Uh, no. No one has the right to a car, cell phone, job, cable tv, or even a pair of shoes. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? That covers a lot of things. You have the right to travel, but it just might not get you where you want to go as fast (try two legs).
But according to the ruling, you don't have the right to travel using any particular means. That means you don't specifically have the right to travel via your two legs, either.
That alone makes the ruling nonsensical. If you don't have the right to travel using any particular means, then by extension you don't have the right to travel at all. Oh, you might by some nebulous theory, but that means nothing unless you also have said right via particular means.
If the court had ruled that the airlines, being private entites in their own right, had the right to impose these restrictions of their own accord, that would be one thing. Then it would have to be shown that the airlines were truly acting out of their own accord. But that's not the case here: the government is the entity that is forcing the airlines to do this.
In a competitive market, morality is defined by law. Companies will (and are supposed to) do whatever it takes to succeed.
They will, yes. But are supposed to?
Says who?
Corporations are fictitious entities that are given certain privileges by the society they exist within in exchange for the economic benefits of being able to take risks that individuals generally can't. Those privileges should be revoked the instant those benefits are exceeded by the cost.
Supporting an oppressive regime such as China is not much different than giving aid and comfort to the enemy, because while we certainly aren't at war with China and hopefully never will be, supporting them in the way Microsoft is doing cannot possibly result in anything but harm to our own freedom and democracy in the long run, and that is something that we would never tolerate in individuals. What's the difference between Microsoft doing this and individuals going over there to help them with, say, their military capability? If we're willing to sell them technology to aid them in supressing their own people, what's the harm in selling them military technology to do the same? These tools we're selling them can easily be turned against us.
You people who support the "right" of corporations to do anything they want conveniently forget that corporations exist to serve us, the People, and exist only because we, the People, allowed them to come into existence. It is only because we have lost our way that they now have the power to control the very government that is supposed to be of, by, and for the People.
I'm more interested, though, in the fundamental question of when we (and we can define "we," here as either "the US" or "the UN," at your discretion) get to impose our ethical system on other countries and when we don't. That is, is it right at all for us to demand that other nations change their natures to fit with our concept of the "proper" way to do things?
(And before anyone says anything, I recognize the strict difference between our forcing anyone to do anything, and our not letting corporations support them doing whatever it is. However, particularly in the modern world, they amount to much the same thing)
No, they don't amount to the same thing, and that's really the point.
If corporations want to be treated as people in the eyes of the law then they should be treated as people in all possible respects.
And that means that a corporation supporting a repressive regime is the same thing as an individual supporting a repressive regime.
If we insist that it is wrong for us as individuals to support repressive regimes, then it is clearly wrong for us as corporations to do so as well. If we care at all about our own liberties then we must at the very least lend as little support to those who would remove those liberties from us as possible. If that means not doing business with said repressive regimes then so be it.
The problem is that those who run corporations want it all ways: they want their corporations to have the benefits of "personhood" but not the drawbacks. They want power but not responsibility.
Back to your original question, there is a difference between how/if you trade with someone else and imposing your will upon them, at least when it comes to dealing in goods that the other entity can either do without or can produce themselves. That difference has to do with free will: such a trade relationship is a voluntary one on both sides. Neither is compelled by circumstance or necessity to participate. Forcing one's will upon another is not voluntary on both sides, by definition. Therein lies the crucial difference. And in the case of the corporation under discussion, that difference is completely relevant.
One problem with dark matter is that there are a number of different dark matter theories, depending on what you hypothesize the dark matter particles to be. So it can be difficult to objectively say that "dark matter" predicts this or that, because it depends on which one you're talking about. However, it's not possible to describe every potential observation by cooking up the right kind of particle, so it's not totally ad hoc. It is, however, not as specific as we'd like it to be.
Hmm...that does complicate things a bit. I'd expect the only real way to narrow it down would be to perform experiments in supercolliders and such.
So do we need to perform experiments in supercolliders and such in order to see the effects of existing particles, or to produce them? If the latter, then one question that naturally arises is why we'd need to produce them when they're theorized to be in great abundance elsewhere in the universe.
That said, I do realize that "great abundance" could easily be a very tiny amount per volume of space, since the distances between galaxies are astoundingly vast.
Of course you can, because there are gravitational observations of many different phenomena (not to mention the electromagnetic imprint on the CMBR) which otherwise would have no reason to be related to each other. Dark matter as observed in galactic rotation curves has implications for large-scale structure formation in the early universe, the cosmic background radiation in the very early universe, it should be responsible for a certain number of gravitational microlensing events, etc. All of these phenomena are observed; without dark matter you have to postulate a patchwork of non-interworking theories to account for each one. Dark matter accounts for all of them in a consistent manner.
