Is it possible that the honey bees aren't really solving the Traveling Salesmen problem at all, but rather employ some sort of unknown heuristic that leads to solutions that's close enough to optimal for it to look like that they've solved it? Maybe that's what we should be looking at rather than pondering if bees somehow have some sort of superior calculating ability over a supercomputer.
Despite other responses, I don't think you're playing word games here. I think people tend to easily confuse "problems" created by or framed within a particular model with natural phenomena that do not necessarily operate under that model.
Just because we can apply the Traveling Salesman model to the bees' behavior does not mean that the bees are necessarily operating under the assumptions of the problem, which requires us to impose a bunch of specific constraints upon the bees' behavior. If the bees only ever behave in a way that appears optimally to solve the Traveling Salesman problem, we might be able to make other assumptions, but in reality, I'd bet bees only appear to "solve" the problem under particular conditions, with particular constraints (number, location, distribution of flowers, etc.), and in particular chosen time-slices.
Which is to say that they probably operate under some practical heuristic approach that works well under specific conditions.
In what way? Not being flippant, I'm genuinely unsure as to what about calculus has changed in the last 50 years.
I believe the GP was arguing that it's not calculus itself that has gotten easier, but rather the presentation, rigor, etc. in the way it is taught.
Aside from the use of calculators, mathematical software and such, which is not insignificant, calculus itself is not easier.
I learned calculus (not too long ago actually) from Tom Apostol's text, which pulls no punches in terms of mathematical rigor and formalism. Not proofs for the sake of proofs, mind you, but formalism that demonstrates the power of calculus and helps you to understand how it works.
The reason I was taught that way was because I chose to take a calculus sequence intended for math majors, though. At my institution, fifty years ago, everyone learned from a book like Apostol (perhaps another text, dumbed down slightly).
Today, textbooks are often about case study problems, using your graphing calculator, etc. I'm not arguing that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it has shifted the focus away from rigorous formalism (which most students have more trouble with) and to types of problems and methods of solution that are, on the whole, easier and simpler. The overall content is still there, but the presentation and methodology is, I think, more user-friendly to many students.
Extremes work in the short term but long term your health will suffer.
This is the nutritionist line that comes up every time someone mentions a low card diet.
You make very good points -- there are a lot of myths out there about fats, carbs, cholesterol, etc. that the medical community has been touting for decades if not a century or more.
That said, the GP made a good point that you seem to be overlooking -- extremes in one's life are generally bad and rarely do anyone any long-term good. If you look up the stats for the limited long-term studies for low-carb diets, you'll find the long-term success rate is about as good as just about any diet, namely... not so good. Sure, people lose more weight faster, but most diets are by definition unsustainable.
There are exceptions, of course. But for most people, the only thing that leads to sustainable weight loss is a gradual (and often small) change in eating habits, rather than an extreme temporary purge of one type of food or extreme calorie-cutting for a few weeks. Extremes in eating for most people (which includes most diets) are a recipe for a yo-yo weight pattern which has been proven to have negative long-term consequences.
It's largely a myth that young people are more tech savvy than older people, at least in the way you mean here.
All I meant by "tech-savvy" is that young people use technology more and encounter it on a more regular basis. Because of the growing social aspect of using technology, they are also more likely to be in communities that use more technology. That means they are more likely to encounter problems in technology, like hacked accounts of their friends (or their own). I certainly have seen a lot of evidence from hacked accounts among my friends. Such encounters would seem to make it more likely that a young person might pay attention to the issue more. Personal example -- I had a credit card number stolen online in 1997, within a year of when I started making online purchases. Ever since, I've been very sensitive to online security. In the past year, I've received spam from at least three friends' email accounts which had been hacked, and had a friend lose access to his Facebook account after he visited a phishing site. Surely young people are just as likely to see such things?
To use a simple car analogy, when cars were first introduced, people may not have realized the dangers of car crashes. (If you look at early stats, it's clear that many people were quite reckless. And look how long it took for seat belts to become widely adopted.) However, I bet the people who used cars a lot and had lots of friends with cars (young or old) knew people who had crashes or fender-benders and thus might be more conscious of the dangers.
The older person is more likely to be slightly afraid of the technology and thus to follow things like password guidelines to the letter (they're afraid they might screw something up unless they follow instructions precisely). The younger person is more likely to have an "I know what I'm doing" attitude and ignore or not read such detailed instructions.
Oh, I agree with this. And you're correct that this trend may point in the opposite direction.
My point isn't that young people understand technology better. Instead, I just meant that they are more likely to use it more often and thus also encounter problems with it more often (like stolen passwords, hacked accounts, etc.). How they react to those encounters is a separate issue, I guess.
they are (by and large) more tech-savvy than older folks
No, they are not. Younger generations by and large use technology to a greater extent than older folks. They also generally have no clue how any of it works.
You're of course right to some extent, although I'd take issue with not knowing "how any of it works." Younger people, as you say, use such things as tools, and thus they are familiar with the aspects that confront them most directly in things they need to do on an everyday basis. From a practical standpoint, they are more tech-savvy than their parents, because they can change their font or upload things to the internet or whatever basic tasks that might confuse their parents.
The fact is that passwords are an essential element of the user interface, which younger people confront all the time. If they don't understand how to use that aspect effectively, despite having a much greater facility with the UI overall, it seems we either have a user education problem or a design flaw (or both).
I think the main thing that matters here is the greater usage. With that, I'd expect younger people would encounter people with hacked accounts on a more regular basis (friends, family, etc.), which should lead them to modify their behavior and practice better security practices. Personally, I probably know and have experienced personally the results of hacked accounts from friends, etc. at least a dozen times in the past few years, whether in spam I've received from hacked email accounts, friends who have had Facebook accounts hacked after they visited a phishing site, etc. If I've encountered that many, I'd think younger people should have too, and the risks should therefore become more apparent.
It seems to me that knowing how things work beneath the surface is somewhat beside the point in this case.
Thanks for the link. The article is interesting. However...
Most of the supposed sins highlighted in the article are junk.
That's not what the article from your link says. I quote from it:
While we argue that it is rational for users to ignore security advice this does not mean that the advice is bad. In fact much, or even most of it is beneficial. It's better for users to have strong passwords than weak ones, to change them often, and to have a different one for each account. That there is benefit is not in question. However, there is also cost, in the form of user effort.
In other words, the linked article is about why users may be acting in a rational manner (in economic terms) by ignoring security advice, not that the advice is "junk." Getting fire insurance is also a waste of time and money for most people (and perhaps not getting it could be considered a "rational" decision according to some economic logic), but if your house burns down, you might have some real problems.
