First off, I think 'no contest' is an exagerration. There's a premium on the Macs, for sure, but it's really not such a huge one. By the time you add on the stuff that comes standard on the Mac but not on the competition the margin is a lot smaller than it used to be. And that's in the desktop realm - for laptops, Apple actually seems to have the advantage these days.
Secondly, you're completely right that the problem they're facing is one of volume, 'economy of scale.' Apples production is way too small to compete with the x86 world there. But, they've gone more and more to things like PCI and AT disk drives lately, which mitigates that to a large part. Many of their components do come from the commodity hardware world these days, and benefit from that economy of scale. Mostly what's left is the processor. And with IBM using the PPC chips in more products, with Linux working well on them, even the production of PPC chips is starting to come around - it's not just Apple using them, and the volume is growing and shows every sign it will continue to do so. At the same time, the x86 world is stagnating a bit - most folks in the western world that need or want a computer have one, and there's really no rational reason to upgrade - any machine made in the past 5 years is 100 times as powerful as it really needs to be to handle the average users demands anyway.
So I don't think the economy of scale problems, and hence the price problems, are nearly as big right now as they have been in the past, and I think they're getting smaller, not larger.
That said, if they ported Windows to PPC it wouldn't make me switch to windows. Would it make me switch to PPC? I already have a mixed bag, one Intel, one AMD, one PPC. If a Windows port to PPC resulted in increased volume for IBMs production lines, that would result in greater economy of scale and thus lower cost, and increase the odds that the next box I'd buy would be PPC. But I'd sure as hell never put windows on it.
and IMHO, with the exception of the coloration and the stone paddles, these "new" primates seem to resemble the grey gorillas in Michael Crichton's (sp?) Congo quite well
Hardly surprising - his book was inspired by the same tales that brought researchers to the same area, looking for the same creatures.
RTFA. Not an æsthetic decision. Patrick is sick and tired of struggling with GNOME compilation, which is by all accounts a bear, and Slack users that want GNOME haven't been using his builds for awhile anyway. They use Dropline, so there's not really much point in Patrick spending so much time wrestling with GNOME to get it to compile.
With all the FUD that's been floating around about Steam, the AC could have elaborated a bit more. If you don't want to get hit by an "overrated" tag, then don't post one-liners that can be confused with something that's "overrated".
The overrated tag, imop, points quite simply to a cowardly moderator trying to shut down a point of view he disagreed with.
When I transferred over to Steam, I didn't have to pay a dime because I already purchased Half-Life.
No, you didn't have to pay a dime. Neither did I. I, too, bought half life (in fact, I bought it twice.)
The point is not the monetary cost, but the cost in terms of unconscionable conditions, a shoddy product, and most importantly a bait and switch routine. Think about it. We bought half life. I don't know about you, but I bought it for counterstrike, period. The 'regular' game I may have played for 20 minutes, total, it sucks - I paid my money to play counterstrike, and so did a lot of other people. Then, without us having any choice in the matter, that game that we bought and played was made nonfunctional. Sure, we get a 'free' (in monetary terms) 'upgrade' to Steam - but what if we don't want it? What if we would rather keep the game that we bought and paid for instead of accepting a substitute that we may or may not like as well, which in any case comes with a new set of conditions, which requires us to run a 'content delivery system' which takes away our control of our own system? Now if you like that deal, fine, take it. But I don't, many others don't, and Valve has no right to take away the game we already paid them for and offer a substitute that we do not want instead.
And you're wrong, that is indeed what they did. Steamless and several other projects have attempted to hack past the actions, with some very small amounts of success, but that doesn't change the fact that they intentionally shut down 1.5 and insisted that everyone had to move to Steam.
From Valves point of view, perhaps. It gives them complete control over your game.
From the point of view of anyone else - of players, server operators, and modders, it's quite the opposite of progress.
And regardless of whether you like it or not, there's something fundamentally wrong with it, morally. I and many others paid for this game, and Valve made the game we paid for unplayable, overnight, without our permission. Even if Steam was wonderful (it's not) and the new CS really r0xxors (it doesn't, I've seen it and played it at a friends and I don't see anything great about it at all) I would STILL not play it, and I would still be boycotting Valve. It's simply not acceptable to treat your customers like this. Ever.
This is precisly why I don't want anything to do with Steam or any other similar technology. Anyone who falls for this is a complete sucker. They get you to install software they have almost complete control over... what did you think they'd do next?
This was posted AC (score 0) and within a few minutes modded down to -1 (overrated.)
Just what's overrated there? Even if it wasn't a particularly good post, at score 0 it was hardly 'overrated.'
In fact I thought it was a very good post. It's exactly what I'm thinking. When they made it impossible to play CS anymore without selling your soul for Steam, I quit playing it. If I were a rich man who could afford to throw thousands of dollars away on a principle, I would have sued them for it - I paid for a game that they then proceeded to make unplayable unless I signed away my rights on a new deal where they hold all the cards.
Am I and the 'overrated' AC above really the only people that care about such issues? Is everyone else here really happy to go along with whatever lopsided agreement some company wants out of them, as long as they get the pretty flashing lights to entertain them?
I guess anyone that fits that description is indeed a 'sucker' and will get what he deserves.
So, the only way to effectively survive in this type of enviroment is to assume if something looks legit, take the first steps and let the two third parties deal with it on their own
The problem here is that the bar for 'looks legit' here seems to be incredibly low. An email from a hotmail account making an allegation, with no evidence to back it up, 'looks legit?' I don't think so.
