That's why there is absolutely nothing wrong with an individual library, or even a whole collective of librarians making such an edict - there should be restrictions on such limited public systems. The problem is that the legislature has no place making such laws.
I'll say upfront that I think Rand definatly took some extreme positions that I cannot agree with, however I find her writing interesting and think your analysis is incomplete.
All of those things talk about sacrifice, which refer to situations where I give up something I want in furtherance of another's goals. But if I actually get pleasure from the thing that I am doing, then it is not a sacrifice. Money (which she defends so strongly) is ultimately a means of achieving personal pleasure - but if I can get the same pleasure through alternate means, then I should. She doesn't only argue against people being forced to do "good" deeds by govenrment, though that is decidedly part of her politics, but she argues against social standards that idealize altruistic behavior as a high moral good.
If I volunteer at an afterschool program because I happen to enjoy helping kids in a tough situation, or I like my beach to be clean so I join a group that picks up trash, or I get a little warm-fuzzy feeling from dropping some coins in a salvation army box, but I also work a decent job that supports my needs, and I am more or less happy - then more power to me. But if I dedicate my life to the poor, or the environment, or I give money beyond what I can afford, or do anything else with a deliberate disregard to my own needs, then one of two things is very likely to happen.
1. I will end up a miserable wreck, living paycheck to paycheck and pouring all my effort into others - all the while cursing the rich around me as evil when they don't make a donation.
2. I will get sick of the good deeds I am doing, and figure out how to turn things to my advantage wherever possible, defeating the purpose of the original "selfless" act and turning it into a "selfish" act.
What I get from reading Rand so far is that doing good for others is not a moral good or a moral bad, but a morally neutral act. If you look at the "altruistic" villains in her stories, their altruism is false or twisted - their evilness does not come from simply acting altruistically, but because they throw away their own wealth and the wealth of the entire nation when they cannot afford it.
I know that Rand disliked the idea of defending "self interest" with the argument that rational self interest actually coincides with the public interest - "the public interest be damned", as she wrote many times - but I can't help but make such an argument because it makes sense to me.
To put a personal spin on what I mentioned above. I have a family member who is a home care nurse, and she told me her reason for being a nurse - to paraphrase - "I just can't not help people, if I see someone suffering on the street I want to take care of them. I figured I might as well get paid for this behavior, because if I was in any other kind of job then I would probably spend all my time taking care of wounded animals and street people."
This kind of attitude would make her a terrible businesswoman, policewoman, shopkeeper - really most jobs. But because her personal inclinations match her job description, she is able to excel at her job, go the extra mile for her patients. What motivated her to be in her job was a purely emotional (Randian = irrational) need to help others, but she made sure that it earned her enough money and she had enough time to fulfill her personal needs.
But all the time she runs into other people in her profession who do not have the same motives, they just want a steady paycheck, or the nursing profession is just a stop on their path to some other career - they may or may not act professionally, will pass problem patients to others to avoid hassle, they may be lazy in how they fill out paperwork for the patient, and generally won't go out of their way to do anything for them that doesn't immediatly equal more pay or a censure from the boss. These people stagnate, making themselves and everyone around them miserable, or they realize their problem and quit.
Yeah, that only applies if something went wrong durring downloading - once you actually have your song then it's tough luck if you lose it. So far I haven't had any problems, but I have had occasion to use backup copies.
Yes, and if food businesses were to pay the going rate for american labor then I suspect there would be a lot more imported food and a lot fewer jobs by time those regular americans arrived in the fields.
I'm not saying it isn't a subscription service. Before they did the free promotion thing it was a per-minute service, and I suspect they would keep that as an option for occasional users.
If skype had some way to generate revenue from voice calls then they might offer it "free", but Google wouldn't be able to do what it does if it wasn't for advertising and whatever other market research they do. I would prefer to not have advertisting or monitoring of my calls involved with my phone service. And even google charges for some of their professional services, such as the advanced google earth, or their corporate solutions.
