Oh look - first definition: "Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion"
Severe physical pain? Check. Punishment for not voluntarily moving? Check. Coercion to move? Check?
It is torture. Don't mince words and don't try to apologise. A foreign student was repeatedly tortured in front of a crowd of students by the police.
Ok? Now, moving on:
"but tasers do have valid uses in police work and are far more humane than the alternatives."
The only sane "alternatives" in this case were to leave him there or carry him out.
How is tazing someone "more humane" than these alternatives? Did you think about what you were saying at all before you posted?
"If I'm wrong then feel free to tell me how a 120lb policewoman is going to stop a 250lb male mental patient from bashing her senseless simply because she looks like his mother."
Sorry, again... where was the 250lb mental patient? All I saw was a gang of cops standing over a smaller, prone, single student, repeatedly giving him painful and debilitating electric shocks.
Your post makes no fucking sense whatsoever.
Nobody's saying tazers aren't more humane than shooting someone. Nobody's saying there aren't situations where police (or whoever) should be allowed to defend themselves. Where did you hallucinate these arguments from.
All people are doing is expressing outrage that a groups of cops should stand over a single, smaller student and repeatedly torture him until he obeys their (questionable) instructions.
What about this strikes you as a good thing? Then why are you introducing irrelevant straw-man apologies for it?
Or, instead of shooting him they could have acted like:
1. Adults with a functioning sense of empathy 2. People employed as government servants to protect the people 3. Agents of the government of a functioning democracy 4. A group of half-a-dozen people trying to get one, smaller, nonviolent person to move
And just left him there or carried him out peacefully.
At what point does repeatedly tasing an unarmed civilian, already on the floor, constitute "reasonable force"?
The key message here wasn't "we want you out of the library" - if that was the case they would have carried him - it was "you will submit and do what we say, or we will continue to cause you pain until you do".
"The current taser models override the voluntary muscle nerve impulses and cause the body to tense for the duration it's firing. Once it's off you're back to normal within a few seconds, with the exception of the adrenaline rush."
Tasers work by using electrical shocks to rapidly contract and release your muscles. This has the very short-term effect of making you lose voluntary control of those muscles, but it also depletes the ATP (your muscles' "fuel"). A half-second burst will make you twitch violently and go "Ow". A 1-2 second burst will daze your attacker. 3-2 seconds will cause loss of balance, disorientation, and will leave you "passive and confused" for several minutes.
A decent taser jolt (or, say, 5 or so jolts in quick succession) will effectively empty your muscles of ATP - your muscles literally have no fuel to contract, so you simply can't move them. Once the tazing stops your body will begin to resupply ATP to the muscles faster than it's being used up... but you'll be weak, shaky and possibly incapable of walking or standing up for several minutes.
"Almost everyone is able to get right back up if they choose to do so, especially if people are trying to pull them up from under the arms as it appears those officers were trying to do at one point in the video."
You've obviously read simplified reports of what happens when someone is given a single half-second burst. This is not the case for longer or repeated bursts.
"This is patently false. There is no recorded evidence of 'trial and error' shotgun testing of herbal or traditional remedies in historical or anthropological literature... Most traditional medicines are passed down through apprenticeships. Novel cures are based on the medical paradigm held by the practitioners ( e.g. Doctrine of Similars from the middle ages, or traditional categorical kinship, such as otters, rivers, and disorders of the female reproductive system amongst Native Americans of the Northwest), or revelatory experiences (i.e. receiving information from spirits, learning directly from plants themselves)."
I think we're talking at cross-purposes here. I accept that someone might believe in homeopathy or the Doctrine of Signatures (not "similars"), and that many of these belief-systems might have internal consistency (don't confuse that with "logic").
Nevertheless, since many of those beliefs have either been disproven by science, appear arbitrary or at least have no hard evidence to support them, from a scientific western viewpoint I don't think it's indefensible to characterise those cures as "random". Hell, I could try feeding sick people anything the little yellow pixies told me to feed them, and my belief system and cure-choice would be entirely internally consistent. However, if I'm feeding people pencil erasers and badgers' feet I would fully expect other people to characterise those items as a "random" selection.
"The trial and error technique is part of the scientific method, not traditional or non-western approaches. I'm not claiming here that traditional medical practices are better, or even on par with modern medicine, but I find it interesting that the single fact you ask us to 'recall' has no documentation in the literature. I think that shows a bias on your part. At the very least, it shows you are unresearched. "
Well, where do you think this "herbal lore" originally came from:
Some very bright spark came up with the correct answer every time for every disease they ever came across, then people wrote it down and started spreading the knowledge.
Space aliens came down, ushered in a golden age of scientific enlightenment from which we devolved, and now herbal lore represents the last saved knowledge from our previous state of scientifically-achieved near-omniscience, or
Shamas and witch-doctors fed people a variety of things they hoped would work, and they carried on feeding people the things that didn't actively kill them?
Well?
I admit I was deliberately characterising the process as negative to make a point, but the point still stands. There's a lot of useful knowledge in "traditional" herbal and animal lore, but as a society we don't consider it useful unless it's been tested, it checks out and it's put on some kind of scientific footing.
"That's utter BS. Take a look into Hopi or Navajo theories of health and disease. You will find a systematized, theoretical system. Granted, it is not scientific, and most westerners would reject its basic assumptions, but it is nonetheless a complete and coherent. It makes sense and is self-supporting within its own logic. For instance, we might criticize Navajo medicine for inadequate or totally ineffective cancer treatments. However, a Navajo medicine man might criticize western medicine for having inadequate inter-personal counseling for mental health and social stress... As far as vague and contradictory -- the Kachina system is certainly not vague. It might be unfamiliar and illogical to westerners, but that does not mean it lacks rigor. "
I don't believe I ever stated anywhere that all herbal lore was "vague, sometimes contradictory... with absolutely no theoretical underpinnings". I recognise that there is some useful knowledge buried in some traditional remedies, but it's effectively useless until we're sure it's safe and have some idea how/why it works.
"Actually, I don't think that anyone can recall how the herb lore was first arrived at, as it's pre written records (possibly pre writing). Whether it was observation that someone eating a particular plant didn't die of an ailment when others did, or whether it was feeding people random things and finding that certain things kept people alive when others didn't.. It was all hundreds (probably thousands) of years ago."
I agree with you - we've got enough drugs and therapies from "traditional" sources that I'd have to be an idiot to say there was no benefit to them.
Nevertheless, and regardless of which of your scenarios above actually occurred, the key point was that whether we fed people things and hoped they didn't die or just watched what they ate anyway... people still died. This is not an acceptable risk in healthcare today, so just because "everyone knows" something works, we don't consider is safe to use until there's been some investigation, toxicity testing and safe/normal dosages have been established.
Other than that, I agree with everything you said.
"There's a whole store of herb and animal lore that's been systematically quashed for decades (well, since the great witch hunts really), and science is only just getting round to looking at it now."
Make that "a whole store of vague, sometimes contradictory waffle that only intermittently produces results with absolutely no theoretical underpinnings to explain why, how or when it works".
And no-one's quashing anything - if you want to go out on the winter solstice and rub a badger on your varicose veins nobody's stopping you - just don't expect to be able to get it on the National Health Service (or private healthcare, for those countries without a functioning public healthcare system) without the slightest bit of scientific evidence that it's safe and it works.
There are a lot of advances still to be (re-)discovered in traditional herbal and animal lore around the world - of this there is no doubt. Unfortunately there's also a whole load of dangerous horseshit dressed up as traditional lore too, so as a society we don't tend to give credence to a piece of lore until it's been scientifically tested (and ideally until we have some theory as to why it works).
This isn't "quashing" or "destroying" anything - it's called being sensibly prudent. We observe an effect, study it and then use it when we're sure it's safe and effective.
Recall that most of this "store of herbal and animal lore" was discovered by feeding patients a variety of random items and watching for the ones who didn't die horribly from an infection or allergic reaction.
"No, they'd be letting other companies temporarily make use of their lock in for however many players they licennse, but whenever they decided to stop licensing itunes, they'd have their lock in back completely."
