Nothing in this thread so far - my earlier jest included - is so spiteful and cruel that even Steven himself couldn't get a chuckle from it.
Maybe the problem is that some people in this world take themselves and their conditions too damn seriously.
You're probably right about his attitude re: his condition, but not his attitude re: his work. When I heard about this job the first thing I remembered was Hawking's first wife, whose comment was she didn't object to working for someone trying to understand God, but she did mind working for God....
On the other hand, she was in the middle of a divorce, so please apply large quantities of NaCl.
My experience is similar to yours. I have no trouble working with men, it's my fellow females that are the problem.
Part of this depends on corporate culture as well. For example, at my latest job there seems to be a pretty good balance of everyone, male and female, putting in the work and getting respected for it. The females can even be feminine and still be regarded as useful in technical matters (!). There's a general sense of job security, even for contractors, that I think contributes to this.
But at the last major corporation I worked for, the culture was very competitive, and many of my female coworkers actively used stereotypically feminine skills to stab each other in the back. I don't mean flirting or being provocative. I mean skills such as being "caring" and "interested" by mentioning in a meeting that someone's personal life is going down the toilet, and immediately diminishing the rest of the team's confidence in them. The men were not blind to this behavior, and didn't befriend the women who did this, with the result that most of the women were isolated from each other and from the men. And at this company, layoffs were a part of life and happened every few months, which probably had a lot to do with this behavior.
It's not just the legal requirements implied. It seems to me that if the NYT behavior becomes accepted precedent, then websites seeking to be accessible internationally may eventually have to require these targeting capabilities, and I would best most don't. Will those without it be censored automatically by some/all foreign countries? (By foreign I mean all countries other than the website's originating country). Surely there are too many websites incapable of this to go through them on a case-by-case basis.
Since I started tracking it in Jan. 2004, my personal, tiny, virtually unknown site has nonetheless had visitors from 46 countries. I've corresponded with people from 13 of those. It's a personal site, and it's not something I want to have to adjust to meet international law because a larger site decided to do so.
A good analogy: If I make a UK-banned book in France, I cannot sell it in my bookshop in the UK.
To me, it's more like a person visiting France buying the book and bringing it into the UK. Accessing the server & page is visiting & "buying"/downloading the content. Should the French bookseller/NYT be responsible for determining the origin of the buyer and whether they are meeting their country's legal requirements?
What do we expect other countries to do to meet U.S. legal requirements? Anything? Nothing? I thought governments concerned with that sort of thing limited access on their own, and governments that didn't limit access, by implication, didn't need us to do it for them. But perhaps I'm ignorant of some crucial piece of information.
I understand the good intent of the NYT, but you know what they say paves the road to hell...
I love it. What's good about this approach is that it provides a new "vocabulary" so to speak. In biology, systematics looks at different ways to arrange data: species via appearance, via clades, via ecological niche. In web design you increase access by presenting different ways of arranging data for users thinking in different ways (specific products vs. solutions, for example). In psychology approaching a disorder from different organizing systems (biophysiological, cognitive, behaviorist, existential) can give new insights. You've done the same thing to astronomy. The taxologist in me is deeply impressed.
The reason the biologists, webweavers, and others play with different taxonomies is that how you organize your data determines the direction of your research and thought. For instance, there were/.ers (and I'm sure there are scientists, too) wondering how to apply the new rules to bodies orbiting other stars. You've provided a framework that works outside our system. All those scientists thinking in terms of orbits, etc., were like web designers who think architecture needs to match user layout; that is, not really thinking.
But seriously, apart from the privacy issue for individuals, what about the issue of the information being misused in order to tailor/edit information for the masses in general? By doing that, the information we use in making decisions becomes even less reliable than it already is. We're already being given ads for medications, etc., that mislead and are dangerous. The more those companies learn about our concerns and fears and hopes, the more they will use that information to abuse our trust, and the less likely we will be able to tell the difference. You're only as good as the data you base your decisions upon.
So "killing millions on orders from psychopaths" == "releasing personal data on orders from idiots", I'm not buying it.
