When it's possible for a lock to be virtually unbreakable, a lock being "crap" is pretty much inexcusable,
And again, you're missing the point entirely. The lock being horribly shitty is NOT by extension a valid justification for you to break in,
No kidding. But my point was the analogy is flawed. Of course, as you seem to be trying to point, which is true, is that it's irrelevant if the lock was shitty or not or if there was a lock there or not (well, except to the point of whether it's considered "breaking and entering" vs "trespassing").
so quit trying to shift the focus back to the company who got robbed.
If anything, the focus was on the CEO and the stockholders, not the company itself. And it wasn't a point of trying to cast blame away from the "ethical hacker", but to point out that stockholders who have a financial interest should have higher standards and demand them from their CEO.
Actually, it makes me wonder why more shareholders don't sue their CEOs for gross incompetence.
Because you can sell your fucking stock and be done with it. You bought it, they didn't force you to.
So, caveat emptor? To a certain extent I can agree to that, since you always have to be wary of whatever you buy and make considerations, but there's also a point of having certain reasonable expectations and a product or company not meeting those expectations. And as I pointed out, the issue at hand is pretty inexcusable. The only real "excuse" is that making unbreakable locks is hard--ie, it requires experts of some sort and can't be done by just anyone--, is potentially a bit more costly--as experts will cost more, although not in the way that "expert" CEOs cost orders of magnitude more than the more common CEO--, and that finally a lot of other companies have the same problems--which speaks more of there being the status quo to have such low standards.
But the stockholders grew a boner for fast profits on a weak investment and the more important point in relation to today's economic problems is they never bothered to make sure the locks were good to start with. They just said "Hey, big company, big cash, I want a piece of that" instead of doing a thorough examination of who they were giving their money to and how they operated their business. So yes, they deserve to take it in the shorts when the stocks tanked, because they are the ones who provided the company with the capital to operate without ensuring they were competent in the first place.
That's true to an extent, but that still seems a poor excuse. Part of the supposed reason CEOs are paid so handsomely is in part precisely that they can both generate high profits but also that they know well enough how to run the company and are willing and able to stand up to unreasonable demands by the stockholders, even if the stockholders may on the face of it think otherwise. As I pointed out in another post, the majority stockholders tend to want to keep the stock for the long term and don't wish to see the stock tank, so they're more willing to listen to a CEO who is more risk adverse, even if it decreases the short-term profit potential a bit. Meanwhile, yes, the minority stockholders who are looking for a quick buck will likely go elsewhere, but then those stockholders rarely have an actual say in the workings of the company, their "get rich quick" trading is likely to cause more instability in the stock price which is undesirable, and catering to their whims only further encourages the sort of corner cutting that destabilizes a company so it's best not to encourage their trading in the company's stock anyways.
If you don't know everything about a company and its practices, then don't give them your fucking money and do NOT come crying to me when your "golden goose" turns out to be a hu
Wouldn't the award be proportional to the amount of stock you actually held? So all you'd be doing is do the other shareholders a favor (who would collect most of the award, whereas you fronted the court costs...)
Well, yes and no. The majority stockholders tend to hold their stock in a company and won't do anything like suing the CEO because there's too much risk involved--they'll likely tank the stock price and the CEO won't or can't pay whatever the court demands. Meanwhile, most minority stockholders are likely to trade more/less stock and in that way bail out of a company with crap "locks" but that won't do much to either punish the CEO or have much sway on what the majority stockholders can/will do--they'll at best understand the stock sales and stock price dip as being caused by the break-in and accurately hold the CEO accountable, but then be more or less forced to pay off the CEO to leave because of how much damage he/she can do before he leaves otherwise, which as above even if they were to try to CEO to recoup the damages would probably not cover what they'd lose in court during/after his leave. Finally, the person who would sue the company owning just one share of stock might be aiming to sue in small claims court (to avoid the court costs) and for which their one proportional settlement from the CEO might be both low enough that the CEO can pay yet high enough to be above the cost of stock plus the time and energy for the court hearing. Of course, if the company has 100 million outstanding shares and the "damage" is unlikely to amount to more than $1 million, yes the odds are good it wouldn't work out financially.
Still, I could see some advocates doing it just for the "social justice" aspect of it.:/ It certainly doesn't feel like as much in the way of justice to dump your shares (presuming you have any in the first place) which might cause a marginal stock price drop.
When it's possible for a lock to be virtually unbreakable, a lock being "crap" is pretty much inexcusable, especially when it's there not to thwart robbers from a single bedroom window but a multi-billion dollar company. But, you know, other than that, great analogy... Actually, it makes me wonder why more shareholders don't sue their CEOs for gross incompetence. I mean, you might get more out of buying one share of stock and suing the CEO than you'd get out of the reselling the actual stock.
Um, if Intel's CPUs can't safely run at 100% continuously, they can surely safely run at 80% or 50% continuously with short 100% bursts. In that case, they could market their CPUs as running 80% or 50% of their max clock speed with "burst performance" or whatever. In short, there's no excuse for running outside of the safe limits.
Buffet Foundation*. And the reason he's bitching is (1) he recognizes that it's absurd how *high* taxes are on the poor/middle class, even if they get a lot or all of their income tax back because it interferes with the growth, development, and well-being of the very people with the least disposable income, and the only way to offset the desired relative tax cuts is to either fundamentally restructure government spending (ie, zero defense or zero welfare+social security (without tax cuts), just to have no deficit, and even further cuts to start paying on the debt) or to shift more of the tax burden to the upper middle class/rich (which some spending cuts, since tax increases aren't likely to be enough); (2) there's a lot of rich people who *aren't* giving to charities and so as much as he plans to give away his fortunes and urge as many other billionaires/millionaires to do the same, it's not enough to actually rely upon the good will of a handful of the notable billionaires to "do the right thing" to actually resolve the social/economic issues of our day which is why government is there to step in; and (3) that a lot of that "wealthy wouldn't be wealthy without realizing how wasteful and downright evil government is" is BS, given it's actually (at least supposedly) fulfilling the needs of people that made those people wealthy under an obviously not so downright wasteful or evil government that it stopped them from becoming rich.
*As above, a lot of his "fortune" is the paper value of his stock in his company, which he can't reasonable sell in bulk (as it'd kill the stock price and allow a takeover that'd likely liquidate the company) and likely is never going to be worth even half the stated value. Other than that, yes, he plans to leave the bulk of his fortune to his foundation to carry on his philanthropy.
You did some underage drinking and turned out okay? Good for you. One of my sister's friends drank a liter soda bottle full of vodka on the school bus when she was fifteen and had to have her stomach pumped. Another kid I didn't really know died from choking on his own vomit after drinking at a party in tenth grade.
Well, your two anecdotes totally beat out his one...
It is equally self-evident that adults should be free to drink...
No. It's self-evident that adults, when barred from drinking, will do it anyways, often with guns and violence to get those drinks. It's also self-evident that most people don't feel like being their brother's keeper (which is fine and everything). It's also self-evident that a lot of the reason youths drink to excess is because society has made drinking an adult thing to do and heavy drinking a manly thing to do. In the end, it's a combination of whether children can and are responsible with things, including things like drinking and how adults who are irresponsible suffer the consequences of their actions, be it directly through their ill effects or indirectly through social sanctions.
Having said all that, yes, society tries to draw some lines on some things as it should and it's rarely clear exactly where those lines should be. Self-evidence, though, is rarely taken into account, otherwise we wouldn't treat marijuana and alcohol the way we do. Instead, a lot of it is cultural norms overlayed with some level of biology, political freedom considerations, religion, etc.
Charities at least put the money to good use and are relatively efficient. Governments, no so much.
Depends on the charity. How many cancers have been cured, again? Seriously, though, people expect the world from governments--and certainly a lot of the blame comes from authoritarian government officials and their supporters in the past who used it to justify their actions, whether or not they were justifiable, along with the more socialist oriented who set to use government to fix social, economic, and private company problems--while ignoring all the good that governments do do. It is, after all, the case that millions of people receive medical care (if nothing else, for many from the government mandate of requiring medicare provides to provide emergency care regardless of whether a person can pay), housing, food, etc precisely because of government in a way that charity can't reasonable match because even the wealthy combined couldn't prove the sort of funds necessary for the task while not nearly enough individuals reliably donate--they're less likely to donate during times of trouble which are precisely the time when the need is greatest.
