As you accidentally pointed out, "is this the best tool for the job" includes more factors than simply, "is it easy for our employees to be productive with it". It also includes, "does it meet our budgetary needs," but at least as important is, "does it meet our responsibility to the public to have our work be clear, transparent, and open for inspection by our employers?" (namely, the public).
I'm not saying that any one factor overrides the others; the details of that are open to endless debate. But everyone seems to keep forgetting that the aforementioned responsibility is indeed important. Indeed, all the factors are components of the government's primary responsibility (and its reason for existing): to serve the public.
Someone working for an employer is constrained to use whatever tools that employer wants them to use. If you are working for the government, then your employer is the public. The public gets to decide how the government works, because the government's entire reason for existing is to serve the public. People seem to lose sight of this a lot.
It might be argued that enforcing Open Source in government would instigate a significant nationwide effort toward producing strong, stable, feature-rich software, with the end result being that "comparable" open source programs are, for the most part, as good or better than similar closed-source options.
I understand your point of view: there's a lot of OS software which isn't up to the standards of closed-source. However, if the government starts requiring it, lots of companies will immediately get on the job of producing good OS software, since they're vying for government contracts. No one (well, no one reasonable) is saying that the government should use only *GPL* software; certainly I'd have no problem with a company providing an open source solution to a government that is copyrighted the same as any other software, but the source of which is freely distributed, i.e. you couldn't go around selling your own copy of the software (or even use any of their code in your own software), but the source is available for review to anyone.
Doesn't "the best tool for the job", when referring to government work, also include the government's responsibility for letting its citizens know whether the tool its using is actually any good? Or should the software's end-user facility be the only measure of its suitability for the job?
I think the issue here is slightly different than simply "the best solution for the job". I agree that they should seek out the best solution for the job; but the argument here (i.e. the counterargument to O'Reilly's article) is that the job also encompasses an overall responsibility to the citizens, including the citizens' right to know what's going on, and to have access to the tools and methods.
For example. Let's say that the government has created a new department, and this new dept. needs specialized software to do its job. Now, in terms of which software is most efficient for those gov't employees who will be working in this department, Software X from Closed Source Inc. may be the best of all the proposals, even better than Software G from Open Source Corp.
But is the employees' use of this software the end of it? No. The argument (I'm ambivalent on this for now, but this is apparently michael's view) is that the goverment has a responsibility to the citizens that gives them a clear, transparent view of what goes on in government offices. Even if Software X appears to work better (from the end-user standpoint), citizens have a right to know whether Software X really IS doing its job correctly, and not making subtle errors that will come back to bugger us ten years down the road. As a result of this responsibility, Software G may be a better choice, because it is open and transparent, even if it's some amount harder to use than Software X is.
PLEASE NOTE that I am not taking one stance or the other -- I am simply pointing out what the argument is, since so many seem to be oblivious to it.
The argument O'Reilly has against forcing the government of CA to use Open Source software is that "any victory for open source achieved through deprivation of the user's right to choose would indeed be a betrayal of the principles that free software and open source have stood for" - a point that is very different from some claim to a person's right to privacy.
This doesn't apply, for one simple reason: the government does not have the same rights as people. The principles of free software is that users should have the power. The principle of our goverment is that the goverment serves the people. The goverment has/should have no rights except those that serve the interests of the people; moral arguments that the government deserves the same consideration (i.e. the moral right to choose) do not apply to the government (except insofar as they serve the people).
I argue that the public commonwealth is best promoted by protecting what O'Reilly calls "Freedom Zero": "the freedom to offer your work to the world on the terms that you choose, and for the recipients to accept or reject those terms." When you start to force *any* entity to use software, you're violating what I perceive to be one of the fundamental principles of the Free software movement.
I agree with this principle as well, but it does NOT apply to the government! The government should NOT get to choose how they offer their work to the public. The goverment is an instrument of public will, and if the public wants laws that require the government to work a certain way and disclose certain things, the government should comply. You keep making the error that the government somehow deserves the same rights and considerations as individuals, but that is exceedingly false.
Although I've come to expect the mentality of least resistance here at/., it's depressing to see an editor such as yourself bashing an article that endorses the ideological foundations for the Open Source movement. Spewing links to Microsoft FUD and drawing vague connections to ridiculous and oversimplified statements that no one would disagree with in an attempt to bolster such a weak argument might fool some of this community, but not all of us.
Same as above. He's not arguing that the right to choose is wrong; he's arguing that it doesn't apply to the government.
Passing bills mandating the use of open source [com.com] in the government takes away the freedom of the government to do its job as efficiently as possible.
This is a strawman. The government does not enjoy "freedom" the same way individuals do. If we are going to pass such bills, it's going to be because it will help the government serve the people -- which is the only reason it exists. The government only enjoys "freedom" insofar as such freedoms serve its populace. You're making it sound like the government has some kind of fundamental right to freedoms the way citizens do.
