I have enough problems with my 3G phone giving me headaches as it is. I only have to talk for 10 seconds or so until I get sharp pains just underneath the phone's antenna. And yes, I realise that all the phone companies have a billion or so studies that 'prove' that phones don't give you cancer, and in fact fight cancer and help reduce your tax as well. I don't buy it. I keep my phone well away from by body when I'm not using it, and I use the speaker-phone functionality so I don't have to hold the thing on my brain when using it. I strongly recommend people do the same.
Safety issues aside, there are also privacy concerns. Since it's hard to remove one of these things, it's a much better target for the government to use to track people ( oh sorry, terrorists... the government doesn't track people, only terrorists ). And I'd also be very wary about saying anything against the government while having one of these in my tooth.
Sure these things are happening, but they're certainly not signs of a dictatorship. In fact, they are signs of a breakdown of a dictatorship... the dictatorship of capitalists. You see, a dictatorship is where you have a ruler or ruling class who dictate, against the will of the population. Take the US, for example. A democracy is where the wishes of the population actually have an effect of what goes on in a country... for an example of this, look at Venezuela. The people overwhelming support all his moves, from nationalising the oil, to spending more money of health and education, to resisting the US's neo-liberal agenda in Venezuela and in other South American countries.
If you think Venezuela is a dictatorship, then you are 100% brainwashed.
I've noticed a large increase in the number of posts expressing socialist or even left-leaning opinions being moderated as a 'troll', to the extent that I'm starting to suspect there's an organised effort behind it. Keep in mind the Dubya administration is spending record levels on propaganda, both via the state and privately.
Chavez has was each successive election with a greater majority than the last. That's a lot more than anyone can say for Dubya. Do you even know what a dictatorship is?
You should spend less time on sarcasm and more time reading what I posted. Dissipative structures are certainly not limited to water. This was but one example. Wow, golly darn dash you look foolish now...
Fritjov Capra ( this guy's an absolute legend, by the way ) had an interesting section on hexagonal structures like these in his book, Web of Life. He was talking about Dissipative Structures, discovered by Ilya Prigogine.
In the experiment that was being described, a small dish of water was heated up uniformly from below. At a certain point, these hexagonal structures emerged. Hot water would rise from the bottom of the dish, travelling in a pipe directly through the middle of the hexagon ( forming a point in the middle that you could see ). When the water hit the surface, it spread out cooled, and then travelled back down to the bottom, creating the sides of the hexagon. Apparently they were getting multiple hexagons, and they were incredibly stable... ie you could run a pen through them and disturb them, and they'd immediately revert to these perfect hexagons. It was fascinating reading - thoroughly recommended for people interested in biology, physics, and philosophy.
If you have to harvest and kill animals for body parts just to keep someone alive, why would you do that? The answer comes down to how you see yourself and the animals in your environment. You, as others, clearly believe that you are somehow different from animals. You're not, and people who argue that you are, are on a very slippery slope. You would also argue that, for example, you should have the right to butcher Muslim, or Jewish, or Hispanic babies for body parts for your children, because you are somehow different to them.
There's a big difference between what you accuse me of... wanting to 'let someone die', and what YOU want to do, MURDERING.
So, because they're not part of the "most if not all" section of your argument all babies with holes in their hearts deserve death as their punishment?
Oh Jesus! It's a "won't someone please think of the children" argument! Punishment! Wow you're a real thinker. I thought this was the stuff of Simpsons cartoons, not reality. That's what I get for doubting Simpsons I suppose. If children have holes in their hearts ( and it's important to note that no children actually DO have holes in their hearts ), then they have a genetic defect that we don't want to pollute the gene pool with. Sure their parents will want the best medical care for them, and which parents wouldn't? But lets not sensationalize things, OK? If babies have holes in their hearts at the moment ( which they don't ), then they die. Sad, but that's life, and human society goes on with some shred of decency.
And that's just one thing that can go wrong with babies. I could list a whole other host of baby organs that go bad, and, hell, a whole host of genetic diseases that damage organs that exist in both vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike, but I guess they're all just collateral damage in your quest to rid the world of animals that aren't roaming around in the open.