Having said that, yes, government is grossly inefficient at times, often corrupt at various levels, frequently takes up causes that are either misguided or inappropriate, etc. But, that's a part of the necessary evil of government. The best that can reasonably be done is to work to fight those points of inefficiency, corruption, etc. One sad truth is, most people aren't interested enough politically to do that and so you have inane things like Congress having horrible public support yet individual Congressmen having great public support, even though those Congressmen vote in lock-step with the greater Congress on almost everything. One could then argue, I guess, that at least with charity it requires an active action to occur, so at least from that perspective it'd result in money being spent overall more wisely. But, if people can't be bother to invest time in their government, why would they bother with charities? No, the result would be a drastic drop in "charitable" spending (ie, both government and private spending towards the needs of others) even if overall private charitable spending would skyrocket.
I mean, as much as some people like to envision the chicken and egg issue of government involvement in affairs like welfare came about because of do-gooders usurping charities, the truth is that government only became involved after a long period of charities/private individuals simply failing to meet the demands of the people and only after a lot of political fighting--admittedly a lot of it based on the principal of what a government should be and do and not only on the selfishness of the wealthy who knew they would likely have to shoulder a lot of the burden--did change occur. So, backing out of paying taxes is pretty much paramount to either giving up on the idea that the problem is at least workable (if not solvable) or being at least a little selfish and ignorant, possibly willfully, about how many people are being damned to starvation, the cold, etc. I mean, the only thing left is saying that those people "deserve" their condition of real poverty because they don't work [enough]--ignoring the adage "the world doesn't owe you a living" and how that translates to starvation as well as how many breaks business people get in things like bankruptcy, limited liability through corporations, etc.
Well, sorry for all the rambling. I guess I'm just sick of the way the image of government has been so twisted, from in the 50s being the source of heroic "G-Men" battling communism and supporting justice at home to now being full of incompetent boobs who do nothing right--and both coming from the same political party. Neither image was true, of course, and it's not like the image actually made government into what it was projected to be, although it could be said that in the former case the projection was used to
You'd have to be a weird sort of dude to give charity to the federal government.
Wow! I didn't realize it was charity to pay taxes, given it's taxes that provide services oneself enjoys* but, if wealthy enough, services that others enjoy as well. Well, I guess it is charity in the sense that it means potentially paying more than you get out for the benefit of others. Personally, I'd just consider that a common duty of anyone with the means towards humanity. But, then, I take that from the idea that just because you're not a completely selfish dick and rose above doing the absolute minimum when it comes to contributing to the world doesn't make your actions charity.
I reduce my tax burden as much as is legal, so I don't think the rich are all that "different" on that particular score.
When the tax laws are rewritten so that "reduce my tax burden as much as is legal" is pretty fluid on the word "legal" precisely because you money can more or less help buy what "legal" is, I think "that particular score" is very different. That's precisely why Warren Buffet bitched about the point that capital gains taxes are so ludicrously low, given it's precisely the rich that have the means to have so much of their assets tied up in stock and hence benefit from such an effectively low income tax rate. I mean, I don't know about you, but when companies require you to buy at least 1,000 shares of stock and stocks sell for at least $1, it's easy to see why the average person isn't going to buy much in the way of stock. Hell, when middle and upper middle class people started actually buying stocks directly (as day traders), their was an incredible amount of bitching and moaning from the rich (through a receptive media) precisely because their actions were causing disruptions in stock prices which represented a significant instability in expected returns. Of course, mutual funds were just as bitchy as they being the middlemen in stocks for the middle class didn't like missing the potential customers nor how it became clear just how illusionary stock prices really are when a relatively few can have significant disruptive effect on the stock market. But, I digress...
*Yes, I realize not everyone uses all services and plenty of people don't pay enough to cover their share of what they use. But, then short of every paying on a per-use basis, there's no way to be "fair" in that sense. Having said that, there's already the absurdity of people today who bitch they paid $X into social security and expect to get $X out, either to themselves or to their loved ones when they die, ignoring that plenty of people on social security get more than they ever paid in (the disabled, the elderly who live longer than average, etc) which makes that entirely unreasonable unless there's some expectation that the government either (a) take the $X and invest it into companies and use dividends or later sales or something to cover the difference (which wouldn't work, given the relatively low rate of return to the demand) or (b) take taxes from some other source to make up the difference (which makes social security not self-sustaining and rather misses the whole point of budgeting). Meanwhile, per-use services fall on their face for many obvious reasons (a person who is robbed of their money, is murdered, etc obviously can't pay) behind the whole injustice of such a system (not that people seem to think too much about that, but it's easy to not think about when you spend all your efforts painting government as the source of injustice). But, then, I digress again..
Re:This is why a flat tax will not work.
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Incorrect. When you buy a stock, you are buying ownership in a company. You are not giving the company any money at all.
Not incorrect, just incomplete. When you buy stock from a company, you're buying ownership in a company with the idea that the stock at the buy time is on paper worth less than your promised shared on the premise that your cash along with the infusion of cash from other new stock owners will allow the company to grow and hence be worth at least as much as what you paid if not more. After that point, of course, you're free to sell your stock to others and the company receives no more money from those transactions.
In any case, the point could be raised that since you as stock holder are a partial owner, you should pay your share of tax from the income derived from the company. Ie, if the company makes $1 million income and there's 1000 shares of stock, then each share of stock is equivalent to $1,000 of income (regardless of whether that income is actual divested to you or not). Hence, if you owned 20 stock, you'd have to pay the income tax on $20,000. This would, of course, remove the need for the company to pay any tax directly, but then it'd also remove the ability of the company to reinvest in itself to avoid claim profits as income (something people can't generally do, but instead are given blanket exemptions for under similar logic).
In either case, the point would be that you have some hypothetical ownership over a chunk of money* and should be taxed on it just the same as a bank account.
*And yes, before you pipe in about it, I realize that the truth is that not every owner has a say in the company and few have the ability to actually force divestment of any money from the company. That's why I mentioned dividends before, since that's the more general practice of a stock company divesting itself to its owners even if it's left up to a select handful of people to set the actual rules of divestment. Of course, banks operate under a similar logic since it's not like banks will generally allow you to pull out large chunks of money at any given time (as they only keep on hand enough cash to meet expected daily demands, and they set regular limits to try to bound those demands), although it's obviously a lot easier to force all your owed money out of a bank than a company whose stock you own, hence the reason for stock sales instead of direct company divestment. Overall, though, that's just a convoluted way of saying that through some legal trickery to allow for companies to reasonable exist there exists an equally convoluted way of preventing legitimate company owners access to their own assets based upon contracts that really should matter to the government, since it's the base organization that gets to set the ground rules on what is or is not considered income and who has to pay it.
To that end, I assume the whole idea of taxing company originated precisely because too few stock holders could pay (as the income became tied up in the company) or would divulge needing to pay large income taxes (as any tax paid would hinder the ability of the company to grow) and it was simpler to go straight to the source, so to speak. But, then, taxing companies has also originated a strong desire by companies to reduce or remove their own tax obligation, under some claim of doing a greater good (jobs, if nothing else) than actual people with their own money, so now companies often pay less taxes than people (especially if you consider all the ways to exempt profits from being counted as income for which people can't remotely get away with, short of pretending they're a company). Overall, I just balk at the absurdity of it all, even if I do acknowledge that I understand the logic of taxing bank account interest but not stock price increases.
Re:This is why a flat tax will not work.
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Um, the whole premise behind stocks is the same as a bank: loaning money to an organization with the intent to provide not only a sort of security to where your money is but also with the potential hope that you'll get some added income. The major difference, of course, is that banks are now FDIC insured, so the risk of a bank collapsing and your "piece of paper" for your account becoming worthless or even devalued is near non-existent. Meanwhile, stock often plummets in value precisely because it's being sold (which seems to be a clear sign that (a) stocks are overvalued at face value* and (b) there's a clear lack of communication that resolves what would otherwise be a simple buying/selling of a valued asset). In any case, the point could be made that so long as the bank holds your money, you don't access possess it but merely "a piece of paper" and the interest should only be taxed as income on withdrawal.
