His point was that Apple basically dropped support for it and now OS X users aren't saddled with shitty Java applications. There are ZERO good desktop Java applications.
Maybe, but nobody twisted Apple's arm to support Java to begin with. Apple was all over it. They wanted Mac OS X to be the "premier platform for Java development." When I say they "dropped the ball," I mean it literally -- wayyyyyy before Apple dropped support for Java, it totally failed to live up to its promises to develop Java for the Mac OS X platform. Far from being the premier Java platform, it couldn't keep up with the status quo of Java on Linux, let alone on Windows or Solaris. Apple bungled the entire project, and that's why it eventually dropped support for Java -- not because it somehow "knew better" than anyone else. Rather the opposite, in fact.
As for Java desktop applications, I know for a fact there are (or at least were) a lot of Java desktop applications in use in large businesses. Whether or not they're "good" is kinda beside the point; not being able to run them was yet another factor that blocked Apple from the enterprise market for many years.
Ribbon - Designed by programmers, Loved by some, Hated by others
I've long suspected that people who still claim to hate it -- more than five years later -- probably aren't really heavy Office users to begin with. At least, the people who seem to hate it the most are the folks here on Slashdot... and let's be fair, half of them use the command line and the other half use Eclipse.
Yeah, that wasn't a "drop the ball". Its cause they actually got someone in charge to knock some sense into them.
So who was that, then? Apple was consistently months, if not years behind the latest Java releases -- and that wasn't just major releases, but point releases and bugfixes, too. I distinctly remember attending MacWorld sessions, the gist of which was, "We know we made promises, and we know there have been some problems, but no, really, this is going to be the year of Java on Mac OS X, and look at all the cool stuff we have in store!" And then... same old thing. You seem to be hinting that it was Steve Jobs's good sense that put the kibosh on Mac Java, but honestly, after Apple's track record spanning years of bumbling, any competent manager would have done the same thing. If anything, Steve didn't kill it soon enough.
IMHO, Sun fucked up, and fucked up badly, when they handed over control of Macintosh Java to Apple. Jonathan Schwarz basically handed Steve Jobs the rope, and was too oblivious to notice Steve busily tying it into a noose. Java's main reason for existing as a platform for desktop applications is WORA, and allowing Apple to screw up Macintosh Java as badly as they did hurt that main purpose really badly.
To be fair, at the time Apple execs were crowing that Mac OS was going to be the premier platform for Java development in the world. They were hinting pretty strongly that they were going to tie Java into every possible aspect of the OS to wring every possible ounce of performance and system integration out of it, so it only made sense that Apple engineers, who had insider knowledge of the Mac OS platform, should be in charge. I suppose we have nobody to blame but Sun, but nobody could have known Apple would drop the ball so badly. (And BTW, it was Scott McNealy who let Apple be responsible for Mac Java, not Schwartz.)
The problem is that the design work is being done by someone who doesn't care about typography and usability, not because it is done by someone who is skilled in programming.
I'm not even sure that's necessarily true. (Why would a publisher assign design and typography work to such a person?)
It seems to me the problem is that the tools for ebook publishing are lacking. I read a lot of ebook fiction (the layout needs of which are few) and every publisher does it differently. Some do a good job, others do a terrible job (and it has little to do with whether the publisher is a "big name" or not). Some of the ones who appear to be trying the hardest end up with the worst product. Someone (you'd think Adobe) should step in and offer "the gold standard" ebook publishing tool that makes it easy to implement the best practices, but no such tool seems to exist so far.
I would add, however, that the other half of the problem is that, once again, digital publishing is not the same as print publishing. When you're offering ebooks, you have to accept that readers are going to view them on all different kinds of devices, on all different sizes of screens, in all different kinds of conditions. Some of them are going to want to override your font choices. Some of them are going to want to override your margins. I can't tell you how many times I've had to crack the DRM on a purchased ebook just so I can modify the CSS so it will display properly on my device. As long as publishers treat ebook formatting like print page layout instead of HTML layout, they're doing it wrong.
