I do a lot of donating money, and I also write open source stuff. I view a paypal link on a site that has taught me something or given me something as a must-click thing. From the flickr widget on my blog to ham radio stuff to tutorials, I donate.
And it isn't that it "doesn't count", it is that this is the Internet I wish to encourage, and that most definitely includes artists creating things I enjoy - fiction, visual arts, music, etc. There is a *direct* connection between support of art, and art. If we ignore this connection, art will suffer for it. I'm not going to be a part of taking us there by either intention or failure to care.
Most everything you said, I already addressed. WRT "regular people", they'll join when there is a benefit. Exactly as happened with "this" network. They left CI$ and AOL and BBS's and BIX because the Internet offered them stuff. If we can't make a network that offers stuff, then we failed, but I'm betting we can. Especially if we can keep the regulator's filthy hands off it somehow.
One thing that comes to mind is that when people they know move to the other network, they may want to be able to comm with them. For free. As opposed to the charges they pay for now. As for ISPs and routing, that can be decentralized too. Memory is cheap and so is storage. The realities that shaped the physical networks we work with today no longer apply in the same ways or amounts. I can *trivially* run a DNS, a mail server, etc. Which is not to say I'd have to. New ways of handling this are called for, decentralized ways. But those are just engineering problems, and I don't expect them to do anything but get crushed by engineers. The actual problem, again, is the FCC and the government, or the foreign equivalent.
Now, not saying this is "the" solution, but consider: devices now can know (because of GPS, mainly) exactly where they are. If not directly by GPS, then indirectly, just ask your iPod or iPad or Android. Now you know. Instead of a nameserver based system, your "email address" is tied to your *location*. So your home system is routed to by the network finding a geo-path to your door. You, in turn, when not home, can get your mail by connecting to your home the same way the mail found it. You send out a packet from X, it finds it's way home, reports the route, maybe optimizes or reroutes it, whatever, and gets you your mail.
Local lookups: I wanna talk to tommyJfoobar@tommyhome in say, pennsylvania. Ok, the network routes me to PA, the local network in PA finds tommyJfoobar, reports back to me, and then I can ask for a direct connection.
Again, not "the" answer, but "an" answer, and though it may be (probably is) full of holes, it only took me 30 seconds to think of it. Because I'm an engineer.:) Dealing with congress-scum, that's beyond my skillset.
how would that work to connect cities 30 miles away?
Hams have had this solved for decades. Slowly - because the frequencies the FCC lets them use are narrow - but reach is no problem. I can reliably hit an RF receiver well over 100 miles away, with no intermediate node, from no more august a perch than my roof and very little power - just a decent antenna. Give me a tower, and I'll beat that easily. 30 miles is nothing.
the hops needed to get from a city to another would be so many that you would end up with latency of minutes.
Nope. Not even the amateur radio network is that slow or hop-crippled, and it runs at old-school modem speeds. I've been able to reliably get packets back from Great Falls - hundreds of miles away - in one hop and about as many seconds using the Zortman VHF repeater. And remember: for a lot of things - web surfing, email, file downloads - latency isn't all that big a deal as compared to actual speed. Send a request, receive a bunch, ack a bunch in one shot. Which is *also* not to say that higher speed connections can't be implemented - they can. IR lasers can do a lot here. Optical comms can be righteously fast.
[how would that] replace intercontinental links?
That's tougher, but again, not impossible. Private satellites can be launched; hams have their own, as a matter of fact. That's the obvious way; a satellite has a great line of view in terms of how much of the earth it can see at any one time. You could use the sat as a wideband RF repeater (old school) or you could simply launch a positionable mirror (or any number of variations on that) and bounce a modulated IR laser off of it (much better idea.) Still some latency, but lots and lots of bandwidth, and it'd go right through clouds; IR doesn't act like visible light as we know it.
I'm telling you, it could be made to work. Hard? Absolutely. And as far as commercial stuff goes, they'd probably stay clear. But the other benefits... huge. Essentially Free global communications.
The most difficult problems here are legal, not technical. Keep the FCC in mind at all times; with a formal mandate to make the best use of the spectrum possible, they gave it away wholesale to corporate interests and kept the citizens off it as if they had plague. They *still* won't give out a low power FM license without incredible and ridiculous amounts of hoop-jumping. That's where the challenge lies. Either we go around them... very tough, and there's danger... or we beat some sense into congress - not dangerous, just nearly impossible. Other countries have similar problems.
