Actually, most of the founding father's saw the need for jury nullification as the last measure to force the gov't to obey its own constitution. It is a necessary product of the unreviewability of an acquittal, thus a jury's right.
Jury nullification has been used for many good things throughout history. For example, to void fugitive slave laws, or to avoid convicting people at the end of the unjustified prohibition on alcohol. Its also been used in backwards ways, for example to acquit OJ Simpson. But the point is, it is a necessary check on the gov'ts power. If the gov't can't even convince 12 ppl that something should be illegal, then a person shouldn't go to jail for that.
Yes, but I'm not proposing we elimiante the lawyers, judges, and prosecutors instructions -- but simply that we also give the jury the primary data, so they can ref. back to that.
And jury nullification is the right of the jury, so they can decide whether the law is right/wrong.
As I noted somewhere else, the entire DMCA is only 59 pages long in PDF format. In other words, as is usual, someone was full of shit in claiming it was "over a hundred pages".
Actually, according to the founding fathers, jurrors were supposed to sit not only in judgement of the facts, but also of the law. Ref. to my posts above about jury nullification.
Yes, it is good that the jurrors get a fine-combed interpretation of the law, reviewed by the defense attorney, prosecutor, and judge. But it is still most certainly necessary that they have access to the primary data -- the text of the law. To use an analogy, I may read a review article on the free radical theory of aging. The author -- an expert in the field -- has clarified things for me and given me a good general overview. But it is still necessary -- if I am to make an informed decision about whether or not (s)he's right, and to (for example) cite the studies that the author reviewed -- for me to go to the original papers (the primary data) and read them myself.
Having the jury "understand" the law through the instructions of the court alone simply introduces an extra unnecessary point of error into the process.
I said "should" not "does". As a private corporation, Google should be allowed to institute whatever assinite backwards hiring/firing/other policies they want, so long as those policies don't endanger their workers.
No one's entitled to a Christmas bonus. Its an extra, a nice optional that companies may or may not choose to give. Of course, the reason companies do so is to endear their employees to the company. Companies that don't do such may be susceptible to poorer relations with their employees, and may run higher risks of strikes and other problems. Etc.
But a Christmas gift is not something one is entitled to, nor gauranteed. However, I agree with the person who submitted the article: giving employees a doll of the CEO is insulting. What does he think, that they all should admire him that much that they should make a doll-house for a miniature of himself? What an ego-maniacal thing to give employees. Like anyone has any use for this thing.
It would be better not to give anything at all, than to give something that insulting.
Imagine if for Christmas, I gave my girlfriend a miniature doll of myself...I'm sure that'd fly over real well, right?
Thank god for small miracles...
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How about the biggest declines? Boy bands. nSync down from 36 to 163, and Back Street Boys tumble to 250 from 58.
Well, thank god for that. I don't know how much more of this "dirty pop" crap I can take.
On another note, people actually use Lycos? Lycos, what's that? Isn't that a dog or something?
Re:Should there be a GNU-Google?
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Yes, which means that though the FSF could (though they won't) do something outrageous like that, as soon as they did, someone else could fork. The FS/OSS fork would succeed, while the proprietary one would fail.
Re:Should there be a GNU-Google?
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If the FSF were to start from scratch, yes it could develop new packages under any license.
But it can't modify currently GPL'ed software and put it under a diff. license.
I disagree with their decision, but it's their decision to make -- not mine.
Google is a private company. They can make whatever assinite decisions they want to make. If they wanted to, they should be able to only hire white people over 6 feet ball with goatees. Their decision.
Is it absurd? Yes. Is it something Google should be prevented from doing? No.
They don't like guns, alcohol, and tobacco. Fine. It's their right not to have those kinds of ads on their site, or allow ads from companies which also make guns or gun parts. They like porn, so they put up ads for that.
I disagree, however, with someone elses characterization that geeks like porn. Geeks like free porn. I don't think most geeks -- especially the paranoid kind -- like porn you have to pay for with credit card, or porn that says its "free" but wants your credit-card number just to "make sure you're 21". I agree with that. I'm not going to pay for porn. I can find it for free using google images or news-groups; if I look hard enough, I can even find a few free porn websites. I also don't like porno-advertising pop-ups or banners, so I block them with my hosts. It'll be a cold day in hell before I pay $20/month to get something online that I could look at in real life for free.
No, we don't always read the papers we cite. But scientists don't need to read the entire papers: we just look at the figures and then the methods to see how the data was produced.
For anything which is of secondary importance in a paper that scientists write, we may not read the entire paper. For example, introductory material. I've put a review article of aging and the brain in my journal, which has inroductory material on free radicals and anti-oxidants. I, however, haven't read the entire papers discussing free radicals and anti-oxidants. I've simply skimmed for what was relevant.
For anything of primary importance to what we write about, we usually at least read the abstract, figures, and methods. The results section is simply a written description of the figures, and the discussion section usually covers things that we can figure out for ourselves from looking at the figures. Considering that the average paper consists of around 50 references and that the average review article consists of around 100 or more referen ces, this is proper and acceptable procedure, imo.
What is not proper and acceptable, imo, is to simply read the abstract of a paper and then assume that the conclusions they say are correct, or to read something out of a review article and trust that that's correct without looking at the primary paper's figures/methods. Abstracts and review articles are very useful for finding key information quickly, but they should never be trusted without verifying by examining the figures from the primary paper.
