The american railroad industry never was an adequat example of free market economics. Just one word: land-grant.
Anyways, antitrust measures where put in place against standard oil and later american aluminum. Both cases where ridiculos considering that oil at the time was of little use ( just for lamps and such). The ruling agains AA contained statements to this effect: 'nobody forced AA to drive out all competitors by providing superior products at better prices in the quantities that where necessary'. Restricting businesses is almost never done for the consumer at all. Instead it is a popular way to gain market share through political connections. If you can't compete, sue (or let sue).
windows can't be a monopoly since even at the time of the trail at least 2 operating systems where *free* (linux/free bsd) and tons of others others ( various unix flavors, mac os, vm, etc) commercialy available.
No matter what the judge/jury decided on this, in economic terms, monopolys are determined by supply and not demand.
kool(?) aid is a mystery to me. Being not-an-american I see it quite often (penny-arcade ie.) but never understand whats funny about it. If anyone had time to enlighten me, I'd be more than grateful.
What is up with making *every* fucking thing safe for kids per default? This is really asking for trouble, it makes parents *and* kids more careless than appropriat.
and what the hell is a child doing on a lawn that is getting mowed (by a human or otherwise) in the first place? Evolution - Stupidity 1:0
I was not talking about a specific law system as I generally don't know my way around them ( no lawyer;). Sorry if it appeared so. The points I made regard the moral and ethical framework I employ to judge actions or entitys. From within this framework I would challenge the morality of any law that 'protected' the really poor from economic transactions. I don't see how it can be justified to forbid and declare invalid any contract to this end. How can a third party decide how my property ( if I were the poor party) is best employed? If I can't sell my life ( just to add drama;) how can I own it? The real moral implication of such laws are always the abolishment of self ownership.
As regards employers in third world countries, nike in vietnam is a really nice example. The vietnamise somewhat communist leadership even praises the nike factory as an example to be followed by all employers. On the show where this was on, they claimed 'the first year, the workers went there by foot, the second year they came per bicylce, soon the first mini-motorcylces appeard and now the car parking lot gets ever more crowded'. Now this is still your basic sweatshop, not a place that makes working fun but still the working conditions compared to alternativs open to employees are first rank.
More generally it can be said that the first world producers in 3rd world countries pay around 8 times as much as the countries median pay is. The workers actually employed in those facilities ( they are never ask, are they?) would not be very excited if the globals suddenly pulled out. It would make an already bad condition even worse as the labor supply overhang grows instead of diminishes.
It's all subjective and more importantly, the standards of living can only equalize with steady progress, not with great leaps. And they are. Notice that low wage countries always seem to shift. In the 80s south korea was a third world country, look at what it has become today.
Looking at the broader historical perspective, around the end of the 18th centrury, all countries where (compared to today) dirt poor with europe only about 20% richer than the rest. England doubled its wealth over a course of 60 years, when japan got its turn 100 years later, it managed the same feat in 34 years. South korea only took 11. Not only is progress being made in 'open' societies which embrace capitalism, it is also accelerated by capital from countries that already archieved it. Which of course is what nike is doing, transfering capital from the (rich) west to the (open) poor. So, it is not only doing the ethical 'right' thing (inadvertently;) it is also doing the only possible thing to improve the situation
To forbid this by law or trade boycot implies force. It forces the pregnant, 18 hour worker to abandon their best option to substain life and health. It might just kill her. These types of laws always inject force and violence (or how else will you inforce it) into a situation that previously was only based on voluntary cooperation. It is unjust aggression.
One futher note on the terms used: you said 'make them work..'. I object! It was an offer she choose to accept. There was no force involved. Pressure to take the job does not come from nike but from her necessities which are solely her responsiblity.
Just name one spyware or malware for Linux that one user has to knowingly install (as it is on Windows) just to get some shity software running (like 3d screensaver or kazaa). Just name one.
Windows is not required for running spyware applications. That was the point, you just need a harddisk with data on it, ram, a cpu and networking vouala! spyware. Also, kazaa-soft or whoever distributes the piece of shit added the spyware, not microsoft. Combined my points defend against your post like NAT against DCOM exploits;)
I agree! There is room for criminal and unethical behaviour, but this is also true for private persons. Without adequat protection of property right and self owenership there will be abuses. Also I am not clear an what your example implies. Where those people forced and/or particpated in this test against their will? Well that's obviously criminal but shouldn't be weighted according to who perpetrated it but according to the damage caused. Did they get money for doing the test, participated freely but where told it was safe? Well, that's fraud for you, same goes as above. Did they get payed, get to decide if to take part and where told the risks involved? It would be unethical to deny these people trading their health for something that is clearly of more importance to them, money -> food.
