If someone steals something, and then puts it in their bag and walks out setting off the alarms, then if the store has no right to check the bag, then how would the store check if you did steal something?
I didn't know what a Phyrric victory was, so I looked it up. Here it is for anyone else curious:
King Pyrrhus of Epirus fought a war against the Romans in 280BC. He won the war, but in the process lost most of his soldiers, commanders and friends. The Romans lost more men in the battle, but had plenty of new men to take their place. Pyrrhus on the other had little left.
He famously said: "Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone."
I have a degree in Physics and a PhD in Physics (well, technically it is engineering since I have to get my hands dirty).
I think that having an indepth knowledge about a field does allow you to teach better. I help people out on irc, and children often have quite detailed questions that require knowledge beyond a normal degree. It also takes a high level of understanding in order to explain simple things simply.
> I don't think that scientific advances are the ultimate goal. I think personal freedom is the ultimate goal, above all else.
I think we'll just have to agree to disagree then:) Almost by definition, a society is about giving up some freedoms, in exchange for the greater good. Society should protect the weak at the cost of a small loss in freedoms of everyone else. I pay towards the health care etc of those who need it.
I'm really quite new to scientific papers. I'm currently writting my first.
But it does seem that every few years there is a "summarising paper" which summarises, simply, what has been happening across the field in fairly simple language.
It seems pretty awful. The way they've had to do it themselves with OOXML is save as RTF, then in the background load the RTF file and save that as OOXML.
It seems their code base really is not designed for such changes.
> Is there a percentage of your money that the government knows better than you how to spend? How do you justify that percentage?
Well most countries have it between 15% to 40% or so. That seems to work fairly well. I think evidence that around that percentage works is a good enough justification for that percentage.
You need a certain amount of tax for things that most people wouldn't invest in, even it was in their own interest. Military, research, welfare, and so on.
I know that there is somewhat of large culture gap between us. Generalising grossly, 'You' see it as your right to have your own money and decide what to do with it - in particular to benefit yourself. 'We' see it as more that we want to live in a society and want to benefit society, while of course still mostly benefiting yourself:)
Of course I'm generalising - there are certainly socialist thinkers in the US and libertarians in the UK.
Put it this way.. I am happy that my university was funded for by tax payers. My student loan for my degree was just to cover living expenses and my grant for my PhD covered all my expenses.
In return, I have no problem with my taxes funding the next generation of thinkers.
If a student gets a scholarship for a PhD, where does that scholarship money come from? It's in societies (i.e. the governments) best interest to fund it, but not in the interest of any particular individual/company to fund it.
Btw I don't think having students just teaching part time would cover the universities cost of the PhD student. Plus the student would then have to work on top of that to earn money to live off. They'd never get any research done if you tried to do that in a way that was profitable for a university and liveable for the student.
Not to mention that the MS one doesn't cover any future versions.
If MS add a feature to their 'standard' and release that as a new version, then that new version isn't covered by the protection. Programs would not be allowed to add in those new features.
The ODF one, of course, guarantees any future versions are covered.
Hmm, I think we have crossed lines a bit.. I don't really understand how it works for you in the US.
You are fine with the state government taking your money and spending it on research, but not the federal government taking your money and spending it on research? I honestly do not see the difference.
> Few PhDs? No Post-Docs? The federal government payes for all this? I thought the students and the schools payed for that.
I honestly don't know how it works in the US. Here, the UK, almost all of the PhDs and postdocs are paid for by the government or by europe. Mine PhD was paid for by Europe. I can't imagine that the US makes students pay for their own PhD and post-docs? If the school pays for it, where do they get the money from?
I lot of your post is a strawman attack. If I said that spending money on food was a good thing, would you reply back and say that if we spent all of our money on food then we'd have no clothes and freeze to death? Just because I argue that we give some of our to the government doesn't mean that I think we should give all the money to the government and become communist! Same for the 82% Jesus thing. I'm sure that 100% of people believe we should have food. Does that mean we should spend 100% of the money on food? No, that's just silly statistics.
For research - yes companies will do their own research, but some things just have to be funded for by the government. I don't think any company funded abstract quantum mechanics research, and yet everyone benefits from that research.
For the bridges thing, "Whoever builds it would want to get the most out of their investment, so they would build it to last a long time" - no. They want it to last for their life time. If they are going to be selfish about this, why do they care about what happens to the bridge after they die? They can no longer reap any reward from it once they are dead.
There you go again with "it's their right", "you can't force them not to" and so on.
Given that nobody was saying it wasn't their right, and nobody has suggested that the government should force them not to, I'm just going to write you off as a troll.
> Why are they forced to pay for something that doesn't benefit them.
Because they in turn benefit from other things that they didn't pay for.
> There are people that never send email, and never want to, but the government took their money and spent it on something that they wouldn't have spent it on themselves.
But they do use DVD players etc that were made possible because of research done well before their time. Research that they did not pay for.
> That is not freedom, that is the government telling you that they know better than you do how to spend your money.
