Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Demon-Haunted World

locusmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 289 posts

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#161

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mirimir wrote: post #158
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was the norm in the US until the late 1800 Source? Let's say a company owning a factory was thusly dissolved. What would you do? Parcel bricks out to shareholders? We got rid of this for a good reason. It nukes long-term investment by laying the road for expropriation.

See http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history... The American Revolution was just as much against Crown Corporations as against British rule.

This Harvard Business Review article [1] interviews a reputable professor on the topic. America adopted English law corporations, replacing the Crown with the states. Early corporations were limited compared to today's because early enterprise was fairly limited--the American Revolution occurred on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution.

You are correct in stating that it took political capital to form a corporation in Revolutionary times. But that didn't mean they existed at the pleasure of the state. Furthermore, the close nexus between corporate chartering and political proximity showed its seams in the 19th century. That's why states moved the chartering process to independent bureaucracies.

[1] https://hbr.org/2010/04/what-the-founding-fathers-real.html

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#162

Post by CamperBob2 »

ryanx435 wrote: post #153
Nomentatus wrote: post #147

This isn't a new demon-haunted world, this is the old, demon-haunted world before nineteenth-century progressive politics, back when "milk" that wasn't half chalk still might have a fish in it (see famous Thoreau quote on evidence.) We aren't enforcing the laws we have and our grandfathers and mothers had. (Three guesses why.) Not on monopolies, contracts, patent misuse... nothing. Just this week I and Hearthstone ca…

Why are you blaming Trump when you yourself admit that this has been going on since the 1800s?

Because the Trump administration has promised to do what it can to make it even harder for consumers to fight back.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#163

Post by pmiller2 »

rb666 wrote: post #132
SubiculumCode wrote: post #10

This is what I think about at the pump. More and more I see gas pumps ask if you want a receipt BEFORE the gas is dispensed. This seems risky. If you decline the receipt and then dispense gas, the pump could cheat on the amount of gas dispensed with less risk, as a papered record of the purchase amount and price is not produced. If on the other hand, the pump waits to ask if you desire a receipt until after the gasol…

What sort of weird gas station requires you to specify the amount of gas before actually refueling your car? Is that a USA-only thing? Never seen that in Europe.

It's not required, but, in most self-serve stations I'm familiar with (Costco being the exception), you can prepay with cash (e.g. ask the attendant for $20 on pump 5, or whatever), and the pump can be set to stop after $20 worth is dispensed. If less than $20 in gas fills your tank, you can get change from the attendant. This is commonly done late at night or for pumps not visible from the attendant's vantage point, to prevent drive-offs.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#164

Post by solatic »

captaincrowbar wrote: post #14

Doctorow mentions the cases where a printer company has made their software lie about how much ink was left in a cartridge to make consumers replace them more often. I always wondered why a manufacturer would want to do that. I mean, I understand the motive of making consumers buy ink more often, but from the manufacturer's point of view, why would they want to throw perfectly good ink away? Colour ink isn't as expen…

It's still sold ink though. If you have a performance metric of total ink sold, anything that helps you get more ink out the door is preferable.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#165

Post by wtallis »

chc wrote: post #58
lostmsu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about this simple hypothesis: Android is suffering from the same problems all Windows had prior to Windows 7 - drive fragmentation. Cheap flash will not give you nice access times when data is fragmented, and over time fragmentation accumulates.

Why wouldn't flash memory give good access times with fragmented data? It's not like it needs to move a head around like a hard disk. Shouldn't one block be as accessible as any other block?

Depends on what you mean by "block". Your OS is probably interacting with the SSD in terms of 512-byte logical blocks, but most likely grouping most I/O into 4kB or larger chunks due to the 4kB virtual memory page size. But the underlying NAND flash has a native page size of more like 16kB, and an erase block size in the MB range, and an internal RAID-like striping of data across multiple channels on the SSD controller. Sequential access is still much simpler and faster than random access.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#166

Post by mirimir »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #161
mirimir wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history... The American Revolution was just as much against Crown Corporations as against British rule.

This Harvard Business Review article [1] interviews a reputable professor on the topic. America adopted English law corporations, replacing the Crown with the states. Early corporations were limited compared to today's because early enterprise was fairly limited--the American Revolution occurred on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution. You are correct in stating that it took political capital to form a corporation i…

I still think that corporations have too much power. They own the system.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#167

Post by TeMPOraL »

zackmorris wrote: post #52

Startup idea: Form a company that explores new markets in legal liabilities. It could bring lawsuits with little risk where the payoff could be billions of dollars. Off the top of my head: * Research whether channels were engineered into smartphones to allow water to leak in (since they have no moving parts and should self-evidently be watertight). * Find the planned-obsolescence parts in things like car doors that w…

Reminds me of an idea from the novel "Makers", by the very same Cory Doctorow, in which there's a mass VC-funded lawsuit against a particular known media megacorp.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#168

Post by computator »

jordigh wrote: post #145

There is so much "Stallman was right" in all of these examples... non-free software always manages to eventually sneak in malicious anti-user features, where the user has no recourse. At least with free software there's always the fundamental freedom to fork. You think systemd is a Red Hat plot to destroy Linux, then go use Devuan. You don't trust what Google could be doing with Chrome, take your pick of alternatives…

> Whenever someone refuses to show source code I always think, "what are you hiding in there?" There's usually something.

There's a dilemma that developers face when deciding to release source code that's bigger than fear of software theft or the desire to hide something evil in the code. It's a fear of being scrutinized, ridiculed, or humiliated over the quality of their code.

Imagine 2 programs that do something useful and are functionally equivalent. Program A is closed source. Program B has source code available for inspection. Suppose on inspection, program B's code turns out to be bloated, ugly, poorly organized, and with many potential bugs or defects. B's reputation is screwed. However, for all you know, A's code is just as bad or worse. But you don't know for sure.

Bloggers and reviewers will write that no source is available for A.

Bloggers and reviewers will write that program B's code sucks.

The consumer reads that "program A doesn't give you source code" and that "program B's code is garbage", but are otherwise functionally equivalent. Which do you think will have greater influence on most consumers and their purchasing decision?

That's one major reason why more developers don't release source code. I wish I knew a way out of this dilemma.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#169

Post by dorian-graph »

rb666 wrote: post #132
SubiculumCode wrote: post #10

This is what I think about at the pump. More and more I see gas pumps ask if you want a receipt BEFORE the gas is dispensed. This seems risky. If you decline the receipt and then dispense gas, the pump could cheat on the amount of gas dispensed with less risk, as a papered record of the purchase amount and price is not produced. If on the other hand, the pump waits to ask if you desire a receipt until after the gasol…

What sort of weird gas station requires you to specify the amount of gas before actually refueling your car? Is that a USA-only thing? Never seen that in Europe.

I've seen it in Norway, Italy, and somewhere else before. It's not terribly common—or it's usually optional and most people don't realise you can do it.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#170

Post by aptwebapps »

shostack wrote: post #150
layble wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of a large printer company who approached a large media company with a deal that would have had the large media company change the color of the text on their printer friendly pages to something near black but requiring the color cartridge instead of true black. As I recall they were willing to pay seven figures annually. The media company did not take them up on their offer. The underhandedness/cleverness of t…

I might be missing something here...why would the media company consider it even? Was it because the printer company charged the same price for either ink but had better margins on the colored version they wanted them to switch to?

I think the GP was referring to media that would be printed by others, not the media company.
Post reply on HN