What do you mean I agreed when I pressed Agree? Nothing came up on my computer, your Honor.. I had some flaky memory a while ago that I had to get replaced. I vaguely remember when I installed it it popped up a blank box with two blank buttons on it.. I clicked one of them and it just went on. Never thought about it otherwise.
Either the meta-data is encoded by hand, in which case it's faulty, prone to error, and susceptible to fraud, or the meta-data is encoded by a machine, in which case there's no need for a "semantic web" just an automated "semantic interpreter" that will interpret pages on the fly.
I mean really, Berners-Lee is just picking up John Wilkins' old saw-horse of a Philosophical Language from about 400 years ago. Philosophers of various stature have been picking up and dropping pieces of it ever since, and it's never caught on in all that time. Perhaps there's a reason for that.
We simply can't afford to give people the ability to change course mid-flight. Too many variables, as you cite. Flying cars driven that way would be a waste of lives and money. That being said, there are still a lot of gains that flying vehicles could provide (so long as we're willing to toss energy concerns out the window)
So we may have flying cars, but they won't be equivalent to the cars you have now where you can get in and go for a drive with no real destination in mind. Instead, your controls to the individual flying car become a simple data entry system. You type in where you want to go, strap in, and let the vehicle do the rest.
Obviously such a vehicle would need multiple redundant systems and the ability to handle emergency landings. It would probably also be centrally controlled, in order to make sure that they didn't hit each other and for emergency cases. (You don't want any idiot getting into his flying car as the hurricane comes through) A flying car isn't a step toward more freedom, as many people think, it's a step toward more control.
You're right. There are plenty of countries that don't have a public school system. How many of them are first world countries again?
Okay, so we're in a society where both parents basically have to work to survive unless one of them has managed to get educated him/herself and found a decent job. So who's staying home to educate the kids? In the libertarian world, where those without food have no relief to look back on, what do you give up first, feeding your kid, or having the time to educate your kid?
No, actually, I called it a troll because it was so obviously silly I couldn't believe that anybody would actually mean it.
Do some research on charitable contributions. You'll find that the data says that people will tend to give about the same proportion of their earnings to charity regardless of income level.
Those who give zero when they're broke will tend to give zero when they're rich.
Those who give about 15% when they're poor, will tend to give about 15% when they're better off. So yeah, a lot more dollars would go if you weren't taxed so heavily, but chances are that it would still work out to about 15% of your income.
Given that, we can see that unless the number of people needing aid doesn't increase faster than your income, the charities are in a losing situation. Given that charities *now* are not able to tend to more than a fraction of those in need, when government support programs are in place, you think that'll somehow improve?
Heh. Nice troll, but just in case some others are emulating your short term thinking, here's the response:
Okay, now you've got a non-educated waif out there. What happens to him? Well, being as he's uneducated in a society that increasingly requires education for legitimate employment, he turns to illegitimate employment instead.
So congrats, you've saved money on your education taxes, just to have to put it into a private security firm and increased theft insurance instead.
Instead of the kid becoming a productive member of the society, creating products and helping people get what they need cheaper, he's become a destructive member, forcing people to pay more for no real benefit.
Well, even if the government fires half their workers all at once, they're not trained for civilian jobs such that they wouldn't require a period of retraining. Just like the hiring of contracters for many government jobs anymore, many will find work in almost the same position. Really? How? The tax code will be simplified, so it's not just "outsourcing" those jobs, it's eliminating them completely. Not just in the government, but in the private sector as well (since the complexity is to some degree what the private firms are based on. Would anybody use H&R Block if their tax form was a postcard?)
Congratulations, you've just released mass unemployment of these "paper-pushers" you so disdain. Think that's not going to have a drag on the economy -- all these former consumers now being unable to consume?
Given how a lot of taxes are progressive Didn't we just fix that? So just what did we do to enable us to fire most of the IRS? That was my point. You've just "fixed" the progressive tax scheme. Meaning the disproportionately wealthy are now even more well off, relatively, to where they were before.
Economics being a zero sum game or not has nothing to do with the equality of the playing field.
If everybody gets "richer" by the same amount, inflation compensates, leaving real purchasing power unchanged. However, by your system, the rich are getting relatively richer. Since inflation compensates by the mean of economic activity, this means that for those not on the upper half of the scale their real purchasing power actually decreases by some amount.
