Re:Everybody's not above average!
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IT Unions?
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· Score: 1
Ummm, actually he's not confused... He's simply referencing an interesting sociological statistic.
It reminds me of the stats that 80% or whatever of drivers say they are an "above average" driver...
What this means is that if you ask 100 random drivers how good they are at driving, 80 of them will think that they are above average. Now, as you've astutely pointed out, this is impossible. 30 of these people (~38%) are wrong. They are not above average, but they think they are.
Are they bad at math? No, they just don't realize that their driving isn't that good. Take/. for example... given the/. population, we could rate everyone and score them for programming ability (I know there's no good way to quantify this, but let's say we could). We could easily determine an average score. How many people here would say that they are above average when it comes to programming? I'd guess that way more than 50% would... same deal.
Basically, people are really bad at determining how good they are at something without direct measurement... which is something you don't have unless you're in open competition with others... There was a sociology study about this on Kuro5hin a few days ago, but I couldn't find it.
Re:Everybody's not above average!
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IT Unions?
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· Score: 1
Speak for yourself. By most measures (IQ, SAT score, GPA, income level, credit rating, average salary increase per year, NTN Trivia Player's Plus score) I'm well above average. Odds are not a factor in this.
Odds ARE a factor here... at least in what the original poster was writing. If I meet you and I don't know how smart you are, or what an egomaniacal libertarian you are (is there any other kind?), then the odds that I choose correctly and peg you as above average are 50-50... the odds that I peg you as overestimating your own abilities are probably higher. If I *do* know you, then yes, odds aren't a factor... I will know to peg you as overestimating your intelligence based on these rubrics (credit rating???) but that's not what the original poster was proposing.
If I don't like what my employer does, I'll find another job. I've done it before, I would do it again. I don't need to pay a union to bargain for benefits or salary for me, I can do it myself perfectly well with what I bring to the table and what I can do for my employer. If you can't say the same, find another field to work in.
That's good for you. Given that most IT people are still in high demand, and that the conditions, while not ideal, are not that bad, unions aren't really that necessary here. Unions are designed for those industries where workers are easily replaced because there is an oversupply of them. Thus, if the workers in place aren't willing to work in sub-human conditions, the employer can still find those who will (try reading Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck for a good idea of how this works).
As for you, just wait 'till the next few years worth of CS majors enter the workforce... then the market will be saturated with people who are above average (don't you love how professional circles are skewed to above average? It really helps deflate a persons overconfidence). Perhaps you're actually good enough that this won't impact you much, but sometimes I think that the world would be a better place with actual Karma.
Oh, and I have a perfect driving record. Guess I'm not average there either.
Why do I get the feeling that there's another area where this guy is not quite average, and that he's desperately trying to make up for it?
Actually, it is. Given the scale at which the US produces food, one of the most expensive components of the final price of food is the cost of distribution. The food's not actually grown in the back of the market you know.
Originally I was alluding to the more severe issues of hunger and distribution in Africa (specifically US/World aid to Somalia), but I'd take issue with your view on 'food kept from the hungry in the middle of los angeles'... There's plenty of money and food spread around through various charities/gov't programs. I think the most important issues facing the homeless are crime and drugs... the food situation isn't too bad for these people. True, they're not dining by any stretch of the imagination, but they're certainly not facing the same situation as others who truly are starving.
As a note, (until I moved) I was a regular worker at a food bank near Wilshire and Western (not far from Normandie)...
I'm gonna report you to PETA for fighting your cold! Those are distinct, lovable critters with their own genetic code and manifest. You're engaged in a wholesale slaughter!
The question here is how you define human. You believe that a fetus is a human; thus an abortion is murder. Not all people agree with this position. That's what the arguement is here. It's not "regressive psuedo-science" (btw, it's 'pseudo'), it's a different and legitimate point of view. That neither of these positions is arguable (they're both based on a fundamental and unchallengeable belief) simply means that will have to agree to disagree. The fun part is the politically fair compromise...
Actually, I'd argue that we belong to neither. Typical argument from the extremes of either side tend to (intentionally) overlook the middle ground. True, as humans we don't have the short digestive system of a pure carnivore. But we don't have the huge systems of a pure herbivore. Without supplements, people have difficulty with a pure meat diet. But we can't digest most plants either. If you don't believe me, try subsisting on grass or tree leaves.
Pure herbivores have either complex systems (cows & other ruminants), double feeding habits (rabbits, etc which basically digest food twice by eating food, shitting a pelllet which they then eat again to pass it through the system twice), or moderate systems which are inefficient (horses, which are very picky about what they eat b/c they can't digest everything... even they can subsist on more than people can).
It's not just the digestive system either. Have you seen the teeth of any pure herbivore over 50lbs? They're absolutely huge! The molars are giant... we simply can't compete.
