Why is the government involved in regulating water, anyways? If we only opened up water service to the free market, then people would buy water from those companies who are prepared and we never would have had a Y2k problem in the first place!...
It would cost considerably less than a manned mars mission, but obviously more than an unmanned mars mission.
But its not as much more expensive as you might imagine -- once you've got it *launched*, the issues are pretty much the same no matter where its going (so long as you're willing to accept that it will take longer to get there, and communications will be slower). Surviving the entry and landing on europa wouln't be much worse than mars (although obviously we're having some difficulty there).
Sending a probe to Jupiter itself would be tough, with the gravitational issues and the lack of any solid ground for it to sit on. Likewise, landing on somewhere like pluto would be an issue because then you're talking about serious communications problems. But mars vs europa is mostly an issue of distance and time more than anything technically challenging...
The "idiotic" rate at which biotech companies are applying for patents is hardly such; these companies are just defending their interests as best they can
I wasn't referring to legitimate biotech inventions (like medicines, engineered bacteria or non-obvious chemical processes) -- those are certainly worth the same as any other invention, and have a lot of expensive research behind them. That's why I said I'm at least relieved that this patent was a PROCESS.
I was referring to the dubious and genric genome patents (that you talked about as well), and (in general) the patenting of naturally occuring substances. It just seems ridiculous to claim them as original works...
unfortunately, the patent was ruled against only because of impropriety in the application/description (representing that it was more significant a change than it was from previous knowledge).
The ruling I'd like very much to see is that genetic patents aren't enforcable/legitimate at all, due to the fact that they are merely discoveries.
Of course, this patent dealt with a specific PROCESS, not a true genetic patent, so I can at least understand why that could/should be protected.
Hopefully this will at least slow down the idiotic rate at which biotech patents are being applied for, as it tells the companies that sloppiness or misrepresentation in the application will invalidate the discovery. Since most of the genetic patents are being done through brute-force methods and applied for as fast as they can type the pages, this may inject a modicum of restraint...
there are two types of sell you need to think about -- "market" or "limit". Just tell the broker which you want.
A market sell means to sell the stock at whatever the market is currently trading it at -- this may be higher or lower than your information, and it's intended for folks who want to cash in as QUICKLY as possible.
A limit says to sell at a certain point -- say, $250. That way, if it dips below $250 a share, your broker will sell it immediately. this is intended to keep you from losing value if the price drops. But if it goes up to $300 the broker doesn't sell. Then maybe you call later and raise the limit to $275, so if it drops down to $275 it will sell.
many of the large chains give you a big hassle about copying regular itmes, much less money. The debit cards they so frequently use for convenience (and they are more convenient than change) can also be used for identification.
As an artist, I've had copy places refuse to let me make photocopies of my own work because they were worried about copyright violations (I just couldn't convince them that i had in fact created the work in the first place!)...
There isn't anything stopping Microsoft from simply closing shop in Redmond and moving to Canada. I can tell you without any doubts that our (Canada's) government would roll out the red carpet for them.
There are about a million reasons why they don't do this.
Foremost is their desire to have the US talent pool of programmers and developers. Moving to Seattle is bad enough, but convincing someone to move to another country from the US is a tough sell.
Foreign programmers are attracted to the US. Offering to move them to Canada is a good way to have them go to work at IBM or AOL or any other company here.
As much as MS can and will posture that the Govt is destroying them, they know which side their bread is buttered on. No other country could have generated MS, and no other country can allow them to prosper as much. They have wayy too much to gain from friendly US laws (we're the most big-business friendly place on earth, by far). If they want to see what real government regulation is like, I'd encourage them to move to Canada or Europe. Then they'll have more problems to worry about than temps asking for options -- they'll have employees suing for working too many hours and not getting enough vacation time...
When's the last time you heard of someone successfully protecting his home and family because he had a gun
Shit, man -- you need to get out more. Happens about every freaking day.
Coincidentally enough, if you actually teach kids about guns rather than locking them in a box and hoping they never see one, they will be very responsible with them.
In the 1800's, when the rite of manhood was getting a gun at 11, do you think everyone was being blown away by these trigger-happy kids? Hell, no -- only romantic nincompoops who have never actually SEEN violence except in movies think that gunning people down is going to solve problems.
