The financial pressure is much less. This is probably the most obvious, but also tactically the most importand, so I'm going to elaborate a bit.
People sue each other all the time, and generally, even in bogus suits, the lawyer's advice is to settle if it will cost less than litigating in court. If you're representing yourself, you don't have to worry about your legal fees, but the meter is still ticking for the other side. Delays, requests for documents, a longer trial than they had anticipated.
if they ask the court to reserve 4 hours for trial, you should ask for 4 days. Have the court hold a hearing just to argue the schedule... If someone's suing you and it's unfounded, here's your chance to bleed them. Don't be surprised if the lawyer for the opposing side lets you run up their meter, since its more money for them, and they can conveniently deflect complaints by blaming it on you;
Your lawyer works for you. When he advises you that it would be better to "pay people to go away", you have every right to tell him to go fuck himself, especially if you had made it clear (as I had) at the outset that there was to be absolutely no negtotiations - that both me and the government are on the same side, and wanted the issues resolved by a judge.
Have no illusions - lawyers don't work for you. They work for themselves.
Churning thousands of dollars in bills for negotiations with the other side that I had forbidden, and that both I and the government had already told him were useless, was an act of dishonesty that also ended up doing considerable collateral damage that I now have to fix. His explanation? He had none.
His response was that he didn't like people telling him how to manage his case. I told him it wasn't *his* case to "manage", it was mine, and it would be done as I said. He didn't like that, so I fired him.
"To quote an old legal proverb: He who represents himself has a fool for a client."
It's not a proverb - its a cliche - and its both wrong and very self-serving of lawyers.
I'll stack my win/loss record against the average lawyer any day. Close to 20 cases, and I don't just win - I enjoy myself while I'm at it (it probably wouldn't be so fun if I'd lose, but unlike the other side, I don't have a fool for a client:-)
If you know how to fill in forms, draw up motions, send faxes, pay a bailiff to serve a summons (hint - you can find them on the Intarweb or the yellow pages), do some research on the net, and present your facts in an ordered, logical, easy-to-understand way, you can do the same thing as a lawyer.
Of course, if you know how to troll them, you can get them to start screaming at the judge. I managed to get someone to do that twice during a trial. A lawyer wouldn't have conducted the same type of cross-examination (and wouldn't have gotten into a heated argument with the judge - which I won, btw), but I was out for blood. I don't like being falsely accused by a couple of people who are your basic waste of oxygen.
The lawyers are claiming rights specific to the DMCA - that doesn't hold under Berne. You can't "export" the DMCA to other countries that are limited to the Berne Convention.
Simple solution - have them post the step-by-step of what they have to do, including the jurisdiction and the "gotcha", to help save others the same pain. I'll gladly host the information.
People are entitled to "Buyers Remorse" in a good chunk of the world. Aside from that, if they change their mind about an online purchase inside of a couple of days, they often utilize the facilities their credit card companies give them to cancel the payment, which incurs significant cost to the seller.
If you don't give purchasers the ability to cancel their order without cost when they changed their mind, it generally ends up costing you more than it's worth.
Come off it - we're not talking people buying something retail here - we're talking domain names. Buy it because you want it or need it. Don't like it after a week -sell it. This whole "domain tasting" bullshit has to end.
Try returning that losing lottery ticket the day after the draw. "Buyer's remorse"? Are you fucking kidding? Try returning your big mac an hour later. Try returning your custom-made whatever (and all domain names are custom - by definition, no two are alike).
The biggest impediment to justice is lawyers. Too often, even if you win, you lose, and the only real winners are the lawyers for both sides.
As for their copyright claim - screw that too - post the notices on a server outside the US - problem solved.
What next - a claim that a hold-up note or a written death threat is copyrighted? Or an oral death threat, or even a murder in front of a crowd - since it meets the "public performance" criteria?
Lawyers like to compare themselves to professionals like doctors or nurses - in polls, the public rates lawyers ethics and honesty closer to used-car salesmen, and lawyers have only themselves to blame.