In such a situation I would think the minimum would be a certified letter with specific allegations, and some sort of evidence showing that the complainant does have a valid copyright, and the material in question does come under it. Anything less should be sent to the bitbucket.
Of course, there's another issue underneath this one - the ISP shouldn't be involved here at all, if there's a legitimate complaint the customer should be sued, and the only involvement with the ISP should be a court order to identify a particular customer. That's where the bad law issue is. But even with the bad law, the ISP shouldn't be jumping to cut off service to its customers based on unsubstantiated and undocumented allegations. I know they can't, realistically, go around making a decent investigation of every complaint - which is why they should simply bitbucket anything that doesn't come with some evidence - which the complaints in this case did not do.
It's not necessary, it's simply lazy programming. You can use a COM object that's bundled with IE and save yourself some programming time here - but if you do, you make sure your application is broken for those of us that have gone to the trouble of removing IE from our windows boxes - that is to say, anyone that's the slightest bit concerned about security.
This is hilarious, if I hadn't already posted in this thread I'd give you a funny mod for sure.
Funny thing is, I'm pretty sure I heard the same story, only from 'Jennifer.' Or at least one or two very similar stories.
They do make it as hard as possible to cancel. Not only do they make you dial a special cancellations number, which is not published, and barely staffed, they also put the poor saps that work that particular line in a very tough spot - they are supposed to talk you out of cancelling, and if they cancel too many accounts in a day they will be fired. They get bonuses for NOT cancelling - even though they're answering a line that is for cancellations only, and one where the simple fact that the customer has the number to dial indicates they've already waded through a lot of shit to get there, so they're pretty determined.
I doubt that giving you porn numbers is official policy, but having seen the incredibly disrespectful ways that AOL reps are required to treat customers that want to quit, I wouldn't really be surprised.
You're correct, the system overall doesn't in any way serve rural areas. But the Electoral college, and the Senate, were *intended* to give rural areas a boost, to prevent their interests from being totally lost and the country being ruled exclusively to suit citydwellers. Which is how it turned out despite that effort, of course, but that was the thought.
But to argue, as Cobb and the grandparent poster seem to, that attempting to protect the interest of rural folks is 'racist' is really, I think, a reductio ad absurdum of the whole concept of majoritarian democracy. It always boils down to the oppression of the minority by the majority, and that the worship of democracy these days has reached the fever pitch where any attempt to reign in the power of the majority is met with cries of 'racism' or other slur words really speaks volumes about the bankruptcy of the entire concept.
The world ends for more and more American soldiers and their families each month because we are in Iraq. President Bush put us in Iraq.
And Kerry says he'll put the kibosh on the Iraqi elections, a plan guaranteed to turn the few Iraqis that aren't already actively supporting the insurgents to their side. Kerry says we shouldn't 'back off in Fallujah' - which can only be interpreted as saying we should bomb it into dust, killing every man woman and child in the place, since pretty much everything short of that has already been attempted and failed. Kerry says ""I have a plan for Iraq. I believe we can be successful. I'm not talking about leaving. I'm talking about winning." (This was all from the 'debate.')
So, yes, I agree completely that GWB needs to be removed from office. But Kerry as an alternative? That's a rigged choice, it's no choice at all. Kerry may well turn out to be, not just every bit as bad, but even worse.
When the election is simply a choice between two war criminals, both of which are publically commited to pursuing ruinous and evil policies that the majority of electorate rejects, voting is nothing but a sham. It's no different from the old-style communist elections where you only had one candidate - here you have two, with no real difference between them. Frankly, voting for a third party candidate, or not voting at all, looks to me like a better choice than voting for either one of these scallywags.
Also keep in mind that we're apparently talking about less than a half dozen lines of code, doing something rather obvious that can't really be done too many different ways. It's my understanding that this is probably not copyrightable to begin with.
Mr. Bdnarik will not be running this country. He will have no more voice after the election then you or I. Either George Bush or John Kerry will be running the country.
Exactly. No matter who you vote for, one of these goons is going to win. You just disproved your own point.
If you care how this country will be run vote for one of them.
No, that's the one thing I certainly won't do. No way in hell will I give sanction to either of these war criminals.
"Reps and Dems are the same for all intents and purposes."
I think the last election proved once and for all just exactly how misguided and wrong this sentiment is. There is a profound difference between Bush and Kerry, if you can't see it then you are blind.
Umm no, it proved exactly how correct that statement was, actually.
Mr. Cobb. Given that you're on record saying you won't even vote for yourself if your state is close, how can anyone possibly take you seriously as a candidate for President? Given that it seems you won the nomination over Nader by taking this position, how can your party be seen as anything but an astroturf campaign for the Democrats?
Okay, I like your replies. It's nice to debate with an adult every now and then on/.
Indeed. It's rarer than in the old days, but it still happens.
Not that you are still convincing me over...
Well my girlfriend is a hopelessly deluded socialist, and if I can't convince her I shan't hope to convince you, but if at least I can get both of you to open your eyes to the fact that a decent person can be in favour of this, without being mentally defective or ill-informed, I figure planting that seed is job 1.
In Enron's case? NONE!!! The people who were ripped off WERE the shareholders (AND employees).
