Ahm.. you do realize that the use of 'Quick Silver' in that piece is in reference to their company name? Oh and look, the person claiming that the particular compound that was in vaccines was dangerous has built a personal empire off the myth, selling products and services including a fake cure for a non-existent situation. Oh and look, he is not a medical doctor, nor a chemist... his degree is in Environmental Sciences from a satellite campus of University of Illinois.
Sure.. I am going to believe a scam artist over peer reviewed experts in actual relevant fields who would just love to find flaws in each other's research.
Well, they have always realized it, I doubt anyone in power actually believed Japan's legal argument. It is really just a matter of who's citizens are upset in what proportions to being able to effect the political careers of various leaders.
On the other hand, subsidizing risky behavior lowers your own costs for living in safer regions. If all the people living in flood plains, tornado alleys, hurricane magnets, etc, all decided it was too risky and moved, what do you think it would do to your cost next time you wanted to move?
We are kinda running out of nice places to live. On an individual scale we can ask 'would you pay more to live somewhere safer', but if we extend that out, well, there are only so many nice and safe places, if people stop living in the dangerous areas it will drive the prices of other areas up and they will go right back to living in the bad places.
One tricky part there, people have children. The adults who buy the land and sign the documents might be able to understand the risks (I say might since the risks are probably presented to them through a filter), but their children can not... so right there you have a population living within a dangerous area who have no control over being there nor do they have the ability/resources to purchase their own private ways of being safe.
I think a bigger problem then management forcing tools on programmers is the one of programmers preferring to write more tools rather then learn to use the existing ones. Seriously, look at how many languages people keep coming up with....
In the case of Google, Yahoo, and Bing at least, while no one is 'forcing' you to use them, the fact they are so heavily used does actually matter. If the three of them decide together that your speech should be censored, it effectively disappears for the vast majority of readers. You can rant and rave all you like and be picked up by alternative sites, but they can control how much audience you have and the bulk of that audience probably would not even be aware of what they are missing.
So it is not just about what medium one uses to speak, but how much control that medium has over who can listen. The difference in getting your message out between small private boards and word of mouth vs accessible on Google is massive. Just talk to anyone trying to do marketing.... 'you can only advertise your product on niche boards and search engines a tiny number of people use, but the competition has access to everyone looking for the topic on Google', which company do you think will survive and which will go out of business? Same with ideas.
In a very real way, we don't have a choice, since a critical element is what choice everyone else makes, and we do not have control over them. If your audience is all using Google, then Google is your only choice. Using some niche engine or building your own does not accomplish your goals and is little better then 'the only thing on the menu is pasta. Well I will eat my napkin instead!'. In a pure way yes, there was a choice, but practically speaking there was effectively no choice and the only benefit from choosing the napkin was the hollow victor of 'having chosen', and the person is still hungry.
So far the groups who are censored by Google lack the political backing or have too much stigma associated with them already. They lack enough public support to bring such suits seriously. Google would have to start censoring someone who can actually fight back for this to start happening.
You touch on one of the reasons that this can be a sticky issue, competition. When taken pedantically the constitution only talks about what the state can and can not do, but philosophically it speaks to people having, well, the freedom to not have their speech crushed. Private individuals and corporations can amass sufficient influence that they are able to act as defacto states within the dejure state. Even when it is not a government mandated monopoly you can still get monopolies based off market realities, and at that point you end up with average citizens having rights curtailed by private but non-state entities because they are powerful enough to do so.
At which point the representative state gets involved since part of its job is to watch out for its citizens against other citizens. This is why we have various public accommodation laws, protecting weak groups from strong group's ability to mistreat them by virtue of their inability to do anything back.
In this case, I agree that the court was probably correct. Even within public accommodation, this particular service is hardly in a position to really curtail speech in the US. Now, if Google and Bing teamed up to start systematic censorship (ok, more then they do already) then the plaintiffs might have a case since right now, if Google wants to make something disappear, for the majority of the population is is gone, and thus they have a massive private ability to control what speech citizens have and consume.
It has been tried before, it is an active area of research, and bit by bit they are learning how to do it. Though one of the big problems is how to test it on humans.
One difference at least is that this was being looked into for military use a few years ago, so there is more research and data to start with.
