Oh, and figure out if it actually is a problem, once the reason for the phenomenon is known. If it can be discovered.
Just because a subset of a general population does not match exactly the demographics of the larger population does not mean that anything is wrong, or that anyone has been wronged. Nor is it a good choice as the default explanation, when there is uncertainty.
If it did, US professional sports teams, especially the NBA, would be chock-full of wrongness, of one sort or another.
They also don't want to back out deployed software immediately -- or worse yet, after days or weeks -- because it's wrong.
They also don't want upset customers screaming that Things Aren't Working Anymore, or It's Taking Forever To Get What Took No Time At All Yesterday, or This Is A Simple Change So Why Do You Say It Will Take Months.
At least, if they're smart, they don't. Avoiding defects and terrible performance, and having good maintainability and ease of enhancement takes code quality and decent architecture. TANSTAAFL.
There's a reason PACs and other organizations that seek to affect government exist: power. As long as government has power to destroy your business, or your competitors' businesses -- or you -- people will want to influence government, either defensively or offensively.
The existence of organizations like PACs are a symptom. Getting rid of lawful means of influencing government will not make the reason for it go away -- or the attempts at influence.
Don't take the canary out of the coal mine and think you've made things safer. Don't quit taking the patient's temperature to end the fever. If you really want to do something about them, attack the root: work to reduce the power of the federal government.
There's even a document that describes how to reduce that power. It's called the Constitution of the United States of America.
It's a mistake to call it profitable unless you include one subsidy most people ignore: the cost of the bullets provides to those the federal government has enforce the postal monopoly, and the guns that carry them, and the employees who carry those guns.
Enforcing a statutory monopoly requires armed force. That cost of maintaining 100% market share should be included in the calculations. Call it a market expense, if you like.
Even if true -- I keep hearing about this pension funding change by the Eeeevillll Republicans, but that doesn't make it so -- so what? It's still a screwed up government operation. If it can be screwed up by partisan efforts, it's inherently flawed.
Also, you didn't answer the question about why you say it's true that: "Daily postal service to all citizens is the mark of an advanced society"
And you also didn't answer the less challenging and less abstract question about a lack of Sunday delivery.
Instead you delivered, well, what you delivered. (I hope I don't get *that* daily. Or even 6 days a week.)
Any federal agency that can make life hell for a person or business, without having to actually prove anything, and that faces no consequences for being wrong.
So, Unisys is still selling proprietary hardware and operating systems.
IBM's continued existence as a mainframe manufacturer doesn't surprise me too much. That's a big installed base that's in no hurry to move to other platforms.
DEC's OpenVMS is still around, though the Alpha hardware is not long for this world (if it isn't already gone). Has HP ported OpenVMS to anything with a brighter future than Itanium?
Even though I never did anything with Univac machines, it does make me a little sad to see another one bite the dust.
Is this a "religious" view -- a postulate, an axiom -- or do you have a rational justification for it?
What about delivery on Sundays? (Delivering only 6 of 7 days is not daily.)
So, you don't care how much money it loses? How about, say, a billion dollars a year? How about a trillion?
One trillion, divided by about 330 million, works out to about $3000 a year.
I'm not sure I'd be willing to foot that big a subsidy. How 'bout you pay my share, too, if it comes to that? It's only money, and as you pointed out, you don't care how much it costs.
I'm liking the "ideological Turing test", wherein contestants attempt to impersonate someone of a different political ideology from themselves. They succeed if they provide plausible responses, rather than exaggerations or "straw man" versions of those they disagree with.
It seems likely that most people with strongly held political views might have an easier time impersonating someone of the opposite sex than a person of a differing political persuasion.
This, based on some of the bizarre responses I occasionally get on the Internet, and the ludicrous attacks I've seen. Either they are simply dishonest in their arguing, or they genuinely have no clue why other people hold views they disagree with.
The idea that someone could disagree with them and simply be mistaken, rather than evil, is beyond their comprehension. So, they don't bother trying to understand where others are coming from.
