If you think this is bad, wait until lots of small monoliths start appearing on the island, the ghost of dead birds start appearing and you have to spend half an hour convincing your outboard motor to take you away from the island.
Surely the only way they could do this would be to have proprietary protocols that couldn't be incorporated into a piece of hardware unless that hardware was designed with a licence from the owners of the technology?
Perhaps that's badly phrased but its the best I can do. What I mean is that unless they decide to use encryption, someone out there is going to build a decoder for digital TV that circumvents whatever protection they put in it, and unless the DMCA is interpreted in the harshest and most restrictive way possible, there's not going to be a great deal they can do about it because people will just be exercising their fair use rights.
Much of what we discuss here on Slashdot is linked in some way - that's probably why such a large group of people are paranoid in such similar ways about such a diverse selection of topics - but what's the nightmare scenario here?
This example takes place in the UK
You tell your employer you need to see the doctor. Your employer says "fine, take friday afternoon to see him". (S)he then scans your recent emails to see the email you used to book your appointment (respiratory difficulties, whatever). A while later, it comes to their attention, because you've been less than discreet, that you have a genetically transmitted defect that limits the probability of your surviving past the age of 45 to 50%. It's just a statistic, but the odds don't look good for their training budget so they unofficially limit the amount of experience or training you receive. The rationale for this is that whilst you MAY survive to retirement age, the odds of your doing so are limited, and therefore you are not as good a bet as the other, equally bright people of your age in the company. You find out that your potential maximum rank in the company is limited, and discover the reason. When in court contesting the decision, you find yourself faced with every even slightly non-business-related email you've written over the past 8 years compiled into a huge directory that fills a number of lever-arch files, and these are all put in front of the jury with the words, "look at what (s)he spends their time at work doing... this is why we're firing him/her, they're obviously not doing what they're paid for", they then draw the jury's attention to a number of emails you've written over the years that contain sexual/libellous/offensive/potentially confidential content, and bring out a laundry list of rules and guidelines in your contract that you have broken. You haven't got a leg to stand on.
Ok - far fetched - or maybe not. Every element of this storyline has happened in the past, just not all at the same time and to the same person, but put it all together, and your right to privacy and your right to a fair trial, and your right to equal opportunities all go out the window. Most people have sent a rude joke on company time, sent a dozen emails to friends organising parties, mentioned something that - interpreted in the right/wrong context - will look like a breach of confidentiality.
Even if such a thing didn't happen, the fact that we live in a society that has the capability of bringing about this kind of a scenario is what we should be worried about. We shouldn't wait until a few dozen people have been treated in this way before we are deemed to have enough evidence to get something done about it - I prefer shutting the stable door before the horse has bolted.
Of course, giving employees the right to exploit their companies systems ad infinitum and treating the companies like criminal entities just because they COULD do this kind of thing isnt the answer either - so I'm being quite unhelpful inasmuch as I'm just pointing out the problems rather than proposing solutions.
Another problem I've found with Spamcop (which I use a lot) is that they're famous with sysadmins, and I expect that as a consequence of their automated messages being quite easy to recognise, and the huge amount of messages generated for anyone with a large web presence, the providers are getting a bit pissed off with Spamcop.
I know they ought to be more sensible and prevent the use of their services by spammers, but the problem is that there's a growing number of ISPs who generate the Spamcop message "xxx@yyy.zzz.com refuses to accept Spamcop reports" during parsing.
Ok - so there's always brute force, I imagine most of us on Slashdot have at some point had the distributed.net icon in our system trays or a distributed.net process running in the background.
You're right - there's a lack of clarity - it's not theoretically impossible, in the same way as proving Fermat is not impossible, but since mathematicians have been trying to do it since pretty much the dawn of mathematics with no success, it's fair to say it's impossible for us at the moment.
Although on a related point, RSA was discovered by GCHQ in the UK before it was discovered by the eminent three who gave it it's name, and the Polish secret service had almost cracked Enigma in the second world war long before anyone else thought it was possible, so there's a possibility that some secret service has actually found a way to do it and isn't telling. Let's face it, the NSA still recruit more mathematicians than anybody else... they must be doing something...
That question has now been answered. If the NSA can develop quantum computers, if this, if that, if somebody figures out a way to factor prime numbers...
You can't factor a prime number, that's the whole point of it being a prime, it's only divisible by 1 and itself. I hate it when alleged cryptographers make silly comments like this.
What he obviously means is "if somebody figures out a shortcut to factoring the product of two large primes" - as the mathematical impossibility of this is the basis for the RSA algorithm.
In a way, if the RBL was managed brilliantly and only ever listed incredibly bad sites, I would be cheering at above.net's gung-ho attitude, but with what I've read more recently, I have to side with you on this one.
Whilst I appreciate the spirit in which the RBL was originally conceived, they are now behaving like a bunch of geeks on a power trip. It *is* a case of David slaying Goliath when they list huge sets of packets in a widely used black hole list, but what do we do when many innocent people are relying on Goliath, David's getting cocky and he isn't always right?
