Who needs space travel? Just set up the nuclear fusion plant on the moon. You get low gravity, better heat dissipation than on earth (in moon's soil which is much colder than earth's) and no nasty neutrons to harm living things as a byproduct of fusion. You can then use a MASER to transmit the energy back to earth. It's probably more effective than mining.
- have know been widely field tested, their strenght and shortcomings are known, there are hundreds of implementation of them that have been heavily tested and debugged, this is extremely precious
- it is widely adopted, switching represents a huge cost for the whole industry (not only it pro but all the people in the world who live by selling html developpement)
While starting from scratch looks pleasant, for big things (and html is *big*) gradual changes are more appropriate.
from here you can build networks of trust. I trust statements made by this person, he trusts statement made by this person and so on. You obtain information with a certain degree of trust.
That prevents a good deal of spamming since pushing information requires past credibility. As for cam whores and the like, you don't *have* to see their information.
The point is not to actually have decentralization but rather the possibility to have it. To take an analogy think of open source projects, the point is not to fork them - on the contrary - but the ability to do so creates incentive that affect the result even though it's only one trunk.
Once a standard is accepted, there are less network effects. Think of email for example, since SMTP has such a long history it means almost anyone can have an email server. Sure gmail, yahoo mail hotmail or whatever will represent most of the traffic but it doesn't matter. Contrast this with IM... lack of interoperability creates huge network effect, the switching cost is very high because you need to coordinate with all of your contacts to switch.
If social network rely on semantic web languages, the competition between websites providing hosting / editing of information will be much more efficient than in the current system... outdated network won't die, they will just merge with the additional vocabulary from newer trendier sites. Innovative networks won't starve because they'll be able to piggy back on existing networks.
Eventually, websites will have value not by being "the biggest" or "the one where most of your friends are" but by providing the best description of your relationships with people or the most useful tools to extract the most relevant information out of your data.
I think the secret to efficient social networking is decentralization, both of content and of standards. This is achieved by the semantic web... Take a look at FOAF, it's a simple exemple of how it could work. Host a RDF/XML file anywhere describing your connections and you're done. Extend the kind of vocabulary describing your information and your relation to people at anytime using OWL.
RDF and OWL provide ways to develop a huge social networks with different features, different takes on it , with decentralized development and decentralized content while still maintaining interoperability. Support the semantic web it rocks.
The problem with (2) is the stupid user, you have to actively prevent it with (3). Why? Because otherwise some dumb person will try OS X on unsupported hardware, have a bad experience and go on claiming OS X is unstable, OS X sucks and it will eventually spill on the mac market.
You don't need to expose that information to the whole world, only to the search engine or the application doing the matching. Of course, the search engine could be compromised or it could itself abuse your information. Still you remain free not to use it, you can ask to see only public information and match it with your agenda yourself, or you could use local sofwtares. Eventually, strong encryption and reputation mechanism should enforce better private information security in the future. For example you could put your info in a very secure, trusted information vault and provide third party applications temporary keys to access limited part of this information.
Democracy means that if enough people agree they may take away the inalienable rights of the minority. The American ideal of inalienable rights you refer to is fortunately deeply anti-democratic. No one has the right to take my rights away, it doesn't matter who decides, a king, an elite or an unwashed majority.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner tonight. -- Benjamin Franklin
The search engines are currently still mostly syntaxic. Look for a word, see pages matching that word, in a more or less relevant order... This means you have to play trick games with search engines in order to find what you want...
Imagine you could simply query things like: Find me an appointement with a dentist that takes my insurance, has good ratings and lives near where I live. From your personal information (your calendar, where you live), public information (consummer ratings on the dentists, maps, information from de dentist office, from your insurance etc) a semantic web search engine could provide you with an answer.
All it takes is for the data published on the internet to be *structured*
More details: Page not found: slashdot Query: SELECT page_title, page_id FROM pages WHERE page_title="slashdot" Redirect query: SELECT page.page_is_redirect,text.old_text FROM page,text,revision WHERE (revision.rev_page = page.page_id) AND (revision.rev_id = text.old_id) AND page.page_title = "slashdot" AND page.page_namespace = 0;
Veropedia is based on Wikipedia, a user-contributed encyclopedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
Meanwhile, food is taxed, energy is taxed, clothing is taxed, health is taxed, labor is taxed, trade is taxed, wealth is taxed, inflation hedging is taxed, mail is taxed, building is taxed, savings are taxed.
Fortunately sex and the internet are still untaxed. Cool.
But then you'd only have something from black to infrared, red... white. What you should really have is a list of coefficient describing the whole spectrum of the color. Also it'd be useful for tetrachromic people.
"I like to be in favor of strong employment laws that give the government full audit power over every corporation's decision to fire any one whatsoever."
