Exactly. I'm an Objectivist, but I'm offering some products online for free for limited use, and I contribute to F/OSS. The idea is that in the first case, my customers will gain confidence in my products and purchase more expensive services in times, and in the second case, that F/OSS will not only become better, but will better fit my own needs in the future.
One doesn't have to be altruistic to benefit others. There are no conflicts of interest amongst rational actors.
While this is a valid concern, you can take it too far. As a private citizen, it doesn't really bother me that Google crawls my email and my contacts' email and uses keywords to target ads. As a business, it would be more concerning, but even then only for certain types of data.
At the end of the day, they provide a service and need to be paid. They get paid through targeted ads - so if you don't want to see targeted ads, you're not "paying" Google, and why should they do things for you then?
It would be "evil" if they weren't up front about it or denied it - but data mining is Google's primary business, and they aren't hiding it. I've yet to see any instance of them declaring data sacred and then parsing it for their own purposes, either.
In short, I see no evidence that Google is "evil" - merely that they aren't doing things the way that a lot of F/OSS folks would prefer. They aren't making their money off support though, so that's expected.
While I'm not going to address you argument about the private space endeavors - they were and are a bit grandiose in their claims - but the industries you chose as examples of private enterprise are probably four of the most regulated industries in the US economy. Saying that the results of these industries is representative of a free market is laughable.
FWIW, I work in transportation, and it is becoming less regulated over time - and it is more stable than any of the other three.
I'll agree with this. I'm no Apple fanboi, but I recently got a iPhone 3G for $49 through AT&T. I was looking for a smartphone, and it just made sense. It has completely changed the way I keep up with my day-to-day life, too. I sync my Google Calendar and Gmail contacts over-the-air, and set up my emails to poll every 15 minutes.* I use it to keep track of everything from going to the gym to my vehicle maintenance. I've not jailbroken it yet, but that's only because I've not seen anything I just have to have.
I really like the phone. Its easy to keep clean, and I've just about stopped lugging around my laptop most of the time.
I *am* considering a Macbook Pro, though, after my experience with the iPhone. I don't care much about OSX (I've not used it), but I do like the unibody construction and the keyboard - I tend to break keyboards and laptop hardware after a year or two of hard use. The magnetic power cord is genius, as the last 3 laptops I've had have failed eventually due to the power port working its way off the motherboard one too many times, which eventually gets to the point there's nothing left to solder it back to. That one feature alone is worth $500 to me, as it probably extends the productive life of the machine 2-3x.
*This part sucks. You can only have one Exchange account, and even though I can set up my webserver to provide push notifications for my gmail, I can't do that *and* sync my calendar/contacts. I deemed the calendar more important, and every 15 minutes acceptable for email.
Twitter's 140 character limit is so they'll fit inside the basic SMS protocol. I don't seem them abandoning this, as portability and the ability to use it on many platforms is one of the reason they are so successful.
Having written some stuff in Python that interacts with the Twitter API, there is more to it than the free stuff. They give special access levels to people with cool apps and things - it would make sense to charge businesses to access in-depth analytic stuff, or prevent them from getting it via the API entirely and build your own suite.
Meh, not really. If it came to full-scale nuclear war, most of China's population is near the coasts. We could take out their entire industrial infrastructure in half an hour with SLBMs. They are also somewhat reliant on hydro power in many locations, and dams wouldn't last long in all-out war.
A few million soldiers do no good at all if you can't feed, fuel, or clothe them.
Cool tidbit - the Three Gorges Dam holds back enough water that the filling of the reservoir actually caused small earthquakes from the shifting of the Earth's crust to accommodate the weight. Breach the dam, and all that weight moves quickly - a nuclear war could actually cause fairly serious earthquakes in the region.
The Congressional Research Service puts the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at $3 trillion. Obama has been in office for 6 months, and we now have a "projected" deficit of $9 trillion, last I heard.
Three times the debt, in 1/12 the time. There's some change you can believe in!
Cows are sentient, now? Prove it. They possess "sensory awareness", sure - but consciousness? Have you ever been NEAR a cow?
Levels of blood and puss are quite low, thanks. Don't forget the shit that they splash on their udders that gets in there, bacterial infections, and my favorite, iodine.
That said, I'm quite certain you're happy with the level of boll weevils, grasshoppers, rat droppings, mice, and birds that the US industry is allowed to include in you wheat and soy. Hey, at least its made into bread and tofu, right?
I fully intend to homeschool my daughter, because I do believe that I can do a better job than the public (or private) schools in the area.
I'm no religious fundamentalist, though I am quite political - that is one of the reasons my wife and I have decided to homeschool. We both had horrible experience in public school, and can't abide by the idea of some left-wing-dominated institution having so much control over our children's lives.
