When taken into consideration of the global economy, China is playing the capitalist game. Just look at China as if they are a very large corporation, possibly the largest corporation in the world. And don't think the large corporations will be any better once they reach China's level of power and control. Capitalist are being beat at their own game. Of course China will eventually pay the price, but I'm not sure the western countries will be around to see it when it happens.
On the other hand, no other company on the planet is going to be able to ever sell Jell-O as long as there is a lawyer who draws breath.
And no other company will ever sell Tylenol. Brand (trademark) protection has nothing to do with patent protection. Patents expire, medical or otherwise, while trademarks do not. Medicine does not have any higher need for R&D than any other product, but there are higher costs in brining to market do to FDA regulations.
I'm only risking my own damfool neck, I can at most cause others a dent.
Not sure if you truly believe this or if it was just an illustration, but cyclists that disobey traffic laws are putting others lives at serious risk. If people lacked in morality they would just run you over for being where you should not have legally been. As a matter of fact in many places it would be illegal for them to not at least attempt to avoid a collision with you. In the act of avoiding you, while you break the law, there is a high potential of causing a far more serious accident. So please, if you do justify breaking the law, make sure you realise your just making excuses and don't have any legitimate grounds for that justification.
What exactly are "desirable characteristics"? Desirable to who? We have entered a period of time where human interaction is going by the way side. Emotions are irrelevant on in the modern internet connected society. Could it be that the most "desirable characteristics" are lack of affect? The exact characteristics that define autism? If Autism truly is on the rise, and I'm not saying it is, then maybe Autism is the most desirable characteristics for human survival.
In the near future we will have computer programs that can pass the turing test without failure, not because they are as complex as humans, but because humans will have become more analytical and predictable.
Having survived many layoffs I will tell you that this is incorrect. Layoffs are a way to release a person, for any reason, without having to follow the usual guidelines for termination. This allows companies to not document wrong doings, and to let people go for personal reasons. It is usually done under the guise of resource reduction, but in many cases those laid off employees are replaced with in a years time.
Can the Arizona Education System really get any worse? From what I understand, with the possible exception of Southern California, Arizona already has the worst education system in the country.
Is there a question which cannot be answered by visiting www.gmail.com and having a helpful friend or highly paid accomplice on the outside write up the solution for you?
No there is not, but why is this a problem? As a professional for many years I have a full network of people in my field. We all keep each other on instance messaging everyday. If one of use has a problem that we either can't solve, or think someone else can solve quicker, we send off a message. So any company that hires me gets not one intelligent mind, but dozens, for the price of one.
Tests in education should be testing just that, showing the ability to be able to find out the answer to complex problems. This should include questions with no known answer or questions that are known to not be answerable, so that you an see a persons thought process and approach. Anything else is simply a test of the persons memory and recall, which might be useful in a small portion of work where immediate answers to routine questions is important, but I don't know that you need much education to carry out those jobs.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
·
· Score: 1
A stock portfolio is identical to a gambler's bankroll. A trader can chose to either leave his resources in his portfolio or sell them. A Gambler can chose to keep the money in his bank roll or make it available for other uses. A gambler does not necessarily make money on gambling winnings anymore than a stock trader makes money on increased value. The fact that it is easier to convert a bankroll into spendable cash should have no barring on the situation.
We can try and justify that stock trading is somehow more valuable to society, but in reality it is a legalized form of gambling that has been given special exemption from taxation.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
·
· Score: 1
How do you propose we deal with decrease of value then?
We could handle it the way we do with all other taxes, it reduces your total tax burden. Just look at any other professional gambler and how their taxes are handled. If a gambler earns a net positive in one year they are taxed on that, at a rate higher than income, whether they chose to spend those winnings or leave it in their bank roll. If a gambler has a net negative for a year, and assuming no other income, they pay no taxes. It can be argued that this is unfair to gamblers, but it is a system that has worked, and should easily be applied to the more acceptable form of gambling that we call stock trading.
Giving a 2 year old game to your friend is like giving him half of your 2-hour-old fries.
