I refer to wikipedia because it's easily referenced. I read over the article and know it to be more or less factually correct.
Explaining Stern-Gerlach by reference to observation is an uhga-buhga approach to Quantum Physics.
A widely held one, though.
Your "defocusing" theory is fine, but is not born of any kind of physical observation or force. It is therefore no more or less "uhga-buhga".
Pardon me, may I butt in? QM for Dummies holds that the electron is the wavefunction, so that only when we measure the electron and collapse its wavefunction does it exist at a discreet location. That is "an uhga-buhga approach to Quantum Physics," because it assumes, without proof, that lack of proof of the electron's specific location is proof of lack of a specific position. That is sophistry, or stupidity, depending on which "physicist" you have the misfortune of asking about this fairy tale known as the "observer effect". The contrary position, that when the electron is not measured its position is unknown, but is describable as being within the parameters of an equation called a wavefunction, is not "an uhga-buhga approach to Quantum Physics," because it makes no assertion whatsoever about what is not measurable. It is rational analysis of empirical fact, combined with acknowledgment that some facts are unknown, and some may in fact be unknowable. Not non-existent, just unknowable because they are not measurable. I can acknowledge that the data might not prohibit such absurdities as the possibility that the electron ceases to exist, or jumps at superliminal velocities between measurements, if we manage to measure it quickly enough. I can also, however, admit that the data do not imply that such things do happen, just because of the unique problems of measurements of quanta.
I was a Star Wars fan from the beginning, but never as much as when I learned that Ben Kingsley's least favorite part of playing Obi-Wan Kenobi was all the mystical crap.
Finally, somebody takes the pro-background check position! I swear, somebody always insists on reading past the headline.
I'm sure you think you are a great lover, but you don't get to make that call for people. The person you wish to date gets to decide and it is up to them what methods they wish to use. If they want to use a background check, that's their prerogative. It's basic freedom of association. My freedom to associate with whomever I want includes the freedom to NOT associate with people if I want...
Not bad.
The reason this is stupid is that online services should not have to incur the cost of background checks, it should be up to the individual.
I agree, compelling the businesses to incur an additional cost is what's wrong with the bill. we all have the right and responsibility to perform our own background checks on people whose background we question, but then certain service providers would have no hyper-regulated markets to corner.
It is in situations like these that capitalism disappoints me.
I reserve my disappointment for people. Capitalism is just a descriptive model of economic systems, which means it makes no choices, but only describes the dynamics of economic exchange more or less accurately than other models and systems. More specifically, capitalism is the system in which individuals are most free to choose for ourselves what to do with our money. As such, it's the worst possible economic system -- except for all the alternatives, which put the same power to decide in the hands of people other than those who live with the consequences.
It is in situations like these that philanthropists disappoint me. First, the generosity of the project is in question because Negroponte isn't giving anybody anything. However, just because he declares his goal to be the benefit of "the poor", his motives, planning and performance are all presumed, by the fans of philanthropy, to be above question. Second, was there a widespread statement of need, originating in the Third World, for Internet-connected, dust-proof, self-powered laptops? I honestly don't know. I admit I might have missed it, but I don't recall reading about the deficiency of laptops being convincingly established as a cause of poverty -- anywhere. I would go so far as to say that the absence of laptop computers, or any computers for that matter, are not a cause but a symptom of poverty, and in the Third World one of the least relevant symptoms. If I lived someplace where I could only connect to the Internet with a hand crank or solar-powered computer, I think I'd prefer to see the same amount of money invested in infrastructure to bring me electricity, which would allow me to power something practical, like a refrigerator. What it looks like to me is that Negroponte had a brainstorm, and initiated communications with potential customers of his costly, still-born idea. Finally, I consider it worth considering whether his association with Motorola, a very large semiconductor business which has tried in the past to compete with Intel, might constitute a sort of conflict of interest of his own. Maybe conflict of interest isn't exactly the right phrase either. His heart probably was in the right place, but his investors seem to have ignored the possibility that his close involvement with high technology would lead him to overestimate the importance of that field to the phenomenon "poverty".
I can actually imagine how having laptop computers could provide tremendous opportunities for the poorest of the poor. But, when I consider the free market price of used laptops of comparable specifications and the root causes of poverty, malnutrition and disease, it becomes clear that what I imagine is not actually possible, in this case, by that route. The increasing use of computers will hopefully be a measurable symptom of increasing wealth in these same areas in the near future, but it won't by itself circumvent the laws of economics, politics, and medicine which must be heeded to create general well-being in any country. A little more skepticism might have helped AMD use their wealth much more productively to make a real impact on the problem of poverty.
