Actually, I think John Locke would disagree. And as for the second part, you can never eliminate risk, true, but you can minimize it to the extent that you render it statistically impossible, although I suspect the only way would be to enact absolutely draconian laws. It's a tautology, but the surest way to eliminate automobile accidents is to eliminate automobiles. There are, I would guess, very few if any car accidents in North Korea, because only high-level government officials are allowed to own cars. And even if I run really fast into someone else who's running really fast in the opposite direction we might just knock ourselves unconscious at the most.
But as for the rest of your post, I agree entirely. Dangerous driving is already covered by existing laws in every state in the US, I believe. Unlike a previous poster, I am more than capable of lighting a cigarette while keeping my eyes on the road, a hand on the wheel, and maintaining alert control of the vehicle. I do it more often than I should, in fact. On the other hand, people get into accidents all the time because they were fiddling with their air conditioning. Since the goal isn't to keep people from smoking in cars but to keep them from not paying attention to driving, legislating against individual behaviors isn't going to have the effect you want.
I would suggest that driving while distracted is the same as talking during a movie. It's illegal, it's annoying, but there will always be people who are more interested in doing whatever they want to do, be it talking through a movie or texting and applying makeup while driving, than not ruining someone else's day. The solution isn't to try to legislate behavior but to change the culture that allows such behavior. That's why I'll be raising kids who would rather burn alive than talk during a movie, and who will pull the car over before they answer a cellphone.
My God, where are these nightmarish, Orwellian bistros people are talking about?? I live in the DC area and have worked in restaurants for about fifteen years. In each and every one we played music in the kitchen; granted, sometimes it was in Spanish, but still. Radio, cd or ipod, no one ever said anything. I've never heard of an instance in my area where playing music at a workplace resulted in copyright violation warnings or anything of the sort.
As a smoker, I resent that remark! But seriously, as a smoker I can tell you that I sometimes want a cigarette really badly but make the decision to not smoke; I have never smoked a cigarette against my will. Addiction of any sort is a motivator, but nothing more. In other words, nicotine isn't sublimating my will to its own (as it has none) and taking control of my body to force me to act against my wishes. Now, addiction can cloud one's judgement and lead one to make bad decisions, but the person is still the actor, not the addiction.
Where evil is concerned, I think that you have to draw a distinction between evil as an amalgamation of harmful or unpleasant traits and evil as a metaphysical force or element. On the one hand, actions that we consider evil are usually some form of selfishness, just as actions we see as good tend to manifest selflessness. For example, a child molester (assuming they believe they're causing harm) sees his or her pleasure as more important than the well-being of a child, which is selfish.
I think evil is like obscenity: we know it when we see it, or at least we think we do. Most evil acts are considered evil because of the motivation rather than the deed, such as murder, and evil people are considered evil because they tend to do evil things. Even Bringsjord's definition touches on this when he says that evil is the intent to do something "morally wrong"; what is moral "wrongness"? I would daresay that if you analyze "evil" deeds enough you can find a root cause that is related to fear, be it fear of want or fear of harm. As an example, a person might steal from someone else out of fear of want, regardless of the effect on the victim, or they might kill someone they see as threatening to forestall the possibility of harm to themselves. Real evil then would be pretty unusual, because it would be something like causing harm for the sheer joy of it: sadism. So then an evil person would be someone who goes forth into the world with the goal of causing harm to others for their own benefit, which is really just selfishness.
As a sidenote, I think it's kind of funny that Bringsjord said he wouldn't put his evil AI in something like Second Life without safeguards such as the Laws of Robotics, resulting in an evil AI that would just sit in a corner thinking nasty thoughts while it wasn't helping old ladies cross busy streets.
Well, on the one hand, you want to be in a relationship with someone who you can tell bad news to without fearing that they'll turn on you. If you lose your job, for example, and won't be able to afford a house you both want to buy, a good wife/husband will feel sympathy for you over the loss of employment before they feel angry about not getting the house they want when they want it. If you'd lie about something like that to avoid a blowout, there are several problems that you need to fix before you lay down cash for a ring, the solutions to which might involve breaking things off all together. And from personal experience, the problem could be that you don't have enough faith in the person rather than that they would react badly. Honesty and integrity in this sort of a situation is always the best choice. It's tired but true; honesty is the bedrock of a healthy relationship.
On the other hand, "white lies" are a necessary requirement of a successful relationship. Do you mind skipping happy hour with your boys to paint the mother-in-law's living room? Of course you do! BUT, you say it's no problem and do it anyway because it's the right thing to do. Does your fiancee actually give a shit about football, westerns or Street Fighter IV? Mine sure as hell doesn't! BUT, she pretends to listen because she knows I like talking about those things. (Actually, she's pretty conversant in football, and she likes some westerns, but she's from Texas so she throws the sample off a little. Doesn't like video games other than Super Mario Bros., however.)
At the end of the day it's less about honesty, strictly speaking, than it is about intimacy, and putting each other first, or advocating for each other as a previous poster more succinctly put it. You don't need to tell the big lies to someone who you really trust, and you shouldn't marry someone who you don't feel comfortable with seeing your dirty underwear, metaphorically speaking.
I second that emotion, man. GPS works great as device that reads a map aloud, maybe a slight step up from a passenger with a road atlas. Local knowledge trumps GPS every single time, however, because GPS devices can't make decisions based on information that isn't necessarily related to getting from point A to B. GPS can't tell you to avoid such-and-such street because it's a really rough part of town, nor can it tell you that Local Sports Team is playing a home game today at 5:00 PM, so if you drive too close to the stadium you'll be stuck in traffic for two hours. Also, from personal experience I can tell you that GPS doesn't always work accurately in places like Baltimore, MD or Washington, DC, places where the whims of urban development have created streets that are one-way during some hours of the day and two-way during others, and where a straight(ish) street will change names four times over five blocks, or where some streets are really more like paved alleys.
Yeah, but I wouldn't think that you would still be responsible for providing service if the service was used in the commission of a crime, in this case fraud.
Not to compare apples to boomerangs here, but all I could think of while reading this was P2P file sharing, ISPs and the RIAA/MPAA.
