"t's not a matter of dark ages, it's a matter of infrastructure... "
Sure that's part of it but the main thing is that people in the US prefer to use english units of measurement. To switch (with any speed at all) would require a great deal of government regulation to *force* people to make the change and that just isn't likely to happen in the US. Trying to *make* people change when the don't want to is an excellent way to lose your next election.
I think the ideal service would offer both becuase each model offers something different. With a subscription service you lose the music when you stop paying - but while you are paying you have a *huge* (unlimited?) music library. You can try out any song or artist or listen to any song you just have a momentary hankering to hear but wouldn't necessarily consider worth purchasing. On the other hand there are some songs you want to "own" that you know you'll listen to years into the future and don't want to have any limitations on.
I could see a "premier" version of iTunes where you pay a small monthly fee and the streaming 30 second preview tracks switch to being full length and can be added to your regular playlists (but go away when you no longer subscribe). Unpaying users would still have access to the same service they have now.
you can't expect that these numbers will remain constant once the newness wears off.
On the other hand the market keeps growing. In that same million dollar first week only about one million mac users downloaded the new iTunes. There are however 25 million mac users in total. I suspect there will be a spike the first couple of weeks as early adopters/geeks try it out. Immediately after that it will fall off for a few weeks/months but going forward it will continue to grow as the installed base continues to grow. I think it's possible that in the end the numbers may be even *better* than they were in the first week. In other words 25 million people occassionally buying music at the average rate may be a higher daily number than only 1 million people caught up in an "opening day" surge.
That's what hack _always_ meant. A hacker has always been another word for coder
Well I'm not sure of the etymology of "hacker" but going pretty far back it also meant "practical joker with a technical bent" as in the "hacks" at MIT most of which have nothing to do with computers (I seem to recall that a group responsible for many of them was called the The Technology Hackers Association).
Going back further most sources I have seen think it's current techy usage comes from a "hack" as in "a hack journalist or author" someone that produces hackneyed (bad) writing. I can see how that would quickly translate among coders to mean a quick fix that gets the job done & might by quite clever but is not correct or right. i.e. "Well, it works now but it's just a hack, I'll go back later & fix it" from there it's a quick jump to BOTH of its current usages. A hack meaning a clever and efficient piece of coding and a "hack" as in a quick and dirty "fix" to the "problem" of not having access to a machine the "hacker" would like to have access to.
Also to be fair I think in the media and popular usage I think people don't think of "hacker" as merely someone that breaks into computers but as people with a great deal of technical skill that can make computers do what the hacker wants - especially things the computer isn't supposed to do. That would include (but isn't limited to) gaining access that they aren't supposed to have. That isn't so far from the canonical definition of hacker that you would find in the jargon file.
Fortunately the English language is perfectly capable of handling words with several meanings from "bad writing" to "good coding" to "cracking into computers"
I know what you're saying (you: "those guys ah smaaht" me: "yeah, they'h wicked smaaht"). Still, if you were overcome by how smart they really are you would have used "wicked" yourself in the first place. Perhaps we just disagree on whether or not these guys are "wicked smart" or merely "smart"
I am originally from Lexington which means I would usually (well sometimes) pronounce my "r"'s but would definitely use "wicked" (That SNL skit doesn't get it right at all, sounds more like Revere than Lexington). In college most of my friends were from NY and would mock me mercilessly for saying "wicked", "wicked cool" or "wicked awsome". Since school I've been in RI so I've not only lost the use of the "r" altogether (except in words like "idear" as in "Those smaht guys have good idears") but also picked up the second person plural pronoun "youse".
Very good points - I only have a problem with this part: " Plus this is the opening day. On average a grand opening well marketed does about 5x then an average day."
That 5X number may be right for a brick and mortar store but it's probably a bit different when you are talking about downloadable software (iTunes). I'm guessing a couple hundred thousand geek "early adopters" dowloaded the software in the first day and started buying music, after a couple of days that number will probably be a couple of million. As your "regular joe" users start getting the software via their weekly Software Update and start seeing the TV ads and magazine articles it will go up a few million more. The number of new users will go up dramatically over a period of a couple of weeks and then grow more slowly until almost all MacOS X users have iTunes4. For each individual user "opening day" is the day they download the software. I expect that the first 18 hours are just the initial ramp up of a "grand openning" surge that will take a week to peak and it might be a month or two before it's effects fade enough so that Apple can see what "normal" day to day usage is going to be.
Perhaps you need to review what I've said and point out where I said that parents should be forbidden such aids
Then what was the point of your post? The original poster was essentially agreeing that the parents not technologies job to protect their children but also thought it would be nice if tools were available that helped the parent out. Your response was that you had "no sympathy" with a parent who doesn't "want to spend your time watching TV with your children" a fine sentiment but one already addressed by the original post. If it is your opinion that such parental controls are OK but no substitute for parental involvement you could have said so and from what I read the original poster would have agreed wholeheartedly. Instead you merely reiterated the point he made in the first sentance as though it was a criticism of his position.
