Hear, hear. I think those comparisons tend to follow the same line:
People want to be taken care of. Whether its metal detectors and cameras or lawsuits, there is an abdication of personal responsibility. Liberty and responsibility go hand in hand; by definition, if you have liberty you MUST take responsibility, or you have bled liberty away from whomever you attempt to hold responsible.
I don't think so. And its a comparison as valid as many other. For example:
Can legally vote.
Can legally drink in some states.
Can legally own and operate a firearm in some states.
Can get married.
Can voluntarily join the military. (although the comment about the draft stands. see link. as long as the government is tracking people, if there's a significant conflict, there may be a draft. If, for example, China invaded Japan...)
I don't need an excuse to blast age limits like this one. It's one thing to stop 10 year olds from drinking. It's another thing entirely to say a 17 yr old can't look at Mortal Kombat alone.
How crazed. Children can go see Basic Instinct with their parents, but this article doesn't mention kids being able to view such games with parental permission or accompanyment.
It's barely worth pointing out that the TV industry only escapes this because they're consolidated mega-corporations, where most video arcades are small businesses (although a shrinking number).
Even this aside, its no wonder some adults have such a legislate-everything, regulate-everything attitude. And each generation, every year even, grows up with more restrictions, more regulations. Meanwhile, we're legislating conformity. Parents should decide what's appropriate for their children, not the government. And it should be pointed out: parental concern has impacted the industry. You won't find a Mortal Kombat VII at your local Chuck E. Cheese pizza -- you'll find redemption games and plastic toys, and singing animatronics. Why? Because when parents want a safer, more child-friendly environment, they'll get it. Consumer demand.
Meanwhile, you have to wonder what will be an "age 18" thing next. It seems ridiculous to me that you get to play a "violent" video game the same day you can be drafted to go die in a war.
The fact that political and private sector work can legitimately coincide does not excuse conflicts of interest, nor does it disprove corruption. Would you like to try to challenge the fact that there are many former politicians sitting in executive offices or on the board at companies they made favorable decisions/actions for while in office? Would you like to deny that some of those do not have a legitimate purpose in the enterprise, but rather are just being rewarded for playing the game when in office?
Heh, I'm always running afoul of not being verbose enough -- what I mean is, politicians who take donations from and pass laws that favor certain private sector interests, THEN get jobs from them, afterwards. It's a bit like post facto bribery. I could do without career politicians, and I applaud those who do civil service as an interruption to their career in another industry.
Well, this is a lot like politicians getting private industry jobs after they leave office; it isn't direct conflict of interest, but it is clearly conflict nonetheless. The judge shouldn't even wait for the disqualification filing to be ruled on. He should just recuse himself.
Even assuming the judge tries to rule honestly without letting his former status sway him, you would think he probably has some strong preconceived notions.
The FBI shouldn't even have the authority to implement drastic new technologies like this. I wonder if AoL and Earthlink have considered that customers knowing they (as the "large providers") have tapped email will drive consumers elsewhere. I find it equally likely that people will shrug it off with the "I don't break the law" attitude. If this keeps up, I wonder how long it will be before they do keywork searches of all emails.
Time for a new.sig: "president bomb gun drugs: support your local FBI". Although I've already seen people doing it, trying to break Echelon;)
Hopefully Earthlink will stand up to them on real principles, if need be.
Notice from the press release, they note "We recognize Sony may still attempt to bring these claims back before the court at a later date..."
Also note this occured 1 day before they were set to present their motion to dismiss (they being connectix). To me, it sounds like Sony is suing, causing trouble, then dropping the case before there's a chance for resolution. In other words, they're grinding on them without ever allowing the court to actually settle the issue, costing Connectix money and making people question the viability of the product, just using money on lawyers to make trouble. Maybe connectix should have had the right to seek a summary judgement on the matter to prevent such abuse. (or at least a right to continue a day and have their motion heard)
There was a guy going by the name "drfreeze" who did the same thing (in general) with mineral oil. Sadly, his page, which I stored the URL to, is currently defunct. But if someone mirrored it somewhere, it would be a safer alternaive.