As for ability, I'm an IT guy and my wife owns a dance studio and teaches there. I'm going now for a BS in Mathematics, and will teach the "hard" subjects - math, the sciences, physics, programming - and my wife will teach the liberal arts - art appreciation, dance, etc. We are looking at joining a co-op when the time comes, which means we might end up basically starting our own school in the end. I'd love to have an engineer teach physics and chemistry, or a geologist teaching earth science.
All said, I'm guessing we'll spend about 3-5 hours per day of explicit schooling. The rest of the time, we'll be doing applications of it - "unschooling", though I'd not heard the word before seeing this article. When we go over American history, for instance, we'll be taking family trips to Concord and Lexington, Gettysburg, Fort Sumter, etc. Hopefully by the time she reaches high school, we'll be in a better financial position and will be visiting Normandy and Dachau for modern history. I'd rather teach her by taking her to a battlefield or a museum than showing her a picture.
A good part of algebra and physics could be taught together, and using real-life examples. Model rockets, firearms, any number of items could be used to increase interest. I want her to be genuinely interested in learning, not just good at it.
That just doesn't make sense, unless you were working with very limited land or something. Grass is free, feed costs money. I'd rather feed only when necessary to supplement, as opposed to all year round.
Why were they tied up in a barn? And why on Earth did you tie them up, as opposed to just penning them ?
I said I *have* 8 hogs, and I didn't reference cattle - I have 16 head right now, which we raise for show mainly.
My father is an Ag teacher, and I know a thing or two about it myself, having grown up around it. Large-scale farming is more dense, but not a whole lot different really. Raising cattle for slaughter is a different thing from milk production, for sure, but it still isn't a "cage slightly bigger than their body". Even the most dense feedlots have enough room for the animals to mill about.
When it comes down to it, though --- they are animals. They don't have "rights" as a human does, and they certainly aren't capable of complex thought. Cattle are some of the absolute dumbest animals I've ever encountered. We raise them for meat, and their entire purpose is to be butchered or provide us with milk.
That doesn't mean that it is okay to be needlessly cruel - they can indeed feel pain, and be uncomfortable - but there is absolutely nothing wrong with running them down a chute and putting a piston-gun to their head. I hate to be graphic about it, and I understand that more urban folks aren't used to the imagery, but that's just the way it is.
Having worked on a dairy farm for years, and seeing that I have 8 hogs in my back yard, I'm going to call bullshit on this one. Dairy cattle are typically allowed to freely roam for most of the day. Their day goes like this:
Wake up in a large barn, with 400 or so other cows. Mosey out into a holding pen and stand there until let into the milk barn. Stand there and get milked. Blow snot on the person milking you. Crap all over the place, try to splatter on the person milking you. Walk out into a field. Stand around and chew on grass all day. Come back to the holding pen because your udder is full and uncomfortable. Stand there until let into the milk barn. Stand there and get milked. Blow snot on the person milking you. Crap all over the place, try to splatter on the person milking you. Walk out into a field. Chew on some grass. Go back to the barn and go to sleep.
Hog pens are messy, but that's not because they're mistreated - pigs can't effectively sweat, so they cover themselves with wet mud to help dissipate heat. I promise, they *prefer* it that way. The pens are usually about 10x10' per pig.
I love how 2 of the 5 things you mentioned are legislative restrictions on business.
Sounds like what you value in life is more aligned with Europeans. Personally, I hold Liberty above all else, even life itself. If you value vacation time and government-mandated retirement, go for it.
Thanks for moving to Europe, though, instead of trying to change us over here. If any of your friends want to join, I'll see about taking up a collection.
I only said that he was assuming even distribution - we have a larger land area of very low population density. That's all. It is physically more difficult to create ubiquitous radio coverage.
For the record, I agree that Europe has better net access. Some European countries have a few more social freedoms than the US. Other than that... I can't think of anything I'd consider better in Europe. Certainly not healthcare, taxes, or basic freedoms.
We Americans are a proud bunch, and our value system isn't the same as Europe's.
If you want to be a prick about it, I would point out that the term "chav" is largely unknown here in the US.
Leaving your children unattended in a US city isn't so much dangerous, as it is socially unacceptable. Also, we're not talking of kids playing outside, we're talking about losing track of children for 6 or more hours at a time.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. I'm an Objectivist, but I'm offering some products online for free for limited use, and I contribute to F/OSS. The idea is that in the first case, my customers will gain confidence in my products and purchase more expensive services in times, and in the second case, that F/OSS will not only become better, but will better fit my own needs in the future.
One doesn't have to be altruistic to benefit others. There are no conflicts of interest amongst rational actors.
While this is a valid concern, you can take it too far. As a private citizen, it doesn't really bother me that Google crawls my email and my contacts' email and uses keywords to target ads. As a business, it would be more concerning, but even then only for certain types of data.
