The problem is that he isn't a mafia bookie (as if being a bookie was so horrible) until he's proven to be so. And he can't be proven to be so until there's evidence. And they got their evidence through tapping his keyboard without a wiretap authorization.
Maybe you're a pedophile. Maybe we should tap all your communications until we have confirmed that you are.
The area in which the US has an unqualified advantage - military technology - is "socialistic," commissioned, paid for and sometimes carried out by the Federal government. Ironic, since the (probably a troll) US-is-number-one chest-beating was originally a defense of pure capitalism against mixed economies
It's much fairer. Fines are not damages - they are punitive, and meant to disincentivize speeding and other violations. If you have millions of dollars, a $200 fine will not disincentivize you from anything. I would like to see this approach adopted here in the US.
Re:Once bitten, twice shy.
on
Golden Rice
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· Score: 2
The problem, of course, is the GM food is a global industry, and much of the world does not have the same regulatory oversight that the US does. Argentina, for example, is one of the largest producer of GM crops. There's no assurance that the "golden rice" describe above might not be made to lower standards, albeit more cheaply, elsewhere.
Note that I'm not a priori hostile to GM foods. I used to be as cavelier about it as a lot of posters here seem to be ("oh, it's no different than selective breeding:" this is patently incorrect, it's quite different) but it took a plant biologist and a biochemist to teach me exactly how much really could go wrong, and at what cost. I won't try to overextend myself by describing science that I only know insofar as I trust their objectivity (just as they do mine for domains in which I'm stronger), but I was fairly persuaded away from my earlier "no worries" stance.
Once bitten, twice shy.
on
Golden Rice
·
· Score: 2
What if genetically engineered food was as buggy as most commercial software? It's our very experience with technology that makes us aware of how difficult it is to predict and manage.
Think of it. "Microsoft Eggplant 2.0," complete with a EULA, service packs, and bug reports.
For one, let's recall that citing "the law" is both naive, simplistic, and limited by jurisdiction. Fair use-like policy varies from country to country, as does the de facto rate of enformcement. In some countries the 'laws' of intellectual property are enforced like we enforce traffic laws in the US - enough to act as a deterrent - and in some, they are almost never enacted at all, and then only against the deepest of pockets.
Additionally, we are not limiting ourselves to descriptions of the law when we broach this topic. Often the law is at profound variance with common sense. At times it is simply wrong. "The law" can even be contradictory, or pending a test case, or waiting to be found (in the US) unconstitutional. Many of us feel that most enforcements of intellectual property that content owners are trying to muster encroach against common sense, normal healthy human behaviour, and the best interests of intellectual and cultural discourse, whatever their legal standing happens to be.
They have something of a personal animosity to each other that leads them to seemingly deliberately misread each other. Searle doesn't believe that consciousness is indecipherable, only that it hasn't been deciphered, and most importantly isn't computational or informational - that it is a biological property of animal brains, and that no moving around of symbols or representations can generate it, anymore than a blackboard can understand the words that are written on it.
To be more precise, many developers - to be more specific, many developers without any training in useability and UIs - simply don't understand human cognition and behavior, and compound that ignorance with a temperment that is ill-suited to getting into other people's heads.
I have, indeed, seen a lot of dumb-but-lucky IPO millionaires. But JWZ ain't none of that. The lad is reasonably clever. And he is, refreshingly, fairly contemptuous of the effect of (relatively) unearned wealth on people and communities. Check out the "greed"gruntle on hissite.
Part of the problem is the unfortunate refusal to accept the limits and structure of human cognition and perception. People design a system thinking that if the system can be comprehended by at least one person, then everyone can and should comprehend it. Underneath that belief lies a serious misunderstanding of the way humans process information and interact with their environment. Those of us in the computer industry compound the problem by projection metaphors of computer 'rationality' onto human cognition.
Remember, the human brain is (loosely, oh so loosely) a parallel machine that can only in limited constrained situations emulate a serial one. It is not a Turing machine!
The measure of the quality of the interface is the way that it ensures, statistically, that people's intentions are reflected in the ballot choices. There are in this case empirical measures of the effectiveness of the design, and this design failed profoundly. More information includes the fact that the ballots didn't always seat correctly, and that state law mandated that the Republican and Democratic options be the first and second on the ballot, respectively, when in fact they were the first and third (in terms of the punches).
