Of course we can only see in four colours (Red, Green, Blue, and "night vision"), but our sensors have broad, overlapping peaks of sensitivity, thus green will also evoke blue and red. However, blue-green will evoke considerably less red (less than half of what green does), so a real blue-green emitter will give us a colour not deliverable with existing technology. Screens should be sharper as a result, through less polluting cross-colour; not only will black be very black, but Indigo will be very Indigo...
Copyright infringement is one issue where personalising it is actually misleading. The biggest reson that copyright infringement is not theft isn't connected to bad analogies with car theft, but with the fact that infringements also act as advertising, and often the infringer wouldn't have bought it anyway.
Strangely enough, the displacement of sales and the advertising effect appear to counter each other almost exactly. However, copyright infringement remains an abuse of trust, so it is still wrong; it is simply mistaken to believe that it leaves the artist out of pocket.
I will say here, to make my position clear, selling pirated goods is theft. What is different? People appear to have a certain sum of money that they spend on music/videos etc; if pirated goods are bought, that money is redirected from the artist or his/her representative, since that cash is no longer in the hands of the purchaser. Accordingly, I would have profiting from piracy be a crime with a fine proportional to the money made, rather than the degree of infringement.
Just been through some of your comments. I don't totally agree with you, but you have many interesting things to say, and argue a good case.
As for scarcity, I think that oxygen is pretty valuable, despite its relative abundance. Also, in any volentary transaction, its value is higher than the price paid, so as to make the exchange worthwhile, which yields a major flaw in attempting to measure wealth; you hope that "all other things are equal" when making the comparison, but can never be sure.
Diamonds and the like are a different matter. Certainly they're pretty, but actually, they're a form of cash. A ladder is valuable because it helps you get to a rooftop; it would still have that value if there were an abundance of ladders.
In the end, this is about society verses nature. That abundance destroys value is a fairly accurate social observation: we evolved so as to value having an edge over one another, and the ubiquitous cannot help in that, but we do still have basic needs and desires, and indeed, this is essential in a justification of capitalism, or else we're all just spinning hamster wheels. Poverty can be alleviated, it's simply a mistake to think that it can be eliminated through ever more government.
They're PC. The now grandparent was fluffing up Digg, and clan loyalty is such that some consider it flamebait. I try to point this out sometimes, but that itself risks a downmod.
The average Slashdotter is still under the influence of either their parents, or else draconian work laws over what can be said and not said. You don't fluff up the opposition; the modern social dialogue, on either side of the political spectrum is about advantage, not truth.
The irony is that Slashdot's leaning is generally some blend of anarchist and libertarian; a position that I am very comfortable with. This general PC movement has the feel of "protecting our freedoms by restricting our rights".
Seems to me that 'expected imminently' means you know that an attack is going to happen. The intelligence services are saying that they have no information suggesting any further attack but they are implementing the extra security as a precaution just incase something they don't know about happens. Wouldn't that constitute 'severe' or 'substantial'?
This immediately makes me suspicious as to whether other facts, while reported essentially truthfully, have been massaged or slightly exaggerated as government PR, starting with this quote from the article:
Head of the Met's anti-terrorist branch Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke said the investigation had had "global dimensions" and had seen an "unprecedented level" of surveillance.
I believe that this is true, but I expect all emphasis to be similarly scaled up for effect. In this case, "we need more surveillance powers".
Hang on, this is certainly on-topic, or else the topic is absurdly narrow.
nVidia are promoting a DIY hardware hack, billed in those terms. Hacking is what we, as geeks, most want to do, or else know that others are doing so that we can extend a devices functionality, reliability, or freedom of use. The immediately larger context is that this is Slashdot; this is what the site's about.
Aside from that, you gave no compelling reason for Nvidia to do as you wish.
Now that is (marginally) flamebait. Producing free software isn't sufficient reason?
I'd say it's because it was a negative comment
Here we agree, political correctness is beginning to be applied to corporations; this goes beyond the standard of hurting someone's feelings...
...were taken off the Microsoft case when the Government changed hands; I wouldn't be surprised if they just left things the way that they are. Non-action rather than agressive support of Microsoft's allies would be entirely consistent.
Also, only geeks really care about this case, and by and large, they'll be satisfied with a court victory against SCO. Why commit more government funds?
