Guess how radioactive something is with a half-life of 100,000 years? Answer: Not very.
Bullshit. Why the need for containment then? Why don't you make products out of it, and sell it to fucking idiots such as yourself? Oh, so it's too radioactive for YOU to go anywhere near, but you can dump it somewhere else and it will be OK?
I'd really wish there was like a prerequisite of high school physics before people were allowed to start talking about the energy issue in America.
1) I'm not a fucking Yank 2) I've studied high school physics, and did quite well too 3) Perhaps YOU should study some physics
Nationalise all the coal mines then shut them down. (Any which are still operating, by any rate.)
Great. But in the US, it'll never happen. But great so far.
Slap a large carbon tax on import coal for power plants.
Also great. But again, the US will never do it.
Power generators which run on natural gas or oil, slap a carbon tax on those, too
OOooo yeah baby!
Hydro, well the enviromentalists hate hydro because it interfers with the social lives of fish, such as the snail darter so bust the dams
There's no blanket rejection of hydro. In some cases, it makes a lot of sense. It's just that in others, it doesn't. There are forms of hydro that don't include dams on rivers. Wave generators, for example.
Enviros also hate those wind generators, which kill wild fowl with their big blades, knock 'em down.
Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on this one. Talk to ANY environmental activist, and they'll bring up wind power. I just went on the Walk Against Warming march in Sydney on the weekend ( 30,000 here, 30,000 in Melbourne, approx 150,000 Australia-wide ). The place was literally covered with windmill things on poles, and Greens banners. It was amazing. I think the only people who complain about wind are actually arsewipes from the big oil & nuclear industry, trying to throw a spanner in the works. NO serious environmentalist brings up the issues in your point.
The last battleground and current battle ground for decades, where to bury the waste from Nuclear Power
That's where it falls apart completely.
1) We don't have any technology that will last more than a couple of hundred years. Nuclear waste lasts for millions of years. We simply can't contain it.
2) Forgetting point 1 for a second, WHO exactly is responsible for the waste? A corporation like Enron? Do you realise that ALL corporations are like Enron, or at least similar enough not to matter? The waste will be around LONG after the corporations that profited from the mining and power conversion have closed up shop and left the country. This means that the responsibility will then fall back onto ordinary people. We'll have to pay taxes for MILLIONS of years to maintain the containment of waste which most people never benefited from, because they weren't around then. In particular, they weren't around then to MAKE THE DECISION, so why should they be responsible?
That pretty much sums up the problems with nuclear ( other than the weapons side, which I've addressed briefly in other posts ). Nuclear is all about short-term profits, and long-term irresponsibility. That's exactly how we got to where we are with CO2-based climate change. Do we really want to fuck ourselves and all future generations up the arse with nuclear waste as well? I really, really hope not, but there are a few very greedy people, and then there are lot of idiots who buy what they say...
We don't need nuclear. Nuclear is the dirtiest of all known fuel sources, NOT the cleanest. The waste remains deadly for hundreds of thousands of years.
The simple truth is that we don't need nuclear, much the same as we don't need fossil fuels. Using totally clean, renewable resources is well within our technological reach.
The problem is with renewable technology is that it takes the market away from the current big players. The oil, coil, and nuclear industry are all based on the same basic process:
- bribe the government so they let you mine the resources you want - claim the resource as your own, as if you have some sort of actual legitimate right to it - convert the resource into power - dump the waste without any thought as to the consequences
A switch to renewable energy undermines this model completely, as the resource is coming at us from the sun, and it's quite distributed in nature. That means that it favors distributed capture and conversion into usable energy. For the big energy companies, this is simply not on.
What's more, renewable energies scale up and down extremely well. This means that instead of requiring massive capital investment to get a huge power plant working, a local community can install solar, wind, etc generators, and bring them online as required. For the big energy companies, this is REALLY not on. And they'll fight with everything they've got to make sure it doesn't happen.