Seriously? Joe pays some schlub at Best Buy to defrag his harddrive once every six months. After two years of this, and installing everything under the sun that he's asked to by the websites he frequents, and leaving on all the bloatware HP was kind enough to preinstall, he buys a brand new one. Why? Because the old one "wore out", like a pencil.
If you ask Joe what kind of video card he has, he replies, "Whatever came with it when I bought it." That is, if he doesn't reply, "Windows", or "HP". Joe gets nervous when you suggest that he update drivers, as he has no idea where you'd get them. Joe confuses operating systems with other kinds of software and in some cases hardware, and will say things like, "My Windows is slow." Don't bother asking which version; he'll just pause, scratch his head, and say, "...um...Microsoft?"
For shits and grins, ask Joe if he's ever heard of Linux. He hasn't, hopefully, because if he has he'll slowly back away from you as if you were holding a bloody cleaver. He might ask you what it is, or what it does. When you tell him it's an operating system, he'll ask, "Can my Windows run it?" Or something to that effect. When you explain that it in fact replaces Windows (don't bother with the dual-boot subject), he'll react as if you'd just suggested that the two of you snort a pound of blow, assassinate the president, and flee to Tijuana with his preteen daughter.
I don't know which Joe you're talking about, but the Joes I know will choose the OS that comes preinstalled on the computer they just bought over the one they have to download or order through the mail and install themselves any damn day.
Kudos to the author for a fascinating post, but there are several problems with the model. For one, I don't know how appropriate it is to center this around the idea of positive externalities. I think a better image would be the "tragedy of the commons". Home users benefit less in a monetary sense than, say, a financial services firm or the IRS from buying and using antivirus software. Also, you list tech support as a cost, which it is, but it's also a market unto itself. Consider this: virii create a demand for technical support. If you were to reduce the amount of infections, you reduce the demand for support. If you reduce the demand for support, you reduce the demand for employees. (I'm using demand as shorthand for "quantity demanded" here.)
Finally, from a libertarian perspective (at least a market libertarian), I would argue that if there was a real perceived need for antivirus software to the extent that it was viewed as absolutely necessary, you'd see it without needing the government's help. As it stands, most people don't especially care if they have a virus on their computer, and those that do are willing to spend the money to protect themselves. Notice that ISPs do nothing to promote antivirus use because it doesn't affect their bottom lines. Most people don't get infected with virii that significantly impact their lives, so they don't see a need to invest in AV software. Kinda like oral herpes, when you think about it.
Finally finally, from a small-government libertarian perspective, you'd have to create a government agency, let's call it the Department of Information Technology and Security, or DITS. It might start out as a working group, but it'll end up either as part of DHS or as it's own cabinet level agency. Then that will spend a few years doing research. Then it'll issue some RFP's, which means you'll need to hire on a slew of contract administrators. And now you're talking about some money changing hands with the private contractors, so you've got to give the thing it's own IG office. At the end of the day, you've just added a whole new agency that will never go away and will only expand, which will cost more money.
If that sounds far fetched, keep in mind that the Department of Homeland Security was invented essentially to fill a void that could've been filled by a secure BBS.
It's no different than any other logistic target. If another country strafed an interstate or shot down one of our satellites, we'd consider it an act of war. Just because it involves a computer doesn't mean the principle or effect is any different. Enough of this "cyber" crap, a violation of a law, a treaty or an understanding is just what it is, whether it happened electronically or not.
That's putting the cart before the horse. The party system was meant to support (financially) politicians who held certain views in common. Politicians aren't elected to support their party, they're elected to further the views they enunciate. While there are politicians like Specter who run as a Republican and then switch because their views don't mesh, that isn't a failing on the part of that politician. That's a fault in the two-party system we've got. If you don't like it, vote for independents, or Libertarians, or Greens. Vote for any third party that supports your beliefs. Vote for any politician that supports your beliefs, more to the point, regardless of party. As it stands, we have two parties who are supposed to run the gamut of the political spectrum on all issues, and that obviously can't cover all the differences we have politically. I mean, there are pro-life Democrats, pro-gun Democrats, pro-choice Republicans, pro-gun control Republicans, etc. It's like trying to paint a portrait with two colors.
Vote your conscience, not your party, and then we'll get somewhere in this country.
I can't believe I'm actually seeing the term "hardcore gamer" in a published article. Traditionally, I've seen it used whenever a basement-dwelling, mouth-breathing shut-in needs desperately to feel superior on a Gamefaqs forum. And now there's such a thing as "classic hardcore games"?? What, Castlevania? Mega Man? Strange, because when I was 10 I didn't feel particularly hardcore playing Contra, because, you know, IT WAS JUST A GAME! Hell, I might be considered a "hardcore gamer" now because I built a PC for games; used to be you had to build a custom water-cooling rig. But the bottom line is that the term "hardcore gamer" is silly and meaningless. It's just a way to make playing video games more than other people (probably more than is healthy) seem like dedication instead of idleness.
What Nintendo is doing is making games for a different demographic. Party games aren't new; back in the day we used to call them fighting games. Through my teens and twenties I went to and hosted parties where people would come over with a case of beer and a controller, and we'd fire up Tekken (2 or 3) or Street Fighter (Alpha 4). The difference is that Nintendo is making games that are simple and easy, and that can be played by more than two people at a time on one screen. They're also making non-traditional games, like Brain Age. It's not a question of so-called "hardcore gamers" falling by the wayside, it's a case where games are being designed for non-traditional (i.e., not late teen/early twenties men) demographics.
Was there a burning need among consumers for a Linux console that was going unfulfilled? Speaking as the kind of person who spends too much money on video games, I see no reason whatsoever to lay down any money at all for a Linux console. If I want to play Amiga games, I can download an emulator. If I want to play games on Linux (insofar as I can), I'd use WINE. Well, really, I'd just run XP or Vista, which I currently do, but that's another can o' worms. The point is that there aren't Linux games that would persuade someone like me to buy a Linux console. Hobbyists or FOSS supporters might, but that's not your money-making demographic if you're making a console. Maybe get a game company or two to sign on for a big launch title if you really want to get this thing off the ground, but as it stands I'd say there's precious little need for an Amiga emulator console. Especially at close to $400.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you aren't a professional writer, or at least not a professional writer of fiction.
