Amtrak is the opposite: passenger rail in the U.S. was private for years (well, quasi-private, if we ignore the land grants used to build the rail lines). But with the decline of intercity rail travel, the rail companies wanted to get out of the business, and Amtrak was set up to consolidate and operate a rump service, mainly focused on keeping rural areas connected. The biggest proponents were actually the private rail companies, who wanted a clean exit strategy (aka dump the mess on the government). Congressmen/Senators representing rural areas were also large proponents of the plan at the time, as they were worried about losing their town's stop.
Conrail has no interest in running passenger rail, since freight is far more profitable. There are more or less three options.
One is to shut it down entirely.
A second is to break it up, leaving it to states to operate local portions if they want. This is slowly being done to some extent on the funding side, as Amtrak cuts routes but has a program where they'll agree to keep operating a cut route if a state wants to pay for it. For example, the Vermonter in Vermont, and two routes in California are now operated by Amtrak as contractor on behalf of the respective states.
A third is the Scandinavian option, of a publicly funded but privately operated system: the government draws up what routes it wants operated and at what fares, and then opens it up for companies to bid how much of a subsidy they would need to operate the system as proposed (this is the arrangement under which, e.g., Movia operates the Copenhagen bus system).
So if they've identified pathways they want to target and have some good fMRI evidence of what's going on, why use games as the drug delivery mechanism, instead of a more conventional method?
Have you really eaten defrosted frozen fruit, and found it to be as good as fresh fruit? And how would you even freeze a tomato in a way that doesn't screw it up?
I'm not a huge fan of farmers markets, especially in well-off urban areas, where they've turned into more like upscale boutique grocery stores. But fresh fruit/vegetables picked ripe are in many cases vastly superior to both the frozen kind, and the picked-green-and-ripened-in-transit kind.
That's precisely what anarchists do think, though! That's one of the main things that distinguishes anarchists from libertarians: libertarians are only worried about state power, while anarchists are worried about both state and corporate power. In general, anarchist theory opposes hierarchical power relations, of which the state is just one variety, and capitalist power relations are another.
There might be repercussions if you're a lawless ruffian, who attempts to use force to defend "his" land as some kind of god-given right of inheritance, sure. I don't see why society needs to accede to your thuggery, though, as natural law does not sanction it.
Your post doesn't really seem to be responding to Franklin's views. He supports possessions, which he (elsewhere) defines as basically what you can actually, in fact, possess around you: your house, its contents, your work tools, your personal effects, etc. What he considers state-created is property that rises to such sizes that it can only be maintained via a central state registry. For example, if your uncle dies and you inherit 10,000 acres in Texas, and you've never visited that land, there is no real sense in which you possess that land. If you indeed "own" that land, it's solely by virtue of a state property register that has that land marked out as being owned by some faraway person who has never seen it. In a stateless society, if you "stole" land from someone who had never in his life been within 1,000 miles of the land, nothing would happen, because the person isn't there, or anywhere close!
It's in this sense that ownership is a matter of social consensus: you own that parcel in Texas because society has agreed that we should recognize you as doing so, via a set of rules (property registers, title, etc.) that are intended to produce smooth functioning of society, improvement of the economy, etc. Franklin is just pointing out that we should ensure the rules actually do have that effect: they aren't god-given rules, but man-made ones, and should be changed to different ones if they turn out to be suboptimal.
Thomas Jefferson had similar views, incidentally, that property above a certain size, especially absentee property, could not preexist society. There is some evidence that these views among the Founders are why the Declaration of Independence says "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", and not "life, liberty, and property", which was the more common formulation at the time. Jefferson and Franklin did think that the state maintaining a system of property ownership was a good idea, but on consequentialist grounds; they didn't think it was a natural right or could preexist the state.
The ancom line against property is hardly even really radical, historically. They have basically the same view that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin had: that personal possessions are natural property in a sense, but beyond that, e.g. when we're talking about owning hundreds of acres of land as an absentee landlord, "property" is a social construct that can only exist through the power of the state, and should be judged by its effects.
Here's Benjamin Franklin, one of the more prominent early American scientists, with the view that you allege "grates on common sense to such an extent that no sane person can realistically believe in and subscribe to it":
All the property that is necessay to a man for the conservation of the individual and the propagation of the species is his natural right, which none can justly deprive him of; but all property superfluous to such purposes is the property of the public, who by their laws have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it whenever the welfare of the public shall demand such a disposition.
It's interesting that this was already evident to people who thought carefully about the matter in the late 18th century, before Proudhon and the more in-depth anarchist critique of property even came on the scene.