As for a person's deterrant for unconscionable acts: while it's true the ultimately the only deterrant is assault on property, there is also a commonly held ideology that acting in your neighbours best interest will someday be in your best interest. Systems of ethos frequently contain some variation of the "due unto others" notion.
This believe carries over in the business sphere, which is no suprise considering that businesses consist of individuals: in the long run, your best interest ( making money) depends on full-filling your consumers and supliers best interest ( quality products, fair dealings). Once your reputation has eroded, profits are hard to come by.
yeah, spam, popups, spyware and malware are truly windows problems. One thing is to be said for exchange, it's most likely not capable of sending millions of emails per hour. As for popups, who brought the javascript implementation that allows windows.open(..);? Well, netscape, thank you! And the only things spyware and malware require are any operating systems and ip for communications.
I am convinced that ethics are negativly defined. I can only act ethical by abstaining from unethical actions ( murder, theft, fraud etc.). A corperation in its normal mode of operations( production, buying and selling goods and services) is by my definition always acting ethically. An unethically acting coperation is to be viewed just the same as an unethically acting person and has to face the same reproachments.
Corporations that follow the nonaggression, voluntary transaction philospphy can only grow bigger if it provides its customers with required goods and services for an acceptable price. This entails that the bigger a coperation is, the more it has benefited (though without having that intention) those that choose to trade with it. Very ethical, very much unlike the borg which just need to out gun you.
Economic assault: The only deterrant every human entity understands is outright assault on its property (money, life and health)
br>
Unreasonable is a double edged sword. I can't believe that you truly think that a cooperation doesn't reason internally, concerning their own goals. So lets just say this: the only other reason you could refer to would be yours or any different third party reason. Since the enlightment it has been generally accepted as being a good thing that no one can claim to be more right or wiser and enforce this against other parties.
zero chemistry? maybe because he is the able but not social outsider? Maybe that is the character he is playing? So maybe the missing chemistry is actually great acting? yeah right, bring back superman, he never gets beat up, thats why the comic is still so popular compared to spiderman that wimpy little boy noone wants to see.
Maybe you should watch the series you are talking about so loudly. Season 2 had an almost continuos story arc with season 3 being actually a 'push down' from the temporal cold war, again, almost completely one arc within another. The part about not developing is mystifying to me. I don't know, maybe you somehow manage to mistake CSI for enterprise.
Also, could someone elaborate on the bad acting that is supposed to happen in ENT, because I can't see it. And whats with the time travel aversion? Actually, I think, it's a great tool for adding interessting context to whats happening in the 'real' timeline/frame. As for inter ST comparision, I think ENT got rid of the sterility that all ST before it shared. There is blood, dirt, sweat, swearing, steamy sex, crew members with *grasp* accents and even a goddamed dog, not to forget about 'not all is peachy between 200 crewmates'. All this combines to make the series the most life-like star trek ever. And about the alien nazi, thats just hilarious, can't see why slashdotters are so uptight about it, just read it outloud alien nazi
gee, a large corperation is essentially very unlike the borg. The borg don't ask you to join, their philosophy is aggression and expansion. Sounds familiar? Read up on the history of nation states. Who is always proclaiming that this and that is un-american, un-german, un-patriotic? Well, it's your 'collective' overlords making sure you stay inline. The profit principle, aquiring wealth through voluntary exhange, is morally and ethical very sound, unlike violence and aggression practiced by alle governments around the world. It's only because those corporations provide you with something essential, somthing you came to rely on, something you would not know about if it weren't for them, that their self-ownership can seem like 'violence' to you.
What the hell is economic assalt supposed to mean?
