Run the full background check on every Congressman, Governor, and influential businessman around... send each one a copy of the report. We'd get a Data Protection Act real quick.
Anyone who has ever participated in the grade school experiment of whispering a story around a classroom only to hear a completely different version of the story come out at the end will understand what word of mouth does to tales related in such a fashion.
Not only that, but there's also a significant time delay between each telling. Imagine playing the game of "telephone" that you describe... where each person has to wait 20 years before passing the story to the next person.
I'll bite. I don't have an elite degree, but I did spend three years at an elite institution, three years at a decent-but-not-elite institution, and since then, I've been in industry for nine years.
During that time, I have worked with Ph. D.'s from top universities as well as kids with only a year or two of college, and guess what? No significant correlation between degrees and performance on the job. High performance seems to come from intellectual curiosity, a sense of how to efficiently solve a problem, a high tolerance for complexity and ambiguity, and raw intelligence, all of which is basically innate. Also, the ability to get along with co-workers cannot be underemphasized.
Having an elite institution in my background has helped in making contacts more than anything else, and it's given me lots of interesting stories to tell along the way. But when I compare my time at the two schools, the educational quality was, if anything, worse at the elite school.
Why? Because the other school had a newer program and newer professors who were more engaged with the current state of things as opposed to teaching the same thing for the past 20 years. There was also a less competitive atmosphere which I thought made for a better learning environment. More emphasis was placed on team projects, and in a real-world environment, that's very important.
So, I would say that the value of the elite background is it says, "this guy's smart" in a way that the average Joe (or HR employee) can understand. That, plus the ability to use it in networking.
We the undersigned pledge our support for freedom of speech and expression on our airwaves, print, the Internet, broadcast, cable and satellite.
While we realize that the government has an obligation to protect our children, surely there needs to be a limit to what is regulated. Adults and parents are capable of making decisions about what to watch, read or listen to and are certainly capable of turning off or putting down anything that may offend them or their children.
As voting citizens, we ask our elected officials to consider your actions in attempting to further regulate television, radio, cable, satellite, print and Internet content.
We consider further censorship attempts to be unconstitutional and we will fight these actions by voting for a politician who cares about our rights as Americans.
You claim that "mechanization does not permanently increase unemployment, because it creates new jobs at the same rate it destroys them." But what is your basis for this statement? It certainly isn't true for every innovation.
I'm not sure where you've been during the past three years, but things haven't been this bad in the USA since the Great Depression, and they're getting worse, not better. And this is largely due to increased productivity through automation of jobs.
It all comes down to this - computers and robots are radically different from previous labor-saving inventions. Other types of machines don't double in power every 18 months, and they aren't nearly as adaptable and configurable. The extent to which computers have transformed society over the last 30 years is breathtaking and unprecedented in human history.
I would agree that it comes down to the rate of job creation versus the rate of job elimination. And with Moore's law in effect, the rate of job elimination will remain significantly higher, and you'll have a constantly deteriorating economy as more and more people become unemployed.
Working conditions for those who remain employed will deteriorate as well, because most industries will be in a state of constant rounds of layoffs, so there will be a large group of qualified applicants for any given position. Employees will always have this hanging over their heads and employers will use the situation to their benefit.
After many iterations of this process, here are two possible (albeit extreme) outcomes: 1) a socialized economy where the machines are collectively owned by the population and used for everyone's benefit or 2) a capitalist economy where the machines are owned by the wealthiest 1% and the remaining 99% are kept at subsistence level, or sent to kill each other in wars.
Cloudmark.com has a good solution for those who use Outlook for email.
It's a plugin that catches spam as it enters your inbox. How does it identify spam? By using the community as a resource. From your Outlook toolbar, you can report a message as spam. If enough people report it, then the plugin automatically filters it out of your inbox.
The early versions didn't work too well, but the latest one is catching about 95% of the 50-60 spam messages I get per day. I recommend checking it out.
In Europe, I have seen rental cars that have advertisements for the rental agency all over them, and while they're not quite free, these do rent for much lower rates than normal rental cars.
The agency name is easycar.com (and since I'm providing free advertising for them via this post, I expect a commission check shortly.)
"In 1941, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates completely. A farmer named Filburn was fined by the federal government for growing 461 bushels of wheat, when the Agriculture Adjustment Act allowed him only 222 bushels. Even though Filburn used the excess only on his own farm for feed and for his families needs, the Court ruled that he affected interstate commerce, and therefore came under Congress' regulatory jurisdiction." - Source: http://www.seidata.com/~neusys/colm0063.html
This is also the legal foundation for the Fed's "authority" to criminalize marijuana, by the way. Other than this interpretation of the interstate commerce clause, the Fed has no constitutional authority to regulate or prohibit marijuana produced and consumed entirely intrastate.
Computer programs are answers to particular problems (or questions). And like in the Hitchhiker's Guide, the Question can be harder to figure out than the Answer.
Gathering the requirements (in plain English) and resolving the gaps and ambiguities takes up a significant percentage of the time allotted for a project, especially if the project is highly complex. This is an exceedingly difficult process for humans. It's beyond the boundaries of what computers can be expected to do, at least for the foreseeable future.