It used to cost 2 cents a minute for calls to the US, the free thing was known to be temporary from the moment they started it. It's still not bad as a per minute or subscription service.
Okay, so even if the first one was justified, how do you explain the following jolts? There were multiple officers there, why not just grab him and haul him away?
I don't know if it will be a commercial success, we'll have to wait and see, but I know that I for one will still be visiting. I have found some damn fine content among the non-corportate producers. Semi-pro and advanced amatures have made some honestly funny and interesting shorts on there. I too watched The Daily Show, but I think a far greater proportion of my viewing has been truly user created.
I have this funny belief that sickenss is caused by invisable demons. But I noticed that water seems to have some mystical property that dispels these demons. In fact ever since I started washing my body, especially my hands after they get dirty, the demons have all but vanished. Clearly I should make a habit of these activities, perform my daily demon clensing ritual...I'l call it a shower.
My methods are a bit off, but is my conclusion wrong?
Intelligence doesn't necessarily follow racial/age group lines, but whatever group is in power that creates the test will probably create a bias whether they intend to or not - and my bet is that sooner or later someone would intend to do just that.
Good point, though even in the case of used book stores there is only one book for one person (or perhaps even group of people), thus only one person (or group of people) can get any value out of each book at one time, whereas a theoretically infinite number of people can get the exact same value from one posting of a book on Google - audio/video material has faced this problem for a while, but things like Google books are the first time this has happened with print media on a large scale.
However whatever the publishers rights may or may not be, we certainly can agree that they are dumb.
Your experience is not the difference, the publishers are not concerned about the consumer level here. The difference is that bookstores haveexisting business relationships with publishers and have already paid something for the books in stock, and thus the publishers have made a decision to loosen their grip on their copyrighted material. But Google on the other hand has taken it upon themselves to offer prewiews to the public, without the publishers having a say in the process.
I know Six Apart is a corporate entity, and I don't expect them to engage in any non-profit behavior, so I'm not too terribly distraught by these changes - I knew this kind of thing was coming after the sale. However the dedicated LJ users started when it was just a fun user-supported community - the free users were supported by the paid user class, and both benefitted. I think the paid users have lots of reason to complain, although if they had read the old TOS it mentioned that although the site was ad-free they reserved the right to introduce ads in the future, which is now. The central problem is that the community became an entirely different entity once it was sold, and people are having a hard time realizing the hard reality of that.
I think people are angry for the same reason that others are angry at the opening up of facebook. Exclusivity is an important part of any community, even if it's not based on much in particular. There is no reason to introduce this change except that Livejournal wants to both make its free users more valuable by tacking advertising dollars to their activity, and expand their user base to the mainstream social networking/blogger who already uses ad-supported services and doesn't mind them, just as Bradfitz mentions in HIS ljbiz posting discussing the introduction of the ad-supported class. This is a culture clash with established LJ users who joined as an ad-free alternative, and if successful will bring in a flood of people with fundementally different ideas about what an olnine community should be. Again, this is not bad behavior for a corportate entity, it's not personal, it's just business.
The kind of community that these people are looking for can only exist as a non-profit community supported model, which it was but is no longer. But as I mentioned before, that was dead once it was bought by Six Apart.
All that can be done in a situation like this is, if you care enough, really care enough, then you have to go out and look for communities, or make your own community, that is based on a user-supported model. It's just sad that in this day and age even the most well intentioned non-profit projects fold, because once thousands of people gather together, they are a prime target for advertisers, and as the workload of managing such a creation grows on a founder like brad Fitzpatrick, they can only hold out on offers of money and an easing of pressure for so long, unless they constrain the community size with something like the invitation feature, which they did years ago and was probably the best move in preserving the nature of the community.
I think it's really a go or stay situation. Maybe if enough people complain they might change the nature of the advertising, but it itcan't be reverted to its pre-corportate days by any amount of protest.
