I'd say that the "building a knowledge-based workforce" criteria is a load of bull.
Currently, it is impossible to have a properly functioning city (or society for that matter) without some distribution between "knowledge-based" workers and those who work in non-"knowledge-based" fields. Just like you don't want everyone to graduate with a degree in CS, you don't want everyone to abandon necessary jobs because they're "beneath" them. For the forseeable future we're going to need janitors, mechanics, carpenters, etc... (basically most of the occupations that you'd see in a vocational school type setting) and that's a good thing because some people love doing those things. Not everyone wants to spend the majority of their waking life in cube farm under flourescent light.
The criteria that this survey used are probably some of the worst possible criteria for determining any group's "intelligence". You might as well also judge it by the number of cable/satellite channels available per home.
I think you're ignoring the very large role that parents play in any student's academic performance. I went to school in one of the poorest school districts in the US and you still had plenty of kids going on to ivy league and comparable universities. By the same token my s.o. grew up in one of the richest school districts in the US and she knew plenty of people who dropped out of high school or didn't make it through college and even now plenty of her little sister's friends are completely under-achieving kids who have almost zero college/job prospects because they just don't give a damn.
Does going to a good/wealthy school help? Well yeah, of course, but the influence that parents can have far outshadows any other influence in a child's life (even if the parent exercises that influence by not doing a thing to educate their kids). I'd argue that the biggest difference between American and Japanese educational systems is the role that parents play in pushing their children to do well and even excell in what they do. It doesn't matter whether it's a public school or a private one, Japanese or American, rich or poor, if children's parents aren't involved and if they don't get their kids used to really working at getting a good education, everything else will go by the wayside.
Until we start making parents accountable for how their kids do in school no amount of finger pointing or creative financing is going to make a difference. That's one of the big problems I had with the whole "No Child Left Behind" system. It focuses solely on teachers/schools and how their students do on standardized tests. If a teacher can't make enough students pass they can loose their jobs, but nothing happens to a parent if they can't make their own children meet certain academic standards.
Personally, I wonder what would happen if instead of focusing on teachers, we focused on parents and made them at least partially accountable for their children. Did their child flunk an entire grade without the parent bringing the kid's problems to a tutor/teacher's attention during the course of the entire school year? Then they lose their tax deduction for that kid for that year. Is their underage kid convicted of some crime? Then they have to do some number of hours of community service in addition to whatever punishment their kid gets.
It's really sad how many people in this country make such a big deal about the importance of producing children without putting an equal emphasis on what parents do once they have the kids. Likewise, it's disturbing how much effort some parents put into indoctrinating their kids into a religion, social group, etc... without putting as much effort into educating them about basic reading/writing/arithmatic type stuff.
Is it crazy to pay anyone millions of dollars for their work? Maybe, maybe not, but if a major company agrees to pay someone $X for their work and what they bring to a project it's utterly wrong to turn around and play the "you're being greedy wanting more money" card. If you agree to a deal with someone and they meet (and agruably exceed) your esxpectations then you should honor the deal, if you don't your a greedy slimeball who should be avoided at all costs.
New line agreed to pay Jackson according to some formula based on how well the movies did. Jackson is questioning their accounting practices and instead of turning around and saying "fine, look at the books, we paid you what we agreed to pay you", New Line has resorted to school yard tactics and they're basically calling him names. They have the information that could settle this case once and for all and the fact that they refuse to provide it makes it look like they do have something to hide.
You can lament that some people's salaries exist in a range that most of us can't even pretend to dream of, but think about what the big company is going to do to the average consumer if they'll turn on Jackson after he made them an amount of money that is many times greater than the what they paid him.
Good job at looking at just one side of the situation.
... the powers that be try to blame everyone but the person/people responsible.
Oh no, it's the internet's/violent video games'/movies/ fault that these kids run wild and act like hooligans! It can't possibly be the kids themselves or their parents who deserve any of that blame.