I will grant you that you may think such technological aids are unnecessary and a bad idea without wanting to limit a parents access to them - I was inferring a position you did not state. In my defense the argument you make is usually made in this forum by those opposing the addition of such parental controls to TV or computers because of overinflated fears of "censorship". Although you were making the first point in this common argument it was unfair of me to assume that you would go on to make the second point (that we should oppose the addition of such parental controls whenever and wherever they are proposed). The vehemence of your (IMO unfair) criticism of the post you were replying to led me (unfairly as well) to assume it was motivated by that ideologically inflated fear of "censorship."
A parent can work to instill their values in the child to the point where they do not NEED to look over their child's shoulder every waking hour
You are right of course but you are also letting your ideology get ahead of your common sense. There is no reason why parents should be forbidden aids that help them manage the technologies they and their children use. I may leave my 7 year old watching "Liberty Kids" on PBS while making diner - but he also knows how to change the channel and likes to think of himself as a "big boy" that can watch the "scary" (violent) shows - Of course watching some of those "scary" shows not only undermines the values I was trying to teach but also leads to a miserable night of dealing with nightmares. You realize how jaded we are to images of violence when you see an innocent react to those same images. You and I see an actor pretending to get killed, we have a very firm grasp that it is "all pretend"... to my son it is MUCH more real. I wouldn't want my child to see a real murder, I don't see why letting him watch Zoom by necessity involves the risk that with the push of one button he could watch a convincing recreation of one. I don't see why *my* using a technological aid to guard against that risk is somehow a violation of *your* rights.
You see all the pussies that can't get over the fact that our towers came down. Are using there fear as an excuse to pass thousands of laws, that don't affect them because there non-technical ninnies...
It has nothing to do with towers coming down - they have been passing such laws LONG before 9/11. Remember the legislator in New Jersey that had the bright idea of requiring programmers to be licensed? That law got repealled real quick once IBM realized it existed and would cost them significantly more $$ than simply moving all their highly paid high tech employees out of state. Granted to a legislator that knows the laws in her state requires hairdressers* to be licensed because that task is so critical it just makes sense that programmers should be licensed as well. *(The risk of hairdressers giving people bad hair is aparently such a severe one with such catastrophic social costs that the state must step in to make sure that only licensed professionals can give you a bad haircut - I'm sure the $$$ from licensing fees and pressure from already licensed hairdressers to restrict competition has nothing to do with it)
The problem is that we have several thousand legislators & their aids who's job it is to "legislate". It's their full-time job to write new laws! And they do. Every year there are thousands and thousands of pages of new laws on top of the thousands and thousands of pages of last years laws on top of the thousands and thousands of pages of laws written the year before that going back 200 years. This doesn't even get into the millions of additional pages of regulations written by the various executive branches that fill all the details. It never seems to occur to anyone that the laws we have are generally sufficient and probably much more than enough. I greatly respect those states that at least *try* to stop the flow by severely limiting the time they give legislators to do their work.
right. just like the people who don't understand that American companies with close ties to this administration (cough)Haliburton(cough) are ready to make a shit-load of money off this, as they did after the first Gulf War.
Consipiracy theories are fun and all but there are a lot more direct, efficient and massively less risky ways to get a measily $900 million out of the government if the administration is motivated by graft. Wars are politically risky - sure there is an upside, they can be popular - but if it goes wrong you're out after only 4 years sucking at the public teat, that adds up to some big lost oppurtunity costs. And all that risk for only $900 million? It's just not worth it, it's too much trouble. If it was all about funneling contracts to Haliburton there are MUCH easier and quiter ways.
I'm usually pretty cynical, especially about labour politicians, but this doesn't sound all that far fetched to anyone who has followed Saadams career or pays attention to what it takes to run a real dictatorship. What do you think people are talking about when they either accuse or concede Saadam's "atrocities"?
I think sometimes our political rhetoric undermines our language and our understanding - we are too quick to use loaded terms, we accuse our opponents of being closet dictators, of advocating a police state, of commiting "atrocities". When we accuse our domestic political opponents in such terms we start to equate the terms with the actions or policies we are labeling as such. When we have been accusing Bush of "atrocities" and then we hear of a real dictator commiting unmentioned "atrocities" we start to think we're talking about the same kind of things - we aren't! Whenever you hear about a Saadam or a Mugabe commiting "atrocities" we are NOT talking about someone being jailed without having his miranda warnings, or being held for a long time, or even being executed under less than perfect (but still present) due process of law. Those are all bad things and to the degree that they are really happening it is perhaps fair to call them "atrocities". But when you hear news reports about "atrocities" under Mugabe, or Saadam, or in North Korea we are talking about something an order of magnitude different - we are talking about EXACTLY this kind of thing. It's to our credit that we live in countries where such things seem unbelievable - they HAVE to be made up. Sadly too often they aren't, these things DO happen and far more often than we are aware.
In the modern world, you do not gain physical terrority, you open markets and install friendly puppet regimes.
I see what you are saying, the slavish obedience of puppet regimes in the conquered vassal states of Germany and France is truly stunning. The sense of cruel oppression by American puppet regimes in Austria, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the Philipines, Panama, and Bosnia stands in stark contrast with the freedom and prosperity enjoyed in nations like Vietnam, North Korea (and until now Iraq) where the US failed to install our oppressive puppets.
