I think it might be a good idea to limit choice in software in the following way: Instead of RAND, have a standards section of prohibited tech which can not be used in a system that claims to be standard. Put the patent encumbered RAND stuff in this section. This aggressive choice tends to invalidate the value of the patent. This gives leverage for negotiating RF agreements. In the meantime, we can all enjoy the screams of rage from the patent holders. In any case, RAND stuff is available after sufficient time has passed. I am willing to slow down RAND stuff for that length of time.
Re:Globalisation for Greed
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps a little light.
The Taliban was created by Pakistan with US agreement after the war with the Soviet Union wound down. Apparently, the Afgans have a tribal society and the tribes do not like each other and so they needed outside help to get a psuedo-government.
A little reported fact is that the Afgan state by international law now includes about half of Pakistan. Presumedly, there is a quid pro quo for Pakistan support of the Taliban in that the Taliban will not press their claims for their territory. Presumedly, this is why Pakistan wants the new governemtn to have "moderate Talibans" in it. This particular mess I would guess is left over from the British and their geo-politics.
The intent of the grandparent author was perhaps to remind us that we have trained and funded our opponents and even perhaps continue to protect them, the last IMO. I cite one recent Russian statement and two Macedonia statements, as follows:
bin Laden's top collaborator is an Egypian. His brother is in Kosavo. He has recently trained 50 Islamic terrorists at a KLA terrorists training camp. The camp is in the US controlled area of Kosovo. The reports are recent and post-date WTC.
Less well documented, the KLA a few months ago got caught in Macadonia territory and their people were going to be captured by the Macadonian army. The KLA personnel included Islamic fundamentalists and private US military advisors. KFOR rescued them, driving them off in air-conditioned buses.
There are some signs of change here in that the American ambassador to Russia is reported stating that the KLA must now be considered terrorists. But I think that just validates the inconsistency of US policy now.
On terrorism, first of all we should want to avoid Katz's tendency to see this in terms of British Clash of Civilizations geo-politics. But this is a big subject.
On globalism, Putin's speech at APEC on globalism is one I can agree with. But good luck finding any reporting on it in the US. I would include it here but the lameness filter would get me.
The House just has to sit on their hands and they will. On one hand, the constitutional argument is inapplicable as the previous poster said. Neither house is trying to impose new taxes technically. And 45 of 50 states are in a budget crisis.
But on state taxes, the previous poster does not quite realize that the goods end up in a particular state where they may then be taxed. In the state of Washington, we have had something called a use tax on the books for years. This obligates me to pay sales tax on stuff I buy out of state. Except they call it a use tax. I bet most states with sales tax have something similar. The trick is that the use tax is very hard to enforce on private individuals. They do try to enforce it on businesses as part of their sales tax audits.My take again is that given the state revenue crisus, we will see the ban lapse. And for politiicians, dot-coms are a bucket of warm spit these days, IMO. So right now, the dot-com effect is a non-issue.
What we are seeing is a little manuvering towards a workable interstate sales tax system. We will get a little chaos, and the pain will move this forward, IMO.
Speakeasy is going to start cutting people off the 23rd. I have no problem with them doing so. Maybe I should, but I feel more like applauding. Here is the message I received from them, which has some useful URLs. As a result it is long. And, oops, the lameness filter caught it. I will prune this down to the rationale and drop the urls and try again.
My take is that a couple days notice, with resources, is an attempt at being reasonable.
Dear Speakeasy Members,
Over the last 3 months, we have been battling it out with the "Code Red"
worm. Just as we were beginning to believe the worst was behind us, we
have now learned that there is yet another hostile bit of rogue data
coursing it's way around the Internet.
This new so-called "Nimda" worm, unlike it's Code Red predecessor, affects
not only Windows 2000/NT/XP running IIS, but Windows 95/98/ME as well. It
goes without saying that the damage potential for this worm is
exponentially greater than the Code Red worm. It is for this reason we
urge you to apply the proper fix to your machines ASAP -- if you have not
done so already.
Maybe I agree with you. After reading the referenced analysis by the Iranian film maker, pointed to by the original news article, I have considerable compassion for this country. It is not even medieval, but tribal. The Taliban seem to be an improvement over what they had. Their situation is mostly a geographical problem, but has been exaberated by the British, US, and Soviet Union, and Pakistan. If we simply do nothing a million of them will die of starvation in the next year. Just how are we going to effectively punish them, given that?
bin Laden's money needs to dry up but this country needs our help, not our bombs. We would do better to cut a deal to build roads and water projects. Doing that might require military force, but it is a different orientation.
Perhaps some background on Bin Laden is in order. He was originally funded and trained by the CIA under George Bush Senior. People sometimes call yesterday's result "blowback". Relevant policy phrases are "Islamic card", "Arc of Crisis", "Clash of Civilizations". Some of these are current policies. The problem is not that the CIA does not do enough, the problem is that the CIA, on instructions from people like Bush, run dangerous geopolitical stategies and geopolitics, though dominating our government's outlook, is an insane policy. This is a complex subject, but even in our sorrow, people need to ask if this was not chicken's coming home to roost.