Here's the thing. Putting aside the ridiculous assumption that you have a right to the product of someone else's creative efforts by virtue of being born, people gotta eat, right? So let's say that music is free to whoever wants it, and anyone can play it or listen to it whenever with no consideration to the creator of the work. Now, the only people making money from music are the people who are playing it. That's fine, as far as it goes; songwriters would either learn an instrument or go in to a different line of work. You can project how this would affect music but the bottom line is that musicians could still make money.
An author only makes money when someone pays for their work. An author only makes money when someone pays for their work. Read that one more time, just to get it firmly in your head. Essayists and authors of short stories are usually freelance, and novelists have to commit a serious length of time and effort to put out one saleable work. Even if you get rid of freelancing somehow and just rely on staff writers (which would result in lower-quality, monolithic work) there's no such thing as a "staff novelist". And it's a little silly to suggest that authors should only be paid for reading their books to live audiences. So, the only time an author makes a profit, or a return on the investment of time and effort he/she has made, is when they sell the rights to a publisher or copies to readers (if they self-publish). Take that away, and no one will write works of any real length. Why? Because they can't afford to spend 3 months writing a book for which they will receive little or no money with which to support themselves, and it takes a damn long time to write a novel if you've got to work a full-time day job.
There's also the issue of justice. My work does not, I repeat, does not belong to all humanity. Humanity has never in its long and illustrious history written a damn thing. Saying that a particular work of art belongs to "humanity" as opposed to the artist who made it makes about as much sense as saying that your car belongs to humanity. And, as for the right to alter a work and claim it as your own, how would you feel if you built a house and then someone slapped a coat of paint on it, sold it, and kept the profits? Besides, authors are perfectly welcome to release works for free. How many good novels have you seen written by modern, living authors for free?
You talk about "we" and "society" and "humanity" giving up rights to the creative works of individuals as if "society" even has some sort of rights in that regard. By your logic, "society" has the right to anyone and everyone's labor, unless you believe that art, music and literature are somehow inferior to other kinds of work. You talk about authors making their works "less accessible and less useful to society" as if authors have some sort of occupational responsibility above and beyond that of any other career. For one thing, it's a little like accusing shop owners with burglar alarms of making their goods less accessible and useful to society. For another, our country isn't and has never been about people having a responsibility to make themselves useful to society. Assuming we're talking about the US, we're based around the idea that individuals have the right to do whatever they want to as a profession (assuming it's legal) and make whatever money they can doing it. Maybe you're thinking of a command economy, like a communist or socialist system, both of which aren't exactly renowned for their tendencies to develop great works of art, or even decent works of art for that matter.
This was a bit of a tirade, but I'm a writer (as yet unpublished), as are several of my friends, and if you were to suggest to any of us that you had some sort of right to the stories we've spent hours, days, weeks or months writing, rewriting and generally trying to cobble in to the best shape possible after racking our brains for inspiration that might or might not come, it's even money as to whether you'd get laughed out of the room or carried out on a stretcher. And we've all got day jobs.
YOU could try putting it into an automobile reference; none leap immediately to mind and I'm curious as to what cars have to do with libel.
Wait, here's one. Someone steals your tags and, living in an apartment, you have to park on the street as opposed to a driveway. Although you are a victim of a crime (theft), you are also responsible for keeping the car properly tagged. If you don't report the theft to the DMV and take steps to remedy the situation, you yourself are guilty of a crime.
The actual situation is already clear enough, though. If you were to have a whiteboard in your front yard with the express purpose of allowing anyone who walked by to write messages on it, and someone wrote something libelous about someone else in the neighborhood, wouldn't you as the owner of the billboard be culpable to some degree? Granted you're not the author, but you're facilitating the communication of the message, and that cuts to the heart of libel.
I think that people get a little too excited whenever regular old actionable offenses happen in a room with a computer. Just because libel happens on the Internet doesn't make it any different for legal purposes than libel in any other medium. Neither does it elevate speech for it to occur on the Internet.
For example, an anonymous post on a web page regarding this chick and her alleged std situation is essentially the same as someone having spray-painted graffiti to that effect on the side of a building. Now, IANAL, but I believe that if the woman in question could prove that the graffiti had a negative effect on her reputation (I think the key is that she'd have to prove some sort of financial harm, like losing her job or something along those lines) AND was false, then the owner of the building would not only have to remove the graffiti but would probably also have to compensate her for her losses.
The only way it would be criminal is if the poster posted something with the intent to provoke a criminal act against the woman in question, like posting her address and license plates on westealcars.org or something like that.
The common response to this seems to be to want the government to step in. Other than maybe requiring a "plain english" TOS the government has no place here. The customer, or mark in this case, should vote with his wallet and switch to another service provider. Failing that, he should be as much of a pain in the ass to their customer service people as possible. A company will respond faster to lost profit than they will to government regulation. And, as with cable television "franchise charges", they'll just pass the cost of the reg. on to the consumer.
I have two bathroom scales, A and B. I know that A is 3 lbs. off because it's consistently 3 lbs. off from scale B, which is new and presumably more accurate (more recently calibrated, etc.). If I want to know how much I weigh, I can use either scale. If I want to know whether I've gained or lost weight, I can use either scale. The consistency of the difference allows me to do this.
Now, I only know the difference is consistent because I have B to rely on. I would have to periodically use B to check consistency. My question with the study is this: How long have they known that the newer method is more accurate? Given that they're studying change over time, have they adjusted for past error? If so, how? Furthermore, since they'd have to use the alternate method to check the old method (as they seem to have done in the article), why aren't they just transitioning to the newer, more accurate method while adjusting past data to reflect the inaccuracy?
Well, I'd still be a little nervous about needing antivenin in a major city, but I suppose it's something you get used to.
The thing about "blocking for blocking's sake"...that's exactly what drives me up the wall about what the current administration is doing. They assume that no one could possibly in good conscience disagree with Keynesian economic policies which have proven time and again to fail, or with a massive spending package concocted in secrecy and then rushed through Congress without anyone knowing how they came up with the numbers or how, for example, monies going to Ms. Pelosi's home state of California for the protection of a particular breed of mouse's habitat relates to economic stimulus.