Not at all. In the case of 2 hour old fries, the actual object has changed in a way that makes it different than it was when first produced. This is not true with 2 year old media. A closer analogy is like saying that giving a 2 year old game to a friend is like giving fresh fries using a 2 year old recipe to your friend, even though newer and more enjoyable fries are available. The fries from the 2 year old recipe are just as good as they where 2 years ago, there just happens to be a better option available. This can be seen clearly in all media when you look at actual quality (in the eye of the beholder) products, such as Mark Twain books, Starwars movies, Super Mario Brothers, etc.
How about instead of car manufactures following the new model of software, we get all-you-can eat buffets to follow the old style. How sweet it would be if I could buy one entry into a buffet, eat all that I can, and then sell that pass to the next guy in line?
Oh wait, like everyone else that wants something for nothing, you are trying to compare a consumable (automobiles have a limited lifespan) with a non-consumable (media, the actual content, has no limit of it's lifespan of use). Two owners can not get the full use of an automobile, while they can each get the full use of media.
When a car company sells you a car, they don't demand that every time you sell that car, they get a portion of the sale.
When you resell that car used you are selling it with wear. That wear has reduced the usability of the product. You got to use up a certain amount of the usability of the product. You have then affectively paid for the portion of the total usability that is potentially in the car. Media does not work that why. Each use has the complete full potential of the product. If you play through the media completely, you can then hand it off for someone else to do the same thing. You just can't compare consumables to media.
If you buy fries at McDonalds, your friend doesn't have to pay McDonalds a fee if you give them one of your fries.
Comparing fries to media would not be the same as sharing a fry with a friend. It would be like eating the container of fries, going back to the counter and getting a second container of fries, without paying for them, and giving those to a friend. This would be the same as purchasing one entry to an all you can eat buffet, and taking your whole family in to eat.
That's the interesting thing here. Developers have the option to put in a required full time connection to call home to their servers to validate the user, and they can tie the product to the initial installed machine. All of this would be perfectly with in their rights. But they heard their customers and have chosen to do away with all the techniques that make sharing or resale impossible. Instead they are offering a bonus to the original purchaser, as thank you to those that chose to actually pay them for their work.
But even when the give the customers what the ask for, there is still a small subset that is unhappy and wish that the could get even more for free. Sure we all want to get as much as we can, but really this approach causes no harm to anyone, and allows content producers to create more quality content. It's really a win for everyone (except used game resellers, but I'm not shedding a tear for them). Used purchasers get the full original content with no strings attached, new purchasers get bonus content (which reflects the additional fee they paid and the price of early adoption), Used games having lessor perceived value will ultimately have lower prices, and producers have more resources to produce content.
If you are fighting against this, then you really just want to return to the days of 8 bit graphics, turn based play and 2 dimensions, and still pay over $40 a game (well over if include inflation.)
Ok, so let's just say that in the next generation we know that we will "need" one quarter as many people as we have today. This means we only need to have one child per every two people. Who decides what people will be producing those children? No mater what you are asking at least half the people to give up there right to add their genes and family history to the next generation. This is not as vain of a thing as you might want to make it out to be. Most people believe their way of living and their beliefs are the right ones and that by passing them on they are producing a better future moving forward. There is validity behind this way of thinking.
And now let's say, for the sake of argument, that we do figure out a way to determine who gets to breed. The next generation is down to exactly the right number of people to keep society going. In the middle of that generation a war breaks out that kills a fair percentage of the people, say 10% (not unreasonable in a global war). Now you have 10% less people than you need (probably more like 9%, but we don't need to get that detailed).
Reproduction is paramount to a societies survival. You may no believe there is a need for societal survival, but most people do. But of course, if your chances of reproducing are very low, then I can understand why you would be against other people doing it.
The same can be said about used cars, PCs, electronics, almost any physical object, so what?...You don't hear Intel bitching about all those used PCs sold to people. Or Mercedes bitching about used cars.
This is about as wrong as one can get. Physical objects have a limited life span. The quality of the product degrades over time. There is much higher true value between a car with 0 miles and a car with 100000 miles. Media on the other hand can be completely consumed multiple times with no degradation in quality. A car can also only be used by a single user at a time (or the maximum occupancy), but media can be consumed by an infinite number of people simultaneously.