Did I say 'audits specifically looking for the officers trying to defraud the shareholders and employees?' Umm. No. Just audits, period. Doesn't matter what they're looking for, what matters is simply that they pay attention. The Enron deal was a massive case of no one paying the slightest attention, of everyone assuming that everything was fine. And, again, I certainly can't guarantee that sort of thing won't happen, again and again and again. It's been happening for a very long time. But I do think that without limited liability laws and the rest, you'd see a lot more people paying a lot more attention.
This argument is such a red herring that I can't believe someone reasonable as you are arguing for it.
I watched the two people I loved most in this world die slowly. I live with chronic pain every day of my life. I don't consider it a red-herring, at all.
How could flooding the market with drugs that don't work, and even worse, kill you faster be of ANY help to these people?
Where did I advocate that?
I didn't.
I advocate letting me, and anyone else that needs help, to look for that help as we see fit, rather than forbidding, under force of law, people from offering us any help that the FDA hasn't approved.
Would I have a dozen sharks peddling snake oil to me the next day? Probably. Would that be legal? Doubtful. Snake-oil salesmen usually make promises that amount to *fraud* which is quite illegal, FDA or not.
Fraud is notoriously difficult to prosecute, of course. And it should be - it revolves around facts that are difficult to demonstrate, and the burden of proof lays on the accuser. Hence 'caveat emptor.' And also hence 'thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live'... but that's really neither here nor there.
You want folks to check these things out so you don't have to? You don't need the FDA for that. Look at consumer reports. You don't think a similar group, or three, would come about very quickly with the FDA monopoly out of the way?
The difference would be, the private versions would have no *power* - only influence over those that choose to trust them. This would give them incentives to compete. And it would leave me free to evaluate as many choices as possible, and to try the ones I want. Instead of being limited to only the ones that the monopoly FDA says are ok. I could read reports myself, weigh the possible downsides against my needs, and make my own decision.
If you prefer not to put so much thought into your choices on the matter, that's fine ('rational ignorance' is rational, after all, and even if it weren't it would be your choice) but don't you dare tell me I can't take a chance because YOU or some beaureacrat that has no knowledge of me or my condition or my needs has determined already that it's no good. Or worse yet, because it's unpatentable and therefore no one has any incentive to cough up millions and millions of dollars to do the tests the FDA requires on it. If I want to test it, that's my choice.
And after this little fiasco with Iraq, do you really believe that media has the people's best interest (cheerleaders for the industry is more like it)? How about their report
First off you're conflating power and wealth. They are, in effect, pretty much the same. They would not be a libertarian system. This is a key point to the whole programme that you just don't seem to be getting. The rich are powerful now, because they can buy politicians and politicians can make laws and the cops run around with guns enforcing those laws. Restore some real limitation on the politicians ability to make whatever nonsense enters their head into law, and suddenly that money doesn't buy you power nearly so efficiently, does it?
You seem to be saying, for example, it is healthy to have 10 stores all selling electronics.
That's another fundamental misunderstanding. How many electronic stores are optimal in your area? I don't know. I know one way to find out, but it requires a free market.
At any rate, what is important is not having 10, or 20, or 100, or 2 stores, but having a situation where there is no artificial barrier to entry into the market.
But what I see in the marketplace is one huge superstore moving in town and all the other smaller mom and pop stores closing.
And there are several factors there. One is economy of scale. Most of the others have to do with regulations. The libertarian ideal here is simply to eliminate the second set - so that the big shop has to compete economically, rather than using bought politicians to secure an 'edge.'
Maybe one superstore comes to town, offers everything you want at a lower price, isn't that a good thing?
It's a little sad if the other stores go out of business, maybe, but unless you're willing to pay higher prices just to support them you really don't have any room to bitch. (And, if you do willingly pay higher prices to support them, it doesn't take too many like you to keep the best of them in business - which happens.)
But then, let's say, there's nothing wrong with the big store, big selection, low prices, all their competitors go out of business. What happens?
They raise prices, of course. And what happens next?
In a free market, they get new competition very quickly. The less free the market becomes, the higher they can raise their prices before the competition reappears. It's really as simple as that.
If they're smart, they'll raise their prices only as much as they can without making it viable for someone else to compete. And the freer the market is, the lower that amount will be. In a totally free market, the only cost of entry is practical stuff like a storefront and some inventory - very low. In a less free market, you have to add the cost of paper compliance - and the less free the market is, the higher that artificial boost to the cost of entry is, and therefore the higher the rent the big store can gouge you for before it makes sense for someone to start a competing store.
'Mom and Pops', btw, are far from extinct, even with the massively artificial boost to the cost of entry in most markets, because they offer things that the big stores don't. That's not always enough, and in some markets it's more effective than others - but in any market, lowering barriers to entry means giving Mom and Pops a better chance.
My understanding of the libertarian party is they want no laws.
You're absolutely 100% wrong then. Libertarians want a society that respects the law - and a law that respects the people. When the law turns into a tool that is used by one to break another, by the rich to oppress the poor (and the poor to oppress the middle class) and a bludgeon used by one group against another in general, people lose respect for the law, and the law doesn't respect the people. The point is to have fair, objective, and minimal laws - things like 'don't kill' 'don't steal' and 'don't rape' rather than 'fill in all the information our beaureacrats ask you for on time, comply with every directive from every agency and file sworn affidavits that you have
If you've read The Jungle (which is closest thing to investigative journalism at the time), how could you guarantee something like that won't happen again without regulation?
Let's get one thing straight. You can't guarantee bad things won't happen. No one can - you can't, I can't, no one can.