If, on the other hand, you're publishing something where print page layout is the only way to approach it -- something like a textbook, for example, where a lot of pictures, graphs, tables, and other complex layout is involved -- then PDF is still the way to go and it's up to the reader to find a device that will display it properly.
Not quite. The appendix is believed to harbor useful bacteria, but how do they get there in the first place? The placenta shields a fetus from most bacteria while it's in the womb, and keeps its blood supply separate from the mother's.
How do you know that Adrianne is a man?... Took me about two seconds to find this:
Follow her @adrjeffries.
I don't pay a lot of attention to bylines and I don't pay a lot of attention to Twitter. All I did was skim TFA.
[Interjection: "... like, whether this is a privacy issue?". Sounds like she just graduated from grade 8. Not very professional.] Moglen: Gives an eloquent and lengthy explanation whereupon Adrianne replies with the condescending remark "Right."
You're reading it as a condescending remark. I read it as a reporter asks a simple question and then can't get a word in edgewise. Anytime you see an unedited transcript of an interview you're going to see words like "uhhh," "right," "I mean," "sort of," etc. That doesn't change the fact that nothing Moglen said was helpful. The reporter wasn't asking for advice, but Moglen was incapable of saying anything that would have been useful in an article.
Now, are you going to continue to be an apologist for your fellow technology journalists, or will you apologize for you're sarcastic and sophomoric "Uhhh, I'm sorry..." reply?
I'm not going to apologize. Apologize for what? It was an idiotic comment to say that the reporter called Moglen asking for advice. Hey, whoever57... you're an idiot!
She doesn't seem like the greatest journalist in the world, but I thought her "interview" with Moglen was telling nonetheless. And it's not the first time Moglen has revealed himself as a bit of a kook. Here's a guy who thinks LLVM is a direct threat to world freedom:
Mr. Jobs is investing heavily in LLVM solely so he can stop using GCC, lest the patents somehow leak across the GPLv3 barrier, and we become able to use his claims. Nobody has ever tried before, to build a multi-platform C compiler solely in order to undermine freedom... A hardware manufacturer or two has done something here and there -- we had a little bit of BSD interest in non-copyleft compilation -- but here's the man whose selfishness surpasses any recorded selfishness.
"Surpasses any recorded selfishness." Yeah. Here's a guy who's capable of objective thought.
Wow. You berate GP for missing the reporter's description of Moglen's behaviour as 'yelling', yet you complete miss the gender of the reporter. Pot, kettle, black.
The reporter never identified his or her gender in the interview. I seldom bother with bylines.
So is the submitter with the description "has taken to yelling at journalists reporting about social networks". What are we? 12? We can no longer use the word 'criticizing' instead of 'yelling at'??? Was he speaking too loudly in the lecture?
You should read instead of just looking at the pictures. "Yelling" was the reporter's own description, and there was no lecture involved; he called Moglen on the phone.
Why do you want to make it public? Why do you want to report to the world that you just shopped at X boutique, or just got ice cream at Y confectionery? Why do you think other people care, such that you tell the whole world about it?
Most people don't "tell the whole world about it." Most people tell their friends, the idea being that they like to go to the same places or do similar things. Personally, I'll post that I'm sitting at XYZ bar right now so anyone who feels like can come down and have a few drinks with me.
Also, as you get older and it gets harder and harder to see your friends face-to-face, because of jobs/school/kids/distance/etc., you may start to see how Facebook can be a useful and fun way to keep in touch. Facebook posts aren't urgent, they aren't particularly time sensitive, and they don't leap up in anyone's face and demand that they respond. You can login and read some people's Facebook posts or you can not login for a week or more and forget the whole thing. It's just keeping connected with people in a casual way, much like you would if you passed them in the halls at school all the time.
No, the reporter is the dick. Moglen is just consistently putting forward his point and the reporter is lamely making excuses for his failure to accept the advice. Anyone who asks for advice and then makes lame excuses for not following it it is a dick.
