I think the reason the American Revolution didn't end up as badly as it could have, is because the commanders of the Continental Army were trained and educated former British Officers, who were trusted by the peasants, because they knew how to fight the occupying Red Coats. And the peasants knew that, implicitly. They acted as a rather civilizing force, and that's largely why US law is based on British "Common Law" - even if our governmental structure is not based on the British hybrid royal/parlimentary system.
Now - on the OTHER side - there are numerous accounts of extreme brutality by British troops, on the rebelling colonials. Extrajudicial executions, rapes, property seizures, etc. All the typical mistakes that imperial powers make while they're arrogantly failing at "winning hearts and minds" because they're in a "we can win by force" mindset.
True: Democracy, as implemented in 1776, was designed to prevent subversion. Loyal Torries had faith in the Crown, and the Magna Carta, and perhaps also feared British power. But they were blinding themselves the the fact that their fellow colonists were being subject to arbitrary abuses, contrary to the letter and spirit of the Magna Carta - (just as modern Americans have blinded themselves, post 9/11. . . ).
NO Document, or system of law can protect against Psychological Denial.
I'm sure that the Easter Island native who cut down the LAST TREE on Easter Island jealously fought for his God Given Right to cut that tree down. It was HIS tree damn it. Who the hell had any right to tell him he could not cut that tree down? Besides. He also had the last axe.
Well, for what it's worth, you can think of Atheism as "religion-like" in many ways. And there are radical atheists.
(My belief on the matter - may be a "scientific impotence" shortcut; I don't believe you can prove God does not exist. And I think that's simply a function of "God" being defined in a sufficiently vague and transcendent way, such that, propositional logic can't apply. Which suits a "supreme creator" quite well. My illogic is airtight, unassailable, and probably incompatible with scripture.)
Now - that's BELIEF. Religion - is also about tradition, and culture, and values. And those things ARE important. I disagree that all atheists (or agnostics) will wander and blindly follow anything. Though there's clearly a human need to fit in - so sez Maslow. We're social creatures. A firm foundation in a religious tradition, without belief, will be there when that belief changes. A foundation in an atheistic moral framework, can also be a tradition, and can bolster values. So as a social-function (which is a popular sociological theory about the function of religion in human culture) - I don't agree that theistic belief is strictly required, in order to have "common values". I also don't believe that religion inherently causes conflict of values either. Any belief framework (including atheistic belief; because it *is* a belief, even if it's empirically more rational than theistic belief) - can be abused to enforce immoral values (like child-sacrifice (Soviet-era child labor), war, even genocide, etc).
I think this "science can't explain" argument is just over-simplistic. And it's because we resist separating theistic/atheistic belief from its framework. Science can explain all kinds of things about religion. We can forensically examine scriptural references, history, and we can use scientific analysis to contradict and refute the traditional content of just about any major religion I'm aware of. Or we can go into linguistics and logic and argue about whether certain passages are allegorical or literal - (which is sort of like claiming that one can read God's mind, I don't care which side you're on, or what religion you claim to be). Science can explain a lot. I'm betting that 2000 years ago, most people thought Science was not capable of explaining whether the world was flat or round or banana shaped. None of us alive today have a freaking clue what Science is capable of discovering or explaining. (this would be sort of like, fortune-telling).
I accept that one day, even the human phenomenon of belief/non-belief, may be explained, even proven. . . by, ew, neurophysicists. Until then, I attribute my belief to something other than what Science has yet explained. And even then - I will still wonder if God exists.
Though one possible reason for that is that they have more money to throw around, since it costs a lot more to design and build a car in the US, thanks to - out of control executive compensation.
There. Fixed that for you.
There have been (and still are) a lot of government-run car companies over the years. You won't see many of the cars they produce today because they're typically totalitarian and/or socialist regimes that make them, and they're usually rubbish.
Like Volkswagen. Which began as a government-mandated design; forced by an oppressive socialist-labeled (yet fascist-acting) regime. The VW beetle was produced from 1953 to, I think 1999 (in Mexico). It was the most popular and successful car in the history of the car. If you know anything about them, you know that the basic design concepts worked out by Ferdinand Porsche in the late 1930's did not change in any significant way until the 1973 Super Beetle. And STILL, it was pretty much the same car. It spawned many variations, including the military kubelwagen personnel carrier, the amphibious schwimmwagen, the Karmann-Ghia sports model, the various "type 3" models, the evil and enigmatic microbus, the Myers Manx dune buggy was based off of it, and Formula V racing was spawned from that mighty 4-banger aircooled. My '72 got 35 mpg on the highway.
I wouldn't want the government being in the car manufacturing/selling business. (because of the inherent power to issue currency, which is very often abused, they should not be involved in commerce in that way).
But there's nothing magical about a private corporation that makes them automatically better at something. Smart people designed cars for GM. Smart people also designed these cars for the government. Smart people figured out safety devices; stupid people wrote legislation to force it in a way that did more harm than good. Smart people designed the Boeing 737. Stupid people wrote legislation that makes it take longer to process through an airport than it does to fly to the destination. Smart people also designed the F-16 for General Dynamics, for the government. (and Smart people working at NASA, worked out the basics of wing aerodynamics, used in BOTH of these planes, and many many others, long beforehand.)
Well, really you ruined it by not checking the oil daily:P
Or maybe Mazda ruined it (like all car manufacturers do - defective by-design), by shipping it with a sensor that reported low-oil only under conditions where the motor had been irrevokably damaged long before you have a chance to do anything about it.
If I were Emporer of the Universe, Mandatory on ALL cars: Oil PRESSURE, and LEVEL indicators. (and for cars with turbos, which would be ALL cars: Exhaust Gas Temperature, and Oil Temperature gauges too. Oh, I guess boost would be useful, but only for masturbation.) I would also ban hard-top cars. All cars would be convertible, or open-top.
(I would also ban the use of the word "turbo" - since all engines would have them, there'd be no use for the word as a marketing distinction. We'd call them compressors or something like that.)
(I would also ban automatic transmissions).
Lifetime chance of dying in a shark attack: 1 in 300 million Lifetime chance of dying from a falling coconut: 1 in 250 million
I just don't think we're "designed" for changing our worldview, or zeitgeist, or whatever you want to call it.
Sure - the human brain is a learning machine. Evolution has absolutely selected it for its capability to learn, and rationalize, which we have extended to include the Scientific Method. But we should not forget that hundreds of millions of years before that, Evolution also selected the more primitive parts of the brain, for their survival qualities. Those parts are responsible for emotion and feeling, and fight/flight responses.