What MP3 player-maker is going to licence DRM from Apple with a clause that allows Apple to break their compatibility at any time? It's commercial suicide.
And once Apple's allowed third-party players to play iTunes content they can't then freeze them out without changing Apple's DRM - otherwise players which have already been sold will continue to work.
Changing Apple's FairPlay DRM would also break any iPods they've already sold, so it's clearly a non-starter unless they can get people to flush their iPod firmware... and then put up with the floods of support calls when people don't know how to, forget to, or something goes wrong.
"No, they'd be gaining revenue from big license fees from each player, then when those players break down, they'd be making extra ipod sales."
You seem to be assuming that Apple could allow MP3 player makers to licence FairPlay, then break their FP compatibility without affecting iPods, thus forcing people to buy iPods in future... without the third-party player makers insisting on protection clauses in their licence contract, and without consumers boycotting Apple for deliberately shafting them. Does this sound likely to you?
"Itunes sales are very important, they're crucial for lock in."
iPods and iTunes are equally important for lock-in, because without either there is no lock-in.
Financially, the only important sales are iPods - Apple could almost give away iTunes songs without taking too much of a financial hit, but if iPods stop selling their whole digital music venture is in the shit big-time.
"50%? A 30 gig zen vision w, which is relatively cheap for a large screen mp3 player, is $300, an original zen vision and most archos players are more than that. Some of these are already massively more expensive than ipods, or at least they were until recently."
Ok, you're making my point even better for me - if the FairPlay licence would push the cost of the third-party player up even higher, it becomes even less attractive to the consumer.
And who's talking about big-screen players? You can still buy MP3 players which fit into a chewing gum packet for under £30 here in the UK. We were talking about iTunes music, not videos - screen size is irrelevant. Video is a whole other discussion (not least because Apple's making fuck-all on their video offerings, but are raking it in hand over fist on music).
"What do you mean by "the third party players", that market is entirely companies other than apple."
We were talking about "Apple and iPods" - the first party is Apple, the vendor. The second party is the consumer. The third party is any other company.
Hence, in a discussion about Apple, "third party" refers to anyone who isn't Apple or you, the consumer.
"Tell me, how is a player with a 320x240 screen made by apple better than a player with a much bigger 480*272 screen, for the functions the big screen player is intended for?"
We were talking about music. How is a larger, more expensive player with a huge screen better than a dedicated MP3 player?
And what I was trying to convey was that iPods are always going to work better with iTunes than third-party solutions, because they're both made by Apple. Why do you think Apple's kept its desktop hardware a closed standard? Because it values staying in control of everything, so it can ensure It Just Works.
Plus, Apple has a much better brand-name than any other manufacturers, more customer loyalty and (less a few manufacturing faults in individual batches) generally the hardware is better quality than third-party players. Not always, but generally.
My previous position was at a small(ish) company (~120+ people), but one which was a Microsoft Gold Partner, and had the kind of stifling corporate culture and immovable inertia normally associated with multinational corporations. The job was boring and frustrating, the workforce hated the management and vice-versa... but it was a 15 minutes car journey (through beautiful countryside) from my door.
My present role is as the web manager of an even smaller company (~70 employees worldwide). The working environment is supportive and empowering, I'm basically left to manage myself and after only a couple of months I've already had a huge impact on the way the whole company does business. This job is at least 45 minutes (~1 hour plus in commuter traffic) from my home.
The funny thing is, since taking this job and losing a couple of hours' free time a day I've actually been more rested and relaxed than I ever was at my old job. I'm happier, more productive, and regularly find myself actively thinking about "work" problems even while I'm at home, and enjoying it.
I guess the moral of the story is to choose the job you'll enjoy the most. I can only speak personally, but for me being able to take satisfaction in the work you produce, your level of self-determination and a feeling your input is really valued is worth thousands and thousands of dollars in annual salary.
Don't be seduced into doing something you hate because the money's good, or because it'll look good on your CV - there's no point in having a kick-arse CV if it gets you the kind of jobs you're miserable in, and you'll never be paid enough money to offset hating your job.
1. Why? It's not like in the event of a draw the incumbent stays in - either there's a clear winner, a recount, a court case or Fox news decides, right?
Not voting benefits/harms both runners equally. Now, the incumbent often has an advantage, but that's just because people recognise him (better the devil you know). If those uneducated voters who'd vote in the same guy again simply because they recognise him instead stayed at home and sat on their thumbs on voting day, the incumbent's advantage would be reduced, not increased. Uneducated votes decrease, meaning educated votes have proportionately more weight.
2. Indeed. Unless you really have no interest in politics, or the "general principles" of both parties are equally attractive to you, in which case you should simply not vote.
Voting without understanding who you're voting for is like 300 million people sitting in a car all snatching at the wheel to try to get somewhere. If you can get over the childish insistence on being "the one who decides where you're going" you'd probably be better off in the long run sitting back and letting people who knows how to drive do the driving.
This even works when the choices seem against your preference in the long run. Ask a hundred people what they'd like from a candidate, and most will say "lower taxes" and "increased safety/security". If everyone gets what they want the country would be a bankrupt police state within a couple of elections[1].
Of course, certain choices a government can make (running up huges debts, wars) may be bad for you in the short term and the long term... but when this happens you'll have a preference for one candidate (or rather, an antipreference for the other), so point 2. will no longer apply, and you can vote with a clean conscience.
There's nothing magical about "everyone's mistakes cancelling out" - sure hopefully, if stupidity is divided 50-50 between supporters of different parties they'll cancel out... but even if this happens they're still diluting the votes of the people who do care, and who do have a clue.
Think of it like this: You can add acid to a cake and you can add alkali. You can also add a dollop of cake-mixture, but only if you know enough about cake-making to mix it correctly yourself (and most/many people don't).
Sure, if anyone who wants to can throw in a cupful of either acid of alkali then eventually with enough people the cake won't burn your mouth and it won't dissolve your jawbone. However, that doesn't mean it's as good as a cake where the fuckwits abstained and the qualified chefs had a greater hand in the outcome.
To be clear: it's vitally important that anyone who wants to can vote - this is the essence of democracy. It's actually harmful when people are forced or pressured into making uneducated votes, as these don't reflect any meaningful relevent opinion and only serve to dilute the votes that do.
If one party is predominantly supported by knuckle-dragging mouth-breathing idiots who would rather watch titties and sports than take part in the electoral process, and the other party is predominantly supported by intelligent, educated people with a passionate interest in politics then I'm quite happy for the result to be skewed towards the party supported by people who have a fucking clue.
Unfortunately neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seem to fit the description of Party B above, but TBH, "biasing" an election in favour of education, intelligence and an understanding of politics doesn't actually seem like a problem to me.
You might as well complain the present system is unfairly biased against the apathetic and lazy sector of society.
"Of course I did not RTFA, because that is not the point of/.."
So why bother to post? You couldn't even be bothered to take the first step (RingTFA so you even know what you're talking about), so why bother taking the second step and posting on the subject? Is it because reading the article doesn't get you any attention from other posters, or just an innate desire to make a prat of yourself by talking out of your arse?
Sorry if this is harsh, but why do people take the time to post complete unmitigated shit and then wave it off with "of course I didn't RTFA... Bygones!" like that somehow excuses their time-wasting public idiocy?
Say it with me:
If I don't RTFA, I don't know what I'm talking about.
If I don't know what I'm talking about, I'm either posting something completely irrelevant - or worse, something persuasively plausable but completely wrong.
If I know I'm posting something completely irrelevant or plausably wrong when people are trying to have a useful discussion, I'm just getting in the way and hampering their efforts for fun.
If I'm getting in people's way and hampering their activities for fun, I'm more interested in demanding attention than in contributing meaningfully to the discussion.
If I'm more interested in demanding attention than learning and communicating with others, I'm a cock. Pure and simple.
Sorry to round down on the OP in particular, but it happens a lot and there's really no excuse for it.
Posting "I didn't RTFA" == Cocketry.
"If I ran a foundation that somehow had its mitts on $50M, I'd want to find some way to get some of that money into places where it was more accessable."
