Oops.. silly me.. I actually finished reading the whole article, and saw the part where they did conclude there was a measurable difference..
But they do still admit the weighting system is crappy and that a 10% difference is small.. So they reccommend further tests.
Thank you for providing the actual (crappy) data!
on
Can Computers Pray?
·
· Score: 2
If you're referring to this, it is worth pointing out that, despite being widely cited by religious groups, the study really isn't all it's cracked up to be. About 1000 patients at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo were randomly assigned to be prayed for or not. The prayers were for "a speedy recovery with no complications." There was in fact no significant difference between the recovery times of the experimental and control groups. The researchers nonetheless managed to concoct a scoring system by which the experimental group did 10% better than the control group.
I wish the original poster had provided that link. (Come to think of it.. IS that the study he was referring to?) I was about to reply with a "I'll believe it when I see it" message. It's interesting that even the researchers are actually admitting that the difference is statistically insignifant.
Not that mention that I find the whole idea of using a (somewhat arbitrary) weighted score rather suspect.
I'm not saying they should be exempt from laws just for being big. If MS breaks a specific law that also applies to smaller companies, sure, I think they should be punished. If MS perpetrates fraud, etc., yeah, they should be punished.
But that's NOT the point of monopoly law. Monopoly law by definition ONLY applies to large companies (which shows I'm not saying big companies shouldn't be punished like little ones since I'm talking about something that only applies to big companies in the first place).
And actually, I'm not entirely against monopoly laws, either. I think MS should be prevented from doing Bad Things with their power. However, I think we should enforce those laws through things like fines, which would make it uneconomical to do Bad Things.. the best way to tell a corporation what to do. After all, this works (to some extent) with environmental protection fines.
I do NOT, however, think we should directly interfere with the business model because we know so little about it that we could cause lots of weird collateral damage.
Yes, fining them could do collateral damage too, but the effects of a company losing money are much better known than the effects of a company being split up or forced to open their code.
Sorry I forgot to mention I think fines are okay in my original post.:P
As I write this , "Let CmdrTaco and Hemos run Microsoft" has 29% while "Break Microsoft into 3-5 'Baby Bills'" has only 27%.
I think it really shows you something when the joke choice gets more votes than any other choice..
Namely, it's not at all obvious to most people what should be done (if anything).
This is a really really complicated situation.
And, in that vane, I argue that if history has taught us anything, monopoly situations are so complex that anything we do to punish Microsoft will likely have more unexpected results than expected ones. I thus argue that instead of risking the danger of the punishment backfiring (as I think is likely), we should just let them be.. They won't last for ever anyway.
Well, one reason you'd want to is because some software (*gasp!*) is not ported to PPC.
AFS is the example that catches my attention because it's what MIT uses, and it's a pain that it's not available for PPC, so LinuxPPC could never be a true workstation in our environment the way RedHat can.
Music can be art, yes. (It's not ALWAYS art..) But that does not preclude it from being information. Art is a quality used to describe the information.
Hell, even the human mind is information.. the information being passed around by our neurons.. but that doesn't make the mind any less significant.
A lot of things ARE information.. it's what's being CONVEYED by that information that matters.
Using MP3s doesn't mean you're not buying CDs. I personally still buy CDs reasonably often, and will probably buy even more CDs when I'm out of school and have a real job.
Part of the reason for this is because most people only have the latest hits, so often what I want is not around. I also like to collect many albums from a group I like, and it'd take forever to find the more obscure stuff online. I also like having physical CDs with the cover art and stuff. Oh.. and did I mention CDs are better quality?
That's another thing.. I find that I never buy singles (except really obscure ones), and rarely even buy poorly-constructed albums with only a few good songs, but if I like some songs and know the album is good as a whole, I'll definitely buy it.
I'm hoping this will encourage more artists to make good concept albums..
But aside from that, I do feel a moral obligation to buy CDs as well. Be as it may that most of the money goes to the record companies.. but SOME of it goes to the artist, at least. I mean, I'm fully in support of overhauling the current system to something more fair, but before that happens, I'm still going to do the legal thing.
