but we need to be sure that the rest of the world gets to see the other parts of the big picture, too.
I agree with Smallest, don't buy the new-fangled junk, don't help SDMI... but how do we mke sure others don't do it either?
Someone needs to reverse-engineer money and then come up with a hack that prevents money from being spent on anything that would further the agendas of any company that is abusing consumer rights, violating privacy, or suppressing free speech and fair use.
If someone came up with a credit card that did this, say it didn't actually prevent purchases, but warned the buyer of the agendas of the corporation that they were buying from, I would sure as hell sign up for it in a heartbeat!
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
Rights reserved, but not implemented
on
Juno And Privacy
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· Score: 1
So far, there's been no actual implementation of the screen saver clause or the "you have to leave your own computer on at all times at your own expense" clause. They've only said that they "may" do this. Bad enough, though, I agree.
I don't even know how they could enforce that you must leave your computer on at all times. That's ridiculous. About all they could do was detect if you weren't leaving your system up 24/7 and then bar you from accessing your email or the web through their dialup service. So they'd just lose customers. No big deal there.
I'm more concerned about this bit about them being allowed to download and run software that will run on your computer and then periodically upload info. I wouldn't mind so much if this were SETI-at-home or if it were calculating large prime numbers or something like that, but there's nothing saying that it couldn't be spyware or policeware.
What free email services have a good TOS that respects the user's privacy and other rights?
No my friend. In the US, you have the right to confront your accuser. You have no accuser if you are being nabbed by a robot camera. As long as you dont say "I was speeding, but..." to the judge, you will walk for whatever reason you give. If you dont beleive me, tell me how the judge will swear in the robot as a witness against you.
Somehow I doubt this. It seems really easy for Them to say that the robot isn't the accuser, that it was just a tool for measurement, and that the accuser was the person who read the measurements and issued the ticket. As long as they have the robot calibrated (and they can always lie about that and you really can't prove they're not telling the truth) they've got you.
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
It's purely a business decision
on
OS X on x86?
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· Score: 1
From a user standpoint, of course this would be great to see on other hardware platforms. I could free myself from the M$ mindshare without changing to much more expensive hardware.
From Apple's standpoint, the question boils down to how much money they make from selling hardware and how much money they make from selling OS software. If their OS sales take off into the stratosphere, but they're left with a lot of fancy boxes sitting around unsold because they're too expensive, and few people will buy them, however superior or prettier they are, then they probably won't do it.
But running an OS X system on an Intel or AMD platform would be a great intermediary step. Once people get used to the differences in the interface, they'll see the superiority of the software.
Later on, they'll see how much faster it runs on the superior G4 boxes, think about their Quake framerates, pee their pants, and buy Apple's hardware, too.
Your argument only makes sense if you think that government isn't made up of PEOPLE. Laws exist, as do grassroots movements that affect change.
Perhaps we should just not do ANY medical research that could be beneficial - gosh, someone might misuse it!
Well, that's just the sort of thing I was trying to stir up by airing my concerns. Of course how technology may be utilized can be governed by laws. But then, of course, laws can always be circumvented and ignored. There was a great, big, (apparently only nearly) universal "No!" on human cloning just last year. Nothing's officially changed, but here we have people working on it anyway. The laws aren't as failsafe as you make it seem.
At any rate, if people aren't aware of the possible abuses that I brought up, they aren't going to push to legislate against those abuses, either, are they?
But think about it - what if we COULD change our DNA? I wouldn't mind getting rid of genetic diseases for good. I'm sure my entire family could do without having Diabetes, for one, and the history of cancer & heart disease isn't too pleasant, either, or the congenital heart problems and kidney problems that run in the other side of the family.
Yeah, it'd be great...
Right about until the time the company that augmented you decides to enforce its patents and claims to own you because you incorporate proprietary DNA. They claim you're their IP and that they can do with you whatever you want.
Oh, also, while they were in there rewriting your genetic code, they added a few things that they didn't bother to tell your parents about. There's now sections of your DNA which they can use to track you wherever you go, and what's more, they have a "self-destruct" sequence installed into your DNA, which gives you a rapid-onset form of cancer that will kill you within 24 hours, "just in case". No civil disobedience for you!
Meanwhile, your unaugmented older brother who was born before this technology was perfected can't get any kind of reasonably-priced health coverage because of a genetic predisposition to whatever disease.
It'll be as close to Utopia as we can get on this planet. I can't wait.
A clone isn't a combination of DNA from the parents. It's a copy of one of the parent's DNA.
So, whoever's contributing the DNA will be the sole "parent". And I put that word in quotes because it won't quite be like being a parent, either. It'll be more like you're a much older identical twin of someone who came out of your wife (or yourself, as the case may be.)
This ought to give the geneologists of the world a lot more headaches than they already have...