It boggles the mind how a teachers' union could fixate more on the "15 minutes of fame" and less on trying to make parents or the kid accountable (even outside of legal remedies). Instead of whining about how terrible the internet is, they could turn around and warn his new teachers/neighbors in Canada about what he's been up to over there (and point them to the video). Make the parents look bad and make his life miserable wherever he ends up and see if kids don't start to wise up.
I suspect what they're really upset about (and the real point to the zero tolerance policy they mention) are the other cases where teachers have been caught on video doing things they shouldn't do (e.g. screaming at kids). This is just a convenient scapegoat because the kids were clearly the ones doing something wrong so now they blame the internet/cameras/etc...
It's funny how often the people who should worry the least about surveillance (teachers, cops, etc...) are often the ones who least want to be scrutinized by the very things they'd like to use on us.
Ummm... according to the movie (i.e. within the Indiana-Jones-verse), yeah pretty much.
The grail knight makes a comment to the effect that he's grown old and weak over the centuries of waiting for someone to make it through the traps to challenge him so presumably he was not old and weak when he first arrived in the temple. Remember, the average life span of people back when he and his brothers originally found the grail was probably somewhere in the 30s-40s at best, it would be highly unlikely that an old man (as he appeared in the movie) would be alive, let alone be able to undertake the journey to find and then hide/construct traps/guard the grail.
Given the apparent importance of the grail, I wouldn't assume that the knight ever left the temple. If the grail was as powerful as it's made out to be, wouldn't it be able to "cure" starvation?
Beyond that, I'd be inclined to agree with the "professional retuning of the body's systems" idea, that would nicely explain why the grail knight was just really realy really old, instead of being in his prime.
Well the knight who was guarding the grail also aged despite drinking from the grail regularly (one would imagine). The grail seems to severely slow down aging, but perhaps only through frequent use (the knight did say something about staying in the temple being the price and limitation of the grail's power)
My guess would be that they'll set it forward quite a few years and make up Ford and Connery to look a bit younger. iirc, in the old "Young Indiana Jones" tv series you saw a very very old Indiana Jones in a few segments. Maybe that's how they internally explained how he could be as old as he was and yet more active than someone of his very advanced age might normally be.
Eh, not using DRM would be a good idea unless MS implements something like the 3 day/3 play "feature" in the Zune. It wouldn't seem unbelievable that it might wrap all content in some manner of DRM. So, you might be able to copy all of your non-DRM content to your Vista machine but then any attempt to share that now-DRMed content with anyone else would cause their machine to downgrade so the only alternative would be to go to an MS-sanctioned store to purchase DRMed content for your computer.
Given their responses to DRM concerns on the Zune (e.g. "we don't care if it's CC-licensed everything gets the 3 day/3 play restriction") I'd be very hesitant to trust MS to not do something equally onerous with Vista (either now or down the road once it's on enough computers along the lines of the WGA "upgrade").
Nope, cops have the nearly unbeatable "I felt like I was in danger so I fired at _____" defense.
It's not necessarily fair, but they've shot quite a few actual people (who happened to be unarmed) and that defense usually gets them off. Good luck winning against them if they didn't even wound anyone:-p
Most regulations governing hunting around roadways are intended to protect people. Just drive out a ways from most cities and take a look at how far back houes/farms can often be fromt the road. These decoys are generally planted where you can see them from the road and they're intended to catch people who stop their vehicle, grab their gun and discharge it in unsafe ways.
It's a quirk of the legal system that it's called poaching because they're attempting to kill and animal in a situation where they have no right to, but really it's responding to the fact that in many areas, shooting from the road can easily mean that you're shooting right at someone's home, or at another road etc... Generally people aren't allowed to hunt anywhere they please and these robo-deer are aimed at stopping people who endanger others through their own stupidity/greed.
Keep in mind that the use of decoys like that is very much context sensitive.