Bullshit. Gutnick should only be liable to be sued in the country it's located in: no court in a nation other than where Gutnick is located has any authority over Gutnick. People and companies should be liable to the laws of the nation's they're in, and not those of any other nation.
Through 2012, more than 95 percent (by volume in gigabytes) of human-to-computer information input will remain keyboard- and mouse-based. (0.6 probability)
60% probability? Are you nuts? How about 100%? I can consistently and constantly type at 100 words per minute, but I certainly wouldn't want to talk that fast. I doubt I could, and even if so, it would hurt my throat after a while.
Writing pads are nice, but again, I can -- and most other people -- can type alot faster than they can write.
Other forms of inputting data into computers will remain niche at best. Voice recognition will be used to quickly convert professor's lectures into documents, and hand-writing recognition will be used to convert hand-written notes into documents.
However, no one will be writing 10-page papers by hand or speaking them. Could you imagine it?
"While I was, umm, 6x backslash, going to the park and um, 8x backslash, I saw a..."
In short, its not going to happen. Outside of planned presentations, people speak in a manner which is specifically for dialogue and which does not make much sense on paper, except in a dialogue.
Yep, if you've taken a profit off of a transaction, that means the other person somehow took a loss: in other words, (s)he got fucked over.
Of course, that's the whole principal behind a capitalistic system: its what keeps the system going, and its worked pretty well so far (observe the US' high standard of living).
Of course, MS goes the extra mile to fuck over their customers and everyone else both on the transaction and in any other way MS can come up with.
There is no magic bullet gene for "solving" large-scale phenotypical behavioral issues. Many genes control the behavioral phenotypes we observe.
You needn't worry about an army of fearless clones anytime soon.
Even if we discover enough about how genes relate to observed phenotypical behavioral patterns, that doesn't mean that it'll be useful in creating an army.
Fear is not some useless emotion which serves no purpose. It is something which has been evolutionarily selected for because it leads to better survivorship. The gazels that didn't fear the lions got eaten. Fear plays a useful and necessary role in any conflict.
In most transactions that occur, one party gets fucked over, unless by chance its an exactly equal transaction. Either the customer pays more than something's worth or the producer gets less than its worth.
If businesses weren't maintaining a net gain in their area, they wouldn't be in business (or at least, not for long). If the business has a net gain -- accounting for the cost of production and R&D -- then that means the consumer has a net loss.
Of course, there is always the Pareto-Superior outcome to consider. The customer has money, but values the product more than his money (because of what the product can do for the customer); the company has the product, but values the money more than the product (because it has millions of copies of this product). Thus, in a transaction both parties are getting what they want.
However, that still doesn't negate the basic facts of transaction. In any transaction, one party is trying to fuck the other party over as much as possible. Equilibrium (thus, a transaction) is achieved when each party believes they've fucked the other party over enough.
Do you feel ripped off when you buy a 25 cent pack of Wrigley's gum? Is that price totally fucking you over, at 5 cents a stick? What about when you pay less than 5 cents a stick when you buy a Plen-T-Pak? Is that a shitty value?
A good value would be the cost of production. By definition, companies have to make money -- that means fucking someone else over. Its a zero sum game: if they get, you give; they win, you lose. Or vica versa.
Operating systems are not food. Nobody *has* to buy an operating system, people *choose* to buy the operating system. The consumers know what they are buying, if they pay too much for too little, they are fucking themselves over.
Actually, yes people do have to buy MS' OS' because MS creates dependencies on them. For example, the word document format. MS has done everything they can to make sure that their 90% of the market finds it impossible to switch over to any other OS.
And finally, what evidence do you have that Microsoft will do what you say they will do?
Ever heard the parable about the scorpion and the fox? Its in Microsoft's nature to fuck everyone else over: the consumer, competitors, the government, anyone. Its what they do. That's the nature of an illegal monopoly. It's been shown that they have illegally used their power as a monopoly to find unfair and anti-competitive ways to crush their competition. They're showing us here in the US that they'll fuck every other business over (look at their new forced upgrade model, which will cost business' much more money).
That's evidence enough that they'll do what I say. They have a history of doing it.
Based on fact? How about the fact that MS is a business and businesses need to make money. Making money necessarily means fucking the customer out of money -- because if the customer isn't getting a shitty value, then you're really losing.
MS will enter into a short-term contract with the Indian government at a very good bargain with perks, perhaps, only to make them dependant on Windows and MS' proprietary formats. Then, when its time to renegotiate, they'll say "fuck you, start bleeding through the asshole".
Don't fall for that MS crap-trap. They might give you the source, but with a shit-load of draconian circumstances and catches that will make it unuseable.
Even if they do give India the source, it'll only be temporary -- for now, to prevent them from switching to Linux. Once India is dependant on MS, it'll be no more source and no more cheap-deals for them.
Firstly, a sniper rifle, is usually a bolt action 7.62 or.30-06 with a small clip. How does that differ from a hunting rifle? There's really no line between them.
The difference I was speaking of isn't in the power of the weapons -- its in the precision. You can kill a target from up to 2 miles away with a sniper gun, if you are good and can compensate for the effect of gravity. Why would hunters need -- or even want -- to do that? After all, if you had to walk two miles to your kill, it might have been eaten by that time.
Secondly, the Second Amendment was added so that the people would have the power to fight back against a repressive government once words and votes started to fail. So the line should be above military grade small arms (M-16s, M-249s, etc.) but somewhere way below nukes.
