Good post. I think, in a similar way, this is why patents should only apply to a *means* and not to and end. That is, you should be able to patent *how* a problem is solved, but not *that* a problem is solved, so you can allow people to explore other ways to solve it. Case in point: the one-click patent. Patents *shouldn't* prevent others from figuring out how to streamline online purchases to one click, and so that end (being able to buy with one click) shouldn't be patentable.
It's nice that people won't take advantage of any opportunity to sell the drugs at a steep discount in "poor and needy countries" by re-importing them into wealthier countries.
Oh wait...
I sympathize with a lot of the criticism of drug companies, but you have to ask, what would you do differently? Like Mr. Underbridge said, universities are ill-suited to bringing the theoretical work to the market. Remember, they can currently cut out the middleman and try to fabricate and market the drugs themselves, but genereally don't. They'd run into the same problem the drug companies do: not just getting FDA approval, and finding out how to cheaply manufacture it, but also convincing the mouth-breathing public and complacent doctors why their way is better. And if there were no patents, drug companies would offer a lot less for the universities' research.
I've thought about and researched a number of ways to profit from a new drug without patents, but most of them sound infeasible. For example, you could buy the appropriate market instruments that would be affected by the invention and then give it away for free. Say, your drug makes a heart valve obsolete, so you short the stock of all of its makers. But even optimistically, this would significantly reduce the profitability of life-saving drugs.
That's been my feeling as well. Someone sent me a link to someone's myspace site a few months back, and when I got there, someone had just completely trashed the page. Everything was just strewn all over the place without any rhyme or reason. Whoever defaced the site also made some crappy music download and play whether you wanted to hear it or no and with no obvious way to silence it. If you clicked on a link to go anywhere, it would for some reason just take you to a login screen. WTF?
What blank axolotl said. This is a new technology. It can only handle a limited set of signals, since it only reads from a small number of inputs. Give it time, and miniaturization will allow it to handle more and eventually be faster than typing.
Your question is kind of like asking the people working on ENIAC, hey, wouldn't it be a lot easier just to train a computer to find the right panel on a multiplication table?
Until I read a series of papers about global climate change, papers that publish all of their source data, algorithms used in simulations, justifications for the use of those algorithms, and statistical analysis by qualified statisticians, I will refrain from forming a solid opinion one way or the other
That's kind of been a sticking point to me. Ideally, in any scientific field, if someone predicts something is going to happen based on a computer model, anyone should be able to audit the entire source code and all assumptions (including formulas and scientific laws) going into the model, and each assumption should have a justification and a link to any evidence used as a basis for it. Anyone should be able to run the model with their own changes. Science is "all about open source" everywhere else. (It's not what you know, it's what you can repeat.)
That's quite a bit to ask of course, so it's understandable if it can't be done everywhere. But when major policy changes could be made based on it? Well, then there's no excuse.
(No, the link you're about to post doesn't count. Re-read the requirements.)
"Jimbo Jimbo Jimbo omg the Wikipedia article says Sinbad's dead!!! What do we do what do we do?????" "Calm down, calm down. Just follow Wikipedia procedure. First, is Sinbad dead?" *long pause* "Okay, done. Now what?"
That's because on CSI, if they were ever in a case like this, they would just take a picture of the fingerprint and then digitially enhance the image until it's a perfect match. Duh.
Okay, I think I've built up enough upmods to post to this story again.
Each to their own, but it was GRUB that failed, not Ubuntu. I do understand that Ubuntu installed GRUB, but GRUB isn't Ubuntu.
Do you understand the thirty times I explained that the Grub failure is not what bothers me, but the software design surrounding it? I understand if Grub fails. I do not understand if the forums expect me to use troubleshooting tools that were never recommended to have ready before beginning the install. I do not understand the extreme negative consequences are not warned of, for Grub. I do not understand HIGHLY RECOMMENDING the wiping of the MBR when you can install on a separate drive with far less risk.
Objectively: I've had the/exact/ same issues with WinNT, Win2k, WinXP and a handful of Linux distros.
Once the MS boot loader is dead
Not objective. The difference is that Ubuntu is desperate for a user base, Windows is not. Sad, but true.
The point is, the boot loader has to be on the booting drive (primary master, normally). So if you left it in, in order for the new OS to be an option on boot (which most people installing would automatically want), it has to edit the MBR on the primary disc.
