If the primary purpose for cap-and-trade (not carbon taxes, they're separate concepts) is to make huge amounts of money, then why has the other side surrendered? In other words, please explain to me why ExxonMobil hasn't bought a 24 hour news network to compete on equal footing.
If a system does get implemented, how many conscientious objectors would there be?
Or, to put it another way, how many of the small-government teabaggers rip up their Social Security check every month?
If this is to be done at all, it will have to be done in such a way that the government has no direct control over who is receiving the money. There would be something like an independent advisory board, with a couple of people representing the government, with other seats filled by media experts and perhaps members of the public. We'll never be in a position where Obama is firing Roger Ailes.
>> How does them making money hurt you any more than your neighbor getting a cow?
If that cow is being fed on public grass, and your neighbor's cow cannot coexist with your own cow on the same land, you end up with a tragedy of the commons situation. In your "nobody should worry about what anyone else is doing" utopia, I would just be able to set up my own competing station on the same frequency? How long would it take for the airwaves to become completely useless?
The fees paid to the FCC seem to be meant to reflect the cost of processing the application and performing the FCC's regulatory duties. Not a word about paying to use the spectrum itself. [src]
>> This government is hellbent on suppressing all dissent like no other administration since Wilson or FDR.
Has Obama called his opponents unpatriotic? No, that was Bush, Rove, and Co.
Has Obama been phonetapping his political rivals, or journalists on his enemies list? Has he had the IRS audit those people, or put them under FBI surveillance? No, that was Nixon.
All the Obama administration did was 1) point out the fact that Fox News operates less as a news organization and more as an arm of the Republican Party, and 2) refuse them a few interviews because of point 1.
The exact, deranged argument you make here could be just as easily applied to public financing of elections, yet states which have adopted public financing have cleaner politics than their peers. There are a dozen great ideas out there for setting things up so that the government funds journalism, but doesn't control journalism. We could adopt one of those.
Or we could sit around being so cynical and distrustful that we end up doing nothing and journalism withers in this country. If you think the gub'mint is scary now, wait until there is *nobody* left to watch them.
How would government financing of media be anything but state-run media?
The same way that government giving out food stamps is something other than a state-run farm system, or the same way that government giving out rental assistance isn't the same as state-owned housing.
Or perhaps it would be more like the way publicly financed elections aren't the same as government-owned politicians.
My idea for government funded media is to give every American over the age of 18 a $50 coupon, which they can give to whatever journalistic enterprise warms their heart. If that's Democracy Now, or Fox News, or grannygertslakeshirevalleynews.blogspot.com is irrelevant, so long as the recipient is doing something recognizably journalistic and has significant readership. There might need to be rules to prevent money laundering, but that's just details.
Since it's ordinary people deciding what should get funded, there would be no danger of the Democrats shutting down Fox News, or the Republicans shutting down, well, everything that isn't Fox News (the only true journalists!)
I thought it a bit implausible that NPR had never interviewed Ron Paul. In fact, I was so certain that I knew what the result would be, my only reason for googling it was to make you look dumb.
You can dismiss that as a small thing, but I hope you'll give it a moment's consideration. The whole point of carrying a model of the world around in your head is so that you can make accurate predictions about things when you don't have first-hand experience. If your mental model of NPR leads you to predict that they would never dare let Ron Paul speak, or Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck, or Michael Steele, or climate change denier Richard Lindzen, or former Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr on their airwaves, then clearly your understanding of NPR is crap, and your belief that you know what NPR is about is deluded.
As I said, even subsidies that are intended to benefit the poor end up assisting corporations in one way or another. Rent assistance benefits landlords. Food stamps benefit supermarket owners. Welfare benefits, well, anyone who markets stuff to poor people.
But if your broader point is that all subsidies are equally corrupt and pernicious, I find that doubtful. Food stamps, for example, does a great deal to alleviate human suffering. A DVD subsidy program would do far less. A program to give every poor person a car would be far more expensive than increasing investments in mass transit. A system of incentives that subsidized healthy, cancer-fighting fruits and vegetables is better for society than the current system, which mostly subsidizes corn, meat, and dairy.
