Thank you. That was exactly my point, but it obviously flew right over JessLeah's head. Perhaps I wasn't explicit enough... I noticed that and was a tad more explicit in my post further down in the thread.
Recently, there's been a lot of this "Economists assume people are rational but they're not!" stuff.
I'm not sure if you're referring to the general literature here, or discussion on Slashdot, but I'll discuss the latter since it is so obviously present in the current thread.
These discussions of rationality of Slashdot eminate from your typical Slashdotter who thinks that even the most rudimentary knowledge of computers and technology give them carte blanche to act as if they know everything in every field. (see my post above in response to "What really affects how people behave). The use of the term "rationality" throughout the discusssion on this thread serves to illustrate that point.
To see why, let's take a look at "rational choice," (also known as political economy, positive political theory, etc.) a field closely related to the book that started this topic. Rational choice, much like the book mentioned earlier, attempts to predict human behavior, albeit the former only applies to the arena of politics instead of the whole of society.
In any introductory rational choice textbook (and any economics textbook for that matter), one of the first topics discussed will be the actual definition of "rationality." What the people here don't realize, is that "the term rationality... in ordinary language, often means something entirely different from what [those in the field of rational theory] have in mind." I'll quote further to explain:
If a friend of yours does something that you would not have done were you in the friend's shoes -- say, go to the movies the night before a final exam -- you might say, "Jeez, that's really irrational." By that you might mean: Given what
your friend wants, that is not the best way to go about getting it. Or perhaps you mean something different: Given what I want, I would not do what she is doing (and she ought to want what I want). In either case, you are claiming that what your friend is doing is crazy. Crazy it may be, but we shall reserve irrationality for something quite specific.
The term "rationality" as we shall use it does not mean brilliant or all-knowing. The men and women whose behavior we we wish to understand are not gods, so we certainly do not want to characterize any deviation from omniscient, godlike behavior as irrational (for then nearly all behavior would fall in this category). The people we model are neither all-knowing nor wordly-wise; they are ordinary folks. As such they have wants and beliefs, both of which affect their behavior.
I bolded the line above because it is perfect in our current discussion. Acting "rationally" has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence. Acting rationally has nothing whatsoever to do with choosing Linux over Microsoft or oppossing the DMCA or thinking that intellectual property protections are evil (or doing whatever other behavior is deemed the appropriate choice by the general Slashdot poplution). Those actions might indicate some level of intellgience (or they might just indicate some level of groupthink, depending on who you are), but they make no statement whatsoever about rational behavior. Instead, a rational individual is merely someone who "combines his or her beliefs about the external environment and preferences about things in that environment in a consistent manner." Rationality makes no judgement about those beliefs or preferences: it merely states that for any given choice, "the object chosen is at least as good as any other available object according to the chooser's preferences." End of story.
If you would some more information on the matter, I highly recommend "Analyzing Politics: Rationality, Behaviors, and Instiutions" by Kenneth A. Shepsle and Mark S. Boncheck, from which the above quotes were taken.
The average IQ is (roughly) 100. Have you met many "average" people? Really, they're pretty bloody stupid, or at least by SlashDot standards. This alone explains a lot.
By Slashdot standards, I think that would make them pretty, err, average? The only difference between the two populations is not the actual level of intelligence, but rather, the self-perceived level of intelligence. The typical Slashdotter is no smarter than the "average" person that you speak of - he just thinks that he is. The pompous, know-it-all tone that this misconceieved notion breeds makes these people all the more ridiculous and unbearable.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I mean, the Internet comprises just Comcast cable modem customers, right? Slashdot is run off of a cable modem in some dude's basement, isn't it? Comcast has designed their infrastructure with this in mind. They lay down all of their cables, which of course, only run to their own customers. That way, they get to cut costs, because they don't actually have to pay anyone for bandwidth, since only their own network is being used. It's an excellent business strategy, and without it, the "Comcast Sponsored Single Provider Internet" would not exist. Indeed, I posted this message from my college's network which is powered by a beowulf cluster of cable modems hidden in a dark sub-basement of the library. Now that I think about it, I guess this means that you did also.
At long last! I'm not a Trekkie at all, however, I am a _huge_ Family Guy fan. There are many episodes that have William Shattner in them and he jumps around in little bursts and talks like you just described.... I finally get it =) I highly suggest you go check out the Family Guy episodes.. they're pretty damned funny. I don't konw where you live, but at least in my area, Comedy Central (or is it the Cartoon Network?) has begun playing re-runs after it was canceled... You can also find episodes on Kazaa, etc.
I'm probably going to get lambasted for this, as I'm about to wear my beliefs on my sleeve, but oh well...
God is sort of like a "special case." Whenever there is a flaw in the logic of many types of philosophy, God immediately enters the picture to clear things up =) Much of the philosophy you will read will continually fall into a recursion towards infinity... as many people have pointed out, there is no way to prove that if we are living in a simulation, the next level up (our simulators) are not living in a simulation as well. For a quick example.. think of SimCity and the like. Though, I will surely not argue that SimDenizens are sentient, if they were, for all intents and purposes we would be their "God." But what about us? We must have a "God" too. And so on, ad infinitum... The only way to stop the cycle is to change the problem a bit by making God a special case... being that he's omnipotent and all, he doesn't need a higher level... everything stops at him.
Now, this is surely not exactly what philosophy says. I do not claim to be a very good phil student either. This is just my personal take on it all and is only based on an intro course. As always, YMMV!
Yes, indeed you are correct. However, pulling out of the Kyoto protocol does not put American soldiers and innocent non-combatants of any origin in harms way during times of war. Thus far, Iraq has at least _claimed_ that they are going to follow the Geneva Convention. Whether they have followed the law to a T or not is certainly debatable... but if we were to withdraw from the Geneva Convention, I'm sure you wouldn't argue that Iraq would surely do horrible, horrible things to ours POWs. While the Kyoto treaty doesn't mean much to us as the world's leading producer of greenhouse gasses, we have an enormous vested interest in following the regulations of the Geneva Conventions, as a nation that isn't very well received globally at the moment.
Right, the original poster was just pandering to the mindless slashbots who see anything negative or the least bit suspicious as a part of a conspiracy by the RIAA/MPAA/Microsoft/Federal Government to outlaw Linux, kill babies, and enslave the world. What's nice about it this time is that for once, the little snide commentary comes in italics, as part of the posters words. Nine times our of ten, similarly paranoid remarks appear as the EDITOR's words. If you believe that this LA Times reporter violated his committment to journalistic integrity and OBJECTIVITY by using these photos, I suggest you take a closer look at Slashdot itself. The spin that gets put on the articles is just absolutely ridiculous.
