I have experience in construction, some computer science, and I'm majoring in computer engineering. I highly doubt that someone could learn in their spare time how to write the code and build the machine that you sat down at to write your post.
That's because you're knee-deep in the academic environment even as we speak. This environment thrives on creating artificial complexities and mysticisms surrounding subject areas in order to justify its expense and time and trappings and prestige.
Or, less charitably, you're sitting there in college, and finding it quite hard despite having tutors and classmates and books to help you, so you couldn't even imagine how someone else could master the material without all those aids.
Out in the real world, gifted programmers are split pretty evenly between the school-trained and the self-taught. Many of the brightest, most capable and widely respected never bothered to finish school.
Likewise, many celebrated physicists and mathematicians throughout history have been entirely unschooled.
Credentials are nothing (except for vendor creds like MCSE, which are substantially less than nothing). Capability is everything.
Nope - Pepsi sold off KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut a couple years ago because they figured it was hurting their ability to get into competing restaurants.
Re:Geeks and filesystems.
on
MUD Shell
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· Score: 2
Geeks seem to have an obsession with representing filesystems, memory maps, harddrive partitions and so forth as everyday objects. For eample, I recently saw someone navigating their filesystem as though it was a space system, which was extremely odd to view.
Aren't you the one who was salivating over the prospect of a 3-d interface the other day?
(I was too, but I'm not dissing it today)
One can see this motivation in Virtual Reality and simulcra, artificial life and the like. A fascination with nonreal complex system can enegender loneliness. What better way to escape this loneliness by bringing the external world, the world longed for but feared, into the internal world?
Yes, I think that most geek social maladaptivia can be directly traced to an encompassing fear of the grues and evil wizards that lie outside the safety of the computer room.
How about this: Geeks couldn't care less. Geeks are happy with the command line. It's for the benefit of everyone else that we have cute little folder icons and trash-cans and clickable buttons that look like old-tyme radios.
NYC, Chicago, and DC have draconian gun laws, which have led to increased violent crime rates.
In school they teach you about something called Cause And Effect.
NYC, Chicago, and DC enacted strict gun control laws in response to violent crime. Since then, such crime has leveled off and subsequently decreased at rates faster than the national average. DC is at a disadvantage due to its porous border with gun-trafficking state Virginia, so its decline has been slower in absolute terms (though impressive in proportional terms).
anyone been jailed yet? fraudsters i mean not hackers
Haven't you been to Adcops yet? Their Top Three list reads like a Who's Who of computer fraudsters. Entirely coincidentally, the top two perpetrators both made off with exactly 37 million dollars each. The runner-up, a close third, made off with $5000.
How the hell did these jokers get their press release picked up by CNN?
My point is, the fact that this smoking ordinance exists is completely separate from and by no means follows from the rights guaranteed by the constitution and its ammendments. In fact, in a rational world, it would be found unconstitutional as it restricts the freedom of the restaurant owners to operate their business in a way that does not infringe on anyone else's rights.
The constitution does not preclude the government from interfering with how people run their businesses - to the contrary, it rather explicitly grants the government the responsibility of regulating commerce in many situations. You need to read it sometime. This is particularly common with knee-jerk right wingers: They dream up all sorts of things that they'd fancy it might be nice for the Constitution to say, and then preach from the text in their head.
I'd gladly trade less regulation, less military, less social programs, less government == less TAX for less safety and more responsibility.
That's nice. Move to Rwanda. They have everything you're looking for.
Would you trade your remaining freedoms for a completely government controlled life?
False alternatives. What you consider freedoms I may consider trespasses.
I want the government to protect my right to clean air, my right to a walk down streets where people are not carrying deadly weapons, my right to cross the street without fear of being run over by a car.
Is this going to be a model, though, for future hardware releases? Will well-meaning hackers destroy business model after business model until nobody bothers to innovate in hardware manufacture?
The CueCat's business model is so fragile that it had no hope. You can't blame "hackers", because no matter how many people refrained from poking holes in it, there would always be more people who could do so with little or no effort.