Right now, the battle is in convincing people that renewables are a viable solution. The energy industry would have us believe that this solution doesn't exist, and that we have to keep burning fossil fuels, and then switch to nuclear. BULLSHIT! We need to invest seriously in renewables, and leave the toxic fossil fuel and nuclear energy and weapons industry in the past.
This brings me to the final point: that nuclear energy == nuclear weapons. In most nuclear countries, the US included, there is NO separation between the so-called civilian and military nuclear fuel cycle. While we have nuclear energy, we'll have nuclear weapons. While we have both these abominations, we'll have nuclear waste, accidents, horrific damage to the environment, and possibly a world-wide nuclear catastrophe. It doesn't take much to cover the world in radioactive dust. And what do we do then?
Property (including money) belongs to human beings (rather than corporations).
Well, that in itself is a pretty radical step. It basically points towards collective ownership, because capital accumulation is required for large projects. If you get rid of corporations ( which I agree that we should ), the state is the only other entity that can take their place.
So I'm not really sure that your 'hybird' system is very hybrid. It sounds like a good socialist model to me.
You show capitalism as bad because it's hard to start a business due to monopolies.
This is not what I was attempting to demonstrate. This line of criticism comes from a capitalist point of view, ie self-criticism. What I'm pointing out is that despite the mantra about how capitalism == competition == good, what in fact happens is the emergence of monopolies and imperial powers.
You then show "internationalists" as good because they advocate making the means of production completely state-based. However, state-based ownership of business makes starting a business illegal due to government monopoly. I'm not really what you are advocating at this point.
OK. I am in fact advocating an international socialist revolution ( attention CIA: watch this space! ). And you are correct that this state-based ownership model would make owning the means of production illegal, which is subtly different from 'starting a business'. For democracy to work, people have to have collective ownership of the means of production, and resources. Once you allow private ownership of these, you throw democratic control out the window.
As a simple example, imagine a country that has enough resources to achieve in 1 year:
Alternative 1)
- build 10,000,000 cars for export
- mine 10,000,000 tonnes of coal for export
- build new missile defense system
Alternative 2)
- replace 30% of fossil-fuel power stations with renewable
- 300% increase in public education spending
- convert 50% of farms to organic, dramatically increasing life expectancy
We all know which scenario will happen under capitalism, because there's simply far more money to be made in Alternative 1. You can argue with me over whether either alternative is sustainable in the long term. But the point is that under capitalism, no-one EVER asks us what we want. We are presented with the goods that the capitalists guess will make them the most money. How is this democratic?
You see, my idea of democracy is not voting for one dick-head over some arse-wipe every 3 to 4 years. I'm not interested in politicians. Democracy is not about politicians. It's about decision-making. It's not about some nebulous list of promises made by politicians in an election campaign. It's about people getting together in community groups, and making decisions that are actually acted upon. This requires collective ownership, otherwise your decisions really amount to nothing, because you don't actually control anything. And please let's not suggest that we can legislate our way to heaven. Collective ownership isn't about somehow making enterprises less efficient. It's about making them do what we decide that we want them to do. The only people who would find this offensive are the current business owners, who will no longer profit from 'their' enterprise. Everyone else will see a massive increase in their standard of living, because profits will be reinvested in society... they way we decide.
Naive democracy doesn't seem to be any more "automatically stable" than naive capitalism is. Therefore, simply making your economic system "we'll do our resource allocation by hand democratically" is really just trading two problems for one extra-complicated problem.
Sure. And when you hear people talking about public education, it's always the socialists saying that we need to invest more, and the capitalists saying that the government should back off and let the market provide, so people have 'choice'. But I agree 100% - we need people educated for it to work.
You aren't differentiating between government behavior and market behavior. Some of the things you are attributing to market failures are really political failures - patents for example.
The boundary is quite blurred under capitalism. The problem with patents, or any other legislation that is thrust upon us, is that it's big business that choose our politicians. If there's a policy they want, they'll get it. Take 'Work Choices' here in Australia. Our government made no mention of this prior to the last election, and had NO mandate for industrial relations reform. But guess what we got when they were re-elected? Wholesale attacks on unions and the right to organise. Removal of award conditions. Anti-terror-style legislation to intimidate and coerce workers to inform on each other in industrial disputes.
