EVERY TIME I have tried to watch an embedded video on Slashdot, it has been abysmally slow to load. An almost complete waste of my time.
JUST LINK TO VIDEOS, DON'T TRY TO EMBED. You are doing your readers a disservice. Just add a link and let people watch off the original server. It works far better.
That's simply poor systems design. You are vastly better off making it distributed.
There is no way a single processor should be involved in all these things. For example, a sound system could talk to your transmission more-or-less directly (or share input from the transmission, at any rate) without sharing any processor or code with the central control system.
Similarly, there is no reason that other devices like Bluetooth, WiFi, cabin temperature, phone, and so on should be connected to the main control system. Instead they should be on separate subsystems of their own, probably with their own microcontrollers.
Isolating those systems allows MUCH easier optimization of them, for one thing, without complicating (or introducing bugs or security issues into) the main control system.
At most, control of those devices should be through a central processor that allows for voice control... again separately from the central system. The only thing the central system should be receiving is hard-wired feedback about system status. And I argue that it need not bother with most of those subsystems at all.
That's the main thing. Devices that are irrelevant to essential system services, like sound systems, climate control, phone and WiFi, should be kept apart from the central processor.
If they need to communicate at all (I would argue no), it should be in one direction only: control signals from the main processor outward, with nothing in the other direction except for hard-wired feedback such as "Yes, I am turned on." By that I mean: they should be separate hardware systems with their own specialized software. Maybe a microcontroller, or some such. But one thing such peripheral systems should NOT be, is simply software subsystems running on the main processor.
The main processor should be limited in its communication/control of such devices. Feedback such as "Bluetooth is turned on" might be useful to some extent, but Bluetooth, WiFi, climate control, etc. should be offloaded from the main processor to subsystems of their own.
That simply eliminates most of the problem, and I know of no good reason they could not be designed that way. Just don't lump everything into a single system and OS. That's a big mistake.
"I don't see a strong central government as being relevant. Pure communism was alleged to be stateless by Marx, but that's not the only form of communism."
It's relevant because that's the definition of socialism. Like communism, except a strong central government.
"They don't know that it's going to run into long-term disaster."
Yes they do. They had disaster before, and they're opting for more of the same.
"The present prosperity was in a large part bought by trading resources, esp. oil & gas. This is not a viable long-term strategy..."
Yes, it is. They have a VAST amount of resources in proportion to their population. It is probably their ONLY viable long-term strategy. And the First World is nowhere near going all-nuclear or anything even remotely like it, for decades. AND when it does, it will still need oil and natural gas as raw materials for manufacturing.
"Problem is that government sucked, and it self-identified with democracy and liberalism (to contrast itself with commies), so when they failed hard, those very terms got smeared for decades to come."
I am aware of this. But the "liberal" government still consisted of mostly the same people, who had a "change of heart".
The difference is that I don't think it was ever intended to succeed. It was intended to fail. Hard.
"Well, what makes Russian communism not communism? The fact it didn't work? I don't see that a label is inappropriate merely because it's not pure."
There is a very big difference between being "not pure", and "not even close to real".
Look up the definition of "Communism". Or better yet: actually read Karl Marx! Because you will get a better actual definition there than you can pull from any dictionary. As a middle ground, consider Wikipedia, but take it with a grain of salt.
Communism was Marx's "ideal" social system in which there is no government. Everybody lives in harmony, free from oppressive government from above.
"Socialism" was, according to Marx, a necessary stepping-stone to get to Communism. Here's the problem: Socialism requires a strong central government. But EVERY TIME, in the history of the world, that an aspiring "communist" country got to that point, for some strange reason those members of the central government refused to give up their power.
"It's different people in US today, and different people in Russia, and the situation is much different as well. I just wanted to make it clearer as to why anti-Americanism is rather pervasive in Russia - it's kinda important, not the least because the present govt channels that sentiment, converting it into support for themselves and anger at the opposition, by painting it as pro-West (which, frankly, it is - nothing wrong with that), and then saying "well remember these guys in the 90s? it's the same thing now; you wanna starve again?"
First: no, it's NOT different people. It's still Putin and his crew.
And they have ALWAYS been pointing at "pro-West" as the enemy.
Remind me now, why you think this is a new thing?
