I think GP is a troll, but the actual point is valid. It isn't that parts of the world "know nothing about ethics or morality." It is that other cultures have other standards of ethics and morality. While most cultures have similar basic ethics and morals (do not kill, do not steal--actually a generalization of the first, etc.), something that falls into a gray area like reusing the IP of another will be inconsistent throughout the world. Besides, we don't really have an established moral outlook on IP infringement, which is why we call it "theft" more often than not. It's because theft is the closest thing we know to IP infringement. Hence, it is negative by association.
It is not to say that Google using Sohu's database is OK because it happened in China. If Sohu started using Google's database, Google would likely make a big stink about it too. But it probably isn't as big a deal over there as it is here. Certainly, it would not be considered "evil" behavior. It wouldn't be good either, but it doesn't quite fall into evil yet.
It's interesting that you mention classical music. I am an avid listener of classical music myself, and I've always enjoyed purchasing the CD over downloading. Certainly, there are places to get the CDs in a lossless format (I don't bother with lossy files, as I can hear the difference between a CD and a 256Kbps MP3, subtle as it may be). But it's just not quite the same. Once I get a CD, I even rip it into a lossless format so that I can play it without having to switch CD's or hog up a whole drive. But I like having the CD too. I like leafing through the booklet, or just scanning my CD rack to look for what I might want to listen to next, as opposed to picking it out of a track list in a media library on the computer. It's almost like reading a book, as opposed to an e-book.
I don't know why, but I don't have this same feeling with my popular CD's. In that case, I buy the CD's, rip 'em, and never touch the CD again. I think it might have to do with the way tracks are. In a classical CD, each track is a movement, and a CD might have several pieces with several movements. On the other hand, each track on a popular CD is one individual song.
Heh, I'm not really sure what my point is, but I do have a feeling that classical music is the only genre where sales are rising, or at least not falling as fast.
Actually, GP might as well not buy anything. There's so much stuff that's made in China these days, and even if the product as a whole isn't, numerous parts are. And even if not that, the same companies have business interests in China. Hell, if GP is living in the US, it's time to leave. The US government owes the Chinese government a lot of money...
Fact of the matter is, China is not a communist regime. It's a not-quite-so benevolent dictatorship. However, dictatorships (and all governments for that matter) can only survive when there's order in the realm, and when there's actually people in the realm. An unstable environment unstablizes governments. Look at the aftermath of Katrina. If a disaster of that magnitude were to hit the rest of the US all at once, the US government itself would be destroyed in the process, likely replaced by a military dictatorship or facist state (as if it isn't happening already...). China realizes this, and all the environment-friendly policies these past few years works towards this end.
A near vacuum would be great for efficiency, but it wouldn't be so good if the rail ran through a countryside. It'd be as much of an eyesore as an oil pipeline in your backyard. Now, if the rails were underground, it'd be a lot easier, especially if the vacuum was maintained on a scheduled (rather than a continuous) basis.
What I've always wondered is why no one ever thought to model the engine like an actual bullet. Put a rotating cone in the front and encompasses the whole of the train, and I'm sure drag will be reduced significantly. Of course, the tracks would have to be pretty clean, and anything that it hits will likely be flung far away, but there shouldn't be things hitting the bullet train in the first place...
The GPL is a gift with strings attached. Yes, you benefit from it, but so does everyone else. It's saying, you can use the code I wrote if you let others use what you wrote. GPL might be the minimum conditions before code can be considered free (the most restrictive, but still free), and BSD might be considered the maximum (no restrictions whatsoever).
Actually, in the case of critical applications like telesurgury, they'd be using dedicated fiber lines instead of a shared line like cable. So the point is moot. The hospital/doctor is already paying for a very high speed, dedicated line, and there's nothing to interfere with that traffic (unless telesurgury generates enough packets that it overloads the ISP's connection to the backbone, or the backbone itself, which is neigh impossible given a large enough ISP for the former and really not possible for the latter).
So in this case, you're already paying a premium for the high speed line. The lack of net neutrality would mean you'd be paying extra on top just to be able to saturate that high speed line you're already paying for.
Net neutrality doesn't work any way you cut it. Now, if you wanted filtering so that your secretary's streaming music and videos don't interfere with your telesurgury, that's something you can request your ISP to do (or do yourself at your switch/NAT). But that's a separate issue, and deals with how you allocate your bandwidth, not whether you need to pay extra for usage on top of capability.
There's mathematics and physics around geocentrism. Math cannot be disproven and physics is much harder to argue against (like the pinciples of centripetal force, momentum, and gravity for example). For example, how does one account for the seasons and the position of the sun in the sky during those seasons in a heliocentric model? One cannot. If the world is spherical or near spherical, the sun cannot revolve around the earth in the way a spring might (because the period of one "solar revolution" doesn't change with the seasons) AND reverse directions every winter/summer without an external force constantly acting upon it.
Besides, there's no contest to the moon revolving around the earth, and the sun's path is definitely different from the moon's. If the sun also revolved around the earth and the above was possible, wouldn't the moon exhibit the same or a similar orbit?
