Hey wonk, this has nothing to do with idealism. Maths is a language that describes reality and should be covered by copyright and trade secret legislation in exactly the same way as english, american, farsi, ect.
"Taking firearms out of the hands of the general populace would simply leave the law-abiding citizens defenseless against the people who break the law and get ahold of guns anyway."
This is nothing but FUD designed to sell handguns, millions of people already live in countries with tight gun control and the overwhelming majority of them like it that way.
"A gun is a tool"
It is an extremely efficient tool with saftey features the depend entirely on the competence of the user. Regulation can effectively improve the "saftey features". Eg: In Australia, "self defense" is not a valid reason to own a gun of any description.
"And can't get the UN to do anything about it because the french would veto it."
Ummm, France is part of the EU and the EU has Interpol to take care of international kiddy porn. Take a look at what happened in Denmark during the 90's, Interpol investigations have been very sucessfull at busting kiddy porn groups because they are more than simple ISP fishing trips.
Insurance relies on the bulk of the people insured to pay more money than they claim so you still need people like yourself who have "done the right thing" to pay more than they need too. Also adding another layer means the whole thing will cost the community 33% extra to pay the insurance company profits.
"If I leave the keys in my house door and someone walks in and empties my house then I'm the one who will be paying."
Agreed, but your analogy is not as stong when ignorance about "high tech keys" is taken into account. If all banks had a policy that "we do not ask for your password" and this policy was as widely known as the "leave your keys" meme then you would have a point.
"Your argument might be valid if they had to defend every domain from legal challenges."
No, the argument is valid because they can't afford to contest as many challenges as someone who charges considerably more. Since they have less money they would likley only defend actions that would have an immediate effect of their own profitability. I agree fighting back would deter some challenegers but what if their strategy is to simply cut off customers who cause them legal grief. The number of customers is small but if they fought the complaints against them they would cost more than they are worth in monetary terms.
"Think of this like insurance. A lot of people pay small amounts in order that a few large claims can be paid every year."
Good analogy but it seems to me that one of the reasons GoDaddy is cheap is because their registration fee does NOT include the "samll amount" for "insurance"!
Having said that I would not use price as the primary yardstick, I would look at TOS and track records and pick the cheapest one that met my anti-social needs. GoDaddy would not make it past a cursory look at their TOS, it makes it clear they will pull the plug at the first sign of legal problems from a customers site.
"The bank promises that only transactions actually authorized by you will be applied. The fact that someone has figured out how to trick the bank in to thinking they're talking to you does not imply that you authorized the transactions."
Ummm, yes it does. "You" is defined as "information about you", such as the answer to a secret question you gave to the bank, DOB, passwords, ect... Theorectically there is no way for banks (or anyone else) to be absoultely certain about identity but they can be reasonably certain. In other words, if someone has your information then as far as banks and the law are concerned, they are you!
"If I slip up and become one of the stupid (which seems very unlikely), I won't go bitching at my bank to give me money if it was my fault."
No, someone with such a smug attitude would be down there claiming it was THEIR fault and could never be convinced otherwise. Scams do not rely on "slipping up" or "stupidity", they rely on ignorance. Someone who takes a bait is not accident prone, they are naive.
Phishing in my mind is a grey area and the responsiblity should be shared. If a bank repeatedly warns the customer, (snail and/or email), that they do not ask customers for passwords but the customer still gives out their password via email or phone, well... as they say "a fool and their money are soon parted". But what about keyloggers, phone scams, people looking over your shoulder,...or bank's that don't give a fuck about phishing because "phishing is not our problem".
Also I can't see how banks can know the method a scammer used to obtain the details without some sort of investigation, but they can choose to ignore it and simply say "you must have given your password to someone". My own bank will pay but demands a few things before they do, first I must convince them the withdrawal was unauthorised, then I must pay the first $50 of the loss. An aquaintance who just happened to use the same bank lost ~$3K via some kind of scam, it took about a week for the bank to "do the right thing". He never found out how he was scammed, he was fortunate that the bank saw the crook try to access the account again and gave him the benifit of the doubt and the cash.
"it may be illegal but apparently 4.7 % of boomers are doing pot these days."
