Patrick is a brilliant student who compares quite favorably to the doctoral students I studied with at the University of Virginia. His keen intellect and strong verbal skills put him a cut above my other students in his M. Div. level class. He is certainly ready for all the academic challenges that Duke will throw at him and I believe that the academic challenge would stimulate him.
This is from a guy with a Ph.D. in New Testament from UVA -- hardly a charm school. It seems references make no difference. I wish they would have at least done an interview. (Bitter? Me? Never.)
At one point, I applied to Duke Divinity School. Short form: I was rejected for "academic concerns". This despite three years of a perfect 4.0 GPA at small, but credible, college. Reading this article, I begin to see what the issue is. The divinity school had no way to evaluate my performance as better than average because of the tendency to give A's away. What ticks me off? There's a guy down the row from me at the school I'm now going to who WAS accepted at Duke -- and I run academic circles around him.
I'm afraid that the net effect of grade inflation will be to further stratify higher education -- leading to a situation in which one can no longer prove oneself and move up.
I used to have a friend who was a navy nuclear tech. That sounds exciting, neh? Well, actually he spent most of his time standing in a small room monitoring a bunch of dials -- and the "nukes" are probably the smartest enlishted men in the navy. Seems like a waste, and a perfect application for telemetry.
A copyright is a social contract with the public. The owner gets exclusive use of the content for a limited time, and after that the content is owned by the public at large. To then say that the public can also use bits and pieces of the content while the copyright is still in effect, seems to me in effect breaking that contract.
And not to say that the public can use bits and pieces is a precedent so dangerous as to be terrifying. Imagine if Rush Limbaugh could prohibit CNN from quoting his (copyrighted) blather in order to correct his factual errors. Or imagine if one could be prohibited from quoting CNN's coverage of the 9-11 incident in your history work. The problem is that you are buying into the intellectual "property" mindset instead of recognizing that the free exchange of information is, fundamentally, a free speech issue. What is speech but the exchange of information?
This is simply not true. From the eff fair use faq:
The public's right to make fair use of copyrighted works is a long-established and integral part of US copyright law. Courts have used fair use as the means of balancing the competing principles underlying copyright law since 1841. Fair use also reconciles a tension that would otherwise exist between copyright law and the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of expression. The Supreme Court has described fair use as "the guarantee of breathing space for new expression within the confines of Copyright law".
Maybe you do have an affirmative right to use short segments of copyrighted materials in your sermons or whatever. Maybe I have an affirmative right to exterminate those gophers who keep tearing up my garden. What I don't and shouldn't have the right to do is to use the absolutely most effective means of getting rid of those little buggers - minute quantities of nerve gas. No, I have to settle for a poison a little less hazardous to the neighbor's kids. Just like using nerve gas to exterminate gophers, ripping from a copyrighted DVD might be the easiest means of accomplishing your goal, but it's not really in the best interests of the neighborhood or society as a whole. I'm sure there's a compromise out there that while not making everyone happy, will allow you most of your rights, while safeguarding (if not maximizing the profits of) our nation's content-based industries.
First of all, you make this sound very reasonable. Unfortunately, such a compromise is not what is being proposed. Instead, the content industry is demanding solutions that will completely abrogate my rights to fair use. What happens when they stop publishing video tapes? Will I then have to setup a separate cable to my video projector in order to play DVD's in a very kludgy way? What happens when they (as they continually threaten to) start encrypting the output of DVD players so that they can only be decrypted using special TV's for a limited period of time defined by the content industry? How many of my rights am I willing to trade to preserve the profits of an industry run amok?
Now, lets deal with your gopher analogy: I am not prohibited from using nerve gas on gophers because of the damage to the gophers. Instead, I am prohibited from using it because of the potential damage to my neighbors. You, as a gopher, are no doubt against nerve gas - but that doesn't mean that nerve gas is not the best thing for our culture. In my opinion, fair use is far more important to our society than the profits of the content industry (and even the profits of the author.)
Finally, let me observe as a writer that, if you are only writing for the money, you should get back to programming. If you can do anything but write and be happy, do it. The vast majority of writers don't make any money at it. (The vast majority of publishers, on the other hand, do. Seen a typical book contract lately?)
