As a sailor I find this discussion interesting because I've been forced by necessity to learn and understand how everything on my boat works, including diesel engine, electric, plumbing, rigging, sail, paint, even the construction materials used. I've also come to mistrust hi-tech in a marine environment.
If my diesel runs away, I know of at least two methods to stop it, and can usually diagnose and solve other mechanical problems. If the steering fails, I know how to access and repair the steering components, but if I can't then I at least know how to steer by sail alone. If the electric fails I can systematically isolate the fault, or just sail without. If the plumbing fails I can likewise isolate the cause and have the equipment on hand to repair it or stop the leak. In essence, I've become a plumber, mechanic, electrician, carpenter, engineer, etc.
But I think most yachties are more like car owners, they don't want to know, they just pay others to fix it.
I tell you, knowledge is freedom. The less you understand the workings of something, the more enslaved you are.
With each passing year you're losing more and more rights and liberties. It's no longer a democracy, not even a republic really. If things continue like this I don't think you're going to have *any* rights whatsoever. The future looks rather bleak, doesn't it? Or can someone point me to a list of case law with some positive victories...?
It's kind of interesting how communism led to this, and this was the main argument everyone had against it and socialism, and now "democracy" or "the democratic republic" is leading to pretty much the same thing. So I guess democracy no longer works either. What are our alternatives?
I'll start off slightly off topic but there's a point coming.
I always think that anyone who says "with the economy the way it is" doesn't really understand the economy.The economy is always the way it is. For every person who is losing money, there is someone gaining. What's bad for one company is good for another. One industry shrinks, another grows. The price/value of something goes up and down, benefiting and harming someone all of the time. Every winning business idea/plan soon becomes a loser, every successful business that grows, grows to the point of losing control. Every great product is eventually superseded by something better. Every business is based on exploiting something or someone.
The point I'll make is that if this kind of constant chaos and turmoil creates fear and anxiety in you, maybe you need to get out of the economy and go back to a much more basic and rewarding lifestyle. Maybe retire, or join a commune, live in a monastery, or set out on an adventure, hitchhike the world, sail the oceans, climb mountains. Stuff that REALLY matters and nourishes the mind and soul.
What produced the mindset that there must not be any blown up/hijacked/whatever planes no matter what? This baffles me.
If lessening these ridiculous security measures means the occasional plane gets blown up or driven into some tower, I'm willing to take that risk. I recognize that, statistically, I'm more likely to accidentally drown in my own bathtub or get hit by a car while walking down the street. And I don't know if this is just me, but the thought of being on one of those planes doesn't frighten me? If it happens to me it happens to me, I'll do my best to fight the attackers and land the plane but if I die then so be it.
In many places in the world this sort of thing goes on every day. Hell, the US blows up a lot of ordinary and innocent people every day.
If most Americans were polled on this would they side with the increased security in return for giving up their rights and freedoms? Has anyone actually polled them on this question? How is this happening?
The iPod may be easy to use, but the iTunes interface sucks big time in terms of usability. It's the total opposite of the iTunes philosophy, if you ask me. I don't think Steve Jobs has ever had to use iTunes, I think he'd have an aneurysm if he had.
Amen to that. The FPS and RTS genres fucked it up. Suddenly, all the industry wanted was shoot'em-ups and blow'em-ups, catering almost exclusively to the lowest common denominator. Gaming became like television, a way to waste time in some brain dead activity that reduced you to a twitching zombie-like state.
I miss the turn-based strategy games in particular.
If you ask me, marriage is one of the dumbest inventions of mankind. It was invented by religion, it rarely has anything to do with love in my experience.
Why on earth would you put arbitrary boundaries and conditions on love? Who are you to dictate to anyone who they may or may not love, when, whyfor and whatever? Moreover, who are you to tell your lover they can't love someone else?
But forget all that - why enter an "agreement" where both of you have only the vaguest notion of what the other thinks it entails? Way to set yourself up for all sorts of problems.
No, more...why are you marrying THAT PERSON? Fuck, they just want the ring, house, car, 1.5 kids, it's the status they want, because it's fashionable to be married, or there are financial benefits to it, you're merely secondary to that, collateral.
