Gee, I don't know, maybe because in the past MS has used their pricing to influence the software installed on machines? Surely, they wouldn't think to use this old trick again....nope, no chance of that...couldn't happen....never...
"How can a universe have an omniscient being and free-will?"
This strikes me as similar to an issue in the foundations of mathematics. Is mathematics a priori and we discover it, or is it a posterori and we create it. Surely, we could not create the impossible, so the possibility of any particular piece of mathematics must be "available". On the other hand, if mathematics is a priori, why?
In any case, we who do a lot of math just more or less get on with the job. Similarly, believers just get on with the job. Now those naughty physicists, them are atheists.
"the universe popped into being all by its self and life evolved through no external design"
Just for the record, there are theories that say our universe is only one of many. And some that say that universes are constantly being created. The question is somewhat ill-formed. The real question is: why is there something rather than nothing. No one has an answer to that question, although it is not entirely clear it is a sensible question if universes are created and die ad infinitum in the past as well as the future. In that case, Popeye had it correct: I k'is what I k'is, ackackackack.
The bit about life evolving is easy. Life is chemistry, chemistry happens in the universe. There need be no external design, the internal design of the universe is enough.
I tend to think question about life isn't also phrased correctly if a religious person is being honest. What they really mean to ask is: where does the ghost in the machine come from if life springs up spontaneously. It is a loaded question assuming a priori what the answer should look like.
Systems theory, read about it. Systems in equilibrium tend to stay in equilibrium until some outside shock sends them to a new one or into chaotic behavior. The human race is performing a giant experiment with the atmosphere and oceans. How much heat trapping gases can we pump in before really fucking up our planet to the point where the atmosphere+ocean causes so many droughts and floods where we humans just cannot keep up with it any longer? How many many changes can the ocean handle before it ceases being a food source? How many droughts will totally spike U.S. farm output?
Care to wager anything on whether "Who cares?" will sound dumb?
This just in from our news bureau: automobiles, motorcycles, bicycles, mopeds, planes, trains, and ships have made the human race mobile, not like they were 70,000s ago of course when they had interstellar space travel and matter transporting beams, but humans reputedly attempting recapture these lost means of travel.
Trillions of dollars? Stop talking out of your ass. A quick Google search shows $15 Billion in 2010, assuming constant dollars, that's 66 years worth of war to total $1 trillion.
The problem was that it was not the greed of a few, it was the greed of the many. In particular, everyone likes to blame the banks or the government, and they certainly had a role. But the main blame goes to that paradigm of virtue, the American People. They took out mortgages they couldn't repay, second and third mortgaged their houses, bought stuff on credit they couldn't afford, spent more than their income, flipped houses, etc.
The government abetted this type of behavior by guaranteeing home loans for McMansions via Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac, Ginny Mae, and a few others. There was also a push by liberals who thought that somehow the poor were being disempowered by not being able to buy a house. Added to that, the push by conservatives who thought that a free market meant no regulation and proceeded to tear down the walls between investment and commercial banking.
This enabled the investment banks, who had tentacles around the world, to securitize loans and sell them off as hot potatoes. They never kept those loans because they knew better. They also sliced and diced them so no one could figure out how unroll them. The rating agencies, not wanting to lose any business, thought the investments AAA, remarkably, and the amount it increased the bottom line was just the price the market owed them for their valuable service.
Seeing the demand, the housing industry produced giant builder companies which rolled out McMansions by the shit-load. They wouldn't build a single house, they would instead buy whole tracks of land and populate it with McMushrooms.
This sort of demand also let your local politicians dream of fatter tax takes by changing zoning laws to accommodate the builders. And if they could get a piece of the action themselves, well, they were there to serve the public weal and they public dutifully served them.
This encouraged the real estate agents and property assessment companies to go with the flow. If customers were willing to flip houses, then they were there to ensure the houses got flipped and the prices showed a good profit for the flippers. Every flip meant a commission to both the real estate agent and the property assessment company, not to mention the local tax take and the other assorted creatures who have their hand in on every sale.
