I think Google is walking a fine line between legitimate business (neutral), and abuse of that information (evil) by themselves and third-parties. This could be out of a genuine belief in their motto (I do think corporations can have the common good in mind), or out of market forces, or a combination of both. The second Google starts abusing their place and starts giving information to other companies/government/big brother people will stop using many of their services, and it will spur people to look for nicer alternatives, or start their own, this obviously is bad for the bottom line.
So far Google is doing a good job at this balancing act. Even the Chinese situation is being handled slightly more ethically than other would do it, they at least have a notice at the bottom letting people know that there is more information out there that they cannot access, a small reminder to the Chinese user telling them how repressed they are (this might of changes since last I checked). Though doing business with China is still ethically dubious, and agreeing to censorship is still wrong, though overall Google compromises towards a neutral position.
I understand that legalized drugs are cheaper, or would be at least, but my main concern in my original post was merely legalizing them as a pharmaceutical. With drugs like marijuana I think a saner course would be legalize-and-regulate like alcohol.
I still cringe at legalizing harder drugs though, even though I do know the damages, and acknowledge the points you bring up. I've known my fair share of addicts and ex-addicts, which I think leads to this. Drugs like heroin, methamphetamines, and crack/cocaine lead to permanent damage in the individuals that use them, besides collateral monetary damages. They can cause permanent physiological and neurological problems, pretty large psychological damage, and negatively effect everyone around them (in ways beyond purely financial harm), and these effects can long lasting to permanent. I don't think the "harder" drugs have any positive consequences, outside of limited medical use (which should be permitted, but only as a last ditch, or for dying patients).
With this in mind, its hard for me to justify the idea that someone should get them legally at a Quicky mart. Most of the users I knew started from a combination of ignorance and social-obligation, they were completely unaware of the real consequences of their actions, even if they had an academic knowledge of the effects. During the hight of their addictions they weren't having fun, but were trapped into it. This also makes it hard for me to concede to the legalization argument, since I think it impossible to make an informed decision regarding these "harder" drugs before the fact, and pretty much impossible (thanks to physical addiction, and drug addled minds) to make one after the fact.
As stated above, I do think that if these drugs have a medical benefit, they should be used in dire cases. And I still don't think we should target junkies and fill our jails with them. But then again I don't think they should ever be totally legalized, even with the financial costs involved, since the individual costs are greater, and longer lasting.
Sorry for such a large reply, this is an issue I've put a lot of thought into, and still have a hard time formulating my opinions on it.
I already find most laptop keyboards difficult to type with due to the reduced gaps (and therefore tactile feedback) compared to a standard keyboard.
Anecdotally: I found the opposite to be true. When my main computer (with a real keyboard) died I used a G4 iBook for 3 years as my primary box, with its little, flat keyboard. At first I had a problem with it since it was hard to differentiate one key from another tactilely, but after some I had a hard time using regular keyboards since my fingers got used to gliding much closer to the keys, and got used to less travel thanks to the lack of gaps.
The only real problem I had with the iBook keyboard (and all laptop keyboards) is the varying layouts, such as how they handle the hidden num-pad, and the page control keys (such as "home" and "page up" etc...), and how the iBook had a crappy "feature" that made the laptop specific keys take priority over the function keys. (F1 should be F! first, and not display brightness or volume).
Then again I never was a "touch typist", being completely self-taught.
I'm not saying your wrong, but that it is largely a degree of what your used to.
You are the type that gives libertarians a bad name. I don't think I'd want to be associated anyone publicly talking about hanging other people, and including vaugly conspiratorial allegations about a mere politcal organization (more a glorified think tank).
I always fear people who think that they are 100% correct, and that everyone who disagrees with them are ignorant. Someone saying they are unequivocally right is generally a good sign of mental unbalance, and potentially violent fanaticism, and this reason sets us up for more of the usual "us vs them" idiocy that causes so many problems in the world today.
You, sir, are as fallible as I am (pretty damn), congratulations.
This isn't an attack on libertarianism, though I don't agree with it 100%, and think it has some unrealistic propositions. I do think that there needs to be more libertarians to balance things out a bit, but I never would want them to "win". I don't want any other dogmatic political ideology to win either, since I beleive that American politics work best with raucious dissent from all sides. For disambiguation, my two hopefulls in the primary were BOTH Kucenich AND Paul, since they both represent a sadly unrepresented fringe of politics who both have some valid (albeit controversal) political ideas that are sadly missing from modern political discussion.
I am knowledgable on both the constitution, and history, as much as I can be as a non-historian, and non-lawyer layperson. From history (and a liberal dose of Foucault) I learn that there are no absolute interpretation of things, these change based on the context we were currently emeshed in. The present changes how we view the past. The constitution is nothing but an artifact of the past (a very important one), and thus it is only natural that it would be intrepreted differently than it was originally. On a less philosophical note; the constitution was written in a VERY different age than the one in which we now exist, thus obviously bits of it have to change, or be interpretted differently, to keep it viable (and thus the Union) in modern times.
Has it been abused? Yes. But can we accept it literally? About as well as we can accept the Bible as literal truth, meaning no. Do we need people who wish to read it literally? Yes, since they can serve as a check to those who wish to rewrite its meaning and content.
"Digital Immigrant" is a new one for me. Never heard that before, never want to again. There is something about nerds coining new words that really irks me. But at least we stopped appending "cyber" to everything on the "information superhighway", though the "2.0" meme might be equally vapid, or more so. I get odd looks because I still refer to "web logs" from time to time.
I look at the whole online presence of Ron Paul as a political version of the Snakes on a Plane bruhaha, geeks tend to think that the internet is much more important than everyone else does. Perhaps because it is such a large part of their lives, they fallaciously conclude it must be so for everyone else. In reality no one really cares outside of our smallish nerd community, and even half of them are well balanced enough to realize that online popularity doesn't matter a lick in the real world.
They wouldn't need these drones if they Decriminalized drugs and made them available via doctor's prescription.
