It's not entirely applicable, but your comment reminded me of a quote:
"The only freedom which counts is the freedom to do what some other people think to be wrong. There is no point in demanding freedom to do that which all will applaud. All the so-called liberties or rights are things which have to be asserted against others who claim that if such things are to be allowed their own rights are infringed or their own liberties threatened. This is always true, even when we speak of the freedom to worship, of the right of free speech or association, or of public assembly. If we are to allow freedoms at all there will constantly be complaints that either the liberty itself or the way in which it is exercised is being abused, and, if it is a genuine freedom, these complaints will often be justified. There is no way of having a free society in which there is not abuse. Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty."
-- Lord Chief Justice Halisham
Basically a neat way of pretending to do something while actually ignoring the problem.
Or perhaps a neat way of believing that government does not need to involve itself in everything?
Re:Why do we have this "grow or perish" mentality?
on
Should Sun Just Fold Now?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The reason companies exist is to make money.
Actually, economically speaking, companies exist to maximize profits or, if they are in the hole, to minimize their losses.
Of course it is the intention of companies to make as much money as they possibly can. However, the "grow or die" idea is still misplaced. A company can hold exactly where they are, even dip a little, and have no impact on their employees salaries or benefits.
As long as a company can pay its fixed costs--that is, rent, paychecks, things of that nature--it behoves them to stay in business as long as they can. Turning employees out on the street when you're still making enough money to pay them is hardly right.
Granted, companies can not run in the red forever (although some certainly seem to try) and they may need to look into things like layoffs to return to profitability. I disagree, however, with your mentality that a company needs to perform better than its peers. There is plenty of room for runner-ups in the economy. And while employees would rather work for the company giving them the most money and benefits, that is not always an option. If they're not hiring your position, should you leave the field or find one of their competitors and see if they're hiring?
Capitalism desires that your company perform better than everybody else, but it doesn't require it. If it did, only one company in every field would be worth a damn.
Another possibility is that putting material on a public web server inherently implies permission to download and view it
To "download and view" sounds a reasonable interpretation. However, to download, modify, jam into a different medium (Flash vs. PNG) on a completely different server, that exists for a completely different purpose, in order to promote a commercial product... aren't we stretching interpretations a little here? "Download and view" is a far cry from "use to sell your product."
Assuming the facts are accurate as represented--that is, that the images were used without permission--it's a pretty clear-cut case to me. The copyright owner has the right to determine where and in what method his work may be used absent a specific license, and has the right to seek legal remedy in order to enforce such decisions. Once the CC took effect for his work, it only codified what use he would and would not permit. If Lindows didn't seek permission prior to the CC license, they are violating his copyright. If they are using it for commercial use (and they surely seem to be) after the CC, they are in violation of his copyright by being in violation of the terms of that license.
I simply remind that the definition of copyright is "the legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work." Yes, there are fair use issues, but I can not believe any reasonable individual, much less a judge, is going to assume that it is a fair use to steal somebody's work, not seek permission to use the work, give them no credit or compensation and then use it to promote their commercial product.
As far as I'm concerned, the author of the images has every right to make whatever sized stink he wants about this. So far I haven't heard what he plans to do about it, if anything, aside from bring it to light. That's an awfully measured response considering.
I had a psychology professor last semester who mentioned studies trying to figure out why American students were so bad at math as compared to many other countries of the world. The basic conclusion that they seemed to be reaching is that we're trying too hard to make math fun. That is, a discipline such as math requires mind-numbing amounts of repetition but since kids don't like that, teachers often shy away.
Then again studies also showed that Japanese students, for example, who absolutely rough up Americans in math scores as children generally have about the same scores years after they're out of school.
Or user interfaces. These things are hard, tedious, and a hell of a lot more boring than actually coming up with stuff to "make things work".
I agree with you and the article author that this is an area that needs improvement in the OSS community. However, I don't think it is because they're hard and tedious.
Rather, I think that developers make an initial user interface--maybe it's good, maybe it's awful--and they sit down and begin to use it. They determine things they don't like, or things that could be better placed, and they make the changes. They repeat until they're happy. This is good.
The problem comes in training yourself to "bad" things that you might not identify as bad. For example, while you were busy moving other form elements around you might not have noticed that a button might be better placed elsewhere. As more time passes you become more and more used to the button being where it is and it doesn't occur to you to move it anymore. In fat if you did move it, it would feel awkward because you became used to it being where it was.
This problem occurs less with commercial applications because of QA and in larger companies, even experts in designing interfaces. With OSS, the developers get used to a design in the normal testing process and when they release a product, they move on to adding features and fixing bugs. Again, this isn't bad, but it means that UI tweaks that users might want are always taking a back-seat. When developers are using their free time to work on a project and aren't being paid--and thus have no real deadlines--I think that most tend to be more unwilling or unable to give up extra time and the bugfixes and feature additions take precedence.
Another problem is conformity. That is, a developer is not under any particular pressure to make things look or feel the same way as any other application looks or feels. Simple example: "OK" button on the left or right? People can arrive at good conclusions for their product independent of and contrary to the conclusions others reached for theirs. While each piece may, itself, function quite intuitively, the fact that a user has to "re-train" himself moving from one program to another can be considerably annoying to him/her. People become attached to their way of doing things; if you don't believe that, ask "KDE or Gnome?" here and watch the fights. Sometimes one is clearly better than the other, but more often each have their good points. I've heard a lot of times that if people don't like the way an open-source project is going they can just fork it. Well, yes they can, but it only creates more problems for the end user.
The solution? I don't know. Greater developer focus on UI, for one. Maybe open source folks can get their own UI experts who are willing to contribute time to making standards or, better yet (since standards can be ignored), permitting developers to submit their program to the experts and receiving expert feedback in return. While the developers wouldn't, in theory, be required to follow the advice, it wouldn't make much sense for them to submit it if they were going to do what they wanted to do anyway. Does anything like this exist?
The U.S. District court last year decided that the RIAA could not subpoena ISPs [techtv.com] to reveal the identities of users who have violated copyright laws on the network.
It's probably nitpicking, but it is not "The" U.S. District Court, it is one U.S. District Court, specifically the Appellate Court for the District of Columbia. The legal decision is not binding on courts outside the jurisdiction of that court.
This is part of a more complex and disturbing trend of a total conversion of the Internet from a tool of the masses for usful communication, to a commercial product. And, it's an example of how western nations, especially the United States, think that they "own" the internet.
