Much to my dismay, Pluto has kept on as a planet, surving the most recent incarnation of controversy over it's real status. No astronomer worth his weight really thinks classifying Pluto a planet is anything more than convienient for confusable schoolchildren (i don't think that's a serious issue either i think kids could easily grasp and enjoy such a controversy). Simply stated: there are asteroids out there bigger than it. It's incredibly tiny. It has an unconventional, totally erratic orbit. It's made of ice, unlike any other planet out there, but very much like all the other crap floating around way out there, just inside (outside?) the solar system.
A very interesting point from this article is the function of advertising in creating consumer demand. I've already ranted once about how advertising can be seen as non-pareto optimal, since it wastes social resources on trying to change people's preferences for things. But I never even considered what it might mean if advertising actually suceeded in such a grand scale (not that I'm claiming it has or will- this is just a "what if"). It's true that for economics, and bundle of preferences is potentially pareto-optimal, but as social policy, it looks like the end result of all of this is that consumer demand is unknowingly for things that make them more and more miserable. When a company makes useless products, and markets them so well that everyone has to have one, that's a terrible waste of economy's potential to truly improve social policy.
On a rather hilarious note- that's exactly what Hobbes argues in Leviathan- that in the State of Nature, everyone is equally dangerous to everyone else, and no one is safe. Life is nasty brutish and short. You're just adding guns. Doing so assumes a great deal about human nature. And what is Hobbes solution to the miserable constant gun battle soceity your're suggesting? An all powerful dictator. So, thanks alot- you just fucked up democaracy. Thanks. Hope you're happy. firearms have the unique capability of being useful for self-defense. you forgot their important use in hunting today's super animals!
Re:What a joke, - individual area's rights
on
Three on Munich
·
· Score: 1
I hate to be on the side of states rights, but this is another case where I feel while there is some rationale for community standards, its RIDICULOUS that people would be considering it on a global level. The very largest level it can reasonably happen at is states, and even then... I think townships are an even better level. Even if all this goes into place, it's ripe for a Supreme Court takedown on precisely this issue (since "ratings" are inherently unconsitutional). Obviously, the Munich rationale is that censorship wont work without a rating system in place for each site. Silly indeed- there are plenty of other options. Commerical porn sites need to get liscenses in the real world, there's no reason they can't be required to on the net as well with such ratings. But there's no rationale at all for regulating non-cmmerical ANYTHING. Child porn is illegal already. I don't see a need to go father.
yes- actually that's a really insightful work. Medical health actually does have a very good chance of becoming a VERY important civic virtue in the future- and an aristocracy of medicine is a serious danger to any democratic polity. Niven was indeed quite a bright fellow.
Okay- let's put a few of the stories over the past few weeks together. We have this story, on brain regeneration and reinvigoration. We have the story you just pointed out- spinal cord regeneration. And we have successful head transplants on monkeys- the central drawback of which is that the spine is still severed. Guess what all this equals? Almost certainly increased life spans for rich people. Within 10 years, we're going to be dealing with moral questions that we never even dreamed of before. Scary and wonderful stuff....
This whole theological debate is quite similar to a long long one about Adam, the supposed original man. In many some religious depictions of Adam, you'll notice that the area where Adam's bellybutton should be was hidden by something- this was because no one could really decide whether or not Adam should have a smooth belly (since he had never had an umbilical cord or came from a woman) or a purely cosmetical bellybutton. The heart of this question was whether or not God would create something with the appearaance of a past it didn't have, just for consistency's sake. Seems to me that this scientist is going to be struggling with a similar question.
Of course you've lost something! Time- labor. For some reason people treat these as non-resources, when they are basically the foundation of all resources....
Capitalism actually doesn't have system for deterimining who gets what, orginally, unless you can consider "first come first own" a system. This is basically because property arose before government enforcement of property rights- which really makes things pretty screwed up politically. There really isn't any "just" way for anyone to have oringally come into permanent ownership of a natural resource, which the major problem with moral justifications of capitalism. But as far as software, the point isn't JUST to distribute it freely, but also to CREATE scarcity in certain areas that you cann profit off of, like service, further features, etc. So really it's not all _that_ different.