Off topic, but one problem with this; I really doubt that most people do drugs for health problems, though those that do should probably get them, granting that full medical studies would be needed. I really don't see my average pothead freind going to a doctor, then a pharmacy just to get a bag of weed he could probably still got on the street cheaper.
I say cheaper, since it seems classifying drugs as pharmacudicals would raise the price, just look at the average cost of American prescriptions.
I think in the dim possibility of legalized drugs they should be handled like alcohol in the states that still have state governed distribution, or like the shops in Amersterdam.
That said, I rather doubt the wisdom of legalizing ALL drugs, pot probably should be legal, but heroin less so. We should definatly not go after users though, and basically decriminalize small quanities of drugs so we can instead focus more on the supply chain, clear up the people that don't belong in our prison system, and divert some man power to keeping the druggies safe (clean needle exchange, better rehab and treatment programs, etc..), at least.
Back on topic: I don't know whether to put on my tinfoil hat or not on this story. The police already have plenty of survelience in the air in the form of helicopters, adding unmanned drones doesn't seem that big of a move. That said, helicopters generally go where the crime is, instead of generalized survalience, if these drones acted the same way I wouldn't worry. But if they hover around looking for crime, then I worry.
Why, also, do the police need drones? I can see in combat situations where they exist to keep the pilots out of danger (dead technology is worth less than dead people), but I don't see this true in metropolitan areas. I don't think Floridian cities are so crime ridden as to the point where the criminals have an ample supply of shoulder-fired missles. How many police helicopters have been shot down in Miami in the last ten years?
The problem is volume. I like a lot of musical acts (about 10 I still track), but they only release new CDs roughly every 5 years (if I'm lucky). This gives me roughly $32 towards CDs a year at 15.95. Contrast this to $2 a day for Starbucks (venti black coffee). There isn't enough new music coming out to warrent even a monthly impulse buy from me. If they could force bands to do a CD a year I could see profitability going up, but some people would be less inclined to buy since the music would be essencially crap.
The only people the labels make a killing off of is youngsters who need to have all of the hip-massmarket-pap at release, and these massmarket acts are nothing but marketing machines, so there is no down time for creative composition. People generally grow out of liking this stuff, so the consumer base starts to dry up sometime past 18 years of age.
Also around a year after release you can pick up almost any CD for $9 at a used record store, cutting the label out completely. Thus they must feed on the new release market.
Yes... and no. Modern art only makes sense from a perspective of the history of art. Without that knowledge it is pretty worthless. Modern art is an expression of contextual meaning over overt meaning, in this sense I respect it. Does it fall into the layman "would I hang it on my wall" aesthetic? Probably not.
Though if we mean modern in the sense of everything past expressionism until abstract impressionism (and the various "post-s"), then I heatedly disagree.
But then again I had a fine-arts friend critique a Pollack to me, and I was blown away at the hidden intentional structures and balance that I was previously unaware of. I think Scientific American, in the last couple of years, had an article detailing a program that could differentiate between Pollack and his imitators (and Pollack-like noise). Would I hang it on my wall, the answer is still "no." I also respect the purely "art for art's sake" goal of abstract impressionism in exploring the actions of pure form within the confines of the discipline, sort of like aesthetic navel gazing. Still wouldn't hang it on my wall, though.
Also the term "modern art" is a misnomer. There is no unified school of "modern" art, everything that is art, and produced since the 60s, is modern art. Good and bad.
Besides this technical point, this is merely an opinion of yours, and other disagree. Until you can come up with an objective reason why it is crap, then you really are wasting words. I like the sparsity of the desert, you like lush forests, who is correct?
As a non-engineer, thank you. I get so sick of the math based crowd trying to pull rank on me (went to school for philosophy and phychology, and dabble in textual and visual arts) because I majored in something "soft". Trying to explain to them that they would probably do as well in my field as I in theirs. It is pretty dumb and arrogant to pull rank in a field in which you are completely uninformed, and is completely unrelated to your own.
That's not to say I don't sometimes get uppity towards some academic paths (most education programs are laughable, as are pure "criticism" courses, and sometimes sociology makes me giggle), but this is mostly due to the method of the subject and not the contents of it. For example I love flat arts, and realize that it is MUCH harder than it seems (simplicity is often a sign of success, as the math/engineering crowd can probably see), but my friend took a class on how to look "deep" and market it, great topic, bad execution.
Perhaps if we hired citizens working at minimum wage or more there would be more money floating around with the consumers to allow higher fruit prices, perhaps, as well, we give these citizens benefits so they pay less in health care allowing them to have more disposable income. Then say we charge these workers an income tax so the government can get a little more done, and a little less debt. Then just imagine if removing the illegal labor we free some burden from hospitals and schools so people paying this said tax get some benefits.
This "illegal immigrants do jobs that americans won't take" rhetoric is fallacious. Americans won't take the jobs because they don't pay a living (or legal) wage. If you made them full-time, roughly minimum wage jobs then I'm sure Americans will flock to them. I really don't understand the origin of this rhetorical trick, since Americans can, and HAVE done these exact same jobs in the last 30 years, the only difference was that they were fair jobs because it was before the politicos and fat-cats used our disadvantaged neighbors down south to break unions and lower wages, WITHOUT passing any of the savings from screwing the blue-collar worker down.
The economic argument for keeping illegals is bunk. The only valid argument I can find is the humanitarian one.
Not to commit/. boosterism, but what, then, is a large community? A million people is a lot of people, a whole lot of people. Before the internet got large (since what, 95?) I doubt we ever would have considered >1m to be small.
Besides it isn't about/. being an action network, its about, to use distasteful political speak, conscious raising. If you have a million or so concerned individuals, these individuals have friends, participate in other forums, etc... thus a local fervor on/. can spread wildly to other areas, since 1m people is pretty good for critical momentum. What local group in meatspace do you belong where you have the potential to be heard by this number of people, especially in a conversational format? Look at the Digg brouhaha last May 1, for an example. Also with such a large userbase, and such a huge amount of content,/. is over represented on places like Google (where we are often #1 in the news section lately), which do, potentially, have a wider reach.
