What, do you think people work for free? Jeez, fancy that.. a benevolent effort to build a $100 notebook made a key person who worked on it realize that they could get quite rich if they could still make $40 a piece off of them.
This only reinforces my general thrust - all of these "save the people types" have some angle in it for them. Now we find out that OLPC was in fact, just another one of those slick tricks. Everyone on board digs the "we're not the corporation" mine to get attention, then they deliver something, and then, establish a price point. Now, they'll leave the OLPC one by one, and filter out into cushy jobs with normal companies, getting 6 figure holiday bonuses and 7 figure stocks, giving the likes of Lenovo and Dell their lessons learned on how to make $100 notebooks. OLPC will gradually die, staffed on by a few talentless fools and ideologues that had no idea that the plan was never to have OLPC succeed at all, and the people left behind will engage in all sorts of double think to try and cover that they have been betrayed.
The organization completely misreads the US Constitution and is also factually incorrect.
# No right to privacy in constitution, though search and seizure protections exist in 4th Amendment; case law on government searches has considered new technology No comprehensive privacy law, many sectoral laws; though tort of privacy
1) The US Constitution is NOT a collection of the rights of citizens, ala a French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Rather the US Constitution is a declaration of the rights of government. As it was stated in our own Declaration of Independence "We are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights". Thus, if it is not in the US Constitution, it is legal for citizens (with respect to the federal government), and illegal for the government. The Bill of Rights is thus an affirmation of that idea, not the document that "gives us rights". Our rights are inalienable.
2) The concept of a right to privacy underlies Roe V Wade in the USA.
Of course that's how it works. Nobody is born homosexual or French; they have to be groomed into it.
Depicting things as good in the media is how the entire corporate system works. Advertising works, otherwise, there would be no slashdot. There's already studies that show violence in art begets violence in society. But seriously, though, if something you read on the internet or see on TV can influence everything you do, from buying a car or accepting violence, then, why couldn't someone be lead down the path to homosexuality and then pedophilia?
"And there was a great earthquake, such as has not been since men were on the earth, so mighty and so great an earthquake. And the great city came to be into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell." (Revelation 18:18-19)
I think it is widely held that John was talking about Rome.
don't know, I quite like my GPS, global communications and satellite TV (satellites are not possible with the ancients' spherical shells, overturned by Kepler and Newton, among others). I'm also fond of my electronics, which are made possible by quantum mechanics and special relativity
At the end of the day, the ancient's spherical shells are more or less equivalent in some accuracy to the kepler system. It's just another mapping system, and, in some ways, it might actually be easier to write software for. In fact, one of the big problems in getting acceptance of copernicus and kepler was that it really -wasn't- any more accurate. scientists of the day struggled because the crux of the matter - predicting where the stars would be, was something the old ancient system actually did pretty well. It was in the little details, of, why are there shadows on other planets, that it all broke down. But, if all you wanted to do was put the planets somewhere in the sky, I imagine cycles and epicycles could actually work pretty well.
Sorry to put a damper on things, but, in the nuclear war of 2072, New York City will be incinerated. In the year 2108, there's only going to be a bunch of glassy craters inhabited by trash and rats.
Really, RIAA is a country whose left wingers are used to getting firehosed and dragged away by police, and whose right wingers are used to getting firehosed and dragged away by police. Everyone in America has a ton of guns, dodges or cheats on their taxes, breaks every traffic law their is, probably has been drunk and driven at least once, and the only thing that unites the polical culture is that everyone on both sides of the aisle seems to worship lawbreakers.
So what does RIAA have? A couple of lawyers chasing after people? No matter how many times they say copying digital works is stealing, everyone knows they only think that because they are paid to think that.
Would RIAA represent my copyrighted work if I made a game where you shot a bunch of RIAA lawyers?
You know, its funny in that, everywhere you turn, engineers are under fire, yet, when you peel back the covers, and really look at most organizations, you will find that:
a) most teams have engineers that want to do things differently. b) most products are the way they are for a reason. c) the proliferation of features is driven by a need to differentiate products, and the real understanding that most people believe more is better. Every time you decide to make a DVD remote with only 20 buttons, someone's DVD remote who has 50 buttons is considered to be better. Just do this - take two gidgets, of any sort, and put them in front of a consumer, and ask which one is more expensive. 99% of the time, the one with the more buttons is the one that people will pick.