Then you're a thief. Not everyone is like that.
"Just like the SCO debacle could be interpreted as a way for Darl to pay his brother (SCO's main lawyer) hefty fees to strip SCO and get the cash into the family, I wonder whether a bit of sooping around here could uncover some similar interesting behaviour."
Except that, had you RTFA and not knee-jerk cock-posted you would have found out:
It's the well-respected MacArthur Foundation, one of the biggest and most well-known philanthropic organisations in the USA, if not the world.
They have assets in excess of 5 billion - when you're managing money like that even 50 million dollars is downgraded from "tempting target" to "pocket change".
Surprise! The/. summary was wrong. It's not even a single $50 million study - instead $10 million goes to "individuals and organizations to work on projects that stimulate research in digital media or explore new approaches to educational innovation", and the remaining $40 million "will be put towards fulfilling the broader aim of connecting researchers, educators, youth, and practitioners in different disciplines"
So...
Didn't RTFA, or even the/. summary? Check. Posted half-baked baseless conspiracy theory? Check. Wasted people's time reading irrelevant ass-wash posted to Slashdot? Check. Slandered well-known philanthropic organisation dedicated solely to helping people? Check. Made cock of self in public? Check.
So, y'know... ultimately... was it really worth it?
"[If opening up the iPod to other music stores] there'd be no going back for apple, and they'd be reducing the vendor lock in advantage."
They'd also be losing the MP3 player vendor lockin advantage if they allowed other music players to access iTunes, and they make their money from selling iPods. They'll never do either while they're leading the market, but it would be even more stupid to open up iTunes than to open up iPods - that was my point.
"On the other hand, if they licensed itunes to a few players, they'd be gaining locked in customers."
No, they'd be losing iPod sales. iPod sales are where they make their money. Not iTunes sales. If you read the article I linked to Robert X. Cringely has helpfully done the maths already.
Frankly, they could piss iTunes sales up the wall if they carried on selling iPods. They won't, but iTunes sales aren't important to their business model compared to iPod sales.
"This would probably work best in markets where apple doesn't have a huge foothold, like singapore and korea. Of course, there the big obstacle to this would be that creative labs and iriver would be unwilling to do this."
Are you crazy? Creative or iRiver could then offer the world's first iTunes-and-Windows Media DRM player - they'd make a mint.
"And I bet they could charge $100+ licence fees for large screen mp3 players."
Hah! No way. That'd push the production-cost of a third-party iTunes-compatible music player up by 25%-50%, making them massively more expensive even than iPods. It would be completely pointless for any company to sign on to this agreement, because Apple would effectively be pricing the third-party players out of the market.
Buy a third-party player to work with Apple's system for $X, or buy branded (and generally better) Apple hardware to work with Apple's branded online service for half the price. That's a no-brainer.
I apologise for name-calling, but this kind of ultra-literal interpretation with no thought to social consequences is a pet hate of mine. FWIW I also support free speech 99% of the time, but recognise there are always situations where it has to be abridged or restrained for the greateer good of society (official secrets act, slander, etc...).
If you're advocating a literal interpretation, how about the second amendment:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Note how it doesn't define "people", or "arms". Does this mean it's ok according to the constitution to give nukes to kids? People means, well, people - men, women or children. And "arms" in this context means "weapons".
Or even more literally, does it mean that everyone has the right to shoulders, elbows and wrists?
I'm not taking the piss, I'm just curious to see if you really believe in the literal interpretation of everything, or if you recognise there are some areas where taking the literal interpretation would be... non-optimal for society.
Only through a loophole, and only by using a CD as an intermediary.
Phone up Apple and ask them if they mind you transcoding your iTunes tracks to MP3. Explain about PlayFair. Ask them when they'll have that functionality integrated into iTunes.
You'll get a "no", an expletive and a "never".
People want to be able to burn CDs. Once CDs are burned they can be transcoded into anything you like.
Just because Apple allows you to burn CDs doesn't mean they allow you to transcode to MP3s.
Kind of like if a homeowner leaves a key under their front doormat - it's to let them back into the house if they forget their key. Now, you might be able to use that to get into their house, but that doesn't mean they've "allowed" you to burgle their property.
The key point here is over time. This is why untimately, in a free market, MP3 or Ogg Vorbis would be the format of choice, making the player manufacturer irrelevant.
However, the market isn't free, because every market player involved is trying to tie users to his device or his music service - nobody's offering an authorised, legitimate MP3 download service, and nobody's allowing people to transcode their DRMed formats to MP3.
If Apple wants to retain market share "forever" then they're better off sticking with open standards. If they want to survive until the point where open standards are actually a viable choice, they'd better stick with proprietary solutions for now.
In a heavily-networked environment, ultimately, eventually, open standards seem to win out. But any company that goes straight for open standards exclusively is dead in the water when they're competing with financial and marketing giants with their own walled gardens.
No way. Apple's in the business of selling hardare, not software. The hardware is where they make their money, so they'd be more likely to open up the iPod to other music stores than to license other placers to work with iTunes.
In the end, though, they won't do either - Apple's raking in cash hand over fist, has a virtual monopoly on digital music and digital music players and has no reason to change anything. Messing with their business model is only likely to make them trip themselves up, not make things better for them.
This is a perfect example of what I've come to think of as Asbergers Reasoning[1] - arguably correct, built from logical premises, lacking all social understanding and therefore completely fucking ridiculous.
"An excellent argument could be made that if person A yells "fire" where there is none, and person B panics, then person B should be punished and person A should get a citizenship award, because he helped the public determine that person B is not safe to have around should a real emergency develop. No one wants some idiot panicking in the case of a real fire, after all. "
Right. And if you physically attack and kill someone on the street, that's ok too because they were clearly genetically inferior not being able to defend themselves, and so you should be rewarded for purifying the gene-pool, right?
And anyone who catches 'flu should be shot, because they're only incubating germs and obviously have inferior immune systems that endanger the rest of us. And people should be rewarded for euthanising disabled babies, and...
What? What? It's logical, so it must be right. And anyone who disagrees is a fucking idiot, right?
Just to be clear: in the Free Speech debate I'm overwhelmingly on the side of free expression. Nevertheless, there are situations where you shouldn't be able to just say whatever you want however and as long as you want to.
The neighbour standing in his front yard is a perfect example - he has the right to say whatever he wants, but by screaming it at the top of his voice he's forcing you to listen to it. He has a right to free speech, but I don't recall the right to be listened to being guaranteed anywhere, especially being listened to against the listener's will.
(Side point: This is the distinction that crackpots on the net are noticeably oblivious to, too - they scream "suppression" and "censorship" that publishers won't publish their book, or TV shows won't show their home-made documentary. They never stop to think that Free Speech guarantees only that they can say whatever they want - nowhere does it guarantee that other people should be forced to listen, take notice or in the extreme case give up airtime on their network TV broadcast to the speaker.)
Free Speech is an ideal - you should be able to say whatever you want.
It does not guarantee other people have to listen, it does not guarantee you should be immune from the consequences of any crimes committed while exercising your free speech, and it does not guarantee you should be able to "speak" in whatever way takes your fancy. You have a right to "free speech"... not "free communication", "free network airtime" or "a guaranteed audience".
[1] Not to disparage anyone with Asbergers - I've got several friends who suffer from it to degrees ranging from "mild" to "severe". They're lovely people to a man, and all highly intelligent, but they are prone to this kind of fallacy - because something is Logical is must be Right, and because it's Right we should do it. Anyone who disagrees because of "irrelevancies" (like socially-accepted norms or interpersonal empathy) is therefore "stupid" for disagreeing with what's patently the Right thing to do.
"Insurance companies have to make a decision as to how much cover, if any, to provide. There's no onus for them to insure someone with only months to live - that would be financial suicide."
Fair point, but I never said "months to live" - if you read my post I specifically put a timeframe of around 20+ years on the example.
"A company would do better, on average, taking money from people with a minute chance of developing Huntingdon's Syndrome (or whatever) than by turning them all away - it would only make sense for them to exclude people for whom there's a probability that they'll lose them money."
