Well, I think legalization would probably result in some people shifting from cigarettes and alcohol to marijuana and pain killers. That's probably a good thing as far as their own health and society are concerned.
If they could close it, which they can't since open, then they will be the only one using it.
Java is dual-licensed. Almost all commercial users use it under the proprietary license, since the open source license is much more restrictive. Furthermore, all the official documentation and specifications are available only under a restrictive license. It's also unclear whether there can be any compatible third party Java implementations, since Sun holds lots of patents on Java. Sun's own GPL Java implementation is protected from patent infringement claims, but no other open source implementation has a license to the patents.
I think Oracle will continue Java in open source form, probably in the same way as Sun. But if Oracle wanted to screw open source Java, they certainly have the means to do it.
Anything they do to it is likely an improvement. They could start by deprecating about 90% of the APIs. Rolling the language back to 1.5 might be a good idea, too.
there's enough problems with legal drugs like alcohol
Prohibition didn't work for alcohol and it clearly isn't working for drugs.
why do you people keep insisting the answer is MORE drugs?!?!
You must have "rocks in your head" if you think that making drugs illegal stops people from using them.
Legalization would reduce the price of drugs and reduce crime. It would allow maintenance and treatment. And it would probably not increase drug usage any more; anybody who wants to use drugs is already using.
Legalization is necessary; our society simply can't keep paying for prosecuting and incarcerating non-violent drug users, or the criminal activity resulting from the drug trade. However, full legalization is going to be tough: both drug dealers and drug enforcement agencies (including the UN) have a strong financial interest in keeping drugs illegal. And the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs makes it hard for any single nation to change the status quo. That's one of the reasons why it's been hard for any nation to legalize drugs.
The US has the most productive labor force in the world, with only Norway in serious competition with us.
Actually, the US labor force is not the most productive per hour.
Of course it's going to be attractive for firms to move overseas, we can't and shouldn't compete with them in that race to the bottom
Funny, from the European point of view, the US is already engaged in a race to the bottom; Europeans have the same complaints about Americans that Americans have about China.
The Chinese manipulate their currency
With the complicity of the US; the US can devaluate its currency any time it chooses.
As for fascism, of course they care about that.
They care about profits, not about the specific political system that delivers it.
76% of Canada's exports are to the US. And Canada's primary exports are natural resources and cars. Canada is in the G8 only because it's so tightly integrated with the US.
And if Canada had persisted in its 1965 law, the US would have retaliated and the Canadian car industry would have been in trouble.
You are absolutely correct, but there is an important side note here. Even if my salary would only be the equivalent of $40,000, it would still provide me with a much higher standard of living than either India or China.
But Americans don't seem to be willing to go back to that kind of living standard--otherwise, we'd vote for politicians that devaluate the dollar and embrace protectionism.
That's not surprising either: as long as unemployment stays around 10%, the current tradeoff doesn't cause too much social upheaval and it works out better for the majority. Some degree of inequality is built into our political system.
Why do you think your $75000 salary is buying what it is buying? It's because India and China have cheap exports. If you are forced to buy American, or if those nations come up to US standards, that $75000 salary would be the equivalent of, say $40000. So, the reason you can earn those $75000 and still have all those "achievements of the labor movement" is because the US has exported the bad working conditions to India and China.
But there is a simple solution to all this: substantially devalue the US dollar. If the US dollar gets devalued by a factor of 2-3, US exports become much more attractive to foreigners, and Chinese and Indian imports become much less attractive to Americans.
Another possible reason is love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it, aka patriotism.
Sure, but Americans obviously don't want to make the sacrifices. If they did, they would do one of two things: either devalue the American dollar, or impose import duties.
And if foreigners are patriotic, then they will buy fewer American goods, and they certainly won't buy American-made goods at their current inflated prices.
They should have to ask before publishing it in the first place.
Well, they don't. If you are visible from a public street, anybody can publish your picture without asking. I'm sorry you don't understand why, but that's the law and it's a good law.
That policy works until other nations start retaliating against your primary export.
Canada managed to get away with it for a while because Canada isn't that significant in international trade and primarily trades in raw materials. But, in the end, even Canada preferred free trade over protectionism, which is why it joined NAFTA.
Large corporations are not good citizens and care little about the welfare of the nations that created them. I've heard them described as sociopathic is nature,
What definition of "good citizen" would that be? Someone who turns down a high paying job abroad and works on a low paying job in his country of birth? Why is that good? Do you know anybody who actually behaves that way?
Plenty of people leave their home nations because they get a better paying job or a higher quality of life elsewhere. America has benefited tremendously from that because so many exceptionally skilled people have come to the US from other nations.