As more IT workers enter the labor market, an individual's skills and specialites will mean less and less. The people with the most skills will always be in demand and always have it pretty good, but there will always be an underclass of midlevel and entry-level employees. These are the people who stand to gain from unionization.
Even for those who are currently making out pretty well, there are still issues unique to the IT labor market. Maybe labor shortages are so severe that you really do need to work 60-80 hrs. a week, but maybe also you'll finally be able to actually get paid for it.
If you think your salary is really all that great, first compute your real hourly wage by factoring in all the overtime you don't get paid for. Then think about all the things you'll do with all that money when you finally get some time off... oh, wait you don't get any time off until you retire, which will happen when you either burn out or when they fire you for not being in your early 20's. What are you going to do with all that money if you've got no time to enjoy spending it?
Even if everything else is good, there's still the issue of abuses of labor. You're a lot stronger if you've got union backing and have a complaint, assuming that the complaint is valid and you have a strong, non-corrupt union helping you to look after your interests.
Bottom line is, management is already organized. It's only fair for labor to organize itself.
In order for unionization to work, here's what I think will need to happen:
Membership must be voluntary. Management cannot coerce workers not to join, and the Union cannot coerce workers to join.
Individuals who feel they can negotiate better contracts for themselves without the union should be free to do so, but they should enjoy none of the benefits that unions have secured for their members (unless they can somehow successfully negotiate them for themselves).
There must exist some means to stamp out corruption in unions. I think one good way to achieve this would be to have a means for sharing information among union members that bypasses the old-school model of the straight dope being handed down from on high.
Traditionally there have been union newsletters which brainwashed the membership with propaganda and told them what a great job the union was doing, while the corrupt bosses went around and did whatever. Instead of the traditional newsletter, why not have an open-contribution website (much like/. naturally) where union members could speak out? Important issues could be discussed with relative anonymnity and safety, and the highest-modded contributions to the discussion could be used as the basis for the choices the union would have to vote on. Done properly, this would take a bit of effort to implement, but once in place, there would be little need for union bosses, and thus there would be no one at the top to corrupt. The whole decision-making process could be transparent, and any attempts at corruption would be weeded out like bugs in open-source software.
If this isn't effective, several unions could compete with each other. Think one union is corrupt? Dump them and sign on with another! This would at least give you another option besides quitting your job and finding another one.
I don't suppose that there's an easy answer to EVERY problem that unionization brings up, but at least if there's a body in existence that addresses labor issues, new workers who enter the labor market won't have to continually invent the wheel for themselves. I certainly don't have all the answers for all my problems, but maybe a few of my friends do. It wouldn't hurt to ask them, but I might not even think to. The collective power of a union is like having thousands of friends, and you get to benefit from the wisdom of each of their experiences in dealing with management. Unionizing IT jobs could make a real difference.
Do any moons have moons? Or does the physics of planets and moons prevent that sort of thing? Any astronomers or phsyicists wanna jump in on that one?
IANAAstronomer, but this seems like a pretty easy one to answer.
Let's think about the Sun as an example. It's the central object in the Solar System, and it has Planets, which orbit it, and the Planets are in turn orbited by Moons. The Sun itself, of course, orbits around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. So I don't see why this could be extended further downward in scale, with "sub-moons" orbiting moons. In fact, we could prove this really easily by throwing up an artificial satellite to orbit our own Moon. Which has already been done in the Apollo missions.
...a 1999 proposal to list Pluto as both a planet and a member of the Kuiper Belt was abandoned after it drew strong opposition from astronomers who did not want to diminish Pluto's status.
I can't believe people are getting territorial about Pluto.
Why is this news?
I would suspect that this is news because a long-standing and commonly held conception is being challenged. I agree that a less vague definition of planet is in order, and would clear this matter up once and for all.
As a secondary consideration, I think probably there is some research money at stake. No government agency is going to want to fund a mission to a lowly Kuiper Belt object, but they'd probably be more open to spending billions on a mission to the outer-most Major Planet in the Home System. So much more prestige and glory.
I really don't see a net gain for Hughes here. They've potentially lost customers by accidentally frying their cards, meanwhile, people who are "stealing" their service are going to have to wait a week before they can steal the service again.
I don't know that they're really going to lose too many legitimate customers.
Say you're an average user who didn't tamper with your hardware, and for some reason your dish stops working. You call up DirecTV customer service and complain that your TV isn't receiving anymore.
They send someone out to look at the problem. The repairman notices there's no apparent tampering with the equipment, and surmises that you're one of those rare people who got accidentally fried along with all the crackers. He replaces the card, charges you $40 for a new card, $75 for the labor, and then blames it all on "hackers messing around with the satellite system."