Microsoft does not want black-hats to be cracking Vista, unless they're visiting a honeypot; for black-hats will keep what they know to themselves, and maybe create false trails. Rather, MS is indicating the grey- and white-hats that they're legally in the clear.
"Black Hat" is simply the name of the conference organiser, a cool name to be sure, but not an indication of who MS is reaching out to.
It's a reasonable point. But feel a need to reply, as I disagree.
The real problem here isn't morale or loyalty; in most other contexts the CIA's action would have been reasonable. The real problem is groupthink. In an intelligence context this matters a lot. Eliminating someone not "on mission" harms the integrity of your intelligence; this action strongly indicates the misordering of priorities for what is meant to be an intelligence agency. It's not as if Christine Axsmith criticised the agency to outsiders.
To quote Mark Twain "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please".
Gradual Elimination of Free Speech
on
IBM Opts for AMD
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· Score: 1
I understand; you're saying "don't stand for political correctness by pretending that it's not there", that is: do the right thing, and refuse to inherit ridiculous standards. Act deliberately "blindly", but reasonably in your own terms.
I agree that doing the right thing is an important part of the fix, but it is not in itself enough. In brief, you need a network to fight a network. The PC network works through "building awareness", and this is therefore an important part of the response. If you don't do this, you will find yourself "showing insensitivity", and it will hurt your career. This "insensitivity" has nothing to do with real compassion, but is rooted in self-justification for minding one's own back. Weakness is promoted into "morality" of the weakest kind, that has nothing to do with courage.
Here's an example of poor humour on Digg. PC nonsense and ridiculous thin-skinnedness needs to be pointed out, and this will occur at some (slight) cost to oneself. Ironically my own post was modded as Troll, as if it was intended to get a rise out of people and generate replies as sport, rather than state an opinion and make people think.
When I say legislation, I agree that social pressure is not in itself legislation, but it becomes legislation when one is considering "hate speech", for example. Hate speech used to mean speech that has the intent behind it of causing harm. Now increasingly, it need only cause offense. The creeping erasure of robust speech needs to be brought to light repeatedly and courageously, or we will find ourselves breaking the law for reasonable criticism in a few years. In fact, it is already happening.
What you say is right in a narrow sense, but why would we have become so much more sensitive?
It is the rise of political correctness that is "legislating" by altering acceptable behaviour. Increasingly criticism is unacceptable. This is far wider than Slashdot.
Although I agree that less than +4 funny shouldn't be worth mod points, your post shows how much fairer it would be if funny mods countered down-mods, IMO.
I'm amazed at what's now called troll or flamebait, but it's actually a general rising tide of political correctness; we're "legislating" for people's feelings. Scary stuff.
Moderation is a system of punishment and reward. The standard punishment for 'FP' is "Offtopic"; being on topic is irrelevent. You can get offtopic for a bad, ontopic joke.
I agree that moderation would be better if it was wielded more precisely, but I'm afraid that that simply isn't how it's done.
You can't know if such universes exist, thought. You can imagine that there might be them, but you can't know if there actually is. That's my point. You can't prove the fact that communication took place to prove anything until you've proven that such communication actually took place, and you can't do that.
You can't prove it, but in those universes where communication didn't take place, reality is trivially singular. Where there is plurality and communication is the more interesting case, since there the situation is interesting. Potentially, we could have different realities, but we don't for the medium of communication binds us together in one reality.
My argument is incomplete for I didn't cover the singular case (on the basis that in such universes, the communication doesn't occur), but that doesn't make it wrong. I still think that it's an interesting point that the act of communication carries meaning (there is a listener) precisely when there is an other.
More generally, this means that communication should presuppose the existance of the other, as the act only has meaning (it only is communication) when that is the case.
And your knowledge about reality may not be relevant to the reality itself, but it is very relevant when you're making any claims about reality, including the claim that reality exists independent of your perceptions - or, if that's the definition of reality, that there is anything that exists independent of your perceptions.
Again sophistry, I'm afraid. If you've caught all cases, you've nailed it. Even if perception is reality, reality is trivially singular. Besides, if there's no "listener", you're talking to thin air, and might as well be talking gibberish. Communicating the concept of non-singular, pluralistic reality contains a contradiction.
Communication presupposes otherness and medium, or else it isn't communication, it's a monologue.
The problem is that you can't tell the two apart reliably. You can never be sure that you are actually communicating with another entity instead of talking to and answering to yourself.