Agreed, their expectations (along with unrealistic promises by their "leaders", who knew full well what they were doing), resulted in relative disaster. It was designed to.
"Instead, the people were stupid (or rather idealistic) enough to buy hook, line and sinker into supporting politicians who chased the American ideal that didn't exist anywhere but in their head."
That's THE PEOPLE. It isn't the people I was talking about, but the government. They would brook no "assistance" from the outside.
I have said this many times: it's not our people who have conflicted so much as it has been our governments.
I did say that they did not have "capitalism" because of organized crime. I agree that in general, such crime is orthogonal to capitalism. But even so: when markets are dominated from the outside via force, you still don't have a free market, and therefore you can't have Adam Smith capitalism. The two things may not be directly related, but they can interact destructively.
"Capitalism is private ownership of the means on production. It's completely orthogonal to the existence or non-existence of coercion, blackmail, protection rackets or monopolies. You can have capitalism with them, or you can have something else without them."
Um... that's pretty much what I wrote. But thanks for reiterating.
"Their mistake was actually that they thought that capitalism was inherently immune to all those things. That if you just liberalize the economy, things magically get better because of the "invisible hand of the market" and such. It doesn't. The government still has to actively work to prevent coercion and blackmail, and regulate naturally arising monopolies. Of course, they made it even worse by themselves partaking in coercion and blackmail, and taking over monopolies while maintaining them."
Okay, but it still boils down to the fact that people thought it would happen pretty much automagically, without a lot of work and struggle and figuring things out. We agree on this too.
"The people were actually promised just that. The leaders... some of them knew they were lying. Others were naive enough that they actually believed it themselves."
So? What's your point? Hey, man, their government had basically just collapsed, and they're listening to promises from POLITICIANS? Okay... maybe they had been lied to for generations, if you ca. But still. Comes a point you have to think for yourself.
"You misunderstand the source of the anger. It's not just that they didn't get what they thought they'd get. It's that other things were taken away from them before, and it was explained that only by taking those things away they can move on to that next better stage, which would be any day now. And the things taken away were things that people happen to value - things like having bread on your table every day, for yourself and your wife and your kids. Having clean water and electricity. Having open schools stuffed with teachers. The state provided them all in USSR, and as part of the reforms of that state they were taken away, and people grumbled, but they were told that they'd get much more and better from a flourishing private market than that if they only just persevere for a year or two. When the promised riches didn't happen, people treated that as theft - and I cannot really blame them for it."
I didn't "misunderstand the reason". I agree with your assessment. But it's moot. Because for whatever reason, they expected the unrealistic, and became angry when it didn't materialize. What you did not seem to pick up is that I wasn't criticizing. I am completely sympathetic to their plight. But however we judge it personally, objectively it still comes down to grossly unrealistic expectations. Fostered by their own "leaders". And then exploited when those expectations did not come to pass.
Pardon me if I word things plainly without apparent emotion. It's not that I don't have any, but I am trying to report objective facts as best I know them.
"Her main headache was actually organized crime / racket,"
And that is why. A point I made elsewhere.
"but that's what you get in a "wild west" capitalism"
No, it isn't. Even many Americans get this wrong. Coercion, blackmail, protection rackets and monopolies have NOTHING to do with capitalism. At all. Not even close.
"The problem is that many people in the USSR thought that, if private businesses were allowed, then anyone could do it and be successful - themselves included."
No, it wasn't. The problem was that they expected that this could happen OVERNIGHT without much effort. Without a lot of struggle and strife. It just doesn't happen that way. Nobody promised them a magical power that could cause this to happen THIS YEAR.
Freedom isn't free. You have to be willing to struggle for it, and shoot the neighborhood gang member through the brain. It takes work, and struggle.
I realize that there are many people, like your mother, who bit the bullet and worked hard and got it done. And I am proud and grateful for such people. But from my understanding (and I know a lot of Russians who have come to the US), most people seemed to thing it was just something that would fall from the sky, and became angry when it didn't and they found that the same gangsters they had to deal with before were still running things, just under a different name.
We fought wars against our own government to get freedom. We didn't expect it to come from there.
I don't mean to lecture, but it must be said. If the people want something else, they are going to have to stand up and demand something else.
