Taking into account human nature does NOT relieve him of responsibility. But it SHOULD mitigate some of the trouble he's in.
How do you mitigate the fact that he went and violated the single most central tenet of the contract he signed? This is on par with trying to keep your home by saying that you didn't bother to read the mortgage before you signed it, and thus didn't really understand that you had to make monthly payments on your loan!
Like I said at the end of my post, this isn't a debate over some dubious interpretation of three words nested in sub-paragraph thirteen of section six. This is a willful and blatant violation of the very core of the agreement! Hell, even if he hadn't read anything beyond "Non Disclosure Agreement", he'd know that what he did was in violation of at least the spirit of the agreement.
I'm not arguing that he should be gutted and dried for display. I'm simply saying that there is absolutely no way he should garner sympathy because he didn't even read a contract before signing it.
I am looking at the situation in human terms. What this guy did was an obvious and blatant breach of a legally-binding contract. There is simply no way he didn't know what he was doing was wrong, save for a stunningly high level of stupidity that, frankly, is precluded by the fact that he's smart and saavy enough about filesharing (and the issues surrounding IP) to go about launching a BitTorrent seed. He's looking for sympathy he honestly doesn't deserve. I do feel sorry for the poor bastard, but it's the same kind of sorry I feel for the type of person who gets carted to the hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning after trying to tune his engine with the garage door closed.
Actually, he said he never read the NDA. Thus it wasn't knowingly.
...so he signed a legally-binding agreement without reading it? And you're defending this mind-bogglingly foolish behavior?
So it's long. Boo-fucking-hoo. If you can't handle spending a couple hours reading and comprehending a contract before signing, get a lawyer to read and comprehend it for you. Just because you may not take a contract all that seriously doesn't mean the other party shares your disinterest.
OTHERWISE, don't go signing legally binding agreements without knowing what you're getting into!
I'm not saying this relieves him of responsibility, but there's a huge fucking difference between knowingly breaking a confidentiality agreement and ignorantly (and irresponsibly) breaking one.
Not in the eyes of the law, there isn't. If you're going to sign a contract, you'd damn well better understand what you're signing--and don't be surprised when you're expected to live up to your end of the deal. Not bothering to read and understand a legally binding document is every bit as willful as understanding and violating said document--especially when the issue at hand isn't some niggling interpretation of language but an obvious and blatant violation of the core concept of the agreement.
My intended point was that I'm not so convinced this supposed cultural spread throughout the world is really happening as you are envisioning. Yes, the end of the Cold War was primarily cultural (although some like to point out the failure of the USSR in Afghanistan - there I go, bringing up military action again). But anyway, I want to simply point out that Eastern Europe and the Middle East are very culturally different. Some of the negative sentiment that the US has in the Middle East is exactly because of this cultural encroachment. The simple fact is that the entire world doesn't want to adopt US culture. Some people absolutely hate it.
Yes, this is true. There exist significant numbers of people who do not want to adopt Western values. I'd wager, though, that they wouldn't have been able to defeat the proponents of Westernization in their own homelands--their numbers, while significant, would not be great enough. Add to the mix a dedicated, non-military push to spread Western values around the globe, and they'd have trouble even maintaining their numbers.
Instead, we've given the anti-Western forces the rough equivalent of a brand-new pony on their birthday. We've become easy marks as overbearing, ruthless, uncaring, soulless killing machines. Our actions aren't nearly as reprehensible as some would have us believe, but we've made a number of very important mistakes and missteps, and we've compounded our errors by failing to take responsibility for them. We're not the evil demons our enemies make us out to be--but we're certainly giving the other side plenty of material to work with. Young, naive, impressionable minds know no boundaries. So long as we keep blundering about, killing civilians, torturing prisoners, and circumventing the rule of law in the name of expedience and counterterror, the other side is going to have easy pickings for new recruits.
The images of those people cheering in the streets, holding up their hands with the "V" sign will be burned into my memory for the rest of my life. Another possibility is that there is success in some regions, but not in others. I think this is probably one area where we will just continue to disagree (which is fine, I think we're both entitled to our opinions on something that seems to me hard to prove conclusively).
