"It pays to be the first when critical mass is achieved. Who remembers JCR Licklider?"
Except Google didn't do that, either. "Critical mass" was achieved with Yahoo! Search, Dogpile, and others.
Search engines were alive and well, and getting millions of hits a day, long before Google came along. The only thing different about Google was that they had a better way of telling which sites were more popular. So their results were better.
So it wasn't a matter of "being first when critical mass is achieved" at all. It was a matter of "doing it better than the big players" at the time.
Too bad they haven't managed to "do better" than others at the other things they've tried. What other successes they have had have largely been due to their existing size.
"Android 4.5, brought to you by Pepsi can't be far from here."
I agree. This is bullshit.
While past releases might have been named "after an actual product", none of the prior releases have been named after a trademarked product. They've always been generic.
Google, this was a bonehead move. When are you going to stop putting your foot up your own ass?
"Since when has the truth not been harmful in diplomacy, politics, or espionage?"
Apparently I did not explain my point well, because it seems all respondents here have experienced a major "WHOOSH" moment.
Quote:
"Experience shows that the judicial proceedings against those who were in fact kidnapped and taken to the U.S. are of a biased character, based on shaky evidence, and clearly tilted toward conviction."
We know from our own news sources in recent years (I am a U.S. citizen) that this is true. And apparently everybody else knows it too. So my question is: How could re-iterating a well-known TRUTH possibly cause harm? It's something most people already know. Saying it again isn't going to hurt anybody.
"Like it or not, NASA are broadly on the right track. Unfortunately, with sequestration and what not, the money isn't going to be around to build and operate SLS."
Nonsense. Just about everybody, excluding a relatively few scientists and the President, wants to go back to the Moon. The President won't hear of it. And that's that.
Despite rumors to the contrary, the Moon does have potential for the future. (Hint: that's why everybody EXCEPT the United States is working on getting back up there.)
First, there is the "space station" potential. What better prospect for an orbiting "space station" than the Moon? No, it's not in LEO, but it has gravity which is very important (more on that in a moment), and it's an excellent stepping-stone outward. Hell, if I were a religious type I'd maybe say that's why it was put there in the first place.
Second -- and extremely important -- is the Moon's strategic value. Any country that dominates the Moon will dominate Earth. Period. Allowing others to do so would be the single biggest strategic mistake in history.
To expand on the first point: "Deep space" projects -- especially manned -- require vehicles that are just too large to launch from the ground. And we know by now that major construction in microgravity is just too damned slow, hard, and expensive with our current level of technology. How to solve those two problems? Do the construction in a shallow gravity well. And where would we find such a thing? Oh yeah... the Moon.
See my reply above. It's only "an illusion" to people who don't understand the rules.
"It's disingenuous to suggest that there isn't major language variety out there."
Variety means nothing. Whenever you have a large, distributed population you will have variety. It still all comes back to the same old rules. You can understand the English in a movie made 90 years ago just as well as you can a movie made today.
THAT'S how much it really changes, despite all the "variety".
"There aren't rules in the sense that the prescriptivists believe there to be."
Yes, there are.
The rules DO change with time. But that does not make them any less rules.
Further, they are not rules in the sense of "laws". they are rules in the sense of "This is how best to speak or write if you want to be fully understood by the maximum number of other people."
If you want a good example, go watch the old movie "Airplane", and listen to June Cleaver translating "jive".
It was popular for a time, but little if any of it ever made it into the "rules" of our language. Same with much of the more recent slang. A little bit dribbles in, here or there. But from the 1970s to the 2010s, our language has actually changed very damned little, no matter how many intervening "generations" had their own slang.
"If there is no actual proof, or anything even resembling it, then that just means copyright and patent law is unproven; it's pretty easy for me to live with that."
I think sooner or later you will find that ignoring evidence simply because it isn't proof will not actually get you very far in life.
Just sayin'
"No need. I'm looking for actual proof, looking to societies and times vastly different from our own doesn't really provide it."
