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Linux has come a long way from being just a geek's operating system. But there is no doubt that Linux is still the best operating system for geeks and developers. The effect of Linux as a development environment has not just been limited to Linux, but has spread on all systems including embedded devices. Projects like Firefox, FileZilla, Qt and SuperTux were originally created on Linux and then made their way to different platforms.
It used to be when you bought a product, you owned it. Simple, right? And once you owned it, you could do what you want with it? But, lately, thanks to digital products and an always connected world, many companies have changed things around -- so the products you thought you owned, you actually rent.
I have an awesome story that I would like to share, it involves Ampache, Ubuntu, Chelsea School, and the use of FOSS in education.
Based on Oracle's recent actions, it seems the company is hell-bent on driving as many of its potential customers as possible away from the UNIX offerings it acquired from Sun and into the arms of Red Hat and other enterprise Linux vendors.
What's startlingly clear from this little exercise though is how dismally Apple's operating systems match up to this list of ideals. Quite simply, OS X Server doesn't tick any of these boxes at all. If Linux is the closest thing to a dream OS, then OS X is without doubt an OS nightmare. Think, being chased by monsters, your teeth falling out and finding yourself naked in public all rolled into one.
Ok, so -rc2 was messy, no question about it. I'm too much of a softie to hold back some peoples work, so my hard-line -rc1 didn't work out the way I wanted. But _next_ time! For sure this time.
Anyway, from a messy -rc2 we now have a -rc3 that should be in much better shape. Regressions fixed, and the ShortLog is short enough to be worth posting to lkml (-rc1 never is, and -rc2 seldom is. It's not like -rc2's are generally wondeful, this time around wasn't _that_ much different).
According to the release plans, the release of X Server 1.8 should take place, and while in reality it will likely not be released today, its release is coming soon. When this release does arrive, it will add a new set of features to the X.Org stack and a number of other minor improvements and bug-fixes.
Thunar and Rox Filer are different from the average file manager, and different from each other too. Both are powerful and flexible, offering features unavailable in other Linux file managers. Thunar has an XP-like interface but it's Linux to the core. Rox has a unique look and feel -- and a rhyme and reason all its own. It grows on you.
Describing any Linux app as a counterpart for a Windows program can be a kiss of death, but that is what first attracted me to Thunar. When I migrated to Linux, Windows XP was my comfort zone. So Linux apps that gave me the look and feel of Windows made the transition easier. All file managers do not work the same way. Thunar worked like what I knew.
This free guide will tell you all you need to know in 20 illustrated pages, helping you to take your first steps. Let your curiosity take you hostage and start discovering Linux today, with this free manual as your guide!
47. Debian GNU/Linux: Got Apt-Get?: Log in to a shell as root, type "apt-get moo" and press Enter. An ASCII-based drawing of a cow saying, "Have you mooed today?" will appear. If you type "apt-get," a help file with the various switches appears. At the very end, it says, "This APT has Super Cow Powers".
We take a peek at how to create your own plasmoids for the latest KDE desktop, giving you the power to build the perfect active desktop environment.
LEADING LINUX VENDOR Red Hat has released Enterprise Linux version 5.5 and it is capable of running the latest Intel and AMD server processors.
RHEL 5.5 comes out just as Intel has announced its launch of the Xeon 7500 line based on its Nehalem EX architecture, and it has support for users wanting to run Linux workloads with cool stuff like virtualisation, cloud deployments and high-performance computing.
Open source enterprise software company Red Hat has updated its flagship operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to take full advantage of the latest spoils from the heated microprocessor battle between Advanced Micro Devices and Intel. RHEL version 5.5, released this week, has been reconfigured for Intel's just-released eight-core Nehalem-EX and AMD's almost-as-recently released 12-core "Magny-Cours" Opteron 6100 Series processors, said Tim Burke, Red Hat vice president for platform engineering. The software also supports the IBM eight-core Power7 processors, released in February.
"This is a great time for the next version of RHEL to hit the market," said Pund-IT analyst Charles King. This latest round in the continued proliferation of cores within AMD, IBM and Intel processors represents an "inflection point" for the industry, one that could spur a lot of data centre server consolidation, through the use of virtualisation, he said.
Chris started using Ubuntu on his server back in 2007 with Ubuntu Server 7.10. After realising the awesomeness of Ubuntu, he began using it on his desktop and laptop in 2008 with the Hardy Heron. Last year he was awarded Ubuntu Membership status for his continued work in the Ubuntu Beginners Team, Ubuntu Classroom and his LoCo in Florida.
WHAT price do you put on a principle?
Some people put their principles before their lives, dragging the whole of the human race along with them to a better place.
This is something that's been cooking for a while now and we are finally ready to serve it up to a hungry world!
Here's the bullet points:
* Based on Ubuntu * GNOME * Includes Wine by default * No Mono * Some QT/KDE apps by default * More you, less them
Price: £229 Tech Specs OS Tested: Ubuntu 9.10, Moblin 2.1, Fedora 12
We found the Zotac MAG HD-ND01 a real pleasure to use for everyday tasks. It dealt with fully fledged 32-bit distros like Fedora 12 and Ubuntu 9.10 wonderfully, thanks to its dual-core Atom processor. And its Ion-powered graphics will really hit the spot with videophiles looking for a slimline media unit.
Italian start-up Synaps Technology announced a Linux-based feature-phone that ships with an RF-connected keyfob panic button for GPS-enabled security response. The Petra phone is equipped with an ARM9 processor clocked at 266Mhz, and offers a 2GB SD card, GSM tri-band cellular service, a 2-megapixel camera, and a highly sensitive uBlox Neo 5G GPS receiver.
Of course, Google's Android defragmentation strategy is just speculation at this point, but it makes sense. There already are several manufacturers who customize various Android releases (HTC Sense, SE Timescape), so there has to be a better way to deliver core applications updates to users.
KDDI Corp., the country's second- largest mobile-phone operator, will introduce its first handset running Google Inc.'s Android operating system in June to catch up with rivals NTT DoCoMo Inc. and Softbank Corp.
The new model, made by Sharp Corp., will feature a 5-inch touch screen, full physical keyboard and will be able to receive television broadcasts, Tokyo-based KDDI said in a statement today. The handset is the first Android phone by a Japanese manufacturer.
Here in the United States, Android continues to gain steam as it grew from 27 percent to 42 percent share over the last four months.
The delayed Android 2.1 update for the Motorola Droid is starting to tarnish the successful launch of Verizon's first smartphone to run on Google's open source mobile operating system, according to posts at Motorola's Facebook page.
If you like ubuntu and like making digital music you should definitely take a look at Indamixx's Transmission.
Although it hasn't been confirmed, one device is expected to be Windows-based while the other is either Android or Chrome.
Jolicloud plans to release an SDK to help port apps to its platform, but since apps are in HTML5, any developer writing HTML5 apps won't need to make a "port," per se, said Krim.
For now, Jolicloud is a free product. Krim said the company is looking at different ways to monetize the software and/or services but for now, "we want to provide a compelling user experience before charging people."
What if all software was open source? Anybody would then be able to add custom features to Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, Apple iTunes or any other program. A University of Washington project may make this possible.
"Microsoft and Apple aren't going to open up all their stuff. But they all create programs that put pixels on the screen. And if we can modify those pixels, then we can change the program's apparent behavior," said James Fogarty, a UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering.
"It dramatically lowers the threshold to getting new innovation into existing, complex programs," Fogarty said.
Research has been funded by the Hacherl Endowed Graduate Fellowship in the UW Department of Computer Science & Engineering, a fellowship from the Seattle chapter of the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists, and Intel.
Registration opened last week for the Palmetto Open Source Software Conference (POSSCON,) the premier free and open source software confence in Columbia, South Carolina. It's a great way to both educate and involve yourself, or your organization, in free and open software and technology.
Our role in the market is to act on their behalf and make their lives better, both through strong positive product improvements, but also sometimes by standing up and saying that something is wrong. Our market share (30% of all traffic to Wikipedia comes through Firefox!) gives us a lot of leverage in that space to make choices in the market or drive other browser vendors to make the web better as well. It's a virtuous cycle.
Ten years ago next month, I moved to California to work on Mozilla full time and one of my first discoveries was a metal worker building giant metal dinosaur sculptures. I suggested to folks at Mozilla, back then, that we get one. Today, thanks to the efforts of Tiffney Mortensen, we finally have one.
MartinSchirr put together a few videos of Fennec on his Milestone (Droid) to show how things are progressing.
When making your first forays into relational database development, you can use simple SQL statements to mine your data easily enough. However, as your data grows in both size and breadth, you'll need to begin employing more sophisticated strategies for exploiting increasingly complex data relations. After all, pulling data from a single table is easy, but what if you need to query for data spanning three, four, or even eight different tables?
The original article referenced discussed how The Onion moved from Drupal, a PHP application platform, to Django, a Python framework.
After finishing his Bachelors Degree from the University of Michigan, and his Masters Degree from UC Berkeley, Joy wrote the original BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) UNIX operating system. Many modern operating systems are based on BSD, including NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly, Ultrix, and Mac OS X. In addition to BSD, he also wrote VI (Visual text editor), NFS (Network File System), and Csh (C shell). Yesââ¬Â¦ you read that correctlyââ¬Â¦ Bill Joy wrote the VI editor and the C shell!!! Any UNIX-guru is more than familiar with these programs. They are still widely-used today.
Bradley and Karen discuss the obligations and details of serving on a Board of Directors of a not-for-profit organization. Following that, they briefly discuss The Open Source Business Conference and LibrePlanet conference.