What I am advocating is that we step up negotiations with North Korea, which China, South Korea, and Japan are all trying to persuade us to do.
Ahh... but wouldn't that be "unilateralism"? We are perfectly happy to negotiate with NK multilaterally with China, SK and Japan but we don't wan't to talk with them one one one. Why? well for a couple of reasons, first because it would be a fairly large concession that we would be granting not because NK also made concesions but because NK threatened us - whatever the issue just folding in the face of a threat is not a good way to start any kind of negotiations.
Secondly, because there is very little we can do without the cooperation of those other nations. Without their cooperation we cannot bring any real pressure to bear on NK while they can bring significant pressure on us simply by making mad threats. If we can get NK to concede to multilateral talks it is likely that the combined pressure would be enough to get NK to back down. Or perhaps we can get some major concessions on their part that would justify accepting bilateral talks. But to enter bilateral talks with NK where they hold all the cards right at the start is a recipe for disaster - North Korea would likely overplay their too strong hand - Bill Clinton has revealed that he was willing to go to war over this issue - I doubt Bush would be any less willing. There is evidence that such multilateral pressure is already working - SK and more particularly Japan have indicated that actually restarting the reprocessing plant would be intolerable and would provoke a response and NK has thus far NOT taken that step. The US could not make any similar threats without those allies. For their part SK, Japan want us to accept NK's demands because they have a gun to their head and are willing to kick the can down the road a little further even if it will most likely make the situations worse in the long run. They have both a fear of NK and are willing to pressure us to do anything to make the current crisis go away while at the same time they don't have to worry about the long term consequences because they feel safe because of our security guarantees. I think Rummy's public musings about pulling out of SK was an implicit threat to our allies that they need to think more seriously about the issue and that if they don't want to help us put pressure on NK we don't have to help them defend their nation. It was also an implicit indirect threat to China, if we remove our security guarantees from SK and Japan they are more than advanced enough to guarantee their own security. China will be much more willing to pressure NK to get rid of it's nuclear program if that program's immediate result is South Korean and Japanese nuclear programs.
I recall reading an article a few years back about *Apple* getting a patent on using two procs for emulation. Apparently one proc would handle the emulation and the other would be running the (now) native code. It would be interesting to see Apple actually implement this, maybe if Microsoft kills VPC they will.
Big brother can more easily track what you buy, and will force stores to start using these to keep track of such things. If you buy certain things, they might enter you in a database of potential terrorists and get you on some FBI watch list
Umm... hate to burst your conspiritorial bubble but the store for rather *obvious reasons* already know exactly what you bought - it doesn't matter whether they tracked that purchase with RFID, bar code or just an old fasioned sales tag scanned by the cashiers extrememly advanced optical scanner (eyes) they have ALWAYS known what you bought. If you bought it on credit or personal check they also know who you are. The scenario you fear is ALREADY possible, has ALWAYS been possible and RFID tags don't add anything to it aside from reducing the likelyhood that you preserve your anonymity by shoplifting.
Now I'll concede that if you walk past an RFID reader somewhere else they *may* be able to know what you are wearing. I suppose this *could* be open to abuse but I think that potential is being overstated. The effective range is only 1.5 meters, at that range I can *see* what you are wearing I don't need an RFID reader. I suppose I can also identify what brand of underwear you are wearing but while that might have some potential for abuse by really lame panty fetishists I can't see that it is particularly open to abuse by Big Brother.These things are recording the SKU# not a unique serial number. Within 1.5 metres of a tag reader I can know what products you have on your person but I can't track you as an individual
Yes you can come up with all sorts of potential abuses of this technology but that is true of ANY technology. Writing, printing presses, photography, video, computers, the internet, RFID tags - all of these can (and are, and will be) abused by governments. Think how hard it was for "big brother" to keep track of things before writing was invented and recording things was possible. But in the end government does not need any more technology than rocks and sharp sticks to abuse and repress the populace. The answer therefor is NOT to avoid new and useful technologies but to restrain governments and maintain those structural checks and balances that (largely) prevent or at least redress abuses. I am MUCH more concerned about those assaults on our constitutional checks and balances than the *potential* abuses of any mere technology. The intrusion of the central government into the states sovereignty - the primacy of courts over legislatures - the willingness of campaign "reformers" to jettison free speech because much of it is ugly or paid for by rich people - THESE things are of FAR more concern than any technology. The technology we have NOW is sufiicient for totalitarianism, the technology of ancient Persia was sufficient for totalitarianism. If we lose those structural protections of liberty we've been blessed with in our system of government it won't matter what technologies the government uses.
If you ask me it should be mandatory to remove the tags upon purchasing the product. The abuse risk is just too great.
Exactly what are the abuse risks? The thing only works when you are 1.5 meters from the tag - at that distance I can already *see* what you are wearing I don't need to scan you to find out you are wearing a benetton turtleneck. The number identifies the SKU of the clothing, it's not a unique serial number. They can't track you as an individual, only that a pair of Benetton slacks (out of thousands) just walked past a scanner.
