So okay, if I don't give people access to my stash, it's illegal, but if I make it searchable and provide snippets, it suddenly becomes legal? Great racket they've got going on there.
That's not quite what he said. He said if you were copying them and didn't already own a copy and were copying them to avoid paying for them, then that would be a copyright violation. The unwritten part, was that if you are scanning books that you have purchased (or otherwise legally acquired a copy of), that is legal and has been legal this whole time.
In conclusion, Spencer's graph has not been rebutted by Sou.
That's an interesting conclusion when Sou showed exactly why the graph was deceptive. You claim it's the natural starting point, and it might be, but it also produces incorrect results as demonstrated by Sou. So, it has been debunked, even if Sou's claims of deliberate deception may not be justified by the evidence presented.
It doesn't really matter if Spencer's approach was simplistic and wrong, or deceptive and wrong, it's still wrong either way.
Take the money given to 3 rich folks for their Tesla's and buy some poor person a LEAF. At least then I'll feel like my money is doing some good.
The goal is to encourage the replacement of gasoline cars with electric cars, not to give people free cars. The way you would do it, would be about only one third as effective in achieving the policy goal. Also, according to the Wikipedia article on the incentives. The LEAF actually qualifies for a large federal subsidy than the Tesla Model S, thus getting both an absolutely larger subsidy and a subsidy that covers a larger percentage of the cost.
And just because they do other stupid things with our money doesn't make this any better.
No, the actual goals of reducing dependency on foreign oil, reducing pollution from gasoline and diesel powered vehicles, and helping to jump start a new and innovative industry make it better. The point is that if you want to bellyache and complain, you should aim for the actually bad policies rather than the relatively good ones. If the U.S. paid for one less aircraft carrier, for instance, you could probably buy everyone in the world their very own malaria net, ship it to them gift-wrapped, and have cash left over.
They say an armed society is a polite society. I dare say they're correct. The next time you see someone brandishing a firearm in a mall stop and look around - how many people are running up to the gunman and insulting his mother? Who is sidling up behind him to bend over so that another one can come push him from the front so that he falls down and everybody has a good laugh? Nobody. That's who.
I don't know where you live, but I've never seen anyone at the all do any of things at the mall to anyone, period. Your comment just may be the saddest indictment of American culture that I read all day.
Interestingly, I've also heard a few estimates that roughly 60% of the guns recovered from criminals in Canada were smuggled across the border from the United States.
It's enough to make you wonder whether the U.S. implementing some effective method of gun control wouldn't decrease firearm deaths (and other violent crime) in all three countries.
Not to mention the relentless gaming of any measurement system by all parties that erodes whatever value it might have.
I have an illustrative anecdote:
A company that I used to worked for, decided to have a bug fixing contest. They decided that they would pay a bonus to their software developers for every bug they fixed so they could lower the defect rate on their software. At first the project seemed to be a roaring success, the number of fixed bugs climbed quickly, however, the budget for the bonuses ran out only a few weeks after the contest started. An examination of the payouts quickly raised suspicion among some of the managers running it. The numbers showed that some of the testers were finding more than 10 times the number of bugs that they used to find, while others were finding the exact same number. It didn't make sense because they weren't paying any bonuses to the testers. A short investigation revealed that some of the developers were deliberately including bugs in the code before they released their work to testing, some went so far as to tell their selected tester what and where the bug was, and then splitting the bug bounty with the tester who sent the bug back to them to fix. Of course, the developers and testers who were caught collaborating were all fired. However, the fake bug fixing displaced real testing work, and fewer real bugs were fixed during the contest, and the company had to recruit new people to replace the people they fired, so the defect rate went up because normal testing was displaced, some of the deliberate bugs actually made it through testing, and the new developers and new testers who replaced the people fired were not as familiar with the product and more problems slipped through while they were settling in to their new duties.
The moral, is that when money is involved it will not take long for people to figure out how to game the system, and quite possibly achieve the exact opposite of what they were supposed to being doing.
Sigh...you DO understand that the word fallacy does NOT always come with the word "logical" connected, yes?
Sigh... You DO understand that the title of the page you linked to was "Logical Fallacy: Loaded Words", yes?
And excuse me for not being willing to coddle the spoiled as fuck population, I suppose you want "trigger warnings" and all that bullshit?
