Consumer laws impose certains changes in the product; a specified quality (batteries that do not explode or leak toxic materials, circuits that do not cause interferences, and so on). But these changes do not apply only to the european products but are applied everywhere (in fact, I do not think USA standards would be very different).
In fact, could you give some example of these laws that cause an increase in price? Or is it just the usual capitalist-anarchist rant in the spirit of "if you allowed the bussiness to sell poisoned food it would be so much better for all of us*"?
* Before you go for it, this is called an hyperbole.
The point is that your food (and that of billions of humans) depend of the whims of a few ones, the potential of abuse is pretty high. I mean, I am sure a new equilibrium will be set, but if it involves my kids being trained as gladiators, me kissing someone's else ass 24/7, and my wife being subject to whatever abuse the one who controls our food can think of, then... well, I may not like it when it comes.
Than Europe, yes. All those vaunted consumer-protection laws aren't free.
Bullshit. If a product must be improved in order to meet EU quality standards, then usually what they do is to improve the manufacturing line and all of the products produced there. So, most of the consumer products sold in the USA will meet EU quality standard because it is exactly the same. Then, by your logic, there should be no difference in price.
Companies take to sell their products at a price that gives them maximum profits, cost is not an issue (unless it gets to the point that there is no price point where the price is greater than cost; in this case the product is just discontinued). Historically computer hardware was produced in the USA so in Europe higher prices were accepted (transport cost/tariffs). When the costs went down and factories relocated to China, the producers found that they could still sell their goods at a higher price and get customers so the kept doing it.
While I find the use of "prerequisite" too strong, it is true that inflation stimulates inversion while deflation works against inversion.
With inflation, your 100$ at today value will be 98$ of value the next year. In order to keep value (or lose less value, or even win value), you have to invest them (either directly, or indirectly through shares/bank account).
In a deflation, your wealth increases just by holding money. The time you change your money for something else, you know your wealth does not increase anymore alone. So, if you have a million dollar and want to build a processing plant that will take a year to complete, you already know (even without taking into account amortization and othere expenses), that in a year you will have less than a million dollar in property. Also, consumers of your products will be in the same situation and they will also delay expending their money to the max, waiting for cheaper goods.
A compensation for deflation could be wealth taxes, making it unatractive to keep the money without investing/spending it, but it can only work if deflation is not severe.
You can get something of these shares because of the profit Apple does, not because their gadgets are cool. If they were in the bussiness of producing packaged dung and they got the same profit, your shares would be worth exactly the same.
From the POV of communism people would revolt and take over BG's assets. Of course there are a few details that do not match:
1- The idea of communism is that the workers (through the state "dictatorship of the proletariat") take over the production media in order to use them to produce goods for themselves (and not for the capitalist who owned the media before). So, if the media produces automatically the goods without people work, the situation is not quite that predicted by communism.
2- Before that, there is a more general concept: in your vision, economy (as in the current definition of allocating efficiently limited resources) no longer exists (as, via automation, resources are illimited). The same concept that someone "owns" something (besides, perhaps, art/hobby/sentimental reason) is made obsolete.
Of course, all of that is taking a simplified POV. Even with illimited automation, you only get to reduce the work from the economy. There is still the question about the resources (the Earth is finite, after all).
The difference between Canada and Mexico is that drugs are more tolerated in Canada, with more lax punishment than in the USA & Mexico, so there is less associated violence. When the penalty is worse, you're going to fight harder to make sure you don't get caught. Canada also produces a lot of drugs, including synthetic drugs. But they aren't killing each other in the streets like in Mexico because the Canadian government isn't provoking the situation like the Calderon government did in Mexico.
I think the difference is the standard of living. With the drug profits, in Mexico you can easily find people who have not enough income for their family, offer them a year worth of salary for a risky day, and get a dealer. It is also easier to find corrupt politicals, police officers.
In Canada, with the same amount of money you are offering just one/two months of salary.... it is way less atractive, there are also social programs that give an opportunity to keep alive without taking so many risks. And police officers are better paid.