We're omnivores... face it. We've got canines and incisors for cutting, and molars for crushing. We've got a moderate system which handles both plant and animal matter admirably. We can't subsist on either a pure meat or pure vegetable diet without lots of effort. And with an eye on evolution, you'll find that our closest relatives are the same... the apes are omnivorous as well.
Sorry, it just bugs me when people argue biology incorrectly. As far as the tirade against capitalism... I suggest you take a look at the history... capitalism isn't the problem. The problem is distribution. We've produced the food, and sent it to the needy... In some cases (Africa), the food is intercepted en route and prevented from reaching the target. In others (N.Korea), it's sometimes refused for political reasons. It's not that only the wealthy can eat... it's that generally only the wealthy will eat well. There's a profound difference there.
Hehe.. Forget the lack of English skills in IT people; it's much, much worse than that. These people are everywhere, and it looks like they're finding support. Watch out!
Actually, he claims it's worth what he's printed on it... Often times he pays for something with a bill that's 'worth' more than the transaction... in these cases he *expects change*. In the LA Weekly article I posted, he goes out to lunch, and the bill comes out to ~$35 (IIRC)... the bill he offers is $50. That's the value he gave it by printing the number $50 on it. In the exchange, he expects (and recieves) his change of $15.
Boggs doesn't argue that the value of $1 or $5 or $10,000 is arbitrary; he argues that the paper itself is worth no more than its value as a piece of art (bills are pretty artistic if you take the time to look at them). He finds it interesting that society has agreed to allocate a specific value to each bill without questioning its actual worth... why is a $5 bill worth more than a $1? Is Washington not as important as Lincoln? Is the art not as good?
As far as collecting, a 'complete' Boggs work is considered to be the following: the bill that paid for the exchange, the receipt for the transaction, and the change received by Boggs... I'm sure that Boggs is tickled pink by the fact that this collection is somehow worth more than the value of the bill (which has a value confirmed by the reciept), the value of the change, and a receipt...
Well, I don't know that the analogy works too well... Remember, the USA back in the 18th century was vastly different than it is now.
I think that if the rural farmers in South Carolina were able to find some common ground with the Entrepeneurial class in New York on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, despite the balkanized nature of the press in those days, there is little danger that everyone in a globally interconnected network are going to totally lose touch with one another.
Realize that the residents of the Carolinas didn't have much in common with New Yorkers at all. Thus the importance of the states. We were more of a federation than a unified nation; a group of independant states loosely bound together for mutual protection in the face of a strong outside influence (The United Kingdom). It's not until the Civil War in the 19th century that technology (telegraph, railroad, etc.) shrunk the country to the scale where news, information, and views were shared across the country. It's not suprising that the shrinking of the country coincided with the resolution of the schizophrenic views of slavery.
The problem is that we have advanced so far in information distribution that there is now far too much. It's no longer an issue of being able to get news from other areas, it's now an issue of being able to sort through the mountains of data to find things that are relevant, useful, or important. And to those who don't think this is accurate, compare how you use the internet with how folks of previous generations do.
It's simply not possible to read or see everything. Instead, we all sort information one way or another. And tools that help do this are extremely beneficial. I only consider these tools 'censorware' if I have no control over them. Basically, we all censor information... it's an unintended consequence of how we work, and the situation (more data than time). Those who wish to call themselves 'well-informed' will try to gain multiple viewpoints, while others will be content with what they receive. Just as in the past, people will tend to associate with those that have similar views as they do... it seems to be human nature. So, will society be balkanized? Well, it is, and has been for quite some time... so I don't see any reason it would increase. If anything, the ability to quickly and easily reach outside views that the internet provides would reduce this balkanization. It's so easy to find and see alternative views that it's a large improvement over what we used to have.
Check out the artist J.S.G. Boggs. His theme is basically to question this:
Dude. It's just paper. There's no reason that a mass-produced little sheet of green paper that costs $0.01 to print should ever be worth $1 just because it has a picture of George Washington on it. That's insanity.
What about that 30-year old bachelor who wants to see porn but can't figure out how to turn off the censorware? Those Texans are depriving people of their right to see naked women (or men)!
I'm amused by the bottom left of the image... where the form asks for any information regarding "Conditions on board which may lead to the spread of disease" and it's marked as "To be determined"...
That's possible... IANAL (subject to future modification). It wouldn't suprise me if the case I saw was an older case which has since been exempted.
I was simply using the case to demonstrate the extent and level to which copyright exists. Now what I'm curious about (with regards to P2P sharing) is how that fits in with the current exemptions to copyright under fair use. Based largely on Texaco v. Geophyisical Union (I believe that's the right case...), Fair Use is found under 4 conditions. One of which is whether there's a market for the product. In the Napster case, for example, the question for fair use would include the question of whether there is currently a market for mp3's that is legally accessible to the public. Are there any lawyers out there who know why this wasn't an issue?