French is the mother tongue for most people in Senegal
Umm... Mother tongue? Unless I'm really bad at geography I'd guess something less European - Imposed colonial tongue perhaps but not mother tongue. As for why English? Well first off the Peace Corp is American not French and secondly English has definitely surpassed French as the language of international discourse especially for business but increasingly for diplomacy as well (Which really has the French steamed) perhaps in Senegal the use of French as a common tongue among different tribes and their economic ties to their old imperial masters would be a good reason to prefer it to English but even then I think you are commiting your nation to a linguistic backwater.
The only blogs to make it into the mainstream - i.e. attract a wider audience than their network of friends - will have a tabloid interest - nudity, offensiveness, extreme views, or some other rally call.
This is largely true but I would add that just being offensive or having extreme views is insufficient. The thing about popular bloggers like Glenn Reynolds (who probably just attracted a million viewers today - the "story" on MSNBC was one of his two blogs) is that they are actually expressing informed views on topics they have some expertise on - Glenn for instance isn't just some wacko spouting off about politics, he is a law professor that teaches constitutional law spouting off about politics - and that makes a big difference. The democratization of the media obviously results in a vast increase in the amount of dreck but among that dreck there are also some gems and they will tend to rise to the top & as they do they will be refined.
I tend think that the democratization of video will not (for the most part) be anything like "blogging" since even amateur video takes time and forethought and the appeal of blogging is for writers and amateur (and professional) thinkers & pundits to get out their thoughts quickly in an informal format. Bloggers may occasionally use video and will likely link to those that do as fodder for their blogs but very little of it would properly be called "video blogging". As an example of what I'm talking about I'm sure Glenn is thinking about "video" and "blogging" because of this little sarcastic man-on-the-street interview/documentary a conservative blogger did at the Peace march in NYC - it was amateurish but also pretty funny and fairly well done.
Then again, you're probably a geek who has in his closet all of Britney Spears albums, or at least the mp3s, aren't you?
This little bit of childishness just trashed any credibility you gained by making a half way coherent and reasoned argument.
Still your reasonable comments before that arrogant little rant deserve a response:
Research is expensive because research is expensive not because of patent protection which runs out in 17 years in any event (in fields where progress is often measured in decades). The entire purpose of patent protection is to entice people that would otherwise have a financial incentive to NEVER reveal the results of their research to do so. The deal is you (a private, for profit inventor) make your discoveries public and for a limited time you are granted a monopoly on your discovery. The alternative is not greater openness but greater secrecy - prior to patent law being developed for profit inventors kept their innovations secret since that was the only way they could profit from them. If the secrets of their inventions became known competitors without research costs would undercut the original inventor. Obviously keeping inventions secret severely limited their business options and their inventions may take decades to become known to science more generally or in worst case scenarios die with the inventor. Zildjian cymbals is a perfect example of how this system worked since it is a relic of that time - their metalurgical process is not patented it has been successfuly kept a family secret for centuries and only members of that family can make cymbals with those particular highly prized characteristics. It is in many ways a trivial example (or maybe not - who knows what other perhaps less trivial purposes their metalurgical process might have benefitted? We don't know because the process is STILL a closely guarded secret) but it illustrates one problem of the research prior to patent law perfectly - the other problem is seen in Gutenberg who spent 32 years of his life trying to figure out how to build a printing machine *because of the financial possiblities* (he was quite mercenary in his motives), But went bankrupt, his attempts at keeping his process secret failed, he lost his printing establishment to his business partner who made all the profits from the Gutenberg Bible. Here was an invention of stupendous influence on the world and he not only didn't make much profit from it (which was his goal) but he often failed to get any credit for it until well after his death (competitors that copied his designs claimed to be the inventors).
That's not an argument for being able to artificially restrict supply of a potentially life saving drug
No, prior to it's development it wasn't just scarce - it was non-existant, any "rethinking of the how we do R&D is performed in our economy" has to take that into account. The system now produces life saving drugs at a very rapid rate but restricts their supply for several years. Most of the proposals to fix this "artificial scarcity" would only fix it for drugs we already have but would likely result in making sure that those drugs we have not yet discovered remain "non-existent" or only very slowly come into existance.
it's not like other solutions haven't been tried. At the risk of becoming a IN SOVIET RUSSIA troll we have had several large and fairly advanced countries in the past 50 years that have attempted other models some of the strikingly similar to the models that reformers have suggested. Let's just say that they were not marked by the spectacular advancements that "our brand of capitalism" has enjoyed.
This isn't some cure that they genetically engineered, spending billions of dollars to splice DNA into an organism. It was literally 'found' in a rock pool. They stumbled across it.
This is perhaps the most mind-numbingly ignorant comment I have ever seen. This is the kind of comment that burrows into your brain and causes an aneurysm.
Do you think it happend like this? Tourist sitting on beach somewhere: "hey, you know that slime over there looks like an antibiotic" *take's a taste* "Why YES it IS an antibiotic, I think I'll patent it and make gobs of money on something I 'just stumbled across'. I'm so happy I didn't have to do any research or invest any money in discovering it - that would have cut into my rapacious profits"
Slashdot Mirror
"t's not a matter of dark ages, it's a matter of infrastructure... "
Sure that's part of it but the main thing is that people in the US prefer to use english units of measurement. To switch (with any speed at all) would require a great deal of government regulation to *force* people to make the change and that just isn't likely to happen in the US. Trying to *make* people change when the don't want to is an excellent way to lose your next election.
