Your argument is predicated on the concept that there is no difference between religious and secular matters. As for the Constitutionality of the idea of separation of church and state, it is disingenuous to say that it is not found within the Constitution, for "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" is clearly the foundation of separation.
Anyway, you've totally disregarded my point -- not addressed it at all. Yes, States and Churches sometimes share a lot of characteristics. But they are not the same thing at all, and to conflate them trivializes their differences.
'Belonging' to a State requires only that you meet the legal definitions of a citizen of that State; as one who belongs to that state, adherence to the rules is compulsory. 'Belonging' to a Church requires not only that you are formally recognized and adhere to the rules, but also that you Believe.
Also, just to note -- there is quite a difference between a religion and a Church. A religion is a concept, not an organization, so to imply that "secularists" are trying to ensure that "theirs is the only one true religion" doesn't compute. Also, I know plenty of Catholic secularists... where does that put them?
"IIRC, you are allowed to record whatever you want on your own private property."
Depends on the state.
"Also, when on public property, there is no right to privacy (The right to privacy is also not explicitly stated in the constitution or any of the amendments as many people believe. It is, according to case law, implied however.) The dash cams are recording you while you and the officer are both on public property (the roads)."
Just wanted to point out -- even when on private property you do not have a right to privacy unless it is reasonable to expect privacy. This means that if your living room curtains are open, and your living room is visible from the street, you have no expectation of privacy there.
"If you record your own property, you do not need to notify anyone that you are recording (think video surveilance of stores.)"
Again, depends on the state. Stores will of course post notices anyway, to deter theft, but in some states that notice is required by law.
IMHO, there should almost be a pre-court judge that can take a look at cases in advance as a checksum against stupidity, and throw them out right away if they are as dumb as this one. I suppose that would be rife for abusing too though.
There is something like that. It's called a grand jury.
Thing is, nobody knows at what cost it will be to the guy involved. Thats truly the greatest flaw of all in the system.
That's why people can sue for wrongful arrest. Not that it erases the wrongdoing, but at least he can recover his legal fees, plus receive additional compensation.
the Founders advocated no national one (along with national religion) because they felt it was the responsiblity for the states (which had taxes for churches and an official church).
This is a pretty huge misinterpretation. The Founders did not feel it was the responsibility of the States to establish State religions; likely a few of them did, and some of them felt it was the States' right to establish a state religion if a state chose to. But given everything I've read about the Founders, the establishment of a State Church was anathema to most of their personal beliefs, as was any government funding of churches.
"You miss the point because while you chose to quit smoking"
It was my choice just as much as quitting videogames is their choice. My wife laid down the law, and I complied.
"Besides if you "fiddled with stuff" then apparently you did need something to replace the smoking with regardless of whether or not you decided to quit doing that as well."
But I didn't replace the fiddling with anything. Substitution is not the only way to kick a habit, and not only that, is often not the best way. A short-term crutch is a different story, you're subsitituting part of the habit so you can tackle another part (eg, the nicotine dependency for me). But it's not a full substitution at all, and in no way matches what the OP was saying -- that habits must be replaced or they will never be broken.
All squares are rectangles and all rectangles are squares?
Adherence to the rules of a state is compulsory; adherence to the rules of a religion is not. This is in the modern, Western, context. The historical role of the RC church as state-builder and kingmaker cannot be denied, but it also cannot be used when discussing the role of religion in re: statehood today, and it especially cannot be extrapolated to other religions.
How does it "only turn on when you look at it?" How would it know? That part just doesn't make sense to me
I'm guessing the same way my wife does, except her default setting is to turn off when I look at her.
I keep grepping her log file to find out why, but that just pisses her off even more, and it's kind of gross.
She tells me it's because of my TLD, I assume she means Tiny Linux Distribution... They keep calling me a n00b over at Usenet, and to RTFM -- anyone have a link to some good docs for a wife driver running on Tiny Linux???
Oh, as to a real answer to your question... well, I don't knoiw either, but it reminds me of an old joke:
An engineer, a physicist, a mathematician, and a mystic were asked to name the greatest invention of all times.
