I just don't understand this four-dimensional gobbledygook. I mean, I can imagine how you'd need another axis to graph something along, but how the heck you visualize four dimensions, or how a thing could BE four-dimensional, just doesn't make sense to me.
It's like imaginary numbers - I see that it works on paper, but what the heck?
Sorry, I forgot to clarify that they tripped you, making you late to pay your rent, which got you evicted, and without a place to take a shower, you lost your job, so you're poor.
This is where I was coming from with my original comment. Ones religion is between them and their God(s). Leave the rest of the world out of it.
Sure. And please leave your atheism out of it when you come to talk about public policy. Don't foist your a-religious opinions on the rest of us. (Tongue in cheek.)
"I believe it's wrong to overtax the poor - but I'm not saying why!"
My beliefs are not your beliefs. Yours are not mine. Science should always recognize this accordingly and avoid being influenced by either.
There is no possible source of ethical judgment in science other than non-scientific belief. Science is observation and experiment. Any guidelines as to what it should or shouldn't do will always be non-scientific.
Should we experiment on animals? Should we research to cure cancer? Should we euthanize the elderly? Science cannot answer those questions. We have to decide whether these things are good or bad based on non-scientific concepts like "human dignity" and "the evil of suffering." Even a rational principle like "the greatest good for the greatest number of people" assumes that we know what "good" is, and that's a value judgment.
I can just as easily dismiss your value judgments as you can dismiss mine. But hopefully, that's not how our society works. Hopefully we can recognize that everyone's opinion should at least be considered before we make collective decisions - whether or not we find the grounds for each other's opinions to be solid or not.
Great question, but aren't "right and wrong" culturally defined?
If right and wrong are culturally defined (not just specific application, but the general principles), I would argue that they don't exist. There is a big difference between "I/we prefer you don't do X" and "X is wrong."
Imagine that you're walking down the street and trip on someone's foot. You're annoyed, right? Now imagine that you realize the person tripped you on purpose, and is laughing. Now you're indigent. Tripping people is wrong!
Clearly your anger has less to do with the pain of falling than with your deep-seated feeling that "it's wrong to harm others." You would not describe this as a preference.
Whatever we say about the source of morality, I think everyone feels that certain things are simply wrong. To deny this removes an important aspect of what it means to be human.
I know that someone will say that different cultures have different concepts of morality, but I don't buy it. There are different applications, yes; but no culture values cowardice and treason and murder. Some cultures defend their genocide and slavery by arguing that the victims aren't human, for example, but they do this because they must justify their actions against the standard that genocide and slavery are wrong. Our instinct to make excuses shows that we agree with the standard.
First, you lump all religious people (hint: this is most of the planet) into the category of "people who cause genocide." Second, you offhandedly pronounce that, on the whole, the effects of religion are evil. Then, you conclude that religious viewpoints should not be heard. I say that you can't back up any of those statements.
It would be just as easy to out-of-hand dismiss Slashdot users (the only group I can knowingly lump you into) as incapable of reasonable political debate.
The fact is, this is an ethical question. It presumes that human life is valuable, and asks whether embryos qualify, and then asks how their interests balance against the other considerations.
The idea that human life IS valuable is just as much a belief as the idea that embryos do or don't qualify as humans. Whether you call that belief "religious" or not, it's still a belief.
I happen to believe that human life is valuable because we "are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights." I make no argument about the faith of the Founding Fathers, but they did start with that premise. If you toss out the Creator, I assume you have some alternate rationale, but I don't think it's reasonable to say that any religious basis for valuing human life is irrelevant.
If only students with a history of truancy are tagged, then I don't have a problem with this.
I was going to say that I have a problem with it no matter what, but on second thought, I think the question should go to the parents. Minors have limited rights, and if the parents want to monitor them using tools the state provides, in order to keep them in school, maybe that's OK. (Personally, if it were my kid, I would consider this a very desperate measure - it certainly doesn't foster mutual trust and respect.)