I think the ideal service would offer both becuase each model offers something different. With a subscription service you lose the music when you stop paying - but while you are paying you have a *huge* (unlimited?) music library. You can try out any song or artist or listen to any song you just have a momentary hankering to hear but wouldn't necessarily consider worth purchasing. On the other hand there are some songs you want to "own" that you know you'll listen to years into the future and don't want to have any limitations on.
I could see a "premier" version of iTunes where you pay a small monthly fee and the streaming 30 second preview tracks switch to being full length and can be added to your regular playlists (but go away when you no longer subscribe). Unpaying users would still have access to the same service they have now.
Now muggers and pick pockets will be able to use technology to identify prime targets.
Assuming the victim reports the theft the next time the mugger buys something the police can pick him up on the way out of the store.
you can't expect that these numbers will remain constant once the newness wears off.
On the other hand the market keeps growing. In that same million dollar first week only about one million mac users downloaded the new iTunes. There are however 25 million mac users in total. I suspect there will be a spike the first couple of weeks as early adopters/geeks try it out. Immediately after that it will fall off for a few weeks/months but going forward it will continue to grow as the installed base continues to grow. I think it's possible that in the end the numbers may be even *better* than they were in the first week. In other words 25 million people occassionally buying music at the average rate may be a higher daily number than only 1 million people caught up in an "opening day" surge.
That's what hack _always_ meant. A hacker has always been another word for coder
Well I'm not sure of the etymology of "hacker" but going pretty far back it also meant "practical joker with a technical bent" as in the "hacks" at MIT most of which have nothing to do with computers (I seem to recall that a group responsible for many of them was called the The Technology Hackers Association).
Going back further most sources I have seen think it's current techy usage comes from a "hack" as in "a hack journalist or author" someone that produces hackneyed (bad) writing. I can see how that would quickly translate among coders to mean a quick fix that gets the job done & might by quite clever but is not correct or right. i.e. "Well, it works now but it's just a hack, I'll go back later & fix it" from there it's a quick jump to BOTH of its current usages. A hack meaning a clever and efficient piece of coding and a "hack" as in a quick and dirty "fix" to the "problem" of not having access to a machine the "hacker" would like to have access to.
Also to be fair I think in the media and popular usage I think people don't think of "hacker" as merely someone that breaks into computers but as people with a great deal of technical skill that can make computers do what the hacker wants - especially things the computer isn't supposed to do. That would include (but isn't limited to) gaining access that they aren't supposed to have. That isn't so far from the canonical definition of hacker that you would find in the jargon file.
Fortunately the English language is perfectly capable of handling words with several meanings from "bad writing" to "good coding" to "cracking into computers"
I know what you're saying (you: "those guys ah smaaht" me: "yeah, they'h wicked smaaht"). Still, if you were overcome by how smart they really are you would have used "wicked" yourself in the first place. Perhaps we just disagree on whether or not these guys are "wicked smart" or merely "smart"
I am originally from Lexington which means I would usually (well sometimes) pronounce my "r"'s but would definitely use "wicked" (That SNL skit doesn't get it right at all, sounds more like Revere than Lexington). In college most of my friends were from NY and would mock me mercilessly for saying "wicked", "wicked cool" or "wicked awsome". Since school I've been in RI so I've not only lost the use of the "r" altogether (except in words like "idear" as in "Those smaht guys have good idears") but also picked up the second person plural pronoun "youse".
Very good points - I only have a problem with this part: " Plus this is the opening day. On average a grand opening well marketed does about 5x then an average day."
That 5X number may be right for a brick and mortar store but it's probably a bit different when you are talking about downloadable software (iTunes). I'm guessing a couple hundred thousand geek "early adopters" dowloaded the software in the first day and started buying music, after a couple of days that number will probably be a couple of million. As your "regular joe" users start getting the software via their weekly Software Update and start seeing the TV ads and magazine articles it will go up a few million more. The number of new users will go up dramatically over a period of a couple of weeks and then grow more slowly until almost all MacOS X users have iTunes4. For each individual user "opening day" is the day they download the software. I expect that the first 18 hours are just the initial ramp up of a "grand openning" surge that will take a week to peak and it might be a month or two before it's effects fade enough so that Apple can see what "normal" day to day usage is going to be.
I think you meant: "They-ah Wicked Smaaht"
Perhaps you need to review what I've said and point out where I said that parents should be forbidden such aids
Then what was the point of your post? The original poster was essentially agreeing that the parents not technologies job to protect their children but also thought it would be nice if tools were available that helped the parent out. Your response was that you had "no sympathy" with a parent who doesn't "want to spend your time watching TV with your children" a fine sentiment but one already addressed by the original post. If it is your opinion that such parental controls are OK but no substitute for parental involvement you could have said so and from what I read the original poster would have agreed wholeheartedly. Instead you merely reiterated the point he made in the first sentance as though it was a criticism of his position.