IQ is certainly an abused concept, both by its detractors and its supportors. Here's what I feel comfortable saying based on what research I've done:
There is a "general intelligence factor" which people have, referred to in the "psychometrics" field as g, which does correlate to a certain intellectual ability to perform certain mental operations, which include pattern matching, logical reasoning, deductive and inductive reasoning, and (depending on the way it is measured) speed of calculation (not raw math)
This g is inheiritable to a certain extent, somewhere 40-80%.
Respected modern "IQ" tests are extremely well normed, and they do not at all correspond to any sort of personality measurements. They have a certain number of questions. You can get them right or wrong. Based on your right or wrong score, you are placed somewhere on a bell curve, thereby determining your IQ. IQ is normally measured in standard deviations of 15 or 16 points, with IQ 100 being median.
It's possible the kid you mentioned had test-taking issues, or just a different though process. IQ testing is tuned for the masses, and there are clearly brilliant people who just do not think in a way which makes such tests appropriate. A great example being Richard Feynman, who was turned down entrance into Mensa for having too low a score (120-something), despite being one of the most brilliant, inspiring, and liked physicists of his whole era (and I'd say, certainly the most entertaining).
I appreciate the anecdotes though, anyhow;)
Re:A problem that no one really wants solved
on
Frankenstein Time
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps I should have been more specific. When writing the comment, I was referring specifically to US conditions. I've read a fair amount regarding studies relating the factors I mentioned, but they were entirely US-centric. Good clarification.
Unlike with the OSS movement, when you go to a commercial electronics retailer, the saying applys: "You pay for what you get, but you don't always get what you pay for."
Linux is built on a community. I've thought about going to a trade show before, but who needs to? Because of the great efforts of many sites that gather and disseminate information, from/. to freshmeat to linuxgames, I never feel "out of touch".
I'm not saying trade shows are doomed, but there's probably a lot less need.
I hadn't yet installed it when I wrote that (I had just gotten back from the mad dash to buy it). The engine seems almost identical. Some differences I've noticed: (1) Walking speed now 50% faster. Whew. That was the most annoying thing about BG. (2) Loading/Saving faster, but loading puts you into a "character maintenance" screen (to like, drop people from your party) instead of into the game directly, so loading isn't really faster. But saving is. Otherwise, things seem the same. Of course, there's more level/spells/etc. Oh, and they slowed down the rate of fire on missile weapons, probably a good idea since a whole party armed with slings and arrows could mow down anything before it got near them.
From Interplay and their studio, Black Isle, with an engine from Bioware, comes Icewind Dale, the latest AD&D RPG, a sort of follow up to Baldur's Gate and Tales of the Sword Coast (the expansion pack).
Good points, but I want to point out a couple things.
First, realize that the proportions of people being raised in poverty (which you've exaggerated -- see this link for ~20%), is exacerbated by the fact the people in poverty have more children. There's a frightening correlation, actually, between measured intelligence (IQ), socio-economic status, education level, and child bearing. The first 3 all correlate positively. The last correlates negatively with all others. IE, as IQ goes up, child birth rates go down. Ditto for SES and education level. Some part of that link is causal -- IE, I won't claim its IQ or education or SES, but one of them or a combination, definitely suppresses childbearing, and anecdotally, it seems obvious. People with better SES and education have careers, less time for children, more opportunities for birth control, and many other reasons. Other arguments might be made for IQ impacting it (such as more foresight into consequences), but they are less convincing.
As to the smartest kid anecdote, let me add that IQ and SES correlate positively. In other words, smarter people end up with better social economic status -- not as children, but as adults. It would be hard to convince me this was not partially causal, at least, and therefore raising intelligence is positive benefit to anyone.
Finally, you have to ask: what problem can we attack? No one wants poverty stricken children, but you can't stop the problem without stopping poverty-stricken adults from having children (especially children at a higher proportion than the rest of society). Even substantial public assistance can't stem the tide in many homes, where any extra money would be consumed in such a way it would not impact the children's well being. Poverty alone does not destroy children. But if you combine poverty, single parenthood (which is also VASTLY more common amongst low SES parents), and an absent "other parent" (not just single parenting with another out there, but solo with a deadbeat dad, etc), you get children who basically are not raised. They have a house, but no parents, no guidance, no role models, etc. And you get disaster. Genetics won't fix that -- unless you use it to stop the right to give birth unless certain conditions are met. And that is eugenics. There were are. However, the problem of poverty is a problem of resource scarcity. Genetics has the power to vastly increase our total capacity. We live in a society now where we make sure people who make the most foolish choices and do the most damage to their own and their children's live can always subsist -- but until we either remove that or spend a LOT more resources on them, we won't fix the problem.
