... it ought to be for the right reasons. I doubt that it is this time around. Nevertheless...
Is there anyone who honestly thinks there's something immoral about people paying specifically for what resources they actually consume, whether it's electricity, medical services, or Internet bandwidth? I'm a pretty solid socialist/consensualist, and even I think it's a very rational concept. It was once the way people paid for pretty much everything, until certain entrepreneurs discovered they could amass even more wealth by charging everyone a flat fee based on the "highest common denominator". Insurance companies make their wads of cash in pretty much the same way, don't they? It's potential abuse of metered usage that might make it immoral, not the concept itself.
Metered usage also serves as financial and economic feedback to keep people honest and make them think about the consequences of their choices and behavior. Do I *really* need to download that ISO of a Jenna Jameson porn DVD? Can you imagine how much less people would drive in their cars, or how much slower they would drive, for instance, if there was a cost in personal physical effort and discomfort for stepping on the accelerator, like there would be if they were riding a bicycle?
Metered usage forces people to make economically realistic choices, god forbid.
No, I'm not a libertarian. I make fun of libertarians for having rebellion issues with parental authority. I'm a socialist, or rather a consensualist. Not only is there a certain harsh reality to free markets that I am forced to acknowledge, however, laws of this sort are NOT the specific will of the people. There was no real consensus to establish them. Laws like these are misuse of authority. People who are given authority over others should HESITATE to wield it and never relish it, but sadly it's almost always the opposite of that mindset that we get in our elected officials. We STILL haven't learned the proper criteria for selecting them.
When a government meddles in the economy and creates an unintended monopoly by its actions, the market has just become less free than it was the day before. You don't think a government should be required to compensate somehow for creating that monopoly?
This is an instance of a government meddling in economics, whether intentional or not, and skewing the "freeness" of the market. In essence a monopoly has just been created, by eliminating the competition that one entire class of devices might have been in a particular market segment. Yes, the government SHOULD atone for that in some fashion, whether it's outright subsidizing to compensate for the prohibition or acting as a collective buyer, like a credit union or co-op, and negotiating a fair price with a contractor(s) to counter the unintended monopoly the government has created.
You're either not as libertarian as you think you are, or your understanding of economics is lacking. I'm not that libertarian either, but given the state of human psychology then keeping the market as free as possible is really the only practical choice. This action will blatantly corrupt a small part of the market.
... when you're a company that makes dedicated car navigation devices. Ain't it great when the guv'ment creates a captive audience for what you happen to be selling? All the auto insurance CEOs jizzed all over themselves the day that California mandated auto insurance but then didn't provide any. The same thing happened twice again when California also mandated helmets for motorcycles and bicycles, but then didn't provide any and didn't even use the state's collective buying power to negotiate a good deal for all the state citizens. Of course they should have done at least that much for auto insurance, too (and they kinda did, very belatedly).
Let's see if New Zealand screws up just as bad or surprise everybody and do it right. If you're gonna require something by law - or effectively do the same thing by banning something else - you'd damned well better keep a lid on the profiteering that is sure to ensue.
You must have gotten a pink slip a week ago, for you to so suddenly become first-to-post on nearly everything that hits the Slashdot Firehose. In the last week or so I've been seeing your username appear in comments of virtually every article I read, and now I'm finding that applies even to the ones I've been skipping. Is there any topic for which you don't feel a compulsion to share an opinion?
You two might be arguing a linguistic issue that isn't quite the same as what I tried to consider. I have no quibble with "big words" or the need for thesauruses (thesaurii?), nor do I shirk from metaphors nor similes when they're warranted; I have no issue with the "artistry" of the language. I know how to wield a linguistic brush a bit myself. The aspect I thought was relevant to TFA is the MISUSE of all that vocabulary and semantic flexibility, both intentional and unintentional misuse, that has caused so much conflict in human affairs on both a micro- and macro-scale. The result is the meatspace equivalent of what happens when a programmer fails to communicate an idea correctly to his silicoid comrades: a "bug".
