Eh, that's a little "I was only following orders" for my blood.
If I'm working for a homicidal maniac and I build a gun for him, I'm not innocent when he goes on a rampage.
Werner Heisenberg claims that he sabotaged the Nazi atomic bomb effort. If that's true, this would have been a very different world if he had just decided to be a "good engineer." (Yes, Godwin, blah blah. I don't think it applies.)
Well, I'm a bit of a skeptic about the more utopian angle about virtuality. I remember calling the whole wave of thinking about virtuality back in the 90's the ultimate version of "white flight." In fact, much of the work in cognition in the past 10 years or so has been to show just how important our bodies are to our thinking, to our experience.
Instead of seeing the virtual as a replacement for the physical, I see it as an augmentation and a way of creating changes and new relations in "the real".
William Gibson noted, "cyberspace is where the bank keeps your money." If one's wealth itself is essentially just bits and consensus, why not the real estate?
Because you're only a floating point error away from being a billionaire.
The funny thing is, this analysis may apply to the real estate market in the real world, as well.
Re:We can all breathe a bit easier
on
Chinese Eco-Cities
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Henry Kissinger asked Zhou Enlai, the premier of the PRC (and critic of the cultural revolution and the Great Leap Forward), whether he thought was the impact of the French Revolution of 1789.
Zhou Enlai replied, "we think it is too soon to tell."
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
That is the clause. It specifically prohibits the Congress from restricting the import of slaves until the year 1808.
4.2.3 was both drafted explicitly for the purpose of, and later interpreted and enforced as preventing slaves (and bonded servants) from escaping their service. Those are the "laws" to which the clause refers. You are being disingenuous in the extreme. The contemporary literature makes it quite clear what issues were at stake.
What does it mean for a standard to last? If enough content is generated that is compatible with that standard, and in fact is created for it, that standard can be said to last.
We need to be suspicious of the rhetoric of obselesence. Obviously, we never have the "best" technology possible - it's always a balance and negotiation between budgets, economies of scale, resources, and the like. And people's lives aren't all about what's called 'progressive time,' in which we are oriented only to a promised, unfolding future which justifies and motivates the present.
The problem with tech neophilia is that it turns into permanent future-orientation, living for a time that is always about to arrive.
You mention something that has occurred to me: the damage done to Sony's reputation. Not just with the rootkit scenario, but with their ongoing, conflicted approach to DRM. While this 'manufactured shortage' on the part of Microsoft isn't so great, it isn't nearly as bad as the rootkit problem.
And Sony has cheezed off a number of game developers, Square Enix not being the least of which: Square Enix will be producing games for the Xbox now. If Microsoft doesn't pull any other big mistakes, this could well be the year that Xbox overtakes Sony.
I agree, but I would extend the observation: most of the science that is outside of the immediate research questions of interest to any give scientist is "pop science." That is, most of the biology that an astronomer knows is "pop" biology; most of the animal behavioral science that a biochemist knows is "pop", etc. And with the proliferation of domains of knowledge, the amount of "knowledge" that is based on authority rather than experience actually grows at a very fast rate.
Part of atheism is the understanding that there is nothing more than this world, that we're all dead in the end anyway, and that you might as well do what you can with what you have. Mao pushed the Great Leap Forward because he believed that the ends of a modernized, industrial, and indeed scientific society were worth whatever cost was paid.
I share Mao's atheism, but not his reduction of means to ends. But that reduction is completely consistent with a positivist approach to scientific advancement and a progressive (that is, viewing technological and scientific progress as a source of meaning in itself) view of human history.
The fact that there is a process of peer review doesn't alter the fact that almost all beliefs generated by the scientific process are still received by a process of authority - from an absolute perpsective, we do not hold those beliefs because of our own application of the scientific method, but because of our confidence and trust in scientific institutions. And lest you get lax about peer review (I'm in academia, I'm pretty familiar with the term), I suggest you research the Bogdanov affair.
Of course evolution should be taught in the schools: I don't think that there's no difference at all between scientific claims and religious claims. But ultimately they are both discourses, they are never neutral, and are human artifacts built around human needs and inseparable from human motivations - in both expression and reception.