Now, you could say that this is a failure of the political system. But on the other hand, this is coming to us direct from the economic system, which is short-circuiting the political system.
There's a difference between using slang and horribly butchering what you're saying to the extent that you're accidentally saying the exact opposite of what you mean.
I've noticed that a lot of Yanks have started the 'could care less' thing, so I thought I'd see how much thought process actually goes into it. Answer: zero.
There may be forms of capitalism that don't degrade into imperialism.
Not if they're exposed to international markets.
There are definitely different forms of socialism.
The complete failure of Stalinism shows that you can't have 'socialism in a state'. It has to be international, for the same reasons that less profitable capitalist powers are doomed to assimilation - everyone has to compete with the most cut-throat capitalist.
There are a number possible hybrid systems.
As transitory systems, yes. But they aren't the end goal; just one possible means of getting there.
I'm not yet convinced that some sort socialist model is the only thing that would work
I accept this challenge then:)
All political systems can basically be split into 2 camps, based on who controls how society is run. I won't go into elaborate details about how socialism works, etc.
The main point, and this is something that Western society desperately needs to learn, is that money itself is an organising force. It attracts more money to itself, unless you specifically dis-allow this practice. What this means is that if you allow capitalism ( in particular private ownership of the means of production ), then you're on a very slippery slope towards Imperialism ( the highest form of capitalism ). This is because ANY allowances made to private ownership ( and control ) of capital will result in greater and greater collections of capital. Smaller capitalists will be swept up in the turmoil and you'll be left with huge monopolies. This is not a generalisation. This is what ALWAYS happens. It can't happen any other way. Survival under capitalism requires the capitalist to constantly profit, and to re-invest those profits to expand the business. Any capitalist who does not or can not do this will not remain a capitalist very long. Hence the constant trend towards fewer, larger capitalists. Hence larger barriers to entry for new competitors.
This is clearly what we see today. We have some token laws 'against' monopolies, but these are incredibly contradictory to the capitalist mantra, and are almost never enforced. Take Microsoft, for example. Microsoft is certainly not the only example though. Have you ever thought about starting your own oil drilling company? You can't, can you? Barriers to entry. What about a car company? Think you can navigate the patent mine-field just to produce an EFI system for an engine? You can't. Individuals can't enter any established industry. Large corporations with armies of lawyers can.
So getting back to the original point... you've got 2 choices. You can either make the means of production completely state-based ( collective ownership with democratic control over how they're used ), or you can NOT make them collectively owned... and this basically opens the floodgates to private accumulation, and eventually huge monopolies and imperial powers, not to mention an ABSOLUTE loss of democratic control over how these industries are run.
Anything in-between is transitory. This is one of the key reasons why the remaining socialists call themselves internationalists - because we realise that there is no possible solution on a small scale - we'd be at the mercy of the world's imperial powers. The only solution is an international revolution. It may seem like a long shot, but just wait for the Oil Wars to ramp up a couple of notches, and the price of living to go through the roof in industrialised countries, and climate change to start biting...
You mean you couldn't care less. If you say that you could care less, then it's clearly not at the bottom of your list of cares, or in other words, that you DO care about it.
Well said. It's a pity that the so-called 'war on drugs' turns into a war on truth, war on the poor, war on civil liberties, etc. The 'date rape drug' bit is especially distasteful, and as others have pointed out, the biggest date rape drug by far is alcohol, but no-ones trying to ban that, are they? Of course orweillian terminology is rampant in our society, eg:
- the war on drugs
- the war on terror
- the liberation of Iraq
- the pacification of Afghanistan
- the free market
All of these terms, of course, mean the exact opposite of what they would appear to on face value. Incidentally, all of them are fabulously profitable as well.
