The reason that's not an easy story to believe is that if someone was making a FAKE lunar rover film, they'd have to put in extra effort to make a rock appear in just one frame. What in the world would be the motivation behind putting in such extra effort to make the film LESS credible? It's not going to happen by "accident" and it's not something someone involved would WANT to do on purpose.
That flag was a rigged prop to look "right" on the moon. If you look at the photo more carefully you can see that the top of the flag is wrapped around a straight rod to hold it out. Also, the 'wavy' look is not from wind. It's the same effect you get when you hang any flexible sheet like that. That flag is wavy for the same reason your shower curtain is wavy when it's at rest just hanging there.
Ironicly, there *were* some special effects going on here. They tried making the flag look like it would on earth, for the viewers at home, and the idiot hoax supporters picked up on that as "evidence" against it being really on the moon.
1 - Get the legal system to stop behaving as if corporations should enjoy the same rights as individuals.
(or)
2 - Get the legal system to equalize sentencing so individuals and corporations run the same risks for breaking the same laws.
Number 2 would be the better solution, if only it was physically possible (you can't throw a corporation in prison). So #1 should be resorted to instead. This notion that a corporation enjoys the same rights as a person is a BAD IDEA given that a corporation doesn't incur the same responsiblities as a person. In fact, absolving the decision makers of any personal responsibility (fiscal or legal) in the business' activities is the major reason FOR incorporating.
I want some equality in the justice system. One way or the other. So long as the current system continues, where corporations enjoy the rights of individuals without the responsibilities, they will continue to behave unethically.
Protecting stokholders is a good thing because they are going to be rather ignorant of the operational decisions made by the company (and that's where there's potential for criminal actions). Protecting those who actually make those decisions is not a good thing.
Although the law in theory applies to corporations as if they were people, in practice it doesn't because there are fewer sentencing options to use against corporations. A person can be sentenced to prison, or in more barborous socities like the USA, even killed. A person can be fined a sum larger than the person's total financial worth (putting him in debt). On the other hand a corporation cannot. The only option for sentencing a corporation is either a fine, and that fine must be small enough that the corporation is actually able to pay it, or a dismantling of the corporation (which unlike an actual human being, doesn't have a personal fear of death, so that doesn't really matter.)
The risk that a corporation takes if it breaks a law is much smaller than the risk an actual flesh and blood person takes for doing the very same thing. It's gotten to the point where corporations typically view legal problems as just another operating expense, like paying the electric bill.
I want to see PERSONAL responsibility brought back into the justice system. If a high-level manager makes a decision that amounts to committing a crime, don't drag the company to court - drag HIM to court. If people knew that the things they do at work are things they will be held responsible for, they'd be a lot less willing to do things they know are wrong.
Einstein's abuse of the term may be understandable, but that doesn't make it not abuse.
Yeah, and that Issac Newton guy should be ashamed for calling his subject of study "Natural Philosophy". Physics is a science, not philosophy, geeze how abusive of the English language. Hint: Over time the meanings of words DO change. That makes it very difficult to read anything over a few centuries old, and sometimes it can even crop up in things that are only 50 years old. Take for example the word "gay". Or even "geek", which used to mean someone working in a circus side show.
It's not Einstein's fault that the usage of the word "god" that he chose ended up falling out of favor *after* he made his quote. (Unless you want to claim that he should have been able to predict how the language would mutate in the future).
Once upon a time, it was unnecessary for the language to distinguish between someone who says "god" meaning the dude up in the sky and "god" meaning the universe in general, because there were so few professed atheists around for which the difference was relevant. To the majority of people, the two were one in the same, and the language reflected this.
The demographic of English speakers has changed a lot in the last century. Christian culture used to permeate everywhere in the language as there were so few non-Christian English speakers that they didn't affect the common usage much. As the percentage of jewish, hindu, muslim, agnostic, atheist, etc speakers of English rose to the point where they were actually able to affect common usage, some idioms changed. English speakers no longer use "Christian Name" to refer to someone's first name, except on rare occasions. People rarely use the term "Christian" to refer to any generic good act, like they used to. Now it is reserved for those acts that are explicitly known to be religiously motivated. And people no longer use "god" to mean the universe in general, but once upon a time they did.