The dieties in the old testament are not the all-powerful, all-knowing Diety in the new testament. The god in the old (who admits he is actually one among many in the first commandment through forbidding of the worship of the others) might be significantly more powerful than a mere human, and immortal to boot, but not nearly as "perfect" as the God in the new. Attempts to reconcile the two would only result in numerous logical inconsistencies. Why, for example, would an omniscient diety need to test believers. The omniscient already knows whether Abraham would sacrifice his own son. Further, if the diety of the old is not omniscient and perfectly good, then how did the death of Jesus transform said diety into one who is omniscient and perfectly good. And why was magic commonplace and an accepted part of life in the old but considered taboo in the new? Did said diety suddenly revise his stance when he ascended from mere god-dom to God-dom after the death of his supposed son?
Don't forget that Christianity was historically a weapon used to control the masses. In order to control people through belief, original thought must be extinguished. Those are the easiest people to control: the ones who are so desperate for something--anything that might bring meaning to their life that they'll eat up every lie the controllers tell in order to keep them in line and remain in power.
The tale of Noah's ark is littered with signs of ignorance. Certainly, a flood could have happened way back when, and someone could have built a giant ark to live upon before that flood, and that person could have loved and kept all sorts of animals on said ark, but to say that the flood covered the whole world, and all the animals of the world were in the ark, would be quite impossible. Human technology and dominance has never been more advanced, and such a feat today would not be possible, simply because we have not yet categorized all the animals in the world, nor are we capable of building self-contained environments wherein the species within would survive for a long period of time. Both are due to the lack of knowledge, something that cannot be reconciled by the non-omniscient old testament diety. That, and even if both the knowledge and technology were sufficient at that time, such an ark would be of a fair enough size that it would have left enough traces for us to easily validate its existence. As such, we still don't know where it is, if there ever was one.
Personally, if the knowledge and technology existed for such a creation as described in the old testament, I would think that Noah actually took the ark and his family into space and never came back. After all, who would want to live on a planet that's controlled by such a wrathful diety in the first place?
Which is why we shouldn't do away with patents, but make the process more thorough, and done by experts in the field. I have always advocated that we move to a system where multiple qualified academics handle the patent application review in their specialized field. Granted the standards of triviality will suddenly go through the roof, but wasn't that the original intention anyway, for a patent to be non-obvious to true academic experts as opposed to laymen? Of course, to ensure unbiased reviews, academic institutions and those working for such institutions would have to be revoked of their ability to obtain patents so long as they obtain federal funding. Academic institutions not receiving federal funding (including federal financial aid for students) would be treated as a business and allowed to file patents, but their employees would not be allowed to review them.
By making the patenting process more stringent, fewer frivilous and blatantly obvious patents would be made (like most software patents), and more time would go into real R&D as opposed to patent litigation (fewer patents to defend/attack, and the patented likely won't be easily rediscovered).
But with D.C. controlled by the special interests, all of whom are for a more lax patenting process (of which the topic of this story is a result), it's not like this is going to actually happen--at least anytime soon. Unfortunately, the judicial is the only branch that remains relatively untainted, and they can't make laws, only validate them. Not that this kind of restructuring is even remotely possible with the executive firmly in the pockets of very specific special interest groups regardless of what the legislative does or does not.
Everybody keeps mentioning another console. What about the PC? PC's have the graphics and numerical processing power. And, if current configurations aren't enough, people can always upgrade. Whatever happened to the games and gamers driving the hardware market?
So the question is, would you buy a PS3 if games started migrating to the PC?
There's also a huge difference between being asked to provide assistance, and being asked to keep and maintain records. Schools and ISP's can provide all the assistance law enforcement wants, but if they don't have a log of all the traffic in their network, that assistance would amount to nothing of consequence for retroactive investigations.
Besides, the telecos would not like laws requiring keeping and maintaining traffic logs, and probably would lobby against them. After all, they'd shoulder the burden of the costs, and even more so, if anything should happen to those logs (fire, failed back-ups, etc.) they'd be the responsible party. Now, they let the government set up spy stations mostly because they wouldn't be responsible for the spying or the data collected, and it doesn't cost terribly much.
You do realize that he resigned because he thought his outing would, by association, harm his company and Obama's campaign. That and he made it in his free time. While (arguably) negative publicity might be a good thing in some instances, it's usually not for politicians.
Still, I wouldn't be surprised if someone from another presidential hopeful's camp shows up at his front door with a really nice job offer within the next few days. I'm thinking perhaps Edwards, Giuliani, McCain, or even *gasp* Clinton.
I wouldn't dare vouch for the company, but there are heavier papers out there than the usual 80-100 gsm. Photo paper in particular is much heavier, especially when saturated with ink. We don't know what kind of paper is being used, so we can't say much about these things. As for curling, it actually largely happens with laser printers and not so much with inkjets. The fuser heats up the paper as it is going by and causes the paper to curl. We can only assume they're using ink we know about, so we can't really talk about drying times either. But I'd think there'd be a little bit of smearing if the prints were landing on top of each other so quickly.
I wouldn't be surprised if other companies have abandoned similar research. After all, we all know there is still the problem with nozzle reliability, and if any one goes, all the prints would look pretty bad. The big players might have hit roadblocks and decided not to pursue this any further, perhaps until their other technologies (like ink or nozzle design) mature. It's not implausible that the real advance is a novel solution to the clogged nozzle problem.
