English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

19:00

First of all, there's no guarantee that the monarch would be "removed from party politics". The queen might really hate one of the parties and work against them all the time. So, stable, I guess, in the sense of predictable, but not in the sense of "moderating every government".

Cerberus

How many Kings or Presidents with little power do you know who are a destablising factor in their country? That normally only happens when they have too much power.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 No guarantee, but high likelihood, because she is no part of the party machine. Completely different from a PM.

Aren't you aware of the enormous down-sides of democracy and factions?

As Churchill said, it truly is the lesser evil.

But still evil.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Nobody is advocating THAT.

Cerberus

I know.

I just gave that as an example of how less democracy is sometimes better.

When you talked about accountability, which amounts to democracy.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I'm aware. But I don't see how having someone who is unaccountable to the public in power is an improvement. You want to create roles whose purpose is to "stabilize" things, fine, make it formal, and make them elected. But I strongly disapprove of unelected power.

Cerberus

How can anything be stable if it is elected?

Elections are inherently unstable.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19:04

@Cerberus No, that's a straw-man argument. "votes on everything" gets you shit like Proposition 8. That's not what I'm talking about.

Cerberus

Thei function is not stability, but accountability.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Just make it a long term of office. But still accountable to the public.

Cerberus

I never said you propagated "votes on everything".

Again, it is just an example of how moderating democracy is good.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Because if your new king is bad, or only just useless, what recourse do you have? All that vaunted stabilization is wasted or lost.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You would have judges elected? That's terrible...

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Why? You just have a coup d'état, as they did in Belgium not long ago. A monarch with little (but substantial) power is no danger.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19:06

@Cerberus Actually, no, I don't like elected judges. But judges are still accountable. They are not hereditary positions. They can be fired. They can be promoted. There are lots of things that help keep judges in line. Also, the current system of judges is not that good. But I feel it's better than elected judges.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 How can they be fired? They can't, not here.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Judges can't be fired? They have no oversight at all? yikes.

Cerberus

I think our system of appointing judges works remarkably well, although of course there are still incompetent judges. It can't be perfect.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Everybody needs to be subject to some kind of oversight.

THAT is the key to good government.

Cerberus

They can't be fired, no. Other judges can relieve them of their duty in the case of flagrant abuse, but otherwise, no. This is in order to protect judicial independence.

Some kind of oversight, yes; but it will only come into effect in extreme cases. It would be a major national news story if a judge were relieved of duty.

If it gets out, that is.

I believe there is an alcoholic judge who is just not assigned any cases any more.

Because he is no longer competent.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19:10

@Cerberus is he still paid?

Cerberus

Yes.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

ridiculous!

get him off the payroll and let someone competent do his job!

Cerberus

I think judicial independence is extremely important, and it rightly trumps accountability in more situations than for, say, ministers.

You really, really don't want anyone from the outside being able to pressure judges or pressure those who are to be appointed, to "shape" them.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I think it's different here because judges also set precedents. So a bad judge is more dangerous.

@Cerberus Sure, but there are lots of ways to pressure judges.

Cerberus

Yeah, jurisprudence is somewhat less important here.

Although the High Council does set important precedents.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Exactly.

So anyway, my point was that it is good for a state to be mixed: lots of accountability is good, but not too much, and not everywhere.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19:14

anyway. I am in favour of "limited" democracy as opposed to your supposed extreme democracy. But I feel that it is transparency and accountability that make good government.

Cerberus

So the argument "if x is unaccountable, x is necessarily bad" is not valid in my opinion.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I am not sure that there can be "too much accountability". People have to be responsible for their actions.

Cerberus

I disagree, because of judges.

You don't want judges to be too accountable.

And the Queen is still accountable in some ways.

Because she has little power, a coup d'état is easy.

As in Belgium.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I do want them accountable. I don't want them to do whatever they want. There have to be rules.

Cerberus

So there really is no problem there.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I said too accountable. My point is that more accountability is not always better.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19:17

@Cerberus What is an example of "too accountable"?

Cerberus

A local judge being elected by popular vote. Or by the city council. That would be more accountable than the way it is now.

