... are often legal. The technology will evolve because there are market incentives (not to mention curious and innovative actors). All legal actors, in contrast, will oppose this evolution because it operates against predictability. What point is evolving technology if the typical beneficial uses are undermined legally?
See (in no particular order) the disputes over: RIAA, MPAA, GPL, Copyright, Patents, Trademarks, Domain names, etc. I would argue that the most beneficial contribution to the world wide web would be researching, educating, and giving effect to laws that promote internet technology, as opposed to undermine it.
What you are missing is the fact of outbreeding depression.
Indeed, I've never heard of it.
Outbreeding depression is actually worse than inbreeding depression.
I'm skeptical that there is evidence of that. There are three problems of outbreeding. I believe they are minor, and significantly unlikely, in comparison to the problems of inbreeding.
One problem of outbreeding is where you have a depressed polygenic inheritance (i.e. one tall parent, one short parent, where a middle-height child is less advantageous). I am not aware of, and find it hard to imagine, traits arising from polygenic inheritance that are inferior to both of the parents.
Another problem of outbreeding is combinations of inferior genes (especially if one of the genes is dominant). In particular, if one parent has a gene for disease A, another for disease B, then a child could have both A and B. However, the same goes for disease immunity.
The final problem I can speculate of is that dominant traits will ultimately propagate faster through outbreeding. Thus, a disease arising from dominant genetic traits will be less likely to propagate in isolated environments (unless the disease otherwise reduces the probability of having progeny).
Genetic diversity is increased by progeny from interracial couples (by definition). The studies I have read indicate that interracial couples have been shown to be more likely to have healthier babies, with stronger immune systems, do better in school, and are more likely to find wealthy partners. It's called heterozygote advantage for a reason.
There is plenty of evidence of the dire consequences of inbreeding. Inbreeding leads to genetic uniformity, and in particular susceptibility to disease. I understand Cheetahs nearly became extinct from one disease because they were so genetically similar.
The effects of inbreeding depression also almost entirely disappear after a population size larger than 500, so much so that they are not statistically relevant.
I'm confident that's not factually correct. Do you have any evidence to support your opinion? I am keenly aware of an isolated population of twenty thousand people where inbreeding over the past 300 years is prevalent to the point where pharmaceutical companies have set up labs to study the effects of drugs on genetic diseases endemic to the area. These diseases would not exist if there was adequate genetic diversity.
I already talked about this in a previous post.
That's not a very useful statement without a link.:)
You seem to be defending your position quite rigorously. I find that if, having posted a position, it is good to see what the response is. If people defend my position on my behalf, it was probably correct. If they don't, perhaps I ought to re-think it.
I think that's an overly strong and biased statement. A more balanced statement, and much better supported, if I may, might be that we have evolved to pick out breeding partners with whom we expect to have have healthy, fat babies that lead long productive lives (so to speak).
I am aware of strongly accepted studies that show that with a genealogy of inbreeding, people are more likely to be attracted to people of different descent (especially women). This leads to stronger, healthier babies, whom are less likely to suffer the genetic "defects" that arise from inbreeding.
It has also been shown in a strongly supported study (which I just read in the Economist) that disease and religion (as a form of isolationism) statistically correlate. A corollary is that peoples' likelihood of rejecting outsiders (outsiders being readily identifiable by a visible traits inherent to a race) is proportional to the disease they perceive themselves to be suffering. CNN just reported that 95% of the churches in the United States are racially segregated.
So I don't think that there is any innate attraction to the same-race. I'm personally aware of an abundance of evidence to the contrary, but that's not statistically significant. However, there are strong evolutionary factors that encourage inter-racial breeding. There are also strong factors that encourage racism, which are not innate, but environmental (e.g. disease).
I can chime in with some potentially illuminating facts.
I'm a member of the ABA, which is a voluntary organization. As a lawyer you are not obliged to join the ABA, and many do not. The ABA serves several roles, including networking, education, policy reform, organization, and lobbying. One of the ABA's most influential roles is "approving" law schools, which has resulted in an interesting split between ABA approved and all other law schools. If you go to an ABA approved law school, there is a presumption that it meets certain standards in terms of quality.
However, the ABA has no power to prevent people from becoming lawyers. That is typically set by the state government. For example, the appellate court in New York administers the bar examinations and sets standards for it. You need not have attended an ABA approved law school to write the NY bar (though some states do mandate this). In fact, one of the most famous jurists in American History, Benjamin Cardozo, never graduated from law school (though this was over a hundred years ago, he had in fact attended Columbia law school for two years, and he was clearly brilliant).
All to say, the ABA has never set a mandatory standard for me, and has no direct power to enforce any standard they feel fit over me. They do, however, have some lobbying powers. However, as a member of the ABA I have the right (indeed, the duty in some cases) to participate in the discussion of the policies the ABA promotes. Mostly, I regard the ABA as a community of lawyers - academics, practitioners, judges and professors - who have different perspectives on the set of problems that the world of dispute resolution faces. I think bringing them together is quite valuable.
All that being said, in the IT domain, having an organization that mandates the use of antiquated technology would be a bad thing. However, I don't think that's what a collective IT organization would be- by its very nature technology is innovative, and any community organization would be founded and populated by people who recognize that. It's if the organization started branching out into useless (or histrionic, or backwards) endeavours and imposes consequences on members without accountability to its members that it becomes problematic.