On a side note... you might find it interesting to note that the United States Department of Defense wrote a memo entitled "An Assessment of International Legal Issues in Information Operations." Basically, the paper is a review of information warfare tactics, and an analysis of whether or not some aspects of information warfare violate the Geneva Convention and other international treaties regarding the rules of war. The report concludes that, "Similarly, it might be possible to use computer 'morphing' techniques to create an image of the enemy's chief of state informing his troops that an armistice or cease-fire agreement had been signed. If false, this would also be a war crime."
So, despite the fact that the government had absolutely NOTHING whatsoever to do with this story, even if they did, the government cannot digitally alter wartime photos because it violates the Geneva Convention. Granted, there are other things that one might be inclined NOT to trust the government for, but this is NOT one of them. Please move along...
Just out of curiousity, where'd you find this figure that the world population is going to decline? To me that seems somewhat counterintuitive. I don't know that much about history, but I'd guess that the only sizeable declines in population occurred far in the past due to things like the plague (or big huge asteroids crashing into the earth causing species extinction). Given that the average lifespan is increasing around the global, especially in "industrialized" nations and advancements in technology and medicine only promise to extend this growth further, I don't quite see how a decline in population will happen. Are we just going to run out of room for everyone and stop procreating? It's not that I doubt the veracity of your claim, it just seems odd to me and I'd like to know if you can point me to more information about it...
Yeah, you don't get any exercise at all playing sports, especially soccer and hockey. That's why all of those soccer players out there are all fat asses with love-handles and beer guts. And jesus, those hockey players, they're fucking FAT! Or even those basketball players. Man, they could really use some more exercise.
How are prescription drugs a "crutch for the weak?" Granted, if there's a kid out there crushing up his Ritalin/Adderal and blowing lines of it off of his bathroom mirror I might follow your logic. However, what about all of the kids our there who are correctly prescribed these drugs to cure their problems? Are people who take Advil weak? How about AIDS patients who take numerous pills a day just to stay alive and ward it off? Are these drugs the "crutch" of the "weak" AIDS patients? Just because Ritalian and Adderal treat malfunctions of the mind, instead of the body, does not make them any different from any other prescription drug. These kids have different wiring in their brains - their brains do not function in the same manner as normal person's does. It is unbelievably naive of you to say that these drugs are crutches for the weak.
Now onto for your next point, your ever-so-enlightening theory that these killings resulted from the fact that we have become a "nation of pussies." Clever. You ask, "what happened to the days when a couple of guys would get in a fight and their parents would be called and nothing else." Well sir, what happened was that crazy fuckers started bringing assault rifles and bombs to school and blowing away their classmates. I guess slaughtering kids with military-grade weaponry is somehow effeminate, or "pussy," in your mind.
Now, with this in mind - the whole blowing the school up thing - if there is an incident the school has to do something about it. First and foremost, they need to make sure that further incidents don't happen and as such they need to have the mindset that any fight could potentially be an indication of future incidents (i.e. people critized many of the schools/parents/teachers involved with many of the school shootings for not recognizing the early signs of trouble). Next, I don't know if you've noticed this, but people are actually suing McDonald's for "making" them fat. Like it or not, we live in a Court TV society. With this in mind, what do you think would happen if a fight or something else happend at school and the "parents would be called and nothing else," and then 2 weeks later the kid blew up the cafeteria? You'd have the lawsuit of the century on your hands.
So, to answer your question, these killings didn't result from the fact that we're a nation of "pussies". They happened because some kids got pissed off and exhibited some early signs of trouble, which were ignored (i.e. the whole "parents would be called and nothing else" that you speak so kindly of). These kids happened to get access to lots of weapons and killed people. Simple as that.
Why is it "lucky" that they provide PDF's as well as Microsoft Word files? What office suite do you use? I use OpenOffice and it opens Microsoft Word documents just fine for me. Perhaps your experience has differed. Or maybe it was just another one of the snide jabs at Microsoft that is all too common in the story headlines on slashdot.
I'm sorry, but I need to call the bullshit card on this one...
Just about everyone that I've ever talked to in college attended high schools with similar social hierarchies to the one I attended. Perhaps yours was different. I don't know....
At the high school I attended, popularity had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with a lack of intelligence, as both you and the article imply. Popular kids are popular because, surprise, people liked them! This can be caused either by being attractive, being athletic, being rich, being nice, being smart, etc. There is no set criteria, but by definition, in order to be popular there has to be something going on in there that makes people respect/admire/like you.
I happened to be one of those people. I'm not the funniest person ever. I'm not amazingly attractive. I'm not rich either. I was, however, at the top of my class, scored the highest on the SATs, played two varsity sports, and got into a very respectable college. I also run Linux and have been coding since I found an IBM PC Junior (which ran some version of BASIC) on the curb on garbage day. However, my girlfriend and I were homecoming king/queen (though this doesn't really mean anything to me, if you want a quantitative measure of popularity in high school, I'd say that's as close as you can get). Unlike me, my girlfriend was not intelligent at all. Instead, she was one of the nicest, most caring people in the entire school. I'd also like to think that she's pretty damned attractive as well;-). Popularity is not something we sought out, but instead, something granted to us by the rest of the high school because, apparently, we were likeable people.
Not every single one of my friends was smart. Not all of them were attractive. Not all of them were rich, nor were they all atheletic. However, the common denominator was that people liked and respected them because they were nice, decent human beings. Because of this, they were "popular." However, I didn't make any of my friends based on this "popularity". In fact, most of my friends from high school (all of whom I still keep in close contact with) I have been friends with since I was really young, either through school or sports. The friends that I made while in high school were made not because either one of us were popular. These people were my friends because they were nice and we got along together. Simply put, nice people tend to associate with each other.
As I've stated, I never sought out popularity. From what I've experienced, most popular kids are regarded as such because they don't really care about being popular. The kids who thought of themselves as being popular and sought out this label were ALWAYS disliked. In my high school, the proper term for them would have been "social climbers".
There was another group of people who were disliked as well. These were the "nerds" (as the article calls them), but you can call them what you wish. These people were generally smart kids. However, they were not disliked because they were smart, liked science fiction, or liked computers.: they were disliked because of the hubris that this brought forth. They always viewed themselves as smarter, and therefore better than everyone else. They looked down upon people of "lesser" mental capacity. The problem, of course, was that for the most part, they weren't always smarter - they just thought that they were, which severely inflated their egos. Their intelligence had nothing to do with their unpopularity: their smug, unfriendly attitudes had everything to do with it.
