it is true that there are good reasons for clumping together two bills sometimes, and that it is impossible to definititively define "one issue". But this shouldn't stop us from trying to reduce the amount of unrelated "riders". We could pass a law that said something like "no unrelated riders" and leave it up to the courts to determine it (the law should specify something to make the determination process really fast, i.e. 20 minutes of discussion and then the court votes; after all, having a whole court case about this issue is a waste of time when the bill in question could just be broken in two). The point is that we have humans to interpret laws, so it is not unreasonable to write laws that need to be interpreted, provided we can keep the "interpretation" bit from bogging down the lawmaking process even further. In this case we can, because it doesn't really matter if the interpretation is often really biased or wrong, anything is better than what we have now.
the writer of the article liked old "don't touch it" museums better than interactive ones. i would just like to say, for the record, that i think interactive ones are more educational. furthermore, the boston museum of science is particularly awesome.
1) this points up a weakness in current law. of course companies that acted to illegally maintain monopolies should face punitive damages. congress needs to change the law to reflect this.
2) but accepting that we are trying to prevent future misdeeds, not punish MS, the current settlement is still too weak. corporations are innovative, and courts are slow enough, that MS will able to get around any specific restriction. That leaves two options
(preferred) restructure MS in some fundamental way (breakup?) so as to remove their economic incentives to screw up the market.
invest a watchdog committee with enough power that they can significantly modify the restrictions on MS without court approval (thereby making the process fast enough that MS won't be able to get around it by delaying things, like they have so far)
i'm more worried about tear gas myself. I've heard that tear gas can cause or aggravate permanent and lung problems, especially if not used as directed (ie, if administered point-blank). Having asthma already, I'd prefer a broken bone than a broken lung.
However, with falls like this onto a city street, paralyis and getting one's eye poked out may be a danger too.. i'm not really sure how probably that is, anyone know the facts?
The DOJ repeatedly says that it didn't impose this or that remedy only because the case did not specifically address that harm prior to now.
I thought the point of having an advocate for each side was that each advocate would find the best possible argument for their side. Who has ever heard of a lawyer refusing to their client to even ask for a remedy on the grounds that it might be shot down? Yet the DOJ is refusing to the American people to even ask for the remedies listed below, not because they are wrong, but merely because the court has not SPECIFICALLY authorized restraining MS in those ways.
In contrast with what the DOJ is doing, even the DOJ admits that its job is impose restrictions on Microsoft that go significantly beyond current law (see the end of this post). This is good evidence to support the contention that Bush's govm't is actively trying to get the case over with with as little harm to Microsoft as possible; they are losing on purpose. From the DOJ response:
22. Stripping Microsoft of its market position in the browser market or banning contractual tying, however, are remedies that are not warranted on the existing record.
Commentors argue that the file formats for Office should be disclosed....The scope of the case as decided by the Court of Appeals does not extend to non-middleware or to Office or other applications that are not distributed with Windows
Some comments(430) argue that the RPFJ fails....to constrain Microsoft's....".Net"....The comments claim that Microsoft....is now implementing its own closed system that will require Microsoft operating system products on both the server side of the network and on the client side....These criticisms are not well taken....whether.Net is, in fact, likely to have an anticompetitive effect....is not yet clear. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to draw conclusions about the competitive impact of such pre-nascent initiatives that have sufficient reliability to warrant additional remedies or restrictions
One comment contends that Microsoft should be prohibited from retaliating against an OEM that ships computers loaded with only a non-Microsoft operating system....Neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals held Microsoft liable because it prevented OEMs from producing PCs with non-Microsoft operating systems; thus, there is no basis for redressing such conduct.
Several commentors complain that the RPFJ does not eliminate license terms that prohibit open source and other developers from finding ways to make Windows applications run on non-Windows operating systems.... Such provisions are far outside the scope of this case
Here is one more bit of evidence that the prosecution is overly concerned about MS (rather than about their job of enforcing the law):
We note that the suggestion of an open-ended decree, subject to review after five years (see Gifford 9; Litan 73), or contingent upon Microsoft's market share decreasing (see Thomas 6), would create undesirable uncertainty in the market and would be contrary to the United States' mission to enforce the federal antitrust laws and to remedy specific violations thereof.
