I also heard in an interview with him on NPR that, even then, he still seeks permission from every artist he parodies just to avoid any potential legal conflicts (citation needed).
Actually, there was a nice large bit of controversy the one time Weird Al didn't get permission, namely when he recorded Amish Paradise. He had the permission from Coolio's manager, but not Coolio. But it's important to note that he seeks out the permission to do his parodies as a courtesy, and that Amish Paradise was completely legal even without Coolio's permission.
Ed Tufte's real issue in the article is failing to recognize that the purpose of that presentation was not to inform the audience but to protect the presenter. That sort of thing is common in any organization whenever the topic is "how we screwed up".
The trouble with the totalitarian/libertarian scale is the same problem as the left/right scale: neither one really describes all the positions completely. Since socialism and fascism are significantly different philosophies with different histories and ideas, redefining socialism to include fascism or vice versa is declaring black to be brown.
Yup, G. W. Bush was a Stalin-age socialist through and through.
He was really much more a fascist than a socialist. Socialists, Stalin included, at least pay lip service to helping poor folks by suggesting that they pool their resources to improve their lot in life. Fascists, on the other hand, argue that greater economic growth and national success come from restricting personal freedom while increasing economic freedom, and are very much in favor of deregulating business while regulating people.
I think a large part of the "cognitive dissonance" stems from the fact that you get no guaranties whatsoever that said software will work.
1. If I pay someone to modify an open source package for me, I can secure a guarantee from that person that it will do what I paid him to make it do. Legally, all that needs to happen is that there's a separate agreement above and beyond the requirements of the open source license that includes that guarantee. So, for instance, if the package was GPL, if someone modifies it for me, we can have an agreement that says that he's giving me the modifications with source code (as he's required to under the terms of the GPL), but also guarantees that it will do what I want it to. And this isn't a hypothetical: I've worked on projects that involved paying an outside contractor to do precisely that.
2. Proprietary software licenses universally disavow any and all warranties including the implied warranty of merchantability and warranty of fitness for a particular purpose. You have no guarantee whatsoever that Microsoft Windows will not set your computer on fire rather than be a functioning computer operating system.
I was attacking his argument that humans consider it immoral and impractical to commit genocide by pointing out that genocide has happened on that sort of scale.
One day I will find a Westerner who learned Japanese for reasons other than casually dropping the fact into web forums.
Are you excluding the completely hopeless anime enthusiasts, and the western guys who learned Japanese in the hopes of snagging a hot Japanese girlfriend (yes, these groups overlap)?
Actually, gambling and lotteries is one of those issues where left-wing activists and right-wing activists tend to find common ground. The left-wing activists don't like them precisely for the "tax on the poor" reason. Right-wing activists don't like them because they find them to be immoral.
Most religious groups regardless of political stances oppose gambling in all forms as well: Christians oppose it as avarice and usury. Jews oppose it as stealing from the poor guy who lost his bet. Muslims are very clear that prosperity should come from work, and the Koran forbids it explicitly. Hindus and Buddhists oppose it as a lack of self-discipline leading only to bad results.
Part of this conversation has to be this. An interesting question is whether casinos are for this due to the potential new market, or against this due to the potential new competitors.
The most likely reason for Republicans to be against this is that most religious denominations are against gambling in any form, and born-again Christians are no exception to that rule. Since that's a large portion of the Republican party base, this is one of those cases where the Republicans are actually doing what their constituents want them to do.
The first is a matter of morality: "bomb your enemies from orbit until their land is clear of any buildings, population, dogs, pine cones, or ants" may be a lot of fun in a game, but in real life it's mass murder on a scale that not even the most bloody-minded conquerors in history have ever attempted, and that is really not a contest any sane nation wants to win.
... writes a guy who's probably the descendant of Europeans or Africans living in a country created by clearing a very large area of land of any existing buildings and populations.
More to the point, slavery generally has not been economical and there are usually significant alternatives to slavery even in those human civilizations where it was tried...
That's very interesting, last I checked, most civilizations capable of expanding beyond their original borders had slaves as a significant portion of their labor force. To name a few that made use of slave labor: Egypt, Sumer, Akkad, Israel, Rome, Athens, Sparta, Mongol, India, Mali, Aztec, Maya, and of course the US.
Again, I would like to ask what possible resource would be so appealing to make such an alien race even want to come all this way, other than to merely "explore" and see just what is "out there"?
