It is my understanding that the relevant codes in the United States copyright laws formally define what is meant by creative work and what may be protected by copyright as any original creation of authorship in a tangible medium, although the law has been amended to include certain creative works, including computer software, which are not tangible in the traditional sense of the word. However, it would be quite a stretch to interpret the gathering of raw statistics, baseball statistics in this instance, as a creative work. If there is some other work created based upon these statistics, such as the formulation of a thesis or comparison, which is then written up in an article or paper and published then that would more readily, depending upon the content, fall under the definition of a creative work. In the practical sense it is perfectly reasonable for major league baseball, or indeed any other information broker, to gather and maintain a database of these statistics and charge whatever they wish for factual reports of this information. It seems to me that the statistics themselves, especially when presented outside the context of the game in which they originally occurred as part of broader comparisons, are not protected by copyright and therefore anyone who wants to sell such information is not impeded by copyright laws.
Note: I am not a lawyer and I do not mean for this to be taken as legal advice. It is merely the opinion of a private citizen and is presented as-is.
If the system is abolished entirely, then all research will have to be conducted by the government.
While I do believe that the government should contribute some portion of the public funds for research and development in areas of compelling public interest, I also believe that such funding should be limited to those areas such as space exploration, which due to the long term nature of the investment and the great expense, would be under funded by the private sector. It should also be the case that the results of such research should be shared completely with all citizens, except where such information is deemed critical to the national defense or security of the state, so that everyone may benefit equally from the research funded with the public monies. However, there is one significant drawback with government funded research and it stems from a basic problem with the political system in general. The problem arises from the fact that each person has only one or limited vote(s) on each issue even though different people feel strongly about some issues and are more ambivalent about others. In the marketplace people spend their money (i.e. vote) in direct proportion to the amount of value they place upon the object of their expenditure. This allows people who care more about something to express that by spending more of their available resources on things which are a priority for them. In the political system, due to the aforementioned limitation of voting, it is not always possible to adequately express one's preference except by organizing with like minded individuals, but this tends to encourage the formation of special interests which act against the interests of the whole while flying below the radar. Thus, the political system of allocation often leads to inefficiencies, as various special interests organize to receive allocations which are disproportionate to the interests of society as a whole, which cause wasteful allocations to occur despite strong general, but distributed preferences in society for alternative uses of those resources.
This course of action is certainly possible but it is not always feasible for each and every transaction that one engages in on a semi-regular basis. Naturally, large and important purchases, such as major surgery, vehicles, real estate, and investments, require greater diligence on the part of the buyer...Caveat Emptor as they say. However, there are a myriad of smaller transactions that we make every day, such as where we stop for gas, how much we spend on lunch, and many other small items that, while individually insignificant, add up to a larger sum of money than most people would care to admit. You could spend all of your time researching whether the McDonalds burger delivers a better comparative value than Burger King, but for most people that would be a waste of time so they just eat the cost...pun intended. This is an entire area of study in economics, imperfect information, which seeks to explain the choices that people make based upon the fact that in the real world there is almost never perfect information on both sides of a transaction. Getting back to the original example...not everyone has the individual expertise to evaluate the quality of a good or service before it is purchased which is why we rely upon the opinions of experts whom we trust. You may ask another doctor about a particular part or procedure, or you could try and read the medical journals...as a layman, or you could read what other people have to say on the Internet, but at the end of the day you are trusting the opinion of another because you are not qualified to fully evaluate the information yourself. The real world economy is all based upon imperfect information...just ask the marketers.
You can sell 'em anything, and they'll never know it's crap, because they don't keep up with the industry.
This is true in any transaction where an information disparity exists between the buyer and the seller. How do you know that the artificial replacement parts that the surgeon is putting in your body are any good until after the deal is done and something breaks? Nobody can be an expert in everything.
You can allow a popup to be shown in IE on a per instance basis, whether the site is trusted or not, by holding down the CTRL button while clicking the link that launches the popup window. If the site uses javascript to automatically launch popups and you absolutely must use it then you can also add the site to your list of trusted sites under Tools->Internet Options->Security Tab. It makes sense add your online banking portal to the list of trusted sites anyway.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a multinational rules based and membership oriented organization which oversees international agreements between members defining the rules of trade, or more precisely the rules governing access to markets, tariffs, quotas, subsidies and the like. It is the successor to the older General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which was signed following WWII in 1947 as part of the Bretton Woods meetings, which took place in Bretton Woods New Hampshire beginning in 1944. The famous economist John Maynard Keynes headed the British delegation and was influential in the drafting of the final agreement. The power of the WTO, at least in theory, comes from the ability of the organization to expel members who do not follow the rules although in practice this would seem unlikely as evidenced by all of the rule bending which China gets away with. There are articles on Wikipedia covering the WTO, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and other issues of International trade for interested readers. The Commanding Heights series, available online at PBS featured a segment with audio selections from Keyne's speech at the Bretton Woods conference as well.