Which is half-true, but conveniently leaves out the fact that the hackers didn't actually cause the damage, that they weren't doing anything malicious to anyone's equipment but that which was in their own homes, and that the damage was caused by DirecTV's countermeasures. He'll probably even be persuaded to spend another $20/month on "hacker insurance" so that he doesn't have to pay another high repair bill if his equipment gets fried again, even though the odds are good that it'll never happen again.
Now the good paying customer has learned that hackers are bad and not to trust them, and if anyone ever tries to sell him on piracy he won't trust them. It's a pretty good strategy, because most customers will trust the information they're given by the "authority figure" of the repair technician.
No, you've only shown that you are willing to dismiss it because you disagree with the end result.
OK, then, let me try again.
I'm sitting somewhere, minding my own business, and then somebody comes along and tells me I shouldn't do something that isn't hurting anyone, or, if it is, the harm could easily be prevented by them not staring at me. Don't like what's on my screen? Look somewhere else! Is it that hard?
Now, how is it anyone else's right to tell me that I can't look at something?
There's a pretty big difference between someone coming up and deliberately reading over your shoulder close enough and long enough to grow "offended" with your choice of reading matter, and displaying a 12 to 20 inch example of corphaphilia (sp?) to all and sundry passerbys.
I disagree that the difference is pretty big. Yes, it's easier to see what someone else looking at a computer monitor is looking at than it is to read tiny text over their shoulder. But perhaps I should have chosen my example more cafefully. It's quite easy to look at the outside cover of a book as someone's reading it, to discern the author and title. To do that is just as easy as to look over someone's shoulder to see what they're looking at on a screen.
But the point is still that what I happen to be viewing is really none of anyone else's business. I have a reasonable expectation that my right to privacy extends to me reading something, whether it be printed on dead trees or displayed on a computer screen. I don't care what I'm looking at, if someone else comes up to me and says, "I demand that you stop reading this horrid, obscene material, as it offends me," I'm going to tell them to mind their own business and keep their eyes on their own reading material.
The library should respect people's privacy and set up kiosks just like the reading kiosks in the quiet sections of the library, where people sit and read undisturbed, with partial partitions that prevent prying eyes from looking at what they're doing.
Not that I think the "person walking by" argument is the only one in favor of public terminal filtering, but its nowhere near as dismissable as you're trying to make it out.
Well, I think I've shown that the "person walking by" argument *is* dismissable. So there. But you're right, it's not the only argument. There's the whole "harmful to minors" thing too.
And if kids viewing porn is really the problem, there's at least one other solution: deny children access to net-accessible computers entirely. This maximizes freedom for the adult population, which, let's face it, is all anyone really cares about anyway. And you can't make the whole world "safe for kids" if that restricting the rights of adults and suppressing "undesirable" information.
No one cares about the freedom of minors, do they? After all, you can raid a kid's locker at school without probable cause, and you can censor their newspapers at school, and no one really cares (except the kids, but so what, they can't vote, and by the time they can they won't care about the rights of disenfranchized minors). All the censors want to do is "protect" them and brainwash them to unquestioning loyalty to the values of the parents and the government/establishment, and they do so by controlling the information that they have access to.
The thing I don't get about all of this, is that essentially what They are trying to tell us is that we're not smart enough to know what's good for us, and that we should trust some machine to know that better than we could, and to protect us from ourselves.
If you're placing that little faith in humanity, you probably also think that allowing people to vote is dangerous and should be stopped too. "Let the computer decide who you'll vot for, it knows you better than you know yourself, and it knows what's best for you."
The problem with filtering is that all current solutions are controlled by soley by private entities, often with unstated agendas.
Let's clear this up just a bit.
First, the companies who are creating the filtering software are private (ie not government agencies). That they have hidden agendas is quite valid, and it is an important point that you bring up. Their censorship isn't covered by the constitution because the constitution only protects you against censorship by the [federal] government.
This is bullshit, of course, but the corporate censors will just tell you to go out and form your own big media company if you want to have a voice, and they're not obligated to carry your content or air your views.
Secondly, the government is involved because they are saying that they won't continue to fund libraries unless they adopt filtering technology. They're just demanding that public libraries adopt filtering software that has been developed in the corporate sector.
This isn't technically censorship, because the government isn't saying that the libraries have to use filters. They're saying that if they want government money, they have to use filters. This of course amounts to the same thing, beause most libraries would find it hard to continute to exist without federal funding. It's also not technically censorship because unfiltered internet access is still available, just not at the public libraries once filtering is in place. It's sort of like saying, "You can't have a picnic lunch in the middle of main street, but that doesn't infringe upon your right to have a picnic. Just do it in the appropriate place (ie a park)." Only thing is, I'm betting that within a few years they'll figure out a way to legally wrangle the ISPs who provide private individuals with access to implement mandatory filters or be taxed out of business.