This is a point in logic, your knowledge about reality isn't relevant. Whether you know or not about the success of the communication, the logic holds in exactly those possible universes where communication took place.
BTW. If there is no other, then reality is trivially singular; I'm taking on physical relativism, not solipsism.
Well, according to theory of relativity, physical reality appears quite different to different observers, and none of these can claim that their reality is any more or less real than anyone else's.
I'm sorry. This is sophistry; the theory of relativity is in fact a theory of invariants, so that one frame of reference can be tranformed into another: you cannot talk of "your own" (distict) reality. The universe is shared, thus reality is signular.
If you're trying to prove to me that reality is singular, then there is otherness. Communication presupposes otherness and medium, or else it isn't communication, it's a monologue.
BTW. If there is no other, then reality is trivially singular; I'm taking on physical relativism, not solipsism.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course we can only see in four colours (Red, Green, Blue, and "night vision"), but our sensors have broad, overlapping peaks of sensitivity, thus green will also evoke blue and red. However, blue-green will evoke considerably less red (less than half of what green does), so a real blue-green emitter will give us a colour not deliverable with existing technology. Screens should be sharper as a result, through less polluting cross-colour; not only will black be very black, but Indigo will be very Indigo...
Copyright infringement is one issue where personalising it is actually misleading. The biggest reson that copyright infringement is not theft isn't connected to bad analogies with car theft, but with the fact that infringements also act as advertising, and often the infringer wouldn't have bought it anyway.
Strangely enough, the displacement of sales and the advertising effect appear to counter each other almost exactly. However, copyright infringement remains an abuse of trust, so it is still wrong; it is simply mistaken to believe that it leaves the artist out of pocket.
I will say here, to make my position clear, selling pirated goods is theft. What is different? People appear to have a certain sum of money that they spend on music/videos etc; if pirated goods are bought, that money is redirected from the artist or his/her representative, since that cash is no longer in the hands of the purchaser. Accordingly, I would have profiting from piracy be a crime with a fine proportional to the money made, rather than the degree of infringement.
You know, you should keep a journal :o)
Just been through some of your comments. I don't totally agree with you, but you have many interesting things to say, and argue a good case.
As for scarcity, I think that oxygen is pretty valuable, despite its relative abundance. Also, in any volentary transaction, its value is higher than the price paid, so as to make the exchange worthwhile, which yields a major flaw in attempting to measure wealth; you hope that "all other things are equal" when making the comparison, but can never be sure.
Diamonds and the like are a different matter. Certainly they're pretty, but actually, they're a form of cash. A ladder is valuable because it helps you get to a rooftop; it would still have that value if there were an abundance of ladders.
In the end, this is about society verses nature. That abundance destroys value is a fairly accurate social observation: we evolved so as to value having an edge over one another, and the ubiquitous cannot help in that, but we do still have basic needs and desires, and indeed, this is essential in a justification of capitalism, or else we're all just spinning hamster wheels. Poverty can be alleviated, it's simply a mistake to think that it can be eliminated through ever more government.
They're PC. The now grandparent was fluffing up Digg, and clan loyalty is such that some consider it flamebait. I try to point this out sometimes, but that itself risks a downmod.
The average Slashdotter is still under the influence of either their parents, or else draconian work laws over what can be said and not said. You don't fluff up the opposition; the modern social dialogue, on either side of the political spectrum is about advantage, not truth.
The irony is that Slashdot's leaning is generally some blend of anarchist and libertarian; a position that I am very comfortable with. This general PC movement has the feel of "protecting our freedoms by restricting our rights".
In a democracy, we get to discuss what the law should be.
Yes, OLGA has (apparently) broken the law. Should it be law?
I believe that this is true, but I expect all emphasis to be similarly scaled up for effect. In this case, "we need more surveillance powers".
nVidia are promoting a DIY hardware hack, billed in those terms. Hacking is what we, as geeks, most want to do, or else know that others are doing so that we can extend a devices functionality, reliability, or freedom of use. The immediately larger context is that this is Slashdot; this is what the site's about.
Now that is (marginally) flamebait. Producing free software isn't sufficient reason?
Here we agree, political correctness is beginning to be applied to corporations; this goes beyond the standard of hurting someone's feelings...
