DISQUS

No, bk, he's a Finn.

they I-phone is behind to what is coming soon…

Good thing they I-phone will have a new revision before "soon" happens, huh?

Funny how other people's "future" products are always better than what Apple's shipping right now, huh?

Jason: Coal liquefaction for motor vehicle fuel is a well-understood and mature technology, so no big problems there.

Michael Drake said (in part): [...] is designed to make global warming sound like a wild-ass guess.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Because, you see, it is a wild-ass guess.

The models are, in plain Anglo-Saxon terms, shit. They don't predict anything (accurately, and that's what matters - I could make up a model that didn't predict, myself - and it wouldn't be worth using!).

They don't predict what we have now from past data - in part because the data is also, to again use the plain Anglo-Saxon term, shit. Extrapolations and proxy data, none of which seem to ever stand up to the test of time or critique.

It's a house of cards.

(Unlike evolutionary theory, which has both mountains of strong paleontological and laboratory results to support it, not to mention the DNA evidence, and, well, the entire case. Which is, while hard to quantify, multiple orders of magnitude stronger than that for anthropogenic* global warming.

Thus the specious comparison between climate change skepticism and creationism will not stand un-refuted in my presence.

* I specify anthropogenic because it's the only kind we can sensibly take action against; if, as is increasingly suspected by various scientists [see recent American Physical Union announcement], what climate change we have, in either direction, is almost entirely unrelated to human activity, no amount of Gore-like changes to society and industry will do diddly, and thus they're pointless to contemplate, as their benefit cannot possibly approach their cost.)

Someone snarkily, I reply "Why not marry her? Then the answer's easy, "colleague and wife"."

Keith: Or more importantly, can society be so ordered without the cost being unacceptable, and would anyone go along with it?

It's easy - as for instance a stereotype hippie might - to say that "people should value being unique and loving and special and not care about money" ... but the problem is, money's so damned useful at arranging for real-world physical and psychological comfort, that it's going to be Very Very Hard to make people stop valuing it.

I think you're conflating Will's noting that we do live in a society such that wealth can (to a large extent) buy happiness, one way or another, with a "position" that that is therefore Right.

Is, as we philosophers say, does not imply ought.

(I am inclined, though I can't speak for Will, to believe that what we have now is "better" overall than anything someone's likely to come up with to "reshape society" to be "better" and "less focused on money". Partly for Burkean reasons, and partly because so far the examples I've seen of the alternative have been laughably implausible.)

In fairness to economists, I don't think I've ever seen one claim that market forces were anything like or related to science.

(Except - perhaps - in that markets exist, and have behaviours, and science could therefore be done about markets, and used to model them.

Or, more aptly, "I will do science to it!")

(Also, gunpowder.)

Sorry*.

Fucking cock-gargling, nun-molesting preterite whoreson pigfelching piker.

Is that better?

*Well, okay, not really, but how fucking hard is it to swear in every god-damn post?

A 40% swearing rate is pathetic. Like you're not even trying. Insert unsmiley face here.

Under 40%?

Fucking piker.

Does Jeff simply not know what "totalitarian" means? Or "fascist[ic]"?

That's the only reason I can imagine (well, apart from deliberate deceit) for using it in that way and in that context.

The last thing Fascist economics does is say "hey, it's okay if our citizens lose jobs, because some guy across the world's better off". Fascist economics is all about not having to trade for anything by acquiring all necessary resources by conquest, or by other means such as replacement technologies. Self-sufficiency is the core, not trade or mutual advantage, as the Fascist worldview is of the war of all against all, at the level of the Volk. (Cf. "Lebensraum", the Nazi drive for the Ploesti oilfields, etc.)

Or, alternatively, "Scoble's a douche and Winer can go do something unmentionable with a drunken aardvark".

What's worse, "social media" or "A-list bloggers"?

Ethical vegetarians can be very evangelical but don’t seem to be very interested in banning or taxing meat at all. Why not?

Because they're rational enough to realise they have exactly zero chance of achieving that goal, perhaps?

The way they get instantly dismissed, laughed at, or funny looks if they suggest a ban on meat would tend to discourage, if not such a goal, then at least mentioning it.

(Achieving it by admitting that's their goal, at any rate - I suppose they could sneakily have that goal and have a "moral softening-up" agenda already.)

Michael: It's not news to farmers all over Africa, every time there's been sustained "free food for poor people".

Immediate, short term famine relief has far less hazard.

(And the real reason people are starving in Sudan is the Sudanese government wanting them to, is it not?

Food is an excellent weapon, especially since the majority of Westerners are unlikely to assume the State in question is causing the famine, unless they've looked into the practice. The autocrats get to starve their opponents into submission or the grave, without pesky ill-will for doing so.)

(The difficulty with "wasteful" consumption is the question of who decides what's "wasteful" or not, in my experience.

Further, even "wasteful" consumption drives increased efficiency in transport and other related fields.

Heck, increased efficiency in production of the "wastefully" consumed good is often transferable as experience or technical innovation to "non-wasteful" goods.)

Michael: Sharing (voluntarily, which is why it's "sharing") is grand.

But the reason you can afford to share is that production and consumption in mass quantities have made living cheaper. Consumption has driven the rise of mankind from hand-to-mouth subsistence to modern wealth and prosperity, such that people can now afford to think about supporting others on the other side of the globe.

Broken: I submit that I am, in fact, "truly happy" regardless of the fact that someone, somewhere, is unhappy. "We" do not, in fact, live as one household, worldwide, no matter how beautiful you may find Rev. King's words, or how much they inspire you spiritually.

(And dependents of one family? Who's the parents, then, if we're all dependents? Did you mean to infantilise the entire world population?)

