Funny you should cite "Tradegedy of the Commons" as it is being used here circa 1968 to warn of the coming overpopulation "crisis", an in-vogue crisis of the 1970's that never really materialized. Of course, at the time the theory was used to further Communist (Maoist, mostly) doctrine like centralized control of breeding, land, human capital, etc. The belief in the coming droughts and famine caused by overpopulation was widely accepted in the scientific community as unavoidable without drastic action.
Global Warming is the latest chapter in this saga. There's always some disaster waiting just around the bend, courtesy of capitalism, personal responsibility, and liberal property rights.
BTW, the Nature article you cited actually argues that the temperature record is hopelessly compromised because of unknown inaccuracies in the measuring process. The scientists appear to be fudging the numbers in the direction they would like them to be fudged.
If there is no global warming, there is no global warming funding.
You can't pretend that the issue hasn't been visited by the Supreme Court on many occasions. The SC says obscenity can be regulated, and obscenity is defined by local standards (otherwise known as the democratic process) within the bounds of a few tests.
You could argue the reverse - in 2 years, HP may need to layoff even more people, and then you would have spent 2 years paying 15,000 employees you could have done without. Any company that waits 2 years to respond to market conditions won't last long.
It's also possible HP has already waited 2 years before doing these layoffs, and now it is even more obvious they need to pull the trigger.
Yes, this terrorist attack makes it clear that the terrorists are not a real threat. It would be terrible if British legislators were to act to prevent future "tragedy".
I think you meant "atrocity", not "tragedy". Why do you seek to minimize the crime? Cancer is a tragedy, the tsunami was a tragedy. This is cold-blooded murder of random people.
It was destroyed on June 7, 1981 by Israeli pilots flying 8 American-made F-16s.
Saddam tried to restart the program in secret over the next decade. After the Gulf War it seems he abandoned the idea of nuclear weaponry, but never fully cooperated with UN inspectors in proving he had a change of heart. While he did not have biological, chemical, or nuclear arms, he did in fact have banned conventional arms that were not found until after March 2003.
He could have easily come clean, like Khadafi allegedly has in Libya, but allowing complete, free access to weapons inspectors. But he thought the French would protect him in the UN Security Council, so he continued to stonewall inspectors, and he continued to make the world think he might have banned arms as a bargaining chip, and to save face at home.
While we may think this is terribly wrong from a moral/ethical standpoint
You may think that being a "journalist" gives you higher moral/ethical standing than the rest of us proles, but you'd be wrong.
In this case, providing a forum for anarchists to publicise details of their crimes carries the possibility of making you the holder of evidence, and journalists have no special federal protection in the US of having evidence secure from seizure, or from being compelled to testify.
Nonsense. Wealthy people don't stuff their money in matresses. They buy things, lend, start businesses, hire people, invest. All of these activities create jobs and opportunity for those who aren't rich.
Do you remember the luxury tax on yachts passed in the early 1990's? The "hate the rich" crowd loved that one - make the rich pay their fair share! Then they realized that rich people weren't buying yachts, and so yacht builders (employing accountants, artisans, craftsmen, shipbuilders, salesmen, secretaries, etc) started laying people off and shutting down. Sales dropped 77% and 25,000 jobs were lost.
Class warfare is bullshit. Don't let people play you for a sucker.
The phrase "pissing contest" is used by the left to descibe a male-oriented competition which is designed to feed the ego rather than do something useful. The idea of calling it a "pissing contest" is to denigrate and belittle those who undertake this kind of competitive behavior, which is meant to instill pride in the winner and motivate the loser to do better next time.
SO the question is, why would someone want to denigrate those who engage in this kind of behavior? If you look at socialist ideology, the answer is clear. Socialist ideology stresses cooperation instead of competition in achieving goals. I think history has shown that competitive paradigm produces results far more than the cooperative paradigm. The reason for this that competition more closely mirrors Man's true nature, in which self-preservation of the individual is paramount. By tapping into the strongest possible motivating factor (self-preservation) those societies that encourage competition will succeed more (as long as the destructive nature of self-preservation is held in check).
So "pissing contests" are very important because they motivate achievement in the most fundamental way. And (whether the parent poster realizes it or not) they do produce real results, just look at cold war race with the Soviets and the achievements driven by DARPA. The list of accomplishment is staggering.