WSJ:
Mr. Negroponte, who is 63 years old, is a computer-science expert and veteran technology investor. He co-founded and formerly directed the MIT Media Laboratory and helped to found Wired Magazine. He serves on the board of Motorola Inc. Recently, he was selected by News Corp. to serve on a committee to protect the editorial integrity of Dow Jones & Co., the owner of The Wall Street Journal, following News Corp.'s agreement to purchase the company. His brother is U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte.
Microloans were a stroke of genius. If Nicholas Negroponte wants to help the poor, he should have waited for the free market to start applying for loans for computers. Then he'd
... it will be too late to build the infrastructure other energy sources require without severely damaging the economy. Not only that, but building the infrastructure will be costlier then, since construction requires a lot of energy. [emphasis mine]
Horsepucky! As in the Great Depression, if such a crisis occurs, the Dollar economy will selectively adapt, nearly instantaneously, much as the Grey and Black Markets do now for commodities prohibited by law from the mainstream economy. The "laws" of economics apply very predictably and reliably, but only within "business as usual" environments, a qualification that "peak oil" paranoiacs forget, misunderstand, or merely choose to omit in order to sell snake oil & third-rate cinema such as Mad Max.
A more straightforward solution to the problem of excessive & frivolous litigation would be statutory requirements that the amount of damages awarded correspond to direct & proven damages. This would also prevent a repeat of the $12,000,000 coffee spill, and the resulting tendency to discourage new competitors to compete, which in turn permits existing retailers to elevate their prices above what they would in a more competitive market, etc.
"Pain & suffering" happen in life, sometimes even when no crimes are committed. Tough luck. If they're caused by a crime, damages should be payable as punishment for that crime, not for amorphous, indefinite, subjective "pain & suffering," which in theory could plausibly be defined as "infinite," by many groups of 12 randomly selected people having approximately average or near-average mathematical aptitude. In practice, "pain & suffering" has been estimated in the Millions of dollars, for such temporary discomfort as a coffee spill. I'm sure it hurt, but I'm equally sure it didn't hurt for as long as it would take the same person to earn $12,000,000 working the job they had at that time, nor did they lose anywhere near that amount while being treated.
Back to the RIAA: the "lost sales" argument is absurd. The documentable damages are for the retail value of the tracks downloaded -- and as downloaded files, not as if they were shrink-wrapped CDs. Good grief.
The public which largely has no access to the product - via the process described above - is essentially supplying the capital to power the current publisher business models largely - as others have said here - providing services (online publishing frameworks; bureaucratic support for the editorial staff; distribution networks to get the final product to the customers) that now-a-days can nearly be performed by a few sharp, motivated college students in their spare time, if the final distributed product were electronic only (e.g., if creating hard-copies of articles were left to the purchaser/reader).
We also supplied that capital to drive the manufacture of nuclear missiles, but very rightly, we do not all have access to the launch codes.
Historically, what gave rise to this current situation?
So before we had these huge pharmaceutical companies and drug patents, we didn't have any medical research, right?
Wrong, and you're the only one who has said that. In fact, before today's pharmaceutical companies, there was a lot of medical research. But, there was not the medical research that those companies have subsequently performed, which, by the way, they did in pursuit of profit.
If the free market is so stupid, how do the same people who supposedly are so terribly stupid when you describe us as "consumers" become omniscient, when we're described as "voters & taxpayers"? Consumers and voter/taxpayers are the same people, just doing different activities. Either we are both spending money stupidly and voting stupidly, or we are doing both wisely. In other words, if the consumers are, in aggregate, too stupid to send the "correct" free market signals to any particular industry, the taxpayers should be assumed to be equally stupid on average, and we should decide based on which system will react more quickly to us idiots, when we do finally figure out what is "better".
Hint: The free market, unlike the legislature, is always in session.
Since somebody who self-identifies as a "university researcher" looks to you to be in an "ivory tower", I wonder, if you had access to every article for which "our tax money paid for the research that allowed them to be written", what would you do with that access, once you had it? Would that access advance your own research? Inform you as a voter? Or do you just want it because some politician with a populist habit told you it was being withheld from you? Have you ever paid for a copy of any scientific research journal? They're not exactly light, pleasure reading, even for the professional scientists published in them.
Also, if paying for something with taxes gives us the right to 100% access, why can't I just step onto an Army base and start driving their tanks around? That would be fun, too.
