Well on moral terms, globalized intellectual property essentially means that every country in the world has to enact the same laws as the countries that have intellectual property. Why should they? Some of those countries are democratic, but decided not to enact the same copyright, trademark, and patent system that the USA has -- should the power of the people be usurped just so that the US can balance its trade (on paper)?
On a more realist level, we have yet to convince every nation to take the same aggressive approach to copyrights/etc. that the USA takes, and we certainly have not convinced the citizens of those countries to respect such things. A quick trip to Chinatown reveals the problem: thousands of cheap clones of luxury brands, in many cases made of the same materials and with the same designs as the "authorized" versions, likely produced in violation of trademark and copyright agreements (perhaps from several companies, as in the case of knockoff iPhones). If these things were only being sold in China, it would be irrelevant, but they are being sold here in the USA -- meaning that someone had to buy them from China. Even if it was under the table, it still matters in terms of its economic impact.
So unless you have a way to convince the Chinese government to stop imprisoning people for practicing obscure religions and to start imprisoning them for infringing on American copyrights, I would agree with the GP: it is impossible to base our economy on "intellectual property." Real, tangible goods must form the backbone.
Except that tangible goods are exactly that: tangible. Copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets are only meaningful if governments are willing to enforce them. Claiming that it is OK for one country to import tangible goods at a higher rate than they are exported because the imbalance is corrected by contractual agreements is kind of like saying it is OK to smoke a cigarette at a gas station. It is something you can get away with for a while, but it is not a good idea in the long run, and it will undoubtedly blow up in your face.
"Intellectual property" is not a solid plan for balancing trade, since not all countries have the same view on patents and copyrights, and certainly not on trademarks. After all these years of people crying about "counterfeit" goods, why would someone use "intellectual property" as the justification for the current structure of the US economy?
Which could very well indicate that one location received no service at all, while some other locations received spotty coverage. That could be really bad; the average reliability of this system really tells you very little about how well it is working.
"Adding 'redundancy' would more than double the network cost"
That is completely dependent on the topology of the network, which I am guessing you do not have access to. Case in point: if the network is a star (likely, since a single link failure takes an office offline), simply adding an extra link between every other node (thus pairs of leaf nodes are connected) and allowing the nodes to route traffic between each other is not going to double the cost of the network. This is still not ideal (since neighboring nodes will have their "spoke" links combined somewhere in all likelihood), but it is just an example to illustrate that the topology of the network matters a lot in determining redundancy costs.
"In small-town Virginia, you're almost certainly going to wind up paying for having redundant wires hanging on the same poles."
That depends on where the redundant links go. If you have one link going north from a town, and another link going east, they are not going to be on the same pole.
It is unethical to knowingly provide your customer with a poorly designed system, especially when they clearly do not understand what makes the system poorly designed. Engineers should be meeting with their clients, reviewing the specs, questioning things that do not make sense, for weeks or months before actually building or deploying a system. If the customer knew every detail of what they need, they would not be spending so much money hiring an engineering firm, and yes, an engineering firm that takes advantage of customers who lack an in-depth technical understanding are behaving unethically.
If the customers refuse to listen to the engineers, then yes, it is their fault. As someone else pointed out, we should not comment on the situation unless we have details about how this happened -- did Northrop tell VA that redundant links were a necessity? Did VA ignore the advice? Or, on the flip side, did VA give a partial specification, and Northrop failed to adequately address issues that were overlooked by VA officials?
In my experience, it is rare for a customer, even with professional IT staff, to properly specify their needs when it comes to technology. Why did Northrop, which presumably has experience in government systems, not design backups?
They are maintaining the government mandated censorship list. How could you possibly call this "less control?" The Chinese government is exerting as much control over Opera as any other company.
"Also, did you ever consider that more services like Opera Mini means more difficulty enforcing the censorship, and a higher chance of cracks in the firewall?"
Not if Opera is working to enforce the censorship. This is just an expanded market for censored material.
