Plus, the usual legalese I've seen references plenty of other laws and documents, larger and more complicated. These reference other things too. Even worse, some words in a legal context have completely different meanings that the dictionary definition.
The crux of the matter is that every one of us is supposed to know and understand ALL law, and act accordingly. The reality is that no-one does, not completely. We all act on partial knowledge at best, use our own common sense and cross our fingers. Sometimes we can get unlucky and pay for that in time or money or both, heavily. But there is not much you can actually do about it without spending half your life becoming a law expert, which, IMHO, is a very steep overhead that I'm not willing to pay.
That's because there are too many misconception floating around education. Many universities stated goal is not education, it is research. The difference might be subtle, but it basically means that how apt you are for a real-life job is secondary to how many papers they publish.
Also, these guys are partially right, education these days is free, or close. As they say in the articles, it's all over in books, videos, etc. Universities do give you this freebie, and improve the format. But more importantly they CERTIFY it. That's what grades and passing/failing is all about. A respectable institution vouching for your knowledge and capacity so employers don't have to take your word for it. I'm not sure if this is the best model tough, as it feels to me that you should be able to get such a certification no matter were you got the knowledge... and some universities do not make such a good job at certification anyway.
Finally, you go to university because maybe you don't have the capacity to independently decide what is worth studying, how to best approach a field or the discipline to dedicate yourself to it when nobody is pushing you. Especially since some things are useful and necessary but not fun. Also, to get access to peers, contacts and maybe job offers from inside the university's network.
How much is this all worth? It depends a lot on where you're coming from and where are you going, but it's clearly not a silver bullet for everyone.
I'm living in the US right now and one of the things I miss most is fresh bread, still hot from the over. In Chile, every supermarket includes a bakery, which gives you all the goodness without lose of convenience:-)
I also strife to explain it. It makes no sense if you want peace, tranquility, time for yourself, money, etc. Nevertheless, I think what a child really does is to switch your sense of accomplishment and self-esteem. Troubles at work are no longer the sole issues at hand, they are now "just another issue". In a sense, it's a switch in perspective more than anything else.
I would not call it thoughtlessness, I would call it instinct. I have an 8-month son. Did I want to have it? Not particularly. Did my wife? Desperately. Are we happy? Certainly! You can not discard maternal instinct, it's a powerful force. The problem is that instinct need to meet rationality, and that's why you should stop at 2 or less.
Actually, I'm fine with 1.9 for some time. Population has been growing exponentially in the last century and all current data guarantees that there is no possible way in which we can all reach for a good average standard of living with our current numbers. If I remember correctly, .
And yes, I would love nothing more than to have a big family, but reality tells me that is something "I want", not something that would actually benefit my children in the long run. Thus big families are, IMHO, no longer ethical. I'll stop at 2 children and do my part.
I got a new Toshiba Laptop yesterday. It came with a disclosure, outside the wrapper, indicating that I could not reject any piece of software in the PC unless I actually rejected the whole PC, and that no refunds would be given.
I'm not sure what you mean by coping. There are current, real-world examples of famine, war, poverty, social injustice and inequality, and other expected effects of too much population and too few resources. We also know examples of extreme weather and related catastrophes. In all cases humanity survives and endures these conditions, I mean, there has been no mass suicide or anything. Nevertheless, I'm not sure if any of these examples of "coping" is cause for optimism.
I do agree with you in terms of the likelihood of mending things before the effects are felt is close to 0. It would mean responsible politicians, willing to tell people "we are going to limit and even decrease your rights to many things, and possible your standard of living, before it's too late". It would also mean responsible and intelligent people to support those politicians. Greece is a good example of were that might go. Well studied fenomena in game theory, the tragedy of the commons, etc. basically guarantee that an equilibrium were everybody sacrifices a little for the common good will not be reached. Much less globally.
In short: yes. Again, that is a break on overspending, debt and consumerism. "Less" is not the same as "Bad" on my book, that{s the main difference. Of course, people can not eat money, so products and services will still be produced, jobs will still exist, etc. Actually the vast majority of people spend most of what they make on bare necessities. Inflationary or deflationary forces don't have any impact on that. The impact will be on what do you do with your disposable income (if any) and on how much other can take from you by forcing you to invest.
