and perhaps most excitingly, the researchers seem confident that their system will scale up from 97km to distances capable of reaching orbital satellites
Actually, what would be most exciting would be if they could scale up from qubits to about 86.6 kilograms of organized mass...
The only real problem is that my wife isn't happy with my fitness; she's pretty insecure about it.
What does that mean, exactly? She is worried you are fit enough to leave her for a "better offer" or something?
Do you flirt with women at the gym? Act really friendly with women in your classes? Gyms are really bad for some people in terms of extramarital relationships. My wife and I go to the gym together and don't get into friendships that don't involve each other. And she loves the resulting increase in fitness! (For both of us.)
There may be some behavioral changes you can make that would give her security and keep you fit. Your fitness alone may not really be the issue.
However the court ruled that this was not the same as having a saved image
That's really a false distinction, to me. I know that most people don't have enough knowledge to poke into the browser cache and that it is essentially a "black box," but there are no end of web clients, no end of ways of configuring them (or modifying the source!), and no way to reliably know what a person actually does or does not know how to do.
Meanwhile, the people drawing this false distinction don't seem to draw the more critical distinction: viewing a photograph of an incident of child abuse, verses actually engaging in child abuse!
It just sends out the message that it's cool to pretend to have qualifications that you don't have.
Suppose some people think it is cool to do this, and you don't. I suppose that they should be able to express their opinion, and you should be able to express your opinion. Some people think those qualifications are worthless or not "cool," and I think they should be able to express that feeling as well.
And I'd like to send the message that Yahoo should be allowed to do whatever it wants internally, and anyone who doesn't like it can just not use Yahoo, or buy a piece of it and try to change it.
And we are back to the 60s again when the FBI used to send people into churchs and other gatherings of non-violent organizations in order to spy on, and sometimes screw with, them. COINTELPRO shit. Pretty sad it only took ~35 years for them to start pulling the same stunts. We have some really short institutional memory.
You solve one problem, you create more problems. Then you work on solving those.
Living past 30 created a whole mess of new health issues. Living past 50 created many more. Now many of us live to 80 and beyond, and we are dealing with new health problems like the degeneration of the brain, problems our forebears never had to face.
I for one am thrilled that we are faced with these problems, and it would be wonderful to see the list of problems that come up when neuron death is turned off to see if anyone can come up with a useful way of solving those problems.
Personally, I'm for getting rid of all lobbyists period but, there should, at least, be a conflict of interest gap, say 10 years, between being a government official or elected representative and being able to work for the organizations you had dealings with while you held that position.
I'm all for solving that by outlawing government officials.
I agree there are a lot more details than what I've posted, and you've posted several very good examples. But it's not a matter of making law; it's a matter of discovering it. The "made" laws are in violation of and in contradiction to basic principles; the discovered laws are reasoned out from and consistent with basic principles.
But you are talking about purely subjective value judgments. You may call it "science," but what I am hearing is "ideology."
Your original statement was: "Deficit spending is clearly the right strategy some of the time." That depends completely on what your goals are. Since not everyone shares the same goals, values, and frame of reference as you, your conclusion may be clearly true for you, but not for others.
We're not talking about things like measuring the speed of light or determining how to build a bridge, here. We're talking about what people want out of life and civilization, and what people believe a government should do, and the last time I checked, those are very subjective and vary from person to person. Saying that your view on this is "scientific" and differing views are "mythology" is simply an ad hominem logical fallacy.
Deficit spending is clearly the right strategy some of the time
I'm always wary any time somebody says the word "clearly." If it is really "clear," it is usually unnecessary to point out how clear it is, because everybody would see it.
Clearly there are people who disagree with your assertion.
(I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself.;) )
And that's what's usually going on when someone uses words like "clearly." Usually there is another point of view that they are dismissing out of hand. That point of view might be reprehensible or unthinkable, but then again, it might hold value.
In politics we are dealing with the power to make other people act according to our view of how the world is, how it works, and how it should be, so the word "clearly" becomes even more dangerous in political discussions. The fact is that we do not all agree, and in the end somebody is going to force their view of what should "clearly" be done on people who, for whatever reason, do not believe in that course of action. e.g., the Iraq War. Ten Commandments in schools. Laws against gay marriage. Welfare. Welfare for corporations. In politics, all of these issues involve a majority (or pseudo-majority) forcing their "clear" view of the world onto a minority who do not share that view and who may well have rational objections to it.
Capitalism was not the problem. The problem is that we continue to elect people who only make laws that empower themselves.