I agree with you that public key cryptography could help sophisticated users avoid these schemes more easily. However, there are several problems with this approach which must be resolved before such a solution could become widely adopted:
1) As you said, the PGP integration with popular e-mail clients, and web clients in particular, is either non-existent or cumbersome.
2) The level of sophistication required to deploy and use public key cryptography is above the competence level of the average e-mail user. If they don't understand it then they won't use it.
3) The cryptography package does not come built in to the e-mail client, but rather it must be downloaded and configured as a separate plugin which goes back to the level of user sophistication.
4) The eBay and PayPal people know that if they force people to jump through too many hoops then they will write off the whole service as, "too much hassle". People want security and privacy but they don't want to take personal responsibility for either and so they end up getting neither.
5) Marketing people only care about your privacy and security insofar as it creates public backlash against their message if they dont "protect your privacy" by making false promises. Never trust the marketing trolls...they are not looking out for you.
The corruption and bureaucracy in India was legendary before the reforms of the early 1990s...just ask any adult Indian living in India today about the "permit raj" and you will know exactly what I am talking about. I once saw a picture of an Indian government permit office, you used to need a permit to do practicaly anything business related in India, where there were three lines stretching from three windows out to eternity with overworked clerks sorting through stacks of paper that reached from the floor to the ceiling in large bundles. In fact, it was so bad that practically every permit was procured by a bribe because it was impossible to work with the system and people had to work around it. Things have gotten better by all acounts since Mahmoud Singh turned things around. There is corruption here in the US to be sure, but compared to many other places in the world we have a remarkably well run and honest government bureaucracy. So the long answer to your question is that it can stop India if they let it get out of control again.
Maybe next time around he could get a group of 20 prospective interns and then, in a high-pressure software company version of the board room (Joel's office maybe), fire one of more of them each week until only one remains as Joel's Apprentice! Of course, finding type-A personality geeks who would appeal to the same audience as Trump and Martha might be difficult...
No I refer to him as a loon because of what he proposed. Also, being a Nobel Prize winning economist is not exactly an automatic endorsement, afer the antics some of the "top" ones have perpetrated in not so distant past. Finally, economy is not exactly "science" and only seen as such by other economists (and various related greed mongers).
It would be better so say that you disagree with his position rather than engaging in the logical fallacy of argumentum ad hominem. It is true that smart and powerful people sometimes misbehave? Or course, they are only human after all. However, it is disingenuous to suggest, whether by implication or direct comment, that all Nobel Prize winning economists are somehow suspect because of the personal indiscretions of a few of their peers.
It is not only not absurd, it is the situation at present. Most of the uninsured seek attention at Emergency Rooms only after "home remedies" and other desperate measures failed. This is one of the reasons of the severe overcrowding of the ER services in public hospitals.
How many of these emergency room visits actually needed the services of a hospital emergency room instead of a regular doctor's office visit? If people would take better care of themselves then they would not need to take desperate measures. The real reason that we have overcrowding in hospital emergency rooms here in the United States is that illegal immigrants and deadbeats would rather have society foot the bill for their medical care and they don't care that the emergency room is vastly more expensive than the doctors office because they have no intention of paying anything when the bill comes. The truly destitute receive medical care on the government's dime even here in the United States, we are not barbarians after all, but surely you must agree that many of the people crowding those emergency rooms could have paid $100 to visit the doctor instead of shirking their responsibilities, but they just didn't feel like paying and they rationalize it because they think that society owes them something or the just don't give a crap that someone else has to pay for their free ride. I am not uncaring, but answer me this: why should I be financially responsible, through higher taxes or higher costs, for the poor lifestyle choices that other people make?
If you have no money for the oil change you have only two options: do not drive (or live in this case) or keep on driving, hoping for the best (and pray furiously, given that most poor are very religious).
How many of the aforementioned people that do not want to pay really couldn't pay? We all have to do things that we don't necessarily enjoy doing like paying the mortgage, paying our taxes, and paying for our healthcare. If you chose to keep on driving then you are unwise to expect that you will dodge the bullet every time. If they are religious then they can probably receive some help through their church if they are truly needy and such help can be anonymous so that dignity is maintained. We all fall on hard times at some point in our lives and religious communities can provide support for us when we need it the most so don't knock religion, it may save your life and not just on this earth.
No money means no money. It does not matter if it is a car or your body.
This is yet another logical fallacy, Argumentum ad lazarum or argument that the conclusion is correct because the subject of the argument is poor or without means. The truly destitute receive help in a civilized society from either the government or private charities (including churches), but it is wrong to say that the average person cannot pay for their healthcare because they are poor or a member of some perceived underclass. They may have less than other people who are better off but they are not penniless.