You're right, it's not the garbage collector's fault! When you're writing code for a DoD project, "Microsoft said they automated that" is a pathetic excuse, which makes it not much of a sales pitch, either. As a news article, this was less interesting than the Discovery Channel special, but as an advertisement, it was laughable. This doesn't tell me that AntEater or whatever it's called is the greatest thing since JIT compilation, it only tells me that the programmers on this project probably had some experience with C/Java/C++, but didn't learn the peculiarities of C# beyond the marketing hype, and specifically didn't have a solid understanding of what its garbage collection would do for them and what it wouldn't. In other words, they depended on the technological commodity -- the "out-of-the-box experience", if you prefer -- to do more for them than it really could. They expected it to do their thinking, and because of that they didn't win. What I get from this story is that without AntHill, the same team would have set an even more grandiose goal than their unique use of "stereo vision, as opposed to scanning lasers, to detect and range obstacles", and they would failed to account for a similarly minor detail. What they really should have done is more fully account for the team's collective technical limitations before deciding how elaborate their final product would be. No "out-of-the-box solution", including so-called "out-of-the-box thinking" will do that for you.
If anything, pushing toward a free publication model would only serve to help researchers who have limited funding because that would be less $ spent on accessing the research of others.
Good point. And, like all redistribution of wealth schemes, to mandate that a product which has a demonstrated greater-than-zero value on the free market be sold for zero economic profit, is to take from the worthwhile and gives to the worthless. Those aren't my judgments, they're yours, in your role as the free market. What you choose to do with your freedom, including what you choose to buy with whatever quantity of money you have, is nobody's responsibility but yours. If you "cannot afford" publications you want to have, your options are to spend less on something else, work harder, better, and/or more, to not have them, or to attempt to steal them with the accompanying risk of loss of your freedom. Those are just the rules of property acquisition, and the particular commodity under discussion -- even when that commodity is the supremely valuable work of scientists -- does not change the legal definition of the individuals' rights to the fruits of our labor, and to sell them for economic market value, not the command economy, legislated value set by lawyers, judges and politicians. Bottom line: if you want access to something, you pay fair market value for it not change its price, or you're a communist.
The direct costs of publishing scientific research are closely analogous to the direct costs of printing a receipt that symbolizes the full satisfaction of my financial obligation to pay you money for the mechanical work you do on my car, or any clients' or customers' obligation to pay you money for whatever work you really do for your living. The printing of a receipt does not directly cost nearly as much as the direct cost of publishing scientific research, but you would not for a moment claim that receipts for anybody's labor, except for a scientist's, should be made available free of charge. That, obviously, would be insane. Although in this case it's apparently less obvious to some people, it is no less insane. Before you toss the word "free" around so liberally, consider whether you want to also work for me, free of charge, merely because my taxes represent a similarly infinitesimal contribution to finance some non-essential aspect of your work. And yes, what taxpayers finance really is non-essential; mere facilities and equipment. It is the scientists which are indispensable to society, not the laboratories. If you don't believe me, I invite you and the rest of the taxpayers to remove all government funding for scientific research, and see how quickly the free market pays equal or greater value for the same labor.
Your argument is obviously insulting to scientists, but just as certainly and only slightly less obviously, it is insulting to yourself and to everybody who does work in exchange for money. It implies that the value of your own work is no more than the value of the printed receipt, which in fact has zero inherent value and is only a symbolic representation of the value of your labor, which is not available free of charge. Nor should it be. Nor should my work or the product of it be free of charge. But until you show respect for that fact, you are worthy of no more of my respect than I hold for a printed receipt. For perishable, non-returnable goods. Which I discard in the receptacle just outside the door of the business where I paid fair market value for the goods symbolized on that essentially worthless piece of paper called a "receipt".
That's a perfectly valid choice for any researcher, in any field, to make for themselves. Like all coercion, it is wrong to force that choice on somebody else.
"I contributed to it therefore I retain some control of it."
My question to you has been, "How much control do you rightfully retain?" Your responses continue to be incorrect, vastly exaggerating the degree of access that can be rationally expected, to the professional effort of workers in the field of scientific research. For example:
If you look further you will see other precedent in accepting government funding such as schools receiving federal funds must comply to with "equal access" federal statutes.
100% access to original works detailing original scientific research, free of charge, is not a logical, fair, or legal consequence of the principle you cited, that "I contributed to it therefore I retain some control of it." (emphasis mine) The requirement that buildings must have wheelchair ramps or other suitable means of access for wheelchair-bound clients who have met the entrance requirements of the university infringes on nobody's right, and even when applied to the private sector, it does not constitute an ongoing compromise of anybody else's right to the financial benefit of their labor. Forcing scientific journals to publish at the expense of the publishers rather than in exchange for payment, does exactly that.
What it all boils down to is this: "If I invest my money in a project then I deserve to see the results of that investment."
