Granted, it's not a wise idea to invest in a company that is probably going to lose money. That does not mean, I don't believe, that we should always go after the highest yield investments.
Your personal responsibility as someone working with other people's money is to go after the highest yield investments. That is the only thing you should be considering (as someone else pointed out it should be within whatever risk factors that you can tolerate).
People bitch and moan about how companies are always looking to do anything to make a short term profit increase, and the reason is because that's what stockholders want.
You have a point here, but it is irrelevant to this conversation. This is a personal investment decision. If you think a company is going to do well over the long term as opposed to the short term, then it is a good decision for you to invest in that company and hold it for the long term. This is very common, and generally speaking it is a prudent and safe strategy. However, that decision should be made independent of any other factors (such as wanting to advance OSS).
2: As others have said, he may honestly believe that there is a lot of money to be made in open source.
If there is money to be made by investing in companies that advance open source, then that is great. As I said, if he thinks that companies such as Redhat, IBM, Novell, etc. are undervalued then he should invest in them. However, the goal of furthering open source should not be dragged into the investment plan. It has no place there. I'm not saying it is bad to invest in these companies. I'm just saying that he has a responsibility to make a profit. If he has any other goals other than to make a profit, he is in fact acting irresponsibly and immorally in his position.
The reason why you invest is to make a profit. That is the only purpose. There simply is no other reason. That money does not go to the companies, it is simply a trade with another investor on a secondary market. If you actually want to help open source, as I said, donate your time or money directly to projects. Otherwise, you are just wasting money by directing it into a non-optimal investment.
Well, in his question he implies that his desire to promote open source is influencing his decision. That should not happen. The only thing you should think of as an investor (especially with other peoples' money) is how to make the greatest profit. If you happen to think companies depending on open source software are undervalued, then that's great. However, if the people have given him money expecting him to turn a profit (even on a student investment firm) then he is in fact acting immoral by even considering a secondary goal.
The whole point of investing is to make a profit. If you want to help open source then donate your time or money directly to the actual projects. Buying Redhat on the secondary market and in the process making it overvalued will not help them a single bit.
Actually the exact same thing happened in most US states in the 60's and 70's. The problem was in the 80's our Greatest President Ever and the wonderful fascists over at MADD decided that alcohol was a terrible, terrible thing. They then proceeded to push a hideous, horrible, and all around despicable law that blackmailed states into accepting a 21 year old drinking age (and also conveniently skirted around that whole Constitution thing). This was of course accompanied by talk of "blood borders" between states with different drinking ages and many cries of "think of the children."
#'s 4-6 of your plan would all be unconstitutional (and possibly #3 also). Not to mention, this would probably do very little to prevent people from keeping a loaded gun where children could reach it. People who do that are already stupid and a new law isn't going to change that behavior. It would probably not prevent accidents with guns, the only thing it would do is make prosecution against people who are careless much easier. As far as I'm concerned, having your kid accidentally shoot themselves is probably punishment enough. This is not a big enough problem to warrant the change that you call for. Just as many kids are killed by getting backed over by a car as by playing with guns, and I view it as a similar problem.
In the US, only 1/3 of all guns are handguns. I don't know how many guns are actually used for hunting, but I think it's fair to say that most guns are used for sporting purposes (hunting, target shooting, skeet shooting, etc.). As far as accidents go, as bad as it is, that stuff happens. It's terrible, but it doesn't really warrant completely restricting the rights of the rest of the population. For crime/homicide using guns, there are better solutions that treat the cause of the problem (poverty and lack of education) rather than just the symptoms. Since this is the US however, people like to look at the simple, ineffective solutions such as restricting the gun laws, rather than actually addressing the real issues.
Good one, really well thought out. Your argument basically boils down to "everyone hates the PS3 except the people that do, and we know those people are paid off. I don't want a PS3 and most people I know don't either so therefore it sucks." How does that shit get modded up?
I know I would like to get one, but the price has put me off. But then again the price of the 360 and Wii are also too much for me. I personally know people that have the PS3 and love it. I know many more that will buy it when the price drops. Just to clarify things, I don't hate the PS3 and Sony has not paid me off.