And if the city council could fire him too. That is very accountable.

I think it is nearly always good if several independent powers that are independently organised operate within the same sphere.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

but we have several independent powers.

Cerberus

I don't want everyone to be accountable to Parliament.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, and that is good; it's just that the Queen is another independent power doing great work. Work that we can't even see or measure, and the results of which we do not recognise as her work.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

no, that isn't what i'm after. the point is that government workers have to be accountable to someone and that the trail of accountability must terminate with the voters, even if not directly.

@Cerberus "can't see or measure" is pretty much a hallmark of bogus claims everywhere.

"This magical amulet will make you better, using mechanisms you can't see or measure"

Cerberus

There is absolutely no trail terminating with voters in any way with respect to judges. And I'm glad there isn't.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Not at all. It's just that these things are done in private conversations.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19:23

"This therapy with magnets and lasers will make your surgery heal faster, using processes you cannot see or measure" <- actual quote from a surgeon my wife visited - I am not joking

Cerberus

Just because it isn't on television doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Yeah, because it's a good thing that a do-nothing drunk can remain on payroll wasting taxpayer dollars.

Cerberus

Again, take party politics. Almost nothing of that happens where you can see it. You have no idea how it works, and yet there's lots of informal power being exercised by the party leader and others MPs.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 A minor annoyance. Judges do correct each other—that is, there is some oversight. But no real accountability, and certainly not with voters.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I have lots of ideas how it works. But that isn't my point. Every time something back-room or secret gets opened up there is usually a bad smell about it.

@Cerberus Wasting tax dollars is a minor annoyance? How much waste is there in your judicial system? Do you even know?

Cerberus

But most of what happens in every country happens in back-rooms.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19:26

In Canada there is a judicial council that would have that judge removed.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Not that much.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus It sounds to me like judges just protecting their own.

It's corrupt.

Cerberus

The judiciary has some sort of organisation, and they would remove a judge in an (even) more egregious case.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus not doing his job isn't egregious enough to get fired?

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 In case of corruption, the police can always get involved. And they do.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19:27

For someone who distrusts capitalism so much you seem to be far more relaxed about government's inadequacies.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 They think of it more as his being ill, I think.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No, I mean, the judges not firing that other judge is a sign of corruption.

Not the "taking money from mobsters to render helpful verdicts" corruption, but "doing nothing because we protect each other, tit-for-tat" corruption.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 No, it is just about the lesser evil. Some inadequacies in the judicial system is, I think, better than having judges that can be influenced from the outside. That is my point.

It has worked very well for a long time.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Or humanity.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus You could still have external accountability without undue influence.

Cerberus

How? With whom?

Don't you feel that judicial independence should ever trump accountability?

If Parliament disagrees with the way judges operate, they can always change the constitution.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19:31

@Cerberus I'm trying to think of a reason why I would want a bad judge to remain, because he's "independant".

Cerberus

There are always some ways in which the judiciary can be corrected.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You sacrifice a little thing for the greater good.

I'm not saying this is how it should always work with all judicial systems.

But it works well this way.

So this low accountability works well in this case.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Well, let's hear an example where you think the accountability would necessarily make a judge unable to act properly.

A case where a judge would have to render the wrong decision, essentially, or suffer the consequences.

Cerberus

So more accountability is not always better. Similarly, our undemocratic monarchy has worked rather well since 1848. In that year, his power was curbed to acceptable levels, and everything has worked well since then.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It is of course more subtle than that, in most cases.

I asked you how you would elect or appoint this body that corrects judges.

You would want to give this body lots of power over judges, because you want high accountability for judges.

If the body has little power over them, there is little accountability.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I don't know how this body should be composed. Perhaps by election or by appointment from parliament or by election-by-judges. The point is that in their roles they would be required to examine judges' behaviour. Actually we have a council that does that in Canada.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 No, no, the essential point if how they should be elected or appointed.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19:36

@Cerberus yes. But I didn't say the process for removing a judge has to be easy.

Cerberus

You can't hand-wave this.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No, the essential point is that they exercise authority over judges. And they are beholden to the rest of society, say, by reporting to parliament.