It's a pathetically boring script - A meets B, A and B date for a while, A and B get engaged, A and B get married, get a house, car, pop out some kids, etc. Because, well, because that's just how it's done, how everyone else does it, because, y'know?
Actually, the society portrayed in Star Trek (e.g. no greed) is feasible to me, but perhaps that's because I'm not greedy/selfish myself. I love my job because I love what I do. If I didn't get paid for it, I would still be doing it. I've found that not many people can't begin to comprehend that, and I feel sad for them. The society portrayed in Star Trek is a society of people like me, where everyone has found their niche, works for love of their craft, has no need for accumulating material wealth and possessions, etc.
At the root of all of this bullshit is the selfish desire for more of something than anyone else has, to one-up, to compete, to p0wn, exploit, to have and wield power over others.
I seriously think we need to rig society in such a way that selfishness is effectively disadvantaged. We can start with a money-free economy, that'll remove 95% of the sociopathy discussed here. People can go back to doing what they do for love of craft rather than love or need for money.
Someone here mentioned that no matter what happens in the management levels, the bottom levels keep the company operating and moving forward. Perhaps we need to remove the management levels in order to improve efficiency. If a company can operate without managers, and I bet it can, then so can all levels of society and civilization.
No, it was a rebuke of warmongering. Notice the "peace" in the "Nobel Peace Prize." Bush, with his swashbuckling "with us or against us" saber rattling "bomb 'em to the stone age", "bring 'em awn" approach was as warmongering and belligerent as they came. Given any number of solutions, he chose a military solution by default over anything else. He spurned diplomacy, choosing Bolton as UN rep,, who distinctly and publicly despised both diplomacy and the UN. Not only that, the Bush administration actively set out to weaken the UN.
Obama is a much more reasonable person to deal with, thus the rest of the world is relieved and can breathe easier. The award really belongs to those Americans who voted Obama, but I wholeheartedly agree with it anyway.
You know what. All advertised products, targeted or not, are things you simply don't need. The point of advertising is to create the perceived need, on your part, out of nothing. And the perceived need isn't a need but a desire, and that's the point - to create the desire and confuse you into thinking it's a need. And you know they do it very well, the magic spell of advertising works on you.
You live in a consumerist society, you're nobody, worthless, if you don't have what everyone else has, and have your toys to play with, to distract you from better things that you should be doing instead - like, I dunno, revolution or doing things for the betterment of mankind. That's where advertising gets its power. To defeat advertising, stop being a society based on property, money, consumption and greed.
Yeah, I stopped playing PC games for the same reasons, plus the fact that nowadays they're all tactical (e.g. FPS) and dumbed down rather than strategic and engaging. They've become just another variation of television. There are no games out there for people like me who like realism and learning curves.
Contrary to what other posters have been saying, there's definitely glory in IT. Glory is when you save a company millions of bucks, or when everyone loves you because you make their jobs easier, save them time, or when people come to you with problems and go away with solutions. Usually this sort of scenario takes place at small to mid-sized companies, not at mega-corporations.
Seriously, you do NOT want to have to deal with Bell Canada customer service or support for any reason whatsoever. They are legendary for the atrocious level of customer care, for bilking their customers, for owing customers money but never giving it back, for simply getting every last little thing amazingly wrong, for the amounts of pain inflicted and for their sheer level of unfairness.
I remember when I got my first telephone line back in the mid-80's, within months I had an unexplained and impossible charge, and I simply couldn't contest the charge - it was either pay it plus (growing) interest or have no phone.
My god, recently I moved to an apartment and had to endure two months of support calls to get my line moved too, and a Bell representative tried to sell me something called Line Insurance - basically, for an extra $20/mo it would guarantee that this sort of thing didn't happen. They wanted to charge me extra to ensure that I got what I already paid for! Can you imagine?!
It doesn't matter if there's someone manning the switch because that person will have been trained to flip that switch and presumably wouldn't be able to tell if it's a practice or real. Otherwise, what's the point? So it may as well be automated.
Here's my take on this. I had an unusual upbringing. My parents were one of those laissez faire types who essentially let me do whatever I wanted as a kid. I could come and go as I pleased, go to bed whenever I wanted, go wherever I wanted, etc.