*In some respects this is intentional as stocks that pay dividends can pay the stated face value of the stock after a period of years, which clearly makes the stock worth more than the face value for anyone planning to hold the stock of years. To that end, it's unclear why stocks that pay no dividends have any value at all, unless one presumes the stocks will either eventually pay dividends or the company will liquidate soon and your partial ownership will see you receiving some value from the purchase. Clearly, though, that's very speculative in nature and a rather large problem with the stock market, IMHO.
I think this attitude really came from early days where the PC was just an awful mess with applications and games completely bypassing the nearly nonexistent operating system on a whim (ignoring decades of experience in other platforms).
Um, it wasn't "on a whim", at least on IBM PCs. On early IBM PCs, ROM BIOS was the closest thing to a HAL; but ROM BIOS was also dog slow (stemming from the fact that RAM was many times faster than ROM, meaning a program that made a lot of ROM calls would tend to be dog slow). Earlier versions of MS-DOS used the ROM BIOS a lot as well, precisely to run on as many IBM PCs or clones as possible, but as time progressed many calls were replaced with direct hardware access precisely for the speed improvements; this obviously happened in a lot of other programs as well. Of course, as time progressed RAM became much bigger and cheaper, so it was common (and still is) for the ROM to be copied in RAM precisely for the speed boost it offers. And the above doesn't even get into the fact that the ROM BIOS, as close as it was to a HAL, was a far cry from a HAL; it's precisely the reason DOS and Windows have their own drivers and HAL.
In short, yes, it's ideologically nice to not directly access hardware, but sometimes it's the only reasonable step if you want to get decent performance on limited, for the goal, hardware. Now, I have no idea if that's still the case with the XBox 360, PS3, or Wii, and I'm inclined to believe for the most part that it's more an excuse for more general bad coding decisions or trying really hard to push the limits of what's graphically possible for the "Wow" factor to compete against other games/other systems. And for the latter point, I can see the justification, but that really boils down to each company working hard to making a good base library for each system to be used in all their games, effectively writing a new HAL for their needs. And presuming they do that, I can certainly understand their willingness to accept having to port that library in the future if needed because it'd be a one-time rewrite and would serve their needs much better than simply catering to whatever they get out of the official libraries given to them by MS, Sony, or Nintendo.
So the campus should open the Internet to everything, not filter porn sites or anything?
Yea, that'd be the idea. We are talking about adults, here, right? I mean, as a general point, a University doesn't cater to children, so even the questionable argument of filtering at schools doesn't really hold up. And on most campuses, it's the case that internet access is available not only in labs, libraries, etc but also in dorm rooms and other private areas, which removes the argument that one needs to filter to protect the general public which is used at public libraries.
Obviously they have authority to regulate their Internet usage, such as access to torrent sites etc.
How does that follow? Are you suggesting that Universities are either (a) constantly monitoring their users and hence track illegal usage or (b) are constantly monitoring for new illegal torrent sites and are legally bound to block them? Clearly there's a lot of legitimate usage for torrents; considering how many Universities mirror Linux distros, it only makes sense that Universities themselves would be distro torrent seeders to ease outgoing bandwidth requests. But even if that wasn't the case, a University is like any other ISP and going around poking into the affairs of its users on its own prerogative is bad to get a backlash from its users, both students and professors.
Maybe there was too much traffic going to this one website and the Firewall put a stop to it.
Golly, a lot of people keep going to cnn.com. We should setup a Firewall to autoblock it! Oh, wait, no, that's dumb. Our purpose is the flow of information and knowledge. It makes more sense to proxy cache the website. In fact, there's services like Akami which are precisely for that purpose, to ease outgoing bandwidth requirements while still providing access. You might question the legally murky issue of caching, especially with illegal content. To that end, there's things like the DMCA and court orders to block content if it comes to that, for which the University if it complies should be legally in the clear like any other ISP. There's certainly no reasonable legal position that demands firewalling first and caching never, especially in any sort of preemptive measure.
Really, everything about the mandate of what a University is really undermines all of what you've said. It's one reason why Libraries fought rather hard against filtering (but eventually acquiesced because there was too much public support blocking creepy people looking at porn where children could walk by). But a University is the epitome of ivory tower, adult considerations, so to suddenly flush seeming 1st Amendment considerations down the toilet (whether or not there really are any) is incredibly absurd and honestly quite horrible. It seems along the same lines of expecting in anarchy laws against theft and murder enforced by a governmental law enforcement body.
The reliability and consistency of what? Other people's movies? Having other people's stuff to offer was the necessary condition of their business, not the reliability.
Actually it's both. The reliability is in having urls that point to files that are retained for years. In comparison, trackers can go dark in months, days, or possibly hours. Similarly, copyright holders who value their product make available regularly that product on discs or websites and make sure it's available for sale for years. As for consistency, that's the issue of quality in part in that you're less likely to get spam on a service like Megaupload rather than a P2P network, just from the sheer point that one is more anonymous than the other.
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
A company that clears millions of dollars a year selling other people's movies is somehow the equivalent of the peace-loving Alderaan?
Not quite. If anything, Napster or Bittorrent were Alderaan. Megaupload would be more like if Tatooine were blown up next.
(Whatever you do, don't ask the guy who wrote that line what he thinks about file sharing. )
I'm not sure I care.:) After all, the point is the message, not the messanger.
Um, Megaupload is the exact opposite of torrents and trackers. Megaupload takes money and uses it to support reliability and consistency, much like how filmmakers and Big Media do with their services; that's where the money is at. Meanwhile, torrents and trackers are so distributed and unreliably (torrenters and trackers can disappear overnight while Megaupload had reports of many files up for years) that its hard to make money (you can host a website to direct people to torrents and place ads on that website, but torrents can be shared P2P like anything else which removes even that although that ads another layer of unreliability). Of course, torrenters are legally attacked much more easily since all IPs are known* vs something like Megaupload which may or may not keep logs of who downloads what; and that's been the story that's pushed people towards Megaupload and ilk.
So, while I'd agree that filesharing isn't free of Big Corporation, that's at least in part due to the legal situation. And the rest is that Megaupload provides a better distribution system than Big Media. That was the story of Napster as well. I mean, a lot of people are clearly willing to pay monthly buffet rates as Megaupload shows, so the real story in some ways is how Big Media failed to be Megaupload and provide that buffet.
*"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." Napster then Bittorrent then Megaupload. Maybe next will be one of tor, freenet, or gnunet being the popular piracy platform and then it will be even more obvious how all these measures are blocking liberty. As much as I feel for artist and want to show my appreciation for the artists' works I enjoy, I fear that the attempts to raise the stakes in this way is only going to make the situation worse. The issue, as has been repeated many times, is figuring out the market solution to the problem if there is one. Yes, there will always be the unrepentant pirate who will never spend a dime no matter how much you court him; there is no perfect solution. But Megaupload shows there's tens of millions to made from people who *will* spend a dime or more. It's pointless to them obsess at the end of the day that you could have made a few million more, except to think of a new way to entice people and market yourself and your work.:/
No he's logical. When you are campaigning you pick and chose your cases. Rosa Parks was selected as the person to campaign over because she had a pretty respectable background. You want to demonise drugs? Ignore the deaths on sink estates and focus on any deaths of pretty middle class girls (Leah Betts).
No, you exploit the pretty middle class girls and then generalize to include the deaths on sink estates. That's what MLK did. If the "unintended consequences" of SOPA and ilk is to suppress liberty, then let it be that the "unintended consequences" of supporting Kim Dotcom and his ilk is to support liberty. What did MLK do? He changed the discussion from one of skin color and the supposed inherent hierarchy to one of personal character. Similarly, instead of a question of piracy and the supposed need to limit liberty, the discussion needs to be converted to one of personal freedom and responsibility. That's what the DMCA Safe Harbor provision was all about; it should matter not how much a person "wanted" their service to be abused for copyright infringement because in the end the DMCA made it explicit that so long as you follow the take down rules it's the uploader who is responsible. That is how it should be.
no you just won't admit that the weather is far more complex than you can imagine.
Weather is far more complex than I can imagine. Climate isn't. The former is trying to predict the exact conditions (hot or cold, wet or dry, windy or calm) at a specific time at a specific place. The latter is trying to predict the general conditions over a large area over a large period of time. I mean, fuck, I wouldn't ever claim to predict to know if it'd snow today or not in NYC but the idea that it'd be general cold and that snow accumulation is likely to occur this month, yea, that's nearly a given.
the thing is not that the earth is getting warmer but why?