I really couldn't care less about your arrogance and misanthropy, but it's probably part of the reason why people assume you're a jackass instead of thinking you're being clever. You might also want to keep Poe's Law in mind.
I think people just (correctly) assume that you're an asshole.
Plus you go the fallacy thing wrong, it was an ad hominem, not loaded wording. Except in this case it's not a fallacy either, because he failed to provide any evidence to back up his claims. So, when someone makes baseless and false claims, what is there to do but call them on their quackery?
Did you think each paragraph was completely independent and unrelated?
Most likely, he actually thinks each sentence is independent and unrelated. I've been through this with others of his ilk. One guy literally chose to believe the only sentence in a paragraph that did not explicitly contradict his views. Even then the sentence he chose to believe did not say what he claimed it did. Even worse, the sentences immediately before and after the one he chose explicitly and exactly contradicted his claim. But that wasn't important, it was important that if you squinted and interpreted the sentence very loosely you could, maybe, imagine that it might support his claims. It was the most gloriously stupid example of confirmation bias that I have ever seen.
If you fail to see how Islamic Terrorism is an existential threat to freedom and democracy worldwide, there isn't a post in Slashdot that will change your mind.
I'm more inclined to see people like you as an existential threat to freedom and democracy worldwide. The terrorists are able to kill hundreds of people a year, while the dickless cowards insist we need to strip the rights from billions of people to stop them.
Simply because there haven't been successful attacks for a while on our home soil, does not mean there aren't real threats that need to be addressed around the world that threaten our interests.
There are certainly real threats, but threats to "your interests" are not the same as "your life" and I consistently find it's evil men who seek to confuse the two.
Many smaller, less stable countries deal with far larger rates of things like suicide bombings without their societies being destroyed. Is America that fragile?
Frankly, I'd be kind of surprised if Ed Regis is able to walk to a grocery store. After all, the elevator could malfunction, it's a really long walk, and he could be hit by a bus, or break his leg, plus the groceries at the store aren't very good, and then he'd have to carry all that heavy stuff back...
The entire editorial sounds like a more erudite version of "it looks hard, so let's not try".
Pretty much, yeah. John "No boobs on the statue of Lady Justice" Ashcroft, and even James "No secure crypto for anybody" Comey, for all their faults, still believe(d) in the rule of law.
The memos that authorized torture came from the Justice Department on John Ashcroft's watch, so I'm not so sure about the "believing in the rule of law". Once you decided that you're ok with torturing people, you've already completely forgotten what the rule of law is.
Just exactly who is going to pay for the communist/socialist programs when nobody is working because there is no benefit to working harder?
Did you know that's actually a problem created by "conservative" "reforms" to social safety nets? It usually takes the form of claw backs where unemployment insurance or welfare payments are reduced by the same amount (or more) than you would earn by working. It can be a strong disincentive to getting people off of these programs.
Interestingly enough, the basic income guarantee actually fixes that problem. Because you never claw back the BIG people are free to take low paying jobs because they want the money or want to do the job. Assuming the tax rate is less than 100% (which is a pretty safe bet), then there is a benefit to working harder, unlike many of the current systems.
Basically everything you said in your comment is either blue-sky/rose-colored-glasses thinking, or just confirms everything I already thought about something like this: It's nonsense, there is no 'free money'.
Of course, there isn't. Not in the way you're using the term, but it's not the same way the OP was using it. Basically you're being a tedious boor, here. You should assume that everyone knows the money has to come from somewhere. The "free money" comments actually refer to money with no strings attached, that you do not actually need to do anything for (except presumably qualify as an American citizen).
Also unlike car insurance, some of us don't need health insurance so much; I'm not obese, I don't eat garbage food, I don't sit on my ass and get weak and diseased, and rarely if ever go to the doctor for anything; I'm middle-aged, genuinely an athlete (if amateur -- I work a day job) and yet I'm forced to pay for health insurance that I don't even use.
Are you bus-proof? If a bus hits you would you dent the front like you're Clark Kent and walk away or would you potentially end up in a coma for a few weeks (if you even survive)? I ask the question because I know a guy who got hit by a bus that jumped the curb. He didn't have insurance and ended up in a coma for a few weeks. The costs bankrupted him and the hospital never got paid in full, so I guess the taxpayers ended up reimbursing the hospital.