It could be argued that intelligence recognized by us must (because we recognized it) be quite similar. Personally I think it's not totally unlikely that evolution on different planets would find similar solutions to similar problems. And considering that the circumstances necessary for life as we know it are pretty narrowly defined, it is also possible that life somewhere else has to face almost the same problems. Of course, I could be wrong, we'll never know, but still it's a possibility, one that star trek chooses to explore.
only a socialist would call the borg a 'peer group'. That a side, the point of humanized borgs was clearly to show the difference and opposing nature of individual and collective. The collective destroys the single borgs indiviuality to the point where they are mindless drones, so it's really the collective thats 'bad' acting through the drone. Once individuality is restored again, the person can make their own choices again, for better or worse.
No, the billions of dollars spent went TO the private sector! Who do you think NASA spent the money WITH? They don't have their own factories, they bid out all the jobs, and the private sector is who gets the jobs!
I did say this at the end, albeit mentioning the negative aspects.
Even if you are totally right my orignal point was this: with limited resources and a government agency that doesn't compete much for capital ( like free market enterprises) but just confiscates it, competing private companys have a harder time.
Also, two additional points:
With much confidence I state that given the same amount of resources and the same goals, the private sector will outdo the government every time. This follows logically from different reward structur. Private money follows private goals ( to make more money, when talking about inverstors), so constant effords to minimize waste are likely going on. Public money also follows private goals, just not openly. Mostly it's about power and keeping the people that have it where they are. As soon as any project involves government funds, decisions concerning the project become political. A good illustration off this is the lay off example from a few pages back. NASA can't lay of personel when it has to because there is always some senator, congress man, president, governer, major that tries to be reelected. It also can't switch suppliers for the same reason. I'll stop here, because it would be fruitless to try to convince someone who thought that the government was efficient.
Even if I were wrong about NASAs efficiency, the political motivations guiding NASA likely have very bad consequences that cannot be visible because, unfortunatly we cannot peek at alternative time lines. So I hope the logic of my argument appeal to you: President Kennedy decided ( more or less alone) that space flight has to be achieved, that we need it, that we need to go to the moon and so forth. The neat thing about the market is that decisions concerning the commencement of certain undertakings are made impersonal. The capital structur must be able to support this, people must be willing to take the risk and lastly noone is interested in burning money so there must be a return on investment (= useful application) in sight. ROI only happens when you have anything to offer to potential consumers and if they wanted to spend money on it.
Already the differences between private and public are visible. Public activities equates to top-down dications while private ones are the sum of free choice. Worse still, public dictates are per definition always made too early( from an economic standpoint) because if there where adequat private effords underway, there wouldn't be need for a dictate. But spending money at the wrong time is not just a linear loss ( imagine, if nasa would have waited and profited from private sector research how much they could have saved), it's actually exponential because the money wasted did not get invested into increasing productivity and thereby increasing total wealth.
Example:
Take 1$, invest it over 50 years, for 3% pa. Actually pretend we used 5% ( realistic) and substracted 2% inflation pa. Now 50 years are up, you quadrupelt your money. Calculate prices inflation adjusted, you will see that you enlarged your (possible) material wealth by at least a factor of 10 compared to 50 years ago.
It is quite possible that if the amount of money received by NASA would have been left in the private sector, invested as 'the market' (meaning: all investors) see fit, space faring would have been feasable a lot early, because the accumulation of capital had been far more rapid. Considering nasa budget the differences are probalby huge.
Things like these are never calculated when evaluating government programs.
Nobody is denying that NASA has, on occasion, stumbled over innovations and produced useful technology. The question is: At what cost? Does anyone ask the taxpayer if they got what they paid for. no. does anyone ask the taxpayer if money should continue to be spend there? no. Bad enough its opt-out on default but can you opt out? no. Those are some 'moral' concerns for everyone who is enthusiastic for NASA.
Unfortunately, this design is not very, well, useful other than to make Scaled Composites LOTS of money from space tourists.
So what meassure of usefulness would you apply? If many individuals would like to spend much money on visiting space it is obviously useful for them. Also, considering that Scaled probably wants to make money of this, don't you think they considered different markets? Enabling space tourists could be the most profitable for them, maybe because the other segments ( ie. putting sattelites into orbits) are relativly overcrowded. In this light, space tourism appears to be the MOST useful application of their capital.
