Indeed, 1/3rd of Belizeans live in the USA, because the economic opportunities are lacking in their country, in no small part due to corruption of local politicians.
There also are incentives to move to Belize, allowing you to move your household possessions, cars, etc. down there tax-free. Just pay the government a small fee.
I've spent time down there, it's a beautiful country, but with an odd mix of enclaves of super-expensive housing developments for expats, and shanty towns for locals.
As an side, my supervisor there was a intelligent lady who was chosen out of 400 applicants. Her response when I told her about the iPhone 2g? "Why would anyone use that? Won't it get finger prints all over it?"
...but cell phones in Japan are so advanced, they are 5 years ahead of the iPhone, it'll never sell there.
I am becoming increasingly jaded at the USian right wing and their Obamapanic
Really guys, your president is Center-Right from the perspective of the rest of the world, and it is just sad to see him try to meet the right wing halfway in all of his policies, only to be branded a "dirty commie" over and over again...
The USA needs Democrats with balls to propose truly liberal policy, not watered down compromises, imho
Yeah, those damn leftist Russians and Eastern Europeans and Middle Easterners. And let's not forget the socially liberal Chinese, they are commies in name only, so they are leftists.
Oh right, what I meant to say is that Europe is not "the rest of the world." Despite how much as some would like to think so.
In most states, you'll be a registered sex offender for taking a leak in public -- i.e. down a dark alley after a few too many pints. Should it be illegal? Yeah probably. Should it be ambiguous whether you raped a kid or couldn't hold your bladder? I dunno, I don't write laws so I shouldn't have an opinion. Maybe the slashlawer can opine on why these are similar things.
First of all smart phones (as we in the US know them) are almost non-existant in Japan. Secondly, gaming on smart phones is not very enjoyable or easy unless you have tiny fingers. Handheld gaming devices are designed to be more comfortable to hold in a gaming position.
I've heard variants on this argument for years ("Japanese phones are so much more advanced than what we have here!"), and having been to Japan on a number of occasions, I just never saw it. Other than streaming TV shows onto surprisingly bulky phones, I just didn't see anything particularly advanced or interesting.
They did not have a concept of greed and this is one of the main reasons tribal cultures did not develop the level of technology and sophistication, or the kinds of weaponry. Greed is something which had to be taught to people. When you barter it's a lot more difficult to be greedy. When you live off the land and everyone has plenty of food and water theres no reason to be focused on greed.
Ah yes, and in that anthropology class, you will learn to embrace The Noble Savage myth like so many others.
And for his next trick, Dr Mark Gasson will insert an Atari 2600 controller into his anus, and proceed to control a Windows PC's mouse cursor with it. This is the first time a human has ever taken over control of a computer with the twitching of their rectal wall, and demonstrates the need for anal computer security.
All hail scientific achievement.
Re:In the US we have an inflated estimate of US
on
H.264 and VP8 Compared
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Your analysis of my post belongs in left field. I never stated any of the straw man assertions you raised.
I never stated our current system might not fail. I never stated that the current western system is the best humanity will discover.
Frankly, I don't even understand how you could glean that from reading my post. Please read the initial post that I was responding to, then read my post and understand it was in response to that.
Afterwards, perhaps a cold martini and some reflection, and you'll understand my points (and cease making up things which I did not say or imply, so that you can refute them).
Re:In the US we have an inflated estimate of US
on
H.264 and VP8 Compared
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
We forget sometimes in the US that our entire country is not as old as a decent British country house, nor a Taiwan temple, nor even a Chinese family land lease. Hell, the US is not even as old as most decent books. We are notmost people and we're never going to be. Our inflated estimate of our importance is the cause of much misunderstanding in the wider world. The sooner we let it go the better.
I agree with the notion that the US should not have an overly inflated estimate of our importance... however your reasons why are beyond silly.
"Old" doesn't make something better. Ask any of the younger generations in the countries you've cited, you'll find that they by in large eschew all of this glorious ancient tradition (if they're even aware of it), and are more interested in modern (read: Western) style living.
