Real ID makes it harder for people who should not have a license (because... [of lack of] citizenship) to get one.
This is a key part of my objections. They tossed in a short sighted, self-defeated anti-illegal immigration rule into the mix to appease some idiots. Banning illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses and state IDs doesn't make them magically go home, or even stop them from driving. It just means that states have less information on people living in them; states have more people driving without being screened by the DMV for basic aptitude. Me, I'm thinking that having illegal immigrants line up and pay a fee in exchange for giving the state a photograph is better.
After the fall of Feudalism all the Serfs were free but they had nothing. They chose to work in those factories because for the first time they were allowed to keep what they earned.
I don't think a lot of serfs headed over to the nearest factory looking for work, mostly because factories wouldn't exist for generations to come.
Sorry. I mentioned polygamy as a way of identifying the group since it's what got lots of media coverage, not to indicate the destructive aspects of it. That they forced young girls into marriages, forced members to donate everything to the church, forced people to move from house to house, exiled community members leaving them nothing, abandoned young boys, and more that is what is so destructive.
People focus on Scientology because it screws people up to an extent no major religion does. Other smaller religions and factions are similarly destructive, like the Mormon faction that still practices polygamy, but they tend to be small fish compared to Scientology. This is why anti-Scientology unites people of multiple religions and atheists. Once people decided to focus on Scientology, the question was how to attack. It's hard to go wrong with mocking someone, and Scientology's beliefs are so wonderfully easy to mock. So that's what they mock. It's the tactic, not the reason.
Wikipedia has a system for blocking proxy edits to articles, and the system detects and blocks tor with reasonable accuracy. It's not usually on, but they turn it on for specific articles that have problems.
An interesting question. Have you considered asking someone who holds that point of view?
Snark aside, I generally like the US government having control over DNS, because as a citizen I have some small amount of control over DNS. But I can see how non-US-citizens might view this as a problem as they have essentially zero control. They would prefer it be in the hands of an international organization over which they have at least a minute amount of control over. This isn't a matter of one being more innocent or competent than the other, this is a matter of being able to potentially hold one accountable, while the other isn't.
I believe more government, applied appropriately, with enforced transparency, careful regulation, review, and aggressive prosecution of abuse, will be a net benefit. Absent these things (hypothetical example: say the president issues secret orders to grant himself additional, secret, unregulated, unreviewable powers), more government is too dangerous to risk. (A libertarian would argue that these things are generally infeasible, and as such more government is always or nearly always too dangerous.) Of course, what expenditures are "appropriate" are their own matter for debate.:-)
Because the rest of the world doesn't trust us. And understandably so. Not because we're bad, but because we're powerful and out of their control. This is why many people are so angry about the warrantless wiretaps, because it is a powerful force out of the population's control. Sure, it may be being used for good today, but you have no guarantees about the future. DNS control is in the hands of the US government, which indirectly puts it in the hands of the US voting public. And as best they can tell, we're all insane. (It's fair, though. I look at their elections and conclude they're all insane, too.)
So, the rest of the world sees the potential for abuse by an entity entirely out of their control. So they want to try and establish control. This is not unreasonable on their part.
So innocent until assumed to be guilty at some unspecified later date? Awesome!
I find that when dealing with governments it is prudent to assumed wrongdoing will be committed at a later date. Governments should get no presumption of innocence. And I say this as an unabashed liberal in favor of higher taxes and increased government services.
So nobody felt this guy was worth $20, neither Verizon, nor the police and family.
Verizon was told by law enforcement, "This is a medical emergency, just do it." They refused. This makes Verizon scum.
Law enforcement told Verizon, "This is a medical emergency, just do it." When Verizon asked for money, they were a bit confused. Normal people, when faced with law enforcement announcing a medical emergency do not think it's a great time to settle up petty outstanding debts. They do whatever the cops fucking say. The cops probably should have had the foresight to say, "Fine, whatever, here's $20 you idiots" earlier, but it's understandable that they weren't quite sure what to do.