Of course you've lost something! Time- labor. For some reason people treat these as non-resources, when they are basically the foundation of all resources.... Capitalism actually doesn't have system for deterimining who gets what, orginally, unless you can consider "first come first own" a system. This is basically because property arose before government enforcement of property rights- which really makes things pretty screwed up politically. There really isn't any "just" way for anyone to have oringally come into permanent ownership of a natural resource, which the major problem with moral justifications of capitalism. But as far as software, the point isn't JUST to distribute it freely, but also to CREATE scarcity in certain areas that you cann profit off of, like service, further features, etc. So really it's not all _that_ different.
Voice rec is getting pretty damn good these days actually. I have a friend at Lucent who's working on "Daisy"- a sort of computerized secretary. And even though she's working on relavtively older tech, she's VERY good at voice rec and command lookup- bad phone lines can screw her up, but I don't imagine that would be the case in space. The real problems in voice rec aren't actual recognition, but trying to figure out confused meanings (like "read" (present) and "read" (past) being two different words). Doing this requires tons more computational power for syntax and grammar analysis, which is usually way more bulky than designers want (and terrible forfloating PDAs....) But if you use a simple, constant verbal command system, there really isn't any problem, and depending on how big you want the language lookup tables to be, you can definately get "holler when it's lunch time." Holler = verb lunch time = noun when = conditional- time- related to "lunch time" command form once speech recognition is down, creating a modular language interp isn't THAT hard. It can be VERY buggy, because it's just about impossible to program for all eventualities of creative linguistic expression, but as long as you don't read the "Jaberwocky" to the thing, it should be able to do just fine.
I didn't say "growing" inequality. I said massive inequality. Very different. Ask an economist, even a very conservative one. They do. It's not a slam against markets, it is by all rights what they should do- not all humans are equally suited to suceed in whatever enviroment is out there. But markets make sure that what is there gets used efficiently. And the way to do that is to entice the highly skilled with better lives, wages, opportunities,, etc. And don't get me wrong, this does indeed benefit everyone, overall. You can argue about whether or not it's fair, it's definately the best at producing pareto-optimality. The real question is not whether or not markets create inequality, but rather if that's good or bad in any given case, and if so what to do. A market in education has the same sort of problem that a market in politics would have- over time some people just try more- and more power too them for that- but this starts "tracking" people into power or powerlessness. In fact politics DOES have tis problem now, because in a sense there is a politics market- it's simply the amount of time and effort anyone is willing to spend on getting their legistative opinions passed. I don't have a solution- but is one vote or one voucher per person a real solution? I don't think it's worse than what we have now- and new ideas are always good, but I feel like it's still missing the issue...
Basic econ buddy. Markets are great at creating efficiency. But as any good economist (like me) will tell you, they _inherently_ create massive inequality. That may be acceptable in a normal market, but education isn't a normal market- there are too many externalities and free-rider problems. Not to mention that that inequlity will only further serve to exacerbate the inequality of opportunity in the labor market. (Anyway, the view that government has been "throwing money" at schools is absolutely ridiculous. If anything, they've been cutting back again and again. The Right has made a concerted effort to convince people that this isn't true, however.) What you shouldn't be throwing at the problem is free markets. You need to really think about how to use them, and what their effects will be, before you suggest them as a cure-all solution.
Has Microsoft ever heard of a thing called a "warrant?" There's simply no reason why any legal enforcement agency couldn't get access to M$'s key anytime they came up with probable cause and a good enough reason.