Human history is littered with such linguistic bugs. The worst of them have arguably been caused by deliberate misuse of all that artistic choice. How much cumulative physical and emotional harm has been caused by it? Perhaps selven was addressing the learning aspect of the language that sometimes causes the unintentional incidences, which also causes harm. The imprecision is not the fault of the language, but rather the fault of the creatures using it. Do we change the language - simplify it or dumb it down - to eliminate that potential for harm, or do we change the creatures using it?
The primary goal of a language is to facilitate the transmission of information and abstract ideas. Humans also try to use it to communicate emotions, and that is arguably the goal of the "artistry" that nickspoon mentions. There are also less artistic ways of communicating emotions with language. It's the interplay of language and emotions that causes much of that harm. Do we change the language to eliminate faulty attempts to communicate emotions (manipulate the emotions of others), or do we change the creatures using it?
So we have several issues: deliberate misuse to misinform, deliberate misuse to manipulate emotionally, unintentional misuse to misinform, and finally unintentional misuse to manipulate emotionally. Can't we prescriptively and conscientiously agree to change the language to eliminate even one of those problems?
"... are people going to have to learn an especially bland form of English to pass exams?"
I wonder if that would necessarily be as bad a thing as this dire warning would have us presume? Can you imagine how dysfunctional computers and software would be if computer languages weren't "bland"... in other words, precise and unambiguous? On the other hand, I wonder how much additional overpopulation has been prevented through semantic confusion and miscommunication? If we finally develop a true human AI, when we teach it human language will that also result in the AIs hurting and killing each other over misunderstandings just like their masters?
So... basically this statement is a plea for the preservation of imprecision and ambiguity? How lovely.
Let's all go back to dial-up analog rates and service to satisfy the copyright czars that we have no practical means to steal their content, shall we? The good old days of sneakernet piracy were really so much more satisfying anyway, weren't they, since you actually got to know some of your fellow pirates?
I have a system that has both NVidia and JMicron RAID chipsets, which both hook in during the POST process and add a LONG delay to it. It would shave ten seconds off my boot process if there weren't those long waits for input as each one initializes. Those wait times aren't configurable AFAIK, either.
There was indeed... so I guess it really does matter to kdawson, at least, that it might be a fading skill? Certainly avoidance of repetition is becoming a forgotten art. Now excuse me, whilst I go back to watching re-runs on TV....
Whatever the FCC proposes, it almost certainly won't be the real thing, but a legislative band-aid. It's sad that we still can't correct century-old mistakes.
The higher quality goods pay for themselves in increased lifespan and reliability, IF the the manufacturer or industry doesn't deliberately obsolete them with "progress". Not everything described as progress actually is. Mass production is supposed to be good at lowering cost of producing goods, but that requires actual "mass" production and persistence in the market to reap those rewards. We get new car models EVERY year, which effectively wrecks most of the cost savings we should be seeing from the mass production of them. Manufacturers have been using this tactic for a long time to maximize profits: they short-circuit the benefits of mass production by keeping the pace of "progress" so high that the benefits never fully accrue.
I.e., planned obsolescence.
I drove a Mercury Tracer for 14 years, BTW, which was already three years old when I bought it used. I only stopped driving it because it developed brake system problems that I couldn't fix myself and weren't worth the $1200 demanded by the experts to fix; actually I was mechanically capable, and willing, to do it, but didn't have any allowed place to tear the car down and do the work.
P.S. Sorry you had such a hard time processing my witty jab after you begged for the punchline. Seriously, though, ADD is not a "disorder" in a physiological sense; it's only a disorder relative to a civilization that demands a way of perceiving/processing/behaving that is foreign to anyone with those "ADD" traits. That wasn't ridicule.
I'm sorry to hear that you have a base case of ADD, with the short attention span and addiction to uniqueness. California's Lemon Law requires that manufacturers provide parts and materials necessary to effect repairs for at least that long. If they fail to do so, they're in violation of State law and subject to prosecution, either by private parties or the state itself in extreme cases. IIRC it applies to anything with a manufacturing cost greater than $100. It's a direct response to planned obsolescence. You apparently like planned obsolescence because it feeds your disability? I have to wonder, though, since you mention "protect[ing] against obsolescence" on your business Web site as one of its goals. Since the Lemon Law also protects against obsolescence, shouldn't you be in favor of it? I'm guessing your clients would be.
