This has nothing to do with our present executive, much as I love to blame anything I can on Bush. Our intelligence community has always depended on help from large American corporations. In return for them providing cover for our operatives overseas, we provide them with useful business intelligence.
This was why Australia tried to withdraw from Echelon, and outed the project when we whined. We refused to let them redact sensitive information regarding Australian businesses from the data, and they knew we were using it against them even though we were partners in the project.
I've heard it said that the eldest child gets the brains, the middle child gets the sneakiness, and the youngest child gets the cuteness. Are you particularly sneaky? Maybe very good at hiding things, or finding them? I had an SO who was a middle child, and damn was she sneaky. "Honey, where the hell are the condoms?" "I don't know, lets just go to bed..."
The ones I've seen are as you describe, only with removable drives. The drives with classified data on them are kept in a separate vault, you have to check out the individual drive with the data you need, take it to the secured computer, plug it in and use it, and then check it back in. And they weren't on any kind of a network, they were in a EM shielded room with nothing but electrical wires leading in and out.
We are a constitutional government, which means it is not that easy to just elect leaders to change the basics. Thankfully. But corporations are an artificial construct of the Government. They are fundamentally different from other business forms. The whole "limited liability" thing is very, very powerful, and very dangerous. I do not feel bad asking my elected officials to place tighter strictures on corporations. Originally, they had much tighter restrictions than they do now.
And control of monopoly situations is one of the prime purposes of government, outside of the question of corporate power. The free market fails under monopoly conditions, as it does when there are imbalances of information, or externalities. We need government to keep the free market free, like we need a police force and government to keep us and our country free.
All the GP post is trying to say is that corporations can not run roughshod over the citizens of America. Or are you in favor of a return to some kind of feudalism?
It should be, he'd be perfect. He could play the old guy in the attic! Did I mention that some of those jars of pee were really, really old?
The funniest thing was the toilet, though, because the house had sunk about a foot. The pipes hadn't. The toilet stood up on its pipes, rocking precariously when you sat down. The scariest thing was when the gas line broke. That was really what set the whole chain of events off. The owners of the house were actually a married couple of ex-cops, so they had managed to get the fact that it was sinking into a sinkhole kept hush hush while still managing to extract rent from the poor anarchists. Until the gas line broke. It could have turned into an anarchist barbeque, and not the vegan kind, either.
Yeah, the whole thing would actually make an excellent movie. Santa Cruz is actually very California-lefty-fascist, if you know what I mean, so these characters had some interesting stories beyond the whole house-sinking-into-a-sinkhole thing.
You may want to explore the difference between Individualist Anarchism and Social Anarchism, the two main "umbrella groups" for the other schools of Anarchism, if you could call it that. We Social Anarchists have at least one of the same criticisms of Individualist Anarchism that you do. In fact, I just used the term "techno-feudalism" to describe what it would devolve into, in a post not far from here.
I've been trying for a rapprochement with the American "Libertarians." I feel the same as you, and if you've been here any amount of time you know that I usually show it. It's just that, you know, most of them probably could be real Anarchists if things were explained to them right.
Originally, what I would call classical Liberalism embraced property rights for the common man. It was a defense against the power of kings and nobles. This was way back, before Anarchism even existed as such. Even looking at the early Anarchists of the 19th century, Proudhon's Property is Theft! certainly upholds its title's point, but Proudhon also admits that private property is inherently anarchistic, saying "The absolute right of the State is in conflict with the absolute right of the property owner." So to be fair, their side has its history, too.
I've been looking into the roots of what is more properly termed Individualist Anarchism here in the US. You and I belong to the Socialist Anarchist branch. I have always had a bad gut reaction to the Individualist Anarchists. They always seem like apologists for the status quo. You never find a poor Individualist Anarchist, lets put it that way. But their theories have some merit, and of course, there are things that all Anarchists, even Libertarians, agree on.
