I think that's a bit of a gray area. It's unfair to not classify Konqueror and Safari as different browsers just because they use the same rendering engine. I would probably consider a wrapper for the IE6 Active-X control which created tabbed browsing to be a *different* browser. I'm not sure exactly where to draw the line though.
I remember reading somewhere, and someone will surely correct me on the numbers, but Walton had 4 kids and when he died he left his fortune to them. Each of them immediately rose to being in the top 10 richest in the world. That's wild.
Well the average real wage in the US has been on steady decline for over 30 years. I would assume the average real wage in every developing country (China, India, Latin America, etc.) has gone up significantly over the same period of time, not sure how it balances out. Also inflation comes into play quite a bit.
When you have as much money as these guys have it's pretty hard to concentrate it in only a few choices period, much less bad ones:) Buffet often laments that his company has so much money that it's difficult to maintain good returns through investments.
Is it? Wikipedia has information about Tienanmen Square which was a Chinese government incident that it does not allow to have information be published about. Sure, the Chinese people are all aware of basically what happened, but you can't find good reliable information about it. How is this fundamentally different than the U.S. censoring its torture documents? We all basically know what happened but getting reliable detailed information is impossible. If Wikipedia had reliable information about that torture the government would start arresting people in a heart beat.
Sure, the Chinese government may be *worse* about it, but diet evil is still evil.
Google is probably trying to win the "good will" of the Chinese people by being a vocal advocate for them. It certainly wins good will from me to see Google publicly fighting censorship in China. As a result I, and presumably many Chinese, will be willing to exchange some of my information so that Google can profit from it. If the culture of Google changes and I become aware of any serious breaches of my privacy (beyond the little I willingly give up) then I will simply change my home page and block the domain causing Google to disappear from my world in a matter of moments.
Call me when they try to enforce it. It's just good policy to file defensive patents on seemingly stupid things. It stinks that the system is designed so that it's good policy, but it is good policy nonetheless.
Why don't you try to get uncensored documents about the US government torturing Guantanamo prison inmates? Why don't you try a FOIA request for what is being requested by the Homeland Security letters? How about warrant-less wiretaps?The freedom of information is an illusion in the United States. Our government has figured out that letting us talk openly about things is pretty harmless when we don't have access to any of the really damaging information about government activity.
Noise ordinances are a perfect example of where discretion in enforcement is perfectly viable IMO. The penalties for breaking the noise ordinances need to be high enough that it's *painful* for people are committing repeated egregious acts of noise pollution, but there's no real issue if your neighbor is having a party and happens to have the volume dial up one notch too many and they comply when a cop asks them to turn the volume down. I don't consider this corruption at all and is probably enforced exactly the way in which the lawmakers intended.
I think you're crazy if you believe that the 13-20 crowd is even vaguely aware of the concept of online security. In my experience they view privacy and security as hurdles, not assets, for the products they use online.
What you're saying is counter to numerous examples in nature of a parent dying to protect their young. Generally speaking for any herd-type animal there are a lot of behaviors which benefit the group but might not be beneficial to the individual doing that behavior. Also there's a huge difference between competition and "screw the entire community over for my personal gain" that you apparently aren't seeing. What you're expressing is "unnatural" behavior.
Conspiracy theory #1: Google wouldn't let the NSA in (as much as NSA wanted). NSA makes it look like someone in China hacked Google. NSA comes to the rescue in exchange for protection money.
People are claiming that the car will suddenly accelerate at random times. The gas pedal getting stuck does not cause sudden acceleration. It causes a fairly consistent speed. Don't get me wrong, there may *also* be a sticking issue. But a sticking issue does not make sense given the widely used description of the problem.
It's a myth that flying has become all that dangerous. When getting on an airplane the idea that a terrorist is going to blow it up isn't even on the list of statistically relevant things to worry about. If something does happen it's been shown that people understand what is coming and are unwilling to let another 9/11 style attack go down. Hijacking an airplane is no longer a serious concern and won't be probably for the next generation.
I agree with everything you said. Where we disagree I guess is that we feel that this should be fixed. Smart people in poor conditions will sometimes be able to claw their way up to better conditions and that's wonderful for them. It also has almost nothing to do with formal public education. Until we eliminate the need for jobs which require no abstract thought we will need to produce a lot of people who are incapable of abstract thought. We need a lot of conformers who are willing to deal with relatively poor conditions. If you think that's not part of the design I think you're kidding yourself.
