So the government announces a massive initiative to protect our rights from the terrorists and here we find it harassing online journalists for informing the public about what the government is secretly up to. Not so different from the way it is charged by the Constitution "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries," and subsequently creates a legal morass which rewards patents trolls, suppresses innovation with legal harrassment, and extorts campaign donations from perpetual copyright extension. Then there is the initiative to lower health care costs and in improve the quality of care which will raise the costs of medical care and ration medical care. Next up: "Net Neutrality". What could possibly go wrong?
When will Americans wake up and recognize that no matter how noble are the stated goals of politicians that the actual outcomes usually oppose the stated goals?
Most people regard OpenOffice.org as a distant runner-up to Microsoft Office, and certainly not a serious rival.
It is not about the performance of the product, it's about performance-per-dollar. And the question the customer should ask himself is is not "does this product do everything" the question he should ask is "does this product to what I need it to do." And the issue is not the present but the future, not about whether Microsoft Office is "better" than OpenOffice now, but whether OpenOffice gains more momentum and continues to improve.
Can a low-priced inferior product overtake more expensive better-quality products in the marketplace? Yes. Microsoft should know, that is pretty much the entire history of the company.
Should Microsoft worry about OpenOffice undermining Microsoft Office market share? Yes. Can they do anything about it? Probably nothing except lower their prices.
When you ebay stuff, would you prefer the winning bidder be the one who offers the lowest bid? When you shop for groceries do you purchase the lowest quality goods which you can find for the highest price? When you look for job do you seek out employers who sould compensates you at the lowest rate? Do you comparison shop online for the highest prices?
People who make the opposite of those choices are engaging in, as you describe it, that "priced to what the market will bear nonesense that is the fundemental underpinnings of our economy."
When you haggle in the market, you being reasonable, it's the other guy who is the greedy bastard. When you try to maximize revenues and minimize costs that is rational self interest. When others do that, it is greed.
My point is not that you should deliberately make bad choices and act against your own financial self-interest. It is that you are a hypocrite for acting in your own financial interests while criticizing others for doing the same.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporter Maria Bartiromo
'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.'
For those who missed it, Schmidt's statement is very likely an indirect reference to Climategate. Google is heavily invested in climate-change mitigation initiatives such as RE<C through its non-profit arm Google.org. The Climategate scandal would be on his radar and the description of people "who have something that you don't anyone to know" and who "shouldn't be doing it in the first place" fits the perpetrators of Climategate to a tee.
Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents leaked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he'd been awarded in the 1990s.
Why did the money pour in so quickly? Because the climate alarm kept ringing so loudly: The louder the alarm, the greater the sums. And who better to ring it than people like Mr. Jones, one of its likeliest beneficiaries?
Thus, the European Commission's most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that's not counting funds from the EU's member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA's climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA's, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. American states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal.
Linus seems unlikely to win the award because he is not a "Goodist." Even if you do agree with the Bret Stephens's characterization of the majority of Nobel Peace Prize winners as "Goodists" be sure to catch his October, 12 column in the Wall Street Journal for the Onionesque but factual photo caption "Japan agrees to outlaw war in 1929, shortly before invading Manchuria."
Usually awards elevate the status of their recipients. However, if Linus Torvalds were to win the Nobel Peace Price, the association of Torvalds with that award would serve to rehabilitate the image of the Nobel Peace Prize and diminish the status of Linus by associating him with the likes of Yasser Arafat, Al Gore and Barack Obama.
Past Nobel Peace Prize recipients proclaim loudly and incessantly that they are saving the world while doing nothing or causing actual social harm. Linus has made a significant, definite and postive impact and modestly describes his role and accomplishments. He has exactly the wrong credentials for that award and is the ideal anti-candite for it.
Really, the simplest and most effective solution is to line up a few greedy CEOs and shoot them dead..
ae1294 wrote:
Sociopaths, by their very nature, do not see others as human beings equal in any way to themselves. They are unconcerned about any adverse consequences received by others due to their own actions or the actions of others.
While I agree with ae1294's observation that the AC who proposed executing CEOs is sociopathic, it seems too evident to merit that "+4 interesting" mod.
Amazon.co.uk spokesman revealed that foreign customers — including those in Britain — would be paying $13.99 (£8.75) per book instead of the American price of $9.99 (£6.25). That amounts to a 40% premium for the same title." The spokesman said the higher prices reflected higher operating costs and VAT rates.
Good. Paying significantly higher prices might help those who believe, "it is free because the government pays for it" to get a clue.
