So, I was a little distressed that Woz, the archetype of the computer good guy, invented a way to track things- shadows of the 'digital angel' system, et cetera.
I was distressed that Woz, the archetypical computer good guy, drives a Hummer, the archetypical symbol of everything that is wrong with American consumerism. (I can't wait for the "Hummer SR-71 edition", which will deliberately leak fuel onto the pavement while driving at low speeds, to facilitate faster acceleration)
Get your facts straight. The fact of the matter is that Israel has the same right to bare nuclear arms as the US has.
Quite so. In fact every country has the same right to bear nuclear arms that the USA has. Which makes me rather uncertain as to what sort of moral ground Bush thinks he is standing on when he demands that Iran and North Korea renounce nuclear weapons, while at the same time he is restarting US nuclear weapons development. Looks like a bit of a double standard to me.
All the Greens did was enter a candidate into the race, the same as every other political party. They are no more guilty of "apparent complicity in Bush's election" than, say, the Democrats are... after all, maybe Nader would have one if Gore hadn't spoiled the election by stealing all the liberal votes away from him.
Other than that, I agree with your post -- the Green's best strategy would be to work towards getting the electoral system changed.
That's the difference, really, and the reason why Freenet will never approach the Web in popularity -- without popularity, no content; without content, no point.
Nobody claims that FreeNet will replace the web. It might replace Kazaa at some point though, since much of Kazaa's content could conceivably fall into your "would get you arrested" category.
It's not so much a question of whether or not a given bit of kiddie porn is "speech", but rather whether a given bit of speech is "kiddie porn". Who decides where to draw the line regarding what must be censored? Who do you trust to do that?
People who say mp3 is poor quality don't have a clue. Chances are they are listening to 128kb/s, recorded through the soundcard, from a cheap CD-ROM's audio output, played through crappy on-board sound chips, onto poor quality speakers. Of course it's going to be poor!
If 128kb/sec mp3s are what is available on the p2p network you use, and your computer has crap speakers, then for you mp3 quality is poor. Those people are absolutely right.
Pointing to the high quality that mp3s can provide (but currently don't because people aren't using that option) is irrelevant.
True, but doesn't your criticism apply to just about everything people in the first world do? According to your logic, our only recourse is to not get out of bed in the morning.
Perhaps the US election system should be overhauled, but it's impossible to completely escape the possibility of "strategic thinking" and "silly games".
That's true. But by adopting a more nuanced system we can reduce the gaming factor to where it is no longer plays a significant role in the system. That's good enough for me.
Any consideration of change must accept the fact that it is swapping one set of problems for a different and hopefully less troubling set of problems
Yup... but that shouldn't stop us from doing what we can. It's like saying that because we know we can never go faster than the speed of light, there's no point in developing better cars or airplanes.
IMNSHO, the UN has become one of the most useless organizations on the planet
Well, of course it has. Now that Bush has shown the world that the USA doesn't give a shit what the UN thinks (or what the rest of the world thinks, for that matter), everybody other country feels free to ignore the UN as well. Oh well, international co-operation was nice while it lasted, maybe after the next world war the survivors will put together something similar.
If you care about the enviroment, and Nader is 100% good for the enviroment, Gore is 50% good for the enviroment, and Bush is 0% good for the enviroment, you should only vote for Nader if you think he has a greater than 50% chance of winning in order to maximize the benefit to the issue you care about.
The fact that American voters are forced to engage in this kind of strategic thinking (instead of being able to just vote for the candidate they think would do the best job) shows how badly broken our plurality electoral system is. A truly representative system would allow voters to speak their mind honestly, and respond by electing the most appropriate candidate. It wouldn't force them to play silly games.
If that's an accurate quote, he's probably the only Democrat I'd ever vote for.
Oh, I don't know, I always thought that whole separation-of-powers, checks-and-balances thing was a pretty good idea. Keeps us from turning into Iran too quickly.
I'm also against gun control, look if criminals have guns, I should be able to get one, I do think machine guns should be outlawed however
Just out of curiosity, why do you think machine guns should be outlawed? Surely if criminals can get a machine gun, you should be able to get one as well?
FWIW, the reason for that awkward phrasing is that the new campaign finance reform laws require candidates to state explicitely in the ads that they are the ones behind the ads. Expect to see more fun and creative ways of satisfying that requirement in the future, from all candidates.
... or you change the system so voters aren't forced to choose between "throwing their vote away" and "choosing the lesser of two evils".
Basically you want a system that allows the voter to express more than just a single choice. There are several systems that would suffice; I myself like instant runoff voting because the process is easy to understand, and it lets me express my preferences in an intuitive "first choice / second choice / third choice" format.
And I should have known better than to try and match wits with a Sicilian!:^)
But the problem is this assumption isn't valid in general. In fact very very few systems possess such a property
Perhaps so, but it appears that my code base is one such system. Any time I see something that I think could be made better, I change it to be better, and as the code grows more and more towards my preferences, the changes become smaller and farther apart. Eventually, I don't need to change the code at all anymore, because everything is just the way I like it.