And when we're challenged, I think it naturally will evoke a defensive response. ESPECIALLY when it comes to cultural survival. We are also social animals, and we bond most closely to our families, and those who are most like us. I think it's simply a natural, and strong response, for the irrational part of the brain to kick in, and defend that "social territory", familiarity, family, tradition, and culture.
The trick is, to set aside the defensive response, and let the rational brain work. Even if it turns the whole-brain's image of the world upside-down. (example: "what? there's boys and girls, that's it. No in-between, no weird stuff! That scares me, and threatens my ability to procreate." . . . indirectly, because maybe their offspring could be gay, and then there would be no way for the parent to inflict social 'control' on the offspring to force them to produce grandchildren, and secure the legacy. - this can affect us on a very primitive level, no matter how backwards and uncivilized you think it is, we also all share this cognitive architecture.)
I am in complete agreement that it would be GREAT if everyone could just sit down, have a beer, and talk about Evolution or how the Earth is round not flat, or whatever, without being called an evil baby-eating communist. But I just don't think it's in human-nature to do that. And while some of us have the ability to look at challenging ideas without feeling threatened, and turning to irrational thoughts and behavior - we share this world with 6 billion others. And we're not all the same. We don't all have the same abilities, environment, background, upbringing, etc. There will NEVER be an ideal utopian paradise where everyone is going to be able to do this. We've done a great job; in Liberal Democracies, of cramming written-language literacy down everyone's throat. I think the illiteracy rate in such nations is down below 1%. We accomplished this in probably less than three generations of public education. But - I'm talking about personal mastery of emotion and logic. These very basic drives. We don't have the technology or the tools, and even attempting this, would be attacked by the very problem its meant to address. Such measures would be branded as "totalitarian brainwashing". And I'm not sure that all (6 billion) of us would even have the facilities with which to develop the necessary skills. Fixing THAT problem? I think you're talking about something like eugenics at the very least, or genocide of certain cultures.
Not very pretty at all. Once we start trying to think on behalf of other people. Economics and Sociology is bad enough. Best stick to Physics and the like. You can push particles around, and they don't hit back.
This is the age where boys seem to be "lost" the most, and parents seem to get the most concerned about them.
I work with boys (save the jokes), and I've seen it happen in several cases, right around this 13-15 age range. They suddenly find something they're interested in, and they just DO it.
In one case, it was a kid who just suddenly found video games boring, and moved on to photography and writing. He's very creative, and he found this very rewarding.
My own son; was a Guitar Hero monster. And I told him (joking): "if you spent this much time playing a REAL guitar, you'd be a really kick ass guitarist, instead of just beating your friends at a video game that will be obsolete in 2 years. Which do you think you'll be thankful for, when you're my age?" He sold his xbox360, and all his games, (I miss Halo 2. . . ) and instead of spending 6 hrs a day playing video games, he plays his guitar for 6 hours a day. And he's pretty amazing. Even if his dreams of rock stardom don't work out, he's going to have a skill and a developed talent he's going to use the rest of his life.
So - don't "push" him in any direction. But DO expose him to other things. (I think it helps if some of the exposure happened before video games came in). He'll push himself in whichever direction works for him.
My armchair-psychologist idea of why this happens, is they're still searching for an identity. They're trying to figure out who they are. You can also make them somewhat accountable for the decisions they make too. (ie. there are consequences to spending all your time on video games. . . failing at real life).
Re:in other news, cementing the BP CEO has started
on
Gulf Oil Leak Plugged?
·
· Score: 1
The corporate charter is exactly what protects the CEO and Board from personal liability.
By the way; an oil platform collapsed and sank off the coast of Venezuela two weeks ago. How much oil do you suppose that's leaking? How many fatalities? Do you think the commercial newsmedia of the US would be covering that, if there were any significant leakage, considering how popular the concept of nationalized oil industries are, in the US?
I'm not arguing for nationalization. It's an opposite extreme of what we have going on here, in this country, which is clearly not working.
Whether you're IN orbit, or NOT in orbit, has nothing at all to do with atmosphere. Except when atmospheric drag slows you down so that you can't maintain the velocity necessary to counter the gravity of the object you're circling.
Solve the propulsion and/or drag problem, and you can orbit the Earth at any altitude you like. Even negative altitude. Dirt's just a harder problem than air. A tad draggier.
In fact, I think the closer to the gravitational center you get, you start getting canceling effects (mass above and below). Theoretically, Newton says you can sit in the center of the earth and rest. It's the same as orbiting the earth, functionally.
what blows my mind is the bad rep this day-trading phenomenon was getting by the close of the 1990's - BEFORE the 2000-2002 crash, BEFORE Enron, BEFORE the housing market bubble.
Hell - it was widely considered harmful, dodgy, and sketchy by 1987 when fricking Derivatives first started trading, and people started asking: shouldn't we be regulating this stuff?
Oh no - let's LOWER capital gains taxes, so we can make this kind of tomfoolery MORE profitable and attractive. Someone said on another thread that human innovation and ingenuity always finds a way to improve and increase in our expanding economy. But we obviously haven't learned a damn thing. Hell, the market's crashing, and we've even forgotten what the hell happened in 2009.
Well, I guess we figured that the Internet would save the poor, by eliminating the middle-man, giving the poor the ability to survive on minimum-wage jobs.
When, in fact, is all these brokers (and I mean the exchanges, trading companies, etc) are just middle men. Eliminated, I guess they found a use for computers and automation. Rapid production of human financial sausage.
So - if nothing else, Capital Markets are, indeed necessary. If for no other reason, than to keep the middle men busy so they don't figure out how to siphon from the poor to the rich more quickly.
Well - if you think about it, since our economy's health is often measured as a function of transactions. . . this makes manufacturing, and consuming, and consumers, utterly obsolete.
Right?
It took (fictional) Skynet just a few milliseconds to figure out who its enemy was, and how to destroy them. The "real skynet" isn't actually aware or conscious - as we know or define it.
I guess a better analogy is that high-frequency trading is really more like a kid who thought he'd make money at his summer job faster, if he just built a giant (2000 foot) robot lawn mower, and set it loose on the neighborhood to mow all the lawns in 4 seconds. And his dad figured, wow, what a genius. Who am I to stop him? 4 seconds before he was shredded into mulch.
Well - this all depends on what YOU consider to be a problem. If you're in the bottom income quintile, you've been perceiving a massive systemic problem. . . well, since the invention of the term "poor-people".
If you're in the TOP income quintile ($-wise, that's the upper.05% of the population), then you probably see no problem, and wont, until there are masses of pitchfork-and-torch wielding 4th-through-1st income quintile people storming your private estate.