"If you disagree with me, it must be out of spite." That's a level of arrogance I am uncomfortable with.
That argument is usually followed by the second you mentioned, which boils down to, "Well, the Bush administration was AWFUL!" As has been pointed out repeatedly, the race is over and Bush is no longer president. Stop running against him. Furthermore, just because the previous administration was wrong doesn't mean that this current administration must be right.
I don't disagree that developing a broader industrial base, investing in infrastructure, education, environmental policies, etc. are worthy goals. I have a problem with packing pet projects in to an omnibus spending bill of historic size and having the gall to describe it as an "economic stimulus package" when even the Congressional Budget Office has determined that, in the long term, our economy would be stronger without it.
And, speaking as one of the people who received the tax refund, I can tell you that I didn't spend it on a bigger television, nor did most other recipients. Although, as it was MY MONEY in the first place, I would've had every right to spend it on hookers and blow if I so chose, legalities aside. I, like most people do in a shitty economy when they aren't making enough money to pay every bill on time, paid off outstanding debts.
Believe it or not, the stereotype of the fat, lazy, consumerist American isn't 100% accurate.
It seems like there are several people posting from the hip, so to speak, and getting very worked up without quite understanding what the Electoral College does, what it is, and the nature of the current situation. You may disagree with me on a factual basis. If that's the case, please cite something. All my info is from wikipedia and several civics textbooks I've got kickin' around.
1. States are allotted a number of electors equal to their Representatives and Senators. In other words, all but two electors are granted in proportion to a state's population. DC gets three, the minimum a state could theoretically have, despite having no Congressional representation (with any teeth, at least).
2. About half the states have laws against what are called "faithless electors", or electors who vote differently than how they're "supposed" to. It's a pretty rare occurrence.
3. The Electoral College was instituted for a number of reasons, but a lack of confidence in the wisdom of the mob was certainly one. In the 18th century, it was highly unlikely that every eligible voter in every state would have enough information about the candidates to make an informed decision, or even know who the candidates were, for that matter. Electors, known to the community and considered "in-the-know", solved the information problem to a degree. It was also hoped that they would act as a last-ditch defense against a charismatic politician duping the public. Not so successful in the last regard, I'm afraid...
4. Although most states use the winner-take-all system, they do so by custom rather than law. Nothing in the Constitution requires it.
While it is true that votes in smaller states pack a bit more of an electoral punch, it doesn't do them too much good these days. Remember the bit about the House of Representatives? In the pre-industrial U.S., the difference between urban and rural populations wasn't nearly as dramatic as it is today, simply because cities had yet to become industrial centers and so didn't draw population from the countryside or smaller towns/villages. Consider the following. Iowa has seven votes. California has 55. Two Ohios and a North Carolina, if you will. Maybe Iowan votes are worth more per capita, but California as a whole is worth almost eight Iowas.
Candidates only have to win the big states. The smaller states tend to go reliably to one party or the other. Look at the number of campaign stops and amount of money spent per state and you'll see that it leans towards the populous states.
The reason, and this is important, that people pay attention to Iowa is that Iowa is the first to hold primaries, and they do so in a caucus. Iowa's impact on the national election is in the very first stages as a bellwether for party nominations.
Furthermore, even if Iowa decides to toss it's seven votes to whoever already has 270, I daresay it wouldn't affect the outcome one way or the other. At 270, we already have a winner.
Dude, you live on an island with the most poisonous animals on earth. Ridiculously poisonous spiders that snuggle up in the toes of slippers and are native to your capital city.
I live right outside of Washington, D.C., and if I couldn't walk around at night in my apartment for fear of poisonous, deadly varmints holing up in my Nikes the last thing I would be is complacent.
Re: governance, I would like to point you towards a recent statement by our new president in which he said something along the lines of, "Debate's nice and all, but you've had your fun and now it's time to pass the legislation I want you to pass." Translation: "Democracy, shemocracy, blah blah blah!"
I don't think that's really an accurate characterization of Chinese history, honestly. Typically, and I'm talking about ancient China right up to the present, ruling governments have had no problem with innovation and individuality so long as those traits didn't manifest themselves as rebellion. The exception that jumps to mind might be the Cultural Revolution, but that was a pretty chaotic period and not a representative example. And east Asian cultures also value individuality and innovation, provided those qualities don't trump loyalty or filial piety. After all, innovators and risk-takers who are successful achieve things that reflect favorably on their families.
I don't think the three OS demographics have really changed at all, honestly. Apple still markets itself to people who don't really know anything (or want to know anything) about computers and will tend to buy software from Apple to match the computer and OS. And hipsters. Windows is still going to be the OS of choice for people who either grew up using it and aren't turned off enough to switch, or who spend considerable sums of money on games, or who just don't really care one way or the other. And people who do fist-bumps seriously. Linux is going to be the choice for hobbyists, geeks (I say this positively), people who've had terrible experiences with Windows and people who work in IT (and don't play current games much). None of the reactions of the people in the video would lead me to believe that there was anyone who'd break the preceding archetypes.
So, as a free OS, what does the Linux community gain from biting in to Microsoft's and Apple's market share? Why would you change Linux to make it more popular amongst people not necessarily inclined to make the switch? Think about it. If you make it pretty like Apple, you're either taking away from the trademark Linux efficiency, or you're wasting time better spent developing something else. If you make it attractive to game publishers, you've also got to make it user-proof, not just user-friendly, and that takes away a lot of the power of the OS as it stands.
It's like the Porsche Cayenne. Porsche coupes are great, because they're small, fast, and handle well. The Porsche Cayenne is sluggish, handles like crap, and is overpriced. Only guys in their 50's who go tanning and have jobs in sales buy Porsche Cayennes.
Lesson: It's better to do one thing well than several things poorly.
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First of all there is no "right to travel."
