If your school did that, then they probably violated the constitution of your state. The school is supposed to provide all those sorts of things to any student - anything else is discriminatory towards poor students (not that there aren't other ways public schools do this, but this is particularly blatant).
The proprietary software market is effectively a scam, which sooner or later will come to an end... Customers will wake up and realise just how badly they're being ripped off, but until then the fraudsters will make as much as they can out of it.
Well, not exactly. I expect the proprietary software market to remain in a couple of areas:
-Niche products. For instance, the navigation system of a Boeing 757 will likely remain proprietary, because for any organization who can buy a 757 the cost of the software for it is tiny by comparison, and the potential pool of interested developers is not much larger than the group of developers that can be easily hired by Boeing to write navigation systems. Similar sorts of stories will exist for other software geared to very specialized uses. - Games with low-ish replay value. For instance, open source teams can build a really top-notch and competitive Civilization clone, because the same game can be replayed gazillions of times with different configurations and approaches, and still be an interesting challenge. By comparison, most people don't play Final Fantasy XXXVII (or whatever they're up to) more than a couple of times through.
But where you're right in thinking open source will likely eventually take over are on tools that really ought to be commodities: office suites, email systems, operating systems, web browsers, web servers, etc.
1. Remember that cutting off the legal arms does no good. 2. Remember that zombie companies can continue to be threatening even if they have no leg to stand on. 3. Exposing and severing the connection between the brain and the rest of the corporate body may help, but the remaining parts can still remain dangerous, and typically twitch for some time. 4. Corporate zombies are often controlled by evil overlords. Real victory occurs only after the evil overlord is slain. 5. Remember that anything that was once good and lovable about the company that has been zombified is long gone and completely unrecoverable. 6. Zombie companies are frequently covered in parasites (lawyers).
Not trolling here, but since when is its mankind's responsibility to save every variety of every species of animal on the planet? I know that we have been responsible for the extinction of many species, but does that now make us responsible for stopping extinction altogether?
Some good reasons:
- They may prove to be resistant to some new disease, providing vital insight to medical researchers trying to keep humans from falling prey to a similar disease.
- Losing some species can produce an ecological domino effect, where other species who were dependent on the first one now become endangered or extinct. For instance, if honeybees were to become extinct, that would cause massive problems for corn and grain, which would cause massive problems for humans.
- Last and certainly least, it would allow us to answer certain kinds of space probes.
Here are the reasons why it's brilliant from the point of view of a military contractor: 1. Damage by wash cycles means that the military will keep needing to buy more of these things. 2. Each person requiring multiple pairs will ensure that they need to buy a lot to start out with.
The trouble is that the poor saps who work at these sorts of places are rarely the people really responsible for the scuzzy business practices. As a general rule, the grunts in those sorts of organizations are people desperate for work, any kind of work, and are aware that what they're doing is scuzzy but at the same time need to feed themselves and their families. Now, if you could drop a bomb that only hit the upper management who's making the big bucks off of these scuzzy business practices, I'd be all for it. But otherwise, you're mostly punishing decent folks trying to make a living.
That's also the reason I generally don't hate on telemarketers. If they could find other work, most of 'em would take it.
Well, as some bright person put it: "Wisdom is seen as a sign of weakness in politics, because a wise person can lead without power but only a powerful person can lead without wisdom."
Self publishing and small labels are still a road to obscurity because the big incumbents have spend decades entrenching themselves in the system.
You might not get super-famous doing self-publishing, but if you end up more economically comfortable doing self-publishing you'll see most musicians begging for the chance. The vast majority of musicians (in all styles of music) stay afloat via some combination of performing, teaching, self-published recordings, and very likely a non-musical job. A few are signed to labels, but due to Hollywood accounting the musicians basically make nothing from that kind of deal. A very very very few (e.g. Michael Jackson) will make it really really big.
Basically, your chances of making big bucks as a good musician are about the same as the chance that your average high school football player will end up as an NFL star. And by signing with a label, you give yourself a chance at the big bucks but at the risk of making absolutely nothing. A lot of musicians would much rather have a guaranteed modest income rather than a 0.05% chance at making millions.