Australia is fairly well-respected in the international community,
Hardly. We're in the Axis of Evil that invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. The US, UK and Australia consistently provoke international condemnation by supporting Israel, refusing to ratify Kyoto ( UK is off the hook here ), and 'leading' the war on terror. We're the world's hypocrites. Maybe you feel that other Westerners think highly of Australians, and that might be so, but if you ask people what they think of our foreign policy, it's a radically different story - particularly outside the Western world ( and lets be clear, most people in the world are not Westerners ).
and doesn't have any highly lucrative natural resources
As others have already pointed out, we have 40% of the world's uranium. The bloody oil wars that we're seeing in the Middle East are a walk in the park compared to the coming uranium wars... after we hit peak uranium production, there is no magic solution left. There'll be no time ( or money ) left for renewable research. The whole of the South Pacific will be turned into a radioactive hell-hole, and the usual suspects - the US, China, Russia, will all be here fighting for their share. And whose side will we be on? Not the US's side! By that point, we'll be a an economic satellite of China.
and would provoke a massive international retaliation.
Bullshit. Every single time Australia has asked for US military assistance, it's been denied. Admittedly, none of these requests have been for defence. But then keep in mind the US entered WWII incredibly late... late enough that everyone else's economy was in ruins. And then they were hedging their bets both ways on the UK and Germany. The big US banks, in particular, were backing Germany. The thing about international relations is that they're all as transitory as money is liquid. When business circumstances change, alliances change instantly. They have to - it makes business sense, and that's what decides foreign policy. If you want an example of this, think about Iraq.
I thought our politicians only saw it fit to buy decommissioned US junk, such as 30 year-old helicopters, and the odd fleet of dud tanks and fighter jets. Perhaps this is Howard's idea of renewable resources. Personally, I'd rather just put the grunts put to work in a more economic - imagine how much clean energy we could produce if we took our soldiers from the bloodbaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, and lined them up in a big grid of treadmill generators. We could put a picture of Kylie Minogue in front of them, and maybe a picture of Bin Laden behind her. This would pretty much motivate the lot of them.
I don't get what the hell you're talking about. China is not a dictatorship
Oh really? You're one deluded dude. I especially like all the pro-CCP-dicatorship propaganda you have set as your home page - it makes you look really independent when you claim that China is... what exactly, if not a dictatorship? Please tell. Actually, don't bother. Think about it to yourself. I already know the answer, and if you can't bring yourself to admit it, I'm not really interested in hearing how great China is from a rabidly pro-dictatorship wheeler and dealer.
Oh dear. Even the Chinese are buying the US trash about the war on terror. But then, you're not a typical Chinese, are you? You're in with the dictatorship. I suppose it suits your purpose to support the whole 'war on terror' ideology. I think you need to worry less about Islam, and more about your own government. Try reading some Marx and Lenin, and get a grip on what socialism is really about, and then have a good look at the pathetic excuse for a social system in your own country.
Developing robots for urban warfare isn't exactly going to decrease civilian deaths or injuries. It's going to increase them. The only thing it will decrease is the reports of dead US soliders. A great example of the twisted focus on 'our' deaths came recently here in Australia. The 2nd Australian solider was killed in Afghanistan. Absolutely everyone on the mainstream media and 2-party political system is falling over themselves to declare our fallen solider a hero. But no-one ever talks about the thousands of hero is Afghanistan, such as men, women and children who 'soldier on' after having their loved ones killed and injured, and classified as 'collateral damage'. These are the real heroes - the innocent civilians who face incredible hardship precisely because of our military and economic meddling in their country. Instead of developing better killing systems, we should develop a more just society. To all those drones protest that we need to fight terrorism - get a grip - we're creating the terrorism. Remove the cause, and the symptom will disintegrate.
While it's logical and not surprising, I find it quite shocking to see them be so cavalier, and even hypocritical, about it.
Greenpeace needs media attention. Since they're not exactly best of friends with big business, it's really no surprise at all that they try to leverage whatever they can to thrust themselves into the spotlight. If they didn't take this approach, they wouldn't reach as many people. Reaching as many people as possible is the name of the game. There are bad ways of doing this ( email spam, fax spam, 'market researchers' calling at dinner time ), and there are creative ways of doing this. Apple are in the spotlight, and are fair game.