Bad, counterproductive subsidies need to be eliminated. They waste our money, and make people like you understandably cynical towards the very idea that government can play a positive role. But the subsidies aren't the problem, so much as they are the visible symptom of the deeper problem: a government which is controlled by moneyed interests, not by the will of its people.
That entirely misses the point. The things you cite as market failures didn't fail when people stopped buying the products for moral reasons. They simply weren't things people wanted, or they were squeezed out by better alternatives.
Functioning markets often weed out low-quality products, but I can't think of a single product which failed or was significantly altered because those who had ethical objections simply and quietly stopped buying it. The rare successful boycotts have always been loud, embarrassing affairs for the companies involved, and were accompanied by equally loud (if sometimes insincere) apologies.
That's why we cannot rely on "voting with dollars" to keep the products on the market safe and ethical. No matter how dangerous a product is, or how much human misery or environmental harm is generated in creating it, somebody will always be there to market it, and someone will always be unaware of or indifferent to the damage or the dangers, and will buy it. Government intervention is the only alternative.
There is a vast difference between socialism and corporatism, but either could be used to hand your hard-earned dollars over to a corporation.
Socialism: Government decides to subsidize entertainment for the masses.
Corporatism: Government acts on the entertainment industry's complaints about piracy by levying a fee on DVDs and high-capacity hard drives, and sending the money to studios.
The difference sometimes is less about the specific action the government is performing, and more about who requested it and who is benefiting from it.
So yes, they could profit from him without socialism. I think what you meant to say was that they couldn't profit from him without government action. Even that isn't entirely true, but hey, close enough for government work.
>> Oh what surprises you'd be in for if the people of business left.
You'd like to think so. In reality, it's a crock of masturbatory Ayn Rand bullshit.
This is the difference between you and me. You think that it's the few at the top who are the visionaries, the creators, the builders of shiny things. They deserve their vast riches because only they could guide the sheeple into building a productive economy. Without them, the rest of us would just sit on our asses and wait for welfare checks that will never come.
I think creativity and hard work can be found from top to bottom, and there is no need to lionize a handful of superwealthy people who were mostly in the right place at the right time.
You talk big about how you want power, how I should fear you. Well, two can play the HTTP-enabled psychoanalysis game. Clearly, some part of you is desperate to make it big, to become a person who will be recognized as one of those valued visionaries. This speaks to a deep-seated inferiority complex. That's why you throw your lot in with the libertarians, who style themselves as the producers, the freedom fighters, the few with the brilliance to see the superiority of their principles. Libertarians, especially of the Objectivist flavor, see themselves as persecuted, glorious eagles shackled by the weight of millions of parasites. If only their inferiors would stop nicking their stuff, oh how they would soar!
Unlike you, I chose the "champion of the downtrodden" route to salve my insecurities. It's trite, I know.
If you think I'm way off base, just tell me who you are in real life, and what tremendous things you've accomplished in your Reardenesque career as a capitalist hero. All I see is a guy who spends way too much time on Slashdot to ever accomplish much.
I miss the good old days, back when men were men and anybody could carve a woman holding a sheaf of wheat and maybe a steamboat pulling into harbor onto a pair of plates and start printing out "money". Truly, those were the glory days of innovation in the financial sector. Lehman Brothers may have done it bigger, but they just didn't have the proper fashion sense. Handlebar moustaches, watches on gold chains, absinthe, and monocles were the mark of a true gentleman of finance. Those days are gone now, but I will never stop pining for them. Compared to those legendary, swashbuckling adventurers of yore, our modern financiers are just a bunch of coke-snorting kids wearing overpriced wingtips.
Feh. Everyone should get the hell off my lawn. I swear, I'm calling the cops right now.
Libertarians just hate being told what to do. In some ways it's admirable, but it's also the political philosophy that most six year olds would choose.
>> And who exactly is this "ruling class" and how much money does one need to join this group of bogeymen?
They're not bogeymen. They're not mythical. The reason you think that they are is because they don't actually don black robes or hold secret meetings where they plan each phase of tightening the grip on the throat of the working class. Instead, they use the coordination that comes from having shared interests. Every business owner makes more money when labor can't command a decent salary. Businesses make higher profits when corporate taxes are low. Stockholders reap greater rewards when capital gains taxes are low. So those who benefit from these policies seek to influence government to adopt them. No black robes or secret handshakes needed.