And gosh, did I ever go places I shouldn't have, and get into trouble, and found myself in danger all the time, including a run in with a pedophile.
But I learned to think my way out of trouble, to be self-sufficient, to problem-solve and, more importantly, not to rely on anyone but myself.
When I see kids these days I'm not sure they're exposed to enough danger to make them think rather than freak out or panic when it happens. And I see this watch as having the potential to give them a false sense of security. I think it actually helps to know people don't know where you are and can't find you if you're in danger, that you'll be a little more cautious knowing this. Don't depend on momma to get you out of trouble.
Someone was just telling me about a documentary they saw where they took a group of kids with ADHD, put them on treadmills and made them raise their heart rates to a certain point for a certain length of time each morning. The result was that the ADHD practically disappeared and the students were much more mentally active and focused on their studies for the rest of the day. I wonder if this is what's behind the heart monitors here.
My interpretation of the Libertarian position is that they value privacy and individualism. Or at least they used to. They don't like the government having anything to do with them. They don't have a "contract" with the government. Similarly, why would they be ok with corporations having their private info without their consent?
I actually think folks who watch TV and movies ARE chumps. I stopped ages ago, you should too. What will it take to get the majority of people to stop? Sometimes I think people will take ANYTHING up the ass and say thank you too.
Commodore 64's, Vic 20's and TRS80's are still functioning...tape drives intact.
And what the heck was that gold plated disc they sent up with Vger, wherever it is?
Oh, and stone tablets are still going pretty strong too.
I used to take a Chinatown streetcar and was always amazed at how the Chinese, at least in this town, had no sense of getting in line or lining up. The streetcar came, they just rushed the thing from all directions. Nobody waited in lines. I thought it was a cultural thing.
Could it simply be that by placing an obstacle near the doorway they forced people to actually line up, thereby proving that lining up actually helps?
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As a sailor I find this discussion interesting because I've been forced by necessity to learn and understand how everything on my boat works, including diesel engine, electric, plumbing, rigging, sail, paint, even the construction materials used. I've also come to mistrust hi-tech in a marine environment.
If my diesel runs away, I know of at least two methods to stop it, and can usually diagnose and solve other mechanical problems. If the steering fails, I know how to access and repair the steering components, but if I can't then I at least know how to steer by sail alone. If the electric fails I can systematically isolate the fault, or just sail without. If the plumbing fails I can likewise isolate the cause and have the equipment on hand to repair it or stop the leak. In essence, I've become a plumber, mechanic, electrician, carpenter, engineer, etc.
But I think most yachties are more like car owners, they don't want to know, they just pay others to fix it.
I tell you, knowledge is freedom. The less you understand the workings of something, the more enslaved you are.
Oh, and the more you pay through the nose for it.
Me, I'll continue to ride my bike to work.
With each passing year you're losing more and more rights and liberties. It's no longer a democracy, not even a republic really. If things continue like this I don't think you're going to have *any* rights whatsoever. The future looks rather bleak, doesn't it? Or can someone point me to a list of case law with some positive victories...?
It's kind of interesting how communism led to this, and this was the main argument everyone had against it and socialism, and now "democracy" or "the democratic republic" is leading to pretty much the same thing. So I guess democracy no longer works either. What are our alternatives?
36,000 acres of turbines to power only 150,000 homes? Seems incredibly inefficient...
I'll start off slightly off topic but there's a point coming.
I always think that anyone who says "with the economy the way it is" doesn't really understand the economy.The economy is always the way it is. For every person who is losing money, there is someone gaining. What's bad for one company is good for another. One industry shrinks, another grows. The price/value of something goes up and down, benefiting and harming someone all of the time. Every winning business idea/plan soon becomes a loser, every successful business that grows, grows to the point of losing control. Every great product is eventually superseded by something better. Every business is based on exploiting something or someone.
The point I'll make is that if this kind of constant chaos and turmoil creates fear and anxiety in you, maybe you need to get out of the economy and go back to a much more basic and rewarding lifestyle. Maybe retire, or join a commune, live in a monastery, or set out on an adventure, hitchhike the world, sail the oceans, climb mountains. Stuff that REALLY matters and nourishes the mind and soul.
