Nice theory, but it isn't backed up by research. Research shows that inequality drives crime. Given the perception of a fair system, most people will play fair because our genes tell us that is the most efficient strategy. Unfortunately, while we are predisposed towards cooperation, it is a poor strategy when the system isn't fair. The cooperators get taken advantage of. Therefore, in an unfair system, people will play unfairly. Change the system, change the people.
I'm not even sure I know how to respond to this. The implied naïveté in your statement has thrown me off completely. "Most people will play fair" -- that doesn't cut it. If one person in 1000 does NOT play fair, then your theory would still be perfectly correct -- and we'd still have crime. This is not research, it's statistical fact -- look up the crime statistics in below-poverty areas throughout the US, and you'll find that the poor do, in fact, rob the poor. (And murder them, and beat them up, etc -- not all crime is theft.)
But let's say you're right, for argument's sake. Do you think everybody will be happy being perfectly equal? Even though some people are smarter, others more capable, and still others simply more willing? What you're describing is fundamentally communism, isn't it? Everybody is equal, all contributions are equal; everybody gets what they need and nothing more.
This fails to account for the fact that everybody is NOT equal in terms of their abilities. Some people/are/ smarter; some people/do/ work harder. And - humans being what they are - they expect to be rewarded for superior contributions. So given a few days after this great redistribution of wealth, we would once again have enterprising individuals using their talents and getting ahead. And we'd once again end up with the "haves" and the "have nots".
Income inequality drives crime. When everyone is poor, no one steals from each other. When everyone is rich, everyone steals from each other, but there are rules. When some people are very, very rich and some are poor, the poor feel justified in evening out the unfairness through direct action. If everyone had their basic needs met, I don't think income inequality would matter as much. But as long as some people are desperare and feel they are being screwed, and they can find an easy target in a rich person, there will be crime. It goes beyond that. While the rich person may have more to steal, it doesn't prevent the poor person from being targeted as well. Anytime someone has something (whether that something be an old black and white television, or a million dollars) that somebody else wants, the potential exists for crime. Distributing income evenly won't change this -- what happens if I have $100 and all of my neighbors have $100, and I want to have their money? The only way to avoid this potential is for nobody to have anything.
Many PCs these days don't ship with a Windows CD. They only come with a set of "System Restore" CDs which will put the system back to out-of-box configuration, including Windows and all preinstalled apps. The last few I have did come with a separate "OS restore" CD, which was actually just an OEM windows image. I don't know why they couldn't just call it "Windows Install", but it was 'os restore' for three different companies.
Actually, many PCs these days don't even go that far. I saw a new HP that only came with a picture of a CD printed on a piece of paper, with instructions on how to burn your own system restore CDs from the rescue partition on the hard drive, and directions to boot from the rescue partition to reinstall Windows if the hard drive gets screwed up.
Silly person. It's no longer fashionable to look out for your own interests. Don't you know that in the religion of Everybody is More Important than Me, you must be willing to sacrifice your money, your possessions, and your very life for the stranger across the world or across the street?
Hell with that. I'm against offshoring for two reasons:
1. In my own extensive experience with work coming back from offshore, it's crap. Period. Anything that we save in up-front cost, we have to pay down the line when the the bugs are getting fixed.
2. I am of the unpopular belief that there's nothing wrong with looking out for the self interest of my family, my friends, and myself. Our lives and livelihoods are more important to me than some stranger I've never met and never will meet. And yes, if it came to a choice between me starving, and that stranger starving, I'd pick the stranger every time. I place value on my own life above others -- it's called survival, though these days we're supposed to call it selfish.
Possibly - though in most cases, there's minimal crapware on the OEM OS disk itself. Most of it is on the supplemental "applications" or "drivers and applications" disc.
Are you reinstalling from the OEM disk, or your own? If you're using the OEM disk, I've found that the installs from Toshiba, Dell, and IBM don't even require you to enter a key; and activation is no problem. (I can't speak to other vendors because I haven't owned of their laptops, but I would expect it's the same.)
I would reply to this, but I'm quite busy installing Linux on my digital shirt. 'course, the shirt is rather uncomfortable now that all the hardware is in place. Most discomfiting.
A critical fact in Al Gore's film: after compiling the results of 1,100 serious scientific papers about GW not one suggests that it is anything but man's fault. The percentage of journalistic articles suggesting that it may not be man's fault: 53%. So what you're saying is that in Gore's film, they hand-selected 1100 serious scientific papers to support their point?
The same reason people pay for anything: perceived value of having it. Free porn is getting tougher to find on the net. I have no idea how difficult it is to find kiddie porn, nor do I want to know, cause that's just nasty. But, if you're looking for it, you're probably willing to pay for it.
I, uh, hear that there's still tons of it on usenet.
No, The persons that bought it paid the fair price for other used equipment. So paid in kind they would get to keep the merchandise and the previous owners would go after the Ebay seller, or the insurance company would. Do you frequently pull answers out of your... erm, out of thin air?
An article just published today says that over 58% of Wikipedia's articles are fake, empty, simple lists of other articles, or garbage... That article also downplays the significance of Wikipedia because people without internet access and those with no time can't edit it. It then proceeds to make selective out-of-context quotes whilst trying to prove its "point". Of course, he never actually states what that point is.
A look at the final sentence of that article shows his motivation, and -- at least in my case -- causes one to question his motives:
John Bambenek is a columnist and freelance writer who blogs at Part-Time Pundit. His biography was deleted from Wikipedia by its editors, but at one stage it falsely listed him as a child sex offender for over an hour and a half.
