The problem is no longer that Linux (or more specifically KDE and Gnome) are too complicated for ordinary users to configure. They are just as good, if not better than Windows in most areas. The problem isn't reaching usability parity, the problem is overcoming the clash of cultures.
Linux has a vastly superior command line to Windows, to the extent that virtually every guide to doing stuff in Linux will tell you to enter in some command or other to the terminal because it takes much less time to explain, and much less time to do. In addition responses from the command line are often easier to decipher, you cant exactly double click in verbose mode.
Windows on the other hand, has a command line that sucks giant dingle berries. Virtually no one, even people who are very proficient in using Windows, use it. So all of the guides detail graphical commands.
The problem then comes when people who are used to lots of graphical support being told to enter command xyz. The problem is not usability any more. The problem is a lack of guidelines in a language people are used to. KDE and Gnome make doing things less intimidating and more intuitive than using a command line, but hardly any guide is written to make use of this.
The problem isn't features or usability, the problem is audience specific documentation.
I'm not surprised that the company has gone through lawsuits, seeing as using an IQ test for discriminating for the purposes of employment is almost certainly racist. Your former employer is playing a very dangerous game using IQ tests to differentiate employees. The APA conducted studies showing that scores on IQ tests (which is not the same thing as intelligence I might add) correlate with race. While I wouldn't go so far as to call an IQ test racist (since we don't really know why test scores between races are different), using them as a basis for employment almost certainly is.
It isn't like there isn't precedent, Griggs v. Duke Power Company for example shows that using an IQ test can be deemed as discrimination against a protected class.
If you think a 879 dead (the vast majority of whom are not civilians) out of a population of nearly 1.5 million constitutes genocide then I doubt you can be reasoned with.
If Israel wanted to wipe out the population of Gaza they could. They are targeting Hamas.
That Israel should just suck it up because they are the stronger side?
I really don't get what you are trying to say. Do you think that this response is disproportionate (in the sense of international law)? If that is the case it is hardly surprising that I did not pick up on it since your case is rather poorly made in your post.
Disproportionate use of force is something legally under the jurisdiction of the international criminal court, and Israel is not a Rome Statute signatory. But let us ignore that for a second, since we really want to talk about the moral issues that lead to these laws rather than the law itself.
The idea that one should not use disproportionate force is one of the many pieces of international law which is intended to reduce civilian casualties. Reducing civilian casualties is a good thing.
The problem with it is that it has to go in tandem with the notion that neither side may use human shields. Why? Because the idea encourages the use of human shields. If I have a high value military target or person, all I have to do to prevent my enemy attacking them is surround them by illegitimate targets.
There is a war crime going on here, but it is not the use of disproportionate force, it is the use of human shields. Had Hamas set up their installations, their military command and control structures ('government offices') and their militia stations ('police') somewhere away from civilian targets, then the number of civilian casualties would be far lower.
If the authority in Gaza does not want more civilian casualties then it needs to use it's internal security forces to prevent the garrisoning of structures intentionally still occupied by civilians. It needs to locate it's military installations with a mind to minimize (rather than maximize) civilian losses. They have not done this and they are the ones who bear the responsibility for the civilian casualties.
Any innocent civilian killed is a tragedy. But that must be weighed against establishing the idea that one side has the right to use human shields.
Just because you suck at attempting genocide doesn't mean a forceful response to it is not warranted. We can discuss elements in Israel attempting to escalate the conflict (along with plenty of help from Hamas) in Nov if you like, or the humanitarian conditions in Gaza as a potential justification for armed resistance to what amounts to a blockade by Israel and Egypt (although I don't see many rockets heading Egypt's way). Not sure how you are going to justify directing attacks at civilian targets but you might have a different perspective.
But I hardly think you can use one sides military ineffectiveness as an argument though. Unless you are in favour of letting out all the criminals in jail for attempted robbery, murder, etc.
I love the way that people keep arguing the legal merits like it is certain that is going to matter.
All it takes is one closet scientologist judge and you are all royally fucked. Heck it isn't like scientology doesn't hire enough lawyers that they don't have a couple of judges by now.
These are a bunch of traitorous pseudo-religious wack jobs hell bent on dragging everyone into their crazy little cult and using any method they can get away with (including murder, extortion, separating people from their families) to undermine our free way of life.
To those in the states, you are steadily approaching the point where if you don't get Scientology under control by reasonable means (locking up it's high ranking members, seizing all it's assets, purging the government of scientology influence) you will find yourselves in a position where patriotic Americans will start fighting back through less pleasant means.
Incidentally I'm not an American, and I'm not advocating the use of violence against scientologist, I'm just predicting what will happen if this situation isn't brought under control. I will say this however, if it does reach that point, violent revolution may be your only option.
There is something I really don't get here. They already have a tax that they have exclusive right to levy. That is basically what copyright is, a tax on copying that we grant to content producers. Now they want another tax?
What happens when that tax isn't enough, will they want another one after than? Maybe everyone should pay a tax, since we all whistle. Maybe there should be a tax on video recording equipment since that is used to pirate stuff from cinemas. And a separate tax for DVD recorders and discs. Maybe one for computers too since they can make copies. And one on the software that lets you do the copying.
Using the government as a private army to get money from people (with absolutely no public good as a result) is similar to the mob, but it has another name as well. Corporatism. That is all this is, pure and simple. At least with the mob you have a hope of getting rid of some of their influence through government.
To the RIAA, MPAA, etc. One tax is enough. You get one tax, if you cant find a way to make it work, that is your problem. Welcome to the wonderful world of capitalism, don't let the door hit your inefficient ass on the way out.
