If you look at the history of evolution over time, the number of species capable of, say, learning how to run a maze keeps going up. Yes, there are some instances of intelligence backsliding, such as how domesticate animals are usually dumber than wild ones, but for the most part, once a species happens to evolve a certain level of intelligence, the descendants of that species have more reproductive success when they retain that intelligence than when they lose it. Thus, intelligence tends to be preserved by an evolutionary "ratchet effect" where things go ahead at random but then tend not to go back again.
If you think about the implication of Kant's dualism, you realize that as far as Kant was concerned, not only can we not be sure that we're not brains-in-a-vat, in one sense, we must be brains-in-a-vat. Since we never experience objects as objects, but only as perceptions of objects, we can never be sure that our concept of an object is anything like the object in itself. Furthermore, due to the various antinomies of reason (how can time be without a beginning? Or how can it stretch on forever? How can there be a causeless first cause or an uncaused infinite chain of causation?), we are obliged to believe that the noumenal system underlying our phenomenal perceptions of the world must be utterly dissimilar from the world we experience. Thus, in a certain sense, we must be brains-in-vats, or tortured by Descartes' evil genius, or Chuang Tzu's dreaming butterfly, or something else utterly unlike ourselves.
But! As Kant goes on to state, whatever the noumenal realm is is in many senses irrelevant. Since our experience, no matter what kind of spiritual transcendence we seek, will always be experiences, they will always be mere inferences made from perceptions and not the direct apprehension of objects. (To give an example using a popular movie, how could Neo know that his "real world" is not just another Matrix that lies on top of the Matrix from which he escaped?) So, we will never know the deepest truth of things in themselves, but since it is unknowable, it is also irrelevant. For if we cannot experience objects as objects, then whatever properties the real objects have will not impact us so long as they are non-phenomenal properties.
So, relax: even if we're brains in vats, maybe those vats are being simulated in another vat, and so on ad infinitum. Just make sure that our experiential world is what we want it to be, and we can be happy here and now.
In a non-monopoly situation, no one will buy your product unless they think what they're getting is worth what they're paying for it. Unless you use deceptive practices to make people think they're getting more than they are (which is a crime prosecutable by the FTC), you can't be "ripping people off" if they are willing to pay what you charge. Jeff Bezos never forced me to buy his cheap books from Amazon. Calling the rich rip off artists is demeaning to the value that entrepreneurs and savvy managers bring to our economy. In the Soviet system, prices were set by a board of people who tried to guess what a fair price for things would be. In our system, prices are set by the mutual agreement of both sides of the trade. Their system imploded and immiserated millions. Ours has its flaws but is still the best system people have come up with so far.
Because if the dude is serious at all, he knows, "Just hold out until Saturday at 7pm, and boom! All glory to Cobra Commander!" In a ticking time bomb situation, a terrorist who has the balls to murder a million people won't just pussy out because we pull out his fingernails or whatever. If we're asking him where the bomb will go off, he knows it hasn't gone off yet, so he just needs to send you off on a wild goose chase from now until it does.
Meanwhile, how do we know for sure that the military pulled the right guy off the street? It makes sense to have a trial to be sure about it. Once the trial is through, give him the electric chair. But don't go torturing people who you haven't proved are guilty and have nothing to gain from spilling the beans and everything to gain from making up some crap and waiting for the clock to hit zero hour.
I understand your point about not letting your job define you, but the counterpoint is, at 40 hours a week, you end up spending a quarter of your life doing your job, so you may as well make it something that you don't mind doing, you know? If your job is something that you want to completely shut out as soon as you walk out the door, then can you really be doing the right thing with your time there?
I think the two sides of this argument both have some merit. If you're a Blackberry-addict, slave-to-your-job type, that's just sad, because your field of interests is so narrow. What about your family, friends, eating good food, seeing good art? On the other hand, if you leave work and completely shut it out, does that mean that you consider yourself to be "wasting" a huge chunk of your life? It's true you have to work just to live, but shouldn't you try to find a way to do that having the feeling that money is the only reward for doing a good job?
You're assuming that the people who will choose to vote will constitute a random sample.
Uh, no I'm not. I'll quote myself:
Of course, Everybody Votes players aren't going to be random, but with 60,000 results, if you ask, "Who do you like better, Mario or Luigi?" the result effectively will predict whether Mario 128 will outsell Luigi's Mansion 2, non-random sample be damned.