I'm serious about learning more about interface design. Note that Tufte doesn't specifically write about computer interfaces, but about information design in general. When one person makes a mistake, it's a mistake; when a group makes a statistically significant (versus control) number of mistakes, there's a design problem.
If one county shows a level of variance between actual and intended votes that is, say, over 300% of the national average, what is more likely to you?
That there is a startling disproportionately high level of dumb people in this one county, even disproportionately higher in comparison with other counties with analogous demographics, or
the ballot is badly designed and essentially foils the purpose of ballots, which is to provide a mechanism for allowing all citizens to communicate their intentions for voting?
Two facts should be noted: first, that the sample ballot was released without indicating the actual punch-holes, so the ambiguity wasn't clear for review, and second, that the ballot design itself is against Florida law regarding ballots: ballots in Florida are required to list the candidates in an agreed upon order (which, for this election, was Bush first and then Gore, but the punch holes for Gore were actually 3rd on the line: it was Bush, Buchanan, and Gore) and that all marks or punches occur directly to the right of the listed candidate.
This would be analogous to accidentally walking into someone else's house because you were distracted and misread street names, or accidentally trying to open someone else's car in the parking lot. The first is not breaking and entering, the latter is not attempted car theft, and there are ways to make that obvious in a legal dispute.
Sometimes, I just find myself heading down the off-topic dirt road, and forget you were ever on Topic Expressway to begin with. This time, I'm driving straight to Off-Topic City, but here goes:
I like Canadians. I like Canada. Really, I think it's a wonderful place filled with decent, sensible people. Modulo a couple details, I like the Canadian political and social system.
But I really don't understand poutine. Just what the hell is up with that? I mean, I suppose I can't talk. My own ethnic background includes guinea pigs* and beef hearts as regular dietary features. But this poutine thing is almost as hard for me to deal with as haggis.
As far as Germany (and, frankly, I) am concerned, Scientology isn't a religion, it's a bona fide cult that engages not only in targetted litigation to silence its critics, but also in systematic violent repression of dissenters and, in some cases, murder. Ask them about what happens to people they identify as "repressives" some day.
This is analogous to protesting that something you were more or less compelled to buy (let's face it, you can't do business easily without buying much MS software) was developed by the Aum Shinrikyo, the Mafia or the Taliban.
Here's the problem: if consoles are the loss leader then, by definition they can't be outsourced or spun off as a product line. The hardware has to be produced by the people who license the (profitable) software, or it won't be produced at all. After all, if it could be produced and marketed at a profit, Sega would be doing so.
Or, does this mean that Sega is going to be producing content for Sony and Nintendo platforms?
I'd love to see Indrema succeed. But there's a chicken-and-egg problem here. In order to sell consoles, you need a critical mass of games. In order to get the games, you need a critical mass of developers on board. And in order to get developers to open their checkbooks and have their programmers spend time working on Indrema versions of games instead of new games for Sega/Sony/Nintendo, you have to be able to show them enough market penetration to make it worth their while.
That last piece of the puzzle is the most troubling one. Game productions are not like regular software - they are ungodly expensive matters that are more like film making than they are like developing a word processor. (Correction, they are like film making PLUS developing a word processor.) The Open Source Magic Wand, which is getting mixed results in the software realm, really won't do the trick here. You don't get musicians, artists, directors, animators and actors to work for free in an environment that pays already-well-paid people in geek-status for their off-time contributions. (N.B.: I am quite aware that Indrema has a content-for-sale strategy for their platform; however, they and their boosters cite the Open Source advantage when pressed for details on where the games will come from, so it's fair for me to mention ths.)
From the years 1949 until 1979, the tax rate in this country was much more progressive. The median household in this country paid less than 20% of their income in taxes. The top 1% paid over 80% of their income in taxes. Note that this era, modulo the recession of the early 70's, has been held as the model for US prosperity
Beginning in the 80's, that curve was dramatically flattened - the median household nearly doubled its tax burden, while the top 1% has halved its burden to a maximum of less than 49%. Until this period, all Americans were increasing in prosperity at approximately the same rate - real wealth was doubling for just about everyone over a constant period of time. Now, the different ends of the curve are moving in different directions, with the lower half actually losing wealth and earning power.