No, the problem is that law is immutable: do not steal, do not kill, do not enslave, do not harm; and since it is immutable, the whole idea that people should make law is the problem. There is no need for legislative power whatsoever, as all they can do is declare wrong things to be right (stealing, killing, enslaving under certain circumstances), or declare right things to be wrong (such as putting whatever bits you want on your own hard drive). We went from the idea of absolute power to make laws held perpetually and hereditarily to somewhat limited power to make laws passed around in a scheme of taking turns. While that may have been an improvement, the problem stems from the whole idea that anyone should have this kind of power in the first place. Destroy the Ring, don't take turns using it.
You are right of course that capitalism is not the problem; capitalism (true capitalism) follows naturally and logically from basic law such as not stealing.
But I'll add that if anyone truly doesn't feel safe on a flight unless everyone, including four year olds, has been through the current security screening process, then I support the right of people to set up an airline/airport where that is the rule, and everyone can pick if they want to fly that way or with less security. Then people can pick the level of security they are comfortable with.
Governments tend not to like their citizens taking part in transactions that don't have a paper trail.
This is true. Of course, since governments exist to provide a service to the governed, not the other way around, these governments should be restrained or abolished. The government should be afraid of its people, and not the people afraid of their government.
The government's "likes" and "dislikes" should be immaterial to my life. That's called being a busybody, and grown civilized people learn to mind their own business instead of sticking their nose into everyone else's and, worse, using force to make other people submit to their personal preferences and visions for how the world ought to be. Governments of course are just composed of people, people with the same moral rights and limitations as everyone else.
Not fake mines likes the ones in Minecraft that might actually be interesting, of course
Okay, this is entirely subjective. I find bitcoin fascinating even though it has never been of economic value to me. And I've never played Minecraft. I find it somewhat interesting, but many people I know do not. And I find bitcoin much more interesting than Minecraft.
If society can't promise benefits for joining it, its members may no longer feel bound to follow its rules
That's okay. People don't have to live by everybody else's rules, anyway. As long as people are not permitted to violate each other's rights to life, liberty, and property, people should be perfectly free to make their own rules and should not have to feel that they are "married" to every single person for 3.8 million square miles with no possibility of divorce.
Well to start with, you're always perfectly free to not buy my product in the first place.
Of course I am. But unless I've made some kind of agreement with you as a condition of the sale, then after the sale I own the product and can do what I please with it. Referring to attempting to enforce "terms" on your customers as "slavery" is not just an appeal to emotion; it's an appeal to idealism, principle, humanity, liberty, and decency. It is also calling a spade a spade: the mafia enforces terms on its "customers," rendering them nothing but subjects/slaves.
But allowing government to directly administer the schools is a terrible, horrible idea
Believing that you can protect against the dangers of government by somehow firewalling it off to only do things "indirectly" is something you were taught in government schools. Personally, I believe the government always melts through the firewall and becomes uncontained and uncontrolled.
There are many shades of Agnosticism but there is only one of Atheism and that is "There is nothing supernatural." There is nothing in that statement that attacks anyone. People just feel attacked by it. I don't claim to understand why.
Actually there are multiple perspectives on atheism by atheists. I was reading about one such debate just last week from an atheist blogger I read, and when I used to be more active on Wikipedia I know there were edit wars on the subject.
As far as feeling threatened, I don't feel threatened by atheism as long as we agree on a common core of rights, including mine and my family's right to be left alone. I start to feel threatened when atheists assert that they ought to be able to influence my children's belief system, and I am emphatically definitely threatened when they start wanting to be able to use my property to implement their goals. I feel just as threatened when religious people do the same kind of things, by the way. But when we agree on a common "I'll leave you alone, and you leave me alone," basis for rights I don't feel threatened by atheism at all, and in the past it's led to a lot of productive exchanges.
I am all for price discrimination; I just do not support the use of legalized force to enforce it! If you can make and sell the same product cheaper overseas, or to people with different genes, or whatever, more power to you. But if I buy your product, then I own your product, which gives me the right to sell your product under terms agreeable to me. To assert otherwise is to assert that I am your slave. Either I own myself and my property rights, or you do, and one of these scenarios is slavery.
Slashdot Mirror
and perhaps most excitingly, the researchers seem confident that their system will scale up from 97km to distances capable of reaching orbital satellites
Actually, what would be most exciting would be if they could scale up from qubits to about 86.6 kilograms of organized mass...
The only real problem is that my wife isn't happy with my fitness; she's pretty insecure about it.
What does that mean, exactly? She is worried you are fit enough to leave her for a "better offer" or something?
Do you flirt with women at the gym? Act really friendly with women in your classes? Gyms are really bad for some people in terms of extramarital relationships. My wife and I go to the gym together and don't get into friendships that don't involve each other. And she loves the resulting increase in fitness! (For both of us.)