At least you realize that their short-term problems were not an inherent problem with "capitalism", as many people there -- and even here, in this/. topic, have tried to assert.
Their short experiment was corrupted early on, by many of the same power-mongers who corrupted their attempts at "communism" early on. And let's be honest. The Soviet Bloc was never anything close to being actually Communist. They weren't even good Socialists. THEY might have pretended it was communist, but it has never met any reasonable definition of same. And even THEY didn't actually call it Communist: they were the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic. It was only the West that pretended that they were Communist. Actual Communism has never existed in the history of this planet.
But I ramble. Pardon me. My point was that they were never given an honest shot at capitalism. Their fake-capitalism has been run by the same criminals who ran their fake-communism. Why should anyone expect different results?
"Which they do because they remember the 90s, when there was democracy - but also poverty and rampant crime. Not that there isn't any of that, today, just much less of it."
Which is a grossly distorted viewpoint. There is no way their highly corrupted form of "democracy" or "capitalism", for that matter, was going to be their instant savior. Apparently many people felt that way, but it isn't even remotely realistic.
To this day, most of them don't have a solid idea of what "capitalism" is. Which should be no surprise, because it has come to my attention that a great many Americans don't, either.
And if you think their crime is down now, you just aren't looking high enough.
"The situation in USSR, and then Russia, in late 80s to early 90s, was such that a lot of people clamored for everything even remotely Western, and especially American, solely on the grounds that it has to be awesome if it comes from people who live so great. You guys could have easily go in and do some actual good there, there was so much goodwill to fall back on it was insane."
I don't dispute this. Maybe you misunderstood me. That's what The People wanted, but the powers that be would never let them have it. Any attempt by the US to help or educate or aid the Russian people was rebuffed -- with prejudice -- by the government.
I have said this for many years: it is clear that what The People want is not what they're getting. And yes, to say that attempts to help from outside were "discouraged" is an understatement.
"Instead you did the usual shit, which is to say, promote extreme rapid economic liberalization - "shock therapy" is what they called it - which resulted in this. And, eventually, people elected Putin, because "democracy" became a swear word associated with utter economic collapse and extreme poverty."
Don't blame outsiders for what was engineered from the inside. I repeat: assistance was offered. Not only by the U.S. government but by many private organizations around the world. It was refused by the people in power. This is the ever-present problem with any kind of economic or political revolution: you have to be extremely careful who or what takes the place of the old power structure. Often, the result is disaster.
But you can't blame that on outsiders. Nobody "conquered" Russia, to be able to impose their will from the outside. That isn't what happened here. And pretending that it did is not productive.
"Have you been following what it's like in Russia?"
Yes, I have. Likely better than you have.
"I mean even if you don't give one human fuck about them..."
Who said anything even REMOTELY resembling that? You are letting your imagination get away with you again.
"... then at least be concerned about how their well being can be used against you?"
I am acutely aware of this. Even though it is totally off the subject that was being discussed.
"If the ways of the West prove to be a poison to these people, they will hate us."
Did you even READ what I wrote? They haven't been exposed to "the ways of the West"!!! They have suffered under a faux-capitalism that has been run by the same thugs who ran the faux-communism!
"At least consider how their organized crime has become a monster."
That's exactly what I'm talking about! Except that unlike you, I know that it hasn't "become" a monster, at all. It's the very same monster that was there before, under the old regime. Otherwise -- get a clue, man -- how is Putin still in power?
"These elements have no respect for diplomacy, rules, boundaries, decency."
Correct.
"Peace can be massively profitable for everyone, where as war is hell. It's illogical as fuck, people need slapped."
Slashdot Mirror
EVERY TIME I have tried to watch an embedded video on Slashdot, it has been abysmally slow to load. An almost complete waste of my time.
JUST LINK TO VIDEOS, DON'T TRY TO EMBED. You are doing your readers a disservice. Just add a link and let people watch off the original server. It works far better.
That doesn't make them the same things. Or even close.
Capitalism and Socialism overlap "to some degree" also. That doesn't mean they are very similar.
That's simply poor systems design. You are vastly better off making it distributed.
There is no way a single processor should be involved in all these things. For example, a sound system could talk to your transmission more-or-less directly (or share input from the transmission, at any rate) without sharing any processor or code with the central control system.
