Okay, I have to ask at this point, do you have a reading problem or something?
You'll note that I quite clearly pointed out that balancing of a diminished population in their natural environment, is a very different issue to introduced invasive (i.e. non-native) species.
The very fact you have to ignore fundamental parts of my posts to try and justify to yourself as being right, is plenty evidence enough that you're on weak ground and don't actually have any idea what you're talking about.
I can only guess that you think that I am saying all culling is always completely and utterly wrong, this isn't the case. What I am saying is that culling of non-introduced species in their natural environment (i.e. whales, seals, etc.) does more harm than good. This does not mean however I disagree with culling of invasive species like cane toads, rabbits, and even plants such as opuntia ficus-indica in places like Australia.
Do not try and pretend scientists and experts agree with you, short of those politicised experts with vested financial interests those with even a basic grasp of population dynamics understand why you are wrong.
Your viewpoint is incorrect, it's political and not founded in sound science, get over it.
I don't think there's really a feud, just that Cryptome got pissy that this new little upstart Wikileaks came and stole all it's glory with leaks that made Cryptome's past leaks look pretty small fry.
Really, Cryptome showed a bit of penis envy, but that was about it.
Your argument is based on the premise that it's more important to be able to distribute pamphlets complaining about US military draft than it is to avoid being crushed to death because some jackass thought it'd be funny to shout fire.
Both make me sick in the mouth, but you've based your argument on an assumption that I do not think necessarily holds true.
Ultimately in a world where we have compromise your life can be unfairly destroyed by government taking things too far, but in your world of absolute free speech your life can equally be unfairly destroyed, whether it's by someone getting you crushed to death by shouting fire in a crowded theatre, someone causing you to lose your job or worse by slandering you by for example publicly labelling you as a paedophile with no recourse to clear your name because suing for slander would breach their right to free speech, or not having any mitigating circumstance in court for for example punching someone for getting in your face and repeatedly making insulting, perhaps for example racist comments.
The reality is you believe not compromising and having free speech as an absolute would be some magical cure for all the problems of government abuse, but really all you're doing is trading abuse of the status quo by government for abuse by private citizens.
So personally I think it is actually about compromise, the only difficulty is getting the compromise right, because a world with absolute free speech causes just as many problems as one with compromised limits to free speech.
Fundamentally though in your last paragraph, you're not actually complaining about compromise anyway, you're complaining about failure to compromise - the laws to which you refer weren't born of compromise, they were born of governments not being introduced in the will of the populace. Ultimately this is a fault born more of terrible government, and the pitfalls of a two party state with little to separate them than an inherent problem with compromise- of course the compromising wont go to well when both ruling parties want the same things, but the solution to that is a healthier democracy and in many countries they have this by having electoral systems that support multi-party coalition governments and so forth where compromise is essential to staying in power.
It's the same here in the UK - when David Cameron said he likes First Past the Post because it provides strong governments, what he really means is "I like First Past the Post because when we inevitably get back into power in this two party state because the other party fucked up so bad the electorate have no choice but to switch to us instead I can do whatever the hell I want, even if I only got the support of less than a 1/3rd of the voting population". Weak governments are the best type of governments for the people, because as soon as they stop serving the people, they can trivially be toppled.
Really, absolutes in politics are rarely ever the best solution, they're really best left to the fantasies of wingnuts who just haven't thought things through. You may dislike the current situation, but the solution is to fix your government, not become even more militant and start demanding absolutes - polarising the debate with extreme viewpoints that have equally many flaws only makes things even worse again as your opposition strengthen their stance against you even further, and are even given the ammunition of the flaws in your plan to better do so.
No, you don't get the point, you still don't, which is the fundamental problem.
Species compete for food, which is the fundamental crux of your argument, but a species numbers are limited by food supply - when a species reaches a large enough size beyond which the food supply can no longer sustain it the population of that species will cease to grow, and will plateau out.
If you have two species competing for the same food source, the ratio of population of species A vs. species B is determined by how fit for harvesting the food supply each species is relative to the other. If you cull species B because it's more numerous in the hope that species A which is currently below it's natural population levels will come back faster then you're mistaken, because species A can only grow at the speed species A grows at, species B will just come back again, if you keep culling it all you will achieve is to keep the population levels of that species artificially low. Species A will reach it's own natural level relative to it's fitness to the environment for which it is competing, if species A is more fit for the food chain it will reach it's natural population limit regardless of species B's numbers- it's growth will displace species B, and species B will see a decline as species A, being more fit, takes a larger share of the available food as it's numbers grow. If however it turns out that species B was more fit all along then, species A numbers may well plateau out lower than they were 100 years ago, but this is ultimately where evolution and the natural balance of the ecosystem would've taken them anyway due to being less fit to compete. If you cull species B, all you're doing is removing a species to cull the food supply, and so you run the risk of the food supply growing out of control. Effectively in the case we're talking about, Minke whales have seen a population boom to act as natures agent to limit krill population in the absence of greater populations of the likes of blue whales, but as blue whale populations recover, and start consuming their share of the krill, Minke whales will see a population decrease, unless they outcompete the blue whales, in which case they are naturally evolved to do so, and a decrease in blue whales was the path that would've been reached naturally in the absence of man anyway, but over time, both will plateau out at natural sustainable levels.
So ultimately the only way to allow populations to reach natural levels is to leave them the fuck alone, culling only makes the problem worse, because then you have an issue of increased krill because you've killed natures balance agent (the Minke whales). Increased krill means more krill eating fish larvae, decreasing and endangering fish stocks, and more krill eating phytoplankton which can lead to an imbalance in carbon dioxide consumption and oxygen production in the oceans.
Finally, your comment about the Australia rabbit fence only serves to demonstrate further that you do not understand the argument. The discussion about whales is one of a decline in a species in their native ecosystem, the discussion about rabbits in Australia is one of an artificially invasive species introduced into an ecosystem in which there is no suitable natural predator to control the population and keep it at safe levels.