What you're doing here is trying to sneak in an impossible yardstick to judge opposing oppositions, while never subjecting your own, never explicated solution, to such a yardstick.
Bad things happen every day. Bad things have happened since long before recorded history began. Bad things, sadly, are likely to continue happening for the forseeable future.
So don't tell me that getting rid of the FDA is an idea that should be rejected because bad things might occur. Bad things are occuring right now, with the FDA larger and better funded and more powerful than ever before. The question is, how can we minimise bad things in the future. Not how we can end them. The answer to the latter is, we can't.
The chances of this sort of thing happening go down very quickly with economic progress past the level we were at when he wrote. Today, food processors charge large premiums for food products produced to strict standards, attest those standards with special seals of certification they have to pay more to be certified for, and consumers eat it up. A plant like Sinclair wrote about would be on the tv news and in the papers very shortly, today, and every restaurant and grocery in the developed world would be scrambling to swear that they didn't deal with them in short order. If they ever existed in the first place - I'm sure those places, at that time, were quite horrific, but Sinclair was also a rather obvious propogandist and it's not hard to believe he exaggerated a bit here and there to make his points. Either way, such a state of affairs could only have existed because it was a time when simply having something to eat was more important to most people than any thought of potential problems in its preparation. That is no longer the case, in any developed country at least. It is economic development that eliminates such practices, not regulatory agencies who sometimes manage to appear at the right time with the right pose to take credit.
Greater threat? Excuse me? I think putting drug manufacturers through trials to prove its efficacy and safety is worthwhile trade for longer development time
People whose loved ones have died while waiting for the FDA to be satisfied may disagree. People whose loved ones died, are dying, will die... or who live with chronic pain or difficulties, because of the market distortions caused by FDA regulations, by patent law, and other monopolistic practices, may disagree.
Do you have any idea how much it costs to get a treatment approved by the FDA? I can tell you it's more than enough to make sure that no one has any financial interest in qualifying any therapy they can't get a patent on. There are an enourmous wealth of natural and/or obvious treatments out there, that could save lives, that could relieve suffering, that will never ever be approved because no one can patent them, no one can get a legal monopoly on them to ensure they make up the costs of testing.
What exactly is so wrong with allowing those of us that wish to take our chances on things the FDA has not and will not approved from doing so?
Name me the limitied liability law that prevents the Enron investors from suing Ken Lay.
I don't believe there is one, although his lawyers certainly get a lot of mileage out of 'compliance with SEC regulations' if you pay attention. But that wasn't the point at all.
In a regime where shareholders were liable for corporate actions, how much more incentive would there have been for large shareholders, or groups of small ones, to have external auditors take a look at those books now and then? How much incent
There is no requirement that ships pass those straits in order for oil to get to almost anywhere in the world. Routing around them simply increases the costs. There are a ton of different solutions to this problem.
Yes, you can have a hegemonist patrol them. That's one solution. It's relatively expensive, both directly and indirectly, but it does, for the most part, achieve the objective you have.
You could also simply route around them. As I said, doable, but at increased costs.
The governments that actually have authority over the waters could patrol them too. Trouble is, they don't see any easy way to make money back out of it to pay their costs, right? Well, not exactly. They *might* see such incentives, if the job wasn't already taken by the hegemon.
But if the hegemon leaves, and they don't? What's to stop the companies that ship oil through there from funding patrols themselves? Remove any legal problems with the idea, and all that's left is that it might be cheaper to re-route them. And frankly, if it is, that's fine with me. No need to pay another 10 cents a litre for petrol to pay for those patrols if 8 cents a litre is all you have to pay to route around it.
This is the beauty of markets, and the reason that people that actually *get* them can sometimes seem a bit obsessed to those who don't. A market here can determine which course of action is most efficient, and if not interfered with will result in several courses of action being taken by different actors, the most efficient one winning out, and also in the actors and potential actors regularly re-assessing the situation and shifting resources to a new optimal course of action when the situations change. A government, immune to the market, simply cannot and will never be able to show that sort of sensitivity. A government will choose a single course of action, maybe the optimal one, maybe not, and will periodically consider changing strategies (if we're very lucky,) but in the end it does all these things based on guesses and opinions and ideology and completely unrelated political considerations... and on all sorts of other basises, but being insulated to the costs of its actions, the one basis it will never and can never use is the one basis that is the most rational and results in the greatest good for the greatest number - cost.
Some people just don't study much history, do they? I think books like "The Jungle" should be a required reading for all citizens.
Actually anyone that knows me will tell you I've read way too much history. Mr. James best known work I have also read - although it's not exactly history.
There is a VERY good reason why FDA exists.
Yes, there is. Doesn't mean it was the best imaginable response to the problem, and doesn't mean that it hasn't evolved over time to become a greater threat than the one it was meant to counter.
As to Enron and the rest - you are the one that is obviously in need of some education. Look into that case a little closer, and then come back and tell me how common that would be in a system where there were no regulatory agencies and no limited-liability rules to shield the perpetrators of such fraud.
Would such things still happen? Of course. If you come up with a way to stop them completely, short of a return to the stone age, please let me know. Until then, I'd be quite happy if the perpetrators had to face liability for their actions without layer after layer of federal and state shielding. I'd be happy if those perpetrators lost every penny to partially compensate the victims, and every other corporate officer and shareholder in the company got an object lesson to discourage them from being a part of, or passively allowing, such things to happen with their company in the future.
