Well in my opinion preventing oppression by physical force is a legitimate function of the government, in fact the main reason for it's existence. That covers the police, military and the courts, though definitely not schools. However, there are many ways for the government to pay for those things. Individual income tax accounts for about 40% of the US government's budget, eliminating it would still leave more than enough money for the essential functions. There are other ways, for example as Ayn Rand suggested, voluntary contract tax would more than cover the costs of the court system. It would be voluntary in the sense that only contracts on which the tax is paid would be enforceable through courts. There are many other such possibilities.
Well good thing you know better than joe blow what is good for him so you can take his money and decide how to dispose of it. It worked so well for every socialist state in the past.
Depending on the faith. I happen to believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster will only allow my dead grandmother to communicate with me by slightly moving a table around which a creepy looking woman whom I paid a lot of money will interpret for me. Don't call this silly or I will be offended and cry.
I want to support science, but at the same time I am reluctant to take other people's money by force and pass it on to the unelected government bureaucrats to decide which project is worthy (or in practice which scientists can beg the loudest) of getting a share of it. The whole process is inefficient, immoral and fraught with possibilities for waste and abuse. Eliminate income tax and replace it with voluntary program where people can donate a share of their income to be used for purposes of their choice and if they want to fund science fine, if they don't then they accept the risk that they and their children will be living in a country that is lagging behind in science. What is wrong with that?
The whole custom of periodically visiting the graves of your loved ones always seemed puzzling to me. What exactly are you visiting and why? If you can do it online that much less hassle I guess.
If you really have to go a particular place in order to remember your dead grandparents, it seems better to visit places where they lived, where you actually have memories of them alive. In any case, since 82% of Americans believe that their dead relatives are actually still alive, seems more "logical" (in a demented sort of way) to visit a psychic or something.
Looking at my logs there are 1000s of "attempts to break in" as well, almost all from IPs located in China where apparently most botnet computers are - the botnet masters themselves may or may not be in China. The thing is, the sites are completely free and there is no reason to break in at all. It's just scripts trying out known vulnerabilities on a large numbers of sites. Maybe the same thing is happening with NYPD sites and someone panicked when they saw that it is coming from China.
While this is cool and all, it kinda feels like cheating. How far are we from a device that can really respond to what you are thinking as opposed to measuring the amount of activity in your brain. Speaking as a programmer ignorant in neuroscience, seems like there is a long chain of events leading up to, say, pressing the Left button on a video game controller. First, the brain receives and processes the input from eyes and ears, then there must be some pretty complicated logic to decide that the right thing to do next is to turn left, then it needs to decide how to go about it (tapping your foot isn't going to do it, a particular finger has to press a particular button), then it needs to send signals to the specific arm and hand muscles to expand and contract in just the right ways so that the end result is pressing the button. I want a toy that can replace this last step and press the button for me in a fraction of time that it takes my fingers to act on my brain's instructions. All this, just so I can kick ass in Pacman
In part because it's too expensive. You can't just start handing our guns to the ship crews, they don't have any training and some of them may not be legaly allowed to have guns (due to previous convictions etc) or they may not be trusted with guns by their own company. There would need to be specially trained people on board, something like air marshals. Note that the pirates are typically armed with RPGs and machine guns, so a single guy with a pistol wouldn't make much difference, you'd need to have a bunch of heavily armed people on each ship. Given that 7.5% of all the world's shipping goes through Suez canal, that's literally an entire army that needs to be paid by someone. The incidents of piracy are so miniscule compared to the total amount of shipping that goes through that area that shipping companies find it much cheaper to just pay the ransom.
Hmm, more like vote for your libertarian or local equivalent party http://www.lp.org/issues/freedom-of-speech The pirate party thing is about copyright, not censorship, right?
Its just something that the US administration (especially the current one) does when there is a problem: appoint a " czar". The issue is basically that the US government is now so enormous and complicated that issues cannot be efficiently handled through normal channels as the multitudes of departments don't communicate very well or at all with each other (or even know of others' existence), so the idea is that a single person focused on a specific issue and with authority across multiple departments will help untangle the mess. It works as well as any hack solution in that it temporarily helps on that specific problem but at the long term cost of making the overall mess even messier.
Lying liars and the lies they tell -- souls in need of correction whether young or old.