1400 patents sounds like a patent troll. Perhaps they were collecting royalties from the big players all this time. And now that perhaps some of them are expiring, they're actually forced to create a product to keep the company alive. The announcement certainly sounds like an attempt to attract more investors.
However, the other points remain, and I am skeptical nonetheless. It's up in the air right now, but I'm sure we'll know in a few years time whether this turns out to be true or not. If it does, good for them, and good for us really (I'd like my camera to be able to print out small prints of photos). If not, oh well.
You're right that they can't really stop you from selling it. But they can convince legislature to pass laws to prevent your vehicle from being considered road worthy. They can launch a propaganda campaign, make your product look bad, and run you out of business. They can buy up your engineers, your management, heck, even enter into contracts with your suppliers. Think about all the dirty little tactics that Microsoft used, then add politics to it. Like for example, convince some lawyers to sue your product for every little defect. Or convince legislature to tighten the regulations for your product--for your parts supplier, your resource supplier, etc. Conspiracy theory? Maybe. But most of these tactics have been used before. And there's nothing preventing big companies from using them to kill off competition.
Why is ethanol so popular these days as an alternative fuel as opposed to other green fuel solutions? Ethanol is only a small (albeit a significant) step away from oil, yet it's being touted as the fuel that will save the planet. It's because corn farmers have a huge presence in DC. They saw an opportunity to increase the worth of their crop, and they jumped to get legislatures' attention. Don't ever underestimate the power of lobbying.
This isn't quite true yet. Most people who use the internet are not very savvy when it comes to protecting their privacy. With everyone having gmail accounts, they can effectively trace a person's search habits over years. Especially if people use the same computer, or log in to gmail before every session. So no, the data doesn't become less useful for most users. On the contrary, it becomes more, and utility is only going to increase as google releases more and more services.
An example off the top of my head (so forgive me if I seem like I'm rambling), you can map shifts in popularity over time by location. So if a cultural movement happens in New York, you can, using search queries, watch it move across the country, and possibly see it move over oceans. And the interesting thing is, you can see where different types of cultural shifts get transmitted first and how quickly they're adopted relative to their initial introduction. With identifiable information, you can identify the user or set of users who have the msot clout in certain areas. Certain ads for those people will be different (and perhaps more expensive) from the same type of ads for people who are merely followers of a cultural movement. And, over an extended period of time, you can actually see the rise and fall of that particular user's clout on a particular subject if the difference is substantial enough.
Now, imagine if the US government got a hold of this. They can pinpoint people who are influential in certain areas (like political movements) and target them should they need to. Communism getting popular again? Violent revolution? Find out who the major influencers are (sometimes, they're not necessarily the leaders) and take 'em out. Don't even have to assassinate these people now. Call 'em a terrorist and lock 'em up indefinitely.
One thing I think would really boost browse/search anonyminity and something I really would like to see on browsers is the ability to tie session cookies to individual tabs and/or windows only. That and a MAC address randomizer. But the latter is probably far more difficult than the former.
Don't forget that librarians greatly value privacy and the right to privacy. It's probably why libraries try not to keep patron records. We might not necessarily think of them as such, but libraries are an integral part of academia, from where the strongest voices advocating privacy have come. Unlike private universities and colleges though, libraries can't be turned into a business, and thus their interests lie solely in the public--or more appropriately, collectively private--good.
Swimming and biking require social interaction? Aside from sports, a lot of exercise is primarily solitary. How many useful skills do you learn from exercise and sports really?
Tell that to the people taking self-defense classes. I'd count self-defense a useful skill.
In addition, because of the nature of self-defense, it almost requires socializing. You can't partner with anyone if you don't trust them. And learn self-defense without a partner is only a little better than learning how to dance.
By the way, I consider martial arts an exercise, not a sport. Sports have rules. If you need to defend yourself, following and breaking rules become a trivial matter. Of course, that's a completely different debate.
I'd also count swimming a useful skill. If you're out in the ocean fishing and happen to fall overboard, regardless whether you're wearing a life jacket or not, knowing how to swim may be the difference between you surviving and not.
Just because you can't conceive of a use for the skills you gain from exercise and sports doesn't mean there are none. Forget knowing self-defense--if someone were to break into my home, suddenly, all that time exercising becomes useful. Quite frankly, I'd rather be fit (whether to fight or flight) than not.
I can't detect any sarcasm, but I really hope you're kidding. Some 7 million people take the bus or subway in New York City every day. You're going to tell me that the daily commute of 88% of the population of NYC falls into that 10-15% of the journeys? These are MTA stats, so it doesn't even count NJ Transit. Unfortunately, I couldn't find NJ Transit stats for NYC commuters.
Maybe in suburbia, you're right. But any city will have a large percentage of people riding mass transit, be it rail or bus, and regardless of how crappy the system might be. They're just not necessarily the people you're used to.
I speak of an ideal situation, where the "credentials is meaningless" philosophy is maintained. In this situation, Essjay's credentials led to his promotion, which does not follow the philosophy behind wikipedia. That chain of evens would've been more appropriate for something like Citizendium. However, that should not have been the case for wikipedia, and people who are in a position to do the promotions should've understood this. Promotion should have been based on Essjay's contributions to wikipedia and the validity thereof. At the same time, his credentials ideally would not have won him anything. It should've been his citable references, sources, etc. And the decision should've been made based on the credibility of those references.