Figuring out the Answer will probably become easier with improvements in software languages, methodologies, and hardware. Defining the Question will become a lot harder, especially with people expecting more from their software every year. Transforming ambiguous and incomplete English requirements into highly specific Code will become even more of a bottleneck than it is today.
Sen. Joe Rabbit (R-TX) introduced legislation today that would make owning a screwdriver a federal crime, punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of two years. The unlicensed manufacture or distribution of screwdrivers would be punishable by a mandatory minimum of ten years for a first offense.
"The screwdriver can be used for a wide variety of illegal acts," said Jane Doe, chief aide to Sen. Rabbit, in a press conference earlier today. "It can be used for lock-picking, for sabotaging machinery, and as a tool in reverse engineering of products. Imagine if terrorists were to use a screwdriver maliciously on a crowded airplane. This is a security risk our country cannot afford to take. Think of the children. "
The White House expressed some concerns about the possible negative impact of the legislation, but the legislation is attached as a rider to SB78692A, a spending package that enjoys substantial bipartisan support. President Gates is unlikely to veto the whole package this close to the presidential election, especially given that the race between him and Sen. Ellison has narrowed considerably in recent weeks.
The rider makes an exception for "federally licensed engineers." Doe was unclear about how such a licensing scheme would be implemented, but she made it fairly clear that licenses would not be given to home users.
"Countless tragedies have occurred when improperly trained individuals have taken it upon themselves to fix a toilet, work on a car, or other commonly bungled household repair jobs," Doe stated. "Some of these improper repairs have caused risk to children. This legislation will ensure that only certified technicians will be using these tools, and that will ensure everyone's safety. How would you feel if criminals used a screwdriver to pick your locks, break into your home, and threaten your children? We must be proactive in our fight against crime!"
Certain dissident groups, including the ACLU and the NRA, decried the legislation as yet another example of the erosion of personal freedoms in the United States. They also questioned the feasibility of enforcing this law, given that there are hundreds of millions of screwdrivers in households across the United States.
"This legislation strikes right at the very fabric of this society," said Ted Campbell, spokesman for the ACLU. "America was built on personal ingenuity and a can-do spirit. Besides, how on Earth will it be possible to enforce this?"
Doe handily dismissed such criticisms. "Enforcement will be difficult, but the Senator has a plan," she said. "In fact, the Senator is already drafting legislation that will expand police powers so that random, anonymous searches of homes for illegal tools can be conducted. "
She added that the bill has support from several major unions, including electricians' and plumbers' unions, and is lauded by many manufacturers of consumer goods.
On a similar note, I just did a search on abcnews.com to see what they had to say regarding this issue. I came up with exactly one article, this one.
Here's an excerpt:
Hackers -- and Cops -- Converge in Las Vegas
At the ninth annual Def Con convention in Las Vegas, thousands of computer hackers and code-breakers gathered to compare notes and tricks on breaking into computer systems. And that caught the attention of some legal authorities.
Dmitry Sklyarov, a 26-year old Russian programmer and one of the convention speakers, was arrested by the FBI at the show. The programmer was accused of creating and selling a software program that lets users copy electronic books. If convicted of violating the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Sklyarov could face five years in prison and a $500,000 fine.
Convention attendees say they are there to share concerns about computer security issues, and that most of them are not criminals. "There's a lot of intellectual people, a lot of very bright kids who are here," said one attendee who requested not to be identified.
But why do hackers break into corporate or government computers? "The control you have when you get through on a system," said one attendee who identified himself as Netranger. "It's the most exhilarating thing that you can probably get."
To the average mainstream American, what does this look like? A bunch of hacker kids, out to disrupt orderly society, who get off on the adrenaline rush of hacking into systems. Not exactly apt to inspire sympathy in the Heartland(TM).
It's also interesting to note that abcnews.com's top story this morning is a piece on resume padding, by the way.
I went to MIT for three years. It was okay for the first two, but the third damaged me severely. It's the only school I would ever forbid my kids from going to. One of my coworker's sons was considering going there and I advised very strongly against it. Thankfully, he decided to go to Harvard. I don't know if I had anything to do with that, but if there's one good thing I've done in my life, that might be it.
My last year there was so terrible I will never be able to erase it from my memory. That's the only year of my life I can say that about. I still suffer from nightmares and flashbacks after almost a decade. I never finished college because the whole educational experience was so polluted. Fortunately, I found a good niche in the real world and I have thrived there.
I would say that if you're considering going to MIT, or if you know someone who is, advise them to go to Stanford, Harvard, or some small liberal-arts college for undergrad. Save MIT for grad school, and only then if you're sufficiently hardened against the cold, cruel world. The undergrad experience at MIT can be perfectly good (mine was for the first two years) but if you get a bad year it will hit you for a lot longer than that. It can be ruthless for a 19 or 20 year old kid.
If there's ever anything I take seriously, it's any issue concerning MIT. MIT can be a cruel place and you'd better be ready to deal with it. Personally, I think it embodies evil, but that's IMHO and YMMV. I got dealt a particularly bad hand, from day one, pretty much.
