Not really. A sociopath can have charisma, or they can not. There are just as many sociopaths with good social skills as good math skills, which means there are also quite a few who have bad social skills and EQs.
yeah, programming would probably benefit from people stopping and asking 'if I did not already know the context and answer, would this piece of code still make sense?', which given how often people have trouble reading their own stuff from a few years ago, the answer is often 'no'.
The author is looking at this from a tech geek perspective, trying to find explanations in terms of mathematical or technological influences.
The first big flaw is the author is starting with the assumption that DVDs are less convenient then streaming 'for almost all users'. Only about a 3rd of the country have fixed broadband currently, meaning a significant number of people are poorly served by streaming right out of the gate.... so there is probably a bit of social group blinders going on there.
Moving away from that, I do not think the OP really appreciates how much of a pain in the butt dealing with the contract is. Studios often do not have the simple ability to wave a pen and allow DVDs to be streamed, the original rights were generally not drawn up to include that kind of availability and courts have already decided that 'we have the physical DVDs and stream/rent them out' technical solution does not get around the legal interpretations of streaming services.
That is not to say there is not politics and price fixing thrown in there, but you really can not skip over these two rather major factors and get a complete picture of why. If nothing else there is plenty of politics involved, studios would probably LOVE to stop Netflix renting out physical DVDs but they are legally unable to prevent that, and control over the order of release of a film is a huge deal to studios (it is debatable how much of it is purely circle-jerking power vs real economic benfit, but most people outside the industry are probably not going to have the background to really know).
What makes the entire 'elegant' debate rather futile is how readable a piece of code seems is highly dependent on the person reading it and the stylistic patterns they follow.
On the other hand, one thing art thieves have discovered over the years is that offloading known works of art is actually very difficult and it is not unusual to dump them after years of failed attempts to find a buyer. There is a big market for fairly unknown art/fossil sales, but the really big ticket material is VERY challenging to offload.
Where there were some technological and economic improvements, the tangible difference was community. Oculus managed to connect to a vibrant dev community, and that means that when it hits the more general markets there will already be a rich set of software floating around for it. HMDs often suffered from a chicken and egg problem, few sold because there was little to do with them, and there was little interest in making stuff to do since was no customer base or community.
Actually, I come from a family of hunters and have done so myself, and have known plenty of subsistence hunters who depend on game for feeding their families.
I am just more willing to look the implications in the face and take them seriously rather then pretending they are not there because they might make me feel bad if they have merit.
If we are going to use that as a measuring stick, considering people are calling the current downturn 'Great Depression 2.0' shows just how well newer economic theory has done. We are so spoiled by prosperity we actually consider the current situation to be earth shattering.
And that is kinda the problem. The people who are pushing BTC are using economic models and thinking that were dropped decades ago. That is what makes the movement around it kinda surreal, it is a bit like people trying to bring back crystal spheres or the ether.
We are specifically talking about people who hunt for fun, for the social experience and the enjoyment of tracking down and killing something. Even if they collect the meat and eat it, it is still generally a hobby activity where the primary gain is pleasure, not calories. So this means not just the mental gymnastics necessary to believe animals do not have awareness or feel pain, but taking the additional steps of going through expensive social actives and choosing to go and kill them for fun.
Money. Hunting is 'non-profit', you do it for entertainment (or at minimal, the people who can afford a lobby do it for entertainment). Factory fishing is for-profit, thus anything they do that decreases the cost to consumers and increases their personal wealth is 'ethical'. Same applies to killing animals for purposes of protecting livestock or farmland, pretty much anything goes since wealth=better.
Which is kinda the disturbing part since it speaks to hunters seeing animals as equivalent to those digital representations, no life before the player enters the scene, doesn't feel pain, exists for their amusement.
Which is why, even though it sounds a bit hyperbolic, 'psychopath' is really not that far off. Granted the disorder is only really defined in terms of not having empathy for other humans, history has shown we have a rather sliding scale about what counts as 'like us' and what does not, and all that really varies is where the disconnect is.