It would not be a fair tradeoff to give up the copy protection battle for shorter copyright terms. Here's why: if I am not allowed to possess technology that could be used to copy copyrighted material (whether I use it for that or not) I will not be able to copy the materials even after the 28 years copyright expires. So far, I am not aware of any DRM technology that does a very good job of supporting expiration of protection.
Further, the problems related to fair use remain. I have an affirmative right to use short segments of copyrighted material in other works. For example, if I wanted to preach a sermon demonstrating how media culture affects us, I might want to use a short clip from the truman show. I have that right under fair use - but I can't do it from a DVD legally right now because of the DMCA which prevents me from legally owning the technology that would enable it. The chilling effect is a scary thing.
Just open mozilla.dmg, and drag Mozilla from the Mozilla 1.2 drive to the applications folder!
(Just a gentle reminder that not everyone runs Windows.:)
My mother was a Librarian. In the state of Virginia, you are required to be licensed to be a "professional librarian." In practice, this means that you MUST have a Masters in Library Science (although it is theoretically possible to get a license without one, its Just Not Very Probable.) And here is where the political tests come in: when my mother went to get her MLS (even though she already had a Ph.D. in Spanish Language and Culture and a pretty stinkin' good idea how a Library is organized) she discovered that many of the classes for an MLS were litmus tests. A great tension was created between "freedom of information" and "responsible librarianship" - which all sounds very good, until you realize that "freedom of information" is only applied to sources that match the ALA's liberal political agenda, while "responsible sources" is applied to "hate literature" like... Dr. Laura, or Rush Limbaugh. (Funny, I seem to remember a few liberals being rather spiteful after the last election.) I can't say that all MLS programs are like this, but the one my mother was in certainly was.
In other places, the licensing schemes have become a way of propping up the unions: the quickest and easiest way to get a license was to join the union. The net effect of this is to restrict YOUR freedom to practice your livelihood based on your membership in some fairly questionable organizations.
Hey there, Windows-boy -- just because you and your HAX0rZ buddies are too slow to play video games and program on the same computer doesn't mean that us grownups can't.
Bull-@*($*(@
on
Complications
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· Score: 3, Insightful
How much say should a patient have in his or her medical treatment? As Gawande describes, until quite recently, the answer was "none -- doctor knows best." But whose body is it, anyway? While the reader might find himself, as I did, indignantly reacting with, "Of course I should be able to decide what happens to me!" Gawande raises an important point. Sometimes a patient really is not in the best position to decide, as when a patient in pain demands the treatment that will alleviate her pain now but cause her serious trouble down the road, unable to consider anything but how much it hurts now.
This is particularly bad in psychiatry. As someone who has been ADHD for his whole life (and treated medically only recently) I am shocked by the attitude that prevails among many psychiatrists: "I'm the doctor, I know best, now shutup and take your medication." This is absurd on several levels.
1. The psychiatrists are often idiots. It is amazing to discover the number of psychiatrists who went to med-school in the third world. Rough estimate: 75%. After three psychiatrists I couldn't understand, I ran into one who did speak English. Of course, he was also a wacko running what appeared to be a cult out of his office.
2. The psychiatrists are often wrong. The first psychiatrist I went to (for ADHD that had been thoroughly diagnosed by two separate psychologists before I was willing to pursue medication) decided after 15 minutes that I was bipolar. He then prescribed a mood stabiliser that made for the worst month of my life. I would sit there, all day, unable to feel anything. I was calm - but I was miserable, couldn't sleep, and developed carpal tunnel from the water retention that was a documented side effect of the drug he gave me. Turns out this drug was brand new, very expensive, and heavily advertised.
3. Let's say I am mis-medicated and develop manic tendencies, and go on a rampage. (A distinct possibility with some of the meds used.) Who goes to jail?
The doctor?
Hardly. I go to jail. The p-docs want total authority, but it is hilarious to watch the way they dodge responsibility.