Then I stand corrected, and retract what I said previously.
Dark matter "feels" like a kludge to me, but if the theory makes multiple independent predictions that have yet to be confirmed then it's definitely science, and if those predictions wind up being confirmed then it's good science, too.
Dark matter is matter that does not radiate an observable amount of EM radiation. You are dark matter, by astronomical definitions
No, I'm not. I already mentioned that type of "dark matter": gas, dust, etc. But there's a crucial difference between that kind of "dark matter" and the type we're talking about. The type of "dark matter" we're talking about does not block light. It's unobservable in any conventional sense.
It might be that we can't detect dark matter particles in that way, either because our detectors aren't good enough or because the dark matter particles interact only gravitationally. (Such particles can theoretically exist; see, for instance, "sterile neutrinos".) But influences on gravity are precisely the reason why we believe dark matter exists in the first place.
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You say that we cannot detect dark matter, but we detect it precisely by means of its gravitational influences on other bodies. And we detect neutrinos by means of their weak nuclear influences on other particles. Just because we can't see it doesn't mean we don't have scientific evidence for it.
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Dark matter was introduced precisely because the dark matter theory can be detected and verified: by means of its gravitational effects.
You clearly don't get what I'm saying.
Dark matter is theorized in order to make our current gravitational theories fit the observed universe. You, and others, claim that the gravitational influence of dark matter is how it's detected. But don't you see? It's because the gravitational calculations based on observable matter don't work that you introduce dark matter into the equation to begin with. You can't add dark matter to the calculations to make them fit observation and then simultaneously turn around and say that the gravitational observations are what confirm dark matter's existence!
When observations don't fit the theory that is supposed to predict them, you toss the theory. The theory in this case is our current gravitational theory. It clearly works extremely well for our local region of spacetime but does not work for the universe as a whole. Whatever replaces it must have the current one as a special case.
You say that we cannot detect dark matter, but we detect it precisely by means of its gravitational influences on other bodies. And we detect neutrinos by means of their weak nuclear influences on other particles. Just because we can't see it doesn't mean we don't have scientific evidence for it.
There's a big difference between the two. Dark matter is theorized in order to make current gravitational theory fit the observations, and is being "confirmed" by that same gravitational theory. Neutrinos were proposed in order to explain the behaviour of electrons during beta decay. Neutrinos were confirmed not by the behaviour of said electrons, but by another independent and predicted interaction.
In short, the neutrino posulate made a set of predictions that were independent of the observations that suggested the existence of the neutrino in the first place.
That very clearly is not what's happening with dark matter: the "confirmation" comes from the very thing that prompted its postulation to begin with!
Finally, the dark matter theory does not, that I can tell, make any non-gravitational predictions of its own. Unlike the neutrino theory, it doesn't tell us what else we should observe that we haven't already. That alone is reason enough to discard it.
Sure, it's possible that this dark matter exists. But as a theory, it ain't science unless it makes testable predictions. Dark matter by its nature does not -- it's an attempt to force-fit current gravitational theory with current observations. That's why it's a kludge.
As a followup, I should note that dark matter and dark energy are especially kludgy, and are in my mind essentially unscientific.
Why?
Because by definition they are something that cannot be observed. Instead, they are used to adjust the universe so that it continues to fit our explanations of it. I suspect that independent confirmation of the existence of dark matter/energy is impossible.
That said, of course there are some forms of "dark matter" which can and do exist: things like gas and dust. There's plenty of that in our own galaxy and a lot that we've observed in others, as well. But that's not what we're talking about here.
Anyway, when you start introducing invisible and unverifiable junk into your model of the universe in order to make it fit your theories, you're not doing science any more. In science, when you get a bunch of observations that don't fit your theories, you throw out the theories and start over (or, rather, you keep your theories as a special case unti you come up with something more universal).
I don't know about you, but this whole dark matter/dark energy thing looks, sounds, and feels like a kludge to me.
It's almost as if the people who are proposing these explanations aren't willing to toss out the current explanations they have for things and essentially start from scratch. But when you start to kludge explanations together as they have with dark matter/energy, that's exactly what you should do: go back to the drawing board. Having to kludge something is a huge hint that you got something badly wrong somewhere way back towards the beginning.
Obviously whatever you come up with has to explain current observations to at least the degree that current conventional theories do, and current theories then have to become a "special case" of the more general theory, just as newtonian mechanics is a special case of relativity.
