Especially in the absence of a union, disorganized laborers' liberty is defenseless in the world of corporate and government control.
I agree with you that unions can be of value. I'm currently represented by one myself.
However, your use of "defenseless" makes no sense. Certainly I have a defense. It's called "not working where I don't want to work". And I can assure you that it is quite effective.
But the fact that it comes from a university doesn't offer any special guarantees in my book.
Certainly not. But we should recognize that the pressures on academic vs. corporate researchers are very different. And I think the pressures in an academic environment are much less conducive to faking results. For one thing, "how much money will we make off this in the next six months" is not how academics think. So ripping off the customers for a quick buck is much less common. For another, it is generally understood that findings are subject to peer review, unlike the trade-secret mentality in the corporate world. Since faking will probably be discovered, people tend not to do it.
Yes, you can mention high profile announcements from academia that turned out to be problematic. I can think of a couple of others you didn't mention. But that's all I can come up with: a handful. On the other hand, I see bogus, vaporware, and ridiculously biased announcements from the corporate world pretty much on a daily basis. Probably you do, too.
In short, certainly, the academic research world is far, far from perfect. But in terms of integrity and reliability, it is head and shoulders above the corporate world.
So no, insurance companeis aren't likely to reap the whole benefit. As with most cases, it's likely to be distributed. The hospital will make more, the insurance company will make more, the insured will pay well. With an efficency increase, everyone tends to win.
Well, I'm glad someone on/. is showing some intelligence.
Wish I had some points; I'd mod you up....
Yeah, yeah, you're being funny. But seriously, many of us think oil is underpriced.
Polution is an externality for both producers and consumers of oil. If that were changed so that people were reponsible for fixing
(or paying for fixing) the damage they caused, then the price of oil would probably be significantly higher than it is now.
But what good is an ivy-league education if you can't freely express your ideas?
Really now.
Yes, certainly, freedom of expression is important.
It's very, very, very, very important.
But here is the answer to your question:
A top-notch education can help you to write great software or to design airplanes or bridges or dams or houses or computers
or to discover new mathematics or new chemical processes or new drugs or to run a business brilliantly
or to be a world-class singer or painter or sculptor or dancer or to manage a wilderness or a fire department or a court of law
or a hotel or a fishery or to more fully understand the processes that led to our current world (physical, geological, biological,
historical, etc.) or to be a physician or a teacher or a lawyer, etc., etc., etc.
Again, freedom is important.
But it is not the sum total of life.
The people of China are living in a situation that it is intolerable;
but the great majority of them are not miserable.
They have lives; they do things; they learn.
And they can benefit from an ivy-league education.
This is why Econ-101 is mandatory for most 4 year degrees.
Much of the rest of your article is on target, but, sadly, I don't think this statement works.
In my experience (undergrad, grad, and faculty at several major U.S. universities) economics is rarely a degree requirement,
except for business and economics degrees.
Further, a basic econ class is going to get you supply & demand, and concepts like profit, marginal cost, utility, and elasticity.
Then you look at the effect on all this of monopolies, taxation, labor unions, trade across national boundaries, etc.
It's a rare econ 101 student who would be able to do the kind of reasoning you are talking about.
What the hell made Florida ever think that this was a good idea?
Florida doesn't "think". It is not a person. Florida is 16 million people, some of whom think.
What happened here is that someone did something stupid and someone else called them on it.
But now, instead of fixing the problem, they're working on CYA.
This is standard practice in any large, dysfunctional organization, nothing particularly special about Florida.
Yeah, they completely forgot about the Apple///, which was the first true failure.
At least the Lisa stuff got reused as bits of the Mac.:)
Hey, don't knock the///. It got reused, too.
Mainly as parts of many fine, well-managed landfills throughout America,
on which are now situated parks and schools for the recreation and
edification of the populace.
Not counting, of course, the people in 1984 that said the Mac was dead on arrival because it didn't have an 80-column screen and cursor keys.
I realize this is not your point, but the fact is that the original Mac did have a screen with enough resolution to show 80 columns of text. Back in '85 I was connecting to BBSs with my Mac and 1200 baud modem and displaying 80-column text just fine. (Just a-settin' the record straight.)
I went to that site.
It's an incredibly busy page with links to zillions of articles.
I want to read the one article that tells me why war is bad for business.
Help me out?
However, I don't think this has ever been a problem untill it became a sort of myth that there is actually something caled a neutral point of view. This, I think the whole idea is quite recent and arrived with modern newspapers.
I suspect that you are right, hundreds of slashdotters notwithstanding.
Someone objected and said that courts have been supposed to be neutral for a long time. But I am not sure about that. It appears to me that judges historically were supposed to be righteous and to judge according to the law. But if a judge knows something about someone that suggests their side of a case is the right one, then historically I don't think people would have a problem with the judge taking that into account.