If you think that the drug war is unjust then do something about it. BTW: I happen to be a "boomer" and think 4.7% is a gross under-estimate, but I suppose it would depend on the definition of "doing".
"There are a lot of reasons to use a good computer system for voting, with the emphasis on the "good"."
Agreed, I live in Melbourne and my blood ran cold this morning when I spotted a white station wagon with "Diebold" written down the side in big blue letters.
"I'm one of the polling officials who does the counting"
Please tell me you guys are NOT using diebold machines.
I typed "Sudan" into the CSM's search box and got 4400+ hits. Kind of hard to report on Sudan without mentioning death and suffering.
You are dissmising the CSM out of hand because you have read some weird shit about it's owners, I did the same before I actually read a few articles several years ago. CSM has no trouble writing insightfull articles and reports that talk about death and suffering but they do try to avoid gloryifying/justifying those topics/events.
Take a look at their about page. You will find that even though owned by a church the paper sees itself as secular and has this to say about it's intended content...
"The idea is that the unblemished truth is freeing (as a fundamental human right); with it, citizens can make informed decisions and take intelligent action, for themselves and for society."
"Anyone who tells you that they can't spot the Starbucks-smashers or the car-burners about to go to town in the middle of their glowing, rosy, smiling Rainbows And Unicorns Society Of Gentle People demonstration is outright lying."
My guess is you have never experienced a large pub-brawl much less a major riot. One well timed punch is often all it takes to make an already tense crowd explode.
"or you can walk right over, yourself, and ask a police officer to intercede."
In the time it takes you to cross the street starbucks will be samshed and the car will be on fire, in that kind of situation you're best bet is to stay away from the police, their horses and the troublemakers (planted or otherwise). If you have information after the fact then by all means report it to the police but don't even attempt to approach them in the middle of that kind of shit fight.
"To convince me that it was not a mistake you need to show a pattern of at least 3 episodes."
So two planes into the WTC was a mistake until OBL admitted culpability? Does a serial killer need to strike three times so we can decide wether to charge him with murder of manslaghter? In other words, the frequency of an event has nothing to do with intent.
"You have one."
There are more if you care to to look for yourself. Some background to my example in this article by Robert Fisk.
"Keep in mind that real insurrections are NOT stupid. They intentionally place their installations near 'morally objectionable targets', such as day care centers, hospitals, medical factories and yes, newsmen."
That is not what happened in the example I used, but it's great PR for driving a wedge between "us & them" and it also makes a fantastic catch-all excuse. BTW: The only people I think of as "stupid" in all of this are the various meglomaniacs that had a hand in starting it.
Could it be that it's because it's the correct answer? With apologies to BadAnalogyGuy, it's like asking what is 2+2 and then complaining about the answer being 4 all the time. Science is not a pile of factoids you can just dive into, it is a methodical approach accompanied by a long history and seemingly odd customs.
"Go read the published material"
Perhaps you are dyslexic or something, you quote my answer in your post and then (directly under it) you start ranting on about a different answer?
"Digging through yellowing documents..."
Nobody does that unless they are very very interested or they are actually thinking of publishing something. Like I said above, you are arguing against something that I haven't said. However that doesn't mean you can escape the boring part of science, as Eienstien is reputed to have said: "Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration".
BTW: The way science works is that if you still feel "There is a need for a comprehensive, multilingual database of theories, experimental results, and their interdependencies", nobody will stop you building one. And if you can convince scientists it would be usefull, most will gladly jump on your bandwagon. One thing you might have trouble with is content, getting your hands on the archives of Nature and all the other journals out there won't be easy.
"Mandatory elections are a staple of dictatorships that put up a sham veneer of democracy then claim that they were chosen by universal acclaim."
Dictators do not have elections that are acceptable to international observers. I have a suspision the govt here in Australia would like to act like dictators, but compulsory voting isn't helping them. Most compulsory voting systems are really compulsory "get your name checked off the roll" systems, there is no law against donkey votes. Also elections are invariably held on Saturday's so that the vast majority of working taxpayers don't need to take time of work to vote.
The BBC has been unwelcome in China for years, the points in your post spell out why. OTOH: I not that confident the free press were welcome at events such as the seige of Fallujah.