You want justice? Fire your lawyer - paying a lawyer is, in most cases, like feeding a cockroach. It just encourages them. Argue your case yourself. You're fucking some lawyer out of $$$ (since you didn't hire them), and the other side can no longer use the "they'll settle out of court since it will be cheaper than litigating the case."
And before someone says "that doesn't work" - I'm doing it right now. Idiot ex trying to claim $70,000.00 from me, her lawyer "let it be known" that they'd like an offer to settle out of court for "just a few grand", and my response - in court, at the last hearing - was "Not a penny." I argued for a 2-day trial on the merits, and her lawyer started complaining about the additional burden a 2-day trial will be to his client (awww... whe'll have to spend another $5k on top of what she's wasted already).
Trying to get people to "settle out of court" over bogus claims is just legalized blackmail. The sooner we all help each other exercise our rights to argue our own cases, the sooner bullshit like this ends.
"Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators"
GPS works with satellites. My cell phone's pretty good, but it doesn't receive satellite signals.
Cell phone triangulation has nothing to do with GPS; if they got this basic fact wrong, its no wonder the idea seems as interesting as shit on a stick for lunch.
I've got a better idea - outfit cell phones with "bullshit lie detector" software, and every time a politician says something that's a lie, all the cellphones in the vicinity play BULLSHIT.mp3.
Civilization as we know it would crumble within a year!
"Why not breed mosquitoes that are immune to, or can't be carriers of, the Dengue virus?"
Simple answer - follow the money. Once the modified mosquito is in the wild, if it does have an advantage, it will displace regular mosquitos with no annual expenditure required.
Its the same reason nobody's looking for a real cure for the common cold - it sells more OTC (over-the-counter) "remedies" than any other disease. And the tie-in sales for kleenex, lysol "kills germs on contact", "antibacterial" soap (since when hasn't a soap been antibacterial), and you're looking at a lot of money.
Until we get anti-anti-biotic-resistant (or whatever you'd call them) skeeters...
We could also go the other route - reduce the affected population of humans by half...
Seriously, it won't work unless its done every year - a real cash cow.
Oxitec's technology is a variation of a proven process called "sterile insect technique," which scientists have already used to eliminate the screwworm and the Mediterranean fruit fly from North America. It involves irradiating male insects, causing mutations that make them sterile. When released into the wild, they mate with females who then fail to reproduce.
But the amount of radiation used in that technique kills mosquitoes. So in a twist on the sterile insect technique, Alphey discovered a way to genetically program the bugs to die unless they're fed the common antibiotic tetracycline.
By postponing death with tetracycline, the scientists can keep the altered bugs alive long enough to breed them in large numbers. When released into the wild, they no longer receive tetracycline so the previously silenced gene springs into action. The bugs stay alive long enough to breed with wild females, but their offspring die young.
In other words, the mosquitoes are genetically poisoned, but Alphey's team provides the antidote until they are released in the wild.
"It occurred to me that this could be used to give death, sterility or whatever you want in insects," Alphey said.
Sure, you reduce the next generation of bugs by half... and then what? Its not like they won't stop breeding, and those that are left will quickly fill the void. Besides, it doesn't take millions of insects to infect you - get bit, get sick. Eliminate half the bites, you'll still get sick.
cell phones and computers can be password-protected. Contents can be encrypted, hidden volumes can be created (hidden volumes work even on memory chips in your cell phone). Can't claim an "incidental search" if you have to waterboard someone to get the password and the decryption key.
computers can be fixed up with a boot-up sequence that says "this computer will self-destruct in 10,,, 9... 8... 6..." "WTF? Where's 7? "Just joking... 7... 6... 5..."
you can encrypt the contents of your computer, and if you're using your cell-phone to carry around data, you can always encrypt that too - or just pull the sim chip. It only takes a few seconds (like 5), at least on my V365.
