As such an obvious "people person", do you wear a seatbelt?
The seatbelt analogy doesn't fit very well. Even the safest of drivers have a sizable risk of getting into an accident because other less-safe drivers share the road with them. Unless this guy is sharing his PC with someone with less-safe computing practices, he doesn't have a comparable risk of spyware/virus infection.
Which is not to say there's no risk - even the safest of computer users can get hit with some 0-day exploit in Windows or the like, unless they leave their machine physically and permanently disconnected from the Net. But like anything else, it's a tradeoff. Do you want that incremental increase in safety at the expense of antivirus subscription fees and computational slowdown? Some people will, some people won't. It's a matter of risk tolerance and the cost/benefit ratio.
And you, sir, are not the "average joe" computer user
And that's exactly why AV programs should let you specify what level of understanding or risk aversion you have. Provide a "Typical User" and "Expert User" selection, with a "Typical User" default setting. There are few things more aggravating than someone or something continually assuming you're an ignoramus despite any and all evidence to the contrary.
Norton's been driving me nuts because I disabled some of its options to save my (pretty old) computer some performance. Every time I log in Norton nags me with this dire warning about "items affecting my status"; those items being the things I told it not to do. I'm very well aware of what I did and the implications, and don't need the app to be my nanny. I'm sure lots of people do want the nanny, and Norton should give it to them. But there's no need to apply that extreme risk aversion to everyone. It's been enough to make me seriously consider uninstalling Norton entirely.
the only option left to him politically was to try and hide it, then deny it.
That wasn't the only option left. The other option was to say "yes, I did it and I was wrong. I apologize to my family, and to the American people, for breaking their trust and dishonoring the office of the President. I hope you all can give my family some space while we try to repair the harm I have done, and I hope that in time I will be able to earn back your trust."
That would have been personally much more difficult - he would have had to publicly admit he was wrong, and that the whole mess was his fault, instead of blaming his Republican critics. But I believe it would have saved him politically. A genuine apology is the first step in rebuilding trust, and his critics would have looked incredibly mean-spirited if they kept attacking him after that. People would have given him credit for his honesty and repentance, and he could've come out of the issue much less politically damaged.
Instead, he chose to perjure himself rather than even admit the truth, much less apologize. What he did with Lewinsky is a mostly a matter for his family to resolve, though there is a legitimate concern that he was abusing the power of his office to win sexual favors from a subordinate (corporate CEOs have been fired for less). But the willful breaking of the law by a sitting President, who is sworn to uphold the law, is an entirely different matter. It was an action that showed arrogance and contempt for the law, and it's my belief that it was that action that really got Clinton in hot water, not his marital infidelity.
Libertarians aren't against government - they see it as necessary for certain things like national defense. They do, however, recognize the temptation of government to believe it knows best and to take away citizens' liberties in its attempts to "help". To help limit that potential, they favor small government. But they're not anarchists who want to overthrow or otherwise remove all government.
Interestingly, Slashdot traditionally had much more of a libertarian bent that it seems to these days (which as you said has become more left-leaning). Though libertarians (of both the conservative and liberal varieties) certainly have much to be upset with Bush about, so the anti-Bush commentary may not be simply a factor of a leftward shift on/.
Why should the user even HAVE to set the clock? The VCR I bought sets its clock automatically without me ever having done a darn thing (I can only assume it does it based on RF time broadcast signals). It updates itself for daylight savings time too, and sets the time properly after a power failure.
If more software used this mentality of eliminating unnecessary work for the user, and did it right, we'd all be better off. Windows OR Linux.
Maybe we have some greater confidence in US code. But US origin doesn't get you all that much more confidence.
The problem is that a large portion of the software the DoD uses is commercial off-the-shelf stuff. Those usually aren't written by contractors who've been investigated or cleared. So even if DoD banned use offshore-produced software, a foreign entity might not have that hard of a time infiltrating some US software company. It wouldn't take many such saboteurs if they were placed in the right companies.
Re: question #1, maybe you do something, maybe you don't. It depends on whether the US law change impacts your license. But any copyright license of necessity lives within the context of existing copyright law. If the law change, the license may no longer be what's needed. I don't see a lot the license author can do other than update his license if the law changes.
Re: the DRM restrictions being overly specific - they could be possible to weasel out of. But using general language also leaves lots of room for weasling, and it's the type of weaseling that lawyers do on a regular basis. There's some advantage to forbidding something both in general terms, and in specific terms, lest someone try to argue that the license doesn't forbid the specific act and thus implicitly allows it.
because value judgments can only be made within the (inherently unique) contextual construct of a person's culture.
If you're saying that you can't really escape the influence of culture on moral judgment, that's almost certainly true. But saying that no culture has a monopoly on wisdom isn't the same as saying that there's no such thing as wisdom.
A society's moral judgments are essentially its accumulated wisdom about what behaviors are beneficial or harmful to its members, expressed in a set of behavioral rules. It enforces those judgments to protect its members. Are the judgments sometimes based on flawed information or reasoning? Yes. Are they sometimes dead-on? Yes.
How do we know which situation we're in? We can't, absolutely. So we should try to keep an open mind about the possibility that our judgment on a particular issue could be wrong, and if the evidence is persuasive that we're wrong, we should change our judgment. But we shouldn't throw out the act of judgment itself as invalid simply because sometimes you could make a mistake. The process as a whole helps each of us live better lives.
I don't think the nationalizing of traditional state powers is a good thing in general. It can result in states being unable (or unwilling) to experiment with new solutions to widespread problems, because the federal government picked its desired solution (often suboptimal, either initially or years later as circumstances changed) and then denied funding to those who don't go along. Federal funding tends to be too huge to deny unless the federal solution is truly outrageous. And federal legislation of necessity is not going to be tailored to the needs of any given state.