No, the real military wasn't deployed at Kent State. I don't remember the details of China's military structure (i.e., whether the 'military' that was deployed was the equivalent of our National Guard), but I do know that you're giving the level of discipline of even their regulars a little too much credit. From all reports I've heard, China's military at the time was not well trained, and certainly not disciplined enough to take on their own people in a non-violent manner.
I got the impression that violence was acceptable if the resistance to clearing the square turned violent. In other words, I don't think the government sanctioned violence against non-violent protest... this could've been handled non-violently, and would not have merited shooting. In this interpretation, dead protesters are not preferable to clearing the square. Dead protesters should only be an outcome if the protest turns violent... any other response from the protesters could have been handled by other means.
My only point as far as your quotes was that you took a quote from a hardliner and used it to paint the government as a whole. Yes, there were hardliners like Gen. Shangkun and Wang Zhen... but I don't think it's reasonable to look at their responses and claim that the government as a whole wanted to kill the protesters.
Overall, I think we're getting off subject. Originally, someone had posted to the effect of 'those who blame China for their handling of Tiananmen should think about the US's response to Kent State'. Someone else responded that the two were not similar because the US didn't go into the matter with the intent of shooting protesters. I got into the issue because I disagreed with that response; I don't think that China went into Tiananmen Square with the intent of killing the protesters either. You're right... we're not China; but that's not the issue here.
Is the parallel accurate? With Kent State, the government sent in military (non-police, designed for a forceful response) units to pacify a non-violent protest which could have (theoretically) turned violent on the part of the protesters. During the encounter, some troops panicked and fired into the crowd. In Tiananmen, the government sent in military units to clear a public square of non-violent protesters who could have (and on occasion during prior days of the sit-ins did) become violent. During the encounter, the military was unable to deal with the situation and opened fire. Is the parallel perfect? No. But the further you look at any parallel the more it tends to break down...
But that's not really the issue either. The issue that I got involved in was whether or not China at Tiananmen, as opposed to the US at Kent State, went into the situation with the intent of shooting the protesters to end the protest. I don't think they did. From what I've read, the Chinese government went into Tiananmen with the goal of removing protesters without use of force. However, they wanted to be prepared to use force if the protesters turned violent. I could play Devil's Advocate and ask why, at Kent State, the decision was made to bring in troops with guns. If there was no thought that guns might be necessary, why not bring in unarmed troops or, better yet, police?
Yeah, I actually own the book... But, having read that and the Time review of it, I don't agree with your assessement. First of all, the review is by necessity a summary, which forces it to lose a lot of the detail and context; the story, characters and motivations are a lot more complicated than what you get from TIME... Moreover, what you're doing is going through the text, and pulling out one line which supports your argument... did you notice who you were quoting there? General Yang Shangkun; not only a military man, but a hard-liner by Chinese government standards. And even he states that the troops "should resort to 'all means necessary' only if everything else fails... they are to open fire only as a last resort"
I don't see this as "pretty clear that the leadership was in favor of mowing down the crowds". Actually, I find it pretty restrained. Hard-line yes, but hey, this is China. It seems that the Chinese Politiburo wanted the military to move into the square and empty it peacefully but forcefully. It's clear they didn't want an incident. If the protesters resisted, government felt that the military could handle it; but if the protesters resisted violently through rioting or other methods (which had happened previously), the government was willing to use force *if nothing else worked*. What happened was that the military couldn't handle it... As we found with Kent State, military personnel are not trained nor equipped to handle non-violent confrontations. The military didn't follow through on the orders and opened fire well before the 'last resort'.
While I don't dispute that the Chinese took a hard line approach to the situation, I don't see their situation as that different from what happened at Kent State. And I certainly don't see the Chinese government as heading into the square with the intent of mowing down the protesters.
It's a matter of whether the MP3 encoder is licensed or not... price has nothing to do with it... (Oh, and btw, it should be "IT'S", not "ITS"... sorry, that just really bugs me)
Yup... I'd be really suprised if the Betamax defense didn't apply here.
This is the reason copy centers like Kinko's and the like have issues with letting you use their machines to copy copyrighted material. 'Facilitating Infringement' can simply be a matter of providing the ability to infringe. It's a much more complicated matter though...
Copyright does *NOT* cover distribution only. Granted, the matter may not be pursued if it's not really distributed, but copyright is a matter of making unauthorized copies. Though I'm blanking on the name of the case, it's in US case law that the process of loading software into RAM constitutes copying, and unless permitted by the EULA, can be called copyright infringement. The only reason you're allowed to encode your own CD's to MP3 is because of Fair Use Doctrine, *NOT* because copyright doesn't apply. Copyright does apply, but in this situation, it's excused (or at least it was).
And the Chinese soldiers were any different? I think the original poster got it right here...
