The difference between porn & obscenity is a matter of opinion. The current U.S. "Christian" right would be quite happy if simple nudity were considered obscenity, and have been working diligently to incrementally change "public morals" laws with that goal in mind.
Symbols of war & violence seem to be a great deal more acceptible to them, however.
In addition, large cities almost always have higher crime rates than non-city areas - simply by virtue of higher population density increasing chances for crime if nothing else.
It might be more persuasive an argument if there are any statistics about areas of equal population density, gun control/no gun control, and crime.
Left-right is an economic scale representing communism/socialism vs. pure laissez-faire capitalism.
I suppose that's one way of assigning left/right. From what I can see, at least in the U.S., left/right at the moment seems to mean for-normal-people vs. for people-with-money respectively. (It's worth noting that Democrat doesn't necessarily == left: a lot of Democrats who call themselves "left" aren't, and should probably be kicked out of the party).
The Democrats have evolved from the party where "the government will take care of economic problems" (Franklin Roosevelt) to "the government will take care of social problems" (Kennedy and LBJ), to now "the government will take care of moral problems" (Hillary Clinton).
I think you're confusing the Democrats for the Republicans for your last two evolutions. The Republicans have been all about sacrificing civil liberties in the name of enforcing their moral code, ever since they decided to "use" the religious right as a fanatic vote base (who ended up using who?). They've actually become quite blatant about it.
The Democrats are much less organized about trying to enforce any kind of moral code on the country, and it all tends to be touchy-feely stuff like "don't discriminate against minorities".
the Democrats' new philosophy scares me even more than anything Bush and Co. seems to be cooking up these days.
You've got a really bizarre interpretation of politics for a so-called libertarian - you seem to have taken every damaging behavior that the Republicans have been doing to our society, and used them as an excuse for hating Democrats who you claim "want" to do those things. It sounds like you've decided that you want to hate Democrats, and you'll use anything bad about government that you've heard to justify your view, even if those bad things have primarily been done by Republicans lately.
Our side? What the fuck is "our side"?!?!? Did Slashdot just become a Democrats-only club while I was away?
Are you a corporation or a person? If you are a real person - not a legally-defined fictitious entity like a corporation - then liberals & progressives (not necessarily Democrats) are on "your side", whether you support and/or agree with them or not.
Whenever you purchase something, just fry the RFID chip by putting the stuff for 15 seconds in your microwave.
I don't have a reference for it, but I believe it is possible for the RFID manufacturers to build circuits which protect the RFID circuitry when exposed to microwave radation & EMPs (shielding & bypass circuitry). Of course, anything could be overwhelmed, but I'm not sure a typical consumer would have access to the equipment necessary to do that.
That's what patents are for: to encourage me to invent by preventing big companies from just stealing my ideas for themselves.
What if a researcher within that company invented the exact same concept completely independently of you? What gives you the right to control the fruits of THAT researcher's labor?
And did you properly compensate EVERYONE whose work you used directly and indirectly to come up with your idea?
Again, I ask, what is the scientific reason for this being the goal?
It is always possible to come up with an infinite number of non-disprovable theories for any given physical phenomenon.
Occam's Razor (and its variants) are a way of picking something to work on. The fundamental concept doesn't insist that the "simplest" concept you pick will actually be true - only that, out of the infinite multitude of choices that you CAN pick, the simplest one that describes all the available observable data is probably the easiest starting point to work from.
Just make sure that if you stumble across observable evidence that contradicts the "simplest" theory that you chose to work from, that you reapply the Razor in a rational manner and choose another theory (which might be just tweaks on the previous one) that fits ALL of the observable evidence.
Who cares? It takes a lot of money to raise & care for kids. If you recycle them all before spending that money, that will leave that much more resources for the rest of us to squander.
Nullification is a de facto power, not a de jure power, at least to the best of my knowledge.
