Regarding Fermat's last theorem, the usual story on that is that Fermat had what he thought was an extremely elegant proof in mind. The trouble was that his proof was wrong.
Well, if they're reading all the information being sent over the Internet, then clearly Verizon is responsible for allowing distribution of online child porn and any other illegal material. I mean, they wouldn't seek common carrier protection from any responsibility while breaking the rules that common carriers have to follow, would they?
So in other words, Congressman King is a supporter of a known terrorist organization (the IRA). So why isn't he in Gitmo instead of in Congress? Oh, right. He was supporting a Christian terrorist organization, not a Muslim one.
That said, your last line is an uncalled-for expression of bigotry against all Irish Catholics (to be clear, I'm neither Irish nor Catholic). Among other things, those most sympathetic to radical Christianity in the US tend to be Protestant fundamentalists, whereas the modern-day Catholic Church (particularly when John Paul II was in charge) is a lot more friendly towards non-Christian faiths.
You'd think so, until you started attaching dollar amounts. The same people who will gladly pay $3000 to treat their parents heart condition will refuse to pay $1 extra to their on-call tech to fix their mail server.
If they're not, then you're giving third-party content access to your site's security zone, which is a terrible idea.
Since when in the long history of bad website security and misused PHP has "a terrible idea" implied "not implemented that way"? Also, if you have some manager who is upset that the page views don't match the ad impressions (because of people using the various techniques listed all over this discussion) demanding that developers do the wrong thing to ensure that all users see all the ads, you might have terrible ideas put in place.
The idea of "cap and trade" isn't new, and has been used for several decades for various pollutants, mostly in waterways. Economists generally consider cap-and-trade to be a good way to not only reduce emissions overall but also to encourage capitalistic innovation in pollution reduction, because companies that implement pollution reduction now have credits that they can sell to their competitors. Since pollutants are practically the definition of a negative externality (that is a cost that is getting foisted on a party that has nothing to do with the transaction), some sort of government intervention is needed to avoid everyone polluting so much that, say, rivers catch fire.
That's not to say that international wrangling over the issue isn't extremely messy. The basic problem is that it is in each countries interest to not do anything about global warming, but convince everyone else to do something about it. No one really wants to pay the price, even if there are real benefits for national security (among other things).
Then we still need to do our best to stop it, or we're still screwed.
Frankly, I think the people who will handle global warming best if becomes a reality is the Amish. The main reason for this is that they're pretty self-sufficient, don't use much if any fossil fuels (directly or otherwise), and use farming techniques that keep their land in good shape in the long run. Also, unlike other agricultural societies, they're relatively far from the equator.
While I agree with your general point, I have to call you out on one thing in your post: What does being flamboyantly gay have to do with decisions to delete stuff related to The Price is Right from Wikipedia? I wouldn't mind if your point had been related to an article about, say, gay activism, but it wasn't.
Your complaint is valid. Your treatment of the user in question isn't.
Real engineers have the power to say no. Their legal culpability makes it harder to cut corners, and since an engineer needs to sign off on a real-life project in order to make it happen, they essentially have veto power in their organization over what they're responsible for.
Software engineers, on the other hand, generally are required by management to cut corners wherever possible. Time-to-market nearly always trumps all other factors. They have no authority whatsoever organizationally, and have no laws to back them up.
Basically, think of an engineer who is told to build a bridge capable of handling the load of 50 laden semis using string and duct tape within 6 months, or lose his job. Can you really fault him for trying his best to meet that demand (he has a family to feed), or making a mistake and only handling the load of 45 semis?
The article paraphrases a Gartner analyst, who points out that the Senators' letter "comes from a US point of view and doesn't take into account how the EU operates."
Combining that with your comment:
Further, the EU Commissions role is to ensure a competitive, fair and transparent market and to protect the consumer from abuse not to ensure Suns or Oracles profit, as the letter appears to imply.
The obvious implication is that the Senators in question (as well as the FTC) think that their job is to protect Sun's and Oracle's profits, not protect citizens from abuse. That says loads about the state of the US federal government right now. In addition, there's good reason to think that they didn't expect the public to find out about their actions, or if they did, interpret it as the senators protecting their jobs from the evil European socialists.
I thought the secret to figuring that out was looking at pictures with large crowds of people and finding the guy with a striped shirt, glasses, and a cane.
One of the basic facts about crime prevention that nearly all criminologists agree on is that the sentence isn't much of a deterrent. What is a massive deterrent is an increased likelihood of getting caught.