NOTE: The MAPS RBL is used by AboveNet to help reduce the amount of spam received by customers. AboveNet cannot remove you, your customers, or remote sites from the RBL. Please contact the RBL workers at rbl@mail-abuse.org with RBL-related questions.
That's from the above.net anti-spam policy - one click away from their front page, so I can't be bothered to go find the link again.
I take this to mean that if you're on the RBL, you can't be seen by above.net customers, or customers of their customers.
Surely all this means is that the people who are blocked by the RBL are not trying to make connections to your server?
If they're unfairly blocked, you wouldn't necessarily expect that much traffic from them, and the fact that they do not come through your server doesn't mean they're not trying to go through a server somewhere and getting blocked - you could just be in a part of the internet architecture that doesn't have much traffic from RBL-blocked sites.
You can't walk on a beach without it having an effect. You can't breathe without it having an effect. Let's face it, we're not talking about a zero-impact existence because that's not feasible.
What we're talking about is something less threatening that burning a few million tons of coal a month, generating quantities of carbon dioxide and other gases that boggle the mind and blowing a great big hole through our ozone layer.
The concept of energy creation through the use of tital or wave forces seems to me to be excellent. My scepticism comes from the fact that I don't believe we're going to make much of a dent in the energy requirements as these are driven by industry, and most alternative forms of energy can barely power a small village. That aside, I find it cringeworthy that allegedly intelligent people spit on an idea like this by running around in circles worrying about the environmental consequences, when they're negligible in contrast to almost every other method of energy creation we have to choose from.
There are a number of variables in this equation, and the amount of energy that we are going to need to keep the population happy is flexible in one direction only : upwards. Everything else gets dragged up with it - tons of Co2 generated, cubic metres of spent fissile material under supervision, diameter of the ozone hole(s).
Okay - you're right, we're once again affecting the distribution of energy, kinetic, potential, tidal, electrical. Well done, you've explained something, but in the context of what our alternatives are, and in terms of what you'd rather we did, what on earth (whilst we still have one) is your point?
Sorry - just re-read it and it's a bit harsh - I'm just getting really tired of all the experts in the world who are great at shooting other people's ideas down and couldn't come up with a better solution given from now until the first horseman comes calling.
Apologies : This is getting slightly offtopic, and I do not usually write like this, it just seems necessary in this case!
Actually, I think it was quite a good point, and I disagree that the answer is a "brain transplant".
Then you are wrong. Period.
That's your dismissive conclusion because we're talking about different things. You're talking about the meaning of words, whereas I'm talking about the philosophical (note: not physical) implications of his comment, which I believe are interesting enough to warrant discussion, and which you believe are merely worthy of being semantically criticised. Furthermore, they leave you with the impression that they, "should have their competence seriously questioned.
", which I'll come back to at the bottom of this post.
Accusing me of pedantry simply for expressing myself clearly is quite low, BTW.
I am indeed, and justifiably I think, accusing you of pedantry. I am not, however, doing it because you explain yourself clearly. Your use of language is obviously very scientific, but this doesn't make you right. The reason I pointed out the pedantic nature of your post was because it belittled a philosophical point in the original message simply because it wasn't expressed in a way that conformed to your linguistic standards.
Who gives a damn if the words, "body transplant" are not the precise construction required to explain his point? - it doesn't take a genius to see what he was trying to say. Try seeing through the words to the meaning that the poster was trying to impart. He had a point. (I disagree with, "There was no "point" put forward by the post I replied to. The post consisted of a single question. Questions don't express propositions, thus, there was nothing in that post to agree or disagree with" because you once again use linguistic construction to ignore the fact that his question implied a debatable philosophical premise, and even if it was not made explicit in his message, the point was there)
Since you obviously need it to be made explicit:
When transplanting a person's brain, is it more meaningful to the individual concerned that his brain has changed, or that his body has changed? Is it correct to assume that the correct point of view is that of the body, or should we consider that of the individual undergoing surgery instead, who will regard the operation as having changed their body rather than their mind - assuming, of course, that the procedure were made possible in the first place.
Unfortunately, I take no pleasure in discussing things like this when I have to phrase them so drily.
On the subject of judging people.....
Statement 1 : you are so arrogant and foolhardy, making judgements about what you have not enough information to judge (like me)
Statement 2 : you show yourself not to be very bright
Statement 3 : So anybody who uses such a term should have their competence seriously questioned.
Actually, I think it was quite a good point, and I disagree that the answer is a "brain transplant".
What you're doing is transplanting an individuals' personality. Now what do you consider more important, a person's identity or their physical presence. If their identity defines them, then in a way you've done a lot more than what is conventially meant by the term "transplant". I would argue that the item being replaced is the body, and not the brain. I mean, would you be doing the transplant for the good of the body or for the good of the brain?
