It's not about population control, decrease, or anything else regarding the Earth. It's about the biological imperative to reproduce one's species. Once we've seeded other star systems, the Earth can go hang as the species will go on. (And the Earth will become unlivable for humans be it from massive climate shifts soon or the far future when the sun expands this far our in the system, it's just a matter of whether or not it's our only home when it does.)
After all, look how well colonization worked out for the Greeks in the long term. They are a major economic and military superpower still, aren't they?
Interesting?!?!?! Dude, parent made a leap from "we fuck things up" to "stop development"? How's that mod-worthy? To me that's the sign of a mind that isn't on its rails. The point here is that yes, we fuck things up. When we're working with materials that have radioactive lives longer than human civilization, we just need to be really careful with it. We shouldn't stop research by any means, but we can't just hand this shit out like cup-cakes.
Good post. To finish it, I'll say that I think that ratemycop.com will probably wind up being another useless site where cop haters will have bitch-fests. But it should still be protected and allowed to die it's own death. Potential abuse (or just plain lameness) is never an excuse for censorship in my U.S.A.
No, his argument is not weak, and for a reason which you yourself pointed out. We don't charge-back legitimate e-mails because they're, well, legitimate. I paid for a computer, and pay monthly for my internet access, in part, so that my friends, family, and associates can send me e-mail. I gave them my e-mail willingly and told them to write. It's a cost I willingly incur. Unsolicited e-mail uses resources that the sender does not pay for, and has not been invited to use. Hence, they have no right to use it. Also, my correspondents don't create bot-nets to hide the origin of their e-mails, forcing the infected computer's owners to foot the bill for the computing resources and bandwidth to send their messages.
First, I agree with your sentiment. However, since you're lambasting someone for not knowing how the world does/has work(ed), I'll kindly point out that you need to look up the principle of extraterritoriality and how it's been applied throughout the colonial era, and today. It may help you understand why you went too far in your claim that "It hasn't ever been the case that rights granted by a country apply to its citizens while they are in other countries". While I'd argue it's ok that we still use extraterritoriality world-wide for diplomats, having had entire cities, like Shanghai, where a country can't exercise it's sovereignty didn't win friends. And lest you think that this idea isn't used anymore outside of the diplomatic corp, please look into the legal basis behind detentions in Guantanimo Bay, Cuba. ( U.S. Gov't want's extraterritoriality for its personnel to protect them from Cuban law (heck, what we're doing at GITMO isn't even legal in the U.S.), but not for detainees being held there, e.g. no right to habeas corpus for them! And more complicated matters.)
I think that your analysis has it about nailed at this point. Hopefully discussion such as this can start to reach a broader audience so that people stop thinking of "the blues" as being depressed, but can still feel ok about seeking medical help when it's really bad. Also, real behavioral therapy, like you speak of, needs to replace the wishy washy "talk" therapy that might keep people alive, but ends there as far as people making real changes in their lives. Unfortunately, how our society views and talks about "disease" appears to be broken, so maybe we'll just have invent new terms:) Oh, and I'm pleased that you read the link enough to call me on it's weaknesses; guess you didn't buy that UID on ebay.
Dude, just tell me that someone who is clinically depressed or with some other severe mental disorder doesn't have a disease to my face, ok?;) The medicines under discussion may be overprescribed (to people who really don't need it, possibly accounting for the placebo effect), but for the people who need it...