The reality is that people who better understand online security find that there are plenty of solutions out there to make their lives as easy (if not easier) than those who engage in bad security practices. Just because you don't reuse passwords doesn't mean you have to have them all memorized, for example. There are effective ways to manage such things without a high user cost in time and effort.
If people understood online security better, they'd make use of such technological solutions to be both safe and efficient. That's not what TFA says, though.
Younger people are especially likely to take online security risks. Webroot found that among 18 to 29 year-olds...
The bad practices don't surprise me. But it's disturbing that younger people are more lax about security, even though they are (by and large) more tech-savvy than older folks. I realize this is also the MySpace/Facebook generation that broadcasts personal information all over the internet, but these stats aren't just dumb teenagers.
If anything, I would hope that people who are more familiar with technology would understand the risks better, but that's not the case here... and that's perhaps a more worrying trend than the overall disregard of safe practices.
"EARTH TO DUMB GUY" - your theory makes the unstated assumption that all the shops collude to keep prices artificially high.
The supermarket I shop at consistently has prices that are about 1/3 less than all the other stores in town. I'm serious. I watch the advertisements each week. I compare the prices. "Sale prices" at any other store are around the normal price at my supermarket. For some items, the standard price at my supermarket is consistently about 50% of the normal sales prices at other places. (I'm usually saving 70% or so on these items.) I'm talking about the same exact product -- the same brand, size, etc.
My supermarket is jammed full almost all hours it is open. It has a high turnover rate for obvious reasons, so everything I buy there is fresher than at the other supermarkets, and generally of comparable or higher quality. There are some items that it doesn't stock, but there are others where it has greater variety. The only reason people avoid shopping there is probably because it's so busy it's like a madhouse most of the time and because it's not convenient to public transport.
There's another discount market in town with slightly higher prices, but the quality isn't as good and it tends to be a little dirty, so I don't go there.
I think the only reasonable conclusion from this situation is that yes, in fact, the vast majority of supermarkets in my area are pricing relative to each other and not to the actual prices of goods.
How else would you explain a situation where I very rarely see a sale price at any other store that's lower than the normal price at my supermarket? And my supermarket, by the way, has no need for customer tracking, etc. You don't need a special card to get items on sale.
Sorry, but my empirical evidence from my area at least suggests that most stores are still making quite a profit and any "price wars" are just putting a small dent in a sizable profit.
It makes no sense that "other people should be doing this for me" when all it involves is pressing a couple of buttons, and in the end the result is far more convenient - and should result in savings for you when the store or whatever has to employ less staff.
You obviously don't shop at a busy store or buy for a large family. Like any other worker, cashiers and baggers learn to be more efficient over time. Unless you know the location of the barcode on every item you purchase, I don't think you're going to be faster than they are. And a good bagger is actually something I admire greatly -- they actually can pack things better than I can much more quickly. And no matter how careful I am at putting things in the right order on the belt, a bad bagger will squash my bread and vegetables while letting all my frozen goods overheat. At my local supermarket, I learn to recognize the good cashiers and baggers, while avoiding the rest.
If I'm buying less than 10 items at a time, and the other lines are busy, self-checkout is faster. But at the busy supermarket I usually shop at, they don't have self-checkout -- there are almost never empty checkout aisles, and a lot of people have full carts. But I can usually get checked out faster at this store with a full cart than do self-checkout for a few items myself at another store. They'd have to fill about 1/2 of this store with self-checkout aisles to make it work, because it would slow everything to a crawl if you had hoards of people trying to find bar codes on their items, figuring out what kind of fruit they purchased, etc. on carts stacked full with items.
I've stood in line at other supermarkets waiting to get to self-checkout, and let me tell you that the average express lane checkout at my usual store goes 4-5 times faster than a bunch of people trying to check themselves out with the same small set of items.
Also, chances are that any savings won't be seen by you. Prices in most large supermarkets are set relative to other supermarkets in your area, not to the actual cost of the item. Try shopping at a discount supermarket in your area -- in my area, I can buy 90% of the same goods with almost as much variety (sometimes more) at better quality for about 65-70% of the cost at other local supermarkets. I'm not talking about giant bulk places like Costco or BJs, I'm talking about a regular supermarket where everything is ALWAYS about "30% off" compared to everywhere else. Given that I know I'm already paying an unnecessary premium at the vast majority of supermarkets, I doubt that you'll ever see prices decrease for less cashiers.
but I sure wish that I had been the arbiter of "quality" rather than some asshole monk sitting in a cloister in 10th century Greece looking to crib lines for a passion play.
Ha! Now that's a funny line... not something you hear on Slashdot everyday.
Actually, that's a real problem. Blanket encouragement to everybody to go to college was a big mistake.
Thank you. Yes, it is a real problem, and it hurts not only the individuals who can't find a job or lose useful time in college when they can do something else, but it also hurts colleges.
When a college degree is looked on as something useful for those who want to broaden their minds, it enhances the way colleges function and encourages better thinking and intellectual development.
But when (as is common today) a college is looked on a glorified trade school, it turns colleges into degree factories that aren't about learning anymore -- just about providing a few skills so people can make money. This harms both college students and our society as a whole.
College isn't for everyone, just like calculus isn't for everyone. I think everyone who wants to try hard and go to college should have an opportunity, but the standards should be high and the focus should be on broadening one's thinking and education, not teaching basic skills that could be better learned in a focused trade program or on the job in an apprenticeship.
Saturation has devalued the prospects of a degree, but not having a degree is in no way an advantage over having a degree.
Depends on the job. Have you not heard of being "overqualified"? Lots of people don't get hired all the time because they are overcredentialed and would "cost too much," or a company sees them as a person just looking for a temporary job because they can't get something better (even if they want that job), or sometimes even because employers are afraid of people "too smart" for a job. Advanced degrees are even worse when looking for positions where advanced degrees are not expected.
I've known people to lie on resumes and hide the fact that they had a doctorate because they knew they couldn't get a job otherwise.
The fact is that a mismatch between your degrees and your prospective employer's expectations in terms of degrees is often a disadvantage -- regardless of whether you don't have enough degrees or too many.
Can you show us a page where any changes, even spelling fixes or simple corrections, are reverted?
No, except in edit wars, I haven't seen spelling fixes randomly reverted.
But I have seen pages where simple factual errors have been corrected, along with citations, AND even a note about the edit on the Talk Page, and they are still reverted. It most often happens on articles too obscure to be policed well that are likely to attract people with agendas. (For example, I've seen both left-wing and right-wing religious crazies peddling their incorrect historical/factual assertions on obscure pages on religious topics.)