And by the way... I do have a place in the MIT gallery of hacks (see, not totally off-topic). Shame to see it's going away, but it's not a big surprise. The hack culture has been the target of a systematic elimination by several MIT adminstrations that have not had much appreciation for that culture. Money is what MIT is all about, and though hacks bring money in the long term (due to the legendary atmosphere that culture generates), it's just like politics. It hurts things in the short term. Everything is getting corporatized at the expense of everything else and MIT has been a frontrunner in that game for the last 20-30 years.
An article buried deep within this thread touched off an interesting idea:
Items of physical "property" such as buildings, land, cars, shares in a corporation,
etc. are all subject to taxes of one sort or another -- property tax,
inheritance tax, sales tax.
Assume that we decide that it's OK to issue deeds and titles to ideas and
concepts and call it "intellectual property".
In that case, those "intellectual properties" ought to subject to the
same sorts of taxes as physical properties. If you want to avoid paying taxes on your properties, physical
or intellectual, you can donate them to a nonprofit organization, such as the EFF
or the Trust for Public Land.
Property is subject to tax! If we're going to lend this idea of "intellectual property"
any credence, why should it be immune?
And I hereby grant the "intellectual property rights" associated with this concept
to a nonprofit organization to be designated later;-)
I wonder if it is indeed such an impossible connection to surmise that global corporatism may herald
a new form of fascism?
Indeed, and the scary thing is that it is truly global. There is nowhere you can run to escape it. In previous eras, there were always countries doing different kinds of things; socialism, communism, monarchy, religious dictatorship, democracy, etc. But now, it's all becoming global corporatism, everywhere you go.
As democracy, in the sense of the historic liberal democracies of the west, is becoming irrelevant
to the ability of global capital to make profits, whereas the rise of capitalism necessitated the freedom
of a civil society, that this may not be so much longer?
Democracy, I think, is not just irrelevant -- it actively interferes with the ability of global capital to make profits. This is part of the reason why our democratic freedoms and the Constitution have been under merciless attack during the last 20 years and why they have sustained serious damage.
Corporations are feudal entities in organizational style. As a result, a society dominated by corporations becomes a feudal society. We're a good percentage of the way there already.
In the lawsuit brought against 2600 regarding linking to the DeCSS program, the judge ruled that publishing the plain text of the links was protected speech, but publishing clickable hyperlinks was not. (?! but true)
Could a similar workaround be done here? Imagine a scenario where the end user could do a search that would return the equivalent of URLs for various songs on people's host machines, and then do a simple cut-and-paste into a web browser or another application to actually start the download?
Slashdot discussions on social issues are not that different from social discussions in other arenas. What is different is the language used to describe social phenomena. On Slashdot, people have usually been trained in technical areas and tend toward technical language and well-reasoned arguments. This is reflected in the tones of posts that people make here.
In this thread, I have seen viewpoints from all parts of the spectrum. In these posts, there is little here to distinguish Slashdotters from the general population, except for three things: 1) a larger number of libertarian posts than one might expect from the general population; 2) more well-reasoned, logical justifications of pre-existing viewpoints than one might expect from the general population; and 3) more unconventional, radical viewpoints than one might expect from the general population.
There is something else as well; regardless of the opinions they hold, people who go to the effort to make these posts *care*. Slashdotters seem to be quite interested in social issues, even without formal training. And as we read more and more about issues that concern us, our knowledge in social areas will expand, and eventually it will catch up to our knowledge (and expertise) in technical areas, which can't be disputed...;-)
Inevitably, we will touch on every major social issue that we face today. Disagreements on all issues seem to reduce to one of about six basic philosophical wars that have been waged since the beginning of time. This one, for instance, largely reduces to free will vs. determinism.
I enjoy the discussion of social issues on Slashdot (although they can be infuriating sometimes) and I hope to see more in the future. The discussions I see here are much more informed, open-minded, and to-the-point than those I see in most other arenas, and I think we can cut through a lot of the bullshit when it comes to social debate. Slashdotters, it's time to grow beyond your specialties...
A thousand years from now, students will learn (but not in schools) about the Decline and Fall of the American Empire...
...One of the factors that led to the fall of the United States of America and the coming of the Second Dark Age was a stifling of intellectual progress by the transnational corporations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
One of the central tenets of the Rational Age, arguably the peak of pre-nuclear civilization, was that scientific and technological progress superseded individual ownership of ideas and concepts. But during the "Greed Years" near the turn of the third millennium, a fundamental shift in values occurred. In a mad rush, the large corporations grabbed every piece of "intellectual property" they could get their hands on, stamping ideas, scientific advances, life forms, and even single words with their brands. Processes that had been used for hundreds of years by indigenous peoples all over the globe were suddenly the exclusive "property" of large corporations.
Initially, this shift in attitude had little effect on progress, as there was healthy competition between transnational corporations. In addition, certain semi-enlightened governments intervened in order to keep progress moving along, although this intervention was typically incompetently applied. Too little, too late, it only slowed things down.
There were subtle effects that few noticed at first. The dizzying pace of inventions slowed dramatically as more and more building blocks for new technologies became the exclusive domain of the transnationals. Smaller companies became unable to innovate due to the excessive licensing fees imposed by those who owned the tools and technologies that the innovations built on. Technology began to stagnate.