The only party to blame here is Digital Convergence. They failed to think things through, and they made foolish assumptions (One, that 50 cents worth of "encryption" would keep them in business; Two, that anyone would want to scan ads from a magazine, only to get more ads).
What's happening here is the market discouraging idiocy. This is actually a good thing, since it reduces the amount of idiocy in the world, leaving more money and resources for cleverer things. Celebrate it.
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
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Uplifting Dolphins
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· Score: 2
So what about the case when it's a human, but with very low intelligence and very low awareness? Say, less than the average chimp. Do you think it's worse to kill them than to kill a chimp? Just to make it easier, assume they do not have any [close] living relatives, so we're not talking about the amount the killing would upset other people.
I believe most people would say "intelligence is the [main] deciding factor when considering if it is acceptable to cause an animal to suffer". But I think most of them would also say "It's wrong to kill a human, no matter how low their intelligence is".
Well, first of all, killing and inducing suffering are two very different things. Let's think of the ramifications of each:
Killing:
A being, together with its memories and experiences, ceases to exist. The continuity and lessons of these are lost.
Whatever that being had the potential to achieve, will not be acheived.
Other beings that care for this being will suffer sadness.
Other similar beings, assuming they're smart enough, will develop an aversion to you or to beings like you.
That being's genes are lost from the pool unless it has already reproduced.
Causing suffering:
A being experiences sensations that its brain tells it are damaging and should be avoided.
The being experiences the frustration of being unable to avoid those sensations.
That being and perhaps other similar beings, assuming they're smart enough, will develop an aversion to you or to beings like you.
Which of these outcomes is tolerable under various circumstances depends very much on the being in question.
If someone/something has a brain deficiency or natural lack of capacity which makes it impossible for them to experience pain, then it's not particularly horrible to poke them with sharp needles (as long as they're clean, I guess).
Most of the time, however, I think it's the other way around. Hence the tradition of humanely terminating animals that are so wounded they're in extreme pain and will never walk again.
Putting it all together, based on the ramifications itemized above, I think that as intelligence rises, killing the being becomes increasingly "more worse" than causing it to suffer. Both are bad, of course, bu they're not the same.
For me, what is much more important than liquor laws is gun laws. As it stands, I have basically struck California off of the list of places I would accept living and working in.
I'd have to agree. I don't understand why NYC and Chicago and DC can have enlightened gun laws and decreasing violent crime, while California cities are still stuck in Wild West times. Oh well. They'll grow up soon enough.
I probably feel more strongly about it than even you. One of these days I'll give up on the US for good unless they manage to mature a little in this regard. A few weeks ago, entering Singapore, the person in front of me had a large pocket knife in his luggage and the customs officer asked him whether he had a justification for carrying it. I almost started to cry with joy. If only they could manage to combine my freedom of speech and my freedom from being assaulted by an armed madman.
Secondarily, how many modern westerners (including a large proportion of geeks) have multiple partners over the course of their lives? In what way is serial monogamy a superior morality to polygamy, if all parties concerned are consenting adults?
A key difference is that in the LDS version, it's only the men who get to have multiple partners.
Also, just FYI, multiple partners (serially, not consecutively) is not particularly a Western thing.
Not just a matter of your age. Software is a global profession, considering how easily people move across continents. Here's my impression, based on personal experience and what I've heard from others.
I've worked in most of these places, and I'd just like to say that your comments are spot-on.
Also, in terms of pay, the US is far-and-away the most lucrative. At what cost? That's for you to decide, since most of the negatives are very intangible.
But nowhere in the constitution does it say you have a right to clean air!
Nowhere in the Constitution does it say you have a right not to be shot in the head by your next-door neighbor in his free time, either.
Yet we generally consider that to be a right. The Constitution sets out the limits of government behavior in certain areas. Those notwithstanding, it does not prevent localities from creating laws to ensure the general welfare.
I've said it a thousand times: If you don't want a government, go live somewhere where there isn't one, and stop taking advantage of the benefits provided by the one we have. You can't have it both ways.
I hate smoking just as much as the next non-smoker, but restaurants are NOT public places. They are private establishments whose rules should be set by the owners, not by the government.