I advocate going back to the original model. I believe that this is fair if you consider money as having a utility value on a logarithmic curve: that the last $1000 someone owns is worth much much less than the first $1000 they own. I would agree to a flat tax for income intervals: that everyone by taxed at n% for their first 10K to 50K of income, income from 50K to 100K being taxed at n+k%, income from 100K to 200K at n+2k%, etc. This is, frankly, much fairer than a flat tax.
Thanks for your lucid explanation of why we have excellent baseball players and a collapsing educational system.
By the way, those who truly manage are working. Management is a service that requires expertise and ability, and I recognize it as real work as much as 'physical' labor. A lot of things go to create the market value of a thing - it isn't just supply and demand, it's at least as much about perception, constraint on choices, consensus of value, and status.
Those of us who don't want capitalism to be unchecked or unfettered by public-sector forces intend to reduce the negative social impact caused by those distortions of valuation. After all, how many of the people who have made so much wealth with their expertise truly paid for the acquisition of their expertise over their entire lives? (N.B.: expertise is bigger than 'technical know-how,' and has as much to do with B-schools, law schools and 'people skills' - better described as class communication skills - than with just knowing what buttons to push.)
"Wealth creation" without increased productivity is just the concentration of capital into fewer hands. Nader is right on about this, and it is why market speculation is a really *bad* engine for "growth." If you want real economic growth, you create goods and provide services, not generate "wealth."
Compared to Sony, Microsoft's licensing of the X-Box system is likely to be much more open and flexible than that for the PS/2. This may put game and software developers with Open Source/Free Software sympathies in the ironic position of preferring to work with the X-Box.
Sega and Nintendo may also be amenable to changing their stances to something that's somewhat more free, although I wouldn't hold my breath.
The ace in the hole that Novell has is a team of good developers and a strong presence in networks outside the US. It's the first that's the most important: technologies come and go, companies can retool and reorient and survive.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe you're a pedophile. Maybe we should tap all your communications until we have confirmed that you are.
The area in which the US has an unqualified advantage - military technology - is "socialistic," commissioned, paid for and sometimes carried out by the Federal government. Ironic, since the (probably a troll) US-is-number-one chest-beating was originally a defense of pure capitalism against mixed economies
It's much fairer. Fines are not damages - they are punitive, and meant to disincentivize speeding and other violations. If you have millions of dollars, a $200 fine will not disincentivize you from anything. I would like to see this approach adopted here in the US.
Note that I'm not a priori hostile to GM foods. I used to be as cavelier about it as a lot of posters here seem to be ("oh, it's no different than selective breeding:" this is patently incorrect, it's quite different) but it took a plant biologist and a biochemist to teach me exactly how much really could go wrong, and at what cost. I won't try to overextend myself by describing science that I only know insofar as I trust their objectivity (just as they do mine for domains in which I'm stronger), but I was fairly persuaded away from my earlier "no worries" stance.
Think of it. "Microsoft Eggplant 2.0," complete with a EULA, service packs, and bug reports.
Additionally, we are not limiting ourselves to descriptions of the law when we broach this topic. Often the law is at profound variance with common sense. At times it is simply wrong. "The law" can even be contradictory, or pending a test case, or waiting to be found (in the US) unconstitutional. Many of us feel that most enforcements of intellectual property that content owners are trying to muster encroach against common sense, normal healthy human behaviour, and the best interests of intellectual and cultural discourse, whatever their legal standing happens to be.
They have something of a personal animosity to each other that leads them to seemingly deliberately misread each other. Searle doesn't believe that consciousness is indecipherable, only that it hasn't been deciphered, and most importantly isn't computational or informational - that it is a biological property of animal brains, and that no moving around of symbols or representations can generate it, anymore than a blackboard can understand the words that are written on it.
To be more precise, many developers - to be more specific, many developers without any training in useability and UIs - simply don't understand human cognition and behavior, and compound that ignorance with a temperment that is ill-suited to getting into other people's heads.
I can assure you that everyone here lives on a landmass that features coasts.
I have, indeed, seen a lot of dumb-but-lucky IPO millionaires. But JWZ ain't none of that. The lad is reasonably clever. And he is, refreshingly, fairly contemptuous of the effect of (relatively) unearned wealth on people and communities. Check out the "greed" gruntle on his site.
Remember, the human brain is (loosely, oh so loosely) a parallel machine that can only in limited constrained situations emulate a serial one. It is not a Turing machine!