Uhhh, I'm sorry, but since when do reporters phone sources to "ask for advice"? What he wanted was a quote for the story he was working on, about banks potentially using Facebook to judge loan application. Moglen could have just politely declined to answer the question, or even to accept the call. Instead, he came off like someone's drunk uncle and launched into a rant about how the reporter is a bad citizen for having a Facebook account. Thanks for the "advice," uncle Eben... maybe you should go lie down a while.
Might have prompted more thought, yes -- for example, my first thought was, "Wrongful termination lawsuit, ka-chiiing!"
So far, you're really not helping make the case here. Your example scenario is just more paranoid fantasy thinking based on a world that does not resemble the one we actually live in. You can say, "Yeah, but what if?" -- but I don't even see any evidence of a slippery slope toward what you describe. It just does not sound plausible to me.
It seems to me the most germane question the reporter asked was, "What's the damage?" And Moglen failed spectacularly to answer it in anything approaching a coherent way.
Gotcha: If I happen to upload pictures of a couple of my friends (I generally don't) and those friends, unbeknownst to me, happen to be on the run from the Myanmar secret police (who are "evil"), then I've informed on them and they're going straight to the Ministry of Love.
Coulda used a slightly more concrete, real-world example, myself, by hey, I'll keep the warning in mind.
I don't agree with the majority of Ron Paul's policy, but let's say I agree with this one. Is there any evidence that Ron Paul, as President, would have the power to eliminate the TSA? The TSA was created by an act of the 107th Congress. Presumably it would take another act of Congress to repeal it. We have a sitting Congress right now that is majority Republican, and they're doing nothing. What is Ron Paul going to do about it, realistically?
Mr. Bloomberg’s use of the subway to get to work appears to have declined over time. In January 2002, he reported taking the train all but one day of his first three weeks. Nowadays, it appears, the S.U.V. is his primary mode of transportation.
However, the most profit can be made from charging what individual consumers are prepared to pay. The marginal cost of an extra cinema-goer probably is 20p, so any extra ticket sold above that price is pure profit. If you manage to sell them popcorn with the 5000% markup, kerching!
So I'm surprised EasyGroup gave up that easily.
You seem to be missing the point that the studios are the ones who want to take all of that "pure profit." That's the whole reason why theaters sell popcorn at 5000 percent markup. I always try to buy popcorn when I see a foreign film or independent film at an independent, non-chain theater, because under the current pricing model, the concession stand is where virtually all of the theater's money is coming from.
It's possible that they calculated that such a device might possibly be useful to people living in adverse conditions, who might be willing to sacrifice normal use cases (e.g. leaving it on the dashboard of the car when not in use, instead of carrying it in a pocket) if it meant they'd have access to a phone. So they sent it to some people who might be willing to try it, to see if it would actually work out that way. It didn't.
Yes, but why not? For any given movie, at a given cinema, at a given time, there's an optimal price that maximizes profit: charge a little more, and you discourage enough people that you end up with less profit; charge a little less, and while you may get more customers, you still end up with less profit.
If it were practical to determine this optimal price, any rational cinema would charge it.
You've hit the nail on the head. A rational cinema might charge that price, true. But the cinema business is not strictly rational, any more than any other media business is (think: "agency model" pricing for ebooks).
Some in the UK may remember when the founder of EasyJet proposed to do just what is suggested. He wanted to create a chain of theaters that priced seats based on demand, in much the same way that EasyJet prices airline seats. Theoretically, you'd be able to see a first-run movie for as little as £0.20, depending on time, date, and how well the screening was showing. He couldn't do it, however, because he couldn't reach agreement with the film studios over a flat-rate pricing scheme that would allow him to set his own prices for seats.
scientists are more likely to be liberal because they work at ivory tower universities and government, which are wholly liberal institutions. They can spend other people's money without guilt because they feel they are working for the greater good.
engineers are more likely to be conservative because they work for private corporations with bottom lines that require real and correct results. they know that good intentions don't hold bridges up or make generators turn.
So do private corporations build bridges, now? Or hydroelectric dams? Or nuclear reactors? Does Boeing build new fighter planes at the whim of private investors? Would the electrification of the United States have happened without public investment? Are any of these things done without the approval (and funding) of the government? The claim that engineers are somehow lily-white when compared to the black-hearted, thieving scientists is at best self-serving, at worst laughable.