After a beta phase lasting exactly a year, the final version of OpenSSL 1.0.0 is here. The source code is now available to download and the list of changes from the previous version 0.9.8(n) is extensive. Version 1.0.0 includes several new features and enhancements, including support for the Whirlpool free hash algorithm, an alternative to the MD5 and SHA-1 algorithms, which have been under scrutiny due to the existence of simplified collision attacks.
Shishi is an implementation of the Kerberos 5 network authentication system. Shishi can be used to authenticate users in distributed systems. Shishi is part of a GNU system.
We have reached the zero P1 GCC 4.5 regressions required for a release candidate build of GCC 4.5.0. To allow this state to prevail the trunk is frozen for non-documentation changes starting April 2nd (use your timezone for your advantage). A release candidate will not be built before the end of Easter.
In short, according to the Court, favoring Free Software does not infringe freedom of competition, since software freedom is a general legal feature, and not a technological aspect connected to a specific product or brand. This ruling demonstrates the weakness of the arguments of those who, until now, have opposed the adoption of rules aimed at promoting and favoring Free Software arguing that they conflict with the principle of "technological neutrality".
The final year of all Italian High Schools (18/19 years age students) ends with a formal State Exam. Depending on which category of school they attend, all students are tested in a different group of subjects and the final vote also depends on personal projects prepared for each subject. This year, among all the final year students in Italy there are two who are preparing a project that is as unusual (at least for Italy) as interesting.
The final year of all Italian High Schools (18/19 years age students) ends with a formal State Exam. Depending on which category of school they attend, all students are tested in a different group of subjects and the final vote also depends on personal projects prepared for each subject. This year, among all the final year students in Italy there are two who are preparing a project that is as unusual (at least for Italy) as interesting.
The Swiss agency for IT in education, SFIB, is recommending that all schools switch to open source software. The IT agency is developing support offerings for schools that are using free and open source software.
The IT agency for Swiss schools, SFIB (Schweizerischen Fachstelle für Informationstechnologien im Bildungswesen) on 1 March posted several documents on its web site, recommending schools to start moving to free and open source software and to stop purchasing or renewing proprietary software licences.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Batman! What the fsck does that say? Here's my plain English translation:If you (or one of your partners) provide software licensed under GPLv3, and agree not to sue anyone — the agreement not to sue (and the use of patents that are in the software) will apply to all future recipients of that software.
Any patent agreement which attempts to nullify any rights given to you or others in the GPLv3 is invalid. This includes paying a partner distribute the software for you and agreeing not to sue them.
Open-source recipes
After a day of shopping and a night of stirring, seasoning, tasting and waiting, you've created a food symphony -- a perfect meal and a killer recipe. Now, thanks to open-source recipe sharing, you can make your recipe public for chefs everywhere to recreate.
Incidentally, an Italian court ruled yesterday that public authorities in Italy's Piedmont region can legally maintain a preference for Free Software in their purchasing decisions. The court considered that such a requirement refers to a characteristic of the software, rather than to a specific product or technology.
This should give a further boost to public bodies that want to use Free Software and Open Standards. It should also remove an obstacle for those that are interested, but haven't yet made the jump.
In this context, Document Freedom Day is a day of hope. It shows that people around the world are passionate about Open Standards, Free Software, and the freedom to use technology as they wish. Governments in Europe and elsewhere should take note.
Today (March 31st) is Document Freedom Day, and I encourage everyone to talk about Document Freedom with all of your friends, and even your enemies.
In 1973 I worked for Aetna Life and Casualty, at that time the "largest commercial user of IBM equipment in the Free World". We did not know what the government was using, and we did not know what the Russians were using, but other than that, Aetna was the largest.
One day I was finding out where a series of magnetic tapes were located for a project that I was working on and I typed the tape numbers into the mainframe. Eventually I was finished, and curious, I typed in the tape number "000001". The machine came back:
I typed in "000002".
Being persistent (some people unkindly say I am "stubborn"), I typed in "000003":
Astonished at this, I went to my boss and said "Tom, how in the world are we ever going to read this magnetic tape in the future?" Tom looked at me wisely and said, "No problem. If we ever have to read that tape we have a seven-track tape drive wrapped in bubble-wrap at the salt mine too."
So of course this is all hinting at ODF (OpenDocument Format), which has a specification (v.1.1) and a process for updating the specification when needed. I believe the specification itself has its issues — it really is difficult to specify syntax and semantics with rigor — but it gets the job done and, most importantly, is written in good faith and available for everyone to implement on a royalty-free basis. The latter is important because we want to play by the rules but also need to enable current and future implementations of tools that use the document format without restrictions.
When you attach a file to an email, please make sure that your correspondent will be able to read your files correctly. It is a basic principle of courtesy. And there is an easy way to make this possible: use open standards. If you do so, your correspondent will have the possibility to choose which program he or she wants. Open standards guarantee sustainability and interoperability for your data, making sure you will be able to access them in the future, even with another software, on another platform or operating system.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today launched a campaign calling on all computer users to start politely rejecting email attachments sent in secret and proprietary formats: for freedom and the good of the web!
The campaign is in support of Document Freedom Day and the OpenDocument format. OpenDocument is an ISO standard that allows anyone to create software that supports it, without fear of patent claims or licensing issues. Documents, spreadsheets and presentations sent in Microsoft Word or Excel native formats, or documents created in Apple's iWorks, are proprietary and incompatible with freedom and an accessible web.
According to other reports, the NY Times also paid $114,000 to the father and son (and to a lawyer representing both). Either way, this whole thing is very odd. Why would a reporter for a respectable publication ever agree not to give an opinion on something? And why would the NY Times' cave for merely stating that having a father and son both as prime minister's represents something of a dynasty?
The prosecutor brought charges Monday against nine teenagers, saying their taunting and physical threats were beyond the pale and led the freshman, Phoebe Prince, to hang herself from a stairwell in January.
Last April, Sen. Jay Rockefeller [D, WV] (pictured at right), the Chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, introduced the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 to his committee. The goal of the bill was to develop a public-private plan for strengthening national security in the case of internet-based attacks. But it stalled almost immediately because of a controversial provision that would have give the President unilateral authority to declare a cybersecurity emergency and then shut down or limit access to parts of the internet without any oversight or explanation.
Schools are denying pupils their civil liberties by fingerprinting them without seeking the consent of their parents, teachers warned yesterday.
Around 80 secondary schools have introduced a new method of scanning the thumbs of pupils as part of a biometric system to replace swipe cards for registration, library book borrowing and cashless catering for school meals. The use of fingerprinting comes despite fears – acknowledged by the Information Commissioners' Office – that some parents believe the practice leads to children being "treated like criminals".
PERSONAL details of 9,000 school pupils has been stolen from the home of a Barnet Council worker, it has been revealed.
Twenty unauthorised and unencrypted CDs and memory sticks with details including names, date of birth, addresses, phone numbers and school attainment were taken from the house a fortnight ago.
You can imagine my surprise after I paid my 50pence to use the public bathroom, walked in and found myself staring at not just one but three ceiling mounted video surveillance cameras. I had to get real close to their enclosures to convince myself that I wasn't seeing things. Not only was it really there, but it was a Pan-Tilt-Zoom model with a microphone to top it off. Must get some great noises coming from there. It has also been reported that London officials are now installing cameras with speakers to allow them to talk as well as see and listen. Perhaps its just me, but I had absolutely no idea that this was legal anywhere, let alone in downtown London, UK. Sure I knew that London has more cameras per square mile than any other country on the planet, but in bathrooms?! How are they getting away with that one? It is appalling!
The second issue is that the former Prime Minister implies that those opposed to an expansion of the DNA database are somehow letting 'murderers, rapists and those who commit violent assault' get away with their crimes. Yet, as a staunch opponent of the retention of DNA from those who are later proven innocent, I can say without any doubt that I am not opposed to DNA being collected from those three groups of ne'er do wells.
Earlier this month we highlighted the tragic case of Jim Railton - the auctioneer from Alnwick who had been arrested for putting a 19th Century wooden cabinet containing birds eggs up for sale at his auction house.
Jim is a parish councillor and a law-abiding man who, because of this ridiculous episode, has now had his DNA added to the national database and gained a criminal record.
John Thompson spent 18 years in a Louisiana prison, 14 of them in a windowless, six-by-nine-foot death row cell. According to a federal appeals court, "There were multiple mentally deranged prisoners near him who would yell and scream at all hours and throw human waste at the guards." Thompson, whose execution was scheduled half a dozen times, was a few weeks away from death by lethal injection when his life was saved by a bloody scrap of cloth.
The latest version of Passware Kit Forensic has become the first commercially available software to break TrueCrypt hard drive encryption without applying a time-consuming brute-force attack. It was also the first product to decrypt BitLocker drives.
Nearly a quarter of people (23 per cent) polled in a survey by Symantec use their browser to keep tabs on their passwords.
A survey of 400 surfers by Symantec also found that 60 per cent fail to change their passwords regularly. Further violating the 'passwords should be treated like toothbrushes' maxim (changed frequently and not shared), the pollsters also found that a quarter of people have given their passwords to their spouse, while one in 10 people have given their password to a 'friend'.
London is "on budget and on time", according to organisers, but the cost is about three times the original estimate. The economic downturn scuppered its private and public partnership plans for two of the park's biggest projects, the Olympic Village and media centre, forcing the taxpayer to step in.