The engineer chose fire, which gave humanity power over matter.
The physicist chose the wheel, which gave humanity the power over space.
The mathematician chose the alphabet, which gave humanity power over symbols.
The mystic chose the thermos bottle.
"Why a thermos bottle?" the others asked.
"Because the thermos keeps hot liquids hot in winter and cold liquids cold in summer."
"Yes -- so what?"
"Think about it." said the mystic reverently. That little bottle -- how does it know?"
Sorry, the function of government is not to protect the rights of individuals. Government exists to protect the rights of groups of individuals, which is a far different thing. In the US, the Bill of Rights is about protecting individuals from government, not from other individuals.
Social factors are what protect an individual from others' transgressing their rights -- sometimes these are codified into law.
The problem is that individual rights are often at loggerheads with the rights of other individuals.
a nanny state is where a state takes away rights "for your protection"
What do you think "for your protection" means? What is being protected, other than your rights (keep in mind, that rights include the right to life, and the right to be secure in your person)?
Nanny-statism is simply a system where some of your rights are restrcited in order to protect other rights. It's this give-and-take of rights that is the reason why governments should NOT be proactive in rights "protection." As you mention, there are rights, which when trasngressed, result in irreparable harm (like the right to life) and in these cases, government does take a proactive role (police forces, etc).
if the government could have prevented then the government has failed in it's function.
I have to come back to this, because it is quite mistaken. What if, in order to prevent me from harming you, the government had to violate my rights, and the rights of thousands more? Do you think people should be incarcerated for thought crimes, to keep them from committing real crimes? This is the crux of why government should not actively pursue rights protection unhindered.
Bad habits cannot be eliminated. If you want to get rid of a bad habit, you
must replace it with a good one.
That's odd, I quit smoking and didn't replace it with anything. Sure, I fiddled with stuff to keep my hands busy in the beginning, but I don't do that anymore.
If you mean that those affected by the law will need something else to do during that time, well, that's just plain obvious and has nothing to do with replacng one habit with another.
The problem there is twofold -- the exec has poorly designed metrics (if they are so easy to falsify and so difficult to report accurately), and the reporting structure is not sound. They don't have to be complex to be useful.
I'll disagree about government taking an active role in protecting rights -- that is where we end up with a nanny state. I think government should play a passive role in protecting rights, it's up to people to use government tools to protect their rights, IMO.
There needs to be a root. Interesting that you bring up the research into teeth grown from stem cells[1], possibly one could create the root from stem cells, implant, and then finish the growth with this device. I'm not sure if tissue rejection would be a problem, though.
There's also a good potential for this to be used for body modification. Easy enough to add things to the diet to impart a color into the tooth while it grows (one reason why kids aren't given tetracycline -- it makes their growing teeth permanaently orange). A mouthful of glow-in-the-dark teeth? No problem. How about teeth that glow orange or green under a blacklight, instead of violet?
IANAD (but I do have a Pharmacy degree). But most likely this could not be used to cure osteosarcoma, as stimulating growth of a cancer is probably not the best idea.
As for osteoporosis, I would suspect stimulating growth is not the right way to go either -- the bones are there, it's the structure of the bone that is weakened. Exercise, calcium intake, Vitamin D intake, and sometimes Fosamax (slows down resorption of calcium) or hormone regimens (still experimental) are the treatments du jour.
I would say simply that you have principles. Those who profess one thing, but then don't apply it equally, have principles that don't include what they are professing. The whole point of a principle is that it is applied to everything, no matter what.
Anyway, I'm glad there ARE libertarian voices-of-reason on Slashdot, sometimes I get very sick of seeing highly-modded pseudo-libertarian claptrap...
I'm quite aware of the failures of laissez-faire economics. However, the term is VERY appropriate to how freedoms are viewed in the US.
It has been a long time since any rights have been considered inalienable by the people. The reason I use the term laissez-faire is that it denotes the concept that many people believe it is both possible and necessary to have a "hands-on" approach to "managing" rights.
Basically, the state should not directly intervene in any effort on my part to exercise any of my rights. If the exercise of my rights deprives someone else of their rights, then that individual has the opportunity to seek redress or prevent me via a state mechanism -- which is far different from the state taking an active hand.
