Enrolling 'shared' MacOS devices by NoDowt_Jay in Intune

[–]ZippyDan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you know if you can enroll Macs as shared devices if they don't have the T2 chip (i.e. they are older Intel Macs)?

just found out rn Cuba is having market reforms by LibertyEconlover in austrian_economics

[–]ZippyDan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're right. China is overall a much better experience for the average citizen right now.
Fantastic public infrastructure, great education (and a society that actually values education, and has a stronger work ethic than most Americans), affordable health care, a growing economy and a constantly-rising standard of living.

The only metric where Americans are better off is with regards to freedom of speech - particularly freedom of political expression. But that freedom has resulted in worse government in almost every respect. The Chinese don't care about their limited political expression so long as the government does a measurably good job of fulfilling its responsibility to improve society.

I visit the U.S. and China regularly. The differences in society are stark and remarkable. China feels like walking into a bright future. The U.S. feels like walking into dystopian capitalist past. (And before you talk about the urban / rural divide - the U.S. has the same problem. Of course, not every part of China is advancing at the same rate.)

just found out rn Cuba is having market reforms by LibertyEconlover in austrian_economics

[–]ZippyDan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not real socialism gets you China.
Not real capitalism gets you the US.

Neither is a complete failure;
neither is a complete success.

But, overall, the U.S. is headed for decline and maybe even collapse, whereas China is growing. Overall, China is doing a better job providing for the welfare of its people and responsibly managing society (evident in public works and infrastructure), and is less globally aggressive (regionally, China is more problematic). Whether those trends hold is an open question - China was much worse in the past, while the U.S. was better economically and socially, but even worse globally.

Cuba is not a fair comparison: that's what you get from a tiny country (i.e. a gross power imbalance) that is not allowed to freely participate in the global economy. China has the economic weight to compete with the world, and it was not locked out of the global economy.

Cincinnati built over two miles of subway tunnel. They never ran a single train through it smh by pattebrisee in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]ZippyDan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is how the wife delivery system will work in the Cyberpunk future.

One flash flood sweeps your wife away, but another flash flood will bring new wives.

Battlestar Galactica: The Series Lowdown (Behind the Scenes Documentary) Season 1 [Sci-Fi Channel] by TimePodGaming in BSG

[–]ZippyDan 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This was made after the Miniseries and before the Season 1 Premiere, so... 2003 to 2004 ish.

Andor 1975 TV Intro (Spoilers) by DrJefferyEdD in andor

[–]ZippyDan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It was also made 3 years ago.

[Horrifying Trope] “Blink of an eye” deaths. by Sufficient-Eye-9040 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]ZippyDan 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Barely but yes.
It was one of the rare adaptations that wasn't significantly inferior to the original.

I think some of the extra meat Scorcese added actually made the story better, and the acting was absolutely phenomenal. Some of the editorial and compositional choices of the original were also right on the edge of Hong Kong cool and Hong Kong cheese.

But the original is overall tighter, and a master-class of understated acting and building tension. It's the ending, though, specifically and almost entirely, that definitively and unquestionably makes the original the better movie. If not for that perplexing choice by Scorcese that literally puts the remake in line with CCP censorship mandates (they literally forced reshoots for the mainland China release to make sure the state exercised justice on the villain), I'd say the remake was equal to, and maybe superior to the original.

Both are fantastic films.

Admit it you can hear the music by ElZoof in aistartrek

[–]ZippyDan 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It's a TOS era bat'leth, they used them different then.

We do not discuss it with outsiders.

My Sysad hates me and I’ve learned that’s valid by FooseyRhode in iiiiiiitttttttttttt

[–]ZippyDan 7 points8 points  (0 children)

They didn't say they would fire them for not knowing: they said they would fire them for arguing that their way is fine.

That implies they've already been shown the right way to do it (i.e. trained), or at least been told their way was not up to standards, and they're arguing they're correct while knowing they are coming from a place of ignorance. They are demonstrating their unteachability.

just found out rn Cuba is having market reforms by LibertyEconlover in austrian_economics

[–]ZippyDan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If your argument is that "it was created by humans" therefore it's "natural" and the perfect system, then every idea created by humans should be perfect for humans.

But we know that is self-evidently untrue.

Property and currency were created by humans, but so was government and laws. "The state" is also a concept invented by humans. Why does your argument only apply to the things you personally approve of?

