Gosh, isn't a, "take it or leave it all," type contract exactly what all 'free software' agreements are all about? You can't tell me this is the first time you've noticed that something is amiss with the $ billions in revenue that accrues to large corporations like banks, wireless carriers, ISPs, and web based businesses that hawk 'their' user's metadata and/or real data because of the assumption that it becomes the property of the company providing the service?
However, Courts often use the âoedoctrine of reasonable expectationsâ as a justification for invalidating parts or all of an adhesion contract: the weaker party will not be held to adhere to contract terms that are beyond what the weaker party would have reasonably expected from the contract, even if what he or she reasonably expected was outside the strict letter of agreement.
Now that EPA testing is shown to flawed and the result clearly indicates the entire regulatory system is just as dysfunctional, perhaps the focus should be on improving both simultaneously. Why not require a engine control system be optimized for the desired performance in terms of fuel economy and pollution reduction, rather than continuing to allow marketers to dangle power, acceleration and top end speed in front of consmers as the holy trinity of all that is good and right about cars and trucks.
Clearly the free market and its attendant regulatory schema is failing us.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a 'free market' publication that anayzed and evaluated automobiles with such criteria in mind. John Maynard Keynes wrote about the comparison between central planning in communist states and advertising in capitalist economies. When all you get from auto manufacturers are engineering specs and hype, in the absence of thoughtful analysis, consumers end up with little information by which to.make inormed choices.
Just like our political selections process, as evidenced by news organizations which routinely broadcast meaningless poll stats putting Trump at the head of a worthless pack of questionable stats.
Trump is a Wrangler.
If there were moral standards applied to truth in advertising, itself, I might agree. Clearly this is not the case, so tough noogies! I use adblocking indiscriminately because my time and thoughts are mine, and the ecosystem of advertising is a swamp of daemons praying on my consciousness.
It's corporate business as usual in America. These crooked companiez benefit regardless of the fines. Restitution isn't required, the executives who initiate these programs keep their bonuses and the companies' cash flow is enhanced by the use of ill gotten gains. Additionally, anything paid through credit cards fills the tills of big banks and the interlocked corporate directorships as well as the 'investors'.
They are not tasked with keeping us safe; they are tasked with 'safeguarding our liberties'.
Safeguarding liberty by breaking through a constitutional boundary... That's a hot one! Thanks for the belly laugh.
The Bill of Rights is the set of proscriptions deemed necessary by the founders to ensure that the citizenry was protected from the tyranny of its own unrestricted government. The fourth amendment was enshrined to limit police power to that which could be rationally supported by evidence of wrong doing. I.E., the wrong doing must logical occur prior to the collection of evidence, in a system where provision against 'unreasonable search' is in force. Blanket surveillance of all electronic communications for as many channels as possible is so completely beyond the pale of reason for anyone who claims knowledge of liberty, that it's hard to believe anyone would question the legitimacy of such an attempt. But here it is...
Where's the coverage of something meaningful, like a rational response to the threat of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the brains of kids? The federal courts just increased the potential settlement in the case against the NFL for the willful and negligent ignorance it showed its 'own' players, and Slashdot wants to trumpet the free advertising generated by the NFL spin doctors during the off-season?!
How come no geeks have KickStarted a device for helmet data collection? One with a cell phone accelerometer, a near-field-computing chip/antenna and battery, so CTE could be easily researched and this stupid, violent, quasi-militaristic monopoly might be augmented by a rational approach to reality?
The alternative is (C) [Your Name Goes Here]
Even if you only enter the 'race' long enough to change the conversation, at least you participted, otherwise you're right. Your nonparticipation is unlikely to have much effect.
Everything about Android IS fishy, starting with its origin and ending with Apps that are allowed 'access' to anything just because the developer asks. Access to my contact list in exchange for information on astronomy?! C'mon... Why does Google approve of such behavior?
Apparently geeks only require security for their own personal data or that of their company and believe everyone else's is better off left wide open.
