So your argument is that since there are areas where people are so oppressed they are willing to work in "sweatshops", we should help them by not giving them any work at all. Let them die long painful deaths by starvation instead of allowing them to work in conditions we would personally not enjoy but are infinitely better than what they are used to?
Whats next, place tariffs on companies that don't have wide screen TVs and foosball tables in the break room? The standards we are used to cannot be appropriately applied across the globe.
Check out Nicholas Kristof's editorial from earlier this year, "Inviting All Democrats" (free registration required, one of the reasons I currently hate the Times). It is rather insightful.
The link to that article is http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/14/opinion/14KRIS.h tml?ex=1087099200&en=2930bf0207c8f710&ei=5 070 in case slashdot screws up the link again.
They may know those of us who don't spend our lives sitting in the basement posting on slashdot. Hell even I know some of the people I meet on the street.
And even if they don't, if they witness you doing something you shouldn't be doing they can still be used by the cops to identify you. Or do you want to make eye-witnesses illegal as well?
"A surveillance system such as the one proposed in Baltimore doesn't lose sight."
They have that sort of power. If you are in public, there is nothing stopping the government (or anyone else for that matter) from watching you. What is your proposed solution? Requiring cops to wear blindfolds when in public?
"Fuck that... in my own home I have reason to expect damn near 100% privacy if I choose."
Tell that to the cops who come into your house with a warrant signed by a Judge to search the place for the wide screen TVs you stole.
"If so, are you really comfortable with the idea of being watched everywhere you go?"
Not everywhere, everywhere in public! Those two little words mean a lot, don't forget them.
"More power for the Federal government..."
Uh, this is the state government we are talking about here. Minor difference there.
"But these cameras interfere with my right to go wherever I goddamn please without someone knowing where I went, and where I went from there, and what I did while there, etc etc."
Whats next? Require everyone walking down the public street to keep their eyes shut while they go about their daily business? After all, thats the only real way to ensure that so-called "right" of yours.
What is all this talk about these violating people's privacy? How is your privacy being violated by someone monitoring you while you are in a public area?
You are guaranteed limited privacy in your own home, yes. But not when you are walking down a public street.
Have those making references to "Big Brother" even read "1984"?
Good plan. If Nader is elected, we won't have to worry about offshoring much longer. Soon after he is elected, there won't be any jobs in America left to offshore.
I didn't realize that Boeing was the sole provider of jobs in the United States. Thanks for opening my eyes, I must have been blinded by Bush propaganda machine that claimed there were other companies out there, many of whom gained employees over the same time period.
"Excuse me but zero jobs should be lost to overseas workers. You know why? Because companies that do this should be taxed to hell and back for doing it."
Why? Because white Americans have an inalienable right to easy overpaid desk jobs while the rest of the world starves to death?
I have a novel idea. Lets try this thing called "competition". Let US workers compete with foreign workers, and let the best get the jobs.
Xenophobia (or racism or whatever is motivating these opinions of yours) aside, your argument suffers from the fact that you are unable to look at the big picture. Many companies offshored jobs to cut their budgets after the dot-com economy tanked. Had they been forced to keep those jobs in the U.S., they would have gone bankrupt and then instead of a couple dozen overpaid programmers having to find new work, the entire company would have gone bankrupt and everyone would have been out of work. Add to that, think of all the jobs we get selling American products overseas. What happens when they implement similar protectionist laws in response to your little plan?
Honestly, I'm not griping I just want to know what the basis was for that. I certainly did not intend it to "insult or enrage" people nor did I try to "mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality". My intention was to merely note that the program does not need to apeal to all users or even a majority of users or even more than.1% of the population for it to be useful.
I've got a dual boot but I've been using Linux 99.9% of the time lately. But because of that, I've haven't had a chance to apply any MS security updates, antivirus updates, firewall updates, etc. Now everything is probably horribly out of date, and I'm afraid if I log back in I'll be vulnerable to every virus developed in the past few months.
Oh well, its not like I really miss anything on Windows.
Anyone else feel that is a tad bit inappropriate? I mean the man did some pretty amazing things in his life, isn't there a better way to memorialize him that by showing him about to kill himself? I doubt that was the proudest moment of his life. You can still make him a martyr while honoring his life, not his death.
I mean the Lincoln memorial doesn't have a giant stone John Wilkes Booth creeping up on him...
Jesus tap dancing Christ, I've had enough of this.
This link should explain exactly where the flaws in virtually every argument you have presented lies (aside from a few misinterpretations of economic and legal theory): http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/straw.htm
For the record...
I did not claim we should get rid of all government.
I did not claim that for each problem in existence, there exists a market based solution that is superior to any government solution.