Talk about tossing in an agenda in topics no matter how tenuous the connection. How, exactly, is a US company filing for an IPO an example of how the US--apparently the entire nation!--thinks it owns the Internet?
Personally I don't mind Gator or what they do, because it's really simple: I just don't install Gator. While I have had plenty of pieces of spyware that manage to sneak through (yeah yeah, I still use IE when I'm in Windows), Gator has never been one of them. I believe I've gotten a pop-up "do you want to install Gator?" dialog from time to time but simply saying "No way in bloody hell" has stopped it. Whether or not to install software that bundles it as a required part of the install process is the decision of the person installing the software. I have seldom come across any piece of software that I absolutely had to install and could not settle for any alternatives.
It's capitalism. That's hardly a unique province of the United States, nor is it necessarily a bad thing. I wouldn't give these guys my money, but I'm not prepared to condemn anybody who does--particularly, as you point out, if they are doing it to make a profit and not because they support the practices. It is not my place to tell people which companies they can invest in under what circumstances. It's also freedom. As much as it annoys the crap out of us sometimes, advertisers have as much right to the Internet as we do so long as they are obeying the applicable laws. I hardly even notice banner ads anymore and my popup blocker does a respectable job of keeping that trash at bay. Even if one does squirt through, it hardly ever stays up long enough for me to read or click on. Obviously, though, enough people find the Gator-style ads useful at the time they're displayed that advertisers continue to pay Gator to provide the service.
As for the UN, if you think other UN member nations are any less beholden to (economic) interests than the US is, you're mistaken. All giving things like ICANN to the UN would do is create more conflicting interests to pull and tug at the same authority.
Aye, but Apple's claims aren't property, they're just "claims". They could also claim to have the world's bestest 256-bit computer, but they ccouldn't then accuse Sun of "vandalism"
Claims are just claims, sure. But the implication was that if the RIAA could not be convinced that Apple's DRM was effective, that they would no longer permit iTunes to operate. In effect, their claim was their selling point: Let us deal with distributing your music, we'll protect it.
I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion, but that's what it is, not that something better could come along.
What I am really asking is, is there no direct democratic control of the armies in the US? Why do you give so much control to the president and his cabinet? are you in constant mode of war?
The president is democratically elected and his cabinet is confirmed by the democratically-elected Senate. Short of nation-wide votes every time a presidents feels the nation needs to respond (and I am not here to comment on whether or not their judgments were correct), we're about as democratically-controlled militarily as it's possible to be.
But I think you're also missing important pieces of the puzzle. The Constitution declares the president to be the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, but it also assigns the power to declare war solely to the Congress. Since some loopholes were exploited in previous times (namely that troops would be deployed and fighting without ever officially calling it a war), the War Powers Act of 1973 was passed by Congress that sought to illucidate and restrict what the president may do unilateraly. It requires permission to introduce the armed forces into hostilities or situations that may be hostile without permission from and reporting to Congress. Specifically, "Within sixty calendar days after a report is submitted or is required to be submitted pursuant to section 4(a)(1), whichever is earlier, the President shall terminate any use of United States Armed Forces with respect to which such report was submitted (or required to be submitted), unless the Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces, (2) has extended by law such sixty-day period, or (3) is physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack upon the United States. Such sixty-day period shall be extended for not more than an additional thirty days if the President determines and certifies to the Congress in writing that unavoidable military necessity respecting the safety of United States Armed Forces requires the continued use of such armed forces in the course of bringing about a prompt removal of such forces."
Are there problems with it? Yes, in that our two-party legislature is likely to produce at least half backing for a president even if everybody thinks it's stupid, but at least right now that's the political reality in America. We still elect our leaders, our leaders still answer to us at election time. How much more democratically controlled do you think this process can get?
Also keep in mind why America is the way it is. We didn't want to get involved in the "purely European" World War I, but we did it anyway to save our friends and prevent the conflict from spreading, eventually to our own borders. After which we crawled back into our hole and were perfectly content to let the world take care of itself. Then came World War II, and while the president did see the need for America to enter and was steering public opinion in that direction, the public itself, and many in Congress, did not view it the same way. Then we were hit at Pearl Harbor and literally hundreds of thousands of our young men lined up to go fight in Europe and the pacific. Many of them died on European beaches to secure European freedom.
America has emerged as the world's leader not because of choice but because of necessity and circumstance. This nation and its leaders have huge balls looking out not only for our own interests, but the interests and security of our friends and neighbors. When the Cuban Missile Crisis was raging, President Kennedy got on the television and stated, "it shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union." The man protected a hemisphere.
Now, frankly, here's the bottom line as I see it: Europeans may not like what we're doing in Iraq, they might disagree and we might be wrong. Hell,
I don't like your PS2 so why should I buy a PSP or PS3?
You don't like their products so you decided to rant about how you're not going to buy it and try to hide the rant amidst gripes about monthly service bills. The line above made it painfully clear to me that you wouldn't have bought it even if it had nothing to do with subscriptions.
Could have at least announced your bias in advance so I wouldn't have had to waste my time reading it.
IE became the most popular browser primarily because you couldn't avoid it on any installation of Windows. Netscape, by contrast, you had to download, install, and -- in theory -- pay for.
Agreed. But --
Many Windows users will think it's too much to type in google.com and hit enter before they do a search, so Microsoft will once again use its monopoly to ruin a great product.
-- I do not agree with this or with making a correllation between the two. Microsoft is certainly going to try, but I don't think they will succeed for several reasons.
1) First of all with regard to the IE/Netscape wars, that took place in a different time. It was playing out on 28.8 modems where to download a five meg file would take a tedius amount of time. The choice was essentially between free and on your computer and free and take an hour to download and install it. Microsoft won handily.
2) I disagree with your statement that "many Windows users will think it's too much to type in google.com and hit enter before they do a search." If we are correct in our assumption that Google is the #1 most popular search engine today, then we must acknowledge the fact that users ARE typing google.com and hitting enter before they search. MSN (and of course their search) is the default IE webpage on a default installation of Windows. Other companies sometimes point the default URL to themselves, but I don't know of any company that points it to Google. Same thing with the default search within IE; it points to Microsoft, I don't know of anybody who resets that to Google when they're shipping a new computer. So far as I can see, that either means that Google is not as popular as we think it is, or people are willing to spend the extra couple of seconds to get there.
