On the other hand, giving punitive damages to the government then gives the government itself an incentive to start throwing around frivolous tort cases.
Not saying it's a bad idea, but one really does need to look out for the law of unintended consequences.
Exactly. Computer hardware and, even more, software just isn't to the level of reliability that other, longer-established industries have achieved.
Frankly, these "tiny things that are normal" for a PC are things we wouldn't tolerate from a microwave oven, a toaster, even a VCR. And perhaps we won't get to that level until Moore's Law stops working (as it almost assuredly will - sooner or later, you can't cheat Heisenberg) and a given hardware design has a chance of lasting more than six months before becoming obsolete.
But that's so far in the future that it's probably silly to try to make any detailed predictions. And of course the lusers you refer to, who don't know what to expect of a computer, will still be with us, even as there are people who try to fish their wedding ring out of the toaster with a knife or try to force a videotape into the VCR upside down.
Well, in The Fifth Elephant, the clacks system was introduced. It's really more an analogue of the telegraph - it's a series of semaphore towers populated by people with little imagination and lots of patience. Gargoyles, particularly, are common clacks operators.
Of course, since there's still only one computer on the Disc, and it's the size of a room, I don't know if we'll see an Internet any time soon -- unless Pterry has need of one.:)
The reason why Slashdot uses GIF images is that there's still a lot of browsers out there (Netscape 3.0, for example, which a lot of people are still using because it isn't nearly so bloated as 4.x) that don't support PNG.
We don't have nearly so much of a problem in the MP3 player space - all we have to do is get Ogg Vorbis plugins made for WinAmp and XMMS and we're all set.
Actually, I may have a partial answer myself. It's acceptable to claim incomplete knowledge, provided you don't make any claims to its completeness. And science doesn't make any claim to have all the answers - it just claims to be pretty sure about the answers it does have.
The laws of thermodynamics are extraordinarily well established. If the second law did contradict evolution, evolution would definitely be the one we'd have to discard.
However, the second law allows for any amount of complexity to arise, provided that you lose more than you gain somewhere else. In the case of life on earth, that loss is in the form of waste heat that's eventually radiated out into space.
Now, it is the case that you have to get life started somehow before it can start taking advantage of the flow of energy from the sun. But the second law has nothing to say about exactly how you extract work from a temperature difference. As soon as you start asking about where the first life forms came from, you've gotten away from thermodynamics and gone into chemistry.
A list of published articles studying biochemical evolution can be found here, including articles on the blood clotting system and eukaryote and bacterial flagella.
Certainly we can't consider the evolutionary history of flagella or blood clotting to be settled. But it stands to reason that piecing together the evolution of a complex system, particularly one which does not fossilize, is going to take a little while, not so?
I haven't ignored it. I read "Darwin's Black Box" and found it utterly unconvincing. Behe tries to make handwaving stand in for reasoned argument. It's been thoroughly demonstrated that irreducibly complex systems can, and have, evolved, and the assertion that "as the complexity of the system increases, the probability of the system evolving by indirect means drops precipitously" is no more than an assertion.
Not to mention that he still claims there's no research addressing the issue of how evolution can work on the molecular level, despite the fact that said claim is manifestly untrue.
And Behe is the best creationism and so-called intelligent design has to offer. (If you disagree, feel free to give a better example.)
Sorry about the inconsistent use of "them" vs. "we" in the above. I am, in fact, a Microsoft employee, and my project involves working very closely with Passport (though I'm not on the Passport team myself).
Except Passport can't do that, not the way it's currently designed.
All that is stored on Passport's servers is:
your email address
a nickname of your choice (optional)
your location, but no more specific than your zip code
your gender (optional)
your birthdate (this is required so that we can comply with COPPA)
preferred language (optional)
and one more "accessibility" bit.
Note that you have the ability to not share your email address with Passport sites. And if you do not share the email address, they cannot get the information.
I'm not saying ignore Passport. It's clearly a place where massive privacy violations could be perpetrated. All I'm saying is that it's not happening now. If nothing else, Microsoft knows that if Passport gets tagged as being a privacy-violator by privacy advocates, no one's going to sign up for it - and then it's worthless to them. So we're motivated to maintain some level of privacy for our users.
To reiterate: there is presently no technological provision whatsoever for personal information that you enter at a Passport member site to filter back to the central Passport database.
"We look forward to the day when the infringements finally cease."
Of course, we all know the "infringements" will NEVER cease. If not Napster, then Gnutella, Freenet, IRC, FTP, and countless other distribution mechanisms will keep the trading of copyrighted MP3s alive. survive - it's just that they won't be able to pull in the huge profits they have had hitherto.
