I read about vestigial limbs on aquatic mammals in the Wiki about a month ago - where a throwback displays fingers/toes rather than properly formed flippers.
From what's written there, this is well understood and well recognized.
I've just had a go at finding the article again, but you know what it's like in the wiki, if you can't remember the article title, you're going to have trouble finding it again:-/
Television means politics is now about the *appearance* of honesty, integrity, competence.
ACTUAL honesty, integrity and competence - who knows? how can you tell through television?
You can tell be learning the history of a candidate, by learning about his position on major issues and what he thinks could be done.
This doesn't happen, because it requires reading, and reading is no longer the primary communication medium in our culture. Television is. We turn to television to learn who to elect; and television is all about *apperance*. Television is all about *show business*. And we do politics through television.
I could be wrong, but an FBI raid seems absolutely disgusting - because they knew perfectly well he created the software, since he had gone public with it. I don't know, but I imagine the source code was available? So what possible need was there to break into his house, semi-ransack it and take his computers and other possessions? you all know or can imagine how he feels now - it seems to me like the State, through the FBI, is *oppressing* people; the message in their actions is "break the law and we'll fuck you over."
No matter how it's presented, what's being presented isn't news.
News is properly defined as functional information.
However, in our day and age, where television *is* our culture, the definition of news is *news as seen on TV* - and news on TV, like everything passed through that medium, is converted into entertainment.
And that's why we no longer have a meaningful public discourse; news, news everywhere, and not a functional fact to think about.
> I wrote: > > Given the very strong tendancy for the State to overspend and so need to > > increase tax and so to utterly mess up taxation, *the current situation is > > such that the State's efforts to provide these needs is counter-productive*.
> 1) This is not a tax. > 2) This money does not go the the government > 3) Government overspending is not an issue here.
As I understand it, the money is being used to fund State run broadcasters.
So the State is charging people to provide a service; as such, it's a tax to help pay for those broadcasters.
State overspend is an issue in that if the State didn't spend so much, it would have more money available and so would be less likely to need - as it apparently does - to raise additional revenue to fund State run broadcasters.
> Your reference "capable of running Windows" is complete irrelevant. > Are you trying to whip up some anti-MS mob here on Slachdot?
No. I was exactly quoting the original.
> Yes, takes are a money grab on people who mind their own business. In the US (I live in North > Carolina), I pay property tax; think about how you would justify that?
Taxes in principle are justified in much the same way the State is justified.
A group of individuals decide, of their own free will, to act together to achieve certain goals they individually could not obtain. The State is an instrument of their combined will. It is usually the case that the people who consent to act together in this way also consent to provide part of their income so that their common goals can be achieved - which is taxation.
> Yes, these taxes are discouraging economic growth. And yes again, there are higher taxes in Germany > than in many other places.
It's not only the amount of tax, it's the *type* of tax. You can obtain the same amount of money in a way which causes n discouragement, or 2n discouragement. It's not solely the amount of money taken which determines the degree of discouragement to industry.
Because of this, it is inherently wrong for the State to tax in ways which cause unnecessary discouragement to the economy.
However, because existing States tend strongly to spend their entire tax revenue and a little bit more, per fiscal period, there is always a pressure to increase taxation. This of course is politically unpopular. As a result, taxation has bifuricated, into a terrible, horrible, incredibly inefficient and expensive and criminally improper mess, where the State continually attempts to exact more tax but in ways not obvious to the people comprising the State.
> But: the German government takes the stand that certain right need to be provided to the people. > (Slightly simiplifying) Free access to education, health care, information, news, etc are part of > that. It's a bunch of non-economic goals, but at large, the people share them in principle.
Hmm. But what people can get depends on how rich they are, either directly or indirectly. If we pay individually for these needs, how much we get depends directly on how rich we are. More taxation in that situation means we get less - directly because of the State taxing us. If we pay collectively for these needs, through taxation, the more, and more improper, taxation there is, the greater the discouragement to industry and the greater the slow down in the rate at which the collective wealth increases - perhaps even to the point where the collective wealth begins to *decrease* (recession).
