Oh, very differently of course. But at that point the article becomes so orthogonal to reality as to be completely meaningless and inane.
I mean, the article is asking you to consider how a massively disruptive new communications technology would be developed, if we understood its implications in advance. The very first thing to become obvious when you consider this is that one of the fundamental principles of disruptive developments is that we do not and cannot understand them in advance.
Might as well write an article asking us to consider what sex would be like if we started out by having the orgasm, and then moved on to intimate touching. Easy enough to consider, but so far removed from reality as to be an exercise whose brevity was exceeded only by its pointlessness. Kind of like the exercise being proposed here.
Name one problem an armed anarchist revolution would actually solve.
No, not a problem that anarchy would obfuscate behind an even bigger problem. Something anarchy would actually solve.
See, I don't think anarchy even qualifies as "a" solution--just another even worse problem.
Example: there are armed anarchist revolutions going on in Iraq and France right now today. What problems are they solving? In what way are they "a" solution?
Have you ever noticed that the crappiest place of all--Africa--is surprisingly short on sweatshops and surprisingly long on ex-vassal states of failed Industrial Age European Empires? What's up with that?
If authorial intent was a sham, writers of fact and fiction would never be able to communicate their ideas, or get a consensus from their audience about what they're trying to say. In reality, ideas get communicated, and consenses developed, in both fictional and factual written pieces, all the time.
Take this post for example. If my authorial intent (to argue that authorial intent does exist, is usually accessible to the audience, and used constantly to successfully communicate ideas through writing) is unclear, it's because I'm an incompetent writer, not because of any limitations on knowable truth.
I dunno. This view of good and evil as opposed and balanced forces leads to the conclusion that George W. Bush is just the natural and healthy counterbalance to Bill Clinton. I'm not sure I'm ready to contemplate such a philosophical abyss as that.
In the medieval/early enlightenment guild culture, a "masterpiece" was the piece of work done by a journeyman to prove that he had acquired all the skills and experience necessary to be recognized as a master of his craft. If the piece wasn't good, then he would remain a journeyman. In this sense, there's no such thing as a "bad" masterpiece. If it's bad, it's not a masterful expression of the craft, and therefore not a masterpiece.
Of course, if you're a journeyman watchmaker, and you make a watch so bad that it forever defines you as a horrible monster in the watchmaking department, then it's definitely a "defining work". But it's still not a "masterpiece". E.g., "Bowling for Columbine". Defining work of documentary? Sure. Masterpiece of documentary? Not so much.
On another note, when did they stop teaching history and common sense in school?
Jokes are probably the thing least likely to retain their meaning and value after translation. You'd probably have been better off just posting it in the original French.
Why would I claim my post was a joke? Your funny got lost in translation. Clearly, all of my mean-spiritid distaste for French foreign and domestic policy came through quite clearly. But hey, if it gives the cake, I take the body out.
It can't be any harder than governing a country with 246 different flavors of religious leader, or 246 different flavors of insipid pop band, or 256 different words for snow, or 246 different genres of perverted comic books, or...
Et tu, DeGaulle? My god, the French really are a nation of pathetic, whiny, defeatists.
"The cheeses! Their variety is... how you say? Too much! Rule such a people? C'est impossible! Better anarchy and suffering than such a doomed ideal!"
Comparing Taiwan's bad behavior to America's bad behavior doesn't seem relevant to the discussion of whether or not Taiwan's behavior is bad. I tried to make it relevant, but now you're claiming that's not what you're getting at. And you also agree that Taiwan is behaving badly, which is all I was saying in the first place.
What a colossal waste of time this has been for both of us. Why couldn't you just have said "yes, Taiwan is behaving badly, but I'm not too worked up about it because Roche has it coming", and left it at that?
You're assuming that the liberties being given up are "essential" in the sense that Franklin used the term.
Do you have anything better than CNN to offer, in support of this assumption? It's obvious that Franklin didn't consider all liberties to be essential, since the government he endorsed certainly curtailed quite a few.
Successful bank robbers are successful in part because they are careful to do their planning and preparation in ways that don't support the belief that criminal activity is occuring. That is, they game the system to ensure that the people charged with stopping them have no legal justification for doing so.