Well, what I want to know is: why Naboo? Was it simply because it was Palpatine's home planet and he was just a senator who happened to rebirth the Sith and decide to take over the galaxy? Or does Naboo have some other future strategic significance? This is certainly important if the Queen is going to play a part in the next two episodes, which hopefuly won't just be because she's "tagging along" like I expect Jar Jar will be. The senator, if he is the same as Sidious, has been a Sith for quite some time- but what exactly is his relationship with the Sith? Is he the leader? (seems so) If so, why did a new Sith lord happen to re-emerge out of Naboo?
yeah.... but just about anyone here REALLY could have helped out the script to Menance. We have to expect more from movie-makers, has it really gotten to the point where we're going to shrug off even STAR WARS as "just a movie." Lucas has to be pretty far gone to not realize what a terrible actor Jake was (he spits his lines as if off a teleprompter!) and not correct the rest of the hokey dialouge. The fact is, the man owns the franchise, but unless the plot does something tricky like Brin's evil Yoda, he's not doing anything very interesting or creative, just throwing CGI at us. No heart mon. No heart. Does he really deserved to be credited for that?
Another great moment for lousy internet journalism- they have a picture of Tori with a caption claiming she'll be touring this summer. As far as I can tell, she recently finished her last tour and isn't planning on going out again any time soon- it's Alanis this caption should be about- they messed up.
Well, live songs posted on the tour aren't under the same deal as recorded material- this deal seems to deal predominantly with LIVE stuff, so I'm assumning the deals signed by these two has to do with their live perfromances, not studio recorded ones. They didn't get out of their contracts, they just sold the rights to their live contracts.
I'll bet the emial interface still works.
on
InterNIC Redesign
·
· Score: 1
Be fair- internic.com does offer more (like free DNS services). The ironic thing is that network solutions webpage now repeatedly suggests that you register all three commercial top levels.org.net.com "to protect your bussiness from speculators" with no discount- only they themselves got sucked punched the same way by internic.com!!!
You'd think they'd offer free DNS services too
on
InterNIC Redesign
·
· Score: 1
but no- just overpriced tee-shirts Anyone else smell the dying throes of a bloated monopoly?
Slashdot Mirror
Much to my dismay, Pluto has kept on as a planet, surving the most recent incarnation of controversy over it's real status. No astronomer worth his weight really thinks classifying Pluto a planet is anything more than convienient for confusable schoolchildren (i don't think that's a serious issue either i think kids could easily grasp and enjoy such a controversy).
Simply stated: there are asteroids out there bigger than it. It's incredibly tiny. It has an unconventional, totally erratic orbit. It's made of ice, unlike any other planet out there, but very much like all the other crap floating around way out there, just inside (outside?) the solar system.
As someone wise once said: "Eathquakes are a message from God.... telling us that the tectonic plates of the earth are shifting."
A very interesting point from this article is the function of advertising in creating consumer demand. I've already ranted once about how advertising can be seen as non-pareto optimal, since it wastes social resources on trying to change people's preferences for things. But I never even considered what it might mean if advertising actually suceeded in such a grand scale (not that I'm claiming it has or will- this is just a "what if"). It's true that for economics, and bundle of preferences is potentially pareto-optimal, but as social policy, it looks like the end result of all of this is that consumer demand is unknowingly for things that make them more and more miserable. When a company makes useless products, and markets them so well that everyone has to have one, that's a terrible waste of economy's potential to truly improve social policy.
On a rather hilarious note- that's exactly what Hobbes argues in Leviathan- that in the State of Nature, everyone is equally dangerous to everyone else, and no one is safe. Life is nasty brutish and short. You're just adding guns. Doing so assumes a great deal about human nature. And what is Hobbes solution to the miserable constant gun battle soceity your're suggesting? An all powerful dictator. So, thanks alot- you just fucked up democaracy. Thanks. Hope you're happy. firearms have the unique capability of being useful for self-defense. you forgot their important use in hunting today's super animals!