Experts say the security budget of 600 million pounds, the same as Vancouver, is hopelessly optimistic given that Britain will be a much bigger target for potential attackers after its support of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
To be clear we are not picking on Apple, we are not 'dissing' the iPad, but maybe someone can come up with an app that calculates the carbon footprint of using different web sites based on their location and energy deals. Apple is the master of promotion, and while we marvel at the sleek unpolluted design of the iPad, we need to think about where this is all leading and how like all good surfers we can make sure our environment stays clean and green.
Bloomberg, which has done some of the best reporting on the financial crisis, is also leading the charge on the fight for transparency at the Federal Reserve and in the financial sector. While many policymakers and reporters were focusing their attention on the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout bill passed by Congress, Bloomberg was one of the first to notice that the TARP program was small change compared to the estimated $2-3 trillion flowing out the back door of the Federal Reserve to prop up the financial system in the early months of the crisis.
Kaptur is authoring a bill, H.R. 3995 the "Financial Crisis of 2008 Criminal Investigation and Prosecution Act of 2009," that gives the FBI 1,000 more agents and forensic experts and tells them to get cracking.
The insider trading scheme revolves around Raj Rajaratnam, the founder and managing director of Galleon Management, formerly a $7bn New York hedge fund that was unwound last year in the wake of the scandal, and Danielle Chiesi, an employee at New Castle Funds, formerly the equity hedge fund group of Bear Stearns.
Noted banking security expert Ross Anderson was forced to threaten action in the small claims court before his bank agreed to refund a disputed transaction.
President Obama's push for electronic medical records [1] has faced resistance from those who question whether health information technology systems can protect patient privacy.
So last week, the U.S Department of Health and Human Services hired a public relations firm to try to win consumer trust.
Just days after President Obama signed the new health care law, insurance companies are already arguing that, at least for now, they do not have to provide one of the benefits that the president calls a centerpiece of the law: coverage for certain children with pre-existing conditions.
Unfortunately for the Obamas, and for the entire nation, once the story hit the news, it became politicized. While the issue was initially raised as a comment on the safety of using sewage sludge as fertilizer – an issue that has no political party – the right soon grabbed a hold of the story as a way to make fun of the Obamas. Some on the left fiercely defended the Obamas in return. But the Obamas are not the villains in this story; they are the victims. They are among many other Americans whose yards and gardens are contaminated with sewage sludge without their knowledge and who, as a result, are exposed to toxic contaminants in the soil. And lead is just a fraction of the overall problem.
The original "Yes We Can" video set to music Obama's campaign speech featuring the phrase, "Yes We Can." In the new mashup, Boehner repeatedly interrupts Obama's "Yes We Can" speech with his harsh yell of "Hell no you can't!" The soothing and melodic guitar in the piece only serves to make Boehner's yell sound harsher. The mashup video has gotten over 445,000 views in the last six days, and prompted an opinion piece from the conservative media outlet FoxNews.com which said Republicans are close to "destroying their brand" and desperately need a new, more positive marketing spin, or else "the Republicans will be in the wilderness for a very long time."
The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has launched a stinging attack on Google and its credibility in response to the search giant's campaign against the government's internet filtering policy.
Many broadband users wonder whether their broadband provider is monitoring and recording their online activity. We get the facts.
You would think that the owner of every single WordPress site out there would want as many visitors as possible, but you'd be wrong. Not everyone needs Sunday Morning SEO. There are plenty of reasons why you would want to keep a blog as private as possible. Perhaps you're using it as an project site in conjunction with the awesome P2 theme and you only want the project members seeing the posts and responding or perhaps you have just set up a site for you newly born and you want to share those early updates with just your family.
That law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or ECPA, is notoriously convoluted and difficult even for judges to follow. The coalition hopes to simplify the wording while requiring police to obtain a search warrant to access private communications and the locations of mobile devices--which is not always the case today.
A GROUP of lawmakers have written to the US Federal Trade Commission and asked it to have a look into Google Buzz.
Newzbin was a members-only website and had turnover of more than £1m in 2009. It provided members with a search engine for Usenet groups. Precise terms of the judgement are still to be decided, but the site is unlikely to continue in its current form.
The frequency of vertical integration lawsuits has slowed in recent years, thanks to increased studio efforts to negotiate at arms length and new deal language that has kept many disputes in private arbitration rather than public litigation.
Oscar-winning director James Cameron says the key to combating digital piracy in the movie industry is to use technology to create an experience that is unmatched anywhere other than the theater.
The House has passed a bill that would prevent government employees from using peer-to-peer file-sharing software either in the office or when accessing government networks remotely from home.
THE CROWN PROSECUTION SERVICE has dropped a legal case against a seventeen year old boy accused of illegally distributing copyrighted material.
The boy in question, Matthew Wyatt, was seventeen when he was accused of sharing three albums and one single and arrested at home in front of his parents despite a lack of evidence.
Uh oh. It appears that a group of independent filmmakers don't seem to recognize the kind of backlash they can receive for going to war against file sharers. It appears that a company, ridiculously named the US Copyright Group, has signed up a bunch of independent filmmakers, with the unofficial backing of Independent Film & Television Alliance, to follow in the footsteps of the disastrous European automated copyright infringement threat letter campaign, and have already gone after 20,000 alleged file sharers with another 30,000 about to follow. Five specific lawsuits have been filed, listing the 20,000 IP addresses accused of infringement.
Warner Bros Entertainment UK is recruiting tech-savvy students to help the company with their anti-piracy efforts. During the 12 month internship the students will have to maintain accounts at private BitTorrent sites, develop link-scanning bots, make trap purchases and perform various other anti-piracy tasks.
You may have seen the news that Zorro Productions is suing Mars, the makers of M&M's, over a trademark infringement claim, concerning an M&Ms commercial that apparently involves some sort of Zorro costume. But wait a second... just like Sherlock Holmes, it appears that at least some of Zorro should be in the public domain by now. Pamela Chestek writes in to give her very thorough analysis of this particular case, noting that, in some ways, it may be setting up some future lawsuits concerning the difference between trademark and copyright in characters.
These days, a lot of that money is up for grabs -- and the record labels are upset that they're not getting more of it. Instead, it may be going to others, such as Apple or an ISP or someone else entirely. But, really, it's up for grabs -- and that's why we see a lot of smart musicians figuring out how to take advantage and get their share.
This presages the direction a lot of creators and artists will start to take as they leave the copyright-mired Old Media Dinosaurs behind.
MPs have the opportunity now to take the Digital Economy Bill in wash-up and do just what a wash-up implies: clean it out. If they don't, and if lobbies like BPI get their way, we're in for a satyagraha.
The Liberal Democrats will try to block the Digital Economy Bill from being fast-tracked into law before the election.
On Tuesday afternoon, the party's chief whip Paul Burstow tweeted that he had told the government the Liberal Democrats will not support the bill as it is drafted because there is "not enough time for MPs to examine it in detail".
The bill is expected to be become part of 'wash-up', a brief period at the end of a sitting parliament when outstanding legislation becomes the subject of back-room deals between the main two parties, the Conservatives and Labour.
ORG and 38 Degrees are pushing to get national advertising placed just before the debate on Tuesday next week: when Parliament will, in effect, allow the Bill to be passed into 'wash up' without proper democratic scrutiny, denying us a national discussion about the rights and wrongs of this Bill.


text: This month, a fake ESPN "30 for 30" documentary on Michael Jordan's 1996 movie "Space Jam" set the Internet on fire. But there are tons of quirky, weird, and downright amazing sports stories (mostly true) that deserve to be delved into by the pros. The documentary series is full of awesome pieces of sports journalism, with Grantland.com founder Bill Simmons at the helm as executive producer, telling stories from the sporting world that are extremely compelling and in many cases, not widely known or discussed. Here are six that probably never will be made but definitely should. More

subset: commoncrawl


text:
D.C. Election Board Sets Vote for Budget Autonomy Referendum
Save the date: On April 23, after more than a year of starts and stops on Capitol Hill, D.C. residents will get to take matters into their own hands and vote on whether to give themselves control of the city's budget.
The District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics ruled unanimously on Tuesday to include a proposed charter amendment on the spring special election ballot that would unlink the District's yearly budget from the congressional appropriations process.
Budget autonomy would give the mayor and D.C. Council the authority to approve all local spending decisions and set a fiscal calendar that best suits the needs of the city. It also would free the District from the threat of a shutdown each time Congress nears a budget stalemate.
Proponents of the referendum, including the D.C. Council's general counsel and activist groups such as DC Vote, say they are within their legal rights: The Home Rule Act of 1973 includes nothing to prohibit the city from amending its charter to let D.C. spend its money without congressional approval.
"The Board's decision puts [the] people of the District at the forefront of our fight for control over our own local tax dollars," DC Vote Communications Director James Jones said in a statement.
But while it might seem too good to be true and all but promise a historic victory in the District's long fight for self-determination, some critics predict the referendum will, if passed, become the victim of a lengthy and expensive court battle.
They say that only Congress has the authority to grant the District budget autonomy, and for D.C. to give itself the power to spend its own money would be in violation of the Antideficiency Act, which forbids federal entities, such as the federal city of D.C., from spending funds before they are appropriated, in this case by Congress.
Among these skeptics is the city's own attorney general, Irvin B. Nathan, who at a Monday hearing of the elections board explicitly warned against the inclusion of the proposed charter amendment on the April 23 ballot.
Mayor Vincent Gray has also cautioned against moving forward. When the D.C. Council was poised to approve authorizing legislation at the end of December, he sent Council Chairman Phil Mendelson a lengthy letter detailing his opposition.
And Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton is not a fan, either. Though she said she would vote for the referendum on the special election ballot, she has expressed legal reservations and also an insistence that her efforts to reach a budget autonomy deal on Capitol Hill should not be underestimated.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., in his capacity as chairman of the D.C.-focused Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has become an unlikely champion for the cause, working closely with Norton and the mayor to shepherd budget autonomy legislation through Congress. When Issa endorsed D.C. budget autonomy in the fall of 2011, the movement around the idea spread quickly from one chamber to the other, and even House Republican leadership offered its conditional support.
Norton has argued that the wildfire rapidity of such public reception proves there's still an opportunity for the realization of budget autonomy in the 113th Congress, especially with Issa opting to move all District matters to the full committee level, rather than relegating them to the docket of a subcommittee.
Others, however, believe that just like in the 112th Congress, there is no way forward for such a bill that doesn't include policy riders. Over the past year, threats of restrictions on abortion funding and rollbacks of the city's gun laws have derailed markups and even formal introductions of budget autonomy legislation.
And then there are those who fear the blowback, that Issa's enthusiasm to help the District could diminish if he felt his efforts were unappreciated on the grass-roots level.
In an interview with CQ Roll Call last month, Issa suggested that the referendum wasn't offensive to him. He did, however, share concerns about the legality of the initiative and said that it could ultimately hinder his work on behalf of D.C. residents.
"The wishes of the people of the District of Columbia will never alienate me," Issa said. "It does undermine my ability to get for them what I believe they want … because if it goes to a court challenge, as I am relatively sure it would, then it ties my hand until that's over with, and that makes no sense."
Elections Board Public Information Officer Agnes Moss said officials would be releasing a statement in the coming days to explain the board's decision to place the referendum on the special election ballot in the midst of strong opinions on all sides of the equation.


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Sunday, 29 April 2012
Mossy SPRING Sign!
26 comments:
I love this! So pretty, I love the the tiny birds nest, too. Such a cute touch!ReplyDelete
Evie, I love it!! I've been wanting to make a sign or some sort, but haven't narrowed it down to what kind of sigh exactly. I really like the look of the mossy green letters on the white background. Very fresh looking! Hope you had a nice weekend. =)ReplyDelete
~ Catie
Oh, I'm finally back to blogging. Pop by and say hi!
It's awesome! I love it!ReplyDelete
Evie! Love these so much. I'm still trying to do the balancing act too. Maybe we can brainstorm some ideas C:ReplyDelete
Super cute!!! I love the little nest, so fun!ReplyDelete
Oh I love this so much! So fun and cheery!ReplyDelete
I love how this turned out! Great idea!!ReplyDelete
Great project! I love the colour variations of all the different types of moss you can craft with.ReplyDelete
I wish I could find letters like this at my Dollar Store :)
I big fat heart it too - fantastic!ReplyDelete
Hi! Love your letters! They turned out great! I bought a set of letters to spell out the baby's name for a baby shower, but they were also the kind that did not stand on their own--except mine were those cute curly-q looking ones. I also bought a backer board to attach them to but I didn't measure before I bought it so it ended up being too small & I was crunched for time so I had to come up with a new solution ... I bought some unfinished/undecorated blocks about the same size or maybe a bit smaller than the normal lettered baby toy blocks. I painted them a great color which contrasted nicely with the color I had painted my letters & then I hot glued them to the back of the letter at the bottom so that the bottom of the block was level with the bottom of the letter which worked like a little stand. And then my letters that couldn't stand on their own could now stand up! My letters were RYLEE. The only letter I had a problem with was the capital Y but I used 2 blocks glued next to each other at the bottom of the Y to offset the wings of the upper part of the letter. This worked great for me and ended up adding a cute design element I hadn't planned on. Later the baby momma took the blocks off & hung the letters on the wall with sticky back Velcro! I just had to laugh! She said the blocks came off pretty easy - maybe next time I'll take a tip from her & attach the block with sticky Velcro!!! :DReplyDelete
This is such a fabulous sign! Won't you enjoy bringing it out each Spring? I love every little thing about it! Thanks for sharing it with us this week!ReplyDelete
Take care,
This is so cute! I'm your newest follower! I'd love you to come follow back and link up to my party going on here:ReplyDelete
Jen :)
This is fantastic! I'm pinning this:)ReplyDelete
I love some mossy letters! This is perfect for spring!ReplyDelete
This is super cute! Stopping by from Southern Lovely Show and Share :-)ReplyDelete
This really is a great gift idea. I have some left-over wood planks and I just don't know what to use it for. This gave me a nice idea :)ReplyDelete
There is a link party going on in my blog today. I would LOVE for you to share this :)
I think we all hit that balance struggle. Your mossy letters are wonderful. Thanks for sharing at this week's BFF Open House and glad to see you :)ReplyDelete
Love it! I really like the nest and eggs with the moss. I am your newest follower. I would love for you to come and link up this project at my new Linky party--Rustic Restorations Weekend. I hope to see you there!ReplyDelete
That is so darling and I love how you have it displayed! Thanks so much for sharing it with us this week at Inspiration Friday! :-)ReplyDelete
Fantastic idea and tutorial! You've been featured at this week's Craftastic party. Stop by and grab a Featured On button. Thanks for linking to Craftastic Monday at Sew Can Do:)ReplyDelete
I LOVE this SO SO SO cute.... may be giving this a try for my mantelReplyDelete
You did an amazing job on this- it definitely looks like something you'd buy from a high end retailer. Love the idea! Thanks so much for sharing!!!ReplyDelete
Adorable! Thanks for linking up to Share the Love Wednesday!ReplyDelete
Just wanted to let you know I showcased this sign on my blog today!ReplyDelete
Thanks so much for coming by Homespun Happenings and linking this up to Rustic Restorations Weekend! Have a great weekend!ReplyDelete
Wow...this is such a creative idea! It looks awesome (and I love the idea of "Home" or maybe even a monogram or something!) Thanks for the inspiration.ReplyDelete


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My adds to the will-not-die Rev. Jeremiah Wright hoopla are:
- Forget his arrogance; he has the ego and vanity of many ministers.
- Non-Blacks looking for an excuse they want to dress up as a reason not to vote for Barack Obama hide behind it.
Often, they use it too good effect far beyond just feeling grand themselves. They influence congregants to good behavior, people who would not take direction, much less scolding, from anyone else.
Moreover, with the lack of challenges to their statements day to day and on their preaching day, they understandably fall into such patterns. They can view themselves as speaking for their deity and perhaps as consistently correct in a confused world.
This particular preacher is toward the fringe of his profession. He has come by it honestly, with decades of speaking his truth, what he likely would call God's truth, before hundreds or thousands at a time. He is clearly positive that he's clever, and as so many ministers, that he's irrefutable.
It's not really noteworthy that so many TV talking heads, print media folk and bloggers have gnawed on this bone that they use to connect Obama's candidacy with Wright's rhetoric. All that's left in the ugly stub, an artifact that hints at unpleasant aspects of America.
We can even set aside Hillary Clinton and John McCain's long associations with bigoted preachers such as Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell. They like to say that's different because they didn't sit in the pews for decades. Well, it's also different because they praised those ministers mightily while Obama did not do so for Wright. They also have exhibited selective oversight and never once criticized their religious mentors and aides. When Obama does what they never had, they are ready with too-little-too-late.
Among the many commentaries on why voters as well as media want to gnaw on this particular bone, I favor The Chicago Sun-Times' Mark Brown's It's gut check time for white Americans. Brown is white and he's right on Wright.
The Wright affair has such resonance in this campaign because Wright has shown himself to be the kind of black person that white people don't like. He brings out our prejudices. Yes, I said "our" prejudices.
Part of it is Wright's ignorance and part of it is his arrogance and part of it is that he talks louder than white people would prefer and part of it is that he uses the sing-song cadence they associate with other black ministers they have grown to hate over the years such as Jesse Jackson.
Obama is none of those things (OK, maybe a little arrogant at times), so Wright has been brought to the forefront as a substitute punching bag.
Brown's town has the same deeply rooted race prejudice as Beantown. He knows from observation that "An opponent has trouble attacking the black candidate, so they find somebody connected to the candidate and attack them."
I have heard local self-identified liberals say it's not race at all that causes them to find these associations to discredit Obama. Yet, they let similar and worse links to Clinton and McCain slide. In a rare flash of fairness from me, some voters surely have manufactured reasons not to vote for the woman, but oh no, not because of her gender, but for something "real." Both types of excluders try unsuccessfully to disguise their emotions.
Brown is not kind to those who would feign objective concern as a way to avoid voting for the Black candidate. Writing of his own upbringing, he notes, "I know firsthand that when you get that prejudice in your system, it doesn't just go away on its own. It's stored away."
He calls simple racism on this, adding:
If somebody tells me they're against Barack Obama because he's on the wrong side of the issues...I can understand. But if they tell me they're against Obama because he went to Wright's church, I can see that for what it is.Amen.
Jeremiah Wright in a jack in the box that keeps popping up. He'll pump up his own ego to keep the attention coming. A lot of other ministers would do the same. More important, the MSM will keep turning that crank to make sure he pops up again and again.
I think of the saintly and sinful people whom could connect me with in my life so far. Were I to run for public office, I could hope for the blinder treatment that other candidates have gotten and not the spotlight of guilt by association that the media, and even candidate Clinton, shine on Obama.
I'm with Brown on this one. I can see it for what it is.
