The hardware is owned by a ton of different individuals and corporations. The government owns a few computers they use for other stuff somewhere. Standards and protocols are defined by hackers through stuff like those nifty RFCs. I don't know of any protocol widely used that was created by a government. Individuals gain access to the internet largely through ISPs, which are not government owned, at least here in the US. Not sure about other places.
If every government in the world simultaneously collapsed, the net would still be there and working just like always.
I don't think any government is capable of taking over the internet for two reasons:
1. No one government would let any other single government own it, and splitting it up would too severely destroy the global usefulness of the internet ("You don't want to conform to my protocol? Ha, you can't access any US sites now!", etc).
2. No government I know of has shown itself capable enough to even run its own country, much less actually successfully run the net. I mean, look at the protocols and standards for taxes. Now imagine the net run with standards like that.
The internet was created by people, is run by people, and is used by people. And short of something that would cause a lot of revolutions, I think it'll stay that way for a while yet.
Unfortunately, governments can make it a lot HARDER to use the net the way it ought to be used, and prosecute people it does find doing so. But that's a government problem, not an internet one. It should say something about governments, though, when they keep doing stuff to stop the very people it's charged with to do what they obviously want just because they're control freaks.
I'm quite aware of the wording, thank you. What I'm saying is that the Bill of Rights was not intended to give rights to rocks, animals, planets, bodies of water, or corporations. It seems to me that its intent is to give rights to people, and ensure that those rights will not be trampled upon. It never directly says people, true, but under your argument, it's unconstitutional to herd a ton of cows in the middle of a highway away because they're peacefully assembling.
And again, in this case, it's a battle between the rights of the people and the rights of a corporation. I say the corporation should always lose. Corporations are a part of a system designed to help people ultimately, whether through capitalism or through more direct methods. When this goal isn't met in any way, and in fact hurts people, there is a problem.
The 1st amendment is part of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights protects people from a variety of government actions. Verizon is not a people.
News flash, Verizon: Companies are not protected under the 1st amendment. Especially when their supposed rights are matched up against real people's.
Hmm... I don't know. Definitely not the same as real rape, obviously, but it can definitely be harrassment, which is a different issue, but still one. There is no difference between if I went up to someone and kept sexually harassing them verbally as if I happen to use a keyboard and a funny polygon avatar to do it. They're still real people (regardless of anonymity) with similar emotional responses. Humans naturally feel things are more real when it's in person, of course, but it doesn't change the action itself and it should be treated in the same way.
Murder is a bit different since no matter how much I talk, I can't make it feel like murder (well, I know a few relatives that can, but most people can't). Through talking I can, however, make people feel sexually harassed. Which is a bad thing, I think.
This is a complete tangent, but I can't help myself. Would that paper happen to be available online?
I heard about Tesla doing this and I never could grasp the concept of wireless transmission of electricity (then again, I'm a computer scientist, and my understanding of electricity ends with Ohm's Law... which I've actually forgotten a third of at the moment), but I'm quite curious and I hate wondering about the same thing for more than a decade without at least trying to figure it out. The only way I can think of is electromagnetic induction... which, I figure, would not be friendly to the electronic equipment it was powering and it wouldn't reasonably work for larger distances.
If science is actively seeking to disprove fundamentalist religions as an end, science needs help. What ought to be the purpose is to find truth, not target any group that might not be particularly well-like. If science could somehow uncover a god, science (ideally) would accept this god as reality. They aren't enemies and there is no war on religion (or at least, shouldn't be).
I'll make my position clear from the start, at the risk of being ignored immediately: I'm one of those loony fundamentalists. And while I'm not personally offended, I think there's quite a bit being asserted here that oughtn't be asserted (although I'm not sure if you're saying that's the case or that you think science is saying that's the case, but it doesn't really matter - finger pointing isn't the... err... point, anyway).
For instance, there seems to be an implication that if fundamentalist religion was wiped off the face of the earth, it would remove a giant pain in the tail to "the rest of us". Yeah, a lot of people blindly oppose the obvious in the name of religion, and you get stuff like the crusades. But you also get Mother Theresa. Religion (and any large-scale belief) changes the earth, but it's not to a certainty of horridness that you can just by-the-by mention it as being a disease on the world and expect it to be taken without question... which, unfortunately, I think to a large extent, it just was.
There also seems to be an assertion that fundamentalists are inherently irrational, fanatical types of people. Which is a common belief, but one that isn't really all that supported and if you look into it beyond the easy-to-see true fanatics out there, you might see something different. You might not. But again, it's not something that should be lightly asserted about anyone. I certainly wouldn't like it asserted about me by some guy who doesn't even know me, just because of my religion. Now excuse me while I go sacrifice some heathens in the name of the Almighty.
Also, while most fundamentalists may believe that we're the only intelligent life in the universe, it's not part of the doctrine. Nowhere in the Bible (or whatever) does it say "And so, the Lord decided not to create aliens." It's just a common belief. I don't know the statistics, but I think if you take the entire human race, there's a large percentage, fundamentalist or not, that thinks aliens don't actually exist. Some fundamentalist types would panic over some made-up rule to their religion if aliens suddenly dropped by. But most would probably react like the rest of humanity - assuming nothing sci-fiish happened with giant lasers and galactic wars, they'd eventually accept that there's more types of intelligent life and go on with their lives. The foundation of fundamentalist religion does not lie on extraterrestrials.
Nobody goes to Google Whatever for the ads. They go there because they want to use a useful, well-made service. You don't compete by making better ads. Nobody likes ads. Google gets away with it because their ads are unobtrusive, and nobody minds seeing (occasionally useful) ads on the side of their Gmail inbox.
People are going to mind seeing giant streaming videos playing at full volume when they're trying to read an e-mail from their niece.
If Microsoft wants to compete, they're going to have to spend a little less time trying to think about how to steal money from you by annoying you enough, and a bit more on making applications good enough that people won't mind ads.
It all comes down to definitions, not surprisingly. What's morality? Good luck on that one. In general, though, there are those big two camps: vaguely utilitarianism stuff, which says that whatever works best for some set of goals is moral, and vaguely rule-based stuff (Kant, etc) which say that there's some set of rules that must be followed, and that there are no set goals. It's just right or wrong.
If we take the utilitarian-like approach, biology has an obvious effect for certain goals such as cooperation, harmony, and survival. It's easy this way. Motives and even awareness of what's being done is irrelevant. Traits such as empathy tend to help social animals help each other (although sometimes, it obviously backfires if chimps go lemming and jump in water and drown trying to save each other). Any individual possessing traits that help work together or survive will tend to pass it along. Not much debate there.
I think it's also pretty obvious that animals are capable of showing behavior we find morally right, if only by chance or some external mechanism (say, evolution - empathy, again, acts as an example). Of course, there may be other goals of morality, but the examples they gave generally seemed to revolve around these two goals.
The last possibility is, of course, that rule-based philosophy is right, and there really are a set of rules. In that case, it seems obvious it's outside of the realm of biology. Biology may help them achieve certain rules that happen to have similar goals/consequences - say, working together. But in this case, what is and isn't moral is not defined by biology. It just is.
Until we figure that out, it will be near impossible to tell if a robot is sentient or just really well programmed. What's the difference? Humans are just really well programmed, too.
I guess this is sort of random, and I'm pretty ill-informed about these sorts of things, but it seems to me there are two separate issues. Accuracy and credibility, which do not always have anything to do with one another. THis is pretty clearly stated with the New York Times example. Vandilism in Wikipedia, in the end, does not seem to affect accuracy because someone's just going to fix it as soon as they notice it. However, seeing that koala have a diet composed primarily of donuts will reduce credibility, even if it's fixed half an hour later. However, I'd argue that due to Delphi effect or other such things, having a larger number of people contributing is generally more accurate, and certainly more scalable, than an editor sytem. Even if it's not true, if the whole accuracy measurement is correct, then Wikipedia isn't bad for accuracy and it's certainly bigger and has more information than Britanica.
In the end, it seems to me that all having the editor does is put a stamp on it that says "I'm J. Random Editor and I approve this article." It adds authenticity, but not necessarily accuracy.
The flaw is that you'd be putting it in front of 1 million 6-year olds who'd have roughly the same experience and education level. The idea is that given enough eyeballs, chances are one of them will be trained in a particular way that it will be shallow. It isn't about skill level as much as diversity in experiences, backgrounds, and perception. Because I'm an underwater basket weaver, I may see a particular problem in a certain light that makes it obvious to me, even though Bob, the Ph.D. in everything except underwater basket weaving, Nobel Prize winner couldn't see it simply because he's got a different background. It's also possible that a 6-year old who knows nothing about computers may see a way to improve something that nobody who didn't think like a 6-year old would ever consider. Not as likely, but still possible, and throwing in another 6-year old into the mix won't hurt.
I think that's the point of the statement - that it is less about the difficulty of bugs and more about how you see them. It asserts that all bugs CAN be shallow, and with enough people, you greatly increase your chances of seeing it in a way that it is.
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The hardware is owned by a ton of different individuals and corporations. The government owns a few computers they use for other stuff somewhere. Standards and protocols are defined by hackers through stuff like those nifty RFCs. I don't know of any protocol widely used that was created by a government. Individuals gain access to the internet largely through ISPs, which are not government owned, at least here in the US. Not sure about other places. If every government in the world simultaneously collapsed, the net would still be there and working just like always. I don't think any government is capable of taking over the internet for two reasons: 1. No one government would let any other single government own it, and splitting it up would too severely destroy the global usefulness of the internet ("You don't want to conform to my protocol? Ha, you can't access any US sites now!", etc). 2. No government I know of has shown itself capable enough to even run its own country, much less actually successfully run the net. I mean, look at the protocols and standards for taxes. Now imagine the net run with standards like that. The internet was created by people, is run by people, and is used by people. And short of something that would cause a lot of revolutions, I think it'll stay that way for a while yet. Unfortunately, governments can make it a lot HARDER to use the net the way it ought to be used, and prosecute people it does find doing so. But that's a government problem, not an internet one. It should say something about governments, though, when they keep doing stuff to stop the very people it's charged with to do what they obviously want just because they're control freaks.
I'm quite aware of the wording, thank you. What I'm saying is that the Bill of Rights was not intended to give rights to rocks, animals, planets, bodies of water, or corporations. It seems to me that its intent is to give rights to people, and ensure that those rights will not be trampled upon. It never directly says people, true, but under your argument, it's unconstitutional to herd a ton of cows in the middle of a highway away because they're peacefully assembling. And again, in this case, it's a battle between the rights of the people and the rights of a corporation. I say the corporation should always lose. Corporations are a part of a system designed to help people ultimately, whether through capitalism or through more direct methods. When this goal isn't met in any way, and in fact hurts people, there is a problem.
The 1st amendment is part of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights protects people from a variety of government actions. Verizon is not a people. News flash, Verizon: Companies are not protected under the 1st amendment. Especially when their supposed rights are matched up against real people's.
Hmm... I don't know. Definitely not the same as real rape, obviously, but it can definitely be harrassment, which is a different issue, but still one. There is no difference between if I went up to someone and kept sexually harassing them verbally as if I happen to use a keyboard and a funny polygon avatar to do it. They're still real people (regardless of anonymity) with similar emotional responses. Humans naturally feel things are more real when it's in person, of course, but it doesn't change the action itself and it should be treated in the same way. Murder is a bit different since no matter how much I talk, I can't make it feel like murder (well, I know a few relatives that can, but most people can't). Through talking I can, however, make people feel sexually harassed. Which is a bad thing, I think.
This is a complete tangent, but I can't help myself. Would that paper happen to be available online? I heard about Tesla doing this and I never could grasp the concept of wireless transmission of electricity (then again, I'm a computer scientist, and my understanding of electricity ends with Ohm's Law... which I've actually forgotten a third of at the moment), but I'm quite curious and I hate wondering about the same thing for more than a decade without at least trying to figure it out. The only way I can think of is electromagnetic induction... which, I figure, would not be friendly to the electronic equipment it was powering and it wouldn't reasonably work for larger distances.
If science is actively seeking to disprove fundamentalist religions as an end, science needs help. What ought to be the purpose is to find truth, not target any group that might not be particularly well-like. If science could somehow uncover a god, science (ideally) would accept this god as reality. They aren't enemies and there is no war on religion (or at least, shouldn't be). I'll make my position clear from the start, at the risk of being ignored immediately: I'm one of those loony fundamentalists. And while I'm not personally offended, I think there's quite a bit being asserted here that oughtn't be asserted (although I'm not sure if you're saying that's the case or that you think science is saying that's the case, but it doesn't really matter - finger pointing isn't the... err... point, anyway). For instance, there seems to be an implication that if fundamentalist religion was wiped off the face of the earth, it would remove a giant pain in the tail to "the rest of us". Yeah, a lot of people blindly oppose the obvious in the name of religion, and you get stuff like the crusades. But you also get Mother Theresa. Religion (and any large-scale belief) changes the earth, but it's not to a certainty of horridness that you can just by-the-by mention it as being a disease on the world and expect it to be taken without question... which, unfortunately, I think to a large extent, it just was. There also seems to be an assertion that fundamentalists are inherently irrational, fanatical types of people. Which is a common belief, but one that isn't really all that supported and if you look into it beyond the easy-to-see true fanatics out there, you might see something different. You might not. But again, it's not something that should be lightly asserted about anyone. I certainly wouldn't like it asserted about me by some guy who doesn't even know me, just because of my religion. Now excuse me while I go sacrifice some heathens in the name of the Almighty. Also, while most fundamentalists may believe that we're the only intelligent life in the universe, it's not part of the doctrine. Nowhere in the Bible (or whatever) does it say "And so, the Lord decided not to create aliens." It's just a common belief. I don't know the statistics, but I think if you take the entire human race, there's a large percentage, fundamentalist or not, that thinks aliens don't actually exist. Some fundamentalist types would panic over some made-up rule to their religion if aliens suddenly dropped by. But most would probably react like the rest of humanity - assuming nothing sci-fiish happened with giant lasers and galactic wars, they'd eventually accept that there's more types of intelligent life and go on with their lives. The foundation of fundamentalist religion does not lie on extraterrestrials.
