Without government bailouts, the worst a private company can do is to piss away their own money (and that of their clients who have hopefully done their risk-management homework) and go out of business.
When the government screws up, you pay them a trillion dollars at gunpoint so they can try it again.
Reportedly the program is causing used-car dealerships to suffer, so the handout is apparently modifying consumer behaviour. (For the worse, I'd argue.)
Hey now! We *need* copyright to encourage creativity! How else is the dead zombie of old Uncle Walt Disney going to keep pumping out creative works, if the descendants of his deceased family and their 50 lawyers aren't given sufficient financial motive?
So population and inflationary costs would be in line with a 158% increase, but instead the budget increased 200%, give-or-take.
However, assuming that government is a service (something I don't assume, but most people do), the cost of providing that service should go *down* with respect to what they provide, and having a larger population should provide better economies of scale, making their services *cheaper* per person.
So the government is doing the opposite of what private services do. Getting more expensive with time rather then less, and getting more expensive the more its "customer base" grows.
"Increasing technology levels"? Technology improves efficiency and lowers cost, not the other way around. In addition, I don't think individuals' absolute wealth is really increasing any more. Any increases we should be seeing are offset by the geometrically increasing amounts of our wealth that are siphoned off by the government (especially at the federal level) to pay for wars and bank bailouts.
Supposedly some of the climate models that predict global warming also predict it would cause increased precipitation and glacial build-up in Greenland and Antarctica, resulting in *lower* sea levels.
I know Yahoo's Japanese search isn't perfect -- they probably haven't manually seeded the results to make sure their own services come up, like in the example you gave -- but all Google gives you for most searches is several pages of irrelevant blog postings.
Yahoo's normalization of Japanese search queries (searching for the kanji version of a kana query or vice versa, for example) used to be a lot better than Google's, although Google has improved on that score. But has Bing done any normalization in Japanese at all?
As you say, Yahoo Japan is sort of a separate company; hopefully they'll keep the same search engine around until Bing exceeds it capability-wise.
Bing isn't really better than Yahoo's search it is?
What's more, what about foreign-language searching? Yahoo is the only search engine that has spent significant resources improving their Japanese search results, for example. (Google is beginning to do this, but their search results still suck badly.) I imagine Bing would be a big step backward for most people outside the U.S.
Luddites have said something similar for every invention since the cotton gin... and probably since fire was discovered, for that matter. The fact is that such fantastic robots would make the economy so productive we'd hardly need to work more than a few hours a week regardless of our skills.
At any rate, I doubt the AI singularity is just around the corner, whatever its repercussions may be.
Congratulations, you spotted the bullshit excuse drinkypoo was referring to. He voted against a measure that wouldn't pass anyway, then when it came back around in a form that *would* pass, he voted *for* it.
I think that's a problem with game architecture. Any given Wow server has dozens of dungeon instances that require a group or raid of 5-40 players of the right levels and classes to experience properly. However, Blizzard's hardware infrastructure cannot handle the number of simultaneous players you need on one server to make forming groups at any time for all this content viable, and there is a queue system limiting the number of players allowed to log in at any time. This problem gets worse with every expansion, as the amount of group content available increases but the number of simultaneous players permitted remains constant.
On top of this, lack of coordination between game world design and game client software results in concentrations of players in specific areas that exceed the ability of the client to render those zones at a playable framerate.
In summary (for the case of WoW):
1. A smooth multiplayer experience requires a higher population than current MMO hardware can handle.
2. Smooth software operation on the client side requires yet a lower population than the (insufficient for multiplayer) populations currently allowed.
Some of this can be fixed with better server-side infrastructure and better game design, but I don't know if it all can be fixed at present.
So he argued against specialization and comparative advantage, the pillars that make an economy work in the first place? No wonder his ideas failed so badly.
I remember when a hub cost a lot more than $20 and broadband was a novelty. Back then, my friends and I would get together and hook our computers up via our serial ports using crossover cables to play Starcraft! Blizzard really went out of their way to give you lots of options for multiplay, and even the stranger ones (like serial-port daisychaining) had their uses.
The federal government *wants* you to rely on your social security card and number for identification. Know why? So you become dependent on it. So you cannot open a bank account or rent a video or buy gum without it. So that if you ever opt out of their little social "security" system, you'll face greater consequences than merely being free of a pyramid scheme.
The concept of ownership only exists in the first place because physical objects are exclusive in their use â" not everyone can make a free copy so one person must be the owner. This does not apply to ideas, therefore the very notion of ownership is moot. You own your copy, that's it.
The hypocrisy of the US government never ceases to amaze. Here Obama has been going about cutting back on home energy use, carbon credits, etc. And at the same time, he's going to open a new government facility that uses as much electricity as all of Salt Lake City?
I'm not sure about that. Chinese tourism (i.e. regular Chinese folks going abroad) is growing so rapidly they will soon eclipse the other major oubound-tourist countries, and they are already in fifth place when counting money spent on tourism abroad. I suspect the bigger trouble is finding countries that will give them visas. It's exceptionally difficult for nearly anyone to visit the US, and not just the Chinese.
Slashdot Mirror
The reality is quite the opposite.
Without government bailouts, the worst a private company can do is to piss away their own money (and that of their clients who have hopefully done their risk-management homework) and go out of business.
When the government screws up, you pay them a trillion dollars at gunpoint so they can try it again.
Reportedly the program is causing used-car dealerships to suffer, so the handout is apparently modifying consumer behaviour. (For the worse, I'd argue.)