On the other hand, it's occasionally useful as a kick in the pants when local/state governments have inadequate performance and are in no hurry to fix it. Setting some minimum standards, and letting the states figure out how to reach them, can stimulate the search for a solution while still allowing states to experiment with different ideas.
I.e. the feds could have a positive role to play if they take on a catalyst role rather than micromanaging. We'll see which they choose.
I think you're probably right about nutrition plaing a big role.
To make a completely unscientific speculation: both the high heritability and the bias towards industrial nations could also be a function of how much early-childhood (roughly defined as say, the first 3-4 years of life) intellectual stimulation the child has.
I.e. some folks may have a genetic predisposition to be more engaged with their young child, more tolerant/supportive of their child's inquisitiveness, etc. And similarly, in industrialized nations such behavior towards children may also have become a learned habit - education has become the dominant function in economic success, and we know it. We always hear stuff in the news about the latest trick that'll supposedly make your kid smarter (playing Mozart for your baby, a new teaching method, preschool, reading to your kids, etc). Many work, many don't, but overall children are probably being exposed to a much more stimulating environment as a result.
(Incidentally, that could also help explain the US racial differences in IQ. US racial differences are often mostly a function of socioeconomics rather than race per se. Those in less intellectually demanding jobs, on average, might not as frequently recognize the importance of fostering an intellectual environment so early in life, or might not have as many good role models for how to do so.)
Even if you're testing kids' IQ when they first start kindergarten, they're already 5 years old, which is a lot of past brain-development time. It's probably difficult to reliably measure level of previous intellectual stimulation after the fact (and I don't know if anyone's tried yet). But I suspect it has a big impact on how well kids do.
(This is what makes me angry everytime I see a mother telling her 5-year old to "shut up" after he asks an innocent question about the world around him. And I see that a lot when traveling. I asked those sorts of questions all the time as a child, and my parents never responded in that sort of way. I believe that's a large reason why I ended up doing very well academically. Scientific? no. But I suspect if my parents had told me to shut up enough times, my desire to learn would have been extinguished early on, which would've stunted my academic growth for years. )
If it was federal law that voting machines had to meet certain federally-defined minimum standards (hardware/software must be independently audited, machine must produce a paper trail, etc), then it's no longer a matter of persuasion so much as "do-this-or-face-the-punishment". Just like any other federal statute.
IANAL, but I'm guessing that at least for federal elections, this is within the federal government's power to do. Even if it were a power reserved to the states, Congress could easily tie compliance to receiving federal highway or other funding, which has been an effective strategy in the past for separation-of-powers concerns. And no county clerk in his right mind is going to buy/maintain two separate sets of voting equipment, one for federal elections and one for everything else. Thus would all elections become effectively subject to federal quality standards.
Your last paragraph identified the real issue, which is applications. Most people could care less what operating system they run. They just want to be able to use the computer in certain specific ways - write documents, play games, surf the web, etc. If people could get all their applications and not have to put up with all the Windows spyware and viruses, I bet they'd jump at alternatives. (Just look at the recent upswing in the popularity of Macs, despite the much smaller choice of software available on the Mac. ).
The primary thing that keeps people from switching is the network effects associated with Microsoft's dominant/monopoly position. Since they have 90-something percent of the market, it's often not economically feasible for software companies to provide versions of their application for non-Windows platforms. That lack of applications (or data/format compatible applications) in turn prevents people from choosing alternative operating systems, thus growing the Windows user base more, and making switching even less feasible. It'a vicious cycle (or a wonderful one, if you're Microsoft).
And in fact Microsoft does their best to reinforce that cycle. It's smart business strategy to lock-in your customers. IMO that's the largest reason why MS is always inventing proprietary APIs and formats to replace open standard ones (DirectX vs OpenGL, Microsoft's bastardized version of Kerberos authentication, IE-specific HTML/DOM extensions, XPS vs PDF, etc.). It makes it harder for software developers to port their applications to other platforms, and harder for users to switch. (Sometimes they actually make an improvement over the open standard. Sometimes they don't. But they make their own version nonetheless because people will use what's there, furthering the lock-in).
That's why the move to Web services is a great thing for competition. It increasingly forces Microsoft to compete on the merits of their software rather than on the basis of their monopoly's network effects.
Fair enough - an OS is probably a lot more complicated than the EEC module mentioned. But the point Animats was making is still valid. The costs of software failures by and large are borne by the users, not the manufacturer, and thus there is little incentive to fix the situation. When the only party with the power to fix a problem has little incentive to do so, chances are extremely high that it won't be fixed.
(The book Freakonomics had an interesting illustration of this phenomenon, whereby bank fraud was much lower in countries where banks were responsible for losses due to bank fraud, compared to countries where the consumer was held accountable. Why? Because when the consumer was accountable, he had no power to fix the situation to reclaim his lost funds. But where banks were held responsible, they had both a large interest in preventing fraud AND the ability to get it done.)
Now if I buy almost any consumer good, and I use it in the way it was intended, and if it breaks and causes me harm (financial, physical, or otherwise), the manufacturer usually has a legal liability. Especially if they knew of the defect and sold it anyway. That is a huge incentive to get the product right initially, and to recall defective products when a problem slips through. If my PC software breaks and causes me to lose thousands of dollars in lost data and/or recovery time, I have no recourse against the manufacturer. They have no legal liability, because software is licensed rather than sold, and of course every manufacturer's EULA essentially says "we the manufacturer take no responsibility whatsoever, this software is as-is and could eat your firstborn for breakfast". The manufacturer bears no cost at all for their failure. If I'm lucky the manufacturer will identify the source of the problem after the fact and post a patch on their website.
The best you can get in that situation is to hope that competition forces the manufacturer in question not to suck too much. But often, there is little competition (often by design, through use of proprietary formats and protocols to lock-in users who otherwise would switch to a competitor).
And that is indeed why software sucks. Because the user wants to fix the problem but can't, and the manufacturer can fix the problem but doesn't care enough to do so. This, IMO, is a large part of why open-source has become popular fairly quickly, particularly among corporate users. Because finally, the user has some ability to fix the problems that are causing him harm.
