Agreed, but your points hight the fact that this is a question of degree. Medical services, financial services and other such professions are what they are because they require large amounts of skill and care to be exercised, and also for the practitioner to exercise a fiduciary duty in many cases, i.e., a duty where they put their clients' interests before their own.
The issues to be assessed are a) how much skill is required to be exercised in delivering these services, b) how much harm can be done to clients through professional dereliction of duty and c) what opportunity there is for fraud, theft and general abuse of clients' trust.
In medicine, this is high given the disparity between the lay person and the service provider. In financial services again, there is a huge disparity in skill and knowledge requiring absolute trust from the client.
Given the above, it sounds like all services require trust from the client, however some are less so. E.g., changing a tyre on a car doesn't really have the same disparity between a doctor performing an appendectomy and his/her patient.
Given that requiring licenses in an industry places a huge burden on the market by limiting the ease of entry and exit, cost of entry and the speed with which the overall market flows, decisions need to be made on *which* industries to regulate with licenses. At one end you have medical which clearly requires a clear, well regulated standard of skill and integrity which (I think) should be overseen by a state body to prevent backyard operators from doing half price heart transplants using steak knife scalpels and Johnny Walker brand cleaning alcohol. At the other end, requiring a license for everything up to paper rounds services would turn every 13 year old to crime as the only alternative to jumping through a whole bunch of hoops before they can get change for comics.
Personally, I think the argument the clients should take would be that the skill required to repair a PC and the trust placed upon them is not at a level that needs to be regulated by the state. Market forces (poor repair men will ge tno business) will take care of the regulation of the standards that they adhere to, and as mentioned, regulation by license will do nothing but vastly reduce the availability of basic PC repair services and increase the price of such service without increasing the quality of the industry at all.
Perhaps. I wonder if all the tactics used by the **AA can be used here by the brands against eBay. I.e., the "maxing available" argument and "facilitating crime".
Big company A, meet Big companies B, C and D.
Oh I like it when the big guys slug it out, wasting vast resources in the process. It's like watching two bullies beat each other up while everyone else laughs at them like the knuckledragging fools that they are.
That's in fact what this is doing. The silicone balls are intended to be calibrated according to a fixed value of Avogadro's number, rather than the Avogadgro number being defined according to the standard. Given this, it would be possible for a researcher anywhere in the world to recreate their own standard.
However, given that milling carbon into a monocrystalline structure is expensive (think 1kg diamond), they are using silicon instead. Thus, the KG would be defined in terms of the number of silicon atoms. They have yet to decide (as far as I know) whether to use naturally occurring silicon, or to remove all the isotopes and only use 28Si. This would, effectively, create a new number, redefining Avogadro's number as:
Avogadros number = New Constant * (mass(12C) / mass(28Si))
A definition that fixes the number of atoms of a substance as defining the KG *does*, as it means that we are then able to further refine our *measurement* of the KG as techniques for doing so improve. It means that we will have fixed the kilogram at a discrete definition with relation to a natural phenomenon, and no longer will changes in the mass of an artifact alter that definition any more than changes in temperature which cause a given sample of water to expand or contract change the definition of a liter.
It's not totally worthless, as the kilogram is the basis for just about all other SI units. It is the only unit that is not defined according to other units, or in relation to a natural property. Thus, its definition is arbitrary, and everybody must agree as to what a kilogram is before the unit has any value as a standard. There's a very nice explanation of the kilogram as a fundamental unit here:
Because the French government funded them to keep the standards held relevant, lest people realize just how redundant they are in the face of modern platonic definitions of these units.
It is antitrust if I cannot set up a business upgrading Apple hardware and charging a lower fee than they charge without them punishing my customers by voiding the warranty or pursuing me for advertising "Apple Upgrade Services"
Does that mean my interpretive film, Star Whores, following the adventures of Luke Skyporker, Princess Layer and Obi Wad Kinobi against Darth Boner is a copyright violation? Damn, as if it didn't already have enough violation in it.