No, "it" does not "all boil down to" that, nor anything close to a right to 100% access to other laborers' primary work product without financial compensation to the laborers who produced the work, which is, to be exact, what you are advocating.
In fact, taxpayers do see the results of our investment in scientific research, in the form of the technologies made available for you to purchase on the free market, as labor-saving devices and, especially recently, in a plethora of advances in biological knowledge. The marketplace of ideas, on the other hand, is free as in liberty, not as in free beers. Your arguments reveal an "entitlement mentality".
The people's money should not be looked upon as a "free" resource to be consumed by those who feel that their needs for a publication payment supersede the investor's "right to know."
The individual's effort should not be looked upon as a "free" resource, to be consumed by those who feel that their needs for information supersede the worker's right to the fair market value for their labor. There is more to being an "investor" than partial financing of an enterprise. A necessary but not sufficient condition of being an investor is sharing in the risk of failure inherent in any novel undertaking, be it a new business or original scientific research. Taxpayers share no such risk via scientific research, thus the description of us as "investors" via our purely financial contribution to the overall budget for original scientific research is inaccurate. A more valid analogy would be to the holder of a bank account. We, as taxpayers, are guaranteed the net benefits of the overall increase in the entirety of human knowledge, and we share no risk in the success or failure of any particular line of inquiry. We taxpayers have no rights to scientists' brains or the contents of them, and those of us who are scientists have every right to fair market value of our labor, as does everybody else. Finally, the financial contribution that you and I, as individual taxpayers, make to scientific research in general or to any particular research project (take your pick) are infinitesimal. Using the rules of business to correctly extend your flawed analogy of taxpayer as investor, we find that any rational expectation you have to the published work of any scientist, would be something like 1/100,000,000th (based on factopinguess of number of total US taxpayers -- the point is that the denominator is very big, and your fractional right to information is very small) of the total
We already require states that accept any federal highway funds (which were paid to the federal government in taxes - called Reapportionment) to adopt speed limits that are in line with federal requirements. The same would hold for research, you accept federal funding, you are required to release all of your research results.
A speed limit is just one limitation on the states' control of the highway, which is still patrolled by state troopers, meaning that enforcement of the posted limit is still at the discretion of state and local law enforcement. I do not believe the highway analogy logically requires 100% transparency, and I strongly believe that states' rights concerns must not trump the individual researchers' rights to the fruits of our labor.
He knowingly, willingly and maliciously did this. It wasn't an accident, a crime of passion or something he did because he was drunk one night, it took real work over many months. He was well aware of what he was doing the whole time he was doing it.
The proverbial book needs to be thrown at people like this. These are precisely the sort of people we should be making an example of.
We would also do well to make examples of people who state, in sentences ending in a preposition, the belief that crimes committed in a state of emotion ought to be punished as if less damaging to your victims than crimes committed in a state of calm, as if the damage done differs based on the perpetrators' internal neurological condition rather than external motor activity. Your callous, indifferent grammatical error has the same effect on me regardless of whether you are drunk one night, or take real work over many months to commit such an egregious affront. The effect on me of such a travesty depends more on my own sobriety than that of the perpetrator.
But congressional Democrats have attached to the measure an unrelated but politically popular bill funding the Department of Veterans Affairs. They hope that this will generate the two-thirds support needed in both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto.
These swindlers will never work for us until we formalize "no riders". It's the only way to get to "no pork".
LOL! Huh-uh, it's MY information, I already paid for it!
Actually, you make some excellent points: The Library of Congress should be assigned responsibility for the free access to this information with no delay (at least at the federal level). It should plainly be a fundamental requirement of government grants. Government exists to serve us, not the other way around and special interests be damned. We have been complacent for so long now that people fall right into line with whatever abuse we receive from government. Impeachment should be commonplace.
But what would you do with research at universities? Both the public and the private ones are less than 100% funded by the federal government. Reduce the length of patents by the % of gov funding? Oh, one last thing: When elected officials begin favoring anything other than the public welfare they should be promptly removed.
Remove them from office the day they begin campaigning? But, then who will run the country? Oh, wait, didn't we learn 10 years ago, that when the federal government shuts down it's business as usual, with slightly less hassle? Does nobody else remember that?
No need for a better analogy. A better description would note that 20 years/$250,000 is the maximum possible sentence, for crimes that have not yet been tried.
This looks like it will be an entertaining topic to argue, but not yet.
But, that's easy. Because she's one of them. She makes plenty of noise about being generous with taxpayer money, but when was the last time she ever risked $0.10 of political capital for personal liberty?