The Chinese government had been holding discussions with the students, trying to come to some sort of resolution. When those attempts fell through, they decided to declare martial law and clear the square out using the military... not that different than what happened at Kent State where there were student protesters who refused to leave: the government used military forces to clear the campus. However, in both cases, the troops used were not well trained, nor by their creation intended to be used for this purpose (clearing an area of non-violent protesters). Some troops panicked and opened fire. Like Kent State, the Chinese soldiers were not operating under orders when they opened fire.
If you think that the Chinese government, having recently improved relations with the US would give an order to open fire on students protesting for democracy, you're nuts. I've seen no evidence that Chinese goverment officials in the Politiburo or anywhere else stood up and said "Good, now that we've let them demonstrate peacefully for a few weeks they've let their guard down. Now we can mow them down without any problems"... They tried to clear the square of protesters who had been there for a long time, they chose the wrong people to clear the square, and people got killed. If you know of any evidence to the contrary, by all means, let us know.
Right... that's all we need: biology based on current software engineering standards. Yah, I've got wings, but when I try to flap them and metabolize food at the same time, my heart crashes... oops. Maybe if I go into a coma and regain consciousness, the system will work okay.:)
Actually, you're confusing Copyright and Trademark here... Copyright is the right to make, distribute, and/or sell creative works. Trademark is the right to use a symbol to represent your enterprise.
Even if you eliminated copyright entirely, a Chinese restaurant couldn't advertise itself using the mouse. It'd get sued for trademark infringement. However, it *could* show Steamboat Willie or other mouse movies/cartoons during meals. The mouse is a Trademark of Disney Corp., while Steamboat Willie is a copyrighted work that happens to include the mouse.
What most people here are arguing is simply that Copyright lasts way too long; Trademark is generally considered to be a benign and beneficial thing.
Well, this gets into some philosophical quandraries...
Who are you? If you die, but your spare body is filled with your memories, are you now alive? Or is it someone else with your memories in a duplicate body? I'd argue the latter...
From everyone elses perspective, you'd still be there... it'd be the same person they're interacting with, but it wouldn't be you... You're dead. Think about it this way: if you don't die, but someone activates your spare body with a current copy of your memories, are you now in two places at the same time? No. You effectively have a twin brother (or sister) with the same memories as you. If you die, he lives... you do not continue to live through him. It doesn't change if you die first.
Having the ability to create backup organs can help you live longer, and help you survive massive injury... but if you die, you're dead... that's life (er... death).
OK genius... time to try some accurate definitions here.
Conservation does *not* mean less spending; it means less waste. In you example: you do not conserve gas by driving half as much as before... you conserve gas by not driving a gas-guzzling, 8 mpg SUV. Thus, you can drive just as far on half a tank of gas. You are still where you need to be, when you need to be, and as often as you like... and you *still* have twice as much money to spend.
Yes, there are reasons to drive SUV's, but sitting around in traffic on your daily commute on all those unpaved, muddy highways is not one of them.
And this doesn't just hold for vehicular traffic... Conservation generally improves efficiency, and thus lowers costs. The problem is that switching over to conservation often includes higher initial costs to setup; most corps are shortsighted and decide to go with the quick path to cheapness, and avoid conservation.
There's one point that I disagree with you here...
See, there is a basic decision one must make. That decision entails who (or what) will control one's destiny. There are only two choices. Either a person will control her own destiny, or she will rely on the government. I choose self. I think I can do a better job of deciding my future than any government will ever be able to do.
I agree with you completely up 'till the last part. I'm sure that you *can* do a better job than the government of deciding your future. Why not? You're an intelligent person. But you are smarter than the majority of people out there. If you're smarter than average, and I'd bet that pretty much everyone here is, think of how stupid most people are. I don't mean to insult any of them, but it's a truth... it's simple math.
These are the people who fall for pyramid schemes, who do all those things we read about and laugh. The government *can* do a better job of planning than these people. And in many cases, government can do a substantially better job. Now, I'm not saying that government's doing a wonderful job; it's inefficient and often ineffective. But it's better than most people can do on their own.
I agree that people have to take control of their own destiny, and not rely on government. It's only by doing this that they can get ahead of the curve and improve on what government provides. But I wouldn't pull government out of the works and rely on people by themselves. We'd be okay, sure, but I doubt most others would.
As far as taxes go, I believe it was Justice Holmes who said that he enjoyed paying taxes because it made him feel like he was buying civilization. Personally, I don't mind paying taxes either. Sometimes I worry that we Americans have taken that ideal of the individual a few steps too far in some ways.
Well, aside from the possible 'sting' function here, the only thing I can think of is cheap labor to test the firewalls. Use the kiddies to test systems; pay 'em money to let them run wild and try to crack the system, just like the RIAA set up the contest for SDMI. I doubt they're hiring these kids to actually set these things up...
/. theories aside, here's what I remember from my paleo classes...
