When they go home they can do whatever they like. I have no desire to watch them eat, sleep, whatever. But when they have a gun on their hip, I don't think it's unreasonable to hold them responsible for their actions.
You do realize that most police officers are required to carry a firearm at all times, right? At least in NJ...
And that a police officer, off duty, is still required to act in a police capacity should an event requiring plice intervention occur...
It's not like a cashier boy at McDonalds -- cops don't punch out and forget about work until their next shift starts.
Just some food for thought when advocating surveillance of public servants whenever they act in an official capacity.
IMO, anyone who appears in public should not have the right to not be recorded. Distribution of the recording, however, is a different matter. Subjects appearing in a video recording should have the right to prevent distribution of the video if they so choose, unless the video becomes part of the public record via use in a trial, and then seaprate rules are necessary.
According to IDC, storage capacity is exploding at a rate of almost 60% per year."
No, you've got it backwards -- since only 40% of our storage capacity will be unexploded at the end of next year, we'll need tubes only 0.4 of the size of the current tubes. In 2010, we'll only need tubes 0.064 the size of the current tubes. See where this is headed?
In some 15 years and change, we'll only need microtubes.
In just 23 years, we'll need nanotubes. Let's just hope no one tries to send anything bigger than a picotruck down them.
Seriously, I don't see what the problem with this is. They're not planning to put up pictures of recently released criminals.
Yet.
They're not planning to put up pictures of sex offenders in your neighborhood.
Yet.
They're not planning to put up pictures telling you to vote Republican.
No, it's more subtle than that. Just as "terror alert" levels were used politically, so will these billboards. Make the people scared, and they'll vote for the party of perceived protection.
If that changes, then start complaining
Incremental change is hard to object to. Slippery slope and all that.
I think the OP makes a humorous, but very valid, point. Our world more and more resembles the dystopias written about several decades ago, and pointing that out might help more people consider whether they really want to support that kind of society.
And finally, you'd have civilians driving loudspeaker vans saying things similar to "It looks like you're writing a letter".
Would you like help?
Sorry, couldn't resist. But I'm curious if you were trying to draw a Clippy comparison to civilian loudspeaker vans. If so, I'm not sure I'm getting your point.
Hmm. You make a valid point about effective employees, but I think you're missing something quite important.
As a business owner or manager, one of the things you need to improve is employee effectiveness. I've managed individuals that are off-the-charts effective when uninterrupted, but easily get lost in the crush of emails. These are usually the people-pleasers. If I send them an email requesting A, B, and C, they'll deliver promptly and thoroughly. But if in the meantime they have received an email requesting D, E, and F from someone else, they run into problems because they can't deliver A through F promptly AND complete their normal workflow.
There are a couple ways of dealing with this. One is to establish priority controls on workflow. Another is to route all requests through their manager. A third is to establish an SLA that gives the employee a better guideline for when a response is expected.
In no way does this mean that the employee is an ineffective employee -- it just means that they are ineffective given their nature and the nature of the work presented to them.
My point, really, is that some good employees handle the "information overload" well, and some don't. The trick is to work with your staff's strengths and weaknesses to maximize their effectiveness. Yes, there are people who truly are generally ineffective -- but that's a hiring issue. Usually ineffective employees can be made effective through competent management.
I think we'll see studies as soon as we have the capacity for economically feasible distributed energy production (such as the solar cells mentioned here ramped up in scale). I think feasibility studies will be happening in the next fifty years. Decentralized power production is really what the power companies fear.
A solution is a global energy grid. Sure, it may be daytime in the US right now, but it's night-time in India. Of course, there would be transmission losses, never mind the cost of insulated undersea high-voltage power lines, the cost of ninjas to fight the pirates who would threaten to hold the power lines hostage, and the cost of robots to keep the ninjas at bay.
Seriously, though, power usage at night is much lower than during the day. We have other non-fossil-fuel energy sources that can be used to produce power at night. It's funny how solar power works during the day, when our usage also peaks... it's too much of a coincidence to believe that could happen naturally. I think mayhaps His Noodly Appendage has touched the power generation industry.
