On the flip side, why should everyone make decisions that affect my hobbies?
(If you claim anything resembling a society with liberty, you have to at least find a balance. Otherwise just be honest and say "Wes, we're limiting your liberty. Deal with it.")
This is the tricky thing about patents: how do you practically distinguish between the result you're trying to achieve (which should not be patentable) from the method to achieve the desired result (which should be patentable).
In the case of this particular patent, it sounds like the interesting feature is having a sensor array that gets signals in one set of frequency bands then uses some kind of logic to change those frequency bands into a viewable image. Personally I don't see anything patentable there, because every sensor ever created uses that concept.
Now, if they have a new novel sensor, or something along those lines, or some specific trick in performing the translation from sensor to target values, then that could in my mind be patent-worthy.
Personally I think that almost all forms of IP should be severely limited (or outright abolished). The ones I'd keep are trademark and attribution rights, because those tell you who came up with a particular idea or who produced a given embodiment of an idea. Value lies in the ability to come up with ideas or implement those ideas well, not simply to copy ideas around. Simply copying information is no longer value-add to society. Artificially restricting members of society from attempting to implement a design using better craftsmanship is costly for society (loss function). Preventing people from implementing a particular design as a component in some other aggregate system is costly to society (again, loss function).
If "idea creators" want to be compensated for their work - and they should - they should either also attempt to do this by implementing their idea well or being employed by an organization that gives them first-mover advantage. Using the government to force revenue to those particular individuals is not a net gain for society (and, arguably, it's a false gain for the people with the short-term monopoly protection in terms of patents; you could argue that the copyright situation is different because there is no "short term" any more in that field).
Because "lifestyle X" (where X = homosexuality) doesn't have any negative impact on anyone not engaging in it
I don't think there's enough data to claim this, to be honest. Note: This doesn't mean I'm claiming there is data to support the opposite, either. I would posit that, just as there are externalities related to things like pollution, there are externalities related to particular behaviors, and "direct damage" doesn't account for this.
It's the fact that you* try to force others to conform to your* beliefs that I hate.
Very thin ice here: Isn't telling people they are wrong for any particular belief trying "to force others to conform to your beliefs"? This line of reasoning is inherently self-defeating, so either a different approach is required or you have to admit that certain beliefs are right and others are wrong. Just like any other fact, though, I would say it's reasonable to let people believe whatever they want, but not act on whatever they want; after all, I want to make sure people use rigorous engineering to build a bridge, not just what they believe is correct.
So how is it hate speech to say "lifestyle X is wrong" but it is not hate speech to say "Believing 'lifestyle X is wrong' is wrong"?
There's a clear difference in my mind between behavior (not tendencies, which may be biological, but actual behavior) and things like race, which are not tied to behavior. I wholly agree that there should be no "discrimination" based on inherent characteristics, but society will fall apart if we don't discriminate based on behavior.
The argument that sexual preference is biological holds no logical merit in my mind: Society already in many areas of life puts prohibitions on all sorts of behaviors which have their roots in biological phenomenon (most relate to violence rather than sexuality - extreme violence has been traced to certain brain chemistry and other conditions), so I must ask what makes this particular behavior any different? The argument that "it doesn't hurt anyone" is shallow, because while it doesn't cause (direct) physical harm it definitely causes "philosophical harm" or "emotional harm" in that certain views become ostracized - and if there is such a thing as emotional abuse, then this is a real effect which must be considered.
The whole argument, in my mind, is due to both sides acting like adolescents, screaming that they don't always get their way all the time related to everything they want, even when they get what they want then change their mind later.
(That said, despite my moral beliefs, I believe that people who are in a committed relationship should be able to form a societal contract related to things such as benefits, etc. What I don't agree with, though, is giving such a contract the same social status as "marriage," notably due to the moral and religious history of that term. The real problem from a legal/liberty standpoint is the mixing of the religious and social aspects of marriage - they should in my mind be given different status. So you might get a "contractual partnership" contract for all the tax and benefit stuff, that has real obligation behind it, but keep it separate from "marriage" which is recognized by religions. And don't force religions to honor all sorts of contractual partnership, because then the government would be dictating religion, which is all sorts of bad news.)
Being a naturally deflationary currency I can see this being problematic eventually
This is the fundamental aspect of bitcoin which I think will simply make it a curiosity. Deflationary currency encourages hoarding, because simply holding currency is better than spending it. It's also problematic because rational participants would never borrow a bitcoin (with interest) because it will likely cost more (in nominal terms) later. That doesn't even touch on the psychological effects related to nominal amounts that are always decreasing; this is one thing inflationary currency got right: people feel like they are doing better even with constant or decreasing standards of living because the numbers are increasing. You could have an increasing standard of living but with a falling salary people would feel slighted; this effect should not be underestimated.
