Ah yes, agreed - that was indeed some seriously silly analysis. They better stick to measuring marketshare and pimping whatever products they are bought to pimp.
...in misleading summary shocker! Keep watching for the latest developments! Seriously, you almost had me with that Battlefield 2142 "spyware" thing the other day, but this time I was more vigilant. Muahahahah!
"However in the US it obviously doesn't provide an incentive not to kill just take a look at the crime stats."
Erm, did it ever strike you that the reason the level of US homocide is so high compared to Europe might have other reasons? (I.e. primarily ethnic gang crime. Roughly 50%+ of all US murders are committed by the roughly 1/10 of the population that is black. Latino gangs bump that figure up even further.)
It is rather likely that the popularity of the death penalty in the US is correlated to the high murder rate, as people deem harsher measures to be needed than in, say, Europe?
"I am not overly pro-prison, I am anti death sentence, in the event you can at a later date be prove innocent at least you have a chance to live your life once you are released from prison"
True, a relatively marginal benefit of imprisonment compared to capital punishement. But that wasn't my point either.
"I prefer killers kept off the streets also, however, life without parole would be just as effective at keeping killers off the streets."
This is a fair point, although properly used, the death penalty can provide an additional, (and for obvious reasons very strong) additional incentive not to kill.
"If you are so death penalty, then I can't wait for the day you are in the wrong place at the wrong time and get wrongly convicted to death from a crime you didn't commit."
"Hey, you're one of those pro-prison people, right?!? I can't wait to see you wrongly imprisoned for life! With lots of prison rape for good measure!" (As an aside, it would be unlikely to happen to me as my country does not apply capital punishment. Perhaps on a trip abroad though...)
"You are shitting me right? If a driver intentionally turned the steering wheel the wrong way it is no longer an accident, it is intentionally causing a wreck and killing someone, hence murder and the person should be tried for murder and sentenced to life without the chance of parole, however, in the event that it is a 'car accident' there is no intention implied. Intention and accident are mutally exclusive."
There is of course no intentionality in executing the wrong person either - it is an accident in the process of attempting to execute a guilty person. (In addition, it appears to be a rather marginal kind of error.)
Of course, if you are arguing against state killing of criminals in general, then there is indeed no comparison to a car crash - but then we have left the whole "but they kill innocents" line of argument for other pastures.
"I find your morals and logic very similar to those that of the WWII Germans."
Such an original line of argument! Did you find it on the internets?
As for my actual point, it was not contingent on zero executions of innocents, rather it pointed out that it is strange to accept the (likely far more) numerous deaths caused by other areas of human activity (Thrill rides kill!) while keeping an absolutist stance on deaths of innocents caused by execution.
This is especially so as those innocently convicted and executed are highly likely to be pond scum, while many other forms of tragedy strike far more randomly in the population.
"So, if I wanted to kill somebody, but mistakenly kill you, can I make the same excuse?"
Probably wouldn't fly in court, because of that whole "monopoly of violence" thing. The state prefers to keep those calls to itself - a position with widespread public support.
" There is no mistake, the person has intentionally been put to death."
Intentional in the same sense that the driver causing the accident intentionally turned the steering wheel the wrong way. (Or similar allegory) If the facts of the case would have been known, the innocent man would not have been killed, just as if the driver had made the right move, the accident would never have happened.
"No man has the right to determine the fate of another, this includes a murderer and a state."
Says who? I personally prefer that the state has a great deal of input into the fate of killers, as I prefer to see killers kept off the streets.
"It doesn't matter if it's mistaken or not - it's still deliberate and still premeditated."
Premeditated? Of course. Deliberate? Not really - if the facts of the case had been known, the innocent man would not have been executed. But perhaps you are taking issue with the very act of deliberate killing in general, and not only with the killing of innocents? If so, that's a different argument against the death penalty than "but it kills innocent people!".
"The difference between car accidents, faulty aircraft designs and the like - is that the responsible parties are NEVER looking to go out and kill people. Indeed, they are generally trying to come up with something that reduces the risk of killing someone.