The wealthy, because of their wealth, can influence debates out of proportion to their actual numbers. They can hire people to lobby the government. They can pay think tanks to come up with studies touting the benefits of their policies. They can probably get the support of media outlets, which are usually owned by people who are also rich, and therefore share many of their political interests.
The rich share more than that, though. Many of them are business leaders, whose experience comes from running businesses. So they tend to see everything in a business-centric way, and specifically they tend to overvalue the contributions of businesspeople to society. Schools aren't up to snuff? They'd be better as a profit-driven enterprise. PBS a drain on the public coffers? Spin off the profitable franchises and shut down the rest. Could public safety be better? Private security would allocate resources more efficiently.
Of course, these wealthy people will be investing in these newly privatized opportunities, or they have friends who will be doing so. It's not a grand Conspiracy. It's just friends helping friends succeed. They don't seek to screw the poor as they use their influence to promote their own interests. They are merely indifferent to the effects of their actions on people who don't share their interests.
Come on, this really is Class Theory 101.
Here in Utah, we have an asshat^H^H^H^H^H^H business visionary who, based on his ability to found Overstock.com, thinks he knows exactly how to reform the education system from top to bottom. He has, almost singlehandedly, managed to push school vouchers through the legislature twice. When the rabble stopped his reforms with a ballot initiative, he again almost singlehandedly funded the pro-voucher side of the argument, to the tune of a couple million dollars. Utah, the reddest state in the nation, voted his proposal down by a 2-1 margin.
California had a similar story, with Gap founder Donald Fisher playing the role of rich-bastard-who-thought-his-ability-to-market-overpriced-hoodies-gave-him-unique-insight-into-education-reform.
Set aside for the moment whether you think school vouchers are a good idea. I assume you think they're the best thing since sliced pickles. How can you libertarians think that giving a single person that much influence over public policy is morally justifiable or healthy to democracy? The libertarian model presupposes no limits on the amount of wealth or influence a single person can have, and generally also demands that there be no limits on what a person can do with that wealth or influence. If you're a wealthy person with a failing heart, why can't you buy the heart of a poor twentysomething? It's a voluntary agreement, you get an extra twenty years of life, the donor gets a better life for his family. It's win-win-win all around.
In a world like that, power will accrue rapidly to those who want it the most, and power will draw more power to itself in a self-perpetuating cycle. Hell, it's not a bad description of how the world already works. But in the
The way people access software has changed dramatically over the last twenty years. With so much software being deployed as web applications and services, it's easy to distribute open source software in a way that doesn't count as "distribution" under GPLv2. For many categories of software, this essentially renders the sharing provisions moot.
Code signing as an anti-competitive tactic was also non-existent. It was just assumed that the person who received the executable could, given the source code, recompile a new version of the code and run it on the same computer. Code signing makes that impossible to do legally (DMCA, etc.). Hence, you can access the changes they've made to GPLed code, but can't really benefit from them as an end user.
I think that the people who complain about "activism" are ignoring the fact that the GPL's protections have been eroding for years. GPL3 mostly just reasserts the rights that GPL2 no longer protects adequately.
I said, a more deserving nominee. Neither of them were nominated. My point is, if you don't even know who else was up for the prize, you don't have much ground for claiming that a more deserving person was robbed.
I'd take this as the insufferable attitude of superiority that "victims" have, being the only people on the planet smart enough to be able to detect that they are being victimized. "I'm a victim of XXX, and if you were smarter you'd see how I was being victimized..." "Come see the violence inherent in the system".
It's not about intelligence. It's about education, familiarity, and life experiences.
If you are a man, you naturally have very little experience with the forms of sexism that women face.* That's not an issue of intelligence, but experience. We men tend to underestimate the impact of those experiences. When a feminist tries to educate a man about the many inequities women still face, it's not an attempt to assert superiority. It's an attempt at education.
Of course, this education isn't always phrased in polite terms, and some people object to the idea that there is anything new for them to learn. So the conversation often goes badly. But there is clear evidence that women aren't afforded the same opportunities in society:
C. Megan Urry, a professor of physics and astronomy at Yale who led the American delegation to an international conference on women in physics in 2002, said there was clear evidence that societal and cultural factors still hindered women in science.