Of course, as the US becomes less attractive to individuals and US immigration becomes ever more tighter, corporations are leaving as well. It's simple, rational behavior, and both corporations and individuals behave accordingly.
Because the stuff that's "chasing them away" is the same stuff that still nominally keeps the American people from being totally subjugated and destitute like the Chinese and Indians are.
What makes you think that's achievable? Americans are competing with Chinese and Indians. What possible reason would there be for anybody to pay more to an American worker than to a Chinese or Indian worker?
Companies aren't going to stop leaving the US until we are so broken by their flight that we are forced to become fascist.
Companies don't care about fascism. We just need to become cheaper, or we need to help Chinese and Indians become rich.
Because they're going to publish those pictures online for millions, nay, billions of people to gawk at. You forget the scope of this.
Well, if you're in the US, you should just get used to it, because it's legal and it's going to stay legal.
And Google is only the tip of the iceberg: your house will be photographed and geoindexed by your neighbors, your city, prospective buyers, many other mapping services, robots, navigation systems, and all that information will be on the Internet.
Street View is wrong. [...] And no one has the right to do what Google is doing with them.
Street View is legal, it's inevitable, and there is a compelling public interest to allow it.
If you don't like it, you have a couple of options: put up a fence (provided your zoning allows it) or move. Of course, the more paranoid you are, the more people are going to consider you a lunatic and avoid you. Actually, the first thing that's going to happen is that your house is going to be much harder to sell if it's blocked on Google Streetview or hidden behind a high fence.
The problem is that Google caves in to the requests of amateur lawyers who have threatened to sue Google over publishing pictures of their homes or faces in Street View.
Google is a business. Having pictures of people in compromising situations hurts their reputation and it makes Google Streetview potentially offensive to their users. That's why they remove pictures even though the law doesn't technically require them to. That's not "caving in", it's a sound business decision.
It's my job to know these sorts of things.
You seem to understand the legal side already, but you evidently have trouble with the business side of things.
The photo doesn't "stay around forever". You can ask Google to remove photographs that portray you in a bad light.
That's the problem here. Like an elephant in the room.
If you're jacking off in front of your window without curtains, well, geez, that's a problem. In fact, it's probably a misdemeanor.
Google accidentally taking a picture of it and putting it on the web until you ask them to remove it is not a problem. In fact, they probably aren't even obligated to remove it, in particular if you get charged with indecent exposure.
The Swiss can do that for servers and businesses located in Switzerland; they have no jurisdiction over what happens outside Switzerland. The only reason Google talks to them is because Google wants to do business in Switzerland.
Also, given how much Switzerland depends on tourists, banning publishing of geolocated photographs would be rather bad for their economy.
Switzerland really has a choice: paranoid privacy-obsessed police state or relaxed and open tourist paradise. They can't be both.
but while it's not "evil", if an individual person (rather than a computerised camera car) put photos up of my house it's plain creepy.
There are plenty of reasons to take pictures of your house. For example, I might be considering buying in the same neighborhood, I might want sales comps, I might want to show your landscaping or architecture to my architect, or I might want to report you for zoning violations.
And there are plenty of reasons for mapping sites to take pictures of your house and publish it. For example, your house might be a waypoint for navigation or geocaching.
If you don't want it to be seen by the public, build a fence.
Anybody can snap pictures on public streets and put them on the Internet. Cameras are increasingly geotagging them, so soon, anybody will be able to find pictures of anything by location anyway, whether Google drives around in a car or not.
The question is whether that "pain" is a psychological association or a physical effect. This research shows that you don't just perceive it as pain, but that it is actually mediated via pain receptors.
That has medical implications. For example, if it's mediated via pain receptors, pain killers may actually help, and people may become addicted to pain killers because of the physical consequences of social rejection.
A single date with no sex doesn't count as "treating men like toss-away toys, and not care". If you expect sex, love, or a relationship after one date and one kiss, there's something wrong with you, not with her. Maybe she isn't over her ex-boyfriend but would consider you once she is (in a year or two). Or maybe she is also going on dinner dates with other guys and hasn't made up her mind yet. Or maybe she likes you enough to have nice dinners with you but doesn't find you attractive enough to have sex with.
Adults often go on good dates repeatedly without ending up with sex or a relationship. Adults even engage in "dating" and sexual innuendo for fun if there is no possibility of anything happening--it's called flirting. Adults do that because it's fun and because they have enough maturity to keep their emotions in check. If you can't deal with that, it's you who's a "socially inept, clueless nerd".
And the gene they used for testing this idea generally increases pain sensitivity, not just emotional sensitivity--and most people lack it. You probably lack it too.
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Well, I think legalization would probably result in some people shifting from cigarettes and alcohol to marijuana and pain killers. That's probably a good thing as far as their own health and society are concerned.
I agree that Sun would have been a better fit for IBM than for Oracle.