Their "means" are those of serfs and slaves. What you describe is a pathetic attempt by them to try to hide their membership in this, ever increasing, unde
That man is a total loon. In his scenario, the coverage for the many Americans would be restricted to the "catastrophic" insurance only, which in the long term is much more expensive as the low income (most populous group and increasing) would avoid using high-deductible medical services until their situation got so desperate as to qualify for "catastrophic" coverage
Did you read the article before making this statement? First off it is extremely rude to refer to a Nobel Laureate and PhD economist as a loon, although he has been demonized by left wing crackpots, such as yourself, for helping poor countries improve their economic situations. The idea that people will wait until they are almost dead to seek care under a high deductible system is absurd. Do you wait until your car engine has a catastrophic failure before you get the oil changed? Of course not so why should it be any different with your body? If people would go for yearly physical exams, see their dentist at least twice per year, and exercise instead of being obese couch potatoes then they would not have to worry about most preventable causes of illness and other medical emergencies. I am tired of hearing people with $100 tennis shoes, $300 dollar cell phones, and designer clothing complain about how they cannot afford to pay out of pocket for their basic medical care. They should try saving their money instead of living above their means. I also tired of being modded down by people who want to pretend that their Noam Chomsky view of the way the world should be is inherently superior to any other viewpoint when experience has shown time and again that wishful socialist thinking leads inevitably to the distribution of poverty and not wealth. Take your cool-aid and drink it someplace else, sir.
This is not as significant as you might believe. The vast majority of working age Americans and their families, those with health coverage, are covered by an umbrella policy through their employer and this benefit is not included as part of their taxable income. It is sort of like having 200-600 tax free dollars which must be used to purchase health care, but in this case the employer buys it for you instead of giving you the cash. The remaining people are either 65 and older and fall under MediCare or MedicAid (i.e. the Government pays for their coverage), they have their own private insurance (in which case the $200 - $600 dollar figure applies) because they are self employed or chose to have their own private coverage, or they have no insurance at all (an extremely risky proposition if you ask me). Those of us, including myself who pay for private insurance are statistically insignificant compared to those on employer sponsored group plans so for the average US household there is not an extra $200-$600 dollars per person per month being paid out of disposable household income for health coverage. In other words both systems are third-party pay, but in Canada its the government through higher taxes and in the US it is mostly the employers. The more efficient system is debatable, but actually neither of these systems is the most desirable. The economist Milton Friedman wrote an excellent paper on how to fix the healthcare system in America and he considers many other systems alongside our own including the Canadian and European systems.
FOr the next two years eclipse will continue to pull ahead and the VS.NET people will not know any better because they finally got a few new features in VS and are soooooo happy and proud.
This may be so, but remember that Microsoft, like Ancient Rome, is famous for losing battles, but winning wars. It would be wrong to underestimate what can be bought for ~40 billion dollars and therefore the open source people should remain alert. However, if imitation is the sincerest form of praise then perhaps the eclipse and java developers should be proud of themselves as well.
As the article in wikipedia pointed out, the use of champions was generally limited to the elderly, infirm, women, and minors or those who were not able to fight on their own behalf. Since the duel was conducted under judicial auspices according to a strict set of rules it is reasonable to suppose that these rules extended to the circumstances under which a champion could be employed. Remember that this form of duel was a contrived combat designed to create a fair contest, or at least as fair as was possible under the circumstances, as an alternative to unrestricted violence. In addition, since this was an honorable combat conducted at the demand of the acused in response to the charges of the acuser, it would be extremely cowardly for an able bodied adult male to defer or attempt to defer to a champion and thereby avoid the personal risk of combat. The seriousness of the combat and the respect for the rules was evident in the oath given by the combatants, "Hear this, ye justices, that I have this day neither eat, drank, nor have upon me, neither bone, stone, ne grass; nor any enchantment, sorcery, or witchcraft, whereby the law of God may be abased, or the law of the Devil exalted. So help me God and his saints."
I brought this example of alternative dispute resolution in an attempt to illustrate the level of frustation among average citizens today for the relative judicial leniency that is the privilege of the wealthy and poweful. I am not advocating that we allow judicial combat to resume, but rather that more needs to be done to discourage wrongdoing by the powerful.
There was at one time in the western system of jurisprudence the notion of a Trial by Combat whereby the acused had the right to compel the acuser or his champion to engage him (the defendant) or his champion in a judicially sanctioned duel whereby the judgement of God would decide the winner. The theory being that God would strengthen the arm and sharpen the skills of the party representing the truth thereby allowing him or his champion to overcome the guilty or his champion. Although there is little evidence in the modern context to prove it, I would bet that society in general would be more civil and courteous if one risked life and limb by slandering his neighbor or falsly acusing him. How many corporate executives would acuse people of slander or insult them in public if they had to face the defendant or his champion at the wrong end of a sharp and pointy object?
Does this mean that I shouldn't bother with a 28 character bank password, since it's all going to be moot anyway?
While 28 characters is probably excessive for most people, I think that my bank limits the password to 13 characters, the answer to your question is no for the following reasons. First, the system which is accepting the password, i.e. the online banking website or the ATM, can only accept passwords so quickly so no matter how fast your quantum computer can generate the combinations they can only be fed to the host computer at a fixed rate (and probably with timeouts for failed attempts to boot). Second , the secret password cannot be recovered by factoring because it was, at least in theory, chosen at random. The worst that can happen is that the key space can be generated quickly, but then only checked at a rate which will ensure that you will be dead of natural causes long before they crack your 28 character bank password. Quantum computing will force us to reconsider encryption schemes, such as public key algorithms, which are based upon the difficulty of factoring or finding the inverse of a given mathematical function. However schemes based upon random secrets, such as one-time pad, will probably remain secure, given sufficiently large keys, for some time to come.