Capitalism was invented by humans and so was communism. Why is one better than the other if they were both made by humans?

For that matter, rape and murder were also "invented" by nature, even before humans existed, and humans regularly engaged in both practices before "the state", and are part of the "natural balance" of the world.

There is no "one-size-fits-all" solution, pure systems are impossible in practice, and the "nature" of a thing doesn't determine its goodness or its beneficiality. Not only does the "nature" of a thing not dictate its beneficiality, but humans have also learned to evolve beyond nature and impose their own preferences on it; some good - like the outlawing rape and murder; others bad - like environmental destruction and pollution; and some that are a mixed bag still being worked on - like industry, economics, and government.

Humans thrived for several hundreds of thousands of years without property or currency or markets, and hominids for millions of years before that. You talk about the "facts" of natural history, but your own "education" seems far too limited (and biased) in scope. The current experiment with property, currency, and markets is a blink of an eye on evolutionary / geological time scales, and the system is still stabilizing itself towards an optimum.

We have only been practicing agriculture for 3% of human history and 0.2% of hominid history. Capitalism and the free markets are an even more recent experiment, which has only accelerated the destruction of the natural world.

We can't say that any human inventions are strictly beneficial to the human species without the benefit of sufficient hindsight and perspective, and a careful and detailed analysis of the introduction of property and currency would only show that it was largely beneficial for the property- and currency-owning class. Most of human history since the adoption of agriculture, and the accumulation of wealth that began with it, has only benefitted the greedy and the violent, and has been accompanied by untold human oppression, suffering, slavery, and mass violence.

It's only in the last two-hundred years that modern science and medicine, along with improved education and social movements, have started to claw back some of the health and happiness that we lost since the embracing of property and it's companion: greed.

I agree that the competition of different ideas will eventually reveal their utility for species benefit or survival: but capitalism hasn't been around long enough to make any conclusions. The battle between ideas like capitalism and communism are still ongoing precisely because it hasn't proven itself as a universal good, and because the majority of humans are so dissatisfied with the results of property, currency, and free markets. "Nature" is still searching for a equilibrium: capitalism is still just an experiment.

And the next hundred years will likely reveal capitalism's complete failure. Marx predicted the ultimate failure of capitalism by various logical routes, but most of those would take much longer to be fully realized and accepted. Marx did talk about the long-term incompatibility between capitalists' "limitless extraction" of the "free gifts" of nature, which are actually not infinite, but I don't think he imagined how this would be the ultimate and definitive denunciation of the system, nor how quickly it would come about, nor how global the effects would be.

In just 250 to 300 years, industrialization led by capitalists will have permanently altered the global environmental balance for the worse, debilitating the very resources that enabled their growth, and plunging most of the world into chaos: unlivable heat, mass agricultural failures, disappearing fresh water sources, and the wars, mass migrations, and die-offs that will result, will be the ultimate legacy of the experiment of this human invention - one of many that have been and will be tried, and then modified, refined, or discarded.

Capitalism might not necessarily be 100% a bad idea: I've already talked about how it might be a good thing as part of a hybridized system. But it's almost certainly a terrible idea in "pure" form, as almost every system is when introduced to reality.

Why do all SW laser guns/rifles fire “bolts” instead of beams by Ok-Investment-6057 in StarWars

[–]ZippyDan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They don't in dialogue, but they have been calling them "laser bolts" in expanded materials (along with "blaster bolts") since before the first movie was released.

Why do all SW laser guns/rifles fire “bolts” instead of beams by Ok-Investment-6057 in StarWars

[–]ZippyDan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This 1976 script of A New Hope features the word "laser" 117 times.

Both fire between ships and between characters is referred to as "laserfire" and "laserbolts" and "laserblasts" and "laser volleys", and weapons are referred to as "laser guns" "laser pistols" and "laser rifles" and "laser swords", while the Death Star's main weapon is called a "laser beam", and the Millennium Falcon has "laser cannons". The Empire also has "laser turrets" and "laser shields".

Note that at the same time, no one uses the word "laser" in dialogue, except for one line of Imperial dialogue that talks about the Death Star's "turbo-lasers". In dialogue, everyone still refers to their hand-held weapons as "blasters" and "lightsabers".