"Uhm.. what if every time you see a commercial (which for me is pretty much only whenever I go to the movies) you're just sitting there cynically wondering wtf the marketing droids were smoking? Why the hell would I buy an intel soundcard just because this popular artist plays his song in the commercial? Why would I destroy my health by eating sugary shit just because happy sexy people on a screen are eating it?"
Welcome to marketing 101, they just got you to remember a product. What, you want them to produce totally bland commercials you spend your time ignoring because somehow your popcorn is more interesting?
At major universities, professors are spending 75% of their time doing what they were hired to do. They were hired to do research and attract grant money, essentially to pay their own salary with hopefully enough left over to fund a few others. Now, if you want to be taught be professors, then you go to a teaching university. The problem with that is if you want to graduate at the head of your field which pretty much means a graduate degree, then you won't get that at a teaching university because those professors spend their time teaching, not doing cutting edge research. To do cutting edge research, you must be up on what research your peers are doing otherwise you will not get published and you won't get the grant money that allows you the freedom to do your research.
The Republicans generally have a problem with higher education because they see it as home for the left wing of the Democrat party. And it is. So they naturally try to cut higher education's throat. However, they then run into the other problem that basic research is done at Universities. Their rejoiner, and echoed by several Slashdotters, is that companies can do all the research we need. The problem with that is companies are run by Business School Product whose only interaction with research was when their frat buddies and they tried to determine how much beer is in a 12 Oz can. Their further argument tries to point to past research successes by companies. But that past success generally happened before companies were taken over by Business School Product. All the major company labs have either shut down, been neutered, or exist by mere inertia (IBM).
I'd critique the Democrats problems with research but this is already too long.
You miss the point. MS and friends don't care what a bunch of geeks do with their systems, they are interested in locking down the mass market who wouldn't have the faintest of fuzzies there is even a problem.
Would these be the same corporations that are hollowing out the jobs in the U.S.? Them corporations? Or are they the ones who helped inflate the housing bubble that took the entire U.S. economy down along with a good chunk of Europe? Could they be the same corporations that have given us dirty air and bad water? Are they the corporations that have no problem extracting corporate welfare from the government? Wow! Yer right, we should just learn to trust them.
"There shouldn't be any US gov't financed research and development." Yep, who the hell needs research on drugs for non-profitable disorders.
"There shouldn't be any public property and so there shouldn't be any public owned 'right of ways'." Yep, the interstate system was a tremendous boondoggle, no one made a dime off using it.
"There shouldn't be any subsidies to any oil drilling, all of it should be private and all land / sea should be private, so all of this drilling would bear full costs." No shit, we need to fish them damn oceans dry before anyone thinks of conservation. If the free market doesn't value it, it has no value.
"There shouldn't be any public infrastructure, including highways and bridges." Damn straight, you should pay to drive anywhere.
"There shouldn't BE a public sector outside of border protection, individual liberties/property protection and criminal/contract law." Yer right, who needs NSTA keeping them planes from falling out of the sky, Business School Product are very able to put a price on how many should die before it starts to crimp profits. And that housing bubble should be allowed to occur over and over again, we still have industries that haven't been decimated yet. Clean air and water? Crap, who needs it except a bunch of poor people, let'em buy their own clean air if they want clean air.
"The increasing cost of education is the ruling class' way of combating what little social mobility is left."
Well, I will admit in the Ruling Class Society (I'm an original member) meetings, we have spent a fair amount of time thinking of new ways to hike the cost of college education. The last thing we want is a lot of social mobility with the proles rising to our level. We even give out badges for ideas that work really well, sort of like the Boy Scouts. Basically we have nothing better to do than ponder new ways of screwing the poor.