I've also seen a territorial admin who kept deleting things even after an academic familiar with the field did a survey of dozens of the standard textbooks in an area and posted the results on the Talk Page, proving that the admin's view on the subject was absolutely wrong.
This is perhaps a more wacko subset of the territorial editors the GP was referencing, who are also a problem when it comes to actually making progress on an article.
By the way, I personally know three good-natured experts in a field who were willing to write basic articles but have stopped working on Wikipedia after various run-ins with the aforementioned admin. (They have their own careers that pay them to do research; why should they offer their expertise for free while having to deal with some idiot halfway across the world questioning everything?) But that admin lives on Wikipedia and goes around fixing random spelling/grammar errors all day... so who does the rest of the Wiki bureaucracy side with?
This is a particularly egregious case, but the GP is right that good people are driven away from Wikipedia by territorial editors and even admins.
The second class are usually spammers and come along when the wiki is stale. They are easily detected by the fact that a long static page is suddenly edited by an unknown person. It's very rare to find a real edit happening late after a wiki has solidified.
Ah... now I know why people revert my generally anonymous but high quality edits on neglected articles. Anyone who edits a dormant article must be a spammer or vandal? I don't think this is true.
Trick is, wikis (maybe not Wikipedia but then certainly individual pages) don't have random life cycles but go through growth and stasis.
While I guess you're correct in general, I've seen quite a few situations on Wikipedia where a new user coming in and taking a look at an established article actually leads to a period of revision, reconsideration, and perhaps growth on a given page.
I'm not saying your opinion isn't correct, but it is an overgeneralization. Effectively, I think why your "second class" of vandals is easier to detect than the first is that it's easier to spot bad edits on a page when there are few edits made on a page. Which seems pretty obvious...
By the way, the legal issue here would be "Trespass to Chattels," which is:
Intentional intermeddling with a chattel in possession of another which results in (a) dispossession of the chattel, (b) deprivation of the use of the chattel for a long period of time, (c) impairment of the condition, quality, usefulness of the chattel or (d) harm to the person of the possessor or persons or things in which he has a legally protected interest.
This idea is what is applied to junk faxes and people have been fighting to expand it to spam. For junk faxes, the "usefulness of the chattel" is obviously impaired, since you lose a blank piece of fax paper when someone prints a junk fax on it.
I could be wrong, but intentionally hiding a device in someone's car in such a way that it will not be discovered and causes "impairment of quality" by decreasing gas mileage, however small, could and should be considered trespass.
The case focused on whether or not police trespassed onto a driveway or whether someone had privacy rights for their car. I think this is the wrong way to go -- no one (police or private citizens) can trespass on chattels without proper cause, like a warrant. Police, however, have limited trespass rights on property that isn't posted in many jurisdictions, if they have reasonable suspicions.
But are you allowed to walk into someones garage/driveway, isn't that considered tress-passing ?
Garage? Probably trespassing. Driveway? Probably not, unless it is fenced off or something. It depends on the state, but in some places you'd have a hard time enforcing "no trespass" on your driveway unless you put up signs and/or otherwise explicitly informing parties that they are not allowed onto your property. If you have such a sign up, I think one could argue that police or private citizens were acting illegally by coming onto your driveway.
Also, if you attach a GPS device, aren't you modifying the car, and what is the difference between modifying and destroying ?
If I may leave a GPS device on your car in your driveway, how does this differ from leaving a DVD player? (and if I can leave a DVD player, how about a broken DVD player or other garbage?)
This is what I'm wondering about the case. This would seem to fall under the category of "trespass to chattels," which basically means the trespass of goods or personal property of another person. Of course, for a party to be liable for trespass, it would have to be deliberate and cause harm -- "impairment of the condition, quality, or usefulness of the chattel." My guess is that the effect of a small transmitter is not enough to be considered damaging, while leaving a bunch of trash might be.
On the other hand, the US has made "junk faxes" illegal on this basis -- since you have to pay for the paper and equipment running to print out a junk fax, you can sue the person that sent the unsolicited fax, and legally you could get $500 for each violation, even if the cost to you was only less than a cent.
So -- my question knowing all this is: carrying extra weight around in your car will cost you money, since you need more gas to move more weight around. Effectively, extra weight "impairs the quality" of the car by decreasing its gas mileage. The weight of these devices is undoubtedly rather small, but not zero. Even if only a few ounces, over time that could cost an owner at least a few cents, if not more, to pay for the extra gas.
In this case, leaving a DVD player in your car might not rise to the level of damage for a claim of trespass, since you would just remove it, but hiding a DVD player would definitely impair the performance of your car, because your engine has to push around extra weight (however small). This tracking device might be smaller, but the issue is still there. If a fax sender can be liable for $500 in damages for causing a fax machine to print one page that might cost less than a cent, can't the police (or private citizens planting tracking devices) be liable for damages here?
Moral of the story -- as long as this ruling stands in the US, put up "No trespassing" signs making clear in the wording that police as well as private citizens should take notice. Of course, that's still not going to prevent police from planting such a device when your car is parked on public property.
I agree with you that the GP is confusing some things. However --
3. The idea that government agents, outside of expressly delegated powers, have only the privileges of private individuals, which is a corollary to #2 and generally is applicable only to the extent that #2 is.
While you are correct in general, ordinarily speaking the citizens of the US by default have the powers of law enforcement, through the common law concept of posse comitatus. Such powers are generally only in force when apprehending someone during or suspected of committing a felony, however.
The police aren't usually allowed to spy on someone or put intense surveillance on someone without a warrant; police engaging in such actions can be charged with harassment ("surveillance abuse"), just as private citizens can. More intense surveillance involves warrants, but those in theory could be granted by a judge to anyone -- private citizen or police. The fact that a warrant would not be required here seems to imply that such surveillance would be legal for both police and private citizens. Correct me if you can come up with a legal precedent that implies otherwise.
Citizen Arrest only lets you detain the person until an actual officer of the law arrives.
Not true. That would be "detention," not "arrest." In most US states (excepting North Carolina and perhaps a couple other places, which only allow detention), you have the right to detain, if necessary restrain, and if necessary transport someone who has committed a felony to the proper authorities for legal action. (Though each of these steps risk further liability if you are in error.)
In most jurisdictions today, the "proper authorities" would involve giving the suspect over to the police for holding until further action can be taken, but such a holding stage is not technically required outside of proper processing of suspects before arraignment. If we didn't require statements to be taken, arrest reports, etc. before bail proceedings or arraignment, I assume a citizen could still walk a suspect directly into court without involving the police. However, the US isn't the Old West, so I doubt that has happened anytime recently.
