Why should I care if "we" figuratively chuck David into the trash, so long as the physical object is preserved and available for those of us whose taste runs more to sculpture than TV?
You ignored my 'literally' chucking statement. If we do not decide that the David is worth preserving, then it will not be around for "those of us whose taste runs more to sculpture than TV?" Unless we are going to allocate resources to preserve every popsicle-stick sculpture that someone wants to claim is 'art', we must make merit judgements.
Unless you can demonstrate that pursuing serious critical analysis of "Fear Factor" means that somebody must necessarily give up serious critical appreciation of "David", which would indeed carry your argument with me.
I am not saying that someone can't spend their time pursuing serious critical analysis of "Fear Factor" (nor am I saying that one cannot spend one's time surfing Internet porn). What I am saying is that we can and should judge artistic merit.
it appears to me that you are saying that you can intelligently rate the works equal provided you don't believe it is possible to do so.
No, what I am saying is that refusing to rate the works as being of unequal is the same as saying that they have equal merit. Denying the possibility of passing judgement is the same as saying, "There is an undifferentiated morass of art in the world. Since we deny the possibility of judging artistic merit, all of these works have equal artistic merit." In case I am not being clear, I am in favor of judging.
Do you really believe that we can't judge artistic merit? If you were told, "One of these works is going to be destroyed forever: Hamlet or {pick a random Danielle Steele novel}" Would you really dither trying to decide which one to save? Forget the age and persistence of the work; pick contemporary works by Danielle Steele and Maya Angelou. Which would you save? Personally, I like to think (economic motive being removed) that even Danielle Steele would choose the Maya Angelou.
So then explain how you can objectively do this. I bet you cannot.
So is your complaint that I cannot design such a yardstick, or do you contend (with a straight face) that it is incorrect for us to claim that Michaelangelo's David has more 'artistic merit' than a crayon drawing by a five year-old child?
Are we going to chuck David in the trash because somebody applies their critical faculties to "Fear Factor"?
Yes. Figuratively, we are chucking David "into" the trash by not elevating it above the fray of high-school lockerroom grafitti and the dreck of the blogosphere. Literally, we are chucking the David into the trash if we decide that it is not 'higher' art than Fear Factor, because we will be unable to justify spending money to preserve the David unless we also spend money to establish public archives of all of the 'equally valid' crap that's out there.
It appears to me that you are implicitly agreeing with the assumptions of people who say that "Fear Factor" is just as good as "David": that you can usefully measure two works of art on an objective scale of artistic merit.
No. I am saying that the only people who could intelligently rate these works as 'equal' are those who deny "that you can usefully measure two works of art on an objective scale of artistic merit." They deny the possibility of judgement, thus all works are equal.
they and their personal limitations become information gatekeepers for society.
The answer to poor gatekeepers is not to abolish gatekeeping. That way lies the end of progress. If our ancestors painting on cave walls had decided that no one expression could be judged better than another expression, then art today would probably consist of more cave paintings and exrement sculpture. As an analogy (of course it's flawed): if computer programmers lived under the delusion that it was impossible to measure the amount of time that a calculation takes, that would be the death of optimization. No one would be able to attempt to 'improve' the performance of a program. What do you think this would due to the performance of software?
Oh crap, I've just discovered the source of Microsoft's bloat. They have a postmodernist approach to optimization!
Yeah, cause it would be a sin to actually think about things that are meant for ordinary people to enjoy.
Unfortunately, your line of thinking if taken to an extreme invalidates all attempts to 'judge' works. We must all then declare that last Tuesday's episode of Fear Factor is as 'good' a work of art as Michaelangelo's David. This is also a problem with Postmodernist cultural-subjectivity.
The idea of VB is great, the implementation was the problem.
No, the idea of VB is stupid. 'Regular folks' shouldn't be writing software, and programmers shouldn't be picking the color scheme for your new headquarters building. Creating software is difficult enough for people who are programmers.
large projects like this that have long term implications should include the views of the people.
What do you do when 'the people' vote to build and run nuclear plants, but refuse to authorize any way to store the waste? What do you do when the people vote for a chicken in every pot, but outlaw the raising and killing of chickens? The people are stupid and inconsistent. And our (USA! USA!) education system does little to improve the situation.
There is such a thing as 'Criminal Copyright Infringement". You can go to jail for copyright infringement (5yrs per incident IIRC). Anytime the penalty can include jail time, you have left the world of civil law.
You misread my post, which said "TV ratings are a democracy". Which shows get, and stay, on TV is not decided by the viewers. But the ratings are driven solely by the viewers. They watch what they like most (or dislike least).
