Even U.S. citizens and aliens living in the U.S. have next to no power to do anything against the cowboy. But at least we aren't under any delusions that we actually elected him.
Though you won't hear about it in any mainstream news, there is ample evidence that suggests (not proves, unfortunately) that the last three federal elections (2004, 2002, 2000)--and many more state and local elections--have had significant levels of vote-counting fraud. Not that it matters when we are always given the choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, of course...
The full extent of the human ability to regenerate is exactly the situation you describe as happening to your mother. The injury to the finger cannot be much more proximal than between the base of the fingernail and the first joint, and the individual must be pre-pubescent.
So the regrowth of joints is not an issue. If you lost a joint, you will not regrow anything at all.
Even so, this is some exciting stuff. Unfortunately, once the technology has finally matured, money and politics will send the whole business to Hell right quick.
A suitable pair of humans, given enough rhythmic musical accompaniment and C2H5OH as catalysts, will not require any money, federal or otherwise, to attempt to create more embryos.
I am also of the opinion that consciousness trumps "human life".
The division between an intelligent being and human meat is nearly universally recognized, whether people like to admit it or not. Babies, toddlers, other children, incompetent or insane adults, and senile elders are not afforded the same legal status as other humans, despite having that hominid genetic blueprint. You can't just pop out of the womb and start filling out government forms, driving cars, and signing 2-year cell phone contracts.
We even invent non-human "people", like corporations and trusts, that have no bodies of their own, and even these have more rights than pre- or post-competent humans.
A true human-equivalent artificial intelligence would therefore be a person. In that metaphor, humans opposing the harvesting of embryonic stem cells would be roughly the same as the AI objecting to freshly-fabricated memory chips, originally designed and manufactured to support AI hardware, being diverted towards improved network routers.
A human embryo will not be a person for many years, and even that presumes that it will be able to catch hold of some ready-and-waiting uterine wall. Up until that point, it is just a thin sack of fat holding in a big blob of water and proteins. I don't weep for the almost-humans that fail to grab on to mommy's guts any more than I manage to care for the millions of sperm that can't figure out how to bust through a latex wall, or the eggs that don't get laid at the same time as the woman. (See also: Every Sperm is Sacred, from Monty Python's Meaning of Life)
The humans that we really ought to be concerned with are not the ones that cannot be seen without magnification, but the ones that write checks and pull triggers. I am not about to decide that a group of 3-day old cells is more important and worthy of continued existence than every other person on Earth, especially when most of those people can pair off and replace that clump of cells a million times over during a single night.
If it would make the critics fell better, why not just mandate that all people that receive lifesaving treatment from embryonic stem cells raise one of that embryo's in-vitro siblings until its 18th birthday? Because we don't need more people that freaking bad, that's why!
Since the system blocks out UV and IR light, why not point the UV at some photovoltaic cells, and the IR at a solar water heater? No point in letting that energy go to waste.
As the distributors (Wal*Mart, Target, K-Mart, etc.) refuse to sell unrated or adult-only rated games, no, you can't see sex in a video game, no matter how old you are. Or at least you can't if you are Typical Lazy Consumer (tm).
Think about the difference between a Hollywood blockbuster showing on 3 screens at your local theater and the titty-bouncer on premium cable. The former makes lots of money, thus justifying the huge production budget. The latter reaps much less revenue, forcing the studio to cut corners, such as by hiring autistics as scriptwriters. The reason for the glaring difference in quality is in the size of the distribution channel. The pr0n industry had to create its own network of distributors because Wal*Mart won't sell for them.
Until you see PS2/Xbox shelves go up in your local "adult bookstore", AO ratings do amount to a ban, because for a game as expensive as GTA to produce and market, a distributor embargo is sure to force the whole project into the red. So why not jump to a different distributor network? Let's all go into those seedy-looking shops and ask where they keep the video games, until they actually have a shelf to show us. Then the ESRB can worry about sorting out the games for kiddies while the grown-ups can pick up an actual 2-foot purple dildo and gimp suit at the same time as their new copy of GTA:San Andreas.