Functional and financial compatibility are both red herrings. Nuclear power has never been compatible with human health or security. You should read up on the work and activism of Helen Caldicott then carefully consider the history of development, the health concerns, and the current state of waste handling. The Hanford site, where nuclear fuel was first manufactured for weapons will most likely never be cleaned up, and there still is no politically or scientifically acceptable solution to the problem of long term storage or processing. If Chernoble didn't clue you in to that, then Fukushima most certainly should have. After +60 years the military uses uranium as if it's safe to vaporize and disperse radioactive munitions, revealing the level of care and concern that it and its industrial engineers employ in addressing the long term consequences.
Alternative short answer: No... not unless you can find an alternative to what passes for biznez in Corporus Decaetum Internationalis. Learn something useful like environmental economics and find a way to fund a startup based on cooperative systems theory.
I am 50+ and remember my 4th grade science teacher telling me that that the theory of plate tectonics was so new that it wasn't taught when she was in school. She brought it up because she wanted us little school kiddies to understand that scientific theory evolves with the adoption of new, peer reviewed, debated, experimentally validated hypotheses that depend upon specific and consistent use of language and method. All of this together is supposed to advance the state of human knowledge and hopefully the human condition.
It's plain as the nose on Rupert Murdoch's ugly puss that Fox has no respect for anything but revenue and their editorial staff can't distinguish a science from a seance or a fact from a fascist, so why does anyone waste other people's time posting the stupid crap that spews forth from this maw of mediocrity? Is it really that addictive, or is revenue the least common denominator for the Nuu Slashdot as well?
An Oreo from Cowboy Neal's chuck wagon for the first cogent response?
By definition, the reason the price of
____ is ____ is because, "that is what the market will bear."
Fundamentally, the idea that neoclassical economics should be allowed to determine the course of human events or the development of civilization has revealed itself to be false. That's the upshot of The Enlightenment as viewed from the midst of the third wave of globalization wrapped in the second wave of industrialization, just before the shit hits the impeller. So the question becomes how to identify the necessary set of values which should replace those that were misidentifed and championed by the Cult of Adam Smith's Incredibly Invisible Hand.
It's officially one world now, according to all good wealthy western outsourcerers, and unless we're going to discriminate against those born to poverty and abandon them to the accident of birth, then redirecting the behemoth will require sacrifice from the first world to the rest. That means subsidized technological development where it's necessary to equalize the chasm of poverty, population decreases and environmental remediation to preserve the ecological integrity of a global system that's in decline and real discussion about what will characterize a heathy, sustainable system of natural and interconnected artifical human systems. It implies far better cooperation than the UN framework for (fill-in-the-blank).
Electrifying rural everwhere, if it can actually done with a net negative impact would be great. If it can't be done without increasing "globalization" as we have come to know it, then it won't matter much in 3 or 4 generations because the catastrophes associated with environmental degradation will include reductions in agricultural output, famine and social dystonia. Since we've "decided" that the natural world is the defacto sewer of industrial man, you can bet that increased envronmental stresses will usher in decreased health to go along with a few panicked incidences of pestilence requiring a little martial law. Don't be afraid, it will all be done for the good of all.
I can't say I believe any of these entrepreneurislisms holds much promise on its own, especially when they are measured in isolation. But if there is hope to be found in any of them, it will become apparent when any of them can be shown to fit into a systemic paradigm with multiple attributes that allow for energy efficiency, reduced environmental pollution, distributed and sustainable local economic development and reduced climatological impacts and a renewed respect man as an ecological participant as well as a social being. We need to establish a new metric for an acceptable level of the energetics of civilization, in much the same way scientists determine the needs of other biological species. Better yet, in the manner of parasitology which requires knowledge of interrelated species and their ecologies.
When you look at today's developments in that light, it's all quite simple.
Contrary to what seems to be your belief, deforestation is a choice and it's not made exclusively by the poor. Nor are the poor resposible for the vast majority of habitat destruction such as deforestation.
But it is universally the institutionalized quest for wealth in the hands of the ecologically ignorant that leads educated people to sacrifice the natural world without consideration for the concern for the consequences.
In the words of Michio Kali, "Classical economics (in the absence of valuation of natural systems) is a form of brain damage.
It's self-promotion, pure and simple. It's obviously not a scientific experiment. It's a "hand wavy" sort of thing, an estimate, a facsimile, a wild-ass guess. It's like reality TV. There should be a term of art to describe and distinguish it from a formal experiment or legitimate research. Maybe Science should create a new category, like "reality typing."
