Under the Constitution, the law making body is Congress, not the Executive. And in this country, most of the immediate decisions are made at State, county and town level. That is mostly the level of politics that has observable effects on your daily life and where exactly such people in "lower offices" exist.
Uber/Airbnb/etc exist because arbitrage around the law allows for lower priced products and increased profits. Never mind that not all laws were created to protect incumbents.
As a side comment: The reflexive anti-government attitudes of many is particularly puzzling in a democracy: you are getting exactly what you voted for; the reason we have such corrupt government is because we keep electing people that explicitly tell us that at the outset! We also elect people that explicitly tell us that they want to break the system and/or do not believe in it. Why are we surprised at the outcomes?
As a technical point, I don't understand why the person that put up the file isn't counted as a single copy. After all, they didn't make all the other copies: the downloaders created those other copies themselves.
Why is the original sharer being made guilty for the copies others made?
Is it fair to blame one person for the acts of others? How on earth did the lawyers hide this little fact from the jury?
Development requires utter concentration. As far as I am concerned, the optimum arrangement for developers
is one enclosed office each with plenty of bookshelves to stash away reference books and surfaces put up
enough monitors.
A nearby conference room with lots of whiteboards and chairs for the occasional brainstorming meeting would also
be very helpful.
However, management, as I've been told, relies on communicating with people. Maybe they should be the ones
put around that circular table in the middle of the room that is now available...:-)
Good tie in to the health care debate: I don't give a damn how unsafe you want to make your life as long as you don't show up at an emergency room when the inevitable catastrophe happens.
If you intend to make use of the emergency room, then you'd better have fully paid up health insurance.
But the odds are that you're also the overconfident idiot that thinks he won't need health insurance either.
So, since the sane among us don't want to fork out for your stupidity, it is easier to guard (somewhat) against your ability to incur costs on us. Thus seat-belt, airbag, helmet laws.
And yes, American table-saws are extremely unsafe. Heck, virtually none even have riving knives (required in European table saws), which means there are a significant number of standard cuts that can't be made with the saw guards in place: ie the saws are designed to be unsafe for normal use. Table saws cause more industrial accidents than any other tool, and maybe this type of judgement is a wake up call to the manufacturers.
Agreed. Remember, at all times, in all countries, 50% of the people will be below median intelligence. And of those at or above the mark, some non-insignificant percentage will have received inferior education.
Everyone has an opinion, but the odds of their opinion being worth the time to even listen to aren't good.
Hmm, there seems to be some other ways the "game" may legitimately play out:
(S,H): the middle-of-the-road global warming theories turn out to have been conservative, the truth was in the more extreme models. Temperate zones that currently feed the bulk of the world population dry out causing massive widespread famines. Sea level rises quickly and flooding destroys most coastal cities (ie all the interesting/big ones) and world economy tanks. Warfare over the remaining resources breaks out. So long, thanks for the fish.
(R,H): world temperatures rise moderately, but air quality, water quality all improve significantly. Due to the investment in green energy, industrialized/educated economies stop sending nearly so much cash to nomadic desert people that happen to be sitting on lots of oil. With the cash to buy weapons drying out, fanatics the world over lose their easy cash income, terrorism dies out, world peace breaks out.
What credentials do I have to back up my game results? Show me yours first:-)
I do not believe that the statement "private companies aren't required to make any service available to anyone they don't want to" is quite correct. Once a product is on the market you do have to sell it to everyone on equal terms. You are not allowed to discriminate against potential clients on the base of gender, ethnicity, religious beliefs/non-beliefs, political affiliations etc.
Just try to run a bus service that requires people of different races to sit in different sections of the bus to see what I mean.
Just being a corporation does not give you the rights to ignore the law.
I found it very revealing to see the statistics about what the public thought the scientific consensus is. Paraphrasing from the original article:
- Public thinks 60% of scientists agree that evolution occurred, but actually 97% of scientists support evolution.
- Public thinks 56% of scientists agree that global warming is human caused, but actually 84% of scientists support the theory that human activity has and is causing global warming.
This nearly 50/50 split in the public's view leads me to think: what is the primary source of science news for most of the public? The press. And most of the time, particularly on controversial issues, the press just presents two talking heads with opposing views as the current state of affairs. If you didn't know better from other sources you'd have to assume that the scientific consensus was split 50/50.