On the other hand, if this is forced on students without parents' consent, then it's a big problem.
Consider this: parents have a right to know where their kid is at all times; the school should only be concerned about that during school hours. When is the tracking turned off?
I totally agree. I would not use 250GB in a month, and if I wanted to, I'd probably be willing to pay extra for it. But by gosh if you advertise "unlimited," you better not cap it. It's dishonest.
If they make a cap, fine - just advertise it as "A ton of bandwidth" or "more than most people will ever need" and specify the actual amount somewhere in the ad. Most people won't care, and those who do will know.
Apple's primary method of shifting products is the fashion angle, followed by their proprietary OS and other software that people may prefer. It's certainly not cost/technical merits the products are purchased on as you can get higher spec with equivalent quality (but not style) cheaper elsewhere.
I love my iPod, and although I acknowledge that I think it's "cooler" than other players, that's not the main reason.
I should acknowledge that I got mine for free by winning a musical contest, so cost wasn't a factor. I had been listening to mp3s in WinAmp at home for years, and burning mp3 CDs to listen to in the car, so I was pumped.
But what really got me excited was when I installed iTunes. Yes, it's bloated and slow, but it scratched a major itch for me: a way to organize my music collection. I had cases full of CDs that I had started to get tired of alphabetizing. iTunes made my collection easy to organize, easy to sort into playlists, and let me see the lovely cover art. I know, who cares, right? But I like my music collection. I like to see it as well as hear it.
Syncing is easy, ripping is easy, etc etc. DRM isn't a problem because I pretty much only buy CDs, and if I buy more music online I will make sure it's DRM-free (maybe via Amazon).
Now for this "style" factor you disdain so much. My wife had a Sandisk mp3 player that was ugly, needed batteries (which means that the battery door can get knocked open), had a terrible and confusing user interface, and needed to be put into an armband to strap on for a workout. After it died (my fault (sarcastic) for formatting it, because I couldn't find any other way to delete some music off it), I got her an iPod Shuffle, which is easy to use, smaller, has no battery compartment, and has a built-in clip. For working out, it's perfect.
My Nano has a great UI and is a pleasure to use. The whole experience, from ripping a CD to selecting songs on the device, is a pleasure. How is that irrelevant?
There may be other good products on the market, but frankly it's easier to buy something I know will be well-designed than try my luck on another product.
What would make me switch? Well, maybe if something else became popular. Am I a sheep? Nope. I call that "not volunteering to be a beta tester."
Yes, and eventually they'll create a console that can read your intentions without any conscious effort on your part at all - all you have to do is exist.
If you sit around talking shit about the idiot customers all day when you're not on the phone, you're probably not going anywhere except possibly the unemployment line.
I currently work tech support for a cell phone company and am hoping to move up in the tech field, so this article is particularly interesting to me. My springboard may be the extensive intranet resources I've created to help the rest of our call-center people understand technical issues.
As far as talking about the "idiot customers" - I've noticed that the regular account reps who pass tech calls on to me often say "this person is an idiot." Curiously, when I talk to them, they often turn out to be very intelligent people who just aren't familiar with their BlackBerry or whatever, and haven't had things explained to them properly. (I might also argue that the device isn't well-designed if it's function isn't more intuitive...)
Of course, there are users who are very non-tech-savvy, but hey, I might not understand their jobs, either. Perspective makes a big difference in the help desk.
I haven't used MySpace in a long time, but when I did, I was annoyed at how UN-targeted their ads were. I had listed lots of Christian music and writers in my profile, but was always getting skanky ads that bordered on obscene. Adblock didn't stop all of them.
At the time, I emailed them to say that they were wasting an opportunity and hacking off their users by ignoring the very profile information they had collected when it came to displaying ads.
I don't think privacy is as big a deal here as in say, Google searches. After all, you've already knowingly posted your profile information; what's the harm in them using it to give you ads you won't hate (as much)?