It may not be enough to end wars unfortunately, but it's going to change the way the military does business.
It already has. Now the military routinely classifies things that would reduce the public's desire to go to war, such as the bodies of dead soldiers returning from Iraq. It also ensures that embedded reporters report only the stories they want (anything else would endanger operational security).
See, the lesson that a lot of military guys learned from Vietnam wasn't "Never get involved in a land war in Asia.", but instead learned "Never let the public know what's actually involved in fighting a war."
There was never any doubt about the authenticity of the videos - the military admitted they were real. What they argued was that the videos didn't show the context in which there had been combat nearby.
Now, how nearby combat affects whether you can shoot at people retrieving the wounded without violating the Geneva Conventions is a different question. What is very clear, though, is that this is a small taste of what the Iraq War really looks like, and that some soldiers under the sort of combat pressure end up thinking along the lines of "Anyone who runs is an insurgent. Anyone who doesn't run is a well-disciplined insurgent."
I am the ousted prince of an Arab Emerite, in possession of $22 million US dollars, and need your assistance in transfering those funds into another account. If you help me, a payment of $220,000 US dollars will be transferred to you for you5r help.
Elected judges do run into these sorts of problems, because they're elected officials with all the baggage that carries. On the other hand, appointed judges for life are accountable to practically nobody, and in areas that have them tend to be the appointer's law partner (or other associate).
In short, they both suck, and for different reasons. And no one's figured out a good alternative to one of the two methods.
Actually, before 1776, there was disagreement about that one too.
After the various taxes were passed by Parliament, there were lots of proposals floated by people against those taxes along the lines of "Parliament, tell us how much money the colonies should raise, and we'll find a way to send it. But we find this direct taxation unacceptable." To give you an idea of how controversial even that idea was, it was over a year between the Battle of Lexington and the Declaration of Independence, with a fair bit of fighting around Boston and Quebec. Until the Declaration, there were still colonial leaders arguing for finding a way to patch things up with Parliament.
the community reinvestment farce is indeed a misstep by the government, and was wrong, and contributed to the 2008 meltdown, absolutely.
Actually, the CRA had little-to-nothing to do with it. There are a lot of arguments for why it had little to do with it, too, the most important being: 1. The institutions engaged in most of the sub-prime lending weren't CRA-regulated banks, they were mortgage brokers (DiTech, Ameriquest Mtg, Countrywide, etc) who weren't subject to the CRA. 2. The default rates of CRA-qualified loans were comparable to the default rates of similar loans that weren't CRA-qualified. But hey, don't trust me on this, trust the Cleveland Federal Reserve (that's just the easiest to read of the many economic studies on this)
The reason the CRA came up early had a lot to do with wanting to blame government rather than banks for the financial crisis, and a bit to do with wanting to blame poor black folks in the inner cities around the country rather than rich white folks in New York City. But the claim is basically hogwash.
The problem isn't too much information, it is too much disinformation. People, in general, are too quick to accept something they read as true, especially if it is repeated elsewhere.
The government of the United States was never supposed to be the top heavy behemoth it is today. At the time our nation was formed, the states of our federation were intended to be much more autonomous - for exactly the reasons outlined in the article.
The founders tried the setup where the central government had virtually no power at all (the Articles of Confederation). That central government was so powerless that it had no armed forces to speak of (it could politely ask the states for one), no power to tax (it could politely ask the states for cash), and not much of anything by way of administrative bureaucracy. This generally didn't work because the states regularly flouted the national government and didn't care about the strongly worded letter they might get in return.
After it became clear that the Articles of Confederation weren't working, they got together and drafted the Constitution. And precisely the arguments about strong-federal-government versus strong-states-and-localities created the beginnings of American political parties (the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists - later Democratic-Republicans). George Washington and John Adams had different views on this one than Thomas Jefferson. So no, it's not clear how "top-heavy" the US government was supposed to be, because no one ever really agreed on it.