So the phrase "pissing contest" is used to support socialist ideology, which boils down to make everything the Right does look foolish, which boils down to simpleminded ideas like "Bush is Eeeevil!!!!!" or "Bush is Hitler!!!!!!.
What are the odds that Bush-haters are going to use this report to try to smear Bush even more than they have?
Although if you look at the original Nature article...
The modern scientist faces intense competition, and is further burdened by difficult, sometimes unreasonable, regulatory, social, and managerial demands. This mix of pressures creates many possibilities for the compromise of scientific integrity.
...it actually sounds like career bureaucrats trying to justify the billions of $$$ they get for scientific research.
I don's see why you're shocked, the govt regulates almost all products. Safety standards for toys and automobiles, black boxes in airplanes, food labling, lead content, "made in the USA" requirements for automobiles, assault weapon bans, decency rules for broadcasters, etc, etc, etc...Anything they can justify being for the common good can and will be done!
If the Constitution codified the right of insurrection, would that be good? The granting of rights is usually a compromise of competing rights. Sure the slaves were freed, but thousands of slave owners had their property stripped without compensation. Of course, it's almost universally agreed that freeing the slaves was a good thing. Nevertheless, slaveowners had their property rights removed.
Concerning the Patriot Act expansion, I want my govt to be able to protect me. Remember, it is the Federal Govt's exclusive responsibility to protect me from foreign invaders. I'm not that concerned about "administrative supoenas" because I believe they will be effective and (in spite of some people's imagined abuses) used very infrequently and for legitimate purposes...
What I want most is accountability. Every subpoena issued should be approved by a high-level administrator who personally assumes responsibility for its issuance. Every subpoena issued should be reviewed in a timely manner by a congressional or judicial panel to make certain there are not abuses. I have no interest in expansion of the Patriot Act without accountability of those in power.
Well, sometimes librarians are the only ones fighting for you to keep having some of these rights
And sometimes they're the ones turning you in. A 2003 Slate article claimed that the Feds had received over 50 tips from librarians who reported suspicious activity. This image of courageous librarians standing up to The Man is mostly nonsense. Most of them are concerned members of their communities, and not at all interested in the ACLU-fantasized rights of people to check out "Dummies Guide to Pipe Bombs".
A couple of things - you aren't talking about salary, you are talking about total compensation, which includes stock options, which were about 65% of all CEO compensation. You picked the year 2000 because that was when the stock market was at an all time high, thus CEO compensation through stock options were extraordinarily lucrative. The ratio has fallen since then.
Also, 2000 was at the end of a "boom" period, driven by tech, and companies that did well were rewarding their executives throughout the 90's for improved performance...many of those excutives did nothing to earn it, but many did.
I'm not suggesting CEO's aren't overpaid, many are and do nothing to help their companies innovate. BUT one good CEO is worth a thousand employees (who are for the most part replaceable) if that CEO can direct the company to profit instead of bankruptcy. That's a fact.
Here's a good summary of the situation (and it's a left wing source, so all you hippies can feel good clicking):
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0412-10. ht m
This is a no brainer for the MPAA types, because of the popularity of DVD sets of TV shows, which make huge money because they require almost no investment.
The HDTV shows I download and burn to disc are just as high quality as DVD (on a normal TV, anyway). I can burn 12 hours of video on one DVD and play them on my DivX compliant Philips DVP642.
That's a very ignorant statement. Hitler, Stalin, Mao - can you name any "worse" capitalist? Can you show me any modern society of people who have shown progress by adhering to non-capitalist ideology?
You are mistakenly equating greed with capitalism. There will always be greedy people in both capitalist and non-capitalist systems. The greedy will always abuse the system to take advantage of the weak. If you think non-capitalist societies protect the weak, you are sadly mistaken. There isn't a single non-capitalist system that hasn't either resorted to brutal oppression of the people - or to free-market policies to dig themselves out of the poverty ditch.
The Dutch have a capitalist system, do you think their research would even exist without it?
he has since starting making accusations of conspiracy, deceit, and has otherwise attempted to make me look bad in front of employees and long-time clients.
This is slander and could damage your professional reputation and your opportunity to get work in the future (aren't you going to have to list this job on your resume?). I suggest you hire a lawyer to draft a letter and remind this prick that his bad behavior is not acceptable. And by all means stick around for the apology.
CA is funding this to stick a fork in Bush's eye. It's basically "You've banned federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, well, we'll do it anyway, so take that!". It's no surprise the most liberal area of the state won the project, they would are desparately willing to do anything to show Bush the error of his ways. The whole thing will wind up being a bureaucratic boondogle, and lots of already-wealthy investors will laugh all the way to the bank with state money.