Capital punishment, on the other hand, is designed to kill people - not avoid it. The innocent man on death row is being deliberately put to death by society."
Couple of points:
- The innocent man is not being deliberately put to death by society, but is rather mistakenly put to death by society.
- " Indeed, they are generally trying to come up with something that reduces the risk of killing someone."
Sometimes. Sometimes they are trying to shave time off travel at the cost of a slight increase in deaths per year. (Or some similar scenario) In any case, most areas of social endeavour has some acceptable level of deaths caused. To apply a zero-tolerance standard to capital punishment is thus inconsistent, and most likely driven by other motivations. (Revulsion at deliberate killing, etc.)
Any system dealing in life-and-death issues will have some degree of fatal mistakes. This goes for car and airplane design, health care, traffic policy, policing, etc.
The central question in those areas is not achieving a 0 death ratio or ceasing their operation. Rather, they weigh the benefit acheived, both in terms of quality of life, productivity, lives saved, etc. against the costs, including deaths caused. In the case of capital punishment, the risk of erronous execution can be almost entirely avoided simply by staying clear of a life of crime.
Hence, I find the whole "but innocents die because of executions!" line of argumentation unconvincing. Innocents die because of virtually all areas of human endeavour.
Microsoft hope to be a (the?) major conduit for media content reaching the home in the future. However, they can only make money off content if it is protected by DRM, otherwise piracy will be able to become "too mainstream", seriously eating into profits.
Hence, they support DRM as long as it's not harsh enough to dissuade a significant portion of their customer base. Which the current setup will probably not do.
Indeed. And they kept their nuclear program running covertly at the same time (which they later admitted). Which nicely illustrates why merely striking deals with them is not much of a fix. Without real inspection access you risk merely end up subsidising the nuclear program you are trying to stop.
McCain? Although I'm not quite sure he would have pushed as hard for the Iraq Attaq if he had been in charge, he was quite gung-ho about it. And the Iraq Attaq is the decisive screw-up of the Bush administration. Hence, McCain does not appear to be an attractive option to me. McCain is also determined to push through with the whole guest peasant / amnesty immigration package, making him a definite non-starter in my eyes.
One: The article linked above relies heavily and unquestioningly on statements from... hold on... North Korean officials. These are, reliability-wise, probably some of the least trustworthy people in the world, not the least because they will be dragged off and shot if they say anything that is not officially sanctioned by the Dear Leader.
Two: North Korea has happily thrown every agreement ever signed overboard, pushing ahead with nuclear weapons development at every turn and during every "agreed framework", etc. simply because they want nuclear weapons. Which is a good move - instead of being an ignored backwater basket case they are top of the international newscasts. Even the mere threat of nuclear development has enabled them to serially blackmail the US, South Korea and Japan (among others) into providing extensive and much-needed relief.
In short, the bomb has been a good move for North Korea, and it would be foolish to believe that they will get rid of it, unless offered *very* substantial concessions from the South, Japan and the US. Threats of intervention on behalf of Bush are not credible, both because a war would be unacceptably costly to the US, and because Bush has burned too much domestic and international political capital in his Iraq misadventure. (If he does not realize this himself, his advisors do.)
So, what to do? Sit pretty and keep handling North Korea using a mix of sanctions, threats and concessions. The leadership of the North, though screwed up, occupy a materially and socially privileged position that they are unlikely to sacrifice in favor of certain death, unless pushed to believe their reign is about to collapse.
"I'm guessing you are quite young then? I'm over 40 and have 2 children. I write but haven't made a penny at it. Much as I enjoy writing, there is definitely an incentive to "publish" in knowing that if my work becomes popular late in my life (or just after) then my kids will benefit.
Parents want to provide for their children."
Guilty as charged, and fair point. My assumption here is that the number of people who write / perform only do so for the sake of their heirs to a very limited extent. Anyone know about any empirics regarding this?