Sad, but you manage to insult me by saying there is no hope for me to understand, twice, then add no valuable fact or idea to the conversation, then ridicule yourself completely by saying a 5% growth is not exponential growth. You can educate yourself here in terms of the math. In terms of how to have an adult conversation, have some humility and/or respect other people, I can't help you, but there are ways. Good luck.
That's debatable. You seem to be taking things a little to the extreme when you say "no one". People will still invest, they are ambitious. God, people still go to CASINOS. Investments are risk, and not necessarily a good thing, especially if compulsory. Also, our economy based on loans and debt is far from healthy. Ask people who lost their retirement funds.
I understand where you are coming from, that's why I said you were partially right. But any real economy is a matter of balance. The current incentive to spend and invest (because it's not always investment) is countered by governments creating saving incentives. If we change the incentive, governments can for instance create separate incentives for investment or to create companies, tax redistribution, etc, etc. The economy is much to complex a creature that a single change has a clear outcome.
So a deflationary currency could impose a different balance, which might be better than the current one (the bar is not too high). One where debt and risk do exist but have a higher entry bar (and are not the ONLY way). Also, inflation somewhat depends on continuous, exponential growth (and slashdot has had that conversation many times). Last time I checked, the 99% was hardly investing and all the consequences you mention are becoming true with the CURRENT schema! I could easily invert all your train of though to get the exact opposite conclusion. IMHO, it's a good thing to see if the bitcoin schema works.
Depends if you consider "hoarding" to be a bad thing in itself. Some of us just call it "saving". Such a currency would put a break at the constant need to invest in stocks and other stuff, as well as the need for governments to promote savings/insurance/retirement artificially. It would diminish the risk and eliminate a lot of compulsive consumption (better spend it right now in any way than to loose it to inflation right?).
I'm not saying that you are wrong though, just saying, that every coin has two sides, and bit-coins seem no exception.
I'm not stating any opinion in this particular case. It just seems dangerous to me how the arguments in favor of "creators" seem to include a legal "right to profit", despite any (positive or negative) consequence to society.
Otherwise, your argument is sound and well-intended, although I doubt the real-world outcome is the one you present. I'm personally very skeptical of monopolies and restrictions as a solution. The reasons why we avoid them (or prosecute them) in the first place is because they tend to work the complete opposite, and IP seems to me no exception. I find this book to be particularly compelling in detailing the history and actual impact of IP: (warning, it's 300 pages long, but and interesting read nonetheless you can at least skim the conclusions).
On a side note, I'm also not a US citizen (I'm from Chile), but I mention the US constitution for three reasons: Because the origins in IP in England are much more about power-grabbing and censorship than anything, thus not a valid point for the discussion. Because the US founder fathers addressed the issue in a much more relevant and interesting way (and were great thinkers, especially Jefferson). And finally because, whether we like it or not, that is were global law and enforcement is coming from these days. As most people outside, I abhor the current US foreign policy and general hypocrisy, although most individuals are just fine people.
Exactly, and that is the way it's supposed to happen. Patents, Copyright and others are not supposed to guarantee that a few people get rich, but instead that the benefit to society is maximized. I lost count on how many times the constitution has been quoted (on both cases) to prove it so. The question remains on how the hell did they manage to sell us the first definition so it's now the most common argument.
And you would be right, provided it does create an incentive and the content pass to the public domain at some point where it is still socially valuable. The current version pays these "incentives to create" to dead authors, while allowing the general public yo enjoy the music listened by their great-grandparents. Yeah! How could we find such a "balance" a bad one?
Latex is just not there if you deviate from writing a paper, period.
The learning curve explodes if you actually want to tweak the format in any meaningful way. I've had a CS Phd who's been using latex for years try to change the headings in a document to a blue color and after more than half an hour the solution she found is to manually edit every heading to set the color. There goes the famous "separation of content and presentation". And come on, HALF AN HOUR, for a trivial task, by an expert user, for a trivial task! The only reason you use such a tool is to avoid a similar punishment trying to look your formulas look good on any alternative, and even then you avoid changing any presentation whatsoever as much as possible.