Gee, you are being a bit too harsh there. A child lying to parents about what he/she is doing at a given time is often simply a defense mechanism for obtaining some privacy and a degree of control over their own life and therefore making themselves feel more adult, even though the parents might in fact know better. I would say it's a perfectly normal and even sometimes a desirable part of childhood if the parents are more protective and intrusive than appropriate for a child of a given age, as parents often are. In fact I can't think of any child I ever met who didn't do this to some degree, and they still tend to grow up to be responsible adults. It is just not even in the same category as a guy lying to his wife about blowing their rent money on gambling who is a seriously irresponsible and probably an immoral person.
Re:One set of texts in deep need of help
on
Ancient Books Go Online
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· Score: 4, Interesting
An interesting question is whether they will survive as long in the digital format as they did in banana leaf format. They might not be eaten by ants, but they can easily disappear in failing hard drives, formats that nobody can read anymore, accidental deletes or perhaps just buried under the mountains and mountains of information with little hope of ever being found again. The primary job of historians 1000 years from now might well be deciphering long forgotten file formats from dusty libraries of ancient hard drives, CDs etc.
Hmm, perhaps GP is overly sensitive but the tone of the summary does seem strange. I am all against holding back the truth for fear of offending someone's racial or (especially) religious sensitivities but I am not in favor of underhanded insults either.
Saying that it is "no surprise" that Europe comes first and Middle East comes last with a "paltry" number of manuscripts is completely unnecessary in this context and can easily be read as insulting to people in Middle East, with racism not far below the surface.
After all, East Asia has 81, Africa 122, North America 133 etc. why single out Middle East with 157, with words like "no surprise" and "paltry"?
The ad network would just have to modify the contract with the ad publishers: if the content on your page is copyrighted by somebody else according to attributor.com we may pay a portion of your income to the original owner, or something like that. If you don't like it don't publish their ads. I do have couple of issues with the whole idea though:
1. Will attributor.com guarantee no false positives, i.e. legitimate blogs being deprived of income on their own original content because a sentence or two matches some article, or perhaps quotes it on purpose, or a visitor (perhaps the original owner of the article, which creates a potential for abuse) posts a comment with a cut and paste copy of the article? Will the ad publisher be notified of each infringement and given a chance to dispute it?
2. If they can get a "percentage" of the income, why not make it 100%? It seems like they are not really as interested in stopping the spammers as in making money by effectively turning spammers into affiliates and sharing income with them. I guess if that makes more business sense for them fine but it won't reduce the number of internet polluters, instead it will legitimize them
Research teams will now be able to do in one day what previously took them three years.
So they can do 1000 times more just by upgrading the speed of the connection between the telescopes? That's pretty remarkable, why didn't they do it earlier?
I would like to see some examples of how Americans consume so much more power then Europeans? Not saying that it doesn't happen, but I lived in both places and didn't really notice much difference in how people behave towards electrical consumption. Gasoline is a different matter of course, it's obvious that Americans drive bigger and less efficient cars, but electricity? Could it be that there are more extremes in climate in the US and so cooling/heating is the big culprit? For example, I bet power usage for air conditioning in the southwest is pretty astronomical. Phoenix or Las Vegas average temperature in the summer months is around 40C (104F). The hottest places in southern Europe are nowhere near that.
Hmm, maybe I'm missing something since I can't read Dutch but why is this not completely obvious even without this experiment? The bigger they are, the more wind they catch. Sure the small ones are going to be somewhat cheaper but it seems like it's only a matter of the scale of the parts (such as bigger blades or whatever) so the cost is not going to be all that different.
Artists in the middle ages had a choice of patrons
The point is that allowing their ideas to compete with others in a free market is obviously much better and fairer system for the artist than giving the ideas for free and then competing to find a rich patron who will support them.
Comparing either patronage or our current system with communist censorship is just ridiculous.
You are missing the point again. The point is not censorship, the point is that when artist's livelihood depends on a particular patron, be it state or business or individual, they have every incentive to produce content that will be pleasing to their patron.