"In order to exist, any nation must advance policies which are advantageous to itself. It is irrational and unrealistic to expect otherwise."
Well, if that's the view, how on Earth can you get all bent out of shape when, say, Iran thinks that it is in their own interest to have a nuclear weapons program? Remember, if we're all going to just do "whats in our own interests", then geopolitics will (sorry, already has) degenerate into a gigantic chess game played by a few powerful men, with the 6 billion other people in the world being pawns.
Sorry, I don't buy it. It maybe the way things *are*, but it sure as hell isn't the way things *ought* to be. We, the people of the world, should not empower the few to play games with our lives, liberties and labor.
Not quite as true with an Arabic text as that may be with English. You see, Arabic, unlike English, bases its words on context and semantics, making it difficult for a word or phrase to be ambiguous to the extent that it is possible in English. The best analogy I can think of would be comparing strongly typed and weakly typed programming languages. There's less room for ambiguity, which means a speaker needs to exercise more discipline when speaking and use a more verbose syntax. This is (I've heard, I am not an Aramaic linguist by a long shot) not true of the "modern" Arabic dialects as spoken in places like Egypt and Lebanon, as these have evolved to allow greater syntactic flexibility (read: poor grammar).
On a side note, I would like to learn classical Arabic, as syntactic flexibility is, in my books, an excuse to mix up things like "there" and "their" as well as disregard proper rules of grammar. Anyone familiar with online forums should know exactly what I'm talking about.
I'm not in a position to approve or disapprove of anything, as the guys who translate it know far more about it than I. I don't even speak Arabic. That being said, the most widely respected translations into English that I know of are those by Yusuf Ali and Pickthall. Google can turn up their full texts quite easily.
FYI: The Koran is the most widely memorized book ever. There is only one version, the original of which is in Arabic and has been translated to many languages. To my knowledge, there is no reputable printing of it in any language without the original Arabic side by side with the translated text. Such is the concern with keeping the message accurate and unchanged. The original Arabic is actually poetry with a highly coherent syntax, which makes obvious any attempt to modify it. Furthermore, given the massive number of people who know the book by heart, any altered version of it would immediately be noticed and pointed out.
Belief in the Koran as it is, is a core tenet of Islamic belief, and changing it or any of the other 4 core tenets (or "pillars") results in a different religion entirely. Just because a sect calls themselves "Muslims" doesn't make it so any more than Scientology calling itself a "Church" makes them a valid member of the family of Christendom. It is an illegitimate and unwelcome adoption of the word, and those who decide to change the Koran or use it for their own purposes really should stop calling themselves Muslims and come up with some new name for their religion. The guys at www.submission.org is one such group. They really aren't as friendly as you may think.
It's obvious to me now that you a) have a chip on your shoulder with regards to Muslims (irony in its purest form) and b) know very few or perhaps even none. There are no other explanations for how you can both be so far from reality and so adamant in your view.
"Your limited personal experiences are a drop in the ocean..." It's a far bigger drop than the one most westerners base their views on. I don't see how people can quite happily believe that Fox News lies about the dangers from music piracy and hackers, yet completely swallow without question the FUD regarding Islam in the face of absolutely zero evidence that can be observed in real life.
"But many others don't (such as Muslim immigrants in Europe)." Your point? There are plenty of Westerners living in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, former USSR states, South America etc who get all uppity and angry about problems they see with the place they are living compared to what they're used to back home.
"Oh, right. Well, I guess we'd better just ignore all those millions of people who hate the West, since you're here to assure us that everything is okay." Actually, I think my point was that those millions don't hate "The West", they hate western governments propping up local tinpot dictators like the Saudis.
"Concessions and friendly gestures do not work, they are simply a sign of weakness and submission. Great. Law of the jungle, might is right. Lets all stand up and beat our chests like a bunch of primordial apes, lest the Other Side think we're weak.
