+1 to this - my 5 and 3 year olds love it. Also some good ones at nickjr.com.
this gave me the excuse to set up a user account for my eldest on my linux laptop - now she fires it up, logs into KDM, starts up firefox and browses to either of these sites all by herself. I should probably look at locking it down a bit before she gets too clever...
and yet it is only government policies which have:
encouraged immunisation uptake to reduce infectious diseases
implemented sanitation policies which have improved drinking water quality
legislated around building control and sewerage/waste effluence
What's your guess about how influential these measures have been in increasing life expectancy and reducing infant mortality over the last 100 years or so?
I love how the kinds of theories in the links you post really bring it home that there is so much we just don't know. Most people would consider physics a hard science, where we've already discovered and proven most things - but quite the opposite is true.
I remember reading about the 'holographic universe' some years ago and starting a conversation with my parents about it - they just started laughing. I'm not sure if I was more upset by their narrow-mindedness or their arrogant presumption that they could unilaterally rule out these kinds of 'crazy' theories!
really had a big impact on me. Apart from being the most 'readable' of all his works by a factor of about 10000000, it opened my mind to the possibilities of life like no other book has.
But what has money really got to do with fulfilling the role of a politician? My neighbor might be a great politician - given the chance - he's got some great ideas, he can debate well, and I'm sure that if he took part in a televised debate he might do pretty good and grab vote share from his opponents.
Yes I know that people in politics historically were generally wealthy or connected but we're living in the middle of an epidemic of voter apathy. Isn't it possible that getting rid of these ridiculous requirements, that favour incumbents or at least discourage real political outsiders, can actually do some good for reinvigorating democracy and notions of citizenship in the general population? What's wrong with having a 'crank' in a debate? Have we become so afraid of difference, or new thinking?
I share your pessimism, although I'm on the other side of the world - things work much the same.
I've come to the conclusion that democracy is quite unworkable in modern societies - people are too lazy, uninformed, disengaged to exercise their right to vote. In this respect - they do get what they deserve if they're not motivated enough to vote out corrupt or idiotic politicians. It's not exactly hard. The system could quite easily work for them if they could tear themselves away from American Idol.
Nevertheless, voting turnouts have not been increasing as far as I'm aware. What's the solution?
Mandatory voting? Binding minimum turnout? Demarchy? We can't go on like this, guys.
i was on/. the other day posting in the story about the fake chinese air bags.
I asked - "surely there are some good news stories about China out there somewhere, that doesn't involve flagrant breaches of environmental/labour/any other protocols or laws??"
it could also be quite convincingly argued that an economic lens is not really the most appropriate one through which to view history...
The ancient Egyptians had mind-boggling knowledge of astronomy, geometry - they knew pi, zero, the golden section - as well as a highly developed cursive script, and construction techniques that we still can't get anywhere near today.
I'm guess what I'm saying is that economic measures are already biased; the global economic structures currently in force are products of western civilisation which prides economy and wealth over other things which different cultures hold dear.
OK... so there are plenty of posts here outlining that using IP addresses as evidence is extremely unreliable at best.
MAC's can be spoofed; networks can be hacked, then there's DHCP and NAT etc etc etc.
Honest question: Given that there are this many holes in putting forward an IP address as proof of illegal downloading/copyright infringement WHY THE FUCK isn't it laughed out of court??
I can only think of 2 options:
1. The judiciary have no clue about these issues and are not being educated on them - if so, why aren't they making it their business to understand these pitfalls?
2. THe legal system prefers to just push all responsibility for network security onto generally clueless service owners - if so, why aren't these innocents presenting this apparently basic information to court?
THis situation is just so moronic that I'm struggling to believe it is actually happening.
maybe. But isn't the point that one needs balance?
I have no problem whatsoever with my kids sitting around watching garbage reality TV, BUT I will do my best to raise them to think critically and to analyse and think over what they're seeing. As well as watching a fair bit of TV, they also read a lot, and play outside a lot. None of these things are mutually exclusive, you know.
Even starting to think about shaving sets my mind abuzz with contours and shear strength equations dealing with each follicle of hair. Before applying the lather, it's a pain to model my face in a three dimensional image so as to optimize the amount of face covered per stroke versus a random walk pattern across the...