Incidentally... On the topic of Unions, it's worthwhile to note that Americans have a type of unionization called Wagnerism (named after the famous Nazi who suggested it, who also incidentally wrote the wedding song). The evils of this style of unionization are well known, though it does have many benefits. The benefits of Wagner unions tend to affect many people beyond those unionized- in fact, it's been studied and (I confidently believe) shown that even if a mere fraction of the workforce in a particular industry (with sufficient mobility of labour and competition) unionizes, then virtually everyone gets the same or equivalent benefits (however only the unionized folks have to pay union dues and put up with the adversarial nature of Wagnerism). There are other forms of unionization, many superior in essentially every way, in my humble opinion. I think unionization is not the problem - it's what unionization in America sometimes means that gives rise to the bad reputation. Plus, big companies have paid an enormous amount of money to give the general population the perception that unions are a bad thing. As a general rule, based on my experience in labour law and conversations with colleagues who are practitioners in the field, your life will be better if you are employed in an industry that has some unionization.
Incidentally, assault and battery are traditionally (and even moreso nowadays) different creatures. I vaguely recall that the old common law versions of the crimes are as follows:
Assault: The reasonable apprehension of harm.
Battery: Non-consensual touching.
Hence, in the old criminal sense, you can assault someone without touching them (i.e. swinging a bat at them), and you can batter them without them being afraid of harm (i.e. a doctor touching an unconscious patient).
Of course, that bears virtually no relation to what those words mean in modern terms.
Random trivia: I've been told by a professor of law and classicist that "null" and "void" mean the same thing (in a legal sense), but are simply different languages. Putting them together is repetitive and unnecessary, although strangely customary.
Basically (and I'm taking off my anarchist hat for a minute), workers rights do require regulation in a capitalist economy, otherwise they get screwed.
I think that's an overly broad statement, but not necessarily wrong. I think that in an industry where there was a lot of healthy competition and the supply of labour is limited, workers have strong bargaining rights. In a monopolistic or oligarchial industry where most of the jobs are with megacorporations and the labour is fungible, the rights of labour will gravitate towards minimum rights.
As well, ultimately people will gravitate to jobs where they have better rights, provided that the transition cost from one industry to another isn't prohibitive. The problem there is that too much regulation results in prohibitive transition costs (i.e. superfluous training and testing required to becoming a pharmacist, doctor, engineer, lawyer, police officer etc... which barriers are, in my humble opinion, as speciously supported as the TSA's "security" checks--- not to say that we should have untrained doctors et al., but merely that the barrier to entry is artificially and prohibitively high).
Trans-industry freedom of labour, in combination with cross-border mobility of labour are fundamental to giving labour bargaining rights. I think that this over-regulation and monopolise constitute the biggest reason that labour has lost its negotiation power. It all comes down to the fundamentals of negotiation: What is labour's best alternative to a negotiated agreement with their current employer?
Labour rights regulation can set minimum standards which are keystones to basic levels of pay (but how's that working out? does it keep a strong and healthy middle class?), but they generally don't give employees better alternatives to staying with their current employers, and therefore don't increase the bargaining power of employees. Without the option to leave, what options do you really have?
Ultimately, there ought to be some law requiring that companies that claim to support a particular spec or standard actually fulfill that obligation or at least have a good faith effort to implement it.
I find it impossible to believe that the government is capable of keeping conspiracies secret. They couldn't keep 5 guys breaking into the DNC office a secret (Watergate), but somehow they can orchestrate an elaborate conspiracy involving thousands of people over the course of 6 decades and not a single shred of credible evidence has been leaked. I'm sorry but deathbed confessions don't count.
The voice of evil itself speaks of its means to such ends:
"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed to tell big lies."
- Hitler
To wit, your argument - the lack of evidence - mirrors what was said about the Nazi death camps prior to the end of World War 2. People denied it, vehemently and utterly, until not just evidence but overwhelming evidence contradicted them. Even today, people deny that millions were killed in the holocaust.
People believe what they want to believe, and people don't want to believe things that threaten their assumptions about the world.
I recognize your argument, and it's a valid one, but I, for one, believe alien visitors could be concealed by governments.
Software patents that already exist are unlikely to be invalidated (though it's not impossible). Any law undermining existing rights probably amounts to an appropriation of property, and companies affected could appeal to the 14th Amendment for (potentially enormous) compensation. If the patents were annulled (i.e. said to have never rightfully existed in the first place). Who's to say, though. At least the momentum seems to be swinging away from the ridiculous.
Congress is attempting to strip US District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of his power following his ruling against the government regarding immunity for telecoms in the NSA wiretapping case. Walker
It is misleading to say that he ruled against the government. He represents a branch of the government, an independent judiciary, and he made a decision contrary to that of other branches of government. He has lived up to his role (nigh duty) and provided the checks and balances that keep the government as a whole in check.
Overselling bandwidth is necessary, its called statistical multiplexing.
Capping transfer per month at ridiculously low levels is not necessary though, they get plenty of money to pay for what people use, and lets face it, this is a quasi-socialist ISP environment, people who barely use their connections are paying for those who use the connection all the time.