Mercedes doesn't need to bitch about used cars, because they continue to make money on them, through used parts sales, or they chose when to stop producing parts because they will get higher value out of producing newer products. They don't worry about after market part sales because they know there is a physical cost involved in producing those parts (though auto manufactures have fought against after market parts in the past.). Computers are the same way, as the will physically fail over time, and the user will then need to purchase a new product. Digital media does not have this issue. 50 years from now, those bits will be still be the same quality they where. Using those bits 24 x 7 will not cause the bits to degrade any faster.
You might have a valid argument but it's hidden behind your completely invalid analogy
Either there is no God, or He just doesn't care to interfere with the messengers -- which means these religious vigilantes are screwed either way.
So in this case we have a man who claimed there was no god, and now he is being put to death. Sounds to me like this might actually be proof that there is a God, and he will have put to death anyone that does not believe. In other words the messenger has been "interfered" with, and you are going to have a hard time proving that it was not Gods work. The fact that God is operating through people, makes it no less Gods work than if he had struck them down with lightning (it's actually more efficient since lightning expends a lot more energy than a court case and a hanging).
I'm not saying I believe in a god, only that in this case your argument could very well be proof that there is a god, as much as you believe it proves there is not.
Consoles prior to the 90s had no moving parts, and produced very little heat. The moment moving parts where added, the chance of failure sky rocketed. it's very easy to find a working SNES or Genesis, and even older systems, but you will find it hard to find working SegaCDs or TurboDuos. Moving parts break. Add in excessive heat and they will even more likely break. The same is true for PC. may c64s are still working, but IBM PCs from a little while later are less likely to be operational.
You can buy ten years of warranty on a PS3 (at least in the USA, can't speak for others). The first year comes free with the purchase of the console. The second year has a variable cost depending on when you buy it and you don't need to purchase it until you are concerned about the life of the console or the console actually breaks. If you purchase it before it breaks, the cost is exactly the same as the current console cost minus the current trade in value. This is often about $100. If you wait until it break, then it's the same as the current cost of a new console. Both options extend your warranty for one year, and you can repeat this process as long as you would like. My warranty has so far cost around $150 to keep my console running for 4 years, with no sign on costing more before the PS4 is released. Mind you my PS2 warranty cost me nothing beyond the original cost and that was a launch system that is still running to this day.
Oh, and if you actually buy extended warranties on electronics you are make a poor economic decision. People would not sell extended warranties if it was not profitable for them to do so. No one sells an extended warranty that is in your favor.
If you were going to make me pick a trade in high school, it probably would have been Software Engineering. Instead, in college I went from business to marketing to accounting, and then went into a career in Software Engineering. I wasted so much by going to a liberal arts college, and it amazes me that anyone would want to limit their kids ability to get detailed learning in a subject that interests them. Had I been exposed to Software Engineering earlier I would have realised my real interest were in hardware and IC design. Don't make more general schools, increase the options of specialisations.
I wasted half my life in the American education system. The education received in the United States is far to slow for a large number of people. Many of us were ready to specialise by our teen years. I had to be accepted into college before I graduated high school because I was unable to receive the necessary education, and I was not in away alone. The kind of general stuff you are talking about should be done in elementary school. There is no reason we shouldn't be able to have a system with specialised high schools for those that are ready for it.
Didn't say they were not, just said that it would solve the problem. But don't worry to much, the GMO corps are lobbying hard to get it outlawed or include a disclaimer like they did with rBST (A Monsanto product).
We can solve that problem. Allow non-GMO modified producers to label their products as such. And lets not do it like we did with rBST where there has to be some disclaimer. Producers should be able to add facts to there labeling (contains no GMO products, or from cows not treated with rBST). Neither of these imply anything about their competition except that they might be using modified products.