Obviously they're not the same thing. But the Nurember analogy is still valid. To do a thing that you know to be wrong, that can lead to expanding the already-pervasive abuse of personal knowledge by so many large companies, is not justifiable because your boss told you to do it.
Today the "little guy's" only defense against being taken advantage of by major corporations and the government is information and the ability to think for himself. A major problem, though, is that even those few trying to think for themselves are at the mercy of the information they are given. That's the information on which they base their decisions. The more corporations and governments know about what we are interested in and find important, the more they can tailor the information we receive to influence in their direction.
Classic marketing and academic research isn't the issue here. The issue is our ability to choose. This is the same reason the Net Neutrality issue matters, because it can directly affect our ability to find good (useful, true) information. Even if these issues weren't considered when the data was released (and I'm sure they were), such sharing of personal data amounts to criminal negligence when caring for other people's quality of life, and yes, lives. Because among the people using this information are people who directly affect our ability to live and yet seem to be driven more by monetary concerns, such as pharmaceutical companies.
Having power issues doesn't mean you have to plan your behavior. If someone gets cut off on the road and responds with road rage, it's an unplanned power issue because they feel a lack of control. If someone gets drunk and their confused, disoriented behavior is toward rape, they have power issues that come out when they're confused and disoriented. Power issues do not mean Machiavellian tendencies or even awareness of having power issues. In fact, I would argue that the fear of lack of control is something most people shove to the back of their minds as a defense mechanism. That's probably why abuse and rape happens so frequently and easily - people aren't addressing their own issues, so they don't know they're there to be dealt with.
I don't see these specific points being made, although the Nazi Star of David requirement for Jews has been mentioned. If someone else has said them, my apologies.
Genetic heritage. My mother still has the leather satchel containing all the family documents my family compiled to prove to the Nazis' satisfaction there was no Jewish blood in the family. Naturally the officials in question were concerned about forgery. Think how much easier things might have been for the Nazis if only they could have used genetic markers to determine who stayed and who went! A bit ironic a Jewish American is suggesting this plan. When we were locking up Japanese Americans in WWII, and more recently registering & detaining Arab and Muslims, don't you think the gov. would have valued a genetic database?
Crime and punishment. Bruce Schneier has pointed out that one of the balancing acts played out between government and citizen is balancing the level of punishment with not just the severity of the crime, but the ease of solving it. He was speaking in reference to automated, camera-recorded traffic tickets, but a national genetic database is also part of this discussion. It's not possible the gov. would not put such a database to further use; the implications need to be considered beforehand.
Misuse in the business world. The potential for misuse by the business world is pretty awful. If there's a database of workers, then the hiring process gives access to the information. Businesses could use genetics to weed out employees who ran a higher risk of illness, or were an ethnic background the employer found undesirable. And since the medical, insurance, and pharmaceutical companies all hire, they would be able to use the information for their own purposes: for example, deciding which disease/genetic "disorder" to target by its frequency in the database. I say "disorder" because there are many current disorders which were nothing of the kind twenty years ago, but are being classified now as such because it sells drugs and treatment. How much easier to associate this with a genetic marker and use the database to pick markers that are widespread?
They also reclassify at will, which means you could publish a leaked, declassified piece of information one week and be guilty of publishing classified information the next.
We are indeed guilty till proven innocent. I worked as a 911 calltaker back in the early '90s, and part of our training was to ride with police to learn the town. I was appalled by the attitude of the police. They picked different car models for ticketing each night, and followed them around until they found something they could ticket. The attitude (which one policeman stated openly to me) was that "everyone is a criminal, you just have to catch them at it."
Also reminiscent of the fairly bizarre conspiracy theory about solutions of powdered gold (called "white powder gold" or "M-state gold") being used in ancient times to prolong life, enhance spirituality and intelligence, and cure poisons. These conspiracy theorists believe this was the actual philosopher's stone, and that gold prices and the control of gold are somehow tied into this.
Well, Steve Jobs obviously thought something like that... otherwise he wouldn't have copped the "Apple" name.