After all, they are asking us to look askance at anything outside their rarified realm of the rigorous standards they claim to uphold. Why do their editors believe they should be able to get away without meeting the same level of scrutiny? Perhaps all is not what it seems at the top?
Exactly what and where were you studying that you felt pressured to publish as an undergrad?
It seems odd that a prof would push so hard unless you had a very specific and competitive grad study program in mind, something important to offer or you prof didn't.
He didn't mean knowledge, he meant worldliness (experince that challenges belief when God doesn't smite you), verily.
Scientific methodologies used to develop knowledge don't require belief, but they demand a rational mind and offer discrete explanations. Religious sytems don't require a rational mind, but they do demand belief, offers no explanation but dogma.
The difference is in the intended purpose of each. Science seeks to explain the external world and allow people to manipulate it. Morality is an after thought. Religion seeks define the internal world, control the definition of morality and manipulate the people outside it.
A law that is not enforced is hardly a law at all.
Worse is when laws are only selectively enforced.
Worse yet, law "enforcement" which results in tiny fines with no meaningful penalty (as they were designed) hold no deterrent effect. Business managers who measure everything by its budgetary effect are free to interpret the chance of such "penalty" as a marginal cost of doing business as usual. In fact, if you build it into the budget and you don't get caught, your bottom line is improved.
So much for the hypothetical value of H1B visas. In this light they look like what they always have been, business tools which expand the workforce and extend the capital interests. Greater supply of indentured employees makes for a pliable workforce who will work their asses off for whatever they offered and love every second of it. Far better to hire people in this circumstance than suffer people with experience and expectations.
The world is your oyster if you are IBM and you can buy your "self" a sympathetic lawmaker connected to a compliant judiciary. Welcome to capitalistc competition. Where everything is exactly what it seems to be, if you are a total cynic.
The grand jury of which you speak, it was investigating what exactly? It certainly wasn't high crime or misdemeanors, let alone justice, because the last time I checked, there is no morals clause in the oath of office to the presidency of the United State. And if Christian morality were the law of the land, we'd be just as bad off as if it were Shari'a law.
That's why we have a Bill of Rights. It's just too bad it's not required reading.
That's different, it's only a framework and it's subject to interpretation by the Supreme Court, the Office of Legal Counsel, the DOJ, every U.S. Senator or Representative (with or without a swingin' dick), the FISA courts, the DHS, the Joint Chiefs, JSOC and the entire dysfunctional intelligence 'community'.
What I want to know is who gets the contract to pull all the equipment that's already installed, and what's their eBay vendor account name?
Re:How does more arable land and food mean violenc
on
A Climate of Violence?
·
· Score: 1
Most of us don't live in a hunter/gatherer society, and even when we did, we didn't just go out and pick whatever happened to grow. Agriculture started in the jungles and on the plains thousands of years ago when people figured out that it was nice that the seeds they'd tossed were plants when they returned after a few seasons or years. Now, Big Ag raises most of the global food supply, and if the climate shifts faster than it can acquire suitable replacement lands and develop the supporting infrastructure (think irrigation and transportation), the financial consequences won't be limited to the equities markets. It will ripple throughout the supply chain with food prices showing the biggest leap just like then did when gasoline hit $4/gal a few years ago. (Notice those prices didn't come down much even after fuel prices abated).
There's a huge web of inter-related business interests that will be destabilized. Everything from feed, seed and weed manufacturers & distributors to the grain elevators, transportation and local banks and insurance brokers that service the industry. The likes of Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and United Fruit are worldwide and have considerable pull. They don't just stand by and watch, and they don't fight fair, either.
It's not the climate per se that leads to the predictable intergroup conflicts, it's the economic instability that drives one geopolitical entity to risk war when diplomacy fails or necessity of the starving masses threatens to upend their apple carts. That's why China has invested in countries on every continent and they've been developing a massive military along with an inquisitive cyber-spying ring. They have well developed culture of power and historical appreciation for the long term implications of the interesting opportunities that come with rapidly shifting geopolitical advantage.