These things are small, about the size of a power supply on a notebook PC. Those used by the police are miniaturized to make them harder to detect for obvious reasons.
I was in part being facetious with my post, but even if we take it seriously, I'm not sure the actual weight matters. How many other things can the government force you to carry around in your car? Registration, inspection sticker, license plate? At least there are legitimate safety reasons for having those. Whether the thing weighs a pound or a couple ounces, effectively this ruling says that they can encumber your car without your permission. Why do I have to pay to transport their equipment around?
I ask again, if I can sue a company for $500 if they use less than a cent worth of my equipment, why do I have to pay more than a cent to carry stuff around for the police?
Your spouse could be using one on you now.
Unlikely, since my spouse owns the car, and I almost never use it without her.
You are looking at this wrong, here in the USA the laws do not tell us what we can do, they tell us what we can not do.
So, if it is not considered a violation of the 5th amendment and there is no law saying "You can not attach GPS devices to police cars" or "You can not monitor police" or any variation there of, then it is legal.
First, grammar -- you mean "cannot," not "can not."
"You cannot do this." -- means you are not allowed to do this.
"You can not do this." -- means you have the option not to do this (but perhaps also can do it).
Second, in theory anyway, the laws do actually have quite a few things to say about what we "can" do. The first amendment rights like freedom of speech, assembly, religion, petition, and press come to mind. Granted, the amendment is framed as "Congress shall make no law..." but the effect on the people is that they are effectively told what they are able to do freely.
Perhaps a more pedantic question, but who pays for the extra gas to carry around this device? On a small car, an extra 100 lbs. can cost 3-5 cents per gallon more to carry. Suppose a tracking device weighs a pound (it's probably less, but just for an estimate), that could begin to cost a person being tracked an extra few cents every few weeks if they drive a lot.
I know this sounds insignificant, but people don't get to use your mechanical property without your permission. That's why you can sue a company for $500 if they send you a junk fax, even if the actual cost of printing the fax was only a few cents.
If the government wants to install a device on my car without my permission that I have to pay to lug around, can I sue them or at least get reimbursed??
(Btw, I know people have been unsuccessful at equating junk faxes with spam for years, but the junk fax precedent exists nevertheless, and perhaps it should apply to this situation.)
LOL: OK, so if we stopped having leap seconds that would never have any bearing on leap days then.
Yes, this is correct, despite your LOL indicating you were being facetious.
Seasons are determined by where the earth is in its orbit. Time of day is determined by where the earth is in its rotation. Leap days make a correction so that calendar days occur when the earth is at a "similar place" in its orbit. ("Similar place" isn't a good term -- it actually has to do with when the tilt of the earth is in a particular relationship to the sun.) Leap seconds make a correction so that the noon occurs when the sun appears at its highest point in the sky. When the sun is highest in the sky has nothing to do with the season.
Theoretically, it is true that if we never made corrections for leap seconds, we would eventually need a leap day, but that would require clock time to go all the way around a 24-hour cycle first, which people would obviously find quite confusing. ("It's 9 AM and sunset... that's fine.") That would take many, many, many thousands of years. In contrast, we need leap-year corrections almost every century (years divisible by 100 but not divisible by 400 don't have a leap year -- the year 2000 was, but the year 2100 won't be), and we'll probably need to throw in an extra leap day correction in the next couple thousand years.
In essence, rotation versus revolution. These are two different motions, and they are corrected two different ways.
There is no clear answer, since the results depend heavily on the breakdown of electric usage (A/C, eletronics, etc), which varies depending on your region.
Agreed, but energy savings is the only issue. Much greater effects seem to come from increased economic activity from people being able to do activities outdoors later in the evening during the summer. Yes, it hurts a few industries (farmers, drive-in movies, etc.), but overall the economic benefit seems to be positive -- and in any case probably outweighs the minor energy savings/cost.
Think of the economy! Daylight Saving Time, which effectively adds a "leap hour" to the day during the summer, has been advocated by various retailers for many years on the basis that they get millions of dollars extra revenue from it. It's tough to get actual figures, but the total number across all commercial industries might be a few billion dollars or more. Pushing things back by a second, therefore, could cost millions of dollars!
Also, ya know, this was exactly the same thinking they had with the old Roman calendar cycles. Add in a few extra days every few years, and it will work out. Except it didn't, until things got so far off that when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon on January 10, it was mid autumn. He later instituted the Julian calendar and needed to make the year 46 BC 445 days long (the so-called "year of confusion") in order to correct the errors.
So, the Julian calendar got started two thousand years ago. The astronomers at the time knew the year wasn't exactly 365.25 days, but the error was too small apparently to worry about (and probably wasn't accurately measured).
Fast forward about 1500 years, the calendar had already gotten significantly out of whack (about 10 days) before anyone bothered to fix it (with the new Gregorian calendar).
The Gregorian calendar also has its flaws and will need to be adjusted at some point, but the adjustments probably need to be carried out on an ad-hoc basis in a couple thousand years as the earth's rotation slows.
Anyhow, the leap second problem is much less significant, I agree. But if anything, history shows us that acceptance of known inaccuracy means that those inaccuracies will be ignored until they cause a major problem, and given how many systems depend on very accurate timekeeping, perhaps we should make sure they can be adjusted for leap seconds, instead of just ignoring the problem until something bad happens.
Many of the works we consider "great", and part of our cultural heritage, were produced before copyright, and many were also produced without the prospect of payment in the artist's lifetime.
Umm, could you name some of those "great" works, please?
The first music books that were printed appeared in the early 1500s by Petrucci. The first copyrights were granted in individual cities in Italy, maybe starting in Venice in 1486. Notably, Petrucci was in Venice and learned the printing trade there. While he didn't get a modern copyright when he started publishing, instead he was granted the exclusive right to be the sole publisher of music in Venice for 20 years. Often, before individual works were copyrighted, publishers were the ones who were granted permissions, effectively producing a system more restrictive than modern copyright.
Copyright was part of music since music was widely distributed. If you can name some "great works" like motets written by Machaut in the 14th century, maybe we can talk, but I doubt the average modern listener has even heard of such things, let alone considers them "great works."
As for the idea that "many were also produced without the prospect of payment in the artist's lifetime" -- again, name some please?
The "starving artist" was largely an invention of the 19th century. Composers before the 1900s wrote music because they had a job to write music and needed the money. Most composers from the 1900s that we remember today also wrote music to get it published... those who didn't were generally independently wealthy.