Actually, we should be aiming at no physical infrastructure at all. RF, light - those should be the "infrastructure." Think just how ridiculous it is that they shoehorned all these wifi radios into our homes, and these units can't talk to each other, or make a decent network. It's appalling, really.
If this - making a new infrastructure - were taken seriously, we'd best use it to get out from under the hands of those with money right up front. Use radios and light and go *around* them. As soon as it costs a zillion bucks to lay a required cable, you're in their hands and you can't get out.
I'm not saying it's easy, or that there wouldn't be serious obstacles, but I *am* saying there is no other way to reach the desired goal - a truly free network.
What is the population density around your library? My cynical nature hints to me the answer to the difference in library attendance will be found there. Here, we've got 5,000 people county-wide (5,062 square miles) who have no alternative; one library; and perhaps 2...3 of those people might be found in the library (not counting the librarian) if you came in at just the right time. It's a pretty nice library, too, all things considered.
I'm going to guess you've got a far higher client population and higher population density for your library. Yes? No?
I am under the impression that the percentage of the US population that visits a library regularly -- who isn't actually in college -- is just about zero.
As for it being sad, I dunno about that. Paying for reading materials always seemed like a smarter way to ensure we'd have more reading materials to me. Libraries - outside of universities and outright archives - always struck me as a bad idea. The implication, however subtle, that knowledge isn't worth paying for, or should be free, seems self-destructive.
...also, reduce download size by factor of ten to a hundred, eliminate animations/video, automate subscriptions, and make sure I can read at any magnification I want with a column-aware zoom tool... then I'd be interested. Oh, wait... also, they need content I'd be interested in, which Wired, bless its edgy little heart, doesn't supply. QST? Sure, I'd subscribe to that if it was reasonably sized and priced. Make too, maybe. A men's magazine here or there, somewhere I could get away from the insane notion that liberation and equal rights means women are bemused into the stunningly misguided idea that they look as good dressing in mens clothes as they do in actual feminine attire.
I can't be sure based on your description, but I *think* it's already been done. Check out Zineo.
The pages turn, it's really "magazine-like." Very good looking, very familiar. I read quite a few magazines using it. The subscription update mechanism is pretty clever, too.
The only downside? Centerfolds.:) Just not enough monitor space on most desktops.
I'm just going to jump in here and rain -- tropically -- on your parade: Most people don't use the library. For anything. Speaking as a devoted library user who doesn't mind in the least paying for music, magazines and books. Of the subset of the population that actually reads, most still don't use the library on any regular basis, if at all. If they did, we'd need a lot more of them, I can tell you that. Our library is quiet as a tomb, and not just because people are behaving well. I can walk several aisles before I even *see* another person. The reading tables are mostly empty. The sound booths are empty. The librarian, with access to darned near anything you can think of via the inter-library loan system, sits there and just... reads. The library cat leaps into my arms when I show up. That's how pitiful library utilization is. I don't even know why we *have* a library, based on utilization.
The reason I don't buy canned magazines for my iPad is they take up lots of space that I'd much rather stuff with apps, music, and data like I/Q HF spectrum recordings (see the iSDR app... now we're [where "we" is a subset consisting of hams and SWLs] *really* having fun.) Well, that, and most magazines suck really bad, but they do that in paper form as well.
I *do* buy books for my iPad, and in pretty fair quantities -- don't buy printed books any longer at all. But I don't try to get them, or music, or games, or apps, or films, for free. Neither does my sweetheart or our kids. We understand the relationship between the elbow room required to create, the income required to obtain that elbow room, and our role in providing said income. The lack of that understanding, IMHO, is the basis for most of this copyright infringement: a clueless, egocentric and ethically bankrupt feeling of entitlement. Usually justified by uber-crapola like "information wants to be free" and "but by copying, I didn't take anything." That kind of childish thinking is absolutely appalling.
Well said. I agree. Same thing here: Work all day with LCDs (six on my desk), play with the iPad all I want, and no eyestrain. Going outside? Yeah, that gives me eyestrain.
I read for many hours at a time; generally I read (fiction) from start to finish in one event. I have experienced absolutely no eyestrain with the iPad. I have control over the font size, the brightness, and I can force the reader to my preferred orientation. This is the Kindle app in particular I'm talking about, I haven't bought anything for the other readers yet. I've had the kindle app since they released it and my iPad has hundreds of books on it (all of which I've read.) I have no problem with the iPad's reading capabilities except, perhaps, in the very brightest sun -- which is a situation I would *never* try to read in anyway, because I value my eye health. However, inside the car on a bright, sunny day - no problem, again, can read for hours, no eyestrain.