Even when there is no one specific process or technique available, ideas that failed due to implementation rather then theory are worth revisiting now and then since over the decades our whole tech and knowledge base has improved and solutions might be discoverable.
Just look at all the talk around thorium reactors. They failed the first time around, no one built one for 50+ years, and now we are looking at them again since we have learned so much since then across any number of disciplines.
Finding a large, diverse group of people would not be difficult. Looking at history, there is always a certain percentage of the population who desire getting away from established society and crowded cities. Over the last century we have pretty much run out of places for people to go, there are no new areas left.. thus there is probably a rather significant pent up demand.
I agree it is highly unlikely, but calendars have been switched before, though there was a lot less time keeping done then. I guess there is an off chance that it could find some niche in scientific or military uses and then bleed into the general population, but yeah, that does not seem likely either.
Still, I imagine the people who came up with it had a lot of fun in the process.
It is normal to have doubts about Japanese law enforcement in general. They do not exactly have a reputation for fairness and are often regarded as even worse then the US when it comes to 'as long as you catch someone, we will make sure they go to jail, guilt is irrelevent'
That is actually pretty common. People tend to forget that charisma and body language are social skills calibrated to certain cultures and subcultures. For any given charismatic person you will find people that are drawn to them and people who find them creepy, depending on how well their particular dialects match up. Unlike spoken language where you can quickly identify there is an accent, with body language and such you are just left with an unsettling 'something feels off' sensation.
Some people learn by observation, some benefit from training. It is kinda like programming or math, some people will pick it up on their own and other people work best when they have a structured class to explicitly introduce elements in context of each other. Some people even need tutoring that focuses on specific areas they struggle with.
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Ahm.. you do realize that the use of 'Quick Silver' in that piece is in reference to their company name? Oh and look, the person claiming that the particular compound that was in vaccines was dangerous has built a personal empire off the myth, selling products and services including a fake cure for a non-existent situation. Oh and look, he is not a medical doctor, nor a chemist... his degree is in Environmental Sciences from a satellite campus of University of Illinois.
Sure.. I am going to believe a scam artist over peer reviewed experts in actual relevant fields who would just love to find flaws in each other's research.
Well, they have always realized it, I doubt anyone in power actually believed Japan's legal argument. It is really just a matter of who's citizens are upset in what proportions to being able to effect the political careers of various leaders.
What better way to deflect criticism then to jump on a bandwagon and attack another country for its own issues?
Besides, they can always claim (esp to their own people) 'but that is different!'. The US does it with our farm animals and fishing after all.
Or better yet, "there is a tire fire over in the next lot which will eventually spread to your house"
On the other hand, subsidizing risky behavior lowers your own costs for living in safer regions. If all the people living in flood plains, tornado alleys, hurricane magnets, etc, all decided it was too risky and moved, what do you think it would do to your cost next time you wanted to move?
We are kinda running out of nice places to live. On an individual scale we can ask 'would you pay more to live somewhere safer', but if we extend that out, well, there are only so many nice and safe places, if people stop living in the dangerous areas it will drive the prices of other areas up and they will go right back to living in the bad places.
One tricky part there, people have children. The adults who buy the land and sign the documents might be able to understand the risks (I say might since the risks are probably presented to them through a filter), but their children can not... so right there you have a population living within a dangerous area who have no control over being there nor do they have the ability/resources to purchase their own private ways of being safe.
But... but.. personal responsibility!
Currently the idea of being 'responsible' only covers your own life, whatever you do to others, as long as you made a profit, is their own fault.
I think a bigger problem then management forcing tools on programmers is the one of programmers preferring to write more tools rather then learn to use the existing ones. Seriously, look at how many languages people keep coming up with....
That would require an arrest warrant of some type at least, which even before the no-fly list could prevent you from traveling.
Well, the hurdle for 'planning' can be pretty low depending on the potential crime.
In the case of Google, Yahoo, and Bing at least, while no one is 'forcing' you to use them, the fact they are so heavily used does actually matter. If the three of them decide together that your speech should be censored, it effectively disappears for the vast majority of readers. You can rant and rave all you like and be picked up by alternative sites, but they can control how much audience you have and the bulk of that audience probably would not even be aware of what they are missing.