At the end of the day, they provide a service and need to be paid. They get paid through targeted ads - so if you don't want to see targeted ads, you're not "paying" Google, and why should they do things for you then?
It would be "evil" if they weren't up front about it or denied it - but data mining is Google's primary business, and they aren't hiding it. I've yet to see any instance of them declaring data sacred and then parsing it for their own purposes, either.
In short, I see no evidence that Google is "evil" - merely that they aren't doing things the way that a lot of F/OSS folks would prefer. They aren't making their money off support though, so that's expected.
While I'm not going to address you argument about the private space endeavors - they were and are a bit grandiose in their claims - but the industries you chose as examples of private enterprise are probably four of the most regulated industries in the US economy. Saying that the results of these industries is representative of a free market is laughable.
FWIW, I work in transportation, and it is becoming less regulated over time - and it is more stable than any of the other three.
I'll agree with this. I'm no Apple fanboi, but I recently got a iPhone 3G for $49 through AT&T. I was looking for a smartphone, and it just made sense. It has completely changed the way I keep up with my day-to-day life, too. I sync my Google Calendar and Gmail contacts over-the-air, and set up my emails to poll every 15 minutes.* I use it to keep track of everything from going to the gym to my vehicle maintenance. I've not jailbroken it yet, but that's only because I've not seen anything I just have to have.
I really like the phone. Its easy to keep clean, and I've just about stopped lugging around my laptop most of the time.
I *am* considering a Macbook Pro, though, after my experience with the iPhone. I don't care much about OSX (I've not used it), but I do like the unibody construction and the keyboard - I tend to break keyboards and laptop hardware after a year or two of hard use. The magnetic power cord is genius, as the last 3 laptops I've had have failed eventually due to the power port working its way off the motherboard one too many times, which eventually gets to the point there's nothing left to solder it back to. That one feature alone is worth $500 to me, as it probably extends the productive life of the machine 2-3x.
*This part sucks. You can only have one Exchange account, and even though I can set up my webserver to provide push notifications for my gmail, I can't do that *and* sync my calendar/contacts. I deemed the calendar more important, and every 15 minutes acceptable for email.
You're late to that party.
Swine Flu.
It is both - a non-blocking webserver and a framework designed to take advantage of that. Please click through the links (Is that British for RTFA?)
Twitter's 140 character limit is so they'll fit inside the basic SMS protocol. I don't seem them abandoning this, as portability and the ability to use it on many platforms is one of the reason they are so successful.
Having written some stuff in Python that interacts with the Twitter API, there is more to it than the free stuff. They give special access levels to people with cool apps and things - it would make sense to charge businesses to access in-depth analytic stuff, or prevent them from getting it via the API entirely and build your own suite.
Meh, not really. If it came to full-scale nuclear war, most of China's population is near the coasts. We could take out their entire industrial infrastructure in half an hour with SLBMs. They are also somewhat reliant on hydro power in many locations, and dams wouldn't last long in all-out war.
A few million soldiers do no good at all if you can't feed, fuel, or clothe them.
Cool tidbit - the Three Gorges Dam holds back enough water that the filling of the reservoir actually caused small earthquakes from the shifting of the Earth's crust to accommodate the weight. Breach the dam, and all that weight moves quickly - a nuclear war could actually cause fairly serious earthquakes in the region.
The Congressional Research Service puts the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at $3 trillion. Obama has been in office for 6 months, and we now have a "projected" deficit of $9 trillion, last I heard.
Three times the debt, in 1/12 the time. There's some change you can believe in!
I realize you're just being contrary, but China lacks the force projection to threaten the us militarily.
Or just consistently use Tor and don't post shit that can ID you. I have a political blog like that.
Cows are sentient, now? Prove it. They possess "sensory awareness", sure - but consciousness? Have you ever been NEAR a cow?
Levels of blood and puss are quite low, thanks. Don't forget the shit that they splash on their udders that gets in there, bacterial infections, and my favorite, iodine.
That said, I'm quite certain you're happy with the level of boll weevils, grasshoppers, rat droppings, mice, and birds that the US industry is allowed to include in you wheat and soy. Hey, at least its made into bread and tofu, right?
I fully intend to homeschool my daughter, because I do believe that I can do a better job than the public (or private) schools in the area.
I'm no religious fundamentalist, though I am quite political - that is one of the reasons my wife and I have decided to homeschool. We both had horrible experience in public school, and can't abide by the idea of some left-wing-dominated institution having so much control over our children's lives.