Our actual Kindle, on the other hand, can't be read in the dark, changes pages too slowly, and doesn't allow me to keep an eye on my email and other stuff, not to mention my chess and scrabble games or provide access to the zillion and one useful apps I carry with me in my iPad. The iPad costs a lot more, but you get a lot more, and the only legitimate downside, if you really want to push the point, is the battery life as a reader can "only" be stretched to about 12 hours.
The Kindle is a low-budget, low-performance e-reader. The iPad is a high-budget, high-performance e-reader with a ton of extra capability. As in, it's a tablet computer.
I heard about this thing that government-funded researchers were working on called the ARPANET. Sounded kind of neat.
Here, by "government funded researchers", you actually mean academics, mind you commercial interests did the vast majority of the work turning the network into... a network. Yes, our colleges often produce very useful things, which the government turns right around and screws up with (using your example) warrant-free surveillance (they don't even get to the level of probable cause), over-regulation, legislation, and general interference. Yes, the government has become involved, and it's fairly easy to tell by examining the things they've done to their "series of tubes", not to mention the things they are about to do.
Definitely keeping the net on the list of major government screw-ups.
But anyone who puts forth the proposition "the federal government has never done anything worthwhile!" on an Internet forum, as I have often seen, demonstrates ignorance that is so ironic that it's entertaining.
I would not put forth such a proposition. In fact, if you read my response to the first reply, you'll see I agreed with three of their points, and added another of my own.
My observation isn't that they're all bad; just that they're very, very bad.
Soft science as you call it should not be conflated with astrology - like many other practices astrology is closer to a very ancient and wonderful art- that of separating people from their money, than it is to scientific investigation. But then perhaps i would say that, being a virgo.
[rises to feet] Extremely well said, sir, though I cannot agree, having been born under a different sign. Still, may I offer you a beer, or perhaps another affordable drink of your choice?*
* Offer redeemable only in rural Montana. Special conditions may apply, including extreme road trip or enduring Amtrack, tolerance for high prairie scenery, OSX evangelism, and secondary citizen status to the cats who run the place.
A noble goal, but success... no. I own property on a major river and a mountain creek in Pennsylvania, and neither are nearly as clean as they were when I was a kid (the 1950's.) Here in Montana where I reside, to the extent that the water is decent, it is a result of state and local efforts. And that's not to say that the water is good, mind you, just that there are times when it doesn't kill the fish outright. You're still not well advised to the eat the darned things. If it isn't runoff from cow pastures or poisons leaching into the water supplies from the gold mining operations, it's just plain old crappy water. We've got a huge water plant here, and the water from my tap tastes like the metal men pissed into it.
2. (Relatively) Clean air.
Again, a noble goal, but no. The skies are filled with particulates, even as rural as I am, I see them (though granted they make for fine sunsets here in Montana), and when I fly into NYC or LA, there are days it is difficult to see the ground -- and not because of clouds. And the federal government has done nothing about light pollution as well. There are few places - like Flagstaff that have done the right thing on their own, but overall, it's a clusterfrappe.
3. (Mostly) Society based on rule of law.
That would be a good thing if federal law was a good thing. But it isn't. Federal law (ok, and state too) is often blatantly unconstitutional and almost always wrongheaded. From drug law to to interfering in internal state affairs (but I repeat myself) to torture to 4th amendment abuse to letting war criminals like Bush walk away unscathed, to bailing out those "too big to fail" at the expense of us "too small to prevent it", the feds have little to actually show that they use the law to benefit society at large, rather than as a cynical exercise in cronyism.
4. (Generally) Secure borders.
Ah. You mean the demotion of the promise "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me" back into no more than meaningless poetry. And you are also no doubt referring to the illegal warrantless searches conducted by the feds inside our borders. Yes, the feds are trying to "secure" our borders, more's the pity. No, can't give you this one, either. We are neither actually additionally secure by virtue of the ridiculous theater of border security, nor do we reside anywhere near the high ground we used to when we considered a person worthy by what they could do in our society rather than what paperwork they had. Thank goodness my ancestors got here before the "papers, please" insanity took hold.
5. (Mostly) Significant protections for individuals from the Government.
To the very limited extent that these protections still exist, they are the result of authority not given to the government, rather than by any action taken by them. Though lately, power violating those protections has commonly been exerted without authority anyway, so I'm not inclined to give you this one under any circumstances. I would, however, not want to miss this opportunity to point to the absolute failure of all three branches of the federal government to honor their oaths. And I'd bring up the FCC's deep and explicit role in repressing the citizen's ability to speak to each other in favor of the corporation's ability to dictate downstream, but it makes me crazy, so I won't do that. [wipes spittle from chin]
I will stipulate that in the case of some national parks (Tock's Island 100% excepted, what a complete foul-up that is), the government is doing good. Glacier park, for instance, is a pleasure to visit, and I am truly grateful the region is being conserved.
