Of course, most of slashdot-dom points fingers at the ISPs, the data centers, the big corporations, etc. I can only find a smattering of posts that even suggest looking in the mirror.
It is *you* and *I* that demand internet resources. Blaming the suppliers of those resources is hypocrisy. Of course, it is no more hypocrisy than that of Gore, Laurie David, et. al., who demand that the plebes impoverish themselves while producing order of magnitude more CO2 than they. But, you'd think nerds would have a better understanding of the actual source of the capabilities the net provides.
Of course, if, like me, you recognize that the wealth and progress which the internet makes possible will far outweigh any hypothetical environmental costs, and that the benefit/cost ratio will increase rapidly due to the knowledge sharing impact of this technology, then you are not worried about these numbers. Electricity consumption, and energy consumption in general, is a sign of human progress, progress that will allow us to better adapt to any environmental change that may be forthcoming, whether natural or man-made.
But, if that's all technological hubris and greedy over-simplification to you, then I have the solution:
No, this is a requirement only if you intend to apply for a European patent on the invention. Otherwise, you can keep the patent secret until it is granted.
Please cite your source for the statement that "The USSR had quite a thriving economy in the beginning". If it was the Soviet government, I call BS. And, even if not, two questions are begged:
1) How long was the "beginning"? 2) "Thriving" compared to what other nations (i.e. what normalization factor is used)?
You are not being fair (or reasonable), given that this forum is best suited for relatively brief items as opposed to scholarly treatises:
The parent is a brief summarization of a causal theory which has been promulgated at least since Adam Smith: when someone knows that they are more-or-less going to be able to benefit from what they produce, they tend to work harder, to produce more, to plan further into the future, to trust others in their society enough to trade with them, and to invest their wealth in ways that actually increase the amount of capital so that the entire economy can grow. It is this virtuous cycle which made the industrial revolution possible.
There. Now you can go ahead and argue with this causal theory.
Um, because using government coercion to legislate cutting our energy usage by 10-50% will cause us to be poorer and less healthy in the short term. Also, it will decrease our capacity to invent, develop and mass-produce technologies which would enable us to adapt to climate change (in _either_ direction)! Given the likely time-scales involved in such change (even the most dire models give us decades), adaptation is certainly achievable, provided we have a dynamic, free economy and society without bureaucrats deciding the "one best way" to adapt.
I haven't seen any posts mention the fundamental moral issue: Government power ought not be used to prevent any individual from moving freely in pursuit of whatever peaceful purposes they choose.
As applied to immigration, I am fully sympathetic to the idea that such individuals should face the burden of proof that their intentions are peaceful, and that unlawful behavior in their country of origin (so long as that country has a legitimate rule of law) would be a prima facie case for rejecting their application. And, based on the realities of the modern world, there would also be strong grounds for rejecting the application of individuals from areas that are known to harbor sworn enemies of the U.S. and of individual rights in general.
I would venture that these criteria would eliminate only a tiny fraction of the H1B applicants. I would also submit that, were the process framed this way, enforcement would be much easier. Honest people would be extremely forthcoming in their willingness to prove their suitability to be allowed in, if they knew that only truly evil behavior and intentions were grounds for rejection. Immigration officials could focus their energies on ferretting out actual bad guys instead of trying vainly to optimize a decision involving endless incalculable political and economic variables. And again, the burden of proof would be on the applicant.
Otherwise, however, preventing the free movement of individuals is a violation of their human rights, and should not be the policy of a free country. Those opposed to this position should answer the question: on what basis should the power of force be used to prevent someone from peaceably pursuing their own happiness? Do you have some kind of "right" to a particular job at a particular salary which nullifies someone else's (actual) right to simply try for a better life? If so, then you must be saying that this "right" of yours derives simply from the accident of you having been born in the U.S. Think about the illogic of that position.
That is in addition to the practical benefits of immigration to all Americans, mentioned by other posts.
You are correct. A schwa in spontaneous speech can have duration way less than 35 msec. In fact, 5 msec is quite reasonable. On the other hand, as you and other have stated, it practically impossible to speak 5 (or 6) syllables in 35 msec. I am a researcher in automatic speech recognition, and typical word durations in spontaneously spoken English are about 300 msec. When people are dictating very quickly, they can get this down to about 100 msec, but not much faster.
It is perfectly reasonable for Armstrong's "a" to have been intended but either elided at the source or dropped in the communication channel, but not that he spoke as fast as this article claims.