The argument should be whether requiring open source will benefit the public more than allowing closed source will. Basing the argument on the idea that the government somehow deserves freedom is ludicrous.
but it's 'company policy' and everyone lives with it.
BURNS: As punishment for your desertion, it's company policy to give you the plague.
SMITHERS: Uh, sir, that's the plaque.
BURNS: Ah yes, the special demotivational plaque to break what's left of your spirit. Because, you see, you're here forever. [Smithers screws a "Don't forget: you're here forever" plaque into the wall]
OK, I don't really wish him dead. I just wish him and every other Microsoft exec and lawyer to retire to a quiet life of recreation and contemplation, out of the public eye and completely away from the computer industry.
That's like exiling Napoleon. They'd just come back, stronger than ever, and be radioactive and fire-breathing, to boot.
The Constitution doesn't say that Congress only has power over interstate commerce -- it says they have power over IC in addition to other things, including trademarks, patents, and copyright. If you violate someone's trademark on a local basis (say, by selling Koka-Kola brand soft drink), they can still sue you even if it never leaves the state.
It bothers me that the NOVA transcript has many instances of someone worrying about the "threat" of synthetic diamonds, without ever examining the assumption that synthetic diamonds should be considered a "threat". Yeah, there's an obvious explanation -- people want "real" things, not "fakes", but when the "real" and "fake" are effectively indistinguishable and share all the same properties and characteristics, who cares?
Well, thanks for flaming, since you couldn't think of anything actually useful to say.
I understand all the reasons why our society has these memes about shiny jewels. I was pointing out that I think they're going to be deflated a bit in decades to come. My wife and I (NB: serious relationship) both agree that shiny things are nice, but the importance our society appears to place on big diamonds is excessive and probably harmful.
Hearing those in the traditional diamond business talk about the "threat of synthetic diamonds" always amuses me. I can't help but think that if Americans (or, heck, people in general) were more comfortable with the nature of matter (and science in general), this wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue.
What I see is that two diamonds, atomically indistinguishable, can be viewed in different ways by the same person. Why? Because one of the diamonds gestated deep in the earth for thousands of years, and the other was created in a lab in an hour two weeks ago. There is some kind of emotional response to really old things that are forged by the fires of the deep... yadda yadda.
Well, what is a diamond? Literally, it's nothing more than carbon atoms arranged in a particular structure. Any two carbon atoms are indistinguishable (assuming they're the same isotope, say C12). The carbon atoms in the synthetic diamond are the same millions of years old as the carbon atoms in the "real" diamond... but the "real" diamond's carbon was down inside the earth, and the synthetic diamond's carbon was tooling around on the surface, probably in the form of biomass for the most part.
So let's say you take one carbon atom from the surface, and one carbon atom from deep inside the earth. Well, they aren't diamonds yet, they're just carbon atoms. Indistinguishable. If you put them in a box and shook the box, when you opened it again, you would never be able to inspect the atoms and tell which one had been the deep atom and which had been the surface atom. So now you take a few more atoms from each location and start adding them to the original atom, to form microscopic diamonds. Let's say each one is formed from 100 carbon atoms. Not much of a diamond, and certainly nobody would care about the difference. Now you up it to 1,000 atoms. Is it a "real" diamond, worthy of emotional differences due to the source of the atoms now? If not now, when? 10,000 atoms? A million? A billion? A trillion?
I think it's entirely a function of recent history that there's any kind of stigma at all against synthetic things that are otherwise identical to "real" things. When we get to the point where the ring-buying population (twentysomethings) has grown up with the idea of synthetic diamonds being just as good (if not better) than the "real" thing, not to mention cheaper, things will, hopefully, change.
Well, not many, anyway. My wife told me before I even proposed to her that she had not much interest in diamonds, let alone big showy ones. She also dislikes yellow gold, so I ended up getting her a white gold ring set with sapphires (and a few tiny diamonds around each of the sapphires), along with a matching bracelet and pendant. (We had somehow -- entirely coincidental, I'm sure;) -- ended up on the topic of gemstones a few months before I proposed, so I had learned her likes and filed it away.)
Since then I've also gotten her a heart-shaped blue topaz pendant and a pearl-and-(small-)diamond pendant; plus, we got married, and her wedding ring itself is a thin, white gold band set with a few tiny diamonds in a V-shaped notch. (My own ring is a plain white gold band; I don't like yellow gold much, either.)
The whole "two months salary" thing was a decades-long marketing attack by DeBeers. If I had spent two months' salary on her engagement ring, it would have cost around $5,000, which we both agree is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on something that is very shiny but extremely useless (scroll down till you see the chart). Yes, she likes jewelry, but we both (for slightly different reasons) detest the idea that spending more money automatically equals you love her more. My wife is never happier than when I clean things around the apartment, unbidden by her -- and it doesn't require me to spend thousands of dollars to do so.