In Tacoma, WA, the library has filtering. But the filtering rules are generated inhouse and what they filter is images, not words. I am not claiming this is the perfect solution, but it appears innovative to me.
Let us recognize reasonable limits to marketing. For instance, there is an international convention that class II (highly addictive drugs) not be marketed except to doctors. Yet in the United States such drugs, for children, are now being marketed to parents. These drugs are not Ritilian, but have the same purpose, whatever that is. I believe Rouche is among those doing such marketing.
Please recognize that the above behavior will add to R&D available revenue, as in your equation, but the real motivation is shareholder's value in both cases.
In an extended discussion, we could develop a number of examples where shareholder's value is not properly the highest goal. In general, these come under the rubic of the Common Good, otherwise known in the US as the General Welfare. These concepts can be *economically* treated as preserving and enhancing the future production of wealth of the society. As a parenthetical note, let us observe that wealth is not money, meaning that in a period such as ours, money is a poor measure of the economic well-being of the society.
Does the common good have a non-economic component. Indeed it does. While people try to address the Brazilian case in moralistic terms, I mistrust that somewhat. The essential moral component is the will to serve the common good, also called agape, with an accent. Brazil's governemnt is to be praised for their will to serve their people's common good.
Did they implement their will in the best way? I think they did okay, but if not, as a nation-state, they get to chose. The sin is the failure to chose.
As a closing note, since the establishment of the United States, the primary domestic determination of the legitimency of a govenment has been its committment to the general welfare. Which government is more legitiment: US or Brazil?
Let us just glance at
Brooks. Consider the following quote from URL:
"First, humankind didn't want to give up that Earth was the center of the universe. Then, we gave up that we were different from animals," Brooks explained. "But to give up the idea that machines can take on higher-level thinking... it's a descent into being little complex machines, giving up that specialness we think we have."
I think that I can fairly conclude that Brooks thinks we are machines. He goes on and describes his dualism between his life and his science, so we should modify my conclusion with the modifier "as a scientist".
I dealt with this a bit in another thread. Treating it from another angle, let us consider a definitional issue. I consider that machines are embodiment of a formal axomatic system and so have that limitation as compared to the demonstrated ability of our species to discover new valid universal laws, which represent elements of a new axomatic system. Brooks thinks his machines are successful if they have emotions such as fear and can think. I will give him and you a supersmart baboon machine. Maybe we should fear that, but I am more concerned about the thought that treats mankind as supersmart baboons.
I think Brooks is essentially an engineer. This is my version of the content-free criticism. But engineers often go out ahead of science and still succeed. It seems to me that if he thought in my terms, he could be said to be planning to avoid the mystery of the ability to discover universal laws by creating it in a mysterious way. And since he is trying to emulate aspects of what is presumed to be the processes by which we as a species developed this ability, I cannot rule out the possiblity that this line of inquiry will "luck out".
Still, although you win on the possiblity, your argument is almost the inevitibility, and is based on the non-distinction of animals and humans. Tbus a baboon with a population potential of a few tens of millions seems indistinguishable from a species who has a population potention of about 15 billion with current tech, and which can change the way it makes its living without changing its DNA. Your argument is common in the AI field, and in the sociobiology area, but is specifically what I am polemicizing against. In the detail of the question of human-like machines, the content-free nature of the Brooks program provides little basis for argument one way or another. Like any cut and try method, it will work or not. But the specs are not that of a being who can discover new universal laws, so you probably will not get that. And that is what makes us a very successful species.
First let me observe that you and the person I was replying to perhaps should talk. If I understand him, he seems to say you do not exist:-). I make this argument because he/she said that no one thinks "that way" anymore. What does "that way" signify at its root, aside from the actual text I wrote? I was claiming that many people treat the universe as fully describable by a formal axiomatic system.
Suppose it is. Then you are right. Suppose it is not. Then you are potentially wrong, in that as part of the universe, the universe's actual nature may influence you. We need not here attempt to specify the universe's actual nature, only that it is not describable as a formal axiomatic system.
If you agree so far, then the questions becomes, first, is the universe fully formal axiomatic describable?, and if not, are we influenced fundamentally by its non-axiomatic nature?.
We can answer the first question by a positve answer to the second. That is, if we have a non-axiomatic nature, then that property adheres to the universe as well.
Consider the most fundamental aspect of the species: that it reproduces. Secondly, as a tribe of baboon equivalents, we have a population potential of a few tens of millions. Observe that our population potential with existing tech seems to be about 15 billion. We seek to know the reason for this difference between baboons and people. Most fundamentally, some people discover new and valid laws of the universe. These are mediated through society and generate more powerful tech, and thus increase the population potential. In all cases of interest, these newly discovered laws of nature invalidate existing axiomatic systems of science, and ultimately, of action. Thus humans have the capability of adducing new axioms that in fact correspond to increased power over the universe. On the other hand, a formal axiomatic system has a fixed set of axioms. Adding new axioms is going outside of the box.