Pick up a router from SMC ( I can recommend the 7008/4 ABR series). Even if you don't want to setup a home network, this is the best way to go I think. Even with the sygate firewall it could ( in theory) happen that the software silently crashed, leaving the icon still in the system tray until you move the mouse cursor over it. Also I wouldn't rely on Windows Update to keep your computer safe. If your unpatched version can get infected, your updates will not prevent infection when someday an exploit gets releases sooner than the patch. When using a router, all incoming connections will be refused by default since the router itself is only running the administration tool. Add a personal firewall for save measure in case the router gets compromised and you are set to go. Also you can seamlessly add computers to your network, all sharing the same internet connection and printer.
As a side note, the Norton firewall has crappy configuration options and its all in baby talk. I didn't like it very much. Zonealarm doesn't work well with edonkey, overnet, emule, also, if you forbid all the notorios windows applications (explorer.exe, alg.exe, svchost.exe) all access to the network, you are in for a very unstable windows expierence. Sygate is still the best of the three. I bought the router to finally rid me of the personal firewalls tedious configuration ( which btw, you have to do again on each install, with the router it stays with you forever;)
Not associated with SMC, I just picked up the model mentioned above friday and I am very happy with it.
Yes, it would have made more accomplishments more likely, earlier. The billions and billions of dollars that NASA has spent are gone from the private sector. This has decrease the ability to privatly fund space flight since capital ( by definition) is scare and will be allocated according to the needs-priority expressed through price structur on the market. This means: high profit enterprises will be choosen over low profit ones. Investments lower profits for other (possible) competitors ( ie: capitalist investors) so for them, other enterprises will be seem more lucrative. This goes round and round until everything that is more important to the market ( ie: food;) than spaceflight is fully developed, at which point space flight will seem like the most profitable endevour to put money into.
Its clear that with less capital in circulation this process takes longer.
Also don't forget that those billions of dollars where used to employ (hopefuly) the best people in the required fields. This in turn drives up the costs for private enterprises as they have to compete for labour with nasa which pays those engineers with tax money from the private sector. At this point, private companys are screwed twice already.
Now take into account that nasa also is a customer for aero(boing), IT, land development and dozens of other firms. Again costs rise for private space flight companys as prices go up due to a modified demand/supply structur.
Also consider the public relation implications. As soon as a government agency is set up to perform a certain task, the perception of the public changes almost immediatly. For many, if the government gets involved they consider it to be in the best hands ( I am not certain why they should, seeing how badly the government fails at everything it does), correct me if I am wrong but the xprice really got on track after nasa lost columbia and basically said 'uhm well, can't do it anymore'.
I am glad that minister got sued. At least its not like here in germany where politicians are basically untouchable as regards their comments on private companys. Every law system should have provisions against slander and politicians should not be any less liable than anyone else. Actually, they should be more liable.
As regards Microsoft, they weren't into buying politicians much before their famous trail that basically accused them of and found guilty for a) being more successful than netscape b) providing cooperation only on their term ( which is very much a human right unless you own Microsoft), regarding that whole OEM business and the APIs. Do some research, you'll find out that the companys that started the whole thing against MS were all very well connected to washington, MS was not, go figure. I guess its a case of: can't compete? Well, sue them!
... can finally enjoy watching space events without that nagging feeling of guilt.
Space flight has always been an argument against the free market: a)'duh, who is going to pay millions of dollars just to visit space' b)'yeah, but it will get cheaper with time, as companys put huge investments into it to archieve the profits that can be realized when spaceflight has truly become a consumer good' a)'hahahahaha, look at how much NASA has to spend, going to space will always be expensive and dangerous, even the government hasn't managed it yet' b)'no, its expensive and dangerous *because* the government is doing it not despite.' a)'yeah right, thats what you always say, I'll believe that when I see it'
Never use Thread.yield() to fix multithreading issues. If your problems go away after you pop in some yields,chances are its pure luck and as portable as the empire state building. Use sleep(), wait(), notify() instead. Look it up yourself, I know you can.
since the huge price drop in 5.1 surround speaker sets (As low as 50!), it should be common place by now. A decent card/speaker combo (sb live 5.1 + creative 5.1) could be had for 150; not that expensive when you consider how much it improves watching dvd and playing games. Maybe the biggest problem is with the setup, I am still waiting for an affordable wireless speaker set, since the cables all over the place really annoy me.
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The american railroad industry never was an adequat example of free market economics. Just one word: land-grant.