Every single one of my classes was filled with these people. I tried to be nice and reach out to them, but I was constantly rebuffed. Although I was nice, these kids HATED me. They absolutely LOATHED me like I was pure evil. Why? Not because I was mean - I never was. They hated me because I partied on the weekend. They hated me because, despite the partying, I did better in class than them. They hated me because people liked me. They hated me because I was popular. Some of these kids were genuinely funny. Some of them were even athletic. Some were good-looking, and some were rich. They ALL were smart. However, none of them were nice people. All these kids needed to realize was that if they got rid of the whole hatred/bitterness thing, opened up to people, and interacted socially on a more agreeable level, they would be LIKED as well. Popularity is not some self-selecting thing - it is a labeled assigned to you by your peers. Consequently, they would be popular, not because they wanted to be or even claimed to be (something which they would never do because of the stigma they have mentally attached to the word), but because people LIKED them and assigned them this label.
Though everyone has been framing this conversation in the context of high school, even in college I've noticed the same trend. I'm a computer science major, and at first, I got along really well with a lot of the kids in my classes. We hang out in class, joke around together, work together in groups, and generally have a good time. In fact, many of these kids requested me in their groups because they thought that I was a good coder. However, once some of these kids found out that I was in a fraternity, they immediately began to actively despite me. I did nothing wrong to them and I was never mean. They had liked me, but because of the grievous wrong I committed in being a member of a fraternity, they immediately hated me, solely because they equated fraternities with the popularity of high school. I saw past their "geek" labels and attempted to befriend them, but they were utterly unwilling to do the same.
Now I know I've gone one a little bit of a rant, but I feel I must. To step off the soapbox and respond to the parent more directly, instead of the general discussion, "associating with someone 'smart', esp someone dubbed 'booksmart'" is NEVER seen as degrading. As I've argued, being smart can help one in being liked - I'd say this was one of the reasons that I was considered popular by my high school. I'm an avid slashdot reader and most people here equate intelligence with nerd/geekdom. Anyone who plays sports, interacts socially, has a girlfriend, or is popular is automatically viewed as a unintelligent, meathead, asshole. This is simply not the case. This attitude of superiority based on intelligence (or supposed intelligence!) is the reason that a large number of people on slashdot were disliked (and perhaps still are), and find social interaction with different kinds of people difficult. Intelligence has nothing to do with it - the disdainful attitude does.
Excuse me, but I'm one of those "frat boys... you see partying hard 4 or 5 nights a week," and I take offense to that comment. Some people happen to be capable of partying a lot while at the same time getting their work done, learning, and being quite successful. That happens to be the way it worked out for me. The fact that I party and hang out with your so-called "sororitutes" in the free time that I DO have after I'm done TA'ing/studying/working has no bearing on my quality as a student as you suggest. A large number of the guys in my fraternity are engineers as well, and I'd say that most of them are in the same boat that I am. I came to Duke to learn - if I can do that, succeed, and have fun at the same time, what's wrong with it?
I agree with you in that Pratt (Duke's engineering school) is quite difficult. Many Trinity (Duke's arts & sciences school) students give engineers shit about how much work they get. However, most engineers will tell you that they aren't the ones with the most work - computer science majors are. In fact, last semester a Pratt student wrote an article in the Chronicle in which he said, "The entire 'You're an engineer? I'm sorry' bit has grown old. We don't need your pity. Save it for the computer science majors.'" Perhaps you didn't notice it, but at Duke, the computer science major is in Trinity, NOT Pratt. Pratt may have EE/ECE, and offer a few computer science courses (EGR53, etc), but Trinity is where computer science resides.
Last semester in CPS108 (with Duvall, not Astrachan) my class was 45 students. I think about 5 of them got A's. All of my computer science classes have been like this, and so I'd agree with you that grade inflation is not a problem there at all. However, I'd have to disagree with you with respect to the humanities. You rightly point out that Sociology is a bit of a joke major (read: all the basketball, football, etc players), but I really don't think grade inflation in the rest of the departments is nearly as bad as you, or Rojstaczer state. If you ask students what the "easy" classes are, I'd say that ALL of them are in either the sociology department, or they are something like "Intro to Jazz."
I'll concede that you've graduated, and have taken more classes than I have (I'm a sopohmore) and have better insight into the issue. However, in the classes that I've taken thus far, I really have not seen a whole lot of grade inflation. Perhaps your experience was different that mine.
However, here's some empirical data for you. Dean's list requires you to place within the top 1/3rd of all undergraduates in your college. Dean's List With Distiniction requires you to place within the top 10% of all undergraduates in your college. To achieve Summa Cum Laude, you GPA needs to be in the top 5% of last year's graduating class, Magna Cum Laude is the next 10%, and Cum Laude is the next 10% after that. (BTW: If you look at the link above, the GPA's for Dean's List in Pratt lists 4 separate numbers. I'm not sure why there are 4, instead of 1, so I went ahead and averaged them)....
Dean's List (Fall 2002): Trinity - 3.6 Pratt - 3.625
Dean's List With Distinction (Fall 2002): Trinity - 3.925 Pratt - 3.929
Latin Honors (For students graduating this year): Summa Cum Laude: 3.881 Manga Cum Laude: 3.751 Cum Laude: 3.663
From the data, you can see that the difference between the top 3rd of Pratt and the top 3rd of Trinity is only.025 grade points. The difference between the top decile of Pratt and that for Trinity is only.004. You can interpet the data how you like, but as far as I'm concerned there is NO difference between Arts & Science students and Engineering students. Furthermore, 75% of last year's graduating class had GPA's below 3.663. With this in mind, I find it REALLY hard to buy the whole grade inflation story at Duke...
"As for me going to an ivy league school, yeah, I was accepted into Stanford based upon college entrance scores"....
Except that Stanford isn't an Ivy League school =) Sorry.. I just had to bite and point that out.
However, semantics aside, that doesn't really mean anything. Stanford is one of the finest colleges in the country and probably produces graduates just as strong, if not stronger, than a large portion of the Ivy League.
For some people, myself included, the Ivies are actually a bit of a turnoff. In high school, I noticed that most people who were applying to Ivies were doing so soley because they "needed" to go to an Ivy... not because they actually liked the school or thought it was a good fit for themselves. I can't tell you how many of these people applied to _every_ Ivy, without having even visited most of them. At that point, I decided that I definitely didn't want that. I had dealt with people like this all of my life - there was no way I was going to do it again for the next four years.
