It's funny that Microsoft can make a desktop OS so utterly abominable and resource-intensive that it actually impedes the normal or optimal operation running of programs. That is the whole raison d'etre of an operating system.
And it will probably turn out profitable for them in the end.
Unfortunately, the primary purpose of... just about everything, from medicine to the press, from radio and television to education, from research & development to films, seems to be to make a profit. Science and art are the last bastions, but I don't know how long they will last with all the talk of R&D investment, useful results (blame Bush for that one), and artistic heritage.
It's very convenient to restrict yourself to the last 100 years. Have you forgotten what happened when we had a truly liberal global Empire? In the nineteenth century, more millions of people starved in Ireland and India than anytime in the twentieth century, as a result of the great experiment of true, unfettered global free trade and classical liberalism. These experience are partly why the British, the archetypal liberals, in the end rejected the unqualified liberal system they had built.
So North Korea is socialist then? Don't be absurd. It's a tyrannical communist dictatorship.
Want to see a really social democratic country? Sweden. The right to roam trumps the right of property.
What really gets me about you libertarian types is how you equate taxes with loss of rights, or only federal taxes but not state taxes, or only taxes on income, not goods, or only taxes above a certain percent. Or how federal government is evil, state government is good.
Government and organisation are about humans escaping the individual condition and banding together to help each other and defend each other and control their environment. If you don't want to be a part of that, fine, you can live on a house in the prairie and nobody will ever touch you. But please don't foist your ridiculous views on me and take my damn rights away in the process.
With all respect, you're part of the problem. Yes, this is a joke. Look around you at other countries; nobody needs this sort of invasion of privacy merely to provide decently for all its citizens. Next you'll be telling me insurance is a bad idea because you have to take care of the people who make insurance claims. This sort of tribal and selfish outlook has caused most of the world's problems to date. Sorry, but you're no better than the idiot you scorn.
Admired throughout the whole world? The US educational system? As someone with a non-American perspective (because I'm not in fact American), that's patently ridiculous. America has always had the (not undeserved) reputation of appalling education right through high school and Bachelor level, with it becoming world-class only at the Master level and above.
Please; I agree with a lot of what you say, but don't knock the real democratisation of science. Our species has progressed so much because of things like government-sponsored, merit-organised scientific research, widely available free education, etc. Democracy is a great thing in many areas, science is one of them.
Someone else in this thread reported that one-word queries return 0 results. Perhaps this is just a bug. Have you tried a variant of your query with multiple words?
I am sure you are oversimplifying. For instance, consider Oscar Wilde's case. He sued Bosie's father for libel, yet he had to prove that he was not a sodomist (which he failed to do).
That's a straw man though. Most people care about their lives, not an abstract delineation called "the government". If there is a small government and everything is privatised, then the government can be controlled democratically and more easily, but the utilities or healthcare providers or whatnot can't. If government serves those areas, then they can at least be (theoretically) democratically controlled.
I think a fundamental problem with the American system is that America is just too large. It would be best to return more control to the individual states, but back that up with Federal standards and guidelines to prevent abuse. (Note that I explicitly reject the Libertarian and Ron Paul positions.)
I subscribe (well, I got it for a family member as a present), and the other advantage is that a new issue arrives every two weeks, not every month, and though it's thinner, the content is not less -- there's just less rubbish filler. It's also pretty cheap.
Just as a note, most jurisdictions have death taxes ("estate taxes"), in some cases as high as 90%, such as in Sweden. But even most US states have them. Physical property is not inalienable at all.
More precisely, the American Founding Fathers enshrined copyright in law because it had already been enshrined in their motherland, Great Britain, down to the exact same term (14 years) as in the 1709 Statute of Anne. Incidentally, the debates in the House of Commons on this topic a bit later by the famous poet and writer Macaulay (mid-19th century) are very instructive to read. You can find them on baen.com, which is where my attention was originally drawn to them.
Sorry, that's incorrect. Slavery in the modern world ended because of the efforts of a dedicated group of men in Britain, by whose efforts slavery was abolished in the entire British Empire, despite it being a major source of income at the time. This then forced slavery to become unprofitable in other areas of the world, such as the United States.
Just a note as to when it exploded -- I think SMS has always been less popular in the USA than in Europe or Japan. In those two places, SMS has been extremely popular with cellphone owners since at least the late 90s.
Slashdot Mirror
I may be mistaken, but didn't Plan 9 offer all this and more even earlier?
It's funny that Microsoft can make a desktop OS so utterly abominable and resource-intensive that it actually impedes the normal or optimal operation running of programs. That is the whole raison d'etre of an operating system.
And it will probably turn out profitable for them in the end.