Maybe I'm generalizing too far, but from your post and the responses of Badnarik I do sense an implicit belief that the legal system is capable of making all the right decisions that the (federal) government is incapable of.
You are reading far too much into it indeed.
I agree that the division between legislative, executive, and judicial branches is a good idea. And if all you're saying is that the libertarian solution here would not be perfect - we're in total agreement. There is, unfortunately, no perfect solution - unless you believe in direct rule by an omniscient being I suppose, but in that case it's long past time she needs to show up and set us straight.
Bad things would happen under the rules libertarians propose. The point is simply that, in the long run, these things would be self-limiting - when the rich have to take responsibility for their actions without hiding behind regulatory agencies and legal fictions, it's suddenly in their best interest to be careful. And, on the consumer side, when people are no longer being taught this nonsense about the FDA and the like taking care of these things so they don't have to worry about it, they may also learn to be a little more careful and critical as well.
A world where pharmaceutical companies enjoy no regulatory shelter and no limited liability protections would be a world where the officers and owners of those companies have solid reasons of self-interest to be careful. A world where both the companies and the consumers are more careful would be a world with fewer (not none, but fewer, particularly in the long run) horrific 'mistakes.'
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First off, I think 'no contest' is an exagerration. There's a premium on the Macs, for sure, but it's really not such a huge one. By the time you add on the stuff that comes standard on the Mac but not on the competition the margin is a lot smaller than it used to be. And that's in the desktop realm - for laptops, Apple actually seems to have the advantage these days.
Secondly, you're completely right that the problem they're facing is one of volume, 'economy of scale.' Apples production is way too small to compete with the x86 world there. But, they've gone more and more to things like PCI and AT disk drives lately, which mitigates that to a large part. Many of their components do come from the commodity hardware world these days, and benefit from that economy of scale. Mostly what's left is the processor. And with IBM using the PPC chips in more products, with Linux working well on them, even the production of PPC chips is starting to come around - it's not just Apple using them, and the volume is growing and shows every sign it will continue to do so. At the same time, the x86 world is stagnating a bit - most folks in the western world that need or want a computer have one, and there's really no rational reason to upgrade - any machine made in the past 5 years is 100 times as powerful as it really needs to be to handle the average users demands anyway.
So I don't think the economy of scale problems, and hence the price problems, are nearly as big right now as they have been in the past, and I think they're getting smaller, not larger.
That said, if they ported Windows to PPC it wouldn't make me switch to windows. Would it make me switch to PPC? I already have a mixed bag, one Intel, one AMD, one PPC. If a Windows port to PPC resulted in increased volume for IBMs production lines, that would result in greater economy of scale and thus lower cost, and increase the odds that the next box I'd buy would be PPC. But I'd sure as hell never put windows on it.
Try here.
Hardly surprising - his book was inspired by the same tales that brought researchers to the same area, looking for the same creatures.
That's just a gorilla.
RTFA. Not an æsthetic decision. Patrick is sick and tired of struggling with GNOME compilation, which is by all accounts a bear, and Slack users that want GNOME haven't been using his builds for awhile anyway. They use Dropline, so there's not really much point in Patrick spending so much time wrestling with GNOME to get it to compile.
The overrated tag, imop, points quite simply to a cowardly moderator trying to shut down a point of view he disagreed with.
No, you didn't have to pay a dime. Neither did I. I, too, bought half life (in fact, I bought it twice.)
The point is not the monetary cost, but the cost in terms of unconscionable conditions, a shoddy product, and most importantly a bait and switch routine. Think about it. We bought half life. I don't know about you, but I bought it for counterstrike, period. The 'regular' game I may have played for 20 minutes, total, it sucks - I paid my money to play counterstrike, and so did a lot of other people. Then, without us having any choice in the matter, that game that we bought and played was made nonfunctional. Sure, we get a 'free' (in monetary terms) 'upgrade' to Steam - but what if we don't want it? What if we would rather keep the game that we bought and paid for instead of accepting a substitute that we may or may not like as well, which in any case comes with a new set of conditions, which requires us to run a 'content delivery system' which takes away our control of our own system? Now if you like that deal, fine, take it. But I don't, many others don't, and Valve has no right to take away the game we already paid them for and offer a substitute that we do not want instead.
And you're wrong, that is indeed what they did. Steamless and several other projects have attempted to hack past the actions, with some very small amounts of success, but that doesn't change the fact that they intentionally shut down 1.5 and insisted that everyone had to move to Steam.
Progress?
From Valves point of view, perhaps. It gives them complete control over your game.
From the point of view of anyone else - of players, server operators, and modders, it's quite the opposite of progress.
And regardless of whether you like it or not, there's something fundamentally wrong with it, morally. I and many others paid for this game, and Valve made the game we paid for unplayable, overnight, without our permission. Even if Steam was wonderful (it's not) and the new CS really r0xxors (it doesn't, I've seen it and played it at a friends and I don't see anything great about it at all) I would STILL not play it, and I would still be boycotting Valve. It's simply not acceptable to treat your customers like this. Ever.
This was posted AC (score 0) and within a few minutes modded down to -1 (overrated.)
Just what's overrated there? Even if it wasn't a particularly good post, at score 0 it was hardly 'overrated.'
In fact I thought it was a very good post. It's exactly what I'm thinking. When they made it impossible to play CS anymore without selling your soul for Steam, I quit playing it. If I were a rich man who could afford to throw thousands of dollars away on a principle, I would have sued them for it - I paid for a game that they then proceeded to make unplayable unless I signed away my rights on a new deal where they hold all the cards.