Actually, I think John Locke would disagree. And as for the second part, you can never eliminate risk, true, but you can minimize it to the extent that you render it statistically impossible, although I suspect the only way would be to enact absolutely draconian laws. It's a tautology, but the surest way to eliminate automobile accidents is to eliminate automobiles. There are, I would guess, very few if any car accidents in North Korea, because only high-level government officials are allowed to own cars. And even if I run really fast into someone else who's running really fast in the opposite direction we might just knock ourselves unconscious at the most.
But as for the rest of your post, I agree entirely. Dangerous driving is already covered by existing laws in every state in the US, I believe. Unlike a previous poster, I am more than capable of lighting a cigarette while keeping my eyes on the road, a hand on the wheel, and maintaining alert control of the vehicle. I do it more often than I should, in fact. On the other hand, people get into accidents all the time because they were fiddling with their air conditioning. Since the goal isn't to keep people from smoking in cars but to keep them from not paying attention to driving, legislating against individual behaviors isn't going to have the effect you want.
I would suggest that driving while distracted is the same as talking during a movie. It's illegal, it's annoying, but there will always be people who are more interested in doing whatever they want to do, be it talking through a movie or texting and applying makeup while driving, than not ruining someone else's day. The solution isn't to try to legislate behavior but to change the culture that allows such behavior. That's why I'll be raising kids who would rather burn alive than talk during a movie, and who will pull the car over before they answer a cellphone.
My God, where are these nightmarish, Orwellian bistros people are talking about?? I live in the DC area and have worked in restaurants for about fifteen years. In each and every one we played music in the kitchen; granted, sometimes it was in Spanish, but still. Radio, cd or ipod, no one ever said anything. I've never heard of an instance in my area where playing music at a workplace resulted in copyright violation warnings or anything of the sort.
Next comes an Autotune warning, and all of a sudden your average local band playing at the bar Friday night is seen in a whole new perspective...
As a smoker, I resent that remark! But seriously, as a smoker I can tell you that I sometimes want a cigarette really badly but make the decision to not smoke; I have never smoked a cigarette against my will. Addiction of any sort is a motivator, but nothing more. In other words, nicotine isn't sublimating my will to its own (as it has none) and taking control of my body to force me to act against my wishes. Now, addiction can cloud one's judgement and lead one to make bad decisions, but the person is still the actor, not the addiction.
Where evil is concerned, I think that you have to draw a distinction between evil as an amalgamation of harmful or unpleasant traits and evil as a metaphysical force or element. On the one hand, actions that we consider evil are usually some form of selfishness, just as actions we see as good tend to manifest selflessness. For example, a child molester (assuming they believe they're causing harm) sees his or her pleasure as more important than the well-being of a child, which is selfish.
I think evil is like obscenity: we know it when we see it, or at least we think we do. Most evil acts are considered evil because of the motivation rather than the deed, such as murder, and evil people are considered evil because they tend to do evil things. Even Bringsjord's definition touches on this when he says that evil is the intent to do something "morally wrong"; what is moral "wrongness"? I would daresay that if you analyze "evil" deeds enough you can find a root cause that is related to fear, be it fear of want or fear of harm. As an example, a person might steal from someone else out of fear of want, regardless of the effect on the victim, or they might kill someone they see as threatening to forestall the possibility of harm to themselves. Real evil then would be pretty unusual, because it would be something like causing harm for the sheer joy of it: sadism. So then an evil person would be someone who goes forth into the world with the goal of causing harm to others for their own benefit, which is really just selfishness.
As a sidenote, I think it's kind of funny that Bringsjord said he wouldn't put his evil AI in something like Second Life without safeguards such as the Laws of Robotics, resulting in an evil AI that would just sit in a corner thinking nasty thoughts while it wasn't helping old ladies cross busy streets.
Well, on the one hand, you want to be in a relationship with someone who you can tell bad news to without fearing that they'll turn on you. If you lose your job, for example, and won't be able to afford a house you both want to buy, a good wife/husband will feel sympathy for you over the loss of employment before they feel angry about not getting the house they want when they want it. If you'd lie about something like that to avoid a blowout, there are several problems that you need to fix before you lay down cash for a ring, the solutions to which might involve breaking things off all together. And from personal experience, the problem could be that you don't have enough faith in the person rather than that they would react badly. Honesty and integrity in this sort of a situation is always the best choice. It's tired but true; honesty is the bedrock of a healthy relationship.
On the other hand, "white lies" are a necessary requirement of a successful relationship. Do you mind skipping happy hour with your boys to paint the mother-in-law's living room? Of course you do! BUT, you say it's no problem and do it anyway because it's the right thing to do. Does your fiancee actually give a shit about football, westerns or Street Fighter IV? Mine sure as hell doesn't! BUT, she pretends to listen because she knows I like talking about those things. (Actually, she's pretty conversant in football, and she likes some westerns, but she's from Texas so she throws the sample off a little. Doesn't like video games other than Super Mario Bros., however.)
At the end of the day it's less about honesty, strictly speaking, than it is about intimacy, and putting each other first, or advocating for each other as a previous poster more succinctly put it. You don't need to tell the big lies to someone who you really trust, and you shouldn't marry someone who you don't feel comfortable with seeing your dirty underwear, metaphorically speaking.
And literally, for that matter.
I second that emotion, man. GPS works great as device that reads a map aloud, maybe a slight step up from a passenger with a road atlas. Local knowledge trumps GPS every single time, however, because GPS devices can't make decisions based on information that isn't necessarily related to getting from point A to B. GPS can't tell you to avoid such-and-such street because it's a really rough part of town, nor can it tell you that Local Sports Team is playing a home game today at 5:00 PM, so if you drive too close to the stadium you'll be stuck in traffic for two hours. Also, from personal experience I can tell you that GPS doesn't always work accurately in places like Baltimore, MD or Washington, DC, places where the whims of urban development have created streets that are one-way during some hours of the day and two-way during others, and where a straight(ish) street will change names four times over five blocks, or where some streets are really more like paved alleys.
Yeah, but I wouldn't think that you would still be responsible for providing service if the service was used in the commission of a crime, in this case fraud.
Not to compare apples to boomerangs here, but all I could think of while reading this was P2P file sharing, ISPs and the RIAA/MPAA.