You're right. I, too, have a propaganda machine, as well as encryption and other scary things. I.e., I have a blog up at www.mrnaz.com and I use SSH from time to time.
Scary.
The article is suggesting that the US is getting their asses kicked not because that's actually what's happening, but becuase telling US citizens that that is what is happening will cause them to clamor for more tax dollars to be spent making rich defense industry shareholders even richer.
Re: Not trying anything heavy handed? Are you freaking nuts? The most expensive military campaign in HISTORY is not heavy handed?
As for proposing rights infringement, are you really that naive that it has to happen *in the same article*? So If you see one article scaring you about "terrorists using encryption" and then another about how police need to have more and more power to probe your private life, you're unable to put 2 and 2 together?
You know, it may not be FUD. Imagine if Al-Qaeda and Anonymous joined forces! Then we'd be truly fucked. Their tagline would be: "Taking down the West for Epic Lulz"
After having lived in Saudi Arabia for a year (admittedly 14 years ago, but I doubt the view has changed hugely since then) I can tell you that the primary gripe the population have there is the U.S. propping up an unpopular monarchy that is mismanaging and/or stealing the country's wealth. The U.S. could make friends of the Saudi people by simply telling the Saudi government that they're on their own. Then the Saudi royal family would need to either make the people happy, or prepare to be overthrown as soon as the last shipment of U.S. supplied weapons started rusting.
I don't know *anyone* (with the possible exception of that crazy lunatic in charge of Iran, who is about as representative of Iranians as the Saudi royals are of the Saudi people) who thinks the West is some evil regime that needs to be toppled. Heck, I live in a Western country quite happily. I've traveled extensively to Middle eastern countries and (remember I'm Muslim, with Muslim friends and relative and we all travel to Muslim countries, so I'm not pulling this out my backside) it's utter BS that Muslims have some kind of chip on their shoulder with regards to the West. The problem is Western interference in Muslim countries' politics, and that primarily is the propping up of the Saudi government. I think I can speak for the majority of Muslims when I say that Muslims don't like the Saudi government. They call themselves "custodians of Islam", yet they are a corrupt, self-serving bunch of monarchical fascists.
Oh, and we don't need the U.S. to come in and "liberate" the place. Just butting out will do the trick. They'll save the hundreds of millions spent on military support and they'll make friends of the majority of the Arabian peninsula to boot. Bargain!
So asking for proof before buying into a scare campaign into which our tax dollars are being spent at an unprecedented rate is being dismissive? You, sir, represent the political apathy among the masses that allows government to get away with what it does.
Because all petrol stations get their petrol from about 3 or 4 different sources in Australia, all of which come through the exact same supply channels, all controlled by Big Oil. The price fixing happens at a far higher level than at the petrol station. Some smaller petrol stations that try to buck the trend (buying petrol on cheap days and selling it lower priced on high days) find themselves quickly unable to buy petrol from Big Oil.
The alarming thing is not that Fox News readers do not reflect upon the standard of intelligence at Fox News Studios, rather, it reflects upon the intelligence of the American Public in general. After all, this is a free market, and Fox News is only delivering the quality that people are demanding in that free market.
That's due to the massive difference in temperature. The colder a gas is, the denser it is. It's no good being able to hold an atmoshpere at >1 atm if that's only the case with temperatures slightly above liquid nitrogen.
"For all we know..."...first world countries will have reigned in their wanton wastefulness, everyone in the third world will not have want for food, shelter and medical care, media companies will decide that honest content delivery is more important than political statements and profit so will stop the practice of campaign contributions as well as ditch DRM, net neutrality will be enshrined in law and it will be discovered that Santa Claus does, in fact, exist.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, but your points hight the fact that this is a question of degree. Medical services, financial services and other such professions are what they are because they require large amounts of skill and care to be exercised, and also for the practitioner to exercise a fiduciary duty in many cases, i.e., a duty where they put their clients' interests before their own.