I think it's considered to be one of the "rights" which citizens can use because it wasn't explictly denied by the Constitution, and the Constitution indirectly prevents the government from passing laws against it (by requiring that the option of trial-by-jury is always allowed under most conditions).
I certainly agree with you that it is a "right" only in the sense that the jury pretty much has to lie about their motives to get it past the system. I would still argue that, in a situation where the legal system has become alien to the general public, such an ability for the general public to frustrate an-otherwise-unrestrained legal system is important.
(In a similar vein, I believe that all citizens should be allowed to vote, regardless of criminal status, as a valuable source of negative feedback against discriminatory legislation. That's a whole 'nother discussion though.:-)
If a jury decides to convict a person because of something besides the charges brought against the defendant, I sure hope the judge would throw it out.
I would probably agree in most cases, although allowing a judge to override a jury's decision without some very strict conditions is problematic, and undermines the checks-and-balances reasons for using a jury system.
Nullification is also a two-sided sword; Ben Franklin was acquitted, but so were many people who murdered blacks when the jury decided that murdering black people shouldn't be a crime.
Yeah, I agree, although the latter results seems to be more of a problem with the jury-selection process than with the actual concept of jury nullification.
Juries are supposed to enforce the law, not create it.
No, they're supposed to decide whether or not a law has been violated, and (within the leeway afforded to them by the law) what the consequences will be if the law has been violated.
And although it drives legal tyrants mad, it is also a jury's perogative - and duty as one of the few direct citizen check-and-balance power against overreaching government power - to exercise jury nullification (deliberately ruling in favor of a defendant although it is completely obvious that the letter of the law has been violated) where appropriate.
Unfortunately, it seems there is a great deal of effort to make juries think they don't have such power, and/or if they DO exercise such power, to invalidate the jury's decision & move the decision to a more "friendly-to-the-system" decision-maker (a judge).
There always needs to be at least SOME pure research being done, to keep the search space from stagnating.
Think of it the same way you do searching on an energy curve for global minima.
"Applied research", the way you say is the most efficient thing to do with research money, is the same as doing incremental searches from a known point (the point representing the problem you are trying to solve). It _is_ very efficient, but like every local search algorithm, it is prone to getting trapped in a local minimum - if the only thing you support is applied research, you will probably never find the "global" minimum, which could be the Holy-Grail-Answer to your problem.
By supporting direct research, even research which is not connected with any known problem, then when you ARE looking for an answer to a problem you have many more starting points and have a much better chance of finding that global minimum.
Of course, to get full societal benefit out of direct research requires that the research be 1) widely accessible, and 2) easily searchable, two qualities that I can see being diminished by the so-called public/private partnerships that are so popular by cash-strapped research institutions.
I'd wonder if the bias of the software developers who wrote the news reporting software was somehow being reflected.:)
You'll be able to tell when you start hearing complaints from the software developers that the news-reporting software _isn't_ reporting things the way they intended it to:-)
But sure as hell, if I were a business in a competitive environment (and a gov't agency is not), I'd be looking to implement the simple and effective white box solution on the cheap.
Of course, if you were the winning bidder on a government contract, you might implement the simple & effective white box solution, but CHARGE the government $60k anyway...
Before I can get the last part going though, some nimrod middle manager decides he isn't getting enough attention and power, and takes the whole kit and kaboodle to a much larger and more powerful company, with marginal interest in my field.
If you have been treating your employees right, then most of them won't follow that "nimrod middle manager". If they do, then that means that you were the "nimrod top executive" who shouldn't have been allowed to run a company in the first place, no matter how good your idea is or how hard you've been working.
Aren't they technically orbiting the center of the galaxy (along with the rest of the solar system)? Or do we know that their trajectory will eventually take them out of the galaxy?
If you actually gave a damn about what I said, you could Google for that info yourself & prove that I was just trolling.
Since you didn't, I can assume only that you don't actually give a damn, or couldn't find enough supporting information for your argument & and are therefore playing the talking asshole part.