If your fiancee honestly wants a big diamond, either because it springs from her own heart or because she's been convinced by the marketdroids, well, go ahead and get it for her. If, like so many women recently, she's shucked the "must have big diamond... MUST HAVE BIG DIAMOND" cliche, find out what gems she really does like.
So, I'm confused... when the beanstalk falls down, does it fall STRAIGHT down into a pile, or does it fall OVER? Or something else entirely?
If it falls straight down, then the entire length of the beanstalk ends up in a relatively small pile around the base structure. Very little damage to surrounding areas, I imagine, especially if the base is a floating platform in the middle of the Pacific.
If it falls over, then the entire surface area of one side of the beanstalk is pushing through the atmosphere, building up a huge wall of air, slowing its descent, so it isn't moving very fast and doesn't do a huge amount of damage should parts of it land on something.
Which is it? Or is it something else? Be specific, please.
The World Wildlife Fund has been hassling the WWE for years about their trademark. The dispute was only *settled* recently, but the WWF brought it up years ago, so it's not like they only recently decided to challenge the WWF.
However, I'm not sure if the WWE's change was due to a court decision, or a private settlement.
No. At least in the launch product, Gungans are not a playable race (although they will be present in the game as NPCs; whether you can encounter Jar-Jar is unknown -- heck, whether he's still ALIVE during the time period SWG exists in, is unknown).
Right, I had long forgotten what C14's decay product actually was... N14, not C12.
Anyway, my point was that since C14's decay product (nitrogen) is also commonly found in things that have carbon in them, you can't simply look at the ratio of decay product to remaining parent element to determine the date. However, if C14's decay product was (let's say) the mysterious N13.5 (which is not normally found in organisms), you could simply measure the proportion of N13.5 to C14, and you wouldn't need any calibration value at all.
To extend the example... you find an organism that has 0.5g of C14 and 0.5g of N13.5 in it. Without any other info, you would be able to tell that the organism had died one C14 half-life ago (5730 years). Now, the problem in real life is that C14 decays into N14, so there's no way to tell whether the N14 in the organism was there to begin with, or whether it is the result of C14 decay, which is why you need cross-calibration for C14 dating. But for heavier elements that decay into things that aren't normally found in living organisms, you only need to know the ratio of daughter products to the parent product. Right?
I was under the impression that you don't even necessarily need to know the ambient level to begin with: you can simply analyze the ratios of daughter isotopes/elements to the parent, which tells you how much there was originally. The only problem I can see with this is that C-14's decay product is C-12, which is already abundant in a dead organism, so how do you tell which C-12 is the decayed C-14 and which C-12 was there to begin with? (Answer: cross-calibration, or other methods that are unnecessary with decaying elements that leave behind distinctive daughter elements, right?)
I don't know if it's even that inconsequential. Think about all the times you've had to deal with messed-up toilet paper systems in publicly accessible toilets (restaurants, stadiums, theaters, etc.). What if someone were to spend a few weeks determining all the parameters of various toilet paper setups, and producing some kind of definitive work on the subject?
Yeah, I read that and it sounds like I'm joking, but I'm not. Surely there can't be more than one or two "optimal" toilet-paper-dispensing solutions, and it seems bizarre that these were not determined years ago. It doesn't seem like the circumstances surrounding the use of toilet paper could have changed all that much in the last fifty years.
I mean, let's think about it. There's two major categories of toilet paper usage: public (restaurants, stadiums, theaters, amusement parks, businesses, etc.) and private (residences). Obviously, private TPS (Toilet Paper Systems) don't need any of the security features that public systems do.
Let's look at private TPS first. What are our parameters and needs? Well, in most situations, replacement TP rolls are within reaching distance of someone sitting on the toilet, so that's not a problem -- having two rolls doesn't really help that much, because you're STILL going to have to replace the rolls at some point (probably when one expires is the proper algorithmic way). The biggest problem I've noted with private TPS is that the volume of space allocated to the roll tends to be just small enough that a full roll comes into frictional contact with the supporting wall -- so when a roll is fresh or near-fresh, it can be difficult to draw it properly (you tend to get tearing, due to friction). Two solutions to this: 1) Have the axis of the toilet paper out far enough from the supporting surface so that a standard-sized roll will not touch it. 2) Have a depression carved into the supporting surface (usually in the form of a semicylinder) so that the full roll does not protrude too far out from the supporting surface. Ideally, the depression should be large enough so that a standard-sized roll does not touch any part of the inside of the depression. Also note that any holder or support mechanism should allow for significant expansion in the size of toilet paper rolls, since the "standard size" may change (and if it gets smaller, that's not much of a problem, but it's more likely it'll get bigger, and we don't want to have to retrofit our holders later if we can avoid it).
Other factors... the spindle itself should be a single unit, usually a pair of size-offset cylinders attached by a spring. The individual cylinders of the spindle should absolutely NOT be able to come apart (except by violent prying). The spindle's exposed area (i.e. where the roll hangs) should be sufficiently long that a standard-size TP roll can spin freely without being crushed between the arms of the holder.