So, I reckon this "trend" can be maintained pretty much indefinitely. At least until the tear-gas and machinegun ammo runs out.
It needs to be pointed out though, that often, illegal distribution of movies and songs, and software often PRECEDES the official release.
Sometimes by several weeks.
The value-add of the "official release" is presentation quality, packaging, and promotion.(including bundling deals with non-downloadable merchandise). The funding for these items comes from the markup. Without that income, the production company doesn't have the ability (or motivation) to add that value. Part of the real issue (and has always been, in the case of music) why is the consumer stuck accepting this forced bundling? (ie. track 2-10 of this album sucked, but track 1 was great - why did I just pay $18 for 10 tracks?). Illegal downloading, then iTMS (and online sales, in general) killed that business model, and album sales are nonexistent, compared to individual track sales now.
That may be a good thing or a bad thing. The music industry HAS changed, somewhat, and HAS "stripped-down" their value-adds, and forced bundling, and pricing models, in response to the changes that happened after 1996 (Napster).
I hear you on the evils of the RIAA/MPAA; the abusive contracts, the monopolistic practices, price-fixing, payola, lobbying and bribery, perversion of our copyright system, etc.
But one also can not deny the creative value in the collaborative aspect of a record COMPANY. (or Movie studio). - including, in the case of music, the sound/recording engineers, the huge amount of innovation that has gone into recording technology, the often annoying, but also often awesomely creative music producers (who take a band or act's song, add instruments, remove instruments, change levels, re-arrange things, and make a SOUND) - the graphic artists, the makeup artists, stage designers, etc. - hell, even the sleazy promoters have an element of creativity to how a tour is planned, arranged, acts are lined up, venues are selected, and even how retailers are corralled and co-ordinated to launch a new release; all part of an "experience" that for many is just banal commercialism, and for others, part of the excitement of being a music fan; and all factored into the price of the CD and/or concert ticket and/or other merchandise.
Same goes for movies. Ever sit through the closing credits, and just look at the hundreds and hundreds of names that scroll by. Even contemplate the talent of the person who keeps track of all those people's contribution to the overall project?
I wholly agree that this group model has killed individual, and small-group creativity, and the abuses at the corporate/business level have intruded intolerably on our civil liberties. But - there IS a value in, and a place for, large-scale entertainment and performance/art production.
The civil disobedience model has been the obvious path since Apple created a system sound file named "sosume". It was obvious then, that digital audio technology was going to lead to this. I am glad to see this evolve into a political party. I've read the party's platform, and I think it's reasonable; and unlike Dr. Lessig, I think the party's name is quite appropriate and acceptable. It's an outright rejection of the unfair bias (and labelling) against our counterculture. We were called beatnicks in the 1920's, and we said; "go ahead, call us beatnicks". We were called hippies in the 1960's, and we said; "yeah, we're hippies, and you're not." Even black Americans permit themselves to use the dreaded n-word. No "cracker's" allowed. So now we're Pirates. Why not?
Um - hell no. Not if I had to register it. Not if I had to insure it. Not if it was a gas hog. Not if it cornered like a pig. Not if it was uncomfortable to sit in. Not if it was a brand of a company I hated (for whatever reason, say. . . GM for narfing Saab).
But otherwise, yeah, cars are really obnoxiously expensive for what they are - and that's because car prices are generally no longer affected by market forces. Because car dealers do not sell cars. They sell car-loans. Since the price of the product is basically disconnected from the VALUE of said product - I'm really inclined to agree that a copytheft would be a completely moral act.
Heh, wouldn't Scotty have been freaked out if he went back to the future, found out the guy he gave the Transparent Aluminum Idea to had patented it, still owned the patent, and the license fees were so high, that they drove Starfleet bankrupt, thus preventing them from being able to go back in time in the first place. Oh noes! Patents-time-paradox!
I suppose the thing to do would be to add a physical locking mechanism to cover the port; with THE CAR'S key. So the owner can get in there.
I don't know, a real sophisticated gremlin could tap into the cable behind the connector, go to a cell-connected, ssd-equipped netbook, (with a 12v adapter off the car battery FTW), stuff it all up under the dashboard, and do all kinds of dastardly things over a long period of time.
My Jetta's VCDS software and port (as well as the printed Bentley shop manual) come with big fat user warnings about taking precautions against accidentally setting off the airbags. In fact, with multi-stage systems, if you're sitting in the front-seat, not buckled, maybe with a laptop on your lap, maybe scooted forward a tad, not resting back, you could probably end up with some serious ow-age.
(I know this, because my controller module has failed; and I'm debating whether to just remove it and live without airbags, or if I should have it re-flashed and deal with the risk of accidental discharge in the reinstallation process.)
I had the same issue. My first language was z-80 assembler on the TRS-80. I was comfortable with that, even in the tedium. (1980. . . ). Sure, I understood that this was what underlies what I'm compiling and what's being interpreted and executed. But rarely did I ever connect the two on a concrete level. Never had to.
And the jump to OOP was similarly very difficult. I went through probably 4 or 5 different approaches before it started making sense... (when it was taught as part of a Data Structures class, and the paradigm for an object was a "Data Type" - that's when if finally started to make sense). I still only sometimes use any OOP in my job. Just not where my primary skillset lies.
The worst thing for me - was looking at other people's C++ and Java code, and not understanding the ugly truth that; they didn't understand OOP either. A lot of people actually program in a very procedural way, and don't really use objects the way they're supposed to. And I was trying to "grok" OOP, looking at this stuff, and of course it wasn't making any sense to me. Then some of these people, when I asked them to explain OOP to me - gave really crappy explanations. Because they didn't understand it. And I didn't realize that they didn't understand it. But at least I wasn't trying to explain it to other people.
Of course, then, once I think I finally started figuring it out, my problem became that I tend to over-abstract and over-encapsulate the crap out of everything. And in languages that started out procedural, and they added OOP features to them, like Perl and PHP? I try to avoid using OOP at all, if I can.
There are many many aspects of programming, and you can't tell me that someone who misses out on one of these classes (a typical cs track example) (and likely, in this particular order):
asm/hardware systems
shell scripting
c
j2se
SQL/databases
css/html/javascript/xml/php
j2ee
. . . + any advanced track of any of the above
These languages are going to each showcase core cs concepts. ASM will introduce architecture, data representation, encoding - very basic and very important concepts.
Shell Scripting will introduce systems admin/management and automation concepts, as well as basic networking, authentication, etc. which, if a student hasn't mastered these by the time they're a CS major, well, there's a serious problem with their academic plan anyway. But I digress.