Don't bother refuting any 'economic analysis' he's looked at or written about doing. He doesn't have the understanding of economics required to grok serious analysis... everything he's learned about econ is from mises.org -- he's very good at twisting it. He spews pseudo-economics and it looks good to people without a foundation in econ, but that's about it... anyone with an undergraduate degree in econ, or even a minor in econ, can see through his BS in a second. The problem is that so many of his posts sound good because of how they are written, despite the blatant misinformation.
To whit: in a post about the economic impact of hoarding of currency value, he stated that putting your money in a low-risk interest-bearing account (like a money-market fund) is hoarding.
I could ask even the most unwashed user the different between a program and data and I'd guess they'd have some clue about the difference most of the time
RMS? Why yes, he'd have some clue, maybe even some expertise.
Well, I'm not sure how many watch John Stewart four times a week, but it would do a world of good if they would watch Jimmy Stewart once a week... Mr. Smith goes to Washington It's a Wonderful Life
You Can't Take It With You
Any of these three movies, if taken to heart, would make a world of difference if our Senators and Reps watched weekly.
Well, so much for wishful thinking, now I'll put my Scintillating Robe of Cynicism +2 and my Tinfoil Hat of Protection from EMR +5 back on.
Honestly, what does Best Buy have to lose if they let someone print shirts that look like their shirts?
Their trademark. Defend it or lose it.
Assuming that their trademark has value, then that value is lessened when it is diluted by Tom, Dick, and Harry all wearing "Best Buy"-esque shirts as men about town. Moreso if Tom, Dick, and Harry are on the shady side and are publically seen doing "bad things".
I understand perfectly your POV, that's not the issue. I just don't believe it holds water;
I believe it is arbitrary and doesn't serve the public interest.
then the interaction of your signal with my radio is an infringement on my property rights in the radio
This is the arbitrary association that I have problems with. If your property rights in the radio include status quo of your environs wrt radio-detectable emissions, then this is a recipe for stasis. It's not that I don't understand your point; I just feel it is fatally flawed. How can one act without infringing someone else's rights if their property rights include the right to observe everything in it's original state?
I don't know, how about putting up a fence? Or you could always stand at the border and tell people where your property starts. Or put up signs. Seriously, this is a long-solved issue.
I agree it's long-solved. But the very act of putting up a border violates someone else's rights according to your theory. My point is that it wasn't solved according to your model, it weas solved according to a different model -- that of absolute real property rights that don't extend well to EM transmissions. I wasn't asking, literally, how do you delineate property boundaries -- I was asking how you delineate them in your model without interfering with your neighbor's right to observe the spectra unchanged[1].
Only damage resulting from a property right violation matters, because any response will be limited in proportion to the damage inflicted
Well, that's where we have a dispute. In essence, you're saying that people's property rights are violated all the time, but it doesn't matter since no damage is incurred. People are willing to exchange goodwill or other intangibles for allowng someone to violate their rights. Or are you saying that property rights only include the right to not incur damages? Say you have some lawn ornaments I like, and you go away on vacation. While you are gone, I put the ornaments on my lawn and brag to my friends (who you do not know) about them. No one else observes our lawns while you are away. I return them before you get back in exactly the same condition. Have I violated your property rights?
Three misunderstandings here: (a) the person building the wall was the new property owner, not the person operating the light, and there was no one else in the scenario at the time to object to the blocking of the light; (b) I don't have a "'right' to receive previously operating radio broadcasts", I have a right to the use of the radio without unwanted interference dating after my initial use of it; and (c) only positive actions incur damages; if the light-owner were to turn off the light, or block it, such that they were simply no longer broadcasting the light, they would be within their rights to do so (meaning that no damages could be incurred). This is qualitatively different from actively emitting light on to someone else's property.
Whose misunderstanding?:) I'm in agreement. When I put up a wall, I have changed the emissions entering your property; prior to the wall, sunlight (for example) entered your property, which is now blocked at certain times of the day by the wall. The wall also blocks your view; and what is the view except some energy within a certain spectrum entering your property? By blocking that light, I have interfered with the property rights you have wrt your windows. Do you see what I'm saying? Maybe I'm not making it clear enough, but I'll try rewording it: if your right to use an observing instrument (like your radio) is attached to the content of the medium being observed (like radio spectra) then by extension, I cannot do anything at all without violating your property rights. Now, you may be willing to forego redress, if you don't feel you incurred damges, but from a logical stand
Dude, you've been around here long enough to understand that griping about relevancy of a computer interest story on slashdot is like griping about a "favorite yarns" story on knittingnews.com.