And what happens if you leave it out? It finds a different drive to boot from. And it can use the MBR on that drive. I could have set the Linux OS to load whenever the tertiary hard drive is booted from.
1) Turn on computer. 2) Hit F8. 3) Select tertiary hard drive. 4) Avoid losing week of computer usage and driving 200 miles to fix problem when Grub fails.
Or I could have it set so that selecting a CD drive loads the Linux OS.
Remember, Grub does not load until after I tell the computer which drive to boot from. How did I get back into the install screen, again?
The lessons you should have learnt from your experience is that a) leaving your only other bootable harddrive in when testing a new OS is a Bad ThingTM and that b) always having a bootable disc (CD, floppy, USB, whatever) available when messing with the part that makes your computer works is a Good ThingTM.
No, the lesson I got from this is:
"The Ubuntu website, if it were really intending to be an OS for all, utterly failed in basic design by not HIGHLY RECOMMENDING that you have a LiveCD or your original OS install CD ready when you try to install. If it can't even get that part right, it's hopeless."
And again -- I do accept personal responsibility for being stupid enough to believe the crap on the Ubuntu site. But what does that mean, exactly? It means responsible people should know better than to do what the Ubuntu website says.
I'm not trying to preach to you, or call you an idiot;
I wish the same were true in reverse. (Sorry, you set yourself up for that one:-P )
I've seen you post this thread around a few times, though, and I get the impression you're overly-passionate about the issue and need to realise that these things happen.
Again, my over-passion is due to my revulsion at poor design, and it wasn't the bad event that bothers me, but failure of the design to adequately mitigate it.
If your goal, however, is to promote caution and improved warnings for people trying out Linux for the first time, then I commend you.
Improved warnings, yes. Improved caution, no. Remember, I had boatloads of caution. Why do you think I set aside a large block of time for the install in case something went wrong? Why did I buy a new HD for it? Why did I research user-friendliness of distros? Why did I do EVERYTHING that was HIGHLY RECOMMENDED and nothing that wasn't?
Because I was cautious. That and $5 will get you a cup of coffee, but it won't do **** if you're not already an Ubuntu expert who knows to do all the stuff that the download site doesn't mention.
But ask yourself: is this really a matter of "oops, f
I was thinking recently: if I could get the credit card cycle beginning right, I could defer payment on any electricity I buy for 110 days. (55 days from first day of electricity billing cycle to due date, 55 days from beginning of credit card to its due date.) If I use it steadily for the whole month, that's on average 95 days still, or about a quarter (of a year).
So, if there were a way to convert electricity into roughly its monetary value, I could put it in a money market account for (on average) 95 days, and then keep the interest that accrued. (5% per year at today's money market rates)
So, anyone know if you can charge enough for PS3 computing cycles for this to be worth it?
HSBC is the very same bank that is most heavily exposed to the subprime market right now, which is under a lot of stress, needless to say. When I read the summary, I was thinking, "Yeah, HSBC sure knows how to save money..."
Nah, I still think it's better for them to do non-violent direct action ramming of whaling boats, non-violent direct action boarding of ships at sea (which no one will mistake for piracy), and non-violent direct action deafening of exchange floor traders.
Technology can improve productivity? Really? And, I always thought steam power was a step backward.
Steam powered textile looms weren't much more productive than cottage-based home production through the spinning jenny, the latter was just legislated away. Spade cultivation is much more efficient than the plow or mechanization, it's just more labor intensive. Everyone would be better off growing their own vegetables at home. Joint-stock and investment bank funding of ventures has never lead to better innovation than what would have persisted without, because it skews the incentive structure. Roads have only benefitted the extremely wealthy. [/crank]
Why are we still in an age where doctors transmit prescription info to pharmacists with a nearly ineligible scrawl? Why are pharmacists still taking classes to learn how to read these? Why is it still possible to administer prescription/hospital medication without a computerized check for excessive dosage, drug interactions, and medical condition interaction. (e.g., "Hey, you just prescripted 20 times the highest typical dosage. You sure about that?")
Why does GE's health care division run ads bragging about how the accomplished the insurmountable task of... computerizing records?
Why aren't expert-type systems routinely used at doctors' offices?
Why do doctors act like you're Satan if you ask questions based on knowledge you've gathered on the internet about your condition?