You're right. I don't have many geek friends. My data is also anecdotal, limited, and probably biased. However, my point is that most "average" people are clueless about HD. I am skeptical that there is a "market" for HD. (I am also usually wrong about "consumers" and "markets".)
You've completely ruined my off-the-cuff flippant remark with logic.
Most of my friends who have the new wide screen HD TVs don't have HD service. Furthermore, they stretch standard TV to fill their wide screen which makes everyone look fat. They end up with a low quality distorted picture but they are really impressed with their new "media experience". This is the real HD experience. I doubt there is any real demand for true HD.
I would submit that your friends are ninnies, and that you draw your conclusions from too little data.
! That is exactly correct. Of course, I would be interested to know why my post was moderated "redundant," while the ones below are "funny." Not that I really care -- karma doesn't matter since it is no longer a number, but it confuzzles me.:\ I was puzzling over that too; my post was mostly in nature of a wager with myself. I had bet that that another post along the same lines would get modded Funny. So I owe myself a beer now.
I have to admit, I was surprised when the person after me also got modded funny -- I thought it would work for one last post.
If Wikipedia's maintaining corporate objectivity means its ultimate failure or stagnation, I will go down with the ship in a heartbeat. That moved me. Kind of like the musicians of the Titanic, who kept playing as the ship sunk.
So this is a separate network, independent of the Internet -- indeed, not even connected. Kind of like a LAN. Perhaps they're planning to run fiber to the door for anyone who wants to use their VR network?
In some shops I've worked in I've literally sat on my ass for months I've find sitting on my ass to be the most comfortable position for hacking out code. But I could be in the minority...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not even sure I know how to respond to this. The implied naïveté in your statement has thrown me off completely. "Most people will play fair" -- that doesn't cut it. If one person in 1000 does NOT play fair, then your theory would still be perfectly correct -- and we'd still have crime. This is not research, it's statistical fact -- look up the crime statistics in below-poverty areas throughout the US, and you'll find that the poor do, in fact, rob the poor. (And murder them, and beat them up, etc -- not all crime is theft.)
But let's say you're right, for argument's sake. Do you think everybody will be happy being perfectly equal? Even though some people are smarter, others more capable, and still others simply more willing? What you're describing is fundamentally communism, isn't it? Everybody is equal, all contributions are equal; everybody gets what they need and nothing more.
This fails to account for the fact that everybody is NOT equal in terms of their abilities. Some people /are/ smarter; some people /do/ work harder. And - humans being what they are - they expect to be rewarded for superior contributions. So given a few days after this great redistribution of wealth, we would once again have enterprising individuals using their talents and getting ahead. And we'd once again end up with the "haves" and the "have nots".
Wow. That's conclusive.
The inherent irony there is breathtaking.
Hell with that. I'm against offshoring for two reasons:
1. In my own extensive experience with work coming back from offshore, it's crap. Period. Anything that we save in up-front cost, we have to pay down the line when the the bugs are getting fixed.
2. I am of the unpopular belief that there's nothing wrong with looking out for the self interest of my family, my friends, and myself. Our lives and livelihoods are more important to me than some stranger I've never met and never will meet. And yes, if it came to a choice between me starving, and that stranger starving, I'd pick the stranger every time. I place value on my own life above others -- it's called survival, though these days we're supposed to call it selfish.
/rant.
Possibly - though in most cases, there's minimal crapware on the OEM OS disk itself. Most of it is on the supplemental "applications" or "drivers and applications" disc.
Are you reinstalling from the OEM disk, or your own? If you're using the OEM disk, I've found that the installs from Toshiba, Dell, and IBM don't even require you to enter a key; and activation is no problem. (I can't speak to other vendors because I haven't owned of their laptops, but I would expect it's the same.)
I would reply to this, but I'm quite busy installing Linux on my digital shirt. 'course, the shirt is rather uncomfortable now that all the hardware is in place. Most discomfiting.
Um... dude? I wasn't looking for detailed instructions on finding child porn. I don't think anybody else here was either. That's really just foul.
I meant that I "hear" that about free porn on the net, not kiddie porn...
I, uh, hear that there's still tons of it on usenet.
http://www.burtonsys.com/bad_BP6/story1.html
A look at the final sentence of that article shows his motivation, and -- at least in my case -- causes one to question his motives:
John Bambenek is a columnist and freelance writer who blogs at Part-Time Pundit. His biography was deleted from Wikipedia by its editors, but at one stage it falsely listed him as a child sex offender for over an hour and a half.You've completely ruined my off-the-cuff flippant remark with logic.
Shame on you.
Most of my friends who have the new wide screen HD TVs don't have HD service. Furthermore, they stretch standard TV to fill their wide screen which makes everyone look fat. They end up with a low quality distorted picture but they are really impressed with their new "media experience". This is the real HD experience. I doubt there is any real demand for true HD.
I would submit that your friends are ninnies, and that you draw your conclusions from too little data.I have to admit, I was surprised when the person after me also got modded funny -- I thought it would work for one last post.
My take on it, at least: DNA transcription errors, particularly appropriate since the article itself is a dup...
So this is a separate network, independent of the Internet -- indeed, not even connected. Kind of like a LAN. Perhaps they're planning to run fiber to the door for anyone who wants to use their VR network?
[quote]SCO[/quote] Now there's a name we can all trust.
Don't forget this one.