The other problem with bitcoin - also a problem of most fiat currencies (for bitcoin is indeed fiat) - is that production of a bitcoin is not directly related to economic activity. That is, if I perform a wealth-generating activity, the only way I can get a bitcoin is if someone with a bitcoin gives it to me. Conversely, if I create ("mine") a bitcoin there's no guarantee that anyone will accept it from me - the only way to guarantee that is if I also produce some other goods and services for which I'd be willing to accept the bitcoin back in exchange.
That latter bit is really the key to any currency: when I give you some currency, you must have some confidence that you will be able to trade that currency back to me or others in exchange for goods and services. If that confidence does not exist, the currency will fail.
Precisely: how can you "create a job" if there is nobody willing (or able) to pay for that job?
Sadly, most people don't realize that demand is the key, and when you take away the ability for people to manifest demand (e.g., by refusing credit or increasing prices) then the economy will fall. I'd argue the Fed only has it half right: they know that liquidity is a problem, but they aren't putting liquidity in the right place. Congress also only has it half right: they create new money to temporarily pay for new jobs, but not jobs for which there is sustained demand (nor for jobs which create mutual demand, which would have also worked).
It strikes me that the ultimate question that underlies all these "issues" surrounding things like marriage is this: is there such a thing as moral behavior or not?
Most people debate the follow-on instead: "given the assumption that there is such a thing as moral versus immoral behavior, should the government regulate that behavior?"
I would argue that people behave as if that there is indeed some kind of inherent moral code, although there is much debate over what is immoral and what is immoral. Even relativists which claim "do whatever you feel is right" or "do whatever makes you happy" don't actually live this way; they always try to put caveats on things "do whatever you want, except that which infringes upon other's rights." That latter statement always interests me, because what it says is that the core value is upholding others' rights. (I'm not going to go into the fact that this is a logical pitfall, because you're left with figuring out what a "right" is, and if you say some things are inherent rights then you are claiming an absolute; this is not really relativism.)
So ultimately I'd believe that pretty much every person believes that there is some moral absolute. Given that everyone behaves this way (if they didn't, then nobody would complain about "fairness" all the time - for something to be "fair" you have to be comparing to some absolute), it makes sense that the government should have as one of its responsibilities upholding those morals. After all, we have no problem allowing the government to monitor theft or violence, which ultimately are indeed moral issues. So if the government is accepted and expected to regulate those moral facets, why are people upset about it regulating other moral behaviors, such as what constitutes marriage, or abortion, or what video games you can sell to a person of some arbitrary age?
An honest debate on this subject must address the core issue, rather than get caught up in the particular headline issue like polygamy or homosexual marriage. Until society quits dallying around and actually addresses this core issue, it will have problems. Even worse, I'd say that society has gone the other way, trying to act like there is no such thing as a moral absolute, and it shows: people do whatever they want and are somehow succeeding at removing all enforced consequences for their actions. Society cannot be sustained on this worldview: we already see this with the worldwide rise of the plutocracy, the refusal of leaders to change their ways, the desire of people to force others through law to pay for their desires, and the like.
This is because people forget that what people are paying for when they buy a book, movie, recording, etc. is not just the emotional or intellectual experience related to reading, hearing, or watching that work, but they are also paying for the physical manifestation of that work: they are paying for the ability to control when that experience can occur.
(A question just occurs to me: Is there a rational, first-principles argument that indicates the original agent of manifestation of such a work should be granted the ability to dictate such control in the first place?)
If some person can provide (or is willing to provide) an equally emotionally/intellectually stimulating manifestation for a lower cost, it's actually beneficial for society for that to occur. The legislated monopoly on intellectual property increases the cost of manifestation so that it might increase immediate monetary profit, but it has some difficult to quantify expense in terms of lost emotional/intellectual experience and economic inefficiencies.
If you can guarantee higher income through force - which is all legislation really is - you'll do it rather than compete fairly, even though there are probably people willing to create the manifestations and distribute them for a lower price. This means that there is a real economic loss associated with the artificial monopoly.
Why shouldn't we have the opportunity to become fabulously wealthy? So long as EACH of us has the same opportunity.
Sounds good on paper, until you realize that we live in a universe of finite resources. I'd argue that it's probably mathematically impossible for even just two individuals to have the same opportunity for one simple reason if nothing else: the distribution of resources across the universe is non-uniform.
There is nothing intrinsic about currency that says it has to devalue over time.
It is not possible to have any type of currency that has a fixed value over time, because preferences are not constant over time.
Even the concept of a BitCoin representing some amount of energy is kind of odd in that sense, because the amount of goods and services someone is willing to pay for, say, 10MJ energy today is not the same amount of goods and services they will be willing to exchange for 10MJ energy in the future.
Value always changes over time. Simple example: how much will you be willing to trade for one serving of your favorite meal after eating only one piece of bread a day for three years? Now, how much would you be willing to trade for a second serving?
The psychological concepts of marginal utility and discount rates ensure that any form of currency will change over time.
"First to file" doesn't eliminate the "novel, useful, unobvious" requirements on a patent. If an invention is already in the field and in use, first to file won't be the thing that locks it up. Instead, it will be the same thing that happens today when people get patents on obvious or preexisting "inventions".