Thankfully, that is not the case. As someone else has pointed out, there are all sorts of restrictions on how restauranteurs and shopkeepers can conduct themselves.
If you open to the general public, you are subject to regulations about who you have to let in, how you can treat them, what the safety measures are, how much you can charge, what you can sell, and so on. Without these, you'd have fire-trap stores selling spoiled food to people of certain ethnic groups for inflated prices, and so on - you would respond "no, the magic market forces will stop it" but in point of fact these things happen all the time, even with government intervention.
Stop trying to get the government into everything, people. We need _less_ government intervention into our lives, not more.
An empty assertion. So I counter with "We need more government intervention, not less."
This morning, I woke up to the smell of the neighbours in my apartment building two doors down and across the hall having a good smoke in their apartment.
Glad I'm not the only one. I wake up in the middle of the night about once a week to the smoke of my neighbors down the hall.
Also like you, I've never been to a restaurant with smoking and non-smoking sections where I couldn't smell the stuff the whole time no matter where I was sitting. But then it's just a minor annoyance, and I wouldn't particularly support banning it any more than I'd support banning people with stinky feet from going out in public.
The real problem is in bars, where it's just unavoidable. These days I rarely go to bars in the wintertime - in the summer you can go to a roof garden or sidewalk seating and it's not so bad. I really hate coming home, taking off my shirt, and having it stink up my entire apartment as if I'd washed it in tobacco ash.
Try The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker. (Great book; should be on everybody's reading list. However, I can't give you an exact page because my friend stole it.)
Pinker's critical evaluation of Koko begins in earnest on p. 337 (I've assiduously hunted down my copy whenever it's left my hands for too long).
To begin with, the apes did
not "learn American sign language." This preposterous claim is based on the myth that ASL is a crude system of pantomimes and gestures rather than a full language with comples phonology, morphology, and syntax. In fact the apes had not learned any true ASL signs. The one deaf signer on the Washoe team later made these candid remarks:
"Every time the chimp made a sign, we were supposed to write it down in the log... They were always complaining because my log didn't show enough signs. All the hearing people turned in logs with long lists of signs. They always saw more signs than I did... I watched really carefully. The chimp's hands were moving constantly. Maybe I missed something, but I don't think so. I just wasn't seeing any signs. The hearing people were logging every movement the chimp made as a sign. Every time the chimp put his finger in his mouth, they'd say 'Oh, he's making the sign for
drink,' and they'd give him some milk... When the chimp scratched itself, they'd record it as the sign for scratch... When [the chimps] want something, they'd reach. Sometimes [the trainers would] say, "Oh, amazing, look at that, it's exactly like the ASL sign for give!" It wasn't."
Now, it's also possible that this native signer was excessively picky about ASL; in high school language classes, for instance, students can understand each other saying stuff that no native speaker of the language in question would ever be able to puzzle out. But it seems more likely that what was reported is true; the apes were just being apes and the researchers were biased in favor of positive results.
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
on
Uplifting Dolphins
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· Score: 3
If any animal has worth, then they all have worth. If we're squeamish about killing any one kind of animal (a "higher-order" "intelligent" animal), then we should be squeamish about killing all animals, since intelligence is just another characteristic and not a particularly important one at that.
I'd hope that once we get things worked out with the dolphins, they display more sophisticated reasoning ability than that. Why exactly aren't dolphins more important than other animals? Because they are more intelligent, and that's nothing special. Why isn't it special? Because it just isn't. I see.
High intelligence is far rarer than almost any other animal characteristic. It represents the fruits of more evolution, and in studying it we see the reflections of more complex processes and detailed natural history than in simpler traits.
From reading your post, I can't tell whether you're the sort who would cry for days upon rubbing your hands and inadvertently killing some bacteria, or the type who would gleefully kill monkeys for fun. Both possibilities flow from your argument. In either case, I'm not impressed.
Then it is the government agency or corporation that is voluntarily choosing to use manufacturers that employ Microsoft products. In your own domain you can do whatever you want. Your employer or client cannot force you to buy Windows for your personal use.