What produced the mindset that there must not be any blown up/hijacked/whatever planes no matter what? This baffles me.
If lessening these ridiculous security measures means the occasional plane gets blown up or driven into some tower, I'm willing to take that risk. I recognize that, statistically, I'm more likely to accidentally drown in my own bathtub or get hit by a car while walking down the street. And I don't know if this is just me, but the thought of being on one of those planes doesn't frighten me? If it happens to me it happens to me, I'll do my best to fight the attackers and land the plane but if I die then so be it.
In many places in the world this sort of thing goes on every day. Hell, the US blows up a lot of ordinary and innocent people every day.
If most Americans were polled on this would they side with the increased security in return for giving up their rights and freedoms? Has anyone actually polled them on this question? How is this happening?
The iPod may be easy to use, but the iTunes interface sucks big time in terms of usability. It's the total opposite of the iTunes philosophy, if you ask me. I don't think Steve Jobs has ever had to use iTunes, I think he'd have an aneurysm if he had.
Amen to that. The FPS and RTS genres fucked it up. Suddenly, all the industry wanted was shoot'em-ups and blow'em-ups, catering almost exclusively to the lowest common denominator. Gaming became like television, a way to waste time in some brain dead activity that reduced you to a twitching zombie-like state.
I miss the turn-based strategy games in particular.
If you ask me, marriage is one of the dumbest inventions of mankind. It was invented by religion, it rarely has anything to do with love in my experience.
Why on earth would you put arbitrary boundaries and conditions on love? Who are you to dictate to anyone who they may or may not love, when, whyfor and whatever? Moreover, who are you to tell your lover they can't love someone else?
But forget all that - why enter an "agreement" where both of you have only the vaguest notion of what the other thinks it entails? Way to set yourself up for all sorts of problems.
No, more...why are you marrying THAT PERSON? Fuck, they just want the ring, house, car, 1.5 kids, it's the status they want, because it's fashionable to be married, or there are financial benefits to it, you're merely secondary to that, collateral.
It's a pathetically boring script - A meets B, A and B date for a while, A and B get engaged, A and B get married, get a house, car, pop out some kids, etc. Because, well, because that's just how it's done, how everyone else does it, because, y'know?
Yup. And by the way, how much do you want to bet all this is coming soon to a neighbourhood near you.
I don't think it's considered a "real death". In the military, towelheads don't count as real people.
Actually, the society portrayed in Star Trek (e.g. no greed) is feasible to me, but perhaps that's because I'm not greedy/selfish myself. I love my job because I love what I do. If I didn't get paid for it, I would still be doing it. I've found that not many people can't begin to comprehend that, and I feel sad for them. The society portrayed in Star Trek is a society of people like me, where everyone has found their niche, works for love of their craft, has no need for accumulating material wealth and possessions, etc.
At the root of all of this bullshit is the selfish desire for more of something than anyone else has, to one-up, to compete, to p0wn, exploit, to have and wield power over others.
I seriously think we need to rig society in such a way that selfishness is effectively disadvantaged. We can start with a money-free economy, that'll remove 95% of the sociopathy discussed here. People can go back to doing what they do for love of craft rather than love or need for money.
Someone here mentioned that no matter what happens in the management levels, the bottom levels keep the company operating and moving forward. Perhaps we need to remove the management levels in order to improve efficiency. If a company can operate without managers, and I bet it can, then so can all levels of society and civilization.
No, it was a rebuke of warmongering. Notice the "peace" in the "Nobel Peace Prize." Bush, with his swashbuckling "with us or against us" saber rattling "bomb 'em to the stone age", "bring 'em awn" approach was as warmongering and belligerent as they came. Given any number of solutions, he chose a military solution by default over anything else. He spurned diplomacy, choosing Bolton as UN rep,, who distinctly and publicly despised both diplomacy and the UN. Not only that, the Bush administration actively set out to weaken the UN.
Obama is a much more reasonable person to deal with, thus the rest of the world is relieved and can breathe easier. The award really belongs to those Americans who voted Obama, but I wholeheartedly agree with it anyway.