This is also bullshit, because it's just a long-winded legal end-around to circumvent first amendment protections. Public Libraries are public institutions which are run by the government. The government has absolutely no right to try to censor the content that these institutions provide.
This is something that must be fought, stopped, or overturned. It is wrong. Even if it weren't strictly speaking prohibited by the first amendment, it certainly goes against the spirit of the law. And even if it did not go against the spirit of the law, it would still be wrong. Legal != right.
You forgot to mention that all (or almost all?) filtering software vendors have skewed political biases which blocks legitimate protected speech. It is censorship of political speech.
Porn viewing at libraries is not a huge problem. Yes, some people do it occasionally, but who does this really hurt? Why shouldn't they be able to view it? The only answer I keep hearing is that "other people" walking by might be offended if they looked at the monitor. So, what then, I guess if I want to read something, say, D.H. Lawrence or Henry Miller, I'd better make sure that no one can read over my shoulder, because, on the off chance that it might offend them, I can't read anything in public?
Why not set up the computers so that they respect the privacy of the user? People use the internet to look up sensitive/personal/private information and correspondence at times. Why should other people walking by easily be able to read that information on the screen, when it is intended for that person only?
People should be able to regulate the content they view by their own choice, not by what someone sitting over their shoulder thinks is "inappropriate" or "offensive".
These "solutions" not only won't work, but aren't needed.
If I was on something like this for a long time and sudden found out that it was a complete waste, becuase of looking in the wrong place, I would be very pissed.
You're absolutely right. Scientists should only look in the right places, because that's a lot more efficient and saves them a lot of time and money when compared to all the fruitless searching that takes place when scientists look in the wrong places.
All we have to do is figure out a way to know where the alien intelligences are BEFORE WE LOOK FOR THEM and then look there, and we'll only be looking in the right place, and never again will we have to waste our time looking in the wrong place.
Hey, I think I'll patent that idea. I think I'll base it off the principle that things are always found in the last place where someone looks for them. The methodology will be to check the list of places to look for the last location on the list of places to look, and the object's certainty of being there should be 100%. You don't need a PhD in Bistro Mathematics to think up this stuff, you know.
So I guess if you ever have any good ideas, I might as well just steal them, because you don't care, it doesn't hurt you, etc... right? It doesn't matter that they belong to someone else. How about if you were selling a service and I just held a gun to your head and forced you to perform the service for free. Hell... I'm just hurting some business. I didn't take anything away from him, did I? I mean I didn't go through his normal billing process, but who cares?
Saying you "don't care" is a rationalization.
I was riding the subway once in New York, and there was a copy of the NYT sitting on an empty seat. I picked it up and read it. I didn't pay for it, and I didn't try to find the owner of the newsstand where the paper was purchased so I could tell him my name, address, income bracket, etc.
I guess I must be a thief, too, but I don't feel too bad about it.
Sure. No one's having their rights violated, because they don't have to use Yahoo! They can always go out and build their own Yahoo!-like site on the web where they can go and do whatever they want. Because it will be theirs.
Owning something means that you can do anything you want with it, including make anyone else who comes into contact or interacts with your invention do whatever you want. Like, if I make a gun, I own it, that means I can shoot people with it when they come to my house. Because I own them. I own the house, the gun, and the bullet, and when someone comes over to my house, they become my property, and when I shoot someone with my gun, they become my property too.
And if people don't like that, well they shouldn't have went to my house or stood in front of the barrel of my gun. If they don't like that, people can get their own guns. But wait, I patented guns, so I would just own those too.
Likewise, if you go to Yahoo!, Yahoo! owns you, because you wouldn't go there unless you wanted to become their property. And they can make you do whatever they want you to do, and stop you from doing whatever they don't want you to.
[/sarcasm]
Obviously there's something wrong with that kind of thinking. The internet is largely a collection of proprietary sites with their own rules, but it is also a public space. It is also a trans-international space, where jurisdictions are not immediately obvious, perhaps even meaningless.
What is a sovereign entity on the net? Everyone? Webmasters and sys admins only? Governments? Corporations? 800 lb. gorillas? What redress do individuals have for their grievances?
If someone invents something which becomes analogous to the air we breathe on the web, does that mean that we have to do everything they say if we want to use that technology? Why? Doesn't public interest at some point supercede proprietary ownership? Well it should.
Re:The real social implications of fusion power.
on
The Quest For Fusion
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· Score: 1
Look how the pre-initial costs (research) are being resisted by the gov't of the USA (the richest nation in the world).
Back in the heyday of the British Empire, which was created and held by virtue of Britian's naval supremacy, the Powers that Were in the Navy tried to suppress the development of steam technology, for fear of the expense of having to replace a lot of obsolete sail-driven craft. In the end, this proved impossible of course, and they ended up in an expensive arms race against Germany to see who could build the most battleships. It could be that a similar mentality exists today with the US and power production. After all, we've been very reluctant to share fission technology. Just something to think about.