C would teach, I guess, algorithms, compiled language (IDE, development workflow, source control, team projects) concepts.
J2SE would teach object oriented concepts, virtual machines, and data structures. (VITAL, and I think maybe you could replace C with this; in my formal education we did.)
SQL/Databases teach concepts that none of the other languages really touch. I've worked on way too many legacy codebases where developers obviously had zero background in SQL. I believe this is fundamental to any professional-level programming skillset. Period. It belongs in any degree program where a computer programming is a skill on the list of outcomes. SQL is not the end-all-be-all of data storage, of course. (KR/OWL is). But it's universal enough by now.
css/html/javascript/xml/php - pick your witch's brew of web technologies. If you're going to know the back end, you should have at least familiarity with the front end.
J2EE, because Larry said so. (kidding. For teaching design, architecture, etc.)
- - - So. . . "understanding programming" is not as simple as it sounds. And "picking up any particular language" based on that, I think, is a bit on the ignorant side. The "world" of the scripter, is a very different world than the world of the enterprise web application programmer, which is a very different world than that of the relational database guru. Having a good basic understanding of programming does not make "picking up" developing J2EE backends even CLOSE to straightforward. Same goes for transitioning into the role of say, writing drivers for embedded hardware devices.
I've met very few "genius" programmers who can just jump from one to the other, and that's after 10-15 years of working various types of projects.
The action of destroying FY-1C had no plausible excuse other than as pure demonstration of capability.
USA-193 had several plausible excuses - and the excuse of destroying a potentially hazardous tank full of hydrazine propellant, which was frozen, and likely would have survived re-entry and impact to pose a hazard to people on the ground, (make no mistake - this stuff is nasty-toxic) - was at least plausible enough to "people close to the industry" that they bought this as the legitimate reason for downing the bird. (whether that's the real reason used at the highest level of decision-making, likely the Joint-Chiefs, is an exercise in the pure futility of idle speculation).
USA-193 was also carrying sensitive surveillance and communication/sigint technology that posed a real (though small) security risk to the United States. You can argue whether drastic measures were worth the small risk. Or we can again, speculate that USA-193 maybe had something in the payload none of us knows about that WAS worth the drastic measures.
USA-193's orbit was decaying; any expected debris was also expected to decay. Its low-altitude meant that any debris would rapidly encounter atmospheric drag, and burn-up. Thus, by-design, this exercise posed little threat as an ongoing orbital debris hazard. I'd be surprised if there were any significant pieces of this bird or the interceptor still up there today.
It's possible that, given the relative age of USA-193, and the "miraculous" staging of what was essentially an experimental launch vehicle AND system, in a historically "magically" short time-window (given we're talking spacelaunch technology), that the whole thing was a rigged test, USA-193 was a dummy-target, and the modified SM-3 design was prepared long in advance. But the nature of the build and launch team was definitely not as "black-ops" as one would expect for that kind of situation. The entire effort was very public, very publicized, and many non-cleared grunts spent a lot of OT putting the launch together (including coordinating global civilian tracking systems), to get it done before USA-193's orbit decayed so much that its path became too unstable and unpredictable due to atmospheric drag effects.
Though, there's much to be learned from staging this kind of exercise - because while taking out a spy or communication satellite at high altitude is a nice capability, it's also a political hot-potato. It's sort of like using a nuclear weapon. We all saw how much heat China took from their test.
In military theory, the battlefield of tomorrow includes the TACTICAL capability to quickly field low-altitude, short-term-use communication and surveillance satellites, for theater-scale conflicts. (hence, the x-37, and others, plus new zeppelins, drones, etc.) - (of course, this is based on the old, discredited Rumsfeld notion that we can do a "Panama" on countries like Iraq or Afghanistan. - You wish, Donnie. This is what happens when military technicians stray over the line into politics. They understand machines, weapons, and troops who wear uniforms and who are trained to act like machines and weapons - but have zero understanding of cultures and nations and history. But I digress.)
So, the TACTICAL ability to take out a TACTICAL satellite, is more politically acceptable; and likely one of the very strong reasons why they wanted to shoot down USA-193. Regardless of the "hazards" story fed to the press. Ethically speaking, (space-environment-wise) I think it is far kinder and gentler than China's FY-1C demonstration. And those who suggest that USA-193 somehow encourages an arms-race. . . just shut up. Our behavior, our moral choices do not make us responsible for other nations' moral choices.
I don't think warheads or kinetic impact are, overall, a good approach, to cleaning up space-junk hazards. Maybe in special cases like USA-193. But for the literally hundreds of thousands of other pieces out there that pose a risk to space travel. . . we need a different approach.
Shit on your customers for a while and alternatives will pop up, it's inevitable.
. . . . unless you're a legislated or legislatively protected monopoly/duopoly/oligopoly/trade-group in your market, (like AT&T(et.al), the FED, the AMA, the RIAA, the MPAA, intel, Microsoft, Clear Channel, - heck, I even think PayPal has some sort of legal protection) -
WRT social networking, I'm not actually aware of any nasty patents or vendor lock-in tricks that Facebook has going on, other than the fact that, for a while, they actually kicked ass. And, I suppose, if they sucked-up to their press competition a little more, and gave away more mindshare, they might not be suffering as much negative press over their privacy policies.
Yes, I'm thinking, they would be "getting away with it" if they weren't somehow playing hardball with potential advertisers. Yes, their mistakes, and their surreptitious policy changes have been horrible. But I think the newsmedia has made a lot more noise about it than they otherwise would have - if they didn't view Facebook as a media COMPETITOR, rather than a partner. (ie. I can join a CNN group, and allow CNN to promote their junk on my Wall, and when I get sick of them, I can HIDE their noise. My guess, is CNN doesn't want me to be able to shut them up so easily).
I do agree that over the past 3-4 months, Facebook's activity/appeal has dwindled. This started to happen independent of the privacy concerns. Most people don't understand or care about the issues beyond a vague sort of - "ooh, that sounds scary". But I think the real issue going on is that they've simply jumped the shark.
You have a lot of insight in your posting. . . but you still have a lot to learn about sociology, and human nature.
"we" are likely going to fight eachother to near extinction over the last drop of oil that we can suck out of the ground. IF the collapse of the biosphere, and global climate change does not make our world uninhabitable first.
Whatever "new culture" is designed, people will resist it, and fight it, and die to preserve their traditional values and beliefs. Against all rational facts staring them in the face. Because that's what we've always done.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the reason the American Revolution didn't end up as badly as it could have, is because the commanders of the Continental Army were trained and educated former British Officers, who were trusted by the peasants, because they knew how to fight the occupying Red Coats. And the peasants knew that, implicitly. They acted as a rather civilizing force, and that's largely why US law is based on British "Common Law" - even if our governmental structure is not based on the British hybrid royal/parlimentary system.