I'm not getting involved in your views on modern copyright, but in terms of history, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it possible that the honey bees aren't really solving the Traveling Salesmen problem at all, but rather employ some sort of unknown heuristic that leads to solutions that's close enough to optimal for it to look like that they've solved it? Maybe that's what we should be looking at rather than pondering if bees somehow have some sort of superior calculating ability over a supercomputer.
Despite other responses, I don't think you're playing word games here. I think people tend to easily confuse "problems" created by or framed within a particular model with natural phenomena that do not necessarily operate under that model.
Just because we can apply the Traveling Salesman model to the bees' behavior does not mean that the bees are necessarily operating under the assumptions of the problem, which requires us to impose a bunch of specific constraints upon the bees' behavior. If the bees only ever behave in a way that appears optimally to solve the Traveling Salesman problem, we might be able to make other assumptions, but in reality, I'd bet bees only appear to "solve" the problem under particular conditions, with particular constraints (number, location, distribution of flowers, etc.), and in particular chosen time-slices.
Which is to say that they probably operate under some practical heuristic approach that works well under specific conditions.
In what way? Not being flippant, I'm genuinely unsure as to what about calculus has changed in the last 50 years.
I believe the GP was arguing that it's not calculus itself that has gotten easier, but rather the presentation, rigor, etc. in the way it is taught.
Aside from the use of calculators, mathematical software and such, which is not insignificant, calculus itself is not easier.
I learned calculus (not too long ago actually) from Tom Apostol's text, which pulls no punches in terms of mathematical rigor and formalism. Not proofs for the sake of proofs, mind you, but formalism that demonstrates the power of calculus and helps you to understand how it works.
The reason I was taught that way was because I chose to take a calculus sequence intended for math majors, though. At my institution, fifty years ago, everyone learned from a book like Apostol (perhaps another text, dumbed down slightly).
Today, textbooks are often about case study problems, using your graphing calculator, etc. I'm not arguing that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it has shifted the focus away from rigorous formalism (which most students have more trouble with) and to types of problems and methods of solution that are, on the whole, easier and simpler. The overall content is still there, but the presentation and methodology is, I think, more user-friendly to many students.
Extremes work in the short term but long term your health will suffer.
This is the nutritionist line that comes up every time someone mentions a low card diet.
You make very good points -- there are a lot of myths out there about fats, carbs, cholesterol, etc. that the medical community has been touting for decades if not a century or more.
That said, the GP made a good point that you seem to be overlooking -- extremes in one's life are generally bad and rarely do anyone any long-term good. If you look up the stats for the limited long-term studies for low-carb diets, you'll find the long-term success rate is about as good as just about any diet, namely... not so good. Sure, people lose more weight faster, but most diets are by definition unsustainable.
There are exceptions, of course. But for most people, the only thing that leads to sustainable weight loss is a gradual (and often small) change in eating habits, rather than an extreme temporary purge of one type of food or extreme calorie-cutting for a few weeks. Extremes in eating for most people (which includes most diets) are a recipe for a yo-yo weight pattern which has been proven to have negative long-term consequences.
It's largely a myth that young people are more tech savvy than older people, at least in the way you mean here.
All I meant by "tech-savvy" is that young people use technology more and encounter it on a more regular basis. Because of the growing social aspect of using technology, they are also more likely to be in communities that use more technology. That means they are more likely to encounter problems in technology, like hacked accounts of their friends (or their own). I certainly have seen a lot of evidence from hacked accounts among my friends. Such encounters would seem to make it more likely that a young person might pay attention to the issue more. Personal example -- I had a credit card number stolen online in 1997, within a year of when I started making online purchases. Ever since, I've been very sensitive to online security. In the past year, I've received spam from at least three friends' email accounts which had been hacked, and had a friend lose access to his Facebook account after he visited a phishing site. Surely young people are just as likely to see such things?
To use a simple car analogy, when cars were first introduced, people may not have realized the dangers of car crashes. (If you look at early stats, it's clear that many people were quite reckless. And look how long it took for seat belts to become widely adopted.) However, I bet the people who used cars a lot and had lots of friends with cars (young or old) knew people who had crashes or fender-benders and thus might be more conscious of the dangers.
The older person is more likely to be slightly afraid of the technology and thus to follow things like password guidelines to the letter (they're afraid they might screw something up unless they follow instructions precisely). The younger person is more likely to have an "I know what I'm doing" attitude and ignore or not read such detailed instructions.
Oh, I agree with this. And you're correct that this trend may point in the opposite direction.
My point isn't that young people understand technology better. Instead, I just meant that they are more likely to use it more often and thus also encounter problems with it more often (like stolen passwords, hacked accounts, etc.). How they react to those encounters is a separate issue, I guess.
they are (by and large) more tech-savvy than older folks
No, they are not. Younger generations by and large use technology to a greater extent than older folks. They also generally have no clue how any of it works.
You're of course right to some extent, although I'd take issue with not knowing "how any of it works." Younger people, as you say, use such things as tools, and thus they are familiar with the aspects that confront them most directly in things they need to do on an everyday basis. From a practical standpoint, they are more tech-savvy than their parents, because they can change their font or upload things to the internet or whatever basic tasks that might confuse their parents.
The fact is that passwords are an essential element of the user interface, which younger people confront all the time. If they don't understand how to use that aspect effectively, despite having a much greater facility with the UI overall, it seems we either have a user education problem or a design flaw (or both).
I think the main thing that matters here is the greater usage. With that, I'd expect younger people would encounter people with hacked accounts on a more regular basis (friends, family, etc.), which should lead them to modify their behavior and practice better security practices. Personally, I probably know and have experienced personally the results of hacked accounts from friends, etc. at least a dozen times in the past few years, whether in spam I've received from hacked email accounts, friends who have had Facebook accounts hacked after they visited a phishing site, etc. If I've encountered that many, I'd think younger people should have too, and the risks should therefore become more apparent.
It seems to me that knowing how things work beneath the surface is somewhat beside the point in this case.
perhaps young people do understand online security better. . . http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/16/1931214/Users-Rejecting-Security-Advice-Considered-Rational
Thanks for the link. The article is interesting. However...
Most of the supposed sins highlighted in the article are junk.
That's not what the article from your link says. I quote from it:
While we argue that it is rational for users to ignore security advice this does not mean that the advice is bad. In fact much, or even most of it is beneficial. It's better for users to have strong passwords than weak ones, to change them often, and to have a different one for each account. That there is benefit is not in question. However, there is also cost, in the form of user effort.