But you can patent genes. Discovered, not created. Is it bullshit? Yes, but it has legal precedent.
Well what many people find to be so vile about gene patents is precisely what you say, that genes are discovered not created, that they violate the "discovered not created" rule. So I would say that still, there is a "discovered not created" rule for patent eligibility and gene patents are a notorious exception to that rule, rather than saying that the existence of gene patents proves that there is no such rule.
Intuitively we think of patents as applying to designs which man creates, but not to designs which man discovers. That system grants engineers compensation for their work of designing and provides them an incentive to design. So you can patent a telephone but not a fish. That "discovered or created" dichotomy works until you get to math because we do not know if math is discovered or created. Is mathematics a natural phenomenon which exists and is discovered by man or is it a thing which man creates? To summarize the summary, if it is the former, and programs are math, then programs should be un-patentable.
Though a philosophically entertaining line of analysis, perhaps a better approach to evaluating software patents would be purely to consider their social utility: How much good software is created at what price with or without software patents; Does the sum social burden of patent trolls, the cost of litigation, and restrictions on using proprietary algorithms outweigh the value of additional software created a result of the patent incentive?
TFA appears to be confusing a statement about the FCC's intention to enforce its publicly-articulate[d] network neutrality principles with a common misconception of what "network neutrality" means that has little, if anything, to do with the principles articulated by the FCC.
Here, I will fix that for you:
TFA appears to be a statement about the FCC's confusing intention to enforce its publicly-articulated network neutrality principles with a common misconception of what "network neutrality" means that has little, if anything, to do with the principles articulated by the FCC.
The confusion is attributable to the FCC, not to the news report, because only that interpretation is consistent with the FCC's actual legal actions.
you wrote:
If one accepts it as a fact without any evidence, sure.
How do you choose which "unsupported" facts to call call into question and which to accept? Are only those inconsistent with your own ideology in doubt? You could raise precisely the same doubt about this. You sound like: "maybe the news is wrong because it does not agree with my government-approved belief system".
The Obama administrationâ(TM)s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to keep the Internet free of increased user fees based on heavy Web traffic and slow downloads.
That supports my claim that the government is out to control prices and demolishes your claim that it is not. It would appear that you have reflexively invoked government propaganda in defense of government policy without even reading the article linked in the slashdot summary.
What is meant by "network neutrality" is network bias. The proposed mandate is a pricing scheme biased in favor of those who consume more. If everyone is required to pay the same price regardless of usage, then those who consume little bandwitdth pay a relatively high rate (in dollars/bit) while those who consume much bandwidth pay a relatively low rate. This is a discriminatory pricing policy biased against small-time users. The grandma sending a weekly email to her grandkids is paying a much higher rate than the BitTorrent junkie sharing films. If you benefit from that mandate then go ahead and selfishly advocate for government to enforce a discriminatory pricing policy which benefits you, but at least have the honesty not call it "neutral".
How about "fuel neutrality," SUV owners pay the same price to fill up the tank on their Lincoln Navigators and Hummers as Toyota Prius users pay to fill up their tanks. Or "land neutrality", the buyer of a 100 acre estate pays the same price as the buyer of the shack on the wrong side of the tracks. Ok, you say, it would be absurd for the government to mandate that pricing and ludicrous to call that "neutral." Well, then you see my point.
A new consortium including networks owned by NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp, Viacom, CBS, Discovery, and Walt Disney â" along with major advertisers â" is calling for the creation of a new audience measurement service, and planning to solicit bids from outside firms by the fourth quarter of this year.
from Deadline Hollywood Daily
This sounds a lot like putting the foxes in charge of the hen house starting in September. The very idea that NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp/Fox, Viacom/MTV, CBS, Disney/ABC and Discovery are forming a consortium to challenge the dominant force in TV audience measurement gives rise to all sorts of scenarios.
The first quote is excerpted from the slashdot summary and lists the parties participating in the consortium. The second quote is excerpted from an editorial at something called Deadline Hollywood Daily and is used to support an allegation that network executives will conspire to deliberately manipulate ratings. Note that the portrayal within the opinion piece omits two crucial facts: 1) The consortium includes advertisers. Advertisers presumably have a financial stake in receiving accurate,not inaccurate ratings 2) The Network consortium does not propose that network executives would rate programs, as the editorial piece portrays it, but that ratings would be determined by "outside firms"
It appears that this "Deadline Hollywood Daily" outfit supports its editorial position by omitting some facts and inventing others.