I'm starting to understand why I'm getting so many replies on this now. I meant taking 16 O-levels would be insane for all bar the absolute elite candidates. I know there were people who took 10, or 11, or 12.
Problem with discussing this kind of thing is that I've had a very hard time getting the statistics I need to back up my point, so busting out anecdotal evidence just causes everyone else to go busting out their anecdotal evidence and we get nowhere.
If you know where I can find the statistics I need to either back or disprove my assertion I'd be very grateful.
I'd love to make history a core subject. In spite of sucking at it to the tune of "I cant remember any date of significance" I'm a history obsessive. And what you say is true, history is important if we are to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. The problem is one cannot understand a higher level subject like history without first understanding how to make a reasoned argument, how to construct a statistical analysis and how to analyse text. We would all be better people if we knew more physics, more history, more economics, more art. The problem is that these concepts are too high level to form the core of any academic work at age 16.
Well unfortunately I only have the someone poor statistical sample of comparing my parents vague memories to my own vague memories so I don't have the much needed statistics to back this up. It also really doesn't help that a large number of students did CSEs rather than O-levels. When these were combined it really does seem to me that the result was more strongly inspired by the CSE than the O-level.
The bottom line is that a direct comparison really isn't possible. If you know where I can get some statistics to test my hypothesis (that people sit more courses now) I'd be interested since I've been looking for a while now.
Not sure what you are getting at here. I was actually berating the simplistic reasoning you are berating. I suggested that it was a combination of factors and that the situation is more complex than it first appears (what common sense would suggest).
In fact one factor I left off is the Flynn Effect. People are smarter, or at least better at IQ tests now that they used to be. If they are getting better at IQ tests then one might reasonably presume they are getting better at other tests too.
My point was that having read past exam questions the tests are clearly easier, at least from the perspective of someone with a good grounding in the field. I even went on to point out that because modern tests are more subjective and poorly structure they are harder for a certain class of student.
My argument is in no way how you have classified it.
No one said learn latin. Latin as a core subject would also be a massive waste of time. What I was saying, and what I think harmony was agreeing to is that it is more important to teach children how to learn and teaching them overarching concepts in the core subjects than it is for them to have a poor, broad and vague understanding in a multitude of subjects.
If you want to tack onto the core one additional course that covers politics, civics, the media, etc I wouldn't object. But that is not what media studies courses are. I'm not far out of high school myself and I remember what media studies was and it did not teach any of the things you suggest it did. In fact the only course I've encountered that actually covered what you are describing in sufficient detail to actually be worthwhile is undergraduate psychology.
The problem here is actually a combination of factors.
It is true that exams have gotten easier. But you cant compare a GCSE with the old O-levels and have a like for like comparison. For a start most students today take about 10 GCSEs. Some take as many as 16! Taking that many O-levels would have been insane. GCSEs have coursework with is usually a total waste of time (and take up a big chunk of time).
They tend to teach things in such a way as to make them deliberately more difficult. Imagine trying to do diffraction when you have no idea what a function is (or a sine wave). Or study Newtons laws when you have no idea about vectors (never mind calculus). By dumbing things down they have made the subjects harder to teach for all bar the stupidest of candidates which was always the intentions. Dumbing a subject down often makes it harder! Especially for the best students.
Then there are a whole bunch of subjects that are a complete waste of time. IT is a good example. Media studies and business studies are another pair of good examples. Incidentally I did business studies and IT so I know what a waste of time they are. The entire science curriculum is taught with virtually no maths, and no statistics.
Modularity of the courses also wastes an immense amount of time. Studying for an exam carries significant overhead. Testing should all be done at the end, with the option to resit (so as to give people who simply have a bad day a second chance). The tests should be hard enough that it doesn't matter how many times you resit (since passing the test demonstrates that you have the necessary knowledge).
It's no wonder that structuring a course which seems to be designed only to get the maximum number of passes (and sod the ability to tell the difference between the genius and the guy who knows just enough) would be railed against.
In the UK at 16 students should be taking around 5 core courses. There should be no course work other than mandatory (but unmarked) labwork in the sciences. English, Maths, Science, Philosophy and Statistics. The emphasis should be on functional capabilities with mathematics, a good cultural understanding in English and good logical and inferential skills in statistics and philosophy. This is supposed to be teaching people the foundations of knowledge, not pretending that people with no knowledge of logic can make a reasoned argument, or that people with no knowledge of calculus can hope to understand Newtons laws.
If we then want a couple of optional courses in computer science, higher physics, economics, art, history, geograph and so on, that's great. But every 16 year old should be able to construct a coherent sentence, work with derivatives, matrices, know what an ad hominem is and be able to analyse experimental data. Without these very basic skills there is absolutely nothing of value you can teach them.
The A-levels are not (at least in their current form) hard enough (or structured sufficiently) to be teaching at 16, never mind the immense waste of time that is the modern GCSE.
The problem with this advert is the same as the problem with a whole bunch of other adverts.
"Really fast" is totally subjective.
We should assume that an advertisement is misleading (and therefore cannot abuse a limited public good like the electromagnetic spectrum) unless an objective metric has been constructed. A full, published report including the methodologies should be mandatory for any claim of superiority in an advert. And the body regulating the advertisements gets to decide is the metric is objective and must fully publish all it's decisions and reasons for taking them. If you cannot objectively demonstrate a statement then it is assumed false.
We should limit advertisers to actual recordings of products with no digital touch ups beyond adding text and logos to the screen. We certainly shouldn't permit speeding up an advert where the principle claim is that the product is "really fast" (or for that matter digitally altering models in anti-rinkle cream ads).