I'm betting the family didn't know anything about the $20 bill. Normal people can't get other people's cell phones activated, then used to trace them. The family probably let the cops were handle tracking the phone. Unless the cops called the family up and said, "Hey, we can't track him until you pay Verizon", they wouldn't have known. I can't find any fault on their side at all.
To save other commentators who may feel the need to speak up to correct someone being wrong on the internet, the "it" I'm referring to isn't craigslist. I willfully misread the grandparent post (which simply spoke of a "free service"). I guess today wasn't my +5 Funny day.
Yes, it's human nature to be pissed when it turns out you were wrong. Scientists are not ubermensch who think perfectly logically. If Newton were still around today, I'm sure he'd still be holding a grudge against Einstein. That they were pissed doesn't mean that they didn't eventually get over it, dust themselves off, and proceed to refining their hypothesis, or crafting a new one. It's pretty useless scientist whose hypothesises are never invalidated.
Oh, wow, gosh, a single scientist disagrees. My mind is totally changed! At least until some article from a single scientist argues the other case.
Yes, there is a great deal of debate about global warming. But a clear majority of research and scientists supports the hypothesis that there is global warming, that humans are a significant part of the cause, that it's likely to continue if we don't change anything, and that it's going to suck hard for us if it does continue. As with other scientific issues that I lack the time to become an expert in*, I defer to the widest consensus among scientists.
*Such things as, best medical treatments (vaccines are overwhelmingly good), will the LHC destroy the world (no), source of multiple species (evolution), and more
So, wait, industry, powered by free market pixie dust, will be able to move us to other planets (and presumably terraform those planets so we actually want to live there) if the world become inhospitable. But confronted with relatively modest regulations, they'll be utterly crippled. How strangely fragile of industry.
Industry whines and cries about the end of the world whenever regulation is proposed. Industries have wailed about limits on rat droppings in food, lead in paint, asbestos in insulation, minimun fuel efficiency, minimum wages, adding seat belts, banning smoking from restaurants. Somehow the world hasn't ended.
Of course, I can appreciate the agility of the free market. Take for example all of the freedom the banking industry had to agilely create new derivative securities and self management. That worked out gangbusters!
I'd have more faith in the free market to solve our problem if it wasn't so easy to turn costs like pollution into externalities, if the stock market didn't demand that companies think no further than a few years into the future. A few percent hit in our GDP today may be a good investment if it will save us from a massive hit in a decade.
Google is mostly scanning books borrowed from university libraries. Librarians get cranky if you borrow a book and return a stack of loose sheets of paper.
I suspect many people don't have a choice. Of the two broadband providers who serve me, all three do this. The local cable company (Charter) turned it on. When their tech support proved unable to even understand my complaint, let alone fix it, I bailed. Months later the new company (TDS Telecom) started doing it. At least their tech support understood me, but they were unable to turn it off. Sure, I can use OpenDNS, or pinch DNS service from elsewhere, but providing functional DNS is a reasonable baseline of service. Welcome to the race to bottom of quality, thanks to the "free" market.
Let me put it another way. Let's say copyright is "Life + 5 years". If I write a book when I turn 25, given an expected lifespan of 70, I and my heirs get 50 years of profit from the book. If my book is a huge success that continues to sell throughout the years (big if, admittedly), that could pay for my kid's college, even if they're born when I publish the book. Oops, I was hit by a bus and die at 26. My book still does well, but my spouse and kids lose the income 5 years later. Why is my book more valuable to me and my family if I live longer than if I die? That seems profoundly unfair. In a sense, creating a copyright protected work is a sort of investment. Admittedly it may never pay off, but it might, and if it was a good investment (That is, turns out to be popular), it's value shouldn't be tied to something as unpredictable and unrelated as a single human being's life.
As for the Life+70 being obscene, I'm in complete agreement. In a magical world where I could also have a pony, I'd go back to 14 years with an optional 14 year renewal. If your book, movie, or whatever can't make a profit in 28 years, frankly, it's not going to. When a book publisher is considering buying a book, they're not honestly thinking "what will this be worth in 29 years", let along "what will this be worth in 71 years". They're thinking 5, may 10 years at most. Authors and publishers will have all of the incentive they need with 28 years. In a more realistic world, the Berne Convention is (almost?) universal international law, and sets a floor of Life+50. Still too long in my mind, but the US could fall back to that without breaking treaty obligations. It's a realistic step.