Make the password for decrypting something easy, like "Go fuck yourself", "I fucked your momma - twice", or "You can have my password when you pry it from my cold dead hands". They'll figure you're being obstinate, when you're in fact cooperating completely. You can even truthfully answer "you already know all I know when it comes to that computer's password." You'll most likely even pass a polygraph.
"But the idea that government programs should be run "like a business"--and I repeat, that's the old idea that this smells of--are hogwash, and often an excuse for getting government money in the pockets of business. That was my rant, hope you enjoyed it!"
Exactly - except I'd change "often" to "always." True philanthropists don't ask the government to pay them to do their "good deeds."
"It's Rule #3 or maybe #4 in IT management: never let a programmer be a sysadmin, and vice-versa. "
If a programmer can't admin a small network, then he or she is quite simply not up to the job of writing code, since they're ill-prepared to understand the typical environment.
Any box can go down. But if my work dev boxes go down, or I just don't feel like driving into work, I can still work from home, on one of my own boxes. USB keys, backup dvds, etc.... the office building can burn down, and I'm still able to work. Sticking stuff into svn is *not* the same as backing up. How many people are stupid | lazy enough that they store all their backups on-site?
"We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people let us continue to rip off poorer people,' Mr. Gates will say in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 'Key to Mr. Gates's plan will be for businesses to dedicate their top people to locking in the poor an approach he feels is more powerful when tied into traditional corporate donations and volunteer work. Governments should set policies and disburse funds to create financial incentives so that businesses can profit when they "improve" the lives of the poor, rather than giving money to the poor, he plans to say "The poor would just waste it on non-essentials like food and medicine.". Mr. Gates's argument for the potential profitability of serving the poor via government pork-barrelling and corporate tie-ins is certain to raise skepticism, and some people may point out that tapping the poverty-ridden became a priority for Mr. Gates only after he'd earned billions building up Microsoft. But Mr. Gates is emphatic that he's not calling for a fundamental change in how capitalism works - as long as he continues to get his.'"
"People often store files, databases, and other such essential data and applications on centralized compters. Then they keep them running all the time, and provide multi-user access. These "servers" can be kept in rooms designed to protect and cool them, These "servers" and can even be backed up to offsite media on an automatic schedule. It's amazing."
I don't think that would be too practical when you want to run a test that will generate hundreds of gigabytes of data... not only will your test run slow, but so will everyone else trying to access that particular server.
Developers will always need their own boxes, with their own filesystems. They'll also run into times when they have stuff on their home boxes that would be useful at work, and its quicker to just fish:// into their home box and grab it than to recreate it.
Once you get used to being able to access your home machine from anywhere, you find all sorts of uses for it.
"What else could explain the surprising fact that MySQL has quietly filled out its open source portfolio with a closed source proprietary management software tool known as Enterprise Software Monitor?""
They're offering better support. Haven't we always said that the rationale behind open source is you can offer the product for free, then offer paid support?
Why is it every time someone actually implements this, they're criticized?
"I doubt a dog would recognize the thing on TV as a dog at all."
They do - and not just my dogs. Ask any dog owner. They see a dog running around barking on TV, they want to play.
Why would you assume that the same tests with mirrors that we interpret as being evidence of self-awareness in primates is invalid for canines?
Also, from the article you linked to:
Rico was also able to interpret phrases such as "fetch the sock" in terms of its component words (rather than considering its utterance to be a single word). Rico could also give the sock to a specified person.
For at least a decade, local dog-training classes have offered the same - you can tell the dog to find a specific object (say, for example, if there was a ball, a block, and a glover, to find the glove) and drop it in front of a specific person. Its not just border collies.
Besides, it could be argued that dogs are more intelligent than humans - after all, who picks up who's shit?:-)
Dogs are capable of learning that an abstract symbol means something. It takes training, same as humans. How do you think you learned the alphabet? Or that green means go and red means stop?