What we do with other mediums not limited like the electromagnetic spectrum is another matter, but this ad certainly shouldn't be on TV.
Yes, Quantum Physics does indeed tell us that one cannot concurrently know certain things about certain systems. There are two ways of looking at this. Either there are hidden variables (or something similar) which if we only knew we would know these quantities (these would as it turns out have to be awful odd things but it is a worthy field of inquiry none the less). The second is that these quantities do not exist.
If you are into Occam's razor then since the first idea postulates a whole bunch of stuff you simply don't need one concludes that the second is the more likely proposition.
You appear to reject Occam's razor as a philosophical concept. That is perfectly justifiable. I would be interested to know however, what criterion would you use to differentiate between Maxwell's equations, and the theory that light behaves exactly the way Maxwell's equations describe due to invincible super unicorns forcing it to?
It is very simple, gender equality is important for a number of reasons.
First it is an indicator of overt discrimination. One sign that there is overt discrimination is that the proportion of women and men in a field is different. It doesn't prove overt discrimination and there are many possible explanations but it is important to work out which explanations apply.
One explanation you have hinted at is that genetic diversity causes this selection. While the differences in aptitude between the sexes are minor, minor differences in distributions can have profound effects on the number of outliers. If I have two distributions with roughly the same mean and slightly different standard deviations and then I ask how many individuals are above say 3 standard deviations of the distribution with smaller range I will find that there are far more individuals in the more widely spread out distribution. In simple terms if I have selection criteria Which requires high aptitude in some specific skill set I will find that I select more individuals in from this distribution with greater spread.
While most half decent studies show that on most aptitude tests men and women are roughly equal the spreads are sometimes different. One might try to explain the difference between the number of men and women in different professions using this. There are two problems I see with this however, especially when specifically applied to computer science. The difference in spread we are talking about here are not in my opinion enough to explain the differences from parity we observe. This is just my opinion but from what I remember most of these differences are very small (I cant be sure since I don't the statistics on the threshold level of aptitude necessary to enter the disciplines in question). In addition were it true that the genetic differences between and men and women explained the male to female ratio in various professions then I would expect to see it in other disciplines like medicine. We don't.
Another explanation is social conditioning. If you repeatedly tell little girls that they are pretty and reward them for it, while telling boys they are smart and reward them for it then little girls are going to grow up concerned with their appearance and little boys are going to grow up concerned with appearing smart. Give a boy Lego and a girl Barbie and you are conditioning them. The end result of this conditioning can be selection of employment. Depending on what you want to optimise this can be a bad thing. We have seen above that aptitude does not follow strongly gender lines so a sizable subset of boys and girls are being encouraged to aspire to goals that they are not necessarily suited for.
Why would we do this though if it weren't optimal? Well the human brain is basically a big correlation machine (and a really good one at that). Small differences could easily be amplified by conditioning, which our brains notice and passes on by us in turn conditioning our children. This conditioning becomes a social norm and we continually pass it on. But if you want children to be encouraged to work at what they are best at this is a problem we need to address.
Gender equality is important because we need to know when the difference from parity is caused by genetic differences (if nature is sexist it really doesn't matter), what fraction are caused by social conditioning, what fraction is caused by direct discrimination and what fraction is caused by indirect discrimination or institutional sexism (which I will come to in a second). I think that trying to explain gender differences using purely genetics is absolute folly. I don't think social conditioning is as big a factor as many would like to believe but I don't have much evidence to back that up.
However, these ideas in no way explain what is going on here. Near the turn of the millennium around 30% of undergraduate degrees in computer science were complete by women. According to the summary that is now closer to 10%. So the question is what has chang
I understand the point you are trying to make, but I must admit I feel your premise is deeply flawed. Since you seem keen to end the discussion I just wanted to clarify a couple of things.
I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to keep secrets. You choose to write a poem and keep it secret no force of law should be able to make you do otherwise.
Where we disagree is what happens once it is published. You believe that once an idea is published it remains the property of it's originator. I do not. I believe that once you sell and object an individual to someone they can do what they like with it. Be it replicate it or otherwise. You thoughts are your own, if you keep them to yourself.
You are correct in how you describe how science is currently done, but I was illustrating how it would be done if we changed to your system (who in their right mind is going to accept a measly government grant when they can make a mint from their ideas and theorems for the rest of their life?).
I think you are conflating two issues into one. The first is how do we get people to develop new technologies, produce new media and so on. The second is what rights do those people have to the ideas they produce.
It is interesting you list patents. Patents are time limited. They are another government mandated monopoly with the exact same intent. Do you think we should remove that time limit and make them into a permanent sort of property?
Imagine for a second if every physicist in the world had to pay Dirac's family 5c for a license to use a new book on quantum theory. Now 50c isn't that much, and I'm imagining Dirac's family being generous. But Dirac was hardly alone in his work. Now comes 50c for Hilbert (after all you are using a Hilbert space). Schoedinger will want a cut, as will Heisenberg, and Einstein. Bohr shouldn't miss out, neither should de Broglie, Bohm. Which interpretation are we using? Maybe Everett deserves a cut, or Feynman. Probably both since I would imagine we will use whichever is most conceptually or mathematically useful. Of course the cheap publishers will just opt not to talk about more than one interpretation, saves money after all. Lets say we are studing a modification of the Ising model and pick ourselves up a book on that, well there is 50c for Ising, and better pay up 50c for Onsager too (we may well be using his exact solution or some result derived there of, we aren't sure, better pay up to be safe). And so on, this list of people you would need to pay would be immense. We have a system that is expensive beyond measure and a legal minefield. Now this just in a book. What about if I want to publish my work. What if I want to make a product. Well that had best be on a per unit basis (or some more expensive bulk licence). Everything from TVs to through computers to digital wrist watches depends on countless discoveries.