I hate to be on the side of states rights, but this is another case where I feel while there is some rationale for community standards, its RIDICULOUS that people would be considering it on a global level. The very largest level it can reasonably happen at is states, and even then... I think townships are an even better level. Even if all this goes into place, it's ripe for a Supreme Court takedown on precisely this issue (since "ratings" are inherently unconsitutional). Obviously, the Munich rationale is that censorship wont work without a rating system in place for each site. Silly indeed- there are plenty of other options. Commerical porn sites need to get liscenses in the real world, there's no reason they can't be required to on the net as well with such ratings. But there's no rationale at all for regulating non-cmmerical ANYTHING. Child porn is illegal already. I don't see a need to go father.
I meant in the future silly. Although major kudos for reminding me that monkeys constitute a major socioeconomic group. heh heh.
yes- actually that's a really insightful work. Medical health actually does have a very good chance of becoming a VERY important civic virtue in the future- and an aristocracy of medicine is a serious danger to any democratic polity. Niven was indeed quite a bright fellow.
Okay- let's put a few of the stories over the past few weeks together. We have this story, on brain regeneration and reinvigoration. We have the story you just pointed out- spinal cord regeneration. And we have successful head transplants on monkeys- the central drawback of which is that the spine is still severed. Guess what all this equals? Almost certainly increased life spans for rich people. Within 10 years, we're going to be dealing with moral questions that we never even dreamed of before. Scary and wonderful stuff....
This whole theological debate is quite similar to a long long one about Adam, the supposed original man. In many some religious depictions of Adam, you'll notice that the area where Adam's bellybutton should be was hidden by something- this was because no one could really decide whether or not Adam should have a smooth belly (since he had never had an umbilical cord or came from a woman) or a purely cosmetical bellybutton. The heart of this question was whether or not God would create something with the appearaance of a past it didn't have, just for consistency's sake. Seems to me that this scientist is going to be struggling with a similar question.
Of course you've lost something! Time- labor. For some reason people treat these as non-resources, when they are basically the foundation of all resources....
Capitalism actually doesn't have system for deterimining who gets what, orginally, unless you can consider "first come first own" a system. This is basically because property arose before government enforcement of property rights- which really makes things pretty screwed up politically. There really isn't any "just" way for anyone to have oringally come into permanent ownership of a natural resource, which the major problem with moral justifications of capitalism. But as far as software, the point isn't JUST to distribute it freely, but also to CREATE scarcity in certain areas that you cann profit off of, like service, further features, etc. So really it's not all _that_ different.
Of course you've lost something! Time- labor. For some reason people treat these as non-resources, when they are basically the foundation of all resources.... Capitalism actually doesn't have system for deterimining who gets what, orginally, unless you can consider "first come first own" a system. This is basically because property arose before government enforcement of property rights- which really makes things pretty screwed up politically. There really isn't any "just" way for anyone to have oringally come into permanent ownership of a natural resource, which the major problem with moral justifications of capitalism. But as far as software, the point isn't JUST to distribute it freely, but also to CREATE scarcity in certain areas that you cann profit off of, like service, further features, etc. So really it's not all _that_ different.
Voice rec is getting pretty damn good these days actually. I have a friend at Lucent who's working on "Daisy"- a sort of computerized secretary. And even though she's working on relavtively older tech, she's VERY good at voice rec and command lookup- bad phone lines can screw her up, but I don't imagine that would be the case in space. The real problems in voice rec aren't actual recognition, but trying to figure out confused meanings (like "read" (present) and "read" (past) being two different words). Doing this requires tons more computational power for syntax and grammar analysis, which is usually way more bulky than designers want (and terrible forfloating PDAs....) But if you use a simple, constant verbal command system, there really isn't any problem, and depending on how big you want the language lookup tables to be, you can definately get "holler when it's lunch time." Holler = verb lunch time = noun when = conditional- time- related to "lunch time" command form once speech recognition is down, creating a modular language interp isn't THAT hard. It can be VERY buggy, because it's just about impossible to program for all eventualities of creative linguistic expression, but as long as you don't read the "Jaberwocky" to the thing, it should be able to do just fine.