1) Buffy stayed on the air even after the main characters left college. When do you stop calling them 'girls'?
2) We tried Cagney and Lacey. Old actors get worse ratings than young actors. This is especially true of women. No it isn't fair, but TV ratings are a democracy and not subject to abstract notions like 'fairness'.
I advocate Linux because if Linux is more popular, not only will *everyone* benefit from reduced malware and vendor lock-in, but I will benefit from having my platform supported by hardware and software manufacturers.
I don't bash WinXX unless someone asks me.
If I see someone drowning, I try to help whether they are shouting for help or not. A few of them are amazing swimmers who want to spend several minutes floating face-down, but most of them could use the help. If you are the kind of visionary who could see (say in 1880), the automobile rising to dominance, then it would be a kindness to tell your friends at the buggywhip factory that it might be time for some cross-training.
If I ask anyone I know why they switched to Linux, it's always "Because Windows sucks. I hate Windows. Bill Gates sucks". It certainly gets old.
I've heard this kind of thing before: "If Linux is so great, why don't you praise it instead of bashing Windows and Microsoft." Well see, the thing is, Linux has warts. It can be slow and frustrating. The learning curve is not free. Linux can be a pain sometimes. But compared to Windows (and only compared to an OS that sucks), Linux is a little corner of Nirvana tucked inside Heaven.
You are assuming that the national decisions are right.
You are making two assumptions: the national decisions are wrong, and the local decisions will be right.
So you can actually change things in your local district, much easier than a change on the national level.
So poorly educated voters will get to design the education system. Forget Intelligent Design, some place will have astrology in their science classes.
I have personally seen 4 different theories of education in my short lifetime, and I have evidence that this is typical. (that is every 5-10 years someone has a new idea to revolutionize education). Some were good, some bad. On a national level all they can do is force all schools to try the new system, or prevent all schools from trying it.
You assume that the national education system wouldn't have test-tube schools to try-out new ideas, which is not necessarily the case. As for 'new approaches': none of these new approaches is a tremendous improvement over our 1940's educational system. We would be better to use a good system than try for a great system, and get a lousy system. Slowing down the change (decline) in our schools would probably be a good thing.
Education is too important to take chances with a uniform national system.
Education is too important to have 2,000 poorly designed adhocracies. And the burden of brining these students up to a uniform level on a uniform body of knowledge will fall on our Universities.
This case involves a private/religious school, so the Constitutional protections do not apply. However, if this were a local public school that did *not* accept federal money, they would still be bound by the Constitution thanks to the 14th Amendment. A local school funded entirely by local taxes is still bound by the Constitution, even the parts that say "Congress shall..."
Most school decisions should be made at the local level
Why? Children in Idaho need to know the exact same: Reading, Writing, Basic Math, Algebra, US History, World History, Geography, Sciences, Arts, etc. as every other kid in America. Why should each district have their own curriculum and textbooks? Why shouldn't we have national standards, materials, and tests? Aside from a single course in Idaho State History, why should the education of those kids be at all different from any other. Sure, they might not need to have any of the ESL (English as a Second Language) courses that some places need, but that just means that they wouldn't order those materials.
There are many cases when individuals, corporations, or state governments deny those freedoms.
No. Thanks to the 14th Amendment, most (all? IANAL) Constitutional restrictions on the federal government also apply to state and local government. That is why a school teacher paid from local property taxes in Podunk, Idaho is bound by First Amendment freedom of religion restrictions. And the Peoples' Republic of Berkeley can't outlaw firearms (Second Amendment).
hinging upon the legal protection of what amount to ideas
Unless Meiers has patents relating to Civ gameplay, he has no legal protection. Copyright only applies to 'expressions', not 'ideas'. Unless someone has copied his code or images, they have not infringed his 'IP'.
If you don't want to share your ideas, then STFU. Then no one can 'steal' your ideas.
This should be a warning to companies (and OSS software teams): if you make a bad product, it's reputation can be a millstone around your neck long after your problems have been fixed. Do not give in to the temptation to rush a piece of crap out the door, hoping to fix it later.
You have to amortize the research costs (spread it over all the uses
You can completely discount the R&D costs for downstream products, if they are justified by the first products to come out of the gate. An F-14 fighter is about $35 million. The pilot and RIO each cost about $1m (that's replacement cost to the Navy, not a value on human life). If the cost of the R&D can be completely justified by using this armor for F-14 canopies, then you don't have to include any of that R&D cost when you calculate the 'cost' of ALONtm razor blades.