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When taken into consideration of the global economy, China is playing the capitalist game. Just look at China as if they are a very large corporation, possibly the largest corporation in the world. And don't think the large corporations will be any better once they reach China's level of power and control. Capitalist are being beat at their own game. Of course China will eventually pay the price, but I'm not sure the western countries will be around to see it when it happens.
On the other hand, no other company on the planet is going to be able to ever sell Jell-O as long as there is a lawyer who draws breath.
And no other company will ever sell Tylenol. Brand (trademark) protection has nothing to do with patent protection. Patents expire, medical or otherwise, while trademarks do not. Medicine does not have any higher need for R&D than any other product, but there are higher costs in brining to market do to FDA regulations.
This is why I don't have cats...
I'm not deaf, but I've never spent more than $10 on headphones.
You'll be in for one heck of a shock the day you hear what music actually sounds like.
I'm only risking my own damfool neck, I can at most cause others a dent.
Not sure if you truly believe this or if it was just an illustration, but cyclists that disobey traffic laws are putting others lives at serious risk. If people lacked in morality they would just run you over for being where you should not have legally been. As a matter of fact in many places it would be illegal for them to not at least attempt to avoid a collision with you. In the act of avoiding you, while you break the law, there is a high potential of causing a far more serious accident. So please, if you do justify breaking the law, make sure you realise your just making excuses and don't have any legitimate grounds for that justification.
What exactly are "desirable characteristics"? Desirable to who? We have entered a period of time where human interaction is going by the way side. Emotions are irrelevant on in the modern internet connected society. Could it be that the most "desirable characteristics" are lack of affect? The exact characteristics that define autism? If Autism truly is on the rise, and I'm not saying it is, then maybe Autism is the most desirable characteristics for human survival.
In the near future we will have computer programs that can pass the turing test without failure, not because they are as complex as humans, but because humans will have become more analytical and predictable.
Having survived many layoffs I will tell you that this is incorrect. Layoffs are a way to release a person, for any reason, without having to follow the usual guidelines for termination. This allows companies to not document wrong doings, and to let people go for personal reasons. It is usually done under the guise of resource reduction, but in many cases those laid off employees are replaced with in a years time.
I had a friend many years ago who's entire vocabulary consisted of Fuck and Dude, and he made sense doing it.
Can the Arizona Education System really get any worse? From what I understand, with the possible exception of Southern California, Arizona already has the worst education system in the country.
Is there a question which cannot be answered by visiting www.gmail.com and having a helpful friend or highly paid accomplice on the outside write up the solution for you?
No there is not, but why is this a problem? As a professional for many years I have a full network of people in my field. We all keep each other on instance messaging everyday. If one of use has a problem that we either can't solve, or think someone else can solve quicker, we send off a message. So any company that hires me gets not one intelligent mind, but dozens, for the price of one.
Tests in education should be testing just that, showing the ability to be able to find out the answer to complex problems. This should include questions with no known answer or questions that are known to not be answerable, so that you an see a persons thought process and approach. Anything else is simply a test of the persons memory and recall, which might be useful in a small portion of work where immediate answers to routine questions is important, but I don't know that you need much education to carry out those jobs.
A stock portfolio is identical to a gambler's bankroll. A trader can chose to either leave his resources in his portfolio or sell them. A Gambler can chose to keep the money in his bank roll or make it available for other uses. A gambler does not necessarily make money on gambling winnings anymore than a stock trader makes money on increased value. The fact that it is easier to convert a bankroll into spendable cash should have no barring on the situation.
We can try and justify that stock trading is somehow more valuable to society, but in reality it is a legalized form of gambling that has been given special exemption from taxation.
How do you propose we deal with decrease of value then?
We could handle it the way we do with all other taxes, it reduces your total tax burden. Just look at any other professional gambler and how their taxes are handled. If a gambler earns a net positive in one year they are taxed on that, at a rate higher than income, whether they chose to spend those winnings or leave it in their bank roll. If a gambler has a net negative for a year, and assuming no other income, they pay no taxes. It can be argued that this is unfair to gamblers, but it is a system that has worked, and should easily be applied to the more acceptable form of gambling that we call stock trading.
Giving a 2 year old game to your friend is like giving him half of your 2-hour-old fries.