Automobiles can be done without if you live in an area that is densely populated. But a lot of Americans live in areas that are not cities, or even densely populated suburbs. Running a mass transit system out to every small town in America would be ruinously expensive and inefficient. Which is one reason why cars are so popular.
I suspect other reasons include lack of quality widespread mass transit in many areas, cultural associations of cars with personal freedom, the high cost of owning quality housing in cities (supply and demand; lots of people creates more demand than there is urban land to provide it), and fear of crime. Until we fix those problems, increasingly far-flung suburbs are going to continue to drive (no pun intended) the demand for cars.
The other obstacles are that A) it's incredibly expensive to build new mass transit systems, and B) they're almost always built and managed by governments (or government monopoly agencies), which are known neither for speed nor efficiency. For example, the northern Virginia area near Washington DC has some of the nation's worst traffic congestion (hour-long one-way commutes are not unusual), but it's still been taking years just to figure out how to extend the Metro rail system a relatively small distance further into the suburbs. Now that they've settled on the basic plan, it'll probably still take years to build. Add to that the refusal of state politicians to even let the local area tax itself to fund much-needed transportation improvements, and the situation's a mess.
You can also lower the learning curve of Emacs a bit with a package called CUA-mode (I've seen it for both Emacs and XEmacs). Basically it gives you the Windows-style cut/copy/paste commands, but without interfering with the traditional Emacs keystrokes (if no next is selected, C-x is the Emacs command; if text is selected, C-x is cut).
I've found that to be a lot easier than retraining my brain to not use the Windows-style keyboard shortcuts, especially since I still have to use a lot of Windows apps.
I'm sure many of the companies that are certified would probably agree with you. But the fact is that many companies, particularly those selling to government entities, are required to be certified in ISO 9000 or similar programs as a precondition of doing business. So they have to go along, at least to some extent, with the fiction that certification equals quality.
IMHO, certification really means repeatability (do you always follow some established process). Which is certainly important, especially when it comes to very expensive/complex programs, in order to mitigate risk. But it's not the same as quality. One can repeatably implement a lousy process or procedure. One can also be repeatably bad at implementing a good process (you can have the best design process in the world, but a bad designer will still give you a bad product).
I think the whole certification buzz comes about in large part because it's difficult to evaluate the other big factors that impact quality, which are largely human factors - talent, workmanship, management acumen, etc. Because customers have little visibility into those factors, they instead evaluate the factor most amenable to measurement - process compliance.
People with some common sense recognize the certification as a useful but limited tool for evaluating a company. It's the other folks that you seem to have encountered - the ones who think process compliance is the Holy Grail for business success. Those are the ones I try to avoid:-)
Sure, it's possible that malicious code could get into OSS and make its way into secure systems. But the exact same thing is true for proprietary software.
US companies have people working for them that have no security clearance and could easily be a foreign agent. If anything, the commercial code is more at risk, because there's no independent review of the potentially compromised code. At least if someone's contributing to Linux you know somebody's looking over their patch. With a proprietary company, who knows what kind of process goes on? That lack of transparency makes commonly-used proprietary vendors a better target for espionage than OSS, IMO.
Regardless of the truth of the Echelon-Boeing story (which I'll assume for the sake of argument is true)...
Realize that the U.S. wouldn't be the only one playing that game. The French are notorious for doing it (and Airbus would be a likely beneficiary). And because of America's technological leadership at present, it's also the primary target for many economic espionage operations.
Quite frankly, I'd be surprised if there were many countries who were not using their intelligence capabilities this way (at least, those nations with the resources to do it, e.g. the U.S., most of Europe, Japan, China, Russia, Australia, etc). The FBI reports that there are 23 nations who do this systematically against the U.S. (source)
It's not so much the state as an entity that gains, it's the individual people who are in positions of state power. And since these folks are often either politicians, or political appointees, they have lots at stake. If they, or their political allies, get proven wrong on an issue, it may affect their chances of future employment/prestige/election/etc. If they support research that undermines their political party's message (or their party's special interest group allies), they may be seen as "caving in" to the "enemy" and won't get the same campaign contributions.
Especially in Washington these days, every issue is a seen not as an opportunity to find the truth or fix a problem but as a club with which to attack the opposition. So if some research looks more likely to be compatible with one's views than others, guess which is more likely to be funded?
It's not just global warming - it's any issue. The science is simply another weapon in the political arsenal, to be discarded when it's inconvenient.
Sure, people should argue based on the merits, not on who's making the argument. But when it comes to technical matters that impact politics, not everyone has the knowledge necessary to make an informed judgment. Must of us don't have PhDs in a relevant field of climate research, for example.
So when someone makes technical arguments that are beyond our expertise, how are we supposed to evaluate the truth of their claims? Since we can't evaulate the merits themselves, we're forced to fall back on our perceptions of the speaker's honesty,competence,etc. And that's why the mix of science and politics is, IMO, such a nasty combination. Most people would evaluate the merits if they could, but they can't, and those with vested interests know and exploit that fact (whether the vested interest be a scientist looking for money, or a politician looking for votes or affirmation of their own preconceptions, etc).
Re:weird perspective for a conflict... and wrong!
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Sun's Open Source DRM
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The main concern for consumers is that a DRM system not prevent them from using content they've bought in a legitimate way. In this context, "legitimate" means any use that does not infringe upon the copyright, e.g. "fair use".
DRM's main concern is that people not be able to buy a work and then redistribute it for free on the Internet. (A cynic might say that DRM's other main concern is to make people pay multiple times for the same content played on different devices/formats/etc, but let's ignore that for now).