Either that, or your Assembly programming on your trash80 sent you into a time loop you're just emerging from.
Obviously I don't want to have to help my player take a shit every day - since there is little or no skill involved in taking a dump (beyond "don't miss the toilet"),
Ew, you forgot to wipe. 2% cumulative chance contracting swampass (- 5 Agility, -5 Concentration, Fail all horseriding checks until cured) per game hour until you bathe. And don't forget to build up your soapmaking skill to level 50 (Antibacterial).
I recall suggesting the use of non-abstract images and measuring the brain's electrical response to determine a map of the user's response to a given stimulus. [snip] This seems like a somewhat more practical way of doing the same basic thing.
So much for having a few beers during lunch.
Unless, of course, the initial measurement is done when I'm already buzzed... in which case I'll need to have a bloody mary every morning in order to get started at work...
The operation of a receiver is altered by the presence of any transmitter.
Not really. The receiver still operates exactly the same way, it's just that there are more/less/different radio waves for it to receive. If you define the content that is being received as integral to the operation of the receiver, then you're really talking about [receiver + content] as what has ownership ascribed to it, in which case the same principle applies to those transmitting that content.
Most would also argue that you need to delineate the borders somehow, so that people know when they're trespassing, and that there needs to be some degree of connection between you and the property you're homesteading beyond simply making an unsupported claim.
So how does one delineate borders when discussing spectra? And for real property, how does one substantiate borders? Is some sort of government/community oversight required to mediate disputes, or does the mightiest win? How about regulation as a solution?
I think the problem here is that you're trying to ascribe traditional property rights theory to something that inherently cannot be divided into parcels. Once you define an abstract mechanism of delineating ownership rights, it becomes a debate about what abstract method to use.
As for the spotlight example:
According to your view of radio spectra, I shouldn't be able to build a wall. It would interfere with light reaching your property, which equates to someone interfering with your "right" to receive previously operating radio broadcasts. I also shouldn't be able to build a fence, or house, or any other structure that obscures light (or any other form of matter/energy) from reaching your property. Futhermore, the wall might reflect some of your broadcast light back onto your property -- in clear violation of your property rights, since it is equivalent to me erecting my own spotlight and shining it on your property.
What I'm getting at is that if you drill down your theory of property rights to it's most basic level, it breaks down -- no one can do anything since it will infringe someone else's rights. So then what is left to decide is where we draw the line of what the acceptable intrusion on someone else's rights is, for the good of the community/state/world. I do not believe that people should have the right to be freedom from interference at any level (especially, since that equates to no freedom for everyone).
Furthermore, by broadcasting at the same frequency as someone else, I am not destroying or interfering with the waves that reach your property. They still get there[1] -- your receiver still picks up those waves -- even if your receiver lacks the ability to filter out the waves someone else has created. The second broadcaster has not changed one bit how your receiver operates.
To get deeper into what I believe, one of the issues is that optimal usage of resources is not best served by squatters' rights. Having a standard frequency for a global or national service is more efficient than being forced to use different frequencies for fear of interrupting someone else's signal every 20 miles. This is why spectra are set aside for single uses, and I think it is necessary and just. Otherwise, you get the equivalent of domain squatters, or speculators, that will camp a frequency in an area just to try to force the hand of $WIRELESSCO into paying them exorbitant amounts of cash. This serves no one.
[1] Not to get into wave cancellation, which could theoretically apply. But, one could always diff the signals with sensitive enough equipment.
Slashdot Mirror
And that a police officer, off duty, is still required to act in a police capacity should an event requiring plice intervention occur...
It's not like a cashier boy at McDonalds -- cops don't punch out and forget about work until their next shift starts.
Just some food for thought when advocating surveillance of public servants whenever they act in an official capacity.
IMO, anyone who appears in public should not have the right to not be recorded. Distribution of the recording, however, is a different matter. Subjects appearing in a video recording should have the right to prevent distribution of the video if they so choose, unless the video becomes part of the public record via use in a trial, and then seaprate rules are necessary.