I agree with your analysis of why it was added. I am not so sure, however, that I agree that it should be there. What if people decide to rise against the government when they disagree with the acquittal of a person? Also, the Founding Father's didn't have to deal with what we have to deal with today: they never imagined that one man could kill a hundred in a matter of seconds, nor did they imagine things like Columbine. The Amendments should be obeyed while they stand -- and not distorted to meet the agendas of political interest groups -- but they should not be unquestioned (nor should the USSC's sometimes stretching interpretation of them be unquestioned).
I've proposed a suggested modification, but I do see the value of the initial 2nd Amendment as an ultimate check on the government's power. However, I don't think it works. If it was there to fight back against a repressive government once words and votes started to fail, there would have been a revolt a long long time ago. The US government has, for example, consistently sacraficed the rights of its citizens at the altar of corporate America.
And if anybody here thinks that the Second Amendment is moot because a determined popular uprising with small arms can't defeat a technologically advanced, well equiped, professional military (I hear that one a lot), go talk to some of Ho Chi Min's troops, or the US troops that faced them.
Good point. Unless the US government would be willing to use nuclear weapons on its own country and its own people, there's no way it could fend off a large-scale revolt of people armed with M-16s.
People should be accountable to the laws of the nation they reside in, and only those laws. They should only have to know one set of laws: those for the country they reside in. It is outrageous that a US citizen could be sued for Libel in Australia under the much more restrictive Australian laws, which would be unconstitutional in the US.
If someone in Australia thinks they were defamed by someone in the US, then they should have to sue the person in US court, if they have standing. I personally think that foreigners in other nations shouldn't be able to use the civil courts in this nation.
The principal here is very simple: that a person should only have to be accountable to the laws of the nation (s)he's residing in. Anything else is inherently problematic, as it will put people in catch-22's, where a certain action may be mandated by the laws of one nation, but prohibited by those of another. This is why I think that the US should withdraw from most international agreements, in that they violate the US Constitution and the rights of US citizens. International treaties, for example, could allow a US citizen to be trialed in China for publishing an opinion critical of the Chinese government.
Another inherent problem with US citizens being subject to the (say) defamation laws of Australia that it is analagous to taxation without representation. In this case, laws are being imposed on US citizens without those citizens being represented in the creation of those laws. It is outrageous.
Every nation has enough bad worthless laws of its own. Nation's don't need the bad laws of other nations in addition to the bad laws of their own. Each nation's citizens run into enough problems with their own nations bad laws, let alone those of other nations.
For your statistics, I suggest you look at the statistics published by the extremes on both sides of the debate. Look at the standard deviation on those stats...when the standard deviation of a stat published by gun-rights activists overlaps with that of one published by gun-control supporters, consider that stat as valid. Otherwise, discard it. If you can find a neutral source, that would also be useful.
Really, all the stats in the world are irrelevant to this particular problem (unless we want to change the 2nd Amendment). The 2nd Amendment says "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." The meaning of this is clear: it means tthat the right of the people to keep/bear arms shouldn't be disturbed by the gov't. The parenthetical preamble part regarding a well-regulated militia is just a built-in justification for the Amendment: it means the same thing with or without that part. It would be like a commander telling a soldier "don't do X, because of Y"...irrelevant of Y, the command is clear: don't do X. Btw, the USSC has recently accepted this interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
So its very clear what the 2nd Amendment says. It does not mandate that people be in a well-regulated militia in order to have the right to bear arms; if that's what the founding father's wanted, they could have worded it that way.
Now, the question becomes "what exactly is an arm". Is a military grade Vulcan cannon (which is equipped on fighter jets) an "arm"? What about napalm cannons, or rocket launchers? Even Uzis and AK-47s? Well, that's a rather unfortunate vaguity. When exactly does something change from being an arm to being a military weapon that shouldn't be available to the general public, such as (for example) an atomic bomb? The founding father's did not have to face this question: there was no gap in the technology between the military and the civillians back then. Thus, we can not look back to the constitution to determine this question.
Another interestin question regards ammunition. The 2nd Amendment makes no mention of ammunitions. Currently, bullets cost less than a buck to buy: that means your allowing someone to kill 10, 15 people for about the cost of a McDonald's happy meal. If bullets were taxed as cigarattes are taxed, alot of these random shooting sprays might be prevented.
I suggest making a modification to the 2nd Amendment, and modifying it to "the right to self-defense and the right to hunt" which would deal with these questions. Hunting rifles would still be fine, but sniper rifles wouldn't: you do not need a sniper rifle to kill a deer. Nor do you need a fully automatic pistil to defend yourself. If a semi-automatic hand-gun and several bullets aren't enough for you to defend yourself or whoever you're defending, then you're pretty much fucked anyways.
If you don't like what the 2nd Amendment says, then lobby to have it re-written/modified. Don't try to take the cheap easy road and twist its words to suit your particular goals. This is a typical pattern among interest groups when something in the Constitution or the Amendments bothers them: rather than trying to have the Amendment or claused changed by another Amendment, they try to twist the meaning of the words. This is rather disturbing to me.
Won't happen unless people force it to happen. Also look at the Free State Project as a practical way to make it happen (on a smaller scale). There's also my suggestion that free-thinking people who believe in human rights out-copulate those who don't:D.