Expiring on an author's death has several problems. One, it creates at least a small bit of incentive to kill off authors. More realistically, it means that if an author writes a successful book and has kids at the same time, if he lives, he can use the money to raise his kids, if he dies, the kids are screwed.
Me, I'm in favor of short, fixed length copyrights. Maybe 50 or so years. If you write something late in life, you can leave the profit to your kids. If you write something young in life, well, 50 years should rack in the overwhelming majority of any income you'd see from it anyway, and I think it's reasonable to ask that you try to write something else in those years.
I'm so with you. I work on physics software, and the grad students keep giving their variables useless names like "G". What's G? I need to decode it. It would be way better if it was GravitationalConstantInMetersPerSecond. But whenever I complain about this, they yammer on about "domain specific language."
</snark>
Context matters. In the examples Spolsky is talking about, the context is painfully clear. If you're working on Excel, you're probably juggling piles of variables discussing rows and columns. After an hour or two of working on it, you'll see "rw" as "Row Number (integer, indexed from 1)" and "co" as "Column Number (integer, indexed from 1 where 1 is A)" and be appreciative that you are typing less, complex equations aren't multi-line monstrosities, and that you get more code visible on screen at once. Apps Hungarian is hardly a "a complex set of rules that need to be memorized", it's a relatively small set of domain specific details that you can quickly learn.
(Now all that said, whenever I read about Apps Hungarian, I'm reminded that I'd prefer to have dedicated data types for incompatible things. If you have two classes: SafeString and UnsafeString, there isn't any risk of passing the wrong one into a function declared "void Write(SafeString output);" Clues for programmers are good. Clues for the compiler are better.)
It's a logical fallacy if you willfully misinterpret it. I don't think any fans of the statement are thinking, "Yes, free ponies for mass murderers, that's a brilliant idea." Sure, we could trim it free of any ambiguity and make it clearer, but the original has a memorable poetry and elegance. But still, let's take another look:
A nation should be judged not upon how it treats its most noble, but how it treats the most deplorable.
Let's see, where does it call for letting the deplorable do what they will, along with giving them free candy? I seem to be missing that. It doesn't say a nation should treat its most deplorable like honored guests. It's actually entirely silent on how you should treat them; it just says you should judge a nation based on that treatment.
I believe there is an implication that you should should treat those most deplorable "well," but that's open to wide interpretation. I would see providing a high quality judicial system dedicated to truth and justice and as free of corruption as possible, human rights that cannot be lost even by criminals, ample opportunities to repent and become worthwhile members of society, and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment as treating the most deplorable very well indeed. Of course, now we're going over specifics, and I suspect the original epigram is so popular because it tries to set a baseline than many people can agree on.
What I disagree with are the people who think that locking someone in a tiny cell for the rest of their natural life is more humane than killing them.
Seems an easy enough hypothesis to test. Poll people sentenced to life in prison and ask if they would prefer to be executed. I'm guessing you'll find the clear majority would prefer life in prison.
Although it does raise an interesting possibility. Perhaps it would most humane to offer up the choice. And the nice thing about execution is that it's still an option next day, next year, or next decade if the prisoner changes their mind.
Are you suggesting that 100% of income taxes on Europeans go to health care? If so, are you suggesting this because you're stupid, or are you actively trying to deceive people?
$400 a month for a family plan? A decade ago when I worked at an HMO and wrote proposals, family plans were way more expensive than that. (I believe they were on the order of $800 a month, but it has been a long time.) You either have really crappy insurance, live in a weird situation, or (my guess), you're ignoring your employer's contribution. To your employer his contribution to your health insurance is just another part of your compensation. A more honest assessment would be to add your employers contribution to your salary, then compare percentages there.
Take my income. I happen to have my W2 for 2008, and I know what my employer pays for my health insurance. Working from the total of my salary plus my insurance cost, more than 22% of my compensation is taxed. Now how much of my compensation pays for health coverage? More than 17%. Add those up and... 39% of my income goes to government services and health care. You're warning me about Europe, where... 40% (+/- 10%) of income goes to government services inclusive of health care. I hope you'll understand when I'm not worried that my income will radically drop if we have guaranteed health care.