The system has been out for less than two weeks. Nintendo hasn't done shit yet either, so why is everyone jumping on the Nintendo bandwagon? I played a Wii for about an hour and wasn't exactly impressed by the launch titles. The only good game is a port, just like the PS3. It definitely has potential, but I'm waiting to see if quality single player games will appear there in large enough numbers or if it will just be a "party" console. As far as backwards compatibility, nearly all games from both the PSX and PS2 work, there are very few that don't. They will probably always have a higher percentage playable than the 360 (probably much higher) because of the difficulties of software emulation.
The fact that people are attacking Sony so much without even addressing it in something remotely resembling a rational way is ridiculous. There are plenty of things wrong with both new consoles, let's wait and see what happens before brutally attacking one side or the other. When the 360 came out there were huge problems, but now all of a sudden it's considered a perfect machine and the PS3 is the one that is going to crash and burn. Funny how that works.
I think that was exactly his point. The movie itself was a political movie. He is not saying the claims in the movie aren't backed up by science. Why would he want to show the movie, when he can just talk about all the numbers and make the same point himself? If they wanted to make a scientific argument, then they would've included actual numbers and figures in the movie. It's not a scientific movie, it's a political one. The fact that they slapped Al Gore's name all over it proves that.
I would suggest, if you haven't already, to read the book The Corporation or watch the movie of the same name. It makes some very interesting points. It is definitely "biased" but it provides sound arguments and generally doesn't devolve into Michael Moore like mudslinging. One of the main points I got out of it (and from other places) is that you really can't treat corporations like people.
Corporations, especially the huge multinationals, are amoral and any individual person is not responsible for the actions of the corporation unless they act illegally. That is where they differ from the rest of society. The entire purpose of the corporation is to create wealth for the stockholders while removing any personal responsibility from either the stockholders or the employees of the company. Most of the time this is in the best interest of society, but when it goes wrong it goes very, very wrong.
Your claim that corporations should be treated the same as other things in our society is just flat out wrong. When corporations act unethically (which is a huge difference than illegally), more often than not it is because the people involved are just doing their job. Many, many scientific studies have shown that people will put away their personal beliefs and do some very bad things if they believe what they are doing is part of their duty or some authority has authorized it. An obvious example is the experiment where people believed they were torturing a man by shocking him but did so anyway because of the doctor telling them it was ok. This is even more true when the acts aren't as morally repugnant and the decision making is further removed from one person.
Regulating everything equally throughout society with respect to corporations is just not possible. Corporations are given special exemptions by law, and it follows that they should face special regulations. If we really wanted everything to be "equal" we would create laws disallowing people from forming corporations. That way they would have to take personal responsibility for the way their companies act. That, of course, would be financial suicide. Conducting business should not be an unbearable risk for people. It should, however, benefit society, and that is why extra rules are needed to keep corporations in check.
Why the hell does QDOS get such a bad rap for ripping off CP/M? As far as I understand it, all they did was clone the API. It had near-identical functionality as CP/M, but nobody working on QDOS had any knowledge of the actual CP/M code. When DRI stalled in discussions with IBM, Microsoft jumped on the opportunity to take their place. If Kildall really desired the fame and wealth, then he shouldn't have screwed up the business deal with IBM. What is wrong with that? Is there something I'm missing? I never hear people complaining about companies cloning IBM PC's. Am I just wildly misinformed?
West Valley, Murray, and Midvale all border Salt Lake City proper and are in the Salt Lake City metro area. Riverton is a little further away but is still considered part of SLC. Orem is hardly a large city, but it is in a metro area of about 400,000 people. It is right next to Provo, which is home to BYU and Novell. As for them all being on I-15, over 80% of the people in Utah live on the Wasatch Front, which happens to be where I-15 runs.