The Apple name comes from Newton's apple; you know, the one that dropped on his head in the legend, thus turning his attention to gravity? The very first logo was a picture of Newton under an apple tree. That's why Apple had a Newton product for a while, too....
It's not that the government shouldn't listen to us. It's that we should control what they know about our opinions. The problem is privacy. The information is not anonymous, which means that it can be used to profile you. We have anonymous voting for a reason; those in power are prone to abuse it, and if you end up on the wrong side you are vulnerable. Those who would vote against someone in power might be less prone to do so if their vote were not anonymous.
The same applies to opinions and so forth. What if a CD such as this asked questions like, "Have you or someone in your family had an abortion?" or, "Have you ever used illegal drugs?" If this information is then attached to your name and address, you've revealed something about yourself you might not want to share publicly, and must trust the government (!) to use that information wisely. Should you in the future want to speak out against them, they already have a hold over you and can smear you if they choose.
The possibilities for abuse of information like this are far too many for it to be acceptable. People should have complete control over which opinions they share publicly and which they share anonymously, through surveys and voting, without being tricked into sharing more than they intended.
Baigent, et. al., put the information together with a specific interpretation, but they're far from the first to do so. They simply did it in a popular form. It should not be possible to copyright an interpretation of history.
This is separate from Dan Brown possibly having a moral obligation to the HBHG authors. Though he does give them credit in the book itself (and no matter how silly HBHG might be, it's still a better book than the simplistic DVC), an argument might be made he could give them more tangible support. Not a legal argument, and not necessarily a good one.
If I were Baigent&Co, I would bask in my already-bestseller past and the increased publicity for a subject close to my heart. I bet HBHG sales went up significantly after DVC came out. And I would be embarrassed to ask Brown for part of his profits, coming from such a bastardization of the concept in the first place.
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Nothing in this thread so far - my earlier jest included - is so spiteful and cruel that even Steven himself couldn't get a chuckle from it.
Maybe the problem is that some people in this world take themselves and their conditions too damn seriously.
You're probably right about his attitude re: his condition, but not his attitude re: his work. When I heard about this job the first thing I remembered was Hawking's first wife, whose comment was she didn't object to working for someone trying to understand God, but she did mind working for God....
On the other hand, she was in the middle of a divorce, so please apply large quantities of NaCl.
That makes eminent sense.
Isn't that what the NYTimes did when they didn't allow ready access to a story in the UK, trying to support a UK law?
It's a lot to ask of any site, though, and I don't believe it was the wisest decision on the part of the NYT.
My experience is similar to yours. I have no trouble working with men, it's my fellow females that are the problem.
Part of this depends on corporate culture as well. For example, at my latest job there seems to be a pretty good balance of everyone, male and female, putting in the work and getting respected for it. The females can even be feminine and still be regarded as useful in technical matters (!). There's a general sense of job security, even for contractors, that I think contributes to this.
But at the last major corporation I worked for, the culture was very competitive, and many of my female coworkers actively used stereotypically feminine skills to stab each other in the back. I don't mean flirting or being provocative. I mean skills such as being "caring" and "interested" by mentioning in a meeting that someone's personal life is going down the toilet, and immediately diminishing the rest of the team's confidence in them. The men were not blind to this behavior, and didn't befriend the women who did this, with the result that most of the women were isolated from each other and from the men. And at this company, layoffs were a part of life and happened every few months, which probably had a lot to do with this behavior.
Pascal was my first language, back in '83, and while it didn't seem to hurt, when I encountered BASIC I thought that should've been my introduction.
It's not just the legal requirements implied. It seems to me that if the NYT behavior becomes accepted precedent, then websites seeking to be accessible internationally may eventually have to require these targeting capabilities, and I would best most don't. Will those without it be censored automatically by some/all foreign countries? (By foreign I mean all countries other than the website's originating country). Surely there are too many websites incapable of this to go through them on a case-by-case basis.
Since I started tracking it in Jan. 2004, my personal, tiny, virtually unknown site has nonetheless had visitors from 46 countries. I've corresponded with people from 13 of those. It's a personal site, and it's not something I want to have to adjust to meet international law because a larger site decided to do so.