I would like to invite you to add to that notion - parks are general an example of doing good - by listing a few areas where you are under the impression the government is doing good.
Not trying to do good, mind you, but actually succeeding.
I find it all too easy to list areas of abject failure and areas where intent is probably good but the implementation and the results... terrible, but I'd like to see a list that would encourage me to think positively about the feds. I'm having real trouble thinking of appropriate areas. Perhaps it's just me.
The problem is that the really dangerous intent is the intent to take someone to court. Because that's where the harm begins in serious measure. Money, time, even reputation.
That's not a given. Particularly in the soft sciences - psychology, for instance - it is extremely difficult to control for all factors (I'm more inclined to say nearly impossible) and so replication of results can be subsumed by other effects, or even simply not work at all. You know that whole generation gap thing? That's a good example of groups of people who are different enough that the reactions they will have to certain subject matter can be polar opposites. So something that was "definitively determined" in 1960 may be statistically irrelevant among the current generation.
That's just one example of how squishy this all is. Without having to bring lying into it at all. And then, there will be liars; and there will be people who draw conclusions without scientific rigor at all, simply because it's just too difficult, expensive or time-consuming to attempt to confirm the ideas at hand. And there is the outlier personality; the one who accounts for those other few percent -- all the declarations of "this is how it is" are false for them right out of the gate.
Hard sciences simply lend themselves a lot better to repeatability. Where I think we go wrong is assigning the same certainties to the claims of the soft scientists. I have personally seen psychiatrists, best intent not in doubt, completely err in characterizing a situation to the great detriment of the people involved, because the court took the psychiatrist's word as gospel truth.
All science is an exercise in metaphor, but soft science is an exercise of metaphor that is almost always far too flexible. One place you can see this happening is the trendy / cyclic adherence to Froyd, Jung, Maslow, Rogers and so forth... the "correct" way to raise babies... Ferberizing, etc. This stuff isn't generally lies at all, but it also generally isn't "right." Good intentions do not automatically make good science.
Serious medicine is another good example. Something that might work very well for you might not work at all for me; get the wrong group of test subjects, and your results will skew or worse. This is an area that I think is fair to call a hard science, but where we just don' t know enough about the systems involved. Generally speaking, I don't think our oncologist lies to us; further, I think he's pretty well aware of the limitations of his practice and the state of knowledge that informs it; but they just don't know enough. To which I hopefully add, "yet."
On a personal level - since that's all I can really affect - I treat soft science about the same way I do astrology. If you believe it, you'll probably attempt to modify your behavior because of the predictions, which in turn may, or may not, affect your actual outcome. If you don't, it's either irrelevant or too uncertain to trust anyway. So it's low confidence all the way.
I do, however, still place very high confidence in Boyle's law for gasses. Hard science works very well.:)
Exactly. Weedcrackers, meat flakes, soyburgers, none of which were central to the plot other than to flesh out the overpopulation/food problem. The movie was a brain-dead Hollywood POS.
Your duty as a citizen is to be a dick to the cops?
Sometimes the citizen's duty conflicts with what the cops are told to do, particularly when they are stomping all over the citizen's well-defined rights. Which the overzealous and/or uninformed may interpret as "being a dick." You might ask Rosa Parks about that. Or are you already certain she should have meekly gone to the back of the bus?
You don't have to be a dick about it, but you *can* say, "Officer, in order to search me or my property, you need probable cause and a warrant. I will absolutely comply with such a search when presented with a proper warrant. May I see the warrant, please? If you need to get one, I can wait here with you, no problem."
If you go to jail for that, you're not a criminal - you're a hero.
I believe the point is generally understood to be that the government has never been given authority to be bothering the citizens unless it has probable cause to do so. And that it is therefore not just "counterculture heroism" to hold them to that standard, but your duty as a citizen. Unless, of course, you are one of those that thinks the constitution is a meaningless piece of paper, and you enjoy watching the government slip into an authoritarian, non-constitutionally authorized mode of operation.
Right. It isn't about the passengers. It never was. It's about protecting the airline's investment in aircraft using the taxpayer's resources, and simultaneously trying to keep the public confidence up in flying so that the corporation doesn't lose money that way, either. If it was about the population, as has been pointed out many times, we would fix our roads, legalize pot, put alcohol on a list of absolute most dangerous drugs ever, regulate prostitution, etc. The government has absolutely zero interest in "saving the people."