I also like to convince myself that I'm really doing nothing wrong when I get MP3s because I'm buying CDs as quickly as I can afford them anyway.. it's just that MP3s are allowing me to spend my money on the better or more obscure CDS... But I know I'm just deluding myself because when I get a job and can afford more CDs, I would still probably never get around to buying singles of new good songs and stuff... They'd be too damn expensive for little gain.
And why don't I want to break the law if the law is unjust? There's a time and a place for civil disobedience. In particular, if it's an organzied protest, then it's civil disobedience. If everone is just doing what they feel like, it's just breaking the law. Still, the illegal MP3 movement certainly does have a lot of the characteristics of civil disobedience, and it IS having an impact... I guess I just have an overdeveloped sense of legality.:P
This would, of course, be blatantly illegal if any of the songs are not available for public distribution.
Re:We need a non-profit org for this specifically
on
Copyright!
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· Score: 2
As far as the length of copyrights, when the original 28 year term was chosen, the flow of information was much slower than it is now. I think a comparable term in today's society would be about 5 years.
EXACTLY! By all conceivable logic, the term should be SHORTER now, no LONGER!
There is much to be gained by putting things in the public domain. Derivative works can have a great deal of impact as well.
Unforunately, that RealVideo clip on that page for the specified link appears to be wrong. It seems to be some sort of fund-raising speech in Marietta, Georgie to this "M.U.S.T." program, not a talk to 5th graders. :(
I've emailed the C-SPAN folks about their broken link. Hope they fix it.
We need a non-profit org for this specifically
on
Copyright!
·
· Score: 2
I don't think organizations like the EFF actively pursue the issue of drasticly reducing copyright durations. ("Drasticly" may sound extreme, but that's only because they've already been drasticly increased, with no benefit to the consumer whatsoever.)
Are there any organizations which specifically advocate copy-right term reduction? Maybe we should start one.
Yes, Saro-wiwa was protesting against Shell, but the people killed in the incident the article was talking about were not.. they were protesting against Chevron. The article was using Shell as background information and for comparison. The article was NOT about Saro-wiwa. It was about people who were protesting against Chevron on a barge who were shot at by Chevron-paid (see below) troops.
Please read the article before bashing its inaccuracy next time.
Pacifica even interviewed Chevron officials and a Chevron contractor (from ETPM Services, a UK company), who said some pretty disturbing things ON RECORD.
My favorite (from Bill Spencer of ETPM): "Life is tough here. And people you often hear it said that life is cheap here. I guess it is . It's looked at a little differently. I think that that's something that doesn't happen in our society. Life is a little more maybe precious or something. I think here or any of these developing countries it tends to be a little cheaper."
So when the Nigerian dictator put to death a half-dozen folks for criticizing Shell, was it an American who was responsible for ordering their deaths? No; it was a Nigerian. That is, it was Nigerians killing Nigerians over money.
Well, I don't know the details about the Shell case, but in this Chevron case, the Mobile Police forces (who killed two protestors) were paid by Chevron and flown in to the barge via a Chevron helicopter. I think that makes Chevron rather liable.
As for the multinational thing, sure, all big countries do this sort of thing. I know that. If you'll notice, in one of my other posts, I even bothered to mention other Western European countries. The reason I was talking about the US in particular was because most of the people bashing China are American, and because this Chevron case involves an American company.
In general, people often criticize Western European countries and the US because we have this tendency to take a moral high ground with other countries, telling them what's right and wrong when we don't even care when you look at our actions.
As a final note, I should mention that I know Pacifica's reports are made with definite agendas, but that article in particular has sufficient direct quotes of people from both sides that its integrity seems pretty good in general.
Sure, but they certainly ARE affordable. And just as some upper-middle class families here have to buy a new car every few years due to wear and tear from commuting, an upper-middle class family in China can afford to get a new computer every few years, which is pretty much how often families here get a new computer anyway.