Think of it this way -- has promoting abstinence solved the problem of teenage pregnancy? No, because they're going to have sex whether you like it or not. teach them how to do it safely and your problem is at least mitigated. Similarly, America will never give up guns, so the only way to promote safety is to require "safe gun" classes.
BTW, I don't own a gun and never have. I don't like them, but I recognize why people do, and I don't have such a myopic view of history that I think the second amentdment is about protecting the rights of "hunters". Of course assault rifles only kill people -- thats what most of the founding fathers had just spent years doing much more slowly...
They also considerably raise the cost of entry to start-ups
Sure, you own this small business...Oh, and by the way, you're guilty
The vast majority of government workplace regulations do not apply to companies under a certain size (depending on the specific regulations) so they almost never apply to "small companies" or startups.
I know it's fashionable to assume the government is out to kill industry and all profit (presumably because they want to destroy the economy?) but they usually enact legislation in a responsible way...
Jackson claimed that the pricing of win98 upgrade at $89 instead of $49 was a violation of antitrust. $49 being the break even point
Wow -- two wrong statements and you're surprised that your conclusion was wrong?
First, $49 was not the "break-even", which would imply they were making no profit at that price -- it was Microsoft's OWN, INTERNAL, OFFICIAL economic analysis of the product's best price point. The price at which they would have been the most successful as a regular company.
But they charged almost twice that, which was not a "violation of antitrust" -- there is nothing wrong with charging more -- it was simply one more indication that they were a monopoly, and thus did not have to do their math the same way ever other company does.
A statement of fact is not an indictment, and you would probably be a lot less concerned about communist infiltration if you would just read the document without reading *into* the document. It means what it says, no more and no less. Show me the line where Jackson says "charging $89 was an antitrust violation" and I will eat my shoe. I would think that with all the discussion taking place these past weeks that people would begin to understand that NO CONCLUSIONS OF LAW have been made yet. The pricing discussions were DISCUSSIONS OF FACT. If you don't like the facts, complain to MS, not the government...
You can't copyright something that is in itself a violation of someone else's copyright, so in that sense the answer to many of you hypotheticals is "no".
however, if you take a photo of someone's code, yes, you'll own the copyright on the photo, but you have no more right to the code itself than you did before the photo was taken.
As another example, if you take a photo of a random woman on the street, you own the copyright for that photograph, BUT -- you can't distribute or sell that photograph or copies without gaining legel right to distribute her likeness. Her right to control the use of her likeness prohibits your exercise of copyright until you can work out a deal, see?
Of course, if she later shoots someone, then it's an image of a "newsworthy" person, and you can do a lot more with it. That's where fair use comes into play at the same time as her right to protect her likeness begins to diminish (as she is now "a celebrity" and less protected). And you can enforce your copyright on that now-valuable image to prevent others from making money off of what you created...
Although I occasionally do find myself wondering whether we would have or need as many laws as we have if everyone was armed. Particularly if those armed individuals were known to keep themselves informed of the voting records of their elected representatives
So force to support law is evil but force for the sake of vigilantism is good? I'm getting really confused here...
How would those bad laws - or any laws - be enforced without, well, force? Cop says "The Village Committe has branded you Unmutal! You're under arrest!" I say "Yeah, right," and go about my business. If he can't pull a gun, or physically overpower me, his "arrest" means nothing.
So in your world where "evil" things like force and laws don't exist, how do people function? What happens if someone goes around burning down houses, should we just say "tsk, tsk" and let them go about their business?
No joke -- when i hit the reply button on the original story there were NO replies yet.
I got distracted by actual work for a minute and wrote the message and posted it. Within about 30 seconds it was moderated down! I think someone's got a little itchy trigger-finger on the moderation, there...
The law is based on violence because, ultimately, obedience to law is enforced by people with guns
Wow -- that's a humdinger of a statement.
I think you're missing a few layers of free will in there, somewhere, though.
People disobey laws all the time without firearms getting involved. Sometimes it even changes the law because the inequity is brought to light. Other times it doesn't.
People obey laws all the time for reasons having nothing to do with firearms.
Are you suggesting bad laws would be better if police were unarmed? Or good laws would be worse if everyone was armed?
i think we're talking past each other on this one -- I never suggested that columbus was right in his thinking, only that he had "the courage to actually go out and trust that he was right", and that's what led to his discovery.