Remember: The government is controlled by corporations. You can find the interests of those corporations at the bottom of nearly every government action taken. Not yours, and not "the people's." That's why analyzing the TSA in terms of cost-effectiveness and "lives saved" is a worthless process. It's like analyzing the menu at McDonald's for vitamins. That's not why anything is on the menu. You're in the wrong place, looking at the wrong things.
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I do a lot of donating money, and I also write open source stuff. I view a paypal link on a site that has taught me something or given me something as a must-click thing. From the flickr widget on my blog to ham radio stuff to tutorials, I donate.
And it isn't that it "doesn't count", it is that this is the Internet I wish to encourage, and that most definitely includes artists creating things I enjoy - fiction, visual arts, music, etc. There is a *direct* connection between support of art, and art. If we ignore this connection, art will suffer for it. I'm not going to be a part of taking us there by either intention or failure to care.
Most everything you said, I already addressed. WRT "regular people", they'll join when there is a benefit. Exactly as happened with "this" network. They left CI$ and AOL and BBS's and BIX because the Internet offered them stuff. If we can't make a network that offers stuff, then we failed, but I'm betting we can. Especially if we can keep the regulator's filthy hands off it somehow.
One thing that comes to mind is that when people they know move to the other network, they may want to be able to comm with them. For free. As opposed to the charges they pay for now. As for ISPs and routing, that can be decentralized too. Memory is cheap and so is storage. The realities that shaped the physical networks we work with today no longer apply in the same ways or amounts. I can *trivially* run a DNS, a mail server, etc. Which is not to say I'd have to. New ways of handling this are called for, decentralized ways. But those are just engineering problems, and I don't expect them to do anything but get crushed by engineers. The actual problem, again, is the FCC and the government, or the foreign equivalent.
Now, not saying this is "the" solution, but consider: devices now can know (because of GPS, mainly) exactly where they are. If not directly by GPS, then indirectly, just ask your iPod or iPad or Android. Now you know. Instead of a nameserver based system, your "email address" is tied to your *location*. So your home system is routed to by the network finding a geo-path to your door. You, in turn, when not home, can get your mail by connecting to your home the same way the mail found it. You send out a packet from X, it finds it's way home, reports the route, maybe optimizes or reroutes it, whatever, and gets you your mail.
Local lookups: I wanna talk to tommyJfoobar@tommyhome in say, pennsylvania. Ok, the network routes me to PA, the local network in PA finds tommyJfoobar, reports back to me, and then I can ask for a direct connection.
Again, not "the" answer, but "an" answer, and though it may be (probably is) full of holes, it only took me 30 seconds to think of it. Because I'm an engineer. :) Dealing with congress-scum, that's beyond my skillset.
Hams have had this solved for decades. Slowly - because the frequencies the FCC lets them use are narrow - but reach is no problem. I can reliably hit an RF receiver well over 100 miles away, with no intermediate node, from no more august a perch than my roof and very little power - just a decent antenna. Give me a tower, and I'll beat that easily. 30 miles is nothing.
Nope. Not even the amateur radio network is that slow or hop-crippled, and it runs at old-school modem speeds. I've been able to reliably get packets back from Great Falls - hundreds of miles away - in one hop and about as many seconds using the Zortman VHF repeater. And remember: for a lot of things - web surfing, email, file downloads - latency isn't all that big a deal as compared to actual speed. Send a request, receive a bunch, ack a bunch in one shot. Which is *also* not to say that higher speed connections can't be implemented - they can. IR lasers can do a lot here. Optical comms can be righteously fast.
That's tougher, but again, not impossible. Private satellites can be launched; hams have their own, as a matter of fact. That's the obvious way; a satellite has a great line of view in terms of how much of the earth it can see at any one time. You could use the sat as a wideband RF repeater (old school) or you could simply launch a positionable mirror (or any number of variations on that) and bounce a modulated IR laser off of it (much better idea.) Still some latency, but lots and lots of bandwidth, and it'd go right through clouds; IR doesn't act like visible light as we know it.
I'm telling you, it could be made to work. Hard? Absolutely. And as far as commercial stuff goes, they'd probably stay clear. But the other benefits... huge. Essentially Free global communications.