Here's a clue. "Smart" kids would have learned a lot whether they went to school or not. "Dumb" kids won't learn no matter how much school you put them through. It would be nice if we were all destined to be doctors or engineers but the system is designed to create people who will be adequate janitors and factory workers too.
The reason people like Apple so much is because outside of Apple there is too much choice. It creates a paradox of choice and makes it difficult to find/choose a good product. Apple has limited the world of choices to one or two options for a particular task and have at least done some basic vetting of those choices to make sure they meet most peoples' needs.
I personally do not find apple products appealing because I'm a tinkerer by nature and want to have a universe of choice for my phone, OS, applications, etc. Most people, it turns out, don't want to concern themselves with all of those annoying choices and just want a widget that does exactly what they want and they want to find it with as little hassle as possible.
..because they nickle and dime you to death with cheap peripherals, and people buy them.
Generally speaking the peripherals you mentioned are geared towards different markets. Wii fit and its platform is really popular with moms. The Wii motion plus is popular with FPS players (young men), the "put this thing on the wii-mote so it looks like a golf club" type stuff is generally for the younger kid crowd. The success of the Wii is that it markets to many different demographics. It's going to be unlikely that all of those peripherals would be purchased for the same person, even if they happen to be purchased within the same household. Meanwhile the XBox 360 and Playstation 3 are still focused almost solely on the young male crowd. That's fine and all, but it's unfair to suggest that any single demographic targeted by the Wii must purchase a bunch of peripherals. Besides, those cheesy peripherals are part of the fun.
I think the business model would have to change to get developers more interested in their work. Generally speaking sales people and developers are at opposite ends of the social spectrum and while I can't say for certain that sales people dislike developers, developers generally have a disdain for sales/marketing staff. Meanwhile when the developer creates the new whizbang feature the salesman is able to sell a million more units and gets a huge bonus. The developer, if he is lucky, will get the standard slop every other employee gets. It does happen, but it's rare to see developers get rewarded for great work. They're lucky if they get a 4% raise instead of the standard 2.5% everyone else gets.
It depends largely on what is being used for the task at hand. I've had both "brain" jobs and "physical" jobs and I could easily toil away for 10 hours a day for months on end doing mindless physical labor. When I have "brain" work to do I can generally get about 4-6 hours of tough work done with occasional surges, but then I get wiped out for a few weeks. I also require more sleep after doing "brain" work than doing "physical" work.
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I think that's a bit of a gray area. It's unfair to not classify Konqueror and Safari as different browsers just because they use the same rendering engine. I would probably consider a wrapper for the IE6 Active-X control which created tabbed browsing to be a *different* browser. I'm not sure exactly where to draw the line though.
That's just because verizon chose, on their own volition, to give you that DNS name. There's no standard for naming, and you could be using a proxy.
Whoosh!
I remember reading somewhere, and someone will surely correct me on the numbers, but Walton had 4 kids and when he died he left his fortune to them. Each of them immediately rose to being in the top 10 richest in the world. That's wild.
Well the average real wage in the US has been on steady decline for over 30 years. I would assume the average real wage in every developing country (China, India, Latin America, etc.) has gone up significantly over the same period of time, not sure how it balances out. Also inflation comes into play quite a bit.
Yes, but in all fairness... we have Detroit.
When you have as much money as these guys have it's pretty hard to concentrate it in only a few choices period, much less bad ones :) Buffet often laments that his company has so much money that it's difficult to maintain good returns through investments.
Sure, the Chinese government may be *worse* about it, but diet evil is still evil.
Google is probably trying to win the "good will" of the Chinese people by being a vocal advocate for them. It certainly wins good will from me to see Google publicly fighting censorship in China. As a result I, and presumably many Chinese, will be willing to exchange some of my information so that Google can profit from it. If the culture of Google changes and I become aware of any serious breaches of my privacy (beyond the little I willingly give up) then I will simply change my home page and block the domain causing Google to disappear from my world in a matter of moments.
Call me when they try to enforce it. It's just good policy to file defensive patents on seemingly stupid things. It stinks that the system is designed so that it's good policy, but it is good policy nonetheless.
Why don't you try to get uncensored documents about the US government torturing Guantanamo prison inmates? Why don't you try a FOIA request for what is being requested by the Homeland Security letters? How about warrant-less wiretaps?The freedom of information is an illusion in the United States. Our government has figured out that letting us talk openly about things is pretty harmless when we don't have access to any of the really damaging information about government activity.