...is you won't have that line of credit without significant income. Which you probably have, if you are an average first-worlder. And thus you enjoy lots of material and non-material amenities that 19:th century working stiffs just didn't have - making Marxism and similar ideologies a much less tempting prospect. (Hence creating incentives for discontented cafe-yabbering types to move their game elsewhere - I.e. race pimping and / or deconstructing Hamlet yet another time.)
As an aside, a credit-based economy might have some of it's roots in imprudence in the general population, and it might bring risks of financial disorder and possible collapse, but it signifies wealth - something the author appears unable to grasp.
Well, zero cost of distribution, more like. Which is nice - but only if offical distribution (Producer sales/distribution) maintains some advantage over non-official channels. Otherwise, the distribution advantage really isn't worth much.
Agree: "The life+70 years term is ludicrous. "To believe that anything beyond lifetime copyright impacts the incentive structure of creators takes some serious suspension of disbelief.
Disagree: "Going non-digital to digital changes nothing." It does - high-grade, repeated copying becomes a lot more easy and economical with digital media, often at near zero cost. This has two effects, pushing in different directions:
1. Immense possible benefit to consumers. You can get lots of high-quality stuff for almost nothing!
2. Immense possible harm to producers. If people are just copying your content free of charge, it's going to eat into your profits in most likely scenarios. In some scenarios, you might cease production entirely, or shift towards more difficult-to-copy formats.
Depending on your preferences, it's very likely that you will be wanting to rebalance copyright, one way or the other (more lenient, more strict), due to the adoption of digital media.
...of why present-day (post-)Marxists have mostly dumped the working class schtick and are now focusing on ethno-pimping and pointless language debates in English departments around the US.
After all, "You have nothing to lose but your Audi, hi-def TV and your $250 a month cellphone bill" is not really a winning slogan.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah yes, agreed - that was indeed some seriously silly analysis. They better stick to measuring marketshare and pimping whatever products they are bought to pimp.
Dunno, Gartner just announced Mac US marketshare had jumped by some 30 percent year-on-year. Pretty decent.
...in misleading summary shocker! Keep watching for the latest developments! Seriously, you almost had me with that Battlefield 2142 "spyware" thing the other day, but this time I was more vigilant. Muahahahah!
Mom! More Hot Pockets(TM)! (I put this in all WoW threads)
"However in the US it obviously doesn't provide an incentive not to kill just take a look at the crime stats."
Erm, did it ever strike you that the reason the level of US homocide is so high compared to Europe might have other reasons? (I.e. primarily ethnic gang crime. Roughly 50%+ of all US murders are committed by the roughly 1/10 of the population that is black. Latino gangs bump that figure up even further.)
It is rather likely that the popularity of the death penalty in the US is correlated to the high murder rate, as people deem harsher measures to be needed than in, say, Europe?
"I am not overly pro-prison, I am anti death sentence, in the event you can at a later date be prove innocent at least you have a chance to live your life once you are released from prison"
True, a relatively marginal benefit of imprisonment compared to capital punishement. But that wasn't my point either.
"but it's not clear to me that someone wrongly convicted of murder is necessarily an ass."
Not necessarily. But probably.
"I prefer killers kept off the streets also, however, life without parole would be just as effective at keeping killers off the streets."
This is a fair point, although properly used, the death penalty can provide an additional, (and for obvious reasons very strong) additional incentive not to kill.
"If you are so death penalty, then I can't wait for the day you are in the wrong place at the wrong time and get wrongly convicted to death from a crime you didn't commit."
"Hey, you're one of those pro-prison people, right?!? I can't wait to see you wrongly imprisoned for life! With lots of prison rape for good measure!" (As an aside, it would be unlikely to happen to me as my country does not apply capital punishment. Perhaps on a trip abroad though...)
"You are shitting me right? If a driver intentionally turned the steering wheel the wrong way it is no longer an accident, it is intentionally causing a wreck and killing someone, hence murder and the person should be tried for murder and sentenced to life without the chance of parole, however, in the event that it is a 'car accident' there is no intention implied. Intention and accident are mutally exclusive."
