The summary would be more useful if it mentioned, you know, what the board is for. In case some of us haven't heard of it or something.
Yes, I did RTFA. It didn't say either.
Nonsense. It's easier to lobby a single entity than to lobby ~100,000 different stores.
Yes, it's easier to demand the government outlaw behavior that you don't like than to persuade people to change. To actually get results, I submit it's more effective to actually talk to the 10 or 12 corporations who own the chains of stores.
There's a difference between store policy and the law. Despite what I've been told by numerous cashiers, there are (AFAIK) no laws against selling to minors:
As skeptical as I am about "industry self regulation," this is an instance where it appears to work fine. People who are concerned about availability of violent games (to minors) should be lobbying the retailers, not the government.
Here's an idea. Require anyone who wants to go up the mountain to carry insurance sufficient to cover the cost of rescue. Then let the insurance company work out how much to charge people based on how much experience and preparedness they can demonstrate.
Lawmakers and judges don't understand technology, so the law does regard different technologies as totally different. So for example the government can read your e-mail without a warrant but can't read your postal mail without a warrant; VoIP has different regulations than circuit-switched telephones; video rental records are mandated by Federal law to be private, but your Web browsing history is not. It's madness.
Whether an existing law applies to a new technology, or not, is pretty much a roll of the dice.
Actually, there is that little box on a job application asking "have you ever been convicted of a crime?" I never paid it any mind because it's easy to say "no" when that's the truth, but some people have to make a calculation. Is it better to check the box and hope they still get a chance to explain in the interview, or leave it blank and hope it never comes up that they lied on the application?
So having a criminal record can, indeed have long-lasting effects. Remember, the question is usually "have you ever."
(As aside, a friend of mine had to answer "have you ever been arrested, which led to the amusing story of him and four other high school kids breaking into the gym because they got locked out during a late track practice... charges were dropped but technically that was an arrest.)
By contrast, an all-digital world is a dream for blind people who want to consume books. How much of a pain in the ass is it to have a home reader where you have to align pages of a physical book, turn them, etc. vs. having an iPod-form-factor device that can download most any book from Amazon?
Well first of all text-to-speech is a lousy substitute for text, and if you don't believe that why don't you try it for a day.
But that point aside, let's imagine there's a device that can read text and display Braille. Then let's imagine that all the publishers decide to publish their e-books in a format that no Braille display can read (say for DRM purposes, or to make them unreadable on a competitor's device, or because their layout people are too damned lazy to learn and apply open standards).
The DoJ recently shut down a trial program--a trial program--that let students use Kindles at several universities instead of buying text books. Their logic was that since Kindles have mediocre accessibility that prevents the blind from fully using them, the mere fact of offering the program is ipso facto discrimination.
I have to side with the DoJ on that one, chief. In case you have not been in a bookstore lately we are within about one decade of physical printing on paper ceasing altogether (except for a tiny connoisseur market, like vinyl records today). Unless there is some requirement for accessibility, blind people will be denied the ability to read, shut off from all education and employment. Are you OK with that, seriously?
Yeah that crossed my mind too, but then if they're intentionally limiting their user base like that, it doesn't really make sense to cancel the product for lack of users.
Invites and waiting lists are Google's way of managing roll-out, so that experimental software that is initially released doesn't have to handle veryone on the web jumping on it on day 1.
Yes but it's ill-considered if you actually want users to adopt your software.
After a year, was there anyone who wanted to try out Wave who had not gotten an invite?
Yes. I would have downloaded it the first week if it weren't for that "invitation" gimmick. I had a specific use case in mind and a specific group of people to use it with, but I realized I probably couldn't get my collaborators (non-IT people) to watch the 1-hour video (hell I could not sit through all of that), and to try to explain to them "you need an invitation to download this" would have resulted in blank looks at best. I figured I'd just wait till Google did something to make adoption easier.
I could have probably networked and asked someone for an invitation, but that is rather missing the point that I don't feel I should have to beg for an invitation to try out Google's new software. If they had wanted me to try it, they could have, you know, tried not preventing me.
However I have to ask, if this process and glass is 60 years old shouldn't the patent have run out quite a while ago?
Yes. Maybe it's not patented: it could be a trade secret instead (like the formula for Coca-Cola).
Shouldn't we have been seeing this before now in uses that Corning couldn't think of?
Not if it's a trade secret. But even if it was patented and the patent expired, there's no guarantee anyone else would want to pick it up and start manufacturing it. It could have easily been overlooked because the original patent holder didn't make any money off it (until now).
Speaking as a liberal... yes. The surge worked. I thought it would be too little, too late, and that the Washington politicians would find a way to micro-manage it into failure. I was wrong. And I'm happy I was wrong.:-) And happy to admit it. I still don't think the invasion was a good idea in the first place -- but the surge was probably the best choice that could have been made given the circumstances.
Publishing by press release is a great advantage in the short term, and most scientists won't be missing that lost integrity till later (if at all). These guys don't have to fight for resources -- they choose to. It's a disgrace.
