On a more serious note after the hook, I read somewhere that the Soviet Union had prohibited this many years ago, as well as prohibiting advertising to children, which is something we still haven't gotten right here in the USA. (I'm still a bit on the fence about the latter, since an argument to allow it might be made using an immunological analogy.)
Are you a Scientologist? That sounded a bit like a CoS screed. I'm not a believer in TALK therapy, either, but I guess you've never heard of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)? That is classed as "therapy" too, but it appears to be effective for the people who need it.
I know this from firsthand experience, being an adult in that same system. It's even worse now, because beginning months ago psychological services are no longer covered by my state's Medicaid program, only psychiatric services. The authors of the study weren't keeping up with the ongoing consequences of the recession (no doubt because they're personally insulated from them).
In other words, pills are still covered by Medicaid, but seeing a shrink isn't. That affects children and adults alike, the the effect is more pronounced for adults: they're likely to have even less of a support system than the children.
It's hard not to perceive social Darwinism as evil when one is on the losing end of the process.
A technical problem requires a technical solution.
I wholeheartedly agree that it's the "wrong approach entirely", but you've misunderstood the nature of the problem and the solution. It's not a technical problem. Did you even read the summary much less RTFA? Your solution is focused on something else entirely, not within the scope of what was being addressed. This proposed authoritarian restriction isn't intended to keep music from being so loud that it bothers other people: it's intended to "protect" people from their own poor judgement concerning their own bodies and eardrums.
Thus the problem here is social and informational: lack of education.
The obvious solution is not more technology, it's the addition of education (or eliminating the lack of education).
What you suggest is the Technocrat equivalent of Democrats throwing money at a problem... and it's not even the same problem at issue here.
English isn't your primary language, is it? Whether intentional or not, you're the only one doing any spinning here... you twisted the words into an interpretation that doesn't resemble the original. Did you not comprehend the last paragraph? Clearly not.
I never said a single word about "promotion", of anything. Further, in that last paragraph that you read with both eyes closed, I very clearly stated that Stallman was resorting to authoritarian tactics, and that it was that behavior that caused the current conflict, not his free-software idealism per se. Do you not understand that censorship of the sort alleged here is authoritarian?
Stopping "spinning" disagreements where there actually aren't any. If certain words confuse you, either refer to a dictionary or ask the author what he meant.
After I commented, I found and read quite a few commentaries about them, none of which had an adequate explanation. The most curious aspect is how they continue THROUGH craters, even deep ones. It's almost as if something drove, or was dragged, across those areas. I'm having a hard time visualizing how any impactor could "slide" across the surface like that, even down into and then back out of craters and continuing. At first, second, and third glance they certainly appear to be unnatural.
What's the deal with the curious striations running longitudinally across the whole surface? Notice, in particular, that they even continue down into and through craters! What could cause that?
My first thought was that Phobos must have a fast spin in addition to its fast orbit, and that it was acquiring those gouges as it spins through clouds of debris. Then I read the notes and learned that the "N" marked the north pole of its axis, meaning that the striations are running perpendicular to its rotation!?
... he values his principles more than he does development speed, ease of use, profits, or being able to use the latest shiny thing from MS.
You hit the nail squarely with that comment: Stallman values ethics more than he does profit, even his own, and the "entrepreneurs" of the world who have a reverse value system utterly despise him for it. Can we agree that Stallman is a talented man who, in some parallel dimension, could have made quite a lot of money for himself? He hasn't though, precisely because he doesn't value that extreme wealth.
In effect, by consistently adhering to and promoting this ethic for decades, Stallman has been placing the Greater Good well ahead of his own good. He's a helluva lot more like Jesus in that regard than most people I know or have heard about. Stallman is not unique for having this value system; Craig Newmark demonstrably holds the same values. However Stallman is, as you pointed out, rather uniquely consistent in his application of those values. That at least is a trait worth admiring, even if one disagrees with him. Those who do disagree with him, though, need to spend some time in reflection upon their own selfishness. Stallman demonstrates a selflessness that makes Mother Teresa (and her lifelong duplicity) look like a huckster.
