See, there you go showing exactly the same attitude the majority of believers like you showed to people like Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus and others who looked at the same universe as the crowd and saw something that did not fit into the popular dogmas of the time.
Most startling progress and civilization changing discoveries in EVERY field were NEVER made by the crowd which simply accepted the consensus. Dead fish ALWAYS float down stream. Only the living ones struggle against the currents and eventually triumph over all obstacles in the river. Life and science is that way also.
... Or do you think that they must be being suppressed by someone.....
Sort of, similar to the way the scientific establishment has suppressed radical ideas until the later, sometimes much later became mainstream.
Scientists are human and as such often do care for dogma more than data. This always been and will always be.
Presently, mainstream cosmological theories largely ignore the electric force as a major, often dominant factor in the operation of the large scale universe. There are two forces at work in the large scale universe. One is gravity and the other is the electric interaction. The latter is mostly ignored in today's cosmological theories. This is why modern space probes deliver so many puzzling "surprises" that have no good explanation if the electric interaction is ignored.
.....we need to shoehorn observations about the curvature of light and time dilation into this fairy tale.......
The time dilation and curving of light, supposedly by the gravity of the sun are two separate parts of Einstein's theory.
Neither of these two parts have anything to do with gravity however. The fact is that, yes, light does curve as it passes close to the sun. This data has been INTERPRETED to be caused by gravity. However, since light is involved with the electric interaction, it is also possible that the light would be affected by interacting with the electric and magnetic fields of the sun and the large electric currents flowing in/out/around the sun. We know from experiments that light and particle beams strongly interact. The electrical force is at least 36 orders of magnitude greater than the gravitational interaction.
We also know from experiments that as particles are accelerated to near the speed of light, there is a time dilation effect EXACTLY as Dr. Einstein predicted mathematically. Therefore his math is of great value because it, unlike so much mathematical gymnastics today, has been experimentally verified innumerable times and in may ways. Even so, the time dilation is independent of gravity, but has been demonstrated to occur in an accelerating ELECTRIC field.
Einstein in fact was singularly unsuccessful in including gravity into his otherwise experimentally well tested theories.
....which have no other detectable attributes.....
That is based on the assumption (belief) that the gravitational interaction is the only force of nature involved. It also assumes, that like we experience here on earth, that matter throughout the universe is electrically neutral. It happens that, by far, most matter in the cosmos consists of naked charged particles milling around in stars and zipping at near light speed through all of space. Since the electric force diminishes also by the inverse square law, just like gravity, such forces based on the electrical interaction must be taken into account also. Most of today's cosmology assumes (believes) that the electrical interaction of matter can be neglected because positive and negative charges tend to cancel each other at large distances.
We know from lab experiments that any time you have moving charges, a magnetic field is generated. In fact, we know of no other way that a magnetic field can exist, other than moving an electrical charge.
These flowing currents in turn tend to get focused and separated according to polarity by these self generated magnetic fields. We have measured values of such fields in the solar system. The earth's magnetic field focuses the huge electric currents from the sun. When these focused charges impinge upon our upper atmosphere, we get the phenomena of the northern lights above both poles. Sometimes, these electrical currents from the sun get strong enough to disrupt our communications systems and power grids.
Since the electric force is at least 36 orders of magnitude greater than gravity, it doesn't take much of a charge imbalance between two objects to generate enormous forces on and between such objects. We get a tiny sample of what slightly imbalanced electrical charges can do in a lightening strike.
There is no reason to assume that stars and planets are electrically neutral with respect to each other. The disruptive forces of even a relatively minor charge imbalance between galaxies, stars and planets can be more than enough to tear apart any form of matter. No black holes need apply for that job.
Not so. If you run a beam of electrons through a magnetic deflection, the will deflect in a particular direction with the degree of bending dependent on the magnetic field and the energy of the electrons. If you replace the electrons with positrons, they will deflect in the opposite direction. This also works with other charged particles and their anti-particles.
Has anybody EVER actually observed a black hole or something being swallowed up by one?
Where? Nobody has yet seen direct evidence of such a theoretical fairy tale. Not only that, but black holes supposedly are based on the gravitational interaction. Anything with lasers and light is based on the electric interaction.
It's just too bad that so much of some sciences today are based on fancy computerized mathematics coming from somebody's fertile imagination, rather than observations and experiments. Often data is INTERPRETED to fit currently fashionable theories, but, even though the data is true, the interpretation is false since it tries to make the data fit a pet theory.