(Also note that these parameters call for a standard size roll of toilet paper, which would theoretically be specified by shipping dimensions, i.e. diameter and height -- if a company wants to make a single-ply roll and a double-ply roll, the roll should be the same dimensions, meaning that the double-ply roll will have fewer sheets.)
Should the spindle be able to move freely, and spin in the holder, or should it be more or less locked in place (by a physical obstruction, or by friction?), letting the cardboard TP spindle itself rotate around? As long as the TP roll itself has sufficient space inside the cardboard spindle to rotate freely about the support spindle, then the support spindle doesn't need to be able to rotate...
See how much thought can go into just a few aspects of a problem like this? We don't think much about how things like this go, but imagine if you went the rest of your life without ever having to deal with poorly-designed toilet paper mechanisms again. It wouldn't necessarily be something you'd notice, but that would be the point -- a single medium-sized application of brainpower, once, could save millions of people from ever having to think about it.
That is true, and I won't deny it. But to be blunt, so what? I would much rather have the current internet than some regulated network where everyone was guaranteed equal resources according to some Bergeronesque scheme. The point of my post was that the mostly anarcho/libertarian society(1) that is the internet today WORKS, and it works WELL. We don't need disgruntled statists sticking their fingers in the works. Egalite is nice, but it must always take a back seat to liberte.
I agree. I like the current Internet the way it is, more or less. I don't want the internet to become a Bergeron-esque scheme any more than you do. However, YOU claimed that it was a completely level playing field, upon which nothing but one's mental abilities had any effect:
Everyone enters into this society with identical opportunities, with outcomes determined by merit, ability or persuasive ability, without regard to race, color, creed, or anything else like that.
This statement is true so far as it goes, but it (and the rest of the post it comes from) omit mention of other factors which are not "like that" -- factors besides personal physical ones. I pointed out that money DOES translate to power, even on the otherwise highly egalitarian Internet. I'll agree that it doesn't translate to nearly as much power as it does offline, but to claim that money has no affect on your online powers is false by any reasonable measure of the words involved.
Money is only a small part of a good website. Even small businesses can (and do) have attractive, usable and robust websites without having to break the bank. If you go look at the top ten websites rated by visual appeal, usability, and ease of use, you will find that those lists are not dominated by the richest companies. Far from it.
Again, I agree that mental abilities have more impact on the popularity of a website than money does, but to claim that money has an insignificant effect, is false. At least in the arena of visual appeal, there is only so much money can do -- whether a website looks good and is easy to navigate scales fairly well with the size of the site, assuming its design was proper. However, money can still augment a website in other ways. Availability is the most key, I think, but being able to afford rafts of additional content is also very important. Sites that have more content will generally attract more people, and if such sites also have the server and bandwidth capacity to support that many visitors, then they get more mindshare. This gives them a bigger audience than smaller (= less monied) websites have, and the people behind such sites can thus have a bigger impact on things.
I think you're not separating the mechanisms of the Internet from its content. Even if you don't control the mechanisms of the Internet (the protocols, the standards, and the wires themselves), with a proper expenditure of money, you can have control of a large segment of the content provided, and you can thus affect the beliefs of many more people than someone with less money can. Even if you don't have coercive power over those people, if they believe what you want them to believe (because of pervasive content exhorting your beliefs), you have gained some power over the world (and over those individuals). Even if I don't have any way to threaten a group of people by force, if I can convince them to agree with me, I have some amount of power over them. And in general, having more money makes convincing more people easier, in the real world OR online.
That means more power to you, not more power over me. At least in cyberspace it doesn't.
I agree entirely. The problem is, I never said that money gives them power over you; I merely said that money gives them more power than you.
Microsoft (and other large, wealthy entities), with their vast coffers, can afford to buy Congressmen that will enact laws that give it more power on the Internet, and give you less power. You cannot. They can eclipse dissenting opinions much more easily than you can, by buying out websites, or flooding the net with advertisements for their own content. You cannot. (Granted, they can't do so as easily in cyberspace as they can in real life, but they can still do it way more than you can.)
It grants you power in the ability to support more people viewing your stuff at once. The ability to advertise on other sites, so that more people know about your site. All else being equal, the ability to add things to your site that someone with less money could not.
For example, take two sites. One is run by a rich guy who can afford a high-bandwidth hosting solution, and one is run by a guy who can't. Slashdot links to both sites. The rich guy's site easily handles all the load, and the poor guy's site doesn't -- it dies almost instantly under the increased load. The rich guy has more power here. More people get to see his content.
Granted, the poor guy's site can be mirrored by others -- but this is an ad-hoc solution that may disappear after a while, and is never going to be as ideal as simply increasing the availability of his own servers. Mirroring has several suboptimal qualities: The mirrors do not necessarily get updated along with the original site; the mirrors themselves are not necessarily much better than the original site; the existence of the mirrors is not necessarily noted on the original site; and worst, mirroring may not even occur, if nobody thinks (or wants) to do it. If the site owner asks people to mirror, then he is spending his time (= money) on improving his website's availability, so it's not like such efforts are zero-cost. (There are SOME cases where offsite mirroring is almost as good as increasing the availability of your own, self-controlled servers, but those are rare, and they are, so far, never superior.)