Simply occupying the same bit of dirt on the planet for a length of time doesn't translate into some type of magical wisdom. Indeed, entities and institutions that have existed for too long very frequently exhibit backwardness and retardation from centuries of inbreeding.
We've got some decent insight on human interaction to share, but others may be rightfully suspicious of new ideas when they have a system that's similar that is proven to work over a span of 5,000 years. To those folk a quarter millenium is still just a "noble experiment", and frankly looking at what we're doing with it, we might not make it to a half millennium so who are we to say they're not civilized?
Please read up on the history of India, China, etc. and the myriad of failed systems that have existed in the countries (India, China, etc) you've cited over the past 5,000 years. Then consider restating your opinion.
Again, I have no issue with your statement that the USA can often be caught up in its own hubris, which we should avoid. But the rest of your statements sound like something right out of the "noble savage" nonsense.
Decimate us, huh? Thank goodness! You see, Decimate literally means "to reduce by ten percent", or "to kill one of every ten". If an alien asteroid attack on Earth is only going to kill one in ten, I'll take my chances.
pedant> That's the historical definition of the word. These days, it literally means kill, destroy, or remove a large of/pedant>
I wondered the legality of this whole situation myself. As it turns out, the item would be considered "mislaid property" and what the person who found it was supposed to do was leave it with the property owner (the bar in this case) on the theory that the person would return to reclaim their mislaid item.
Given that this didn't transpire, the finder of mislaid items is the new owner, unless the original owner returns to claim it. The law also talks about the new finder making a "reasonable effort" to return the mislaid item.
The finder did apparently did try to contact Apple... but has since sold it to Gizmodo. Apple has made a formal demand for the property being returned to them, so it will be... but the damage has already been done, to an extent. I wonder if Apple has any recourse at all.
I wondered the legality of this whole situation myself. As it turns out, the item would be considered "mislaid property" and what the person who found it was supposed to do was leave it with the property owner (the bar in this case) on the theory that the person would return to reclaim their mislaid item.
Given that this didn't transpire, the finder of mislaid items is the new owner, unless the original owner returns to claim it. The law also talks about the new finder making a "reasonable effort" to return the mislaid item.
The finder did apparently did try to contact Apple... but has since sold it to Gizmodo. Apple has made a formal demand for the property being returned to them, so it will be... but the damage has already been done, to an extent. I wonder if Apple has any recourse at all.
Kindle customers have, in effect, been sold "stolen" property. . . If you buy a stolen ipod, it can get confiscated by the police.
IGNORANCE IS NOT STRENGTH
IDEAS ARE NOT PROPERTY
Taking an iPod from somebody deprives that person of an iPod. Having an extra copy of a book does not take anything from anyone. Purchasing unauthorised copies is neither equivalent to nor even similar to stealing.
RHETORIC IS NOT REALITY
UNSHAVEN HIPPIES SPEAKING IN TONGUES ARE NOT THE MESSIAH
You are taking the right to copy an original work from the artist who created it. You are depriving him or her of the right bestowed to him by law, just as freedom of speech is bestowed unto him or her by law.
You are taking the fruits of someone else's labor, the hours and days and years of study and work that culminated in the creation they put out on the free market for sale.
That the tools used didn't create a physical object you can fold, spindle, or mutilate means little. R&D costs are the bulk of most sophisticated manufactured goods, whether physical or ephemeral.
When thinking about dinosaurs' long necks, it's helpful to consider the possibility that the atmosphere was much thicker back then.
OMG!! Global thinning! If you thought global warming was bad, let me introduce you to the horror of our atmosphere thinning like a 40 year old man's bald patch.
Everybody panic. Someone call Al Gore, time for another documentary & award.
Updated 4:00 p.m. - An Apple representative said the company's policy concerning refunds and developers is that when a refund is granted on a purchase made through the App Store, Apple returns the customer's money and debits the developer's account by 70 percent of the application price, or the revenue the developer had gained on the sale. The company does not charge the developer an additional 30 percent during the refund process, the representative said.