Also, after a time of these settings, in Mexico the public views the activity of the cartes as "normal" and this lowers the entry barrier for recruits.
1. Its not a picture of you. Its a picture of a car and its license plate.
I do not know of USA, but here if the driver cannot be identified then the owner is legally responsible of the fines. Of course, if he can prove that someone else was the driver it then gets passed to the driver. Apart from theft, it is pretty sure to say that the owner knows who was driving the car and can discuss the matter with him.
2. The plate is read with OCR, sometimes its wrong.
I am pretty sure you can ask for the picture to check it yourself and correct the OCR. It would be better if the fines were served with a printout of the picture attached to it, to simplify things (I do not know if this is done or not).
3. How do you know the camera is set up correctly? How do you know the timing is correct?
The only thing that should really matter if is the camera is only triggered while the light is red (v.g., by the cable that powers the red light runs through the camera and activates it). Way better if the camera is set so you see in the picture both the car and the red light.
About the settings, I think these cameras must be networked. And if not, when the crew in charge of downloading the pics come, they must check that evertything is ok. Anyway, if the camera date/time is incorrectly set, it can only benefit you ("but your honour, if the date/time is not set correctly I can not verify this proof so it must be invalidated").
4. How about extenuating circumstances. In DC, I moved out of the way of an ambulance, into the intersection. That triggered the red light camera. Then I was blocking traffic, so the safest thing to do was continue with an illegal right on red. I got 2 tickets. The camera could not testify to any of this happening, where a cop would have been able to.
I agree with that, a limitation of automatic systems is that they do what they are programmed to do, without any common sense. For your case it might have been possible to ask for the previous pictures from the camera to check your story, but even winning that would mean a lot more work than explaining to a cop (provided that the cop had not seen it himself).
Being able to go from idea to deployment in under an hour is something that Smalltalk and Haskell give you, and that's something that the financial industry values highly.
More to the point, not all discrimination is illegal (or even unethical). You can discriminate/refuse to hire someone because he does not have the skills/certifications required. Even the laws do discriminate (you must be older than x to get a driving licence, or to work).
Do you remember that "House" is a TV Drama? It is like when, in CSI, they find ALL the tiny, minuscule evidence fragments, do not get distracted by false clues, have all that sci-fi technology and all the time in the world so, at the end, the criminal always is found and is ready to admit defeat. And, above all of that, they live for nothing else than for solving crimes.
Item one would be cost... if you think your current healthcare is expensive, wait until you have to have 4 full time doctors(plus extra staff) devoted only to you for a week.
Item two would be medicine itself... at House all illness are well catalogued, all have at least one distintive symptom, all symptoms are either present or absent. If you think it is realistic, let me remind you that 40% of all Parkinson cases are misdiagnosed.
Item three is the know-it-all doctor that knows... well, all of it (from the effects of a drug retired from the market 30 years ago to the chemical composition of brazil nuts to the religious rites of whatever sect appears). Talk about deus ex machina.
I mean, I expect that if I have a critical condition the doctor will spend more time with my case that he does when I go with a constipation. But I realize that there is a cost to it(*1) and, even without cost considerations, some illness are rare/comlicated enough to not admit a good diagnostic/treatment. If you find it sad, then remember that the last laugh is always at ayou.
*1: Yes, a cost. Given the data of death causes, sometimes putting a $ into building more sport facilities/improving air quality/food safety is better than putting it into a doctor work minute. And remember that, one way or the other, as a society we are always going to pay for the services we use (more doctors means less people building other goods --> more expensive goods).
I do not think that is how thinks work. It will just benefit the ones that have recent experience related to the question. To put an example, an engineer doing work about unscratchable materials will quickly remember the hardness of quartz, while another one who has been working designing a power plant might not remember it just because it is not use.
Speaking for myself, I have not had need to solve a quadratic equation in a long, long time. I think I still remember the method from back at high school, but if THAT is what proves how good an engineer I am.... OTOH, I do not remember how to manually calculate square roots, do that makes me unemployable?
The problem is inherent to indirect measurements. Any indirect measurements.