It became illegal for curious engineers and inventors to even analyze an existing technology. Consequently, more and more of society was based on technology that was not rigorously tested. Breakdowns of everything from financial markets to air traffic control systems became increasingly more common, until they were eventually accepted as a way of life.
Discouraged, young people began to turn away from science and technology even
more. Fewer and fewer fresh minds were available to create new inventions,
and they were poorly trained compared to previous generations due to the
ever-degrading state of education.
Those who did enter these fields were generally occupied with
maintaining, patching, and in some cases, dismantling the technological
infrastructure.
The process was insidiously cumulative; as more corporations merged into single entities, with operations on all the continents, they became too difficult for governments to handle. They continued to merge, and they formed alliances that kept a lid on all technological advances that threatened the status quo.
Of course, it could not continue forever. The planet's population was beyond its carrying capacity at the time, and the economic production of the planet was based on ever-increasing use of dwindling nonrenewable fuels. Technologies to harness the power of the sun and nuclear fusion had been suppressed by the huge oil and gas conglomerates; they owned these technologies, but sat on them.
Increasing pollution, the instabilities in cost and availability of energy, and changing climate patterns all took their toll, introducing greater social instability in turn. There was not enough time for society to retool itself to become dependent on newer energy technologies, and the greatest empire the world had ever seen began to unravel.
...taken from the Decline and Fall of the American Empire, published 3026 A.D.
If the door is left open for abuse to take place, it probably will, especially if there's a quick buck to be had. It's happened before a few times, what makes you think it couldn't happen again?
You claim that "There is a growing body of research that is quickly establishing that the only thing computers can teach you is computers. Everything else is better learnt from the pages of a book"... but you provide no citations or hyperlinks (yes, those evil things) to back up this claim. Who is doing this research, who is funding it, where is it being published?
This claim makes no sense. The human mind does not work in a linear fashion; it is inherently nonlinear. In the process of learning, the brain has to break down linear presentations of information and convert them to native format. The nonlinear organizational structure of the Internet bypasses this need for translation, so information can be absorbed and understood much more quickly.
It is possible that the retention of facts and details (but not concepts) would be aided by doing this linear-to-nonlinear conversion (much as the process of taking notes helps retention of raw data, even if the notes are never referred to again). However, the amount of information that can be processed is greatly diminished, and the speed and reliability of its absorption is diminished by orders of magnitude.
In the context of a linear presentation, the concepts behind the information are never absorbed by the average individual, and the facts are usually irrelevant without the conceptual framework in place. Even in individuals of moderate intelligence, connections between "unrelated" disciplines are rarely synthesized. Most disciplines are very closely related. I'm sure that the studies you are mentioning do not even look at these issues, and whether the nonlinear form of information on the Internet helps people in forming these connections.
Also, the Internet itself reduces the need for retention of facts or details. Why should I bother to memorize the exact date that some event occurred or the exact spelling of a word if I can find out in ten seconds? I can spend the time investigating why that event happened or where that word came from.
I think this emphasis on linear presentation of information in our educational system is a major cause of the woes in said system, and by extension, in our society. It is, in my mind, a fairly major issue, even though it is one that most people could not even grasp as an issue. This is why I'm taking the effort to respond to this post, even though it will probably be read by about 2 people...:-)
I don't know what leads you to believe that just because someone can conceptualize a system different from the one currently in place, that the person in question must be a child.
I thought it was an intelligent post that brought up a very valid point. The representative system, like any system, was a product of its time, and it was subject to environmental constraints. It was the only feasible way that people from Maine, New York, Georgia, etc. could have their views represented in a Congress that would eventually meet in Washington, D.C. It served its purpose well, but it is obsolete now, and it has been for quite some time.
At the time it was created, there was no Internet, no radio, no telephone, no telegraph. These developments changed the very face of the world -- but Congress remains basically the same. And it is dangerously outmoded.
Our communities are much larger and much more diverse. People living in Boston or Baltimore have much more in common with each other than they do with people living in the rural areas near those cities. Large groups of people have no voice in Congress at all due to our "winner takes all" voting system and the ruthless gerrymandering of political districts, which favors certain minorities while necessarily excluding others. The notion of representation by "districts" and "states" is increasingly meaningless in today's connected world. I personally don't think that representation based on geography has much place anymore.
Most democracies throughout the world use a proportional-representation system. In this system, 60% of the votes win 60% of the seats in any given district and 40% of the votes win 40% of the seats. In our antiquated system, 60% of the votes win 100% of the seats and the 40% minority is completely disenfranchised. There is an organization that is trying to promote the adoption of this system in the U.S. See this site for more information.
Of course, even this system is fairly old (100-150 years IIRC). Now that we have the Internet (and for non-netizens, toll-free numbers), we could do much better, by integrating Internet-based voting with some form of proportional representation. The mechanics of this are another discussion entirely, but doing something like this would improve voter participation dramatically. Voter turnouts are at an all-time low, and getting worse. People know the system doesn't work, so they don't participate.
By the way, regarding the threat of a "tyranny of the majority" -- the judicial branch of government was established for the express purpose of checking the power of the other two branches, for this very reason. There is no reason to believe that it wouldn't be able to do so if the legislative branch were reworked.