Good luck with that. There is no "proof", and there are no societies and times that do not differ vastly from ours. Comparative analysis is the best you can get. I suggest learning to live with it.
"language never stands still, it constantly evolves, there is no standard"
Stop whining.
True, language never stands still. It constantly evolves. But if you think there is no standard, you're exactly the kind of idiot TFA was referring to.
Correlation is not causation. Your "argument" is worthless.
I am not an idiot, and the argument is not worthless.
While correlation does not prove causation, it can strongly suggest causation. If you think otherwise, you are a fool.
The more you find separate incidences of correlation, when other variables change, the stronger the evidence for causation. Unless you can find another variable that has an even stronger correlation.
"Where is the evidence that, in this day and age, copyright and patent law foster innovation to any significant degree?"
There is simply no way to do that. We can only judge by the historical evidence.
"How is this judged in an unbiased, objective way..."
See above.
"... without looking into an alternate world where copyright and patent laws simply don't exist (and the cultures and countries are otherwise the same)? I've had people tell me that there is lots of evidence that copyright and patent laws are beneficial (if the laws themselves are 'reasonable'), but then they failed to actually show me the evidence."
Here, at least, we can approximate. And the evidence is all around you. While we don't have countries and cultures that are the same, we DO have cross-sections of many different countries and cultures, in which one of the major distinguishing features has been the absence of any official concept of "rights" to intellectual creations (i.e., inventions, and writings or other forms of art). Examples of these are the former Soviet countries, and (increasingly we have to use the word "formerly" here) Communist China. Those are not the only examples but are certainly the two largest. No, their cultures and their countries were not the same -- they were VERY different -- and yet the rejection of private ownership of personal creations was one of their glaringly common traits.
And guess what? They didn't just do poorly, they failed.
By that I mean: look at their performance during the period in which they rejected intellectual ownership, and look at their relative prosperity now, as they have been increasingly embracing it. It is like night and day.
I assert that they are not exceptions, but rather large examples of the rule.
Another case in point: now that America's patent and copyright regulation has arguably been seriously abused and less "reasonable" by most peoples' assessment, its economy pretty much sucks.
Yes, it is pretty hard to isolate that one variable. Nevertheless, the historical correlations (which I have barely touched on) are pretty damned glaring.
"If it were, we could get rid of the TSA, copyrights, patents, and numerous other garbage (seeing as how there's no evidence they're effective)."
In general I have agreed with you in this thread, but here I must draw the line.
Recent abuse of the patent and copyright systems, made possible largely by recent law and regulation changes, are not even remotely the whole history of patents and copyrights, and do not mean that patents and copyrights are worthless. There is LOTS of evidence -- the vast majority of it -- that shows that a reasonable body of patent and copyright laws can and does foster innovation and the arts (including writing).
Anything can be abused. But it is irresponsible to equate the abuse of something with the worth of that thing. By that logic, we could call children worthless because they were abused, or automobiles worthless because some people speed or drive recklessly.
Do you also believe, given recent proven abuses by the IRS, that there is no evidence for the effectiveness of the concept of taxation?
"Nevertheless things have reached a point where you might get idealogically motivated people starting anti-NSA encryption systems and there isn't much the NSA can do against someone willing to risk prison or flee the country or shut down their entire company rather than deal with the devil. The NSA and the government in general are used to dealing with people who are easily controlled with nothing more than money."
"Unfortunately, the government already won. The case is over, the company closed down. "
WHOOSH!
You missed the whole point. Sure, that was bad enough. But IF THE GOVERNMENT WINS THIS, it will set an even WORSE precedent. Because this would not just shut the company down, but make the CEO personally liable for harming small children... even though their product (see the link I provided above) was clearly marked "Keep Away From All Children".
If that prospect doesn't give you chills, then nothing will.
"So apparently they were being marketed as "toys" at some point."
But not, as far as I know, children's toys, and especially not small children's toys. Go to ThinkGeek and look at all the toys. But they aren't being marketed for children, much less small children.