Might not be fair, but the ISPs have nothing to complain about, they have been taking peoples money without having to provide much in return to most of them for a long, long time.
FYI, the bandwidth Bell is traffic shaping, which this case arises out of, is (1) not Bell customers (Bell simply provides the last-leg of the DSL connection - the DSLAM, I believe) and (2) not using Bell's backbone internet connection.
The traffic is from, for example, Teksavvy (ISP) customers to the Teksavvy backbone. Bell is just an intermediary.
Wealth disparity, drug criminalization, religious and racial diversity, and socialized drug addiction management are all strongly correlative with violence, while gun control laws are not. I still am suggestible to the idea that easily accessible guns do contribute to more violent crime (which intuitively makes sense, since it's harder to cudgel someone to death than to pull a trigger).
I also believe gun control laws, like drug prohibitions, contraindicate. I may not have stated that, but I don't think I've stated any other belief.
However, I believe the other factors you've mentioned are key (if not moreso) to predicting violence. It sounds like you've given it a lot of thought, so I defer to you on that.
I expect that gun violence (and the fear of gun violence) reinforces this segregation. What reinforced racial and class segregation is the huge difference in income between them. Both groups have similar rates of gun ownership. I really wish you'd stop using terms like "gun violence". It reinforces the logical misstatement I mentioned before. I used the term gun violence pointedly because I was attempting to portray the sensationalism that leads to increased class segregation- the perception of violence and expectation of vulnerability by the rich to the poor. Notably, I think gun violence on television in particular generates fear, and in particular class, geographic, and racial fear, which reinforces insularity. I do think people fear guns more than axes (for example), because guns are much more efficient for killing than axes- I think the power of guns to kill instantly and without effort make us feel helpless, or at least defenceless. That's just my take, though.
Your point on Sweden is misleading because Swedes have compulsory military service, and their firearms are rifles with a small clip and the guns are difficult to conceal. Further, citizens undergo regular training throughout their life on firearm use.
In particular, the USA has over 11,000 firearm homicides a year, compared to (for example) Canada's 184. That's 44 firearm deaths per million citizens in the USA per year, compared to 6.1 per million in Canada. Statistically, the USA is economically superior to Canada in virtually every way, including the distribution of wealth (as measured by per capita income).
However, I think those statistics may fail to reveal something sinister. There seems to be a racial or class segregation in the USA, and the per capita income fails to illuminate the number of people who are essentially destitute in the USA. I expect that gun violence (and the fear of gun violence) reinforces this segregation.
I do not feel I have an adequate explanation of the aberrant level of gun violence in the USA. I feel you are correct that the violence is in no small part due to the disparity in wealth. However, it seems clear (from the Harvard article, the Brady statistics, if not common sense) that the abundance of easily accessible guns significantly contributes to the amount of violent crime.
What you can *do* about those hundreds of millions of guns, now that they've polluted the country, is another issue.
Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 22 times more likely to kill a family member or friend than to kill an assailant in self-defense. (Kellerman, Journal of Trauma, 1998)
That reference is a bit misleading, because it says how many assailants are killed while defending your home with your gun; it doesn't say how many people are deterred during an attempt by a person in the house using a gun (if it's not used, need it actually be a gun, or just the threat of a gun?), or how many personal assaults are stopped outside the home.
However, I recall the likelihood of killing a family member or friend being 9 times as likely as killing a perpetrator or an assailant while outside the home, but I'm sorry I cannot find the cite. I've an inkling that it was the Economist, and from the early 2000's, so you may need a subscription to dig it up.
That's informative (taken at face value, it seems well founded); thank you. I'm in no way an expert, but I grew up in a gun-free society, where violent crime was more-or-less non-existant (domestic violence notwithstanding). It was also a universally poor society, so the wealth disparity was also absent.
Your emphasis on wealth disparity is insightful, and probably correct (or at least strongly correlates). It's interesting that gun advocates don't emphasize that point more.
I do not believe gun laws reduce violent gun crime. I believe reducing the number of guns does. Therefore the gun violence in DC is explained by the easy access to guns nearby. Perhaps the heightened violence is a reaction to the excess punishment when you have a gun? Or perhaps a bit of a prisoner's dilemma: presuming others don't have guns, perpetrators can take advantage.
I am convinced that a society without prevalent access to guns is less likely to have violent crime (based on principle: When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail). I'm not sure I can be convinced otherwise, but I welcome those to try.
Frankly, it may be noted, I think guns are cool. Just incredibly dangerous, with little benefit.
- Nine times out of ten, the gun that kills you is your own or belongs to someone you know.
- Nine times out of ten, the gun that kills your children and spouse is your own or belongs to someone you know.
Analysis - Owning a gun is not a preventative measure for the vast majority of gun deaths. In fact, owning a gun is magnitudes more likely to cause a fatality than random gun violence, and discouraging your acquaintances from owning a gun is in fact your best protection. For that relative rarity when it's a stranger's gun, maybe that person wouldn't have had a gun if there were sensible gun laws or attitudes. If America could reduce it's gun violence to random violence, it would be a reduction of 90%, and it would be doing very well. Owning a gun is not, nor has it ever been, shown to be a useful defensive mechanism. In my humble but correct opinion, the best defense against gun violence is living in a society that abhors gun ownership.