No, that isn't true. Utah has bars just like anywhere else, just with much crazier laws. Technically, only private clubs can serve alcohol in the same way as bars in other states, so bars just call themselves "private clubs for members". You pay for a "temporary membership" which is just another name for a cover charge. This isn't a secret or anything, bars and clubs are in the open and advertise the same way as in other places, just with the stupid "private club for members" bit. Stores can only sell 3.2 beer and wine, anything with more alcohol content is sold from state liquor stores. You won't find as many liquor stores or bars as in other places, mostly because people here don't drink very much as in other places (even the non-Mormons).
I'm not saying there isn't anything to criticize George Bush (both of them) for; that's obviously not true. I'm saying George Bush and Vladimir Putin are not even remotely similar people. Putin is a rough-handed, power hungry dictator. Bush is an incompetent, misguided ideologue. Bush is not assassinating his political opposition. Bush is not murdering thousands of his own citizens. Comparing the two is absurd.
Now that all the ideology is stripped away, there really isn't much difference between the Bushes+the CIA and Putin+the KGB.
Please tell me you're kidding. There isn't much difference except that Putin is a dictator (some people may call Bush a dictator, but those people are stupid), and he ruthlessly suppresses dissent in his country using murder and torture (or sometimes just sends dissenters to jail in Siberia and takes their property). Please stop the stupid bullshit. If you are going to say things that are that obviously wrong, please keep your "conclusions" to yourself. Making ridiculous claims like this undermines legitimate criticism of the president.
I agree with your opinions about the way high schools are administered and the dogmatic teaching style, but you are equating the things you like with conservatism and the things you don't like with liberalism. Some of the examples you give are in fact very non-liberal. Encouraging students to share their viewpoints (assuming it was a "dialectic" type class like I imagine) is a liberal teaching style. Forcing people to believe the "correct" ideas is very conservative. Don't twist the words around. I am very much on the right side of the political spectrum, yet I consider myself a diehard liberal. I have had great teachers with many different political views, mostly because great teachers help students form and evaluate their own opinions. That is the difference between teachers and preachers.
What if what they love to do is make money? And yes, I'm serious. I'd say generally most people aren't very passionate about the job they're in, so why not at least go for something that has a relatively comfortable work atmosphere and pays well. For a lot of people work is just that thing they do most of the time to pay the rent. Also, IT workers != programmers.
2) Roll back the fascict laws, introduced by the Bush Administration (Patriot act, DCMA, and the likes)
Also, when referring to Americans, it is probably not best to call us yanks (at least directly). A lot of people consider that a pejorative term. Unless you mean it that way, I would suggest staying away from it.
Hmm.. I sure haven't extensively studied the founding fathers of the US, but it's my understanding that they were quite driven to establish liberty, and not simply driven by greed or a lust for power.
It would be more accurate to say that they were driven to re-establish liberty. Americans at the time still saw themselves as British. They thought the way the British government was set up was actually quite good. They simply thought King George was a bad ruler. That is why after the revolution the American government was extremely similar to the British government of the time but with changes designed to balance the power of the monarch.
I do agree with your point, however it should be noted that almost every issue that they disagreed with the British government about was either tax or land related. In the beginning (before outright war started) it was almost entirely about money. It wasn't until the king started taking away basic rights (The Intolerable Acts) that the First Continental Congress was formed and outright revolution started. Even after that, it probably would've been able to reconcile the differences between the government and colonists if the acts were repealed and the colonists' complaints were addressed.
I'm about 80 hours into the game, and I think it is fantastic. However, don't let people describing the plot as complex and mature throw you over too much. I think what most people mean is that it is complex and mature for a video game. Some of the stuff is still really, really cheesy and occasionally the dialogue is really bad. If the plot was translated to a novel format, it would probably be mediocre. Overall, however, it is a huge step up for storytelling in video games.
I never said he was a technical genius. What the original poster was saying is that Bill Gates doesn't understand computers. Maybe he hasn't done any real hacking in a while, but claiming that he is just an administrator who makes grand claims about computers but doesn't know very much about the actual concepts is ridiculous.
Bill doesn't know personal computers any better than the average hospital administrator knows the human immune system.
Wanna share your thoughts on how you came to this conclusion? It seems pretty ridiculous to me. There are many things you can say about Bill Gates, but claiming that he is simply a management type that doesn't know anything about how computers work is definitely not one of them.