Obviously.
Most of the ice sheets that are melting are only 5-10 thousand years old. that means 10,000 years ago it was warm enough that they didn't fucking exist. We also know in the past the earth was a lot warmer than it is now.
So how come it is humans warming up the planet when the planet not only has been warmer in the past without humans, but has done so in the last 10,000 years before humans even had domesticated animals.
Perhaps you're unaware, but those glaciers you're talking about didn't pop-in over night. While some advanced or retreated at the breakneck speed of hundreds of years, many took thousands or tens of thousands of year to advance or retreat. Meanwhile, with rare exception, most of the ice sheets you speak of are melting in the hundreds of years time frame (or faster). Ie, that's not normal or consistent with the past.
I can believe our burning CO2 into the atmosphere is bad. the smog is a great example of that. However that doesn't mean that this isn't part of a normal warming and cool trend the planet goes through. In fact not a single person who supports Global warming will even look at such data.
What data, exactly, are you speaking of? I mean, I don't remember that period 65 million years ago when dinosaurs in their automobiles were releasing billions of tons of CO2 from otherwise trapped carbon sources and there was a sudden spike in CO2 concentrations then temperatures. Oh, but there have been periods where there was natural warming, glaciers retreated, and a lot of the dead matter underneath was converted to CO2 that then saw a spike in CO2 concentrations. Funny how that's backwards to now.
So water levels increase? It will be disastrous, but the majority will survive.
And if we dropped a bunch of H-Bombs on the US, the majority of humanity would probably survive (Asia being the major population center and all). I mean, sure, it'd be disastrous, but so what?
As a Christian, I'm against gay marriage from a religious point of view.
Out of curiosity, as a Christian, how do you feel about not marrying? It seems clear from Matthew 19:10-12 that Jesus thinks it's better that people put the kingdom of heaven first and not marry (and hence to practice celibacy), so it would seem if anything most churches should and would promote a life of following God and be more begrudging to those who feel the need to be married. It only seems a pragmatic step that Jesus concedes that not everyone can live up to that standard.
That leads into a question on how you feel about teaching teens safe sex? After all, the argument often is when talking of abstinence that "[not] everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given" which sounds almost paramount to saying, in modern terms, that not everyone is pious enough to abstain from sex and so one just has to accept the truth of it and deal best with it as it is.
Apples and oranges. The bottled water companies didn't invent water. The media companies did make the media you're pirating.
Question: If I were to clone Coca-Cola and sell it but without Coca-Cola's trademark logo, would that be legal, even though Coca-Cola clearly made the formula I'm "pirating"? What if the product was a mechanical clone of MS Word that used water wheels and gears instead of electrons and silicon? Does the limit simply come at the point where it's presumed the creator doesn't have an edge to sell their product because of the difficulty of construction of the product (that is, it's easy to copy MS Word as software but not as hardware...at least until RepRaps get far enough along and the need plastic gets to be as cheap as water)? In short, I'm not sure how you can call it apples and oranges.
I don't see why Microsoft, the owner of the Windows trademark, cannot impose whatever rules it wants to on manufacturers who want to put the Windows logo on their products.
Off-hand, I'd say because it defeats the purpose of the trademark system?
This was a big deal in the 90's because Microsoft already had huge platform lock-in, so it was unfeasible to ship a product that wasn't Windows-certified.
It's actually been worse since thanks to device driver signing. At least up until now, there was the legitimate explanation that they wanted to verify drivers (and hence hardware) were stable and secure enough. Well, slippery slope and all...
But on ARM? There's no Windows ARM software available, no multi-decade legacy of crap following behind it, so where is the lock-in? The Windows logo no longer indicates a platform advantage, it merely indicates you passed Microsoft's tests.
Test Case #1 - Does it forbid running Linux? What does that have to do with Windows, again?
A manufacturer can still make an ARM device that runs Windows and allow Linux as well -- they just can't put the Windows logo on it.
How about this: devices that can run Windows 8 on ARM can use the Windows logo and devices that can *only* run Windows 8 on ARM can use the Anti-Linux Windows-only logo. That's a better communication of the point, right?
What hard data is there that justifies spending money on WMDs and military equipment instead of food for starving people?
OK, this is the kind of mental softness that lets idiot politicians get elected. What you have here is a false dilemma, your entire premise is wrong. The US spends money on both WMDs AND food for starving people.
Yes, and as you point out, the hard data shows it's unsustainable to do both (or possibly either). Hence, it's not a false dilemma to contemplate that if neither is sustainable and we're going to spend the money anyways, we might as well divert most (if not all) the money for the military towards humanitarian efforts.
Now, your overall point is a good idea, that we should find some way to use the money to help the world instead of hurt the world, but your supporting evidence is so bad that it completely undermines your point.
My "supporting evidence" is the very "hard data" that you linked to coupled with the common sense "we should find some way to use the money to help the world instead of hurt the world". So, where exactly is the "supporting evidence [that] is so bad"?
If you want to change the world, you need to find a way to make it happen, not sit around spouting stupidity.
That's not a bad idea at all. One way to change the world is to sponsor, support, and elect to political office those who would spend money on food instead of guns. But, as the saying goes, one of the very base "boxes" to stand upon is the soap box. So, here I am "spouting stupidity" just like everyone else.
I'm not sure if you're referring to Toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein in Iraq or not, but Saddam's security forces had long killed or tortured most vocal dissenters long before the invasion of Iraq. Yes, certainly, some who saw the US as a liberator who saw the US marching in finally took the initiative to speak out, but I think most people knew the truth: the US was only invested in its own interests, not the interests of the Iraqi people. That they should coincide for a time did not mean Saddam or his forces would be destroyed before the US left nor that when the US left another dictator, like one of Saddam's sons, wouldn't seize power and engage in another round of executions.
But, more generally, I just don't think most Iraqis cared. People live out their lives as best they can in the environment that exists. Few people spend their energy to try to change that environment because so many entrenched elements work to stabilize back to that environment that even without the fear of punishment, it seems to be wasted effort. This holds true in the US as much as Iraq and is a major reason there is such political dissatisfaction and yet so little political movement for change. Of course, by the same token, most people don't have a fully realized idea of what would be a better system and so couldn't advocate for that change anyways--I'd have to include myself in that camp as well, since I recognize how many gaps in my understanding of the government world there is. At best, I can only think in terms of moving from one form of democracy to another; I imagine most Iraqis thought in the same terms.
I think the real question is given that the US imposed democracy on Iraqis, how do they now feel about the current system vs the old one. And the truth is, many people liked the old system because it offered things like more stability for things like infrastructure, concerns about personal safety, etc. I only imagine that will change for the better as more infrastructure is built, more political groups settle for non-violent solutions to their troubles, etc. But, that's the optimism of a belief that the free market will solve supply issues, government won't be so deadlocked to not act to the needs of the people, and eventually even the most ardent supporter of a cause will become tired of the killing and seek more peaceful means. The cycle can, of course, begin again given enough motive. And another dictatorship could arise.
In the end, the US's involvement is wishy-washy enough that as much as it might have had a positive impact on Iraq today, it seems more an accidental side-effect than anything.
If overspending is happening and will continue to happen, why divert funds towards weapons which will make the world a worse place when the shit hits the fan? What hard data is there that justifies spending money on WMDs and military equipment instead of food for starving people?
I call it "Home Security". Just as Social Security is "earned" as a means for the elderly to be guaranteed a means to live when they are old, "Home Security" provides a means to guarantee that everyone who has worked sufficiently will have a home to live in, be it an apartment, house, or whatever. Okay, that idea isn't really perfect. The only reason Social Security works is because people have been brainwashed into believing that people earn it and they only believe that because it takes decades of work for any benefit to arrive; and even then, people still want to cut Social Security.
To be an effective tool against homelessness, "Home Security" would have to provide benefits even to people who have worked only five years. Part of the answer is to acknowledge that houses exist that can be bought in five years time on even a rather meager wage and without it being but a quarter of a paycheck. Fannie and Freddy tried in part to cause this but had the opposite effect: they made 30 year loans common which encouraged middle class buyers to pay more for their home and to buy larger homes than they needed; something similar happened with college tuitions.