I don't mind that you misread my post. It happens. But I do think it's weird that the mods put you up to five, when I quite clearly said the opposite of what you claim I said.:-P I get that EV is non-random. I'm just saying with enough votes, you can put controls on your data to make it useful.
When I downloaded this thing yesterday, I was really confused about it. I mean, I know Nintendo is known for being quirky, but this is just odd, you know? What possible purpose could there be in a Wii polling application? Once I played a little with it though, I saw the genius behind this thing. By spacing out the polls to one every other day or so, Nintendo ensures that we'll play with our Wii every couple days to check out what the new poll is, and what our results were for predicting the last poll. Then, once they have us checking our Wii every couple days, we are more likely to think, "Hmm, I guess I should get a new game for this thing, since I'm always just fiddling with the channels."
This is to say nothing of the sheer treasure trove of demographic data Nintendo is getting out of this. Think of it: Nintendo has shipped 6 million Wiis world wide. If even 10% vote on the first poll, they just got 600,000 votes. After a couple days, a lot of people will stop using, and it will be down to 1%, but that's still 60,000 people. In comparison, usually you can get a truly significant poll with a random group of 1,000 people. Of course, Everybody Votes players aren't going to be random, but with 60,000 results, if you ask, "Who do you like better, Mario or Luigi?" the result effectively will predict whether Mario 128 will outsell Luigi's Mansion 2, non-random sample be damned. Nintendo have come up with an awesome but strange window into the hearts of their demographic.
In theory, one upgrades because the value added by the features to the new version outweigh the uncertainty about the new version's stability, security, etc. The problem with Vista is that the equation doesn't balance properly. The new features of Vista are Aero, better searching, more logical file structure, and numerous minor tweaks to security and performance, but the unknowns are of a similar or greater weight as the benefits. Especially when one factors in that the users most concerned about the features Vista is addressing are the users who are most likely to have already jumped ship to OS X. (Ie. people who want Aero glass probably already switched to Aqua, and so forth.) The users who are still with Windows are the ones who care more about backwards compatibility, games, familiarity, and other areas in which OS X is deficient. As a result, it seems like a lot of users are sitting this upgrade out.
The problem in "papers please" totalitarian dictatorships is not that people constantly ask you for your ID before you're allowed to go anyway. That is the symptom of the problem. The actual problem is that if your papers aren't "in order" then you're not allowed to move around freely.
Seriously, is it that bad to show someone your ID? Now, obviously if someone asks for it, it's going to be checked, so there is a chance that you'll be detained because of your ID, but remember that (at least so far) we usually don't stop people from moving without a good reason. (Except Jose Padilla. (I do think Bush should be impeached for that, but that's a different issue...)) In the Soviet system, the presumption is that you aren't allowed to travel, and the papers check is to prove that you are. Our system is the opposite. We let everyone travel freely unless we have grounds for suspecting otherwise. Let's save the freaking out for when people tell us that we can't move freely, not for when people ask us who we are when we move. Indeed, instead of freaking out about the national ID, it would be a much better use of our time to ensure that travel restrictions are transparent and contestable in court, so no ordinary people are grounded without a good reason or if they are, they can have the reasons reviewed.
To recap: Restricting the movement of people = bad. Asking people to prove who they are = often done by bad guys but not bad in itself! Demanding our system be more transparent = a much better use of our time.
Your analogy is poor, because we can't replace "food" with something else, so having a limited supply ensures our eventual death. Oil is mostly of interest to us in the sense that it's an energy source. So, if other energy sources come along, we'll stop using it. It's like if you had a single-use apple tree in your backyard: you can eat the apples until the tree is almost bare, but after that you'll just give up on the tree and just eat food from the supermarket instead, leaving the last remaining apples stuck at the top of the tree for the rest of time.
A DS version of Guitar Hero will probably end up like some existing guitar software out in Japan. (YouTube link to some Japanese people playing DS guitar...) Yeah, it won't be as cool as the current Guitar Hero controller, but it will work the same in principle: use the D-pad to set the chord then strum on the lower screen while the upper screen shows the falling notes.
KDE does it. It doesn't have to turn out as a security nightmare. That was more of a problem with Microsoft in general than the weird intertwining of iexplorer.exe and explorer.exe in particular.
I'm using OS in the sense of "distribution" not "kernel." If there's really a full-fledged, desktop-ready, consumer-friendly distribution that doesn't at least encourage you to install a web browser with it, I'll eat my hat.