Anyways, antitrust measures where put in place against standard oil and later american aluminum. Both cases where ridiculos considering that oil at the time was of little use ( just for lamps and such). The ruling agains AA contained statements to this effect: 'nobody forced AA to drive out all competitors by providing superior products at better prices in the quantities that where necessary'. Restricting businesses is almost never done for the consumer at all. Instead it is a popular way to gain market share through political connections. If you can't compete, sue (or let sue).
windows can't be a monopoly since even at the time of the trail at least 2 operating systems where *free* (linux/free bsd) and tons of others others ( various unix flavors, mac os, vm, etc) commercialy available.
No matter what the judge/jury decided on this, in economic terms, monopolys are determined by supply and not demand.
kool(?) aid is a mystery to me. Being not-an-american I see it quite often (penny-arcade ie.) but never understand whats funny about it. If anyone had time to enlighten me, I'd be more than grateful.
What is up with making *every* fucking thing safe for kids per default? This is really asking for trouble, it makes parents *and* kids more careless than appropriat.
and what the hell is a child doing on a lawn that is getting mowed (by a human or otherwise) in the first place? Evolution - Stupidity 1:0
I was not talking about a specific law system as I generally don't know my way around them ( no lawyer ;). Sorry if it appeared so. The points I made regard the moral and ethical framework I employ to judge actions or entitys. From within this framework I would challenge the morality of any law that 'protected' the really poor from economic transactions. I don't see how it can be justified to forbid and declare invalid any contract to this end. How can a third party decide how my property ( if I were the poor party) is best employed? If I can't sell my life ( just to add drama ;) how can I own it? The real moral implication of such laws are always the abolishment of self ownership.
;) it is also doing the only possible thing to improve the situation
..'. I object! It was an offer she choose to accept. There was no force involved. Pressure to take the job does not come from nike but from her necessities which are solely her responsiblity.
As regards employers in third world countries, nike in vietnam is a really nice example. The vietnamise somewhat communist leadership even praises the nike factory as an example to be followed by all employers. On the show where this was on, they claimed 'the first year, the workers went there by foot, the second year they came per bicylce, soon the first mini-motorcylces appeard and now the car parking lot gets ever more crowded'. Now this is still your basic sweatshop, not a place that makes working fun but still the working conditions compared to alternativs open to employees are first rank.
More generally it can be said that the first world producers in 3rd world countries pay around 8 times as much as the countries median pay is. The workers actually employed in those facilities ( they are never ask, are they?) would not be very excited if the globals suddenly pulled out. It would make an already bad condition even worse as the labor supply overhang grows instead of diminishes.
It's all subjective and more importantly, the standards of living can only equalize with steady progress, not with great leaps. And they are. Notice that low wage countries always seem to shift. In the 80s south korea was a third world country, look at what it has become today.
Looking at the broader historical perspective, around the end of the 18th centrury, all countries where (compared to today) dirt poor with europe only about 20% richer than the rest. England doubled its wealth over a course of 60 years, when japan got its turn 100 years later, it managed the same feat in 34 years. South korea only took 11. Not only is progress being made in 'open' societies which embrace capitalism, it is also accelerated by capital from countries that already archieved it. Which of course is what nike is doing, transfering capital from the (rich) west to the (open) poor. So, it is not only doing the ethical 'right' thing (inadvertently
To forbid this by law or trade boycot implies force. It forces the pregnant, 18 hour worker to abandon their best option to substain life and health. It might just kill her. These types of laws always inject force and violence (or how else will you inforce it) into a situation that previously was only based on voluntary cooperation. It is unjust aggression.
One futher note on the terms used: you said 'make them work
Just name one spyware or malware for Linux that one user has to knowingly install (as it is on Windows) just to get some shity software running (like 3d screensaver or kazaa). Just name one.
;)
Windows is not required for running spyware applications. That was the point, you just need a harddisk with data on it, ram, a cpu and networking vouala! spyware. Also, kazaa-soft or whoever distributes the piece of shit added the spyware, not microsoft. Combined my points defend against your post like NAT against DCOM exploits
A is a company[..]