Given the very strong tendancy for the State to overspend and so need to increase tax and so to utterly mess up taxation, *the current situation is such that the State's efforts to provide these needs is counter-productive*.
What's more, it's not only counter-productive, but in the very act of being counter-productive, the State is behaving towards the people that comprise the State in an entirely respectless manner, by producing criminally discouraging taxes, without justification, purely to increase revenue, to deal with the problem of the State chronically overspending.
> Vendors Symantec and McAfee have looked into the future > and realized that people may one day speak of them in > the way that we now speak reverently of the early builds > of Netscape.
Believe me, there is NO fucking way I would EVER think of the PC-infesting junk Symantec and McAfee make in the same light as Netscape in its early days.
So, you're sitting there, minding your own business, and the State comes along with what is an absolutely disgustingly expedient excuse of a reason - "your PC is capable of running Windows and is capable of receiving IP and so can be used to view public TV and radio, so you must support that public TV and radio" - and then takes your money.
It's a money-grab. It's simply a method to extract money.
It is utterly, utterly disrespectful to the people the State is supposed to represent; they're not being treated as people, but as wallets, to raid.
It's also absolutely insane from an economists point of view. Taxation inherently discourages growth. There are ways to tax which minimize discouragement. It is absolutely insane to tax in any other way. This tax is criminally stupid.
Finally, the simplest and most profound issue is that this event has *happened*, with all that it illustrates about the relationship between the German State and the people comprising that State.
> You're accepting these things on the basis that most people who partkae > in this new activity are not going to harm society.
Not *quite* - the view I have is to consider if an activity will cause harm to other *people*.
Society is a whole 'nother kettle of fish - not least of which is the question "what is society?" and the question "who decides what's good or bad for society, whatever it is?"
When you pin the question down to harm to *people*, it becomes a lot more clear cut.
The reasoning is self-defence; if there's a car accident, the more people who are injured, the greater the demand upon those who are there trying to save people - and so the greater the risk that someone *else* may die, not just yourself.
If it was just you, then I would say this shouldn't be law. If you want to take the risk, it's your life.
I've had to return two drives over the years; both were of course replaced by refurbished drives.
I'm assuming "refurbished" means someone else returned the drive, no fault was found, and now you've got it.
Problem is, some drives are returned because of intermittant errors, or subtler faults which may not be regarded as faults by the manufacturer, such as elevated noise.
So the warranty, really, is a risk - you may get a drive back which is okay, but you may get a bundle of trouble.
That newspaper is the lowest of the low, the gutter press. Their normal faire consists of entirely fabricated stories and their conduct is entirely unethical. Do not place ANY credence to stories printed in this paper.
> "Statistically speaking, it's likely that a sizable percentage of these students download copyrighted > material from the Internet. Do you think any of them are concerned about IP rights then?"
That's an awful comment, for it assumes those objecting are those plagiarizing.
What's a teenager doing when he's being monitored by his parents?
What he's doing is not being trusted. So he's learning that his parents do not trust him, and he's learning that they will forcefully impose themselves into his life to coerce his behaviour; he's learning to resent them and he's learning that speeding is only wrong because it is prohibited by parents.
"...that the plan has been approved by the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation", who, according to another source, a Mr.Satan, would gladly sell your soul to the devil for the right price, no questions asked.
> Actually, an 8cm tungsten sphere would exert > the same gravitational pull on any object 10cm away, > regardless of the other object's mass.
Need a real physicist to answer this, but I'm half-guessing this is wrong; I think the greater the mass of an object, the more it is attracted to another object - but its mass in exact proportion cancels out the additional pull, by simple dint of being more massive and thus requiring more force to move.
This is why high and low mass objects fall at the same rate when dropped; the heavier mass object MUST be feeling a greater attraction or it would not be able to move at the same rate as a lower mass object.
To put it another way, all the atoms in the tungsten sphere pull upon all the atoms in the remote sphere; if the remote sphere has more atoms, then there is more pull. However, because there *are* more atoms, the remote object is more massive and this exactly matches the additional pull.