Brilliant. Very well done. I would have been laughing out loud if it weren't so scary. You had better hope the RIAA doesn't find that one. It would be music to their ears (no pun intended).
I had thought about doing something like this myself for another issue. The issue in question is a root problem that I haven't seen addressed explicitly as such. The DeCSS controversy is an instance of it. Another instance is Orrin Hatch's proposed legislation (don't know what the current status of this bill is) that would make it a felony to distribute information about how to grow marijuana, among other things.
Ultimately, it comes down to a First Amendment issue. Do First Amendment instructions apply to instructions for performing a potentially (but not necessarily) illegal act?
The DeCSS source code is a set of instructions. That's all. They can be executed by a computer, or by a human being with (lots of) spare time. But ultimately, it's an algorithm for performing an action, just like making crystal meth or growing a pot plant.
I was going to write a fake press release, saying that the Supreme Court had ruled that publishing a set of instructions that could lead to an illegal act was not protected speech under the First Amendment. Haven't found the time yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Run the full background check on every Congressman, Governor, and influential businessman around... send each one a copy of the report. We'd get a Data Protection Act real quick.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Anyone who has ever participated in the grade school experiment of whispering a story around a classroom only to hear a completely different version of the story come out at the end will understand what word of mouth does to tales related in such a fashion.
Not only that, but there's also a significant time delay between each telling. Imagine playing the game of "telephone" that you describe... where each person has to wait 20 years before passing the story to the next person.
OK,
I'll bite. I don't have an elite degree, but I did spend three years at an elite institution, three years at a decent-but-not-elite institution, and since then, I've been in industry for nine years.
During that time, I have worked with Ph. D.'s from top universities as well as kids with only a year or two of college, and guess what? No significant correlation between degrees and performance on the job. High performance seems to come from intellectual curiosity, a sense of how to efficiently solve a problem, a high tolerance for complexity and ambiguity, and raw intelligence, all of which is basically innate. Also, the ability to get along with co-workers cannot be underemphasized.
Having an elite institution in my background has helped in making contacts more than anything else, and it's given me lots of interesting stories to tell along the way. But when I compare my time at the two schools, the educational quality was, if anything, worse at the elite school.
Why? Because the other school had a newer program and newer professors who were more engaged with the current state of things as opposed to teaching the same thing for the past 20 years. There was also a less competitive atmosphere which I thought made for a better learning environment. More emphasis was placed on team projects, and in a real-world environment, that's very important.
So, I would say that the value of the elite background is it says, "this guy's smart" in a way that the average Joe (or HR employee) can understand. That, plus the ability to use it in networking.
My two cents.
Now that's not a bad idea...
We the undersigned pledge our support for freedom of speech and expression on our airwaves, print, the Internet, broadcast, cable and satellite.
While we realize that the government has an obligation to protect our children, surely there needs to be a limit to what is regulated. Adults and parents are capable of making decisions about what to watch, read or listen to and are certainly capable of turning off or putting down anything that may offend them or their children.
As voting citizens, we ask our elected officials to consider your actions in attempting to further regulate television, radio, cable, satellite, print and Internet content.
We consider further censorship attempts to be unconstitutional and we will fight these actions by voting for a politician who cares about our rights as Americans.
http://www.stopfcc.com/
You claim that "mechanization does not permanently increase unemployment, because it creates new jobs at the same rate it destroys them." But what is your basis for this statement? It certainly isn't true for every innovation.
I'm not sure where you've been during the past three years, but things haven't been this bad in the USA since the Great Depression, and they're getting worse, not better. And this is largely due to increased productivity through automation of jobs.
It all comes down to this - computers and robots are radically different from previous labor-saving inventions. Other types of machines don't double in power every 18 months, and they aren't nearly as adaptable and configurable. The extent to which computers have transformed society over the last 30 years is breathtaking and unprecedented in human history.
I would agree that it comes down to the rate of job creation versus the rate of job elimination. And with Moore's law in effect, the rate of job elimination will remain significantly higher, and you'll have a constantly deteriorating economy as more and more people become unemployed.
Working conditions for those who remain employed will deteriorate as well, because most industries will be in a state of constant rounds of layoffs, so there will be a large group of qualified applicants for any given position. Employees will always have this hanging over their heads and employers will use the situation to their benefit.
After many iterations of this process, here are two possible (albeit extreme) outcomes: 1) a socialized economy where the machines are collectively owned by the population and used for everyone's benefit or 2) a capitalist economy where the machines are owned by the wealthiest 1% and the remaining 99% are kept at subsistence level, or sent to kill each other in wars.
Which one should be aiming for?
Cloudmark.com has a good solution for those who use Outlook for email.
It's a plugin that catches spam as it enters your inbox. How does it identify spam? By using the community as a resource. From your Outlook toolbar, you can report a message as spam. If enough people report it, then the plugin automatically filters it out of your inbox.
The early versions didn't work too well, but the latest one is catching about 95% of the 50-60 spam messages I get per day. I recommend checking it out.
In Europe, I have seen rental cars that have advertisements for the rental agency all over them, and while they're not quite free, these do rent for much lower rates than normal rental cars.