I don't want gagets around me every single moment. I surf the net, play video games, watch TV, all electronic activities that I enjoy. But somtimes I want non-electronic enjoyment, and board games are one excellent alternative.
There are already electronic versions of monopoly the people play, it seems to me like the people who still fork out money for the board probably are after a differet experience - I know I am. But as long as there are paper versions out thre, I guess I can't complain.
A man plays a violin sitting on a park bench. He is relaxing after a hard day of work, and indulging his personal hobby in a pleasant environment. People in the park pass by and enjoy his music, and he does not care whether they listen or not.
Another man plays on a street corner, an upturned hat at his feet with a few coins inside for people to get the idea. He would play no matter how many generous souls pass him by, he always did like the attention you see - but he could use some more cash and he is making a polite request that those who listen show their appreciation through payment.
Yet another man plays in a nice restaurant, lending a pleasant atmosphere for dining, and on occasion for romance. Not only does the establishment pay him, but he also receives tips from patrons that feel either obligated or grateful.
Is there not a place for all such men in the world? Is one nobler than the others? They are all performing for some reward - one for his own contentment, another for attention, and the other for money - they merely have different definitions of reward. Or should we expect all men of such talents to resign themselves to park benches and play for our delight?
Adaptation is not a one way street with the only options being more or less adapted, it has branches.
Our army is well adapted to overrun nations and crush capitals - I would dare say they probably still are if the need were to arise. But the people we are supposed to be fighting do not have one country, and their leadership shifts more than sand in the desert. Our troops were prepared to crush, but we never prepared them for how to rebuild.
It doesn't alter INCOME, sure, but it does alter PROFITS, I would imagine. In I pay you $20 a month and rent one DVD in that month, you have $20 minus $0.78* postage plus handling for one DVD. If I rent 20 DVD's in that month, then you still have $20 but are responsible for the $15.60 postage and handling of 20 DVD's. If you send out my movies slower and I only end up recieving 15 DVD's in the same period that I used to recieve 20, you saved yourself $3.90 per 20 DVD-a-month renter.
My reply is a little hindered by the fact that I'm not sure exactly what variety of 'genetically modified humans' these slashdotters supposedly support. However, human GM experiments, as far as I know, are deep inside of labse, done thusfar in the pursuit of knowledge. Whereas GM plants are in the wild interracting with native plants, humans, and animals and are explicitly done for profit. Human experiments to date have not had the ability to alter our ecology or our genepool, but GM plants do have these abilities (altering local ecology through their dominence, changing the future genes of their own species.)
I find it hard to believe that many in the slashdot crowd are against the modification of plants outright, it's just that one must be very, very careful before unleashing them where they can grow beyond our control.
I supose my first reaction is to say that it's the inequity of the relationship. If the government gets more and more of our secrets, while we get less and less of the governments secrets - both phenomenon said stemming from the 'conern for OUR security'. Such a one way street in any human relationship just begs for abuse.
Even given the fact that a majority of people don't have Tivo's, you have to follow the money. I am sure that a great many advertisers have been unaffected by this, but most people who can afford luxury products and services probably do have tivo-like service, or will have them soon. Thus people who advertise to people with spare cash to throw around will be disproportinately affected and will seek other mediums to fill the gap.
But in much the same way as a school CAN enforce a dress code on school grounds, but cannot suspend students for wearing something innapropriate to a mall on saturday - Of course they can control what happens on school computers, but they should not be allowed to control what the students say outside of school.
It's all about believability. Even if I and a couple wild-eyed, incredulous few hold up printouts of something that has already gone "down the memory hole", if everyone else has an e-paper version that toes the "official story", then they will be less likely to believe me. It'd be easy to think that the dissenter just modified the text before printing it.
In the case of real newspapers, if I want to reference something in a past issue, there are thousands of unalterable issues distributed across the country., it's much easier to appear credible.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for this technology, but there's danger in everything.
Slashdot Mirror
That's why there is absolutely nothing wrong with an individual library, or even a whole collective of librarians making such an edict - there should be restrictions on such limited public systems. The problem is that the legislature has no place making such laws.