You're right, we will continue to disagree on this point. Bush does get the gist of it when he talks about democracy and freedom. There are universal values. Human beings--whether they're American, Iraqi, North Korean, Ukrainian, Japanese, Spanish, Venezuelan, Indonesian or Rwandan--have in common some basic desires. They want peace. They want justice. They cherish their values. They want happiness and comfort. They want security. They want freedom to lead their lives without fear, poverty, hunger or oppression.
Imagine, for a moment, that you're living in America in early 1945. If I were to walk up to you and tell you that within your lifetime, the Japanese would become the very model of Western civilization, engaged in active but largely amicable competition with America, you'd call me crazy. You'd say that Japan is a nation of ruthless, bizzare, ritualistic brutes. You'd say they live in paper houses, think that raw fish is high cuisine, and walk around town in bathrobes. You'd say they're absolute zealots would rather fly an explosive-laden Zero on a suicide mission into an aircraft carrier than cede one inch of their country to our troops. You'd say that there was no way that such an alien society could ever accept the ways of the Western world, and that if we did manage to win the war, the best we could hope for is keeping them isolated and militarily weak--if there was anything left of Japan, as they would probably fight us to the last man, woman and child.
Yet here we are--a mere sixty years later, Japan is the very model of a Western society. They have their problems, but in many respects, they're even more "Western" than America is. The
We were so well along the way, that people decided to hijack planes, fly them into buildings, and when the buildings collapsed, killing thousands of people, people across the world were actually seen cheering on the streets. Yup, we were just inches away...
And keep in mind, before September 11th, there was a previous attempt to topple the WTC. I believe the bombing (which I believe was under the Clinton administration) was supposed to cause one building to collapse into the other.
...and you somehow think that we'll ever end this kind of sociopathy? Hell, we could give everybody in the world a gold-plated Ferrari and a million bucks cash and you'd still have people who want nothing more than to kill and destroy. It's part of the human condition.
Human nature didn't radically change on 9/11. The biggest change was that we--the United States--discovered that we really were vulnerable to terrorism. Terrorism wasn't born on 9/11; it just felt that way for most Americans.
9/11 did make a big difference--but it's hardly a repudiation of the steady, impressive progress we'd been making ever since the days of the Cold War. We didn't win the Cold War with missiles--we won it with culture. The Berlin Wall was not torn down by NATO tanks--it was torn down by people who wanted what we had to offer. That intangible, American essence of freedom has been, and always will be, far mightier than any army we could ever field.
There are always going to be people who are willing to resort to deplorable, senseless, vicious crimes against humanity to get their way. We can minimize it, but we cannot eradicate it--and the more we're willing to use any means nessecary in trying to eradicate it, the faster the ranks of the enemy will grow.
We just can't kill 'em fast enough. This war cannot be won on the battlefield.
The best defense is, in fact, to Westernize the globe so that everyone joins the Western world.
...and to think, just a few years ago, we were so well on the way to that goal. Then, some ass decided that he didn't want to wait for the steady, inexorable force of the global market to Westernize the world. It seems that the forces of capitalism just weren't enough for his grand vision. Seems he didn't trust private enterprise to do what it does best
Noooo, he wanted change now, so we decided to go piss everybody off, kill several tens of thousands (regrettable, oh so regrettable, but hey, that's war, kids!), tie up our military in a grand neoconservative experiment, and piss away every last ounce of goodwill and "I wanna be like you guys" we'd spent several decades building.
We were so well on the way to westernizing the world. Now, we've turned ourselves into the very kind of monster we're trying to defeat. We've gone from being the world's beacon of freedom, democracy and civil rights to "oh, shut up--at least we're better than Saddam was!"
While it's all well and good to disagree with various politicians on a topic or two, people are pretending there's an outright ban on something, when it's really a "we won't pay you to do (thing) in (mode) with (condition)" situation.
Technically, no, it is not an outright ban. You won't get thrown in prison for doing it; it's not in violation of the law. You could use only non-federal funds and perform this research with impugnity.
When the federal government pays the lion's share of your lab's bills with a big grant, though, you can be damned sure that to do anything that might cost you that funding is, quite simply, professional suicide. The minute you use a single dollar of federal funds--say, some disposable plastic pipettor tips paid for by a federal grant, or five minutes' time of a lab tech whose salary is paid for by a government grant--the government can withdraw every penny of that grant. Goodbye, lab, livelihood, and years' worth of hard work.
