Nice to get some real insight on how things work for a change, thanks for these stories. You might consider putting some of these up on a blog. These pretty much completely invalidate the so-called social "science" discussed in the OP. The problem being, the presumption that the amount of stealing going on is any measure of ethics.
An "open market" is open to market manipulation by the bigger players. Open markets that remain level playing fields do not and have never existed except in theoretician's minds.
They should test corporate CEOs. They have not proven to be the most ethical bunch of late, or for that matter, ever. If that's as good as capitalist ethics gets, I'd say the difference between socialism and capitalism when it comes to ethics is negligible.
This really becomes an intractable problem, as we're culturally unwilling to force people off welfare in order to make them work on farms, doing jobs they're unaware, unable to commute to, and don't pay a living wage for urban areas.
Many people on welfare already have jobs, they qualify for welfare because their resultant pay is too low compared with the cost of living. "Forcing people off welfare" isn't going to fix the problem there.
Given the apparent interest in Privacy Badger it's clear in the US most people are still using desktops. I almost never browse on a desktop anymore, and the fact that Privacy Badger insists on running as a desktop browser plug-in makes it useless to me. And before you whine about how Apple won't this or Apple won't that, I am using a less heuristic web filter on iOS that I believe operates as a proxy (Weblock. Note: NOT Web Lock, though I suppose that might work too). So it seems to me it's possible to do in iOS. Plus, a proxy version rather than a browser plug-in would be preferrable anyhow, I tend to use multiple browsers on every platform, and I could set up a Raspberry PI to host it and at least my at-home browsing with the iPad and everything else would be able to use that in any case...
This a perfect argument for NOT storing the data. ANYWHERE. You're too addicted to it anyway. At least anonymize it as soon as possible, or distill it down to something useless for anything but your intended usage (such as product preferences or ad targeting info). Sure, they'll try to force you to keep it but they can't always and not indefinitely, in any case. Can they really keep you from deleting data that you have once you've no longer any need for it? And without paying for the storage? How can a long-lived company remain economically viable in face of short lived competitors who don't yet have the same data storage requirements? Can they keep grandma from deleting her own old data from her personal hard drive? If not, then how can they legitimately force intermediaries to do it? The real addictive habit that needs to be broken here is the government's insatiable desire to preserve all possible surveillance information, forever. Just because Google offers a free email service shouldn't mean they can just give copies of all your messages to anyone and everyone, or save them forever and risk hackers getting ahold of them. And while you may have signed that right over to Google when you signed up, would you have if you were first told your emails would all be archived for posterity whether you like it or not? Welcome to the US, where you have freedom of speech but everything you say will be recorded and there are no private conversations. In fact, they encourage you to speak freely so that they can get it all down and save it in order to keep track of all you miscreants.
No, "publish or perish" really dis-incentivizes novel research because guess what, often times really novel research fails. All "publish or perish" really does is incentivize either cheating or the lowest risk research imaginable. There are other mechanisms for making sure a researcher is actually doing their work, punishing them for taking risks shouldn't be among them.
If novel research is failing peer-review, I don't see that not publishing is a good answer to that. A convenient one, no doubt.
What if the passphrase was something like "I hid the murder weapon under the floorboards in the kitchen"? So that the phrase itself was incriminating? Can you be compelled to reveal such a phrase, or if you did would the prosecution be prohibited from using it?
The old dumb tools still work, if all you want is a couple of dumb web pages you're fine. If you want to hook it to dynamic content from an SQL database, fancy behaviors that require Java or Javascript or Ajax or whatever, you're going to have to learn the technology. TNSTAAFL.
I'd say it deserves whistleblower protection. But in this country no one in power wants to hear from whistleblowers. When whistleblowing is illegal, only criminals know anything.
Oh, that's right, the excuse has to have "terrorism" in it somewhere... "Hey officer, I had a good reason to run that stop sign, I thought the guy behind me might be a terrorist."
As long as you have a "good reason" to violate the Constitution, hey, it's OK. Now that's a legal standard I can get behind. "Hey officer, I had a good reason to run that stop sign, I was late for work."
Remind me why we should bother to obey laws again? Lead by example...
I think the real dichotomy is more between modern composition and older works. I'm only interested in listening to Wagner or Mozart for so long, at some point I'd like to hear something that's fresh. But many of the modern composers seemed to me have lost sight of what sounds good, preferring to take some kind of conceptual approach that may be of interest to other composers but I find often isn't very interesting to listen to. After the likes of Xenakis, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson and a few others, I found it to be mostly elitist insider music, and tuned out. And I'm a musician myself, but that kind of stuff just lost me. I now listen more to Chris Clark, Peter Scherer, and maybe John Zorn and some ethnic-fusion experimenters, Jazz and electronica artists and a few others who at least haven't lost sight of what sounds interesting. As far as I'm concerned, "purists" of any kind are tending towards boring. If you see your art as a museum piece be a purist and re-create that which has come before. But as I think Grace Slick once said, "Van Gogh never had to paint a painting twice."