In other words, the linked article is about why users may be acting in a rational manner (in economic terms) by ignoring security advice, not that the advice is "junk." Getting fire insurance is also a waste of time and money for most people (and perhaps not getting it could be considered a "rational" decision according to some economic logic), but if your house burns down, you might have some real problems.
The reality is that people who better understand online security find that there are plenty of solutions out there to make their lives as easy (if not easier) than those who engage in bad security practices. Just because you don't reuse passwords doesn't mean you have to have them all memorized, for example. There are effective ways to manage such things without a high user cost in time and effort.
If people understood online security better, they'd make use of such technological solutions to be both safe and efficient. That's not what TFA says, though.
Younger people are especially likely to take online security risks. Webroot found that among 18 to 29 year-olds...
The bad practices don't surprise me. But it's disturbing that younger people are more lax about security, even though they are (by and large) more tech-savvy than older folks. I realize this is also the MySpace/Facebook generation that broadcasts personal information all over the internet, but these stats aren't just dumb teenagers.
If anything, I would hope that people who are more familiar with technology would understand the risks better, but that's not the case here... and that's perhaps a more worrying trend than the overall disregard of safe practices.
"EARTH TO DUMB GUY" - your theory makes the unstated assumption that all the shops collude to keep prices artificially high.
The supermarket I shop at consistently has prices that are about 1/3 less than all the other stores in town. I'm serious. I watch the advertisements each week. I compare the prices. "Sale prices" at any other store are around the normal price at my supermarket. For some items, the standard price at my supermarket is consistently about 50% of the normal sales prices at other places. (I'm usually saving 70% or so on these items.) I'm talking about the same exact product -- the same brand, size, etc.
My supermarket is jammed full almost all hours it is open. It has a high turnover rate for obvious reasons, so everything I buy there is fresher than at the other supermarkets, and generally of comparable or higher quality. There are some items that it doesn't stock, but there are others where it has greater variety. The only reason people avoid shopping there is probably because it's so busy it's like a madhouse most of the time and because it's not convenient to public transport.
There's another discount market in town with slightly higher prices, but the quality isn't as good and it tends to be a little dirty, so I don't go there.
I think the only reasonable conclusion from this situation is that yes, in fact, the vast majority of supermarkets in my area are pricing relative to each other and not to the actual prices of goods.
How else would you explain a situation where I very rarely see a sale price at any other store that's lower than the normal price at my supermarket? And my supermarket, by the way, has no need for customer tracking, etc. You don't need a special card to get items on sale.
Sorry, but my empirical evidence from my area at least suggests that most stores are still making quite a profit and any "price wars" are just putting a small dent in a sizable profit.
It makes no sense that "other people should be doing this for me" when all it involves is pressing a couple of buttons, and in the end the result is far more convenient - and should result in savings for you when the store or whatever has to employ less staff.
You obviously don't shop at a busy store or buy for a large family. Like any other worker, cashiers and baggers learn to be more efficient over time. Unless you know the location of the barcode on every item you purchase, I don't think you're going to be faster than they are. And a good bagger is actually something I admire greatly -- they actually can pack things better than I can much more quickly. And no matter how careful I am at putting things in the right order on the belt, a bad bagger will squash my bread and vegetables while letting all my frozen goods overheat. At my local supermarket, I learn to recognize the good cashiers and baggers, while avoiding the rest.
If I'm buying less than 10 items at a time, and the other lines are busy, self-checkout is faster. But at the busy supermarket I usually shop at, they don't have self-checkout -- there are almost never empty checkout aisles, and a lot of people have full carts. But I can usually get checked out faster at this store with a full cart than do self-checkout for a few items myself at another store. They'd have to fill about 1/2 of this store with self-checkout aisles to make it work, because it would slow everything to a crawl if you had hoards of people trying to find bar codes on their items, figuring out what kind of fruit they purchased, etc. on carts stacked full with items.
I've stood in line at other supermarkets waiting to get to self-checkout, and let me tell you that the average express lane checkout at my usual store goes 4-5 times faster than a bunch of people trying to check themselves out with the same small set of items.
Also, chances are that any savings won't be seen by you. Prices in most large supermarkets are set relative to other supermarkets in your area, not to the actual cost of the item. Try shopping at a discount supermarket in your area -- in my area, I can buy 90% of the same goods with almost as much variety (sometimes more) at better quality for about 65-70% of the cost at other local supermarkets. I'm not talking about giant bulk places like Costco or BJs, I'm talking about a regular supermarket where everything is ALWAYS about "30% off" compared to everywhere else. Given that I know I'm already paying an unnecessary premium at the vast majority of supermarkets, I doubt that you'll ever see prices decrease for less cashiers.
but I sure wish that I had been the arbiter of "quality" rather than some asshole monk sitting in a cloister in 10th century Greece looking to crib lines for a passion play.
Ha! Now that's a funny line... not something you hear on Slashdot everyday.
Actually, that's a real problem. Blanket encouragement to everybody to go to college was a big mistake.
Thank you. Yes, it is a real problem, and it hurts not only the individuals who can't find a job or lose useful time in college when they can do something else, but it also hurts colleges.
When a college degree is looked on as something useful for those who want to broaden their minds, it enhances the way colleges function and encourages better thinking and intellectual development.
But when (as is common today) a college is looked on a glorified trade school, it turns colleges into degree factories that aren't about learning anymore -- just about providing a few skills so people can make money. This harms both college students and our society as a whole.
College isn't for everyone, just like calculus isn't for everyone. I think everyone who wants to try hard and go to college should have an opportunity, but the standards should be high and the focus should be on broadening one's thinking and education, not teaching basic skills that could be better learned in a focused trade program or on the job in an apprenticeship.
Saturation has devalued the prospects of a degree, but not having a degree is in no way an advantage over having a degree.
Depends on the job. Have you not heard of being "overqualified"? Lots of people don't get hired all the time because they are overcredentialed and would "cost too much," or a company sees them as a person just looking for a temporary job because they can't get something better (even if they want that job), or sometimes even because employers are afraid of people "too smart" for a job. Advanced degrees are even worse when looking for positions where advanced degrees are not expected.
I've known people to lie on resumes and hide the fact that they had a doctorate because they knew they couldn't get a job otherwise.
The fact is that a mismatch between your degrees and your prospective employer's expectations in terms of degrees is often a disadvantage -- regardless of whether you don't have enough degrees or too many.
Can you show us a page where any changes, even spelling fixes or simple corrections, are reverted?
No, except in edit wars, I haven't seen spelling fixes randomly reverted.