It still isn't a problem -I say, let all viewpoints be recorded, at least all well written and well sourced viewpoints. I think it is fairer to the reader if a point of view is out in the open rather than hidden behind claimed netrality.... We are much better served by varying viewpoints.
If you don't know about it already, you may want to take a look at Wikinfo, which is trying to take Wikipedia-style content in a direction you might approve of.
Yes, TPMs can be used to remove privacy, but only with your consent.
I suspect that what you really mean is that TPMs can be used remove privacy, but only if software is executed that
performs whatever operation removes privacy.
This is equivalent to your statement under the assumption that software is only executed with the consent of the user.
However, as we all know, there are some problems with this assumption.
In other terms, assuming a population of about 6.5 billion humans, there are enough IPv6 addresses such that every atom of every person on Earth could be assigned 7 unique addresses with enough to spare (assuming 7 × 10^27 atoms per human).
In other words, forget about subatomic-scale networked devices. Sorry, not enough address space. Geez, why don't these people ever think of the future?
Re:panspermia, evolution
on
Space Lichens
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
15 days exposed in LEO and the samples were still viable? That indicates, to me, that lichen not only "happen" to be able to survive in space, but that the base organism evolved in space and transported to Earth continually until conditions allowed it to survive here.
Maybe. The problem is the evidence works both ways.
In particular, this space-based lichen also has the ability to survive, long-term, in a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere,
at temperatures a bit above the freezing point of water.
In fact, it actually does better in such an environment than in its native vacuum environment.
So maybe the real truth is that it actually evolved in such an environment, and not in a vacuum.
I'm not trying to belittle your ideas here.
I'm just saying that the place where an organism survives best is a good bet to be its native environment.
And vacuum doesn't fit the bill for lichen.
On the other hand, it is possible that what we have here is an organism that mostly hangs out on planetary surfaces, in an atmosphere,
and occasionally makes successful trips through vacuum.
But such trips would necessarily be very long: years (at least) within the Solar System, millennia between stars.
So the real question is whether lichen (or whatever) can be freeze dried for a while and then brought back to life
by the presence of a favorable environment.
The next experiment they need to do is to stick some lichen out in space for a year or so, then dump it in a nice tropical
environment and see what happens.
Why not just forget about time zones, day light savings and create a new universal global time.... It just seems like we are slowly outgrowing the need for this,....
I think you are a bit ahead of your <ahem> time.
We're getting there, as you say, but we're not there yet.
As evidence, I offer the fact that changes in Daylight Savings Time really do result in changes in fuel usage.
We all still seem to think we need to do certain things at certain clock times,
not when it's most sensible to do them.
On the other hand, having a clock time that has nothing to do with the sun might lead us to do things at
sensible hours, since the only other option (following the "normal" clock time) would be so ridiculous.
In any case, there is no way such a suggestion would be successful -- yet.
Wait about 50 years and suggest it again.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you that unions can be of value. I'm currently represented by one myself.
However, your use of "defenseless" makes no sense. Certainly I have a defense. It's called "not working where I don't want to work". And I can assure you that it is quite effective.
Certainly not. But we should recognize that the pressures on academic vs. corporate researchers are very different. And I think the pressures in an academic environment are much less conducive to faking results. For one thing, "how much money will we make off this in the next six months" is not how academics think. So ripping off the customers for a quick buck is much less common. For another, it is generally understood that findings are subject to peer review, unlike the trade-secret mentality in the corporate world. Since faking will probably be discovered, people tend not to do it.
Yes, you can mention high profile announcements from academia that turned out to be problematic. I can think of a couple of others you didn't mention. But that's all I can come up with: a handful. On the other hand, I see bogus, vaporware, and ridiculously biased announcements from the corporate world pretty much on a daily basis. Probably you do, too.
In short, certainly, the academic research world is far, far from perfect. But in terms of integrity and reliability, it is head and shoulders above the corporate world.
Well, I'm glad someone on /. is showing some intelligence.
Wish I had some points; I'd mod you up ....
Yeah, yeah, you're being funny. But seriously, many of us think oil is underpriced.
Polution is an externality for both producers and consumers of oil. If that were changed so that people were reponsible for fixing (or paying for fixing) the damage they caused, then the price of oil would probably be significantly higher than it is now.
Really now.
Yes, certainly, freedom of expression is important. It's very, very, very, very important.
But here is the answer to your question: A top-notch education can help you to write great software or to design airplanes or bridges or dams or houses or computers or to discover new mathematics or new chemical processes or new drugs or to run a business brilliantly or to be a world-class singer or painter or sculptor or dancer or to manage a wilderness or a fire department or a court of law or a hotel or a fishery or to more fully understand the processes that led to our current world (physical, geological, biological, historical, etc.) or to be a physician or a teacher or a lawyer, etc., etc., etc.
Again, freedom is important. But it is not the sum total of life. The people of China are living in a situation that it is intolerable; but the great majority of them are not miserable. They have lives; they do things; they learn. And they can benefit from an ivy-league education.