Even with a college background heavy on liberal arts and social sciences, meaning lots of parenthetical citations interspersed in my own writing, I found the heavy use of hyperlinks in the Wired article distracting. But, before reading far enough for my attention to drop off to nil, I found this: http://www.google.com/patents?id=_b0LAAAAEBAJ&dq=6480844&num=100
AT&T has filed a patent on the use of textbook statistical analysis on telephone records -- and it worked! [Issue date: Nov 12, 2002]
Also, I question your description of the investment in WiMax as an investment in "innovation". Marconi's transmission of radio waves was an innovation. New IEEE protocols in transmission spectra amount to nothing more than refinement of that innovation, and has more to do with keeping various uses of radio waves from interfering with one another than with innovation. $5bn investment in a century-old technology looks to me more like a fund to bribe to politicians via patent lawyers.
Cynicism: noun despair seeking converts. (From Gr8Scot's Like-New 21st Century Dictionary of Half-Witticisms)
"Whine?" It's essentially a mathematical certainty. Rhetoric doesn't trump political science demonstrated by centuries of practical examples.
"Whine" was the right word. Although centuries of political examples will prove the same conclusion, a few weeks of reading from a good variety of news sources will demonstrate unequivocally to a perceptive observer that the best government is the one with the least power available to abuse, because, as it incessantly reminds us, government power tends to corrupt, and corruptible people tend to seek government power, both as officials and influence peddlers.
As with anything, really, the more popular the idea, the stupider it is -- so it is with the P.C. notion of ultimate equality and myopia with regard to hereditary intelligence and behavior.
The notions of tolerance and universal rights, which some morons call "P.c.", are relatively recent and uncommon in human history. The idea of the inherent superiority of one's own tribe or race, on the other hand, is quite popular among primitives.
Slashdot Mirror
I was a Star Wars fan from the beginning, but never as much as when I learned that Ben Kingsley's least favorite part of playing Obi-Wan Kenobi was all the mystical crap.
I reserve my disappointment for people. Capitalism is just a descriptive model of economic systems, which means it makes no choices, but only describes the dynamics of economic exchange more or less accurately than other models and systems. More specifically, capitalism is the system in which individuals are most free to choose for ourselves what to do with our money. As such, it's the worst possible economic system -- except for all the alternatives, which put the same power to decide in the hands of people other than those who live with the consequences.
It is in situations like these that philanthropists disappoint me. First, the generosity of the project is in question because Negroponte isn't giving anybody anything. However, just because he declares his goal to be the benefit of "the poor", his motives, planning and performance are all presumed, by the fans of philanthropy, to be above question. Second, was there a widespread statement of need, originating in the Third World, for Internet-connected, dust-proof, self-powered laptops? I honestly don't know. I admit I might have missed it, but I don't recall reading about the deficiency of laptops being convincingly established as a cause of poverty -- anywhere. I would go so far as to say that the absence of laptop computers, or any computers for that matter, are not a cause but a symptom of poverty, and in the Third World one of the least relevant symptoms. If I lived someplace where I could only connect to the Internet with a hand crank or solar-powered computer, I think I'd prefer to see the same amount of money invested in infrastructure to bring me electricity, which would allow me to power something practical, like a refrigerator. What it looks like to me is that Negroponte had a brainstorm, and initiated communications with potential customers of his costly, still-born idea. Finally, I consider it worth considering whether his association with Motorola, a very large semiconductor business which has tried in the past to compete with Intel, might constitute a sort of conflict of interest of his own. Maybe conflict of interest isn't exactly the right phrase either. His heart probably was in the right place, but his investors seem to have ignored the possibility that his close involvement with high technology would lead him to overestimate the importance of that field to the phenomenon "poverty".
I can actually imagine how having laptop computers could provide tremendous opportunities for the poorest of the poor. But, when I consider the free market price of used laptops of comparable specifications and the root causes of poverty, malnutrition and disease, it becomes clear that what I imagine is not actually possible, in this case, by that route. The increasing use of computers will hopefully be a measurable symptom of increasing wealth in these same areas in the near future, but it won't by itself circumvent the laws of economics, politics, and medicine which must be heeded to create general well-being in any country. A little more skepticism might have helped AMD use their wealth much more productively to make a real impact on the problem of poverty.
WSJ:
Microloans were a stroke of genius. If Nicholas Negroponte wants to help the poor, he should have waited for the free market to start applying for loans for computers. Then he'd
A more straightforward solution to the problem of excessive & frivolous litigation would be statutory requirements that the amount of damages awarded correspond to direct & proven damages. This would also prevent a repeat of the $12,000,000 coffee spill, and the resulting tendency to discourage new competitors to compete, which in turn permits existing retailers to elevate their prices above what they would in a more competitive market, etc.