The experience you describe seems entirely plausible based upon my own experiences and those of my friends. The green X in the hardware compatability list should be taken as, "This has a chance of working when the OS boots, but don't count on it..." Microsoft had many of these same problems back in the Windows 95 days when hardware manufacturers, especially smaller boutique brands or unusual hardware, would cause the machine to lock or have unexpected failures during operation. The major linux vendors, such as Novell/SuSE, RedHat, Mandrake, et al could improve their current situation by implementing a certified driver program, similar to what Microsoft does, whereby drivers are tested by the OS vendor and certified to work with the distribution in question. The linux vendor could charge for this service and thus earn additional support revenues. This would not be required of course, there will always be some manufacturers or open source projects who are unwilling or unable to pay the fee and their drivers should not be refused by the Linux kernel. However, it would be appropriate in such cases to display a dialog or console message when the driver is bound to the device that says something to the effect of, "This is a unsigned/uncertified driver and cannot be gauranteed to work...use at your own risk/discretion." In this way everyone is satisifed: the hackers can still use whatever drivers they want, those that want to purchase hardware with a "certified" driver can do so, and the companies who pay to get certified have the added marketing bonus of having that certification mean something to the potential buyer as a stamp of quality or assurance of trust.
BTW: I advised my Grandmother to buy the iMac too;D
Now we have software injecting stuff directly into the OS. I can't say this is going to help MS in the security and stability department.
This is a very good point. If First 4 Internet can inject code into system drivers then someone with far more malicious intent (.i.e steal your online banking password and drain your accounts) can do the same thing. It would be extremely foolish for Microsoft to do nothing about this now that the exploit is known to exist. The damage is somewhat contained for now because the code is not in the wild and First 4 Internet does not intend to defraud Sony's customers. However, the rootkit problem remains a very serious threat and Microsoft should take this very seriously.
There are several lakes in equatorial Africa which by virtue of their depth and location sequester large amounts of carbon dioxide gas in solution and create a potentially dangerous situation. The incident to which you refer occurred at Lake Nyos in the Northwest Province of Cameroon on the 21st of August 1986. The lake emitted a large cloud of CO2 gas when the waters of the lake were disturbed by an underwater landslide and the gas bubbled up from the depths of the lake. The resulting cloud of gas flowed down the hillside and through the surrounding areas killing 1,800 people and 3,500 livestock. Degassing pipes have since been installed at Nyos and other similar lakes to allow the stored gas to be gradually released from solution and thereby prevent another uncontrolled release.
It is indeed unfortunate that some governments find it necessary to limit access to what amounts to free speech (Classified, Criminal, and other obviously dangerous information not withstanding) and that the same corporations that enable access to this speech are falling over themselves to assist those governments in their repression. The Chinese experience has shown that restricting access to information via technical measures is very effective against the significant majority of their Internet using population. There will always be some savvy people who are able to get through, but we must acknowledge the effectiveness of their filters even though most Slashdoters disagree vehemently with those governments' policies...know your enemy. As for apathy, that is probably the default state for human beings. Consider that even here in the United States people frequently do not exercise their right to vote because they are "too busy" or "it doesn't matter". Apathy does not exist because of repression, although repression probably reinforces it, but rather in spite of it. So would you regard a policy that is, for the most part, extremely effective as hopeless? If we want to discourage the Chinese from perusing a policy of technical repression then we will have find much better ways of degrading the effectiveness of their methods before they will even consider throwing in the towel.
Isn't this precisely what Apple is doing with iPod + iTunes? If Apple can open an online music store and restrict competing hardware and software products then why can Microsoft not compete in exactly the same way? What about the tethering of music purchased on iTunes to the computer which purchased the music and the FairPlay system? It seems to me that Microsoft cannot be faulted for taking a few pages from Apple's playbook in this case.
but to actually redirect revenues towards political posturing is nuts
You are correct about companies redirecting revenues to a "green car" initiative. However, the use of company funds for political purposes, including political posturing or lobbying, is quite common for various reasons including, but not limited to, hobbling the competition through increased oversight and regulation (i.e. raising the barrier of entry for newcomers - ask the Cosmotology industry about this...a bad haircut from an unlicensed stylist is hardly life threatening), preventing legislators from passing unfavorable legislation, including costly environmental mandates, higher taxes, sales restrictions etc, and finally encouraging the law makers to pass favorable legislation including tax breaks, tax credits, and consumer mandates (The independent smog station operators would be out of business except that the law requires you to go to an independent operator periodically as a condition of renewing your vehicle registration).
