See the qualifier in that sentence? It starts with an m. It means that I'm aware that some shareholders do pay attention and do file valid lawsuits. This isn't one of them, and the majority of them aren't either.
Seriously, if the executive team would have announced it too early, and they changed their mind, there would be a lawsuit. Instead, they announce the new strategy when they're sure they want to do it, and now they get sued because they should have announced it earlier. Besides, how much earlier were they supposed to announce that they were going to ditch WebOS? The day after the acquisition? This just smells like sour grapes from some investors who didn't expect this hit to their short term profit schedule.
Quite frankly, most shareholders should just shut up when it comes to corporate governance. They are generally the main reason that corporations are so focused on the quarterly bottom line anyway. There are some investors who take the long view, but I'm also pretty sure that they are not the ones who sue because the company wasn't forthcoming with major strategic decisions, and the stock price takes a bit of a dive over a few days.
Aw, I hurt your shilly little feelings, and now you have to resort to completely unrelated analogies to make your case. Oh, and it's easy to spot someone who doesn't believe or can't cope with what they're writing, because their writing style goes down the drain. Just an FYI for the next time you try to burnish your "I hate everybody equally" credentials.
Since slashdotters think Google is so much about open source and free software, why is App Engine backend proprietary. I'm not even asking something like their search engine code,
Now I know you're either utterly fucking retarded, or really just shilling for one of Google's major competitors. You don't need to know the backend to port your project. All you need to know is the APIs of the new system, and do some work. Just like for every other platform project. Don't like it? Write your own platform. Also, there's absolutely nothing to be gained for anyone to know the detailed heuristics Google uses to streamline its search, outside of SEOs. The rest of the algorithm is very well known.
I seriously, seriously hate the idea that corporations have that the way to advertise to people is to impersonate someone and then post paid bullshit. It's too bad you're hiding behind an anonymous handle, because otherwise your company would be on my immediate shitlist... though I suspect it probably is. Corporations who engage in this kind of crap are generally shady.
Oh look, another recent user who consistently bashes Google for not being "open", and praises Microsoft. I'm sure this has nothing to do with the recent obvious shills who appeared on Slashdot?
Nice disinformation campaign you got going there. I mean, it's totally new that if you code for a specific platform, you might have some trouble porting that code. Or does your.NET code run as is on Linux?
No, what's purposefully invoked is the similarity in how argumentation goes with people who deny that the Holocaust happened, and how argumentation goes with people who deny AGW is happening. In both cases it's a never-ending merry-go-round of arguments that have been long debunked, conspiracy theories and cherry-picking of who is a true expert and who isn't.
Good grief. You don't understand chaos theory. It has nothing to do with accuracy. What it says is that there are systems that cannot be modeled by predictive functions, but only by iterative functions.
You're also conflating predictions for small systems and stochastic models. One says particle A will be in position B at time Z, while the other says that on average, the system will have temperature t at time z.
Both offer predictive power. But one is a little more difficult to understand. It's amazing how hard statistics is for some people.
Actually, science is highly political. Ever worked in a niche field? Egos are huge, battles for grants epic, discoveries are battlefields for opposing armies, slave labor is rampant, and that is just for stuff that no one cares about - like what bone belongs to what long extinct animal.
People for some reason think that science is done in some sort of vacuum, where fully formed ideas spring from the heads of a singular enlightened being, and which then immediately become the new standard. Instead, it's much more like politics than people think. There's no voting, that's true, no filibuster rules, no gerrymandering - but it's politics nonetheless.
Once you accept that, things make a lot more sense, and it becomes a lot easier to wade through the various nonsense that comes from the scientific community.
This is the best I found in five minutes of googling: http://www.taxfoundation.org/press/show/22659.html What I also found interesting is that until 2008, CA actually had better employment numbers in every respect than Texas. After that, CA crashed massively while TX didn't. My suspicion: a lot of government workers were laid off in CA, on top of a lot of real-estate and banking related jobs. TX didn't have the real-estate bubble that CA had, and doesn't have government workers either.
By that same logic, I should stop myself talking about energy responsibility or forego taking my daughter to the park to enjoy a fine day because ZOMG I'm burning dinosaur juices right into the air!!!
If you believe that Global Warming is a problem that justifies massive government intervention into the everyday lives of the majority of people, then the answer is "Yes".
Ah, I get it. You correctly identify that Global Warming is a massive externality not accounted for by current markets, and therefore can only be addressed by government intervention, or altruism on a massive, unprecedented and completely unlikely scale. You then use an exaggerated position that cannot be met by anybody who isn't living in a cave off of berries, and which serves a dual-purpose: it guarantees that no one can talk about how to fix Global Warming, and, in the unlikely case you do come across said hermit, you have your example they want to destroy Western Civilization.