Not at all. In the case of 2 hour old fries, the actual object has changed in a way that makes it different than it was when first produced. This is not true with 2 year old media. A closer analogy is like saying that giving a 2 year old game to a friend is like giving fresh fries using a 2 year old recipe to your friend, even though newer and more enjoyable fries are available. The fries from the 2 year old recipe are just as good as they where 2 years ago, there just happens to be a better option available. This can be seen clearly in all media when you look at actual quality (in the eye of the beholder) products, such as Mark Twain books, Starwars movies, Super Mario Brothers, etc.
How about instead of car manufactures following the new model of software, we get all-you-can eat buffets to follow the old style. How sweet it would be if I could buy one entry into a buffet, eat all that I can, and then sell that pass to the next guy in line?
Oh wait, like everyone else that wants something for nothing, you are trying to compare a consumable (automobiles have a limited lifespan) with a non-consumable (media, the actual content, has no limit of it's lifespan of use). Two owners can not get the full use of an automobile, while they can each get the full use of media.
When a car company sells you a car, they don't demand that every time you sell that car, they get a portion of the sale.
When you resell that car used you are selling it with wear. That wear has reduced the usability of the product. You got to use up a certain amount of the usability of the product. You have then affectively paid for the portion of the total usability that is potentially in the car. Media does not work that why. Each use has the complete full potential of the product. If you play through the media completely, you can then hand it off for someone else to do the same thing. You just can't compare consumables to media.
If you buy fries at McDonalds, your friend doesn't have to pay McDonalds a fee if you give them one of your fries.
Comparing fries to media would not be the same as sharing a fry with a friend. It would be like eating the container of fries, going back to the counter and getting a second container of fries, without paying for them, and giving those to a friend. This would be the same as purchasing one entry to an all you can eat buffet, and taking your whole family in to eat.
That's the interesting thing here. Developers have the option to put in a required full time connection to call home to their servers to validate the user, and they can tie the product to the initial installed machine. All of this would be perfectly with in their rights. But they heard their customers and have chosen to do away with all the techniques that make sharing or resale impossible. Instead they are offering a bonus to the original purchaser, as thank you to those that chose to actually pay them for their work.
But even when the give the customers what the ask for, there is still a small subset that is unhappy and wish that the could get even more for free. Sure we all want to get as much as we can, but really this approach causes no harm to anyone, and allows content producers to create more quality content. It's really a win for everyone (except used game resellers, but I'm not shedding a tear for them). Used purchasers get the full original content with no strings attached, new purchasers get bonus content (which reflects the additional fee they paid and the price of early adoption), Used games having lessor perceived value will ultimately have lower prices, and producers have more resources to produce content.
If you are fighting against this, then you really just want to return to the days of 8 bit graphics, turn based play and 2 dimensions, and still pay over $40 a game (well over if include inflation.)
Ok, so let's just say that in the next generation we know that we will "need" one quarter as many people as we have today. This means we only need to have one child per every two people. Who decides what people will be producing those children? No mater what you are asking at least half the people to give up there right to add their genes and family history to the next generation. This is not as vain of a thing as you might want to make it out to be. Most people believe their way of living and their beliefs are the right ones and that by passing them on they are producing a better future moving forward. There is validity behind this way of thinking.
And now let's say, for the sake of argument, that we do figure out a way to determine who gets to breed. The next generation is down to exactly the right number of people to keep society going. In the middle of that generation a war breaks out that kills a fair percentage of the people, say 10% (not unreasonable in a global war). Now you have 10% less people than you need (probably more like 9%, but we don't need to get that detailed).
Reproduction is paramount to a societies survival. You may no believe there is a need for societal survival, but most people do. But of course, if your chances of reproducing are very low, then I can understand why you would be against other people doing it.
The same can be said about used cars, PCs, electronics, almost any physical object, so what?...You don't hear Intel bitching about all those used PCs sold to people. Or Mercedes bitching about used cars.
