All human action is, by definition, motivated by self-interest.
Sorry, but no. "Human action" carries with it no definition about whose interest it is in. It's simply actions by humans.
What you're getting at is the philosophical perspective that altruism doesn't really exist. BUT, what you're actually doing there is simply redefining altruism, from "selfless actions" to "actions that appear selfless, but I get a kick out of them anyway".
And I'd have to agree with you. I don't think anybody really does anything selflessly. Although I have to point out that I can very easily assign a zero value to... uh, whatever, so that any value at all in exchange is a net gain for me. And then there is the ludicrously deferred value, like when I help out society in general so that my children will benefit from it.
It's a terminology thing. The computer industry is awash in buzzwords. Some stick.
But when was the last time you heard the gcc refereed to as a "framework"?
Sure, using the right technical definition, you could probably apply it to the gcc. But you could also apply it to the x86 architecture, the cpu and memory, and the Internet on the whole. Most of these terms are worthless out of context.
Where you want to advise someone in one direction,
but then on the very next line you warn them not to go too far?
It makes the entire message a little watered down. They're all good points, in various scenarios, but the lesson I learned out of that was to do something in between both of the extremes... which is what I'm doing now. Huh, and here I just thought I was lazy.
If we start getting into telling businesses what to charge, according to OUR ideas of what is fair. Don't like your carrier? Change. That IS capitalism
Fixed it for you. I think you meant to say "if the government starts getting into telling businesses..."
We the people, on the other hand, ARE exactly one half of the capitalism equation.
Do you think the cyber-guerrillas will respect the Geneva convention? The international cyber-banks will be the first to go in a world-wide-cyber-war!
The cyber-dead will be strewn about the cyber-fields, and cyber-children will run in terror from cyber-napalm. WE'LL REVERT TO PRE-CYBER CIVILIZATION!
So... like today, but instead of cyber-dot, to complain about greedy corporations we'll have to go talk to our neighbors.
It's not so much a sucky position, so much as a blatantly illegal position of flipping the bird to both state and federal law.
Also, what exactly is the distinction between asking for money and being given money, constitution-wise?
If the mayor of Chicago just happens to have some money left over, and Al Capone just happens to walk by and pick it up, and maybe suggest who you should vote for in an entirely unrelated way, that's somehow better than a straight up bribe?
Just as it's impossible to know for sure what you ate last Thursday, there are some telling bits of evidence that let us make informed guesswork that has a degree of probability.
So they have some sort of evidence that Jullian Assange broke into sensitive military databases?
And NOT Bradley Manning, the guy they ARE charging for that exact action?
So should they also charge the New York Times as well? Because they too are releasing this information.
Ah yes, I remember touring the lovely Tanezrouft: "One of the harshest regions on Earth and the driest in the Sahara, contains no vegetation and very little life."
A beautiful home where the microbes roam.
At approximately 6pm, terrorists have kidnapped the sun are are demanding a ransom in order of over 100 million yen. While authorities on the ground scramble to contain the area, officials reassure us that this will all be resolved by 6am or so. I don't know about you Bob, but I've noticed a rash of such terrorist activities, and they appear to be getting worse of late.
I think the biggest problem for the desert ecosystem is too much sun.
Nukey plants are good, but they usually require a river. And solar plants are better.
Still I think that's awesome enough to warrant the bad puns. And it's an important reminder to not get too lofty and not to try and scrap by at the bottom. A lot of these green projects get idealists attached to them and they'll complain about... I dunno, all the pollution that goes into making the wire or something.
It's pretty simple, really; you can only fit so much in a particular amount of space
Right, like a pressure tank. You can pump more and more air into a tank, but at some point it's going to compress into a liquid and it's going to require exponential force to pump any more in.
Except that if you DO compress atoms together then their structure breaks down and the fabric of existence unravels in a glorious explosion entirely contrary to our previous understanding of science and adding another wing to the science halls.
Well... if you're using the right atoms at least. That whole chain reaction thing. I dunno what happens when you rip apart oxygen or nitrogen. A popping sound, maybe?
But you say that you can only fit so much in a particular amount of space? Why? Because otherwise protons would bump into electrons? Maybe they break down into their components? And how about when quarks bump into each other? What do quarks break down into?
But you have an important point. A lot of cosmology and astrophysics is still up in the air. Theories like the big bang and the existence of black holes aren't etched in stone. There's a chance that they're simply wrong. Unlikely, but there's a chance. But if you REALLY want to make a claim like the big bang theory is all hand waving, then explain why. And none of this vague "nothing in physics" shenanigans. And then propose an alternative. If it's something like a static universe, well you've got to explain why galaxies are moving away from each other. And all of this may be stretching the limit of a slashdot post, so maybe this isn't the best place to try to tear down scientific theories.
Really? You're NOT going for "Captain K." ?
Well then, how about you inform us just what exactly you were going for, so we just don't assume that you're a pretentious twat?
Does Microsoft have a monopoly?
Does Microsoft perform anti-competitive practices?