Noise ordinances are a perfect example of where discretion in enforcement is perfectly viable IMO. The penalties for breaking the noise ordinances need to be high enough that it's *painful* for people are committing repeated egregious acts of noise pollution, but there's no real issue if your neighbor is having a party and happens to have the volume dial up one notch too many and they comply when a cop asks them to turn the volume down. I don't consider this corruption at all and is probably enforced exactly the way in which the lawmakers intended.
I think you're crazy if you believe that the 13-20 crowd is even vaguely aware of the concept of online security. In my experience they view privacy and security as hurdles, not assets, for the products they use online.
What you're saying is counter to numerous examples in nature of a parent dying to protect their young. Generally speaking for any herd-type animal there are a lot of behaviors which benefit the group but might not be beneficial to the individual doing that behavior. Also there's a huge difference between competition and "screw the entire community over for my personal gain" that you apparently aren't seeing. What you're expressing is "unnatural" behavior.
I would suggest reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Looking out for ones self at the peril of the group is actually quite unusual in nature.
Conspiracy theory #1: Google wouldn't let the NSA in (as much as NSA wanted). NSA makes it look like someone in China hacked Google. NSA comes to the rescue in exchange for protection money.
People are claiming that the car will suddenly accelerate at random times. The gas pedal getting stuck does not cause sudden acceleration. It causes a fairly consistent speed. Don't get me wrong, there may *also* be a sticking issue. But a sticking issue does not make sense given the widely used description of the problem.
It's a myth that flying has become all that dangerous. When getting on an airplane the idea that a terrorist is going to blow it up isn't even on the list of statistically relevant things to worry about. If something does happen it's been shown that people understand what is coming and are unwilling to let another 9/11 style attack go down. Hijacking an airplane is no longer a serious concern and won't be probably for the next generation.
I agree with everything you said. Where we disagree I guess is that we feel that this should be fixed. Smart people in poor conditions will sometimes be able to claw their way up to better conditions and that's wonderful for them. It also has almost nothing to do with formal public education. Until we eliminate the need for jobs which require no abstract thought we will need to produce a lot of people who are incapable of abstract thought. We need a lot of conformers who are willing to deal with relatively poor conditions. If you think that's not part of the design I think you're kidding yourself.
Here's a clue. "Smart" kids would have learned a lot whether they went to school or not. "Dumb" kids won't learn no matter how much school you put them through. It would be nice if we were all destined to be doctors or engineers but the system is designed to create people who will be adequate janitors and factory workers too.
The reason people like Apple so much is because outside of Apple there is too much choice. It creates a paradox of choice and makes it difficult to find/choose a good product. Apple has limited the world of choices to one or two options for a particular task and have at least done some basic vetting of those choices to make sure they meet most peoples' needs.
I personally do not find apple products appealing because I'm a tinkerer by nature and want to have a universe of choice for my phone, OS, applications, etc. Most people, it turns out, don't want to concern themselves with all of those annoying choices and just want a widget that does exactly what they want and they want to find it with as little hassle as possible.
..because they nickle and dime you to death with cheap peripherals, and people buy them.
Generally speaking the peripherals you mentioned are geared towards different markets. Wii fit and its platform is really popular with moms. The Wii motion plus is popular with FPS players (young men), the "put this thing on the wii-mote so it looks like a golf club" type stuff is generally for the younger kid crowd. The success of the Wii is that it markets to many different demographics. It's going to be unlikely that all of those peripherals would be purchased for the same person, even if they happen to be purchased within the same household. Meanwhile the XBox 360 and Playstation 3 are still focused almost solely on the young male crowd. That's fine and all, but it's unfair to suggest that any single demographic targeted by the Wii must purchase a bunch of peripherals. Besides, those cheesy peripherals are part of the fun.
It's the same as the rest of the searches at the airports, security theater.
I think the business model would have to change to get developers more interested in their work. Generally speaking sales people and developers are at opposite ends of the social spectrum and while I can't say for certain that sales people dislike developers, developers generally have a disdain for sales/marketing staff. Meanwhile when the developer creates the new whizbang feature the salesman is able to sell a million more units and gets a huge bonus. The developer, if he is lucky, will get the standard slop every other employee gets. It does happen, but it's rare to see developers get rewarded for great work. They're lucky if they get a 4% raise instead of the standard 2.5% everyone else gets.
It depends largely on what is being used for the task at hand. I've had both "brain" jobs and "physical" jobs and I could easily toil away for 10 hours a day for months on end doing mindless physical labor. When I have "brain" work to do I can generally get about 4-6 hours of tough work done with occasional surges, but then I get wiped out for a few weeks. I also require more sleep after doing "brain" work than doing "physical" work.