Question: Should you expose yourself to unnecessary risk for virtually no benefit?
Apparently, your answer is to say yes because it's dangerous, edgy, and shows humanity's balls.
I don't see much benefit from this. It's not like the Chinese are getting tons of valuable materials that don't exist on earth and it makes economic sense to send stuff to/from the asteroid (it's still expensive to get stuff into space). If the Chinese want something ambitious, tell them to go to the asteroid belt and mine stuff. That's more ambitious and less dangerous. It's also about as economically feasible (i.e. it's not).
As a matter of principle, I support cracking down on filesharing because I support the people who invested money to create products over the people who simply want free entertainment and contribute nothing back. I don't care if it's the RIAA or MPAA. It doesn't even matter if I dislike the RIAA. Similarly, if someone in my neighborhood is a crappy human being I still support certain rights for them - and if someone steals from that detestable person, I'm not going to say "we'll screw them, they're a crappy human being", as if being a bad person means they no longer get the protections everyone should get (in fact, mistreating them in the legal system would only make them worse).
(And, no, I'm not saying I support long copyright terms or large financial penalties for pirates.)
> "It looks like a shakedown when you've paid $100/license, and then are told, "Oh by the way, you owe us $5000/license."
"Looks like a shakedown" and "Is a shakedown" are two different things, by the way. There is no "double dipping" (as your title suggests) when you didn't pay the right people in the first place.
Industry loves uncertain language, as well. Afterall, no action can be taken if everything is uncertain. No wonder they've been working so hard to raise doubts.
I like how, when faced with decades of research on the CO2 - global warming connection, the anti-AWG crowd are completely skeptical. But, a hint that cosmic rays might affect cloud formation and climate change, and they're already convinced.
It fits pretty nicely with other research that showed that people's willingness to accept global warming seemed to hinge on whether or not they needed to change their lives as a result. (As if facts were true or not depending on their consequences for their own lives.)
In one version of the news story, however, the scientific study was described as calling for “increased antipollution regulation,” whereas in another it was described as calling for “revitalization of the nation’s nuclear power industry".... individualists who received the “nuclear power” [solution to global warming] were less inclined to dismiss the facts [of global warming] related by the described report
http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2007/10/02/nuclear-power-makes-individualists-see-green/
I'm sorry, China. I shouldn't have expected anything better than lies from any government. I am no longer outraged. You may continue operating as usual, but now you don't have to worry about our disapproval. Thank you, NicknamesAreStupid, for normalizing lies and deceit. I predict a rosey future for humanity when nobody even complains about government lies. And, I predict a wonderful existence for governments when they can lie without ever being held accountable, not even having to face social disapproval.
As long as we're at it, let's add a few more things: men and women cheat. Let's stop complaining about it. Let's just shrug and not even make people face social disapproval. Habitual cheaters everywhere, rejoice. You've just reached heaven.
> "Bad analogy. Michelle Bachmann is well known. The China video is showing an "unseen" person.. If an unseen person is shown to be doing cocaine in a tea party video"
Bad analogy, since the hacker in the background is obviously following orders. Some random person in the background snorting cocaine would obviously be doing it for their own reasons, not because they were ordered to (which would give the tea party credibility in saying "they weren't doing it on our behalf"). Anyway, his analogy wasn't about who was giving orders or who was in control over the person in the background - it was about whether or not the video was fake. You picked out the wrong feature of the analogy and complained it didn't fit.
> "who are for some reason completely convinced china is launching a massive digital attack against its primary trading partner."
I wasn't aware that Falun Gong was China's primary trading partner.
But, seriously, China has ample reasons to exploit security holes to conduct industrial and military espionage. They realize, as the US does, that the trade agreement is overlayed on top of *the* major rivalry of the 21st century.
Funny, a lot of us seem to think the reverse is (also?) true: "Are you kidding? You can't even have a conversation with an anti-agw type about it." Maybe you're coming into the conversation with guns blazing. I know Republicans who start political conversations by saying the most offensive, political inflammatory thing they can, I wonder if they're also complaining that they can't have a conversation with the "other side".