No, on average the company would do better to refuse all applicants with even the slightest hint that they might later develop Huntingdon's - there are plenty of people out there with no significant "early warning" markers for anything. They can either refuse all potential sufferers and cream off the insurance payments from people who have almost no risk (barring accidents) of collecting, or they can take a punt on a potential future Huntingdon's sufferer, and risk having to lose hundreds of thousands (or even millions) supporting them if they contract the disease.
You're assuming there are enough people out there who run the risk of contracting rare degenerative disorders that insurance companies would effectively have no choice... but that's why they're rare disorders.
To bring it closer to home, how would you feel about paying twice the insurance premiums because you commute four hours a day and don't have time to go jogging? How would you feel if your insurance broker looked at your "lifestyle report" and basically told you to start jogging and stop going to pubs/clubs/bars or you wouldn't get insurance?
The free market is a wonderful thing, but it more or less ensures that the neediest and least-able are going to drop straight through the cracks, simply because it's not cost-effective enough to worry about them.
Well, since the last poster was somewhat rude in his delivery, let me apologise for him.
To be clear, I don't dispute his opinion at all, merely his delivery of it.
"I find Hobbes's account of the state and the good society the most appealing. Basically... the argument goes that before organization of society we were in the state of nature where people can do whatever they "listeth to whomever [they] listeth"*. Now, in this state the life of man is "nasty, brutish and short" and there is largely no high or civil society, because the fruits of any labour can't be guaranteed."
That's Hobbes' view, sure. And on the other hand we have Rousseau, who believed that animals (including uncivilised man) was in a natural state of grace, and civilisation was a corrupting influence that could only be escaped by returning to nature.
Who says which ones right? I don't thing you'll find a successful, mainstream, respected philosopher that thinks either one of their over-simplified and poorly-argued positions is The Truth.
If you're judging your beliefs on which one "appeals to you more" you should really try getting a better metric, like "which one has the most support", "which one is most internally consistent", and "whether you can ever sensibly draw moral value judgements about amoral value-less aspects of the universe".
And here's a piece of advice - you might find it more interesting (but harder and lesscomfortable) if you consider that both society and nature have "good" and "bad" aspects. And that "good" and "bad" in this context are largely subjective and culturally-defined qualities.
With all due respect, you're obviously well up on the theory and you've obviously read a lot of Hobbes. Can I now recommend reading something that doesn't flatter your preconceptions (hey, even a diametric opposite like Rousseau) to get a bit of perspective on what you're read... and maybe consider that neither one extreme nor the other is as likely to be correct as a synthesis that combines some aspects of both?
"ID cards is a different issue to CCTV. But I've spent a lot of time in Denmark, where they have ID cards"
ID cards, CCTV and the DNA database won't automatically and immediately spell the end of freedom and civil liberties in our society.
In other news, the penultimate chess move doesn't spell checkmate, but once you're in that position it's more or less impossible to escape the one that follows on.
"Insurance companies have to work out whether or not someone is worth insuring. They're allowed to take peoples age into account, and existing illness etc. Otherwise how are they supposed to work out what to charge you? It's a business, yes? They exist to make money - you understand that, right? It's just a form of gambling - no-one is forcing you to have insurance. I don't have any."
Good for you! You're fiscally irresponsible, and could leave your dependants destitute if you happened to fall under a bus tomorrow! Hooray for choice!
Now picture you're a fiscally responsible person with a family and kids who rely on you for income. Now imagine you try to get insurance, but a standard DNA screening shows you have a minute chance of developing Huntingdon's Syndrome. You have 20 years of degenerative physical and mental capability to look forward to, you'll need years of full-time care and any partner or carer will be highly unlikely to be able to work at the same time as caring for you.
The insurance company refuses to insure you. No other company will touch you either, because now you know you've got this possibility to look forward to. Even better, even if the other companies don't pick it up in their screening, when you try to make the claim they may well argue that you knew ahead of time and refuse to honour the claim.
Funnily enough, it's exactly this type of person who most needs insurance. Those of us who are fit, healthy and active until the far-future day we die, and leave behind a vast estate to benefit our dependants don't actually need insurance. Insurance only makes money from the people who don't actually need it. The people who need it aren't profitable. The more insurance companies are allowed to cherry-pick their customers the more profitable they get, and the less reason there is at all to have them.
Hypothetically, if an insurance company had the ability to watch the entire future course of your life and only chose to insure the people who would live very long lives, never be ill, and never get injured... what would be the point of having insurance companies?
"You could make its use illegal, if you so desired. Or would insurance companies hire people and tell them to secretly use the illegal information? "If you tell anyone we're using this data, we're going to hunt you down and kill you!"."
Riiiiiight. Because no big business is ever caught doing anything unethical or illegal.
What planet are you from?
"What makes you think `petty officials` would have access to confidential medical records?"
Because it's very rare that directors or companies or organisations are the ones changing backup tapes and doing low-level database admin work.
In fact, it's almost exactly as unlikely as a big, juicy government-organised IT project remaining secure and unhacked for the entire lifetime of the project.
You think ID theft is easy now? You want until one half-arsed lowest-bidding government IT contractor leaves a SQL injection hole open, and suddenly- SELECT * FROM IDCards WHERE NAME="Joe Bloggs" -your identity is for sale on the open market. In particular because everyone knows "the computer's never wrong".
"> In that case I'll pay for a masked man with a digital video camera to follow you about 24hrs a day, > recording you whilst you are out of your house.*
You'd be arrested under the "Protection from Harassment Act 1997"."
Why? I thought you had nothing to hide? If you have nothing to hide, why don't you want to be followed and filmed by a guy in a black mask all day every day?
Unless... y'know... you do have something to hide, just like everybody else, but aren't thoughtful enough to characterise it or honest enough to admit you were wrong.
"No, it's the slight difference between being 1) me being singled out and followed by a masked man and 2) cameras recording what happens in a public space. Has this difference somehow escaped your attention."
Why should the fact you're being singled out bother you? It's entirely possible to track a single person around an entire city-centre in many UK cities. I have a friend who works for the council monitoring their CCTV systems, and he does exactly this for a job - look for suspicious activity, watch, optionally report to the police then track the person to make sure they don't do anything else.
And who cares if you're being tracked by a masked man in a public place, or if you're being tracked remotely by a man sitting in a nice, comfy CCTV office... who may well be wearing a mask for all you know?
You haven't even tried to explain what the difference is, and that's because there isn't a significant one. Instead, when someone corners you you try to back out of the whole argument or change the subject.
Man up and admit your position doesn't make sense, or come back with some (any) sensible arguments in favour of it.
"I have nothing to hide, but I don't want to be followed by a masked man with a camera."
"What IS the problem with being filmed as you go about your lawful business? I don't get it."
And you don't see any inconsistency in this position?
Man, the cognitive dissonance you must be capable of withstanding would make my head explode.:-)
"> Lots of Nasty regimes were democratically elected when they came to power; Robert Mugabe, for example was democratically > elected.
That has nothing to do with CCTV cameras."
Reading this thread form the beginning I'm starting to wonder if you're intentionally missing the point.
CCTV (and changes like it) hands an unprecedented amount of power to the government.
You support this (or at least don't see the problem with it) because you support the government, or at least the idea of an elected government.
Unfortunately you aren't just handing this power to the current UK Labour government - you're handing the power to every single government who ever comes after them, and trusting them to act exactly as you'd wish, too.
While you may support the decisions of the current government, is that reason to reduce your chance of opposing any government, at any point in the future?
It's not a case of "well, there's no reason not to have CCTV so we might as well have it". CCTV and methods like it centralise power. This removes power from the average man in the street. There should be good, compelling and essential reasons before we even think about increasing governmental control like this.
Mere unthinking apathy about the outcome is not a good reason.
""Dictatorship" and "elected" are mutually exclusive."
No they aren't. A dictator is an undemocratic leader. A democracy is one which democratically elects its leader. It's there are many examples (and if you bothered to read history you'd already know) throughout history of leaders who were democratically elected (past tense) but them remained in power through force or intimidation. Voila - a democratically-elected despot.