This move harms the iPhone platform, undermines trust of iPhone developers, angers existing owners and will harm future iPhone sales. Therefore, there must exist a powerful incentive for Apple which outweighs those considerations. What is that? What prize does Apple receive in return that is so big it is worth screwing over their customers and developers and harming their own reputation?
Was this an elective decision on Apple's part, or was Apple obligated by its contract with AT&T to shut out Google Voice?
And if elective, how exactly would Apple stand to benefit by shutting out Google Voice? Are the terms if its contract with AT&T such that they will receive additional revenue by shutting out Google Voice?
Cultures have both good and bad aspects. We must not condemn an entire culture because it contains some bad elements, however horrific those are . German scientific and technological achievements of the period were significant. Condemn the bad aspects of a culture and praise the good ones. The moderators are behaving like anti-german bigots, moderating as troll an accurate statement about the scientific and technological accomplishments of Germany.
I am a 45 year old Canadian and no one has EVER told what doctor I may/may not see. It has never been mentioned or hinted at by any of the doctors I have seen or by any government bureauocrat.
Perhaps true, but completely irrelevant. Yours is not a statement about the quality of the Canadian health care system. Relevant questions would be: What is the average length of wait for any given medical treatment, how many patients die each year while on waiting lists for treatment, and how many patients are denied life-saving medical procedure or medication because those have been rationed out of the Canadian system?
Slashdot Mirror
The bill largely does nothing for the vast majority of Americans.
Ya, that pretty much sums it up.
The thing is such a train wreck that its strongest advocates endorse it by claiming that it does nothing.
So the government announces a massive initiative to protect our rights from the terrorists and here we find it harassing online journalists for informing the public about what the government is secretly up to. Not so different from the way it is charged by the Constitution "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries," and subsequently creates a legal morass which rewards patents trolls, suppresses innovation with legal harrassment, and extorts campaign donations from perpetual copyright extension. Then there is the initiative to lower health care costs and in improve the quality of care which will raise the costs of medical care and ration medical care. Next up: "Net Neutrality". What could possibly go wrong?
When will Americans wake up and recognize that no matter how noble are the stated goals of politicians that the actual outcomes usually oppose the stated goals?
Most people regard OpenOffice.org as a distant runner-up to Microsoft Office, and certainly not a serious rival.
It is not about the performance of the product, it's about performance-per-dollar. And the question the customer should ask himself is is not "does this product do everything" the question he should ask is "does this product to what I need it to do." And the issue is not the present but the future, not about whether Microsoft Office is "better" than OpenOffice now, but whether OpenOffice gains more momentum and continues to improve.
Can a low-priced inferior product overtake more expensive better-quality products in the marketplace? Yes. Microsoft should know, that is pretty much the entire history of the company.
Should Microsoft worry about OpenOffice undermining Microsoft Office market share? Yes. Can they do anything about it? Probably nothing except lower their prices.
When you ebay stuff, would you prefer the winning bidder be the one who offers the lowest bid? When you shop for groceries do you purchase the lowest quality goods which you can find for the highest price? When you look for job do you seek out employers who sould compensates you at the lowest rate? Do you comparison shop online for the highest prices?
People who make the opposite of those choices are engaging in, as you describe it, that "priced to what the market will bear nonesense that is the fundemental underpinnings of our economy."
When you haggle in the market, you being reasonable, it's the other guy who is the greedy bastard. When you try to maximize revenues and minimize costs that is rational self interest. When others do that, it is greed.
My point is not that you should deliberately make bad choices and act against your own financial self-interest. It is that you are a hypocrite for acting in your own financial interests while criticizing others for doing the same.
two words - Sarah Palin. .
how exactly is she *qualified* in *any* respect to comment on this?
How exactly are you *qualified* in *any* respect to comment on this?
Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporter Maria Bartiromo
'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.'
For those who missed it, Schmidt's statement is very likely an indirect reference to Climategate. Google is heavily invested in climate-change mitigation initiatives such as RE<C through its non-profit arm Google.org. The Climategate scandal would be on his radar and the description of people "who have something that you don't anyone to know" and who "shouldn't be doing it in the first place" fits the perpetrators of Climategate to a tee.
I know there are lots of whackjobs who are conviced that GW is a worthless topic, or that the scientists are all on someone's payroll...
In fact they are "on someone's payroll":
Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents leaked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he'd been awarded in the 1990s.
Why did the money pour in so quickly? Because the climate alarm kept ringing so loudly: The louder the alarm, the greater the sums. And who better to ring it than people like Mr. Jones, one of its likeliest beneficiaries?
