The problem here isn't nutral ideaology, it is that the truth is made to be an opinion or subjective, and free will is made to be an irellavent abstract. I don't think I'd have a problem with libertarian biased professors. (though that bias is almost impossible to have in a public funded institution)
It is suprising how the link between intelligence, and the non derterministic nature of the universe (translated to free will, in humans) is constantly treated as irrelavent - when in fact it is probably the most important factor of all. When technology to make intelligent machines comes of age, I think people are going to be in for a very rude supprise. They will be able to make machines that are "intelligent" but don't do what they want, or they are going to be able to make machines that do what they wan't, but are not intelligent.
One time we were interviewing a person of color for an IT position. He was clearly lacking, but this was the bay area and IT help was hard to come by at the time, and I felt pressure that if we turned him away I would be accused of racist hiring practices. So we hired him, and it wasn't a week later before he wasn't found shooting up hard drugs ( which showed in his performance long before, making me look really bad ) . The receptionist, who was also a lady of color, cried because "he embarrased her whole race".
From then out, I've had the attitude - that this is not a disenlightened profession. If a person of color fails to get a job for because of race, he should be thankfull that he won't be required to work arround such shallow people. I say let racist employers suffer the natural consequences of not getting the best people for the job. They will suffer long before a good IT professional does.
Like, have they downloaded/posted credit card numbers, kiddy porn, terrost plots, maybe post a promise to kill the president, and customized ones for several western and radical countries? Maybe send death threats to the head of the CIA, FBI, and NSA? Maybe the russian mafia? Maybe the israli secret police?
If people start getting away with those kind of things, then I'll conisider it.
Investing in the "economic foundation of the economy" isn't going do any good when that economic foundation is being watered down faster than it grows. Stocks, pay, and growth measured in dollars might have gone up over the last few years, but measured in gold or any other commodity have gone absolutely nowhere since 2001. That shiny metal not only looks pretty, but it can't be printed up out of thin air: a 0 percent return on sitting gold is better than a negative return on dollars and bonds. The fact is that the US econ is in more troubble now than in the late 70's, so that sould pretty much tell you a lot about where gold is going right there.
Maybe they'll have contraction, maybe they'll have inflation. But either way there is less demand for the dollar, so gold goes up. Also, gold was $35/oz in 1970 - so who says it didn't take off. Plus, as you said they had to raise interest rates higher than 16%, but that is to get people out of gold back into dollars - and as I said they can't pull that off now because we have too much debt.
The interesting thing about the debt in the US economy is who is backing it, namely foreign investors. Like China and Japan. At the moment, they really don't want to see the US economy falter, as it would destroy thier investments, so they are doing everything they can to prop it up. This is why the revaluation of the yuan was such a big deal; nobody knew how far they were willing to go. It turned out that it was pretty conservative, and things continue to truck forward.
I think the problem is that in "real" terms the US economy is not growing and they are proping it up by making new investments at a rate that is higher than the interest owed on current debt. But the interest owed is on a linear path upward, and the amount of investments comming in is on a linear path downward (and they will likely cross over in June of this year) Hence my prediction all hell will break loose.
If you look at it adjusted for inflation, except for a period in the early '80s, the price of gold (in dollars anyway) really hasn't change a whole lot over time. A factor of two here and there, but it pretty much tends to be in the $300-$500 range.
I think that will change. In the 80's they got people out of gold back into the dollar by offering interest rates as high as 20%. There is no way they could do that now without ripping the economy to shreds. In the 90's we had the dot com boom which increased technology infrastructure and productivity, making it credible that the US could meet it's debt obligation. Now we have nothing other than people refinancing their homes and going on a spending spree. Gold will probably be $700 before the end of the year, and well into 4 digits within 3 or 4 years.