(Incidentally, I'm not sure why people always insist that OS refers only to the disk controllers and such. The initials mean "operating system." Surely the web browser is an important part of the system? If nothing else, your computer needs to have a default browser so that you can go download an alternative one.)
I hate Yahoo Mail Beta. It's just as bad as Yahoo Mail regular, but slower! Why, why, why does it open up to a page that tells me I have X new messages? Who thinks that after waiting a solid minute for the page to load I want to wait another 30 seconds for the REAL mail page to load after I click on X new messages button. Ugh. Just an awful decision that sinks the whole thing for me.
Maybe the rest of YMB is OK, but it's too slow and frustrating for me to use.
You stopped using Windows because they forced you to install a web browser?
If so then my question is what do you do now that the only OS that doesn't come with a web browser built-in is Abacus 1.0?
Seriously, MS has done a lot of crap things over the years, and it was harsh of them to make IE uninstallable, but bundling the browser with the OS? If you can bundle worthless stuff like solitaire with an OS and no one complains, I don't see how anyone can be upset about an OS coming packaged with the single most important piece of software for a modern computer. Seriously. I'm a proud Mac user, but I'll go to the mat for MS on this one: Bundling a web browser was the right thing to do. While strong arming OEMs into not including Netscape was evil, including IE was completely justified.
"Super Paper Mario" isn't out yet. It will be released for the Wii sometime later this year. Probably the comment should be about "Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door" on the Gamecube which is the sequel to "Paper Mario" for the N64.
For the record, I beat "Thousand Year Door," and I don't recall their being any unbeatable bosses. There might have been a couple that I had to challenge more than once to actually beat, but none were that tough. And I'm not a RPG grinder at all. For example, I never beat "Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga" because I found the final boss too hard.
Anyhow, if you haven't tried "Thousand Year Door," I can't recommend it enough: The dialogue is awesome, and the combat is fun.
Well of course the PS2 is still market champ. But if you're talking about the current generation of consoles, then Wii is the champ in Japan, since they overtook the 360 during the holiday season. The PS3 just isn't selling that well. Which makes sense, because it has no compelling software yet.
Can you name three NASA long term projects that ran on schedule since the 70s?
Seriously.
Name them.
And small Mars missions don't count. I'm talking about things that cost at least a billion and were scheduled for 5 plus years in the future. The fact is, 99% of the time, if you can't build it in 5 years, you basically can't build it at all without some breakthrough happening. NASA's planning teams always assume that sometime in the next 10 years we'll learn how to use unobtanium to keep the cost of the heat shields down or whatever, but then that never happens and we've already wasted more than the original budget on the preliminary work.
Let's face it, NASA's glory days are behind them. The agency that put men on the moon is no more. Now, there's just a lot of gossamer dreams, the price tag of which is always rising and the release date of which is always being pushed back.
When I was an English teacher in Japan, one of the Japanese teachers pointed out to me how weird it is that we still "turn on" TVs and computers that have no dials. Similarly, we "hang up" our cell phones.
Your teacher is incompetent and should be fired. If this is a college, you 100% need to withdraw *now* and find a better college. If this is a high school, you should consider your other educational options, such as taking classes at the local technical college for high school and college credit. One thing you might consider is to tell parents about this. Most parents by now should know that floppies are completely obsolete and will complain to the administrators about it. The complaints of parents is the only thing administrators care about (unless you're at a public high school; they only care about Federal dollars), so getting them on your side will help in the battle against this woman who insists on wasting your time and everyone else's.
They mention this in the Japanese Get A Mac ads. The PC is like, "Hey, aren't you kind of a PC, too?" The Mac, "Yeah, but people like me a lot, so they gave me this kind of a nickname, 'Mac.' Cool, huh?" PC, "What!? I want a nickname, too!" "Oh, I know, since you're so into doing serious stuff, they could call you 'Work'!" ('Work' sounds like 'Mac' in Japanese.)
It was a pretty cute routine, but it doesn't work as well in translation. Also, I'm just going by my memory. And I'm only semi-fluent. But it was something like that.
Then you could spam the stock of your competitor to suspend their trading whenever you felt like it, which could harm their reputation and ability to operate, etc.
Batman is pretty clever. He'd probably invent some sort of magnet to rip the adamantium off of his bones, or better to keep him magnetically trapped in a jail of some sort.
At first I figured that Batman would lose too, but then once I remembered that Batman would win a fight against Superman, I reversed my opinion. The Dark Knight is basically unbeatable.
