I hate those expressions! That implies that the original light was faint. But faint compared to what? Why not just say that it was 1/x-th the brightness of the original event's visible light? The echos/reflections are relative to the original, in terms of what makes the story interesting. Both the original event and the reflections are found on some hard scale of luminosity, but that's not referenced... so why the awkward, un-anchored, and thus meaningless reference? Grrrr. 20 billion times fainter than the original... which was what? Half as bright as the full moon? Brighter than the sun? Brighter than an ascending science journalist or summary writer?
If the snake is about to bite you, you'll not be quick enough to shoot it. You probably were fumbling around in its vicinity and you scared it.
Yeah, except your "probably" scenario is full of crap. Have you ever confronted a large rattlesnake in a stock paddock or a dog pen? I have.
With the nearest Helpful Snake Catching Wildlife Ranger Guy hours away after a call (during which call, of course, their first advice
would be: "Uh, why don't you just shoot it?"). I've encountered deadly snakes in domestic circumstances. I feel absolutely no urge to try to catch
it myself, and even less of an urge to wait hours for a Certified Poisonous Snake Wrangler to make the trip out... only to have had the snake
get bored and disappear under your front porch, into your firewood pile, or into a crack on the sunny side of your barn's foundation.
Same applies for rabid foxes and other varmits. Or how about the time I came across a 150-pound whitetail deer, caught with its rack tangled in some
wild grape vine while jumping a hedgerow? It was in agony, with a broken back. Response time from a Department Of Natural Resources officer on
a Sunday morning? "We can have someone out there Monday, would that be OK?" Bang. Animal out of misery. I suppose you would have attempted to put
in an IV and administer a sedative so that the animal could hang peacefully from its neck until the next day? You're very thoughtful, I can tell.
The farmer should call the organization responsible for the management of wild-life to get his coyote problem handled.
Ah. Which organization would that be, exactly? Obviously you don't know any farmers. Predatory pest control is not handled by
the government. As much as you'd obviously like to raise taxes to pay for more Nanny State services so that a professional government trapper
could get hold of the coyotes and move them (where? to some other zip code where they promise to say put and only eat the taxpayer-provided
food that you'll arrange for them?), actual, real-life farmers would rather spend $0.35 on a.22 Mag round and quickly put down the animal that's
eating his inventory. That's a lot cheaper and more effective than calling a government employee to beg for the services of a contractor who
will have to then camp out on the farm to deal with a fleeting, intermittent, difficult to nail down opportunistic scavenger/predator. The
farmer is out on his grounds all day, every day. Why do you feel the need to add a taxpayer-funded government layer to the picture? I suspect
I know.
The hiker/camper would do well not to shoot a charging bear, because unless you have an elephant gun and kill it in one shot, that bear
will go medieval on the hiker/camper's ass
A nice, tidy, fits in your fanny-pack.44 Mag revolver will usually do the job if it comes down to it. And if you're really up against a gigantic
Kodiak or Grizzly that's pissed at you, it's a little academic, isn't it? But a starving, scrawny immature bear that sees you across
your campsite and gets nuts? Or a typical black bear? One shot, no problem. Running from either of those bears? Disaster. Standing there and
singing Kumbaya to it? Roll of the dice. Standing there and singing Kumbaya while also holding a.44 Mag in your hand, just in case? Much better.
Ever been in a rural, bear-populated area where there's a beefy handgun hanging on a hook next to the door so that you'll remember to grab
it on your way to the outhouse at night? Didn't think so. But then, sounds like you've never been in such a setting, or had to think about
mountain lions, rabid badgers that can tear a chunk out of your leg, or anything else, for that matter.
There seems to be at least a correlation between weapons and violent crime
Yes, there is. The correlation is inverse: when a population is legally allowed to own firearms, violent crime in that area goes down.
When a population is deprived of that
You keep using that word, but...
on
Censorship By Glut
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
censorship a: the institution, system, or practice of censoring
b: the actions or practices of censors ; especially : censorial control exercised repressively
Which is not the same thing as people going with the flow, and acting like the rather lazy pack/herd animals that hundreds of millions of years of evolution has wired up.
Having a great idea that you express below the Signal-to-Noise threshold is not the same as being censored.
My point was simply that your arguments are old ground on slashdot, it is odd that someone with a low uid has not heard them before and heard them be discredited.
There are any number of "old" positions routinely touted on this web site. The age and repetitiveness of the discussion has absolutely nothing to do with merits of any position. If it's so old, and so distilled down to perfection in your mind, why are you so unable to make a succinct, compelling argument for your (vague, un-defined) proposed alternative to authors controlling the reproduction of their work?
I see no point in arguing the obvious with you. If you would like to come back to MY original point that copyright is inefficient and thus not the best bargain for society, please do.
People aren't coming back to your "point" because you haven't actually made one. You're making a statement, without backing it up philosophically, practically, or in any other meaningful way. You don't propose or articulate an alternative, you simply state that there is one, and refer people to years of "information wants to be free" pablum as served up on sites like this over the years as some sort of proof that the matter is philosophically tucked in for the night. But there are people who defend creationism the same way ("We've talked about it for centuries, so let's just stipulate the matter as settled, OK?").
No, you can expect President Bush to be fired for ordering the wiretap.
Unfortunately, we can't expect people like Nancy Pelosi - who has always been fully briefed on such things - to be fired for being such a hypocrite about it.
Gee, I don't know. Maybe it was your assertion that:
those who benefit directly from the system who should have the least say in how the system is run
which conveniently skips over the whole part where the people who benefit from copyright protection are also the people who actually get off their ass and produce that which is being sought out (or not) by the audience. Your vaporous suggestions about how that audience's money should instead be re-allocated among a larger group of artists for a more "utilitarian" societal use of arts and entertainment dollars isn't the history lesson you seem to think it is. Unless you liked the way, say, the Soviets took care of artists. You know, the ones who risked their lives to flee that paradise of equitable creativity.