But I have seen pages where simple factual errors have been corrected, along with citations, AND even a note about the edit on the Talk Page, and they are still reverted. It most often happens on articles too obscure to be policed well that are likely to attract people with agendas. (For example, I've seen both left-wing and right-wing religious crazies peddling their incorrect historical/factual assertions on obscure pages on religious topics.)
I've also seen a territorial admin who kept deleting things even after an academic familiar with the field did a survey of dozens of the standard textbooks in an area and posted the results on the Talk Page, proving that the admin's view on the subject was absolutely wrong.
This is perhaps a more wacko subset of the territorial editors the GP was referencing, who are also a problem when it comes to actually making progress on an article.
By the way, I personally know three good-natured experts in a field who were willing to write basic articles but have stopped working on Wikipedia after various run-ins with the aforementioned admin. (They have their own careers that pay them to do research; why should they offer their expertise for free while having to deal with some idiot halfway across the world questioning everything?) But that admin lives on Wikipedia and goes around fixing random spelling/grammar errors all day... so who does the rest of the Wiki bureaucracy side with?
This is a particularly egregious case, but the GP is right that good people are driven away from Wikipedia by territorial editors and even admins.
The second class are usually spammers and come along when the wiki is stale. They are easily detected by the fact that a long static page is suddenly edited by an unknown person. It's very rare to find a real edit happening late after a wiki has solidified.
Ah... now I know why people revert my generally anonymous but high quality edits on neglected articles. Anyone who edits a dormant article must be a spammer or vandal? I don't think this is true.
Trick is, wikis (maybe not Wikipedia but then certainly individual pages) don't have random life cycles but go through growth and stasis.
While I guess you're correct in general, I've seen quite a few situations on Wikipedia where a new user coming in and taking a look at an established article actually leads to a period of revision, reconsideration, and perhaps growth on a given page.
I'm not saying your opinion isn't correct, but it is an overgeneralization. Effectively, I think why your "second class" of vandals is easier to detect than the first is that it's easier to spot bad edits on a page when there are few edits made on a page. Which seems pretty obvious...
Intentional intermeddling with a chattel in possession of another which results in (a) dispossession of the chattel, (b) deprivation of the use of the chattel for a long period of time, (c) impairment of the condition, quality, usefulness of the chattel or (d) harm to the person of the possessor or persons or things in which he has a legally protected interest.
This idea is what is applied to junk faxes and people have been fighting to expand it to spam. For junk faxes, the "usefulness of the chattel" is obviously impaired, since you lose a blank piece of fax paper when someone prints a junk fax on it.
I could be wrong, but intentionally hiding a device in someone's car in such a way that it will not be discovered and causes "impairment of quality" by decreasing gas mileage, however small, could and should be considered trespass.
The case focused on whether or not police trespassed onto a driveway or whether someone had privacy rights for their car. I think this is the wrong way to go -- no one (police or private citizens) can trespass on chattels without proper cause, like a warrant. Police, however, have limited trespass rights on property that isn't posted in many jurisdictions, if they have reasonable suspicions.
But are you allowed to walk into someones garage/driveway, isn't that considered tress-passing ?
Garage? Probably trespassing. Driveway? Probably not, unless it is fenced off or something. It depends on the state, but in some places you'd have a hard time enforcing "no trespass" on your driveway unless you put up signs and/or otherwise explicitly informing parties that they are not allowed onto your property. If you have such a sign up, I think one could argue that police or private citizens were acting illegally by coming onto your driveway.
Also, if you attach a GPS device, aren't you modifying the car, and what is the difference between modifying and destroying ?
If I may leave a GPS device on your car in your driveway, how does this differ from leaving a DVD player? (and if I can leave a DVD player, how about a broken DVD player or other garbage?)
This is what I'm wondering about the case. This would seem to fall under the category of "trespass to chattels," which basically means the trespass of goods or personal property of another person. Of course, for a party to be liable for trespass, it would have to be deliberate and cause harm -- "impairment of the condition, quality, or usefulness of the chattel." My guess is that the effect of a small transmitter is not enough to be considered damaging, while leaving a bunch of trash might be.
On the other hand, the US has made "junk faxes" illegal on this basis -- since you have to pay for the paper and equipment running to print out a junk fax, you can sue the person that sent the unsolicited fax, and legally you could get $500 for each violation, even if the cost to you was only less than a cent.
So -- my question knowing all this is: carrying extra weight around in your car will cost you money, since you need more gas to move more weight around. Effectively, extra weight "impairs the quality" of the car by decreasing its gas mileage. The weight of these devices is undoubtedly rather small, but not zero. Even if only a few ounces, over time that could cost an owner at least a few cents, if not more, to pay for the extra gas.
In this case, leaving a DVD player in your car might not rise to the level of damage for a claim of trespass, since you would just remove it, but hiding a DVD player would definitely impair the performance of your car, because your engine has to push around extra weight (however small). This tracking device might be smaller, but the issue is still there. If a fax sender can be liable for $500 in damages for causing a fax machine to print one page that might cost less than a cent, can't the police (or private citizens planting tracking devices) be liable for damages here?
Moral of the story -- as long as this ruling stands in the US, put up "No trespassing" signs making clear in the wording that police as well as private citizens should take notice. Of course, that's still not going to prevent police from planting such a device when your car is parked on public property.
3. The idea that government agents, outside of expressly delegated powers, have only the privileges of private individuals, which is a corollary to #2 and generally is applicable only to the extent that #2 is.
While you are correct in general, ordinarily speaking the citizens of the US by default have the powers of law enforcement, through the common law concept of posse comitatus. Such powers are generally only in force when apprehending someone during or suspected of committing a felony, however.
The police aren't usually allowed to spy on someone or put intense surveillance on someone without a warrant; police engaging in such actions can be charged with harassment ("surveillance abuse"), just as private citizens can. More intense surveillance involves warrants, but those in theory could be granted by a judge to anyone -- private citizen or police. The fact that a warrant would not be required here seems to imply that such surveillance would be legal for both police and private citizens. Correct me if you can come up with a legal precedent that implies otherwise.
Citizen Arrest only lets you detain the person until an actual officer of the law arrives.
Not true. That would be "detention," not "arrest." In most US states (excepting North Carolina and perhaps a couple other places, which only allow detention), you have the right to detain, if necessary restrain, and if necessary transport someone who has committed a felony to the proper authorities for legal action. (Though each of these steps risk further liability if you are in error.) In most jurisdictions today, the "proper authorities" would involve giving the suspect over to the police for holding until further action can be taken, but such a holding stage is not technically required outside of proper processing of suspects before arraignment. If we didn't require statements to be taken, arrest reports, etc. before bail proceedings or arraignment, I assume a citizen could still walk a suspect directly into court without involving the police. However, the US isn't the Old West, so I doubt that has happened anytime recently.