FTS:No, you've got it backwards -- since only 40% of our storage capacity will be unexploded at the end of next year, we'll need tubes only 0.4 of the size of the current tubes. In 2010, we'll only need tubes 0.064 the size of the current tubes. See where this is headed?
In some 15 years and change, we'll only need microtubes.
In just 23 years, we'll need nanotubes. Let's just hope no one tries to send anything bigger than a picotruck down them.
Yet.
No, it's more subtle than that. Just as "terror alert" levels were used politically, so will these billboards. Make the people scared, and they'll vote for the party of perceived protection.
Incremental change is hard to object to. Slippery slope and all that.
I think the OP makes a humorous, but very valid, point. Our world more and more resembles the dystopias written about several decades ago, and pointing that out might help more people consider whether they really want to support that kind of society.
Sorry, couldn't resist. But I'm curious if you were trying to draw a Clippy comparison to civilian loudspeaker vans. If so, I'm not sure I'm getting your point.
Hmm. You make a valid point about effective employees, but I think you're missing something quite important.
As a business owner or manager, one of the things you need to improve is employee effectiveness. I've managed individuals that are off-the-charts effective when uninterrupted, but easily get lost in the crush of emails. These are usually the people-pleasers. If I send them an email requesting A, B, and C, they'll deliver promptly and thoroughly. But if in the meantime they have received an email requesting D, E, and F from someone else, they run into problems because they can't deliver A through F promptly AND complete their normal workflow.
There are a couple ways of dealing with this. One is to establish priority controls on workflow. Another is to route all requests through their manager. A third is to establish an SLA that gives the employee a better guideline for when a response is expected.
In no way does this mean that the employee is an ineffective employee -- it just means that they are ineffective given their nature and the nature of the work presented to them.
My point, really, is that some good employees handle the "information overload" well, and some don't. The trick is to work with your staff's strengths and weaknesses to maximize their effectiveness. Yes, there are people who truly are generally ineffective -- but that's a hiring issue. Usually ineffective employees can be made effective through competent management.
Or so I've heard.
Residential power use if lower than industrial/commercial power use... we're talking about total grid load
I think we'll see studies as soon as we have the capacity for economically feasible distributed energy production (such as the solar cells mentioned here ramped up in scale). I think feasibility studies will be happening in the next fifty years. Decentralized power production is really what the power companies fear.
A solution is a global energy grid. Sure, it may be daytime in the US right now, but it's night-time in India. Of course, there would be transmission losses, never mind the cost of insulated undersea high-voltage power lines, the cost of ninjas to fight the pirates who would threaten to hold the power lines hostage, and the cost of robots to keep the ninjas at bay.
Seriously, though, power usage at night is much lower than during the day. We have other non-fossil-fuel energy sources that can be used to produce power at night. It's funny how solar power works during the day, when our usage also peaks... it's too much of a coincidence to believe that could happen naturally. I think mayhaps His Noodly Appendage has touched the power generation industry.
To whit: in a post about the economic impact of hoarding of currency value, he stated that putting your money in a low-risk interest-bearing account (like a money-market fund) is hoarding.
What? I keed, I keed...
Mr. Smith goes to Washington
It's a Wonderful Life
You Can't Take It With You
Any of these three movies, if taken to heart, would make a world of difference if our Senators and Reps watched weekly.
Well, so much for wishful thinking, now I'll put my Scintillating Robe of Cynicism +2 and my Tinfoil Hat of Protection from EMR +5 back on.
Assuming that their trademark has value, then that value is lessened when it is diluted by Tom, Dick, and Harry all wearing "Best Buy"-esque shirts as men about town. Moreso if Tom, Dick, and Harry are on the shady side and are publically seen doing "bad things".
This is the arbitrary association that I have problems with. If your property rights in the radio include status quo of your environs wrt radio-detectable emissions, then this is a recipe for stasis. It's not that I don't understand your point; I just feel it is fatally flawed. How can one act without infringing someone else's rights if their property rights include the right to observe everything in it's original state?
I agree it's long-solved. But the very act of putting up a border violates someone else's rights according to your theory. My point is that it wasn't solved according to your model, it weas solved according to a different model -- that of absolute real property rights that don't extend well to EM transmissions. I wasn't asking, literally, how do you delineate property boundaries -- I was asking how you delineate them in your model without interfering with your neighbor's right to observe the spectra unchanged[1].