Slashdot Mirror
Not saying it's a bad idea, but one really does need to look out for the law of unintended consequences.
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Seems to me we just need to keep doing what we're doing. That'll teach 'em all the lesson they can stand. :-)
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Didn't even know about the poll over here. But sounds like your typical Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf stunt. :-)
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I predict this comment won't get moderated at all. Now, let's see what happens. :-)
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Um, are you aware that more than a few carriers don't allow you to type in an arbitrary URL?
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Don't tell me you believe that stuff? Do you not know that A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads?
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Frankly, these "tiny things that are normal" for a PC are things we wouldn't tolerate from a microwave oven, a toaster, even a VCR. And perhaps we won't get to that level until Moore's Law stops working (as it almost assuredly will - sooner or later, you can't cheat Heisenberg) and a given hardware design has a chance of lasting more than six months before becoming obsolete.
But that's so far in the future that it's probably silly to try to make any detailed predictions. And of course the lusers you refer to, who don't know what to expect of a computer, will still be with us, even as there are people who try to fish their wedding ring out of the toaster with a knife or try to force a videotape into the VCR upside down.
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Of course, since there's still only one computer on the Disc, and it's the size of a room, I don't know if we'll see an Internet any time soon -- unless Pterry has need of one. :)
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If you liked that, check out Soul Music, where Pratchett explores that thought in much more detail.
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Oh, by the way, if you want to do >_<, use >_<.
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We don't have nearly so much of a problem in the MP3 player space - all we have to do is get Ogg Vorbis plugins made for WinAmp and XMMS and we're all set.
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So, where did this come from? Is there any independent corroboration of these heinous charges leveled against Philadelphia's criminal justice system?
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Actually, I may have a partial answer myself. It's acceptable to claim incomplete knowledge, provided you don't make any claims to its completeness. And science doesn't make any claim to have all the answers - it just claims to be pretty sure about the answers it does have.
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And that force is natural selection, which keeps the good luck and throws away the bad luck.
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Would you care to state one disproof of evolution? Just one? (Preferably the one you consider strongest.)
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However, the second law allows for any amount of complexity to arise, provided that you lose more than you gain somewhere else. In the case of life on earth, that loss is in the form of waste heat that's eventually radiated out into space.
Now, it is the case that you have to get life started somehow before it can start taking advantage of the flow of energy from the sun. But the second law has nothing to say about exactly how you extract work from a temperature difference. As soon as you start asking about where the first life forms came from, you've gotten away from thermodynamics and gone into chemistry.
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Certainly we can't consider the evolutionary history of flagella or blood clotting to be settled. But it stands to reason that piecing together the evolution of a complex system, particularly one which does not fossilize, is going to take a little while, not so?
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Not to mention that he still claims there's no research addressing the issue of how evolution can work on the molecular level, despite the fact that said claim is manifestly untrue.
And Behe is the best creationism and so-called intelligent design has to offer. (If you disagree, feel free to give a better example.)
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Except that this has been in progress for at least a month already.
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All the same, I'd have felt better about it if it were "Hotmail about to collapse under load?".
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Sorry about the inconsistent use of "them" vs. "we" in the above. I am, in fact, a Microsoft employee, and my project involves working very closely with Passport (though I'm not on the Passport team myself).
--
All that is stored on Passport's servers is:
- your email address
- a nickname of your choice (optional)
- your location, but no more specific than your zip code
- your gender (optional)
- your birthdate (this is required so that we can comply with COPPA)
- preferred language (optional)
- and one more "accessibility" bit.
Note that you have the ability to not share your email address with Passport sites. And if you do not share the email address, they cannot get the information.I'm not saying ignore Passport. It's clearly a place where massive privacy violations could be perpetrated. All I'm saying is that it's not happening now. If nothing else, Microsoft knows that if Passport gets tagged as being a privacy-violator by privacy advocates, no one's going to sign up for it - and then it's worthless to them. So we're motivated to maintain some level of privacy for our users.
To reiterate: there is presently no technological provision whatsoever for personal information that you enter at a Passport member site to filter back to the central Passport database.
--
"We look forward to the day when the infringements finally cease."
Of course, we all know the "infringements" will NEVER cease. If not Napster, then Gnutella, Freenet, IRC, FTP, and countless other distribution mechanisms will keep the trading of copyrighted MP3s alive. survive - it's just that they won't be able to pull in the huge profits they have had hitherto.
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