Suggesting that people shouldn't get full credit for accidental discoveries is stingy. So penecillin was no big deal because "someone would have discoveed it eventually".
As an artist, I see a version of this all the time, when people say "my kid could draw that". The point is, that your kid DIDN'T. being the second person to do something is not a big deal, and beating up on the first is a little too easy...
That's selling him short -- what he had was the courage to actually go out and trust that he was right -- on penalty of death.
It's one thing to "know" the earth is round, it's entirely another to be the guy to sail it first, despite having your crew on the brink of mutiny because they think you're going to kill them all.
It's like saying Neil Armstrong and other astronauts are no big deal, because they "knew" they'd be fine. No matter how many times you work it out on the slide rule, going into space with nothing but a millimeter of gold foil to keep your guts from blasting out your eyes is not a matter of luck, and neither is sailing over a horizon no one has ever returned from before...
The most obvious answer is that people dismiss it because the proponents jump to irrational and illogical conclusions based on only minimal or nonexistant evidence.
reading through the page, what struck me most was how quickly they were assosciating anything about the skull with "eyewitness accounts" of what a "gray" looks like. Given only a verbal account of what a human head looks like, i have no doubt this skull would fit within acceptable parameters, as well.
They brush off suggestions that it is simply malformed but entirely human because the doctors they've consulted disagree on the cause of deformity. So what? You can get mutually exclusive diagnosis for even the most common ailments for a patient that can actually talk to doctors and subject themselves to tests. Suggesting that multiple diagnosis from only a single sekeletal section necessarily invalidates them all is nothing short of self-delusional.
Furthermore, there are many statements about why it couldn't be a given ailment that are simply wrong. Most extreme genetic disorders or other genetic ailmnents are fairly rare, and thus they have very little basis for saying that this skull doesn't fit them. Having done studies on Progeria, I personally thought the skull looked pretty much like most of the photos I've seen of progeric heads. For them to say it COULDN'T be progeria because it's "too symmetrical" is ridiculous and completely unbased on any scientific rationale.
Finally, I couldn't do anything but laugh at their "forensic rendering". There are a lot of groundless assumptions being made in it, and i suggest that if they gave the skull to a qualified forensic artist without telling them "we think its an alien skull!" it would look pretty normal, although obviously a little top-heavy (a lot like someone with progeria).
I especially liked the pointed ears, considering there was no ear cartilage or other physical structure to indicate what shape they should be other than normal human rounded...
Contrary to being "interesting" I think this guy must have interviewed at some offshore medical school or was rejected for some other reason.
I can assure you that as someone working at 2 different medical schools in the past year, there are tons of people doing development using OSS for their own use.
It's kinda like Visicalc invading the corporations in the 80s, there are simply too many brilliant MD/PhD students out there who happen to know how to code and want to make it easier to check out a scan from radiology without having to drive into the hospital when they're on call...
No one would need more than 1024x768, nor anything larger than 21inch
And no one would need more than 640k of RAM, right?
Seriously, I run my 21" monitor at 1280x1024 for normal use, up to 1800x1600 if I'm doing work in 3d studio. Most of the time I'm doing web design at 1280, though.
believe me, photoshop and dreamweaver and most other apps with 100 palettes work a lot better with the resolution to put them ALL off to the side of the screen and still have enough real estate left over to get work done.
Standalone LCD screens seem to me a waste too.
Well, they are for your average computer user, but even then you have a lot of advanatages in power consumption and ecological damage. It's a lot better on the environment for everyone to use LCDs than CRTs. And a 21" CRT weighs about 80 pounds -- not fun to lug around and makes it hard on your desk. They also tend to be about 18" deep or more, meaning my desk has to be about two feet from the wall just so I can hang the damn monitor off the back and still have enough spoace for the keyboard!
And as many others have noted, it's a LOT easier on your eyes to look at an LCD -- you're not staring into a lightbulb, which is essentially what a CRT is...
Slashdot Mirror
Why is the government involved in regulating water, anyways? If we only opened up water service to the free market, then people would buy water from those companies who are prepared and we never would have had a Y2k problem in the first place!...
It would cost considerably less than a manned mars mission, but obviously more than an unmanned mars mission.