I agree! There is room for criminal and unethical behaviour, but this is also true for private persons. Without adequat protection of property right and self owenership there will be abuses. Also I am not clear an what your example implies. Where those people forced and/or particpated in this test against their will? Well that's obviously criminal but shouldn't be weighted according to who perpetrated it but according to the damage caused. Did they get money for doing the test, participated freely but where told it was safe? Well, that's fraud for you, same goes as above. Did they get payed, get to decide if to take part and where told the risks involved? It would be unethical to deny these people trading their health for something that is clearly of more importance to them, money -> food.
As for a person's deterrant for unconscionable acts: while it's true the ultimately the only deterrant is assault on property, there is also a commonly held ideology that acting in your neighbours best interest will someday be in your best interest. Systems of ethos frequently contain some variation of the "due unto others" notion.
This believe carries over in the business sphere, which is no suprise considering that businesses consist of individuals: in the long run, your best interest ( making money) depends on full-filling your consumers and supliers best interest ( quality products, fair dealings). Once your reputation has eroded, profits are hard to come by.
well, i suppose you are happy with >30 years old *nix
Yes, They could file chapter 11
No, the rage would be on about maintaining and supporting software and how bad Microsoft has gotten about that lately.
yeah, spam, popups, spyware and malware are truly windows problems. One thing is to be said for exchange, it's most likely not capable of sending millions of emails per hour. As for popups, who brought the javascript implementation that allows windows.open(..);? Well, netscape, thank you! And the only things spyware and malware require are any operating systems and ip for communications.
I am convinced that ethics are negativly defined. I can only act ethical by abstaining from unethical actions ( murder, theft, fraud etc.). A corperation in its normal mode of operations( production, buying and selling goods and services) is by my definition always acting ethically. An unethically acting coperation is to be viewed just the same as an unethically acting person and has to face the same reproachments.
Corporations that follow the nonaggression, voluntary transaction philospphy can only grow bigger if it provides its customers with required goods and services for an acceptable price. This entails that the bigger a coperation is, the more it has benefited (though without having that intention) those that choose to trade with it. Very ethical, very much unlike the borg which just need to out gun you.
Economic assault: The only deterrant every human entity understands is outright assault on its property (money, life and health)
br> Unreasonable is a double edged sword. I can't believe that you truly think that a cooperation doesn't reason internally, concerning their own goals. So lets just say this: the only other reason you could refer to would be yours or any different third party reason. Since the enlightment it has been generally accepted as being a good thing that no one can claim to be more right or wiser and enforce this against other parties.
zero chemistry? maybe because he is the able but not social outsider? Maybe that is the character he is playing? So maybe the missing chemistry is actually great acting?
yeah right, bring back superman, he never gets beat up, thats why the comic is still so popular compared to spiderman that wimpy little boy noone wants to see.
Maybe you should watch the series you are talking about so loudly. Season 2 had an almost continuos story arc with season 3 being actually a 'push down' from the temporal cold war, again, almost completely one arc within another. The part about not developing is mystifying to me. I don't know, maybe you somehow manage to mistake CSI for enterprise.
Also, could someone elaborate on the bad acting that is supposed to happen in ENT, because I can't see it. And whats with the time travel aversion? Actually, I think, it's a great tool for adding interessting context to whats happening in the 'real' timeline/frame. As for inter ST comparision, I think ENT got rid of the sterility that all ST before it shared. There is blood, dirt, sweat, swearing, steamy sex, crew members with *grasp* accents and even a goddamed dog, not to forget about 'not all is peachy between 200 crewmates'. All this combines to make the series the most life-like star trek ever. And about the alien nazi, thats just hilarious, can't see why slashdotters are so uptight about it, just read it outloud alien nazi
gee, a large corperation is essentially very unlike the borg. The borg don't ask you to join, their philosophy is aggression and expansion. Sounds familiar? Read up on the history of nation states. Who is always proclaiming that this and that is un-american, un-german, un-patriotic? Well, it's your 'collective' overlords making sure you stay inline. The profit principle, aquiring wealth through voluntary exhange, is morally and ethical very sound, unlike violence and aggression practiced by alle governments around the world. It's only because those corporations provide you with something essential, somthing you came to rely on, something you would not know about if it weren't for them, that their self-ownership can seem like 'violence' to you.
What the hell is economic assalt supposed to mean?