The most difficult problems here are legal, not technical. Keep the FCC in mind at all times; with a formal mandate to make the best use of the spectrum possible, they gave it away wholesale to corporate interests and kept the citizens off it as if they had plague. They *still* won't give out a low power FM license without incredible and ridiculous amounts of hoop-jumping. That's where the challenge lies. Either we go around them... very tough, and there's danger... or we beat some sense into congress - not dangerous, just nearly impossible. Other countries have similar problems.
Actually, we should be aiming at no physical infrastructure at all. RF, light - those should be the "infrastructure." Think just how ridiculous it is that they shoehorned all these wifi radios into our homes, and these units can't talk to each other, or make a decent network. It's appalling, really.
If this - making a new infrastructure - were taken seriously, we'd best use it to get out from under the hands of those with money right up front. Use radios and light and go *around* them. As soon as it costs a zillion bucks to lay a required cable, you're in their hands and you can't get out.
I'm not saying it's easy, or that there wouldn't be serious obstacles, but I *am* saying there is no other way to reach the desired goal - a truly free network.
What is the population density around your library? My cynical nature hints to me the answer to the difference in library attendance will be found there. Here, we've got 5,000 people county-wide (5,062 square miles) who have no alternative; one library; and perhaps 2...3 of those people might be found in the library (not counting the librarian) if you came in at just the right time. It's a pretty nice library, too, all things considered.
I'm going to guess you've got a far higher client population and higher population density for your library. Yes? No?
I am under the impression that the percentage of the US population that visits a library regularly -- who isn't actually in college -- is just about zero.
As for it being sad, I dunno about that. Paying for reading materials always seemed like a smarter way to ensure we'd have more reading materials to me. Libraries - outside of universities and outright archives - always struck me as a bad idea. The implication, however subtle, that knowledge isn't worth paying for, or should be free, seems self-destructive.
I can't be sure based on your description, but I *think* it's already been done. Check out Zineo.
The pages turn, it's really "magazine-like." Very good looking, very familiar. I read quite a few magazines using it. The subscription update mechanism is pretty clever, too.
The only downside? Centerfolds. :) Just not enough monitor space on most desktops.
I'm just going to jump in here and rain -- tropically -- on your parade: Most people don't use the library. For anything. Speaking as a devoted library user who doesn't mind in the least paying for music, magazines and books. Of the subset of the population that actually reads, most still don't use the library on any regular basis, if at all. If they did, we'd need a lot more of them, I can tell you that. Our library is quiet as a tomb, and not just because people are behaving well. I can walk several aisles before I even *see* another person. The reading tables are mostly empty. The sound booths are empty. The librarian, with access to darned near anything you can think of via the inter-library loan system, sits there and just... reads. The library cat leaps into my arms when I show up. That's how pitiful library utilization is. I don't even know why we *have* a library, based on utilization.
The reason I don't buy canned magazines for my iPad is they take up lots of space that I'd much rather stuff with apps, music, and data like I/Q HF spectrum recordings (see the iSDR app... now we're [where "we" is a subset consisting of hams and SWLs] *really* having fun.) Well, that, and most magazines suck really bad, but they do that in paper form as well.
I *do* buy books for my iPad, and in pretty fair quantities -- don't buy printed books any longer at all. But I don't try to get them, or music, or games, or apps, or films, for free. Neither does my sweetheart or our kids. We understand the relationship between the elbow room required to create, the income required to obtain that elbow room, and our role in providing said income. The lack of that understanding, IMHO, is the basis for most of this copyright infringement: a clueless, egocentric and ethically bankrupt feeling of entitlement. Usually justified by uber-crapola like "information wants to be free" and "but by copying, I didn't take anything." That kind of childish thinking is absolutely appalling.
Well said. I agree. Same thing here: Work all day with LCDs (six on my desk), play with the iPad all I want, and no eyestrain. Going outside? Yeah, that gives me eyestrain.
I read for many hours at a time; generally I read (fiction) from start to finish in one event. I have experienced absolutely no eyestrain with the iPad. I have control over the font size, the brightness, and I can force the reader to my preferred orientation. This is the Kindle app in particular I'm talking about, I haven't bought anything for the other readers yet. I've had the kindle app since they released it and my iPad has hundreds of books on it (all of which I've read.) I have no problem with the iPad's reading capabilities except, perhaps, in the very brightest sun -- which is a situation I would *never* try to read in anyway, because I value my eye health. However, inside the car on a bright, sunny day - no problem, again, can read for hours, no eyestrain.