Re:thoughts on Katz, Eugenics, and such
on
Frankenstein Time
·
· Score: 1
I agree. But I think there are better reasons for differences than genetic luck. Let's raise the median, its good for everyone.
thoughts on Katz, Eugenics, and such
on
Frankenstein Time
·
· Score: 5
This was a notch above recent Katz posts. Again, I wish Jon would turn his considerable talents towards the introduction of original thought, however, rather than simply lacing the obvious with witticisms and passing it off as news.
That said something jumps out from reading the article: there's a big difference between eugenics and genetic enhancement. The fact is, there are a lot of significantly disadvantaged people in the world. They lack the intelligence, or possibly even general health and well-being, to compete in and contribute to society. Nothing is so humbling as to step back and realize that no small measure of your own success is due to gifts given you in a grand game of chance, which you did nothing to deserve. Genetics gives us the chance to equalize the luck of birth for all people. This cannot be inherently bad. Or, to romanticize it less than Katz: if you know 1 in 100 babies with be born with genes for a removable genetic defect which will render them retarded, what is the greater ill -- to fix their genetic code, or to birth them and claim, "Everyone is acceptable"?
I'm not preaching unacceptance. I believe everyone's life has an equal inherent value. But what a person derives from their own life is largely contingent upon their blessings, or lack thereof, of genetic chance. To give everyone a chance to start equal should appeal to people on every part of the political spectrum. And this is the best way, of course, by raising up the less fortunate through a "miracle" of science, rather than by handicapping the more capable, which is a popular theme in today's world.
As a final thought on that first observation, society needs to require responsible parents for such children. If you add genetic enhancement to the mix of poor, ill-equipped parents without time to raise their children, society may find itself in the midst of a boom of genius criminals, and one person I respect has observed to me before that it is much easier to destroy than create. For those of the security vein, the observation was it is considerably easier to penetrate a system than to truly secure it. Similarly, it is easier to destroy life than to protect it, and rushing ahead of ourselves by over-enhancement may mean our own destruction. We may end up with the power to create our own mad scientists, as it were, and sadly, as often as they are romanticized to go hand in hand, moral responsibility does not accompany scientific prowess.
In the end, you simply cannot ignore the benefits that can be enjoyed as a result of this ambitious research. You cannot turn back the clock -- you cannot unsplit the atom, make the world flat again, or place the Earth at the center of the universe. And that said, you cannot undiscover our genes. The reason Gattaca was so poignant was not only the warning it gave, but the certainty many felt upon seeing it that society would face that moral dilemna.
It is now up to all of us to see we make the right choices for everyone, take moderation to heart, and use technology responsibly, while guarding against those who would abuse it.
The US form of government is not one of rule-by-the-people, but rather, rule by the people's elected representatives. Democracy is fraught with problems -- simply put, you can't expect every citizen (especially the "average" citizens) to understand all the issues behind proposed legislation. Imagine the laws you would see passed if technology enabled all Americans to simply click laws into existence on even a 2/3 vote. Banning all pornography? (Save the children!) done. Banning books that use any of a list of 50 bad words? (Save the children!) done. (And so disappears "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" for the use of the N* word -- and you thought it was bad when individual school boards banned it)
And that's only creative content. _Dread_ what would happen to all sorts of other things. Wholesale discrimination against any minority group, so on. Education, hurrah. Online people's voting for legislation? Ow.
(1) Suppressing illegally copied music is hardly impinging on the freedom of the internet. It is such a stretch from banning pirating music over Napster to banning trading ideas on a web page, I'm surprised the poster even tried to make the connection.
(2) About bandwidth considerations: obviously, anyone with bandwidth has to manage it. Whether it requires a little (keep it up, go free for all), or a lot (rate shaping on traffic analysis) is a matter of scarcity.
Count on slashdot to spin any story on Napster into something as preposterously significant as "the death of the internet".