The consequence is obvious, and statistically correlates:
- You are four to ten times as likely to die of a gun-inflicted injury in the United States than other Western countries.
- Gun violence is one of the top ten reasons for death in the United States.
I believe that the rampant gun violence in the United States promulgates a society of fear, insularity and obstinate entitlement. It is wholly evil and backwards.
Further, gun ownership does nothing to prevent tyranny. It's the ability to coalesce en mass, and revolt as a general populace that controls governments' tendency towards totalitarianism. The prevalent gun ownership has clearly done nothing to deter the Bush administration's onslaught on freedom and rights. Gun ownership to protect freedom is a sexy idea, but utterly specious.
So what to do? Effectively removing guns from the streets ought to be a carrot-and-stick approach. The punishment for having a gun during a crime should be higher than without (but not so high that the perpetrator would choose to fight-to-the-death), but there should be an amnesty to turn guns and maybe even a minor reward for it.
I think what SCOTUS has done has been an assault on State sovereignty, as they have undermined the ability of States to self-govern. I believe they have misconstrued the Constitution of the United States, to the detriment of the ability of states to control peace and security, and to the benefit of gun manufacturers and their lobbyists.
Incidentally, for competitors in the DSL consumer service, Bell often offers the 'last leg' of DSL connections, but doesn't actually provide the backbone bandwidth. They nevertheless are throttling customers of competitors for bandwidth that Bell isn't even paying for.
A lot of people seem confused or misinformed about the history of Microsoft. I believe that Microsoft is a monopoly because they made a deal with IBM whereby when IBM sold a PC, Microsoft received royalties for MS-DOS. This contract, I hear, was an invention of Bill Gates Sr., a lawyer. The royalties were paid regardless of whether MS-DOS was actually on the machine, thus IBM could not sensibly sell PC's with alternative operating systems (i.e. PC-DOS, etc.).
Thereafter they wielded this contractual monopoly over PC operating systems skillfully, a shining contrast when compared to their essentially bland programming output, and were responsible for a variety of anti-competitive practices over the years. I lament not having documented my observations of these practices, but embrace, extend, extinguish has been honed on many, many occasions from more brutal and subversive tactics such as looking for and intentionally breaking other companies' software (viz. Corel).
Make no mistake, Microsoft's business strategies have been diligently locking in customers through proprietary formats and libraries, as diligently as they have been snuffing out any actual competition with the same. Their contributions to research, development, and technology are essentially non-existent, and virtually unheard of when compared to their revenue.
They are not a development shop; I recall some absurd (but probably accurate) statistic that the cost to the economy due to lost productivity from things such as blue screens of death and the untenable Word interface amounting to the same cost as the September 11th, 2001 World Trade Center attacks, every hour. (This is not to mention the lost productivity to Solitaire) That's a false dichotomy, since who's to say that perfect (or at least working) software would result in ideal output, and it's much the same as saying the millions of songs downloaded each year amounts to trillions in lost revenue to the record companies. Nevertheless, I know that I prefer to waste my time on Slashdot, as opposed to rebooting my machine, or restarting a mangled list in a Word document.
Try getting caught speeding over and over, and sooner or later your license will be suspended. It may take a few more than 3 tries depending on how serious your speeding offense is. Doing 100 MPH in a 25 MPH zone three times would probably do it.
Oscar Madison: The wick is almost out, Felix. All I want is for the candle to glow one last time rather than curse the darkness. Felix Ungar: It's not going out, Oscar, not yours and not mine. But I still have hope that somewhere out there we'll find the right lamplighter. Oscar Madison: You know, we just used so many metaphors I forgot what the hell we were talking about.
What the RIAA lawyers are doing is often referred to as a collateral attack - the attempt to undermine one Court's unfavourable ruling by seeking out a different ruling in another court. It is also related to the concept of litigation by installments. It is generally accepted that fundamental principles of justice (fairness, expediency, access to justice, finality, and certainty) are undermined by collateral attacks. The Court committing the collateral attack is often estopped (by collateral estoppel) from making a judgment which would undermine another Court's ruling. One example of this principle exists in mainstream media as "double jeopardy". In the practice of law, this is quite a common issue; for example, when a unionized individual brings a collective agreement grievance to labour arbitration they are often then precluded from seeking out a remedy at Court.
A collateral attack is not the same as an appeal. Appeals are to "higher" Courts that typically only have a limited scope to review the decision of a lower Court.
Of course, you ought to seek out proper legal advice in your jurisdiction to see how these rules would apply and in particular apply to the facts of your situation.
Slashdot Mirror
... are often legal. The technology will evolve because there are market incentives (not to mention curious and innovative actors). All legal actors, in contrast, will oppose this evolution because it operates against predictability. What point is evolving technology if the typical beneficial uses are undermined legally?
See (in no particular order) the disputes over: RIAA, MPAA, GPL, Copyright, Patents, Trademarks, Domain names, etc. I would argue that the most beneficial contribution to the world wide web would be researching, educating, and giving effect to laws that promote internet technology, as opposed to undermine it.
What you are missing is the fact of outbreeding depression.
Indeed, I've never heard of it.