The Panasonic P905i wouldn't appeal to me at all. I really don't think of a cell phone that doubles as a portable TV is particularly innovative; I think it's rather sad.
I saw this all over Japan, people watching TV on the subway... and meanwhile the Internet access and web capabilities of this phone, and others in Japan, are quite poor relative to what the iPhone or G1 can do.
I'm sorry, but being able to watch live TV on a cell phone is not "OMG, it's so advanced, I want it" in my book.
personally, i'd travel to the nearest university where there are the highest concentrations of:
progressive civic-minded & altruistic individuals intellectuals and knowledgeable experts in assorted fields innovative freethinkers and fresh young minds
Awesome. I'll travel to meet up with some hunter friends of mine who have guns and wilderness survival skills... we'll shoot you and your newly found progressive buddies, eat your vegetables, and have a long pig BBQ!
My response to him was to quit. After trying to play with him for at least 30 minutes, I just quit and told him I would never play against him ever again because he was brutal, unkind, and deceitful.
You got frustrated with the game, so you acted like a baby, quit, and insulted your son.
The Parent of the Year award is headed your way... well done!
So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility... with hard-working home owners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:
The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.
The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.
Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.
The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.
Sorry, skippy, your political spin is silly. The Bush administration did not allow financial institutions to create Mortgage Backed Securities... they've been around since about 1938.
If you really want to know who or what caused the financial meltdown, I'd suggest reading this piece on Factcheck.org -- skip down to the "The Real Deal" section for the executive summary, which concludes with:
The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.
Slashdot Mirror
So in an actual game, the expert human player will outperform the computer because the other humans in the game are exploitable.
No, it won't. Read the article. The game they solved is heads-up limit hold 'em.
There will never be other humans in the game. That's not what they solved.
Indeed, 1/3rd of Belizeans live in the USA, because the economic opportunities are lacking in their country, in no small part due to corruption of local politicians.
There also are incentives to move to Belize, allowing you to move your household possessions, cars, etc. down there tax-free. Just pay the government a small fee.
I've spent time down there, it's a beautiful country, but with an odd mix of enclaves of super-expensive housing developments for expats, and shanty towns for locals.
As an side, my supervisor there was a intelligent lady who was chosen out of 400 applicants. Her response when I told her about the iPhone 2g? "Why would anyone use that? Won't it get finger prints all over it?"
...but cell phones in Japan are so advanced, they are 5 years ahead of the iPhone, it'll never sell there.
Oh wait...
Here's some news about Munich.
I am becoming increasingly jaded at the USian right wing and their Obamapanic
Really guys, your president is Center-Right from the perspective of the rest of the world, and it is just sad to see him try to meet the right wing halfway in all of his policies, only to be branded a "dirty commie" over and over again...
The USA needs Democrats with balls to propose truly liberal policy, not watered down compromises, imho
Yeah, those damn leftist Russians and Eastern Europeans and Middle Easterners. And let's not forget the socially liberal Chinese, they are commies in name only, so they are leftists.
Oh right, what I meant to say is that Europe is not "the rest of the world." Despite how much as some would like to think so.
In most states, you'll be a registered sex offender for taking a leak in public -- i.e. down a dark alley after a few too many pints. Should it be illegal? Yeah probably. Should it be ambiguous whether you raped a kid or couldn't hold your bladder? I dunno, I don't write laws so I shouldn't have an opinion. Maybe the slashlawer can opine on why these are similar things.
Name the states. Because what you're stating is misinformed urban legend.
First of all smart phones (as we in the US know them) are almost non-existant in Japan. Secondly, gaming on smart phones is not very enjoyable or easy unless you have tiny fingers. Handheld gaming devices are designed to be more comfortable to hold in a gaming position.
I've heard variants on this argument for years ("Japanese phones are so much more advanced than what we have here!"), and having been to Japan on a number of occasions, I just never saw it. Other than streaming TV shows onto surprisingly bulky phones, I just didn't see anything particularly advanced or interesting.
