I found this article saying that Gore overstates the case somewhat in may cases and backs up its facts with references: http://www.reason.com/news/show/116471.html
All in all, I still have no idea to what extent human activity has contributed to global warming. To my mind it makes sense to look to renewable energy sources that cause less pollution anyway, simply because the oils going to run out and pollution obviously impacts on health. In our current political framework, I don't see how that's going to happen.
Can anyone name a job for which a CS degree is the best qualification?
A PhD in Computer Science?
Seriously, most CompSci graduates come out of their degrees and start hacking code. For the most part that wasn't what a CompSci degree was trying to teach them, it was trying to teach them to be Scientists (hence the name), to do original research.
Most people would probably be better off doing something like a Computer Engineering course. In that case teach them some Discrete maths, the majority are unlikely to need Calculus. Things like graph theory are best covered in an algorithms course, where they will practice programming at the same time.
Individuals may be free-market true belivers corporations are not, corporations are entities designed to maximise profit not promote a particular belief system.
The original poster claimed that this was an example of capitalism in action.
This is clearly not the case.
The fact that a corporation is willing to take advantage of the monopoly-socialist handouts from the government doesn't change the fact that this is not "capitalism".
I guess what I'm saying is that this is entirely how I would expect a corporation to act with capitalistic motives. To take the maximum advantage of the legal system in order to maximise profit. I can't really blame Sony, I can blame our governments and legal system for allowing itself to be manipulated perhaps. But I'm not even sure about that.
Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are mostly privately owned, and capital is invested in the production, distribution and other trade of goods and services, for profit in a competitive free market.
An externally enforced monopoly is not part of a free market.
How do you feel a monopoly is being externally enforced?
The problem, as I see it, is that large corporations are able to exert a large amount of pressure on the government and public opinion, which is entirely what I'd expect them to do, they are after all trying to maximise proft. I guess I see that as almost a inevitable result of a capitalistic system.
In a free market there would be no mechanism for Sony to put LikSang out of business other than refusing to sell a product to them. This isn't capitalism, it's some kind of bizarre twist on protectionism by proxy.
But how do you mitigate against this without additional regulation? In a sense we have a free market, ``price is determined by unregulated supply and demand'' it's just that due to their size large corporations have a huge advantage. How can this be mitigated against without additional regulation?
Ahem... no capitalism per se would be competition... sueing someone who cannot defent himself due to lack of legal funds and thus opening a monopoly governmental granted is on the borderline to communisn/faschism/oligarchism, you name it same thing different roots!
In a capitalistic system a corporation will take full advantage of the legal system to secure profits. They will also attempt to alter government policy if this proves profitable. The corporation will attempt to stifle competition and subvert the political process. That may mean you no longer have a democracy but I don't see how it means you have a communist system.
Also, what is oligarchism? Do you have a reference, I'd be interested in learning about it.
In a capitalist system corporations do whatever is require to maximise profit. If government intervention maximises profit so be it. They operate purely on this single pragmatic principle. If they lobby against government intervention they do so in the belief that this will, in the long term, maximise profit.
Government intervention usually leads to regulation, which is anathema to free-market true believers.
Individuals may be free-market true belivers corporations are not, corporations are entities designed to maximise profit not promote a particular belief system.
He meant mercantilist system, but I blame the American education system, which conflates the two.
I don't get it. A mercantilist system appears to be "an economic theory which holds that the prosperity of a nation depends upon its supply of capital, and that the global volume of trade is unchangeable.". That not really what I'm implying. Would a capitalist really argue that the state should not moderate the actions of industry? That for example corporations should be allowed to commit murder? Doesn't sound much like a requirement of being a capitalist to me. Perhaps Anarcho-capitalism which rejects the concepts of state but not capitalism per se.
We live in a capitalist system. In such a system if Sony can sue the ass off LikSang, and they feel that will increase their revenue, then they should.
You're an idiot; a true capitalist would never resort to using the court system to achieve their goals. The courts are representatives of the government, after all, and capitalists want governments to stay out of business matters entirely.
From wikipedia (the definitive source of all human knowledge):
Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are mostly privately owned, and capital is invested in the production, distribution and other trade of goods and services, for profit in a competitive free market.
In a capitalist system corporations do whatever is require to maximise profit. If government intervention maximises profit so be it. They operate purely on this single pragmatic principle. If they lobby against government intervention they do so in the belief that this will, in the long term, maximise profit.
We live in a capitalist system. In such a system if Sony can sue the ass off LikSang, and they feel that will increase their revenue, then they should. However capitalism only works if you have a strong legal system that protects the public at large. We should really be blaming our governments and our legal system for allowing this to happen.
Yeah isn't that true. Don't you just love searching for documentation or at minimum a FAQ or HowTo for an application, then posting to the list for the location of the documentation only to get no useful reply, then follow up asking for specifics on how to do (n) with the tool, then you get blasted and told to RTFM. Then, post back that if there WERE a FM to R, that you'd have RTFMed already and wouldn't be posting a question for some wiseass to post a snarky RTFM reply. At that, you'll be told to WTFM, which is senseless because you don't know how to DO (n) because there is no FM to R, so telling you to WTFM is fruitless, or they point you at a wiki which is nothing but a skeleton consisting of Feature (N) : To be written later.
Emergence had a good section on Internet forum dynamics. IIRC the basic conclusion was that in a real life discussion people present but not actively participating in the provide feedback to the group (expressions gestures etc.) that you know, whoever's talking is being a pain. This doesn't happen in Internet forums, and nobody it willing to speak up and say "look your being a pain, chill out". Many we should.
I take a screenshot of secondlife containing object, larger than 50% of the screen which is texture mapped with a photo? Is that allowed? Hmm!