First to file simply eliminates the fights over who invented things first. Of course, I'm of the opinion that if there is a "who invented it first" fight then the patent under question should immediately be invalidated or rejected, because near-enough simultaneous development by disparate parties means the invention is "obvious to those skilled in the art" QED.
Matter cannot move faster than the speed of light... The expansion of the universe is not caused by all the matter in the universe moving away from each other, it's caused by the expansion of space itself, with the matter being just "carried along" so to speak.
This is the part with which I have a fundamental problem. If I measure the distance between myself and an object at two different times, and the distance between us increases by more than c*dt, then how can it be claimed that our relative velocity has remained less than the speed of light?
Is the problem simply one of using incompatible measuring sticks? I cannot conceive of a mechanism by which the instantaneous measured speed of any entity can be less than c and yet the total distance measured over some time period is greater than c times that time period, unless either c is changing or the definition of distance is changing over time in a very silly way.
The only other consistent thing of which I can think is to revise relativity to say that no object can be observed to travel faster than c*k, where k is some function of distance. I admit that I'm not that familiar with the details of expansionary theory. What's the verifiable mathematical explanation that resolves this apparent inconsistency?
What you'd need to show is that a "peaceful" population, when subject to "violent" video games, has a higher rate of people switching from "peaceful" to "violent" than a population that is not subject to "violent" video games.
Any reasonable study would need to eliminate the fact that people with violent tendencies already would probably choose to play a "violent" video game.
I personally fall into the camp that sees video games and other media not as a cause of violent behavior, but merely a catalyst: media is likely to take already existing tendencies and magnify them. If those tendencies don't exist, the games (or movies or television shows or music or books) will do nothing.
In general I'm a fan of FF, but XIII really disappointed me. Perhaps even more than VIII, and that's a pretty amazing feat.
I think the number one thing about XIII that is really awful is it's absurdly linear gameplay; unlike any other FF, there is no "freedom" to do anything other than follow a single path through the zones - you can't even take two routes to the same place.
It's kind of sad, really. I actually haven't even finished the game; the gameplay and really typical storyline don't hold my interest. (FF has often oscillated between good stories and characterization to poor, but XIII is a combination of poor gameplay system (weapon mods are not even really customizable - you just max them all out), poor characterization, and linear play.)
I wonder what happened there - was it a change in artistic team? A side effect of the Enix merger? A side effect of trying to cater to both the PS and 360 crowds?
Bad quote alert. Unless Heinlein (an atheist) quoted CS Lewis (a pretty serious Christian) without attribution, that's a Heinlein quote. Not that it really matters.
This is the first post that attempts to address the issue of interpolation (there was one that indicates high spatial resolution from satellites, which is a different solution). I'll have to follow that link and read up later - I'm still not sure I'm convinced in the first principles analysis even using anomalies, because the way temperature works there is no physical mechanism that would force all anomalies to move together. My hesitation is because while bulk changes would guarantee the anomalies would all move in concert, anomalies moving in concert does not necessarily guarantee a bulk change.
Average Temperature
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Bastardi's Wager
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The only thing I've not really been able to figure out from the entire climate discussion is what is meant by "average temperature" in the first place.
The idea of taking some temperature measurements at various geographic locations and then averaging those values doesn't seem to make much physical sense to me, because there is no meaningful method by which to perform an average. Consider using an "area based average." This sounds reasonable: put your measurements in some regular grid, assume the temperature varies continuously between those points, and compute an average. I would argue that's a terrible method, because temperature is not a continuous quantity: if you put two temperature probes any distance apart, there is no meaningful way to estimate the temperature variation between those points. It could be linear between them, it could be nonlinear such that the temperature is higher between the two points, it could be nonlinear such that it is lower between the two points.
I am much more willing to look at other parameters which do have a better "average" information content. Sea level, snow cover (both max and min amounts, as well as time spent at those amounts) because those are inherently continuous phenomena that are not subject to interpolation errors.
Actually, a question and it may actually convince me to accept the concept of "average temperature": do thermal satellites have the capability to do a true area-continuous temperature measurement?
I have other questions as well, for instance, is average temperature really the critical parameter or is it median temperature? Actual max vs actual min? Is it something more related to the square of the deviation from the mean ("signal power")?
I have a hard time believing that an area-average temperature is an adequate parametrization of climate. Or, perhaps what I'm asking is, what climate effects are actually correlated so strongly with the mean temperature (how statistically significant is that correlation)? And how geographically dependent is that correlation?
I agree with this one. That much computing power means it's not a phone but a highly portable computer that happens to have access to a certain specific communications network ("telephony") in addition to the general Internet.
Calling these devices "phones" is a misnomer, and I think if we are more honest about what the devices actually represent we'll be better off. Mobile "phones" stopped being phones quite some time ago. And I'm not the first one to make this observation by any means.
The only rational argument for which I would grant a particular species some form of "rights" (rather than something along the lines of protection we offer to, say, endangered species) is if that species has the trait of being capable of distinguishing between moral choices.