So you can talk about using scientific backing to rectify the errors, but when you clearly show absolutely not grasp of the basic science behind your point, then it means you're not backing the scientifically sound point - you're backing a politically charged point that has no scientific merit, and will only create more problems.
"Don't believe in a creator? That's fine, but understand this country was founded by Religous people and we will always be fighting to govern it, because we know our rights are provided by our Creator."
No, you think your rights are provided by your creator, you don't know it anymore than I know that they are not.
Re-read my post, I explained why that's not true. If you still don't get it then you don't even know enough about the way in which survival of the fittest and population balance interact to even be arguing the point you are.
This discussion is meaningless if you don't even understand the basic scientific principles behind the point which you are arguing as it just means you're arguing from a point of ignorance.
The minke whale outcompeting other species argument goes against pretty much everything we know about the way ecosystems and evolution work - a species is limited by the food supply available to it, and minke can only continue to increase in numbers whilst there's enough food to support that, if they have an evolutionary trait that allows them to outcompete other whales that's nothing to do with human action - that's pure evolution and that's absolutely something we shouldn't be pretending we can manage, because to date, all such experiments in doing so have been disastrous. If minke whales are outcompeting say, fin whales for food, then ultimately the situation of a greater ratio of minke whales to fin whales is the expected natural result anyway. If however that isn't the case and fins are actually better at grabbing their share of krill etc. then fins will continue to increase in population even in the face of a currently larger than natural minke whale population and the minke population will naturally decline to more natural levels as they do so. Of course, the argument is even more irrelevant to the debate when countries like Iceland and Japan are catching the slower growing species like fins anyway- obviously it's not about population control when fins sit at levels around 80% below where they were 100 years ago.
Similarly seal culls have always been more about both the fur trade and competition between man and animal for fish, it's a bit dishonest to suggest they need to be culled, whilst many of their main predators (polar bears, sharks, whales, wolves) have seen declines in population, and in many cases due to lack of food. This is particularly the case for polar bears and many shark species.
Much of what you say seems to be based on the propaganda of pro-whaling and pro-sealing groups that have vested commercial interests in what they do, but ultimately it doesn't make much sense in the face of well established scientific understanding of nature. Once again, nature does a great job of balancing populations, the only reason man needs to get involved is if they've truly fucked up by introducing species into habitats where they just thrive too well (i.e. introducing the likes of Opuntia ficus-indica, and Cane toads to Australia) or because they've decided they don't like competing with other species for food. It's worth noting that Cane toads themselves are an example of why man shouldn't get involved in population control though without expecting to truly make things even worse. The fact is that we simply can't manage nature, we do not have the resources, nor the knowledge to control such complex and chaotic systems.
You'd only think it's ridiculous logic if you're incapable of pursuing logical argument yourself. There's absolutely nothing in what I've said that is illogical, you seem to be repeatedly trying to imply logical fallacy where there is none. You may disagree, but that's a different issue.
Your comment illustrates why you are failing to grasp the argument still:
"It's limited to Japan because Japan is one of the few countries that wanted to continue whaling and still decided to remain in the IWC"
This merely reasserts the point that Japan is one of the few selfish nations that wants to continue whaling. I do not see how this goes against the point I was making at all.
"I have not once heard any of the anti-whaling countries tell Japan, "Look, stop taking advantage of the loopholes so we can figure out a system of sustainable whaling for all countries. " The focus is entirely on figuring out how to stop Japan from whaling so whaling can come to an end."
Then you're obviously not even in a place to discuss the topic. It can be found in the discussions of pretty much every IWC meeting. Unless you get your news directly from either Greenpeace, or Japan, I fail to see how you could've missed this, it's widely reported also.
"If there was even the smallest amount of honesty involved in developing a valid plan for sustainable whaling, it would be much harder for Japan to ignore it"
That really is the situation though, and it's why in recent years Norway has slowed it's whaling industry, alongise the recognition that it can make more money by eco-tourism (whale watching) anyway, and why Japan similarly has shown signals to suggest it might even finally start playing ball. We're not there yet, but the realisation is dawning somewhat. You're absolutely right that some species of whales have more healthy populations now, but be aware that even if not endagered they're still well below their natural population levels if left unhunted by humans - sometimes as far as 90% under. Most countries do actually not worry too much about hunting of these species, the real problem is when Japan starts adding 50 fins to it's quota, and when Iceland kills over 100 a year. If you still think it's never been under discussion then there's really no point debating further with you as you don't even have a basic grasp of the history of the IWC and the facts, the whole reason for the IWC was to focus on sustainability, since it was created post war (1946), and the ban is only relatively recent (1986) pushed through 14 years after the UN suggested a 10 year global ban on whaling because stocks were already dangerously low at that point. It's hardly a suprise that another 14 years after the UN report an even longer period of whaling prevention has been necessary.
Yes, the oceans are completely mismanaged in general, whales are only part of that, but they are an important part - they're a major factor in ocean ecosystems. Since 1900 we've seen a decline in whale populations on the order of 90% for species such as fin whales, which of course has a major impact on the other species that are linked to them.
But if we have problems even getting agreement on whales where countries like Japan unilaterally do their own thing and screw much of the rest of the world on it, then you can begin to see why controls on fishing in general are even harder again to achieve. Countries that would like better fisheries management in principle are saying to themselves what's the point in throwing away a food source and an industry that brings jobs and contributes to the economy when all it means is that selfish countries like Japan will continue to ignore the international rules anyway?
Even within the EU, where countries generally agree to work together towards EU wide rules quite succesfully the negotiations on catch limits and such are far from smooth and often end in failure.
Things like this only work when absolutely everyone agrees, and it only takes one or two selfish countries to screw it for the rest of us, because at that point the responsible countries have given up something, but with nothing to show for it because the irresponsible countries have picked up the slack. It's the same with things like nuclear weapons treaties, and MAD - it all only works if you can be sure every country is willing to adhere to those principles, if you have one crazy fuck who isn't then it creates risk for everyone.
No, you're completely missing the point, even if Japan's catch is sustainable (it's quite arguably not for some species) why should whaling be limited to Japan?