Even if one stipulates moral equivalency between Bush and Annan as individuals (and I don't), that is not particularly relevant to this discussion. The issue is the moral authority of the institutions which they represent. The Bush administration, as part of the U.S. government, is subject to all of the checks and balances of our system and our relatively free society. We have an independent judiciary which can and does rule against the administration (see Hamdan), a free press which exposes secret government programs (see NYT/SWIFT), and a democratic system which allows the people to vote the rascals out, if they so deem fit. The UN is a secretive, corrupt, unelected, unaccountable organization which encourages the vilest dictatorships on earth to feel like they are part of the civilized world. Anyone who wants to be Secretary General of such an institution, without the intention to use that power to completely reform it, is, by virute of that desire, not to be trusted with power.
While your realpolitik take on this is correct, as far as it goes, it doesn't go far enough: it is not just the "stability" of Iran that is at issue. It is the nature of the regime. Simply put, tyrannies will always be a threat to their neighbors (and in the nuclear age, to much more distant "neighbors"), and should therefore be discouraged in whatever way is practical from having any kind of military power. Relatively free countries pose much less of a threat to world peace. Therefore, given the existence of tyrannies, it is imperative that free countries have powerful militaries in order to deter the initiation of force, and to defeat/overthrow the dictators if things get bad enough. Having the latest/greatest nukes is part of that picture and I am happy that we are working on this.
I realize that none of this squares with the world view of those that see the U.S. and Iranian systems as morally equivalent, or to those that think pacificism is non-contracdictory and practicable, but I'm not interested in persuading them.
Are you serious? There is no question that the U.S. Ban on DDT has resulted in supply shortages such that millions of Africans and South Americans are dying each year from malaria. This site and this reference at the the CDC are good places to start.
What is worse is that the philisophical routes of this ban were explicitly anti-human. Rachel Carson barely mentioned any negative impact on humans in 'Silent Spring'. Certainly, there were no such studies at the time (and studies since then have shown 0 ill effects to humans). Carson's main complaint was that DDT weakened the shells of bird eggs, thereby disrupting their cycle. This too has been disproven.
So, we have essentially sacrificed the lives of millions of humans in the name of speculation regarding the potential damage to birds! If that's not religion, I don't know what is.
>Perhaps you can explain that concept of censorship to the Chinese people.
The Chinese government clearly censors, by my definition: they use the threat of force (i.e. guns and jail) to prevent their citizens from speaking, publishing, associating, petitioning. This is censorship, plain and simple. It is wrong (evil, even).
That Google chooses to do business with this government may also be wrong. They are certainly not doing anything to oppose this censorship and might even be reasonably described as supporting it. However, I have heard plausible arguments that Google believes they are on balance offerring a positive value to the Chinese people on the grounds that having some access to the search results provides some window into information which would otherwise be unattainable. But even if this argument were proved false, it would not mean that Google is censoring. Google would obviously prefer to offer its full service to all of China. It is the Chinese government which is preventing this from happening; it is the government which is the censor.
Censorship is the supression of the speech of others by force (or fraud). In our society, where government does a pretty good job of preventing actual criminals from doing this, it is practically speaking only the government itself which censors (see: campaign finance "reform"). Google has an absolute right to filter whatever it wants from its News site, or its search results, for that matter. Noone has a "right" to force Google to promote their ideas.
On the other hand, Google is clearly irresponsible in its editorial decisions here. Criticism of fanatical Islam is a valid perspective and ought to be published. World Net Daily should be commended for drawing attention to this immoral choice. As has been said by many true proponents of free speech: the answer to bad speech (or non-speech) is more speech, hopefully of the good variety. That is all that one can ask for in a free society.
You do have a way to "protect" yourself against a corporation: Don't buy their products/services.
As for a government (dictatorship or otherwise), you're on to something with that "buy a gun" advice. Unfortunately, if you're really oppressed, it would pretty stupid to write that in a public forum such as this.
If by "play it safe", you mean "substantially cut back on fossil fuel emissions, just in case that is what's causing the current increase in global temperatures", then your play-it-safe approach would - all else being equal - condemn many millions of people to early death.
Usable energy is the life-blood of modern civilization. If you make it more expensive, you will inevitably cause a regression in living standards, which will inevitably result in the deaths of millions of people who are living on the edge of survival. Just because you are not in that group, does not mean you have no moral obligation to consider these consequences.