I could go on and on. Yes, health care has advanced technologically, but we still have multi-million dollar MRI machines next to doctors communicating by scribble and no clue about how to do CBA's for the whole process.
If you were able to produce energy from renewable sources at prices that were less than non-renewable sources, only a fool would keep using the non-renewables....
My point is, you're acting like people would continue to do what they do now, but swap out current fossil fuels for whatever they were doing before. That's not how it works. Adding another, cheaper kind of energy (regardless of the source), has the same effect as an increase in supply, which is to decrease price *and increase quantity consumed*.
You agree, but say that the increase will be mainly in renewables because they're cheaper. But not all fossil fuels today are equal in price, even for the same consumer and the same time. Nevertheless, they are all used, up to the point where the price of that input can no longer be justified by the market price of the byproduct. The most expensive ones are at the so-called "margin of production", and their uses are the first to go when energy prices go up. With renewables being cheaper, you'd see the same thing: people applying the available fuels up to the margin of production; you've just made a lot more activities profitable.
What's more likely to happen, barring the discovery of some incredibly cheap renewable, is that people will continue to use non-renewable sources until they begin to dwindle, at which point the price will go up, at which point suddenly renewable sources will be competitive and will begin to become popular.
No, what's more likely is that people will become accustomed to the newer source; apply that energy to *additional* activites, rather than replacing the old; and then apply the proceeds from higher fossil fuel prices when demand increases, to explore for more, just as has always happened.
However, because the overall price of a unit of energy has increased, some activities that were once possible, will no longer be practical, and will be terminated for cost reasons.
You can't have it both ways. If renewables become cheaper, why would the cost ever exceed what it is now?
Blaming "capitalism" for these effects makes about as much sense to me
I didn't mean to cast capitalism in a negative light; I was just showing how people adapt to changes rather than simply substituting previous activities in a linear fashion, i.e. the Lucas Critique.
If you don't like the outcome, the solution isn't to rail against the models that predict it
? I was pointing out that the model you're using is in error, which is why no economist thinks things would occur as you claim they would. Finding out what will actually happen as a result of a policy is *always* part of the solution, whether or not you or I "like the outcome".
it's to try [to] modify in some way the input conditions so as to make the desired outcome more likely.
Yes, and your plan doesn't do that. I discuss the problem of input/output modification at length here and show how swapping out certain activities, without fundamentally changing the incentive structure, is counterproductive.
I figured it would be easier to convert the coal to oil than to redesign engines, but I guess not.
Anyway, better renewable energy technology can't actually reduce fossil fuel use. It just adds to the supply of energy. People will take the existence of that energy source as a given, energy supply increases, and the marvelous engines of capitalism find another use for it. It's like trying to cut down on thievery by giving away TV's to the current TV thieves.
It would, however, make restrictions (like taxes) on fossil fuels a lot more bearable, which you may consider a worthy cause anyway.
It sounds like the network administrators in said "governmental offices" should take the precautions neccessary to police the bandwidth. Furthermore, any environment in which said p2p applications are capable of leaking any private information need to be under closer scrutiny.
Yeah, imagine if they had p2p in Star Wars:
FULL DEATH STAR PLANS!!!NO KIDDING!!!!.R2D | DroidFile | 5.1 Gb deathstarschematics.r2d | DroidFile | 5.1 Gb Death Star 1of20.r2d | DroidFile | 250 Mb
I largely agree, but you have to remember that this falls into the category of "technical solution to a human problem". It doesn't matter what benefits will accrue to this: most people don't want to cede control over driving. Driving is too fun. It's why SUV drivers are mostly women: that feeling of control. Yes, even if you set up a hundred courses where people can drive for fun.
It's similar to the congestion problem. There are lots of solutions that would make commutes cheaper and shorter (see journal entry). But people don't *want* it to be cheap and quick to get to their home. That makes it easier for criminals and the unwashed masses to get there.
In other words, you're right, but only if you "fix people" for lack of a better term;-)
"Oh, so let me see, I can't be drunk while driving, I can't be dropping acid, I can't use a cell phone, I can't camp the passing lane, I can't watch TV, I can't put on lipstick, I can't fire automatic weapons... gee, you might as well ban driving!"