Reality has shown that OSS/FS programs get bug-fixes and other such patches quicker than do proprietary programs. Check out the times between bug-notifications and fixes for MS Windows v. Linux and *BSD. Proprietary venders are under no obligation to fix bugs: they simply do whatever will maximize profits. They will, in fact, hide bugs when it serves their purposes, so as not to lose possible income sources. With OSS/FS software, you get full and complete disclosure, and history has shown that problems are fixed quickly. If they aren't, and something is important to you, organize a consortium to pay for fixing the problem. This will ultimately be cheaper overall thna paying a company, because the consortium doesn't want to make a profit, but just get the problem fixed.
You can talk about licenses in terms of varying degrees of freedom, of course; one license might be "more free" than another depending on how many or few restrictions it places on its users. But it is not correct to simply, and without qualification, call the GPL "free."
Firstly, few people do that. In fact, the FSF doesn't want people to call the GPL "free" because of the vagueness of the word (i.e., free could mena zero cost or free as in freedom). I and others call the GPL Free Software...it can also be called Open Source Software, as it is OSI-certified. Secondly, we simplify things significantly in many occasions; we, for example, say we live in a "free country" which is mostly true, but not completely true. I've already demonstrated, the GPL will result in situations where there is more Free Software and less restrictions, thus more freedom.
People accept all kinds of assertions with no proof at all.
Yes, people accept all kinds of assertions without proof or evidence at all. In those cases, they are idiots. Want examples? Well, I'll put religion at the top of that list. Next to that, comes the belief in sorcery and witch-craft. Then there's the fact that some people accept that aliens from Mars come to Earth and abduct the humanoids to perform rectal exams. Many people accept all these absurd assertions without any proof at all. In those cases, they are idiots.
Can you prove that the sky is blue?
Proof or evidence. I can provide evidence that the sky is blue to a person who can see. I can point to the ocean and say "that's blue" and then point to the sky and say "that's blue too". Any person who can see will be able to tell that they are different shades of the same color.
Can you prove that a baby is beautiful? No.
Wow, you get more and more looney as you go along. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Saying something is beautiful is about as meaningless as saying something tastes good. No, nothing is absolutely beautiful, nor does anything absolutely smell good or taste good, etc. It's a matter of personal preference. I can tell you that asparagus, for example, tastes good to me. I can't tell you "it tastes good"; well, I can, and people do this all the time, but what they mean is "it tastes good to me". Just as I like asparagus, other people -- most people, unfortunately -- think it is disgusting.
Can you prove that you are a sentient, self-aware individual? No.
By the definitions of the words "sentient", "self-aware", and "individual" I can prove that.
Proof is not required for truth.
I did not say it was. I said that proof is required to convince rationally acting people that an assertion is true: we should all require proof, or evidence, before taking something for the truth.
Of course, the truth is the truth whether we can prove it or not. Atoms were always the fundamental building blocks of life, even back 2000 years ago, when no technology could prove the existence of atoms.
I knew that you would eventually bring up this point regarding "eyes". Anyone who can see will tell you that the sky is (normally) blue. The evidence is what we see, and that we all agree. Furthermore, since there is universal agreement, there's no need to debate the matter. Controversial moral issues are another thing, however. You seem to argue as if "conscience" is a sixth sense. If it is, it is a rather poorly conserved one. My sixth sense tells me that its wrong to force a woman to give birth and that its wrong to force a man in extreme terminal pain to live his life like that; that of the Christian Right tells them the opposite. In other words, because there are major differences in what my conscience, your conscience, and everyone elses conscience "perceives" to be right/wrong, you cannot rely on it as a determining factor.
Ultimately, you are asking me and anyone else who disagrees with you to (for example) just "accept that prostitution is wrong". Then, by some miraculous leap, you ask us to just accept that it should be criminalized, despite evidence which shows that its criminalization harms the prostitutes (by making them more susceptible to rape) and society at large (by opening up a black market).
When asked why we should accept this "moral truth" you say something like "look to your conscience". Unfortunatley, the conscience of many people disagrees with you. In response to that, you say one of two things: (1) You have no conscience; (2) Your conscience is corrupted. This amounts saying that anyone who disagrees with you either has no conscience or that their conscience is corrupted. You then say "some things don't require proof to be accepted" implying that we should simply listen to what we feel, and again run into the same problem that not everyone feels the same way as you do. It ultimately boils down to you wanting me to accept what you say is the truth on faith.
I do, however, think that people who rationalize away truth in the name of logic
Again, you're assuming that you know what the moral truth is, and that those who disagree with you are trying to "rationalize away the truth". The reality is, that there is no absolute moral truth, but that morality varies from nation to nation and individiaul to individual. Even if there was an absolute moral truth, we'd have no way of knowing whether we knew it or not. Opinions on the morality of controversial issues are about as subjective as "chocolate or vanilla ice cream": it boils down to personal preference, not some universal truth.
For example, you say prostitution is -- in an absolute sense -- morally bad. That's as absurd as saying that vanilla ice cream is -- in an absolute sense -- really bad tasting (and those who think it tastes good must have some kind of mutation).
I believe I have the same right to force my opinions on you that everybody else has.
As much as I wish the legislative branch of our government was a direct-democracy, it isn't. We don't get to impose our will on anyone. We get to elect a representative -- a Senator and/or Congressman. They then subsequently break almost every promise they made while running for office and accept numerous bribes, thus completely negating any targetted influence we may have.
You keep on speaking as if we have a Democracy -- we don't. We have a Republic, where the elected officials are supposed to represent the constituents. However, that's not the way it works: the way it works is that they accept bribes from various corporations and organizations, and then represent those interests, so as to get more bribes which will help with elections.