The main differences between Franklin and anarchists are on policy grounds, not philosophical grounds. Franklin was basically a moderate liberal, who thought that, although property is a state-created fiction, it's a useful fiction to a certain extent, so long as we ensure that it's instituted for the benefit of the general public. Whereas, anarchists think it's a harmful fiction.
I agree for "regular" people, but it sounds like they're targeting this at first-class passengers who might expect to be recognized, and may even have their egos bruised if they aren't. So BA is going to pull up a bunch of photos for the flight attendants peruse, in order to ensure that they don't accidentally fail to recognize a CEO or pop star or whoever.
It's still fake, but seems like a kind of faking that might work. Especially with people who want to believe it's real, that they're so famous that of course the flight attendants recognized them.
I believe that classification is unavoidable due to its sources of funds: a public charity has to raise a substantial portion of its funds through donations from many individuals, rather than a handful of benefactors, and generally can't be wholly controlled by one party either. The B&MG Foundation gets virtually all of its money from a handful of individuals (the Gates themselves, and some Buffett donations), and is controlled by the Gates.
Large nonprofit organizations get increasingly likely to be run in questionable ways. The most common failing, of course, is just the usual inefficiency and bureaucracy. But when you're moving around millions or billions of dollars, opportunities for personal interest and corruption are around many corners. As this article notes, nonprofit-corporate partnerships may benefit corporate shareholders, depending on how the partnership is structured (who fronts the money, who benefits, what long-term effects are generated, etc.). And even at levels below official big partnerships, there are always decisions being made: using a contractor here or there, adopting one technology or methodology over another one, etc. It's just really hard to move around billions of dollars without an array of consequences, sometimes intended and sometimes not (and sometimes intended by some people and not intended by others).
In this case I don't think that's the underlying problem: even if it were opt-in, a lot of users would opt in to syncing email addresses, because in the normal case that's what they want. If a friend leaves company A and goes to company B, updating the address in your phone is convenient. What's less convenient is Facebook changing their email address when the old one was still valid and the friend didn't actually remove it...
Sweden just didn't really have a lot of modern infrastructure until post-WW2, especially outside Stockholm. The first metro system in the country opened in 1950, for example. The road system was so undeveloped as late as the 1960s that they were able to change from left-hand to right-hand driving in 1967 without a lot of expense (it would've been a lot worse if they had motorways whose on/off-ramps had to be replaced). The national power grid was only completed in the 1940s. And so on.
There is definitely some maintenance that should be done, so I'd say fairly accurate.
Above-ground power lines on poles aren't exactly uncommon across the world, though, especially outside of major cities. Much of the UK outside downtowns is wooden poles still. Heck, even in some major cities: large parts of Tokyo are served by power lines hanging off poles.
The Constellation Program developing next-gen human spaceflight was investigated in the early 2000s, and reinvigorated in revised form in 2004, when President Bush endorsed significant spending on manned space exploration.
NASA began developing, as part of that project, a Crew Exploration Vehicle, working on it roughly 2004-2005, somewhat into 2006.
The head of NASA changed in early 2005, and the new head ordered a new study reevaluating NASA's human spaceflight programs.
As part of that study's outcome, the Orion spacecraft was contracted out to Lockheed, starting from 2006.
In 2009, President Obama ordered a new study reevaluating NASA's human spaceflight programs.
As part of that study's outcome, Constellation got the axe in the proposed 2011 budget (released early 2010).
The final version of the budget (late 2010) salvaged some parts of Constellation, spinning much of it off into a cheaper, scaled-down program, of which Orion is a major part, the other major part being the new launch vehicle. All that got going again in 2011.
That's why web neutrality is a nonsense concept from my perspective - if companies can build their own infrastructure
The problem is that it's really only a handful of Google-sized companies who can do so. The worry with net neutrality is that the traditional ability of smaller players to participate will be eroded, if you can no longer buy access to the internet as a leaf node via an ISP, and then have your traffic treated equally once you're on the network.
The goal is to merge eglibc back into glibc, yes. After the previous glibc steering committee disbanded, it switched to being run by an informal three-person committee, one of whom (Joseph Myers) is also one of the lead maintainers of eglibc, so the two projects' leadership are no longer at odds. And Myers has suggested that the goal is to start moving eglibc changes over into the main glibc branch.
Slashdot Mirror
Amtrak is the opposite: passenger rail in the U.S. was private for years (well, quasi-private, if we ignore the land grants used to build the rail lines). But with the decline of intercity rail travel, the rail companies wanted to get out of the business, and Amtrak was set up to consolidate and operate a rump service, mainly focused on keeping rural areas connected. The biggest proponents were actually the private rail companies, who wanted a clean exit strategy (aka dump the mess on the government). Congressmen/Senators representing rural areas were also large proponents of the plan at the time, as they were worried about losing their town's stop.