I did not claim the weaker version of above that market forces are better in all instances than government regulation.
I did not claim that I had found a solution that would be guaranteed to stop any chance of a technological disaster.
I did not claim that I had found a solution that has already been implemented.
I did claim that a system involving insuring research on technologies considered risky could encourage researchers to take more precautions without wiping out legitimate research or suffering from many of the problems involved with government regulations.
I did claim that a market solution if available is generally far more effective than government regulation (hell I copied that one straight from my last post).
If you come up with a legitimate argument against a claim I did make, let me know and we will discuss this further. Until then, I've got better things to do.
" they estimate that Google has as many Ph.D.'s working for it as Microsoft, which is 30 times larger."
Is that really something to be proud of? How many Ph.D.'s does MS hire anyways? I believe their business model calls for programmers, not researchers. You don't get a Ph.D. so you can get a job patching up security flaws in Windows XP.
Its like saying that the small record store down the street sells more CDs than supermarket that is 30 times larger. You are comparing two very different kinds of stores.
Wake me up when they have more Ph.D.s than a university or defense subcontracter (or any other business that actually hires Ph.D.s) that is 30 times their size.
"Right, but it does mean we should not except with blind faith that the market's solution will be better or faster in coming than any other institution's."
Point is irrelevant as we are discussing a proposed market solution that has already been thought up.
"But I don't think he was arguing that the government is perfect--merely that the market is no more perfect and perhaps far more imperfect."
Ask any economist, a market solution if available is generally far more effective than government regulation.
"If this were not the case, then why is the SEC to blame at all for Enron's corruption?"
I don't follow. How is the failure of a government regulating body proof that government regulations are more effective than the market?
"There's a reason no one talks about letting the marketplace correct for criminal behavior in the stock market--because the market correction for an SEC-less stock market would be to take most of the money out of the entire stock market."
Where is this straw man coming from? I never said I wanted to remove all regulations from the stock market.
"But your apparently non-governmental resort relies on government decision making--the courts."
Yeah, so? Again, I am not arguing for anarchy, just for market forces to help protect us from potential disasters.
"but what you're asking for is the insurance company to make a prediction of how courts will rule in cases of nanotechnological and biotechnological disaster--or even more unpredictable, the chance of such a disaster occuring in the first place, which is basically completely unknowable today in 2004."
As for how the courts will rule, precedent has already been set so thats not too hard to predict. As for the likelihood of a disaster happening, well thats what insurance companies do. Assess risk.
"Not too mention the limited-liability issue the other poster brought up. "
As I pointed out to him, limited liability is not the same as no liability.
"but then you've turned a free-market solution into mere subcontracted legislature--the insurance company ends up writing de facto laws."
Except that you generally have a choice of policies. Plus they are controlled by market forces instead of government forces.
Re:Definately a bad choice on the part of the devs
on
A New Look For Firefox
·
· Score: 1
I know plenty of average users who use winamp.
And even those who have switched to Windows Media Player used to use it, and likely used skins. Thus they are competent enough to use skins.
Besides, real power users would rather use xmms or rhythmbox.
Ok, its late and I'm about posted out, so I'll make this short.
There were numerous regulations made to help investors know about the company. This allows the market to make good decisions about whether or not to invest in the company or other decisions they may want to make. However, Enron lied and broke those regulations.
"I presented three different possibilities--and this post is acting is if I didn't present the second possibility--that the invisible hand has simply not acted yet."
Actually I did address it. Just because the 'invisible hand' hasn't acted yet doesn't mean the market cannot provide a solution.
"So, I reiterate that the government has every bit as much incentive to prevent their own infectious death as the insurance company has to prevent hypothetical profit loss."
There are numerous problems with having the government do the work instead of the market. First, it is highly ineffective. This other guy's argument about Enron actually shows this (although he apparently does not realize it). The main force in existence to keep Enron from doing the things they ended up doing was the SEC and government regulations, and we all know what happened then. Second, government power is easily abused. For every legitimate regulation, there will be dozens of regulations that serve no purpose other than to block legitimate research. Thus, relying on government regulations should be the very last resort.
On the differences between civil and criminal court, allow me to elaborate. You go to criminal court when you break a law. This law must be stated in advance to your action, and generally must be rather specific. If it is not stated to be illegal, you cannot be charged. Add to that, the justice system ends up giving the benefit of the doubt to the defendant. One is innocent until proven guilty, plus there are many hurdles concerning what the prosecution can and cannot do. Civil court, on the other hand, is where you go when you are sued. Unlike criminal court, there does not necessarily have to be an existing regulation or law in place for you to be sued. Even if there is no law stating "you cannot produce a dangerous nano-swarm that will kill people", you can still be sued by the families of the victims. Also it is much more balanced than criminal court; it is much easier to sue someone than to convict them of a crime.