From the linked story, there are two issues before the Supreme Court:
1. Does using a GPS device to follow you around without a warrant violate your Fourth Amendment rights? There's extra language in there, too: A key point seems to be that when they're following you around, they're doing so on the public streets. The argument could be made that following your car is different from a wiretap in this respect, in that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy when you're talking on the phone at home, but you have no such expectation when you leave the house and go out in public. Is following you via GPS really any different than tailing your car visually?
2. Does planting the GPS device without a warrant, in and of itself, violate your Fourth Amendment rights? Maybe -- but one could argue that by planting the device, they have no more "searched" you than they would have had they driven past your house and seen the car in the driveway. They haven't done much more than a parking cop does when he puts chalk on the tire of your car. And they've haven't "seized" anything -- in fact, you now have something that you didn't have before.
These seem like complicated issues and I'm interested to hear what the Supremes think about them.
Prison inmates are held agains their will and demonstrably do not come out being welfare-statst.
Say instead that anyone in the military will obviously be welfare-statist, then, because all of the military's funding also comes from the government.
My point is that I highly doubt that anyone who's had to write a grant has done so while thinking, "glory, glory to the blessed state, praise that your scraps may fall unto my unworthy plate." If they could get funded another way without compromising the integrity of their research, they would.
Also, the claim that government funding for scientific research evidence of a "welfare state" is facile. Just for starters, who would you rather have split the atom first? Nazi Germany? There are valid purposes for government, and just as military defense is one of them, so is scientific research with the aim of the betterment of society. Being in favor of science in no way predisposes you to socialism.
Slashdot Mirror
His point was that Apple basically dropped support for it and now OS X users aren't saddled with shitty Java applications. There are ZERO good desktop Java applications.
Maybe, but nobody twisted Apple's arm to support Java to begin with. Apple was all over it. They wanted Mac OS X to be the "premier platform for Java development." When I say they "dropped the ball," I mean it literally -- wayyyyyy before Apple dropped support for Java, it totally failed to live up to its promises to develop Java for the Mac OS X platform. Far from being the premier Java platform, it couldn't keep up with the status quo of Java on Linux, let alone on Windows or Solaris. Apple bungled the entire project, and that's why it eventually dropped support for Java -- not because it somehow "knew better" than anyone else. Rather the opposite, in fact.
As for Java desktop applications, I know for a fact there are (or at least were) a lot of Java desktop applications in use in large businesses. Whether or not they're "good" is kinda beside the point; not being able to run them was yet another factor that blocked Apple from the enterprise market for many years.
Ribbon - Designed by programmers, Loved by some, Hated by others
I've long suspected that people who still claim to hate it -- more than five years later -- probably aren't really heavy Office users to begin with. At least, the people who seem to hate it the most are the folks here on Slashdot ... and let's be fair, half of them use the command line and the other half use Eclipse.
Yeah, that wasn't a "drop the ball". Its cause they actually got someone in charge to knock some sense into them.
So who was that, then? Apple was consistently months, if not years behind the latest Java releases -- and that wasn't just major releases, but point releases and bugfixes, too. I distinctly remember attending MacWorld sessions, the gist of which was, "We know we made promises, and we know there have been some problems, but no, really, this is going to be the year of Java on Mac OS X, and look at all the cool stuff we have in store!" And then... same old thing. You seem to be hinting that it was Steve Jobs's good sense that put the kibosh on Mac Java, but honestly, after Apple's track record spanning years of bumbling, any competent manager would have done the same thing. If anything, Steve didn't kill it soon enough.
IMHO, Sun fucked up, and fucked up badly, when they handed over control of Macintosh Java to Apple. Jonathan Schwarz basically handed Steve Jobs the rope, and was too oblivious to notice Steve busily tying it into a noose. Java's main reason for existing as a platform for desktop applications is WORA, and allowing Apple to screw up Macintosh Java as badly as they did hurt that main purpose really badly.