Now, as for experts, I think we've been hearing for 20 years about how all of the engineers at NASA suck and how those big fat companies like Boeing are just milking NASA for money, and how some newer and simpler startup is going to win the space race ultimately, as if, all of those Phds at NASA and Boeing just simply skated by in correspondence school. It's an easy enough myth to buy into, especially since so many vultures in Washington DC are more than happy to support that myth simply as an excuse to kill NASA.
Yet, it is a myth. Guys making paypal, doom and records are not somehow better than aerospace engineers because they are good programmers. The best we've got now is a few suborbital vehicles - big deal. NASA had that capability in the 1950s and with about the same budget (and they only had sliderules and pilots with big balls). I'm through waiting for a private Saturn V or a private Space Shuttle, because, the experiment has been done and the truth is out - flying in space is hard.
And I think you could say the same for these so-called experts. Really, when a company is bringing in these people, its really to cover up their own bad management. Do you seriously think GM engineers weren't aware that they needed to put better quality parts in their cars? I mean, really, within a few years of Bob Lutz saying "yes", and actually investing in a real product, the long moribund American Car is suddenly back. The new Cadillac CTS, is, once again, the Standard of the World.
In short, really, its not bad engineering that is the problem in America - its stupid management.
Notably, the actual article never says Apple Stores are ideal for techies
Yeah, but the thing is, I've talked to a lot of people that work as geniuses in the Mac store, and some of them know the system pretty well. I walked in and had a jolly conversation with someone who explained how the whole Apple Objective C or C++ environment works compared to Windows... and walked me al through it. While not every Apple geek is a hardcore programmer for Macs, I think its the case that the Apple environment is cool enough to attract students and partisans alike who like the Mac. I mean, some of these Geeks might do the job more because it is fun and some extra money on the weekends, then they do it for a job ala Best Buy. Just a different kind of crowd for a different kind of computer.
That was more than 200 years and a couple of world wars ago. Today's Europe is a sick man recovering from its own follies of the last 150 years. My whole thing is this: If Europe was so great, then why do so many European women choose not to bring more children into it. My god, I've read that despite European safety net, American flexibility actually is contributing to a higher birth rate for American women. Granted, American women are still getting screwed, and, our own American society sucks for children, but at least we admit that it sucks and can take steps to make it better. I predict the USA will have more onsite day care and a greater acceptance of children in public places, acting like children, than Europe will.
Note that I don't hate Europe per se, its just that, you can't go and kill 10% of your best and brightest young men and expect to have a healthy society as a result for at least another 50 years. Even the relatively minor disasters of VietNam and to some extent Iraq play a sapping role on the American imagination. I can't imagine what it must be like for a European, whose every family member has someone killed by either firebombs or on some random front around the world, and nearly all of whom had their home and livelihood destroyed in the past. I tell my friends who are upset about how Europeans are so against any American war, that, look, Europeans have had more than enough of it, and if we were in their shoes, maybe we would not be so quick to cheer the President on into another stupid war.
If there is anything to be gained from Europe for America at this point, it is the lesson that, geez, if we fight too many wars, we will wind up like Europe. It's hard to avoid being cynical when even your supposed allies in some major war fire bomb your house.
I had an absolutely great experience with Ubuntu installation. I popped in the CD, booted up into it, clicked install, and it just worked. The only thing that I didn't have was some of the latest drivers for my graphics card, but then again, Windows generally doesn't either.
I do agree that the average joe should not be installing an operating system anywhere, but ubuntu's installer system for drivers works with about as many steps as Windows does, so, even though its different, I wouldn't say that it was "more daunting". If anything, Ubuntu's LiveCD approach to an OS installation is nicer because you can surf and answer installation questions while you are installing the OS. I think that's pretty damned slick.