Unfortunately, the primary purpose of... just about everything, from medicine to the press, from radio and television to education, from research & development to films, seems to be to make a profit. Science and art are the last bastions, but I don't know how long they will last with all the talk of R&D investment, useful results (blame Bush for that one), and artistic heritage.
It's very convenient to restrict yourself to the last 100 years. Have you forgotten what happened when we had a truly liberal global Empire? In the nineteenth century, more millions of people starved in Ireland and India than anytime in the twentieth century, as a result of the great experiment of true, unfettered global free trade and classical liberalism. These experience are partly why the British, the archetypal liberals, in the end rejected the unqualified liberal system they had built.
So North Korea is socialist then? Don't be absurd. It's a tyrannical communist dictatorship.
Want to see a really social democratic country? Sweden. The right to roam trumps the right of property.
What really gets me about you libertarian types is how you equate taxes with loss of rights, or only federal taxes but not state taxes, or only taxes on income, not goods, or only taxes above a certain percent. Or how federal government is evil, state government is good.
Government and organisation are about humans escaping the individual condition and banding together to help each other and defend each other and control their environment. If you don't want to be a part of that, fine, you can live on a house in the prairie and nobody will ever touch you. But please don't foist your ridiculous views on me and take my damn rights away in the process.
With all respect, you're part of the problem. Yes, this is a joke. Look around you at other countries; nobody needs this sort of invasion of privacy merely to provide decently for all its citizens. Next you'll be telling me insurance is a bad idea because you have to take care of the people who make insurance claims. This sort of tribal and selfish outlook has caused most of the world's problems to date. Sorry, but you're no better than the idiot you scorn.
Admired throughout the whole world? The US educational system? As someone with a non-American perspective (because I'm not in fact American), that's patently ridiculous. America has always had the (not undeserved) reputation of appalling education right through high school and Bachelor level, with it becoming world-class only at the Master level and above.
Racism also appears twice, by the way. What a disorganised mind...
Please; I agree with a lot of what you say, but don't knock the real democratisation of science. Our species has progressed so much because of things like government-sponsored, merit-organised scientific research, widely available free education, etc. Democracy is a great thing in many areas, science is one of them.
Someone else in this thread reported that one-word queries return 0 results. Perhaps this is just a bug. Have you tried a variant of your query with multiple words?
I am sure you are oversimplifying. For instance, consider Oscar Wilde's case. He sued Bosie's father for libel, yet he had to prove that he was not a sodomist (which he failed to do).
Wow. So tasteless it's exquisite. Someone mod this up, please. (This is from someone whose father died in cancer; and I was extremely close to him.)
There is some justice in the 'mystical' bit: but perhaps more like "unknowable", "Women move in mysterious and often meaningless ways", etc.
The mods know more than we think!
You conveniently forget that you subsidise it in taxes anyway.
A.K.A. the "True Scotsman" fallacy.
That's a straw man though. Most people care about their lives, not an abstract delineation called "the government". If there is a small government and everything is privatised, then the government can be controlled democratically and more easily, but the utilities or healthcare providers or whatnot can't. If government serves those areas, then they can at least be (theoretically) democratically controlled.
I think a fundamental problem with the American system is that America is just too large. It would be best to return more control to the individual states, but back that up with Federal standards and guidelines to prevent abuse. (Note that I explicitly reject the Libertarian and Ron Paul positions.)
human waste management
This is redundant. By definition, they already manage SCO.
In other words, 3.5 years of a full-time job, with no weekends off. This doesn't trivialise the issue very much.
I subscribe (well, I got it for a family member as a present), and the other advantage is that a new issue arrives every two weeks, not every month, and though it's thinner, the content is not less -- there's just less rubbish filler. It's also pretty cheap.
Just as a note, most jurisdictions have death taxes ("estate taxes"), in some cases as high as 90%, such as in Sweden. But even most US states have them. Physical property is not inalienable at all.
More precisely, the American Founding Fathers enshrined copyright in law because it had already been enshrined in their motherland, Great Britain, down to the exact same term (14 years) as in the 1709 Statute of Anne. Incidentally, the debates in the House of Commons on this topic a bit later by the famous poet and writer Macaulay (mid-19th century) are very instructive to read. You can find them on baen.com, which is where my attention was originally drawn to them.
Sorry, that's incorrect. Slavery in the modern world ended because of the efforts of a dedicated group of men in Britain, by whose efforts slavery was abolished in the entire British Empire, despite it being a major source of income at the time. This then forced slavery to become unprofitable in other areas of the world, such as the United States.
Isn't it MIT that's the Waterloo of the South?
Just a note as to when it exploded -- I think SMS has always been less popular in the USA than in Europe or Japan. In those two places, SMS has been extremely popular with cellphone owners since at least the late 90s.