Don't miss out on the fun. Suppose your hits are shaped by Richard Nixon, let your neighborhood know you might be interested in their political skeletons. Or J. Edgar Hoover, lady's dresses and lipstick might make it for you. How about Red Skelton? Every hit a laugh. Osama bin Laden? Mass murder and a harem to boot. Mephistopheles? Learn how to value your soul. George S. Patton? Find your local Tanks-Are-Us store. Jeff Bezos? Learn how to patent the most obvious, insignificant things, say, farts.
Yeah, that's the ticket, the Iranian regime isn't evil, the West MADE them be evil. Those sneaky Westerners with their emphasis on human and women's rights, freedom from slaughter of homosexuals. Why next, they'll even be making it legal to be any religion they like...dirty sneaky Westerners.
Yes, well there is a problem with stocking a lot of non-100 bestsellers, that being you don't sell very many. Most of your stock simply sits there because of the two people interested in any one title, one has already bought it from you once and other has their own copy from some place else.
There simply isn't a way for small bookstores to compete. And it isn't just bookstores. Amazon is one stop shopping, they have damn near everything. All you need is a credit card and a bit of time to wait for it to show up at your house. No wandering among the proles at Wally-World, no fighting traffic to get to the store and they might not even have it, etc.
"Taking money away from bank share-holders.". Fine sentiment. Now how would you do that? Steal it from them by passing a law? They violated no laws. Immoral maybe, but what they did was not illegal. And it was bank officers that were doing things share holders had no knowledge of.
"Reform the political system: no gerrymandering electorates, instant run-off voting, limits on corporate donations/advertising/PACs, etc." Oh, the Unions won't like that at all. How does one define no gerrymandering anyhow? Limits on donations? Please, every time Congress places a limit, there's always 10 ways around it.
"No tax-breaks to corporations who off-shore jobs". Good luck trying to police that. How about no tax-breaks period, for anyone, any corporations. And you'll be wanting to include charities in that, many are simply using the law not to pay taxes.
"A commission to look into regulatory capture",...Hmmm...a commission. Why, I don't believe that has ever been tried before.
"Make it easy to punish the board when a corporation does something illegal." Okay, but we have plenty of laws regulating corporations now and it hasn't done any good. Now let's say I'm a prospective board member. Do I (1) accept the board position knowing I'm liable if the company screws up without telling me about it first, or (2) No, that's okay, I'd rather go fishing.
Yes, and Americans embraced the sub-prime housing issue. They thought they could get in and out before the musical chairs stopped. They signed for loans they couldn't afford, neglected or were too stupid to understand the fine print. They second-mortgaged their houses to buy more stuff. They treated housing as though it were their Uncle's unwatched piggy bank. Now that they got their tails caught in crack, they are complaining to anyone who'll listen that it wasn't their fault. Sure, Wall Street and Government enabled them, but they didn't sign those loan papers, the American people did.
"Right now your troops are being sacfificed (and sacrificing thousands of civilians in the process) to keep the Job CReators profits flowing". Really, last I checked when both wars were going, the U.S. was spending about $130 billion on them. The U.S. has $14-5 Trillion economy. You saw what happened when Obama tried to budget it with nearly a $1 Trillion deficit spending. Didn't budge.
As one of the posters mentioned, you've been watching too much TV.
More to the point, SS and Medicare are pay as you go systems. Any surplus they had got used by the government to fund the government. Why? Because the U.S. Government cannot "bank" money. Where would they put it? Putting it into private banks only distorts the banking system. Putting it in Wall Street is just plain dumb given that they'd treat it like a bunch of drunken sailors. So they put it into their expenses. Were the U.S. to run a surplus in any particular year, they could use it to retire debt. They could do this up to the point where they retired all their debt, then they either have to put it out in rebates or more government programs.
The story also fails to consider that the new Americans were big on farming and would have been clearing land for farming. I too think the authors had their PC blinkers on.
Slashdot Mirror
Gee, I don't know, maybe because in the past MS has used their pricing to influence the software installed on machines? Surely, they wouldn't think to use this old trick again....nope, no chance of that...couldn't happen....never...
"How can a universe have an omniscient being and free-will?"