Cerberus

A universally just and omniscient computer, yes, let it by all means oversee judges.

But any elected body will be involved in party politics.

And any appointed body will have to be appointed by someone.

That is the problem.

Again, if we had a perfect computer, sure.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus And because they're appointed by someone, that appointment necessarily taints all their work, permanently? Obviously not, or else you couldn't trust judges at all

Cerberus

Not necessarily, but you have to admit there are potential problems.

Problems of independence.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19:44

But the point is that if someone needs to be appointed or elected, or elected from a bunch of appointees, or whatever, ultimately the power stems from somewhere. So it's false to claim that you couldn't have an independent body of people overseeing judges, because they'd be too embroiled in party politics and not independent enough, therefore judges must have no oversight. The judges are themselves appointed by tainted politicians.

Cerberus

Huh?

I don't understand this argument.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

you are saying that judges can't have any oversight because whoever does the overseeing will be able to exert undue influence on judges

and thus judges won't be independent enough

Cerberus

Sort of, yes.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I'm saying that whatever process is sufficient to make judges should be sufficient to make meta-judges

Cerberus

Well, how can you have meta-judges in a system of coöptation?

I'm sure the commissions that appoint judges are organised in some way, but they're still manned by judges.

Or womaned, actually, because most judges are women here.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19:49

@Cerberus My point is that it must be possible to achieve sufficient independence AND maintain accountability. I don't believe that the two concepts are at odds.

I mean, our government has a commissioner that they appoint whose job it is to find fault in what the government does. That person is accountable to the very government they are meant to attack. Yet if the government doesn't appoint a good enough person, the voters can vote the government out of office next time.

Cerberus

Again, I'm not saying there should be no accountability at all. There is accountability. My point is just that more accountability is in many cases better, but not always.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Anyway, I find it scandalous that a judge would be given full pay and no cases.

Cerberus

Do you fire a sick employee?

Perhaps he should have been fired. I don't know.

But I just think you should be very, very careful about firing judges.

By the way, I actually know of a semi-corrupt judge. The problem is mainly that her case is incredibly hard to prove.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus within certain definitions of "fire", yes, you do.

Cerberus

Uhh that is totally illegal here.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19:56

So if someone can no longer work, you are obliged to continue to pay them forever?

Cerberus

Not forever, but at least for a very long time.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Really?

Cerberus

Yeah.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Because here there are rules about that. And it's not "a very long time".

Cerberus

The reasoning is that it is less hard on an employer than on the employee.

If you have no income all of a sudden, you're screwed. If you have an unproductive employee, you may or may not be screwed. Only if you're a very small company.

Of course there is a problem there.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19:58

@Cerberus But if you create a system where you incentivize long-term sickness, won't that increase the frequency of long-term sicknesses?

Cerberus

But not firing someone who is mentally ill is not exactly absurd, although it is certainly dubious. I don't know the details.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Absolutely. As always, it is a choice between evils.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I know for a fact that insurance companies, when paying out for claims, often prefer to pay a large lump sum up front, because that incentivizes getting better faster than paying out over a period of months or years.

user19161

@trig I see your face.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah, that makes sense.

So by the way, what happened in the case of this drunk judge probably happens all the time with civil servants, and also in private companies.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Anyway, I don't know the particulars of the judge's case. Obviously people can get sick, and sometimes it takes a long time to get better. Around here we typically use insurance to deal with that.

Cerberus

20:00

Whose insurance?

IT can be extremely expensive for employees, that kind of insurance.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

The employee's group health insurance typically provided by any company large enough to "not suffer from an unproductive employee"

Cerberus

I think my mother's insurance would have been € 1000 a month or so, for unemployment due to sickness/accident.

So she didn't take it.

So, if she should fall ill, she simply has zero income, period (because she is nobody's employee).

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Any idea how much that would cost?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Not off hand. employers offer it as a standard perk most of the time.

The smallest companies might not offer it.

Cerberus

I wonder how people can afford that.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

but then they are also the most impacted by unproductive employees.

Cerberus

20:03

Yeah.

There is a problem with our system.