So I've been trying to find some common ground, and understand their side. I still think they just don't get it, but I'm not going to go around saying "they are all chuckle-headed morons who want to take us back to some kind of techno-feudalism with themselves as the landed gentry," quite as often as I used to. And maybe, like now, I'll throw them a bone once in a while.
Oh man, I've sung those songs. While striking, even! That was the Borders Books campaign, if you remember that one. It was pretty big, and I helped set up the world's first cyber-picket. Pretty much any search for Border's Books in '95 would have returned our site first. And I can tell you, at least as of '96 when I was heavily involved, there were still some very awesome women involved.
Who says anarchists don't believe in property? In fact, that is the issue that sets apart the different anarchist groups. Most anarchists, as opposed to communists, believe in personal property rights, such as the right to own houses and clothes. Anarcho-capitalists such as libertarians are staunch defenders of all property rights. Lefty-anarchists like anarcho-socialists or anarcho-syndicalists believe in collective governance of real property. And anarchists do believe in governance. Just not the use of coercion or force to back things up.
Anarchism is not all safety-pinned punks with a circle-A sign.
I was involved in the pirate radio scene in San Francisco and Santa Cruz. Down in Santa Cruz they had this micro-power radio station set up in the local anarchist house, which was also the main Food not Bombs house. The FCC found out about it and came to try to bust them, but somehow they got word and skedaddled. No lie, they loaded up the station in a Food not Bombs bike cart and pedaled that sucker from hill to hill for a week, always one step ahead of the FCC snoops. Then the anarchist house started to sink into a sinkhole and got condemned, so the anarchists all had bigger things to worry about.
They had a stand off with the authorities for a month before the cops finally got a court order and raided the house. Funny story, they had this weird guy who lived in the attic and saved all his pee in jars, so they booby trapped the place with jars of pee. Those were not happy cops that day, I'll tell you what. But the spirit of the place was broken, and Santa Cruz lost its pirate radio.
In San Francisco, the station I knew had an actual studio in the Labor Temple right next to my IWW union office, and no one bothered them much. Heh, if you lived within five blocks of Mission and 16th, you might even have heard them. Woot! 30 whole watts of AWESOME POWER! Ah, good times, good times.
As for me, when I really want to show of my extravagant wealth, I throw an ink-tasting party. Sure it tastes like crap, but so does caviar and you don't see rich people complaining about that.
No, no, get your terminology right. At 38, even if you've played your cards right, you are still only a codger. It goes codger, duffer, geezer, and finally coot. I have the exact specs for each stage around here somewhere, consarn it.
I'm having a hard time determining where you stand from this post. Are you just layout possibilities rather than taking a position? I don't buy your 'we haven't proved causality' bit. Free will needs causality to cause anything itself. And just because we can't predict something also does not make it free. I don't even understand what you mean by free will here. First you say you are a reductionist, that mind arises from the function of the brain. I'm with you. Then you go on to claim will is free, or could be. Which is it? If mind is determined by the brain, and the will is not separate from mind, then will is determined by the brain as well.
In fact, I can not picture a scenario where 'will' whatever that might be is acted upon by the universe, acts upon the universe, and is free. If it acts and is acted upon it is part of the chain of causality, whatever mechanism you postulate and wherever you place the seat of this will.
Free will comes from dualistic thinking, seeing the world as subject and object. There is no subject. Look at your own self awareness. When I do, and I look close enough, it disappears. There is no self awareness, only a stream of correlated thoughts. There is no thing that is aware of the thoughts, there are only thoughts that point to a thing which isn't there at all. People stuck in dualistic thinking are unable to even comprehend how this is possible, but it is what I have seen when I have looked.
Without self, the concept of free will is moot. So let me be more specific. Free will is meaningless because there is no self separate from conditions.
Sorry, that's reality. You want psychopaths to define what kind of freedom they get? Because I think they might have a different definition, one that involves liver, fava beans, and a nice chianti. Every freedom entails a concomitant loss of freedom. You give up the freedom to murder if you want to be free from the threat of murder. You give up the right to just walk about anywhere if you want the freedom to own private property. You give up the right to just take whatever you see laying about if you want the freedom to own personal property. And so on. This is so basic that I can only believe that your lack of understanding is deliberate.