Actually, you might be surprised how much of the US population still hunts for food. Granted these are generally poor rural people and thus are poorly represented on the internet and media so they are somewhat invisible, but there is a significant number of them spread around the country and they hunt more frequently then the recreational crowd.
I think we passed that point a long time ago. I imagine it will not be all that long till people start arming drones so they do not even have to go sit in the cold.
I could easily see how traditional 'sales tax' laws could be applied here and probably have a significant positive effect. Even a tiny sales tax would lead to people buying and selling stocks only when there has been significant movement, which *gasp* might actually encourage long term investing.
I guess the point is that just because something is currently legal does not mean it is ethical, and there are many things socially we consider 'criminal' that do not meet the legal definition.
You know, from an economic policy and growth perspective, that might not actually be such a bad idea..... research organizations that are non-profit can already claim tax exempt status, but giving them the same range as religious organizations could really encourage some movement forward.
Yeah... I have a feeling that if the guy actually got what he wanted,... equal time for religious and science views on a topic, he would get the exact opposite of what he hoped and we would see a massive uptick in educational programming.
It should also be noted tat these workers are an excellent example of how poorly "free market" implementations do when they collide with other forces. Foreign workers are cheap for non-economic reasons, employers hold their immigration status over their head, they can squeeze lower wages out of them due to the ever present threat of having to leave the country. Citizens are harder to threaten so you have to pay them closer to what they are worth.
There is also the classic game theory problem here that every industry wants OTHER industries to have well paid domestic workers since those are its customers.
Even worse, probably one of those people who believe the only experience worth having revolves around networking and people skills, everything non-social is replaceable.
The thing is, they are not better. They are cheaper in the short run but bad for companies in the longer term. The problem is that the people making these decisions are insulated from the impact of them, so naturally the people who actually pay the cost of short term thinking take it upon themselves to try to do something about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. A sociopath can have charisma, or they can not. There are just as many sociopaths with good social skills as good math skills, which means there are also quite a few who have bad social skills and EQs.
yeah, programming would probably benefit from people stopping and asking 'if I did not already know the context and answer, would this piece of code still make sense?', which given how often people have trouble reading their own stuff from a few years ago, the answer is often 'no'.
The author is looking at this from a tech geek perspective, trying to find explanations in terms of mathematical or technological influences.
The first big flaw is the author is starting with the assumption that DVDs are less convenient then streaming 'for almost all users'. Only about a 3rd of the country have fixed broadband currently, meaning a significant number of people are poorly served by streaming right out of the gate.... so there is probably a bit of social group blinders going on there.
Moving away from that, I do not think the OP really appreciates how much of a pain in the butt dealing with the contract is. Studios often do not have the simple ability to wave a pen and allow DVDs to be streamed, the original rights were generally not drawn up to include that kind of availability and courts have already decided that 'we have the physical DVDs and stream/rent them out' technical solution does not get around the legal interpretations of streaming services.
That is not to say there is not politics and price fixing thrown in there, but you really can not skip over these two rather major factors and get a complete picture of why. If nothing else there is plenty of politics involved, studios would probably LOVE to stop Netflix renting out physical DVDs but they are legally unable to prevent that, and control over the order of release of a film is a huge deal to studios (it is debatable how much of it is purely circle-jerking power vs real economic benfit, but most people outside the industry are probably not going to have the background to really know).
What makes the entire 'elegant' debate rather futile is how readable a piece of code seems is highly dependent on the person reading it and the stylistic patterns they follow.
On the other hand, one thing art thieves have discovered over the years is that offloading known works of art is actually very difficult and it is not unusual to dump them after years of failed attempts to find a buyer. There is a big market for fairly unknown art/fossil sales, but the really big ticket material is VERY challenging to offload.
Where there were some technological and economic improvements, the tangible difference was community. Oculus managed to connect to a vibrant dev community, and that means that when it hits the more general markets there will already be a rich set of software floating around for it. HMDs often suffered from a chicken and egg problem, few sold because there was little to do with them, and there was little interest in making stuff to do since was no customer base or community.