You have some very good arguments, please don't weaken them with straw men like "someone lacks normal and usual cognitive and behavioral skills to deal with, say, anger". Depression (the disease under discussion) can be very real. Ever seen a person who used to function fine slowly (chemically) imbalance to where they can't get out of bed? Ever felt it yourself? Sure, there are hypochondriacs who think they have depression (I used to be married to one), and doctors seem pretty willing to go along in our society. But there are hypochondriacs who think that they have "the flu and coronary artery disease", too. That doesn't make those conditions any less a real disease than over/mis-diagnosis of depression make depression something that's [idiom]just in your head[/idiom]. (oh, and you can see brain chemistry changes in autopsies http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/S/science/body/depression.html, just like hardening arteries, so, yeah, it's a physical disease)
Historically, fire brigades have always been community based, so I can't give you an historical example. Even the most primitive of societies realize that fire is a community problem and that it must be suppressed communally. I don't know how to convince you that some services cannot be adequately rendered by private companies, because you appear to be either too young (inexperienced), too rich (i.e. feel that you can always buy yourself out of trouble), or just a troll. Notice that I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not stupid. For you to believe that you can switch insurance companies and actually get different service/price tells me that you've either never shopped around or actually dealt with your insurance agency(ies). As for forcing you to pay taxes, well, I'm not. I'm merely saying that if you want to live in a society, a community of people, that you have to live by their rules, and one of them is taxation and paying for things that you may not like. As I said in my original post, you ARE free to go live in a cave without the benefits of community services, even to find like minded people and build up your society. But to live among real people, in the real world, some services just cannot be effectively bought on an individual basis. So, stop using the 'net that your gov't paid for (development and subsidies to telcos) now. Please.
I have private insurance company. Think about your private insurance company and how helpful they were the last time you called. Now, do you really believe that Private fire departments are a good idea? How about a for-profit Police department? For a "funny" take on that idea, read Snow Crash. I don't know about you, but I willingly work 10 hours of my week for public police, fire, and roads. Not least because private organizations of that type would cost me 20 hours a week and make me sign a waiver and wait on hold with my insurance company for pre-authorization before they started hosing my burning house down. I call that a realistic view of how the real world works, not a "flawed" understanding of anything. Don't get me wrong, gov't sucks. It's wastefully mis-managed, corrupt, and all that... it just really is better than the alternatives.
Yeah, and the first computers could only calculate Logs. I mean, who needs those, we already had books FULL of them that you could just grab and look them up in! --Sometimes you have to learn to crawl before you can run. I'm glad that we're learning how to build in space so that we can write the first pages in our encyclopedia of space-faring knowledge. You don't like it? Tough. That's why we have taxes... to force the short-sighted people help fund projects that are for the good of the nation/humanity. You don't like the pace of progress or the final goal? Then stop using the police, fire dept., roads, water/sewage infrastructure, monetary system, army, etc. that I help pay for for you and go live in a cave. In the meantime I'll pay my taxes to support NASA AND I'll invest in private space agencies. Oh, and in little companies like Microsoft that figured out a way to make a LOT of money from that little government experiment in calculating Logs.
I normally wouldn't answer a rant like yours, but I feel I must as it's been rated "insightful" for some frightful reason. Guess I'll be losing my Karma.
You are wrong. Most people do not want to have the gov't be their mommy. Most people either feel helpless to fix the system, are just greedy, or don't think at all. They know the government is broken, but don't feel that they can do anything about it. One man I know feels that the tax cuts are wrong, and that W. has betrayed his conservative ideals, but this man still wants his tax cut money. Why? Because he says that the system is so far gone, he may as well "get his". I think that if you ask around, most people will say they just "want theirs". Greed is good, right Mr. Libertarian? Problem is, if we don't work together sometimes things just don't work.
Gagh, you made me defend centrists. Now I must shower.
Check with ISO to see if they have a program for non-profits. This is the type of project that you can't just pull out of a hat. You need an organization that's done this before for other sites.
Ok, I don't think people should infringe copyright or steal games from stores, but no one owes you anything if you spend 5 years making anything on spec. Get a contract if you're the coder, and take your lumps and figure out how to sell in today's market if you're the backer. You argue that it costs to make the commercial stuff on the web but not the free stuff? Give me a break, it costs money to make any content. The people who produce the "free" stuff just figured out other ways to make money off it (ad based revenue anyone? Broadcasters figured that one out, oh, 80 years or so ago when radio started) or decided to take the hit and put the product out there anyway.
And the argument that people will "suffer" if fewer music/video games/movies are produced... let's get real here. People suffer if they don't have food. If U2 delays an album by a year or if we don't get the next Britney Spears, that's an inconvenience at worst (insert joke about no next-Britney being a good thing here). I'd be just as happy if Michael Bay never made another movie, and maybe if Hollywood shrunk a little bit all those creative minds could think about how to make U.S. manufacturing profitable again and reduce our ridiculous trade deficit.