Really, the central problem with the PC, according to the article, was that it didn't have Flash preloaded, and it can't run Windows applications. The first is a stupid problem correctable by the hardware integrator. I think if you plink down a few bucks, get the codecs licenced, get flash licensed, you can have a PC that has everything you need and is ready to go, out of the box, running Linux, that will work fine for surfing, email and a bit word processing. As for not being able to run Windows Apps, any more, I don't think consumers have a problem understanding multiple formats. After all, they know the difference between XBOX 360 and Playstation 3! Why should it be any different for PCs?
Windows compatibility is a non-issue.
In fact, I would even argue that Office compatibility is a non-issue. People use Office to make documents for themselves, and then, they use those documents and throw them away.
And the Beatles played what genre of music, rock and roll, invented by American blacks, as was its forebear, the Blues. So let's run down the genre's of music American blacks have invented - the blues, rock and roll, jazz, rap... I mean come on, let's face it, Europeans have done nothing but ape American innovation when it comes to the last 100 years. And I've not even through in comic books, video games, movies, DVDs... Americans have it all over Europe when it comes to the arts. Europe is culturally dead. In fact, even American cooking is better!
Google was started by a 50% European team. Nokia is European. Television was invented here. The Compact disc was invented here. The automobile, albeit slightly longer than your arbitrary 100 years. Digital computing.
So what? That's my big answer.
a) There were other search engines before Google, and besides, I thought Europeans always haughtily say that Russia isn't a part of Europe. b) No one cares about Nokia - just another cell phone and Motorola's work just as well. c) Television, blah, was invented in the USA... spinning disks don't cut it. d) Automobile, blah, Mercedes, except for the AMG, is the most overrated car on the planet. e) Digital computing, means nothing without the transistor, made in the USA.
There are already european and asian companies that simply don't trade in the USA anymore. And they're doing fine. The USA is ceasing to matter. The ONLY thing keeping them relevant is their vast military. And while the USA spends more on military than the rest of the world combined, it really can't hope to win WWIII, spending more money on something doesn't mean it's actually better.
You know what, I don't want the USA to matter. I don't care about the EU, the WTO, Germany, France, or whoever else, and I see no reason that any American should. People accuse Americans of being ignorant of world affairs, and really, Americans are just smart about it. There's nothing in Europe worth knowing.
After 40 years of witnessing American involvement on the other side of the world, I have decided that there is absolutely no point to the other side of the world. It's the same as it always was, a bunch of old people with old ideas stuck in old ways doing old things. When people say, "we have to be in NATO to defend Europe", it's not even a question of "from what" any more, but "why?". I fail to find one European value where an American value is not better. The whole continent is a cultural wasteland, producing nothing of significance. 30 million American blacks have had more impact on the arts than nearly a billion Europeans have, over the last 100 years.
despite self-deluding crap in the US about how the rest of the world needs the US to "buy their stuff" - sure, just like black ants need a bunch of lazy-ass red ants lording it over them...),
The rest of the world dumps its crap on the USA because the dollar is artificially high. Now that the dollar is coming down in value, you see EU economic growth slowing, while meanwhile, the USA economy continues to grow despite high energy prices and an aweful housing market. But hey, if there are enough Germans to buy BMWs, please, by all means, keep them in Europe. We have plenty of cars in the USA.
I really can't grasp what your point is. If it's "watch out for this and make sure it's used properly" then I'm all for it and I agree. But your point seems to be "don't embarass criminals, they may be innocent!"
I'm sick of a supposedly free country trumpeting state powers everywhere one turns.
I've had it with checkpoints, searches, warning signs about the law, police, and everything else. We spent trillions of dollars fighting the Russians in the Cold War and now we do it voluntarily to ourselves because of a couple of drunk drivers, potheads, and disgruntled arabs? Come on? Where's the real threat? If we weren't going to go totalitarian while facing down the Red Army and the KGB, why on earth do it now?
I remember an America where you could drive down the street without seeing street signs saying to call the Feds at some 1-800 number if you see someone suspicious. I remember an America where airports were places that you partied at and had a few drinks watching the planes come in. I remember an America where you could drive around without seeing 2000 signs reminding you about following every single law. I remember an America where laws were made to be broken and the citizenry was cool about things. I remember being drunk and driving back and forth across the Canadian border without so much as even stopping, let alone having a passport or a visa.