You may retort that, by not "play it safe", I am toying with the lives of future generations. I respond:
a)That is completely hypothetical, as opposed to my contention that reducing energy production/consumption will result in real costs, now.
b) That flies in the face of mountains of evidence that technological advancement - not its obstruction - is the key to improving life on earth for people at all levels of wealth.
As Bjorn Lomborg has pointed out, the wealth we would squander by adhering to the Kyoto protocol could be allocated to projects which would actually improve people's existence, right now. Most important among these would be ~$100B to solve the very real shortage of potable water throughout much of the third world. In fact, this project (among others) requires MORE energy production, so your "play it safe" approach would move us farther from this tangibly beneficial goal.
... but if the article does not quantify this failure "rate" as mean-time-beetween-failure (MTBF), then the statistic is worthless. 8% of "sessions" requiring reboot is meaningless, without defining how long is a session.
The MPAA did not pass this. Congress did. Congress, to my knowledge, is part of the government. The MPAA lobbying for this act is not "government action", but the exercise of free speech.
Yes, CSS is a private activity. But, surely you don't object to private efforts to protect property, do you?
This is a very understandable emotional reaction, given our societal FUD regarding nuclear energy. However, a little bit of self education would lead you to the conclusion that - if there are any energy sources you should fear - nuclear is not one of them. Indeed, the mostly invisible effluents from oil and (especially) coal fired power plants should concern you much more than few extra millirem you are getting each year from the one remaining operational reactor at TMI. It would be sad if your "out of sight, out of mind" attitude regarding relative risk were pervasive in our society - So, I guess I should be sad, because it is.
It's fascinating to see the (mostly) statists here flail away at this decision while still trying to uphold (or at least not confronting) the notion that the FCC should have control over the ownership of the airwaves.
What do you expect? The FCC is an agency of the government, which in this society is, in the end, answerable to the people, at least those that vote. (And, please no bitching about election 2000 - do you think an FCC filled with Democrats would not be under the exact same pressure as the current one?) If, as many are unwilling to debate, the airwaves are "publicly owned", subject to FCC discretion, then what is broadcast over those airwaves will inevitably be regulated by the government, and it only depends on whose views are in political ascendancy as to what the specific pressures on broadcasters will be.
The only principled alternative to this is the complete separation of speech and state, including speech broadcast over the airwaves. The FCC's role should be to come up with sensible (given technological capabilities and requirements) divisions of the various spectra and then to auction these slices off to the highest bidder, and then never to have anything to say about that slice of the spectrum again.
Broadcasters would then be morally responsible for what they broadcast, parents would be responsible for dealing with their children's viewing/listening behavior, individuals and corporations (read: advertisers) would be free to patronize, boycott, protest as they see fit. And, anyone would be able to start a blog for less than $500 (including a brand new computer and net connection) to say whatever they want about whomever they want. In other words, SPEECH would be FREE!
If you can't accept this scenario, then all of your yelping - on either side - about these profanity "standards" is pointless; go vote for whomever you think would better represent YOUR standards, but don't be surprised when the political winds start blowing the other way.
All it will take is one idiot and his lawyer to mess it up for everyone else.
IANAF (Frenchman), but my understanding is that the U.S.'s litigation insanity has not yet made it to the land of foie gras and wine-from-the-time-you're-able-to-walk. Note also that the French seem to have quite a bit of tolerance for the risk-reward tradeoffs inherent in technological change. For example, the Green's have been unable to make a dent in France's (quite rational) reliance on nuclear power (> 70% of electricity capacity). This is one of the (few) economic advantages that France has over the U.S.
A pretty significant portion of our clientele are people with Repetitive Strain Injury and of those I'd estimate about 90 percent are coders or professional writers.
To synthesize the points made my Malia and good-n-nappy: if there is any causation that this statistic might indicate, it is that centers for adaptive technology attract people who are comfortable with technology (and, in the case, also may have RSIs).
It (your anecdotal statistic) most definitely does not addres the question of "Does typing on a keyboard cause RSI?". The statistic which might then lead one to conduct a study addressing this causation question would be: "What percentage of ALL people who type on keyboards have RSI?". And then you'd need to at least normalize that be "What percentage of ALL people have RSI?". And, if you were really a decent researcher you would (at least) additionally ask: "What relationship does the amount of time that one types on a keyboard have to the likelihood of developing RSI." And the questions would go on from there.