"Pain & suffering" happen in life, sometimes even when no crimes are committed. Tough luck. If they're caused by a crime, damages should be payable as punishment for that crime, not for amorphous, indefinite, subjective "pain & suffering," which in theory could plausibly be defined as "infinite," by many groups of 12 randomly selected people having approximately average or near-average mathematical aptitude. In practice, "pain & suffering" has been estimated in the Millions of dollars, for such temporary discomfort as a coffee spill. I'm sure it hurt, but I'm equally sure it didn't hurt for as long as it would take the same person to earn $12,000,000 working the job they had at that time, nor did they lose anywhere near that amount while being treated.
Back to the RIAA: the "lost sales" argument is absurd. The documentable damages are for the retail value of the tracks downloaded -- and as downloaded files, not as if they were shrink-wrapped CDs. Good grief.
The public which largely has no access to the product - via the process described above - is essentially supplying the capital to power the current publisher business models largely - as others have said here - providing services (online publishing frameworks; bureaucratic support for the editorial staff; distribution networks to get the final product to the customers) that now-a-days can nearly be performed by a few sharp, motivated college students in their spare time, if the final distributed product were electronic only (e.g., if creating hard-copies of articles were left to the purchaser/reader).
We also supplied that capital to drive the manufacture of nuclear missiles, but very rightly, we do not all have access to the launch codes.
Historically, what gave rise to this current situation?
A modicum of wisdom.
Straw Man:
So before we had these huge pharmaceutical companies and drug patents, we didn't have any medical research, right?
Wrong, and you're the only one who has said that. In fact, before today's pharmaceutical companies, there was a lot of medical research. But, there was not the medical research that those companies have subsequently performed, which, by the way, they did in pursuit of profit.
If the free market is so stupid, how do the same people who supposedly are so terribly stupid when you describe us as "consumers" become omniscient, when we're described as "voters & taxpayers"? Consumers and voter/taxpayers are the same people, just doing different activities. Either we are both spending money stupidly and voting stupidly, or we are doing both wisely. In other words, if the consumers are, in aggregate, too stupid to send the "correct" free market signals to any particular industry, the taxpayers should be assumed to be equally stupid on average, and we should decide based on which system will react more quickly to us idiots, when we do finally figure out what is "better".
Hint: The free market, unlike the legislature, is always in session.
Since somebody who self-identifies as a "university researcher" looks to you to be in an "ivory tower", I wonder, if you had access to every article for which "our tax money paid for the research that allowed them to be written", what would you do with that access, once you had it? Would that access advance your own research? Inform you as a voter? Or do you just want it because some politician with a populist habit told you it was being withheld from you? Have you ever paid for a copy of any scientific research journal? They're not exactly light, pleasure reading, even for the professional scientists published in them.
Also, if paying for something with taxes gives us the right to 100% access, why can't I just step onto an Army base and start driving their tanks around? That would be fun, too.
You're right, it's not the garbage collector's fault! When you're writing code for a DoD project, "Microsoft said they automated that" is a pathetic excuse, which makes it not much of a sales pitch, either. As a news article, this was less interesting than the Discovery Channel special, but as an advertisement, it was laughable. This doesn't tell me that AntEater or whatever it's called is the greatest thing since JIT compilation, it only tells me that the programmers on this project probably had some experience with C/Java/C++, but didn't learn the peculiarities of C# beyond the marketing hype, and specifically didn't have a solid understanding of what its garbage collection would do for them and what it wouldn't. In other words, they depended on the technological commodity -- the "out-of-the-box experience", if you prefer -- to do more for them than it really could. They expected it to do their thinking, and because of that they didn't win. What I get from this story is that without AntHill, the same team would have set an even more grandiose goal than their unique use of "stereo vision, as opposed to scanning lasers, to detect and range obstacles", and they would failed to account for a similarly minor detail. What they really should have done is more fully account for the team's collective technical limitations before deciding how elaborate their final product would be. No "out-of-the-box solution", including so-called "out-of-the-box thinking" will do that for you.
If anything, pushing toward a free publication model would only serve to help researchers who have limited funding because that would be less $ spent on accessing the research of others.
Good point. And, like all redistribution of wealth schemes, to mandate that a product which has a demonstrated greater-than-zero value on the free market be sold for zero economic profit, is to take from the worthwhile and gives to the worthless. Those aren't my judgments, they're yours, in your role as the free market. What you choose to do with your freedom, including what you choose to buy with whatever quantity of money you have, is nobody's responsibility but yours. If you "cannot afford" publications you want to have, your options are to spend less on something else, work harder, better, and/or more, to not have them, or to attempt to steal them with the accompanying risk of loss of your freedom. Those are just the rules of property acquisition, and the particular commodity under discussion -- even when that commodity is the supremely valuable work of scientists -- does not change the legal definition of the individuals' rights to the fruits of our labor, and to sell them for economic market value, not the command economy, legislated value set by lawyers, judges and politicians. Bottom line: if you want access to something, you pay fair market value for it not change its price, or you're a communist.
