"A theory is accepted in science when it's got overwhelming evidence or an actual proof." This isn't always the case- Scientists often have difficulty overcoming their biases, just like everyone else. Whether you're talking about phlogiston theory (17th century), the Luminiferous aether (19th century), or a steady-state model of the universe (1950s), you could find plenty of people who continued to believe the old theory when a better theory is introduced despite overwhelming evidence. Einstein hated quantum theory, just as many of the scientists who came before him hated relativity. The next generation of scientists can be relied upon to go with the theory that has the best evidence, which they then cling to even after some newer generation of scientists creates a theory better still.
Something licensed that way can be used by both GPLv2 and GPLv3 projects, but can't use GPL3 code itself without converting to GPL3. It's still under GPLv2 until then.
The probability of catching a criminal is independent of the total amount of crime I'm sorry, but that logic is bogus. If I have 10 police officers, and it takes ~20 man-hours on average to solve a crime, I can solve ~100 crimes a month (give or take). Therefore, if my district has 1000 crimes, I can solve 10% of them, while if it has 500 crimes, I can solve 20% of them.
Of course, if the crime rates are going up since the cameras were installed, that's still a failure of the cameras.
If every time you see an add you suffer ~10 cents of annoyance, you must gain at least $0.50 of pleasure from most of the websites you visit (or have extensive adblock, or you're a total moron). Regardless, I don't have any sympathy for you- you're like an old lady complaining about how annoyed you are every time you see someone younger than 40, but you still go to the mall, the theater, and the pool.
"They invade my life, in their small way, every time I see them, so I can't really reason with them as with a friend, or even a disinterested stranger"
I don't think he's saying that it's bad, but it's certainly not what everyone expected Blizzard's next big game to be. (I was expecting them to release StarCraft II next, myself- they had released Diablo II and WarCraft III since StarCraft came out, and we were all expecting a sequel). WoW was (and is) amazingly successful, but I don't think anyone expected Blizzard to take that route with their WarCraft Franchise.
Maybe I'm just being cynical, but at this point I suspect WoW will continue to dominate until Blizzard creates WoW2. It's so far ahead of all the other MMORPGs on the market that I don't see anyone being able to displace it.
Yes, but finding that bit was the hard part. Note that I said 'find the 'hot coffee' settings in the first place', not 'change the settings once the bit was found'. Also, while it's technically possible drive corruption would have changed just that bit without making the rest of the game unplayable, that's still incredibly unlikely- on the order of a few trillion to one.
The whole 'Hot Coffee' thing was massively overblown; the content was not accessible to normal users, you had to go and download a mod to get it working. Complaining about content that requires a user-generated mod to run is like complaining that you can stick a mod on a game to play a porno every time the game starts (which, actually, probably takes less effort to write than it took to find the 'hot coffee' settings in the first place).
More recently our butchers have been capitalists- No one called Saddam or Milosevic socialists, and the brutal genocides in Africa weren't done by socialists either. History is filled with butchers, killing people for political ideas, religious ideas, race, and profit. Sure, the Chinese are still killing dissenters, but they've pretty much gone capitalist now, and aren't butchering people by the millions, just thousands. The problem is with Totalitarian systems, not which type of system (Fascism, Theocracy, Monarchies, Communism, etc.) is being totalitarian. Even a democratic capitalist state could become a tyranny of the majority without protection for the rights of the minority. (If you don't believe me, check out the history of slavery in the U.S.) On the other hand, a democratic socialist state could be a decent place to live, as evidenced by the many European countries that are pretty socialist at this point.
People like George Orwell (who hated Stalin, Mao, and all the totalitarian madmen who controlled Communist States) still described themselves as socialists, specifically as democratic socialists. Plenty of Democrats in our modern age are socialist (or close enough). Certainly our current economic system is a mix of socialist and capitalist ideas, with plenty of government interference in the economy. Now, I personally think that less government interference is in my best interests, and the best interests of the country as a whole, but that doesn't mean the socialists don't have a few good points and ideas somewhere in their philosophy.
All I'm trying to say is that placing all socialists in the same category of butchers as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao is like saying all atheists are butchers, or all males are butchers. The problem isn't socialists, the problem is people who have the power to kill off everyone they find inconvenient.
It's possible I'm just misunderstanding your original statement: In the first process where only a blue ball can appear, and one does, that's still one of two possibilities. I was thinking that you could 'force' the blue ball to appear, but if that's not the case then causality still isn't violated.