My own personal use is of trivial interest. I buy a computer every three or four years. Likewise your shrill proclamations of successful avoidance are of little consequence
The effect of the Microsoft tax on society is measured in the millions of purchases where it is assessed, whether because of channel availability, or purchasing rules, or simple broad ignorance.
But you wouldn't be going to jail for "tax avoidance". Microsoft had nothing to do with it.
Now you're just being silly. Nobody argued that Microsoft tax compliance was enforced by the IRS.
First of all, there is absolutely no need to go all the way to Flurjnik to get computers without Windows. Have you ever heard of Penguin Computing? VA Linux?
I have purchased many fine servers from VAlinux and couldn't be happier. They do not, however, come on a moment's notice.
You current state of freedom, absent any external coercion, is a product of your previous choices. If you're stuck in a situation where you have to buy 100 computers NOW, then that odds are overwhelming that it was you that got yourself into that situation.
Sounds like you just haven't had the same sorts of jobs/clients that I have. While it may be my fault for accepting an urgent request to get a lab full of machines up by 8am the next morning, I would strongly dispute that the situation was of my creation. In any case, it doesn't matter. The situation comes up. You claimed the Microsoft tax was avoidable (and sure it is if you're just worrying about the computer in your basement), I phoned in from the real world to point out that's not always the case.
What if your situation called for 100 flatbed trucks right NOW, and the only local supplier was Ford, but that Dodge could have them ready for you in a week. Would you then be paying a Ford tax? I don't think so.
No, but the situation is not analogous. I can get computers from any number of manufacturers on a last-minute basis. They equal the set of mass-market PC manufacturers with broad retail distribution.
Quite correct. And our movies are also censored, and nobody would argue that this is not a good thing, since it protects our children from graphic portayals of sex and violence.
Are you talking about the United States? The government quite specifically does not practice prior restraint. You can show/play/say anything you want. If it was illegal based on the law (common and legislative) in place at the time, then you get in trouble for it later.
In Australia, for instance, the government looks at materials before they are published or performed, and makes a determination as to whether publication or performance will be permitted. This is censorship, and is the exact opposite of how it works in America.
Now I am quite well-travelled and have been to (amongst other places) Iran, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom, the People's Republic of China, and the Soviet Union (as was). All these places have something that America lacks, and that is respect for religious and cultural diversity. Which in practice means censorship. We cannot have it both ways. In effect by allowing freedom of speech, our constitution is denying us the right to religious freedom. If someone can denounce my God with no comeback from the state, it just creates an atmosphere of persecution.
Having lived and worked in most of the places you list, I'm not sure I can agree.
First of all, only Singapore even tries to do what you describe in your thesis (specifically forbidding statements derogatory to any religion in order to preserve the peace).
Religion-baiting is a national sport in the Netherlands and the UK, though it's practiced on an equal-opportunity basis. In Iran, Saudi Arabia, and PRC, whether your anti-religious statements earn you a plum job or a trip to the hoosegow depends entirely on which religion it is you're slinging mud at.
My rationality strains to sympathize with the Singaporean approach: On one level, I think it idiotic, since 100% of the power of anti-religious statements is created by the receiver. It only bothers you if your faith is so shallow, and your religion so uncompelling to you, that you allow it to. On the other hand, it has been very effective in keeping down the sort of clashes that occur with depressing regularity across the straits in Malaysia.
So whose system really has more respect, the US' or Singapore's? The Singapore system implies that religious people are weak and manipulable; the US system asserts that they are smart enough to take words as words and get on with their lives.
Harsh words time: if Microsoft is compelling you to do anything, it is your own damn fault. Grow a backbone and start making your own decisions. If you don't want to purchase a copy of Windows, then simply don't purchase one! Of course it won't be convenient. Freedom has never been convenient. You're going to have to excercise your shopping muscles and find one of those manufacturers that don't charge for Windows. Or build your own. So what if it's hard! Who gives a shit! My ancestors fought and died in the Revolutionary war for freedom and here you are blaming Microsoft just because you're too lazy to shop around.
Think what I might of Microsoft, King George they ain't.