Asteroid impact... this has been a favorite since Alvarez found the Iridium layer. The theory goes that ~65 million years ago, a massive asteroid impacted, somewhere around the Carribean. From there, the theory fragments; some go for nuclear winter, others go for acid rain and worldwide forest-fires.
There's lots of evidence that there was in fact an asteroid impact, but there's also a lot of evidence that the results were nowhere near as bad as everyone claims. Soil samples don't suggest acid rain, nor ice age. Most importantly, the fossil record doesn't support this. What everyone forgets is that the dinosaurs didn't die in a week. Think about it, if an asteroid did all the work, you'd expect there to be a colossal slaughter, but we don't see that in the record...
Plants became poisonous and killed off dinosaurs... too many issues with this theory.
Mass migration moved diseases around which killed the dinos. This wouldn't be enough to remove them all, but it's got some good points: it would target large mobile critters more, and a disease would be more likely to affect similar animals (like dinos) but exclude others. Still, there are issues here...
Deccan Traps. When India slammed into the Asian continent, it pushed up the Himalayas, and created lava flows that covered millions of square acres. The amount of ejecta from the eruptions could have created a nuclear winter on its own (think St. Helens but millions of times worse).
No one really knows what killed off the dinosaurs, but to say that the asteroid did it itself is ridiculous. It's simply not supported. The dinosaurs were dying off for millions of years; The Cretaceous period started with really high species (dinosaur) diversity... by the end, there were pretty much two species left: T-Rex and Triceratops... the duckbills, the other Ceratopsians, etc, were almost extinct already.
Most likely it was a combination of many of these things... Diseases start to ravage certain lineages, others can't compete with new types of plants, and slowly die off. The climate changes due to massive volcanic eruptions, and this adds more challenges to various species. After a few million years of this, dinosaurs as a class are hurting: they have little species diversity left, and are unlikely to recover. An asteroid impact puts the final touch on it...
For more reading check the following links:
A Cowen Essay posted on UCMP Summaries from UCMP
Also, see The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert Bakker... His ideas are interesting and opposite of much of UCMP's thoughts. But he's definitely worth reading; I recommend this to anyone interested in dinos...
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What this means is that if you ask 100 random drivers how good they are at driving, 80 of them will think that they are above average. Now, as you've astutely pointed out, this is impossible. 30 of these people (~38%) are wrong. They are not above average, but they think they are.
Are they bad at math? No, they just don't realize that their driving isn't that good. Take /. for example... given the /. population, we could rate everyone and score them for programming ability (I know there's no good way to quantify this, but let's say we could). We could easily determine an average score. How many people here would say that they are above average when it comes to programming? I'd guess that way more than 50% would... same deal.
Basically, people are really bad at determining how good they are at something without direct measurement... which is something you don't have unless you're in open competition with others... There was a sociology study about this on Kuro5hin a few days ago, but I couldn't find it.
Odds ARE a factor here... at least in what the original poster was writing. If I meet you and I don't know how smart you are, or what an egomaniacal libertarian you are (is there any other kind?), then the odds that I choose correctly and peg you as above average are 50-50... the odds that I peg you as overestimating your own abilities are probably higher. If I *do* know you, then yes, odds aren't a factor... I will know to peg you as overestimating your intelligence based on these rubrics (credit rating???) but that's not what the original poster was proposing.
That's good for you. Given that most IT people are still in high demand, and that the conditions, while not ideal, are not that bad, unions aren't really that necessary here. Unions are designed for those industries where workers are easily replaced because there is an oversupply of them. Thus, if the workers in place aren't willing to work in sub-human conditions, the employer can still find those who will (try reading Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck for a good idea of how this works).
As for you, just wait 'till the next few years worth of CS majors enter the workforce... then the market will be saturated with people who are above average (don't you love how professional circles are skewed to above average? It really helps deflate a persons overconfidence). Perhaps you're actually good enough that this won't impact you much, but sometimes I think that the world would be a better place with actual Karma.
Why do I get the feeling that there's another area where this guy is not quite average, and that he's desperately trying to make up for it?
Well, AFAIK, it's "Klaatu, Barata, N..." ergh. Necktie... Nickel... it's definitely an 'N' word.
Hmmm... "Klaatu, Barata, N<cough>" There you go. Works like a charm... : )
Originally I was alluding to the more severe issues of hunger and distribution in Africa (specifically US/World aid to Somalia), but I'd take issue with your view on 'food kept from the hungry in the middle of los angeles'... There's plenty of money and food spread around through various charities/gov't programs. I think the most important issues facing the homeless are crime and drugs... the food situation isn't too bad for these people. True, they're not dining by any stretch of the imagination, but they're certainly not facing the same situation as others who truly are starving.
As a note, (until I moved) I was a regular worker at a food bank near Wilshire and Western (not far from Normandie)...