The agency name is easycar.com (and since I'm providing free advertising for them via this post, I expect a commission check shortly.)
Better get a license for that apricot tree.
"In 1941, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates completely. A farmer named Filburn was fined by the federal government for growing 461 bushels of wheat, when the Agriculture Adjustment Act allowed him only 222 bushels. Even though Filburn used the excess only on his own farm for feed and for his families needs, the Court ruled that he affected interstate commerce, and therefore came under Congress' regulatory jurisdiction." - Source: http://www.seidata.com/~neusys/colm0063.html
This is also the legal foundation for the Fed's "authority" to criminalize marijuana, by the way. Other than this interpretation of the interstate commerce clause, the Fed has no constitutional authority to regulate or prohibit marijuana produced and consumed entirely intrastate.
Computer programs are answers to particular problems (or questions). And like in the Hitchhiker's Guide, the Question can be harder to figure out than the Answer.
Gathering the requirements (in plain English) and resolving the gaps and ambiguities takes up a significant percentage of the time allotted for a project, especially if the project is highly complex. This is an exceedingly difficult process for humans. It's beyond the boundaries of what computers can be expected to do, at least for the foreseeable future.
Figuring out the Answer will probably become easier with improvements in software languages, methodologies, and hardware. Defining the Question will become a lot harder, especially with people expecting more from their software every year. Transforming ambiguous and incomplete English requirements into highly specific Code will become even more of a bottleneck than it is today.
Thanks, that was useful.
By the way, do you know what cd_htm.dll does or if I should try to generate a stub replacement for that?
Sen. Joe Rabbit (R-TX) introduced legislation today that would make owning a screwdriver a federal crime, punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of two years. The unlicensed manufacture or distribution of screwdrivers would be punishable by a mandatory minimum of ten years for a first offense.
"The screwdriver can be used for a wide variety of illegal acts," said Jane Doe, chief aide to Sen. Rabbit, in a press conference earlier today. "It can be used for lock-picking, for sabotaging machinery, and as a tool in reverse engineering of products. Imagine if terrorists were to use a screwdriver maliciously on a crowded airplane. This is a security risk our country cannot afford to take. Think of the children. "
The White House expressed some concerns about the possible negative impact of the legislation, but the legislation is attached as a rider to SB78692A, a spending package that enjoys substantial bipartisan support. President Gates is unlikely to veto the whole package this close to the presidential election, especially given that the race between him and Sen. Ellison has narrowed considerably in recent weeks.
The rider makes an exception for "federally licensed engineers." Doe was unclear about how such a licensing scheme would be implemented, but she made it fairly clear that licenses would not be given to home users.
"Countless tragedies have occurred when improperly trained individuals have taken it upon themselves to fix a toilet, work on a car, or other commonly bungled household repair jobs," Doe stated. "Some of these improper repairs have caused risk to children. This legislation will ensure that only certified technicians will be using these tools, and that will ensure everyone's safety. How would you feel if criminals used a screwdriver to pick your locks, break into your home, and threaten your children? We must be proactive in our fight against crime!"
Certain dissident groups, including the ACLU and the NRA, decried the legislation as yet another example of the erosion of personal freedoms in the United States. They also questioned the feasibility of enforcing this law, given that there are hundreds of millions of screwdrivers in households across the United States.
"This legislation strikes right at the very fabric of this society," said Ted Campbell, spokesman for the ACLU. "America was built on personal ingenuity and a can-do spirit. Besides, how on Earth will it be possible to enforce this?"
Doe handily dismissed such criticisms. "Enforcement will be difficult, but the Senator has a plan," she said. "In fact, the Senator is already drafting legislation that will expand police powers so that random, anonymous searches of homes for illegal tools can be conducted. "
She added that the bill has support from several major unions, including electricians' and plumbers' unions, and is lauded by many manufacturers of consumer goods.
Here's an excerpt:
To the average mainstream American, what does this look like? A bunch of hacker kids, out to disrupt orderly society, who get off on the adrenaline rush of hacking into systems. Not exactly apt to inspire sympathy in the Heartland(TM).It's also interesting to note that abcnews.com's top story this morning is a piece on resume padding, by the way.
- Firedog
My last year there was so terrible I will never be able to erase it from my memory. That's the only year of my life I can say that about. I still suffer from nightmares and flashbacks after almost a decade. I never finished college because the whole educational experience was so polluted. Fortunately, I found a good niche in the real world and I have thrived there.
I would say that if you're considering going to MIT, or if you know someone who is, advise them to go to Stanford, Harvard, or some small liberal-arts college for undergrad. Save MIT for grad school, and only then if you're sufficiently hardened against the cold, cruel world. The undergrad experience at MIT can be perfectly good (mine was for the first two years) but if you get a bad year it will hit you for a lot longer than that. It can be ruthless for a 19 or 20 year old kid.
If there's ever anything I take seriously, it's any issue concerning MIT. MIT can be a cruel place and you'd better be ready to deal with it. Personally, I think it embodies evil, but that's IMHO and YMMV. I got dealt a particularly bad hand, from day one, pretty much.