Let's keep in mind this is a professor emeritus of Spanish. He evidently doesn't know jack about quantitative analysis.
If silent hybrid vehicles posed a threat to pedestrians, he reasoned, then the number of pedestrian deaths should have risen since 2000, when the first hybrids were sold.
Well there's your problem right there. You can't identify the contribution due to hybrids by looking at the total. There are on the order of what, 100 million vehicles on the road, and maybe 1% of them are hybrids. So if pedestrian kills by the other 99% of vehicles drop by 1%, hybrids could be 99 times more deadly than them and you wouldn't notice from this guy's analysis.
Second, Larson really only addresses half the issue. Fatalities from accidents are one data point, but injuries would be another--and are far more common than deaths.
Old style pen-and-paper roleplaying works for this too. You have fewer people to deal with but you get to see their faces and body language. I would venture that online RPGs may build management skills and pen-and-paper, face-to-face games may build "soft" interpersonal skills.
If the U.S. government were to offer training and good-paying jobs in "cyber warfare" or whatever they want to call it, I believe there are plenty of people who would rise to the opportunity. Full scholarships, retraining for displaced professionals, that sort of thing. What they seem to expect instead is an unlimited pool of highly skilled, motivated workers all ready to hit the ground running as soon as a job is (eventually) created for them. It doesn't work like that.
When they say "critical shortage of talent," read "critical shortage of people already highly trained yet inexplicably unemployed (or willing to take a massive pay cut to leave private industry for a government job)." In other words, they're basically whining about not wanting to pay enough.
Well that is the strongest argument in favor of free software, isn't it?
With free software, you have to pay for support and the non-trivial cost of training, setup, and administration. With paid-license software you also have to pay all those costs plus the added non-trivial cost of administering the licenses. So it boils down to whether you think the cost of managing the licenses is negligible, or not (and whether you think support and training are better/cheaper for FOSS vs. proprietary software).
I am happy to say we get to use a lot of FOSS at work because my manager agrees with me, that spending a lot of my time to maintain the license server and police the licenses is a bad investment. He also agrees that violating the license terms (what some would call "piracy") is both an unacceptable risk, and an unethical business practice.:-)
Because every piece of information you voluntarily give away will inevitably end up in places you couldn't foresee, that's why.
Exactly. Once you give up information to anyone, they own and control it. You can't rescind it, ever, for any reason. The new owners of your data however can change their minds any time about who they want to sell it to or share it with. Even if they really mean it when they say your data will be private and secure, that could all change tomorrow.
If that doesn't make you think twice before clicking "I agree," then there's really no help for you.
'It will actually discourage service providers from taking steps to minimize the illegal exchange of copyrighted works on their sites.'
And that is a Good Thing. I do not *want* service providers spending time and money policing their networks; both as a customer and a shareholder I see no benefit to me in a service provider cooperating with the {RI,MP}AA beyond the absolute minimum required by law. That minimum just got lower.:-) If the media companies want to crack down on copyright infringement, let them do it at their own expense.
Tesla's model is new to the auto industry: manufacturer sells direct to consumer, and also owns the distribution network and the service departments.
I thought that had been tried in the early history of the U.S. auto industry, but had run afoul of antitrust laws on the grounds that it turned the car manufacturers into vertical monopolies.
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The summary would be more useful if it mentioned, you know, what the board is for. In case some of us haven't heard of it or something. Yes, I did RTFA. It didn't say either.
Before we get all excited about this car's potential to solve our energy problems, we should give some thought to practical matters like crash safety.
Yes, it's easier to demand the government outlaw behavior that you don't like than to persuade people to change. To actually get results, I submit it's more effective to actually talk to the 10 or 12 corporations who own the chains of stores.
As skeptical as I am about "industry self regulation," this is an instance where it appears to work fine. People who are concerned about availability of violent games (to minors) should be lobbying the retailers, not the government.
Here's an idea. Require anyone who wants to go up the mountain to carry insurance sufficient to cover the cost of rescue. Then let the insurance company work out how much to charge people based on how much experience and preparedness they can demonstrate.
Lawmakers and judges don't understand technology, so the law does regard different technologies as totally different. So for example the government can read your e-mail without a warrant but can't read your postal mail without a warrant; VoIP has different regulations than circuit-switched telephones; video rental records are mandated by Federal law to be private, but your Web browsing history is not. It's madness.
Whether an existing law applies to a new technology, or not, is pretty much a roll of the dice.
Actually, there is that little box on a job application asking "have you ever been convicted of a crime?" I never paid it any mind because it's easy to say "no" when that's the truth, but some people have to make a calculation. Is it better to check the box and hope they still get a chance to explain in the interview, or leave it blank and hope it never comes up that they lied on the application?
So having a criminal record can, indeed have long-lasting effects. Remember, the question is usually "have you ever."
(As aside, a friend of mine had to answer "have you ever been arrested, which led to the amusing story of him and four other high school kids breaking into the gym because they got locked out during a late track practice... charges were dropped but technically that was an arrest.)