Bottom line, I think, is that Google is going to win or lose the search war based on its search technology--a novel concept, it seems, when competing with Microsoft. I agree with many people here: Google is fantastic, I love the minimalist design and the unintrusive advertisements, but I also think the average person only cares about the quality of results and even those who do care about design issues have to put result quality ahead in the importance category. If MS manages to put out a better search engine, then it will win. If it doesn't, I see no reason to prophesize the end of Google.
The problem is, and I don't mean this in a disrespectful way to anybody, most people don't care very much. Let's face it: Slashdot is hardly representative of society at large. People here are keen on technological issues and privacy issues while the average person on the street doesn't know and doesn't care. My parents know what their loyalty card is being used for and they don't care. Hell, I know it and I don't care either; it won't stop me from applying for one myself in the future.
Your "I don't track you" advertisement might be able to bring you a small geeky community of folks who appreciate that but bottom line is, as in most any business, money talks. Whether you're tracking them or not, you had better be able to match or beat the prices and selection of the place that does. The only real alternative is to go "upscale," charge a little more for friendlier or more personable service, which people enjoy, and hope the people who will come to you because of that outnumber those who won't because of your prices.
Additionally, an increasing number of the loyalty-card stores want your business badly enough that they will give you the card price even without a card. I used to work at Jewel (owned by Albertsons for those in different parts of the country) a year or so ago. They would always begin by asking if you had a card; if not, or if you said you forgot it, they would punch in a generic card number for you anyway. Therefore you don't get tracked, but they get your business and hopefully, in their minds, your return business.
On a semi-side note, one thing I've noticed is that the average person seems to care much less what companies do to them than what government does. I suppose it makes sense--the government can certainly screw you harder than most private companies can--but I still find it interesting.
Well, not to be a smartass, but limited means that it's not unlimited; ie, that it does have a termination point.
The rulings that have come down in cases like this seem to indicate that at least the current Court has decided that "limited" is whatever Congress decides it is. The section you quoted is within the section enumerating Congressional powers, so that ruling makes some sense.
Of course what you should do in situations where you don't agree with the Court's opinion is to read the dissenting opinions, and to find out what reasoning the justices used to decide in the manner you hoped would prevail. Interestingly, the idea you presented does appear: That the new copyright terms make the copyright period virtually unlimited. Other ideas include that it puts the First Amendment and the Copyright Clause at odds with one another; that is to say, that the near-perpetual extension of copyright effects the manner in which it may be disseminated, which becomes an issue of free speech. Justice Stevens, on the other hand, argues that s 1964 precedent that "a State could not 'extend the
life of a patent beyond its expiration date,'" applies to Congress. He argues that if Congress is forbidden from making ex post facto laws--for example, that it would not be proper for Congress to pass a bill limiting patent term once a patent was granted under previous requirements--that the government, as a representative of the public, should be likewise forbidden from making an agreement that extends the inventor's monopoly against the public. Very interesting arguement.
Hopefully, the Kahle case is incorporating some of these arguments. It's obviously sound legal reasoning if a Supreme Court justice wrote it to begin with. However, the problem is that the decision was 7-2 meaning that the arguements would need to persuade three justices to switch sides, or that three justices other than Stevens or Breyer need to retire and be replaced--with people who agree with Stevens/Breyer, no less. 7-2 is regarded as a strong decision, one that is not likely to be overturned in the near future.
Long story short, I guess: It is said the Supreme Court likes to review itself every 20 years or so. We're in for a long haul. Once again, like in 2000, analysts are expecting 2004 to be an important election in that the winner may get to appoint a number of Supreme Court justices. For good or bad. I don't expect Kahle to make much impact. The SC precedent is set until they, or subsequent Courts, are prepared to overturn it.
(Majority opinion and the two dissenting opinions in Eldred were used to base the summaries upon.)
But even in your own statement you show the problem: Terms like "large" are relative. They're comparative.
A "large dog" is likely to be much smaller than a "large boat," is likely to be much smaller than a "large house," is likely to be much smaller than a "large planet," is likely...
In fact I threw in all those "likely" statements precisely because the definition of "large" is so arbitrary. Is 1,000,000 a large number? It sure is if compared to.000001. It's not so impressive compared to 999,999 and it's small compared to 1,000,000,000,000.
In order for size to be a valid criteria you would have to pick specific size over which an object must be to be considered a planet. If we're talking diameter, Pluto is roughly half the size of other objects we call planets. Then again, the moon of Calisto is roughly the same size as the planet Mercury. If we're talking mass, then it's roughly 25 times less massive than Mercury--but then again Mercury is 15 times less massive than Venus, 18 times less massive than Earth and over 300 times less massive than Neptune. What is our cutoff point? And more importantly, how did we arrive at it? If we're going to assign it arbitrarily right now then we can decide for ourselves whether or not it would be a "reasonable definition" to include objects similar to Pluto and the debate begins anew.
And your proof that this is just bitching from liberals who still claim Bush "stole" the presidence(sic) is...??
If you think that the Justice Department, like all branches of government, is not affected by politics, you're mistaken. The JD was trying to get MS broken up. A new JD comes in, takes over, and abandons that tract. It WAS political. The average republican wants government's hands out of business. The average democrat wants to regulate business. Guaranteed: A harsher penalty would have come down under a democratic administration. Bush is a republican. Therefore the lesser punishment is directly related to Bush becoming president and appointing his republican cabinet.
You can argue if that's good or bad for yourself. To me it makes no difference. But you seem to be the only one making unbased political bitchings at somebody you know nothing about with absolutely no reasoning behind it except your BS statement that you "hear this a lot."
It was indeed the Bush administration. Under Clinton, the Justice Department was demanding that Microsoft be split up into two separate companies. When Bush came in, his JD settled for a slap on the wrist and a "be about your business."
It seems that people of a certain political bent are willing to condemn and set aside ANY goal, no matter how admirable, or how much they would have supported said goal if it wasn't THIS PRESIDENT promoting it.
Look at point number one, above. Stated as unassailable fact, this person clearly has such a terrific AXE to grind, they aren't interested in even considering that it might be simply true.
Then again you might not be considering that what he says might be true. If you think the Bush White House doesn't politicize EVERYTHING--even things they full do intend to follow through on--then you're sadly mistaken. They have proven themselves to be extremely partisan and abrasive. Maybe that's true of all White Houses, but it has never been as clear to me as it is with Bush. Make of that what you will.
Besides, why WOULDN'T Bush, or any president, do something like that? Get on TV, propose a new plan that a lot of people are going to like and watch the other party in Congress shoot it down. Makes you look like a great guy and the democrats (in this case) as the obstructors of progress. If Bush were to win a second term, it would likely also help the Republicans keep control of Congress.