And remember: Never underestimate the amount of money Chinese parents are willing to spend on their kids.
Thanks for posting that. There seem to be an awful lot of moral relativists in denial.
Funny thing is, although I posted that, and you're thanking me for it, I AM a moral relativist. But being a moral relativist hardly means you have no morals. I think the Tiananmen Square massacre was a horrendous thing, but even so, I don't think any issue is that clear-cut.
I mean, the party-line.. that it was for "stability".. DOES have some merit. If you look at Russia, you see what happens when a country makes big changes too quickly. Stability IS definitely important.
Now, I happen to think that in this case, it was utterly wrong to kill those students.. especially since they posed (imho) no really significant threat of revolution. But what if they did? What if they could have cause massive nationwide chaos? Imagine what would happen if 1.3 billion people were thrown into anarchy. It would NOT be pretty. And in that case, I think the decision would be less clear-cut. Would it be right to kill a few hundred to save the lives of the thousands of lives which would be lost in such anarchy? I'm don't know.
Nothing in the real world is pure black and white, and that's why we need moral relativism. The danger, of course, is to doubt TOO much. We should contemplate what we do, but we have to draw the line somewhere so we can go out and DO something. And that's why we have simplified morality.
The hard part is deciding where to draw that line.
And I would hate think of what the Chinese have to think about us.
I can tell you from experience (I was just back in Shanghai a few years ago) that people do two things to the US in China:
1) Bash the US politically for being pompous self-appointed world police who think everything they do is right.
2) Mimick the US as much as possible in terms of everything else, from stock market to television shows to fashion to nightclubs to more casual sex (and thus more STDs).
Slashdot Mirror
Oops.. silly me.. I actually finished reading the whole article, and saw the part where they did conclude there was a measurable difference..
But they do still admit the weighting system is crappy and that a 10% difference is small.. So they reccommend further tests.
If you're referring to this, it is worth pointing out that, despite being widely cited by religious groups, the study really isn't all it's cracked up to be. About 1000 patients at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo were randomly assigned to be prayed for or not. The prayers were for "a speedy recovery with no complications." There was in fact no significant difference between the recovery times of the experimental and control groups. The researchers nonetheless managed to concoct a scoring system by which the experimental group did 10% better than the control group.
I wish the original poster had provided that link. (Come to think of it.. IS that the study he was referring to?) I was about to reply with a "I'll believe it when I see it" message. It's interesting that even the researchers are actually admitting that the difference is statistically insignifant.
Not that mention that I find the whole idea of using a (somewhat arbitrary) weighted score rather suspect.
I'm not saying they should be exempt from laws just for being big. If MS breaks a specific law that also applies to smaller companies, sure, I think they should be punished. If MS perpetrates fraud, etc., yeah, they should be punished.
:P
But that's NOT the point of monopoly law. Monopoly law by definition ONLY applies to large companies (which shows I'm not saying big companies shouldn't be punished like little ones since I'm talking about something that only applies to big companies in the first place).
And actually, I'm not entirely against monopoly laws, either. I think MS should be prevented from doing Bad Things with their power. However, I think we should enforce those laws through things like fines, which would make it uneconomical to do Bad Things.. the best way to tell a corporation what to do. After all, this works (to some extent) with environmental protection fines.
I do NOT, however, think we should directly interfere with the business model because we know so little about it that we could cause lots of weird collateral damage.
Yes, fining them could do collateral damage too, but the effects of a company losing money are much better known than the effects of a company being split up or forced to open their code.
Sorry I forgot to mention I think fines are okay in my original post.
As I write this , "Let CmdrTaco and Hemos run Microsoft" has 29% while "Break Microsoft into 3-5 'Baby Bills'" has only 27%.
I think it really shows you something when the joke choice gets more votes than any other choice..
Namely, it's not at all obvious to most people what should be done (if anything).
This is a really really complicated situation.
And, in that vane, I argue that if history has taught us anything, monopoly situations are so complex that anything we do to punish Microsoft will likely have more unexpected results than expected ones.
