What are you talking about? The very first thing it did (in the narrative, chronologically, it destroyed the town first) was eat through all the organic materials in the overflying jet. It did magically evolve into "safe-for-humans" pretty quickly, but it didn't gain any abilities it didn't at the beginning.
Also, based on the interludes, I gather we were expected to believe it was a (possibly broken) Von Neumann machine, possibly with collective intelligence and the ability to alter itself.
I'd say the most unbelievable part was the suggestion that it would be nuclear-bomb proof.
Heliocentrism is as naive compared to current knowledge of astronomy, mechanics, and relativity as geocentrism was to heliocentrism. If there are people who extol its universal correctness, then they are science-worshipers rather than scientists.
Much of modern society has become science-ologists who believe in the Truth as presented by clergy clothed in vestments of white labcoats. People who give no heed (out of intellectual laziness, belief that they aren't smart enough, some fundamental confusion accidentally introduced by well-meaning educators and other reasons) to the principles of science, namely the so-called scientific method.
It would if we'd require poeple to get their own damn insurance. You want to be compassionate? Fine, play government-provided 'insurer' this time, but make it clear that there won't be any more federal money the next time around. It's been hit three times in a century. It would be folly to think that it won't be hit again.
Oh.. and deregulate insurers at least enough that they can charge the exorbitant rates requied to even reach breakeaven without leaning on a mysterious government funded "insurance-insurer," thus exposing the real cost of precipitous locations. We shouldn't be in the business of federally subsidizing failing business models or idiotic housing placement decisions.
What makes you think it would be economically costly to move the cities? Remember the timescales we're talking about are hundreds of years. Most buildings simply don't last nearly that long.
Simple attrition should take care of the problem. No one would actively move the cities anywhere, but in a couple hundred years people would notice that some cites just kind of waned away, while others shifted slightly.
But.. it's also not as sweet as sugar. Just because they're both equally bad for you chemically doesn't mean they're overall equally bad. If corn syrup does not satisfy a sweet craving as well as sugar, then perhaps more of it will be consumed.
Consuming massive amounts of sugar is unhealthy, but the question remains: would people consume equal amounts of the various sugars?
Heh.. I'm a republican, and I thought the very same thing. I did not have my act together to vote in the primary. I would've probably voted for Buchanan (but I really wanted to vote for Watts after his speech at the '96 GOP convention) (oops.. looks like Buchanan wasn't in the R primary in 2000 either. I don't think I can remember any of the R-hopefuls that year..)
Anyway, I knew he was running on the "electability" platform (a mistake you may recall the D's making in 2004) and ended up voting for him in that election. Or rather against Gore, but that hasn't turned out all that well either: Onerous, poorly thought out, environmental legislation (maybe.. depending on congress) and no interest in protecting the borders vs. the largest increase in domestic spending in decades and what appears to be active interest in not protecting the borders.
Anyway, I wouldn't hitch my wagon to Obama just yet. He comes across as an up-and-coming political science student who knows the right words to say yet has very little depth. I think you'll find if you do get him into office that he really just wanted to be president, rather than accomplish something as president.
The oldest parts of town, which happen to also be the most expensive, were not built below the water level. There was only so much dry land, and once the hills were filled, the only way to go was out to the lowlands. This is evidence that New Orleans is unsuitable for the population level it once supported and should not be returned to its pre-katrina state.
Of course, let's not let logic get in the way of a perfectly good opportunity to trash "The Rich"
No, the matrix used the word correctly: they did in fact use an array of similar things together.
Just like an electronic battery is an array of electrochemical cells for generating electricity, the matrix held an array of people for some vague use not actually related to power generation (they had "a new form of fusion power" for that). The characters however (Morpheus specifically), believed it was for power but Morpheus is an unreliable narrator.
If you are an American however, you have bought quite a few F-16s. You also probably have an idea about what a fighter jet is "supposed to" look like. I'm sure the fact that the Lockheed JSF candidate looked like a sleek war bird, stylistically similar to other American fighters and the Boeing submission looked like a fat, ugly duck played into the decision to go with Lockheed for that purchase despite their relative equivalence. They did differ a bit from a performance standpoint, but they each had strengths and weaknesses, one of which was likely appearance. It was the weighting of these strengths and weaknesses that lead to the decision, but it would be naive to assume emotional appeal was completely irrelevant.
Yes, that was my point. You don't want someone who's interested in the power/prestige of the office. But you don't want someone who's completely disinterested in the responsibilities of leadership either. Also, I made a suggestion as to a criterion which could be used to weed out some of the power-seekers.