Of course, since Wikipedia hasn't been asking for sources until very recently, it's wasn't particularly easy to do such validation on the content of the edit. And for numerous topics that are not objective, it still isn't, as producing sources may not be so easy, or sources may be conflicting (in which case both viewpoints should be expressed). But I digress.
The problem of admins pushing their own agenda should be tackled by other admins. Which is to say, the problem solves itself in the same way that vandalism or other agenda-pushing gets solved--by other admins. Of course, since admins are upheld to a higher standard than regular wikipedians, if they are caught doing something unethical, their powers as an admin should be limited. For example, they might not be allowed to administer certain pages if there is a conflict of interest. And if their violation is particularly severe, the solution would be permanent demotion--permanent demotion achievable by the fact that an admin's credentials need to be validated before becoming one in the first place.
There is the question of how one might decide whether an admin has violated the code of ethics. I think this is vastly simplified with credential validation. It's easy to do some digging around once an admin has given up the right to privacy. And if enough admins think the violation is punishable, then that admin would be put on probation or outright punished. Of course, this assumes an ideal situation where the admins aren't corrupt in the first place. Though, it seems that's not possible to achieve anymore.
Mods: Parent isn't just a funny comment. Parent does bring up a very valid question. Please mod appropriately.
The beginning philosophy of Wikipedia was that everyone had something to contribute to human knowledge, and credentials (the sort of things that get you opportunities to publish in respected journals) should not matter as much as the accuracy of your statements. This is correct, and it still holds true--all other things being equal. There's the catch. If everyone had an equal say in things, then regardless of credentials, the validity of each person's contribution would be based on content. That is to say, if I told you that a red shift meant things were moving away and someone with a Ph.D. in astrophysics said that a red shift meant things were moving towards, you might believe the astrophysicist (if you knew), but what if I could back up my claims with sources and the astrophysicist couldn't, what I said would end up on Wikipedia.
However, when it comes to moderators and administrators, things are a little different. They break this concept of equality that is the foundation of the philosophy. They can exert influence over points of contention, and even more so, they can assert their authority by limiting the voice of a regular wikipedian. They are in a position of power. So the rules have to change for them.
It isn't intuitive, but ideally, it is the fact that they are in a position of power that lends credibility to their claimed credentials, as opposed to their credentials putting them in that position. Remember that credentials are ideally meaningless for a regular wikipedian. That means that their elevation to a moderator or administrator would be made based on the content of their contributions. Credentials are still meaningless during this process. But once they've ceased to be a regular wikipedian, and they begin exerting their powers over regular wikipedians, then their credentials need to come into play.
This shouldn't mean that one has to have a Ph.D. or some other credential to be a moderator or administrator. However, this does mean that once someone becomes a moderator or administrator, all such claims need to be verifiably true. Just because someone doesn't have a degree in anything doesn't mean that person would make a poor moderator. But it does mean that the person should not be able to influence debates on astrophysics in the role of a moderator.
So no, it's not so much of a breakdown in the philosophy of wikipedia, as it is that the original system was imperfectly implemented. A background check on moderator/administrator candidates would be more like a natural part of the ideal system based on the wiki philosophy, but that was not discovered until now.
JPEG isn't going anywhere as far as the preferred internet image format goes. What Microsoft might be thinking about entering is the digital point-and-shoot photography market, and maybe a little of the clip art market as well. But they're gonna have to jump through hoops to get that. They don't have their own digital cameras to generate pictures in this format, and they'll need to get the major image manipulation software companies on board before they can even begin to hope for any adoption. Which means that they'll have to convince adobe to support it at the very least, and last I heard, Microsoft and Adobe's relationship wasn't particularly good, especially when it comes to formats--something about Microsoft dicking Adobe over by creating True Type Fonts or something alone those line.
In real life, for a trial lawyer, how many juries do you think could tell you what an ad hominem attack is, much less recognize and respond appropriately to one. Besides, ad hominem is actually one of the most effective strategies out there for trial lawyers. Witness says something damaging? Attack the credibility of the witness. Even if the witness is under oath, if it is possible to show that the witness has reason to be biased, there will still be reason for the jury to suspect the witness' testimony.
That's why there's such thing as character witnesses, who testify to the quality--or the lack thereof--of the key witnesses in the trial. Many (usually smaller) cases are decided based on ad hominem alone.
Actually, we treat non-human animals a certain way already, regardless of their intelligence/sentience. There's very little debate on how to treat animals. Nor is there any major clamor about inhumane practices against animals (like killing them, for example, which is against the law in most places if the victim was human instead of a non-human animal).
You're absolutely right: we should treat robots like we treat every other non-human sentient being on the planet. They'll never actually be human anyway (or they won't be robots anymore, will they?;) ), and socially generalizing, humans have always considered and still consider everything non-human to be inferior. In fact, I'd go as far as to say they are inferior to animals, as they'd only behave in ways that humans had coded them to behave. If they're able to break their mold, it's because we humans gave them that ability. So perhaps they don't deserve as good a treatment as we give animals (as is the case now).
Which does imply that there's nothing to actually debate about, since there are already established ethics on treating programmed machines and sentient non-human beings. And robots, sentient or otherwise, do indeed fall neatly into the existing framework.