Believe it or not, it's not always that easy to avoid the Microsoft tax - and in many circumstances, the principle just isn't worth the increased expense and effort.
When I need dozens of computers the same day, my only hope is to go around cleaning out all the electronics and office supply stores within a reasonable distance. I can't wait around for some dinky garage assembler in Flurjnik, Minnesota to scare up enough neighbor kids to put them together and mail them to me.
When I'm buying equipment in government or corporate situations, there are often regulations or contracts or purchasing guidelines that limit me to certain vendors. And I can promise you that any vendor who is the beneficiary of such a thing is collecting taxes for Micros~1.
If I don't pay taxes to the IRS and California Franchise Tax Board, I go to jail! On the other hand, I own a modern x86 computer that has never had any Microsoft software on it, ever. And I have absolutely no fear that Bill Gates can do anything about it.
Trust me, when I signed the paperwork granting me authorization to make major purchases on the government's tab, jail was definitely a stated consequence for failure to follow the rules.
this Canuck had the pleasure of travelling throughout the east coast of Australia last summer and was surprised at how technologically progressive their culture seemed, at least in comparison to Canada. Brisbane, Sydney, and Cairns were brimming with Internet cafes, and even convenience stores had Internet kiosks
I would contend that internet cafes are a sign of technological backwardness. They thrive in places where people do not have ready or affordable access to the internet at home. You think Australia was something, try a trip to a country like Indonesia sometime... Internet cafes on every corner. And they have a per cap GDP that couldn't satisfy my Dr. Pepper habit. In the United States and Canada, on the other hand, the internet cafes largely shut down once everyone had dirt-cheap access in their living rooms.
I have been to Australia several times
One thing I found is you are allowed to say swear words on TV.
Remember when On Golden Pond was first broadcast in prime time on US network TV? The word "bullshit" was left in - I think it was NBC, around 1983.
On the evening news they were doing a story about poorly build navy subs. They broadcast the captian of a Sub saying "None of this shit works"
Not long ago someone on Australian government radio (pleasantly streamed to my desktop) referred to the prime minister as a "dickhead".
Remember two key things:
Just because they find different things offensive, doesn't mean they're not censoring. TV in the USA shows levels of violence that would be scandalous in Europe, while many European broadcast channels show full-bore naked sausageplay in the wee hours.
Australia is not homogenous. In urban NSW and to a lesser extent in ACT, it's almost anything-goes.
So, the fact that every magazine on NSW newsstands is pornographic, that people cuss up a storm on TV, does not make the South Australia proposal any less ignorant.
I thing I found odd they get our late night shows, like David Letterman and Jay Leno. Twords were still bleeped out. Think they get those shows with those words bleeped out.
Yup, they're bleeped in post-production whenever possible so even foreign markets suffer.
In any case, it's not necessarily a technical issue. Looking at the legislation, I find it's actually not all that technically illiterate. It specifically targets content providers, and exempts ISPs (just as well, otherwise it would be illegal to be an ISP in SA - sucks to be them!). So what it's basically saying is, it's illegal to set up a porn site in South Australia. Like it's illegal to set up a brothel.
I should think that this quite directly demonstrates a complete failure to grasp the technical issues involved. Otherwise what is the point of the legislation? It doesn't protect South Australians from porn, it protects the rest of the world from South Australian porn. While I have seen enough naked South Australians that I would not take up arms to fight such a law, I fail to see how this is a legitimate objective for such controversial legislation.
As far as I can tell, the SA legislature's picture of the internet is something like this: There are 15 or 20 companies (Yahoo, MSN, etc.) that produce almost all of the content, and then a few little skanky operators, like the places that make porn videos. I think they've completely overlooked the two-way nature of the internet. Perhaps someone needs to show them just how many Geocities and Angelfire pages there are out there, pages about kittens and puppies and movies and healthcare and - whoops! We've crossed the invisible line into topics that may be objectionable to someone somewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
That's because you're knee-deep in the academic environment even as we speak. This environment thrives on creating artificial complexities and mysticisms surrounding subject areas in order to justify its expense and time and trappings and prestige.