As just one example of how they understand, watch what they do when they see a mirror. They understand that the dog they see isn't real, that its a reflection of themself. They act differently than to a dog on TV, which they understand is "not self." The ability to understand and discern the difference between "self" and "not self" is a huge leap into both abstraction and self-awareness, along the same lines as "I think, therefore I am."
They even understand that other dogs in the mirror are not only "not self", but also "not really dogs".
That takes a fair amount of intelligence, and the ability to understand abstract concepts - "self", "other", "not self", "not other", "not dog", etc.
"A dog learning that "B-A-T-H" means "bath" has simply learned a new word, just like they learned the original "bath". To a dog, it's just a different kind of bark and they've figured out that it means they're about to get a bath. There's a difference between learning and comprehending a language, and associating a certain sound with an activity that usually follows it."
And how is that different from humans associating the word "banana" with a fruit? Or us associating words with activites that follow, like "Stop or I'll shoot?" And how does that take away from the fact that the dog understands the difference between "I'm going to take a bath" and "I'm going to give the D-O-G a B-A-T-H"?
Communication is taking place. They understand something based on context - something which is more advanced than just the word in isolation. There's a cerain amount of intelligence involved, which is what counts.
Sorry to hear about your odg. However, like a lot of things, it doesn't scale linearly. A 25-pound dog is a small dog. Then again, to me anything under 100 pounds is a small dog.
Sharing chocolate chip cookies with my dogs is a zero-risk proposition. Its not bakers' chocolate, and even if it were, there's not enough chocolate in a 2-pound bag of cookies, even if one of them ate the whole thing by itself, to do them any harm.
"If I ever met you in person my first instinct wouldn't be to punch you in the face."
Gee, you obviously haven't met me:-)
File that under self-deprecating humour, designed to deflect aggression.
Look, what I'm saying isn't nice. The idea that humans are basically cruel and employ humour to manage their cruel, aggressive tendancies, makes us look awful, and we don't want to think of ourselves as basically the scum of the earth. It ruins our illusions, our self-image.
However, it explains a lot, and it can be used to make predictions, like any useful theory. Mean and cruel will make more at the box office than sugar and sweet. The American Pie series was a great example of mean and cruel humour. We continually make fun of the characters. Stifler having to eat dog shit. Jim being hopelessly inept, and flubbing his big chance with Nadia being broadcasted on the net. Getting caught having sex with a pie. One humiliation after another. Sure, in the end, "it all works out", but that wasn't what we enjoyed. Nobody talked about the wedding when they gathered around the water cooler the next day.
Was Miss Carolina flubbing her lines funny? Tens of millions of people think so.
Look at how many people are totally fascinated with the public melt-down of Britney Speares.
Or the reason American Idol is popular - so they can watch people making fools of themselves in public, then getting raked over the coals by Simon Whatsisname. Its the new "Gong Show".
We're aggressive animals. We just have evolved mechanisms (and humour is one of them) to enable us to sort of live together.
Want more proof? Look at how cruel and cutting and FUNNY the jokes are when people split up. Nichole Kidman saying "at least now I can wear high heels again" is a great line! Ask anyone who's gone through a particularly bitter split-up, and they'll have a few funny stories to tell - with their ex being the target. Its what we do. Its what we are.
The fact that so many people feel compelled to deny it, without offering any contrary evidence, speaks for itself. "Methinks they doth protest too much."
Pit two equals together - one aggressive, one non-aggressive. Who ends up owning the store?
Any sufficiently advanced entities will already know this.
Also, there are NO benefits to cooperation in this scenario, because they can just take what they want. No need to exchange.
Humans (sometimes) cooperate because they have to, and because right now its in our long-term advantage. You have something I want, I have something you want, we work out a deal. We don't negotiate with the ants and field mice when we bulldoze a subdivision. We don't negotiate with the cows and the pigs and the apples we eat. We just take.