Slashdot Mirror
If you look at the history of evolution over time, the number of species capable of, say, learning how to run a maze keeps going up. Yes, there are some instances of intelligence backsliding, such as how domesticate animals are usually dumber than wild ones, but for the most part, once a species happens to evolve a certain level of intelligence, the descendants of that species have more reproductive success when they retain that intelligence than when they lose it. Thus, intelligence tends to be preserved by an evolutionary "ratchet effect" where things go ahead at random but then tend not to go back again.
If you think about the implication of Kant's dualism, you realize that as far as Kant was concerned, not only can we not be sure that we're not brains-in-a-vat, in one sense, we must be brains-in-a-vat. Since we never experience objects as objects, but only as perceptions of objects, we can never be sure that our concept of an object is anything like the object in itself. Furthermore, due to the various antinomies of reason (how can time be without a beginning? Or how can it stretch on forever? How can there be a causeless first cause or an uncaused infinite chain of causation?), we are obliged to believe that the noumenal system underlying our phenomenal perceptions of the world must be utterly dissimilar from the world we experience. Thus, in a certain sense, we must be brains-in-vats, or tortured by Descartes' evil genius, or Chuang Tzu's dreaming butterfly, or something else utterly unlike ourselves.
But! As Kant goes on to state, whatever the noumenal realm is is in many senses irrelevant. Since our experience, no matter what kind of spiritual transcendence we seek, will always be experiences, they will always be mere inferences made from perceptions and not the direct apprehension of objects. (To give an example using a popular movie, how could Neo know that his "real world" is not just another Matrix that lies on top of the Matrix from which he escaped?) So, we will never know the deepest truth of things in themselves, but since it is unknowable, it is also irrelevant. For if we cannot experience objects as objects, then whatever properties the real objects have will not impact us so long as they are non-phenomenal properties.
So, relax: even if we're brains in vats, maybe those vats are being simulated in another vat, and so on ad infinitum. Just make sure that our experiential world is what we want it to be, and we can be happy here and now.
In a non-monopoly situation, no one will buy your product unless they think what they're getting is worth what they're paying for it. Unless you use deceptive practices to make people think they're getting more than they are (which is a crime prosecutable by the FTC), you can't be "ripping people off" if they are willing to pay what you charge. Jeff Bezos never forced me to buy his cheap books from Amazon. Calling the rich rip off artists is demeaning to the value that entrepreneurs and savvy managers bring to our economy. In the Soviet system, prices were set by a board of people who tried to guess what a fair price for things would be. In our system, prices are set by the mutual agreement of both sides of the trade. Their system imploded and immiserated millions. Ours has its flaws but is still the best system people have come up with so far.
Because if the dude is serious at all, he knows, "Just hold out until Saturday at 7pm, and boom! All glory to Cobra Commander!" In a ticking time bomb situation, a terrorist who has the balls to murder a million people won't just pussy out because we pull out his fingernails or whatever. If we're asking him where the bomb will go off, he knows it hasn't gone off yet, so he just needs to send you off on a wild goose chase from now until it does.
Meanwhile, how do we know for sure that the military pulled the right guy off the street? It makes sense to have a trial to be sure about it. Once the trial is through, give him the electric chair. But don't go torturing people who you haven't proved are guilty and have nothing to gain from spilling the beans and everything to gain from making up some crap and waiting for the clock to hit zero hour.
I understand your point about not letting your job define you, but the counterpoint is, at 40 hours a week, you end up spending a quarter of your life doing your job, so you may as well make it something that you don't mind doing, you know? If your job is something that you want to completely shut out as soon as you walk out the door, then can you really be doing the right thing with your time there?
I think the two sides of this argument both have some merit. If you're a Blackberry-addict, slave-to-your-job type, that's just sad, because your field of interests is so narrow. What about your family, friends, eating good food, seeing good art? On the other hand, if you leave work and completely shut it out, does that mean that you consider yourself to be "wasting" a huge chunk of your life? It's true you have to work just to live, but shouldn't you try to find a way to do that having the feeling that money is the only reward for doing a good job?
Just something to think about...
Uh, no I'm not. I'll quote myself:
I don't mind that you misread my post. It happens. But I do think it's weird that the mods put you up to five, when I quite clearly said the opposite of what you claim I said.