I think you're missing my point re: metrics. It's not the individual metrics that count -- it's the aggregate metrics that matter in the long term, especially to the highest levels. Without collecting those metrics at the lowest levels, it's impossible to have accurate analysis.
What if the question is, "Which manager is more effective at making sure their team meets deadline?" or "Which team is hobbled most by inadequate managers, and is therefore a priority for assigning a talented manager?" As multiple projects are completed, this is the way to measure success|failure in a way that can be demonstrated to those who need to know.
As to inadequate forecasting of timescales -- measuring that is just as important for determining how to better forecast them as it is to determine whether a certain manager or team habitually misses deadline.
Again, I think the problem is that you're only looking from the perspective of an engineer on a team, or a team manager, not someone responsible for long-term success of many teams and many projects.
Finally, another word on metrics -- despite how inaccurate they may be, or how poorly they represent what's happening in the trenches, they are invaluable when you need justification for terminations, selective promotions, and raises. Employment law has created a situation where these things MUST be documented or else you're exposing yourself to a boatload of risk.
Countries constantly arrest people on terrorism charges. Luckily, at least in the United States, we have a fairly unbiased court system that gives everyone a fair trial.
Two things --
First, that assumes you make it into the court system (see: Guantanamo Bay). Beyond that, I'm sure there are plenty of people who've been "disappeared" -- at least according to the tinfoil hatters out there.
Second, you've got to consider who makes it into the court system, who actually goes to trial. Is that applied fairly? Do certain types of criminals get handled differently based on some segregating factor, like race, or economic background, or personal connections to law enforcement or government officials?
In terms of the grid you've supplied, I'm a little confused about the row assignments -- in one row, you've got two values of a boolean; in the other, you've got one value which is a subset of the other. Anyway, here's a matrix I think would work better:
The goal is to maximize A1, and to minimize A2 and all B, with B1 being the most important to minimize.
If you want to look at invasion of privacy and violation of other rights, then you're missing the most important data in your matrix: impact of rights transgression. In that case, you want a histogram, not a matrix -- perps convicted vs. scale of rights transgression.
Finally, if you want to consider security, you're graphing events prevented vs. rights transgression. And unfortunately, there is no way to measure events prevented, since there is a subset of events planned that won't come off for other reasons.
This is just an issue with management, though. A good manager will trust his engineers (or fire them and replace them with trustworthy alternatives). The manager's job is to set the direction of the project, get the engineers what they need to steer in that direction, and then get out of the way as much as possible and as quickly as possible.
You're missing two vital parts of project management: ensuring the train stays on track, and ensuring that the investors (stockholders, direct investors, whoever supplied the $$) is kept aware of progress.
A manager's job is not just to get the project done on time, under budget, as best quality as possible -- it's also to liason between their team and the high[er|est] levels. For those at the highest level of a large company, you're looking at possibly dozens or hundreds of projects. How does a company distill the important information that policies and decisions need to be based upon? If you're going to analyze data from dozens of projects, you'll need common metrics -- which means bureacratic "red tape" in order to get values for those metrics.
I will add, however, that micromanagers, and managers without competency, or at least familiarity, of the skillsets needed for the project, can often harm production. But, you need to keep in mind the full responsibilities of a manager -- that {$TECHNOBABBLE}-caused delay will need to be explained to his boss -- unexplained delays are by default inexcusable.
People caring about this depends on people knowing how it affects them. For most people, this doesn't affect them one bit in practical terms.
In some sense, it is already too late, as laissez-faire has been dropped from how Western governments choose to handle individuals, in addition to how it was dropped from how Western governments handle business. This is a cultural change that has been a century in the making, and is not likely reverse itself in our lifetimes, IMO.
Re:Where to draw the line on user ignorance?
on
Dealing with Phishing
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Are people so content with blind usability of their devices?
Why yes, yes they are.
To most users out there, their devices are just blackbox tools. As long as the output is what's expected, they could care less what the updates are doing, or what their device is doing. Note that this is very much what software/hardware companies aim for -- "it just works."