If you're referring to Linux, that's just not true. Certainly fewer home users have Linux, and those users are generally better-informed about security. However, the bulk of the security comes from a better design[1]. For one, regular users do not have the equivalent of Windows "admin" privileges. Also, the components are more de-coupled. Knowing how to crack the web browser does not automatically imply knowing how to exploit the word processor, or how to hijack all CPU cycles. Critical directory paths are not hard-coded. Even if 90% Linux penetration would divert hacker resources to Linux, it will still take longer for them to find flaws, and those flaws would be less severe.
[1] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I've criticized Linux's design before and I know all the links you've compiled to my previous posts. No, I'm not contradicting myself. When I said the design was poor in the past, I was referring to a different aspect of it, that is, handling potential issues in installation. I stand by those claims. Linux's security aspect still has good design.
"Google can only tap that 100+ billion dollars by issuing and selling more shares, since most of its value is based on expectations, right or wrong, of future revenues, rather than saleable assets."
So can you make money by shorting them? Only if you can time it right, which is half the problem, as others have mentioned by now.
(Side note: I wish it were possible to issue your own "phantom shares" for any corporation. Such shares would have to be collateralized like a short-sale, and would obligate you to pay dividends and buyout proceeds, and put up more collateral if it goes up too much, but wouldn't require you to get them from an existing holder. You would void your obligation by buying back phantom or real shares.)
Which makes it almost ironic that: (Linspire To Switch To Kubuntu)
Well, I have to ascertain whether *all* Linux distros are built around poor design, or whether it was just an Ubuntu thing. The evidence leads to the former.
GRUB had an issue during your installation - which is unfortunate but possible with any software
Hundredth time: yes, that is possible with any software. But it's also possible that you can avoid unnecessary risks. You can, for example, not recommend wiping the MBR. You can have it boot from a separate drive. You can "HIGHLY RECOMMEND" the troubleshooting tools (here, the Live CD). And so on. My complaint is not that it failed, which is understandable, but that there was no backup mechanism whatsoever that the instructions said to use and that this failure locked me out entirely, making me far worse off than if I had never heard of Linux.
Personally, I always have at least one drive lying around with a full OS installed on it that I can throw in as 0 whenever I need an alternative boot.
Yeah, I had that too until Ubuntu HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that I wipe the MBR. I had it installed on a tertiary hard drive. It could have left the main one alone, but then -- that would have too much fault tolerance, wouldn't it?
You've hit a snag with moving OS, you've survived; learn from what happened and move on.
Am I not already doing that? I learned that Ubuntu would not recognize basic design principles it they bit it on the nose. Have I not predicated later actions on that knowledge?
The issue you faced may or may not have been a design flaw,
No, "HIGHLY RECOMMENDING" the wiping of the MBR, without informing the user of the possible consequences, and without informing the user of lower-risk alternatives, while not recommending *at all* the very tools you will need to fix it if anything goes wrong, and which you will be unable to get to if things actually do go wrong... IS a design flaw. No "may or may not be" about it.
You asked repeatedly for the logical next step, people gave you the logical next step, and you refused to take it.
It was the next logical step in the sense that "reformat and re-install" is the next logical step for any OS install failure. That "next logical step" was long, tedious, and infeasible. I had recently moved to a new city. I could not feasibly ask to borrow someone's high-speed connection and CD burner for an hour. I could not burn CDs at work. In the amount of time I would need to do that, I could easily have changed the three characters in the appropriate file that were messing it up.
You'll notice I *did* follow their advice through the command lines to get to the problem, and none of those did what they were expected to. I posted the results of these attempts (i.e., the *real* logical next step), and there were not followed up.
Even if the ultimate answer to the problem was "Ubuntu is hopelessly broken," you STILL would not have been justified in acting the way you did.
I wasn't claiming that in my response. I was claiming that the design problems revealed in that thread do illustrate exactly the sort of thing that drives a lot of very intelligent people away from adopting Linux, and that it's not easy trying to help expand the Linux user base, with no compensation, when you get locked out of your computer and forced beg for arcane commands to re-establish access for your trouble.
Even if you were paying for the support, that sort of abuse is unnecessary and usually (and definitely in this case) counter-productive.
Debatable. It was a wake-up call to anyone seriously confused as to why more people don't use it.
Slashdot Mirror
Good post. I think, in a similar way, this is why patents should only apply to a *means* and not to and end. That is, you should be able to patent *how* a problem is solved, but not *that* a problem is solved, so you can allow people to explore other ways to solve it. Case in point: the one-click patent. Patents *shouldn't* prevent others from figuring out how to streamline online purchases to one click, and so that end (being able to buy with one click) shouldn't be patentable.