ID should not be taught in schools because it is doesn't explain either the "intelligent" or the "design" part. You can't simply observe a complex structure and say "nothing that complicated could happen by accident, so it must have been created by an intelligent designer".
I'm really more interested in the hostility displayed by slashdotters towards religion and religious ideas here. Scientists are going way out of their way ridicule and denigrate people of faith for having these ideas. If the facts are on your side, why all the hostility, and why resort to logical fallacies like ad hominem attacks? Why even bother to attack or disprove ID if it is such a farce? I'm detecting a high level of sensitivity. And as far as the school children of Kansas goes, public schools are always going to teach what the community wants them to know, as long as they don't get into the area of state sponsored religion. I'm sure there are many communities that teach as an absolute fact that Humans are causing an imminent global warming catastrophe, when no such thing has been proven.
I disagree. These technological innovations were mostly fueled by Defense spending, what you would probably call the military-industrial complex. Hardly the idealistic platform for world change that you see. Withough ARPA, and the profit motive of our corporations, I think we'd be at least 10 years behind where we are now.
And whatever successes the geniuses of the counterculture produced, it was in spite of their self-indulgent nature, not because of their high ideals about collectivism. Lots of those enlightened people took ARPA money.
BTW, changing the world usually involves the confiscation of private property. Most people object to that. It's true that capitalism encourages exploitation, but so does every other economic system. You only need to look at any state-run economy to see a bloody trail of exploitation.
I think the popularity of The Sims and team based shooters shows that the future is greater and greater immersion into realistic worlds, virtual worlds that are free of the risk of real worlds. Games will focus on creating realistic environments and realistic interactions with actors in the environment.
I don't know whether this is a good thing. It seems odd to create games that are less and less like games and more like the real world. Take the recent Grand Theft Auto games. Much of the enjoyment in the game is from just running around and interacting with the environment, not achieving goals.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny you should cite "Tradegedy of the Commons" as it is being used here circa 1968 to warn of the coming overpopulation "crisis", an in-vogue crisis of the 1970's that never really materialized. Of course, at the time the theory was used to further Communist (Maoist, mostly) doctrine like centralized control of breeding, land, human capital, etc. The belief in the coming droughts and famine caused by overpopulation was widely accepted in the scientific community as unavoidable without drastic action.
Global Warming is the latest chapter in this saga. There's always some disaster waiting just around the bend, courtesy of capitalism, personal responsibility, and liberal property rights.
BTW, the Nature article you cited actually argues that the temperature record is hopelessly compromised because of unknown inaccuracies in the measuring process. The scientists appear to be fudging the numbers in the direction they would like them to be fudged.
If there is no global warming, there is no global warming funding.
You can't pretend that the issue hasn't been visited by the Supreme Court on many occasions. The SC says obscenity can be regulated, and obscenity is defined by local standards (otherwise known as the democratic process) within the bounds of a few tests.
God, I love the neuroses of the left.
Please, keep it up.
You could argue the reverse - in 2 years, HP may need to layoff even more people, and then you would have spent 2 years paying 15,000 employees you could have done without. Any company that waits 2 years to respond to market conditions won't last long.
It's also possible HP has already waited 2 years before doing these layoffs, and now it is even more obvious they need to pull the trigger.
Yes, this terrorist attack makes it clear that the terrorists are not a real threat. It would be terrible if British legislators were to act to prevent future "tragedy".
I think you meant "atrocity", not "tragedy". Why do you seek to minimize the crime? Cancer is a tragedy, the tsunami was a tragedy. This is cold-blooded murder of random people.
It was destroyed on June 7, 1981 by Israeli pilots flying 8 American-made F-16s.
Saddam tried to restart the program in secret over the next decade. After the Gulf War it seems he abandoned the idea of nuclear weaponry, but never fully cooperated with UN inspectors in proving he had a change of heart. While he did not have biological, chemical, or nuclear arms, he did in fact have banned conventional arms that were not found until after March 2003.
He could have easily come clean, like Khadafi allegedly has in Libya, but allowing complete, free access to weapons inspectors. But he thought the French would protect him in the UN Security Council, so he continued to stonewall inspectors, and he continued to make the world think he might have banned arms as a bargaining chip, and to save face at home.