I have not read the study in question, but if it takes an approach like the one I've outlined, then it would seem to at least know how to frame the correlation questions correctly.
As has been well documented, coal is in fact the leading source of radioactive materials released to the environment.
This would be true even if we sprinkled the waste from N-fission plants randomly across the oceans, and in that scenario, the impact on life - both human and animal - would be minimal.
The fear of nuclear power will one day go down in history as one of the great superstitions of our age. Even a geek-heavy site like/. is filled with people who won't let the facts get in the way of their feelings on this issue.
I and many others have a view of the constitution which sees it as a device to limit the power of the government. In this view, while the legislature is solely empowered to make law, this power is strictly limited by enumerating a list of areas in which laws can be made. Since nowhere in the constitution is there an enumerated power to "dissolve entities which the congress dislikes", then changing the laws in such a manner would be unconstitutional.
The constituion goes further and even explicitly mentions the rights of the people to freely associate (e.g. to form corporations) and to use their own resources to speak freely (e.g. to broadcast any information or music they wish). These rights are clear bright lines across which the powers delegated to the government must not trespass. So, on many grounds, the constitution does not grant a moral basis for the actions you seem to endorse.
Now, can today's U.S. government pass such laws? Is it possible for congress to muster a 51% majority to pass a bill to dissolve Clear Channel, or any other company? Of course. But, why is that relevant?
It is also possible for such a majority to be gathered in support of a bill that would not allow Jews to work in the construction industry. If we were a democracy, then there would be no institutional basis for rejecting such laws, just as there was no basis for the Germans to reject the policies of the democratically-elected Nazi party during the 1930's.
However, since we are a constitutional republic, and since the constitution - in my view - is the document which strictly limits the power of the government to violate the rights of individuals, then there is no moral or legal basis for the government to act as you suggest.
Think about it. If your understanding were correct, noone would be any richer than we were at the beginning of humankind! Indeed, everyone would be MUCH poorer, since the "same amount of money" would need to be "shared" among many more people. Or maybe we could all get rich simply by printing more money.
Since it is clear that by any objective measure we are all much richer than we were even 50 years ago (and that printing money does nothing to benefit the economy), here is what you're missing: money != wealth; production == wealth. In other words, the "purpose" of an economy is to produce goods and services ("stuff") that people want.
In the context of this discussion, these leads to some very simple truths:
- Corporations are simply collections of individuals freely associating to - potentially - produce stuff that they think other people want. - Corporations are owned by some people; again this ownership arrangement results from the voluntary consent of the individuals involved. - The owners of a corporation have a right to try to "profit" in the classical sense: that is to make stuff that people want so much that the customers are willing to pay them more than it costs to produce. (Note: Money is obviously involved here as a means of storing the wealth produced by the producers in an economy. And, the producers can play the role of consumers when they take that stored wealth and buy things from other producers. But, the wealth - the stuff - is what gives the money value.) - As such, corporations do not owe anyone a job, except by contractual arrangment between the owners (or the agents, the "managers", who are also just employees) and the individuals that agree to work for them. - They may (and should, in my view) hire and fire people as they see fit. The better they are at choosing employees which can accomplish their corporate goals (however defined) at the lowest cost, the better they will "succeed" at a corporation. - If you take away this "right to profit", for example by interfering with the owners hiring/firing decisions, you are actually saying to the owners: you must continue to produce stuff that we want, but you can't have an equivalent amount of stuff (as measured by money) produced by other people. This, to put it simply, is theft. - Anyone (even YOU) a free to form a corporation without intending to "profit" in this classical sense. You can have any number of explicit or implicit "non economic" goals, such as: have fun, clean the environment, meet sex partners, etc. However, since few people would pay you for this stuff, you would be unable to sustain these activities for very long - UNLESS you use force to extract actual wealth from others.
Bottom line: There can be no right to a job, never mind a right to a job at a given wage. Neither can there be a right for a business to profit. Existence of such "positive" rights would in fact negate the actual rights of others. The only non-contradictory rights that can possibly exist are those that impose negative obligations on other individuals. These obligations are most neatly summarized as: Laissez faire!
Slashdot Mirror
but yourself.
Of course, most of slashdot-dom points fingers at the ISPs, the data centers, the big corporations, etc. I can only find a smattering of posts that even suggest looking in the mirror.