Almost anything is poisonous in large enough doses, including oxygen and water. Likewise, (very) small quantities of mercury, arsenic, and/or uranium are probably in your drinking water (depending on where you live the chemical contamination will vary). Even Hemlock has been used as medicine to treat arthritis, but problems with accidental poisoning were too common.
Some minor Google browsing and WikiSource seem to indicate the Reagan wrote his own Inaugural Address, which is where that quote is from. I'd say the burden of proof lies on you to show us that Peggy Noonan wrote this speech as she did some of his others.
Even if his speechwriter wrote the lines for him, Regan still said them. It's not like we attribute the line "Khaaaaaaan!" to Jack B. Sowards, instead we attribute it to Kirk or William Shatner.
That could actually violate the speed of light, then. Imagine that you have one of the particles, and your friend a light-minute away chooses whether or not to 'pull forth the blue ball', as it were. 30 seconds after this, you also try to pull forth a blue ball. If you succeed, then you know that your friend did not pull forth a blue ball, and have gained 1 bit of information 'faster than light'. If you fail, you also know that your friend did pull forth a blue ball. Either way, you've gotten information faster than the speed of light.
I work for a small company, and when we were searching resumes for a new position, I ignored all the people with master's degrees. We're looking to pay ~$45k/yr for a programmer, (it's in the Midwest, so cost of living is low here), and someone with your qualifications is easily worth twice that. Quite frankly, we wouldn't have enough work for you to do, and what we have wouldn't be challenging enough.
If you're just hanging out with friends and chatting, it doesn't really matter what combination of people you have in real life or in a game. When trying to accomplish something, however, you have to deal with the jerks who are excellent salesmen or the lead engineer who's a sociopath, just because they have the needed skill or are part of a needed class. Meanwhile, the superfluous classes are marginalized in the business world as well, and are typically paid less. You other examples are also all reminiscent of real life: Trying to schedule meetings with a bunch of busy people is exceedingly tricky, especially if it's last minute. Playing 5 vs. 5 basketball without your center is laughable, and you're probably not going to have much fun when your team is defeated effortlessly. Danielle is a busy and popular girl, and she may only have time for you once a week or so.
What you should be complaining about is not that the game differs from real life, if anything, it's too much like real life at the office.
"Governor Rod Blagojevich spent nearly $1 million in a failed defense of an unconstitutional videogame law, which ultimately resulted in cash being drawn from public health and state welfare programs in order to cover the cost."
It's bad enough that they are passing these stupid laws in the first place, but wasting that much taxpayer money to defend them after the fact is just sad. Won't someone think of the poor and sick children?
I would rather see the incompetent rise to mediocrity than live forever off the forced mercy of others. But we're diverging off our original topic anyway.
That was an incidental benefit of the socialist dole. There are arguably just as many authors who didn't write a book because they were receiving a paycheck without doing any work. Besides, J.K. Rowling is one of those success stories of people on welfare- the people who needed help, but then got back on their own feet. Only the most callous jerks don't want to support them. It's the people who've been supported by welfare since their mother was fourteen that annoy me and most others who oppose the welfare state.
I think we're trying to reach mutually exclusive goals, though certainly we could change our society in ways that makes us both happier. We both value individuals, but you seem to value communities as being the best way to promote individual welfare, while I place little value on them. I still don't think you grasp the value of trade, despite the necessity of it for things as specialized as your computer.
One minor note I wish to make about Spaceports is that they work best near the equator- so Florida and New Mexico can have more productive spaceports than Maine and Oregon. This is supposed to suggest that certain communities are naturally more suited for certain occupations, but if you're unaware of this then my post makes much less sense.
I am quite fond of PBS and the BBC myself. I suppose a better objection would be that while such a system might work, very few people support increasing taxes to extend it, especially if the state goes from something like television (which most people watch) to video games (which most taxpayers still see as children's entertainment). Mostly it's just something I've never seen work on a large scale before, and I'm not sure it can be scaled up.
And that was perhaps a mistake. Specialization may allow you to live the good life in good years- but in a bad corn year, you have *NOTHING* instead of *something* that the generalist has. Thus creating the boom-bust business cycle.
This is indeed the case, which means the corn farmer either needs to save his profits from good years or do some diversifying. Of course, even if the farmer has apples, corn, and pigs (which are easy to raise in tandem) he's still not going to have every food he wants to eat, and will still want to trade with the farmer who has rice and fish, and the farmer who has wheat and barley and beef, etc. My example was overly simplified to show a point, but it's still the case that specializing in a few goods is better than trying to do everything.
It's better than buying it from the Mexican drug cartel who shot the park ranger to get it to you.