The bottom line is, I refuse to surrender my control to any idiot with an MD. I now have a doctor who has finally figured out that (a) I have done my homework, (b) I am more aware of what's going on in my head than ANYONE else, and (c) he can prescribe medication, but he can't make me take it -- I'm adhd, not psychotic and not committable. I can be fairly functional with no meds at all so long as I don't go to school. So he has to convince me that the med he proposes is the best course of action. He is okay with this, and he has to be if he wants to continue getting my money.
The sad part is that, if I weren't so stinkin' stubborn and didn't read so much, I would have either roled over and played dead or given up on the whole process. The point of all this is not that all psychotropic meds are bad - in fact, getting the ADHD medicated has made a tremendous contribution to my welfare and the welfare of my family - but that you shouldn't trust someone just because he's a licensed physician.
I'm not sure its true that China can raise more than Intel/AMD. A government is not necessarily able simply to plunder the economy it manages - that tends to kill the economy - so, the amount that they can apply to stuff that is not immediately beneficial (like research and development) is limited. Intel and AMD have a much bigger pot of money to draw from, even if they might not be able to draw as much of it.
I noticed that, apparently, they are using this technique to treat Parkinson's, which is a result of lack of Dopamine. I wonder if this could not also be used (many years from now) to treat ADHD, which results from a Serotonin Dopamine imbalance. Anyone good with bio want to comment?
You know... you've really got a point there. Maybe if we weren't putting all our law enforcement dollars into trivial, non-violent drug "crimes" (or would be non-violent if they weren't illegal) we would have time, money and energy to pursue things like theft, fraud, forgery, utterance, grand theft auto, etc.
One of the things he mentions is tha tthe FBI and Secret Service were not interested in anything less than $5000. Chicago police just weren't interested... This brings up something called "the broken window theory." It goes like this: some socioligists whose names escape me observed that, as long as no window was broken in a building, they tended to stay unbroken. However, as soon as one was broken, if it was not repaired every window in the building would be broken in a couple of weeks.
The idea here is that, by ignoring small crimes, the police miss chances to prevent big crimes. The funny thing is that the people wanted for "small" (I don't think of $3000 as small, but that's just me) crimes are often pulling the same scam again and again - but no one ever turns them in. These "small" scams can add up to really large amounts of money and become big ones.
A few years ago, we had a homeless man who we gave a household job to steal a check out of my wife's checkbook. We only found out when we got a call from the grocery store, asking if we had actually written the check. Of course we hadn't -- the reason the grocery store had called us was that the guy had pulled the same stunt, at the same grocery store, seven times before. No one ever pressed charges. Well, we pressed charges, and it turned out the guy was also wanted for 10 counts of car theft, forging, fraud, etc. etc. ad nauseam. The really nauseating part? The police never followed through on our theft and forgery complaints, even though this guy had dozens of similar complaints against him.
So, the bottom line in my not so humble opinion is that, if you want to prevent crime, you don't need to outlaw guns or anything: just start enforcing the laws you already have.
That's like saying OpenOffice doesn't run on Linux, it really runs on X, since OpenOffice runs on X which sits on top of Linux.
Yes, and if he did say that he would be correct. In many ways, a *nix kernel is a *nix kernel, and presents a very similar interface to the developer regardless of the particular flavor. OS X vs. Aqua, on the other hand, are totally different API's, in different languages, running on a different rendering backend, on different hardware. The differences between Aqua and X are much larger than the diffs between any two modern kernel api's.
Okay, I don't know what anyone else's experience is, but my primary reason for switching to Netscape 7.0 (then to Chimera starting with 0.6) was that IE was so incredibly slow and unreliable, prash-crone and sluggish.
I almost wonder if they are using the same IE I am to call it faster and more reliable.
Look guys, there's a simple way to get rid of these people: every time you see one of their ads, click on it 10 times, then move on. They almost certainly pay a significant amount of money for click-throughs, so you can readily drive them out of business pretty quickly.
First, I want to observe that all the screwing around with software, syncing, etc. seems to be something that happens mostly with pocketpc's. With palms, most of the software just works. You download it, and install it with a simple, one-time operation. The only software problem I ever had was when I moved to Mac OS X and had trouble finding working palm desktop etc.