Yes, it is that simple.
The direct costs of publishing scientific research are closely analogous to the direct costs of printing a receipt that symbolizes the full satisfaction of my financial obligation to pay you money for the mechanical work you do on my car, or any clients' or customers' obligation to pay you money for whatever work you really do for your living. The printing of a receipt does not directly cost nearly as much as the direct cost of publishing scientific research, but you would not for a moment claim that receipts for anybody's labor, except for a scientist's, should be made available free of charge. That, obviously, would be insane. Although in this case it's apparently less obvious to some people, it is no less insane. Before you toss the word "free" around so liberally, consider whether you want to also work for me, free of charge, merely because my taxes represent a similarly infinitesimal contribution to finance some non-essential aspect of your work. And yes, what taxpayers finance really is non-essential; mere facilities and equipment. It is the scientists which are indispensable to society, not the laboratories. If you don't believe me, I invite you and the rest of the taxpayers to remove all government funding for scientific research, and see how quickly the free market pays equal or greater value for the same labor.
Your argument is obviously insulting to scientists, but just as certainly and only slightly less obviously, it is insulting to yourself and to everybody who does work in exchange for money. It implies that the value of your own work is no more than the value of the printed receipt, which in fact has zero inherent value and is only a symbolic representation of the value of your labor, which is not available free of charge. Nor should it be. Nor should my work or the product of it be free of charge. But until you show respect for that fact, you are worthy of no more of my respect than I hold for a printed receipt. For perishable, non-returnable goods. Which I discard in the receptacle just outside the door of the business where I paid fair market value for the goods symbolized on that essentially worthless piece of paper called a "receipt".
That's a perfectly valid choice for any researcher, in any field, to make for themselves. Like all coercion, it is wrong to force that choice on somebody else.
Yes, it is that simple.
"I contributed to it therefore I retain some control of it."
My question to you has been, "How much control do you rightfully retain?" Your responses continue to be incorrect, vastly exaggerating the degree of access that can be rationally expected, to the professional effort of workers in the field of scientific research. For example:
If you look further you will see other precedent in accepting government funding such as schools receiving federal funds must comply to with "equal access" federal statutes.
100% access to original works detailing original scientific research, free of charge, is not a logical, fair, or legal consequence of the principle you cited, that "I contributed to it therefore I retain some control of it." (emphasis mine) The requirement that buildings must have wheelchair ramps or other suitable means of access for wheelchair-bound clients who have met the entrance requirements of the university infringes on nobody's right, and even when applied to the private sector, it does not constitute an ongoing compromise of anybody else's right to the financial benefit of their labor. Forcing scientific journals to publish at the expense of the publishers rather than in exchange for payment, does exactly that.
What it all boils down to is this: "If I invest my money in a project then I deserve to see the results of that investment."
No, "it" does not "all boil down to" that, nor anything close to a right to 100% access to other laborers' primary work product without financial compensation to the laborers who produced the work, which is, to be exact, what you are advocating.
In fact, taxpayers do see the results of our investment in scientific research, in the form of the technologies made available for you to purchase on the free market, as labor-saving devices and, especially recently, in a plethora of advances in biological knowledge. The marketplace of ideas, on the other hand, is free as in liberty, not as in free beers. Your arguments reveal an "entitlement mentality".
The people's money should not be looked upon as a "free" resource to be consumed by those who feel that their needs for a publication payment supersede the investor's "right to know."
The individual's effort should not be looked upon as a "free" resource, to be consumed by those who feel that their needs for information supersede the worker's right to the fair market value for their labor. There is more to being an "investor" than partial financing of an enterprise. A necessary but not sufficient condition of being an investor is sharing in the risk of failure inherent in any novel undertaking, be it a new business or original scientific research. Taxpayers share no such risk via scientific research, thus the description of us as "investors" via our purely financial contribution to the overall budget for original scientific research is inaccurate. A more valid analogy would be to the holder of a bank account. We, as taxpayers, are guaranteed the net benefits of the overall increase in the entirety of human knowledge, and we share no risk in the success or failure of any particular line of inquiry. We taxpayers have no rights to scientists' brains or the contents of them, and those of us who are scientists have every right to fair market value of our labor, as does everybody else. Finally, the financial contribution that you and I, as individual taxpayers, make to scientific research in general or to any particular research project (take your pick) are infinitesimal. Using the rules of business to correctly extend your flawed analogy of taxpayer as investor, we find that any rational expectation you have to the published work of any scientist, would be something like 1/100,000,000th (based on factopinguess of number of total US taxpayers -- the point is that the denominator is very big, and your fractional right to information is very small) of the total
A speed limit is just one limitation on the states' control of the highway, which is still patrolled by state troopers, meaning that enforcement of the posted limit is still at the discretion of state and local law enforcement. I do not believe the highway analogy logically requires 100% transparency, and I strongly believe that states' rights concerns must not trump the individual researchers' rights to the fruits of our labor.