I believe it probably is just as valid in small claims court; it might be that it was tailor-made for that venue. I just wasn't in a state of mind to be distracted by even that. I wound up spending $180 to buy a refurb monitor that worked fine right up until I resold it for $40 a week ago. Even if I had sued and won, I doubt the repair cost would have been much less than the cost of the refurb (assuming the court didn't just compel Viewsonic to give me a punitive replacement).
The motivation here is roughly the same as that which inspired California's so-called Lemon Law. Contrary to common perception, though, California's law covers EVERYTHING (past a certain cost of manufacture), not just automobiles, and for a period of no less than seven years.
For example, when my 21-inch Nokia CRT monitor died after six years, California's law explicitly guaranteed me a "right to repair". However, Nokia had sold their display brand to Viewsonic who, when I contacted them, politely told me to go fuck myself. Legally speaking, I could have sued Viewsonic for specific performance and the verdict would have been assured. I even spoke to one firm about the possibility of a class action suit (they decided the "class" wasn't large enough to be profitable for chasing that ambulance). Ultimately it wasn't practical to sue Viewsonic, but had I done so the state law would have guaranteed a slam-dunk verdict in my favor.
Perhaps Massachusetts should consider broadening the scope of its proposed law as well? Why arbitrarily restrict it to only ONE type of product?
That doesn't prevent a small amount of water from collecting at and inside the shower head itself. I *always* open the diverter after every shower; what I described is an additional step. Without that extender and the additional step, a small amount of water would still collect at the shower head and evaporate.
I have a daily routine that might prevent this problem, though it was hardly my intention:
I have a shower "extender", a z-shaped arm which raises the height of the shower head by a few inches. I happen to hate routine maintenance like removing hard water precipitates from shower heads, and I discovered a way to avoid it completely: after a shower, I loosen the thumbscrew of the upper elbow of the extender and rotate it into an upward-facing position, shower head and all.
This has the effect of letting water drain back out of the shower head, rather than collect and then form those precipitates we all love so much. Perhaps it also creates an inhospitable, or less hospitable, environment for Mycobacterium avium in the process?
Maybe next they can liberate all the data held hostage in the Windows Registry? Maybe they can kidnap Ballmer and hold him hostage until he cries uncle-Bill? They could tie him to a chair and then throw it around the room.
This conclusions of this study don't apply to me at all: I'm not human, at least not precisely the same variety of Homo sp. that these researchers put under the microscope. I prefer to avoid games with social components, particularly those that are multiplayer but even those solo games that include elements like diplomacy and spying. Truth be told, I prefer games that have endless replayability (*without* other human players), total immersion, and a focus on non-abstract strategy and complexity (extra bonus points if I can indulge my love of symmetry and order). Price certainly is always a consideration, but decent realistic graphics (that aid the total immersion) can be a tie-breaker, all other thing equal. The things that are NOT important to me are precisely the things that their carefully selected subjects valued. Do they think evolution just stopped with the invention of language? Word up, guys: some of us aren't hardwired the same as those monkeys you studied. Some of us are wired more like cats than dogs, to use a very old but still apt comparison. Some of us aren't beholden to the rush of oxytocin, some of us don't have a social bone.
This is a contest between capitalist greed and the Common Good that has barely had the battlefield defined as yet. What we've seen so far are just the clashes between the upstart Rebellion's scouting parties and the evil Empire. No one has come forward to organize the splinter cells and create a united front yet. If the Empire succeeds in dividing and conquering, there may never be much of a Rebellion.
Slashdot Mirror
How about wiring the steering wheel to be electrically conductive, and slowly increasing the voltage with speed?
... it ought to be for the right reasons. I doubt that it is this time around. Nevertheless...