/end rant
Re:Software is under the eyes of regulators
on
Geekonomics
·
· Score: 1
Good question. I guess we'd need a "reference box" for a testbed. I'll leave it up to a statistician to answer the math of calculating a secure or insecure percentage as I'm unqualified for that. In the end though, due to the differences in configuration, we are always going to have the caveat emptor and just let people know that their mileage may vary- kind of like the sticker on the side of new cars. Crash test ratings and gov't mileage estimates on cars are far from perfect, but they give a baseline for comparison- and you're still allowed to buy an SUV or a Dodge Neon based on you needs and wallet.
Re:as the review says
on
Geekonomics
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Oddly enough, you just made one of the best arguments I've heard to date for regulation and licensing of software designers and engineers. If we can't trust people to make rational decisions, then we may very well have to regulate them into it.
Re:Software is under the eyes of regulators
on
Geekonomics
·
· Score: 1
So QuickBooks should be regulated because it's financial software, but Word, which can essentially run programs within it to copy your QuickBooks data over the internet to a thief shouldn't? I'm not for all kinds of additional regulations, but how about at least a gov't "crash test" rating for software? Then people could better make informed decisions about how safe their software really is and let the market sort it out. Right now most people are flying blind to the dangers that are out there to their data, and that makes computer security either something to be ignored or scary for them.
What is this "significant" difference you speak of? Isn't dead, well, dead? What makes this even worse is that 100% of American's are at risk of dying in a terrorist act and only a percentage of Americans use cars (don't believe me? Look up what percentage of NYC residents even have driver's licenses). This means that even with a bigger pool of potential victims terrorism claims fewer lives.
In the U.S., it's the law that a company must retain all electronic documents just in case they do ever have to go to court, for whatever reason. IMO, this is one of those very poorly thought out laws as 1) how do you punish a company for contempt when they can't hand over their e-mails because of 2) almost nobody currently archives all of their e-mails. Also, how do you prove that you've not deleted any? Plus, how does anybody ever sort through them all during discovery? I pity that law clerk.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not about population control, decrease, or anything else regarding the Earth. It's about the biological imperative to reproduce one's species. Once we've seeded other star systems, the Earth can go hang as the species will go on. (And the Earth will become unlivable for humans be it from massive climate shifts soon or the far future when the sun expands this far our in the system, it's just a matter of whether or not it's our only home when it does.)
After all, look how well colonization worked out for the Greeks in the long term. They are a major economic and military superpower still, aren't they?
Interesting?!?!?! Dude, parent made a leap from "we fuck things up" to "stop development"? How's that mod-worthy? To me that's the sign of a mind that isn't on its rails. The point here is that yes, we fuck things up. When we're working with materials that have radioactive lives longer than human civilization, we just need to be really careful with it. We shouldn't stop research by any means, but we can't just hand this shit out like cup-cakes.
Good post. To finish it, I'll say that I think that ratemycop.com will probably wind up being another useless site where cop haters will have bitch-fests. But it should still be protected and allowed to die it's own death. Potential abuse (or just plain lameness) is never an excuse for censorship in my U.S.A.
"Hitler gave eugenics a bad name."-Richard Dawkins
'nough said?
No, his argument is not weak, and for a reason which you yourself pointed out. We don't charge-back legitimate e-mails because they're, well, legitimate. I paid for a computer, and pay monthly for my internet access, in part, so that my friends, family, and associates can send me e-mail. I gave them my e-mail willingly and told them to write. It's a cost I willingly incur. Unsolicited e-mail uses resources that the sender does not pay for, and has not been invited to use. Hence, they have no right to use it. Also, my correspondents don't create bot-nets to hide the origin of their e-mails, forcing the infected computer's owners to foot the bill for the computing resources and bandwidth to send their messages.
Strong enough for you?
First, I agree with your sentiment. However, since you're lambasting someone for not knowing how the world does/has work(ed), I'll kindly point out that you need to look up the principle of extraterritoriality and how it's been applied throughout the colonial era, and today. It may help you understand why you went too far in your claim that "It hasn't ever been the case that rights granted by a country apply to its citizens while they are in other countries". While I'd argue it's ok that we still use extraterritoriality world-wide for diplomats, having had entire cities, like Shanghai, where a country can't exercise it's sovereignty didn't win friends. And lest you think that this idea isn't used anymore outside of the diplomatic corp, please look into the legal basis behind detentions in Guantanimo Bay, Cuba. ( U.S. Gov't want's extraterritoriality for its personnel to protect them from Cuban law (heck, what we're doing at GITMO isn't even legal in the U.S.), but not for detainees being held there, e.g. no right to habeas corpus for them! And more complicated matters.)