I find it interesting that a few posts up the/. board, there's one that deals with the evolutionary advantage or cooperation over competition. Especially as it comes during a period when anthropogenic climate change may require a mindset reset in terms of the failing nationalistic economic financial competition which nearly unraveled completely due to the irrational exuberance in the derivatives markets which has yet to be addressed in any real of meaningful fashion. Alan Greenspan may have unknowingly led us to an evolutionary tipping point for which history my be incapable of acknowledging the depth or breadth of his contribution.
Slashdot Mirror
Gosh, isn't a, "take it or leave it all," type contract exactly what all 'free software' agreements are all about? You can't tell me this is the first time you've noticed that something is amiss with the $ billions in revenue that accrues to large corporations like banks, wireless carriers, ISPs, and web based businesses that hawk 'their' user's metadata and/or real data because of the assumption that it becomes the property of the company providing the service? However, Courts often use the âoedoctrine of reasonable expectationsâ as a justification for invalidating parts or all of an adhesion contract: the weaker party will not be held to adhere to contract terms that are beyond what the weaker party would have reasonably expected from the contract, even if what he or she reasonably expected was outside the strict letter of agreement.
Clearly the free market and its attendant regulatory schema is failing us.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a 'free market' publication that anayzed and evaluated automobiles with such criteria in mind. John Maynard Keynes wrote about the comparison between central planning in communist states and advertising in capitalist economies. When all you get from auto manufacturers are engineering specs and hype, in the absence of thoughtful analysis, consumers end up with little information by which to.make inormed choices. Just like our political selections process, as evidenced by news organizations which routinely broadcast meaningless poll stats putting Trump at the head of a worthless pack of questionable stats. Trump is a Wrangler.
If there were moral standards applied to truth in advertising, itself, I might agree. Clearly this is not the case, so tough noogies! I use adblocking indiscriminately because my time and thoughts are mine, and the ecosystem of advertising is a swamp of daemons praying on my consciousness.
It's corporate business as usual in America. These crooked companiez benefit regardless of the fines. Restitution isn't required, the executives who initiate these programs keep their bonuses and the companies' cash flow is enhanced by the use of ill gotten gains. Additionally, anything paid through credit cards fills the tills of big banks and the interlocked corporate directorships as well as the 'investors'.
Don't worry. The constitutional proscription is only against the official adoption of a state religion...
Thank God!
(And save me from the followers of his prophets who would otherwise restrict my liberties.)
They are not tasked with keeping us safe; they are tasked with 'safeguarding our liberties'.
Safeguarding liberty by breaking through a constitutional boundary... That's a hot one! Thanks for the belly laugh.
The Bill of Rights is the set of proscriptions deemed necessary by the founders to ensure that the citizenry was protected from the tyranny of its own unrestricted government. The fourth amendment was enshrined to limit police power to that which could be rationally supported by evidence of wrong doing. I.E., the wrong doing must logical occur prior to the collection of evidence, in a system where provision against 'unreasonable search' is in force. Blanket surveillance of all electronic communications for as many channels as possible is so completely beyond the pale of reason for anyone who claims knowledge of liberty, that it's hard to believe anyone would question the legitimacy of such an attempt. But here it is...
Where's the coverage of something meaningful, like a rational response to the threat of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the brains of kids? The federal courts just increased the potential settlement in the case against the NFL for the willful and negligent ignorance it showed its 'own' players, and Slashdot wants to trumpet the free advertising generated by the NFL spin doctors during the off-season?! How come no geeks have KickStarted a device for helmet data collection? One with a cell phone accelerometer, a near-field-computing chip/antenna and battery, so CTE could be easily researched and this stupid, violent, quasi-militaristic monopoly might be augmented by a rational approach to reality?
The alternative is (C) [Your Name Goes Here] Even if you only enter the 'race' long enough to change the conversation, at least you participted, otherwise you're right. Your nonparticipation is unlikely to have much effect.
Apparently geeks only require security for their own personal data or that of their company and believe everyone else's is better off left wide open.
Functional and financial compatibility are both red herrings. Nuclear power has never been compatible with human health or security. You should read up on the work and activism of Helen Caldicott then carefully consider the history of development, the health concerns, and the current state of waste handling. The Hanford site, where nuclear fuel was first manufactured for weapons will most likely never be cleaned up, and there still is no politically or scientifically acceptable solution to the problem of long term storage or processing. If Chernoble didn't clue you in to that, then Fukushima most certainly should have. After +60 years the military uses uranium as if it's safe to vaporize and disperse radioactive munitions, revealing the level of care and concern that it and its industrial engineers employ in addressing the long term consequences.