They do know 'better than you' on how to spend your money. That's why we live in a society, rather than living as nomads. Money goes into research and development. Big science projects often take 10 to 20 years just to build, then many years later to work out the results. Of course most people who paid for it aren't going to benefit from it.
> I think that each individual person should be free to spend their money on things that benefit them.
So I guess in your idea world, we scrap all government research, scrap NASA and all it's space research, scrap the majority (all?) of university research, scrap the large hadron collider and all the other accelerators, and so on? We'd also have no research papers, and much much fewer PhD students. And certainly no post-docs etc.
I wonder how your life would be if this was done a hundred years ago.
I certainly doubt we'd have computers - who would do the basic research in the first place? A modern computer relies on full knowledge of the quantum mechanical interactions.
Also bridges etc would be interesting. A bridge would be paid for only by the people who would be directly benefited (presumably people would put money in a pot for it, or a company would build it, then charge people to cross or something). It would be designed to last exactly as long as the life expectancy of the people who paid for (over designing it would be a waste of money, after all, since you wouldn't benefit from it once you are dead).
Most people don't care about most things. It's China's right to pass whatever laws they want - it's their country. And most of their people won't care about politics. I'll still be worried and complain.
MS are trying to muddle the whole open source issue. Managers etc do read about Linux and Open Source from the Financial Times etc. MS wants to confuse the issue at that level, and make it appear that they are participating.
Ask yourself why MS is doing this. Why release the MS-PL and MS-LPL, with such similar naming to the GPL and LGPL, but making the MS-LPL an awful license.
I know, but ask yourself why they came out with MS-PL and MS-LPL, which sound like GPL and LGPL, and then submit the MS-PL for approval and make the MS-LPL really bad.
Slashdot Mirror
If someone steals something, and then puts it in their bag and walks out setting off the alarms, then if the store has no right to check the bag, then how would the store check if you did steal something?
As much as I agree with most of your post, please don't talk about the increase in price of product without taking inflation into account.
I didn't know what a Phyrric victory was, so I looked it up. Here it is for anyone else curious:
King Pyrrhus of Epirus fought a war against the Romans in 280BC. He won the war, but in the process lost most of his soldiers, commanders and friends.
The Romans lost more men in the battle, but had plenty of new men to take their place. Pyrrhus on the other had little left.
He famously said: "Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone."
It won't work with your future directx 10 games :)
Out of interest, did you have to review the license agreements on the normal closed source software?
From the previous name "Star Office"
The balloon idea can be misleading, because a balloon expands into a 3rd dimension. Whereas the big bang theory doesn't require another dimension.
3 minutes when Mars and Earth are at their closest point. 20 minutes or so when they are further apart :)
I have a degree in Physics and a PhD in Physics (well, technically it is engineering since I have to get my hands dirty).
I think that having an indepth knowledge about a field does allow you to teach better. I help people out on irc, and children often have quite detailed questions that require knowledge beyond a normal degree. It also takes a high level of understanding in order to explain simple things simply.
jonner,
:)
Good points - I'll try to be more clear next time
Which is why I posted a documentary to give you the details :)
DTemp,
6 2583451279
If you borrow $1000 from the bank, then the bank basically ends up $10,000 to spend.
Check out: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-90504743
> I don't think that scientific advances are the ultimate goal. I think personal freedom is the ultimate goal, above all else.
:) Almost by definition, a society is about giving up some freedoms, in exchange for the greater good. Society should protect the weak at the cost of a small loss in freedoms of everyone else. I pay towards the health care etc of those who need it.
I think we'll just have to agree to disagree then
I'm really quite new to scientific papers. I'm currently writting my first.
But it does seem that every few years there is a "summarising paper" which summarises, simply, what has been happening across the field in fairly simple language.
Maybe this is just a once-off in my field though.
Brian Jones, the Microsoft Office manager, talks about it here:
/ 11/german-standards-body-creates-new-working-group -to-focus-on-interoperability.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2007/05
It seems pretty awful. The way they've had to do it themselves with OOXML is save as RTF, then in the background load the RTF file and save that as OOXML.
It seems their code base really is not designed for such changes.
Try moving your head rapidly into the screen.
> Is there a percentage of your money that the government knows better than you how to spend? How do you justify that percentage?
:)
Well most countries have it between 15% to 40% or so. That seems to work fairly well. I think evidence that around that percentage works is a good enough justification for that percentage.
You need a certain amount of tax for things that most people wouldn't invest in, even it was in their own interest. Military, research, welfare, and so on.
I know that there is somewhat of large culture gap between us. Generalising grossly, 'You' see it as your right to have your own money and decide what to do with it - in particular to benefit yourself. 'We' see it as more that we want to live in a society and want to benefit society, while of course still mostly benefiting yourself
Of course I'm generalising - there are certainly socialist thinkers in the US and libertarians in the UK.
Put it this way.. I am happy that my university was funded for by tax payers. My student loan for my degree was just to cover living expenses and my grant for my PhD covered all my expenses.