I was born after the original trilogy was finished, and managed to go without seeing the entire series until earlier this year. My friends were shocked to find out that I had never seen any of the movies.
No disrespect intended (I certainly love movies that others find pretty bad) but I didn't really think that they were all that great. I'm a bit of a movie buff, but I don't think I'm too pretentious to enjoy a nice good vs. evil epic story every once in a while. There was just so much preventing me from liking them. I already knew the major plot twists simply because the movies are referenced so much in pop culture. I didn't connect much with any of the characters. The effects were dated and they were made even worse by the stupid edits by Lucas. The dialogue was pretty corny. I did watch the original trilogy first, and I'm sure I share many others' opinions that the new trilogy was just awful.
It really gave me the same feeling as watching a movie you loved as a child only to discover that it is just mediocre. Certainly I lack the perspective of what the movies were like when they first came out, but I don't really understand why they hold such a special place in pop culture and in so many people's hearts. Perhaps someone can elaborate for me?
Because that transition from oil has the potential to completely wreck global markets and bring about huge civil unrest. Remember the Great Depression? Some very bad things can happen when the global economy is upset.
Now, whether something that bad will happen or not depends on a lot of things. It probably won't, but there is a reason why so many people are concerned about it.
Re:This is cronyism at its finest
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More A's, More Pay
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Show me one truely competitive market that is bad to the poor -- I haven't found any in all my history of debating this debate.
How about private police? Private firefighters? Private hospitals? Private schools? All of these were the norm before the government (mostly) took over. And guess what, poor people couldn't afford them. You are assuming that just because education would become cheaper overall that it would still be affordable for poor people. Without a government monopoly these things are extremely expensive. There's a reason why they were brought under state control in the first place. If you can't afford to feed your children, how the hell are you going to afford to educate them, even if it the cost is relatively cheaper than it is now?
The free market does not solve everything, especially for services that are absolutely vital for every person to have. Last time I checked a $20 oil change at Jiffy Lube (when the oil costs less than $5 and takes maybe 15 minutes of your time) wasn't exactly a necessity of life. That is a truly terrible analogy.
I doubt they even count the write in votes unless there is the potential for someone to actually win. For example, if one candidate has 47% of the vote and another has 42%, it is really useless to count the other 1% that contains write in candidates. It would take a lot of effort to tally up each and every person that was voted for when they have no chance of winning. That being said, I don't actually know what they do in MD or anywhere else for that matter, so I may be wrong.
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Your personal responsibility as someone working with other people's money is to go after the highest yield investments. That is the only thing you should be considering (as someone else pointed out it should be within whatever risk factors that you can tolerate).
You have a point here, but it is irrelevant to this conversation. This is a personal investment decision. If you think a company is going to do well over the long term as opposed to the short term, then it is a good decision for you to invest in that company and hold it for the long term. This is very common, and generally speaking it is a prudent and safe strategy. However, that decision should be made independent of any other factors (such as wanting to advance OSS).
If there is money to be made by investing in companies that advance open source, then that is great. As I said, if he thinks that companies such as Redhat, IBM, Novell, etc. are undervalued then he should invest in them. However, the goal of furthering open source should not be dragged into the investment plan. It has no place there. I'm not saying it is bad to invest in these companies. I'm just saying that he has a responsibility to make a profit. If he has any other goals other than to make a profit, he is in fact acting irresponsibly and immorally in his position.
The reason why you invest is to make a profit. That is the only purpose. There simply is no other reason. That money does not go to the companies, it is simply a trade with another investor on a secondary market. If you actually want to help open source, as I said, donate your time or money directly to projects. Otherwise, you are just wasting money by directing it into a non-optimal investment.
Well, in his question he implies that his desire to promote open source is influencing his decision. That should not happen. The only thing you should think of as an investor (especially with other peoples' money) is how to make the greatest profit. If you happen to think companies depending on open source software are undervalued, then that's great. However, if the people have given him money expecting him to turn a profit (even on a student investment firm) then he is in fact acting immoral by even considering a secondary goal.