Or maybe we should start treating dolphins, chimps, pigs, cats, dogs, and other sentient creatures the same way we treat humans. Then again, maybe we shouldn't, since that would mean we'd all have to be vegetarian. Pescetarian if we only consider terrestrial animals to be sentient.
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I think GP is a troll, but the actual point is valid. It isn't that parts of the world "know nothing about ethics or morality." It is that other cultures have other standards of ethics and morality. While most cultures have similar basic ethics and morals (do not kill, do not steal--actually a generalization of the first, etc.), something that falls into a gray area like reusing the IP of another will be inconsistent throughout the world. Besides, we don't really have an established moral outlook on IP infringement, which is why we call it "theft" more often than not. It's because theft is the closest thing we know to IP infringement. Hence, it is negative by association.
It is not to say that Google using Sohu's database is OK because it happened in China. If Sohu started using Google's database, Google would likely make a big stink about it too. But it probably isn't as big a deal over there as it is here. Certainly, it would not be considered "evil" behavior. It wouldn't be good either, but it doesn't quite fall into evil yet.
It's interesting that you mention classical music. I am an avid listener of classical music myself, and I've always enjoyed purchasing the CD over downloading. Certainly, there are places to get the CDs in a lossless format (I don't bother with lossy files, as I can hear the difference between a CD and a 256Kbps MP3, subtle as it may be). But it's just not quite the same. Once I get a CD, I even rip it into a lossless format so that I can play it without having to switch CD's or hog up a whole drive. But I like having the CD too. I like leafing through the booklet, or just scanning my CD rack to look for what I might want to listen to next, as opposed to picking it out of a track list in a media library on the computer. It's almost like reading a book, as opposed to an e-book.
I don't know why, but I don't have this same feeling with my popular CD's. In that case, I buy the CD's, rip 'em, and never touch the CD again. I think it might have to do with the way tracks are. In a classical CD, each track is a movement, and a CD might have several pieces with several movements. On the other hand, each track on a popular CD is one individual song.
Heh, I'm not really sure what my point is, but I do have a feeling that classical music is the only genre where sales are rising, or at least not falling as fast.
Actually, GP might as well not buy anything. There's so much stuff that's made in China these days, and even if the product as a whole isn't, numerous parts are. And even if not that, the same companies have business interests in China. Hell, if GP is living in the US, it's time to leave. The US government owes the Chinese government a lot of money...
Fact of the matter is, China is not a communist regime. It's a not-quite-so benevolent dictatorship. However, dictatorships (and all governments for that matter) can only survive when there's order in the realm, and when there's actually people in the realm. An unstable environment unstablizes governments. Look at the aftermath of Katrina. If a disaster of that magnitude were to hit the rest of the US all at once, the US government itself would be destroyed in the process, likely replaced by a military dictatorship or facist state (as if it isn't happening already...). China realizes this, and all the environment-friendly policies these past few years works towards this end.
A near vacuum would be great for efficiency, but it wouldn't be so good if the rail ran through a countryside. It'd be as much of an eyesore as an oil pipeline in your backyard. Now, if the rails were underground, it'd be a lot easier, especially if the vacuum was maintained on a scheduled (rather than a continuous) basis.
What I've always wondered is why no one ever thought to model the engine like an actual bullet. Put a rotating cone in the front and encompasses the whole of the train, and I'm sure drag will be reduced significantly. Of course, the tracks would have to be pretty clean, and anything that it hits will likely be flung far away, but there shouldn't be things hitting the bullet train in the first place...
The GPL is a gift with strings attached. Yes, you benefit from it, but so does everyone else. It's saying, you can use the code I wrote if you let others use what you wrote. GPL might be the minimum conditions before code can be considered free (the most restrictive, but still free), and BSD might be considered the maximum (no restrictions whatsoever).
Actually, in the case of critical applications like telesurgury, they'd be using dedicated fiber lines instead of a shared line like cable. So the point is moot. The hospital/doctor is already paying for a very high speed, dedicated line, and there's nothing to interfere with that traffic (unless telesurgury generates enough packets that it overloads the ISP's connection to the backbone, or the backbone itself, which is neigh impossible given a large enough ISP for the former and really not possible for the latter).
So in this case, you're already paying a premium for the high speed line. The lack of net neutrality would mean you'd be paying extra on top just to be able to saturate that high speed line you're already paying for.
Net neutrality doesn't work any way you cut it. Now, if you wanted filtering so that your secretary's streaming music and videos don't interfere with your telesurgury, that's something you can request your ISP to do (or do yourself at your switch/NAT). But that's a separate issue, and deals with how you allocate your bandwidth, not whether you need to pay extra for usage on top of capability.
There's mathematics and physics around geocentrism. Math cannot be disproven and physics is much harder to argue against (like the pinciples of centripetal force, momentum, and gravity for example). For example, how does one account for the seasons and the position of the sun in the sky during those seasons in a heliocentric model? One cannot. If the world is spherical or near spherical, the sun cannot revolve around the earth in the way a spring might (because the period of one "solar revolution" doesn't change with the seasons) AND reverse directions every winter/summer without an external force constantly acting upon it.