To be fair, at the time Apple execs were crowing that Mac OS was going to be the premier platform for Java development in the world. They were hinting pretty strongly that they were going to tie Java into every possible aspect of the OS to wring every possible ounce of performance and system integration out of it, so it only made sense that Apple engineers, who had insider knowledge of the Mac OS platform, should be in charge. I suppose we have nobody to blame but Sun, but nobody could have known Apple would drop the ball so badly. (And BTW, it was Scott McNealy who let Apple be responsible for Mac Java, not Schwartz.)
There is not programming for ebooks at the publisher's level. Heck, I question the basic premise presented here.
I'm pretty sure they mean "programming" in the sense of "HTML programming."
The problem is that the design work is being done by someone who doesn't care about typography and usability, not because it is done by someone who is skilled in programming.
I'm not even sure that's necessarily true. (Why would a publisher assign design and typography work to such a person?)
It seems to me the problem is that the tools for ebook publishing are lacking. I read a lot of ebook fiction (the layout needs of which are few) and every publisher does it differently. Some do a good job, others do a terrible job (and it has little to do with whether the publisher is a "big name" or not). Some of the ones who appear to be trying the hardest end up with the worst product. Someone (you'd think Adobe) should step in and offer "the gold standard" ebook publishing tool that makes it easy to implement the best practices, but no such tool seems to exist so far.
I would add, however, that the other half of the problem is that, once again, digital publishing is not the same as print publishing. When you're offering ebooks, you have to accept that readers are going to view them on all different kinds of devices, on all different sizes of screens, in all different kinds of conditions. Some of them are going to want to override your font choices. Some of them are going to want to override your margins. I can't tell you how many times I've had to crack the DRM on a purchased ebook just so I can modify the CSS so it will display properly on my device. As long as publishers treat ebook formatting like print page layout instead of HTML layout, they're doing it wrong.
If, on the other hand, you're publishing something where print page layout is the only way to approach it -- something like a textbook, for example, where a lot of pictures, graphs, tables, and other complex layout is involved -- then PDF is still the way to go and it's up to the reader to find a device that will display it properly.
Not quite. The appendix is believed to harbor useful bacteria, but how do they get there in the first place? The placenta shields a fetus from most bacteria while it's in the womb, and keeps its blood supply separate from the mother's.
How do you know that Adrianne is a man? ...
Took me about two seconds to find this:
Follow her @adrjeffries.
I don't pay a lot of attention to bylines and I don't pay a lot of attention to Twitter. All I did was skim TFA.
[Interjection: "... like, whether this is a privacy issue?". Sounds like she just graduated from grade 8. Not very professional.]
Moglen: Gives an eloquent and lengthy explanation whereupon Adrianne replies with the condescending remark "Right."
You're reading it as a condescending remark. I read it as a reporter asks a simple question and then can't get a word in edgewise. Anytime you see an unedited transcript of an interview you're going to see words like "uhhh," "right," "I mean," "sort of," etc. That doesn't change the fact that nothing Moglen said was helpful. The reporter wasn't asking for advice, but Moglen was incapable of saying anything that would have been useful in an article.
Now, are you going to continue to be an apologist for your fellow technology journalists, or will you apologize for you're sarcastic and sophomoric "Uhhh, I'm sorry..." reply?
I'm not going to apologize. Apologize for what? It was an idiotic comment to say that the reporter called Moglen asking for advice. Hey, whoever57... you're an idiot!
She doesn't seem like the greatest journalist in the world, but I thought her "interview" with Moglen was telling nonetheless. And it's not the first time Moglen has revealed himself as a bit of a kook. Here's a guy who thinks LLVM is a direct threat to world freedom:
Mr. Jobs is investing heavily in LLVM solely so he can stop using GCC, lest the patents somehow leak across the GPLv3 barrier, and we become able to use his claims. Nobody has ever tried before, to build a multi-platform C compiler solely in order to undermine freedom ... A hardware manufacturer or two has done something here and there -- we had a little bit of BSD interest in non-copyleft compilation -- but here's the man whose selfishness surpasses any recorded selfishness.