If the content providers choose to only distribute their copyrighted works when DRM is in the loop, that's their prerogative. It's our prerogative to ignore it and give our business to those who do not use DRM.
Nothing more needs to be said if one's view is that copyrighted works rightfully belong to the copyright holder forever.
But if you believe that copyright is a compromise between society and content producers, then the choice by copyright owners to employ DRM on their works has the additional negative consequence of giving them control over their works beyond the term of the copyright. And that's a problem.
As far as I'm concerned, copyright owners can do whatever they want with their works, as long as they don't violate the purpose of copyright. DRM allows them to violate that purpose, and that's why I'm vehemently against it.
Let's see...do people prefer to work a job that's boring and/or frustrating, or one that's fun? Do they prefer to sit there with a dumb look on their face or to laugh?
I dunno, that's a tough one...someone help me out here...
(That was sarcasm, in case someone out there didn't figure that out)
The problem here is, many people seem to assume that the logical conclusion, in the absence of scientific evidence to the contrary, is that God does not exist.
One must be careful to distinguish between belief in lack and lack of belief. Most atheists lack belief in a God. Some believe in lack thereof.
Only when one must make a decision where one must assume either existence of God or nonexistence thereof will someone who lacks belief fall back to a default. Generally that default will be nonexistence, since it is what comes of the application of Occam's Razor.
Anyway, the thing is, many of us disagree with your basic assumption. If you assume that, in the absence of scientific evidence to the contrary, that there is a God, then obviously anyone who believes otherwise - including atheists - is holding a religious belief, on faith, without proof. That's OK, but it means your unscientific religious belief that there is no God isn't any crazier than my unscientific religious belief that there is.
I cannot agree. The reason I cannot agree is that someone who holds a positive belief in God despite lack of evidence of said God is someone who is failing to apply Occam's Razor to the question of God's existence, whereas they would not fail to apply the Razor to any other similar belief. On the other hand, someone who believes in the nonexistence of God due to lack of evidence is applying Occam's Razor. Admittedly, belief in the nonexistence of God has nothing supporting it other than Occam's Razor, but belief in the existence of God has nothing supporting it whatsoever. Therein lies the crucial difference.
There is no difference at all between believing in the existence of God and believing that aliens routinely visit Earth and abduct people from time to time. Neither has any substantiating evidence worth anything. Yet those who have a scientific bent and who also simultaneously believe in God will scoff at those who believe that aliens are visiting us right now.
If you wish us to believe that belief in the existence of God has the same standing as belief in the nonexistence of God, then you must concede that the belief in the existence of God has the same standing as the belief that aliens are visiting Earth and occasionally abducting people. Or any unfounded but unprovable belief, for that matter.
No, sorry, but belief in the nonexistence of something based on lack of evidence is slightly more substantiated than belief in the existence of something despite lack of evidence. If you cannot see that, then why don't you believe that aliens are abducting people from under our noses?
Why is it scary to you that so many geeks might actually believe religion? An awful lot of brilliant math and science has been performed by people who firmly believed religion...does that terrify you, too?
I don't know that he's terrified so much as perplexed.
And I think I understand why.
To hold a religious belief requires that one have some sort of unchecked faith in something that cannot be observed or verified in any way.
Science requires no such thing. At most, it requires the "belief" that observations of the world are generally valid, and that the universe is generally consistent in our own local region of space (for some branches of science, e.g. astronomy, the latter assumption is tentatively extended to cover the observable universe).
Those assumptions are ones that pretty much everyone automatically makes every day, so the amount of "faith" they require is no greater than the amount of "faith" an ordinary person has when normally interacting with the world anyway.
Or to put it another way, science is just the formalization of the way people deal with the world around them anyway (you know: examine the world, come up with an idea of how something works, do something to test it, adjust the idea based on the results, etc.).
Back to the original question: the reason some of us might be perplexed about the fact that some geeks have religious beliefs is the fact that such a person has to intentionally not apply the scientific method to some of their own beliefs. It means that the person in question intentionally limits the scope of the methods he uses to evaluate ideas in order to preserve the ideas that he would probably otherwise discard for lack of evidence (since in science, one does not hold onto hypotheses which make no testable predictions and for which no observable evidence exists).
And the reason that's perplexing is that geeks in general expect themselves, and others, to apply rules consistently and in an unbiased manner. As you can see from the above, holding religious beliefs and applying the methods of science at the same time requires the person in question to break that consistency, to bias the application of the rules of logic and science.