A tungsten sphere 10cm in diameter would have such a tiny gravitational field that I suspect even a hydrogen atom at the ambient temperature of local space would possess escape velocity.
What exactly are they thinking of putting into orbit around this thing?
In fact, thinking about it, what I find interesting is the implied equivelence of legal and illegal downloads.
There appears to exist in the RIAA mind the notion that if legal downloads rise, illegal downloads must fall.
I think the derives from a failure to understand that the majority of illegal downloads *would never have otherwise been a legal purchase*.
Naturally, if you imagine the two are precisely correlated, if you see that the rate of illegal download growth has leveled out, you might - if you wanted to imagine it were so - consider that the problem had been "contained", especially since the number of legal downloads is rising (naturally, since it began recently at zero).
In reality of course it simply means the problem has maximized and naturally, with no relation to the RIAA in any way, the number of users has levelled out.
The RIAA just doesn't get it, it seems.
Of course, we have to consider how the RIAA are measuring numbers - absolutely nothing is said about this. Are they still fixated on the now-defunct Kazaa network? looking on eMule right now, there appear to be approximately 19 (nineteen) million concurrent users. On one P2P network, just at this moment. In the evenings UK time it's about 26 (twenty-six) million.
It's quite likely their measuring method is deliberately deceptive, in which case the statement means even less that it does.
> Do you have running water? Is there a road leading > to your house that you can drive to work on? Do > you have electricity?
> Bring on the government intervention please.
I'm not sure what you're arguing.
Are you asserting that we wouldn't have these things, were it not for State intervention in the market?
Dare I say that we would have had them sooner, and we have them now more cheaply, if the State *hadn't* have been involved?
Electricity in the UK is now about half the price it used to be; this is because of the denationalisation of power generation. The same can be said of the telecoms market, where call prices have fallen through the floor. The National Health Service, however, is a vast shambles, consuming enourmous amounts of money and remains a political football - and the human cost is terrible; all the health care which is *not* done because of the incredible inefficiencies in the spending of the money that is available for health care.
> Aid programs for the poor is too complicated to get > exactly right, so the government should not get > involved. (People starve)
Aid is complex. State aid is highly inefficient in its application and in particular is prone to corruption - and because of that, people do indeed starve - more than would have done if the aid had been effectively used.
The State should get involved in that it should provide funds, but it should simply distribute dollars to the people in need. The market will ensure they them get to buy what they need.
You are, as I am, deeply concerned about those in need of aid.
*For that reason*, I am appalled by State provision of aid, because it makes the aid that exists far less effective in reducing suffering.
> International policy with countries we have no > direct relations with is too complicated to be > entirely effective, so the government should not > get involved. (Rouge states can ignore one of > the most powerful nations)
I feel here you are broadening my argument to a sphere so different and so much wider that it is unfair to my original argument.
> Criminal justice is far too complicated for us to > get right in every single case, so the government > should not get involved. (Yay anarchy!)
Your argument is flawed - you're asserting if the State did not provide criminal justice, *there would be NO criminal justice*. This is incorrect. In fact, the State does properly have a role in justice, in that it is the role of State to ensure everyone plays by the same rules. Generalizing my argument against State intervention is incorrect, because there are some fields in which I assert the State *should* be involved.
> You have an easter bunny argument; initially yummy and > satisfying, but after the initial bite, ultimately hollow.
I may be wrong, but I think my argument is deeper than you perceive - you have dismissed a superfical understanding of my concerns.
Slashdot Mirror
I read about vestigial limbs on aquatic mammals in the Wiki about a month ago - where a throwback displays fingers/toes rather than properly formed flippers.
:-/
From what's written there, this is well understood and well recognized.
I've just had a go at finding the article again, but you know what it's like in the wiki, if you can't remember the article title, you're going to have trouble finding it again
This isn't any way to run a body politic.
Television means politics is now about the *appearance* of honesty, integrity, competence.
ACTUAL honesty, integrity and competence - who knows? how can you tell through television?
You can tell be learning the history of a candidate, by learning about his position on major issues and what he thinks could be done.