Is there anyone who honestly thinks there's something immoral about people paying specifically for what resources they actually consume, whether it's electricity, medical services, or Internet bandwidth? I'm a pretty solid socialist/consensualist, and even I think it's a very rational concept. It was once the way people paid for pretty much everything, until certain entrepreneurs discovered they could amass even more wealth by charging everyone a flat fee based on the "highest common denominator". Insurance companies make their wads of cash in pretty much the same way, don't they? It's potential abuse of metered usage that might make it immoral, not the concept itself.
Metered usage also serves as financial and economic feedback to keep people honest and make them think about the consequences of their choices and behavior. Do I *really* need to download that ISO of a Jenna Jameson porn DVD? Can you imagine how much less people would drive in their cars, or how much slower they would drive, for instance, if there was a cost in personal physical effort and discomfort for stepping on the accelerator, like there would be if they were riding a bicycle?
Metered usage forces people to make economically realistic choices, god forbid.
No, I'm not a libertarian. I make fun of libertarians for having rebellion issues with parental authority. I'm a socialist, or rather a consensualist. Not only is there a certain harsh reality to free markets that I am forced to acknowledge, however, laws of this sort are NOT the specific will of the people. There was no real consensus to establish them. Laws like these are misuse of authority. People who are given authority over others should HESITATE to wield it and never relish it, but sadly it's almost always the opposite of that mindset that we get in our elected officials. We STILL haven't learned the proper criteria for selecting them.
Surprised, no... relieved for the sake of all those directionally challenged New Zealanders, yes.
When a government meddles in the economy and creates an unintended monopoly by its actions, the market has just become less free than it was the day before. You don't think a government should be required to compensate somehow for creating that monopoly?
This is an instance of a government meddling in economics, whether intentional or not, and skewing the "freeness" of the market. In essence a monopoly has just been created, by eliminating the competition that one entire class of devices might have been in a particular market segment. Yes, the government SHOULD atone for that in some fashion, whether it's outright subsidizing to compensate for the prohibition or acting as a collective buyer, like a credit union or co-op, and negotiating a fair price with a contractor(s) to counter the unintended monopoly the government has created.
You're either not as libertarian as you think you are, or your understanding of economics is lacking. I'm not that libertarian either, but given the state of human psychology then keeping the market as free as possible is really the only practical choice. This action will blatantly corrupt a small part of the market.
... when you're a company that makes dedicated car navigation devices. Ain't it great when the guv'ment creates a captive audience for what you happen to be selling? All the auto insurance CEOs jizzed all over themselves the day that California mandated auto insurance but then didn't provide any. The same thing happened twice again when California also mandated helmets for motorcycles and bicycles, but then didn't provide any and didn't even use the state's collective buying power to negotiate a good deal for all the state citizens. Of course they should have done at least that much for auto insurance, too (and they kinda did, very belatedly).
Let's see if New Zealand screws up just as bad or surprise everybody and do it right. If you're gonna require something by law - or effectively do the same thing by banning something else - you'd damned well better keep a lid on the profiteering that is sure to ensue.
You must have gotten a pink slip a week ago, for you to so suddenly become first-to-post on nearly everything that hits the Slashdot Firehose. In the last week or so I've been seeing your username appear in comments of virtually every article I read, and now I'm finding that applies even to the ones I've been skipping. Is there any topic for which you don't feel a compulsion to share an opinion?
You two might be arguing a linguistic issue that isn't quite the same as what I tried to consider. I have no quibble with "big words" or the need for thesauruses (thesaurii?), nor do I shirk from metaphors nor similes when they're warranted; I have no issue with the "artistry" of the language. I know how to wield a linguistic brush a bit myself. The aspect I thought was relevant to TFA is the MISUSE of all that vocabulary and semantic flexibility, both intentional and unintentional misuse, that has caused so much conflict in human affairs on both a micro- and macro-scale. The result is the meatspace equivalent of what happens when a programmer fails to communicate an idea correctly to his silicoid comrades: a "bug".