In my case, my old neighbor once told me she doesn't give a crap about global warming because Jesus is coming back soon. Even when we have a low-key discussion, it takes no time at all until she's emotional and yelling her points. (She's a die-hard tea-party republican activist who believes all the hardline right-wing stuff - global warming is a lie, abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest, taxes on the rich need to be dramatically reduced, taxes on the poor need to be raised, Obama wasn't born in the US, etc.etc.)
Really? Because my observation is that the anti-AGW crowd tend to raise a lot of complaints, then I look up the pro-AGW response and the responses are clear and convincing. By in large, I'd say that the anti-AGW crowd is using an awful lot of already-debunked arguments. My guess is that the anti-AWG crowd isn't reading the responses from the pro-AGW crowd; instead they're in some kind of a echo chamber and don't seem too eager to read information that contradicts their position.
But, looking around, it seems that New York city's costs have fluctuated from year to year: "New York City, the nation’s largest school district, reported spending $13,755 per pupil" (article from 2008). You also picked the highest-cost per pupil city (New York, a city which has high costs in a variety of ways) to compare against the "average" private school tuition. But, in fact, this isn't the "average" private school tuition, either. According to another article, "Average Private School Tuition: 2007-08, All Schools (i.e. Catholic, Other Religious, Non-Sectarian), K-12 Schools" = $10,045 per pupil (Source: http://www.capenet.org/facts.html)
> "how does the education system in South Korea and Finland work?"
South Korea:
The school year in South Korea typically runs from March to February. The year is divided into two semesters (March to July and September to February). School days are from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., but many stay later into the evening. In addition, students help clean up their classroom before leaving. Most students remain in the same room while their teachers rotate throughout the day. Each room has about thirty students with ten computers for them to share.
South Korean student
After 5 p.m. students have a short dinner at home, or eat at school, before study sessions or other activities begin in the evening. Students attend school Monday to Friday, with some Saturday classes scattered throughout the year.
But, this article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4033261.stm) says "Finnish pupils have the least school hours of any industrialized country".
Even worse: it means every man alive got his Y-Chromosome from Noah, who lived sometime around 2400 BC. (This is because Noah's sons all inherited their Y-Chromosome from their dad.) There's far, far too much genetic diversity in the Y-Chromosome to suggest that it's only 4,400 years old.
> "I hate to burst the hateful bubbles present, but tons of evangelical scientists have always supported evolution. It is only just a very strong push into education and other areas of life by certain evangelicals who became the 'squeaky wheel' that everyone hears that brought about that stupid bubble. Except it was more like an incessant roar that drowned everything out. "
Yes, a lot of evangelical scientists disagree with young earth creationism. It's an exaggeration to say that "tons" of them have always supported evolution (though I suppose it depends on how you define evolution). The other issue is that you're ignoring the fact that tons of evangelical non-scientists agree with young earth creationism. They also get angry when professors at Christian colleges dispute young earth creationism. I've seen professors at Christian colleges lose their job because of it, and Christian colleges attacked for being "liberal" and "not following the true word of God" because they touch on evolution. The young earth creationists are not just some tiny minority who stir up trouble. Almost half of Americans agree with the statement that God created human beings within the last 10,000 years (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2680/nearly-half-the-u-s-population-believes-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old). Among the laypeople, it's a popular position.
> "Given the complexity of a human being as-is, the gradual change of humans over a period of several thousand years (assuming a Creation-based timetable of 10,000-50,000 years, no I don't believe the 6,000 number either) into the genetic diversity we see today seems no more remote a possibility than (switching gears to evolution and TFS) having multiple apes each independently evolving into human beings that have sufficiently equivalent DNA and reproductive systems compatible enough to themselves reproduce."
So, you're saying that having humans being created 10,000-50,000 years ago and then evolve genetic diversity over that time-period is roughly equivalent to the probability of having multiple apes each independently evolve into humans? Evolution doesn't work by having multiple apes independently evolve into humans. Rather, a beneficial mutation happens from time to time, and gets spread throughout the species via sexual reproduction. Evolution is not 'multiple lineages of apes all evolving into human beings independently of each other'.
> "I thought that Lucy/African Eve was the one that we're all descended from. Or was that a single pair of humans... Lucy and multiple males."