Second... I use mine to: track my schedule, track my tasks, track my weight, track my diet, track my exercise, read my Bible (in Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and English), listen to mp3's, and keep notes. Oh yeah, I use it as a shopping list too. And it has a calorie database for my diet. And I play video games on it. It goes everywhere I go, remembers everything I can't. It has a company phonebook imported, and I"m more likely to use that one than the web-based one.
Geesh... How could I live without it? It must be confessed, however, that I'm ADD, which makes external organization very important. But still... Join the revolution!
Look folks... it's all well and good to dis passport (and I'm with you in hating it), but if no one comes up with something else that will work, this battle will be lost. Where are the comparable alternatives to passport? (I'm sure they exist, but I'm not familiar with them.)
So the door knockers can keep track of how many dinners they interrupted?
Yeah, how'd you know? Mine just happens to be unique in tracking door knocks, whereas most programs try to serve as research tools for the Bible and other ancient Christian documents.
This is not just making fancy web pages. This is not about the Mozilla browser, it's about the Mozilla framework. This framework was used to develop the browser, the mail program, composer, and everything else including chatzilla. These run as local applications on your box, just like Mozilla composer does.
There are a couple of very interesting examples developed using this technology out already:
I myself am working on a Bible program that will run, locally, under Mozilla. This is probably the future of desktop application development for most stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought it was one of the better recent star trek movies (not that that's saying much.) I particularly like the way they poked fun at Star Trek 5.
I'm afraid that the net effect of grade inflation will be to further stratify higher education -- leading to a situation in which one can no longer prove oneself and move up.
I used to have a friend who was a navy nuclear tech. That sounds exciting, neh? Well, actually he spent most of his time standing in a small room monitoring a bunch of dials -- and the "nukes" are probably the smartest enlishted men in the navy. Seems like a waste, and a perfect application for telemetry.
Now, lets deal with your gopher analogy: I am not prohibited from using nerve gas on gophers because of the damage to the gophers. Instead, I am prohibited from using it because of the potential damage to my neighbors. You, as a gopher, are no doubt against nerve gas - but that doesn't mean that nerve gas is not the best thing for our culture. In my opinion, fair use is far more important to our society than the profits of the content industry (and even the profits of the author.)
Finally, let me observe as a writer that, if you are only writing for the money, you should get back to programming. If you can do anything but write and be happy, do it. The vast majority of writers don't make any money at it. (The vast majority of publishers, on the other hand, do. Seen a typical book contract lately?)
Further, the problems related to fair use remain. I have an affirmative right to use short segments of copyrighted material in other works. For example, if I wanted to preach a sermon demonstrating how media culture affects us, I might want to use a short clip from the truman show. I have that right under fair use - but I can't do it from a DVD legally right now because of the DMCA which prevents me from legally owning the technology that would enable it. The chilling effect is a scary thing.
Just open mozilla.dmg, and drag Mozilla from the Mozilla 1.2 drive to the applications folder! (Just a gentle reminder that not everyone runs Windows. :)
In other places, the licensing schemes have become a way of propping up the unions: the quickest and easiest way to get a license was to join the union. The net effect of this is to restrict YOUR freedom to practice your livelihood based on your membership in some fairly questionable organizations.
Hey there, Windows-boy -- just because you and your HAX0rZ buddies are too slow to play video games and program on the same computer doesn't mean that us grownups can't.
1. The psychiatrists are often idiots. It is amazing to discover the number of psychiatrists who went to med-school in the third world. Rough estimate: 75%. After three psychiatrists I couldn't understand, I ran into one who did speak English. Of course, he was also a wacko running what appeared to be a cult out of his office.
2. The psychiatrists are often wrong. The first psychiatrist I went to (for ADHD that had been thoroughly diagnosed by two separate psychologists before I was willing to pursue medication) decided after 15 minutes that I was bipolar. He then prescribed a mood stabiliser that made for the worst month of my life. I would sit there, all day, unable to feel anything. I was calm - but I was miserable, couldn't sleep, and developed carpal tunnel from the water retention that was a documented side effect of the drug he gave me. Turns out this drug was brand new, very expensive, and heavily advertised.
3. Let's say I am mis-medicated and develop manic tendencies, and go on a rampage. (A distinct possibility with some of the meds used.) Who goes to jail?