This country has just gone mad with security, and I think the price is too high. If I had to put up with a little more crime and the occasional blown up building to get rid of all of these gestapo thugs, then, so be it.
Very well said. But it is also worth noting that to be effective at their jobs, police must also be respected by the public. Unfortunately a (growing?) segment of the population has little respect for concepts such as law and order and societal stability. They do respect the force of a gun, however, and as such a certain amount of perceived intimidation is useful.
If you want people to respect law and order, then, pass laws and define an order worth respecting. Some people think society sucks, and making them see things your way at the barrel of a gun isn't going to do anything. It didn't work in Iraq, and it certainly won't work in the United States.
Even the article concedes that Gray's invention wasn't for spoken words over the phone, it was for multiplexing morse code signals to make a more efficient telegraph. Sure, Gray may have been the better technologist, but Bell should get some larger props for seeing the point that you wouldn't need telegraphs any more at all. Saying that Gray invented the telephone because Bell borrowed some of his ideas is like saying that Reimann invented Relativity because Einstein used some of his math. In both cases, it was the application and vision of a technology that is more interesting than the mechanism itself. Neither Bell nor Gray's inventions are even relevant now, but the idea of spoken communications at a distance is.
The thought of giant billboards showing enemies of the state, and the public acceptance thereof, is just appalling. People wanted by the FBI for a crime have not been proven guilty in a court of law, and so for the government to broadcast that these people are guilty is an undo usurpation of police powers over the jury system.
There's more important things here than money. Less energy used is still less energy used
That's retarded. Energy is wealth and the more you have, the better you are. If you want to revert to some dark ages humanity, than you ought be bitching less about nuclear weapons. A good war would cool the planet down, destroy the industrial base, and lower the population dramatically, all in one stroke. Instead, you just have us sitting in shitty hovels over little LEDs, dark and shivering in the cold. Environmentalism sucks.
Traditional mass media is obsolete. Were the internet a simple issue of distribution, then, newspapers would simply be the same thing, but cheaper. What's happened is that people are interested in their own niches of information, and mass media simply can't get its head around it. All of the sifting through events that reporters and editors used to do, the internet makes pointless. Because there is essentially infinite bandwidth, you don't need someone to decide what news is worth actually distributing. Now, it all can be distributed.
You can get in depth knowledge on any topic. The odd review about a car or a movie in the paper just can't cut it compared to the in depth information you get from a direct source. Why go to the Philadelphia Inquirer car section or computer section when I can go to not just one, but any number of computer or car web sites. About all that newspapers are good for are sports columnists, and even they have made a transition to online or, gasp, radio talk shows. On the other end of the scale, a lot of information reporters get comes from 3rd hand sources, such as the AP Wires, and now, you can get the same article online.
You can get any information you want. If you want to find out what is going on in Switzerland, you can go to a web site in Switzerland and read it. If you want to find out what's going on in politics, you don't have to be aggravated that your political view isn't represented in the media. On the internet, all views are.
You can find anyone to agree with you. Newspapers and broadcast media needed to foster the notion that there was a mainstream of opinion, a sweet spot or common ground for everyone. Reality is a lot more complex and we're finding that there's no such thing as mainstream. There's a lot of people online, and, on any given topic, you can find someone that agrees with you. You don't have to believe you are an outcast, when you have 30,000 people that form their own online community. If someone else calls me a crackpot for wanting to pave the earth, I can find someone to agree with me.
This trend isn't going to affect just newspapers and broadcast media. They are just the first pickings. In the future, every traditional role of knowledge acquisition and distribution will be upended by the democratizing influence of the internet. At some point, as search tools get better, and communications improves, there won't even be a need for a specialized formal education. We are moving towards, truly, the world of the matrix, where if we want to learn to fly a helicopter, we'll find it on google.
Slashdot Mirror
What, do you think people work for free? Jeez, fancy that.. a benevolent effort to build a $100 notebook made a key person who worked on it realize that they could get quite rich if they could still make $40 a piece off of them.