He did not act wisely.
While we may think this is terribly wrong from a moral/ethical standpoint
You may think that being a "journalist" gives you higher moral/ethical standing than the rest of us proles, but you'd be wrong.
In this case, providing a forum for anarchists to publicise details of their crimes carries the possibility of making you the holder of evidence, and journalists have no special federal protection in the US of having evidence secure from seizure, or from being compelled to testify.
Nonsense. Wealthy people don't stuff their money in matresses. They buy things, lend, start businesses, hire people, invest. All of these activities create jobs and opportunity for those who aren't rich.
Do you remember the luxury tax on yachts passed in the early 1990's? The "hate the rich" crowd loved that one - make the rich pay their fair share! Then they realized that rich people weren't buying yachts, and so yacht builders (employing accountants, artisans, craftsmen, shipbuilders, salesmen, secretaries, etc) started laying people off and shutting down. Sales dropped 77% and 25,000 jobs were lost.
Class warfare is bullshit. Don't let people play you for a sucker.
Looks like you've got it all figured out. Why don't you just run things for the rest of us rubes? We can't be trusted, obviously...
The phrase "pissing contest" is used by the left to descibe a male-oriented competition which is designed to feed the ego rather than do something useful. The idea of calling it a "pissing contest" is to denigrate and belittle those who undertake this kind of competitive behavior, which is meant to instill pride in the winner and motivate the loser to do better next time.
SO the question is, why would someone want to denigrate those who engage in this kind of behavior? If you look at socialist ideology, the answer is clear. Socialist ideology stresses cooperation instead of competition in achieving goals. I think history has shown that competitive paradigm produces results far more than the cooperative paradigm. The reason for this that competition more closely mirrors Man's true nature, in which self-preservation of the individual is paramount. By tapping into the strongest possible motivating factor (self-preservation) those societies that encourage competition will succeed more (as long as the destructive nature of self-preservation is held in check).
So "pissing contests" are very important because they motivate achievement in the most fundamental way. And (whether the parent poster realizes it or not) they do produce real results, just look at cold war race with the Soviets and the achievements driven by DARPA. The list of accomplishment is staggering.
So the phrase "pissing contest" is used to support socialist ideology, which boils down to make everything the Right does look foolish, which boils down to simpleminded ideas like "Bush is Eeeevil!!!!!" or "Bush is Hitler!!!!!!.
What are the odds that Bush-haters are going to use this report to try to smear Bush even more than they have?
Although if you look at the original Nature article...
The government can regulate interstate commerce.
I don's see why you're shocked, the govt regulates almost all products. Safety standards for toys and automobiles, black boxes in airplanes, food labling, lead content, "made in the USA" requirements for automobiles, assault weapon bans, decency rules for broadcasters, etc, etc, etc...Anything they can justify being for the common good can and will be done!
If the Constitution codified the right of insurrection, would that be good? The granting of rights is usually a compromise of competing rights. Sure the slaves were freed, but thousands of slave owners had their property stripped without compensation. Of course, it's almost universally agreed that freeing the slaves was a good thing. Nevertheless, slaveowners had their property rights removed.
Concerning the Patriot Act expansion, I want my govt to be able to protect me. Remember, it is the Federal Govt's exclusive responsibility to protect me from foreign invaders. I'm not that concerned about "administrative supoenas" because I believe they will be effective and (in spite of some people's imagined abuses) used very infrequently and for legitimate purposes...
What I want most is accountability. Every subpoena issued should be approved by a high-level administrator who personally assumes responsibility for its issuance. Every subpoena issued should be reviewed in a timely manner by a congressional or judicial panel to make certain there are not abuses. I have no interest in expansion of the Patriot Act without accountability of those in power.
Well, sometimes librarians are the only ones fighting for you to keep having some of these rights
And sometimes they're the ones turning you in. A 2003 Slate article claimed that the Feds had received over 50 tips from librarians who reported suspicious activity. This image of courageous librarians standing up to The Man is mostly nonsense. Most of them are concerned members of their communities, and not at all interested in the ACLU-fantasized rights of people to check out "Dummies Guide to Pipe Bombs".
People like you will blame the US, regardless of the circumstances, like you always do.
A couple of things - you aren't talking about salary, you are talking about total compensation, which includes stock options, which were about 65% of all CEO compensation. You picked the year 2000 because that was when the stock market was at an all time high, thus CEO compensation through stock options were extraordinarily lucrative. The ratio has fallen since then.