It could be argued that intelligence recognized by us must (because we recognized it) be quite similar. Personally I think it's not totally unlikely that evolution on different planets would find similar solutions to similar problems. And considering that the circumstances necessary for life as we know it are pretty narrowly defined, it is also possible that life somewhere else has to face almost the same problems. Of course, I could be wrong, we'll never know, but still it's a possibility, one that star trek chooses to explore.
only a socialist would call the borg a 'peer group'. That a side, the point of humanized borgs was clearly to show the difference and opposing nature of individual and collective. The collective destroys the single borgs indiviuality to the point where they are mindless drones, so it's really the collective thats 'bad' acting through the drone. Once individuality is restored again, the person can make their own choices again, for better or worse.
No, the billions of dollars spent went TO the private sector! Who do you think NASA spent the money WITH? They don't have their own factories, they bid out all the jobs, and the private sector is who gets the jobs!
I did say this at the end, albeit mentioning the negative aspects.
Even if you are totally right my orignal point was this: with limited resources and a government agency that doesn't compete much for capital ( like free market enterprises) but just confiscates it, competing private companys have a harder time.
Also, two additional points:
With much confidence I state that given the same amount of resources and the same goals, the private sector will outdo the government every time. This follows logically from different reward structur. Private money follows private goals ( to make more money, when talking about inverstors), so constant effords to minimize waste are likely going on. Public money also follows private goals, just not openly. Mostly it's about power and keeping the people that have it where they are. As soon as any project involves government funds, decisions concerning the project become political. A good illustration off this is the lay off example from a few pages back. NASA can't lay of personel when it has to because there is always some senator, congress man, president, governer, major that tries to be reelected. It also can't switch suppliers for the same reason. I'll stop here, because it would be fruitless to try to convince someone who thought that the government was efficient.
Even if I were wrong about NASAs efficiency, the political motivations guiding NASA likely have very bad consequences that cannot be visible because, unfortunatly we cannot peek at alternative time lines. So I hope the logic of my argument appeal to you: President Kennedy decided ( more or less alone) that space flight has to be achieved, that we need it, that we need to go to the moon and so forth. The neat thing about the market is that decisions concerning the commencement of certain undertakings are made impersonal. The capital structur must be able to support this, people must be willing to take the risk and lastly noone is interested in burning money so there must be a return on investment (= useful application) in sight. ROI only happens when you have anything to offer to potential consumers and if they wanted to spend money on it.
Already the differences between private and public are visible. Public activities equates to top-down dications while private ones are the sum of free choice. Worse still, public dictates are per definition always made too early( from an economic standpoint) because if there where adequat private effords underway, there wouldn't be need for a dictate. But spending money at the wrong time is not just a linear loss ( imagine, if nasa would have waited and profited from private sector research how much they could have saved), it's actually exponential because the money wasted did not get invested into increasing productivity and thereby increasing total wealth.
Example:
Take 1$, invest it over 50 years, for 3% pa. Actually pretend we used 5% ( realistic) and substracted 2% inflation pa. Now 50 years are up, you quadrupelt your money. Calculate prices inflation adjusted, you will see that you enlarged your (possible) material wealth by at least a factor of 10 compared to 50 years ago.
It is quite possible that if the amount of money received by NASA would have been left in the private sector, invested as 'the market' (meaning: all investors) see fit, space faring would have been feasable a lot early, because the accumulation of capital had been far more rapid. Considering nasa budget the differences are probalby huge. Things like these are never calculated when evaluating government programs.
Nobody is denying that NASA has, on occasion, stumbled over innovations and produced useful technology. The question is: At what cost? Does anyone ask the taxpayer if they got what they paid for. no. does anyone ask the taxpayer if money should continue to be spend there? no. Bad enough its opt-out on default but can you opt out? no. Those are some 'moral' concerns for everyone who is enthusiastic for NASA.
I am not sure you know what 'Libertarians' are. As a pointer, those are not people that have regular dealings concerning books.
Unfortunately, this design is not very, well, useful other than to make Scaled Composites LOTS of money from space tourists.
So what meassure of usefulness would you apply? If many individuals would like to spend much money on visiting space it is obviously useful for them. Also, considering that Scaled probably wants to make money of this, don't you think they considered different markets? Enabling space tourists could be the most profitable for them, maybe because the other segments ( ie. putting sattelites into orbits) are relativly overcrowded. In this light, space tourism appears to be the MOST useful application of their capital.