There may be some behavioral changes you can make that would give her security and keep you fit. Your fitness alone may not really be the issue.
However the court ruled that this was not the same as having a saved image
That's really a false distinction, to me. I know that most people don't have enough knowledge to poke into the browser cache and that it is essentially a "black box," but there are no end of web clients, no end of ways of configuring them (or modifying the source!), and no way to reliably know what a person actually does or does not know how to do.
Meanwhile, the people drawing this false distinction don't seem to draw the more critical distinction: viewing a photograph of an incident of child abuse, verses actually engaging in child abuse!
It just sends out the message that it's cool to pretend to have qualifications that you don't have.
Suppose some people think it is cool to do this, and you don't. I suppose that they should be able to express their opinion, and you should be able to express your opinion. Some people think those qualifications are worthless or not "cool," and I think they should be able to express that feeling as well.
And I'd like to send the message that Yahoo should be allowed to do whatever it wants internally, and anyone who doesn't like it can just not use Yahoo, or buy a piece of it and try to change it.
And we are back to the 60s again when the FBI used to send people into churchs and other gatherings of non-violent organizations in order to spy on, and sometimes screw with, them. COINTELPRO shit. Pretty sad it only took ~35 years for them to start pulling the same stunts. We have some really short institutional memory.
What makes you think they ever stopped?
You solve one problem, you create more problems. Then you work on solving those.
Living past 30 created a whole mess of new health issues. Living past 50 created many more. Now many of us live to 80 and beyond, and we are dealing with new health problems like the degeneration of the brain, problems our forebears never had to face.
I for one am thrilled that we are faced with these problems, and it would be wonderful to see the list of problems that come up when neuron death is turned off to see if anyone can come up with a useful way of solving those problems.
Personally, I'm for getting rid of all lobbyists period but, there should, at least, be a conflict of interest gap, say 10 years, between being a government official or elected representative and being able to work for the organizations you had dealings with while you held that position.
I'm all for solving that by outlawing government officials.
I agree there are a lot more details than what I've posted, and you've posted several very good examples. But it's not a matter of making law; it's a matter of discovering it. The "made" laws are in violation of and in contradiction to basic principles; the discovered laws are reasoned out from and consistent with basic principles.
I strongly prefer science to mythology.
But you are talking about purely subjective value judgments. You may call it "science," but what I am hearing is "ideology."
Your original statement was: "Deficit spending is clearly the right strategy some of the time." That depends completely on what your goals are. Since not everyone shares the same goals, values, and frame of reference as you, your conclusion may be clearly true for you, but not for others.
We're not talking about things like measuring the speed of light or determining how to build a bridge, here. We're talking about what people want out of life and civilization, and what people believe a government should do, and the last time I checked, those are very subjective and vary from person to person. Saying that your view on this is "scientific" and differing views are "mythology" is simply an ad hominem logical fallacy.
Combs has estimated the state loses $600 million a year from untaxed online sales
No, the people get to keep $600 million more of their own money.
I'm Texan, I'm an Amazon Prime customer, and I'm pissed off about this.
Deficit spending is clearly the right strategy some of the time
I'm always wary any time somebody says the word "clearly." If it is really "clear," it is usually unnecessary to point out how clear it is, because everybody would see it.
Clearly there are people who disagree with your assertion.
(I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself. ;) )
And that's what's usually going on when someone uses words like "clearly." Usually there is another point of view that they are dismissing out of hand. That point of view might be reprehensible or unthinkable, but then again, it might hold value.
In politics we are dealing with the power to make other people act according to our view of how the world is, how it works, and how it should be, so the word "clearly" becomes even more dangerous in political discussions. The fact is that we do not all agree, and in the end somebody is going to force their view of what should "clearly" be done on people who, for whatever reason, do not believe in that course of action. e.g., the Iraq War. Ten Commandments in schools. Laws against gay marriage. Welfare. Welfare for corporations. In politics, all of these issues involve a majority (or pseudo-majority) forcing their "clear" view of the world onto a minority who do not share that view and who may well have rational objections to it.
Capitalism was not the problem. The problem is that we continue to elect people who only make laws that empower themselves.
No, the problem is that law is immutable: do not steal, do not kill, do not enslave, do not harm; and since it is immutable, the whole idea that people should make law is the problem. There is no need for legislative power whatsoever, as all they can do is declare wrong things to be right (stealing, killing, enslaving under certain circumstances), or declare right things to be wrong (such as putting whatever bits you want on your own hard drive). We went from the idea of absolute power to make laws held perpetually and hereditarily to somewhat limited power to make laws passed around in a scheme of taking turns. While that may have been an improvement, the problem stems from the whole idea that anyone should have this kind of power in the first place. Destroy the Ring, don't take turns using it.