"Surpasses any recorded selfishness." Yeah. Here's a guy who's capable of objective thought.
Wow. You berate GP for missing the reporter's description of Moglen's behaviour as 'yelling', yet you complete miss the gender of the reporter. Pot, kettle, black.
The reporter never identified his or her gender in the interview. I seldom bother with bylines.
Another fun fact: Guess how gut flora are "seeded" in humans? Hint: It's more effective with natural childbirth.
So is the submitter with the description "has taken to yelling at journalists reporting about social networks". What are we? 12? We can no longer use the word 'criticizing' instead of 'yelling at'??? Was he speaking too loudly in the lecture?
You should read instead of just looking at the pictures. "Yelling" was the reporter's own description, and there was no lecture involved; he called Moglen on the phone.
Why do you want to make it public? Why do you want to report to the world that you just shopped at X boutique, or just got ice cream at Y confectionery? Why do you think other people care, such that you tell the whole world about it?
Most people don't "tell the whole world about it." Most people tell their friends, the idea being that they like to go to the same places or do similar things. Personally, I'll post that I'm sitting at XYZ bar right now so anyone who feels like can come down and have a few drinks with me.
Also, as you get older and it gets harder and harder to see your friends face-to-face, because of jobs/school/kids/distance/etc., you may start to see how Facebook can be a useful and fun way to keep in touch. Facebook posts aren't urgent, they aren't particularly time sensitive, and they don't leap up in anyone's face and demand that they respond. You can login and read some people's Facebook posts or you can not login for a week or more and forget the whole thing. It's just keeping connected with people in a casual way, much like you would if you passed them in the halls at school all the time.
No, the reporter is the dick. Moglen is just consistently putting forward his point and the reporter is lamely making excuses for his failure to accept the advice. Anyone who asks for advice and then makes lame excuses for not following it it is a dick.
Uhhh, I'm sorry, but since when do reporters phone sources to "ask for advice"? What he wanted was a quote for the story he was working on, about banks potentially using Facebook to judge loan application. Moglen could have just politely declined to answer the question, or even to accept the call. Instead, he came off like someone's drunk uncle and launched into a rant about how the reporter is a bad citizen for having a Facebook account. Thanks for the "advice," uncle Eben... maybe you should go lie down a while.
Might have prompted more thought, yes -- for example, my first thought was, "Wrongful termination lawsuit, ka-chiiing!"
So far, you're really not helping make the case here. Your example scenario is just more paranoid fantasy thinking based on a world that does not resemble the one we actually live in. You can say, "Yeah, but what if?" -- but I don't even see any evidence of a slippery slope toward what you describe. It just does not sound plausible to me.
and by the time I find out that I've been harmed it's too late to do anything about it.
And so I'll ask you: What's the harm? Ministry of Love again?
It seems to me the most germane question the reporter asked was, "What's the damage?" And Moglen failed spectacularly to answer it in anything approaching a coherent way.
Gotcha: If I happen to upload pictures of a couple of my friends (I generally don't) and those friends, unbeknownst to me, happen to be on the run from the Myanmar secret police (who are "evil"), then I've informed on them and they're going straight to the Ministry of Love.
Coulda used a slightly more concrete, real-world example, myself, by hey, I'll keep the warning in mind.
Vote for Ron Paul. End the TSA
I don't agree with the majority of Ron Paul's policy, but let's say I agree with this one. Is there any evidence that Ron Paul, as President, would have the power to eliminate the TSA? The TSA was created by an act of the 107th Congress. Presumably it would take another act of Congress to repeal it. We have a sitting Congress right now that is majority Republican, and they're doing nothing. What is Ron Paul going to do about it, realistically?
Except that's just for show. From the article:
Mr. Bloomberg’s use of the subway to get to work appears to have declined over time. In January 2002, he reported taking the train all but one day of his first three weeks. Nowadays, it appears, the S.U.V. is his primary mode of transportation.