If anything, I should charge them for the service of providing more traffic to their site. Who thought of this? The fashion design people who thought it was a brilliant idea to charge $30 for a $2 t-shirt with the manufacturer's logo on it?
I really like the band Modest Mouse these days. Do yourself a favor and check them out if you haven't already.
One thing to remember about older music is that we typically don't remember all the crap that was out back then. Sure, there were a *ton* of incredible bands in the 60/70's but there were also a slew of forgetable wannabe acts, one-hit wonders, and just outright crap. We naturally don't have an interest in preserving the crap, therefore the proportion of good music from back then increases over time, because the crap gets forgotten.
Conversely, we *can* all enjoy crappy music that we do still remember. Vanilla Ice, Milli Vanilli, hair metal, and other too godawful to be forgotten music gives us 70's-born kids something else in common. The problem with music today is not that it's crappy, but that it's so crappy it's not even a joke anymore. Back in my day music was so bad it was funny. There's no way I could ever enjoy making fun of Kid Rock the way I make fun of Vanilla Ice; all I can do about Kid Rock is hate him unhumorously.
The important questions to ask today about music are:
Is the proportion of crap in the music industry changing?
Is what's good the same as what's popular?
Is popularity relevant to anything aside from profitability?
Slashdot Mirror
Someone needs to reverse-engineer money and then come up with a hack that prevents money from being spent on anything that would further the agendas of any company that is abusing consumer rights, violating privacy, or suppressing free speech and fair use.
If someone came up with a credit card that did this, say it didn't actually prevent purchases, but warned the buyer of the agendas of the corporation that they were buying from, I would sure as hell sign up for it in a heartbeat!
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
So far, there's been no actual implementation of the screen saver clause or the "you have to leave your own computer on at all times at your own expense" clause. They've only said that they "may" do this. Bad enough, though, I agree.
I don't even know how they could enforce that you must leave your computer on at all times. That's ridiculous. About all they could do was detect if you weren't leaving your system up 24/7 and then bar you from accessing your email or the web through their dialup service. So they'd just lose customers. No big deal there.
I'm more concerned about this bit about them being allowed to download and run software that will run on your computer and then periodically upload info. I wouldn't mind so much if this were SETI-at-home or if it were calculating large prime numbers or something like that, but there's nothing saying that it couldn't be spyware or policeware.
What free email services have a good TOS that respects the user's privacy and other rights?
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
Somehow I doubt this. It seems really easy for Them to say that the robot isn't the accuser, that it was just a tool for measurement, and that the accuser was the person who read the measurements and issued the ticket. As long as they have the robot calibrated (and they can always lie about that and you really can't prove they're not telling the truth) they've got you.
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
From a user standpoint, of course this would be great to see on other hardware platforms. I could free myself from the M$ mindshare without changing to much more expensive hardware.
From Apple's standpoint, the question boils down to how much money they make from selling hardware and how much money they make from selling OS software. If their OS sales take off into the stratosphere, but they're left with a lot of fancy boxes sitting around unsold because they're too expensive, and few people will buy them, however superior or prettier they are, then they probably won't do it.
But running an OS X system on an Intel or AMD platform would be a great intermediary step. Once people get used to the differences in the interface, they'll see the superiority of the software.
Later on, they'll see how much faster it runs on the superior G4 boxes, think about their Quake framerates, pee their pants, and buy Apple's hardware, too.
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
Well, that's just the sort of thing I was trying to stir up by airing my concerns. Of course how technology may be utilized can be governed by laws. But then, of course, laws can always be circumvented and ignored. There was a great, big, (apparently only nearly) universal "No!" on human cloning just last year. Nothing's officially changed, but here we have people working on it anyway. The laws aren't as failsafe as you make it seem.
At any rate, if people aren't aware of the possible abuses that I brought up, they aren't going to push to legislate against those abuses, either, are they?
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
Yeah, it'd be great...
Right about until the time the company that augmented you decides to enforce its patents and claims to own you because you incorporate proprietary DNA. They claim you're their IP and that they can do with you whatever you want.
Oh, also, while they were in there rewriting your genetic code, they added a few things that they didn't bother to tell your parents about. There's now sections of your DNA which they can use to track you wherever you go, and what's more, they have a "self-destruct" sequence installed into your DNA, which gives you a rapid-onset form of cancer that will kill you within 24 hours, "just in case". No civil disobedience for you!
Meanwhile, your unaugmented older brother who was born before this technology was perfected can't get any kind of reasonably-priced health coverage because of a genetic predisposition to whatever disease.
It'll be as close to Utopia as we can get on this planet. I can't wait.
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
Hey, did anyone else notice?
A clone isn't a combination of DNA from the parents. It's a copy of one of the parent's DNA.