Besides, there's no contest to the moon revolving around the earth, and the sun's path is definitely different from the moon's. If the sun also revolved around the earth and the above was possible, wouldn't the moon exhibit the same or a similar orbit?
The dieties in the old testament are not the all-powerful, all-knowing Diety in the new testament. The god in the old (who admits he is actually one among many in the first commandment through forbidding of the worship of the others) might be significantly more powerful than a mere human, and immortal to boot, but not nearly as "perfect" as the God in the new. Attempts to reconcile the two would only result in numerous logical inconsistencies. Why, for example, would an omniscient diety need to test believers. The omniscient already knows whether Abraham would sacrifice his own son. Further, if the diety of the old is not omniscient and perfectly good, then how did the death of Jesus transform said diety into one who is omniscient and perfectly good. And why was magic commonplace and an accepted part of life in the old but considered taboo in the new? Did said diety suddenly revise his stance when he ascended from mere god-dom to God-dom after the death of his supposed son?
Don't forget that Christianity was historically a weapon used to control the masses. In order to control people through belief, original thought must be extinguished. Those are the easiest people to control: the ones who are so desperate for something--anything that might bring meaning to their life that they'll eat up every lie the controllers tell in order to keep them in line and remain in power.
The tale of Noah's ark is littered with signs of ignorance. Certainly, a flood could have happened way back when, and someone could have built a giant ark to live upon before that flood, and that person could have loved and kept all sorts of animals on said ark, but to say that the flood covered the whole world, and all the animals of the world were in the ark, would be quite impossible. Human technology and dominance has never been more advanced, and such a feat today would not be possible, simply because we have not yet categorized all the animals in the world, nor are we capable of building self-contained environments wherein the species within would survive for a long period of time. Both are due to the lack of knowledge, something that cannot be reconciled by the non-omniscient old testament diety. That, and even if both the knowledge and technology were sufficient at that time, such an ark would be of a fair enough size that it would have left enough traces for us to easily validate its existence. As such, we still don't know where it is, if there ever was one.
Personally, if the knowledge and technology existed for such a creation as described in the old testament, I would think that Noah actually took the ark and his family into space and never came back. After all, who would want to live on a planet that's controlled by such a wrathful diety in the first place?
Which is why we shouldn't do away with patents, but make the process more thorough, and done by experts in the field. I have always advocated that we move to a system where multiple qualified academics handle the patent application review in their specialized field. Granted the standards of triviality will suddenly go through the roof, but wasn't that the original intention anyway, for a patent to be non-obvious to true academic experts as opposed to laymen? Of course, to ensure unbiased reviews, academic institutions and those working for such institutions would have to be revoked of their ability to obtain patents so long as they obtain federal funding. Academic institutions not receiving federal funding (including federal financial aid for students) would be treated as a business and allowed to file patents, but their employees would not be allowed to review them.
By making the patenting process more stringent, fewer frivilous and blatantly obvious patents would be made (like most software patents), and more time would go into real R&D as opposed to patent litigation (fewer patents to defend/attack, and the patented likely won't be easily rediscovered).
But with D.C. controlled by the special interests, all of whom are for a more lax patenting process (of which the topic of this story is a result), it's not like this is going to actually happen--at least anytime soon. Unfortunately, the judicial is the only branch that remains relatively untainted, and they can't make laws, only validate them. Not that this kind of restructuring is even remotely possible with the executive firmly in the pockets of very specific special interest groups regardless of what the legislative does or does not.
Everybody keeps mentioning another console. What about the PC? PC's have the graphics and numerical processing power. And, if current configurations aren't enough, people can always upgrade. Whatever happened to the games and gamers driving the hardware market?
So the question is, would you buy a PS3 if games started migrating to the PC?
There's also a huge difference between being asked to provide assistance, and being asked to keep and maintain records. Schools and ISP's can provide all the assistance law enforcement wants, but if they don't have a log of all the traffic in their network, that assistance would amount to nothing of consequence for retroactive investigations.
Besides, the telecos would not like laws requiring keeping and maintaining traffic logs, and probably would lobby against them. After all, they'd shoulder the burden of the costs, and even more so, if anything should happen to those logs (fire, failed back-ups, etc.) they'd be the responsible party. Now, they let the government set up spy stations mostly because they wouldn't be responsible for the spying or the data collected, and it doesn't cost terribly much.
You do realize that he resigned because he thought his outing would, by association, harm his company and Obama's campaign. That and he made it in his free time. While (arguably) negative publicity might be a good thing in some instances, it's usually not for politicians.
Still, I wouldn't be surprised if someone from another presidential hopeful's camp shows up at his front door with a really nice job offer within the next few days. I'm thinking perhaps Edwards, Giuliani, McCain, or even *gasp* Clinton.
I wouldn't dare vouch for the company, but there are heavier papers out there than the usual 80-100 gsm. Photo paper in particular is much heavier, especially when saturated with ink. We don't know what kind of paper is being used, so we can't say much about these things. As for curling, it actually largely happens with laser printers and not so much with inkjets. The fuser heats up the paper as it is going by and causes the paper to curl. We can only assume they're using ink we know about, so we can't really talk about drying times either. But I'd think there'd be a little bit of smearing if the prints were landing on top of each other so quickly.