Now, I'm not saying that all Ivies student are like this. While visiting friends at Ivies I've met a lot of very nice kids who I really got along with. However, at the same time, I've perceived a very definite aura of pretentiousness with the oh-so-familiar, "Oh, so you don't go to an Ivy?", etc.
There is even a phrase used by some to describe people who share my views - "Ivy Envy." And you know what.. the people who use that phrase are the very people who I'm talking about. But to each his own. Some people want that and others don't.
Although the college you attend may help you in your first step out of college (whether that is law school, graduate school, or your first job) in the end, it doesn't really matter. If in ten years people are still judging you on the college you went to, instead of the person that you are, then I'd say that you're probably surrounding yourself with the wrong people.
Though I'm sure heroin is orders of magnitude more addictive than a EverQuest, I wouldn't overlook how addictive games like this can be.
Freshman year of college I was roommates with a kid who was pretty shy and antisocial. He was a really nice guy though, so whenever I went out to a party, or went to see a movie, or went out to get food with my friends I'd invite him along. First semester this worked, and my roommate actually ended up having a lot of fun and meeting a lot of people.
However, for Christmas he got Dark Age of Camelot. When he came back to school after Winter break he was a totally different person. He would stay up till 8am playing this game. He'd wake up at 6pm and repeat the cycle. He wouldn't go to class. He wouldn't do his work. I'd invite him to go get meals with me but he wouldn't. Instead, he'd order food to the room so that he wouldn't have to leave his game. This kid was no dummy either, he had a LARGE merit based scholarship and was a very smart guy. However, Dark Age of Camelot ruined all of that. I would plead with him to go to class. Plead with him to do his work. Plead with him to leave the room, but to no-avail. He ended up failing 3 out of his 4 classes and was kicked out of school.
The kid was given a life-changing opportunity. He came from a very humble background. His parents had nearly no money. He was the first person in his family to go to college. He had a large merit scholarship to a very respectable school. Though I don't discount the fact that he may have just had a latent addictive personality, I have to think that this game was part of the reason that he threw his great opportunity away.
Again, this is just one case. I'm not saying that games like this are necessarily inherently addictive. There is no doubt that a large part of that addiction is a result of an individual's personality. However, this sad story that I experienced first hand certainly made me aware that given certain circumstances, games such as EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot can be horribly addictive and ruins people's lives.
Correct me if I'm wrong, as I've never had to do this, but I would think that a Linux system with a very precisely configured kernel is also not going to boot just fine and dandy after swapping in a brand new motherboard with different IDE controllers, SCSI controllers, etc.
And I'm sure you probably posted your comment using Lynx. I mean, I think all of us who use a modern graphical browser would agree with you... we've _DEFINITELY_ sacrificed a galatic amount of efficiency, productivity, and functionality using a GUI web browser instead of a console based one. Let's be honest, who needs all of that crufty GUI stuff when you've got Lynx?!
They graduate HS so that they can get a job at a gas station outside NJ... At least the pollution kills them more slowly than the toxic waste they drink as water... Sheesh... even an antisocial person knows NJ is the place where the entire Eastern seaboard dumps its waste....
That's really interesting.
According to the White House, the figures for the importation of out-of-state waste are as follows (in tons):
Pennsylvania 9,808,261
Virginia 4,663,797
Indiana 2,871,225
Michigan 1,728,501
Illinois 1,507,526
Wisconsin 1,216,363
Oregon 1,185,099
Ohio 1,089,649
New Hampshire 817,000
Kansas 800,000
Interesting. New Jersey isn't on there. Maybe you should actually visit a nice suburb instead of regurgitating the hackneyed blather of those who consistently deride New Jersey without actually having been anywhere other than the Turnpike.
Oh, and about high school graduates in NJ looking for jobs at gas stations OUTSIDE of NJ....... Perhaps you don't realize that NJ is the only state where you DON'T PUMP YOUR OWN GAS. Instead, gas station workers pump it FOR YOU. It's amazing to me that HS graduates looking for employment in this field would leave to go to OTHER states when the demand is much higher and the PAY is much higher in NJ. Maybe I'm just imagining things though.
Maybe I'm also imagining that the 2000 Census determined that NJ was one of the 4th wealthiest states in the nation (using per-capita GDP income as the metric).
Get rid of your media-fed, Sopranos-inspired, bullshit New Jersey stereotype. Check out Westfield. Look at Summit. Experience Mendham. Go visit Somerset County. Spend the weekend down the shore in Mantoloking or Avalon. Take the family to Long Beach Island. Take your wife to Cape May for your anniversary.
Do all of this and then come back to me. Then we'll see if you've got anything else to say.
Born in New Jersey
Raised in New Jersey
Not attending college in NJ (actually in NC, but ironically, it makes me appreciate how great NJ is), but God damnit - I will raise a family and die in NJ.
"While it is understandable from Microsoft, it is interesting that IBM, who often claims to be a defender of Open Source Software, would be so negative."
Hey, MySQL is open source... that's great! But what the hell does that have to do with anything? The guy from IBM says, that open source databases (read MySQL):
"Don't support as many users, they don't support as much data, and you don't have as many connectivity options. They lack some key functionality and lack the scalability and performance, which keeps them out of the enterprise."
Now, as is very apparent from the fervently religious DB wars in past articles, these criticisms are _very_ valid, and there are many people, other than IBM, who feel similarly as well.
The IBM guy wasn't saying that the lack of functionality in MySQL is a symptom of its open source nature, he was just saying that it isn't there! With this in mind, why in the hell should IBM push a product that doesn't deliver (open source or not!)
Do you expect IBM to give all open source software that it reviews higher marks than its proprietary brethren based solely on the fact that is is open source? OR, should maybe some sort of objective criteria (read performance/features) be used? I guess you just choose to ignore this blatant bias based on the fact that it fits your ideology.
"The intention and spirit of the references to the LIMITED monopoly over ideas in the constitution is clear enough for any of us who are bound to follow it to understand."
I'm sorry, but apparently you aren't one of those who are "bound to follow and understand" it. If you knew anthing about the topic, which clearly you don't, you would know that the strict "Jeffersonian" interpretation of the law is that "inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." While what I have quoted doesn't explicitly state it, Jefferson felt that _IDEAS_, not their implementation mind you, should not be "owned." Thus, as you have said, there is a "limited monopoly over ideas" since we shouldn't be able to own them. However, Jefferson, and the other men who originally devised these laws, said NOTHING of their implementation. So, as you yourself has stated, there is no such monopoly there.