There you go! Now that's some insightful feedback. I especially like how you've circled back and refuted the details. That is some fine work, there. Certainly not a non sequitor at all, no. Call me a convert! I now think it's appropriate for people who don't create anything to be in charge of the people who do. You are SO cool to straighten that all out.
those who benefit directly from the system who should have the least say in how the system is run
Let me guess... Obama voter?
To follow your logic, people who don't work at all should be the ones who get to say what someone who's willing to work 80 hours a week must do with the proceeds and output of that work. You are supporting a framework in which willingness to work is punished by submitting the worker to the whim of the non-worker. You are supporting a framework in which the ability to create something or to innovate means automatic slavery to those with less talent and motivation.
"Society" benefits just fine from an author hitting a resonent note and producing a series of books like Rowling's. It benefits by demonstrating that there is the prospect of being well rewarded for sparking an interest in one's work, and prolificly persuing that audience. Your model - where some entity takes the audience's willingness to spend money on entertainment they want, and spreading that money around a 1000 other authors - is absurd on the face of it.
The Ministry Of Entertainment might accidentally get it right once in a while, but the knowledge that a government agency is injecting itself between readers and writers and regulating that relationship - that might please you, but it all it would do for me is make me seek out authors willing to work for the reward of my wanting to pay them for their writings. Those who spend their day writing books while receiving their assigned sliver of the book-buying public's government mandated redistribution of entertainment funds don't strike me as the likeliest sources of what I want to read.
Most big name pop bands don't make a dime off their first hit album.
Unless, of course, they are clearly talented enough strike a deal more to their liking, and are able to show that it's not a risk for the people fronting the money. Most new entertainers can't demonstrate that sort of marketability, and they themselves know it, so they make an investment in their own success: they trade some early income in exchange for letting someone else take the early risks.
How much more utility would society get for its money if it weren't squandered on things like 'The Clone Wars' and the Ewok Christmas Special that coast on the good name of his earlier works?
Well, that sort of depends on how wisely that money is spent, and how concentrated it is on larger, more complex projects that require long-term funding during production. I'm curious which agency of the government you think should decide such things? Perhaps we can get Michael Moore to be Minister Of Good Taste And Wholesome Entertainment to direct those dollars and choose which artists are worthy? Yesiree, Change We Can Believe In!
Or, are you just pissy because the consuming public is fickle and lazy, and you don't always love the choices they make, and think that it should be up to you, instead? Yeah, I thought so.
Are you trying to prove that you'll complain about anything and everything Obama-related?
Actually, no. I was proving that the GP's comment about how Obama's change being away from cronyism and lobbyists is complete fantasy. If it was only his supporters having such dreams, and being deluded about it... that's one thing. But since Obama's campaign actually talked in those terms despite deliberate and consistent actual actions to the contrary, it's worth pointing out that sort of deceit. It goes to the shallowness of his character in that regard. Knowing that about him helps to put the rest of his comments and promises in context.
you're heading at full speed for Sore Loser territory
Not really. Anyone who was watching saw this pattern of behavior coming (since it was being used in the campaign, too), which is why they were sore before the election, and thus still are.
Now it's time to see what Obama has to offer
Don't you feel at least a little odd, hiring someone to be the Commander-in-Chief, not knowing what he has to offer, or knowing that his words and his actions, his vaguely stated policies and his actual associations and actions are quite at odds with each other?
You're kidding, right? He's doling out cabinet positions to millionaire buddies from Chicago and the Queen Of Cronyism (soon to be Secretary of State Clinton), and his transition team is full of dozens of lobbyists and friends/associates of long time professional lobbyists.
A change from a culture of fear to a culture of hope.
Ah. So that's why the only specific note he ever hit in his entire campaign was the repetitive preaching to his fawning audiences about how much they had to fear the prospects of John McCain being POTUS? Nah, no fear mongering there. No fear mongering or anger-stoking in his class and race baiting messages, no siree. Did you ever even read the transcripts of his Spanish-language advertising?
No matter how fine the granularity of the responses of the AI becomes, it's still just a collection of little functions that passed the point of "photorealism" from a conversational perspective. That doesn't mean it's self aware.
So, does that means that YOU are not self-aware? All you are is a collection of complex cellular interactions. You have a finite number of neurons, make a huge but finite number of connections. Those connections behave in subtle ways that are influenced by a finite number of conditions. So, you can't imagine a combination of hardware and sortware that can emulate a neuron? Or a thousand neurons and their interactions?
There's a big difference between the number of neurons you have and an infinite number of them. You want to be careful using the word "never" when all of the pieces of the puzzle are finite, and increasingly well understood. Massively interconnected neural pathways - whether hardware, software, or some future bio-engineered replacement - are no more inconceivable than are tiny microprocessors containing millions of transistors, operating miniscule radios with keyboards that let you read this sentence on a photorealistic display. Those technologies were previously considered outlandish or prohibitively, incomprehensively complex. And that was just earlier in the lives of millions of people who today use such technology before breakfast every morning.
run up a multi-trillion dollar debt, fight an undeclared war
Check with Congress. The president can't spend a dime that the congress doesn't collect as taxes and authorize as a budget item. And, presuming you're talking about Iraq (or were you talking about Bill Clinton's use of the military in, say, Kosovo - no war declared there, either), the president didn't use force there, either, until congress specifically authorized it.
deliberately sabotage attempts of the majority
Which majority are you referring to, exactly? If you mean that the party with more seats in congress doesn't always get its way when it can't muster a super majority of votes in the senate, but seem to think that this has only been true while the current administration has been in the executive branch, then you are really being myopic about it. Were you not around while Dems were filbustering the Republican majority in the legislature? Or when the party in the majority had its agenda "sabotaged" by Bill Clinton? What makes your particular, contemporary dislike for the centuries-old system of checks and balances worth a second glance? It's not new, not even close.