The question here is how you define human. You believe that a fetus is a human; thus an abortion is murder. Not all people agree with this position. That's what the arguement is here. It's not "regressive psuedo-science" (btw, it's 'pseudo'), it's a different and legitimate point of view. That neither of these positions is arguable (they're both based on a fundamental and unchallengeable belief) simply means that will have to agree to disagree. The fun part is the politically fair compromise...
Pure herbivores have either complex systems (cows & other ruminants), double feeding habits (rabbits, etc which basically digest food twice by eating food, shitting a pelllet which they then eat again to pass it through the system twice), or moderate systems which are inefficient (horses, which are very picky about what they eat b/c they can't digest everything... even they can subsist on more than people can).
It's not just the digestive system either. Have you seen the teeth of any pure herbivore over 50lbs? They're absolutely huge! The molars are giant... we simply can't compete.
We're omnivores... face it. We've got canines and incisors for cutting, and molars for crushing. We've got a moderate system which handles both plant and animal matter admirably. We can't subsist on either a pure meat or pure vegetable diet without lots of effort. And with an eye on evolution, you'll find that our closest relatives are the same... the apes are omnivorous as well.
Sorry, it just bugs me when people argue biology incorrectly. As far as the tirade against capitalism... I suggest you take a look at the history... capitalism isn't the problem. The problem is distribution. We've produced the food, and sent it to the needy... In some cases (Africa), the food is intercepted en route and prevented from reaching the target. In others (N.Korea), it's sometimes refused for political reasons. It's not that only the wealthy can eat... it's that generally only the wealthy will eat well. There's a profound difference there.
Hehe.. Forget the lack of English skills in IT people; it's much, much worse than that. These people are everywhere, and it looks like they're finding support. Watch out!
Boggs doesn't argue that the value of $1 or $5 or $10,000 is arbitrary; he argues that the paper itself is worth no more than its value as a piece of art (bills are pretty artistic if you take the time to look at them). He finds it interesting that society has agreed to allocate a specific value to each bill without questioning its actual worth... why is a $5 bill worth more than a $1? Is Washington not as important as Lincoln? Is the art not as good?
As far as collecting, a 'complete' Boggs work is considered to be the following: the bill that paid for the exchange, the receipt for the transaction, and the change received by Boggs... I'm sure that Boggs is tickled pink by the fact that this collection is somehow worth more than the value of the bill (which has a value confirmed by the reciept), the value of the change, and a receipt...
Realize that the residents of the Carolinas didn't have much in common with New Yorkers at all. Thus the importance of the states. We were more of a federation than a unified nation; a group of independant states loosely bound together for mutual protection in the face of a strong outside influence (The United Kingdom). It's not until the Civil War in the 19th century that technology (telegraph, railroad, etc.) shrunk the country to the scale where news, information, and views were shared across the country. It's not suprising that the shrinking of the country coincided with the resolution of the schizophrenic views of slavery.
The problem is that we have advanced so far in information distribution that there is now far too much. It's no longer an issue of being able to get news from other areas, it's now an issue of being able to sort through the mountains of data to find things that are relevant, useful, or important. And to those who don't think this is accurate, compare how you use the internet with how folks of previous generations do.
It's simply not possible to read or see everything. Instead, we all sort information one way or another. And tools that help do this are extremely beneficial. I only consider these tools 'censorware' if I have no control over them. Basically, we all censor information... it's an unintended consequence of how we work, and the situation (more data than time). Those who wish to call themselves 'well-informed' will try to gain multiple viewpoints, while others will be content with what they receive. Just as in the past, people will tend to associate with those that have similar views as they do... it seems to be human nature. So, will society be balkanized? Well, it is, and has been for quite some time... so I don't see any reason it would increase. If anything, the ability to quickly and easily reach outside views that the internet provides would reduce this balkanization. It's so easy to find and see alternative views that it's a large improvement over what we used to have.
Here's some links:
Background of Boggs in the LA Weekly
Boggs' website, including an example of his art
Also, look into the book by Lawrence Weschler, "Boggs: a Comedy of Values"
What about that 30-year old bachelor who wants to see porn but can't figure out how to turn off the censorware? Those Texans are depriving people of their right to see naked women (or men)!
I'm amused by the bottom left of the image... where the form asks for any information regarding "Conditions on board which may lead to the spread of disease" and it's marked as "To be determined"...
It'd explain a lot to know that he was just in a hurry to punch out for the day...
I was simply using the case to demonstrate the extent and level to which copyright exists. Now what I'm curious about (with regards to P2P sharing) is how that fits in with the current exemptions to copyright under fair use. Based largely on Texaco v. Geophyisical Union (I believe that's the right case...), Fair Use is found under 4 conditions. One of which is whether there's a market for the product. In the Napster case, for example, the question for fair use would include the question of whether there is currently a market for mp3's that is legally accessible to the public. Are there any lawyers out there who know why this wasn't an issue?