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Actually, most of the founding father's saw the need for jury nullification as the last measure to force the gov't to obey its own constitution. It is a necessary product of the unreviewability of an acquittal, thus a jury's right.
Jury nullification has been used for many good things throughout history. For example, to void fugitive slave laws, or to avoid convicting people at the end of the unjustified prohibition on alcohol. Its also been used in backwards ways, for example to acquit OJ Simpson. But the point is, it is a necessary check on the gov'ts power. If the gov't can't even convince 12 ppl that something should be illegal, then a person shouldn't go to jail for that.
Yes, but I'm not proposing we elimiante the lawyers, judges, and prosecutors instructions -- but simply that we also give the jury the primary data, so they can ref. back to that.
And jury nullification is the right of the jury, so they can decide whether the law is right/wrong.
As I noted somewhere else, the entire DMCA is only 59 pages long in PDF format. In other words, as is usual, someone was full of shit in claiming it was "over a hundred pages".
Actually, according to the founding fathers, jurrors were supposed to sit not only in judgement of the facts, but also of the law. Ref. to my posts above about jury nullification.
Yes, it is good that the jurrors get a fine-combed interpretation of the law, reviewed by the defense attorney, prosecutor, and judge. But it is still most certainly necessary that they have access to the primary data -- the text of the law. To use an analogy, I may read a review article on the free radical theory of aging. The author -- an expert in the field -- has clarified things for me and given me a good general overview. But it is still necessary -- if I am to make an informed decision about whether or not (s)he's right, and to (for example) cite the studies that the author reviewed -- for me to go to the original papers (the primary data) and read them myself.
Having the jury "understand" the law through the instructions of the court alone simply introduces an extra unnecessary point of error into the process.
I said "should" not "does". As a private corporation, Google should be allowed to institute whatever assinite backwards hiring/firing/other policies they want, so long as those policies don't endanger their workers.
No one's entitled to a Christmas bonus. Its an extra, a nice optional that companies may or may not choose to give. Of course, the reason companies do so is to endear their employees to the company. Companies that don't do such may be susceptible to poorer relations with their employees, and may run higher risks of strikes and other problems. Etc.
But a Christmas gift is not something one is entitled to, nor gauranteed. However, I agree with the person who submitted the article: giving employees a doll of the CEO is insulting. What does he think, that they all should admire him that much that they should make a doll-house for a miniature of himself? What an ego-maniacal thing to give employees. Like anyone has any use for this thing.
It would be better not to give anything at all, than to give something that insulting.
Imagine if for Christmas, I gave my girlfriend a miniature doll of myself...I'm sure that'd fly over real well, right?
How about the biggest declines? Boy bands. nSync down from 36 to 163, and Back Street Boys tumble to 250 from 58.
Well, thank god for that. I don't know how much more of this "dirty pop" crap I can take.
On another note, people actually use Lycos? Lycos, what's that? Isn't that a dog or something?
Yes, which means that though the FSF could (though they won't) do something outrageous like that, as soon as they did, someone else could fork. The FS/OSS fork would succeed, while the proprietary one would fail.
If the FSF were to start from scratch, yes it could develop new packages under any license.
But it can't modify currently GPL'ed software and put it under a diff. license.
I disagree with their decision, but it's their decision to make -- not mine.
Google is a private company. They can make whatever assinite decisions they want to make. If they wanted to, they should be able to only hire white people over 6 feet ball with goatees. Their decision.
Is it absurd? Yes. Is it something Google should be prevented from doing? No.
They don't like guns, alcohol, and tobacco. Fine. It's their right not to have those kinds of ads on their site, or allow ads from companies which also make guns or gun parts. They like porn, so they put up ads for that.
I disagree, however, with someone elses characterization that geeks like porn. Geeks like free porn. I don't think most geeks -- especially the paranoid kind -- like porn you have to pay for with credit card, or porn that says its "free" but wants your credit-card number just to "make sure you're 21". I agree with that. I'm not going to pay for porn. I can find it for free using google images or news-groups; if I look hard enough, I can even find a few free porn websites. I also don't like porno-advertising pop-ups or banners, so I block them with my hosts. It'll be a cold day in hell before I pay $20/month to get something online that I could look at in real life for free.
No, we don't always read the papers we cite. But scientists don't need to read the entire papers: we just look at the figures and then the methods to see how the data was produced.
For anything which is of secondary importance in a paper that scientists write, we may not read the entire paper. For example, introductory material. I've put a review article of aging and the brain in my journal, which has inroductory material on free radicals and anti-oxidants. I, however, haven't read the entire papers discussing free radicals and anti-oxidants. I've simply skimmed for what was relevant.
For anything of primary importance to what we write about, we usually at least read the abstract, figures, and methods. The results section is simply a written description of the figures, and the discussion section usually covers things that we can figure out for ourselves from looking at the figures. Considering that the average paper consists of around 50 references and that the average review article consists of around 100 or more referen ces, this is proper and acceptable procedure, imo.
What is not proper and acceptable, imo, is to simply read the abstract of a paper and then assume that the conclusions they say are correct, or to read something out of a review article and trust that that's correct without looking at the primary paper's figures/methods. Abstracts and review articles are very useful for finding key information quickly, but they should never be trusted without verifying by examining the figures from the primary paper.
Bullshit. Gutnick should only be liable to be sued in the country it's located in: no court in a nation other than where Gutnick is located has any authority over Gutnick. People and companies should be liable to the laws of the nation's they're in, and not those of any other nation.