So I think the human generation of new valid universal laws is outside of a formal axiomatic system, and we are part of the universe, so the universe is outside of a formal axiomatic system.
Note a lot of AI people have historically denied the existance of creativity in the form I describe. Typically, the "strong" AI people take that sort of stance. I guess the term should be "strong-smelling":-). I can however conceive of creative constructs, not based on current AI research, but just suppose... I come to a paradox. The existence of the paradox points out the need for new universal law to be discovered. The need for, but the absence of, this new axiom is the barrier you posit does not exist.
Consider building a machine that is creative. Make it a big machine that you can walk around inside and see everything. What part of it is the creative part and what actions do you see when the machine is being creative. Since it is a "machine" this should all be visible to you. Yet we know that in humans, the creative moment is private. It can be duplicated in others, but we do not see anything from outside. In the machine, we are inside and so we should be able to "see" it. But generalizing from the human case, I think we would not "see" it. So where is it? To me, this is a difficult question.
Thank you for the spelling correction, but I respectfully disagree with the second clause of your statement. Here is an easy assertion: Economics is still dominated by Von Neumann radical logical positivism. If it is not yet phrased as a formal axiomatic system, this is not due to lack of program, but general incompetence with respect to the subject matter by the so-called economists. And the natural product of this viewpoint is that of a view of economics as a zero-sum game (shades of Von Neumann). Of course, if you introduce new tech, it is no longer a zero-sum game, so that should make the treatment of radical new tech the main progammatic goal. However, with a few exceptions, economists and their clients consider such occurances "disruptive" and outside of the box. It IS outside of their box. And I experience conversation with ordinary people who express the opinion in effect that economics is zero-sum. Thus I think people often think in with way, contrary to your assertion.
Economics as it is practiced generally is not a science, and you might respond that I pick a degenerate example. Without granting the charge, I will now pick on physics. Pose the question: Is physics, as a body of knowledge, finite or infinite? I think many "bread" physicists will respond "finite". If so, then a fixed axiomatic set of natural laws will suffice to describe the universe and we have a formal axiomatic system.
The economics example is a good example because we all practice economics and tend to do it with currency, and so we see it as a zero-sum game from our viewpoint. The physics example is rigged because I specified "bread" physicists, which by the reference are in physics to earn a living, and so are threatened by new knowledge, since it invalidate their existing knowledge, and thus the way they earn their living.
Well, I have a Masters in SE, but that is not my basis of authority. Ultimately, the valid basis of authority of a person is the ability to produce and understand valid ideas. The most powerfull ideas are that that describe a new valid universal law. These sort of ideas tend to overthrough existing axioms of thought and action. This ability of humans is properly something of a mystery and allows us to change the way we make a living as a species without rewritting our DNA, as a lower being must. Conceptually, this particularity can be used to organize the universe in a heirarchy of matter, biosphere, and noonsphere.
Somehow I do not see AI making fundamental discoveries about the universe. I do not think AI is going to apply these fundamental discoveries without rewritting of the axioms hidden in their code. This claim comes from the limitations of formal axionomic systems, of which computers are an as yet unrealized instance of embodiment. Thus their limitation is a very fundamental limitation imposed on AI by the nature of the universe as a non-formal-axonomic system. A useful reference on the limitations of a formal axiomic system is Kurt Godel, who demolished Russell's program for representing all possible knowledge in a formal axiomic system. Oh, I have a math degree too.
The reference to the Unibomber is actually useful. I claim it reminds us of the natural products of viewing the world as a formal axionomic system. Thus, AI would be a lesser creation, but muderously insane, either in the style of the Unibomber, or in the style of "Dirty Bertie", i.e., Russell.
Re:Stupidity is Self Curing
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 1
Man quite properly changes the environment. The issue is doing a "correct" job of it. Good science is a necessity in doing a "correct" job.
Some people do not think man should change the environment. But the obvious point is that biosphere has changed the planet quite a bit! That is what it does in order to exist. It fails in some places like the Sahara desert. If we assume some teleology, we can say that man, if he used his reason, could make the deserts bloom, to benefit man and the teleology of the biosphere. But doing it right requires some knowledge. So the best thing to prevent environmental problems, for ourselves and the biosphere, is develop some good science and apply it.
And the last I looked, I was a natural being in some sense, so I guess food I "make" is natural food.
I heard that about 425 companies are announcing profit warnings, twice the number this time a year ago. And on a more fundamental level, for the first time since statistics have been kept, global steel production was down last year. Gotta have some atoms, not just bits.
It is not just a dot-com bubble, but a bubble in general, as can be seen in a number of indicators for the physical economy as opposed to the financial superstructure. I think next month we will all be agreeing that the economy is going down the tube.
West Law owns all the citable black law in the United States. Black law is the case law. Legal results tend slightly against them, but one court had held that you cannot even use their page numbers. A later case had a different result. Note that you cannot practice law effectively if you can not cite acceptably to a relevant case. West also owns the indexing and the commentary.