Of course, if you're going to be a pedant, then you're right, semantically. But your scientific (anal?) approach to reading prevents you from seeing the point he was trying to make.
I bet when you're losing an argument, you're the kind of person who starts to criticise your opponent's use of language in an attempt to avoid having to acknowledge their points.
??? And you get to decide what goes between the "do not look" veil? This
makes industrial espionage just too easy.
No - there's no decision to make - they never look, they have no right to (well, until yesterday I guess).
Industrial espionage 101 :
1. Get confidential documents
2. Photocopy confidential documents
3. Put photocopies in envelope
4. Send letter to competitor
5. Return originals to cupboard
This has been possible for decades. Email didn't rewrite the rules, it just happens to be a vector that *can* be controlled, therefore they pass laws taking away rights that have been taken for granted for generations.
Industrial espionage has always been easy, email didn't rewrite that rulebook.
And again, you have no "right" to use the company's machines in this manner anyway.
Even if that were true (which it isn't unless that happens to be explicit in the terms of your contract or the general terms of employment), once you have sent the message using their equipment, regardless of whether you had the right to or not, they still should not have the right to intercept and read it - they should only be allowed to discipline you for using the company equipment in an unauthorised way. Now, whether the use of the computer was permitted or not, they can still snoop - you have lost privacy in the workplace, which I think is very serious indeed.
If someone is in an office, and receives an email from their doctor, giving them information about an appointment, that information should be private, as it is none of the company's business (at least in most cases).
The fact that the company owns and controls the vector that is being used to communicate the appointment is, in my opinion, irrelevant in any reasonable moral context. They may own the laptop, but they have no right to the proprietary information flowing between me and a third party. Because email leaves a trail, it is inherently less secure than paper mail - if I use a company pen to write a letter, they can't snoop on it, even if it's written on their paper, but because with email they can, they do...
A related point is that The RIP bill, as far as I understand it, means that they can do this without informing you of their intention to do it prior to the fact, so someone a little less clued up than your average Slashdot reader may be writing in the belief that it is private.
And what makes you think the library isn't snooping? Or the Cybercafe? Or your ISP? Or your telephone company?
But I'm quite comfortable in the belief that whoever is controlling this microbe is taking all the necessary precautions.
Furthermore, the microbes that are resistant to antibiotics are only resistant because of continual exposure to these antibiotics. Something arising from that far back in the past is unlikely to have much of a resistance to anything that might exist today. If anything, it should be treated with very great respect so that *we* don't damage *it* rather than the other way round.
Nature has survived almost 4 billion years without human help, and it worked. And we think to be able to do real harm to nature? No, we can't, not at all. Sure, we can do some harm to the balance out there, but in little time - little compared to the age of earth, not compared to the age of humans - nature will cope with that, and a new balance is created, there are already many examples out there.
I can resist, I can resist...
No I can't.
The curiosity of our ancestors, expressed through what you term "meddling", is the major driving force behind the progress we make as a species.
Without that progress, we wouldn't have, for example, antibiotics, and you would probably not be alive to take advantage of the luxury of looking from the lofty heights of the moral high ground at those who will make it possible for future generations to progress beyond the point where we are now.
If you believe in a sentient "mother earth", then you probably also believe in other higher powers, why not a sentient "father galaxy" or "grandaddy universe", at which point one has to assume that if we accidentally screwed something up here, he/she/it would just get rid of us through whatever self-adjusting mechanisms no doubt exist.
For what its worth, my "belief" is that our intelligence is just as natural as anything else you care to point out in the world around us, arising through Darwinism (or whatever you believe in), and therefore the consequences of our intelligence (among them curiosity and "meddling") are also natural.
Who's to say that global warming, caused by our parasitic existence, is not natural when viewed from the point of view of a higher intelligence, after all, we won't be the first parasite that kills its host as a natural consequence of our existence.
I could edit the above to make it less contentious, but I prefer to be provocative:-)
Sticking to filters on the internet to start with - As I said in my post, I have a lot of trouble with the spelling of my name on most websites, but that doesn't stop me using the ones I want to use. Usually, a message to a sysadmin saying "I want to use your site, but I can't buy airline tickets if you can't put my name on them" has, twice, proved enough to solve the problem.
In the case where they reply, "We can't be bothered to make a 2 minute effort to enable you to use our site", I move on, and if, for example, ebookers.com can't do it, then expedia probably can. I have yet to come across a situation, as you describe, where I can't track down any way of doing business.
Of course, in the spirit of good debating, you expanded the argument to the non-internet world, and to disabled people, therefore somewhat changing the subject and adopting the moral high ground. Congratulations, good debating tactics.
My answer to that comes is in three parts : (1) Is every single internet company therefore in the wrong because they don't enable their websites with special technology for the blind? (sorry, cheap shot)
(2) Most shops in my part of the world have access ramps - but they don't put all their prices and descriptions of their goods in braille - does this represent discrimination against the blind? I suppose that in fact, they do what I suggested above - they adapt based on the individual request for help, and when a blind person turns up to shop, they assign a member of staff to take them through the store and help them with their shopping.