One question worth asking here is, is it beneficial to our society to give up earlier and more effective prevention of bank robberies in exchange for greater privacy and freedom for law-abiding citizens?
The answer to this question is generally an overwhelming "yes".
Support for the Patriot Act seems to come largely from people who believe that the "yes" answer is not as compelling when you alter the sceneario such that instead of robbing banks, the "bank robbers" are plotting to detonate nuclear bombs at crowded stadiums, or crash passenger liners into large office buildings, or mail anthrax to everybody in the tri-state area.
In principle, I wholeheartedly agree that the old "yes" answer isn't automatically appropriate to this new scenario.
Re:Testament to Open Source Software Developers
on
OpenOffice Bloated?
·
· Score: 1
Sadly, when the Teacher is a Sith Lord, the success of the student is to be dreaded, not anticipated.
How many slashdotters today are feeling betrayed, upon discovering that their Open Source Anakin turns out to be just another Bloatware Apprentice of Darth Sidious?
In the recent natural disaster you allude to, we didn't see a lot of stories about price gouging before the disaster hit. People had plenty of warning, and even timely evacuation notices, before the disaster hit. That was the perfect time to provide water for your family at a reasonable price. I think price gouging is immoral, but I also think there's a substantial grey area where "stupid fee" or "lazy fee" might be a better term.
If you decide to give up the sure thing at a low price through advance planning, then you're going to be much more desperate to get the uncertain thing later on during the hour of crisis which you knew was coming but for which you did not prepare. I think it's totally reasonable that the price you pay for that decision is much higher than the price you pay for the other decision.
And in the case of Taiwan and Roche, it's not like we're talking about the truly destitue, who lack the resources to prepare ahead of time, no matter how much warning they're given. It's not that Taiwan can't pay Roche's price; it's that they don't want to pay Roche's price. But they also don't want to pay the price of doing the research themselves. How can this possibly lead to a moral solution?
If, as you suggest, Roche is doing the work on behalf of everybody else, including Taiwan, then doesn't it follow that Taiwan should appreciate their efforts and contribute to them by paying for the results of those efforts?
Yes, it would be inefficient for each country to invent their own wheel. But it doesn't follow that the one guy who did invent the wheel has to give it away free to anybody who needs or wants the wheel.
You also seem to be suggesting that any company that is motivated by profit instead of charity is acting immorally. That may be, but I don't see how it's relevant. Taiwan still isn't doing their own work, and they still aren't paying somebody else to do the work for them, but they still expect to get the work results for free.
Not only that, but they're forced to work without the benefits of Roche's research anyway, which can't be a good use of Taiwanese taxes. This is all Taiwan's problem, of their own making. Their governance decisions aren't Roche's problem. Roche's problem is that it made something it thought people would want, and it turns out some people want it enought to try to steal it, but not enough to pay for it.
Roche may also be behaving badly. But we get that story on/. all the time. I don't see how this means Taiwan isn't behaving badly.
I'm sorry, but you totally lost right about the time you compared negotiating in bad faith with a legitimate business partner (Taiwan & Roche) with profiting from the spoils of war after a great victory against a truly evil enemy (the U.S. and Nazi Germany). And you also seem to have glossed over the part where we didn't "steal" the technology so much as the Nazi regime drove out all of its Jewish rocket scientists, practically gifting their enemies with the knowledge base necessary to win the war and strengthen their economies.
Unless you're saying that Taiwan is at war with Roche, or something the two circumstances seem to have a completely different moral tone to me.
Another thing: I am charged with providing for my family. This totally justifies me busting my ass every day, working hard and earning all the goods and services my family needs. It does not justify stealing, negotiating in bad faith, or casting such shenanigans as a moral choice. I still think it looks like the Taiwanese government put themselves in a situation where they had no morally good solution to their problem. They could either let their responsibility to their people slide completely, or they could find a way to behave badly that would also fulfill their responsibility. It's also possible that they could've simply paid Roche's price, which would've been the honorable thing to do, in my opinion.
The Onion is a corporate entity. Are you suggesting that corporate entities now have the same claims on our government as individual human citizens? What next, the Onion gets to vote?
...everyone would be screaming that 'We made it, we should keep it!' which doesn't really make us look any better the rest of the world.
