This is not a new problem, and is well covered in Bertrand Russell's In Praise of Idleness written in 1932.
Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day.
Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price.
In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before.
But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work.
There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness.
Can anything more insane be imagined?
The whole essay is well worth reading, and remains just as true as ever it was..
Here in the EU, we're removing all the highest-denomination notes from circulation on the grounds that the only people who need to make such huge transactions in cash are criminals.
you replied;
Do you have ANY evidence to back that seemingly far-fetched claim up?
I've never even heard of categorically removing high denomination notes in the EU.
I politely give you a link about the UK (a member of the EU since 1973) removing 500 euro notes (what might be called high denomination) from circulation because of organised crime (what we might call criminals)
and you then tell me that the currency of the UK isn't euros...
no fucking shit sherlock
top tip for you; not all members of the EU use the euro. There are 27 members of the EU and only 17* of them are in the eurozone
*this number may drop suddenly in the next few months
500 Euro note withdrawn in the UK
here is one example for you. actually the main trouble is that it makes a large amount of money quite a small physical size, and thus harder to catch people moving about
while i may agree with your overall assessment of the artistic quality of avatar...
What will Avatar be in 20 years? An early example of stereoscopic 3D, and about as much of a classic as the first movie filmed with "technicolour". Of interest to people interested in the history of film technology... and that's about it.
I'm not sure this comparison to technicolour helps your case.
As i understand it, the first big budget technicolor movie was the Wizard of Oz, and it was to most movie goers of the time utterly ground breaking
[for people who may not have seen the film in a while, the begining starts off in "normal" black and white, it's only when Dorothy gets to oz that it switches to colour]
I think its not an unfair comparison to the early scene in Avatar where there is a drop of water floating in space, 30 feet in front of the projected screen.
For me that was a genuine wow moment at the new technology, which i imagine was the same reaction technicolour had
I think from then on the problems with 3d detract from the movie more than they enhance it, and to be honest it's a pretty weak story with very 2 dimension (pun-intended) characterisation - ( except for the armoured mechs, Cameron is right in that EVERYTHING can be improved with armoured mechs...)
Sin is, by definition, behavior that God does not want. But if God is the omnipotent, omniscient creator, he must have known that humans would sin and yet he created them anyway.
It's a logical impossibility for such a God to create a world that he does not want.
Theologians do a lot of handwaving to avoid this conundrum, but nobody has successfully solved it.
Actually thats not true, it was quite sucessfully solved by the Cathars,by the premise of two equally powerful gods, one good the other evil
The World of matter we are living in was held to be a creation of the evil god btw, this is why it is so obviously full of suffering and sin. the goal of the cathar's was to transend this evil physical world and enter the good spiritual one.
This is of course utterly heretical, and is why the catholic church saw fit to help the cathar's escape the physical world by setting them on fire...
How about Clement Attlee, Father of the welfare State. regarded in a recent Poll as the greatest prime minister of the 20th Century.
When interviewed on the subject of his belief, he declared himself to be "incapable of religious feeling"
he's just the first I thought of by the way, I'm fairly sure there are a large number of other european heads of state who would fit the bill just fine...
actually there has already been an experiment that demonstrated the converse
rat park
which appeared to demonstrate that addiction in rats was as much related of their being held in tiny cages, as to the inherent "addictiveness" of opiates
the funding was withdrawn, and doubt cast as to Alexander's integrity
one could speculate that it is not popular opinion that the way to reduce drug dependance in humans is to improve their general quality of life, such that they don't feel the need to compulsively take drugs in the first place
not to diminish your point or anything, but the Dark Ages weren't quite as dark as all that.
There was still much pan european trade and flourishing culture all over the place.
most of the whole dark ages = lack of civilisation propaganda was from the venerable bede, and he had a very definate agenda for promoting a view of history that england went through a period of terrible darkness before being brought into the enlightment of the christian church
actual archeology reveals that life for most people carried on just fine once the romans had left.