I think that the real reason shops have access ramps is because the shops on our high-streets today are in such a competitive market that they can't afford to have second rate customer service in any respect. They have reached the point where their customer service is a major selling point, because if theirs is second rate, their neighbouring store will start snapping up their business. This will happen on the internet, but the market is still young, and there's enough easy business out there that branding is still much more important than service, so that's where the effort goes.
(3) You compare the percentage of disabled people to the percentage of non-disabled people. But what about the percentage of disabled people compared to the percentage of people who (a) want to purchase from websites AND (b) have names that will get stuck in filters. I think we just went from around (guessing) 5% to 0.05%. We also have to bear in mind that neither of these groups is prevented from purchasing stuff either on the internet or in real life - there are always companies willing to go the extra mile, just not all companies.
What do you mean "Sigh"? Why should 98% of people who are content with a service be deprived of it because you have a problem with it? That's not democracy, it's not "the market", and it's not "you being the market". It's just small-minded selfishness.
I'm as opposed to minorities being discriminated against as anyone, and, like most people, being part of a diverse set of individuals, I probably belong to a few minorities depending how you care to define them. But that doesn't mean I think the success or failure of a company should hinge on whether their filters accept my name. As it happens, I've yet to come across a website that can handle my name because they can't do accents, and they tend to have maximum field lengths that are shorter than my surname.
If the company's actions are due to an endemic problem with their customer service or the quality of their business practices then fine - they deserve to fail, and the market will ensure they will as they will be outcompeted by other players and 98% of the customers will end up leaving - all for their own reasons.
But 2% of people being upset with a service is not a trend - it could be either an error term, or it could, in some cases, be a business decision - maybe the company doesn't want that 2% of the business, because it costs them 20% of their effort to go and pander to those customers.
If I'm in the 98%, I don't want a bunch of discontents killing a service I use because their names happen to get jammed in a filter. Luckily, it's quite rare for that 2% to have the ability to kill off the business, so I'm safe. If I'm in the 2%, and because of my name, I quite often am, I'll find another service, it's only a click away - although usually a phone call is enough to fix the problem if I'd rather stick with the site in question.
So if this were a large corporations site like CDNow or Buy.com or even Amazon, would you have the same attitude? I think larger coporations are forced to adhere to higher standards.
But this is precisely the point. CDNow and Amazon are keen enough to do well that they can't afford to piss people off like this. Therefore they try not to. Ideally, when you complain to one of them because some short-sightedness of their has led to a situation like this, their immediate proffessional reaction should be to apologise profusely and send you a $10 voucher, at which point they stand the chance of impressing you sufficiently that you become a valued customer.
Reactions to little things like this are precisely how you tell a company that has excellent processes and a high level of awareness of customer service from the lame ducks run by millionaire-whizzkid-wannabes that only make them rich becauses people hurl money at anything with a full stop in the name that happens to float on the market.
I agree with the original post, and the one that came before it in this discussion - let the market decide. I've seen this thread, read the names of the companies concerned, and they have fallen in my esteem. Not that won't affect them, but the overall effect of carrying on with such policies over time will mean that a sufficient number of people will end up feeling like me, and even if they don't completely stop using these services, they will look elsewhere first.
The same thing happened with my Amazon purchases - I realised they were not that cheap, and now I go to shopsmart.com first. Sometimes I still end up on Amazon, but only when they've got something that makes me go there (out of print books, or maybe I want really quick delivery, or whatever) that is also worth the price premium.
Market power rules - especially in a medium where going to another shop requires less than half a calorie spent typing in a different web address.
More tangible results also come from investment into schools and child programs.
Why does one have to come at the expense of the other - we can spend the money on the space projects, and also spend the money on schools, the arts and scientific research on earth.
That's the great thing about money, it's divisible.
Now of course the counter-argument that any first year economist will put to you is that every margnial increase in spending should be spent on the items that will bring the most benefit. This is true in a way, but ignores two important points.
1. In a simple, "ceteris paribus", assumption-simplified economists world, you can measure everything, which is why the above advice on spending works in a model. In the real world, you have no certainty that your money spent on space is bringing in a lower or higher return, it is therefore good risk management to continue to explore that area of science in case that is where the most important discoveries of tomorrow will come.
2. There's more to the equation than spending money for a fixed return. Just because you're spending money on schools doesn't mean that your children's children will have a better school system - take a look at the NHS, you could plough billions into it and nothing would happen - oh, hang on, they've already done that. What I mean is, you can probably do more by looking at how the money is spent and how you're doing things than by just using money to do more of them. In NASA's case, their projects require significant advances in technology to make them possible in the first place, and it's my (not necessarily shared) philosophy that the advancement of science, even without a directly applicable use for the technology outside of space exploration, is a good thing, because it feeds the thirst for knowledge.