If you get past the technical aspects, you still need someone to officiate. Try your local UU churches. They are often willing to perform ceremonies that other church officials will balk at. But you may find that they want to validate your personal reasons! Which might be a good idea if you have not yet talked it over with other people.
My wife did an extensive search of the internet for what was not out there for free with respect to doing legal research. The short answer is West Law. West Law defines the citation system everyone uses and the indexes for finding relevant cases. One court even held that they own the pagiation that they put on a decision. You know, the page numbers. In a later court case, this position was reversed.
The central public policy argument in these cases revolves around "Who owns the law". The West Law position is that the law is too important to be left in the hands of the government.
Some people want to open source the citation system with a government created indexing system and citation system and West Law does not. In the/. context it is interesting to note that no one claims West Law is "buggy". However, the index never did live up to its expectations.
Note that West Law is available on the internet, but for big bucks.
The process of a judge deciding an issue ideally has the following elements:
1) finding of facts
2) applying relevant law to the facts to produce conclusions of law
3) remedies
When you are doing item 1, it is not always clear what item 2 is going to be. The big deal for the judge is figuring out how to frame the issues. And the big deal for the appeals court is deciding if the frame is right. But Jackson gets a lot of slack on his findings of fact at the appeal court. There are a lot of rules on evidence but we can assume Jackson got those right. Otherwise, there is some standard such as reasonably supported by the evidence. Spoiler: lots of nitpicking possible.
Given the findings of fact, M$ is dead meat except that Jackson is an asshole, like most judges. An example of this is his response to M$ attempt to finese the order to release a non-IE windows, IMO. In any case, his post-trial remarks provide an excuse for the appeals to remand to a different court and start over again if they have problems with the decision but cannot legally overturn it on other grounds. If they reach this point, it is not motivated by the legal questions per se, but by something else. I think it has likely reached this point and finely parsing the legal issues is pointless as to result.
MY friend is doing a startup in the voice email space. The company worked extensively with modems starting out, but had to bag that approach because there were too many problems. This was a couple years ago and I do not remember the problems, beyond generic reliability issues. They now have a product and it is based on dialogic cards, which seem very reliable. These can provide DTMF? and caller ID.
My dream system interfaces into the house telephone system. Someone pointed out that you can ignore the phone ringers and use a loudspeaker when you want the phones to indicate ring, which I had not thought of. A barrier I had had was the difficulty of generating ring voltage. I also consider that a text to speech product would allow construction of a small special purpose phone language to control all this through scripting. There is an existing standard language called Phone that might be enhanceable.
The recent conceptual addition to this package is an ethernet connection. The idea here is that perhaps the feature of VOIP through cooperating boxes might be workable. I also thought of putting a mail server on the box and implementing some the standard spam avoidance techniques.
With all this in place, you would also have a email to voice capability.
This is blue sky of course, but represents my current thinking. I think this combination of features might be popular and very disruptive.
Given an opinion that a bad NDA reflects poorly on the employer, I suggest someone might want to create a NDA.org with the idea of accumulating different companies' NDAs. They could be rated on a scale from good to horrid and people could vote on how much of a signing bonus to demand for the horrid ones. Perhaps the site could even get a copy of the M$ NDA.
Re:Complain to Utilties Commission About RBOCs
on
DSL Woes
·
· Score: 1
In the state of Washington, you can make your utility complaint using an on-line form. I encourage people to complain early and often. My experience is that it is useful.
MAPS harassing people selling software leaves a bad taste in my mouth too. This conflicts with some our common dogma about how the net is supposed to work. On the other hand, our dogma is inconsistent on SPAM. SPAM is attacked because we do not like it, among other things. As I set up the issues here, censorware and anti-SPAM actions such a narrow MAPS policy sound similar. In fact, I have had personal experiences with being flamed for SPAMMING for posting political messages in my ISP's usenet lobby. Politics was often discussed there. I responded to comments. While the eventual consensus was that my postings were not SPAM, the incident shows some fuzzy definitions and personal agendas floating around out there concerning acceptable use.
I conjecture that MAPS people have fallen victim to a similar zealotry. This is unfortunate, but not unusual. But since using MAPS is voluntary, it still fits my personal dogma. Your mileage my vary. But MAPS is a little useful in how it has been traditional used. Rather than inflict this controversal policy of censoring legal software sites on the people who voluntarily use their MAPS services, MAPS should subset their blackhole lists based on the different rule sets used to create the lists. Then the ISPs can chose the sets of lists they want to implement. This fits my dogma and has a virtue in not tending to abuse their status as "white-hats" with the subscribing ISP's.
Joke: Not only as predicted in this election, the sure losers are the Americna people, the two leading candidates are so bad, neither of them can actually win.
The Nevada style ballot has been called the Kafka ballot! Idaho has a similar provision. Unfortunately, even if None of the Above wins, some loser still get elected.
The way things are set up, you only win on search warrants if you are guilty, the more guilty the better, and the warrant is bad.