Much of the rest of your article is on target, but, sadly, I don't think this statement works.
In my experience (undergrad, grad, and faculty at several major U.S. universities) economics is rarely a degree requirement, except for business and economics degrees. Further, a basic econ class is going to get you supply & demand, and concepts like profit, marginal cost, utility, and elasticity. Then you look at the effect on all this of monopolies, taxation, labor unions, trade across national boundaries, etc. It's a rare econ 101 student who would be able to do the kind of reasoning you are talking about.
Florida doesn't "think". It is not a person. Florida is 16 million people, some of whom think.
What happened here is that someone did something stupid and someone else called them on it. But now, instead of fixing the problem, they're working on CYA. This is standard practice in any large, dysfunctional organization, nothing particularly special about Florida.
Indeed. As I see it, this is obviously a good thing. Putting a negative spin on it is bizarre, from the reader's POV.
On the other hand, I can see why journalists might not like it. And the author is a journalist.
At least the Lisa stuff got reused as bits of the Mac. :)
Hey, don't knock the ///. It got reused, too.
Mainly as parts of many fine, well-managed landfills throughout America,
on which are now situated parks and schools for the recreation and
edification of the populace.
I realize this is not your point, but the fact is that the original Mac did have a screen with enough resolution to show 80 columns of text. Back in '85 I was connecting to BBSs with my Mac and 1200 baud modem and displaying 80-column text just fine. (Just a-settin' the record straight.)
But can you tell where the bullseye is, by looking at the distribution of darts?
Actually, I think you probably can.
Well, unmanned spaceflight is still of interest ....
And how would we go about verifying these names?
Two reasons: Winter, and that "almost" cleverly hidden in your message.
"Bang" is the new "boom".
Possibly the state is bound by an NDA?
That's one question that is easy to answer. The U.S. is a bit trickier.
Learn why war is bad for business (both big and small). http://www.antiwar.com/
I went to that site. It's an incredibly busy page with links to zillions of articles. I want to read the one article that tells me why war is bad for business. Help me out?
I suspect that you are right, hundreds of slashdotters notwithstanding.
Someone objected and said that courts have been supposed to be neutral for a long time. But I am not sure about that. It appears to me that judges historically were supposed to be righteous and to judge according to the law. But if a judge knows something about someone that suggests their side of a case is the right one, then historically I don't think people would have a problem with the judge taking that into account.
It still isn't a problem -I say, let all viewpoints be recorded, at least all well written and well sourced viewpoints. I think it is fairer to the reader if a point of view is out in the open rather than hidden behind claimed netrality. ... We are much better served by varying viewpoints.
If you don't know about it already, you may want to take a look at Wikinfo, which is trying to take Wikipedia-style content in a direction you might approve of.
Hmmm ... okay, so what can we do to make Wikipedia less popular?
<wink> <wink> <grin>
I suspect that what you really mean is that TPMs can be used remove privacy, but only if software is executed that performs whatever operation removes privacy.
This is equivalent to your statement under the assumption that software is only executed with the consent of the user. However, as we all know, there are some problems with this assumption.
So that they can help you get them, through a convenient, well organized interface.
You have certainly pointed out some real disadvantages to this approach. However, it is silly to suggest there are not any advantages.
In other words, forget about subatomic-scale networked devices. Sorry, not enough address space. Geez, why don't these people ever think of the future?
Maybe. The problem is the evidence works both ways. In particular, this space-based lichen also has the ability to survive, long-term, in a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, at temperatures a bit above the freezing point of water. In fact, it actually does better in such an environment than in its native vacuum environment. So maybe the real truth is that it actually evolved in such an environment, and not in a vacuum.
I'm not trying to belittle your ideas here. I'm just saying that the place where an organism survives best is a good bet to be its native environment. And vacuum doesn't fit the bill for lichen.
On the other hand, it is possible that what we have here is an organism that mostly hangs out on planetary surfaces, in an atmosphere, and occasionally makes successful trips through vacuum. But such trips would necessarily be very long: years (at least) within the Solar System, millennia between stars. So the real question is whether lichen (or whatever) can be freeze dried for a while and then brought back to life by the presence of a favorable environment. The next experiment they need to do is to stick some lichen out in space for a year or so, then dump it in a nice tropical environment and see what happens.
I think you are a bit ahead of your <ahem> time. We're getting there, as you say, but we're not there yet. As evidence, I offer the fact that changes in Daylight Savings Time really do result in changes in fuel usage. We all still seem to think we need to do certain things at certain clock times, not when it's most sensible to do them.
On the other hand, having a clock time that has nothing to do with the sun might lead us to do things at sensible hours, since the only other option (following the "normal" clock time) would be so ridiculous.
In any case, there is no way such a suggestion would be successful -- yet. Wait about 50 years and suggest it again.