This law allows recipients of spam and ISPs to sue spammers who violate it. The State of Colorado won't sue/prosecute spammers. How does this use taxpayer resources?
Surely because the taxpayers are the individuals who foot the bill for the legislative infrastructure. The opportunity cost of hundreds of lawsuits for every spam mail sent in the state is that it will take so much time that it will clog the legislative system and remove resources from other cases.
I think the key is to let ISPs sue spammers. In a wider context, it's not necessarily a good idea to give the individuals who receive the Spam the same right. After all, the individuals are getting very little damage per individual piece of spam, and therefore if you can identify a sender, that sender is only responsible for 30 seconds of lost time at most, which makes a lawsuit by an individual a very very small claim. But an ISP can say that it has suffered significant damages from the use of its servers, and that all it's users receive a degraded service as a consequence of its servers sending out junk. They could make a good case for damages, add to that punitive damages and the need to make an example, and you could finally have the spammers by the short and curlies.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think this is bad, wait until lots of small monoliths start appearing on the island, the ghost of dead birds start appearing and you have to spend half an hour convincing your outboard motor to take you away from the island.
Perhaps that's badly phrased but its the best I can do. What I mean is that unless they decide to use encryption, someone out there is going to build a decoder for digital TV that circumvents whatever protection they put in it, and unless the DMCA is interpreted in the harshest and most restrictive way possible, there's not going to be a great deal they can do about it because people will just be exercising their fair use rights.
Or am I wrong again?
This example takes place in the UK
You tell your employer you need to see the doctor. Your employer says "fine, take friday afternoon to see him". (S)he then scans your recent emails to see the email you used to book your appointment (respiratory difficulties, whatever). A while later, it comes to their attention, because you've been less than discreet, that you have a genetically transmitted defect that limits the probability of your surviving past the age of 45 to 50%. It's just a statistic, but the odds don't look good for their training budget so they unofficially limit the amount of experience or training you receive. The rationale for this is that whilst you MAY survive to retirement age, the odds of your doing so are limited, and therefore you are not as good a bet as the other, equally bright people of your age in the company. You find out that your potential maximum rank in the company is limited, and discover the reason. When in court contesting the decision, you find yourself faced with every even slightly non-business-related email you've written over the past 8 years compiled into a huge directory that fills a number of lever-arch files, and these are all put in front of the jury with the words, "look at what (s)he spends their time at work doing... this is why we're firing him/her, they're obviously not doing what they're paid for", they then draw the jury's attention to a number of emails you've written over the years that contain sexual/libellous/offensive/potentially confidential content, and bring out a laundry list of rules and guidelines in your contract that you have broken. You haven't got a leg to stand on.
Ok - far fetched - or maybe not. Every element of this storyline has happened in the past, just not all at the same time and to the same person, but put it all together, and your right to privacy and your right to a fair trial, and your right to equal opportunities all go out the window. Most people have sent a rude joke on company time, sent a dozen emails to friends organising parties, mentioned something that - interpreted in the right/wrong context - will look like a breach of confidentiality.
Even if such a thing didn't happen, the fact that we live in a society that has the capability of bringing about this kind of a scenario is what we should be worried about. We shouldn't wait until a few dozen people have been treated in this way before we are deemed to have enough evidence to get something done about it - I prefer shutting the stable door before the horse has bolted.
Of course, giving employees the right to exploit their companies systems ad infinitum and treating the companies like criminal entities just because they COULD do this kind of thing isnt the answer either - so I'm being quite unhelpful inasmuch as I'm just pointing out the problems rather than proposing solutions.
Fair enough - if you're a sysadmin or on the receiving end of an abuse account, and you were convinced, I'm willing to be convinced also!
I know they ought to be more sensible and prevent the use of their services by spammers, but the problem is that there's a growing number of ISPs who generate the Spamcop message "xxx@yyy.zzz.com refuses to accept Spamcop reports" during parsing.
Sorry - bad example (IANAM!) - but my point holds, even if my example is rubbish.
You're right - there's a lack of clarity - it's not theoretically impossible, in the same way as proving Fermat is not impossible, but since mathematicians have been trying to do it since pretty much the dawn of mathematics with no success, it's fair to say it's impossible for us at the moment.
Although on a related point, RSA was discovered by GCHQ in the UK before it was discovered by the eminent three who gave it it's name, and the Polish secret service had almost cracked Enigma in the second world war long before anyone else thought it was possible, so there's a possibility that some secret service has actually found a way to do it and isn't telling. Let's face it, the NSA still recruit more mathematicians than anybody else... they must be doing something...
You can't factor a prime number, that's the whole point of it being a prime, it's only divisible by 1 and itself. I hate it when alleged cryptographers make silly comments like this.
What he obviously means is "if somebody figures out a shortcut to factoring the product of two large primes" - as the mathematical impossibility of this is the basis for the RSA algorithm.