Am I and the 'overrated' AC above really the only people that care about such issues? Is everyone else here really happy to go along with whatever lopsided agreement some company wants out of them, as long as they get the pretty flashing lights to entertain them?
I guess anyone that fits that description is indeed a 'sucker' and will get what he deserves.
The problem here is that the bar for 'looks legit' here seems to be incredibly low. An email from a hotmail account making an allegation, with no evidence to back it up, 'looks legit?' I don't think so.
In such a situation I would think the minimum would be a certified letter with specific allegations, and some sort of evidence showing that the complainant does have a valid copyright, and the material in question does come under it. Anything less should be sent to the bitbucket.
Of course, there's another issue underneath this one - the ISP shouldn't be involved here at all, if there's a legitimate complaint the customer should be sued, and the only involvement with the ISP should be a court order to identify a particular customer. That's where the bad law issue is. But even with the bad law, the ISP shouldn't be jumping to cut off service to its customers based on unsubstantiated and undocumented allegations. I know they can't, realistically, go around making a decent investigation of every complaint - which is why they should simply bitbucket anything that doesn't come with some evidence - which the complaints in this case did not do.
It's not necessary, it's simply lazy programming. You can use a COM object that's bundled with IE and save yourself some programming time here - but if you do, you make sure your application is broken for those of us that have gone to the trouble of removing IE from our windows boxes - that is to say, anyone that's the slightest bit concerned about security.
This is hilarious, if I hadn't already posted in this thread I'd give you a funny mod for sure. Funny thing is, I'm pretty sure I heard the same story, only from 'Jennifer.' Or at least one or two very similar stories.
They do make it as hard as possible to cancel. Not only do they make you dial a special cancellations number, which is not published, and barely staffed, they also put the poor saps that work that particular line in a very tough spot - they are supposed to talk you out of cancelling, and if they cancel too many accounts in a day they will be fired. They get bonuses for NOT cancelling - even though they're answering a line that is for cancellations only, and one where the simple fact that the customer has the number to dial indicates they've already waded through a lot of shit to get there, so they're pretty determined.
I doubt that giving you porn numbers is official policy, but having seen the incredibly disrespectful ways that AOL reps are required to treat customers that want to quit, I wouldn't really be surprised.
You're correct, the system overall doesn't in any way serve rural areas. But the Electoral college, and the Senate, were *intended* to give rural areas a boost, to prevent their interests from being totally lost and the country being ruled exclusively to suit citydwellers. Which is how it turned out despite that effort, of course, but that was the thought.
But to argue, as Cobb and the grandparent poster seem to, that attempting to protect the interest of rural folks is 'racist' is really, I think, a reductio ad absurdum of the whole concept of majoritarian democracy. It always boils down to the oppression of the minority by the majority, and that the worship of democracy these days has reached the fever pitch where any attempt to reign in the power of the majority is met with cries of 'racism' or other slur words really speaks volumes about the bankruptcy of the entire concept.
And Kerry says he'll put the kibosh on the Iraqi elections, a plan guaranteed to turn the few Iraqis that aren't already actively supporting the insurgents to their side. Kerry says we shouldn't 'back off in Fallujah' - which can only be interpreted as saying we should bomb it into dust, killing every man woman and child in the place, since pretty much everything short of that has already been attempted and failed. Kerry says ""I have a plan for Iraq. I believe we can be successful. I'm not talking about leaving. I'm talking about winning." (This was all from the 'debate.')
So, yes, I agree completely that GWB needs to be removed from office. But Kerry as an alternative? That's a rigged choice, it's no choice at all. Kerry may well turn out to be, not just every bit as bad, but even worse.
When the election is simply a choice between two war criminals, both of which are publically commited to pursuing ruinous and evil policies that the majority of electorate rejects, voting is nothing but a sham. It's no different from the old-style communist elections where you only had one candidate - here you have two, with no real difference between them. Frankly, voting for a third party candidate, or not voting at all, looks to me like a better choice than voting for either one of these scallywags.
Also keep in mind that we're apparently talking about less than a half dozen lines of code, doing something rather obvious that can't really be done too many different ways. It's my understanding that this is probably not copyrightable to begin with.
Exactly. No matter who you vote for, one of these goons is going to win. You just disproved your own point.
No, that's the one thing I certainly won't do. No way in hell will I give sanction to either of these war criminals.
I think the last election proved once and for all just exactly how misguided and wrong this sentiment is. There is a profound difference between Bush and Kerry, if you can't see it then you are blind.
Umm no, it proved exactly how correct that statement was, actually.
Mr. Cobb. Given that you're on record saying you won't even vote for yourself if your state is close, how can anyone possibly take you seriously as a candidate for President? Given that it seems you won the nomination over Nader by taking this position, how can your party be seen as anything but an astroturf campaign for the Democrats?
Indeed. It's rarer than in the old days, but it still happens.
Well my girlfriend is a hopelessly deluded socialist, and if I can't convince her I shan't hope to convince you, but if at least I can get both of you to open your eyes to the fact that a decent person can be in favour of this, without being mentally defective or ill-informed, I figure planting that seed is job 1.
Did I say 'audits specifically looking for the officers trying to defraud the shareholders and employees?' Umm. No. Just audits, period. Doesn't matter what they're looking for, what matters is simply that they pay attention. The Enron deal was a massive case of no one paying the slightest attention, of everyone assuming that everything was fine. And, again, I certainly can't guarantee that sort of thing won't happen, again and again and again. It's been happening for a very long time. But I do think that without limited liability laws and the rest, you'd see a lot more people paying a lot more attention.