In other words, it's an argument specifically designed to kill and avoid any debate around how to fix Global Warming. Good to know that you have actually no interest in debating the matter.
I love how when a prominent spokesperson who calls for Americans to return to moral values is caught violating those moral values it is used as evidence that all proponents of moral values are morally bankrupt.
Citation needed.
But when people who call for Western economies to bankrupt themselves to prevent the disaster of Global Warming
Citation needed.
are caught acting as if it is no big deal
Citation needed.
we are supposed to ignore thier actions and just evaluate thier message.
Strawman.
Man, not even one sentence that can be used as a point of debate in any way.
Or, you know, it could be that they understand that drastic action doesn't mean moving back to caves and living off of berries. That there is something in between our current use and zero that would mitigate our current problem.
No, couldn't be. Instead of proposing sensible solutions that are easy to implement which have a significant effect, they are hypocrites to be ignored. Let me guess: the only people who aren't hypocrites are the people who tell you what you're doing is A-OK, and that you don't need to change anything about where you get energy from and how you use it.
Personally, I prefer hypocrites to lazy asses who can't take constructive criticism. Your mileage obviously varies.
That map, quite frankly, sucks. It's incredibly hard to see what total influx/outflux is for a county, and it's impossible to judge overall numbers for a state. Furthermore, the lines obscure the mouse tracking for the underlying counties, making it hard to figure out what the related county numbers are. Lastly, red is brighter than black, and stands out more over the black lines used to delineate counties. That makes it hard to make judgments when the numbers aren't as obvious as those for Detroit.
Finally, that's some mighty fine cherry-picking there. Dallas has some decidedly iffy numbers - can't tell if there's a net influx or outflux. Austin is the center of Texas' tech economy, and Houston is the other economic center outside of Dallas. If you move to Texas, you move to Austin or Houston. And why no comparison to SF, which would invalidate the idea that people are fleeing oppressively socialist California? Or how about migration to/from NYC or Seattle, other liberal hotbeds?
And finally, if Texas is in such great shape, I'm sure it wouldn't mind putting more into the federal coffers than it takes - say, about 20% than it gets back? Like CA? I wonder how things would look like then.
Oh..... someone is ALMOST paying attention. What is necessary to pass a budget, and what is a debate tactic that requires a super majority to move a bill to said state?
My argument though is that the original version really isn't that hard to read. Yes, some words have somewhat changed in context, but if you are ready to reread a few paragraphs, it comes together quite nicely. Specifically, it becomes obvious that when they talk about democracy, they're actually talking about a direct democracy in the vast majority of the cases. It also specifically doesn't need infographics. Finally - and this is where we will part roads, I'm pretty sure - Beck is a moron of such magnitude that I immediately assume the opposite to be true whenever he says anything. If he says that some scholars looked over the translation, I assume that to mean that the intern at the show used a dictionary to correct some misspellings - like replace "democracy" with "anarcho-fascism". I'll stick to the original, thank you.
As for your assessment of the current legal situation, I can only agree. It's an epic mess. It's either be rich enough to afford the best lawyers, or be of such low profile that no one cares about you. But you put your finger on the problem: how you interpret the wording of the constitution is not how someone else interprets the wording of the constitution. And yes, it is all about interpretation. Just look at the part about General clause in the Taxation clause. What exactly is meant by that? You can believe as strongly as you want that it means A, but if you can't convince everyone else around you that it means A, and they believe that it means B, you're shit out of luck. It doesn't matter what you think the Law says, it matters what the people in power think the Law says. You have therefore two choices: be in power yourself, or convince the people in power that you're right. Democracies are designed to give everyone a chance at both.
That's the reality of any legal system. Doesn't matter where it came from, how it was created, who signed off on it - if the people charged with enforcing it say it means B, you better hope that B doesn't mean killing your firstborn.
The Federalist Papers are available for free, online, in their entirety. See for example http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html, or even via free reader apps on Android. Not sure why there's a need for a modernized version, considering we're specifically talking about what the Federalist papers said, not what their modern interpretation is.
Your idea of the Rule of Law is fine and dandy, but it's a shell game. All laws are men's laws, even the ones in the bible. The only thing that's up for discussion is whether we agree on the principles behind them. If the laws somehow aren't open for discussion, you are submitting yourself to someone else telling you what The Law is - and that could be anything (kill your firstborn, perhaps?). You cannot talk about The Law in the abstract without getting into specifics - otherwise, it's just mental masturbation worse than Hippies talking about Love And Peace. And that is exactly where it gets messy, and where the Republic of the Rule of Law variety either becomes a representative democracy or a dictatorship.