I highly doubt anyone could ever establish a monopoly on the Internet, or even any Internet service. But that sure as hell doesn't mean that the wonderful and cherished Internet, which currently has an incredibly open and free market, is somehow inherently immune to anti-competitive practices. Such practices that would make it less open and less free.
Like contracts between ESPN3.com and ISP directly, bypassing the users altogether. Or discriminating against specific protocols like bittorrent. Or boosting one service over it's competitors. Or blocking access to competitors sites. Or chopping up the Internet into tiered network channels like CableTV.
vxice: He should call them out.
bunratty: What do you want him to do about it?
Perhaps he could, oh I dunno, Call them out on it! It usually involves pointing out the congressmen that simply refuse to even look at the issue and ask them why they reject it all out of hand. Ask them to simply stop obstructing all progress and maybe consider the possibility of working together. Just maybe.
And if they ask him to, oh I dunno, cut taxes, kick out the immigrants, or defend our longtime ally or N. Korea, he could respond that he's simply going to block the whole affair out of hand... Until they actually take a look at the FCC's proposal.
It's, you know, political hardball. Not exactly his sort of thing, but he could do it.
I've been asking others to find specifically who is going to be hurt from this leak, and here you go.
And you're right, this guys is probably going to have a rough time.
And so I toast this fellow fencer and hope him the best of luck. For verily it's his blood that might be spilled for the sake of keeping our own government honest. And I toast the 103,000 dead civilians in Iraq and 34,000 dead civilians in Afghanistan. None of them deserved to die, and I like to think we tried our best, but they're dead all the same. And yet, for their deaths, and this man's endangerment, we can hopefully claim some small victory for freedom. At least, that's what they tell me.
Money isn't a "tool for distribution", it's a financial lubricator that allows anything and everything to have an equivalent cost in cash, as opposed to an equivalent cost in everything else.
So rather then trading 3 days hunting for 4 loaves of bread, or 15 rabbits for 1 and a half loaves, or 1 goat for 1 days work and two loaves with 13 arrows and a smack on the rear in change, you can have a simple price in cash that everything works with.
If someone is too poor to afford food, that means they have no resources to afford food. Regardless of a monetary system or a bartering system or whatever else you can think of.
If you're going to blame something for the poor, blame the economic system that the poor exist under, not the aspect of money.
Slashdot Mirror
And they're running the risk, however slight, of being sued into oblivion.
All human action is, by definition, motivated by self-interest.
Sorry, but no. "Human action" carries with it no definition about whose interest it is in. It's simply actions by humans.
What you're getting at is the philosophical perspective that altruism doesn't really exist. BUT, what you're actually doing there is simply redefining altruism, from "selfless actions" to "actions that appear selfless, but I get a kick out of them anyway".
And I'd have to agree with you. I don't think anybody really does anything selflessly. Although I have to point out that I can very easily assign a zero value to... uh, whatever, so that any value at all in exchange is a net gain for me. And then there is the ludicrously deferred value, like when I help out society in general so that my children will benefit from it.
Well you might not have any disposable income, but it looks like you sure as hell have some disposable time on your hands.
It's a terminology thing. The computer industry is awash in buzzwords. Some stick.
But when was the last time you heard the gcc refereed to as a "framework"?
Sure, using the right technical definition, you could probably apply it to the gcc. But you could also apply it to the x86 architecture, the cpu and memory, and the Internet on the whole. Most of these terms are worthless out of context.
How about them F-22's that went dark when crossing the timezone to the next day in the pacific?
Where you want to advise someone in one direction,
but then on the very next line you warn them not to go too far?
It makes the entire message a little watered down. They're all good points, in various scenarios, but the lesson I learned out of that was to do something in between both of the extremes... which is what I'm doing now. Huh, and here I just thought I was lazy.
Well that largely depended on where you got your news from.
If we start getting into telling businesses what to charge, according to OUR ideas of what is fair. Don't like your carrier? Change. That IS capitalism
Fixed it for you. I think you meant to say "if the government starts getting into telling businesses..."
We the people, on the other hand, ARE exactly one half of the capitalism equation.
Do you think the cyber-guerrillas will respect the Geneva convention? The international cyber-banks will be the first to go in a world-wide-cyber-war!
The cyber-dead will be strewn about the cyber-fields, and cyber-children will run in terror from cyber-napalm. WE'LL REVERT TO PRE-CYBER CIVILIZATION!
So... like today, but instead of cyber-dot, to complain about greedy corporations we'll have to go talk to our neighbors.
It's not so much a sucky position, so much as a blatantly illegal position of flipping the bird to both state and federal law.
Also, what exactly is the distinction between asking for money and being given money, constitution-wise?
If the mayor of Chicago just happens to have some money left over, and Al Capone just happens to walk by and pick it up, and maybe suggest who you should vote for in an entirely unrelated way, that's somehow better than a straight up bribe?
Just as it's impossible to know for sure what you ate last Thursday, there are some telling bits of evidence that let us make informed guesswork that has a degree of probability.
So they have some sort of evidence that Jullian Assange broke into sensitive military databases?
And NOT Bradley Manning, the guy they ARE charging for that exact action?