It also means you need to know a little about nature as well, knowledge it's sometimes difficult to develop in a technology smitten world.
Which is the dependent variable, technology or nature? Which one can be perfected? If you can answer the last one, please don't study business.
Alternative short answer: No... not unless you can find an alternative to what passes for biznez in Corporus Decaetum Internationalis. Learn something useful like environmental economics and find a way to fund a startup based on cooperative systems theory.
I am 50+ and remember my 4th grade science teacher telling me that that the theory of plate tectonics was so new that it wasn't taught when she was in school. She brought it up because she wanted us little school kiddies to understand that scientific theory evolves with the adoption of new, peer reviewed, debated, experimentally validated hypotheses that depend upon specific and consistent use of language and method. All of this together is supposed to advance the state of human knowledge and hopefully the human condition. It's plain as the nose on Rupert Murdoch's ugly puss that Fox has no respect for anything but revenue and their editorial staff can't distinguish a science from a seance or a fact from a fascist, so why does anyone waste other people's time posting the stupid crap that spews forth from this maw of mediocrity? Is it really that addictive, or is revenue the least common denominator for the Nuu Slashdot as well? An Oreo from Cowboy Neal's chuck wagon for the first cogent response?
I assumed that methane digestion would form the basis of this type project. India can't possibly do anything else, can it?
By definition, the reason the price of ____ is ____ is because, "that is what the market will bear."
Fundamentally, the idea that neoclassical economics should be allowed to determine the course of human events or the development of civilization has revealed itself to be false. That's the upshot of The Enlightenment as viewed from the midst of the third wave of globalization wrapped in the second wave of industrialization, just before the shit hits the impeller. So the question becomes how to identify the necessary set of values which should replace those that were misidentifed and championed by the Cult of Adam Smith's Incredibly Invisible Hand.
It's officially one world now, according to all good wealthy western outsourcerers, and unless we're going to discriminate against those born to poverty and abandon them to the accident of birth, then redirecting the behemoth will require sacrifice from the first world to the rest. That means subsidized technological development where it's necessary to equalize the chasm of poverty, population decreases and environmental remediation to preserve the ecological integrity of a global system that's in decline and real discussion about what will characterize a heathy, sustainable system of natural and interconnected artifical human systems. It implies far better cooperation than the UN framework for (fill-in-the-blank).
Electrifying rural everwhere, if it can actually done with a net negative impact would be great. If it can't be done without increasing "globalization" as we have come to know it, then it won't matter much in 3 or 4 generations because the catastrophes associated with environmental degradation will include reductions in agricultural output, famine and social dystonia. Since we've "decided" that the natural world is the defacto sewer of industrial man, you can bet that increased envronmental stresses will usher in decreased health to go along with a few panicked incidences of pestilence requiring a little martial law. Don't be afraid, it will all be done for the good of all.
I can't say I believe any of these entrepreneurislisms holds much promise on its own, especially when they are measured in isolation. But if there is hope to be found in any of them, it will become apparent when any of them can be shown to fit into a systemic paradigm with multiple attributes that allow for energy efficiency, reduced environmental pollution, distributed and sustainable local economic development and reduced climatological impacts and a renewed respect man as an ecological participant as well as a social being. We need to establish a new metric for an acceptable level of the energetics of civilization, in much the same way scientists determine the needs of other biological species. Better yet, in the manner of parasitology which requires knowledge of interrelated species and their ecologies.
When you look at today's developments in that light, it's all quite simple.
Sorry, the above quote was from Dr. Michio Kaku. (mkaku.org)
Contrary to what seems to be your belief, deforestation is a choice and it's not made exclusively by the poor. Nor are the poor resposible for the vast majority of habitat destruction such as deforestation. But it is universally the institutionalized quest for wealth in the hands of the ecologically ignorant that leads educated people to sacrifice the natural world without consideration for the concern for the consequences. In the words of Michio Kali, "Classical economics (in the absence of valuation of natural systems) is a form of brain damage.
After all, they are asking us to look askance at anything outside their rarified realm of the rigorous standards they claim to uphold. Why do their editors believe they should be able to get away without meeting the same level of scrutiny? Perhaps all is not what it seems at the top?