So, in response to your pedantic post, yes, I would be overly concerned with "making sure people who spend a lot of many make a profit." They spent a good deal of money expanding on an idea that someone (presumably not themselves) envisioned, and made it a reality. If these said people made a lot of money, and patented their specific implementation of an idea, then GOOD FOR THEM. Find your own fucking implementation and patent it. Otherwise don't disgrace Jefferson by misrepresenting his views on the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you. That was exactly my point, but it obviously flew right over JessLeah's head. Perhaps I wasn't explicit enough... I noticed that and was a tad more explicit in my post further down in the thread.
I'm not sure if you're referring to the general literature here, or discussion on Slashdot, but I'll discuss the latter since it is so obviously present in the current thread.
These discussions of rationality of Slashdot eminate from your typical Slashdotter who thinks that even the most rudimentary knowledge of computers and technology give them carte blanche to act as if they know everything in every field. (see my post above in response to "What really affects how people behave). The use of the term "rationality" throughout the discusssion on this thread serves to illustrate that point.
To see why, let's take a look at "rational choice," (also known as political economy, positive political theory, etc.) a field closely related to the book that started this topic. Rational choice, much like the book mentioned earlier, attempts to predict human behavior, albeit the former only applies to the arena of politics instead of the whole of society.
In any introductory rational choice textbook (and any economics textbook for that matter), one of the first topics discussed will be the actual definition of "rationality." What the people here don't realize, is that "the term rationality... in ordinary language, often means something entirely different from what [those in the field of rational theory] have in mind." I'll quote further to explain:
I bolded the line above because it is perfect in our current discussion. Acting "rationally" has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence. Acting rationally has nothing whatsoever to do with choosing Linux over Microsoft or oppossing the DMCA or thinking that intellectual property protections are evil (or doing whatever other behavior is deemed the appropriate choice by the general Slashdot poplution). Those actions might indicate some level of intellgience (or they might just indicate some level of groupthink, depending on who you are), but they make no statement whatsoever about rational behavior. Instead, a rational individual is merely someone who "combines his or her beliefs about the external environment and preferences about things in that environment in a consistent manner." Rationality makes no judgement about those beliefs or preferences: it merely states that for any given choice, "the object chosen is at least as good as any other available object according to the chooser's preferences." End of story.
If you would some more information on the matter, I highly recommend "Analyzing Politics: Rationality, Behaviors, and Instiutions" by Kenneth A. Shepsle and Mark S. Boncheck, from which the above quotes were taken.
By Slashdot standards, I think that would make them pretty, err, average? The only difference between the two populations is not the actual level of intelligence, but rather, the self-perceived level of intelligence. The typical Slashdotter is no smarter than the "average" person that you speak of - he just thinks that he is. The pompous, know-it-all tone that this misconceieved notion breeds makes these people all the more ridiculous and unbearable.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I mean, the Internet comprises just Comcast cable modem customers, right? Slashdot is run off of a cable modem in some dude's basement, isn't it? Comcast has designed their infrastructure with this in mind. They lay down all of their cables, which of course, only run to their own customers. That way, they get to cut costs, because they don't actually have to pay anyone for bandwidth, since only their own network is being used. It's an excellent business strategy, and without it, the "Comcast Sponsored Single Provider Internet" would not exist. Indeed, I posted this message from my college's network which is powered by a beowulf cluster of cable modems hidden in a dark sub-basement of the library. Now that I think about it, I guess this means that you did also.
Entrapment only applies to law enforcement officials, not private individuals.
At long last! I'm not a Trekkie at all, however, I am a _huge_ Family Guy fan. There are many episodes that have William Shattner in them and he jumps around in little bursts and talks like you just described.... I finally get it =) I highly suggest you go check out the Family Guy episodes.. they're pretty damned funny. I don't konw where you live, but at least in my area, Comedy Central (or is it the Cartoon Network?) has begun playing re-runs after it was canceled... You can also find episodes on Kazaa, etc.
-Matt
You're right...
I'm probably going to get lambasted for this, as I'm about to wear my beliefs on my sleeve, but oh well...
God is sort of like a "special case." Whenever there is a flaw in the logic of many types of philosophy, God immediately enters the picture to clear things up =) Much of the philosophy you will read will continually fall into a recursion towards infinity... as many people have pointed out, there is no way to prove that if we are living in a simulation, the next level up (our simulators) are not living in a simulation as well. For a quick example.. think of SimCity and the like. Though, I will surely not argue that SimDenizens are sentient, if they were, for all intents and purposes we would be their "God." But what about us? We must have a "God" too. And so on, ad infinitum... The only way to stop the cycle is to change the problem a bit by making God a special case... being that he's omnipotent and all, he doesn't need a higher level... everything stops at him.
Now, this is surely not exactly what philosophy says. I do not claim to be a very good phil student either. This is just my personal take on it all and is only based on an intro course. As always, YMMV!
-Matt
That's interesting... Was forcing private airlines to have to abide by the Bill of Rights tacked onto the Constitution in the Patriot Act?
Yes, indeed you are correct. However, pulling out of the Kyoto protocol does not put American soldiers and innocent non-combatants of any origin in harms way during times of war. Thus far, Iraq has at least _claimed_ that they are going to follow the Geneva Convention. Whether they have followed the law to a T or not is certainly debatable... but if we were to withdraw from the Geneva Convention, I'm sure you wouldn't argue that Iraq would surely do horrible, horrible things to ours POWs. While the Kyoto treaty doesn't mean much to us as the world's leading producer of greenhouse gasses, we have an enormous vested interest in following the regulations of the Geneva Conventions, as a nation that isn't very well received globally at the moment.
Right, the original poster was just pandering to the mindless slashbots who see anything negative or the least bit suspicious as a part of a conspiracy by the RIAA/MPAA/Microsoft/Federal Government to outlaw Linux, kill babies, and enslave the world. What's nice about it this time is that for once, the little snide commentary comes in italics, as part of the posters words. Nine times our of ten, similarly paranoid remarks appear as the EDITOR's words. If you believe that this LA Times reporter violated his committment to journalistic integrity and OBJECTIVITY by using these photos, I suggest you take a closer look at Slashdot itself. The spin that gets put on the articles is just absolutely ridiculous.