Was the OP strictly correct in calling the current UK government despotic? Not until they dissolve democratic elections and remain in power. Did your response to this exaggeration betray a complete lack of knowledge of the subject? Yep.
Not just americans will be modding you down, mate.
I'd just like to say this attitude isn't a US/UK difference - it's a "trusting the government and all governments who come after them" versus "not wanting to hand unnecessary power to a group which has been proven time and again to work primarily in their own (or their donors') best interestes, changes every 4-5 years and may not even be the group I voted for" thing.
Oh, and you'll find that the reson that so many of us UK citizens "don't care" about the changes is because we're simply not aware of them. Everyone knows who won X-Factor last night, but if you ask people about not being allowed to demonstrate within a mile of Parliament and being unable to exercise the time-honoured tradition of taking their grievances to Number 10 Downing Street, they don't know what you're talking about. The second they understand what's going on most people get at least slightly uncomfortable about it.
Slashdot Mirror
"If you use a broad definition then maybe it is torture"
Stop right there. Let's look at the definition of torture, shall we?
Oh look - first definition: "Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion"
Severe physical pain? Check.
Punishment for not voluntarily moving? Check.
Coercion to move? Check?
It is torture. Don't mince words and don't try to apologise. A foreign student was repeatedly tortured in front of a crowd of students by the police.
Ok? Now, moving on:
"but tasers do have valid uses in police work and are far more humane than the alternatives."
The only sane "alternatives" in this case were to leave him there or carry him out.
How is tazing someone "more humane" than these alternatives? Did you think about what you were saying at all before you posted?
"If I'm wrong then feel free to tell me how a 120lb policewoman is going to stop a 250lb male mental patient from bashing her senseless simply because she looks like his mother."
Sorry, again... where was the 250lb mental patient? All I saw was a gang of cops standing over a smaller, prone, single student, repeatedly giving him painful and debilitating electric shocks.
Your post makes no fucking sense whatsoever.
Nobody's saying tazers aren't more humane than shooting someone. Nobody's saying there aren't situations where police (or whoever) should be allowed to defend themselves. Where did you hallucinate these arguments from.
All people are doing is expressing outrage that a groups of cops should stand over a single, smaller student and repeatedly torture him until he obeys their (questionable) instructions.
What about this strikes you as a good thing? Then why are you introducing irrelevant straw-man apologies for it?
Twat.
Or, instead of shooting him they could have acted like:
1. Adults with a functioning sense of empathy
2. People employed as government servants to protect the people
3. Agents of the government of a functioning democracy
4. A group of half-a-dozen people trying to get one, smaller, nonviolent person to move
And just left him there or carried him out peacefully.
At what point does repeatedly tasing an unarmed civilian, already on the floor, constitute "reasonable force"?
The key message here wasn't "we want you out of the library" - if that was the case they would have carried him - it was "you will submit and do what we say, or we will continue to cause you pain until you do".
And that, my friend, is torture.
"The current taser models override the voluntary muscle nerve impulses and cause the body to tense for the duration it's firing. Once it's off you're back to normal within a few seconds, with the exception of the adrenaline rush."
Ummmmm... no.
Tasers work by using electrical shocks to rapidly contract and release your muscles. This has the very short-term effect of making you lose voluntary control of those muscles, but it also depletes the ATP (your muscles' "fuel"). A half-second burst will make you twitch violently and go "Ow". A 1-2 second burst will daze your attacker. 3-2 seconds will cause loss of balance, disorientation, and will leave you "passive and confused" for several minutes.
A decent taser jolt (or, say, 5 or so jolts in quick succession) will effectively empty your muscles of ATP - your muscles literally have no fuel to contract, so you simply can't move them. Once the tazing stops your body will begin to resupply ATP to the muscles faster than it's being used up... but you'll be weak, shaky and possibly incapable of walking or standing up for several minutes.
"Almost everyone is able to get right back up if they choose to do so, especially if people are trying to pull them up from under the arms as it appears those officers were trying to do at one point in the video."
You've obviously read simplified reports of what happens when someone is given a single half-second burst. This is not the case for longer or repeated bursts.
I think we're talking at cross-purposes here. I accept that someone might believe in homeopathy or the Doctrine of Signatures (not "similars"), and that many of these belief-systems might have internal consistency (don't confuse that with "logic").
Nevertheless, since many of those beliefs have either been disproven by science, appear arbitrary or at least have no hard evidence to support them, from a scientific western viewpoint I don't think it's indefensible to characterise those cures as "random". Hell, I could try feeding sick people anything the little yellow pixies told me to feed them, and my belief system and cure-choice would be entirely internally consistent. However, if I'm feeding people pencil erasers and badgers' feet I would fully expect other people to characterise those items as a "random" selection.
"The trial and error technique is part of the scientific method, not traditional or non-western approaches. I'm not claiming here that traditional medical practices are better, or even on par with modern medicine, but I find it interesting that the single fact you ask us to 'recall' has no documentation in the literature. I think that shows a bias on your part. At the very least, it shows you are unresearched. "
Well, where do you think this "herbal lore" originally came from:
Well?
I admit I was deliberately characterising the process as negative to make a point, but the point still stands. There's a lot of useful knowledge in "traditional" herbal and animal lore, but as a society we don't consider it useful unless it's been tested, it checks out and it's put on some kind of scientific footing.
"That's utter BS. Take a look into Hopi or Navajo theories of health and disease. You will find a systematized, theoretical system. Granted, it is not scientific, and most westerners would reject its basic assumptions, but it is nonetheless a complete and coherent. It makes sense and is self-supporting within its own logic. For instance, we might criticize Navajo medicine for inadequate or totally ineffective cancer treatments. However, a Navajo medicine man might criticize western medicine for having inadequate inter-personal counseling for mental health and social stress... As far as vague and contradictory -- the Kachina system is certainly not vague. It might be unfamiliar and illogical to westerners, but that does not mean it lacks rigor. "
I don't believe I ever stated anywhere that all herbal lore was "vague, sometimes contradictory... with absolutely no theoretical underpinnings". I recognise that there is some useful knowledge buried in some traditional remedies, but it's effectively useless until we're sure it's safe and have some idea how/why it works.
Taking what I act
"Actually, I don't think that anyone can recall how the herb lore was first arrived at, as it's pre written records (possibly pre writing). Whether it was observation that someone eating a particular plant didn't die of an ailment when others did, or whether it was feeding people random things and finding that certain things kept people alive when others didn't.. It was all hundreds (probably thousands) of years ago."
I agree with you - we've got enough drugs and therapies from "traditional" sources that I'd have to be an idiot to say there was no benefit to them.
Nevertheless, and regardless of which of your scenarios above actually occurred, the key point was that whether we fed people things and hoped they didn't die or just watched what they ate anyway... people still died. This is not an acceptable risk in healthcare today, so just because "everyone knows" something works, we don't consider is safe to use until there's been some investigation, toxicity testing and safe/normal dosages have been established.
Other than that, I agree with everything you said.
"There's a whole store of herb and animal lore that's been systematically quashed for decades (well, since the great witch hunts really), and science is only just getting round to looking at it now."
Make that "a whole store of vague, sometimes contradictory waffle that only intermittently produces results with absolutely no theoretical underpinnings to explain why, how or when it works".
And no-one's quashing anything - if you want to go out on the winter solstice and rub a badger on your varicose veins nobody's stopping you - just don't expect to be able to get it on the National Health Service (or private healthcare, for those countries without a functioning public healthcare system) without the slightest bit of scientific evidence that it's safe and it works.
There are a lot of advances still to be (re-)discovered in traditional herbal and animal lore around the world - of this there is no doubt. Unfortunately there's also a whole load of dangerous horseshit dressed up as traditional lore too, so as a society we don't tend to give credence to a piece of lore until it's been scientifically tested (and ideally until we have some theory as to why it works).
This isn't "quashing" or "destroying" anything - it's called being sensibly prudent. We observe an effect, study it and then use it when we're sure it's safe and effective.