Because it is so incredibly hard to fire people, most people are now only hired on short contracts.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus it's nowhere near € 1000/month. More like $100/month, maybe less. depends on the group size and the kinds of benefits provided.

Cerberus

That is affordable, for most people.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus see? Too little accountability

Cerberus

How much do you pay for health insurance?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hmm whose accountability?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I don't pay for any health insurance directly. I have coverage from work.

Cerberus

20:05

Huh.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus The workers are not accountable to their bosses.

Cerberus

I don't know.

It's not exactly the same.

If you don't perform well, and your employer has a file on you in which he provides lots of information about how your performance is really bad, he can fire you.

The idea is that he can only fire you if he has a good reason, not just 'cause.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Here, we do it differently. Your employer can fire you for no reason, if they give sufficient severance pay.

Cerberus

How much?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

The size of that severance pay is usually the problem. For some employees it can be a year's wages, depending on the circumstances.

Cerberus

20:09

I think that may be possible here as well.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

There is no set guideline.

Cerberus

We have guidelines.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I should have said, there are guidelines, but no laws.

Cerberus

It is usually around 1 month's pay for each year you have worked at the company.

Our guidelines may be laws—at least, they are enforced by judges.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Yeah, something like that, but of course employers are loathe to part with so much money, so they try to drum up some pretext to trim it down.

That's when you get lawsuits.

Cerberus

20:10

Absolutely.

And, when you quit, you get nothing.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

But I would not say it's "hard" to fire people. It's easy enough. Sometimes you have to pay for it though.

Cerberus

Maybe it is the samehere.

But paying is apparently too hard for employers, so it must be lots of money.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yeah. When I left my last job, I made the decision to leave and then there were layoffs. My friend, who decided to leave at the same time as me, and go to the same new job as me, got laid off (= fired) and got a severance package. They wanted to keep me, though, so I got nothing when I quit.

Cerberus

Heh.

Here you also can't get unemployment benefits if you quit.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Maybe. capitalism ain't perfect but rewarding people proportionate to the value they bring is a good incentive to get more value created. Thus you have to be able to fire unproductive workers.

@Cerberus yeah, same here.

Cerberus

20:13

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah, eventually...as always, there should be a balance.

So anyway, to return to the Queen: if this system of a monarch who has very little but still some power, and very little accountability, has worked extremely well for 165 years, why change it? Practice precedes principles.

Precedes as in trumps.

Johan Larsson

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Have you seen this, do you agree?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus my contention is that it isn't necessary, and thus a waste. If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It's fairly cheap. And do you really believe that, that anything that you can't measure is a waste? How about our discussions? Can you measure the benefit they have on our opinions and knowledge?

Are they a waste of time?

How about the arts, theoretical science...

Johan Larsson

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Also how much more than you do your CEO make. Do you feel it is proportional?

Cerberus

I think the "measure" think is too simple.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

20:18

@Cerberus I can't necessarily measure them, per se, but subjectively I feel that sometimes they are beneficial, but what about the opportunity cost? I could be practicing my chinese right now instead of discussing republicanism.

Cerberus

Of course there has to be some evidence that it works.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus come on. at least half our conversations are wastes of time in the end, except for entertainment value.

Cerberus

And is entertainment not valuable?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@JohanLarsson I don't know what my "ceo" makes.

@Cerberus well, it is valuable. Actually I contend that the main function of the British Monarchy right now is entertainment.

@Cerberus Don't read "measure" too literally.

Cerberus

Your "If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist." really doesn't make sense. You know that. If there is no evidence at all that it exists, and it doesn't seem theoretically plausible either, then, yes, it as good as doesn't exist.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

20:20

@JohanLarsson I've seen this. I have to re-watch it though to answer "do I agree" because I forget the question.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It sounded weird. I didn't understand what you meant exactly. It seems very likely that the Queen and her influence have real effects.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No. I mean "if you can't measure [the evidence that the queen is beneficial] then [that evidence doesn't exist]".

Cerberus

Suppose she were beneficial, what kind of evidence would we see?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Just because a queen could theoretically have lots of power or influence, doesn't mean that yours does, or that she uses it properly, or that the result is distinguishable from not having a queen.