Now, I personally don't have a problem with someone holding a religious belief, as long as they don't attempt to push that belief onto me. But I won't hesitate to point out that there's at least one area of their belief system to which they're not applying the tests they normally apply (and that they generally expect others to apply as well -- they're geeks, after all).
In fact, I'd LOVE it a criminal stole my car and was brought down only a few miles away because these cameras were able to quickly identify the position of it.
Yes, well, you might think that's what this will be used for, but I assure you it's not, because the police don't answer to you and, frankly, catching the criminal would simply be too much work even with this system in place. If you were an "important person" then it would be used for that, of course, but otherwise you can forget about it.
No, this will be used to track the movements of political enemies and to bring down those who represent any sort of threat to those in power.
Brin is far too optimistic here. Those with power are almost never willing to give it up or allow it to be reduced in any way. Quite the opposite in fact: they tend to want to increase their power.
Making records such as this publicly available will by default mean that the records about those in power will also be available. That will reduce their power over the public, which is something they will never allow. So either the records of those in power will be removed from what gets published to the public (thus negating Brin's entire point) or the set of records as a whole will be kept under wraps, accessible only to those in power. The latter is much simpler and, in general, grants greater power to those who have it, so that's what will happen.
And no, there's not a damned thing the "little people" can do about it. You can protest it all you want. It won't change a thing, because those in power know that they don't need to listen to the people anymore.
Face it: the entire world is rapidly decending into a totalitarian nightmare, and there won't be any way back out, because the overthrow of totalitarianism requires an outside influence. When the entire world is a police state, there is no outside influence.
publish the surfing habits and email of their executives over the past two years. If they have things like Porn, Payola, and Prostitutes showing up in public view, and they might lobby for Privacy.
No, they'll just pay off the right people to make sure that their data "accidentally" goes missing. Remember, they have far, far more money than you or I.
I thought you guys in the US had it bad, but it looks like the EU is the current record holder in totalitarian tendencies.
The U.S. and the E.U. are competing/cooperating with each other on this front. When one side gets darker, the other does something to up the ante. Back and forth it goes.
It's obvious where this must end: a totalitarian police state. And it's also obvious that most of the rest of the world is following in the footsteps of the US and EU, because the US and (to a lesser degree) the EU force their draconian laws upon the rest of the world under the moniker of "free trade". China's already an oppressive totalitarian police state.
When it's all over, some 50 years or so hence (at this rate, it won't even take that long), nobody will be free.
They may be "reevaluating" their methods, but you can bet what that really means is that they're investigating less visible means of achieving the same thing: as much control as possible over how you use the music you purchase.
Sony certainly isn't "repenting" over this. Not at all. They don't care, and haven't for a long time.
I expect to see more of the same shit from Sony. They'll claim they're "changing" but in reality nothing will change.
My point was that both of those people lost their jobs because of their failings. and one of them was prosecuted.
Sure. But the original context is that these things will somehow act as a deterrent to executives. My point is that today in the U.S., they don't.
Most people would be ecstatic to lose their jobs for a multimillion dollar payout. And that's exactly what happened to Carly.
Carly shouldn't be *criminaly prosecuted* just because she made some perfectly legitimately poor decisions, they were in fact, the decisions one would expect from someone with her background
But we're talking about screwups here. I probably shouldn't have mentioned Enron because it's something of a special case (actions of the CEO that are so blatantly bad that he might actually get in trouble for it, though that remains to be seen). Anyway, whether the decisions are considered by some to be "perfectly legitimate" or not is irrelevant. When you're being compensated tens to hundreds of millions of dollars per year for your decisions, no mistake is really legitimate, much less a stupid "mistake". Especially if the mistake is the result of lack of understanding of your own business domain!
She had "business sense" but no ability to understand the nature of her business
That's the same thing as saying she had no business sense. Anyone with any brains at all knows that you can't make sound business decisions if you know nothing about the business you're in! To conciously take the job of CEO of a company whose business you know nothing about shows massive lack of business sense. You just don't do that if you give a shit about the business in question. I don't think she cared. She just wanted the money. And she got it, for the reasons I stated originally.
Enron: Ken Lay defrauded investors, was canned, and the court case is pending.
Yeah. Pending. For how long now?? Meanwhile, the dude is living like a king, and will continue to, even during the court case. And I won't be surprised at all if he gets away scot-free, too.
HP: Carly Fiorina tried to turn it into a middleman company focusing on volume. It failed and she was canned.
After getting a nice bonus and a $45 million golden parachute.
Who gives a fuck if they're canned, if they get a nice $45 million payout for it? That's not any sort of punishment in my book. Quite the opposite.