Can the two "main concerns" be reconciled? I would argue that they cannot, if the concerns are defined as above. The traditional legal concept of "fair use" includes the right to excerpt pieces of a work for purposes of parody, teaching, criticism, etc. However, if the DRM system allows excerpts, how does one prevent an entire work from being reconstructed from individual excerpts? You could try limiting the number of excerpts allowed by the DRM, but this at least partially cripples the fair use right (people are likely, during the creative process, to change their mind over which excerpts they intend to use or actually distribute as part of their parody/criticism/etc. So they're likely to be hobbled by any artificial restriction).
Even if you had such an excerpt limit, what's to prevent a group of folks from collaborating over the Internet to each excerpt particular pieces and then sharing with each other to recreate the whole, and putting that online? It is thus impossible to have a DRM that truly prevents online redistribution and still protect customer's rights.
This says to me that we ought to step back and re-examine the problem at hand. IMO, the problem for the music/movie industries is not really how to prevent people from redistributing their work (for which DRM would be the solution). Their real problem is how to make sure that their profits do not erode due to such occurrences. To achieve that goal, the content companies do not need DRM and its accompanying headaches (lesser ease of use, customer frustration over inability to do legitimate things). They need a system where it's more convenient/desirable for customers to use a paid service than it is to troll for illegally ditributed files online.
What sort of strategy could achieve that? A combination of three things: A) lawsuits over massive public filesharing to make use of such systems perceived as legally risky, B) pollution of P2P networks with "fake" copies of songs to make the use of such systems less useful for infringing uses, and C) a paid service that provides value beyond simply the purchase of a song.
Why C? Because while the purchase value is important, it doesn't do much to keep someone using the service instead of another mechanism (possible illegal, possibly legal). Plus, that additional value is something beyond price cuts that content companies can use to entice customers. Maybe that value-added is simply access to your music collection from anywhere. Maybe that value is a recommendation engine that uses your current collection of songs as a database from which to recommend new music. Maybe it's something new we haven't thought of yet. But it's a strong incentive to stay within the system, and a source of further profits. Thus it's a win-win for the labels and their customers, rather than DRM's zero-sum game.
Record companies are already doing A and B, and they've taken beginning steps towards C with Apple's iTunes system (listen and buy online, play on an iPod or computer). Note that DRM isn't a major part of this solution - Apple has DRM, but it allows you to burn stuff to CD, which can then be "ripped" into an unprotected format. DRM is reduced to a speed-bump to deter the most casual copying (thus encouraging purchases rather than casual infringement), but is not an all-encompassing Big Brother. Which is fine, because it's just so convenient to get the music through the legal channel. And because it's still possible to get a non-DRM'd version with some effort, customers can
I can only assume it's because FISA requires that there be probable cause that the subject of the intercept be a foreign power or agent thereof.
Suppose the government captures a terrorist's cell phone addressbook. They then decide they'd like to eavesdrop on everyone in that list, in case some of them are also involved in terrorism. The administration may not be able to convince a FISA judge that simply being in someone's phone list is "probable cause" that the person is themselves a foreign agent or terrorist.
The activists aren't just attacking scientists or "educated people" as being supposedly anti-Christian, they're attacking other Christians. Catholics, for example, have no quarrel with evolution or other aspects of modern science. The Church may not believe in *using* all the knowledge we have through modern science, e.g. contraception, but it recognizes that science and religion should not, and need not, be made into enemies.
Maybe it's the Church's own history with making this exact error (e.g. Galileo) that has given it the necessary perspective. But as a Catholic, I'm glad we've learned that lesson. Hopefully our friends in the anti-evolution camp will learn it someday too.
I would suggest that "omgwtf we rule 'cos we have CARS! F*ck public transport! YEEE-HAW!!!" is an inaccurate caricature of America. Many cities do in fact have decent public transportation systems. Do we come up short in many cases? Sure, particularly in densely populated suburbs. But it's not just because we've got some sort of cowboy cultural hostility to the idea.
For one, extending public transportation systems (typically some sort of rail system) to cover larger and larger areas costs a lot of money upfront. Many communities either don't have the money, or have other pressing problems that cause public transportation to be overlooked. Even in places like where I live, where transportation is one of the top political concerns, the (popular) idea of extending mass transit further to the suburbs has proven difficult to implement due to the cost.
Also realize that the United States is not nearly as densely populated as many other developed countries. It has many rural, sparsely populated communities. For these situations, public transportation simply isn't efficient or practical. Unless you expect entire communities to abandon their homes and move en masse to the cities, you need cars and roads to service those communities.
So you're saying to hell with the other 50+% who aren't a problem? They should be forced away from public sidewalks and stores by painful noises just because they're the same age as the troublemakers?
If there are too many teenagers causing problems, the laws ought to be toughened and the police ought to crack down. Punish the ones who are committing the crimes, not innocent people.
What other groups are we going to start to penalize for sharing some nominal characteristics with the bad apples? Do we ban all poor people from stores because crime is more prevalent amongst the poor? Do we ban all older people from driving an automobile because plenty of the elderly can't see so well anymore? No - we target the ones who have proven themselves to be a problem (arrests or failed vision tests, in these two examples). And that's as it should be. Punishing whole categories of people for the actions of a subset is not justice - it's an assault on, yes, the *rights* of law-abiding citizens.
Sure, Google has the right not to talk to News.com reporters. Even if it's just because they didn't like the allegedly "personal" content of an article. But using that right in this case is just infantile, which is why Google is getting such criticism.
And for that matter, I don't think the details were really all that "personal". CNET revealed that Google's CEO is worth about $1.5 billion, that he lives in an affluent California town where he attended a $10,000-a-plate Democratic fundraiser, and that he's an amateur pilot. Hardly skeletons in the closet, or even a source of the mildest embarassment.
Google is a great company with great services. And I really respect that they take their "don't be evil" motto seriously, especially in an age of so many corporate scandals. But that self-imposed moral standard, and the fact that most people really like Google, are all the more reason we should tell Google when we think it's acting immaturely. Why let it tarnish (even slightly) an excellent reputation over something so trivial?