In the early 19th Century, the ideal was that it was hard to get a judge issued search warrant, but you did not have recourse. On the other hand, most searchs were done on the authority of the searcher and you could, and people regularly did, take them to court for the tort of treaspass.
The court order search needed probably cause and the cop-initiated search needed to be reasonable, a lesser and more flexible standard.
Since the mid-19th century, the courts have weakened the rules for court-ordered search to reasonable but put a lot of technical constraints on what is reasonable. The result does not serve us well either in the criminal justice (sic) system or as free citizens of a Republic.
As far as I can tell, this did not start out as a big conspiracy against the citizenry, but the results are equivalent.
Solving this problem takes no more that a good bill on the subject passing Congress. Sure!
My statements here are my interpretation of a detailed analysis recently in either Harpers or Atlantic Monthly, probably Atlantic Monthly.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it might be a good idea to limit choice in software in the following way: Instead of RAND, have a standards section of prohibited tech which can not be used in a system that claims to be standard. Put the patent encumbered RAND stuff in this section. This aggressive choice tends to invalidate the value of the patent. This gives leverage for negotiating RF agreements. In the meantime, we can all enjoy the screams of rage from the patent holders. In any case, RAND stuff is available after sufficient time has passed. I am willing to slow down RAND stuff for that length of time.
Perhaps a little light.
The Taliban was created by Pakistan with US agreement after the war with the Soviet Union wound down. Apparently, the Afgans have a tribal society and the tribes do not like each other and so they needed outside help to get a psuedo-government.
A little reported fact is that the Afgan state by international law now includes about half of Pakistan. Presumedly, there is a quid pro quo for Pakistan support of the Taliban in that the Taliban will not press their claims for their territory. Presumedly, this is why Pakistan wants the new governemtn to have "moderate Talibans" in it. This particular mess I would guess is left over from the British and their geo-politics.
The intent of the grandparent author was perhaps to remind us that we have trained and funded our opponents and even perhaps continue to protect them, the last IMO. I cite one recent Russian statement and two Macedonia statements, as follows:
bin Laden's top collaborator is an Egypian. His brother is in Kosavo. He has recently trained 50 Islamic terrorists at a KLA terrorists training camp. The camp is in the US controlled area of Kosovo. The reports are recent and post-date WTC.
Less well documented, the KLA a few months ago got caught in Macadonia territory and their people were going to be captured by the Macadonian army. The KLA personnel included Islamic fundamentalists and private US military advisors. KFOR rescued them, driving them off in air-conditioned buses.
There are some signs of change here in that the American ambassador to Russia is reported stating that the KLA must now be considered terrorists. But I think that just validates the inconsistency of US policy now.
On terrorism, first of all we should want to avoid Katz's tendency to see this in terms of British Clash of Civilizations geo-politics. But this is a big subject.
On globalism, Putin's speech at APEC on globalism is one I can agree with. But good luck finding any reporting on it in the US. I would include it here but the lameness filter would get me.
Pooh.
The House just has to sit on their hands and they will. On one hand, the constitutional argument is inapplicable as the previous poster said. Neither house is trying to impose new taxes technically. And 45 of 50 states are in a budget crisis.
But on state taxes, the previous poster does not quite realize that the goods end up in a particular state where they may then be taxed. In the state of Washington, we have had something called a use tax on the books for years. This obligates me to pay sales tax on stuff I buy out of state. Except they call it a use tax. I bet most states with sales tax have something similar. The trick is that the use tax is very hard to enforce on private individuals. They do try to enforce it on businesses as part of their sales tax audits.My take again is that given the state revenue crisus, we will see the ban lapse. And for politiicians, dot-coms are a bucket of warm spit these days, IMO. So right now, the dot-com effect is a non-issue.
What we are seeing is a little manuvering towards a workable interstate sales tax system. We will get a little chaos, and the pain will move this forward, IMO.
Speakeasy is going to start cutting people off the 23rd. I have no problem with them doing so. Maybe I should, but I feel more like applauding. Here is the message I received from them, which has some useful URLs. As a result it is long. And, oops, the lameness filter caught it. I will prune this down to the rationale and drop the urls and try again.
My take is that a couple days notice, with resources, is an attempt at being reasonable.
Dear Speakeasy Members,
Over the last 3 months, we have been battling it out with the "Code Red"
worm. Just as we were beginning to believe the worst was behind us, we
have now learned that there is yet another hostile bit of rogue data
coursing it's way around the Internet.
This new so-called "Nimda" worm, unlike it's Code Red predecessor, affects
not only Windows 2000/NT/XP running IIS, but Windows 95/98/ME as well. It
goes without saying that the damage potential for this worm is
exponentially greater than the Code Red worm. It is for this reason we
urge you to apply the proper fix to your machines ASAP -- if you have not
done so already.