Would you like to accept TEN MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS from MR MUBATSU of KENYA?
And the point is that the appearance of such a dialog should be so unusual as to give the user pause and force them to actually look at the thing.
Doesn't have to ask for a password. It can require that the user type in anything, really. But it has to be very different and require much more interaction from the user than the usual "yes or not" dialog.
From a strictly Darwinian standpoint, this would explain why birds don't live very long. A bird that lives longer will experience more of the shift during its lifetime. During a shift, more of them will become lost and confused. Therefore, having a shorter lifespan is an advantage.
Huh? This is bullshit.
A shorter lifespan is never an advantage to an organism's genes unless it serves to reduce the competition (e.g., for scarce resources) between an organism and its own offspring.
Why? Because a longer lifespan automatically means more opportunities to reproduce if nothing else.
Or to put it another way, a longer lifespan is a superset of a shorter one. Everything you could do in a shorter lifespan, you can do in a longer one as well (all other things being equal, of course).
In the case of the birds and their navigational difficulties in the face of a moving magnetic pole, either the bird dies earlier due to a shortened lifespan or it dies due to navigational error. It dies either way, so there's no advantage conferred here by dying earlier due to a shortened lifespan.
I wonder how many times the person(s) hit "Yes I am sure" when the system was telling them not to do it...
No kidding.
The solution to this problem is really simple: when you want to ask the user if they really want to do something amazingly stupid, require that they enter their password or some other character string. Most other dialogs aren't going to ask for that, so it'll be very unusual for them to see such a thing, which will tip them off that this isn't the usual "yes or no" question.
Naturally, the dialog box should also explain that they are about to do something insanely stupid, why it's a stupid thing to do, and how they're going to be so screwed if they're wrong.
I'm not suggesting that this method be used for most applications (indeed, that would be counterproductive, because the whole idea is to give the user great pause, which won't happen if every app does something similar). There are very few (relatively speaking) applications where even the worst screwup will result in anything more than a bit of inconvenience. Financial apps like the trading app that was used here are an exception.
The difference is that when a US exec screws up at this magnitude, reguardless of how much apologizing happens, they will be canned in the very near future. They also will face a very likely suit in court for defrauding investors.
Is that so? Got any examples from within the past decade to back it up?
Perhaps what you say used to be true, but it doesn't appear to be true any longer. One need only look at the likes of Enron and Hewlett-Packard to see that.
No, today when a U.S. exec screws up bigtime, he gets a fat bonus and maybe a nice golden parachute.
Slashdot Mirror
But according to the ruling, you don't have the right to travel using any particular means. That means you don't specifically have the right to travel via your two legs, either.
That alone makes the ruling nonsensical. If you don't have the right to travel using any particular means, then by extension you don't have the right to travel at all. Oh, you might by some nebulous theory, but that means nothing unless you also have said right via particular means.
If the court had ruled that the airlines, being private entites in their own right, had the right to impose these restrictions of their own accord, that would be one thing. Then it would have to be shown that the airlines were truly acting out of their own accord. But that's not the case here: the government is the entity that is forcing the airlines to do this.
They will, yes. But are supposed to?
Says who?
Corporations are fictitious entities that are given certain privileges by the society they exist within in exchange for the economic benefits of being able to take risks that individuals generally can't. Those privileges should be revoked the instant those benefits are exceeded by the cost.
Supporting an oppressive regime such as China is not much different than giving aid and comfort to the enemy, because while we certainly aren't at war with China and hopefully never will be, supporting them in the way Microsoft is doing cannot possibly result in anything but harm to our own freedom and democracy in the long run, and that is something that we would never tolerate in individuals. What's the difference between Microsoft doing this and individuals going over there to help them with, say, their military capability? If we're willing to sell them technology to aid them in supressing their own people, what's the harm in selling them military technology to do the same? These tools we're selling them can easily be turned against us.
You people who support the "right" of corporations to do anything they want conveniently forget that corporations exist to serve us, the People, and exist only because we, the People, allowed them to come into existence. It is only because we have lost our way that they now have the power to control the very government that is supposed to be of, by, and for the People.
No, they don't amount to the same thing, and that's really the point.
If corporations want to be treated as people in the eyes of the law then they should be treated as people in all possible respects.
And that means that a corporation supporting a repressive regime is the same thing as an individual supporting a repressive regime.
If we insist that it is wrong for us as individuals to support repressive regimes, then it is clearly wrong for us as corporations to do so as well. If we care at all about our own liberties then we must at the very least lend as little support to those who would remove those liberties from us as possible. If that means not doing business with said repressive regimes then so be it.