You can tell these guys are all lamer coders, they can't document worth squat. In the forum some guy asks for clear docs and they repond in essense with "just run our simulator, it's too complicated to explain." What a bunch of hosers. A competition like this ought to have clearly deliniated parameters. From reading their page I can't tell a darn thing about what the "Greed" environment is, what the problem to be solved is, and the summary of the winning solution on the Slashdot article here presumes you already know exactly what the conditions and goal with which the warring program must run. I see references on the linked contest site to coins that "randomly appear" and not much more. There's no way he could submit his solution to a journal except the "Journal for Irreproducible Results." Lazy bastards. There may be an interesting solution to something here, but there's seems no way to tell exactly what without reverse engineering their simulator.
I wonder if I can get it configured to serve me really weird ads for ultra-obscure products. Himalayan llamas. Voodoo dolls. Chastity belts. Or maybe illegal products. Rhino horn. Brass knuckles. Poisonous snakes. I might actually read a few ads like that. Probably wouldn't buy anything though.
No doubt these devices operate by exploiting security vulnerabilities in the cel networks. If info got out about how it works, they'd have to upgrade every cel tower in existance at crushing expense. "Can you hear me now?"
These guys take the cake for the world's WORST user interfaces. They don't need more programming languages. They need to learn how to make USABLE programs with the languages they have, first. My latest favorite example: YouTube history lists are sorted RANDOMLY. I have a history list with nearly 2000 views. Now I want to find a vid I watched last week. WTF? It's no help at all. It allows me to clear the list, which might have helped if I did it a month ago, but not now. So I go off trying to find it by searching from memory. No luck, and now I've added several dozen additional views to my even more useless history list in the process. Microsoft will do dumb things, but usually I can figure out what they were trying to accomplish. The only thing that seems to explain Google on the other hand, is BRAIN DAMAGE.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice to get some real insight on how things work for a change, thanks for these stories. You might consider putting some of these up on a blog. These pretty much completely invalidate the so-called social "science" discussed in the OP. The problem being, the presumption that the amount of stealing going on is any measure of ethics.
Didn't you get the memo? Capitalism is the worst system of economics there is, except for all the others. That's the mantra, anyhow.
An "open market" is open to market manipulation by the bigger players. Open markets that remain level playing fields do not and have never existed except in theoretician's minds.
On the other hand, perhaps the problem is all the corporate welfare, making systems like the American one more like socialism for the rich.
Sounds about as realistic as a "free market".
They should test corporate CEOs. They have not proven to be the most ethical bunch of late, or for that matter, ever. If that's as good as capitalist ethics gets, I'd say the difference between socialism and capitalism when it comes to ethics is negligible.
This really becomes an intractable problem, as we're culturally unwilling to force people off welfare in order to make them work on farms, doing jobs they're unaware, unable to commute to, and don't pay a living wage for urban areas.
Many people on welfare already have jobs, they qualify for welfare because their resultant pay is too low compared with the cost of living. "Forcing people off welfare" isn't going to fix the problem there.
Given the apparent interest in Privacy Badger it's clear in the US most people are still using desktops. I almost never browse on a desktop anymore, and the fact that Privacy Badger insists on running as a desktop browser plug-in makes it useless to me. And before you whine about how Apple won't this or Apple won't that, I am using a less heuristic web filter on iOS that I believe operates as a proxy (Weblock. Note: NOT Web Lock, though I suppose that might work too). So it seems to me it's possible to do in iOS. Plus, a proxy version rather than a browser plug-in would be preferrable anyhow, I tend to use multiple browsers on every platform, and I could set up a Raspberry PI to host it and at least my at-home browsing with the iPad and everything else would be able to use that in any case...
No doubt this is because it is taking the NSA too long to suck the data out of your computer(s).
This a perfect argument for NOT storing the data. ANYWHERE. You're too addicted to it anyway. At least anonymize it as soon as possible, or distill it down to something useless for anything but your intended usage (such as product preferences or ad targeting info). Sure, they'll try to force you to keep it but they can't always and not indefinitely, in any case. Can they really keep you from deleting data that you have once you've no longer any need for it? And without paying for the storage? How can a long-lived company remain economically viable in face of short lived competitors who don't yet have the same data storage requirements? Can they keep grandma from deleting her own old data from her personal hard drive? If not, then how can they legitimately force intermediaries to do it? The real addictive habit that needs to be broken here is the government's insatiable desire to preserve all possible surveillance information, forever. Just because Google offers a free email service shouldn't mean they can just give copies of all your messages to anyone and everyone, or save them forever and risk hackers getting ahold of them. And while you may have signed that right over to Google when you signed up, would you have if you were first told your emails would all be archived for posterity whether you like it or not? Welcome to the US, where you have freedom of speech but everything you say will be recorded and there are no private conversations. In fact, they encourage you to speak freely so that they can get it all down and save it in order to keep track of all you miscreants.