I think there are two reasons for this, the first is that housing is crashing - so that means that all that money that was going into houses is now looking a lot more seriously at stocks, the second is that the Fed has special team called the PPT - an internal operation designed to buy huge amounts of equities in the event of emergency ( like say the collapse of refco which makes enron look like a saint ). With 270 trillion with a T derivatives on the line, you can better believe that they won't hesitate to buy stocks as needed. Anyhow, be very carefull about stocks, be it housing or PPT, it's a false market and there is a high probability of being shot down no matter how smart you are. My guess is that whatever the market goes up, gold will go up doubble. If you must play the market, try a pool of precious metal mining stocks like PD, NEM, PAAS, SSRI, GG - for higher risk and profit try ones like TRE and RGLD. ( there is also a gold ETF, GLD - but some experts don't trust it) I think most commodities are in for the long term, but in the event of a large economic meltdown all immediate bets other than precious metals are off.
My prediction is still that these predictions won't matter, because the US economy/dollar is in serious troubble and the price of precious metals is going to completely explode. The foundation of these predictions is very simple:
a) the US economy has way too much debt b) there is no way they can pay it off without printing up tons of money c) the US economy is extremely efficient which means the adjustment will almost certainly be harsh and brutal
Some other notes: 1) the dollar survived the 1920's because currency was still backed by precious metals 2) the dollar survived the inflation of the 80's becuase there wasn't a lot of debt 3) neither 1 nor 2 apply today, so hold on for the ride of your life when it hits
The problem is that too many people see copyrights as a meca of free markets and property rights when in truth they need to look at them as massive microregulations on how people can use and apply information in the information age. Rather than seeing them as some glorious protection for creators, they need to be looked at as the intelectual sewage that they are. The current software industry in the USA is just a manifestation of this ignorance (perhaps motivated by greed, and the desire for total control) Anyhow, when one understands that, then the success of the GPL compaired to other licenses makes perfect sense. In fact, it should really say something when the GPL is more successfull in free market economies than non free market ones. I think the bottom line is that in the information age there is a lot more money to be made from information services than there is from content control, and it wrong to hold to hold up the information age for the sake of a few media empires who can't see it any other way.
Seriously, at one time or another - I've used every imaginable sericve over simple ssh port forwards and reverse port-forwards. Also, using public key auth, it's one of the few services I trust to be open on the internet. (I always turn off root though and/sbin/nologin unrequired accounts) There are even file browsers that work over ssh, it is intuitive simple, and I've herd that it can be used over for ldap for centralized key managment. (though I've never done it)
Just because something is being abused, that doesn't make it inherently bad. copyrights & patents are like guns. They don't hurt anyone until somebody with bad intentions come along.
Copyrights are like the bad tree that bears bad fruit. The fact that they get more and more out of controll as time goes on should really be saying something here. Like slavery was back 150 years ago, it's a form of control - under the guised name of a property right. The copyrights industry understands that there is no technical difference between free spech content and copyright content.... do we understand that?
Why is it that so many take it as a mantra of faith, it seems, that without a copyright imposed monopoly - all artists will just be starving fools on the streets looking for patronage. In fact, it kills me that everyone is supposedly justifying all this controll in the name of artists, but when you look at the facts - copyrights provide a decent living for maybe 1% of 1% of artists, whilt the 99.9% are locked into paying for any other song they want to perform live or copy. Fod God's sake, give a live concert, offer live artistic services, charge by the hour - if they're creative enough to make content that isn't trash, then surely they are creative enough to figure out a way to gain an income without a universally coerced distribution monopoly. Getting rid of copyrights will not destroy artists, most the entire renassance happened without them and today there are far more resources and needs for artists then there were back then. But getting rid of copyrights will get rid of the distribution cartell that holds so many artists back.
It really is all about visions. To many of us, the intnernet envisions a future with the uninhibited unrestricted free flow of information - where all knowledge and creative works will be birthed into the world thru creative collaberation, or thru services, or thru just plain giving for free as a side effect of private interests. To the music industry, and the RIAA in particular, the internet envisions a future where every piece of content is tagged and charged for with the promise of unlimited profit and royality and the prospect of endlessly being able to nickel and dime the consumer to the highest order - but to inpose this vision requires that they coerce upon people and technology companies, an infrastructure of controll - where no piece of information can leak out and risk becomming free.
Moral: This is like an ALL or NOTHING game
People who want to play half hearted, and allow some room for copyrights in this age are only going to continue to feed the beast that is trying to enslave them. Copyrights are like a vine that will never stop growing to choke off peoples freedom until we cut it off at the root. One of these days people are going to realise that copyrights are not about artists, writers, developers, incentive, or "property", or even profit, they are only about control. Controll, even if that means the loss of privacy, free speech, and controll over our PC's.