The problem with making ideas into property is that you create massive scarcity. We go from a world where a TV costs a few hundred dollars to a world where a ordinary TV costs thousands of dollars because it depends on thousands and thousands of ideas, each of which has a price.
Now if you time limit control of ideas (like we do with patents), then eventually all the above problems go away (and you incentivise new discovery). But if you make ideas into property then the problem remains in perpetuity.
I have to admit that at this stage I have no idea what kind of system you support. I can only assume your last comment was directed at someone else because I'm not opposed to a reformed version of copyright, which incentivises the creation of new works. I am in favour of a reformed version of the patent system, which incentivises new inventions. I acknowledge that this deprives others of the right to the knowledge and culture there in (a right I believe we all have), and I'm prepared to infringe upon those right to encourage creation.
I don't wish to put words in your mouth but you seem to believe that ideas are property and that creators of ideas have a right to control who uses those ideas and how. Sure that will incentivise creation of new ideas, assuming that they don't depend on too many prior ideas. The problem being that almost every new idea depends on countless old ones. What is the point of coming up with a new work of art, or a new theorem, or a new design if all of your proceeds have to go to the descendants of people who came up with the ideas your new work is based on?
Copyright amounts to the right to levy and keep a tax on the reproduction of something. It even allows one to choose the tax rate.
Let me give you an example to show you how very absurd your idea is. I'm a particle physicist by profession. At some point in the future my discoveries will probably be used in some new fangled gadget or other. Do I (or my sponsor, or whoever) have the right to claim anyone who uses my discoveries should pay me (or my descendants) for the privilege? I don't think so. You would effectively set up scientific dynasties. The offspring of Dirac or Boltzman would be would rich beyond measure (or more likely, technology would have stagnated). Are you really suggesting that if I think of or produce something first then that idea is my property in the strictest sense of the word? Do you not see where that leads?
They are the only people who are allowed to produce a good. They are the only seller of that good. That is the definition of a monopoly (in fact most definitions of monopoly only require substantial control of the terms of sale). There are mitigating factors that reduce their monopoly power and drag their prices down from what a simplistic analysis would suggest, but they are a monopoly.
Socialism broadly defined is state intervention in the market in the interest of increasing social welfare. In a free market there would be no copyright, no patents. The market would be left to fix prices. I suspect this would be (as you suggest) an unmitigated disaster with only the rich able to afford being patrons of the arts. So we socialise the cost of producing arts by essentially giving content producers the ability to levy and keep a tax on the replication of their work. We even let them fix the rate of that tax.
I have no problem with socialism (I'd call myself a socialist or social democrat). There are situations where it is necessary and useful. This is actually a good example of that. I not using 'socialism' as a dirty word. I'm just calling government intervention in the market what it is.
I happen to think the basic premise of this system is fine, so long as we remember that this de facto 'tax' is a privileged we grant artists and creators. It is time limited, and subject to the requirement that their work enter the public domain when that time limit is up. If they stick DRM on their work they cheat the system since it provides them with a permanent monopoly. That is wrong.
How is this for a fair system (I'm not an expert here so this is just an uninformed opinion). Copyright term limits on the order of 10 years. No DRM or other mechanisms that prevent entry into the public domain. Fines and damages for infringement (punitive or otherwise) the same order of magnitude as the damaged caused.
Yes, I'm a socialist and I would be happy to comment. (I'm also the GP)
By granting them a monopoly government is de facto paying artists to produce work. It is interference in the market by government with the objective of improving society.
The problem with quoting the top line of a Wikipedia entry is socialism is a broad term that can depending on who you talk to include everything from the political perspective of most centre left parties through to Stalinism.
However we can operate within the limited definition. The question here therefore is, what industry has been (at least in part) nationalised by the copyright legislation? It's the content reproduction industry (which is so intimately tied to the content distribution industry that one might well consider them the same). Think of copyright as giving the owner of copyright the ability to levy and then keep a tax (whose rate they can set themselves) on the replication of their work in return for producing it in the first place. Think of it in these terms also reveals how obvious and big the potential pitfalls are.
Now I'm no more happy about the current state of copyright than a free market capitalist would be about a completely deregulated police force or armed service. Both are examples of poor implementation of an ideology. It doesn't change the fact that both are consistent with those ideologies.
Your analogy reveals why you don't understand what I'm saying. You don't have a right to claim my house as your own. But if you build a perfect replica of my house then we are all square. That is the difference here.
It is true that if making games wasn't profitable then EA wouldn't do it. Thats why I support limited copyright (way more limited than it is now).
But they do not have a right to make money (if they can all well and good, but they don't have a right to it). We subsidies them via copyright.
That's why class action lawsuits like this one are legitimate and ethical. When copyright is abused it should be reigned in. And it is widely and massively abused.
I have no right to something created by someone else. If they wish to keep it private then no court should be able to make them hand over what they have created.
But if they don't keep it secret, if they published it, well that's a different matter. Once you sell something to some it becomes theirs, and assuming they don't use it to do something unpleasant to someone else then they can do what they darn well like with it. Including replicate it. Including giving away those replicas.
Everyone has a right to experience their national culture. Not just because that is a fine idea in principle, but because preventing them from doing so is an unnecessary restriction. You might just as well ask what gives me the right to drink coffee or dance in the rain. I have those rights because no one else is harmed when I exercise them.