The point is that other countries want to have a whaling industry too to provide food and income, but they understand they can't because it's unsustainable when everyone does it in an uncontrolled manner, so they practice restraint and choose not to. Japan however sees itself as special and doesn't see why it should have to practice restraint like everyone else, and so just selfishly goes out and maintains a whaling industry unilaterally.
Imagine that in 50 years time, we reach a point where there's fuck all oil left in the world and we're running renewables for power, but oil is still useful for production of a few important things that we haven't replaced, so the international community decides that we'll just keep the remaining oil wells for production of that essential product. Imagine then that one country says, you know what? fuck the international agreement, we'll just continue burning the remaining oil off for fuel because we're too lazy to change. That's what Japan's doing regards to whaling - it's decided it's needs are more important than those of any other country and hence the rules shouldn't apply to it. Essentially all IWC members could do what Japan does and cheat the system by claiming scientific whaling despite doing no science on said whales and instead just selling off the meat, but then there'd be no whales left for anyone to catch, and again, dependent ecosystems would also collapse.
The only reason there's a push for an outright ban on hunting some species is because said species are at risk, and because they're species which will take decades to replenish their numbers to more natural levels. No one's saying it has to be permanent, but for the forseeable future it's the only measure that will protect some species.
So yes, it's sustainable whaling for all countries - don't try and pretend anything I've said suggests otherwise. It doesn't, but the "all countries" part is key, and it means "Everyone - not just Japan, Iceland, Norway".
I think there's an argument that if it's so fundamental it should probably at least have been licensed under FRAND terms.
But I suspect there's also a more subtle argument in what Berners-Lee is saying, and that's that the patent is quite trivial, and fundamental because it's trivial - that without it the web couldn't exist, but that if this guy hadn't patented it, then someone else would because it was so obvious for what everyone was trying to achieve - that essentially there was no real R&D needed.
Think a patent on car wheels being round - sure it's fundamental to every car around today, and changing that would cause massive issues, but there's really no practical way of doing things differently and it didn't really require any effort to realise that yes, car wheels should be round.
If this was Berners-Lee's point then he could've probably been a bit more clear, but I suspect this is what he was getting at - it's fundamental and essential, because it's the only practical, and obvious way of doing it, there's effectively nothing there that's validly patentable.
I think the point is that when Apple is making such profits that it's sat on some $80bn in cash, and running way ahead of it's competitors financially that it could at least spare a bit of a decrease in that to ensure people making it's products don't evne have to complain about money, forced overtime, dust, and having to ask for bathroom breaks.
Whilst we can't defend the likes of Dell, they at least have the excuse that to stay in business they can't afford to improve working conditions much. Apple doesn't have that excuse, it has more than enough money, and plenty large enough profit margins to be able to improve the conditions of workers without losing it's competitiveness or market position.
Ultimately Apple has so much money it just doesn't even know what to do with it, so people are rightly saying here's an idea, why not use it to improve the conditions of people making your products so that they don't really have any complaints at all, rather than trying to justify the status quo by saying well, it's okay because they only suffer low wages, forced overtime, unhealthy working conditions and are forced to hold their need to relieve themselves until break time, and even then are sometimes told to work through it. What else is Apple going to do with it's cash? It might as well act as a beacon for doing what's right, unless of course, it sees having a pointlessly large cash pile as being more important than ensuring people who produce it's products can live safe, healthy, comfortable lives.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
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"I think that taxing savings might encourage people to spend money which is otherwise sitting there doing nothing and not helping the economy."
This isn't particularly smart or fair either though, unless you do it above some specific amount. Truly sensible people will keep a savings pool in case of emergency, if they lose their job, fall ill, or because their pension in their old age wont be enough to survive on. If you discourage this then you'll just end up with more people who have to rely on the state when things go tits up.
The fact that it was, previously, unsustainable, pushing many species to the verge of extinction.
So the international community realised that's a bad thing, because if said species go extinct, entire ecosystems dependent on those species go extinct, less food in the ocean for everyone, loss of species of scientific significance, we're all worse off. As such the international community decided to stop, limiting it to sustainable levels where possible, banning it completely in the case of species that had been hunted to the point of extinction so that they could recover.
The problem is Japan, and a tiny handful of other countries (i.e. Iceland) think they're fucking special and somehow have a right to carry on whaling when everyone else has stopped/drastically cut down. If every country acted like Japan and just said "fuck it" then there'd be no whales left.
So that's what's wrong with it, it's fucking selfish, it's no more culturally significant to Japan than many other countries that have stopped, so their claims of having some special cultural heritage to protect that no one else does are frankly a load of bollocks. It's like being in a swimming pool, and some selfish fuck ruining it for everyone by peeing in the pool when everyone else recognises that's not a reasonable thing to do. Japan is that selfish fuck.
No one is saying all whaling should be banned no matter what, or anything quite to that extent (well, some crazy environmentalists might, but they're not the ones at the debating table) just that it should be sustainable, and that it should be sustainable for everybody, not just the twats who think they're special and the rules don't apply to them such that they believe they can hog some shared resource all to themselves leaving none for anyone else.
Back in the post-war era, shortly after the UN was created, WIPO was created as an element of the UN. The purpose of WIPO was to help manage World Intellectual Property issues, and was a fairly representative organisation at the time.
Under WIPO the US wanted strong IP laws, like the sort it's pushing nowadays, but WIPO being democratic actually pushed for more sane laws, this is because the developing nations, such as those in Africa, outnumbered it and voted against laws that would allow for example, big pharamaceutical companies to hold patents protecting their drugs for far longer than necessary to turn a profit, meaning many people in these poor nations would have to go without life saving drugs, due to the unaffordability of the monopoly the US wanted.
Because the US wasn't getting it's own way in the somewhat globally representative WIPO, it decided to push for a new organisation, which eventually became the WTO. The US has used the WTO to do what it couldn't with WIPO, and the WTO Is much more biased towards the will of the US than WIPO was. The US has over the years pushed countries hard to join the WTO, often threatening to block much trade if they don't.