Your average consumer does not actually care. It may seem as though they do, because on every purchase they do not understand, they consult a geek friend that does care. And we, the geeks that care, tell our friends to avoid DRM like the plague. And we do this not just because DRM is pointless, but because will be the ones that have to field informal support calls about why the MP3s that work in their old player won't play on their new iPod.
Heck, it's even getting to the point where people are asking me what television they should buy, just because they heard they need a digital TV by 2005.
That part was a joke. I was going to say he was scarred by that time Uncle Sam parachuted into his bedroom and kicked his favorite puppy, but it was both unbelievable hyperbole and not really all that funny anyway.
Iraq, in Gulf War 1. Though Bin Laden had no love for Saddam Hussein, he didn't take kindly to all those non-Muslim Americans stationed semi-permanently on his beloved Arabian peninsula. Though I think he also took offense to the US's puppeteering of Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, and its unconditional support of Israel, especially in the UN arena. Also, when he was a child, he had to compete with 100 siblings for his father's love.
Let's distill your example down a little further. You are a farmer. If you give me $1, I will give you $3. You would take the deal, right?
Ok, now what if I'm a sloppy accountant? I give $3 to every farmer, whether he has paid or not, as long as I got $100 from somewhere. If I don't get $100 total, you just get your money back. Now you have some choices. You could pay $1, and hope no one "forgets" to pay. You could pay $2, to cover one freeloader, and still come out ahead. You could even pay $2.99, assured that you can still come out ahead.
But real life seldom has farmland parceled out in equally-sized checkerboard squares. Not all farmers will yield equal benefit from a public good. Farmer Bigranch might stand to gain $80 a year, while Farmer Smallpotatoes might only get an extra $1. Bigranch would be willing to pay $50, and let Smallpotatoes ride for free. He is getting an extra $30, after all, even if other people are getting a little out of it without paying. Smallpotatoes is not likely to agree to a $1/farm tax, which would pay for the satellite, but would not benefit him at all.
The people who want something the most are willing to pay higher prices, and the highest price moves the goods first.
Not exactly. In other words, an ethically mature individual does not need someone else's code of laws to tell him what he can and cannot do. He already has his own. It also helps to recognize that other people may not wish to have the same sort of lifestyle that you enjoy.
For instance, I do not use narcotics. The strongest drugs I use without medical reasons are sugar, caffeine, alcohol, and whatever it is that they put in the fries at McDonald's. But I do not begrudge junkies their heroin, or potheads their weed. Nor do I enlist the government to watch everyone's consumption of certain substances because I may lack the self-control to moderate my own.
Murder, theft, rape, fraud--these are things that most of us can agree are wrong. We don't need laws telling us not to use our own radio spectrum for our own mutual benefit, just because it just might hurt the telcos. The governments are not looking out for your interests any more, if they ever were. They are now only interested in whether your accounts are paid up enough to not get a face-full of pepper spray and both of your hands and someone else's knee in the small of your own back, while a kevlar-clad ninja scans your universal ID to see what rights you qualify for with your current credit rating.
Re:And Paramount's response?
on
P2P and TV
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· Score: 1
I heard rumor that J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye, had written several more works, kept them in a locked vault, and left instructions that they were all to be destroyed when he died.
There are at least three ways to react to this request:
Of course! You have the right to control your creations absolutely. We will send schoolchildren to weep over the ashes and imagine protagonists even whinier than Holden.
Screw you, you antisocial dead man; we're publishing them. If you have a problem, get a zombie license and a good lawyer.
Fair enough, we'll burn your stuff, but as you don't seem interested in contributing to the metalibrary any longer, we're putting your published stuff in the public domain, and changing the author credits to "Anonymous".
The only reason people do not, in general, engage in massive, widespread copying and re-distribution is not because some cop with a gun is standing over our shoulder with a shotgun and the copyright laws. For the most part, we wish the creator to be paid enough to make more of the same. If Matt Groening wasn't paid for Life in Hell, we wouldn't have the Simpsons. If he wasn't paid for the Simpsons, we wouldn't have Futurama. So, even though episodes of Futurama are available at no cost to me from a variety of sources, I still bought the DVDs. Even if MG never sends another sketch to Korea ever again, I want my dollars to say that I am willing to pay for another work that is similar. That's the whole point of copyright--the public wants their patronage money to go to the people who create the new stuff, not the guy that ripped him off.