I didn't say "growing" inequality. I said massive inequality. Very different. Ask an economist, even a very conservative one. They do. It's not a slam against markets, it is by all rights what they should do- not all humans are equally suited to suceed in whatever enviroment is out there. But markets make sure that what is there gets used efficiently. And the way to do that is to entice the highly skilled with better lives, wages, opportunities,, etc. And don't get me wrong, this does indeed benefit everyone, overall. You can argue about whether or not it's fair, it's definately the best at producing pareto-optimality. The real question is not whether or not markets create inequality, but rather if that's good or bad in any given case, and if so what to do. A market in education has the same sort of problem that a market in politics would have- over time some people just try more- and more power too them for that- but this starts "tracking" people into power or powerlessness. In fact politics DOES have tis problem now, because in a sense there is a politics market- it's simply the amount of time and effort anyone is willing to spend on getting their legistative opinions passed. I don't have a solution- but is one vote or one voucher per person a real solution? I don't think it's worse than what we have now- and new ideas are always good, but I feel like it's still missing the issue...
"Even lower middle income people are gaining"? Patently incorrect. Their real wages have fallen. Period.
Basic econ buddy. Markets are great at creating efficiency. But as any good economist (like me) will tell you, they _inherently_ create massive inequality. That may be acceptable in a normal market, but education isn't a normal market- there are too many externalities and free-rider problems. Not to mention that that inequlity will only further serve to exacerbate the inequality of opportunity in the labor market. (Anyway, the view that government has been "throwing money" at schools is absolutely ridiculous. If anything, they've been cutting back again and again. The Right has made a concerted effort to convince people that this isn't true, however.) What you shouldn't be throwing at the problem is free markets. You need to really think about how to use them, and what their effects will be, before you suggest them as a cure-all solution.
Has Microsoft ever heard of a thing called a "warrant?" There's simply no reason why any legal enforcement agency couldn't get access to M$'s key anytime they came up with probable cause and a good enough reason.
Put some clothes on and stop screwing each other- Slashdot is a family site!
Well, what I want to know is: why Naboo? Was it simply because it was Palpatine's home planet and he was just a senator who happened to rebirth the Sith and decide to take over the galaxy? Or does Naboo have some other future strategic significance? This is certainly important if the Queen is going to play a part in the next two episodes, which hopefuly won't just be because she's "tagging along" like I expect Jar Jar will be. The senator, if he is the same as Sidious, has been a Sith for quite some time- but what exactly is his relationship with the Sith? Is he the leader? (seems so) If so, why did a new Sith lord happen to re-emerge out of Naboo?
yeah.... but just about anyone here REALLY could have helped out the script to Menance. We have to expect more from movie-makers, has it really gotten to the point where we're going to shrug off even STAR WARS as "just a movie." Lucas has to be pretty far gone to not realize what a terrible actor Jake was (he spits his lines as if off a teleprompter!) and not correct the rest of the hokey dialouge. The fact is, the man owns the franchise, but unless the plot does something tricky like Brin's evil Yoda, he's not doing anything very interesting or creative, just throwing CGI at us. No heart mon. No heart. Does he really deserved to be credited for that?
Another great moment for lousy internet journalism- they have a picture of Tori with a caption claiming she'll be touring this summer. As far as I can tell, she recently finished her last tour and isn't planning on going out again any time soon- it's Alanis this caption should be about- they messed up.
Well, live songs posted on the tour aren't under the same deal as recorded material- this deal seems to deal predominantly with LIVE stuff, so I'm assumning the deals signed by these two has to do with their live perfromances, not studio recorded ones. They didn't get out of their contracts, they just sold the rights to their live contracts.
Be fair- internic.com does offer more (like free DNS services). The ironic thing is that network solutions webpage now repeatedly suggests that you register all three commercial top levels .org .net .com "to protect your bussiness from speculators" with no discount- only they themselves got sucked punched the same way by internic.com!!!
but no- just overpriced tee-shirts
Anyone else smell the dying throes of a bloated monopoly?