Recall that most of this "store of herbal and animal lore" was discovered by feeding patients a variety of random items and watching for the ones who didn't die horribly from an infection or allergic reaction.
"No, they'd be letting other companies temporarily make use of their lock in for however many players they licennse, but whenever they decided to stop licensing itunes, they'd have their lock in back completely."
What MP3 player-maker is going to licence DRM from Apple with a clause that allows Apple to break their compatibility at any time? It's commercial suicide.
And once Apple's allowed third-party players to play iTunes content they can't then freeze them out without changing Apple's DRM - otherwise players which have already been sold will continue to work.
Changing Apple's FairPlay DRM would also break any iPods they've already sold, so it's clearly a non-starter unless they can get people to flush their iPod firmware... and then put up with the floods of support calls when people don't know how to, forget to, or something goes wrong.
"No, they'd be gaining revenue from big license fees from each player, then when those players break down, they'd be making extra ipod sales."
You seem to be assuming that Apple could allow MP3 player makers to licence FairPlay, then break their FP compatibility without affecting iPods, thus forcing people to buy iPods in future... without the third-party player makers insisting on protection clauses in their licence contract, and without consumers boycotting Apple for deliberately shafting them. Does this sound likely to you?
"Itunes sales are very important, they're crucial for lock in."
iPods and iTunes are equally important for lock-in, because without either there is no lock-in.
Financially, the only important sales are iPods - Apple could almost give away iTunes songs without taking too much of a financial hit, but if iPods stop selling their whole digital music venture is in the shit big-time.
"50%? A 30 gig zen vision w, which is relatively cheap for a large screen mp3 player, is $300, an original zen vision and most archos players are more than that. Some of these are already massively more expensive than ipods, or at least they were until recently."
Ok, you're making my point even better for me - if the FairPlay licence would push the cost of the third-party player up even higher, it becomes even less attractive to the consumer.
And who's talking about big-screen players? You can still buy MP3 players which fit into a chewing gum packet for under £30 here in the UK. We were talking about iTunes music, not videos - screen size is irrelevant. Video is a whole other discussion (not least because Apple's making fuck-all on their video offerings, but are raking it in hand over fist on music).
"What do you mean by "the third party players", that market is entirely companies other than apple."
We were talking about "Apple and iPods" - the first party is Apple, the vendor. The second party is the consumer. The third party is any other company.
Hence, in a discussion about Apple, "third party" refers to anyone who isn't Apple or you, the consumer.
"Tell me, how is a player with a 320x240 screen made by apple better than a player with a much bigger 480*272 screen, for the functions the big screen player is intended for?"
We were talking about music. How is a larger, more expensive player with a huge screen better than a dedicated MP3 player?
And what I was trying to convey was that iPods are always going to work better with iTunes than third-party solutions, because they're both made by Apple. Why do you think Apple's kept its desktop hardware a closed standard? Because it values staying in control of everything, so it can ensure It Just Works.
Plus, Apple has a much better brand-name than any other manufacturers, more customer loyalty and (less a few manufacturing faults in individual batches) generally the hardware is better quality than third-party players. Not always, but generally.
Bingo.
My previous position was at a small(ish) company (~120+ people), but one which was a Microsoft Gold Partner, and had the kind of stifling corporate culture and immovable inertia normally associated with multinational corporations. The job was boring and frustrating, the workforce hated the management and vice-versa... but it was a 15 minutes car journey (through beautiful countryside) from my door.
My present role is as the web manager of an even smaller company (~70 employees worldwide). The working environment is supportive and empowering, I'm basically left to manage myself and after only a couple of months I've already had a huge impact on the way the whole company does business. This job is at least 45 minutes (~1 hour plus in commuter traffic) from my home.
The funny thing is, since taking this job and losing a couple of hours' free time a day I've actually been more rested and relaxed than I ever was at my old job. I'm happier, more productive, and regularly find myself actively thinking about "work" problems even while I'm at home, and enjoying it.
I guess the moral of the story is to choose the job you'll enjoy the most. I can only speak personally, but for me being able to take satisfaction in the work you produce, your level of self-determination and a feeling your input is really valued is worth thousands and thousands of dollars in annual salary.
Don't be seduced into doing something you hate because the money's good, or because it'll look good on your CV - there's no point in having a kick-arse CV if it gets you the kind of jobs you're miserable in, and you'll never be paid enough money to offset hating your job.
1. Why? It's not like in the event of a draw the incumbent stays in - either there's a clear winner, a recount, a court case or Fox news decides, right?
Not voting benefits/harms both runners equally. Now, the incumbent often has an advantage, but that's just because people recognise him (better the devil you know). If those uneducated voters who'd vote in the same guy again simply because they recognise him instead stayed at home and sat on their thumbs on voting day, the incumbent's advantage would be reduced, not increased. Uneducated votes decrease, meaning educated votes have proportionately more weight.
2. Indeed. Unless you really have no interest in politics, or the "general principles" of both parties are equally attractive to you, in which case you should simply not vote.
Voting without understanding who you're voting for is like 300 million people sitting in a car all snatching at the wheel to try to get somewhere. If you can get over the childish insistence on being "the one who decides where you're going" you'd probably be better off in the long run sitting back and letting people who knows how to drive do the driving.
This even works when the choices seem against your preference in the long run. Ask a hundred people what they'd like from a candidate, and most will say "lower taxes" and "increased safety/security". If everyone gets what they want the country would be a bankrupt police state within a couple of elections[1].
Of course, certain choices a government can make (running up huges debts, wars) may be bad for you in the short term and the long term... but when this happens you'll have a preference for one candidate (or rather, an antipreference for the other), so point 2. will no longer apply, and you can vote with a clean conscience.
There's nothing magical about "everyone's mistakes cancelling out" - sure hopefully, if stupidity is divided 50-50 between supporters of different parties they'll cancel out... but even if this happens they're still diluting the votes of the people who do care, and who do have a clue.
Think of it like this: You can add acid to a cake and you can add alkali. You can also add a dollop of cake-mixture, but only if you know enough about cake-making to mix it correctly yourself (and most/many people don't).
Sure, if anyone who wants to can throw in a cupful of either acid of alkali then eventually with enough people the cake won't burn your mouth and it won't dissolve your jawbone. However, that doesn't mean it's as good as a cake where the fuckwits abstained and the qualified chefs had a greater hand in the outcome.
To be clear: it's vitally important that anyone who wants to can vote - this is the essence of democracy. It's actually harmful when people are forced or pressured into making uneducated votes, as these don't reflect any meaningful relevent opinion and only serve to dilute the votes that do.
[1] Insert your own joke here.
If one party is predominantly supported by knuckle-dragging mouth-breathing idiots who would rather watch titties and sports than take part in the electoral process, and the other party is predominantly supported by intelligent, educated people with a passionate interest in politics then I'm quite happy for the result to be skewed towards the party supported by people who have a fucking clue.
Unfortunately neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seem to fit the description of Party B above, but TBH, "biasing" an election in favour of education, intelligence and an understanding of politics doesn't actually seem like a problem to me.
You might as well complain the present system is unfairly biased against the apathetic and lazy sector of society.
So why bother to post? You couldn't even be bothered to take the first step (RingTFA so you even know what you're talking about), so why bother taking the second step and posting on the subject? Is it because reading the article doesn't get you any attention from other posters, or just an innate desire to make a prat of yourself by talking out of your arse?
Sorry if this is harsh, but why do people take the time to post complete unmitigated shit and then wave it off with "of course I didn't RTFA... Bygones!" like that somehow excuses their time-wasting public idiocy?
Say it with me:
Sorry to round down on the OP in particular, but it happens a lot and there's really no excuse for it.
Posting "I didn't RTFA" == Cocketry.
"If I ran a foundation that somehow had its mitts on $50M, I'd want to find some way to get some of that money into places where it was more accessable."
Then you're a thief. Not everyone is like that.
"Just like the SCO debacle could be interpreted as a way for Darl to pay his brother (SCO's main lawyer) hefty fees to strip SCO and get the cash into the family, I wonder whether a bit of sooping around here could uncover some similar interesting behaviour."