This only reinforces my general thrust - all of these "save the people types" have some angle in it for them. Now we find out that OLPC was in fact, just another one of those slick tricks. Everyone on board digs the "we're not the corporation" mine to get attention, then they deliver something, and then, establish a price point. Now, they'll leave the OLPC one by one, and filter out into cushy jobs with normal companies, getting 6 figure holiday bonuses and 7 figure stocks, giving the likes of Lenovo and Dell their lessons learned on how to make $100 notebooks. OLPC will gradually die, staffed on by a few talentless fools and ideologues that had no idea that the plan was never to have OLPC succeed at all, and the people left behind will engage in all sorts of double think to try and cover that they have been betrayed.
Everyone has an angle.
The organization completely misreads the US Constitution and is also factually incorrect.
# No right to privacy in constitution, though search and seizure protections exist in 4th Amendment; case law on government searches has considered new technology No comprehensive privacy law, many sectoral laws; though tort of privacy
1) The US Constitution is NOT a collection of the rights of citizens, ala a French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Rather the US Constitution is a declaration of the rights of government. As it was stated in our own Declaration of Independence "We are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights". Thus, if it is not in the US Constitution, it is legal for citizens (with respect to the federal government), and illegal for the government. The Bill of Rights is thus an affirmation of that idea, not the document that "gives us rights". Our rights are inalienable.
2) The concept of a right to privacy underlies Roe V Wade in the USA.
Of course that's how it works. Nobody is born homosexual or French; they have to be groomed into it.
Depicting things as good in the media is how the entire corporate system works. Advertising works, otherwise, there would be no slashdot. There's already studies that show violence in art begets violence in society. But seriously, though, if something you read on the internet or see on TV can influence everything you do, from buying a car or accepting violence, then, why couldn't someone be lead down the path to homosexuality and then pedophilia?
I mean, how many PS3's sold for xmas? Costco is selling 1080p TVs for $1000. I think 2008 is going to be the tipping point for a lot of people.
"And there was a great earthquake, such as has not been since men were on the earth, so mighty and so great an earthquake. And the great city came to be into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell." (Revelation 18:18-19)
I think it is widely held that John was talking about Rome.
don't know, I quite like my GPS, global communications and satellite TV (satellites are not possible with the ancients' spherical shells, overturned by Kepler and Newton, among others). I'm also fond of my electronics, which are made possible by quantum mechanics and special relativity
At the end of the day, the ancient's spherical shells are more or less equivalent in some accuracy to the kepler system. It's just another mapping system, and, in some ways, it might actually be easier to write software for. In fact, one of the big problems in getting acceptance of copernicus and kepler was that it really -wasn't- any more accurate. scientists of the day struggled because the crux of the matter - predicting where the stars would be, was something the old ancient system actually did pretty well. It was in the little details, of, why are there shadows on other planets, that it all broke down. But, if all you wanted to do was put the planets somewhere in the sky, I imagine cycles and epicycles could actually work pretty well.
Sorry to put a damper on things, but, in the nuclear war of 2072, New York City will be incinerated. In the year 2108, there's only going to be a bunch of glassy craters inhabited by trash and rats.
Really, RIAA is a country whose left wingers are used to getting firehosed and dragged away by police, and whose right wingers are used to getting firehosed and dragged away by police. Everyone in America has a ton of guns, dodges or cheats on their taxes, breaks every traffic law their is, probably has been drunk and driven at least once, and the only thing that unites the polical culture is that everyone on both sides of the aisle seems to worship lawbreakers.
So what does RIAA have? A couple of lawyers chasing after people? No matter how many times they say copying digital works is stealing, everyone knows they only think that because they are paid to think that.
Would RIAA represent my copyrighted work if I made a game where you shot a bunch of RIAA lawyers?
You know, its funny in that, everywhere you turn, engineers are under fire, yet, when you peel back the covers, and really look at most organizations, you will find that:
a) most teams have engineers that want to do things differently.
b) most products are the way they are for a reason.
c) the proliferation of features is driven by a need to differentiate products, and the real understanding that most people believe more is better. Every time you decide to make a DVD remote with only 20 buttons, someone's DVD remote who has 50 buttons is considered to be better. Just do this - take two gidgets, of any sort, and put them in front of a consumer, and ask which one is more expensive. 99% of the time, the one with the more buttons is the one that people will pick.