This reminds me very much of a story about PD Ouspensky - I think he wrote about it himself but this is a quote from 'A secret history of consciousness' by Gary Lachman:
Ouspensky came to understand that this world was a gigantic hieroglyph, a symbol for a higher, more intensely meaningful world that lay beyond it but radiated its significance through the most mundane items... During his experiments,... he looked with wonder at his ashtray. Suddenly he saw this humble object as the center of a vast radiating web of meanings and relations. In a rush of recognition, everything to do with the ashtray flooded his consciousness. Who had made it, its use, the material from which it was made, the history of tobacco, the whole long development of humankind's ability to mold its environment. Fire, flame, and the match he had just struck; each seemed a hitherto unopened window on the world, through which he now looked with wonder and amazement.
Ouspensky wrote a note after this which read simply "A man can go mad from one ashtray". I can certainly believe that someone like Einstein would have great difficulty disconnecting 'ordinary' everyday objects from the things he studied and researched, and so the stories about his drab clothes make a lot of sense. I also don't believe that Obama is quite up there yet with the likes of Einstein, and there may be other more mundane reasons for his routine as described in TFA.
so isn't the problem more that this is the kind of thing many people actually WANT to watch?
let's be generous and say that Fox are just supplying what the market demands; is there a case to say that some kind of intervention is required in the entertainment free market to arrest this race to the bottom?
the problem with this kind of TV is that it is giving us all the impression that suicides, shootings, etc all happen far more frequently than they may actually do. Your point about accounting is a good one - there is little balance in entertainment nowadays.
If Fox are only showing car chases, shootings, hostage-takings etc, then those people who can't think critically about what they're watching will start to buy in to all this neo-conservative climate of fear bullshit. That's when we start to suspect our neighbours, and invite the government to indulge in warrantless wiretaps.
I'd just like to know what Bill Gates would have to say about this, and how everyone thinks this would reflect on the Windows community.
Furthermore, I think I'd have to cut off all ties completely with the Yahoo community if Marissa Mayer were to join in this debate!
I wait with bated breath.
of course it's the solution - this is capitalism! it's the only thing they have no control over.
If their profits drop catastrophically then yeah they can undertake further crackdowns and DRM etc but so what - if people aren't buying it, who cares whether their products have DRM or not.
I'm no fan of the free market, but I'd much rather have a true free market where business respond to customer demand - than this semi-free market we have now, where governments are intervening to prop up failing business models.
Given this, why is there no legal/reasonable way to pay for just the content we want...?
because too many people continue to acquiesce to this ridiculous business model - thereby providing absolutely no incentive whatever for the content providers to change.
This is a very insightful post - I would mod up if I had points.
This is a very good example of a symptom of a failing free market - and how interest groups have managed to legislate their way around its failures to make sure the money keeps rolling in. You are right - in a true free market these corporations/businesses would go bust. But this is only half the story - you can't legislate to force people to subscribe to your service! So the real power is still in the hands of individual consumers...
You talk about your toss-up of cost-effectiveness of getting cable. Most people (I guess, based on the success of this model) simply say "I want to watch that one show, so I'll buy the whole cable subscription". I rarely watch TV so I would be fine not having access to it, but many see having cable as an inalienable human right which they 'just pay for' - like electricity or something.
I keep saying this a lot recently but, even in the face of these big powerful companies, the individual consumer still has the power of giving them money or not giving them money. If more people cancelled subscriptions then business models would really change to reflect what consumers want. But while they can still make shit loads of money - what's the point?
ITT: Vague tech-related story used as an excuse to tell everyone what an amazing parent I am.
Quite easily the very worst thing about being a parent is having to listen to other parents' condescending life lessons.
Budgeting for health care means focusing the available resources on the most cost effective problems first -- the things that affect the most people.
Wrong
"Budgeting for health care" means finding ways to actually fund essential services for needy vulnerable people, AFTER the govt (of whatever level/variety) has instructed you to please make sure your priority is getting as many elective hip replacements as possible are performed on retirees. Votes count, you know.
Maybe if we ever separate health from politics we can actually build a sane health system.
Disclaimer: Health economist, non-US, ymmv.
Slashdot Mirror
+1 to this - my 5 and 3 year olds love it. Also some good ones at nickjr.com.
this gave me the excuse to set up a user account for my eldest on my linux laptop - now she fires it up, logs into KDM, starts up firefox and browses to either of these sites all by herself. I should probably look at locking it down a bit before she gets too clever...
What's your guess about how influential these measures have been in increasing life expectancy and reducing infant mortality over the last 100 years or so?
great post, thanks.