But IBM wasn't sufficiently eager (or desperate) to acquire them.
If they could close it, which they can't since open, then they will be the only one using it.
Java is dual-licensed. Almost all commercial users use it under the proprietary license, since the open source license is much more restrictive. Furthermore, all the official documentation and specifications are available only under a restrictive license. It's also unclear whether there can be any compatible third party Java implementations, since Sun holds lots of patents on Java. Sun's own GPL Java implementation is protected from patent infringement claims, but no other open source implementation has a license to the patents.
I think Oracle will continue Java in open source form, probably in the same way as Sun. But if Oracle wanted to screw open source Java, they certainly have the means to do it.
Anything they do to it is likely an improvement. They could start by deprecating about 90% of the APIs. Rolling the language back to 1.5 might be a good idea, too.
there's enough problems with legal drugs like alcohol
Prohibition didn't work for alcohol and it clearly isn't working for drugs.
why do you people keep insisting the answer is MORE drugs?!?!
You must have "rocks in your head" if you think that making drugs illegal stops people from using them.
Legalization would reduce the price of drugs and reduce crime. It would allow maintenance and treatment. And it would probably not increase drug usage any more; anybody who wants to use drugs is already using.
Legalization is necessary; our society simply can't keep paying for prosecuting and incarcerating non-violent drug users, or the criminal activity resulting from the drug trade. However, full legalization is going to be tough: both drug dealers and drug enforcement agencies (including the UN) have a strong financial interest in keeping drugs illegal. And the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs makes it hard for any single nation to change the status quo. That's one of the reasons why it's been hard for any nation to legalize drugs.
The US has the most productive labor force in the world, with only Norway in serious competition with us.
Actually, the US labor force is not the most productive per hour.
Of course it's going to be attractive for firms to move overseas, we can't and shouldn't compete with them in that race to the bottom
Funny, from the European point of view, the US is already engaged in a race to the bottom; Europeans have the same complaints about Americans that Americans have about China.
The Chinese manipulate their currency
With the complicity of the US; the US can devaluate its currency any time it chooses.
As for fascism, of course they care about that.
They care about profits, not about the specific political system that delivers it.
76% of Canada's exports are to the US. And Canada's primary exports are natural resources and cars. Canada is in the G8 only because it's so tightly integrated with the US.
And if Canada had persisted in its 1965 law, the US would have retaliated and the Canadian car industry would have been in trouble.
You are absolutely correct, but there is an important side note here. Even if my salary would only be the equivalent of $40,000, it would still provide me with a much higher standard of living than either India or China.
But Americans don't seem to be willing to go back to that kind of living standard--otherwise, we'd vote for politicians that devaluate the dollar and embrace protectionism.
That's not surprising either: as long as unemployment stays around 10%, the current tradeoff doesn't cause too much social upheaval and it works out better for the majority. Some degree of inequality is built into our political system.
Why do you think your $75000 salary is buying what it is buying? It's because India and China have cheap exports. If you are forced to buy American, or if those nations come up to US standards, that $75000 salary would be the equivalent of, say $40000. So, the reason you can earn those $75000 and still have all those "achievements of the labor movement" is because the US has exported the bad working conditions to India and China.
But there is a simple solution to all this: substantially devalue the US dollar. If the US dollar gets devalued by a factor of 2-3, US exports become much more attractive to foreigners, and Chinese and Indian imports become much less attractive to Americans.
Another possible reason is love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it, aka patriotism.
Sure, but Americans obviously don't want to make the sacrifices. If they did, they would do one of two things: either devalue the American dollar, or impose import duties.
And if foreigners are patriotic, then they will buy fewer American goods, and they certainly won't buy American-made goods at their current inflated prices.
They should have to ask before publishing it in the first place.
Well, they don't. If you are visible from a public street, anybody can publish your picture without asking. I'm sorry you don't understand why, but that's the law and it's a good law.
That's a simulation; the work from Tokyo is tests with real people.
So, the principle has been articulated, but this work is still a new contribution.
That policy works until other nations start retaliating against your primary export.
Canada managed to get away with it for a while because Canada isn't that significant in international trade and primarily trades in raw materials. But, in the end, even Canada preferred free trade over protectionism, which is why it joined NAFTA.
Large corporations are not good citizens and care little about the welfare of the nations that created them. I've heard them described as sociopathic is nature,
What definition of "good citizen" would that be? Someone who turns down a high paying job abroad and works on a low paying job in his country of birth? Why is that good? Do you know anybody who actually behaves that way?
Plenty of people leave their home nations because they get a better paying job or a higher quality of life elsewhere. America has benefited tremendously from that because so many exceptionally skilled people have come to the US from other nations.