Similarly, there is no reason that other devices like Bluetooth, WiFi, cabin temperature, phone, and so on should be connected to the main control system. Instead they should be on separate subsystems of their own, probably with their own microcontrollers.
Isolating those systems allows MUCH easier optimization of them, for one thing, without complicating (or introducing bugs or security issues into) the main control system.
At most, control of those devices should be through a central processor that allows for voice control... again separately from the central system. The only thing the central system should be receiving is hard-wired feedback about system status. And I argue that it need not bother with most of those subsystems at all.
That's the main thing. Devices that are irrelevant to essential system services, like sound systems, climate control, phone and WiFi, should be kept apart from the central processor.
If they need to communicate at all (I would argue no), it should be in one direction only: control signals from the main processor outward, with nothing in the other direction except for hard-wired feedback such as "Yes, I am turned on." By that I mean: they should be separate hardware systems with their own specialized software. Maybe a microcontroller, or some such. But one thing such peripheral systems should NOT be, is simply software subsystems running on the main processor.
The main processor should be limited in its communication/control of such devices. Feedback such as "Bluetooth is turned on" might be useful to some extent, but Bluetooth, WiFi, climate control, etc. should be offloaded from the main processor to subsystems of their own.
That simply eliminates most of the problem, and I know of no good reason they could not be designed that way. Just don't lump everything into a single system and OS. That's a big mistake.
"I don't see a strong central government as being relevant. Pure communism was alleged to be stateless by Marx, but that's not the only form of communism."
It's relevant because that's the definition of socialism. Like communism, except a strong central government.
"They had communal sharing of property and capital."
With a strong central government. That's called Socialism.
"They don't know that it's going to run into long-term disaster."
Yes they do. They had disaster before, and they're opting for more of the same.
"The present prosperity was in a large part bought by trading resources, esp. oil & gas. This is not a viable long-term strategy..."
Yes, it is. They have a VAST amount of resources in proportion to their population. It is probably their ONLY viable long-term strategy. And the First World is nowhere near going all-nuclear or anything even remotely like it, for decades. AND when it does, it will still need oil and natural gas as raw materials for manufacturing.
"Frankly, you sound the same as the Americans who believe that Stalin ruled USSR from 1917 until 1989."
That's nice. I didn't even know such people existed. You learn something new every day, I guess.
"Problem is that government sucked, and it self-identified with democracy and liberalism (to contrast itself with commies), so when they failed hard, those very terms got smeared for decades to come."
I am aware of this. But the "liberal" government still consisted of mostly the same people, who had a "change of heart".
The difference is that I don't think it was ever intended to succeed. It was intended to fail. Hard.
"There is no foolproof way of rebooting a nation. It's never been done. Nobody knows how. "
Yes, it has been done. Very often. Just not usually very successfully.
">>Freedom isn't free.
It most certainly is. Now go fuck yourself, parrot."
Wow. That was pretty hostile, even for an AC.
I would challenge you to a face-to-face, except that I don't think I want someone like you knowing where I live.
If you ever grow the balls to actually confront me, you're on, asshole.
"Well, what makes Russian communism not communism? The fact it didn't work? I don't see that a label is inappropriate merely because it's not pure."
There is a very big difference between being "not pure", and "not even close to real".
Look up the definition of "Communism". Or better yet: actually read Karl Marx! Because you will get a better actual definition there than you can pull from any dictionary. As a middle ground, consider Wikipedia, but take it with a grain of salt.
Communism was Marx's "ideal" social system in which there is no government. Everybody lives in harmony, free from oppressive government from above.
"Socialism" was, according to Marx, a necessary stepping-stone to get to Communism. Here's the problem: Socialism requires a strong central government. But EVERY TIME, in the history of the world, that an aspiring "communist" country got to that point, for some strange reason those members of the central government refused to give up their power.
I wonder why that might be.
No... that's still insane.
Taking the short-term out even though you know it will run into long-term disaster is very close to the very definition of insanity.
"It's different people in US today, and different people in Russia, and the situation is much different as well. I just wanted to make it clearer as to why anti-Americanism is rather pervasive in Russia - it's kinda important, not the least because the present govt channels that sentiment, converting it into support for themselves and anger at the opposition, by painting it as pro-West (which, frankly, it is - nothing wrong with that), and then saying "well remember these guys in the 90s? it's the same thing now; you wanna starve again?"