Now that the iPhone is the best selling cell phone in Japan (not just smart phone, best selling cell phone), perhaps it's time to put these arguments aside. Hell, people are lining up to get on waiting lists for the new iPhone. Granted, people in Japan seem to love lining up for almost anything, but it's still significant.
The iPhone has done extremely well. Even in Japan. Perhaps that's why Nintendo sees Apple as a threat.
They did not have a concept of greed and this is one of the main reasons tribal cultures did not develop the level of technology and sophistication, or the kinds of weaponry. Greed is something which had to be taught to people. When you barter it's a lot more difficult to be greedy. When you live off the land and everyone has plenty of food and water theres no reason to be focused on greed.
Ah yes, and in that anthropology class, you will learn to embrace The Noble Savage myth like so many others.
And for his next trick, Dr Mark Gasson will insert an Atari 2600 controller into his anus, and proceed to control a Windows PC's mouse cursor with it. This is the first time a human has ever taken over control of a computer with the twitching of their rectal wall, and demonstrates the need for anal computer security.
All hail scientific achievement.
Your analysis of my post belongs in left field. I never stated any of the straw man assertions you raised.
I never stated our current system might not fail. I never stated that the current western system is the best humanity will discover.
Frankly, I don't even understand how you could glean that from reading my post. Please read the initial post that I was responding to, then read my post and understand it was in response to that.
Afterwards, perhaps a cold martini and some reflection, and you'll understand my points (and cease making up things which I did not say or imply, so that you can refute them).
We forget sometimes in the US that our entire country is not as old as a decent British country house, nor a Taiwan temple, nor even a Chinese family land lease. Hell, the US is not even as old as most decent books. We are not most people and we're never going to be. Our inflated estimate of our importance is the cause of much misunderstanding in the wider world. The sooner we let it go the better.
I agree with the notion that the US should not have an overly inflated estimate of our importance... however your reasons why are beyond silly.
"Old" doesn't make something better. Ask any of the younger generations in the countries you've cited, you'll find that they by in large eschew all of this glorious ancient tradition (if they're even aware of it), and are more interested in modern (read: Western) style living.
Simply occupying the same bit of dirt on the planet for a length of time doesn't translate into some type of magical wisdom. Indeed, entities and institutions that have existed for too long very frequently exhibit backwardness and retardation from centuries of inbreeding.
We've got some decent insight on human interaction to share, but others may be rightfully suspicious of new ideas when they have a system that's similar that is proven to work over a span of 5,000 years. To those folk a quarter millenium is still just a "noble experiment", and frankly looking at what we're doing with it, we might not make it to a half millennium so who are we to say they're not civilized?
Please read up on the history of India, China, etc. and the myriad of failed systems that have existed in the countries (India, China, etc) you've cited over the past 5,000 years. Then consider restating your opinion.
Again, I have no issue with your statement that the USA can often be caught up in its own hubris, which we should avoid. But the rest of your statements sound like something right out of the "noble savage" nonsense.
Decimate us, huh? Thank goodness! You see, Decimate literally means "to reduce by ten percent", or "to kill one of every ten". If an alien asteroid attack on Earth is only going to kill one in ten, I'll take my chances.
pedant> That's the historical definition of the word. These days, it literally means kill, destroy, or remove a large of /pedant>
Get with the times... ;)
I wondered the legality of this whole situation myself. As it turns out, the item would be considered "mislaid property" and what the person who found it was supposed to do was leave it with the property owner (the bar in this case) on the theory that the person would return to reclaim their mislaid item.
Given that this didn't transpire, the finder of mislaid items is the new owner, unless the original owner returns to claim it. The law also talks about the new finder making a "reasonable effort" to return the mislaid item.
The finder did apparently did try to contact Apple... but has since sold it to Gizmodo. Apple has made a formal demand for the property being returned to them, so it will be... but the damage has already been done, to an extent. I wonder if Apple has any recourse at all.
Here's the CA penal code on the matter: Lost and Unclaimed Property. Article 1. Lost Money and Goods.
See my reply here Re: Legality of "found" goods
I wondered the legality of this whole situation myself. As it turns out, the item would be considered "mislaid property" and what the person who found it was supposed to do was leave it with the property owner (the bar in this case) on the theory that the person would return to reclaim their mislaid item.