The doctor?
Hardly. I go to jail. The p-docs want total authority, but it is hilarious to watch the way they dodge responsibility.
The bottom line is, I refuse to surrender my control to any idiot with an MD. I now have a doctor who has finally figured out that (a) I have done my homework, (b) I am more aware of what's going on in my head than ANYONE else, and (c) he can prescribe medication, but he can't make me take it -- I'm adhd, not psychotic and not committable. I can be fairly functional with no meds at all so long as I don't go to school. So he has to convince me that the med he proposes is the best course of action. He is okay with this, and he has to be if he wants to continue getting my money.
The sad part is that, if I weren't so stinkin' stubborn and didn't read so much, I would have either roled over and played dead or given up on the whole process. The point of all this is not that all psychotropic meds are bad - in fact, getting the ADHD medicated has made a tremendous contribution to my welfare and the welfare of my family - but that you shouldn't trust someone just because he's a licensed physician.
I'm not sure its true that China can raise more than Intel/AMD. A government is not necessarily able simply to plunder the economy it manages - that tends to kill the economy - so, the amount that they can apply to stuff that is not immediately beneficial (like research and development) is limited. Intel and AMD have a much bigger pot of money to draw from, even if they might not be able to draw as much of it.
I noticed that, apparently, they are using this technique to treat Parkinson's, which is a result of lack of Dopamine. I wonder if this could not also be used (many years from now) to treat ADHD, which results from a Serotonin Dopamine imbalance. Anyone good with bio want to comment?
Never thought I'd see an Insightful AC.
The idea here is that, by ignoring small crimes, the police miss chances to prevent big crimes. The funny thing is that the people wanted for "small" (I don't think of $3000 as small, but that's just me) crimes are often pulling the same scam again and again - but no one ever turns them in. These "small" scams can add up to really large amounts of money and become big ones.
A few years ago, we had a homeless man who we gave a household job to steal a check out of my wife's checkbook. We only found out when we got a call from the grocery store, asking if we had actually written the check. Of course we hadn't -- the reason the grocery store had called us was that the guy had pulled the same stunt, at the same grocery store, seven times before. No one ever pressed charges. Well, we pressed charges, and it turned out the guy was also wanted for 10 counts of car theft, forging, fraud, etc. etc. ad nauseam. The really nauseating part? The police never followed through on our theft and forgery complaints, even though this guy had dozens of similar complaints against him.
So, the bottom line in my not so humble opinion is that, if you want to prevent crime, you don't need to outlaw guns or anything: just start enforcing the laws you already have.
Okay, I don't know what anyone else's experience is, but my primary reason for switching to Netscape 7.0 (then to Chimera starting with 0.6) was that IE was so incredibly slow and unreliable, prash-crone and sluggish. I almost wonder if they are using the same IE I am to call it faster and more reliable.
Look guys, there's a simple way to get rid of these people: every time you see one of their ads, click on it 10 times, then move on. They almost certainly pay a significant amount of money for click-throughs, so you can readily drive them out of business pretty quickly.
Of course God's a geek... Look how creative he is. Study physics? He invented it! Study logic? He IS logic.
Second ... I use mine to: track my schedule, track my tasks, track my weight, track my diet, track my exercise, read my Bible (in Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and English), listen to mp3's, and keep notes. Oh yeah, I use it as a shopping list too. And it has a calorie database for my diet. And I play video games on it. It goes everywhere I go, remembers everything I can't. It has a company phonebook imported, and I"m more likely to use that one than the web-based one.
Geesh... How could I live without it? It must be confessed, however, that I'm ADD, which makes external organization very important. But still... Join the revolution!
Look folks ... it's all well and good to dis passport (and I'm with you in hating it), but if no one comes up with something else that will work, this battle will be lost. Where are the comparable alternatives to passport? (I'm sure they exist, but I'm not familiar with them.)
There are a couple of very interesting examples developed using this technology out already:
- OEOne, a complete desktop environment.
- Kimodo, a python and perl IDE.
I myself am working on a Bible program that will run, locally, under Mozilla. This is probably the future of desktop application development for most stuff.