While many animal species do exhibit social behavior, including things like kicking members out of their local group, I don't think any species aside from "human" has demonstrated anything along the lines of the concepts of morality. I will grant that such a thing would be difficult for which to test, but it would boil down to something along the lines of testing not if individuals follow some specific moral code, but that individuals all attempt to follow a moral code (as humans, while all our moral codes differ, every single one of us has some code by which we internally classify things as good or bad).
So I'd say I'd be for increasing anti-abuse protections for higher-functioning animals, but I would not give them rights. In fact, this is exactly what we do to disabled humans: they have numerous protections but no real "rights." In my mind, rights only come with responsibility. Of course, this is not a popular view, but in my mind the "right to life" includes some responsibility with how we conduct our lives. Otherwise we're just like any other social animal. A purely naturalistic worldview has no rational basis on which to evaluate one view regarding species or even individual treatment above any other; there is no "optimal" physical principal that can be used to say one form of behavior is more desirable than another. So we have to be honest and just say, "there's no reason to treat species X this way, other than we want to and have the power to force other individuals of our species to behave in accordance with our wishes". That would at least be honest; anything else is just pure drivel. Put another way: if a species has no mechanism or ability or demonstrated ability to perform or acknowledge or recognize "responsibility" then it should have no "rights".
There is probably some semantic issue here as well - I would not call what animal rights activists advocate as "rights" but more "mandates on humans to behave in some particular way relating to some particular phenomenon." Put another way: "animal rights" do not grant rights to animals but impose restrictions on humans. Rights are something a species can assert upon their recognition - if dolphins or species Q9537 has no ability to recognize and then later assert "rights" then they should not be classified as "rights" in my mind.
Humans, including slaves, and children when they reach a certain level of maturity, as a species trait tend to assert the concepts declared to them as "rights." I would be very interested to see a mechanism by which we could even declare the concept of "rights" to dolphins or chimpanzees, let alone recognize if they were trying to then assert those rights at a later date.
Now, realize, some of the above is thinking out loud and is not a "final answer" regarding my opinion on the matter...
I don't think it's an issue of ABI/API stability at all. The true culprit, in my opinion, is the massive interdependence of independently developed and rapidly changing libraries.
The one thing that has consistently stopped me from being more involved with open source is that every time I attempt to play with some open source utility I spend hours trying to find correct dependencies, often finding some that were undocumented as necessary after numerous failed compiles, and finally giving up.
The thing that would bring open source truly "to the desktop" or "to the mobile" or whatever is if developers did a better job of packaging their source with the libraries that they used to install it, instead of assuming the end client will already have those libraries or will go out and fetch them. When the vast majority of people want a program, they don't want to have to go find two or three supporting programs; they want everything in one simple package.
(Yes, I'm aware of the various package managers, but those haven't succeeded for the few programs I've wanted; perhaps my sampling is unusual and this is not common, but my personal success rate has been so poor as to encourage me to seek other solutions.)
If there is no physical constraint on providing health care supply, then why, with such high prices, are there not massive numbers of people flocking to provide new health care services?
It is true that health care supply is not limited by geography as roads are. There are, however, other constraints that prevent health care supply from increasing. This is why the health care "problem" in the US is not really economic - it's bureaucratic (certification requirements, lack of medical schools, professional societies, litigation, etc.).
Simply changing the laws so that the existing supply must service more people without providing a means to increase the available supply will not increase quality of service or reduce prices; it will instead decrease the quality and/or increase prices.
So, why is that OK for roads, but not for hospitals and health care?
Roads don't generally suffer from the type of resource allocation constraints as health care. That is, "roads" do not exhibit the same type of scarcity as "health care." Because health care is more scarce than roads, some more intrusive form of resource allocation is warranted. This can either be an economic means of allocation (e.g., you pay more, you get better service) or some kind of procedural means - waiting lists, quotas, etc.
The major failing of health care systems is that they do not adequately address the issues of resource supply and allocation to those people needing medical services. This results in high prices and/or apparent unavailability of services under an economic scheme - that is, if you can't pay you can't get the service (or get a lower level of service; e.g., the "mandatory" emergency room service which is basically "ensure they aren't going to die") - or lack of services (in the form of waiting lists) if there is a bureaucratic allocation mechanism. What good is a system that is "available to everyone" if there is simply insufficient resource to provide all the desired services?
No. We grant people the right to be in control of what they've created so that there is some incentive for people to create things in the first place.
One issue with the current copyright system is that as soon as a group has a particularly valued piece of work, they no longer have to keep producing anything else because copyright ensures they will be the sole provider of that valued work. This calls the "incentive" motive for copyright into question to some extent.
One other issue is the issue of transference: while a building up of value and saving it for one's beneficiaries through a will makes some sense (this is essentially saving up for them) this is very different from passing on a monopoly to provide a constant revenue stream [i]with no additional creation of wealth[/i]. Note in the first case - say an estate or large bank account - the only way that provides revenue to beneficiaries is if they invest it or draw down on the reserve. For copyrights, there is no "drawing down" or requirement for investment (I suppose there is some necessary work to create new transferrable copies like CDs or new print copies or whatever).