A good example of this is the Hubble interpretation that the fact of the red shift is due to the doppler effect. Different interpretations of that ONE fact make a fundamental change in our understanding of the universe in light of the data we received since the space age began. Such other than the current "accepted" cause of the red shift demolishes much of current cosmological dogma. The "Big Bang", dark matter/energy, Oort clouds as the birth place of comets are all fancy mathematical constructs, made unnecessary by other interpretation of the data. Some cosmology theorists don't know which end of a telescope to stick their eyeballs on, since they have never seen one except maybe in a book.
Nothing has really changed from the days of Copernicus and Kepler. They were persecuted and ridiculed for their then radical ideas, based on real observations, not fanciful math. Today, scientists who promulgate foundation rocking new concepts and promising new avenues of real research, are denied, by the scientific establishment, publication and funding. Science today is less and less interested in discovering truth, because there is always the danger that such truth will demolish cherished dogma.
...People are no more or less honorable now than they have ever been....
Well in regard to marriage, I suppose you have never studied divorce statistics between today and a hundred or so years ago. You probably haven't looked at the statistics on lawsuits or scandals in government either.
When people TRULY believe that they are responsible to a higher power, someone beyond mere men, they do tend to behave better toward each other. When people really believe they are nothing more than an accidental, purposeless collection of subatomic particles, that disappears without a trace, they tend to behave differently than someone who believes that he/she is a special purposeful creation of God, ultimately responsible to Him.
Before the "enlightenment" of evolution came, most people did believe that there is a God to whom they will, on judgement day, have to give an accounting of their lives. Of course there were back then, just as there are today, many that SAY they believe, but their lives shout just the opposite. They are called hypocrites and were the kind of people that Jesus directed His most scathing words against.
......Apple Bank's website currently supports.....
I have found that with Safari, whenever I get a message from a web site that it only works with IE, that this is because their server checks what browser is calling it. Most of the time, if I tell Safari to lie and tell that stupid site that it is being talked to by IE, everything works perfectly or is at least useable. The exceptions to this are few.
....a government data repository that is Active X only......
Why does the government use a proprietary, special format? Is there no way such data can be stored and disseminated so ALL computers, such as Linux and Macs can access it equally well? It seems that the taxpayers ought not subsidize any one particular company's data format. Isn't that why there are standards open to all? I think this is the government's fault.
.....in good faith, honestly *know* you can deliver.......
The key word here is CAN. It's not that people can't, so much, rather than not wanting to. There is the saying: "Where there is a will, there is a way".
Feelings change and so does the weather. Love is not a feeling, but an act of the will. It is amazing what people can do if the want to. Almost all the time, saying "I can't" should be translated "I won't".
Those kinds of events are often called "an Act of God" and were and still are usually exceptions and therefore valid reasons to not deliver on a promise. In this discussion, there was no earthquake or anything else that prevented New Line from paying what they promised. They have the ability to make good on their promises, but they don't feel integrity is as important as their greed. In your scenario the insurance money can be used to indemnify the customer who ordered those CPUs.
Most contract disputes nowadays arise where one party sees a sometimes substantial financial disadvantage if they fulfill their part of a deal. Taking a large financial hit is not a valid reason to weasel out a business deal. The right thing to do is to suck it up and fulfill the promise anyway.
People took ALL promises, especially marriage vows, much more seriously say 150 or so years ago than today. That is a fact you may deny, but is nevertheless true.
........Actually, it would appear that Newline is a bunch of crooks.......
Probably no more than many other businesses and individuals breaking their promises nowadays. It used to be that people, and that includes companies run by them, would keep their word and promises. Big business deals were at one time sealed with a word and a handshake. Today, even a contract with more print than the phone book for a big city may not be honored.
People incurring debts and then abusing bankruptcy laws to get out of paying is no different. A couple breaking the promise of marriage, or a parent breaking a promise to their son or daughter is really no different, except in the amount of money involved. Breaking a promise these days is no longer considered by many, to be a big deal. It happens all the time and is considered normal by many.
Doesn't that assume that the PC has some sort of special hardware that tunes the TV channels? How many installed PCs have that? How many NEW PCs come stock with TV receiving capability? There are a number of hardware devices for the Mac that allow this as well.
I have recorded TV on occasions since about five years ago, using my Digital Camcorder as an interface between my Mac Powerbook running iMovie and our Satellite receiver. I can easily edit out the commercials and then use iDVD to preserve the finished show. Much more important, can I plug my camcorder into the computer and edit my own footage and make an at least semi-not-boring presentation for friends and family?
I don't watch that much TV anyway, since it is still the largely commercial infested programmatic wasteland it has always been. A good Netflix rental inserted into the Powerbook, connected to a not terribly expensive projector lighting up a 60 inch screen and the sound of the stereo system, together with some fresh popped popcorn, makes for an enjoyable movie night for family and friends.