...so, what do you do--carefully sequester your new stem-cell research and hope and pray that one of your postdocs doesn't accidentally grab a reagent from the wrong shelf, or that your first-year rotation student doesn't unknowingly save a dataset to a shared volume on a server paid for by federal funds? Hell, no. Not if you like having a lab, care about your research, and want your fifteen-odd researchers to stay productive and employed.
Does anyone else see something fundamentally wrong with that? I agree that the government should play a LIMITED role in R&D ie financing the stuff that nobody else is willing to take the risk and finance, but there is somethin fundamentally wrong with this country when the government needs to finance most of the scientific research in this country.
It depends, in part, on what you think government should do. If you think that government should play a minimal role in the advancement of society, then yes, this is wrong. If you think that government should play an active role in the advancement of society, then no, this is an excellent thing.
That said, I'd personally much rather have the government fund pure scientific research than the private sector. The private sector simply can't afford to aggressively fund overarching scientific research; instead, they fund applied scientific research. They're interested in getting something they can sell, whereas the government is interested in making more generalized advances in scientific knowledge.
These two types of science are separate, but they both rely heavily on the other. Without pure science, applied science would suffer for lack of new ideas and the breakthroughs that only come from decades and decades of careful, dedicated, uninterrupted, expensive research. Without applied science, pure science would suffer for lack of general interest in (and application of) the fruits of their labor.
Not counting altruism, there's little reason for the private sector to engage in the kinds of large-scale, high-risk, long-term research projects that typefy pure research--simply put, the risk isn't worth the return. That research still needs to happen, though, or scientific progress will slow significantly.
How do you convince a private corporation to embark on a scientific experiment that'll take four decades, cost tens of millions of dollars, and will quite likely result in inconclusive or useless results? It just doesn't make sense--and yet these types of projects are central to the advancement of scientific knowledge.
Add to all this the fact that private enterprise tends to jealously guard their discoveries--after all, how do you make money off your discoveries if you give the recipe for your secret sauce to the world for free? Top it off with a sprinkling of companies who actively supress or distort scientific research that could be detrimental to the health of their business (but invaluable to, say, the health of the public,) and you've got another reason why the government should take a keen interest in advancing scientific knowledge.
Use the appropriate tool for the task at hand. Either suffer through the course on lab computers or get your hands on an old x86 box for cheep/free/loansies. I'd bet my left shoe that trying to code ASM via emulated x86 on OS X will be ten times more painful than the ignominy of biting the bullet and working on something other than your architecture of choice.
I hate using anything other than my PowerBook these days, but I honestly can't see any good arguments for not just sucking it up and working with the most appropriate hardware for the task.
I won't say "You can mod me down if you want, but..." because I hate it when people say that.
Well, I won't say that I won't say "you can mod me down if you want, but...", because I hate it when people say that they won't say that since the only reason they say that is to say that without actually saying that they're saying that.
So you may mod me down for saying that I wouldn't say that I won't say "you can mod me down if you want, but...",
Netscape didn't make a mistake, Microsoft broke anti-trust bundling laws.
No, Microsoft broke anti-trust laws and Netscape made mistakes. Netscape let their guard down; Netscape got caught up in the rush of the Dot-Com boom--a classic case of stardom going to one's head. Netscape, the company that defined "Internet Time", took over three years to release the major upgrade from Netscape Communicator 4; it had been so long that they decided to basically skip directly from version 4 to version 6, so they could be "ahead" of the current version of IE. Add to this the fact that Netscape 6 was basically Mozilla 0.6--a far superior browser to NN4, to be sure, but still a pre-1.0 release--and you've got some idea of just how badly Netscape dropped the ball.
Yes, Microsoft bundled IE3 with Windows 95. Yes, Microsoft violated anti-trust laws. Yes, this hurt Netscape. No, this was not the biggest reason why Netscape lost the browser war. Microsoft may have landed some low blows, but Netscape spent most of the fight standing still with its arms at its sides.
Consider that Microsoft sets the default IE homepage (and search engine) to MSN. Amazingly enough, Google has been able to overcome both of these and retains a solid lead over Microsoft's own offerings--even on their own system. Why has Google been able to achieve such amazing success against Microsoft, given the bundling and default-setting power Microsoft has?
Yes, I know. Netscape didn't continue down the path that made them great--they grew complacent and tried to rely on a combination of name recognition and incremental updates to an aging product. They became the name in web browser software, they toasted their success, and they rested on their laurels. Some years later, Netscape's software became mired in poorly-planned incremental upgrades while IE became a far superior product, despite its own myriad flaws.