Our actual Kindle, on the other hand, can't be read in the dark, changes pages too slowly, and doesn't allow me to keep an eye on my email and other stuff, not to mention my chess and scrabble games or provide access to the zillion and one useful apps I carry with me in my iPad. The iPad costs a lot more, but you get a lot more, and the only legitimate downside, if you really want to push the point, is the battery life as a reader can "only" be stretched to about 12 hours.
The Kindle is a low-budget, low-performance e-reader. The iPad is a high-budget, high-performance e-reader with a ton of extra capability. As in, it's a tablet computer.
I use SACD. I don't have a great deal of media, but I appreciate being able to play what I have.
Hey now. That's not a very nice way to talk about crows.
Here, by "government funded researchers", you actually mean academics, mind you commercial interests did the vast majority of the work turning the network into... a network. Yes, our colleges often produce very useful things, which the government turns right around and screws up with (using your example) warrant-free surveillance (they don't even get to the level of probable cause), over-regulation, legislation, and general interference. Yes, the government has become involved, and it's fairly easy to tell by examining the things they've done to their "series of tubes", not to mention the things they are about to do.
Definitely keeping the net on the list of major government screw-ups.
I would not put forth such a proposition. In fact, if you read my response to the first reply, you'll see I agreed with three of their points, and added another of my own.
My observation isn't that they're all bad; just that they're very, very bad.
[rises to feet] Extremely well said, sir, though I cannot agree, having been born under a different sign. Still, may I offer you a beer, or perhaps another affordable drink of your choice?*
* Offer redeemable only in rural Montana. Special conditions may apply, including extreme road trip or enduring Amtrack, tolerance for high prairie scenery, OSX evangelism, and secondary citizen status to the cats who run the place.
Well, all right, but besides that...
A noble goal, but success... no. I own property on a major river and a mountain creek in Pennsylvania, and neither are nearly as clean as they were when I was a kid (the 1950's.) Here in Montana where I reside, to the extent that the water is decent, it is a result of state and local efforts. And that's not to say that the water is good, mind you, just that there are times when it doesn't kill the fish outright. You're still not well advised to the eat the darned things. If it isn't runoff from cow pastures or poisons leaching into the water supplies from the gold mining operations, it's just plain old crappy water. We've got a huge water plant here, and the water from my tap tastes like the metal men pissed into it.
Again, a noble goal, but no. The skies are filled with particulates, even as rural as I am, I see them (though granted they make for fine sunsets here in Montana), and when I fly into NYC or LA, there are days it is difficult to see the ground -- and not because of clouds. And the federal government has done nothing about light pollution as well. There are few places - like Flagstaff that have done the right thing on their own, but overall, it's a clusterfrappe.
That would be a good thing if federal law was a good thing. But it isn't. Federal law (ok, and state too) is often blatantly unconstitutional and almost always wrongheaded. From drug law to to interfering in internal state affairs (but I repeat myself) to torture to 4th amendment abuse to letting war criminals like Bush walk away unscathed, to bailing out those "too big to fail" at the expense of us "too small to prevent it", the feds have little to actually show that they use the law to benefit society at large, rather than as a cynical exercise in cronyism.
Ah. You mean the demotion of the promise "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me" back into no more than meaningless poetry. And you are also no doubt referring to the illegal warrantless searches conducted by the feds inside our borders. Yes, the feds are trying to "secure" our borders, more's the pity. No, can't give you this one, either. We are neither actually additionally secure by virtue of the ridiculous theater of border security, nor do we reside anywhere near the high ground we used to when we considered a person worthy by what they could do in our society rather than what paperwork they had. Thank goodness my ancestors got here before the "papers, please" insanity took hold.
To the very limited extent that these protections still exist, they are the result of authority not given to the government, rather than by any action taken by them. Though lately, power violating those protections has commonly been exerted without authority anyway, so I'm not inclined to give you this one under any circumstances. I would, however, not want to miss this opportunity to point to the absolute failure of all three branches of the federal government to honor their oaths. And I'd bring up the FCC's deep and explicit role in repressing the citizen's ability to speak to each other in favor of the corporation's ability to dictate downstream, but it makes me crazy, so I won't do that. [wipes spittle from chin]
Roads. Yes, defi
I will stipulate that in the case of some national parks (Tock's Island 100% excepted, what a complete foul-up that is), the government is doing good. Glacier park, for instance, is a pleasure to visit, and I am truly grateful the region is being conserved.
I would like to invite you to add to that notion - parks are general an example of doing good - by listing a few areas where you are under the impression the government is doing good.
Not trying to do good, mind you, but actually succeeding.