Slashdot Mirror
It is my understanding that the relevant codes in the United States copyright laws formally define what is meant by creative work and what may be protected by copyright as any original creation of authorship in a tangible medium, although the law has been amended to include certain creative works, including computer software, which are not tangible in the traditional sense of the word. However, it would be quite a stretch to interpret the gathering of raw statistics, baseball statistics in this instance, as a creative work. If there is some other work created based upon these statistics, such as the formulation of a thesis or comparison, which is then written up in an article or paper and published then that would more readily, depending upon the content, fall under the definition of a creative work. In the practical sense it is perfectly reasonable for major league baseball, or indeed any other information broker, to gather and maintain a database of these statistics and charge whatever they wish for factual reports of this information. It seems to me that the statistics themselves, especially when presented outside the context of the game in which they originally occurred as part of broader comparisons, are not protected by copyright and therefore anyone who wants to sell such information is not impeded by copyright laws.
Note: I am not a lawyer and I do not mean for this to be taken as legal advice. It is merely the opinion of a private citizen and is presented as-is.
If the system is abolished entirely, then all research will have to be conducted by the government.
While I do believe that the government should contribute some portion of the public funds for research and development in areas of compelling public interest, I also believe that such funding should be limited to those areas such as space exploration, which due to the long term nature of the investment and the great expense, would be under funded by the private sector. It should also be the case that the results of such research should be shared completely with all citizens, except where such information is deemed critical to the national defense or security of the state, so that everyone may benefit equally from the research funded with the public monies. However, there is one significant drawback with government funded research and it stems from a basic problem with the political system in general. The problem arises from the fact that each person has only one or limited vote(s) on each issue even though different people feel strongly about some issues and are more ambivalent about others. In the marketplace people spend their money (i.e. vote) in direct proportion to the amount of value they place upon the object of their expenditure. This allows people who care more about something to express that by spending more of their available resources on things which are a priority for them. In the political system, due to the aforementioned limitation of voting, it is not always possible to adequately express one's preference except by organizing with like minded individuals, but this tends to encourage the formation of special interests which act against the interests of the whole while flying below the radar. Thus, the political system of allocation often leads to inefficiencies, as various special interests organize to receive allocations which are disproportionate to the interests of society as a whole, which cause wasteful allocations to occur despite strong general, but distributed preferences in society for alternative uses of those resources.
This course of action is certainly possible but it is not always feasible for each and every transaction that one engages in on a semi-regular basis. Naturally, large and important purchases, such as major surgery, vehicles, real estate, and investments, require greater diligence on the part of the buyer...Caveat Emptor as they say. However, there are a myriad of smaller transactions that we make every day, such as where we stop for gas, how much we spend on lunch, and many other small items that, while individually insignificant, add up to a larger sum of money than most people would care to admit. You could spend all of your time researching whether the McDonalds burger delivers a better comparative value than Burger King, but for most people that would be a waste of time so they just eat the cost...pun intended. This is an entire area of study in economics, imperfect information, which seeks to explain the choices that people make based upon the fact that in the real world there is almost never perfect information on both sides of a transaction. Getting back to the original example...not everyone has the individual expertise to evaluate the quality of a good or service before it is purchased which is why we rely upon the opinions of experts whom we trust. You may ask another doctor about a particular part or procedure, or you could try and read the medical journals...as a layman, or you could read what other people have to say on the Internet, but at the end of the day you are trusting the opinion of another because you are not qualified to fully evaluate the information yourself. The real world economy is all based upon imperfect information...just ask the marketers.
You can sell 'em anything, and they'll never know it's crap, because they don't keep up with the industry.
This is true in any transaction where an information disparity exists between the buyer and the seller. How do you know that the artificial replacement parts that the surgeon is putting in your body are any good until after the deal is done and something breaks? Nobody can be an expert in everything.
You can allow a popup to be shown in IE on a per instance basis, whether the site is trusted or not, by holding down the CTRL button while clicking the link that launches the popup window. If the site uses javascript to automatically launch popups and you absolutely must use it then you can also add the site to your list of trusted sites under Tools->Internet Options->Security Tab. It makes sense add your online banking portal to the list of trusted sites anyway.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a multinational rules based and membership oriented organization which oversees international agreements between members defining the rules of trade, or more precisely the rules governing access to markets, tariffs, quotas, subsidies and the like. It is the successor to the older General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which was signed following WWII in 1947 as part of the Bretton Woods meetings, which took place in Bretton Woods New Hampshire beginning in 1944. The famous economist John Maynard Keynes headed the British delegation and was influential in the drafting of the final agreement. The power of the WTO, at least in theory, comes from the ability of the organization to expel members who do not follow the rules although in practice this would seem unlikely as evidenced by all of the rule bending which China gets away with. There are articles on Wikipedia covering the WTO, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and other issues of International trade for interested readers. The Commanding Heights series, available online at PBS featured a segment with audio selections from Keyne's speech at the Bretton Woods conference as well.
Chapter 6: Worldwide War - Keynes at Bretton Woods
I agree with you that public key cryptography could help sophisticated users avoid these schemes more easily. However, there are several problems with this approach which must be resolved before such a solution could become widely adopted:
1) As you said, the PGP integration with popular e-mail clients, and web clients in particular, is either non-existent or cumbersome.
