True. I suppose if they're collecting information on car type, they could easily collect information on the model year. That would be better. It depends on how hard it would be to make the system fair; if it's too hard, it might not be worthwhile.
Because we would like things to be as fair as possible. However, the fact is that we can't always be fair to everyone, so we have to make a choice. We shouldn't just abandon our principles because they won't always work perfectly; we should hold to them as well as we can.
No, it's not fair to them. However, as your parents used to say, life isn't fair. In particular, it's impossible to be fair to everyone. If we don't create disincentives for destructive behaviors (like driving SUVs), then we're being unfair to our children. If we create some beaurocracy to carefully penalize only people who buy SUVs after a certain date, then we're being unfair to the taxpayer. In the end, being slightly unfair to people who ignored how their behavior would impact others doesn't sound like such a terrible thing, since they were in the process of being unfair to us.
Let's look at it from an economics perspective: A person's choice affects other people. These effects are called "externalities." The first person does not tend to take the other people into account. By using a tax to add the cost of the externalities into the cost of the product, then the Great Big Magical Hand of the Market will cause the consumer to make the efficient choice including the externalities.
So yes, people are punished for making choices that are bad for other people. However, the principles of freedom don't say that everyone should be free from the ill consequences of their decisions, just that they should get to make decisions. So this does not really remove people's freedoms; it just makes people take a broader view when exercising them.
As the whole point of my calculation was to show how big the thing would have to be to keep the acceleration below 10 g there is no way a 30 degree incline is going to happen--you've have to have a curve so long that the top of it really would be above a significant fraction of the atmosphere.
What if you build the whole thing at a 30-degree angle on a mountainside somewhere? Wouldn't this solve that problem?
Unenforced laws are the worst sort. They make it easy for the government to target anyone for persecution. So, "Bad law X isn't being enforced" doesn't make it okay.
I knocked my T41 off my desk just last week. It fell about 2 1/2 feet onto a wood floor, while on, and nothing happened. Nothing at all. The laptop remained on, and there is no visible damage to the laptop. The hard drive is fine, and so is the screen. Having destroyed laptops before with relative ease, I must say that I was impressed.
My favorite book was one that only had a single ending. Your other choices just took you to places you'd been before. It was a fun puzzle to find the way out. I wish I knew the name of that book now--does anyone else remember it?
In my judgement, global warming is an untested hypothesis, because the environment in which it grew is so uncritical as to be worthless.
The catch is that by the time it is proven beyond any doubt, the worst predictions may have occurred. It seems foolish to do nothing until it's too late, especially because the risk is so great and the cost is so minor.
The issue is that if we take, say, 20 to 100 years to study global warming and human-related greenhouse effects, we could be too late to stop anything bad from happening. Humans might or might not be warming the earth, but if we are, the cost is very high, while if we aren't, the cost of reducing greenhouse emissions is relatively low. That suggests that we should do something to stop our greenhouse emissions and then spend 20 to 100 years studying whether or not that was a good idea.
I'm not sure I'd say it's pure genius, but the tab-completion and all makes it fully functional in my book. I also don't understand people's issues with it. I understand the "ugliness" issue if you're using KDE and haven't set a GTK theme, but that can be fixed by setting a GTK2 theme.
You know it's hard out here for spyware, when you're tryin' to sell Viagra to the men. On viruses and trojans we depend, And Firefox is givin' us a scare.
I think the point is that businesses will adopt this so that they can keep employees from leaking important information, and so that employee activities can be monitored. It makes perfect sense from a business perspective to require that all emails use TPM software. Then, those employees will want this software at home so they can receive messages from their bosses. They won't see the point of a second email program, so they'll expect their friends to use TPM, too. Thus it spreads.
At every stage, it's easier to go along with it than fight it, and so it will succeed. There's no need for enforcement (except perhaps at the business level), and very few people would quit their jobs to prevent this.
In many ways, Carnegie is just like Gates. They both made their money through many illegal practices, and are using some of it charitably. I think Carnegie's practices were less ethical than Gates's, because Gates was "only" a monopolist, while Carnegie also created unsafe working environments and unlivable wages for his employees.
There is an easy (to say) answer to this. I've started playing Guild Wars, and they automatically share money and assign loot to players. Now, I've never played WoW, so I can't compare the two, but Guild Wars sure is fun and addictive. Even my D&D-hating wife enjoys it. (Plus, no monthly fee.)
I'm not necessarily suggesting that you switch, just that WoW should implement some of these features. When I play, I never worry about someone in my party running off with the treasure from the quest.
You do understand that the review site taking the orders itself is a completely trivial matter? That is not an innovation, and it doesn't deserve a patent. The conjunction of two commonplace things does not constitute a patentable idea.
Your argument is kind of like saying that even though people have sold spoons for ages, selling spoons AND GIVING A STICKER AS WELL should be patentable.
Are you suggesting that religious faith isn't superstition? Seriously, believing in things that don't follow natural law and lack evidence seems to be the very definition of superstition.