Companies of middlemen have succeeded in subverting it into a tool to enrich themselves at the expense of the creators. And the result is the public being spoon-fed crap, which remains the property of the company until everyone that made it successful is dead and buried.
"Monopoly power" is a term extrapolated from the conditions found in a monopoly, that basically keys off of the slope of the demand curve that an individual firm faces. Commodity manufacturers see demand as a horizontal line at the market price. Monopolies see the same demand curve as the whole industry, because they ARE the whole industry.
In an industry where 80% of the products come from a single firm, and the remainder from smaller competitors, those competitors MUST follow the big guy's lead, or be replaced by another minor competitor.
While the large firm cannot price and produce in the same way as a 100% monopoly, they still call all the shots. It is understandable that Intel would rather be the 80% firm rather than the 20% firm, but consumers would rather they be at 49-51%, clawing and biting over 1% of market share.
Every man, woman, and child in the US, or any country for that matter, should love their country, especially if it's a democratic republic like ours is. (I'll be a little more sympathetic to people living in dictatorships, I can see why they shouldn't love their country).
Do you actually live in one of the States? Watch C-SPAN? Do you even read Slashdot? The "democratic republic" has been slowly turning into "plutocratic oligarchic military-industrial police state" ever since Andrew Jackson's tenure, and the trend has been pushed into overdrive ever since 11Sep2001. Americans: love your country, but bitchslap your government. Hard. With lots of rings on. And with their stones on the inside.
But there is no such thing as a free rider "problem" for a public good. Once the good is paid for, it exists, and everyone benefits. The "problem" exists in the mentality of the payers--they cannot abide someone enjoying for free that which they have paid money for. They want their costs spread out to everyone, even though many of the free riders would not have chosen to purchase the public good if it did cost something.
As an example, the town of Podunk wishes to launch a weather control satellite. The satellite will cause light rains at 2 am, make the days partly cloudy, with puffy cumulus clouds, and the nights clear. The winds will always be perfect for kite-flying. The cost of building and launching the thing is exactly $10 million, with $100000 a year to operate it. Now, there are two ways to finance the thing: worry about a free rider problem and levy a $10000 tax on the town's 1000 residents and 50 small businesses; or let FarmerBrownCo chip in $2 million for better crops, Mr. and Mrs. Idlerich $4 million for better poolside cocktails, and the Podunk.edu astronomy department $4 million for guaranteed telescope times. Only the second method will actually get the can into space, because there is no way in Hell to get 1000 people to agree on anything that will cost them each $10000.
identity theft is impossible with an ID-card system
That is 180 degrees wrong. Identity theft is made possible by separating the data records from the actual person. In the States, credit records dangle from a Social Security Number. And that is how frauds open accounts against other people's credit--by stealing the SSN and DoB. They use these numbers to gather the "password" information on the victim, and then use that to commit their fraud.
Anglo-saxons have a big problem with government-issued ID because of the Common Law concept of identity. Basically, as long as there is no intent to defraud, you are who you claim to be. Court rulings have upheld this often, from centuries-past UK to the modern-day US, even to the point where they recognize your ability to change your name every second of every minute for the rest of your life.
Governments favor ID records because they can control the data, and if they can make the data more economically important that the person, then they can control the person by manipulating the data. If the data is the thing that can take out loans, buy property, travel on common carrier passenger transit, and drive cars, then the person has to hang on to that data for dear life, because a human stripped of that data record is as powerless in society as a newborn babe.
Suppose you are a peaceful dissenter, perhaps for copyright reforms. One day, your ID record is tagged as "terrorist suspect", so every flight is preceded by a cavity search, and regular harassment, often causing you to miss boarding and takeoff. Your luggage is searched every time you go anywhere, and things are often missing when you get it back. This happens already--today, right now. ID databases are tools, and like any other tool, they can be used for good and for evil. In the case of this particular tool, the potential for evil vastly outstrips the potential for good.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
Even U.S. citizens and aliens living in the U.S. have next to no power to do anything against the cowboy. But at least we aren't under any delusions that we actually elected him.