In return, I have no problem with my taxes funding the next generation of thinkers.
If a student gets a scholarship for a PhD, where does that scholarship money come from? It's in societies (i.e. the governments) best interest to fund it, but not in the interest of any particular individual/company to fund it.
Btw I don't think having students just teaching part time would cover the universities cost of the PhD student. Plus the student would then have to work on top of that to earn money to live off. They'd never get any research done if you tried to do that in a way that was profitable for a university and liveable for the student.
This sounds like a good idea.
s mallernk5.jpg
I personally work on a digital hologram printer, and wouldn't mind recording a short video describing how it works etc.
Here's an example hologram that I've done: (Yes, I'm a KDE developer as well. It's the KDE dragon, konqi.)
http://img267.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pict0044
(Excuse the mess of my room)
HAHA! Do you really think Microsoft would let you change the default 'save as' to anything except a microsoft format?
f fice-to-support-odf-the-qa/
I googled, and found: http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2006/07/06/microsoft-o
Which says that MS themselves said that you cannot change the default 'save as'.
Not to mention that the MS one doesn't cover any future versions.
If MS add a feature to their 'standard' and release that as a new version, then that new version isn't covered by the protection. Programs would not be allowed to add in those new features.
The ODF one, of course, guarantees any future versions are covered.
Hmm, I think we have crossed lines a bit.. I don't really understand how it works for you in the US.
You are fine with the state government taking your money and spending it on research, but not the federal government taking your money and spending it on research?
I honestly do not see the difference.
> Few PhDs? No Post-Docs? The federal government payes for all this? I thought the students and the schools payed for that.
I honestly don't know how it works in the US. Here, the UK, almost all of the PhDs and postdocs are paid for by the government or by europe. Mine PhD was paid for by Europe. I can't imagine that the US makes students pay for their own PhD and post-docs? If the school pays for it, where do they get the money from?
I lot of your post is a strawman attack. If I said that spending money on food was a good thing, would you reply back and say that if we spent all of our money on food then we'd have no clothes and freeze to death? Just because I argue that we give some of our to the government doesn't mean that I think we should give all the money to the government and become communist!
Same for the 82% Jesus thing. I'm sure that 100% of people believe we should have food. Does that mean we should spend 100% of the money on food? No, that's just silly statistics.
For research - yes companies will do their own research, but some things just have to be funded for by the government. I don't think any company funded abstract quantum mechanics research, and yet everyone benefits from that research.
For the bridges thing, "Whoever builds it would want to get the most out of their investment, so they would build it to last a long time" - no. They want it to last for their life time. If they are going to be selfish about this, why do they care about what happens to the bridge after they die? They can no longer reap any reward from it once they are dead.
There you go again with "it's their right", "you can't force them not to" and so on.
Given that nobody was saying it wasn't their right, and nobody has suggested that the government should force them not to, I'm just going to write you off as a troll.
> Why are they forced to pay for something that doesn't benefit them.
:(
Because they in turn benefit from other things that they didn't pay for.
> There are people that never send email, and never want to, but the government took their money and spent it on something that they wouldn't have spent it on themselves.
But they do use DVD players etc that were made possible because of research done well before their time. Research that they did not pay for.
> That is not freedom, that is the government telling you that they know better than you do how to spend your money.
They do know 'better than you' on how to spend your money. That's why we live in a society, rather than living as nomads. Money goes into research and development. Big science projects often take 10 to 20 years just to build, then many years later to work out the results. Of course most people who paid for it aren't going to benefit from it.
> I think that each individual person should be free to spend their money on things that benefit them.
So I guess in your idea world, we scrap all government research, scrap NASA and all it's space research, scrap the majority (all?) of university research, scrap the large hadron collider and all the other accelerators, and so on? We'd also have no research papers, and much much fewer PhD students. And certainly no post-docs etc.
I wonder how your life would be if this was done a hundred years ago.
I certainly doubt we'd have computers - who would do the basic research in the first place? A modern computer relies on full knowledge of the quantum mechanical interactions.
Also bridges etc would be interesting. A bridge would be paid for only by the people who would be directly benefited (presumably people would put money in a pot for it, or a company would build it, then charge people to cross or something). It would be designed to last exactly as long as the life expectancy of the people who paid for (over designing it would be a waste of money, after all, since you wouldn't benefit from it once you are dead).
I would sure hate to live in your world
Most people don't care about most things. It's China's right to pass whatever laws they want - it's their country. And most of their people won't care about politics. I'll still be worried and complain.
MS are trying to muddle the whole open source issue. Managers etc do read about Linux and Open Source from the Financial Times etc. MS wants to confuse the issue at that level, and make it appear that they are participating.
Ask yourself why MS is doing this. Why release the MS-PL and MS-LPL, with such similar naming to the GPL and LGPL, but making the MS-LPL an awful license.
I know, but ask yourself why they came out with MS-PL and MS-LPL, which sound like GPL and LGPL, and then submit the MS-PL for approval and make the MS-LPL really bad.