The only thing wrong with Stallman's approach is that, in his zeal to realize this ethical Utopia before he dies, he is resorting to increasingly authoritarian methods when mere education fails to sway people. That appears to be what caused this little rebellion within the GNOME community: it wasn't his free-software ethic that got them riled, it was his willingness to resort to authoritarian measures to realize or preserve it.
The only true network neutrality is public ownership of the wires themselves.
We don't let construction companies own the sections of highway they build and maintain. We don't even let broadcast and telecom companies own the slices of RF "spectrum" they use for some of their devices and services. So why do we continue to let them own the wires, when those wires are (now) so obviously common shared infrastructure, just as are those other examples? We may not have recognized it when the first telegraph wires were laid along the railroad rights of way, but we damned well ought to recognize it now.
We're truly at a crossroads here... and in grave danger of taking the wrong fork in the road.
I can recall using Google Earth shortly after it was first released to zoom around the earth, randomly poking at it with a stick. I was looking for anything that seemed to stand out, and I found quite a number of unique things in those days: weird geologic features in Brunei/Sarawak, the salt flats in the Andes, the gold/minerals rush in the Atacama desert.
One of them was obvious overhead evidence of clear-cutting in southwest Australia. I've always had a silent fantasy about moving to Australia, believing it to be some sort of relative Utopia where things like resource mismanagement and government abuses didn't happen. The discovery of that clear-cutting FROM ORBIT was the beginning of the end of my fantasy.
You're mistaking numbers and "data" for "science". Data != science. It was the plotting to silence dissenters, etc. that represented bad scientific procedure. Numbers and facts don't make science: it's the procedure, the process, and in doing what they did they disrespected that process in an unforgivable way.
The difference here is not the medium: the difference is OUR content versus THEIR content. They have no problem letting their citizens pirate OUR content, even resell it, but when it's THEIR music in which some CHINESE company holds IP interest, well... that's a whole other story!
I bought a used street sweeper and modded it with an extra tank on the top. I fill that full of white-out that I made myself in bulk from a secret family recipe (what can I say, I come from a long line of screw-ups). Then whenever I put my online foot in my mouth, I run out and hop in my "Eraser" and head off for my ISP's local datacenter... I whitewash the whole place top to bottom, and problem solved.
They brought this upon themselves, and by extension ALL the rest of us who consider ourselves "naturalists" in the literal sense of that word. They were in fact performing BAD science. Science is about the process, the Method, and a big part of that is the acknowledgement that nothing is truly a Law written into stone. Dogmatism and religiosity have NO place in science, and yet that is exactly what this ClimateGate displays for the whole world to see: dogmatism in the scientific process. It demonstrates exactly what happens when stupid human beings form emotional attachments to ideas and then either (a) can't let go of them when they're disproven or (b) react badly when those ideas are challenged.
Both (a) and (b) are utterly destructive to the scientific process.
Has everyone forgotten that there were stubborn "believers" who clung to the validity of Piltdown Man even after the hoax was revealed? That lesson should have been driven home in every science class in the world in the many decades since. It hasn't. There are still too many believers in science, who form unproductive emotional attachments to theories and then proceed to ruin the process for everyone, scientist and layperson alike.
Religiosity, faith, and dogmatism have no place in science. If we don't have a very public referendum about ClimateGate and openly discuss the fact that those involved DID screw up, and how and why they screwed-up, we'll be missing yet another opportunity to teach this lesson again.
I hope they put these in elementary and high schools now, use them to teach a new generation of Asperger nerds how to do it, so we can further infect the gene pool and avoid the need for any more Revenge of the Nerds movies?
A huge 500-acre vat of this stuff will explode all at once, causing a rift in the time-space continuum that allows Species 8472 to emerge and exact retribution for bursting their cozy bubble.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, it's not our fault that you're a Republican. ;-)
On a more serious note after the hook, I read somewhere that the Soviet Union had prohibited this many years ago, as well as prohibiting advertising to children, which is something we still haven't gotten right here in the USA. (I'm still a bit on the fence about the latter, since an argument to allow it might be made using an immunological analogy.)