This strikes me as similar to an issue in the foundations of mathematics. Is mathematics a priori and we discover it, or is it a posterori and we create it. Surely, we could not create the impossible, so the possibility of any particular piece of mathematics must be "available". On the other hand, if mathematics is a priori, why?
In any case, we who do a lot of math just more or less get on with the job. Similarly, believers just get on with the job. Now those naughty physicists, them are atheists.
"the universe popped into being all by its self and life evolved through no external design"
Just for the record, there are theories that say our universe is only one of many. And some that say that universes are constantly being created. The question is somewhat ill-formed. The real question is: why is there something rather than nothing. No one has an answer to that question, although it is not entirely clear it is a sensible question if universes are created and die ad infinitum in the past as well as the future. In that case, Popeye had it correct: I k'is what I k'is, ackackackack.
The bit about life evolving is easy. Life is chemistry, chemistry happens in the universe. There need be no external design, the internal design of the universe is enough.
I tend to think question about life isn't also phrased correctly if a religious person is being honest. What they really mean to ask is: where does the ghost in the machine come from if life springs up spontaneously. It is a loaded question assuming a priori what the answer should look like.
Yep, I for one am skeptical of the theory of gravity. Newton and Einstein made out like bandits on that one.
Systems theory, read about it. Systems in equilibrium tend to stay in equilibrium until some outside shock sends them to a new one or into chaotic behavior. The human race is performing a giant experiment with the atmosphere and oceans. How much heat trapping gases can we pump in before really fucking up our planet to the point where the atmosphere+ocean causes so many droughts and floods where we humans just cannot keep up with it any longer? How many many changes can the ocean handle before it ceases being a food source? How many droughts will totally spike U.S. farm output?
Care to wager anything on whether "Who cares?" will sound dumb?
"Considering certain other OS vendors won't even let you touch a device running on ARM"
I give up, which OS venders don't let you touch a device running on ARM? MS? Windows 8 is reputed to be ARMed. Apple? Snapdragon base, ARM arch.
This just in from our news bureau: automobiles, motorcycles, bicycles, mopeds, planes, trains, and ships have made the human race mobile, not like they were 70,000s ago of course when they had interstellar space travel and matter transporting beams, but humans reputedly attempting recapture these lost means of travel.
Trillions of dollars? Stop talking out of your ass. A quick Google search shows $15 Billion in 2010, assuming constant dollars, that's 66 years worth of war to total $1 trillion.
The problem was that it was not the greed of a few, it was the greed of the many. In particular, everyone likes to blame the banks or the government, and they certainly had a role. But the main blame goes to that paradigm of virtue, the American People. They took out mortgages they couldn't repay, second and third mortgaged their houses, bought stuff on credit they couldn't afford, spent more than their income, flipped houses, etc.
The government abetted this type of behavior by guaranteeing home loans for McMansions via Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac, Ginny Mae, and a few others. There was also a push by liberals who thought that somehow the poor were being disempowered by not being able to buy a house. Added to that, the push by conservatives who thought that a free market meant no regulation and proceeded to tear down the walls between investment and commercial banking.
This enabled the investment banks, who had tentacles around the world, to securitize loans and sell them off as hot potatoes. They never kept those loans because they knew better. They also sliced and diced them so no one could figure out how unroll them. The rating agencies, not wanting to lose any business, thought the investments AAA, remarkably, and the amount it increased the bottom line was just the price the market owed them for their valuable service.
Seeing the demand, the housing industry produced giant builder companies which rolled out McMansions by the shit-load. They wouldn't build a single house, they would instead buy whole tracks of land and populate it with McMushrooms.
This sort of demand also let your local politicians dream of fatter tax takes by changing zoning laws to accommodate the builders. And if they could get a piece of the action themselves, well, they were there to serve the public weal and they public dutifully served them.
This encouraged the real estate agents and property assessment companies to go with the flow. If customers were willing to flip houses, then they were there to ensure the houses got flipped and the prices showed a good profit for the flippers. Every flip meant a commission to both the real estate agent and the property assessment company, not to mention the local tax take and the other assorted creatures who have their hand in on every sale.