I will grant you that you may think such technological aids are unnecessary and a bad idea without wanting to limit a parents access to them - I was inferring a position you did not state. In my defense the argument you make is usually made in this forum by those opposing the addition of such parental controls to TV or computers because of overinflated fears of "censorship". Although you were making the first point in this common argument it was unfair of me to assume that you would go on to make the second point (that we should oppose the addition of such parental controls whenever and wherever they are proposed). The vehemence of your (IMO unfair) criticism of the post you were replying to led me (unfairly as well) to assume it was motivated by that ideologically inflated fear of "censorship."
A parent can work to instill their values in the child to the point where they do not NEED to look over their child's shoulder every waking hour
You are right of course but you are also letting your ideology get ahead of your common sense. There is no reason why parents should be forbidden aids that help them manage the technologies they and their children use. I may leave my 7 year old watching "Liberty Kids" on PBS while making diner - but he also knows how to change the channel and likes to think of himself as a "big boy" that can watch the "scary" (violent) shows - Of course watching some of those "scary" shows not only undermines the values I was trying to teach but also leads to a miserable night of dealing with nightmares. You realize how jaded we are to images of violence when you see an innocent react to those same images. You and I see an actor pretending to get killed, we have a very firm grasp that it is "all pretend"... to my son it is MUCH more real. I wouldn't want my child to see a real murder, I don't see why letting him watch Zoom by necessity involves the risk that with the push of one button he could watch a convincing recreation of one. I don't see why *my* using a technological aid to guard against that risk is somehow a violation of *your* rights.
You see all the pussies that can't get over the fact that our towers came down. Are using there fear as an excuse to pass thousands of laws, that don't affect them because there non-technical ninnies...
It has nothing to do with towers coming down - they have been passing such laws LONG before 9/11. Remember the legislator in New Jersey that had the bright idea of requiring programmers to be licensed? That law got repealled real quick once IBM realized it existed and would cost them significantly more $$ than simply moving all their highly paid high tech employees out of state. Granted to a legislator that knows the laws in her state requires hairdressers* to be licensed because that task is so critical it just makes sense that programmers should be licensed as well. *(The risk of hairdressers giving people bad hair is aparently such a severe one with such catastrophic social costs that the state must step in to make sure that only licensed professionals can give you a bad haircut - I'm sure the $$$ from licensing fees and pressure from already licensed hairdressers to restrict competition has nothing to do with it)
The problem is that we have several thousand legislators & their aids who's job it is to "legislate". It's their full-time job to write new laws! And they do. Every year there are thousands and thousands of pages of new laws on top of the thousands and thousands of pages of last years laws on top of the thousands and thousands of pages of laws written the year before that going back 200 years. This doesn't even get into the millions of additional pages of regulations written by the various executive branches that fill all the details. It never seems to occur to anyone that the laws we have are generally sufficient and probably much more than enough. I greatly respect those states that at least *try* to stop the flow by severely limiting the time they give legislators to do their work.
right. just like the people who don't understand that American companies with close ties to this administration (cough)Haliburton(cough) are ready to make a shit-load of money off this, as they did after the first Gulf War.
Consipiracy theories are fun and all but there are a lot more direct, efficient and massively less risky ways to get a measily $900 million out of the government if the administration is motivated by graft. Wars are politically risky - sure there is an upside, they can be popular - but if it goes wrong you're out after only 4 years sucking at the public teat, that adds up to some big lost oppurtunity costs. And all that risk for only $900 million? It's just not worth it, it's too much trouble. If it was all about funneling contracts to Haliburton there are MUCH easier and quiter ways.
Cynical as i am i don't belive a word of this
I'm usually pretty cynical, especially about labour politicians, but this doesn't sound all that far fetched to anyone who has followed Saadams career or pays attention to what it takes to run a real dictatorship. What do you think people are talking about when they either accuse or concede Saadam's "atrocities"?
I think sometimes our political rhetoric undermines our language and our understanding - we are too quick to use loaded terms, we accuse our opponents of being closet dictators, of advocating a police state, of commiting "atrocities". When we accuse our domestic political opponents in such terms we start to equate the terms with the actions or policies we are labeling as such. When we have been accusing Bush of "atrocities" and then we hear of a real dictator commiting unmentioned "atrocities" we start to think we're talking about the same kind of things - we aren't! Whenever you hear about a Saadam or a Mugabe commiting "atrocities" we are NOT talking about someone being jailed without having his miranda warnings, or being held for a long time, or even being executed under less than perfect (but still present) due process of law. Those are all bad things and to the degree that they are really happening it is perhaps fair to call them "atrocities". But when you hear news reports about "atrocities" under Mugabe, or Saadam, or in North Korea we are talking about something an order of magnitude different - we are talking about EXACTLY this kind of thing. It's to our credit that we live in countries where such things seem unbelievable - they HAVE to be made up. Sadly too often they aren't, these things DO happen and far more often than we are aware.
In the modern world, you do not gain physical terrority, you open markets and install friendly puppet regimes.
I see what you are saying, the slavish obedience of puppet regimes in the conquered vassal states of Germany and France is truly stunning. The sense of cruel oppression by American puppet regimes in Austria, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the Philipines, Panama, and Bosnia stands in stark contrast with the freedom and prosperity enjoyed in nations like Vietnam, North Korea (and until now Iraq) where the US failed to install our oppressive puppets.