Pick up a router from SMC ( I can recommend the 7008/4 ABR series). Even if you don't want to setup a home network, this is the best way to go I think. Even with the sygate firewall it could ( in theory) happen that the software silently crashed, leaving the icon still in the system tray until you move the mouse cursor over it. Also I wouldn't rely on Windows Update to keep your computer safe. If your unpatched version can get infected, your updates will not prevent infection when someday an exploit gets releases sooner than the patch. When using a router, all incoming connections will be refused by default since the router itself is only running the administration tool. Add a personal firewall for save measure in case the router gets compromised and you are set to go. Also you can seamlessly add computers to your network, all sharing the same internet connection and printer. As a side note, the Norton firewall has crappy configuration options and its all in baby talk. I didn't like it very much. Zonealarm doesn't work well with edonkey, overnet, emule, also, if you forbid all the notorios windows applications (explorer.exe, alg.exe, svchost.exe) all access to the network, you are in for a very unstable windows expierence. Sygate is still the best of the three. ;)
I bought the router to finally rid me of the personal firewalls tedious configuration ( which btw, you have to do again on each install, with the router it stays with you forever
Not associated with SMC, I just picked up the model mentioned above friday and I am very happy with it.
Yes, it would have made more accomplishments more likely, earlier. The billions and billions of dollars that NASA has spent are gone from the private sector. This has decrease the ability to privatly fund space flight since capital ( by definition) is scare and will be allocated according to the needs-priority expressed through price structur on the market. This means: high profit enterprises will be choosen over low profit ones. Investments lower profits for other (possible) competitors ( ie: capitalist investors) so for them, other enterprises will be seem more lucrative. This goes round and round until everything that is more important to the market ( ie: food ;) than spaceflight is fully developed, at which point space flight will seem like the most profitable endevour to put money into.
Its clear that with less capital in circulation this process takes longer.
Also don't forget that those billions of dollars where used to employ (hopefuly) the best people in the required fields. This in turn drives up the costs for private enterprises as they have to compete for labour with nasa which pays those engineers with tax money from the private sector. At this point, private companys are screwed twice already.
Now take into account that nasa also is a customer for aero(boing), IT, land development and dozens of other firms. Again costs rise for private space flight companys as prices go up due to a modified demand/supply structur.
Also consider the public relation implications. As soon as a government agency is set up to perform a certain task, the perception of the public changes almost immediatly. For many, if the government gets involved they consider it to be in the best hands ( I am not certain why they should, seeing how badly the government fails at everything it does), correct me if I am wrong but the xprice really got on track after nasa lost columbia and basically said 'uhm well, can't do it anymore'.
I am glad that minister got sued. At least its not like here in germany where politicians are basically untouchable as regards their comments on private companys. Every law system should have provisions against slander and politicians should not be any less liable than anyone else. Actually, they should be more liable.
As regards Microsoft, they weren't into buying politicians much before their famous trail that basically accused them of and found guilty for a) being more successful than netscape b) providing cooperation only on their term ( which is very much a human right unless you own Microsoft), regarding that whole OEM business and the APIs.
Do some research, you'll find out that the companys that started the whole thing against MS were all very well connected to washington, MS was not, go figure. I guess its a case of: can't compete? Well, sue them!
Space flight has always been an argument against the free market:
a)'duh, who is going to pay millions of dollars just to visit space'
b)'yeah, but it will get cheaper with time, as companys put huge investments into it to archieve the profits that can be realized when spaceflight has truly become a consumer good'
a)'hahahahaha, look at how much NASA has to spend, going to space will always be expensive and dangerous, even the government hasn't managed it yet'
b)'no, its expensive and dangerous *because* the government is doing it not despite.'
a)'yeah right, thats what you always say, I'll believe that when I see it'
Never use Thread.yield() to fix multithreading issues. If your problems go away after you pop in some yields,chances are its pure luck and as portable as the empire state building. Use sleep(), wait(), notify() instead. Look it up yourself, I know you can.
since the huge price drop in 5.1 surround speaker sets (As low as 50!), it should be common place by now. A decent card/speaker combo (sb live 5.1 + creative 5.1) could be had for 150; not that expensive when you consider how much it improves watching dvd and playing games. Maybe the biggest problem is with the setup, I am still waiting for an affordable wireless speaker set, since the cables all over the place really annoy me.