That may sound rather harmless, but then you examine the actions of the WTO, whilst it's dispute resolution system has regularly found in favour of countries against the US - for example in favour of Brazil over cotton, Antigua over gambling, Canada over lumber/fresh water, the EU over steel in many cases the US has failed to do anything about the WTO's ruling against it. Despite this, it at the same time repeatedly complains about WTO members like China, and non-members like Russia, ignoring it's IP.
So you'll have to excuse me if I can't help but feel that you're a little naive and ignorant in your comments. China isn't doing anything that the US doesn't itself do, so to complain that it's somehow wronging the US is laughably unfair. America has been doing what you complain about in terms of trade for decades, so to come out crying when China does the same is stupid.
Using it's weight to push laws and rulings beneficial to it, whilst ignoring other rulings against it has been the US' modus operandi for decades and is an important factor in keeping itself as the top world economy. If you think US economic strength is entirely down to hard working and playing fair then you're grossly mistaken.
The difference now is that China is big enough, growing fast enough, and owns enough US debt, to be able to play the game the same way the US does.
Don't bitch and moan about China, bitch and moan about the US for putting countries in a position whereby they have to play the game that way to compete if they're big enough. The US has built and pushed entire international organisations to try and do exactly this sort of thing, China supporting a few companies doing it within their own borders is hardly much of a scandal in comparison.
Yes, because the iPad is so fundamentally important to China's economy their economic growth would come crashing to a halt and their populace would rebel en-masse if Apple followed through on that threat.
Are you serious? About a week after that happened there'd be black market made in China clones selling for about half the price on every street corner there. There probably are anyway, but if Apple pulled out the market they'd rapidly just pick up the customers.
Threatening the Chinese administration is probably the quickest way to cripple any hope of doing business there. Look what happened when Google tried to stand up to them - their search engine in China was taken offline a few times, and China's homegrown Baidu picked up many users.
Being an Apple fan is one thing, but being so deluded that you think Apple has the power to hold the China's adminsitration to ransom is incredibly naive. Make no mistake, Chinese firms have the ear of the government and if a foreign firm isn't giving way when said companies request if then that foreign firms business is going to get fucked. In China, you really do have to play by China's rules as the price of having access to that 1.3 billion person strong market.
I like to think that the 'i' is short for idiot, all such products are much more amusingly named when you mentally replace the i with that.
I've yet to come up with anything globally satisfactory for terms beginning with e though, like e-mail, but I suspect when I do, it'll make ASUS' EeePCs the most amusingly named product going with said word repeated 3 times.
Possibly, but keep in mind that it'll probably be a rolling upgrade, meaning they'll do it as phones need replacing, so it may well cost $70million to convert, but if it was going to cost $65million to continue dealing with RIM anyway as handsets are upgraded, software licenses renewed etc. then they may have deemed the difference is worth it. For what it's worth I think $1k per person is probably a gross overestimate, particularly with the type of bulk discount a large corporation like this will get. Just as with getting a personal contract phone, much of the cost of the handsets can be absorbed into the contract with the telco also. I know when I worked in public sector and we were looking at what to do with our 5,000 staff, it was really the contract defining usage of the phones that was primary, once we'd decided that we just had a list of handsets to choose from that were free - if it's the same here, they may not be getting charge any more for the iPhone than the Blackberry as again, the contract with the telco will mask the per-handset costs.
I'm not an Apple fan by any measure, I'd be much happier if they'd gone to Android, and in fact probably happier if they'd stayed with RIM, but I'm not convinced there's really any foul play here still.
Whilst I don't disagree that you're probably right, this is just an IT decision, let's please not trivialise how evil Halliburton actually is down to a mere connection to a politician people may or may not like.
They were running empty convoys through Iraq just so they could charge the government for more money, despite the fact US troops and civilians died on such convoys.
They're also still to this day trying to exploit the anti-BP rhetoric surrounding the deepwater horizon incident to shirk off their portion of the blame, despite the fact other companies involved have accepted their portion of the blame, companies such as Mitsui, Anadarko, Weatherford International, and Cameron International.
This is before you factor in any number of cases of severe corruption in places like Nigeria, and responsibility for a number of other oil and other chemical leaks.
So yeah, it may be an IT decision, but I suspect people hate it for far more than just it's links to Cheney alone. It's actions are quite despicable.
Ultimately, the fight for civil rights is ongoing, it requires repeated assertion to make progress. Complacency can only lead to backwards steps on the issue.
For what it's worth, I posted a response to someone else pointing out the fundamental reason why I back this - it's not actually so much whether I believe a pardon is right or wrong if I'm honest, but that continued confrontation of the topic is the only way to force those with bigoted views on the topic to address their views publicly.
It's worth noting that both the pardon, and the law to retroactively remove convictions were put into place by the Labour government. The current administration (well, part of it) has a much worse track record on bigotry and many members of the ruling government are homophobic, xenophobic, and sometimes outright racist.
So the real reason I'd like to see a pardon now is because it forces those viewpoints into the open, they either sit quietly and accept support of gay rights, or they vocally oppose it forcing them into a debate on the issue which is always the best way to confront hatred.
As I've pointed out elsewhere, I suspect the real reason for not giving this pardon is because the current administration known that that would reveal a split in the party, and push some of their much more further right wing members into a situation where they'd publicly embarass themselves with their viewpoint and harm the parties rating in the polls.
This is not to say I'm against the current government, personally I prefer to be quite pragmatic, and currently for all their faults, they're still doing a better job than the last government. I'll vote for whatever party is most rational at election time as I've never been one to be a lifelong supporter of one single party or another - that strikes me as blindingly naive yet many do it. But the fact is, this is one area where the Tories have a pretty dire track record, and so yes, I'd quite like to see their party confront this particular issue publicly, so that it's better known at the ballot box who holds such backwards views on the issue as much as anything else, a pardon for Turing is a convenient mechanism to trigger that.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, I have to ask at this point, do you have a reading problem or something?
You'll note that I quite clearly pointed out that balancing of a diminished population in their natural environment, is a very different issue to introduced invasive (i.e. non-native) species.