Now, most people, myself included, actually want to have better usability for moving images around, setting my styles, get WYSIWYG immediate feedback instead of compiling my documents, inline grammar and spelling help, etc, etc, etc. (latex alternatives are severely lacking). MS Office is, to me, just a great piece of software.
Incidentally, there is an easy way to use Word much like Latex, by creating a template with all the desired styles and then locking the styles to restrict any formatting changes (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/restrict-or-permit-formatting-changes-HA010090865.aspx). Most formatting problems have to do with people inserting extra newlines to move things down, inconsistently painting a style manually in many parts of a document, numbering lists and headers manually, etc, etc. If you open the styles side panel of the typical document you will find dozens upon dozens of redundant and inconsistent styles. I even found that in the "Word template" for submissions to a known conference, along with their latex template. I usually keep a few templates and use them in every new document, concentrating only in content. If I ever need to format something, I switch temporarily to presentation by unlocking, editing, locking, cleanly separating both aspects. Changes are applied instantly over all document consistently and I can even update the template with the changes I made.
In sum, almost any advantage of latex over word can be matched by word if used in the right way. The opposite is just far, far from true. I would really encourage people to look into this workflow, as many others that I have shown it love it instantly. I just wish that MS would make styles more prominent as a replacement for the typical buttons for bold, etc...
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, I was about to mod you Funny, but hit overrated instead. Commenting to undo.
Plus, the usual legalese I've seen references plenty of other laws and documents, larger and more complicated. These reference other things too. Even worse, some words in a legal context have completely different meanings that the dictionary definition.
The crux of the matter is that every one of us is supposed to know and understand ALL law, and act accordingly. The reality is that no-one does, not completely. We all act on partial knowledge at best, use our own common sense and cross our fingers. Sometimes we can get unlucky and pay for that in time or money or both, heavily. But there is not much you can actually do about it without spending half your life becoming a law expert, which, IMHO, is a very steep overhead that I'm not willing to pay.
Magnetic Hard drives, for instance is an example of the same curve with no transistors.
That's because there are too many misconception floating around education. Many universities stated goal is not education, it is research. The difference might be subtle, but it basically means that how apt you are for a real-life job is secondary to how many papers they publish.
Also, these guys are partially right, education these days is free, or close. As they say in the articles, it's all over in books, videos, etc. Universities do give you this freebie, and improve the format. But more importantly they CERTIFY it. That's what grades and passing/failing is all about. A respectable institution vouching for your knowledge and capacity so employers don't have to take your word for it. I'm not sure if this is the best model tough, as it feels to me that you should be able to get such a certification no matter were you got the knowledge... and some universities do not make such a good job at certification anyway.
Finally, you go to university because maybe you don't have the capacity to independently decide what is worth studying, how to best approach a field or the discipline to dedicate yourself to it when nobody is pushing you. Especially since some things are useful and necessary but not fun. Also, to get access to peers, contacts and maybe job offers from inside the university's network.
How much is this all worth? It depends a lot on where you're coming from and where are you going, but it's clearly not a silver bullet for everyone.
I'm living in the US right now and one of the things I miss most is fresh bread, still hot from the over. In Chile, every supermarket includes a bakery, which gives you all the goodness without lose of convenience :-)
I also strife to explain it. It makes no sense if you want peace, tranquility, time for yourself, money, etc. Nevertheless, I think what a child really does is to switch your sense of accomplishment and self-esteem. Troubles at work are no longer the sole issues at hand, they are now "just another issue". In a sense, it's a switch in perspective more than anything else.
I would not call it thoughtlessness, I would call it instinct. I have an 8-month son. Did I want to have it? Not particularly. Did my wife? Desperately. Are we happy? Certainly! You can not discard maternal instinct, it's a powerful force. The problem is that instinct need to meet rationality, and that's why you should stop at 2 or less.