"Uhm.. what if every time you see a commercial (which for me is pretty much only whenever I go to the movies) you're just sitting there cynically wondering wtf the marketing droids were smoking? Why the hell would I buy an intel soundcard just because this popular artist plays his song in the commercial? Why would I destroy my health by eating sugary shit just because happy sexy people on a screen are eating it?"
Welcome to marketing 101, they just got you to remember a product. What, you want them to produce totally bland commercials you spend your time ignoring because somehow your popcorn is more interesting?
At major universities, professors are spending 75% of their time doing what they were hired to do. They were hired to do research and attract grant money, essentially to pay their own salary with hopefully enough left over to fund a few others. Now, if you want to be taught be professors, then you go to a teaching university. The problem with that is if you want to graduate at the head of your field which pretty much means a graduate degree, then you won't get that at a teaching university because those professors spend their time teaching, not doing cutting edge research. To do cutting edge research, you must be up on what research your peers are doing otherwise you will not get published and you won't get the grant money that allows you the freedom to do your research.
The Republicans generally have a problem with higher education because they see it as home for the left wing of the Democrat party. And it is. So they naturally try to cut higher education's throat. However, they then run into the other problem that basic research is done at Universities. Their rejoiner, and echoed by several Slashdotters, is that companies can do all the research we need. The problem with that is companies are run by Business School Product whose only interaction with research was when their frat buddies and they tried to determine how much beer is in a 12 Oz can. Their further argument tries to point to past research successes by companies. But that past success generally happened before companies were taken over by Business School Product. All the major company labs have either shut down, been neutered, or exist by mere inertia (IBM).
I'd critique the Democrats problems with research but this is already too long.
You miss the point. MS and friends don't care what a bunch of geeks do with their systems, they are interested in locking down the mass market who wouldn't have the faintest of fuzzies there is even a problem.
Would these be the same corporations that are hollowing out the jobs in the U.S.? Them corporations? Or are they the ones who helped inflate the housing bubble that took the entire U.S. economy down along with a good chunk of Europe? Could they be the same corporations that have given us dirty air and bad water? Are they the corporations that have no problem extracting corporate welfare from the government? Wow! Yer right, we should just learn to trust them.
"There shouldn't be any US gov't financed research and development." Yep, who the hell needs research on drugs for non-profitable disorders.
"There shouldn't be any public property and so there shouldn't be any public owned 'right of ways'." Yep, the interstate system was a tremendous boondoggle, no one made a dime off using it.
"There shouldn't be any subsidies to any oil drilling, all of it should be private and all land / sea should be private, so all of this drilling would bear full costs." No shit, we need to fish them damn oceans dry before anyone thinks of conservation. If the free market doesn't value it, it has no value.
"There shouldn't be any public infrastructure, including highways and bridges." Damn straight, you should pay to drive anywhere.
"There shouldn't BE a public sector outside of border protection, individual liberties/property protection and criminal/contract law." Yer right, who needs NSTA keeping them planes from falling out of the sky, Business School Product are very able to put a price on how many should die before it starts to crimp profits. And that housing bubble should be allowed to occur over and over again, we still have industries that haven't been decimated yet. Clean air and water? Crap, who needs it except a bunch of poor people, let'em buy their own clean air if they want clean air.
Jeezes you are a moron.
"The increasing cost of education is the ruling class' way of combating what little social mobility is left."
Well, I will admit in the Ruling Class Society (I'm an original member) meetings, we have spent a fair amount of time thinking of new ways to hike the cost of college education. The last thing we want is a lot of social mobility with the proles rising to our level. We even give out badges for ideas that work really well, sort of like the Boy Scouts. Basically we have nothing better to do than ponder new ways of screwing the poor.
Sheesh, are you mad? You want more of these "innovative" ideas?