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This is a key part of my objections. They tossed in a short sighted, self-defeated anti-illegal immigration rule into the mix to appease some idiots. Banning illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses and state IDs doesn't make them magically go home, or even stop them from driving. It just means that states have less information on people living in them; states have more people driving without being screened by the DMV for basic aptitude. Me, I'm thinking that having illegal immigrants line up and pay a fee in exchange for giving the state a photograph is better.
I don't think a lot of serfs headed over to the nearest factory looking for work, mostly because factories wouldn't exist for generations to come.
My apologies, I phrased that poorly. Details.
Sorry. I mentioned polygamy as a way of identifying the group since it's what got lots of media coverage, not to indicate the destructive aspects of it. That they forced young girls into marriages, forced members to donate everything to the church, forced people to move from house to house, exiled community members leaving them nothing, abandoned young boys, and more that is what is so destructive.
People focus on Scientology because it screws people up to an extent no major religion does. Other smaller religions and factions are similarly destructive, like the Mormon faction that still practices polygamy, but they tend to be small fish compared to Scientology. This is why anti-Scientology unites people of multiple religions and atheists. Once people decided to focus on Scientology, the question was how to attack. It's hard to go wrong with mocking someone, and Scientology's beliefs are so wonderfully easy to mock. So that's what they mock. It's the tactic, not the reason.
Wikipedia has a system for blocking proxy edits to articles, and the system detects and blocks tor with reasonable accuracy. It's not usually on, but they turn it on for specific articles that have problems.
An interesting question. Have you considered asking someone who holds that point of view?
Snark aside, I generally like the US government having control over DNS, because as a citizen I have some small amount of control over DNS. But I can see how non-US-citizens might view this as a problem as they have essentially zero control. They would prefer it be in the hands of an international organization over which they have at least a minute amount of control over. This isn't a matter of one being more innocent or competent than the other, this is a matter of being able to potentially hold one accountable, while the other isn't.
I believe more government, applied appropriately, with enforced transparency, careful regulation, review, and aggressive prosecution of abuse, will be a net benefit. Absent these things (hypothetical example: say the president issues secret orders to grant himself additional, secret, unregulated, unreviewable powers), more government is too dangerous to risk. (A libertarian would argue that these things are generally infeasible, and as such more government is always or nearly always too dangerous.) Of course, what expenditures are "appropriate" are their own matter for debate. :-)
Because the rest of the world doesn't trust us. And understandably so. Not because we're bad, but because we're powerful and out of their control. This is why many people are so angry about the warrantless wiretaps, because it is a powerful force out of the population's control. Sure, it may be being used for good today, but you have no guarantees about the future. DNS control is in the hands of the US government, which indirectly puts it in the hands of the US voting public. And as best they can tell, we're all insane. (It's fair, though. I look at their elections and conclude they're all insane, too.) So, the rest of the world sees the potential for abuse by an entity entirely out of their control. So they want to try and establish control. This is not unreasonable on their part.
I find that when dealing with governments it is prudent to assumed wrongdoing will be committed at a later date. Governments should get no presumption of innocence. And I say this as an unabashed liberal in favor of higher taxes and increased government services.
Verizon was told by law enforcement, "This is a medical emergency, just do it." They refused. This makes Verizon scum.
Law enforcement told Verizon, "This is a medical emergency, just do it." When Verizon asked for money, they were a bit confused. Normal people, when faced with law enforcement announcing a medical emergency do not think it's a great time to settle up petty outstanding debts. They do whatever the cops fucking say. The cops probably should have had the foresight to say, "Fine, whatever, here's $20 you idiots" earlier, but it's understandable that they weren't quite sure what to do.
I'm betting the family didn't know anything about the $20 bill. Normal people can't get other people's cell phones activated, then used to trace them. The family probably let the cops were handle tracking the phone. Unless the cops called the family up and said, "Hey, we can't track him until you pay Verizon", they wouldn't have known. I can't find any fault on their side at all.