That would make one heck of a tinfoil hat...
No, "publish or perish" really dis-incentivizes novel research because guess what, often times really novel research fails. All "publish or perish" really does is incentivize either cheating or the lowest risk research imaginable. There are other mechanisms for making sure a researcher is actually doing their work, punishing them for taking risks shouldn't be among them.
If novel research is failing peer-review, I don't see that not publishing is a good answer to that. A convenient one, no doubt.
What if the passphrase was something like "I hid the murder weapon under the floorboards in the kitchen"? So that the phrase itself was incriminating? Can you be compelled to reveal such a phrase, or if you did would the prosecution be prohibited from using it?
The old dumb tools still work, if all you want is a couple of dumb web pages you're fine. If you want to hook it to dynamic content from an SQL database, fancy behaviors that require Java or Javascript or Ajax or whatever, you're going to have to learn the technology. TNSTAAFL.
I'd say it deserves whistleblower protection. But in this country no one in power wants to hear from whistleblowers. When whistleblowing is illegal, only criminals know anything.
I suspect they have a lot of old Android phones that they'd like to monetize on eBay...
Oh, that's right, the excuse has to have "terrorism" in it somewhere... "Hey officer, I had a good reason to run that stop sign, I thought the guy behind me might be a terrorist."
As long as you have a "good reason" to violate the Constitution, hey, it's OK. Now that's a legal standard I can get behind. "Hey officer, I had a good reason to run that stop sign, I was late for work."
Remind me why we should bother to obey laws again? Lead by example...
When they start seeing if they can manipulate the murder or suicide rates, THEN we can talk about ethics. Until then, hey, anything goes.
I think the real dichotomy is more between modern composition and older works. I'm only interested in listening to Wagner or Mozart for so long, at some point I'd like to hear something that's fresh. But many of the modern composers seemed to me have lost sight of what sounds good, preferring to take some kind of conceptual approach that may be of interest to other composers but I find often isn't very interesting to listen to. After the likes of Xenakis, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson and a few others, I found it to be mostly elitist insider music, and tuned out. And I'm a musician myself, but that kind of stuff just lost me. I now listen more to Chris Clark, Peter Scherer, and maybe John Zorn and some ethnic-fusion experimenters, Jazz and electronica artists and a few others who at least haven't lost sight of what sounds interesting. As far as I'm concerned, "purists" of any kind are tending towards boring. If you see your art as a museum piece be a purist and re-create that which has come before. But as I think Grace Slick once said, "Van Gogh never had to paint a painting twice."
You can tell these guys are all lamer coders, they can't document worth squat. In the forum some guy asks for clear docs and they repond in essense with "just run our simulator, it's too complicated to explain." What a bunch of hosers. A competition like this ought to have clearly deliniated parameters. From reading their page I can't tell a darn thing about what the "Greed" environment is, what the problem to be solved is, and the summary of the winning solution on the Slashdot article here presumes you already know exactly what the conditions and goal with which the warring program must run. I see references on the linked contest site to coins that "randomly appear" and not much more. There's no way he could submit his solution to a journal except the "Journal for Irreproducible Results." Lazy bastards. There may be an interesting solution to something here, but there's seems no way to tell exactly what without reverse engineering their simulator.
I wonder if I can get it configured to serve me really weird ads for ultra-obscure products. Himalayan llamas. Voodoo dolls. Chastity belts. Or maybe illegal products. Rhino horn. Brass knuckles. Poisonous snakes. I might actually read a few ads like that. Probably wouldn't buy anything though.
No doubt these devices operate by exploiting security vulnerabilities in the cel networks. If info got out about how it works, they'd have to upgrade every cel tower in existance at crushing expense. "Can you hear me now?"
These guys take the cake for the world's WORST user interfaces. They don't need more programming languages. They need to learn how to make USABLE programs with the languages they have, first. My latest favorite example: YouTube history lists are sorted RANDOMLY. I have a history list with nearly 2000 views. Now I want to find a vid I watched last week. WTF? It's no help at all. It allows me to clear the list, which might have helped if I did it a month ago, but not now. So I go off trying to find it by searching from memory. No luck, and now I've added several dozen additional views to my even more useless history list in the process. Microsoft will do dumb things, but usually I can figure out what they were trying to accomplish. The only thing that seems to explain Google on the other hand, is BRAIN DAMAGE.
Oh please. After you've been a "grownup" for 30 or 40 years, you may realize it's overrated...