Through 2012, more than 95 percent (by volume in gigabytes) of human-to-computer information input will remain keyboard- and mouse-based. (0.6 probability)
60% probability? Are you nuts? How about 100%? I can consistently and constantly type at 100 words per minute, but I certainly wouldn't want to talk that fast. I doubt I could, and even if so, it would hurt my throat after a while.
Writing pads are nice, but again, I can -- and most other people -- can type alot faster than they can write.
Other forms of inputting data into computers will remain niche at best. Voice recognition will be used to quickly convert professor's lectures into documents, and hand-writing recognition will be used to convert hand-written notes into documents.
However, no one will be writing 10-page papers by hand or speaking them. Could you imagine it?
"While I was, umm, 6x backslash, going to the park and um, 8x backslash, I saw a..."
In short, its not going to happen. Outside of planned presentations, people speak in a manner which is specifically for dialogue and which does not make much sense on paper, except in a dialogue.
Yep, if you've taken a profit off of a transaction, that means the other person somehow took a loss: in other words, (s)he got fucked over.
Of course, that's the whole principal behind a capitalistic system: its what keeps the system going, and its worked pretty well so far (observe the US' high standard of living).
Of course, MS goes the extra mile to fuck over their customers and everyone else both on the transaction and in any other way MS can come up with.
There is no magic bullet gene for "solving" large-scale phenotypical behavioral issues. Many genes control the behavioral phenotypes we observe.
You needn't worry about an army of fearless clones anytime soon.
Even if we discover enough about how genes relate to observed phenotypical behavioral patterns, that doesn't mean that it'll be useful in creating an army.
Fear is not some useless emotion which serves no purpose. It is something which has been evolutionarily selected for because it leads to better survivorship. The gazels that didn't fear the lions got eaten. Fear plays a useful and necessary role in any conflict.
Like I said, its a zero sum game.
In most transactions that occur, one party gets fucked over, unless by chance its an exactly equal transaction. Either the customer pays more than something's worth or the producer gets less than its worth.
If businesses weren't maintaining a net gain in their area, they wouldn't be in business (or at least, not for long). If the business has a net gain -- accounting for the cost of production and R&D -- then that means the consumer has a net loss.
Of course, there is always the Pareto-Superior outcome to consider. The customer has money, but values the product more than his money (because of what the product can do for the customer); the company has the product, but values the money more than the product (because it has millions of copies of this product). Thus, in a transaction both parties are getting what they want.
However, that still doesn't negate the basic facts of transaction. In any transaction, one party is trying to fuck the other party over as much as possible. Equilibrium (thus, a transaction) is achieved when each party believes they've fucked the other party over enough.
Do you feel ripped off when you buy a 25 cent pack of Wrigley's gum? Is that price totally fucking you over, at 5 cents a stick? What about when you pay less than 5 cents a stick when you buy a Plen-T-Pak? Is that a shitty value?
A good value would be the cost of production. By definition, companies have to make money -- that means fucking someone else over. Its a zero sum game: if they get, you give; they win, you lose. Or vica versa.
Operating systems are not food. Nobody *has* to buy an operating system, people *choose* to buy the operating system. The consumers know what they are buying, if they pay too much for too little, they are fucking themselves over.
Actually, yes people do have to buy MS' OS' because MS creates dependencies on them. For example, the word document format. MS has done everything they can to make sure that their 90% of the market finds it impossible to switch over to any other OS.
And finally, what evidence do you have that Microsoft will do what you say they will do?
Ever heard the parable about the scorpion and the fox? Its in Microsoft's nature to fuck everyone else over: the consumer, competitors, the government, anyone. Its what they do. That's the nature of an illegal monopoly. It's been shown that they have illegally used their power as a monopoly to find unfair and anti-competitive ways to crush their competition. They're showing us here in the US that they'll fuck every other business over (look at their new forced upgrade model, which will cost business' much more money).
That's evidence enough that they'll do what I say. They have a history of doing it.
Based on fact? How about the fact that MS is a business and businesses need to make money. Making money necessarily means fucking the customer out of money -- because if the customer isn't getting a shitty value, then you're really losing.
MS will enter into a short-term contract with the Indian government at a very good bargain with perks, perhaps, only to make them dependant on Windows and MS' proprietary formats. Then, when its time to renegotiate, they'll say "fuck you, start bleeding through the asshole".
Don't fall for that MS crap-trap. They might give you the source, but with a shit-load of draconian circumstances and catches that will make it unuseable.
Even if they do give India the source, it'll only be temporary -- for now, to prevent them from switching to Linux. Once India is dependant on MS, it'll be no more source and no more cheap-deals for them.
Firstly, a sniper rifle, is usually a bolt action 7.62 or .30-06 with a small clip. How does that differ from a hunting rifle? There's really no line between them.
The difference I was speaking of isn't in the power of the weapons -- its in the precision. You can kill a target from up to 2 miles away with a sniper gun, if you are good and can compensate for the effect of gravity. Why would hunters need -- or even want -- to do that? After all, if you had to walk two miles to your kill, it might have been eaten by that time.
Secondly, the Second Amendment was added so that the people would have the power to fight back against a repressive government once words and votes started to fail. So the line should be above military grade small arms (M-16s, M-249s, etc.) but somewhere way below nukes.