They're rarely deployed in any significant way outside of hunting season or in areas that don't see much hunting in general. They're mostly used right around hunting season on roads that lead to or are near hunting areas and they're targetted pretty much exclusively at hunters who break the hunting rules. Rules like not shooting from inside a vehicle, not shooting from or near roads etc... are generally aimed at protecting the general public, not at protecting dear.
They don't affect people who go hunting and follow the simple safety rules that go with getting a license, they're really only intended to catch people who endanger the public by attempting to poach (generally from public roads).
So you have a good idea why your local city council chose to make the fine for littering significantly higher than that for other, more dangerous crimes. It looks like the litterbugs in your little corner of the world aren't the only stupid ones out there.
You also (still) failed to comment on how a fine levied by a government body is related to "damages" that someone can sue for in civil court. No other industry in the world can make up numbers and sue for damages that are thouands of times greater than the cost of their actual products.
If the "fine" was directly proportional to the cost of the jacket, everyone would try to steal jackets, since at worst you'd just be paying retail for it if you're caught. In other words, there's no deterrent value.
The fine isn't necessarilly proportional to the cost of the jacket, but the crime that you will be charged with is a function of the value of the item stolen. iirc there are divisions at $500 and $5000 of value which significantly affect the fine and the jail time imposed. Yeah, a repeat offense where you have been convicted of a crime before or where there is evidence that you are a habitual offender does carry stiffer penalties, but I don't recall that ever being brought up in the various music industry lawsuits. Generally those people don't even seem to have any criminal records (or none that come up in the news).
I've read through the various suits brought by the RIAA and I don't recall seeing any of them alleging that people infringed by having thousands upon thouands of songs (hell I seem to recall that many had lists of less than a hundred infringing songs, that's what? 10 CDs worth?) and yet the "damages" sought are often in the multiple thousands of dollars.
That's another thing to consider. A fine is a set amount of money that the government can demand from a person for committing a crime. A traffic ticket, littering ticket etc... those are all fines imposed by the powers that be. A $1000 ticket for littering is a punishment imposed by the government in response to a crime that the legislature feels must be punished at a certain level. You have no way of knowing why the fine for littering is a $1000 but why someone can get a misdemeanor citation for drunk driving. Claiming that it is somehow a function of "greater difficulty" in finding or catching is conjecture at best. The RIAA lawsuits allege actual damages in the multiple thouands of dollars even if the person is only alleged to have shared a few dozen songs. That is far from reasonable or just.
If someone steals a leather jacket they'll be charged with a crime relative to the value of that jacket (say a couple of hundred dollars). If they steal a BMW they'll be charged with a much more serious crime because the value of that item is much greater (tens of thousands of dollars). In both cases the theft has prevented the rightful owner of that property from enjoying the benefits of their property and in both those cases the punishment for the crime will be in direct relation to the value of the item(s) stolen.
Now compare that to "stealing" in the music industry's world. Even though they have lost no use of their "property" and even though the "theft" it hasn't cost them a single cent, they'll sue you in civil court and they'll demand damages far in excess of the average retail price of their "property". If the music industry was willing to behave like any other industry when it came to "theft" I might be inclined to believe the "stealing" angle, but you know that no normal retailer or manufacturer could demand thouands of dollars in reparations for items that cost $0.99 on iTunes. Major media producers plays by their own rules (the are designed to benefit ONLY them) and I refuse to go along with their opportunistic whining.
Personally I enjoy seeing people like you blindly buying into the music industry's propoganda so fully. They tell you that it's stealing and they tell you it's like stealing a car and you buy it. Nevermind that the actual term is copyright infringement or that copyright was never intended to be wielded like a mighty stick against the consumer, THEY told you what's what and that's as far as you go in your thought process.
Nevermind that companies like Sony put rootkits on their CDs, nevermind that movie studios have arbitrarily decided to undermine established legal precedent (the Betamax case), nevermind that software companies decide how long you can use software you "bought", the media companies have spoke and you fall into line like a good obedient consumer. Good job.