MAD (mutually assured destruction) only works when each side can destroy the other. If they're smart (and they would be) the would already know, just by watching the TV programs we've been sending into space (as well as the news, etc), that we are not peaceful, we can't even work properly among ourselves, and that we are not to be trusted. We even have a saying for it - "a leapord doesn't change its spots."
Its too late to "call back" those programs - and anyone coming this way will certainly intercept them, and take the safe decision. So our path is already set.
If we're more advanced (not very likely, given the age of the universe), they won't communicate with us. If they're more advanced, we have nothing to offer them, we're a proven menace that can't be trusted, and there is no up side for letting us continue. Might as well bulldoze the field and get rid of the mice.
Remember - we'll probably be dealing with AIs, not bios (actually, the most likely scenario is our AIs dealing with their AIs, because after a certain point, we have nothing to offer our own AIs in trade...).
Actually, I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to gather all the thoughts in the various threads and expand them into an article.
Most people (myself included) don't like aggressive behaviour. Yet it seems that we have no choice ultimately, except to either increase both our aggresiveness, and our ability to channel it into non-destructive behaviour, or we'll end up being uncompetitive as a species, another footnote on the trash dump of history.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly,
7 reasons to represent yourself in court
Your lawyer works for you. When he advises you that it would be better to "pay people to go away", you have every right to tell him to go fuck himself, especially if you had made it clear (as I had) at the outset that there was to be absolutely no negtotiations - that both me and the government are on the same side, and wanted the issues resolved by a judge.
Have no illusions - lawyers don't work for you. They work for themselves.
Churning thousands of dollars in bills for negotiations with the other side that I had forbidden, and that both I and the government had already told him were useless, was an act of dishonesty that also ended up doing considerable collateral damage that I now have to fix. His explanation? He had none.
His response was that he didn't like people telling him how to manage his case. I told him it wasn't *his* case to "manage", it was mine, and it would be done as I said. He didn't like that, so I fired him.
More here and here.
"To quote an old legal proverb: He who represents himself has a fool for a client."
It's not a proverb - its a cliche - and its both wrong and very self-serving of lawyers.
I'll stack my win/loss record against the average lawyer any day. Close to 20 cases, and I don't just win - I enjoy myself while I'm at it (it probably wouldn't be so fun if I'd lose, but unlike the other side, I don't have a fool for a client :-)
Here's 7 reasons to represent yourself in court. People do it every day, some by choice, some because they have no other choice.
If you know how to fill in forms, draw up motions, send faxes, pay a bailiff to serve a summons (hint - you can find them on the Intarweb or the yellow pages), do some research on the net, and present your facts in an ordered, logical, easy-to-understand way, you can do the same thing as a lawyer.
Of course, if you know how to troll them, you can get them to start screaming at the judge. I managed to get someone to do that twice during a trial. A lawyer wouldn't have conducted the same type of cross-examination (and wouldn't have gotten into a heated argument with the judge - which I won, btw), but I was out for blood. I don't like being falsely accused by a couple of people who are your basic waste of oxygen.
Last I looked, you can register domains for as little as $5.00 per year.
Really, if you're not happy with the domain after you bought it, just park it, sell it, or even contact a ppc aggregator and make a few bucks off it.
There's no excuse for "domain tasting".
The lawyers are claiming rights specific to the DMCA - that doesn't hold under Berne. You can't "export" the DMCA to other countries that are limited to the Berne Convention.
Simple solution - have them post the step-by-step of what they have to do, including the jurisdiction and the "gotcha", to help save others the same pain. I'll gladly host the information.
Come off it - we're not talking people buying something retail here - we're talking domain names. Buy it because you want it or need it. Don't like it after a week -sell it. This whole "domain tasting" bullshit has to end.
Try returning that losing lottery ticket the day after the draw. "Buyer's remorse"? Are you fucking kidding? Try returning your big mac an hour later. Try returning your custom-made whatever (and all domain names are custom - by definition, no two are alike).