Thank you. I'm not even sure how this karma system works really, I just post sporadically when a thought comes to mind while reading.
I'll say upfront that I think Rand definatly took some extreme positions that I cannot agree with, however I find her writing interesting and think your analysis is incomplete.
All of those things talk about sacrifice, which refer to situations where I give up something I want in furtherance of another's goals. But if I actually get pleasure from the thing that I am doing, then it is not a sacrifice. Money (which she defends so strongly) is ultimately a means of achieving personal pleasure - but if I can get the same pleasure through alternate means, then I should. She doesn't only argue against people being forced to do "good" deeds by govenrment, though that is decidedly part of her politics, but she argues against social standards that idealize altruistic behavior as a high moral good.
If I volunteer at an afterschool program because I happen to enjoy helping kids in a tough situation, or I like my beach to be clean so I join a group that picks up trash, or I get a little warm-fuzzy feeling from dropping some coins in a salvation army box, but I also work a decent job that supports my needs, and I am more or less happy - then more power to me. But if I dedicate my life to the poor, or the environment, or I give money beyond what I can afford, or do anything else with a deliberate disregard to my own needs, then one of two things is very likely to happen.
1. I will end up a miserable wreck, living paycheck to paycheck and pouring all my effort into others - all the while cursing the rich around me as evil when they don't make a donation.
2. I will get sick of the good deeds I am doing, and figure out how to turn things to my advantage wherever possible, defeating the purpose of the original "selfless" act and turning it into a "selfish" act.
What I get from reading Rand so far is that doing good for others is not a moral good or a moral bad, but a morally neutral act. If you look at the "altruistic" villains in her stories, their altruism is false or twisted - their evilness does not come from simply acting altruistically, but because they throw away their own wealth and the wealth of the entire nation when they cannot afford it.
I know that Rand disliked the idea of defending "self interest" with the argument that rational self interest actually coincides with the public interest - "the public interest be damned", as she wrote many times - but I can't help but make such an argument because it makes sense to me.
To put a personal spin on what I mentioned above. I have a family member who is a home care nurse, and she told me her reason for being a nurse - to paraphrase - "I just can't not help people, if I see someone suffering on the street I want to take care of them. I figured I might as well get paid for this behavior, because if I was in any other kind of job then I would probably spend all my time taking care of wounded animals and street people."
This kind of attitude would make her a terrible businesswoman, policewoman, shopkeeper - really most jobs. But because her personal inclinations match her job description, she is able to excel at her job, go the extra mile for her patients. What motivated her to be in her job was a purely emotional (Randian = irrational) need to help others, but she made sure that it earned her enough money and she had enough time to fulfill her personal needs.
But all the time she runs into other people in her profession who do not have the same motives, they just want a steady paycheck, or the nursing profession is just a stop on their path to some other career - they may or may not act professionally, will pass problem patients to others to avoid hassle, they may be lazy in how they fill out paperwork for the patient, and generally won't go out of their way to do anything for them that doesn't immediatly equal more pay or a censure from the boss. These people stagnate, making themselves and everyone around them miserable, or they realize their problem and quit.
Whenever I am rea
Yeah, that only applies if something went wrong durring downloading - once you actually have your song then it's tough luck if you lose it. So far I haven't had any problems, but I have had occasion to use backup copies.
Yes, and if food businesses were to pay the going rate for american labor then I suspect there would be a lot more imported food and a lot fewer jobs by time those regular americans arrived in the fields.
I'm not saying it isn't a subscription service. Before they did the free promotion thing it was a per-minute service, and I suspect they would keep that as an option for occasional users.
If skype had some way to generate revenue from voice calls then they might offer it "free", but Google wouldn't be able to do what it does if it wasn't for advertising and whatever other market research they do. I would prefer to not have advertisting or monitoring of my calls involved with my phone service. And even google charges for some of their professional services, such as the advanced google earth, or their corporate solutions.