Well, that's where we have a dispute. In essence, you're saying that people's property rights are violated all the time, but it doesn't matter since no damage is incurred. People are willing to exchange goodwill or other intangibles for allowng someone to violate their rights. Or are you saying that property rights only include the right to not incur damages? Say you have some lawn ornaments I like, and you go away on vacation. While you are gone, I put the ornaments on my lawn and brag to my friends (who you do not know) about them. No one else observes our lawns while you are away. I return them before you get back in exactly the same condition. Have I violated your property rights?
Whose misunderstanding? :)
I'm in agreement. When I put up a wall, I have changed the emissions entering your property; prior to the wall, sunlight (for example) entered your property, which is now blocked at certain times of the day by the wall. The wall also blocks your view; and what is the view except some energy within a certain spectrum entering your property? By blocking that light, I have interfered with the property rights you have wrt your windows. Do you see what I'm saying? Maybe I'm not making it clear enough, but I'll try rewording it: if your right to use an observing instrument (like your radio) is attached to the content of the medium being observed (like radio spectra) then by extension, I cannot do anything at all without violating your property rights. Now, you may be willing to forego redress, if you don't feel you incurred damges, but from a logical stand
I preferred Telengard on the PET anyway, the graphical character set was so much cleaner than the "graphics" on the 64. Who needs color, anyway?
Of course, it'll be used to justify a massively increased annual FCC budget which we'll still be paying 20 years down the road...
If the revenue from this sale were earmarked to subsidizing FTTC, it would make me happy.
Either that, or your Assembly programming on your trash80 sent you into a time loop you're just emerging from.
That reminds me of the note I have taped to my monitor:
Warning: Do not look into goatse with remaining eye.
Unless, of course, the initial measurement is done when I'm already buzzed... in which case I'll need to have a bloody mary every morning in order to get started at work...
Idea intriguing, newsletter please.
I thought that was the problem with 18-year-olds' moon missions.
Great. Now I have to keep my wife from talking to her Chinese friends, or I'm going to have to deal with *yet another* comparative inadequacy.
So how does one delineate borders when discussing spectra? And for real property, how does one substantiate borders? Is some sort of government/community oversight required to mediate disputes, or does the mightiest win? How about regulation as a solution?
I think the problem here is that you're trying to ascribe traditional property rights theory to something that inherently cannot be divided into parcels. Once you define an abstract mechanism of delineating ownership rights, it becomes a debate about what abstract method to use.
As for the spotlight example:
According to your view of radio spectra, I shouldn't be able to build a wall. It would interfere with light reaching your property, which equates to someone interfering with your "right" to receive previously operating radio broadcasts. I also shouldn't be able to build a fence, or house, or any other structure that obscures light (or any other form of matter/energy) from reaching your property. Futhermore, the wall might reflect some of your broadcast light back onto your property -- in clear violation of your property rights, since it is equivalent to me erecting my own spotlight and shining it on your property.
What I'm getting at is that if you drill down your theory of property rights to it's most basic level, it breaks down -- no one can do anything since it will infringe someone else's rights. So then what is left to decide is where we draw the line of what the acceptable intrusion on someone else's rights is, for the good of the community/state/world. I do not believe that people should have the right to be freedom from interference at any level (especially, since that equates to no freedom for everyone).
Furthermore, by broadcasting at the same frequency as someone else, I am not destroying or interfering with the waves that reach your property. They still get there[1] -- your receiver still picks up those waves -- even if your receiver lacks the ability to filter out the waves someone else has created. The second broadcaster has not changed one bit how your receiver operates.
To get deeper into what I believe, one of the issues is that optimal usage of resources is not best served by squatters' rights. Having a standard frequency for a global or national service is more efficient than being forced to use different frequencies for fear of interrupting someone else's signal every 20 miles. This is why spectra are set aside for single uses, and I think it is necessary and just. Otherwise, you get the equivalent of domain squatters, or speculators, that will camp a frequency in an area just to try to force the hand of $WIRELESSCO into paying them exorbitant amounts of cash. This serves no one.
[1] Not to get into wave cancellation, which could theoretically apply. But, one could always diff the signals with sensitive enough equipment.
It seems that your proposition might have problems with its prepositions.
Either way, you might have problems if it gets turned on.