Now - on the OTHER side - there are numerous accounts of extreme brutality by British troops, on the rebelling colonials. Extrajudicial executions, rapes, property seizures, etc. All the typical mistakes that imperial powers make while they're arrogantly failing at "winning hearts and minds" because they're in a "we can win by force" mindset.
True: Democracy, as implemented in 1776, was designed to prevent subversion. Loyal Torries had faith in the Crown, and the Magna Carta, and perhaps also feared British power. But they were blinding themselves the the fact that their fellow colonists were being subject to arbitrary abuses, contrary to the letter and spirit of the Magna Carta - (just as modern Americans have blinded themselves, post 9/11. . . ).
NO Document, or system of law can protect against Psychological Denial.
I'm sure that the Easter Island native who cut down the LAST TREE on Easter Island jealously fought for his God Given Right to cut that tree down. It was HIS tree damn it. Who the hell had any right to tell him he could not cut that tree down? Besides. He also had the last axe.
Well, for what it's worth, you can think of Atheism as "religion-like" in many ways. And there are radical atheists.
(My belief on the matter - may be a "scientific impotence" shortcut; I don't believe you can prove God does not exist. And I think that's simply a function of "God" being defined in a sufficiently vague and transcendent way, such that, propositional logic can't apply. Which suits a "supreme creator" quite well. My illogic is airtight, unassailable, and probably incompatible with scripture.)
Now - that's BELIEF. Religion - is also about tradition, and culture, and values. And those things ARE important. I disagree that all atheists (or agnostics) will wander and blindly follow anything. Though there's clearly a human need to fit in - so sez Maslow. We're social creatures. A firm foundation in a religious tradition, without belief, will be there when that belief changes. A foundation in an atheistic moral framework, can also be a tradition, and can bolster values. So as a social-function (which is a popular sociological theory about the function of religion in human culture) - I don't agree that theistic belief is strictly required, in order to have "common values". I also don't believe that religion inherently causes conflict of values either. Any belief framework (including atheistic belief; because it *is* a belief, even if it's empirically more rational than theistic belief) - can be abused to enforce immoral values (like child-sacrifice (Soviet-era child labor), war, even genocide, etc).
I think this "science can't explain" argument is just over-simplistic. And it's because we resist separating theistic/atheistic belief from its framework. Science can explain all kinds of things about religion. We can forensically examine scriptural references, history, and we can use scientific analysis to contradict and refute the traditional content of just about any major religion I'm aware of. Or we can go into linguistics and logic and argue about whether certain passages are allegorical or literal - (which is sort of like claiming that one can read God's mind, I don't care which side you're on, or what religion you claim to be). Science can explain a lot. I'm betting that 2000 years ago, most people thought Science was not capable of explaining whether the world was flat or round or banana shaped. None of us alive today have a freaking clue what Science is capable of discovering or explaining. (this would be sort of like, fortune-telling).
I accept that one day, even the human phenomenon of belief/non-belief, may be explained, even proven. . . by, ew, neurophysicists. Until then, I attribute my belief to something other than what Science has yet explained. And even then - I will still wonder if God exists.
Though one possible reason for that is that they have more money to throw around, since it costs a lot more to design and build a car in the US, thanks to - out of control executive compensation.
There. Fixed that for you.
There have been (and still are) a lot of government-run car companies over the years. You won't see many of the cars they produce today because they're typically totalitarian and/or socialist regimes that make them, and they're usually rubbish.
Like Volkswagen. Which began as a government-mandated design; forced by an oppressive socialist-labeled (yet fascist-acting) regime. The VW beetle was produced from 1953 to, I think 1999 (in Mexico). It was the most popular and successful car in the history of the car. If you know anything about them, you know that the basic design concepts worked out by Ferdinand Porsche in the late 1930's did not change in any significant way until the 1973 Super Beetle. And STILL, it was pretty much the same car. It spawned many variations, including the military kubelwagen personnel carrier, the amphibious schwimmwagen, the Karmann-Ghia sports model, the various "type 3" models, the evil and enigmatic microbus, the Myers Manx dune buggy was based off of it, and Formula V racing was spawned from that mighty 4-banger aircooled.
My '72 got 35 mpg on the highway.
I wouldn't want the government being in the car manufacturing/selling business. (because of the inherent power to issue currency, which is very often abused, they should not be involved in commerce in that way).
But there's nothing magical about a private corporation that makes them automatically better at something. Smart people designed cars for GM. Smart people also designed these cars for the government. Smart people figured out safety devices; stupid people wrote legislation to force it in a way that did more harm than good. Smart people designed the Boeing 737. Stupid people wrote legislation that makes it take longer to process through an airport than it does to fly to the destination. Smart people also designed the F-16 for General Dynamics, for the government. (and Smart people working at NASA, worked out the basics of wing aerodynamics, used in BOTH of these planes, and many many others, long beforehand.)
Yay, smart people!
Boo, stupid people.
Boo, knee-jerk, irrational, idealistic pro-and-anti-government arguments.
Well, really you ruined it by not checking the oil daily :P
Or maybe Mazda ruined it (like all car manufacturers do - defective by-design), by shipping it with a sensor that reported low-oil only under conditions where the motor had been irrevokably damaged long before you have a chance to do anything about it.
If I were Emporer of the Universe, Mandatory on ALL cars:
Oil PRESSURE, and LEVEL indicators. (and for cars with turbos, which would be ALL cars: Exhaust Gas Temperature, and Oil Temperature gauges too. Oh, I guess boost would be useful, but only for masturbation.) I would also ban hard-top cars. All cars would be convertible, or open-top.
(I would also ban the use of the word "turbo" - since all engines would have them, there'd be no use for the word as a marketing distinction. We'd call them compressors or something like that.)
(I would also ban automatic transmissions).
Lifetime chance of dying in a shark attack: 1 in 300 million
Lifetime chance of dying from a falling coconut: 1 in 250 million
I just don't think we're "designed" for changing our worldview, or zeitgeist, or whatever you want to call it.
Sure - the human brain is a learning machine. Evolution has absolutely selected it for its capability to learn, and rationalize, which we have extended to include the Scientific Method. But we should not forget that hundreds of millions of years before that, Evolution also selected the more primitive parts of the brain, for their survival qualities. Those parts are responsible for emotion and feeling, and fight/flight responses.