So, you're saying you've seen someone who believes in global warming models and has wagered actual money on their predictive power? Or are someone who does and has?
I've encountered plenty of people who are willing to risk the material well-being of billions of strangers on the strength of the convictions about global warming.
I've encountered approximately zero of them who are willing to wager a modest quantity of their own personal money on the validity of those climate models.
I'm not sure how it squares with the observation that the Socialist Party platform (of 1928, I believe) has been pretty much enacted by the Democrats and Republicans in the decades since.
So, the underwater part would be across the Bering Strait, rather than the Pacific Ocean. Thus ends any chance of a quip about reality providing a sequel to Harry Harrison's alternate history, "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!".
Instead, a question: Is that near the part of Alaska that doesn't get big earthquakes, and is far far away from the part that does? If not, I'm not riding on that train.
"Regulatory capture" is the econ term for this phenomenon. This is why people trust Consumer Reports magazine more than the FDA or the NHTSC or any of the other federal regulatory agencies -- or, at least, why they should.
If Consumer Reports or UL or whoever starts doing a bad job they will no longer have as much credibility -- or revenue.
Nobody quits paying taxes just because regulatory agencies or the DoD or Congress works badly/slowly/corruptly. (Well, not enough to matter.)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and figure out if it actually is a problem, once the reason for the phenomenon is known. If it can be discovered.
Just because a subset of a general population does not match exactly the demographics of the larger population does not mean that anything is wrong, or that anyone has been wronged. Nor is it a good choice as the default explanation, when there is uncertainty.
If it did, US professional sports teams, especially the NBA, would be chock-full of wrongness, of one sort or another.
They also don't want to back out deployed software immediately -- or worse yet, after days or weeks -- because it's wrong.
They also don't want upset customers screaming that Things Aren't Working Anymore, or It's Taking Forever To Get What Took No Time At All Yesterday, or This Is A Simple Change So Why Do You Say It Will Take Months.
At least, if they're smart, they don't. Avoiding defects and terrible performance, and having good maintainability and ease of enhancement takes code quality and decent architecture. TANSTAAFL.
There's a reason PACs and other organizations that seek to affect government exist: power. As long as government has power to destroy your business, or your competitors' businesses -- or you -- people will want to influence government, either defensively or offensively.
The existence of organizations like PACs are a symptom. Getting rid of lawful means of influencing government will not make the reason for it go away -- or the attempts at influence.
Don't take the canary out of the coal mine and think you've made things safer. Don't quit taking the patient's temperature to end the fever. If you really want to do something about them, attack the root: work to reduce the power of the federal government.
There's even a document that describes how to reduce that power. It's called the Constitution of the United States of America.
It's a mistake to call it profitable unless you include one subsidy most people ignore: the cost of the bullets provides to those the federal government has enforce the postal monopoly, and the guns that carry them, and the employees who carry those guns.
Enforcing a statutory monopoly requires armed force. That cost of maintaining 100% market share should be included in the calculations. Call it a market expense, if you like.
Even if true -- I keep hearing about this pension funding change by the Eeeevillll Republicans, but that doesn't make it so -- so what? It's still a screwed up government operation. If it can be screwed up by partisan efforts, it's inherently flawed.
Also, you didn't answer the question about why you say it's true that: "Daily postal service to all citizens is the mark of an advanced society"
And you also didn't answer the less challenging and less abstract question about a lack of Sunday delivery.
Instead you delivered, well, what you delivered. (I hope I don't get *that* daily. Or even 6 days a week.)
Any federal agency that can make life hell for a person or business, without having to actually prove anything, and that faces no consequences for being wrong.
That's a bit redundant. I'll try again.
Any federal agency.
So, Unisys is still selling proprietary hardware and operating systems.
IBM's continued existence as a mainframe manufacturer doesn't surprise me too much. That's a big installed base that's in no hurry to move to other platforms.
DEC's OpenVMS is still around, though the Alpha hardware is not long for this world (if it isn't already gone). Has HP ported OpenVMS to anything with a brighter future than Itanium?