That's a big surprise for those peoples who were conquered by outsiders showing up on their doorstep exploring. Did you actually the The War of the Worlds was about aliens?
That would be if your actual goal was to capture terrorists, convince them to talk, capture more terrorists, etc. If on the other hand your goal is to harass people who are a color or religion you don't like, then they're very very effective. And the best part is that through these petty annoyances you convince more of them that the US is in fact the great evil that should be wiped off the face of the earth, making sure that no matter how many bad guys you capture you're never going to be out of a job.
No, because the systemic problems were way bigger than 33 people. All bubbles pop eventually, it's just a question of when and how much damage they do.
Well, I'll put it this way: there's a significantly higher chance of all of those things working out for us than there is of there being some sort of omnipotent omniscient entity directly involved in our daily lives.
GNC and other stores have shelves and shelves of vitamins and herb extracts that don't actually improve your health. Frosted Flakes gets sold with health claims. Basically, the use of a spurious claim about improving mental acuity or health in advertising is so common that it's generally best to ignore those claims entirely, unless they're coming from your doctor.
The people who stay sharp into their old age are people who are still actively using their brains and bodies as much as possible. For instance, Justice John Paul Stevens has a ridiculously good tennis game for someone in his late 80's, as well as continuing to work on legal cases, and may become a case study for gerontologists. Now, what's causing what (behavior->health or health->behavior) is a different question.
It differs from the earlier leaks in that the negotiating stance of each country has been scrubbed.
That way, each country's leader could blame the more draconian provisions on the other countries, and thus no one is to blame. You see this in organizational politics too: when it's unpleasant, make it from the committee rather than from the people in the committee.
By "upscale" restaurant, I meant the sort of restaurants that have a chef with significant artistic control over their menus, and are generally quite pricey. The "upscale" was to distinguish those sorts of restaurants from Denny's. The reason why those restaurants don't scale well is because a great chef can only cook so many meals, and while he can train other people to become good chefs he can't clone himself.
Not all monopolies are theoretically cheaper: In many industries there's a dis-economy of scale too, and a point at which producing n+1 widgets costs more than producing n widgets, so it's better for the company to produce no more than that amount.
The inevitable state for a mature market is monopoly or cartel, and the price of freedom is eternal regulation.
More exactly, there are some industries (telecom being one of them) for which a monopoly is in fact (theoretically at least) the most economically efficient way to provide the good/service, provided that something is done to prevent the monopoly from overcharging their customers. The reason this happens is because in some industries the economies of scale mean that the volume that produces the lowest possible cost of the service is more than the total demand for the service. Some other industries (such as upscale restaurants) don't work that way at all, which is why they tend to be heavily competitive.
In the case of telecoms, the reason why a monopoly is theoretically cheaper include: It's a lot cheaper to string up one set of fiber rather than many, you need less switching equipment with fewer cables, and because one organization has the full picture of what's going on they can effectively allocate their resources towards the places than need it.
The trouble is that with bought-off politicians, instead of doing what needs to be done to prevent overcharging, there's a tendency to take a hands-off approach and allow the monopolist to profit handsomely in exchange for campaign contributions. The argument they make for deregulation usually involves something about competition and libertarian pixie dust, but the real story is invariably the politicians and the deregulated industry profiting at the expense of the consumers.
Actually, it turns out that the image of people spending oodles on worthless crap is not an entirely accurate picture. Watch and learn from Elizabeth Warren. Are there outliers? Sure, but the statistical trends she describes are very very clear.
If you don't have time for the whole thing, one of her basic points is that middle class folks are not in fact buying lots of clothing or appliances or other shiny toys, but are spending far more on housing than they used to (for a house which is not much larger and probably older than what their parents would have bought in the 70's), and because of the higher fixed expenses have significantly less discretionary funds to spend and save. So on average an American middle class family is doing everything they can to reduce spending and still not making ends meet, much less have any savings available.
Slashdot Mirror
I also heard in an interview with him on NPR that, even then, he still seeks permission from every artist he parodies just to avoid any potential legal conflicts (citation needed).
Actually, there was a nice large bit of controversy the one time Weird Al didn't get permission, namely when he recorded Amish Paradise. He had the permission from Coolio's manager, but not Coolio. But it's important to note that he seeks out the permission to do his parodies as a courtesy, and that Amish Paradise was completely legal even without Coolio's permission.