You are right of course that capitalism is not the problem; capitalism (true capitalism) follows naturally and logically from basic law such as not stealing.
People on the ground who want to be safe from flying objects should be prepared to shoot those objects down.
I'm with you.
But I'll add that if anyone truly doesn't feel safe on a flight unless everyone, including four year olds, has been through the current security screening process, then I support the right of people to set up an airline/airport where that is the rule, and everyone can pick if they want to fly that way or with less security. Then people can pick the level of security they are comfortable with.
Governments tend not to like their citizens taking part in transactions that don't have a paper trail.
This is true. Of course, since governments exist to provide a service to the governed, not the other way around, these governments should be restrained or abolished. The government should be afraid of its people, and not the people afraid of their government.
The government's "likes" and "dislikes" should be immaterial to my life. That's called being a busybody, and grown civilized people learn to mind their own business instead of sticking their nose into everyone else's and, worse, using force to make other people submit to their personal preferences and visions for how the world ought to be. Governments of course are just composed of people, people with the same moral rights and limitations as everyone else.
Not fake mines likes the ones in Minecraft that might actually be interesting, of course
Okay, this is entirely subjective. I find bitcoin fascinating even though it has never been of economic value to me. And I've never played Minecraft. I find it somewhat interesting, but many people I know do not. And I find bitcoin much more interesting than Minecraft.
If society can't promise benefits for joining it, its members may no longer feel bound to follow its rules
That's okay. People don't have to live by everybody else's rules, anyway. As long as people are not permitted to violate each other's rights to life, liberty, and property, people should be perfectly free to make their own rules and should not have to feel that they are "married" to every single person for 3.8 million square miles with no possibility of divorce.
Same to you. :)
Because exercising your rights under the law as the last option after seeking settlement out of court is "using it as a weapon."
Yes, when you enforce unjust "rights" under an unjust law, that's a weapon.
Your problem apparently isn't with Mr. Teller, but copyright law
Precisely.
Good luck there.
Well, it hasn't been so far, and in fact the track record for liberty hasn't been so great recently, but we can always stand for what is right.
So then why should performers and content generators even register copyrights for things at all
They shouldn't.
I don't think one iota less of Mr. Teller for pursuing legal action for the violation of copyright.
I do. Just because an unjust law exists does not mean it is right to take advantage of it and use it as a weapon against people.
Well to start with, you're always perfectly free to not buy my product in the first place.
Of course I am. But unless I've made some kind of agreement with you as a condition of the sale, then after the sale I own the product and can do what I please with it. Referring to attempting to enforce "terms" on your customers as "slavery" is not just an appeal to emotion; it's an appeal to idealism, principle, humanity, liberty, and decency. It is also calling a spade a spade: the mafia enforces terms on its "customers," rendering them nothing but subjects/slaves.
But allowing government to directly administer the schools is a terrible, horrible idea
Believing that you can protect against the dangers of government by somehow firewalling it off to only do things "indirectly" is something you were taught in government schools. Personally, I believe the government always melts through the firewall and becomes uncontained and uncontrolled.
There are many shades of Agnosticism but there is only one of Atheism and that is "There is nothing supernatural." There is nothing in that statement that attacks anyone. People just feel attacked by it. I don't claim to understand why.
Actually there are multiple perspectives on atheism by atheists. I was reading about one such debate just last week from an atheist blogger I read, and when I used to be more active on Wikipedia I know there were edit wars on the subject.
As far as feeling threatened, I don't feel threatened by atheism as long as we agree on a common core of rights, including mine and my family's right to be left alone. I start to feel threatened when atheists assert that they ought to be able to influence my children's belief system, and I am emphatically definitely threatened when they start wanting to be able to use my property to implement their goals. I feel just as threatened when religious people do the same kind of things, by the way. But when we agree on a common "I'll leave you alone, and you leave me alone," basis for rights I don't feel threatened by atheism at all, and in the past it's led to a lot of productive exchanges.
I am all for price discrimination; I just do not support the use of legalized force to enforce it! If you can make and sell the same product cheaper overseas, or to people with different genes, or whatever, more power to you. But if I buy your product, then I own your product, which gives me the right to sell your product under terms agreeable to me. To assert otherwise is to assert that I am your slave. Either I own myself and my property rights, or you do, and one of these scenarios is slavery.
After 3000+ years, religion has finally finished with hides, scrolls, codices and books, and moved back to tablets?