Monopolies do not *have* to be bad, I'll agree. But it is very easy for them to be so, and relies almost entirely on the monopoly's own choice.
However, anywhere that there is a significant barrier to entry, a monopoly can be formed (and even in those areas where there really isn't any barrier a good run can be had at a monopoly, ala MS)
Once a monopoly is formed, it can use economies of scale to prevent other companies from being able to overcome the barrier to entry.
This gives a less stable bottom line (as the monopoly goes through periods of gouging and undercutting, tending more toward gouging in ratio with how high the entry barrier is) but it still doesn't necessarily mean that it is non-profitable for the monopoly to gouge consumers. Where the service is a required service (utilities, food, medical care, education) this costs the society as a whole.
It's only slow if the government releases them slowly.
When you talk about wholesale changes to the tax code that allows these bureaucrats to be releasd into the workforce, there's nothing there about it being changed slowly.
And the other side is that you're not getting any actual gain in purchasing power if everybody else gains the same as you do. All you're doing is adjusting the level of the field. Given how a lot of taxes are progressive, you'd likely be adjusting the field mostly in favor of those who already have the most money.
Here's a hint.. those people are already consuming.
If you add them to the manufacturing capacity, you have surplus manufacturing. When that happens you get incresased storage costs, or in other words, wasted resources.
The only difference is that companies are a lot quicker to ditch wasted resources, so the extra manufacturing capacity (ie, workers) is dumped. Of course then what we have is more unemployment, so lower demand, ie higher manufacturing glut, etc.
Welcome to the deflationary spiral. Argentina had one of those recently. Perhaps you should look up what happened there.
Look up some statistics on charitable donations one day. One thing you'll note is that the percentage of people who donate out of the general public remains about the same across all income levels. All that changes is the amount donated, and even that scales roughly at the same rate as income level.
Ergo, people who are charitable are charitable regardless of what they're making and what they have. Peope who aren't, aren't. They can always find some other area where they need the money.
Hell, you might be twice as likely to donate with lower taxes, but twice nothing is still zip.
One of the lovely things about having humans count the vote is that it scales perfectly well. If you have more people who can vote, you obviously have more people who can count as well.
why are the electoral college voters more suited for judging character than the populace as a whole?
They aren't. No more so than whites being better than blacks, or men being better than women.
But that still doesn't change the fact that he's correct. The Electoral college was put in place exactly because the founders didn't trust the hoi polloi to be entirely sensible. Just like they didn't trust blacks to be sensible, or women to be sensible.
We've managed to discard those latter two anachronisms today, but the Electoral College still persists.
Re:Who said anything about "free?"
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
Ah, so then we come to a society where the use of creativity is dictated almost entirely by the needs of the elite. Or patronage in other words.
It's a workable system I suppose. But not really what I'd consider to be a good one.
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
Good.
Now take that one step further.. what is the reason they don't keep their ideas secret?
It's because they get fame and fortune as a result of sharing their ideas. The fame comes from having it first. The fortune though? That comes from being the one able to sell the idea for implementation. Except if the idea was free for anybody to take.. what's the incentive for a company to buy it?
Re:the whole IP issue is invalid
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
You could only get copies if crackers managed to break the copy-protection.
Crackers always break copy-protection though, right? So what's the problem? The problem is sooner or later they're going to wise up and realize that instead of giving you the software on your machine, they'll just let you purchase time on their servers and run the program there. Your machine essentially becomes a dumb terminal, so there's nothing to crack.
ie, you can't get the MS products for free.
Re:Who said anything about "free?"
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
Hey, if you're willing to pay, on your own, for custom software to be written or a new song to be written, every time you want one? More power to you.
I don't have that kind of money however.
Creative works are expensive. A new novel can easily cost a writer 6 months of his time. Are you willing to pay 6 months salary for a person to get a new book?
Slashdot Mirror
EULA?
What EULA?
Do you have a copy with my signature?
What do you mean I agreed when I pressed Agree? Nothing came up on my computer, your Honor.. I had some flaky memory a while ago that I had to get replaced. I vaguely remember when I installed it it popped up a blank box with two blank buttons on it.. I clicked one of them and it just went on. Never thought about it otherwise.
Either the meta-data is encoded by hand, in which case it's faulty, prone to error, and susceptible to fraud, or the meta-data is encoded by a machine, in which case there's no need for a "semantic web" just an automated "semantic interpreter" that will interpret pages on the fly.