The problem is that those who run corporations want it all ways: they want their corporations to have the benefits of "personhood" but not the drawbacks. They want power but not responsibility.
Back to your original question, there is a difference between how/if you trade with someone else and imposing your will upon them, at least when it comes to dealing in goods that the other entity can either do without or can produce themselves. That difference has to do with free will: such a trade relationship is a voluntary one on both sides. Neither is compelled by circumstance or necessity to participate. Forcing one's will upon another is not voluntary on both sides, by definition. Therein lies the crucial difference. And in the case of the corporation under discussion, that difference is completely relevant.
Hmm...that does complicate things a bit. I'd expect the only real way to narrow it down would be to perform experiments in supercolliders and such.
So do we need to perform experiments in supercolliders and such in order to see the effects of existing particles, or to produce them? If the latter, then one question that naturally arises is why we'd need to produce them when they're theorized to be in great abundance elsewhere in the universe.
That said, I do realize that "great abundance" could easily be a very tiny amount per volume of space, since the distances between galaxies are astoundingly vast.
Then I stand corrected, and retract what I said previously.
Dark matter "feels" like a kludge to me, but if the theory makes multiple independent predictions that have yet to be confirmed then it's definitely science, and if those predictions wind up being confirmed then it's good science, too.
No, I'm not. I already mentioned that type of "dark matter": gas, dust, etc. But there's a crucial difference between that kind of "dark matter" and the type we're talking about. The type of "dark matter" we're talking about does not block light. It's unobservable in any conventional sense.
You clearly don't get what I'm saying.
Dark matter is theorized in order to make our current gravitational theories fit the observed universe. You, and others, claim that the gravitational influence of dark matter is how it's detected. But don't you see? It's because the gravitational calculations based on observable matter don't work that you introduce dark matter into the equation to begin with. You can't add dark matter to the calculations to make them fit observation and then simultaneously turn around and say that the gravitational observations are what confirm dark matter's existence!
When observations don't fit the theory that is supposed to predict them, you toss the theory. The theory in this case is our current gravitational theory. It clearly works extremely well for our local region of spacetime but does not work for the universe as a whole. Whatever replaces it must have the current one as a special case.
There's a big difference between the two. Dark matter is theorized in order to make current gravitational theory fit the observations, and is being "confirmed" by that same gravitational theory. Neutrinos were proposed in order to explain the behaviour of electrons during beta decay. Neutrinos were confirmed not by the behaviour of said electrons, but by another independent and predicted interaction.
In short, the neutrino posulate made a set of predictions that were independent of the observations that suggested the existence of the neutrino in the first place.
That very clearly is not what's happening with dark matter: the "confirmation" comes from the very thing that prompted its postulation to begin with!
Finally, the dark matter theory does not, that I can tell, make any non-gravitational predictions of its own. Unlike the neutrino theory, it doesn't tell us what else we should observe that we haven't already. That alone is reason enough to discard it.
Sure, it's possible that this dark matter exists. But as a theory, it ain't science unless it makes testable predictions. Dark matter by its nature does not -- it's an attempt to force-fit current gravitational theory with current observations. That's why it's a kludge.
Why?
Because by definition they are something that cannot be observed. Instead, they are used to adjust the universe so that it continues to fit our explanations of it. I suspect that independent confirmation of the existence of dark matter/energy is impossible.
That said, of course there are some forms of "dark matter" which can and do exist: things like gas and dust. There's plenty of that in our own galaxy and a lot that we've observed in others, as well. But that's not what we're talking about here.
Anyway, when you start introducing invisible and unverifiable junk into your model of the universe in order to make it fit your theories, you're not doing science any more. In science, when you get a bunch of observations that don't fit your theories, you throw out the theories and start over (or, rather, you keep your theories as a special case unti you come up with something more universal).
It's almost as if the people who are proposing these explanations aren't willing to toss out the current explanations they have for things and essentially start from scratch. But when you start to kludge explanations together as they have with dark matter/energy, that's exactly what you should do: go back to the drawing board. Having to kludge something is a huge hint that you got something badly wrong somewhere way back towards the beginning.
Obviously whatever you come up with has to explain current observations to at least the degree that current conventional theories do, and current theories then have to become a "special case" of the more general theory, just as newtonian mechanics is a special case of relativity.
He's not wrong about how our government works, only about how it's supposed to work.
In practice, our government does whatever damned thing it wants, Constitution or no Constitution.
Nothing more needs to be said if one's view is that copyrighted works rightfully belong to the copyright holder forever.