One of the possible reasons for the 1990's drop in crime rate was a shift towards community-oriented policing, which emphasized several points: 1. More police officers. Seems simple enough. 2. Hiring police officers from the communities they are policing. The main reason for doing this is that officers policing their own communities have better relations with that community, which makes it more likely for those officers to gather good information. 3. Walking the beat rather than driving the beat. A cop on foot can be talked to more easily. 4. An emphasis on getting to know the citizenry in contexts that aren't threatening. For instance, sending an officer into a school not to arrest anyone but to talk to students about, say, what drugs do to people based on the people he's picked up.
The whole point is to try to make it easier for citizens to contact police when they have good information, and for police to be pals enough with citizens that they can get good information when they need to ask for it. That information leads to solving cases, which increases the chance the bad guys will get caught, which increases the deterrent of the law.
In addition, having the maximum penalty be execution doesn't really solve the problem GP argued: if you committed a crime that will likely cause you to be executed, what do you have to lose? You're right back to where you were before when the maximum penalty was life without parole - there's a maximum penalty, and once you hit it you have nothing left to lose.
Unfortunately, real life is a bit more complicated.
What if the reason that some police clerk didn't destroy the records is because they were told not to, and their boss threatened their job if they didn't comply?
What if the reason was that their boss told them to focus on other priorities during the 8 hours they had in the work day? As in "I need you working on this other project which could help the department solve 3 murder cases. You can work on destroying the records later."?
You see the problem? That's one of the basic problems with forcing organizations to do things: figuring out where the buck stops when the law is violated is extremely difficult. Who knows what when, who decides what when, and so forth is massively complex, because a guilty party with half a brain carefully fingers someone else. The tendency is for the police clerk to be hung out to dry in both of the cases I described above, while the boss simply says "I told the clerk to follow standard procedures".
There's a massive difference between Scientology (and other dangerous cults) and legitimate religion: legitimate religions nowadays never (and I mean never) require monetary payments to learn or take part in the doctrine, history, and basic practices of the church. They don't expect you to pay for the chance to talk to clergy. You can if you so choose walk into a religious building (making sure to follow any customs that members ask you to follow, such as wearing a hat or removing your shoes), take part in a service, eat some snacks, have tea with the clergy, and walk out without paying anyone a dime, signing anything, or making any promises to the organization.
With a cult, the pattern is very different: they usually promise access to some secret that will improve your life, and want you to start paying and making promises to them from the moment you join.
With option 2, the company is officially granted a monopoly, but is answerable to a government body (typically a public utilities commission), and has to get things like pricing changes approved by the PUC. In that scheme, competitors are legally barred from entering the market: if a competitor wants to take over, they have to convince the PUC and possibly the legislature that they can offer a better deal to the public.
As far as the "throw them all out and replace them" theory, that doesn't work for source code, and there's no reason to think it would for regulations. The really complicated regs have a lot to do with the fact that real life is complicated. Like code, regulations tend to start simple, but end up getting more and more complex as loopholes (bugs) are discovered and fixed.
Conveniently, you have a good recourse, namely to argue your point to your own town / city government, and push for either (a) not running the sewer lines, (b) not requiring you to join onto the sewer lines right away, or (c) paying off the depreciated value of the septic system when they do. Even more effective would be to get your neighbors who likely have a similar problems together so that your own local government has more reason to act.
Here's the good news: Even if you do end up losing the new septic system, the costs associated with the municipal sewer service will probably be cheaper in the long run than maintaining your own.
It's worth mentioning that the county rule was probably made for a good reason, namely that in areas with density high enough to run sewer lines having septic systems produces nasty environmental effects. Yes, it sucks for you, but it's not necessarily just mindless bureaucracy.
But he won't charge you for not giving you your pizza. Or have you sign a contract (as a condition of ordering the pizza in the first place) that says that if you decide to not pay him and call up a different pizza place instead, you owe him $300.
Telecom is by all appearances a natural monopoly, like other utilities. If you take AT&T and Verizon and break them up into little pieces, in about 15 years you'll be right back to where we are now in this market. We know this because we tried breaking up Ma Bell, and within about 15 years we were back to an oligopoly (and probably would have been back to a monopoly had the FCC and FTC allowed it).