The use of "God" as a metaphor for the laws of nature in general used to be a lot more commonly done in Einstein's time than it is today. TODAY it typically isn't used that way anymore, but putting his statement into the context of the time it was spoken, it makes more sense. Einstein had also said that the only sort of "god" he believed in is a general sense of wonder when he examines how the universe works. It helps to remember that Judaism is an odd religion in which, since it is BOTH a religion and an ethnicity, there are a lot of what are called "secular Jews" who aren't the slightest bit believers in the religion, yet still want to be identified as members of the ethnicity, and use the terms and imagery of it for cultural reasons. Someone who had once been Christian and had become and atheist would be a lot less likely to use the term "God" in the way Einstein did.
I think it's more that many of the sciences lead to useful obvious working "stuff" we use every day, and those sciences that laymen can obviously *tell* have this effect end up not getting much ridicule. Every time you use a computer, you are validating that the scientists who described how electricity works "got it right". Every time you start your car engine you validate many current theories of chemistry and physics. But the sciences that study the history of our world don't have obvious application to the layman. (They do have application, but not that the layman typically realizes.) And so, in the end, the places where the "obviously useful" sciences contradict the bible, people understand that the science can't be wrong if they use items that employ it every day, and they grudgingly have to accept that the bible is wrong (or as they typically dodge, start claiming it's just a metaphor and conveniently forget that they only called it a metaphor AFTER science showed it can't be literally true.)
But they don't see the connection between the sciences that prove evolution has happened and the normal useful applications of science they witness every day, and so they don't accept such things.
It's not that evolution is more "threatening". It's that it's not something that leads to a modern invention people can hold in their hands and see working.
Other than the fact that both those phrases were expressed in English, I fail to see in what way they are like each other.
And keep in mind that I'm NOT complaining about the fact that this situation (you don't get paid 100% of the worth of the fruits of your labor) exists. I said a number of times in the previous posts that I don't see any better way to do it. What I'm complaining about is the fact that you are claiming said situation doesn't exist. It's
the fact that you claim said situation doesn't exist that I object to.
Of all the economic systems I have heard of, capitalism is the one that lets you spend the greatest percentage of the fruits of your labor, but that percentage is still less than 100%.
It's irrelevant that you can choose which company to work for when *all* of them have to be turning a profit in order to continue existing. There will always exist a profit margin (except in those companies that aren't going to last much longer), and that profit margin *IS* the excess fruits of your labor that you are not getting paid for. The total worth of a company *IS* the fruits of the labor of its members. If its total worth generated exceeds the total worth it pays out, people are not getting paid the full balance of the fruits of their labor.
I agree that totalitarianism is worse because you get very little if any of the fruits of your labor under your control. And yes, capitalism is better because you get a larger percentage of thr fruits of your labor, but to claim as you do that that percentage is 100% is false.
There exists no such system where that percentage becomes 100%. It's a hypothetical utopia.
So he's bitching because he thinks Google isn't democratic. But he lives in a fantasy world where he doesn't realize people *are* voting democraticly *against* his site by never linking to it.
That's a bit like a candidate for public office claiming the system is failing because only three people voted for him, when the real reason his votes were low is because most people did not want him in office and so the system is working perfectly.
fact that people don't find Brandt's information all that relevant and therefore don't link much to it is precisely WHY his ranking is low.
Any company that makes a profit is necessarily NOT paying its employees for all the fruits of their labors. If it *was* paying them the real value for all the fruits of all their labors, the company would at best be breaking even, not making profit. So YES capitalism does have as it's premise that someone else decides how to spend at least a portion of the fruits of your labors. That someone else is the company you work for.
Does this mean I don't like capitalism? No. The other systems are worse because they take an ever greater percentage of the fruits of your labor away from you. Minimization of these 'stolen fruits' is a good goal, but it is foolish to claim that capitalism actually achieves it. It just gets closer to it than any of the alternatives do, but nothing could ever actually achieve it completely. The only way to get all the fruits of your labor under your own control is to live in an economy where everything is a zero-sum game, and those tend not to last because people are greedy by nature and a zero-sum economy doesn't feed that need very well.