This is the same government that made a deal with Microsoft to pay them regardless of whether Microsoft's software was actually installed. That doesn't sound like the kind of logical decision making that leads to entertaining the notion that 230 students might not need 192 servers after all.
I can see a possible case where that might make sense.
If for example the cost of auditing what each machine was running was more than the discounted price offered by microsoft, ie just pay us a flat fee for every machine you have, dont worry about auditing it.
Having said that of course, I doubt that the deal microsoft worked out is anything like that fair.
However I would imagine part of the cost saving involved, is the schools are not being sued for unlicenced copies of windows, when they have 300 copies of office, but only 200 licences
Not that it makes it any less a protection racket from microsoft, but it might not be an entirely stupid move on behalf of the education department
If I roll a die, and cover it up and look, maybe it says 3. So if I ask you, who doesn't see the number, what the chances are it's 3, it's 100%, because it is a 3. The fact that you can't see it can't change reality, they say!
yeah whatever Dave, you failed your saving throw ok, just give it up man... just give it up.
keeping bread in the fridge causes it to go stale faster.
apparantly quite cool temperatures causes the starch crystals to form long shard like structures (making the bread hard) baking causes the starch to form small spiky balls, but this is not a stable state, hence breads tendency to go stale.
the best way to store bread is at room temperature, or freezing.
my source for all of this is a random science program on Radio 4 so is of course COMPLETELY true
When reading an article about the Mona Lisa on Wikipedia, I expect to see a photo of the article in question for purpose of discussion, not "to see this painting, please visit the Louvre in France"
yeah if only the NPG was prepared to give them some lower resolution images suitable for the web or something... the bastards
basically wikimedia has taken someone elses hard work because they think they can get away with it
and the end result of this sort of behaviour is that less works will be digitalised, because there will be no one to pay for it
if wikimedia needs this information so badly, it should put its hand in its pocket to support the people that made it available in the first place, through A LOT of hard work
mind you lots of stuff just gets accidently lost, one project i was working on found a 100KV powerline by digging through it, you'd think it would be quite hard to miss on your maps that you have a 100KV line missing if you were the power company, but apparently not
we went back through the version of the mapping, and it was there up to a minor version change in 1976, and then gone on all future versions
probably someone left for a lunch on friday meaning to add it it when they got back, and then never did
i suspect there is vast amounts of stuff not on maps becuase of errors like this
Now look, no one is to stone anyone until I blow this whistle. *Even*...and I want to make this absolutely clear...*even* if they *do* hot link wolfram|alpha
I'm obviously going to win with my idea to feed the people from overpopulated countries to starving people. Gets rid of world hunger and overpopulation!
oh dear, no you didn't you made an unsupported assertion
Indeed. There is a difference between 'exceeding the speed limit' and 'speeding'.
actually no there isn't, that's exactly what speeding means under UK law
you may well be mistaking it for driving faster than the conditions allow, but that would be classed as reckless/dangerous driving, not speeding
On the contrary all of them must have been speed related. Stationary cars kill no-one.
oh dear you are really reaching now aren't you
, so in effect you are now defining speeding as any form of moving... which is a trifle contrived since this is pretty much the raison d'etre for a vehicle
Drinking alcohol is not, in itself, a crime.
i never stated it was, however the death by drink figures put the death by cars figures in perspective...
the death by knives figures however are crime related and are on par with the number of deaths caused by speeding as defined by the police, i notice you ignored that point
i am full aware the drugs deaths included paracetamol poisoning... all 242 of them,
which again is about the same number of people killed by speeding, by the police's estimates
however the significant majority of the deaths ARE caused by illegal drugs, which puts the lie to your assertion that speeding causes more damage than ALL other criminals COMBINED
Slashdot Mirror
The whole essay is well worth reading, and remains just as true as ever it was..
The Popes solved that problem by holding the title until they die.