So, whoever's contributing the DNA will be the sole "parent". And I put that word in quotes because it won't quite be like being a parent, either. It'll be more like you're a much older identical twin of someone who came out of your wife (or yourself, as the case may be.)
This ought to give the geneologists of the world a lot more headaches than they already have...
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
As more IT workers enter the labor market, an individual's skills and specialites will mean less and less. The people with the most skills will always be in demand and always have it pretty good, but there will always be an underclass of midlevel and entry-level employees. These are the people who stand to gain from unionization.
Even for those who are currently making out pretty well, there are still issues unique to the IT labor market. Maybe labor shortages are so severe that you really do need to work 60-80 hrs. a week, but maybe also you'll finally be able to actually get paid for it.
If you think your salary is really all that great, first compute your real hourly wage by factoring in all the overtime you don't get paid for. Then think about all the things you'll do with all that money when you finally get some time off... oh, wait you don't get any time off until you retire, which will happen when you either burn out or when they fire you for not being in your early 20's. What are you going to do with all that money if you've got no time to enjoy spending it?
Even if everything else is good, there's still the issue of abuses of labor. You're a lot stronger if you've got union backing and have a complaint, assuming that the complaint is valid and you have a strong, non-corrupt union helping you to look after your interests.
Bottom line is, management is already organized. It's only fair for labor to organize itself.
In order for unionization to work, here's what I think will need to happen:
Membership must be voluntary. Management cannot coerce workers not to join, and the Union cannot coerce workers to join.
Individuals who feel they can negotiate better contracts for themselves without the union should be free to do so, but they should enjoy none of the benefits that unions have secured for their members (unless they can somehow successfully negotiate them for themselves).
There must exist some means to stamp out corruption in unions. I think one good way to achieve this would be to have a means for sharing information among union members that bypasses the old-school model of the straight dope being handed down from on high.
Traditionally there have been union newsletters which brainwashed the membership with propaganda and told them what a great job the union was doing, while the corrupt bosses went around and did whatever. Instead of the traditional newsletter, why not have an open-contribution website (much like /. naturally) where union members could speak out? Important issues could be discussed with relative anonymnity and safety, and the highest-modded contributions to the discussion could be used as the basis for the choices the union would have to vote on. Done properly, this would take a bit of effort to implement, but once in place, there would be little need for union bosses, and thus there would be no one at the top to corrupt. The whole decision-making process could be transparent, and any attempts at corruption would be weeded out like bugs in open-source software.
If this isn't effective, several unions could compete with each other. Think one union is corrupt? Dump them and sign on with another! This would at least give you another option besides quitting your job and finding another one.
I don't suppose that there's an easy answer to EVERY problem that unionization brings up, but at least if there's a body in existence that addresses labor issues, new workers who enter the labor market won't have to continually invent the wheel for themselves. I certainly don't have all the answers for all my problems, but maybe a few of my friends do. It wouldn't hurt to ask them, but I might not even think to. The collective power of a union is like having thousands of friends, and you get to benefit from the wisdom of each of their experiences in dealing with management. Unionizing IT jobs could make a real difference.
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Kids. K for Kuiper belt object :)
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
IANAAstronomer, but this seems like a pretty easy one to answer.
Let's think about the Sun as an example. It's the central object in the Solar System, and it has Planets, which orbit it, and the Planets are in turn orbited by Moons. The Sun itself, of course, orbits around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. So I don't see why this could be extended further downward in scale, with "sub-moons" orbiting moons. In fact, we could prove this really easily by throwing up an artificial satellite to orbit our own Moon. Which has already been done in the Apollo missions.
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I would suspect that this is news because a long-standing and commonly held conception is being challenged. I agree that a less vague definition of planet is in order, and would clear this matter up once and for all.
As a secondary consideration, I think probably there is some research money at stake. No government agency is going to want to fund a mission to a lowly Kuiper Belt object, but they'd probably be more open to spending billions on a mission to the outer-most Major Planet in the Home System. So much more prestige and glory.
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
I don't know that they're really going to lose too many legitimate customers.
Say you're an average user who didn't tamper with your hardware, and for some reason your dish stops working. You call up DirecTV customer service and complain that your TV isn't receiving anymore.
They send someone out to look at the problem. The repairman notices there's no apparent tampering with the equipment, and surmises that you're one of those rare people who got accidentally fried along with all the crackers. He replaces the card, charges you $40 for a new card, $75 for the labor, and then blames it all on "hackers messing around with the satellite system."
Which is half-true, but conveniently leaves out the fact that the hackers didn't actually cause the damage, that they weren't doing anything malicious to anyone's equipment but that which was in their own homes, and that the damage was caused by DirecTV's countermeasures. He'll probably even be persuaded to spend another $20/month on "hacker insurance" so that he doesn't have to pay another high repair bill if his equipment gets fried again, even though the odds are good that it'll never happen again.