Shakespeare had it right ...
The biggest impediment to justice is lawyers. Too often, even if you win, you lose, and the only real winners are the lawyers for both sides.
As for their copyright claim - screw that too - post the notices on a server outside the US - problem solved.
What next - a claim that a hold-up note or a written death threat is copyrighted? Or an oral death threat, or even a murder in front of a crowd - since it meets the "public performance" criteria?
Lawyers like to compare themselves to professionals like doctors or nurses - in polls, the public rates lawyers ethics and honesty closer to used-car salesmen, and lawyers have only themselves to blame.
You want justice? Fire your lawyer - paying a lawyer is, in most cases, like feeding a cockroach. It just encourages them. Argue your case yourself. You're fucking some lawyer out of $$$ (since you didn't hire them), and the other side can no longer use the "they'll settle out of court since it will be cheaper than litigating the case."
And before someone says "that doesn't work" - I'm doing it right now. Idiot ex trying to claim $70,000.00 from me, her lawyer "let it be known" that they'd like an offer to settle out of court for "just a few grand", and my response - in court, at the last hearing - was "Not a penny." I argued for a 2-day trial on the merits, and her lawyer started complaining about the additional burden a 2-day trial will be to his client (awww ... whe'll have to spend another $5k on top of what she's wasted already).
Trying to get people to "settle out of court" over bogus claims is just legalized blackmail. The sooner we all help each other exercise our rights to argue our own cases, the sooner bullshit like this ends.
"Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators"
GPS works with satellites. My cell phone's pretty good, but it doesn't receive satellite signals.
Cell phone triangulation has nothing to do with GPS; if they got this basic fact wrong, its no wonder the idea seems as interesting as shit on a stick for lunch.
I've got a better idea - outfit cell phones with "bullshit lie detector" software, and every time a politician says something that's a lie, all the cellphones in the vicinity play BULLSHIT.mp3.
Civilization as we know it would crumble within a year!
"Why not breed mosquitoes that are immune to, or can't be carriers of, the Dengue virus?"
Simple answer - follow the money. Once the modified mosquito is in the wild, if it does have an advantage, it will displace regular mosquitos with no annual expenditure required.
Its the same reason nobody's looking for a real cure for the common cold - it sells more OTC (over-the-counter) "remedies" than any other disease. And the tie-in sales for kleenex, lysol "kills germs on contact", "antibacterial" soap (since when hasn't a soap been antibacterial), and you're looking at a lot of money.
Until we get anti-anti-biotic-resistant (or whatever you'd call them) skeeters ...
We could also go the other route - reduce the affected population of humans by half ...
Seriously, it won't work unless its done every year - a real cash cow.
Sure, you reduce the next generation of bugs by halfMake the password for decrypting something easy, like "Go fuck yourself", "I fucked your momma - twice", or "You can have my password when you pry it from my cold dead hands". They'll figure you're being obstinate, when you're in fact cooperating completely. You can even truthfully answer "you already know all I know when it comes to that computer's password." You'll most likely even pass a polygraph.
"But the idea that government programs should be run "like a business"--and I repeat, that's the old idea that this smells of--are hogwash, and often an excuse for getting government money in the pockets of business. That was my rant, hope you enjoyed it!"
Exactly - except I'd change "often" to "always." True philanthropists don't ask the government to pay them to do their "good deeds."
"It's Rule #3 or maybe #4 in IT management: never let a programmer be a sysadmin, and vice-versa. "
If a programmer can't admin a small network, then he or she is quite simply not up to the job of writing code, since they're ill-prepared to understand the typical environment.
Any box can go down. But if my work dev boxes go down, or I just don't feel like driving into work, I can still work from home, on one of my own boxes. USB keys, backup dvds, etc. ... the office building can burn down, and I'm still able to work. Sticking stuff into svn is *not* the same as backing up. How many people are stupid | lazy enough that they store all their backups on-site?