And here is the proof that the DOJ admits its job is not merely to enforce current law, but to restrain MS's monopoly by going beyond it:
474. Commentors are also incorrect in their insistence that including a reasonableness standard simply engrafts the rule of reason into the RPFJ,(453) turning it into an instruction to Microsoft to comply with the law -- effectively to "go forth and sin no more." In fact, the RPFJ goes beyond eliminating illegal practices and preventing recurrence of the same or similar practices in the future. The RPFJ also takes affirmative steps to restore the competitive threat that middleware posed prior to Microsoft's unlawful undertakings.
The DOJ doesn't care if Microsoft complied with the law about lobbying disclosures. From the DOJ response:
Several comments question whether Microsoft made adequate disclosures under 15 U.S.C. ? 16(g)...
even if Microsoft failed to satisfy the requirements of Section 16(g), that would not provide any basis to begin the comment period anew and further delay entry of the RPFJ.
[bshanks: some background: the Tunney Act requires Microsoft to dislose "any and all written or oral communications" with "any officer or employee of the United States". However, even MSNBC reports: "In court filings, the software giant disclosed only contacts with executive branch officials and not Congress."]
The DOJ blatently support Microsoft's effort to leverage its Windows monopoly. From the DOJ response:
469. Several commentors complain that the RPFJ does not eliminate license terms that prohibit open source and other developers from finding ways to make Windows applications run on non-Windows operating systems.... Such provisions are far outside the scope of this case, and in any event are unlikely to benefit consumers. If Microsoft could not prevent people from expropriating and modifying its applications or middleware products -- that is, its "redistributable code" -- to turn them into complements to non-Microsoft operating systems, Microsoft would have a significantly reduced incentive to invest in developing and marketing attractive applications and middleware for Windows users.
One comment contends that Microsoft should be prohibited from retaliating against an OEM that ships computers loaded with only a non-Microsoft operating system, rather than (as in Section III.A.2) prohibited only from retaliating against an OEM that ships a computer with Microsoft and non-Microsoft operating systems or one that ships a computer that will "dual-boot" with more than one operating system (445) Neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals held Microsoft liable because it prevented OEMs from producing PCs with non-Microsoft operating systems; thus, there is no basis for redressing such conduct. The absence of such a provision, however, is not problematic. If the OEM ships no machines with Windows, then presumably it ships no machines with Windows applications, either; thus, Microsoft would have few ways to "retaliate" against that OEM for its decision not to ship Windows.
23. In particular, neither open sourcing the Internet Explorer source code nor requiring Microsoft to port Internet Explorer to other operating systems would... significantly enhance those competitors' incentives or ability to develop new or better products.
from the DOJ response:
"Stripping Microsoft of its market position in the browser market or banning contractual tying, however, are remedies that are not warranted on the existing record. This case was not a monopoly leveraging case, and..."
Re:Are we really any more advanced than the Amish?
on
Arguing A.I.
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· Score: 1
I don't know much about the Amish so i can't answer the question as asked. But i think one of the more solid benefits we have over less technological societies are greater efficiency that leads to less poverty. I do agree with you that perhaps the lifestyle of the non-poor is worse off, though.
and currently we do not distribute our greater wealth to the poor very well --- there are fewer poor in the first world because of tech but there should be fewer in the third world as well.
Re:We (probably) won't ever actually ACHIEVE AI
on
Arguing A.I.
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· Score: 1
What really annoys me about AI is that people seem to think that it must be human-like intelligence. Why is the Turing test so worshipped? Why on earth would we want to duplicate human intelligence when we could fabricate something completely unique?
I agree that a novel type of intelligence may be more practical and more useful too. But the Turing test is a standard that it is easier for people to agree on. If a computer passes a Turing test, it seems a lot like it is conscious. If it is a new type of intelligence, then it will be a lot harder to tell if it is conscious.
I bet that even if we had novel intelligence, people would still be trying to build Turing-test-passing A.I. to find out definitively if a machine could be conscious.
Re:Seems logical to me
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Arguing A.I.
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· Score: 1
The point seems to me to be that, no matter how close to human a built machine would be, people would still insist that it's Not Really AI, and if you tried to explain otherwise, they'd either stick their fingers in their ears or insist upon tests that cannot be satisfied even in the case of humans.
I don't think so. If we had a HAL, there would some disagree-ers, but also a large faction of believers.
the debate is about potential, not current, tech
on
Arguing A.I.
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Are intelligent machines transforming life as we know it? Or is A.I. yet another overhyped, self-serving fantasy by deluded scientists and technocrats talking mostly to one another, foisting their ill-conceived, poorly-engineered creations on an unsuspecting public?