Dr. Urry cited a 1983 study in which 360 people - half men, half women - rated mathematics papers on a five-point scale. On average, the men rated them a full point higher when the author was "John T. McKay" than when the author was "Joan T. McKay." There was a similar, but smaller disparity in the scores the women gave.
Dr. Spelke, of Harvard, said, "It's hard for me to get excited about small differences in biology when the evidence shows that women in science are still discriminated against every stage of the way."
A recent experiment showed that when Princeton students were asked to evaluate two highly qualified candidates for an engineering job - one with more education, the other with more work experience - they picked the more educated candidate 75 percent of the time. But when the candidates were designated as male or female, and the educated candidate bore a female name, suddenly she was preferred only 48 percent of the time. [source]
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." Anatole France, The Red Lily (1894).
Equality before the law has never been, and will never be, enough to demonstrate that a society is just or equitable.
If it's fiction, then Lawrence Lessig did a botch-up job on "Code". If you read it, it describes something of how the code worked, and how it allowed for such an exploit.
Having read Lessig's explanation, I found the story to be both plausible and creepy. I completely understand why the members of the community found it so disruptive.
It's an elective class, so the students involved are going to want to read some science fiction.
For most people, learning to read and understand sci-fi is going to be a more valuable skill than learning to write it. Not only could it lead to a lifelong hobby, but it will help the students learn to analyze other written works.
But more to the point, trying to teach things like worldbuilding and character development without reference to existing, well-implemented examples is like trying to teach a class on oil painting appreciation in the dark.
Last point: some people seem to be "turned off" to reading before they enter kindergarten. That doesn't mean that they won't need to develop the skill.
So, if we say "he" to refer to a professor of unspecified gender, we're simply following tried and true English conventions. But if we say "she" to refer to the same individual, we're saying something untrue?
How would you rewrite these sentences?
"If she doesn't want to open-source a book, she simply doesn't claim it as a grant-related activity..."
Unless the planet is very small, no matter where or how you move material around, it's going to return to a roughly spherical shape, regardless. In fact, a big part of the definition of "planet" is some mass large enough that gravity forces it into a sphere.
Now, you could imagine a planet where this front-to-back migration actually stirs the planet. That would be cool.
Slashdot Mirror
Is that the way the world works?
If the primary purpose for cap-and-trade (not carbon taxes, they're separate concepts) is to make huge amounts of money, then why has the other side surrendered? In other words, please explain to me why ExxonMobil hasn't bought a 24 hour news network to compete on equal footing.
If a system does get implemented, how many conscientious objectors would there be?
Or, to put it another way, how many of the small-government teabaggers rip up their Social Security check every month?
If this is to be done at all, it will have to be done in such a way that the government has no direct control over who is receiving the money. There would be something like an independent advisory board, with a couple of people representing the government, with other seats filled by media experts and perhaps members of the public. We'll never be in a position where Obama is firing Roger Ailes.
>> How does them making money hurt you any more than your neighbor getting a cow?
If that cow is being fed on public grass, and your neighbor's cow cannot coexist with your own cow on the same land, you end up with a tragedy of the commons situation. In your "nobody should worry about what anyone else is doing" utopia, I would just be able to set up my own competing station on the same frequency? How long would it take for the airwaves to become completely useless?
The fees paid to the FCC seem to be meant to reflect the cost of processing the application and performing the FCC's regulatory duties. Not a word about paying to use the spectrum itself. [src]
>> This government is hellbent on suppressing all dissent like no other administration since Wilson or FDR.
Has Obama called his opponents unpatriotic? No, that was Bush, Rove, and Co.
Has Obama been phonetapping his political rivals, or journalists on his enemies list? Has he had the IRS audit those people, or put them under FBI surveillance? No, that was Nixon.
All the Obama administration did was 1) point out the fact that Fox News operates less as a news organization and more as an arm of the Republican Party, and 2) refuse them a few interviews because of point 1.
The exact, deranged argument you make here could be just as easily applied to public financing of elections, yet states which have adopted public financing have cleaner politics than their peers. There are a dozen great ideas out there for setting things up so that the government funds journalism, but doesn't control journalism. We could adopt one of those.