This is about as wrong as one can get. Physical objects have a limited life span. The quality of the product degrades over time. There is much higher true value between a car with 0 miles and a car with 100000 miles. Media on the other hand can be completely consumed multiple times with no degradation in quality. A car can also only be used by a single user at a time (or the maximum occupancy), but media can be consumed by an infinite number of people simultaneously.
Mercedes doesn't need to bitch about used cars, because they continue to make money on them, through used parts sales, or they chose when to stop producing parts because they will get higher value out of producing newer products. They don't worry about after market part sales because they know there is a physical cost involved in producing those parts (though auto manufactures have fought against after market parts in the past.). Computers are the same way, as the will physically fail over time, and the user will then need to purchase a new product. Digital media does not have this issue. 50 years from now, those bits will be still be the same quality they where. Using those bits 24 x 7 will not cause the bits to degrade any faster.
You might have a valid argument but it's hidden behind your completely invalid analogy
Shh. Keep that up and the duped Neo-Libertarians might catch on to the mighty plan.
Either there is no God, or He just doesn't care to interfere with the messengers -- which means these religious vigilantes are screwed either way.
So in this case we have a man who claimed there was no god, and now he is being put to death. Sounds to me like this might actually be proof that there is a God, and he will have put to death anyone that does not believe. In other words the messenger has been "interfered" with, and you are going to have a hard time proving that it was not Gods work. The fact that God is operating through people, makes it no less Gods work than if he had struck them down with lightning (it's actually more efficient since lightning expends a lot more energy than a court case and a hanging).
I'm not saying I believe in a god, only that in this case your argument could very well be proof that there is a god, as much as you believe it proves there is not.
Consoles prior to the 90s had no moving parts, and produced very little heat. The moment moving parts where added, the chance of failure sky rocketed. it's very easy to find a working SNES or Genesis, and even older systems, but you will find it hard to find working SegaCDs or TurboDuos. Moving parts break. Add in excessive heat and they will even more likely break. The same is true for PC. may c64s are still working, but IBM PCs from a little while later are less likely to be operational.
You can buy ten years of warranty on a PS3 (at least in the USA, can't speak for others). The first year comes free with the purchase of the console. The second year has a variable cost depending on when you buy it and you don't need to purchase it until you are concerned about the life of the console or the console actually breaks. If you purchase it before it breaks, the cost is exactly the same as the current console cost minus the current trade in value. This is often about $100. If you wait until it break, then it's the same as the current cost of a new console. Both options extend your warranty for one year, and you can repeat this process as long as you would like. My warranty has so far cost around $150 to keep my console running for 4 years, with no sign on costing more before the PS4 is released. Mind you my PS2 warranty cost me nothing beyond the original cost and that was a launch system that is still running to this day.
Oh, and if you actually buy extended warranties on electronics you are make a poor economic decision. People would not sell extended warranties if it was not profitable for them to do so. No one sells an extended warranty that is in your favor.
If you were going to make me pick a trade in high school, it probably would have been Software Engineering. Instead, in college I went from business to marketing to accounting, and then went into a career in Software Engineering. I wasted so much by going to a liberal arts college, and it amazes me that anyone would want to limit their kids ability to get detailed learning in a subject that interests them. Had I been exposed to Software Engineering earlier I would have realised my real interest were in hardware and IC design. Don't make more general schools, increase the options of specialisations.
I wasted half my life in the American education system. The education received in the United States is far to slow for a large number of people. Many of us were ready to specialise by our teen years. I had to be accepted into college before I graduated high school because I was unable to receive the necessary education, and I was not in away alone. The kind of general stuff you are talking about should be done in elementary school. There is no reason we shouldn't be able to have a system with specialised high schools for those that are ready for it.
Didn't say they were not, just said that it would solve the problem. But don't worry to much, the GMO corps are lobbying hard to get it outlawed or include a disclaimer like they did with rBST (A Monsanto product).
We can solve that problem. Allow non-GMO modified producers to label their products as such. And lets not do it like we did with rBST where there has to be some disclaimer. Producers should be able to add facts to there labeling (contains no GMO products, or from cows not treated with rBST). Neither of these imply anything about their competition except that they might be using modified products.