For the Jeopardy and other programs my wife enjoys, as well as the evening news, an old $200 TV is plenty good enough.
Exactly what can Computer with VISTA Ultimate do that the standard OSX Leopard that comes with every new Mac or in every retail Leopard box? What does media centre do that the iLife programs that come with Macs cannot?
....Every electronic voting machine on the market has, in tests, been found easy to rig.........
Here we still use a paper ballot, sort of like the test forms for standard multiple guess tests they used in schools. Everyone gets one form to mark and place in the ballot box. Then if there is a dispute in the counting of those little physical black dots, the paper is still in existence and they can count those little dots more carefully, again, hopefully getting the correct result. Physical black dots can be changed also, but only one at a time. It is usually also easy to tell if the little black dots have been tampered with. Little magnetized dots on a disk can be changed en masse and leave not trace they were altered.
So much of you and your money is reduced to a collection of bits represented by a few nanometers of magnetism these days. Why should that not inevitably become the case with votes? Somewhere the government keeps some magnetized spots that determine whether you get to board an airliner. Somewhere there are some magnetic impressions that determine whether you get to drive a car, get a loan or job. Any of these can and some have been messed up and often nobody seems to know how or why. Ephemeral bits, easily changed, without a trace, rule our lives. You may have already experienced the helplessness that ensued when those bits were suddenly inaccessible due to a power or other failure. You could not even obtain a loaf of bread at the supermarket or a few gallons of gas to get you back home. That is a fact of our time and nothing will change that. Live with it.
A friend of mine asked for a certain auto part. The clerk checked the computer and then told the friend, "The computer says we are out of stock on this items", but then he said, "but I know I saw two of those on the shelf in the back", but quickly added, "however I can't sell one to you because the computer won't let me until the boss corrects the computer." My friend was forced to drive to another parts store.
.......we the people who are going to have to reverse it even though that means maybe breaking the law to do so........
No, we don't have to break any laws, we have to break the lawmakers by voting them out of office and putting in people who will listen to the voters, rather than money.
One definition of insanity is: "Doing the same thing over an over again and expecting a different result each time. As long as a legislator can spend a lifetime in office, even if demonstrated to be totally in the pocket of the big moenybags, being voted in again and again, how can anything change?
Right now a certain female wants to get into office. She and her husband are for big business, even if that big business is in opposition to the people and the little competitors.
....if the businesses are honest, prices go up by less than their employees' disposable income does......
I don't understand what the honesty of businesses has to do with how much money I have left to get a given "market basket" of goods and services. If the profits of the business stays at the same percentage, the market basket would cost more than at present by the total tax burden now exclusively on all businesses.
I do agree that the cost of collecting the taxes would decrease, since there are far fewer taxpayers to keep track of. In the big scheme of things though, that wouldn't be all that huge an amount. What is the percentage cost of collecting all taxes compared to the amount of tax collected? Since there would be fewer tax accounts to administer, there should be an increase of efficiency, but I suspect it would not amount to a hill of beans. It sure would simplify paperwork for individuals on April 15th though.
......We are already paying higher income taxes every year so corporations can have lower taxes.......
So if the corporations pay more, including tax, do you really think that they won't pass those costs on to the consumers by higher prices? Corporations don't pay tax, only people do, you and I. Taxes are to the national economy as overhead is to any business. To have more money in the taxpayer's own pocket it is necessary to cut down on the national overhead, all taxes collected. It makes absolutely no difference how those overhead costs are distributed, only the total matters.
......What we do have is differing probabilities for everything, and we have to weigh up all those probabilities........
Exactly, and we have to decide which probabilities we BELIEVE and which not. There is a probability that the golden plover evolved and learned how to migrate over time. There is however also a probability that someone did write the code into its DNA that enables it to find its way across the ocean. There are many migratory creatures that are able to do some astounding feats of pathfinding. There is a probability that their DNA code was written by a programmer, in the same way that one or more programmers wrote the code that runs the computer you are now reading my reply on.
We have to decide, filtered by our world view, which probability we are more comfortable with. In the end, when all is said an done, it comes down to our belief system. You have yours and I have mine. There are those who believe evolution, beyond the demonstrated adaptability of all life. They tell themselves that they are nothing more than a random collection of matter that somehow became conscious and started wondering why is exists and how it got here. Mechanistic, evolution is a relatively new notion in human history. Most of your and my not even so distant ancestors believed, and millions still do today, that they are a special, eternal creation by a God that has a purpose for everything. They believed, as I still do, that we are accountable to this God, as to how we live our lives. There are those to whom even the remotest possibility of such accountability is unthinkable. They will prefer the belief that they are nothing more than a cosmic accident that will vanish when their particular collection of matter gets recycled into its constituent atoms.