Or we could sit around being so cynical and distrustful that we end up doing nothing and journalism withers in this country. If you think the gub'mint is scary now, wait until there is *nobody* left to watch them.
The same way that government giving out food stamps is something other than a state-run farm system, or the same way that government giving out rental assistance isn't the same as state-owned housing.
Or perhaps it would be more like the way publicly financed elections aren't the same as government-owned politicians.
My idea for government funded media is to give every American over the age of 18 a $50 coupon, which they can give to whatever journalistic enterprise warms their heart. If that's Democracy Now, or Fox News, or grannygertslakeshirevalleynews.blogspot.com is irrelevant, so long as the recipient is doing something recognizably journalistic and has significant readership. There might need to be rules to prevent money laundering, but that's just details.
Since it's ordinary people deciding what should get funded, there would be no danger of the Democrats shutting down Fox News, or the Republicans shutting down, well, everything that isn't Fox News (the only true journalists!)
I thought it a bit implausible that NPR had never interviewed Ron Paul. In fact, I was so certain that I knew what the result would be, my only reason for googling it was to make you look dumb.
I was right.
You were wrong.
Link: Ron Paul on All Things Considered .
You can dismiss that as a small thing, but I hope you'll give it a moment's consideration. The whole point of carrying a model of the world around in your head is so that you can make accurate predictions about things when you don't have first-hand experience. If your mental model of NPR leads you to predict that they would never dare let Ron Paul speak, or Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck, or Michael Steele, or climate change denier Richard Lindzen, or former Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr on their airwaves, then clearly your understanding of NPR is crap, and your belief that you know what NPR is about is deluded.
As I said, even subsidies that are intended to benefit the poor end up assisting corporations in one way or another. Rent assistance benefits landlords. Food stamps benefit supermarket owners. Welfare benefits, well, anyone who markets stuff to poor people.
But if your broader point is that all subsidies are equally corrupt and pernicious, I find that doubtful. Food stamps, for example, does a great deal to alleviate human suffering. A DVD subsidy program would do far less. A program to give every poor person a car would be far more expensive than increasing investments in mass transit. A system of incentives that subsidized healthy, cancer-fighting fruits and vegetables is better for society than the current system, which mostly subsidizes corn, meat, and dairy.
Bad, counterproductive subsidies need to be eliminated. They waste our money, and make people like you understandably cynical towards the very idea that government can play a positive role. But the subsidies aren't the problem, so much as they are the visible symptom of the deeper problem: a government which is controlled by moneyed interests, not by the will of its people.
That entirely misses the point. The things you cite as market failures didn't fail when people stopped buying the products for moral reasons. They simply weren't things people wanted, or they were squeezed out by better alternatives.
Functioning markets often weed out low-quality products, but I can't think of a single product which failed or was significantly altered because those who had ethical objections simply and quietly stopped buying it. The rare successful boycotts have always been loud, embarrassing affairs for the companies involved, and were accompanied by equally loud (if sometimes insincere) apologies.
That's why we cannot rely on "voting with dollars" to keep the products on the market safe and ethical. No matter how dangerous a product is, or how much human misery or environmental harm is generated in creating it, somebody will always be there to market it, and someone will always be unaware of or indifferent to the damage or the dangers, and will buy it. Government intervention is the only alternative.
There is a vast difference between socialism and corporatism, but either could be used to hand your hard-earned dollars over to a corporation.
Socialism: Government decides to subsidize entertainment for the masses.
Corporatism: Government acts on the entertainment industry's complaints about piracy by levying a fee on DVDs and high-capacity hard drives, and sending the money to studios.
The difference sometimes is less about the specific action the government is performing, and more about who requested it and who is benefiting from it.
So yes, they could profit from him without socialism. I think what you meant to say was that they couldn't profit from him without government action. Even that isn't entirely true, but hey, close enough for government work.
>> Oh what surprises you'd be in for if the people of business left.
You'd like to think so. In reality, it's a crock of masturbatory Ayn Rand bullshit.
This is the difference between you and me. You think that it's the few at the top who are the visionaries, the creators, the builders of shiny things. They deserve their vast riches because only they could guide the sheeple into building a productive economy. Without them, the rest of us would just sit on our asses and wait for welfare checks that will never come.