I agree with your analysis of why it was added. I am not so sure, however, that I agree that it should be there. What if people decide to rise against the government when they disagree with the acquittal of a person? Also, the Founding Father's didn't have to deal with what we have to deal with today: they never imagined that one man could kill a hundred in a matter of seconds, nor did they imagine things like Columbine. The Amendments should be obeyed while they stand -- and not distorted to meet the agendas of political interest groups -- but they should not be unquestioned (nor should the USSC's sometimes stretching interpretation of them be unquestioned).
I've proposed a suggested modification, but I do see the value of the initial 2nd Amendment as an ultimate check on the government's power. However, I don't think it works. If it was there to fight back against a repressive government once words and votes started to fail, there would have been a revolt a long long time ago. The US government has, for example, consistently sacraficed the rights of its citizens at the altar of corporate America.
And if anybody here thinks that the Second Amendment is moot because a determined popular uprising with small arms can't defeat a technologically advanced, well equiped, professional military (I hear that one a lot), go talk to some of Ho Chi Min's troops, or the US troops that faced them.
Good point. Unless the US government would be willing to use nuclear weapons on its own country and its own people, there's no way it could fend off a large-scale revolt of people armed with M-16s.
People should be accountable to the laws of the nation they reside in, and only those laws. They should only have to know one set of laws: those for the country they reside in. It is outrageous that a US citizen could be sued for Libel in Australia under the much more restrictive Australian laws, which would be unconstitutional in the US.
If someone in Australia thinks they were defamed by someone in the US, then they should have to sue the person in US court, if they have standing. I personally think that foreigners in other nations shouldn't be able to use the civil courts in this nation.
The principal here is very simple: that a person should only have to be accountable to the laws of the nation (s)he's residing in. Anything else is inherently problematic, as it will put people in catch-22's, where a certain action may be mandated by the laws of one nation, but prohibited by those of another. This is why I think that the US should withdraw from most international agreements, in that they violate the US Constitution and the rights of US citizens. International treaties, for example, could allow a US citizen to be trialed in China for publishing an opinion critical of the Chinese government.
Another inherent problem with US citizens being subject to the (say) defamation laws of Australia that it is analagous to taxation without representation. In this case, laws are being imposed on US citizens without those citizens being represented in the creation of those laws. It is outrageous.
Every nation has enough bad worthless laws of its own. Nation's don't need the bad laws of other nations in addition to the bad laws of their own. Each nation's citizens run into enough problems with their own nations bad laws, let alone those of other nations.
For your statistics, I suggest you look at the statistics published by the extremes on both sides of the debate. Look at the standard deviation on those stats...when the standard deviation of a stat published by gun-rights activists overlaps with that of one published by gun-control supporters, consider that stat as valid. Otherwise, discard it. If you can find a neutral source, that would also be useful.
Really, all the stats in the world are irrelevant to this particular problem (unless we want to change the 2nd Amendment). The 2nd Amendment says "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." The meaning of this is clear: it means tthat the right of the people to keep/bear arms shouldn't be disturbed by the gov't. The parenthetical preamble part regarding a well-regulated militia is just a built-in justification for the Amendment: it means the same thing with or without that part. It would be like a commander telling a soldier "don't do X, because of Y"...irrelevant of Y, the command is clear: don't do X. Btw, the USSC has recently accepted this interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
So its very clear what the 2nd Amendment says. It does not mandate that people be in a well-regulated militia in order to have the right to bear arms; if that's what the founding father's wanted, they could have worded it that way.
Now, the question becomes "what exactly is an arm". Is a military grade Vulcan cannon (which is equipped on fighter jets) an "arm"? What about napalm cannons, or rocket launchers? Even Uzis and AK-47s? Well, that's a rather unfortunate vaguity. When exactly does something change from being an arm to being a military weapon that shouldn't be available to the general public, such as (for example) an atomic bomb? The founding father's did not have to face this question: there was no gap in the technology between the military and the civillians back then. Thus, we can not look back to the constitution to determine this question.
Another interestin question regards ammunition. The 2nd Amendment makes no mention of ammunitions. Currently, bullets cost less than a buck to buy: that means your allowing someone to kill 10, 15 people for about the cost of a McDonald's happy meal. If bullets were taxed as cigarattes are taxed, alot of these random shooting sprays might be prevented.
I suggest making a modification to the 2nd Amendment, and modifying it to "the right to self-defense and the right to hunt" which would deal with these questions. Hunting rifles would still be fine, but sniper rifles wouldn't: you do not need a sniper rifle to kill a deer. Nor do you need a fully automatic pistil to defend yourself. If a semi-automatic hand-gun and several bullets aren't enough for you to defend yourself or whoever you're defending, then you're pretty much fucked anyways.
If you don't like what the 2nd Amendment says, then lobby to have it re-written/modified. Don't try to take the cheap easy road and twist its words to suit your particular goals. This is a typical pattern among interest groups when something in the Constitution or the Amendments bothers them: rather than trying to have the Amendment or claused changed by another Amendment, they try to twist the meaning of the words. This is rather disturbing to me.
Won't happen unless people force it to happen. Also look at the Free State Project as a practical way to make it happen (on a smaller scale). There's also my suggestion that free-thinking people who believe in human rights out-copulate those who don't :D.