Q: Why would you pay a premium for something with limited functionality, then risk destroying it to swap in a different feature, when you could have had all those features for less money?
Business users may not need much that's different than non-business, but companies like to have control over the devices.
If you administer a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, you can set security policies (like "all users have to enter a password when they pick up their device") and kill a device remotely. This could help you keep your company's sensitive info from getting stolen.
The very value of money is defined by its limited availability.
True - money represents one person's share in a set of limited resources. For example, it's impossible for everyone to be rich enough to own lots of land, because there is limited land available.
On the other hand, some resources have become much less scarce - food, for example. It's very difficult to be poor enough in America that you can't afford to eat anything (though you might not eat well). In that sense, everyone IS rich here, compared to other places and times.
I think it's possible to imagine a future where everyone has things that only rich people have today, with the exception of resources that are inherently limited. (And though it can eliminate a lot of misery, money still won't buy happiness.)
So the banks are more impportant than the ballots here. But it's what one would expect in a plutocracy.
I'm not sure this is a valid conclusion. The same people aren't making decisions in each case. And while we like to think we place a high value on the integrity of our voting system, it's hard to put a dollar figure on that, which is what the people running the budget need.
Banks, on the other hand, can easily place a dollar figure on the value of their ATMs' security, and show their decision-makers that X dollars spent on securing them will easily pay for itself.
I'm not happy with the situation, but I don't think you've got a single set of people saying "transactions are more important than votes."
I'm coming in on this discussion late, and I have a question. I know nothing about mySQL yet, and just a little about PHP. I do know HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript and JQuery, and am looking to learn more server-side stuff.
Amazon is supposed to be shipping me this book soon. What do these changes imply for me? If I learn mySQL now, will have to pay to use it? Would it be hard to switch over to some other flavor of SQL once I've got the basics down?
...even if you can get it to create long, coherent chord progressions, it still will have to stick to chords that match whatever was sung. Even if the system knows how to do jazzy chord changes and secondary function chords and such, an amateur singer won't sing a melody that will flow well with that.
The melody and the chord structure fit together very intimately. If someone doesn't "hear" the chords they want in their head, they probably won't sing a melody that will need an interesting chord progression behind it to make it work.
And of course, for any given melody, there are multiple possible progressions (do you want a IV or a I chord here? Or maybe a V7/V?). The singer will need to have the musical sense to choose which one they want.
It's a fair question. I guess the real answer is that I'm mad enough to debate people at parties, but not mad enough to take to the streets. Maybe I should be.
I explain my personal inaction, and lack of involvement in campaigns and movements generally, with my belief that politics and government are temporary things that generally have nothing to do with what's really important in life. In other words, it's mostly saber-rattling and life goes on. I vote, but that's about the end of my involvement. And of course, like everyone, I'm busy with my own life.
I'm one of those religious, conservative nutjobs that gets mocked on this site, and I find this outrageous. Here is the Fourth Amendment:
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
That's been suspended?? Doesn't apply to military operations?? If the citizens have no rights over against the military, why do we have the Third Amendment?
Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Now I see that there is a difference in the Third Amendment between "in time of peace" and "in time of war," but realistically, this "time of war" against terrorists can NEVER be officially and completely over. There are no official enemies, so there can be no official truce.
The government is overstepping its Constitutional bounds, and it needs to stop. We have to be careful that we do not lose our identity as a country of freedom via our efforts to protect that freedom.
I understand how you feel - I think I feel the same way, both about a "flat rate" for internet giving you peace of mind, and about not eating excessively just because you can.
My point was just that from a purely logical perspective, a person who wants to eat $5 worth of food would see a $10 buffet as a bad deal. A person who wants to eat $15 worth of food would see it as a great deal.
Same for data or cell phone minutes. If I'm going to use more than I'm paying for, it's a good deal for me; if I'm going to use less than I'm paying for, it's a bad deal for me.
Package deals get you both ways - you pay unnecessarily if you use less than the package, you pay extra if you use more than the package.