Your assertion that better-designed sites are irrelevant, is false. You're saying that websites are analogous to buildings. This is a bad idea for a variety of reasons, but if you go to Microsoft's site, you're viewing their content -- it's like you went inside the building to see what they have available to give (or sell) to you. You're right, in the real world, (mostly) nobody cares what corporate buildings look like, but on the Internet, people do indeed care what websites look like. What a website looks like is far more analogous to how a building is built, than it is to what a building looks like.
People are much more likely to visit a site that is easy to navigate, visually pleasing, and easy to use, than they are to visit a site that is ugly or difficult to use. In GENERAL, more money means you can design an easier-to-use, prettier site, though it does not always -- but whenever it does, those with money have more power, or, indirectly, more ability to affect change (which is one form of power). More money also means you can afford to hire a person (or people) to maintain your site, and keep it up-to-date, full of fresh content. Sites with more fresh content (I hate saying things like that, it makes me sound like a marketdroid, but there you have it) are generally going to be more popular than sites with old, outdated content.
The Internet is still part of the real world, and in the real world, money is power. The nature of the Internet diminishes this a bit, but in the long run I don't know of any reason to expect why the Internet should necessarily remain magically immune to the abuses money can allow. Heck, just look at the definition of power:
power Pronunciation Key (pour) n.
1. The ability or capacity to perform or act effectively.
Money gives you more "ability or capacity to perform or act effectively". There are manifested side-effects of money that often counterbalance that a bit, but in general, more money = more power.
It's not quite that egalitarian. There is one other factor that still can affect things: money. If I have more money than you, I can afford more, faster servers, more bandwidth, professional site design, better search engine results, and so forth. I'm thankful that racial, religious, and sexual prejudice are more or less precluded on the internet (unless you tell people what your race, religion, or gender is, but you can happily exist online without doing so), but someone with more money will still have more ability to affect things than someone without.
Slashdot Mirror
Offtopic reply:
:)
I like your sig, but I think it would be funnier if it read as follows:
"Note on "The Matrix" casting: Tonight, the part of Agent Smith will be played by John Ashcroft."
Food for thought.
As you accidentally pointed out, "is this the best tool for the job" includes more factors than simply, "is it easy for our employees to be productive with it". It also includes, "does it meet our budgetary needs," but at least as important is, "does it meet our responsibility to the public to have our work be clear, transparent, and open for inspection by our employers?" (namely, the public).
I'm not saying that any one factor overrides the others; the details of that are open to endless debate. But everyone seems to keep forgetting that the aforementioned responsibility is indeed important. Indeed, all the factors are components of the government's primary responsibility (and its reason for existing): to serve the public.
Someone working for an employer is constrained to use whatever tools that employer wants them to use. If you are working for the government, then your employer is the public. The public gets to decide how the government works, because the government's entire reason for existing is to serve the public. People seem to lose sight of this a lot.
It might be argued that enforcing Open Source in government would instigate a significant nationwide effort toward producing strong, stable, feature-rich software, with the end result being that "comparable" open source programs are, for the most part, as good or better than similar closed-source options.
I understand your point of view: there's a lot of OS software which isn't up to the standards of closed-source. However, if the government starts requiring it, lots of companies will immediately get on the job of producing good OS software, since they're vying for government contracts. No one (well, no one reasonable) is saying that the government should use only *GPL* software; certainly I'd have no problem with a company providing an open source solution to a government that is copyrighted the same as any other software, but the source of which is freely distributed, i.e. you couldn't go around selling your own copy of the software (or even use any of their code in your own software), but the source is available for review to anyone.
In theory, anyway. Justt rying to shed light.
Doesn't "the best tool for the job", when referring to government work, also include the government's responsibility for letting its citizens know whether the tool its using is actually any good? Or should the software's end-user facility be the only measure of its suitability for the job?
For example. Let's say that the government has created a new department, and this new dept. needs specialized software to do its job. Now, in terms of which software is most efficient for those gov't employees who will be working in this department, Software X from Closed Source Inc. may be the best of all the proposals, even better than Software G from Open Source Corp.
But is the employees' use of this software the end of it? No. The argument (I'm ambivalent on this for now, but this is apparently michael's view) is that the goverment has a responsibility to the citizens that gives them a clear, transparent view of what goes on in government offices. Even if Software X appears to work better (from the end-user standpoint), citizens have a right to know whether Software X really IS doing its job correctly, and not making subtle errors that will come back to bugger us ten years down the road. As a result of this responsibility, Software G may be a better choice, because it is open and transparent, even if it's some amount harder to use than Software X is.
PLEASE NOTE that I am not taking one stance or the other -- I am simply pointing out what the argument is, since so many seem to be oblivious to it.