Given that the rest of the world seems to be screaming that "you made it, we want it, now hand it over!", I'm not sure who we'd be looking good for, I'm not sure they'd appreciate it, and I'm not sure looking good would end up being a pointful exercise in any way. Certainly not so pointful as to be a worthwhile exchange for giving up control of the Internet to, say, China.
Have any of these other countries come forward with a mass of investment, know-how, and thorough plans for working with us to make the Internet better? If so, then by all means let them share the authority along with the responsibility. If not, then what are they trying to pull? You don't get concessions just by demanding them. You're supposed to actually make a compelling case that the concessions are in the conceder's best interest. Wake me up when the EU gets to that stage, and I'll take their demands seriously. Until then, they're just children playing astronaut and throwing a tantrum because NASA won't let them actually go into space.
It's obvious that in reality you're some pasty-faced teenager who lives in his mother's basement and dreads any human contact whatsoever. While fantasies of mooning street preachers undoubtedly fuel your pathetic wet dreams, the waking thought of acutally doing so probably makes you physically ill. I'm sure you had to reach for your inhaler several times, pausing repeatedly to unclench your throat as you typed out this amusing and fictional account of how "abnormal" you are.
No, stranger, it's clear that you are, in fact, just a total fuckwad of the normal kind.
But who knows? Maybe someday you'll find the courage to wear your hate on your sleeve. Or get assfucked by street preachers. Whichever it is, keep the dream alive, champ. You can make it if you try!
Slashdot Mirror
The classical anarchist social model---small communities that govern themselves by consensus.
I always find it hilarious (and totally irrelevant) that the anarchists insist on having rules about what counts as "anarchy".
Oh, very differently of course. But at that point the article becomes so orthogonal to reality as to be completely meaningless and inane.
I mean, the article is asking you to consider how a massively disruptive new communications technology would be developed, if we understood its implications in advance. The very first thing to become obvious when you consider this is that one of the fundamental principles of disruptive developments is that we do not and cannot understand them in advance.
Might as well write an article asking us to consider what sex would be like if we started out by having the orgasm, and then moved on to intimate touching. Easy enough to consider, but so far removed from reality as to be an exercise whose brevity was exceeded only by its pointlessness. Kind of like the exercise being proposed here.
Name one problem an armed anarchist revolution would actually solve.
No, not a problem that anarchy would obfuscate behind an even bigger problem. Something anarchy would actually solve.
See, I don't think anarchy even qualifies as "a" solution--just another even worse problem.
Example: there are armed anarchist revolutions going on in Iraq and France right now today. What problems are they solving? In what way are they "a" solution?
Trying to change one law of physics is like trying to eat one peanut.
It turns out I'm allergic to laws of physics and die a horrible choking death on the elementary school lunchroom floor?
Bah. This is nothing more than a clever marketing campaign ahead of the real release date. Wake me up when Microsoft kills some puppies or something.
... that's got to be the lamest story line I've ever heard.
Not to mention the fact that Rip Van Winkle, King Arthur, and Sleeping Beauty are all prior art.
Hrm.
Sleeping Beauty?
Maybe the worst part is what Disney is going to do to this guy...
Have you ever noticed that the crappiest place of all--Africa--is surprisingly short on sweatshops and surprisingly long on ex-vassal states of failed Industrial Age European Empires? What's up with that?
See, this is exactly why I don't want to contemplate this particular philosophical abyss: it's full of complete fucking idiots.
If authorial intent was a sham, writers of fact and fiction would never be able to communicate their ideas, or get a consensus from their audience about what they're trying to say. In reality, ideas get communicated, and consenses developed, in both fictional and factual written pieces, all the time.
Take this post for example. If my authorial intent (to argue that authorial intent does exist, is usually accessible to the audience, and used constantly to successfully communicate ideas through writing) is unclear, it's because I'm an incompetent writer, not because of any limitations on knowable truth.
I dunno. This view of good and evil as opposed and balanced forces leads to the conclusion that George W. Bush is just the natural and healthy counterbalance to Bill Clinton. I'm not sure I'm ready to contemplate such a philosophical abyss as that.