Don't miss out on the fun. Suppose your hits are shaped by Richard Nixon, let your neighborhood know you might be interested in their political skeletons. Or J. Edgar Hoover, lady's dresses and lipstick might make it for you. How about Red Skelton? Every hit a laugh. Osama bin Laden? Mass murder and a harem to boot. Mephistopheles? Learn how to value your soul. George S. Patton? Find your local Tanks-Are-Us store. Jeff Bezos? Learn how to patent the most obvious, insignificant things, say, farts.
Yeah, that's the ticket, the Iranian regime isn't evil, the West MADE them be evil. Those sneaky Westerners with their emphasis on human and women's rights, freedom from slaughter of homosexuals. Why next, they'll even be making it legal to be any religion they like...dirty sneaky Westerners.
What about FB compiling information about people who do not have FB accounts is it that you do not understand?
Yes, well there is a problem with stocking a lot of non-100 bestsellers, that being you don't sell very many. Most of your stock simply sits there because of the two people interested in any one title, one has already bought it from you once and other has their own copy from some place else.
There simply isn't a way for small bookstores to compete. And it isn't just bookstores. Amazon is one stop shopping, they have damn near everything. All you need is a credit card and a bit of time to wait for it to show up at your house. No wandering among the proles at Wally-World, no fighting traffic to get to the store and they might not even have it, etc.
At what point does Amazon become too big?
"Taking money away from bank share-holders.". Fine sentiment. Now how would you do that? Steal it from them by passing a law? They violated no laws. Immoral maybe, but what they did was not illegal. And it was bank officers that were doing things share holders had no knowledge of.
"Reform the political system: no gerrymandering electorates, instant run-off voting, limits on corporate donations/advertising/PACs, etc." Oh, the Unions won't like that at all. How does one define no gerrymandering anyhow? Limits on donations? Please, every time Congress places a limit, there's always 10 ways around it.
"No tax-breaks to corporations who off-shore jobs". Good luck trying to police that. How about no tax-breaks period, for anyone, any corporations. And you'll be wanting to include charities in that, many are simply using the law not to pay taxes.
"A commission to look into regulatory capture",...Hmmm...a commission. Why, I don't believe that has ever been tried before.
"Make it easy to punish the board when a corporation does something illegal." Okay, but we have plenty of laws regulating corporations now and it hasn't done any good. Now let's say I'm a prospective board member. Do I (1) accept the board position knowing I'm liable if the company screws up without telling me about it first, or (2) No, that's okay, I'd rather go fishing.
Yes, and Americans embraced the sub-prime housing issue. They thought they could get in and out before the musical chairs stopped. They signed for loans they couldn't afford, neglected or were too stupid to understand the fine print. They second-mortgaged their houses to buy more stuff. They treated housing as though it were their Uncle's unwatched piggy bank. Now that they got their tails caught in crack, they are complaining to anyone who'll listen that it wasn't their fault. Sure, Wall Street and Government enabled them, but they didn't sign those loan papers, the American people did.
"Right now your troops are being sacfificed (and sacrificing thousands of civilians in the process) to keep the Job CReators profits flowing". Really, last I checked when both wars were going, the U.S. was spending about $130 billion on them. The U.S. has $14-5 Trillion economy. You saw what happened when Obama tried to budget it with nearly a $1 Trillion deficit spending. Didn't budge.
As one of the posters mentioned, you've been watching too much TV.
More to the point, SS and Medicare are pay as you go systems. Any surplus they had got used by the government to fund the government. Why? Because the U.S. Government cannot "bank" money. Where would they put it? Putting it into private banks only distorts the banking system. Putting it in Wall Street is just plain dumb given that they'd treat it like a bunch of drunken sailors. So they put it into their expenses. Were the U.S. to run a surplus in any particular year, they could use it to retire debt. They could do this up to the point where they retired all their debt, then they either have to put it out in rebates or more government programs.
The story also fails to consider that the new Americans were big on farming and would have been clearing land for farming. I too think the authors had their PC blinkers on.