Thus, the European Commission's most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that's not counting funds from the EU's member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA's climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA's, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. American states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal.
Linus seems unlikely to win the award because he is not a "Goodist." Even if you do agree with the Bret Stephens's characterization of the majority of Nobel Peace Prize winners as "Goodists" be sure to catch his October, 12 column in the Wall Street Journal for the Onionesque but factual photo caption "Japan agrees to outlaw war in 1929, shortly before invading Manchuria."
Usually awards elevate the status of their recipients. However, if Linus Torvalds were to win the Nobel Peace Price, the association of Torvalds with that award would serve to rehabilitate the image of the Nobel Peace Prize and diminish the status of Linus by associating him with the likes of Yasser Arafat, Al Gore and Barack Obama.
Past Nobel Peace Prize recipients proclaim loudly and incessantly that they are saving the world while doing nothing or causing actual social harm. Linus has made a significant, definite and postive impact and modestly describes his role and accomplishments. He has exactly the wrong credentials for that award and is the ideal anti-candite for it.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
Really, the simplest and most effective solution is to line up a few greedy CEOs and shoot them dead..
ae1294 wrote:
Sociopaths, by their very nature, do not see others as human beings equal in any way to themselves. They are unconcerned about any adverse consequences received by others due to their own actions or the actions of others.
While I agree with ae1294's observation that the AC who proposed executing CEOs is sociopathic, it seems too evident to merit that "+4 interesting" mod.
Why would anyone think that strong marketing isn't needed in a crowded marketplace?
Spontaneous word-of-mouth enthusiasm spreading through pre-existing social networks.
Amazon.co.uk spokesman revealed that foreign customers — including those in Britain — would be paying $13.99 (£8.75) per book instead of the American price of $9.99 (£6.25). That amounts to a 40% premium for the same title." The spokesman said the higher prices reflected higher operating costs and VAT rates.
Good. Paying significantly higher prices might help those who believe, "it is free because the government pays for it" to get a clue.
Math is clearly a human creation - it is the use of symbols to describe the natural world.
Math did not exist before humans.
I was speaking of pure mathematics.
But you can patent genes. Discovered, not created.
Is it bullshit? Yes, but it has legal precedent.
Well what many people find to be so vile about gene patents is precisely what you say, that genes are discovered not created, that they violate the "discovered not created" rule. So I would say that still, there is a "discovered not created" rule for patent eligibility and gene patents are a notorious exception to that rule, rather than saying that the existence of gene patents proves that there is no such rule.
Intuitively we think of patents as applying to designs which man creates, but not to designs which man discovers. That system grants engineers compensation for their work of designing and provides them an incentive to design. So you can patent a telephone but not a fish. That "discovered or created" dichotomy works until you get to math because we do not know if math is discovered or created. Is mathematics a natural phenomenon which exists and is discovered by man or is it a thing which man creates? To summarize the summary, if it is the former, and programs are math, then programs should be un-patentable.
Though a philosophically entertaining line of analysis, perhaps a better approach to evaluating software patents would be purely to consider their social utility: How much good software is created at what price with or without software patents; Does the sum social burden of patent trolls, the cost of litigation, and restrictions on using proprietary algorithms outweigh the value of additional software created a result of the patent incentive?
But Judge White said that the pollen from the genetically engineered crops might spread to non-engineered beets.
The United States court system is protecting us from miscegenated sugar beets?
Arguments in favor of genetic purity are no more valid when applied to sugar beets than when applied to people.
Dear moderators: "Troll" does not mean "Inconsistent with my own political beliefs."
you wrote:
TFA appears to be confusing a statement about the FCC's intention to enforce its publicly-articulate[d] network neutrality principles with a common misconception of what "network neutrality" means that has little, if anything, to do with the principles articulated by the FCC.
Here, I will fix that for you:
TFA appears to be a statement about the FCC's confusing intention to enforce its publicly-articulated network neutrality principles with a common misconception of what "network neutrality" means that has little, if anything, to do with the principles articulated by the FCC.
The confusion is attributable to the FCC, not to the news report, because only that interpretation is consistent with the FCC's actual legal actions.
you wrote:
If one accepts it as a fact without any evidence, sure.
How do you choose which "unsupported" facts to call call into question and which to accept? Are only those inconsistent with your own ideology in doubt? You could raise precisely the same doubt about this. You sound like: "maybe the news is wrong because it does not agree with my government-approved belief system".