To save other commentators who may feel the need to speak up to correct someone being wrong on the internet, the "it" I'm referring to isn't craigslist. I willfully misread the grandparent post (which simply spoke of a "free service"). I guess today wasn't my +5 Funny day.
If it was a free service, it wouldn't be illegal.
Yes, it's human nature to be pissed when it turns out you were wrong. Scientists are not ubermensch who think perfectly logically. If Newton were still around today, I'm sure he'd still be holding a grudge against Einstein. That they were pissed doesn't mean that they didn't eventually get over it, dust themselves off, and proceed to refining their hypothesis, or crafting a new one. It's pretty useless scientist whose hypothesises are never invalidated.
Oh, wow, gosh, a single scientist disagrees. My mind is totally changed! At least until some article from a single scientist argues the other case.
Yes, there is a great deal of debate about global warming. But a clear majority of research and scientists supports the hypothesis that there is global warming, that humans are a significant part of the cause, that it's likely to continue if we don't change anything, and that it's going to suck hard for us if it does continue. As with other scientific issues that I lack the time to become an expert in*, I defer to the widest consensus among scientists.
*Such things as, best medical treatments (vaccines are overwhelmingly good), will the LHC destroy the world (no), source of multiple species (evolution), and more
So, wait, industry, powered by free market pixie dust, will be able to move us to other planets (and presumably terraform those planets so we actually want to live there) if the world become inhospitable. But confronted with relatively modest regulations, they'll be utterly crippled. How strangely fragile of industry.
Industry whines and cries about the end of the world whenever regulation is proposed. Industries have wailed about limits on rat droppings in food, lead in paint, asbestos in insulation, minimun fuel efficiency, minimum wages, adding seat belts, banning smoking from restaurants. Somehow the world hasn't ended.
Of course, I can appreciate the agility of the free market. Take for example all of the freedom the banking industry had to agilely create new derivative securities and self management. That worked out gangbusters!
I'd have more faith in the free market to solve our problem if it wasn't so easy to turn costs like pollution into externalities, if the stock market didn't demand that companies think no further than a few years into the future. A few percent hit in our GDP today may be a good investment if it will save us from a massive hit in a decade.
Google is mostly scanning books borrowed from university libraries. Librarians get cranky if you borrow a book and return a stack of loose sheets of paper.
I suspect many people don't have a choice. Of the two broadband providers who serve me, all three do this. The local cable company (Charter) turned it on. When their tech support proved unable to even understand my complaint, let alone fix it, I bailed. Months later the new company (TDS Telecom) started doing it. At least their tech support understood me, but they were unable to turn it off. Sure, I can use OpenDNS, or pinch DNS service from elsewhere, but providing functional DNS is a reasonable baseline of service. Welcome to the race to bottom of quality, thanks to the "free" market.
Let me put it another way. Let's say copyright is "Life + 5 years". If I write a book when I turn 25, given an expected lifespan of 70, I and my heirs get 50 years of profit from the book. If my book is a huge success that continues to sell throughout the years (big if, admittedly), that could pay for my kid's college, even if they're born when I publish the book. Oops, I was hit by a bus and die at 26. My book still does well, but my spouse and kids lose the income 5 years later. Why is my book more valuable to me and my family if I live longer than if I die? That seems profoundly unfair. In a sense, creating a copyright protected work is a sort of investment. Admittedly it may never pay off, but it might, and if it was a good investment (That is, turns out to be popular), it's value shouldn't be tied to something as unpredictable and unrelated as a single human being's life.
As for the Life+70 being obscene, I'm in complete agreement. In a magical world where I could also have a pony, I'd go back to 14 years with an optional 14 year renewal. If your book, movie, or whatever can't make a profit in 28 years, frankly, it's not going to. When a book publisher is considering buying a book, they're not honestly thinking "what will this be worth in 29 years", let along "what will this be worth in 71 years". They're thinking 5, may 10 years at most. Authors and publishers will have all of the incentive they need with 28 years. In a more realistic world, the Berne Convention is (almost?) universal international law, and sets a floor of Life+50. Still too long in my mind, but the US could fall back to that without breaking treaty obligations. It's a realistic step.