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The problem is no longer that Linux (or more specifically KDE and Gnome) are too complicated for ordinary users to configure. They are just as good, if not better than Windows in most areas. The problem isn't reaching usability parity, the problem is overcoming the clash of cultures.
Linux has a vastly superior command line to Windows, to the extent that virtually every guide to doing stuff in Linux will tell you to enter in some command or other to the terminal because it takes much less time to explain, and much less time to do. In addition responses from the command line are often easier to decipher, you cant exactly double click in verbose mode.
Windows on the other hand, has a command line that sucks giant dingle berries. Virtually no one, even people who are very proficient in using Windows, use it. So all of the guides detail graphical commands.
The problem then comes when people who are used to lots of graphical support being told to enter command xyz. The problem is not usability any more. The problem is a lack of guidelines in a language people are used to. KDE and Gnome make doing things less intimidating and more intuitive than using a command line, but hardly any guide is written to make use of this.
The problem isn't features or usability, the problem is audience specific documentation.
I'm not surprised that the company has gone through lawsuits, seeing as using an IQ test for discriminating for the purposes of employment is almost certainly racist. Your former employer is playing a very dangerous game using IQ tests to differentiate employees. The APA conducted studies showing that scores on IQ tests (which is not the same thing as intelligence I might add) correlate with race. While I wouldn't go so far as to call an IQ test racist (since we don't really know why test scores between races are different), using them as a basis for employment almost certainly is.
It isn't like there isn't precedent, Griggs v. Duke Power Company for example shows that using an IQ test can be deemed as discrimination against a protected class.
If you think a 879 dead (the vast majority of whom are not civilians) out of a population of nearly 1.5 million constitutes genocide then I doubt you can be reasoned with.
If Israel wanted to wipe out the population of Gaza they could. They are targeting Hamas.
What exactly is your point?
That Israel should just suck it up because they are the stronger side?
I really don't get what you are trying to say. Do you think that this response is disproportionate (in the sense of international law)? If that is the case it is hardly surprising that I did not pick up on it since your case is rather poorly made in your post.
Disproportionate use of force is something legally under the jurisdiction of the international criminal court, and Israel is not a Rome Statute signatory. But let us ignore that for a second, since we really want to talk about the moral issues that lead to these laws rather than the law itself.
The idea that one should not use disproportionate force is one of the many pieces of international law which is intended to reduce civilian casualties. Reducing civilian casualties is a good thing.
The problem with it is that it has to go in tandem with the notion that neither side may use human shields. Why? Because the idea encourages the use of human shields. If I have a high value military target or person, all I have to do to prevent my enemy attacking them is surround them by illegitimate targets.
There is a war crime going on here, but it is not the use of disproportionate force, it is the use of human shields. Had Hamas set up their installations, their military command and control structures ('government offices') and their militia stations ('police') somewhere away from civilian targets, then the number of civilian casualties would be far lower.
If the authority in Gaza does not want more civilian casualties then it needs to use it's internal security forces to prevent the garrisoning of structures intentionally still occupied by civilians. It needs to locate it's military installations with a mind to minimize (rather than maximize) civilian losses. They have not done this and they are the ones who bear the responsibility for the civilian casualties.
Any innocent civilian killed is a tragedy. But that must be weighed against establishing the idea that one side has the right to use human shields.
Just because you suck at attempting genocide doesn't mean a forceful response to it is not warranted. We can discuss elements in Israel attempting to escalate the conflict (along with plenty of help from Hamas) in Nov if you like, or the humanitarian conditions in Gaza as a potential justification for armed resistance to what amounts to a blockade by Israel and Egypt (although I don't see many rockets heading Egypt's way). Not sure how you are going to justify directing attacks at civilian targets but you might have a different perspective.
But I hardly think you can use one sides military ineffectiveness as an argument though. Unless you are in favour of letting out all the criminals in jail for attempted robbery, murder, etc.
I love the way that people keep arguing the legal merits like it is certain that is going to matter.
All it takes is one closet scientologist judge and you are all royally fucked. Heck it isn't like scientology doesn't hire enough lawyers that they don't have a couple of judges by now.
These are a bunch of traitorous pseudo-religious wack jobs hell bent on dragging everyone into their crazy little cult and using any method they can get away with (including murder, extortion, separating people from their families) to undermine our free way of life.
To those in the states, you are steadily approaching the point where if you don't get Scientology under control by reasonable means (locking up it's high ranking members, seizing all it's assets, purging the government of scientology influence) you will find yourselves in a position where patriotic Americans will start fighting back through less pleasant means.
Incidentally I'm not an American, and I'm not advocating the use of violence against scientologist, I'm just predicting what will happen if this situation isn't brought under control. I will say this however, if it does reach that point, violent revolution may be your only option.
There is something I really don't get here. They already have a tax that they have exclusive right to levy. That is basically what copyright is, a tax on copying that we grant to content producers. Now they want another tax?
What happens when that tax isn't enough, will they want another one after than? Maybe everyone should pay a tax, since we all whistle. Maybe there should be a tax on video recording equipment since that is used to pirate stuff from cinemas. And a separate tax for DVD recorders and discs. Maybe one for computers too since they can make copies. And one on the software that lets you do the copying.
Using the government as a private army to get money from people (with absolutely no public good as a result) is similar to the mob, but it has another name as well. Corporatism. That is all this is, pure and simple. At least with the mob you have a hope of getting rid of some of their influence through government.
To the RIAA, MPAA, etc. One tax is enough. You get one tax, if you cant find a way to make it work, that is your problem. Welcome to the wonderful world of capitalism, don't let the door hit your inefficient ass on the way out.