My example was more along the lines of "I don't buy pot now, so I don't feel the need to buy it from anyone, whether or not they are my neighbor". I should have made it more clear. Also, I would like to point out that while I'm not involved in my immediate community, I spend time and money supporting causes I care about, including charities, scholarships, and medical organizations. I still don't see why the people living next door to me are any more important than people living anywhere else, and why you want to put me into a 'community' based on where I happened to be born. I suppose if I wanted to be an astronaut, you would tell me to build an airstrip where I was born instead of moving to Florida.
But really, our most serious disagreement comes from our different perspectives on the environmental impact of trade. Your views on the matter are so extreme I don't even know where to begin. Greenpeace and the Sierra Club aren't nearly as out there as you are.
Lastly, Distributism is all in favor of specialization and trade. What it's opposed to is giant megacorps with undue influence on the State. For instance, a distributed society would still have fast-food restaurants, but instead of having a McDonald's in every town, one town would have a McDonald's, one would have a Joe's, one would have a GnarlBurger, etc., and each would be locally owned. However, the Joe's, the McDonald's, and the GnarlBurger would probably still all import beef, cheese, buns, and/or ketchup from outside of town. (McDonald's might be in a good beef&cheese area, Joe's might be near a Bakery, and GnarlBurger might be in the middle of tomato fields, but they would still want to trade for other ingredients). Also, the State wouldn't be controlling all the services in such a system either, since Distributism favors local, private ownership of the means of production.
Clearly there are problems with the current patent/copyright system, as well as with the health care in the United States. I'm sure there are good ways to set up state-sponsored doctors, since other countries have pulled it off. (Some have miserably failed, too, so we want to make sure we don't make the problem worse). I doubt, however, that there are good ways to set up state-sponsored entertainment. Unlike health care, the goals of entertainment are non-obvious and the end results entirely subjective. What I may find to be the best story/game/movie ever you may dismiss as boring trash, and vice-versa. In health care, if I have a broken arm or a failed kidney, it's pretty obvious what I want (a repaired arm/working kidney). Likewise, if you have a broken arm and a failed kidney, you will also want a repaired arm and a working kidney. It may not be obvious what the best way to fix the problem is, but at least the end goal is clear. I fear any sort of state-mandated entertainment would be as bland, inoffensive, and unoriginal as possible, not to mention carry no criticism of the government in charge.
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"A theory is accepted in science when it's got overwhelming evidence or an actual proof." This isn't always the case- Scientists often have difficulty overcoming their biases, just like everyone else. Whether you're talking about phlogiston theory (17th century), the Luminiferous aether (19th century), or a steady-state model of the universe (1950s), you could find plenty of people who continued to believe the old theory when a better theory is introduced despite overwhelming evidence. Einstein hated quantum theory, just as many of the scientists who came before him hated relativity. The next generation of scientists can be relied upon to go with the theory that has the best evidence, which they then cling to even after some newer generation of scientists creates a theory better still.
Something licensed that way can be used by both GPLv2 and GPLv3 projects, but can't use GPL3 code itself without converting to GPL3. It's still under GPLv2 until then.
If every time you see an add you suffer ~10 cents of annoyance, you must gain at least $0.50 of pleasure from most of the websites you visit (or have extensive adblock, or you're a total moron). Regardless, I don't have any sympathy for you- you're like an old lady complaining about how annoyed you are every time you see someone younger than 40, but you still go to the mall, the theater, and the pool.
"They invade my life, in their small way, every time I see them, so I can't really reason with them as with a friend, or even a disinterested stranger"
I don't think he's saying that it's bad, but it's certainly not what everyone expected Blizzard's next big game to be. (I was expecting them to release StarCraft II next, myself- they had released Diablo II and WarCraft III since StarCraft came out, and we were all expecting a sequel). WoW was (and is) amazingly successful, but I don't think anyone expected Blizzard to take that route with their WarCraft Franchise.
Maybe I'm just being cynical, but at this point I suspect WoW will continue to dominate until Blizzard creates WoW2. It's so far ahead of all the other MMORPGs on the market that I don't see anyone being able to displace it.
Yes, but finding that bit was the hard part. Note that I said 'find the 'hot coffee' settings in the first place', not 'change the settings once the bit was found'. Also, while it's technically possible drive corruption would have changed just that bit without making the rest of the game unplayable, that's still incredibly unlikely- on the order of a few trillion to one.