In a way, if the RBL was managed brilliantly and only ever listed incredibly bad sites, I would be cheering at above.net's gung-ho attitude, but with what I've read more recently, I have to side with you on this one.
Whilst I appreciate the spirit in which the RBL was originally conceived, they are now behaving like a bunch of geeks on a power trip. It *is* a case of David slaying Goliath when they list huge sets of packets in a widely used black hole list, but what do we do when many innocent people are relying on Goliath, David's getting cocky and he isn't always right?
That's from the above.net anti-spam policy - one click away from their front page, so I can't be bothered to go find the link again.
I take this to mean that if you're on the RBL, you can't be seen by above.net customers, or customers of their customers.
If they're unfairly blocked, you wouldn't necessarily expect that much traffic from them, and the fact that they do not come through your server doesn't mean they're not trying to go through a server somewhere and getting blocked - you could just be in a part of the internet architecture that doesn't have much traffic from RBL-blocked sites.
What we're talking about is something less threatening that burning a few million tons of coal a month, generating quantities of carbon dioxide and other gases that boggle the mind and blowing a great big hole through our ozone layer.
The concept of energy creation through the use of tital or wave forces seems to me to be excellent. My scepticism comes from the fact that I don't believe we're going to make much of a dent in the energy requirements as these are driven by industry, and most alternative forms of energy can barely power a small village. That aside, I find it cringeworthy that allegedly intelligent people spit on an idea like this by running around in circles worrying about the environmental consequences, when they're negligible in contrast to almost every other method of energy creation we have to choose from.
There are a number of variables in this equation, and the amount of energy that we are going to need to keep the population happy is flexible in one direction only : upwards. Everything else gets dragged up with it - tons of Co2 generated, cubic metres of spent fissile material under supervision, diameter of the ozone hole(s).
Okay - you're right, we're once again affecting the distribution of energy, kinetic, potential, tidal, electrical. Well done, you've explained something, but in the context of what our alternatives are, and in terms of what you'd rather we did, what on earth (whilst we still have one) is your point?
Sorry - just re-read it and it's a bit harsh - I'm just getting really tired of all the experts in the world who are great at shooting other people's ideas down and couldn't come up with a better solution given from now until the first horseman comes calling.
Actually, I think it was quite a good point, and I disagree that the answer is a "brain transplant".
Then you are wrong. Period.
That's your dismissive conclusion because we're talking about different things. You're talking about the meaning of words, whereas I'm talking about the philosophical (note: not physical) implications of his comment, which I believe are interesting enough to warrant discussion, and which you believe are merely worthy of being semantically criticised. Furthermore, they leave you with the impression that they, "should have their competence seriously questioned. ", which I'll come back to at the bottom of this post.
Accusing me of pedantry simply for expressing myself clearly is quite low, BTW.
I am indeed, and justifiably I think, accusing you of pedantry. I am not, however, doing it because you explain yourself clearly. Your use of language is obviously very scientific, but this doesn't make you right. The reason I pointed out the pedantic nature of your post was because it belittled a philosophical point in the original message simply because it wasn't expressed in a way that conformed to your linguistic standards.
Who gives a damn if the words, "body transplant" are not the precise construction required to explain his point? - it doesn't take a genius to see what he was trying to say. Try seeing through the words to the meaning that the poster was trying to impart. He had a point. (I disagree with, "There was no "point" put forward by the post I replied to. The post consisted of a single question. Questions don't express propositions, thus, there was nothing in that post to agree or disagree with" because you once again use linguistic construction to ignore the fact that his question implied a debatable philosophical premise, and even if it was not made explicit in his message, the point was there)
Since you obviously need it to be made explicit:
When transplanting a person's brain, is it more meaningful to the individual concerned that his brain has changed, or that his body has changed? Is it correct to assume that the correct point of view is that of the body, or should we consider that of the individual undergoing surgery instead, who will regard the operation as having changed their body rather than their mind - assuming, of course, that the procedure were made possible in the first place.
Unfortunately, I take no pleasure in discussing things like this when I have to phrase them so drily.
On the subject of judging people.....
Statement 1 : you are so arrogant and foolhardy, making judgements about what you have not enough information to judge (like me)
Statement 2 : you show yourself not to be very bright
Statement 3 : So anybody who uses such a term should have their competence seriously questioned.
I rest my case.
What you're doing is transplanting an individuals' personality. Now what do you consider more important, a person's identity or their physical presence. If their identity defines them, then in a way you've done a lot more than what is conventially meant by the term "transplant". I would argue that the item being replaced is the body, and not the brain. I mean, would you be doing the transplant for the good of the body or for the good of the brain?
Of course, if you're going to be a pedant, then you're right, semantically. But your scientific (anal?) approach to reading prevents you from seeing the point he was trying to make.