It's nice that people won't take advantage of any opportunity to sell the drugs at a steep discount in "poor and needy countries" by re-importing them into wealthier countries.
Oh wait...
I sympathize with a lot of the criticism of drug companies, but you have to ask, what would you do differently? Like Mr. Underbridge said, universities are ill-suited to bringing the theoretical work to the market. Remember, they can currently cut out the middleman and try to fabricate and market the drugs themselves, but genereally don't. They'd run into the same problem the drug companies do: not just getting FDA approval, and finding out how to cheaply manufacture it, but also convincing the mouth-breathing public and complacent doctors why their way is better. And if there were no patents, drug companies would offer a lot less for the universities' research.
I've thought about and researched a number of ways to profit from a new drug without patents, but most of them sound infeasible. For example, you could buy the appropriate market instruments that would be affected by the invention and then give it away for free. Say, your drug makes a heart valve obsolete, so you short the stock of all of its makers. But even optimistically, this would significantly reduce the profitability of life-saving drugs.
That's been my feeling as well. Someone sent me a link to someone's myspace site a few months back, and when I got there, someone had just completely trashed the page. Everything was just strewn all over the place without any rhyme or reason. Whoever defaced the site also made some crappy music download and play whether you wanted to hear it or no and with no obvious way to silence it. If you clicked on a link to go anywhere, it would for some reason just take you to a login screen. WTF?
I hope that got that bug patched up.
What blank axolotl said. This is a new technology. It can only handle a limited set of signals, since it only reads from a small number of inputs. Give it time, and miniaturization will allow it to handle more and eventually be faster than typing.
Your question is kind of like asking the people working on ENIAC, hey, wouldn't it be a lot easier just to train a computer to find the right panel on a multiplication table?
Until I read a series of papers about global climate change, papers that publish all of their source data, algorithms used in simulations, justifications for the use of those algorithms, and statistical analysis by qualified statisticians, I will refrain from forming a solid opinion one way or the other
That's kind of been a sticking point to me. Ideally, in any scientific field, if someone predicts something is going to happen based on a computer model, anyone should be able to audit the entire source code and all assumptions (including formulas and scientific laws) going into the model, and each assumption should have a justification and a link to any evidence used as a basis for it. Anyone should be able to run the model with their own changes. Science is "all about open source" everywhere else. (It's not what you know, it's what you can repeat.)
That's quite a bit to ask of course, so it's understandable if it can't be done everywhere. But when major policy changes could be made based on it? Well, then there's no excuse.
(No, the link you're about to post doesn't count. Re-read the requirements.)
It's like a twist on the old joke...
"Jimbo Jimbo Jimbo omg the Wikipedia article says Sinbad's dead!!! What do we do what do we do?????"
"Calm down, calm down. Just follow Wikipedia procedure. First, is Sinbad dead?"
*long pause* "Okay, done. Now what?"
That's because on CSI, if they were ever in a case like this, they would just take a picture of the fingerprint and then digitially enhance the image until it's a perfect match. Duh.
Well, your post definitely helped my eyesight by training my brain to filter out junk strings...
Okay, I think I've built up enough upmods to post to this story again.
/exact/ same issues with WinNT, Win2k, WinXP and a handful of Linux distros.
:-P )
Each to their own, but it was GRUB that failed, not Ubuntu. I do understand that Ubuntu installed GRUB, but GRUB isn't Ubuntu.
Do you understand the thirty times I explained that the Grub failure is not what bothers me, but the software design surrounding it? I understand if Grub fails. I do not understand if the forums expect me to use troubleshooting tools that were never recommended to have ready before beginning the install. I do not understand the extreme negative consequences are not warned of, for Grub. I do not understand HIGHLY RECOMMENDING the wiping of the MBR when you can install on a separate drive with far less risk.
Objectively: I've had the
Once the MS boot loader is dead
Not objective. The difference is that Ubuntu is desperate for a user base, Windows is not. Sad, but true.
The point is, the boot loader has to be on the booting drive (primary master, normally). So if you left it in, in order for the new OS to be an option on boot (which most people installing would automatically want), it has to edit the MBR on the primary disc.