Of course, all of the above is based upon the presumption that those in power would work to undermine their vast real estate interests, especially as supposedly its those real estate interests which are keeping the financial sector and hence the US economy afloat.:/
PS - I realize you were probably being sarcastic and didn't really expect or want an actual response. I also recognize my idea is far from complete, would probably be rather costly, and would be difficult to implement and sell to the American people. I also recognize that no solution would end homelessness, which as hyperbolic as the GP was I don't think was his actual point--it was one of at least discussing such ideas and trying them. After all, the words used were the jingoistic talk about the power and uniqueness of America. It's rather inconsistent to then point out how much America is like all the other, less-powerful countries, even if it is true.
They are. But so were poorhouses a solution to the homeless and the poor. And poor farms were a solution to the elderly needing a place to live. And orphanages were a solution to the orphaned to have a place to live. What is the common theme in all of these things? They pushed people with a problem into a compartmentalized solution that stigmatized them for life and possibly trapped them. That doesn't mean the spirit behind the ideas were wrong. But the execution leaved something to be desired.
In short, at some level, to be empowered to change and become part of "normal" society you have to have those stepping stones that make you *more* normal, not less.
Name the country that does not have homeless people.
Yea, that's telling 'em. America, the great and power, is just as powerless as everyone else to resolve a social problem that may be unsolvable. Of course, America isn't really interested in solving that social problem. I don't mean this as a slander or an insult. It's precisely the belief in a sort of Social Darwinism that has made the US such a great power (it also helps that it has a lot of natural resources and a climate that readily allows for most of their extraction, a relatively large amount of space which keeps down the cost of living in most the country, and an effective imperialist agenda not unlike many other empires of the past which might have more to do with it) that keeps a lot of social reform discussion from even coming up; I mean, why fight against a gifted horse just to help a few people? Then there is...
Not saying the US does not have problems (oh hells yes we do!), but there are homeless everywhere.
Hunger is everywhere. Vaccinatable childhood diseases are everywhere. A need for high-speed travel for the movement of both goods and people exists everywhere. The desire for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness exists everywhere. I guess we can't actually do anything about any of the above then, though. I mean, the US has problems...like homelessness..so we can't actually discuss working to fix homelessness. That's some master deflection; how about at least trying in the slightest to offer a few valid ideas on why homelessness can't be eradication entirely? That'd probably be an actually valid argument. Of course, that still leaves the potential of homeless almost being entirely eradicated (ie, that the few special cases that show homelessness is inherently inevitable doesn't explain not dealing with homelessness for the vast majority of the homeless).
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No kidding. But my point was the analogy is flawed. Of course, as you seem to be trying to point, which is true, is that it's irrelevant if the lock was shitty or not or if there was a lock there or not (well, except to the point of whether it's considered "breaking and entering" vs "trespassing").
If anything, the focus was on the CEO and the stockholders, not the company itself. And it wasn't a point of trying to cast blame away from the "ethical hacker", but to point out that stockholders who have a financial interest should have higher standards and demand them from their CEO.
So, caveat emptor? To a certain extent I can agree to that, since you always have to be wary of whatever you buy and make considerations, but there's also a point of having certain reasonable expectations and a product or company not meeting those expectations. And as I pointed out, the issue at hand is pretty inexcusable. The only real "excuse" is that making unbreakable locks is hard--ie, it requires experts of some sort and can't be done by just anyone--, is potentially a bit more costly--as experts will cost more, although not in the way that "expert" CEOs cost orders of magnitude more than the more common CEO--, and that finally a lot of other companies have the same problems--which speaks more of there being the status quo to have such low standards.
That's true to an extent, but that still seems a poor excuse. Part of the supposed reason CEOs are paid so handsomely is in part precisely that they can both generate high profits but also that they know well enough how to run the company and are willing and able to stand up to unreasonable demands by the stockholders, even if the stockholders may on the face of it think otherwise. As I pointed out in another post, the majority stockholders tend to want to keep the stock for the long term and don't wish to see the stock tank, so they're more willing to listen to a CEO who is more risk adverse, even if it decreases the short-term profit potential a bit. Meanwhile, yes, the minority stockholders who are looking for a quick buck will likely go elsewhere, but then those stockholders rarely have an actual say in the workings of the company, their "get rich quick" trading is likely to cause more instability in the stock price which is undesirable, and catering to their whims only further encourages the sort of corner cutting that destabilizes a company so it's best not to encourage their trading in the company's stock anyways.
Well, yes and no. The majority stockholders tend to hold their stock in a company and won't do anything like suing the CEO because there's too much risk involved--they'll likely tank the stock price and the CEO won't or can't pay whatever the court demands. Meanwhile, most minority stockholders are likely to trade more/less stock and in that way bail out of a company with crap "locks" but that won't do much to either punish the CEO or have much sway on what the majority stockholders can/will do--they'll at best understand the stock sales and stock price dip as being caused by the break-in and accurately hold the CEO accountable, but then be more or less forced to pay off the CEO to leave because of how much damage he/she can do before he leaves otherwise, which as above even if they were to try to CEO to recoup the damages would probably not cover what they'd lose in court during/after his leave. Finally, the person who would sue the company owning just one share of stock might be aiming to sue in small claims court (to avoid the court costs) and for which their one proportional settlement from the CEO might be both low enough that the CEO can pay yet high enough to be above the cost of stock plus the time and energy for the court hearing. Of course, if the company has 100 million outstanding shares and the "damage" is unlikely to amount to more than $1 million, yes the odds are good it wouldn't work out financially.
Still, I could see some advocates doing it just for the "social justice" aspect of it. :/ It certainly doesn't feel like as much in the way of justice to dump your shares (presuming you have any in the first place) which might cause a marginal stock price drop.
When it's possible for a lock to be virtually unbreakable, a lock being "crap" is pretty much inexcusable, especially when it's there not to thwart robbers from a single bedroom window but a multi-billion dollar company. But, you know, other than that, great analogy... Actually, it makes me wonder why more shareholders don't sue their CEOs for gross incompetence. I mean, you might get more out of buying one share of stock and suing the CEO than you'd get out of the reselling the actual stock.
Um, if Intel's CPUs can't safely run at 100% continuously, they can surely safely run at 80% or 50% continuously with short 100% bursts. In that case, they could market their CPUs as running 80% or 50% of their max clock speed with "burst performance" or whatever. In short, there's no excuse for running outside of the safe limits.
Buffet Foundation*. And the reason he's bitching is (1) he recognizes that it's absurd how *high* taxes are on the poor/middle class, even if they get a lot or all of their income tax back because it interferes with the growth, development, and well-being of the very people with the least disposable income, and the only way to offset the desired relative tax cuts is to either fundamentally restructure government spending (ie, zero defense or zero welfare+social security (without tax cuts), just to have no deficit, and even further cuts to start paying on the debt) or to shift more of the tax burden to the upper middle class/rich (which some spending cuts, since tax increases aren't likely to be enough); (2) there's a lot of rich people who *aren't* giving to charities and so as much as he plans to give away his fortunes and urge as many other billionaires/millionaires to do the same, it's not enough to actually rely upon the good will of a handful of the notable billionaires to "do the right thing" to actually resolve the social/economic issues of our day which is why government is there to step in; and (3) that a lot of that "wealthy wouldn't be wealthy without realizing how wasteful and downright evil government is" is BS, given it's actually (at least supposedly) fulfilling the needs of people that made those people wealthy under an obviously not so downright wasteful or evil government that it stopped them from becoming rich.
*As above, a lot of his "fortune" is the paper value of his stock in his company, which he can't reasonable sell in bulk (as it'd kill the stock price and allow a takeover that'd likely liquidate the company) and likely is never going to be worth even half the stated value. Other than that, yes, he plans to leave the bulk of his fortune to his foundation to carry on his philanthropy.
Well, your two anecdotes totally beat out his one...
No. It's self-evident that adults, when barred from drinking, will do it anyways, often with guns and violence to get those drinks. It's also self-evident that most people don't feel like being their brother's keeper (which is fine and everything). It's also self-evident that a lot of the reason youths drink to excess is because society has made drinking an adult thing to do and heavy drinking a manly thing to do. In the end, it's a combination of whether children can and are responsible with things, including things like drinking and how adults who are irresponsible suffer the consequences of their actions, be it directly through their ill effects or indirectly through social sanctions.