On a side note... you might find it interesting to note that the United States Department of Defense wrote a memo entitled "An Assessment of International Legal Issues in Information Operations." Basically, the paper is a review of information warfare tactics, and an analysis of whether or not some aspects of information warfare violate the Geneva Convention and other international treaties regarding the rules of war. The report concludes that, "Similarly, it might be possible to use computer 'morphing' techniques to create an image of the enemy's chief of state informing his troops that an armistice or cease-fire agreement had been signed. If false, this would also be a war crime."
So, despite the fact that the government had absolutely NOTHING whatsoever to do with this story, even if they did, the government cannot digitally alter wartime photos because it violates the Geneva Convention. Granted, there are other things that one might be inclined NOT to trust the government for, but this is NOT one of them. Please move along...
-Matt
Just out of curiousity, where'd you find this figure that the world population is going to decline? To me that seems somewhat counterintuitive. I don't know that much about history, but I'd guess that the only sizeable declines in population occurred far in the past due to things like the plague (or big huge asteroids crashing into the earth causing species extinction). Given that the average lifespan is increasing around the global, especially in "industrialized" nations and advancements in technology and medicine only promise to extend this growth further, I don't quite see how a decline in population will happen. Are we just going to run out of room for everyone and stop procreating? It's not that I doubt the veracity of your claim, it just seems odd to me and I'd like to know if you can point me to more information about it...
Yeah, you don't get any exercise at all playing sports, especially soccer and hockey. That's why all of those soccer players out there are all fat asses with love-handles and beer guts. And jesus, those hockey players, they're fucking FAT! Or even those basketball players. Man, they could really use some more exercise.
OK, I'll bite...
How are prescription drugs a "crutch for the weak?" Granted, if there's a kid out there crushing up his Ritalin/Adderal and blowing lines of it off of his bathroom mirror I might follow your logic. However, what about all of the kids our there who are correctly prescribed these drugs to cure their problems? Are people who take Advil weak? How about AIDS patients who take numerous pills a day just to stay alive and ward it off? Are these drugs the "crutch" of the "weak" AIDS patients? Just because Ritalian and Adderal treat malfunctions of the mind, instead of the body, does not make them any different from any other prescription drug. These kids have different wiring in their brains - their brains do not function in the same manner as normal person's does. It is unbelievably naive of you to say that these drugs are crutches for the weak.
Now onto for your next point, your ever-so-enlightening theory that these killings resulted from the fact that we have become a "nation of pussies." Clever. You ask, "what happened to the days when a couple of guys would get in a fight and their parents would be called and nothing else." Well sir, what happened was that crazy fuckers started bringing assault rifles and bombs to school and blowing away their classmates. I guess slaughtering kids with military-grade weaponry is somehow effeminate, or "pussy," in your mind.
Now, with this in mind - the whole blowing the school up thing - if there is an incident the school has to do something about it. First and foremost, they need to make sure that further incidents don't happen and as such they need to have the mindset that any fight could potentially be an indication of future incidents (i.e. people critized many of the schools/parents/teachers involved with many of the school shootings for not recognizing the early signs of trouble). Next, I don't know if you've noticed this, but people are actually suing McDonald's for "making" them fat. Like it or not, we live in a Court TV society. With this in mind, what do you think would happen if a fight or something else happend at school and the "parents would be called and nothing else," and then 2 weeks later the kid blew up the cafeteria? You'd have the lawsuit of the century on your hands.
So, to answer your question, these killings didn't result from the fact that we're a nation of "pussies". They happened because some kids got pissed off and exhibited some early signs of trouble, which were ignored (i.e. the whole "parents would be called and nothing else" that you speak so kindly of). These kids happened to get access to lots of weapons and killed people. Simple as that.
Why is it "lucky" that they provide PDF's as well as Microsoft Word files? What office suite do you use? I use OpenOffice and it opens Microsoft Word documents just fine for me. Perhaps your experience has differed. Or maybe it was just another one of the snide jabs at Microsoft that is all too common in the story headlines on slashdot.
I'm sorry, but I need to call the bullshit card on this one...
;-). Popularity is not something we sought out, but instead, something granted to us by the rest of the high school because, apparently, we were likeable people.
Just about everyone that I've ever talked to in college attended high schools with similar social hierarchies to the one I attended. Perhaps yours was different. I don't know....
At the high school I attended, popularity had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with a lack of intelligence, as both you and the article imply. Popular kids are popular because, surprise, people liked them! This can be caused either by being attractive, being athletic, being rich, being nice, being smart, etc. There is no set criteria, but by definition, in order to be popular there has to be something going on in there that makes people respect/admire/like you.
I happened to be one of those people. I'm not the funniest person ever. I'm not amazingly attractive. I'm not rich either. I was, however, at the top of my class, scored the highest on the SATs, played two varsity sports, and got into a very respectable college. I also run Linux and have been coding since I found an IBM PC Junior (which ran some version of BASIC) on the curb on garbage day. However, my girlfriend and I were homecoming king/queen (though this doesn't really mean anything to me, if you want a quantitative measure of popularity in high school, I'd say that's as close as you can get). Unlike me, my girlfriend was not intelligent at all. Instead, she was one of the nicest, most caring people in the entire school. I'd also like to think that she's pretty damned attractive as well
Not every single one of my friends was smart. Not all of them were attractive. Not all of them were rich, nor were they all atheletic. However, the common denominator was that people liked and respected them because they were nice, decent human beings. Because of this, they were "popular." However, I didn't make any of my friends based on this "popularity". In fact, most of my friends from high school (all of whom I still keep in close contact with) I have been friends with since I was really young, either through school or sports. The friends that I made while in high school were made not because either one of us were popular. These people were my friends because they were nice and we got along together. Simply put, nice people tend to associate with each other.
As I've stated, I never sought out popularity. From what I've experienced, most popular kids are regarded as such because they don't really care about being popular. The kids who thought of themselves as being popular and sought out this label were ALWAYS disliked. In my high school, the proper term for them would have been "social climbers".
There was another group of people who were disliked as well. These were the "nerds" (as the article calls them), but you can call them what you wish. These people were generally smart kids. However, they were not disliked because they were smart, liked science fiction, or liked computers.: they were disliked because of the hubris that this brought forth. They always viewed themselves as smarter, and therefore better than everyone else. They looked down upon people of "lesser" mental capacity. The problem, of course, was that for the most part, they weren't always smarter - they just thought that they were, which severely inflated their egos. Their intelligence had nothing to do with their unpopularity: their smug, unfriendly attitudes had everything to do with it.
