They might not know the keyboard shortcuts for copy and past, but I doubt they're erasing large chunks of text in one place only to re-type it somewhere else... at least I hope not!
Umm... seriously? You haven't dealt with a lot of average computer users, have you?
Over the past couple decades, I've shown at least half a dozen people how to use cut and paste -- I'm not talking about the keyboard shortcuts: I'm talking about the concept itself.
And these have just been in casual encounters, usually when I'm helping someone do something else on their system. I've never even been in tech support...
Perhaps it is getting a little better with the generation under age 30 or so. But anyone who grew up using a typewriter (or who even used one occasionally when first typing) doesn't naturally understand that there should be such a thing as "cut and paste."
HeLa cells can multiply ad infitum, unlike any other kind... but they're not Henrieta's native cells, but cancer-derived cells (as far as wikipedia tells).
Cancer cells are not generally invading cells with an origin outside the body. (Only about 20% of cancers are caused by viruses.) Most of their genetic makeup is from the person they inhabit. They just have some small genetic mutation that leads to unfettered reproduction.
It may not have been a desirable change, but it was in fact an internal change in someone's body that caused this. Therefore I'm not sure that these are not "Henrietta's native cells." They may not have the exact DNA that the original embryo did that created her, but neither do a lot of cells in people's bodies. Carcinogens cause mutations in DNA; enough of them will cause one to happen in the wrong place and cause cancer.
What do you think defines "native cells" in a person? Does any cell that has a random mutation from the original DNA prototype fail the test as a "native cell"? If so, that opens up an easy way for lots of companies/governments to get away with taking samples and using your DNA... except not quite "your" DNA... but that of many cells in your body.
I would realy like it to be some sort of GPL where findings are actually intended for the general public.
Does anybody have any experience with such a thing?
Yes.
Don't have a surgical procedure. Request cremation upon death. Those are your options.
Even then, you might run into problems. Many state governments are routinely keeping samples of all citizens from birth -- and many store them indefinitely, with no easy way for parents or citizens to get them released or destroyed. There have been cases where these samples have made it into the hands of private researchers with little or no oversight.
Whether or not such policies have affected the GP is a different question, but for new people born nowadays, it's getting ever harder to stay out of such databases.
Thanks for this. I didn't read this before I wrote my reply to your previous post.
Anyhow, this is interesting. But I still wonder whether you think the government is happy with over a million blogs being censored here? Surely some of those blogs held positive views about the government as well as negative ones....
I'm not sure what this actually means, is this supposed to include P2P? Because if it is, it's a lie.
I didn't write the Wikipedia article. I don't claim to have any special knowledge of the status of general censorship in Argentina, but even if your claim is true, it sounds like an argument about ISP policy, not about "Argentina." Perhaps the Wikipedia article is inaccurate regarding individual ISP policy. Perhaps you believe the government should work harder to restrict the freedoms of private ISPs in order to guarantee stronger internet freedoms. There are certainly arguments to be made in that line, which I haven't taken a side on here.
Nevertheless, even if that were so, I still don't understand how the government's neglect to require that ISPs allow transmission of free speech would be the same as "Argentina censoring" free speech. You might think that people should be able to express their positive opinions about Nazis, but a newspaper might decide not to publish letters to the editor that endorse such views: the existence of such a policy at a private corporation does not mean that the country has censored those views.
My point was simple: when I see "Argentina" in a headline, I equate it with the government or perhaps the will of a large segment of the population. My argument was solely about the Slashdot headline, which I still think is inaccurate.
Your story about denial of P2P is interesting, but unless you believe that is related to the policy of "Argentina" as a whole, I'm not sure what it has to do with the headline here.
Your initial reply implied the "Argentina" should be doing something about the censorship. Does that mean you think the government tacitly endorses internet censorship in general? (I really am asking -- I'm curious, since you seem to have first-hand knowledge.)
The government didn't pass a law? So you're saying the judge's order to block those two URLs was illegal -- you do realize that's what you're claiming, right?
No, I guess I don't realize what I'm claiming. Perhaps you should tell me.
Or perhaps what you're going to tell me is what you think I'm claiming.
In no sense was I supporting or arguing against the judge's claim. In fact, my remark about how the government didn't pass a law was superfluous. Let me be more clear about what I actually did claim:
THERE DOESN'T SEEM TO BE ANY EVIDENCE THAT ARGENTINA AS A WHOLE OR ANY PORTION OF ARGENTINA'S GOVERNMENT -- OR POPULATION SIGNIFICANT ENOUGH TO REPRESENT "ARGENTINA" AS A WHOLE -- HAS ORDERED, ENCOURAGED, OR ENDORSED THE CENSORSHIP OF "OVER A MILLION BLOGS."
The decision for this degree of censorship originates in decisions made by some ISPs located in a country.
Any other conclusion about what I was saying on your part about the judge's ruling, its meaning, or whether I agree with it, is your own opinion, not what I was "claiming."
"Argentina" hasn't done anything to fix it either.
Umm, one can argue about the legality or effectiveness of the judge's order in this case, but I don't see evidence that Argentina has a general record of endorsing blanket internet censorship, as the ISPs have done here.
In fact, quite the opposite. See the Wikipedia article on "Internet Censorship by Country" where Argentina is included in the list under "No Evidence of Censorship":
Not individually classified by ONI, but is included in the regional overview for Latin America.
Technical filtering of the Internet is uncommon in Argentina. The regulation of Internet content addresses largely the same concerns and strategies seen in North America and Europe, focusing on combating the spread of child pornography and restricting child access to age-inappropriate material. As Internet usage in Argentina increases, so do defamation, hate speech, copyright, and privacy issues.
And...
Since the 1997 presidential declaration regarding "Free Speech on the Internet" that guarantees Internet content the same constitutional protections for freedom of expression, Argentina has become a haven for neo-Nazi and race-hate groups around the region.
Sounds like, if anything, they have a more open policy toward internet freedom than many European countries, for example.
I'm happy to be contradicted, but I don't see evidence that this is anymore than some ISPs implementing a stupid method of blocking that snagged a million blogs rather than the two requested. TFA even says "some ISPs," not all, suggesting that the problem is about a technical choice for a solution for a few private corporations.