And lest you think that a particular idealogy is somehow moving into a sweet spot of sweeping unamimous authority and some large mandate come January, remember that Obama only won by 6% of the people that voted, and that as usual, close to half of the people who could have voted did not bother to do so. And of the seats gained by the democrats in congress and the senate, many of those newly won seats are now occupied by very conservative dems who are not at all of the Pelosi/Reid stripe. But even if they were, would you really expect their political opponents to cease to vote on behalf of those who re-elected them? Should the democrats, when they were most recently in the minority, have given up their own principles and not voted according to their own values? Why? Do you really think that whoever owns the most legislative seats should expect to be able to steamroll the wishes of the other half of the country?
If one party as a very good case for something, they should have no trouble getting a majority of the votes to back them. It happens when it needs to. And it doesn't happen when the sponsor of the legislation is weak on the issue - and that's exactly how it should be.
ignore the constitution when it's convenient
Specifically?
That the President isn't actually running an undeclared war
Against who? The Taliban wasn't a nation-state. It was a brutal movement of armed thugs from other countries that was occupying Afghanistan's meager civic roles and marketplaces and harboring another group that had been carrying out terrorist attacks around the world for years. The constitution's language surrounding war declaration doesn't even fit that situation. Would you have just sat on your hands, then? And what of Saddam Hussein? The hostilities he started when he invaded Kuwait never ended. The UN's sanctions against his regime were never relieved because he never complied with the terms of his withdrawl from that nation, and never stopped shooting at coalition aircraft. For years. So, should a declaration of war have been used to aid Kuwait? How about Somalia? How about in Kosovo? Should one be issued before we could aid peacekeepers in Darfur? Why?
Obama's administration is going to re-open the channels of communication between the exec. branch and the populace.
You're confusing "communication between" with "communication at."
Do you really want a chief executive who has to wade through millions of messages sent to him? Or want, as a taxpayer, to pay for a staff of thousands who will sit there all day and distill down what they think are messages he should see or surf to? Come now. Saying that he'll use different mechanisms to broadcast his thoughts is a lot different than saying that he'll somehow be more communicated to than his predecessors. He's hired to be an executive, not an open-door representative. Executives who misunderstand that tend to be terrible leaders.
Communication channels are not closed now, and won't be more open next year. The current president has weekly communications going out, and has a press team that meets with the press to field questions every day. The next president is going to do the same thing. You can already go online to listen digest every weekly presidential communication that you want to digest. I think that you're just talking about having a president that has things to say that you prefer to hear. I'm worried enough about Obama's ability to learn everything he needs to know about having his first ever actual executive job while also being POTUS in very challenging times. I don't know why he should take even more time out of every week to make sure that every weekly address is seamlessly presentable for video. Ask any president if he thinks prepping for 52 more on-television presentations every year is particularly helpful for his schedule. I'm betting that Obama is only now getting his head around how much less time he'll have for anything, compared to being a non-voting, perpetual candidate senator. His Web 2.0 goof-off time is going to evaporate on him right before his sleep-deprived eyes.
Raise taxes higher tomorrow than they are today (no matter where you distribute the load), and you are putting higher taxes on the economy. Period. How anyone can think that raising the taxes on, say, a guy who runs a landscaping company or a dental practice won't involve those extra costs being simply passed along to the people who buy those services is... deluded. Deluded enough to fall for the pitch, I guess. And that's exactly what just happened.
I don't know if "landing" is the right term for it, exactly. That doesn't seem fair to people and devices that actually... don't splat when they "land."
The President is the ultimate authority on the budget. If he vetos it, Congress will have to start again
Which is why the Dems in the legislature are trying so hard to produce a veto-proof super majority in the Senate. Even as we speak, Al Franken's crew is trying everything to win in MN, even if it means pulling a couple of dozen votes out stashes of votes that election officials seem to be mysteriously producing out of "secure storage" between the voting day and counting process. That race is going to play out exactly like Florida did eight years ago - blow by blow, suit by suit. It wouldn't matter as much except for the whole super majority issue. Well, that and the fact that Franken is a blowhard asshat, and who wants THAT around for six years. Regardless... a veto-proof majority in the Senate gives Obama cover for any distasteful old thing that he wants shoved through ("Hey, don't look at me! I had no way to stop it!" etc).
Is any of this really up to Obama? Isn't it Congress that decides where money is spent?
Shhhh, you'll spoil it! Next thing you'll be saying is that Obama can't wave a magic want and "change the world," or that his promises to tax the economy - especially the most successful parts of it - won't discourage people from risking their money and efforts in that way. Next you'll probably even say that calling a check you get from IRS, when you don't even pay income taxes, a "rebate" is a gratuitous lie. Why do you hate his supporters so much, that you bring up little issues like the fact that Nancy Pelosi has more to do with what NASA gets to spend than Obama does? You are mean.
nothing I say can change the mind of the true believer
And you are... ? What, a highly refined moral relativist? If you are comfortable, ethically, with 50 hours of compulsary work that a child has to perform, why not 500? Why not 5 years? Why not simply 55%, or 95% of all waking hours? Once you open up a hole in your value system that says it's OK to compel someone to work for the state, you waive any right to complain about the number of hours, or days, or years involved. There is absolutely no moral difference between compelling five minutes, or five thousand.
The difference between us isn't a choice of world view (say, between socialism and a free labor market, or some other over-arcing polar set of systems). No, you're expressly choosing not to have principles at all. You'd rather give up some liberty in the name of convenience and in order to save yourself the frustration of trying to talk other people into investing in (for example) clean streets. What you won't do is actually make a case for why the state should compel such work, rather than inspire it. Compulsary labor forced on them by their government teaches the exact opposite of inspiring kids to show initiative. But you know that, and you're simply willing to swallow that pill because it's easy. I don't care about that. What I care about is that you're willing to force - through the state - other people to swallow it, too.