Ed Tufte's real issue in the article is failing to recognize that the purpose of that presentation was not to inform the audience but to protect the presenter. That sort of thing is common in any organization whenever the topic is "how we screwed up".
The trouble with the totalitarian/libertarian scale is the same problem as the left/right scale: neither one really describes all the positions completely. Since socialism and fascism are significantly different philosophies with different histories and ideas, redefining socialism to include fascism or vice versa is declaring black to be brown.
Yup, G. W. Bush was a Stalin-age socialist through and through.
He was really much more a fascist than a socialist. Socialists, Stalin included, at least pay lip service to helping poor folks by suggesting that they pool their resources to improve their lot in life. Fascists, on the other hand, argue that greater economic growth and national success come from restricting personal freedom while increasing economic freedom, and are very much in favor of deregulating business while regulating people.
Not quite. Wall St costs at least 100 times as much as your average compulsive gambler.
I think a large part of the "cognitive dissonance" stems from the fact that you get no guaranties whatsoever that said software will work.
1. If I pay someone to modify an open source package for me, I can secure a guarantee from that person that it will do what I paid him to make it do. Legally, all that needs to happen is that there's a separate agreement above and beyond the requirements of the open source license that includes that guarantee. So, for instance, if the package was GPL, if someone modifies it for me, we can have an agreement that says that he's giving me the modifications with source code (as he's required to under the terms of the GPL), but also guarantees that it will do what I want it to. And this isn't a hypothetical: I've worked on projects that involved paying an outside contractor to do precisely that.
2. Proprietary software licenses universally disavow any and all warranties including the implied warranty of merchantability and warranty of fitness for a particular purpose. You have no guarantee whatsoever that Microsoft Windows will not set your computer on fire rather than be a functioning computer operating system.
Even if an artist subscribes to the free->fame startup model, eventually the steps to monetization involve controlling the distribution of copies.
Counterexample: The Grateful Dead. They not only allowed the distribution of copies, they actively encouraged it.
I was attacking his argument that humans consider it immoral and impractical to commit genocide by pointing out that genocide has happened on that sort of scale.
One day I will find a Westerner who learned Japanese for reasons other than casually dropping the fact into web forums.
Are you excluding the completely hopeless anime enthusiasts, and the western guys who learned Japanese in the hopes of snagging a hot Japanese girlfriend (yes, these groups overlap)?
Actually, gambling and lotteries is one of those issues where left-wing activists and right-wing activists tend to find common ground. The left-wing activists don't like them precisely for the "tax on the poor" reason. Right-wing activists don't like them because they find them to be immoral.
Most religious groups regardless of political stances oppose gambling in all forms as well: Christians oppose it as avarice and usury. Jews oppose it as stealing from the poor guy who lost his bet. Muslims are very clear that prosperity should come from work, and the Koran forbids it explicitly. Hindus and Buddhists oppose it as a lack of self-discipline leading only to bad results.
Part of this conversation has to be this. An interesting question is whether casinos are for this due to the potential new market, or against this due to the potential new competitors.
The most likely reason for Republicans to be against this is that most religious denominations are against gambling in any form, and born-again Christians are no exception to that rule. Since that's a large portion of the Republican party base, this is one of those cases where the Republicans are actually doing what their constituents want them to do.
The first is a matter of morality: "bomb your enemies from orbit until their land is clear of any buildings, population, dogs, pine cones, or ants" may be a lot of fun in a game, but in real life it's mass murder on a scale that not even the most bloody-minded conquerors in history have ever attempted, and that is really not a contest any sane nation wants to win.
... writes a guy who's probably the descendant of Europeans or Africans living in a country created by clearing a very large area of land of any existing buildings and populations.
Actually, I'm surprised we've gotten this far without quoting this cute ditty by Shel Silverstein:
Chester came to school and said,
“Durn, I growed another head.”
Teacher said, “It’s time you knowed
The word is ‘grew’ instead of ‘growed’ ”
More to the point, slavery generally has not been economical and there are usually significant alternatives to slavery even in those human civilizations where it was tried...
That's very interesting, last I checked, most civilizations capable of expanding beyond their original borders had slaves as a significant portion of their labor force. To name a few that made use of slave labor: Egypt, Sumer, Akkad, Israel, Rome, Athens, Sparta, Mongol, India, Mali, Aztec, Maya, and of course the US.