Though you won't hear about it in any mainstream news, there is ample evidence that suggests (not proves, unfortunately) that the last three federal elections (2004, 2002, 2000)--and many more state and local elections--have had significant levels of vote-counting fraud. Not that it matters when we are always given the choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, of course...
The full extent of the human ability to regenerate is exactly the situation you describe as happening to your mother. The injury to the finger cannot be much more proximal than between the base of the fingernail and the first joint, and the individual must be pre-pubescent.
So the regrowth of joints is not an issue. If you lost a joint, you will not regrow anything at all.
Even so, this is some exciting stuff. Unfortunately, once the technology has finally matured, money and politics will send the whole business to Hell right quick.
They forgot to mention that those scopes cost the airforce $3 million apiece (just before last year's budget expired).
...and both parties implicitly claiming that scientists are inherently less ethical than politicians.
A suitable pair of humans, given enough rhythmic musical accompaniment and C2H5OH as catalysts, will not require any money, federal or otherwise, to attempt to create more embryos.
I am also of the opinion that consciousness trumps "human life".
The division between an intelligent being and human meat is nearly universally recognized, whether people like to admit it or not. Babies, toddlers, other children, incompetent or insane adults, and senile elders are not afforded the same legal status as other humans, despite having that hominid genetic blueprint. You can't just pop out of the womb and start filling out government forms, driving cars, and signing 2-year cell phone contracts.
We even invent non-human "people", like corporations and trusts, that have no bodies of their own, and even these have more rights than pre- or post-competent humans.
A true human-equivalent artificial intelligence would therefore be a person. In that metaphor, humans opposing the harvesting of embryonic stem cells would be roughly the same as the AI objecting to freshly-fabricated memory chips, originally designed and manufactured to support AI hardware, being diverted towards improved network routers.
A human embryo will not be a person for many years, and even that presumes that it will be able to catch hold of some ready-and-waiting uterine wall. Up until that point, it is just a thin sack of fat holding in a big blob of water and proteins. I don't weep for the almost-humans that fail to grab on to mommy's guts any more than I manage to care for the millions of sperm that can't figure out how to bust through a latex wall, or the eggs that don't get laid at the same time as the woman. (See also: Every Sperm is Sacred, from Monty Python's Meaning of Life)
The humans that we really ought to be concerned with are not the ones that cannot be seen without magnification, but the ones that write checks and pull triggers. I am not about to decide that a group of 3-day old cells is more important and worthy of continued existence than every other person on Earth, especially when most of those people can pair off and replace that clump of cells a million times over during a single night.
If it would make the critics fell better, why not just mandate that all people that receive lifesaving treatment from embryonic stem cells raise one of that embryo's in-vitro siblings until its 18th birthday? Because we don't need more people that freaking bad, that's why!
But where does the energy come from? Traditional meat energy comes from solar-powered grasses and grains.
Vat-grown meat energy comes from... where? Bring me a nuclear reactor that spits out simulated beef tenderloins instead of watts!
Since the system blocks out UV and IR light, why not point the UV at some photovoltaic cells, and the IR at a solar water heater? No point in letting that energy go to waste.
Anyone else think "parental controls" is just the spin phrase for "digital rights management"?
If you can lock your kids out of certain content, the same mechanism can lock you out, right?
As the distributors (Wal*Mart, Target, K-Mart, etc.) refuse to sell unrated or adult-only rated games, no, you can't see sex in a video game, no matter how old you are. Or at least you can't if you are Typical Lazy Consumer (tm).
Think about the difference between a Hollywood blockbuster showing on 3 screens at your local theater and the titty-bouncer on premium cable. The former makes lots of money, thus justifying the huge production budget. The latter reaps much less revenue, forcing the studio to cut corners, such as by hiring autistics as scriptwriters. The reason for the glaring difference in quality is in the size of the distribution channel. The pr0n industry had to create its own network of distributors because Wal*Mart won't sell for them.