You have a performance/aptitude that you want to test. As you can't directly know if John is more capable than Joseph, you set a test to measure it. The only thing you can measure directly is Joe's and Joseph ability to perform the test, and hope that test is a good enough representation of the performance/aptitude you want to measure. If it is not, at the end Joe and Joseph will see through it, ignore the original aspect and concentrate only in beating the test.
That happens not only at schools but at all levels of live: bussiness (audits, for example), economy (inflation, unemployement charts). Even with people. You meet someone well dressed and hope that this is a sign that s/he has been given education/knows how to manage his/her life/can keep a job and do it well/whatever. You get someone in drags and think he is unemployed/uneducated/drug addict/whatever.
Of course, that includes a soldier messing up and killing innocent civilians. Or bombing innocent civilians.
No one's perfect.
That's *never* to be blamed to the soldier. The civilian "acted suspiciously" by scratching his nose, "failed to respond to warnings" when we shot at him and he fled and "was shot for the security of the operation". And more, he was in "the theatre of operations" (that happened to be his neighborhood).
Hey, I have done nothing illegal. Keeping me from my medic licence is clearly unconstitutional. As a plus, I often watch Nature documentals so I am pretty sure I know where everything in the human body is.
Please send me my medical licence by e-mail. Thanks.
I would hire someone in the team and fire the "smart" person.
Hey, tell to your boss that the next time your company is hiring, they should hire 3/4 persons for every position so that way they can "double check" each others work. Do not forget to ask for your own backup team, too. I bet his/her face will be priceless.
You put forward 7 examples (most of them dubious) and say that it proves that monopolies are usually government induced? Then, there are only 4 or 5 "natural" monopolies?
Let's see why some of your "government induced" monopolies fit also with "natural" monopolies.
Water: What is the high cost? The water itself? Nope, the infrastructure. Passing plumbing down the street is a big cost, connecting it to your house is a small one. Are you suggesting that there should be in each (or most) street of your city several pipes so you can chose from? Nope, first comer wins it all.
Same for electricity distribution. Note that in most countries there are several companies generating electricity.
Health care. Where do you live that it is an state sponsored monopoly. Even here in "red" Europe, I can chose to go to private clinic if I want to. There are many of them. And yes, I have mandatory public insurance, but I can chose what I use. And it is part of the government services, not a private company.
Railroads: 50/50. In the USA there was no monopoly, in Europe it was somewhat common (there did exist private railways, but usually disconnected from the main grid and with a very specific function).
Drugs: Then again, where? Most that I know of, producers and sellers are private enterprise. Yes, regulations and checks are very strict but it is 100% private enterprise.
Yes, some of them are legally stablished as monopolies, but even if they were not, they would end up as one. And being a monopoly allows the government to force them to provide an universal service (for example, not only wiring the parts of the city were are the wealthier customers -who consume more- but all of it) and control price.
Compare that with monopolies like current Microsoft or historycal Rockefeller Oil, and tell me if you still think that monopolies are usually government induced.
This is also the same company that likes to sell used copies on launch day,
Yours too? Bought a game for the NintendoDS of my niece. It was strange that it was open, but I thougt it was a cheap anti-theft measure. When I put it in my nieces DS, I saw two profiles already loaded. Thanksfully my niece didn't notice it and I could erase them before being embarrassed in front of my family. Never gonna buy anything from those assholes, neither at shop or online.
What I call dogma is dogma. It exists, even in science (or better, amongst scientifics). Just a few examples:
Lord Kelvin rejected the idea of radioactivity.
Darwinism was opposed not only by creationists, but also by evolutionists that felt that evolution had to have more sense than just a wild trial and error (v.g. lamarckists).
"A few atoms will never be able to light a match"
Quantum physics were opposed by scientifics who wanted a more "deterministic" model.
Relativity
Of course, I am not saying that just not being so influenced by the dogma makes young scientifics more successful. There is knowledge, work, intuition and maybe a decent share of luck. But young scientifics have the above mentioned advantages that allow them, when things go right, to make more spectacular discoveries.