Maybe I agree with you. After reading the referenced analysis by the Iranian film maker, pointed to by the original news article, I have considerable compassion for this country. It is not even medieval, but tribal. The Taliban seem to be an improvement over what they had. Their situation is mostly a geographical problem, but has been exaberated by the British, US, and Soviet Union, and Pakistan. If we simply do nothing a million of them will die of starvation in the next year. Just how are we going to effectively punish them, given that?
bin Laden's money needs to dry up but this country needs our help, not our bombs. We would do better to cut a deal to build roads and water projects. Doing that might require military force, but it is a different orientation.
This sort of arguement rings false to me.
Perhaps some background on Bin Laden is in order. He was originally funded and trained by the CIA under George Bush Senior. People sometimes call yesterday's result "blowback". Relevant policy phrases are "Islamic card", "Arc of Crisis", "Clash of Civilizations". Some of these are current policies. The problem is not that the CIA does not do enough, the problem is that the CIA, on instructions from people like Bush, run dangerous geopolitical stategies and geopolitics, though dominating our government's outlook, is an insane policy. This is a complex subject, but even in our sorrow, people need to ask if this was not chicken's coming home to roost.
In Tacoma, WA, the library has filtering. But the filtering rules are generated inhouse and what they filter is images, not words. I am not claiming this is the perfect solution, but it appears innovative to me.
Let us recognize reasonable limits to marketing. For instance, there is an international convention that class II (highly addictive drugs) not be marketed except to doctors. Yet in the United States such drugs, for children, are now being marketed to parents. These drugs are not Ritilian, but have the same purpose, whatever that is. I believe Rouche is among those doing such marketing.
Please recognize that the above behavior will add to R&D available revenue, as in your equation, but the real motivation is shareholder's value in both cases.
In an extended discussion, we could develop a number of examples where shareholder's value is not properly the highest goal. In general, these come under the rubic of the Common Good, otherwise known in the US as the General Welfare. These concepts can be *economically* treated as preserving and enhancing the future production of wealth of the society. As a parenthetical note, let us observe that wealth is not money, meaning that in a period such as ours, money is a poor measure of the economic well-being of the society.
Does the common good have a non-economic component. Indeed it does. While people try to address the Brazilian case in moralistic terms, I mistrust that somewhat. The essential moral component is the will to serve the common good, also called agape, with an accent. Brazil's governemnt is to be praised for their will to serve their people's common good.
Did they implement their will in the best way? I think they did okay, but if not, as a nation-state, they get to chose. The sin is the failure to chose.
As a closing note, since the establishment of the United States, the primary domestic determination of the legitimency of a govenment has been its committment to the general welfare. Which government is more legitiment: US or Brazil?
At this point, the correct response is to bring in some theology, but I am uncomfortable doing that, so I will retire in disarray.
I will remember your handle!
"First, humankind didn't want to give up that Earth was the center of the universe. Then, we gave up that we were different from animals," Brooks explained. "But to give up the idea that machines can take on higher-level thinking ... it's a descent into being little complex machines, giving up that specialness we think we have."
I think that I can fairly conclude that Brooks thinks we are machines. He goes on and describes his dualism between his life and his science, so we should modify my conclusion with the modifier "as a scientist".
I dealt with this a bit in another thread. Treating it from another angle, let us consider a definitional issue. I consider that machines are embodiment of a formal axomatic system and so have that limitation as compared to the demonstrated ability of our species to discover new valid universal laws, which represent elements of a new axomatic system. Brooks thinks his machines are successful if they have emotions such as fear and can think. I will give him and you a supersmart baboon machine. Maybe we should fear that, but I am more concerned about the thought that treats mankind as supersmart baboons.
I think Brooks is essentially an engineer. This is my version of the content-free criticism. But engineers often go out ahead of science and still succeed. It seems to me that if he thought in my terms, he could be said to be planning to avoid the mystery of the ability to discover universal laws by creating it in a mysterious way. And since he is trying to emulate aspects of what is presumed to be the processes by which we as a species developed this ability, I cannot rule out the possiblity that this line of inquiry will "luck out".
Still, although you win on the possiblity, your argument is almost the inevitibility, and is based on the non-distinction of animals and humans. Tbus a baboon with a population potential of a few tens of millions seems indistinguishable from a species who has a population potention of about 15 billion with current tech, and which can change the way it makes its living without changing its DNA. Your argument is common in the AI field, and in the sociobiology area, but is specifically what I am polemicizing against. In the detail of the question of human-like machines, the content-free nature of the Brooks program provides little basis for argument one way or another. Like any cut and try method, it will work or not. But the specs are not that of a being who can discover new universal laws, so you probably will not get that. And that is what makes us a very successful species.
First let me observe that you and the person I was replying to perhaps should talk. If I understand him, he seems to say you do not exist:-). I make this argument because he/she said that no one thinks "that way" anymore. What does "that way" signify at its root, aside from the actual text I wrote? I was claiming that many people treat the universe as fully describable by a formal axiomatic system.
Suppose it is. Then you are right. Suppose it is not. Then you are potentially wrong, in that as part of the universe, the universe's actual nature may influence you. We need not here attempt to specify the universe's actual nature, only that it is not describable as a formal axiomatic system.