I'm serious about learning more about interface design. Note that Tufte doesn't specifically write about computer interfaces, but about information design in general. When one person makes a mistake, it's a mistake; when a group makes a statistically significant (versus control) number of mistakes, there's a design problem.
Two facts should be noted: first, that the sample ballot was released without indicating the actual punch-holes, so the ambiguity wasn't clear for review, and second, that the ballot design itself is against Florida law regarding ballots: ballots in Florida are required to list the candidates in an agreed upon order (which, for this election, was Bush first and then Gore, but the punch holes for Gore were actually 3rd on the line: it was Bush, Buchanan, and Gore) and that all marks or punches occur directly to the right of the listed candidate.
Edward Tufte and Jacob Nielsen need to get a couple of baseball bats and go medieval on your ass.
This would be analogous to accidentally walking into someone else's house because you were distracted and misread street names, or accidentally trying to open someone else's car in the parking lot. The first is not breaking and entering, the latter is not attempted car theft, and there are ways to make that obvious in a legal dispute.
I like Canadians. I like Canada. Really, I think it's a wonderful place filled with decent, sensible people. Modulo a couple details, I like the Canadian political and social system.
But I really don't understand poutine. Just what the hell is up with that? I mean, I suppose I can't talk. My own ethnic background includes guinea pigs* and beef hearts as regular dietary features. But this poutine thing is almost as hard for me to deal with as haggis.
*Guinea pig: yes, you know what it tastes like.
This is analogous to protesting that something you were more or less compelled to buy (let's face it, you can't do business easily without buying much MS software) was developed by the Aum Shinrikyo, the Mafia or the Taliban.
Because people make typos when they are typing with just one hand.
Or, does this mean that Sega is going to be producing content for Sony and Nintendo platforms?
That last piece of the puzzle is the most troubling one. Game productions are not like regular software - they are ungodly expensive matters that are more like film making than they are like developing a word processor. (Correction, they are like film making PLUS developing a word processor.) The Open Source Magic Wand, which is getting mixed results in the software realm, really won't do the trick here. You don't get musicians, artists, directors, animators and actors to work for free in an environment that pays already-well-paid people in geek-status for their off-time contributions. (N.B.: I am quite aware that Indrema has a content-for-sale strategy for their platform; however, they and their boosters cite the Open Source advantage when pressed for details on where the games will come from, so it's fair for me to mention ths.)
Beginning in the 80's, that curve was dramatically flattened - the median household nearly doubled its tax burden, while the top 1% has halved its burden to a maximum of less than 49%. Until this period, all Americans were increasing in prosperity at approximately the same rate - real wealth was doubling for just about everyone over a constant period of time. Now, the different ends of the curve are moving in different directions, with the lower half actually losing wealth and earning power.
I advocate going back to the original model. I believe that this is fair if you consider money as having a utility value on a logarithmic curve: that the last $1000 someone owns is worth much much less than the first $1000 they own. I would agree to a flat tax for income intervals: that everyone by taxed at n% for their first 10K to 50K of income, income from 50K to 100K being taxed at n+k%, income from 100K to 200K at n+2k%, etc. This is, frankly, much fairer than a flat tax.
By the way, those who truly manage are working. Management is a service that requires expertise and ability, and I recognize it as real work as much as 'physical' labor. A lot of things go to create the market value of a thing - it isn't just supply and demand, it's at least as much about perception, constraint on choices, consensus of value, and status.
Those of us who don't want capitalism to be unchecked or unfettered by public-sector forces intend to reduce the negative social impact caused by those distortions of valuation. After all, how many of the people who have made so much wealth with their expertise truly paid for the acquisition of their expertise over their entire lives? (N.B.: expertise is bigger than 'technical know-how,' and has as much to do with B-schools, law schools and 'people skills' - better described as class communication skills - than with just knowing what buttons to push.)
"Wealth creation" without increased productivity is just the concentration of capital into fewer hands. Nader is right on about this, and it is why market speculation is a really *bad* engine for "growth." If you want real economic growth, you create goods and provide services, not generate "wealth."
Sega and Nintendo may also be amenable to changing their stances to something that's somewhat more free, although I wouldn't hold my breath.
The ace in the hole that Novell has is a team of good developers and a strong presence in networks outside the US. It's the first that's the most important: technologies come and go, companies can retool and reorient and survive.