But politics aside, I simply question if this is the right time for a space mission. I want to see space exploration resume as much as anybody, and I like the idea of a manned mission to Mars, but the economy simply isn't doing very well regardless of what the "economic indicators" say it should be doing.
Oh, the economy is probably improving a bit, but there's no denying that a lot of people still don't have jobs, and many of those who do are grossly overqualified for what they're doing; a programmer working the drive-through at McDonalds will show up as a person employed, but there is something wrong about that. But at the same time, we've got two wars/occupations to fight (Afghanistan and Iraq) with continued crises in North Korea, Iran and the Israeli/Palestinian issues. Terrorism hasn't gone away. In fact, terrorists just pulled off one of their bigger successes in some time. There is just too much else to do right now than fly to Mars.
Let me begin by saying that I agree with you that lawsuits are out of control.
But...
The sort of reform you suggest is not fair. We all know that guilty (or in this case liable) parties are found not liable, and not liable parties are found liable. It happens, especially in law where the running joke that "a jury is twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer" isn't that far from the truth.
An unintended consequence of this reform is to limit completely LEGITIMATE lawsuits and make big corporations essentially untouchable for the average Joe Citizen. We all know that the bigger the corporation or the richer the party, the more lawyers they have and the more expensive each one is. Even if somebody has a legitimate claim against the corporation, are they going to take the chance of having to pay $150,000 if a jury doesn't agree? How about a half million? They would be especially wary about doing so if the amount they're claiming is less than the amount that they were likely to lose if their case was rejected.
On the other side of the coin, it permits companies and rich people from continuing to run rampant over the judicial system by simply accepting the risks or for intimidation purposes--one of the main purposes of lawsuits today. Tort reform that only reforms the lower- and middle-classes... there just has to be something better.
On a completely DIFFERENT coin, even if your idea was otherwise flawless there would still be a problem: Namely, that some unbelievable percentage of cases never even reach court. So if that number is 85% (I can't find a figure right now), that means you're only having an effect on the remaining 15% of lawsuits anyway. It would be a start, but hardly a big impact.
Personally, I think the problem is attitude. When people stop believing that everybody owes them something, that if any mistake is ever made they should sue the pants off of somebody, the lawsuit problem will cease to exist. But that attitude plays on human nature's inherent greed, so I'm not sure it ever will.
Let me start off by saying that I don't exactly disagree with you, but I'm not sure 1) how much damage this sort of person does or 2) whether or not the good he does outweighs it.
Slashdot is a really cool place for science and technology news; that's what it's here for and that's why we come. But outside our little universe (no space humor intended) are the majority of folks who really don't know much about what's going on.
People like this certainly get a lot of PR because as somebody else pointed out, controversy sells. But at the same time controversy sparks, even requires, debate: Two sides, at least!, of the same issue. Which means that this guy might get on a radio show and talk up his crackpot ideas, but it may also have the effect of people going, "hey, you know, that Mars stuff is pretty neat" and taking more of an interest.
Generally speaking, the issue that somebody like this guy presents isn't really tough to deal with. He stared at some rocks, determined it looked like a face and decided it must mean alien life. It's not like a lot of other theories in astronomy where you really do need two PhD's to really grasp what's going on; it's a guy staring at a photo. Most people aren't going to take him seriously.
The real short version: One of the things the guy debunking the alien civilization claims says is that even if a small fraction of the 10 million people who listen to the radio show believe the alien theory that it still amounts to a lot of people. My contention is simply that even if only a small fraction of the 10 million people who listen to the radio show take a heightened interest in astronomy/the Mars missions that it still amounts to a lot of people.
I've never been directed anywhere, although I wouldn't be surprised if I simply turned off the service a long time ago or something and don't remember.
STOP MENTIONING BLUE SCREENS! DUDES! That's so old! It doesn't exist anymore! Anyone who mentions it is showing themselves to be out of touch!
Bull. My XP box has crashed--and I mean BSOD, BOOM! type crash--3-4 times in the six months or so I've had it. My laptop, which continues to run XP for the moment, has BSOD'd 3-4 times as well in about a year and a half. It is certainly an improvement over previous versions, but it is not immune.
Of course if you had actually read what the person said, he was talking about his Windows 98 box crashing and that he switched to linux because he couldn't justify buying XP, so your erroneous comments are also irrelevant. Oops.
We need some branch of the government that is separated somewhat from the consent political, partisan bickering that the other two branches engage in daily.
I know that was a typo, but it's an interesting one because as I'm sure you know, judicial nominees (at the federal level) do need to be given consent from the Senate, which brings the political, partisan bickering directly back in. Since they are also appointed by perhaps THE most political figure in the country, the president, and almost always appointed because they hold the same important ideals as the person appointing them, they are pretty political people themselves.
I suppose you're right that it is "somewhat" separated, probably farther than elected positions are, but they are definitely still involved. It's a shame.
The reason why your US forefathers equated "direct democracy" to mob rule was because like all politicians they abhorred the concept of anyone and everyone having a say and a system that would enable them to follow their words through.
Sort of. They abhorred it because they believed the philosophies of people like John Locke. They believed, perhaps rightly so in their time, that the average person was simply not educated enough to participate so directly in government. Things like the electoral college were set up to "save us from ourselves."
I wouldn't equate that position to abhorring the thought of people having a voice and an ability to follow through. They simply wanted the people participating in government to be the most intelligent parts of society (boy would they love Bush!). It would be interesting to see if they arrived at the same conclusion if they were alive in present day.
At the very least, these things confirm my general posit that "Computers should not be allowed to control things that move."
I think you've gone far too general with that posit. There are many situations where you would want a computer to control something rather than a person. Autopilot, for instance, is less likely to make mistakes than a pilot would be, properly coded; and in the event it failed or the operator didn't trust it, it can be turned off. Likewise with things such as computer-controlled cuts/welds/whatever in factories; it's more efficient and more accurate for a machine to be doing it than a person. Toll booths--it would be nice if they didn't exist, but imagine if every one had to be manned instead of having an automatic counter that can control the barrier. You might not have meant "things that move" to include such harmless applications, but it is what you said.