Outbreeding depression is actually worse than inbreeding depression.
I'm skeptical that there is evidence of that. There are three problems of outbreeding. I believe they are minor, and significantly unlikely, in comparison to the problems of inbreeding.
One problem of outbreeding is where you have a depressed polygenic inheritance (i.e. one tall parent, one short parent, where a middle-height child is less advantageous). I am not aware of, and find it hard to imagine, traits arising from polygenic inheritance that are inferior to both of the parents.
Another problem of outbreeding is combinations of inferior genes (especially if one of the genes is dominant). In particular, if one parent has a gene for disease A, another for disease B, then a child could have both A and B. However, the same goes for disease immunity.
The final problem I can speculate of is that dominant traits will ultimately propagate faster through outbreeding. Thus, a disease arising from dominant genetic traits will be less likely to propagate in isolated environments (unless the disease otherwise reduces the probability of having progeny).
Genetic diversity is increased by progeny from interracial couples (by definition). The studies I have read indicate that interracial couples have been shown to be more likely to have healthier babies, with stronger immune systems, do better in school, and are more likely to find wealthy partners. It's called heterozygote advantage for a reason.
There is plenty of evidence of the dire consequences of inbreeding. Inbreeding leads to genetic uniformity, and in particular susceptibility to disease. I understand Cheetahs nearly became extinct from one disease because they were so genetically similar.
The effects of inbreeding depression also almost entirely disappear after a population size larger than 500, so much so that they are not statistically relevant.
I'm confident that's not factually correct. Do you have any evidence to support your opinion? I am keenly aware of an isolated population of twenty thousand people where inbreeding over the past 300 years is prevalent to the point where pharmaceutical companies have set up labs to study the effects of drugs on genetic diseases endemic to the area. These diseases would not exist if there was adequate genetic diversity.
I already talked about this in a previous post.
That's not a very useful statement without a link. :)
You seem to be defending your position quite rigorously. I find that if, having posted a position, it is good to see what the response is. If people defend my position on my behalf, it was probably correct. If they don't, perhaps I ought to re-think it.
I think that's an overly strong and biased statement. A more balanced statement, and much better supported, if I may, might be that we have evolved to pick out breeding partners with whom we expect to have have healthy, fat babies that lead long productive lives (so to speak).
I am aware of strongly accepted studies that show that with a genealogy of inbreeding, people are more likely to be attracted to people of different descent (especially women). This leads to stronger, healthier babies, whom are less likely to suffer the genetic "defects" that arise from inbreeding.
It has also been shown in a strongly supported study (which I just read in the Economist) that disease and religion (as a form of isolationism) statistically correlate. A corollary is that peoples' likelihood of rejecting outsiders (outsiders being readily identifiable by a visible traits inherent to a race) is proportional to the disease they perceive themselves to be suffering. CNN just reported that 95% of the churches in the United States are racially segregated.
So I don't think that there is any innate attraction to the same-race. I'm personally aware of an abundance of evidence to the contrary, but that's not statistically significant. However, there are strong evolutionary factors that encourage inter-racial breeding. There are also strong factors that encourage racism, which are not innate, but environmental (e.g. disease).
I can chime in with some potentially illuminating facts.
I'm a member of the ABA, which is a voluntary organization. As a lawyer you are not obliged to join the ABA, and many do not. The ABA serves several roles, including networking, education, policy reform, organization, and lobbying. One of the ABA's most influential roles is "approving" law schools, which has resulted in an interesting split between ABA approved and all other law schools. If you go to an ABA approved law school, there is a presumption that it meets certain standards in terms of quality.
However, the ABA has no power to prevent people from becoming lawyers. That is typically set by the state government. For example, the appellate court in New York administers the bar examinations and sets standards for it. You need not have attended an ABA approved law school to write the NY bar (though some states do mandate this). In fact, one of the most famous jurists in American History, Benjamin Cardozo, never graduated from law school (though this was over a hundred years ago, he had in fact attended Columbia law school for two years, and he was clearly brilliant).
All to say, the ABA has never set a mandatory standard for me, and has no direct power to enforce any standard they feel fit over me. They do, however, have some lobbying powers. However, as a member of the ABA I have the right (indeed, the duty in some cases) to participate in the discussion of the policies the ABA promotes. Mostly, I regard the ABA as a community of lawyers - academics, practitioners, judges and professors - who have different perspectives on the set of problems that the world of dispute resolution faces. I think bringing them together is quite valuable.
All that being said, in the IT domain, having an organization that mandates the use of antiquated technology would be a bad thing. However, I don't think that's what a collective IT organization would be- by its very nature technology is innovative, and any community organization would be founded and populated by people who recognize that. It's if the organization started branching out into useless (or histrionic, or backwards) endeavours and imposes consequences on members without accountability to its members that it becomes problematic.
Incidentally ...