The very fact you have to ignore fundamental parts of my posts to try and justify to yourself as being right, is plenty evidence enough that you're on weak ground and don't actually have any idea what you're talking about.
I can only guess that you think that I am saying all culling is always completely and utterly wrong, this isn't the case. What I am saying is that culling of non-introduced species in their natural environment (i.e. whales, seals, etc.) does more harm than good. This does not mean however I disagree with culling of invasive species like cane toads, rabbits, and even plants such as opuntia ficus-indica in places like Australia.
Do not try and pretend scientists and experts agree with you, short of those politicised experts with vested financial interests those with even a basic grasp of population dynamics understand why you are wrong.
Your viewpoint is incorrect, it's political and not founded in sound science, get over it.
I don't think there's really a feud, just that Cryptome got pissy that this new little upstart Wikileaks came and stole all it's glory with leaks that made Cryptome's past leaks look pretty small fry.
Really, Cryptome showed a bit of penis envy, but that was about it.
Yes, perhaps if you insist on retaining an early 20th century philosophical view of the world.
Unfortunately for you, we're now in the 21st century, so don't be suprised if people find you to be a little backwards intellectually.
Your argument is based on the premise that it's more important to be able to distribute pamphlets complaining about US military draft than it is to avoid being crushed to death because some jackass thought it'd be funny to shout fire.
Both make me sick in the mouth, but you've based your argument on an assumption that I do not think necessarily holds true.
Ultimately in a world where we have compromise your life can be unfairly destroyed by government taking things too far, but in your world of absolute free speech your life can equally be unfairly destroyed, whether it's by someone getting you crushed to death by shouting fire in a crowded theatre, someone causing you to lose your job or worse by slandering you by for example publicly labelling you as a paedophile with no recourse to clear your name because suing for slander would breach their right to free speech, or not having any mitigating circumstance in court for for example punching someone for getting in your face and repeatedly making insulting, perhaps for example racist comments.
The reality is you believe not compromising and having free speech as an absolute would be some magical cure for all the problems of government abuse, but really all you're doing is trading abuse of the status quo by government for abuse by private citizens.
So personally I think it is actually about compromise, the only difficulty is getting the compromise right, because a world with absolute free speech causes just as many problems as one with compromised limits to free speech.
Fundamentally though in your last paragraph, you're not actually complaining about compromise anyway, you're complaining about failure to compromise - the laws to which you refer weren't born of compromise, they were born of governments not being introduced in the will of the populace. Ultimately this is a fault born more of terrible government, and the pitfalls of a two party state with little to separate them than an inherent problem with compromise- of course the compromising wont go to well when both ruling parties want the same things, but the solution to that is a healthier democracy and in many countries they have this by having electoral systems that support multi-party coalition governments and so forth where compromise is essential to staying in power.
It's the same here in the UK - when David Cameron said he likes First Past the Post because it provides strong governments, what he really means is "I like First Past the Post because when we inevitably get back into power in this two party state because the other party fucked up so bad the electorate have no choice but to switch to us instead I can do whatever the hell I want, even if I only got the support of less than a 1/3rd of the voting population". Weak governments are the best type of governments for the people, because as soon as they stop serving the people, they can trivially be toppled.
Really, absolutes in politics are rarely ever the best solution, they're really best left to the fantasies of wingnuts who just haven't thought things through. You may dislike the current situation, but the solution is to fix your government, not become even more militant and start demanding absolutes - polarising the debate with extreme viewpoints that have equally many flaws only makes things even worse again as your opposition strengthen their stance against you even further, and are even given the ammunition of the flaws in your plan to better do so.
No, you don't get the point, you still don't, which is the fundamental problem.
Species compete for food, which is the fundamental crux of your argument, but a species numbers are limited by food supply - when a species reaches a large enough size beyond which the food supply can no longer sustain it the population of that species will cease to grow, and will plateau out.
If you have two species competing for the same food source, the ratio of population of species A vs. species B is determined by how fit for harvesting the food supply each species is relative to the other. If you cull species B because it's more numerous in the hope that species A which is currently below it's natural population levels will come back faster then you're mistaken, because species A can only grow at the speed species A grows at, species B will just come back again, if you keep culling it all you will achieve is to keep the population levels of that species artificially low. Species A will reach it's own natural level relative to it's fitness to the environment for which it is competing, if species A is more fit for the food chain it will reach it's natural population limit regardless of species B's numbers- it's growth will displace species B, and species B will see a decline as species A, being more fit, takes a larger share of the available food as it's numbers grow. If however it turns out that species B was more fit all along then, species A numbers may well plateau out lower than they were 100 years ago, but this is ultimately where evolution and the natural balance of the ecosystem would've taken them anyway due to being less fit to compete. If you cull species B, all you're doing is removing a species to cull the food supply, and so you run the risk of the food supply growing out of control. Effectively in the case we're talking about, Minke whales have seen a population boom to act as natures agent to limit krill population in the absence of greater populations of the likes of blue whales, but as blue whale populations recover, and start consuming their share of the krill, Minke whales will see a population decrease, unless they outcompete the blue whales, in which case they are naturally evolved to do so, and a decrease in blue whales was the path that would've been reached naturally in the absence of man anyway, but over time, both will plateau out at natural sustainable levels.
So ultimately the only way to allow populations to reach natural levels is to leave them the fuck alone, culling only makes the problem worse, because then you have an issue of increased krill because you've killed natures balance agent (the Minke whales). Increased krill means more krill eating fish larvae, decreasing and endangering fish stocks, and more krill eating phytoplankton which can lead to an imbalance in carbon dioxide consumption and oxygen production in the oceans.
Finally, your comment about the Australia rabbit fence only serves to demonstrate further that you do not understand the argument. The discussion about whales is one of a decline in a species in their native ecosystem, the discussion about rabbits in Australia is one of an artificially invasive species introduced into an ecosystem in which there is no suitable natural predator to control the population and keep it at safe levels.
So you can talk about using scientific backing to rectify the errors, but when you clearly show absolutely not grasp of the basic science behind your point, then it means you're not backing the scientifically sound point - you're backing a politically charged point that has no scientific merit, and will only create more problems.