It's possible that any one of those things could be miscoded and end up doing it wrong, of course, but as I stated it's equally possible--perhaps more likely--for a human doing the same job to eventually make a mistake.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not entirely applicable, but your comment reminded me of a quote:
"The only freedom which counts is the freedom to do what some other people think to be wrong. There is no point in demanding freedom to do that which all will applaud. All the so-called liberties or rights are things which have to be asserted against others who claim that if such things are to be allowed their own rights are infringed or their own liberties threatened. This is always true, even when we speak of the freedom to worship, of the right of free speech or association, or of public assembly. If we are to allow freedoms at all there will constantly be complaints that either the liberty itself or the way in which it is exercised is being abused, and, if it is a genuine freedom, these complaints will often be justified. There is no way of having a free society in which there is not abuse. Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty."
-- Lord Chief Justice Halisham
Basically a neat way of pretending to do something while actually ignoring the problem.
Or perhaps a neat way of believing that government does not need to involve itself in everything?
The reason companies exist is to make money.
Actually, economically speaking, companies exist to maximize profits or, if they are in the hole, to minimize their losses.
Of course it is the intention of companies to make as much money as they possibly can. However, the "grow or die" idea is still misplaced. A company can hold exactly where they are, even dip a little, and have no impact on their employees salaries or benefits.
As long as a company can pay its fixed costs--that is, rent, paychecks, things of that nature--it behoves them to stay in business as long as they can. Turning employees out on the street when you're still making enough money to pay them is hardly right.
Granted, companies can not run in the red forever (although some certainly seem to try) and they may need to look into things like layoffs to return to profitability. I disagree, however, with your mentality that a company needs to perform better than its peers. There is plenty of room for runner-ups in the economy. And while employees would rather work for the company giving them the most money and benefits, that is not always an option. If they're not hiring your position, should you leave the field or find one of their competitors and see if they're hiring?
Capitalism desires that your company perform better than everybody else, but it doesn't require it. If it did, only one company in every field would be worth a damn.
Another possibility is that putting material on a public web server inherently implies permission to download and view it
To "download and view" sounds a reasonable interpretation. However, to download, modify, jam into a different medium (Flash vs. PNG) on a completely different server, that exists for a completely different purpose, in order to promote a commercial product... aren't we stretching interpretations a little here? "Download and view" is a far cry from "use to sell your product."
Assuming the facts are accurate as represented--that is, that the images were used without permission--it's a pretty clear-cut case to me. The copyright owner has the right to determine where and in what method his work may be used absent a specific license, and has the right to seek legal remedy in order to enforce such decisions. Once the CC took effect for his work, it only codified what use he would and would not permit. If Lindows didn't seek permission prior to the CC license, they are violating his copyright. If they are using it for commercial use (and they surely seem to be) after the CC, they are in violation of his copyright by being in violation of the terms of that license.
I simply remind that the definition of copyright is "the legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work." Yes, there are fair use issues, but I can not believe any reasonable individual, much less a judge, is going to assume that it is a fair use to steal somebody's work, not seek permission to use the work, give them no credit or compensation and then use it to promote their commercial product.
As far as I'm concerned, the author of the images has every right to make whatever sized stink he wants about this. So far I haven't heard what he plans to do about it, if anything, aside from bring it to light. That's an awfully measured response considering.
I had a psychology professor last semester who mentioned studies trying to figure out why American students were so bad at math as compared to many other countries of the world. The basic conclusion that they seemed to be reaching is that we're trying too hard to make math fun. That is, a discipline such as math requires mind-numbing amounts of repetition but since kids don't like that, teachers often shy away.
Then again studies also showed that Japanese students, for example, who absolutely rough up Americans in math scores as children generally have about the same scores years after they're out of school.
Or user interfaces. These things are hard, tedious, and a hell of a lot more boring than actually coming up with stuff to "make things work".
I agree with you and the article author that this is an area that needs improvement in the OSS community. However, I don't think it is because they're hard and tedious.
Rather, I think that developers make an initial user interface--maybe it's good, maybe it's awful--and they sit down and begin to use it. They determine things they don't like, or things that could be better placed, and they make the changes. They repeat until they're happy. This is good.
The problem comes in training yourself to "bad" things that you might not identify as bad. For example, while you were busy moving other form elements around you might not have noticed that a button might be better placed elsewhere. As more time passes you become more and more used to the button being where it is and it doesn't occur to you to move it anymore. In fat if you did move it, it would feel awkward because you became used to it being where it was.
This problem occurs less with commercial applications because of QA and in larger companies, even experts in designing interfaces. With OSS, the developers get used to a design in the normal testing process and when they release a product, they move on to adding features and fixing bugs. Again, this isn't bad, but it means that UI tweaks that users might want are always taking a back-seat. When developers are using their free time to work on a project and aren't being paid--and thus have no real deadlines--I think that most tend to be more unwilling or unable to give up extra time and the bugfixes and feature additions take precedence.
Another problem is conformity. That is, a developer is not under any particular pressure to make things look or feel the same way as any other application looks or feels. Simple example: "OK" button on the left or right? People can arrive at good conclusions for their product independent of and contrary to the conclusions others reached for theirs. While each piece may, itself, function quite intuitively, the fact that a user has to "re-train" himself moving from one program to another can be considerably annoying to him/her. People become attached to their way of doing things; if you don't believe that, ask "KDE or Gnome?" here and watch the fights. Sometimes one is clearly better than the other, but more often each have their good points. I've heard a lot of times that if people don't like the way an open-source project is going they can just fork it. Well, yes they can, but it only creates more problems for the end user.
The solution? I don't know. Greater developer focus on UI, for one. Maybe open source folks can get their own UI experts who are willing to contribute time to making standards or, better yet (since standards can be ignored), permitting developers to submit their program to the experts and receiving expert feedback in return. While the developers wouldn't, in theory, be required to follow the advice, it wouldn't make much sense for them to submit it if they were going to do what they wanted to do anyway. Does anything like this exist?
The U.S. District court last year decided that the RIAA could not subpoena ISPs [techtv.com] to reveal the identities of users who have violated copyright laws on the network.
It's probably nitpicking, but it is not "The" U.S. District Court, it is one U.S. District Court, specifically the Appellate Court for the District of Columbia. The legal decision is not binding on courts outside the jurisdiction of that court.
This is part of a more complex and disturbing trend of a total conversion of the Internet from a tool of the masses for usful communication, to a commercial product. And, it's an example of how western nations, especially the United States, think that they "own" the internet.
Talk about tossing in an agenda in topics no matter how tenuous the connection. How, exactly, is a US company filing for an IPO an example of how the US--apparently the entire nation!--thinks it owns the Internet?