Not a bad summary. I am probably not telling you anything new but one of the best places on the web for in depth reporting of climate science is RealClimate. It's also and excellent source for articles that debunk common myths and assumptions. One of my favorite examples is the false (but common) assumption that economic models are more robust than climate models, leading to the politicaly inspired myth that international regulation of CO2 emmisions will "destroy the economy".
As for TFA, methane from permafrost is nothing new to people who follow the science. I think it was last year when they picked out the large methane "anomoly" hovering over siberia. What is new (and bad) is the observed rate (5X what was expected). Another study observed a huge increase in the number and area of fresh water lakes across siberia and interpreted the results as a faster than expected permafrost melt. Same sort of results from a study looking at the output from siberian rivers.
Results from climate models have consitently underestimated the volatility of permafrost. A half dozen years ago models were predicting permafrost would start melting in 20-50yrs, yet buildings, bridges and roads in Russia and Alaska are already sinking into the ever expanding mud. The one ray of hope in all this is that acctuaries in the big insurance companies have taken a good look at the risks and those (very influential) companies are now starting to act accordingly.
Do I think it's "the end of the world"? No, but what happens when I combine "global warming" with "peak-oil" and "the sixth great extinction"? Suddenly my grandkids suffering through a major downward "correction" for the "population explosion", followed by a second dark-age in an environment only fit for goats, becomes a very real possibility. Much more real than someone like OBL enforcing it on us via kamakazi tactics and home made videos.
Slashdot Mirror
Neither, my Azaleas thrive on Emu shit.
Hey wonk, this has nothing to do with idealism. Maths is a language that describes reality and should be covered by copyright and trade secret legislation in exactly the same way as english, american, farsi, ect.
"Taking firearms out of the hands of the general populace would simply leave the law-abiding citizens defenseless against the people who break the law and get ahold of guns anyway."
This is nothing but FUD designed to sell handguns, millions of people already live in countries with tight gun control and the overwhelming majority of them like it that way.
"A gun is a tool"
It is an extremely efficient tool with saftey features the depend entirely on the competence of the user. Regulation can effectively improve the "saftey features". Eg: In Australia, "self defense" is not a valid reason to own a gun of any description.
"And can't get the UN to do anything about it because the french would veto it."
Ummm, France is part of the EU and the EU has Interpol to take care of international kiddy porn. Take a look at what happened in Denmark during the 90's, Interpol investigations have been very sucessfull at busting kiddy porn groups because they are more than simple ISP fishing trips.
On the surface not a bad idea, but...
Insurance relies on the bulk of the people insured to pay more money than they claim so you still need people like yourself who have "done the right thing" to pay more than they need too. Also adding another layer means the whole thing will cost the community 33% extra to pay the insurance company profits.
"If I leave the keys in my house door and someone walks in and empties my house then I'm the one who will be paying."
Agreed, but your analogy is not as stong when ignorance about "high tech keys" is taken into account. If all banks had a policy that "we do not ask for your password" and this policy was as widely known as the "leave your keys" meme then you would have a point.
"Your argument might be valid if they had to defend every domain from legal challenges."
No, the argument is valid because they can't afford to contest as many challenges as someone who charges considerably more. Since they have less money they would likley only defend actions that would have an immediate effect of their own profitability. I agree fighting back would deter some challenegers but what if their strategy is to simply cut off customers who cause them legal grief. The number of customers is small but if they fought the complaints against them they would cost more than they are worth in monetary terms.
"Think of this like insurance. A lot of people pay small amounts in order that a few large claims can be paid every year."
Good analogy but it seems to me that one of the reasons GoDaddy is cheap is because their registration fee does NOT include the "samll amount" for "insurance"!
Having said that I would not use price as the primary yardstick, I would look at TOS and track records and pick the cheapest one that met my anti-social needs. GoDaddy would not make it past a cursory look at their TOS, it makes it clear they will pull the plug at the first sign of legal problems from a customers site.
"Britain (the big island)"
Britain is the same thing as the UK, ie: Everything except the republic of Ireland.
"Hibernia"
Hibernia is the ancient Roman name for the island, it's a bit like calling Iraq "Persia", or Thailand "Siam", ie: meaningless.
"The bank promises that only transactions actually authorized by you will be applied. The fact that someone has figured out how to trick the bank in to thinking they're talking to you does not imply that you authorized the transactions."