Reality has shown that OSS/FS programs get bug-fixes and other such patches quicker than do proprietary programs. Check out the times between bug-notifications and fixes for MS Windows v. Linux and *BSD. Proprietary venders are under no obligation to fix bugs: they simply do whatever will maximize profits. They will, in fact, hide bugs when it serves their purposes, so as not to lose possible income sources. With OSS/FS software, you get full and complete disclosure, and history has shown that problems are fixed quickly. If they aren't, and something is important to you, organize a consortium to pay for fixing the problem. This will ultimately be cheaper overall thna paying a company, because the consortium doesn't want to make a profit, but just get the problem fixed.
You can talk about licenses in terms of varying degrees of freedom, of course; one license might be "more free" than another depending on how many or few restrictions it places on its users. But it is not correct to simply, and without qualification, call the GPL "free."
Firstly, few people do that. In fact, the FSF doesn't want people to call the GPL "free" because of the vagueness of the word (i.e., free could mena zero cost or free as in freedom). I and others call the GPL Free Software...it can also be called Open Source Software, as it is OSI-certified. Secondly, we simplify things significantly in many occasions; we, for example, say we live in a "free country" which is mostly true, but not completely true. I've already demonstrated, the GPL will result in situations where there is more Free Software and less restrictions, thus more freedom.
People accept all kinds of assertions with no proof at all.
Yes, people accept all kinds of assertions without proof or evidence at all. In those cases, they are idiots. Want examples? Well, I'll put religion at the top of that list. Next to that, comes the belief in sorcery and witch-craft. Then there's the fact that some people accept that aliens from Mars come to Earth and abduct the humanoids to perform rectal exams. Many people accept all these absurd assertions without any proof at all. In those cases, they are idiots.
Can you prove that the sky is blue?
Proof or evidence. I can provide evidence that the sky is blue to a person who can see. I can point to the ocean and say "that's blue" and then point to the sky and say "that's blue too". Any person who can see will be able to tell that they are different shades of the same color.
Can you prove that a baby is beautiful? No.
Wow, you get more and more looney as you go along. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Saying something is beautiful is about as meaningless as saying something tastes good. No, nothing is absolutely beautiful, nor does anything absolutely smell good or taste good, etc. It's a matter of personal preference. I can tell you that asparagus, for example, tastes good to me. I can't tell you "it tastes good"; well, I can, and people do this all the time, but what they mean is "it tastes good to me". Just as I like asparagus, other people -- most people, unfortunately -- think it is disgusting.
Can you prove that you are a sentient, self-aware individual? No.
By the definitions of the words "sentient", "self-aware", and "individual" I can prove that.
Proof is not required for truth.
I did not say it was. I said that proof is required to convince rationally acting people that an assertion is true: we should all require proof, or evidence, before taking something for the truth.
Of course, the truth is the truth whether we can prove it or not. Atoms were always the fundamental building blocks of life, even back 2000 years ago, when no technology could prove the existence of atoms.
I knew that you would eventually bring up this point regarding "eyes". Anyone who can see will tell you that the sky is (normally) blue. The evidence is what we see, and that we all agree. Furthermore, since there is universal agreement, there's no need to debate the matter. Controversial moral issues are another thing, however. You seem to argue as if "conscience" is a sixth sense. If it is, it is a rather poorly conserved one. My sixth sense tells me that its wrong to force a woman to give birth and that its wrong to force a man in extreme terminal pain to live his life like that; that of the Christian Right tells them the opposite. In other words, because there are major differences in what my conscience, your conscience, and everyone elses conscience "perceives" to be right/wrong, you cannot rely on it as a determining factor.
Ultimately, you are asking me and anyone else who disagrees with you to (for example) just "accept that prostitution is wrong". Then, by some miraculous leap, you ask us to just accept that it should be criminalized, despite evidence which shows that its criminalization harms the prostitutes (by making them more susceptible to rape) and society at large (by opening up a black market).
When asked why we should accept this "moral truth" you say something like "look to your conscience". Unfortunatley, the conscience of many people disagrees with you. In response to that, you say one of two things: (1) You have no conscience; (2) Your conscience is corrupted. This amounts saying that anyone who disagrees with you either has no conscience or that their conscience is corrupted. You then say "some things don't require proof to be accepted" implying that we should simply listen to what we feel, and again run into the same problem that not everyone feels the same way as you do. It ultimately boils down to you wanting me to accept what you say is the truth on faith.
I do, however, think that people who rationalize away truth in the name of logic
Again, you're assuming that you know what the moral truth is, and that those who disagree with you are trying to "rationalize away the truth". The reality is, that there is no absolute moral truth, but that morality varies from nation to nation and individiaul to individual. Even if there was an absolute moral truth, we'd have no way of knowing whether we knew it or not. Opinions on the morality of controversial issues are about as subjective as "chocolate or vanilla ice cream": it boils down to personal preference, not some universal truth.
For example, you say prostitution is -- in an absolute sense -- morally bad. That's as absurd as saying that vanilla ice cream is -- in an absolute sense -- really bad tasting (and those who think it tastes good must have some kind of mutation).
I believe I have the same right to force my opinions on you that everybody else has.
As much as I wish the legislative branch of our government was a direct-democracy, it isn't. We don't get to impose our will on anyone. We get to elect a representative -- a Senator and/or Congressman. They then subsequently break almost every promise they made while running for office and accept numerous bribes, thus completely negating any targetted influence we may have.
You keep on speaking as if we have a Democracy -- we don't. We have a Republic, where the elected officials are supposed to represent the constituents. However, that's not the way it works: the way it works is that they accept bribes from various corporations and organizations, and then represent those interests, so as to get more bribes which will help with elections.