Tags: massmarrier, Mark Brown, Chicago Sun-Times, racism, Obama, Clinton, Democrats, Jeremiah Wright


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Thursday, November 4
Thursday Dose of Cute: That Gnat
9 comments:
You have almost talked me into wanting donkeys - should I ever get to live at a farm.ReplyDelete
I never knew they were so funny.
~ Karina
Sitting in rainy New England, sipping coffee, and SMILING ear to ear. That was a HUGE dose of cute. Donkeyland...makes me happy, too!ReplyDelete
Thanks for the smile early in the morning...I used to have horses and would often swear they were smiling, too...lol Maybe they are!ReplyDelete
Perfect pictures! She does look like she's smiling!ReplyDelete
- Janetxb11/05/2010 11:10 AM
Yes, that is a perfectly charming donkey-smile!ReplyDelete
- Cyndi11/05/2010 11:19 AM
So cute :))ReplyDelete
Oh my goodness, I am so glad you stopped by my blog--so I could come discover yours! What a treat. I can't wait to dive into your wealth of recipes, stories and charming photographs. I will definitely be recommending your blog to friends.ReplyDelete
Have a lovely day--thanks for making mine!
I'm a newbie here and have enjoyed all the cuteness. I especially can't stand the cuteness of the chicken going off to vote! SO funny! ~ShandaReplyDelete
I can't stop laughing. These guys have such personality. What would they say if they could talk?ReplyDelete
December 2015 update: Hi! For some reason I can't figure out, Blogger hasn't been letting me leave comments on my own blog (!) for the last several months, so I've been unable to respond to your comments and questions. My apologies for any inconvenience! You're always welcome to email me: farmgirlfare AT gmail DOT com.
Hi! Thanks for visiting Farmgirl Fare and taking the time to write. While I'm not always able to reply to every comment, I receive and enjoy reading them all.
Your feedback is greatly appreciated, and I especially love hearing about your experiences with my recipes. Comments on older posts are always welcome!
Please note that I moderate comments, so if I'm away from the computer it may be a while before yours appears.
I try my best to answer all questions, though sometimes it takes me a few days. And sometimes, I'm sorry to say, they fall through the cracks, and for that I sincerely apologize.
I look forward to hearing from you and hope you enjoy your e-visits to our farm!


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'Friday Night Lights' Playing At The Library
'Friday Night Lights' Playing At The Library
Thursday, November 2, 6:30 p.m.
"Friday Night Lights"
Odessa, Texas, is a small town in Texas.
Racially divided and economically dying, there is one night that gives the town something to live for: Friday Night.
The Permian Panthers have a big winning tradition in Texas high school football, led by QB Mike Winchell and superstar tailback Boobie Miles, but all is not well, after Boobie suffers a career-ending injury in the first game of the season.
Hope is lost among citizens in Odessa, and for the team, but Coach Gary Gaines, who believes that "Perfection is being able to look your friends in the eye and know you did everything you could not to let them down", is somehow able to help the team rise up from the ashes and make a huge season comeback.
Now on their way to state, the Panthers must go out and be perfect, because they may never matter this much for the rest of their lives.


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Monday, May 15, 2006
Global Strategies and Indirect Reasons
We have reason to achieve G. But I am more likely to achieve G by adopting S as my goal instead. So there are instrumental reasons to aim at S rather than G. If I know all this, my apparent and objective reasons will coincide, so the demands of rationality coincide with what is objectively best: namely, to achieve G by aiming at S instead.
This may seem puzzling. Rationality tells us to aim at the good, or do what seems best, i.e. maximize expected utility (for whatever scale of "utility" we're interested in). But the whole idea of the indirect strategy is to be guided by reliable rules rather than direct utility calculations. One effectively commits to occasionally acting irrationally (in the 'local' sense), though it is rational/optimal to make this commitment. Parfit thus calls it "rational irrationality".
But we may question whether it is really irrational to abide by the rules (against apparent utility) after all. We adopt the indirect strategy because we recognize that our direct calculations are unreliable. The over-zealous sherriff might think that torturing a terrorist suspect would have a high expected utility. But if he recalls his own unreliability on such matters, he should lower the expected utility accordingly. As a good indirect utilitarian, he believes that in situations subjectively indiscernible from his own, the best results will generally be obtained by respecting human rights and following a strict "no torture" policy. Taking this "meta" information into account, then, he should reach the all-things-considered conclusion that expected utility is maximized by refraining from torture.
Global reasons thus entail local reasons. It's not a matter of following strategy S no matter what seems most likely to achieve G. A broadened perspective will lead the agent to recognize that S is what's most likely to achieve G. The conflict is only with prima facie "seemings". His all-things-considered judgment of "what seems best" should in fact coincide with his general strategy. So "rational irrationality" need not be genuinely irrational at all. It is only irrational in the restricted, "local" sense whereby we only take into account first-order evidence or considerations, and fail to consider higher-order issues of reliability and so forth. But rationality, simpliciter, is surely an "all things considered" rationality. And when we consider all things, the apparent conflict dissolves.
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29 comments:
This seems a little like communism. (which gives us a test case!)ReplyDelete
some group makes a set of rules (if it was just you making the rules they have an even less special status) on the assumption that they know a lot more about what you need in all situtions than you do when confronted directly with the choices.
I guess it would depend on the person but to me it seems in general you would be in more danger of obeying the rules and causing more harm than disobeying them and causing more harm.
Possibly the thesis relies on the fact that when confronted with the choice you are likely to have too much adrenaline and become irrational or that one person can never approach the cumulative wisdom of a religion/moral system or similar but there needs to be something to outweigh the fact that when you are there you have a lot more information.
Maybe the above would be mroe aplicable to normal peopel and less so to philosophers who should be more resistant. Also I'd accept that you may not have time/intelect to think it out properly (and then might revert to a previous position) but that is a standard formulae you would have to apply even in forming your global oppinions.
Anyway the global rules theory doesn't seem to work in economics very well why would it work in morality?
(I also note that you would stil have LAWS because they serve a different purpose)
Well, it seems to me that if you are going to hang your hat on the "unreliability of of our direct calculations" (if our direct calculations are unreliable, why would our indirect calculations be less so?), then you don't really have an indirect theory.ReplyDelete
It seems to me that a genuine indirect theory is committed to the idea that the rules have independent force beyond their action-guiding "rule of thumb" status. Otherwise, it is just sophisticated act-utilitarianism.
But when asked about that, you punt by appealing to our cognitive limitations.
But it would not be hard to construct a case where it really IS that you maximize welfare by breaking the rule and despite all our cognitive limitations, we would be in a position to know that. I see no reason why that possibility isn't a live one.
It seems to me you are committed to breaking the rule in those cases.
The post sounds good to me.ReplyDelete
"But when asked about that, you punt by appealing to our cognitive limitations."
By saying that we're cognitively limited, he's saying that the rules *are* just rules of thumb, useful because they're a good shortcut calculating what actions will work toward a more general (and thus, hard-to-apply) goal. I'm not sure exactly what you're saying, Pat, but I don't see how Richard has punted anything.
"But it would not be hard to construct a case where it really IS that you maximize welfare by breaking the rule and despite all our cognitive limitations, we would be in a position to know that. I see no reason why that possibility isn't a live one."
In other words, a case where you understand the application of G as well as S, and see how they conflict? Well, the whole point of the rule of thumb is that G is difficult to apply correctly, but if you're able to calculate the liklihood that you're right about what each strategy actually says in a given situation, and the liklihood of you being right about G is higher in a given situation, then yes, go ahead and apply G. But if G really is hard to apply, then the liklihood that you can apply G to a situation should be lower, in general, than S.
"By saying that we're cognitively limited, he's saying that the rules *are* just rules of thumb, useful because they're a good shortcut calculating what actions will work toward a more general (and thus, hard-to-apply) goal."ReplyDelete
Precisely, but that isn't indirect or rule utilitarianism. If you are saying that the calculations are hard, and we often don't have enough time or info to do them properly so we use rules of thumb, then you are simply arguing for a version of act-consequentalism.
And that's fine (well, fine for this particular discussion) if, like Smart, you are willing to bite the bullet in those cases--which are certainly possible--when any reasonable person would say that the utility calculation comes out in favor of sacrificing someone,.
Rule or indirect utilitarianism tries to avoid having the utilitarian bite that bullet by saying that the rules themselves come to have independent force beyond being mere "rules of thumb" (see Rawls in "Two Concepts of Rules").
The objection to this kind of utilitarianism is that is seems straightforwardly incoherent or rule fetishistic. Why continue to follow the rule when the reason for following the rule tells you not to?
That's the status of the debate. I don't see how Richard has moved the ball at all. Hence, my question to Richard is why he thinks he has. I may be missing something.
"And that's fine (well, fine for this particular discussion) if, like Smart, you are willing to bite the bullet in those cases--which are certainly possible--when any reasonable person would say that the utility calculation comes out in favor of sacrificing someone,."ReplyDelete
OK. I don't see how these cases follow from act-consequentialism. If some obviously heinous action H is such that G(H) (the utility of H according to G) is low, and S(H) is high, then you're still not justified in applying S because the cost of calculating G(H) is so low (and/or its margin of error given a practical amount of calculation is low). This is implied in the "obviously" part, no?
- Anonymous1:26 am, May 16, 2006
Pat, the justification for my indirect utilitarianism (as explained in my original post on the topic) is very much grounded in classical utilitarianism itself, and not some independent desire for rule-worship. It is, I happily concede, merely "sophisticated utilitarianism", i.e. the position that every (act) utilitarian should naturally be led to.ReplyDelete
I don't think I.U. is the same as Rule Util. To situate the tradition, I take Derek Parfit and R.M. Hare to be archetypical indirect utilitarians. It would be weird to call them rule utilitarians.