He doesn't mind sharing the costs for essential services with his peers in good faith. The jobless waifs he's referring to are benefiting from those services in bad faith: they have no intention of bearing any of the burden. Not all of the jobless are waifs of course, but he wasn't talking about them either.
If what you say is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), then there is a HUGE market opportunity here. Namely: eliminating the unnecessary waste of the current record companies, charging less for the albums, and paying the artists more. By snapping up a smaller percentage and undercutting the current industry, you'd be virtually guaranteed to accelerate into market dominating position.
Of course, you'd put a lot of people out of work and probably be vilified as the "Wal-Mart" of the music industry, but that's no reason not to provide a huge benefit to the market at a substantial profit to yourself.
The only real question is, "What is preventing this from happening now?"
You can't "invoke" Godwin's law any more than you can "invoke" Moore's law. They aren't formal debate rules. They're just observations. And if the discussion in question is about actual Nazis, it's pretty moot as others have mentioned.
Would you want a butcher who has no interest in cutting meat? How about a doctor who'd rather be a contractor?
The problem with the HHGttG solution is that the chain of logic from "people who express interest in the job are insincere" to "therefore we should hire the people least interest in the job." is not well established.
So, you're correct that your solution is unworkable, and that is why, even with the magic parts, it is.
The real problem is that there are people who want to serve the public, and people who want to be "public servants" and it is difficult to tell the difference. (although I would posit that attending law school, "schools of government" and the like are automatic indicators of the latter and should therefore contraindicate serving in office.)
If they're smart they'll talk Grumman into a very low/nonexistent license fee since a game is also an advertisement for the company's designs. Very much like 90% of the car-games on PS2 are thinly disguised ads. Similarly Lockheed. Whatever fees they could extract from the game are likely insignificant compared to their core businesses regardless.
Also, they may be able to purchase the rights from the US Government, depending on how their agreements with Lockheed, Grumman are worded. I'm sure they'd be interested in whatever potential recruiting tools they can develop.
I'm not sure that you really meant that free markets aren't the answer to any problem, based on the remaining character of your post. Although they aren't the answer to every problem, the number of supply problems which are not solved by proper application of laissez-faire is vanishingly small.
There is a common meme going around that people be able to get any medical care they want/need at insignificant cost to themselves. As a result they simultaneously demand both price-controls and an end to shortages: a situation which by definition cannot ever exist. People point to the rising cost of health care as if it means that prices for basic services are rising, but it only makes sense that as medicine is able to treat more conditions that people will end up spending more on health care, since the previous case was that they died of untreatable conditions for free.
The question everyone must answer for themselves wrt health care is, "How much am I really willing to spend to not die for another $time" (and also, "Do I want the health care industry to be more like the agriculture or the diamond industry?")
Reasonableness should be coded into the law. If you want the police to have discretionary powers wrt a law, write it into the law. Inconsistency breeds contempt. I realize that this has all kinds of issues on the courtroom side. e.g. if you do away with hard speed limits in favor of "reasonable and prudent" how do you objectively determine that, and do it without expending excessive resources.
But if you use your arbitrary selective enforcement scheme, you end up with at situation like the USA's immigration problem: There is a stated policy which is at least two orders of magnitude less than the actual fact. For some reason it has become politically unpalatable to either raise the quotas or put enforcement measures in place, despite the obvious need for both. The result is a permanent underclass with a status somewhere between slaves and sharecroppers.
What we need are fewer, more general laws, strict enforcement and meaningful oversight. How many fewer? Low enough that an average person can grok all of them
Would you like to be fined everytime you cross the street illegally, go over the speed limit, fail to signal when switching lanes or turning, come to a rolling stop, make a techical error in accounting or taxation when first starting your business, committed some sort of prank as a child? If everyone were GPS tracked with their cell phone and a computer analyzed the data it would only take a year or two to develop an effective system to automatically fine everyone who violates most traffic laws or fails to cross at a crosswalk.
I wouldn't. But maybe the fault lies with the laws themselves. If fining every jaywalker would make people get up in arms over it, maybe the jaywalking law should be struck down. Similarly, people don't violate traffic laws completely on accident. They violate them because they are driving right on the edge of legality out of convenience or carelessness. They are enabled by the lax enforcement. If the traffic laws were infallibly enforced, people would drive with a bit more of a safety factor between them and the law.
Far too much is made of foreign trade in discussing *any* country's activities. It typically hovers around 10% of GDP, which while not exactly insignificant, in no way contraindicates a nation surviving and prospering almost entirely on its own.
If collecting this data, why can't they keep track of the actual viewing stats? I'm all for increasing the sample size for ratings purposes. Give Nielson a run for their money. Heck, I'd consider buying one if they did that.