When I downloaded this thing yesterday, I was really confused about it. I mean, I know Nintendo is known for being quirky, but this is just odd, you know? What possible purpose could there be in a Wii polling application? Once I played a little with it though, I saw the genius behind this thing. By spacing out the polls to one every other day or so, Nintendo ensures that we'll play with our Wii every couple days to check out what the new poll is, and what our results were for predicting the last poll. Then, once they have us checking our Wii every couple days, we are more likely to think, "Hmm, I guess I should get a new game for this thing, since I'm always just fiddling with the channels."
This is to say nothing of the sheer treasure trove of demographic data Nintendo is getting out of this. Think of it: Nintendo has shipped 6 million Wiis world wide. If even 10% vote on the first poll, they just got 600,000 votes. After a couple days, a lot of people will stop using, and it will be down to 1%, but that's still 60,000 people. In comparison, usually you can get a truly significant poll with a random group of 1,000 people. Of course, Everybody Votes players aren't going to be random, but with 60,000 results, if you ask, "Who do you like better, Mario or Luigi?" the result effectively will predict whether Mario 128 will outsell Luigi's Mansion 2, non-random sample be damned. Nintendo have come up with an awesome but strange window into the hearts of their demographic.
In theory, one upgrades because the value added by the features to the new version outweigh the uncertainty about the new version's stability, security, etc. The problem with Vista is that the equation doesn't balance properly. The new features of Vista are Aero, better searching, more logical file structure, and numerous minor tweaks to security and performance, but the unknowns are of a similar or greater weight as the benefits. Especially when one factors in that the users most concerned about the features Vista is addressing are the users who are most likely to have already jumped ship to OS X. (Ie. people who want Aero glass probably already switched to Aqua, and so forth.) The users who are still with Windows are the ones who care more about backwards compatibility, games, familiarity, and other areas in which OS X is deficient. As a result, it seems like a lot of users are sitting this upgrade out.
Why bother saving the movies to DVD-R? If you ever want to watch it again, you can just download it again, right?
The problem in "papers please" totalitarian dictatorships is not that people constantly ask you for your ID before you're allowed to go anyway. That is the symptom of the problem. The actual problem is that if your papers aren't "in order" then you're not allowed to move around freely.
Seriously, is it that bad to show someone your ID? Now, obviously if someone asks for it, it's going to be checked, so there is a chance that you'll be detained because of your ID, but remember that (at least so far) we usually don't stop people from moving without a good reason. (Except Jose Padilla. (I do think Bush should be impeached for that, but that's a different issue...)) In the Soviet system, the presumption is that you aren't allowed to travel, and the papers check is to prove that you are. Our system is the opposite. We let everyone travel freely unless we have grounds for suspecting otherwise. Let's save the freaking out for when people tell us that we can't move freely, not for when people ask us who we are when we move. Indeed, instead of freaking out about the national ID, it would be a much better use of our time to ensure that travel restrictions are transparent and contestable in court, so no ordinary people are grounded without a good reason or if they are, they can have the reasons reviewed.
To recap:
Restricting the movement of people = bad.
Asking people to prove who they are = often done by bad guys but not bad in itself!
Demanding our system be more transparent = a much better use of our time.
Your analogy is poor, because we can't replace "food" with something else, so having a limited supply ensures our eventual death. Oil is mostly of interest to us in the sense that it's an energy source. So, if other energy sources come along, we'll stop using it. It's like if you had a single-use apple tree in your backyard: you can eat the apples until the tree is almost bare, but after that you'll just give up on the tree and just eat food from the supermarket instead, leaving the last remaining apples stuck at the top of the tree for the rest of time.
The ocean is already full of phytoplankton. Putting trees over top of the ocean wouldn't really change the situation the net CO2 flux for the better.
A DS version of Guitar Hero will probably end up like some existing guitar software out in Japan. (YouTube link to some Japanese people playing DS guitar...) Yeah, it won't be as cool as the current Guitar Hero controller, but it will work the same in principle: use the D-pad to set the chord then strum on the lower screen while the upper screen shows the falling notes.
KDE does it. It doesn't have to turn out as a security nightmare. That was more of a problem with Microsoft in general than the weird intertwining of iexplorer.exe and explorer.exe in particular.
I'm using OS in the sense of "distribution" not "kernel." If there's really a full-fledged, desktop-ready, consumer-friendly distribution that doesn't at least encourage you to install a web browser with it, I'll eat my hat.