The power of ignorance. Seriously. At least in part.
Young people are usually less likely to rely in the previous generation dogmas, so they test everything. By pure statistics, some of them are intelligent enough and point at a direction right enough to find a new answer that would have been passed over by older scientifics. Also, they may be more blunt because they don't have a status to defend (non-euclidean geometry was several times discovered but people found it too 'weird' and chose not to publicite it).
A more biological explanation that also would affect is that young people are more used to new technologies, theories. Older brains are less flexible and so, even if they learn item X, probably won't see its repercussions as easily. and so on.
Finally, old eminencies are expected to make new discoveries, so when they find the next big thing it comes as less of a surprise.
*: The way to introduce the history. In other films, it starts slowly with Indiana not knowing where he is getting into. In these, it is like if they count you half the story (where did they find the skull? for example). Also, from the beginning the bads are bad and the goods are good (even the traitor at the end is the traitor at the beginning).
*: There is less of a path... in other films they try to find a solution, make plans... there they just follow the skull (or the memories left by the skull) while being pursued... just a "physical" challenge, not a mental one.
*: Maybe because of that, or just because is trendy, overdone and long FX. Bigger is not *always* better. At least for me, there is some point where I think: "Awesome. Please wake me when people start acting again".
Also, yes, we are older and we have seen a lot more things (films included). The same "deus ex machina" solution that was breathtaking in Raiders would probably leave us empty stared, because now it is more difficult to find any surprising FX, now FX is accesory to the rest of the film, and because we probably have grown to think more about the story and people and less about big bangs.
Microsoft theory would say: "Since we have the biggest share of market, let's make the UI of our system different so it is harder for the user to swith to another solution"
That said, I do not think it is time to worry (yet). Gestures is a new input method and people are experimenting with it, see what works and does not, etc... once it is more mature I hope we will see a trend towards standarization.
Slashdot Mirror
I have read it pretty well.
Consumer laws impose certains changes in the product; a specified quality (batteries that do not explode or leak toxic materials, circuits that do not cause interferences, and so on). But these changes do not apply only to the european products but are applied everywhere (in fact, I do not think USA standards would be very different).
In fact, could you give some example of these laws that cause an increase in price? Or is it just the usual capitalist-anarchist rant in the spirit of "if you allowed the bussiness to sell poisoned food it would be so much better for all of us*"?
* Before you go for it, this is called an hyperbole.
The point is that your food (and that of billions of humans) depend of the whims of a few ones, the potential of abuse is pretty high. I mean, I am sure a new equilibrium will be set, but if it involves my kids being trained as gladiators, me kissing someone's else ass 24/7, and my wife being subject to whatever abuse the one who controls our food can think of, then... well, I may not like it when it comes.
Than Europe, yes. All those vaunted consumer-protection laws aren't free.
Bullshit. If a product must be improved in order to meet EU quality standards, then usually what they do is to improve the manufacturing line and all of the products produced there. So, most of the consumer products sold in the USA will meet EU quality standard because it is exactly the same. Then, by your logic, there should be no difference in price.
Companies take to sell their products at a price that gives them maximum profits, cost is not an issue (unless it gets to the point that there is no price point where the price is greater than cost; in this case the product is just discontinued). Historically computer hardware was produced in the USA so in Europe higher prices were accepted (transport cost/tariffs). When the costs went down and factories relocated to China, the producers found that they could still sell their goods at a higher price and get customers so the kept doing it.
While I find the use of "prerequisite" too strong, it is true that inflation stimulates inversion while deflation works against inversion.
With inflation, your 100$ at today value will be 98$ of value the next year. In order to keep value (or lose less value, or even win value), you have to invest them (either directly, or indirectly through shares/bank account).
In a deflation, your wealth increases just by holding money. The time you change your money for something else, you know your wealth does not increase anymore alone. So, if you have a million dollar and want to build a processing plant that will take a year to complete, you already know (even without taking into account amortization and othere expenses), that in a year you will have less than a million dollar in property. Also, consumers of your products will be in the same situation and they will also delay expending their money to the max, waiting for cheaper goods.