Now, as for experts, I think we've been hearing for 20 years about how all of the engineers at NASA suck and how those big fat companies like Boeing are just milking NASA for money, and how some newer and simpler startup is going to win the space race ultimately, as if, all of those Phds at NASA and Boeing just simply skated by in correspondence school. It's an easy enough myth to buy into, especially since so many vultures in Washington DC are more than happy to support that myth simply as an excuse to kill NASA.
Yet, it is a myth. Guys making paypal, doom and records are not somehow better than aerospace engineers because they are good programmers. The best we've got now is a few suborbital vehicles - big deal. NASA had that capability in the 1950s and with about the same budget (and they only had sliderules and pilots with big balls). I'm through waiting for a private Saturn V or a private Space Shuttle, because, the experiment has been done and the truth is out - flying in space is hard.
And I think you could say the same for these so-called experts. Really, when a company is bringing in these people, its really to cover up their own bad management. Do you seriously think GM engineers weren't aware that they needed to put better quality parts in their cars? I mean, really, within a few years of Bob Lutz saying "yes", and actually investing in a real product, the long moribund American Car is suddenly back. The new Cadillac CTS, is, once again, the Standard of the World.
In short, really, its not bad engineering that is the problem in America - its stupid management.
Notably, the actual article never says Apple Stores are ideal for techies
Yeah, but the thing is, I've talked to a lot of people that work as geniuses in the Mac store, and some of them know the system pretty well. I walked in and had a jolly conversation with someone who explained how the whole Apple Objective C or C++ environment works compared to Windows... and walked me al through it. While not every Apple geek is a hardcore programmer for Macs, I think its the case that the Apple environment is cool enough to attract students and partisans alike who like the Mac. I mean, some of these Geeks might do the job more because it is fun and some extra money on the weekends, then they do it for a job ala Best Buy. Just a different kind of crowd for a different kind of computer.
America was invented in Europe
That was more than 200 years and a couple of world wars ago. Today's Europe is a sick man recovering from its own follies of the last 150 years. My whole thing is this: If Europe was so great, then why do so many European women choose not to bring more children into it. My god, I've read that despite European safety net, American flexibility actually is contributing to a higher birth rate for American women. Granted, American women are still getting screwed, and, our own American society sucks for children, but at least we admit that it sucks and can take steps to make it better. I predict the USA will have more onsite day care and a greater acceptance of children in public places, acting like children, than Europe will.
Note that I don't hate Europe per se, its just that, you can't go and kill 10% of your best and brightest young men and expect to have a healthy society as a result for at least another 50 years. Even the relatively minor disasters of VietNam and to some extent Iraq play a sapping role on the American imagination. I can't imagine what it must be like for a European, whose every family member has someone killed by either firebombs or on some random front around the world, and nearly all of whom had their home and livelihood destroyed in the past. I tell my friends who are upset about how Europeans are so against any American war, that, look, Europeans have had more than enough of it, and if we were in their shoes, maybe we would not be so quick to cheer the President on into another stupid war.
If there is anything to be gained from Europe for America at this point, it is the lesson that, geez, if we fight too many wars, we will wind up like Europe. It's hard to avoid being cynical when even your supposed allies in some major war fire bomb your house.
I had an absolutely great experience with Ubuntu installation. I popped in the CD, booted up into it, clicked install, and it just worked. The only thing that I didn't have was some of the latest drivers for my graphics card, but then again, Windows generally doesn't either.
I do agree that the average joe should not be installing an operating system anywhere, but ubuntu's installer system for drivers works with about as many steps as Windows does, so, even though its different, I wouldn't say that it was "more daunting". If anything, Ubuntu's LiveCD approach to an OS installation is nicer because you can surf and answer installation questions while you are installing the OS. I think that's pretty damned slick.
Really, the central problem with the PC, according to the article, was that it didn't have Flash preloaded, and it can't run Windows applications. The first is a stupid problem correctable by the hardware integrator. I think if you plink down a few bucks, get the codecs licenced, get flash licensed, you can have a PC that has everything you need and is ready to go, out of the box, running Linux, that will work fine for surfing, email and a bit word processing. As for not being able to run Windows Apps, any more, I don't think consumers have a problem understanding multiple formats. After all, they know the difference between XBOX 360 and Playstation 3! Why should it be any different for PCs?