And what happens if you leave it out? It finds a different drive to boot from. And it can use the MBR on that drive. I could have set the Linux OS to load whenever the tertiary hard drive is booted from.
1) Turn on computer.
2) Hit F8.
3) Select tertiary hard drive.
4) Avoid losing week of computer usage and driving 200 miles to fix problem when Grub fails.
Or I could have it set so that selecting a CD drive loads the Linux OS.
Remember, Grub does not load until after I tell the computer which drive to boot from. How did I get back into the install screen, again?
The lessons you should have learnt from your experience is that a) leaving your only other bootable harddrive in when testing a new OS is a Bad ThingTM and that b) always having a bootable disc (CD, floppy, USB, whatever) available when messing with the part that makes your computer works is a Good ThingTM.
No, the lesson I got from this is:
"The Ubuntu website, if it were really intending to be an OS for all, utterly failed in basic design by not HIGHLY RECOMMENDING that you have a LiveCD or your original OS install CD ready when you try to install. If it can't even get that part right, it's hopeless."
And again -- I do accept personal responsibility for being stupid enough to believe the crap on the Ubuntu site. But what does that mean, exactly? It means responsible people should know better than to do what the Ubuntu website says.
I'm not trying to preach to you, or call you an idiot;
I wish the same were true in reverse. (Sorry, you set yourself up for that one
I've seen you post this thread around a few times, though, and I get the impression you're overly-passionate about the issue and need to realise that these things happen.
Again, my over-passion is due to my revulsion at poor design, and it wasn't the bad event that bothers me, but failure of the design to adequately mitigate it.
If your goal, however, is to promote caution and improved warnings for people trying out Linux for the first time, then I commend you.
Improved warnings, yes. Improved caution, no. Remember, I had boatloads of caution. Why do you think I set aside a large block of time for the install in case something went wrong? Why did I buy a new HD for it? Why did I research user-friendliness of distros? Why did I do EVERYTHING that was HIGHLY RECOMMENDED and nothing that wasn't?
Because I was cautious. That and $5 will get you a cup of coffee, but it won't do **** if you're not already an Ubuntu expert who knows to do all the stuff that the download site doesn't mention.
But ask yourself: is this really a matter of "oops, f
I was thinking recently: if I could get the credit card cycle beginning right, I could defer payment on any electricity I buy for 110 days. (55 days from first day of electricity billing cycle to due date, 55 days from beginning of credit card to its due date.) If I use it steadily for the whole month, that's on average 95 days still, or about a quarter (of a year).
So, if there were a way to convert electricity into roughly its monetary value, I could put it in a money market account for (on average) 95 days, and then keep the interest that accrued. (5% per year at today's money market rates)
So, anyone know if you can charge enough for PS3 computing cycles for this to be worth it?
HSBC is the very same bank that is most heavily exposed to the subprime market right now, which is under a lot of stress, needless to say. When I read the summary, I was thinking, "Yeah, HSBC sure knows how to save money..."
All computers do is speed up something you can do with abacuses and a rule table.
Nah, I still think it's better for them to do non-violent direct action ramming of whaling boats, non-violent direct action boarding of ships at sea (which no one will mistake for piracy), and non-violent direct action deafening of exchange floor traders.
Technology can improve productivity? Really? And, I always thought steam power was a step backward.
Steam powered textile looms weren't much more productive than cottage-based home production through the spinning jenny, the latter was just legislated away. Spade cultivation is much more efficient than the plow or mechanization, it's just more labor intensive. Everyone would be better off growing their own vegetables at home. Joint-stock and investment bank funding of ventures has never lead to better innovation than what would have persisted without, because it skews the incentive structure. Roads have only benefitted the extremely wealthy. [/crank]
Why are we still in an age where doctors transmit prescription info to pharmacists with a nearly ineligible scrawl? Why are pharmacists still taking classes to learn how to read these? Why is it still possible to administer prescription/hospital medication without a computerized check for excessive dosage, drug interactions, and medical condition interaction. (e.g., "Hey, you just prescripted 20 times the highest typical dosage. You sure about that?")
... computerizing records?
Why does GE's health care division run ads bragging about how the accomplished the insurmountable task of
Why aren't expert-type systems routinely used at doctors' offices?
Why do doctors act like you're Satan if you ask questions based on knowledge you've gathered on the internet about your condition?
I could go on and on. Yes, health care has advanced technologically, but we still have multi-million dollar MRI machines next to doctors communicating by scribble and no clue about how to do CBA's for the whole process.
