The EU is a treaty, not a country. This makes the EU very fragile. If it became a harm to its member countries instead of a benefit, it would dissolve rapidly. How do you know it hasn't been a harm to its members? Each year the Commission spends billions of dollars of tax payer's money on advertising itself to its own electorate. We literally pay it to tell us how great it is.
Meanwhile, how much is spent on finding out whether life might be better without this gargantuan socialist bureaucracy which legislates on the size of carrots? We don't have an alternative NATO-protected Europe against which to measure our progress. We do have people being prosecuted for selling fruit by the pound.
The EU claims most of NATO's achievements for its own, but it was NATO, whose most important member is the US, that saved us Europeans from Stalinism.
Better still, each time you download a track via p2p, google the address of the musician and post them a quarter and a note explaining what it's for.
A non-profit website which takes micropayments so that p2p'ers can make voluntary payments and can see when artists collect their dues would make a great community project.
Even though I did maths and physics at school and university, I was not remotely interested in computers. It took hours to make them do stupid things in Basic. The day I saw Photoshop in 24bit colour on a Powermac (1994) was an epiphany. An endless supply of blank canvases, and every colour and brush imaginable.
Photoshop was the bait, but Mac OS 7.x made sense after Basic, DOS, Windows and Unix. Files, even system files were called appropriate names. You could make a folder on a disc and call it 'System Folder', drag in the 'System' file and 'Finder', and you had a working boot disc. Without needing to learn programming, I could see the structure of the system in the GUI, and when rarely something didn't work, I could find out why. That gave me the determination to return to the arcane inconsistency of Unix and the frustrating unreliabilty of Windows and persevere until the job is done.
If you want to teach your child that she can enjoy and benefit from using computers, give her an old System 7 Mac and Photoshop 3. It's the shallowest learning curve.
I suspect even Americans will have a lower standard of living because most of the foods they are used to eating now will simply be unavailable.
Nooooooo!!!! Global warming means a future without donutz??? How will we maintain obesity? Now we godda do sumthing! Let's drive bigger cars more while we think up a plan...
Can we see your working? The time displacement depends on the acceleration path, not just the time up there. We probably need to know the height/orbital velocity and duration of each trip to work out by how much he is younger than his imaginary earthbound twin. I think more short trips keep you young better than a few long ones.
I am not sure what you mean by that. Free markets are often unstable and quickly revert to monopolies if unregulated. That's one of the reasons why markets like the NY and London stock exchanges have to be carefully regulated and policed:
Monopolies and Mergers Commission
UK government body re-established in 1973 under the Fair Trading Act and, since 1980, embracing the Competition Act. Its role is to investigate and report when there is a risk of creating a monopoly by a company merger or takeover, or when a newspaper or newspaper assets are transferred. It also investigates companies, nationalized industries, or local authorities that are suspected of operating in a noncompetitive way.
The US equivalent is the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Without this sort of "complete bullshit" regulation, practically everything you buy would be more expensive and less good. Like I said, all of us benefit when government intervenes to support competitive markets.
a decrease in product price would equal a decrease in paychecks
Only when buyers don't have an alternative product to buy. Overpricing can also reduce revenue by killing sales. When a product is overpriced, decreasing the price often leads to exponential uptake and therefore increased revenue. IMO software and music are products that are overpriced due to anti-competitive barriers.
Every successful company in the world tries to lock you into their product. In many cases, it is just a matter of what a person prefers (I think coke is better than pepsi, but you may think otherwise).
Again you have missed my point. There are no barriers stopping you buying Pepsi instead. You can try it and decide if you like it. Software is different. People often choose not to switch to software that will save them time and effort in the long run because they have invested time and effort in learning their current software. It can take weeks to adjust to a better product. This is a very understandable form of Ludditism, but it stifles growth and progress in the software industry and is an anti-competitive force. As such it harms all users of software and all producers of software except the entrenched.
In the UK the cell network providers used to maintain the anti-competitive barrier of forcing each user to change her telephone number if she changed network. The telcoms regulator stepped in and stopped this. All networks suddenly became a lot cheaper and the market grew.
Software usage contains an even higher intrinsic competition barrier. Regulators should be encouraging progress in the software industry by incentivising crossgrades.
but it doesn't happen in any other business, so why is software so special?
I think it does happen in almost all other businesses: books, ballpoints, tea. You may be aware of the expression "not for all the tea in China". Here in England, tea chests used to have locks on them, and the lady of the house would carry the key on a chain around her neck because tea leaves were so expensive. Prices of meatspace products do decrease in line with the cost of production and supply. Why should Microsoft, Disney, and Sony Music be immune to the market forces that govern production? The monopolies in the software and music industries, and the abusive international copyright laws allow these companies to screw programmers, musicians and consumers through pricing which fails to reflect the underlying economics.
what amount of profit needs to be reached?
Ideally, competitive forces would drive down prices so the vendor would benefit from adjusting her prices down when possible, but the problem is lock-in. Changing tea supplier is easy, but nobody wants to switch to new software, even when it's demonstrably better. Regulators guarantee competition in most markets, so why shouldn't they encourage competition in software by adding incentives to software migration? Call it a 'crossgrade rebate'.