Personally I don't mind Gator or what they do, because it's really simple: I just don't install Gator. While I have had plenty of pieces of spyware that manage to sneak through (yeah yeah, I still use IE when I'm in Windows), Gator has never been one of them. I believe I've gotten a pop-up "do you want to install Gator?" dialog from time to time but simply saying "No way in bloody hell" has stopped it. Whether or not to install software that bundles it as a required part of the install process is the decision of the person installing the software. I have seldom come across any piece of software that I absolutely had to install and could not settle for any alternatives.
It's capitalism. That's hardly a unique province of the United States, nor is it necessarily a bad thing. I wouldn't give these guys my money, but I'm not prepared to condemn anybody who does--particularly, as you point out, if they are doing it to make a profit and not because they support the practices. It is not my place to tell people which companies they can invest in under what circumstances. It's also freedom. As much as it annoys the crap out of us sometimes, advertisers have as much right to the Internet as we do so long as they are obeying the applicable laws. I hardly even notice banner ads anymore and my popup blocker does a respectable job of keeping that trash at bay. Even if one does squirt through, it hardly ever stays up long enough for me to read or click on. Obviously, though, enough people find the Gator-style ads useful at the time they're displayed that advertisers continue to pay Gator to provide the service.
As for the UN, if you think other UN member nations are any less beholden to (economic) interests than the US is, you're mistaken. All giving things like ICANN to the UN would do is create more conflicting interests to pull and tug at the same authority.
Aye, but Apple's claims aren't property, they're just "claims". They could also claim to have the world's bestest 256-bit computer, but they ccouldn't then accuse Sun of "vandalism"
Claims are just claims, sure. But the implication was that if the RIAA could not be convinced that Apple's DRM was effective, that they would no longer permit iTunes to operate. In effect, their claim was their selling point: Let us deal with distributing your music, we'll protect it.
I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion, but that's what it is, not that something better could come along.
What I am really asking is, is there no direct democratic control of the armies in the US? Why do you give so much control to the president and his cabinet? are you in constant mode of war?
The president is democratically elected and his cabinet is confirmed by the democratically-elected Senate. Short of nation-wide votes every time a presidents feels the nation needs to respond (and I am not here to comment on whether or not their judgments were correct), we're about as democratically-controlled militarily as it's possible to be.
But I think you're also missing important pieces of the puzzle. The Constitution declares the president to be the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, but it also assigns the power to declare war solely to the Congress. Since some loopholes were exploited in previous times (namely that troops would be deployed and fighting without ever officially calling it a war), the War Powers Act of 1973 was passed by Congress that sought to illucidate and restrict what the president may do unilateraly. It requires permission to introduce the armed forces into hostilities or situations that may be hostile without permission from and reporting to Congress. Specifically, "Within sixty calendar days after a report is submitted or is required to be submitted pursuant to section 4(a)(1), whichever is earlier, the President shall terminate any use of United States Armed Forces with respect to which such report was submitted (or required to be submitted), unless the Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces, (2) has extended by law such sixty-day period, or (3) is physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack upon the United States. Such sixty-day period shall be extended for not more than an additional thirty days if the President determines and certifies to the Congress in writing that unavoidable military necessity respecting the safety of United States Armed Forces requires the continued use of such armed forces in the course of bringing about a prompt removal of such forces."
Are there problems with it? Yes, in that our two-party legislature is likely to produce at least half backing for a president even if everybody thinks it's stupid, but at least right now that's the political reality in America. We still elect our leaders, our leaders still answer to us at election time. How much more democratically controlled do you think this process can get?
Also keep in mind why America is the way it is. We didn't want to get involved in the "purely European" World War I, but we did it anyway to save our friends and prevent the conflict from spreading, eventually to our own borders. After which we crawled back into our hole and were perfectly content to let the world take care of itself. Then came World War II, and while the president did see the need for America to enter and was steering public opinion in that direction, the public itself, and many in Congress, did not view it the same way. Then we were hit at Pearl Harbor and literally hundreds of thousands of our young men lined up to go fight in Europe and the pacific. Many of them died on European beaches to secure European freedom.
America has emerged as the world's leader not because of choice but because of necessity and circumstance. This nation and its leaders have huge balls looking out not only for our own interests, but the interests and security of our friends and neighbors. When the Cuban Missile Crisis was raging, President Kennedy got on the television and stated, "it shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union." The man protected a hemisphere.
Now, frankly, here's the bottom line as I see it: Europeans may not like what we're doing in Iraq, they might disagree and we might be wrong. Hell,
I think you made your "case" in one line:
I don't like your PS2 so why should I buy a PSP or PS3?
You don't like their products so you decided to rant about how you're not going to buy it and try to hide the rant amidst gripes about monthly service bills. The line above made it painfully clear to me that you wouldn't have bought it even if it had nothing to do with subscriptions.
Could have at least announced your bias in advance so I wouldn't have had to waste my time reading it.
IE became the most popular browser primarily because you couldn't avoid it on any installation of Windows. Netscape, by contrast, you had to download, install, and -- in theory -- pay for.
Agreed. But --
Many Windows users will think it's too much to type in google.com and hit enter before they do a search, so Microsoft will once again use its monopoly to ruin a great product.
-- I do not agree with this or with making a correllation between the two. Microsoft is certainly going to try, but I don't think they will succeed for several reasons.
1) First of all with regard to the IE/Netscape wars, that took place in a different time. It was playing out on 28.8 modems where to download a five meg file would take a tedius amount of time. The choice was essentially between free and on your computer and free and take an hour to download and install it. Microsoft won handily.
2) I disagree with your statement that "many Windows users will think it's too much to type in google.com and hit enter before they do a search." If we are correct in our assumption that Google is the #1 most popular search engine today, then we must acknowledge the fact that users ARE typing google.com and hitting enter before they search. MSN (and of course their search) is the default IE webpage on a default installation of Windows. Other companies sometimes point the default URL to themselves, but I don't know of any company that points it to Google. Same thing with the default search within IE; it points to Microsoft, I don't know of anybody who resets that to Google when they're shipping a new computer. So far as I can see, that either means that Google is not as popular as we think it is, or people are willing to spend the extra couple of seconds to get there.
Bottom line, I think, is that Google is going to win or lose the search war based on its search technology--a novel concept, it seems, when competing with Microsoft. I agree with many people here: Google is fantastic, I love the minimalist design and the unintrusive advertisements, but I also think the average person only cares about the quality of results and even those who do care about design issues have to put result quality ahead in the importance category. If MS manages to put out a better search engine, then it will win. If it doesn't, I see no reason to prophesize the end of Google.