- No, the real military wasn't deployed at Kent State. I don't remember the details of China's military structure (i.e., whether the 'military' that was deployed was the equivalent of our National Guard), but I do know that you're giving the level of discipline of even their regulars a little too much credit. From all reports I've heard, China's military at the time was not well trained, and certainly not disciplined enough to take on their own people in a non-violent manner.
- I got the impression that violence was acceptable if the resistance to clearing the square turned violent. In other words, I don't think the government sanctioned violence against non-violent protest... this could've been handled non-violently, and would not have merited shooting. In this interpretation, dead protesters are not preferable to clearing the square. Dead protesters should only be an outcome if the protest turns violent... any other response from the protesters could have been handled by other means.
- My only point as far as your quotes was that you took a quote from a hardliner and used it to paint the government as a whole. Yes, there were hardliners like Gen. Shangkun and Wang Zhen... but I don't think it's reasonable to look at their responses and claim that the government as a whole wanted to kill the protesters.
Overall, I think we're getting off subject. Originally, someone had posted to the effect of 'those who blame China for their handling of Tiananmen should think about the US's response to Kent State'. Someone else responded that the two were not similar because the US didn't go into the matter with the intent of shooting protesters. I got into the issue because I disagreed with that response; I don't think that China went into Tiananmen Square with the intent of killing the protesters either. You're right... we're not China; but that's not the issue here.Is the parallel accurate? With Kent State, the government sent in military (non-police, designed for a forceful response) units to pacify a non-violent protest which could have (theoretically) turned violent on the part of the protesters. During the encounter, some troops panicked and fired into the crowd. In Tiananmen, the government sent in military units to clear a public square of non-violent protesters who could have (and on occasion during prior days of the sit-ins did) become violent. During the encounter, the military was unable to deal with the situation and opened fire. Is the parallel perfect? No. But the further you look at any parallel the more it tends to break down...
But that's not really the issue either. The issue that I got involved in was whether or not China at Tiananmen, as opposed to the US at Kent State, went into the situation with the intent of shooting the protesters to end the protest. I don't think they did. From what I've read, the Chinese government went into Tiananmen with the goal of removing protesters without use of force. However, they wanted to be prepared to use force if the protesters turned violent. I could play Devil's Advocate and ask why, at Kent State, the decision was made to bring in troops with guns. If there was no thought that guns might be necessary, why not bring in unarmed troops or, better yet, police?
I don't see this as "pretty clear that the leadership was in favor of mowing down the crowds". Actually, I find it pretty restrained. Hard-line yes, but hey, this is China. It seems that the Chinese Politiburo wanted the military to move into the square and empty it peacefully but forcefully. It's clear they didn't want an incident. If the protesters resisted, government felt that the military could handle it; but if the protesters resisted violently through rioting or other methods (which had happened previously), the government was willing to use force *if nothing else worked*. What happened was that the military couldn't handle it... As we found with Kent State, military personnel are not trained nor equipped to handle non-violent confrontations. The military didn't follow through on the orders and opened fire well before the 'last resort'.
While I don't dispute that the Chinese took a hard line approach to the situation, I don't see their situation as that different from what happened at Kent State. And I certainly don't see the Chinese government as heading into the square with the intent of mowing down the protesters.
The Chinese government had been holding discussions with the students, trying to come to some sort of resolution. When those attempts fell through, they decided to declare martial law and clear the square out using the military... not that different than what happened at Kent State where there were student protesters who refused to leave: the government used military forces to clear the campus. However, in both cases, the troops used were not well trained, nor by their creation intended to be used for this purpose (clearing an area of non-violent protesters). Some troops panicked and opened fire. Like Kent State, the Chinese soldiers were not operating under orders when they opened fire.
If you think that the Chinese government, having recently improved relations with the US would give an order to open fire on students protesting for democracy, you're nuts. I've seen no evidence that Chinese goverment officials in the Politiburo or anywhere else stood up and said "Good, now that we've let them demonstrate peacefully for a few weeks they've let their guard down. Now we can mow them down without any problems"... They tried to clear the square of protesters who had been there for a long time, they chose the wrong people to clear the square, and people got killed. If you know of any evidence to the contrary, by all means, let us know.
Right... that's all we need: biology based on current software engineering standards. Yah, I've got wings, but when I try to flap them and metabolize food at the same time, my heart crashes... oops. Maybe if I go into a coma and regain consciousness, the system will work okay. :)
Even if you eliminated copyright entirely, a Chinese restaurant couldn't advertise itself using the mouse. It'd get sued for trademark infringement. However, it *could* show Steamboat Willie or other mouse movies/cartoons during meals. The mouse is a Trademark of Disney Corp., while Steamboat Willie is a copyrighted work that happens to include the mouse.
What most people here are arguing is simply that Copyright lasts way too long; Trademark is generally considered to be a benign and beneficial thing.