I propose a network filesystem called ClusterFS, which would be fixed using the ClusterFSCK command.
Auntie Matter will smooth the whole thing over with tea and crumpets.
Hey now! We *need* copyright to encourage creativity! How else is the dead zombie of old Uncle Walt Disney going to keep pumping out creative works, if the descendants of his deceased family and their 50 lawyers aren't given sufficient financial motive?
So population and inflationary costs would be in line with a 158% increase, but instead the budget increased 200%, give-or-take.
However, assuming that government is a service (something I don't assume, but most people do), the cost of providing that service should go *down* with respect to what they provide, and having a larger population should provide better economies of scale, making their services *cheaper* per person.
So the government is doing the opposite of what private services do. Getting more expensive with time rather then less, and getting more expensive the more its "customer base" grows.
"Increasing technology levels"? Technology improves efficiency and lowers cost, not the other way around. In addition, I don't think individuals' absolute wealth is really increasing any more. Any increases we should be seeing are offset by the geometrically increasing amounts of our wealth that are siphoned off by the government (especially at the federal level) to pay for wars and bank bailouts.
Supposedly some of the climate models that predict global warming also predict it would cause increased precipitation and glacial build-up in Greenland and Antarctica, resulting in *lower* sea levels.
I know Yahoo's Japanese search isn't perfect -- they probably haven't manually seeded the results to make sure their own services come up, like in the example you gave -- but all Google gives you for most searches is several pages of irrelevant blog postings. Yahoo's normalization of Japanese search queries (searching for the kanji version of a kana query or vice versa, for example) used to be a lot better than Google's, although Google has improved on that score. But has Bing done any normalization in Japanese at all? As you say, Yahoo Japan is sort of a separate company; hopefully they'll keep the same search engine around until Bing exceeds it capability-wise.
Bing isn't really better than Yahoo's search it is? What's more, what about foreign-language searching? Yahoo is the only search engine that has spent significant resources improving their Japanese search results, for example. (Google is beginning to do this, but their search results still suck badly.) I imagine Bing would be a big step backward for most people outside the U.S.
Luddites have said something similar for every invention since the cotton gin... and probably since fire was discovered, for that matter. The fact is that such fantastic robots would make the economy so productive we'd hardly need to work more than a few hours a week regardless of our skills. At any rate, I doubt the AI singularity is just around the corner, whatever its repercussions may be.
I really hope you meant assisted suicide rather than euthanasia (mercy killing).
South Africa has a sizeable population of native English speakers (descendants of British settlers), but not the Philippines.
I assume that by "FAIL", you're referring to that apostrophe that shouldn't be there.
Congratulations, you spotted the bullshit excuse drinkypoo was referring to. He voted against a measure that wouldn't pass anyway, then when it came back around in a form that *would* pass, he voted *for* it.
I think that's a problem with game architecture. Any given Wow server has dozens of dungeon instances that require a group or raid of 5-40 players of the right levels and classes to experience properly. However, Blizzard's hardware infrastructure cannot handle the number of simultaneous players you need on one server to make forming groups at any time for all this content viable, and there is a queue system limiting the number of players allowed to log in at any time. This problem gets worse with every expansion, as the amount of group content available increases but the number of simultaneous players permitted remains constant. On top of this, lack of coordination between game world design and game client software results in concentrations of players in specific areas that exceed the ability of the client to render those zones at a playable framerate. In summary (for the case of WoW): 1. A smooth multiplayer experience requires a higher population than current MMO hardware can handle. 2. Smooth software operation on the client side requires yet a lower population than the (insufficient for multiplayer) populations currently allowed. Some of this can be fixed with better server-side infrastructure and better game design, but I don't know if it all can be fixed at present.
So he argued against specialization and comparative advantage, the pillars that make an economy work in the first place? No wonder his ideas failed so badly.
It sounds like "door hinge" in a Cockney accent.
I remember when a hub cost a lot more than $20 and broadband was a novelty. Back then, my friends and I would get together and hook our computers up via our serial ports using crossover cables to play Starcraft! Blizzard really went out of their way to give you lots of options for multiplay, and even the stranger ones (like serial-port daisychaining) had their uses.
Show me where I can unsubscribe, please.
That's okay; "ironically" doesn't mean what he thinks it does either. ;)
Heat is an electromagnetic phenomenon, so wouldn't that involve a released photon as well?
The federal government *wants* you to rely on your social security card and number for identification. Know why? So you become dependent on it. So you cannot open a bank account or rent a video or buy gum without it. So that if you ever opt out of their little social "security" system, you'll face greater consequences than merely being free of a pyramid scheme.
The concept of ownership only exists in the first place because physical objects are exclusive in their use â" not everyone can make a free copy so one person must be the owner. This does not apply to ideas, therefore the very notion of ownership is moot. You own your copy, that's it.
The hypocrisy of the US government never ceases to amaze. Here Obama has been going about cutting back on home energy use, carbon credits, etc. And at the same time, he's going to open a new government facility that uses as much electricity as all of Salt Lake City?
I'm not sure about that. Chinese tourism (i.e. regular Chinese folks going abroad) is growing so rapidly they will soon eclipse the other major oubound-tourist countries, and they are already in fifth place when counting money spent on tourism abroad. I suspect the bigger trouble is finding countries that will give them visas. It's exceptionally difficult for nearly anyone to visit the US, and not just the Chinese.