I hope for your sake, that I am wrong and you are right, because if I am dissolved into nothing after death, I have not lost a thing. However, if there is even a small probability that I, believing in God, am right and we both stand before God one day, who will be in a better position? (John 3:16)
....We don't know when those plovers started this migration, but it was some millions of years in the past......
You sentence it contradictory. First you state we don't know and then you say we do know that it was millions of years in the past.
Science deals with present observations and experiments. Future and past are not open to science, but we can only infer and believe. Extrapolating from the present to the past or future, always forces us to make certain assumptions (beliefs) which cannot be known for sure. It's not like combining hydrogen and oxygen and getting water every time.
(.....It could have even been......)
Most conjectures about the past or the future usually have statements of uncertainty. It also "could have been" that a designer programmed these abilities right at the start. It would be interesting to do a study on articles and books on evolution to find the ones, if any. that DON'T have statements with similar uncertainty constructs such as: "It is thought that" -- "we assume that" -- "might have arisen" -- "is most probably" -- "we believe" and similar phrases. These conjectures MAY be correct, but we can never really know for sure. The design conjecture also may be correct, but there also, we cannot perform any experiments to verify this.
Until somebody invents a time machine, we humans are irrevocably stuck in the present. The past is only a collection of memories and the future is unknown. You can believe that the picture on the wall is that of your great-great grandfather, but there is no way you can prove that today. There may be a high probability it is, but still no absolute way to determine if it really is or not.
We can today observe the fact that swallows can turn 5000 degrees/min but we really cannot know for sure how they got this ability. We know from observation that birds' mechanics of flight are quite different than the aircraft we build, but there are also many similarities. Many modern inventions have a prototype in nature, by which we can get pointers in how to design our imitations and improvements. We design our imitations, but conjecture that the original which we are trying to copy was not designed, but just sort of randomly happened over large amounts of time. What is the probability that the original was also designed by someone, just as someone designed the copy?
There are other feats that birds are good at that have nothing to do with mass per se. Example:
How does the Golden Plover (Pluvialis dominica) find its way each fall to the over 2000 miles distant islands of Hawaii from Alaska? Who programmed that navigation system into its miniature brain? No gradual processes over time can work here. The FIRST plover setting out has to make it, because plovers can't swim. Not only does it have to get the location right, no matter what the weather, but, since there are no refueling stops, each bird has to carry the right amount of fat fuel. It turns out that the amount of fuel a plover carries mandates that the individual bird would crash into the ocean about 800 miles short of its destination. However, since they fly in flocks, in formation, only the lead bird has the full wind resistance load. They take turns in the lead position and thus the all arrive together. All this had to work the very first time.
There are some things in nature, that gradual evolution over vast amounts of time cannot deal with.
....That would take millions of years though......
That is an assumption (belief). We don't know that. If something is truly random, it is possible to get all variables right in the first try. All the random variables could be just so, to get a fantastically performing airplane.
....advertisements that said, basically, 'do you want to have gas on your hands before you go eat food?.......
No, it was defeated basically by the people seeing through the transparent lying propaganda of the oil companies promising cheaper gas. It also rains a lot in Oregon and people LIKE the idea of not having to get out of a nice, cozy warm car for the mundane task of pumping fuel into the tank. Oregon also has a lot of retired folks from California who don't like paying sales tax, like the 8-9% they used to pay, out of their meager pension or Social Security income.
.....The gas wasn't noticeably more expensive.........
In California they have self service. Like most things, gas is actually more expensive there. The money saved by the gas station owners certainly is not being passed on to the customers, but simply lines the pockets of the gas companies or owners of the gas station. In Oregon at least some people who might otherwise be on welfare, are instead providing a service which costs the public absolutely nothing. Entry level jobs have been disappearing over the years through outsourcing and automation. This kind of job can't be outsourced to some foreign land, but somebody is making an attempt to take the already few remaining entry jobs away by automation.
......Problem is it's far cheaper to let the people use the pump themselves.......
Unless you live in Oregon, where it is illegal for people to pump their own gas. Some years ago, the oil companies spent millions on a campaign to have the voters repeal this law. They promised lower gas prices. Oregonians did not believe that propaganda, but voted by a huge margin to not have to get out into the cold and be forced to pump their own gas. They also voted against a sales tax by a similar lopsided margin. In California, where gas station operators do not have the expense of attendants, gas costs the same, or even more than in Oregon.
Slashdot Mirror
.....Oh, you're an electric universe nutjob......