I also wouldn't say that we're that limited in the ideologies of the user-base. I'd say we skew towards mid-high income brackets, and towards the more libertarian techies, but thats not to say that they are a large majority. Look how many left-right, socialism-libertarianism debates plague YRO daily. We even have a share of Christian fundies resident. And while American's are the majority, we definitely have a LARGE share of folk from other countries/cultures to balance things out.
We represent a large array of international basement dwellers, in other words.
Secure that connection then. It takes five bloody minutes. If you don't have the five minutes to spare (10 maybe if you need to RTFM) then you obviously don't care that much. Unless, perhaps, you find it okay for the government to protect you being lazy (or in most cases ignorant), which is something that I find rather distasteful.
We're not taking about people hacking your WEP/WPA passwords, we're talking about broacasting, open, and unprotected signals. The latter two of these are REALLY easy to fix. Hacking a secured connection is already illegal.
If you cared so much, why would you be broadcasting an open connection? You must not care about your property enough to RTFM, or take the 5 minutes of work to secure your connection. If someone hacks your secure connection, that is a different and existent law.
Anyone that does not fight this kind of law tooth and nail, and then does not try to burn the asshat that introduced it on a stake in the front of the capitol building deserved everything they get. The law is only there to protect cable, telco, and cellular company profits. it has no other use.
Honestly the politicians at the local, state, and federal level need to be scared to hell of the populace. Because only then will they do the right thing instead of bending over and passing laws for the companies that pay them to do so.
I don't think we can even put these laws directly on the self-interest of the telcos (though they have some share of blame). The whole problem is that the legislators are as technologically ignorant as the populace. Neither understand (nor seem to care to) the technology that they're using and regulating. A state legislator (or federal, sadly) is just as likely to think "ZOMG HAX!" as Joe Sixpack when told that people can "hack into your internets". They don't understand that this "hacking" is the default use of the technology, and can be generally be done without the knowledge (or nefarious intent) of the "hacker".
Being an optimist, I don't think that in this case the government is toeing a corporate line (though it is possible). They really think that their are legions of "hackers" "stealing" your connection. Being technologically ignorant, this MUST be malicious intent.
A few week ago I learned I have been "pirating" someone's open wifi connects for a long, unspecified, period of time, completely on accident. I was futzing around with my MacMini, and realized that it had autoconnected to an open wifi connection (as it is set up to do on default). Thus I am a criminal, without any actually intent, or knowledge of it.
My general feeling on this, personally, is that if the connection is open, it is shared. I have no way to differentiate between people sharing their access, and people who are just to stupid to protect it (no, I can't go door to door, I live in an apartment complex with 500+ people, and 3 open connections, and around 10 protected ones).
Furthermore, this law hurts people who want to be nice, and offer their connections for free. If this is in violation of a contact with an ISP, it is the ISPs job to take action, as it is in all business contracts. It also protects ignorance, which I find rather distasteful. You obviously don't care about people using your access, if you can't take the 15 minutes to RTFM, click on WAP, and enter a password. In this case negligence is as good as permission, IMO.
By all means petition the manufactures of routers to lock them down by default, but don't criminalize something this dumb.
Thank you for the cite, I'm going to spend some quality google time with this topic. I'll cede that point for a bit.
Well, perhaps you should do society a favor, and turn in your license. Your argument is that the average American (which you are, and we can't assume otherwise) can't handle making reasonable judgement calls. It stands to reason that you can't either, so make us all safer and stop driving.
I don't do such things while driving, hence my criticism of these activities. I generally fall into the "never whistle while pissing" philosophy, I'd rather do something well, than do a lot of things badly.
We're probably never going to agree, since I can see you have libertarian leanings. This is not meant as an attack, just that we are wearing different colored glasses when it comes to humanity. I don't think that getting rid of government intervention would fix anything, since there still be greedy sociopaths willing to hurt everyone for their own gain, and there still will be the majority who are apathetic, uneducated, and and completely ignorant of their own best interests (or societies, in the aggregate).
I do agree that the government is getting very close to nullifying any social contract that might have existed, and is very much over-stepping their bounds in infringing with individual rights. This isn't completely the fault of government (people who want power are ambitious by nature, in all spheres), but also the fault of the people. Generally I agree with the proposition that we get the government we deserve.
Looking at the history of government, complacent and relatively rich subjects generally breed a tyranny. Actually, it seems, all government ultimately leads to tyranny. I suppose this thought should make me an anarchist.
I just got StarControl 3 images floating through my head, with those damn annihilator probes that were made to be self-reproducing (by rendering objects into their elements), and peaceful. But instead just ran around randomly trying to eat everything that moved.
Self reproducing technology is probably a terrible idea, and not just because of the "grey-ooze" on the micro-scale, but the same effect could be macroscopic. Once you bring reproduction into the mix you get evolution, and once you get evolution things get chaotic.
And, since it is finally appropriate, I for one welcome of highly compressed, room-temperature superconducting overlords.
Um, you compeletely disagree with civil engineers and all the studies that looked at the effects of speed limits?
Care to give me a couple layman-worthy cites? If your going to talk about things like the Autobaun, don't bother, since that isn't geared towards the Big Gulp and Taco, Cellphone, Hair Drying, and Novel Reading American Driver. We're too busy doing other things to be fully trusted to our own means. If there are valid studies, taking into account the unique American character of road use and vehicular philosophy, I will cede your point, barring that I'm sure (guessing here) that there are other studies, equally valid in method, that say otherwise.
We can agree on the mob-rule thing, though I wouldn't go so far as calling democracy (en toto) mob-rule, and thus bad, there is something to be said for a group of people having the right to represent themselves. I do find benefits in the idea of Philosopher Kings or meritocracy, but generally these go wrong, since those who claim the right to rule generally look out for themselves, to the detriment of the polis. We generally forget that government is here for the sake of the governed, and not for that of the governors. Actually the ideal form of government, IMHO, would be mob-rule (ala democracy) with an informed public, and a large body of empowered experts within advisory roles in the government. Sadly, here in the US we have an ignorant and apathetic public, and corporate interests (and scientists who are willing sell their standards to said interests) represented in government. I digress.