However, that is the worst thing to do for a U.S. politician and I'm not so sure about the Supreme Court either.
Holding office until you are dead, and having fixed terms of office are not mutually exclusive
Executing your rulers after they have served their terms is not a new concept
you replied;
I politely give you a link about the UK (a member of the EU since 1973) removing 500 euro notes (what might be called high denomination) from circulation because of organised crime (what we might call criminals)
and you then tell me that the currency of the UK isn't euros...
no fucking shit sherlock
top tip for you; not all members of the EU use the euro. There are 27 members of the EU and only 17* of them are in the eurozone
*this number may drop suddenly in the next few months
500 Euro note withdrawn in the UK here is one example for you. actually the main trouble is that it makes a large amount of money quite a small physical size, and thus harder to catch people moving about
you are only exacerbating the situation
i believe the parent was making a reference to this film; in the loop
What will Avatar be in 20 years? An early example of stereoscopic 3D, and about as much of a classic as the first movie filmed with "technicolour". Of interest to people interested in the history of film technology... and that's about it.
I'm not sure this comparison to technicolour helps your case.
As i understand it, the first big budget technicolor movie was the Wizard of Oz, and it was to most movie goers of the time utterly ground breaking
[for people who may not have seen the film in a while, the begining starts off in "normal" black and white, it's only when Dorothy gets to oz that it switches to colour]
I think its not an unfair comparison to the early scene in Avatar where there is a drop of water floating in space, 30 feet in front of the projected screen.
For me that was a genuine wow moment at the new technology, which i imagine was the same reaction technicolour had
I think from then on the problems with 3d detract from the movie more than they enhance it, and to be honest it's a pretty weak story with very 2 dimension (pun-intended) characterisation - ( except for the armoured mechs, Cameron is right in that EVERYTHING can be improved with armoured mechs...)
Sin is, by definition, behavior that God does not want. But if God is the omnipotent, omniscient creator, he must have known that humans would sin and yet he created them anyway.
It's a logical impossibility for such a God to create a world that he does not want.
Theologians do a lot of handwaving to avoid this conundrum, but nobody has successfully solved it.
Actually thats not true, it was quite sucessfully solved by the Cathars,by the premise of two equally powerful gods, one good the other evil
The World of matter we are living in was held to be a creation of the evil god btw, this is why it is so obviously full of suffering and sin. the goal of the cathar's was to transend this evil physical world and enter the good spiritual one.
This is of course utterly heretical, and is why the catholic church saw fit to help the cathar's escape the physical world by setting them on fire...
How about Clement Attlee, Father of the welfare State. regarded in a recent Poll as the greatest prime minister of the 20th Century.
When interviewed on the subject of his belief, he declared himself to be "incapable of religious feeling"
he's just the first I thought of by the way, I'm fairly sure there are a large number of other european heads of state who would fit the bill just fine...
actually there has already been an experiment that demonstrated the converse rat park
which appeared to demonstrate that addiction in rats was as much related of their being held in tiny cages, as to the inherent "addictiveness" of opiates
the funding was withdrawn, and doubt cast as to Alexander's integrity
one could speculate that it is not popular opinion that the way to reduce drug dependance in humans is to improve their general quality of life, such that they don't feel the need to compulsively take drugs in the first place
not to diminish your point or anything, but the Dark Ages weren't quite as dark as all that.
There was still much pan european trade and flourishing culture all over the place.
most of the whole dark ages = lack of civilisation propaganda was from the venerable bede, and he had a very definate agenda for promoting a view of history that england went through a period of terrible darkness before being brought into the enlightment of the christian church
actual archeology reveals that life for most people carried on just fine once the romans had left.
I can see a possible case where that might make sense.
If for example the cost of auditing what each machine was running was more than the discounted price offered by microsoft, ie just pay us a flat fee for every machine you have, dont worry about auditing it.
Having said that of course, I doubt that the deal microsoft worked out is anything like that fair.