"I don't know how you do it in America but in the UK the law generally works on the basis of what a "reasonable person" would think and assume. Clearly a reasonable person would not consider a cleaning products, a car or a power tool to be a suitable toy. What a reasonable person does think is ultimately up to a jury though."
Of course, the U.S. is also a Common Law country, so we also have the "reasonable person" standard. But isn't that the whole point? If a manufacturer clearly marks something Keep Away From All Children, as Buckyballs clearly did, is it "reasonable" to hold the manufacturer responsible when your kid swallows them?
Or is it more "reasonable" to blame the parents for putting something known to be hazardous within the reach of small children?
"So there is a chance companies will no longer get pathetic fines and be pretty much unaccountable for this misdeeds. Individuals who made decisions within the organization will be held responsible. Good."
Um... NO.
First, you have to identify actual misdeeds. Buckyballs were NOT sold as children's toys! They were labeled that they were NOT for children.
The fact that Buckyballs were recalled at all is what is pathetic. But also of great concern. Because if the government were to win, then any company that makes cleaning products that kids get hold of and poison themselves with... or car manufacturers... or makers of power tools... anybody who sells things that are NOT children's toys could be prosecuted simply because someone let their children play with them (or negligently gave them access).
The criminals here were the adults who let children play with unsafe objects. Hell, makers of children's toys who include a label that says "Warning! Contains small parts. Not for children under 4 years old." is exempt from this kind of government harassment. Yet you're seeing someone being pursued for this when they weren't even selling children's toys! It is OUTRAGEOUS.
This is an extremely dangerous precedent and the government must lose this case. Otherwise, anybody could be prosecuted for anything, merely if some child gets hold of it. Bad, bad, bad.
"That's like going to jail for teaching people where to hit their head to pass a phrenology test..."
Not really. It would only be like that if phrenology were a tool Government used to coerce and intimidate people.
OP did not explain an important point that a lot of people here don't get: government knows that polygraphs don't work. But they myth that they DO work is used as a tool to coerce and intimidate people into confessing things they otherwise would not.
The problem here is that polygraphs many not WORK the way government agencies claim they do. But they are still useful TOOLS to get people to 'fess up. As long as the myth that they actually work is maintained.
This is just another government attempt to maintain that myth. But it looks like it's being done in a rather criminal fashion.
"Or they could just move and leave it to the city"
Better yet, they could just stay where they are, and forget about it.
The IPCC's worst projection was about a 1m rise in 100 years. That means about a foot and a half in 50 years.
Hell, even the artificial island of Alameda is higher above water level that that. And San Francisco is STEEP. You can be a city block away from the water and already several meters above it.
"No, adding the third dimension to the problem really does increase the complexity"
Only trivially, since we already have more-than-adequate 3-dimensional autopilots. Even kids' toys today have autopilots that are better than autopilots in commercial jets in the 1960s. That is not the problem here.
I don't want to belittle the problem... it really is more complex. But it has also been SOLVED.
"special problems like "how do I handle an engine failure while enroute""
Those problems are already adequately solved by private aerial vehicles. Again, it's a real problem. But again, it's been solved.
"You people who aren't pilots are a continual source of amusement for those of us who are. I bet you think that an aircraft stall is when the engine dies, don't you?"
Don't be an asshole. Funny, but you people who think others aren't pilots don't seen to be aware that the FAA and NTSB have been saying exactly what I wrote. Mass air transportation won't be available until the auto-navigation and networking problems are solved. Everything else has been done. But those are big problems when there are lots of things in the air. Being a licensed pilot -- or even commercial pilot -- won't get you out of that one.
Slashdot Mirror
"High time to stop using paypal" was years ago.
No, it wasn't. What passed years ago was "It's high time PayPal was regulated as a bank."
"It pays to be the first when critical mass is achieved. Who remembers JCR Licklider?"
Except Google didn't do that, either. "Critical mass" was achieved with Yahoo! Search, Dogpile, and others.
Search engines were alive and well, and getting millions of hits a day, long before Google came along. The only thing different about Google was that they had a better way of telling which sites were more popular. So their results were better.
