I agree that China should be required to reduce carbon emissions, too, and I believe they have recently signaled their readiness to commit to this in the upcoming Copenhagen conference of the UNFCCC.
But really it makes no sense to claim that Kyoto's obligations are unfair on developed countries. That's what GW et al like to say, but it's a smokescreen based on misrepresentation of the Kyoto Protocol.
For a start - almost all of the world's developed countries have ratified the treaty. Of major economies, only the US has refused to do so. If it's really so unfair on developed countries, why is the US out on a limb by itself?
Secondly, the Kyoto Protocol is very flexible, and allows for states to meet their obligations in a variety of ways. For instance, polluters in the developed world which are already carbon-efficient can meet their obligations by investing in efficient production facilities in other countries (e.g. by investing in clean energy in China). The US has efficient energy technology, so why doesn't it pull its weight by deploying that technology world-wide? The Protocol will give credit for that, because its aim is reduce carbon emissions on a global basis. This is what you wanted to see the US do, but you appear not to realise that it will work under Kyoto. Worrying about China's emissions is a red herring, since the US can achieve its Kyoto goals precisely by helping to clean up China!
Finally, on the question of historical unfairness to developed countries, who put all that CO2 in the atmosphere anyway? Most of the anthropogenic C02 came from the developed countries in the course of their own industrial development. Essentially, they developed their economies and built up huge national infrastructures and assets over decades (over a century in fact) which those countries continue to enjoy. Although it wasn't appreciated until recently, those gains were actually made at the expense of the entire world's climate security. The legacy of those extra Gigatonnes of C02 in the atmosphere is a debt which the developed world owes everyone on the planet, and it's time to start paying it back. Now that's fair.
We really are a joke to them, I remember the hilarious conversations we used to have about IP in Shenzhen with the local engineers, they have no concept of it at all. Its all fair game if they can work out how we did it.
I've had the same experience; a user will tell me about some problem they had "... and then suddenly I got an error message". I would naturally ask "what the did the message say?".
"I don't know...", "something went wrong", "it was an error message", "I just clicked OK".
Seriously, many users are habituated to not understanding error messages, such that they ignore their content altogether. It's as if the error message had been nothing more than "ERROR".
I can understand this, but what still amazes is me is that people deduce that because the error message doesn't mean squat to them, that it doesn't mean anything to anyone, so they don't even write it down, and then they expect someone like me, later on, and even over the phone, to tell them what it meant!
The Polish SF writer Stanislaw Lem wrote a short story "Non Serviam" on this theme which is well worth a read.
It takes the form of a review of a non-existent book by a computer scientist who creates an artificial universe populated with AIs, and studies them from outside their universe. Obviously they have no access to the "real" world at all; living entirely in a virtual space. After a long process of evolution he eavesdrops some of his AIs discussions of theology. He is logically and morally forced to agree with the atheists among them even though he knows in fact they are wrong.
The story was published in "A Perfect Vacuuum", and also appeared in Hofstadter and Dennet's book "The Mind's I".
When you start fucking with seeds and shit the entire paradigm of money for ideas breaks down. you are not god, we do not owe you tribute.. all IP is this way
How, exactly, is all IP like genetic modification? If I write a piece of software, every single bit is my own creation (as opposed to your Monsanto example). So how is all IP like your Monsanto example?
I think the GP has the answer in the title of their original post: "artifical scarcity".
Like Monsanto's propietary genomes, your proprietary software is also artificially scarce. This is how they alike - their scarcity is not an essential aspect of their nature, but something which your business model ("IP") imposes on them artificially. Actually, your software could be replicated for free, i.e. at zero cost (or near as dammit). Your "IP" business model, for all its benefit to you, nevertheless requires that you mutilate the social utility of your product.
Also, bouncing things 70,000 km (35,000 km to the satellite, and 35,000 km back) will instill quite a bit of latency, much higher than an 802.11* link that is ~200km.
I was in Havana about 2000 or 2001 and used the cybercafe at the National Library in the Capitol building. I talked briefly to the technical people there. Their international bandwidth was derisory. Seriously it was I think 128k bit/s which was a major part of the country's external IP connectivity.
Plenty of other countries make and own comsats and there are plenty of other commercial launch providers outside US jurisdiction. I think the big problem is that satellite bandwidth is much more expensive than what you'd pay for a submarine cable. The cable to the South American mainland in Venezuela will give them much more bang for their peso.