The issues to be assessed are a) how much skill is required to be exercised in delivering these services, b) how much harm can be done to clients through professional dereliction of duty and c) what opportunity there is for fraud, theft and general abuse of clients' trust.
In medicine, this is high given the disparity between the lay person and the service provider. In financial services again, there is a huge disparity in skill and knowledge requiring absolute trust from the client.
Given the above, it sounds like all services require trust from the client, however some are less so. E.g., changing a tyre on a car doesn't really have the same disparity between a doctor performing an appendectomy and his/her patient.
Given that requiring licenses in an industry places a huge burden on the market by limiting the ease of entry and exit, cost of entry and the speed with which the overall market flows, decisions need to be made on *which* industries to regulate with licenses. At one end you have medical which clearly requires a clear, well regulated standard of skill and integrity which (I think) should be overseen by a state body to prevent backyard operators from doing half price heart transplants using steak knife scalpels and Johnny Walker brand cleaning alcohol. At the other end, requiring a license for everything up to paper rounds services would turn every 13 year old to crime as the only alternative to jumping through a whole bunch of hoops before they can get change for comics.
Personally, I think the argument the clients should take would be that the skill required to repair a PC and the trust placed upon them is not at a level that needs to be regulated by the state. Market forces (poor repair men will ge tno business) will take care of the regulation of the standards that they adhere to, and as mentioned, regulation by license will do nothing but vastly reduce the availability of basic PC repair services and increase the price of such service without increasing the quality of the industry at all.
Perhaps. I wonder if all the tactics used by the **AA can be used here by the brands against eBay. I.e., the "maxing available" argument and "facilitating crime".
Big company A, meet Big companies B, C and D.
Oh I like it when the big guys slug it out, wasting vast resources in the process. It's like watching two bullies beat each other up while everyone else laughs at them like the knuckledragging fools that they are.
That's in fact what this is doing. The silicone balls are intended to be calibrated according to a fixed value of Avogadro's number, rather than the Avogadgro number being defined according to the standard. Given this, it would be possible for a researcher anywhere in the world to recreate their own standard.
However, given that milling carbon into a monocrystalline structure is expensive (think 1kg diamond), they are using silicon instead. Thus, the KG would be defined in terms of the number of silicon atoms. They have yet to decide (as far as I know) whether to use naturally occurring silicon, or to remove all the isotopes and only use 28Si. This would, effectively, create a new number, redefining Avogadro's number as:
Avogadros number = New Constant * (mass(12C) / mass(28Si))
A definition that fixes the number of atoms of a substance as defining the KG *does*, as it means that we are then able to further refine our *measurement* of the KG as techniques for doing so improve. It means that we will have fixed the kilogram at a discrete definition with relation to a natural phenomenon, and no longer will changes in the mass of an artifact alter that definition any more than changes in temperature which cause a given sample of water to expand or contract change the definition of a liter.
It's not totally worthless, as the kilogram is the basis for just about all other SI units. It is the only unit that is not defined according to other units, or in relation to a natural property. Thus, its definition is arbitrary, and everybody must agree as to what a kilogram is before the unit has any value as a standard. There's a very nice explanation of the kilogram as a fundamental unit here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram#Importance_of_the_kilogram
Because the French government funded them to keep the standards held relevant, lest people realize just how redundant they are in the face of modern platonic definitions of these units.
Yea, but I've seen more worst cases of grammatical error on Slashdot.
"By paying extra, we get to avoid the ignorant twit who thinks that computer brands are a religion."
Err... you're saying you avoid that by going *to* the Apple store?
It is antitrust if I cannot set up a business upgrading Apple hardware and charging a lower fee than they charge without them punishing my customers by voiding the warranty or pursuing me for advertising "Apple Upgrade Services"
Does that mean my interpretive film, Star Whores, following the adventures of Luke Skyporker, Princess Layer and Obi Wad Kinobi against Darth Boner is a copyright violation? Damn, as if it didn't already have enough violation in it.