That's how you separate the geeks from the boys (not with a crowbar, as has been joked) -- who wants to know what's going on there (and is willing to spend the time to find out), and who is content just playing their game.
The funny thing is that I am definitely NOT a libertarian - yet I feel I have a better understanding of what libertarianism is than many who profess to be one.
I'm a militant libertarian as a general rule. Much more so than your average slashdotter. Yet even I can sympathize with the school here. Until they take this over into punishing regular students, it's fine by me.
A militant libertarian shouldn't have a problem with any rules the school establishes, or any actions students choose to take (whether against the rules or not). Students are free to transfer out if they don't like the rules, and the school should be free to offer scholarships to whomever it pleases, to grant admission to whomever it pleases, and to expel whoever it pleases.
The market will sort it out, right? Schools that are too restrictive of students' behavior will see the quality of their students decline, as the good applicants will no longer wish to go there, right?
I think slashbacks are good in general, but this topic was discussed... yesterday. A few days (at least) to ruminate might be more useful in terms of generating new useful discussion. I think there will be lots of articles relevant to this topic submitted in the next few weeks, why not refer back to the KSU/Facebook discussion then? Is this just a way to keep the topic on the main page (for people using the default view)?
Also, Offtopic (ironically): Comments discussing the nature of this type of article are not really off-topic IMO; given that the article itself is meta-commentary on comments, how are comments that are meta-commentary on the article offtopic?
Slashdot Mirror
Your argument is predicated on the concept that there is no difference between religious and secular matters. As for the Constitutionality of the idea of separation of church and state, it is disingenuous to say that it is not found within the Constitution, for "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" is clearly the foundation of separation.
Anyway, you've totally disregarded my point -- not addressed it at all. Yes, States and Churches sometimes share a lot of characteristics. But they are not the same thing at all, and to conflate them trivializes their differences.
'Belonging' to a State requires only that you meet the legal definitions of a citizen of that State; as one who belongs to that state, adherence to the rules is compulsory. 'Belonging' to a Church requires not only that you are formally recognized and adhere to the rules, but also that you Believe.
Also, just to note -- there is quite a difference between a religion and a Church. A religion is a concept, not an organization, so to imply that "secularists" are trying to ensure that "theirs is the only one true religion" doesn't compute. Also, I know plenty of Catholic secularists... where does that put them?
"IIRC, you are allowed to record whatever you want on your own private property."
Depends on the state.
"Also, when on public property, there is no right to privacy (The right to privacy is also not explicitly stated in the constitution or any of the amendments as many people believe. It is, according to case law, implied however.) The dash cams are recording you while you and the officer are both on public property (the roads)."
Just wanted to point out -- even when on private property you do not have a right to privacy unless it is reasonable to expect privacy. This means that if your living room curtains are open, and your living room is visible from the street, you have no expectation of privacy there.
"If you record your own property, you do not need to notify anyone that you are recording (think video surveilance of stores.)"
Again, depends on the state. Stores will of course post notices anyway, to deter theft, but in some states that notice is required by law.
That's why people can sue for wrongful arrest. Not that it erases the wrongdoing, but at least he can recover his legal fees, plus receive additional compensation.
This is a pretty huge misinterpretation. The Founders did not feel it was the responsibility of the States to establish State religions; likely a few of them did, and some of them felt it was the States' right to establish a state religion if a state chose to. But given everything I've read about the Founders, the establishment of a State Church was anathema to most of their personal beliefs, as was any government funding of churches.
"You miss the point because while you chose to quit smoking"
It was my choice just as much as quitting videogames is their choice. My wife laid down the law, and I complied.
"Besides if you "fiddled with stuff" then apparently you did need something to replace the smoking with regardless of whether or not you decided to quit doing that as well."
But I didn't replace the fiddling with anything. Substitution is not the only way to kick a habit, and not only that, is often not the best way. A short-term crutch is a different story, you're subsitituting part of the habit so you can tackle another part (eg, the nicotine dependency for me). But it's not a full substitution at all, and in no way matches what the OP was saying -- that habits must be replaced or they will never be broken.