Neither. Yes, there are many useful things that have come from A.I. research. Yes, there may be a titanic debate going on over the potential and the philosophical implications of A.I.
But few researchers are claiming that the technology we have now is even near the goal of real, general-purpose A.I.(*) If there is hype, it is not coming from the researchers (See Komodo's post).
* (There are some who say that we will advance a lot in a short time, however.)
as a college student, here would be my three choices, in order of priority:
1) make sure there is enough public computer labs in my opinion, this is the single most necessary item for students
2) training for nontechnical faculty this makes it more likely that relevant course info will make it to the a course web page
3) videotape classes and broadcast online
of course, this is only if your budget is rather large.at my university (stanford), a lot of lectures are taped online, and it makes a big difference. there are a lot of times when i have rewatched parts of a lecture later on, or stepped through a confusing lecture slowly until it became clear.
Slashdot Mirror
completely right. we need to switch to a runoff system to give third parties a chance.
it is true that there are good reasons for clumping together two bills sometimes, and that it is impossible to definititively define "one issue". But this shouldn't stop us from trying to reduce the amount of unrelated "riders". We could pass a law that said something like "no unrelated riders" and leave it up to the courts to determine it (the law should specify something to make the determination process really fast, i.e. 20 minutes of discussion and then the court votes; after all, having a whole court case about this issue is a waste of time when the bill in question could just be broken in two). The point is that we have humans to interpret laws, so it is not unreasonable to write laws that need to be interpreted, provided we can keep the "interpretation" bit from bogging down the lawmaking process even further. In this case we can, because it doesn't really matter if the interpretation is often really biased or wrong, anything is better than what we have now.
the writer of the article liked old "don't touch it" museums better than interactive ones. i would just like to say, for the record, that i think interactive ones are more educational. furthermore, the boston museum of science is particularly awesome.
2) but accepting that we are trying to prevent future misdeeds, not punish MS, the current settlement is still too weak. corporations are innovative, and courts are slow enough, that MS will able to get around any specific restriction. That leaves two options
However, with falls like this onto a city street, paralyis and getting one's eye poked out may be a danger too.. i'm not really sure how probably that is, anyone know the facts?
personally, i am kind of fed up with flash. i leave the flash plugin uninstalled and generally just ignore all-flash sites.
I thought the point of having an advocate for each side was that each advocate would find the best possible argument for their side. Who has ever heard of a lawyer refusing to their client to even ask for a remedy on the grounds that it might be shot down? Yet the DOJ is refusing to the American people to even ask for the remedies listed below, not because they are wrong, but merely because the court has not SPECIFICALLY authorized restraining MS in those ways.
In contrast with what the DOJ is doing, even the DOJ admits that its job is impose restrictions on Microsoft that go significantly beyond current law (see the end of this post). This is good evidence to support the contention that Bush's govm't is actively trying to get the case over with with as little harm to Microsoft as possible; they are losing on purpose. From the DOJ response:
22. Stripping Microsoft of its market position in the browser market or banning contractual tying, however, are remedies that are not warranted on the existing record.
Commentors argue that the file formats for Office should be disclosed....The scope of the case as decided by the Court of Appeals does not extend to non-middleware or to Office or other applications that are not distributed with Windows
Some comments(430) argue that the RPFJ fails....to constrain Microsoft's....".Net"....The comments claim that Microsoft....is now implementing its own closed system that will require Microsoft operating system products on both the server side of the network and on the client side....These criticisms are not well taken....whether .Net is, in fact, likely to have an anticompetitive effect....is not yet clear. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to draw conclusions about the competitive impact of such pre-nascent initiatives that have sufficient reliability to warrant additional remedies or restrictions
One comment contends that Microsoft should be prohibited from retaliating against an OEM that ships computers loaded with only a non-Microsoft operating system....Neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals held Microsoft liable because it prevented OEMs from producing PCs with non-Microsoft operating systems; thus, there is no basis for redressing such conduct.
Several commentors complain that the RPFJ does not eliminate license terms that prohibit open source and other developers from finding ways to make Windows applications run on non-Windows operating systems.... Such provisions are far outside the scope of this case
Here is one more bit of evidence that the prosecution is overly concerned about MS (rather than about their job of enforcing the law):
We note that the suggestion of an open-ended decree, subject to review after five years (see Gifford 9; Litan 73), or contingent upon Microsoft's market share decreasing (see Thomas 6), would create undesirable uncertainty in the market and would be contrary to the United States' mission to enforce the federal antitrust laws and to remedy specific violations thereof.