This doesn't happen, because it requires reading, and reading is no longer the primary communication medium in our culture. Television is. We turn to television to learn who to elect; and television is all about *apperance*. Television is all about *show business*. And we do politics through television.
Glug, glug, glug, glug, glug...
> At the very least the UK government is taking the report
:-/
> seriously; both major parties are proposing new green taxes.
I bet they are
States normally spend all they take in tax, plus a little more, leading to a chronic budget shortfall.
That, IMO, is a factor in their responsiveness to a proposal to introduce additional taxes.
I could be wrong, but an FBI raid seems absolutely disgusting - because they knew perfectly well he created the software, since he had gone public with it. I don't know, but I imagine the source code was available? So what possible need was there to break into his house, semi-ransack it and take his computers and other possessions? you all know or can imagine how he feels now - it seems to me like the State, through the FBI, is *oppressing* people; the message in their actions is "break the law and we'll fuck you over."
No matter how it's presented, what's being presented isn't news.
News is properly defined as functional information.
However, in our day and age, where television *is* our culture, the definition of news is *news as seen on TV* - and news on TV, like everything passed through that medium, is converted into entertainment.
And that's why we no longer have a meaningful public discourse; news, news everywhere, and not a functional fact to think about.
> I wrote:
> > Given the very strong tendancy for the State to overspend and so need to
> > increase tax and so to utterly mess up taxation, *the current situation is
> > such that the State's efforts to provide these needs is counter-productive*.
> 1) This is not a tax.
> 2) This money does not go the the government
> 3) Government overspending is not an issue here.
As I understand it, the money is being used to fund State run broadcasters.
So the State is charging people to provide a service; as such, it's a tax to help pay for those broadcasters.
State overspend is an issue in that if the State didn't spend so much, it would have more money available and so would be less likely to need - as it apparently does - to raise additional revenue to fund State run broadcasters.
> Your reference "capable of running Windows" is complete irrelevant.
> Are you trying to whip up some anti-MS mob here on Slachdot?
No. I was exactly quoting the original.
> Yes, takes are a money grab on people who mind their own business. In the US (I live in North
> Carolina), I pay property tax; think about how you would justify that?
Taxes in principle are justified in much the same way the State is justified.
A group of individuals decide, of their own free will, to act together to achieve certain goals they individually could not obtain. The State is an instrument of their combined will. It is usually the case that the people who consent to act together in this way also consent to provide part of their income so that their common goals can be achieved - which is taxation.
> Yes, these taxes are discouraging economic growth. And yes again, there are higher taxes in Germany
> than in many other places.
It's not only the amount of tax, it's the *type* of tax. You can obtain the same amount of money in a way which causes n discouragement, or 2n discouragement. It's not solely the amount of money taken which determines the degree of discouragement to industry.
Because of this, it is inherently wrong for the State to tax in ways which cause unnecessary discouragement to the economy.
However, because existing States tend strongly to spend their entire tax revenue and a little bit more, per fiscal period, there is always a pressure to increase taxation. This of course is politically unpopular. As a result, taxation has bifuricated, into a terrible, horrible, incredibly inefficient and expensive and criminally improper mess, where the State continually attempts to exact more tax but in ways not obvious to the people comprising the State.
> But: the German government takes the stand that certain right need to be provided to the people.
> (Slightly simiplifying) Free access to education, health care, information, news, etc are part of
> that. It's a bunch of non-economic goals, but at large, the people share them in principle.
Hmm. But what people can get depends on how rich they are, either directly or indirectly. If we pay individually for these needs, how much we get depends directly on how rich we are. More taxation in that situation means we get less - directly because of the State taxing us. If we pay collectively for these needs, through taxation, the more, and more improper, taxation there is, the greater the discouragement to industry and the greater the slow down in the rate at which the collective wealth increases - perhaps even to the point where the collective wealth begins to *decrease* (recession).
Given the very strong tendancy for the State to overspend and so need to increase tax and so to utterly mess up taxation, *the current situation is such that the State's efforts to provide these needs is counter-productive*.