Same as in any other video game: They lose points.
"In order to exist, any nation must advance policies which are advantageous to itself. It is irrational and unrealistic to expect otherwise."
Well, if that's the view, how on Earth can you get all bent out of shape when, say, Iran thinks that it is in their own interest to have a nuclear weapons program? Remember, if we're all going to just do "whats in our own interests", then geopolitics will (sorry, already has) degenerate into a gigantic chess game played by a few powerful men, with the 6 billion other people in the world being pawns.
Sorry, I don't buy it. It maybe the way things *are*, but it sure as hell isn't the way things *ought* to be. We, the people of the world, should not empower the few to play games with our lives, liberties and labor.
Not quite as true with an Arabic text as that may be with English. You see, Arabic, unlike English, bases its words on context and semantics, making it difficult for a word or phrase to be ambiguous to the extent that it is possible in English. The best analogy I can think of would be comparing strongly typed and weakly typed programming languages. There's less room for ambiguity, which means a speaker needs to exercise more discipline when speaking and use a more verbose syntax. This is (I've heard, I am not an Aramaic linguist by a long shot) not true of the "modern" Arabic dialects as spoken in places like Egypt and Lebanon, as these have evolved to allow greater syntactic flexibility (read: poor grammar).
On a side note, I would like to learn classical Arabic, as syntactic flexibility is, in my books, an excuse to mix up things like "there" and "their" as well as disregard proper rules of grammar. Anyone familiar with online forums should know exactly what I'm talking about.
I'm not in a position to approve or disapprove of anything, as the guys who translate it know far more about it than I. I don't even speak Arabic. That being said, the most widely respected translations into English that I know of are those by Yusuf Ali and Pickthall. Google can turn up their full texts quite easily.
http://www.islam101.com/quran/yusufAli/
http://www.ishwar.com/islam/holy_quran_(pickthall)/
I like to read with two translations open at once, just to clarify contextual use of words and things like that. Hope that helps!
FYI: The Koran is the most widely memorized book ever. There is only one version, the original of which is in Arabic and has been translated to many languages. To my knowledge, there is no reputable printing of it in any language without the original Arabic side by side with the translated text. Such is the concern with keeping the message accurate and unchanged. The original Arabic is actually poetry with a highly coherent syntax, which makes obvious any attempt to modify it. Furthermore, given the massive number of people who know the book by heart, any altered version of it would immediately be noticed and pointed out.
Belief in the Koran as it is, is a core tenet of Islamic belief, and changing it or any of the other 4 core tenets (or "pillars") results in a different religion entirely. Just because a sect calls themselves "Muslims" doesn't make it so any more than Scientology calling itself a "Church" makes them a valid member of the family of Christendom. It is an illegitimate and unwelcome adoption of the word, and those who decide to change the Koran or use it for their own purposes really should stop calling themselves Muslims and come up with some new name for their religion. The guys at www.submission.org is one such group. They really aren't as friendly as you may think.
It's obvious to me now that you a) have a chip on your shoulder with regards to Muslims (irony in its purest form) and b) know very few or perhaps even none. There are no other explanations for how you can both be so far from reality and so adamant in your view.
"Your limited personal experiences are a drop in the ocean..."
It's a far bigger drop than the one most westerners base their views on. I don't see how people can quite happily believe that Fox News lies about the dangers from music piracy and hackers, yet completely swallow without question the FUD regarding Islam in the face of absolutely zero evidence that can be observed in real life.
"But many others don't (such as Muslim immigrants in Europe)."
Your point? There are plenty of Westerners living in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, former USSR states, South America etc who get all uppity and angry about problems they see with the place they are living compared to what they're used to back home.
"Oh, right. Well, I guess we'd better just ignore all those millions of people who hate the West, since you're here to assure us that everything is okay."
Actually, I think my point was that those millions don't hate "The West", they hate western governments propping up local tinpot dictators like the Saudis.
"Concessions and friendly gestures do not work, they are simply a sign of weakness and submission.