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As such an obvious "people person", do you wear a seatbelt?
The seatbelt analogy doesn't fit very well. Even the safest of drivers have a sizable risk of getting into an accident because other less-safe drivers share the road with them. Unless this guy is sharing his PC with someone with less-safe computing practices, he doesn't have a comparable risk of spyware/virus infection.
Which is not to say there's no risk - even the safest of computer users can get hit with some 0-day exploit in Windows or the like, unless they leave their machine physically and permanently disconnected from the Net. But like anything else, it's a tradeoff. Do you want that incremental increase in safety at the expense of antivirus subscription fees and computational slowdown? Some people will, some people won't. It's a matter of risk tolerance and the cost/benefit ratio.
And you, sir, are not the "average joe" computer user
And that's exactly why AV programs should let you specify what level of understanding or risk aversion you have. Provide a "Typical User" and "Expert User" selection, with a "Typical User" default setting. There are few things more aggravating than someone or something continually assuming you're an ignoramus despite any and all evidence to the contrary.
Norton's been driving me nuts because I disabled some of its options to save my (pretty old) computer some performance. Every time I log in Norton nags me with this dire warning about "items affecting my status"; those items being the things I told it not to do. I'm very well aware of what I did and the implications, and don't need the app to be my nanny. I'm sure lots of people do want the nanny, and Norton should give it to them. But there's no need to apply that extreme risk aversion to everyone. It's been enough to make me seriously consider uninstalling Norton entirely.
the only option left to him politically was to try and hide it, then deny it.
That wasn't the only option left. The other option was to say "yes, I did it and I was wrong. I apologize to my family, and to the American people, for breaking their trust and dishonoring the office of the President. I hope you all can give my family some space while we try to repair the harm I have done, and I hope that in time I will be able to earn back your trust."
That would have been personally much more difficult - he would have had to publicly admit he was wrong, and that the whole mess was his fault, instead of blaming his Republican critics. But I believe it would have saved him politically. A genuine apology is the first step in rebuilding trust, and his critics would have looked incredibly mean-spirited if they kept attacking him after that. People would have given him credit for his honesty and repentance, and he could've come out of the issue much less politically damaged.
Instead, he chose to perjure himself rather than even admit the truth, much less apologize. What he did with Lewinsky is a mostly a matter for his family to resolve, though there is a legitimate concern that he was abusing the power of his office to win sexual favors from a subordinate (corporate CEOs have been fired for less). But the willful breaking of the law by a sitting President, who is sworn to uphold the law, is an entirely different matter. It was an action that showed arrogance and contempt for the law, and it's my belief that it was that action that really got Clinton in hot water, not his marital infidelity.
Libertarians aren't against government - they see it as necessary for certain things like national defense. They do, however, recognize the temptation of government to believe it knows best and to take away citizens' liberties in its attempts to "help". To help limit that potential, they favor small government. But they're not anarchists who want to overthrow or otherwise remove all government.
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Interestingly, Slashdot traditionally had much more of a libertarian bent that it seems to these days (which as you said has become more left-leaning). Though libertarians (of both the conservative and liberal varieties) certainly have much to be upset with Bush about, so the anti-Bush commentary may not be simply a factor of a leftward shift on
Why should the user even HAVE to set the clock? The VCR I bought sets its clock automatically without me ever having done a darn thing (I can only assume it does it based on RF time broadcast signals). It updates itself for daylight savings time too, and sets the time properly after a power failure.
If more software used this mentality of eliminating unnecessary work for the user, and did it right, we'd all be better off. Windows OR Linux.
Maybe we have some greater confidence in US code. But US origin doesn't get you all that much more confidence.
The problem is that a large portion of the software the DoD uses is commercial off-the-shelf stuff. Those usually aren't written by contractors who've been investigated or cleared. So even if DoD banned use offshore-produced software, a foreign entity might not have that hard of a time infiltrating some US software company. It wouldn't take many such saboteurs if they were placed in the right companies.
Re: question #1, maybe you do something, maybe you don't. It depends on whether the US law change impacts your license. But any copyright license of necessity lives within the context of existing copyright law. If the law change, the license may no longer be what's needed. I don't see a lot the license author can do other than update his license if the law changes.
Re: the DRM restrictions being overly specific - they could be possible to weasel out of. But using general language also leaves lots of room for weasling, and it's the type of weaseling that lawyers do on a regular basis. There's some advantage to forbidding something both in general terms, and in specific terms, lest someone try to argue that the license doesn't forbid the specific act and thus implicitly allows it.
because value judgments can only be made within the (inherently unique) contextual construct of a person's culture.
If you're saying that you can't really escape the influence of culture on moral judgment, that's almost certainly true.
But saying that no culture has a monopoly on wisdom isn't the same as saying that there's no such thing as wisdom.
A society's moral judgments are essentially its accumulated wisdom about what behaviors are beneficial or harmful to its members,
expressed in a set of behavioral rules. It enforces those judgments to protect its members. Are the judgments sometimes based
on flawed information or reasoning? Yes. Are they sometimes dead-on? Yes.
How do we know which situation we're in? We can't, absolutely. So we should try to keep an open mind about the possibility
that our judgment on a particular issue could be wrong, and if the evidence is persuasive that we're wrong, we should change our
judgment. But we shouldn't throw out the act of judgment itself as invalid simply because sometimes you could make a mistake. The
process as a whole helps each of us live better lives.
I don't think the nationalizing of traditional state powers is a good thing in general. It can result in states being unable (or unwilling) to experiment with new solutions to widespread problems, because the federal government picked its desired solution (often suboptimal, either initially or years later as circumstances changed) and then denied funding to those who don't go along. Federal funding tends to be too huge to deny unless the federal solution is truly outrageous. And federal legislation of necessity is not going to be tailored to the needs of any given state.