But, interestingly, the g-g-parent said something along the lines of "most people don't want speed limits, but they are enforced for revenue only". This IS a statement FOR mob-rule, the term "most people" confirms it.
Murder and speeding are completely different things. Murder is harm by nature and intent. Speeding is potential harm and not intentionally directed towards harm. Traffic death is generally based on the perpetrators own ignorance of their ability, or disinterest in basic safety, and not the intent to actually harm. Being this is based on potential, it is up to the people (as in We the...) to decide what threshold of potential we are willing to tolerate, and for the government to regulate that.
Have you considered a ballot proposition? If everyone agrees with you, you should have no problem receiving the requisite signatures, and votes in your next election, if not you must happily stop bitching since democracy willed it not so.
The government has the right to regulate our behavior when it puts others at risk. You can be an asshat, until someone loses and eye, basically. Most people drive much faster than their ability, and thus are a risk to the rest of us, and we can't expect these people to self regulate (something Americans are less and less capable with our post 80's confusion of right and privilege, and complete ignorance of the term "responsibility"), and thus it is the government's job to cap how idiotic we can be.
My favorite solution is tiered licensing of a sort. Let the people who think they could be doing F1 racing take a very tough real-world test to prove that they can perform over a certain speed (I'm guessing most of the speeding-is-justified-set would fail), and then allow them on special roads away from the rest of the public.
I wouldn't blame this one on the discipline of philosophy, as it is an informal fallacy. I would put this more into the area of rhetoric.
I do see the point though, since just claiming potential bias is not enough to discredit a source. A potentially biased, or vested, individual can tell the truth as well. To turn your analogy around; a Porsche dealer tells you that this new Porsche is faster than you '68 Bug.
That said, I don't think the g-g-parent was off the mark, nor guilty of committing this informal fallacy. Pointing out potential bias isn't the same as discrediting someone for the same potential bias. The contested statement basically said "we should pay a wee more attention than we would, because IBM has a history of collaborating with Microsoft", this is not discrediting IBM, but just warranting caution in accord with inductive reasoning (it has been often previously observed that).
Its very rarely I see an insightful reply in a discussion about mental illnesses and drugs, and yours is one of those rare ones.
I'm inclined to agree with much of what you say. It's always been a pet theory of mine that mental illness is more a societal illness (society not meeting or monkey needs), than a problem with the individual. In some cases the individual can have some flaws, but for a majority of cases it is society that is flawed. It would be interesting to see a study of the prevalence of various mental diseases across a broad spectrum of social organizations.
My favorite example of this is a woman I once met, who claimed to have adult ADHD. I asked her how she knew this, and she said her shrink diagnosed it because she couldn't focus at work, which was hurting her productivity. When asked, she told me she worked at a call center, doing billing. I don't know many people who would be able to remain on task well at a job that boring. But instead of blaming the job, we blame the individual for not being able to cope with it. It seems, to me at least, that our priorities are screwed up. Last I checked society was here for individuals, and not the other way around.
Most people with diagnosed ADD/ADHD I've met are pretty normal. But in our overcrowded world children acting like curious and active children are a disruption to social order, and thus must be ill. To spark some controversy, the same can be said for a majority of people diagnosed with, or claiming, asperger's or (mostly) minor depression, and bipolar. Most of these people are reacting healthily to an unhealthy environment. And in some absurd cases, claim it as a badge of identity, so they can be special feeling.
Of course drug marketing is only making this worse, and more tragic and absurd. Individual lucidity, and personality has just become another commodity to trade.
I don't think that, to wander back on topic, that the internet is addictive, as much as it is interesting. Our monkey brains like stimulus and amusement. It becomes an addiction when I take it away from you and you have dire psychological (or physical) effects from it. Increasingly I think your ability to function will be hampered more by our social dependence on it, than by any individual dependence. It's like saying your addicted to cars, you can probably do away with yours with no terrible effects, but you might not be able to go to work or buy groceries thanks to civic planning that had cars in mind.
The various wings of the radio don't really equal an opinion, they equal a sensationalist lunatic fringe based on marketing. If I told a bunch of liberals to listen to Bill O'Reilly they would learn nothing of conservatism, but they would learn to HATE conservatives because he really is an asshat who represents no-one. I can say the same of telling conservatives to read the Nation, you learn no valid points of view, only group think.
Arguments are necessary for understanding, the sources mentioned (here at least) are not based on arguments, but sensationalist opinions manufactures to create more sectarian polarization.
I have more experience with magazines than any other form of media, so I can't speak of television or radio, but I would get liberals to read the Economist or Foreign Policy, and conservatives to read Mother Jones or the modern (and overly politicized, IMO) Scientific American.
Is there any rational conservative who things Rush is actually sane?
Your right though, people have too much (irrational, IMHO) interest in certain causes and ideologies. They invest so much in a position that it almost seems like their entire being depends on it, thus they treat any attack on it as an excuse to resort to (verbal, or violent) self-defense.
On this issue, I remember giving an Isreali ex-pat that Arab and Jew book (in which both sides are handles evenly), and then asked her if she could see her enemies point of view. Her exact words were "Yes, I agree they have the right to their land and existence, but I'm Jewish, so I need to support Israel". My brain died a little with that statement.
Slashdot Mirror
I think Google is walking a fine line between legitimate business (neutral), and abuse of that information (evil) by themselves and third-parties. This could be out of a genuine belief in their motto (I do think corporations can have the common good in mind), or out of market forces, or a combination of both. The second Google starts abusing their place and starts giving information to other companies/government/big brother people will stop using many of their services, and it will spur people to look for nicer alternatives, or start their own, this obviously is bad for the bottom line.