On the topic of Unions, it's worthwhile to note that Americans have a type of unionization called Wagnerism (named after the famous Nazi who suggested it, who also incidentally wrote the wedding song). The evils of this style of unionization are well known, though it does have many benefits. The benefits of Wagner unions tend to affect many people beyond those unionized- in fact, it's been studied and (I confidently believe) shown that even if a mere fraction of the workforce in a particular industry (with sufficient mobility of labour and competition) unionizes, then virtually everyone gets the same or equivalent benefits (however only the unionized folks have to pay union dues and put up with the adversarial nature of Wagnerism). There are other forms of unionization, many superior in essentially every way, in my humble opinion. I think unionization is not the problem - it's what unionization in America sometimes means that gives rise to the bad reputation. Plus, big companies have paid an enormous amount of money to give the general population the perception that unions are a bad thing. As a general rule, based on my experience in labour law and conversations with colleagues who are practitioners in the field, your life will be better if you are employed in an industry that has some unionization.
Thanks for the info. That's interesting.
Incidentally, assault and battery are traditionally (and even moreso nowadays) different creatures. I vaguely recall that the old common law versions of the crimes are as follows:
Assault: The reasonable apprehension of harm.
Battery: Non-consensual touching.
Hence, in the old criminal sense, you can assault someone without touching them (i.e. swinging a bat at them), and you can batter them without them being afraid of harm (i.e. a doctor touching an unconscious patient).
Of course, that bears virtually no relation to what those words mean in modern terms.
Random trivia: I've been told by a professor of law and classicist that "null" and "void" mean the same thing (in a legal sense), but are simply different languages. Putting them together is repetitive and unnecessary, although strangely customary.
I thought that interesting enough to share.
Basically (and I'm taking off my anarchist hat for a minute), workers rights do require regulation in a capitalist economy, otherwise they get screwed.
I think that's an overly broad statement, but not necessarily wrong. I think that in an industry where there was a lot of healthy competition and the supply of labour is limited, workers have strong bargaining rights. In a monopolistic or oligarchial industry where most of the jobs are with megacorporations and the labour is fungible, the rights of labour will gravitate towards minimum rights.
As well, ultimately people will gravitate to jobs where they have better rights, provided that the transition cost from one industry to another isn't prohibitive. The problem there is that too much regulation results in prohibitive transition costs (i.e. superfluous training and testing required to becoming a pharmacist, doctor, engineer, lawyer, police officer etc... which barriers are, in my humble opinion, as speciously supported as the TSA's "security" checks--- not to say that we should have untrained doctors et al., but merely that the barrier to entry is artificially and prohibitively high).
Trans-industry freedom of labour, in combination with cross-border mobility of labour are fundamental to giving labour bargaining rights. I think that this over-regulation and monopolise constitute the biggest reason that labour has lost its negotiation power. It all comes down to the fundamentals of negotiation: What is labour's best alternative to a negotiated agreement with their current employer?
Labour rights regulation can set minimum standards which are keystones to basic levels of pay (but how's that working out? does it keep a strong and healthy middle class?), but they generally don't give employees better alternatives to staying with their current employers, and therefore don't increase the bargaining power of employees. Without the option to leave, what options do you really have?
A very thorough yet accessible article. Very well done- a wonderful job of putting together a complex set of factual and legal issues.
Do you suppose someone at the RIAA will read and (in any way) react to this?
Ultimately, there ought to be some law requiring that companies that claim to support a particular spec or standard actually fulfill that obligation or at least have a good faith effort to implement it.
Perhaps see: Warranty, and Implied Warranty.
I find it impossible to believe that the government is capable of keeping conspiracies secret. They couldn't keep 5 guys breaking into the DNC office a secret (Watergate), but somehow they can orchestrate an elaborate conspiracy involving thousands of people over the course of 6 decades and not a single shred of credible evidence has been leaked. I'm sorry but deathbed confessions don't count.
The voice of evil itself speaks of its means to such ends:
"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed to tell big lies."
- Hitler
To wit, your argument - the lack of evidence - mirrors what was said about the Nazi death camps prior to the end of World War 2. People denied it, vehemently and utterly, until not just evidence but overwhelming evidence contradicted them. Even today, people deny that millions were killed in the holocaust.
People believe what they want to believe, and people don't want to believe things that threaten their assumptions about the world.
I recognize your argument, and it's a valid one, but I, for one, believe alien visitors could be concealed by governments.
Software patents that already exist are unlikely to be invalidated (though it's not impossible). Any law undermining existing rights probably amounts to an appropriation of property, and companies affected could appeal to the 14th Amendment for (potentially enormous) compensation. If the patents were annulled (i.e. said to have never rightfully existed in the first place). Who's to say, though. At least the momentum seems to be swinging away from the ridiculous.
I swear, the USA is one lost staring contest away from a bloodless military coup. I mean, if it hasn't already happened.
It wouldn't be the first time ... Business Plot.
How would we tell the difference?
Your life would be mired by hopelessness.
Congress is attempting to strip US District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of his power following his ruling against the government regarding immunity for telecoms in the NSA wiretapping case. Walker
It is misleading to say that he ruled against the government. He represents a branch of the government, an independent judiciary, and he made a decision contrary to that of other branches of government. He has lived up to his role (nigh duty) and provided the checks and balances that keep the government as a whole in check.
Capping transfer per month at ridiculously low levels is not necessary though, they get plenty of money to pay for what people use, and lets face it, this is a quasi-socialist ISP environment, people who barely use their connections are paying for those who use the connection all the time.
Might not be fair, but the ISPs have nothing to complain about, they have been taking peoples money without having to provide much in return to most of them for a long, long time.