It is *you* and *I* that demand internet resources. Blaming the suppliers of those resources is hypocrisy. Of course, it is no more hypocrisy than that of Gore, Laurie David, et. al., who demand that the plebes impoverish themselves while producing order of magnitude more CO2 than they. But, you'd think nerds would have a better understanding of the actual source of the capabilities the net provides.
Of course, if, like me, you recognize that the wealth and progress which the internet makes possible will far outweigh any hypothetical environmental costs, and that the benefit/cost ratio will increase rapidly due to the knowledge sharing impact of this technology, then you are not worried about these numbers. Electricity consumption, and energy consumption in general, is a sign of human progress, progress that will allow us to better adapt to any environmental change that may be forthcoming, whether natural or man-made.
But, if that's all technological hubris and greedy over-simplification to you, then I have the solution:
Turn off your damn computer.
No, this is a requirement only if you intend to apply for a European patent on the invention. Otherwise, you can keep the patent secret until it is granted.
Please cite your source for the statement that "The USSR had quite a thriving economy in the beginning". If it was the Soviet government, I call BS. And, even if not, two questions are begged:
1) How long was the "beginning"?
2) "Thriving" compared to what other nations (i.e. what normalization factor is used)?
You are not being fair (or reasonable), given that this forum is best suited for relatively brief items as opposed to scholarly treatises:
The parent is a brief summarization of a causal theory which has been promulgated at least since Adam Smith: when someone knows that they are more-or-less going to be able to benefit from what they produce, they tend to work harder, to produce more, to plan further into the future, to trust others in their society enough to trade with them, and to invest their wealth in ways that actually increase the amount of capital so that the entire economy can grow. It is this virtuous cycle which made the industrial revolution possible.
There. Now you can go ahead and argue with this causal theory.
Um, because using government coercion to legislate cutting our energy usage by 10-50% will cause us to be poorer and less healthy in the short term. Also, it will decrease our capacity to invent, develop and mass-produce technologies which would enable us to adapt to climate change (in _either_ direction)! Given the likely time-scales involved in such change (even the most dire models give us decades), adaptation is certainly achievable, provided we have a dynamic, free economy and society without bureaucrats deciding the "one best way" to adapt.
It comes down to dynamism vs. one-size-fits-all stasism . I prefer the former.
This office will always, by its very nature, be politicized. If you don't like that, you should be arguing to get rid of the position entirely.
In a free society, the government would not have any power to make or enforce laws that bear upon anything an SG might have to say.
I won't argue with any of these points.
Instead, I will save this reply in my ~ as a quintessential example of what is meant by the idea "will to power".
I haven't seen any posts mention the fundamental moral issue: Government power ought not be used to prevent any individual from moving freely in pursuit of whatever peaceful purposes they choose.
As applied to immigration, I am fully sympathetic to the idea that such individuals should face the burden of proof that their intentions are peaceful, and that unlawful behavior in their country of origin (so long as that country has a legitimate rule of law) would be a prima facie case for rejecting their application. And, based on the realities of the modern world, there would also be strong grounds for rejecting the application of individuals from areas that are known to harbor sworn enemies of the U.S. and of individual rights in general.
I would venture that these criteria would eliminate only a tiny fraction of the H1B applicants. I would also submit that, were the process framed this way, enforcement would be much easier. Honest people would be extremely forthcoming in their willingness to prove their suitability to be allowed in, if they knew that only truly evil behavior and intentions were grounds for rejection. Immigration officials could focus their energies on ferretting out actual bad guys instead of trying vainly to optimize a decision involving endless incalculable political and economic variables. And again, the burden of proof would be on the applicant.
Otherwise, however, preventing the free movement of individuals is a violation of their human rights, and should not be the policy of a free country. Those opposed to this position should answer the question: on what basis should the power of force be used to prevent someone from peaceably pursuing their own happiness? Do you have some kind of "right" to a particular job at a particular salary which nullifies someone else's (actual) right to simply try for a better life? If so, then you must be saying that this "right" of yours derives simply from the accident of you having been born in the U.S. Think about the illogic of that position.
That is in addition to the practical benefits of immigration to all Americans, mentioned by other posts.
You are correct. A schwa in spontaneous speech can have duration way less than 35 msec. In fact, 5 msec is quite reasonable. On the other hand, as you and other have stated, it practically impossible to speak 5 (or 6) syllables in 35 msec. I am a researcher in automatic speech recognition, and typical word durations in spontaneously spoken English are about 300 msec. When people are dictating very quickly, they can get this down to about 100 msec, but not much faster.