Don't know. But you could sure use some, for yourself.
Just to help get you started, from the dictionary:
slavery: noun
1: drudgery , toil
2: submission to a dominating influence
3: the state of a person who is a chattel of another
So, when someone wakes up in the morning and is facing 40, or 50, or 1, or 1000 hours of uncompensated labor for someone else - and will face legal consequences for not performing it - what do you call it? You are forced, by your government, to work unpaid for someone else, or face penalties. There's a reason that that exact scenario is a common form of government punishment for lawbreakers. Many people who have assaulted, or defrauded, or otherwise injured one or more people have their liberty denied. Makes perfect sense. Some of them get the choice of either incarceration, or performing community service. Both are specifically seen as a denial of liberty as a consequence for bad acts. Obama and the many other fans of mandatory servitude in that vein are talking about making people who've done nothing wrong do the same things that criminals must do.
I clean up trash along roads and parks. Just like convicts do. Why? Because I want to, not because I'm being forced to. You prefer the force option. And you're confused about the moral problems presented by that?
Actually, I don't think you are. You are absolutely positive that you can't make a good case for forcing a person to work for other people, so you're deflecting. You think that a rented slave is different than a permanently owned one. But if Obama gets his way on this, he'll be normalizing the concept of schools establishing rent-a-slave programs. Sure, they get to go home at night, and aren't being whipped. But is the permanent establishing of the notion that the government should have that power over every citizen really that important to you? Is your ability to inspire someone to volunteer really so weak that you require a bureaucracy to trot out legal sanctions for those people that don't go along, or don't see such student conscription to be appropriate?
I notice you're not making the case for it - it's because you're totally abdicating the formation of a student's values and ethics to the nanny state. If you weren't, you'd be talking about your success and your continuing plans to talk kids into giving up some weekends because they want to, as so many already do. You want to trot out ugly historical analogies? Slavery of the kind you described was the fruit of laziness on the part of the slaveholders - the result of wanting results with minimal personal effort. You are looking for the same thing. You want to be off the hook in actually seeing through your agenda of getting kids to volunteer their time. You're so lazy that you'd rather empower the government to force that work, and are so blind that you don't see the peril in making that a normal state of affairs. Yours isn't cotton-harvesting laziness, it's moral and intellectual laziness.
It's 50 hours out of a kid's life. They'll be ok, I promise. It's good for them, it's good for the community. My kids both did 80 hours, and enjoyed it
Well then, why not leave it to the people that enjoy it? If something is so good, and The Master Communicator Of All Time is now president, shouldn't he be able to sell people on volunteering their time? Why is forcing people to do it virtuous? What does it say about his ideals, and his ability to communicate them, that the immediate reaction of a large sample of this audience (notoriously lefty) is to regard it as conscriptatory labor? If you're so able to present your kids' mandatory work for other people as a positive thing, why do you doubt your ability to talk other kids into doing it? Why do you need a huge new government bureaucracy, funded by tax payers, to make people do something that you think is fun?
Possibly raise a generation of Americans who have actually seen firsthand that they can help others?
So, that cause - which you consider so noble - is beyond you, in this age of massively internetworking and media, to persuasively illustrate? You need to prove your compassion by making slaves?
Just go sell books at the library or something, its really not that hard to accomplish
Ah, well then, way to make the point that it's a meaningless gesture in the first place. Other than the fact that it's a bit of empty action that can be pointed to as an example of just how benign it is for the government to be more involved in your life and the arbitor of personal ethics and morality. Ah, the Nanny State.
if a de facto monopoly shuts down its service there must be continuity of service
Why? There is only one walk-up ice cream store in my neighborhood. They own that market. There is no competition. Should they be forced to stay in business if they don't feel like doing it any more, or want to change how they do what they do?
What takes precedence, private shareholders or the health of the entire nations web services?
Gee... maybe if you're betting your own entire ability to make a living on whether or not one other business continues to do something in exactly the way you're hoping they will, you're taking way too much risk to complain? There are plenty of other businesses doing what Google does. If Google folded up their tent and went away, there would be huge amounts of capital flowing, that day to Yahoo, MS, and others to invest in filling that role. Don't like the idea of disruption during the transition? It's no different than a shipping company needing to take into account road closures, fleet recalls, or anything else. If you don't want to carry the cost of some insurance against a disruption in your business model, then you're not charging enough for what you do... or can't complain when it happens. You can't have it both ways. And hoping that the government will be there to coddle you is absurd. Well, it was until Tuesday. Now the government is there to coddle everyone! Yay! I can't wait. Oh wait. I work, so I'll be paying even more for someone else's coddling.
Should gmail suddenly get turned off because they offer it for free ? Is that in the shareholders best interest ?
What if it is? What if it isn't, and it's a mistake? So what. You're proposing that the government should rule on what's in a given company's shareholders' best interests?
then providing free searches is fundamental to my success
And business models never change? What, do you still have your job at the telegraph office, bicycling Western Union paper scraps around town? Businesses evolve, and pursue what they please. Should the government be forcing AOL to back into mailing around CDs full of dial-up internet access software?
this is getting so far away from the point that it's getting ridiculous
No, it's not. Because the issue is whether or not government should be making business decisions for private businesses. We've just enhanced the power of a political party that thinks government should be more involved in businesses, more involved in your personal life, and more involved in specifically who should actually receive the money you earn... so ANY topic that brushes up against that philosophical issue is actually very pointed.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate those expressions! That implies that the original light was faint. But faint compared to what? Why not just say that it was 1/x-th the brightness of the original event's visible light? The echos/reflections are relative to the original, in terms of what makes the story interesting. Both the original event and the reflections are found on some hard scale of luminosity, but that's not referenced... so why the awkward, un-anchored, and thus meaningless reference? Grrrr. 20 billion times fainter than the original... which was what? Half as bright as the full moon? Brighter than the sun? Brighter than an ascending science journalist or summary writer?