Are you a Scientologist? That sounded a bit like a CoS screed. I'm not a believer in TALK therapy, either, but I guess you've never heard of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)? That is classed as "therapy" too, but it appears to be effective for the people who need it.
I know this from firsthand experience, being an adult in that same system. It's even worse now, because beginning months ago psychological services are no longer covered by my state's Medicaid program, only psychiatric services. The authors of the study weren't keeping up with the ongoing consequences of the recession (no doubt because they're personally insulated from them).
In other words, pills are still covered by Medicaid, but seeing a shrink isn't. That affects children and adults alike, the the effect is more pronounced for adults: they're likely to have even less of a support system than the children.
It's hard not to perceive social Darwinism as evil when one is on the losing end of the process.
You and BadAnalogyGuy would make a great WWF tag team.
Even if that were true - and I'm not conceding that it is - it's not the solution to the problem being discussed here.
Can ya at least be on-topic enough to agree that yet another Big-Mother-ish law isn't the solution to either problem?
It's a Bad Analogy, perhaps?
I wholeheartedly agree that it's the "wrong approach entirely", but you've misunderstood the nature of the problem and the solution. It's not a technical problem. Did you even read the summary much less RTFA? Your solution is focused on something else entirely, not within the scope of what was being addressed. This proposed authoritarian restriction isn't intended to keep music from being so loud that it bothers other people: it's intended to "protect" people from their own poor judgement concerning their own bodies and eardrums.
Thus the problem here is social and informational: lack of education.
The obvious solution is not more technology, it's the addition of education (or eliminating the lack of education).
What you suggest is the Technocrat equivalent of Democrats throwing money at a problem... and it's not even the same problem at issue here.
English isn't your primary language, is it? Whether intentional or not, you're the only one doing any spinning here... you twisted the words into an interpretation that doesn't resemble the original. Did you not comprehend the last paragraph? Clearly not.
I never said a single word about "promotion", of anything. Further, in that last paragraph that you read with both eyes closed, I very clearly stated that Stallman was resorting to authoritarian tactics, and that it was that behavior that caused the current conflict, not his free-software idealism per se. Do you not understand that censorship of the sort alleged here is authoritarian ?
Stopping "spinning" disagreements where there actually aren't any. If certain words confuse you, either refer to a dictionary or ask the author what he meant.
After I commented, I found and read quite a few commentaries about them, none of which had an adequate explanation. The most curious aspect is how they continue THROUGH craters, even deep ones. It's almost as if something drove, or was dragged, across those areas. I'm having a hard time visualizing how any impactor could "slide" across the surface like that, even down into and then back out of craters and continuing. At first, second, and third glance they certainly appear to be unnatural.
What's the deal with the curious striations running longitudinally across the whole surface? Notice, in particular, that they even continue down into and through craters! What could cause that?
My first thought was that Phobos must have a fast spin in addition to its fast orbit, and that it was acquiring those gouges as it spins through clouds of debris. Then I read the notes and learned that the "N" marked the north pole of its axis, meaning that the striations are running perpendicular to its rotation!?
Back to the drawing board....
You hit the nail squarely with that comment: Stallman values ethics more than he does profit, even his own, and the "entrepreneurs" of the world who have a reverse value system utterly despise him for it. Can we agree that Stallman is a talented man who, in some parallel dimension, could have made quite a lot of money for himself? He hasn't though, precisely because he doesn't value that extreme wealth.
In effect, by consistently adhering to and promoting this ethic for decades, Stallman has been placing the Greater Good well ahead of his own good. He's a helluva lot more like Jesus in that regard than most people I know or have heard about. Stallman is not unique for having this value system; Craig Newmark demonstrably holds the same values. However Stallman is, as you pointed out, rather uniquely consistent in his application of those values. That at least is a trait worth admiring, even if one disagrees with him. Those who do disagree with him, though, need to spend some time in reflection upon their own selfishness. Stallman demonstrates a selflessness that makes Mother Teresa (and her lifelong duplicity) look like a huckster.