Except that, had you RTFA and not knee-jerk cock-posted you would have found out:
So...
Didn't RTFA, or even the
Posted half-baked baseless conspiracy theory? Check.
Wasted people's time reading irrelevant ass-wash posted to Slashdot? Check.
Slandered well-known philanthropic organisation dedicated solely to helping people? Check.
Made cock of self in public? Check.
So, y'know... ultimately... was it really worth it?
"[If opening up the iPod to other music stores] there'd be no going back for apple, and they'd be reducing the vendor lock in advantage."
They'd also be losing the MP3 player vendor lockin advantage if they allowed other music players to access iTunes, and they make their money from selling iPods. They'll never do either while they're leading the market, but it would be even more stupid to open up iTunes than to open up iPods - that was my point.
"On the other hand, if they licensed itunes to a few players, they'd be gaining locked in customers."
No, they'd be losing iPod sales. iPod sales are where they make their money. Not iTunes sales. If you read the article I linked to Robert X. Cringely has helpfully done the maths already.
Frankly, they could piss iTunes sales up the wall if they carried on selling iPods. They won't, but iTunes sales aren't important to their business model compared to iPod sales.
"This would probably work best in markets where apple doesn't have a huge foothold, like singapore and korea. Of course, there the big obstacle to this would be that creative labs and iriver would be unwilling to do this."
Are you crazy? Creative or iRiver could then offer the world's first iTunes-and-Windows Media DRM player - they'd make a mint.
"And I bet they could charge $100+ licence fees for large screen mp3 players."
Hah! No way. That'd push the production-cost of a third-party iTunes-compatible music player up by 25%-50%, making them massively more expensive even than iPods. It would be completely pointless for any company to sign on to this agreement, because Apple would effectively be pricing the third-party players out of the market.
Buy a third-party player to work with Apple's system for $X, or buy branded (and generally better) Apple hardware to work with Apple's branded online service for half the price. That's a no-brainer.
If you're advocating a literal interpretation, how about the second amendment:
Note how it doesn't define "people", or "arms". Does this mean it's ok according to the constitution to give nukes to kids? People means, well, people - men, women or children. And "arms" in this context means "weapons".
Or even more literally, does it mean that everyone has the right to shoulders, elbows and wrists?
I'm not taking the piss, I'm just curious to see if you really believe in the literal interpretation of everything, or if you recognise there are some areas where taking the literal interpretation would be... non-optimal for society.
Only through a loophole, and only by using a CD as an intermediary.
Phone up Apple and ask them if they mind you transcoding your iTunes tracks to MP3. Explain about PlayFair. Ask them when they'll have that functionality integrated into iTunes.
You'll get a "no", an expletive and a "never".
People want to be able to burn CDs. Once CDs are burned they can be transcoded into anything you like.
Just because Apple allows you to burn CDs doesn't mean they allow you to transcode to MP3s.
Kind of like if a homeowner leaves a key under their front doormat - it's to let them back into the house if they forget their key. Now, you might be able to use that to get into their house, but that doesn't mean they've "allowed" you to burgle their property.
Sorry - I assumed the bit about providing music a large number of people would want to pay for was kind of taken as read... ;-)
The key point here is over time. This is why untimately, in a free market, MP3 or Ogg Vorbis would be the format of choice, making the player manufacturer irrelevant.
However, the market isn't free, because every market player involved is trying to tie users to his device or his music service - nobody's offering an authorised, legitimate MP3 download service, and nobody's allowing people to transcode their DRMed formats to MP3.
If Apple wants to retain market share "forever" then they're better off sticking with open standards. If they want to survive until the point where open standards are actually a viable choice, they'd better stick with proprietary solutions for now.
In a heavily-networked environment, ultimately, eventually, open standards seem to win out. But any company that goes straight for open standards exclusively is dead in the water when they're competing with financial and marketing giants with their own walled gardens.
No way. Apple's in the business of selling hardare, not software. The hardware is where they make their money, so they'd be more likely to open up the iPod to other music stores than to license other placers to work with iTunes.
In the end, though, they won't do either - Apple's raking in cash hand over fist, has a virtual monopoly on digital music and digital music players and has no reason to change anything. Messing with their business model is only likely to make them trip themselves up, not make things better for them.
This is a perfect example of what I've come to think of as Asbergers Reasoning[1] - arguably correct, built from logical premises, lacking all social understanding and therefore completely fucking ridiculous.
"An excellent argument could be made that if person A yells "fire" where there is none, and person B panics, then person B should be punished and person A should get a citizenship award, because he helped the public determine that person B is not safe to have around should a real emergency develop. No one wants some idiot panicking in the case of a real fire, after all. "
Right. And if you physically attack and kill someone on the street, that's ok too because they were clearly genetically inferior not being able to defend themselves, and so you should be rewarded for purifying the gene-pool, right?
And anyone who catches 'flu should be shot, because they're only incubating germs and obviously have inferior immune systems that endanger the rest of us. And people should be rewarded for euthanising disabled babies, and...
What? What? It's logical , so it must be right. And anyone who disagrees is a fucking idiot, right?
Just to be clear: in the Free Speech debate I'm overwhelmingly on the side of free expression. Nevertheless, there are situations where you shouldn't be able to just say whatever you want however and as long as you want to.
The neighbour standing in his front yard is a perfect example - he has the right to say whatever he wants, but by screaming it at the top of his voice he's forcing you to listen to it. He has a right to free speech, but I don't recall the right to be listened to being guaranteed anywhere, especially being listened to against the listener's will.
(Side point: This is the distinction that crackpots on the net are noticeably oblivious to, too - they scream "suppression" and "censorship" that publishers won't publish their book, or TV shows won't show their home-made documentary. They never stop to think that Free Speech guarantees only that they can say whatever they want - nowhere does it guarantee that other people should be forced to listen, take notice or in the extreme case give up airtime on their network TV broadcast to the speaker.)
Free Speech is an ideal - you should be able to say whatever you want.
It does not guarantee other people have to listen, it does not guarantee you should be immune from the consequences of any crimes committed while exercising your free speech, and it does not guarantee you should be able to "speak" in whatever way takes your fancy. You have a right to "free speech"... not "free communication", "free network airtime" or "a guaranteed audience".
[1] Not to disparage anyone with Asbergers - I've got several friends who suffer from it to degrees ranging from "mild" to "severe". They're lovely people to a man, and all highly intelligent, but they are prone to this kind of fallacy - because something is Logical is must be Right, and because it's Right we should do it. Anyone who disagrees because of "irrelevancies" (like socially-accepted norms or interpersonal empathy) is therefore "stupid" for disagreeing with what's patently the Right thing to do.
Pwned.
"Insurance companies have to make a decision as to how much cover, if any, to provide. There's no onus for them to insure someone with only months to live - that would be financial suicide."
Fair point, but I never said "months to live" - if you read my post I specifically put a timeframe of around 20+ years on the example.
"A company would do better, on average, taking money from people with a minute chance of developing Huntingdon's Syndrome (or whatever) than by turning them all away - it would only make sense for them to exclude people for whom there's a probability that they'll lose them money."
No, on average the company would do better to refuse all applicants with even the slightest hint that they might later develop Huntingdon's - there are plenty of people out there with no significant "early warning" markers for anything. They can either refuse all potential sufferers and cream off the insurance payments from people who have almost no risk (barring accidents) of collecting, or they can take a punt on a potential future Huntingdon's sufferer, and risk having to lose hundreds of thousands (or even millions) supporting them if they contract the disease.
You're assuming there are enough people out there who run the risk of contracting rare degenerative disorders that insurance companies would effectively have no choice... but that's why they're rare disorders.
To bring it closer to home, how would you feel about paying twice the insurance premiums because you commute four hours a day and don't have time to go jogging? How would you feel if your insurance broker looked at your "lifestyle report" and basically told you to start jogging and stop going to pubs/clubs/bars or you wouldn't get insurance?
The free market is a wonderful thing, but it more or less ensures that the neediest and least-able are going to drop straight through the cracks, simply because it's not cost-effective enough to worry about them.