The first sentence of the FA states:
The Obama administrationâ(TM)s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to keep the Internet free of increased user fees based on heavy Web traffic and slow downloads.
That supports my claim that the government is out to control prices and demolishes your claim that it is not. It would appear that you have reflexively invoked government propaganda in defense of government policy without even reading the article linked in the slashdot summary.
What is meant by "network neutrality" is network bias. The proposed mandate is a pricing scheme biased in favor of those who consume more. If everyone is required to pay the same price regardless of usage, then those who consume little bandwitdth pay a relatively high rate (in dollars/bit) while those who consume much bandwidth pay a relatively low rate. This is a discriminatory pricing policy biased against small-time users. The grandma sending a weekly email to her grandkids is paying a much higher rate than the BitTorrent junkie sharing films. If you benefit from that mandate then go ahead and selfishly advocate for government to enforce a discriminatory pricing policy which benefits you, but at least have the honesty not call it "neutral".
How about "fuel neutrality," SUV owners pay the same price to fill up the tank on their Lincoln Navigators and Hummers as Toyota Prius users pay to fill up their tanks. Or "land neutrality", the buyer of a 100 acre estate pays the same price as the buyer of the shack on the wrong side of the tracks. Ok, you say, it would be absurd for the government to mandate that pricing and ludicrous to call that "neutral." Well, then you see my point.
from slashdot summary
A new consortium including networks owned by NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp, Viacom, CBS, Discovery, and Walt Disney â" along with major advertisers â" is calling for the creation of a new audience measurement service, and planning to solicit bids from outside firms by the fourth quarter of this year.
from Deadline Hollywood Daily
This sounds a lot like putting the foxes in charge of the hen house starting in September. The very idea that NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp/Fox, Viacom/MTV, CBS, Disney/ABC and Discovery are forming a consortium to challenge the dominant force in TV audience measurement gives rise to all sorts of scenarios.
The first quote is excerpted from the slashdot summary and lists the parties participating in the consortium. The second quote is excerpted from an editorial at something called Deadline Hollywood Daily and is used to support an allegation that network executives will conspire to deliberately manipulate ratings. Note that the portrayal within the opinion piece omits two crucial facts: 1) The consortium includes advertisers. Advertisers presumably have a financial stake in receiving accurate,not inaccurate ratings 2) The Network consortium does not propose that network executives would rate programs, as the editorial piece portrays it, but that ratings would be determined by "outside firms"
It appears that this "Deadline Hollywood Daily" outfit supports its editorial position by omitting some facts and inventing others.
To paraphrase Frodo Baggins:
"I think evil would look fairer and feel fouler."
True evil would try to look as trustworthy and pleasant as possible; or, to also paraphrase Baudelaire,
"The greatest trick the Devil could ever pull would be convincing the world he didn't exist."
True evil would try to look as trustworthy and pleasant as possible; or, to also paraphrase Baudelaire,
"The greatest trick the Devil could ever pull would be convincing the world he didn't exist."
Isn't that what Obama has done?
No. He tried to convince us that evil was George W. Bush.
This move harms the iPhone platform, undermines trust of iPhone developers, angers existing owners and will harm future iPhone sales. Therefore, there must exist a powerful incentive for Apple which outweighs those considerations. What is that? What prize does Apple receive in return that is so big it is worth screwing over their customers and developers and harming their own reputation?
Was this an elective decision on Apple's part, or was Apple obligated by its contract with AT&T to shut out Google Voice?
And if elective, how exactly would Apple stand to benefit by shutting out Google Voice? Are the terms if its contract with AT&T such that they will receive additional revenue by shutting out Google Voice?
Why is the parent moderated "-1, Troll" ?
Cultures have both good and bad aspects. We must not condemn an entire culture because it contains some bad elements, however horrific those are . German scientific and technological achievements of the period were significant. Condemn the bad aspects of a culture and praise the good ones. The moderators are behaving like anti-german bigots, moderating as troll an accurate statement about the scientific and technological accomplishments of Germany.
I am a 45 year old Canadian and no one has EVER told what doctor I may/may not see.
It has never been mentioned or hinted at by any of the doctors I have seen or by any government bureauocrat.
Perhaps true, but completely irrelevant. Yours is not a statement about the quality of the Canadian health care system. Relevant questions would be: What is the average length of wait for any given medical treatment, how many patients die each year while on waiting lists for treatment, and how many patients are denied life-saving medical procedure or medication because those have been rationed out of the Canadian system?