If the snake is about to bite you, you'll not be quick enough to shoot it. You probably were fumbling around in its vicinity and you scared it.
.22 Mag round and quickly put down the animal that's
eating his inventory. That's a lot cheaper and more effective than calling a government employee to beg for the services of a contractor who
will have to then camp out on the farm to deal with a fleeting, intermittent, difficult to nail down opportunistic scavenger/predator. The
farmer is out on his grounds all day, every day. Why do you feel the need to add a taxpayer-funded government layer to the picture? I suspect
I know.
.44 Mag revolver will usually do the job if it comes down to it. And if you're really up against a gigantic
Kodiak or Grizzly that's pissed at you, it's a little academic, isn't it? But a starving, scrawny immature bear that sees you across
your campsite and gets nuts? Or a typical black bear? One shot, no problem. Running from either of those bears? Disaster. Standing there and
singing Kumbaya to it? Roll of the dice. Standing there and singing Kumbaya while also holding a .44 Mag in your hand, just in case? Much better.
Yeah, except your "probably" scenario is full of crap. Have you ever confronted a large rattlesnake in a stock paddock or a dog pen? I have. With the nearest Helpful Snake Catching Wildlife Ranger Guy hours away after a call (during which call, of course, their first advice would be: "Uh, why don't you just shoot it?"). I've encountered deadly snakes in domestic circumstances. I feel absolutely no urge to try to catch it myself, and even less of an urge to wait hours for a Certified Poisonous Snake Wrangler to make the trip out... only to have had the snake get bored and disappear under your front porch, into your firewood pile, or into a crack on the sunny side of your barn's foundation.
Same applies for rabid foxes and other varmits. Or how about the time I came across a 150-pound whitetail deer, caught with its rack tangled in some wild grape vine while jumping a hedgerow? It was in agony, with a broken back. Response time from a Department Of Natural Resources officer on a Sunday morning? "We can have someone out there Monday, would that be OK?" Bang. Animal out of misery. I suppose you would have attempted to put in an IV and administer a sedative so that the animal could hang peacefully from its neck until the next day? You're very thoughtful, I can tell.
The farmer should call the organization responsible for the management of wild-life to get his coyote problem handled.
Ah. Which organization would that be, exactly? Obviously you don't know any farmers. Predatory pest control is not handled by the government. As much as you'd obviously like to raise taxes to pay for more Nanny State services so that a professional government trapper could get hold of the coyotes and move them (where? to some other zip code where they promise to say put and only eat the taxpayer-provided food that you'll arrange for them?), actual, real-life farmers would rather spend $0.35 on a
The hiker/camper would do well not to shoot a charging bear, because unless you have an elephant gun and kill it in one shot, that bear will go medieval on the hiker/camper's ass
A nice, tidy, fits in your fanny-pack
Ever been in a rural, bear-populated area where there's a beefy handgun hanging on a hook next to the door so that you'll remember to grab it on your way to the outhouse at night? Didn't think so. But then, sounds like you've never been in such a setting, or had to think about mountain lions, rabid badgers that can tear a chunk out of your leg, or anything else, for that matter.
There seems to be at least a correlation between weapons and violent crime
Yes, there is. The correlation is inverse: when a population is legally allowed to own firearms, violent crime in that area goes down. When a population is deprived of that
censorship
a: the institution, system, or practice of censoring
b: the actions or practices of censors ; especially : censorial control exercised repressively
Which is not the same thing as people going with the flow, and acting like the rather lazy pack/herd animals that hundreds of millions of years of evolution has wired up.
Having a great idea that you express below the Signal-to-Noise threshold is not the same as being censored.
My point was simply that your arguments are old ground on slashdot, it is odd that someone with a low uid has not heard them before and heard them be discredited.
There are any number of "old" positions routinely touted on this web site. The age and repetitiveness of the discussion has absolutely nothing to do with merits of any position. If it's so old, and so distilled down to perfection in your mind, why are you so unable to make a succinct, compelling argument for your (vague, un-defined) proposed alternative to authors controlling the reproduction of their work?
I see no point in arguing the obvious with you. If you would like to come back to MY original point that copyright is inefficient and thus not the best bargain for society, please do.
People aren't coming back to your "point" because you haven't actually made one. You're making a statement, without backing it up philosophically, practically, or in any other meaningful way. You don't propose or articulate an alternative, you simply state that there is one, and refer people to years of "information wants to be free" pablum as served up on sites like this over the years as some sort of proof that the matter is philosophically tucked in for the night. But there are people who defend creationism the same way ("We've talked about it for centuries, so let's just stipulate the matter as settled, OK?").
No, you can expect President Bush to be fired for ordering the wiretap.
Unfortunately, we can't expect people like Nancy Pelosi - who has always been fully briefed on such things - to be fired for being such a hypocrite about it.
Why do you think that?
Gee, I don't know. Maybe it was your assertion that:
those who benefit directly from the system who should have the least say in how the system is run
which conveniently skips over the whole part where the people who benefit from copyright protection are also the people who actually get off their ass and produce that which is being sought out (or not) by the audience. Your vaporous suggestions about how that audience's money should instead be re-allocated among a larger group of artists for a more "utilitarian" societal use of arts and entertainment dollars isn't the history lesson you seem to think it is. Unless you liked the way, say, the Soviets took care of artists. You know, the ones who risked their lives to flee that paradise of equitable creativity.
Let me guess... constitutional illiterate?