It is perfectly reasonable for Armstrong's "a" to have been intended but either elided at the source or dropped in the communication channel, but not that he spoke as fast as this article claims.
Even if one stipulates moral equivalency between Bush and Annan as individuals (and I don't), that is not particularly relevant to this discussion. The issue is the moral authority of the institutions which they represent. The Bush administration, as part of the U.S. government, is subject to all of the checks and balances of our system and our relatively free society. We have an independent judiciary which can and does rule against the administration (see Hamdan), a free press which exposes secret government programs (see NYT/SWIFT), and a democratic system which allows the people to vote the rascals out, if they so deem fit. The UN is a secretive, corrupt, unelected, unaccountable organization which encourages the vilest dictatorships on earth to feel like they are part of the civilized world. Anyone who wants to be Secretary General of such an institution, without the intention to use that power to completely reform it, is, by virute of that desire, not to be trusted with power.
While your realpolitik take on this is correct, as far as it goes, it doesn't go far enough: it is not just the "stability" of Iran that is at issue. It is the nature of the regime. Simply put, tyrannies will always be a threat to their neighbors (and in the nuclear age, to much more distant "neighbors"), and should therefore be discouraged in whatever way is practical from having any kind of military power. Relatively free countries pose much less of a threat to world peace. Therefore, given the existence of tyrannies, it is imperative that free countries have powerful militaries in order to deter the initiation of force, and to defeat/overthrow the dictators if things get bad enough. Having the latest/greatest nukes is part of that picture and I am happy that we are working on this.
I realize that none of this squares with the world view of those that see the U.S. and Iranian systems as morally equivalent, or to those that think pacificism is non-contracdictory and practicable, but I'm not interested in persuading them.
Are you serious? There is no question that the U.S. Ban on DDT has resulted in supply shortages such that millions of Africans and South Americans are dying each year from malaria. This site and this reference at the the CDC are good places to start.
Even the New York Times has begun to accept the truth on this.
What is worse is that the philisophical routes of this ban were explicitly anti-human. Rachel Carson barely mentioned any negative impact on humans in 'Silent Spring'. Certainly, there were no such studies at the time (and studies since then have shown 0 ill effects to humans). Carson's main complaint was that DDT weakened the shells of bird eggs, thereby disrupting their cycle. This too has been disproven.
So, we have essentially sacrificed the lives of millions of humans in the name of speculation regarding the potential damage to birds! If that's not religion, I don't know what is.
>Perhaps you can explain that concept of censorship to the Chinese people.
The Chinese government clearly censors, by my definition: they use the threat of force (i.e. guns and jail) to prevent their citizens from speaking, publishing, associating, petitioning. This is censorship, plain and simple. It is wrong (evil, even).
That Google chooses to do business with this government may also be wrong. They are certainly not doing anything to oppose this censorship and might even be reasonably described as supporting it. However, I have heard plausible arguments that Google believes they are on balance offerring a positive value to the Chinese people on the grounds that having some access to the search results provides some window into information which would otherwise be unattainable. But even if this argument were proved false, it would not mean that Google is censoring. Google would obviously prefer to offer its full service to all of China. It is the Chinese government which is preventing this from happening; it is the government which is the censor.
Censorship is the supression of the speech of others by force (or fraud). In our society, where government does a pretty good job of preventing actual criminals from doing this, it is practically speaking only the government itself which censors (see: campaign finance "reform"). Google has an absolute right to filter whatever it wants from its News site, or its search results, for that matter. Noone has a "right" to force Google to promote their ideas.
On the other hand, Google is clearly irresponsible in its editorial decisions here. Criticism of fanatical Islam is a valid perspective and ought to be published. World Net Daily should be commended for drawing attention to this immoral choice. As has been said by many true proponents of free speech: the answer to bad speech (or non-speech) is more speech, hopefully of the good variety. That is all that one can ask for in a free society.
You do have a way to "protect" yourself against a corporation: Don't buy their products/services.
As for a government (dictatorship or otherwise), you're on to something with that "buy a gun" advice. Unfortunately, if you're really oppressed, it would pretty stupid to write that in a public forum such as this.
If by "play it safe", you mean "substantially cut back on fossil fuel emissions, just in case that is what's causing the current increase in global temperatures", then your play-it-safe approach would - all else being equal - condemn many millions of people to early death.