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True. I suppose if they're collecting information on car type, they could easily collect information on the model year. That would be better. It depends on how hard it would be to make the system fair; if it's too hard, it might not be worthwhile.
Because we would like things to be as fair as possible. However, the fact is that we can't always be fair to everyone, so we have to make a choice. We shouldn't just abandon our principles because they won't always work perfectly; we should hold to them as well as we can.
No, it's not fair to them. However, as your parents used to say, life isn't fair. In particular, it's impossible to be fair to everyone. If we don't create disincentives for destructive behaviors (like driving SUVs), then we're being unfair to our children. If we create some beaurocracy to carefully penalize only people who buy SUVs after a certain date, then we're being unfair to the taxpayer. In the end, being slightly unfair to people who ignored how their behavior would impact others doesn't sound like such a terrible thing, since they were in the process of being unfair to us.
Let's look at it from an economics perspective: A person's choice affects other people. These effects are called "externalities." The first person does not tend to take the other people into account. By using a tax to add the cost of the externalities into the cost of the product, then the Great Big Magical Hand of the Market will cause the consumer to make the efficient choice including the externalities.
So yes, people are punished for making choices that are bad for other people. However, the principles of freedom don't say that everyone should be free from the ill consequences of their decisions, just that they should get to make decisions. So this does not really remove people's freedoms; it just makes people take a broader view when exercising them.
Hear, hear. That's the first thing I thought of, too.
Unenforced laws are the worst sort. They make it easy for the government to target anyone for persecution. So, "Bad law X isn't being enforced" doesn't make it okay.
I knocked my T41 off my desk just last week. It fell about 2 1/2 feet onto a wood floor, while on, and nothing happened. Nothing at all. The laptop remained on, and there is no visible damage to the laptop. The hard drive is fine, and so is the screen. Having destroyed laptops before with relative ease, I must say that I was impressed.
My favorite book was one that only had a single ending. Your other choices just took you to places you'd been before. It was a fun puzzle to find the way out. I wish I knew the name of that book now--does anyone else remember it?
It looks to me like it could be the output of Graphviz.
Excellent.
The catch is that by the time it is proven beyond any doubt, the worst predictions may have occurred. It seems foolish to do nothing until it's too late, especially because the risk is so great and the cost is so minor.
The issue is that if we take, say, 20 to 100 years to study global warming and human-related greenhouse effects, we could be too late to stop anything bad from happening. Humans might or might not be warming the earth, but if we are, the cost is very high, while if we aren't, the cost of reducing greenhouse emissions is relatively low. That suggests that we should do something to stop our greenhouse emissions and then spend 20 to 100 years studying whether or not that was a good idea.
I'm not sure I'd say it's pure genius, but the tab-completion and all makes it fully functional in my book. I also don't understand people's issues with it. I understand the "ugliness" issue if you're using KDE and haven't set a GTK theme, but that can be fixed by setting a GTK2 theme.
You know it's hard out here for spyware,
when you're tryin' to sell Viagra to the men.
On viruses and trojans we depend,
And Firefox is givin' us a scare.
Really? It works fine for me in Firefox. Do you have javascript disabled or something like that?
Thank you! I've been amazed at all the comments saying it's okay that only Diebold can properly inspect the machines.
I sure would! But my wife probably wouldn't let me....
I think the point is that businesses will adopt this so that they can keep employees from leaking important information, and so that employee activities can be monitored. It makes perfect sense from a business perspective to require that all emails use TPM software. Then, those employees will want this software at home so they can receive messages from their bosses. They won't see the point of a second email program, so they'll expect their friends to use TPM, too. Thus it spreads. At every stage, it's easier to go along with it than fight it, and so it will succeed. There's no need for enforcement (except perhaps at the business level), and very few people would quit their jobs to prevent this.
In many ways, Carnegie is just like Gates. They both made their money through many illegal practices, and are using some of it charitably. I think Carnegie's practices were less ethical than Gates's, because Gates was "only" a monopolist, while Carnegie also created unsafe working environments and unlivable wages for his employees.
There is an easy (to say) answer to this. I've started playing Guild Wars, and they automatically share money and assign loot to players. Now, I've never played WoW, so I can't compare the two, but Guild Wars sure is fun and addictive. Even my D&D-hating wife enjoys it. (Plus, no monthly fee.)
I'm not necessarily suggesting that you switch, just that WoW should implement some of these features. When I play, I never worry about someone in my party running off with the treasure from the quest.
You do understand that the review site taking the orders itself is a completely trivial matter? That is not an innovation, and it doesn't deserve a patent. The conjunction of two commonplace things does not constitute a patentable idea.
Your argument is kind of like saying that even though people have sold spoons for ages, selling spoons AND GIVING A STICKER AS WELL should be patentable.
Worse than that, now you should declare it as a volatile variable.
Are you suggesting that religious faith isn't superstition? Seriously, believing in things that don't follow natural law and lack evidence seems to be the very definition of superstition.
Well said!