When the political party I'm in ( http://www.iso.org.au - a revolutionary socialist party ) puts candidates up for election, one of the conditions that they're bound by is that they're instantly recallable by an internal party vote ( another is that their salary is something like 25% above the minimum wage ).
We also argue in taking this a step further, and making ALL politicians recallable by a popular vote. Politicians shouldn't be making policy. They should be implementing policy that we make. That's the whole point of democracy - that people have a say in how things are run... and NOT that people get to vote for those who have a say in how things are run. In this light, politicians are in fact a barrier between us and the decision-making process, and not there to facilitate democracy at all.
So yes, I think it certainly SHOULD be enshrined into law that if administrators ( we're getting rid of politicians ) don't do what they're installed to do, then they get removed and face a law-suit. Sounds good to me.
Failing this, I think that Senator Online is a brilliant step in this direction, and in fact side-stepping the whole idea of politicians who push their own policy. It's lateral thinking, and it might just work.
PLEASE, PLEASE look at Lotus Approach. The interface is crisp, thin, lean, flexible, and feature-rich.
HUH? I found some screenshots. Approach reminds me of Access, and not a recent Access, but v2.0 of it. Trust me, leave this garbage behind. Gtk2 has *much* better UI design, including dropping the tired fixed-positioning in favour of dynamically resizing widgets, which really makes a huge difference.
Obviously I haven't actually *used* Approach, because:
a) I don't have a Windows PC b) I'm not interested in Windows-only software c) I don't need to pay anyone money for database software - my own suits my needs perfectly
But anyway, the looks didn't impress me. Admittedly I couldn't actually find screenshots on the software's official homepage, but I found one on a wikipedia page.
Also others have noted, giving end-users the ability to create database forms is a recipe for disaster. My target market is other developers.
On a personal note, I'm disappointed that it is written in Perl and the author thinks that Python has some "very strange ideas" such as "everything is an object" (OO languages aren't strange anymore). Makes me scared of what the code looks like underneath, but honestly, if it works and works WELL than I don't really care unless I have to dig in and change something. (o:
WTF dude? This is the 2nd post that's complained about my attitude to OO languages, whereas I said nothing of the sort. I said that Python is anal. It is. If you take a look at the changelogs for a lot of projects, particularly smaller projects ( and I'm thinking Enlightenment-0.17 particularly ), almost half of the changes are people reformatting code. They like it like that. In my opinion, while they're not being particularly productive, this is their God-given right... to format their code in the way they like. The mere fact that they are doing this suggests that there are differing styles of formatting. Great. Now I openly admit that I have my own code formatting conventions, and they're not exactly like other Perl programmers. To be honest, I probably format my code a lot more like a Python programmer! BUT, and this is important... I absolutely insist that I be allowed to format my code how I want, and not how someone else has decreed. I insist. And if the Python developers want to be so anal about their preferred code formatting, then they're lost my interest. It's as simple as that. None of this has anything to do with OO programming. It's about formatting. It's not the most important issue when choosing a language, but it rubbed me up the wrong way when I was investigating languages, whereas Perl seemed to fit like an old glove. So bye-bye Python.
As for your app, assuming you are actually using object-oriented development under the hood -- the fact that you were scared by an "everything is an object" language scares me, frankly -- it looks like it could be VERY interesting.
Yes of course it's all OO under the hood. I didn't make any reference to being scared about Python's OO nature, I simply stated that I don't like anal constraints, such us those on code formatting. I've seen some pretty strangely formatted code in my time - everyone has their own style. I didn't like Python's style, and since I didn't have an option, I didn't pursue it. Perl appeared to do everything that Python could do, plus some good friends programmed in Perl, so I could work on stuff with them, plus the Perl community is huge compared to the Python community. There were plenty of reasons. There still are.
Any plans for a web interface?