If you agree so far, then the questions becomes, first, is the universe fully formal axiomatic describable?, and if not, are we influenced fundamentally by its non-axiomatic nature?.
We can answer the first question by a positve answer to the second. That is, if we have a non-axiomatic nature, then that property adheres to the universe as well.
Consider the most fundamental aspect of the species: that it reproduces. Secondly, as a tribe of baboon equivalents, we have a population potential of a few tens of millions. Observe that our population potential with existing tech seems to be about 15 billion. We seek to know the reason for this difference between baboons and people. Most fundamentally, some people discover new and valid laws of the universe. These are mediated through society and generate more powerful tech, and thus increase the population potential. In all cases of interest, these newly discovered laws of nature invalidate existing axiomatic systems of science, and ultimately, of action. Thus humans have the capability of adducing new axioms that in fact correspond to increased power over the universe. On the other hand, a formal axiomatic system has a fixed set of axioms. Adding new axioms is going outside of the box.
So I think the human generation of new valid universal laws is outside of a formal axiomatic system, and we are part of the universe, so the universe is outside of a formal axiomatic system.
Note a lot of AI people have historically denied the existance of creativity in the form I describe. Typically, the "strong" AI people take that sort of stance. I guess the term should be "strong-smelling":-). I can however conceive of creative constructs, not based on current AI research, but just suppose... I come to a paradox. The existence of the paradox points out the need for new universal law to be discovered. The need for, but the absence of, this new axiom is the barrier you posit does not exist.
Consider building a machine that is creative. Make it a big machine that you can walk around inside and see everything. What part of it is the creative part and what actions do you see when the machine is being creative. Since it is a "machine" this should all be visible to you. Yet we know that in humans, the creative moment is private. It can be duplicated in others, but we do not see anything from outside. In the machine, we are inside and so we should be able to "see" it. But generalizing from the human case, I think we would not "see" it. So where is it? To me, this is a difficult question.
Economics as it is practiced generally is not a science, and you might respond that I pick a degenerate example. Without granting the charge, I will now pick on physics. Pose the question: Is physics, as a body of knowledge, finite or infinite? I think many "bread" physicists will respond "finite". If so, then a fixed axiomatic set of natural laws will suffice to describe the universe and we have a formal axiomatic system.
The economics example is a good example because we all practice economics and tend to do it with currency, and so we see it as a zero-sum game from our viewpoint. The physics example is rigged because I specified "bread" physicists, which by the reference are in physics to earn a living, and so are threatened by new knowledge, since it invalidate their existing knowledge, and thus the way they earn their living.
Somehow I do not see AI making fundamental discoveries about the universe. I do not think AI is going to apply these fundamental discoveries without rewritting of the axioms hidden in their code. This claim comes from the limitations of formal axionomic systems, of which computers are an as yet unrealized instance of embodiment. Thus their limitation is a very fundamental limitation imposed on AI by the nature of the universe as a non-formal-axonomic system. A useful reference on the limitations of a formal axiomic system is Kurt Godel, who demolished Russell's program for representing all possible knowledge in a formal axiomic system. Oh, I have a math degree too.
The reference to the Unibomber is actually useful. I claim it reminds us of the natural products of viewing the world as a formal axionomic system. Thus, AI would be a lesser creation, but muderously insane, either in the style of the Unibomber, or in the style of "Dirty Bertie", i.e., Russell.
Some people do not think man should change the environment. But the obvious point is that biosphere has changed the planet quite a bit! That is what it does in order to exist. It fails in some places like the Sahara desert. If we assume some teleology, we can say that man, if he used his reason, could make the deserts bloom, to benefit man and the teleology of the biosphere. But doing it right requires some knowledge. So the best thing to prevent environmental problems, for ourselves and the biosphere, is develop some good science and apply it.
And the last I looked, I was a natural being in some sense, so I guess food I "make" is natural food.
It is not just a dot-com bubble, but a bubble in general, as can be seen in a number of indicators for the physical economy as opposed to the financial superstructure. I think next month we will all be agreeing that the economy is going down the tube.
West Law owns all the citable black law in the United States. Black law is the case law. Legal results tend slightly against them, but one court had held that you cannot even use their page numbers. A later case had a different result. Note that you cannot practice law effectively if you can not cite acceptably to a relevant case. West also owns the indexing and the commentary.
If you get past the technical aspects, you still need someone to officiate. Try your local UU churches. They are often willing to perform ceremonies that other church officials will balk at. But you may find that they want to validate your personal reasons! Which might be a good idea if you have not yet talked it over with other people.
My wife did an extensive search of the internet for what was not out there for free with respect to doing legal research. The short answer is West Law. West Law defines the citation system everyone uses and the indexes for finding relevant cases. One court even held that they own the pagiation that they put on a decision. You know, the page numbers. In a later court case, this position was reversed. The central public policy argument in these cases revolves around "Who owns the law". The West Law position is that the law is too important to be left in the hands of the government. Some people want to open source the citation system with a government created indexing system and citation system and West Law does not. In the /. context it is interesting to note that no one claims West Law is "buggy". However, the index never did live up to its expectations.