I mean really, Berners-Lee is just picking up John Wilkins' old saw-horse of a Philosophical Language from about 400 years ago. Philosophers of various stature have been picking up and dropping pieces of it ever since, and it's never caught on in all that time. Perhaps there's a reason for that.
Try http://www.hardwar.info for a decent Elite sequel
Joe Pilot wouldn't exist.
We simply can't afford to give people the ability to change course mid-flight. Too many variables, as you cite. Flying cars driven that way would be a waste of lives and money. That being said, there are still a lot of gains that flying vehicles could provide (so long as we're willing to toss energy concerns out the window)
So we may have flying cars, but they won't be equivalent to the cars you have now where you can get in and go for a drive with no real destination in mind. Instead, your controls to the individual flying car become a simple data entry system. You type in where you want to go, strap in, and let the vehicle do the rest.
Obviously such a vehicle would need multiple redundant systems and the ability to handle emergency landings. It would probably also be centrally controlled, in order to make sure that they didn't hit each other and for emergency cases. (You don't want any idiot getting into his flying car as the hurricane comes through) A flying car isn't a step toward more freedom, as many people think, it's a step toward more control.
But it doesn't generally include long-term thinking, which is also what your assumption relies on.
Let's start by stating, as we are all smart people here,
Let's start by saying that's a hell of an assumption on Slashdot.
Are you kidding?
Think about it.. the Tech managed to keep Windows up and running for almost 50 days. The guy's a hero!
Ah.. I see.. so you're assuming a change in the behavior of the people based on a change in the system.
There was some other guy who thought that'd happen as well.. now what was his name again? Oh yeah.
Karl Marx.
Funny that.. didn't seem to work out for him, did it?
You're right. There are plenty of countries that don't have a public school system. How many of them are first world countries again?
Okay, so we're in a society where both parents basically have to work to survive unless one of them has managed to get educated him/herself and found a decent job. So who's staying home to educate the kids? In the libertarian world, where those without food have no relief to look back on, what do you give up first, feeding your kid, or having the time to educate your kid?
No, actually, I called it a troll because it was so obviously silly I couldn't believe that anybody would actually mean it.
Congratulations. You're one of the givers.
Do some research on charitable contributions. You'll find that the data says that people will tend to give about the same proportion of their earnings to charity regardless of income level.
Those who give zero when they're broke will tend to give zero when they're rich.
Those who give about 15% when they're poor, will tend to give about 15% when they're better off. So yeah, a lot more dollars would go if you weren't taxed so heavily, but chances are that it would still work out to about 15% of your income.
Given that, we can see that unless the number of people needing aid doesn't increase faster than your income, the charities are in a losing situation. Given that charities *now* are not able to tend to more than a fraction of those in need, when government support programs are in place, you think that'll somehow improve?
Heh. Nice troll, but just in case some others are emulating your short term thinking, here's the response:
Okay, now you've got a non-educated waif out there. What happens to him? Well, being as he's uneducated in a society that increasingly requires education for legitimate employment, he turns to illegitimate employment instead.
So congrats, you've saved money on your education taxes, just to have to put it into a private security firm and increased theft insurance instead.
Instead of the kid becoming a productive member of the society, creating products and helping people get what they need cheaper, he's become a destructive member, forcing people to pay more for no real benefit.
Myopic?
Who said anything about MS?
Well, even if the government fires half their workers all at once, they're not trained for civilian jobs such that they wouldn't require a period of retraining. Just like the hiring of contracters for many government jobs anymore, many will find work in almost the same position.
Really? How? The tax code will be simplified, so it's not just "outsourcing" those jobs, it's eliminating them completely. Not just in the government, but in the private sector as well (since the complexity is to some degree what the private firms are based on. Would anybody use H&R Block if their tax form was a postcard?)
Congratulations, you've just released mass unemployment of these "paper-pushers" you so disdain. Think that's not going to have a drag on the economy -- all these former consumers now being unable to consume?
Given how a lot of taxes are progressive
Didn't we just fix that? So just what did we do to enable us to fire most of the IRS?
That was my point. You've just "fixed" the progressive tax scheme. Meaning the disproportionately wealthy are now even more well off, relatively, to where they were before.
Economics being a zero sum game or not has nothing to do with the equality of the playing field.