The problem isn't that an artist is successful while producing work, the problem is that the current US copyright system essentially entitles an artist (or beneficiaries) to income with [i]no additional creative effort[/i]. The concept of entitlements is indeed a bitter one, depending on if you sympathize with the recipients or providers.
Slashdot Mirror
On the flip side, why should everyone make decisions that affect my hobbies?
(If you claim anything resembling a society with liberty, you have to at least find a balance. Otherwise just be honest and say "Wes, we're limiting your liberty. Deal with it.")
This is the tricky thing about patents: how do you practically distinguish between the result you're trying to achieve (which should not be patentable) from the method to achieve the desired result (which should be patentable).
In the case of this particular patent, it sounds like the interesting feature is having a sensor array that gets signals in one set of frequency bands then uses some kind of logic to change those frequency bands into a viewable image. Personally I don't see anything patentable there, because every sensor ever created uses that concept.
Now, if they have a new novel sensor, or something along those lines, or some specific trick in performing the translation from sensor to target values, then that could in my mind be patent-worthy.
Personally I think that almost all forms of IP should be severely limited (or outright abolished). The ones I'd keep are trademark and attribution rights, because those tell you who came up with a particular idea or who produced a given embodiment of an idea. Value lies in the ability to come up with ideas or implement those ideas well, not simply to copy ideas around. Simply copying information is no longer value-add to society. Artificially restricting members of society from attempting to implement a design using better craftsmanship is costly for society (loss function). Preventing people from implementing a particular design as a component in some other aggregate system is costly to society (again, loss function).
If "idea creators" want to be compensated for their work - and they should - they should either also attempt to do this by implementing their idea well or being employed by an organization that gives them first-mover advantage. Using the government to force revenue to those particular individuals is not a net gain for society (and, arguably, it's a false gain for the people with the short-term monopoly protection in terms of patents; you could argue that the copyright situation is different because there is no "short term" any more in that field).
I don't think there's enough data to claim this, to be honest. Note: This doesn't mean I'm claiming there is data to support the opposite, either. I would posit that, just as there are externalities related to things like pollution, there are externalities related to particular behaviors, and "direct damage" doesn't account for this.
Very thin ice here: Isn't telling people they are wrong for any particular belief trying "to force others to conform to your beliefs"? This line of reasoning is inherently self-defeating, so either a different approach is required or you have to admit that certain beliefs are right and others are wrong. Just like any other fact, though, I would say it's reasonable to let people believe whatever they want, but not act on whatever they want; after all, I want to make sure people use rigorous engineering to build a bridge, not just what they believe is correct.
So how is it hate speech to say "lifestyle X is wrong" but it is not hate speech to say "Believing 'lifestyle X is wrong' is wrong"?
There's a clear difference in my mind between behavior (not tendencies, which may be biological, but actual behavior) and things like race, which are not tied to behavior. I wholly agree that there should be no "discrimination" based on inherent characteristics, but society will fall apart if we don't discriminate based on behavior.
The argument that sexual preference is biological holds no logical merit in my mind: Society already in many areas of life puts prohibitions on all sorts of behaviors which have their roots in biological phenomenon (most relate to violence rather than sexuality - extreme violence has been traced to certain brain chemistry and other conditions), so I must ask what makes this particular behavior any different? The argument that "it doesn't hurt anyone" is shallow, because while it doesn't cause (direct) physical harm it definitely causes "philosophical harm" or "emotional harm" in that certain views become ostracized - and if there is such a thing as emotional abuse, then this is a real effect which must be considered.
The whole argument, in my mind, is due to both sides acting like adolescents, screaming that they don't always get their way all the time related to everything they want, even when they get what they want then change their mind later.
(That said, despite my moral beliefs, I believe that people who are in a committed relationship should be able to form a societal contract related to things such as benefits, etc. What I don't agree with, though, is giving such a contract the same social status as "marriage," notably due to the moral and religious history of that term. The real problem from a legal/liberty standpoint is the mixing of the religious and social aspects of marriage - they should in my mind be given different status. So you might get a "contractual partnership" contract for all the tax and benefit stuff, that has real obligation behind it, but keep it separate from "marriage" which is recognized by religions. And don't force religions to honor all sorts of contractual partnership, because then the government would be dictating religion, which is all sorts of bad news.)
This is the fundamental aspect of bitcoin which I think will simply make it a curiosity. Deflationary currency encourages hoarding, because simply holding currency is better than spending it. It's also problematic because rational participants would never borrow a bitcoin (with interest) because it will likely cost more (in nominal terms) later. That doesn't even touch on the psychological effects related to nominal amounts that are always decreasing; this is one thing inflationary currency got right: people feel like they are doing better even with constant or decreasing standards of living because the numbers are increasing. You could have an increasing standard of living but with a falling salary people would feel slighted; this effect should not be underestimated.