The ways to handle utilities, in order of my preference at least, based on the experiences of residents where each of these are applied: 1. Publicly owned and operated: This isn't perfect, but by all appearances can do a really good job. When was the last time you thought about your municipal water and sewer service? That's the sign of a well-run utility. 2. Heavily regulated monopoly: This is the electricity market in a lot of places. Again, far from perfect, but customers generally aren't bilked and service is usually pretty decent. 3. Less regulated oligopoly: This can be decidedly unpleasant if the various players realize that they can earn more by both of them bilking their customers rather than trying to take market share away from each other. The regulations can help prevent problems, but are generally less extensive than the regulated monopoly. 4. "Free-market" free-for-all: Think California during the electric deregulation. This typically is really an unregulated oligopoly. 5. Unregulated monopoly: Standard Oil et al. Typically, the monopoly makes a huge bundle of cash while all the customers (who often have little choice but to pay) get bilked.
Right now, telecommunications is sitting at option 3. AT&T and Verizon would both love option 4, and whichever one is capable of buying out the other would really really like option 5, but for the purposes of serving customers you're typically better off with option 1 or 2.
Actually, my real concern about this has nothing to do with the financial impact on Google (which is to say, not much), or the effect it has on Bing's credibility (not much to lose there really).
My real concern is that Murdoch and MS are pushing towards 2 different Internet realities: the Windows-Bing-Fox reality, and the Linux-Google-PBS reality. It's the next logical step: conservative folks and liberal folks watch different news broadcasts (Fox v MSNBC), read different news publications (Wall St Journal vs NY Times), and frequent different news websites (DailyKos vs Drudge Report), so why even make it possible for one group to see what the other one does?
I'm guessing another part of the real story here is that students are very unlikely to vote in the local elections where they attend college compared to other people who could be taxed, so the mayor feels safer about taxing them then taxing, say, elderly homeowners (who are most likely to vote).
And this is why the students would do well to start voting locally. If you don't vote, you lose any political power you might have to prevent someone from doing this. Yes, you have economic power by taking your money elsewhere, but that's a much bigger PITA than spending a little while in November to go vote.
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding Fermat's last theorem, the usual story on that is that Fermat had what he thought was an extremely elegant proof in mind. The trouble was that his proof was wrong.
Well, if they're reading all the information being sent over the Internet, then clearly Verizon is responsible for allowing distribution of online child porn and any other illegal material. I mean, they wouldn't seek common carrier protection from any responsibility while breaking the rules that common carriers have to follow, would they?
You mean like this?
So in other words, Congressman King is a supporter of a known terrorist organization (the IRA). So why isn't he in Gitmo instead of in Congress? Oh, right. He was supporting a Christian terrorist organization, not a Muslim one.
That said, your last line is an uncalled-for expression of bigotry against all Irish Catholics (to be clear, I'm neither Irish nor Catholic). Among other things, those most sympathetic to radical Christianity in the US tend to be Protestant fundamentalists, whereas the modern-day Catholic Church (particularly when John Paul II was in charge) is a lot more friendly towards non-Christian faiths.
You'd think so, until you started attaching dollar amounts. The same people who will gladly pay $3000 to treat their parents heart condition will refuse to pay $1 extra to their on-call tech to fix their mail server.
If they're not, then you're giving third-party content access to your site's security zone, which is a terrible idea.
Since when in the long history of bad website security and misused PHP has "a terrible idea" implied "not implemented that way"? Also, if you have some manager who is upset that the page views don't match the ad impressions (because of people using the various techniques listed all over this discussion) demanding that developers do the wrong thing to ensure that all users see all the ads, you might have terrible ideas put in place.
The idea of "cap and trade" isn't new, and has been used for several decades for various pollutants, mostly in waterways. Economists generally consider cap-and-trade to be a good way to not only reduce emissions overall but also to encourage capitalistic innovation in pollution reduction, because companies that implement pollution reduction now have credits that they can sell to their competitors. Since pollutants are practically the definition of a negative externality (that is a cost that is getting foisted on a party that has nothing to do with the transaction), some sort of government intervention is needed to avoid everyone polluting so much that, say, rivers catch fire.
That's not to say that international wrangling over the issue isn't extremely messy. The basic problem is that it is in each countries interest to not do anything about global warming, but convince everyone else to do something about it. No one really wants to pay the price, even if there are real benefits for national security (among other things).
Then we still need to do our best to stop it, or we're still screwed.
Frankly, I think the people who will handle global warming best if becomes a reality is the Amish. The main reason for this is that they're pretty self-sufficient, don't use much if any fossil fuels (directly or otherwise), and use farming techniques that keep their land in good shape in the long run. Also, unlike other agricultural societies, they're relatively far from the equator.