Windows compatibility is a non-issue.
In fact, I would even argue that Office compatibility is a non-issue. People use Office to make documents for themselves, and then, they use those documents and throw them away.
No. They played something that is called Mersey beat. That's not Rock'n'Roll
"If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'."
-- John Lennon
And he wasn't as good as yet another American, Bob Dylan, anyway....
Norwegian Wood vs Chimes of Freedom
Revolution vs Desolation Row
really, just no comparison. Dylan is the man.
said the man who never listened to the Beatles.
And the Beatles played what genre of music, rock and roll, invented by American blacks, as was its forebear, the Blues. So let's run down the genre's of music American blacks have invented - the blues, rock and roll, jazz, rap... I mean come on, let's face it, Europeans have done nothing but ape American innovation when it comes to the last 100 years. And I've not even through in comic books, video games, movies, DVDs... Americans have it all over Europe when it comes to the arts. Europe is culturally dead. In fact, even American cooking is better!
Google was started by a 50% European team.
Nokia is European.
Television was invented here.
The Compact disc was invented here.
The automobile, albeit slightly longer than your arbitrary 100 years.
Digital computing.
So what? That's my big answer.
a) There were other search engines before Google, and besides, I thought Europeans always haughtily say that Russia isn't a part of Europe.
b) No one cares about Nokia - just another cell phone and Motorola's work just as well.
c) Television, blah, was invented in the USA... spinning disks don't cut it.
d) Automobile, blah, Mercedes, except for the AMG, is the most overrated car on the planet.
e) Digital computing, means nothing without the transistor, made in the USA.
There are already european and asian companies that simply don't trade in the USA anymore. And they're doing fine. The USA is ceasing to matter. The ONLY thing keeping them relevant is their vast military. And while the USA spends more on military than the rest of the world combined, it really can't hope to win WWIII, spending more money on something doesn't mean it's actually better.
You know what, I don't want the USA to matter. I don't care about the EU, the WTO, Germany, France, or whoever else, and I see no reason that any American should. People accuse Americans of being ignorant of world affairs, and really, Americans are just smart about it. There's nothing in Europe worth knowing.
After 40 years of witnessing American involvement on the other side of the world, I have decided that there is absolutely no point to the other side of the world. It's the same as it always was, a bunch of old people with old ideas stuck in old ways doing old things. When people say, "we have to be in NATO to defend Europe", it's not even a question of "from what" any more, but "why?". I fail to find one European value where an American value is not better. The whole continent is a cultural wasteland, producing nothing of significance. 30 million American blacks have had more impact on the arts than nearly a billion Europeans have, over the last 100 years.
despite self-deluding crap in the US about how the rest of the world needs the US to "buy their stuff" - sure, just like black ants need a bunch of lazy-ass red ants lording it over them...),
The rest of the world dumps its crap on the USA because the dollar is artificially high. Now that the dollar is coming down in value, you see EU economic growth slowing, while meanwhile, the USA economy continues to grow despite high energy prices and an aweful housing market. But hey, if there are enough Germans to buy BMWs, please, by all means, keep them in Europe. We have plenty of cars in the USA.
I really can't grasp what your point is. If it's "watch out for this and make sure it's used properly" then I'm all for it and I agree. But your point seems to be "don't embarass criminals, they may be innocent!"
I'm sick of a supposedly free country trumpeting state powers everywhere one turns.
I've had it with checkpoints, searches, warning signs about the law, police, and everything else. We spent trillions of dollars fighting the Russians in the Cold War and now we do it voluntarily to ourselves because of a couple of drunk drivers, potheads, and disgruntled arabs? Come on? Where's the real threat? If we weren't going to go totalitarian while facing down the Red Army and the KGB, why on earth do it now?
I remember an America where you could drive down the street without seeing street signs saying to call the Feds at some 1-800 number if you see someone suspicious. I remember an America where airports were places that you partied at and had a few drinks watching the planes come in. I remember an America where you could drive around without seeing 2000 signs reminding you about following every single law. I remember an America where laws were made to be broken and the citizenry was cool about things. I remember being drunk and driving back and forth across the Canadian border without so much as even stopping, let alone having a passport or a visa.