FYI, the bandwidth Bell is traffic shaping, which this case arises out of, is (1) not Bell customers (Bell simply provides the last-leg of the DSL connection - the DSLAM, I believe) and (2) not using Bell's backbone internet connection.The traffic is from, for example, Teksavvy (ISP) customers to the Teksavvy backbone. Bell is just an intermediary.
I think I agree with you. Well done. Caveats:
Wealth disparity, drug criminalization, religious and racial diversity, and socialized drug addiction management are all strongly correlative with violence, while gun control laws are not. I still am suggestible to the idea that easily accessible guns do contribute to more violent crime (which intuitively makes sense, since it's harder to cudgel someone to death than to pull a trigger).I also believe gun control laws, like drug prohibitions, contraindicate. I may not have stated that, but I don't think I've stated any other belief.
However, I believe the other factors you've mentioned are key (if not moreso) to predicting violence. It sounds like you've given it a lot of thought, so I defer to you on that.
I expect that gun violence (and the fear of gun violence) reinforces this segregation. What reinforced racial and class segregation is the huge difference in income between them. Both groups have similar rates of gun ownership. I really wish you'd stop using terms like "gun violence". It reinforces the logical misstatement I mentioned before. I used the term gun violence pointedly because I was attempting to portray the sensationalism that leads to increased class segregation- the perception of violence and expectation of vulnerability by the rich to the poor. Notably, I think gun violence on television in particular generates fear, and in particular class, geographic, and racial fear, which reinforces insularity. I do think people fear guns more than axes (for example), because guns are much more efficient for killing than axes- I think the power of guns to kill instantly and without effort make us feel helpless, or at least defenceless. That's just my take, though.I just replied to your original post, again. :) Sorry for the duplication.
I've done a little more research. This article supports my point:
States With Higher Levels of Gun Ownership Have Higher Homicide Rates, January 11, 2007
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2007-releases/press01112007.html
Your point on Sweden is misleading because Swedes have compulsory military service, and their firearms are rifles with a small clip and the guns are difficult to conceal. Further, citizens undergo regular training throughout their life on firearm use.
The Brady Campaign (while clearly supporting the assertion that guns are problematic) is telling:
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/factsheets/
In particular, the USA has over 11,000 firearm homicides a year, compared to (for example) Canada's 184. That's 44 firearm deaths per million citizens in the USA per year, compared to 6.1 per million in Canada. Statistically, the USA is economically superior to Canada in virtually every way, including the distribution of wealth (as measured by per capita income).
However, I think those statistics may fail to reveal something sinister. There seems to be a racial or class segregation in the USA, and the per capita income fails to illuminate the number of people who are essentially destitute in the USA. I expect that gun violence (and the fear of gun violence) reinforces this segregation.
I do not feel I have an adequate explanation of the aberrant level of gun violence in the USA. I feel you are correct that the violence is in no small part due to the disparity in wealth. However, it seems clear (from the Harvard article, the Brady statistics, if not common sense) that the abundance of easily accessible guns significantly contributes to the amount of violent crime.
What you can *do* about those hundreds of millions of guns, now that they've polluted the country, is another issue.
Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 22 times more likely to kill a family member or friend than to kill an assailant in self-defense. (Kellerman, Journal of Trauma, 1998)
http://emergency-medicine.jwatch.org/cgi/content/citation/1998/1201/24
(Sorry, it's not freely accessible)
That reference is a bit misleading, because it says how many assailants are killed while defending your home with your gun; it doesn't say how many people are deterred during an attempt by a person in the house using a gun (if it's not used, need it actually be a gun, or just the threat of a gun?), or how many personal assaults are stopped outside the home.
However, I recall the likelihood of killing a family member or friend being 9 times as likely as killing a perpetrator or an assailant while outside the home, but I'm sorry I cannot find the cite. I've an inkling that it was the Economist, and from the early 2000's, so you may need a subscription to dig it up.
That's informative (taken at face value, it seems well founded); thank you. I'm in no way an expert, but I grew up in a gun-free society, where violent crime was more-or-less non-existant (domestic violence notwithstanding). It was also a universally poor society, so the wealth disparity was also absent.
Your emphasis on wealth disparity is insightful, and probably correct (or at least strongly correlates). It's interesting that gun advocates don't emphasize that point more.
I do not believe gun laws reduce violent gun crime. I believe reducing the number of guns does. Therefore the gun violence in DC is explained by the easy access to guns nearby. Perhaps the heightened violence is a reaction to the excess punishment when you have a gun? Or perhaps a bit of a prisoner's dilemma: presuming others don't have guns, perpetrators can take advantage.
I am convinced that a society without prevalent access to guns is less likely to have violent crime (based on principle: When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail). I'm not sure I can be convinced otherwise, but I welcome those to try.
Frankly, it may be noted, I think guns are cool. Just incredibly dangerous, with little benefit.
More importantly, Eurocup's on ...
Some illuminating gun statistics.
- Nine times out of ten, the gun that kills you is your own or belongs to someone you know.
- Nine times out of ten, the gun that kills your children and spouse is your own or belongs to someone you know.