However I would imagine part of the cost saving involved, is the schools are not being sued for unlicenced copies of windows, when they have 300 copies of office, but only 200 licences
Not that it makes it any less a protection racket from microsoft, but it might not be an entirely stupid move on behalf of the education department
yeah whatever Dave, you failed your saving throw ok, just give it up man... just give it up.
it's pronounced "Homm-el-steen" ...
yes of course google is much better,...
oh no wait it returns the same 'Why are Macs so expensive.' That's right. You're not hallucinating." article as the 7th link instead of the top
incidently when i tried on bing it was the 3rd result
while there may be many reasons to hate bing, this story is really ;
man doesn't put search in quotes, doesn't get results he was expecting!
the failure is on the part of the user, not the search engine
i have one of these mythical toasters of which you speak, i use it to turn frozen sliced bread into toast.
however really stale bread toasted just makes horrid toast that just crumbles to dust when you try and spread anything on it
though i agree that toast is a good use of bread that's just a bit too stale to enjoy
keeping bread in the fridge causes it to go stale faster.
apparantly quite cool temperatures causes the starch crystals to form long shard like structures (making the bread hard) baking causes the starch to form small spiky balls, but this is not a stable state, hence breads tendency to go stale.
the best way to store bread is at room temperature, or freezing.
my source for all of this is a random science program on Radio 4 so is of course COMPLETELY true
it helps if you search the right year 1986 (i'll give you a clue, she's the one called halle berry, that looks a lot like a young halle berry)
yeah if only the NPG was prepared to give them some lower resolution images suitable for the web or something... the bastards
basically wikimedia has taken someone elses hard work because they think they can get away with it
and the end result of this sort of behaviour is that less works will be digitalised, because there will be no one to pay for it
if wikimedia needs this information so badly, it should put its hand in its pocket to support the people that made it available in the first place, through A LOT of hard work
there are a lot of those places in the UK, the fuel pipelines that take aviation fuel around the country are a good example
lots of them are semi-secret some accidently show up on some versions of maps and then vanish a bit later
mark thomas did a TV show on them mark thomas secret map of britain
mind you lots of stuff just gets accidently lost, one project i was working on found a 100KV powerline by digging through it, you'd think it would be quite hard to miss on your maps that you have a 100KV line missing if you were the power company, but apparently not
we went back through the version of the mapping, and it was there up to a minor version change in 1976, and then gone on all future versions
probably someone left for a lunch on friday meaning to add it it when they got back, and then never did
i suspect there is vast amounts of stuff not on maps becuase of errors like this
Now look, no one is to stone anyone until I blow this whistle. *Even*...and I want to make this absolutely clear...*even* if they *do* hot link wolfram|alpha
no i want them to do their bloody work!
if you allow your users to stream video and download games during working hours, more fool you
either they are working and require VPN or they are not and they don't
your solution is just a security nightmare
I'm afraid there's prior art...A Modest Proposal
I for one can't wait till they release the Watchmen Babies edition... V for Vacation sounds awesome
oh dear, no you didn't you made an unsupported assertion
actually no there isn't, that's exactly what speeding means under UK law
you may well be mistaking it for driving faster than the conditions allow, but that would be classed as reckless/dangerous driving, not speeding
oh dear you are really reaching now aren't you , so in effect you are now defining speeding as any form of moving... which is a trifle contrived since this is pretty much the raison d'etre for a vehicle
i never stated it was, however the death by drink figures put the death by cars figures in perspective...
... all 242 of them,
which again is about the same number of people killed by speeding, by the police's estimates
the death by knives figures however are crime related and are on par with the number of deaths caused by speeding as defined by the police, i notice you ignored that point
i am full aware the drugs deaths included paracetamol poisoning
however the significant majority of the deaths ARE caused by illegal drugs, which puts the lie to your assertion that speeding causes more damage than ALL other criminals COMBINED