It's as if an American court ordered ISPs not to provide internet service to a child molester in Cleveland with multiple clear cases of abuse that were initiated over the internet, and Comcast responded by shutting down the internet to the entire state of Ohio.
Then Slashdot runs a headline: "United States Censors Internet from Ohio."
In such a case, we could argue about the court ruling, but I think we would agree that the headline would be false.
And yet you're too stupid to realize why your comment is dumb.
A bookstore like you describe can't survive unless it's in an area where people actually care about those books. Small town bookstores sell the crap you mentioned, because it SELLS. Voltaire, Rousseau, and Sartre DON'T.
Bookstores sell what people want. You're right. But also sometimes people buy what is being sold.
Basic principle of marketing -- you can accept what the situation is and just give people what they think they want. Or you can find new markets by convincing people they want something they didn't realize they needed before.
Our society is currently somewhat anti-intellectual. A bookstore that tries to fight that (through novel advertising and promotions) would be refreshing to some. Would it make a lot of money? Probably not. But if no one does it, there definitely won't be a market for it anywhere.
You make some money getting people to buy what they already think they want. You usually get more money by finding something else and convincing them. If you only have a selection of what you think people already want, you'll never get them to buy something more.
someone who owns a comic book store in a small city and who is constantly nagged by so-called experts for focusing on manga (which sells) instead of used 80s comic books (which don't sell).
Something sounds wrong with your statement. If you are truly "constantly nagged" for not selling something, presumably those who are nagging you are interested in buying it. They may not be a large market or your target market, but if they are "constantly nagging" you, maybe you should sell them something they want.
On the other hand, perhaps you meant "occasionally asked," in which case it's probably not worth your trouble. Or perhaps these people aren't actually customers, in which case -- why the hell do you give a crap what they say?
But in fact, Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, likes to say that Amazon already collecting state sales taxes.
He may like to say that, but they avoid it at all costs. Recently, when California tried to ensnare Amazon by requiring payment of state income taxes, Amazon shut down all affiliate connections it had to stores in the entire state, disrupting huge amounts of small businesses. Ultimately, many are predicting that it will actually lower state tax revenue, not to mention the loss to the California economy.
Amazon will conform when it absolutely has to, but it's quite misleading to emphasize how much Amazon pays its taxes.
(Of course, you're absolutely right in your reply to the GP.)
The bottom line is: you go to the bookstore to buy a book. You don't need to go there to socialize or to ask advice. You just need the book.
This is a very limited view of what shopping is for many people. Not to stereotype, but while many men go to stores knowing exactly what they are going to buy ahead of time (or having a very small range of well-researched options), most women and many men also like to browse. They like to find surprises. They like to try things out. They might like expert advise, particularly on a topic they are unfamiliar with.
This style of shopping is becoming less common as internet sales go up. But there are lots of people who like this method of shopping. The problem is, as you rightly point out, it often doesn't seem worth it to pay the extra costs when online shops almost always offer a discount.
The unfortunate thing is that those actual stores are worth more than people think. I think I buy more items these days that are inferior than I would have in previous years, and I keep them because... well, it's a pain to mail them back. If I had just spent a few minutes in a real store, I might have found something that was a better fit for me, but I preferred to get the small discount.
On the other hand, the danger of traditional stores is that salesmen might give you bad advice, perhaps getting you to buy more items than you need or sway you toward an item that they can earn more money off of.
How do these things balance out? I don't really know. But I do know that browsing books on a shelf is very different from browsing on Amazon.
I do a lot of research, and I can also say that I've found numerous books that have resulted in great advances in my knowledge because of fortuitous placement of books on shelves close to other things I was looking at. I would not have encountered these books on Amazon.
Thus, perhaps the larger problem is not that people lose the small perks of shopping in a real store, but that they become more narrow-minded, only buying what they already know about or what happens to come up in an Amazon search or a Google search, rather than what they might happen upon through more random browsing.
A judge in Argentina ordered ISPs to block two websites -- leakymails.com and leakymails.blogspot.com. According to Google, many ISPs have simply blocked the IP 216.239.32.2 instead of using a targeted DNS filter.
"Argentina" didn't do anything. The government didn't pass a law. A judge ordered two URLs to be blocked.
Idiot ISPs blocked an IP address that led to a million blogs.
The title should read: Inept Argentinian ISPs Block a Million Blogs Rather Than Blocking Two URLs to Satisfy Court Ruling
Reading and understanding the text is awesome, but ultimately useless.
Not "useless." If you actually understand the text, you should be able to formulate a reasonable opinion of how it should be applied in a particular case. There are cases where subsequent jurisprudence has accrued that flies the face of a plain reading of text. Such cases should be overturned.
For example, if you asked any person on the street whether "regulating interstate commerce" should apply to telling a farmer that he could not grow enough wheat to feed his family and farm animals with no intention of selling it in another state, let alone every selling it period (Wickard v. Filburn), the vast majority of people would say you're a lunatic. Perhaps the federal government should have that power, but it is not found in the Constitution. I believe there is a reason why we have three branches of government, and judges should not be able to usurp the power of the legislature, or, as in the example case, the power granted to the legislatures of the several states as well to amend the Constitution.
Regardless of which you support you can scream until you're blue in the face that these pesky judges and constitutional scholars are doing it wrong as they lead you off in handcuffs or garnish your wages to pay off a judgment to no effect. What matters is how it is applied in the real world. There are hundreds of years of precedent and case law and possibly more, sometimes reaching back to the precedent of our colonial masters.
Meh. Here's how the law really works. The U.S. is not a pure common law country. The Constitution overrides any other law, and any other court precedent. If you understand what the text of the Constitution says, you can almost always make an argument to a court on that basis, even if it flies the in face of preceding interpretations.
Now, the reality is that the interpretation of many issues has been settled, often leading to gross distortions of the original meaning of the Constitution. Convincing a judge to go with an original meaning argument here is probably not going to get you far (stare decisis), unless it's the Supreme Court and the current political climate or opinions of the judges are on your side.