Mr. Wilkensen’s analysis on the costs and benefits of personal consumption leaves out important stakeholders–the millions of poor and destitute peoples of the world. The more stuff we consume, the less money there is to provide basic food, shelter and medicine to people who cannot provide for themselves. This is not moralism, as Mr. Wilkenson supposes, but a question of equity and justice.

Barking mad.

The more we consume the cheaper new production is. Consumption of consumer goods is what drives more efficient production and lower prices, and generates wealth (well, to be fair, it's one thing that generates wealth, but it does do so, and amply).

People are best provided with food, shelter, and medicine by making them all cheap by making lots of them, efficiently - not by making them more expensive by making less of them, in order to have more money to ship to give them away.

(Especially since giving away food perpetuates poverty by utterly destroying local food production, which can't compete with free.

Maybe it's just that I'm in the middle of reading Human Action, but this seems like more or less Ec. 201 (if not 102) stuff.

Of course, that would explain why "social justice" types coming over from Kos wouldn't have any idea about it.)

Then again, again, I'm almost confused as to why "people prefer being wealthy to being poor" needs to be demonstrated; I'd thought it completely basic and fundamental to the human condition.

Is there some significance here that isn't obvious to the rest of us?

Cuba without Fidel isn't interesting.

Fidel without a Castro in power migth be.

Cuba without Communism might hurt Republicans in Florida, yes. Cuba with a different Castro or a different Communist dictator? Not so much.

Wright? A hack that made cold houses with leaky roofs.

Happy?

You're right on what matters here, Will, but I kinda like the idea of "grotesque wood-paneled den stuffed with animal heads, mounted swords, garish carpets, and a giant roaring fire" combined with a comfy chair and a nice fat cigar and some whiskey.

Though I'd add rifles to the wall.

To double up on what Matt said, wouldn't a "technically skilled, highly motivated" attacker that you leave along with the guest account long enough to do anything useful (ie, you've left him alone for at least a few minutes) be able to just reboot the machine with a boot image on a CD or flash key, and do whatever he felt like?

A really motivated attacker would have an image that would automatically mount and backdoor your root drive, in fact.

Security (and "secure") is definitely a graduated sort of thing.

"Guest" might well be vulnerable to some sort of cron attack (though of course the worst it seems able to do is run jobs as guest), but as far as threats go, that's very low on the scale.

Not a big "security" win for Apple, but a useful convenience that helps with a more practical sort of security that maps to a reasonably common real-world use case and threat model.

Is alphie seriously arguing that defense contracts are creating "(most?) wealthy families"? In the suburbs?

I mean, news flash, man. DC is not a microcosm of the nation as a whole. That the DC suburbs are the nations's wealthiest means nothing regarding the nation as a whole, or to the general source of the wealth of most wealthy Americans - note that the other locations in the list are Silicon Valley, Manhattan, and San Franciso, not exactly known for their Defense and DHS spending!

(You also didn't quote "Basu, chairman of Sage Policy Group, an economic consulting firm in Baltimore, said the region's affluence was "decades in the making." During the 1990s, he said, suburban Maryland and Virginia emerged as hubs of information technology, biotechnology, and defense and aerospace work. And the high levels of spending since 2001 on defense and homeland security "have generated revenues for existing businesses and prompted business formation, job growth, income growth and investment."" either, oddly.

I guess decades in the making, and all that IT and biotech stuff just doesn't support the thesis.

Nor, as Mac said, was there any "privatization" to speak of, pushed through by those awful Republicans.

The only thing vaguely close I can think of recently is the change to having military support operations being run by contractors rather than troops... and that dates back to when a Democrat was running the White House.

Shall we re-cast the "peace dividend" reductions as a Republican plot?)

Larry: I think Will meant twice as much increase (3x-x = 2x, vs 2x-x = 1x, where x is the starting GDP), not twice as much GDP in the end state.

At very least, that was my reading of his statement, which can admittedly be parsed in either direction - but given that both are possible, I choose to err on the side of charity and assume Will meant the reading that's accurate.

Well, more strictly, we know that the experience of free will exists, phenomenologically.

It could just as easily be so that being told to touch your nose (or to try to as a thought experiment) causes responses in a way that's strictly deterministic (with no actual freedom of will in the sense of non-determinism).

It's long been my position that it doesn't matter*, since we're incapable of seriously thinking that there's no free will, because of the ubiquitous (even if possibly false) experience of having it.

* In any non-metaphysical sense.

I don't care how cheap it is, I'm not buying that bridge.

Snork.

Of course he's doing this for more reasons than just being nice, and of course he wants ITMS to make more money.

But it could make more money, arguably, by selling non-DRM music. (Especially if, as is suggested, the big-4 contracts it has now prevent it from carrying any non-DRM music, even from other labels.)

Plus, DRM is a pile of work and expense for Apple that doesn't make Apple any extra money. Of course he'd want to get rid of it; FairPlay doesn't, itself, make Apple a red cent. It exists only to make the big-4 labels happy. Jobs would dump it all in a second if he could, I wager.

I don't see this "scandal" affecting anyone much but Foley, and he's already resigned.

The people giddy about How Awful It Proves The Republicans To Be... already weren't going to vote for Republicans.

I don't see why people who'd vote Republican in every other district are going to stop because the Democrats are thirsty for any blood they can get. Maybe, perhaps, the if the Republican leadership had covered up a crime, say, but there's nothing in the evidence I've seen that suggests a crime rather than mere "inappropriate" behaviour.

Josh Marshall's job, after all, is to think scandals for Republicans are "huge".

You mean those aren't enough to make it worthwhile by themselves?

Picvy, picky.