. ht m
Also, 2000 was at the end of a "boom" period, driven by tech, and companies that did well were rewarding their executives throughout the 90's for improved performance...many of those excutives did nothing to earn it, but many did.
I'm not suggesting CEO's aren't overpaid, many are and do nothing to help their companies innovate. BUT one good CEO is worth a thousand employees (who are for the most part replaceable) if that CEO can direct the company to profit instead of bankruptcy. That's a fact.
Here's a good summary of the situation (and it's a left wing source, so all you hippies can feel good clicking):
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0412-10
Low, underhanded, and effective.
And don't even try to make the argument that every other country in the world doesn't behave this way.
This is a no brainer for the MPAA types, because of the popularity of DVD sets of TV shows, which make huge money because they require almost no investment.
The HDTV shows I download and burn to disc are just as high quality as DVD (on a normal TV, anyway). I can burn 12 hours of video on one DVD and play them on my DivX compliant Philips DVP642.
There is only one thing worse than capitalism
That's a very ignorant statement. Hitler, Stalin, Mao - can you name any "worse" capitalist? Can you show me any modern society of people who have shown progress by adhering to non-capitalist ideology?
You are mistakenly equating greed with capitalism. There will always be greedy people in both capitalist and non-capitalist systems. The greedy will always abuse the system to take advantage of the weak. If you think non-capitalist societies protect the weak, you are sadly mistaken. There isn't a single non-capitalist system that hasn't either resorted to brutal oppression of the people - or to free-market policies to dig themselves out of the poverty ditch.
The Dutch have a capitalist system, do you think their research would even exist without it?
he has since starting making accusations of conspiracy, deceit, and has otherwise attempted to make me look bad in front of employees and long-time clients.
This is slander and could damage your professional reputation and your opportunity to get work in the future (aren't you going to have to list this job on your resume?). I suggest you hire a lawyer to draft a letter and remind this prick that his bad behavior is not acceptable. And by all means stick around for the apology.
CA is funding this to stick a fork in Bush's eye. It's basically "You've banned federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, well, we'll do it anyway, so take that!". It's no surprise the most liberal area of the state won the project, they would are desparately willing to do anything to show Bush the error of his ways. The whole thing will wind up being a bureaucratic boondogle, and lots of already-wealthy investors will laugh all the way to the bank with state money.
ID should not be taught in schools because it is doesn't explain either the "intelligent" or the "design" part. You can't simply observe a complex structure and say "nothing that complicated could happen by accident, so it must have been created by an intelligent designer".
I'm really more interested in the hostility displayed by slashdotters towards religion and religious ideas here. Scientists are going way out of their way ridicule and denigrate people of faith for having these ideas. If the facts are on your side, why all the hostility, and why resort to logical fallacies like ad hominem attacks? Why even bother to attack or disprove ID if it is such a farce? I'm detecting a high level of sensitivity. And as far as the school children of Kansas goes, public schools are always going to teach what the community wants them to know, as long as they don't get into the area of state sponsored religion. I'm sure there are many communities that teach as an absolute fact that Humans are causing an imminent global warming catastrophe, when no such thing has been proven.
Here's a better article, with some statistics:
How exactly do they collect this information? It's not like the Chinese are real forthcoming with reliable info.
BTW, This is just another excuse for slashdot editors to kick the US in the crotch.
I disagree. These technological innovations were mostly fueled by Defense spending, what you would probably call the military-industrial complex. Hardly the idealistic platform for world change that you see. Withough ARPA, and the profit motive of our corporations, I think we'd be at least 10 years behind where we are now.
And whatever successes the geniuses of the counterculture produced, it was in spite of their self-indulgent nature, not because of their high ideals about collectivism. Lots of those enlightened people took ARPA money.
BTW, changing the world usually involves the confiscation of private property. Most people object to that. It's true that capitalism encourages exploitation, but so does every other economic system. You only need to look at any state-run economy to see a bloody trail of exploitation.
I think the popularity of The Sims and team based shooters shows that the future is greater and greater immersion into realistic worlds, virtual worlds that are free of the risk of real worlds. Games will focus on creating realistic environments and realistic interactions with actors in the environment.
I don't know whether this is a good thing. It seems odd to create games that are less and less like games and more like the real world. Take the recent Grand Theft Auto games. Much of the enjoyment in the game is from just running around and interacting with the environment, not achieving goals.