No. Web 'interfaces' suck. Read the 'forms' and 'datasheets' page on my website. I've spent a hell of a lot of time making sure the libraries will work well over slow network connections. Gtk2::Ex::DBI has built-in record paging ( which I hacked into it with a plain-text editor when I was on holiday in Cambodia ). Gtk2::Ex::Datasheet::DBI stores all data in the treemodel while you're working on it, and you send back big chunks of updates ( and / or inserts ) when you're done. So both work very well remotely. I realise that you need to install some libraries on the client PCs, whereas with a web-based solution you wouldn't have to, but frankly, it's more than work it, just for the incredible control over the GUI and huge feature-set that it brings. If someone wants to try to add a web interface, then they're more than welcome to, but it's not something I've ever seriously considered. I have written a PHP-based CRM package for our sales team, largely because they work from home ( and all around Australia ), and they also don't last long, so we're *always* getting new salespeople. It would be handy in this case, but still, a huge majority of my work is in a rich GUI environment like Gtk2, and I really like it this way.
Slashdot Mirror
OOOoooo great argument, AC. Right up there with the literary best.
Bullshit. Why the need for containment then? Why don't you make products out of it, and sell it to fucking idiots such as yourself? Oh, so it's too radioactive for YOU to go anywhere near, but you can dump it somewhere else and it will be OK?
1) I'm not a fucking Yank
2) I've studied high school physics, and did quite well too
3) Perhaps YOU should study some physics
Great. But in the US, it'll never happen. But great so far.
Also great. But again, the US will never do it.
OOooo yeah baby!
There's no blanket rejection of hydro. In some cases, it makes a lot of sense. It's just that in others, it doesn't. There are forms of hydro that don't include dams on rivers. Wave generators, for example.
Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on this one. Talk to ANY environmental activist, and they'll bring up wind power. I just went on the Walk Against Warming march in Sydney on the weekend ( 30,000 here, 30,000 in Melbourne, approx 150,000 Australia-wide ). The place was literally covered with windmill things on poles, and Greens banners. It was amazing. I think the only people who complain about wind are actually arsewipes from the big oil & nuclear industry, trying to throw a spanner in the works. NO serious environmentalist brings up the issues in your point.
That's where it falls apart completely.
1) We don't have any technology that will last more than a couple of hundred years. Nuclear waste lasts for millions of years. We simply can't contain it.
2) Forgetting point 1 for a second, WHO exactly is responsible for the waste? A corporation like Enron? Do you realise that ALL corporations are like Enron, or at least similar enough not to matter? The waste will be around LONG after the corporations that profited from the mining and power conversion have closed up shop and left the country. This means that the responsibility will then fall back onto ordinary people. We'll have to pay taxes for MILLIONS of years to maintain the containment of waste which most people never benefited from, because they weren't around then. In particular, they weren't around then to MAKE THE DECISION, so why should they be responsible?
That pretty much sums up the problems with nuclear ( other than the weapons side, which I've addressed briefly in other posts ). Nuclear is all about short-term profits, and long-term irresponsibility. That's exactly how we got to where we are with CO2-based climate change. Do we really want to fuck ourselves and all future generations up the arse with nuclear waste as well? I really, really hope not, but there are a few very greedy people, and then there are lot of idiots who buy what they say
We don't need nuclear. Nuclear is the dirtiest of all known fuel sources, NOT the cleanest. The waste remains deadly for hundreds of thousands of years.
The simple truth is that we don't need nuclear, much the same as we don't need fossil fuels. Using totally clean, renewable resources is well within our technological reach.
The problem is with renewable technology is that it takes the market away from the current big players. The oil, coil, and nuclear industry are all based on the same basic process:
- bribe the government so they let you mine the resources you want
- claim the resource as your own, as if you have some sort of actual legitimate right to it
- convert the resource into power
- dump the waste without any thought as to the consequences
A switch to renewable energy undermines this model completely, as the resource is coming at us from the sun, and it's quite distributed in nature. That means that it favors distributed capture and conversion into usable energy. For the big energy companies, this is simply not on.