See, there you go showing exactly the same attitude the majority of believers like you showed to people like Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus and others who looked at the same universe as the crowd and saw something that did not fit into the popular dogmas of the time.
Most startling progress and civilization changing discoveries in EVERY field were NEVER made by the crowd which simply accepted the consensus. Dead fish ALWAYS float down stream. Only the living ones struggle against the currents and eventually triumph over all obstacles in the river. Life and science is that way also.
... Or do you think that they must be being suppressed by someone.....
Sort of, similar to the way the scientific establishment has suppressed radical ideas until the later, sometimes much later became mainstream.
Scientists are human and as such often do care for dogma more than data. This always been and will always be.
Presently, mainstream cosmological theories largely ignore the electric force as a major, often dominant factor in the operation of the large scale universe. There are two forces at work in the large scale universe. One is gravity and the other is the electric interaction. The latter is mostly ignored in today's cosmological theories. This is why modern space probes deliver so many puzzling "surprises" that have no good explanation if the electric interaction is ignored.
.....we need to shoehorn observations about the curvature of light and time dilation into this fairy tale.......
The time dilation and curving of light, supposedly by the gravity of the sun are two separate parts of Einstein's theory.
Neither of these two parts have anything to do with gravity however. The fact is that, yes, light does curve as it passes close to the sun. This data has been INTERPRETED to be caused by gravity. However, since light is involved with the electric interaction, it is also possible that the light would be affected by interacting with the electric and magnetic fields of the sun and the large electric currents flowing in/out/around the sun. We know from experiments that light and particle beams strongly interact. The electrical force is at least 36 orders of magnitude greater than the gravitational interaction.
We also know from experiments that as particles are accelerated to near the speed of light, there is a time dilation effect EXACTLY as Dr. Einstein predicted mathematically. Therefore his math is of great value because it, unlike so much mathematical gymnastics today, has been experimentally verified innumerable times and in may ways. Even so, the time dilation is independent of gravity, but has been demonstrated to occur in an accelerating ELECTRIC field.
Einstein in fact was singularly unsuccessful in including gravity into his otherwise experimentally well tested theories.
....which have no other detectable attributes.....
That is based on the assumption (belief) that the gravitational interaction is the only force of nature involved. It also assumes, that like we experience here on earth, that matter throughout the universe is electrically neutral. It happens that, by far, most matter in the cosmos consists of naked charged particles milling around in stars and zipping at near light speed through all of space. Since the electric force diminishes also by the inverse square law, just like gravity, such forces based on the electrical interaction must be taken into account also. Most of today's cosmology assumes (believes) that the electrical interaction of matter can be neglected because positive and negative charges tend to cancel each other at large distances.
We know from lab experiments that any time you have moving charges, a magnetic field is generated. In fact, we know of no other way that a magnetic field can exist, other than moving an electrical charge.
These flowing currents in turn tend to get focused and separated according to polarity by these self generated magnetic fields. We have measured values of such fields in the solar system. The earth's magnetic field focuses the huge electric currents from the sun. When these focused charges impinge upon our upper atmosphere, we get the phenomena of the northern lights above both poles. Sometimes, these electrical currents from the sun get strong enough to disrupt our communications systems and power grids.
Since the electric force is at least 36 orders of magnitude greater than gravity, it doesn't take much of a charge imbalance between two objects to generate enormous forces on and between such objects. We get a tiny sample of what slightly imbalanced electrical charges can do in a lightening strike.
There is no reason to assume that stars and planets are electrically neutral with respect to each other. The disruptive forces of even a relatively minor charge imbalance between galaxies, stars and planets can be more than enough to tear apart any form of matter. No black holes need apply for that job.
....they're impossible to detect directly.....
Not so. If you run a beam of electrons through a magnetic deflection, the will deflect in a particular direction with the degree of bending dependent on the magnetic field and the energy of the electrons. If you replace the electrons with positrons, they will deflect in the opposite direction. This also works with other charged particles and their anti-particles.
Has anybody EVER actually observed a black hole or something being swallowed up by one?
......natural occurences of black holes.......
Where? Nobody has yet seen direct evidence of such a theoretical fairy tale. Not only that, but black holes supposedly are based on the gravitational interaction. Anything with lasers and light is based on the electric interaction.
It's just too bad that so much of some sciences today are based on fancy computerized mathematics coming from somebody's fertile imagination, rather than observations and experiments. Often data is INTERPRETED to fit currently fashionable theories, but, even though the data is true, the interpretation is false since it tries to make the data fit a pet theory.