"Don't believe in a creator? That's fine, but understand this country was founded by Religous people and we will always be fighting to govern it, because we know our rights are provided by our Creator."
No, you think your rights are provided by your creator, you don't know it anymore than I know that they are not.
Re-read my post, I explained why that's not true. If you still don't get it then you don't even know enough about the way in which survival of the fittest and population balance interact to even be arguing the point you are.
This discussion is meaningless if you don't even understand the basic scientific principles behind the point which you are arguing as it just means you're arguing from a point of ignorance.
The minke whale outcompeting other species argument goes against pretty much everything we know about the way ecosystems and evolution work - a species is limited by the food supply available to it, and minke can only continue to increase in numbers whilst there's enough food to support that, if they have an evolutionary trait that allows them to outcompete other whales that's nothing to do with human action - that's pure evolution and that's absolutely something we shouldn't be pretending we can manage, because to date, all such experiments in doing so have been disastrous. If minke whales are outcompeting say, fin whales for food, then ultimately the situation of a greater ratio of minke whales to fin whales is the expected natural result anyway. If however that isn't the case and fins are actually better at grabbing their share of krill etc. then fins will continue to increase in population even in the face of a currently larger than natural minke whale population and the minke population will naturally decline to more natural levels as they do so. Of course, the argument is even more irrelevant to the debate when countries like Iceland and Japan are catching the slower growing species like fins anyway- obviously it's not about population control when fins sit at levels around 80% below where they were 100 years ago.
Similarly seal culls have always been more about both the fur trade and competition between man and animal for fish, it's a bit dishonest to suggest they need to be culled, whilst many of their main predators (polar bears, sharks, whales, wolves) have seen declines in population, and in many cases due to lack of food. This is particularly the case for polar bears and many shark species.
Much of what you say seems to be based on the propaganda of pro-whaling and pro-sealing groups that have vested commercial interests in what they do, but ultimately it doesn't make much sense in the face of well established scientific understanding of nature. Once again, nature does a great job of balancing populations, the only reason man needs to get involved is if they've truly fucked up by introducing species into habitats where they just thrive too well (i.e. introducing the likes of Opuntia ficus-indica, and Cane toads to Australia) or because they've decided they don't like competing with other species for food. It's worth noting that Cane toads themselves are an example of why man shouldn't get involved in population control though without expecting to truly make things even worse. The fact is that we simply can't manage nature, we do not have the resources, nor the knowledge to control such complex and chaotic systems.
There's laws against a lot of things in the US, but that's never stopped successive US governments breaking them.
You'd only think it's ridiculous logic if you're incapable of pursuing logical argument yourself. There's absolutely nothing in what I've said that is illogical, you seem to be repeatedly trying to imply logical fallacy where there is none. You may disagree, but that's a different issue.
Your comment illustrates why you are failing to grasp the argument still:
"It's limited to Japan because Japan is one of the few countries that wanted to continue whaling and still decided to remain in the IWC"
This merely reasserts the point that Japan is one of the few selfish nations that wants to continue whaling. I do not see how this goes against the point I was making at all.
"I have not once heard any of the anti-whaling countries tell Japan, "Look, stop taking advantage of the loopholes so we can figure out a system of sustainable whaling for all countries. " The focus is entirely on figuring out how to stop Japan from whaling so whaling can come to an end."
Then you're obviously not even in a place to discuss the topic. It can be found in the discussions of pretty much every IWC meeting. Unless you get your news directly from either Greenpeace, or Japan, I fail to see how you could've missed this, it's widely reported also.
"If there was even the smallest amount of honesty involved in developing a valid plan for sustainable whaling, it would be much harder for Japan to ignore it"
That really is the situation though, and it's why in recent years Norway has slowed it's whaling industry, alongise the recognition that it can make more money by eco-tourism (whale watching) anyway, and why Japan similarly has shown signals to suggest it might even finally start playing ball. We're not there yet, but the realisation is dawning somewhat. You're absolutely right that some species of whales have more healthy populations now, but be aware that even if not endagered they're still well below their natural population levels if left unhunted by humans - sometimes as far as 90% under. Most countries do actually not worry too much about hunting of these species, the real problem is when Japan starts adding 50 fins to it's quota, and when Iceland kills over 100 a year. If you still think it's never been under discussion then there's really no point debating further with you as you don't even have a basic grasp of the history of the IWC and the facts, the whole reason for the IWC was to focus on sustainability, since it was created post war (1946), and the ban is only relatively recent (1986) pushed through 14 years after the UN suggested a 10 year global ban on whaling because stocks were already dangerously low at that point. It's hardly a suprise that another 14 years after the UN report an even longer period of whaling prevention has been necessary.
Yes, the oceans are completely mismanaged in general, whales are only part of that, but they are an important part - they're a major factor in ocean ecosystems. Since 1900 we've seen a decline in whale populations on the order of 90% for species such as fin whales, which of course has a major impact on the other species that are linked to them.
But if we have problems even getting agreement on whales where countries like Japan unilaterally do their own thing and screw much of the rest of the world on it, then you can begin to see why controls on fishing in general are even harder again to achieve. Countries that would like better fisheries management in principle are saying to themselves what's the point in throwing away a food source and an industry that brings jobs and contributes to the economy when all it means is that selfish countries like Japan will continue to ignore the international rules anyway?
Even within the EU, where countries generally agree to work together towards EU wide rules quite succesfully the negotiations on catch limits and such are far from smooth and often end in failure.
Things like this only work when absolutely everyone agrees, and it only takes one or two selfish countries to screw it for the rest of us, because at that point the responsible countries have given up something, but with nothing to show for it because the irresponsible countries have picked up the slack. It's the same with things like nuclear weapons treaties, and MAD - it all only works if you can be sure every country is willing to adhere to those principles, if you have one crazy fuck who isn't then it creates risk for everyone.
No, you're completely missing the point, even if Japan's catch is sustainable (it's quite arguably not for some species) why should whaling be limited to Japan?