"...[The thief] will sell the laptop to parents who are in need of a laptop - because they haven't won one in a national lottery, for example, or if the child had his/her laptop stolen..."
Hmm.. quite a racket they've got there, selling stolen laptops to people who've had their laptops stolen. What a great service to society they'll be performing.
Slashdot Mirror
What are you talking about? The very first thing it did (in the narrative, chronologically, it destroyed the town first) was eat through all the organic materials in the overflying jet. It did magically evolve into "safe-for-humans" pretty quickly, but it didn't gain any abilities it didn't at the beginning.
Also, based on the interludes, I gather we were expected to believe it was a (possibly broken) Von Neumann machine, possibly with collective intelligence and the ability to alter itself.
I'd say the most unbelievable part was the suggestion that it would be nuclear-bomb proof.
Heliocentrism is as naive compared to current knowledge of astronomy, mechanics, and relativity as geocentrism was to heliocentrism. If there are people who extol its universal correctness, then they are science-worshipers rather than scientists.
Much of modern society has become science-ologists who believe in the Truth as presented by clergy clothed in vestments of white labcoats. People who give no heed (out of intellectual laziness, belief that they aren't smart enough, some fundamental confusion accidentally introduced by well-meaning educators and other reasons) to the principles of science, namely the so-called scientific method.
It would if we'd require poeple to get their own damn insurance. You want to be compassionate? Fine, play government-provided 'insurer' this time, but make it clear that there won't be any more federal money the next time around. It's been hit three times in a century. It would be folly to think that it won't be hit again.
Oh.. and deregulate insurers at least enough that they can charge the exorbitant rates requied to even reach breakeaven without leaning on a mysterious government funded "insurance-insurer," thus exposing the real cost of precipitous locations. We shouldn't be in the business of federally subsidizing failing business models or idiotic housing placement decisions.
I wonder how well that compresses...
What makes you think it would be economically costly to move the cities? Remember the timescales we're talking about are hundreds of years. Most buildings simply don't last nearly that long.
Simple attrition should take care of the problem. No one would actively move the cities anywhere, but in a couple hundred years people would notice that some cites just kind of waned away, while others shifted slightly.
But.. it's also not as sweet as sugar. Just because they're both equally bad for you chemically doesn't mean they're overall equally bad. If corn syrup does not satisfy a sweet craving as well as sugar, then perhaps more of it will be consumed.
Consuming massive amounts of sugar is unhealthy, but the question remains: would people consume equal amounts of the various sugars?
Heh.. I'm a republican, and I thought the very same thing. I did not have my act together to vote in the primary. I would've probably voted for Buchanan (but I really wanted to vote for Watts after his speech at the '96 GOP convention) (oops.. looks like Buchanan wasn't in the R primary in 2000 either. I don't think I can remember any of the R-hopefuls that year..)
Anyway, I knew he was running on the "electability" platform (a mistake you may recall the D's making in 2004) and ended up voting for him in that election. Or rather against Gore, but that hasn't turned out all that well either: Onerous, poorly thought out, environmental legislation (maybe.. depending on congress) and no interest in protecting the borders vs. the largest increase in domestic spending in decades and what appears to be active interest in not protecting the borders.
Anyway, I wouldn't hitch my wagon to Obama just yet. He comes across as an up-and-coming political science student who knows the right words to say yet has very little depth. I think you'll find if you do get him into office that he really just wanted to be president, rather than accomplish something as president.
The oldest parts of town, which happen to also be the most expensive, were not built below the water level. There was only so much dry land, and once the hills were filled, the only way to go was out to the lowlands. This is evidence that New Orleans is unsuitable for the population level it once supported and should not be returned to its pre-katrina state.
Of course, let's not let logic get in the way of a perfectly good opportunity to trash "The Rich"
No, the matrix used the word correctly: they did in fact use an array of similar things together.
Just like an electronic battery is an array of electrochemical cells for generating electricity, the matrix held an array of people for some vague use not actually related to power generation (they had "a new form of fusion power" for that). The characters however (Morpheus specifically), believed it was for power but Morpheus is an unreliable narrator.
If you are an American however, you have bought quite a few F-16s. You also probably have an idea about what a fighter jet is "supposed to" look like. I'm sure the fact that the Lockheed JSF candidate looked like a sleek war bird, stylistically similar to other American fighters and the Boeing submission looked like a fat, ugly duck played into the decision to go with Lockheed for that purchase despite their relative equivalence.
They did differ a bit from a performance standpoint, but they each had strengths and weaknesses, one of which was likely appearance. It was the weighting of these strengths and weaknesses that lead to the decision, but it would be naive to assume emotional appeal was completely irrelevant.