I love how the kinds of theories in the links you post really bring it home that there is so much we just don't know. Most people would consider physics a hard science, where we've already discovered and proven most things - but quite the opposite is true.
I remember reading about the 'holographic universe' some years ago and starting a conversation with my parents about it - they just started laughing. I'm not sure if I was more upset by their narrow-mindedness or their arrogant presumption that they could unilaterally rule out these kinds of 'crazy' theories!
Meetings with remarkable men, by Gurdjieff
really had a big impact on me. Apart from being the most 'readable' of all his works by a factor of about 10000000, it opened my mind to the possibilities of life like no other book has.
But what has money really got to do with fulfilling the role of a politician? My neighbor might be a great politician - given the chance - he's got some great ideas, he can debate well, and I'm sure that if he took part in a televised debate he might do pretty good and grab vote share from his opponents.
Yes I know that people in politics historically were generally wealthy or connected but we're living in the middle of an epidemic of voter apathy. Isn't it possible that getting rid of these ridiculous requirements, that favour incumbents or at least discourage real political outsiders, can actually do some good for reinvigorating democracy and notions of citizenship in the general population? What's wrong with having a 'crank' in a debate? Have we become so afraid of difference, or new thinking?
so how do 'marginal' candidates, who do not want to receive corporate donations, become 'mainstream' or 'credible'?
I share your pessimism, although I'm on the other side of the world - things work much the same.
I've come to the conclusion that democracy is quite unworkable in modern societies - people are too lazy, uninformed, disengaged to exercise their right to vote. In this respect - they do get what they deserve if they're not motivated enough to vote out corrupt or idiotic politicians. It's not exactly hard. The system could quite easily work for them if they could tear themselves away from American Idol.
Nevertheless, voting turnouts have not been increasing as far as I'm aware. What's the solution?
Mandatory voting? Binding minimum turnout? Demarchy? We can't go on like this, guys.
quite. Isn't it time we started looking seriously at alternatives like demarchy?
i was on /. the other day posting in the story about the fake chinese air bags.
I asked - "surely there are some good news stories about China out there somewhere, that doesn't involve flagrant breaches of environmental/labour/any other protocols or laws??"
LOL
it could also be quite convincingly argued that an economic lens is not really the most appropriate one through which to view history...
The ancient Egyptians had mind-boggling knowledge of astronomy, geometry - they knew pi, zero, the golden section - as well as a highly developed cursive script, and construction techniques that we still can't get anywhere near today.
I'm guess what I'm saying is that economic measures are already biased; the global economic structures currently in force are products of western civilisation which prides economy and wealth over other things which different cultures hold dear.
serious question -
are there any news stories from China which don't involve how they're either spying on us or trying to kill us with counterfeit products?
I'd genuinely like to know how much of this news is anti-china propaganda, or whether things really are that fucked up over there.
OK... so there are plenty of posts here outlining that using IP addresses as evidence is extremely unreliable at best.
MAC's can be spoofed; networks can be hacked, then there's DHCP and NAT etc etc etc.
Honest question: Given that there are this many holes in putting forward an IP address as proof of illegal downloading/copyright infringement WHY THE FUCK isn't it laughed out of court??
I can only think of 2 options:
1. The judiciary have no clue about these issues and are not being educated on them - if so, why aren't they making it their business to understand these pitfalls?
2. THe legal system prefers to just push all responsibility for network security onto generally clueless service owners - if so, why aren't these innocents presenting this apparently basic information to court?
THis situation is just so moronic that I'm struggling to believe it is actually happening.
maybe. But isn't the point that one needs balance?
I have no problem whatsoever with my kids sitting around watching garbage reality TV, BUT I will do my best to raise them to think critically and to analyse and think over what they're seeing. As well as watching a fair bit of TV, they also read a lot, and play outside a lot. None of these things are mutually exclusive, you know.
Even starting to think about shaving sets my mind abuzz with contours and shear strength equations dealing with each follicle of hair. Before applying the lather, it's a pain to model my face in a three dimensional image so as to optimize the amount of face covered per stroke versus a random walk pattern across the ...