And here is the proof that the DOJ admits its job is not merely to enforce current law, but to restrain MS's monopoly by going beyond it:
474. Commentors are also incorrect in their insistence that including a reasonableness standard simply engrafts the rule of reason into the RPFJ,(453) turning it into an instruction to Microsoft to comply with the law -- effectively to "go forth and sin no more." In fact, the RPFJ goes beyond eliminating illegal practices and preventing recurrence of the same or similar practices in the future. The RPFJ also takes affirmative steps to restore the competitive threat that middleware posed prior to Microsoft's unlawful undertakings.
From the DOJ response:
But plaintiffs never alleged, and neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals found, that Microsoft acquired its monopoly unlawfully.
I have no idea about the others, but Red Hat submitted a comment. See the list of "major" comments at http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms-major.htm
Several comments question whether Microsoft made adequate disclosures under 15 U.S.C. ? 16(g)... even if Microsoft failed to satisfy the requirements of Section 16(g), that would not provide any basis to begin the comment period anew and further delay entry of the RPFJ.
[bshanks: some background: the Tunney Act requires Microsoft to dislose "any and all written or oral communications" with "any officer or employee of the United States". However, even MSNBC reports: "In court filings, the software giant disclosed only contacts with executive branch officials and not Congress."]
469. Several commentors complain that the RPFJ does not eliminate license terms that prohibit open source and other developers from finding ways to make Windows applications run on non-Windows operating systems.... Such provisions are far outside the scope of this case, and in any event are unlikely to benefit consumers. If Microsoft could not prevent people from expropriating and modifying its applications or middleware products -- that is, its "redistributable code" -- to turn them into complements to non-Microsoft operating systems, Microsoft would have a significantly reduced incentive to invest in developing and marketing attractive applications and middleware for Windows users.
One comment contends that Microsoft should be prohibited from retaliating against an OEM that ships computers loaded with only a non-Microsoft operating system, rather than (as in Section III.A.2) prohibited only from retaliating against an OEM that ships a computer with Microsoft and non-Microsoft operating systems or one that ships a computer that will "dual-boot" with more than one operating system (445) Neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals held Microsoft liable because it prevented OEMs from producing PCs with non-Microsoft operating systems; thus, there is no basis for redressing such conduct. The absence of such a provision, however, is not problematic. If the OEM ships no machines with Windows, then presumably it ships no machines with Windows applications, either; thus, Microsoft would have few ways to "retaliate" against that OEM for its decision not to ship Windows.
23. In particular, neither open sourcing the Internet Explorer source code nor requiring Microsoft to port Internet Explorer to other operating systems would ... significantly enhance those competitors' incentives or ability to develop new or better products.
from the DOJ response: "Stripping Microsoft of its market position in the browser market or banning contractual tying, however, are remedies that are not warranted on the existing record. This case was not a monopoly leveraging case, and..."
and currently we do not distribute our greater wealth to the poor very well --- there are fewer poor in the first world because of tech but there should be fewer in the third world as well.
I agree that a novel type of intelligence may be more practical and more useful too. But the Turing test is a standard that it is easier for people to agree on. If a computer passes a Turing test, it seems a lot like it is conscious. If it is a new type of intelligence, then it will be a lot harder to tell if it is conscious.
I bet that even if we had novel intelligence, people would still be trying to build Turing-test-passing A.I. to find out definitively if a machine could be conscious.
I don't think so. If we had a HAL, there would some disagree-ers, but also a large faction of believers.
Neither. Yes, there are many useful things that have come from A.I. research. Yes, there may be a titanic debate going on over the potential and the philosophical implications of A.I.
But few researchers are claiming that the technology we have now is even near the goal of real, general-purpose A.I.(*) If there is hype, it is not coming from the researchers (See Komodo's post).
* (There are some who say that we will advance a lot in a short time, however.)
It is definitely a possibility. Humans don't treat inferior species too well.
hate
as a college student, here would be my three choices, in order of priority:
1) make sure there is enough public computer labs in my opinion, this is the single most necessary item for students
2) training for nontechnical faculty this makes it more likely that relevant course info will make it to the a course web page
3) videotape classes and broadcast online
of course, this is only if your budget is rather large.at my university (stanford), a lot of lectures are taped online, and it makes a big difference. there are a lot of times when i have rewatched parts of a lecture later on, or stepped through a confusing lecture slowly until it became clear.