I didn't forget the development cost, and I agree with you. In fact I referred to "the work of authorship". It is for the author to predict the market's appetite for the software, fund her development programme, and set a suitable launch price. I am sure there are cases where software has been developed very expensively for, and sold at very high prices to, a handful of high-paying purchasers. That's fine. But it seems only reasonable to argue that once profit is reached, then the more copies are sold, the cheaper those copies should become, for the benefit of all.
it's worse, because it decreases the value of the product over time.
That's a good thing. Are you suggesting that worth decreases with value? Ideally the price should reflect the decreasing cost of production, rather than the inappropriate notion of scarcity of resources. In other words, since the cost of distributing copies is so tiny compared to the work of authorship, the price of software licenses should, to an extent, follow the value of the work done by the author PER COPY. The ten millionth copy sold should cost an awful lot less than the first. This way everyone benefits, not just Elton and Bill.
The single button on the mice infuriates me to no end.
I have bitten my tongue for years on this but I can't take it any more. For the first and last time:
Macs work out-of-the-box with every $10 USB1/2/Bluetooth 3-button mouse I have ever tried. If you need more buttons feel free to plug in more keyboards and mice and configure them how you like with the built-in mouse/keyboard control panels. Macs seamlessly handle simultaneous input, including built-in HWR, from multiple mice, tablets, trackpads and keyboards on multiple buses, with real plug and play. But why stop there? Why not go mental and equip your swamp-shack with 13 keyboards, one for each of your webbed fingers and your knob? (er, make that 12:)
Apple supplies a one-button mouse because it's easy for 1st-timers and encourages app-developers to put program controls in the menu bar where new users and veterans know to look for them. If you don't like it, sell your Mac mouse, buy a multi-button one, and pocket the change.
Sorry - please don't take offense. I am just really tired and unluckily, yours is the one millionth complaint that I have read about the one-button mouse.
...any true belief is knowledge, whether the knower can offer valid justification or not.
No, that's just luck and belief. And that is Plato's point, and subsequently Gettier's. Knowledge, if it is possible, should reliably reflect the truth of the proposed belief.
There'd be a fair chance that you'd get a call at a rather inopportune moment...
Are they that stupid? I don't think so. Presumably they just set a silent alarm for a minute before t=0 and keep the phone switched off while they set us up the bomb.
Cell networks are introducing transceivers to the underground so that commuters can annoy each other in tunnels too. Of course, a stolen phone's timed alarm could detonate a bomb, so I suppose security is little worse.
I'm sure theres something deep, meaningful and on-topic to gain from this
Well spotted. It is an important subject in epistemology, i.e. you can be right, with good reasons, but the wrong reasons, and that ain't knowledge: Gettier counterexamples
It's good to conform on spelling, not because you avoid annoying pedants, but because the spelling of every word contains clues to its own long history of meanings. If you look up the etymology of 'filter' and 'philtre' you can see that the words have very different origins.
I find it somewhat offensive that you're questioning my understanding of the scientific method while defending that viewpoint.
I am sorry if I have offended you - I don't mean to be offensive at all.
But you seem to be saying that it's impossible. Actually, you're not saying that now, you seem to be backpedaling.
Never did say it. What I did say is that there is 'some evidence that it won't happen': that evidence is that time travellers of any kind don't seem to feature in our history. I raised Ockam's Razor because you have had to put forward extra theories e.g. the discreetness of time travellers and an arbitrary limit to their journeys in order to undermine what I call 'some evidence'.
Finally, it was heresy to deny the Ptolemaic (geocentric) System, not the Copernican (heliocentric) one.
Is it possible to simply copy the config files to another machine so you won't have to do the same config over and over again
It certainly is. Proof: every day I put my powerbook into firewire target mode and connect it to my mini. The mini has a user whose home is my powerbook's home folder so my mini and powerbook user/desktops are one and the same. Works beautifully.
even I know that abscence of proof in support of a theory is NOT proof against it.
Read my post. I said 'evidence', not 'proof'. The Problem of Induction suggests that we may never have proof of anything.
How do we know that the time travellers are not just discreet? Maybe you can only time travel back 100 years-- and it will be discovered on June 19th 2105?
You are having to postulate a lot of ad hoc 'epicycles' to dismiss what I called 'some evidence'. Heard of Ockam's Razor?
Just because we don't have proof of time travellers today doesn't mean we won't tomorrow.
That's kind of my point. Unlike other inventions, tomorrow's time-travel could show evidence today, but doesn't seem to. In favour of time-travel we have no evidence at all, and a bog of paradox. The notion of time-travel might just be an ill-formed idea, like a square circle. Time passengers don't appear to be flocking to make our acquaintance. Science explores detectable phenomena, not phantoms lurking beyond the event horizon.
You're not a scientist, are you?
No, but I have a BSc in Physics and Philosophy. A significant part of my course was History and Philosophy of Science, which includes Bayesianism, Popper's hypothetico-deductive model, Kuhn, Feyerabend, possible world semantics, and of course, Epistemology and Metaphysics. I am familiar with the terms 'proof', 'evidence' and 'time'.