" but you write as though his is some sick person hell bent on ripping off the poor."
He is. This Microsoft Ties $235m IT Aid To Use of Windows was only 2 days ago.
yesterday
But not just the poor - he's an equal-opportunity exploiter.
"We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people let us continue to rip off poorer people,' Mr. Gates will say in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 'Key to Mr. Gates's plan will be for businesses to dedicate their top people to locking in the poor an approach he feels is more powerful when tied into traditional corporate donations and volunteer work. Governments should set policies and disburse funds to create financial incentives so that businesses can profit when they "improve" the lives of the poor, rather than giving money to the poor, he plans to say "The poor would just waste it on non-essentials like food and medicine.". Mr. Gates's argument for the potential profitability of serving the poor via government pork-barrelling and corporate tie-ins is certain to raise skepticism, and some people may point out that tapping the poverty-ridden became a priority for Mr. Gates only after he'd earned billions building up Microsoft. But Mr. Gates is emphatic that he's not calling for a fundamental change in how capitalism works - as long as he continues to get his.'"
"People often store files, databases, and other such essential data and applications on centralized compters. Then they keep them running all the time, and provide multi-user access. These "servers" can be kept in rooms designed to protect and cool them, These "servers" and can even be backed up to offsite media on an automatic schedule. It's amazing."
I don't think that would be too practical when you want to run a test that will generate hundreds of gigabytes of data ... not only will your test run slow, but so will everyone else trying to access that particular server.
Developers will always need their own boxes, with their own filesystems. They'll also run into times when they have stuff on their home boxes that would be useful at work, and its quicker to just fish:// into their home box and grab it than to recreate it.
Once you get used to being able to access your home machine from anywhere, you find all sorts of uses for it.
"What else could explain the surprising fact that MySQL has quietly filled out its open source portfolio with a closed source proprietary management software tool known as Enterprise Software Monitor?""
They're offering better support. Haven't we always said that the rationale behind open source is you can offer the product for free, then offer paid support?
Why is it every time someone actually implements this, they're criticized?
"I doubt a dog would recognize the thing on TV as a dog at all."
They do - and not just my dogs. Ask any dog owner. They see a dog running around barking on TV, they want to play.
Why would you assume that the same tests with mirrors that we interpret as being evidence of self-awareness in primates is invalid for canines?
Also, from the article you linked to:
For at least a decade, local dog-training classes have offered the same - you can tell the dog to find a specific object (say, for example, if there was a ball, a block, and a glover, to find the glove) and drop it in front of a specific person. Its not just border collies.
Besides, it could be argued that dogs are more intelligent than humans - after all, who picks up who's shit? :-)
Dogs are capable of learning that an abstract symbol means something. It takes training, same as humans. How do you think you learned the alphabet? Or that green means go and red means stop?
As just one example of how they understand, watch what they do when they see a mirror. They understand that the dog they see isn't real, that its a reflection of themself. They act differently than to a dog on TV, which they understand is "not self." The ability to understand and discern the difference between "self" and "not self" is a huge leap into both abstraction and self-awareness, along the same lines as "I think, therefore I am."
They even understand that other dogs in the mirror are not only "not self", but also "not really dogs".
That takes a fair amount of intelligence, and the ability to understand abstract concepts - "self", "other", "not self", "not other", "not dog", etc.
"A dog learning that "B-A-T-H" means "bath" has simply learned a new word, just like they learned the original "bath". To a dog, it's just a different kind of bark and they've figured out that it means they're about to get a bath. There's a difference between learning and comprehending a language, and associating a certain sound with an activity that usually follows it."
And how is that different from humans associating the word "banana" with a fruit? Or us associating words with activites that follow, like "Stop or I'll shoot?" And how does that take away from the fact that the dog understands the difference between "I'm going to take a bath" and "I'm going to give the D-O-G a B-A-T-H"?
Communication is taking place. They understand something based on context - something which is more advanced than just the word in isolation. There's a cerain amount of intelligence involved, which is what counts.