On the other hand, there are many cases which present unique circumstances that are not settled in precedent (or where precedent is not clearly applicable, or was argued badly, or any number of other problems). In such a case, which actually is the case in most situations that work their way up through appellate courts (because it if were settled law, appeal wouldn't be allowed except in cases of technical procedural error), the circumstances are in some way argued to be novel. You can play the precedent game if you like, but it's often good to refer to the original Constitutional text, which should (in an ideal world) be the superior test of an opinion.
In sum, cases are won all the time by appealing to precedent. But when a case presents some novel circumstances, the original Constitution is often just as useful as citing precedent that may not be directly on point. Major Supreme Court decisions of the past few years have often be based on a lot of wrangling over the original text of the Constitution.
Intelligent Design is a very anti-science topic. By definition it cannot prove any of its claims, so it uses negative arguments attacking evolution. It claims that some things cannot be explained by science, so therefore ID is right.
You're absolutely right about most of the people in the ID movement, which is basically a front to promote religion.
However, the basic concept of intelligent design could actually be a scientific topic. It is a perfectly acceptable scientific question to ask whether some superior intelligence (aliens, "gods," whatever you want to call them) might have somehow influenced the development of life on earth. That is the same question an archaeologist asks when he discovers a piece of rock that might be an arrowhead -- can it be explained adequately by natural processes, or is there evidence that intention was involved in creating that thing?
Our understanding of evolutionary mechanics is pretty primitive, though, despite huge advances over the past century. Nevertheless, if you believe extraterrestrial life is possible and could have evolved elsewhere (which should be true, if you believe in evolution), then it is possible that such life may have interacted with the development of life on earth.
A search for evidence of such a thing could in fact be scientific. I'm not saying the ID people do this or that they don't distort things as you say. I'm just saying that arguments which dismiss the question as "unscientific" out of hand aren't justified.
The constitution is against promotion of a religion -- NO pushing of religion. period. Keep religion out of government is the whole point.
Umm, not quite. The Constitution isn't quite that strong. Here's all it says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...
In other words, the government can't "establish" a religion, i.e., make some religion the official government-sponsored religion, which would require people to be part of that religion. It can't say one religion is right, while others are wrong. The government also can't stop you from "freely exercising" your religion.
The point was to allow pluralism in belief systems, not to restrict what one can say about them. I don't see anything in that brief clause that prohibits anyone associated with the government from ever talking about religion or mildly coming out in favor of it. It just prohibits Congress from making a law that says you have to practice a particular religion, or that the state has a particular official religion, or that you can't practice a specific religion that the government doesn't like.
(remember, the king of England was heavily connected to religion...)
Umm, no. The problem was that the king of England persecuted particular religions that weren't his. The Founders wanted to ensure pluralism, not atheism. No monopoly on religion, not "no religion" period.
Furthermore, my point is that government can bash all religion equally without promoting any single one of them;
While it may be within the government's right to do such a thing under free speech, it isn't actually discussed in the Constitution. Neither is the government's right to bash non-religion, for that matter, which is probably equally allowed by free speech. The Constitution requires a neutrality toward the treatment of various religions (and non-religions); anything else is your personal belief, not something written into the Constitution.
...some could argue that the banning of religion is possible to a degree but I'm not going there
Seriously? Here you show you haven't even read the Constitution. "Congress shall make no law... prohibiting the free exercise" of religion. How can you possibly read that that would allow the government to ban religion?
Re:There are several factors at play here
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You're looking at the rewriting of history and thinking the rewrite is true. "The victorians" were much less constrained by religion than we currently are today. All of that "founded by christians" and "in god we trust" is a post WWII addition to the history books, mostly on a anti-commie trip.
Agree with the general point. But your specific examples are off.
No one ever disputed that almost all of the "Founding Fathers" were practicing Christians. Tolerant ones, it is true. And quite a few had some qualms about certain tenets of Christianity (as most "Christians" do today), some more than others. (One can argue about Deism all you want, but the fact is that except for Jefferson and a couple others, everybody pretty much went to a mainstream Christian church and publicly supported them.) But the "history books" didn't mention it until recently because everyone assumed it was true. It's only with the rise and recognition of multiculturalism that we had to mention it, and admittedly, some people have gotten defensive about it.
As for "In God We Trust," that's been on currency since the Civil War. And it probably derives from The Star-Spangled Banner's final verse ("...and this be our motto, in God is our trust..."), which of course was written during the War of 1812. It became the national motto after WWII, but it was an important element of U.S. patriotic imagery for at least a century before that.
It's just that no one is having an intelligent discussion about these topics. They prefer to stake out a position on blind faith and then denounce everyone who disagrees. Seems to me more like a lack of discussion than a shortage of societal challenges or of ideas to deal with those challenges.
Actually, it's both -- one begets the other. Two main political parties now seems to mean that there are only two ideological viewpoints on any issue. Some of these viewpoints may be interesting, with novel ideas; others are not. The media and the political systems are working together to keep every issue to two ideas, and those ideas are usually wrapped up with the "blind faith" in one side of the political "spectrum" (which in reality has many dimensions, despite that fact that politics makes us think there are only one or two).
Suppose a novelist writes a book and accidentally leaves a copy of the electronic manuscript on a public computer (or in another place where it might be accessible, though the author didn't intend it to be). Another person finds it and publishes it first -- making millions of dollars.
Is that theft?
Theft occurs when someone takes away something of value from someone else. Whether that thing is a physical object or not is to some extent irrelevant.
By the way, the example I give is a better example of traditional copyright infringement, i.e., infringing on the right to make copies (and the subsequent profits that come from them). While I don't agree with our current copyright system, I also don't think it's an error to think of distributing someone else's work without their permission as a kind of "theft."
What we need to do is reform the system to make it more rational and workable, not try to undermine the value of intellectual property -- otherwise, creators lose any incentive to invest their time in making something of value. (Note that I am not in favor of rewarding their descendants a century after they die or anything like that, as we do in the ridiculous current system -- the original copyrights were for only a few years to allow authors and publishers to recoup costs.)
Using similar methods, there was a time when you could "detect" epicycles, too. Like dark matter they were a theoretical fudge factor designed to prevent a cherished theory from falling apart due to its lack of successful predictions and explanatory power. In the case of epicycles, the cherished theory was geocentrism.
Not to be too pedantic, but the history is more complicated than that. The "cherished theory" in this case also depended on other assumptions that led to epicycles, perhaps the most notable being circular orbits.