But its not as much more expensive as you might imagine -- once you've got it *launched*, the issues are pretty much the same no matter where its going (so long as you're willing to accept that it will take longer to get there, and communications will be slower). Surviving the entry and landing on europa wouln't be much worse than mars (although obviously we're having some difficulty there).
Sending a probe to Jupiter itself would be tough, with the gravitational issues and the lack of any solid ground for it to sit on. Likewise, landing on somewhere like pluto would be an issue because then you're talking about serious communications problems. But mars vs europa is mostly an issue of distance and time more than anything technically challenging...
The "idiotic" rate at which biotech companies are applying for patents is hardly such; these companies are just defending their interests as best they can
I wasn't referring to legitimate biotech inventions (like medicines, engineered bacteria or non-obvious chemical processes) -- those are certainly worth the same as any other invention, and have a lot of expensive research behind them. That's why I said I'm at least relieved that this patent was a PROCESS.
I was referring to the dubious and genric genome patents (that you talked about as well), and (in general) the patenting of naturally occuring substances. It just seems ridiculous to claim them as original works...
unfortunately, the patent was ruled against only because of impropriety in the application/description (representing that it was more significant a change than it was from previous knowledge).
The ruling I'd like very much to see is that genetic patents aren't enforcable/legitimate at all, due to the fact that they are merely discoveries.
Of course, this patent dealt with a specific PROCESS, not a true genetic patent, so I can at least understand why that could/should be protected.
Hopefully this will at least slow down the idiotic rate at which biotech patents are being applied for, as it tells the companies that sloppiness or misrepresentation in the application will invalidate the discovery. Since most of the genetic patents are being done through brute-force methods and applied for as fast as they can type the pages, this may inject a modicum of restraint...
there are two types of sell you need to think about -- "market" or "limit". Just tell the broker which you want.
A market sell means to sell the stock at whatever the market is currently trading it at -- this may be higher or lower than your information, and it's intended for folks who want to cash in as QUICKLY as possible.
A limit says to sell at a certain point -- say, $250. That way, if it dips below $250 a share, your broker will sell it immediately. this is intended to keep you from losing value if the price drops. But if it goes up to $300 the broker doesn't sell. Then maybe you call later and raise the limit to $275, so if it drops down to $275 it will sell.
I'm never funny until I'm drunk, and even then I only think I am
Yeah, but the point of being drunk is that it doesn't matter if it's all in your head!
As long as you don't get into any fights...
In 4 sentences you've managed to make just about every flaw in logic discovered since the time of Plato...
many of the large chains give you a big hassle about copying regular itmes, much less money. The debit cards they so frequently use for convenience (and they are more convenient than change) can also be used for identification.
As an artist, I've had copy places refuse to let me make photocopies of my own work because they were worried about copyright violations (I just couldn't convince them that i had in fact created the work in the first place!)...
There isn't anything stopping Microsoft from simply closing shop in Redmond and moving to Canada. I can tell you without any doubts that our (Canada's) government would roll out the red carpet for them.
There are about a million reasons why they don't do this.
Foremost is their desire to have the US talent pool of programmers and developers. Moving to Seattle is bad enough, but convincing someone to move to another country from the US is a tough sell.
Foreign programmers are attracted to the US. Offering to move them to Canada is a good way to have them go to work at IBM or AOL or any other company here.
As much as MS can and will posture that the Govt is destroying them, they know which side their bread is buttered on. No other country could have generated MS, and no other country can allow them to prosper as much. They have wayy too much to gain from friendly US laws (we're the most big-business friendly place on earth, by far). If they want to see what real government regulation is like, I'd encourage them to move to Canada or Europe. Then they'll have more problems to worry about than temps asking for options -- they'll have employees suing for working too many hours and not getting enough vacation time...
When's the last time you heard of someone successfully protecting his home and family because he had a gun
Shit, man -- you need to get out more. Happens about every freaking day.
Coincidentally enough, if you actually teach kids about guns rather than locking them in a box and hoping they never see one, they will be very responsible with them.
In the 1800's, when the rite of manhood was getting a gun at 11, do you think everyone was being blown away by these trigger-happy kids? Hell, no -- only romantic nincompoops who have never actually SEEN violence except in movies think that gunning people down is going to solve problems.