Of course, as the US becomes less attractive to individuals and US immigration becomes ever more tighter, corporations are leaving as well. It's simple, rational behavior, and both corporations and individuals behave accordingly.
Because the stuff that's "chasing them away" is the same stuff that still nominally keeps the American people from being totally subjugated and destitute like the Chinese and Indians are.
What makes you think that's achievable? Americans are competing with Chinese and Indians. What possible reason would there be for anybody to pay more to an American worker than to a Chinese or Indian worker?
Companies aren't going to stop leaving the US until we are so broken by their flight that we are forced to become fascist.
Companies don't care about fascism. We just need to become cheaper, or we need to help Chinese and Indians become rich.
It's not about his house, it's about protecting the right to photograph and publish those photographs, which is an essential right in a democracy.
Because they're going to publish those pictures online for millions, nay, billions of people to gawk at. You forget the scope of this.
Well, if you're in the US, you should just get used to it, because it's legal and it's going to stay legal.
And Google is only the tip of the iceberg: your house will be photographed and geoindexed by your neighbors, your city, prospective buyers, many other mapping services, robots, navigation systems, and all that information will be on the Internet.
Street View is wrong. [...] And no one has the right to do what Google is doing with them.
Street View is legal, it's inevitable, and there is a compelling public interest to allow it.
If you don't like it, you have a couple of options: put up a fence (provided your zoning allows it) or move. Of course, the more paranoid you are, the more people are going to consider you a lunatic and avoid you. Actually, the first thing that's going to happen is that your house is going to be much harder to sell if it's blocked on Google Streetview or hidden behind a high fence.
The problem is that Google caves in to the requests of amateur lawyers who have threatened to sue Google over publishing pictures of their homes or faces in Street View.
Google is a business. Having pictures of people in compromising situations hurts their reputation and it makes Google Streetview potentially offensive to their users. That's why they remove pictures even though the law doesn't technically require them to. That's not "caving in", it's a sound business decision.
It's my job to know these sorts of things.
You seem to understand the legal side already, but you evidently have trouble with the business side of things.
But on the net, it stays there forever.
The photo doesn't "stay around forever". You can ask Google to remove photographs that portray you in a bad light.
That's the problem here. Like an elephant in the room.
If you're jacking off in front of your window without curtains, well, geez, that's a problem. In fact, it's probably a misdemeanor.
Google accidentally taking a picture of it and putting it on the web until you ask them to remove it is not a problem. In fact, they probably aren't even obligated to remove it, in particular if you get charged with indecent exposure.
The Swiss can do that for servers and businesses located in Switzerland; they have no jurisdiction over what happens outside Switzerland. The only reason Google talks to them is because Google wants to do business in Switzerland.
Also, given how much Switzerland depends on tourists, banning publishing of geolocated photographs would be rather bad for their economy.
Switzerland really has a choice: paranoid privacy-obsessed police state or relaxed and open tourist paradise. They can't be both.
but while it's not "evil", if an individual person (rather than a computerised camera car) put photos up of my house it's plain creepy.
There are plenty of reasons to take pictures of your house. For example, I might be considering buying in the same neighborhood, I might want sales comps, I might want to show your landscaping or architecture to my architect, or I might want to report you for zoning violations.
And there are plenty of reasons for mapping sites to take pictures of your house and publish it. For example, your house might be a waypoint for navigation or geocaching.
If you don't want it to be seen by the public, build a fence.
Anybody can snap pictures on public streets and put them on the Internet. Cameras are increasingly geotagging them, so soon, anybody will be able to find pictures of anything by location anyway, whether Google drives around in a car or not.
The question is whether that "pain" is a psychological association or a physical effect. This research shows that you don't just perceive it as pain, but that it is actually mediated via pain receptors.
That has medical implications. For example, if it's mediated via pain receptors, pain killers may actually help, and people may become addicted to pain killers because of the physical consequences of social rejection.
A single date with no sex doesn't count as "treating men like toss-away toys, and not care". If you expect sex, love, or a relationship after one date and one kiss, there's something wrong with you, not with her. Maybe she isn't over her ex-boyfriend but would consider you once she is (in a year or two). Or maybe she is also going on dinner dates with other guys and hasn't made up her mind yet. Or maybe she likes you enough to have nice dinners with you but doesn't find you attractive enough to have sex with.
Adults often go on good dates repeatedly without ending up with sex or a relationship. Adults even engage in "dating" and sexual innuendo for fun if there is no possibility of anything happening--it's called flirting. Adults do that because it's fun and because they have enough maturity to keep their emotions in check. If you can't deal with that, it's you who's a "socially inept, clueless nerd".
And the gene they used for testing this idea generally increases pain sensitivity, not just emotional sensitivity--and most people lack it. You probably lack it too.