Or what if the object is texture mapped with a photo of my computer screen with secondlife running containing an object texture mapped with a photo of my comp... [Error Stack Overflow]
it's not as horrific as I thought I'd be! Granted most of them are technically infeasible at least for mass production, would be annoying to use or are just pointless, but I was expecting a lot worse.
Certainly some of them look less retarded than some of the things nokia come up with.
I have a solution, however. The problem is there are too many lawyers. They have no natural predator, as it were. I propose,then, a lawyer hunting season. Say, from Sept to March. Trophies are based on bank account size.
I suggest we create a race of anti-clone (lawyers are obviously clones) Reywals. Being anti-clones when they come in to contact with the lawyers they will both wink out of existence in a puff of unsmoke.
This is slashdot, someones got to get my slightly obscure 80s scifi reference right?
Sorry this is probably redundant but I wanted add the specifics.
Why isn't there any game where you ride a surfboard realistically?
Because games aren't about realistic simulations they are about fun. The majority of gamers wouldn't like a realistic surfboard simulation.
Why do meteorologists use the most powerful number crunching systems in the world to be wrong in 50% of the cases when predicting weather a week ahead?
Because weather systems are chaotic systems. Simply throwing more compute power at this problem isn't going to solve it.
And what about artificial intelligence and neural networks? Find me a CPU that can do a decent OCR, or speech recognition. What about parsing natural language? Why can't I search in Google by abstract concepts, instead of isolated words?
Show me good solutions to these problems that take a long time, and would become practical by speeding them up. In my understanding Computer Vision papers (unless dealing with real time problems) mostly benchmark by how accurate the recognition was rather than how fast, so it shouldn't be a problem. Truth is we're simply not good enough at AI yet.
No matter how powerful CPUs are, they are still ridiculously inadequate for a large range of real world problems. When you go beyond textbook examples, one still needs to squeeze every bit of performance that only optimized compilers can get.
This may be true. Nothing you've said supports it.
true, but to be honest you could say the same things about any operating system/software you don't have the source code to and/or hasn't been given independent security checks. You have no guarantee that it isn't going to phone home and give away all your data at some point.
At the end of the day, if those sort of concerns are important to you, you should probably only be connecting to the Internet through an extremely strict firewall, if at all.
I find it hard to believe that targeted advertising or Tivo problems couldn't be solved more easily by just say having more accurate listings information...
Slashdot Mirror
I found this article saying that Gore overstates the case somewhat in may cases and backs up its facts with references: http://www.reason.com/news/show/116471.html All in all, I still have no idea to what extent human activity has contributed to global warming. To my mind it makes sense to look to renewable energy sources that cause less pollution anyway, simply because the oils going to run out and pollution obviously impacts on health. In our current political framework, I don't see how that's going to happen.
Seriously, most CompSci graduates come out of their degrees and start hacking code. For the most part that wasn't what a CompSci degree was trying to teach them, it was trying to teach them to be Scientists (hence the name), to do original research.
Most people would probably be better off doing something like a Computer Engineering course. In that case teach them some Discrete maths, the majority are unlikely to need Calculus. Things like graph theory are best covered in an algorithms course, where they will practice programming at the same time.
Brain Eno not Fripp designed the Windows 95 sound...
Where was the stuff about creating an open-google? I didn't see anything like that.
The summary doesn't mention that you have to pay at least 25GBP to become a member.
We live in a capitalist system. In such a system if Sony can sue the ass off LikSang, and they feel that will increase their revenue, then they should. However capitalism only works if you have a strong legal system that protects the public at large. We should really be blaming our governments and our legal system for allowing this to happen.
Sure, but I think you have to shoot them in the head first.
I take a screenshot of secondlife containing object, larger than 50% of the screen which is texture mapped with a photo? Is that allowed? Hmm!
Or what if the object is texture mapped with a photo of my computer screen with secondlife running containing an object texture mapped with a photo of my comp... [Error Stack Overflow]
Probably Ferengi
it's not as horrific as I thought I'd be! Granted most of them are technically infeasible at least for mass production, would be annoying to use or are just pointless, but I was expecting a lot worse.
Certainly some of them look less retarded than some of the things nokia come up with.
It does raise an interesting point, should you effectively boycott a company because of the restrictions the government puts on it?
I suggest we create a race of anti-clone (lawyers are obviously clones) Reywals. Being anti-clones when they come in to contact with the lawyers they will both wink out of existence in a puff of unsmoke.
This is slashdot, someones got to get my slightly obscure 80s scifi reference right?
I beg to differ! Physics research here. And this was OBVIOUSLY the intended use of the iPod sock!
cd music
mplayer *
for it's speed...
Because games aren't about realistic simulations they are about fun. The majority of gamers wouldn't like a realistic surfboard simulation.
Because weather systems are chaotic systems. Simply throwing more compute power at this problem isn't going to solve it.
Show me good solutions to these problems that take a long time, and would become practical by speeding them up. In my understanding Computer Vision papers (unless dealing with real time problems) mostly benchmark by how accurate the recognition was rather than how fast, so it shouldn't be a problem. Truth is we're simply not good enough at AI yet.
This may be true. Nothing you've said supports it.
true, but to be honest you could say the same things about any operating system/software you don't have the source code to and/or hasn't been given independent security checks. You have no guarantee that it isn't going to phone home and give away all your data at some point.
At the end of the day, if those sort of concerns are important to you, you should probably only be connecting to the Internet through an extremely strict firewall, if at all.
I find it hard to believe that targeted advertising or Tivo problems couldn't be solved more easily by just say having more accurate listings information...