Seriously? Joe pays some schlub at Best Buy to defrag his harddrive once every six months. After two years of this, and installing everything under the sun that he's asked to by the websites he frequents, and leaving on all the bloatware HP was kind enough to preinstall, he buys a brand new one. Why? Because the old one "wore out", like a pencil.
If you ask Joe what kind of video card he has, he replies, "Whatever came with it when I bought it." That is, if he doesn't reply, "Windows", or "HP". Joe gets nervous when you suggest that he update drivers, as he has no idea where you'd get them. Joe confuses operating systems with other kinds of software and in some cases hardware, and will say things like, "My Windows is slow." Don't bother asking which version; he'll just pause, scratch his head, and say, "...um...Microsoft?"
For shits and grins, ask Joe if he's ever heard of Linux. He hasn't, hopefully, because if he has he'll slowly back away from you as if you were holding a bloody cleaver. He might ask you what it is, or what it does. When you tell him it's an operating system, he'll ask, "Can my Windows run it?" Or something to that effect. When you explain that it in fact replaces Windows (don't bother with the dual-boot subject), he'll react as if you'd just suggested that the two of you snort a pound of blow, assassinate the president, and flee to Tijuana with his preteen daughter.
I don't know which Joe you're talking about, but the Joes I know will choose the OS that comes preinstalled on the computer they just bought over the one they have to download or order through the mail and install themselves any damn day.
Kudos to the author for a fascinating post, but there are several problems with the model. For one, I don't know how appropriate it is to center this around the idea of positive externalities. I think a better image would be the "tragedy of the commons". Home users benefit less in a monetary sense than, say, a financial services firm or the IRS from buying and using antivirus software. Also, you list tech support as a cost, which it is, but it's also a market unto itself. Consider this: virii create a demand for technical support. If you were to reduce the amount of infections, you reduce the demand for support. If you reduce the demand for support, you reduce the demand for employees. (I'm using demand as shorthand for "quantity demanded" here.)
Finally, from a libertarian perspective (at least a market libertarian), I would argue that if there was a real perceived need for antivirus software to the extent that it was viewed as absolutely necessary, you'd see it without needing the government's help. As it stands, most people don't especially care if they have a virus on their computer, and those that do are willing to spend the money to protect themselves. Notice that ISPs do nothing to promote antivirus use because it doesn't affect their bottom lines. Most people don't get infected with virii that significantly impact their lives, so they don't see a need to invest in AV software. Kinda like oral herpes, when you think about it.
Finally finally, from a small-government libertarian perspective, you'd have to create a government agency, let's call it the Department of Information Technology and Security, or DITS. It might start out as a working group, but it'll end up either as part of DHS or as it's own cabinet level agency. Then that will spend a few years doing research. Then it'll issue some RFP's, which means you'll need to hire on a slew of contract administrators. And now you're talking about some money changing hands with the private contractors, so you've got to give the thing it's own IG office. At the end of the day, you've just added a whole new agency that will never go away and will only expand, which will cost more money.
If that sounds far fetched, keep in mind that the Department of Homeland Security was invented essentially to fill a void that could've been filled by a secure BBS.
Yes.
It's no different than any other logistic target. If another country strafed an interstate or shot down one of our satellites, we'd consider it an act of war. Just because it involves a computer doesn't mean the principle or effect is any different. Enough of this "cyber" crap, a violation of a law, a treaty or an understanding is just what it is, whether it happened electronically or not.
That's putting the cart before the horse. The party system was meant to support (financially) politicians who held certain views in common. Politicians aren't elected to support their party, they're elected to further the views they enunciate. While there are politicians like Specter who run as a Republican and then switch because their views don't mesh, that isn't a failing on the part of that politician. That's a fault in the two-party system we've got. If you don't like it, vote for independents, or Libertarians, or Greens. Vote for any third party that supports your beliefs. Vote for any politician that supports your beliefs, more to the point, regardless of party. As it stands, we have two parties who are supposed to run the gamut of the political spectrum on all issues, and that obviously can't cover all the differences we have politically. I mean, there are pro-life Democrats, pro-gun Democrats, pro-choice Republicans, pro-gun control Republicans, etc. It's like trying to paint a portrait with two colors.
Vote your conscience, not your party, and then we'll get somewhere in this country.
I can't believe I'm actually seeing the term "hardcore gamer" in a published article. Traditionally, I've seen it used whenever a basement-dwelling, mouth-breathing shut-in needs desperately to feel superior on a Gamefaqs forum. And now there's such a thing as "classic hardcore games"?? What, Castlevania? Mega Man? Strange, because when I was 10 I didn't feel particularly hardcore playing Contra, because, you know, IT WAS JUST A GAME! Hell, I might be considered a "hardcore gamer" now because I built a PC for games; used to be you had to build a custom water-cooling rig. But the bottom line is that the term "hardcore gamer" is silly and meaningless. It's just a way to make playing video games more than other people (probably more than is healthy) seem like dedication instead of idleness.
What Nintendo is doing is making games for a different demographic. Party games aren't new; back in the day we used to call them fighting games. Through my teens and twenties I went to and hosted parties where people would come over with a case of beer and a controller, and we'd fire up Tekken (2 or 3) or Street Fighter (Alpha 4). The difference is that Nintendo is making games that are simple and easy, and that can be played by more than two people at a time on one screen. They're also making non-traditional games, like Brain Age. It's not a question of so-called "hardcore gamers" falling by the wayside, it's a case where games are being designed for non-traditional (i.e., not late teen/early twenties men) demographics.
Was there a burning need among consumers for a Linux console that was going unfulfilled? Speaking as the kind of person who spends too much money on video games, I see no reason whatsoever to lay down any money at all for a Linux console. If I want to play Amiga games, I can download an emulator. If I want to play games on Linux (insofar as I can), I'd use WINE. Well, really, I'd just run XP or Vista, which I currently do, but that's another can o' worms. The point is that there aren't Linux games that would persuade someone like me to buy a Linux console. Hobbyists or FOSS supporters might, but that's not your money-making demographic if you're making a console. Maybe get a game company or two to sign on for a big launch title if you really want to get this thing off the ground, but as it stands I'd say there's precious little need for an Amiga emulator console. Especially at close to $400.