Well, more specifically, Clarence Thomas really disagrees with GP. His concurring opinion in that case makes it clear that in his view students have no right to, say, criticize or petition their government whatsoever. In his view, for instance, the landmark Tinker decision was incorrect because it gave students the any right to engage in protest of the Vietnam War. (And note that this position is more extreme than any opinion issued by the court at the time.)
So are you saying that students have no free speech rights (when applied to teachers and principals, who are public officials) whatsoever?
It's not quite as clear-cut as you think, that's for sure. I'll put forward a few scenarios, tell me where the line is drawn:
(a) Student goes up to Mr Smith in school and says "Go fuck yourself."
(b) Student goes up to Mr Smith in school and says "You suck"
(c) Student goes up to Mr Smith in school and says "You're incapable of doing your job."
(d) Student raises his hand in class, is acknowledged, and explains to the class that Mr Smith just did some math on the blackboard that assumed that 2=1.
(e) A student has just finished shoveling their family's driveway, and Mr Smith (who happens to live next door) blows snow onto the driveway. The student responds on the scene by saying "Screw you" to Mr Smith.
(f) A student complains to his friends that Mr Smith is incompetent.
(g) A student complains to his friends that Mr Smith blew snow into his driveway.
(h) A student thinks Mr Smith has applied school rules improperly and arbitrarily, and writes an editorial in the school newspaper laying out his case.
I can think of a few more cases, but this seems like a good starting point. Where's the line between acceptable and unacceptable speech in your view?
Slashdot Mirror
If your school did that, then they probably violated the constitution of your state. The school is supposed to provide all those sorts of things to any student - anything else is discriminatory towards poor students (not that there aren't other ways public schools do this, but this is particularly blatant).
The proprietary software market is effectively a scam, which sooner or later will come to an end... Customers will wake up and realise just how badly they're being ripped off, but until then the fraudsters will make as much as they can out of it.
Well, not exactly. I expect the proprietary software market to remain in a couple of areas:
-Niche products. For instance, the navigation system of a Boeing 757 will likely remain proprietary, because for any organization who can buy a 757 the cost of the software for it is tiny by comparison, and the potential pool of interested developers is not much larger than the group of developers that can be easily hired by Boeing to write navigation systems. Similar sorts of stories will exist for other software geared to very specialized uses.
- Games with low-ish replay value. For instance, open source teams can build a really top-notch and competitive Civilization clone, because the same game can be replayed gazillions of times with different configurations and approaches, and still be an interesting challenge. By comparison, most people don't play Final Fantasy XXXVII (or whatever they're up to) more than a couple of times through.
But where you're right in thinking open source will likely eventually take over are on tools that really ought to be commodities: office suites, email systems, operating systems, web browsers, web servers, etc.
1. Remember that cutting off the legal arms does no good.
2. Remember that zombie companies can continue to be threatening even if they have no leg to stand on.
3. Exposing and severing the connection between the brain and the rest of the corporate body may help, but the remaining parts can still remain dangerous, and typically twitch for some time.
4. Corporate zombies are often controlled by evil overlords. Real victory occurs only after the evil overlord is slain.
5. Remember that anything that was once good and lovable about the company that has been zombified is long gone and completely unrecoverable.
6. Zombie companies are frequently covered in parasites (lawyers).
The cops must have been real idiots, or may be they just didn't feel like arresting that guy that night.
Or maybe they were influenced by the guy's good friend Ben Franklin. That'd be my guess.
Not trolling here, but since when is its mankind's responsibility to save every variety of every species of animal on the planet? I know that we have been responsible for the extinction of many species, but does that now make us responsible for stopping extinction altogether?
Some good reasons:
- They may prove to be resistant to some new disease, providing vital insight to medical researchers trying to keep humans from falling prey to a similar disease.
- Losing some species can produce an ecological domino effect, where other species who were dependent on the first one now become endangered or extinct. For instance, if honeybees were to become extinct, that would cause massive problems for corn and grain, which would cause massive problems for humans.