It seems odd that a prof would push so hard unless you had a very specific and competitive grad study program in mind, something important to offer or you prof didn't.
He didn't mean knowledge, he meant worldliness (experince that challenges belief when God doesn't smite you), verily.
Scientific methodologies used to develop knowledge don't require belief, but they demand a rational mind and offer discrete explanations. Religious sytems don't require a rational mind, but they do demand belief, offers no explanation but dogma.
The difference is in the intended purpose of each. Science seeks to explain the external world and allow people to manipulate it. Morality is an after thought. Religion seeks define the internal world, control the definition of morality and manipulate the people outside it.
A law that is not enforced is hardly a law at all. Worse is when laws are only selectively enforced.
Worse yet, law "enforcement" which results in tiny fines with no meaningful penalty (as they were designed) hold no deterrent effect. Business managers who measure everything by its budgetary effect are free to interpret the chance of such "penalty" as a marginal cost of doing business as usual. In fact, if you build it into the budget and you don't get caught, your bottom line is improved.
So much for the hypothetical value of H1B visas. In this light they look like what they always have been, business tools which expand the workforce and extend the capital interests. Greater supply of indentured employees makes for a pliable workforce who will work their asses off for whatever they offered and love every second of it. Far better to hire people in this circumstance than suffer people with experience and expectations.
The world is your oyster if you are IBM and you can buy your "self" a sympathetic lawmaker connected to a compliant judiciary. Welcome to capitalistc competition. Where everything is exactly what it seems to be, if you are a total cynic.
The grand jury of which you speak, it was investigating what exactly? It certainly wasn't high crime or misdemeanors, let alone justice, because the last time I checked, there is no morals clause in the oath of office to the presidency of the United State. And if Christian morality were the law of the land, we'd be just as bad off as if it were Shari'a law.
That's why we have a Bill of Rights. It's just too bad it's not required reading.
That's different, it's only a framework and it's subject to interpretation by the Supreme Court, the Office of Legal Counsel, the DOJ, every U.S. Senator or Representative (with or without a swingin' dick), the FISA courts, the DHS, the Joint Chiefs, JSOC and the entire dysfunctional intelligence 'community'. What I want to know is who gets the contract to pull all the equipment that's already installed, and what's their eBay vendor account name?
Most of us don't live in a hunter/gatherer society, and even when we did, we didn't just go out and pick whatever happened to grow. Agriculture started in the jungles and on the plains thousands of years ago when people figured out that it was nice that the seeds they'd tossed were plants when they returned after a few seasons or years. Now, Big Ag raises most of the global food supply, and if the climate shifts faster than it can acquire suitable replacement lands and develop the supporting infrastructure (think irrigation and transportation), the financial consequences won't be limited to the equities markets. It will ripple throughout the supply chain with food prices showing the biggest leap just like then did when gasoline hit $4/gal a few years ago. (Notice those prices didn't come down much even after fuel prices abated).
There's a huge web of inter-related business interests that will be destabilized. Everything from feed, seed and weed manufacturers & distributors to the grain elevators, transportation and local banks and insurance brokers that service the industry. The likes of Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and United Fruit are worldwide and have considerable pull. They don't just stand by and watch, and they don't fight fair, either.
It's not the climate per se that leads to the predictable intergroup conflicts, it's the economic instability that drives one geopolitical entity to risk war when diplomacy fails or necessity of the starving masses threatens to upend their apple carts. That's why China has invested in countries on every continent and they've been developing a massive military along with an inquisitive cyber-spying ring. They have well developed culture of power and historical appreciation for the long term implications of the interesting opportunities that come with rapidly shifting geopolitical advantage.
I find it interesting that a few posts up the /. board, there's one that deals with the evolutionary advantage or cooperation over competition. Especially as it comes during a period when anthropogenic climate change may require a mindset reset in terms of the failing nationalistic economic financial competition which nearly unraveled completely due to the irrational exuberance in the derivatives markets which has yet to be addressed in any real of meaningful fashion. Alan Greenspan may have unknowingly led us to an evolutionary tipping point for which history my be incapable of acknowledging the depth or breadth of his contribution.
And so it goes... *