Just install some sort of ssh server on all their computers, open port 22, and you are good to go. Cygwin might be a good way to get a no cost ssh server that runs as a Windows service, if your family is still using Windows.
I wonder what would happen if we simply asked various computer makers to sell us specific laptop models with Linux preinstalled. Maybe if enough people ask for it, get turned down, and then say, "Thanks, I'll buy from your competitors," we would start to see progress on the "Linux laptops" front.
"Don't worry, the models are bunk, CO2 is not the driving force behind temperature change."
Explaining, of course, why we continue to see verification of those models.
"But what the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration will definitely do is be a great benefit to plant growth. Plants are starved for lack of CO2."
This is a poor generalization -- increased levels of CO2 in a climate controlled greenhouse do not generalize to a global increase. Plants may grow faster, or they may deplete the soil faster and destroy ecosystems. Dominant plant species may suddenly be displaced by species that can better utilize the increased carbon dioxide. Increasing numbers of plants may cause an increase in animal populations, which could upset well established ecosystems in unknown ways.
There are too many factors to say for sure that increased CO2 is a good thing. Yes, it is also difficult to say what effect the rise in CO2 will have on temperature, or what effect a change in average global temperatures will have on the world. The rise in temperatures is increasingly supported, much more so today than at the time of the article you cited (which was written when Al Gore was a senator).
There was no lying. People who already doubt the results pull a sentence out of context, demand that we all forget normal idiomatic uses of English words in that sentence, and then claim that it is an indication of falsified data. That is all, nothing to see here, move along.
Well, keep in mind that over the past decade, there has been a tremendous growth in the number of automobile and computer owners, and that an enormous number of cell phones have been manufacture. Just producing enough cars, computers, and phones to keep up with demand probably knocked the CO2 emissions up a few notches.
It is not linear, which was the point. A temperature change over a century is not necessarily proportional to a temperature change over a decade within that century. The temperature change of two decades in that century are not necessarily equal.
Only those who read one sentence, and never bother to read anything else. Some of the data from a previous paper was found to be faulty, and a method of adjusting to show a longer term trend based on several data source was required. Not only is this not unheard of, it is a routine technique in studies where some data cannot be duplicated -- such as a temperature reading.
Speaking of warping science to conform to a belief, why is it that so many people are so eager to believe global warming skeptics? Methinks it is because they do not want to believe that something as innocent as driving a car could be a problem.
"you should receive "long-term benefits" for being depressed, yet find the strength to go out to the beach and to parties"
A friend of mine with depression came to a party once. He appeared to be happy for a few hours, but the next day, he kept himself locked inside, and could not find the strength to face the world.
Going to a party or two is not equivalent to going to work, and it is not an indication that someone is no longer depressed.
"that a government-run system would not do the same."
Unfortunately, there are those in the government who will fight against universal healthcare even after it has been implemented, trying to cut costs as much as possible, in the hopes of undoing it all. Yes, it will require tax dollars to run, and yes, it will require a more progressive tax code.
"If it would be run the way you envision it (everyone gets everything for every possible and impossible reason), "
Who said anything about that? We are talking about depression, not a foot rash -- depression is not just a matter of having a bad day, or even a series of bad days, it is a serious condition which destroys families and lives. I suppose you would also say that it is absurd for a cancer patient to receive coverage for chemotherapy?
"the entire country would be utterly bankrupt in a decade."
Yes, because we all know that a heavy progressive tax will bankrupt the country. That is exactly what happened in the 1950s, when America's progressive tax system levied a 90% income tax on some people, right? Oh, wait, that is the era when we discovered nuclear power, sent men into space, and developed the integrated circuit.
"Instead what you will have is a MORE intrusive system, because as a customer you'd have no recourse against its failures."