The argument should be whether requiring open source will benefit the public more than allowing closed source will. Basing the argument on the idea that the government somehow deserves freedom is ludicrous.
SMITHERS: Uh, sir, that's the plaque.
BURNS: Ah yes, the special demotivational plaque to break what's left of your spirit. Because, you see, you're here forever. [Smithers screws a "Don't forget: you're here forever" plaque into the wall]
BURNS: Don't forget: you're here forever!
The Constitution doesn't say that Congress only has power over interstate commerce -- it says they have power over IC in addition to other things, including trademarks, patents, and copyright. If you violate someone's trademark on a local basis (say, by selling Koka-Kola brand soft drink), they can still sue you even if it never leaves the state.
It bothers me that the NOVA transcript has many instances of someone worrying about the "threat" of synthetic diamonds, without ever examining the assumption that synthetic diamonds should be considered a "threat". Yeah, there's an obvious explanation -- people want "real" things, not "fakes", but when the "real" and "fake" are effectively indistinguishable and share all the same properties and characteristics, who cares?
Well, thanks for flaming, since you couldn't think of anything actually useful to say.
I understand all the reasons why our society has these memes about shiny jewels. I was pointing out that I think they're going to be deflated a bit in decades to come. My wife and I (NB: serious relationship) both agree that shiny things are nice, but the importance our society appears to place on big diamonds is excessive and probably harmful.
Hearing those in the traditional diamond business talk about the "threat of synthetic diamonds" always amuses me. I can't help but think that if Americans (or, heck, people in general) were more comfortable with the nature of matter (and science in general), this wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue.
What I see is that two diamonds, atomically indistinguishable, can be viewed in different ways by the same person. Why? Because one of the diamonds gestated deep in the earth for thousands of years, and the other was created in a lab in an hour two weeks ago. There is some kind of emotional response to really old things that are forged by the fires of the deep... yadda yadda.
Well, what is a diamond? Literally, it's nothing more than carbon atoms arranged in a particular structure. Any two carbon atoms are indistinguishable (assuming they're the same isotope, say C12). The carbon atoms in the synthetic diamond are the same millions of years old as the carbon atoms in the "real" diamond... but the "real" diamond's carbon was down inside the earth, and the synthetic diamond's carbon was tooling around on the surface, probably in the form of biomass for the most part.
So let's say you take one carbon atom from the surface, and one carbon atom from deep inside the earth. Well, they aren't diamonds yet, they're just carbon atoms. Indistinguishable. If you put them in a box and shook the box, when you opened it again, you would never be able to inspect the atoms and tell which one had been the deep atom and which had been the surface atom. So now you take a few more atoms from each location and start adding them to the original atom, to form microscopic diamonds. Let's say each one is formed from 100 carbon atoms. Not much of a diamond, and certainly nobody would care about the difference. Now you up it to 1,000 atoms. Is it a "real" diamond, worthy of emotional differences due to the source of the atoms now? If not now, when? 10,000 atoms? A million? A billion? A trillion?
I think it's entirely a function of recent history that there's any kind of stigma at all against synthetic things that are otherwise identical to "real" things. When we get to the point where the ring-buying population (twentysomethings) has grown up with the idea of synthetic diamonds being just as good (if not better) than the "real" thing, not to mention cheaper, things will, hopefully, change.
Well, not many, anyway. My wife told me before I even proposed to her that she had not much interest in diamonds, let alone big showy ones. She also dislikes yellow gold, so I ended up getting her a white gold ring set with sapphires (and a few tiny diamonds around each of the sapphires), along with a matching bracelet and pendant. (We had somehow -- entirely coincidental, I'm sure ;) -- ended up on the topic of gemstones a few months before I proposed, so I had learned her likes and filed it away.)
Since then I've also gotten her a heart-shaped blue topaz pendant and a pearl-and-(small-)diamond pendant; plus, we got married, and her wedding ring itself is a thin, white gold band set with a few tiny diamonds in a V-shaped notch. (My own ring is a plain white gold band; I don't like yellow gold much, either.)
The whole "two months salary" thing was a decades-long marketing attack by DeBeers. If I had spent two months' salary on her engagement ring, it would have cost around $5,000, which we both agree is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on something that is very shiny but extremely useless (scroll down till you see the chart). Yes, she likes jewelry, but we both (for slightly different reasons) detest the idea that spending more money automatically equals you love her more. My wife is never happier than when I clean things around the apartment, unbidden by her -- and it doesn't require me to spend thousands of dollars to do so.
If your fiancee honestly wants a big diamond, either because it springs from her own heart or because she's been convinced by the marketdroids, well, go ahead and get it for her. If, like so many women recently, she's shucked the "must have big diamond... MUST HAVE BIG DIAMOND" cliche, find out what gems she really does like.
So, I'm confused... when the beanstalk falls down, does it fall STRAIGHT down into a pile, or does it fall OVER? Or something else entirely?