Where was your concern for rights and free association then?
Notice however that if said economic regulation applies to Microsoft, Google or [insert any big company] then concern for rights seamlessly vanish on Slashdot and everyone magically becomes turns to law positivism.
I'll provide you later with a longer answer but since you mention the Ancien Régime you must know that it relied on corporation holding priviledges, that is *coercive* monopolies. There was no free entry in the market, as anyone trying to do it would be prevented to do so *by force*. Originaly the word monopoly meant a *state-granted* privilege of non competition, at the turn of the century the socialists and the marxists stirred that term to design any natural dominant position in the market. This semantic shift was provided by the marxist confusion between freedom and capacity (for example a marxist would say you're not free to eat if you're broke).
There's a crucial dinstinction between physical force and mere "power" or "influence". Physical force produces a net loss to me, power and influence leave me no worst than I currently am. This is why the first gets you in jail and the second doesn't.
If a monopoly is protected by force, like land monopoly in feudalism, it means if I try to compete I will be made worst off, someone will come an kill me. If a company is so big it dominates a field it means it's hard for me to compete, but they will not impose any cost on me.
Please provide reference as to what you mean by "practical experience over the last few centuries".
BTW I don't draw any line, there's simply no place for a central coercive authority ^^
You're confusing freedom and capacity. Having the freedom to compete with Microsoft does not mean I can succesfully do so, it means no one is using physical force to restrain me from doing it. Similarly I am free to become the world champion of marathon although I'll never be it.
Feudalism has nothing to do with this as it relies on land monopolies obtained and maintained by force.
Aquinas did provide an answer to your question though, the justness of law and ethics in general can be inquired by the use of reason. Thomists you are briefly talked about here http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/one.asp . The argument you put forth seems more Hobbesian to me.
I don't care about the legal framework, I should be free to relinquish that framework as should the person offering the license. Why should any politician have the right to decide for me what kind of contract I do or do not want to sign.
Slashdot Mirror
Who needs space travel? Just set up the nuclear fusion plant on the moon. You get low gravity, better heat dissipation than on earth (in moon's soil which is much colder than earth's) and no nasty neutrons to harm living things as a byproduct of fusion. You can then use a MASER to transmit the energy back to earth. It's probably more effective than mining.
Because HTML and javascript
- have know been widely field tested, their strenght and shortcomings are known, there are hundreds of implementation of them that have been heavily tested and debugged, this is extremely precious
- it is widely adopted, switching represents a huge cost for the whole industry (not only it pro but all the people in the world who live by selling html developpement)
While starting from scratch looks pleasant, for big things (and html is *big*) gradual changes are more appropriate.
Reification.
The fact that every RDF statement can be used as an entity in other statement. It is not about saying
X is friend with Y but
http://slashdot.org/~Arthur+B./ claims (X is friend with Y)
from here you can build networks of trust. I trust statements made by this person, he trusts statement made by this person and so on. You obtain information with a certain degree of trust.
That prevents a good deal of spamming since pushing information requires past credibility. As for cam whores and the like, you don't *have* to see their information.
The point is not to actually have decentralization but rather the possibility to have it. To take an analogy think of open source projects, the point is not to fork them - on the contrary - but the ability to do so creates incentive that affect the result even though it's only one trunk.
Once a standard is accepted, there are less network effects. Think of email for example, since SMTP has such a long history it means almost anyone can have an email server. Sure gmail, yahoo mail hotmail or whatever will represent most of the traffic but it doesn't matter. Contrast this with IM... lack of interoperability creates huge network effect, the switching cost is very high because you need to coordinate with all of your contacts to switch.
If social network rely on semantic web languages, the competition between websites providing hosting / editing of information will be much more efficient than in the current system... outdated network won't die, they will just merge with the additional vocabulary from newer trendier sites. Innovative networks won't starve because they'll be able to piggy back on existing networks.
Eventually, websites will have value not by being "the biggest" or "the one where most of your friends are" but by providing the best description of your relationships with people or the most useful tools to extract the most relevant information out of your data.
I think the secret to efficient social networking is decentralization, both of content and of standards. This is achieved by the semantic web... Take a look at FOAF, it's a simple exemple of how it could work. Host a RDF/XML file anywhere describing your connections and you're done. Extend the kind of vocabulary describing your information and your relation to people at anytime using OWL.
RDF and OWL provide ways to develop a huge social networks with different features, different takes on it , with decentralized development and decentralized content while still maintaining interoperability. Support the semantic web it rocks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Ontology_Language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOAF_(software)
The problem with (2) is the stupid user, you have to actively prevent it with (3). Why? Because otherwise some dumb person will try OS X on unsupported hardware, have a bad experience and go on claiming OS X is unstable, OS X sucks and it will eventually spill on the mac market.
gone in 60 second !