Now the good paying customer has learned that hackers are bad and not to trust them, and if anyone ever tries to sell him on piracy he won't trust them. It's a pretty good strategy, because most customers will trust the information they're given by the "authority figure" of the repair technician.
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OK, then, let me try again.
I'm sitting somewhere, minding my own business, and then somebody comes along and tells me I shouldn't do something that isn't hurting anyone, or, if it is, the harm could easily be prevented by them not staring at me. Don't like what's on my screen? Look somewhere else! Is it that hard?
Now, how is it anyone else's right to tell me that I can't look at something?
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I disagree that the difference is pretty big. Yes, it's easier to see what someone else looking at a computer monitor is looking at than it is to read tiny text over their shoulder. But perhaps I should have chosen my example more cafefully. It's quite easy to look at the outside cover of a book as someone's reading it, to discern the author and title. To do that is just as easy as to look over someone's shoulder to see what they're looking at on a screen.
But the point is still that what I happen to be viewing is really none of anyone else's business. I have a reasonable expectation that my right to privacy extends to me reading something, whether it be printed on dead trees or displayed on a computer screen. I don't care what I'm looking at, if someone else comes up to me and says, "I demand that you stop reading this horrid, obscene material, as it offends me," I'm going to tell them to mind their own business and keep their eyes on their own reading material.
The library should respect people's privacy and set up kiosks just like the reading kiosks in the quiet sections of the library, where people sit and read undisturbed, with partial partitions that prevent prying eyes from looking at what they're doing.
Well, I think I've shown that the "person walking by" argument *is* dismissable. So there. But you're right, it's not the only argument. There's the whole "harmful to minors" thing too.
And if kids viewing porn is really the problem, there's at least one other solution: deny children access to net-accessible computers entirely. This maximizes freedom for the adult population, which, let's face it, is all anyone really cares about anyway. And you can't make the whole world "safe for kids" if that restricting the rights of adults and suppressing "undesirable" information.
No one cares about the freedom of minors, do they? After all, you can raid a kid's locker at school without probable cause, and you can censor their newspapers at school, and no one really cares (except the kids, but so what, they can't vote, and by the time they can they won't care about the rights of disenfranchized minors). All the censors want to do is "protect" them and brainwash them to unquestioning loyalty to the values of the parents and the government/establishment, and they do so by controlling the information that they have access to.
Yeah, I think that's wrong too.
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The thing I don't get about all of this, is that essentially what They are trying to tell us is that we're not smart enough to know what's good for us, and that we should trust some machine to know that better than we could, and to protect us from ourselves.
If you're placing that little faith in humanity, you probably also think that allowing people to vote is dangerous and should be stopped too. "Let the computer decide who you'll vot for, it knows you better than you know yourself, and it knows what's best for you."
Yeah, right. No thanks.
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Let's clear this up just a bit.
First, the companies who are creating the filtering software are private (ie not government agencies). That they have hidden agendas is quite valid, and it is an important point that you bring up. Their censorship isn't covered by the constitution because the constitution only protects you against censorship by the [federal] government.
This is bullshit, of course, but the corporate censors will just tell you to go out and form your own big media company if you want to have a voice, and they're not obligated to carry your content or air your views.
Secondly, the government is involved because they are saying that they won't continue to fund libraries unless they adopt filtering technology. They're just demanding that public libraries adopt filtering software that has been developed in the corporate sector.
This isn't technically censorship, because the government isn't saying that the libraries have to use filters. They're saying that if they want government money, they have to use filters. This of course amounts to the same thing, beause most libraries would find it hard to continute to exist without federal funding. It's also not technically censorship because unfiltered internet access is still available, just not at the public libraries once filtering is in place. It's sort of like saying, "You can't have a picnic lunch in the middle of main street, but that doesn't infringe upon your right to have a picnic. Just do it in the appropriate place (ie a park)." Only thing is, I'm betting that within a few years they'll figure out a way to legally wrangle the ISPs who provide private individuals with access to implement mandatory filters or be taxed out of business.
This is also bullshit, because it's just a long-winded legal end-around to circumvent first amendment protections. Public Libraries are public institutions which are run by the government. The government has absolutely no right to try to censor the content that these institutions provide.
This is something that must be fought, stopped, or overturned. It is wrong. Even if it weren't strictly speaking prohibited by the first amendment, it certainly goes against the spirit of the law. And even if it did not go against the spirit of the law, it would still be wrong. Legal != right.
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You forgot to mention that all (or almost all?) filtering software vendors have skewed political biases which blocks legitimate protected speech. It is censorship of political speech.
Check out Peacefire.org. Check out EFF.
