I'd like to amend that to remove TLC. Sadly, we're well beyond the days of James Burke's Connections and the like. There's not much science involved in 2-day home renovation shows, fashion makeover shows, or pimp-my-vehicle. Whaaaat?! If it wasn't for Trading Spaces, my Ph.D thesis, "The Effects of Quantum Entanglement on Low-Cost Interior Design" would never have happened. I owe my job here at CERN (Cost Efficient Redesigning, National) to that show.
I would argue that the USA's peak of scientific interest was during the late 1960s when the space program was a national obsession and every second kid had a Nasa poster on their bedroom wall. You're probably right. But, I'm sure there were plenty of people back then that thought there were too many kids interested in The Beatles, not science. If anything, I believe that what has been lost is a generation of physicists and biologists to the siren's song of computer science. If the Apollo program was what drew them in the '60s, then dot-coms and OSS draw them now. There is no other field today where the barriers to entry are so low that almost anyone can make a real contribution.
The first step towards solving the problem, in my opinion, is stop making college degrees the minimum requirement for employment, regardless of major. There are too many people attending college today simply looking for any degree. This results in over-enrollment in so called easy majors, and less funding for science and engineering. You don't see nearly as many foreign students in those programs because, for them, the job market back home requires real knowledge, not just a piece of paper.
Look how Discovery channel etc get hyped and dramatized and facts removed to make for a more entertaining package. Even the news is infotainment. I think this is a perfect example of how the situation is improving. Before things like TLC or Discovery, there were almost no infotainment outlets. Even though the balance is skewed more towards the "tainment," and less toward the "info," it is still a net positive.
Science education, world-wide if not in the US, has never been better. Scientists and engineers make up a larger share of our society than ever before in the history of mankind. Religion and ignorance have lost ground, while knowledge and understanding have gained.
Is there more to be done? Are we where we want to be in terms of scientific understanding? No, but we are on the right track as a species. The only things we can do is continue pushing the veil of ignorance steadily back, and doing our best to educate children in the way science actually works.
The real question for me is, why not get FISA warrants? By all accounts, they are a rubber stamp that will grant most any warrant. The FISA court was set up for exactly the type of activities that they say they are doing. So by circumventing that process, I can only conclude that the real program is much more broad, and illegal, than they are letting on.
Greek Shmeek! Sounds made up too. I heard that "Greece" was made up by some fraternity brothers, in the middle of back-to-back Power Hours, trying to come up with an explanation for those funny looking designs that they plaster everywhere. That's why the Greek's supposedly wore togas. Yeah right! We all know that those were invented in 1978 by John Belushi.
there is some sucker out there who buys at a higher price believing there is an even bigger sucker who will pay more for said stock later on. You're missing the whole point of why MS would want Yahoo, or why any business takes over another. For the most part, it's so they can own the business, not so they can turn around and sell it later. Yeah, for the most part, the stock market is used for speculation, but not in this case.
Even when considering only the speculators, the market is still not zero-sum. People are trading risk, which definitely has some value.
Eating may be one of the only human activities that can be partially understood without analogy. It is such a basic and universal drive. I guess, in that sense, even a dog can understand the human concept of eating. But that basic concept is only a kernel, wrapped with thousands of layers of analogy.
If I go to a restaurant and eat dinner, I am, probably subconsciously, comparing the experience to every meal that I can remember. The sauce may taste like something I had eaten a year ago; the wine, like what I drank at my wedding. Though the experience can be understood in some limited way without that context, to truly understand it I need to surround the act with context drawn from previous experiences.
Some of the greatest scenes in fiction have taken place around a dinner table, and not by accident. In Christianity, the only way to directly commune with god is through the act of eating. And if communing with god is, by analogy, like eating, then each act of eating is in some small way like communing with god. It may not be a historical fact, but everyone in Western society has had their conception of eating influenced by that story.
Eating is powerful. I'm not saying that each time I mow through a box of Mac'n'Cheese, that I am contemplating its metaphysical significance. But, if I'm lucky, I might be reminded of how good that same meal tasted when I was a kid and my mom let me eat it in a fort I had made from pillows and blankets.
I hate to break this to you and the rest of the illiterates, but Rome and Latin really existed. (In fact, Latin still does exist.) It's not like Star Wars or Middle Earth. In fact, you can get on a plane, go to Italy and see remains of it. Whoa there! The reason we don't find any ruins from Star Wars is because it happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Duh. And how many remains are there from Alderaan? I've got video proof that those societies existed, not just some books written by guys with weird names like Plutarch or crap like that.
No, my entire argument is premised on the literal, objective fact that my bandwidth is like my bandwidth and that the router is like a router. No one can dispute that those two facts are true. For almost all values of A, A == A. But that, on its own with no context is meaningless. Analogies give context and meaning to words like "bandwidth" and "router". No, connecting to someone else's unsecured wireless access point is not exactly the same as entering an unlocked house, nor is it the same as standing in the road and clapping, making your neighbor's Clapper turn on and off their lights. It's not exactly the same as anything else in the world.
People learn from experience. Even though no moment in my future will ever be exactly the same as any one I have experienced in the past, I can still draw valid inferences through analogy. I can't imagine willfully ignoring one of the most powerful tools in our intellectual toolbox because sometimes, some people make bad analogies.
No need for analogies. The thing is completely understandable in terms of itself. Legislating without analogy is how we end up with laws like the DMCA. When there is no common understanding of the principles involved, congress can start from scratch and throw in all kinds of provisions that no one gets upset about (DRM), because no one understands it well enough (present company excluded), to grasp the principle behind the law. There are cases where a new technology comes along that is totally revolutionary where new laws have to be invented from scratch. But, 99% of the time I much prefer the slower pace of judicial reasoning through analogy and precedent.
Besides, your entire argument about routers giving permission to access bandwidth is premised on the analogy that your bandwidth is like your house and the router is like a sign on the front door reading, "Come On In." And, that bandwidth, a completely non-physical service, is somehow analogous to physical property that can be stolen. It might not be "theft," but "non-payment for services rendered" is a completely different animal entirely. According to your reasoning, the gap between them is so large that there is absolutely no insight that could be gained by viewing one as like the other in even some small way.
The FSF needs to remain focused on developing free as in libre software. There's no reason
for them to get involved in intellectual property disputes of this nature
The FSF needs copyright law in order to defend the GPL. If the defendants won the case,
and, by the nature of the argument, weaken copyright law, the FSF loses ground when trying
to enforce the GPL.
No one could have predicted 9/11 or JFK's assassination. The actions of small groups of whack-jobs will always fly under the radar. Modern technology amplifies individual acts. 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine, all serve as examples. There are not enough computing resources in the world, to track the potential actions of each nut. But, prediction becomes less intractable when you ask the right question. You can't just say, "Okay, here is the state of things now. What's going to happen tomorrow?" Rather, "What would happen tomorrow, if the US was struck by a massive, distributed, terrorist attack (like 9/11)?" The prediction moves away from the lone, unpredictable, nuts, to the actions of the masses and well known public figures(President etc.).
I'm not saying the predictions would be good or even possible. But, the potential is there for a system that can analyze more data than a thousand RAND Corporations, and perhaps come up with better solutions.
But what I'm really worried about is the government spending so much time staring at their computer screens, waiting for the next prediction, that they miss the real action going on right now.
Slashdot Mirror
The first step towards solving the problem, in my opinion, is stop making college degrees the minimum requirement for employment, regardless of major. There are too many people attending college today simply looking for any degree. This results in over-enrollment in so called easy majors, and less funding for science and engineering. You don't see nearly as many foreign students in those programs because, for them, the job market back home requires real knowledge, not just a piece of paper.
Science education, world-wide if not in the US, has never been better. Scientists and engineers make up a larger share of our society than ever before in the history of mankind. Religion and ignorance have lost ground, while knowledge and understanding have gained.
Is there more to be done? Are we where we want to be in terms of scientific understanding? No, but we are on the right track as a species. The only things we can do is continue pushing the veil of ignorance steadily back, and doing our best to educate children in the way science actually works.
The real question for me is, why not get FISA warrants? By all accounts, they are a rubber stamp that will grant most any warrant. The FISA court was set up for exactly the type of activities that they say they are doing. So by circumventing that process, I can only conclude that the real program is much more broad, and illegal, than they are letting on.
Greek Shmeek! Sounds made up too. I heard that "Greece" was made up by some fraternity brothers, in the middle of back-to-back Power Hours, trying to come up with an explanation for those funny looking designs that they plaster everywhere. That's why the Greek's supposedly wore togas. Yeah right! We all know that those were invented in 1978 by John Belushi.
Even when considering only the speculators, the market is still not zero-sum. People are trading risk, which definitely has some value.
Eating may be one of the only human activities that can be partially understood without analogy. It is such a basic and universal drive. I guess, in that sense, even a dog can understand the human concept of eating. But that basic concept is only a kernel, wrapped with thousands of layers of analogy.
If I go to a restaurant and eat dinner, I am, probably subconsciously, comparing the experience to every meal that I can remember. The sauce may taste like something I had eaten a year ago; the wine, like what I drank at my wedding. Though the experience can be understood in some limited way without that context, to truly understand it I need to surround the act with context drawn from previous experiences.
Some of the greatest scenes in fiction have taken place around a dinner table, and not by accident. In Christianity, the only way to directly commune with god is through the act of eating. And if communing with god is, by analogy, like eating, then each act of eating is in some small way like communing with god. It may not be a historical fact, but everyone in Western society has had their conception of eating influenced by that story.
Eating is powerful. I'm not saying that each time I mow through a box of Mac'n'Cheese, that I am contemplating its metaphysical significance. But, if I'm lucky, I might be reminded of how good that same meal tasted when I was a kid and my mom let me eat it in a fort I had made from pillows and blankets.
I don't know, 30 million will buy a lot of 2-liter soda bottles and one hell of an air compressor. I better go call that Canadian guy.
People learn from experience. Even though no moment in my future will ever be exactly the same as any one I have experienced in the past, I can still draw valid inferences through analogy. I can't imagine willfully ignoring one of the most powerful tools in our intellectual toolbox because sometimes, some people make bad analogies.
Besides, your entire argument about routers giving permission to access bandwidth is premised on the analogy that your bandwidth is like your house and the router is like a sign on the front door reading, "Come On In." And, that bandwidth, a completely non-physical service, is somehow analogous to physical property that can be stolen. It might not be "theft," but "non-payment for services rendered" is a completely different animal entirely. According to your reasoning, the gap between them is so large that there is absolutely no insight that could be gained by viewing one as like the other in even some small way.
for them to get involved in intellectual property disputes of this nature
The FSF needs copyright law in order to defend the GPL. If the defendants won the case,
and, by the nature of the argument, weaken copyright law, the FSF loses ground when trying
to enforce the GPL.
I'm not saying the predictions would be good or even possible. But, the potential is there for a system that can analyze more data than a thousand RAND Corporations, and perhaps come up with better solutions.
But what I'm really worried about is the government spending so much time staring at their computer screens, waiting for the next prediction, that they miss the real action going on right now.