Slashdot Mirror
Well in my opinion preventing oppression by physical force is a legitimate function of the government, in fact the main reason for it's existence. That covers the police, military and the courts, though definitely not schools. However, there are many ways for the government to pay for those things. Individual income tax accounts for about 40% of the US government's budget, eliminating it would still leave more than enough money for the essential functions. There are other ways, for example as Ayn Rand suggested, voluntary contract tax would more than cover the costs of the court system. It would be voluntary in the sense that only contracts on which the tax is paid would be enforceable through courts. There are many other such possibilities.
Well good thing you know better than joe blow what is good for him so you can take his money and decide how to dispose of it. It worked so well for every socialist state in the past.
Depending on the faith. I happen to believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster will only allow my dead grandmother to communicate with me by slightly moving a table around which a creepy looking woman whom I paid a lot of money will interpret for me. Don't call this silly or I will be offended and cry.
I want to support science, but at the same time I am reluctant to take other people's money by force and pass it on to the unelected government bureaucrats to decide which project is worthy (or in practice which scientists can beg the loudest) of getting a share of it. The whole process is inefficient, immoral and fraught with possibilities for waste and abuse. Eliminate income tax and replace it with voluntary program where people can donate a share of their income to be used for purposes of their choice and if they want to fund science fine, if they don't then they accept the risk that they and their children will be living in a country that is lagging behind in science. What is wrong with that?
The whole custom of periodically visiting the graves of your loved ones always seemed puzzling to me. What exactly are you visiting and why? If you can do it online that much less hassle I guess.
If you really have to go a particular place in order to remember your dead grandparents, it seems better to visit places where they lived, where you actually have memories of them alive. In any case, since 82% of Americans believe that their dead relatives are actually still alive, seems more "logical" (in a demented sort of way) to visit a psychic or something.
Looking at my logs there are 1000s of "attempts to break in" as well, almost all from IPs located in China where apparently most botnet computers are - the botnet masters themselves may or may not be in China. The thing is, the sites are completely free and there is no reason to break in at all. It's just scripts trying out known vulnerabilities on a large numbers of sites. Maybe the same thing is happening with NYPD sites and someone panicked when they saw that it is coming from China.
While this is cool and all, it kinda feels like cheating. How far are we from a device that can really respond to what you are thinking as opposed to measuring the amount of activity in your brain. Speaking as a programmer ignorant in neuroscience, seems like there is a long chain of events leading up to, say, pressing the Left button on a video game controller. First, the brain receives and processes the input from eyes and ears, then there must be some pretty complicated logic to decide that the right thing to do next is to turn left, then it needs to decide how to go about it (tapping your foot isn't going to do it, a particular finger has to press a particular button), then it needs to send signals to the specific arm and hand muscles to expand and contract in just the right ways so that the end result is pressing the button. I want a toy that can replace this last step and press the button for me in a fraction of time that it takes my fingers to act on my brain's instructions. All this, just so I can kick ass in Pacman
Why don't they just use guns?
In part because it's too expensive. You can't just start handing our guns to the ship crews, they don't have any training and some of them may not be legaly allowed to have guns (due to previous convictions etc) or they may not be trusted with guns by their own company. There would need to be specially trained people on board, something like air marshals. Note that the pirates are typically armed with RPGs and machine guns, so a single guy with a pistol wouldn't make much difference, you'd need to have a bunch of heavily armed people on each ship. Given that 7.5% of all the world's shipping goes through Suez canal, that's literally an entire army that needs to be paid by someone. The incidents of piracy are so miniscule compared to the total amount of shipping that goes through that area that shipping companies find it much cheaper to just pay the ransom.
Hmm, more like vote for your libertarian or local equivalent party http://www.lp.org/issues/freedom-of-speech The pirate party thing is about copyright, not censorship, right?
They used Fuhrer at first but it proved unpopular
Has it occurred to you that the moderation itself was a joke? Whoosh to you!
Its just something that the US administration (especially the current one) does when there is a problem: appoint a " czar". The issue is basically that the US government is now so enormous and complicated that issues cannot be efficiently handled through normal channels as the multitudes of departments don't communicate very well or at all with each other (or even know of others' existence), so the idea is that a single person focused on a specific issue and with authority across multiple departments will help untangle the mess. It works as well as any hack solution in that it temporarily helps on that specific problem but at the long term cost of making the overall mess even messier.
Lying liars and the lies they tell -- souls in need of correction whether young or old.