The fact that they were satisfied not to aggressively continue down the path that made them great--that they rested on their laurels--is one of the key reasons why Netscape lost Browser War I. They let the fact that they had over 80% of the browser market go to their heads.
Before we get too much into the IE vs. Netscape comparisons here, I want to point out one of the major differences between the Browser War and whatever Search Engine War may or may not be brewing:
IE didn't win the browser war as much as Netscape lost the browser war.
Simply put, Netscape sat on their laurels and watched as Microsoft yanked the rug out from under them. Yes, there was underhandedness involved, but at root, Netscape shoulders most of the blame for having lost the browser war.
Thus far, I don't see any indication that Google is going to repeat Netscape's mistakes. Google continues to run a service that is fast, reliable, and modern. They're aggressively broadening their service base, they've attained the pinnacle of name recognition, and they're not showing any signs of letting up.
Whatever comes, this will not be a simple rehash of Netscape vs. IE.
The Game Boy, while succesful, has always been seen as a childs toy.
No, the Game Boy has always been seen as the undisputed king of handheld gaming. If you wanted handheld gaming, you got a Game Boy; that the market for handheld gaming systems has traditionally been saturated by younger consumers is not the fault of the Game Boy.
There has yet to be a single entry that has even come close to challenging Nintendo's dominance in this arena; while the PSP may stand the best chance yet, let's not re-write history to make the Game Boy seem like something it really isn't.
The PSP with its sexy design, playstation type games and ability to play movies will appeal to the same 15 - 25 male demographic that has made the playstation so successful.
The biggest reason the 15-25 male demographic has been the "big" demographic in video games has more to do with the relatively short history of video gaming in general than anything. You're seeing so many 15-25 year-old males because they're the ones who were playing Nintendo and Sega Master System back when video games really were considered toys for little boys--and by and large the only people playing them were little boys. Now that video games are becoming more mainstream--now that they're no longer seen as the exclusive domain of small children and nerds--you're going to see a much broader market for this kind of thing. Heck, we're seeing it already.
I'm not saying that PSP isn't going to become a serious force--it may yet, I honestly don't know--all I'm saying is that you're making some erroneous assumptions. The world of video games looks radically different today than it did ten years ago, and a lot of the old assumptions really aren't valid anymore.
(On a tangent: I'm not convinced that the "playstation-style games" are going to go over as well on a handheld-sized screen. Part of the reason handheld games so often look cartoony is that it is very, very hard to do the realistic, highly-detailed game environments we've come to expect from consoles on a small screen. What looks stunning on a television often looks cluttered, nondescript and smudgy on a handheld screen...)
I'm not sure I want my bow-weilding vixens to be transforming into tractor-trailers anyway...
...but think all the double entendre fun you could have!
"Wait 'till you get inside! Cozy, yet surprisingly roomy!"
"I'm into leather. Heated seats, too..."
"It's very pleasant in the rear--I could spend all day there!"
"I enjoy sex with motor vehicles!"
The problem with the "slippery slope" argument is that the slope can run in any direction you want it to, depending on your own worst-case-scenario. It really boils down to where we each stand in the "gray area" of what should and should not be allowed. For example, would you be opposed to legislation that restricted the installation of dash-mounted TV/DVD systems? Legislation that prevents drivers from wearing headphones?
There is indeed a general law against driving recklessly, but it also makes sense to mitigate against conditions that contribute to recklessness.
I'm weird when it comes to driving. I'm a Thomas Paine kinda guy and I value my rights dearly, but when I'm on the road, I'm surrounded by people who simply don't take driving remotely as seriously as they should. The automobile is the single deadliest thing most Americans own, and we drive 'em so frequently that we become downright blasé about the risks involved. Driving is not something we should take as lightly as we do. Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death for between the ages of 3 and 35, and they're the leading cause of accidental death in all age groups.[1] I love my rights, but there is something fundamentally wrong with the fact that it is so deadly to go from point A to point B in our society. Until we come up with something better than automobiles and roads, I'm willing to sacrifice some pretty trivial personal rights to improve the quality of life across our society.
I know we can't outlaw everything. I don't think we should. I do, however, strongly believe that we simply do not approach the act of driving with the gravity and care it deserves, and that strong and vigilant regluation is the best way to make our roads safer and our lives better.
I'm saying its not worth trying if doing so restricts peoples rights.
Dude. Stop lights, speed limits, double-yellow-lines, yield signs, high-occupancy lanes, limited access roadways, roadworthiness regulations, driver licensing, vehicle licensing, one-way streets, parking regulations, no turn on red, left-turn-only lanes--these all restrict your rights!
Can you even begin to imagine driving on roads that didn't have these personal-rights-limiting things? Are you honestly incapable of seeing the value of a safety-oriented, well-regulated public right-of-way?
If we were all truly, solely responsible for your own safety, guys like you and I would end up crushed under the wheels of the sociopath who can afford to purchase and drive a sixty-ton Stryker. Illegal? Tough, kid, it was up to you to protect yourself! Personal freedom and all that!
Y'know, if your driving ability is significantly impaired--whether said impairment is caused by the flu, sleep deprivation, alcohol, drugs, a vicious migrane, whatever--then no, you really shouldn't be driving. That's when you bite the bullet, keep your car parked, and call a cab to take you home.
If significant numbers of people were getting into accidents because ill health impaired their ability to drive, wouldn't some form of regulation designed to minimize the social impact of this problem make sense?
Give me a break. no one said life is safe, any number of things can kill you just as easily. People that say this crap are also usually ones that want to ban free speech and remove other rights 'for the children.'
Oh, you give me a break. Yeah, we're all gonna die someday. Are you telling me that you really don't see any reason to act on those self-preservation instincts? You really think it's just not worth even trying to make everyday life safer? Throw up the ol' hands and take whatever comes your way? What, are you John Calvin for the new millenium or something?
...can you think of any differences between when you listen to Robert Siegel read the news and when you carry on a telephone conversation with somebody you know?
Can you think of any ways in which the former is less distracting than the latter?
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How do you mitigate the fact that he went and violated the single most central tenet of the contract he signed? This is on par with trying to keep your home by saying that you didn't bother to read the mortgage before you signed it, and thus didn't really understand that you had to make monthly payments on your loan!
Like I said at the end of my post, this isn't a debate over some dubious interpretation of three words nested in sub-paragraph thirteen of section six. This is a willful and blatant violation of the very core of the agreement! Hell, even if he hadn't read anything beyond "Non Disclosure Agreement", he'd know that what he did was in violation of at least the spirit of the agreement.
I'm not arguing that he should be gutted and dried for display. I'm simply saying that there is absolutely no way he should garner sympathy because he didn't even read a contract before signing it.
I am looking at the situation in human terms. What this guy did was an obvious and blatant breach of a legally-binding contract. There is simply no way he didn't know what he was doing was wrong, save for a stunningly high level of stupidity that, frankly, is precluded by the fact that he's smart and saavy enough about filesharing (and the issues surrounding IP) to go about launching a BitTorrent seed. He's looking for sympathy he honestly doesn't deserve. I do feel sorry for the poor bastard, but it's the same kind of sorry I feel for the type of person who gets carted to the hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning after trying to tune his engine with the garage door closed.
So it's long. Boo-fucking-hoo. If you can't handle spending a couple hours reading and comprehending a contract before signing, get a lawyer to read and comprehend it for you. Just because you may not take a contract all that seriously doesn't mean the other party shares your disinterest.
OTHERWISE, don't go signing legally binding agreements without knowing what you're getting into!
I'm not saying this relieves him of responsibility, but there's a huge fucking difference between knowingly breaking a confidentiality agreement and ignorantly (and irresponsibly) breaking one.
Not in the eyes of the law, there isn't. If you're going to sign a contract, you'd damn well better understand what you're signing--and don't be surprised when you're expected to live up to your end of the deal. Not bothering to read and understand a legally binding document is every bit as willful as understanding and violating said document--especially when the issue at hand isn't some niggling interpretation of language but an obvious and blatant violation of the core concept of the agreement.
Yes, this is true. There exist significant numbers of people who do not want to adopt Western values. I'd wager, though, that they wouldn't have been able to defeat the proponents of Westernization in their own homelands--their numbers, while significant, would not be great enough. Add to the mix a dedicated, non-military push to spread Western values around the globe, and they'd have trouble even maintaining their numbers.