In case you didn't know, Copernicus's theory contained a lot of epicycles too. It wasn't that much less complex than the Ptolemaic theory, despite being heliocentric. Why? Because he assumed circular orbits. It wasn't until Kepler came along with his ellipses that the epicycles disappeared.
The difference is that scientists embrace the whole idea of proving themselves wrong, and are willing to walk away from obviously nonsensical explanations for things.
I think you have a pretty naive view of scientists. You really think ALL people who built a career based on a theory are just willing to say "oops" and let their work and reputation become irrelevant? Sure, there are many scientists who are noble enough to do so. But when you look at the history of science, even recently, there are many popular but disproved ideas that stick around for decades, even longer... until people die off or retire, or until the evidence against them becomes so strong that people realize they can't move forward without trashing the old stuff.
Religions may be worse, but they don't have a monopoly on sticking to ideas that you "know" to be true.
Why do so many people in finance continue to insist on growth? We should be focusing on steady state sustainability.
Let me break it down in simple terms for you. Growth in money is not the same as growth in productivity (actual goods, etc.). Many businesses would love to reach a steady state in terms of real productivity, which is pretty difficult over the long term.
However, this is a very different question from how money works. Small amounts of inflation have been targeted by economists and those who manage the money supply. Why? because deflation has the potential to be really bad (just consider that once deflation sets in, no one has any incentive to spend money unless they actually have to at that moment, because by waiting, they will get stuff more cheaply).
A perfect equilibrium is difficult to maintain, so economists for the past century at least have focused on a slow inflation rate.
In such a system, a business must make some growth in terms of its income at least to keep up with inflation, or else it won't be able to keep up a steady state of productivity. Most businesses might like to stay a couple steps ahead of inflation, so in case the economy tanks or the company comes upon hard times, they have something to fall back on.
Of course, there are also plenty of people in finance and business who like speculation and like rapid growth. But that has always been the case: it almost seems to be a sort of primitive instinct for alpha males. What they're doing is playing a game of dominance; it only nominally has to do with finance and actual business. If they were hunter gatherers, they'd be fighting over women and the rights to ever-greater fishing and hunting territories.
No, exponential means that the advances would be getting greater and greater over time. You're confusing the popular expression of "exponential" with the real one.
Um, no. You're the one who's confusing meanings. A number of elements of computer technology actually show true exponential growth (according to the mathematical definition), and have been for decades.
Now, whether or not our generally inaccurate human perceptions sense that growth accurately, or whether the technology advances in ways that make that growth visible are different questions. But the growth pattern in a number of aspects of computing hardware actually has been exponential.
In most countries, there was a time of two or three decades after the Second World War when wealth flowed downwards overall. It was a slow movement to be sure, but when you look at indicators like inequality, or the share of national income that goes towards wages (as opposed to rents) the trend was clearly in favor of the "small guy".
Not to mention the structure of the tax system, at least in the U.S. For two decades after WWII, the top tax bracket hovered around 90%, so the richest people were only keeping 10% of their nominal income. Even if their nominal incomes look high, that's important to keep in mind. And until the Reagan tax cuts in 1980, they were always about 70%. Meanwhile, the bottom tax bracket was always below 25% after about a decade following WWII.
While taxes aren't everything, the tax system for about 40 years after WWII was incredibly progressive compared to today.
Indirectly, in as much as the voter makes decisions for the country. That never seems to be a clear 1:1 'vote', and you are still ruled by percentage of share, meaning the small voices are buried beneath those billionaires holding majorities of stock.
All of these policies are generally laid out in the corporate charter, and while many structures are like this, they don't have to be. In general, they are for for-profit corporations, since the primary goal of for-profit corporations is to make money, and generally most people accept that the more an investor puts in, the more voice he/she should have, and the more he/she should get out.
Again, though, note that there are plenty of non-profit organizations, many with political (even non-partisan political) goals as their primary reason for existing -- not necessarily with the evil money-based corporate structure you described -- and they were also banned from political speech. What's your rationale for banning the ACLU from political speech?
I have no voice in where my corporation spends it's dollars. That is the CEO and the Boards decision.
Ultimately, that decision is officially in the hands of shareholders, which delegate their power to the board. You don't want to delegate that power? Either argue for a different governing structure or don't have a share in a corporation.
Regardless, almost any organized group has a similar structure. You really think the day-to-day finances of the ACLU are dictated directly by ALL its members, or even your local political action group? Any group beyond a couple dozen people usually delegates some of its powers to an executive board or a few officers or something. Nothing generally gets done otherwise. Perfect agreement in large groups is generally impossible.
Vastly different than a political group who's entire purpose is to voice the political opinion of it's members.
Even if your "vastly different" were true, such a political group would also have been prohibited from free speech if it were a non-profit corporation before Citizens United. It wasn't just the evil ATTs of the world that were silenced, it was also the ACLUs or whatever your favorite political group might be.
The Founding Fathers didn't imagine that we would be crazy enough to recognize a nonhuman corporation as a legal person with free speech and all of the other rights.
Let's take a look back at that first amendment, shall we:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Note a few things here. "The people" is only mentioned for the rights to assemble and petition. No subject is given for religion, speech, or press, so it's not clear what entities they refer to.
Furthermore, please note that speech is almost the only right here that reasonably makes sense to refer to individuals. The right to assemble and petition only makes sense when referring to groups of people. The press, even back in the 1700s, usually required a group of people to operate, not often a single guy printing in his basement. And even religions require a corporate structure (not in the business sense, but in the sense of a "body" of believers) to be granted this freedom -- you can't be granted free exercise of religion for something you just make up yourself.
In other words, all of the other first amendment rights only really make sense when applied to groups of people. But, according to your logic, if any of those groups dare to form a legal entity of a "corporation," we should deny the constituent people making up the corporation those rights to act as a group. As long as they petition or assemble or whatever without claiming to be a "corporation," that's fine, but if they pool their resources and form an arbitrary legal construct, we tell them to just go home -- they don't have any rights. Is that what you're saying?
Speech is the only right that makes sense when applied only to individuals. But when read in context, it seems to make sense that groups of people might also have "free speech." Why are those groups of people silenced when they happen to enter into one particular type of legal agreement with each other?