2) The level of sophistication required to deploy and use public key cryptography is above the competence level of the average e-mail user. If they don't understand it then they won't use it.
3) The cryptography package does not come built in to the e-mail client, but rather it must be downloaded and configured as a separate plugin which goes back to the level of user sophistication.
4) The eBay and PayPal people know that if they force people to jump through too many hoops then they will write off the whole service as, "too much hassle". People want security and privacy but they don't want to take personal responsibility for either and so they end up getting neither.
5) Marketing people only care about your privacy and security insofar as it creates public backlash against their message if they dont "protect your privacy" by making false promises. Never trust the marketing trolls...they are not looking out for you.
The corruption and bureaucracy in India was legendary before the reforms of the early 1990s...just ask any adult Indian living in India today about the "permit raj" and you will know exactly what I am talking about. I once saw a picture of an Indian government permit office, you used to need a permit to do practicaly anything business related in India, where there were three lines stretching from three windows out to eternity with overworked clerks sorting through stacks of paper that reached from the floor to the ceiling in large bundles. In fact, it was so bad that practically every permit was procured by a bribe because it was impossible to work with the system and people had to work around it. Things have gotten better by all acounts since Mahmoud Singh turned things around. There is corruption here in the US to be sure, but compared to many other places in the world we have a remarkably well run and honest government bureaucracy. So the long answer to your question is that it can stop India if they let it get out of control again.
Chapter 4: India's Permit Raj 3:04
Maybe next time around he could get a group of 20 prospective interns and then, in a high-pressure software company version of the board room (Joel's office maybe), fire one of more of them each week until only one remains as Joel's Apprentice! Of course, finding type-A personality geeks who would appeal to the same audience as Trump and Martha might be difficult...
No I refer to him as a loon because of what he proposed. Also, being a Nobel Prize winning economist is not exactly an automatic endorsement, afer the antics some of the "top" ones have perpetrated in not so distant past. Finally, economy is not exactly "science" and only seen as such by other economists (and various related greed mongers).
It would be better so say that you disagree with his position rather than engaging in the logical fallacy of argumentum ad hominem. It is true that smart and powerful people sometimes misbehave? Or course, they are only human after all. However, it is disingenuous to suggest, whether by implication or direct comment, that all Nobel Prize winning economists are somehow suspect because of the personal indiscretions of a few of their peers.
It is not only not absurd, it is the situation at present. Most of the uninsured seek attention at Emergency Rooms only after "home remedies" and other desperate measures failed. This is one of the reasons of the severe overcrowding of the ER services in public hospitals.
How many of these emergency room visits actually needed the services of a hospital emergency room instead of a regular doctor's office visit? If people would take better care of themselves then they would not need to take desperate measures. The real reason that we have overcrowding in hospital emergency rooms here in the United States is that illegal immigrants and deadbeats would rather have society foot the bill for their medical care and they don't care that the emergency room is vastly more expensive than the doctors office because they have no intention of paying anything when the bill comes. The truly destitute receive medical care on the government's dime even here in the United States, we are not barbarians after all, but surely you must agree that many of the people crowding those emergency rooms could have paid $100 to visit the doctor instead of shirking their responsibilities, but they just didn't feel like paying and they rationalize it because they think that society owes them something or the just don't give a crap that someone else has to pay for their free ride. I am not uncaring, but answer me this: why should I be financially responsible, through higher taxes or higher costs, for the poor lifestyle choices that other people make?
If you have no money for the oil change you have only two options: do not drive (or live in this case) or keep on driving, hoping for the best (and pray furiously, given that most poor are very religious).
How many of the aforementioned people that do not want to pay really couldn't pay? We all have to do things that we don't necessarily enjoy doing like paying the mortgage, paying our taxes, and paying for our healthcare. If you chose to keep on driving then you are unwise to expect that you will dodge the bullet every time. If they are religious then they can probably receive some help through their church if they are truly needy and such help can be anonymous so that dignity is maintained. We all fall on hard times at some point in our lives and religious communities can provide support for us when we need it the most so don't knock religion, it may save your life and not just on this earth.
No money means no money. It does not matter if it is a car or your body.
This is yet another logical fallacy, Argumentum ad lazarum or argument that the conclusion is correct because the subject of the argument is poor or without means. The truly destitute receive help in a civilized society from either the government or private charities (including churches), but it is wrong to say that the average person cannot pay for their healthcare because they are poor or a member of some perceived underclass. They may have less than other people who are better off but they are not penniless.