So far Google is doing a good job at this balancing act. Even the Chinese situation is being handled slightly more ethically than other would do it, they at least have a notice at the bottom letting people know that there is more information out there that they cannot access, a small reminder to the Chinese user telling them how repressed they are (this might of changes since last I checked). Though doing business with China is still ethically dubious, and agreeing to censorship is still wrong, though overall Google compromises towards a neutral position.
I understand that legalized drugs are cheaper, or would be at least, but my main concern in my original post was merely legalizing them as a pharmaceutical. With drugs like marijuana I think a saner course would be legalize-and-regulate like alcohol.
I still cringe at legalizing harder drugs though, even though I do know the damages, and acknowledge the points you bring up. I've known my fair share of addicts and ex-addicts, which I think leads to this. Drugs like heroin, methamphetamines, and crack/cocaine lead to permanent damage in the individuals that use them, besides collateral monetary damages. They can cause permanent physiological and neurological problems, pretty large psychological damage, and negatively effect everyone around them (in ways beyond purely financial harm), and these effects can long lasting to permanent. I don't think the "harder" drugs have any positive consequences, outside of limited medical use (which should be permitted, but only as a last ditch, or for dying patients).
With this in mind, its hard for me to justify the idea that someone should get them legally at a Quicky mart. Most of the users I knew started from a combination of ignorance and social-obligation, they were completely unaware of the real consequences of their actions, even if they had an academic knowledge of the effects. During the hight of their addictions they weren't having fun, but were trapped into it. This also makes it hard for me to concede to the legalization argument, since I think it impossible to make an informed decision regarding these "harder" drugs before the fact, and pretty much impossible (thanks to physical addiction, and drug addled minds) to make one after the fact.
As stated above, I do think that if these drugs have a medical benefit, they should be used in dire cases. And I still don't think we should target junkies and fill our jails with them. But then again I don't think they should ever be totally legalized, even with the financial costs involved, since the individual costs are greater, and longer lasting.
Sorry for such a large reply, this is an issue I've put a lot of thought into, and still have a hard time formulating my opinions on it.
I already find most laptop keyboards difficult to type with due to the reduced gaps (and therefore tactile feedback) compared to a standard keyboard.
Anecdotally: I found the opposite to be true. When my main computer (with a real keyboard) died I used a G4 iBook for 3 years as my primary box, with its little, flat keyboard. At first I had a problem with it since it was hard to differentiate one key from another tactilely, but after some I had a hard time using regular keyboards since my fingers got used to gliding much closer to the keys, and got used to less travel thanks to the lack of gaps.
The only real problem I had with the iBook keyboard (and all laptop keyboards) is the varying layouts, such as how they handle the hidden num-pad, and the page control keys (such as "home" and "page up" etc...), and how the iBook had a crappy "feature" that made the laptop specific keys take priority over the function keys. (F1 should be F! first, and not display brightness or volume).
Then again I never was a "touch typist", being completely self-taught.
I'm not saying your wrong, but that it is largely a degree of what your used to.
Our presidents are usually base 20? How odd.
This probably explains a lot about the incompatibility problems with the current install.
You are the type that gives libertarians a bad name. I don't think I'd want to be associated anyone publicly talking about hanging other people, and including vaugly conspiratorial allegations about a mere politcal organization (more a glorified think tank).
I always fear people who think that they are 100% correct, and that everyone who disagrees with them are ignorant. Someone saying they are unequivocally right is generally a good sign of mental unbalance, and potentially violent fanaticism, and this reason sets us up for more of the usual "us vs them" idiocy that causes so many problems in the world today.
You, sir, are as fallible as I am (pretty damn), congratulations.
This isn't an attack on libertarianism, though I don't agree with it 100%, and think it has some unrealistic propositions. I do think that there needs to be more libertarians to balance things out a bit, but I never would want them to "win". I don't want any other dogmatic political ideology to win either, since I beleive that American politics work best with raucious dissent from all sides. For disambiguation, my two hopefulls in the primary were BOTH Kucenich AND Paul, since they both represent a sadly unrepresented fringe of politics who both have some valid (albeit controversal) political ideas that are sadly missing from modern political discussion.
I am knowledgable on both the constitution, and history, as much as I can be as a non-historian, and non-lawyer layperson. From history (and a liberal dose of Foucault) I learn that there are no absolute interpretation of things, these change based on the context we were currently emeshed in. The present changes how we view the past. The constitution is nothing but an artifact of the past (a very important one), and thus it is only natural that it would be intrepreted differently than it was originally. On a less philosophical note; the constitution was written in a VERY different age than the one in which we now exist, thus obviously bits of it have to change, or be interpretted differently, to keep it viable (and thus the Union) in modern times.
Has it been abused? Yes. But can we accept it literally? About as well as we can accept the Bible as literal truth, meaning no. Do we need people who wish to read it literally? Yes, since they can serve as a check to those who wish to rewrite its meaning and content.
The latest one that annoys me is "information wants to be free".
Actually I think thats a pretty old one, its just having a silly resurgence. Wikipedia bears this out, it was coined in 1982. I remember it back in the days of pirate BBSs, it was associated with the "cyberpunks" of the day. I think Gibson even used it once or twice, but don't quote me on that.
"Digital Immigrant" is a new one for me. Never heard that before, never want to again. There is something about nerds coining new words that really irks me. But at least we stopped appending "cyber" to everything on the "information superhighway", though the "2.0" meme might be equally vapid, or more so. I get odd looks because I still refer to "web logs" from time to time.
I look at the whole online presence of Ron Paul as a political version of the Snakes on a Plane bruhaha, geeks tend to think that the internet is much more important than everyone else does. Perhaps because it is such a large part of their lives, they fallaciously conclude it must be so for everyone else. In reality no one really cares outside of our smallish nerd community, and even half of them are well balanced enough to realize that online popularity doesn't matter a lick in the real world.
They wouldn't need these drones if they Decriminalized drugs and made them available via doctor's prescription.