Even though I never did anything with Univac machines, it does make me a little sad to see another one bite the dust.
Is this a "religious" view -- a postulate, an axiom -- or do you have a rational justification for it?
What about delivery on Sundays? (Delivering only 6 of 7 days is not daily.)
So, you don't care how much money it loses? How about, say, a billion dollars a year? How about a trillion?
One trillion, divided by about 330 million, works out to about $3000 a year.
I'm not sure I'd be willing to foot that big a subsidy. How 'bout you pay my share, too, if it comes to that? It's only money, and as you pointed out, you don't care how much it costs.
I'm liking the "ideological Turing test", wherein contestants attempt to impersonate someone of a different political ideology from themselves. They succeed if they provide plausible responses, rather than exaggerations or "straw man" versions of those they disagree with.
It seems likely that most people with strongly held political views might have an easier time impersonating someone of the opposite sex than a person of a differing political persuasion.
This, based on some of the bizarre responses I occasionally get on the Internet, and the ludicrous attacks I've seen. Either they are simply dishonest in their arguing, or they genuinely have no clue why other people hold views they disagree with.
The idea that someone could disagree with them and simply be mistaken, rather than evil, is beyond their comprehension. So, they don't bother trying to understand where others are coming from.
Now, practical fusion power is only 25 years away, instead of, well, 25 years away.
or slightly more ept content.
You're not a lobster, then?
Thanks for the unsolicited advice. Here's some for you.
Put your money where your mouth is.
Nice try, shifting the burden of proof. Busted.
So, you're saying you've seen someone who believes in global warming models and has wagered actual money on their predictive power? Or are someone who does and has?
If not, it's still zero.
I've encountered plenty of people who are willing to risk the material well-being of billions of strangers on the strength of the convictions about global warming.
I've encountered approximately zero of them who are willing to wager a modest quantity of their own personal money on the validity of those climate models.
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=julian.simon+paul.ehrlich+wager
When drawing up the blueprints for those remote-printed people, they need to remember the ecosystems of their skin and gut and eyelashes and such.
The SF of days gone by did not do that.
Kinda like the US, then. Blue Team or Red Team, they're both pro-government. (And pro-government extremists, too.)
Don't believe it? Look at who is and who is not allowed into the presidential debates.
That's certainly an interesting opinion.
I'm not sure how it squares with the observation that the Socialist Party platform (of 1928, I believe) has been pretty much enacted by the Democrats and Republicans in the decades since.
It might be fun to watch someone try. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=socia...
So, the underwater part would be across the Bering Strait, rather than the Pacific Ocean. Thus ends any chance of a quip about reality providing a sequel to Harry Harrison's alternate history, "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!".
Instead, a question: Is that near the part of Alaska that doesn't get big earthquakes, and is far far away from the part that does? If not, I'm not riding on that train.
The very wealthy are a very small minority of the population. The common folk can pool their money -- in a PAC perhaps -- and outspend the wealthy.
Does anyone really need it spelled out for them?
Isn't the right word "subsidies"?
And aren't subsidies a bad thing?
And strangely enough, government is deeply involved in how those necessities are produced and/or paid for and/or actually producing them.
Could just be a coincidence, I suppose ...
There was nothing about radar-absorbing paint. So much for the civilian market.
"Regulatory capture" is the econ term for this phenomenon. This is why people trust Consumer Reports magazine more than the FDA or the NHTSC or any of the other federal regulatory agencies -- or, at least, why they should.
If Consumer Reports or UL or whoever starts doing a bad job they will no longer have as much credibility -- or revenue.
Nobody quits paying taxes just because regulatory agencies or the DoD or Congress works badly/slowly/corruptly. (Well, not enough to matter.)
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=regulatory.capture
Dialog (close to verbatim) from TBBT.
Stuart: You couldn't be more wrong.
Sheldon: [typical Sheldon-ish pedantic lecture]
Stuart: It's wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable. It's more wrong to say it's a suspension bridge.
It's not just a sitcom, it's also a source of parables.