A good analogy: If I make a UK-banned book in France, I cannot sell it in my bookshop in the UK.
To me, it's more like a person visiting France buying the book and bringing it into the UK. Accessing the server & page is visiting & "buying"/downloading the content. Should the French bookseller/NYT be responsible for determining the origin of the buyer and whether they are meeting their country's legal requirements?
What do we expect other countries to do to meet U.S. legal requirements? Anything? Nothing? I thought governments concerned with that sort of thing limited access on their own, and governments that didn't limit access, by implication, didn't need us to do it for them. But perhaps I'm ignorant of some crucial piece of information.
I understand the good intent of the NYT, but you know what they say paves the road to hell...
then it's not exactly a clerical 'mistake,' is it? ;-)
Forgive me, I can't help myself. I have APD - Awful Punning Disorder.
I love it. What's good about this approach is that it provides a new "vocabulary" so to speak. In biology, systematics looks at different ways to arrange data: species via appearance, via clades, via ecological niche. In web design you increase access by presenting different ways of arranging data for users thinking in different ways (specific products vs. solutions, for example). In psychology approaching a disorder from different organizing systems (biophysiological, cognitive, behaviorist, existential) can give new insights. You've done the same thing to astronomy. The taxologist in me is deeply impressed.
/.ers (and I'm sure there are scientists, too) wondering how to apply the new rules to bodies orbiting other stars. You've provided a framework that works outside our system. All those scientists thinking in terms of orbits, etc., were like web designers who think architecture needs to match user layout; that is, not really thinking.
The reason the biologists, webweavers, and others play with different taxonomies is that how you organize your data determines the direction of your research and thought. For instance, there were
Yes, it seems that eight steps forward and one step back is actually pretty good given their history.
Ok, you made me laugh :-D
But seriously, apart from the privacy issue for individuals, what about the issue of the information being misused in order to tailor/edit information for the masses in general? By doing that, the information we use in making decisions becomes even less reliable than it already is. We're already being given ads for medications, etc., that mislead and are dangerous. The more those companies learn about our concerns and fears and hopes, the more they will use that information to abuse our trust, and the less likely we will be able to tell the difference. You're only as good as the data you base your decisions upon.
Sorry you feel that way. Can you tell me why is there a debate going on over the release of the information in that case?
Today the "little guy's" only defense against being taken advantage of by major corporations and the government is information and the ability to think for himself. A major problem, though, is that even those few trying to think for themselves are at the mercy of the information they are given. That's the information on which they base their decisions. The more corporations and governments know about what we are interested in and find important, the more they can tailor the information we receive to influence in their direction.
Classic marketing and academic research isn't the issue here. The issue is our ability to choose. This is the same reason the Net Neutrality issue matters, because it can directly affect our ability to find good (useful, true) information. Even if these issues weren't considered when the data was released (and I'm sure they were), such sharing of personal data amounts to criminal negligence when caring for other people's quality of life, and yes, lives. Because among the people using this information are people who directly affect our ability to live and yet seem to be driven more by monetary concerns, such as pharmaceutical companies.
Actually, it looked a lot like a parody to me.
parody, n. A literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule.
Having power issues doesn't mean you have to plan your behavior. If someone gets cut off on the road and responds with road rage, it's an unplanned power issue because they feel a lack of control. If someone gets drunk and their confused, disoriented behavior is toward rape, they have power issues that come out when they're confused and disoriented. Power issues do not mean Machiavellian tendencies or even awareness of having power issues. In fact, I would argue that the fear of lack of control is something most people shove to the back of their minds as a defense mechanism. That's probably why abuse and rape happens so frequently and easily - people aren't addressing their own issues, so they don't know they're there to be dealt with.
Apparently schizophrenics also find nicotine useful; it reduces the "bad" quality of some symptoms.
I don't see these specific points being made, although the Nazi Star of David requirement for Jews has been mentioned. If someone else has said them, my apologies.