But if you believe that copyright is a compromise between society and content producers, then the choice by copyright owners to employ DRM on their works has the additional negative consequence of giving them control over their works beyond the term of the copyright. And that's a problem.
As far as I'm concerned, copyright owners can do whatever they want with their works, as long as they don't violate the purpose of copyright. DRM allows them to violate that purpose, and that's why I'm vehemently against it.
I dunno, that's a tough one...someone help me out here...
(That was sarcasm, in case someone out there didn't figure that out)
One must be careful to distinguish between belief in lack and lack of belief. Most atheists lack belief in a God. Some believe in lack thereof.
Only when one must make a decision where one must assume either existence of God or nonexistence thereof will someone who lacks belief fall back to a default. Generally that default will be nonexistence, since it is what comes of the application of Occam's Razor.
I cannot agree. The reason I cannot agree is that someone who holds a positive belief in God despite lack of evidence of said God is someone who is failing to apply Occam's Razor to the question of God's existence, whereas they would not fail to apply the Razor to any other similar belief. On the other hand, someone who believes in the nonexistence of God due to lack of evidence is applying Occam's Razor. Admittedly, belief in the nonexistence of God has nothing supporting it other than Occam's Razor, but belief in the existence of God has nothing supporting it whatsoever. Therein lies the crucial difference.
There is no difference at all between believing in the existence of God and believing that aliens routinely visit Earth and abduct people from time to time. Neither has any substantiating evidence worth anything. Yet those who have a scientific bent and who also simultaneously believe in God will scoff at those who believe that aliens are visiting us right now.
If you wish us to believe that belief in the existence of God has the same standing as belief in the nonexistence of God, then you must concede that the belief in the existence of God has the same standing as the belief that aliens are visiting Earth and occasionally abducting people. Or any unfounded but unprovable belief, for that matter.
No, sorry, but belief in the nonexistence of something based on lack of evidence is slightly more substantiated than belief in the existence of something despite lack of evidence. If you cannot see that, then why don't you believe that aliens are abducting people from under our noses?
I don't know that he's terrified so much as perplexed.
And I think I understand why.
To hold a religious belief requires that one have some sort of unchecked faith in something that cannot be observed or verified in any way.
Science requires no such thing. At most, it requires the "belief" that observations of the world are generally valid, and that the universe is generally consistent in our own local region of space (for some branches of science, e.g. astronomy, the latter assumption is tentatively extended to cover the observable universe).
Those assumptions are ones that pretty much everyone automatically makes every day, so the amount of "faith" they require is no greater than the amount of "faith" an ordinary person has when normally interacting with the world anyway.
Or to put it another way, science is just the formalization of the way people deal with the world around them anyway (you know: examine the world, come up with an idea of how something works, do something to test it, adjust the idea based on the results, etc.).
Back to the original question: the reason some of us might be perplexed about the fact that some geeks have religious beliefs is the fact that such a person has to intentionally not apply the scientific method to some of their own beliefs. It means that the person in question intentionally limits the scope of the methods he uses to evaluate ideas in order to preserve the ideas that he would probably otherwise discard for lack of evidence (since in science, one does not hold onto hypotheses which make no testable predictions and for which no observable evidence exists).
And the reason that's perplexing is that geeks in general expect themselves, and others, to apply rules consistently and in an unbiased manner. As you can see from the above, holding religious beliefs and applying the methods of science at the same time requires the person in question to break that consistency, to bias the application of the rules of logic and science.
Now, I personally don't have a problem with someone holding a religious belief, as long as they don't attempt to push that belief onto me. But I won't hesitate to point out that there's at least one area of their belief system to which they're not applying the tests they normally apply (and that they generally expect others to apply as well -- they're geeks, after all).
Yes, well, you might think that's what this will be used for, but I assure you it's not, because the police don't answer to you and, frankly, catching the criminal would simply be too much work even with this system in place. If you were an "important person" then it would be used for that, of course, but otherwise you can forget about it.
No, this will be used to track the movements of political enemies and to bring down those who represent any sort of threat to those in power.
Brin is far too optimistic here. Those with power are almost never willing to give it up or allow it to be reduced in any way. Quite the opposite in fact: they tend to want to increase their power.
Making records such as this publicly available will by default mean that the records about those in power will also be available. That will reduce their power over the public, which is something they will never allow. So either the records of those in power will be removed from what gets published to the public (thus negating Brin's entire point) or the set of records as a whole will be kept under wraps, accessible only to those in power. The latter is much simpler and, in general, grants greater power to those who have it, so that's what will happen.