While I agree with your general point, I have to call you out on one thing in your post: What does being flamboyantly gay have to do with decisions to delete stuff related to The Price is Right from Wikipedia? I wouldn't mind if your point had been related to an article about, say, gay activism, but it wasn't.
Your complaint is valid. Your treatment of the user in question isn't.
Real engineers have the power to say no. Their legal culpability makes it harder to cut corners, and since an engineer needs to sign off on a real-life project in order to make it happen, they essentially have veto power in their organization over what they're responsible for.
Software engineers, on the other hand, generally are required by management to cut corners wherever possible. Time-to-market nearly always trumps all other factors. They have no authority whatsoever organizationally, and have no laws to back them up.
Basically, think of an engineer who is told to build a bridge capable of handling the load of 50 laden semis using string and duct tape within 6 months, or lose his job. Can you really fault him for trying his best to meet that demand (he has a family to feed), or making a mistake and only handling the load of 45 semis?
I always do that, I mess up some mundane detail!
FTFS:
The article paraphrases a Gartner analyst, who points out that the Senators' letter "comes from a US point of view and doesn't take into account how the EU operates."
Combining that with your comment:
Further, the EU Commissions role is to ensure a competitive, fair and transparent market and to protect the consumer from abuse not to ensure Suns or Oracles profit, as the letter appears to imply.
The obvious implication is that the Senators in question (as well as the FTC) think that their job is to protect Sun's and Oracle's profits, not protect citizens from abuse. That says loads about the state of the US federal government right now. In addition, there's good reason to think that they didn't expect the public to find out about their actions, or if they did, interpret it as the senators protecting their jobs from the evil European socialists.
I thought the secret to figuring that out was looking at pictures with large crowds of people and finding the guy with a striped shirt, glasses, and a cane.
One of the basic facts about crime prevention that nearly all criminologists agree on is that the sentence isn't much of a deterrent. What is a massive deterrent is an increased likelihood of getting caught.
One of the possible reasons for the 1990's drop in crime rate was a shift towards community-oriented policing, which emphasized several points:
1. More police officers. Seems simple enough.
2. Hiring police officers from the communities they are policing. The main reason for doing this is that officers policing their own communities have better relations with that community, which makes it more likely for those officers to gather good information.
3. Walking the beat rather than driving the beat. A cop on foot can be talked to more easily.
4. An emphasis on getting to know the citizenry in contexts that aren't threatening. For instance, sending an officer into a school not to arrest anyone but to talk to students about, say, what drugs do to people based on the people he's picked up.
The whole point is to try to make it easier for citizens to contact police when they have good information, and for police to be pals enough with citizens that they can get good information when they need to ask for it. That information leads to solving cases, which increases the chance the bad guys will get caught, which increases the deterrent of the law.
In addition, having the maximum penalty be execution doesn't really solve the problem GP argued: if you committed a crime that will likely cause you to be executed, what do you have to lose? You're right back to where you were before when the maximum penalty was life without parole - there's a maximum penalty, and once you hit it you have nothing left to lose.
You forgot to do something to filter out those pages with the Evil Bit set (see RFC 3514).
Unfortunately, real life is a bit more complicated.
What if the reason that some police clerk didn't destroy the records is because they were told not to, and their boss threatened their job if they didn't comply?
What if the reason was that their boss told them to focus on other priorities during the 8 hours they had in the work day? As in "I need you working on this other project which could help the department solve 3 murder cases. You can work on destroying the records later."?
You see the problem? That's one of the basic problems with forcing organizations to do things: figuring out where the buck stops when the law is violated is extremely difficult. Who knows what when, who decides what when, and so forth is massively complex, because a guilty party with half a brain carefully fingers someone else. The tendency is for the police clerk to be hung out to dry in both of the cases I described above, while the boss simply says "I told the clerk to follow standard procedures".
There's a massive difference between Scientology (and other dangerous cults) and legitimate religion: legitimate religions nowadays never (and I mean never) require monetary payments to learn or take part in the doctrine, history, and basic practices of the church. They don't expect you to pay for the chance to talk to clergy. You can if you so choose walk into a religious building (making sure to follow any customs that members ask you to follow, such as wearing a hat or removing your shoes), take part in a service, eat some snacks, have tea with the clergy, and walk out without paying anyone a dime, signing anything, or making any promises to the organization.