Almost all beliefs are irrational, including most scientific beliefs - most of which we also hold based on the authority of those who communicated them to us. None of us has the time and means to verify all those claims that we've been taught.
Religion is a human practice based on human needs. To "fight" it the way you describe is only to make it stronger. To understand it, particulary in the light of a society that is becoming increasingly focused on instrumentalization, on means to ends without questioning or examining ends, is to exarcebate the very worst elements of religion.
I know you are just grandstanding and getting all Sturm und Drang, but I think it's indicative of a blind scientism that has contributed to this religious anti-rationalism in its own way.
I think the OS is the very, very last thing that Google would aim for. They'd go for all the application and framework space first.
As long as there is a legacy of 10+ years of games and media on Windows, I'm afraid that there is always going to be a Windows OS somewhere in my life. However, if the OS were the only bit of Microsoft software that I had to worry about, and if MS took a role more or less equivalent to a BIOS developer and otherwise dropped out of userland, that would be a good thing.
Ultimately, Google is about an entirely different metaphor. It's post-OS viewpoint, and post-file-system. Once you start "working Googlishly" - using Google desktop, Picasa, etc. - things like organizing your file system heirarchically start to feel archaic and limited. If you wanted to get philosophical about it, it's a move from a 'great chain of being' metaphor towards work and information to one of a distrubuted network of nodes that don't have strict set-theoretical relationships.
Your Ms. wants to forget you? I mean, I'd like to forget Me too, but everytime I wake up and look into the mirror, there's Me. But perhaps because I'm also the last in the family to do something useful.
Well, there's more to identity than a unique identifying character string. I have used a nick (not this one) for BBS' and accounts for about 16 years now, one that was meaningful to me, yet fairly unique. But if I google it, I'll find it elsewhere now, and I sometimes find that string unavailable now when signing up a new account.
Just like my real name. I'm not the only person in the world with my first and last name. (I probably am the only person in the world with my first, middle and last name, but that's largely due to the cruelty^H^H^H^H^H^Hcreativity of my parents.)
And just like in the real world, we have to be creative about producing truly unique identities that transcend the name, that use a variety of cues to indicate who we are. Would a Taco, by any other name, smell just as... well, Taco-like?
Funny, I was just thinking how reasonable the requests were compared to some of the more extreme environmentalist positions. Seems like you've got some anger, buddy.
The implication in the original system is that only a market system with a profit incentive on a business level (as opposed to other types of incentives, individual and collective, including bounty systems) would be effective.
Like you, I winced when the poster (as others have) overlooked that Roche is Swiss, is that this is no place for an anti-American screed.
However:
That is certainly an option. If we tear down the patent system, perhaps we can insure that many, many drugs never get developed, and so never manufactured. We all die equally.
That is ridiculous. Are you suggesting that the fact that virtually all funding and support for military development comes from the public sector, that the US government is the patent-holder on important security technology patents, has led to a moribund pace of innovation in weapons technology? Hardly. There are many, many ways to fund research and distribution, and your belief that only a crude market model is effective is just that - a principle of faith.
This scenario leave out one big factor: who is in a position to fund this sort of work.
Investors look at the various investment possibilities and choose the one with the best return on investment. Your idea does not have as good an ROI as the alternatives. Your research therefore gets no funding, and doesn't happen.
VOIP is an essentially different type of technology than an anti-cancer drug. You and I can write VOIP applications in our spare time. The cost of entry is very low. This is not the case with pharma and biotech research.
Now, if you decide to start a company to cure cancer for moral reasons, and find investors also driven by morals, then that's another story. But that's outside of the market-driven model.
From the perspective of the people who would face death from this flu epidemic, without treatment, there is no "long term." They have no rational reason to respect IP in this case.
This is simply one of those many cases where the market system fails to provide the best, or even a very good, scenario.
Slashdot Mirror
Eh, that's a little "I was only following orders" for my blood.
If I'm working for a homicidal maniac and I build a gun for him, I'm not innocent when he goes on a rampage.
Werner Heisenberg claims that he sabotaged the Nazi atomic bomb effort. If that's true, this would have been a very different world if he had just decided to be a "good engineer." (Yes, Godwin, blah blah. I don't think it applies.)