And no, there's not a damned thing the "little people" can do about it. You can protest it all you want. It won't change a thing, because those in power know that they don't need to listen to the people anymore.
Face it: the entire world is rapidly decending into a totalitarian nightmare, and there won't be any way back out, because the overthrow of totalitarianism requires an outside influence. When the entire world is a police state, there is no outside influence.
I can't wait to see the major motion picture based on this game!
*ducks*
No, they'll just pay off the right people to make sure that their data "accidentally" goes missing. Remember, they have far, far more money than you or I.
The U.S. and the E.U. are competing/cooperating with each other on this front. When one side gets darker, the other does something to up the ante. Back and forth it goes.
It's obvious where this must end: a totalitarian police state. And it's also obvious that most of the rest of the world is following in the footsteps of the US and EU, because the US and (to a lesser degree) the EU force their draconian laws upon the rest of the world under the moniker of "free trade". China's already an oppressive totalitarian police state.
When it's all over, some 50 years or so hence (at this rate, it won't even take that long), nobody will be free.
Sony certainly isn't "repenting" over this. Not at all. They don't care, and haven't for a long time.
I expect to see more of the same shit from Sony. They'll claim they're "changing" but in reality nothing will change.
Sure. But the original context is that these things will somehow act as a deterrent to executives. My point is that today in the U.S., they don't.
Most people would be ecstatic to lose their jobs for a multimillion dollar payout. And that's exactly what happened to Carly.
But we're talking about screwups here. I probably shouldn't have mentioned Enron because it's something of a special case (actions of the CEO that are so blatantly bad that he might actually get in trouble for it, though that remains to be seen). Anyway, whether the decisions are considered by some to be "perfectly legitimate" or not is irrelevant. When you're being compensated tens to hundreds of millions of dollars per year for your decisions, no mistake is really legitimate, much less a stupid "mistake". Especially if the mistake is the result of lack of understanding of your own business domain!
That's the same thing as saying she had no business sense. Anyone with any brains at all knows that you can't make sound business decisions if you know nothing about the business you're in! To conciously take the job of CEO of a company whose business you know nothing about shows massive lack of business sense. You just don't do that if you give a shit about the business in question. I don't think she cared. She just wanted the money. And she got it, for the reasons I stated originally.
Yeah. Pending. For how long now?? Meanwhile, the dude is living like a king, and will continue to, even during the court case. And I won't be surprised at all if he gets away scot-free, too.
After getting a nice bonus and a $45 million golden parachute.
Who gives a fuck if they're canned, if they get a nice $45 million payout for it? That's not any sort of punishment in my book. Quite the opposite.
Like I was saying...
And the point is that the appearance of such a dialog should be so unusual as to give the user pause and force them to actually look at the thing.
Doesn't have to ask for a password. It can require that the user type in anything, really. But it has to be very different and require much more interaction from the user than the usual "yes or not" dialog.
Huh? This is bullshit.
A shorter lifespan is never an advantage to an organism's genes unless it serves to reduce the competition (e.g., for scarce resources) between an organism and its own offspring.
Why? Because a longer lifespan automatically means more opportunities to reproduce if nothing else.
Or to put it another way, a longer lifespan is a superset of a shorter one. Everything you could do in a shorter lifespan, you can do in a longer one as well (all other things being equal, of course).
In the case of the birds and their navigational difficulties in the face of a moving magnetic pole, either the bird dies earlier due to a shortened lifespan or it dies due to navigational error. It dies either way, so there's no advantage conferred here by dying earlier due to a shortened lifespan.
No kidding.
The solution to this problem is really simple: when you want to ask the user if they really want to do something amazingly stupid, require that they enter their password or some other character string. Most other dialogs aren't going to ask for that, so it'll be very unusual for them to see such a thing, which will tip them off that this isn't the usual "yes or no" question.
Naturally, the dialog box should also explain that they are about to do something insanely stupid, why it's a stupid thing to do, and how they're going to be so screwed if they're wrong.
I'm not suggesting that this method be used for most applications (indeed, that would be counterproductive, because the whole idea is to give the user great pause, which won't happen if every app does something similar). There are very few (relatively speaking) applications where even the worst screwup will result in anything more than a bit of inconvenience. Financial apps like the trading app that was used here are an exception.
Is that so? Got any examples from within the past decade to back it up?
Perhaps what you say used to be true, but it doesn't appear to be true any longer. One need only look at the likes of Enron and Hewlett-Packard to see that.
No, today when a U.S. exec screws up bigtime, he gets a fat bonus and maybe a nice golden parachute.