I think that your analysis has it about nailed at this point. Hopefully discussion such as this can start to reach a broader audience so that people stop thinking of "the blues" as being depressed, but can still feel ok about seeking medical help when it's really bad. Also, real behavioral therapy, like you speak of, needs to replace the wishy washy "talk" therapy that might keep people alive, but ends there as far as people making real changes in their lives. Unfortunately, how our society views and talks about "disease" appears to be broken, so maybe we'll just have invent new terms :) Oh, and I'm pleased that you read the link enough to call me on it's weaknesses; guess you didn't buy that UID on ebay.
Dude, just tell me that someone who is clinically depressed or with some other severe mental disorder doesn't have a disease to my face, ok? ;) The medicines under discussion may be overprescribed (to people who really don't need it, possibly accounting for the placebo effect), but for the people who need it...
You have some very good arguments, please don't weaken them with straw men like "someone lacks normal and usual cognitive and behavioral skills to deal with, say, anger". Depression (the disease under discussion) can be very real. Ever seen a person who used to function fine slowly (chemically) imbalance to where they can't get out of bed? Ever felt it yourself? Sure, there are hypochondriacs who think they have depression (I used to be married to one), and doctors seem pretty willing to go along in our society. But there are hypochondriacs who think that they have "the flu and coronary artery disease", too. That doesn't make those conditions any less a real disease than over/mis-diagnosis of depression make depression something that's [idiom]just in your head[/idiom]. (oh, and you can see brain chemistry changes in autopsies http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/S/science/body/depression.html, just like hardening arteries, so, yeah, it's a physical disease)
Historically, fire brigades have always been community based, so I can't give you an historical example. Even the most primitive of societies realize that fire is a community problem and that it must be suppressed communally. I don't know how to convince you that some services cannot be adequately rendered by private companies, because you appear to be either too young (inexperienced), too rich (i.e. feel that you can always buy yourself out of trouble), or just a troll. Notice that I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not stupid. For you to believe that you can switch insurance companies and actually get different service/price tells me that you've either never shopped around or actually dealt with your insurance agency(ies). As for forcing you to pay taxes, well, I'm not. I'm merely saying that if you want to live in a society, a community of people, that you have to live by their rules, and one of them is taxation and paying for things that you may not like. As I said in my original post, you ARE free to go live in a cave without the benefits of community services, even to find like minded people and build up your society. But to live among real people, in the real world, some services just cannot be effectively bought on an individual basis. So, stop using the 'net that your gov't paid for (development and subsidies to telcos) now. Please.
I have private insurance company. Think about your private insurance company and how helpful they were the last time you called. Now, do you really believe that Private fire departments are a good idea? How about a for-profit Police department? For a "funny" take on that idea, read Snow Crash. I don't know about you, but I willingly work 10 hours of my week for public police, fire, and roads. Not least because private organizations of that type would cost me 20 hours a week and make me sign a waiver and wait on hold with my insurance company for pre-authorization before they started hosing my burning house down. I call that a realistic view of how the real world works, not a "flawed" understanding of anything. Don't get me wrong, gov't sucks. It's wastefully mis-managed, corrupt, and all that... it just really is better than the alternatives.
Yeah, and the first computers could only calculate Logs. I mean, who needs those, we already had books FULL of them that you could just grab and look them up in! --Sometimes you have to learn to crawl before you can run. I'm glad that we're learning how to build in space so that we can write the first pages in our encyclopedia of space-faring knowledge. You don't like it? Tough. That's why we have taxes... to force the short-sighted people help fund projects that are for the good of the nation/humanity. You don't like the pace of progress or the final goal? Then stop using the police, fire dept., roads, water/sewage infrastructure, monetary system, army, etc. that I help pay for for you and go live in a cave. In the meantime I'll pay my taxes to support NASA AND I'll invest in private space agencies. Oh, and in little companies like Microsoft that figured out a way to make a LOT of money from that little government experiment in calculating Logs.