The whole point of investing is to make a profit. If you want to help open source then donate your time or money directly to the actual projects. Buying Redhat on the secondary market and in the process making it overvalued will not help them a single bit.
Actually the exact same thing happened in most US states in the 60's and 70's. The problem was in the 80's our Greatest President Ever and the wonderful fascists over at MADD decided that alcohol was a terrible, terrible thing. They then proceeded to push a hideous, horrible, and all around despicable law that blackmailed states into accepting a 21 year old drinking age (and also conveniently skirted around that whole Constitution thing). This was of course accompanied by talk of "blood borders" between states with different drinking ages and many cries of "think of the children."
#'s 4-6 of your plan would all be unconstitutional (and possibly #3 also). Not to mention, this would probably do very little to prevent people from keeping a loaded gun where children could reach it. People who do that are already stupid and a new law isn't going to change that behavior. It would probably not prevent accidents with guns, the only thing it would do is make prosecution against people who are careless much easier. As far as I'm concerned, having your kid accidentally shoot themselves is probably punishment enough. This is not a big enough problem to warrant the change that you call for. Just as many kids are killed by getting backed over by a car as by playing with guns, and I view it as a similar problem.
In the US, only 1/3 of all guns are handguns. I don't know how many guns are actually used for hunting, but I think it's fair to say that most guns are used for sporting purposes (hunting, target shooting, skeet shooting, etc.). As far as accidents go, as bad as it is, that stuff happens. It's terrible, but it doesn't really warrant completely restricting the rights of the rest of the population. For crime/homicide using guns, there are better solutions that treat the cause of the problem (poverty and lack of education) rather than just the symptoms. Since this is the US however, people like to look at the simple, ineffective solutions such as restricting the gun laws, rather than actually addressing the real issues.
Good one, really well thought out. Your argument basically boils down to "everyone hates the PS3 except the people that do, and we know those people are paid off. I don't want a PS3 and most people I know don't either so therefore it sucks." How does that shit get modded up?
I know I would like to get one, but the price has put me off. But then again the price of the 360 and Wii are also too much for me. I personally know people that have the PS3 and love it. I know many more that will buy it when the price drops. Just to clarify things, I don't hate the PS3 and Sony has not paid me off.
The system has been out for less than two weeks. Nintendo hasn't done shit yet either, so why is everyone jumping on the Nintendo bandwagon? I played a Wii for about an hour and wasn't exactly impressed by the launch titles. The only good game is a port, just like the PS3. It definitely has potential, but I'm waiting to see if quality single player games will appear there in large enough numbers or if it will just be a "party" console. As far as backwards compatibility, nearly all games from both the PSX and PS2 work, there are very few that don't. They will probably always have a higher percentage playable than the 360 (probably much higher) because of the difficulties of software emulation.
The fact that people are attacking Sony so much without even addressing it in something remotely resembling a rational way is ridiculous. There are plenty of things wrong with both new consoles, let's wait and see what happens before brutally attacking one side or the other. When the 360 came out there were huge problems, but now all of a sudden it's considered a perfect machine and the PS3 is the one that is going to crash and burn. Funny how that works.
I think that was exactly his point. The movie itself was a political movie. He is not saying the claims in the movie aren't backed up by science. Why would he want to show the movie, when he can just talk about all the numbers and make the same point himself? If they wanted to make a scientific argument, then they would've included actual numbers and figures in the movie. It's not a scientific movie, it's a political one. The fact that they slapped Al Gore's name all over it proves that.
I would suggest, if you haven't already, to read the book The Corporation or watch the movie of the same name. It makes some very interesting points. It is definitely "biased" but it provides sound arguments and generally doesn't devolve into Michael Moore like mudslinging. One of the main points I got out of it (and from other places) is that you really can't treat corporations like people.
Corporations, especially the huge multinationals, are amoral and any individual person is not responsible for the actions of the corporation unless they act illegally. That is where they differ from the rest of society. The entire purpose of the corporation is to create wealth for the stockholders while removing any personal responsibility from either the stockholders or the employees of the company. Most of the time this is in the best interest of society, but when it goes wrong it goes very, very wrong.