Well first of all text-to-speech is a lousy substitute for text, and if you don't believe that why don't you try it for a day.
But that point aside, let's imagine there's a device that can read text and display Braille. Then let's imagine that all the publishers decide to publish their e-books in a format that no Braille display can read (say for DRM purposes, or to make them unreadable on a competitor's device, or because their layout people are too damned lazy to learn and apply open standards).
That's the issue of accessibility.
I have to side with the DoJ on that one, chief. In case you have not been in a bookstore lately we are within about one decade of physical printing on paper ceasing altogether (except for a tiny connoisseur market, like vinyl records today). Unless there is some requirement for accessibility, blind people will be denied the ability to read, shut off from all education and employment. Are you OK with that, seriously?
If only we could have two! All we've got is the empire.
So you're saying the zero-fatality car will be made by Microsoft?
Yeah that crossed my mind too, but then if they're intentionally limiting their user base like that, it doesn't really make sense to cancel the product for lack of users.
Yes but it's ill-considered if you actually want users to adopt your software.
Yes. I would have downloaded it the first week if it weren't for that "invitation" gimmick. I had a specific use case in mind and a specific group of people to use it with, but I realized I probably couldn't get my collaborators (non-IT people) to watch the 1-hour video (hell I could not sit through all of that), and to try to explain to them "you need an invitation to download this" would have resulted in blank looks at best. I figured I'd just wait till Google did something to make adoption easier.
I could have probably networked and asked someone for an invitation, but that is rather missing the point that I don't feel I should have to beg for an invitation to try out Google's new software. If they had wanted me to try it, they could have, you know, tried not preventing me.
Yes. Maybe it's not patented: it could be a trade secret instead (like the formula for Coca-Cola).
Not if it's a trade secret. But even if it was patented and the patent expired, there's no guarantee anyone else would want to pick it up and start manufacturing it. It could have easily been overlooked because the original patent holder didn't make any money off it (until now).
Speaking as a liberal ... yes. The surge worked. I thought it would be too little, too late, and that the Washington politicians would find a way to micro-manage it into failure. I was wrong. And I'm happy I was wrong. :-) And happy to admit it. I still don't think the invasion was a good idea in the first place -- but the surge was probably the best choice that could have been made given the circumstances.
Publishing by press release is a great advantage in the short term, and most scientists won't be missing that lost integrity till later (if at all). These guys don't have to fight for resources -- they choose to. It's a disgrace.
So does this mean that Apple turning your legally-jailbroken iPhone into a brick is still legal too?
Well there's your problem right there. You can't identify the contribution due to hybrids by looking at the total. There are on the order of what, 100 million vehicles on the road, and maybe 1% of them are hybrids. So if pedestrian kills by the other 99% of vehicles drop by 1%, hybrids could be 99 times more deadly than them and you wouldn't notice from this guy's analysis.
What he said.
Old style pen-and-paper roleplaying works for this too. You have fewer people to deal with but you get to see their faces and body language. I would venture that online RPGs may build management skills and pen-and-paper, face-to-face games may build "soft" interpersonal skills.
If the U.S. government were to offer training and good-paying jobs in "cyber warfare" or whatever they want to call it, I believe there are plenty of people who would rise to the opportunity. Full scholarships, retraining for displaced professionals, that sort of thing. What they seem to expect instead is an unlimited pool of highly skilled, motivated workers all ready to hit the ground running as soon as a job is (eventually) created for them. It doesn't work like that.
When they say "critical shortage of talent," read "critical shortage of people already highly trained yet inexplicably unemployed (or willing to take a massive pay cut to leave private industry for a government job)." In other words, they're basically whining about not wanting to pay enough.
Well that is the strongest argument in favor of free software, isn't it?
With free software, you have to pay for support and the non-trivial cost of training, setup, and administration. With paid-license software you also have to pay all those costs plus the added non-trivial cost of administering the licenses. So it boils down to whether you think the cost of managing the licenses is negligible, or not (and whether you think support and training are better/cheaper for FOSS vs. proprietary software).
I am happy to say we get to use a lot of FOSS at work because my manager agrees with me, that spending a lot of my time to maintain the license server and police the licenses is a bad investment. He also agrees that violating the license terms (what some would call "piracy") is both an unacceptable risk, and an unethical business practice. :-)
Exactly. Once you give up information to anyone, they own and control it. You can't rescind it, ever, for any reason. The new owners of your data however can change their minds any time about who they want to sell it to or share it with. Even if they really mean it when they say your data will be private and secure, that could all change tomorrow.
If that doesn't make you think twice before clicking "I agree," then there's really no help for you.
And that is a Good Thing. I do not *want* service providers spending time and money policing their networks; both as a customer and a shareholder I see no benefit to me in a service provider cooperating with the {RI,MP}AA beyond the absolute minimum required by law. That minimum just got lower. :-) If the media companies want to crack down on copyright infringement, let them do it at their own expense.
I thought that had been tried in the early history of the U.S. auto industry, but had run afoul of antitrust laws on the grounds that it turned the car manufacturers into vertical monopolies.