What's more, it's not only counter-productive, but in the very act of being counter-productive, the State is behaving towards the people that comprise the State in an entirely respectless manner, by producing criminally discouraging taxes, without justification, purely to increase revenue, to deal with the problem of the State chronically overspending.
> Vendors Symantec and McAfee have looked into the future
> and realized that people may one day speak of them in
> the way that we now speak reverently of the early builds
> of Netscape.
Believe me, there is NO fucking way I would EVER think of the PC-infesting junk Symantec and McAfee make in the same light as Netscape in its early days.
This tax is absolutely shocking.
So, you're sitting there, minding your own business, and the State comes along with what is an absolutely disgustingly expedient excuse of a reason - "your PC is capable of running Windows and is capable of receiving IP and so can be used to view public TV and radio, so you must support that public TV and radio" - and then takes your money.
It's a money-grab. It's simply a method to extract money.
It is utterly, utterly disrespectful to the people the State is supposed to represent; they're not being treated as people, but as wallets, to raid.
It's also absolutely insane from an economists point of view. Taxation inherently discourages growth. There are ways to tax which minimize discouragement. It is absolutely insane to tax in any other way. This tax is criminally stupid.
Finally, the simplest and most profound issue is that this event has *happened*, with all that it illustrates about the relationship between the German State and the people comprising that State.
> You're accepting these things on the basis that most people who partkae
> in this new activity are not going to harm society.
Not *quite* - the view I have is to consider if an activity will cause harm to other *people*.
Society is a whole 'nother kettle of fish - not least of which is the question "what is society?" and the question "who decides what's good or bad for society, whatever it is?"
When you pin the question down to harm to *people*, it becomes a lot more clear cut.
> Seat belt law?
In my view, this should be law.
The reasoning is self-defence; if there's a car accident, the more people who are injured, the greater the demand upon those who are there trying to save people - and so the greater the risk that someone *else* may die, not just yourself.
If it was just you, then I would say this shouldn't be law. If you want to take the risk, it's your life.
It is a violation of personal liberty for the State to forceably intervene in citizen's lives in this way.
Gambling is a personal activity which, when not abused, harms no one else.
You do not outlaw an entire activity from ALL people because it can be abused; you simply take steps to deal with the problem of abusive.
The only justification for *forceable* intervention in another individual's life is *self-defence*.
This principle is the very antithisis of Big Government.
We pay tax through our noses for other people to progressively control our lives.
I quite agree.
I've had to return two drives over the years; both were of course replaced by refurbished drives.
I'm assuming "refurbished" means someone else returned the drive, no fault was found, and now you've got it.
Problem is, some drives are returned because of intermittant errors, or subtler faults which may not be regarded as faults by the manufacturer, such as elevated noise.
So the warranty, really, is a risk - you may get a drive back which is okay, but you may get a bundle of trouble.
This story is from "The Sun".
That newspaper is the lowest of the low, the gutter press. Their normal faire consists of entirely fabricated stories and their conduct is entirely unethical. Do not place ANY credence to stories printed in this paper.
> "Statistically speaking, it's likely that a sizable percentage of these students download copyrighted
> material from the Internet. Do you think any of them are concerned about IP rights then?"
That's an awful comment, for it assumes those objecting are those plagiarizing.
We learn what we *do*.
What's a teenager doing when he's being monitored by his parents?
What he's doing is not being trusted. So he's learning that his parents do not trust him, and he's learning that they will forcefully impose themselves into his life to coerce his behaviour; he's learning to resent them and he's learning that speeding is only wrong because it is prohibited by parents.
"...that the plan has been approved by the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation", who, according to another source, a Mr.Satan, would gladly sell your soul to the devil for the right price, no questions asked.
> Actually, an 8cm tungsten sphere would exert
> the same gravitational pull on any object 10cm away,
> regardless of the other object's mass.
Need a real physicist to answer this, but I'm half-guessing this is wrong; I think the greater the mass of an object, the more it is attracted to another object - but its mass in exact proportion cancels out the additional pull, by simple dint of being more massive and thus requiring more force to move.
This is why high and low mass objects fall at the same rate when dropped; the heavier mass object MUST be feeling a greater attraction or it would not be able to move at the same rate as a lower mass object.