Indeed, I think it would be more appropriate to say that open source is not inherently more trustworthy. In terms of levels of trust, open source alone guarantees nothing. Nonetheless, if I had a choice between a solidly tested and reviewed trusted BSD and trusted Solaris, I'd probably prefer trusted BSD.
Seriously. There's a whole other lawsuit Microsoft SHOULD have to deal with about their hiding so much of their API from other developers -- never mind their browser war behavior.
I've always been a bit annoyed with Use taxes. Use taxes generally tax you for anything you buy in a situation where you haven't paid sales tax. The constitution does not permit taxing interstate commerce directly, but states that want sales tax revenue generally levy "use" taxes on things you purchase from across state lines to get their cut. In a way, this benefits your local merchants, though, because it means you aren't encouraged to mail-order solely because of the tax benefits. Still, Use taxes aren't reported, since a Washington State company has no duty to report that you bought $50 in books while in CA, and so while you can be caught, most people generally never pay this tax.
Sales Taxes come into effect whenever you buy from within your state (if your state HAS sales tax), or whenever you buy from an out-of-state company which has an "in-state" presence. In other words, if you're in TX, and you order from a mail order company in CA, but they have a branch office in TX, then they must collect sales tax. That's how I understand the mess.
I haven't paid a lot of attention to the Internet Tax moratorium, and so I've wondered: what do they plan on taxing? Another "internet" tax on TOP OF sales/use tax? I'm sure brick and mortar merchants would love it, but I don't see it really benefiting state governments a lot. If the customer state gets the tax, why not just enforce their use tax? How will they force another state's company to track the taxes? And if the shipping/merchant state gets the taxes, I see a lot of migration of internet companies that don't need to be centralized to other places -- maybe Oregon -- that don't charge sales tax (and therefore, in my mind, would not levy internet taxes).
And in the larger picture -- can't the government just pick a tax? Maybe they just don't want people to know how nickel and dimed they get. Add up income tax, sales tax, property tax, social security, state income tax, plus possible self-employment tax, car registration fees (which in some states are so exorbitant they are clearly just another tax), etc, and some people find themselves paying 60%+ to the government. That's just lame.
Slashdot Mirror
Hear, hear. I think those comparisons tend to follow the same line:
People want to be taken care of. Whether its metal detectors and cameras or lawsuits, there is an abdication of personal responsibility. Liberty and responsibility go hand in hand; by definition, if you have liberty you MUST take responsibility, or you have bled liberty away from whomever you attempt to hold responsible.
I don't think so. And its a comparison as valid as many other. For example:
Can legally vote.
Can legally drink in some states.
Can legally own and operate a firearm in some states.
Can get married.
Can voluntarily join the military. (although the comment about the draft stands. see link. as long as the government is tracking people, if there's a significant conflict, there may be a draft. If, for example, China invaded Japan...)
I don't need an excuse to blast age limits like this one. It's one thing to stop 10 year olds from drinking. It's another thing entirely to say a 17 yr old can't look at Mortal Kombat alone.
How crazed. Children can go see Basic Instinct with their parents, but this article doesn't mention kids being able to view such games with parental permission or accompanyment.
It's barely worth pointing out that the TV industry only escapes this because they're consolidated mega-corporations, where most video arcades are small businesses (although a shrinking number).
Even this aside, its no wonder some adults have such a legislate-everything, regulate-everything attitude. And each generation, every year even, grows up with more restrictions, more regulations. Meanwhile, we're legislating conformity. Parents should decide what's appropriate for their children, not the government. And it should be pointed out: parental concern has impacted the industry. You won't find a Mortal Kombat VII at your local Chuck E. Cheese pizza -- you'll find redemption games and plastic toys, and singing animatronics. Why? Because when parents want a safer, more child-friendly environment, they'll get it. Consumer demand.
Meanwhile, you have to wonder what will be an "age 18" thing next. It seems ridiculous to me that you get to play a "violent" video game the same day you can be drafted to go die in a war.
The fact that political and private sector work can legitimately coincide does not excuse conflicts of interest, nor does it disprove corruption. Would you like to try to challenge the fact that there are many former politicians sitting in executive offices or on the board at companies they made favorable decisions/actions for while in office? Would you like to deny that some of those do not have a legitimate purpose in the enterprise, but rather are just being rewarded for playing the game when in office?