So if "gets there first" wasn't a part of the equation, then inventors could have their livelihood taken away from them because people keep "inventing" what they've invented.
So because "gets there first" IS part of the equation, the 2nd guy can have their livelihood taken away from them even though they did just as much work as the 1st guy? That sounds just as unfair as what you're complaining about.
Giving _anybody_ a monopoly on a concept is a bad idea. If somebody's idea benefits society, then give them a lot of money for it. Allowing them to control what other people can do with THEIR own ideas is a bad idea all around.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference between porn & obscenity is a matter of opinion. The current U.S. "Christian" right would be quite happy if simple nudity were considered obscenity, and have been working diligently to incrementally change "public morals" laws with that goal in mind.
Symbols of war & violence seem to be a great deal more acceptible to them, however.
How about water? It's going to be important for other reasons anyway.
In addition, large cities almost always have higher crime rates than non-city areas - simply by virtue of higher population density increasing chances for crime if nothing else.
It might be more persuasive an argument if there are any statistics about areas of equal population density, gun control/no gun control, and crime.
I suppose that's one way of assigning left/right. From what I can see, at least in the U.S., left/right at the moment seems to mean for-normal-people vs. for people-with-money respectively. (It's worth noting that Democrat doesn't necessarily == left: a lot of Democrats who call themselves "left" aren't, and should probably be kicked out of the party).
I think you're confusing the Democrats for the Republicans for your last two evolutions. The Republicans have been all about sacrificing civil liberties in the name of enforcing their moral code, ever since they decided to "use" the religious right as a fanatic vote base (who ended up using who?). They've actually become quite blatant about it.
The Democrats are much less organized about trying to enforce any kind of moral code on the country, and it all tends to be touchy-feely stuff like "don't discriminate against minorities".
You've got a really bizarre interpretation of politics for a so-called libertarian - you seem to have taken every damaging behavior that the Republicans have been doing to our society, and used them as an excuse for hating Democrats who you claim "want" to do those things. It sounds like you've decided that you want to hate Democrats, and you'll use anything bad about government that you've heard to justify your view, even if those bad things have primarily been done by Republicans lately.
Are you a corporation or a person? If you are a real person - not a legally-defined fictitious entity like a corporation - then liberals & progressives (not necessarily Democrats) are on "your side", whether you support and/or agree with them or not.
I don't have a reference for it, but I believe it is possible for the RFID manufacturers to build circuits which protect the RFID circuitry when exposed to microwave radation & EMPs (shielding & bypass circuitry). Of course, anything could be overwhelmed, but I'm not sure a typical consumer would have access to the equipment necessary to do that.
What if a researcher within that company invented the exact same concept completely independently of you? What gives you the right to control the fruits of THAT researcher's labor?
And did you properly compensate EVERYONE whose work you used directly and indirectly to come up with your idea?
It is always possible to come up with an infinite number of non-disprovable theories for any given physical phenomenon.
Occam's Razor (and its variants) are a way of picking something to work on. The fundamental concept doesn't insist that the "simplest" concept you pick will actually be true - only that, out of the infinite multitude of choices that you CAN pick, the simplest one that describes all the available observable data is probably the easiest starting point to work from.
Just make sure that if you stumble across observable evidence that contradicts the "simplest" theory that you chose to work from, that you reapply the Razor in a rational manner and choose another theory (which might be just tweaks on the previous one) that fits ALL of the observable evidence.
Who cares? It takes a lot of money to raise & care for kids. If you recycle them all before spending that money, that will leave that much more resources for the rest of us to squander.
I think it's considered to be one of the "rights" which citizens can use because it wasn't explictly denied by the Constitution, and the Constitution indirectly prevents the government from passing laws against it (by requiring that the option of trial-by-jury is always allowed under most conditions).