Slashdot Mirror
They might not know the keyboard shortcuts for copy and past, but I doubt they're erasing large chunks of text in one place only to re-type it somewhere else... at least I hope not!
Umm... seriously? You haven't dealt with a lot of average computer users, have you?
Over the past couple decades, I've shown at least half a dozen people how to use cut and paste -- I'm not talking about the keyboard shortcuts: I'm talking about the concept itself.
And these have just been in casual encounters, usually when I'm helping someone do something else on their system. I've never even been in tech support...
Perhaps it is getting a little better with the generation under age 30 or so. But anyone who grew up using a typewriter (or who even used one occasionally when first typing) doesn't naturally understand that there should be such a thing as "cut and paste."
HeLa cells can multiply ad infitum, unlike any other kind ... but they're not Henrieta's native cells, but cancer-derived cells (as far as wikipedia tells).
Cancer cells are not generally invading cells with an origin outside the body. (Only about 20% of cancers are caused by viruses.) Most of their genetic makeup is from the person they inhabit. They just have some small genetic mutation that leads to unfettered reproduction.
It may not have been a desirable change, but it was in fact an internal change in someone's body that caused this. Therefore I'm not sure that these are not "Henrietta's native cells." They may not have the exact DNA that the original embryo did that created her, but neither do a lot of cells in people's bodies. Carcinogens cause mutations in DNA; enough of them will cause one to happen in the wrong place and cause cancer.
What do you think defines "native cells" in a person? Does any cell that has a random mutation from the original DNA prototype fail the test as a "native cell"? If so, that opens up an easy way for lots of companies/governments to get away with taking samples and using your DNA... except not quite "your" DNA... but that of many cells in your body.
I would realy like it to be some sort of GPL where findings are actually intended for the general public.
Does anybody have any experience with such a thing?
Yes.
Don't have a surgical procedure. Request cremation upon death. Those are your options.
Even then, you might run into problems. Many state governments are routinely keeping samples of all citizens from birth -- and many store them indefinitely, with no easy way for parents or citizens to get them released or destroyed. There have been cases where these samples have made it into the hands of private researchers with little or no oversight.
Whether or not such policies have affected the GP is a different question, but for new people born nowadays, it's getting ever harder to stay out of such databases.
Anyhow, this is interesting. But I still wonder whether you think the government is happy with over a million blogs being censored here? Surely some of those blogs held positive views about the government as well as negative ones....
I'm not sure what this actually means, is this supposed to include P2P? Because if it is, it's a lie.
I didn't write the Wikipedia article. I don't claim to have any special knowledge of the status of general censorship in Argentina, but even if your claim is true, it sounds like an argument about ISP policy, not about "Argentina." Perhaps the Wikipedia article is inaccurate regarding individual ISP policy. Perhaps you believe the government should work harder to restrict the freedoms of private ISPs in order to guarantee stronger internet freedoms. There are certainly arguments to be made in that line, which I haven't taken a side on here.
Nevertheless, even if that were so, I still don't understand how the government's neglect to require that ISPs allow transmission of free speech would be the same as "Argentina censoring" free speech. You might think that people should be able to express their positive opinions about Nazis, but a newspaper might decide not to publish letters to the editor that endorse such views: the existence of such a policy at a private corporation does not mean that the country has censored those views.
My point was simple: when I see "Argentina" in a headline, I equate it with the government or perhaps the will of a large segment of the population. My argument was solely about the Slashdot headline, which I still think is inaccurate.
Your story about denial of P2P is interesting, but unless you believe that is related to the policy of "Argentina" as a whole, I'm not sure what it has to do with the headline here.
Your initial reply implied the "Argentina" should be doing something about the censorship. Does that mean you think the government tacitly endorses internet censorship in general? (I really am asking -- I'm curious, since you seem to have first-hand knowledge.)
The government didn't pass a law? So you're saying the judge's order to block those two URLs was illegal -- you do realize that's what you're claiming, right?
No, I guess I don't realize what I'm claiming. Perhaps you should tell me.
Or perhaps what you're going to tell me is what you think I'm claiming.
In no sense was I supporting or arguing against the judge's claim. In fact, my remark about how the government didn't pass a law was superfluous. Let me be more clear about what I actually did claim:
THERE DOESN'T SEEM TO BE ANY EVIDENCE THAT ARGENTINA AS A WHOLE OR ANY PORTION OF ARGENTINA'S GOVERNMENT -- OR POPULATION SIGNIFICANT ENOUGH TO REPRESENT "ARGENTINA" AS A WHOLE -- HAS ORDERED, ENCOURAGED, OR ENDORSED THE CENSORSHIP OF "OVER A MILLION BLOGS."
The decision for this degree of censorship originates in decisions made by some ISPs located in a country.
Any other conclusion about what I was saying on your part about the judge's ruling, its meaning, or whether I agree with it, is your own opinion, not what I was "claiming."
"Argentina" hasn't done anything to fix it either.
Umm, one can argue about the legality or effectiveness of the judge's order in this case, but I don't see evidence that Argentina has a general record of endorsing blanket internet censorship, as the ISPs have done here. In fact, quite the opposite. See the Wikipedia article on "Internet Censorship by Country" where Argentina is included in the list under "No Evidence of Censorship":
Not individually classified by ONI, but is included in the regional overview for Latin America.
Technical filtering of the Internet is uncommon in Argentina. The regulation of Internet content addresses largely the same concerns and strategies seen in North America and Europe, focusing on combating the spread of child pornography and restricting child access to age-inappropriate material. As Internet usage in Argentina increases, so do defamation, hate speech, copyright, and privacy issues.
And...
Since the 1997 presidential declaration regarding "Free Speech on the Internet" that guarantees Internet content the same constitutional protections for freedom of expression, Argentina has become a haven for neo-Nazi and race-hate groups around the region.
Sounds like, if anything, they have a more open policy toward internet freedom than many European countries, for example.
I'm happy to be contradicted, but I don't see evidence that this is anymore than some ISPs implementing a stupid method of blocking that snagged a million blogs rather than the two requested. TFA even says "some ISPs," not all, suggesting that the problem is about a technical choice for a solution for a few private corporations.