So: although I sympathize with your desire for predictability, to me it's just like any other variable cost in the budget. I know that the power bill isn't the same every month, but I have an idea what it will be and budget accordingly. And it's nice to know that I'm only being charged for what I use.
Slashdot Mirror
I just don't understand this four-dimensional gobbledygook. I mean, I can imagine how you'd need another axis to graph something along, but how the heck you visualize four dimensions, or how a thing could BE four-dimensional, just doesn't make sense to me.
It's like imaginary numbers - I see that it works on paper, but what the heck?
Sorry, I forgot to clarify that they tripped you, making you late to pay your rent, which got you evicted, and without a place to take a shower, you lost your job, so you're poor.
So you're pretty mad. ;)
Sure. And please leave your atheism out of it when you come to talk about public policy. Don't foist your a-religious opinions on the rest of us. (Tongue in cheek.)
"I believe it's wrong to overtax the poor - but I'm not saying why!"
There is no possible source of ethical judgment in science other than non-scientific belief. Science is observation and experiment. Any guidelines as to what it should or shouldn't do will always be non-scientific.
Should we experiment on animals? Should we research to cure cancer? Should we euthanize the elderly? Science cannot answer those questions. We have to decide whether these things are good or bad based on non-scientific concepts like "human dignity" and "the evil of suffering." Even a rational principle like "the greatest good for the greatest number of people" assumes that we know what "good" is, and that's a value judgment.
I can just as easily dismiss your value judgments as you can dismiss mine. But hopefully, that's not how our society works. Hopefully we can recognize that everyone's opinion should at least be considered before we make collective decisions - whether or not we find the grounds for each other's opinions to be solid or not.
If right and wrong are culturally defined (not just specific application, but the general principles), I would argue that they don't exist. There is a big difference between "I/we prefer you don't do X" and "X is wrong."
Imagine that you're walking down the street and trip on someone's foot. You're annoyed, right? Now imagine that you realize the person tripped you on purpose, and is laughing. Now you're indigent. Tripping people is wrong!
Clearly your anger has less to do with the pain of falling than with your deep-seated feeling that "it's wrong to harm others." You would not describe this as a preference.
Whatever we say about the source of morality, I think everyone feels that certain things are simply wrong. To deny this removes an important aspect of what it means to be human.
I know that someone will say that different cultures have different concepts of morality, but I don't buy it. There are different applications, yes; but no culture values cowardice and treason and murder. Some cultures defend their genocide and slavery by arguing that the victims aren't human, for example, but they do this because they must justify their actions against the standard that genocide and slavery are wrong. Our instinct to make excuses shows that we agree with the standard.
First, you lump all religious people (hint: this is most of the planet) into the category of "people who cause genocide." Second, you offhandedly pronounce that, on the whole, the effects of religion are evil. Then, you conclude that religious viewpoints should not be heard. I say that you can't back up any of those statements.
It would be just as easy to out-of-hand dismiss Slashdot users (the only group I can knowingly lump you into) as incapable of reasonable political debate.
The fact is, this is an ethical question. It presumes that human life is valuable, and asks whether embryos qualify, and then asks how their interests balance against the other considerations.
The idea that human life IS valuable is just as much a belief as the idea that embryos do or don't qualify as humans. Whether you call that belief "religious" or not, it's still a belief.
I happen to believe that human life is valuable because we "are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights." I make no argument about the faith of the Founding Fathers, but they did start with that premise. If you toss out the Creator, I assume you have some alternate rationale, but I don't think it's reasonable to say that any religious basis for valuing human life is irrelevant.
I was going to say that I have a problem with it no matter what, but on second thought, I think the question should go to the parents. Minors have limited rights, and if the parents want to monitor them using tools the state provides, in order to keep them in school, maybe that's OK. (Personally, if it were my kid, I would consider this a very desperate measure - it certainly doesn't foster mutual trust and respect.)
On the other hand, if this is forced on students without parents' consent, then it's a big problem.