Every single one of my classes was filled with these people. I tried to be nice and reach out to them, but I was constantly rebuffed. Although I was nice, these kids HATED me. They absolutely LOATHED me like I was pure evil. Why? Not because I was mean - I never was. They hated me because I partied on the weekend. They hated me because, despite the partying, I did better in class than them. They hated me because people liked me. They hated me because I was popular. Some of these kids were genuinely funny. Some of them were even athletic. Some were good-looking, and some were rich. They ALL were smart. However, none of them were nice people. All these kids needed to realize was that if they got rid of the whole hatred/bitterness thing, opened up to people, and interacted socially on a more agreeable level, they would be LIKED as well. Popularity is not some self-selecting thing - it is a labeled assigned to you by your peers. Consequently, they would be popular, not because they wanted to be or even claimed to be (something which they would never do because of the stigma they have mentally attached to the word), but because people LIKED them and assigned them this label.
Though everyone has been framing this conversation in the context of high school, even in college I've noticed the same trend. I'm a computer science major, and at first, I got along really well with a lot of the kids in my classes. We hang out in class, joke around together, work together in groups, and generally have a good time. In fact, many of these kids requested me in their groups because they thought that I was a good coder. However, once some of these kids found out that I was in a fraternity, they immediately began to actively despite me. I did nothing wrong to them and I was never mean. They had liked me, but because of the grievous wrong I committed in being a member of a fraternity, they immediately hated me, solely because they equated fraternities with the popularity of high school. I saw past their "geek" labels and attempted to befriend them, but they were utterly unwilling to do the same.
Now I know I've gone one a little bit of a rant, but I feel I must. To step off the soapbox and respond to the parent more directly, instead of the general discussion, "associating with someone 'smart', esp someone dubbed 'booksmart'" is NEVER seen as degrading. As I've argued, being smart can help one in being liked - I'd say this was one of the reasons that I was considered popular by my high school. I'm an avid slashdot reader and most people here equate intelligence with nerd/geekdom. Anyone who plays sports, interacts socially, has a girlfriend, or is popular is automatically viewed as a unintelligent, meathead, asshole. This is simply not the case. This attitude of superiority based on intelligence (or supposed intelligence!) is the reason that a large number of people on slashdot were disliked (and perhaps still are), and find social interaction with different kinds of people difficult. Intelligence has nothing to do with it - the disdainful attitude does.
Lots of flames to this post...
;-) from a Duke student, with hard data, read my other post
Anyway, if you would like to see another perspective
Excuse me, but I'm one of those "frat boys... you see partying hard 4 or 5 nights a week," and I take offense to that comment. Some people happen to be capable of partying a lot while at the same time getting their work done, learning, and being quite successful. That happens to be the way it worked out for me. The fact that I party and hang out with your so-called "sororitutes" in the free time that I DO have after I'm done TA'ing/studying/working has no bearing on my quality as a student as you suggest. A large number of the guys in my fraternity are engineers as well, and I'd say that most of them are in the same boat that I am. I came to Duke to learn - if I can do that, succeed, and have fun at the same time, what's wrong with it?
.025 grade points. The difference between the top decile of Pratt and that for Trinity is only .004. You can interpet the data how you like, but as far as I'm concerned there is NO difference between Arts & Science students and Engineering students. Furthermore, 75% of last year's graduating class had GPA's below 3.663. With this in mind, I find it REALLY hard to buy the whole grade inflation story at Duke...
I agree with you in that Pratt (Duke's engineering school) is quite difficult. Many Trinity (Duke's arts & sciences school) students give engineers shit about how much work they get. However, most engineers will tell you that they aren't the ones with the most work - computer science majors are. In fact, last semester a Pratt student wrote an article in the Chronicle in which he said, "The entire 'You're an engineer? I'm sorry' bit has grown old. We don't need your pity. Save it for the computer science majors.'" Perhaps you didn't notice it, but at Duke, the computer science major is in Trinity, NOT Pratt. Pratt may have EE/ECE, and offer a few computer science courses (EGR53, etc), but Trinity is where computer science resides.
Last semester in CPS108 (with Duvall, not Astrachan) my class was 45 students. I think about 5 of them got A's. All of my computer science classes have been like this, and so I'd agree with you that grade inflation is not a problem there at all. However, I'd have to disagree with you with respect to the humanities. You rightly point out that Sociology is a bit of a joke major (read: all the basketball, football, etc players), but I really don't think grade inflation in the rest of the departments is nearly as bad as you, or Rojstaczer state. If you ask students what the "easy" classes are, I'd say that ALL of them are in either the sociology department, or they are something like "Intro to Jazz."
I'll concede that you've graduated, and have taken more classes than I have (I'm a sopohmore) and have better insight into the issue. However, in the classes that I've taken thus far, I really have not seen a whole lot of grade inflation. Perhaps your experience was different that mine.
However, here's some empirical data for you. Dean's list requires you to place within the top 1/3rd of all undergraduates in your college. Dean's List With Distiniction requires you to place within the top 10% of all undergraduates in your college. To achieve Summa Cum Laude, you GPA needs to be in the top 5% of last year's graduating class, Magna Cum Laude is the next 10%, and Cum Laude is the next 10% after that. (BTW: If you look at the link above, the GPA's for Dean's List in Pratt lists 4 separate numbers. I'm not sure why there are 4, instead of 1, so I went ahead and averaged them)....
Dean's List (Fall 2002):
Trinity - 3.6
Pratt - 3.625
Dean's List With Distinction (Fall 2002):
Trinity - 3.925
Pratt - 3.929
Latin Honors (For students graduating this year):
Summa Cum Laude: 3.881
Manga Cum Laude: 3.751
Cum Laude: 3.663
From the data, you can see that the difference between the top 3rd of Pratt and the top 3rd of Trinity is only
"As for me going to an ivy league school, yeah, I was accepted into Stanford based upon college entrance scores"....
Except that Stanford isn't an Ivy League school =) Sorry.. I just had to bite and point that out.
However, semantics aside, that doesn't really mean anything. Stanford is one of the finest colleges in the country and probably produces graduates just as strong, if not stronger, than a large portion of the Ivy League.
For some people, myself included, the Ivies are actually a bit of a turnoff. In high school, I noticed that most people who were applying to Ivies were doing so soley because they "needed" to go to an Ivy... not because they actually liked the school or thought it was a good fit for themselves. I can't tell you how many of these people applied to _every_ Ivy, without having even visited most of them. At that point, I decided that I definitely didn't want that. I had dealt with people like this all of my life - there was no way I was going to do it again for the next four years.