What recourse do we have against the private insurance system? All insurance companies engage in these sorts of behaviors, because it is the only way to deliver increasing profits to their shareholders. Even if you know of a company that is not working against its patients, you might not be able to afford the premiums, especially for those who rely on their employer's healthcare plan (as opposed to paying insurance premiums out of pocket). Only the wealthy can "vote with their dollar."
At least with a government provided plan, you have a theoretically equal vote.
Some people are not as able to cope with depression as you claim to be. I have a few friends who suffer, and if they were not receiving medication and therapy, they would never have the will to see daylight, let alone accomplish anything. For them, it is not a matter of biting the bullet, they need help, and thankfully they receive it.
Depression is an illness, and if a doctor diagnoses depression and a medical treatment for it, then the patient should receive that treatment. The fact that we are in a recession does not mean that people should stop receiving care; if private companies are going to "tighten the belt" because of a recession, then medical care should be paid for by the government, with tax dollars.
Depression is not a "mild" problem that can be ignored, it is a syndrome that destroys lives, something I am a witness to.
Not smoke; smoke residue. That is what this case is about, and that is what I said in my post. Cigarette smoke residue is a lot less hazardous than cigarette smoke...
"a worker can sue their employer for forcing them to work on hazardous materials"
Only if they are not issued appropriate protective gear. People are forced to work with materials far more hazardous than cigarette smoke every day in a wide variety of industries, but they have no grounds to sue an employer who provides them with whatever mask or suit they need to wear. If Apple really thinks the residue from cigarette smoke is a danger to their tech staff, they should be issuing them appropriate protective gear, instead of trying to avoid upholding the warranty agreement. Personally, if I were working with computers from random people, I would want some kind of face mask just to protect my lungs from the dust, which would be enough to protect from smoke residue as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Well on moral terms, globalized intellectual property essentially means that every country in the world has to enact the same laws as the countries that have intellectual property. Why should they? Some of those countries are democratic, but decided not to enact the same copyright, trademark, and patent system that the USA has -- should the power of the people be usurped just so that the US can balance its trade (on paper)?
On a more realist level, we have yet to convince every nation to take the same aggressive approach to copyrights/etc. that the USA takes, and we certainly have not convinced the citizens of those countries to respect such things. A quick trip to Chinatown reveals the problem: thousands of cheap clones of luxury brands, in many cases made of the same materials and with the same designs as the "authorized" versions, likely produced in violation of trademark and copyright agreements (perhaps from several companies, as in the case of knockoff iPhones). If these things were only being sold in China, it would be irrelevant, but they are being sold here in the USA -- meaning that someone had to buy them from China. Even if it was under the table, it still matters in terms of its economic impact.
So unless you have a way to convince the Chinese government to stop imprisoning people for practicing obscure religions and to start imprisoning them for infringing on American copyrights, I would agree with the GP: it is impossible to base our economy on "intellectual property." Real, tangible goods must form the backbone.
Except that tangible goods are exactly that: tangible. Copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets are only meaningful if governments are willing to enforce them. Claiming that it is OK for one country to import tangible goods at a higher rate than they are exported because the imbalance is corrected by contractual agreements is kind of like saying it is OK to smoke a cigarette at a gas station. It is something you can get away with for a while, but it is not a good idea in the long run, and it will undoubtedly blow up in your face.
Sorry, references are not on hand at the moment.
"Intellectual property" is not a solid plan for balancing trade, since not all countries have the same view on patents and copyrights, and certainly not on trademarks. After all these years of people crying about "counterfeit" goods, why would someone use "intellectual property" as the justification for the current structure of the US economy?
"1.07 failures at any given time"
Which could very well indicate that one location received no service at all, while some other locations received spotty coverage. That could be really bad; the average reliability of this system really tells you very little about how well it is working.
"Adding 'redundancy' would more than double the network cost"
That is completely dependent on the topology of the network, which I am guessing you do not have access to. Case in point: if the network is a star (likely, since a single link failure takes an office offline), simply adding an extra link between every other node (thus pairs of leaf nodes are connected) and allowing the nodes to route traffic between each other is not going to double the cost of the network. This is still not ideal (since neighboring nodes will have their "spoke" links combined somewhere in all likelihood), but it is just an example to illustrate that the topology of the network matters a lot in determining redundancy costs.