I'm starting to understand why I'm getting so many replies on this now. I meant taking 16 O-levels would be insane for all bar the absolute elite candidates. I know there were people who took 10, or 11, or 12.
Problem with discussing this kind of thing is that I've had a very hard time getting the statistics I need to back up my point, so busting out anecdotal evidence just causes everyone else to go busting out their anecdotal evidence and we get nowhere.
If you know where I can find the statistics I need to either back or disprove my assertion I'd be very grateful.
I'd love to make history a core subject. In spite of sucking at it to the tune of "I cant remember any date of significance" I'm a history obsessive. And what you say is true, history is important if we are to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. The problem is one cannot understand a higher level subject like history without first understanding how to make a reasoned argument, how to construct a statistical analysis and how to analyse text. We would all be better people if we knew more physics, more history, more economics, more art. The problem is that these concepts are too high level to form the core of any academic work at age 16.
Well unfortunately I only have the someone poor statistical sample of comparing my parents vague memories to my own vague memories so I don't have the much needed statistics to back this up. It also really doesn't help that a large number of students did CSEs rather than O-levels. When these were combined it really does seem to me that the result was more strongly inspired by the CSE than the O-level.
The bottom line is that a direct comparison really isn't possible. If you know where I can get some statistics to test my hypothesis (that people sit more courses now) I'd be interested since I've been looking for a while now.
Not sure what you are getting at here. I was actually berating the simplistic reasoning you are berating. I suggested that it was a combination of factors and that the situation is more complex than it first appears (what common sense would suggest).
In fact one factor I left off is the Flynn Effect. People are smarter, or at least better at IQ tests now that they used to be. If they are getting better at IQ tests then one might reasonably presume they are getting better at other tests too.
My point was that having read past exam questions the tests are clearly easier, at least from the perspective of someone with a good grounding in the field. I even went on to point out that because modern tests are more subjective and poorly structure they are harder for a certain class of student.
My argument is in no way how you have classified it.
No one said learn latin. Latin as a core subject would also be a massive waste of time. What I was saying, and what I think harmony was agreeing to is that it is more important to teach children how to learn and teaching them overarching concepts in the core subjects than it is for them to have a poor, broad and vague understanding in a multitude of subjects.
If you want to tack onto the core one additional course that covers politics, civics, the media, etc I wouldn't object. But that is not what media studies courses are. I'm not far out of high school myself and I remember what media studies was and it did not teach any of the things you suggest it did. In fact the only course I've encountered that actually covered what you are describing in sufficient detail to actually be worthwhile is undergraduate psychology.
The problem here is actually a combination of factors.
It is true that exams have gotten easier. But you cant compare a GCSE with the old O-levels and have a like for like comparison. For a start most students today take about 10 GCSEs. Some take as many as 16! Taking that many O-levels would have been insane. GCSEs have coursework with is usually a total waste of time (and take up a big chunk of time).
They tend to teach things in such a way as to make them deliberately more difficult. Imagine trying to do diffraction when you have no idea what a function is (or a sine wave). Or study Newtons laws when you have no idea about vectors (never mind calculus). By dumbing things down they have made the subjects harder to teach for all bar the stupidest of candidates which was always the intentions. Dumbing a subject down often makes it harder! Especially for the best students.
Then there are a whole bunch of subjects that are a complete waste of time. IT is a good example. Media studies and business studies are another pair of good examples. Incidentally I did business studies and IT so I know what a waste of time they are. The entire science curriculum is taught with virtually no maths, and no statistics.
Modularity of the courses also wastes an immense amount of time. Studying for an exam carries significant overhead. Testing should all be done at the end, with the option to resit (so as to give people who simply have a bad day a second chance). The tests should be hard enough that it doesn't matter how many times you resit (since passing the test demonstrates that you have the necessary knowledge).
It's no wonder that structuring a course which seems to be designed only to get the maximum number of passes (and sod the ability to tell the difference between the genius and the guy who knows just enough) would be railed against.
In the UK at 16 students should be taking around 5 core courses. There should be no course work other than mandatory (but unmarked) labwork in the sciences. English, Maths, Science, Philosophy and Statistics. The emphasis should be on functional capabilities with mathematics, a good cultural understanding in English and good logical and inferential skills in statistics and philosophy. This is supposed to be teaching people the foundations of knowledge, not pretending that people with no knowledge of logic can make a reasoned argument, or that people with no knowledge of calculus can hope to understand Newtons laws.
If we then want a couple of optional courses in computer science, higher physics, economics, art, history, geograph and so on, that's great. But every 16 year old should be able to construct a coherent sentence, work with derivatives, matrices, know what an ad hominem is and be able to analyse experimental data. Without these very basic skills there is absolutely nothing of value you can teach them.
The A-levels are not (at least in their current form) hard enough (or structured sufficiently) to be teaching at 16, never mind the immense waste of time that is the modern GCSE.
The problem with this advert is the same as the problem with a whole bunch of other adverts.
"Really fast" is totally subjective.
We should assume that an advertisement is misleading (and therefore cannot abuse a limited public good like the electromagnetic spectrum) unless an objective metric has been constructed. A full, published report including the methodologies should be mandatory for any claim of superiority in an advert. And the body regulating the advertisements gets to decide is the metric is objective and must fully publish all it's decisions and reasons for taking them. If you cannot objectively demonstrate a statement then it is assumed false.
We should limit advertisers to actual recordings of products with no digital touch ups beyond adding text and logos to the screen. We certainly shouldn't permit speeding up an advert where the principle claim is that the product is "really fast" (or for that matter digitally altering models in anti-rinkle cream ads).