You know what. All advertised products, targeted or not, are things you simply don't need. The point of advertising is to create the perceived need, on your part, out of nothing. And the perceived need isn't a need but a desire, and that's the point - to create the desire and confuse you into thinking it's a need. And you know they do it very well, the magic spell of advertising works on you.
You live in a consumerist society, you're nobody, worthless, if you don't have what everyone else has, and have your toys to play with, to distract you from better things that you should be doing instead - like, I dunno, revolution or doing things for the betterment of mankind. That's where advertising gets its power. To defeat advertising, stop being a society based on property, money, consumption and greed.
Yeah, I stopped playing PC games for the same reasons, plus the fact that nowadays they're all tactical (e.g. FPS) and dumbed down rather than strategic and engaging. They've become just another variation of television. There are no games out there for people like me who like realism and learning curves.
Contrary to what other posters have been saying, there's definitely glory in IT. Glory is when you save a company millions of bucks, or when everyone loves you because you make their jobs easier, save them time, or when people come to you with problems and go away with solutions. Usually this sort of scenario takes place at small to mid-sized companies, not at mega-corporations.
Seriously, you do NOT want to have to deal with Bell Canada customer service or support for any reason whatsoever. They are legendary for the atrocious level of customer care, for bilking their customers, for owing customers money but never giving it back, for simply getting every last little thing amazingly wrong, for the amounts of pain inflicted and for their sheer level of unfairness.
I remember when I got my first telephone line back in the mid-80's, within months I had an unexplained and impossible charge, and I simply couldn't contest the charge - it was either pay it plus (growing) interest or have no phone.
My god, recently I moved to an apartment and had to endure two months of support calls to get my line moved too, and a Bell representative tried to sell me something called Line Insurance - basically, for an extra $20/mo it would guarantee that this sort of thing didn't happen. They wanted to charge me extra to ensure that I got what I already paid for! Can you imagine?!
No, Bell Canada is evil incarnate and must die.
It doesn't matter if there's someone manning the switch because that person will have been trained to flip that switch and presumably wouldn't be able to tell if it's a practice or real. Otherwise, what's the point? So it may as well be automated.
Here's my take on this. I had an unusual upbringing. My parents were one of those laissez faire types who essentially let me do whatever I wanted as a kid. I could come and go as I pleased, go to bed whenever I wanted, go wherever I wanted, etc.
And gosh, did I ever go places I shouldn't have, and get into trouble, and found myself in danger all the time, including a run in with a pedophile.
But I learned to think my way out of trouble, to be self-sufficient, to problem-solve and, more importantly, not to rely on anyone but myself.
When I see kids these days I'm not sure they're exposed to enough danger to make them think rather than freak out or panic when it happens. And I see this watch as having the potential to give them a false sense of security. I think it actually helps to know people don't know where you are and can't find you if you're in danger, that you'll be a little more cautious knowing this. Don't depend on momma to get you out of trouble.
Yeah, think of most managers at any corporation. I suspect there's more of these sorts than we like to think.
Someone was just telling me about a documentary they saw where they took a group of kids with ADHD, put them on treadmills and made them raise their heart rates to a certain point for a certain length of time each morning. The result was that the ADHD practically disappeared and the students were much more mentally active and focused on their studies for the rest of the day. I wonder if this is what's behind the heart monitors here.
My interpretation of the Libertarian position is that they value privacy and individualism. Or at least they used to. They don't like the government having anything to do with them. They don't have a "contract" with the government. Similarly, why would they be ok with corporations having their private info without their consent?
I actually think folks who watch TV and movies ARE chumps. I stopped ages ago, you should too. What will it take to get the majority of people to stop? Sometimes I think people will take ANYTHING up the ass and say thank you too.
Commodore 64's, Vic 20's and TRS80's are still functioning...tape drives intact. And what the heck was that gold plated disc they sent up with Vger, wherever it is? Oh, and stone tablets are still going pretty strong too.
I think I know what's going on here.
I used to take a Chinatown streetcar and was always amazed at how the Chinese, at least in this town, had no sense of getting in line or lining up. The streetcar came, they just rushed the thing from all directions. Nobody waited in lines. I thought it was a cultural thing.
Could it simply be that by placing an obstacle near the doorway they forced people to actually line up, thereby proving that lining up actually helps?