Off topic, but one problem with this; I really doubt that most people do drugs for health problems, though those that do should probably get them, granting that full medical studies would be needed. I really don't see my average pothead freind going to a doctor, then a pharmacy just to get a bag of weed he could probably still got on the street cheaper.
I say cheaper, since it seems classifying drugs as pharmacudicals would raise the price, just look at the average cost of American prescriptions.
I think in the dim possibility of legalized drugs they should be handled like alcohol in the states that still have state governed distribution, or like the shops in Amersterdam.
That said, I rather doubt the wisdom of legalizing ALL drugs, pot probably should be legal, but heroin less so. We should definatly not go after users though, and basically decriminalize small quanities of drugs so we can instead focus more on the supply chain, clear up the people that don't belong in our prison system, and divert some man power to keeping the druggies safe (clean needle exchange, better rehab and treatment programs, etc..), at least.
Back on topic: I don't know whether to put on my tinfoil hat or not on this story. The police already have plenty of survelience in the air in the form of helicopters, adding unmanned drones doesn't seem that big of a move. That said, helicopters generally go where the crime is, instead of generalized survalience, if these drones acted the same way I wouldn't worry. But if they hover around looking for crime, then I worry.
Why, also, do the police need drones? I can see in combat situations where they exist to keep the pilots out of danger (dead technology is worth less than dead people), but I don't see this true in metropolitan areas. I don't think Floridian cities are so crime ridden as to the point where the criminals have an ample supply of shoulder-fired missles. How many police helicopters have been shot down in Miami in the last ten years?
The problem is volume. I like a lot of musical acts (about 10 I still track), but they only release new CDs roughly every 5 years (if I'm lucky). This gives me roughly $32 towards CDs a year at 15.95. Contrast this to $2 a day for Starbucks (venti black coffee). There isn't enough new music coming out to warrent even a monthly impulse buy from me. If they could force bands to do a CD a year I could see profitability going up, but some people would be less inclined to buy since the music would be essencially crap.
The only people the labels make a killing off of is youngsters who need to have all of the hip-massmarket-pap at release, and these massmarket acts are nothing but marketing machines, so there is no down time for creative composition. People generally grow out of liking this stuff, so the consumer base starts to dry up sometime past 18 years of age.
Also around a year after release you can pick up almost any CD for $9 at a used record store, cutting the label out completely. Thus they must feed on the new release market.
Art, modern art anyways - is a load of rubbish.
Yes... and no. Modern art only makes sense from a perspective of the history of art. Without that knowledge it is pretty worthless. Modern art is an expression of contextual meaning over overt meaning, in this sense I respect it. Does it fall into the layman "would I hang it on my wall" aesthetic? Probably not.
Though if we mean modern in the sense of everything past expressionism until abstract impressionism (and the various "post-s"), then I heatedly disagree.
But then again I had a fine-arts friend critique a Pollack to me, and I was blown away at the hidden intentional structures and balance that I was previously unaware of. I think Scientific American, in the last couple of years, had an article detailing a program that could differentiate between Pollack and his imitators (and Pollack-like noise). Would I hang it on my wall, the answer is still "no." I also respect the purely "art for art's sake" goal of abstract impressionism in exploring the actions of pure form within the confines of the discipline, sort of like aesthetic navel gazing. Still wouldn't hang it on my wall, though.
Also the term "modern art" is a misnomer. There is no unified school of "modern" art, everything that is art, and produced since the 60s, is modern art. Good and bad.
Besides this technical point, this is merely an opinion of yours, and other disagree. Until you can come up with an objective reason why it is crap, then you really are wasting words. I like the sparsity of the desert, you like lush forests, who is correct?
As a non-engineer, thank you. I get so sick of the math based crowd trying to pull rank on me (went to school for philosophy and phychology, and dabble in textual and visual arts) because I majored in something "soft". Trying to explain to them that they would probably do as well in my field as I in theirs. It is pretty dumb and arrogant to pull rank in a field in which you are completely uninformed, and is completely unrelated to your own.
That's not to say I don't sometimes get uppity towards some academic paths (most education programs are laughable, as are pure "criticism" courses, and sometimes sociology makes me giggle), but this is mostly due to the method of the subject and not the contents of it. For example I love flat arts, and realize that it is MUCH harder than it seems (simplicity is often a sign of success, as the math/engineering crowd can probably see), but my friend took a class on how to look "deep" and market it, great topic, bad execution.
Perhaps if we hired citizens working at minimum wage or more there would be more money floating around with the consumers to allow higher fruit prices, perhaps, as well, we give these citizens benefits so they pay less in health care allowing them to have more disposable income. Then say we charge these workers an income tax so the government can get a little more done, and a little less debt. Then just imagine if removing the illegal labor we free some burden from hospitals and schools so people paying this said tax get some benefits.
This "illegal immigrants do jobs that americans won't take" rhetoric is fallacious. Americans won't take the jobs because they don't pay a living (or legal) wage. If you made them full-time, roughly minimum wage jobs then I'm sure Americans will flock to them. I really don't understand the origin of this rhetorical trick, since Americans can, and HAVE done these exact same jobs in the last 30 years, the only difference was that they were fair jobs because it was before the politicos and fat-cats used our disadvantaged neighbors down south to break unions and lower wages, WITHOUT passing any of the savings from screwing the blue-collar worker down.
The economic argument for keeping illegals is bunk. The only valid argument I can find is the humanitarian one.
How is a movie not data? Not to sound dense, or anything, but there are several definitions of the term.
Face it, Slashdot is a SMALL community.
/. boosterism, but what, then, is a large community? A million people is a lot of people, a whole lot of people. Before the internet got large (since what, 95?) I doubt we ever would have considered >1m to be small.