Don't take out my British charm unit. Without that, I'm nothing but a borish American clyde! Ahhh thanks a lot asswipe!
...er, British spelling unit. Now look here, frightfully sorry to be a bore old chap, but didn't you mean 'boorish'? Rejig your sig cos it means what it oughter, but only sorta...
Apple lost to Microsoft because it failed to see that software was where the money was.
Apple has steadily been migrating towards standard x86 hardware configurations ever since his steveness's 2nd coming.
Apple's acquisitions in the last few years have mainly been software companies/titles/staff.
If Apple were able to grow install base rapidly this could trigger a boom in sales of software titles such as Final Cut, Logic, Shake, Motion, WebObjects, XGrid, DVDStudio, iWork (Pages, Keynote), AppleWorks, Quicktime Pro, iLife (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie HD, GarageBand, iDVD), iChat, iCal, iSync et cetera. Such a boom would have the potential to dwarf profits from Apple's tight margin hardware sales.
Today Apple is really a strong software company with a limited access to the software market. Giving away the OS for a while must look tempting.
Slashdot Mirror
A non-profit website which takes micropayments so that p2p'ers can make voluntary payments and can see when artists collect their dues would make a great community project.
25 years of following seems to have worked fine for M$.
Newton cost Apple a billion.
iPod was NOT the first MP3 'Walkman'; iTunes store was not the first music download service.
Even though I did maths and physics at school and university, I was not remotely interested in computers. It took hours to make them do stupid things in Basic. The day I saw Photoshop in 24bit colour on a Powermac (1994) was an epiphany. An endless supply of blank canvases, and every colour and brush imaginable.
Photoshop was the bait, but Mac OS 7.x made sense after Basic, DOS, Windows and Unix. Files, even system files were called appropriate names. You could make a folder on a disc and call it 'System Folder', drag in the 'System' file and 'Finder', and you had a working boot disc. Without needing to learn programming, I could see the structure of the system in the GUI, and when rarely something didn't work, I could find out why. That gave me the determination to return to the arcane inconsistency of Unix and the frustrating unreliabilty of Windows and persevere until the job is done.
If you want to teach your child that she can enjoy and benefit from using computers, give her an old System 7 Mac and Photoshop 3. It's the shallowest learning curve.
Nooooooo!!!! Global warming means a future without donutz??? How will we maintain obesity? Now we godda do sumthing! Let's drive bigger cars more while we think up a plan...
Did anyone else think of Woz's comment after the 2nd coming of His Steveness: "Gil Amelio, meet Steve Jobs. Game over"?
Closing the holes in Windows would be a start: nearly all the spam I receive comes via botnetted Windows broadband accounts.
In the UK the cell network providers used to maintain the anti-competitive barrier of forcing each user to change her telephone number if she changed network. The telcoms regulator stepped in and stopped this. All networks suddenly became a lot cheaper and the market grew.
Software usage contains an even higher intrinsic competition barrier. Regulators should be encouraging progress in the software industry by incentivising crossgrades.
I didn't forget the development cost, and I agree with you. In fact I referred to "the work of authorship". It is for the author to predict the market's appetite for the software, fund her development programme, and set a suitable launch price. I am sure there are cases where software has been developed very expensively for, and sold at very high prices to, a handful of high-paying purchasers. That's fine. But it seems only reasonable to argue that once profit is reached, then the more copies are sold, the cheaper those copies should become, for the benefit of all.
Macs work out-of-the-box with every $10 USB1/2/Bluetooth 3-button mouse I have ever tried. If you need more buttons feel free to plug in more keyboards and mice and configure them how you like with the built-in mouse/keyboard control panels. Macs seamlessly handle simultaneous input, including built-in HWR, from multiple mice, tablets, trackpads and keyboards on multiple buses, with real plug and play. But why stop there? Why not go mental and equip your swamp-shack with 13 keyboards, one for each of your webbed fingers and your knob? (er, make that 12 :)
Apple supplies a one-button mouse because it's easy for 1st-timers and encourages app-developers to put program controls in the menu bar where new users and veterans know to look for them. If you don't like it, sell your Mac mouse, buy a multi-button one, and pocket the change.
Sorry - please don't take offense. I am just really tired and unluckily, yours is the one millionth complaint that I have read about the one-button mouse.
Cell networks are introducing transceivers to the underground so that commuters can annoy each other in tunnels too. Of course, a stolen phone's timed alarm could detonate a bomb, so I suppose security is little worse.
It's good to conform on spelling, not because you avoid annoying pedants, but because the spelling of every word contains clues to its own long history of meanings. If you look up the etymology of 'filter' and 'philtre' you can see that the words have very different origins.
Finally, it was heresy to deny the Ptolemaic (geocentric) System, not the Copernican (heliocentric) one.
...er, British spelling unit. Now look here, frightfully sorry to be a bore old chap, but didn't you mean 'boorish'? Rejig your sig cos it means what it oughter, but only sorta...
Maybe the apparent absence of visitors from the future constitutes some evidence that it won't happen. What evidence is there that it will?
Today Apple is really a strong software company with a limited access to the software market. Giving away the OS for a while must look tempting.