Conrail has no interest in running passenger rail, since freight is far more profitable. There are more or less three options.
One is to shut it down entirely.
A second is to break it up, leaving it to states to operate local portions if they want. This is slowly being done to some extent on the funding side, as Amtrak cuts routes but has a program where they'll agree to keep operating a cut route if a state wants to pay for it. For example, the Vermonter in Vermont, and two routes in California are now operated by Amtrak as contractor on behalf of the respective states.
A third is the Scandinavian option, of a publicly funded but privately operated system: the government draws up what routes it wants operated and at what fares, and then opens it up for companies to bid how much of a subsidy they would need to operate the system as proposed (this is the arrangement under which, e.g., Movia operates the Copenhagen bus system).
So if they've identified pathways they want to target and have some good fMRI evidence of what's going on, why use games as the drug delivery mechanism, instead of a more conventional method?
something that moves like a jellyfish when you apply an electric field across it in water
Wonder what the approval process is like to get this into toy stores...
I am intrigued by your comment and wish to mail-order your Asperger's Handbook.
A lot of utility information is now in OpenStreetMap. Are they going to classify that, too?
People carried mobile phones in the early 80s?
How do you enjoy living on Mars so far? What's the culture there like? Do you ever miss Earth? Would you recommend it as a retirement destination?
Have you really eaten defrosted frozen fruit, and found it to be as good as fresh fruit? And how would you even freeze a tomato in a way that doesn't screw it up?
I'm not a huge fan of farmers markets, especially in well-off urban areas, where they've turned into more like upscale boutique grocery stores. But fresh fruit/vegetables picked ripe are in many cases vastly superior to both the frozen kind, and the picked-green-and-ripened-in-transit kind.
That's precisely what anarchists do think, though! That's one of the main things that distinguishes anarchists from libertarians: libertarians are only worried about state power, while anarchists are worried about both state and corporate power. In general, anarchist theory opposes hierarchical power relations, of which the state is just one variety, and capitalist power relations are another.
There might be repercussions if you're a lawless ruffian, who attempts to use force to defend "his" land as some kind of god-given right of inheritance, sure. I don't see why society needs to accede to your thuggery, though, as natural law does not sanction it.
Your post doesn't really seem to be responding to Franklin's views. He supports possessions, which he (elsewhere) defines as basically what you can actually, in fact, possess around you: your house, its contents, your work tools, your personal effects, etc. What he considers state-created is property that rises to such sizes that it can only be maintained via a central state registry. For example, if your uncle dies and you inherit 10,000 acres in Texas, and you've never visited that land, there is no real sense in which you possess that land. If you indeed "own" that land, it's solely by virtue of a state property register that has that land marked out as being owned by some faraway person who has never seen it. In a stateless society, if you "stole" land from someone who had never in his life been within 1,000 miles of the land, nothing would happen, because the person isn't there, or anywhere close!
It's in this sense that ownership is a matter of social consensus: you own that parcel in Texas because society has agreed that we should recognize you as doing so, via a set of rules (property registers, title, etc.) that are intended to produce smooth functioning of society, improvement of the economy, etc. Franklin is just pointing out that we should ensure the rules actually do have that effect: they aren't god-given rules, but man-made ones, and should be changed to different ones if they turn out to be suboptimal.
Thomas Jefferson had similar views, incidentally, that property above a certain size, especially absentee property, could not preexist society. There is some evidence that these views among the Founders are why the Declaration of Independence says "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", and not "life, liberty, and property", which was the more common formulation at the time. Jefferson and Franklin did think that the state maintaining a system of property ownership was a good idea, but on consequentialist grounds; they didn't think it was a natural right or could preexist the state.
The ancom line against property is hardly even really radical, historically. They have basically the same view that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin had: that personal possessions are natural property in a sense, but beyond that, e.g. when we're talking about owning hundreds of acres of land as an absentee landlord, "property" is a social construct that can only exist through the power of the state, and should be judged by its effects.
Here's Benjamin Franklin, one of the more prominent early American scientists, with the view that you allege "grates on common sense to such an extent that no sane person can realistically believe in and subscribe to it":
It's interesting that this was already evident to people who thought carefully about the matter in the late 18th century, before Proudhon and the more in-depth anarchist critique of property even came on the scene.