- Last and certainly least, it would allow us to answer certain kinds of space probes.
Here are the reasons why it's brilliant from the point of view of a military contractor:
1. Damage by wash cycles means that the military will keep needing to buy more of these things.
2. Each person requiring multiple pairs will ensure that they need to buy a lot to start out with.
The trouble is that the poor saps who work at these sorts of places are rarely the people really responsible for the scuzzy business practices. As a general rule, the grunts in those sorts of organizations are people desperate for work, any kind of work, and are aware that what they're doing is scuzzy but at the same time need to feed themselves and their families. Now, if you could drop a bomb that only hit the upper management who's making the big bucks off of these scuzzy business practices, I'd be all for it. But otherwise, you're mostly punishing decent folks trying to make a living.
That's also the reason I generally don't hate on telemarketers. If they could find other work, most of 'em would take it.
Why not? There's a decent chance it will work under Wine!
Right. "Watchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?". 4 words.
See also: the late Gary Coleman, who despite his best efforts had his entire life boiled down to a 4-word catch phrase even in the obituaries.
Well, as some bright person put it: "Wisdom is seen as a sign of weakness in politics, because a wise person can lead without power but only a powerful person can lead without wisdom."
Self publishing and small labels are still a road to obscurity because the big incumbents have spend decades entrenching themselves in the system.
You might not get super-famous doing self-publishing, but if you end up more economically comfortable doing self-publishing you'll see most musicians begging for the chance. The vast majority of musicians (in all styles of music) stay afloat via some combination of performing, teaching, self-published recordings, and very likely a non-musical job. A few are signed to labels, but due to Hollywood accounting the musicians basically make nothing from that kind of deal. A very very very few (e.g. Michael Jackson) will make it really really big.
Basically, your chances of making big bucks as a good musician are about the same as the chance that your average high school football player will end up as an NFL star. And by signing with a label, you give yourself a chance at the big bucks but at the risk of making absolutely nothing. A lot of musicians would much rather have a guaranteed modest income rather than a 0.05% chance at making millions.
Quick, someone sell a lot of it to the Dear Leader! I mean, this has an equally good chance of working as a Castro exploding cigar.
It may not be enough to end wars unfortunately, but it's going to change the way the military does business.
It already has. Now the military routinely classifies things that would reduce the public's desire to go to war, such as the bodies of dead soldiers returning from Iraq. It also ensures that embedded reporters report only the stories they want (anything else would endanger operational security).
See, the lesson that a lot of military guys learned from Vietnam wasn't "Never get involved in a land war in Asia.", but instead learned "Never let the public know what's actually involved in fighting a war."
There was never any doubt about the authenticity of the videos - the military admitted they were real. What they argued was that the videos didn't show the context in which there had been combat nearby.
Now, how nearby combat affects whether you can shoot at people retrieving the wounded without violating the Geneva Conventions is a different question. What is very clear, though, is that this is a small taste of what the Iraq War really looks like, and that some soldiers under the sort of combat pressure end up thinking along the lines of "Anyone who runs is an insurgent. Anyone who doesn't run is a well-disciplined insurgent."
Dear Sir,
I am the ousted prince of an Arab Emerite, in possession of $22 million US dollars, and need your assistance in transfering those funds into another account. If you help me, a payment of $220,000 US dollars will be transferred to you for you5r help.
If you are interested, please visit http://www.scams-r-us.com/.
Sincerely,
Sheikh Khalid, Crown Prince of Ras al-Khaimah
Yes and no.
Elected judges do run into these sorts of problems, because they're elected officials with all the baggage that carries. On the other hand, appointed judges for life are accountable to practically nobody, and in areas that have them tend to be the appointer's law partner (or other associate).
In short, they both suck, and for different reasons. And no one's figured out a good alternative to one of the two methods.
Actually, before 1776, there was disagreement about that one too.