Ummm, yes it does. "You" is defined as "information about you", such as the answer to a secret question you gave to the bank, DOB, passwords, ect... Theorectically there is no way for banks (or anyone else) to be absoultely certain about identity but they can be reasonably certain. In other words, if someone has your information then as far as banks and the law are concerned, they are you!
"If I slip up and become one of the stupid (which seems very unlikely), I won't go bitching at my bank to give me money if it was my fault."
No, someone with such a smug attitude would be down there claiming it was THEIR fault and could never be convinced otherwise. Scams do not rely on "slipping up" or "stupidity", they rely on ignorance. Someone who takes a bait is not accident prone, they are naive.
Phishing in my mind is a grey area and the responsiblity should be shared. If a bank repeatedly warns the customer, (snail and/or email), that they do not ask customers for passwords but the customer still gives out their password via email or phone, well... as they say "a fool and their money are soon parted". But what about keyloggers, phone scams, people looking over your shoulder,...or bank's that don't give a fuck about phishing because "phishing is not our problem".
Also I can't see how banks can know the method a scammer used to obtain the details without some sort of investigation, but they can choose to ignore it and simply say "you must have given your password to someone". My own bank will pay but demands a few things before they do, first I must convince them the withdrawal was unauthorised, then I must pay the first $50 of the loss. An aquaintance who just happened to use the same bank lost ~$3K via some kind of scam, it took about a week for the bank to "do the right thing". He never found out how he was scammed, he was fortunate that the bank saw the crook try to access the account again and gave him the benifit of the doubt and the cash.
"it may be illegal but apparently 4.7 % of boomers are doing pot these days."
If you think that the drug war is unjust then do something about it. BTW: I happen to be a "boomer" and think 4.7% is a gross under-estimate, but I suppose it would depend on the definition of "doing".
"There are a lot of reasons to use a good computer system for voting, with the emphasis on the "good"."
Agreed, I live in Melbourne and my blood ran cold this morning when I spotted a white station wagon with "Diebold" written down the side in big blue letters.
"I'm one of the polling officials who does the counting"
Please tell me you guys are NOT using diebold machines.
"required latency requirements"
Well done BAG, extra redundancy points for the redundant bit.
"does it run linux?"
No, but it still a "kick arse" machine.
"I am reading more on them right at the moment, the about page actually, and indeed I do like the sound of it."
By giving them a fair go you have shown yourself to be more "christian" than the various bigots and control freaks who gather in local churches.
"I'm just forever weary of anything that is tied to the church...I'm just gun-shy because of prior experiences..."
Ahmen brother!
I typed "Sudan" into the CSM's search box and got 4400+ hits. Kind of hard to report on Sudan without mentioning death and suffering.
You are dissmising the CSM out of hand because you have read some weird shit about it's owners, I did the same before I actually read a few articles several years ago. CSM has no trouble writing insightfull articles and reports that talk about death and suffering but they do try to avoid gloryifying/justifying those topics/events.
Take a look at their about page. You will find that even though owned by a church the paper sees itself as secular and has this to say about it's intended content...
"The idea is that the unblemished truth is freeing (as a fundamental human right); with it, citizens can make informed decisions and take intelligent action, for themselves and for society."
"Anyone who tells you that they can't spot the Starbucks-smashers or the car-burners about to go to town in the middle of their glowing, rosy, smiling Rainbows And Unicorns Society Of Gentle People demonstration is outright lying."
My guess is you have never experienced a large pub-brawl much less a major riot. One well timed punch is often all it takes to make an already tense crowd explode.
"or you can walk right over, yourself, and ask a police officer to intercede."
In the time it takes you to cross the street starbucks will be samshed and the car will be on fire, in that kind of situation you're best bet is to stay away from the police, their horses and the troublemakers (planted or otherwise). If you have information after the fact then by all means report it to the police but don't even attempt to approach them in the middle of that kind of shit fight.
"toke up, get rowdy and start smashing stuff"
I think you mean "toke up, get drowsy and start forgeting stuff", or were you thinking rednecks, ie: "drink up, get rowdy and start smashing stuff"?
"The US military is not perfect."
None of us are.