A good example of this is the Hubble interpretation that the fact of the red shift is due to the doppler effect. Different interpretations of that ONE fact make a fundamental change in our understanding of the universe in light of the data we received since the space age began. Such other than the current "accepted" cause of the red shift demolishes much of current cosmological dogma. The "Big Bang", dark matter/energy, Oort clouds as the birth place of comets are all fancy mathematical constructs, made unnecessary by other interpretation of the data. Some cosmology theorists don't know which end of a telescope to stick their eyeballs on, since they have never seen one except maybe in a book.
Nothing has really changed from the days of Copernicus and Kepler. They were persecuted and ridiculed for their then radical ideas, based on real observations, not fanciful math. Today, scientists who promulgate foundation rocking new concepts and promising new avenues of real research, are denied, by the scientific establishment, publication and funding. Science today is less and less interested in discovering truth, because there is always the danger that such truth will demolish cherished dogma.
...People are no more or less honorable now than they have ever been....
Well in regard to marriage, I suppose you have never studied divorce statistics between today and a hundred or so years ago. You probably haven't looked at the statistics on lawsuits or scandals in government either.
When people TRULY believe that they are responsible to a higher power, someone beyond mere men, they do tend to behave better toward each other. When people really believe they are nothing more than an accidental, purposeless collection of subatomic particles, that disappears without a trace, they tend to behave differently than someone who believes that he/she is a special purposeful creation of God, ultimately responsible to Him.
Before the "enlightenment" of evolution came, most people did believe that there is a God to whom they will, on judgement day, have to give an accounting of their lives. Of course there were back then, just as there are today, many that SAY they believe, but their lives shout just the opposite. They are called hypocrites and were the kind of people that Jesus directed His most scathing words against.
......Apple Bank's website currently supports.....
I have found that with Safari, whenever I get a message from a web site that it only works with IE, that this is because their server checks what browser is calling it. Most of the time, if I tell Safari to lie and tell that stupid site that it is being talked to by IE, everything works perfectly or is at least useable. The exceptions to this are few.
....a government data repository that is Active X only......
Why does the government use a proprietary, special format? Is there no way such data can be stored and disseminated so ALL computers, such as Linux and Macs can access it equally well? It seems that the taxpayers ought not subsidize any one particular company's data format. Isn't that why there are standards open to all? I think this is the government's fault.
.....in good faith, honestly *know* you can deliver.......
The key word here is CAN. It's not that people can't, so much, rather than not wanting to. There is the saying: "Where there is a will, there is a way".
Feelings change and so does the weather. Love is not a feeling, but an act of the will. It is amazing what people can do if the want to. Almost all the time, saying "I can't" should be translated "I won't".
....and an earthquake destroys the facility......
Those kinds of events are often called "an Act of God" and were and still are usually exceptions and therefore valid reasons to not deliver on a promise. In this discussion, there was no earthquake or anything else that prevented New Line from paying what they promised. They have the ability to make good on their promises, but they don't feel integrity is as important as their greed. In your scenario the insurance money can be used to indemnify the customer who ordered those CPUs.
Most contract disputes nowadays arise where one party sees a sometimes substantial financial disadvantage if they fulfill their part of a deal. Taking a large financial hit is not a valid reason to weasel out a business deal. The right thing to do is to suck it up and fulfill the promise anyway.
People took ALL promises, especially marriage vows, much more seriously say 150 or so years ago than today. That is a fact you may deny, but is nevertheless true.
........Actually, it would appear that Newline is a bunch of crooks.......
Probably no more than many other businesses and individuals breaking their promises nowadays. It used to be that people, and that includes companies run by them, would keep their word and promises. Big business deals were at one time sealed with a word and a handshake. Today, even a contract with more print than the phone book for a big city may not be honored.
People incurring debts and then abusing bankruptcy laws to get out of paying is no different. A couple breaking the promise of marriage, or a parent breaking a promise to their son or daughter is really no different, except in the amount of money involved. Breaking a promise these days is no longer considered by many, to be a big deal. It happens all the time and is considered normal by many.
....Watch and record TV.....
Doesn't that assume that the PC has some sort of special hardware that tunes the TV channels? How many installed PCs have that? How many NEW PCs come stock with TV receiving capability? There are a number of hardware devices for the Mac that allow this as well.
I have recorded TV on occasions since about five years ago, using my Digital Camcorder as an interface between my Mac Powerbook running iMovie and our Satellite receiver. I can easily edit out the commercials and then use iDVD to preserve the finished show. Much more important, can I plug my camcorder into the computer and edit my own footage and make an at least semi-not-boring presentation for friends and family?
I don't watch that much TV anyway, since it is still the largely commercial infested programmatic wasteland it has always been. A good Netflix rental inserted into the Powerbook, connected to a not terribly expensive projector lighting up a 60 inch screen and the sound of the stereo system, together with some fresh popped popcorn, makes for an enjoyable movie night for family and friends.