I think creativity and hard work can be found from top to bottom, and there is no need to lionize a handful of superwealthy people who were mostly in the right place at the right time.
You talk big about how you want power, how I should fear you. Well, two can play the HTTP-enabled psychoanalysis game. Clearly, some part of you is desperate to make it big, to become a person who will be recognized as one of those valued visionaries. This speaks to a deep-seated inferiority complex. That's why you throw your lot in with the libertarians, who style themselves as the producers, the freedom fighters, the few with the brilliance to see the superiority of their principles. Libertarians, especially of the Objectivist flavor, see themselves as persecuted, glorious eagles shackled by the weight of millions of parasites. If only their inferiors would stop nicking their stuff, oh how they would soar!
Unlike you, I chose the "champion of the downtrodden" route to salve my insecurities. It's trite, I know.
If you think I'm way off base, just tell me who you are in real life, and what tremendous things you've accomplished in your Reardenesque career as a capitalist hero. All I see is a guy who spends way too much time on Slashdot to ever accomplish much.
I miss the good old days, back when men were men and anybody could carve a woman holding a sheaf of wheat and maybe a steamboat pulling into harbor onto a pair of plates and start printing out "money". Truly, those were the glory days of innovation in the financial sector. Lehman Brothers may have done it bigger, but they just didn't have the proper fashion sense. Handlebar moustaches, watches on gold chains, absinthe, and monocles were the mark of a true gentleman of finance. Those days are gone now, but I will never stop pining for them. Compared to those legendary, swashbuckling adventurers of yore, our modern financiers are just a bunch of coke-snorting kids wearing overpriced wingtips.
Feh. Everyone should get the hell off my lawn. I swear, I'm calling the cops right now.
You know what they call a moderate libertarian?
A pinko commie! No compromising on personal liberties, dammit!
Are you saying that there is violence inherent in the system? People should be encouraged to come see it.
My excuse: It's 3AM, and I'm not firing on all cylinders.
Libertarians just hate being told what to do. In some ways it's admirable, but it's also the political philosophy that most six year olds would choose.
>> And who exactly is this "ruling class" and how much money does one need to join this group of bogeymen?
They're not bogeymen. They're not mythical. The reason you think that they are is because they don't actually don black robes or hold secret meetings where they plan each phase of tightening the grip on the throat of the working class. Instead, they use the coordination that comes from having shared interests. Every business owner makes more money when labor can't command a decent salary. Businesses make higher profits when corporate taxes are low. Stockholders reap greater rewards when capital gains taxes are low. So those who benefit from these policies seek to influence government to adopt them. No black robes or secret handshakes needed.
The wealthy, because of their wealth, can influence debates out of proportion to their actual numbers. They can hire people to lobby the government. They can pay think tanks to come up with studies touting the benefits of their policies. They can probably get the support of media outlets, which are usually owned by people who are also rich, and therefore share many of their political interests.
The rich share more than that, though. Many of them are business leaders, whose experience comes from running businesses. So they tend to see everything in a business-centric way, and specifically they tend to overvalue the contributions of businesspeople to society. Schools aren't up to snuff? They'd be better as a profit-driven enterprise. PBS a drain on the public coffers? Spin off the profitable franchises and shut down the rest. Could public safety be better? Private security would allocate resources more efficiently.
Of course, these wealthy people will be investing in these newly privatized opportunities, or they have friends who will be doing so. It's not a grand Conspiracy. It's just friends helping friends succeed. They don't seek to screw the poor as they use their influence to promote their own interests. They are merely indifferent to the effects of their actions on people who don't share their interests.
Come on, this really is Class Theory 101.
Here in Utah, we have an asshat^H^H^H^H^H^H business visionary who, based on his ability to found Overstock.com, thinks he knows exactly how to reform the education system from top to bottom. He has, almost singlehandedly, managed to push school vouchers through the legislature twice. When the rabble stopped his reforms with a ballot initiative, he again almost singlehandedly funded the pro-voucher side of the argument, to the tune of a couple million dollars. Utah, the reddest state in the nation, voted his proposal down by a 2-1 margin.