Same thing with open source. We are giving up some freedoms in order to protect greater freedoms. That is the nature of freedom. I know you were trying to be a clever troll, but you just come across as someone who doesn't think things through. You have to actually understand something before you can successfully make fun of it. Oh, and OSI is not GNU.
Yeah, but you need something with a universal and game-like set of rules, that is the hard part. Second life is a programmable 3d chat more than anything. It has to be playable as a game, not like working in a real job, unless you could make real world money, and that was your job. But then who would pay to play? There are definite opportunities here. I think the future in games, as an art form rather than a sport, is in telling interesting stories. And the future of MMORPGs is in letting players create interesting stories.
You know, I don't mean to be cruel, but every time someone attempts one of these jokes and gets modded down, I picture that person stepping out into the limelight and delivering his hackneyed line. Crickets chirp for a moment, an audience member coughs, and then a trumpet plays that sad little "WAH Wah wah waaaaaah" bit as the poor unfortunate is dragged off with a hook.
I mean, what if they start killing each other? Hey, we already had one astronaut snap, and that was on the ground! Will they stop the experiment? Do the astronauts know that ahead of time?
You think it was staged? It's too fucking hilarious, come on, 33.3% chance of success? They thought up that dialogue beforehand. They don't even sound seriously mad towards the end. You can tell from their voices they knew all along they were going to get slaughtered. I think it was staged.
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This has nothing to do with our present executive, much as I love to blame anything I can on Bush. Our intelligence community has always depended on help from large American corporations. In return for them providing cover for our operatives overseas, we provide them with useful business intelligence.
This was why Australia tried to withdraw from Echelon, and outed the project when we whined. We refused to let them redact sensitive information regarding Australian businesses from the data, and they knew we were using it against them even though we were partners in the project.
I've heard it said that the eldest child gets the brains, the middle child gets the sneakiness, and the youngest child gets the cuteness. Are you particularly sneaky? Maybe very good at hiding things, or finding them? I had an SO who was a middle child, and damn was she sneaky. "Honey, where the hell are the condoms?" "I don't know, lets just go to bed..."
The ones I've seen are as you describe, only with removable drives. The drives with classified data on them are kept in a separate vault, you have to check out the individual drive with the data you need, take it to the secured computer, plug it in and use it, and then check it back in. And they weren't on any kind of a network, they were in a EM shielded room with nothing but electrical wires leading in and out.
Well, I didn't read the article, but from the blurb it sounds like it disappeared into Andy's fissure. Sounds painful, that lake looked cold.
Hey! I have glaucoma you insensitive clod.
We are a constitutional government, which means it is not that easy to just elect leaders to change the basics. Thankfully. But corporations are an artificial construct of the Government. They are fundamentally different from other business forms. The whole "limited liability" thing is very, very powerful, and very dangerous. I do not feel bad asking my elected officials to place tighter strictures on corporations. Originally, they had much tighter restrictions than they do now.
And control of monopoly situations is one of the prime purposes of government, outside of the question of corporate power. The free market fails under monopoly conditions, as it does when there are imbalances of information, or externalities. We need government to keep the free market free, like we need a police force and government to keep us and our country free.
All the GP post is trying to say is that corporations can not run roughshod over the citizens of America. Or are you in favor of a return to some kind of feudalism?
When I read that, I heard in my head in a surfer-dude voice saying it as in, "Global warming is totally off the hook! It's AWESOME!"
I was confused.
I had to reread it to get the real meaning. My blood sugar must low, excuse me, I think I need to eat some dinner.
It should be, he'd be perfect. He could play the old guy in the attic! Did I mention that some of those jars of pee were really, really old?