Who are you? If you die, but your spare body is filled with your memories, are you now alive? Or is it someone else with your memories in a duplicate body? I'd argue the latter...
From everyone elses perspective, you'd still be there... it'd be the same person they're interacting with, but it wouldn't be you... You're dead. Think about it this way: if you don't die, but someone activates your spare body with a current copy of your memories, are you now in two places at the same time? No. You effectively have a twin brother (or sister) with the same memories as you. If you die, he lives... you do not continue to live through him. It doesn't change if you die first.
Having the ability to create backup organs can help you live longer, and help you survive massive injury... but if you die, you're dead... that's life (er... death).
Conservation does *not* mean less spending; it means less waste. In you example: you do not conserve gas by driving half as much as before... you conserve gas by not driving a gas-guzzling, 8 mpg SUV. Thus, you can drive just as far on half a tank of gas. You are still where you need to be, when you need to be, and as often as you like... and you *still* have twice as much money to spend.
Yes, there are reasons to drive SUV's, but sitting around in traffic on your daily commute on all those unpaved, muddy highways is not one of them.
And this doesn't just hold for vehicular traffic... Conservation generally improves efficiency, and thus lowers costs. The problem is that switching over to conservation often includes higher initial costs to setup; most corps are shortsighted and decide to go with the quick path to cheapness, and avoid conservation.
I agree with you completely up 'till the last part. I'm sure that you *can* do a better job than the government of deciding your future. Why not? You're an intelligent person. But you are smarter than the majority of people out there. If you're smarter than average, and I'd bet that pretty much everyone here is, think of how stupid most people are. I don't mean to insult any of them, but it's a truth... it's simple math.
These are the people who fall for pyramid schemes, who do all those things we read about and laugh. The government *can* do a better job of planning than these people. And in many cases, government can do a substantially better job. Now, I'm not saying that government's doing a wonderful job; it's inefficient and often ineffective. But it's better than most people can do on their own.
I agree that people have to take control of their own destiny, and not rely on government. It's only by doing this that they can get ahead of the curve and improve on what government provides. But I wouldn't pull government out of the works and rely on people by themselves. We'd be okay, sure, but I doubt most others would.
As far as taxes go, I believe it was Justice Holmes who said that he enjoyed paying taxes because it made him feel like he was buying civilization. Personally, I don't mind paying taxes either. Sometimes I worry that we Americans have taken that ideal of the individual a few steps too far in some ways.
Well, aside from the possible 'sting' function here, the only thing I can think of is cheap labor to test the firewalls. Use the kiddies to test systems; pay 'em money to let them run wild and try to crack the system, just like the RIAA set up the contest for SDMI. I doubt they're hiring these kids to actually set these things up...
- Asteroid impact... this has been a favorite since Alvarez found the Iridium layer. The theory goes that ~65 million years ago, a massive asteroid impacted, somewhere around the Carribean. From there, the theory fragments; some go for nuclear winter, others go for acid rain and worldwide forest-fires.
There's lots of evidence that there was in fact an asteroid impact, but there's also a lot of evidence that the results were nowhere near as bad as everyone claims. Soil samples don't suggest acid rain, nor ice age. Most importantly, the fossil record doesn't support this. What everyone forgets is that the dinosaurs didn't die in a week. Think about it, if an asteroid did all the work, you'd expect there to be a colossal slaughter, but we don't see that in the record...
- Plants became poisonous and killed off dinosaurs... too many issues with this theory.
- Mass migration moved diseases around which killed the dinos. This wouldn't be enough to remove them all, but it's got some good points: it would target large mobile critters more, and a disease would be more likely to affect similar animals (like dinos) but exclude others. Still, there are issues here...
- Deccan Traps. When India slammed into the Asian continent, it pushed up the Himalayas, and created lava flows that covered millions of square acres. The amount of ejecta from the eruptions could have created a nuclear winter on its own (think St. Helens but millions of times worse).
No one really knows what killed off the dinosaurs, but to say that the asteroid did it itself is ridiculous. It's simply not supported. The dinosaurs were dying off for millions of years; The Cretaceous period started with really high species (dinosaur) diversity... by the end, there were pretty much two species left: T-Rex and Triceratops... the duckbills, the other Ceratopsians, etc, were almost extinct already.Most likely it was a combination of many of these things... Diseases start to ravage certain lineages, others can't compete with new types of plants, and slowly die off. The climate changes due to massive volcanic eruptions, and this adds more challenges to various species. After a few million years of this, dinosaurs as a class are hurting: they have little species diversity left, and are unlikely to recover. An asteroid impact puts the final touch on it...
For more reading check the following links:
A Cowen Essay posted on UCMP
Summaries from UCMP
Also, see The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert Bakker... His ideas are interesting and opposite of much of UCMP's thoughts. But he's definitely worth reading; I recommend this to anyone interested in dinos...