But in any case, my argument suggests that your point is moot. If it's true that there are situations where, faced with subjective evidence E, we are transparently in a position to reliably employ direct utility calculations, then this will be included in the globally optimal strategy! The best rules will include one to the effect that "If you find yourself in situation E, then ignore the other rules and directly maximize utility!"
(Incidentally, I have a taste for bullets.)
So my point is that, all things considered, direct and indirect reasons simply can't come apart in the way required for it to be a significant question whether the strategic rules have independent normative force.
Well, Richard, if you are willing to hang some innocent people, then you are and the debate has to proceed to other areas.ReplyDelete
So let me try shift to a different front. What seems to be motivating your version of IU is that sometimes the utility maximizing thing to do is to follow certain rules of thumb.
But there is another worry that is related.
Rather, we might think that people need to pursue certain ends for their own sakes to maximize utility.
Now, if we formulate a rule that simply said: "pursue X for its own sake" then it seems that we have escaped this problem (though now we have problems of incoherence).
But that isn't your rule. Your rule is: "Pursue end X (for its own sake) unless not doing so will reasonably lead (given our cognitive limitations) to greater utility."
Why doesn't this have us end up right where we are before? We are still forced to make the same utility calculations and epistemic judgments that a direct act utilitarian would demand of us.
So, I am changing the discussion of your post in an important way. I am adding the additional claim that what is really important for utility maximization is not just that we pursue dancing, say, for the sake of utility, but that we pursue dancing for its own sake. In fact, we wouldn't be made happy or joyous at dancing if we did it to be happy.
If that's true, then does IU get you out of this worry? Or do you just reject the claim?
1) I think your position is misleading to the average reader. Most of us who read your posts probably assume that you indirect utilitarianism differs significantly from act utilitarianism (partly as a result of how fiercely you seem to try to differentiate it). I don't think you should intentionally surrender the term "utilitarianism" to an incorrect/intellectually deficient belief of how it might be applied.ReplyDelete
2) I'm concerned that indirect utilitarianism or rule utilitarianism might be used as a "cop out" (which, actually, I propose is usually the case). For example the person might want to excuse the fact they don't act in a utilitarian manner so they might find a set of reasonable rules they live by and declare them the indirect rules.
3) I think it obscures some of the most important topics there are.
Related to this is that much of the debate on morals is treated by people already as a debate over what general rules people can live by - taking it a level higher potentially leaves even the philosophers to give the details lip service.
Pat, I've a forthcoming post which will discuss situations where, to succeed in G, we must pursue S for its own sake and not for sake of G.ReplyDelete
"We are still forced to make the same utility calculations and epistemic judgments that a direct act utilitarian would demand of us."
I think you've misunderstood. The vast majority of the time, we will not have to make any utility calculations at all. The globally optimal rules will only tell us to employ direct calculation if we're in that specially gerrymandered situation E, which probably none of us ever will be. Now, I've pointed out that if one were to attempt a direct calculation, then considerations of "metacoherence", reliability, etc., should soon lead one to abandon that and return to the rules of thumb. But that doesn't mean we have to go through that whole tired process every time we make a moral decision. Most of the time we can just directly employ our (non-utilitarian) practical morality.
"if you are willing to hang some innocent people..."
Oh, please. If you want to play that game, I'll start ranting about how you think your moral "purity" is more important than the millions of innocent people who would otherwise have been tortured (or whatever our silly thought-experiment of the day is). Don't be such an ass.
Some additional thoughts…….ReplyDelete
There may be a bit of psychology in here
I.e. mental effort seems to be a fundamental aspect of this problem
1) You cant apply a moral calculation (or a rule) to every action, some things you will just do instinctively or selfishly or from habit, so we must be talking about some sub set of actions that we will control.
2) Calculations and rules must be combined – it is nonsense to imagine you would reinvent yourself every time you had a thought (that just wouldn't work) or that you would mindlessly obey rules without some sort of analysis – at a bare minimum which of some pre prepared rules were appropriate.
a) you may well be saying that any algorithm is a rule but if so I'm having difficulty understanding how act utilitarianism can exist. In which case it would be a straw man.
3) Clearly we can say it is easier to follow a reverse justified set of rules
but it may be (I can think of some reasons why it probably is) harder to get marginally better utility out of following theoretically justified rules as compared to utility calculations.
a) Applying calculations takes effort - but so does applying rules where those rules differ from normal actions. It is debatable which will be easier because some rules might make that easier but then again so might some utility calculation algorithms. (e.g. a rule may well conflict with normal behavior more often than a calculation)
4) If we do divide the algorithm into rules and calculations and admit that people are using a combination of both and are debating how that should be shared then there is a question as to how this works
a) does an individual apply calculations from day to day which then are used to form templates and rules?
b) Do they create rules and at some point declare them fixed in order to work on other rules?
How it should be done?
5) Does trying to be an act utilitarian or an indirect utilitarianism improve this system? Is the debate about marginal improvement or is it about who's dogmatic position is closer to the happy middle?
"But in any case, my argument suggests that your point is moot."
So do mine.
"Well, Richard, if you are willing to hang some innocent people, then you are and the debate has to proceed to other areas."
My previous post outlined why I don't think these situations arise. If you can give a counterexample, I'm willing to hear it. Note that any practical system of morality is going to make reasonable mistakes, i.e. wrong decisions in genuinely difficult cases. I don't see how this is a downside.
"But that isn't your rule. Your rule is: "Pursue end X (for its own sake) unless not doing so will reasonably lead (given our cognitive limitations) to greater utility."
Why doesn't this have us end up right where we are before? We are still forced to make the same utility calculations and epistemic judgments that a direct act utilitarian would demand of us."
It doesn't because we aren't making the same calculations. We only suspends the rules of thumb in situation where direct utility calculations are easy and obvious. We're still obviating the need for the vast majority of subtle and difficult calculations.
"Pat, I've a forthcoming post which will discuss situations where, to succeed in G, we must pursue S for its own sake and not for sake of G."
I don't think that, in an ideal rational actor, there are any such cases. It may be that humans need to do that sometimes, because of emotional needs and cognitive biases and such. The next paragraph is copied from a comment on another blog, and is remarkably on-topic.
People have weird brains. Adopting certain clearly irrational beliefs can improve one's state of mind and increase the chance of reaching certain goals because of the heightened performance, and *maybe* increase overall hapiness. I.e. "believing in yourself". That is, if those irrational beliefs don't end up blinding the person to reality in ways that cause missed opportunities and over-exuberant risk-taking or over-conservateness or other mistakes. We've evolved to over-estimate our own ability in a wide variety of contexts. We overestimate our agency in situations with favorable outcomes, and underestimate it in those with poor outcomes. There's lots of different cognitive biases, and a lot of appear to be geared toward keeping our self-esteem and optimism up. I can see how a belief God can help one's optimism, etc.
People didn't evolve straight toward greater rationality (though they did evolve greater rationality). They evolved toward a process good at setting goals and achieving them.
Adopting irrational beliefs is one form of this. Another is adopting irrational goals.
Well, given that you have played the fetishizing moral purity game, I don't see why what I am saying is illegitimate. Hell, you LINKED to a post where you essentially argue that such things are acceptable, and that shouldn't be surprising. I didn't say you would be "happy" to hang innocent people, which would be unfair. I just said you were willing to do so.
I provided a bullet, you bite it, and I said that if you are willing to bite it, then we don't much to discuss on this point. And then I moved on to another discussion. All I was doing was explaining why I moved on to a different point. How does that make me ass?
I didn't make any moral judgment, or say you were a bad person. I just said that we have to talk about other things if you are gonna bite the bullet. Maybe you shouldn't be so defensive, and lay off the personal attacks.
All, I was asserting Richard and P, was that an act-consequentalist could just as well say the same thing as you: follow the general rules of thumb except when it could reasonably lead to better utility to do otherwise.
I wasn't saying that people would have to do utility calculations all the time under your account, only that a direct act utilitarian wouldn't think that either.
And it was in the context of my new objection that concerned doing G for its own sake. I was merely pointing out that your indirect view is doesn't answer that objection anymore than the direct view does.
All I was trying to do was establish where you lie on the dialectic.
- Anonymous11:56 pm, May 16, 2006
"I just said that we have to talk about other things if you are gonna bite the bullet."ReplyDelete
Of course the problem is with how you said it, with such a one-sided presentation of an emotive example which gave no hint of recognizing the reasons why a utilitarian might accept that position. It was a gratuitous jab or "parting shot" before moving on to other issues. How would you like it if a pro-lifer turned up on your blog and said "Well, if you're willing to slaughter innocent unborn babies..."? Even if it's not strictly false, anyone who would phrase it like that clearly isn't interested in representing your position fairly. They're just going for the rhetorical effect, either to smugly express their own moral superiority, or simply to piss you off. Either way, that makes them an ass.
Richard, you far too easily ascribe sinister intent to me, and I, at no point in this conversation have asserted anything like moral superiority during any of these posts. I don't believe I have ever remotely called you anything like an ass. In fact, I am fairly sure I have never insulted you.ReplyDelete
And your abortion example doesn't hold any water because the description isn't accurate: slaughtering innocent babies implies, in the vernacular, that abortion kills people. If I believed that and accepted that description, then I wouldn't hold my position. The reason I find that language objectionable is because I think it is an unfair description.