And by the way... I do have a place in the MIT gallery of hacks (see, not totally off-topic). Shame to see it's going away, but it's not a big surprise. The hack culture has been the target of a systematic elimination by several MIT adminstrations that have not had much appreciation for that culture. Money is what MIT is all about, and though hacks bring money in the long term (due to the legendary atmosphere that culture generates), it's just like politics. It hurts things in the short term. Everything is getting corporatized at the expense of everything else and MIT has been a frontrunner in that game for the last 20-30 years.
- Firedog
Items of physical "property" such as buildings, land, cars, shares in a corporation, etc. are all subject to taxes of one sort or another -- property tax, inheritance tax, sales tax.
Assume that we decide that it's OK to issue deeds and titles to ideas and concepts and call it "intellectual property". In that case, those "intellectual properties" ought to subject to the same sorts of taxes as physical properties. If you want to avoid paying taxes on your properties, physical or intellectual, you can donate them to a nonprofit organization, such as the EFF or the Trust for Public Land.
Property is subject to tax! If we're going to lend this idea of "intellectual property" any credence, why should it be immune?
And I hereby grant the "intellectual property rights" associated with this concept to a nonprofit organization to be designated later ;-)
- Firedog
Indeed, and the scary thing is that it is truly global. There is nowhere you can run to escape it. In previous eras, there were always countries doing different kinds of things; socialism, communism, monarchy, religious dictatorship, democracy, etc. But now, it's all becoming global corporatism, everywhere you go.
As democracy, in the sense of the historic liberal democracies of the west, is becoming irrelevant to the ability of global capital to make profits, whereas the rise of capitalism necessitated the freedom of a civil society, that this may not be so much longer?
Democracy, I think, is not just irrelevant -- it actively interferes with the ability of global capital to make profits. This is part of the reason why our democratic freedoms and the Constitution have been under merciless attack during the last 20 years and why they have sustained serious damage.
Corporations are feudal entities in organizational style. As a result, a society dominated by corporations becomes a feudal society. We're a good percentage of the way there already.
Could a similar workaround be done here? Imagine a scenario where the end user could do a search that would return the equivalent of URLs for various songs on people's host machines, and then do a simple cut-and-paste into a web browser or another application to actually start the download?
Firedog
Slashdot discussions on social issues are not that different from social discussions in other arenas. What is different is the language used to describe social phenomena. On Slashdot, people have usually been trained in technical areas and tend toward technical language and well-reasoned arguments. This is reflected in the tones of posts that people make here.
;-)
In this thread, I have seen viewpoints from all parts of the spectrum. In these posts, there is little here to distinguish Slashdotters from the general population, except for three things: 1) a larger number of libertarian posts than one might expect from the general population; 2) more well-reasoned, logical justifications of pre-existing viewpoints than one might expect from the general population; and 3) more unconventional, radical viewpoints than one might expect from the general population.
There is something else as well; regardless of the opinions they hold, people who go to the effort to make these posts *care*. Slashdotters seem to be quite interested in social issues, even without formal training. And as we read more and more about issues that concern us, our knowledge in social areas will expand, and eventually it will catch up to our knowledge (and expertise) in technical areas, which can't be disputed...
Inevitably, we will touch on every major social issue that we face today. Disagreements on all issues seem to reduce to one of about six basic philosophical wars that have been waged since the beginning of time. This one, for instance, largely reduces to free will vs. determinism.
I enjoy the discussion of social issues on Slashdot (although they can be infuriating sometimes) and I hope to see more in the future. The discussions I see here are much more informed, open-minded, and to-the-point than those I see in most other arenas, and I think we can cut through a lot of the bullshit when it comes to social debate. Slashdotters, it's time to grow beyond your specialties...
- Firedog
One of the central tenets of the Rational Age, arguably the peak of pre-nuclear civilization, was that scientific and technological progress superseded individual ownership of ideas and concepts. But during the "Greed Years" near the turn of the third millennium, a fundamental shift in values occurred. In a mad rush, the large corporations grabbed every piece of "intellectual property" they could get their hands on, stamping ideas, scientific advances, life forms, and even single words with their brands. Processes that had been used for hundreds of years by indigenous peoples all over the globe were suddenly the exclusive "property" of large corporations.
Initially, this shift in attitude had little effect on progress, as there was healthy competition between transnational corporations. In addition, certain semi-enlightened governments intervened in order to keep progress moving along, although this intervention was typically incompetently applied. Too little, too late, it only slowed things down.
There were subtle effects that few noticed at first. The dizzying pace of inventions slowed dramatically as more and more building blocks for new technologies became the exclusive domain of the transnationals. Smaller companies became unable to innovate due to the excessive licensing fees imposed by those who owned the tools and technologies that the innovations built on. Technology began to stagnate.
It became illegal for curious engineers and inventors to even analyze an existing technology. Consequently, more and more of society was based on technology that was not rigorously tested. Breakdowns of everything from financial markets to air traffic control systems became increasingly more common, until they were eventually accepted as a way of life.
Discouraged, young people began to turn away from science and technology even more. Fewer and fewer fresh minds were available to create new inventions, and they were poorly trained compared to previous generations due to the ever-degrading state of education. Those who did enter these fields were generally occupied with maintaining, patching, and in some cases, dismantling the technological infrastructure.