What we do with other mediums not limited like the electromagnetic spectrum is another matter, but this ad certainly shouldn't be on TV.
Yes, Quantum Physics does indeed tell us that one cannot concurrently know certain things about certain systems. There are two ways of looking at this. Either there are hidden variables (or something similar) which if we only knew we would know these quantities (these would as it turns out have to be awful odd things but it is a worthy field of inquiry none the less). The second is that these quantities do not exist.
If you are into Occam's razor then since the first idea postulates a whole bunch of stuff you simply don't need one concludes that the second is the more likely proposition.
You appear to reject Occam's razor as a philosophical concept. That is perfectly justifiable. I would be interested to know however, what criterion would you use to differentiate between Maxwell's equations, and the theory that light behaves exactly the way Maxwell's equations describe due to invincible super unicorns forcing it to?
It is very simple, gender equality is important for a number of reasons.
First it is an indicator of overt discrimination. One sign that there is overt discrimination is that the proportion of women and men in a field is different. It doesn't prove overt discrimination and there are many possible explanations but it is important to work out which explanations apply.
One explanation you have hinted at is that genetic diversity causes this selection. While the differences in aptitude between the sexes are minor, minor differences in distributions can have profound effects on the number of outliers. If I have two distributions with roughly the same mean and slightly different standard deviations and then I ask how many individuals are above say 3 standard deviations of the distribution with smaller range I will find that there are far more individuals in the more widely spread out distribution. In simple terms if I have selection criteria Which requires high aptitude in some specific skill set I will find that I select more individuals in from this distribution with greater spread.
While most half decent studies show that on most aptitude tests men and women are roughly equal the spreads are sometimes different. One might try to explain the difference between the number of men and women in different professions using this. There are two problems I see with this however, especially when specifically applied to computer science. The difference in spread we are talking about here are not in my opinion enough to explain the differences from parity we observe. This is just my opinion but from what I remember most of these differences are very small (I cant be sure since I don't the statistics on the threshold level of aptitude necessary to enter the disciplines in question). In addition were it true that the genetic differences between and men and women explained the male to female ratio in various professions then I would expect to see it in other disciplines like medicine. We don't.
Another explanation is social conditioning. If you repeatedly tell little girls that they are pretty and reward them for it, while telling boys they are smart and reward them for it then little girls are going to grow up concerned with their appearance and little boys are going to grow up concerned with appearing smart. Give a boy Lego and a girl Barbie and you are conditioning them. The end result of this conditioning can be selection of employment. Depending on what you want to optimise this can be a bad thing. We have seen above that aptitude does not follow strongly gender lines so a sizable subset of boys and girls are being encouraged to aspire to goals that they are not necessarily suited for.
Why would we do this though if it weren't optimal? Well the human brain is basically a big correlation machine (and a really good one at that). Small differences could easily be amplified by conditioning, which our brains notice and passes on by us in turn conditioning our children. This conditioning becomes a social norm and we continually pass it on. But if you want children to be encouraged to work at what they are best at this is a problem we need to address.
Gender equality is important because we need to know when the difference from parity is caused by genetic differences (if nature is sexist it really doesn't matter), what fraction are caused by social conditioning, what fraction is caused by direct discrimination and what fraction is caused by indirect discrimination or institutional sexism (which I will come to in a second). I think that trying to explain gender differences using purely genetics is absolute folly. I don't think social conditioning is as big a factor as many would like to believe but I don't have much evidence to back that up.
However, these ideas in no way explain what is going on here. Near the turn of the millennium around 30% of undergraduate degrees in computer science were complete by women. According to the summary that is now closer to 10%. So the question is what has chang
I understand the point you are trying to make, but I must admit I feel your premise is deeply flawed. Since you seem keen to end the discussion I just wanted to clarify a couple of things.
I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to keep secrets. You choose to write a poem and keep it secret no force of law should be able to make you do otherwise.
Where we disagree is what happens once it is published. You believe that once an idea is published it remains the property of it's originator. I do not. I believe that once you sell and object an individual to someone they can do what they like with it. Be it replicate it or otherwise. You thoughts are your own, if you keep them to yourself.
You are correct in how you describe how science is currently done, but I was illustrating how it would be done if we changed to your system (who in their right mind is going to accept a measly government grant when they can make a mint from their ideas and theorems for the rest of their life?).
I think you are conflating two issues into one. The first is how do we get people to develop new technologies, produce new media and so on. The second is what rights do those people have to the ideas they produce.
It is interesting you list patents. Patents are time limited. They are another government mandated monopoly with the exact same intent. Do you think we should remove that time limit and make them into a permanent sort of property?
Imagine for a second if every physicist in the world had to pay Dirac's family 5c for a license to use a new book on quantum theory. Now 50c isn't that much, and I'm imagining Dirac's family being generous. But Dirac was hardly alone in his work. Now comes 50c for Hilbert (after all you are using a Hilbert space). Schoedinger will want a cut, as will Heisenberg, and Einstein. Bohr shouldn't miss out, neither should de Broglie, Bohm. Which interpretation are we using? Maybe Everett deserves a cut, or Feynman. Probably both since I would imagine we will use whichever is most conceptually or mathematically useful. Of course the cheap publishers will just opt not to talk about more than one interpretation, saves money after all. Lets say we are studing a modification of the Ising model and pick ourselves up a book on that, well there is 50c for Ising, and better pay up 50c for Onsager too (we may well be using his exact solution or some result derived there of, we aren't sure, better pay up to be safe). And so on, this list of people you would need to pay would be immense. We have a system that is expensive beyond measure and a legal minefield. Now this just in a book. What about if I want to publish my work. What if I want to make a product. Well that had best be on a per unit basis (or some more expensive bulk licence). Everything from TVs to through computers to digital wrist watches depends on countless discoveries.