What I am advocating is that we step up negotiations with North Korea, which China, South Korea, and Japan are all trying to persuade us to do.
Ahh... but wouldn't that be "unilateralism"? We are perfectly happy to negotiate with NK multilaterally with China, SK and Japan but we don't wan't to talk with them one one one. Why? well for a couple of reasons, first because it would be a fairly large concession that we would be granting not because NK also made concesions but because NK threatened us - whatever the issue just folding in the face of a threat is not a good way to start any kind of negotiations.
Secondly, because there is very little we can do without the cooperation of those other nations. Without their cooperation we cannot bring any real pressure to bear on NK while they can bring significant pressure on us simply by making mad threats. If we can get NK to concede to multilateral talks it is likely that the combined pressure would be enough to get NK to back down. Or perhaps we can get some major concessions on their part that would justify accepting bilateral talks. But to enter bilateral talks with NK where they hold all the cards right at the start is a recipe for disaster - North Korea would likely overplay their too strong hand - Bill Clinton has revealed that he was willing to go to war over this issue - I doubt Bush would be any less willing. There is evidence that such multilateral pressure is already working - SK and more particularly Japan have indicated that actually restarting the reprocessing plant would be intolerable and would provoke a response and NK has thus far NOT taken that step. The US could not make any similar threats without those allies. For their part SK, Japan want us to accept NK's demands because they have a gun to their head and are willing to kick the can down the road a little further even if it will most likely make the situations worse in the long run. They have both a fear of NK and are willing to pressure us to do anything to make the current crisis go away while at the same time they don't have to worry about the long term consequences because they feel safe because of our security guarantees. I think Rummy's public musings about pulling out of SK was an implicit threat to our allies that they need to think more seriously about the issue and that if they don't want to help us put pressure on NK we don't have to help them defend their nation. It was also an implicit indirect threat to China, if we remove our security guarantees from SK and Japan they are more than advanced enough to guarantee their own security. China will be much more willing to pressure NK to get rid of it's nuclear program if that program's immediate result is South Korean and Japanese nuclear programs.
If it ?twere done when ?tis done, then ?twere well it were done quickly
- MacBeth
I recall reading an article a few years back about *Apple* getting a patent on using two procs for emulation. Apparently one proc would handle the emulation and the other would be running the (now) native code. It would be interesting to see Apple actually implement this, maybe if Microsoft kills VPC they will.
Big brother can more easily track what you buy, and will force stores to start using these to keep track of such things. If you buy certain things, they might enter you in a database of potential terrorists and get you on some FBI watch list
Umm... hate to burst your conspiritorial bubble but the store for rather *obvious reasons* already know exactly what you bought - it doesn't matter whether they tracked that purchase with RFID, bar code or just an old fasioned sales tag scanned by the cashiers extrememly advanced optical scanner (eyes) they have ALWAYS known what you bought. If you bought it on credit or personal check they also know who you are. The scenario you fear is ALREADY possible, has ALWAYS been possible and RFID tags don't add anything to it aside from reducing the likelyhood that you preserve your anonymity by shoplifting.
Now I'll concede that if you walk past an RFID reader somewhere else they *may* be able to know what you are wearing. I suppose this *could* be open to abuse but I think that potential is being overstated. The effective range is only 1.5 meters, at that range I can *see* what you are wearing I don't need an RFID reader. I suppose I can also identify what brand of underwear you are wearing but while that might have some potential for abuse by really lame panty fetishists I can't see that it is particularly open to abuse by Big Brother.These things are recording the SKU# not a unique serial number. Within 1.5 metres of a tag reader I can know what products you have on your person but I can't track you as an individual
Yes you can come up with all sorts of potential abuses of this technology but that is true of ANY technology. Writing, printing presses, photography, video, computers, the internet, RFID tags - all of these can (and are, and will be) abused by governments. Think how hard it was for "big brother" to keep track of things before writing was invented and recording things was possible. But in the end government does not need any more technology than rocks and sharp sticks to abuse and repress the populace. The answer therefor is NOT to avoid new and useful technologies but to restrain governments and maintain those structural checks and balances that (largely) prevent or at least redress abuses. I am MUCH more concerned about those assaults on our constitutional checks and balances than the *potential* abuses of any mere technology. The intrusion of the central government into the states sovereignty - the primacy of courts over legislatures - the willingness of campaign "reformers" to jettison free speech because much of it is ugly or paid for by rich people - THESE things are of FAR more concern than any technology. The technology we have NOW is sufiicient for totalitarianism, the technology of ancient Persia was sufficient for totalitarianism. If we lose those structural protections of liberty we've been blessed with in our system of government it won't matter what technologies the government uses.
If you ask me it should be mandatory to remove the tags upon purchasing the product. The abuse risk is just too great.
Exactly what are the abuse risks? The thing only works when you are 1.5 meters from the tag - at that distance I can already *see* what you are wearing I don't need to scan you to find out you are wearing a benetton turtleneck. The number identifies the SKU of the clothing, it's not a unique serial number. They can't track you as an individual, only that a pair of Benetton slacks (out of thousands) just walked past a scanner.