While you're spending your $1z on research, can you find out if transparent aluminum foil protects from government mind control rays as well as regular aluminum foil? Not that I'll believe your government-funded 'research'.
Slashdot Mirror
SELECT * FROM brillig WHERE toves IN (SELECT toves FROM the_wabe WHERE (slithy and (action='gyre' or action='gimble')))
You ignored my 'literally' chucking statement. If we do not decide that the David is worth preserving, then it will not be around for "those of us whose taste runs more to sculpture than TV?" Unless we are going to allocate resources to preserve every popsicle-stick sculpture that someone wants to claim is 'art', we must make merit judgements.
Unless you can demonstrate that pursuing serious critical analysis of "Fear Factor" means that somebody must necessarily give up serious critical appreciation of "David", which would indeed carry your argument with me.
I am not saying that someone can't spend their time pursuing serious critical analysis of "Fear Factor" (nor am I saying that one cannot spend one's time surfing Internet porn). What I am saying is that we can and should judge artistic merit.
it appears to me that you are saying that you can intelligently rate the works equal provided you don't believe it is possible to do so.
No, what I am saying is that refusing to rate the works as being of unequal is the same as saying that they have equal merit. Denying the possibility of passing judgement is the same as saying, "There is an undifferentiated morass of art in the world. Since we deny the possibility of judging artistic merit, all of these works have equal artistic merit." In case I am not being clear, I am in favor of judging.
Do you really believe that we can't judge artistic merit? If you were told, "One of these works is going to be destroyed forever: Hamlet or {pick a random Danielle Steele novel}" Would you really dither trying to decide which one to save? Forget the age and persistence of the work; pick contemporary works by Danielle Steele and Maya Angelou. Which would you save? Personally, I like to think (economic motive being removed) that even Danielle Steele would choose the Maya Angelou.
So is your complaint that I cannot design such a yardstick, or do you contend (with a straight face) that it is incorrect for us to claim that Michaelangelo's David has more 'artistic merit' than a crayon drawing by a five year-old child?
Yes. Figuratively, we are chucking David "into" the trash by not elevating it above the fray of high-school lockerroom grafitti and the dreck of the blogosphere. Literally, we are chucking the David into the trash if we decide that it is not 'higher' art than Fear Factor, because we will be unable to justify spending money to preserve the David unless we also spend money to establish public archives of all of the 'equally valid' crap that's out there.
It appears to me that you are implicitly agreeing with the assumptions of people who say that "Fear Factor" is just as good as "David": that you can usefully measure two works of art on an objective scale of artistic merit.
No. I am saying that the only people who could intelligently rate these works as 'equal' are those who deny "that you can usefully measure two works of art on an objective scale of artistic merit." They deny the possibility of judgement, thus all works are equal.
they and their personal limitations become information gatekeepers for society.
The answer to poor gatekeepers is not to abolish gatekeeping. That way lies the end of progress. If our ancestors painting on cave walls had decided that no one expression could be judged better than another expression, then art today would probably consist of more cave paintings and exrement sculpture. As an analogy (of course it's flawed): if computer programmers lived under the delusion that it was impossible to measure the amount of time that a calculation takes, that would be the death of optimization. No one would be able to attempt to 'improve' the performance of a program. What do you think this would due to the performance of software?
Oh crap, I've just discovered the source of Microsoft's bloat. They have a postmodernist approach to optimization!
Unfortunately, your line of thinking if taken to an extreme invalidates all attempts to 'judge' works. We must all then declare that last Tuesday's episode of Fear Factor is as 'good' a work of art as Michaelangelo's David. This is also a problem with Postmodernist cultural-subjectivity.
No, the idea of VB is stupid. 'Regular folks' shouldn't be writing software, and programmers shouldn't be picking the color scheme for your new headquarters building. Creating software is difficult enough for people who are programmers.
So the article on Quantum Mechanics reflects Uncertainty! That's kind of like making the article on Poetry have rhyme and meter.
What do you do when 'the people' vote to build and run nuclear plants, but refuse to authorize any way to store the waste? What do you do when the people vote for a chicken in every pot, but outlaw the raising and killing of chickens? The people are stupid and inconsistent. And our (USA! USA!) education system does little to improve the situation.
A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.
Lloyds of London was founded in 1774 and will be raking it in long after your death. Thanks for the chuckle though.
There is such a thing as 'Criminal Copyright Infringement". You can go to jail for copyright infringement (5yrs per incident IIRC). Anytime the penalty can include jail time, you have left the world of civil law.