Usable energy is the life-blood of modern civilization. If you make it more expensive, you will inevitably cause a regression in living standards, which will inevitably result in the deaths of millions of people who are living on the edge of survival. Just because you are not in that group, does not mean you have no moral obligation to consider these consequences.
You may retort that, by not "play it safe", I am toying with the lives of future generations. I respond:
a)That is completely hypothetical, as opposed to my contention that reducing energy production/consumption will result in real costs, now.
b) That flies in the face of mountains of evidence that technological advancement - not its obstruction - is the key to improving life on earth for people at all levels of wealth.
As Bjorn Lomborg has pointed out, the wealth we would squander by adhering to the Kyoto protocol could be allocated to projects which would actually improve people's existence, right now. Most important among these would be ~$100B to solve the very real shortage of potable water throughout much of the third world. In fact, this project (among others) requires MORE energy production, so your "play it safe" approach would move us farther from this tangibly beneficial goal.
... but if the article does not quantify this failure "rate" as mean-time-beetween-failure (MTBF), then the statistic is worthless. 8% of "sessions" requiring reboot is meaningless, without defining how long is a session.
Excuse me?
DMCA = Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
The MPAA did not pass this. Congress did. Congress, to my knowledge, is part of the government. The MPAA lobbying for this act is not "government action", but the exercise of free speech.
Yes, CSS is a private activity. But, surely you don't object to private efforts to protect property, do you?
This is a very understandable emotional reaction, given our societal FUD regarding nuclear energy. However, a little bit of self education would lead you to the conclusion that - if there are any energy sources you should fear - nuclear is not one of them. Indeed, the mostly invisible effluents from oil and (especially) coal fired power plants should concern you much more than few extra millirem you are getting each year from the one remaining operational reactor at TMI. It would be sad if your "out of sight, out of mind" attitude regarding relative risk were pervasive in our society - So, I guess I should be sad, because it is.
It's fascinating to see the (mostly) statists here flail away at this decision while still trying to uphold (or at least not confronting) the notion that the FCC should have control over the ownership of the airwaves.
What do you expect? The FCC is an agency of the government, which in this society is, in the end, answerable to the people, at least those that vote. (And, please no bitching about election 2000 - do you think an FCC filled with Democrats would not be under the exact same pressure as the current one?) If, as many are unwilling to debate, the airwaves are "publicly owned", subject to FCC discretion, then what is broadcast over those airwaves will inevitably be regulated by the government, and it only depends on whose views are in political ascendancy as to what the specific pressures on broadcasters will be.
The only principled alternative to this is the complete separation of speech and state, including speech broadcast over the airwaves. The FCC's role should be to come up with sensible (given technological capabilities and requirements) divisions of the various spectra and then to auction these slices off to the highest bidder, and then never to have anything to say about that slice of the spectrum again.
Broadcasters would then be morally responsible for what they broadcast, parents would be responsible for dealing with their children's viewing/listening behavior, individuals and corporations (read: advertisers) would be free to patronize, boycott, protest as they see fit. And, anyone would be able to start a blog for less than $500 (including a brand new computer and net connection) to say whatever they want about whomever they want. In other words, SPEECH would be FREE!
If you can't accept this scenario, then all of your yelping - on either side - about these profanity "standards" is pointless; go vote for whomever you think would better represent YOUR standards, but don't be surprised when the political winds start blowing the other way.
All it will take is one idiot and his lawyer to mess it up for everyone else.
IANAF (Frenchman), but my understanding is that the U.S.'s litigation insanity has not yet made it to the land of foie gras and wine-from-the-time-you're-able-to-walk. Note also that the French seem to have quite a bit of tolerance for the risk-reward tradeoffs inherent in technological change. For example, the Green's have been unable to make a dent in France's (quite rational) reliance on nuclear power (> 70% of electricity capacity). This is one of the (few) economic advantages that France has over the U.S.
A pretty significant portion of our clientele are people with Repetitive Strain Injury and of those I'd estimate about 90 percent are coders or professional writers.
To synthesize the points made my Malia and good-n-nappy: if there is any causation that this statistic might indicate, it is that centers for adaptive technology attract people who are comfortable with technology (and, in the case, also may have RSIs).