Human history is littered with such linguistic bugs. The worst of them have arguably been caused by deliberate misuse of all that artistic choice. How much cumulative physical and emotional harm has been caused by it? Perhaps selven was addressing the learning aspect of the language that sometimes causes the unintentional incidences, which also causes harm. The imprecision is not the fault of the language, but rather the fault of the creatures using it. Do we change the language - simplify it or dumb it down - to eliminate that potential for harm, or do we change the creatures using it?
The primary goal of a language is to facilitate the transmission of information and abstract ideas. Humans also try to use it to communicate emotions, and that is arguably the goal of the "artistry" that nickspoon mentions. There are also less artistic ways of communicating emotions with language. It's the interplay of language and emotions that causes much of that harm. Do we change the language to eliminate faulty attempts to communicate emotions (manipulate the emotions of others), or do we change the creatures using it?
So we have several issues: deliberate misuse to misinform, deliberate misuse to manipulate emotionally, unintentional misuse to misinform, and finally unintentional misuse to manipulate emotionally. Can't we prescriptively and conscientiously agree to change the language to eliminate even one of those problems?
I wonder if that would necessarily be as bad a thing as this dire warning would have us presume? Can you imagine how dysfunctional computers and software would be if computer languages weren't "bland"... in other words, precise and unambiguous? On the other hand, I wonder how much additional overpopulation has been prevented through semantic confusion and miscommunication? If we finally develop a true human AI, when we teach it human language will that also result in the AIs hurting and killing each other over misunderstandings just like their masters?
So... basically this statement is a plea for the preservation of imprecision and ambiguity? How lovely.
Let's all go back to dial-up analog rates and service to satisfy the copyright czars that we have no practical means to steal their content, shall we? The good old days of sneakernet piracy were really so much more satisfying anyway, weren't they, since you actually got to know some of your fellow pirates?
I have a system that has both NVidia and JMicron RAID chipsets, which both hook in during the POST process and add a LONG delay to it. It would shave ten seconds off my boot process if there weren't those long waits for input as each one initializes. Those wait times aren't configurable AFAIK, either.
There was indeed... so I guess it really does matter to kdawson, at least, that it might be a fading skill? Certainly avoidance of repetition is becoming a forgotten art. Now excuse me, whilst I go back to watching re-runs on TV....
Whatever the FCC proposes, it almost certainly won't be the real thing, but a legislative band-aid. It's sad that we still can't correct century-old mistakes.
The higher quality goods pay for themselves in increased lifespan and reliability, IF the the manufacturer or industry doesn't deliberately obsolete them with "progress". Not everything described as progress actually is. Mass production is supposed to be good at lowering cost of producing goods, but that requires actual "mass" production and persistence in the market to reap those rewards. We get new car models EVERY year, which effectively wrecks most of the cost savings we should be seeing from the mass production of them. Manufacturers have been using this tactic for a long time to maximize profits: they short-circuit the benefits of mass production by keeping the pace of "progress" so high that the benefits never fully accrue.
I.e., planned obsolescence.
I drove a Mercury Tracer for 14 years, BTW, which was already three years old when I bought it used. I only stopped driving it because it developed brake system problems that I couldn't fix myself and weren't worth the $1200 demanded by the experts to fix; actually I was mechanically capable, and willing, to do it, but didn't have any allowed place to tear the car down and do the work.
P.S. Sorry you had such a hard time processing my witty jab after you begged for the punchline. Seriously, though, ADD is not a "disorder" in a physiological sense; it's only a disorder relative to a civilization that demands a way of perceiving/processing/behaving that is foreign to anyone with those "ADD" traits. That wasn't ridicule.
... BitTorrent pirates. You'll always find last night's shows backed-up on TPB the next morning. Yaaarrr!