These things are small, about the size of a power supply on a notebook PC. Those used by the police are miniaturized to make them harder to detect for obvious reasons.
I was in part being facetious with my post, but even if we take it seriously, I'm not sure the actual weight matters. How many other things can the government force you to carry around in your car? Registration, inspection sticker, license plate? At least there are legitimate safety reasons for having those. Whether the thing weighs a pound or a couple ounces, effectively this ruling says that they can encumber your car without your permission. Why do I have to pay to transport their equipment around?
I ask again, if I can sue a company for $500 if they use less than a cent worth of my equipment, why do I have to pay more than a cent to carry stuff around for the police?
Your spouse could be using one on you now.
Unlikely, since my spouse owns the car, and I almost never use it without her.
You are looking at this wrong, here in the USA the laws do not tell us what we can do, they tell us what we can not do.
So, if it is not considered a violation of the 5th amendment and there is no law saying "You can not attach GPS devices to police cars" or "You can not monitor police" or any variation there of, then it is legal.
First, grammar -- you mean "cannot," not "can not."
Second, in theory anyway, the laws do actually have quite a few things to say about what we "can" do. The first amendment rights like freedom of speech, assembly, religion, petition, and press come to mind. Granted, the amendment is framed as "Congress shall make no law..." but the effect on the people is that they are effectively told what they are able to do freely.
Perhaps a more pedantic question, but who pays for the extra gas to carry around this device? On a small car, an extra 100 lbs. can cost 3-5 cents per gallon more to carry. Suppose a tracking device weighs a pound (it's probably less, but just for an estimate), that could begin to cost a person being tracked an extra few cents every few weeks if they drive a lot.
I know this sounds insignificant, but people don't get to use your mechanical property without your permission. That's why you can sue a company for $500 if they send you a junk fax, even if the actual cost of printing the fax was only a few cents.
If the government wants to install a device on my car without my permission that I have to pay to lug around, can I sue them or at least get reimbursed??
(Btw, I know people have been unsuccessful at equating junk faxes with spam for years, but the junk fax precedent exists nevertheless, and perhaps it should apply to this situation.)
LOL: OK, so if we stopped having leap seconds that would never have any bearing on leap days then.
Yes, this is correct, despite your LOL indicating you were being facetious.
Seasons are determined by where the earth is in its orbit. Time of day is determined by where the earth is in its rotation. Leap days make a correction so that calendar days occur when the earth is at a "similar place" in its orbit. ("Similar place" isn't a good term -- it actually has to do with when the tilt of the earth is in a particular relationship to the sun.) Leap seconds make a correction so that the noon occurs when the sun appears at its highest point in the sky. When the sun is highest in the sky has nothing to do with the season.
Theoretically, it is true that if we never made corrections for leap seconds, we would eventually need a leap day, but that would require clock time to go all the way around a 24-hour cycle first, which people would obviously find quite confusing. ("It's 9 AM and sunset... that's fine.") That would take many, many, many thousands of years. In contrast, we need leap-year corrections almost every century (years divisible by 100 but not divisible by 400 don't have a leap year -- the year 2000 was, but the year 2100 won't be), and we'll probably need to throw in an extra leap day correction in the next couple thousand years.
In essence, rotation versus revolution. These are two different motions, and they are corrected two different ways.
There is no clear answer, since the results depend heavily on the breakdown of electric usage (A/C, eletronics, etc), which varies depending on your region.
Agreed, but energy savings is the only issue. Much greater effects seem to come from increased economic activity from people being able to do activities outdoors later in the evening during the summer. Yes, it hurts a few industries (farmers, drive-in movies, etc.), but overall the economic benefit seems to be positive -- and in any case probably outweighs the minor energy savings/cost.
Think of the economy! Daylight Saving Time, which effectively adds a "leap hour" to the day during the summer, has been advocated by various retailers for many years on the basis that they get millions of dollars extra revenue from it. It's tough to get actual figures, but the total number across all commercial industries might be a few billion dollars or more. Pushing things back by a second, therefore, could cost millions of dollars!
Also, ya know, this was exactly the same thinking they had with the old Roman calendar cycles. Add in a few extra days every few years, and it will work out. Except it didn't, until things got so far off that when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon on January 10, it was mid autumn. He later instituted the Julian calendar and needed to make the year 46 BC 445 days long (the so-called "year of confusion") in order to correct the errors.
So, the Julian calendar got started two thousand years ago. The astronomers at the time knew the year wasn't exactly 365.25 days, but the error was too small apparently to worry about (and probably wasn't accurately measured).
Fast forward about 1500 years, the calendar had already gotten significantly out of whack (about 10 days) before anyone bothered to fix it (with the new Gregorian calendar).
The Gregorian calendar also has its flaws and will need to be adjusted at some point, but the adjustments probably need to be carried out on an ad-hoc basis in a couple thousand years as the earth's rotation slows.
Anyhow, the leap second problem is much less significant, I agree. But if anything, history shows us that acceptance of known inaccuracy means that those inaccuracies will be ignored until they cause a major problem, and given how many systems depend on very accurate timekeeping, perhaps we should make sure they can be adjusted for leap seconds, instead of just ignoring the problem until something bad happens.
Many of the works we consider "great", and part of our cultural heritage, were produced before copyright, and many were also produced without the prospect of payment in the artist's lifetime.
Umm, could you name some of those "great" works, please?
The first music books that were printed appeared in the early 1500s by Petrucci. The first copyrights were granted in individual cities in Italy, maybe starting in Venice in 1486. Notably, Petrucci was in Venice and learned the printing trade there. While he didn't get a modern copyright when he started publishing, instead he was granted the exclusive right to be the sole publisher of music in Venice for 20 years. Often, before individual works were copyrighted, publishers were the ones who were granted permissions, effectively producing a system more restrictive than modern copyright.
Copyright was part of music since music was widely distributed. If you can name some "great works" like motets written by Machaut in the 14th century, maybe we can talk, but I doubt the average modern listener has even heard of such things, let alone considers them "great works."
As for the idea that "many were also produced without the prospect of payment in the artist's lifetime" -- again, name some please?
The "starving artist" was largely an invention of the 19th century. Composers before the 1900s wrote music because they had a job to write music and needed the money. Most composers from the 1900s that we remember today also wrote music to get it published... those who didn't were generally independently wealthy.
I'm not getting involved in your views on modern copyright, but in terms of history, you have no idea what you're talking about.