There you go! Now that's some insightful feedback. I especially like how you've circled back and refuted the details. That is some fine work, there. Certainly not a non sequitor at all, no. Call me a convert! I now think it's appropriate for people who don't create anything to be in charge of the people who do. You are SO cool to straighten that all out.
those who benefit directly from the system who should have the least say in how the system is run
... Obama voter?
Let me guess
To follow your logic, people who don't work at all should be the ones who get to say what someone who's willing to work 80 hours a week must do with the proceeds and output of that work. You are supporting a framework in which willingness to work is punished by submitting the worker to the whim of the non-worker. You are supporting a framework in which the ability to create something or to innovate means automatic slavery to those with less talent and motivation.
"Society" benefits just fine from an author hitting a resonent note and producing a series of books like Rowling's. It benefits by demonstrating that there is the prospect of being well rewarded for sparking an interest in one's work, and prolificly persuing that audience. Your model - where some entity takes the audience's willingness to spend money on entertainment they want, and spreading that money around a 1000 other authors - is absurd on the face of it.
The Ministry Of Entertainment might accidentally get it right once in a while, but the knowledge that a government agency is injecting itself between readers and writers and regulating that relationship - that might please you, but it all it would do for me is make me seek out authors willing to work for the reward of my wanting to pay them for their writings. Those who spend their day writing books while receiving their assigned sliver of the book-buying public's government mandated redistribution of entertainment funds don't strike me as the likeliest sources of what I want to read.
Most big name pop bands don't make a dime off their first hit album.
Unless, of course, they are clearly talented enough strike a deal more to their liking, and are able to show that it's not a risk for the people fronting the money. Most new entertainers can't demonstrate that sort of marketability, and they themselves know it, so they make an investment in their own success: they trade some early income in exchange for letting someone else take the early risks.
How much more utility would society get for its money if it weren't squandered on things like 'The Clone Wars' and the Ewok Christmas Special that coast on the good name of his earlier works?
Well, that sort of depends on how wisely that money is spent, and how concentrated it is on larger, more complex projects that require long-term funding during production. I'm curious which agency of the government you think should decide such things? Perhaps we can get Michael Moore to be Minister Of Good Taste And Wholesome Entertainment to direct those dollars and choose which artists are worthy? Yesiree, Change We Can Believe In!
Or, are you just pissy because the consuming public is fickle and lazy, and you don't always love the choices they make, and think that it should be up to you, instead? Yeah, I thought so.
Are you trying to prove that you'll complain about anything and everything Obama-related?
Actually, no. I was proving that the GP's comment about how Obama's change being away from cronyism and lobbyists is complete fantasy. If it was only his supporters having such dreams, and being deluded about it... that's one thing. But since Obama's campaign actually talked in those terms despite deliberate and consistent actual actions to the contrary, it's worth pointing out that sort of deceit. It goes to the shallowness of his character in that regard. Knowing that about him helps to put the rest of his comments and promises in context.
you're heading at full speed for Sore Loser territory
Not really. Anyone who was watching saw this pattern of behavior coming (since it was being used in the campaign, too), which is why they were sore before the election, and thus still are.
Now it's time to see what Obama has to offer
Don't you feel at least a little odd, hiring someone to be the Commander-in-Chief, not knowing what he has to offer, or knowing that his words and his actions, his vaguely stated policies and his actual associations and actions are quite at odds with each other?
A change away from cronyism and lobbyists
You're kidding, right? He's doling out cabinet positions to millionaire buddies from Chicago and the Queen Of Cronyism (soon to be Secretary of State Clinton), and his transition team is full of dozens of lobbyists and friends/associates of long time professional lobbyists.
A change from a culture of fear to a culture of hope.
Ah. So that's why the only specific note he ever hit in his entire campaign was the repetitive preaching to his fawning audiences about how much they had to fear the prospects of John McCain being POTUS? Nah, no fear mongering there. No fear mongering or anger-stoking in his class and race baiting messages, no siree. Did you ever even read the transcripts of his Spanish-language advertising?
No matter how fine the granularity of the responses of the AI becomes, it's still just a collection of little functions that passed the point of "photorealism" from a conversational perspective. That doesn't mean it's self aware.
So, does that means that YOU are not self-aware? All you are is a collection of complex cellular interactions. You have a finite number of neurons, make a huge but finite number of connections. Those connections behave in subtle ways that are influenced by a finite number of conditions. So, you can't imagine a combination of hardware and sortware that can emulate a neuron? Or a thousand neurons and their interactions?
There's a big difference between the number of neurons you have and an infinite number of them. You want to be careful using the word "never" when all of the pieces of the puzzle are finite, and increasingly well understood. Massively interconnected neural pathways - whether hardware, software, or some future bio-engineered replacement - are no more inconceivable than are tiny microprocessors containing millions of transistors, operating miniscule radios with keyboards that let you read this sentence on a photorealistic display. Those technologies were previously considered outlandish or prohibitively, incomprehensively complex. And that was just earlier in the lives of millions of people who today use such technology before breakfast every morning.
run up a multi-trillion dollar debt, fight an undeclared war
Check with Congress. The president can't spend a dime that the congress doesn't collect as taxes and authorize as a budget item. And, presuming you're talking about Iraq (or were you talking about Bill Clinton's use of the military in, say, Kosovo - no war declared there, either), the president didn't use force there, either, until congress specifically authorized it.
deliberately sabotage attempts of the majority
Which majority are you referring to, exactly? If you mean that the party with more seats in congress doesn't always get its way when it can't muster a super majority of votes in the senate, but seem to think that this has only been true while the current administration has been in the executive branch, then you are really being myopic about it. Were you not around while Dems were filbustering the Republican majority in the legislature? Or when the party in the majority had its agenda "sabotaged" by Bill Clinton? What makes your particular, contemporary dislike for the centuries-old system of checks and balances worth a second glance? It's not new, not even close.