Also, the point of insurance isn't to use it, it's to mitigate the costs for when the unexpected happens. You pay into the pool and hope you never have to use it.
Oh and for sure businesses would lower wages since people get 'free money', and everything would self-regulate back down to exactly where things stand right now: poor people would still be poor, rich people would still be rich, corporate America would still do whatever it takes to raise their bottom line, mainly by cutting wages since people get so-called 'free money'.
The point isn't to fix poor people being poor (although it establishes a "poor" floor, where you can't be more poor than this), the rich will still be rich and that's good, and corporate America will still do whatever it can to maximize profits and that's ok. According to my conservative friends, cutting wages would be good for the economy and increase employment, they keep telling me we should get rid of the minimum wage, well, there we go.
My advice to you is to not quit your day job, friend, because there won't being any $2000 checks from the government in your mailbox anytime soon, or ever.
Absolutely. Americans hate each other way too much to ever do this.
It's just an incredibly unrealistic idea, and I haven't read anything from anyone yet that convinces me it's even remotely feasible.
I'm not sure what you mean by "feasible". It could certainly be done, there are no technical reasons why it can't be done. The main reasons it probably can't be done in America are mostly cultural and political. In that it's entirely possible half your country would try to murder the other half if it was done. Of course, there is a caveat, America almost did this in the 1970s. According to the article, the House passed a basic income bill with bi-partisan support, only to have it die in the Senate.
Also as I've said repeatedly now, if there is all this money floating around then pay the National Debt with it!
Slashdot Mirror
So okay, if I don't give people access to my stash, it's illegal, but if I make it searchable and provide snippets, it suddenly becomes legal? Great racket they've got going on there.
That's not quite what he said. He said if you were copying them and didn't already own a copy and were copying them to avoid paying for them, then that would be a copyright violation. The unwritten part, was that if you are scanning books that you have purchased (or otherwise legally acquired a copy of), that is legal and has been legal this whole time.
He must talking about Skynet. It's going after the authors first!
In conclusion, Spencer's graph has not been rebutted by Sou.
That's an interesting conclusion when Sou showed exactly why the graph was deceptive. You claim it's the natural starting point, and it might be, but it also produces incorrect results as demonstrated by Sou. So, it has been debunked, even if Sou's claims of deliberate deception may not be justified by the evidence presented.
It doesn't really matter if Spencer's approach was simplistic and wrong, or deceptive and wrong, it's still wrong either way.
Funny, how you don't demand references from the other AC the one, who made the unsubstantiated statement about 2014 being "the hottest" on record.
Why would he? It's common knowledge to anyone who is paying attention.
Take the money given to 3 rich folks for their Tesla's and buy some poor person a LEAF. At least then I'll feel like my money is doing some good.
The goal is to encourage the replacement of gasoline cars with electric cars, not to give people free cars. The way you would do it, would be about only one third as effective in achieving the policy goal. Also, according to the Wikipedia article on the incentives. The LEAF actually qualifies for a large federal subsidy than the Tesla Model S, thus getting both an absolutely larger subsidy and a subsidy that covers a larger percentage of the cost.
And just because they do other stupid things with our money doesn't make this any better.
No, the actual goals of reducing dependency on foreign oil, reducing pollution from gasoline and diesel powered vehicles, and helping to jump start a new and innovative industry make it better. The point is that if you want to bellyache and complain, you should aim for the actually bad policies rather than the relatively good ones. If the U.S. paid for one less aircraft carrier, for instance, you could probably buy everyone in the world their very own malaria net, ship it to them gift-wrapped, and have cash left over.
Dyson has studied climatology before most of the "experts" were born.
That may be true, but if it is, he hasn't studied climatology since most of the "experts" were born, either.
My wife got a $10k taxpayer subsidy on her Tesla. That could have paid for a thousand anti-malaria bed nets. That is misplaced priorities.
I suppose it could have, but so could $10k spent on anything else, and the U.S. government spends a lot of $10ks on much less worthy priorities.
I can use my car to murder, maybe we should ban all of them?
No, but me might consider issuing licences for them and requiring only licensed users to use them...
They say an armed society is a polite society. I dare say they're correct. The next time you see someone brandishing a firearm in a mall stop and look around - how many people are running up to the gunman and insulting his mother? Who is sidling up behind him to bend over so that another one can come push him from the front so that he falls down and everybody has a good laugh? Nobody. That's who.