However, the most profit can be made from charging what individual consumers are prepared to pay. The marginal cost of an extra cinema-goer probably is 20p, so any extra ticket sold above that price is pure profit. If you manage to sell them popcorn with the 5000% markup, kerching!
So I'm surprised EasyGroup gave up that easily.
You seem to be missing the point that the studios are the ones who want to take all of that "pure profit." That's the whole reason why theaters sell popcorn at 5000 percent markup. I always try to buy popcorn when I see a foreign film or independent film at an independent, non-chain theater, because under the current pricing model, the concession stand is where virtually all of the theater's money is coming from.
It's possible that they calculated that such a device might possibly be useful to people living in adverse conditions, who might be willing to sacrifice normal use cases (e.g. leaving it on the dashboard of the car when not in use, instead of carrying it in a pocket) if it meant they'd have access to a phone. So they sent it to some people who might be willing to try it, to see if it would actually work out that way. It didn't.
I believe in this case you mean Finnish taxpayers, but same rules apply.
Yes, but why not? For any given movie, at a given cinema, at a given time, there's an optimal price that maximizes profit: charge a little more, and you discourage enough people that you end up with less profit; charge a little less, and while you may get more customers, you still end up with less profit.
If it were practical to determine this optimal price, any rational cinema would charge it.
You've hit the nail on the head. A rational cinema might charge that price, true. But the cinema business is not strictly rational, any more than any other media business is (think: "agency model" pricing for ebooks).
Some in the UK may remember when the founder of EasyJet proposed to do just what is suggested. He wanted to create a chain of theaters that priced seats based on demand, in much the same way that EasyJet prices airline seats. Theoretically, you'd be able to see a first-run movie for as little as £0.20, depending on time, date, and how well the screening was showing. He couldn't do it, however, because he couldn't reach agreement with the film studios over a flat-rate pricing scheme that would allow him to set his own prices for seats.
scientists are more likely to be liberal because they work at ivory tower universities and government, which are wholly liberal institutions. They can spend other people's money without guilt because they feel they are working for the greater good.
engineers are more likely to be conservative because they work for private corporations with bottom lines that require real and correct results. they know that good intentions don't hold bridges up or make generators turn.
So do private corporations build bridges, now? Or hydroelectric dams? Or nuclear reactors? Does Boeing build new fighter planes at the whim of private investors? Would the electrification of the United States have happened without public investment? Are any of these things done without the approval (and funding) of the government? The claim that engineers are somehow lily-white when compared to the black-hearted, thieving scientists is at best self-serving, at worst laughable.
From the linked story, there are two issues before the Supreme Court:
1. Does using a GPS device to follow you around without a warrant violate your Fourth Amendment rights? There's extra language in there, too: A key point seems to be that when they're following you around, they're doing so on the public streets. The argument could be made that following your car is different from a wiretap in this respect, in that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy when you're talking on the phone at home, but you have no such expectation when you leave the house and go out in public. Is following you via GPS really any different than tailing your car visually?
2. Does planting the GPS device without a warrant, in and of itself, violate your Fourth Amendment rights? Maybe -- but one could argue that by planting the device, they have no more "searched" you than they would have had they driven past your house and seen the car in the driveway. They haven't done much more than a parking cop does when he puts chalk on the tire of your car. And they've haven't "seized" anything -- in fact, you now have something that you didn't have before.
These seem like complicated issues and I'm interested to hear what the Supremes think about them.
Prison inmates are held agains their will and demonstrably do not come out being welfare-statst.
Say instead that anyone in the military will obviously be welfare-statist, then, because all of the military's funding also comes from the government.
My point is that I highly doubt that anyone who's had to write a grant has done so while thinking, "glory, glory to the blessed state, praise that your scraps may fall unto my unworthy plate." If they could get funded another way without compromising the integrity of their research, they would.
Also, the claim that government funding for scientific research evidence of a "welfare state" is facile. Just for starters, who would you rather have split the atom first? Nazi Germany? There are valid purposes for government, and just as military defense is one of them, so is scientific research with the aim of the betterment of society. Being in favor of science in no way predisposes you to socialism.