Yes, that was my point. You don't want someone who's interested in the power/prestige of the office. But you don't want someone who's completely disinterested in the responsibilities of leadership either. Also, I made a suggestion as to a criterion which could be used to weed out some of the power-seekers.
He doesn't mind sharing the costs for essential services with his peers in good faith. The jobless waifs he's referring to are benefiting from those services in bad faith: they have no intention of bearing any of the burden. Not all of the jobless are waifs of course, but he wasn't talking about them either.
If what you say is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), then there is a HUGE market opportunity here. Namely: eliminating the unnecessary waste of the current record companies, charging less for the albums, and paying the artists more. By snapping up a smaller percentage and undercutting the current industry, you'd be virtually guaranteed to accelerate into market dominating position.
Of course, you'd put a lot of people out of work and probably be vilified as the "Wal-Mart" of the music industry, but that's no reason not to provide a huge benefit to the market at a substantial profit to yourself.
The only real question is, "What is preventing this from happening now?"
You can't "invoke" Godwin's law any more than you can "invoke" Moore's law. They aren't formal debate rules. They're just observations. And if the discussion in question is about actual Nazis, it's pretty moot as others have mentioned.
Would you want a butcher who has no interest in cutting meat? How about a doctor who'd rather be a contractor?
The problem with the HHGttG solution is that the chain of logic from "people who express interest in the job are insincere" to "therefore we should hire the people least interest in the job." is not well established.
So, you're correct that your solution is unworkable, and that is why, even with the magic parts, it is.
The real problem is that there are people who want to serve the public, and people who want to be "public servants" and it is difficult to tell the difference. (although I would posit that attending law school, "schools of government" and the like are automatic indicators of the latter and should therefore contraindicate serving in office.)
If they're smart they'll talk Grumman into a very low/nonexistent license fee since a game is also an advertisement for the company's designs. Very much like 90% of the car-games on PS2 are thinly disguised ads. Similarly Lockheed. Whatever fees they could extract from the game are likely insignificant compared to their core businesses regardless.
Also, they may be able to purchase the rights from the US Government, depending on how their agreements with Lockheed, Grumman are worded. I'm sure they'd be interested in whatever potential recruiting tools they can develop.
I'm not sure that you really meant that free markets aren't the answer to any problem, based on the remaining character of your post. Although they aren't the answer to every problem, the number of supply problems which are not solved by proper application of laissez-faire is vanishingly small.
There is a common meme going around that people be able to get any medical care they want/need at insignificant cost to themselves. As a result they simultaneously demand both price-controls and an end to shortages: a situation which by definition cannot ever exist. People point to the rising cost of health care as if it means that prices for basic services are rising, but it only makes sense that as medicine is able to treat more conditions that people will end up spending more on health care, since the previous case was that they died of untreatable conditions for free.
The question everyone must answer for themselves wrt health care is, "How much am I really willing to spend to not die for another $time" (and also, "Do I want the health care industry to be more like the agriculture or the diamond industry?")
I had always assumed that "permanently surprised" was the goal of these plastic surgeries.
Perhaps Oakley is behind this new technology...
Reasonableness should be coded into the law. If you want the police to have discretionary powers wrt a law, write it into the law. Inconsistency breeds contempt. I realize that this has all kinds of issues on the courtroom side. e.g. if you do away with hard speed limits in favor of "reasonable and prudent" how do you objectively determine that, and do it without expending excessive resources.
But if you use your arbitrary selective enforcement scheme, you end up with at situation like the USA's immigration problem: There is a stated policy which is at least two orders of magnitude less than the actual fact. For some reason it has become politically unpalatable to either raise the quotas or put enforcement measures in place, despite the obvious need for both. The result is a permanent underclass with a status somewhere between slaves and sharecroppers.
What we need are fewer, more general laws, strict enforcement and meaningful oversight. How many fewer? Low enough that an average person can grok all of them
How about, next time I'd like to see one that I can buy. Leave the complicated extra advances for a couple more generations after that.
Far too much is made of foreign trade in discussing *any* country's activities. It typically hovers around 10% of GDP, which while not exactly insignificant, in no way contraindicates a nation surviving and prospering almost entirely on its own.
If collecting this data, why can't they keep track of the actual viewing stats? I'm all for increasing the sample size for ratings purposes. Give Nielson a run for their money. Heck, I'd consider buying one if they did that.
"...[The thief] will sell the laptop to parents who are in need of a laptop - because they haven't won one in a national lottery, for example, or if the child had his/her laptop stolen..."
Hmm.. quite a racket they've got there, selling stolen laptops to people who've had their laptops stolen. What a great service to society they'll be performing.