I don't know where you live, but I've never seen anyone at the all do any of things at the mall to anyone, period. Your comment just may be the saddest indictment of American culture that I read all day.
Interestingly, I've also heard a few estimates that roughly 60% of the guns recovered from criminals in Canada were smuggled across the border from the United States.
It's enough to make you wonder whether the U.S. implementing some effective method of gun control wouldn't decrease firearm deaths (and other violent crime) in all three countries.
Not to mention the relentless gaming of any measurement system by all parties that erodes whatever value it might have.
I have an illustrative anecdote:
A company that I used to worked for, decided to have a bug fixing contest. They decided that they would pay a bonus to their software developers for every bug they fixed so they could lower the defect rate on their software. At first the project seemed to be a roaring success, the number of fixed bugs climbed quickly, however, the budget for the bonuses ran out only a few weeks after the contest started. An examination of the payouts quickly raised suspicion among some of the managers running it. The numbers showed that some of the testers were finding more than 10 times the number of bugs that they used to find, while others were finding the exact same number. It didn't make sense because they weren't paying any bonuses to the testers. A short investigation revealed that some of the developers were deliberately including bugs in the code before they released their work to testing, some went so far as to tell their selected tester what and where the bug was, and then splitting the bug bounty with the tester who sent the bug back to them to fix. Of course, the developers and testers who were caught collaborating were all fired. However, the fake bug fixing displaced real testing work, and fewer real bugs were fixed during the contest, and the company had to recruit new people to replace the people they fired, so the defect rate went up because normal testing was displaced, some of the deliberate bugs actually made it through testing, and the new developers and new testers who replaced the people fired were not as familiar with the product and more problems slipped through while they were settling in to their new duties.
The moral, is that when money is involved it will not take long for people to figure out how to game the system, and quite possibly achieve the exact opposite of what they were supposed to being doing.
Sigh...you DO understand that the word fallacy does NOT always come with the word "logical" connected, yes?
Sigh... You DO understand that the title of the page you linked to was "Logical Fallacy: Loaded Words", yes?
And excuse me for not being willing to coddle the spoiled as fuck population, I suppose you want "trigger warnings" and all that bullshit?
I really couldn't care less about your arrogance and misanthropy, but it's probably part of the reason why people assume you're a jackass instead of thinking you're being clever. You might also want to keep Poe's Law in mind.
I think people just (correctly) assume that you're an asshole.
Plus you go the fallacy thing wrong, it was an ad hominem, not loaded wording. Except in this case it's not a fallacy either, because he failed to provide any evidence to back up his claims. So, when someone makes baseless and false claims, what is there to do but call them on their quackery?
Did you think each paragraph was completely independent and unrelated?
Most likely, he actually thinks each sentence is independent and unrelated. I've been through this with others of his ilk. One guy literally chose to believe the only sentence in a paragraph that did not explicitly contradict his views. Even then the sentence he chose to believe did not say what he claimed it did. Even worse, the sentences immediately before and after the one he chose explicitly and exactly contradicted his claim. But that wasn't important, it was important that if you squinted and interpreted the sentence very loosely you could, maybe, imagine that it might support his claims. It was the most gloriously stupid example of confirmation bias that I have ever seen.
If you fail to see how Islamic Terrorism is an existential threat to freedom and democracy worldwide, there isn't a post in Slashdot that will change your mind.
I'm more inclined to see people like you as an existential threat to freedom and democracy worldwide. The terrorists are able to kill hundreds of people a year, while the dickless cowards insist we need to strip the rights from billions of people to stop them.
Simply because there haven't been successful attacks for a while on our home soil, does not mean there aren't real threats that need to be addressed around the world that threaten our interests.
There are certainly real threats, but threats to "your interests" are not the same as "your life" and I consistently find it's evil men who seek to confuse the two.
Many smaller, less stable countries deal with far larger rates of things like suicide bombings without their societies being destroyed. Is America that fragile?
Yes?
I may seem extreme for liberty, but when the alternative is the slippery slope towards tyranny, it isn't that extreme.
On the contrary, it is that extreme. It's simply that you've lost the perspective to recognize your own extreme behaviour.
Fortunately, the answer is "Yes".