The process was insidiously cumulative; as more corporations merged into single entities, with operations on all the continents, they became too difficult for governments to handle. They continued to merge, and they formed alliances that kept a lid on all technological advances that threatened the status quo.
Of course, it could not continue forever. The planet's population was beyond its carrying capacity at the time, and the economic production of the planet was based on ever-increasing use of dwindling nonrenewable fuels. Technologies to harness the power of the sun and nuclear fusion had been suppressed by the huge oil and gas conglomerates; they owned these technologies, but sat on them.
Increasing pollution, the instabilities in cost and availability of energy, and changing climate patterns all took their toll, introducing greater social instability in turn. There was not enough time for society to retool itself to become dependent on newer energy technologies, and the greatest empire the world had ever seen began to unravel.
If the door is left open for abuse to take place, it probably will, especially if there's a quick buck to be had. It's happened before a few times, what makes you think it couldn't happen again?
And once it's done, it's done.
This claim makes no sense. The human mind does not work in a linear fashion; it is inherently nonlinear. In the process of learning, the brain has to break down linear presentations of information and convert them to native format. The nonlinear organizational structure of the Internet bypasses this need for translation, so information can be absorbed and understood much more quickly.
It is possible that the retention of facts and details (but not concepts) would be aided by doing this linear-to-nonlinear conversion (much as the process of taking notes helps retention of raw data, even if the notes are never referred to again). However, the amount of information that can be processed is greatly diminished, and the speed and reliability of its absorption is diminished by orders of magnitude.
In the context of a linear presentation, the concepts behind the information are never absorbed by the average individual, and the facts are usually irrelevant without the conceptual framework in place. Even in individuals of moderate intelligence, connections between "unrelated" disciplines are rarely synthesized. Most disciplines are very closely related. I'm sure that the studies you are mentioning do not even look at these issues, and whether the nonlinear form of information on the Internet helps people in forming these connections.
Also, the Internet itself reduces the need for retention of facts or details. Why should I bother to memorize the exact date that some event occurred or the exact spelling of a word if I can find out in ten seconds? I can spend the time investigating why that event happened or where that word came from.
I think this emphasis on linear presentation of information in our educational system is a major cause of the woes in said system, and by extension, in our society. It is, in my mind, a fairly major issue, even though it is one that most people could not even grasp as an issue. This is why I'm taking the effort to respond to this post, even though it will probably be read by about 2 people... :-)
- Firedog
I thought it was an intelligent post that brought up a very valid point. The representative system, like any system, was a product of its time, and it was subject to environmental constraints. It was the only feasible way that people from Maine, New York, Georgia, etc. could have their views represented in a Congress that would eventually meet in Washington, D.C. It served its purpose well, but it is obsolete now, and it has been for quite some time.
At the time it was created, there was no Internet, no radio, no telephone, no telegraph. These developments changed the very face of the world -- but Congress remains basically the same. And it is dangerously outmoded.
Our communities are much larger and much more diverse. People living in Boston or Baltimore have much more in common with each other than they do with people living in the rural areas near those cities. Large groups of people have no voice in Congress at all due to our "winner takes all" voting system and the ruthless gerrymandering of political districts, which favors certain minorities while necessarily excluding others. The notion of representation by "districts" and "states" is increasingly meaningless in today's connected world. I personally don't think that representation based on geography has much place anymore.
Most democracies throughout the world use a proportional-representation system. In this system, 60% of the votes win 60% of the seats in any given district and 40% of the votes win 40% of the seats. In our antiquated system, 60% of the votes win 100% of the seats and the 40% minority is completely disenfranchised. There is an organization that is trying to promote the adoption of this system in the U.S. See this site for more information.
Of course, even this system is fairly old (100-150 years IIRC). Now that we have the Internet (and for non-netizens, toll-free numbers), we could do much better, by integrating Internet-based voting with some form of proportional representation. The mechanics of this are another discussion entirely, but doing something like this would improve voter participation dramatically. Voter turnouts are at an all-time low, and getting worse. People know the system doesn't work, so they don't participate.
By the way, regarding the threat of a "tyranny of the majority" -- the judicial branch of government was established for the express purpose of checking the power of the other two branches, for this very reason. There is no reason to believe that it wouldn't be able to do so if the legislative branch were reworked.
- Firedog
I had thought about doing something like this myself for another issue. The issue in question is a root problem that I haven't seen addressed explicitly as such. The DeCSS controversy is an instance of it. Another instance is Orrin Hatch's proposed legislation (don't know what the current status of this bill is) that would make it a felony to distribute information about how to grow marijuana, among other things.
Ultimately, it comes down to a First Amendment issue. Do First Amendment instructions apply to instructions for performing a potentially (but not necessarily) illegal act?
The DeCSS source code is a set of instructions. That's all. They can be executed by a computer, or by a human being with (lots of) spare time. But ultimately, it's an algorithm for performing an action, just like making crystal meth or growing a pot plant.
I was going to write a fake press release, saying that the Supreme Court had ruled that publishing a set of instructions that could lead to an illegal act was not protected speech under the First Amendment. Haven't found the time yet.
- Firedog