I bet when you're losing an argument, you're the kind of person who starts to criticise your opponent's use of language in an attempt to avoid having to acknowledge their points.
No - there's no decision to make - they never look, they have no right to (well, until yesterday I guess).
Industrial espionage 101 :
1. Get confidential documents
2. Photocopy confidential documents
3. Put photocopies in envelope
4. Send letter to competitor
5. Return originals to cupboard
This has been possible for decades. Email didn't rewrite the rules, it just happens to be a vector that *can* be controlled, therefore they pass laws taking away rights that have been taken for granted for generations.
Industrial espionage has always been easy, email didn't rewrite that rulebook.
And again, you have no "right" to use the company's machines in this manner anyway.
Even if that were true (which it isn't unless that happens to be explicit in the terms of your contract or the general terms of employment), once you have sent the message using their equipment, regardless of whether you had the right to or not, they still should not have the right to intercept and read it - they should only be allowed to discipline you for using the company equipment in an unauthorised way. Now, whether the use of the computer was permitted or not, they can still snoop - you have lost privacy in the workplace, which I think is very serious indeed.
If someone is in an office, and receives an email from their doctor, giving them information about an appointment, that information should be private, as it is none of the company's business (at least in most cases).
The fact that the company owns and controls the vector that is being used to communicate the appointment is, in my opinion, irrelevant in any reasonable moral context. They may own the laptop, but they have no right to the proprietary information flowing between me and a third party. Because email leaves a trail, it is inherently less secure than paper mail - if I use a company pen to write a letter, they can't snoop on it, even if it's written on their paper, but because with email they can, they do...
A related point is that The RIP bill, as far as I understand it, means that they can do this without informing you of their intention to do it prior to the fact, so someone a little less clued up than your average Slashdot reader may be writing in the belief that it is private.
And what makes you think the library isn't snooping? Or the Cybercafe? Or your ISP? Or your telephone company?
Whichever way I look at this, I don't like it.
Furthermore, the microbes that are resistant to antibiotics are only resistant because of continual exposure to these antibiotics. Something arising from that far back in the past is unlikely to have much of a resistance to anything that might exist today. If anything, it should be treated with very great respect so that *we* don't damage *it* rather than the other way round.
I can resist, I can resist...
No I can't.
The curiosity of our ancestors, expressed through what you term "meddling", is the major driving force behind the progress we make as a species.
Without that progress, we wouldn't have, for example, antibiotics, and you would probably not be alive to take advantage of the luxury of looking from the lofty heights of the moral high ground at those who will make it possible for future generations to progress beyond the point where we are now.
If you believe in a sentient "mother earth", then you probably also believe in other higher powers, why not a sentient "father galaxy" or "grandaddy universe", at which point one has to assume that if we accidentally screwed something up here, he/she/it would just get rid of us through whatever self-adjusting mechanisms no doubt exist.
For what its worth, my "belief" is that our intelligence is just as natural as anything else you care to point out in the world around us, arising through Darwinism (or whatever you believe in), and therefore the consequences of our intelligence (among them curiosity and "meddling") are also natural.
Who's to say that global warming, caused by our parasitic existence, is not natural when viewed from the point of view of a higher intelligence, after all, we won't be the first parasite that kills its host as a natural consequence of our existence.
I could edit the above to make it less contentious, but I prefer to be provocative :-)
In the case where they reply, "We can't be bothered to make a 2 minute effort to enable you to use our site", I move on, and if, for example, ebookers.com can't do it, then expedia probably can. I have yet to come across a situation, as you describe, where I can't track down any way of doing business.
Of course, in the spirit of good debating, you expanded the argument to the non-internet world, and to disabled people, therefore somewhat changing the subject and adopting the moral high ground. Congratulations, good debating tactics.
My answer to that comes is in three parts : (1) Is every single internet company therefore in the wrong because they don't enable their websites with special technology for the blind? (sorry, cheap shot)
(2) Most shops in my part of the world have access ramps - but they don't put all their prices and descriptions of their goods in braille - does this represent discrimination against the blind? I suppose that in fact, they do what I suggested above - they adapt based on the individual request for help, and when a blind person turns up to shop, they assign a member of staff to take them through the store and help them with their shopping.
I think that the real reason shops have access ramps is because the shops on our high-streets today are in such a competitive market that they can't afford to have second rate customer service in any respect. They have reached the point where their customer service is a major selling point, because if theirs is second rate, their neighbouring store will start snapping up their business. This will happen on the internet, but the market is still young, and there's enough easy business out there that branding is still much more important than service, so that's where the effort goes.
(3) You compare the percentage of disabled people to the percentage of non-disabled people. But what about the percentage of disabled people compared to the percentage of people who (a) want to purchase from websites AND (b) have names that will get stuck in filters. I think we just went from around (guessing) 5% to 0.05%. We also have to bear in mind that neither of these groups is prevented from purchasing stuff either on the internet or in real life - there are always companies willing to go the extra mile, just not all companies.