Instead, we've given the anti-Western forces the rough equivalent of a brand-new pony on their birthday. We've become easy marks as overbearing, ruthless, uncaring, soulless killing machines. Our actions aren't nearly as reprehensible as some would have us believe, but we've made a number of very important mistakes and missteps, and we've compounded our errors by failing to take responsibility for them. We're not the evil demons our enemies make us out to be--but we're certainly giving the other side plenty of material to work with. Young, naive, impressionable minds know no boundaries. So long as we keep blundering about, killing civilians, torturing prisoners, and circumventing the rule of law in the name of expedience and counterterror, the other side is going to have easy pickings for new recruits.
The images of those people cheering in the streets, holding up their hands with the "V" sign will be burned into my memory for the rest of my life. Another possibility is that there is success in some regions, but not in others. I think this is probably one area where we will just continue to disagree (which is fine, I think we're both entitled to our opinions on something that seems to me hard to prove conclusively).
You're right, we will continue to disagree on this point. Bush does get the gist of it when he talks about democracy and freedom. There are universal values. Human beings--whether they're American, Iraqi, North Korean, Ukrainian, Japanese, Spanish, Venezuelan, Indonesian or Rwandan--have in common some basic desires. They want peace. They want justice. They cherish their values. They want happiness and comfort. They want security. They want freedom to lead their lives without fear, poverty, hunger or oppression.
Imagine, for a moment, that you're living in America in early 1945. If I were to walk up to you and tell you that within your lifetime, the Japanese would become the very model of Western civilization, engaged in active but largely amicable competition with America, you'd call me crazy. You'd say that Japan is a nation of ruthless, bizzare, ritualistic brutes. You'd say they live in paper houses, think that raw fish is high cuisine, and walk around town in bathrobes. You'd say they're absolute zealots would rather fly an explosive-laden Zero on a suicide mission into an aircraft carrier than cede one inch of their country to our troops. You'd say that there was no way that such an alien society could ever accept the ways of the Western world, and that if we did manage to win the war, the best we could hope for is keeping them isolated and militarily weak--if there was anything left of Japan, as they would probably fight us to the last man, woman and child.
Yet here we are--a mere sixty years later, Japan is the very model of a Western society. They have their problems, but in many respects, they're even more "Western" than America is. The
And keep in mind, before September 11th, there was a previous attempt to topple the WTC. I believe the bombing (which I believe was under the Clinton administration) was supposed to cause one building to collapse into the other.
Human nature didn't radically change on 9/11. The biggest change was that we--the United States--discovered that we really were vulnerable to terrorism. Terrorism wasn't born on 9/11; it just felt that way for most Americans.
9/11 did make a big difference--but it's hardly a repudiation of the steady, impressive progress we'd been making ever since the days of the Cold War. We didn't win the Cold War with missiles--we won it with culture. The Berlin Wall was not torn down by NATO tanks--it was torn down by people who wanted what we had to offer. That intangible, American essence of freedom has been, and always will be, far mightier than any army we could ever field.
There are always going to be people who are willing to resort to deplorable, senseless, vicious crimes against humanity to get their way. We can minimize it, but we cannot eradicate it--and the more we're willing to use any means nessecary in trying to eradicate it, the faster the ranks of the enemy will grow.
We just can't kill 'em fast enough. This war cannot be won on the battlefield.
Noooo, he wanted change now, so we decided to go piss everybody off, kill several tens of thousands (regrettable, oh so regrettable, but hey, that's war, kids!), tie up our military in a grand neoconservative experiment, and piss away every last ounce of goodwill and "I wanna be like you guys" we'd spent several decades building.
We were so well on the way to westernizing the world. Now, we've turned ourselves into the very kind of monster we're trying to defeat. We've gone from being the world's beacon of freedom, democracy and civil rights to "oh, shut up--at least we're better than Saddam was!"
Just wait. It has yet to get really bad.
Technically, no, it is not an outright ban. You won't get thrown in prison for doing it; it's not in violation of the law. You could use only non-federal funds and perform this research with impugnity.
When the federal government pays the lion's share of your lab's bills with a big grant, though, you can be damned sure that to do anything that might cost you that funding is, quite simply, professional suicide. The minute you use a single dollar of federal funds--say, some disposable plastic pipettor tips paid for by a federal grant, or five minutes' time of a lab tech whose salary is paid for by a government grant--the government can withdraw every penny of that grant. Goodbye, lab, livelihood, and years' worth of hard work.