To put it another way, all the atoms in the tungsten sphere pull upon all the atoms in the remote sphere; if the remote sphere has more atoms, then there is more pull. However, because there *are* more atoms, the remote object is more massive and this exactly matches the additional pull.
A tungsten sphere 10cm in diameter would have such a tiny gravitational field that I suspect even a hydrogen atom at the ambient temperature of local space would possess escape velocity.
What exactly are they thinking of putting into orbit around this thing?
Oh my God - this is SO uncool.
A geek flexing his mental muscles is still a geek; girls will still put him in the friend zone.
In fact, thinking about it, what I find interesting is the implied equivelence of legal and illegal downloads.
There appears to exist in the RIAA mind the notion that if legal downloads rise, illegal downloads must fall.
I think the derives from a failure to understand that the majority of illegal downloads *would never have otherwise been a legal purchase*.
Naturally, if you imagine the two are precisely correlated, if you see that the rate of illegal download growth has leveled out, you might - if you wanted to imagine it were so - consider that the problem had been "contained", especially since the number of legal downloads is rising (naturally, since it began recently at zero).
In reality of course it simply means the problem has maximized and naturally, with no relation to the RIAA in any way, the number of users has levelled out.
The RIAA just doesn't get it, it seems.
Of course, we have to consider how the RIAA are measuring numbers - absolutely nothing is said about this. Are they still fixated on the now-defunct Kazaa network? looking on eMule right now, there appear to be approximately 19 (nineteen) million concurrent users. On one P2P network, just at this moment. In the evenings UK time it's about 26 (twenty-six) million.
It's quite likely their measuring method is deliberately deceptive, in which case the statement means even less that it does.
It's true - because everyone who is going to do P2P download is now doing it.
So he is right; P2P growth is flat - in exactly the same way TV purchase growth is flat.
Note any shortage of TVs around the first world? alas not...
> Do you have running water? Is there a road leading
> to your house that you can drive to work on? Do
> you have electricity?
> Bring on the government intervention please.
I'm not sure what you're arguing.
Are you asserting that we wouldn't have these things, were it not for State intervention in the market?
Dare I say that we would have had them sooner, and we have them now more cheaply, if the State *hadn't* have been involved?
Electricity in the UK is now about half the price it used to be; this is because of the denationalisation of power generation. The same can be said of the telecoms market, where call prices have fallen through the floor. The National Health Service, however, is a vast shambles, consuming enourmous amounts of money and remains a political football - and the human cost is terrible; all the health care which is *not* done because of the incredible inefficiencies in the spending of the money that is available for health care.
> Aid programs for the poor is too complicated to get
> exactly right, so the government should not get
> involved. (People starve)
Aid is complex. State aid is highly inefficient in its application and in particular is prone to corruption - and because of that, people do indeed starve - more than would have done if the aid had been effectively used.
The State should get involved in that it should provide funds, but it should simply distribute dollars to the people in need. The market will ensure they them get to buy what they need.
You are, as I am, deeply concerned about those in need of aid.
*For that reason*, I am appalled by State provision of aid, because it makes the aid that exists far less effective in reducing suffering.
> International policy with countries we have no
> direct relations with is too complicated to be
> entirely effective, so the government should not
> get involved. (Rouge states can ignore one of
> the most powerful nations)
I feel here you are broadening my argument to a sphere so different and so much wider that it is unfair to my original argument.
> Criminal justice is far too complicated for us to
> get right in every single case, so the government
> should not get involved. (Yay anarchy!)
Your argument is flawed - you're asserting if the State did not provide criminal justice, *there would be NO criminal justice*. This is incorrect. In fact, the State does properly have a role in justice, in that it is the role of State to ensure everyone plays by the same rules. Generalizing my argument against State intervention is incorrect, because there are some fields in which I assert the State *should* be involved.
> You have an easter bunny argument; initially yummy and
> satisfying, but after the initial bite, ultimately hollow.
I may be wrong, but I think my argument is deeper than you perceive - you have dismissed a superfical understanding of my concerns.