The point is that other countries want to have a whaling industry too to provide food and income, but they understand they can't because it's unsustainable when everyone does it in an uncontrolled manner, so they practice restraint and choose not to. Japan however sees itself as special and doesn't see why it should have to practice restraint like everyone else, and so just selfishly goes out and maintains a whaling industry unilaterally.
Imagine that in 50 years time, we reach a point where there's fuck all oil left in the world and we're running renewables for power, but oil is still useful for production of a few important things that we haven't replaced, so the international community decides that we'll just keep the remaining oil wells for production of that essential product. Imagine then that one country says, you know what? fuck the international agreement, we'll just continue burning the remaining oil off for fuel because we're too lazy to change. That's what Japan's doing regards to whaling - it's decided it's needs are more important than those of any other country and hence the rules shouldn't apply to it. Essentially all IWC members could do what Japan does and cheat the system by claiming scientific whaling despite doing no science on said whales and instead just selling off the meat, but then there'd be no whales left for anyone to catch, and again, dependent ecosystems would also collapse.
The only reason there's a push for an outright ban on hunting some species is because said species are at risk, and because they're species which will take decades to replenish their numbers to more natural levels. No one's saying it has to be permanent, but for the forseeable future it's the only measure that will protect some species.
So yes, it's sustainable whaling for all countries - don't try and pretend anything I've said suggests otherwise. It doesn't, but the "all countries" part is key, and it means "Everyone - not just Japan, Iceland, Norway".
I think there's an argument that if it's so fundamental it should probably at least have been licensed under FRAND terms.
But I suspect there's also a more subtle argument in what Berners-Lee is saying, and that's that the patent is quite trivial, and fundamental because it's trivial - that without it the web couldn't exist, but that if this guy hadn't patented it, then someone else would because it was so obvious for what everyone was trying to achieve - that essentially there was no real R&D needed.
Think a patent on car wheels being round - sure it's fundamental to every car around today, and changing that would cause massive issues, but there's really no practical way of doing things differently and it didn't really require any effort to realise that yes, car wheels should be round.
If this was Berners-Lee's point then he could've probably been a bit more clear, but I suspect this is what he was getting at - it's fundamental and essential, because it's the only practical, and obvious way of doing it, there's effectively nothing there that's validly patentable.
I think the point is that when Apple is making such profits that it's sat on some $80bn in cash, and running way ahead of it's competitors financially that it could at least spare a bit of a decrease in that to ensure people making it's products don't evne have to complain about money, forced overtime, dust, and having to ask for bathroom breaks.
Whilst we can't defend the likes of Dell, they at least have the excuse that to stay in business they can't afford to improve working conditions much. Apple doesn't have that excuse, it has more than enough money, and plenty large enough profit margins to be able to improve the conditions of workers without losing it's competitiveness or market position.
Ultimately Apple has so much money it just doesn't even know what to do with it, so people are rightly saying here's an idea, why not use it to improve the conditions of people making your products so that they don't really have any complaints at all, rather than trying to justify the status quo by saying well, it's okay because they only suffer low wages, forced overtime, unhealthy working conditions and are forced to hold their need to relieve themselves until break time, and even then are sometimes told to work through it. What else is Apple going to do with it's cash? It might as well act as a beacon for doing what's right, unless of course, it sees having a pointlessly large cash pile as being more important than ensuring people who produce it's products can live safe, healthy, comfortable lives.
"I think that taxing savings might encourage people to spend money which is otherwise sitting there doing nothing and not helping the economy."
This isn't particularly smart or fair either though, unless you do it above some specific amount. Truly sensible people will keep a savings pool in case of emergency, if they lose their job, fall ill, or because their pension in their old age wont be enough to survive on. If you discourage this then you'll just end up with more people who have to rely on the state when things go tits up.
The fact that it was, previously, unsustainable, pushing many species to the verge of extinction.
So the international community realised that's a bad thing, because if said species go extinct, entire ecosystems dependent on those species go extinct, less food in the ocean for everyone, loss of species of scientific significance, we're all worse off. As such the international community decided to stop, limiting it to sustainable levels where possible, banning it completely in the case of species that had been hunted to the point of extinction so that they could recover.
The problem is Japan, and a tiny handful of other countries (i.e. Iceland) think they're fucking special and somehow have a right to carry on whaling when everyone else has stopped/drastically cut down. If every country acted like Japan and just said "fuck it" then there'd be no whales left.
So that's what's wrong with it, it's fucking selfish, it's no more culturally significant to Japan than many other countries that have stopped, so their claims of having some special cultural heritage to protect that no one else does are frankly a load of bollocks. It's like being in a swimming pool, and some selfish fuck ruining it for everyone by peeing in the pool when everyone else recognises that's not a reasonable thing to do. Japan is that selfish fuck.
No one is saying all whaling should be banned no matter what, or anything quite to that extent (well, some crazy environmentalists might, but they're not the ones at the debating table) just that it should be sustainable, and that it should be sustainable for everybody, not just the twats who think they're special and the rules don't apply to them such that they believe they can hog some shared resource all to themselves leaving none for anyone else.
Let me give you a short history lesson.
Back in the post-war era, shortly after the UN was created, WIPO was created as an element of the UN. The purpose of WIPO was to help manage World Intellectual Property issues, and was a fairly representative organisation at the time.
Under WIPO the US wanted strong IP laws, like the sort it's pushing nowadays, but WIPO being democratic actually pushed for more sane laws, this is because the developing nations, such as those in Africa, outnumbered it and voted against laws that would allow for example, big pharamaceutical companies to hold patents protecting their drugs for far longer than necessary to turn a profit, meaning many people in these poor nations would have to go without life saving drugs, due to the unaffordability of the monopoly the US wanted.
Because the US wasn't getting it's own way in the somewhat globally representative WIPO, it decided to push for a new organisation, which eventually became the WTO. The US has used the WTO to do what it couldn't with WIPO, and the WTO Is much more biased towards the will of the US than WIPO was. The US has over the years pushed countries hard to join the WTO, often threatening to block much trade if they don't.