Or, less charitably, you're sitting there in college, and finding it quite hard despite having tutors and classmates and books to help you, so you couldn't even imagine how someone else could master the material without all those aids.
Out in the real world, gifted programmers are split pretty evenly between the school-trained and the self-taught. Many of the brightest, most capable and widely respected never bothered to finish school.
Likewise, many celebrated physicists and mathematicians throughout history have been entirely unschooled.
Credentials are nothing (except for vendor creds like MCSE, which are substantially less than nothing). Capability is everything.
Nope - Pepsi sold off KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut a couple years ago because they figured it was hurting their ability to get into competing restaurants.
Aren't you the one who was salivating over the prospect of a 3-d interface the other day?
(I was too, but I'm not dissing it today)
Yes, I think that most geek social maladaptivia can be directly traced to an encompassing fear of the grues and evil wizards that lie outside the safety of the computer room.
How about this: Geeks couldn't care less. Geeks are happy with the command line. It's for the benefit of everyone else that we have cute little folder icons and trash-cans and clickable buttons that look like old-tyme radios.
In school they teach you about something called Cause And Effect.
NYC, Chicago, and DC enacted strict gun control laws in response to violent crime. Since then, such crime has leveled off and subsequently decreased at rates faster than the national average. DC is at a disadvantage due to its porous border with gun-trafficking state Virginia, so its decline has been slower in absolute terms (though impressive in proportional terms).
Haven't you been to Adcops yet? Their Top Three list reads like a Who's Who of computer fraudsters. Entirely coincidentally, the top two perpetrators both made off with exactly 37 million dollars each. The runner-up, a close third, made off with $5000.
How the hell did these jokers get their press release picked up by CNN?
The constitution does not preclude the government from interfering with how people run their businesses - to the contrary, it rather explicitly grants the government the responsibility of regulating commerce in many situations. You need to read it sometime. This is particularly common with knee-jerk right wingers: They dream up all sorts of things that they'd fancy it might be nice for the Constitution to say, and then preach from the text in their head.
That's nice. Move to Rwanda. They have everything you're looking for.
False alternatives. What you consider freedoms I may consider trespasses.
I want the government to protect my right to clean air, my right to a walk down streets where people are not carrying deadly weapons, my right to cross the street without fear of being run over by a car.
The CueCat's business model is so fragile that it had no hope. You can't blame "hackers", because no matter how many people refrained from poking holes in it, there would always be more people who could do so with little or no effort.
The only party to blame here is Digital Convergence. They failed to think things through, and they made foolish assumptions (One, that 50 cents worth of "encryption" would keep them in business; Two, that anyone would want to scan ads from a magazine, only to get more ads).
What's happening here is the market discouraging idiocy. This is actually a good thing, since it reduces the amount of idiocy in the world, leaving more money and resources for cleverer things. Celebrate it.
Well, first of all, killing and inducing suffering are two very different things. Let's think of the ramifications of each:
Killing:
Causing suffering:
Which of these outcomes is tolerable under various circumstances depends very much on the being in question.
If someone/something has a brain deficiency or natural lack of capacity which makes it impossible for them to experience pain, then it's not particularly horrible to poke them with sharp needles (as long as they're clean, I guess).
Most of the time, however, I think it's the other way around. Hence the tradition of humanely terminating animals that are so wounded they're in extreme pain and will never walk again.
Putting it all together, based on the ramifications itemized above, I think that as intelligence rises, killing the being becomes increasingly "more worse" than causing it to suffer. Both are bad, of course, bu they're not the same.
I'd have to agree. I don't understand why NYC and Chicago and DC can have enlightened gun laws and decreasing violent crime, while California cities are still stuck in Wild West times. Oh well. They'll grow up soon enough.
I probably feel more strongly about it than even you. One of these days I'll give up on the US for good unless they manage to mature a little in this regard. A few weeks ago, entering Singapore, the person in front of me had a large pocket knife in his luggage and the customs officer asked him whether he had a justification for carrying it. I almost started to cry with joy. If only they could manage to combine my freedom of speech and my freedom from being assaulted by an armed madman.