"They make mistakes."
Don't we all.
"To convince me that it was not a mistake you need to show a pattern of at least 3 episodes."
So two planes into the WTC was a mistake until OBL admitted culpability? Does a serial killer need to strike three times so we can decide wether to charge him with murder of manslaghter? In other words, the frequency of an event has nothing to do with intent.
"You have one."
There are more if you care to to look for yourself. Some background to my example in this article by Robert Fisk.
"Keep in mind that real insurrections are NOT stupid. They intentionally place their installations near 'morally objectionable targets', such as day care centers, hospitals, medical factories and yes, newsmen."
That is not what happened in the example I used, but it's great PR for driving a wedge between "us & them" and it also makes a fantastic catch-all excuse. BTW: The only people I think of as "stupid" in all of this are the various meglomaniacs that had a hand in starting it.
"That's the same, lame response I always get."
Could it be that it's because it's the correct answer? With apologies to BadAnalogyGuy, it's like asking what is 2+2 and then complaining about the answer being 4 all the time. Science is not a pile of factoids you can just dive into, it is a methodical approach accompanied by a long history and seemingly odd customs.
"Go read the published material"
Perhaps you are dyslexic or something, you quote my answer in your post and then (directly under it) you start ranting on about a different answer?
"Digging through yellowing documents..."
Nobody does that unless they are very very interested or they are actually thinking of publishing something. Like I said above, you are arguing against something that I haven't said. However that doesn't mean you can escape the boring part of science, as Eienstien is reputed to have said: "Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration".
BTW: The way science works is that if you still feel "There is a need for a comprehensive, multilingual database of theories, experimental results, and their interdependencies", nobody will stop you building one. And if you can convince scientists it would be usefull, most will gladly jump on your bandwagon. One thing you might have trouble with is content, getting your hands on the archives of Nature and all the other journals out there won't be easy.
"Mandatory elections are a staple of dictatorships that put up a sham veneer of democracy then claim that they were chosen by universal acclaim."
Dictators do not have elections that are acceptable to international observers. I have a suspision the govt here in Australia would like to act like dictators, but compulsory voting isn't helping them. Most compulsory voting systems are really compulsory "get your name checked off the roll" systems, there is no law against donkey votes. Also elections are invariably held on Saturday's so that the vast majority of working taxpayers don't need to take time of work to vote.
I had heard the FBI spy on the EFF but I didn't know Rumsfeld posted on slashdot.
The BBC has been unwelcome in China for years, the points in your post spell out why. OTOH: I not that confident the free press were welcome at events such as the seige of Fallujah.
"We don't just kill journalists or blow up television stations like other countries do"
I find it hard to belive the 500lb bomb dropped on al-jezeera was accidental.
Not a bad summary. I am probably not telling you anything new but one of the best places on the web for in depth reporting of climate science is RealClimate. It's also and excellent source for articles that debunk common myths and assumptions. One of my favorite examples is the false (but common) assumption that economic models are more robust than climate models, leading to the politicaly inspired myth that international regulation of CO2 emmisions will "destroy the economy".
As for TFA, methane from permafrost is nothing new to people who follow the science. I think it was last year when they picked out the large methane "anomoly" hovering over siberia. What is new (and bad) is the observed rate (5X what was expected). Another study observed a huge increase in the number and area of fresh water lakes across siberia and interpreted the results as a faster than expected permafrost melt. Same sort of results from a study looking at the output from siberian rivers.
Results from climate models have consitently underestimated the volatility of permafrost. A half dozen years ago models were predicting permafrost would start melting in 20-50yrs, yet buildings, bridges and roads in Russia and Alaska are already sinking into the ever expanding mud. The one ray of hope in all this is that acctuaries in the big insurance companies have taken a good look at the risks and those (very influential) companies are now starting to act accordingly.
Do I think it's "the end of the world"? No, but what happens when I combine "global warming" with "peak-oil" and "the sixth great extinction"? Suddenly my grandkids suffering through a major downward "correction" for the "population explosion", followed by a second dark-age in an environment only fit for goats, becomes a very real possibility. Much more real than someone like OBL enforcing it on us via kamakazi tactics and home made videos.
Should read: as silly as the GP's attempt to nitpick.