In the medieval/early enlightenment guild culture, a "masterpiece" was the piece of work done by a journeyman to prove that he had acquired all the skills and experience necessary to be recognized as a master of his craft. If the piece wasn't good, then he would remain a journeyman. In this sense, there's no such thing as a "bad" masterpiece. If it's bad, it's not a masterful expression of the craft, and therefore not a masterpiece.
Of course, if you're a journeyman watchmaker, and you make a watch so bad that it forever defines you as a horrible monster in the watchmaking department, then it's definitely a "defining work". But it's still not a "masterpiece". E.g., "Bowling for Columbine". Defining work of documentary? Sure. Masterpiece of documentary? Not so much.
On another note, when did they stop teaching history and common sense in school?
Jokes are probably the thing least likely to retain their meaning and value after translation. You'd probably have been better off just posting it in the original French.
Why would I claim my post was a joke? Your funny got lost in translation. Clearly, all of my mean-spiritid distaste for French foreign and domestic policy came through quite clearly. But hey, if it gives the cake, I take the body out.
Why should such artists be protected?
Nothing prevents them from supporting themselves by some more sure method than turning out the occasional shiny artwork.
It can't be any harder than governing a country with 246 different flavors of religious leader, or 246 different flavors of insipid pop band, or 256 different words for snow, or 246 different genres of perverted comic books, or...
Et tu, DeGaulle? My god, the French really are a nation of pathetic, whiny, defeatists.
"The cheeses! Their variety is... how you say? Too much! Rule such a people? C'est impossible! Better anarchy and suffering than such a doomed ideal!"
Why point this out, though?
Comparing Taiwan's bad behavior to America's bad behavior doesn't seem relevant to the discussion of whether or not Taiwan's behavior is bad. I tried to make it relevant, but now you're claiming that's not what you're getting at. And you also agree that Taiwan is behaving badly, which is all I was saying in the first place.
What a colossal waste of time this has been for both of us. Why couldn't you just have said "yes, Taiwan is behaving badly, but I'm not too worked up about it because Roche has it coming", and left it at that?
You're assuming that the liberties being given up are "essential" in the sense that Franklin used the term.
Do you have anything better than CNN to offer, in support of this assumption? It's obvious that Franklin didn't consider all liberties to be essential, since the government he endorsed certainly curtailed quite a few.
Seems to me more like an indication of how much secure cryptography has gained value as a tool of war.
I suspect that the Pentagon is more concerned with preserving an edge in weapons technology, than with secrecy-as-secrecy.
The secrecy thing is just a side effect of wanting the edge.
Successful bank robbers are successful in part because they are careful to do their planning and preparation in ways that don't support the belief that criminal activity is occuring. That is, they game the system to ensure that the people charged with stopping them have no legal justification for doing so.
One question worth asking here is, is it beneficial to our society to give up earlier and more effective prevention of bank robberies in exchange for greater privacy and freedom for law-abiding citizens?
The answer to this question is generally an overwhelming "yes".
Support for the Patriot Act seems to come largely from people who believe that the "yes" answer is not as compelling when you alter the sceneario such that instead of robbing banks, the "bank robbers" are plotting to detonate nuclear bombs at crowded stadiums, or crash passenger liners into large office buildings, or mail anthrax to everybody in the tri-state area.
In principle, I wholeheartedly agree that the old "yes" answer isn't automatically appropriate to this new scenario.
Sadly, when the Teacher is a Sith Lord, the success of the student is to be dreaded, not anticipated.
How many slashdotters today are feeling betrayed, upon discovering that their Open Source Anakin turns out to be just another Bloatware Apprentice of Darth Sidious?
Thanks!
/. all the time. I don't see how this means Taiwan isn't behaving badly.
In the recent natural disaster you allude to, we didn't see a lot of stories about price gouging before the disaster hit. People had plenty of warning, and even timely evacuation notices, before the disaster hit. That was the perfect time to provide water for your family at a reasonable price. I think price gouging is immoral, but I also think there's a substantial grey area where "stupid fee" or "lazy fee" might be a better term.
If you decide to give up the sure thing at a low price through advance planning, then you're going to be much more desperate to get the uncertain thing later on during the hour of crisis which you knew was coming but for which you did not prepare. I think it's totally reasonable that the price you pay for that decision is much higher than the price you pay for the other decision.
