway is doing something right.
That's nice. Now how does this differ in principle from OLE, DDE or other similar technologies underlying mainstream OS's?
The average user is NOT a geek, will NEVER be a geek, has NO desire to learn geek languages or customs, and consequently cares absolutely nothing about what Linux (actually Unix) is at core. All they care about is whether their applications work or not. They don't under Linux, so Linux isn't and won't be a mainstream OS unless Wine takes huge strides.
Of course they shouldn't. They should be paying 100% of the taxes. After all, they the controlling share of the society, so they should pay for its maintenance. This is especially true in a capitalistic society where owning things means receiving income from other people's work and where the group owning 90% of everything are basically parasites for the rest of us, so the least they can do is stop whining just because they get a little less luxuries they didn't work for (and even that's debatable - no matter how rich you are, you can only drink so much beer per day, and the 90% owners aren't bound by their wallet).
Which it should. Using money as you receive it means a steady demand for consumer goods, which translates to reliable income for the employees and easy to estimate prospects for the enterpreneurs. Remember, the whole point of keeping up a steady inflation and avoiding deflation is to discourage saving.
That, and everyone is free to trade their things with everyone else as they see fit, everyone has perfect data on who's buying or selling what on what prices (and the sufficient computing power to make optimal use of all this data), there are no monopolies (that is, there are many non-cooperating buyers and sellers for everything), there are no barriers for entry, there are no external costs (that is, if your product pollutes, it's reflected in the original price when it enters the market), no one needs to buy or sell at "any price" (food, for example), ...
In short, it's an abstract model of a world that has never existed, does not exist, and can never exist. Useful as an approximation when aided by the legal system, but that's all.
"Best" by what measure? By achieving the most good for the most people? That seems to be implying that most people are too dumb to know their own best interests and need a firm, fatherly hand to guide them, which gets really ugly really soon. By causing the least harm to least people? That implies that most people are monsters willing to sacrifice others for their own good, which may well be true but if so is an argument against letting leaders implement unpopular policies since those leaders are no less likely to be monsters than anyone else. Or "best" by adhering to some (unpopular) ideology and sacrificing people and their interests for it? I am assuming that you weren't merely referring to the good old "there are exceptions to every rule" rule.
In the end you either gain popular support for your solution, or implement it anyway through force and are a tyrant for it, or fail to implement it at all. Those are the alternatives.
The rule of law requires the law to be respectable. It ceased to be so when it became for sale for the highest bidder. Trying to substitute fear for respect simply makes the law from disrespectable to outright despicable, making breaking and helping others break it at every opportunity not only acceptable but in fact a moral duty.
None of this is exactly news, but I guess that those with an authoritarian bent simply can't accept that there are limits to every form of power.
Store A is deprived of sales and income if you shop at store B, and store B if you shop at store A. Thieves, thieves everywhere!
Bullshit. The need to create is innate in humans, as proven by our entire history, every piece of GPL'd code, every piece of art on DeviantArt or similar sites and every new meme that comes up on the Internet. People may or may not be able to make a career out of creating without copyright law (most likely they could - it's not like cl is obeyed as is), but they won't - can't - stop creating, any more than they can stop breathing.