(Incidentally, I'm not sure why people always insist that OS refers only to the disk controllers and such. The initials mean "operating system." Surely the web browser is an important part of the system? If nothing else, your computer needs to have a default browser so that you can go download an alternative one.)
I hate Yahoo Mail Beta. It's just as bad as Yahoo Mail regular, but slower! Why, why, why does it open up to a page that tells me I have X new messages? Who thinks that after waiting a solid minute for the page to load I want to wait another 30 seconds for the REAL mail page to load after I click on X new messages button. Ugh. Just an awful decision that sinks the whole thing for me.
Maybe the rest of YMB is OK, but it's too slow and frustrating for me to use.
You stopped using Windows because they forced you to install a web browser?
If so then my question is what do you do now that the only OS that doesn't come with a web browser built-in is Abacus 1.0?
Seriously, MS has done a lot of crap things over the years, and it was harsh of them to make IE uninstallable, but bundling the browser with the OS? If you can bundle worthless stuff like solitaire with an OS and no one complains, I don't see how anyone can be upset about an OS coming packaged with the single most important piece of software for a modern computer. Seriously. I'm a proud Mac user, but I'll go to the mat for MS on this one: Bundling a web browser was the right thing to do. While strong arming OEMs into not including Netscape was evil, including IE was completely justified.
"Super Paper Mario" isn't out yet. It will be released for the Wii sometime later this year. Probably the comment should be about "Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door" on the Gamecube which is the sequel to "Paper Mario" for the N64.
For the record, I beat "Thousand Year Door," and I don't recall their being any unbeatable bosses. There might have been a couple that I had to challenge more than once to actually beat, but none were that tough. And I'm not a RPG grinder at all. For example, I never beat "Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga" because I found the final boss too hard.
Anyhow, if you haven't tried "Thousand Year Door," I can't recommend it enough: The dialogue is awesome, and the combat is fun.
Well of course the PS2 is still market champ. But if you're talking about the current generation of consoles, then Wii is the champ in Japan, since they overtook the 360 during the holiday season. The PS3 just isn't selling that well. Which makes sense, because it has no compelling software yet.
Can you name three NASA long term projects that ran on schedule since the 70s?
Seriously.
Name them.
And small Mars missions don't count. I'm talking about things that cost at least a billion and were scheduled for 5 plus years in the future. The fact is, 99% of the time, if you can't build it in 5 years, you basically can't build it at all without some breakthrough happening. NASA's planning teams always assume that sometime in the next 10 years we'll learn how to use unobtanium to keep the cost of the heat shields down or whatever, but then that never happens and we've already wasted more than the original budget on the preliminary work.
Let's face it, NASA's glory days are behind them. The agency that put men on the moon is no more. Now, there's just a lot of gossamer dreams, the price tag of which is always rising and the release date of which is always being pushed back.
When I was an English teacher in Japan, one of the Japanese teachers pointed out to me how weird it is that we still "turn on" TVs and computers that have no dials. Similarly, we "hang up" our cell phones.
Some metaphors just won't die!
Your teacher is incompetent and should be fired. If this is a college, you 100% need to withdraw *now* and find a better college. If this is a high school, you should consider your other educational options, such as taking classes at the local technical college for high school and college credit. One thing you might consider is to tell parents about this. Most parents by now should know that floppies are completely obsolete and will complain to the administrators about it. The complaints of parents is the only thing administrators care about (unless you're at a public high school; they only care about Federal dollars), so getting them on your side will help in the battle against this woman who insists on wasting your time and everyone else's.
They mention this in the Japanese Get A Mac ads. The PC is like, "Hey, aren't you kind of a PC, too?"
The Mac, "Yeah, but people like me a lot, so they gave me this kind of a nickname, 'Mac.' Cool, huh?"
PC, "What!? I want a nickname, too!"
"Oh, I know, since you're so into doing serious stuff, they could call you 'Work'!" ('Work' sounds like 'Mac' in Japanese.)
It was a pretty cute routine, but it doesn't work as well in translation. Also, I'm just going by my memory. And I'm only semi-fluent. But it was something like that.
Then you could spam the stock of your competitor to suspend their trading whenever you felt like it, which could harm their reputation and ability to operate, etc.
Batman is pretty clever. He'd probably invent some sort of magnet to rip the adamantium off of his bones, or better to keep him magnetically trapped in a jail of some sort.
At first I figured that Batman would lose too, but then once I remembered that Batman would win a fight against Superman, I reversed my opinion. The Dark Knight is basically unbeatable.