So it wasn't a matter of "being first when critical mass is achieved" at all. It was a matter of "doing it better than the big players" at the time.
Too bad they haven't managed to "do better" than others at the other things they've tried. What other successes they have had have largely been due to their existing size.
"Android 4.5, brought to you by Pepsi can't be far from here."
I agree. This is bullshit.
While past releases might have been named "after an actual product", none of the prior releases have been named after a trademarked product. They've always been generic.
Google, this was a bonehead move. When are you going to stop putting your foot up your own ass?
"Since when has the truth not been harmful in diplomacy, politics, or espionage?"
Apparently I did not explain my point well, because it seems all respondents here have experienced a major "WHOOSH" moment.
Quote:
"Experience shows that the judicial proceedings against those who were in fact kidnapped and taken to the U.S. are of a biased character, based on shaky evidence, and clearly tilted toward conviction."
We know from our own news sources in recent years (I am a U.S. citizen) that this is true. And apparently everybody else knows it too. So my question is: How could re-iterating a well-known TRUTH possibly cause harm? It's something most people already know. Saying it again isn't going to hurt anybody.
Actually you did imply that when you asked how it can be harmful if it is the "simple truth".
Ehhhhhhhh. (Sound of buzzer.) Nope. Asking what harm "the simple truth" can do does not imply falsehood.
Minus two points for logic error.
"Like it or not, NASA are broadly on the right track. Unfortunately, with sequestration and what not, the money isn't going to be around to build and operate SLS."
Nonsense. Just about everybody, excluding a relatively few scientists and the President, wants to go back to the Moon. The President won't hear of it. And that's that.
Despite rumors to the contrary, the Moon does have potential for the future. (Hint: that's why everybody EXCEPT the United States is working on getting back up there.)
First, there is the "space station" potential. What better prospect for an orbiting "space station" than the Moon? No, it's not in LEO, but it has gravity which is very important (more on that in a moment), and it's an excellent stepping-stone outward. Hell, if I were a religious type I'd maybe say that's why it was put there in the first place.
Second -- and extremely important -- is the Moon's strategic value. Any country that dominates the Moon will dominate Earth. Period. Allowing others to do so would be the single biggest strategic mistake in history.
To expand on the first point: "Deep space" projects -- especially manned -- require vehicles that are just too large to launch from the ground. And we know by now that major construction in microgravity is just too damned slow, hard, and expensive with our current level of technology. How to solve those two problems? Do the construction in a shallow gravity well. And where would we find such a thing? Oh yeah... the Moon.
Notice that your definition of propaganda doesn't say "false information".
Nor did I say or imply that it had to. What I mentioned was "harmful".
"It's disingenuous to suggest that there isn't major language variety out there."
Variety means nothing. Whenever you have a large, distributed population you will have variety. It still all comes back to the same old rules. You can understand the English in a movie made 90 years ago just as well as you can a movie made today.
THAT'S how much it really changes, despite all the "variety".
"There aren't rules in the sense that the prescriptivists believe there to be."
Yes, there are.
The rules DO change with time. But that does not make them any less rules.
Further, they are not rules in the sense of "laws". they are rules in the sense of "This is how best to speak or write if you want to be fully understood by the maximum number of other people."
If you want a good example, go watch the old movie "Airplane", and listen to June Cleaver translating "jive".
It was popular for a time, but little if any of it ever made it into the "rules" of our language. Same with much of the more recent slang. A little bit dribbles in, here or there. But from the 1970s to the 2010s, our language has actually changed very damned little, no matter how many intervening "generations" had their own slang.
"If there is no actual proof, or anything even resembling it, then that just means copyright and patent law is unproven; it's pretty easy for me to live with that."
I think sooner or later you will find that ignoring evidence simply because it isn't proof will not actually get you very far in life.
Just sayin'
"No, but is an excellent propaganda phrase."
Hmmm...
prop a gan da noun
information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.
How is this harmful? It appears to be simple truth.
"No need. I'm looking for actual proof, looking to societies and times vastly different from our own doesn't really provide it."