The problem is, and I don't mean this in a disrespectful way to anybody, most people don't care very much. Let's face it: Slashdot is hardly representative of society at large. People here are keen on technological issues and privacy issues while the average person on the street doesn't know and doesn't care. My parents know what their loyalty card is being used for and they don't care. Hell, I know it and I don't care either; it won't stop me from applying for one myself in the future.
Your "I don't track you" advertisement might be able to bring you a small geeky community of folks who appreciate that but bottom line is, as in most any business, money talks. Whether you're tracking them or not, you had better be able to match or beat the prices and selection of the place that does. The only real alternative is to go "upscale," charge a little more for friendlier or more personable service, which people enjoy, and hope the people who will come to you because of that outnumber those who won't because of your prices.
Additionally, an increasing number of the loyalty-card stores want your business badly enough that they will give you the card price even without a card. I used to work at Jewel (owned by Albertsons for those in different parts of the country) a year or so ago. They would always begin by asking if you had a card; if not, or if you said you forgot it, they would punch in a generic card number for you anyway. Therefore you don't get tracked, but they get your business and hopefully, in their minds, your return business.
On a semi-side note, one thing I've noticed is that the average person seems to care much less what companies do to them than what government does. I suppose it makes sense--the government can certainly screw you harder than most private companies can--but I still find it interesting.
Well, not to be a smartass, but limited means that it's not unlimited; ie, that it does have a termination point.
The rulings that have come down in cases like this seem to indicate that at least the current Court has decided that "limited" is whatever Congress decides it is. The section you quoted is within the section enumerating Congressional powers, so that ruling makes some sense.
Of course what you should do in situations where you don't agree with the Court's opinion is to read the dissenting opinions, and to find out what reasoning the justices used to decide in the manner you hoped would prevail. Interestingly, the idea you presented does appear: That the new copyright terms make the copyright period virtually unlimited. Other ideas include that it puts the First Amendment and the Copyright Clause at odds with one another; that is to say, that the near-perpetual extension of copyright effects the manner in which it may be disseminated, which becomes an issue of free speech. Justice Stevens, on the other hand, argues that s 1964 precedent that "a State could not 'extend the life of a patent beyond its expiration date,'" applies to Congress. He argues that if Congress is forbidden from making ex post facto laws--for example, that it would not be proper for Congress to pass a bill limiting patent term once a patent was granted under previous requirements--that the government, as a representative of the public, should be likewise forbidden from making an agreement that extends the inventor's monopoly against the public. Very interesting arguement.
Hopefully, the Kahle case is incorporating some of these arguments. It's obviously sound legal reasoning if a Supreme Court justice wrote it to begin with. However, the problem is that the decision was 7-2 meaning that the arguements would need to persuade three justices to switch sides, or that three justices other than Stevens or Breyer need to retire and be replaced--with people who agree with Stevens/Breyer, no less. 7-2 is regarded as a strong decision, one that is not likely to be overturned in the near future.
Long story short, I guess: It is said the Supreme Court likes to review itself every 20 years or so. We're in for a long haul. Once again, like in 2000, analysts are expecting 2004 to be an important election in that the winner may get to appoint a number of Supreme Court justices. For good or bad. I don't expect Kahle to make much impact. The SC precedent is set until they, or subsequent Courts, are prepared to overturn it.
(Majority opinion and the two dissenting opinions in Eldred were used to base the summaries upon.)
But even in your own statement you show the problem: Terms like "large" are relative. They're comparative.
A "large dog" is likely to be much smaller than a "large boat," is likely to be much smaller than a "large house," is likely to be much smaller than a "large planet," is likely...
In fact I threw in all those "likely" statements precisely because the definition of "large" is so arbitrary. Is 1,000,000 a large number? It sure is if compared to .000001. It's not so impressive compared to 999,999 and it's small compared to 1,000,000,000,000.
In order for size to be a valid criteria you would have to pick specific size over which an object must be to be considered a planet. If we're talking diameter, Pluto is roughly half the size of other objects we call planets. Then again, the moon of Calisto is roughly the same size as the planet Mercury. If we're talking mass, then it's roughly 25 times less massive than Mercury--but then again Mercury is 15 times less massive than Venus, 18 times less massive than Earth and over 300 times less massive than Neptune. What is our cutoff point? And more importantly, how did we arrive at it? If we're going to assign it arbitrarily right now then we can decide for ourselves whether or not it would be a "reasonable definition" to include objects similar to Pluto and the debate begins anew.
(For those interested, the numbers at http://www.nineplanets.org/datamax.html were used for comparisons and my calculations are probably wrong. :P)
And your proof that this is just bitching from liberals who still claim Bush "stole" the presidence(sic) is...??
If you think that the Justice Department, like all branches of government, is not affected by politics, you're mistaken. The JD was trying to get MS broken up. A new JD comes in, takes over, and abandons that tract. It WAS political. The average republican wants government's hands out of business. The average democrat wants to regulate business. Guaranteed: A harsher penalty would have come down under a democratic administration. Bush is a republican. Therefore the lesser punishment is directly related to Bush becoming president and appointing his republican cabinet.
You can argue if that's good or bad for yourself. To me it makes no difference. But you seem to be the only one making unbased political bitchings at somebody you know nothing about with absolutely no reasoning behind it except your BS statement that you "hear this a lot."
It was indeed the Bush administration. Under Clinton, the Justice Department was demanding that Microsoft be split up into two separate companies. When Bush came in, his JD settled for a slap on the wrist and a "be about your business."
It seems that people of a certain political bent are willing to condemn and set aside ANY goal, no matter how admirable, or how much they would have supported said goal if it wasn't THIS PRESIDENT promoting it.
Look at point number one, above. Stated as unassailable fact, this person clearly has such a terrific AXE to grind, they aren't interested in even considering that it might be simply true.
Then again you might not be considering that what he says might be true. If you think the Bush White House doesn't politicize EVERYTHING--even things they full do intend to follow through on--then you're sadly mistaken. They have proven themselves to be extremely partisan and abrasive. Maybe that's true of all White Houses, but it has never been as clear to me as it is with Bush. Make of that what you will.
Besides, why WOULDN'T Bush, or any president, do something like that? Get on TV, propose a new plan that a lot of people are going to like and watch the other party in Congress shoot it down. Makes you look like a great guy and the democrats (in this case) as the obstructors of progress. If Bush were to win a second term, it would likely also help the Republicans keep control of Congress.