It's as if an American court ordered ISPs not to provide internet service to a child molester in Cleveland with multiple clear cases of abuse that were initiated over the internet, and Comcast responded by shutting down the internet to the entire state of Ohio.
Then Slashdot runs a headline: "United States Censors Internet from Ohio."
In such a case, we could argue about the court ruling, but I think we would agree that the headline would be false.
And yet you're too stupid to realize why your comment is dumb.
A bookstore like you describe can't survive unless it's in an area where people actually care about those books. Small town bookstores sell the crap you mentioned, because it SELLS. Voltaire, Rousseau, and Sartre DON'T.
Bookstores sell what people want. You're right. But also sometimes people buy what is being sold.
Basic principle of marketing -- you can accept what the situation is and just give people what they think they want. Or you can find new markets by convincing people they want something they didn't realize they needed before.
Our society is currently somewhat anti-intellectual. A bookstore that tries to fight that (through novel advertising and promotions) would be refreshing to some. Would it make a lot of money? Probably not. But if no one does it, there definitely won't be a market for it anywhere.
You make some money getting people to buy what they already think they want. You usually get more money by finding something else and convincing them. If you only have a selection of what you think people already want, you'll never get them to buy something more.
someone who owns a comic book store in a small city and who is constantly nagged by so-called experts for focusing on manga (which sells) instead of used 80s comic books (which don't sell).
Something sounds wrong with your statement. If you are truly "constantly nagged" for not selling something, presumably those who are nagging you are interested in buying it. They may not be a large market or your target market, but if they are "constantly nagging" you, maybe you should sell them something they want.
On the other hand, perhaps you meant "occasionally asked," in which case it's probably not worth your trouble. Or perhaps these people aren't actually customers, in which case -- why the hell do you give a crap what they say?
But in fact, Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, likes to say that Amazon already collecting state sales taxes.
He may like to say that, but they avoid it at all costs. Recently, when California tried to ensnare Amazon by requiring payment of state income taxes, Amazon shut down all affiliate connections it had to stores in the entire state, disrupting huge amounts of small businesses. Ultimately, many are predicting that it will actually lower state tax revenue, not to mention the loss to the California economy.
Amazon will conform when it absolutely has to, but it's quite misleading to emphasize how much Amazon pays its taxes.
(Of course, you're absolutely right in your reply to the GP.)
The bottom line is: you go to the bookstore to buy a book. You don't need to go there to socialize or to ask advice. You just need the book.
This is a very limited view of what shopping is for many people. Not to stereotype, but while many men go to stores knowing exactly what they are going to buy ahead of time (or having a very small range of well-researched options), most women and many men also like to browse. They like to find surprises. They like to try things out. They might like expert advise, particularly on a topic they are unfamiliar with.
This style of shopping is becoming less common as internet sales go up. But there are lots of people who like this method of shopping. The problem is, as you rightly point out, it often doesn't seem worth it to pay the extra costs when online shops almost always offer a discount.
The unfortunate thing is that those actual stores are worth more than people think. I think I buy more items these days that are inferior than I would have in previous years, and I keep them because... well, it's a pain to mail them back. If I had just spent a few minutes in a real store, I might have found something that was a better fit for me, but I preferred to get the small discount.
On the other hand, the danger of traditional stores is that salesmen might give you bad advice, perhaps getting you to buy more items than you need or sway you toward an item that they can earn more money off of.
How do these things balance out? I don't really know. But I do know that browsing books on a shelf is very different from browsing on Amazon.
I do a lot of research, and I can also say that I've found numerous books that have resulted in great advances in my knowledge because of fortuitous placement of books on shelves close to other things I was looking at. I would not have encountered these books on Amazon.
Thus, perhaps the larger problem is not that people lose the small perks of shopping in a real store, but that they become more narrow-minded, only buying what they already know about or what happens to come up in an Amazon search or a Google search, rather than what they might happen upon through more random browsing.
A judge in Argentina ordered ISPs to block two websites -- leakymails.com and leakymails.blogspot.com. According to Google, many ISPs have simply blocked the IP 216.239.32.2 instead of using a targeted DNS filter.
"Argentina" didn't do anything. The government didn't pass a law. A judge ordered two URLs to be blocked.
Idiot ISPs blocked an IP address that led to a million blogs.
The title should read: Inept Argentinian ISPs Block a Million Blogs Rather Than Blocking Two URLs to Satisfy Court Ruling
Reading and understanding the text is awesome, but ultimately useless.
Not "useless." If you actually understand the text, you should be able to formulate a reasonable opinion of how it should be applied in a particular case. There are cases where subsequent jurisprudence has accrued that flies the face of a plain reading of text. Such cases should be overturned.
For example, if you asked any person on the street whether "regulating interstate commerce" should apply to telling a farmer that he could not grow enough wheat to feed his family and farm animals with no intention of selling it in another state, let alone every selling it period (Wickard v. Filburn), the vast majority of people would say you're a lunatic. Perhaps the federal government should have that power, but it is not found in the Constitution. I believe there is a reason why we have three branches of government, and judges should not be able to usurp the power of the legislature, or, as in the example case, the power granted to the legislatures of the several states as well to amend the Constitution.
Regardless of which you support you can scream until you're blue in the face that these pesky judges and constitutional scholars are doing it wrong as they lead you off in handcuffs or garnish your wages to pay off a judgment to no effect. What matters is how it is applied in the real world. There are hundreds of years of precedent and case law and possibly more, sometimes reaching back to the precedent of our colonial masters.
Meh. Here's how the law really works. The U.S. is not a pure common law country. The Constitution overrides any other law, and any other court precedent. If you understand what the text of the Constitution says, you can almost always make an argument to a court on that basis, even if it flies the in face of preceding interpretations.
Now, the reality is that the interpretation of many issues has been settled, often leading to gross distortions of the original meaning of the Constitution. Convincing a judge to go with an original meaning argument here is probably not going to get you far (stare decisis), unless it's the Supreme Court and the current political climate or opinions of the judges are on your side.
On the other hand, there are many cases which present unique circumstances that are not settled in precedent (or where precedent is not clearly applicable, or was argued badly, or any number of other problems). In such a case, which actually is the case in most situations that work their way up through appellate courts (because it if were settled law, appeal wouldn't be allowed except in cases of technical procedural error), the circumstances are in some way argued to be novel. You can play the precedent game if you like, but it's often good to refer to the original Constitutional text, which should (in an ideal world) be the superior test of an opinion.