Given that this didn't transpire, the finder of mislaid items is the new owner, unless the original owner returns to claim it. The law also talks about the new finder making a "reasonable effort" to return the mislaid item.
The finder did apparently did try to contact Apple... but has since sold it to Gizmodo. Apple has made a formal demand for the property being returned to them, so it will be... but the damage has already been done, to an extent. I wonder if Apple has any recourse at all.
Here's the CA penal code on the matter: Lost and Unclaimed Property. Article 1. Lost Money and Goods.
Kindle customers have, in effect, been sold "stolen" property. . . If you buy a stolen ipod, it can get confiscated by the police.
IGNORANCE IS NOT STRENGTH
IDEAS ARE NOT PROPERTY
Taking an iPod from somebody deprives that person of an iPod. Having an extra copy of a book does not take anything from anyone. Purchasing unauthorised copies is neither equivalent to nor even similar to stealing.
RHETORIC IS NOT REALITY
UNSHAVEN HIPPIES SPEAKING IN TONGUES ARE NOT THE MESSIAH
You are taking the right to copy an original work from the artist who created it. You are depriving him or her of the right bestowed to him by law, just as freedom of speech is bestowed unto him or her by law.
You are taking the fruits of someone else's labor, the hours and days and years of study and work that culminated in the creation they put out on the free market for sale.
That the tools used didn't create a physical object you can fold, spindle, or mutilate means little. R&D costs are the bulk of most sophisticated manufactured goods, whether physical or ephemeral.
When thinking about dinosaurs' long necks, it's helpful to consider the possibility that the atmosphere was much thicker back then.
OMG!! Global thinning! If you thought global warming was bad, let me introduce you to the horror of our atmosphere thinning like a 40 year old man's bald patch.
Everybody panic. Someone call Al Gore, time for another documentary & award.
The the Dalai Lama is not a vegetarian... so he very well may know how to cook up a mean meat dish.
This is all fairly silly... Apple does not keep the 30%:
Updated 4:00 p.m. - An Apple representative said the company's policy concerning refunds and developers is that when a refund is granted on a purchase made through the App Store, Apple returns the customer's money and debits the developer's account by 70 percent of the application price, or the revenue the developer had gained on the sale. The company does not charge the developer an additional 30 percent during the refund process, the representative said.
The Panasonic P905i wouldn't appeal to me at all. I really don't think of a cell phone that doubles as a portable TV is particularly innovative; I think it's rather sad.
I saw this all over Japan, people watching TV on the subway... and meanwhile the Internet access and web capabilities of this phone, and others in Japan, are quite poor relative to what the iPhone or G1 can do.
I'm sorry, but being able to watch live TV on a cell phone is not "OMG, it's so advanced, I want it" in my book.
I'm sure this being on the front page of /. has nothing to do with the Macworld Expo keynote that takes place in a matter of hours...
personally, i'd travel to the nearest university where there are the highest concentrations of:
progressive civic-minded & altruistic individuals
intellectuals and knowledgeable experts in assorted fields
innovative freethinkers and fresh young minds
Awesome. I'll travel to meet up with some hunter friends of mine who have guns and wilderness survival skills... we'll shoot you and your newly found progressive buddies, eat your vegetables, and have a long pig BBQ!
My response to him was to quit. After trying to play with him for at least 30 minutes, I just quit and told him I would never play against him ever again because he was brutal, unkind, and deceitful.
You got frustrated with the game, so you acted like a baby, quit, and insulted your son.
The Parent of the Year award is headed your way... well done!
The Real Deal on the Current Economic Crisis
So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working home owners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:
The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.
The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.
Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.
Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.
The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.
Sorry, skippy, your political spin is silly. The Bush administration did not allow financial institutions to create Mortgage Backed Securities... they've been around since about 1938.
If you really want to know who or what caused the financial meltdown, I'd suggest reading this piece on Factcheck.org -- skip down to the "The Real Deal" section for the executive summary, which concludes with:
The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.