I wouldn't be surprised if other companies have abandoned similar research. After all, we all know there is still the problem with nozzle reliability, and if any one goes, all the prints would look pretty bad. The big players might have hit roadblocks and decided not to pursue this any further, perhaps until their other technologies (like ink or nozzle design) mature. It's not implausible that the real advance is a novel solution to the clogged nozzle problem.
1400 patents sounds like a patent troll. Perhaps they were collecting royalties from the big players all this time. And now that perhaps some of them are expiring, they're actually forced to create a product to keep the company alive. The announcement certainly sounds like an attempt to attract more investors.
However, the other points remain, and I am skeptical nonetheless. It's up in the air right now, but I'm sure we'll know in a few years time whether this turns out to be true or not. If it does, good for them, and good for us really (I'd like my camera to be able to print out small prints of photos). If not, oh well.
You're right that they can't really stop you from selling it. But they can convince legislature to pass laws to prevent your vehicle from being considered road worthy. They can launch a propaganda campaign, make your product look bad, and run you out of business. They can buy up your engineers, your management, heck, even enter into contracts with your suppliers. Think about all the dirty little tactics that Microsoft used, then add politics to it. Like for example, convince some lawyers to sue your product for every little defect. Or convince legislature to tighten the regulations for your product--for your parts supplier, your resource supplier, etc. Conspiracy theory? Maybe. But most of these tactics have been used before. And there's nothing preventing big companies from using them to kill off competition.
Why is ethanol so popular these days as an alternative fuel as opposed to other green fuel solutions? Ethanol is only a small (albeit a significant) step away from oil, yet it's being touted as the fuel that will save the planet. It's because corn farmers have a huge presence in DC. They saw an opportunity to increase the worth of their crop, and they jumped to get legislatures' attention. Don't ever underestimate the power of lobbying.
This isn't quite true yet. Most people who use the internet are not very savvy when it comes to protecting their privacy. With everyone having gmail accounts, they can effectively trace a person's search habits over years. Especially if people use the same computer, or log in to gmail before every session. So no, the data doesn't become less useful for most users. On the contrary, it becomes more, and utility is only going to increase as google releases more and more services.
An example off the top of my head (so forgive me if I seem like I'm rambling), you can map shifts in popularity over time by location. So if a cultural movement happens in New York, you can, using search queries, watch it move across the country, and possibly see it move over oceans. And the interesting thing is, you can see where different types of cultural shifts get transmitted first and how quickly they're adopted relative to their initial introduction. With identifiable information, you can identify the user or set of users who have the msot clout in certain areas. Certain ads for those people will be different (and perhaps more expensive) from the same type of ads for people who are merely followers of a cultural movement. And, over an extended period of time, you can actually see the rise and fall of that particular user's clout on a particular subject if the difference is substantial enough.
Now, imagine if the US government got a hold of this. They can pinpoint people who are influential in certain areas (like political movements) and target them should they need to. Communism getting popular again? Violent revolution? Find out who the major influencers are (sometimes, they're not necessarily the leaders) and take 'em out. Don't even have to assassinate these people now. Call 'em a terrorist and lock 'em up indefinitely.
One thing I think would really boost browse/search anonyminity and something I really would like to see on browsers is the ability to tie session cookies to individual tabs and/or windows only. That and a MAC address randomizer. But the latter is probably far more difficult than the former.
I think you misspelled red bull.
Don't forget that librarians greatly value privacy and the right to privacy. It's probably why libraries try not to keep patron records. We might not necessarily think of them as such, but libraries are an integral part of academia, from where the strongest voices advocating privacy have come. Unlike private universities and colleges though, libraries can't be turned into a business, and thus their interests lie solely in the public--or more appropriately, collectively private--good.
Swimming and biking require social interaction? Aside from sports, a lot of exercise is primarily solitary. How many useful skills do you learn from exercise and sports really?
Tell that to the people taking self-defense classes. I'd count self-defense a useful skill.
In addition, because of the nature of self-defense, it almost requires socializing. You can't partner with anyone if you don't trust them. And learn self-defense without a partner is only a little better than learning how to dance.
By the way, I consider martial arts an exercise, not a sport. Sports have rules. If you need to defend yourself, following and breaking rules become a trivial matter. Of course, that's a completely different debate.
I'd also count swimming a useful skill. If you're out in the ocean fishing and happen to fall overboard, regardless whether you're wearing a life jacket or not, knowing how to swim may be the difference between you surviving and not.
Just because you can't conceive of a use for the skills you gain from exercise and sports doesn't mean there are none. Forget knowing self-defense--if someone were to break into my home, suddenly, all that time exercising becomes useful. Quite frankly, I'd rather be fit (whether to fight or flight) than not.
I can't detect any sarcasm, but I really hope you're kidding. Some 7 million people take the bus or subway in New York City every day. You're going to tell me that the daily commute of 88% of the population of NYC falls into that 10-15% of the journeys? These are MTA stats, so it doesn't even count NJ Transit. Unfortunately, I couldn't find NJ Transit stats for NYC commuters.
Maybe in suburbia, you're right. But any city will have a large percentage of people riding mass transit, be it rail or bus, and regardless of how crappy the system might be. They're just not necessarily the people you're used to.