What's more, renewable energies scale up and down extremely well. This means that instead of requiring massive capital investment to get a huge power plant working, a local community can install solar, wind, etc generators, and bring them online as required. For the big energy companies, this is REALLY not on. And they'll fight with everything they've got to make sure it doesn't happen.
Right now, the battle is in convincing people that renewables are a viable solution. The energy industry would have us believe that this solution doesn't exist, and that we have to keep burning fossil fuels, and then switch to nuclear. BULLSHIT! We need to invest seriously in renewables, and leave the toxic fossil fuel and nuclear energy and weapons industry in the past.
This brings me to the final point: that nuclear energy == nuclear weapons. In most nuclear countries, the US included, there is NO separation between the so-called civilian and military nuclear fuel cycle. While we have nuclear energy, we'll have nuclear weapons. While we have both these abominations, we'll have nuclear waste, accidents, horrific damage to the environment, and possibly a world-wide nuclear catastrophe. It doesn't take much to cover the world in radioactive dust. And what do we do then?
Well, that in itself is a pretty radical step. It basically points towards collective ownership, because capital accumulation is required for large projects. If you get rid of corporations ( which I agree that we should ), the state is the only other entity that can take their place.
So I'm not really sure that your 'hybird' system is very hybrid. It sounds like a good socialist model to me.
I have a single moderation point left, but I think I'd prefer to respond personally and congratulate you on your insight :)
So shake your head at me :)
This is not what I was attempting to demonstrate. This line of criticism comes from a capitalist point of view, ie self-criticism. What I'm pointing out is that despite the mantra about how capitalism == competition == good, what in fact happens is the emergence of monopolies and imperial powers.
OK. I am in fact advocating an international socialist revolution ( attention CIA: watch this space! ). And you are correct that this state-based ownership model would make owning the means of production illegal, which is subtly different from 'starting a business'. For democracy to work, people have to have collective ownership of the means of production, and resources. Once you allow private ownership of these, you throw democratic control out the window.
As a simple example, imagine a country that has enough resources to achieve in 1 year:
Alternative 1)
- build 10,000,000 cars for export
- mine 10,000,000 tonnes of coal for export
- build new missile defense system
Alternative 2)
- replace 30% of fossil-fuel power stations with renewable
- 300% increase in public education spending
- convert 50% of farms to organic, dramatically increasing life expectancy
We all know which scenario will happen under capitalism, because there's simply far more money to be made in Alternative 1. You can argue with me over whether either alternative is sustainable in the long term. But the point is that under capitalism, no-one EVER asks us what we want. We are presented with the goods that the capitalists guess will make them the most money. How is this democratic?
You see, my idea of democracy is not voting for one dick-head over some arse-wipe every 3 to 4 years. I'm not interested in politicians. Democracy is not about politicians. It's about decision-making. It's not about some nebulous list of promises made by politicians in an election campaign. It's about people getting together in community groups, and making decisions that are actually acted upon. This requires collective ownership, otherwise your decisions really amount to nothing, because you don't actually control anything. And please let's not suggest that we can legislate our way to heaven. Collective ownership isn't about somehow making enterprises less efficient. It's about making them do what we decide that we want them to do. The only people who would find this offensive are the current business owners, who will no longer profit from 'their' enterprise. Everyone else will see a massive increase in their standard of living, because profits will be reinvested in society
Sure. And when you hear people talking about public education, it's always the socialists saying that we need to invest more, and the capitalists saying that the government should back off and let the market provide, so people have 'choice'. But I agree 100% - we need people educated for it to work.
The boundary is quite blurred under capitalism. The problem with patents, or any other legislation that is thrust upon us, is that it's big business that choose our politicians. If there's a policy they want, they'll get it. Take 'Work Choices' here in Australia. Our government made no mention of this prior to the last election, and had NO mandate for industrial relations reform. But guess what we got when they were re-elected? Wholesale attacks on unions and the right to organise. Removal of award conditions. Anti-terror-style legislation to intimidate and coerce workers to inform on each other in industrial disputes.