Think of it this way -- has promoting abstinence solved the problem of teenage pregnancy? No, because they're going to have sex whether you like it or not. teach them how to do it safely and your problem is at least mitigated. Similarly, America will never give up guns, so the only way to promote safety is to require "safe gun" classes.
BTW, I don't own a gun and never have. I don't like them, but I recognize why people do, and I don't have such a myopic view of history that I think the second amentdment is about protecting the rights of "hunters". Of course assault rifles only kill people -- thats what most of the founding fathers had just spent years doing much more slowly...
They also considerably raise the cost of entry to start-ups
Sure, you own this small business...Oh, and by the way, you're guilty
The vast majority of government workplace regulations do not apply to companies under a certain size (depending on the specific regulations) so they almost never apply to "small companies" or startups.
I know it's fashionable to assume the government is out to kill industry and all profit (presumably because they want to destroy the economy?) but they usually enact legislation in a responsible way...
Jackson claimed that the pricing of win98 upgrade at $89 instead of $49 was a violation of antitrust. $49 being the break even point
Wow -- two wrong statements and you're surprised that your conclusion was wrong?
First, $49 was not the "break-even", which would imply they were making no profit at that price -- it was Microsoft's OWN, INTERNAL, OFFICIAL economic analysis of the product's best price point. The price at which they would have been the most successful as a regular company.
But they charged almost twice that, which was not a "violation of antitrust" -- there is nothing wrong with charging more -- it was simply one more indication that they were a monopoly, and thus did not have to do their math the same way ever other company does.
A statement of fact is not an indictment, and you would probably be a lot less concerned about communist infiltration if you would just read the document without reading *into* the document. It means what it says, no more and no less. Show me the line where Jackson says "charging $89 was an antitrust violation" and I will eat my shoe. I would think that with all the discussion taking place these past weeks that people would begin to understand that NO CONCLUSIONS OF LAW have been made yet. The pricing discussions were DISCUSSIONS OF FACT. If you don't like the facts, complain to MS, not the government...
You can't copyright something that is in itself a violation of someone else's copyright, so in that sense the answer to many of you hypotheticals is "no".
however, if you take a photo of someone's code, yes, you'll own the copyright on the photo, but you have no more right to the code itself than you did before the photo was taken.
As another example, if you take a photo of a random woman on the street, you own the copyright for that photograph, BUT -- you can't distribute or sell that photograph or copies without gaining legel right to distribute her likeness. Her right to control the use of her likeness prohibits your exercise of copyright until you can work out a deal, see?
Of course, if she later shoots someone, then it's an image of a "newsworthy" person, and you can do a lot more with it. That's where fair use comes into play at the same time as her right to protect her likeness begins to diminish (as she is now "a celebrity" and less protected). And you can enforce your copyright on that now-valuable image to prevent others from making money off of what you created...
Although I occasionally do find myself wondering whether we would have or need as many laws as we
have if everyone was armed. Particularly if those armed individuals were known to keep themselves informed of
the voting records of their elected representatives
So force to support law is evil but force for the sake of vigilantism is good? I'm getting really confused here...
How would those bad laws - or any laws - be enforced without, well, force? Cop says "The Village Committe
has branded you Unmutal! You're under arrest!" I say "Yeah, right," and go about my business. If he can't pull a
gun, or physically overpower me, his "arrest" means nothing.
So in your world where "evil" things like force and laws don't exist, how do people function? What happens if someone goes around burning down houses, should we just say "tsk, tsk" and let them go about their business?
No joke -- when i hit the reply button on the original story there were NO replies yet.
I got distracted by actual work for a minute and wrote the message and posted it. Within about 30 seconds it was moderated down! I think someone's got a little itchy trigger-finger on the moderation, there...
Safe Mode? It's gonna be hell looking at those great astronomical photographs in 16-color VGA!...
The law is based on violence because, ultimately, obedience to law is enforced by people with guns
Wow -- that's a humdinger of a statement.
I think you're missing a few layers of free will in there, somewhere, though.
People disobey laws all the time without firearms getting involved. Sometimes it even changes the law because the inequity is brought to light. Other times it doesn't.
People obey laws all the time for reasons having nothing to do with firearms.
Are you suggesting bad laws would be better if police were unarmed? Or good laws would be worse if everyone was armed?