And lest you think that a particular idealogy is somehow moving into a sweet spot of sweeping unamimous authority and some large mandate come January, remember that Obama only won by 6% of the people that voted, and that as usual, close to half of the people who could have voted did not bother to do so. And of the seats gained by the democrats in congress and the senate, many of those newly won seats are now occupied by very conservative dems who are not at all of the Pelosi/Reid stripe. But even if they were, would you really expect their political opponents to cease to vote on behalf of those who re-elected them? Should the democrats, when they were most recently in the minority, have given up their own principles and not voted according to their own values? Why? Do you really think that whoever owns the most legislative seats should expect to be able to steamroll the wishes of the other half of the country?
If one party as a very good case for something, they should have no trouble getting a majority of the votes to back them. It happens when it needs to. And it doesn't happen when the sponsor of the legislation is weak on the issue - and that's exactly how it should be.
ignore the constitution when it's convenient
Specifically?
That the President isn't actually running an undeclared war
Against who? The Taliban wasn't a nation-state. It was a brutal movement of armed thugs from other countries that was occupying Afghanistan's meager civic roles and marketplaces and harboring another group that had been carrying out terrorist attacks around the world for years. The constitution's language surrounding war declaration doesn't even fit that situation. Would you have just sat on your hands, then? And what of Saddam Hussein? The hostilities he started when he invaded Kuwait never ended. The UN's sanctions against his regime were never relieved because he never complied with the terms of his withdrawl from that nation, and never stopped shooting at coalition aircraft. For years. So, should a declaration of war have been used to aid Kuwait? How about Somalia? How about in Kosovo? Should one be issued before we could aid peacekeepers in Darfur? Why?
Obama's administration is going to re-open the channels of communication between the exec. branch and the populace.
You're confusing "communication between" with "communication at."
Do you really want a chief executive who has to wade through millions of messages sent to him? Or want, as a taxpayer, to pay for a staff of thousands who will sit there all day and distill down what they think are messages he should see or surf to? Come now. Saying that he'll use different mechanisms to broadcast his thoughts is a lot different than saying that he'll somehow be more communicated to than his predecessors. He's hired to be an executive, not an open-door representative. Executives who misunderstand that tend to be terrible leaders.
Communication channels are not closed now, and won't be more open next year. The current president has weekly communications going out, and has a press team that meets with the press to field questions every day. The next president is going to do the same thing. You can already go online to listen digest every weekly presidential communication that you want to digest. I think that you're just talking about having a president that has things to say that you prefer to hear. I'm worried enough about Obama's ability to learn everything he needs to know about having his first ever actual executive job while also being POTUS in very challenging times. I don't know why he should take even more time out of every week to make sure that every weekly address is seamlessly presentable for video. Ask any president if he thinks prepping for 52 more on-television presentations every year is particularly helpful for his schedule. I'm betting that Obama is only now getting his head around how much less time he'll have for anything, compared to being a non-voting, perpetual candidate senator. His Web 2.0 goof-off time is going to evaporate on him right before his sleep-deprived eyes.
Tax the economy?
Raise taxes higher tomorrow than they are today (no matter where you distribute the load), and you are putting higher taxes on the economy. Period. How anyone can think that raising the taxes on, say, a guy who runs a landscaping company or a dental practice won't involve those extra costs being simply passed along to the people who buy those services is... deluded. Deluded enough to fall for the pitch, I guess. And that's exactly what just happened.
I don't know if "landing" is the right term for it, exactly. That doesn't seem fair to people and devices that actually... don't splat when they "land."
I was so relieved that we won't have another four years of failed Republican policies
Whew! We can finally go back to Failed Jimmy Carter Policies, now, but with a stylish and even less experienced guy promoting them.
The President is the ultimate authority on the budget. If he vetos it, Congress will have to start again
Which is why the Dems in the legislature are trying so hard to produce a veto-proof super majority in the Senate. Even as we speak, Al Franken's crew is trying everything to win in MN, even if it means pulling a couple of dozen votes out stashes of votes that election officials seem to be mysteriously producing out of "secure storage" between the voting day and counting process. That race is going to play out exactly like Florida did eight years ago - blow by blow, suit by suit. It wouldn't matter as much except for the whole super majority issue. Well, that and the fact that Franken is a blowhard asshat, and who wants THAT around for six years. Regardless... a veto-proof majority in the Senate gives Obama cover for any distasteful old thing that he wants shoved through ("Hey, don't look at me! I had no way to stop it!" etc).
Is any of this really up to Obama? Isn't it Congress that decides where money is spent?
Shhhh, you'll spoil it! Next thing you'll be saying is that Obama can't wave a magic want and "change the world," or that his promises to tax the economy - especially the most successful parts of it - won't discourage people from risking their money and efforts in that way. Next you'll probably even say that calling a check you get from IRS, when you don't even pay income taxes, a "rebate" is a gratuitous lie. Why do you hate his supporters so much, that you bring up little issues like the fact that Nancy Pelosi has more to do with what NASA gets to spend than Obama does? You are mean.
It's true. I run several mail servers, with varying spam filtering solutions... there's been a dramatic drop. Huge.
nothing I say can change the mind of the true believer
... ? What, a highly refined moral relativist? If you are comfortable, ethically, with 50 hours of compulsary work that a child has to perform, why not 500? Why not 5 years? Why not simply 55%, or 95% of all waking hours? Once you open up a hole in your value system that says it's OK to compel someone to work for the state, you waive any right to complain about the number of hours, or days, or years involved. There is absolutely no moral difference between compelling five minutes, or five thousand.