Until you see PS2/Xbox shelves go up in your local "adult bookstore", AO ratings do amount to a ban, because for a game as expensive as GTA to produce and market, a distributor embargo is sure to force the whole project into the red. So why not jump to a different distributor network? Let's all go into those seedy-looking shops and ask where they keep the video games, until they actually have a shelf to show us. Then the ESRB can worry about sorting out the games for kiddies while the grown-ups can pick up an actual 2-foot purple dildo and gimp suit at the same time as their new copy of GTA:San Andreas.
Your average consumer does not actually care. It may seem as though they do, because on every purchase they do not understand, they consult a geek friend that does care. And we, the geeks that care, tell our friends to avoid DRM like the plague. And we do this not just because DRM is pointless, but because will be the ones that have to field informal support calls about why the MP3s that work in their old player won't play on their new iPod.
Heck, it's even getting to the point where people are asking me what television they should buy, just because they heard they need a digital TV by 2005.
That part was a joke. I was going to say he was scarred by that time Uncle Sam parachuted into his bedroom and kicked his favorite puppy, but it was both unbelievable hyperbole and not really all that funny anyway.
There is one thing that they could do that no one would complain about: resign.
War on terrorism? War *is* terrorism!
Iraq, in Gulf War 1. Though Bin Laden had no love for Saddam Hussein, he didn't take kindly to all those non-Muslim Americans stationed semi-permanently on his beloved Arabian peninsula. Though I think he also took offense to the US's puppeteering of Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, and its unconditional support of Israel, especially in the UN arena. Also, when he was a child, he had to compete with 100 siblings for his father's love.
Let's distill your example down a little further. You are a farmer. If you give me $1, I will give you $3. You would take the deal, right?
Ok, now what if I'm a sloppy accountant? I give $3 to every farmer, whether he has paid or not, as long as I got $100 from somewhere. If I don't get $100 total, you just get your money back. Now you have some choices. You could pay $1, and hope no one "forgets" to pay. You could pay $2, to cover one freeloader, and still come out ahead. You could even pay $2.99, assured that you can still come out ahead.
But real life seldom has farmland parceled out in equally-sized checkerboard squares. Not all farmers will yield equal benefit from a public good. Farmer Bigranch might stand to gain $80 a year, while Farmer Smallpotatoes might only get an extra $1. Bigranch would be willing to pay $50, and let Smallpotatoes ride for free. He is getting an extra $30, after all, even if other people are getting a little out of it without paying. Smallpotatoes is not likely to agree to a $1/farm tax, which would pay for the satellite, but would not benefit him at all.
The people who want something the most are willing to pay higher prices, and the highest price moves the goods first.
Not exactly. In other words, an ethically mature individual does not need someone else's code of laws to tell him what he can and cannot do. He already has his own. It also helps to recognize that other people may not wish to have the same sort of lifestyle that you enjoy.
For instance, I do not use narcotics. The strongest drugs I use without medical reasons are sugar, caffeine, alcohol, and whatever it is that they put in the fries at McDonald's. But I do not begrudge junkies their heroin, or potheads their weed. Nor do I enlist the government to watch everyone's consumption of certain substances because I may lack the self-control to moderate my own.
Murder, theft, rape, fraud--these are things that most of us can agree are wrong. We don't need laws telling us not to use our own radio spectrum for our own mutual benefit, just because it just might hurt the telcos. The governments are not looking out for your interests any more, if they ever were. They are now only interested in whether your accounts are paid up enough to not get a face-full of pepper spray and both of your hands and someone else's knee in the small of your own back, while a kevlar-clad ninja scans your universal ID to see what rights you qualify for with your current credit rating.
I heard rumor that J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye, had written several more works, kept them in a locked vault, and left instructions that they were all to be destroyed when he died.
There are at least three ways to react to this request:
The only reason people do not, in general, engage in massive, widespread copying and re-distribution is not because some cop with a gun is standing over our shoulder with a shotgun and the copyright laws. For the most part, we wish the creator to be paid enough to make more of the same. If Matt Groening wasn't paid for Life in Hell, we wouldn't have the Simpsons. If he wasn't paid for the Simpsons, we wouldn't have Futurama. So, even though episodes of Futurama are available at no cost to me from a variety of sources, I still bought the DVDs. Even if MG never sends another sketch to Korea ever again, I want my dollars to say that I am willing to pay for another work that is similar. That's the whole point of copyright--the public wants their patronage money to go to the people who create the new stuff, not the guy that ripped him off.