Trained by whom, one has to wonder?
Heh, I'm always running afoul of not being verbose enough -- what I mean is, politicians who take donations from and pass laws that favor certain private sector interests, THEN get jobs from them, afterwards. It's a bit like post facto bribery. I could do without career politicians, and I applaud those who do civil service as an interruption to their career in another industry.
Well, this is a lot like politicians getting private industry jobs after they leave office; it isn't direct conflict of interest, but it is clearly conflict nonetheless. The judge shouldn't even wait for the disqualification filing to be ruled on. He should just recuse himself.
Even assuming the judge tries to rule honestly without letting his former status sway him, you would think he probably has some strong preconceived notions.
I'm surprised they didn't address more in the way of development issues, especially regarding sound and video.
The FBI shouldn't even have the authority to implement drastic new technologies like this. I wonder if AoL and Earthlink have considered that customers knowing they (as the "large providers") have tapped email will drive consumers elsewhere. I find it equally likely that people will shrug it off with the "I don't break the law" attitude. If this keeps up, I wonder how long it will be before they do keywork searches of all emails.
.sig: "president bomb gun drugs: support your local FBI". Although I've already seen people doing it, trying to break Echelon ;)
Time for a new
Hopefully Earthlink will stand up to them on real principles, if need be.
Here's another link about this, at Capitol Hill Blue.
Notice from the press release, they note "We recognize Sony may still attempt to bring these claims back before the court at a later date..."
Also note this occured 1 day before they were set to present their motion to dismiss (they being connectix). To me, it sounds like Sony is suing, causing trouble, then dropping the case before there's a chance for resolution. In other words, they're grinding on them without ever allowing the court to actually settle the issue, costing Connectix money and making people question the viability of the product, just using money on lawyers to make trouble. Maybe connectix should have had the right to seek a summary judgement on the matter to prevent such abuse. (or at least a right to continue a day and have their motion heard)
There was a guy going by the name "drfreeze" who did the same thing (in general) with mineral oil. Sadly, his page, which I stored the URL to, is currently defunct. But if someone mirrored it somewhere, it would be a safer alternaive.
There is a "general intelligence factor" which people have, referred to in the "psychometrics" field as g, which does correlate to a certain intellectual ability to perform certain mental operations, which include pattern matching, logical reasoning, deductive and inductive reasoning, and (depending on the way it is measured) speed of calculation (not raw math)
This g is inheiritable to a certain extent, somewhere 40-80%.
;)
Respected modern "IQ" tests are extremely well normed, and they do not at all correspond to any sort of personality measurements. They have a certain number of questions. You can get them right or wrong. Based on your right or wrong score, you are placed somewhere on a bell curve, thereby determining your IQ. IQ is normally measured in standard deviations of 15 or 16 points, with IQ 100 being median.
It's possible the kid you mentioned had test-taking issues, or just a different though process. IQ testing is tuned for the masses, and there are clearly brilliant people who just do not think in a way which makes such tests appropriate. A great example being Richard Feynman, who was turned down entrance into Mensa for having too low a score (120-something), despite being one of the most brilliant, inspiring, and liked physicists of his whole era (and I'd say, certainly the most entertaining).
I appreciate the anecdotes though, anyhow
Perhaps I should have been more specific. When writing the comment, I was referring specifically to US conditions. I've read a fair amount regarding studies relating the factors I mentioned, but they were entirely US-centric. Good clarification.
Unlike with the OSS movement, when you go to a commercial electronics retailer, the saying applys: "You pay for what you get, but you don't always get what you pay for."
Linux is built on a community. I've thought about going to a trade show before, but who needs to? Because of the great efforts of many sites that gather and disseminate information, from /. to freshmeat to linuxgames, I never feel "out of touch".
I'm not saying trade shows are doomed, but there's probably a lot less need.
I hadn't yet installed it when I wrote that (I had just gotten back from the mad dash to buy it). The engine seems almost identical. Some differences I've noticed: (1) Walking speed now 50% faster. Whew. That was the most annoying thing about BG. (2) Loading/Saving faster, but loading puts you into a "character maintenance" screen (to like, drop people from your party) instead of into the game directly, so loading isn't really faster. But saving is. Otherwise, things seem the same. Of course, there's more level/spells/etc. Oh, and they slowed down the rate of fire on missile weapons, probably a good idea since a whole party armed with slings and arrows could mow down anything before it got near them.