The funniest thing was the toilet, though, because the house had sunk about a foot. The pipes hadn't. The toilet stood up on its pipes, rocking precariously when you sat down. The scariest thing was when the gas line broke. That was really what set the whole chain of events off. The owners of the house were actually a married couple of ex-cops, so they had managed to get the fact that it was sinking into a sinkhole kept hush hush while still managing to extract rent from the poor anarchists. Until the gas line broke. It could have turned into an anarchist barbeque, and not the vegan kind, either.
Yeah, the whole thing would actually make an excellent movie. Santa Cruz is actually very California-lefty-fascist, if you know what I mean, so these characters had some interesting stories beyond the whole house-sinking-into-a-sinkhole thing.
You may want to explore the difference between Individualist Anarchism and Social Anarchism, the two main "umbrella groups" for the other schools of Anarchism, if you could call it that. We Social Anarchists have at least one of the same criticisms of Individualist Anarchism that you do. In fact, I just used the term "techno-feudalism" to describe what it would devolve into, in a post not far from here.
I've been trying for a rapprochement with the American "Libertarians." I feel the same as you, and if you've been here any amount of time you know that I usually show it. It's just that, you know, most of them probably could be real Anarchists if things were explained to them right.
Originally, what I would call classical Liberalism embraced property rights for the common man. It was a defense against the power of kings and nobles. This was way back, before Anarchism even existed as such. Even looking at the early Anarchists of the 19th century, Proudhon's Property is Theft! certainly upholds its title's point, but Proudhon also admits that private property is inherently anarchistic, saying "The absolute right of the State is in conflict with the absolute right of the property owner." So to be fair, their side has its history, too.
I've been looking into the roots of what is more properly termed Individualist Anarchism here in the US. You and I belong to the Socialist Anarchist branch. I have always had a bad gut reaction to the Individualist Anarchists. They always seem like apologists for the status quo. You never find a poor Individualist Anarchist, lets put it that way. But their theories have some merit, and of course, there are things that all Anarchists, even Libertarians, agree on.
So I've been trying to find some common ground, and understand their side. I still think they just don't get it, but I'm not going to go around saying "they are all chuckle-headed morons who want to take us back to some kind of techno-feudalism with themselves as the landed gentry," quite as often as I used to. And maybe, like now, I'll throw them a bone once in a while.
Oh man, I've sung those songs. While striking, even! That was the Borders Books campaign, if you remember that one. It was pretty big, and I helped set up the world's first cyber-picket. Pretty much any search for Border's Books in '95 would have returned our site first. And I can tell you, at least as of '96 when I was heavily involved, there were still some very awesome women involved.
Who says anarchists don't believe in property? In fact, that is the issue that sets apart the different anarchist groups. Most anarchists, as opposed to communists, believe in personal property rights, such as the right to own houses and clothes. Anarcho-capitalists such as libertarians are staunch defenders of all property rights. Lefty-anarchists like anarcho-socialists or anarcho-syndicalists believe in collective governance of real property. And anarchists do believe in governance. Just not the use of coercion or force to back things up.
Anarchism is not all safety-pinned punks with a circle-A sign.
I was involved in the pirate radio scene in San Francisco and Santa Cruz. Down in Santa Cruz they had this micro-power radio station set up in the local anarchist house, which was also the main Food not Bombs house. The FCC found out about it and came to try to bust them, but somehow they got word and skedaddled. No lie, they loaded up the station in a Food not Bombs bike cart and pedaled that sucker from hill to hill for a week, always one step ahead of the FCC snoops. Then the anarchist house started to sink into a sinkhole and got condemned, so the anarchists all had bigger things to worry about.
They had a stand off with the authorities for a month before the cops finally got a court order and raided the house. Funny story, they had this weird guy who lived in the attic and saved all his pee in jars, so they booby trapped the place with jars of pee. Those were not happy cops that day, I'll tell you what. But the spirit of the place was broken, and Santa Cruz lost its pirate radio.
In San Francisco, the station I knew had an actual studio in the Labor Temple right next to my IWW union office, and no one bothered them much. Heh, if you lived within five blocks of Mission and 16th, you might even have heard them. Woot! 30 whole watts of AWESOME POWER! Ah, good times, good times.