I'm sorry to hear that you have a base case of ADD, with the short attention span and addiction to uniqueness. California's Lemon Law requires that manufacturers provide parts and materials necessary to effect repairs for at least that long. If they fail to do so, they're in violation of State law and subject to prosecution, either by private parties or the state itself in extreme cases. IIRC it applies to anything with a manufacturing cost greater than $100. It's a direct response to planned obsolescence. You apparently like planned obsolescence because it feeds your disability? I have to wonder, though, since you mention "protect[ing] against obsolescence" on your business Web site as one of its goals. Since the Lemon Law also protects against obsolescence, shouldn't you be in favor of it? I'm guessing your clients would be.
I believe it probably is just as valid in small claims court; it might be that it was tailor-made for that venue. I just wasn't in a state of mind to be distracted by even that. I wound up spending $180 to buy a refurb monitor that worked fine right up until I resold it for $40 a week ago. Even if I had sued and won, I doubt the repair cost would have been much less than the cost of the refurb (assuming the court didn't just compel Viewsonic to give me a punitive replacement).
The motivation here is roughly the same as that which inspired California's so-called Lemon Law. Contrary to common perception, though, California's law covers EVERYTHING (past a certain cost of manufacture), not just automobiles, and for a period of no less than seven years.
For example, when my 21-inch Nokia CRT monitor died after six years, California's law explicitly guaranteed me a "right to repair". However, Nokia had sold their display brand to Viewsonic who, when I contacted them, politely told me to go fuck myself. Legally speaking, I could have sued Viewsonic for specific performance and the verdict would have been assured. I even spoke to one firm about the possibility of a class action suit (they decided the "class" wasn't large enough to be profitable for chasing that ambulance). Ultimately it wasn't practical to sue Viewsonic, but had I done so the state law would have guaranteed a slam-dunk verdict in my favor.
Perhaps Massachusetts should consider broadening the scope of its proposed law as well? Why arbitrarily restrict it to only ONE type of product?
That doesn't prevent a small amount of water from collecting at and inside the shower head itself. I *always* open the diverter after every shower; what I described is an additional step. Without that extender and the additional step, a small amount of water would still collect at the shower head and evaporate.
I have a daily routine that might prevent this problem, though it was hardly my intention:
I have a shower "extender", a z-shaped arm which raises the height of the shower head by a few inches. I happen to hate routine maintenance like removing hard water precipitates from shower heads, and I discovered a way to avoid it completely: after a shower, I loosen the thumbscrew of the upper elbow of the extender and rotate it into an upward-facing position, shower head and all.
This has the effect of letting water drain back out of the shower head, rather than collect and then form those precipitates we all love so much. Perhaps it also creates an inhospitable, or less hospitable, environment for Mycobacterium avium in the process?
Yep, that's the way to make people receptive to it, make it LESS truthy.
Maybe next they can liberate all the data held hostage in the Windows Registry? Maybe they can kidnap Ballmer and hold him hostage until he cries uncle-Bill? They could tie him to a chair and then throw it around the room.
This conclusions of this study don't apply to me at all: I'm not human, at least not precisely the same variety of Homo sp. that these researchers put under the microscope. I prefer to avoid games with social components, particularly those that are multiplayer but even those solo games that include elements like diplomacy and spying. Truth be told, I prefer games that have endless replayability (*without* other human players), total immersion, and a focus on non-abstract strategy and complexity (extra bonus points if I can indulge my love of symmetry and order). Price certainly is always a consideration, but decent realistic graphics (that aid the total immersion) can be a tie-breaker, all other thing equal. The things that are NOT important to me are precisely the things that their carefully selected subjects valued. Do they think evolution just stopped with the invention of language? Word up, guys: some of us aren't hardwired the same as those monkeys you studied. Some of us are wired more like cats than dogs, to use a very old but still apt comparison. Some of us aren't beholden to the rush of oxytocin, some of us don't have a social bone.
Sincerely,
the Vulcan Tourist
This is a contest between capitalist greed and the Common Good that has barely had the battlefield defined as yet. What we've seen so far are just the clashes between the upstart Rebellion's scouting parties and the evil Empire. No one has come forward to organize the splinter cells and create a united front yet. If the Empire succeeds in dividing and conquering, there may never be much of a Rebellion.
Luke and Leia, where are you?