The whole 'Hot Coffee' thing was massively overblown; the content was not accessible to normal users, you had to go and download a mod to get it working. Complaining about content that requires a user-generated mod to run is like complaining that you can stick a mod on a game to play a porno every time the game starts (which, actually, probably takes less effort to write than it took to find the 'hot coffee' settings in the first place).
"If you neglect the values of freedom and social solidarity, and appreciate only powerful reliable software, you are making a terrible mistake." -RMS
More recently our butchers have been capitalists- No one called Saddam or Milosevic socialists, and the brutal genocides in Africa weren't done by socialists either. History is filled with butchers, killing people for political ideas, religious ideas, race, and profit. Sure, the Chinese are still killing dissenters, but they've pretty much gone capitalist now, and aren't butchering people by the millions, just thousands. The problem is with Totalitarian systems, not which type of system (Fascism, Theocracy, Monarchies, Communism, etc.) is being totalitarian. Even a democratic capitalist state could become a tyranny of the majority without protection for the rights of the minority. (If you don't believe me, check out the history of slavery in the U.S.) On the other hand, a democratic socialist state could be a decent place to live, as evidenced by the many European countries that are pretty socialist at this point.
People like George Orwell (who hated Stalin, Mao, and all the totalitarian madmen who controlled Communist States) still described themselves as socialists, specifically as democratic socialists. Plenty of Democrats in our modern age are socialist (or close enough). Certainly our current economic system is a mix of socialist and capitalist ideas, with plenty of government interference in the economy. Now, I personally think that less government interference is in my best interests, and the best interests of the country as a whole, but that doesn't mean the socialists don't have a few good points and ideas somewhere in their philosophy.
All I'm trying to say is that placing all socialists in the same category of butchers as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao is like saying all atheists are butchers, or all males are butchers. The problem isn't socialists, the problem is people who have the power to kill off everyone they find inconvenient.
It's possible I'm just misunderstanding your original statement: In the first process where only a blue ball can appear, and one does, that's still one of two possibilities. I was thinking that you could 'force' the blue ball to appear, but if that's not the case then causality still isn't violated.
Almost anything is poisonous in large enough doses, including oxygen and water. Likewise, (very) small quantities of mercury, arsenic, and/or uranium are probably in your drinking water (depending on where you live the chemical contamination will vary). Even Hemlock has been used as medicine to treat arthritis, but problems with accidental poisoning were too common.
Some minor Google browsing and WikiSource seem to indicate the Reagan wrote his own Inaugural Address, which is where that quote is from. I'd say the burden of proof lies on you to show us that Peggy Noonan wrote this speech as she did some of his others.
Even if his speechwriter wrote the lines for him, Regan still said them. It's not like we attribute the line "Khaaaaaaan!" to Jack B. Sowards, instead we attribute it to Kirk or William Shatner.
That could actually violate the speed of light, then. Imagine that you have one of the particles, and your friend a light-minute away chooses whether or not to 'pull forth the blue ball', as it were. 30 seconds after this, you also try to pull forth a blue ball. If you succeed, then you know that your friend did not pull forth a blue ball, and have gained 1 bit of information 'faster than light'. If you fail, you also know that your friend did pull forth a blue ball. Either way, you've gotten information faster than the speed of light.
I work for a small company, and when we were searching resumes for a new position, I ignored all the people with master's degrees. We're looking to pay ~$45k/yr for a programmer, (it's in the Midwest, so cost of living is low here), and someone with your qualifications is easily worth twice that. Quite frankly, we wouldn't have enough work for you to do, and what we have wouldn't be challenging enough.
While welfare can be a waste of money, I can't believe you're supporting taking cash from welfare and diverting it to lawyers.
If you're just hanging out with friends and chatting, it doesn't really matter what combination of people you have in real life or in a game. When trying to accomplish something, however, you have to deal with the jerks who are excellent salesmen or the lead engineer who's a sociopath, just because they have the needed skill or are part of a needed class. Meanwhile, the superfluous classes are marginalized in the business world as well, and are typically paid less. You other examples are also all reminiscent of real life: Trying to schedule meetings with a bunch of busy people is exceedingly tricky, especially if it's last minute. Playing 5 vs. 5 basketball without your center is laughable, and you're probably not going to have much fun when your team is defeated effortlessly. Danielle is a busy and popular girl, and she may only have time for you once a week or so.
What you should be complaining about is not that the game differs from real life, if anything, it's too much like real life at the office.
"Governor Rod Blagojevich spent nearly $1 million in a failed defense of an unconstitutional videogame law, which ultimately resulted in cash being drawn from public health and state welfare programs in order to cover the cost."