A key difference is that in the LDS version, it's only the men who get to have multiple partners.
Also, just FYI, multiple partners (serially, not consecutively) is not particularly a Western thing.
I've worked in most of these places, and I'd just like to say that your comments are spot-on.
Also, in terms of pay, the US is far-and-away the most lucrative. At what cost? That's for you to decide, since most of the negatives are very intangible.
San Francisco has no nightlife either to speak of - less and less each year, it feels like. By 2am these days it's dead as a Microsoft DNS server.
The only city in the US with nightlife approximating that found elsewhere in the world is New York.
Nowhere in the Constitution does it say you have a right not to be shot in the head by your next-door neighbor in his free time, either.
Yet we generally consider that to be a right. The Constitution sets out the limits of government behavior in certain areas. Those notwithstanding, it does not prevent localities from creating laws to ensure the general welfare.
I've said it a thousand times: If you don't want a government, go live somewhere where there isn't one, and stop taking advantage of the benefits provided by the one we have. You can't have it both ways.
Thankfully, that is not the case. As someone else has pointed out, there are all sorts of restrictions on how restauranteurs and shopkeepers can conduct themselves.
If you open to the general public, you are subject to regulations about who you have to let in, how you can treat them, what the safety measures are, how much you can charge, what you can sell, and so on. Without these, you'd have fire-trap stores selling spoiled food to people of certain ethnic groups for inflated prices, and so on - you would respond "no, the magic market forces will stop it" but in point of fact these things happen all the time, even with government intervention.
An empty assertion. So I counter with "We need more government intervention, not less."
Glad I'm not the only one. I wake up in the middle of the night about once a week to the smoke of my neighbors down the hall.
Also like you, I've never been to a restaurant with smoking and non-smoking sections where I couldn't smell the stuff the whole time no matter where I was sitting. But then it's just a minor annoyance, and I wouldn't particularly support banning it any more than I'd support banning people with stinky feet from going out in public.
The real problem is in bars, where it's just unavoidable. These days I rarely go to bars in the wintertime - in the summer you can go to a roof garden or sidewalk seating and it's not so bad. I really hate coming home, taking off my shirt, and having it stink up my entire apartment as if I'd washed it in tobacco ash.
Pinker's critical evaluation of Koko begins in earnest on p. 337 (I've assiduously hunted down my copy whenever it's left my hands for too long).
Now, it's also possible that this native signer was excessively picky about ASL; in high school language classes, for instance, students can understand each other saying stuff that no native speaker of the language in question would ever be able to puzzle out. But it seems more likely that what was reported is true; the apes were just being apes and the researchers were biased in favor of positive results.
I'd hope that once we get things worked out with the dolphins, they display more sophisticated reasoning ability than that. Why exactly aren't dolphins more important than other animals? Because they are more intelligent, and that's nothing special. Why isn't it special? Because it just isn't. I see.
High intelligence is far rarer than almost any other animal characteristic. It represents the fruits of more evolution, and in studying it we see the reflections of more complex processes and detailed natural history than in simpler traits.
From reading your post, I can't tell whether you're the sort who would cry for days upon rubbing your hands and inadvertently killing some bacteria, or the type who would gleefully kill monkeys for fun. Both possibilities flow from your argument. In either case, I'm not impressed.
My own personal use is of trivial interest. I buy a computer every three or four years. Likewise your shrill proclamations of successful avoidance are of little consequence
The effect of the Microsoft tax on society is measured in the millions of purchases where it is assessed, whether because of channel availability, or purchasing rules, or simple broad ignorance.
Now you're just being silly. Nobody argued that Microsoft tax compliance was enforced by the IRS.
I have purchased many fine servers from VAlinux and couldn't be happier. They do not, however, come on a moment's notice.
Sounds like you just haven't had the same sorts of jobs/clients that I have. While it may be my fault for accepting an urgent request to get a lab full of machines up by 8am the next morning, I would strongly dispute that the situation was of my creation. In any case, it doesn't matter. The situation comes up. You claimed the Microsoft tax was avoidable (and sure it is if you're just worrying about the computer in your basement), I phoned in from the real world to point out that's not always the case.