For the Jeopardy and other programs my wife enjoys, as well as the evening news, an old $200 TV is plenty good enough.
....no Media Centre, for example.......
Exactly what can Computer with VISTA Ultimate do that the standard OSX Leopard that comes with every new Mac or in every retail Leopard box? What does media centre do that the iLife programs that come with Macs cannot?
....Every electronic voting machine on the market has, in tests, been found easy to rig.........
Here we still use a paper ballot, sort of like the test forms for standard multiple guess tests they used in schools. Everyone gets one form to mark and place in the ballot box. Then if there is a dispute in the counting of those little physical black dots, the paper is still in existence and they can count those little dots more carefully, again, hopefully getting the correct result. Physical black dots can be changed also, but only one at a time. It is usually also easy to tell if the little black dots have been tampered with. Little magnetized dots on a disk can be changed en masse and leave not trace they were altered.
So much of you and your money is reduced to a collection of bits represented by a few nanometers of magnetism these days. Why should that not inevitably become the case with votes? Somewhere the government keeps some magnetized spots that determine whether you get to board an airliner. Somewhere there are some magnetic impressions that determine whether you get to drive a car, get a loan or job. Any of these can and some have been messed up and often nobody seems to know how or why. Ephemeral bits, easily changed, without a trace, rule our lives. You may have already experienced the helplessness that ensued when those bits were suddenly inaccessible due to a power or other failure. You could not even obtain a loaf of bread at the supermarket or a few gallons of gas to get you back home. That is a fact of our time and nothing will change that. Live with it.
A friend of mine asked for a certain auto part. The clerk checked the computer and then told the friend, "The computer says we are out of stock on this items", but then he said, "but I know I saw two of those on the shelf in the back", but quickly added, "however I can't sell one to you because the computer won't let me until the boss corrects the computer." My friend was forced to drive to another parts store.
.......we the people who are going to have to reverse it even though that means maybe breaking the law to do so........
No, we don't have to break any laws, we have to break the lawmakers by voting them out of office and putting in people who will listen to the voters, rather than money.
One definition of insanity is: "Doing the same thing over an over again and expecting a different result each time. As long as a legislator can spend a lifetime in office, even if demonstrated to be totally in the pocket of the big moenybags, being voted in again and again, how can anything change?
Right now a certain female wants to get into office. She and her husband are for big business, even if that big business is in opposition to the people and the little competitors.
....if the businesses are honest, prices go up by less than their employees' disposable income does......
I don't understand what the honesty of businesses has to do with how much money I have left to get a given "market basket" of goods and services. If the profits of the business stays at the same percentage, the market basket would cost more than at present by the total tax burden now exclusively on all businesses.
I do agree that the cost of collecting the taxes would decrease, since there are far fewer taxpayers to keep track of. In the big scheme of things though, that wouldn't be all that huge an amount. What is the percentage cost of collecting all taxes compared to the amount of tax collected? Since there would be fewer tax accounts to administer, there should be an increase of efficiency, but I suspect it would not amount to a hill of beans. It sure would simplify paperwork for individuals on April 15th though.
......We are already paying higher income taxes every year so corporations can have lower taxes.......
So if the corporations pay more, including tax, do you really think that they won't pass those costs on to the consumers by higher prices? Corporations don't pay tax, only people do, you and I. Taxes are to the national economy as overhead is to any business. To have more money in the taxpayer's own pocket it is necessary to cut down on the national overhead, all taxes collected. It makes absolutely no difference how those overhead costs are distributed, only the total matters.
......What we do have is differing probabilities for everything, and we have to weigh up all those probabilities........
Exactly, and we have to decide which probabilities we BELIEVE and which not. There is a probability that the golden plover evolved and learned how to migrate over time. There is however also a probability that someone did write the code into its DNA that enables it to find its way across the ocean. There are many migratory creatures that are able to do some astounding feats of pathfinding. There is a probability that their DNA code was written by a programmer, in the same way that one or more programmers wrote the code that runs the computer you are now reading my reply on.
We have to decide, filtered by our world view, which probability we are more comfortable with. In the end, when all is said an done, it comes down to our belief system. You have yours and I have mine. There are those who believe evolution, beyond the demonstrated adaptability of all life. They tell themselves that they are nothing more than a random collection of matter that somehow became conscious and started wondering why is exists and how it got here. Mechanistic, evolution is a relatively new notion in human history. Most of your and my not even so distant ancestors believed, and millions still do today, that they are a special, eternal creation by a God that has a purpose for everything. They believed, as I still do, that we are accountable to this God, as to how we live our lives. There are those to whom even the remotest possibility of such accountability is unthinkable. They will prefer the belief that they are nothing more than a cosmic accident that will vanish when their particular collection of matter gets recycled into its constituent atoms.