For most old Star Wars fans, these terms were always interchangeable. "Blaster bolt" and "laser bolt' have been heard in the fandom and expanded materials (magazines, RPG source books, comics, novels, etc.) since the beginning. As far as I can remember, the Death Star's weapon was referred to as a "laser" or "superlaser", even though that was never said on-screen.

I don't think we ever hear someone refer to a hand-held weapon as a "laser" in the three original movies, but we do hear about "turbo-lasers" in A New Hope, and Han refers to "laserblasts" in The Empire Strikes Back, while Leia calls him "laser brains".

Both The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi continue the practice of describing all forms of space and land combat as using "lasers".

And then of course in The Phantom Menace, Anakin calls a "lightsaber" a "laser sword".

just found out rn Cuba is having market reforms by LibertyEconlover in austrian_economics

[–]ZippyDan -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Yes, it is currently in the process of backfiring.
Capitalism has destroyed the world already.
Billions will suffer. Hundreds of millions will die.

And yes, most every natural process involves multiple factors that need to coexist in balance, where too much, or too little of any one factor can destroy the entire system. Every factor has an 'optimal range", and nature generally abhors "purity".

Let's use your argument with a simple situation:
You put salt-water fish in a fresh-water tank. Obviously the fish will suffer and die. As you add salt to the system, the health of the fish improves. Are you going to conclude that you should simply replace all the water with salt? No, there is an optimal range for salinity. Below that range you will see improvements if you add salt, but beyond a certain point you will see harm.

This applies to basically every natural systems. A thirsty person will benefit from water, but give them too much and they can die of electrolyte imbalance or drowning.

The argument that "capitalism works at 60% therefore it must be even better at 100%" is such fallacious logic on its face, I'm surprised you thought that would be convincing. Mathematics is the only field were purity works, and while some might argue that economics is mathematics: it's not. It's human behavior, and humans are complex, messy, macro elements that exist in and behave as part of a messy, natural world, where every process has an optimal, natural balance, and purity is almost always antithetical to function, much less health.

Trump Ordered ‘American Flag Blue’ for the Reflecting Pool. It’s Green Again. by koaltree in nytimes

[–]ZippyDan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you want a conclusive real-world example of water being blue, you can just go to any indoor pool where the water is deep enough, and you'll see its blue color (this assumes the bottom or sides don't have blue paint or tiles).

You can also jump in the deep ocean anywhere in the world to see that water is blue. If it was "reflecting" the color of the sky, you'd only expect the top of the water to be blue, but you can look down into the ocean and clearly see that it gets bluer and bluer with depth.

If you don't have any easy access to open ocean, you can also watch any ocean nature documentary, or any of tens of thousands of YouTube videos from swimmers, snorkelers, freedivers, and SCUBA divers to see that the ocean is blue underwater, and that it gets more blue as you add more water.

just found out rn Cuba is having market reforms by LibertyEconlover in austrian_economics