I thus argue that instead of risking the danger of the punishment backfiring (as I think is likely), we should just let them be.. They won't last for ever anyway.
Well, one reason you'd want to is because some software (*gasp!*) is not ported to PPC.
AFS is the example that catches my attention because it's what MIT uses, and it's a pain that it's not available for PPC, so LinuxPPC could never be a true workstation in our environment the way RedHat can.
In the cool-non-ripoff industrial design category, I think Sony VAIOs are definitely very cool-looking.
I'd say that's another reason we need universal health care so the situation never arises in the first place!
The problem I see with hate crimes is best exemplified in this comic.
I like his swipe at Bush...
So I obviously spent too much time in advance preparing for a pop quiz about CEO's of software companies from hot spots around the world.
Man, those penalties sure are harsher than potential litigation...
Music can be art, yes. (It's not ALWAYS art..)
But that does not preclude it from being information.
Art is a quality used to describe the information.
Hell, even the human mind is information.. the information being passed around by our neurons.. but that doesn't make the mind any less significant.
A lot of things ARE information.. it's what's being CONVEYED by that information that matters.
Using MP3s doesn't mean you're not buying CDs. I personally still buy CDs reasonably often, and will probably buy even more CDs when I'm out of school and have a real job.
:P
Part of the reason for this is because most people only have the latest hits, so often what I want is not around. I also like to collect many albums from a group I like, and it'd take forever to find the more obscure stuff online.
I also like having physical CDs with the cover art and stuff.
Oh.. and did I mention CDs are better quality?
That's another thing.. I find that I never buy singles (except really obscure ones), and rarely even buy poorly-constructed albums with only a few good songs, but if I like some songs and know the album is good as a whole, I'll definitely buy it.
I'm hoping this will encourage more artists to make good concept albums..
But aside from that, I do feel a moral obligation to buy CDs as well. Be as it may that most of the money goes to the record companies.. but SOME of it goes to the artist, at least. I mean, I'm fully in support of overhauling the current system to something more fair, but before that happens, I'm still going to do the legal thing.
I also like to convince myself that I'm really doing nothing wrong when I get MP3s because I'm buying CDs as quickly as I can afford them anyway.. it's just that MP3s are allowing me to spend my money on the better or more obscure CDS...
But I know I'm just deluding myself because when I get a job and can afford more CDs, I would still probably never get around to buying singles of new good songs and stuff... They'd be too damn expensive for little gain.
And why don't I want to break the law if the law is unjust?
There's a time and a place for civil disobedience. In particular, if it's an organzied protest, then it's civil disobedience. If everone is just doing what they feel like, it's just breaking the law.
Still, the illegal MP3 movement certainly does have a lot of the characteristics of civil disobedience, and it IS having an impact... I guess I just have an overdeveloped sense of legality.
This would, of course, be blatantly illegal if any of the songs are not available for public distribution.
As far as the length of copyrights, when the original 28 year term was chosen, the flow of information was much slower than it is now. I think a comparable term in today's society would be about 5 years.
EXACTLY! By all conceivable logic, the term should be SHORTER now, no LONGER!
There is much to be gained by putting things in the public domain. Derivative works can have a great deal of impact as well.
Unforunately, that RealVideo clip on that page for the specified link appears to be wrong. It seems to be some sort of fund-raising speech in Marietta, Georgie to this "M.U.S.T." program, not a talk to 5th graders.
:(
I've emailed the C-SPAN folks about their broken link. Hope they fix it.
I don't think organizations like the EFF actively pursue the issue of drasticly reducing copyright durations. ("Drasticly" may sound extreme, but that's only because they've already been drasticly increased, with no benefit to the consumer whatsoever.)
Are there any organizations which specifically advocate copy-right term reduction?
Maybe we should start one.
I would email you privately, but you don't provide your email address, so I can only hope you read this..
I really like your sig. Do you have a source for that? (I'd rather not quote it unless I know it's not a joke.)
Thanks.