Well, since the last poster was somewhat rude in his delivery, let me apologise for him.
To be clear, I don't dispute his opinion at all, merely his delivery of it.
"I find Hobbes's account of the state and the good society the most appealing. Basically... the argument goes that before organization of society we were in the state of nature where people can do whatever they "listeth to whomever [they] listeth"*. Now, in this state the life of man is "nasty, brutish and short" and there is largely no high or civil society, because the fruits of any labour can't be guaranteed."
That's Hobbes' view, sure. And on the other hand we have Rousseau, who believed that animals (including uncivilised man) was in a natural state of grace, and civilisation was a corrupting influence that could only be escaped by returning to nature.
Who says which ones right? I don't thing you'll find a successful, mainstream, respected philosopher that thinks either one of their over-simplified and poorly-argued positions is The Truth.
If you're judging your beliefs on which one "appeals to you more" you should really try getting a better metric, like "which one has the most support", "which one is most internally consistent", and "whether you can ever sensibly draw moral value judgements about amoral value-less aspects of the universe".
And here's a piece of advice - you might find it more interesting (but harder and lesscomfortable) if you consider that both society and nature have "good" and "bad" aspects. And that "good" and "bad" in this context are largely subjective and culturally-defined qualities.
With all due respect, you're obviously well up on the theory and you've obviously read a lot of Hobbes. Can I now recommend reading something that doesn't flatter your preconceptions (hey, even a diametric opposite like Rousseau) to get a bit of perspective on what you're read... and maybe consider that neither one extreme nor the other is as likely to be correct as a synthesis that combines some aspects of both?
"ID cards is a different issue to CCTV. But I've spent a lot of time in Denmark, where they have ID cards"
ID cards, CCTV and the DNA database won't automatically and immediately spell the end of freedom and civil liberties in our society.
In other news, the penultimate chess move doesn't spell checkmate, but once you're in that position it's more or less impossible to escape the one that follows on.
"Insurance companies have to work out whether or not someone is worth insuring. They're allowed to take peoples age into account, and existing illness etc. Otherwise how are they supposed to work out what to charge you? It's a business, yes? They exist to make money - you understand that, right? It's just a form of gambling - no-one is forcing you to have insurance. I don't have any."
Good for you! You're fiscally irresponsible, and could leave your dependants destitute if you happened to fall under a bus tomorrow! Hooray for choice!
Now picture you're a fiscally responsible person with a family and kids who rely on you for income. Now imagine you try to get insurance, but a standard DNA screening shows you have a minute chance of developing Huntingdon's Syndrome. You have 20 years of degenerative physical and mental capability to look forward to, you'll need years of full-time care and any partner or carer will be highly unlikely to be able to work at the same time as caring for you.
The insurance company refuses to insure you. No other company will touch you either, because now you know you've got this possibility to look forward to. Even better, even if the other companies don't pick it up in their screening, when you try to make the claim they may well argue that you knew ahead of time and refuse to honour the claim.
Funnily enough, it's exactly this type of person who most needs insurance. Those of us who are fit, healthy and active until the far-future day we die, and leave behind a vast estate to benefit our dependants don't actually need insurance. Insurance only makes money from the people who don't actually need it. The people who need it aren't profitable. The more insurance companies are allowed to cherry-pick their customers the more profitable they get, and the less reason there is at all to have them.
Hypothetically, if an insurance company had the ability to watch the entire future course of your life and only chose to insure the people who would live very long lives, never be ill, and never get injured... what would be the point of having insurance companies?
"You could make its use illegal, if you so desired. Or would insurance companies hire people and tell them to secretly use the illegal information? "If you tell anyone we're using this data, we're going to hunt you down and kill you!"."
Riiiiiight. Because no big business is ever caught doing anything unethical or illegal.
What planet are you from?
"What makes you think `petty officials` would have access to confidential medical records?"
Because it's very rare that directors or companies or organisations are the ones changing backup tapes and doing low-level database admin work.
In fact, it's almost exactly as unlikely as a big, juicy government-organised IT project remaining secure and unhacked for the entire lifetime of the project.
You think ID theft is easy now? You want until one half-arsed lowest-bidding government IT contractor leaves a SQL injection hole open, and suddenly- SELECT * FROM IDCards WHERE NAME="Joe Bloggs" -your identity is for sale on the open market. In particular because everyone knows "the computer's never wrong".
Good luck with that.
"> In that case I'll pay for a masked man with a digital video camera to follow you about 24hrs a day,
:-)
> recording you whilst you are out of your house.*
You'd be arrested under the "Protection from Harassment Act 1997"."
Why? I thought you had nothing to hide? If you have nothing to hide, why don't you want to be followed and filmed by a guy in a black mask all day every day?
Unless... y'know... you do have something to hide, just like everybody else, but aren't thoughtful enough to characterise it or honest enough to admit you were wrong.
"No, it's the slight difference between being 1) me being singled out and followed by a masked man and 2) cameras recording what happens in a public space. Has this difference somehow escaped your attention."
Why should the fact you're being singled out bother you? It's entirely possible to track a single person around an entire city-centre in many UK cities. I have a friend who works for the council monitoring their CCTV systems, and he does exactly this for a job - look for suspicious activity, watch, optionally report to the police then track the person to make sure they don't do anything else.
And who cares if you're being tracked by a masked man in a public place, or if you're being tracked remotely by a man sitting in a nice, comfy CCTV office... who may well be wearing a mask for all you know?
You haven't even tried to explain what the difference is, and that's because there isn't a significant one. Instead, when someone corners you you try to back out of the whole argument or change the subject.
Man up and admit your position doesn't make sense, or come back with some (any) sensible arguments in favour of it.
"I have nothing to hide, but I don't want to be followed by a masked man with a camera."
"What IS the problem with being filmed as you go about your lawful business? I don't get it."
And you don't see any inconsistency in this position?
Man, the cognitive dissonance you must be capable of withstanding would make my head explode.
"> Lots of Nasty regimes were democratically elected when they came to power; Robert Mugabe, for example was democratically
> elected.
That has nothing to do with CCTV cameras."
Reading this thread form the beginning I'm starting to wonder if you're intentionally missing the point.
CCTV (and changes like it) hands an unprecedented amount of power to the government.
You support this (or at least don't see the problem with it) because you support the government, or at least the idea of an elected government.
Unfortunately you aren't just handing this power to the current UK Labour government - you're handing the power to every single government who ever comes after them, and trusting them to act exactly as you'd wish, too.
While you may support the decisions of the current government, is that reason to reduce your chance of opposing any government, at any point in the future?
It's not a case of "well, there's no reason not to have CCTV so we might as well have it". CCTV and methods like it centralise power. This removes power from the average man in the street. There should be good, compelling and essential reasons before we even think about increasing governmental control like this.
Mere unthinking apathy about the outcome is not a good reason.
""Dictatorship" and "elected" are mutually exclusive."
No they aren't. A dictator is an undemocratic leader. A democracy is one which democratically elects its leader. It's there are many examples (and if you bothered to read history you'd already know) throughout history of leaders who were democratically elected (past tense) but them remained in power through force or intimidation. Voila - a democratically-elected despot.
Was the OP strictly correct in calling the current UK government despotic? Not until they dissolve democratic elections and remain in power. Did your response to this exaggeration betray a complete lack of knowledge of the subject? Yep.
Not just americans will be modding you down, mate.
I'd just like to say this attitude isn't a US/UK difference - it's a "trusting the government and all governments who come after them" versus "not wanting to hand unnecessary power to a group which has been proven time and again to work primarily in their own (or their donors') best interestes, changes every 4-5 years and may not even be the group I voted for" thing.
Oh, and you'll find that the reson that so many of us UK citizens "don't care" about the changes is because we're simply not aware of them. Everyone knows who won X-Factor last night, but if you ask people about not being allowed to demonstrate within a mile of Parliament and being unable to exercise the time-honoured tradition of taking their grievances to Number 10 Downing Street, they don't know what you're talking about. The second they understand what's going on most people get at least slightly uncomfortable about it.