Their "means" are those of serfs and slaves. What you describe is a pathetic attempt by them to try to hide their membership in this, ever increasing, unde
That man is a total loon. In his scenario, the coverage for the many Americans would be restricted to the "catastrophic" insurance only, which in the long term is much more expensive as the low income (most populous group and increasing) would avoid using high-deductible medical services until their situation got so desperate as to qualify for "catastrophic" coverage
Did you read the article before making this statement? First off it is extremely rude to refer to a Nobel Laureate and PhD economist as a loon, although he has been demonized by left wing crackpots, such as yourself, for helping poor countries improve their economic situations. The idea that people will wait until they are almost dead to seek care under a high deductible system is absurd. Do you wait until your car engine has a catastrophic failure before you get the oil changed? Of course not so why should it be any different with your body? If people would go for yearly physical exams, see their dentist at least twice per year, and exercise instead of being obese couch potatoes then they would not have to worry about most preventable causes of illness and other medical emergencies. I am tired of hearing people with $100 tennis shoes, $300 dollar cell phones, and designer clothing complain about how they cannot afford to pay out of pocket for their basic medical care. They should try saving their money instead of living above their means. I also tired of being modded down by people who want to pretend that their Noam Chomsky view of the way the world should be is inherently superior to any other viewpoint when experience has shown time and again that wishful socialist thinking leads inevitably to the distribution of poverty and not wealth. Take your cool-aid and drink it someplace else, sir.
This is not as significant as you might believe. The vast majority of working age Americans and their families, those with health coverage, are covered by an umbrella policy through their employer and this benefit is not included as part of their taxable income. It is sort of like having 200-600 tax free dollars which must be used to purchase health care, but in this case the employer buys it for you instead of giving you the cash. The remaining people are either 65 and older and fall under MediCare or MedicAid (i.e. the Government pays for their coverage), they have their own private insurance (in which case the $200 - $600 dollar figure applies) because they are self employed or chose to have their own private coverage, or they have no insurance at all (an extremely risky proposition if you ask me). Those of us, including myself who pay for private insurance are statistically insignificant compared to those on employer sponsored group plans so for the average US household there is not an extra $200-$600 dollars per person per month being paid out of disposable household income for health coverage. In other words both systems are third-party pay, but in Canada its the government through higher taxes and in the US it is mostly the employers. The more efficient system is debatable, but actually neither of these systems is the most desirable. The economist Milton Friedman wrote an excellent paper on how to fix the healthcare system in America and he considers many other systems alongside our own including the Canadian and European systems.
How to Cure Health Care
FOr the next two years eclipse will continue to pull ahead and the VS.NET people will not know any better because they finally got a few new features in VS and are soooooo happy and proud.
This may be so, but remember that Microsoft, like Ancient Rome, is famous for losing battles, but winning wars. It would be wrong to underestimate what can be bought for ~40 billion dollars and therefore the open source people should remain alert. However, if imitation is the sincerest form of praise then perhaps the eclipse and java developers should be proud of themselves as well.
As the article in wikipedia pointed out, the use of champions was generally limited to the elderly, infirm, women, and minors or those who were not able to fight on their own behalf. Since the duel was conducted under judicial auspices according to a strict set of rules it is reasonable to suppose that these rules extended to the circumstances under which a champion could be employed. Remember that this form of duel was a contrived combat designed to create a fair contest, or at least as fair as was possible under the circumstances, as an alternative to unrestricted violence. In addition, since this was an honorable combat conducted at the demand of the acused in response to the charges of the acuser, it would be extremely cowardly for an able bodied adult male to defer or attempt to defer to a champion and thereby avoid the personal risk of combat. The seriousness of the combat and the respect for the rules was evident in the oath given by the combatants, "Hear this, ye justices, that I have this day neither eat, drank, nor have upon me, neither bone, stone, ne grass; nor any enchantment, sorcery, or witchcraft, whereby the law of God may be abased, or the law of the Devil exalted. So help me God and his saints."
I brought this example of alternative dispute resolution in an attempt to illustrate the level of frustation among average citizens today for the relative judicial leniency that is the privilege of the wealthy and poweful. I am not advocating that we allow judicial combat to resume, but rather that more needs to be done to discourage wrongdoing by the powerful.
There was at one time in the western system of jurisprudence the notion of a Trial by Combat whereby the acused had the right to compel the acuser or his champion to engage him (the defendant) or his champion in a judicially sanctioned duel whereby the judgement of God would decide the winner. The theory being that God would strengthen the arm and sharpen the skills of the party representing the truth thereby allowing him or his champion to overcome the guilty or his champion. Although there is little evidence in the modern context to prove it, I would bet that society in general would be more civil and courteous if one risked life and limb by slandering his neighbor or falsly acusing him. How many corporate executives would acuse people of slander or insult them in public if they had to face the defendant or his champion at the wrong end of a sharp and pointy object?
Does this mean that I shouldn't bother with a 28 character bank password, since it's all going to be moot anyway?
While 28 characters is probably excessive for most people, I think that my bank limits the password to 13 characters, the answer to your question is no for the following reasons. First, the system which is accepting the password, i.e. the online banking website or the ATM, can only accept passwords so quickly so no matter how fast your quantum computer can generate the combinations they can only be fed to the host computer at a fixed rate (and probably with timeouts for failed attempts to boot). Second , the secret password cannot be recovered by factoring because it was, at least in theory, chosen at random. The worst that can happen is that the key space can be generated quickly, but then only checked at a rate which will ensure that you will be dead of natural causes long before they crack your 28 character bank password. Quantum computing will force us to reconsider encryption schemes, such as public key algorithms, which are based upon the difficulty of factoring or finding the inverse of a given mathematical function. However schemes based upon random secrets, such as one-time pad, will probably remain secure, given sufficiently large keys, for some time to come.