There was nothing inaccurate or unfair about my description of your position. I was simply, and only, trying to explain what motivated my switch of direction. I was thread jacking a little bit, and I just trying to explain why I was doing that.
I had no intention of lording any moral superiority over you or piss you off. I had no idea you would react this way, and I am quite shocked since you linked to a post where you accepted an action that seems even MORE intuitively shocking. I apologize for producing that reaction, and I would have been more sensitive had I known you would react that way. Still, I don't appreciate being called an ass.
And for you to object to emotive language when I have read posts on this very site where you have asserted that I am some evil moral fetishist and a conservative(!) because of my ethical views seems pretty rich to me. So get off your horse.
Meh, nix conservative. That's not what you meant with that post. Although I do "idolize" the 'natural way of things' and "exhibit an unthinking deference to the status quo" that is the worst of conservative thinking.ReplyDelete
Okay, I appreciate that you didn't intend it that way, but my point was precisely that it is an unfair description because you leave out all the features which are relevant to the utilitarian's moral judgment. I'm not worried about the action being "intuitively shocking". My complaint was your misleading and unfair description of the action. (I'd happily concede that I'm "willing to hang an innocent person if I transparently know that this is the only possible way to save a million other innocent persons". But that's a whopping huge "IF". So it's awfully misleading to say that I'm "willing to hang an innocent person", simpliciter, as if it's the kind of thing I'd endorse in everyday life.) As in the abortion case, it simply isn't a fair representation of the other person's position. I hope that's a little clearer now.ReplyDelete
(Though I'll grant that I was probably a little over-sensitive due to having just endured a more significantly hostile comment in another thread, which certainly wasn't your fault.)
As for being an ass, if I ever leave such a rhetorically loaded throwaway "parting shot" on your blog, you're most welcome to accuse me of the same. But I reserve the right to be an ass on my own blog ;-). (Not that I think there's anything wrong with emotive language in the context of a substantive argument.)
Oh come on, isn't it somewhat reasonable to think that all I was doing was writing it shorthand?ReplyDelete
I mean, could any reasonable person look at what I said in context and believe I was saying you just go around hanging people for fun?
I don't deny that someone could use that statement in a rhetorically loaded way, I am just saying you should know me and the situation better than to think that's what I was doing.
This dispute seems to have stalled progress in debating anything substantive.ReplyDelete
Pat, okay, it looks like I misinterpreted you. My apologies.ReplyDelete
Surely I stumbled across somthign in my last two posts worthy of adressing?ReplyDelete
G., you might need to explain why you think indirect utilitarianism "obscures some of the most important topics there are." That isn't clear to me at all.ReplyDelete
As for my position being "misleading", I think it would be more misleading to say one is an "act utilitarian" but insist that this means something different from how the position is commonly understood. There's little point arguing over terminology though. The important point is that we typically shouldn't try to employ utilitarian reasoning in our everyday lives.
Try to meet me half way here, or at least 1/3 of the way.
Your position seems to contradict the usual sources - for example
Act utilitarianism "Many act utilitarians agree that it makes sense to formulate certain rules of thumb"
Similarly all the other dictionaries say something like "... the most common understanding of Utilitarianism and uses the outcome of an action to assess whether the action is right or wrong."
A search for "indirect utilitarianism" on the other hand gives – you (interesting...)
But in general it would seem to be defined as per the penguin dictionary
"A kind of utilitarianism which recognizes that an agent is more likely to act rightly by developing the right attitudes, habits and principles. This indirect utilitarianism is so called because it bears on actions ONLY indirectly." (my emphasis)
At first glance this implies a plausible (but inferior) theory wherein you DON'T EVER apply utility calculations you only ever employ those tools that indirectly effect habits attitudes and principles in general. Which is the opposite of "direct act utilitarianism" something you seem to confusingly simplify to "act utilitarianism".
However I expect your definition is more like this
1) Direct: [I note you seem to use act utilitarianism not direct act utilitarianism]
Agents should seek to maximize aggregate utility by trying to ascertain, on each occasion, which available alternative would produce the greatest utility and act accordingly.
2) Indirect:
Agents should at the intuitive level seek to maximize aggregate utility not by trying to ascertain, on each occasion, which available alternative has the greatest utility, but by abiding by tried and tested rules for the most part … Agents should appeal to the criterion of rightness directly only at the critical level: (1) when there are conflicts between the rules, (2) when the rules do not provide sufficient guidance, and (3) when there are obviously extraordinary utility losses associated with following the rule.
I think this guy has also failed to clearly define why 1 doesn't include 2 but regardless I think I know what he is trying to do.
That is, to create what I would term a "leading definition". What it does is define one form as extreme and the other as the other side plus the best of your argument (despite the fact that the name implies a strict division).
(Now I have a number of thoughts on how these two inter related the fundamental impossibility of pure direct utilitarianism and the fact that most decisions are dominated by habit and instinct and not by moral strategies such as utilitarianism - but we can put that aside so I don't loose you)
But even this definition faces the standard rule utilitarian problems (I assume I don't need to list them).
"We typically shouldn't try to employ utilitarian reasoning in our everyday lives."
I guess I am nitpicking here but that seems outright wrong. I give an example though I expect it is not required...
Imagine swapping your least productive use of your "brain time" for a little time looking into utility of certain actions. Is there any benefit?
Anyway - The very concept of indirect utilitarianism seems to fly in its own face in that it gets you out of the habit of considering utility on a day to day basis. I expect that has implications for your habits attitudes and principles.
"Obscures some of the most important topics there are."
I think I need to go a bit slower here so I'll let you catch up on the above but the paragraph above touches on a little.
OK I went back to one of the old posts to get your old approach. So I might adress that to save you tackling the other approach.ReplyDelete
R.M. Hare's "two-level" utilitarian theory... The intuitive level is our everyday, practical, working morality [rules of thumb]...The critical level, by contrast, is when we critically reflect upon our intuitive-level principles. If beset by a 'moral dilemma', in which we have a clash between our principles, we will need to reason about how to resolve it. Or, in moments of cool reflection, we might ask for justifications of our intuitive-level principles... This is where utilitarianism comes in.
(and indeed that is a correct description of a generic human.... [well aside from the fact that it might not be utility they want to maximize])
the thing that concerns me is that you follow that up with
"attempting to reason in a utilitarian fashion tends to have disastrous consequences, and fails miserably to maximize utility. Therefore, we ought not to reason in a utilitarian manner."
Maybe you mean (using the points in that post) "in the heat of the moment (time), when you have a shortage of brain power, when you can't trust your own judgment or willpower, when the situation is generic/has unguessable side effects." (or the reverse - when the factors don't combine in the right way to make analysis useful) But if the qualifier exists it seems to constantly be dropped?
I guess the above can be used as a criteria to allocate a period of time a status as "mindless action according to rules" or "rethinking rules" times.
OH well Ill get the rest of this out of hte way...ReplyDelete
I also wonder is there a limit to the number of rules a person can have in their head? a condition under which "rule utilitarian aspect of act utilitarianism becomes more and more negative?
do you examine rules to make sure they are better than the default? how much time does that take? every rule?
Surely the default must be considered to be normal behavior, which is not too bad.
I would suggest experimentally it is fairly close to ruleish indirect utilitarianism. (don't kill, don't steal etc all those things most people don't do anyway)
and vastly inferior to pretty direct indirect utilitarianism (all those hard calls people DONT make that are often worth multiple lives including high level things where individuals following general rules will dig holes for themselves like maybe dealing with infections diseases and so forth).
I personally I believe there is not nearly enough hypocrisy in the world. It sounds funny but too many people are too eager to treat very similar situations the same despite there being different consequences.
hey just apply he rule and never get round to reviewing it based on the situation.
I also note that you originally seem to have pointed me to this debate based on a government level discussion so that's how I was approaching the initial few posts in the old thread and apparently NOT how you were approaching it which really set us up to disagree.
Do you think that a libertarians (or other philosophies) are in a sense indirect "utilitarians"?ReplyDelete
1) they apply a set of principles that they tend to assert is best in all situations (as well as being fundamentally right) - any argument that this is not the case is countered by recourse to unknowable future side effects, lack of trust in the morality of decision makers in the heat of the moment and the other usual suspects.
Most people then would then accept that there may be exceptions where theories contradict (i.e. two people apparently have property rights over the something) or it is outstandingly dysfunctional or unjust (e.g. I can't buy you children as slaves or claim ancestral ownership of your house).
- Anonymous1:44 am, May 21, 2006
Some libertarians are utilitarians, whereas others are fundamentally deontologists (and so not 'utilitarian' in any sense).ReplyDelete
"Maybe you mean (using the points in that post) "in the heat of the moment (time), when you have a shortage of brain power, when you can't trust your own judgment or willpower, when the situation is generic/has unguessable side effects.""
Yes, that's right. There are special occasions when one may employ utilitarian reasoning. But the point is that one shouldn't usually do so.
So do you think the vast majority of normal people are utilitarians or dentologists?ReplyDelete
This is rather like being Cullen debating with a national party MP about tax.ReplyDelete
I wonder who in history is a "naive utilitarian" - I note that Bentham is sometimes called a naive utilitarian but apparently the Benthamites supported all sorts of rules formed through contemplation - i.e. they seem to be indirect utilitarians as are almost any coherent group of utilitarians that has ever caused trouble (one of the cheat essays on the net seems to make this sort of point too).
I think I might have gotten to the root of it.ReplyDelete
OK this is what I think you do -
1) you say "in my experience consistent laws and equality are good" and a few others (maybe it comes from socialism).