Stop calling it "stealing" and stop using the same tired and idiotic comparisons to stealing tangible goods and then maybe we can have a useful discussion about what is and is not fair use and just what rights media companies should have over the products that they release into the world.
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I'd say that the "building a knowledge-based workforce" criteria is a load of bull.
Currently, it is impossible to have a properly functioning city (or society for that matter) without some distribution between "knowledge-based" workers and those who work in non-"knowledge-based" fields. Just like you don't want everyone to graduate with a degree in CS, you don't want everyone to abandon necessary jobs because they're "beneath" them. For the forseeable future we're going to need janitors, mechanics, carpenters, etc... (basically most of the occupations that you'd see in a vocational school type setting) and that's a good thing because some people love doing those things. Not everyone wants to spend the majority of their waking life in cube farm under flourescent light.
The criteria that this survey used are probably some of the worst possible criteria for determining any group's "intelligence". You might as well also judge it by the number of cable/satellite channels available per home.
I think you're ignoring the very large role that parents play in any student's academic performance. I went to school in one of the poorest school districts in the US and you still had plenty of kids going on to ivy league and comparable universities. By the same token my s.o. grew up in one of the richest school districts in the US and she knew plenty of people who dropped out of high school or didn't make it through college and even now plenty of her little sister's friends are completely under-achieving kids who have almost zero college/job prospects because they just don't give a damn.
Does going to a good/wealthy school help? Well yeah, of course, but the influence that parents can have far outshadows any other influence in a child's life (even if the parent exercises that influence by not doing a thing to educate their kids). I'd argue that the biggest difference between American and Japanese educational systems is the role that parents play in pushing their children to do well and even excell in what they do. It doesn't matter whether it's a public school or a private one, Japanese or American, rich or poor, if children's parents aren't involved and if they don't get their kids used to really working at getting a good education, everything else will go by the wayside.
Until we start making parents accountable for how their kids do in school no amount of finger pointing or creative financing is going to make a difference. That's one of the big problems I had with the whole "No Child Left Behind" system. It focuses solely on teachers/schools and how their students do on standardized tests. If a teacher can't make enough students pass they can loose their jobs, but nothing happens to a parent if they can't make their own children meet certain academic standards.
Personally, I wonder what would happen if instead of focusing on teachers, we focused on parents and made them at least partially accountable for their children. Did their child flunk an entire grade without the parent bringing the kid's problems to a tutor/teacher's attention during the course of the entire school year? Then they lose their tax deduction for that kid for that year. Is their underage kid convicted of some crime? Then they have to do some number of hours of community service in addition to whatever punishment their kid gets.
It's really sad how many people in this country make such a big deal about the importance of producing children without putting an equal emphasis on what parents do once they have the kids. Likewise, it's disturbing how much effort some parents put into indoctrinating their kids into a religion, social group, etc... without putting as much effort into educating them about basic reading/writing/arithmatic type stuff.
Nice way to ignore the move studio's greed.
Is it crazy to pay anyone millions of dollars for their work? Maybe, maybe not, but if a major company agrees to pay someone $X for their work and what they bring to a project it's utterly wrong to turn around and play the "you're being greedy wanting more money" card. If you agree to a deal with someone and they meet (and agruably exceed) your esxpectations then you should honor the deal, if you don't your a greedy slimeball who should be avoided at all costs.
New line agreed to pay Jackson according to some formula based on how well the movies did. Jackson is questioning their accounting practices and instead of turning around and saying "fine, look at the books, we paid you what we agreed to pay you", New Line has resorted to school yard tactics and they're basically calling him names. They have the information that could settle this case once and for all and the fact that they refuse to provide it makes it look like they do have something to hide.
You can lament that some people's salaries exist in a range that most of us can't even pretend to dream of, but think about what the big company is going to do to the average consumer if they'll turn on Jackson after he made them an amount of money that is many times greater than the what they paid him.
Good job at looking at just one side of the situation.