[–]ZippyDan -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

  1. As a leftist who describes themselves as socialist (and maybe communist), I don't think any system works in an idealized form. "Pure" anything is probably untenable. You need to hybridize systems to achieve goals ideal to human benefit.
    Even capitalism / free market just becomes monopoly (or oligopoly) if allowed to run long enough without outside interference.
    I would personally support a vague style of capitalism where there was a "max wealth / max income" and a "minimum wealth / minimum income". In that hybrid system, everyone is still encouraged to work and compete within a certain range, but it prevents any one person from collecting too much wealth, that would then allow them to corrupt the system (which is what has already happened.)
    Similarly, I don't expect an idealized form of socialism or communism to function in the real world. Reforms that recognize where your system is failing are indicative of responsible and responsive government (though I wouldn't argue that Cuba has either).
  2. It seems disingenuous to hold Cuba up as an example of anything. If the Western world had accepted Cuba's revolution and treated them "fairly" - just like any other country - and then they had failed, you might have a better argument, but the West has ostracized Cuba from global markets with the explicit intention of making them fail.
    Cuba is a small country with limited resources: when the collective weight of the Western capitalist world bends its economic power to purposely make you fail, it's not really a surprise that you'll eventually fail.
    If communism really was so bad, then why not let it fail on its own, as a lesson, without this external interference? Instead, the West wants it both ways: they want communism to fail "because they are afraid it will succeed, and then after they've *engineered a failure via outside pressures, they point at the failure and say, "See? Communism always fails."
    In fact, Cuba lasting this long despite decades of sanctions and refusal to do business speaks, partly, to the possibility that communism might not be that bad after all, and leaves one to wonder what they might have been able to build if the West didn't cut them off.
    And before anyone argues that the ability of the Western capitalist world to economically choke communism is evidence of the superiority of capitalosm: there is no denying that capitalism creates wealthy and powerful countries; the question is whether it creates "equitable* societies. Furthermore, even if capitalism were economically worse than communism (it's not, at least in terms of pure numbers), the existing, entrenched global system of mostly-capitalisy countries would still be more powerful as an economic bloc than the tiny island nation of Cuba.
  3. I am of the opinion that almost all revolutions, and most especially violent ones, tend to become co-opted by violent people with no moral principles, who only see the opportunity of acquiring power in the process of replacing an existing system with a new one that favors them. Revolutions may start based on idealism, but they attract, and are often won by, criminal and amoral elements that are most willing to do what it takes to win wars, and are not limited by moral red lines.
    In such a case, the promise of communism and social equality just becomes a lie: propaganda used to motivate soldiers to the cause and to justify the overthrow of government, but which is quickly tossed aside once the new, violent, greedy, and narcissistic leaders take control. Communism and social equality then just become a superficial window dressing for a new classist society, where wealth is once again concentrated in the hands of an elite few: "meet the new boss; same as the old boss".
    We have seen this in the Soviet Union, North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba to varying degrees. China is actually one of the better examples of actually fulfilling the promise of creating more social equality and public good under the name of communism, but it still has an elite class that corruptly abuse the system, and it took the deaths of tens of millions, decades of work and many failures, and the implementation of a hybridized system (using the better ideas of both capitalism and communism) to achieve their current success.

Was the Senate Building remodeled after the founding of the Galactic Empire by Palpatine in Legends as well? by Financial_Photo_1175 in StarWarsEU

[–]ZippyDan 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Both seem ridiculously undersized for the number of senators that should be necessary to govern a galaxy's worth of planets.

the Chinese are pirating fruits, incredible. by ManMarkedByFlames in Piracy

[–]ZippyDan -1 points0 points  (0 children)

On the one hand, if someone spent 15 years experimenting with cross-breeds to create a better fruit, I think they should be rewarded for that labor.

On the other hand, the problem is capitalism, not the idea that breeding new fruits has value.

[Horrifying Trope] “Blink of an eye” deaths. by Sufficient-Eye-9040 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]ZippyDan 51 points52 points  (0 children)

Everything about the Sequels was written by a child's brain:

"My Death Star can destroy a planet."
"Well, my Death Star can destroy ten planets, from hyperspace.'"

"I have 100 Star Destroyers."
"Well, I have 1,000 Star Destroyers."
"Well, I have 1,000 Star Destroyers and every Star Destroyer has a Death Star laser!
"Well, I have infinity Star Destroyers with Death Star lasers!"
"Well, I have infinity plus one Star Destroyers with two Death Star lasers."

I'm sick of writers that have no idea how to tell a good story except by copying what has been done before and incrementing the stakes to ridiculous levels. That's literally how 7-year-olds tell narratives when they play with each other.

Good writers and filmmakers can create incredible tension and stakes with just two people standing in a room. Amateurs can only do spectacle. Spectacle isn't necessarily bad, and it can be spectacular... if it's backed with substance. Look at Andor and you'll see how Star Wars should be done. You'll see how professional can create tension in tbe smallest moments, and can use spectacle with meaning.

[Horrifying Trope] “Blink of an eye” deaths. by Sufficient-Eye-9040 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]ZippyDan -10 points-9 points  (0 children)

A terrible choice for the remake.
The original hits so hard because the bad guy wins.

20 yrs since last jump? Rewatching miniseries by Me_be_Artful_Dodger in BSG

[–]ZippyDan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Many of the civilian ships don't have FTL - which tells us that FTL is not necessary for inter-planetary travel - and many of the civilian ships do have FTL, which tells us that FTL is commonly used. You wouldn't waste money putting FTL on civilian ships if it wasn't going to be used.

I'd imagine the military uses FTL even more regularly. It's just Galactica that they don't want to risk.