In other words there is no Law other than the Word of powerful men in robes
Very true. However, EVERY system degenerates into this. Unless, of course, you assume that all people can live in harmony, in which case there is no need for men in robes. The real question is who are these people, how did they get there, and is the system that appoints them arbiters of the law set up in such a way to minimize corruption and abuse?
Which is why it stabilizes there. Producers enter a market for as long as there is a profit to be made. Someone, somewhere, will offer their product at cost (which includes their own wage). As a result, all others offering a sufficiently similar product will have to follow suit or lose market share.
It is in your absolute best interest in a communist system to be the one, solitary bad actor who exploits it.
Depends. Do you want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, wondering who wants to take your place at the top of the pyramid of have nots? Or would you rather be surrounded by people who think they'll do better with you around than with you not around?
Which is why the guy said "A Republic, if you can keep it" walking out of the Convention. The Founders, unlike today's products of government education, understood the difference and knew Democracy always ends the same way, the plebs figure out they can vote themselves bread and circuses from the public treasury.
I really, really wish that people who say this would actually - actually! - read the Federalist Papers, and not just say they did. Franklin knew the definition of a republic, and also understood the difference between a direct democracy and a representative democracy. He knew that what had been created was a republic - a form of government where the head of government is not an inherited position - and he also knew that a direct democracy was not going to work in a country the size of the US. Hence why the US was founded as a representative democracy with some quirks thrown in about who can vote for what.
And as an FYI, the battle cry "Rule of Law" is favored by dictators of all stripes. Because the legislative process and the content and legitimacy of the laws becomes a side story, with blind adherence coming to the fore front.
I love all the right-wing loonies denouncing democracy for the benefit of a country ruled by The Law. It shows them to be the wannabe jack-booted thugs they are deep in their hearts.
Slashdot Mirror
Pore over, not pore through. But that's a battle lost.
See the qualifier in that sentence? It starts with an m. It means that I'm aware that some shareholders do pay attention and do file valid lawsuits. This isn't one of them, and the majority of them aren't either.
... where the only winners are the lawyers.
Seriously, if the executive team would have announced it too early, and they changed their mind, there would be a lawsuit. Instead, they announce the new strategy when they're sure they want to do it, and now they get sued because they should have announced it earlier. Besides, how much earlier were they supposed to announce that they were going to ditch WebOS? The day after the acquisition? This just smells like sour grapes from some investors who didn't expect this hit to their short term profit schedule.
Quite frankly, most shareholders should just shut up when it comes to corporate governance. They are generally the main reason that corporations are so focused on the quarterly bottom line anyway. There are some investors who take the long view, but I'm also pretty sure that they are not the ones who sue because the company wasn't forthcoming with major strategic decisions, and the stock price takes a bit of a dive over a few days.
Oh look, I have a mod stalker. I guess I finally pissed someone off enough to waste his mod points.
I know. Kinda weird. I suspect it might have to do with him leaving his first comments in the North Korea thread.
Aw, I hurt your shilly little feelings, and now you have to resort to completely unrelated analogies to make your case. Oh, and it's easy to spot someone who doesn't believe or can't cope with what they're writing, because their writing style goes down the drain. Just an FYI for the next time you try to burnish your "I hate everybody equally" credentials.
Go get a new handle, this one's burned.
Yeah, no one is ever going to deprecate Javascript. I mean, Cobol is still the way we interact with Mainframes, right? Stupid shills.
Since slashdotters think Google is so much about open source and free software, why is App Engine backend proprietary. I'm not even asking something like their search engine code,
Now I know you're either utterly fucking retarded, or really just shilling for one of Google's major competitors. You don't need to know the backend to port your project. All you need to know is the APIs of the new system, and do some work. Just like for every other platform project. Don't like it? Write your own platform. Also, there's absolutely nothing to be gained for anyone to know the detailed heuristics Google uses to streamline its search, outside of SEOs. The rest of the algorithm is very well known.
I seriously, seriously hate the idea that corporations have that the way to advertise to people is to impersonate someone and then post paid bullshit. It's too bad you're hiding behind an anonymous handle, because otherwise your company would be on my immediate shitlist... though I suspect it probably is. Corporations who engage in this kind of crap are generally shady.
Oh look, another recent user who consistently bashes Google for not being "open", and praises Microsoft. I'm sure this has nothing to do with the recent obvious shills who appeared on Slashdot?