/. being an action network, its about, to use distasteful political speak, conscious raising. If you have a million or so concerned individuals, these individuals have friends, participate in other forums, etc... thus a local fervor on /. can spread wildly to other areas, since 1m people is pretty good for critical momentum. What local group in meatspace do you belong where you have the potential to be heard by this number of people, especially in a conversational format? Look at the Digg brouhaha last May 1, for an example. Also with such a large userbase, and such a huge amount of content, /. is over represented on places like Google (where we are often #1 in the news section lately), which do, potentially, have a wider reach.
Not to commit
Besides it isn't about
I also wouldn't say that we're that limited in the ideologies of the user-base. I'd say we skew towards mid-high income brackets, and towards the more libertarian techies, but thats not to say that they are a large majority. Look how many left-right, socialism-libertarianism debates plague YRO daily. We even have a share of Christian fundies resident. And while American's are the majority, we definitely have a LARGE share of folk from other countries/cultures to balance things out.
We represent a large array of international basement dwellers, in other words.
Secure that connection then. It takes five bloody minutes. If you don't have the five minutes to spare (10 maybe if you need to RTFM) then you obviously don't care that much. Unless, perhaps, you find it okay for the government to protect you being lazy (or in most cases ignorant), which is something that I find rather distasteful.
We're not taking about people hacking your WEP/WPA passwords, we're talking about broacasting, open, and unprotected signals. The latter two of these are REALLY easy to fix. Hacking a secured connection is already illegal.
Then lock your connection down. End of debate.
If you cared so much, why would you be broadcasting an open connection? You must not care about your property enough to RTFM, or take the 5 minutes of work to secure your connection. If someone hacks your secure connection, that is a different and existent law.
Anyone that does not fight this kind of law tooth and nail, and then does not try to burn the asshat that introduced it on a stake in the front of the capitol building deserved everything they get. The law is only there to protect cable, telco, and cellular company profits. it has no other use.
Honestly the politicians at the local, state, and federal level need to be scared to hell of the populace. Because only then will they do the right thing instead of bending over and passing laws for the companies that pay them to do so.
I don't think we can even put these laws directly on the self-interest of the telcos (though they have some share of blame). The whole problem is that the legislators are as technologically ignorant as the populace. Neither understand (nor seem to care to) the technology that they're using and regulating. A state legislator (or federal, sadly) is just as likely to think "ZOMG HAX!" as Joe Sixpack when told that people can "hack into your internets". They don't understand that this "hacking" is the default use of the technology, and can be generally be done without the knowledge (or nefarious intent) of the "hacker".
Being an optimist, I don't think that in this case the government is toeing a corporate line (though it is possible). They really think that their are legions of "hackers" "stealing" your connection. Being technologically ignorant, this MUST be malicious intent.
A few week ago I learned I have been "pirating" someone's open wifi connects for a long, unspecified, period of time, completely on accident. I was futzing around with my MacMini, and realized that it had autoconnected to an open wifi connection (as it is set up to do on default). Thus I am a criminal, without any actually intent, or knowledge of it.
My general feeling on this, personally, is that if the connection is open, it is shared. I have no way to differentiate between people sharing their access, and people who are just to stupid to protect it (no, I can't go door to door, I live in an apartment complex with 500+ people, and 3 open connections, and around 10 protected ones).
Furthermore, this law hurts people who want to be nice, and offer their connections for free. If this is in violation of a contact with an ISP, it is the ISPs job to take action, as it is in all business contracts. It also protects ignorance, which I find rather distasteful. You obviously don't care about people using your access, if you can't take the 15 minutes to RTFM, click on WAP, and enter a password. In this case negligence is as good as permission, IMO.
By all means petition the manufactures of routers to lock them down by default, but don't criminalize something this dumb.
Thank you for the cite, I'm going to spend some quality google time with this topic. I'll cede that point for a bit.
Well, perhaps you should do society a favor, and turn in your license. Your argument is that the average American (which you are, and we can't assume otherwise) can't handle making reasonable judgement calls. It stands to reason that you can't either, so make us all safer and stop driving.
I don't do such things while driving, hence my criticism of these activities. I generally fall into the "never whistle while pissing" philosophy, I'd rather do something well, than do a lot of things badly.
We're probably never going to agree, since I can see you have libertarian leanings. This is not meant as an attack, just that we are wearing different colored glasses when it comes to humanity. I don't think that getting rid of government intervention would fix anything, since there still be greedy sociopaths willing to hurt everyone for their own gain, and there still will be the majority who are apathetic, uneducated, and and completely ignorant of their own best interests (or societies, in the aggregate).
I do agree that the government is getting very close to nullifying any social contract that might have existed, and is very much over-stepping their bounds in infringing with individual rights. This isn't completely the fault of government (people who want power are ambitious by nature, in all spheres), but also the fault of the people. Generally I agree with the proposition that we get the government we deserve.
Looking at the history of government, complacent and relatively rich subjects generally breed a tyranny. Actually, it seems, all government ultimately leads to tyranny. I suppose this thought should make me an anarchist.
I just got StarControl 3 images floating through my head, with those damn annihilator probes that were made to be self-reproducing (by rendering objects into their elements), and peaceful. But instead just ran around randomly trying to eat everything that moved.
Self reproducing technology is probably a terrible idea, and not just because of the "grey-ooze" on the micro-scale, but the same effect could be macroscopic. Once you bring reproduction into the mix you get evolution, and once you get evolution things get chaotic.
And, since it is finally appropriate, I for one welcome of highly compressed, room-temperature superconducting overlords.
Um, you compeletely disagree with civil engineers and all the studies that looked at the effects of speed limits?
Care to give me a couple layman-worthy cites? If your going to talk about things like the Autobaun, don't bother, since that isn't geared towards the Big Gulp and Taco, Cellphone, Hair Drying, and Novel Reading American Driver. We're too busy doing other things to be fully trusted to our own means. If there are valid studies, taking into account the unique American character of road use and vehicular philosophy, I will cede your point, barring that I'm sure (guessing here) that there are other studies, equally valid in method, that say otherwise.