But what if tomorrow I invented a replicator just like you'd see on Star Trek....and I replicated myself a nice new car, just like yours. Then I go and find Linus and replicate the uber-badass laptop I imagine he must have, and finally I go next door and replicate my neighbor's candybar. Is that illegal? Hell no.
Oh yes it would be!!
If such a replicator existed, then the manufacturers of cars, candy-bars and computers absolutely would be claiming copyright (or whatever kind of "intellectual property" they could muster) on their products.
Sure it would be a stupid idea, and sure it wouldn't work... but since when has that stopped people?
the grooves in a vinyl record are actually the analog waveforms of the sound
They are at best an analog copy of that waveform, and the resolution of the vinyl grooves is itself finite (if not very well-defined, as resolution is in the digital world). So although they may contain frequencies inaudible to humans (unlike CDs), but this is as you say not valuable (to humans). Are they necessarily more accurate recordings of the frequencies they record? No I doubt it.
But although change itself isn't optional, we do still have a choice to make: we can set out to change our lifestyles consciously, or we can be all precious about our current lifestyles, and wait until we are forced to change, which can be considerably more uncomfortable.
Your "small" leap of faith to bridge the gap (between belief based on evidence and belief based purely on faith) is precisely what I deride as "purely faith-based".
I don't believe it's courageous at all to believe in God in the face of a lack of evidence. In my book such an ideology is (frankly, and without wishing to be offensive) simply delusional.
Look at it this way: you can choose "leap" into the arms of Jesus, but why not "leap" into the arms of Muhammed, peace be upon him? Why not put your faith in Shamash or Tane or Thor or Djaus Pitar or any other God? Or why not "leap" onto the back of an infinite stack of giant turtles? Or believe that the world was created by an omnipotent budgie? The point of my earlier message was that given an infinite number of such "faith-based" leaps are possible, to the extent that they rely on faith they must all be regarded as equally worthless.
The historical evidence that Jesus was killed and came back to life is frankly derisory. If you can't imagine why people might not believe in the supernatural powers of a charismatic person who they admired and followed, and had devoted to lives to, then I submit you are not facing up to the ability and willingness of humans to delude themselves. Seriously, even going by the bible story, who witnessed the resurrection itself? Just a couple of people (neither of them authors of biblical testaments themselves). Who's to say what they saw and how their stories were represented later? Whereas on the other hand, there's very strong evidence that people who are dead do not get up and walk around. I will grant you the possibility that Jesus may have been a real historical figure who was crucified but had the amazing luck to live to tell the tale. I seem to remember he was cut down from the cross early for religious reasons, and his body taken off by his followers. In any case, none of that implies in the least that he was God. For that, you have nothing to go on but "faith" (or "delusion" as I would call it).
The fallacious argument from personal incredulity, also known as argument from personal belief or argument from personal conviction, refers to an assertion that because one personally finds a premise unlikely or unbelievable, the premise can be assumed not to be true, or alternately that another preferred but unproven premise is true instead.
That argument is indeed fallacious, but it's not the one I was making.
My argument is a statistical one based on the vanishingly small probability of any arbitrary (i.e. purely faith based) notion being true, which is quite different.
I'm an atheist, but if you can show me conclusive proof that God, an omnipotent being, does not exist, I'll buy you a drink.
What do you mean "conclusive"?
Something that would enable a hypothetical rational person to reach that conclusion? Or something that will convince everyone?
If the latter, then remember there are people who believe that the Earth is flat, that dinosaurs and humans coexisted, that the whole universe was created in 7 days, etc, despite ample proof to the contrary.
If the former, then isn't the absurdity enough to conclude the falsity of theism? If one can believe in God in the absence of any evidence at all, how is that different from believing in a Giant Budgie creating the universe? Or an infinite stack of turtles? Or any of a literal infinitude of absurdities? Given that an infinite number of such unfounded beliefs must contradict an infinite number of others, only a vanishingly small proportion of them could even theoretically be true (at once). Hence any particular such belief must be infinitely unlikely.
Slashdot Mirror
Head in the sand much?
I agree that China should be required to reduce carbon emissions, too, and I believe they have recently signaled their readiness to commit to this in the upcoming Copenhagen conference of the UNFCCC.