A compensation for deflation could be wealth taxes, making it unatractive to keep the money without investing/spending it, but it can only work if deflation is not severe.
You can get something of these shares because of the profit Apple does, not because their gadgets are cool. If they were in the bussiness of producing packaged dung and they got the same profit, your shares would be worth exactly the same.
Item more: if the rights are natural, why are they different from civilization to civilization and change with time?
From the POV of communism people would revolt and take over BG's assets. Of course there are a few details that do not match:
1- The idea of communism is that the workers (through the state "dictatorship of the proletariat") take over the production media in order to use them to produce goods for themselves (and not for the capitalist who owned the media before). So, if the media produces automatically the goods without people work, the situation is not quite that predicted by communism.
2- Before that, there is a more general concept: in your vision, economy (as in the current definition of allocating efficiently limited resources) no longer exists (as, via automation, resources are illimited). The same concept that someone "owns" something (besides, perhaps, art/hobby/sentimental reason) is made obsolete.
Of course, all of that is taking a simplified POV. Even with illimited automation, you only get to reduce the work from the economy. There is still the question about the resources (the Earth is finite, after all).
I think the difference is the standard of living. With the drug profits, in Mexico you can easily find people who have not enough income for their family, offer them a year worth of salary for a risky day, and get a dealer. It is also easier to find corrupt politicals, police officers.
In Canada, with the same amount of money you are offering just one/two months of salary.... it is way less atractive, there are also social programs that give an opportunity to keep alive without taking so many risks. And police officers are better paid.
Also, after a time of these settings, in Mexico the public views the activity of the cartes as "normal" and this lowers the entry barrier for recruits.
1. Its not a picture of you. Its a picture of a car and its license plate.
I do not know of USA, but here if the driver cannot be identified then the owner is legally responsible of the fines. Of course, if he can prove that someone else was the driver it then gets passed to the driver. Apart from theft, it is pretty sure to say that the owner knows who was driving the car and can discuss the matter with him.
2. The plate is read with OCR, sometimes its wrong.
I am pretty sure you can ask for the picture to check it yourself and correct the OCR. It would be better if the fines were served with a printout of the picture attached to it, to simplify things (I do not know if this is done or not).
3. How do you know the camera is set up correctly? How do you know the timing is correct?
The only thing that should really matter if is the camera is only triggered while the light is red (v.g., by the cable that powers the red light runs through the camera and activates it). Way better if the camera is set so you see in the picture both the car and the red light.
About the settings, I think these cameras must be networked. And if not, when the crew in charge of downloading the pics come, they must check that evertything is ok. Anyway, if the camera date/time is incorrectly set, it can only benefit you ("but your honour, if the date/time is not set correctly I can not verify this proof so it must be invalidated").
4. How about extenuating circumstances. In DC, I moved out of the way of an ambulance, into the intersection. That triggered the red light camera. Then I was blocking traffic, so the safest thing to do was continue with an illegal right on red. I got 2 tickets. The camera could not testify to any of this happening, where a cop would have been able to.
I agree with that, a limitation of automatic systems is that they do what they are programmed to do, without any common sense. For your case it might have been possible to ask for the previous pictures from the camera to check your story, but even winning that would mean a lot more work than explaining to a cop (provided that the cop had not seen it himself).
Being able to go from idea to deployment in under an hour is something that Smalltalk and Haskell give you, and that's something that the financial industry values highly.
I am afraid to ask, but... what about testing?
This would really explain a lot of things.
More to the point, not all discrimination is illegal (or even unethical). You can discriminate/refuse to hire someone because he does not have the skills/certifications required. Even the laws do discriminate (you must be older than x to get a driving licence, or to work).
Do you remember that "House" is a TV Drama? It is like when, in CSI, they find ALL the tiny, minuscule evidence fragments, do not get distracted by false clues, have all that sci-fi technology and all the time in the world so, at the end, the criminal always is found and is ready to admit defeat. And, above all of that, they live for nothing else than for solving crimes.