The blank panthers were so scary. For one thing, you could never see them coming. Not to mention their leader Malcolm _______ was a total bad-ass.
As for me, when I really want to show of my extravagant wealth, I throw an ink-tasting party. Sure it tastes like crap, but so does caviar and you don't see rich people complaining about that.
No, no, get your terminology right. At 38, even if you've played your cards right, you are still only a codger. It goes codger, duffer, geezer, and finally coot. I have the exact specs for each stage around here somewhere, consarn it.
I'm having a hard time determining where you stand from this post. Are you just layout possibilities rather than taking a position? I don't buy your 'we haven't proved causality' bit. Free will needs causality to cause anything itself. And just because we can't predict something also does not make it free. I don't even understand what you mean by free will here. First you say you are a reductionist, that mind arises from the function of the brain. I'm with you. Then you go on to claim will is free, or could be. Which is it? If mind is determined by the brain, and the will is not separate from mind, then will is determined by the brain as well.
In fact, I can not picture a scenario where 'will' whatever that might be is acted upon by the universe, acts upon the universe, and is free. If it acts and is acted upon it is part of the chain of causality, whatever mechanism you postulate and wherever you place the seat of this will.
Free will comes from dualistic thinking, seeing the world as subject and object. There is no subject. Look at your own self awareness. When I do, and I look close enough, it disappears. There is no self awareness, only a stream of correlated thoughts. There is no thing that is aware of the thoughts, there are only thoughts that point to a thing which isn't there at all. People stuck in dualistic thinking are unable to even comprehend how this is possible, but it is what I have seen when I have looked.
Without self, the concept of free will is moot. So let me be more specific. Free will is meaningless because there is no self separate from conditions.
Sorry, that's reality. You want psychopaths to define what kind of freedom they get? Because I think they might have a different definition, one that involves liver, fava beans, and a nice chianti. Every freedom entails a concomitant loss of freedom. You give up the freedom to murder if you want to be free from the threat of murder. You give up the right to just walk about anywhere if you want the freedom to own private property. You give up the right to just take whatever you see laying about if you want the freedom to own personal property. And so on. This is so basic that I can only believe that your lack of understanding is deliberate.
Same thing with open source. We are giving up some freedoms in order to protect greater freedoms. That is the nature of freedom. I know you were trying to be a clever troll, but you just come across as someone who doesn't think things through. You have to actually understand something before you can successfully make fun of it. Oh, and OSI is not GNU.
It'll all be okay. You just need to find a dark, quiet room where you can chill out until the walls stop melting.
Yeah, but you need something with a universal and game-like set of rules, that is the hard part. Second life is a programmable 3d chat more than anything. It has to be playable as a game, not like working in a real job, unless you could make real world money, and that was your job. But then who would pay to play? There are definite opportunities here. I think the future in games, as an art form rather than a sport, is in telling interesting stories. And the future of MMORPGs is in letting players create interesting stories.
You know, I don't mean to be cruel, but every time someone attempts one of these jokes and gets modded down, I picture that person stepping out into the limelight and delivering his hackneyed line. Crickets chirp for a moment, an audience member coughs, and then a trumpet plays that sad little "WAH Wah wah waaaaaah" bit as the poor unfortunate is dragged off with a hook.
That's probably just me, though.
I mean, what if they start killing each other? Hey, we already had one astronaut snap, and that was on the ground! Will they stop the experiment? Do the astronauts know that ahead of time?
You think it was staged? It's too fucking hilarious, come on, 33.3% chance of success? They thought up that dialogue beforehand. They don't even sound seriously mad towards the end. You can tell from their voices they knew all along they were going to get slaughtered. I think it was staged.
That is so well put. I don't usually post if I have nothing to add, but well said.
That 'nothing changes' part is a problem for me, too. We need dynamic content, some sort of MMORPG combined with a sim. I talk more about that here.