Actually, I'm fine with 1.9 for some time. Population has been growing exponentially in the last century and all current data guarantees that there is no possible way in which we can all reach for a good average standard of living with our current numbers. If I remember correctly, .
And yes, I would love nothing more than to have a big family, but reality tells me that is something "I want", not something that would actually benefit my children in the long run. Thus big families are, IMHO, no longer ethical. I'll stop at 2 children and do my part.
I got a new Toshiba Laptop yesterday. It came with a disclosure, outside the wrapper, indicating that I could not reject any piece of software in the PC unless I actually rejected the whole PC, and that no refunds would be given.
Or you can pirate common sense!
After a decade plus of denial we come out with the worst case scenario is our best case.
Actually 3 decades plus. The first report on global warming and it's potential consequences was at least as far back as 1981 (by James Hansen).
I'm not sure what you mean by coping. There are current, real-world examples of famine, war, poverty, social injustice and inequality, and other expected effects of too much population and too few resources. We also know examples of extreme weather and related catastrophes. In all cases humanity survives and endures these conditions, I mean, there has been no mass suicide or anything. Nevertheless, I'm not sure if any of these examples of "coping" is cause for optimism.
I do agree with you in terms of the likelihood of mending things before the effects are felt is close to 0. It would mean responsible politicians, willing to tell people "we are going to limit and even decrease your rights to many things, and possible your standard of living, before it's too late". It would also mean responsible and intelligent people to support those politicians. Greece is a good example of were that might go. Well studied fenomena in game theory, the tragedy of the commons, etc. basically guarantee that an equilibrium were everybody sacrifices a little for the common good will not be reached. Much less globally.
In short: yes. Again, that is a break on overspending, debt and consumerism. "Less" is not the same as "Bad" on my book, that{s the main difference. Of course, people can not eat money, so products and services will still be produced, jobs will still exist, etc. Actually the vast majority of people spend most of what they make on bare necessities. Inflationary or deflationary forces don't have any impact on that. The impact will be on what do you do with your disposable income (if any) and on how much other can take from you by forcing you to invest.
Sad, but you manage to insult me by saying there is no hope for me to understand, twice, then add no valuable fact or idea to the conversation, then ridicule yourself completely by saying a 5% growth is not exponential growth. You can educate yourself here in terms of the math. In terms of how to have an adult conversation, have some humility and/or respect other people, I can't help you, but there are ways. Good luck.
That's debatable. You seem to be taking things a little to the extreme when you say "no one". People will still invest, they are ambitious. God, people still go to CASINOS. Investments are risk, and not necessarily a good thing, especially if compulsory. Also, our economy based on loans and debt is far from healthy. Ask people who lost their retirement funds.
I understand where you are coming from, that's why I said you were partially right. But any real economy is a matter of balance. The current incentive to spend and invest (because it's not always investment) is countered by governments creating saving incentives. If we change the incentive, governments can for instance create separate incentives for investment or to create companies, tax redistribution, etc, etc. The economy is much to complex a creature that a single change has a clear outcome.
So a deflationary currency could impose a different balance, which might be better than the current one (the bar is not too high). One where debt and risk do exist but have a higher entry bar (and are not the ONLY way). Also, inflation somewhat depends on continuous, exponential growth (and slashdot has had that conversation many times). Last time I checked, the 99% was hardly investing and all the consequences you mention are becoming true with the CURRENT schema! I could easily invert all your train of though to get the exact opposite conclusion. IMHO, it's a good thing to see if the bitcoin schema works.
Depends if you consider "hoarding" to be a bad thing in itself. Some of us just call it "saving". Such a currency would put a break at the constant need to invest in stocks and other stuff, as well as the need for governments to promote savings/insurance/retirement artificially. It would diminish the risk and eliminate a lot of compulsive consumption (better spend it right now in any way than to loose it to inflation right?).
I'm not saying that you are wrong though, just saying, that every coin has two sides, and bit-coins seem no exception.
Why are you playing an MMORPG if you prefer not to interact with other players? You would probably be better with a plain old RPG.