I certainly agree with you that it is a "right" only in the sense that the jury pretty much has to lie about their motives to get it past the system. I would still argue that, in a situation where the legal system has become alien to the general public, such an ability for the general public to frustrate an-otherwise-unrestrained legal system is important.
(In a similar vein, I believe that all citizens should be allowed to vote, regardless of criminal status, as a valuable source of negative feedback against discriminatory legislation. That's a whole 'nother discussion though. :-)
I would probably agree in most cases, although allowing a judge to override a jury's decision without some very strict conditions is problematic, and undermines the checks-and-balances reasons for using a jury system.
Yeah, I agree, although the latter results seems to be more of a problem with the jury-selection process than with the actual concept of jury nullification.
Or worse, starts playing random Britney Spears song clips. *shudders*
No, they're supposed to decide whether or not a law has been violated, and (within the leeway afforded to them by the law) what the consequences will be if the law has been violated.
And although it drives legal tyrants mad, it is also a jury's perogative - and duty as one of the few direct citizen check-and-balance power against overreaching government power - to exercise jury nullification (deliberately ruling in favor of a defendant although it is completely obvious that the letter of the law has been violated) where appropriate .
Unfortunately, it seems there is a great deal of effort to make juries think they don't have such power, and/or if they DO exercise such power, to invalidate the jury's decision & move the decision to a more "friendly-to-the-system" decision-maker (a judge).
Bleah - I mean to say, what people do with THEIR own private property.
So what entitles the recording industry to control what people do with your own private property?
Yeah, it would also save a lot of money & society resources if we did that to troublemakers. And poor people. And kids.
There always needs to be at least SOME pure research being done, to keep the search space from stagnating.
Think of it the same way you do searching on an energy curve for global minima.
"Applied research", the way you say is the most efficient thing to do with research money, is the same as doing incremental searches from a known point (the point representing the problem you are trying to solve). It _is_ very efficient, but like every local search algorithm, it is prone to getting trapped in a local minimum - if the only thing you support is applied research, you will probably never find the "global" minimum, which could be the Holy-Grail-Answer to your problem.
By supporting direct research, even research which is not connected with any known problem, then when you ARE looking for an answer to a problem you have many more starting points and have a much better chance of finding that global minimum.
Of course, to get full societal benefit out of direct research requires that the research be 1) widely accessible, and 2) easily searchable, two qualities that I can see being diminished by the so-called public/private partnerships that are so popular by cash-strapped research institutions.
Unfortunately, the type of "reform" that they will want will benefit them, and make it harder for smaller competitors to challenge them.
You'll be able to tell when you start hearing complaints from the software developers that the news-reporting software _isn't_ reporting things the way they intended it to :-)
Mmmmmm...carcinogens...
Of course, if you were the winning bidder on a government contract, you might implement the simple & effective white box solution, but CHARGE the government $60k anyway...
If you have been treating your employees right, then most of them won't follow that "nimrod middle manager". If they do, then that means that you were the "nimrod top executive" who shouldn't have been allowed to run a company in the first place, no matter how good your idea is or how hard you've been working.
Aren't they technically orbiting the center of the galaxy (along with the rest of the solar system)? Or do we know that their trajectory will eventually take them out of the galaxy?
If you actually gave a damn about what I said, you could Google for that info yourself & prove that I was just trolling.
Since you didn't, I can assume only that you don't actually give a damn, or couldn't find enough supporting information for your argument & and are therefore playing the talking asshole part.
Yeah, the rubberstamp court. How many times have they turned down any requests, versus how many they've approved? Some judicial oversight there.
So because "gets there first" IS part of the equation, the 2nd guy can have their livelihood taken away from them even though they did just as much work as the 1st guy? That sounds just as unfair as what you're complaining about.
Giving _anybody_ a monopoly on a concept is a bad idea. If somebody's idea benefits society, then give them a lot of money for it. Allowing them to control what other people can do with THEIR own ideas is a bad idea all around.