The other problem with bitcoin - also a problem of most fiat currencies (for bitcoin is indeed fiat) - is that production of a bitcoin is not directly related to economic activity. That is, if I perform a wealth-generating activity, the only way I can get a bitcoin is if someone with a bitcoin gives it to me. Conversely, if I create ("mine") a bitcoin there's no guarantee that anyone will accept it from me - the only way to guarantee that is if I also produce some other goods and services for which I'd be willing to accept the bitcoin back in exchange.
That latter bit is really the key to any currency: when I give you some currency, you must have some confidence that you will be able to trade that currency back to me or others in exchange for goods and services. If that confidence does not exist, the currency will fail.
I'm pretty sure people that live here get plenty of iced water. It tends to freeze over every single year, actually.
Precisely: how can you "create a job" if there is nobody willing (or able) to pay for that job?
Sadly, most people don't realize that demand is the key, and when you take away the ability for people to manifest demand (e.g., by refusing credit or increasing prices) then the economy will fall. I'd argue the Fed only has it half right: they know that liquidity is a problem, but they aren't putting liquidity in the right place. Congress also only has it half right: they create new money to temporarily pay for new jobs, but not jobs for which there is sustained demand (nor for jobs which create mutual demand, which would have also worked).
It strikes me that the ultimate question that underlies all these "issues" surrounding things like marriage is this: is there such a thing as moral behavior or not?
Most people debate the follow-on instead: "given the assumption that there is such a thing as moral versus immoral behavior, should the government regulate that behavior?"
I would argue that people behave as if that there is indeed some kind of inherent moral code, although there is much debate over what is immoral and what is immoral. Even relativists which claim "do whatever you feel is right" or "do whatever makes you happy" don't actually live this way; they always try to put caveats on things "do whatever you want, except that which infringes upon other's rights." That latter statement always interests me, because what it says is that the core value is upholding others' rights. (I'm not going to go into the fact that this is a logical pitfall, because you're left with figuring out what a "right" is, and if you say some things are inherent rights then you are claiming an absolute; this is not really relativism.)
So ultimately I'd believe that pretty much every person believes that there is some moral absolute. Given that everyone behaves this way (if they didn't, then nobody would complain about "fairness" all the time - for something to be "fair" you have to be comparing to some absolute), it makes sense that the government should have as one of its responsibilities upholding those morals. After all, we have no problem allowing the government to monitor theft or violence, which ultimately are indeed moral issues. So if the government is accepted and expected to regulate those moral facets, why are people upset about it regulating other moral behaviors, such as what constitutes marriage, or abortion, or what video games you can sell to a person of some arbitrary age?
An honest debate on this subject must address the core issue, rather than get caught up in the particular headline issue like polygamy or homosexual marriage. Until society quits dallying around and actually addresses this core issue, it will have problems. Even worse, I'd say that society has gone the other way, trying to act like there is no such thing as a moral absolute, and it shows: people do whatever they want and are somehow succeeding at removing all enforced consequences for their actions. Society cannot be sustained on this worldview: we already see this with the worldwide rise of the plutocracy, the refusal of leaders to change their ways, the desire of people to force others through law to pay for their desires, and the like.
Hey now, we'll not be having any of that reductio ad absurdum logic nonsense in here!
This is because people forget that what people are paying for when they buy a book, movie, recording, etc. is not just the emotional or intellectual experience related to reading, hearing, or watching that work, but they are also paying for the physical manifestation of that work: they are paying for the ability to control when that experience can occur.
(A question just occurs to me: Is there a rational, first-principles argument that indicates the original agent of manifestation of such a work should be granted the ability to dictate such control in the first place?)
If some person can provide (or is willing to provide) an equally emotionally/intellectually stimulating manifestation for a lower cost, it's actually beneficial for society for that to occur. The legislated monopoly on intellectual property increases the cost of manifestation so that it might increase immediate monetary profit, but it has some difficult to quantify expense in terms of lost emotional/intellectual experience and economic inefficiencies.
If you can guarantee higher income through force - which is all legislation really is - you'll do it rather than compete fairly, even though there are probably people willing to create the manifestations and distribute them for a lower price. This means that there is a real economic loss associated with the artificial monopoly.
Sounds good on paper, until you realize that we live in a universe of finite resources. I'd argue that it's probably mathematically impossible for even just two individuals to have the same opportunity for one simple reason if nothing else: the distribution of resources across the universe is non-uniform.
It is not possible to have any type of currency that has a fixed value over time, because preferences are not constant over time.
Even the concept of a BitCoin representing some amount of energy is kind of odd in that sense, because the amount of goods and services someone is willing to pay for, say, 10MJ energy today is not the same amount of goods and services they will be willing to exchange for 10MJ energy in the future.
Value always changes over time. Simple example: how much will you be willing to trade for one serving of your favorite meal after eating only one piece of bread a day for three years? Now, how much would you be willing to trade for a second serving?
The psychological concepts of marginal utility and discount rates ensure that any form of currency will change over time.