... the powers that be try to blame everyone but the person/people responsible.
Oh no, it's the internet's/violent video games'/movies/ fault that these kids run wild and act like hooligans! It can't possibly be the kids themselves or their parents who deserve any of that blame.
It boggles the mind how a teachers' union could fixate more on the "15 minutes of fame" and less on trying to make parents or the kid accountable (even outside of legal remedies). Instead of whining about how terrible the internet is, they could turn around and warn his new teachers/neighbors in Canada about what he's been up to over there (and point them to the video). Make the parents look bad and make his life miserable wherever he ends up and see if kids don't start to wise up.
I suspect what they're really upset about (and the real point to the zero tolerance policy they mention) are the other cases where teachers have been caught on video doing things they shouldn't do (e.g. screaming at kids). This is just a convenient scapegoat because the kids were clearly the ones doing something wrong so now they blame the internet/cameras/etc...
It's funny how often the people who should worry the least about surveillance (teachers, cops, etc...) are often the ones who least want to be scrutinized by the very things they'd like to use on us.
Ummm... according to the movie (i.e. within the Indiana-Jones-verse), yeah pretty much.
The grail knight makes a comment to the effect that he's grown old and weak over the centuries of waiting for someone to make it through the traps to challenge him so presumably he was not old and weak when he first arrived in the temple. Remember, the average life span of people back when he and his brothers originally found the grail was probably somewhere in the 30s-40s at best, it would be highly unlikely that an old man (as he appeared in the movie) would be alive, let alone be able to undertake the journey to find and then hide/construct traps/guard the grail.
Given the apparent importance of the grail, I wouldn't assume that the knight ever left the temple. If the grail was as powerful as it's made out to be, wouldn't it be able to "cure" starvation?
Beyond that, I'd be inclined to agree with the "professional retuning of the body's systems" idea, that would nicely explain why the grail knight was just really realy really old, instead of being in his prime.
Well the knight who was guarding the grail also aged despite drinking from the grail regularly (one would imagine). The grail seems to severely slow down aging, but perhaps only through frequent use (the knight did say something about staying in the temple being the price and limitation of the grail's power) My guess would be that they'll set it forward quite a few years and make up Ford and Connery to look a bit younger. iirc, in the old "Young Indiana Jones" tv series you saw a very very old Indiana Jones in a few segments. Maybe that's how they internally explained how he could be as old as he was and yet more active than someone of his very advanced age might normally be.
Given their responses to DRM concerns on the Zune (e.g. "we don't care if it's CC-licensed everything gets the 3 day/3 play restriction") I'd be very hesitant to trust MS to not do something equally onerous with Vista (either now or down the road once it's on enough computers along the lines of the WGA "upgrade").
Nope, cops have the nearly unbeatable "I felt like I was in danger so I fired at _____" defense.
It's not necessarily fair, but they've shot quite a few actual people (who happened to be unarmed) and that defense usually gets them off. Good luck winning against them if they didn't even wound anyone :-p
Most regulations governing hunting around roadways are intended to protect people. Just drive out a ways from most cities and take a look at how far back houes/farms can often be fromt the road. These decoys are generally planted where you can see them from the road and they're intended to catch people who stop their vehicle, grab their gun and discharge it in unsafe ways.
It's a quirk of the legal system that it's called poaching because they're attempting to kill and animal in a situation where they have no right to, but really it's responding to the fact that in many areas, shooting from the road can easily mean that you're shooting right at someone's home, or at another road etc... Generally people aren't allowed to hunt anywhere they please and these robo-deer are aimed at stopping people who endanger others through their own stupidity/greed.
Keep in mind that the use of decoys like that is very much context sensitive. They're rarely deployed in any significant way outside of hunting season or in areas that don't see much hunting in general. They're mostly used right around hunting season on roads that lead to or are near hunting areas and they're targetted pretty much exclusively at hunters who break the hunting rules. Rules like not shooting from inside a vehicle, not shooting from or near roads etc... are generally aimed at protecting the general public, not at protecting dear. They don't affect people who go hunting and follow the simple safety rules that go with getting a license, they're really only intended to catch people who endanger the public by attempting to poach (generally from public roads).