No, nobody believes we all descended from Lucy (as in the one female in existence). Lucy is one individual of a species of upright-walking, small brained hominids. Whether or not Lucy produced any ancestors is unknown. Whether human beings descended from the same species Lucy was a part of is unknown (perhaps the human lineage branched off from another species which was a cousin to Lucy's species). And Lucy was certainly not the only female of her species, so even if humans descended from Lucy's species, it means there was a whole population of creatures alive at the time, and Lucy was only one example.
And, there's good reason to suppose the Genesis story was meant to be read literally. For example, if you look in the New Testament, you'll find a list of Jesus' ancestry leading back to Adam. This leads to a tension in Christianity between people who know science well enough to know that it isn't true (and suggest that it should be read metaphorically, despite the evidence in the Bible that it's supposed to be read literally) and the people who either don't know the scientific evidence or use dubious explanations to explain-away the gap between science and a literal Genesis.
So, you're saying that the ancient Romans were, in fact, superior to Germans, but Germans became ascendant because the ancient Romans messed up their genetics? Does this mean that we can put all the other ancient civilizations above Germans, since they had civilizations while the Germans were still relatively primitive?
In other words ( Ancient Egyptians, Ancient Babylonians/Sumerians, Ancient Romans, Ancient Greek ) > Ancient and Modern Germans? And the Ancient Roman civilization fell because they interbreed with other people, may of whom also came from other ancient civilizations that were still more advanced than the Germans around 0 B.C.?
If we're looking for genetic explanations, I guess I have a hard time believing that there were these pockets of genetic superiority (ancient romans, greeks, egyptians, babylonians/sumerians) among a much worse genetic people who ended up interbreeding with ancient Romans and bringing down their civilization.
I think there were quite a few more technological differences between Romans and Germans in the centuries around 0 B.C. Not to mention that other areas had advanced civilizations a few millenia before the Germans. To name a few: Romans, Greek, Egyptians, Sumurians/Babylonians. If we're going for a genetic explanation, I have a hard time seeing why Germans were so far behind the curve. On the other hand, if we talk about things like culture, organization, and environment (like the fact that trade is easier when it happens over water), then we'd also have to raise the possibility that Germany was also powerful because of non-genetic factors.
It's also worth mentioning that Jews have disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes. The Jews also aren't that different genetically from anyone else in the middle east and Arabs have very few Nobel Prizes. (Sure, Judaism cut down the interbreeding with other groups in the middle east, but Judaism is only about three thousand years old - which is mostly a drop in the bucket.) Again, I'd favor the cultural explanation (like wealth and respect for education) for the gap in Nobel Prizes between Jews/Arabs or Jews and everybody else.
... and two thousand years before Germans almost took over the world, it was the Romans. Which raises the question: During the Roman Empire, why were Germans still barbarians? And During the twentieth century, why were the Germans so competent, while the Italians were the ones who constantly got themselves into trouble? I have a hard time believing that genetics somehow shifted from one group of people to the other. Maybe it has to do with culture.
Your comment assumes that the dish was working. It looks like a very old dish, perhaps 1980s-era, so it's not unreasonable that it no longer worked. Maybe it was used by the previous owners until it fell into disrepair. Also, the pictures I saw of the dish showed the dish pointing almost at the horizon (not up in the sky), which also hints that it might not have been in working condition.
It depends on what he did with the patents. Having a patent doesn't mean that no one else could use it. For example, He could've changed $0.10 per year to every website. This would be negligible compared to annual domain name registration, so it would have a negligible effect on adoption. He might've used that money for himself, or perhaps, used it more philanthropically - for example, to improve security on the web, research a cure for cancer, or help people around the world to get access to the web (which would be both self-interested since he gets paid per website, and socially useful).
Let's also not forget that Google has been paying for Firefox development for years. If Google pulls out in favor of Chrome, you have to ask what will happen.
Mozilla, the organization behind the popular Firefox web browser, has extended its search deal with Google for another three years. In return for setting Google as the default search engine on Firefox, Google pays Mozilla a substantial sum – in 2006 the total amounted to around $57 million, or 85% of the company’s total revenue. The deal was originally going to expire in 2006, but was later extended to 2008 and will now run through 2011.