You misread my post, which said "TV ratings are a democracy". Which shows get, and stay, on TV is not decided by the viewers. But the ratings are driven solely by the viewers. They watch what they like most (or dislike least).
2) We tried Cagney and Lacey. Old actors get worse ratings than young actors. This is especially true of women. No it isn't fair, but TV ratings are a democracy and not subject to abstract notions like 'fairness'.
I advocate Linux because if Linux is more popular, not only will *everyone* benefit from reduced malware and vendor lock-in, but I will benefit from having my platform supported by hardware and software manufacturers. I don't bash WinXX unless someone asks me.
If I see someone drowning, I try to help whether they are shouting for help or not. A few of them are amazing swimmers who want to spend several minutes floating face-down, but most of them could use the help. If you are the kind of visionary who could see (say in 1880), the automobile rising to dominance, then it would be a kindness to tell your friends at the buggywhip factory that it might be time for some cross-training.
I've heard this kind of thing before: "If Linux is so great, why don't you praise it instead of bashing Windows and Microsoft." Well see, the thing is, Linux has warts. It can be slow and frustrating. The learning curve is not free. Linux can be a pain sometimes. But compared to Windows (and only compared to an OS that sucks), Linux is a little corner of Nirvana tucked inside Heaven.
Here's your encrypted smiley: !$#@&*
No, this is IBM. Wang went out of business years ago.
You are making two assumptions: the national decisions are wrong, and the local decisions will be right.
So you can actually change things in your local district, much easier than a change on the national level.
So poorly educated voters will get to design the education system. Forget Intelligent Design, some place will have astrology in their science classes.
I have personally seen 4 different theories of education in my short lifetime, and I have evidence that this is typical. (that is every 5-10 years someone has a new idea to revolutionize education). Some were good, some bad. On a national level all they can do is force all schools to try the new system, or prevent all schools from trying it.
You assume that the national education system wouldn't have test-tube schools to try-out new ideas, which is not necessarily the case. As for 'new approaches': none of these new approaches is a tremendous improvement over our 1940's educational system. We would be better to use a good system than try for a great system, and get a lousy system. Slowing down the change (decline) in our schools would probably be a good thing.
Education is too important to take chances with a uniform national system.
Education is too important to have 2,000 poorly designed adhocracies. And the burden of brining these students up to a uniform level on a uniform body of knowledge will fall on our Universities.
This case involves a private/religious school, so the Constitutional protections do not apply. However, if this were a local public school that did *not* accept federal money, they would still be bound by the Constitution thanks to the 14th Amendment. A local school funded entirely by local taxes is still bound by the Constitution, even the parts that say "Congress shall..."
Why? Children in Idaho need to know the exact same: Reading, Writing, Basic Math, Algebra, US History, World History, Geography, Sciences, Arts, etc. as every other kid in America. Why should each district have their own curriculum and textbooks? Why shouldn't we have national standards, materials, and tests? Aside from a single course in Idaho State History, why should the education of those kids be at all different from any other. Sure, they might not need to have any of the ESL (English as a Second Language) courses that some places need, but that just means that they wouldn't order those materials.
No. Thanks to the 14th Amendment, most (all? IANAL) Constitutional restrictions on the federal government also apply to state and local government. That is why a school teacher paid from local property taxes in Podunk, Idaho is bound by First Amendment freedom of religion restrictions. And the Peoples' Republic of Berkeley can't outlaw firearms (Second Amendment).
Unless Meiers has patents relating to Civ gameplay, he has no legal protection. Copyright only applies to 'expressions', not 'ideas'. Unless someone has copied his code or images, they have not infringed his 'IP'.
If you don't want to share your ideas, then STFU. Then no one can 'steal' your ideas.
This should be a warning to companies (and OSS software teams): if you make a bad product, it's reputation can be a millstone around your neck long after your problems have been fixed. Do not give in to the temptation to rush a piece of crap out the door, hoping to fix it later.
You can completely discount the R&D costs for downstream products, if they are justified by the first products to come out of the gate. An F-14 fighter is about $35 million. The pilot and RIO each cost about $1m (that's replacement cost to the Navy, not a value on human life). If the cost of the R&D can be completely justified by using this armor for F-14 canopies, then you don't have to include any of that R&D cost when you calculate the 'cost' of ALONtm razor blades.
While you're spending your $1z on research, can you find out if transparent aluminum foil protects from government mind control rays as well as regular aluminum foil? Not that I'll believe your government-funded 'research'.