Good luck with that. There is no "proof", and there are no societies and times that do not differ vastly from ours. Comparative analysis is the best you can get. I suggest learning to live with it.
"language never stands still, it constantly evolves, there is no standard"
Stop whining.
True, language never stands still. It constantly evolves. But if you think there is no standard, you're exactly the kind of idiot TFA was referring to.
Correlation is not causation. Your "argument" is worthless.
I am not an idiot, and the argument is not worthless.
While correlation does not prove causation, it can strongly suggest causation. If you think otherwise, you are a fool.
The more you find separate incidences of correlation, when other variables change, the stronger the evidence for causation. Unless you can find another variable that has an even stronger correlation.
In this case, I know of no such "other variable".
"Not to me."
Then pick up a history book.
"Where is the evidence that, in this day and age, copyright and patent law foster innovation to any significant degree?"
There is simply no way to do that. We can only judge by the historical evidence.
"How is this judged in an unbiased, objective way..."
See above.
"... without looking into an alternate world where copyright and patent laws simply don't exist (and the cultures and countries are otherwise the same)? I've had people tell me that there is lots of evidence that copyright and patent laws are beneficial (if the laws themselves are 'reasonable'), but then they failed to actually show me the evidence."
Here, at least, we can approximate. And the evidence is all around you. While we don't have countries and cultures that are the same, we DO have cross-sections of many different countries and cultures, in which one of the major distinguishing features has been the absence of any official concept of "rights" to intellectual creations (i.e., inventions, and writings or other forms of art). Examples of these are the former Soviet countries, and (increasingly we have to use the word "formerly" here) Communist China. Those are not the only examples but are certainly the two largest. No, their cultures and their countries were not the same -- they were VERY different -- and yet the rejection of private ownership of personal creations was one of their glaringly common traits.
And guess what? They didn't just do poorly, they failed.
By that I mean: look at their performance during the period in which they rejected intellectual ownership, and look at their relative prosperity now, as they have been increasingly embracing it. It is like night and day.
I assert that they are not exceptions, but rather large examples of the rule.
Another case in point: now that America's patent and copyright regulation has arguably been seriously abused and less "reasonable" by most peoples' assessment, its economy pretty much sucks.
Yes, it is pretty hard to isolate that one variable. Nevertheless, the historical correlations (which I have barely touched on) are pretty damned glaring.
"If it were, we could get rid of the TSA, copyrights, patents, and numerous other garbage (seeing as how there's no evidence they're effective)."
In general I have agreed with you in this thread, but here I must draw the line.
Recent abuse of the patent and copyright systems, made possible largely by recent law and regulation changes, are not even remotely the whole history of patents and copyrights, and do not mean that patents and copyrights are worthless. There is LOTS of evidence -- the vast majority of it -- that shows that a reasonable body of patent and copyright laws can and does foster innovation and the arts (including writing).
Anything can be abused. But it is irresponsible to equate the abuse of something with the worth of that thing. By that logic, we could call children worthless because they were abused, or automobiles worthless because some people speed or drive recklessly.
Do you also believe, given recent proven abuses by the IRS, that there is no evidence for the effectiveness of the concept of taxation?
"Nevertheless things have reached a point where you might get idealogically motivated people starting anti-NSA encryption systems and there isn't much the NSA can do against someone willing to risk prison or flee the country or shut down their entire company rather than deal with the devil. The NSA and the government in general are used to dealing with people who are easily controlled with nothing more than money."
"Might get"???
Haven't you been reading the news?
"Unfortunately, the government already won. The case is over, the company closed down. "
WHOOSH!
You missed the whole point. Sure, that was bad enough. But IF THE GOVERNMENT WINS THIS, it will set an even WORSE precedent. Because this would not just shut the company down, but make the CEO personally liable for harming small children... even though their product (see the link I provided above) was clearly marked "Keep Away From All Children".
If that prospect doesn't give you chills, then nothing will.
"So apparently they were being marketed as "toys" at some point."