Your claim that corporations should be treated the same as other things in our society is just flat out wrong. When corporations act unethically (which is a huge difference than illegally), more often than not it is because the people involved are just doing their job. Many, many scientific studies have shown that people will put away their personal beliefs and do some very bad things if they believe what they are doing is part of their duty or some authority has authorized it. An obvious example is the experiment where people believed they were torturing a man by shocking him but did so anyway because of the doctor telling them it was ok. This is even more true when the acts aren't as morally repugnant and the decision making is further removed from one person.
Regulating everything equally throughout society with respect to corporations is just not possible. Corporations are given special exemptions by law, and it follows that they should face special regulations. If we really wanted everything to be "equal" we would create laws disallowing people from forming corporations. That way they would have to take personal responsibility for the way their companies act. That, of course, would be financial suicide. Conducting business should not be an unbearable risk for people. It should, however, benefit society, and that is why extra rules are needed to keep corporations in check.
I'm not sure I know what you're talking about, but that's a great line.
Why the hell does QDOS get such a bad rap for ripping off CP/M? As far as I understand it, all they did was clone the API. It had near-identical functionality as CP/M, but nobody working on QDOS had any knowledge of the actual CP/M code. When DRI stalled in discussions with IBM, Microsoft jumped on the opportunity to take their place. If Kildall really desired the fame and wealth, then he shouldn't have screwed up the business deal with IBM. What is wrong with that? Is there something I'm missing? I never hear people complaining about companies cloning IBM PC's. Am I just wildly misinformed?
West Valley, Murray, and Midvale all border Salt Lake City proper and are in the Salt Lake City metro area. Riverton is a little further away but is still considered part of SLC. Orem is hardly a large city, but it is in a metro area of about 400,000 people. It is right next to Provo, which is home to BYU and Novell. As for them all being on I-15, over 80% of the people in Utah live on the Wasatch Front, which happens to be where I-15 runs.
No, that isn't true. Utah has bars just like anywhere else, just with much crazier laws. Technically, only private clubs can serve alcohol in the same way as bars in other states, so bars just call themselves "private clubs for members". You pay for a "temporary membership" which is just another name for a cover charge. This isn't a secret or anything, bars and clubs are in the open and advertise the same way as in other places, just with the stupid "private club for members" bit. Stores can only sell 3.2 beer and wine, anything with more alcohol content is sold from state liquor stores. You won't find as many liquor stores or bars as in other places, mostly because people here don't drink very much as in other places (even the non-Mormons).
I'm not saying there isn't anything to criticize George Bush (both of them) for; that's obviously not true. I'm saying George Bush and Vladimir Putin are not even remotely similar people. Putin is a rough-handed, power hungry dictator. Bush is an incompetent, misguided ideologue. Bush is not assassinating his political opposition. Bush is not murdering thousands of his own citizens. Comparing the two is absurd.
Please tell me you're kidding. There isn't much difference except that Putin is a dictator (some people may call Bush a dictator, but those people are stupid), and he ruthlessly suppresses dissent in his country using murder and torture (or sometimes just sends dissenters to jail in Siberia and takes their property). Please stop the stupid bullshit. If you are going to say things that are that obviously wrong, please keep your "conclusions" to yourself. Making ridiculous claims like this undermines legitimate criticism of the president.
I agree with your opinions about the way high schools are administered and the dogmatic teaching style, but you are equating the things you like with conservatism and the things you don't like with liberalism. Some of the examples you give are in fact very non-liberal. Encouraging students to share their viewpoints (assuming it was a "dialectic" type class like I imagine) is a liberal teaching style. Forcing people to believe the "correct" ideas is very conservative. Don't twist the words around. I am very much on the right side of the political spectrum, yet I consider myself a diehard liberal. I have had great teachers with many different political views, mostly because great teachers help students form and evaluate their own opinions. That is the difference between teachers and preachers.
What if what they love to do is make money? And yes, I'm serious. I'd say generally most people aren't very passionate about the job they're in, so why not at least go for something that has a relatively comfortable work atmosphere and pays well. For a lot of people work is just that thing they do most of the time to pay the rent. Also, IT workers != programmers.