But really it makes no sense to claim that Kyoto's obligations are unfair on developed countries. That's what GW et al like to say, but it's a smokescreen based on misrepresentation of the Kyoto Protocol.
For a start - almost all of the world's developed countries have ratified the treaty. Of major economies, only the US has refused to do so. If it's really so unfair on developed countries, why is the US out on a limb by itself?
Secondly, the Kyoto Protocol is very flexible, and allows for states to meet their obligations in a variety of ways. For instance, polluters in the developed world which are already carbon-efficient can meet their obligations by investing in efficient production facilities in other countries (e.g. by investing in clean energy in China). The US has efficient energy technology, so why doesn't it pull its weight by deploying that technology world-wide? The Protocol will give credit for that, because its aim is reduce carbon emissions on a global basis. This is what you wanted to see the US do, but you appear not to realise that it will work under Kyoto. Worrying about China's emissions is a red herring, since the US can achieve its Kyoto goals precisely by helping to clean up China!
Finally, on the question of historical unfairness to developed countries, who put all that CO2 in the atmosphere anyway? Most of the anthropogenic C02 came from the developed countries in the course of their own industrial development. Essentially, they developed their economies and built up huge national infrastructures and assets over decades (over a century in fact) which those countries continue to enjoy. Although it wasn't appreciated until recently, those gains were actually made at the expense of the entire world's climate security. The legacy of those extra Gigatonnes of C02 in the atmosphere is a debt which the developed world owes everyone on the planet, and it's time to start paying it back. Now that's fair.
+V RIDICVLVS
We really are a joke to them, I remember the hilarious conversations we used to have about IP in Shenzhen with the local engineers, they have no concept of it at all. Its all fair game if they can work out how we did it.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
habits I should/shouldn't develop, etc as I take on my new craft.
Stop wasting time hanging out on /.! You should be working!
I've had the same experience; a user will tell me about some problem they had "... and then suddenly I got an error message". I would naturally ask "what the did the message say?".
"I don't know ...", "something went wrong", "it was an error message", "I just clicked OK".
Seriously, many users are habituated to not understanding error messages, such that they ignore their content altogether. It's as if the error message had been nothing more than "ERROR".
I can understand this, but what still amazes is me is that people deduce that because the error message doesn't mean squat to them, that it doesn't mean anything to anyone, so they don't even write it down, and then they expect someone like me, later on, and even over the phone, to tell them what it meant!
Affect; not effect.
Man, I've seen this so many times recently its starting to seem rediculous!!
Their, fixed it four you.
Write back at ya! ;-)
Affect; not effect.
Man, I've seen this so many times recently it's starting to seem rediculous!!
Ridiculous; not rediculous. If you're going to tear a person's minor English mistakes apart then you ought to be correct yourself!
Whooooosh! ;-)
Affect; not effect.
Man, I've seen this so many times recently it's starting to seem rediculous!!
That's ridiculous not rediculous, buddy.
Whoooosh!
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/99433/incredible_documentary_footage_of_mass_arrest_in_st._paul/
DRM is irrelevant to 99.999% of Blu-Ray owners because it doesn't effect them.
Affect; not effect.
Man, I've seen this so many times recently it's starting to seem rediculous!!
Nobody wants to censor talk about mom and apple pie.
I'm allergic to apples, you insensitive clod!
I'd rather no-one mentioned those unfortunate fruits.
The Polish SF writer Stanislaw Lem wrote a short story "Non Serviam" on this theme which is well worth a read.
It takes the form of a review of a non-existent book by a computer scientist who creates an artificial universe populated with AIs, and studies them from outside their universe. Obviously they have no access to the "real" world at all; living entirely in a virtual space. After a long process of evolution he eavesdrops some of his AIs discussions of theology. He is logically and morally forced to agree with the atheists among them even though he knows in fact they are wrong.
The story was published in "A Perfect Vacuuum", and also appeared in Hofstadter and Dennet's book "The Mind's I".
How, exactly, is all IP like genetic modification? If I write a piece of software, every single bit is my own creation (as opposed to your Monsanto example). So how is all IP like your Monsanto example?
I think the GP has the answer in the title of their original post: "artifical scarcity".