It depends, in part, on what you think government should do. If you think that government should play a minimal role in the advancement of society, then yes, this is wrong. If you think that government should play an active role in the advancement of society, then no, this is an excellent thing.
That said, I'd personally much rather have the government fund pure scientific research than the private sector. The private sector simply can't afford to aggressively fund overarching scientific research; instead, they fund applied scientific research. They're interested in getting something they can sell, whereas the government is interested in making more generalized advances in scientific knowledge.
These two types of science are separate, but they both rely heavily on the other. Without pure science, applied science would suffer for lack of new ideas and the breakthroughs that only come from decades and decades of careful, dedicated, uninterrupted, expensive research. Without applied science, pure science would suffer for lack of general interest in (and application of) the fruits of their labor.
Not counting altruism, there's little reason for the private sector to engage in the kinds of large-scale, high-risk, long-term research projects that typefy pure research--simply put, the risk isn't worth the return. That research still needs to happen, though, or scientific progress will slow significantly.
How do you convince a private corporation to embark on a scientific experiment that'll take four decades, cost tens of millions of dollars, and will quite likely result in inconclusive or useless results? It just doesn't make sense--and yet these types of projects are central to the advancement of scientific knowledge.
Add to all this the fact that private enterprise tends to jealously guard their discoveries--after all, how do you make money off your discoveries if you give the recipe for your secret sauce to the world for free? Top it off with a sprinkling of companies who actively supress or distort scientific research that could be detrimental to the health of their business (but invaluable to, say, the health of the public,) and you've got another reason why the government should take a keen interest in advancing scientific knowledge.
I hate using anything other than my PowerBook these days, but I honestly can't see any good arguments for not just sucking it up and working with the most appropriate hardware for the task.
Not bad, Google!
Because nothing says "fiesta!" quite like third-degree burns on the roof of your mouth...
Well, I won't say that I won't say "you can mod me down if you want, but...", because I hate it when people say that they won't say that since the only reason they say that is to say that without actually saying that they're saying that.
So you may mod me down for saying that I wouldn't say that I won't say "you can mod me down if you want, but...",
But...
Yeah, I agree with the parent.
Damn you, semantics!
No, Microsoft broke anti-trust laws and Netscape made mistakes. Netscape let their guard down; Netscape got caught up in the rush of the Dot-Com boom--a classic case of stardom going to one's head. Netscape, the company that defined "Internet Time", took over three years to release the major upgrade from Netscape Communicator 4; it had been so long that they decided to basically skip directly from version 4 to version 6, so they could be "ahead" of the current version of IE. Add to this the fact that Netscape 6 was basically Mozilla 0.6--a far superior browser to NN4, to be sure, but still a pre-1.0 release--and you've got some idea of just how badly Netscape dropped the ball.
Yes, Microsoft bundled IE3 with Windows 95. Yes, Microsoft violated anti-trust laws. Yes, this hurt Netscape. No, this was not the biggest reason why Netscape lost the browser war. Microsoft may have landed some low blows, but Netscape spent most of the fight standing still with its arms at its sides.
Consider that Microsoft sets the default IE homepage (and search engine) to MSN. Amazingly enough, Google has been able to overcome both of these and retains a solid lead over Microsoft's own offerings--even on their own system. Why has Google been able to achieve such amazing success against Microsoft, given the bundling and default-setting power Microsoft has?
How 'bout "Resmearch" or "Resmirch"?
besmirch, v. To soil, discolour, as with smoke, soot, or mud; also fig. to sully, dim the lustre of.
The fact that they were satisfied not to aggressively continue down the path that made them great--that they rested on their laurels--is one of the key reasons why Netscape lost Browser War I. They let the fact that they had over 80% of the browser market go to their heads.
IE didn't win the browser war as much as Netscape lost the browser war.
Simply put, Netscape sat on their laurels and watched as Microsoft yanked the rug out from under them. Yes, there was underhandedness involved, but at root, Netscape shoulders most of the blame for having lost the browser war.
Thus far, I don't see any indication that Google is going to repeat Netscape's mistakes. Google continues to run a service that is fast, reliable, and modern. They're aggressively broadening their service base, they've attained the pinnacle of name recognition, and they're not showing any signs of letting up.
Whatever comes, this will not be a simple rehash of Netscape vs. IE.