Still crying over phantom babies with holes in their hearts? Jesus Christ, wake up to yourself man! You're just stated that these people have genetic diseases. When you find a genetic disease in someone, you do what you can to ease their suffering, while trying to prevent that disease from being propogated further into the gene pool. You don't slaughter everything in sight so that their disease can spread throughout the gene pool. You need to get some perspective and stop thinking of the children. Your comment about collateral damage is particularly cynical, since that's exactly how you'd describe the animals involved in your mutilation festival.
The last paragraph takes absurdity to an as-yet unheard of height. I'm flabergasted. You are amongst the fairies dude, well and truly.
Of course it depends where you draw the line. But my argument stands: this is a new form of abuse, as opposed to the traditional forms of abuse ( farming to eat, and farming of 'beasts of burden' ).
This 'research' carries the assumption that we are fundamentally different and superior to other life. We're not, and in fact I think this shows that we're inferior.
Hunting animals for food is a part of one of the oldest, sacred games around. Fair enough. For the vegetarians who protest that we don't need to eat meat, I agree... we no longer need to eat meat... I'm talking about hunters.
Farming animals for food is taking this sacred game and twisting it into something that lacks both sanctity and game. Large-scale intensive farming is particularly twisted.
But farming animals and implanting tissue so we can harvest organs is fucking horrendous. All these people who 'need' new organs should have taken better care of the ones they started out with. Most, if not all, of their ailments are related to their excessive consumption of meat, combined with their consumption of artificial pesticides & fertilizers, their proximity to industrial waste, etc. Some people think they have the right to abuse their body, their environment, and everything else they encounter, and then demand that animals are farmed, mutilated, and sacrificed to provide them with 'backup' organs. Bullshit! You get one body. If you fuck it up, hope that someone donates their organs. These animals aren't donating anything. This is taking our abuse of animals WAY too far.
I'm not sure how it goes in the US, but here in Australia, you have to have a certain number of paid members before you can register as a political party ( otherwise you can only run as an independent ). Then you can claim money back from the state as campaign funding, based on the number of votes that your party gets. I'm not claiming that we do it perfectly here, but it's a good basis for a fairer system, once you outlaw corporate 'donations'. Smaller parties will still claim that they are being marginalized, and I agree with them ( hence there being room for improvement ), but the main point is that getting rid of corporate 'donations' is the big improvement. You could do something like have a sliding scale, so the more votes your party gets, the lower the claim:vote ratio is.
Sure, that's a great step. But good luck implementing it.
The problem is very deeply ingrained in the political process now - more so in the US than anywhere else. You need to have MILLIONS of dollars to run for President, for example. The only quick-fix I can see is to make the PUBLIC pay for election campaigns ( while preventing corporations, of course ). Some people will complain that they don't want to see public money used for such things, but the public money gets wasted in so many other areas ( 4 billion in Iraq, isn't it? ), I hardly think that's a valid arguement. We need to provide EQUAL access to the media to all parties. It's not good enough that people only really know about the big 2, and have no idea whatsoever what other people are saying. Sure, it might be an expensive solution, but it looks like if the people want democracy, they're going to have to pay for it themselves, or else stand aside so someone else can pay for it.
The Soviet revolution was democratic. Lenin waited until they had a majority in the Soviet councils until they arguing that the Soviets themselves should seize power, as the only group with a valid claim to it.
If you want a non-violent revolution, the best current example is Venezuela. They're part way through anyway. Most socialists agree that they won't be able to complete the revolution without things getting violent, but only because the capitalists ( inside and out ) will resort to violence in an attempt to crush the revolution if it goes too far.
Firstly, people DID vote against Bush, twice, and their votes were not counted for various reasons, ranging from Diebold 'malfunctions', to manual electoral fraud, to people mysteriously winding up on the felons list, etc, etc. Voting clearly isn't working.
Secondly, vote for WHO, exactly? Big business OWNS the election. They pay MASSIVE, multi-million dollar bribes... sorry... donations, to BOTH political parties. Sure if you get enough people to vote Democrat ( shudder ), you can get rid of the Republicans ( yay ), but no matter who you vote for, big business wins.
The only way ordinary people can affect society is by organising OUTSIDE of the official political process, and calling massive demonstrations, strikes, etc. These events wield far more power than the pathetic jokes that we call 'elections'.
:) Why of course. We've had a number of our members followed, 'interviewed', and generally harassed. It would certainly be no surprise to us if this bullshit continued.
Certainly the police are not there to protect individual freedoms. They're there to protect private property of the fabulously wealth, and a part of that 'protection' is intimidating anyone who argues against the rights of these people to continue to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense.
On 18th April, at 7pm at the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre ( Sydney ), I will be speaking at a Socialist Worker forum on these issues precisely, entitled, "The Police, the State, and Civil Liberties". Anyone interested is more than welcome to come along and join the discussion.
I don't think it's genetic. I've just finished reading a fascinating book by Humberto Maturana and Franscisco Varela, "Autopeoisis and Cognition". They spend a lot of the book discussion consciousness and how it arises.
They argue that organisms begin from a position of perceiving changes in their environment only. Each successive level of complexity gives rise to emergent features. When their nervous system has increased in complexity to the point where it can hold one description of their environment and compare it with another description ( which requires adding a layer of recursion ), this is the emergence of consciousness. Next, when they can describe themselves, which requires another layer of recursion, they become self-conscious. The next level of recursion is when they can hold a description of themselves against a description of another organism, and they develop Theory of Mind .
Now, one of the consequences of the development Theory of Mind is an intellectual empathy, an understanding that others are fundamentally the same as we ourselves are. This is the basis of morality. The domain of the mind is not genetically or physically determined. The main determinant in the state of the mind is the mind itself - it's state is infinitely self-recursive, and while the brain, who's state IS largely determined by genetics is required to enable the mind, the brain does not specify the organisation of the mind. The mind carries out self-organisation.
In cases like this, it is the people who should force companies that wish to have any dealings inside a country to treat all workers to the same standards that people inside the country demand of themselves. This is called solidarity, and with the trend towards globalisation, this is the only defense the working class have against having their wages eroded by workers in an even worse position than they are. So if a company in China wants to exploit their workers, then sure, there's not a great deal that you or I or even our governments can do. But the people can, via their unions ( and yes, I realise that unions are in a pretty shitty condition these days ), call for trade bans on these companies. If the union is strong enough ( ie people care enough about their own conditions, or even the conditions of others ), then it's quite feasible that we can lock out the companies who choose to exploit the incredibly inhumane conditions in 3rd world countries.
NT is designed to be portable, and Microsoft has ported it to MIPS, Alpha, PPC, x86, Itanium and AMD64 each at one time or another.
That's stretching the truth a bit.
The AMD64 'port', for starters, isn't in the same category as other 'ports' as it doesn't actually require any porting! There are optimisations that can be done. But is this a full-blown 'port'? Doubt it.
Next in terms of completeness is the Alpha port, which was abandoned long, long ago. Was it NT3.5 that used to run on Alpha? Something like that. And there was a tiny selection of server software / hardware combos that worked.
Next in line is the Itanium 'port'. I went to a Microsoft SQL Server sales pitch from Microsoft a while back, and they were demoing SQL Server 2003 on Itanium. The presentation was full of quotes like "Of course when it's complete, it won't lock up at this point... hang on while I reboot...", and other things such as "The whole DTS thing will run in 32-bit emulation mode, and quite slowly, for many years to come. We're having big problems getting this to work properly on an IA64 kernel." Now fair enough, this might be at least partly SQL Server, and not NT, but I think it's indicative of the whole shebang.
As for MIPS, I've never seen this one, so I can't comment.
And PPC? Are you serious? There's a PPC port of Windows? I don't think so. Maybe someone in Microsoft was dreaming of it, but I don't think this 'port' ever got anywhere.
That's got nothing to do with it. ( in reference to 'all men are created equal' quote )
So you DO take the opinion that all white male middle-to-upper-class males are created equal, and everyone else can go to hell? That's the logical conclusion of your argument.
Basically. If you want to show up in the country and live here, be prepared to demonstrate some useful skill. This ain't a charity.
What happened to 'with liberty and justice for all'? And if this ISN'T a charity, why shouldn't it be? Why do you have to push people down to get to the top? And what makes you think that these people will be bludging off you or society? Unskilled, cheap migrant labour is a source of massive profits for American companies, and migrants are much less inclined to utilize the few public services you have left.
Gang members and criminals, or haven't you been paying attention?
In fact I HAVE been paying attention, and I think that this steady stream of migration will in fact DILUTE your levels of gang members and criminals, not increase them.
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I have enough problems with my 3G phone giving me headaches as it is. I only have to talk for 10 seconds or so until I get sharp pains just underneath the phone's antenna. And yes, I realise that all the phone companies have a billion or so studies that 'prove' that phones don't give you cancer, and in fact fight cancer and help reduce your tax as well. I don't buy it. I keep my phone well away from by body when I'm not using it, and I use the speaker-phone functionality so I don't have to hold the thing on my brain when using it. I strongly recommend people do the same.
... the government doesn't track people, only terrorists ). And I'd also be very wary about saying anything against the government while having one of these in my tooth.
Safety issues aside, there are also privacy concerns. Since it's hard to remove one of these things, it's a much better target for the government to use to track people ( oh sorry, terrorists
Sure these things are happening, but they're certainly not signs of a dictatorship. In fact, they are signs of a breakdown of a dictatorship ... the dictatorship of capitalists. You see, a dictatorship is where you have a ruler or ruling class who dictate , against the will of the population. Take the US, for example. A democracy is where the wishes of the population actually have an effect of what goes on in a country ... for an example of this, look at Venezuela. The people overwhelming support all his moves, from nationalising the oil, to spending more money of health and education, to resisting the US's neo-liberal agenda in Venezuela and in other South American countries.
If you think Venezuela is a dictatorship, then you are 100% brainwashed.
I've noticed a large increase in the number of posts expressing socialist or even left-leaning opinions being moderated as a 'troll', to the extent that I'm starting to suspect there's an organised effort behind it. Keep in mind the Dubya administration is spending record levels on propaganda, both via the state and privately.
It's not the supply of food that's the problem. It's the distribution that's letting people starve. There's plenty of supply.
And what dictatorship would that be?
Chavez has was each successive election with a greater majority than the last. That's a lot more than anyone can say for Dubya. Do you even know what a dictatorship is?
You should spend less time on sarcasm and more time reading what I posted. Dissipative structures are certainly not limited to water. This was but one example. Wow, golly darn dash you look foolish now ...
Flamebait?
Some people are strange.
Fritjov Capra ( this guy's an absolute legend, by the way ) had an interesting section on hexagonal structures like these in his book, Web of Life. He was talking about Dissipative Structures, discovered by Ilya Prigogine.
... ie you could run a pen through them and disturb them, and they'd immediately revert to these perfect hexagons. It was fascinating reading - thoroughly recommended for people interested in biology, physics, and philosophy.
In the experiment that was being described, a small dish of water was heated up uniformly from below. At a certain point, these hexagonal structures emerged. Hot water would rise from the bottom of the dish, travelling in a pipe directly through the middle of the hexagon ( forming a point in the middle that you could see ). When the water hit the surface, it spread out cooled, and then travelled back down to the bottom, creating the sides of the hexagon. Apparently they were getting multiple hexagons, and they were incredibly stable
If you have to harvest and kill animals for body parts just to keep someone alive, why would you do that? The answer comes down to how you see yourself and the animals in your environment. You, as others, clearly believe that you are somehow different from animals. You're not, and people who argue that you are, are on a very slippery slope. You would also argue that, for example, you should have the right to butcher Muslim, or Jewish, or Hispanic babies for body parts for your children, because you are somehow different to them.
... wanting to 'let someone die', and what YOU want to do, MURDERING.
There's a big difference between what you accuse me of
Oh Jesus! It's a "won't someone please think of the children" argument! Punishment! Wow you're a real thinker. I thought this was the stuff of Simpsons cartoons, not reality. That's what I get for doubting Simpsons I suppose. If children have holes in their hearts ( and it's important to note that no children actually DO have holes in their hearts ), then they have a genetic defect that we don't want to pollute the gene pool with. Sure their parents will want the best medical care for them, and which parents wouldn't? But lets not sensationalize things, OK? If babies have holes in their hearts at the moment ( which they don't ), then they die. Sad, but that's life, and human society goes on with some shred of decency.
Still crying over phantom babies with holes in their hearts? Jesus Christ, wake up to yourself man! You're just stated that these people have genetic diseases. When you find a genetic disease in someone, you do what you can to ease their suffering, while trying to prevent that disease from being propogated further into the gene pool. You don't slaughter everything in sight so that their disease can spread throughout the gene pool. You need to get some perspective and stop thinking of the children. Your comment about collateral damage is particularly cynical, since that's exactly how you'd describe the animals involved in your mutilation festival.
The last paragraph takes absurdity to an as-yet unheard of height. I'm flabergasted. You are amongst the fairies dude, well and truly.
How do you figure that? Do you believe the line that Stalinism == Communism?
As for your actual response, you're demonstrating about as much maturity here as you are in your signature. Well done.
Of course it depends where you draw the line. But my argument stands: this is a new form of abuse, as opposed to the traditional forms of abuse ( farming to eat, and farming of 'beasts of burden' ).
This 'research' carries the assumption that we are fundamentally different and superior to other life. We're not, and in fact I think this shows that we're inferior .
... we no longer need to eat meat ... I'm talking about hunters .
Hunting animals for food is a part of one of the oldest, sacred games around. Fair enough. For the vegetarians who protest that we don't need to eat meat, I agree
Farming animals for food is taking this sacred game and twisting it into something that lacks both sanctity and game. Large-scale intensive farming is particularly twisted.
But farming animals and implanting tissue so we can harvest organs is fucking horrendous. All these people who 'need' new organs should have taken better care of the ones they started out with. Most, if not all, of their ailments are related to their excessive consumption of meat, combined with their consumption of artificial pesticides & fertilizers, their proximity to industrial waste, etc. Some people think they have the right to abuse their body, their environment, and everything else they encounter, and then demand that animals are farmed, mutilated, and sacrificed to provide them with 'backup' organs. Bullshit! You get one body. If you fuck it up, hope that someone donates their organs. These animals aren't donating anything. This is taking our abuse of animals WAY too far.
Ouch! That's right.
I'm not sure how it goes in the US, but here in Australia, you have to have a certain number of paid members before you can register as a political party ( otherwise you can only run as an independent ). Then you can claim money back from the state as campaign funding, based on the number of votes that your party gets. I'm not claiming that we do it perfectly here, but it's a good basis for a fairer system, once you outlaw corporate 'donations'. Smaller parties will still claim that they are being marginalized, and I agree with them ( hence there being room for improvement ), but the main point is that getting rid of corporate 'donations' is the big improvement. You could do something like have a sliding scale, so the more votes your party gets, the lower the claim:vote ratio is.
Sure, that's a great step. But good luck implementing it.
The problem is very deeply ingrained in the political process now - more so in the US than anywhere else. You need to have MILLIONS of dollars to run for President, for example. The only quick-fix I can see is to make the PUBLIC pay for election campaigns ( while preventing corporations, of course ). Some people will complain that they don't want to see public money used for such things, but the public money gets wasted in so many other areas ( 4 billion in Iraq, isn't it? ), I hardly think that's a valid arguement. We need to provide EQUAL access to the media to all parties. It's not good enough that people only really know about the big 2, and have no idea whatsoever what other people are saying. Sure, it might be an expensive solution, but it looks like if the people want democracy, they're going to have to pay for it themselves, or else stand aside so someone else can pay for it.
The Soviet revolution was democratic. Lenin waited until they had a majority in the Soviet councils until they arguing that the Soviets themselves should seize power, as the only group with a valid claim to it.
If you want a non-violent revolution, the best current example is Venezuela. They're part way through anyway. Most socialists agree that they won't be able to complete the revolution without things getting violent, but only because the capitalists ( inside and out ) will resort to violence in an attempt to crush the revolution if it goes too far.
Vote?
... sorry ... donations, to BOTH political parties. Sure if you get enough people to vote Democrat ( shudder ), you can get rid of the Republicans ( yay ), but no matter who you vote for, big business wins.
You're missing some very important points.
Firstly, people DID vote against Bush, twice, and their votes were not counted for various reasons, ranging from Diebold 'malfunctions', to manual electoral fraud, to people mysteriously winding up on the felons list, etc, etc. Voting clearly isn't working.
Secondly, vote for WHO, exactly? Big business OWNS the election. They pay MASSIVE, multi-million dollar bribes
The only way ordinary people can affect society is by organising OUTSIDE of the official political process, and calling massive demonstrations, strikes, etc. These events wield far more power than the pathetic jokes that we call 'elections'.
:) Why of course. We've had a number of our members followed, 'interviewed', and generally harassed. It would certainly be no surprise to us if this bullshit continued.
Certainly the police are not there to protect individual freedoms. They're there to protect private property of the fabulously wealth, and a part of that 'protection' is intimidating anyone who argues against the rights of these people to continue to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense.
On 18th April, at 7pm at the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre ( Sydney ), I will be speaking at a Socialist Worker forum on these issues precisely, entitled, "The Police, the State, and Civil Liberties". Anyone interested is more than welcome to come along and join the discussion.
I don't think it's genetic. I've just finished reading a fascinating book by Humberto Maturana and Franscisco Varela, "Autopeoisis and Cognition". They spend a lot of the book discussion consciousness and how it arises.
They argue that organisms begin from a position of perceiving changes in their environment only. Each successive level of complexity gives rise to emergent features. When their nervous system has increased in complexity to the point where it can hold one description of their environment and compare it with another description ( which requires adding a layer of recursion ), this is the emergence of consciousness. Next, when they can describe themselves, which requires another layer of recursion, they become self-conscious. The next level of recursion is when they can hold a description of themselves against a description of another organism, and they develop Theory of Mind .
Now, one of the consequences of the development Theory of Mind is an intellectual empathy, an understanding that others are fundamentally the same as we ourselves are. This is the basis of morality. The domain of the mind is not genetically or physically determined. The main determinant in the state of the mind is the mind itself - it's state is infinitely self-recursive, and while the brain, who's state IS largely determined by genetics is required to enable the mind, the brain does not specify the organisation of the mind. The mind carries out self-organisation.
Which employees? I'm not sure what point you're making here. Do you mean employees of the companies who are sacking people and heading overseas?
In cases like this, it is the people who should force companies that wish to have any dealings inside a country to treat all workers to the same standards that people inside the country demand of themselves. This is called solidarity, and with the trend towards globalisation, this is the only defense the working class have against having their wages eroded by workers in an even worse position than they are. So if a company in China wants to exploit their workers, then sure, there's not a great deal that you or I or even our governments can do. But the people can, via their unions ( and yes, I realise that unions are in a pretty shitty condition these days ), call for trade bans on these companies. If the union is strong enough ( ie people care enough about their own conditions, or even the conditions of others ), then it's quite feasible that we can lock out the companies who choose to exploit the incredibly inhumane conditions in 3rd world countries.
That's stretching the truth a bit.
The AMD64 'port', for starters, isn't in the same category as other 'ports' as it doesn't actually require any porting! There are optimisations that can be done. But is this a full-blown 'port'? Doubt it.
Next in terms of completeness is the Alpha port, which was abandoned long, long ago. Was it NT3.5 that used to run on Alpha? Something like that. And there was a tiny selection of server software / hardware combos that worked.
Next in line is the Itanium 'port'. I went to a Microsoft SQL Server sales pitch from Microsoft a while back, and they were demoing SQL Server 2003 on Itanium. The presentation was full of quotes like "Of course when it's complete, it won't lock up at this point
As for MIPS, I've never seen this one, so I can't comment.
And PPC? Are you serious? There's a PPC port of Windows? I don't think so. Maybe someone in Microsoft was dreaming of it, but I don't think this 'port' ever got anywhere.
So you DO take the opinion that all white male middle-to-upper-class males are created equal, and everyone else can go to hell? That's the logical conclusion of your argument.
What happened to 'with liberty and justice for all'? And if this ISN'T a charity, why shouldn't it be? Why do you have to push people down to get to the top? And what makes you think that these people will be bludging off you or society? Unskilled, cheap migrant labour is a source of massive profits for American companies, and migrants are much less inclined to utilize the few public services you have left.
In fact I HAVE been paying attention, and I think that this steady stream of migration will in fact DILUTE your levels of gang members and criminals, not increase them.