Nice disinformation campaign you got going there. I mean, it's totally new that if you code for a specific platform, you might have some trouble porting that code. Or does your .NET code run as is on Linux?
No, what's purposefully invoked is the similarity in how argumentation goes with people who deny that the Holocaust happened, and how argumentation goes with people who deny AGW is happening. In both cases it's a never-ending merry-go-round of arguments that have been long debunked, conspiracy theories and cherry-picking of who is a true expert and who isn't.
Good grief. You don't understand chaos theory. It has nothing to do with accuracy. What it says is that there are systems that cannot be modeled by predictive functions, but only by iterative functions.
You're also conflating predictions for small systems and stochastic models. One says particle A will be in position B at time Z, while the other says that on average, the system will have temperature t at time z.
Both offer predictive power. But one is a little more difficult to understand. It's amazing how hard statistics is for some people.
Actually, science is highly political. Ever worked in a niche field? Egos are huge, battles for grants epic, discoveries are battlefields for opposing armies, slave labor is rampant, and that is just for stuff that no one cares about - like what bone belongs to what long extinct animal.
People for some reason think that science is done in some sort of vacuum, where fully formed ideas spring from the heads of a singular enlightened being, and which then immediately become the new standard. Instead, it's much more like politics than people think. There's no voting, that's true, no filibuster rules, no gerrymandering - but it's politics nonetheless.
Once you accept that, things make a lot more sense, and it becomes a lot easier to wade through the various nonsense that comes from the scientific community.
You RTFA? You must be new here.
This is the best I found in five minutes of googling: http://www.taxfoundation.org/press/show/22659.html What I also found interesting is that until 2008, CA actually had better employment numbers in every respect than Texas. After that, CA crashed massively while TX didn't. My suspicion: a lot of government workers were laid off in CA, on top of a lot of real-estate and banking related jobs. TX didn't have the real-estate bubble that CA had, and doesn't have government workers either.
By that same logic, I should stop myself talking about energy responsibility or forego taking my daughter to the park to enjoy a fine day because ZOMG I'm burning dinosaur juices right into the air!!!
If you believe that Global Warming is a problem that justifies massive government intervention into the everyday lives of the majority of people, then the answer is "Yes".
Ah, I get it. You correctly identify that Global Warming is a massive externality not accounted for by current markets, and therefore can only be addressed by government intervention, or altruism on a massive, unprecedented and completely unlikely scale. You then use an exaggerated position that cannot be met by anybody who isn't living in a cave off of berries, and which serves a dual-purpose: it guarantees that no one can talk about how to fix Global Warming, and, in the unlikely case you do come across said hermit, you have your example they want to destroy Western Civilization.
In other words, it's an argument specifically designed to kill and avoid any debate around how to fix Global Warming. Good to know that you have actually no interest in debating the matter.
I love how when a prominent spokesperson who calls for Americans to return to moral values is caught violating those moral values it is used as evidence that all proponents of moral values are morally bankrupt.
Citation needed.
But when people who call for Western economies to bankrupt themselves to prevent the disaster of Global Warming
Citation needed.
are caught acting as if it is no big deal
Citation needed.
we are supposed to ignore thier actions and just evaluate thier message.
Strawman.
Man, not even one sentence that can be used as a point of debate in any way.
Or, you know, it could be that they understand that drastic action doesn't mean moving back to caves and living off of berries. That there is something in between our current use and zero that would mitigate our current problem.
No, couldn't be. Instead of proposing sensible solutions that are easy to implement which have a significant effect, they are hypocrites to be ignored. Let me guess: the only people who aren't hypocrites are the people who tell you what you're doing is A-OK, and that you don't need to change anything about where you get energy from and how you use it.
Personally, I prefer hypocrites to lazy asses who can't take constructive criticism. Your mileage obviously varies.
That map, quite frankly, sucks. It's incredibly hard to see what total influx/outflux is for a county, and it's impossible to judge overall numbers for a state. Furthermore, the lines obscure the mouse tracking for the underlying counties, making it hard to figure out what the related county numbers are. Lastly, red is brighter than black, and stands out more over the black lines used to delineate counties. That makes it hard to make judgments when the numbers aren't as obvious as those for Detroit.
Finally, that's some mighty fine cherry-picking there. Dallas has some decidedly iffy numbers - can't tell if there's a net influx or outflux. Austin is the center of Texas' tech economy, and Houston is the other economic center outside of Dallas. If you move to Texas, you move to Austin or Houston. And why no comparison to SF, which would invalidate the idea that people are fleeing oppressively socialist California? Or how about migration to/from NYC or Seattle, other liberal hotbeds?