If it falls straight down, then the entire length of the beanstalk ends up in a relatively small pile around the base structure. Very little damage to surrounding areas, I imagine, especially if the base is a floating platform in the middle of the Pacific.
If it falls over, then the entire surface area of one side of the beanstalk is pushing through the atmosphere, building up a huge wall of air, slowing its descent, so it isn't moving very fast and doesn't do a huge amount of damage should parts of it land on something.
Which is it? Or is it something else? Be specific, please.
The World Wildlife Fund has been hassling the WWE for years about their trademark. The dispute was only *settled* recently, but the WWF brought it up years ago, so it's not like they only recently decided to challenge the WWF.
However, I'm not sure if the WWE's change was due to a court decision, or a private settlement.
No. At least in the launch product, Gungans are not a playable race (although they will be present in the game as NPCs; whether you can encounter Jar-Jar is unknown -- heck, whether he's still ALIVE during the time period SWG exists in, is unknown).
Right, I had long forgotten what C14's decay product actually was... N14, not C12.
Anyway, my point was that since C14's decay product (nitrogen) is also commonly found in things that have carbon in them, you can't simply look at the ratio of decay product to remaining parent element to determine the date. However, if C14's decay product was (let's say) the mysterious N13.5 (which is not normally found in organisms), you could simply measure the proportion of N13.5 to C14, and you wouldn't need any calibration value at all.
To extend the example... you find an organism that has 0.5g of C14 and 0.5g of N13.5 in it. Without any other info, you would be able to tell that the organism had died one C14 half-life ago (5730 years). Now, the problem in real life is that C14 decays into N14, so there's no way to tell whether the N14 in the organism was there to begin with, or whether it is the result of C14 decay, which is why you need cross-calibration for C14 dating. But for heavier elements that decay into things that aren't normally found in living organisms, you only need to know the ratio of daughter products to the parent product. Right?
I was under the impression that you don't even necessarily need to know the ambient level to begin with: you can simply analyze the ratios of daughter isotopes/elements to the parent, which tells you how much there was originally. The only problem I can see with this is that C-14's decay product is C-12, which is already abundant in a dead organism, so how do you tell which C-12 is the decayed C-14 and which C-12 was there to begin with? (Answer: cross-calibration, or other methods that are unnecessary with decaying elements that leave behind distinctive daughter elements, right?)
Wait wait, WHAT? You can HEAT food? Hot damn! I'm writing this down... no more frozen taquitos in the middle of a 16-hour coding binge for me!
I don't know if it's even that inconsequential. Think about all the times you've had to deal with messed-up toilet paper systems in publicly accessible toilets (restaurants, stadiums, theaters, etc.). What if someone were to spend a few weeks determining all the parameters of various toilet paper setups, and producing some kind of definitive work on the subject?
Yeah, I read that and it sounds like I'm joking, but I'm not. Surely there can't be more than one or two "optimal" toilet-paper-dispensing solutions, and it seems bizarre that these were not determined years ago. It doesn't seem like the circumstances surrounding the use of toilet paper could have changed all that much in the last fifty years.
I mean, let's think about it. There's two major categories of toilet paper usage: public (restaurants, stadiums, theaters, amusement parks, businesses, etc.) and private (residences). Obviously, private TPS (Toilet Paper Systems) don't need any of the security features that public systems do.
Let's look at private TPS first. What are our parameters and needs? Well, in most situations, replacement TP rolls are within reaching distance of someone sitting on the toilet, so that's not a problem -- having two rolls doesn't really help that much, because you're STILL going to have to replace the rolls at some point (probably when one expires is the proper algorithmic way). The biggest problem I've noted with private TPS is that the volume of space allocated to the roll tends to be just small enough that a full roll comes into frictional contact with the supporting wall -- so when a roll is fresh or near-fresh, it can be difficult to draw it properly (you tend to get tearing, due to friction). Two solutions to this: 1) Have the axis of the toilet paper out far enough from the supporting surface so that a standard-sized roll will not touch it. 2) Have a depression carved into the supporting surface (usually in the form of a semicylinder) so that the full roll does not protrude too far out from the supporting surface. Ideally, the depression should be large enough so that a standard-sized roll does not touch any part of the inside of the depression. Also note that any holder or support mechanism should allow for significant expansion in the size of toilet paper rolls, since the "standard size" may change (and if it gets smaller, that's not much of a problem, but it's more likely it'll get bigger, and we don't want to have to retrofit our holders later if we can avoid it).
Other factors... the spindle itself should be a single unit, usually a pair of size-offset cylinders attached by a spring. The individual cylinders of the spindle should absolutely NOT be able to come apart (except by violent prying). The spindle's exposed area (i.e. where the roll hangs) should be sufficiently long that a standard-size TP roll can spin freely without being crushed between the arms of the holder.