California had a similar story, with Gap founder Donald Fisher playing the role of rich-bastard-who-thought-his-ability-to-market-overpriced-hoodies-gave-him-unique-insight-into-education-reform.
Set aside for the moment whether you think school vouchers are a good idea. I assume you think they're the best thing since sliced pickles. How can you libertarians think that giving a single person that much influence over public policy is morally justifiable or healthy to democracy? The libertarian model presupposes no limits on the amount of wealth or influence a single person can have, and generally also demands that there be no limits on what a person can do with that wealth or influence. If you're a wealthy person with a failing heart, why can't you buy the heart of a poor twentysomething? It's a voluntary agreement, you get an extra twenty years of life, the donor gets a better life for his family. It's win-win-win all around.
In a world like that, power will accrue rapidly to those who want it the most, and power will draw more power to itself in a self-perpetuating cycle. Hell, it's not a bad description of how the world already works. But in the
The way people access software has changed dramatically over the last twenty years. With so much software being deployed as web applications and services, it's easy to distribute open source software in a way that doesn't count as "distribution" under GPLv2. For many categories of software, this essentially renders the sharing provisions moot.
Code signing as an anti-competitive tactic was also non-existent. It was just assumed that the person who received the executable could, given the source code, recompile a new version of the code and run it on the same computer. Code signing makes that impossible to do legally (DMCA, etc.). Hence, you can access the changes they've made to GPLed code, but can't really benefit from them as an end user.
I think that the people who complain about "activism" are ignoring the fact that the GPL's protections have been eroding for years. GPL3 mostly just reasserts the rights that GPL2 no longer protects adequately.
I said, a more deserving nominee. Neither of them were nominated. My point is, if you don't even know who else was up for the prize, you don't have much ground for claiming that a more deserving person was robbed.
The term "feminazi" is repulsive. In fact, anythingnazi is repulsive, unless:
1) The people being described are self-proclaimed followers of the Nazi party, or
2) The people being described are committing genocide, or openly advocating the same.
Anything less is a slander to the people being described, and an insult to the people the Nazis killed.
No, don't even try to justify it. You fail Entry Level Humanity 101, as does the fat sack of manure who first coined the term.
It's not about intelligence. It's about education, familiarity, and life experiences.
If you are a man, you naturally have very little experience with the forms of sexism that women face.* That's not an issue of intelligence, but experience. We men tend to underestimate the impact of those experiences. When a feminist tries to educate a man about the many inequities women still face, it's not an attempt to assert superiority. It's an attempt at education.
Of course, this education isn't always phrased in polite terms, and some people object to the idea that there is anything new for them to learn. So the conversation often goes badly. But there is clear evidence that women aren't afforded the same opportunities in society:
* Yes they do.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." Anatole France, The Red Lily (1894).
Equality before the law has never been, and will never be, enough to demonstrate that a society is just or equitable.
If it's fiction, then Lawrence Lessig did a botch-up job on "Code". If you read it, it describes something of how the code worked, and how it allowed for such an exploit.
Having read Lessig's explanation, I found the story to be both plausible and creepy. I completely understand why the members of the community found it so disruptive.
Without looking it up, can you name a more deserving nominee for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize?
Thought so.
It's an elective class, so the students involved are going to want to read some science fiction.
For most people, learning to read and understand sci-fi is going to be a more valuable skill than learning to write it. Not only could it lead to a lifelong hobby, but it will help the students learn to analyze other written works.
But more to the point, trying to teach things like worldbuilding and character development without reference to existing, well-implemented examples is like trying to teach a class on oil painting appreciation in the dark.
Last point: some people seem to be "turned off" to reading before they enter kindergarten. That doesn't mean that they won't need to develop the skill.
So, if we say "he" to refer to a professor of unspecified gender, we're simply following tried and true English conventions. But if we say "she" to refer to the same individual, we're saying something untrue?
How would you rewrite these sentences?
"If she doesn't want to open-source a book, she simply doesn't claim it as a grant-related activity..."
Unless the planet is very small, no matter where or how you move material around, it's going to return to a roughly spherical shape, regardless. In fact, a big part of the definition of "planet" is some mass large enough that gravity forces it into a sphere.
Now, you could imagine a planet where this front-to-back migration actually stirs the planet. That would be cool.