Whoa, I had no idea that one of the effects of Conficker was the widespread distribution of wet blankets...
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you aren't a professional writer, or at least not a professional writer of fiction.
Here's the thing. Putting aside the ridiculous assumption that you have a right to the product of someone else's creative efforts by virtue of being born, people gotta eat, right? So let's say that music is free to whoever wants it, and anyone can play it or listen to it whenever with no consideration to the creator of the work. Now, the only people making money from music are the people who are playing it. That's fine, as far as it goes; songwriters would either learn an instrument or go in to a different line of work. You can project how this would affect music but the bottom line is that musicians could still make money.
An author only makes money when someone pays for their work. An author only makes money when someone pays for their work. Read that one more time, just to get it firmly in your head. Essayists and authors of short stories are usually freelance, and novelists have to commit a serious length of time and effort to put out one saleable work. Even if you get rid of freelancing somehow and just rely on staff writers (which would result in lower-quality, monolithic work) there's no such thing as a "staff novelist". And it's a little silly to suggest that authors should only be paid for reading their books to live audiences. So, the only time an author makes a profit, or a return on the investment of time and effort he/she has made, is when they sell the rights to a publisher or copies to readers (if they self-publish). Take that away, and no one will write works of any real length. Why? Because they can't afford to spend 3 months writing a book for which they will receive little or no money with which to support themselves, and it takes a damn long time to write a novel if you've got to work a full-time day job.
There's also the issue of justice. My work does not, I repeat, does not belong to all humanity. Humanity has never in its long and illustrious history written a damn thing. Saying that a particular work of art belongs to "humanity" as opposed to the artist who made it makes about as much sense as saying that your car belongs to humanity. And, as for the right to alter a work and claim it as your own, how would you feel if you built a house and then someone slapped a coat of paint on it, sold it, and kept the profits? Besides, authors are perfectly welcome to release works for free. How many good novels have you seen written by modern, living authors for free?
You talk about "we" and "society" and "humanity" giving up rights to the creative works of individuals as if "society" even has some sort of rights in that regard. By your logic, "society" has the right to anyone and everyone's labor, unless you believe that art, music and literature are somehow inferior to other kinds of work. You talk about authors making their works "less accessible and less useful to society" as if authors have some sort of occupational responsibility above and beyond that of any other career. For one thing, it's a little like accusing shop owners with burglar alarms of making their goods less accessible and useful to society. For another, our country isn't and has never been about people having a responsibility to make themselves useful to society. Assuming we're talking about the US, we're based around the idea that individuals have the right to do whatever they want to as a profession (assuming it's legal) and make whatever money they can doing it. Maybe you're thinking of a command economy, like a communist or socialist system, both of which aren't exactly renowned for their tendencies to develop great works of art, or even decent works of art for that matter.
This was a bit of a tirade, but I'm a writer (as yet unpublished), as are several of my friends, and if you were to suggest to any of us that you had some sort of right to the stories we've spent hours, days, weeks or months writing, rewriting and generally trying to cobble in to the best shape possible after racking our brains for inspiration that might or might not come, it's even money as to whether you'd get laughed out of the room or carried out on a stretcher. And we've all got day jobs.
YOU could try putting it into an automobile reference; none leap immediately to mind and I'm curious as to what cars have to do with libel.
Wait, here's one. Someone steals your tags and, living in an apartment, you have to park on the street as opposed to a driveway. Although you are a victim of a crime (theft), you are also responsible for keeping the car properly tagged. If you don't report the theft to the DMV and take steps to remedy the situation, you yourself are guilty of a crime.
The actual situation is already clear enough, though. If you were to have a whiteboard in your front yard with the express purpose of allowing anyone who walked by to write messages on it, and someone wrote something libelous about someone else in the neighborhood, wouldn't you as the owner of the billboard be culpable to some degree? Granted you're not the author, but you're facilitating the communication of the message, and that cuts to the heart of libel.
I think that people get a little too excited whenever regular old actionable offenses happen in a room with a computer. Just because libel happens on the Internet doesn't make it any different for legal purposes than libel in any other medium. Neither does it elevate speech for it to occur on the Internet.
For example, an anonymous post on a web page regarding this chick and her alleged std situation is essentially the same as someone having spray-painted graffiti to that effect on the side of a building. Now, IANAL, but I believe that if the woman in question could prove that the graffiti had a negative effect on her reputation (I think the key is that she'd have to prove some sort of financial harm, like losing her job or something along those lines) AND was false, then the owner of the building would not only have to remove the graffiti but would probably also have to compensate her for her losses.
The only way it would be criminal is if the poster posted something with the intent to provoke a criminal act against the woman in question, like posting her address and license plates on westealcars.org or something like that.
The common response to this seems to be to want the government to step in. Other than maybe requiring a "plain english" TOS the government has no place here. The customer, or mark in this case, should vote with his wallet and switch to another service provider. Failing that, he should be as much of a pain in the ass to their customer service people as possible. A company will respond faster to lost profit than they will to government regulation. And, as with cable television "franchise charges", they'll just pass the cost of the reg. on to the consumer.
Level pally...watch porn...level pally...watch porn...
hmmm...
EUREKA!
I have two bathroom scales, A and B. I know that A is 3 lbs. off because it's consistently 3 lbs. off from scale B, which is new and presumably more accurate (more recently calibrated, etc.). If I want to know how much I weigh, I can use either scale. If I want to know whether I've gained or lost weight, I can use either scale. The consistency of the difference allows me to do this.
Now, I only know the difference is consistent because I have B to rely on. I would have to periodically use B to check consistency. My question with the study is this: How long have they known that the newer method is more accurate? Given that they're studying change over time, have they adjusted for past error? If so, how? Furthermore, since they'd have to use the alternate method to check the old method (as they seem to have done in the article), why aren't they just transitioning to the newer, more accurate method while adjusting past data to reflect the inaccuracy?
Well, I'd still be a little nervous about needing antivenin in a major city, but I suppose it's something you get used to.