From Interplay and their studio, Black Isle, with an engine from Bioware, comes Icewind Dale, the latest AD&D RPG, a sort of follow up to Baldur's Gate and Tales of the Sword Coast (the expansion pack).
Good points, but I want to point out a couple things.
First, realize that the proportions of people being raised in poverty (which you've exaggerated -- see this link for ~20%), is exacerbated by the fact the people in poverty have more children. There's a frightening correlation, actually, between measured intelligence (IQ), socio-economic status, education level, and child bearing. The first 3 all correlate positively. The last correlates negatively with all others. IE, as IQ goes up, child birth rates go down. Ditto for SES and education level. Some part of that link is causal -- IE, I won't claim its IQ or education or SES, but one of them or a combination, definitely suppresses childbearing, and anecdotally, it seems obvious. People with better SES and education have careers, less time for children, more opportunities for birth control, and many other reasons. Other arguments might be made for IQ impacting it (such as more foresight into consequences), but they are less convincing.
As to the smartest kid anecdote, let me add that IQ and SES correlate positively. In other words, smarter people end up with better social economic status -- not as children, but as adults. It would be hard to convince me this was not partially causal, at least, and therefore raising intelligence is positive benefit to anyone.
Finally, you have to ask: what problem can we attack? No one wants poverty stricken children, but you can't stop the problem without stopping poverty-stricken adults from having children (especially children at a higher proportion than the rest of society). Even substantial public assistance can't stem the tide in many homes, where any extra money would be consumed in such a way it would not impact the children's well being. Poverty alone does not destroy children. But if you combine poverty, single parenthood (which is also VASTLY more common amongst low SES parents), and an absent "other parent" (not just single parenting with another out there, but solo with a deadbeat dad, etc), you get children who basically are not raised. They have a house, but no parents, no guidance, no role models, etc. And you get disaster. Genetics won't fix that -- unless you use it to stop the right to give birth unless certain conditions are met. And that is eugenics. There were are. However, the problem of poverty is a problem of resource scarcity. Genetics has the power to vastly increase our total capacity. We live in a society now where we make sure people who make the most foolish choices and do the most damage to their own and their children's live can always subsist -- but until we either remove that or spend a LOT more resources on them, we won't fix the problem.
I agree. But I think there are better reasons for differences than genetic luck. Let's raise the median, its good for everyone.
This was a notch above recent Katz posts. Again, I wish Jon would turn his considerable talents towards the introduction of original thought, however, rather than simply lacing the obvious with witticisms and passing it off as news.
That said something jumps out from reading the article: there's a big difference between eugenics and genetic enhancement. The fact is, there are a lot of significantly disadvantaged people in the world. They lack the intelligence, or possibly even general health and well-being, to compete in and contribute to society. Nothing is so humbling as to step back and realize that no small measure of your own success is due to gifts given you in a grand game of chance, which you did nothing to deserve. Genetics gives us the chance to equalize the luck of birth for all people. This cannot be inherently bad. Or, to romanticize it less than Katz: if you know 1 in 100 babies with be born with genes for a removable genetic defect which will render them retarded, what is the greater ill -- to fix their genetic code, or to birth them and claim, "Everyone is acceptable"?
I'm not preaching unacceptance. I believe everyone's life has an equal inherent value. But what a person derives from their own life is largely contingent upon their blessings, or lack thereof, of genetic chance. To give everyone a chance to start equal should appeal to people on every part of the political spectrum. And this is the best way, of course, by raising up the less fortunate through a "miracle" of science, rather than by handicapping the more capable, which is a popular theme in today's world.
As a final thought on that first observation, society needs to require responsible parents for such children. If you add genetic enhancement to the mix of poor, ill-equipped parents without time to raise their children, society may find itself in the midst of a boom of genius criminals, and one person I respect has observed to me before that it is much easier to destroy than create. For those of the security vein, the observation was it is considerably easier to penetrate a system than to truly secure it. Similarly, it is easier to destroy life than to protect it, and rushing ahead of ourselves by over-enhancement may mean our own destruction. We may end up with the power to create our own mad scientists, as it were, and sadly, as often as they are romanticized to go hand in hand, moral responsibility does not accompany scientific prowess.