On the other hand, it's occasionally useful as a kick in the pants when local/state governments have inadequate performance and are in no hurry to fix it. Setting some minimum standards, and letting the states figure out how to reach them, can stimulate the search for a solution while still allowing states to experiment with different ideas.
I.e. the feds could have a positive role to play if they take on a catalyst role rather than micromanaging. We'll see which they choose.
I think you're probably right about nutrition plaing a big role.
To make a completely unscientific speculation: both the high heritability and the bias towards industrial nations could also be a function of how much early-childhood (roughly defined as say, the first 3-4 years of life) intellectual stimulation the child has.
I.e. some folks may have a genetic predisposition to be more engaged with their young child, more tolerant/supportive of their child's inquisitiveness, etc. And similarly, in industrialized nations such behavior towards children may also have become a learned habit - education has become the dominant function in economic success, and we know it. We always hear stuff in the news about the latest trick that'll supposedly make your kid smarter (playing Mozart for your baby, a new teaching method, preschool, reading to your kids, etc). Many work, many don't, but overall children are probably being exposed to a much more stimulating environment as a result.
(Incidentally, that could also help explain the US racial differences in IQ. US racial differences are often mostly a function of socioeconomics rather than race per se. Those in less intellectually demanding jobs, on average, might not as frequently recognize the importance of fostering an intellectual environment so early in life, or might not have as many good role models for how to do so.)
Even if you're testing kids' IQ when they first start kindergarten, they're already 5 years old, which is a lot of past brain-development time. It's probably difficult to reliably measure level of previous intellectual stimulation after the fact (and I don't know if anyone's tried yet). But I suspect it has a big impact on how well kids do.
(This is what makes me angry everytime I see a mother telling her 5-year old to "shut up" after he asks an innocent question about the world around him. And I see that a lot when traveling. I asked those sorts of questions all the time as a child, and my parents never responded in that sort of way. I believe that's a large reason why I ended up doing very well academically. Scientific? no. But I suspect if my parents had told me to shut up enough times, my desire to learn would have been extinguished early on, which would've stunted my academic growth for years. )
If it was federal law that voting machines had to meet certain federally-defined minimum standards (hardware/software must be independently audited, machine must produce a paper trail, etc), then it's no longer a matter of persuasion so much as "do-this-or-face-the-punishment". Just like any other federal statute.
IANAL, but I'm guessing that at least for federal elections, this is within the federal government's power to do. Even if it were a power reserved to the states, Congress could easily tie compliance to receiving federal highway or other funding, which has been an effective strategy in the past for separation-of-powers concerns. And no county clerk in his right mind is going to buy/maintain two separate sets of voting equipment, one for federal elections and one for everything else. Thus would all elections become effectively subject to federal quality standards.
Your last paragraph identified the real issue, which is applications. Most people could care less what operating system they run. They just want to be able to use the computer in certain specific ways - write documents, play games, surf the web, etc. If people could get all their applications and not have to put up with all the Windows spyware and viruses, I bet they'd jump at alternatives. (Just look at the recent upswing in the popularity of Macs, despite the much smaller choice of software available on the Mac. ).
The primary thing that keeps people from switching is the network effects associated with Microsoft's dominant/monopoly position. Since they have 90-something percent of the market, it's often not economically feasible for software companies to provide versions of their application for non-Windows platforms. That lack of applications (or data/format compatible applications) in turn prevents people from choosing alternative operating systems, thus growing the Windows user base more, and making switching even less feasible. It'a vicious cycle (or a wonderful one, if you're Microsoft).
And in fact Microsoft does their best to reinforce that cycle. It's smart business strategy to lock-in your customers. IMO that's the largest reason why MS is always inventing proprietary APIs and formats to replace open standard ones (DirectX vs OpenGL, Microsoft's bastardized version of Kerberos authentication, IE-specific HTML/DOM extensions, XPS vs PDF, etc.). It makes it harder for software developers to port their applications to other platforms, and harder for users to switch. (Sometimes they actually make an improvement over the open standard. Sometimes they don't. But they make their own version nonetheless because people will use what's there, furthering the lock-in).
That's why the move to Web services is a great thing for competition. It increasingly forces Microsoft to compete on the merits of their software rather than on the basis of their monopoly's network effects.
Fair enough - an OS is probably a lot more complicated than the EEC module mentioned. But the point Animats was making is still valid. The costs of software failures by and large are borne by the users, not the manufacturer, and thus there is little incentive to fix the situation. When the only party with the power to fix a problem has little incentive to do so, chances are extremely high that it won't be fixed.
(The book Freakonomics had an interesting illustration of this phenomenon, whereby bank fraud was much lower in countries where banks were responsible for losses due to bank fraud, compared to countries where the consumer was held accountable. Why? Because when the consumer was accountable, he had no power to fix the situation to reclaim his lost funds. But where banks were held responsible, they had both a large interest in preventing fraud AND the ability to get it done.)
Now if I buy almost any consumer good, and I use it in the way it was intended, and if it breaks and causes me harm (financial, physical, or otherwise), the manufacturer usually has a legal liability. Especially if they knew of the defect and sold it anyway. That is a huge incentive to get the product right initially, and to recall defective products when a problem slips through. If my PC software breaks and causes me to lose thousands of dollars in lost data and/or recovery time, I have no recourse against the manufacturer. They have no legal liability, because software is licensed rather than sold, and of course every manufacturer's EULA essentially says "we the manufacturer take no responsibility whatsoever, this software is as-is and could eat your firstborn for breakfast". The manufacturer bears no cost at all for their failure. If I'm lucky the manufacturer will identify the source of the problem after the fact and post a patch on their website.
The best you can get in that situation is to hope that competition forces the manufacturer in question not to suck too much. But often, there is little competition (often by design, through use of proprietary formats and protocols to lock-in users who otherwise would switch to a competitor).