No. Free markets are a natural derivative from freedom which is a natural derivative of free will which is a natural derivative of the non-deterministic nature of the universe which, because we are part of it - is impossible to prove one way or the other.
For analogy, we can't prove that existence is rational either, but still assume things like scientific method on faith and work from there. Maybe a perfect rationality, isn't possible for society either, but would you say it is "quite a bad idea" to attempt a maximal approach to that? Really? Have you ever seen a perfect rationality?
Corporations collectively spend billions on lobbying the government to bring in laws to "protect IP rights" specifically so that they can legally initiate force against you. It's called the FBI kicking in your door and seizing your property on the flimsiest of evidence and if you don't think that's force then you're welcome to tell the agents that you refuse to co-operate!
Hmmmm, sounds like a compelling argument for limiting the power of government to impose 'IP' and raid people if you ask me.
Just as an FYI. Format wars don't tend to get out of controll in a free market, it's only controlled market where people try to fence off "intellectual property" (which isn't a real free market property at all) that it becomes a problem.
At a fundamental level, there is no inherent difference between an insightful comment and a total misfire of logical thought, either.
Try a response that goes something like...... No, I don't think it proves that point at all Because...(insert BS here that is sure to be shot down rather than say nothing at all because you don't want to be called on it)
This just proves the point that it all comes down to a battle between copyrights and free speech rights. After all this technology could just as easially be used to dissemate political information. At a fundamental level, there is no inherent difference between free speech content and copyright content.
Maybe Chineese law says that Microsoft should hunt down bad bloggers and pop a bullet in their head too. But really, since when is anyone other than China pre-dispositioned to to enforce chineese laws for them. This was Microsofts choice, not China's.
One more thing. Miscosoft is a US company, traded on US stock exchanges, incorporated in US terrortiroes. If they can't deal with that, then they are free to move to China, in the meantime it is not unreasonable for us and the rest of the world to expect Microsoft to act according to US norms.
Every punishment for a crime takes away somebody's rights, but the death penalty is not a human rights violation when done as justice. The people who are on death row in the US are NOT there because they have simply expressed opinions. In fact the only way to get on death row in the US is to be charged and found guilty of murder in front of a jury of peers with appropiate legal representation - this is a far cry from the Chineese system and it's disingenuoius to even compare.
These people are not being put to death to torment them, torture them, drive fear into non murderors, or even harm them (even thought that is the effect). It is simply about removing violent people from society, and setting an example - in practice, it isn't even for revenge and is implemented in a way that minimizes personal pain. This is plain and simple justice.
Now I personally think that there are very compelling legal cost reasons not to have the death penalty, and that there are very compelling reasons from the perspective that justice systems make mistakes from time to time - and this is one mistake that can't be undone. And even arguments that society is safer when governments don't have that power at all. But the death penalty is not a human rights violation any more than it is if I shoot someone who busts into my house and is threatening the safety of my wife and daughter.
The UN is just wrong here and is kneejerking to some political interest.
This and what China (and MS) did does not even compare, I challenge anyone to make such a compelling argument as to why it's ok to coercively forbid people from expressing their opinions.
I don't know where you come from, but in civilized societies we at least pretend to accept that just because we might not know what the perfict truth is - doen't mean that it's a feeling or opinion. The fact is that people have rights, these rights are not rocket science nor that hard to understand - maybe chineese culture says gravity pulls upward too? So what, it doesn't change the reality. Free speech is one of those rights that have been accepted as a fundamental one for a long time. This isn't some advanced imcomprehensible theory where we just don't know what the best solution is.
Now if you want to make a compelling argument about why people should have their opinions forbidden, then fine. But I suspect you won't do that because you will logically and factually be ripped to shreds like the thousands that have tried before you. Hiding behind the guise of cultural norms for the sake of not wanting to argue the facts is intellectual cowerdace.