In the end, you simply cannot ignore the benefits that can be enjoyed as a result of this ambitious research. You cannot turn back the clock -- you cannot unsplit the atom, make the world flat again, or place the Earth at the center of the universe. And that said, you cannot undiscover our genes. The reason Gattaca was so poignant was not only the warning it gave, but the certainty many felt upon seeing it that society would face that moral dilemna.
It is now up to all of us to see we make the right choices for everyone, take moderation to heart, and use technology responsibly, while guarding against those who would abuse it.
I guess Lucas has to make his merchandise billions somewhere, but couldn't he find a less obnoxious character than Jar Jar?
Maul does Got milk
The US form of government is not one of rule-by-the-people, but rather, rule by the people's elected representatives. Democracy is fraught with problems -- simply put, you can't expect every citizen (especially the "average" citizens) to understand all the issues behind proposed legislation. Imagine the laws you would see passed if technology enabled all Americans to simply click laws into existence on even a 2/3 vote. Banning all pornography? (Save the children!) done. Banning books that use any of a list of 50 bad words? (Save the children!) done. (And so disappears "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" for the use of the N* word -- and you thought it was bad when individual school boards banned it)
And that's only creative content. _Dread_ what would happen to all sorts of other things. Wholesale discrimination against any minority group, so on. Education, hurrah. Online people's voting for legislation? Ow.
Two comments:
(1) Suppressing illegally copied music is hardly impinging on the freedom of the internet. It is such a stretch from banning pirating music over Napster to banning trading ideas on a web page, I'm surprised the poster even tried to make the connection.
(2) About bandwidth considerations: obviously, anyone with bandwidth has to manage it. Whether it requires a little (keep it up, go free for all), or a lot (rate shaping on traffic analysis) is a matter of scarcity.
Count on slashdot to spin any story on Napster into something as preposterously significant as "the death of the internet".
Indeed, I think it would be more appropriate to say that open source is not inherently more trustworthy. In terms of levels of trust, open source alone guarantees nothing. Nonetheless, if I had a choice between a solidly tested and reviewed trusted BSD and trusted Solaris, I'd probably prefer trusted BSD.
Seriously. There's a whole other lawsuit Microsoft SHOULD have to deal with about their hiding so much of their API from other developers -- never mind their browser war behavior.
I've always been a bit annoyed with Use taxes. Use taxes generally tax you for anything you buy in a situation where you haven't paid sales tax. The constitution does not permit taxing interstate commerce directly, but states that want sales tax revenue generally levy "use" taxes on things you purchase from across state lines to get their cut. In a way, this benefits your local merchants, though, because it means you aren't encouraged to mail-order solely because of the tax benefits. Still, Use taxes aren't reported, since a Washington State company has no duty to report that you bought $50 in books while in CA, and so while you can be caught, most people generally never pay this tax.
Sales Taxes come into effect whenever you buy from within your state (if your state HAS sales tax), or whenever you buy from an out-of-state company which has an "in-state" presence. In other words, if you're in TX, and you order from a mail order company in CA, but they have a branch office in TX, then they must collect sales tax. That's how I understand the mess.
I haven't paid a lot of attention to the Internet Tax moratorium, and so I've wondered: what do they plan on taxing? Another "internet" tax on TOP OF sales/use tax? I'm sure brick and mortar merchants would love it, but I don't see it really benefiting state governments a lot. If the customer state gets the tax, why not just enforce their use tax? How will they force another state's company to track the taxes? And if the shipping/merchant state gets the taxes, I see a lot of migration of internet companies that don't need to be centralized to other places -- maybe Oregon -- that don't charge sales tax (and therefore, in my mind, would not levy internet taxes).
And in the larger picture -- can't the government just pick a tax? Maybe they just don't want people to know how nickel and dimed they get. Add up income tax, sales tax, property tax, social security, state income tax, plus possible self-employment tax, car registration fees (which in some states are so exorbitant they are clearly just another tax), etc, and some people find themselves paying 60%+ to the government. That's just lame.