With a cult, the pattern is very different: they usually promise access to some secret that will improve your life, and want you to start paying and making promises to them from the moment you join.
Sure it does. What the heck is all the talk about auxiliary and emergency power?
Of course, the real limitation is that any redundant control systems make the operator's console twice as likely to explode.
With option 2, the company is officially granted a monopoly, but is answerable to a government body (typically a public utilities commission), and has to get things like pricing changes approved by the PUC. In that scheme, competitors are legally barred from entering the market: if a competitor wants to take over, they have to convince the PUC and possibly the legislature that they can offer a better deal to the public.
As far as the "throw them all out and replace them" theory, that doesn't work for source code, and there's no reason to think it would for regulations. The really complicated regs have a lot to do with the fact that real life is complicated. Like code, regulations tend to start simple, but end up getting more and more complex as loopholes (bugs) are discovered and fixed.
Conveniently, you have a good recourse, namely to argue your point to your own town / city government, and push for either (a) not running the sewer lines, (b) not requiring you to join onto the sewer lines right away, or (c) paying off the depreciated value of the septic system when they do. Even more effective would be to get your neighbors who likely have a similar problems together so that your own local government has more reason to act.
Here's the good news: Even if you do end up losing the new septic system, the costs associated with the municipal sewer service will probably be cheaper in the long run than maintaining your own.
It's worth mentioning that the county rule was probably made for a good reason, namely that in areas with density high enough to run sewer lines having septic systems produces nasty environmental effects. Yes, it sucks for you, but it's not necessarily just mindless bureaucracy.
But he won't charge you for not giving you your pizza. Or have you sign a contract (as a condition of ordering the pizza in the first place) that says that if you decide to not pay him and call up a different pizza place instead, you owe him $300.
AT&T and Verizon do both.
Why not more regulation?
Telecom is by all appearances a natural monopoly, like other utilities. If you take AT&T and Verizon and break them up into little pieces, in about 15 years you'll be right back to where we are now in this market. We know this because we tried breaking up Ma Bell, and within about 15 years we were back to an oligopoly (and probably would have been back to a monopoly had the FCC and FTC allowed it).
The ways to handle utilities, in order of my preference at least, based on the experiences of residents where each of these are applied:
1. Publicly owned and operated: This isn't perfect, but by all appearances can do a really good job. When was the last time you thought about your municipal water and sewer service? That's the sign of a well-run utility.
2. Heavily regulated monopoly: This is the electricity market in a lot of places. Again, far from perfect, but customers generally aren't bilked and service is usually pretty decent.
3. Less regulated oligopoly: This can be decidedly unpleasant if the various players realize that they can earn more by both of them bilking their customers rather than trying to take market share away from each other. The regulations can help prevent problems, but are generally less extensive than the regulated monopoly.
4. "Free-market" free-for-all: Think California during the electric deregulation. This typically is really an unregulated oligopoly.
5. Unregulated monopoly: Standard Oil et al. Typically, the monopoly makes a huge bundle of cash while all the customers (who often have little choice but to pay) get bilked.
Right now, telecommunications is sitting at option 3. AT&T and Verizon would both love option 4, and whichever one is capable of buying out the other would really really like option 5, but for the purposes of serving customers you're typically better off with option 1 or 2.
Actually, my real concern about this has nothing to do with the financial impact on Google (which is to say, not much), or the effect it has on Bing's credibility (not much to lose there really).
My real concern is that Murdoch and MS are pushing towards 2 different Internet realities: the Windows-Bing-Fox reality, and the Linux-Google-PBS reality. It's the next logical step: conservative folks and liberal folks watch different news broadcasts (Fox v MSNBC), read different news publications (Wall St Journal vs NY Times), and frequent different news websites (DailyKos vs Drudge Report), so why even make it possible for one group to see what the other one does?
I'm guessing another part of the real story here is that students are very unlikely to vote in the local elections where they attend college compared to other people who could be taxed, so the mayor feels safer about taxing them then taxing, say, elderly homeowners (who are most likely to vote).
And this is why the students would do well to start voting locally. If you don't vote, you lose any political power you might have to prevent someone from doing this. Yes, you have economic power by taking your money elsewhere, but that's a much bigger PITA than spending a little while in November to go vote.
Laffer said that reducing taxes stimulates the economy as long as government reduces spending to match inflows.
If it's as accurate as his Laffer curve, I'd have to say he was probably full of it.
The actual Laffer curve, as best as Martin Gardner could figure out, looks a bit like this.