Well, I'm a bit of a skeptic about the more utopian angle about virtuality. I remember calling the whole wave of thinking about virtuality back in the 90's the ultimate version of "white flight." In fact, much of the work in cognition in the past 10 years or so has been to show just how important our bodies are to our thinking, to our experience.
Instead of seeing the virtual as a replacement for the physical, I see it as an augmentation and a way of creating changes and new relations in "the real".
William Gibson noted, "cyberspace is where the bank keeps your money." If one's wealth itself is essentially just bits and consensus, why not the real estate?
Because you're only a floating point error away from being a billionaire.
The funny thing is, this analysis may apply to the real estate market in the real world, as well.
Henry Kissinger asked Zhou Enlai, the premier of the PRC (and critic of the cultural revolution and the Great Leap Forward), whether he thought was the impact of the French Revolution of 1789.
Zhou Enlai replied, "we think it is too soon to tell."
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
That is the clause. It specifically prohibits the Congress from restricting the import of slaves until the year 1808.
4.2.3 was both drafted explicitly for the purpose of, and later interpreted and enforced as preventing slaves (and bonded servants) from escaping their service. Those are the "laws" to which the clause refers. You are being disingenuous in the extreme. The contemporary literature makes it quite clear what issues were at stake.
t's a good system that has been twisted around. It barely resembles the original framework, at this point.
You do realize that the original U.S. constitution referred to and maintained the institution of slavery, don't you?
Section 9 of Article I, and Section 2 of Article IV.
In this case, I'm pretty happy that it doesn't resemble the original framework.
What does it mean for a standard to last? If enough content is generated that is compatible with that standard, and in fact is created for it, that standard can be said to last.
We need to be suspicious of the rhetoric of obselesence. Obviously, we never have the "best" technology possible - it's always a balance and negotiation between budgets, economies of scale, resources, and the like. And people's lives aren't all about what's called 'progressive time,' in which we are oriented only to a promised, unfolding future which justifies and motivates the present.
The problem with tech neophilia is that it turns into permanent future-orientation, living for a time that is always about to arrive.
You mention something that has occurred to me: the damage done to Sony's reputation. Not just with the rootkit scenario, but with their ongoing, conflicted approach to DRM. While this 'manufactured shortage' on the part of Microsoft isn't so great, it isn't nearly as bad as the rootkit problem.
And Sony has cheezed off a number of game developers, Square Enix not being the least of which: Square Enix will be producing games for the Xbox now. If Microsoft doesn't pull any other big mistakes, this could well be the year that Xbox overtakes Sony.
(Personally, I'm all about the Revolution.)
The institutional amnesia is very convenient.
Look for a delightful lesson in political theater and twisted rhetoric to come.
I agree, but I would extend the observation: most of the science that is outside of the immediate research questions of interest to any give scientist is "pop science." That is, most of the biology that an astronomer knows is "pop" biology; most of the animal behavioral science that a biochemist knows is "pop", etc. And with the proliferation of domains of knowledge, the amount of "knowledge" that is based on authority rather than experience actually grows at a very fast rate.
Part of atheism is the understanding that there is nothing more than this world, that we're all dead in the end anyway, and that you might as well do what you can with what you have. Mao pushed the Great Leap Forward because he believed that the ends of a modernized, industrial, and indeed scientific society were worth whatever cost was paid.
I share Mao's atheism, but not his reduction of means to ends. But that reduction is completely consistent with a positivist approach to scientific advancement and a progressive (that is, viewing technological and scientific progress as a source of meaning in itself) view of human history.
The fact that there is a process of peer review doesn't alter the fact that almost all beliefs generated by the scientific process are still received by a process of authority - from an absolute perpsective, we do not hold those beliefs because of our own application of the scientific method, but because of our confidence and trust in scientific institutions. And lest you get lax about peer review (I'm in academia, I'm pretty familiar with the term), I suggest you research the Bogdanov affair.
Of course evolution should be taught in the schools: I don't think that there's no difference at all between scientific claims and religious claims. But ultimately they are both discourses, they are never neutral, and are human artifacts built around human needs and inseparable from human motivations - in both expression and reception.