Expiring on an author's death has several problems. One, it creates at least a small bit of incentive to kill off authors. More realistically, it means that if an author writes a successful book and has kids at the same time, if he lives, he can use the money to raise his kids, if he dies, the kids are screwed.
Me, I'm in favor of short, fixed length copyrights. Maybe 50 or so years. If you write something late in life, you can leave the profit to your kids. If you write something young in life, well, 50 years should rack in the overwhelming majority of any income you'd see from it anyway, and I think it's reasonable to ask that you try to write something else in those years.
I'm so with you. I work on physics software, and the grad students keep giving their variables useless names like "G". What's G? I need to decode it. It would be way better if it was GravitationalConstantInMetersPerSecond. But whenever I complain about this, they yammer on about "domain specific language."
</snark>
Context matters. In the examples Spolsky is talking about, the context is painfully clear. If you're working on Excel, you're probably juggling piles of variables discussing rows and columns. After an hour or two of working on it, you'll see "rw" as "Row Number (integer, indexed from 1)" and "co" as "Column Number (integer, indexed from 1 where 1 is A)" and be appreciative that you are typing less, complex equations aren't multi-line monstrosities, and that you get more code visible on screen at once. Apps Hungarian is hardly a "a complex set of rules that need to be memorized", it's a relatively small set of domain specific details that you can quickly learn.
(Now all that said, whenever I read about Apps Hungarian, I'm reminded that I'd prefer to have dedicated data types for incompatible things. If you have two classes: SafeString and UnsafeString, there isn't any risk of passing the wrong one into a function declared "void Write(SafeString output);" Clues for programmers are good. Clues for the compiler are better.)
It's a logical fallacy if you willfully misinterpret it. I don't think any fans of the statement are thinking, "Yes, free ponies for mass murderers, that's a brilliant idea." Sure, we could trim it free of any ambiguity and make it clearer, but the original has a memorable poetry and elegance. But still, let's take another look:
Let's see, where does it call for letting the deplorable do what they will, along with giving them free candy? I seem to be missing that. It doesn't say a nation should treat its most deplorable like honored guests. It's actually entirely silent on how you should treat them; it just says you should judge a nation based on that treatment.
I believe there is an implication that you should should treat those most deplorable "well," but that's open to wide interpretation. I would see providing a high quality judicial system dedicated to truth and justice and as free of corruption as possible, human rights that cannot be lost even by criminals, ample opportunities to repent and become worthwhile members of society, and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment as treating the most deplorable very well indeed. Of course, now we're going over specifics, and I suspect the original epigram is so popular because it tries to set a baseline than many people can agree on.
Seems an easy enough hypothesis to test. Poll people sentenced to life in prison and ask if they would prefer to be executed. I'm guessing you'll find the clear majority would prefer life in prison.
Although it does raise an interesting possibility. Perhaps it would most humane to offer up the choice. And the nice thing about execution is that it's still an option next day, next year, or next decade if the prisoner changes their mind.
I don't like trolling, but I must respect skill when I see it. You deftly dance the edge of plausibility. Kudos, sir.
Are you suggesting that 100% of income taxes on Europeans go to health care? If so, are you suggesting this because you're stupid, or are you actively trying to deceive people?
$400 a month for a family plan? A decade ago when I worked at an HMO and wrote proposals, family plans were way more expensive than that. (I believe they were on the order of $800 a month, but it has been a long time.) You either have really crappy insurance, live in a weird situation, or (my guess), you're ignoring your employer's contribution. To your employer his contribution to your health insurance is just another part of your compensation. A more honest assessment would be to add your employers contribution to your salary, then compare percentages there.
Take my income. I happen to have my W2 for 2008, and I know what my employer pays for my health insurance. Working from the total of my salary plus my insurance cost, more than 22% of my compensation is taxed. Now how much of my compensation pays for health coverage? More than 17%. Add those up and... 39% of my income goes to government services and health care. You're warning me about Europe, where... 40% (+/- 10%) of income goes to government services inclusive of health care. I hope you'll understand when I'm not worried that my income will radically drop if we have guaranteed health care.