And in the case of Taiwan and Roche, it's not like we're talking about the truly destitue, who lack the resources to prepare ahead of time, no matter how much warning they're given. It's not that Taiwan can't pay Roche's price; it's that they don't want to pay Roche's price. But they also don't want to pay the price of doing the research themselves. How can this possibly lead to a moral solution?
If, as you suggest, Roche is doing the work on behalf of everybody else, including Taiwan, then doesn't it follow that Taiwan should appreciate their efforts and contribute to them by paying for the results of those efforts?
Yes, it would be inefficient for each country to invent their own wheel. But it doesn't follow that the one guy who did invent the wheel has to give it away free to anybody who needs or wants the wheel.
You also seem to be suggesting that any company that is motivated by profit instead of charity is acting immorally. That may be, but I don't see how it's relevant. Taiwan still isn't doing their own work, and they still aren't paying somebody else to do the work for them, but they still expect to get the work results for free.
Not only that, but they're forced to work without the benefits of Roche's research anyway, which can't be a good use of Taiwanese taxes. This is all Taiwan's problem, of their own making. Their governance decisions aren't Roche's problem. Roche's problem is that it made something it thought people would want, and it turns out some people want it enought to try to steal it, but not enough to pay for it.
Roche may also be behaving badly. But we get that story on
Yawn.
You opened this thread by inventing tall tales for your own amusement. Now you're doing more of the same. I'm supposed to be impressed by this?
I'm sorry, but you totally lost right about the time you compared negotiating in bad faith with a legitimate business partner (Taiwan & Roche) with profiting from the spoils of war after a great victory against a truly evil enemy (the U.S. and Nazi Germany). And you also seem to have glossed over the part where we didn't "steal" the technology so much as the Nazi regime drove out all of its Jewish rocket scientists, practically gifting their enemies with the knowledge base necessary to win the war and strengthen their economies.
Unless you're saying that Taiwan is at war with Roche, or something the two circumstances seem to have a completely different moral tone to me.
Another thing: I am charged with providing for my family. This totally justifies me busting my ass every day, working hard and earning all the goods and services my family needs. It does not justify stealing, negotiating in bad faith, or casting such shenanigans as a moral choice. I still think it looks like the Taiwanese government put themselves in a situation where they had no morally good solution to their problem. They could either let their responsibility to their people slide completely, or they could find a way to behave badly that would also fulfill their responsibility. It's also possible that they could've simply paid Roche's price, which would've been the honorable thing to do, in my opinion.
The Onion is a corporate entity. Are you suggesting that corporate entities now have the same claims on our government as individual human citizens? What next, the Onion gets to vote?
...everyone would be screaming that 'We made it, we should keep it!' which doesn't really make us look any better the rest of the world.
Given that the rest of the world seems to be screaming that "you made it, we want it, now hand it over!", I'm not sure who we'd be looking good for, I'm not sure they'd appreciate it, and I'm not sure looking good would end up being a pointful exercise in any way. Certainly not so pointful as to be a worthwhile exchange for giving up control of the Internet to, say, China.
Have any of these other countries come forward with a mass of investment, know-how, and thorough plans for working with us to make the Internet better? If so, then by all means let them share the authority along with the responsibility. If not, then what are they trying to pull? You don't get concessions just by demanding them. You're supposed to actually make a compelling case that the concessions are in the conceder's best interest. Wake me up when the EU gets to that stage, and I'll take their demands seriously. Until then, they're just children playing astronaut and throwing a tantrum because NASA won't let them actually go into space.
I'm sorry, but you are lying.
It's obvious that in reality you're some pasty-faced teenager who lives in his mother's basement and dreads any human contact whatsoever. While fantasies of mooning street preachers undoubtedly fuel your pathetic wet dreams, the waking thought of acutally doing so probably makes you physically ill. I'm sure you had to reach for your inhaler several times, pausing repeatedly to unclench your throat as you typed out this amusing and fictional account of how "abnormal" you are.
No, stranger, it's clear that you are, in fact, just a total fuckwad of the normal kind.
But who knows? Maybe someday you'll find the courage to wear your hate on your sleeve. Or get assfucked by street preachers. Whichever it is, keep the dream alive, champ. You can make it if you try!