Having said all that, yes, society tries to draw some lines on some things as it should and it's rarely clear exactly where those lines should be. Self-evidence, though, is rarely taken into account, otherwise we wouldn't treat marijuana and alcohol the way we do. Instead, a lot of it is cultural norms overlayed with some level of biology, political freedom considerations, religion, etc.
Depends on the charity. How many cancers have been cured, again? Seriously, though, people expect the world from governments--and certainly a lot of the blame comes from authoritarian government officials and their supporters in the past who used it to justify their actions, whether or not they were justifiable, along with the more socialist oriented who set to use government to fix social, economic, and private company problems--while ignoring all the good that governments do do. It is, after all, the case that millions of people receive medical care (if nothing else, for many from the government mandate of requiring medicare provides to provide emergency care regardless of whether a person can pay), housing, food, etc precisely because of government in a way that charity can't reasonable match because even the wealthy combined couldn't prove the sort of funds necessary for the task while not nearly enough individuals reliably donate--they're less likely to donate during times of trouble which are precisely the time when the need is greatest.
Having said that, yes, government is grossly inefficient at times, often corrupt at various levels, frequently takes up causes that are either misguided or inappropriate, etc. But, that's a part of the necessary evil of government. The best that can reasonably be done is to work to fight those points of inefficiency, corruption, etc. One sad truth is, most people aren't interested enough politically to do that and so you have inane things like Congress having horrible public support yet individual Congressmen having great public support, even though those Congressmen vote in lock-step with the greater Congress on almost everything. One could then argue, I guess, that at least with charity it requires an active action to occur, so at least from that perspective it'd result in money being spent overall more wisely. But, if people can't be bother to invest time in their government, why would they bother with charities? No, the result would be a drastic drop in "charitable" spending (ie, both government and private spending towards the needs of others) even if overall private charitable spending would skyrocket.
I mean, as much as some people like to envision the chicken and egg issue of government involvement in affairs like welfare came about because of do-gooders usurping charities, the truth is that government only became involved after a long period of charities/private individuals simply failing to meet the demands of the people and only after a lot of political fighting--admittedly a lot of it based on the principal of what a government should be and do and not only on the selfishness of the wealthy who knew they would likely have to shoulder a lot of the burden--did change occur. So, backing out of paying taxes is pretty much paramount to either giving up on the idea that the problem is at least workable (if not solvable) or being at least a little selfish and ignorant, possibly willfully, about how many people are being damned to starvation, the cold, etc. I mean, the only thing left is saying that those people "deserve" their condition of real poverty because they don't work [enough]--ignoring the adage "the world doesn't owe you a living" and how that translates to starvation as well as how many breaks business people get in things like bankruptcy, limited liability through corporations, etc.
Well, sorry for all the rambling. I guess I'm just sick of the way the image of government has been so twisted, from in the 50s being the source of heroic "G-Men" battling communism and supporting justice at home to now being full of incompetent boobs who do nothing right--and both coming from the same political party. Neither image was true, of course, and it's not like the image actually made government into what it was projected to be, although it could be said that in the former case the projection was used to
Wow! I didn't realize it was charity to pay taxes, given it's taxes that provide services oneself enjoys* but, if wealthy enough, services that others enjoy as well. Well, I guess it is charity in the sense that it means potentially paying more than you get out for the benefit of others. Personally, I'd just consider that a common duty of anyone with the means towards humanity. But, then, I take that from the idea that just because you're not a completely selfish dick and rose above doing the absolute minimum when it comes to contributing to the world doesn't make your actions charity.
When the tax laws are rewritten so that "reduce my tax burden as much as is legal" is pretty fluid on the word "legal" precisely because you money can more or less help buy what "legal" is, I think "that particular score" is very different. That's precisely why Warren Buffet bitched about the point that capital gains taxes are so ludicrously low, given it's precisely the rich that have the means to have so much of their assets tied up in stock and hence benefit from such an effectively low income tax rate. I mean, I don't know about you, but when companies require you to buy at least 1,000 shares of stock and stocks sell for at least $1, it's easy to see why the average person isn't going to buy much in the way of stock. Hell, when middle and upper middle class people started actually buying stocks directly (as day traders), their was an incredible amount of bitching and moaning from the rich (through a receptive media) precisely because their actions were causing disruptions in stock prices which represented a significant instability in expected returns. Of course, mutual funds were just as bitchy as they being the middlemen in stocks for the middle class didn't like missing the potential customers nor how it became clear just how illusionary stock prices really are when a relatively few can have significant disruptive effect on the stock market. But, I digress...
*Yes, I realize not everyone uses all services and plenty of people don't pay enough to cover their share of what they use. But, then short of every paying on a per-use basis, there's no way to be "fair" in that sense. Having said that, there's already the absurdity of people today who bitch they paid $X into social security and expect to get $X out, either to themselves or to their loved ones when they die, ignoring that plenty of people on social security get more than they ever paid in (the disabled, the elderly who live longer than average, etc) which makes that entirely unreasonable unless there's some expectation that the government either (a) take the $X and invest it into companies and use dividends or later sales or something to cover the difference (which wouldn't work, given the relatively low rate of return to the demand) or (b) take taxes from some other source to make up the difference (which makes social security not self-sustaining and rather misses the whole point of budgeting). Meanwhile, per-use services fall on their face for many obvious reasons (a person who is robbed of their money, is murdered, etc obviously can't pay) behind the whole injustice of such a system (not that people seem to think too much about that, but it's easy to not think about when you spend all your efforts painting government as the source of injustice). But, then, I digress again..
Not incorrect, just incomplete. When you buy stock from a company, you're buying ownership in a company with the idea that the stock at the buy time is on paper worth less than your promised shared on the premise that your cash along with the infusion of cash from other new stock owners will allow the company to grow and hence be worth at least as much as what you paid if not more. After that point, of course, you're free to sell your stock to others and the company receives no more money from those transactions.
In any case, the point could be raised that since you as stock holder are a partial owner, you should pay your share of tax from the income derived from the company. Ie, if the company makes $1 million income and there's 1000 shares of stock, then each share of stock is equivalent to $1,000 of income (regardless of whether that income is actual divested to you or not). Hence, if you owned 20 stock, you'd have to pay the income tax on $20,000. This would, of course, remove the need for the company to pay any tax directly, but then it'd also remove the ability of the company to reinvest in itself to avoid claim profits as income (something people can't generally do, but instead are given blanket exemptions for under similar logic).
In either case, the point would be that you have some hypothetical ownership over a chunk of money* and should be taxed on it just the same as a bank account.
*And yes, before you pipe in about it, I realize that the truth is that not every owner has a say in the company and few have the ability to actually force divestment of any money from the company. That's why I mentioned dividends before, since that's the more general practice of a stock company divesting itself to its owners even if it's left up to a select handful of people to set the actual rules of divestment. Of course, banks operate under a similar logic since it's not like banks will generally allow you to pull out large chunks of money at any given time (as they only keep on hand enough cash to meet expected daily demands, and they set regular limits to try to bound those demands), although it's obviously a lot easier to force all your owed money out of a bank than a company whose stock you own, hence the reason for stock sales instead of direct company divestment. Overall, though, that's just a convoluted way of saying that through some legal trickery to allow for companies to reasonable exist there exists an equally convoluted way of preventing legitimate company owners access to their own assets based upon contracts that really should matter to the government, since it's the base organization that gets to set the ground rules on what is or is not considered income and who has to pay it.
To that end, I assume the whole idea of taxing company originated precisely because too few stock holders could pay (as the income became tied up in the company) or would divulge needing to pay large income taxes (as any tax paid would hinder the ability of the company to grow) and it was simpler to go straight to the source, so to speak. But, then, taxing companies has also originated a strong desire by companies to reduce or remove their own tax obligation, under some claim of doing a greater good (jobs, if nothing else) than actual people with their own money, so now companies often pay less taxes than people (especially if you consider all the ways to exempt profits from being counted as income for which people can't remotely get away with, short of pretending they're a company). Overall, I just balk at the absurdity of it all, even if I do acknowledge that I understand the logic of taxing bank account interest but not stock price increases.