Now, I'm not saying that all Ivies student are like this. While visiting friends at Ivies I've met a lot of very nice kids who I really got along with. However, at the same time, I've perceived a very definite aura of pretentiousness with the oh-so-familiar, "Oh, so you don't go to an Ivy?", etc.
There is even a phrase used by some to describe people who share my views - "Ivy Envy." And you know what.. the people who use that phrase are the very people who I'm talking about. But to each his own. Some people want that and others don't.
Although the college you attend may help you in your first step out of college (whether that is law school, graduate school, or your first job) in the end, it doesn't really matter. If in ten years people are still judging you on the college you went to, instead of the person that you are, then I'd say that you're probably surrounding yourself with the wrong people.
But that's just my 2 cents...
Though I'm sure heroin is orders of magnitude more addictive than a EverQuest, I wouldn't overlook how addictive games like this can be.
Freshman year of college I was roommates with a kid who was pretty shy and antisocial. He was a really nice guy though, so whenever I went out to a party, or went to see a movie, or went out to get food with my friends I'd invite him along. First semester this worked, and my roommate actually ended up having a lot of fun and meeting a lot of people.
However, for Christmas he got Dark Age of Camelot. When he came back to school after Winter break he was a totally different person. He would stay up till 8am playing this game. He'd wake up at 6pm and repeat the cycle. He wouldn't go to class. He wouldn't do his work. I'd invite him to go get meals with me but he wouldn't. Instead, he'd order food to the room so that he wouldn't have to leave his game. This kid was no dummy either, he had a LARGE merit based scholarship and was a very smart guy. However, Dark Age of Camelot ruined all of that. I would plead with him to go to class. Plead with him to do his work. Plead with him to leave the room, but to no-avail. He ended up failing 3 out of his 4 classes and was kicked out of school.
The kid was given a life-changing opportunity. He came from a very humble background. His parents had nearly no money. He was the first person in his family to go to college. He had a large merit scholarship to a very respectable school. Though I don't discount the fact that he may have just had a latent addictive personality, I have to think that this game was part of the reason that he threw his great opportunity away.
Again, this is just one case. I'm not saying that games like this are necessarily inherently addictive. There is no doubt that a large part of that addiction is a result of an individual's personality. However, this sad story that I experienced first hand certainly made me aware that given certain circumstances, games such as EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot can be horribly addictive and ruins people's lives.
The first slashdot post to honestly make me laugh out loud in quite some time =)
Correct me if I'm wrong, as I've never had to do this, but I would think that a Linux system with a very precisely configured kernel is also not going to boot just fine and dandy after swapping in a brand new motherboard with different IDE controllers, SCSI controllers, etc.
And I'm sure you probably posted your comment using Lynx. I mean, I think all of us who use a modern graphical browser would agree with you... we've _DEFINITELY_ sacrificed a galatic amount of efficiency, productivity, and functionality using a GUI web browser instead of a console based one. Let's be honest, who needs all of that crufty GUI stuff when you've got Lynx?!
That's really interesting.
According to the White House, the figures for the importation of out-of-state waste are as follows (in tons):
Interesting. New Jersey isn't on there. Maybe you should actually visit a nice suburb instead of regurgitating the hackneyed blather of those who consistently deride New Jersey without actually having been anywhere other than the Turnpike.
Oh, and about high school graduates in NJ looking for jobs at gas stations OUTSIDE of NJ....... Perhaps you don't realize that NJ is the only state where you DON'T PUMP YOUR OWN GAS. Instead, gas station workers pump it FOR YOU. It's amazing to me that HS graduates looking for employment in this field would leave to go to OTHER states when the demand is much higher and the PAY is much higher in NJ. Maybe I'm just imagining things though.
Maybe I'm also imagining that the 2000 Census determined that NJ was one of the 4th wealthiest states in the nation (using per-capita GDP income as the metric).
Get rid of your media-fed, Sopranos-inspired, bullshit New Jersey stereotype. Check out Westfield. Look at Summit. Experience Mendham. Go visit Somerset County. Spend the weekend down the shore in Mantoloking or Avalon. Take the family to Long Beach Island. Take your wife to Cape May for your anniversary.
Do all of this and then come back to me. Then we'll see if you've got anything else to say.
"While it is understandable from Microsoft, it is interesting that IBM, who often claims to be a defender of Open Source Software, would be so negative."
Hey, MySQL is open source... that's great! But what the hell does that have to do with anything? The guy from IBM says, that open source databases (read MySQL):
"Don't support as many users, they don't support as much data, and you don't have as many connectivity options. They lack some key functionality and lack the scalability and performance, which keeps them out of the enterprise."
Now, as is very apparent from the fervently religious DB wars in past articles, these criticisms are _very_ valid, and there are many people, other than IBM, who feel similarly as well.
The IBM guy wasn't saying that the lack of functionality in MySQL is a symptom of its open source nature, he was just saying that it isn't there! With this in mind, why in the hell should IBM push a product that doesn't deliver (open source or not!)
Do you expect IBM to give all open source software that it reviews higher marks than its proprietary brethren based solely on the fact that is is open source? OR, should maybe some sort of objective criteria (read performance/features) be used? I guess you just choose to ignore this blatant bias based on the fact that it fits your ideology.
God-damned slashthink.
"The intention and spirit of the references to the LIMITED monopoly over ideas in the constitution is clear enough for any of us who are bound to follow it to understand."
I'm sorry, but apparently you aren't one of those who are "bound to follow and understand" it. If you knew anthing about the topic, which clearly you don't, you would know that the strict "Jeffersonian" interpretation of the law is that "inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." While what I have quoted doesn't explicitly state it, Jefferson felt that _IDEAS_, not their implementation mind you, should not be "owned." Thus, as you have said, there is a "limited monopoly over ideas" since we shouldn't be able to own them. However, Jefferson, and the other men who originally devised these laws, said NOTHING of their implementation. So, as you yourself has stated, there is no such monopoly there.
So, in response to your pedantic post, yes, I would be overly concerned with "making sure people who spend a lot of many make a profit." They spent a good deal of money expanding on an idea that someone (presumably not themselves) envisioned, and made it a reality. If these said people made a lot of money, and patented their specific implementation of an idea, then GOOD FOR THEM. Find your own fucking implementation and patent it. Otherwise don't disgrace Jefferson by misrepresenting his views on the issue.