After the various taxes were passed by Parliament, there were lots of proposals floated by people against those taxes along the lines of "Parliament, tell us how much money the colonies should raise, and we'll find a way to send it. But we find this direct taxation unacceptable." To give you an idea of how controversial even that idea was, it was over a year between the Battle of Lexington and the Declaration of Independence, with a fair bit of fighting around Boston and Quebec. Until the Declaration, there were still colonial leaders arguing for finding a way to patch things up with Parliament.
the community reinvestment farce is indeed a misstep by the government, and was wrong, and contributed to the 2008 meltdown, absolutely.
Actually, the CRA had little-to-nothing to do with it. There are a lot of arguments for why it had little to do with it, too, the most important being:
1. The institutions engaged in most of the sub-prime lending weren't CRA-regulated banks, they were mortgage brokers (DiTech, Ameriquest Mtg, Countrywide, etc) who weren't subject to the CRA.
2. The default rates of CRA-qualified loans were comparable to the default rates of similar loans that weren't CRA-qualified.
But hey, don't trust me on this, trust the Cleveland Federal Reserve (that's just the easiest to read of the many economic studies on this)
The reason the CRA came up early had a lot to do with wanting to blame government rather than banks for the financial crisis, and a bit to do with wanting to blame poor black folks in the inner cities around the country rather than rich white folks in New York City. But the claim is basically hogwash.
I was actually hoping Lythrdskynrd would explain his/her views on this in terms of real examples.
The problem isn't too much information, it is too much disinformation. People, in general, are too quick to accept something they read as true, especially if it is repeated elsewhere.
Why should I believe that?
The government of the United States was never supposed to be the top heavy behemoth it is today. At the time our nation was formed, the states of our federation were intended to be much more autonomous - for exactly the reasons outlined in the article.
The founders tried the setup where the central government had virtually no power at all (the Articles of Confederation). That central government was so powerless that it had no armed forces to speak of (it could politely ask the states for one), no power to tax (it could politely ask the states for cash), and not much of anything by way of administrative bureaucracy. This generally didn't work because the states regularly flouted the national government and didn't care about the strongly worded letter they might get in return.
After it became clear that the Articles of Confederation weren't working, they got together and drafted the Constitution. And precisely the arguments about strong-federal-government versus strong-states-and-localities created the beginnings of American political parties (the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists - later Democratic-Republicans). George Washington and John Adams had different views on this one than Thomas Jefferson. So no, it's not clear how "top-heavy" the US government was supposed to be, because no one ever really agreed on it.
Well, more specifically, Clarence Thomas really disagrees with GP. His concurring opinion in that case makes it clear that in his view students have no right to, say, criticize or petition their government whatsoever. In his view, for instance, the landmark Tinker decision was incorrect because it gave students the any right to engage in protest of the Vietnam War. (And note that this position is more extreme than any opinion issued by the court at the time.)
Supreme Court fights have real consequences.
So are you saying that students have no free speech rights (when applied to teachers and principals, who are public officials) whatsoever?
It's not quite as clear-cut as you think, that's for sure. I'll put forward a few scenarios, tell me where the line is drawn:
(a) Student goes up to Mr Smith in school and says "Go fuck yourself."
(b) Student goes up to Mr Smith in school and says "You suck"
(c) Student goes up to Mr Smith in school and says "You're incapable of doing your job."
(d) Student raises his hand in class, is acknowledged, and explains to the class that Mr Smith just did some math on the blackboard that assumed that 2=1.
(e) A student has just finished shoveling their family's driveway, and Mr Smith (who happens to live next door) blows snow onto the driveway. The student responds on the scene by saying "Screw you" to Mr Smith.
(f) A student complains to his friends that Mr Smith is incompetent.
(g) A student complains to his friends that Mr Smith blew snow into his driveway.
(h) A student thinks Mr Smith has applied school rules improperly and arbitrarily, and writes an editorial in the school newspaper laying out his case.
I can think of a few more cases, but this seems like a good starting point. Where's the line between acceptable and unacceptable speech in your view?
Unfortunately, thanks to the Roberts Court, that doctrine has now changed, and student speech off of school grounds can result in a suspension.