Um, the whole premise behind stocks is the same as a bank: loaning money to an organization with the intent to provide not only a sort of security to where your money is but also with the potential hope that you'll get some added income. The major difference, of course, is that banks are now FDIC insured, so the risk of a bank collapsing and your "piece of paper" for your account becoming worthless or even devalued is near non-existent. Meanwhile, stock often plummets in value precisely because it's being sold (which seems to be a clear sign that (a) stocks are overvalued at face value* and (b) there's a clear lack of communication that resolves what would otherwise be a simple buying/selling of a valued asset). In any case, the point could be made that so long as the bank holds your money, you don't access possess it but merely "a piece of paper" and the interest should only be taxed as income on withdrawal.
*In some respects this is intentional as stocks that pay dividends can pay the stated face value of the stock after a period of years, which clearly makes the stock worth more than the face value for anyone planning to hold the stock of years. To that end, it's unclear why stocks that pay no dividends have any value at all, unless one presumes the stocks will either eventually pay dividends or the company will liquidate soon and your partial ownership will see you receiving some value from the purchase. Clearly, though, that's very speculative in nature and a rather large problem with the stock market, IMHO.
Um, it wasn't "on a whim", at least on IBM PCs. On early IBM PCs, ROM BIOS was the closest thing to a HAL; but ROM BIOS was also dog slow (stemming from the fact that RAM was many times faster than ROM, meaning a program that made a lot of ROM calls would tend to be dog slow). Earlier versions of MS-DOS used the ROM BIOS a lot as well, precisely to run on as many IBM PCs or clones as possible, but as time progressed many calls were replaced with direct hardware access precisely for the speed improvements; this obviously happened in a lot of other programs as well. Of course, as time progressed RAM became much bigger and cheaper, so it was common (and still is) for the ROM to be copied in RAM precisely for the speed boost it offers. And the above doesn't even get into the fact that the ROM BIOS, as close as it was to a HAL, was a far cry from a HAL; it's precisely the reason DOS and Windows have their own drivers and HAL.
In short, yes, it's ideologically nice to not directly access hardware, but sometimes it's the only reasonable step if you want to get decent performance on limited, for the goal, hardware. Now, I have no idea if that's still the case with the XBox 360, PS3, or Wii, and I'm inclined to believe for the most part that it's more an excuse for more general bad coding decisions or trying really hard to push the limits of what's graphically possible for the "Wow" factor to compete against other games/other systems. And for the latter point, I can see the justification, but that really boils down to each company working hard to making a good base library for each system to be used in all their games, effectively writing a new HAL for their needs. And presuming they do that, I can certainly understand their willingness to accept having to port that library in the future if needed because it'd be a one-time rewrite and would serve their needs much better than simply catering to whatever they get out of the official libraries given to them by MS, Sony, or Nintendo.
Yea, that'd be the idea. We are talking about adults, here, right? I mean, as a general point, a University doesn't cater to children, so even the questionable argument of filtering at schools doesn't really hold up. And on most campuses, it's the case that internet access is available not only in labs, libraries, etc but also in dorm rooms and other private areas, which removes the argument that one needs to filter to protect the general public which is used at public libraries.
How does that follow? Are you suggesting that Universities are either (a) constantly monitoring their users and hence track illegal usage or (b) are constantly monitoring for new illegal torrent sites and are legally bound to block them? Clearly there's a lot of legitimate usage for torrents; considering how many Universities mirror Linux distros, it only makes sense that Universities themselves would be distro torrent seeders to ease outgoing bandwidth requests. But even if that wasn't the case, a University is like any other ISP and going around poking into the affairs of its users on its own prerogative is bad to get a backlash from its users, both students and professors.
Golly, a lot of people keep going to cnn.com. We should setup a Firewall to autoblock it! Oh, wait, no, that's dumb. Our purpose is the flow of information and knowledge. It makes more sense to proxy cache the website. In fact, there's services like Akami which are precisely for that purpose, to ease outgoing bandwidth requirements while still providing access. You might question the legally murky issue of caching, especially with illegal content. To that end, there's things like the DMCA and court orders to block content if it comes to that, for which the University if it complies should be legally in the clear like any other ISP. There's certainly no reasonable legal position that demands firewalling first and caching never, especially in any sort of preemptive measure.
Really, everything about the mandate of what a University is really undermines all of what you've said. It's one reason why Libraries fought rather hard against filtering (but eventually acquiesced because there was too much public support blocking creepy people looking at porn where children could walk by). But a University is the epitome of ivory tower, adult considerations, so to suddenly flush seeming 1st Amendment considerations down the toilet (whether or not there really are any) is incredibly absurd and honestly quite horrible. It seems along the same lines of expecting in anarchy laws against theft and murder enforced by a governmental law enforcement body.
Actually it's both. The reliability is in having urls that point to files that are retained for years. In comparison, trackers can go dark in months, days, or possibly hours. Similarly, copyright holders who value their product make available regularly that product on discs or websites and make sure it's available for sale for years. As for consistency, that's the issue of quality in part in that you're less likely to get spam on a service like Megaupload rather than a P2P network, just from the sheer point that one is more anonymous than the other.
Not quite. If anything, Napster or Bittorrent were Alderaan. Megaupload would be more like if Tatooine were blown up next.
I'm not sure I care. :) After all, the point is the message, not the messanger.
Um, Megaupload is the exact opposite of torrents and trackers. Megaupload takes money and uses it to support reliability and consistency, much like how filmmakers and Big Media do with their services; that's where the money is at. Meanwhile, torrents and trackers are so distributed and unreliably (torrenters and trackers can disappear overnight while Megaupload had reports of many files up for years) that its hard to make money (you can host a website to direct people to torrents and place ads on that website, but torrents can be shared P2P like anything else which removes even that although that ads another layer of unreliability). Of course, torrenters are legally attacked much more easily since all IPs are known* vs something like Megaupload which may or may not keep logs of who downloads what; and that's been the story that's pushed people towards Megaupload and ilk.
So, while I'd agree that filesharing isn't free of Big Corporation, that's at least in part due to the legal situation. And the rest is that Megaupload provides a better distribution system than Big Media. That was the story of Napster as well. I mean, a lot of people are clearly willing to pay monthly buffet rates as Megaupload shows, so the real story in some ways is how Big Media failed to be Megaupload and provide that buffet.
*"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." Napster then Bittorrent then Megaupload. Maybe next will be one of tor, freenet, or gnunet being the popular piracy platform and then it will be even more obvious how all these measures are blocking liberty. As much as I feel for artist and want to show my appreciation for the artists' works I enjoy, I fear that the attempts to raise the stakes in this way is only going to make the situation worse. The issue, as has been repeated many times, is figuring out the market solution to the problem if there is one. Yes, there will always be the unrepentant pirate who will never spend a dime no matter how much you court him; there is no perfect solution. But Megaupload shows there's tens of millions to made from people who *will* spend a dime or more. It's pointless to them obsess at the end of the day that you could have made a few million more, except to think of a new way to entice people and market yourself and your work. :/
No, you exploit the pretty middle class girls and then generalize to include the deaths on sink estates. That's what MLK did. If the "unintended consequences" of SOPA and ilk is to suppress liberty, then let it be that the "unintended consequences" of supporting Kim Dotcom and his ilk is to support liberty. What did MLK do? He changed the discussion from one of skin color and the supposed inherent hierarchy to one of personal character. Similarly, instead of a question of piracy and the supposed need to limit liberty, the discussion needs to be converted to one of personal freedom and responsibility. That's what the DMCA Safe Harbor provision was all about; it should matter not how much a person "wanted" their service to be abused for copyright infringement because in the end the DMCA made it explicit that so long as you follow the take down rules it's the uploader who is responsible. That is how it should be.
Weather is far more complex than I can imagine. Climate isn't. The former is trying to predict the exact conditions (hot or cold, wet or dry, windy or calm) at a specific time at a specific place. The latter is trying to predict the general conditions over a large area over a large period of time. I mean, fuck, I wouldn't ever claim to predict to know if it'd snow today or not in NYC but the idea that it'd be general cold and that snow accumulation is likely to occur this month, yea, that's nearly a given.
Obviously.
Perhaps you're unaware, but those glaciers you're talking about didn't pop-in over night. While some advanced or retreated at the breakneck speed of hundreds of years, many took thousands or tens of thousands of year to advance or retreat. Meanwhile, with rare exception, most of the ice sheets you speak of are melting in the hundreds of years time frame (or faster). Ie, that's not normal or consistent with the past.