Porn viewing at libraries is not a huge problem. Yes, some people do it occasionally, but who does this really hurt? Why shouldn't they be able to view it? The only answer I keep hearing is that "other people" walking by might be offended if they looked at the monitor. So, what then, I guess if I want to read something, say, D.H. Lawrence or Henry Miller, I'd better make sure that no one can read over my shoulder, because, on the off chance that it might offend them, I can't read anything in public?
Why not set up the computers so that they respect the privacy of the user? People use the internet to look up sensitive/personal/private information and correspondence at times. Why should other people walking by easily be able to read that information on the screen, when it is intended for that person only?
People should be able to regulate the content they view by their own choice, not by what someone sitting over their shoulder thinks is "inappropriate" or "offensive".
These "solutions" not only won't work, but aren't needed.
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You're absolutely right. Scientists should only look in the right places, because that's a lot more efficient and saves them a lot of time and money when compared to all the fruitless searching that takes place when scientists look in the wrong places.
All we have to do is figure out a way to know where the alien intelligences are BEFORE WE LOOK FOR THEM and then look there, and we'll only be looking in the right place, and never again will we have to waste our time looking in the wrong place.
Hey, I think I'll patent that idea. I think I'll base it off the principle that things are always found in the last place where someone looks for them. The methodology will be to check the list of places to look for the last location on the list of places to look, and the object's certainty of being there should be 100%. You don't need a PhD in Bistro Mathematics to think up this stuff, you know.
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I was riding the subway once in New York, and there was a copy of the NYT sitting on an empty seat. I picked it up and read it. I didn't pay for it, and I didn't try to find the owner of the newsstand where the paper was purchased so I could tell him my name, address, income bracket, etc.
I guess I must be a thief, too, but I don't feel too bad about it.
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[sarcasm]
Sure. No one's having their rights violated, because they don't have to use Yahoo! They can always go out and build their own Yahoo!-like site on the web where they can go and do whatever they want. Because it will be theirs.
Owning something means that you can do anything you want with it, including make anyone else who comes into contact or interacts with your invention do whatever you want. Like, if I make a gun, I own it, that means I can shoot people with it when they come to my house. Because I own them. I own the house, the gun, and the bullet, and when someone comes over to my house, they become my property, and when I shoot someone with my gun, they become my property too.
And if people don't like that, well they shouldn't have went to my house or stood in front of the barrel of my gun. If they don't like that, people can get their own guns. But wait, I patented guns, so I would just own those too.
Likewise, if you go to Yahoo!, Yahoo! owns you, because you wouldn't go there unless you wanted to become their property. And they can make you do whatever they want you to do, and stop you from doing whatever they don't want you to.
[/sarcasm]
Obviously there's something wrong with that kind of thinking. The internet is largely a collection of proprietary sites with their own rules, but it is also a public space. It is also a trans-international space, where jurisdictions are not immediately obvious, perhaps even meaningless.
What is a sovereign entity on the net? Everyone? Webmasters and sys admins only? Governments? Corporations? 800 lb. gorillas? What redress do individuals have for their grievances?
If someone invents something which becomes analogous to the air we breathe on the web, does that mean that we have to do everything they say if we want to use that technology? Why? Doesn't public interest at some point supercede proprietary ownership? Well it should.
Back in the heyday of the British Empire, which was created and held by virtue of Britian's naval supremacy, the Powers that Were in the Navy tried to suppress the development of steam technology, for fear of the expense of having to replace a lot of obsolete sail-driven craft. In the end, this proved impossible of course, and they ended up in an expensive arms race against Germany to see who could build the most battleships. It could be that a similar mentality exists today with the US and power production. After all, we've been very reluctant to share fission technology. Just something to think about.
If anything, I should charge them for the service of providing more traffic to their site. Who thought of this? The fashion design people who thought it was a brilliant idea to charge $30 for a $2 t-shirt with the manufacturer's logo on it?
One company sues another for using a technology that most end-users hate. Real good. And the analysts speculate as to why the bubble is bursting.
I really like the band Modest Mouse these days. Do yourself a favor and check them out if you haven't already.
One thing to remember about older music is that we typically don't remember all the crap that was out back then. Sure, there were a *ton* of incredible bands in the 60/70's but there were also a slew of forgetable wannabe acts, one-hit wonders, and just outright crap. We naturally don't have an interest in preserving the crap, therefore the proportion of good music from back then increases over time, because the crap gets forgotten.
Conversely, we *can* all enjoy crappy music that we do still remember. Vanilla Ice, Milli Vanilli, hair metal, and other too godawful to be forgotten music gives us 70's-born kids something else in common. The problem with music today is not that it's crappy, but that it's so crappy it's not even a joke anymore. Back in my day music was so bad it was funny. There's no way I could ever enjoy making fun of Kid Rock the way I make fun of Vanilla Ice; all I can do about Kid Rock is hate him unhumorously.
The important questions to ask today about music are: