You seem to be one of the few folk to grasp the fact that the European Commission is the de facto government of some 500 million people, despite never having been given such a mandate by those people. Some British Ministers do not seem to grasp it. I think Mr Baker ("We will not be banning cars from city centres..,"), will do precisely what those who make the laws tell him to; and the laws of Britain are no longer made by the people's elected representatives in the British Parliament.
The unelected bosses of the EU - who do make the laws of Britain - have only one interest in life: to seat themselves at the international top table. The subjugation of 500 million people is integral to that ambition, and this ludicrous EU pontificating about an unknown world 40 years in the future is simply part of an ongoing, cynical campaign to grind firmly into the minds of the masses just who the boss is.
If the people do eventually rebel against this continent-wide deceit, we must hope they can evict the perpetrators before black-shirted Euro-Police clutching vague, Eurocratically-worded EU Arrest Warrants haul them before a politicised EU Court that interprets criticism of the EU as blasphemy.
It is hard to know who are the more deluded - those who think the EU is a sovereign state, or those who think it is not.
I suspect this is exactly the case - that the Universe is a single entity whose gazillion individual parts are all interconnected and endlessly communicating, in much the same way that a beehive contains tens of thousands of individual bees all operating together as a single entity by endlessly communicating. I suspect the human body is the same. I suspect that all the parts of anything we perceive as a single entity are endlessly communicating in ways that we can barely imagine; and that everything we perceive as a single entity is endlessly communicating with other similar parts of a greater whole, that we are equally incapable of imagining.
The physicist Sir James Jeans once described the Universe as "more like a great thought than a great machine", and I suspect he will be proved right.
We need to throw off the out-dated and fatuous, MAFIAA-peddled notion that a digital copy is like a material object that its owner can be deprived of: it is not. We must also reject the MAFIAA-peddled notion that every free copy is a 'lost sale': it is not.
What it actually is is free advertising to millions of people. The more it is 'pirated' the more valuable the advertising. All you have to do is drag your mind out of the materialistic 20th Century and look to the future; devise a way of capitalising on this fantastic publicity that back in the 20th Century would have cost you millions of whatever currency you use.
The free distribution of digital content is inevitable; even the might of the MAFIAA and all the politicians it can bribe will never stop it. So use it; turn it to your advantage. Many claim that free e-books sell paperbacks; that free software sells support contracts; that free movies can be financed by advertisers (who will be delighted if it is 'pirated' by millions); that free music sells merchandise and concert seats. And that your greatest fear is obscurity, not 'piracy'.
The forward-thinking minds that embrace free distribution of content will soon think of many other ways of turning a penny from it, that we can currently not even imagine. Who would have thought, back in the 1960s where the record industry seems to have become frozen, that a man could become a billionaire from setting up a social media site with no charge for entry? We must not let the Luddites of the media industry stifle all that, and in the process deprive ordinary folk of access to their world's information.
I am aware that the people control their own countries' leaderships, but the fact is their own countries are no longer independent countries, having been subsumed into a centrally-governed European super-state. If it was a "bunch of independent countries coming together", it would be a good thing unquestionably.
However, it is not: it is a powerful central political core, with ambitions to strut on the World Stage, dictating for its own benefit the laws that control those millions of peoples' lives. The link between the people and these lawmakers is so long, convoluted, indistinct, tenuous and deliberately obfuscated that it is effectively non-existent. This realisation, and its implications, so alarmed me that a few years ago I moved my family out of the UK to New Zealand.
The laws of 'Europe' are invented in secret by the unelected, unaccountable European Commission, gilded to suit their own agendas by the unelected, unaccountable Council of Ministers, then handed to the elected 'National' parliaments with direct orders to implement them without question. This is not democracy. And the European Parliament, which professes to represent the people, is a toothless, tax-draining talking shop, a cynical front for the Commission with all the power and legitimacy of a Mafia boss's cafe. Yes, elected MEPs can decide who cleans the toilets, but they do not make the laws.
Adolf Hitler, who actually started the EU, was not a great fan of democracy. Even his foe, Winston Churchill, considered democracy "the worst form of government", but he qualified that with "except for all the others". Sadly, the people of 'Europe' now live in one of the others. And due to years of subtle, deceitful manipulation by a self-appointed controlling political elite very few of them even realise it.
Europe is not a country. You need to clarify what institution in Eurpoe proposed this treaty, the European Union for example.