Companies of middlemen have succeeded in subverting it into a tool to enrich themselves at the expense of the creators. And the result is the public being spoon-fed crap, which remains the property of the company until everyone that made it successful is dead and buried.
"Monopoly power" is a term extrapolated from the conditions found in a monopoly, that basically keys off of the slope of the demand curve that an individual firm faces. Commodity manufacturers see demand as a horizontal line at the market price. Monopolies see the same demand curve as the whole industry, because they ARE the whole industry.
In an industry where 80% of the products come from a single firm, and the remainder from smaller competitors, those competitors MUST follow the big guy's lead, or be replaced by another minor competitor.
While the large firm cannot price and produce in the same way as a 100% monopoly, they still call all the shots. It is understandable that Intel would rather be the 80% firm rather than the 20% firm, but consumers would rather they be at 49-51%, clawing and biting over 1% of market share.
America has more than just a colonial past...
Nope, not possible. The Neutrals have already been defeated several times by Zapp Brannigan.
Do you actually live in one of the States? Watch C-SPAN? Do you even read Slashdot? The "democratic republic" has been slowly turning into "plutocratic oligarchic military-industrial police state" ever since Andrew Jackson's tenure, and the trend has been pushed into overdrive ever since 11Sep2001. Americans: love your country, but bitchslap your government. Hard. With lots of rings on. And with their stones on the inside.
But there is no such thing as a free rider "problem" for a public good. Once the good is paid for, it exists, and everyone benefits. The "problem" exists in the mentality of the payers--they cannot abide someone enjoying for free that which they have paid money for. They want their costs spread out to everyone, even though many of the free riders would not have chosen to purchase the public good if it did cost something.
As an example, the town of Podunk wishes to launch a weather control satellite. The satellite will cause light rains at 2 am, make the days partly cloudy, with puffy cumulus clouds, and the nights clear. The winds will always be perfect for kite-flying. The cost of building and launching the thing is exactly $10 million, with $100000 a year to operate it. Now, there are two ways to finance the thing: worry about a free rider problem and levy a $10000 tax on the town's 1000 residents and 50 small businesses; or let FarmerBrownCo chip in $2 million for better crops, Mr. and Mrs. Idlerich $4 million for better poolside cocktails, and the Podunk.edu astronomy department $4 million for guaranteed telescope times. Only the second method will actually get the can into space, because there is no way in Hell to get 1000 people to agree on anything that will cost them each $10000.
That is 180 degrees wrong. Identity theft is made possible by separating the data records from the actual person. In the States, credit records dangle from a Social Security Number. And that is how frauds open accounts against other people's credit--by stealing the SSN and DoB. They use these numbers to gather the "password" information on the victim, and then use that to commit their fraud.
Anglo-saxons have a big problem with government-issued ID because of the Common Law concept of identity. Basically, as long as there is no intent to defraud, you are who you claim to be. Court rulings have upheld this often, from centuries-past UK to the modern-day US, even to the point where they recognize your ability to change your name every second of every minute for the rest of your life.
Governments favor ID records because they can control the data, and if they can make the data more economically important that the person, then they can control the person by manipulating the data. If the data is the thing that can take out loans, buy property, travel on common carrier passenger transit, and drive cars, then the person has to hang on to that data for dear life, because a human stripped of that data record is as powerless in society as a newborn babe.
Suppose you are a peaceful dissenter, perhaps for copyright reforms. One day, your ID record is tagged as "terrorist suspect", so every flight is preceded by a cavity search, and regular harassment, often causing you to miss boarding and takeoff. Your luggage is searched every time you go anywhere, and things are often missing when you get it back. This happens already--today, right now. ID databases are tools, and like any other tool, they can be used for good and for evil. In the case of this particular tool, the potential for evil vastly outstrips the potential for good.
And surface evaporation removes more water anyway.
Microsoft loses more money from its employees reading Slashdot (et al) at work than it ever will from the little guy with a patent.