This is your basic proposition - then you proceed to look at utilitarianism.
2) Now while utilitarianism is quite straight forward in theory when you want to do something about it gets more complex because your decisions have moral values but you can't be sure of what they are.
So you create a template or a set of rules so you can start talking about results by assuming the above sort of things (effectively assuming they are utilitarian in all cases). I expect other utilitarian might choose slightly different ones but yours would-be pretty common.
The problem is who evaluated that the initial principles were utilitarian? The problem is that it becomes a fundamental question it quickly becomes the MOST important thing for the utilitarian society to debate - but then it becomes a variable and one gets stuck in, at best, a paradox.
So for it to be perscriptive you need to make some assumptions but doing this leaves you opento having all sorts of naive assumptions about the results of a utilitarian analysis. Some of the most extreme examples of course are things like "Islam is right" etc while the least are the non committal "anything is possible approaches that dont realy provide advise.
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text:
Red Sox Sweep Twins 2-1 In Ten Innings
Mike Napoli and David Ortiz hit consecutive homers with one out in the 10th inning and the Boston Red Sox rallied past Minnesota 2-1 Wednesday, sending the Twins to their fifth straight loss.
Boston was held to one hit _ a fifth-inning double by Daniel Nava _ before the homers.
The Twins took a 1-0 lead in the top of the 10th on Chris Parmelee's two-out home run off Red Sox closer Koji Uehara (2-1).
But after Dustin Pedroia flied out to begin the Boston 10th, the Red Sox connected against Casey Fien (3-4) to complete a three-game sweep.
Ortiz hit his drive down the right-field line and pumped his fist toward the Boston dugout as he headed toward first base. Napoli hit his shot into the center-field bleachers.


text:
Tweet: A tweet paraphrased my link-economy line and showed me I've been saying more than I thought I have. **
In Twitter today, one @rpaskin paraphrased something I've been saying – and said again in my talk at Web 2.0 Expo Tuesday (generously covered in that link by Aneta Hall). My line has been that in the link economy, value comes from the creator of the content and from the creator of a public (formerly known as an audience). That is, Rupert's wrong with he says that Google takes content; it gives attention.
Anyway, @rpaskin tweeted this: "In a link economy, there are values from creating content and linking to content. There's no value in just reproducing content (Jeff Jarvis)."
I didn't say that exactly but I think it better expressed what I have been trying to say. Or at least it added a perspective and raised a fundamental and important question, namely:
Is there value anymore in reproducing content? Is the six-century-long reign of Guttenberg and the industries he created really over?
Wow. Maybe so. In my discussions of the link economy, I had been concentrating on explaining and defending the side of the value equation brought by Google, aggregators, blogger, Twitter, et al rather than on the loss of value brought to those who reproduced – rather than created – content. But in looking at the entire equation, what @rpaskin says stands to reason: There is no value left over for the copiers. Indeed, online, if one copies, one is considered a thief because it's only the thieves who copy.
The problem is, of course, that it was through the making and selling of copies that monetary value was extracted and that is why it is so upsetting to those who did so that they can't do it anymore. It's upsetting that they don't see other ways to recognize value. It's what makes folks including Murdoch say silly things that betray ignorance about the workings of our new world.
I'm sure Rupert knows exactly how the scribes Guttenberg put out of business felt.
ALSO: Speaking of speaking of Murdoch, you can hear me doing so – along with Michael Wolf and Steven Brill – on Murdoch's tilting against Google's energy-efficient windmills.
** Once again, I'm experimenting with using tweets about posts as subheds summarizing those posts.


text:
Thursday, April 5, 2012
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Spit Bucket--Part Two
9 comments:
Are you sure it is Tim Foyer who has Asimov in his pants? Some people think that Asimov lives in Tim Goodde's trousers. Or is it vice versa?
- April 5, 2012 at 8:04 PM
- Ron Washam, HMW said...
Wow, lonely around here.
I have no idea what you're talking about, but, hey, that's about right.
I guess Anonymous comments are better than none. Or is it vice versa?
- April 6, 2012 at 8:19 AM
Do you speak French?
Perhaps, Tom Goodde would have been a somewhat more accurate clue.
- April 6, 2012 at 9:14 AM
- Easter Egg Daddy said...
Ron, the Easter Bunny has got our tongues, stolen our spit buckets and is running around the world trying to sell Gruner to green bean farmers.
- April 6, 2012 at 9:50 AM
- Samantha Dugan said...
I don't know what the hell anyone is talking about....
- April 6, 2012 at 10:37 AM
- Ron Washam, HMW said...
Speak French? For God's sake, I barely speak Esperanto. So your joke/reference goes way over my head. And if you have to explain them, hell, they ain't funny anyway. I'd know about that.
Puff Daddy,
Your story is a real tongue-depresser. But Happy Easter to everyone. It's Spring! And life renews itself with each cry of "Play Ball!" And at least now I can say my Dodgers are in first place!
My Gorgeous Samantha,
Yeah, it's like that around here a LOT.
- April 6, 2012 at 11:09 AM
- Thomas said...
Easter schmeaster!
I stupidly went grocery shopping today, forgetting that it was both Passover and Good Friday; the mob was incredible. After having two grocery cart collisions in the aisle, in the parking lot I became a magnet for some asshole on a cell phone who did not stop for a stop sign and nearly kissed my engine compartment with hers.
- April 6, 2012 at 12:36 PM
- Mockingbird said...
Thomas, I thought NY had a hands-free law....
Oh, wait... assholes and idiots are exempt....
- April 7, 2012 at 8:00 PM
Well, always late to the Hose but never sorry.
Was a pretty tough target this time.
But I don't know why you need to learn French. I haven't.
- April 10, 2012 at 10:19 AM


text:
It started a long time ago, in a country far, far away....
It continued in an arena that hadn't been visited in nearly 50 years....
And it ended much deeper into October than anyone expected.
Along the way, the Dodgers' 2008 season presented us with new perspectives we felt privileged to experience. There were quite a few low points, there were superstitions, and we had questions about some of our players along the way.
But after months of mediocrity, things started to look up. And then...a certain trade happened. Coincidentally or not, other players—kids and veterans alike—started to make this a team, not just a group of players.
September was a good month: The Dodgers gained sole possession of first place and never let go. They celebrated a well-deserved division victory, even the odds didn't favor them advancing past the Cubs.
Improbably, October was an even better month. Every victory made us appreciate how this team was accomplishing what Dodger teams of the past 19 years couldn't.
And even after the Phillies shocked us into realizing they were the better team in 2008, we still have a brand-new wing of the Pantheon of Post-1988 Dodger Playoff Win Heroes to carry us into 2009.
So thank you, Dodgers, for our happiest season in 20 years. We'll still be watching the rest of the playoffs and World Series (Go Rays!), but what interests us most are the Dodgers' many off-season issues, from A (Manny Ramirez) to Z (Kim Ng) and even AZ (2009 spring training).
So keep checking back with us, loyal SoSG readers—when it happens to the Dodgers, we'll be talking about it!
top photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images
bottom photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images


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Havana, the sultry spring of 1953: gambling is expensive, sex is cheap, and death is free.
A half-hour by air from Miami, it's the world's hottest -- and most dangerous -- city. From the plush mobster casinos in Centro to the backstreet brothels on Zanja Street, you can get anything you want, for a price. The city is the linchpin of many empires: the Mafia's, the CIA's, numerous American corporations', El Presidente's, and even the vice lords' of Old Havana. It must be protected at all costs.
But now there's a threat. A young lawyer, a kid named Castro, is giving speeches. He speaks of reform, of change, of self-determination. He speaks of...of revolution even.
This danger must be dealt with. So, into the steamy, sunny climate of corruption come two men, both unafraid, both skilled, both tough as ball bearings. They would be friends in a sane world, for they are so similar in their capabilities and experiences. But now they have to be enemies, because the Cold War is at its apogee: one is American, the other Russian.
The American is named Earl Swagger. A Medal of Honor winner on Iwo Jima, a toughened gunman from adventures in Hot Springs and the swamps of Mississippi, Earl has been conned by two young Old Boys of the CIA to become Our Gun in Havana.
The Russian, Speshnev, also a veteran of tough battles (from Spain in '36 to Berlin in '45, with a few stays in the gulag just for seasoning), has a similar assignment: he too is sent by strategic gamesters to pay attention to that same young orator. But his job is protection, not elimination.
Neither man's assignment will be easy. For, like an orchid hot house, Havana's climate grows spectacular specimens: the wise old mobster king Meyer Lansky, who runs the casinos for his nervous New York sponsors; the syndicate hitman Frankie Carbine, Frankie Horsekiller of the famed Times Square massacre; the secret police officer called Ojos Bellos -- Beautiful Eyes -- for his penchant to interrogate at scalpel point; the beautiful Filipina Jean-Marie Augustine, who knows so much; and even those crew-cut, cheery young CIA fellows on the embassy's Third Floor, behind whose baby-blues and tender faces lurk all manner of deviousness. And everybody wants something.
In Havana, Stephen Hunter has produced a truly epic adventure story, shot-through with violence, eroticism, and the pressures of big money and big politics, set in a legendary time and place. His hero, Earl Swagger, fights his enemies, his superiors, and his own temptations and, in the end, has to decide what is worth killing for -- and what is worth dying for. He knows only one thing for certain: that he's a pawn in somebody else's game. But a pawn with a Colt Super .38 in his shoulder holster and the skill and will to use it fast and well is a formidable man, indeed.
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