If the ONLY content on a particular website is copyrighted works being given away (distributed) without license and you can prove that the website/domain name will never ever ever be used for anything else, then you can claim that blocking said website/domain is not equal to censorship.
So, if Walmart started printing up some media (books, music, software, movies) and ignored copyright, but for other media they respected copyright laws, then shutting down Walmart for copyright violations would be "censorship" because now Walmart wouldn't be able to sell the media for which they actually followed copyright? I don't think that argument works.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh. Heh.
Question: Should you expose yourself to unnecessary risk for virtually no benefit?
Apparently, your answer is to say yes because it's dangerous, edgy, and shows humanity's balls.
I don't see much benefit from this. It's not like the Chinese are getting tons of valuable materials that don't exist on earth and it makes economic sense to send stuff to/from the asteroid (it's still expensive to get stuff into space). If the Chinese want something ambitious, tell them to go to the asteroid belt and mine stuff. That's more ambitious and less dangerous. It's also about as economically feasible (i.e. it's not).
As a matter of principle, I support cracking down on filesharing because I support the people who invested money to create products over the people who simply want free entertainment and contribute nothing back. I don't care if it's the RIAA or MPAA. It doesn't even matter if I dislike the RIAA. Similarly, if someone in my neighborhood is a crappy human being I still support certain rights for them - and if someone steals from that detestable person, I'm not going to say "we'll screw them, they're a crappy human being", as if being a bad person means they no longer get the protections everyone should get (in fact, mistreating them in the legal system would only make them worse).
(And, no, I'm not saying I support long copyright terms or large financial penalties for pirates.)
Napster (http://www.napster.com) shut down?
> "It looks like a shakedown when you've paid $100/license, and then are told, "Oh by the way, you owe us $5000/license."
"Looks like a shakedown" and "Is a shakedown" are two different things, by the way. There is no "double dipping" (as your title suggests) when you didn't pay the right people in the first place.
Industry loves uncertain language, as well. Afterall, no action can be taken if everything is uncertain. No wonder they've been working so hard to raise doubts.
It fits pretty nicely with other research that showed that people's willingness to accept global warming seemed to hinge on whether or not they needed to change their lives as a result. (As if facts were true or not depending on their consequences for their own lives.)
I'm sorry, China. I shouldn't have expected anything better than lies from any government. I am no longer outraged. You may continue operating as usual, but now you don't have to worry about our disapproval. Thank you, NicknamesAreStupid, for normalizing lies and deceit. I predict a rosey future for humanity when nobody even complains about government lies. And, I predict a wonderful existence for governments when they can lie without ever being held accountable, not even having to face social disapproval.
As long as we're at it, let's add a few more things: men and women cheat. Let's stop complaining about it. Let's just shrug and not even make people face social disapproval. Habitual cheaters everywhere, rejoice. You've just reached heaven.
> "Bad analogy. Michelle Bachmann is well known. The China video is showing an "unseen" person.. If an unseen person is shown to be doing cocaine in a tea party video"
Bad analogy, since the hacker in the background is obviously following orders. Some random person in the background snorting cocaine would obviously be doing it for their own reasons, not because they were ordered to (which would give the tea party credibility in saying "they weren't doing it on our behalf"). Anyway, his analogy wasn't about who was giving orders or who was in control over the person in the background - it was about whether or not the video was fake. You picked out the wrong feature of the analogy and complained it didn't fit.
> "who are for some reason completely convinced china is launching a massive digital attack against its primary trading partner."
I wasn't aware that Falun Gong was China's primary trading partner.
But, seriously, China has ample reasons to exploit security holes to conduct industrial and military espionage. They realize, as the US does, that the trade agreement is overlayed on top of *the* major rivalry of the 21st century.
Funny, a lot of us seem to think the reverse is (also?) true: "Are you kidding? You can't even have a conversation with an anti-agw type about it." Maybe you're coming into the conversation with guns blazing. I know Republicans who start political conversations by saying the most offensive, political inflammatory thing they can, I wonder if they're also complaining that they can't have a conversation with the "other side".