Anyone who thinks it is completely impossible for capitalism to ever reduce choices is ignoring the evidence of monopolies past and present.
The proposal isn't saying to the government employees, "use this exact tool for the job". It's saying to the government employees, "As dissemators of government information to the people, making said information as open as possible is your job. So, yes, go ahead and use the right tool for the job - given that you remember that using a closed format doesn't really qualify as doing the job.
Trying to prevent others from patenting it *is* a big value. Often the patent office wears blinders and only compares a proposed patent to previous patents to determine if it is really a new idea or not. It often fails to compare it to the actual real world. If it's not in their records, it hasn't been invented as far as they can tell. That practice is how we got stupid things like the Amazon.com one-click shopping patent, or (from quite a while back) IBM patenting the common practice of using XOR'ed display bits to create a cursor (instead of having to remember what's on the screen under the cursor, just draw the cursor by XOR-ing the color bits. Then when you want to move the cursor to a new position you can put the display under the cursor back the way it was by XORing the color bits again. This was a common, obvious tactic, but IBM got the patent on it because nobody else who was using it had even thought it worth patenting. The patent office didn't realize it was already common practice because it wasn't in their records.)
Some company who doesn't want to *own* an idea, but wants to make sure they are allowed to use it in the future and it doesn't ever get owned by someone else might decide to patent the idea but allow anyone to use it.
National defense is about conflicts with OTHER countries. That's something entirely different from policing within the country. It's the difference between a Navy SEALS special forces unit sneaking onto a beach and sabotaging an enemy radar station, versus a police SWAT team breaking down the door to someone's house looking for drugs.
The standard Libertarian line I've always heard is that if the government needs to use threat of overwhelming force to make people obey a law, then that law is not one the people actually want and it shouldn't exist.
And that's why I stated that this concept of making polluters pay an appropriate price reflecting the actual cost of the damage they cause will NEVER happen under a libertarian government. Making such costs work requires a number of practices that go against Libertarian dogma, one of which is forcing the market to incur a cost by artificial government rule that would not have been incurred otherwise. (While it might be true that there is a *real* cost associated with polluting, the marketplace left to it's own devices has failed to account for it. Based on past history, I have no reason to believe that it would happen unless the government forces it to happen.)
No, you're twisting my statement in order to make me seem to have that implication. I'm pretty certain you know that I didn't mean that.
I have this annoying habit of assuming people actually mean what they say, and avoid reading between the lines. Your statement that you don't program outside work *because* you have a life means precisely that having a life is a cause that prevents you from programming outside of work. If that's not what you meant, I'm sorry, but it's not my fault your words said something different from what you intended them to.
But once you talk about supporting the idea of a government that is well-armed enough to enforce it's will on people, you are making a huge departure from the standard Libertarian Party line.
I cannot understand why these performance issues are always talked away,
denial just doesn't make them go away.
They are "just talked away" because a lot of people aren't seeing them happen. I don't notice opera being faster than Mozilla. I do notice it rendering pages in a somewhat buggy way, though, when it comes to revisiting pages already seen. Sometimes I have to force a reload with a shift-click on the reload button to make it clean up the clutter on the screen. I suspect this has something to do with whatever it is they do to make it so allegedly fast. There's probably some caching going awry there. I'm not calling you a lair. I believe you that Mozilla is slow when you try it. But without being able to reproduce it, there's nothing that can be done to fix it. I suspect the developers of Mozilla are in the same boat. They can't fix a problem that only seems to be happening for some people and there doesn't seem to be a common denominator as to why.
I don't do that much programming for fun, because I have a life.
In the same post in which you falsely accuse me of prejudice, you make the implication that programming for fun means having no life, making your true colors shine through. You are failing to remove my alleged "prejudice" when you yourself are turning out to be a perfect example of the rule.
Your post above is sensible. The one to which I replied was not. It went beyond the reasonable "contribution to open source isn't the only way to show you know what you are doing and like it." It went so far as to say that contribution to open source was evidence that someone is *less* competent."
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It could have been meant as a pun. "Over water" might have been referring to the location of the fighting, not the issues behind the fighting.