The thing about "blocking for blocking's sake"...that's exactly what drives me up the wall about what the current administration is doing. They assume that no one could possibly in good conscience disagree with Keynesian economic policies which have proven time and again to fail, or with a massive spending package concocted in secrecy and then rushed through Congress without anyone knowing how they came up with the numbers or how, for example, monies going to Ms. Pelosi's home state of California for the protection of a particular breed of mouse's habitat relates to economic stimulus.
"If you disagree with me, it must be out of spite." That's a level of arrogance I am uncomfortable with.
That argument is usually followed by the second you mentioned, which boils down to, "Well, the Bush administration was AWFUL!" As has been pointed out repeatedly, the race is over and Bush is no longer president. Stop running against him. Furthermore, just because the previous administration was wrong doesn't mean that this current administration must be right.
I don't disagree that developing a broader industrial base, investing in infrastructure, education, environmental policies, etc. are worthy goals. I have a problem with packing pet projects in to an omnibus spending bill of historic size and having the gall to describe it as an "economic stimulus package" when even the Congressional Budget Office has determined that, in the long term, our economy would be stronger without it.
And, speaking as one of the people who received the tax refund, I can tell you that I didn't spend it on a bigger television, nor did most other recipients. Although, as it was MY MONEY in the first place, I would've had every right to spend it on hookers and blow if I so chose, legalities aside. I, like most people do in a shitty economy when they aren't making enough money to pay every bill on time, paid off outstanding debts.
Believe it or not, the stereotype of the fat, lazy, consumerist American isn't 100% accurate.
It seems like there are several people posting from the hip, so to speak, and getting very worked up without quite understanding what the Electoral College does, what it is, and the nature of the current situation. You may disagree with me on a factual basis. If that's the case, please cite something. All my info is from wikipedia and several civics textbooks I've got kickin' around.
1. States are allotted a number of electors equal to their Representatives and Senators. In other words, all but two electors are granted in proportion to a state's population. DC gets three, the minimum a state could theoretically have, despite having no Congressional representation (with any teeth, at least).
2. About half the states have laws against what are called "faithless electors", or electors who vote differently than how they're "supposed" to. It's a pretty rare occurrence.
3. The Electoral College was instituted for a number of reasons, but a lack of confidence in the wisdom of the mob was certainly one. In the 18th century, it was highly unlikely that every eligible voter in every state would have enough information about the candidates to make an informed decision, or even know who the candidates were, for that matter. Electors, known to the community and considered "in-the-know", solved the information problem to a degree. It was also hoped that they would act as a last-ditch defense against a charismatic politician duping the public. Not so successful in the last regard, I'm afraid...
4. Although most states use the winner-take-all system, they do so by custom rather than law. Nothing in the Constitution requires it.
While it is true that votes in smaller states pack a bit more of an electoral punch, it doesn't do them too much good these days. Remember the bit about the House of Representatives? In the pre-industrial U.S., the difference between urban and rural populations wasn't nearly as dramatic as it is today, simply because cities had yet to become industrial centers and so didn't draw population from the countryside or smaller towns/villages. Consider the following. Iowa has seven votes. California has 55. Two Ohios and a North Carolina, if you will. Maybe Iowan votes are worth more per capita, but California as a whole is worth almost eight Iowas.
Candidates only have to win the big states. The smaller states tend to go reliably to one party or the other. Look at the number of campaign stops and amount of money spent per state and you'll see that it leans towards the populous states.
The reason, and this is important, that people pay attention to Iowa is that Iowa is the first to hold primaries, and they do so in a caucus. Iowa's impact on the national election is in the very first stages as a bellwether for party nominations.
Furthermore, even if Iowa decides to toss it's seven votes to whoever already has 270, I daresay it wouldn't affect the outcome one way or the other. At 270, we already have a winner.
Dude, you live on an island with the most poisonous animals on earth. Ridiculously poisonous spiders that snuggle up in the toes of slippers and are native to your capital city.
I live right outside of Washington, D.C., and if I couldn't walk around at night in my apartment for fear of poisonous, deadly varmints holing up in my Nikes the last thing I would be is complacent.
Re: governance, I would like to point you towards a recent statement by our new president in which he said something along the lines of, "Debate's nice and all, but you've had your fun and now it's time to pass the legislation I want you to pass." Translation: "Democracy, shemocracy, blah blah blah!"
I don't think that's really an accurate characterization of Chinese history, honestly. Typically, and I'm talking about ancient China right up to the present, ruling governments have had no problem with innovation and individuality so long as those traits didn't manifest themselves as rebellion. The exception that jumps to mind might be the Cultural Revolution, but that was a pretty chaotic period and not a representative example. And east Asian cultures also value individuality and innovation, provided those qualities don't trump loyalty or filial piety. After all, innovators and risk-takers who are successful achieve things that reflect favorably on their families.
I don't think the three OS demographics have really changed at all, honestly. Apple still markets itself to people who don't really know anything (or want to know anything) about computers and will tend to buy software from Apple to match the computer and OS. And hipsters. Windows is still going to be the OS of choice for people who either grew up using it and aren't turned off enough to switch, or who spend considerable sums of money on games, or who just don't really care one way or the other. And people who do fist-bumps seriously. Linux is going to be the choice for hobbyists, geeks (I say this positively), people who've had terrible experiences with Windows and people who work in IT (and don't play current games much). None of the reactions of the people in the video would lead me to believe that there was anyone who'd break the preceding archetypes.
So, as a free OS, what does the Linux community gain from biting in to Microsoft's and Apple's market share? Why would you change Linux to make it more popular amongst people not necessarily inclined to make the switch? Think about it. If you make it pretty like Apple, you're either taking away from the trademark Linux efficiency, or you're wasting time better spent developing something else. If you make it attractive to game publishers, you've also got to make it user-proof, not just user-friendly, and that takes away a lot of the power of the OS as it stands.
It's like the Porsche Cayenne. Porsche coupes are great, because they're small, fast, and handle well. The Porsche Cayenne is sluggish, handles like crap, and is overpriced. Only guys in their 50's who go tanning and have jobs in sales buy Porsche Cayennes.
Lesson: It's better to do one thing well than several things poorly.