'Europe' is what the unelected, unaccountable European Union, that has never been given a mandate by the people of Europe to rule them, cleverly manipulates the media into calling it, thus implying that it is indeed a country, with its own flag, anthem, ministers, parliament, ambassadors, UN representatives, bureaucracy, legal system, executive, President and all the rest of the paraphernalia associated with being a country, popularly called Europe. Much like the USA is a country, popularly called America.
It is not only a de facto country, however; it is also a de facto dictatorship, whose lawmakers cannot be removed by the people. It is run by a self-appointed political elite crazed with a lust for international power. This is it flexing its muscles, using its 500 million carefully-duped people to elbow the US big boy out of the way, so it can throw its weight about on the top table. Everything the EU does is to this end.
They do exactly this in New Zealand on TradeMe. Auction extends by two minutes every time a bid is placed within two minutes from the end. Great system for sellers; irritating as hell for those used to 'sniping' bargains on eBay while still resident in the UK. Probably on balance a better system though.
Religious dogma has no place in religion, any more than scientific dogma has in science. Both blind us to the truth. And truth is precisely what real religion seeks, while science seeks explanations - there is a difference. As each explanation is disproved upon uncovering fresh evidence so the scientists modify the explanation to fit. At all stages during this process the scientist deals with observable facts explicable to a human. What the religious seeker sees is not explicable to a human, any more than a computer is explicable to a grasshopper, so he describes it as best he can. Those who follow him increasingly add their own twists, then wield the result like a sword to control the peasants, and the result is the variety of disagreeing and disagreeable religions we see today.
But we must not let the frailties of the messengers blind us to the message. The notion of the 'Word of God' may seem laughable until we consider that a word is a collection of vibrations, much as described in String theory. Careful examination of religion will produce many more such examples that only a fool would discard without question.
My 10 yr old daughter communicates with her friends using her DS or a llama sim website or a virtual penguin community, depending on which is most convenient at the time - all are free of charge. If necessary she uses the phone - which is not. Youngsters are not as hidebound as oldsters, and will simply use the most suitable tool for the job - ie the cheapest system their friends are likely to be on the other end of. Twitter seems best suited to celebrities of the sort who hold court at parties in order to hear their own voices. Not of much interest to the average Teen who just wants to chat to his mates, I suspect.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to be one of the few folk to grasp the fact that the European Commission is the de facto government of some 500 million people, despite never having been given such a mandate by those people. Some British Ministers do not seem to grasp it. I think Mr Baker ("We will not be banning cars from city centres ..,"), will do precisely what those who make the laws tell him to; and the laws of Britain are no longer made by the people's elected representatives in the British Parliament.
The unelected bosses of the EU - who do make the laws of Britain - have only one interest in life: to seat themselves at the international top table. The subjugation of 500 million people is integral to that ambition, and this ludicrous EU pontificating about an unknown world 40 years in the future is simply part of an ongoing, cynical campaign to grind firmly into the minds of the masses just who the boss is.
If the people do eventually rebel against this continent-wide deceit, we must hope they can evict the perpetrators before black-shirted Euro-Police clutching vague, Eurocratically-worded EU Arrest Warrants haul them before a politicised EU Court that interprets criticism of the EU as blasphemy.
It is hard to know who are the more deluded - those who think the EU is a sovereign state, or those who think it is not.
I suspect this is exactly the case - that the Universe is a single entity whose gazillion individual parts are all interconnected and endlessly communicating, in much the same way that a beehive contains tens of thousands of individual bees all operating together as a single entity by endlessly communicating. I suspect the human body is the same. I suspect that all the parts of anything we perceive as a single entity are endlessly communicating in ways that we can barely imagine; and that everything we perceive as a single entity is endlessly communicating with other similar parts of a greater whole, that we are equally incapable of imagining.
The physicist Sir James Jeans once described the Universe as "more like a great thought than a great machine", and I suspect he will be proved right.
We need to throw off the out-dated and fatuous, MAFIAA-peddled notion that a digital copy is like a material object that its owner can be deprived of: it is not. We must also reject the MAFIAA-peddled notion that every free copy is a 'lost sale': it is not.
What it actually is is free advertising to millions of people. The more it is 'pirated' the more valuable the advertising. All you have to do is drag your mind out of the materialistic 20th Century and look to the future; devise a way of capitalising on this fantastic publicity that back in the 20th Century would have cost you millions of whatever currency you use.