No, the Game Boy has always been seen as the undisputed king of handheld gaming. If you wanted handheld gaming, you got a Game Boy; that the market for handheld gaming systems has traditionally been saturated by younger consumers is not the fault of the Game Boy.
There has yet to be a single entry that has even come close to challenging Nintendo's dominance in this arena; while the PSP may stand the best chance yet, let's not re-write history to make the Game Boy seem like something it really isn't.
The PSP with its sexy design, playstation type games and ability to play movies will appeal to the same 15 - 25 male demographic that has made the playstation so successful.
The biggest reason the 15-25 male demographic has been the "big" demographic in video games has more to do with the relatively short history of video gaming in general than anything. You're seeing so many 15-25 year-old males because they're the ones who were playing Nintendo and Sega Master System back when video games really were considered toys for little boys--and by and large the only people playing them were little boys. Now that video games are becoming more mainstream--now that they're no longer seen as the exclusive domain of small children and nerds--you're going to see a much broader market for this kind of thing. Heck, we're seeing it already.
I'm not saying that PSP isn't going to become a serious force--it may yet, I honestly don't know--all I'm saying is that you're making some erroneous assumptions. The world of video games looks radically different today than it did ten years ago, and a lot of the old assumptions really aren't valid anymore.
(On a tangent: I'm not convinced that the "playstation-style games" are going to go over as well on a handheld-sized screen. Part of the reason handheld games so often look cartoony is that it is very, very hard to do the realistic, highly-detailed game environments we've come to expect from consoles on a small screen. What looks stunning on a television often looks cluttered, nondescript and smudgy on a handheld screen...)
And it was good.
Then, root created 1.
And that, too, was good.
Then, root created assembly.
And that totally rocked.
Then root created HCF.
And it was very, very bad.
"Wait 'till you get inside! Cozy, yet surprisingly roomy!"
"I'm into leather. Heated seats, too..."
"It's very pleasant in the rear--I could spend all day there!"
"I enjoy sex with motor vehicles!"
(uh--scratch that last one.)
Unless it can transform from a tractor-trailer into a bow-wielding vixen, I'm not interested.
There is indeed a general law against driving recklessly, but it also makes sense to mitigate against conditions that contribute to recklessness.
I'm weird when it comes to driving. I'm a Thomas Paine kinda guy and I value my rights dearly, but when I'm on the road, I'm surrounded by people who simply don't take driving remotely as seriously as they should. The automobile is the single deadliest thing most Americans own, and we drive 'em so frequently that we become downright blasé about the risks involved. Driving is not something we should take as lightly as we do. Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death for between the ages of 3 and 35, and they're the leading cause of accidental death in all age groups.[1] I love my rights, but there is something fundamentally wrong with the fact that it is so deadly to go from point A to point B in our society. Until we come up with something better than automobiles and roads, I'm willing to sacrifice some pretty trivial personal rights to improve the quality of life across our society.
I know we can't outlaw everything. I don't think we should. I do, however, strongly believe that we simply do not approach the act of driving with the gravity and care it deserves, and that strong and vigilant regluation is the best way to make our roads safer and our lives better.
[1] source
Dude. Stop lights, speed limits, double-yellow-lines, yield signs, high-occupancy lanes, limited access roadways, roadworthiness regulations, driver licensing, vehicle licensing, one-way streets, parking regulations, no turn on red, left-turn-only lanes--these all restrict your rights!
Can you even begin to imagine driving on roads that didn't have these personal-rights-limiting things? Are you honestly incapable of seeing the value of a safety-oriented, well-regulated public right-of-way?
If we were all truly, solely responsible for your own safety, guys like you and I would end up crushed under the wheels of the sociopath who can afford to purchase and drive a sixty-ton Stryker. Illegal? Tough, kid, it was up to you to protect yourself! Personal freedom and all that!
If significant numbers of people were getting into accidents because ill health impaired their ability to drive, wouldn't some form of regulation designed to minimize the social impact of this problem make sense?
Oh, you give me a break. Yeah, we're all gonna die someday. Are you telling me that you really don't see any reason to act on those self-preservation instincts? You really think it's just not worth even trying to make everyday life safer? Throw up the ol' hands and take whatever comes your way? What, are you John Calvin for the new millenium or something?
Can you think of any ways in which the former is less distracting than the latter?