Consider this: parents have a right to know where their kid is at all times; the school should only be concerned about that during school hours. When is the tracking turned off?
I totally agree. I would not use 250GB in a month, and if I wanted to, I'd probably be willing to pay extra for it. But by gosh if you advertise "unlimited," you better not cap it. It's dishonest.
If they make a cap, fine - just advertise it as "A ton of bandwidth" or "more than most people will ever need" and specify the actual amount somewhere in the ad. Most people won't care, and those who do will know.
I love my iPod, and although I acknowledge that I think it's "cooler" than other players, that's not the main reason.
I should acknowledge that I got mine for free by winning a musical contest, so cost wasn't a factor. I had been listening to mp3s in WinAmp at home for years, and burning mp3 CDs to listen to in the car, so I was pumped.
But what really got me excited was when I installed iTunes. Yes, it's bloated and slow, but it scratched a major itch for me: a way to organize my music collection. I had cases full of CDs that I had started to get tired of alphabetizing. iTunes made my collection easy to organize, easy to sort into playlists, and let me see the lovely cover art. I know, who cares, right? But I like my music collection. I like to see it as well as hear it.
Syncing is easy, ripping is easy, etc etc. DRM isn't a problem because I pretty much only buy CDs, and if I buy more music online I will make sure it's DRM-free (maybe via Amazon).
Now for this "style" factor you disdain so much. My wife had a Sandisk mp3 player that was ugly, needed batteries (which means that the battery door can get knocked open), had a terrible and confusing user interface, and needed to be put into an armband to strap on for a workout. After it died (my fault (sarcastic) for formatting it, because I couldn't find any other way to delete some music off it), I got her an iPod Shuffle, which is easy to use, smaller, has no battery compartment, and has a built-in clip. For working out, it's perfect.
My Nano has a great UI and is a pleasure to use. The whole experience, from ripping a CD to selecting songs on the device, is a pleasure. How is that irrelevant?
There may be other good products on the market, but frankly it's easier to buy something I know will be well-designed than try my luck on another product.
What would make me switch? Well, maybe if something else became popular. Am I a sheep? Nope. I call that "not volunteering to be a beta tester."
Yes, and eventually they'll create a console that can read your intentions without any conscious effort on your part at all - all you have to do is exist.
This console will be called the Bii.
Which is why we need legislation that will fine them for releasing that information.
Another idea would be to demote the person who made the decision to post that stuff publicly to Official Identity Theft Aftermath Cleanup Technician.
I currently work tech support for a cell phone company and am hoping to move up in the tech field, so this article is particularly interesting to me. My springboard may be the extensive intranet resources I've created to help the rest of our call-center people understand technical issues.
As far as talking about the "idiot customers" - I've noticed that the regular account reps who pass tech calls on to me often say "this person is an idiot." Curiously, when I talk to them, they often turn out to be very intelligent people who just aren't familiar with their BlackBerry or whatever, and haven't had things explained to them properly. (I might also argue that the device isn't well-designed if it's function isn't more intuitive...)
Of course, there are users who are very non-tech-savvy, but hey, I might not understand their jobs, either. Perspective makes a big difference in the help desk.
I haven't used MySpace in a long time, but when I did, I was annoyed at how UN-targeted their ads were. I had listed lots of Christian music and writers in my profile, but was always getting skanky ads that bordered on obscene. Adblock didn't stop all of them.
At the time, I emailed them to say that they were wasting an opportunity and hacking off their users by ignoring the very profile information they had collected when it came to displaying ads.
I don't think privacy is as big a deal here as in say, Google searches. After all, you've already knowingly posted your profile information; what's the harm in them using it to give you ads you won't hate (as much)?
Q: Why would you pay a premium for something with limited functionality, then risk destroying it to swap in a different feature, when you could have had all those features for less money?
Business users may not need much that's different than non-business, but companies like to have control over the devices.
If you administer a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, you can set security policies (like "all users have to enter a password when they pick up their device") and kill a device remotely. This could help you keep your company's sensitive info from getting stolen.