@Cerberus I don't know. Some list of achievements she's had?

Cerberus

Like which?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

20:23

@Cerberus which what, achievements? I don't know her achievements.

Cerberus

How can "she talked x out of y" ever be known?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I mean, scientifically, if you wanted to experiment, you would take a bunch of countries, and add queens to half of them, and then measure later which ones have better outcomes.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It is indeed not necessary, but we're talking likelihoods here.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That would be totally useless, because you could never exclude all other factors.

And you could never measure the "outcomes".

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Of course it wouldn't be totally useless. How do you think medical trials are done?

Cerberus

Not on countries.

It is much easier to become somewhat close to ceteris paribus with patients in controlled environments.

Matt Эллен

20:25

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 or you could do a cohort study, looking at nations with and without queens

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Just compare all the commonwealth countries with England: they all seem to do just fine, and yet only England has the queen.

Cerberus

And you have excluded all other factors how?

Johan Larsson

Sweden has a king, will be a queen soon

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 This doesn't make any sense at all. No scientist would propose this.

@JohanLarsson Yay!

But your crown princess married her trainer, didn't she?

Or was that the Norvegian princess?

Johan Larsson

idk, I don't follow it that closely, our prince designed a fork and can not speak a full sentence in proper Swedish though

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

20:27

@Cerberus My point is that if you cannot point to any evidence of a queen having any effect on the country, then you may as well not have a queen. Not just hypotheses about how a queen might affect a country. Actual results.

And there are enough republics or de facto republics in this world that act as examples of nations with no queens or kings who do just fine without them. whatever job the queen or king supposedly does is either unimportant or handled by someone else.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 What evidence do you have that studying history at university benefits the student or humanity?

Johan Larsson

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I think the level of evidence from epidemiology is considered to be low

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Nobody said it was absolutely necessary. Or that the effect was large.

A country is not a simple science experiment. There are too many factors to take any measurements.

Johan Larsson

(I'm not defending monarchy btw, I'm an anarchist pretty much)

Cerberus

It is like politicians who say "look, the economy has grown during my tenure, so I must have been beneficial".

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

20:30

@Cerberus Just admit it. The queen is a decoration and entertainment. Not an important piece of government.

Cerberus

@JohanLarsson Haha, really? Why is his language or style deficient?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus just because it's not a simple science experiment doesn't mean you can't apply science to it.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I don't know about important. I'm just saying she is a good influence and a positive factor.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus And yet, politicians champion policies which can eventually be evaluated for their effectiveness.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Look, your suggestion about commonwealth republics makes no sense at all, and you know it. You can't apply science to that at all.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

20:31

@Cerberus Yes, she, Beatrice, the one queen in question. But the whole office of the monarch? The hereditary nature of it? All the pomp and circumstance? All the unnecessary ceremony?

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Most policies cannot really be evaluated.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No, it makes perfect sense. They have remarkably similar systems of government. Try to find a single beneficial outcome that must be performed by a monarch and see if it's present in England and absent in Canada.

@Cerberus That's for those useless historians to decide.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I wasn't talking about the pomp. That is worth keeping for aesthetic reasons alone. I was talking about her constitutional powers.

Johan Larsson

@Cerberus he is slightly retarded I believe

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 This is ridiculous. Don't you believe in ceteris paribus at all?

@JohanLarsson Aww.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Okay, if you think most academic pursuits are useless...

Mahnax

20:33

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Did you hear about the law against unlocking one's phone in the US?

Johan Larsson

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I agree fully (for Sweden)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No, I was joking when I said that. You asked for evidence that studying history is worthwhile. I thought that this proved that it could be.

@Cerberus What does that have to do with it? Just because you can't control every variable doesn't mean that there aren't techniques for doing experiments.

@Mahnax yeah I had a long discussion with cerb and metaed about it the other day.

Cerberus

Anyway, I think the "quantify or perish" mentality that is now en vogue is really, really short-sighted and fundamentally incorrect. It causes lots of waste and wrongness in politics and the world.

And now I have to buy milk.