Nobody goes to Google Whatever for the ads. They go there because they want to use a useful, well-made service. You don't compete by making better ads. Nobody likes ads. Google gets away with it because their ads are unobtrusive, and nobody minds seeing (occasionally useful) ads on the side of their Gmail inbox. People are going to mind seeing giant streaming videos playing at full volume when they're trying to read an e-mail from their niece. If Microsoft wants to compete, they're going to have to spend a little less time trying to think about how to steal money from you by annoying you enough, and a bit more on making applications good enough that people won't mind ads.
It all comes down to definitions, not surprisingly. What's morality? Good luck on that one. In general, though, there are those big two camps: vaguely utilitarianism stuff, which says that whatever works best for some set of goals is moral, and vaguely rule-based stuff (Kant, etc) which say that there's some set of rules that must be followed, and that there are no set goals. It's just right or wrong. If we take the utilitarian-like approach, biology has an obvious effect for certain goals such as cooperation, harmony, and survival. It's easy this way. Motives and even awareness of what's being done is irrelevant. Traits such as empathy tend to help social animals help each other (although sometimes, it obviously backfires if chimps go lemming and jump in water and drown trying to save each other). Any individual possessing traits that help work together or survive will tend to pass it along. Not much debate there. I think it's also pretty obvious that animals are capable of showing behavior we find morally right, if only by chance or some external mechanism (say, evolution - empathy, again, acts as an example). Of course, there may be other goals of morality, but the examples they gave generally seemed to revolve around these two goals. The last possibility is, of course, that rule-based philosophy is right, and there really are a set of rules. In that case, it seems obvious it's outside of the realm of biology. Biology may help them achieve certain rules that happen to have similar goals/consequences - say, working together. But in this case, what is and isn't moral is not defined by biology. It just is.
I guess this is sort of random, and I'm pretty ill-informed about these sorts of things, but it seems to me there are two separate issues. Accuracy and credibility, which do not always have anything to do with one another. THis is pretty clearly stated with the New York Times example. Vandilism in Wikipedia, in the end, does not seem to affect accuracy because someone's just going to fix it as soon as they notice it. However, seeing that koala have a diet composed primarily of donuts will reduce credibility, even if it's fixed half an hour later. However, I'd argue that due to Delphi effect or other such things, having a larger number of people contributing is generally more accurate, and certainly more scalable, than an editor sytem. Even if it's not true, if the whole accuracy measurement is correct, then Wikipedia isn't bad for accuracy and it's certainly bigger and has more information than Britanica. In the end, it seems to me that all having the editor does is put a stamp on it that says "I'm J. Random Editor and I approve this article." It adds authenticity, but not necessarily accuracy.
The flaw is that you'd be putting it in front of 1 million 6-year olds who'd have roughly the same experience and education level. The idea is that given enough eyeballs, chances are one of them will be trained in a particular way that it will be shallow. It isn't about skill level as much as diversity in experiences, backgrounds, and perception. Because I'm an underwater basket weaver, I may see a particular problem in a certain light that makes it obvious to me, even though Bob, the Ph.D. in everything except underwater basket weaving, Nobel Prize winner couldn't see it simply because he's got a different background. It's also possible that a 6-year old who knows nothing about computers may see a way to improve something that nobody who didn't think like a 6-year old would ever consider. Not as likely, but still possible, and throwing in another 6-year old into the mix won't hurt.
I think that's the point of the statement - that it is less about the difficulty of bugs and more about how you see them. It asserts that all bugs CAN be shallow, and with enough people, you greatly increase your chances of seeing it in a way that it is.