OBVIOUSLY a "tyop" is a "Ty Operation", that being a command which operates on beanie babies...
I meant "kids" as in the kids of many families.
Well, if you consider that that 100 million doesn't have to be all in the same generation, it's possible...
Yes, Saro-wiwa was protesting against Shell, but the people killed in the incident the article was talking about were not.. they were protesting against Chevron. The article was using Shell as background information and for comparison. The article was NOT about Saro-wiwa. It was about people who were protesting against Chevron on a barge who were shot at by Chevron-paid (see below) troops.
Please read the article before bashing its inaccuracy next time.
Pacifica even interviewed Chevron officials and a Chevron contractor (from ETPM Services, a UK company), who said some pretty disturbing things ON RECORD.
My favorite (from Bill Spencer of ETPM): "Life is tough here. And people you often hear it said that life is cheap here. I guess it is . It's looked at a little differently. I think that that's something that doesn't happen in our society. Life is a little more maybe precious or something. I think here or any of these developing countries it tends to be a little cheaper."
So when the Nigerian dictator put to death a half-dozen folks for criticizing Shell, was it an American who was responsible for ordering their deaths? No; it was a Nigerian. That is, it was Nigerians killing Nigerians over money.
Well, I don't know the details about the Shell case, but in this Chevron case, the Mobile Police forces (who killed two protestors) were paid by Chevron and flown in to the barge via a Chevron helicopter. I think that makes Chevron rather liable.
As for the multinational thing, sure, all big countries do this sort of thing. I know that. If you'll notice, in one of my other posts, I even bothered to mention other Western European countries.
The reason I was talking about the US in particular was because most of the people bashing China are American, and because this Chevron case involves an American company.
In general, people often criticize Western European countries and the US because we have this tendency to take a moral high ground with other countries, telling them what's right and wrong when we don't even care when you look at our actions.
As a final note, I should mention that I know Pacifica's reports are made with definite agendas, but that article in particular has sufficient direct quotes of people from both sides that its integrity seems pretty good in general.
Sure, but they certainly ARE affordable. And just as some upper-middle class families here have to buy a new car every few years due to wear and tear from commuting, an upper-middle class family in China can afford to get a new computer every few years, which is pretty much how often families here get a new computer anyway.
And remember: Never underestimate the amount of money Chinese parents are willing to spend on their kids.
Thanks for posting that. There seem to be an awful lot of moral relativists in denial.
Funny thing is, although I posted that, and you're thanking me for it, I AM a moral relativist. But being a moral relativist hardly means you have no morals. I think the Tiananmen Square massacre was a horrendous thing, but even so, I don't think any issue is that clear-cut.
I mean, the party-line.. that it was for "stability".. DOES have some merit. If you look at Russia, you see what happens when a country makes big changes too quickly. Stability IS definitely important.
Now, I happen to think that in this case, it was utterly wrong to kill those students.. especially since they posed (imho) no really significant threat of revolution. But what if they did? What if they could have cause massive nationwide chaos? Imagine what would happen if 1.3 billion people were thrown into anarchy. It would NOT be pretty. And in that case, I think the decision would be less clear-cut. Would it be right to kill a few hundred to save the lives of the thousands of lives which would be lost in such anarchy? I'm don't know.
Nothing in the real world is pure black and white, and that's why we need moral relativism. The danger, of course, is to doubt TOO much. We should contemplate what we do, but we have to draw the line somewhere so we can go out and DO something. And that's why we have simplified morality.
The hard part is deciding where to draw that line.
Occasionally, bad moderators moderate stuff down unfairly, but it seems that usually gets compensated with some upward moderation.
And I would hate think of what the Chinese have to think about us.
I can tell you from experience (I was just back in Shanghai a few years ago) that people do two things to the US in China:
1) Bash the US politically for being pompous self-appointed world police who think everything they do is right.
2) Mimick the US as much as possible in terms of everything else, from stock market to television shows to fashion to nightclubs to more casual sex (and thus more STDs).