"First to file" doesn't eliminate the "novel, useful, unobvious" requirements on a patent. If an invention is already in the field and in use, first to file won't be the thing that locks it up. Instead, it will be the same thing that happens today when people get patents on obvious or preexisting "inventions".
First to file simply eliminates the fights over who invented things first. Of course, I'm of the opinion that if there is a "who invented it first" fight then the patent under question should immediately be invalidated or rejected, because near-enough simultaneous development by disparate parties means the invention is "obvious to those skilled in the art" QED.
This is the part with which I have a fundamental problem. If I measure the distance between myself and an object at two different times, and the distance between us increases by more than c*dt, then how can it be claimed that our relative velocity has remained less than the speed of light?
Is the problem simply one of using incompatible measuring sticks? I cannot conceive of a mechanism by which the instantaneous measured speed of any entity can be less than c and yet the total distance measured over some time period is greater than c times that time period, unless either c is changing or the definition of distance is changing over time in a very silly way.
The only other consistent thing of which I can think is to revise relativity to say that no object can be observed to travel faster than c*k, where k is some function of distance. I admit that I'm not that familiar with the details of expansionary theory. What's the verifiable mathematical explanation that resolves this apparent inconsistency?
What you'd need to show is that a "peaceful" population, when subject to "violent" video games, has a higher rate of people switching from "peaceful" to "violent" than a population that is not subject to "violent" video games.
Any reasonable study would need to eliminate the fact that people with violent tendencies already would probably choose to play a "violent" video game.
I personally fall into the camp that sees video games and other media not as a cause of violent behavior, but merely a catalyst: media is likely to take already existing tendencies and magnify them. If those tendencies don't exist, the games (or movies or television shows or music or books) will do nothing.
In general I'm a fan of FF, but XIII really disappointed me. Perhaps even more than VIII, and that's a pretty amazing feat.
I think the number one thing about XIII that is really awful is it's absurdly linear gameplay; unlike any other FF, there is no "freedom" to do anything other than follow a single path through the zones - you can't even take two routes to the same place.
It's kind of sad, really. I actually haven't even finished the game; the gameplay and really typical storyline don't hold my interest. (FF has often oscillated between good stories and characterization to poor, but XIII is a combination of poor gameplay system (weapon mods are not even really customizable - you just max them all out), poor characterization, and linear play.)
I wonder what happened there - was it a change in artistic team? A side effect of the Enix merger? A side effect of trying to cater to both the PS and 360 crowds?
CS Lewis. That Hideous Strength.
This is the first post that attempts to address the issue of interpolation (there was one that indicates high spatial resolution from satellites, which is a different solution). I'll have to follow that link and read up later - I'm still not sure I'm convinced in the first principles analysis even using anomalies, because the way temperature works there is no physical mechanism that would force all anomalies to move together. My hesitation is because while bulk changes would guarantee the anomalies would all move in concert, anomalies moving in concert does not necessarily guarantee a bulk change.
The only thing I've not really been able to figure out from the entire climate discussion is what is meant by "average temperature" in the first place.
The idea of taking some temperature measurements at various geographic locations and then averaging those values doesn't seem to make much physical sense to me, because there is no meaningful method by which to perform an average. Consider using an "area based average." This sounds reasonable: put your measurements in some regular grid, assume the temperature varies continuously between those points, and compute an average. I would argue that's a terrible method, because temperature is not a continuous quantity: if you put two temperature probes any distance apart, there is no meaningful way to estimate the temperature variation between those points. It could be linear between them, it could be nonlinear such that the temperature is higher between the two points, it could be nonlinear such that it is lower between the two points.
I am much more willing to look at other parameters which do have a better "average" information content. Sea level, snow cover (both max and min amounts, as well as time spent at those amounts) because those are inherently continuous phenomena that are not subject to interpolation errors.
Actually, a question and it may actually convince me to accept the concept of "average temperature": do thermal satellites have the capability to do a true area-continuous temperature measurement?
I have other questions as well, for instance, is average temperature really the critical parameter or is it median temperature? Actual max vs actual min? Is it something more related to the square of the deviation from the mean ("signal power")?
I have a hard time believing that an area-average temperature is an adequate parametrization of climate. Or, perhaps what I'm asking is, what climate effects are actually correlated so strongly with the mean temperature (how statistically significant is that correlation)? And how geographically dependent is that correlation?
I agree with this one. That much computing power means it's not a phone but a highly portable computer that happens to have access to a certain specific communications network ("telephony") in addition to the general Internet.
Calling these devices "phones" is a misnomer, and I think if we are more honest about what the devices actually represent we'll be better off. Mobile "phones" stopped being phones quite some time ago. And I'm not the first one to make this observation by any means.
The only rational argument for which I would grant a particular species some form of "rights" (rather than something along the lines of protection we offer to, say, endangered species) is if that species has the trait of being capable of distinguishing between moral choices.
While many animal species do exhibit social behavior, including things like kicking members out of their local group, I don't think any species aside from "human" has demonstrated anything along the lines of the concepts of morality. I will grant that such a thing would be difficult for which to test, but it would boil down to something along the lines of testing not if individuals follow some specific moral code, but that individuals all attempt to follow a moral code (as humans, while all our moral codes differ, every single one of us has some code by which we internally classify things as good or bad).