Like Monsanto's propietary genomes, your proprietary software is also artificially scarce. This is how they alike - their scarcity is not an essential aspect of their nature, but something which your business model ("IP") imposes on them artificially. Actually, your software could be replicated for free, i.e. at zero cost (or near as dammit). Your "IP" business model, for all its benefit to you, nevertheless requires that you mutilate the social utility of your product.
Yeah - about 0.5s extra ping time.
I was in Havana about 2000 or 2001 and used the cybercafe at the National Library in the Capitol building. I talked briefly to the technical people there. Their international bandwidth was derisory. Seriously it was I think 128k bit/s which was a major part of the country's external IP connectivity.
Plenty of other countries make and own comsats and there are plenty of other commercial launch providers outside US jurisdiction. I think the big problem is that satellite bandwidth is much more expensive than what you'd pay for a submarine cable. The cable to the South American mainland in Venezuela will give them much more bang for their peso.
Oh yes it would be!!
If such a replicator existed, then the manufacturers of cars, candy-bars and computers absolutely would be claiming copyright (or whatever kind of "intellectual property" they could muster) on their products.
Sure it would be a stupid idea, and sure it wouldn't work ... but since when has that stopped people?
One of my favourite web programmes is the short cartoon series "Big Bunny", by Amy Winfrey. Also her Making Fiends is excellent. It's all flash.
They are at best an analog copy of that waveform, and the resolution of the vinyl grooves is itself finite (if not very well-defined, as resolution is in the digital world). So although they may contain frequencies inaudible to humans (unlike CDs), but this is as you say not valuable (to humans). Are they necessarily more accurate recordings of the frequencies they record? No I doubt it.
Indeed not. It's absolutely inevitable.
But although change itself isn't optional, we do still have a choice to make: we can set out to change our lifestyles consciously, or we can be all precious about our current lifestyles, and wait until we are forced to change, which can be considerably more uncomfortable.
Indeed not. It is essential.
Your "small" leap of faith to bridge the gap (between belief based on evidence and belief based purely on faith) is precisely what I deride as "purely faith-based".
I don't believe it's courageous at all to believe in God in the face of a lack of evidence. In my book such an ideology is (frankly, and without wishing to be offensive) simply delusional.
Look at it this way: you can choose "leap" into the arms of Jesus, but why not "leap" into the arms of Muhammed, peace be upon him? Why not put your faith in Shamash or Tane or Thor or Djaus Pitar or any other God? Or why not "leap" onto the back of an infinite stack of giant turtles? Or believe that the world was created by an omnipotent budgie? The point of my earlier message was that given an infinite number of such "faith-based" leaps are possible, to the extent that they rely on faith they must all be regarded as equally worthless.
The historical evidence that Jesus was killed and came back to life is frankly derisory. If you can't imagine why people might not believe in the supernatural powers of a charismatic person who they admired and followed, and had devoted to lives to, then I submit you are not facing up to the ability and willingness of humans to delude themselves. Seriously, even going by the bible story, who witnessed the resurrection itself? Just a couple of people (neither of them authors of biblical testaments themselves). Who's to say what they saw and how their stories were represented later? Whereas on the other hand, there's very strong evidence that people who are dead do not get up and walk around. I will grant you the possibility that Jesus may have been a real historical figure who was crucified but had the amazing luck to live to tell the tale. I seem to remember he was cut down from the cross early for religious reasons, and his body taken off by his followers. In any case, none of that implies in the least that he was God. For that, you have nothing to go on but "faith" (or "delusion" as I would call it).
That argument is indeed fallacious, but it's not the one I was making.
My argument is a statistical one based on the vanishingly small probability of any arbitrary (i.e. purely faith based) notion being true, which is quite different.
What do you mean "conclusive"?
Something that would enable a hypothetical rational person to reach that conclusion? Or something that will convince everyone?
If the latter, then remember there are people who believe that the Earth is flat, that dinosaurs and humans coexisted, that the whole universe was created in 7 days, etc, despite ample proof to the contrary.
If the former, then isn't the absurdity enough to conclude the falsity of theism? If one can believe in God in the absence of any evidence at all, how is that different from believing in a Giant Budgie creating the universe? Or an infinite stack of turtles? Or any of a literal infinitude of absurdities? Given that an infinite number of such unfounded beliefs must contradict an infinite number of others, only a vanishingly small proportion of them could even theoretically be true (at once). Hence any particular such belief must be infinitely unlikely.
Wish I had mod points today - funny AND informative!