And that is indeed why software sucks. Because the user wants to fix the problem but can't, and the manufacturer can fix the problem but doesn't care enough to do so. This, IMO, is a large part of why open-source has become popular fairly quickly, particularly among corporate users. Because finally, the user has some ability to fix the problems that are causing him harm.
Automobiles can be done without if you live in an area that is densely populated. But a lot of Americans live in areas that are not cities, or even densely populated suburbs. Running a mass transit system out to every small town in America would be ruinously expensive and inefficient. Which is one reason why cars are so popular.
I suspect other reasons include lack of quality widespread mass transit in many areas, cultural associations of cars with personal freedom, the high cost of owning quality housing in cities (supply and demand; lots of people creates more demand than there is urban land to provide it), and fear of crime. Until we fix those problems, increasingly far-flung suburbs are going to continue to drive (no pun intended) the demand for cars.
The other obstacles are that A) it's incredibly expensive to build new mass transit systems, and B) they're almost always built and managed by governments (or government monopoly agencies), which are known neither for speed nor efficiency. For example, the northern Virginia area near Washington DC has some of the nation's worst traffic congestion (hour-long one-way commutes are not unusual), but it's still been taking years just to figure out how to extend the Metro rail system a relatively small distance further into the suburbs. Now that they've settled on the basic plan, it'll probably still take years to build. Add to that the refusal of state politicians to even let the local area tax itself to fund much-needed transportation improvements, and the situation's a mess.
You can also lower the learning curve of Emacs a bit with a package called CUA-mode (I've seen it for both Emacs and XEmacs). Basically it gives you the Windows-style cut/copy/paste commands, but without interfering with the traditional Emacs keystrokes (if no next is selected, C-x is the Emacs command; if text is selected, C-x is cut).
I've found that to be a lot easier than retraining my brain to not use the Windows-style keyboard shortcuts, especially since I still have to use a lot of Windows apps.
I'm sure many of the companies that are certified would probably agree with you. But the fact is that many companies, particularly those selling to government entities, are required to be certified in ISO 9000 or similar programs as a precondition of doing business. So they have to go along, at least to some extent, with the fiction that certification equals quality.
:-)
IMHO, certification really means repeatability (do you always follow some established process). Which is certainly important, especially when it comes to very expensive/complex programs, in order to mitigate risk. But it's not the same as quality. One can repeatably implement a lousy process or procedure. One can also be repeatably bad at implementing a good process (you can have the best design process in the world, but a bad designer will still give you a bad product).
I think the whole certification buzz comes about in large part because it's difficult to evaluate the other big factors that impact quality, which are largely human factors - talent, workmanship, management acumen, etc. Because customers have little visibility into those factors, they instead evaluate the factor most amenable to measurement - process compliance.
People with some common sense recognize the certification as a useful but limited tool for evaluating a company. It's the other folks that you seem to have encountered - the ones who think process compliance is the Holy Grail for business success. Those are the ones I try to avoid
Sure, it's possible that malicious code could get into OSS and make its way into secure systems. But the exact same thing is true for proprietary software.
US companies have people working for them that have no security clearance and could easily be a foreign agent. If anything, the commercial code is more at risk, because there's no independent review of the potentially compromised code. At least if someone's contributing to Linux you know somebody's looking over their patch. With a proprietary company, who knows what kind of process goes on? That lack of transparency makes commonly-used proprietary vendors a better target for espionage than OSS, IMO.
Regardless of the truth of the Echelon-Boeing story (which I'll assume for the sake of argument is true)...
Realize that the U.S. wouldn't be the only one playing that game. The French are notorious for doing it (and Airbus would be a likely beneficiary). And because of America's technological leadership at present, it's also the primary target for many economic espionage operations.
Quite frankly, I'd be surprised if there were many countries who were not using their intelligence capabilities this way (at least, those nations with the resources to do it, e.g. the U.S., most of Europe, Japan, China, Russia, Australia, etc). The FBI reports that there are 23 nations who do this systematically against the U.S. (source)
It's not so much the state as an entity that gains, it's the individual people who are in positions of state power. And since these folks are often either politicians, or political appointees, they have lots at stake. If they, or their political allies, get proven wrong on an issue, it may affect their chances of future employment/prestige/election/etc. If they support research that undermines their political party's message (or their party's special interest group allies), they may be seen as "caving in" to the "enemy" and won't get the same campaign contributions.
Especially in Washington these days, every issue is a seen not as an opportunity to find the truth or fix a problem but as a club with which to attack the opposition. So if some research looks more likely to be compatible with one's views than others, guess which is more likely to be funded?
It's not just global warming - it's any issue. The science is simply another weapon in the political arsenal, to be discarded when it's inconvenient.
Sure, people should argue based on the merits, not on who's making the argument. But when it comes to technical matters that impact politics, not everyone has the knowledge necessary to make an informed judgment. Must of us don't have PhDs in a relevant field of climate research, for example.
So when someone makes technical arguments that are beyond our expertise, how are we supposed to evaluate the truth of their claims? Since we can't evaulate the merits themselves, we're forced to fall back on our perceptions of the speaker's honesty,competence,etc. And that's why the mix of science and politics is, IMO, such a nasty combination. Most people would evaluate the merits if they could, but they can't, and those with vested interests know and exploit that fact (whether the vested interest be a scientist looking for money, or a politician looking for votes or affirmation of their own preconceptions, etc).
The main concern for consumers is that a DRM system not prevent them from using content they've bought in a legitimate way. In this context, "legitimate" means any use that does not infringe upon the copyright, e.g. "fair use".
DRM's main concern is that people not be able to buy a work and then redistribute it for free on the Internet. (A cynic might say that DRM's other main concern is to make people pay multiple times for the same content played on different devices/formats/etc, but let's ignore that for now).