In my case, my old neighbor once told me she doesn't give a crap about global warming because Jesus is coming back soon. Even when we have a low-key discussion, it takes no time at all until she's emotional and yelling her points. (She's a die-hard tea-party republican activist who believes all the hardline right-wing stuff - global warming is a lie, abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest, taxes on the rich need to be dramatically reduced, taxes on the poor need to be raised, Obama wasn't born in the US, etc.etc.)
Really? Because my observation is that the anti-AGW crowd tend to raise a lot of complaints, then I look up the pro-AGW response and the responses are clear and convincing. By in large, I'd say that the anti-AGW crowd is using an awful lot of already-debunked arguments. My guess is that the anti-AWG crowd isn't reading the responses from the pro-AGW crowd; instead they're in some kind of a echo chamber and don't seem too eager to read information that contradicts their position.
So, just to get this straight:
You used the figure of "new york city they get $17,000 per year per student" (2007-2008 figure according to http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-06-29-school-spending_N.htm) as a comparison against "Average tuition at a private school is $4,000".
But, looking around, it seems that New York city's costs have fluctuated from year to year: "New York City, the nation’s largest school district, reported spending $13,755 per pupil" (article from 2008). You also picked the highest-cost per pupil city (New York, a city which has high costs in a variety of ways) to compare against the "average" private school tuition. But, in fact, this isn't the "average" private school tuition, either. According to another article, "Average Private School Tuition: 2007-08, All Schools (i.e. Catholic, Other Religious, Non-Sectarian), K-12 Schools" = $10,045 per pupil (Source: http://www.capenet.org/facts.html)
South Korea:
http://www.infoplease.com/world/statistics/school-years.html
But, this article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4033261.stm) says "Finnish pupils have the least school hours of any industrialized country".
Even worse: it means every man alive got his Y-Chromosome from Noah, who lived sometime around 2400 BC. (This is because Noah's sons all inherited their Y-Chromosome from their dad.) There's far, far too much genetic diversity in the Y-Chromosome to suggest that it's only 4,400 years old.
> "I hate to burst the hateful bubbles present, but tons of evangelical scientists have always supported evolution. It is only just a very strong push into education and other areas of life by certain evangelicals who became the 'squeaky wheel' that everyone hears that brought about that stupid bubble. Except it was more like an incessant roar that drowned everything out. "
Yes, a lot of evangelical scientists disagree with young earth creationism. It's an exaggeration to say that "tons" of them have always supported evolution (though I suppose it depends on how you define evolution). The other issue is that you're ignoring the fact that tons of evangelical non-scientists agree with young earth creationism. They also get angry when professors at Christian colleges dispute young earth creationism. I've seen professors at Christian colleges lose their job because of it, and Christian colleges attacked for being "liberal" and "not following the true word of God" because they touch on evolution. The young earth creationists are not just some tiny minority who stir up trouble. Almost half of Americans agree with the statement that God created human beings within the last 10,000 years (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2680/nearly-half-the-u-s-population-believes-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old). Among the laypeople, it's a popular position.
> "Given the complexity of a human being as-is, the gradual change of humans over a period of several thousand years (assuming a Creation-based timetable of 10,000-50,000 years, no I don't believe the 6,000 number either) into the genetic diversity we see today seems no more remote a possibility than (switching gears to evolution and TFS) having multiple apes each independently evolving into human beings that have sufficiently equivalent DNA and reproductive systems compatible enough to themselves reproduce."
So, you're saying that having humans being created 10,000-50,000 years ago and then evolve genetic diversity over that time-period is roughly equivalent to the probability of having multiple apes each independently evolve into humans? Evolution doesn't work by having multiple apes independently evolve into humans. Rather, a beneficial mutation happens from time to time, and gets spread throughout the species via sexual reproduction. Evolution is not 'multiple lineages of apes all evolving into human beings independently of each other'.
> "I thought that Lucy/African Eve was the one that we're all descended from. Or was that a single pair of humans ... Lucy and multiple males."
No, nobody believes we all descended from Lucy (as in the one female in existence). Lucy is one individual of a species of upright-walking, small brained hominids. Whether or not Lucy produced any ancestors is unknown. Whether human beings descended from the same species Lucy was a part of is unknown (perhaps the human lineage branched off from another species which was a cousin to Lucy's species). And Lucy was certainly not the only female of her species, so even if humans descended from Lucy's species, it means there was a whole population of creatures alive at the time, and Lucy was only one example.