"In small-town Virginia, you're almost certainly going to wind up paying for having redundant wires hanging on the same poles."
That depends on where the redundant links go. If you have one link going north from a town, and another link going east, they are not going to be on the same pole.
It is unethical to knowingly provide your customer with a poorly designed system, especially when they clearly do not understand what makes the system poorly designed. Engineers should be meeting with their clients, reviewing the specs, questioning things that do not make sense, for weeks or months before actually building or deploying a system. If the customer knew every detail of what they need, they would not be spending so much money hiring an engineering firm, and yes, an engineering firm that takes advantage of customers who lack an in-depth technical understanding are behaving unethically.
If the customers refuse to listen to the engineers, then yes, it is their fault. As someone else pointed out, we should not comment on the situation unless we have details about how this happened -- did Northrop tell VA that redundant links were a necessity? Did VA ignore the advice? Or, on the flip side, did VA give a partial specification, and Northrop failed to adequately address issues that were overlooked by VA officials?
In my experience, it is rare for a customer, even with professional IT staff, to properly specify their needs when it comes to technology. Why did Northrop, which presumably has experience in government systems, not design backups?
RTFA; Opera's proxies for OperaMini are enforcing the Chinese censorship list.
They are maintaining the government mandated censorship list. How could you possibly call this "less control?" The Chinese government is exerting as much control over Opera as any other company.
So?
"Also, did you ever consider that more services like Opera Mini means more difficulty enforcing the censorship, and a higher chance of cracks in the firewall?"
Not if Opera is working to enforce the censorship. This is just an expanded market for censored material.
Just install some sort of ssh server on all their computers, open port 22, and you are good to go. Cygwin might be a good way to get a no cost ssh server that runs as a Windows service, if your family is still using Windows.
I wonder what would happen if we simply asked various computer makers to sell us specific laptop models with Linux preinstalled. Maybe if enough people ask for it, get turned down, and then say, "Thanks, I'll buy from your competitors," we would start to see progress on the "Linux laptops" front.
"Don't worry, the models are bunk, CO2 is not the driving force behind temperature change."
Explaining, of course, why we continue to see verification of those models.
"But what the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration will definitely do is be a great benefit to plant growth. Plants are starved for lack of CO2."
This is a poor generalization -- increased levels of CO2 in a climate controlled greenhouse do not generalize to a global increase. Plants may grow faster, or they may deplete the soil faster and destroy ecosystems. Dominant plant species may suddenly be displaced by species that can better utilize the increased carbon dioxide. Increasing numbers of plants may cause an increase in animal populations, which could upset well established ecosystems in unknown ways.
There are too many factors to say for sure that increased CO2 is a good thing. Yes, it is also difficult to say what effect the rise in CO2 will have on temperature, or what effect a change in average global temperatures will have on the world. The rise in temperatures is increasingly supported, much more so today than at the time of the article you cited (which was written when Al Gore was a senator).
"A predicted 6 degrees Celsius rise in a century? Oh, how scary! Let's introduce onerous carbon-curbing measures."
I take it you've never tried to grow your own food? A few degrees can mean the difference between getting a juicy tomato or just a leafy vine.
"It seems like cutting CO2 back to the levels needed to stop global warming would require or cause a much more serious recession."
Cause and effect fail? A recession forces people to reduce emissions, but it is not the only way to do so...
There was no lying. People who already doubt the results pull a sentence out of context, demand that we all forget normal idiomatic uses of English words in that sentence, and then claim that it is an indication of falsified data. That is all, nothing to see here, move along.
"All this has been for naught?"