It used to cost 2 cents a minute for calls to the US, the free thing was known to be temporary from the moment they started it. It's still not bad as a per minute or subscription service.
Okay, so even if the first one was justified, how do you explain the following jolts? There were multiple officers there, why not just grab him and haul him away?
I don't know if it will be a commercial success, we'll have to wait and see, but I know that I for one will still be visiting. I have found some damn fine content among the non-corportate producers. Semi-pro and advanced amatures have made some honestly funny and interesting shorts on there. I too watched The Daily Show, but I think a far greater proportion of my viewing has been truly user created.
I have this funny belief that sickenss is caused by invisable demons. But I noticed that water seems to have some mystical property that dispels these demons. In fact ever since I started washing my body, especially my hands after they get dirty, the demons have all but vanished. Clearly I should make a habit of these activities, perform my daily demon clensing ritual...I'l call it a shower. My methods are a bit off, but is my conclusion wrong?
Intelligence doesn't necessarily follow racial/age group lines, but whatever group is in power that creates the test will probably create a bias whether they intend to or not - and my bet is that sooner or later someone would intend to do just that.
Silly human, we ARE the AI. Maybe this means we're close to finding the ultimate question...
Good point, though even in the case of used book stores there is only one book for one person (or perhaps even group of people), thus only one person (or group of people) can get any value out of each book at one time, whereas a theoretically infinite number of people can get the exact same value from one posting of a book on Google - audio/video material has faced this problem for a while, but things like Google books are the first time this has happened with print media on a large scale. However whatever the publishers rights may or may not be, we certainly can agree that they are dumb.
Your experience is not the difference, the publishers are not concerned about the consumer level here. The difference is that bookstores haveexisting business relationships with publishers and have already paid something for the books in stock, and thus the publishers have made a decision to loosen their grip on their copyrighted material. But Google on the other hand has taken it upon themselves to offer prewiews to the public, without the publishers having a say in the process.
I know Six Apart is a corporate entity, and I don't expect them to engage in any non-profit behavior, so I'm not too terribly distraught by these changes - I knew this kind of thing was coming after the sale. However the dedicated LJ users started when it was just a fun user-supported community - the free users were supported by the paid user class, and both benefitted. I think the paid users have lots of reason to complain, although if they had read the old TOS it mentioned that although the site was ad-free they reserved the right to introduce ads in the future, which is now. The central problem is that the community became an entirely different entity once it was sold, and people are having a hard time realizing the hard reality of that.
I think people are angry for the same reason that others are angry at the opening up of facebook. Exclusivity is an important part of any community, even if it's not based on much in particular. There is no reason to introduce this change except that Livejournal wants to both make its free users more valuable by tacking advertising dollars to their activity, and expand their user base to the mainstream social networking/blogger who already uses ad-supported services and doesn't mind them, just as Bradfitz mentions in HIS ljbiz posting discussing the introduction of the ad-supported class. This is a culture clash with established LJ users who joined as an ad-free alternative, and if successful will bring in a flood of people with fundementally different ideas about what an olnine community should be. Again, this is not bad behavior for a corportate entity, it's not personal, it's just business.
The kind of community that these people are looking for can only exist as a non-profit community supported model, which it was but is no longer. But as I mentioned before, that was dead once it was bought by Six Apart.
All that can be done in a situation like this is, if you care enough, really care enough, then you have to go out and look for communities, or make your own community, that is based on a user-supported model. It's just sad that in this day and age even the most well intentioned non-profit projects fold, because once thousands of people gather together, they are a prime target for advertisers, and as the workload of managing such a creation grows on a founder like brad Fitzpatrick, they can only hold out on offers of money and an easing of pressure for so long, unless they constrain the community size with something like the invitation feature, which they did years ago and was probably the best move in preserving the nature of the community.
I think it's really a go or stay situation. Maybe if enough people complain they might change the nature of the advertising, but it itcan't be reverted to its pre-corportate days by any amount of protest.