Adherence to the rules of a state is compulsory; adherence to the rules of a religion is not. This is in the modern, Western, context. The historical role of the RC church as state-builder and kingmaker cannot be denied, but it also cannot be used when discussing the role of religion in re: statehood today, and it especially cannot be extrapolated to other religions.
I keep grepping her log file to find out why, but that just pisses her off even more, and it's kind of gross.
She tells me it's because of my TLD, I assume she means Tiny Linux Distribution... They keep calling me a n00b over at Usenet, and to RTFM -- anyone have a link to some good docs for a wife driver running on Tiny Linux???
Oh, as to a real answer to your question... well, I don't knoiw either, but it reminds me of an old joke:
Social factors are what protect an individual from others' transgressing their rights -- sometimes these are codified into law.
The problem is that individual rights are often at loggerheads with the rights of other individuals. What do you think "for your protection" means? What is being protected, other than your rights (keep in mind, that rights include the right to life, and the right to be secure in your person)?
Nanny-statism is simply a system where some of your rights are restrcited in order to protect other rights. It's this give-and-take of rights that is the reason why governments should NOT be proactive in rights "protection." As you mention, there are rights, which when trasngressed, result in irreparable harm (like the right to life) and in these cases, government does take a proactive role (police forces, etc).
I have to come back to this, because it is quite mistaken. What if, in order to prevent me from harming you, the government had to violate my rights, and the rights of thousands more? Do you think people should be incarcerated for thought crimes, to keep them from committing real crimes? This is the crux of why government should not actively pursue rights protection unhindered.
If you mean that those affected by the law will need something else to do during that time, well, that's just plain obvious and has nothing to do with replacng one habit with another.
The problem there is twofold -- the exec has poorly designed metrics (if they are so easy to falsify and so difficult to report accurately), and the reporting structure is not sound. They don't have to be complex to be useful.
I'll disagree about government taking an active role in protecting rights -- that is where we end up with a nanny state. I think government should play a passive role in protecting rights, it's up to people to use government tools to protect their rights, IMO.
There needs to be a root. Interesting that you bring up the research into teeth grown from stem cells[1], possibly one could create the root from stem cells, implant, and then finish the growth with this device. I'm not sure if tissue rejection would be a problem, though.
There's also a good potential for this to be used for body modification. Easy enough to add things to the diet to impart a color into the tooth while it grows (one reason why kids aren't given tetracycline -- it makes their growing teeth permanaently orange). A mouthful of glow-in-the-dark teeth? No problem. How about teeth that glow orange or green under a blacklight, instead of violet?
IANAD (but I do have a Pharmacy degree). But most likely this could not be used to cure osteosarcoma, as stimulating growth of a cancer is probably not the best idea.
As for osteoporosis, I would suspect stimulating growth is not the right way to go either -- the bones are there, it's the structure of the bone that is weakened. Exercise, calcium intake, Vitamin D intake, and sometimes Fosamax (slows down resorption of calcium) or hormone regimens (still experimental) are the treatments du jour.
Obviously you have a pressing interest in this cutting-edge technology.
I would say simply that you have principles. Those who profess one thing, but then don't apply it equally, have principles that don't include what they are professing. The whole point of a principle is that it is applied to everything, no matter what.
Anyway, I'm glad there ARE libertarian voices-of-reason on Slashdot, sometimes I get very sick of seeing highly-modded pseudo-libertarian claptrap...
I'm quite aware of the failures of laissez-faire economics. However, the term is VERY appropriate to how freedoms are viewed in the US.
It has been a long time since any rights have been considered inalienable by the people. The reason I use the term laissez-faire is that it denotes the concept that many people believe it is both possible and necessary to have a "hands-on" approach to "managing" rights.
Basically, the state should not directly intervene in any effort on my part to exercise any of my rights. If the exercise of my rights deprives someone else of their rights, then that individual has the opportunity to seek redress or prevent me via a state mechanism -- which is far different from the state taking an active hand.
I think you're missing my point re: metrics. It's not the individual metrics that count -- it's the aggregate metrics that matter in the long term, especially to the highest levels. Without collecting those metrics at the lowest levels, it's impossible to have accurate analysis.