Item one would be cost... if you think your current healthcare is expensive, wait until you have to have 4 full time doctors(plus extra staff) devoted only to you for a week.
Item two would be medicine itself... at House all illness are well catalogued, all have at least one distintive symptom, all symptoms are either present or absent. If you think it is realistic, let me remind you that 40% of all Parkinson cases are misdiagnosed.
Item three is the know-it-all doctor that knows... well, all of it (from the effects of a drug retired from the market 30 years ago to the chemical composition of brazil nuts to the religious rites of whatever sect appears). Talk about deus ex machina.
I mean, I expect that if I have a critical condition the doctor will spend more time with my case that he does when I go with a constipation. But I realize that there is a cost to it(*1) and, even without cost considerations, some illness are rare/comlicated enough to not admit a good diagnostic/treatment. If you find it sad, then remember that the last laugh is always at ayou.
*1: Yes, a cost. Given the data of death causes, sometimes putting a $ into building more sport facilities/improving air quality/food safety is better than putting it into a doctor work minute. And remember that, one way or the other, as a society we are always going to pay for the services we use (more doctors means less people building other goods --> more expensive goods).
I do not think that is how thinks work. It will just benefit the ones that have recent experience related to the question. To put an example, an engineer doing work about unscratchable materials will quickly remember the hardness of quartz, while another one who has been working designing a power plant might not remember it just because it is not use.
Speaking for myself, I have not had need to solve a quadratic equation in a long, long time. I think I still remember the method from back at high school, but if THAT is what proves how good an engineer I am.... OTOH, I do not remember how to manually calculate square roots, do that makes me unemployable?
The problem is inherent to indirect measurements. Any indirect measurements.
You have a performance/aptitude that you want to test. As you can't directly know if John is more capable than Joseph, you set a test to measure it. The only thing you can measure directly is Joe's and Joseph ability to perform the test, and hope that test is a good enough representation of the performance/aptitude you want to measure. If it is not, at the end Joe and Joseph will see through it, ignore the original aspect and concentrate only in beating the test.
That happens not only at schools but at all levels of live: bussiness (audits, for example), economy (inflation, unemployement charts). Even with people. You meet someone well dressed and hope that this is a sign that s/he has been given education/knows how to manage his/her life/can keep a job and do it well/whatever. You get someone in drags and think he is unemployed/uneducated/drug addict/whatever.
Of course, that includes a soldier messing up and killing innocent civilians. Or bombing innocent civilians.
No one's perfect.
That's *never* to be blamed to the soldier. The civilian "acted suspiciously" by scratching his nose, "failed to respond to warnings" when we shot at him and he fled and "was shot for the security of the operation". And more, he was in "the theatre of operations" (that happened to be his neighborhood).
Hey, I have done nothing illegal. Keeping me from my medic licence is clearly unconstitutional. As a plus, I often watch Nature documentals so I am pretty sure I know where everything in the human body is.
Please send me my medical licence by e-mail. Thanks.
I would hire someone in the team and fire the "smart" person.
Hey, tell to your boss that the next time your company is hiring, they should hire 3/4 persons for every position so that way they can "double check" each others work. Do not forget to ask for your own backup team, too. I bet his/her face will be priceless.
3) since he pissed his doctor off, nobody will renew his anti-psychotic medication.
Then it is 1), again. If a doctor is unprofessional enough to be offended by a psychotic pacient's remarks, he is not a good doctor.
Note than I am talking about a clinical case and not someone who just is a screaming moron.
Yeah... Car makers in the more capitalist countries have done so well that they have needed to be bailed out with public money
Damn socialists! USA! USA! USA!
You put forward 7 examples (most of them dubious) and say that it proves that monopolies are usually government induced? Then, there are only 4 or 5 "natural" monopolies?
Let's see why some of your "government induced" monopolies fit also with "natural" monopolies.
Water: What is the high cost? The water itself? Nope, the infrastructure. Passing plumbing down the street is a big cost, connecting it to your house is a small one. Are you suggesting that there should be in each (or most) street of your city several pipes so you can chose from? Nope, first comer wins it all.