I hope for your sake, that I am wrong and you are right, because if I am dissolved into nothing after death, I have not lost a thing. However, if there is even a small probability that I, believing in God, am right and we both stand before God one day, who will be in a better position? (John 3:16)
....We don't know when those plovers started this migration, but it was some millions of years in the past......
You sentence it contradictory. First you state we don't know and then you say we do know that it was millions of years in the past.
Science deals with present observations and experiments. Future and past are not open to science, but we can only infer and believe. Extrapolating from the present to the past or future, always forces us to make certain assumptions (beliefs) which cannot be known for sure. It's not like combining hydrogen and oxygen and getting water every time.
(.....It could have even been......)
Most conjectures about the past or the future usually have statements of uncertainty. It also "could have been" that a designer programmed these abilities right at the start. It would be interesting to do a study on articles and books on evolution to find the ones, if any. that DON'T have statements with similar uncertainty constructs such as: "It is thought that" -- "we assume that" -- "might have arisen" -- "is most probably" -- "we believe" and similar phrases. These conjectures MAY be correct, but we can never really know for sure. The design conjecture also may be correct, but there also, we cannot perform any experiments to verify this.
Until somebody invents a time machine, we humans are irrevocably stuck in the present. The past is only a collection of memories and the future is unknown. You can believe that the picture on the wall is that of your great-great grandfather, but there is no way you can prove that today. There may be a high probability it is, but still no absolute way to determine if it really is or not.
We can today observe the fact that swallows can turn 5000 degrees/min but we really cannot know for sure how they got this ability. We know from observation that birds' mechanics of flight are quite different than the aircraft we build, but there are also many similarities. Many modern inventions have a prototype in nature, by which we can get pointers in how to design our imitations and improvements. We design our imitations, but conjecture that the original which we are trying to copy was not designed, but just sort of randomly happened over large amounts of time. What is the probability that the original was also designed by someone, just as someone designed the copy?
.....Mass of a sparrow at takeoff......
There are other feats that birds are good at that have nothing to do with mass per se. Example:
How does the Golden Plover (Pluvialis dominica) find its way each fall to the over 2000 miles distant islands of Hawaii from Alaska? Who programmed that navigation system into its miniature brain? No gradual processes over time can work here. The FIRST plover setting out has to make it, because plovers can't swim. Not only does it have to get the location right, no matter what the weather, but, since there are no refueling stops, each bird has to carry the right amount of fat fuel. It turns out that the amount of fuel a plover carries mandates that the individual bird would crash into the ocean about 800 miles short of its destination. However, since they fly in flocks, in formation, only the lead bird has the full wind resistance load. They take turns in the lead position and thus the all arrive together. All this had to work the very first time.
There are some things in nature, that gradual evolution over vast amounts of time cannot deal with.
....That would take millions of years though......
That is an assumption (belief). We don't know that. If something is truly random, it is possible to get all variables right in the first try. All the random variables could be just so, to get a fantastically performing airplane.
....advertisements that said, basically, 'do you want to have gas on your hands before you go eat food?.......
No, it was defeated basically by the people seeing through the transparent lying propaganda of the oil companies promising cheaper gas. It also rains a lot in Oregon and people LIKE the idea of not having to get out of a nice, cozy warm car for the mundane task of pumping fuel into the tank. Oregon also has a lot of retired folks from California who don't like paying sales tax, like the 8-9% they used to pay, out of their meager pension or Social Security income.
.....The gas wasn't noticeably more expensive.........
In California they have self service. Like most things, gas is actually more expensive there. The money saved by the gas station owners certainly is not being passed on to the customers, but simply lines the pockets of the gas companies or owners of the gas station. In Oregon at least some people who might otherwise be on welfare, are instead providing a service which costs the public absolutely nothing. Entry level jobs have been disappearing over the years through outsourcing and automation. This kind of job can't be outsourced to some foreign land, but somebody is making an attempt to take the already few remaining entry jobs away by automation.
......Problem is it's far cheaper to let the people use the pump themselves.......
Unless you live in Oregon, where it is illegal for people to pump their own gas. Some years ago, the oil companies spent millions on a campaign to have the voters repeal this law. They promised lower gas prices. Oregonians did not believe that propaganda, but voted by a huge margin to not have to get out into the cold and be forced to pump their own gas. They also voted against a sales tax by a similar lopsided margin. In California, where gas station operators do not have the expense of attendants, gas costs the same, or even more than in Oregon.