The reason that's not an easy story to believe is that if someone was making a FAKE lunar rover film, they'd have to put in extra effort to make a rock appear in just one frame. What in the world would be the motivation behind putting in such extra effort to make the film LESS credible? It's not going to happen by "accident" and it's not something someone involved would WANT to do on purpose.
You know, this may sound odd, but I've heard it's actually possible to take moving picture footage without using a microphone.
Ironicly, there *were* some special effects going on here. They tried making the flag look like it would on earth, for the viewers at home, and the idiot hoax supporters picked up on that as "evidence" against it being really on the moon.
There are two fair choices:
1 - Get the legal system to stop behaving as if corporations should enjoy the same rights as individuals.
(or)
2 - Get the legal system to equalize sentencing so individuals and corporations run the same risks for breaking the same laws.
Number 2 would be the better solution, if only it was physically possible (you can't throw a corporation in prison). So #1 should be resorted to instead. This notion that a corporation enjoys the same rights as a person is a BAD IDEA given that a corporation doesn't incur the same responsiblities as a person. In fact, absolving the decision makers of any personal responsibility (fiscal or legal) in the business' activities is the major reason FOR incorporating.
I want some equality in the justice system. One way or the other. So long as the current system continues, where corporations enjoy the rights of individuals without the responsibilities, they will continue to behave unethically.
Nowhere did I specify that I was only referring to civil offences.
Protecting stokholders is a good thing because they are going to be rather ignorant of the operational decisions made by the company (and that's where there's potential for criminal actions). Protecting those who actually make those decisions is not a good thing.
The risk that a corporation takes if it breaks a law is much smaller than the risk an actual flesh and blood person takes for doing the very same thing. It's gotten to the point where corporations typically view legal problems as just another operating expense, like paying the electric bill.
I want to see PERSONAL responsibility brought back into the justice system. If a high-level manager makes a decision that amounts to committing a crime, don't drag the company to court - drag HIM to court. If people knew that the things they do at work are things they will be held responsible for, they'd be a lot less willing to do things they know are wrong.
Yeah, and that Issac Newton guy should be ashamed for calling his subject of study "Natural Philosophy". Physics is a science, not philosophy, geeze how abusive of the English language. Hint: Over time the meanings of words DO change. That makes it very difficult to read anything over a few centuries old, and sometimes it can even crop up in things that are only 50 years old. Take for example the word "gay". Or even "geek", which used to mean someone working in a circus side show.
It's not Einstein's fault that the usage of the word "god" that he chose ended up falling out of favor *after* he made his quote. (Unless you want to claim that he should have been able to predict how the language would mutate in the future).
Once upon a time, it was unnecessary for the language to distinguish between someone who says "god" meaning the dude up in the sky and "god" meaning the universe in general, because there were so few professed atheists around for which the difference was relevant. To the majority of people, the two were one in the same, and the language reflected this.
The demographic of English speakers has changed a lot in the last century. Christian culture used to permeate everywhere in the language as there were so few non-Christian English speakers that they didn't affect the common usage much. As the percentage of jewish, hindu, muslim, agnostic, atheist, etc speakers of English rose to the point where they were actually able to affect common usage, some idioms changed. English speakers no longer use "Christian Name" to refer to someone's first name, except on rare occasions. People rarely use the term "Christian" to refer to any generic good act, like they used to. Now it is reserved for those acts that are explicitly known to be religiously motivated. And people no longer use "god" to mean the universe in general, but once upon a time they did.
The use of "God" as a metaphor for the laws of nature in general used to be a lot more commonly done in Einstein's time than it is today. TODAY it typically isn't used that way anymore, but putting his statement into the context of the time it was spoken, it makes more sense. Einstein had also said that the only sort of "god" he believed in is a general sense of wonder when he examines how the universe works. It helps to remember that Judaism is an odd religion in which, since it is BOTH a religion and an ethnicity, there are a lot of what are called "secular Jews" who aren't the slightest bit believers in the religion, yet still want to be identified as members of the ethnicity, and use the terms and imagery of it for cultural reasons. Someone who had once been Christian and had become and atheist would be a lot less likely to use the term "God" in the way Einstein did.