...were taken off the Microsoft case when the Government changed hands; I wouldn't be surprised if they just left things the way that they are. Non-action rather than agressive support of Microsoft's allies would be entirely consistent.
Also, only geeks really care about this case, and by and large, they'll be satisfied with a court victory against SCO. Why commit more government funds?
Microsoft does not want black-hats to be cracking Vista, unless they're visiting a honeypot; for black-hats will keep what they know to themselves, and maybe create false trails. Rather, MS is indicating the grey- and white-hats that they're legally in the clear.
"Black Hat" is simply the name of the conference organiser, a cool name to be sure, but not an indication of who MS is reaching out to.
It's a reasonable point. But feel a need to reply, as I disagree.
The real problem here isn't morale or loyalty; in most other contexts the CIA's action would have been reasonable. The real problem is groupthink. In an intelligence context this matters a lot. Eliminating someone not "on mission" harms the integrity of your intelligence; this action strongly indicates the misordering of priorities for what is meant to be an intelligence agency. It's not as if Christine Axsmith criticised the agency to outsiders.
To quote Mark Twain "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please".
I understand; you're saying "don't stand for political correctness by pretending that it's not there", that is: do the right thing, and refuse to inherit ridiculous standards. Act deliberately "blindly", but reasonably in your own terms.
I agree that doing the right thing is an important part of the fix, but it is not in itself enough. In brief, you need a network to fight a network. The PC network works through "building awareness", and this is therefore an important part of the response. If you don't do this, you will find yourself "showing insensitivity", and it will hurt your career. This "insensitivity" has nothing to do with real compassion, but is rooted in self-justification for minding one's own back. Weakness is promoted into "morality" of the weakest kind, that has nothing to do with courage.
Here's an example of poor humour on Digg. PC nonsense and ridiculous thin-skinnedness needs to be pointed out, and this will occur at some (slight) cost to oneself. Ironically my own post was modded as Troll, as if it was intended to get a rise out of people and generate replies as sport, rather than state an opinion and make people think.
When I say legislation, I agree that social pressure is not in itself legislation, but it becomes legislation when one is considering "hate speech", for example. Hate speech used to mean speech that has the intent behind it of causing harm. Now increasingly, it need only cause offense. The creeping erasure of robust speech needs to be brought to light repeatedly and courageously, or we will find ourselves breaking the law for reasonable criticism in a few years. In fact, it is already happening.
What you say is right in a narrow sense, but why would we have become so much more sensitive?
It is the rise of political correctness that is "legislating" by altering acceptable behaviour. Increasingly criticism is unacceptable. This is far wider than Slashdot.
Although I agree that less than +4 funny shouldn't be worth mod points, your post shows how much fairer it would be if funny mods countered down-mods, IMO.
I'm amazed at what's now called troll or flamebait, but it's actually a general rising tide of political correctness; we're "legislating" for people's feelings. Scary stuff.
Moderation is a system of punishment and reward. The standard punishment for 'FP' is "Offtopic"; being on topic is irrelevent. You can get offtopic for a bad, ontopic joke.
I agree that moderation would be better if it was wielded more precisely, but I'm afraid that that simply isn't how it's done.
It's now called "game theory", or "protecting our *cough* best interests".
Who modded you troll?
Tentacles == Spaghetti?
You may have just unmasked the true identity of the Great and Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster!
You can't prove it, but in those universes where communication didn't take place, reality is trivially singular. Where there is plurality and communication is the more interesting case, since there the situation is interesting. Potentially, we could have different realities, but we don't for the medium of communication binds us together in one reality.
My argument is incomplete for I didn't cover the singular case (on the basis that in such universes, the communication doesn't occur), but that doesn't make it wrong. I still think that it's an interesting point that the act of communication carries meaning (there is a listener) precisely when there is an other.
More generally, this means that communication should presuppose the existance of the other, as the act only has meaning (it only is communication) when that is the case.
Again sophistry, I'm afraid. If you've caught all cases, you've nailed it. Even if perception is reality, reality is trivially singular. Besides, if there's no "listener", you're talking to thin air, and might as well be talking gibberish. Communicating the concept of non-singular, pluralistic reality contains a contradiction.
If you're trying to prove to me that reality is singular, then there is otherness. Communication presupposes otherness and medium, or else it isn't communication, it's a monologue.
BTW. If there is no other, then reality is trivially singular; I'm taking on physical relativism, not solipsism.