Thus we do not need the government to pass specific regulations that will most likely have little or no effect other than to stamp out legitimate research in order for researchers to be held accountable for their actions.
Well first of all, no solution is going to be perfect. It will always be possible for someone to slip through the system.
As for Enron, name the company providing "technological disaster insurance" for them. What, you can't? Thats because we are talking about Enron is a different type of business. Apples and oranges buddy, apples and oranges.
Slashdot Mirror
Whats next, place tariffs on companies that don't have wide screen TVs and foosball tables in the break room? The standards we are used to cannot be appropriately applied across the globe.
Check out Nicholas Kristof's editorial from earlier this year, "Inviting All Democrats" (free registration required, one of the reasons I currently hate the Times). It is rather insightful.
The link to that article is http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/14/opinion/14KRIS.h tml?ex=1087099200&en=2930bf0207c8f710&ei=5 070 in case slashdot screws up the link again.
They may know those of us who don't spend our lives sitting in the basement posting on slashdot. Hell even I know some of the people I meet on the street.
And even if they don't, if they witness you doing something you shouldn't be doing they can still be used by the cops to identify you. Or do you want to make eye-witnesses illegal as well?
"A surveillance system such as the one proposed in Baltimore doesn't lose sight."
They do if you enter an area which is private.
They have that sort of power. If you are in public, there is nothing stopping the government (or anyone else for that matter) from watching you. What is your proposed solution? Requiring cops to wear blindfolds when in public?
"Fuck that... in my own home I have reason to expect damn near 100% privacy if I choose."
Tell that to the cops who come into your house with a warrant signed by a Judge to search the place for the wide screen TVs you stole.
"If so, are you really comfortable with the idea of being watched everywhere you go?"
Not everywhere, everywhere in public! Those two little words mean a lot, don't forget them.
"More power for the Federal government..." Uh, this is the state government we are talking about here. Minor difference there.
Back to the pile!
Whats next? Require everyone walking down the public street to keep their eyes shut while they go about their daily business? After all, thats the only real way to ensure that so-called "right" of yours.
You are guaranteed limited privacy in your own home, yes. But not when you are walking down a public street.
Have those making references to "Big Brother" even read "1984"?
Good plan. If Nader is elected, we won't have to worry about offshoring much longer. Soon after he is elected, there won't be any jobs in America left to offshore.
I guess not all mods are racist assholes whose sole knowledge of economics comes from reading a Ralph Nader pamphlet.
I didn't realize that Boeing was the sole provider of jobs in the United States. Thanks for opening my eyes, I must have been blinded by Bush propaganda machine that claimed there were other companies out there, many of whom gained employees over the same time period.
Why? Because white Americans have an inalienable right to easy overpaid desk jobs while the rest of the world starves to death?
I have a novel idea. Lets try this thing called "competition". Let US workers compete with foreign workers, and let the best get the jobs.
Xenophobia (or racism or whatever is motivating these opinions of yours) aside, your argument suffers from the fact that you are unable to look at the big picture. Many companies offshored jobs to cut their budgets after the dot-com economy tanked. Had they been forced to keep those jobs in the U.S., they would have gone bankrupt and then instead of a couple dozen overpaid programmers having to find new work, the entire company would have gone bankrupt and everyone would have been out of work. Add to that, think of all the jobs we get selling American products overseas. What happens when they implement similar protectionist laws in response to your little plan?
I wanted that million bucks. How else can my math dgree earn any money?
Honestly, I'm not griping I just want to know what the basis was for that. I certainly did not intend it to "insult or enrage" people nor did I try to "mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality". My intention was to merely note that the program does not need to apeal to all users or even a majority of users or even more than .1% of the population for it to be useful.
Oh well, its not like I really miss anything on Windows.
Ironically it was the same line of reasoning that led to his downfall. They thought his sexuality defined him more than his genius as well.
I mean the Lincoln memorial doesn't have a giant stone John Wilkes Booth creeping up on him...
Maybe you Brits are just more morbid than us.
This is a product for that .1% of the population who wants it, not the 99.9% who don't.
This link should explain exactly where the flaws in virtually every argument you have presented lies (aside from a few misinterpretations of economic and legal theory): http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/straw.htm
For the record...
- I did not claim we should get rid of all government.
- I did not claim that for each problem in existence, there exists a market based solution that is superior to any government solution.
- I did not claim the weaker version of above that market forces are better in all instances than government regulation.