This doesn't exactly make sense.
...
If you were able to produce energy from renewable sources at prices that were less than non-renewable sources, only a fool would keep using the non-renewables.
My point is, you're acting like people would continue to do what they do now, but swap out current fossil fuels for whatever they were doing before. That's not how it works. Adding another, cheaper kind of energy (regardless of the source), has the same effect as an increase in supply, which is to decrease price *and increase quantity consumed*.
You agree, but say that the increase will be mainly in renewables because they're cheaper. But not all fossil fuels today are equal in price, even for the same consumer and the same time. Nevertheless, they are all used, up to the point where the price of that input can no longer be justified by the market price of the byproduct. The most expensive ones are at the so-called "margin of production", and their uses are the first to go when energy prices go up. With renewables being cheaper, you'd see the same thing: people applying the available fuels up to the margin of production; you've just made a lot more activities profitable.
What's more likely to happen, barring the discovery of some incredibly cheap renewable, is that people will continue to use non-renewable sources until they begin to dwindle, at which point the price will go up, at which point suddenly renewable sources will be competitive and will begin to become popular.
No, what's more likely is that people will become accustomed to the newer source; apply that energy to *additional* activites, rather than replacing the old; and then apply the proceeds from higher fossil fuel prices when demand increases, to explore for more, just as has always happened.
However, because the overall price of a unit of energy has increased, some activities that were once possible, will no longer be practical, and will be terminated for cost reasons.
You can't have it both ways. If renewables become cheaper, why would the cost ever exceed what it is now?
Blaming "capitalism" for these effects makes about as much sense to me
I didn't mean to cast capitalism in a negative light; I was just showing how people adapt to changes rather than simply substituting previous activities in a linear fashion, i.e. the Lucas Critique.
If you don't like the outcome, the solution isn't to rail against the models that predict it
? I was pointing out that the model you're using is in error, which is why no economist thinks things would occur as you claim they would. Finding out what will actually happen as a result of a policy is *always* part of the solution, whether or not you or I "like the outcome".
it's to try [to] modify in some way the input conditions so as to make the desired outcome more likely.
Yes, and your plan doesn't do that. I discuss the problem of input/output modification at length here and show how swapping out certain activities, without fundamentally changing the incentive structure, is counterproductive.
I figured it would be easier to convert the coal to oil than to redesign engines, but I guess not.
Anyway, better renewable energy technology can't actually reduce fossil fuel use. It just adds to the supply of energy. People will take the existence of that energy source as a given, energy supply increases, and the marvelous engines of capitalism find another use for it. It's like trying to cut down on thievery by giving away TV's to the current TV thieves.
It would, however, make restrictions (like taxes) on fossil fuels a lot more bearable, which you may consider a worthy cause anyway.
It sounds like the network administrators in said "governmental offices" should take the precautions neccessary to police the bandwidth. Furthermore, any environment in which said p2p applications are capable of leaking any private information need to be under closer scrutiny.
Yeah, imagine if they had p2p in Star Wars:
FULL DEATH STAR PLANS!!!NO KIDDING!!!!.R2D | DroidFile | 5.1 Gb
deathstarschematics.r2d | DroidFile | 5.1 Gb
Death Star 1of20.r2d | DroidFile | 250 Mb
I largely agree, but you have to remember that this falls into the category of "technical solution to a human problem". It doesn't matter what benefits will accrue to this: most people don't want to cede control over driving. Driving is too fun. It's why SUV drivers are mostly women: that feeling of control. Yes, even if you set up a hundred courses where people can drive for fun.
;-)
It's similar to the congestion problem. There are lots of solutions that would make commutes cheaper and shorter (see journal entry). But people don't *want* it to be cheap and quick to get to their home. That makes it easier for criminals and the unwashed masses to get there.
In other words, you're right, but only if you "fix people" for lack of a better term
Wow, that almost rivals the "if we can put a man on the moon" non-sequitur for "huh?"-factor.
... gee, you might as well ban driving!"