The main differences between Franklin and anarchists are on policy grounds, not philosophical grounds. Franklin was basically a moderate liberal, who thought that, although property is a state-created fiction, it's a useful fiction to a certain extent, so long as we ensure that it's instituted for the benefit of the general public. Whereas, anarchists think it's a harmful fiction.
I agree for "regular" people, but it sounds like they're targeting this at first-class passengers who might expect to be recognized, and may even have their egos bruised if they aren't. So BA is going to pull up a bunch of photos for the flight attendants peruse, in order to ensure that they don't accidentally fail to recognize a CEO or pop star or whoever.
It's still fake, but seems like a kind of faking that might work. Especially with people who want to believe it's real, that they're so famous that of course the flight attendants recognized them.
For pay-by-the-day it's not a bad price at all. You can do better than $1200/mo for a room, but usually that requires you to sign a lease.
Even the MPAA has done this for years, and they aren't known for being cutting-edge technologists.
Well, not all clouds evaporate. Sometimes, rather than evaporating, they dump their contents all over, at inconvenient times and locations.
I believe that classification is unavoidable due to its sources of funds: a public charity has to raise a substantial portion of its funds through donations from many individuals, rather than a handful of benefactors, and generally can't be wholly controlled by one party either. The B&MG Foundation gets virtually all of its money from a handful of individuals (the Gates themselves, and some Buffett donations), and is controlled by the Gates.
Large nonprofit organizations get increasingly likely to be run in questionable ways. The most common failing, of course, is just the usual inefficiency and bureaucracy. But when you're moving around millions or billions of dollars, opportunities for personal interest and corruption are around many corners. As this article notes, nonprofit-corporate partnerships may benefit corporate shareholders, depending on how the partnership is structured (who fronts the money, who benefits, what long-term effects are generated, etc.). And even at levels below official big partnerships, there are always decisions being made: using a contractor here or there, adopting one technology or methodology over another one, etc. It's just really hard to move around billions of dollars without an array of consequences, sometimes intended and sometimes not (and sometimes intended by some people and not intended by others).
In this case I don't think that's the underlying problem: even if it were opt-in, a lot of users would opt in to syncing email addresses, because in the normal case that's what they want. If a friend leaves company A and goes to company B, updating the address in your phone is convenient. What's less convenient is Facebook changing their email address when the old one was still valid and the friend didn't actually remove it...
Sweden just didn't really have a lot of modern infrastructure until post-WW2, especially outside Stockholm. The first metro system in the country opened in 1950, for example. The road system was so undeveloped as late as the 1960s that they were able to change from left-hand to right-hand driving in 1967 without a lot of expense (it would've been a lot worse if they had motorways whose on/off-ramps had to be replaced). The national power grid was only completed in the 1940s. And so on.
There is definitely some maintenance that should be done, so I'd say fairly accurate.
Above-ground power lines on poles aren't exactly uncommon across the world, though, especially outside of major cities. Much of the UK outside downtowns is wooden poles still. Heck, even in some major cities: large parts of Tokyo are served by power lines hanging off poles.
For those keeping score at home:
The Constellation Program developing next-gen human spaceflight was investigated in the early 2000s, and reinvigorated in revised form in 2004, when President Bush endorsed significant spending on manned space exploration.
NASA began developing, as part of that project, a Crew Exploration Vehicle, working on it roughly 2004-2005, somewhat into 2006.
The head of NASA changed in early 2005, and the new head ordered a new study reevaluating NASA's human spaceflight programs.
As part of that study's outcome, the Orion spacecraft was contracted out to Lockheed, starting from 2006.
In 2009, President Obama ordered a new study reevaluating NASA's human spaceflight programs.
As part of that study's outcome, Constellation got the axe in the proposed 2011 budget (released early 2010).
The final version of the budget (late 2010) salvaged some parts of Constellation, spinning much of it off into a cheaper, scaled-down program, of which Orion is a major part, the other major part being the new launch vehicle. All that got going again in 2011.
The problem is that it's really only a handful of Google-sized companies who can do so. The worry with net neutrality is that the traditional ability of smaller players to participate will be eroded, if you can no longer buy access to the internet as a leaf node via an ISP, and then have your traffic treated equally once you're on the network.
Speaking of "Google I/O", how is the I/O performance on Google's offering? Is it any better than the, err, "not great" performance of Amazon's EBS?
The goal is to merge eglibc back into glibc, yes. After the previous glibc steering committee disbanded, it switched to being run by an informal three-person committee, one of whom (Joseph Myers) is also one of the lead maintainers of eglibc, so the two projects' leadership are no longer at odds. And Myers has suggested that the goal is to start moving eglibc changes over into the main glibc branch.