- I did not claim that I had found a solution that would be guaranteed to stop any chance of a technological disaster.
- I did not claim that I had found a solution that has already been implemented.
- I did claim that a system involving insuring research on technologies considered risky could encourage researchers to take more precautions without wiping out legitimate research or suffering from many of the problems involved with government regulations.
- I did claim that a market solution if available is generally far more effective than government regulation (hell I copied that one straight from my last post).
If you come up with a legitimate argument against a claim I did make, let me know and we will discuss this further. Until then, I've got better things to do.Is that really something to be proud of? How many Ph.D.'s does MS hire anyways? I believe their business model calls for programmers, not researchers. You don't get a Ph.D. so you can get a job patching up security flaws in Windows XP.
Its like saying that the small record store down the street sells more CDs than supermarket that is 30 times larger. You are comparing two very different kinds of stores.
Wake me up when they have more Ph.D.s than a university or defense subcontracter (or any other business that actually hires Ph.D.s) that is 30 times their size.
Point is irrelevant as we are discussing a proposed market solution that has already been thought up.
"But I don't think he was arguing that the government is perfect--merely that the market is no more perfect and perhaps far more imperfect."
Ask any economist, a market solution if available is generally far more effective than government regulation.
"If this were not the case, then why is the SEC to blame at all for Enron's corruption?"
I don't follow. How is the failure of a government regulating body proof that government regulations are more effective than the market?
"There's a reason no one talks about letting the marketplace correct for criminal behavior in the stock market--because the market correction for an SEC-less stock market would be to take most of the money out of the entire stock market."
Where is this straw man coming from? I never said I wanted to remove all regulations from the stock market.
"But your apparently non-governmental resort relies on government decision making--the courts."
Yeah, so? Again, I am not arguing for anarchy, just for market forces to help protect us from potential disasters.
"but what you're asking for is the insurance company to make a prediction of how courts will rule in cases of nanotechnological and biotechnological disaster--or even more unpredictable, the chance of such a disaster occuring in the first place, which is basically completely unknowable today in 2004."
As for how the courts will rule, precedent has already been set so thats not too hard to predict. As for the likelihood of a disaster happening, well thats what insurance companies do. Assess risk.
"Not too mention the limited-liability issue the other poster brought up. "
As I pointed out to him, limited liability is not the same as no liability.
"but then you've turned a free-market solution into mere subcontracted legislature--the insurance company ends up writing de facto laws."
Except that you generally have a choice of policies. Plus they are controlled by market forces instead of government forces.
And even those who have switched to Windows Media Player used to use it, and likely used skins. Thus they are competent enough to use skins.
Besides, real power users would rather use xmms or rhythmbox.
There were numerous regulations made to help investors know about the company. This allows the market to make good decisions about whether or not to invest in the company or other decisions they may want to make. However, Enron lied and broke those regulations.
The market didn't fail. The regulations failed.
Actually I did address it. Just because the 'invisible hand' hasn't acted yet doesn't mean the market cannot provide a solution.
"So, I reiterate that the government has every bit as much incentive to prevent their own infectious death as the insurance company has to prevent hypothetical profit loss."
There are numerous problems with having the government do the work instead of the market. First, it is highly ineffective. This other guy's argument about Enron actually shows this (although he apparently does not realize it). The main force in existence to keep Enron from doing the things they ended up doing was the SEC and government regulations, and we all know what happened then. Second, government power is easily abused. For every legitimate regulation, there will be dozens of regulations that serve no purpose other than to block legitimate research. Thus, relying on government regulations should be the very last resort.
On the differences between civil and criminal court, allow me to elaborate. You go to criminal court when you break a law. This law must be stated in advance to your action, and generally must be rather specific. If it is not stated to be illegal, you cannot be charged. Add to that, the justice system ends up giving the benefit of the doubt to the defendant. One is innocent until proven guilty, plus there are many hurdles concerning what the prosecution can and cannot do. Civil court, on the other hand, is where you go when you are sued. Unlike criminal court, there does not necessarily have to be an existing regulation or law in place for you to be sued. Even if there is no law stating "you cannot produce a dangerous nano-swarm that will kill people", you can still be sued by the families of the victims. Also it is much more balanced than criminal court; it is much easier to sue someone than to convict them of a crime.
Thus we do not need the government to pass specific regulations that will most likely have little or no effect other than to stamp out legitimate research in order for researchers to be held accountable for their actions.
As for Enron, name the company providing "technological disaster insurance" for them. What, you can't? Thats because we are talking about Enron is a different type of business. Apples and oranges buddy, apples and oranges.
Yeah, I have had some problems with the Tab Browser Extensions plugin but I havn't seen this problem with the browser itself.