And when we're challenged, I think it naturally will evoke a defensive response. ESPECIALLY when it comes to cultural survival. We are also social animals, and we bond most closely to our families, and those who are most like us. I think it's simply a natural, and strong response, for the irrational part of the brain to kick in, and defend that "social territory", familiarity, family, tradition, and culture.
The trick is, to set aside the defensive response, and let the rational brain work. Even if it turns the whole-brain's image of the world upside-down. (example: "what? there's boys and girls, that's it. No in-between, no weird stuff! That scares me, and threatens my ability to procreate." . . . indirectly, because maybe their offspring could be gay, and then there would be no way for the parent to inflict social 'control' on the offspring to force them to produce grandchildren, and secure the legacy. - this can affect us on a very primitive level, no matter how backwards and uncivilized you think it is, we also all share this cognitive architecture.)
I am in complete agreement that it would be GREAT if everyone could just sit down, have a beer, and talk about Evolution or how the Earth is round not flat, or whatever, without being called an evil baby-eating communist. But I just don't think it's in human-nature to do that. And while some of us have the ability to look at challenging ideas without feeling threatened, and turning to irrational thoughts and behavior - we share this world with 6 billion others. And we're not all the same. We don't all have the same abilities, environment, background, upbringing, etc. There will NEVER be an ideal utopian paradise where everyone is going to be able to do this. We've done a great job; in Liberal Democracies, of cramming written-language literacy down everyone's throat. I think the illiteracy rate in such nations is down below 1%. We accomplished this in probably less than three generations of public education. But - I'm talking about personal mastery of emotion and logic. These very basic drives. We don't have the technology or the tools, and even attempting this, would be attacked by the very problem its meant to address. Such measures would be branded as "totalitarian brainwashing". And I'm not sure that all (6 billion) of us would even have the facilities with which to develop the necessary skills. Fixing THAT problem? I think you're talking about something like eugenics at the very least, or genocide of certain cultures.
Not very pretty at all. Once we start trying to think on behalf of other people. Economics and Sociology is bad enough. Best stick to Physics and the like. You can push particles around, and they don't hit back.
This is the age where boys seem to be "lost" the most, and parents seem to get the most concerned about them.
I work with boys (save the jokes), and I've seen it happen in several cases, right around this 13-15 age range. They suddenly find something they're interested in, and they just DO it.
In one case, it was a kid who just suddenly found video games boring, and moved on to photography and writing. He's very creative, and he found this very rewarding.
My own son; was a Guitar Hero monster. And I told him (joking): "if you spent this much time playing a REAL guitar, you'd be a really kick ass guitarist, instead of just beating your friends at a video game that will be obsolete in 2 years. Which do you think you'll be thankful for, when you're my age?"
He sold his xbox360, and all his games, (I miss Halo 2. . . ) and instead of spending 6 hrs a day playing video games, he plays his guitar for 6 hours a day. And he's pretty amazing. Even if his dreams of rock stardom don't work out, he's going to have a skill and a developed talent he's going to use the rest of his life.
So - don't "push" him in any direction. But DO expose him to other things. (I think it helps if some of the exposure happened before video games came in). He'll push himself in whichever direction works for him.
My armchair-psychologist idea of why this happens, is they're still searching for an identity. They're trying to figure out who they are. You can also make them somewhat accountable for the decisions they make too. (ie. there are consequences to spending all your time on video games. . . failing at real life).
The corporate charter is exactly what protects the CEO and Board from personal liability.
By the way; an oil platform collapsed and sank off the coast of Venezuela two weeks ago. How much oil do you suppose that's leaking? How many fatalities? Do you think the commercial newsmedia of the US would be covering that, if there were any significant leakage, considering how popular the concept of nationalized oil industries are, in the US?
I'm not arguing for nationalization. It's an opposite extreme of what we have going on here, in this country, which is clearly not working.
Do me a favor, and look up: "Java Mud Volcano" on wikipedia. And hope to hell we don't get an unrestricted hole.
UN-informative.
Whether you're IN orbit, or NOT in orbit, has nothing at all to do with atmosphere. Except when atmospheric drag slows you down so that you can't maintain the velocity necessary to counter the gravity of the object you're circling.
Solve the propulsion and/or drag problem, and you can orbit the Earth at any altitude you like. Even negative altitude. Dirt's just a harder problem than air. A tad draggier.
In fact, I think the closer to the gravitational center you get, you start getting canceling effects (mass above and below). Theoretically, Newton says you can sit in the center of the earth and rest. It's the same as orbiting the earth, functionally.
what blows my mind is the bad rep this day-trading phenomenon was getting by the close of the 1990's - BEFORE the 2000-2002 crash, BEFORE Enron, BEFORE the housing market bubble.
Hell - it was widely considered harmful, dodgy, and sketchy by 1987 when fricking Derivatives first started trading, and people started asking: shouldn't we be regulating this stuff?
Oh no - let's LOWER capital gains taxes, so we can make this kind of tomfoolery MORE profitable and attractive. Someone said on another thread that human innovation and ingenuity always finds a way to improve and increase in our expanding economy. But we obviously haven't learned a damn thing. Hell, the market's crashing, and we've even forgotten what the hell happened in 2009.
Well, I guess we figured that the Internet would save the poor, by eliminating the middle-man, giving the poor the ability to survive on minimum-wage jobs.
When, in fact, is all these brokers (and I mean the exchanges, trading companies, etc) are just middle men. Eliminated, I guess they found a use for computers and automation. Rapid production of human financial sausage.
So - if nothing else, Capital Markets are, indeed necessary. If for no other reason, than to keep the middle men busy so they don't figure out how to siphon from the poor to the rich more quickly.
Well - if you think about it, since our economy's health is often measured as a function of transactions. . . this makes manufacturing, and consuming, and consumers, utterly obsolete.
Right?
It took (fictional) Skynet just a few milliseconds to figure out who its enemy was, and how to destroy them. The "real skynet" isn't actually aware or conscious - as we know or define it.
I guess a better analogy is that high-frequency trading is really more like a kid who thought he'd make money at his summer job faster, if he just built a giant (2000 foot) robot lawn mower, and set it loose on the neighborhood to mow all the lawns in 4 seconds. And his dad figured, wow, what a genius. Who am I to stop him? 4 seconds before he was shredded into mulch.
If only our demise will be as humane.
Well - this all depends on what YOU consider to be a problem. If you're in the bottom income quintile, you've been perceiving a massive systemic problem. . . well, since the invention of the term "poor-people".
If you're in the TOP income quintile ($-wise, that's the upper .05% of the population), then you probably see no problem, and wont, until there are masses of pitchfork-and-torch wielding 4th-through-1st income quintile people storming your private estate.