I'm as opposed to minorities being discriminated against as anyone, and, like most people, being part of a diverse set of individuals, I probably belong to a few minorities depending how you care to define them. But that doesn't mean I think the success or failure of a company should hinge on whether their filters accept my name. As it happens, I've yet to come across a website that can handle my name because they can't do accents, and they tend to have maximum field lengths that are shorter than my surname.
If the company's actions are due to an endemic problem with their customer service or the quality of their business practices then fine - they deserve to fail, and the market will ensure they will as they will be outcompeted by other players and 98% of the customers will end up leaving - all for their own reasons.
But 2% of people being upset with a service is not a trend - it could be either an error term, or it could, in some cases, be a business decision - maybe the company doesn't want that 2% of the business, because it costs them 20% of their effort to go and pander to those customers.
If I'm in the 98%, I don't want a bunch of discontents killing a service I use because their names happen to get jammed in a filter. Luckily, it's quite rare for that 2% to have the ability to kill off the business, so I'm safe. If I'm in the 2%, and because of my name, I quite often am, I'll find another service, it's only a click away - although usually a phone call is enough to fix the problem if I'd rather stick with the site in question.
There were a really embarassing number of typos in that message - apologies to all. It's the caffeine - honest - it mmmaakkkes typpingg diffficultt.
But this is precisely the point. CDNow and Amazon are keen enough to do well that they can't afford to piss people off like this. Therefore they try not to. Ideally, when you complain to one of them because some short-sightedness of their has led to a situation like this, their immediate proffessional reaction should be to apologise profusely and send you a $10 voucher, at which point they stand the chance of impressing you sufficiently that you become a valued customer.
Reactions to little things like this are precisely how you tell a company that has excellent processes and a high level of awareness of customer service from the lame ducks run by millionaire-whizzkid-wannabes that only make them rich becauses people hurl money at anything with a full stop in the name that happens to float on the market.
I agree with the original post, and the one that came before it in this discussion - let the market decide. I've seen this thread, read the names of the companies concerned, and they have fallen in my esteem. Not that won't affect them, but the overall effect of carrying on with such policies over time will mean that a sufficient number of people will end up feeling like me, and even if they don't completely stop using these services, they will look elsewhere first.
The same thing happened with my Amazon purchases - I realised they were not that cheap, and now I go to shopsmart.com first. Sometimes I still end up on Amazon, but only when they've got something that makes me go there (out of print books, or maybe I want really quick delivery, or whatever) that is also worth the price premium.
Market power rules - especially in a medium where going to another shop requires less than half a calorie spent typing in a different web address.
Why does one have to come at the expense of the other - we can spend the money on the space projects, and also spend the money on schools, the arts and scientific research on earth.
That's the great thing about money, it's divisible.
Now of course the counter-argument that any first year economist will put to you is that every margnial increase in spending should be spent on the items that will bring the most benefit. This is true in a way, but ignores two important points.
1. In a simple, "ceteris paribus", assumption-simplified economists world, you can measure everything, which is why the above advice on spending works in a model. In the real world, you have no certainty that your money spent on space is bringing in a lower or higher return, it is therefore good risk management to continue to explore that area of science in case that is where the most important discoveries of tomorrow will come.
2. There's more to the equation than spending money for a fixed return. Just because you're spending money on schools doesn't mean that your children's children will have a better school system - take a look at the NHS, you could plough billions into it and nothing would happen - oh, hang on, they've already done that. What I mean is, you can probably do more by looking at how the money is spent and how you're doing things than by just using money to do more of them. In NASA's case, their projects require significant advances in technology to make them possible in the first place, and it's my (not necessarily shared) philosophy that the advancement of science, even without a directly applicable use for the technology outside of space exploration, is a good thing, because it feeds the thirst for knowledge.
Surely because the taxpayers are the individuals who foot the bill for the legislative infrastructure. The opportunity cost of hundreds of lawsuits for every spam mail sent in the state is that it will take so much time that it will clog the legislative system and remove resources from other cases.
I think the key is to let ISPs sue spammers. In a wider context, it's not necessarily a good idea to give the individuals who receive the Spam the same right. After all, the individuals are getting very little damage per individual piece of spam, and therefore if you can identify a sender, that sender is only responsible for 30 seconds of lost time at most, which makes a lawsuit by an individual a very very small claim. But an ISP can say that it has suffered significant damages from the use of its servers, and that all it's users receive a degraded service as a consequence of its servers sending out junk. They could make a good case for damages, add to that punitive damages and the need to make an example, and you could finally have the spammers by the short and curlies.
Seems far more likely that they'd be coming to your door.
You're the kind of person who, in France, during the second world war, told the Germans that his next door neighbour was part of the resistance.
After all, the Germans were bringing "stability" and by that time the German army defined "status quo".
It takes courage, determination and belief to stand against an oppressive regime, whereas you seem to always side with whoever has the authority.