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The problem here isn't nutral ideaology, it is that the truth is made to be an opinion or subjective, and free will is made to be an irellavent abstract. I don't think I'd have a problem with libertarian biased professors. (though that bias is almost impossible to have in a public funded institution)
It is suprising how the link between intelligence, and the non derterministic nature of the universe (translated to free will, in humans) is constantly treated as irrelavent - when in fact it is probably the most important factor of all. When technology to make intelligent machines comes of age, I think people are going to be in for a very rude supprise. They will be able to make machines that are "intelligent" but don't do what they want, or they are going to be able to make machines that do what they wan't, but are not intelligent.
The loss of online liberties to orwellian government costs society billions every year too.
One time we were interviewing a person of color for an IT position. He was clearly lacking, but this was the bay area and IT help was hard to come by at the time, and I felt pressure that if we turned him away I would be accused of racist hiring practices. So we hired him, and it wasn't a week later before he wasn't found shooting up hard drugs ( which showed in his performance long before, making me look really bad ) . The receptionist, who was also a lady of color, cried because "he embarrased her whole race".
From then out, I've had the attitude - that this is not a disenlightened profession. If a person of color fails to get a job for because of race, he should be thankfull that he won't be required to work arround such shallow people. I say let racist employers suffer the natural consequences of not getting the best people for the job. They will suffer long before a good IT professional does.
I'll believe it wen I see it.
Like, have they downloaded/posted credit card numbers, kiddy porn, terrost plots, maybe post a promise to kill the president, and customized ones for several western and radical countries? Maybe send death threats to the head of the CIA, FBI, and NSA? Maybe the russian mafia? Maybe the israli secret police?
If people start getting away with those kind of things, then I'll conisider it.
Investing in the "economic foundation of the economy" isn't going do any good when that economic foundation is being watered down faster than it grows. Stocks, pay, and growth measured in dollars might have gone up over the last few years, but measured in gold or any other commodity have gone absolutely nowhere since 2001. That shiny metal not only looks pretty, but it can't be printed up out of thin air: a 0 percent return on sitting gold is better than a negative return on dollars and bonds. The fact is that the US econ is in more troubble now than in the late 70's, so that sould pretty much tell you a lot about where gold is going right there.
Maybe they'll have contraction, maybe they'll have inflation. But either way there is less demand for the dollar, so gold goes up. Also, gold was $35/oz in 1970 - so who says it didn't take off. Plus, as you said they had to raise interest rates higher than 16%, but that is to get people out of gold back into dollars - and as I said they can't pull that off now because we have too much debt.
The interesting thing about the debt in the US economy is who is backing it, namely foreign investors. Like China and Japan. At the moment, they really don't want to see the US economy falter, as it would destroy thier investments, so they are doing everything they can to prop it up. This is why the revaluation of the yuan was such a big deal; nobody knew how far they were willing to go. It turned out that it was pretty conservative, and things continue to truck forward.
I think the problem is that in "real" terms the US economy is not growing and they are proping it up by making new investments at a rate that is higher than the interest owed on current debt. But the interest owed is on a linear path upward, and the amount of investments comming in is on a linear path downward (and they will likely cross over in June of this year) Hence my prediction all hell will break loose.
If you look at it adjusted for inflation, except for a period in the early '80s, the price of gold (in dollars anyway) really hasn't change a whole lot over time. A factor of two here and there, but it pretty much tends to be in the $300-$500 range.
I think that will change. In the 80's they got people out of gold back into the dollar by offering interest rates as high as 20%. There is no way they could do that now without ripping the economy to shreds. In the 90's we had the dot com boom which increased technology infrastructure and productivity, making it credible that the US could meet it's debt obligation. Now we have nothing other than people refinancing their homes and going on a spending spree. Gold will probably be $700 before the end of the year, and well into 4 digits within 3 or 4 years.
I think there are two reasons for this, the first is that housing is crashing - so that means that all that money that was going into houses is now looking a lot more seriously at stocks, the second is that the Fed has special team called the PPT - an internal operation designed to buy huge amounts of equities in the event of emergency ( like say the collapse of refco which makes enron look like a saint ). With 270 trillion with a T derivatives on the line, you can better believe that they won't hesitate to buy stocks as needed. Anyhow, be very carefull about stocks, be it housing or PPT, it's a false market and there is a high probability of being shot down no matter how smart you are. My guess is that whatever the market goes up, gold will go up doubble. If you must play the market, try a pool of precious metal mining stocks like PD, NEM, PAAS, SSRI, GG - for higher risk and profit try ones like TRE and RGLD. ( there is also a gold ETF, GLD - but some experts don't trust it) I think most commodities are in for the long term, but in the event of a large economic meltdown all immediate bets other than precious metals are off.