So, I reckon this "trend" can be maintained pretty much indefinitely. At least until the tear-gas and machinegun ammo runs out.
It needs to be pointed out though, that often, illegal distribution of movies and songs, and software often PRECEDES the official release.
Sometimes by several weeks.
The value-add of the "official release" is presentation quality, packaging, and promotion.(including bundling deals with non-downloadable merchandise). The funding for these items comes from the markup. Without that income, the production company doesn't have the ability (or motivation) to add that value. Part of the real issue (and has always been, in the case of music) why is the consumer stuck accepting this forced bundling? (ie. track 2-10 of this album sucked, but track 1 was great - why did I just pay $18 for 10 tracks?). Illegal downloading, then iTMS (and online sales, in general) killed that business model, and album sales are nonexistent, compared to individual track sales now.
That may be a good thing or a bad thing. The music industry HAS changed, somewhat, and HAS "stripped-down" their value-adds, and forced bundling, and pricing models, in response to the changes that happened after 1996 (Napster).
I hear you on the evils of the RIAA/MPAA; the abusive contracts, the monopolistic practices, price-fixing, payola, lobbying and bribery, perversion of our copyright system, etc.
But one also can not deny the creative value in the collaborative aspect of a record COMPANY. (or Movie studio). - including, in the case of music, the sound/recording engineers, the huge amount of innovation that has gone into recording technology, the often annoying, but also often awesomely creative music producers (who take a band or act's song, add instruments, remove instruments, change levels, re-arrange things, and make a SOUND) - the graphic artists, the makeup artists, stage designers, etc. - hell, even the sleazy promoters have an element of creativity to how a tour is planned, arranged, acts are lined up, venues are selected, and even how retailers are corralled and co-ordinated to launch a new release; all part of an "experience" that for many is just banal commercialism, and for others, part of the excitement of being a music fan; and all factored into the price of the CD and/or concert ticket and/or other merchandise.
Same goes for movies. Ever sit through the closing credits, and just look at the hundreds and hundreds of names that scroll by. Even contemplate the talent of the person who keeps track of all those people's contribution to the overall project?
I wholly agree that this group model has killed individual, and small-group creativity, and the abuses at the corporate/business level have intruded intolerably on our civil liberties. But - there IS a value in, and a place for, large-scale entertainment and performance/art production.
The civil disobedience model has been the obvious path since Apple created a system sound file named "sosume". It was obvious then, that digital audio technology was going to lead to this. I am glad to see this evolve into a political party. I've read the party's platform, and I think it's reasonable; and unlike Dr. Lessig, I think the party's name is quite appropriate and acceptable. It's an outright rejection of the unfair bias (and labelling) against our counterculture. We were called beatnicks in the 1920's, and we said; "go ahead, call us beatnicks". We were called hippies in the 1960's, and we said; "yeah, we're hippies, and you're not." Even black Americans permit themselves to use the dreaded n-word. No "cracker's" allowed. So now we're Pirates. Why not?
Um - hell no.
Not if I had to register it.
Not if I had to insure it.
Not if it was a gas hog.
Not if it cornered like a pig.
Not if it was uncomfortable to sit in.
Not if it was a brand of a company I hated (for whatever reason, say. . . GM for narfing Saab).
But otherwise, yeah, cars are really obnoxiously expensive for what they are - and that's because car prices are generally no longer affected by market forces. Because car dealers do not sell cars. They sell car-loans. Since the price of the product is basically disconnected from the VALUE of said product - I'm really inclined to agree that a copytheft would be a completely moral act.
Heh, wouldn't Scotty have been freaked out if he went back to the future, found out the guy he gave the Transparent Aluminum Idea to had patented it, still owned the patent, and the license fees were so high, that they drove Starfleet bankrupt, thus preventing them from being able to go back in time in the first place. Oh noes! Patents-time-paradox!
I suppose the thing to do would be to add a physical locking mechanism to cover the port; with THE CAR'S key. So the owner can get in there.
I don't know, a real sophisticated gremlin could tap into the cable behind the connector, go to a cell-connected, ssd-equipped netbook, (with a 12v adapter off the car battery FTW), stuff it all up under the dashboard, and do all kinds of dastardly things over a long period of time.
My Jetta's VCDS software and port (as well as the printed Bentley shop manual) come with big fat user warnings about taking precautions against accidentally setting off the airbags. In fact, with multi-stage systems, if you're sitting in the front-seat, not buckled, maybe with a laptop on your lap, maybe scooted forward a tad, not resting back, you could probably end up with some serious ow-age.
(I know this, because my controller module has failed; and I'm debating whether to just remove it and live without airbags, or if I should have it re-flashed and deal with the risk of accidental discharge in the reinstallation process.)
I had the same issue. My first language was z-80 assembler on the TRS-80. I was comfortable with that, even in the tedium. (1980. . . ).
Sure, I understood that this was what underlies what I'm compiling and what's being interpreted and executed. But rarely did I ever connect the two on a concrete level. Never had to.
And the jump to OOP was similarly very difficult. I went through probably 4 or 5 different approaches before it started making sense. .. (when it was taught as part of a Data Structures class, and the paradigm for an object was a "Data Type" - that's when if finally started to make sense). I still only sometimes use any OOP in my job. Just not where my primary skillset lies.
The worst thing for me - was looking at other people's C++ and Java code, and not understanding the ugly truth that; they didn't understand OOP either. A lot of people actually program in a very procedural way, and don't really use objects the way they're supposed to. And I was trying to "grok" OOP, looking at this stuff, and of course it wasn't making any sense to me. Then some of these people, when I asked them to explain OOP to me - gave really crappy explanations. Because they didn't understand it. And I didn't realize that they didn't understand it. But at least I wasn't trying to explain it to other people.
Of course, then, once I think I finally started figuring it out, my problem became that I tend to over-abstract and over-encapsulate the crap out of everything. And in languages that started out procedural, and they added OOP features to them, like Perl and PHP? I try to avoid using OOP at all, if I can.
While this is generally true;
There are many many aspects of programming, and you can't tell me that someone who misses out on one of these classes (a typical cs track example) (and likely, in this particular order):
asm/hardware systems
shell scripting
c
j2se
SQL/databases
css/html/javascript/xml/php
j2ee
. . . + any advanced track of any of the above
These languages are going to each showcase core cs concepts.
ASM will introduce architecture, data representation, encoding - very basic and very important concepts.