If everybody gets "richer" by the same amount, inflation compensates, leaving real purchasing power unchanged. However, by your system, the rich are getting relatively richer. Since inflation compensates by the mean of economic activity, this means that for those not on the upper half of the scale their real purchasing power actually decreases by some amount.
Monopolies do not *have* to be bad, I'll agree. But it is very easy for them to be so, and relies almost entirely on the monopoly's own choice.
However, anywhere that there is a significant barrier to entry, a monopoly can be formed (and even in those areas where there really isn't any barrier a good run can be had at a monopoly, ala MS)
Once a monopoly is formed, it can use economies of scale to prevent other companies from being able to overcome the barrier to entry.
This gives a less stable bottom line (as the monopoly goes through periods of gouging and undercutting, tending more toward gouging in ratio with how high the entry barrier is) but it still doesn't necessarily mean that it is non-profitable for the monopoly to gouge consumers. Where the service is a required service (utilities, food, medical care, education) this costs the society as a whole.
It's only slow if the government releases them slowly.
When you talk about wholesale changes to the tax code that allows these bureaucrats to be releasd into the workforce, there's nothing there about it being changed slowly.
And the other side is that you're not getting any actual gain in purchasing power if everybody else gains the same as you do. All you're doing is adjusting the level of the field. Given how a lot of taxes are progressive, you'd likely be adjusting the field mostly in favor of those who already have the most money.
Welcome to economics 101.
Here's a hint.. those people are already consuming.
If you add them to the manufacturing capacity, you have surplus manufacturing. When that happens you get incresased storage costs, or in other words, wasted resources.
The only difference is that companies are a lot quicker to ditch wasted resources, so the extra manufacturing capacity (ie, workers) is dumped. Of course then what we have is more unemployment, so lower demand, ie higher manufacturing glut, etc.
Welcome to the deflationary spiral. Argentina had one of those recently. Perhaps you should look up what happened there.
I call BS.
Look up some statistics on charitable donations one day. One thing you'll note is that the percentage of people who donate out of the general public remains about the same across all income levels. All that changes is the amount donated, and even that scales roughly at the same rate as income level.
Ergo, people who are charitable are charitable regardless of what they're making and what they have. Peope who aren't, aren't. They can always find some other area where they need the money.
Hell, you might be twice as likely to donate with lower taxes, but twice nothing is still zip.
Perhaps you've heard of this little thing called a "monopoly"?
If they're all as bright as you, perhaps.
One of the lovely things about having humans count the vote is that it scales perfectly well. If you have more people who can vote, you obviously have more people who can count as well.
why are the electoral college voters more suited for judging character than the populace as a whole?
They aren't. No more so than whites being better than blacks, or men being better than women.
But that still doesn't change the fact that he's correct. The Electoral college was put in place exactly because the founders didn't trust the hoi polloi to be entirely sensible. Just like they didn't trust blacks to be sensible, or women to be sensible.
We've managed to discard those latter two anachronisms today, but the Electoral College still persists.
Ah, so then we come to a society where the use of creativity is dictated almost entirely by the needs of the elite. Or patronage in other words.
It's a workable system I suppose. But not really what I'd consider to be a good one.
Good.
Now take that one step further.. what is the reason they don't keep their ideas secret?
It's because they get fame and fortune as a result of sharing their ideas. The fame comes from having it first. The fortune though? That comes from being the one able to sell the idea for implementation. Except if the idea was free for anybody to take.. what's the incentive for a company to buy it?
You could only get copies if crackers managed to break the copy-protection.
Crackers always break copy-protection though, right? So what's the problem? The problem is sooner or later they're going to wise up and realize that instead of giving you the software on your machine, they'll just let you purchase time on their servers and run the program there. Your machine essentially becomes a dumb terminal, so there's nothing to crack.
ie, you can't get the MS products for free.
Hey, if you're willing to pay, on your own, for custom software to be written or a new song to be written, every time you want one? More power to you.
I don't have that kind of money however.
Creative works are expensive. A new novel can easily cost a writer 6 months of his time. Are you willing to pay 6 months salary for a person to get a new book?
Patents != Copyright.
Allowing ideas to be patented (which is what is happening with software patents and business method patents) was one of the worst moves made.
Software (and music) deserves to be copyrighted, and deserves to have protections under that.
It does *not* deserve to be patented.