And finally, if Texas is in such great shape, I'm sure it wouldn't mind putting more into the federal coffers than it takes - say, about 20% than it gets back? Like CA? I wonder how things would look like then.
Oh..... someone is ALMOST paying attention. What is necessary to pass a budget, and what is a debate tactic that requires a super majority to move a bill to said state?
My argument though is that the original version really isn't that hard to read. Yes, some words have somewhat changed in context, but if you are ready to reread a few paragraphs, it comes together quite nicely. Specifically, it becomes obvious that when they talk about democracy, they're actually talking about a direct democracy in the vast majority of the cases. It also specifically doesn't need infographics. Finally - and this is where we will part roads, I'm pretty sure - Beck is a moron of such magnitude that I immediately assume the opposite to be true whenever he says anything. If he says that some scholars looked over the translation, I assume that to mean that the intern at the show used a dictionary to correct some misspellings - like replace "democracy" with "anarcho-fascism". I'll stick to the original, thank you.
As for your assessment of the current legal situation, I can only agree. It's an epic mess. It's either be rich enough to afford the best lawyers, or be of such low profile that no one cares about you. But you put your finger on the problem: how you interpret the wording of the constitution is not how someone else interprets the wording of the constitution. And yes, it is all about interpretation. Just look at the part about General clause in the Taxation clause. What exactly is meant by that? You can believe as strongly as you want that it means A, but if you can't convince everyone else around you that it means A, and they believe that it means B, you're shit out of luck. It doesn't matter what you think the Law says, it matters what the people in power think the Law says. You have therefore two choices: be in power yourself, or convince the people in power that you're right. Democracies are designed to give everyone a chance at both.
That's the reality of any legal system. Doesn't matter where it came from, how it was created, who signed off on it - if the people charged with enforcing it say it means B, you better hope that B doesn't mean killing your firstborn.
The Federalist Papers are available for free, online, in their entirety. See for example http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html, or even via free reader apps on Android. Not sure why there's a need for a modernized version, considering we're specifically talking about what the Federalist papers said, not what their modern interpretation is.
Your idea of the Rule of Law is fine and dandy, but it's a shell game. All laws are men's laws, even the ones in the bible. The only thing that's up for discussion is whether we agree on the principles behind them. If the laws somehow aren't open for discussion, you are submitting yourself to someone else telling you what The Law is - and that could be anything (kill your firstborn, perhaps?). You cannot talk about The Law in the abstract without getting into specifics - otherwise, it's just mental masturbation worse than Hippies talking about Love And Peace. And that is exactly where it gets messy, and where the Republic of the Rule of Law variety either becomes a representative democracy or a dictatorship.
In other words there is no Law other than the Word of powerful men in robes
Very true. However, EVERY system degenerates into this. Unless, of course, you assume that all people can live in harmony, in which case there is no need for men in robes. The real question is who are these people, how did they get there, and is the system that appoints them arbiters of the law set up in such a way to minimize corruption and abuse?
Which is why it stabilizes there. Producers enter a market for as long as there is a profit to be made. Someone, somewhere, will offer their product at cost (which includes their own wage). As a result, all others offering a sufficiently similar product will have to follow suit or lose market share.
Correct. That is exactly what I said at the onset. Since markets are already not free, they are open for manipulation.
It is in your absolute best interest in a communist system to be the one, solitary bad actor who exploits it.
Depends. Do you want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, wondering who wants to take your place at the top of the pyramid of have nots? Or would you rather be surrounded by people who think they'll do better with you around than with you not around?
Which is why the guy said "A Republic, if you can keep it" walking out of the Convention. The Founders, unlike today's products of government education, understood the difference and knew Democracy always ends the same way, the plebs figure out they can vote themselves bread and circuses from the public treasury.
I really, really wish that people who say this would actually - actually! - read the Federalist Papers, and not just say they did. Franklin knew the definition of a republic, and also understood the difference between a direct democracy and a representative democracy. He knew that what had been created was a republic - a form of government where the head of government is not an inherited position - and he also knew that a direct democracy was not going to work in a country the size of the US. Hence why the US was founded as a representative democracy with some quirks thrown in about who can vote for what.
And as an FYI, the battle cry "Rule of Law" is favored by dictators of all stripes. Because the legislative process and the content and legitimacy of the laws becomes a side story, with blind adherence coming to the fore front.
I love all the right-wing loonies denouncing democracy for the benefit of a country ruled by The Law. It shows them to be the wannabe jack-booted thugs they are deep in their hearts.