Great. Law of the jungle, might is right. Lets all stand up and beat our chests like a bunch of primordial apes, lest the Other Side think we're weak.
You're right. I, too, have a propaganda machine, as well as encryption and other scary things. I.e., I have a blog up at www.mrnaz.com and I use SSH from time to time.
Scary.
The article is suggesting that the US is getting their asses kicked not because that's actually what's happening, but becuase telling US citizens that that is what is happening will cause them to clamor for more tax dollars to be spent making rich defense industry shareholders even richer.
Re: Not trying anything heavy handed? Are you freaking nuts? The most expensive military campaign in HISTORY is not heavy handed?
As for proposing rights infringement, are you really that naive that it has to happen *in the same article*? So If you see one article scaring you about "terrorists using encryption" and then another about how police need to have more and more power to probe your private life, you're unable to put 2 and 2 together?
I have no words.
You know, it may not be FUD. Imagine if Al-Qaeda and Anonymous joined forces! Then we'd be truly fucked. Their tagline would be: "Taking down the West for Epic Lulz"
As a Muslim, I'm calling you on that one.
After having lived in Saudi Arabia for a year (admittedly 14 years ago, but I doubt the view has changed hugely since then) I can tell you that the primary gripe the population have there is the U.S. propping up an unpopular monarchy that is mismanaging and/or stealing the country's wealth. The U.S. could make friends of the Saudi people by simply telling the Saudi government that they're on their own. Then the Saudi royal family would need to either make the people happy, or prepare to be overthrown as soon as the last shipment of U.S. supplied weapons started rusting.
I don't know *anyone* (with the possible exception of that crazy lunatic in charge of Iran, who is about as representative of Iranians as the Saudi royals are of the Saudi people) who thinks the West is some evil regime that needs to be toppled. Heck, I live in a Western country quite happily. I've traveled extensively to Middle eastern countries and (remember I'm Muslim, with Muslim friends and relative and we all travel to Muslim countries, so I'm not pulling this out my backside) it's utter BS that Muslims have some kind of chip on their shoulder with regards to the West. The problem is Western interference in Muslim countries' politics, and that primarily is the propping up of the Saudi government. I think I can speak for the majority of Muslims when I say that Muslims don't like the Saudi government. They call themselves "custodians of Islam", yet they are a corrupt, self-serving bunch of monarchical fascists.
Oh, and we don't need the U.S. to come in and "liberate" the place. Just butting out will do the trick. They'll save the hundreds of millions spent on military support and they'll make friends of the majority of the Arabian peninsula to boot. Bargain!
So asking for proof before buying into a scare campaign into which our tax dollars are being spent at an unprecedented rate is being dismissive? You, sir, represent the political apathy among the masses that allows government to get away with what it does.
Because all petrol stations get their petrol from about 3 or 4 different sources in Australia, all of which come through the exact same supply channels, all controlled by Big Oil. The price fixing happens at a far higher level than at the petrol station. Some smaller petrol stations that try to buck the trend (buying petrol on cheap days and selling it lower priced on high days) find themselves quickly unable to buy petrol from Big Oil.
The alarming thing is not that Fox News readers do not reflect upon the standard of intelligence at Fox News Studios, rather, it reflects upon the intelligence of the American Public in general. After all, this is a free market, and Fox News is only delivering the quality that people are demanding in that free market.
*That* is what frightens me.
That's due to the massive difference in temperature. The colder a gas is, the denser it is. It's no good being able to hold an atmoshpere at >1 atm if that's only the case with temperatures slightly above liquid nitrogen.
"For all we know..." ...first world countries will have reigned in their wanton wastefulness, everyone in the third world will not have want for food, shelter and medical care, media companies will decide that honest content delivery is more important than political statements and profit so will stop the practice of campaign contributions as well as ditch DRM, net neutrality will be enshrined in law and it will be discovered that Santa Claus does, in fact, exist.