Truley you have a dizzying intellect...perhaps you are just getting warmed up?
Ahhh....but the Ukraine is weak...WHAT?!? I am from Ukraine...Ukraine is not weak! (breaks the board in half with a karate style chop)
It may be human nature to want to smash stuff once in a while
Perhaps that is what motivated a group of bored teenagers to smash an iPod in the apple store...
The experience you describe seems entirely plausible based upon my own experiences and those of my friends. The green X in the hardware compatability list should be taken as, "This has a chance of working when the OS boots, but don't count on it..." Microsoft had many of these same problems back in the Windows 95 days when hardware manufacturers, especially smaller boutique brands or unusual hardware, would cause the machine to lock or have unexpected failures during operation. The major linux vendors, such as Novell/SuSE, RedHat, Mandrake, et al could improve their current situation by implementing a certified driver program, similar to what Microsoft does, whereby drivers are tested by the OS vendor and certified to work with the distribution in question. The linux vendor could charge for this service and thus earn additional support revenues. This would not be required of course, there will always be some manufacturers or open source projects who are unwilling or unable to pay the fee and their drivers should not be refused by the Linux kernel. However, it would be appropriate in such cases to display a dialog or console message when the driver is bound to the device that says something to the effect of, "This is a unsigned/uncertified driver and cannot be gauranteed to work...use at your own risk/discretion." In this way everyone is satisifed: the hackers can still use whatever drivers they want, those that want to purchase hardware with a "certified" driver can do so, and the companies who pay to get certified have the added marketing bonus of having that certification mean something to the potential buyer as a stamp of quality or assurance of trust.
;D
BTW: I advised my Grandmother to buy the iMac too
Now we have software injecting stuff directly into the OS. I can't say this is going to help MS in the security and stability department.
This is a very good point. If First 4 Internet can inject code into system drivers then someone with far more malicious intent (.i.e steal your online banking password and drain your accounts) can do the same thing. It would be extremely foolish for Microsoft to do nothing about this now that the exploit is known to exist. The damage is somewhat contained for now because the code is not in the wild and First 4 Internet does not intend to defraud Sony's customers. However, the rootkit problem remains a very serious threat and Microsoft should take this very seriously.
There are several lakes in equatorial Africa which by virtue of their depth and location sequester large amounts of carbon dioxide gas in solution and create a potentially dangerous situation. The incident to which you refer occurred at Lake Nyos in the Northwest Province of Cameroon on the 21st of August 1986. The lake emitted a large cloud of CO2 gas when the waters of the lake were disturbed by an underwater landslide and the gas bubbled up from the depths of the lake. The resulting cloud of gas flowed down the hillside and through the surrounding areas killing 1,800 people and 3,500 livestock. Degassing pipes have since been installed at Nyos and other similar lakes to allow the stored gas to be gradually released from solution and thereby prevent another uncontrolled release.
It is indeed unfortunate that some governments find it necessary to limit access to what amounts to free speech (Classified, Criminal, and other obviously dangerous information not withstanding) and that the same corporations that enable access to this speech are falling over themselves to assist those governments in their repression. The Chinese experience has shown that restricting access to information via technical measures is very effective against the significant majority of their Internet using population. There will always be some savvy people who are able to get through, but we must acknowledge the effectiveness of their filters even though most Slashdoters disagree vehemently with those governments' policies...know your enemy. As for apathy, that is probably the default state for human beings. Consider that even here in the United States people frequently do not exercise their right to vote because they are "too busy" or "it doesn't matter". Apathy does not exist because of repression, although repression probably reinforces it, but rather in spite of it. So would you regard a policy that is, for the most part, extremely effective as hopeless? If we want to discourage the Chinese from perusing a policy of technical repression then we will have find much better ways of degrading the effectiveness of their methods before they will even consider throwing in the towel.
Isn't this precisely what Apple is doing with iPod + iTunes? If Apple can open an online music store and restrict competing hardware and software products then why can Microsoft not compete in exactly the same way? What about the tethering of music purchased on iTunes to the computer which purchased the music and the FairPlay system? It seems to me that Microsoft cannot be faulted for taking a few pages from Apple's playbook in this case.
but to actually redirect revenues towards political posturing is nuts
You are correct about companies redirecting revenues to a "green car" initiative. However, the use of company funds for political purposes, including political posturing or lobbying, is quite common for various reasons including, but not limited to, hobbling the competition through increased oversight and regulation (i.e. raising the barrier of entry for newcomers - ask the Cosmotology industry about this...a bad haircut from an unlicensed stylist is hardly life threatening), preventing legislators from passing unfavorable legislation, including costly environmental mandates, higher taxes, sales restrictions etc, and finally encouraging the law makers to pass favorable legislation including tax breaks, tax credits, and consumer mandates (The independent smog station operators would be out of business except that the law requires you to go to an independent operator periodically as a condition of renewing your vehicle registration).