Sorry to hear about your odg. However, like a lot of things, it doesn't scale linearly. A 25-pound dog is a small dog. Then again, to me anything under 100 pounds is a small dog.
Sharing chocolate chip cookies with my dogs is a zero-risk proposition. Its not bakers' chocolate, and even if it were, there's not enough chocolate in a 2-pound bag of cookies, even if one of them ate the whole thing by itself, to do them any harm.
"If I ever met you in person my first instinct wouldn't be to punch you in the face."
Gee, you obviously haven't met me :-)
File that under self-deprecating humour, designed to deflect aggression.
Look, what I'm saying isn't nice. The idea that humans are basically cruel and employ humour to manage their cruel, aggressive tendancies, makes us look awful, and we don't want to think of ourselves as basically the scum of the earth. It ruins our illusions, our self-image.
However, it explains a lot, and it can be used to make predictions, like any useful theory. Mean and cruel will make more at the box office than sugar and sweet. The American Pie series was a great example of mean and cruel humour. We continually make fun of the characters. Stifler having to eat dog shit. Jim being hopelessly inept, and flubbing his big chance with Nadia being broadcasted on the net. Getting caught having sex with a pie. One humiliation after another. Sure, in the end, "it all works out", but that wasn't what we enjoyed. Nobody talked about the wedding when they gathered around the water cooler the next day.
Was Miss Carolina flubbing her lines funny? Tens of millions of people think so.
Look at how many people are totally fascinated with the public melt-down of Britney Speares.
Or the reason American Idol is popular - so they can watch people making fools of themselves in public, then getting raked over the coals by Simon Whatsisname. Its the new "Gong Show".
We're aggressive animals. We just have evolved mechanisms (and humour is one of them) to enable us to sort of live together.
Want more proof? Look at how cruel and cutting and FUNNY the jokes are when people split up. Nichole Kidman saying "at least now I can wear high heels again" is a great line! Ask anyone who's gone through a particularly bitter split-up, and they'll have a few funny stories to tell - with their ex being the target. Its what we do. Its what we are.
The fact that so many people feel compelled to deny it, without offering any contrary evidence, speaks for itself. "Methinks they doth protest too much."
Pit two equals together - one aggressive, one non-aggressive. Who ends up owning the store?
Any sufficiently advanced entities will already know this.
Also, there are NO benefits to cooperation in this scenario, because they can just take what they want. No need to exchange.
Humans (sometimes) cooperate because they have to, and because right now its in our long-term advantage. You have something I want, I have something you want, we work out a deal. We don't negotiate with the ants and field mice when we bulldoze a subdivision. We don't negotiate with the cows and the pigs and the apples we eat. We just take.
MAD (mutually assured destruction) only works when each side can destroy the other. If they're smart (and they would be) the would already know, just by watching the TV programs we've been sending into space (as well as the news, etc), that we are not peaceful, we can't even work properly among ourselves, and that we are not to be trusted. We even have a saying for it - "a leapord doesn't change its spots."
Its too late to "call back" those programs - and anyone coming this way will certainly intercept them, and take the safe decision. So our path is already set.
If we're more advanced (not very likely, given the age of the universe), they won't communicate with us. If they're more advanced, we have nothing to offer them, we're a proven menace that can't be trusted, and there is no up side for letting us continue. Might as well bulldoze the field and get rid of the mice.
Remember - we'll probably be dealing with AIs, not bios (actually, the most likely scenario is our AIs dealing with their AIs, because after a certain point, we have nothing to offer our own AIs in trade ...).
Actually, I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to gather all the thoughts in the various threads and expand them into an article.
Most people (myself included) don't like aggressive behaviour. Yet it seems that we have no choice ultimately, except to either increase both our aggresiveness, and our ability to channel it into non-destructive behaviour, or we'll end up being uncompetitive as a species, another footnote on the trash dump of history.