So it is not just about what medium one uses to speak, but how much control that medium has over who can listen. The difference in getting your message out between small private boards and word of mouth vs accessible on Google is massive. Just talk to anyone trying to do marketing.... 'you can only advertise your product on niche boards and search engines a tiny number of people use, but the competition has access to everyone looking for the topic on Google', which company do you think will survive and which will go out of business? Same with ideas.
In a very real way, we don't have a choice, since a critical element is what choice everyone else makes, and we do not have control over them. If your audience is all using Google, then Google is your only choice. Using some niche engine or building your own does not accomplish your goals and is little better then 'the only thing on the menu is pasta. Well I will eat my napkin instead!'. In a pure way yes, there was a choice, but practically speaking there was effectively no choice and the only benefit from choosing the napkin was the hollow victor of 'having chosen', and the person is still hungry.
So far the groups who are censored by Google lack the political backing or have too much stigma associated with them already. They lack enough public support to bring such suits seriously. Google would have to start censoring someone who can actually fight back for this to start happening.
You touch on one of the reasons that this can be a sticky issue, competition. When taken pedantically the constitution only talks about what the state can and can not do, but philosophically it speaks to people having, well, the freedom to not have their speech crushed. Private individuals and corporations can amass sufficient influence that they are able to act as defacto states within the dejure state. Even when it is not a government mandated monopoly you can still get monopolies based off market realities, and at that point you end up with average citizens having rights curtailed by private but non-state entities because they are powerful enough to do so.
At which point the representative state gets involved since part of its job is to watch out for its citizens against other citizens. This is why we have various public accommodation laws, protecting weak groups from strong group's ability to mistreat them by virtue of their inability to do anything back.
In this case, I agree that the court was probably correct. Even within public accommodation, this particular service is hardly in a position to really curtail speech in the US. Now, if Google and Bing teamed up to start systematic censorship (ok, more then they do already) then the plaintiffs might have a case since right now, if Google wants to make something disappear, for the majority of the population is is gone, and thus they have a massive private ability to control what speech citizens have and consume.
It has been tried before, it is an active area of research, and bit by bit they are learning how to do it. Though one of the big problems is how to test it on humans.
One difference at least is that this was being looked into for military use a few years ago, so there is more research and data to start with.
Even when there is no one specific process or technique available, ideas that failed due to implementation rather then theory are worth revisiting now and then since over the decades our whole tech and knowledge base has improved and solutions might be discoverable.
Just look at all the talk around thorium reactors. They failed the first time around, no one built one for 50+ years, and now we are looking at them again since we have learned so much since then across any number of disciplines.
The key would come down to 'contribute', there is a lot of wiggle room regarding what has larger benefits to society.
Finding a large, diverse group of people would not be difficult. Looking at history, there is always a certain percentage of the population who desire getting away from established society and crowded cities. Over the last century we have pretty much run out of places for people to go, there are no new areas left.. thus there is probably a rather significant pent up demand.
That it would, but then again homeopathic remedies kinda defeat the purpose of remedies.
I agree it is highly unlikely, but calendars have been switched before, though there was a lot less time keeping done then. I guess there is an off chance that it could find some niche in scientific or military uses and then bleed into the general population, but yeah, that does not seem likely either.
Still, I imagine the people who came up with it had a lot of fun in the process.
Yeah, but they are not marketed for human consumption nor do they claim to contain no antibiotics.
It is normal to have doubts about Japanese law enforcement in general. They do not exactly have a reputation for fairness and are often regarded as even worse then the US when it comes to 'as long as you catch someone, we will make sure they go to jail, guilt is irrelevent'
That is actually pretty common. People tend to forget that charisma and body language are social skills calibrated to certain cultures and subcultures. For any given charismatic person you will find people that are drawn to them and people who find them creepy, depending on how well their particular dialects match up. Unlike spoken language where you can quickly identify there is an accent, with body language and such you are just left with an unsettling 'something feels off' sensation.
Meh, not everyone is satisfied to simply accept their lot in life and thus *gasp* actually want to improve.
Some people learn by observation, some benefit from training. It is kinda like programming or math, some people will pick it up on their own and other people work best when they have a structured class to explicitly introduce elements in context of each other. Some people even need tutoring that focuses on specific areas they struggle with.