But not, as far as I know, children's toys, and especially not small children's toys. Go to ThinkGeek and look at all the toys. But they aren't being marketed for children, much less small children.
"I don't know how you do it in America but in the UK the law generally works on the basis of what a "reasonable person" would think and assume. Clearly a reasonable person would not consider a cleaning products, a car or a power tool to be a suitable toy. What a reasonable person does think is ultimately up to a jury though."
Of course, the U.S. is also a Common Law country, so we also have the "reasonable person" standard. But isn't that the whole point? If a manufacturer clearly marks something Keep Away From All Children, as Buckyballs clearly did, is it "reasonable" to hold the manufacturer responsible when your kid swallows them?
Or is it more "reasonable" to blame the parents for putting something known to be hazardous within the reach of small children?
"So there is a chance companies will no longer get pathetic fines and be pretty much unaccountable for this misdeeds. Individuals who made decisions within the organization will be held responsible. Good."
Um... NO.
First, you have to identify actual misdeeds. Buckyballs were NOT sold as children's toys! They were labeled that they were NOT for children.
The fact that Buckyballs were recalled at all is what is pathetic. But also of great concern. Because if the government were to win, then any company that makes cleaning products that kids get hold of and poison themselves with... or car manufacturers... or makers of power tools... anybody who sells things that are NOT children's toys could be prosecuted simply because someone let their children play with them (or negligently gave them access).
The criminals here were the adults who let children play with unsafe objects. Hell, makers of children's toys who include a label that says "Warning! Contains small parts. Not for children under 4 years old." is exempt from this kind of government harassment. Yet you're seeing someone being pursued for this when they weren't even selling children's toys! It is OUTRAGEOUS.
This is an extremely dangerous precedent and the government must lose this case. Otherwise, anybody could be prosecuted for anything, merely if some child gets hold of it. Bad, bad, bad.
"That's like going to jail for teaching people where to hit their head to pass a phrenology test..."
Not really. It would only be like that if phrenology were a tool Government used to coerce and intimidate people.
OP did not explain an important point that a lot of people here don't get: government knows that polygraphs don't work. But they myth that they DO work is used as a tool to coerce and intimidate people into confessing things they otherwise would not.
The problem here is that polygraphs many not WORK the way government agencies claim they do. But they are still useful TOOLS to get people to 'fess up. As long as the myth that they actually work is maintained.
This is just another government attempt to maintain that myth. But it looks like it's being done in a rather criminal fashion.
"Or they could just move and leave it to the city"
Better yet, they could just stay where they are, and forget about it.
The IPCC's worst projection was about a 1m rise in 100 years. That means about a foot and a half in 50 years.
Hell, even the artificial island of Alameda is higher above water level that that. And San Francisco is STEEP. You can be a city block away from the water and already several meters above it.
"It's not like you can control which packets will and won't be routed through the US."
Yes, it is. To a large degree, anyway. And one way to keep those packets out of the U.S. is to not use gmail.
This *IS* the way (or one way, anyway) to deal with those companies that have "cooperated" with the NSA: hit 'em in the pocketbook.
"No, adding the third dimension to the problem really does increase the complexity"
Only trivially, since we already have more-than-adequate 3-dimensional autopilots. Even kids' toys today have autopilots that are better than autopilots in commercial jets in the 1960s. That is not the problem here.
I don't want to belittle the problem... it really is more complex. But it has also been SOLVED.
"special problems like "how do I handle an engine failure while enroute""
Those problems are already adequately solved by private aerial vehicles. Again, it's a real problem. But again, it's been solved.
"You people who aren't pilots are a continual source of amusement for those of us who are. I bet you think that an aircraft stall is when the engine dies, don't you?"
Don't be an asshole. Funny, but you people who think others aren't pilots don't seen to be aware that the FAA and NTSB have been saying exactly what I wrote. Mass air transportation won't be available until the auto-navigation and networking problems are solved. Everything else has been done. But those are big problems when there are lots of things in the air. Being a licensed pilot -- or even commercial pilot -- won't get you out of that one.