So should they also charge the New York Times as well? Because they too are releasing this information.
Ah yes, I remember touring the lovely Tanezrouft: "One of the harshest regions on Earth and the driest in the Sahara, contains no vegetation and very little life."
A beautiful home where the microbes roam.
Thanks for the link.
At approximately 6pm, terrorists have kidnapped the sun are are demanding a ransom in order of over 100 million yen. While authorities on the ground scramble to contain the area, officials reassure us that this will all be resolved by 6am or so. I don't know about you Bob, but I've noticed a rash of such terrorist activities, and they appear to be getting worse of late.
I think the biggest problem for the desert ecosystem is too much sun.
Nukey plants are good, but they usually require a river. And solar plants are better.
Still I think that's awesome enough to warrant the bad puns. And it's an important reminder to not get too lofty and not to try and scrap by at the bottom. A lot of these green projects get idealists attached to them and they'll complain about... I dunno, all the pollution that goes into making the wire or something.
Pft, that's nothing. That's like a jog down to the pub and you're thinking "whew, what a was that was", but that's peanuts to space.
It's pretty simple, really; you can only fit so much in a particular amount of space
Right, like a pressure tank. You can pump more and more air into a tank, but at some point it's going to compress into a liquid and it's going to require exponential force to pump any more in.
Except that if you DO compress atoms together then their structure breaks down and the fabric of existence unravels in a glorious explosion entirely contrary to our previous understanding of science and adding another wing to the science halls.
Well... if you're using the right atoms at least. That whole chain reaction thing. I dunno what happens when you rip apart oxygen or nitrogen. A popping sound, maybe?
But you say that you can only fit so much in a particular amount of space? Why? Because otherwise protons would bump into electrons? Maybe they break down into their components? And how about when quarks bump into each other? What do quarks break down into?
But you have an important point. A lot of cosmology and astrophysics is still up in the air. Theories like the big bang and the existence of black holes aren't etched in stone. There's a chance that they're simply wrong. Unlikely, but there's a chance.
But if you REALLY want to make a claim like the big bang theory is all hand waving, then explain why. And none of this vague "nothing in physics" shenanigans. And then propose an alternative. If it's something like a static universe, well you've got to explain why galaxies are moving away from each other. And all of this may be stretching the limit of a slashdot post, so maybe this isn't the best place to try to tear down scientific theories.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure they could nab him if they wanted. But what exactly would they charge him with?
Other then, you know, character assassination?
Really? You're NOT going for "Captain K." ?
Well then, how about you inform us just what exactly you were going for, so we just don't assume that you're a pretentious twat?
Does Microsoft have a monopoly?
Does Microsoft perform anti-competitive practices?
I highly doubt anyone could ever establish a monopoly on the Internet, or even any Internet service. But that sure as hell doesn't mean that the wonderful and cherished Internet, which currently has an incredibly open and free market, is somehow inherently immune to anti-competitive practices. Such practices that would make it less open and less free.
Like contracts between ESPN3.com and ISP directly, bypassing the users altogether. Or discriminating against specific protocols like bittorrent. Or boosting one service over it's competitors. Or blocking access to competitors sites. Or chopping up the Internet into tiered network channels like CableTV.
vxice: He should call them out.
bunratty: What do you want him to do about it?
Perhaps he could, oh I dunno, Call them out on it! It usually involves pointing out the congressmen that simply refuse to even look at the issue and ask them why they reject it all out of hand. Ask them to simply stop obstructing all progress and maybe consider the possibility of working together. Just maybe.
And if they ask him to, oh I dunno, cut taxes, kick out the immigrants, or defend our longtime ally or N. Korea, he could respond that he's simply going to block the whole affair out of hand... Until they actually take a look at the FCC's proposal.
It's, you know, political hardball. Not exactly his sort of thing, but he could do it.
I've been asking others to find specifically who is going to be hurt from this leak, and here you go.
And you're right, this guys is probably going to have a rough time.
And so I toast this fellow fencer and hope him the best of luck. For verily it's his blood that might be spilled for the sake of keeping our own government honest. And I toast the 103,000 dead civilians in Iraq and 34,000 dead civilians in Afghanistan. None of them deserved to die, and I like to think we tried our best, but they're dead all the same. And yet, for their deaths, and this man's endangerment, we can hopefully claim some small victory for freedom.
At least, that's what they tell me.
Who exactly is going to be killed over this? Do you think someone is going to order a hit on a diplomat because he was called rude behind his back?
Money isn't a "tool for distribution", it's a financial lubricator that allows anything and everything to have an equivalent cost in cash, as opposed to an equivalent cost in everything else.
So rather then trading 3 days hunting for 4 loaves of bread, or 15 rabbits for 1 and a half loaves, or 1 goat for 1 days work and two loaves with 13 arrows and a smack on the rear in change, you can have a simple price in cash that everything works with.
If someone is too poor to afford food, that means they have no resources to afford food. Regardless of a monetary system or a bartering system or whatever else you can think of.
If you're going to blame something for the poor, blame the economic system that the poor exist under, not the aspect of money.