As for ability, I'm an IT guy and my wife owns a dance studio and teaches there. I'm going now for a BS in Mathematics, and will teach the "hard" subjects - math, the sciences, physics, programming - and my wife will teach the liberal arts - art appreciation, dance, etc. We are looking at joining a co-op when the time comes, which means we might end up basically starting our own school in the end. I'd love to have an engineer teach physics and chemistry, or a geologist teaching earth science.
All said, I'm guessing we'll spend about 3-5 hours per day of explicit schooling. The rest of the time, we'll be doing applications of it - "unschooling", though I'd not heard the word before seeing this article. When we go over American history, for instance, we'll be taking family trips to Concord and Lexington, Gettysburg, Fort Sumter, etc. Hopefully by the time she reaches high school, we'll be in a better financial position and will be visiting Normandy and Dachau for modern history. I'd rather teach her by taking her to a battlefield or a museum than showing her a picture.
A good part of algebra and physics could be taught together, and using real-life examples. Model rockets, firearms, any number of items could be used to increase interest. I want her to be genuinely interested in learning, not just good at it.
That just doesn't make sense, unless you were working with very limited land or something. Grass is free, feed costs money. I'd rather feed only when necessary to supplement, as opposed to all year round.
Why were they tied up in a barn? And why on Earth did you tie them up, as opposed to just penning them ?
I said I *have* 8 hogs, and I didn't reference cattle - I have 16 head right now, which we raise for show mainly.
My father is an Ag teacher, and I know a thing or two about it myself, having grown up around it. Large-scale farming is more dense, but not a whole lot different really. Raising cattle for slaughter is a different thing from milk production, for sure, but it still isn't a "cage slightly bigger than their body". Even the most dense feedlots have enough room for the animals to mill about.
When it comes down to it, though --- they are animals. They don't have "rights" as a human does, and they certainly aren't capable of complex thought. Cattle are some of the absolute dumbest animals I've ever encountered. We raise them for meat, and their entire purpose is to be butchered or provide us with milk.
That doesn't mean that it is okay to be needlessly cruel - they can indeed feel pain, and be uncomfortable - but there is absolutely nothing wrong with running them down a chute and putting a piston-gun to their head. I hate to be graphic about it, and I understand that more urban folks aren't used to the imagery, but that's just the way it is.
Yep - I have 8 pigs, and their pen is 3 panels by 5 panels. A panel is 8', so that's 24'x32', or 768 sq.ft. 96 square feet per pig.
Having worked on a dairy farm for years, and seeing that I have 8 hogs in my back yard, I'm going to call bullshit on this one. Dairy cattle are typically allowed to freely roam for most of the day. Their day goes like this:
Wake up in a large barn, with 400 or so other cows. Mosey out into a holding pen and stand there until let into the milk barn. Stand there and get milked. Blow snot on the person milking you. Crap all over the place, try to splatter on the person milking you. Walk out into a field. Stand around and chew on grass all day. Come back to the holding pen because your udder is full and uncomfortable. Stand there until let into the milk barn. Stand there and get milked. Blow snot on the person milking you. Crap all over the place, try to splatter on the person milking you. Walk out into a field. Chew on some grass. Go back to the barn and go to sleep.
Hog pens are messy, but that's not because they're mistreated - pigs can't effectively sweat, so they cover themselves with wet mud to help dissipate heat. I promise, they *prefer* it that way. The pens are usually about 10x10' per pig.
I love how 2 of the 5 things you mentioned are legislative restrictions on business.
Sounds like what you value in life is more aligned with Europeans. Personally, I hold Liberty above all else, even life itself. If you value vacation time and government-mandated retirement, go for it.
Thanks for moving to Europe, though, instead of trying to change us over here. If any of your friends want to join, I'll see about taking up a collection.
You got a little defensive there, didn't ya?
I only said that he was assuming even distribution - we have a larger land area of very low population density. That's all. It is physically more difficult to create ubiquitous radio coverage.
For the record, I agree that Europe has better net access. Some European countries have a few more social freedoms than the US. Other than that... I can't think of anything I'd consider better in Europe. Certainly not healthcare, taxes, or basic freedoms.
We Americans are a proud bunch, and our value system isn't the same as Europe's.
You're assuming even distribution. Something like 3/4 of the US population is withing 100 miles of the border, in our cities.
I was fun of the improper use of the word "then", as opposed the correct word for the context, "than".
I'm going to school right now for a BS in math, actually. I understood the joke.
I don't need that addon, I can count now!
I'm not sure how an addon will help someone who can't count suddenly be able too, either.
Those people may have borne children, but they aren't parents. That's kinda the point I was making :)
This is a function of the culture, not of safety.
If you want to be a prick about it, I would point out that the term "chav" is largely unknown here in the US.
Leaving your children unattended in a US city isn't so much dangerous, as it is socially unacceptable. Also, we're not talking of kids playing outside, we're talking about losing track of children for 6 or more hours at a time.