But politics aside, I simply question if this is the right time for a space mission. I want to see space exploration resume as much as anybody, and I like the idea of a manned mission to Mars, but the economy simply isn't doing very well regardless of what the "economic indicators" say it should be doing.
Oh, the economy is probably improving a bit, but there's no denying that a lot of people still don't have jobs, and many of those who do are grossly overqualified for what they're doing; a programmer working the drive-through at McDonalds will show up as a person employed, but there is something wrong about that. But at the same time, we've got two wars/occupations to fight (Afghanistan and Iraq) with continued crises in North Korea, Iran and the Israeli/Palestinian issues. Terrorism hasn't gone away. In fact, terrorists just pulled off one of their bigger successes in some time. There is just too much else to do right now than fly to Mars.
Let me begin by saying that I agree with you that lawsuits are out of control.
But...
The sort of reform you suggest is not fair. We all know that guilty (or in this case liable) parties are found not liable, and not liable parties are found liable. It happens, especially in law where the running joke that "a jury is twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer" isn't that far from the truth.
An unintended consequence of this reform is to limit completely LEGITIMATE lawsuits and make big corporations essentially untouchable for the average Joe Citizen. We all know that the bigger the corporation or the richer the party, the more lawyers they have and the more expensive each one is. Even if somebody has a legitimate claim against the corporation, are they going to take the chance of having to pay $150,000 if a jury doesn't agree? How about a half million? They would be especially wary about doing so if the amount they're claiming is less than the amount that they were likely to lose if their case was rejected.
On the other side of the coin, it permits companies and rich people from continuing to run rampant over the judicial system by simply accepting the risks or for intimidation purposes--one of the main purposes of lawsuits today. Tort reform that only reforms the lower- and middle-classes... there just has to be something better.
On a completely DIFFERENT coin, even if your idea was otherwise flawless there would still be a problem: Namely, that some unbelievable percentage of cases never even reach court. So if that number is 85% (I can't find a figure right now), that means you're only having an effect on the remaining 15% of lawsuits anyway. It would be a start, but hardly a big impact.
Personally, I think the problem is attitude. When people stop believing that everybody owes them something, that if any mistake is ever made they should sue the pants off of somebody, the lawsuit problem will cease to exist. But that attitude plays on human nature's inherent greed, so I'm not sure it ever will.
Let me start off by saying that I don't exactly disagree with you, but I'm not sure 1) how much damage this sort of person does or 2) whether or not the good he does outweighs it.
Slashdot is a really cool place for science and technology news; that's what it's here for and that's why we come. But outside our little universe (no space humor intended) are the majority of folks who really don't know much about what's going on.
People like this certainly get a lot of PR because as somebody else pointed out, controversy sells. But at the same time controversy sparks, even requires, debate: Two sides, at least!, of the same issue. Which means that this guy might get on a radio show and talk up his crackpot ideas, but it may also have the effect of people going, "hey, you know, that Mars stuff is pretty neat" and taking more of an interest.
Generally speaking, the issue that somebody like this guy presents isn't really tough to deal with. He stared at some rocks, determined it looked like a face and decided it must mean alien life. It's not like a lot of other theories in astronomy where you really do need two PhD's to really grasp what's going on; it's a guy staring at a photo. Most people aren't going to take him seriously.
The real short version: One of the things the guy debunking the alien civilization claims says is that even if a small fraction of the 10 million people who listen to the radio show believe the alien theory that it still amounts to a lot of people. My contention is simply that even if only a small fraction of the 10 million people who listen to the radio show take a heightened interest in astronomy/the Mars missions that it still amounts to a lot of people.
Maybe he's doing some good without knowing it.
I've never been directed anywhere, although I wouldn't be surprised if I simply turned off the service a long time ago or something and don't remember.
STOP MENTIONING BLUE SCREENS! DUDES! That's so old! It doesn't exist anymore! Anyone who mentions it is showing themselves to be out of touch!
Bull. My XP box has crashed--and I mean BSOD, BOOM! type crash--3-4 times in the six months or so I've had it. My laptop, which continues to run XP for the moment, has BSOD'd 3-4 times as well in about a year and a half. It is certainly an improvement over previous versions, but it is not immune.
Of course if you had actually read what the person said, he was talking about his Windows 98 box crashing and that he switched to linux because he couldn't justify buying XP, so your erroneous comments are also irrelevant. Oops.
We need some branch of the government that is separated somewhat from the consent political, partisan bickering that the other two branches engage in daily.
I know that was a typo, but it's an interesting one because as I'm sure you know, judicial nominees (at the federal level) do need to be given consent from the Senate, which brings the political, partisan bickering directly back in. Since they are also appointed by perhaps THE most political figure in the country, the president, and almost always appointed because they hold the same important ideals as the person appointing them, they are pretty political people themselves.
I suppose you're right that it is "somewhat" separated, probably farther than elected positions are, but they are definitely still involved. It's a shame.
The reason why your US forefathers equated "direct democracy" to mob rule was because like all politicians they abhorred the concept of anyone and everyone having a say and a system that would enable them to follow their words through.
Sort of. They abhorred it because they believed the philosophies of people like John Locke. They believed, perhaps rightly so in their time, that the average person was simply not educated enough to participate so directly in government. Things like the electoral college were set up to "save us from ourselves."
I wouldn't equate that position to abhorring the thought of people having a voice and an ability to follow through. They simply wanted the people participating in government to be the most intelligent parts of society (boy would they love Bush!). It would be interesting to see if they arrived at the same conclusion if they were alive in present day.
At the very least, these things confirm my general posit that "Computers should not be allowed to control things that move."
I think you've gone far too general with that posit. There are many situations where you would want a computer to control something rather than a person. Autopilot, for instance, is less likely to make mistakes than a pilot would be, properly coded; and in the event it failed or the operator didn't trust it, it can be turned off. Likewise with things such as computer-controlled cuts/welds/whatever in factories; it's more efficient and more accurate for a machine to be doing it than a person. Toll booths--it would be nice if they didn't exist, but imagine if every one had to be manned instead of having an automatic counter that can control the barrier. You might not have meant "things that move" to include such harmless applications, but it is what you said.
It's possible that any one of those things could be miscoded and end up doing it wrong, of course, but as I stated it's equally possible--perhaps more likely--for a human doing the same job to eventually make a mistake.