I normally wouldn't answer a rant like yours, but I feel I must as it's been rated "insightful" for some frightful reason. Guess I'll be losing my Karma.
You are wrong. Most people do not want to have the gov't be their mommy. Most people either feel helpless to fix the system, are just greedy, or don't think at all. They know the government is broken, but don't feel that they can do anything about it. One man I know feels that the tax cuts are wrong, and that W. has betrayed his conservative ideals, but this man still wants his tax cut money. Why? Because he says that the system is so far gone, he may as well "get his". I think that if you ask around, most people will say they just "want theirs". Greed is good, right Mr. Libertarian? Problem is, if we don't work together sometimes things just don't work.
Gagh, you made me defend centrists. Now I must shower.
You're right: The Steel Albatross
Check with ISO to see if they have a program for non-profits. This is the type of project that you can't just pull out of a hat. You need an organization that's done this before for other sites.
You mean Grey Goose Vodka isn't a code word for "just a nice guy who gives us lots of money so that we can bring you "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me...""?
Shiny
Ok, I don't think people should infringe copyright or steal games from stores, but no one owes you anything if you spend 5 years making anything on spec. Get a contract if you're the coder, and take your lumps and figure out how to sell in today's market if you're the backer. You argue that it costs to make the commercial stuff on the web but not the free stuff? Give me a break, it costs money to make any content. The people who produce the "free" stuff just figured out other ways to make money off it (ad based revenue anyone? Broadcasters figured that one out, oh, 80 years or so ago when radio started) or decided to take the hit and put the product out there anyway.
And the argument that people will "suffer" if fewer music/video games/movies are produced... let's get real here. People suffer if they don't have food. If U2 delays an album by a year or if we don't get the next Britney Spears, that's an inconvenience at worst (insert joke about no next-Britney being a good thing here). I'd be just as happy if Michael Bay never made another movie, and maybe if Hollywood shrunk a little bit all those creative minds could think about how to make U.S. manufacturing profitable again and reduce our ridiculous trade deficit.
Good question. I guess we'd need a "reference box" for a testbed. I'll leave it up to a statistician to answer the math of calculating a secure or insecure percentage as I'm unqualified for that. In the end though, due to the differences in configuration, we are always going to have the caveat emptor and just let people know that their mileage may vary- kind of like the sticker on the side of new cars. Crash test ratings and gov't mileage estimates on cars are far from perfect, but they give a baseline for comparison- and you're still allowed to buy an SUV or a Dodge Neon based on you needs and wallet.
Oddly enough, you just made one of the best arguments I've heard to date for regulation and licensing of software designers and engineers. If we can't trust people to make rational decisions, then we may very well have to regulate them into it.
So QuickBooks should be regulated because it's financial software, but Word, which can essentially run programs within it to copy your QuickBooks data over the internet to a thief shouldn't? I'm not for all kinds of additional regulations, but how about at least a gov't "crash test" rating for software? Then people could better make informed decisions about how safe their software really is and let the market sort it out. Right now most people are flying blind to the dangers that are out there to their data, and that makes computer security either something to be ignored or scary for them.
Mod UP. Couldn't put it better myself. Move along people, nothing more to see here.
If you really don't believe him, try this: http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/06/30/0644201.shtml
Wow, thanks (really!) I do believe that's the most concise, informative, and dare-I-say-it friendliest explanation I've ever seen on /.
What is this "significant" difference you speak of? Isn't dead, well, dead? What makes this even worse is that 100% of American's are at risk of dying in a terrorist act and only a percentage of Americans use cars (don't believe me? Look up what percentage of NYC residents even have driver's licenses). This means that even with a bigger pool of potential victims terrorism claims fewer lives.
In the U.S., it's the law that a company must retain all electronic documents just in case they do ever have to go to court, for whatever reason. IMO, this is one of those very poorly thought out laws as 1) how do you punish a company for contempt when they can't hand over their e-mails because of 2) almost nobody currently archives all of their e-mails. Also, how do you prove that you've not deleted any? Plus, how does anybody ever sort through them all during discovery? I pity that law clerk.