Note that West Law is available on the internet, but for big bucks.
The process of a judge deciding an issue ideally has the following elements: 1) finding of facts 2) applying relevant law to the facts to produce conclusions of law 3) remedies When you are doing item 1, it is not always clear what item 2 is going to be. The big deal for the judge is figuring out how to frame the issues. And the big deal for the appeals court is deciding if the frame is right. But Jackson gets a lot of slack on his findings of fact at the appeal court. There are a lot of rules on evidence but we can assume Jackson got those right. Otherwise, there is some standard such as reasonably supported by the evidence. Spoiler: lots of nitpicking possible. Given the findings of fact, M$ is dead meat except that Jackson is an asshole, like most judges. An example of this is his response to M$ attempt to finese the order to release a non-IE windows, IMO. In any case, his post-trial remarks provide an excuse for the appeals to remand to a different court and start over again if they have problems with the decision but cannot legally overturn it on other grounds. If they reach this point, it is not motivated by the legal questions per se, but by something else. I think it has likely reached this point and finely parsing the legal issues is pointless as to result.
MY friend is doing a startup in the voice email space. The company worked extensively with modems starting out, but had to bag that approach because there were too many problems. This was a couple years ago and I do not remember the problems, beyond generic reliability issues. They now have a product and it is based on dialogic cards, which seem very reliable. These can provide DTMF? and caller ID. My dream system interfaces into the house telephone system. Someone pointed out that you can ignore the phone ringers and use a loudspeaker when you want the phones to indicate ring, which I had not thought of. A barrier I had had was the difficulty of generating ring voltage. I also consider that a text to speech product would allow construction of a small special purpose phone language to control all this through scripting. There is an existing standard language called Phone that might be enhanceable. The recent conceptual addition to this package is an ethernet connection. The idea here is that perhaps the feature of VOIP through cooperating boxes might be workable. I also thought of putting a mail server on the box and implementing some the standard spam avoidance techniques. With all this in place, you would also have a email to voice capability. This is blue sky of course, but represents my current thinking. I think this combination of features might be popular and very disruptive.
Given an opinion that a bad NDA reflects poorly on the employer, I suggest someone might want to create a NDA.org with the idea of accumulating different companies' NDAs. They could be rated on a scale from good to horrid and people could vote on how much of a signing bonus to demand for the horrid ones. Perhaps the site could even get a copy of the M$ NDA.
In the state of Washington, you can make your utility complaint using an on-line form. I encourage people to complain early and often. My experience is that it is useful.
MAPS harassing people selling software leaves a bad taste in my mouth too. This conflicts with some our common dogma about how the net is supposed to work. On the other hand, our dogma is inconsistent on SPAM. SPAM is attacked because we do not like it, among other things. As I set up the issues here, censorware and anti-SPAM actions such a narrow MAPS policy sound similar. In fact, I have had personal experiences with being flamed for SPAMMING for posting political messages in my ISP's usenet lobby. Politics was often discussed there. I responded to comments. While the eventual consensus was that my postings were not SPAM, the incident shows some fuzzy definitions and personal agendas floating around out there concerning acceptable use. I conjecture that MAPS people have fallen victim to a similar zealotry. This is unfortunate, but not unusual. But since using MAPS is voluntary, it still fits my personal dogma. Your mileage my vary. But MAPS is a little useful in how it has been traditional used. Rather than inflict this controversal policy of censoring legal software sites on the people who voluntarily use their MAPS services, MAPS should subset their blackhole lists based on the different rule sets used to create the lists. Then the ISPs can chose the sets of lists they want to implement. This fits my dogma and has a virtue in not tending to abuse their status as "white-hats" with the subscribing ISP's.
Joke: Not only as predicted in this election, the sure losers are the Americna people, the two leading candidates are so bad, neither of them can actually win. The Nevada style ballot has been called the Kafka ballot! Idaho has a similar provision. Unfortunately, even if None of the Above wins, some loser still get elected.
The way things are set up, you only win on search warrants if you are guilty, the more guilty the better, and the warrant is bad. In the early 19th Century, the ideal was that it was hard to get a judge issued search warrant, but you did not have recourse. On the other hand, most searchs were done on the authority of the searcher and you could, and people regularly did, take them to court for the tort of treaspass. The court order search needed probably cause and the cop-initiated search needed to be reasonable, a lesser and more flexible standard. Since the mid-19th century, the courts have weakened the rules for court-ordered search to reasonable but put a lot of technical constraints on what is reasonable. The result does not serve us well either in the criminal justice (sic) system or as free citizens of a Republic. As far as I can tell, this did not start out as a big conspiracy against the citizenry, but the results are equivalent. Solving this problem takes no more that a good bill on the subject passing Congress. Sure! My statements here are my interpretation of a detailed analysis recently in either Harpers or Atlantic Monthly, probably Atlantic Monthly.