Speaking of which ...
He knowingly, willingly and maliciously did this. It wasn't an accident, a crime of passion or something he did because he was drunk one night, it took real work over many months. He was well aware of what he was doing the whole time he was doing it.
The proverbial book needs to be thrown at people like this. These are precisely the sort of people we should be making an example of.
We would also do well to make examples of people who state, in sentences ending in a preposition, the belief that crimes committed in a state of emotion ought to be punished as if less damaging to your victims than crimes committed in a state of calm, as if the damage done differs based on the perpetrators' internal neurological condition rather than external motor activity. Your callous, indifferent grammatical error has the same effect on me regardless of whether you are drunk one night, or take real work over many months to commit such an egregious affront. The effect on me of such a travesty depends more on my own sobriety than that of the perpetrator.
You may think about it, if you wish.
But congressional Democrats have attached to the measure an unrelated but politically popular bill funding the Department of Veterans Affairs. They hope that this will generate the two-thirds support needed in both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto.
These swindlers will never work for us until we formalize "no riders". It's the only way to get to "no pork".
LOL! Huh-uh, it's MY information, I already paid for it!
Actually, you make some excellent points:
The Library of Congress should be assigned responsibility for the free access to this information with no delay (at least at the federal level). It should plainly be a fundamental requirement of government grants. Government exists to serve us, not the other way around and special interests be damned. We have been complacent for so long now that people fall right into line with whatever abuse we receive from government. Impeachment should be commonplace.
But what would you do with research at universities? Both the public and the private ones are less than 100% funded by the federal government. Reduce the length of patents by the % of gov funding? Oh, one last thing:
When elected officials begin favoring anything other than the public welfare they should be promptly removed.
Remove them from office the day they begin campaigning? But, then who will run the country? Oh, wait, didn't we learn 10 years ago, that when the federal government shuts down it's business as usual, with slightly less hassle? Does nobody else remember that?
No need for a better analogy. A better description would note that 20 years/$250,000 is the maximum possible sentence, for crimes that have not yet been tried.
This looks like it will be an entertaining topic to argue, but not yet.
But, that's easy. Because she's one of them. She makes plenty of noise about being generous with taxpayer money, but when was the last time she ever risked $0.10 of political capital for personal liberty?
She's no liberal.
http://www.news.com/Getting-charged-up-over-service-stations/2008-11392_3-6216133.html?tag=nefd.lede
If PowerPoint can't kill PowerPoint, nothing can. Cartoons in board rooms. My goodness.
Even with a college background heavy on liberal arts and social sciences, meaning lots of parenthetical citations interspersed in my own writing, I found the heavy use of hyperlinks in the Wired article distracting. But, before reading far enough for my attention to drop off to nil, I found this: http://www.google.com/patents?id=_b0LAAAAEBAJ&dq=6480844&num=100
AT&T has filed a patent on the use of textbook statistical analysis on telephone records -- and it worked! [Issue date: Nov 12, 2002]
Also, I question your description of the investment in WiMax as an investment in "innovation". Marconi's transmission of radio waves was an innovation. New IEEE protocols in transmission spectra amount to nothing more than refinement of that innovation, and has more to do with keeping various uses of radio waves from interfering with one another than with innovation. $5bn investment in a century-old technology looks to me more like a fund to bribe to politicians via patent lawyers.
Cynicism: noun despair seeking converts. (From Gr8Scot's Like-New 21st Century Dictionary of Half-Witticisms)
"Whine?" It's essentially a mathematical certainty. Rhetoric doesn't trump political science demonstrated by centuries of practical examples.
"Whine" was the right word. Although centuries of political examples will prove the same conclusion, a few weeks of reading from a good variety of news sources will demonstrate unequivocally to a perceptive observer that the best government is the one with the least power available to abuse, because, as it incessantly reminds us, government power tends to corrupt, and corruptible people tend to seek government power, both as officials and influence peddlers.
Transparent packaging also might work, without the enormous expense of millions of RFID readers.