Well, keep in mind that over the past decade, there has been a tremendous growth in the number of automobile and computer owners, and that an enormous number of cell phones have been manufacture. Just producing enough cars, computers, and phones to keep up with demand probably knocked the CO2 emissions up a few notches.
It is not linear, which was the point. A temperature change over a century is not necessarily proportional to a temperature change over a decade within that century. The temperature change of two decades in that century are not necessarily equal.
Only those who read one sentence, and never bother to read anything else. Some of the data from a previous paper was found to be faulty, and a method of adjusting to show a longer term trend based on several data source was required. Not only is this not unheard of, it is a routine technique in studies where some data cannot be duplicated -- such as a temperature reading.
Speaking of warping science to conform to a belief, why is it that so many people are so eager to believe global warming skeptics? Methinks it is because they do not want to believe that something as innocent as driving a car could be a problem.
"you should receive "long-term benefits" for being depressed, yet find the strength to go out to the beach and to parties"
A friend of mine with depression came to a party once. He appeared to be happy for a few hours, but the next day, he kept himself locked inside, and could not find the strength to face the world.
Going to a party or two is not equivalent to going to work, and it is not an indication that someone is no longer depressed.
"that a government-run system would not do the same."
Unfortunately, there are those in the government who will fight against universal healthcare even after it has been implemented, trying to cut costs as much as possible, in the hopes of undoing it all. Yes, it will require tax dollars to run, and yes, it will require a more progressive tax code.
"If it would be run the way you envision it (everyone gets everything for every possible and impossible reason), "
Who said anything about that? We are talking about depression, not a foot rash -- depression is not just a matter of having a bad day, or even a series of bad days, it is a serious condition which destroys families and lives. I suppose you would also say that it is absurd for a cancer patient to receive coverage for chemotherapy?
"the entire country would be utterly bankrupt in a decade."
Yes, because we all know that a heavy progressive tax will bankrupt the country. That is exactly what happened in the 1950s, when America's progressive tax system levied a 90% income tax on some people, right? Oh, wait, that is the era when we discovered nuclear power, sent men into space, and developed the integrated circuit.
"Instead what you will have is a MORE intrusive system, because as a customer you'd have no recourse against its failures."
What recourse do we have against the private insurance system? All insurance companies engage in these sorts of behaviors, because it is the only way to deliver increasing profits to their shareholders. Even if you know of a company that is not working against its patients, you might not be able to afford the premiums, especially for those who rely on their employer's healthcare plan (as opposed to paying insurance premiums out of pocket). Only the wealthy can "vote with their dollar."
At least with a government provided plan, you have a theoretically equal vote.
Some people are not as able to cope with depression as you claim to be. I have a few friends who suffer, and if they were not receiving medication and therapy, they would never have the will to see daylight, let alone accomplish anything. For them, it is not a matter of biting the bullet, they need help, and thankfully they receive it.
Depression is an illness, and if a doctor diagnoses depression and a medical treatment for it, then the patient should receive that treatment. The fact that we are in a recession does not mean that people should stop receiving care; if private companies are going to "tighten the belt" because of a recession, then medical care should be paid for by the government, with tax dollars.
Depression is not a "mild" problem that can be ignored, it is a syndrome that destroys lives, something I am a witness to.
Not smoke; smoke residue. That is what this case is about, and that is what I said in my post. Cigarette smoke residue is a lot less hazardous than cigarette smoke...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#Toxicity
"a worker can sue their employer for forcing them to work on hazardous materials"
Only if they are not issued appropriate protective gear. People are forced to work with materials far more hazardous than cigarette smoke every day in a wide variety of industries, but they have no grounds to sue an employer who provides them with whatever mask or suit they need to wear. If Apple really thinks the residue from cigarette smoke is a danger to their tech staff, they should be issuing them appropriate protective gear, instead of trying to avoid upholding the warranty agreement. Personally, if I were working with computers from random people, I would want some kind of face mask just to protect my lungs from the dust, which would be enough to protect from smoke residue as well.