So I'd say I'd be for increasing anti-abuse protections for higher-functioning animals, but I would not give them rights. In fact, this is exactly what we do to disabled humans: they have numerous protections but no real "rights." In my mind, rights only come with responsibility. Of course, this is not a popular view, but in my mind the "right to life" includes some responsibility with how we conduct our lives. Otherwise we're just like any other social animal. A purely naturalistic worldview has no rational basis on which to evaluate one view regarding species or even individual treatment above any other; there is no "optimal" physical principal that can be used to say one form of behavior is more desirable than another. So we have to be honest and just say, "there's no reason to treat species X this way, other than we want to and have the power to force other individuals of our species to behave in accordance with our wishes". That would at least be honest; anything else is just pure drivel. Put another way: if a species has no mechanism or ability or demonstrated ability to perform or acknowledge or recognize "responsibility" then it should have no "rights".
There is probably some semantic issue here as well - I would not call what animal rights activists advocate as "rights" but more "mandates on humans to behave in some particular way relating to some particular phenomenon." Put another way: "animal rights" do not grant rights to animals but impose restrictions on humans. Rights are something a species can assert upon their recognition - if dolphins or species Q9537 has no ability to recognize and then later assert "rights" then they should not be classified as "rights" in my mind.
Humans, including slaves, and children when they reach a certain level of maturity, as a species trait tend to assert the concepts declared to them as "rights." I would be very interested to see a mechanism by which we could even declare the concept of "rights" to dolphins or chimpanzees, let alone recognize if they were trying to then assert those rights at a later date.
Now, realize, some of the above is thinking out loud and is not a "final answer" regarding my opinion on the matter...
I don't think it's an issue of ABI/API stability at all. The true culprit, in my opinion, is the massive interdependence of independently developed and rapidly changing libraries.
The one thing that has consistently stopped me from being more involved with open source is that every time I attempt to play with some open source utility I spend hours trying to find correct dependencies, often finding some that were undocumented as necessary after numerous failed compiles, and finally giving up.
The thing that would bring open source truly "to the desktop" or "to the mobile" or whatever is if developers did a better job of packaging their source with the libraries that they used to install it, instead of assuming the end client will already have those libraries or will go out and fetch them. When the vast majority of people want a program, they don't want to have to go find two or three supporting programs; they want everything in one simple package.
(Yes, I'm aware of the various package managers, but those haven't succeeded for the few programs I've wanted; perhaps my sampling is unusual and this is not common, but my personal success rate has been so poor as to encourage me to seek other solutions.)
If there is no physical constraint on providing health care supply, then why, with such high prices, are there not massive numbers of people flocking to provide new health care services?
It is true that health care supply is not limited by geography as roads are. There are, however, other constraints that prevent health care supply from increasing. This is why the health care "problem" in the US is not really economic - it's bureaucratic (certification requirements, lack of medical schools, professional societies, litigation, etc.).
Simply changing the laws so that the existing supply must service more people without providing a means to increase the available supply will not increase quality of service or reduce prices; it will instead decrease the quality and/or increase prices.
Roads don't generally suffer from the type of resource allocation constraints as health care. That is, "roads" do not exhibit the same type of scarcity as "health care." Because health care is more scarce than roads, some more intrusive form of resource allocation is warranted. This can either be an economic means of allocation (e.g., you pay more, you get better service) or some kind of procedural means - waiting lists, quotas, etc.
The major failing of health care systems is that they do not adequately address the issues of resource supply and allocation to those people needing medical services. This results in high prices and/or apparent unavailability of services under an economic scheme - that is, if you can't pay you can't get the service (or get a lower level of service; e.g., the "mandatory" emergency room service which is basically "ensure they aren't going to die") - or lack of services (in the form of waiting lists) if there is a bureaucratic allocation mechanism. What good is a system that is "available to everyone" if there is simply insufficient resource to provide all the desired services?
One issue with the current copyright system is that as soon as a group has a particularly valued piece of work, they no longer have to keep producing anything else because copyright ensures they will be the sole provider of that valued work. This calls the "incentive" motive for copyright into question to some extent.
One other issue is the issue of transference: while a building up of value and saving it for one's beneficiaries through a will makes some sense (this is essentially saving up for them) this is very different from passing on a monopoly to provide a constant revenue stream [i]with no additional creation of wealth[/i]. Note in the first case - say an estate or large bank account - the only way that provides revenue to beneficiaries is if they invest it or draw down on the reserve. For copyrights, there is no "drawing down" or requirement for investment (I suppose there is some necessary work to create new transferrable copies like CDs or new print copies or whatever).
The problem isn't that an artist is successful while producing work, the problem is that the current US copyright system essentially entitles an artist (or beneficiaries) to income with [i]no additional creative effort[/i]. The concept of entitlements is indeed a bitter one, depending on if you sympathize with the recipients or providers.