Granted, when a new problem comes along my existing code may not be applicable to it. But in that case I won't change my existing code, I'll write new code to handle the new problem.
Exactly - if you're too lazy to modify the code then C++ lets you get away with it. Ugh.
My library is used (in source code form) by N other people, many of which have minimal contact with me. It's not a question of whether I'm too lazy to modify the code (global search and replace is easy), so much as I dislike breaking other people's code.
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I was distressed that Woz, the archetypical computer good guy, drives a Hummer, the archetypical symbol of everything that is wrong with American consumerism. (I can't wait for the "Hummer SR-71 edition", which will deliberately leak fuel onto the pavement while driving at low speeds, to facilitate faster acceleration)
Care to back this claim up? It was my understanding that Linux was coded from scratch, and contains no SysV code.
I don't know about you, but my web browser follows FTP links just fine. FTP sites are effectively part of the web.
Can you say, "class action lawsuit"? Maybe Linux developers will finally get some money for their work!
They are charging you for the luxury of not having to worry about being sued by them. Software has nothing to do with it, this is simple extortion.
Quite so. In fact every country has the same right to bear nuclear arms that the USA has. Which makes me rather uncertain as to what sort of moral ground Bush thinks he is standing on when he demands that Iran and North Korea renounce nuclear weapons, while at the same time he is restarting US nuclear weapons development. Looks like a bit of a double standard to me.
Hm, I was reminded more of Augustus Gloop.
Other than that, I agree with your post -- the Green's best strategy would be to work towards getting the electoral system changed.
How do you know what it is being used for? Have you accessed every Freenet server in the world? Or are you just making an assumption?
Nobody claims that FreeNet will replace the web. It might replace Kazaa at some point though, since much of Kazaa's content could conceivably fall into your "would get you arrested" category.
It's not so much a question of whether or not a given bit of kiddie porn is "speech", but rather whether a given bit of speech is "kiddie porn". Who decides where to draw the line regarding what must be censored? Who do you trust to do that?
If 128kb/sec mp3s are what is available on the p2p network you use, and your computer has crap speakers, then for you mp3 quality is poor. Those people are absolutely right.
Pointing to the high quality that mp3s can provide (but currently don't because people aren't using that option) is irrelevant.
Hmm... you misspelled 'Fox'
True, but doesn't your criticism apply to just about everything people in the first world do? According to your logic, our only recourse is to not get out of bed in the morning.
That's true. But by adopting a more nuanced system we can reduce the gaming factor to where it is no longer plays a significant role in the system. That's good enough for me.
Any consideration of change must accept the fact that it is
swapping one set of problems for a different and hopefully less troubling set of problems
Yup... but that shouldn't stop us from doing what we can. It's like saying that because we know we can never go faster than the speed of light, there's no point in developing better cars or airplanes.
Well, of course it has. Now that Bush has shown the world that the USA doesn't give a shit what the UN thinks (or what the rest of the world thinks, for that matter), everybody other country feels free to ignore the UN as well. Oh well, international co-operation was nice while it lasted, maybe after the next world war the survivors will put together something similar.
national health is.
Hmm. Why is that?
The fact that American voters are forced to engage in this kind of strategic thinking (instead of being able to just vote for the candidate they think would do the best job) shows how badly broken our plurality electoral system is. A truly representative system would allow voters to speak their mind honestly, and respond by electing the most appropriate candidate. It wouldn't force them to play silly games.
Oh, I don't know, I always thought that whole separation-of-powers, checks-and-balances thing was a pretty good idea. Keeps us from turning into Iran too quickly.
Just out of curiosity, why do you think machine guns should be outlawed? Surely if criminals can get a machine gun, you should be able to get one as well?
FWIW, the reason for that awkward phrasing is that the new campaign finance reform laws require candidates to state explicitely in the ads that they are the ones behind the ads. Expect to see more fun and creative ways of satisfying that requirement in the future, from all candidates.
Great! Maybe that will help him get elected, and then we might just have someone with integrity in the White House.
He almost reminds me of Clinton.
How I miss the days when the worst thing you could say about the President was that he was getting sexual favors from the wrong person...
(yes, I fully expect 25 people to come up with worse things about him now... oh well)
Basically you want a system that allows the voter to express more than just a single choice. There are several systems that would suffice; I myself like instant runoff voting because the process is easy to understand, and it lets me express my preferences in an intuitive "first choice / second choice / third choice" format.
And I should have known better than to try and match wits with a Sicilian!
But the problem is this assumption isn't valid in general. In fact very very few systems possess such a property
Perhaps so, but it appears that my code base is one such system. Any time I see something that I think could be made better, I change it to be better, and as the code grows more and more towards my preferences, the changes become smaller and farther apart. Eventually, I don't need to change the code at all anymore, because everything is just the way I like it.
Granted, when a new problem comes along my existing code may not be applicable to it. But in that case I won't change my existing code, I'll write new code to handle the new problem.
My library is used (in source code form) by N other people, many of which have minimal contact with me. It's not a question of whether I'm too lazy to modify the code (global search and replace is easy), so much as I dislike breaking other people's code.