The free distribution of digital content is inevitable; even the might of the MAFIAA and all the politicians it can bribe will never stop it. So use it; turn it to your advantage. Many claim that free e-books sell paperbacks; that free software sells support contracts; that free movies can be financed by advertisers (who will be delighted if it is 'pirated' by millions); that free music sells merchandise and concert seats. And that your greatest fear is obscurity, not 'piracy'.
The forward-thinking minds that embrace free distribution of content will soon think of many other ways of turning a penny from it, that we can currently not even imagine. Who would have thought, back in the 1960s where the record industry seems to have become frozen, that a man could become a billionaire from setting up a social media site with no charge for entry? We must not let the Luddites of the media industry stifle all that, and in the process deprive ordinary folk of access to their world's information.
I am aware that the people control their own countries' leaderships, but the fact is their own countries are no longer independent countries, having been subsumed into a centrally-governed European super-state. If it was a "bunch of independent countries coming together", it would be a good thing unquestionably.
However, it is not: it is a powerful central political core, with ambitions to strut on the World Stage, dictating for its own benefit the laws that control those millions of peoples' lives. The link between the people and these lawmakers is so long, convoluted, indistinct, tenuous and deliberately obfuscated that it is effectively non-existent. This realisation, and its implications, so alarmed me that a few years ago I moved my family out of the UK to New Zealand.
The laws of 'Europe' are invented in secret by the unelected, unaccountable European Commission, gilded to suit their own agendas by the unelected, unaccountable Council of Ministers, then handed to the elected 'National' parliaments with direct orders to implement them without question. This is not democracy. And the European Parliament, which professes to represent the people, is a toothless, tax-draining talking shop, a cynical front for the Commission with all the power and legitimacy of a Mafia boss's cafe. Yes, elected MEPs can decide who cleans the toilets, but they do not make the laws.
Adolf Hitler, who actually started the EU, was not a great fan of democracy. Even his foe, Winston Churchill, considered democracy "the worst form of government", but he qualified that with "except for all the others". Sadly, the people of 'Europe' now live in one of the others. And due to years of subtle, deceitful manipulation by a self-appointed controlling political elite very few of them even realise it.
Europe is not a country. You need to clarify what institution in Eurpoe proposed this treaty, the European Union for example.
'Europe' is what the unelected, unaccountable European Union, that has never been given a mandate by the people of Europe to rule them, cleverly manipulates the media into calling it, thus implying that it is indeed a country, with its own flag, anthem, ministers, parliament, ambassadors, UN representatives, bureaucracy, legal system, executive, President and all the rest of the paraphernalia associated with being a country, popularly called Europe. Much like the USA is a country, popularly called America.
It is not only a de facto country, however; it is also a de facto dictatorship, whose lawmakers cannot be removed by the people. It is run by a self-appointed political elite crazed with a lust for international power. This is it flexing its muscles, using its 500 million carefully-duped people to elbow the US big boy out of the way, so it can throw its weight about on the top table. Everything the EU does is to this end.
They do exactly this in New Zealand on TradeMe. Auction extends by two minutes every time a bid is placed within two minutes from the end. Great system for sellers; irritating as hell for those used to 'sniping' bargains on eBay while still resident in the UK. Probably on balance a better system though.
Religious dogma has no place in religion, any more than scientific dogma has in science. Both blind us to the truth. And truth is precisely what real religion seeks, while science seeks explanations - there is a difference. As each explanation is disproved upon uncovering fresh evidence so the scientists modify the explanation to fit. At all stages during this process the scientist deals with observable facts explicable to a human. What the religious seeker sees is not explicable to a human, any more than a computer is explicable to a grasshopper, so he describes it as best he can.
Those who follow him increasingly add their own twists, then wield the result like a sword to control the peasants, and the result is the variety of disagreeing and disagreeable religions we see today.
But we must not let the frailties of the messengers blind us to the message. The notion of the 'Word of God' may seem laughable until we consider that a word is a collection of vibrations, much as described in String theory. Careful examination of religion will produce many more such examples that only a fool would discard without question.
My 10 yr old daughter communicates with her friends using her DS or a llama sim website or a virtual penguin community, depending on which is most convenient at the time - all are free of charge. If necessary she uses the phone - which is not. Youngsters are not as hidebound as oldsters, and will simply use the most suitable tool for the job - ie the cheapest system their friends are likely to be on the other end of. Twitter seems best suited to celebrities of the sort who hold court at parties in order to hear their own voices. Not of much interest to the average Teen who just wants to chat to his mates, I suspect.