Gee, you are being a bit too harsh there. A child lying to parents about what he/she is doing at a given time is often simply a defense mechanism for obtaining some privacy and a degree of control over their own life and therefore making themselves feel more adult, even though the parents might in fact know better. I would say it's a perfectly normal and even sometimes a desirable part of childhood if the parents are more protective and intrusive than appropriate for a child of a given age, as parents often are. In fact I can't think of any child I ever met who didn't do this to some degree, and they still tend to grow up to be responsible adults. It is just not even in the same category as a guy lying to his wife about blowing their rent money on gambling who is a seriously irresponsible and probably an immoral person.
An interesting question is whether they will survive as long in the digital format as they did in banana leaf format. They might not be eaten by ants, but they can easily disappear in failing hard drives, formats that nobody can read anymore, accidental deletes or perhaps just buried under the mountains and mountains of information with little hope of ever being found again. The primary job of historians 1000 years from now might well be deciphering long forgotten file formats from dusty libraries of ancient hard drives, CDs etc.
Hmm, perhaps GP is overly sensitive but the tone of the summary does seem strange. I am all against holding back the truth for fear of offending someone's racial or (especially) religious sensitivities but I am not in favor of underhanded insults either.
Saying that it is "no surprise" that Europe comes first and Middle East comes last with a "paltry" number of manuscripts is completely unnecessary in this context and can easily be read as insulting to people in Middle East, with racism not far below the surface.
After all, East Asia has 81, Africa 122, North America 133 etc. why single out Middle East with 157, with words like "no surprise" and "paltry"?
Yeah, but what if every congressional district did that: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317676/
The ad network would just have to modify the contract with the ad publishers: if the content on your page is copyrighted by somebody else according to attributor.com we may pay a portion of your income to the original owner, or something like that. If you don't like it don't publish their ads. I do have couple of issues with the whole idea though:
1. Will attributor.com guarantee no false positives, i.e. legitimate blogs being deprived of income on their own original content because a sentence or two matches some article, or perhaps quotes it on purpose, or a visitor (perhaps the original owner of the article, which creates a potential for abuse) posts a comment with a cut and paste copy of the article? Will the ad publisher be notified of each infringement and given a chance to dispute it?
2. If they can get a "percentage" of the income, why not make it 100%? It seems like they are not really as interested in stopping the spammers as in making money by effectively turning spammers into affiliates and sharing income with them. I guess if that makes more business sense for them fine but it won't reduce the number of internet polluters, instead it will legitimize them
It's not necessarily just search engines that send traffic to these sites though so while 3 would be nice, it can't be a complete solution.
Sure why not. A crazy solution to a crazy problem
Research teams will now be able to do in one day what previously took them three years.
So they can do 1000 times more just by upgrading the speed of the connection between the telescopes? That's pretty remarkable, why didn't they do it earlier?
Don't worry, given the usual quality of slashdot summaries, cutting them in half is probably an improvement.
I would like to see some examples of how Americans consume so much more power then Europeans? Not saying that it doesn't happen, but I lived in both places and didn't really notice much difference in how people behave towards electrical consumption. Gasoline is a different matter of course, it's obvious that Americans drive bigger and less efficient cars, but electricity? Could it be that there are more extremes in climate in the US and so cooling/heating is the big culprit? For example, I bet power usage for air conditioning in the southwest is pretty astronomical. Phoenix or Las Vegas average temperature in the summer months is around 40C (104F). The hottest places in southern Europe are nowhere near that.
Hmm, maybe I'm missing something since I can't read Dutch but why is this not completely obvious even without this experiment? The bigger they are, the more wind they catch. Sure the small ones are going to be somewhat cheaper but it seems like it's only a matter of the scale of the parts (such as bigger blades or whatever) so the cost is not going to be all that different.
Artists in the middle ages had a choice of patrons
The point is that allowing their ideas to compete with others in a free market is obviously much better and fairer system for the artist than giving the ideas for free and then competing to find a rich patron who will support them.
Comparing either patronage or our current system with communist censorship is just ridiculous.
You are missing the point again. The point is not censorship, the point is that when artist's livelihood depends on a particular patron, be it state or business or individual, they have every incentive to produce content that will be pleasing to their patron.
You stage coach drivers and your fancy wheels! I had a perfectly good career delivering CDs on a mule.