It is always wrong to fall back on violence (and the law is based on violence)
Whoa! Could you explain to me why the law is based on violence again? I seem to be missing that section of my civics textbook...
i think we're talking past each other on this one -- I never suggested that columbus was right in his thinking, only that he had "the courage to actually go out and trust that he was right", and that's what led to his discovery.
Suggesting that people shouldn't get full credit for accidental discoveries is stingy. So penecillin was no big deal because "someone would have discoveed it eventually".
As an artist, I see a version of this all the time, when people say "my kid could draw that". The point is, that your kid DIDN'T. being the second person to do something is not a big deal, and beating up on the first is a little too easy...
That's selling him short -- what he had was the courage to actually go out and trust that he was right -- on penalty of death.
It's one thing to "know" the earth is round, it's entirely another to be the guy to sail it first, despite having your crew on the brink of mutiny because they think you're going to kill them all.
It's like saying Neil Armstrong and other astronauts are no big deal, because they "knew" they'd be fine. No matter how many times you work it out on the slide rule, going into space with nothing but a millimeter of gold foil to keep your guts from blasting out your eyes is not a matter of luck, and neither is sailing over a horizon no one has ever returned from before...
The most obvious answer is that people dismiss it because the proponents jump to irrational and illogical conclusions based on only minimal or nonexistant evidence.
reading through the page, what struck me most was how quickly they were assosciating anything about the skull with "eyewitness accounts" of what a "gray" looks like. Given only a verbal account of what a human head looks like, i have no doubt this skull would fit within acceptable parameters, as well.
They brush off suggestions that it is simply malformed but entirely human because the doctors they've consulted disagree on the cause of deformity. So what? You can get mutually exclusive diagnosis for even the most common ailments for a patient that can actually talk to doctors and subject themselves to tests.
Suggesting that multiple diagnosis from only a single sekeletal section necessarily invalidates them all is nothing short of self-delusional.
Furthermore, there are many statements about why it couldn't be a given ailment that are simply wrong. Most extreme genetic disorders or other genetic ailmnents are fairly rare, and thus they have very little basis for saying that this skull doesn't fit them. Having done studies on Progeria, I personally thought the skull looked pretty much like most of the photos I've seen of progeric heads. For them to say it COULDN'T be progeria because it's "too symmetrical" is ridiculous and completely unbased on any scientific rationale.
Finally, I couldn't do anything but laugh at their "forensic rendering". There are a lot of groundless assumptions being made in it, and i suggest that if they gave the skull to a qualified forensic artist without telling them "we think its an alien skull!" it would look pretty normal, although obviously a little top-heavy (a lot like someone with progeria).
I especially liked the pointed ears, considering there was no ear cartilage or other physical structure to indicate what shape they should be other than normal human rounded...
Contrary to being "interesting" I think this guy must have interviewed at some offshore medical school or was rejected for some other reason.
I can assure you that as someone working at 2 different medical schools in the past year, there are tons of people doing development using OSS for their own use.
It's kinda like Visicalc invading the corporations in the 80s, there are simply too many brilliant MD/PhD students out there who happen to know how to code and want to make it easier to check out a scan from radiology without having to drive into the hospital when they're on call...
No one would need more than 1024x768, nor anything larger than 21inch
And no one would need more than 640k of RAM, right?
Seriously, I run my 21" monitor at 1280x1024 for normal use, up to 1800x1600 if I'm doing work in 3d studio. Most of the time I'm doing web design at 1280, though.
believe me, photoshop and dreamweaver and most other apps with 100 palettes work a lot better with the resolution to put them ALL off to the side of the screen and still have enough real estate left over to get work done.
Standalone LCD screens seem to me a waste too.
Well, they are for your average computer user, but even then you have a lot of advanatages in power consumption and ecological damage. It's a lot better on the environment for everyone to use LCDs than CRTs. And a 21" CRT weighs about 80 pounds -- not fun to lug around and makes it hard on your desk. They also tend to be about 18" deep or more, meaning my desk has to be about two feet from the wall just so I can hang the damn monitor off the back and still have enough spoace for the keyboard!
And as many others have noted, it's a LOT easier on your eyes to look at an LCD -- you're not staring into a lightbulb, which is essentially what a CRT is...
well maybe sony could fax us a screen shot so we could see the quality?