The problem with making ideas into property is that you create massive scarcity. We go from a world where a TV costs a few hundred dollars to a world where a ordinary TV costs thousands of dollars because it depends on thousands and thousands of ideas, each of which has a price.
Now if you time limit control of ideas (like we do with patents), then eventually all the above problems go away (and you incentivise new discovery). But if you make ideas into property then the problem remains in perpetuity.
I have to admit that at this stage I have no idea what kind of system you support. I can only assume your last comment was directed at someone else because I'm not opposed to a reformed version of copyright, which incentivises the creation of new works. I am in favour of a reformed version of the patent system, which incentivises new inventions. I acknowledge that this deprives others of the right to the knowledge and culture there in (a right I believe we all have), and I'm prepared to infringe upon those right to encourage creation.
I don't wish to put words in your mouth but you seem to believe that ideas are property and that creators of ideas have a right to control who uses those ideas and how. Sure that will incentivise creation of new ideas, assuming that they don't depend on too many prior ideas. The problem being that almost every new idea depends on countless old ones. What is the point of coming up with a new work of art, or a new theorem, or a new design if all of your proceeds have to go to the descendants of people who came up with the ideas your new work is based on?
My apologies, I replied to your other (Anonymous) post.
Copyright amounts to the right to levy and keep a tax on the reproduction of something. It even allows one to choose the tax rate.
Let me give you an example to show you how very absurd your idea is. I'm a particle physicist by profession. At some point in the future my discoveries will probably be used in some new fangled gadget or other. Do I (or my sponsor, or whoever) have the right to claim anyone who uses my discoveries should pay me (or my descendants) for the privilege? I don't think so. You would effectively set up scientific dynasties. The offspring of Dirac or Boltzman would be would rich beyond measure (or more likely, technology would have stagnated). Are you really suggesting that if I think of or produce something first then that idea is my property in the strictest sense of the word? Do you not see where that leads?
They are the only people who are allowed to produce a good. They are the only seller of that good. That is the definition of a monopoly (in fact most definitions of monopoly only require substantial control of the terms of sale). There are mitigating factors that reduce their monopoly power and drag their prices down from what a simplistic analysis would suggest, but they are a monopoly.
Socialism broadly defined is state intervention in the market in the interest of increasing social welfare. In a free market there would be no copyright, no patents. The market would be left to fix prices. I suspect this would be (as you suggest) an unmitigated disaster with only the rich able to afford being patrons of the arts. So we socialise the cost of producing arts by essentially giving content producers the ability to levy and keep a tax on the replication of their work. We even let them fix the rate of that tax.
I have no problem with socialism (I'd call myself a socialist or social democrat). There are situations where it is necessary and useful. This is actually a good example of that. I not using 'socialism' as a dirty word. I'm just calling government intervention in the market what it is.
I happen to think the basic premise of this system is fine, so long as we remember that this de facto 'tax' is a privileged we grant artists and creators. It is time limited, and subject to the requirement that their work enter the public domain when that time limit is up. If they stick DRM on their work they cheat the system since it provides them with a permanent monopoly. That is wrong.
How is this for a fair system (I'm not an expert here so this is just an uninformed opinion). Copyright term limits on the order of 10 years. No DRM or other mechanisms that prevent entry into the public domain. Fines and damages for infringement (punitive or otherwise) the same order of magnitude as the damaged caused.
Yes, I'm a socialist and I would be happy to comment. (I'm also the GP)
By granting them a monopoly government is de facto paying artists to produce work. It is interference in the market by government with the objective of improving society.
The problem with quoting the top line of a Wikipedia entry is socialism is a broad term that can depending on who you talk to include everything from the political perspective of most centre left parties through to Stalinism.
However we can operate within the limited definition. The question here therefore is, what industry has been (at least in part) nationalised by the copyright legislation? It's the content reproduction industry (which is so intimately tied to the content distribution industry that one might well consider them the same). Think of copyright as giving the owner of copyright the ability to levy and then keep a tax (whose rate they can set themselves) on the replication of their work in return for producing it in the first place. Think of it in these terms also reveals how obvious and big the potential pitfalls are.
Now I'm no more happy about the current state of copyright than a free market capitalist would be about a completely deregulated police force or armed service. Both are examples of poor implementation of an ideology. It doesn't change the fact that both are consistent with those ideologies.
Your analogy reveals why you don't understand what I'm saying. You don't have a right to claim my house as your own. But if you build a perfect replica of my house then we are all square. That is the difference here.
It is true that if making games wasn't profitable then EA wouldn't do it. Thats why I support limited copyright (way more limited than it is now).
But they do not have a right to make money (if they can all well and good, but they don't have a right to it). We subsidies them via copyright.
That's why class action lawsuits like this one are legitimate and ethical. When copyright is abused it should be reigned in. And it is widely and massively abused.
I have no right to something created by someone else. If they wish to keep it private then no court should be able to make them hand over what they have created.
But if they don't keep it secret, if they published it, well that's a different matter. Once you sell something to some it becomes theirs, and assuming they don't use it to do something unpleasant to someone else then they can do what they darn well like with it. Including replicate it. Including giving away those replicas.
Everyone has a right to experience their national culture. Not just because that is a fine idea in principle, but because preventing them from doing so is an unnecessary restriction. You might just as well ask what gives me the right to drink coffee or dance in the rain. I have those rights because no one else is harmed when I exercise them.