Slashdot Mirror
Under the Constitution, the law making body is Congress, not the Executive. And in this country, most of the immediate decisions are made at State, county and town level. That is mostly the level of politics that has observable effects on your daily life and where exactly such people in "lower offices" exist.
Uber/Airbnb/etc exist because arbitrage around the law allows for lower priced products and increased profits. Never mind that not all laws were created to protect incumbents.
As a side comment: The reflexive anti-government attitudes of many is particularly puzzling in a democracy: you are getting exactly what you voted for; the reason we have such corrupt government is because we keep electing people that explicitly tell us that at the outset! We also elect people that explicitly tell us that they want to break the system and/or do not believe in it. Why are we surprised at the outcomes?
As a technical point, I don't understand why the person that put up the file isn't counted as a single copy. After all, they didn't make all the other copies: the downloaders created those other copies themselves. Why is the original sharer being made guilty for the copies others made? Is it fair to blame one person for the acts of others? How on earth did the lawyers hide this little fact from the jury?
Development requires utter concentration. As far as I am concerned, the optimum arrangement for developers is one enclosed office each with plenty of bookshelves to stash away reference books and surfaces put up enough monitors. A nearby conference room with lots of whiteboards and chairs for the occasional brainstorming meeting would also be very helpful. However, management, as I've been told, relies on communicating with people. Maybe they should be the ones put around that circular table in the middle of the room that is now available ... :-)
Good tie in to the health care debate: I don't give a damn how unsafe you want to make your life as long as you don't show up at an emergency room when the inevitable catastrophe happens. If you intend to make use of the emergency room, then you'd better have fully paid up health insurance. But the odds are that you're also the overconfident idiot that thinks he won't need health insurance either. So, since the sane among us don't want to fork out for your stupidity, it is easier to guard (somewhat) against your ability to incur costs on us. Thus seat-belt, airbag, helmet laws. And yes, American table-saws are extremely unsafe. Heck, virtually none even have riving knives (required in European table saws), which means there are a significant number of standard cuts that can't be made with the saw guards in place: ie the saws are designed to be unsafe for normal use. Table saws cause more industrial accidents than any other tool, and maybe this type of judgement is a wake up call to the manufacturers.
Agreed. Remember, at all times, in all countries, 50% of the people will be below median intelligence. And of those at or above the mark, some non-insignificant percentage will have received inferior education.
Everyone has an opinion, but the odds of their opinion being worth the time to even listen to aren't good.
Hmm, there seems to be some other ways the "game" may legitimately play out:
:-)
(S,H): the middle-of-the-road global warming theories turn out to have been conservative, the truth was in the more extreme models. Temperate zones that currently feed the bulk of the world population dry out causing massive widespread famines. Sea level rises quickly and flooding destroys most coastal cities (ie all the interesting/big ones) and world economy tanks. Warfare over the remaining resources breaks out. So long, thanks for the fish.
(R,H): world temperatures rise moderately, but air quality, water quality all improve significantly. Due to the investment in green energy, industrialized/educated economies stop sending nearly so much cash to nomadic desert people that happen to be sitting on lots of oil. With the cash to buy weapons drying out, fanatics the world over lose their easy cash income, terrorism dies out, world peace breaks out.
What credentials do I have to back up my game results? Show me yours first
I do not believe that the statement "private companies aren't required to make any service available to anyone they don't want to" is quite correct. Once a product is on the market you do have to sell it to everyone on equal terms. You are not allowed to discriminate against potential clients on the base of gender, ethnicity, religious beliefs/non-beliefs, political affiliations etc. Just try to run a bus service that requires people of different races to sit in different sections of the bus to see what I mean. Just being a corporation does not give you the rights to ignore the law.
I found it very revealing to see the statistics about what the public thought the scientific consensus is. Paraphrasing from the original article:
- Public thinks 60% of scientists agree that evolution occurred, but actually 97% of scientists support evolution.
- Public thinks 56% of scientists agree that global warming is human caused, but actually 84% of scientists support the theory that human activity has and is causing global warming.
This nearly 50/50 split in the public's view leads me to think: what is the primary source of science news for most of the public? The press. And most of the time, particularly on controversial issues, the press just presents two talking heads with opposing views as the current state of affairs. If you didn't know better from other sources you'd have to assume that the scientific consensus was split 50/50.