I watched the two people I loved most in this world die slowly. I live with chronic pain every day of my life. I don't consider it a red-herring, at all.
Where did I advocate that?
I didn't.
I advocate letting me, and anyone else that needs help, to look for that help as we see fit, rather than forbidding, under force of law, people from offering us any help that the FDA hasn't approved.
Would I have a dozen sharks peddling snake oil to me the next day? Probably. Would that be legal? Doubtful. Snake-oil salesmen usually make promises that amount to *fraud* which is quite illegal, FDA or not.
Fraud is notoriously difficult to prosecute, of course. And it should be - it revolves around facts that are difficult to demonstrate, and the burden of proof lays on the accuser. Hence 'caveat emptor.' And also hence 'thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live'... but that's really neither here nor there.
You want folks to check these things out so you don't have to? You don't need the FDA for that. Look at consumer reports. You don't think a similar group, or three, would come about very quickly with the FDA monopoly out of the way?
The difference would be, the private versions would have no *power* - only influence over those that choose to trust them. This would give them incentives to compete. And it would leave me free to evaluate as many choices as possible, and to try the ones I want. Instead of being limited to only the ones that the monopoly FDA says are ok. I could read reports myself, weigh the possible downsides against my needs, and make my own decision.
If you prefer not to put so much thought into your choices on the matter, that's fine ('rational ignorance' is rational, after all, and even if it weren't it would be your choice) but don't you dare tell me I can't take a chance because YOU or some beaureacrat that has no knowledge of me or my condition or my needs has determined already that it's no good. Or worse yet, because it's unpatentable and therefore no one has any incentive to cough up millions and millions of dollars to do the tests the FDA requires on it. If I want to test it, that's my choice.
First off you're conflating power and wealth. They are, in effect, pretty much the same. They would not be a libertarian system. This is a key point to the whole programme that you just don't seem to be getting. The rich are powerful now, because they can buy politicians and politicians can make laws and the cops run around with guns enforcing those laws. Restore some real limitation on the politicians ability to make whatever nonsense enters their head into law, and suddenly that money doesn't buy you power nearly so efficiently, does it?
That's another fundamental misunderstanding. How many electronic stores are optimal in your area? I don't know. I know one way to find out, but it requires a free market.
At any rate, what is important is not having 10, or 20, or 100, or 2 stores, but having a situation where there is no artificial barrier to entry into the market.
And there are several factors there. One is economy of scale. Most of the others have to do with regulations. The libertarian ideal here is simply to eliminate the second set - so that the big shop has to compete economically, rather than using bought politicians to secure an 'edge.'
Maybe one superstore comes to town, offers everything you want at a lower price, isn't that a good thing?
It's a little sad if the other stores go out of business, maybe, but unless you're willing to pay higher prices just to support them you really don't have any room to bitch. (And, if you do willingly pay higher prices to support them, it doesn't take too many like you to keep the best of them in business - which happens.)
But then, let's say, there's nothing wrong with the big store, big selection, low prices, all their competitors go out of business. What happens?
They raise prices, of course. And what happens next?
In a free market, they get new competition very quickly. The less free the market becomes, the higher they can raise their prices before the competition reappears. It's really as simple as that.
If they're smart, they'll raise their prices only as much as they can without making it viable for someone else to compete. And the freer the market is, the lower that amount will be. In a totally free market, the only cost of entry is practical stuff like a storefront and some inventory - very low. In a less free market, you have to add the cost of paper compliance - and the less free the market is, the higher that artificial boost to the cost of entry is, and therefore the higher the rent the big store can gouge you for before it makes sense for someone to start a competing store.
'Mom and Pops', btw, are far from extinct, even with the massively artificial boost to the cost of entry in most markets, because they offer things that the big stores don't. That's not always enough, and in some markets it's more effective than others - but in any market, lowering barriers to entry means giving Mom and Pops a better chance.
You're absolutely 100% wrong then. Libertarians want a society that respects the law - and a law that respects the people. When the law turns into a tool that is used by one to break another, by the rich to oppress the poor (and the poor to oppress the middle class) and a bludgeon used by one group against another in general, people lose respect for the law, and the law doesn't respect the people. The point is to have fair, objective, and minimal laws - things like 'don't kill' 'don't steal' and 'don't rape' rather than 'fill in all the information our beaureacrats ask you for on time, comply with every directive from every agency and file sworn affidavits that you have
Let's get one thing straight. You can't guarantee bad things won't happen. No one can - you can't, I can't, no one can.
What you're doing here is trying to sneak in an impossible yardstick to judge opposing oppositions, while never subjecting your own, never explicated solution, to such a yardstick.
Bad things happen every day. Bad things have happened since long before recorded history began. Bad things, sadly, are likely to continue happening for the forseeable future.
So don't tell me that getting rid of the FDA is an idea that should be rejected because bad things might occur. Bad things are occuring right now, with the FDA larger and better funded and more powerful than ever before. The question is, how can we minimise bad things in the future. Not how we can end them. The answer to the latter is, we can't.