What data, exactly, are you speaking of? I mean, I don't remember that period 65 million years ago when dinosaurs in their automobiles were releasing billions of tons of CO2 from otherwise trapped carbon sources and there was a sudden spike in CO2 concentrations then temperatures. Oh, but there have been periods where there was natural warming, glaciers retreated, and a lot of the dead matter underneath was converted to CO2 that then saw a spike in CO2 concentrations. Funny how that's backwards to now.
And if we dropped a bunch of H-Bombs on the US, the majority of humanity would probably survive (Asia being the major population center and all). I mean, sure, it'd be disastrous, but so what?
Out of curiosity, as a Christian, how do you feel about not marrying? It seems clear from Matthew 19:10-12 that Jesus thinks it's better that people put the kingdom of heaven first and not marry (and hence to practice celibacy), so it would seem if anything most churches should and would promote a life of following God and be more begrudging to those who feel the need to be married. It only seems a pragmatic step that Jesus concedes that not everyone can live up to that standard.
That leads into a question on how you feel about teaching teens safe sex? After all, the argument often is when talking of abstinence that "[not] everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given" which sounds almost paramount to saying, in modern terms, that not everyone is pious enough to abstain from sex and so one just has to accept the truth of it and deal best with it as it is.
Question: If I were to clone Coca-Cola and sell it but without Coca-Cola's trademark logo, would that be legal, even though Coca-Cola clearly made the formula I'm "pirating"? What if the product was a mechanical clone of MS Word that used water wheels and gears instead of electrons and silicon? Does the limit simply come at the point where it's presumed the creator doesn't have an edge to sell their product because of the difficulty of construction of the product (that is, it's easy to copy MS Word as software but not as hardware...at least until RepRaps get far enough along and the need plastic gets to be as cheap as water)? In short, I'm not sure how you can call it apples and oranges.
Off-hand, I'd say because it defeats the purpose of the trademark system?
It's actually been worse since thanks to device driver signing. At least up until now, there was the legitimate explanation that they wanted to verify drivers (and hence hardware) were stable and secure enough. Well, slippery slope and all...
Test Case #1 - Does it forbid running Linux? What does that have to do with Windows, again?
How about this: devices that can run Windows 8 on ARM can use the Windows logo and devices that can *only* run Windows 8 on ARM can use the Anti-Linux Windows-only logo. That's a better communication of the point, right?
Yes, and as you point out, the hard data shows it's unsustainable to do both (or possibly either). Hence, it's not a false dilemma to contemplate that if neither is sustainable and we're going to spend the money anyways, we might as well divert most (if not all) the money for the military towards humanitarian efforts.
My "supporting evidence" is the very "hard data" that you linked to coupled with the common sense "we should find some way to use the money to help the world instead of hurt the world". So, where exactly is the "supporting evidence [that] is so bad"?
That's not a bad idea at all. One way to change the world is to sponsor, support, and elect to political office those who would spend money on food instead of guns. But, as the saying goes, one of the very base "boxes" to stand upon is the soap box. So, here I am "spouting stupidity" just like everyone else.
I'm not sure if you're referring to Toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein in Iraq or not, but Saddam's security forces had long killed or tortured most vocal dissenters long before the invasion of Iraq. Yes, certainly, some who saw the US as a liberator who saw the US marching in finally took the initiative to speak out, but I think most people knew the truth: the US was only invested in its own interests, not the interests of the Iraqi people. That they should coincide for a time did not mean Saddam or his forces would be destroyed before the US left nor that when the US left another dictator, like one of Saddam's sons, wouldn't seize power and engage in another round of executions.
But, more generally, I just don't think most Iraqis cared. People live out their lives as best they can in the environment that exists. Few people spend their energy to try to change that environment because so many entrenched elements work to stabilize back to that environment that even without the fear of punishment, it seems to be wasted effort. This holds true in the US as much as Iraq and is a major reason there is such political dissatisfaction and yet so little political movement for change. Of course, by the same token, most people don't have a fully realized idea of what would be a better system and so couldn't advocate for that change anyways--I'd have to include myself in that camp as well, since I recognize how many gaps in my understanding of the government world there is. At best, I can only think in terms of moving from one form of democracy to another; I imagine most Iraqis thought in the same terms.
I think the real question is given that the US imposed democracy on Iraqis, how do they now feel about the current system vs the old one. And the truth is, many people liked the old system because it offered things like more stability for things like infrastructure, concerns about personal safety, etc. I only imagine that will change for the better as more infrastructure is built, more political groups settle for non-violent solutions to their troubles, etc. But, that's the optimism of a belief that the free market will solve supply issues, government won't be so deadlocked to not act to the needs of the people, and eventually even the most ardent supporter of a cause will become tired of the killing and seek more peaceful means. The cycle can, of course, begin again given enough motive. And another dictatorship could arise.
In the end, the US's involvement is wishy-washy enough that as much as it might have had a positive impact on Iraq today, it seems more an accidental side-effect than anything.
If overspending is happening and will continue to happen, why divert funds towards weapons which will make the world a worse place when the shit hits the fan? What hard data is there that justifies spending money on WMDs and military equipment instead of food for starving people?
I call it "Home Security". Just as Social Security is "earned" as a means for the elderly to be guaranteed a means to live when they are old, "Home Security" provides a means to guarantee that everyone who has worked sufficiently will have a home to live in, be it an apartment, house, or whatever. Okay, that idea isn't really perfect. The only reason Social Security works is because people have been brainwashed into believing that people earn it and they only believe that because it takes decades of work for any benefit to arrive; and even then, people still want to cut Social Security.
To be an effective tool against homelessness, "Home Security" would have to provide benefits even to people who have worked only five years. Part of the answer is to acknowledge that houses exist that can be bought in five years time on even a rather meager wage and without it being but a quarter of a paycheck. Fannie and Freddy tried in part to cause this but had the opposite effect: they made 30 year loans common which encouraged middle class buyers to pay more for their home and to buy larger homes than they needed; something similar happened with college tuitions.
Of course, all of the above is based upon the presumption that those in power would work to undermine their vast real estate interests, especially as supposedly its those real estate interests which are keeping the financial sector and hence the US economy afloat. :/
PS - I realize you were probably being sarcastic and didn't really expect or want an actual response. I also recognize my idea is far from complete, would probably be rather costly, and would be difficult to implement and sell to the American people. I also recognize that no solution would end homelessness, which as hyperbolic as the GP was I don't think was his actual point--it was one of at least discussing such ideas and trying them. After all, the words used were the jingoistic talk about the power and uniqueness of America. It's rather inconsistent to then point out how much America is like all the other, less-powerful countries, even if it is true.
They are. But so were poorhouses a solution to the homeless and the poor. And poor farms were a solution to the elderly needing a place to live. And orphanages were a solution to the orphaned to have a place to live. What is the common theme in all of these things? They pushed people with a problem into a compartmentalized solution that stigmatized them for life and possibly trapped them. That doesn't mean the spirit behind the ideas were wrong. But the execution leaved something to be desired.
In short, at some level, to be empowered to change and become part of "normal" society you have to have those stepping stones that make you *more* normal, not less.
Yea, that's telling 'em. America, the great and power, is just as powerless as everyone else to resolve a social problem that may be unsolvable. Of course, America isn't really interested in solving that social problem. I don't mean this as a slander or an insult. It's precisely the belief in a sort of Social Darwinism that has made the US such a great power (it also helps that it has a lot of natural resources and a climate that readily allows for most of their extraction, a relatively large amount of space which keeps down the cost of living in most the country, and an effective imperialist agenda not unlike many other empires of the past which might have more to do with it) that keeps a lot of social reform discussion from even coming up; I mean, why fight against a gifted horse just to help a few people? Then there is...
Hunger is everywhere. Vaccinatable childhood diseases are everywhere. A need for high-speed travel for the movement of both goods and people exists everywhere. The desire for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness exists everywhere. I guess we can't actually do anything about any of the above then, though. I mean, the US has problems...like homelessness..so we can't actually discuss working to fix homelessness. That's some master deflection; how about at least trying in the slightest to offer a few valid ideas on why homelessness can't be eradication entirely? That'd probably be an actually valid argument. Of course, that still leaves the potential of homeless almost being entirely eradicated (ie, that the few special cases that show homelessness is inherently inevitable doesn't explain not dealing with homelessness for the vast majority of the homeless).