The only thing wrong with Stallman's approach is that, in his zeal to realize this ethical Utopia before he dies, he is resorting to increasingly authoritarian methods when mere education fails to sway people. That appears to be what caused this little rebellion within the GNOME community: it wasn't his free-software ethic that got them riled, it was his willingness to resort to authoritarian measures to realize or preserve it.
... even though it's likely a waste of breath:
The only true network neutrality is public ownership of the wires themselves.
We don't let construction companies own the sections of highway they build and maintain. We don't even let broadcast and telecom companies own the slices of RF "spectrum" they use for some of their devices and services. So why do we continue to let them own the wires, when those wires are (now) so obviously common shared infrastructure, just as are those other examples? We may not have recognized it when the first telegraph wires were laid along the railroad rights of way, but we damned well ought to recognize it now.
We're truly at a crossroads here... and in grave danger of taking the wrong fork in the road.
I can recall using Google Earth shortly after it was first released to zoom around the earth, randomly poking at it with a stick. I was looking for anything that seemed to stand out, and I found quite a number of unique things in those days: weird geologic features in Brunei/Sarawak, the salt flats in the Andes, the gold/minerals rush in the Atacama desert.
One of them was obvious overhead evidence of clear-cutting in southwest Australia. I've always had a silent fantasy about moving to Australia, believing it to be some sort of relative Utopia where things like resource mismanagement and government abuses didn't happen. The discovery of that clear-cutting FROM ORBIT was the beginning of the end of my fantasy.
Dude... I was KIDDING. I was poking fun at the parent post.
Sorry I made you waste the NRG of a good rant.
Yep. ^^^ What he said. You're suffering from an Americanized delusion of the rest of the world; that's why you didn't know.
You're mistaking numbers and "data" for "science". Data != science. It was the plotting to silence dissenters, etc. that represented bad scientific procedure. Numbers and facts don't make science: it's the procedure, the process, and in doing what they did they disrespected that process in an unforgivable way.
The difference here is not the medium: the difference is OUR content versus THEIR content. They have no problem letting their citizens pirate OUR content, even resell it, but when it's THEIR music in which some CHINESE company holds IP interest, well... that's a whole other story!
I bought a used street sweeper and modded it with an extra tank on the top. I fill that full of white-out that I made myself in bulk from a secret family recipe (what can I say, I come from a long line of screw-ups). Then whenever I put my online foot in my mouth, I run out and hop in my "Eraser" and head off for my ISP's local datacenter... I whitewash the whole place top to bottom, and problem solved.
They brought this upon themselves, and by extension ALL the rest of us who consider ourselves "naturalists" in the literal sense of that word. They were in fact performing BAD science. Science is about the process, the Method, and a big part of that is the acknowledgement that nothing is truly a Law written into stone. Dogmatism and religiosity have NO place in science, and yet that is exactly what this ClimateGate displays for the whole world to see: dogmatism in the scientific process. It demonstrates exactly what happens when stupid human beings form emotional attachments to ideas and then either (a) can't let go of them when they're disproven or (b) react badly when those ideas are challenged.
Both (a) and (b) are utterly destructive to the scientific process.
Has everyone forgotten that there were stubborn "believers" who clung to the validity of Piltdown Man even after the hoax was revealed? That lesson should have been driven home in every science class in the world in the many decades since. It hasn't. There are still too many believers in science, who form unproductive emotional attachments to theories and then proceed to ruin the process for everyone, scientist and layperson alike.
Religiosity, faith, and dogmatism have no place in science. If we don't have a very public referendum about ClimateGate and openly discuss the fact that those involved DID screw up, and how and why they screwed-up, we'll be missing yet another opportunity to teach this lesson again.
I hope they put these in elementary and high schools now, use them to teach a new generation of Asperger nerds how to do it, so we can further infect the gene pool and avoid the need for any more Revenge of the Nerds movies?
So then this will be a pretty bad Bellwether for them, I guess, huh?
So would I, come to think of it! Bring on our bacterial biofuel overlords, then!
A huge 500-acre vat of this stuff will explode all at once, causing a rift in the time-space continuum that allows Species 8472 to emerge and exact retribution for bursting their cozy bubble.
No, I wasn't being serious, but thanks for asking!