No, but the situation is not analogous. I can get computers from any number of manufacturers on a last-minute basis. They equal the set of mass-market PC manufacturers with broad retail distribution.
Are you talking about the United States? The government quite specifically does not practice prior restraint. You can show/play/say anything you want. If it was illegal based on the law (common and legislative) in place at the time, then you get in trouble for it later.
In Australia, for instance, the government looks at materials before they are published or performed, and makes a determination as to whether publication or performance will be permitted. This is censorship, and is the exact opposite of how it works in America.
Having lived and worked in most of the places you list, I'm not sure I can agree.
First of all, only Singapore even tries to do what you describe in your thesis (specifically forbidding statements derogatory to any religion in order to preserve the peace).
Religion-baiting is a national sport in the Netherlands and the UK, though it's practiced on an equal-opportunity basis. In Iran, Saudi Arabia, and PRC, whether your anti-religious statements earn you a plum job or a trip to the hoosegow depends entirely on which religion it is you're slinging mud at.
My rationality strains to sympathize with the Singaporean approach: On one level, I think it idiotic, since 100% of the power of anti-religious statements is created by the receiver. It only bothers you if your faith is so shallow, and your religion so uncompelling to you, that you allow it to. On the other hand, it has been very effective in keeping down the sort of clashes that occur with depressing regularity across the straits in Malaysia.
So whose system really has more respect, the US' or Singapore's? The Singapore system implies that religious people are weak and manipulable; the US system asserts that they are smart enough to take words as words and get on with their lives.
Think what I might of Microsoft, King George they ain't.
Believe it or not, it's not always that easy to avoid the Microsoft tax - and in many circumstances, the principle just isn't worth the increased expense and effort.
When I need dozens of computers the same day, my only hope is to go around cleaning out all the electronics and office supply stores within a reasonable distance. I can't wait around for some dinky garage assembler in Flurjnik, Minnesota to scare up enough neighbor kids to put them together and mail them to me.
When I'm buying equipment in government or corporate situations, there are often regulations or contracts or purchasing guidelines that limit me to certain vendors. And I can promise you that any vendor who is the beneficiary of such a thing is collecting taxes for Micros~1.
Trust me, when I signed the paperwork granting me authorization to make major purchases on the government's tab, jail was definitely a stated consequence for failure to follow the rules.
I would contend that internet cafes are a sign of technological backwardness. They thrive in places where people do not have ready or affordable access to the internet at home. You think Australia was something, try a trip to a country like Indonesia sometime... Internet cafes on every corner. And they have a per cap GDP that couldn't satisfy my Dr. Pepper habit. In the United States and Canada, on the other hand, the internet cafes largely shut down once everyone had dirt-cheap access in their living rooms.
Remember when On Golden Pond was first broadcast in prime time on US network TV? The word "bullshit" was left in - I think it was NBC, around 1983.
Not long ago someone on Australian government radio (pleasantly streamed to my desktop) referred to the prime minister as a "dickhead".
Remember two key things:
So, the fact that every magazine on NSW newsstands is pornographic, that people cuss up a storm on TV, does not make the South Australia proposal any less ignorant.
Yup, they're bleeped in post-production whenever possible so even foreign markets suffer.
I should think that this quite directly demonstrates a complete failure to grasp the technical issues involved. Otherwise what is the point of the legislation? It doesn't protect South Australians from porn, it protects the rest of the world from South Australian porn. While I have seen enough naked South Australians that I would not take up arms to fight such a law, I fail to see how this is a legitimate objective for such controversial legislation.
As far as I can tell, the SA legislature's picture of the internet is something like this: There are 15 or 20 companies (Yahoo, MSN, etc.) that produce almost all of the content, and then a few little skanky operators, like the places that make porn videos. I think they've completely overlooked the two-way nature of the internet. Perhaps someone needs to show them just how many Geocities and Angelfire pages there are out there, pages about kittens and puppies and movies and healthcare and - whoops! We've crossed the invisible line into topics that may be objectionable to someone somewhere.