Shell Scripting will introduce systems admin/management and automation concepts, as well as basic networking, authentication, etc. which, if a student hasn't mastered these by the time they're a CS major, well, there's a serious problem with their academic plan anyway. But I digress.
C would teach, I guess, algorithms, compiled language (IDE, development workflow, source control, team projects) concepts.
J2SE would teach object oriented concepts, virtual machines, and data structures. (VITAL, and I think maybe you could replace C with this; in my formal education we did.)
SQL/Databases teach concepts that none of the other languages really touch. I've worked on way too many legacy codebases where developers obviously had zero background in SQL. I believe this is fundamental to any professional-level programming skillset. Period. It belongs in any degree program where a computer programming is a skill on the list of outcomes. SQL is not the end-all-be-all of data storage, of course. (KR/OWL is). But it's universal enough by now.
css/html/javascript/xml/php - pick your witch's brew of web technologies. If you're going to know the back end, you should have at least familiarity with the front end.
J2EE, because Larry said so. (kidding. For teaching design, architecture, etc.)
- - -
So. . . "understanding programming" is not as simple as it sounds. And "picking up any particular language" based on that, I think, is a bit on the ignorant side. The "world" of the scripter, is a very different world than the world of the enterprise web application programmer, which is a very different world than that of the relational database guru. Having a good basic understanding of programming does not make "picking up" developing J2EE backends even CLOSE to straightforward. Same goes for transitioning into the role of say, writing drivers for embedded hardware devices.
I've met very few "genius" programmers who can just jump from one to the other, and that's after 10-15 years of working various types of projects.
The action of destroying FY-1C had no plausible excuse other than as pure demonstration of capability.
USA-193 had several plausible excuses - and the excuse of destroying a potentially hazardous tank full of hydrazine propellant, which was frozen, and likely would have survived re-entry and impact to pose a hazard to people on the ground, (make no mistake - this stuff is nasty-toxic) - was at least plausible enough to "people close to the industry" that they bought this as the legitimate reason for downing the bird. (whether that's the real reason used at the highest level of decision-making, likely the Joint-Chiefs, is an exercise in the pure futility of idle speculation).
USA-193 was also carrying sensitive surveillance and communication/sigint technology that posed a real (though small) security risk to the United States. You can argue whether drastic measures were worth the small risk. Or we can again, speculate that USA-193 maybe had something in the payload none of us knows about that WAS worth the drastic measures.
USA-193's orbit was decaying; any expected debris was also expected to decay. Its low-altitude meant that any debris would rapidly encounter atmospheric drag, and burn-up. Thus, by-design, this exercise posed little threat as an ongoing orbital debris hazard. I'd be surprised if there were any significant pieces of this bird or the interceptor still up there today.
It's possible that, given the relative age of USA-193, and the "miraculous" staging of what was essentially an experimental launch vehicle AND system, in a historically "magically" short time-window (given we're talking spacelaunch technology), that the whole thing was a rigged test, USA-193 was a dummy-target, and the modified SM-3 design was prepared long in advance. But the nature of the build and launch team was definitely not as "black-ops" as one would expect for that kind of situation. The entire effort was very public, very publicized, and many non-cleared grunts spent a lot of OT putting the launch together (including coordinating global civilian tracking systems), to get it done before USA-193's orbit decayed so much that its path became too unstable and unpredictable due to atmospheric drag effects.
Though, there's much to be learned from staging this kind of exercise - because while taking out a spy or communication satellite at high altitude is a nice capability, it's also a political hot-potato. It's sort of like using a nuclear weapon. We all saw how much heat China took from their test.
In military theory, the battlefield of tomorrow includes the TACTICAL capability to quickly field low-altitude, short-term-use communication and surveillance satellites, for theater-scale conflicts. (hence, the x-37, and others, plus new zeppelins, drones, etc.) - (of course, this is based on the old, discredited Rumsfeld notion that we can do a "Panama" on countries like Iraq or Afghanistan. - You wish, Donnie. This is what happens when military technicians stray over the line into politics. They understand machines, weapons, and troops who wear uniforms and who are trained to act like machines and weapons - but have zero understanding of cultures and nations and history. But I digress.)
So, the TACTICAL ability to take out a TACTICAL satellite, is more politically acceptable; and likely one of the very strong reasons why they wanted to shoot down USA-193. Regardless of the "hazards" story fed to the press.
Ethically speaking, (space-environment-wise) I think it is far kinder and gentler than China's FY-1C demonstration. And those who suggest that USA-193 somehow encourages an arms-race. . . just shut up. Our behavior, our moral choices do not make us responsible for other nations' moral choices.
I don't think warheads or kinetic impact are, overall, a good approach, to cleaning up space-junk hazards. Maybe in special cases like USA-193. But for the literally hundreds of thousands of other pieces out there that pose a risk to space travel. . . we need a different approach.
Shit on your customers for a while and alternatives will pop up, it's inevitable.
. . . . unless you're a legislated or legislatively protected monopoly/duopoly/oligopoly/trade-group in your market, (like AT&T(et.al), the FED, the AMA, the RIAA, the MPAA, intel, Microsoft, Clear Channel, - heck, I even think PayPal has some sort of legal protection) -
WRT social networking, I'm not actually aware of any nasty patents or vendor lock-in tricks that Facebook has going on, other than the fact that, for a while, they actually kicked ass. And, I suppose, if they sucked-up to their press competition a little more, and gave away more mindshare, they might not be suffering as much negative press over their privacy policies.
Yes, I'm thinking, they would be "getting away with it" if they weren't somehow playing hardball with potential advertisers. Yes, their mistakes, and their surreptitious policy changes have been horrible. But I think the newsmedia has made a lot more noise about it than they otherwise would have - if they didn't view Facebook as a media COMPETITOR, rather than a partner. (ie. I can join a CNN group, and allow CNN to promote their junk on my Wall, and when I get sick of them, I can HIDE their noise. My guess, is CNN doesn't want me to be able to shut them up so easily).
I do agree that over the past 3-4 months, Facebook's activity/appeal has dwindled. This started to happen independent of the privacy concerns. Most people don't understand or care about the issues beyond a vague sort of - "ooh, that sounds scary". But I think the real issue going on is that they've simply jumped the shark.
"we"?
"designed"?
You have a lot of insight in your posting. . . but you still have a lot to learn about sociology, and human nature.
"we" are likely going to fight eachother to near extinction over the last drop of oil that we can suck out of the ground. IF the collapse of the biosphere, and global climate change does not make our world uninhabitable first.
Whatever "new culture" is designed, people will resist it, and fight it, and die to preserve their traditional values and beliefs. Against all rational facts staring them in the face. Because that's what we've always done.