That may sound rather harmless, but then you examine the actions of the WTO, whilst it's dispute resolution system has regularly found in favour of countries against the US - for example in favour of Brazil over cotton, Antigua over gambling, Canada over lumber/fresh water, the EU over steel in many cases the US has failed to do anything about the WTO's ruling against it. Despite this, it at the same time repeatedly complains about WTO members like China, and non-members like Russia, ignoring it's IP.
So you'll have to excuse me if I can't help but feel that you're a little naive and ignorant in your comments. China isn't doing anything that the US doesn't itself do, so to complain that it's somehow wronging the US is laughably unfair. America has been doing what you complain about in terms of trade for decades, so to come out crying when China does the same is stupid.
Using it's weight to push laws and rulings beneficial to it, whilst ignoring other rulings against it has been the US' modus operandi for decades and is an important factor in keeping itself as the top world economy. If you think US economic strength is entirely down to hard working and playing fair then you're grossly mistaken.
The difference now is that China is big enough, growing fast enough, and owns enough US debt, to be able to play the game the same way the US does.
Don't bitch and moan about China, bitch and moan about the US for putting countries in a position whereby they have to play the game that way to compete if they're big enough. The US has built and pushed entire international organisations to try and do exactly this sort of thing, China supporting a few companies doing it within their own borders is hardly much of a scandal in comparison.
Yes, because the iPad is so fundamentally important to China's economy their economic growth would come crashing to a halt and their populace would rebel en-masse if Apple followed through on that threat.
Are you serious? About a week after that happened there'd be black market made in China clones selling for about half the price on every street corner there. There probably are anyway, but if Apple pulled out the market they'd rapidly just pick up the customers.
Threatening the Chinese administration is probably the quickest way to cripple any hope of doing business there. Look what happened when Google tried to stand up to them - their search engine in China was taken offline a few times, and China's homegrown Baidu picked up many users.
Being an Apple fan is one thing, but being so deluded that you think Apple has the power to hold the China's adminsitration to ransom is incredibly naive. Make no mistake, Chinese firms have the ear of the government and if a foreign firm isn't giving way when said companies request if then that foreign firms business is going to get fucked. In China, you really do have to play by China's rules as the price of having access to that 1.3 billion person strong market.
I like to think that the 'i' is short for idiot, all such products are much more amusingly named when you mentally replace the i with that.
I've yet to come up with anything globally satisfactory for terms beginning with e though, like e-mail, but I suspect when I do, it'll make ASUS' EeePCs the most amusingly named product going with said word repeated 3 times.
Possibly, but keep in mind that it'll probably be a rolling upgrade, meaning they'll do it as phones need replacing, so it may well cost $70million to convert, but if it was going to cost $65million to continue dealing with RIM anyway as handsets are upgraded, software licenses renewed etc. then they may have deemed the difference is worth it. For what it's worth I think $1k per person is probably a gross overestimate, particularly with the type of bulk discount a large corporation like this will get. Just as with getting a personal contract phone, much of the cost of the handsets can be absorbed into the contract with the telco also. I know when I worked in public sector and we were looking at what to do with our 5,000 staff, it was really the contract defining usage of the phones that was primary, once we'd decided that we just had a list of handsets to choose from that were free - if it's the same here, they may not be getting charge any more for the iPhone than the Blackberry as again, the contract with the telco will mask the per-handset costs.
I'm not an Apple fan by any measure, I'd be much happier if they'd gone to Android, and in fact probably happier if they'd stayed with RIM, but I'm not convinced there's really any foul play here still.
"Of course, Iran has the advantage of coming late to market so they can get all of the component parts much, much easier."
Especially when your enemy lands them in your back yard.
I bet America's RQ-170 entry won.
Whilst I don't disagree that you're probably right, this is just an IT decision, let's please not trivialise how evil Halliburton actually is down to a mere connection to a politician people may or may not like.
They were running empty convoys through Iraq just so they could charge the government for more money, despite the fact US troops and civilians died on such convoys.
They're also still to this day trying to exploit the anti-BP rhetoric surrounding the deepwater horizon incident to shirk off their portion of the blame, despite the fact other companies involved have accepted their portion of the blame, companies such as Mitsui, Anadarko, Weatherford International, and Cameron International.
This is before you factor in any number of cases of severe corruption in places like Nigeria, and responsibility for a number of other oil and other chemical leaks.
So yeah, it may be an IT decision, but I suspect people hate it for far more than just it's links to Cheney alone. It's actions are quite despicable.
Somewhat, see my post here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2656331&cid=38950893
Ultimately, the fight for civil rights is ongoing, it requires repeated assertion to make progress. Complacency can only lead to backwards steps on the issue.
For what it's worth, I posted a response to someone else pointing out the fundamental reason why I back this - it's not actually so much whether I believe a pardon is right or wrong if I'm honest, but that continued confrontation of the topic is the only way to force those with bigoted views on the topic to address their views publicly.
It's worth noting that both the pardon, and the law to retroactively remove convictions were put into place by the Labour government. The current administration (well, part of it) has a much worse track record on bigotry and many members of the ruling government are homophobic, xenophobic, and sometimes outright racist.
So the real reason I'd like to see a pardon now is because it forces those viewpoints into the open, they either sit quietly and accept support of gay rights, or they vocally oppose it forcing them into a debate on the issue which is always the best way to confront hatred.
As I've pointed out elsewhere, I suspect the real reason for not giving this pardon is because the current administration known that that would reveal a split in the party, and push some of their much more further right wing members into a situation where they'd publicly embarass themselves with their viewpoint and harm the parties rating in the polls.
This is not to say I'm against the current government, personally I prefer to be quite pragmatic, and currently for all their faults, they're still doing a better job than the last government. I'll vote for whatever party is most rational at election time as I've never been one to be a lifelong supporter of one single party or another - that strikes me as blindingly naive yet many do it. But the fact is, this is one area where the Tories have a pretty dire track record, and so yes, I'd quite like to see their party confront this particular issue publicly, so that it's better known at the ballot box who holds such backwards views on the issue as much as anything else, a pardon for Turing is a convenient mechanism to trigger that.