There is of course no intentionality in executing the wrong person either - it is an accident in the process of attempting to execute a guilty person. (In addition, it appears to be a rather marginal kind of error.)
Of course, if you are arguing against state killing of criminals in general, then there is indeed no comparison to a car crash - but then we have left the whole "but they kill innocents" line of argument for other pastures.
"I find your morals and logic very similar to those that of the WWII Germans."
Such an original line of argument! Did you find it on the internets?
As for my actual point, it was not contingent on zero executions of innocents, rather it pointed out that it is strange to accept the (likely far more) numerous deaths caused by other areas of human activity (Thrill rides kill!) while keeping an absolutist stance on deaths of innocents caused by execution.
This is especially so as those innocently convicted and executed are highly likely to be pond scum, while many other forms of tragedy strike far more randomly in the population.
"So, if I wanted to kill somebody, but mistakenly kill you, can I make the same excuse?"
Probably wouldn't fly in court, because of that whole "monopoly of violence" thing. The state prefers to keep those calls to itself - a position with widespread public support.
"
There is no mistake, the person has intentionally been put to death."
Intentional in the same sense that the driver causing the accident intentionally turned the steering wheel the wrong way. (Or similar allegory) If the facts of the case would have been known, the innocent man would not have been killed, just as if the driver had made the right move, the accident would never have happened.
"No man has the right to determine the fate of another, this includes a murderer and a state."
Says who? I personally prefer that the state has a great deal of input into the fate of killers, as I prefer to see killers kept off the streets.
"It doesn't matter if it's mistaken or not - it's still deliberate and still premeditated."
Premeditated? Of course. Deliberate? Not really - if the facts of the case had been known, the innocent man would not have been executed. But perhaps you are taking issue with the very act of deliberate killing in general, and not only with the killing of innocents? If so, that's a different argument against the death penalty than "but it kills innocent people!".
"The difference between car accidents, faulty aircraft designs and the like - is that the responsible parties are NEVER looking to go out and kill people. Indeed, they are generally trying to come up with something that reduces the risk of killing someone.
Capital punishment, on the other hand, is designed to kill people - not avoid it. The innocent man on death row is being deliberately put to death by society."
Couple of points:
- The innocent man is not being deliberately put to death by society, but is rather mistakenly put to death by society.
- " Indeed, they are generally trying to come up with something that reduces the risk of killing someone."
Sometimes. Sometimes they are trying to shave time off travel at the cost of a slight increase in deaths per year. (Or some similar scenario) In any case, most areas of social endeavour has some acceptable level of deaths caused. To apply a zero-tolerance standard to capital punishment is thus inconsistent, and most likely driven by other motivations. (Revulsion at deliberate killing, etc.)
Any system dealing in life-and-death issues will have some degree of fatal mistakes. This goes for car and airplane design, health care, traffic policy, policing, etc.
The central question in those areas is not achieving a 0 death ratio or ceasing their operation. Rather, they weigh the benefit acheived, both in terms of quality of life, productivity, lives saved, etc. against the costs, including deaths caused. In the case of capital punishment, the risk of erronous execution can be almost entirely avoided simply by staying clear of a life of crime.
Hence, I find the whole "but innocents die because of executions!" line of argumentation unconvincing. Innocents die because of virtually all areas of human endeavour.
Microsoft hope to be a (the?) major conduit for media content reaching the home in the future. However, they can only make money off content if it is protected by DRM, otherwise piracy will be able to become "too mainstream", seriously eating into profits.
Hence, they support DRM as long as it's not harsh enough to dissuade a significant portion of their customer base. Which the current setup will probably not do.
"North Korea agreed."
Indeed. And they kept their nuclear program running covertly at the same time (which they later admitted). Which nicely illustrates why merely striking deals with them is not much of a fix. Without real inspection access you risk merely end up subsidising the nuclear program you are trying to stop.
"Totally his fault, since Clinton had already resolved the NK issue, and all Bush Jr had to do was not screw it up. "
I seriously hope that you are joking here.