I don't want gagets around me every single moment. I surf the net, play video games, watch TV, all electronic activities that I enjoy. But somtimes I want non-electronic enjoyment, and board games are one excellent alternative.
There are already electronic versions of monopoly the people play, it seems to me like the people who still fork out money for the board probably are after a differet experience - I know I am. But as long as there are paper versions out thre, I guess I can't complain.
A man plays a violin sitting on a park bench. He is relaxing after a hard day of work, and indulging his personal hobby in a pleasant environment. People in the park pass by and enjoy his music, and he does not care whether they listen or not.
Another man plays on a street corner, an upturned hat at his feet with a few coins inside for people to get the idea. He would play no matter how many generous souls pass him by, he always did like the attention you see - but he could use some more cash and he is making a polite request that those who listen show their appreciation through payment.
Yet another man plays in a nice restaurant, lending a pleasant atmosphere for dining, and on occasion for romance. Not only does the establishment pay him, but he also receives tips from patrons that feel either obligated or grateful.
Is there not a place for all such men in the world? Is one nobler than the others? They are all performing for some reward - one for his own contentment, another for attention, and the other for money - they merely have different definitions of reward. Or should we expect all men of such talents to resign themselves to park benches and play for our delight?
Adaptation is not a one way street with the only options being more or less adapted, it has branches.
Our army is well adapted to overrun nations and crush capitals - I would dare say they probably still are if the need were to arise. But the people we are supposed to be fighting do not have one country, and their leadership shifts more than sand in the desert. Our troops were prepared to crush, but we never prepared them for how to rebuild.
It doesn't alter INCOME, sure, but it does alter PROFITS, I would imagine. In I pay you $20 a month and rent one DVD in that month, you have $20 minus $0.78* postage plus handling for one DVD. If I rent 20 DVD's in that month, then you still have $20 but are responsible for the $15.60 postage and handling of 20 DVD's. If you send out my movies slower and I only end up recieving 15 DVD's in the same period that I used to recieve 20, you saved yourself $3.90 per 20 DVD-a-month renter.
*The article mentions $0.78 for each envelope.
My reply is a little hindered by the fact that I'm not sure exactly what variety of 'genetically modified humans' these slashdotters supposedly support. However, human GM experiments, as far as I know, are deep inside of labse, done thusfar in the pursuit of knowledge. Whereas GM plants are in the wild interracting with native plants, humans, and animals and are explicitly done for profit. Human experiments to date have not had the ability to alter our ecology or our genepool, but GM plants do have these abilities (altering local ecology through their dominence, changing the future genes of their own species.)
I find it hard to believe that many in the slashdot crowd are against the modification of plants outright, it's just that one must be very, very careful before unleashing them where they can grow beyond our control.
I supose my first reaction is to say that it's the inequity of the relationship. If the government gets more and more of our secrets, while we get less and less of the governments secrets - both phenomenon said stemming from the 'conern for OUR security'. Such a one way street in any human relationship just begs for abuse.
Even given the fact that a majority of people don't have Tivo's, you have to follow the money. I am sure that a great many advertisers have been unaffected by this, but most people who can afford luxury products and services probably do have tivo-like service, or will have them soon. Thus people who advertise to people with spare cash to throw around will be disproportinately affected and will seek other mediums to fill the gap.
But in much the same way as a school CAN enforce a dress code on school grounds, but cannot suspend students for wearing something innapropriate to a mall on saturday - Of course they can control what happens on school computers, but they should not be allowed to control what the students say outside of school.
It's all about believability. Even if I and a couple wild-eyed, incredulous few hold up printouts of something that has already gone "down the memory hole", if everyone else has an e-paper version that toes the "official story", then they will be less likely to believe me. It'd be easy to think that the dissenter just modified the text before printing it.
In the case of real newspapers, if I want to reference something in a past issue, there are thousands of unalterable issues distributed across the country., it's much easier to appear credible.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for this technology, but there's danger in everything.