My prediction is still that these predictions won't matter, because the US economy/dollar is in serious troubble and the price of precious metals is going to completely explode. The foundation of these predictions is very simple:
a) the US economy has way too much debt
b) there is no way they can pay it off without printing up tons of money
c) the US economy is extremely efficient which means the adjustment will almost certainly
be harsh and brutal
Some other notes:
1) the dollar survived the 1920's because currency was still backed by precious metals
2) the dollar survived the inflation of the 80's becuase there wasn't a lot of debt
3) neither 1 nor 2 apply today, so hold on for the ride of your life when it hits
When dealing with government, or any type of bully - history has shown that it always better to ask forgivness than permission.
The problem is that too many people see copyrights as a meca of free markets and property rights when in truth they need to look at them as massive microregulations on how people can use and apply information in the information age. Rather than seeing them as some glorious protection for creators, they need to be looked at as the intelectual sewage that they are. The current software industry in the USA is just a manifestation of this ignorance (perhaps motivated by greed, and the desire for total control) Anyhow, when one understands that, then the success of the GPL compaired to other licenses makes perfect sense. In fact, it should really say something when the GPL is more successfull in free market economies than non free market ones. I think the bottom line is that in the information age there is a lot more money to be made from information services than there is from content control, and it wrong to hold to hold up the information age for the sake of a few media empires who can't see it any other way.
Seriously, at one time or another - I've used every imaginable sericve over simple ssh port forwards and reverse port-forwards. Also, using public key auth, it's one of the few services I trust to be open on the internet. (I always turn off root though and /sbin/nologin unrequired accounts) There are even file browsers that work over ssh, it is intuitive simple, and I've herd that it can be used over for ldap for centralized key managment. (though I've never done it)
Just because something is being abused, that doesn't make it inherently bad. copyrights & patents are like guns. They don't hurt anyone until somebody with bad intentions come along.
Copyrights are like the bad tree that bears bad fruit. The fact that they get more and more out of controll as time goes on should really be saying something here. Like slavery was back 150 years ago, it's a form of control - under the guised name of a property right. The copyrights industry understands that there is no technical difference between free spech content and copyright content .... do we understand that?
Why is it that so many take it as a mantra of faith, it seems, that without a copyright imposed monopoly - all artists will just be starving fools on the streets looking for patronage. In fact, it kills me that everyone is supposedly justifying all this controll in the name of artists, but when you look at the facts - copyrights provide a decent living for maybe 1% of 1% of artists, whilt the 99.9% are locked into paying for any other song they want to perform live or copy. Fod God's sake, give a live concert, offer live artistic services, charge by the hour - if they're creative enough to make content that isn't trash, then surely they are creative enough to figure out a way to gain an income without a universally coerced distribution monopoly. Getting rid of copyrights will not destroy artists, most the entire renassance happened without them and today there are far more resources and needs for artists then there were back then. But getting rid of copyrights will get rid of the distribution cartell that holds so many artists back.
It really is all about visions. To many of us, the intnernet envisions a future with the uninhibited unrestricted free flow of information - where all knowledge and creative works will be birthed into the world thru creative collaberation, or thru services, or thru just plain giving for free as a side effect of private interests. To the music industry, and the RIAA in particular, the internet envisions a future where every piece of content is tagged and charged for with the promise of unlimited profit and royality and the prospect of endlessly being able to nickel and dime the consumer to the highest order - but to inpose this vision requires that they coerce upon people and technology companies, an infrastructure of controll - where no piece of information can leak out and risk becomming free.
Moral: This is like an ALL or NOTHING game
People who want to play half hearted, and allow some room for copyrights in this age are only going to continue to feed the beast that is trying to enslave them. Copyrights are like a vine that will never stop growing to choke off peoples freedom until we cut it off at the root. One of these days people are going to realise that copyrights are not about artists, writers, developers, incentive, or "property", or even profit, they are only about control. Controll, even if that means the loss of privacy, free speech, and controll over our PC's.