First: no, it's NOT different people. It's still Putin and his crew.
And they have ALWAYS been pointing at "pro-West" as the enemy.
Remind me now, why you think this is a new thing?
Agreed, their expectations (along with unrealistic promises by their "leaders", who knew full well what they were doing), resulted in relative disaster. It was designed to.
"Instead, the people were stupid (or rather idealistic) enough to buy hook, line and sinker into supporting politicians who chased the American ideal that didn't exist anywhere but in their head."
That's THE PEOPLE. It isn't the people I was talking about, but the government. They would brook no "assistance" from the outside.
I have said this many times: it's not our people who have conflicted so much as it has been our governments.
BTW, maybe I should clarify a comment of my own.
I did say that they did not have "capitalism" because of organized crime. I agree that in general, such crime is orthogonal to capitalism. But even so: when markets are dominated from the outside via force, you still don't have a free market, and therefore you can't have Adam Smith capitalism. The two things may not be directly related, but they can interact destructively.
"Capitalism is private ownership of the means on production. It's completely orthogonal to the existence or non-existence of coercion, blackmail, protection rackets or monopolies. You can have capitalism with them, or you can have something else without them."
Um... that's pretty much what I wrote. But thanks for reiterating.
"Their mistake was actually that they thought that capitalism was inherently immune to all those things. That if you just liberalize the economy, things magically get better because of the "invisible hand of the market" and such. It doesn't. The government still has to actively work to prevent coercion and blackmail, and regulate naturally arising monopolies. Of course, they made it even worse by themselves partaking in coercion and blackmail, and taking over monopolies while maintaining them."
Okay, but it still boils down to the fact that people thought it would happen pretty much automagically, without a lot of work and struggle and figuring things out. We agree on this too.
"The people were actually promised just that. The leaders... some of them knew they were lying. Others were naive enough that they actually believed it themselves."
So? What's your point? Hey, man, their government had basically just collapsed, and they're listening to promises from POLITICIANS? Okay... maybe they had been lied to for generations, if you ca. But still. Comes a point you have to think for yourself.
"You misunderstand the source of the anger. It's not just that they didn't get what they thought they'd get. It's that other things were taken away from them before, and it was explained that only by taking those things away they can move on to that next better stage, which would be any day now. And the things taken away were things that people happen to value - things like having bread on your table every day, for yourself and your wife and your kids. Having clean water and electricity. Having open schools stuffed with teachers. The state provided them all in USSR, and as part of the reforms of that state they were taken away, and people grumbled, but they were told that they'd get much more and better from a flourishing private market than that if they only just persevere for a year or two. When the promised riches didn't happen, people treated that as theft - and I cannot really blame them for it."
I didn't "misunderstand the reason". I agree with your assessment. But it's moot. Because for whatever reason, they expected the unrealistic, and became angry when it didn't materialize. What you did not seem to pick up is that I wasn't criticizing. I am completely sympathetic to their plight. But however we judge it personally, objectively it still comes down to grossly unrealistic expectations. Fostered by their own "leaders". And then exploited when those expectations did not come to pass.
Pardon me if I word things plainly without apparent emotion. It's not that I don't have any, but I am trying to report objective facts as best I know them.
And I should add: that is as true of the United States today as anywhere else. It is time people started standing up.
"We did have real capitalism for a while, too "
No, you didn't.
"Her main headache was actually organized crime / racket,"
And that is why. A point I made elsewhere.
"but that's what you get in a "wild west" capitalism"
No, it isn't. Even many Americans get this wrong. Coercion, blackmail, protection rackets and monopolies have NOTHING to do with capitalism. At all. Not even close.
"The problem is that many people in the USSR thought that, if private businesses were allowed, then anyone could do it and be successful - themselves included."
No, it wasn't. The problem was that they expected that this could happen OVERNIGHT without much effort. Without a lot of struggle and strife. It just doesn't happen that way. Nobody promised them a magical power that could cause this to happen THIS YEAR.
Freedom isn't free. You have to be willing to struggle for it, and shoot the neighborhood gang member through the brain. It takes work, and struggle.