No issues whatsoever :-)
Incidentally, you might also find this interesting: Johanna
Blakley: Lessons from fashion's free culture | Video on TED.com. I have more sources if you are interested.
I'm not stating any opinion in this particular case. It just seems dangerous to me how the arguments in favor of "creators" seem to include a legal "right to profit", despite any (positive or negative) consequence to society.
Otherwise, your argument is sound and well-intended, although I doubt the real-world outcome is the one you present. I'm personally very skeptical of monopolies and restrictions as a solution. The reasons why we avoid them (or prosecute them) in the first place is because they tend to work the complete opposite, and IP seems to me no exception. I find this book to be particularly compelling in detailing the history and actual impact of IP: (warning, it's 300 pages long, but and interesting read nonetheless you can at least skim the conclusions).
On a side note, I'm also not a US citizen (I'm from Chile), but I mention the US constitution for three reasons: Because the origins in IP in England are much more about power-grabbing and censorship than anything, thus not a valid point for the discussion. Because the US founder fathers addressed the issue in a much more relevant and interesting way (and were great thinkers, especially Jefferson). And finally because, whether we like it or not, that is were global law and enforcement is coming from these days. As most people outside, I abhor the current US foreign policy and general hypocrisy, although most individuals are just fine people.
Because it benefits us,the people.
At the expense of them, the company.
Exactly, and that is the way it's supposed to happen. Patents, Copyright and others are not supposed to guarantee that a few people get rich, but instead that the benefit to society is maximized. I lost count on how many times the constitution has been quoted (on both cases) to prove it so. The question remains on how the hell did they manage to sell us the first definition so it's now the most common argument.
SIGH, Things were so simple when whoever HAD the data was the owner of it...
And you would be right, provided it does create an incentive and the content pass to the public domain at some point where it is still socially valuable.
The current version pays these "incentives to create" to dead authors, while allowing the general public yo enjoy the music listened by their great-grandparents. Yeah!
How could we find such a "balance" a bad one?
Latex is just not there if you deviate from writing a paper, period.
The learning curve explodes if you actually want to tweak the format in any meaningful way. I've had a CS Phd who's been using latex for years try to change the headings in a document to a blue color and after more than half an hour the solution she found is to manually edit every heading to set the color. There goes the famous "separation of content and presentation". And come on, HALF AN HOUR, for a trivial task, by an expert user, for a trivial task! The only reason you use such a tool is to avoid a similar punishment trying to look your formulas look good on any alternative, and even then you avoid changing any presentation whatsoever as much as possible.
Now, most people, myself included, actually want to have better usability for moving images around, setting my styles, get WYSIWYG immediate feedback instead of compiling my documents, inline grammar and spelling help, etc, etc, etc. (latex alternatives are severely lacking). MS Office is, to me, just a great piece of software.
Incidentally, there is an easy way to use Word much like Latex, by creating a template with all the desired styles and then locking the styles to restrict any formatting changes (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/restrict-or-permit-formatting-changes-HA010090865.aspx). Most formatting problems have to do with people inserting extra newlines to move things down, inconsistently painting a style manually in many parts of a document, numbering lists and headers manually, etc, etc. If you open the styles side panel of the typical document you will find dozens upon dozens of redundant and inconsistent styles. I even found that in the "Word template" for submissions to a known conference, along with their latex template. I usually keep a few templates and use them in every new document, concentrating only in content. If I ever need to format something, I switch temporarily to presentation by unlocking, editing, locking, cleanly separating both aspects. Changes are applied instantly over all document consistently and I can even update the template with the changes I made.
In sum, almost any advantage of latex over word can be matched by word if used in the right way. The opposite is just far, far from true. I would really encourage people to look into this workflow, as many others that I have shown it love it instantly. I just wish that MS would make styles more prominent as a replacement for the typical buttons for bold, etc...
So YOU are the guy who keeps missing the toilet in the office! Man, you're almost a legend after all these years...
"that makes them the inefficient backbone of employment."
True, but it also makes them unable to compete with the proverbial Wallmart.