True - money represents one person's share in a set of limited resources. For example, it's impossible for everyone to be rich enough to own lots of land, because there is limited land available.
On the other hand, some resources have become much less scarce - food, for example. It's very difficult to be poor enough in America that you can't afford to eat anything (though you might not eat well). In that sense, everyone IS rich here, compared to other places and times.
I think it's possible to imagine a future where everyone has things that only rich people have today, with the exception of resources that are inherently limited. (And though it can eliminate a lot of misery, money still won't buy happiness.)
I'm not sure this is a valid conclusion. The same people aren't making decisions in each case. And while we like to think we place a high value on the integrity of our voting system, it's hard to put a dollar figure on that, which is what the people running the budget need.
Banks, on the other hand, can easily place a dollar figure on the value of their ATMs' security, and show their decision-makers that X dollars spent on securing them will easily pay for itself.
I'm not happy with the situation, but I don't think you've got a single set of people saying "transactions are more important than votes."
How do you know this? (I don't know any different, but that's a pretty strong statement to make.)
I'm coming in on this discussion late, and I have a question. I know nothing about mySQL yet, and just a little about PHP. I do know HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript and JQuery, and am looking to learn more server-side stuff.
Amazon is supposed to be shipping me this book soon. What do these changes imply for me? If I learn mySQL now, will have to pay to use it? Would it be hard to switch over to some other flavor of SQL once I've got the basics down?
Would appreciate any advice you can offer. :)
Thank you. :D
Marco!
...even if you can get it to create long, coherent chord progressions, it still will have to stick to chords that match whatever was sung. Even if the system knows how to do jazzy chord changes and secondary function chords and such, an amateur singer won't sing a melody that will flow well with that.
The melody and the chord structure fit together very intimately. If someone doesn't "hear" the chords they want in their head, they probably won't sing a melody that will need an interesting chord progression behind it to make it work.
And of course, for any given melody, there are multiple possible progressions (do you want a IV or a I chord here? Or maybe a V7/V?). The singer will need to have the musical sense to choose which one they want.
It's a fair question. I guess the real answer is that I'm mad enough to debate people at parties, but not mad enough to take to the streets. Maybe I should be.
I explain my personal inaction, and lack of involvement in campaigns and movements generally, with my belief that politics and government are temporary things that generally have nothing to do with what's really important in life. In other words, it's mostly saber-rattling and life goes on. I vote, but that's about the end of my involvement. And of course, like everyone, I'm busy with my own life.
Maybe I should be more involved.
I'm one of those religious, conservative nutjobs that gets mocked on this site, and I find this outrageous. Here is the Fourth Amendment:
That's been suspended?? Doesn't apply to military operations?? If the citizens have no rights over against the military, why do we have the Third Amendment?Now I see that there is a difference in the Third Amendment between "in time of peace" and "in time of war," but realistically, this "time of war" against terrorists can NEVER be officially and completely over. There are no official enemies, so there can be no official truce.
The government is overstepping its Constitutional bounds, and it needs to stop. We have to be careful that we do not lose our identity as a country of freedom via our efforts to protect that freedom.
I understand how you feel - I think I feel the same way, both about a "flat rate" for internet giving you peace of mind, and about not eating excessively just because you can.
My point was just that from a purely logical perspective, a person who wants to eat $5 worth of food would see a $10 buffet as a bad deal. A person who wants to eat $15 worth of food would see it as a great deal.
Same for data or cell phone minutes. If I'm going to use more than I'm paying for, it's a good deal for me; if I'm going to use less than I'm paying for, it's a bad deal for me.
Package deals get you both ways - you pay unnecessarily if you use less than the package, you pay extra if you use more than the package.
So: although I sympathize with your desire for predictability, to me it's just like any other variable cost in the budget. I know that the power bill isn't the same every month, but I have an idea what it will be and budget accordingly. And it's nice to know that I'm only being charged for what I use.