Analysis - Owning a gun is not a preventative measure for the vast majority of gun deaths. In fact, owning a gun is magnitudes more likely to cause a fatality than random gun violence, and discouraging your acquaintances from owning a gun is in fact your best protection. For that relative rarity when it's a stranger's gun, maybe that person wouldn't have had a gun if there were sensible gun laws or attitudes. If America could reduce it's gun violence to random violence, it would be a reduction of 90%, and it would be doing very well. Owning a gun is not, nor has it ever been, shown to be a useful defensive mechanism. In my humble but correct opinion, the best defense against gun violence is living in a society that abhors gun ownership.
The consequence is obvious, and statistically correlates:
- You are four to ten times as likely to die of a gun-inflicted injury in the United States than other Western countries.
- Gun violence is one of the top ten reasons for death in the United States.
I believe that the rampant gun violence in the United States promulgates a society of fear, insularity and obstinate entitlement. It is wholly evil and backwards.
Further, gun ownership does nothing to prevent tyranny. It's the ability to coalesce en mass, and revolt as a general populace that controls governments' tendency towards totalitarianism. The prevalent gun ownership has clearly done nothing to deter the Bush administration's onslaught on freedom and rights. Gun ownership to protect freedom is a sexy idea, but utterly specious.
So what to do? Effectively removing guns from the streets ought to be a carrot-and-stick approach. The punishment for having a gun during a crime should be higher than without (but not so high that the perpetrator would choose to fight-to-the-death), but there should be an amnesty to turn guns and maybe even a minor reward for it.
I think what SCOTUS has done has been an assault on State sovereignty, as they have undermined the ability of States to self-govern. I believe they have misconstrued the Constitution of the United States, to the detriment of the ability of states to control peace and security, and to the benefit of gun manufacturers and their lobbyists.
Incidentally, for competitors in the DSL consumer service, Bell often offers the 'last leg' of DSL connections, but doesn't actually provide the backbone bandwidth. They nevertheless are throttling customers of competitors for bandwidth that Bell isn't even paying for.
A lot of people seem confused or misinformed about the history of Microsoft. I believe that Microsoft is a monopoly because they made a deal with IBM whereby when IBM sold a PC, Microsoft received royalties for MS-DOS. This contract, I hear, was an invention of Bill Gates Sr., a lawyer. The royalties were paid regardless of whether MS-DOS was actually on the machine, thus IBM could not sensibly sell PC's with alternative operating systems (i.e. PC-DOS, etc.).
Thereafter they wielded this contractual monopoly over PC operating systems skillfully, a shining contrast when compared to their essentially bland programming output, and were responsible for a variety of anti-competitive practices over the years. I lament not having documented my observations of these practices, but embrace, extend, extinguish has been honed on many, many occasions from more brutal and subversive tactics such as looking for and intentionally breaking other companies' software (viz. Corel).
Make no mistake, Microsoft's business strategies have been diligently locking in customers through proprietary formats and libraries, as diligently as they have been snuffing out any actual competition with the same. Their contributions to research, development, and technology are essentially non-existent, and virtually unheard of when compared to their revenue.
They are not a development shop; I recall some absurd (but probably accurate) statistic that the cost to the economy due to lost productivity from things such as blue screens of death and the untenable Word interface amounting to the same cost as the September 11th, 2001 World Trade Center attacks, every hour. (This is not to mention the lost productivity to Solitaire) That's a false dichotomy, since who's to say that perfect (or at least working) software would result in ideal output, and it's much the same as saying the millions of songs downloaded each year amounts to trillions in lost revenue to the record companies. Nevertheless, I know that I prefer to waste my time on Slashdot, as opposed to rebooting my machine, or restarting a mangled list in a Word document.
Try getting caught speeding over and over, and sooner or later your license will be suspended. It may take a few more than 3 tries depending on how serious your speeding offense is. Doing 100 MPH in a 25 MPH zone three times would probably do it.
Oscar Madison: The wick is almost out, Felix. All I want is for the candle to glow one last time rather than curse the darkness.
Felix Ungar: It's not going out, Oscar, not yours and not mine. But I still have hope that somewhere out there we'll find the right lamplighter.
Oscar Madison: You know, we just used so many metaphors I forgot what the hell we were talking about.
From the Odd Couple 2
What the RIAA lawyers are doing is often referred to as a collateral attack - the attempt to undermine one Court's unfavourable ruling by seeking out a different ruling in another court. It is also related to the concept of litigation by installments. It is generally accepted that fundamental principles of justice (fairness, expediency, access to justice, finality, and certainty) are undermined by collateral attacks. The Court committing the collateral attack is often estopped (by collateral estoppel) from making a judgment which would undermine another Court's ruling. One example of this principle exists in mainstream media as "double jeopardy". In the practice of law, this is quite a common issue; for example, when a unionized individual brings a collective agreement grievance to labour arbitration they are often then precluded from seeking out a remedy at Court.
A collateral attack is not the same as an appeal. Appeals are to "higher" Courts that typically only have a limited scope to review the decision of a lower Court.
Of course, you ought to seek out proper legal advice in your jurisdiction to see how these rules would apply and in particular apply to the facts of your situation.
I don't know whats stopping them from fixing the bugs in it.
The salient question would be: What's stopping us from fixing the bugs in it.