Server != Multi-use computer. Repeat as many times as are needed.
McCain? Although I'm not quite sure he would have pushed as hard for the Iraq Attaq if he had been in charge, he was quite gung-ho about it. And the Iraq Attaq is the decisive screw-up of the Bush administration. Hence, McCain does not appear to be an attractive option to me. McCain is also determined to push through with the whole guest peasant / amnesty immigration package, making him a definite non-starter in my eyes.
Two points:
One: The article linked above relies heavily and unquestioningly on statements from... hold on... North Korean officials. These are, reliability-wise, probably some of the least trustworthy people in the world, not the least because they will be dragged off and shot if they say anything that is not officially sanctioned by the Dear Leader.
Two: North Korea has happily thrown every agreement ever signed overboard, pushing ahead with nuclear weapons development at every turn and during every "agreed framework", etc. simply because they want nuclear weapons. Which is a good move - instead of being an ignored backwater basket case they are top of the international newscasts. Even the mere threat of nuclear development has enabled them to serially blackmail the US, South Korea and Japan (among others) into providing extensive and much-needed relief.
In short, the bomb has been a good move for North Korea, and it would be foolish to believe that they will get rid of it, unless offered *very* substantial concessions from the South, Japan and the US. Threats of intervention on behalf of Bush are not credible, both because a war would be unacceptably costly to the US, and because Bush has burned too much domestic and international political capital in his Iraq misadventure. (If he does not realize this himself, his advisors do.)
So, what to do? Sit pretty and keep handling North Korea using a mix of sanctions, threats and concessions. The leadership of the North, though screwed up, occupy a materially and socially privileged position that they are unlikely to sacrifice in favor of certain death, unless pushed to believe their reign is about to collapse.
Mom! More Hot Pockets!
"I'm guessing you are quite young then? I'm over 40 and have 2 children. I write but haven't made a penny at it. Much as I enjoy writing, there is definitely an incentive to "publish" in knowing that if my work becomes popular late in my life (or just after) then my kids will benefit.
Parents want to provide for their children."
Guilty as charged, and fair point. My assumption here is that the number of people who write / perform only do so for the sake of their heirs to a very limited extent. Anyone know about any empirics regarding this?
...is you won't have that line of credit without significant income. Which you probably have, if you are an average first-worlder. And thus you enjoy lots of material and non-material amenities that 19:th century working stiffs just didn't have - making Marxism and similar ideologies a much less tempting prospect. (Hence creating incentives for discontented cafe-yabbering types to move their game elsewhere - I.e. race pimping and / or deconstructing Hamlet yet another time.)
As an aside, a credit-based economy might have some of it's roots in imprudence in the general population, and it might bring risks of financial disorder and possible collapse, but it signifies wealth - something the author appears unable to grasp.
Well, zero cost of distribution, more like. Which is nice - but only if offical distribution (Producer sales/distribution) maintains some advantage over non-official channels. Otherwise, the distribution advantage really isn't worth much.
Agree: "The life+70 years term is ludicrous. "To believe that anything beyond lifetime copyright impacts the incentive structure of creators takes some serious suspension of disbelief.
Disagree: "Going non-digital to digital changes nothing." It does - high-grade, repeated copying becomes a lot more easy and economical with digital media, often at near zero cost. This has two effects, pushing in different directions:
1. Immense possible benefit to consumers. You can get lots of high-quality stuff for almost nothing!
2. Immense possible harm to producers. If people are just copying your content free of charge, it's going to eat into your profits in most likely scenarios. In some scenarios, you might cease production entirely, or shift towards more difficult-to-copy formats.
Depending on your preferences, it's very likely that you will be wanting to rebalance copyright, one way or the other (more lenient, more strict), due to the adoption of digital media.
...of why present-day (post-)Marxists have mostly dumped the working class schtick and are now focusing on ethno-pimping and pointless language debates in English departments around the US.
After all, "You have nothing to lose but your Audi, hi-def TV and your $250 a month cellphone bill" is not really a winning slogan.