I speak of an ideal situation, where the "credentials is meaningless" philosophy is maintained. In this situation, Essjay's credentials led to his promotion, which does not follow the philosophy behind wikipedia. That chain of evens would've been more appropriate for something like Citizendium. However, that should not have been the case for wikipedia, and people who are in a position to do the promotions should've understood this. Promotion should have been based on Essjay's contributions to wikipedia and the validity thereof. At the same time, his credentials ideally would not have won him anything. It should've been his citable references, sources, etc. And the decision should've been made based on the credibility of those references.
Of course, since Wikipedia hasn't been asking for sources until very recently, it's wasn't particularly easy to do such validation on the content of the edit. And for numerous topics that are not objective, it still isn't, as producing sources may not be so easy, or sources may be conflicting (in which case both viewpoints should be expressed). But I digress.
The problem of admins pushing their own agenda should be tackled by other admins. Which is to say, the problem solves itself in the same way that vandalism or other agenda-pushing gets solved--by other admins. Of course, since admins are upheld to a higher standard than regular wikipedians, if they are caught doing something unethical, their powers as an admin should be limited. For example, they might not be allowed to administer certain pages if there is a conflict of interest. And if their violation is particularly severe, the solution would be permanent demotion--permanent demotion achievable by the fact that an admin's credentials need to be validated before becoming one in the first place.
There is the question of how one might decide whether an admin has violated the code of ethics. I think this is vastly simplified with credential validation. It's easy to do some digging around once an admin has given up the right to privacy. And if enough admins think the violation is punishable, then that admin would be put on probation or outright punished. Of course, this assumes an ideal situation where the admins aren't corrupt in the first place. Though, it seems that's not possible to achieve anymore.
However, when it comes to moderators and administrators, things are a little different. They break this concept of equality that is the foundation of the philosophy. They can exert influence over points of contention, and even more so, they can assert their authority by limiting the voice of a regular wikipedian. They are in a position of power. So the rules have to change for them.
It isn't intuitive, but ideally, it is the fact that they are in a position of power that lends credibility to their claimed credentials, as opposed to their credentials putting them in that position. Remember that credentials are ideally meaningless for a regular wikipedian. That means that their elevation to a moderator or administrator would be made based on the content of their contributions. Credentials are still meaningless during this process. But once they've ceased to be a regular wikipedian, and they begin exerting their powers over regular wikipedians, then their credentials need to come into play.
This shouldn't mean that one has to have a Ph.D. or some other credential to be a moderator or administrator. However, this does mean that once someone becomes a moderator or administrator, all such claims need to be verifiably true. Just because someone doesn't have a degree in anything doesn't mean that person would make a poor moderator. But it does mean that the person should not be able to influence debates on astrophysics in the role of a moderator.
So no, it's not so much of a breakdown in the philosophy of wikipedia, as it is that the original system was imperfectly implemented. A background check on moderator/administrator candidates would be more like a natural part of the ideal system based on the wiki philosophy, but that was not discovered until now.
JPEG isn't going anywhere as far as the preferred internet image format goes. What Microsoft might be thinking about entering is the digital point-and-shoot photography market, and maybe a little of the clip art market as well. But they're gonna have to jump through hoops to get that. They don't have their own digital cameras to generate pictures in this format, and they'll need to get the major image manipulation software companies on board before they can even begin to hope for any adoption. Which means that they'll have to convince adobe to support it at the very least, and last I heard, Microsoft and Adobe's relationship wasn't particularly good, especially when it comes to formats--something about Microsoft dicking Adobe over by creating True Type Fonts or something alone those line.
In real life, for a trial lawyer, how many juries do you think could tell you what an ad hominem attack is, much less recognize and respond appropriately to one. Besides, ad hominem is actually one of the most effective strategies out there for trial lawyers. Witness says something damaging? Attack the credibility of the witness. Even if the witness is under oath, if it is possible to show that the witness has reason to be biased, there will still be reason for the jury to suspect the witness' testimony.
That's why there's such thing as character witnesses, who testify to the quality--or the lack thereof--of the key witnesses in the trial. Many (usually smaller) cases are decided based on ad hominem alone.
Actually, we treat non-human animals a certain way already, regardless of their intelligence/sentience. There's very little debate on how to treat animals. Nor is there any major clamor about inhumane practices against animals (like killing them, for example, which is against the law in most places if the victim was human instead of a non-human animal).
;) ), and socially generalizing, humans have always considered and still consider everything non-human to be inferior. In fact, I'd go as far as to say they are inferior to animals, as they'd only behave in ways that humans had coded them to behave. If they're able to break their mold, it's because we humans gave them that ability. So perhaps they don't deserve as good a treatment as we give animals (as is the case now).
You're absolutely right: we should treat robots like we treat every other non-human sentient being on the planet. They'll never actually be human anyway (or they won't be robots anymore, will they?
Which does imply that there's nothing to actually debate about, since there are already established ethics on treating programmed machines and sentient non-human beings. And robots, sentient or otherwise, do indeed fall neatly into the existing framework.
Or maybe we should start treating dolphins, chimps, pigs, cats, dogs, and other sentient creatures the same way we treat humans. Then again, maybe we shouldn't, since that would mean we'd all have to be vegetarian. Pescetarian if we only consider terrestrial animals to be sentient.