This reminds me very much of a story about PD Ouspensky - I think he wrote about it himself but this is a quote from 'A secret history of consciousness' by Gary Lachman:
Ouspensky came to understand that this world was a gigantic hieroglyph, a symbol for a higher, more intensely meaningful world that lay beyond it but radiated its significance through the most mundane items... During his experiments, ... he looked with wonder at his ashtray. Suddenly he saw this humble object as the center of a vast radiating web of meanings and relations. In a rush of recognition, everything to do with the ashtray flooded his consciousness. Who had made it, its use, the material from which it was made, the history of tobacco, the whole long development of humankind's ability to mold its environment. Fire, flame, and the match he had just struck; each seemed a hitherto unopened window on the world, through which he now looked with wonder and amazement.
Ouspensky wrote a note after this which read simply "A man can go mad from one ashtray". I can certainly believe that someone like Einstein would have great difficulty disconnecting 'ordinary' everyday objects from the things he studied and researched, and so the stories about his drab clothes make a lot of sense. I also don't believe that Obama is quite up there yet with the likes of Einstein, and there may be other more mundane reasons for his routine as described in TFA.
I'm not sure how I feel about this argument that helmets give everyone a 'false sense of security'.
reduction ad absurdum - the best thing is to make the whole enterprise of bicycle use simply as dangerous as possible?
so isn't the problem more that this is the kind of thing many people actually WANT to watch?
let's be generous and say that Fox are just supplying what the market demands; is there a case to say that some kind of intervention is required in the entertainment free market to arrest this race to the bottom?
the problem with this kind of TV is that it is giving us all the impression that suicides, shootings, etc all happen far more frequently than they may actually do. Your point about accounting is a good one - there is little balance in entertainment nowadays.
If Fox are only showing car chases, shootings, hostage-takings etc, then those people who can't think critically about what they're watching will start to buy in to all this neo-conservative climate of fear bullshit. That's when we start to suspect our neighbours, and invite the government to indulge in warrantless wiretaps.
tl;dr - we need more accounting shows.
I'd just like to know what Bill Gates would have to say about this, and how everyone thinks this would reflect on the Windows community.
Furthermore, I think I'd have to cut off all ties completely with the Yahoo community if Marissa Mayer were to join in this debate!
I wait with bated breath.
Do I need to say more ?
Yes you do - you promised to
compared the stimulative effects of space programs (manned or unmanned) to welfare program
but all you actually did was show that more has been spent on welfare than space programmes.
not the same thing at all.
of course it's the solution - this is capitalism! it's the only thing they have no control over.
If their profits drop catastrophically then yeah they can undertake further crackdowns and DRM etc but so what - if people aren't buying it, who cares whether their products have DRM or not.
I'm no fan of the free market, but I'd much rather have a true free market where business respond to customer demand - than this semi-free market we have now, where governments are intervening to prop up failing business models.
Given this, why is there no legal/reasonable way to pay for just the content we want...?
because too many people continue to acquiesce to this ridiculous business model - thereby providing absolutely no incentive whatever for the content providers to change.
This is a very insightful post - I would mod up if I had points.
This is a very good example of a symptom of a failing free market - and how interest groups have managed to legislate their way around its failures to make sure the money keeps rolling in. You are right - in a true free market these corporations/businesses would go bust. But this is only half the story - you can't legislate to force people to subscribe to your service! So the real power is still in the hands of individual consumers...
You talk about your toss-up of cost-effectiveness of getting cable. Most people (I guess, based on the success of this model) simply say "I want to watch that one show, so I'll buy the whole cable subscription". I rarely watch TV so I would be fine not having access to it, but many see having cable as an inalienable human right which they 'just pay for' - like electricity or something.
I keep saying this a lot recently but, even in the face of these big powerful companies, the individual consumer still has the power of giving them money or not giving them money. If more people cancelled subscriptions then business models would really change to reflect what consumers want. But while they can still make shit loads of money - what's the point?
ITT: Vague tech-related story used as an excuse to tell everyone what an amazing parent I am.
Quite easily the very worst thing about being a parent is having to listen to other parents' condescending life lessons.
Budgeting for health care means focusing the available resources on the most cost effective problems first -- the things that affect the most people.
Wrong
"Budgeting for health care" means finding ways to actually fund essential services for needy vulnerable people, AFTER the govt (of whatever level/variety) has instructed you to please make sure your priority is getting as many elective hip replacements as possible are performed on retirees. Votes count, you know.
Maybe if we ever separate health from politics we can actually build a sane health system.
Disclaimer: Health economist, non-US, ymmv.
A mobile population in the world means this is going to happen more often, everywhere.
ah - so the TSA really is protecting us all!. Tapeworms - who knew!!