In sum, cases are won all the time by appealing to precedent. But when a case presents some novel circumstances, the original Constitution is often just as useful as citing precedent that may not be directly on point. Major Supreme Court decisions of the past few years have often be based on a lot of wrangling over the original text of the Constitution.
Intelligent Design is a very anti-science topic. By definition it cannot prove any of its claims, so it uses negative arguments attacking evolution. It claims that some things cannot be explained by science, so therefore ID is right.
You're absolutely right about most of the people in the ID movement, which is basically a front to promote religion.
However, the basic concept of intelligent design could actually be a scientific topic. It is a perfectly acceptable scientific question to ask whether some superior intelligence (aliens, "gods," whatever you want to call them) might have somehow influenced the development of life on earth. That is the same question an archaeologist asks when he discovers a piece of rock that might be an arrowhead -- can it be explained adequately by natural processes, or is there evidence that intention was involved in creating that thing?
Our understanding of evolutionary mechanics is pretty primitive, though, despite huge advances over the past century. Nevertheless, if you believe extraterrestrial life is possible and could have evolved elsewhere (which should be true, if you believe in evolution), then it is possible that such life may have interacted with the development of life on earth.
A search for evidence of such a thing could in fact be scientific. I'm not saying the ID people do this or that they don't distort things as you say. I'm just saying that arguments which dismiss the question as "unscientific" out of hand aren't justified.
The constitution is against promotion of a religion -- NO pushing of religion. period. Keep religion out of government is the whole point.
Umm, not quite. The Constitution isn't quite that strong. Here's all it says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...
In other words, the government can't "establish" a religion, i.e., make some religion the official government-sponsored religion, which would require people to be part of that religion. It can't say one religion is right, while others are wrong. The government also can't stop you from "freely exercising" your religion.
The point was to allow pluralism in belief systems, not to restrict what one can say about them. I don't see anything in that brief clause that prohibits anyone associated with the government from ever talking about religion or mildly coming out in favor of it. It just prohibits Congress from making a law that says you have to practice a particular religion, or that the state has a particular official religion, or that you can't practice a specific religion that the government doesn't like.
(remember, the king of England was heavily connected to religion...)
Umm, no. The problem was that the king of England persecuted particular religions that weren't his. The Founders wanted to ensure pluralism, not atheism. No monopoly on religion, not "no religion" period.
Furthermore, my point is that government can bash all religion equally without promoting any single one of them;
While it may be within the government's right to do such a thing under free speech, it isn't actually discussed in the Constitution. Neither is the government's right to bash non-religion, for that matter, which is probably equally allowed by free speech. The Constitution requires a neutrality toward the treatment of various religions (and non-religions); anything else is your personal belief, not something written into the Constitution.
...some could argue that the banning of religion is possible to a degree but I'm not going there
Seriously? Here you show you haven't even read the Constitution. "Congress shall make no law... prohibiting the free exercise" of religion. How can you possibly read that that would allow the government to ban religion?
You're looking at the rewriting of history and thinking the rewrite is true. "The victorians" were much less constrained by religion than we currently are today. All of that "founded by christians" and "in god we trust" is a post WWII addition to the history books, mostly on a anti-commie trip.
Agree with the general point. But your specific examples are off.
No one ever disputed that almost all of the "Founding Fathers" were practicing Christians. Tolerant ones, it is true. And quite a few had some qualms about certain tenets of Christianity (as most "Christians" do today), some more than others. (One can argue about Deism all you want, but the fact is that except for Jefferson and a couple others, everybody pretty much went to a mainstream Christian church and publicly supported them.) But the "history books" didn't mention it until recently because everyone assumed it was true. It's only with the rise and recognition of multiculturalism that we had to mention it, and admittedly, some people have gotten defensive about it.
As for "In God We Trust," that's been on currency since the Civil War. And it probably derives from The Star-Spangled Banner's final verse ("...and this be our motto, in God is our trust..."), which of course was written during the War of 1812. It became the national motto after WWII, but it was an important element of U.S. patriotic imagery for at least a century before that.
Again, this is not to dispute your larger point.
It's just that no one is having an intelligent discussion about these topics. They prefer to stake out a position on blind faith and then denounce everyone who disagrees. Seems to me more like a lack of discussion than a shortage of societal challenges or of ideas to deal with those challenges.
Actually, it's both -- one begets the other. Two main political parties now seems to mean that there are only two ideological viewpoints on any issue. Some of these viewpoints may be interesting, with novel ideas; others are not. The media and the political systems are working together to keep every issue to two ideas, and those ideas are usually wrapped up with the "blind faith" in one side of the political "spectrum" (which in reality has many dimensions, despite that fact that politics makes us think there are only one or two).
Suppose a novelist writes a book and accidentally leaves a copy of the electronic manuscript on a public computer (or in another place where it might be accessible, though the author didn't intend it to be). Another person finds it and publishes it first -- making millions of dollars.
Is that theft?
Theft occurs when someone takes away something of value from someone else. Whether that thing is a physical object or not is to some extent irrelevant.
By the way, the example I give is a better example of traditional copyright infringement, i.e., infringing on the right to make copies (and the subsequent profits that come from them). While I don't agree with our current copyright system, I also don't think it's an error to think of distributing someone else's work without their permission as a kind of "theft."
What we need to do is reform the system to make it more rational and workable, not try to undermine the value of intellectual property -- otherwise, creators lose any incentive to invest their time in making something of value. (Note that I am not in favor of rewarding their descendants a century after they die or anything like that, as we do in the ridiculous current system -- the original copyrights were for only a few years to allow authors and publishers to recoup costs.)
Using similar methods, there was a time when you could "detect" epicycles, too. Like dark matter they were a theoretical fudge factor designed to prevent a cherished theory from falling apart due to its lack of successful predictions and explanatory power. In the case of epicycles, the cherished theory was geocentrism.
Not to be too pedantic, but the history is more complicated than that. The "cherished theory" in this case also depended on other assumptions that led to epicycles, perhaps the most notable being circular orbits.