I find it all too easy to list areas of abject failure and areas where intent is probably good but the implementation and the results... terrible, but I'd like to see a list that would encourage me to think positively about the feds. I'm having real trouble thinking of appropriate areas. Perhaps it's just me.
The problem is that the really dangerous intent is the intent to take someone to court. Because that's where the harm begins in serious measure. Money, time, even reputation.
That's not a given. Particularly in the soft sciences - psychology, for instance - it is extremely difficult to control for all factors (I'm more inclined to say nearly impossible) and so replication of results can be subsumed by other effects, or even simply not work at all. You know that whole generation gap thing? That's a good example of groups of people who are different enough that the reactions they will have to certain subject matter can be polar opposites. So something that was "definitively determined" in 1960 may be statistically irrelevant among the current generation.
That's just one example of how squishy this all is. Without having to bring lying into it at all. And then, there will be liars; and there will be people who draw conclusions without scientific rigor at all, simply because it's just too difficult, expensive or time-consuming to attempt to confirm the ideas at hand. And there is the outlier personality; the one who accounts for those other few percent -- all the declarations of "this is how it is" are false for them right out of the gate.
Hard sciences simply lend themselves a lot better to repeatability. Where I think we go wrong is assigning the same certainties to the claims of the soft scientists. I have personally seen psychiatrists, best intent not in doubt, completely err in characterizing a situation to the great detriment of the people involved, because the court took the psychiatrist's word as gospel truth.
All science is an exercise in metaphor, but soft science is an exercise of metaphor that is almost always far too flexible. One place you can see this happening is the trendy / cyclic adherence to Froyd, Jung, Maslow, Rogers and so forth... the "correct" way to raise babies... Ferberizing, etc. This stuff isn't generally lies at all, but it also generally isn't "right." Good intentions do not automatically make good science.
Serious medicine is another good example. Something that might work very well for you might not work at all for me; get the wrong group of test subjects, and your results will skew or worse. This is an area that I think is fair to call a hard science, but where we just don' t know enough about the systems involved. Generally speaking, I don't think our oncologist lies to us; further, I think he's pretty well aware of the limitations of his practice and the state of knowledge that informs it; but they just don't know enough. To which I hopefully add, "yet."
On a personal level - since that's all I can really affect - I treat soft science about the same way I do astrology. If you believe it, you'll probably attempt to modify your behavior because of the predictions, which in turn may, or may not, affect your actual outcome. If you don't, it's either irrelevant or too uncertain to trust anyway. So it's low confidence all the way.
I do, however, still place very high confidence in Boyle's law for gasses. Hard science works very well. :)
Exactly. Weedcrackers, meat flakes, soyburgers, none of which were central to the plot other than to flesh out the overpopulation/food problem. The movie was a brain-dead Hollywood POS.
"Meat flakes. That sure sounds nice!"
Sometimes the citizen's duty conflicts with what the cops are told to do, particularly when they are stomping all over the citizen's well-defined rights. Which the overzealous and/or uninformed may interpret as "being a dick." You might ask Rosa Parks about that. Or are you already certain she should have meekly gone to the back of the bus?
You don't have to be a dick about it, but you *can* say, "Officer, in order to search me or my property, you need probable cause and a warrant. I will absolutely comply with such a search when presented with a proper warrant. May I see the warrant, please? If you need to get one, I can wait here with you, no problem."
If you go to jail for that, you're not a criminal - you're a hero.
Soylent green is not people. RTFB.
I believe the point is generally understood to be that the government has never been given authority to be bothering the citizens unless it has probable cause to do so. And that it is therefore not just "counterculture heroism" to hold them to that standard, but your duty as a citizen. Unless, of course, you are one of those that thinks the constitution is a meaningless piece of paper, and you enjoy watching the government slip into an authoritarian, non-constitutionally authorized mode of operation.
Right. It isn't about the passengers. It never was. It's about protecting the airline's investment in aircraft using the taxpayer's resources, and simultaneously trying to keep the public confidence up in flying so that the corporation doesn't lose money that way, either. If it was about the population, as has been pointed out many times, we would fix our roads, legalize pot, put alcohol on a list of absolute most dangerous drugs ever, regulate prostitution, etc. The government has absolutely zero interest in "saving the people."
Remember: The government is controlled by corporations. You can find the interests of those corporations at the bottom of nearly every government action taken. Not yours, and not "the people's." That's why analyzing the TSA in terms of cost-effectiveness and "lives saved" is a worthless process. It's like analyzing the menu at McDonald's for vitamins. That's not why anything is on the menu. You're in the wrong place, looking at the wrong things.
Well said.