(Also note that these parameters call for a standard size roll of toilet paper, which would theoretically be specified by shipping dimensions, i.e. diameter and height -- if a company wants to make a single-ply roll and a double-ply roll, the roll should be the same dimensions, meaning that the double-ply roll will have fewer sheets.)
Should the spindle be able to move freely, and spin in the holder, or should it be more or less locked in place (by a physical obstruction, or by friction?), letting the cardboard TP spindle itself rotate around? As long as the TP roll itself has sufficient space inside the cardboard spindle to rotate freely about the support spindle, then the support spindle doesn't need to be able to rotate...
See how much thought can go into just a few aspects of a problem like this? We don't think much about how things like this go, but imagine if you went the rest of your life without ever having to deal with poorly-designed toilet paper mechanisms again. It wouldn't necessarily be something you'd notice, but that would be the point -- a single medium-sized application of brainpower, once, could save millions of people from ever having to think about it.
I think you're not separating the mechanisms of the Internet from its content. Even if you don't control the mechanisms of the Internet (the protocols, the standards, and the wires themselves), with a proper expenditure of money, you can have control of a large segment of the content provided, and you can thus affect the beliefs of many more people than someone with less money can. Even if you don't have coercive power over those people, if they believe what you want them to believe (because of pervasive content exhorting your beliefs), you have gained some power over the world (and over those individuals). Even if I don't have any way to threaten a group of people by force, if I can convince them to agree with me, I have some amount of power over them. And in general, having more money makes convincing more people easier, in the real world OR online.
I agree entirely. The problem is, I never said that money gives them power over you; I merely said that money gives them more power than you.Microsoft (and other large, wealthy entities), with their vast coffers, can afford to buy Congressmen that will enact laws that give it more power on the Internet, and give you less power. You cannot. They can eclipse dissenting opinions much more easily than you can, by buying out websites, or flooding the net with advertisements for their own content. You cannot. (Granted, they can't do so as easily in cyberspace as they can in real life, but they can still do it way more than you can.)
It grants you power in the ability to support more people viewing your stuff at once. The ability to advertise on other sites, so that more people know about your site. All else being equal, the ability to add things to your site that someone with less money could not.
For example, take two sites. One is run by a rich guy who can afford a high-bandwidth hosting solution, and one is run by a guy who can't. Slashdot links to both sites. The rich guy's site easily handles all the load, and the poor guy's site doesn't -- it dies almost instantly under the increased load. The rich guy has more power here. More people get to see his content.
Granted, the poor guy's site can be mirrored by others -- but this is an ad-hoc solution that may disappear after a while, and is never going to be as ideal as simply increasing the availability of his own servers. Mirroring has several suboptimal qualities: The mirrors do not necessarily get updated along with the original site; the mirrors themselves are not necessarily much better than the original site; the existence of the mirrors is not necessarily noted on the original site; and worst, mirroring may not even occur, if nobody thinks (or wants) to do it. If the site owner asks people to mirror, then he is spending his time (= money) on improving his website's availability, so it's not like such efforts are zero-cost. (There are SOME cases where offsite mirroring is almost as good as increasing the availability of your own, self-controlled servers, but those are rare, and they are, so far, never superior.)
Your assertion that better-designed sites are irrelevant, is false. You're saying that websites are analogous to buildings. This is a bad idea for a variety of reasons, but if you go to Microsoft's site, you're viewing their content -- it's like you went inside the building to see what they have available to give (or sell) to you. You're right, in the real world, (mostly) nobody cares what corporate buildings look like, but on the Internet, people do indeed care what websites look like. What a website looks like is far more analogous to how a building is built, than it is to what a building looks like.
People are much more likely to visit a site that is easy to navigate, visually pleasing, and easy to use, than they are to visit a site that is ugly or difficult to use. In GENERAL, more money means you can design an easier-to-use, prettier site, though it does not always -- but whenever it does, those with money have more power, or, indirectly, more ability to affect change (which is one form of power). More money also means you can afford to hire a person (or people) to maintain your site, and keep it up-to-date, full of fresh content. Sites with more fresh content (I hate saying things like that, it makes me sound like a marketdroid, but there you have it) are generally going to be more popular than sites with old, outdated content.
The Internet is still part of the real world, and in the real world, money is power. The nature of the Internet diminishes this a bit, but in the long run I don't know of any reason to expect why the Internet should necessarily remain magically immune to the abuses money can allow. Heck, just look at the definition of power:
power Pronunciation Key (pour)
n.
1. The ability or capacity to perform or act effectively.
Money gives you more "ability or capacity to perform or act effectively". There are manifested side-effects of money that often counterbalance that a bit, but in general, more money = more power.
It's not quite that egalitarian. There is one other factor that still can affect things: money. If I have more money than you, I can afford more, faster servers, more bandwidth, professional site design, better search engine results, and so forth. I'm thankful that racial, religious, and sexual prejudice are more or less precluded on the internet (unless you tell people what your race, religion, or gender is, but you can happily exist online without doing so), but someone with more money will still have more ability to affect things than someone without.