It's bad enough that they are passing these stupid laws in the first place, but wasting that much taxpayer money to defend them after the fact is just sad. Won't someone think of the poor and sick children?
I would rather see the incompetent rise to mediocrity than live forever off the forced mercy of others. But we're diverging off our original topic anyway.
That was an incidental benefit of the socialist dole. There are arguably just as many authors who didn't write a book because they were receiving a paycheck without doing any work. Besides, J.K. Rowling is one of those success stories of people on welfare- the people who needed help, but then got back on their own feet. Only the most callous jerks don't want to support them. It's the people who've been supported by welfare since their mother was fourteen that annoy me and most others who oppose the welfare state.
I think we're trying to reach mutually exclusive goals, though certainly we could change our society in ways that makes us both happier. We both value individuals, but you seem to value communities as being the best way to promote individual welfare, while I place little value on them. I still don't think you grasp the value of trade, despite the necessity of it for things as specialized as your computer.
One minor note I wish to make about Spaceports is that they work best near the equator- so Florida and New Mexico can have more productive spaceports than Maine and Oregon. This is supposed to suggest that certain communities are naturally more suited for certain occupations, but if you're unaware of this then my post makes much less sense.
I am quite fond of PBS and the BBC myself. I suppose a better objection would be that while such a system might work, very few people support increasing taxes to extend it, especially if the state goes from something like television (which most people watch) to video games (which most taxpayers still see as children's entertainment). Mostly it's just something I've never seen work on a large scale before, and I'm not sure it can be scaled up.
And that was perhaps a mistake. Specialization may allow you to live the good life in good years- but in a bad corn year, you have *NOTHING* instead of *something* that the generalist has. Thus creating the boom-bust business cycle.
This is indeed the case, which means the corn farmer either needs to save his profits from good years or do some diversifying. Of course, even if the farmer has apples, corn, and pigs (which are easy to raise in tandem) he's still not going to have every food he wants to eat, and will still want to trade with the farmer who has rice and fish, and the farmer who has wheat and barley and beef, etc. My example was overly simplified to show a point, but it's still the case that specializing in a few goods is better than trying to do everything.
It's better than buying it from the Mexican drug cartel who shot the park ranger to get it to you.
My example was more along the lines of "I don't buy pot now, so I don't feel the need to buy it from anyone, whether or not they are my neighbor". I should have made it more clear. Also, I would like to point out that while I'm not involved in my immediate community, I spend time and money supporting causes I care about, including charities, scholarships, and medical organizations. I still don't see why the people living next door to me are any more important than people living anywhere else, and why you want to put me into a 'community' based on where I happened to be born. I suppose if I wanted to be an astronaut, you would tell me to build an airstrip where I was born instead of moving to Florida.
But really, our most serious disagreement comes from our different perspectives on the environmental impact of trade. Your views on the matter are so extreme I don't even know where to begin. Greenpeace and the Sierra Club aren't nearly as out there as you are.
Lastly, Distributism is all in favor of specialization and trade. What it's opposed to is giant megacorps with undue influence on the State. For instance, a distributed society would still have fast-food restaurants, but instead of having a McDonald's in every town, one town would have a McDonald's, one would have a Joe's, one would have a GnarlBurger, etc., and each would be locally owned. However, the Joe's, the McDonald's, and the GnarlBurger would probably still all import beef, cheese, buns, and/or ketchup from outside of town. (McDonald's might be in a good beef&cheese area, Joe's might be near a Bakery, and GnarlBurger might be in the middle of tomato fields, but they would still want to trade for other ingredients). Also, the State wouldn't be controlling all the services in such a system either, since Distributism favors local, private ownership of the means of production.
Clearly there are problems with the current patent/copyright system, as well as with the health care in the United States. I'm sure there are good ways to set up state-sponsored doctors, since other countries have pulled it off. (Some have miserably failed, too, so we want to make sure we don't make the problem worse). I doubt, however, that there are good ways to set up state-sponsored entertainment. Unlike health care, the goals of entertainment are non-obvious and the end results entirely subjective. What I may find to be the best story/game/movie ever you may dismiss as boring trash, and vice-versa. In health care, if I have a broken arm or a failed kidney, it's pretty obvious what I want (a repaired arm/working kidney). Likewise, if you have a broken arm and a failed kidney, you will also want a repaired arm and a working kidney. It may not be obvious what the best way to fix the problem is, but at least the end goal is clear. I fear any sort of state-mandated entertainment would be as bland, inoffensive, and unoriginal as possible, not to mention carry no criticism of the government in charge.