Mahnax

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Ah.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It boils down to this: courts have started deciding that you don't own software, where previously they tended to decide otherwise.

The phone companies pointed this out to the copyright board and the EFF and other pro-unlocking lobbyists didn't counter this argument enough. And then, even though the copyright registrar WASN'T CONVINCED by that argument, she advanced it anyway, and the librarian of congress revoked the exemption.

KitFox

20:36

Hi.

Mahnax

Hi @Kit!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

So unlocking phones is illegal on the basis that changing the phone's firmware is a contract violation in the hypothetical situation where you don't own your copy of your phone's software despite having bought it.

KitFox

So just build your own phone instead.

TRiG

@JasonBourne And you see a paper party hat worn over a cloth hat.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 If you can't control or exclude the variables well enough, you can't draw any conclusions from the experiment, making it...inconclusive. You cannot draw any conclusions about whether or not Lizzy has been beneficial based on "NZ and CA and AUS are doing fine". You can conclude that being a republic is not a terrible disaster, sure. But you cannot conclude that having a (power-limited) monarch is useless.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

20:38

And if you violate your contract (with the carrier) then your license becomes invalid, and thus your copy is no longer legit, and thus you'd be violating copyright. So through that torturous chain of hypotheticals, the carrier lock is mumble mumble a DRM mechanism.

Cerberus

Now I'm off, bye.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus How many examples do you need before you could conclude it? What if only one country in the world had a monarch, and did no better than any other?

What if half did, and on average did no better?

pick any metric

I still think that unlocking your phone should be legal if you unlocked it by replacing the phone's firmware with some other firmware. I don't see how destroying your copy could be illegal under any copyright law. But The DMCA makes no sense.

Cerberus

Utterly useless unless you can exclude all other variables. Only by studying each country's system in depth will you be able to draw any conclusions: merely comparing quantified results will be totally unpractical.

Matt Эллен

Queens are better than presidents. It's just universal fact.

Mahnax

@MattЭллен A president wouldn't be of much use in a game of chess, but a queen…

Matt Эллен

20:42

exactly!

KitFox

Is there a word, or maybe it is a name, like Nemecine?

Matt Эллен

Queens have all the best moves

@KitFox what's it used for?

KitFox

I was going to use it as a name, but it's half there, teasing me.

Mahnax

Nemenčinė

Nemenčinė (, see names section for alternate and historic names) is a city in Vilnius district municipality, Lithuania, it is located about north-east of Vilnius. Names Nemenčinė is the original name of the city reflected in historical documents and still in use today. Other versions of the name include Неменчын in Belarussian, Niemenczyn in Polish, Неменчине (or Нямянчине) in Russian and Nementchin (נעמענטשין) in Yiddish. History In 1387, following the Christianization of Lithuania, Jogaila established the first Christian parish in Nemenčinė and built a church there. Ethnic compos...

KitFox

Starts with N, ends in cene or cine.

@Mahnax Not that.

Mahnax

20:44

I think I have seen Nancine used as a name, but not frequently.

Johan Larsson

@KitFox name of what?

Mahnax

@KitFox Thought not.

KitFox

Maybe I'm thinking of Nicene.

@JohanLarsson Name of a woman protagonist.

Matt Эллен

nacent?

KitFox

No, definitely a -cine or -cene.

Shit.

Hey @Cerb, what's the adjectival of Nemesis?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

20:49

11

Q: What is the adjective form of "nemesis"?

If I have a non-person object or idea that I consider to be my nemesis1, how could I refer to the object as a noun but use an embellishing adjective to emphasize that the object is my nemesis? For instance, "Since the end of World War II, Communism has been the [nemesisical] ideology of the Unit...

KitFox

Oh. I did remember that.

I thought maybe I was remembering that, but nope.

Well, maybe I will just call her Nicene then. Why not?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

like the creed?

KitFox

Yeah.

She's a woman of faith. Not a religious faith, but. Well.

Cerberus

@KitFox Yeah, nemetic, or nemetical.

But, you know.

Matt Эллен

nemesaurus

Cerberus

20:59

Nemellen.

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