"Oh, so let me see, I can't be drunk while driving, I can't be dropping acid, I can't use a cell phone, I can't camp the passing lane, I can't watch TV, I can't put on lipstick, I can't fire automatic weapons
If you're referring to Linux, that's just not true. Certainly fewer home users have Linux, and those users are generally better-informed about security. However, the bulk of the security comes from a better design[1]. For one, regular users do not have the equivalent of Windows "admin" privileges. Also, the components are more de-coupled. Knowing how to crack the web browser does not automatically imply knowing how to exploit the word processor, or how to hijack all CPU cycles. Critical directory paths are not hard-coded. Even if 90% Linux penetration would divert hacker resources to Linux, it will still take longer for them to find flaws, and those flaws would be less severe.
[1] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I've criticized Linux's design before and I know all the links you've compiled to my previous posts. No, I'm not contradicting myself. When I said the design was poor in the past, I was referring to a different aspect of it, that is, handling potential issues in installation. I stand by those claims. Linux's security aspect still has good design.
A non-trollish way to say that would be:
"Google can only tap that 100+ billion dollars by issuing and selling more shares, since most of its value is based on expectations, right or wrong, of future revenues, rather than saleable assets."
So can you make money by shorting them? Only if you can time it right, which is half the problem, as others have mentioned by now.
(Side note: I wish it were possible to issue your own "phantom shares" for any corporation. Such shares would have to be collateralized like a short-sale, and would obligate you to pay dividends and buyout proceeds, and put up more collateral if it goes up too much, but wouldn't require you to get them from an existing holder. You would void your obligation by buying back phantom or real shares.)
Which makes it almost ironic that: (Linspire To Switch To Kubuntu)
Well, I have to ascertain whether *all* Linux distros are built around poor design, or whether it was just an Ubuntu thing. The evidence leads to the former.
GRUB had an issue during your installation - which is unfortunate but possible with any software
Hundredth time: yes, that is possible with any software. But it's also possible that you can avoid unnecessary risks. You can, for example, not recommend wiping the MBR. You can have it boot from a separate drive. You can "HIGHLY RECOMMEND" the troubleshooting tools (here, the Live CD). And so on. My complaint is not that it failed, which is understandable, but that there was no backup mechanism whatsoever that the instructions said to use and that this failure locked me out entirely, making me far worse off than if I had never heard of Linux.
Personally, I always have at least one drive lying around with a full OS installed on it that I can throw in as 0 whenever I need an alternative boot.
Yeah, I had that too until Ubuntu HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that I wipe the MBR. I had it installed on a tertiary hard drive. It could have left the main one alone, but then -- that would have too much fault tolerance, wouldn't it?
You've hit a snag with moving OS, you've survived; learn from what happened and move on.
Am I not already doing that? I learned that Ubuntu would not recognize basic design principles it they bit it on the nose. Have I not predicated later actions on that knowledge?
At what point do you stop funding the scientists investigating that the Earth is flat?
When they stop making testable, correct, non-trivial predictions?
The issue you faced may or may not have been a design flaw,
... IS a design flaw. No "may or may not be" about it.
No, "HIGHLY RECOMMENDING" the wiping of the MBR, without informing the user of the possible consequences, and without informing the user of lower-risk alternatives, while not recommending *at all* the very tools you will need to fix it if anything goes wrong, and which you will be unable to get to if things actually do go wrong
You asked repeatedly for the logical next step, people gave you the logical next step, and you refused to take it.
It was the next logical step in the sense that "reformat and re-install" is the next logical step for any OS install failure. That "next logical step" was long, tedious, and infeasible. I had recently moved to a new city. I could not feasibly ask to borrow someone's high-speed connection and CD burner for an hour. I could not burn CDs at work. In the amount of time I would need to do that, I could easily have changed the three characters in the appropriate file that were messing it up.
You'll notice I *did* follow their advice through the command lines to get to the problem, and none of those did what they were expected to. I posted the results of these attempts (i.e., the *real* logical next step), and there were not followed up.
Even if the ultimate answer to the problem was "Ubuntu is hopelessly broken," you STILL would not have been justified in acting the way you did.
I wasn't claiming that in my response. I was claiming that the design problems revealed in that thread do illustrate exactly the sort of thing that drives a lot of very intelligent people away from adopting Linux, and that it's not easy trying to help expand the Linux user base, with no compensation, when you get locked out of your computer and forced beg for arcane commands to re-establish access for your trouble.
Even if you were paying for the support, that sort of abuse is unnecessary and usually (and definitely in this case) counter-productive.
Debatable. It was a wake-up call to anyone seriously confused as to why more people don't use it.