Hum how exactly does vynil prevent range compression ? (honest question here)
You don't need to expose that information to the whole world, only to the search engine or the application doing the matching. Of course, the search engine could be compromised or it could itself abuse your information. Still you remain free not to use it, you can ask to see only public information and match it with your agenda yourself, or you could use local sofwtares. Eventually, strong encryption and reputation mechanism should enforce better private information security in the future. For example you could put your info in a very secure, trusted information vault and provide third party applications temporary keys to access limited part of this information.
Democracy means that if enough people agree they may take away the inalienable rights of the minority. The American ideal of inalienable rights you refer to is fortunately deeply anti-democratic. No one has the right to take my rights away, it doesn't matter who decides, a king, an elite or an unwashed majority.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner tonight.
-- Benjamin Franklin
Why yes, they can push laws that supersede the laws of science. People fall from bridges and die? Why make gravity illegal!
Some laws are that stupid.
The search engines are currently still mostly syntaxic. Look for a word, see pages matching that word, in a more or less relevant order... This means you have to play trick games with search engines in order to find what you want...
Imagine you could simply query things like: Find me an appointement with a dentist that takes my insurance, has good ratings and lives near where I live. From your personal information (your calendar, where you live), public information (consummer ratings on the dentists, maps, information from de dentist office, from your insurance etc) a semantic web search engine could provide you with an answer.
All it takes is for the data published on the internet to be *structured*
From Veropedia, based on Wikipedia Oops!
We couldn't find the article: slashdot
Click here to go back & try again.
More details:
Page not found: slashdot
Query: SELECT page_title, page_id FROM pages WHERE page_title="slashdot"
Redirect query: SELECT page.page_is_redirect,text.old_text FROM page,text,revision WHERE (revision.rev_page = page.page_id) AND (revision.rev_id = text.old_id) AND page.page_title = "slashdot" AND page.page_namespace = 0;
Veropedia is based on Wikipedia, a user-contributed encyclopedia.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
Meanwhile, food is taxed, energy is taxed, clothing is taxed, health is taxed, labor is taxed, trade is taxed, wealth is taxed, inflation hedging is taxed, mail is taxed, building is taxed, savings are taxed.
Fortunately sex and the internet are still untaxed. Cool.
What if they even use PEOPLE to gather that information, omfg !
But then you'd only have something from black to infrared, red ... white. What you should really have is a list of coefficient describing the whole spectrum of the color. Also it'd be useful for tetrachromic people.
yeah I can un-un-friend you again
Didn't you write a while ago:
"I like to be in favor of strong employment laws that give the government full audit power over every corporation's decision to fire any one whatsoever."
Where was your concern for rights and free association then?
I wish I could mod you +6
Notice however that if said economic regulation applies to Microsoft, Google or [insert any big company] then concern for rights seamlessly vanish on Slashdot and everyone magically becomes turns to law positivism.
I'll provide you later with a longer answer but since you mention the Ancien Régime you must know that it relied on corporation holding priviledges, that is *coercive* monopolies. There was no free entry in the market, as anyone trying to do it would be prevented to do so *by force*. Originaly the word monopoly meant a *state-granted* privilege of non competition, at the turn of the century the socialists and the marxists stirred that term to design any natural dominant position in the market. This semantic shift was provided by the marxist confusion between freedom and capacity (for example a marxist would say you're not free to eat if you're broke).
There's a crucial dinstinction between physical force and mere "power" or "influence". Physical force produces a net loss to me, power and influence leave me no worst than I currently am. This is why the first gets you in jail and the second doesn't.
If a monopoly is protected by force, like land monopoly in feudalism, it means if I try to compete I will be made worst off, someone will come an kill me. If a company is so big it dominates a field it means it's hard for me to compete, but they will not impose any cost on me.
Please provide reference as to what you mean by "practical experience over the last few centuries".
BTW I don't draw any line, there's simply no place for a central coercive authority ^^
You're confusing freedom and capacity. Having the freedom to compete with Microsoft does not mean I can succesfully do so, it means no one is using physical force to restrain me from doing it. Similarly I am free to become the world champion of marathon although I'll never be it.
Feudalism has nothing to do with this as it relies on land monopolies obtained and maintained by force.
Free means free, dumbass. Not some abstract bureaucratic defined economic ideal.
Aquinas did provide an answer to your question though, the justness of law and ethics in general can be inquired by the use of reason. Thomists you are briefly talked about here http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/one.asp . The argument you put forth seems more Hobbesian to me.
I don't care about the legal framework, I should be free to relinquish that framework as should the person offering the license. Why should any politician have the right to decide for me what kind of contract I do or do not want to sign.