This country has just gone mad with security, and I think the price is too high. If I had to put up with a little more crime and the occasional blown up building to get rid of all of these gestapo thugs, then, so be it.
Very well said. But it is also worth noting that to be effective at their jobs, police must also be respected by the public. Unfortunately a (growing?) segment of the population has little respect for concepts such as law and order and societal stability. They do respect the force of a gun, however, and as such a certain amount of perceived intimidation is useful.
If you want people to respect law and order, then, pass laws and define an order worth respecting. Some people think society sucks, and making them see things your way at the barrel of a gun isn't going to do anything. It didn't work in Iraq, and it certainly won't work in the United States.
Even the article concedes that Gray's invention wasn't for spoken words over the phone, it was for multiplexing morse code signals to make a more efficient telegraph. Sure, Gray may have been the better technologist, but Bell should get some larger props for seeing the point that you wouldn't need telegraphs any more at all. Saying that Gray invented the telephone because Bell borrowed some of his ideas is like saying that Reimann invented Relativity because Einstein used some of his math. In both cases, it was the application and vision of a technology that is more interesting than the mechanism itself. Neither Bell nor Gray's inventions are even relevant now, but the idea of spoken communications at a distance is.
The thought of giant billboards showing enemies of the state, and the public acceptance thereof, is just appalling. People wanted by the FBI for a crime have not been proven guilty in a court of law, and so for the government to broadcast that these people are guilty is an undo usurpation of police powers over the jury system.
"You should switch from the free US GPS to our free GPS, so that, you won't be relying on their free GPS after the nuclear war."
If the USA could build a million robots, what's the harm in trying to send in a giant army of robotic soldiers to try and take over the world?
There's more important things here than money. Less energy used is still less energy used
That's retarded. Energy is wealth and the more you have, the better you are. If you want to revert to some dark ages humanity, than you ought be bitching less about nuclear weapons. A good war would cool the planet down, destroy the industrial base, and lower the population dramatically, all in one stroke. Instead, you just have us sitting in shitty hovels over little LEDs, dark and shivering in the cold. Environmentalism sucks.
Traditional mass media is obsolete. Were the internet a simple issue of distribution, then, newspapers would simply be the same thing, but cheaper. What's happened is that people are interested in their own niches of information, and mass media simply can't get its head around it. All of the sifting through events that reporters and editors used to do, the internet makes pointless. Because there is essentially infinite bandwidth, you don't need someone to decide what news is worth actually distributing. Now, it all can be distributed.
You can get in depth knowledge on any topic. The odd review about a car or a movie in the paper just can't cut it compared to the in depth information you get from a direct source. Why go to the Philadelphia Inquirer car section or computer section when I can go to not just one, but any number of computer or car web sites. About all that newspapers are good for are sports columnists, and even they have made a transition to online or, gasp, radio talk shows. On the other end of the scale, a lot of information reporters get comes from 3rd hand sources, such as the AP Wires, and now, you can get the same article online.
You can get any information you want. If you want to find out what is going on in Switzerland, you can go to a web site in Switzerland and read it. If you want to find out what's going on in politics, you don't have to be aggravated that your political view isn't represented in the media. On the internet, all views are.
You can find anyone to agree with you. Newspapers and broadcast media needed to foster the notion that there was a mainstream of opinion, a sweet spot or common ground for everyone. Reality is a lot more complex and we're finding that there's no such thing as mainstream. There's a lot of people online, and, on any given topic, you can find someone that agrees with you. You don't have to believe you are an outcast, when you have 30,000 people that form their own online community. If someone else calls me a crackpot for wanting to pave the earth, I can find someone to agree with me.
This trend isn't going to affect just newspapers and broadcast media. They are just the first pickings. In the future, every traditional role of knowledge acquisition and distribution will be upended by the democratizing influence of the internet. At some point, as search tools get better, and communications improves, there won't even be a need for a specialized formal education. We are moving towards, truly, the world of the matrix, where if we want to learn to fly a helicopter, we'll find it on google.