Almost all beliefs are irrational, including most scientific beliefs - most of which we also hold based on the authority of those who communicated them to us. None of us has the time and means to verify all those claims that we've been taught.
Religion is a human practice based on human needs. To "fight" it the way you describe is only to make it stronger. To understand it, particulary in the light of a society that is becoming increasingly focused on instrumentalization, on means to ends without questioning or examining ends, is to exarcebate the very worst elements of religion.
I know you are just grandstanding and getting all Sturm und Drang, but I think it's indicative of a blind scientism that has contributed to this religious anti-rationalism in its own way.
Nope, not like Java at all. Because Google starts with the user and works back from there. Java put the user last.
I think the OS is the very, very last thing that Google would aim for. They'd go for all the application and framework space first.
As long as there is a legacy of 10+ years of games and media on Windows, I'm afraid that there is always going to be a Windows OS somewhere in my life. However, if the OS were the only bit of Microsoft software that I had to worry about, and if MS took a role more or less equivalent to a BIOS developer and otherwise dropped out of userland, that would be a good thing.
Ultimately, Google is about an entirely different metaphor. It's post-OS viewpoint, and post-file-system. Once you start "working Googlishly" - using Google desktop, Picasa, etc. - things like organizing your file system heirarchically start to feel archaic and limited. If you wanted to get philosophical about it, it's a move from a 'great chain of being' metaphor towards work and information to one of a distrubuted network of nodes that don't have strict set-theoretical relationships.
Your Ms. wants to forget you? I mean, I'd like to forget Me too, but everytime I wake up and look into the mirror, there's Me. But perhaps because I'm also the last in the family to do something useful.
Well, there's more to identity than a unique identifying character string. I have used a nick (not this one) for BBS' and accounts for about 16 years now, one that was meaningful to me, yet fairly unique. But if I google it, I'll find it elsewhere now, and I sometimes find that string unavailable now when signing up a new account.
Just like my real name. I'm not the only person in the world with my first and last name. (I probably am the only person in the world with my first, middle and last name, but that's largely due to the cruelty^H^H^H^H^H^Hcreativity of my parents.)
And just like in the real world, we have to be creative about producing truly unique identities that transcend the name, that use a variety of cues to indicate who we are. Would a Taco, by any other name, smell just as... well, Taco-like?
Note that in the U.S. Navy, the actual rank and name tends to be "Seaman".
Which, of course, never leads to embarassing and uncomfortable remarks.
Hold on, I've got it. We need to outlaw comedy. Then the stupid people will be safe from being taken advantage of by the funny people in the world.
When funniness is outlawed, then only outlaws will be funny.
Funny, I was just thinking how reasonable the requests were compared to some of the more extreme environmentalist positions. Seems like you've got some anger, buddy.
The implication in the original system is that only a market system with a profit incentive on a business level (as opposed to other types of incentives, individual and collective, including bounty systems) would be effective.
Like you, I winced when the poster (as others have) overlooked that Roche is Swiss, is that this is no place for an anti-American screed.
However:
That is certainly an option. If we tear down the patent system, perhaps we can insure that many, many drugs never get developed, and so never manufactured. We all die equally.
That is ridiculous. Are you suggesting that the fact that virtually all funding and support for military development comes from the public sector, that the US government is the patent-holder on important security technology patents, has led to a moribund pace of innovation in weapons technology? Hardly. There are many, many ways to fund research and distribution, and your belief that only a crude market model is effective is just that - a principle of faith.
This scenario leave out one big factor: who is in a position to fund this sort of work.
Investors look at the various investment possibilities and choose the one with the best return on investment. Your idea does not have as good an ROI as the alternatives. Your research therefore gets no funding, and doesn't happen.
VOIP is an essentially different type of technology than an anti-cancer drug. You and I can write VOIP applications in our spare time. The cost of entry is very low. This is not the case with pharma and biotech research.
Now, if you decide to start a company to cure cancer for moral reasons, and find investors also driven by morals, then that's another story. But that's outside of the market-driven model.
From the perspective of the people who would face death from this flu epidemic, without treatment, there is no "long term." They have no rational reason to respect IP in this case.
This is simply one of those many cases where the market system fails to provide the best, or even a very good, scenario.