It (your anecdotal statistic) most definitely does not addres the question of "Does typing on a keyboard cause RSI?". The statistic which might then lead one to conduct a study addressing this causation question would be: "What percentage of ALL people who type on keyboards have RSI?". And then you'd need to at least normalize that be "What percentage of ALL people have RSI?". And, if you were really a decent researcher you would (at least) additionally ask: "What relationship does the amount of time that one types on a keyboard have to the likelihood of developing RSI." And the questions would go on from there.
I have not read the study in question, but if it takes an approach like the one I've outlined, then it would seem to at least know how to frame the correlation questions correctly.
As has been well documented, coal is in fact the leading source of radioactive materials released to the environment.
/. is filled with people who won't let the facts get in the way of their feelings on this issue.
This would be true even if we sprinkled the waste from N-fission plants randomly across the oceans, and in that scenario, the impact on life - both human and animal - would be minimal.
The fear of nuclear power will one day go down in history as one of the great superstitions of our age. Even a geek-heavy site like
Oh well.
I and many others have a view of the constitution which sees it as a device to limit the power of the government. In this view, while the legislature is solely empowered to make law, this power is strictly limited by enumerating a list of areas in which laws can be made. Since nowhere in the constitution is there an enumerated power to "dissolve entities which the congress dislikes", then changing the laws in such a manner would be unconstitutional.
The constituion goes further and even explicitly mentions the rights of the people to freely associate (e.g. to form corporations) and to use their own resources to speak freely (e.g. to broadcast any information or music they wish). These rights are clear bright lines across which the powers delegated to the government must not trespass. So, on many grounds, the constitution does not grant a moral basis for the actions you seem to endorse.
Now, can today's U.S. government pass such laws? Is it possible for congress to muster a 51% majority to pass a bill to dissolve Clear Channel, or any other company? Of course. But, why is that relevant?
It is also possible for such a majority to be gathered in support of a bill that would not allow Jews to work in the construction industry. If we were a democracy, then there would be no institutional basis for rejecting such laws, just as there was no basis for the Germans to reject the policies of the democratically-elected Nazi party during the 1930's.
However, since we are a constitutional republic, and since the constitution - in my view - is the document which strictly limits the power of the government to violate the rights of individuals, then there is no moral or legal basis for the government to act as you suggest.
Think about it. If your understanding were correct, noone would be any richer than we were at the beginning of humankind! Indeed, everyone would be MUCH poorer, since the "same amount of money" would need to be "shared" among many more people. Or maybe we could all get rich simply by printing more money.
Since it is clear that by any objective measure we are all much richer than we were even 50 years ago (and that printing money does nothing to benefit the economy), here is what you're missing: money != wealth; production == wealth. In other words, the "purpose" of an economy is to produce goods and services ("stuff") that people want.
In the context of this discussion, these leads to some very simple truths:
- Corporations are simply collections of individuals freely associating to - potentially - produce stuff that they think other people want.
- Corporations are owned by some people; again this ownership arrangement results from the voluntary consent of the individuals involved.
- The owners of a corporation have a right to try to "profit" in the classical sense: that is to make stuff that people want so much that the customers are willing to pay them more than it costs to produce. (Note: Money is obviously involved here as a means of storing the wealth produced by the producers in an economy. And, the producers can play the role of consumers when they take that stored wealth and buy things from other producers. But, the wealth - the stuff - is what gives the money value.)
- As such, corporations do not owe anyone a job, except by contractual arrangment between the owners (or the agents, the "managers", who are also just employees) and the individuals that agree to work for them.
- They may (and should, in my view) hire and fire people as they see fit. The better they are at choosing employees which can accomplish their corporate goals (however defined) at the lowest cost, the better they will "succeed" at a corporation.
- If you take away this "right to profit", for example by interfering with the owners hiring/firing decisions, you are actually saying to the owners: you must continue to produce stuff that we want, but you can't have an equivalent amount of stuff (as measured by money) produced by other people. This, to put it simply, is theft.
- Anyone (even YOU) a free to form a corporation without intending to "profit" in this classical sense. You can have any number of explicit or implicit "non economic" goals, such as: have fun, clean the environment, meet sex partners, etc. However, since few people would pay you for this stuff, you would be unable to sustain these activities for very long - UNLESS you use force to extract actual wealth from others.
Bottom line: There can be no right to a job, never mind a right to a job at a given wage. Neither can there be a right for a business to profit. Existence of such "positive" rights would in fact negate the actual rights of others. The only non-contradictory rights that can possibly exist are those that impose negative obligations on other individuals. These obligations are most neatly summarized as: Laissez faire!