What if the question is, "Which manager is more effective at making sure their team meets deadline?" or "Which team is hobbled most by inadequate managers, and is therefore a priority for assigning a talented manager?" As multiple projects are completed, this is the way to measure success|failure in a way that can be demonstrated to those who need to know.
As to inadequate forecasting of timescales -- measuring that is just as important for determining how to better forecast them as it is to determine whether a certain manager or team habitually misses deadline.
Again, I think the problem is that you're only looking from the perspective of an engineer on a team, or a team manager, not someone responsible for long-term success of many teams and many projects.
Finally, another word on metrics -- despite how inaccurate they may be, or how poorly they represent what's happening in the trenches, they are invaluable when you need justification for terminations, selective promotions, and raises. Employment law has created a situation where these things MUST be documented or else you're exposing yourself to a boatload of risk.
First, that assumes you make it into the court system (see: Guantanamo Bay). Beyond that, I'm sure there are plenty of people who've been "disappeared" -- at least according to the tinfoil hatters out there.
Second, you've got to consider who makes it into the court system, who actually goes to trial. Is that applied fairly? Do certain types of criminals get handled differently based on some segregating factor, like race, or economic background, or personal connections to law enforcement or government officials?
In terms of the grid you've supplied, I'm a little confused about the row assignments -- in one row, you've got two values of a boolean; in the other, you've got one value which is a subset of the other. Anyway, here's a matrix I think would work better:
The goal is to maximize A1, and to minimize A2 and all B, with B1 being the most important to minimize.
If you want to look at invasion of privacy and violation of other rights, then you're missing the most important data in your matrix: impact of rights transgression. In that case, you want a histogram, not a matrix -- perps convicted vs. scale of rights transgression.
Finally, if you want to consider security, you're graphing events prevented vs. rights transgression. And unfortunately, there is no way to measure events prevented, since there is a subset of events planned that won't come off for other reasons.
A manager's job is not just to get the project done on time, under budget, as best quality as possible -- it's also to liason between their team and the high[er|est] levels. For those at the highest level of a large company, you're looking at possibly dozens or hundreds of projects. How does a company distill the important information that policies and decisions need to be based upon? If you're going to analyze data from dozens of projects, you'll need common metrics -- which means bureacratic "red tape" in order to get values for those metrics.
I will add, however, that micromanagers, and managers without competency, or at least familiarity, of the skillsets needed for the project, can often harm production. But, you need to keep in mind the full responsibilities of a manager -- that {$TECHNOBABBLE}-caused delay will need to be explained to his boss -- unexplained delays are by default inexcusable.
People caring about this depends on people knowing how it affects them. For most people, this doesn't affect them one bit in practical terms.
In some sense, it is already too late, as laissez-faire has been dropped from how Western governments choose to handle individuals, in addition to how it was dropped from how Western governments handle business. This is a cultural change that has been a century in the making, and is not likely reverse itself in our lifetimes, IMO.
Whoooooosh. :)
To most users out there, their devices are just blackbox tools. As long as the output is what's expected, they could care less what the updates are doing, or what their device is doing. Note that this is very much what software/hardware companies aim for -- "it just works."
That's how you separate the geeks from the boys (not with a crowbar, as has been joked) -- who wants to know what's going on there (and is willing to spend the time to find out), and who is content just playing their game.
The funny thing is that I am definitely NOT a libertarian - yet I feel I have a better understanding of what libertarianism is than many who profess to be one.
The market will sort it out, right? Schools that are too restrictive of students' behavior will see the quality of their students decline, as the good applicants will no longer wish to go there, right?
I think slashbacks are good in general, but this topic was discussed... yesterday. A few days (at least) to ruminate might be more useful in terms of generating new useful discussion. I think there will be lots of articles relevant to this topic submitted in the next few weeks, why not refer back to the KSU/Facebook discussion then? Is this just a way to keep the topic on the main page (for people using the default view)?
Also, Offtopic (ironically): Comments discussing the nature of this type of article are not really off-topic IMO; given that the article itself is meta-commentary on comments, how are comments that are meta-commentary on the article offtopic?