Frankly, I'd be kind of surprised if Ed Regis is able to walk to a grocery store. After all, the elevator could malfunction, it's a really long walk, and he could be hit by a bus, or break his leg, plus the groceries at the store aren't very good, and then he'd have to carry all that heavy stuff back...
The entire editorial sounds like a more erudite version of "it looks hard, so let's not try".
Pretty much, yeah. John "No boobs on the statue of Lady Justice" Ashcroft, and even James "No secure crypto for anybody" Comey, for all their faults, still believe(d) in the rule of law.
The memos that authorized torture came from the Justice Department on John Ashcroft's watch, so I'm not so sure about the "believing in the rule of law". Once you decided that you're ok with torturing people, you've already completely forgotten what the rule of law is.
Exmas? Really? No. Laziness from lazy fuckwits that can't spell.
Welcome to the Internet, you must be new here...
Furthermore, food in of itself is a scarce commodity that has a value both real and economical.
Roughly half of the food in the United States ends up in landfill every year because it isn't used so I'm not sure it's as scarce as you think it is.
Just exactly who is going to pay for the communist/socialist programs when nobody is working because there is no benefit to working harder?
Did you know that's actually a problem created by "conservative" "reforms" to social safety nets? It usually takes the form of claw backs where unemployment insurance or welfare payments are reduced by the same amount (or more) than you would earn by working. It can be a strong disincentive to getting people off of these programs.
Interestingly enough, the basic income guarantee actually fixes that problem. Because you never claw back the BIG people are free to take low paying jobs because they want the money or want to do the job. Assuming the tax rate is less than 100% (which is a pretty safe bet), then there is a benefit to working harder, unlike many of the current systems.
They're not trying to prevent you from speaking your mind. They think you're just pretending to be stupid.
Basically everything you said in your comment is either blue-sky/rose-colored-glasses thinking, or just confirms everything I already thought about something like this: It's nonsense, there is no 'free money'.
Of course, there isn't. Not in the way you're using the term, but it's not the same way the OP was using it. Basically you're being a tedious boor, here. You should assume that everyone knows the money has to come from somewhere. The "free money" comments actually refer to money with no strings attached, that you do not actually need to do anything for (except presumably qualify as an American citizen).
Also unlike car insurance, some of us don't need health insurance so much; I'm not obese, I don't eat garbage food, I don't sit on my ass and get weak and diseased, and rarely if ever go to the doctor for anything; I'm middle-aged, genuinely an athlete (if amateur -- I work a day job) and yet I'm forced to pay for health insurance that I don't even use.
Are you bus-proof? If a bus hits you would you dent the front like you're Clark Kent and walk away or would you potentially end up in a coma for a few weeks (if you even survive)? I ask the question because I know a guy who got hit by a bus that jumped the curb. He didn't have insurance and ended up in a coma for a few weeks. The costs bankrupted him and the hospital never got paid in full, so I guess the taxpayers ended up reimbursing the hospital.
Also, the point of insurance isn't to use it, it's to mitigate the costs for when the unexpected happens. You pay into the pool and hope you never have to use it.
Oh and for sure businesses would lower wages since people get 'free money', and everything would self-regulate back down to exactly where things stand right now: poor people would still be poor, rich people would still be rich, corporate America would still do whatever it takes to raise their bottom line, mainly by cutting wages since people get so-called 'free money'.
The point isn't to fix poor people being poor (although it establishes a "poor" floor, where you can't be more poor than this), the rich will still be rich and that's good, and corporate America will still do whatever it can to maximize profits and that's ok. According to my conservative friends, cutting wages would be good for the economy and increase employment, they keep telling me we should get rid of the minimum wage, well, there we go.
My advice to you is to not quit your day job, friend, because there won't being any $2000 checks from the government in your mailbox anytime soon, or ever.
Absolutely. Americans hate each other way too much to ever do this.
It's just an incredibly unrealistic idea, and I haven't read anything from anyone yet that convinces me it's even remotely feasible.
I'm not sure what you mean by "feasible". It could certainly be done, there are no technical reasons why it can't be done. The main reasons it probably can't be done in America are mostly cultural and political. In that it's entirely possible half your country would try to murder the other half if it was done. Of course, there is a caveat, America almost did this in the 1970s. According to the article, the House passed a basic income bill with bi-partisan support, only to have it die in the Senate.
Also as I've said repeatedly now, if there is all this money floating around then pay the National Debt with it!
Facepalm