In case you didn't know, Copernicus's theory contained a lot of epicycles too. It wasn't that much less complex than the Ptolemaic theory, despite being heliocentric. Why? Because he assumed circular orbits. It wasn't until Kepler came along with his ellipses that the epicycles disappeared.
The difference is that scientists embrace the whole idea of proving themselves wrong, and are willing to walk away from obviously nonsensical explanations for things.
I think you have a pretty naive view of scientists. You really think ALL people who built a career based on a theory are just willing to say "oops" and let their work and reputation become irrelevant? Sure, there are many scientists who are noble enough to do so. But when you look at the history of science, even recently, there are many popular but disproved ideas that stick around for decades, even longer... until people die off or retire, or until the evidence against them becomes so strong that people realize they can't move forward without trashing the old stuff.
Religions may be worse, but they don't have a monopoly on sticking to ideas that you "know" to be true.
Why do so many people in finance continue to insist on growth? We should be focusing on steady state sustainability.
Let me break it down in simple terms for you. Growth in money is not the same as growth in productivity (actual goods, etc.). Many businesses would love to reach a steady state in terms of real productivity, which is pretty difficult over the long term.
However, this is a very different question from how money works. Small amounts of inflation have been targeted by economists and those who manage the money supply. Why? because deflation has the potential to be really bad (just consider that once deflation sets in, no one has any incentive to spend money unless they actually have to at that moment, because by waiting, they will get stuff more cheaply).
A perfect equilibrium is difficult to maintain, so economists for the past century at least have focused on a slow inflation rate.
In such a system, a business must make some growth in terms of its income at least to keep up with inflation, or else it won't be able to keep up a steady state of productivity. Most businesses might like to stay a couple steps ahead of inflation, so in case the economy tanks or the company comes upon hard times, they have something to fall back on.
Of course, there are also plenty of people in finance and business who like speculation and like rapid growth. But that has always been the case: it almost seems to be a sort of primitive instinct for alpha males. What they're doing is playing a game of dominance; it only nominally has to do with finance and actual business. If they were hunter gatherers, they'd be fighting over women and the rights to ever-greater fishing and hunting territories.
No, exponential means that the advances would be getting greater and greater over time. You're confusing the popular expression of "exponential" with the real one.
Um, no. You're the one who's confusing meanings. A number of elements of computer technology actually show true exponential growth (according to the mathematical definition), and have been for decades.
Now, whether or not our generally inaccurate human perceptions sense that growth accurately, or whether the technology advances in ways that make that growth visible are different questions. But the growth pattern in a number of aspects of computing hardware actually has been exponential.
In most countries, there was a time of two or three decades after the Second World War when wealth flowed downwards overall. It was a slow movement to be sure, but when you look at indicators like inequality, or the share of national income that goes towards wages (as opposed to rents) the trend was clearly in favor of the "small guy".
Not to mention the structure of the tax system, at least in the U.S. For two decades after WWII, the top tax bracket hovered around 90%, so the richest people were only keeping 10% of their nominal income. Even if their nominal incomes look high, that's important to keep in mind. And until the Reagan tax cuts in 1980, they were always about 70%. Meanwhile, the bottom tax bracket was always below 25% after about a decade following WWII.
While taxes aren't everything, the tax system for about 40 years after WWII was incredibly progressive compared to today.
Indirectly, in as much as the voter makes decisions for the country. That never seems to be a clear 1:1 'vote', and you are still ruled by percentage of share, meaning the small voices are buried beneath those billionaires holding majorities of stock.
All of these policies are generally laid out in the corporate charter, and while many structures are like this, they don't have to be. In general, they are for for-profit corporations, since the primary goal of for-profit corporations is to make money, and generally most people accept that the more an investor puts in, the more voice he/she should have, and the more he/she should get out.
Again, though, note that there are plenty of non-profit organizations, many with political (even non-partisan political) goals as their primary reason for existing -- not necessarily with the evil money-based corporate structure you described -- and they were also banned from political speech. What's your rationale for banning the ACLU from political speech?
I have no voice in where my corporation spends it's dollars. That is the CEO and the Boards decision.
Ultimately, that decision is officially in the hands of shareholders, which delegate their power to the board. You don't want to delegate that power? Either argue for a different governing structure or don't have a share in a corporation.
Regardless, almost any organized group has a similar structure. You really think the day-to-day finances of the ACLU are dictated directly by ALL its members, or even your local political action group? Any group beyond a couple dozen people usually delegates some of its powers to an executive board or a few officers or something. Nothing generally gets done otherwise. Perfect agreement in large groups is generally impossible.
Vastly different than a political group who's entire purpose is to voice the political opinion of it's members.
Even if your "vastly different" were true, such a political group would also have been prohibited from free speech if it were a non-profit corporation before Citizens United. It wasn't just the evil ATTs of the world that were silenced, it was also the ACLUs or whatever your favorite political group might be.
The Founding Fathers didn't imagine that we would be crazy enough to recognize a nonhuman corporation as a legal person with free speech and all of the other rights.
Let's take a look back at that first amendment, shall we:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Note a few things here. "The people" is only mentioned for the rights to assemble and petition. No subject is given for religion, speech, or press, so it's not clear what entities they refer to.
Furthermore, please note that speech is almost the only right here that reasonably makes sense to refer to individuals. The right to assemble and petition only makes sense when referring to groups of people. The press, even back in the 1700s, usually required a group of people to operate, not often a single guy printing in his basement. And even religions require a corporate structure (not in the business sense, but in the sense of a "body" of believers) to be granted this freedom -- you can't be granted free exercise of religion for something you just make up yourself.
In other words, all of the other first amendment rights only really make sense when applied to groups of people. But, according to your logic, if any of those groups dare to form a legal entity of a "corporation," we should deny the constituent people making up the corporation those rights to act as a group. As long as they petition or assemble or whatever without claiming to be a "corporation," that's fine, but if they pool their resources and form an arbitrary legal construct, we tell them to just go home -- they don't have any rights. Is that what you're saying?
Speech is the only right that makes sense when applied only to individuals. But when read in context, it seems to make sense that groups of people might also have "free speech." Why are those groups of people silenced when they happen to enter into one particular type of legal agreement with each other?