Can the two "main concerns" be reconciled? I would argue that they cannot, if the concerns are defined as above. The traditional legal concept of "fair use" includes the right to excerpt pieces of a work for purposes of parody, teaching, criticism, etc. However, if the DRM system allows excerpts, how does one prevent an entire work from being reconstructed from individual excerpts? You could try limiting the number of excerpts allowed by the DRM, but this at least partially cripples the fair use right (people are likely, during the creative process, to change their mind over which excerpts they intend to use or actually distribute as part of their parody/criticism/etc. So they're likely to be hobbled by any artificial restriction).
Even if you had such an excerpt limit, what's to prevent a group of folks from collaborating over the Internet to each excerpt particular pieces and then sharing with each other to recreate the whole, and putting that online? It is thus impossible to have a DRM that truly prevents online redistribution and still protect customer's rights.
This says to me that we ought to step back and re-examine the problem at hand. IMO, the problem for the music/movie industries is not really how to prevent people from redistributing their work (for which DRM would be the solution). Their real problem is how to make sure that their profits do not erode due to such occurrences. To achieve that goal, the content companies do not need DRM and its accompanying headaches (lesser ease of use, customer frustration over inability to do legitimate things). They need a system where it's more convenient/desirable for customers to use a paid service than it is to troll for illegally ditributed files online.
What sort of strategy could achieve that? A combination of three things: A) lawsuits over massive public filesharing to make use of such systems perceived as legally risky, B) pollution of P2P networks with "fake" copies of songs to make the use of such systems less useful for infringing uses, and C) a paid service that provides value beyond simply the purchase of a song.
Why C? Because while the purchase value is important, it doesn't do much to keep someone using the service instead of another mechanism (possible illegal, possibly legal). Plus, that additional value is something beyond price cuts that content companies can use to entice customers. Maybe that value-added is simply access to your music collection from anywhere. Maybe that value is a recommendation engine that uses your current collection of songs as a database from which to recommend new music. Maybe it's something new we haven't thought of yet. But it's a strong incentive to stay within the system, and a source of further profits. Thus it's a win-win for the labels and their customers, rather than DRM's zero-sum game.
Record companies are already doing A and B, and they've taken beginning steps towards C with Apple's iTunes system (listen and buy online, play on an iPod or computer). Note that DRM isn't a major part of this solution - Apple has DRM, but it allows you to burn stuff to CD, which can then be "ripped" into an unprotected format. DRM is reduced to a speed-bump to deter the most casual copying (thus encouraging purchases rather than casual infringement), but is not an all-encompassing Big Brother. Which is fine, because it's just so convenient to get the music through the legal channel. And because it's still possible to get a non-DRM'd version with some effort, customers can
I can only assume it's because FISA requires that there be probable cause that the subject of the intercept be a foreign power or agent thereof.
Suppose the government captures a terrorist's cell phone addressbook. They then decide they'd like to eavesdrop on everyone in that list, in case some of them are also involved in terrorism. The administration may not be able to convince a FISA judge that simply being in someone's phone list is "probable cause" that the person is themselves a foreign agent or terrorist.
Details on FISA
The activists aren't just attacking scientists or "educated people" as being supposedly anti-Christian, they're attacking other Christians. Catholics, for example, have no quarrel with evolution or other aspects of modern science. The Church may not believe in *using* all the knowledge we have through modern science, e.g. contraception, but it recognizes that science and religion should not, and need not, be made into enemies.
Maybe it's the Church's own history with making this exact error (e.g. Galileo) that has given it the necessary perspective. But as a Catholic, I'm glad we've learned that lesson. Hopefully our friends in the anti-evolution camp will learn it someday too.
I would suggest that "omgwtf we rule 'cos we have CARS! F*ck public transport! YEEE-HAW!!!" is an inaccurate caricature of America. Many cities do in fact have decent public transportation systems. Do we come up short in many cases? Sure, particularly in densely populated suburbs. But it's not just because we've got some sort of cowboy cultural hostility to the idea.
For one, extending public transportation systems (typically some sort of rail system) to cover larger and larger areas costs a lot of money upfront. Many communities either don't have the money, or have other pressing problems that cause public transportation to be overlooked. Even in places like where I live, where transportation is one of the top political concerns, the (popular) idea of extending mass transit further to the suburbs has proven difficult to implement due to the cost.
Also realize that the United States is not nearly as densely populated as many other developed countries. It has many rural, sparsely populated communities. For these situations, public transportation simply isn't efficient or practical. Unless you expect entire communities to abandon their homes and move en masse to the cities, you need cars and roads to service those communities.
So you're saying to hell with the other 50+% who aren't a problem? They should be forced away from public sidewalks and stores by painful noises just because they're the same age as the troublemakers?
If there are too many teenagers causing problems, the laws ought to be toughened and the police ought to crack down. Punish the ones who are committing the crimes, not innocent people.
What other groups are we going to start to penalize for sharing some nominal characteristics with the bad apples? Do we ban all poor people from stores because crime is more prevalent amongst the poor? Do we ban all older people from driving an automobile because plenty of the elderly can't see so well anymore? No - we target the ones who have proven themselves to be a problem (arrests or failed vision tests, in these two examples). And that's as it should be. Punishing whole categories of people for the actions of a subset is not justice - it's an assault on, yes, the *rights* of law-abiding citizens.
Sure, Google has the right not to talk to News.com reporters. Even if it's just because they didn't like the allegedly "personal" content of an article. But using that right in this case is just infantile, which is why Google is getting such criticism.
And for that matter, I don't think the details were really all that "personal". CNET revealed that Google's CEO is worth about $1.5 billion, that he lives in an affluent California town where he attended a $10,000-a-plate Democratic fundraiser, and that he's an amateur pilot. Hardly skeletons in the closet, or even a source of the mildest embarassment.
Google is a great company with great services. And I really respect that they take their "don't be evil" motto seriously, especially in an age of so many corporate scandals. But that self-imposed moral standard, and the fact that most people really like Google, are all the more reason we should tell Google when we think it's acting immaturely. Why let it tarnish (even slightly) an excellent reputation over something so trivial?