I realize that there are many people, like your mother, who bit the bullet and worked hard and got it done. And I am proud and grateful for such people. But from my understanding (and I know a lot of Russians who have come to the US), most people seemed to thing it was just something that would fall from the sky, and became angry when it didn't and they found that the same gangsters they had to deal with before were still running things, just under a different name.
We fought wars against our own government to get freedom. We didn't expect it to come from there.
I don't mean to lecture, but it must be said. If the people want something else, they are going to have to stand up and demand something else.
At least you realize that their short-term problems were not an inherent problem with "capitalism", as many people there -- and even here, in this /. topic, have tried to assert.
Their short experiment was corrupted early on, by many of the same power-mongers who corrupted their attempts at "communism" early on. And let's be honest. The Soviet Bloc was never anything close to being actually Communist. They weren't even good Socialists. THEY might have pretended it was communist, but it has never met any reasonable definition of same. And even THEY didn't actually call it Communist: they were the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic. It was only the West that pretended that they were Communist. Actual Communism has never existed in the history of this planet.
But I ramble. Pardon me. My point was that they were never given an honest shot at capitalism. Their fake-capitalism has been run by the same criminals who ran their fake-communism. Why should anyone expect different results?
"Which they do because they remember the 90s, when there was democracy - but also poverty and rampant crime. Not that there isn't any of that, today, just much less of it."
Which is a grossly distorted viewpoint. There is no way their highly corrupted form of "democracy" or "capitalism", for that matter, was going to be their instant savior. Apparently many people felt that way, but it isn't even remotely realistic.
To this day, most of them don't have a solid idea of what "capitalism" is. Which should be no surprise, because it has come to my attention that a great many Americans don't, either.
And if you think their crime is down now, you just aren't looking high enough.
The real problem is that from an outside perspective, it's almost insane to support Putin.
But then, from an internal perspective, it's pretty insane to support either Obama or Romney. Both are disasters.
"The situation in USSR, and then Russia, in late 80s to early 90s, was such that a lot of people clamored for everything even remotely Western, and especially American, solely on the grounds that it has to be awesome if it comes from people who live so great. You guys could have easily go in and do some actual good there, there was so much goodwill to fall back on it was insane."
I don't dispute this. Maybe you misunderstood me. That's what The People wanted, but the powers that be would never let them have it. Any attempt by the US to help or educate or aid the Russian people was rebuffed -- with prejudice -- by the government.
I have said this for many years: it is clear that what The People want is not what they're getting. And yes, to say that attempts to help from outside were "discouraged" is an understatement.
"Instead you did the usual shit, which is to say, promote extreme rapid economic liberalization - "shock therapy" is what they called it - which resulted in this. And, eventually, people elected Putin, because "democracy" became a swear word associated with utter economic collapse and extreme poverty."
Don't blame outsiders for what was engineered from the inside. I repeat: assistance was offered. Not only by the U.S. government but by many private organizations around the world. It was refused by the people in power. This is the ever-present problem with any kind of economic or political revolution: you have to be extremely careful who or what takes the place of the old power structure. Often, the result is disaster.
But you can't blame that on outsiders. Nobody "conquered" Russia, to be able to impose their will from the outside. That isn't what happened here. And pretending that it did is not productive.
"Have you been following what it's like in Russia?"
Yes, I have. Likely better than you have.
"I mean even if you don't give one human fuck about them..."
Who said anything even REMOTELY resembling that? You are letting your imagination get away with you again.
"... then at least be concerned about how their well being can be used against you?"
I am acutely aware of this. Even though it is totally off the subject that was being discussed.
"If the ways of the West prove to be a poison to these people, they will hate us."
Did you even READ what I wrote? They haven't been exposed to "the ways of the West"!!! They have suffered under a faux-capitalism that has been run by the same thugs who ran the faux-communism!
"At least consider how their organized crime has become a monster."
That's exactly what I'm talking about! Except that unlike you, I know that it hasn't "become" a monster, at all. It's the very same monster that was there before, under the old regime. Otherwise -- get a clue, man -- how is Putin still in power?
"These elements have no respect for diplomacy, rules, boundaries, decency."
Correct.
"Peace can be massively profitable for everyone, where as war is hell. It's illogical as fuck, people need slapped."
You won't find any argument from me there.
They may be associative but they're probably not transitive.