Again, I would like to ask what possible resource would be so appealing to make such an alien race even want to come all this way, other than to merely "explore" and see just what is "out there"?
That's a big surprise for those peoples who were conquered by outsiders showing up on their doorstep exploring. Did you actually the The War of the Worlds was about aliens?
And something to remember from this whole discussion: Richard Branson probably doesn't care about being right, he cares about being paid.
That would be if your actual goal was to capture terrorists, convince them to talk, capture more terrorists, etc. If on the other hand your goal is to harass people who are a color or religion you don't like, then they're very very effective. And the best part is that through these petty annoyances you convince more of them that the US is in fact the great evil that should be wiped off the face of the earth, making sure that no matter how many bad guys you capture you're never going to be out of a job.
No, because the systemic problems were way bigger than 33 people. All bubbles pop eventually, it's just a question of when and how much damage they do.
Is that a roll of $5 coins in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
Well, I'll put it this way: there's a significantly higher chance of all of those things working out for us than there is of there being some sort of omnipotent omniscient entity directly involved in our daily lives.
Also don't argue with the FCC and SCOTUS. And of course, the use of about 7 specific words is also far worse than a depiction of a brutal murder.
GNC and other stores have shelves and shelves of vitamins and herb extracts that don't actually improve your health. Frosted Flakes gets sold with health claims. Basically, the use of a spurious claim about improving mental acuity or health in advertising is so common that it's generally best to ignore those claims entirely, unless they're coming from your doctor.
The people who stay sharp into their old age are people who are still actively using their brains and bodies as much as possible. For instance, Justice John Paul Stevens has a ridiculously good tennis game for someone in his late 80's, as well as continuing to work on legal cases, and may become a case study for gerontologists. Now, what's causing what (behavior->health or health->behavior) is a different question.
It differs from the earlier leaks in that the negotiating stance of each country has been scrubbed.
That way, each country's leader could blame the more draconian provisions on the other countries, and thus no one is to blame. You see this in organizational politics too: when it's unpleasant, make it from the committee rather than from the people in the committee.
By "upscale" restaurant, I meant the sort of restaurants that have a chef with significant artistic control over their menus, and are generally quite pricey. The "upscale" was to distinguish those sorts of restaurants from Denny's. The reason why those restaurants don't scale well is because a great chef can only cook so many meals, and while he can train other people to become good chefs he can't clone himself.
Not all monopolies are theoretically cheaper: In many industries there's a dis-economy of scale too, and a point at which producing n+1 widgets costs more than producing n widgets, so it's better for the company to produce no more than that amount.
The inevitable state for a mature market is monopoly or cartel, and the price of freedom is eternal regulation.
More exactly, there are some industries (telecom being one of them) for which a monopoly is in fact (theoretically at least) the most economically efficient way to provide the good/service, provided that something is done to prevent the monopoly from overcharging their customers. The reason this happens is because in some industries the economies of scale mean that the volume that produces the lowest possible cost of the service is more than the total demand for the service. Some other industries (such as upscale restaurants) don't work that way at all, which is why they tend to be heavily competitive.
In the case of telecoms, the reason why a monopoly is theoretically cheaper include: It's a lot cheaper to string up one set of fiber rather than many, you need less switching equipment with fewer cables, and because one organization has the full picture of what's going on they can effectively allocate their resources towards the places than need it.
The trouble is that with bought-off politicians, instead of doing what needs to be done to prevent overcharging, there's a tendency to take a hands-off approach and allow the monopolist to profit handsomely in exchange for campaign contributions. The argument they make for deregulation usually involves something about competition and libertarian pixie dust, but the real story is invariably the politicians and the deregulated industry profiting at the expense of the consumers.
Actually, it turns out that the image of people spending oodles on worthless crap is not an entirely accurate picture. Watch and learn from Elizabeth Warren. Are there outliers? Sure, but the statistical trends she describes are very very clear.
If you don't have time for the whole thing, one of her basic points is that middle class folks are not in fact buying lots of clothing or appliances or other shiny toys, but are spending far more on housing than they used to (for a house which is not much larger and probably older than what their parents would have bought in the 70's), and because of the higher fixed expenses have significantly less discretionary funds to spend and save. So on average an American middle class family is doing everything they can to reduce spending and still not making ends meet, much less have any savings available.