No. Free markets are a natural derivative from freedom which is a natural derivative of free will which is a natural derivative of the non-deterministic nature of the universe which, because we are part of it - is impossible to prove one way or the other.
For analogy, we can't prove that existence is rational either, but still assume things like scientific method on faith and work from there. Maybe a perfect rationality, isn't possible for society either, but would you say it is "quite a bad idea" to attempt a maximal approach to that? Really? Have you ever seen a perfect rationality?
Corporations collectively spend billions on lobbying the government to bring in laws to "protect IP rights" specifically so that they can legally initiate force against you. It's called the FBI kicking in your door and seizing your property on the flimsiest of evidence and if you don't think that's force then you're welcome to tell the agents that you refuse to co-operate!
Hmmmm, sounds like a compelling argument for limiting the power of government to impose 'IP' and raid people if you ask me.
Just as an FYI. Format wars don't tend to get out of controll in a free market, it's only controlled market where people try to fence off "intellectual property" (which isn't a real free market property at all) that it becomes a problem.
No, I don't think it proves that point at all.
At a fundamental level, there is no inherent difference between an insightful comment and a total misfire of logical thought, either.
Try a response that goes something like ...... No, I don't think it proves that point at all Because ...(insert BS here that is sure to be shot down rather than say nothing at all because you don't want to be called on it)
Free speech is the ability to spread your own thoughts and ideas.
Copyright infringement is spreading someone elses against their wishes.
Allright fine. Then please point me to a technology that distinguishes the difference.
This just proves the point that it all comes down to a battle between copyrights and free speech rights. After all this technology could just as easially be used to dissemate political information. At a fundamental level, there is no inherent difference between free speech content and copyright content.
Maybe Chineese law says that Microsoft should hunt down bad bloggers and pop a bullet in their head too. But really, since when is anyone other than China pre-dispositioned to to enforce chineese laws for them. This was Microsofts choice, not China's.
One more thing. Miscosoft is a US company, traded on US stock exchanges, incorporated in US terrortiroes. If they can't deal with that, then they are free to move to China, in the meantime it is not unreasonable for us and the rest of the world to expect Microsoft to act according to US norms.
Every punishment for a crime takes away somebody's rights, but the death penalty is not a human rights violation when done as justice. The people who are on death row in the US are NOT there because they have simply expressed opinions. In fact the only way to get on death row in the US is to be charged and found guilty of murder in front of a jury of peers with appropiate legal representation - this is a far cry from the Chineese system and it's disingenuoius to even compare.
These people are not being put to death to torment them, torture them, drive fear into non murderors, or even harm them (even thought that is the effect). It is simply about removing violent people from society, and setting an example - in practice, it isn't even for revenge and is implemented in a way that minimizes personal pain. This is plain and simple justice.
Now I personally think that there are very compelling legal cost reasons not to have the death penalty, and that there are very compelling reasons from the perspective that justice systems make mistakes from time to time - and this is one mistake that can't be undone. And even arguments that society is safer when governments don't have that power at all. But the death penalty is not a human rights violation any more than it is if I shoot someone who busts into my house and is threatening the safety of my wife and daughter.
The UN is just wrong here and is kneejerking to some political interest.
This and what China (and MS) did does not even compare, I challenge anyone to make such a compelling argument as to why it's ok to coercively forbid people from expressing their opinions.
I don't know where you come from, but in civilized societies we at least pretend to accept that just because we might not know what the perfict truth is - doen't mean that it's a feeling or opinion. The fact is that people have rights, these rights are not rocket science nor that hard to understand - maybe chineese culture says gravity pulls upward too? So what, it doesn't change the reality. Free speech is one of those rights that have been accepted as a fundamental one for a long time. This isn't some advanced imcomprehensible theory where we just don't know what the best solution is.
Now if you want to make a compelling argument about why people should have their opinions forbidden, then fine. But I suspect you won't do that because you will logically and factually be ripped to shreds like the thousands that have tried before you. Hiding behind the guise of cultural norms for the sake of not wanting to argue the facts is intellectual cowerdace.