Lots of people literally believe it. About 44 to 47 percent of Americans agree with the statement that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." Source: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2680/nearly-half-the-u-s-population-believes-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old.
And, there's good reason to suppose the Genesis story was meant to be read literally. For example, if you look in the New Testament, you'll find a list of Jesus' ancestry leading back to Adam. This leads to a tension in Christianity between people who know science well enough to know that it isn't true (and suggest that it should be read metaphorically, despite the evidence in the Bible that it's supposed to be read literally) and the people who either don't know the scientific evidence or use dubious explanations to explain-away the gap between science and a literal Genesis.
So, you're saying that the ancient Romans were, in fact, superior to Germans, but Germans became ascendant because the ancient Romans messed up their genetics? Does this mean that we can put all the other ancient civilizations above Germans, since they had civilizations while the Germans were still relatively primitive?
In other words ( Ancient Egyptians, Ancient Babylonians/Sumerians, Ancient Romans, Ancient Greek ) > Ancient and Modern Germans? And the Ancient Roman civilization fell because they interbreed with other people, may of whom also came from other ancient civilizations that were still more advanced than the Germans around 0 B.C.?
If we're looking for genetic explanations, I guess I have a hard time believing that there were these pockets of genetic superiority (ancient romans, greeks, egyptians, babylonians/sumerians) among a much worse genetic people who ended up interbreeding with ancient Romans and bringing down their civilization.
I think there were quite a few more technological differences between Romans and Germans in the centuries around 0 B.C. Not to mention that other areas had advanced civilizations a few millenia before the Germans. To name a few: Romans, Greek, Egyptians, Sumurians/Babylonians. If we're going for a genetic explanation, I have a hard time seeing why Germans were so far behind the curve. On the other hand, if we talk about things like culture, organization, and environment (like the fact that trade is easier when it happens over water), then we'd also have to raise the possibility that Germany was also powerful because of non-genetic factors.
It's also worth mentioning that Jews have disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes. The Jews also aren't that different genetically from anyone else in the middle east and Arabs have very few Nobel Prizes. (Sure, Judaism cut down the interbreeding with other groups in the middle east, but Judaism is only about three thousand years old - which is mostly a drop in the bucket.) Again, I'd favor the cultural explanation (like wealth and respect for education) for the gap in Nobel Prizes between Jews/Arabs or Jews and everybody else.
... and two thousand years before Germans almost took over the world, it was the Romans. Which raises the question: During the Roman Empire, why were Germans still barbarians? And During the twentieth century, why were the Germans so competent, while the Italians were the ones who constantly got themselves into trouble? I have a hard time believing that genetics somehow shifted from one group of people to the other. Maybe it has to do with culture.
Your comment assumes that the dish was working. It looks like a very old dish, perhaps 1980s-era, so it's not unreasonable that it no longer worked. Maybe it was used by the previous owners until it fell into disrepair. Also, the pictures I saw of the dish showed the dish pointing almost at the horizon (not up in the sky), which also hints that it might not have been in working condition.
It depends on what he did with the patents. Having a patent doesn't mean that no one else could use it. For example, He could've changed $0.10 per year to every website. This would be negligible compared to annual domain name registration, so it would have a negligible effect on adoption. He might've used that money for himself, or perhaps, used it more philanthropically - for example, to improve security on the web, research a cure for cancer, or help people around the world to get access to the web (which would be both self-interested since he gets paid per website, and socially useful).
http://techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-deal-with-google-for-3-years/
If the ONLY content on a particular website is copyrighted works being given away (distributed) without license and you can prove that the website/domain name will never ever ever be used for anything else, then you can claim that blocking said website/domain is not equal to censorship.
So, if Walmart started printing up some media (books, music, software, movies) and ignored copyright, but for other media they respected copyright laws, then shutting down Walmart for copyright violations would be "censorship" because now Walmart wouldn't be able to sell the media for which they actually followed copyright? I don't think that argument works.