Actually, I come from a family of hunters and have done so myself, and have known plenty of subsistence hunters who depend on game for feeding their families.
I am just more willing to look the implications in the face and take them seriously rather then pretending they are not there because they might make me feel bad if they have merit.
If we are going to use that as a measuring stick, considering people are calling the current downturn 'Great Depression 2.0' shows just how well newer economic theory has done. We are so spoiled by prosperity we actually consider the current situation to be earth shattering.
And that is kinda the problem. The people who are pushing BTC are using economic models and thinking that were dropped decades ago. That is what makes the movement around it kinda surreal, it is a bit like people trying to bring back crystal spheres or the ether.
Well, if BTC wants to be used as a general or replacement currency, yeah, problems on that time scale matter a great deal.
We are specifically talking about people who hunt for fun, for the social experience and the enjoyment of tracking down and killing something. Even if they collect the meat and eat it, it is still generally a hobby activity where the primary gain is pleasure, not calories. So this means not just the mental gymnastics necessary to believe animals do not have awareness or feel pain, but taking the additional steps of going through expensive social actives and choosing to go and kill them for fun.
Money. Hunting is 'non-profit', you do it for entertainment (or at minimal, the people who can afford a lobby do it for entertainment). Factory fishing is for-profit, thus anything they do that decreases the cost to consumers and increases their personal wealth is 'ethical'. Same applies to killing animals for purposes of protecting livestock or farmland, pretty much anything goes since wealth=better.
Which is kinda the disturbing part since it speaks to hunters seeing animals as equivalent to those digital representations, no life before the player enters the scene, doesn't feel pain, exists for their amusement.
Which is why, even though it sounds a bit hyperbolic, 'psychopath' is really not that far off. Granted the disorder is only really defined in terms of not having empathy for other humans, history has shown we have a rather sliding scale about what counts as 'like us' and what does not, and all that really varies is where the disconnect is.
Actually, you might be surprised how much of the US population still hunts for food. Granted these are generally poor rural people and thus are poorly represented on the internet and media so they are somewhat invisible, but there is a significant number of them spread around the country and they hunt more frequently then the recreational crowd.
I think we passed that point a long time ago. I imagine it will not be all that long till people start arming drones so they do not even have to go sit in the cold.
I could easily see how traditional 'sales tax' laws could be applied here and probably have a significant positive effect. Even a tiny sales tax would lead to people buying and selling stocks only when there has been significant movement, which *gasp* might actually encourage long term investing.
I guess the point is that just because something is currently legal does not mean it is ethical, and there are many things socially we consider 'criminal' that do not meet the legal definition.
5 minutes for every religion..... there would not be enough time in the day ^_^
You know, from an economic policy and growth perspective, that might not actually be such a bad idea..... research organizations that are non-profit can already claim tax exempt status, but giving them the same range as religious organizations could really encourage some movement forward.
Yeah... I have a feeling that if the guy actually got what he wanted,... equal time for religious and science views on a topic, he would get the exact opposite of what he hoped and we would see a massive uptick in educational programming.
It should also be noted tat these workers are an excellent example of how poorly "free market" implementations do when they collide with other forces. Foreign workers are cheap for non-economic reasons, employers hold their immigration status over their head, they can squeeze lower wages out of them due to the ever present threat of having to leave the country. Citizens are harder to threaten so you have to pay them closer to what they are worth.
There is also the classic game theory problem here that every industry wants OTHER industries to have well paid domestic workers since those are its customers.
Even worse, probably one of those people who believe the only experience worth having revolves around networking and people skills, everything non-social is replaceable.
The thing is, they are not better. They are cheaper in the short run but bad for companies in the longer term. The problem is that the people making these decisions are insulated from the impact of them, so naturally the people who actually pay the cost of short term thinking take it upon themselves to try to do something about it.
In other words, it is sound advice for go-go 80s CEOs who can not plan past the next quarter.
The same could be asked for why anyone would take down perfectly good, functioning servers to upgrade them to 3?