And you are
The difference between us isn't a choice of world view (say, between socialism and a free labor market, or some other over-arcing polar set of systems). No, you're expressly choosing not to have principles at all. You'd rather give up some liberty in the name of convenience and in order to save yourself the frustration of trying to talk other people into investing in (for example) clean streets. What you won't do is actually make a case for why the state should compel such work, rather than inspire it. Compulsary labor forced on them by their government teaches the exact opposite of inspiring kids to show initiative. But you know that, and you're simply willing to swallow that pill because it's easy. I don't care about that. What I care about is that you're willing to force - through the state - other people to swallow it, too.
Could I buy some perspective here?
Don't know. But you could sure use some, for yourself.
Just to help get you started, from the dictionary:
slavery: noun
1: drudgery , toil
2: submission to a dominating influence
3: the state of a person who is a chattel of another
So, when someone wakes up in the morning and is facing 40, or 50, or 1, or 1000 hours of uncompensated labor for someone else - and will face legal consequences for not performing it - what do you call it? You are forced, by your government, to work unpaid for someone else, or face penalties. There's a reason that that exact scenario is a common form of government punishment for lawbreakers. Many people who have assaulted, or defrauded, or otherwise injured one or more people have their liberty denied. Makes perfect sense. Some of them get the choice of either incarceration, or performing community service. Both are specifically seen as a denial of liberty as a consequence for bad acts. Obama and the many other fans of mandatory servitude in that vein are talking about making people who've done nothing wrong do the same things that criminals must do.
I clean up trash along roads and parks. Just like convicts do. Why? Because I want to, not because I'm being forced to. You prefer the force option. And you're confused about the moral problems presented by that?
Actually, I don't think you are. You are absolutely positive that you can't make a good case for forcing a person to work for other people, so you're deflecting. You think that a rented slave is different than a permanently owned one. But if Obama gets his way on this, he'll be normalizing the concept of schools establishing rent-a-slave programs. Sure, they get to go home at night, and aren't being whipped. But is the permanent establishing of the notion that the government should have that power over every citizen really that important to you? Is your ability to inspire someone to volunteer really so weak that you require a bureaucracy to trot out legal sanctions for those people that don't go along, or don't see such student conscription to be appropriate?
I notice you're not making the case for it - it's because you're totally abdicating the formation of a student's values and ethics to the nanny state. If you weren't, you'd be talking about your success and your continuing plans to talk kids into giving up some weekends because they want to, as so many already do. You want to trot out ugly historical analogies? Slavery of the kind you described was the fruit of laziness on the part of the slaveholders - the result of wanting results with minimal personal effort. You are looking for the same thing. You want to be off the hook in actually seeing through your agenda of getting kids to volunteer their time. You're so lazy that you'd rather empower the government to force that work, and are so blind that you don't see the peril in making that a normal state of affairs. Yours isn't cotton-harvesting laziness, it's moral and intellectual laziness.
It's 50 hours out of a kid's life. They'll be ok, I promise. It's good for them, it's good for the community. My kids both did 80 hours, and enjoyed it
Well then, why not leave it to the people that enjoy it? If something is so good, and The Master Communicator Of All Time is now president, shouldn't he be able to sell people on volunteering their time? Why is forcing people to do it virtuous? What does it say about his ideals, and his ability to communicate them, that the immediate reaction of a large sample of this audience (notoriously lefty) is to regard it as conscriptatory labor? If you're so able to present your kids' mandatory work for other people as a positive thing, why do you doubt your ability to talk other kids into doing it? Why do you need a huge new government bureaucracy, funded by tax payers, to make people do something that you think is fun?
Possibly raise a generation of Americans who have actually seen firsthand that they can help others?
So, that cause - which you consider so noble - is beyond you, in this age of massively internetworking and media, to persuasively illustrate? You need to prove your compassion by making slaves?
Just go sell books at the library or something, its really not that hard to accomplish
Ah, well then, way to make the point that it's a meaningless gesture in the first place. Other than the fact that it's a bit of empty action that can be pointed to as an example of just how benign it is for the government to be more involved in your life and the arbitor of personal ethics and morality. Ah, the Nanny State.
if a de facto monopoly shuts down its service there must be continuity of service
Why? There is only one walk-up ice cream store in my neighborhood. They own that market. There is no competition. Should they be forced to stay in business if they don't feel like doing it any more, or want to change how they do what they do?
What takes precedence, private shareholders or the health of the entire nations web services?
Gee... maybe if you're betting your own entire ability to make a living on whether or not one other business continues to do something in exactly the way you're hoping they will, you're taking way too much risk to complain? There are plenty of other businesses doing what Google does. If Google folded up their tent and went away, there would be huge amounts of capital flowing, that day to Yahoo, MS, and others to invest in filling that role. Don't like the idea of disruption during the transition? It's no different than a shipping company needing to take into account road closures, fleet recalls, or anything else. If you don't want to carry the cost of some insurance against a disruption in your business model, then you're not charging enough for what you do... or can't complain when it happens. You can't have it both ways. And hoping that the government will be there to coddle you is absurd. Well, it was until Tuesday. Now the government is there to coddle everyone! Yay! I can't wait. Oh wait. I work, so I'll be paying even more for someone else's coddling.
Should gmail suddenly get turned off because they offer it for free ? Is that in the shareholders best interest ?
What if it is? What if it isn't, and it's a mistake? So what. You're proposing that the government should rule on what's in a given company's shareholders' best interests?
then providing free searches is fundamental to my success
And business models never change? What, do you still have your job at the telegraph office, bicycling Western Union paper scraps around town? Businesses evolve, and pursue what they please. Should the government be forcing AOL to back into mailing around CDs full of dial-up internet access software?
this is getting so far away from the point that it's getting ridiculous
No, it's not. Because the issue is whether or not government should be making business decisions for private businesses. We've just enhanced the power of a political party that thinks government should be more involved in businesses, more involved in your personal life, and more involved in specifically who should actually receive the money you earn... so ANY topic that brushes up against that philosophical issue is actually very pointed.