The chances of this sort of thing happening go down very quickly with economic progress past the level we were at when he wrote. Today, food processors charge large premiums for food products produced to strict standards, attest those standards with special seals of certification they have to pay more to be certified for, and consumers eat it up. A plant like Sinclair wrote about would be on the tv news and in the papers very shortly, today, and every restaurant and grocery in the developed world would be scrambling to swear that they didn't deal with them in short order. If they ever existed in the first place - I'm sure those places, at that time, were quite horrific, but Sinclair was also a rather obvious propogandist and it's not hard to believe he exaggerated a bit here and there to make his points. Either way, such a state of affairs could only have existed because it was a time when simply having something to eat was more important to most people than any thought of potential problems in its preparation. That is no longer the case, in any developed country at least. It is economic development that eliminates such practices, not regulatory agencies who sometimes manage to appear at the right time with the right pose to take credit.
People whose loved ones have died while waiting for the FDA to be satisfied may disagree. People whose loved ones died, are dying, will die... or who live with chronic pain or difficulties, because of the market distortions caused by FDA regulations, by patent law, and other monopolistic practices, may disagree.
Do you have any idea how much it costs to get a treatment approved by the FDA? I can tell you it's more than enough to make sure that no one has any financial interest in qualifying any therapy they can't get a patent on. There are an enourmous wealth of natural and/or obvious treatments out there, that could save lives, that could relieve suffering, that will never ever be approved because no one can patent them, no one can get a legal monopoly on them to ensure they make up the costs of testing.
What exactly is so wrong with allowing those of us that wish to take our chances on things the FDA has not and will not approved from doing so?
I don't believe there is one, although his lawyers certainly get a lot of mileage out of 'compliance with SEC regulations' if you pay attention. But that wasn't the point at all.
In a regime where shareholders were liable for corporate actions, how much more incentive would there have been for large shareholders, or groups of small ones, to have external auditors take a look at those books now and then? How much incent
There is no requirement that ships pass those straits in order for oil to get to almost anywhere in the world. Routing around them simply increases the costs. There are a ton of different solutions to this problem.
Yes, you can have a hegemonist patrol them. That's one solution. It's relatively expensive, both directly and indirectly, but it does, for the most part, achieve the objective you have.
You could also simply route around them. As I said, doable, but at increased costs.
The governments that actually have authority over the waters could patrol them too. Trouble is, they don't see any easy way to make money back out of it to pay their costs, right? Well, not exactly. They *might* see such incentives, if the job wasn't already taken by the hegemon.
But if the hegemon leaves, and they don't? What's to stop the companies that ship oil through there from funding patrols themselves? Remove any legal problems with the idea, and all that's left is that it might be cheaper to re-route them. And frankly, if it is, that's fine with me. No need to pay another 10 cents a litre for petrol to pay for those patrols if 8 cents a litre is all you have to pay to route around it.
This is the beauty of markets, and the reason that people that actually *get* them can sometimes seem a bit obsessed to those who don't. A market here can determine which course of action is most efficient, and if not interfered with will result in several courses of action being taken by different actors, the most efficient one winning out, and also in the actors and potential actors regularly re-assessing the situation and shifting resources to a new optimal course of action when the situations change. A government, immune to the market, simply cannot and will never be able to show that sort of sensitivity. A government will choose a single course of action, maybe the optimal one, maybe not, and will periodically consider changing strategies (if we're very lucky,) but in the end it does all these things based on guesses and opinions and ideology and completely unrelated political considerations... and on all sorts of other basises, but being insulated to the costs of its actions, the one basis it will never and can never use is the one basis that is the most rational and results in the greatest good for the greatest number - cost.
Actually anyone that knows me will tell you I've read way too much history. Mr. James best known work I have also read - although it's not exactly history.
Yes, there is. Doesn't mean it was the best imaginable response to the problem, and doesn't mean that it hasn't evolved over time to become a greater threat than the one it was meant to counter.
As to Enron and the rest - you are the one that is obviously in need of some education. Look into that case a little closer, and then come back and tell me how common that would be in a system where there were no regulatory agencies and no limited-liability rules to shield the perpetrators of such fraud.
Would such things still happen? Of course. If you come up with a way to stop them completely, short of a return to the stone age, please let me know. Until then, I'd be quite happy if the perpetrators had to face liability for their actions without layer after layer of federal and state shielding. I'd be happy if those perpetrators lost every penny to partially compensate the victims, and every other corporate officer and shareholder in the company got an object lesson to discourage them from being a part of, or passively allowing, such things to happen with their company in the future.
You are reading far too much into it indeed.
I agree that the division between legislative, executive, and judicial branches is a good idea. And if all you're saying is that the libertarian solution here would not be perfect - we're in total agreement. There is, unfortunately, no perfect solution - unless you believe in direct rule by an omniscient being I suppose, but in that case it's long past time she needs to show up and set us straight.
Bad things would happen under the rules libertarians propose. The point is simply that, in the long run, these things would be self-limiting - when the rich have to take responsibility for their actions without hiding behind regulatory agencies and legal fictions, it's suddenly in their best interest to be careful. And, on the consumer side, when people are no longer being taught this nonsense about the FDA and the like taking care of these things so they don't have to worry about it, they may also learn to be a little more careful and critical as well.
A world where pharmaceutical companies enjoy no regulatory shelter and no limited liability protections would be a world where the officers and owners of those companies have solid reasons of self-interest to be careful. A world where both the companies and the consumers are more careful would be a world with fewer (not none, but fewer, particularly in the long run) horrific 'mistakes.'
What have you been smoking? That is the fundamental insight behind Libertarianism.