Also, when referring to Americans, it is probably not best to call us yanks (at least directly). A lot of people consider that a pejorative term. Unless you mean it that way, I would suggest staying away from it.
It would be more accurate to say that they were driven to re-establish liberty. Americans at the time still saw themselves as British. They thought the way the British government was set up was actually quite good. They simply thought King George was a bad ruler. That is why after the revolution the American government was extremely similar to the British government of the time but with changes designed to balance the power of the monarch.
I do agree with your point, however it should be noted that almost every issue that they disagreed with the British government about was either tax or land related. In the beginning (before outright war started) it was almost entirely about money. It wasn't until the king started taking away basic rights (The Intolerable Acts) that the First Continental Congress was formed and outright revolution started. Even after that, it probably would've been able to reconcile the differences between the government and colonists if the acts were repealed and the colonists' complaints were addressed.
I'm about 80 hours into the game, and I think it is fantastic. However, don't let people describing the plot as complex and mature throw you over too much. I think what most people mean is that it is complex and mature for a video game. Some of the stuff is still really, really cheesy and occasionally the dialogue is really bad. If the plot was translated to a novel format, it would probably be mediocre. Overall, however, it is a huge step up for storytelling in video games.
I never said he was a technical genius. What the original poster was saying is that Bill Gates doesn't understand computers. Maybe he hasn't done any real hacking in a while, but claiming that he is just an administrator who makes grand claims about computers but doesn't know very much about the actual concepts is ridiculous.
Wanna share your thoughts on how you came to this conclusion? It seems pretty ridiculous to me. There are many things you can say about Bill Gates, but claiming that he is simply a management type that doesn't know anything about how computers work is definitely not one of them.
Patchouli?
I was born after the original trilogy was finished, and managed to go without seeing the entire series until earlier this year. My friends were shocked to find out that I had never seen any of the movies.
No disrespect intended (I certainly love movies that others find pretty bad) but I didn't really think that they were all that great. I'm a bit of a movie buff, but I don't think I'm too pretentious to enjoy a nice good vs. evil epic story every once in a while. There was just so much preventing me from liking them. I already knew the major plot twists simply because the movies are referenced so much in pop culture. I didn't connect much with any of the characters. The effects were dated and they were made even worse by the stupid edits by Lucas. The dialogue was pretty corny. I did watch the original trilogy first, and I'm sure I share many others' opinions that the new trilogy was just awful.
It really gave me the same feeling as watching a movie you loved as a child only to discover that it is just mediocre. Certainly I lack the perspective of what the movies were like when they first came out, but I don't really understand why they hold such a special place in pop culture and in so many people's hearts. Perhaps someone can elaborate for me?
Because that transition from oil has the potential to completely wreck global markets and bring about huge civil unrest. Remember the Great Depression? Some very bad things can happen when the global economy is upset.
Now, whether something that bad will happen or not depends on a lot of things. It probably won't, but there is a reason why so many people are concerned about it.
How about private police? Private firefighters? Private hospitals? Private schools? All of these were the norm before the government (mostly) took over. And guess what, poor people couldn't afford them. You are assuming that just because education would become cheaper overall that it would still be affordable for poor people. Without a government monopoly these things are extremely expensive. There's a reason why they were brought under state control in the first place. If you can't afford to feed your children, how the hell are you going to afford to educate them, even if it the cost is relatively cheaper than it is now?
The free market does not solve everything, especially for services that are absolutely vital for every person to have. Last time I checked a $20 oil change at Jiffy Lube (when the oil costs less than $5 and takes maybe 15 minutes of your time) wasn't exactly a necessity of life. That is a truly terrible analogy.
I doubt they even count the write in votes unless there is the potential for someone to actually win. For example, if one candidate has 47% of the vote and another has 42%, it is really useless to count the other 1% that contains write in candidates. It would take a lot of effort to tally up each and every person that was voted for when they have no chance of winning. That being said, I don't actually know what they do in MD or anywhere else for that matter, so I may be wrong.