Sure, if you had readers in your home it actually would.
French is the mother tongue for most people in Senegal
Umm... Mother tongue? Unless I'm really bad at geography I'd guess something less European - Imposed colonial tongue perhaps but not mother tongue. As for why English? Well first off the Peace Corp is American not French and secondly English has definitely surpassed French as the language of international discourse especially for business but increasingly for diplomacy as well (Which really has the French steamed) perhaps in Senegal the use of French as a common tongue among different tribes and their economic ties to their old imperial masters would be a good reason to prefer it to English but even then I think you are commiting your nation to a linguistic backwater.
The only blogs to make it into the mainstream - i.e. attract a wider audience than their network of friends - will have a tabloid interest - nudity, offensiveness, extreme views, or some other rally call.
This is largely true but I would add that just being offensive or having extreme views is insufficient. The thing about popular bloggers like Glenn Reynolds (who probably just attracted a million viewers today - the "story" on MSNBC was one of his two blogs) is that they are actually expressing informed views on topics they have some expertise on - Glenn for instance isn't just some wacko spouting off about politics, he is a law professor that teaches constitutional law spouting off about politics - and that makes a big difference. The democratization of the media obviously results in a vast increase in the amount of dreck but among that dreck there are also some gems and they will tend to rise to the top & as they do they will be refined.
I tend think that the democratization of video will not (for the most part) be anything like "blogging" since even amateur video takes time and forethought and the appeal of blogging is for writers and amateur (and professional) thinkers & pundits to get out their thoughts quickly in an informal format. Bloggers may occasionally use video and will likely link to those that do as fodder for their blogs but very little of it would properly be called "video blogging". As an example of what I'm talking about I'm sure Glenn is thinking about "video" and "blogging" because of this little sarcastic man-on-the-street interview/documentary a conservative blogger did at the Peace march in NYC - it was amateurish but also pretty funny and fairly well done.
Then again, you're probably a geek who has in his closet all of Britney Spears albums, or at least the mp3s, aren't you?
This little bit of childishness just trashed any credibility you gained by making a half way coherent and reasoned argument.
Still your reasonable comments before that arrogant little rant deserve a response: Research is expensive because research is expensive not because of patent protection which runs out in 17 years in any event (in fields where progress is often measured in decades). The entire purpose of patent protection is to entice people that would otherwise have a financial incentive to NEVER reveal the results of their research to do so. The deal is you (a private, for profit inventor) make your discoveries public and for a limited time you are granted a monopoly on your discovery. The alternative is not greater openness but greater secrecy - prior to patent law being developed for profit inventors kept their innovations secret since that was the only way they could profit from them. If the secrets of their inventions became known competitors without research costs would undercut the original inventor. Obviously keeping inventions secret severely limited their business options and their inventions may take decades to become known to science more generally or in worst case scenarios die with the inventor. Zildjian cymbals is a perfect example of how this system worked since it is a relic of that time - their metalurgical process is not patented it has been successfuly kept a family secret for centuries and only members of that family can make cymbals with those particular highly prized characteristics. It is in many ways a trivial example (or maybe not - who knows what other perhaps less trivial purposes their metalurgical process might have benefitted? We don't know because the process is STILL a closely guarded secret) but it illustrates one problem of the research prior to patent law perfectly - the other problem is seen in Gutenberg who spent 32 years of his life trying to figure out how to build a printing machine *because of the financial possiblities* (he was quite mercenary in his motives), But went bankrupt, his attempts at keeping his process secret failed, he lost his printing establishment to his business partner who made all the profits from the Gutenberg Bible. Here was an invention of stupendous influence on the world and he not only didn't make much profit from it (which was his goal) but he often failed to get any credit for it until well after his death (competitors that copied his designs claimed to be the inventors).
That's not an argument for being able to artificially restrict supply of a potentially life saving drug
No, prior to it's development it wasn't just scarce - it was non-existant, any "rethinking of the how we do R&D is performed in our economy" has to take that into account. The system now produces life saving drugs at a very rapid rate but restricts their supply for several years. Most of the proposals to fix this "artificial scarcity" would only fix it for drugs we already have but would likely result in making sure that those drugs we have not yet discovered remain "non-existent" or only very slowly come into existance.
it's not like other solutions haven't been tried. At the risk of becoming a IN SOVIET RUSSIA troll we have had several large and fairly advanced countries in the past 50 years that have attempted other models some of the strikingly similar to the models that reformers have suggested. Let's just say that they were not marked by the spectacular advancements that "our brand of capitalism" has enjoyed.
This isn't some cure that they genetically engineered, spending billions of dollars to splice DNA into an organism. It was literally 'found' in a rock pool. They stumbled across it.
This is perhaps the most mind-numbingly ignorant comment I have ever seen. This is the kind of comment that burrows into your brain and causes an aneurysm.
Do you think it happend like this? Tourist sitting on beach somewhere: "hey, you know that slime over there looks like an antibiotic" *take's a taste* "Why YES it IS an antibiotic, I think I'll patent it and make gobs of money on something I 'just stumbled across'. I'm so happy I didn't have to do any research or invest any money in discovering it - that would have cut into my rapacious profits"