Genetic heritage. My mother still has the leather satchel containing all the family documents my family compiled to prove to the Nazis' satisfaction there was no Jewish blood in the family. Naturally the officials in question were concerned about forgery. Think how much easier things might have been for the Nazis if only they could have used genetic markers to determine who stayed and who went! A bit ironic a Jewish American is suggesting this plan. When we were locking up Japanese Americans in WWII, and more recently registering & detaining Arab and Muslims, don't you think the gov. would have valued a genetic database?
Crime and punishment. Bruce Schneier has pointed out that one of the balancing acts played out between government and citizen is balancing the level of punishment with not just the severity of the crime, but the ease of solving it. He was speaking in reference to automated, camera-recorded traffic tickets, but a national genetic database is also part of this discussion. It's not possible the gov. would not put such a database to further use; the implications need to be considered beforehand.
Misuse in the business world. The potential for misuse by the business world is pretty awful. If there's a database of workers, then the hiring process gives access to the information. Businesses could use genetics to weed out employees who ran a higher risk of illness, or were an ethnic background the employer found undesirable. And since the medical, insurance, and pharmaceutical companies all hire, they would be able to use the information for their own purposes: for example, deciding which disease/genetic "disorder" to target by its frequency in the database. I say "disorder" because there are many current disorders which were nothing of the kind twenty years ago, but are being classified now as such because it sells drugs and treatment. How much easier to associate this with a genetic marker and use the database to pick markers that are widespread?
They also reclassify at will, which means you could publish a leaked, declassified piece of information one week and be guilty of publishing classified information the next.
We are indeed guilty till proven innocent. I worked as a 911 calltaker back in the early '90s, and part of our training was to ride with police to learn the town. I was appalled by the attitude of the police. They picked different car models for ticketing each night, and followed them around until they found something they could ticket. The attitude (which one policeman stated openly to me) was that "everyone is a criminal, you just have to catch them at it."
An oldie but goodie: Installing Linux on a dead badger can create its own particular brand of difficulties.
Also reminiscent of the fairly bizarre conspiracy theory about solutions of powdered gold (called "white powder gold" or "M-state gold") being used in ancient times to prolong life, enhance spirituality and intelligence, and cure poisons. These conspiracy theorists believe this was the actual philosopher's stone, and that gold prices and the control of gold are somehow tied into this.
The Apple name comes from Newton's apple; you know, the one that dropped on his head in the legend, thus turning his attention to gravity? The very first logo was a picture of Newton under an apple tree. That's why Apple had a Newton product for a while, too....
Nothing at all to do with a record company label.
There's another good quote, from Mengele. "The more we do to you, the less you believe we are doing it."
It's not that the government shouldn't listen to us. It's that we should control what they know about our opinions. The problem is privacy. The information is not anonymous, which means that it can be used to profile you. We have anonymous voting for a reason; those in power are prone to abuse it, and if you end up on the wrong side you are vulnerable. Those who would vote against someone in power might be less prone to do so if their vote were not anonymous.
The same applies to opinions and so forth. What if a CD such as this asked questions like, "Have you or someone in your family had an abortion?" or, "Have you ever used illegal drugs?" If this information is then attached to your name and address, you've revealed something about yourself you might not want to share publicly, and must trust the government (!) to use that information wisely. Should you in the future want to speak out against them, they already have a hold over you and can smear you if they choose.
The possibilities for abuse of information like this are far too many for it to be acceptable. People should have complete control over which opinions they share publicly and which they share anonymously, through surveys and voting, without being tricked into sharing more than they intended.
Baigent, et. al., put the information together with a specific interpretation, but they're far from the first to do so. They simply did it in a popular form. It should not be possible to copyright an interpretation of history.
This is separate from Dan Brown possibly having a moral obligation to the HBHG authors. Though he does give them credit in the book itself (and no matter how silly HBHG might be, it's still a better book than the simplistic DVC), an argument might be made he could give them more tangible support. Not a legal argument, and not necessarily a good one.
If I were Baigent&Co, I would bask in my already-bestseller past and the increased publicity for a subject close to my heart. I bet HBHG sales went up significantly after DVC came out. And I would be embarrassed to ask Brown for part of his profits, coming from such a bastardization of the concept in the first place.