But they don't see the connection between the sciences that prove evolution has happened and the normal useful applications of science they witness every day, and so they don't accept such things.
It's not that evolution is more "threatening". It's that it's not something that leads to a modern invention people can hold in their hands and see working.
Other than the fact that both those phrases were expressed in English, I fail to see in what way they are like each other.
And keep in mind that I'm NOT complaining about the fact that this situation (you don't get paid 100% of the worth of the fruits of your labor) exists. I said a number of times in the previous posts that I don't see any better way to do it. What I'm complaining about is the fact that you are claiming said situation doesn't exist. It's
the fact that you claim said situation doesn't exist that I object to.
Of all the economic systems I have heard of, capitalism is the one that lets you spend the greatest percentage of the fruits of your labor, but that percentage is still less than 100%.
How would that be different from any other patent?
It's irrelevant that you can choose which company to work for when *all* of them have to be turning a profit in order to continue existing. There will always exist a profit margin (except in those companies that aren't going to last much longer), and that profit margin *IS* the excess fruits of your labor that you are not getting paid for.
The total worth of a company *IS* the fruits of the labor of its members. If its total worth generated exceeds the total worth it pays out, people are not getting paid the full balance of the fruits of their labor.
I agree that totalitarianism is worse because you get very little if any of the fruits of your labor under your control. And yes, capitalism is better because you get a larger percentage of thr fruits of your labor, but to claim as you do that that percentage is 100% is false.
There exists no such system where that percentage becomes 100%. It's a hypothetical utopia.
That's a bit like a candidate for public office claiming the system is failing because only three people voted for him, when the real reason his votes were low is because most people did not want him in office and so the system is working perfectly. fact that people don't find Brandt's information all that relevant and therefore don't link much to it is precisely WHY his ranking is low.
Does this mean I don't like capitalism? No. The other systems are worse because they take an ever greater percentage of the fruits of your labor away from you. Minimization of these 'stolen fruits' is a good goal, but it is foolish to claim that capitalism actually achieves it. It just gets closer to it than any of the alternatives do, but nothing could ever actually achieve it completely. The only way to get all the fruits of your labor under your own control is to live in an economy where everything is a zero-sum game, and those tend not to last because people are greedy by nature and a zero-sum economy doesn't feed that need very well.
Anyone who thinks it is completely impossible for capitalism to ever reduce choices is ignoring the evidence of monopolies past and present.
The proposal isn't saying to the government employees, "use this exact tool for the job". It's saying to the government employees, "As dissemators of government information to the people, making said information as open as possible is your job. So, yes, go ahead and use the right tool for the job - given that you remember that using a closed format doesn't really qualify as doing the job.
Some company who doesn't want to *own* an idea, but wants to make sure they are allowed to use it in the future and it doesn't ever get owned by someone else might decide to patent the idea but allow anyone to use it.
The standard Libertarian line I've always heard is that if the government needs to use threat of overwhelming force to make people obey a law, then that law is not one the people actually want and it shouldn't exist.
And that's why I stated that this concept of making polluters pay an appropriate price reflecting the actual cost of the damage they cause will NEVER happen under a libertarian government. Making such costs work requires a number of practices that go against Libertarian dogma, one of which is forcing the market to incur a cost by artificial government rule that would not have been incurred otherwise. (While it might be true that there is a *real* cost associated with polluting, the marketplace left to it's own devices has failed to account for it. Based on past history, I have no reason to believe that it would happen unless the government forces it to happen.)
But once you talk about supporting the idea of a government that is well-armed enough to enforce it's will on people, you are making a huge departure from the standard Libertarian Party line.
Next time try reading the thread.
In the same post in which you falsely accuse me of prejudice, you make the implication that programming for fun means having no life, making your true colors shine through. You are failing to remove my alleged "prejudice" when you yourself are turning out to be a perfect example of the rule.
Your post above is sensible. The one to which I replied was not. It went beyond the reasonable "contribution to open source isn't the only way to show you know what you are doing and like it." It went so far as to say that contribution to open source was evidence that someone is *less* competent."