Touche'
So you have a good idea why your local city council chose to make the fine for littering significantly higher than that for other, more dangerous crimes. It looks like the litterbugs in your little corner of the world aren't the only stupid ones out there.
You also (still) failed to comment on how a fine levied by a government body is related to "damages" that someone can sue for in civil court. No other industry in the world can make up numbers and sue for damages that are thouands of times greater than the cost of their actual products.
If the "fine" was directly proportional to the cost of the jacket, everyone would try to steal jackets, since at worst you'd just be paying retail for it if you're caught. In other words, there's no deterrent value. The fine isn't necessarilly proportional to the cost of the jacket, but the crime that you will be charged with is a function of the value of the item stolen. iirc there are divisions at $500 and $5000 of value which significantly affect the fine and the jail time imposed. Yeah, a repeat offense where you have been convicted of a crime before or where there is evidence that you are a habitual offender does carry stiffer penalties, but I don't recall that ever being brought up in the various music industry lawsuits. Generally those people don't even seem to have any criminal records (or none that come up in the news). I've read through the various suits brought by the RIAA and I don't recall seeing any of them alleging that people infringed by having thousands upon thouands of songs (hell I seem to recall that many had lists of less than a hundred infringing songs, that's what? 10 CDs worth?) and yet the "damages" sought are often in the multiple thousands of dollars. That's another thing to consider. A fine is a set amount of money that the government can demand from a person for committing a crime. A traffic ticket, littering ticket etc... those are all fines imposed by the powers that be. A $1000 ticket for littering is a punishment imposed by the government in response to a crime that the legislature feels must be punished at a certain level. You have no way of knowing why the fine for littering is a $1000 but why someone can get a misdemeanor citation for drunk driving. Claiming that it is somehow a function of "greater difficulty" in finding or catching is conjecture at best. The RIAA lawsuits allege actual damages in the multiple thouands of dollars even if the person is only alleged to have shared a few dozen songs. That is far from reasonable or just.
If someone steals a leather jacket they'll be charged with a crime relative to the value of that jacket (say a couple of hundred dollars). If they steal a BMW they'll be charged with a much more serious crime because the value of that item is much greater (tens of thousands of dollars). In both cases the theft has prevented the rightful owner of that property from enjoying the benefits of their property and in both those cases the punishment for the crime will be in direct relation to the value of the item(s) stolen.
Now compare that to "stealing" in the music industry's world. Even though they have lost no use of their "property" and even though the "theft" it hasn't cost them a single cent, they'll sue you in civil court and they'll demand damages far in excess of the average retail price of their "property". If the music industry was willing to behave like any other industry when it came to "theft" I might be inclined to believe the "stealing" angle, but you know that no normal retailer or manufacturer could demand thouands of dollars in reparations for items that cost $0.99 on iTunes. Major media producers plays by their own rules (the are designed to benefit ONLY them) and I refuse to go along with their opportunistic whining.
Personally I enjoy seeing people like you blindly buying into the music industry's propoganda so fully. They tell you that it's stealing and they tell you it's like stealing a car and you buy it. Nevermind that the actual term is copyright infringement or that copyright was never intended to be wielded like a mighty stick against the consumer, THEY told you what's what and that's as far as you go in your thought process.
Nevermind that companies like Sony put rootkits on their CDs, nevermind that movie studios have arbitrarily decided to undermine established legal precedent (the Betamax case), nevermind that software companies decide how long you can use software you "bought", the media companies have spoke and you fall into line like a good obedient consumer. Good job.
Stop calling it "stealing" and stop using the same tired and idiotic comparisons to stealing tangible goods and then maybe we can have a useful discussion about what is and is not fair use and just what rights media companies should have over the products that they release into the world.