We can agree on the mob-rule thing, though I wouldn't go so far as calling democracy (en toto) mob-rule, and thus bad, there is something to be said for a group of people having the right to represent themselves. I do find benefits in the idea of Philosopher Kings or meritocracy, but generally these go wrong, since those who claim the right to rule generally look out for themselves, to the detriment of the polis. We generally forget that government is here for the sake of the governed, and not for that of the governors. Actually the ideal form of government, IMHO, would be mob-rule (ala democracy) with an informed public, and a large body of empowered experts within advisory roles in the government. Sadly, here in the US we have an ignorant and apathetic public, and corporate interests (and scientists who are willing sell their standards to said interests) represented in government. I digress.
But, interestingly, the g-g-parent said something along the lines of "most people don't want speed limits, but they are enforced for revenue only". This IS a statement FOR mob-rule, the term "most people" confirms it.
Murder and speeding are completely different things. Murder is harm by nature and intent. Speeding is potential harm and not intentionally directed towards harm. Traffic death is generally based on the perpetrators own ignorance of their ability, or disinterest in basic safety, and not the intent to actually harm. Being this is based on potential, it is up to the people (as in We the...) to decide what threshold of potential we are willing to tolerate, and for the government to regulate that.
I completely disagree with you, but...
Have you considered a ballot proposition? If everyone agrees with you, you should have no problem receiving the requisite signatures, and votes in your next election, if not you must happily stop bitching since democracy willed it not so.
The government has the right to regulate our behavior when it puts others at risk. You can be an asshat, until someone loses and eye, basically. Most people drive much faster than their ability, and thus are a risk to the rest of us, and we can't expect these people to self regulate (something Americans are less and less capable with our post 80's confusion of right and privilege, and complete ignorance of the term "responsibility"), and thus it is the government's job to cap how idiotic we can be.
My favorite solution is tiered licensing of a sort. Let the people who think they could be doing F1 racing take a very tough real-world test to prove that they can perform over a certain speed (I'm guessing most of the speeding-is-justified-set would fail), and then allow them on special roads away from the rest of the public.
I wouldn't blame this one on the discipline of philosophy, as it is an informal fallacy. I would put this more into the area of rhetoric.
I do see the point though, since just claiming potential bias is not enough to discredit a source. A potentially biased, or vested, individual can tell the truth as well. To turn your analogy around; a Porsche dealer tells you that this new Porsche is faster than you '68 Bug.
That said, I don't think the g-g-parent was off the mark, nor guilty of committing this informal fallacy. Pointing out potential bias isn't the same as discrediting someone for the same potential bias. The contested statement basically said "we should pay a wee more attention than we would, because IBM has a history of collaborating with Microsoft", this is not discrediting IBM, but just warranting caution in accord with inductive reasoning (it has been often previously observed that).
Its very rarely I see an insightful reply in a discussion about mental illnesses and drugs, and yours is one of those rare ones.
I'm inclined to agree with much of what you say. It's always been a pet theory of mine that mental illness is more a societal illness (society not meeting or monkey needs), than a problem with the individual. In some cases the individual can have some flaws, but for a majority of cases it is society that is flawed. It would be interesting to see a study of the prevalence of various mental diseases across a broad spectrum of social organizations.
My favorite example of this is a woman I once met, who claimed to have adult ADHD. I asked her how she knew this, and she said her shrink diagnosed it because she couldn't focus at work, which was hurting her productivity. When asked, she told me she worked at a call center, doing billing. I don't know many people who would be able to remain on task well at a job that boring. But instead of blaming the job, we blame the individual for not being able to cope with it. It seems, to me at least, that our priorities are screwed up. Last I checked society was here for individuals, and not the other way around.
Most people with diagnosed ADD/ADHD I've met are pretty normal. But in our overcrowded world children acting like curious and active children are a disruption to social order, and thus must be ill. To spark some controversy, the same can be said for a majority of people diagnosed with, or claiming, asperger's or (mostly) minor depression, and bipolar. Most of these people are reacting healthily to an unhealthy environment. And in some absurd cases, claim it as a badge of identity, so they can be special feeling.
Of course drug marketing is only making this worse, and more tragic and absurd. Individual lucidity, and personality has just become another commodity to trade.
I don't think that, to wander back on topic, that the internet is addictive, as much as it is interesting. Our monkey brains like stimulus and amusement. It becomes an addiction when I take it away from you and you have dire psychological (or physical) effects from it. Increasingly I think your ability to function will be hampered more by our social dependence on it, than by any individual dependence. It's like saying your addicted to cars, you can probably do away with yours with no terrible effects, but you might not be able to go to work or buy groceries thanks to civic planning that had cars in mind.
The various wings of the radio don't really equal an opinion, they equal a sensationalist lunatic fringe based on marketing. If I told a bunch of liberals to listen to Bill O'Reilly they would learn nothing of conservatism, but they would learn to HATE conservatives because he really is an asshat who represents no-one. I can say the same of telling conservatives to read the Nation, you learn no valid points of view, only group think.
Arguments are necessary for understanding, the sources mentioned (here at least) are not based on arguments, but sensationalist opinions manufactures to create more sectarian polarization.
I have more experience with magazines than any other form of media, so I can't speak of television or radio, but I would get liberals to read the Economist or Foreign Policy, and conservatives to read Mother Jones or the modern (and overly politicized, IMO) Scientific American.
Is there any rational conservative who things Rush is actually sane?
Screw your HUD, I want a full neural interface. I'm playing Quake on the bus... oh yeah.
The world needs more moderates.
:)
Amen. I would be an extremist for that cause.
Your right though, people have too much (irrational, IMHO) interest in certain causes and ideologies. They invest so much in a position that it almost seems like their entire being depends on it, thus they treat any attack on it as an excuse to resort to (verbal, or violent) self-defense.
On this issue, I remember giving an Isreali ex-pat that Arab and Jew book (in which both sides are handles evenly), and then asked her if she could see her enemies point of view. Her exact words were "Yes, I agree they have the right to their land and existence, but I'm Jewish, so I need to support Israel". My brain died a little with that statement.