Same for electricity distribution. Note that in most countries there are several companies generating electricity.
Health care. Where do you live that it is an state sponsored monopoly. Even here in "red" Europe, I can chose to go to private clinic if I want to. There are many of them. And yes, I have mandatory public insurance, but I can chose what I use. And it is part of the government services, not a private company.
Railroads: 50/50. In the USA there was no monopoly, in Europe it was somewhat common (there did exist private railways, but usually disconnected from the main grid and with a very specific function).
Drugs: Then again, where? Most that I know of, producers and sellers are private enterprise. Yes, regulations and checks are very strict but it is 100% private enterprise.
Yes, some of them are legally stablished as monopolies, but even if they were not, they would end up as one. And being a monopoly allows the government to force them to provide an universal service (for example, not only wiring the parts of the city were are the wealthier customers -who consume more- but all of it) and control price.
Compare that with monopolies like current Microsoft or historycal Rockefeller Oil, and tell me if you still think that monopolies are usually government induced.
Yours too? Bought a game for the NintendoDS of my niece. It was strange that it was open, but I thougt it was a cheap anti-theft measure. When I put it in my nieces DS, I saw two profiles already loaded. Thanksfully my niece didn't notice it and I could erase them before being embarrassed in front of my family. Never gonna buy anything from those assholes, neither at shop or online.
What I call dogma is dogma. It exists, even in science (or better, amongst scientifics). Just a few examples:
Lord Kelvin rejected the idea of radioactivity.
Darwinism was opposed not only by creationists, but also by evolutionists that felt that evolution had to have more sense than just a wild trial and error (v.g. lamarckists).
"A few atoms will never be able to light a match"
Quantum physics were opposed by scientifics who wanted a more "deterministic" model.
Relativity
Of course, I am not saying that just not being so influenced by the dogma makes young scientifics more successful. There is knowledge, work, intuition and maybe a decent share of luck. But young scientifics have the above mentioned advantages that allow them, when things go right, to make more spectacular discoveries.
The power of ignorance. Seriously. At least in part.
Young people are usually less likely to rely in the previous generation dogmas, so they test everything. By pure statistics, some of them are intelligent enough and point at a direction right enough to find a new answer that would have been passed over by older scientifics. Also, they may be more blunt because they don't have a status to defend (non-euclidean geometry was several times discovered but people found it too 'weird' and chose not to publicite it).
A more biological explanation that also would affect is that young people are more used to new technologies, theories. Older brains are less flexible and so, even if they learn item X, probably won't see its repercussions as easily. and so on.
Finally, old eminencies are expected to make new discoveries, so when they find the next big thing it comes as less of a surprise.
My main point against Kingdom is(*1):
*: The way to introduce the history. In other films, it starts slowly with Indiana not knowing where he is getting into. In these, it is like if they count you half the story (where did they find the skull? for example). Also, from the beginning the bads are bad and the goods are good (even the traitor at the end is the traitor at the beginning).
*: There is less of a path... in other films they try to find a solution, make plans... there they just follow the skull (or the memories left by the skull) while being pursued... just a "physical" challenge, not a mental one.
*: Maybe because of that, or just because is trendy, overdone and long FX. Bigger is not *always* better. At least for me, there is some point where I think: "Awesome. Please wake me when people start acting again".
Also, yes, we are older and we have seen a lot more things (films included). The same "deus ex machina" solution that was breathtaking in Raiders would probably leave us empty stared, because now it is more difficult to find any surprising FX, now FX is accesory to the rest of the film, and because we probably have grown to think more about the story and people and less about big bangs.
*1: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
In fact, it is opposite to Microsoft theory
Microsoft theory would say: "Since we have the biggest share of market, let's make the UI of our system different so it is harder for the user to swith to another solution"
That said, I do not think it is time to worry (yet). Gestures is a new input method and people are experimenting with it, see what works and does not, etc... once it is more mature I hope we will see a trend towards standarization.