Now, you could say that this is a failure of the political system. But on the other hand, this is coming to us direct from the economic system, which is short-circuiting the political system.
There's a difference between using slang and horribly butchering what you're saying to the extent that you're accidentally saying the exact opposite of what you mean.
I've noticed that a lot of Yanks have started the 'could care less' thing, so I thought I'd see how much thought process actually goes into it. Answer: zero.
Not if they're exposed to international markets.
The complete failure of Stalinism shows that you can't have 'socialism in a state'. It has to be international, for the same reasons that less profitable capitalist powers are doomed to assimilation - everyone has to compete with the most cut-throat capitalist.
As transitory systems, yes. But they aren't the end goal; just one possible means of getting there.
I accept this challenge then
All political systems can basically be split into 2 camps, based on who controls how society is run. I won't go into elaborate details about how socialism works, etc.
The main point, and this is something that Western society desperately needs to learn, is that money itself is an organising force. It attracts more money to itself, unless you specifically dis-allow this practice. What this means is that if you allow capitalism ( in particular private ownership of the means of production ), then you're on a very slippery slope towards Imperialism ( the highest form of capitalism ). This is because ANY allowances made to private ownership ( and control ) of capital will result in greater and greater collections of capital. Smaller capitalists will be swept up in the turmoil and you'll be left with huge monopolies. This is not a generalisation. This is what ALWAYS happens. It can't happen any other way. Survival under capitalism requires the capitalist to constantly profit, and to re-invest those profits to expand the business. Any capitalist who does not or can not do this will not remain a capitalist very long. Hence the constant trend towards fewer, larger capitalists. Hence larger barriers to entry for new competitors.
This is clearly what we see today. We have some token laws 'against' monopolies, but these are incredibly contradictory to the capitalist mantra, and are almost never enforced. Take Microsoft, for example. Microsoft is certainly not the only example though. Have you ever thought about starting your own oil drilling company? You can't, can you? Barriers to entry. What about a car company? Think you can navigate the patent mine-field just to produce an EFI system for an engine? You can't. Individuals can't enter any established industry. Large corporations with armies of lawyers can.
So getting back to the original point
Anything in-between is transitory. This is one of the key reasons why the remaining socialists call themselves internationalists - because we realise that there is no possible solution on a small scale - we'd be at the mercy of the world's imperial powers. The only solution is an international revolution. It may seem like a long shot, but just wait for the Oil Wars to ramp up a couple of notches, and the price of living to go through the roof in industrialised countries, and climate change to start biting
You mean you couldn't care less. If you say that you could care less, then it's clearly not at the bottom of your list of cares, or in other words, that you DO care about it.
Well said. It's a pity that the so-called 'war on drugs' turns into a war on truth, war on the poor, war on civil liberties, etc. The 'date rape drug' bit is especially distasteful, and as others have pointed out, the biggest date rape drug by far is alcohol, but no-ones trying to ban that, are they? Of course orweillian terminology is rampant in our society, eg:
- the war on drugs
- the war on terror
- the liberation of Iraq
- the pacification of Afghanistan
- the free market
All of these terms, of course, mean the exact opposite of what they would appear to on face value. Incidentally, all of them are fabulously profitable as well.
Hardly. We're in the Axis of Evil that invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. The US, UK and Australia consistently provoke international condemnation by supporting Israel, refusing to ratify Kyoto ( UK is off the hook here ), and 'leading' the war on terror. We're the world's hypocrites. Maybe you feel that other Westerners think highly of Australians, and that might be so, but if you ask people what they think of our foreign policy, it's a radically different story - particularly outside the Western world ( and lets be clear, most people in the world are not Westerners ).
As others have already pointed out, we have 40% of the world's uranium. The bloody oil wars that we're seeing in the Middle East are a walk in the park compared to the coming uranium wars
Bullshit. Every single time Australia has asked for US military assistance, it's been denied. Admittedly, none of these requests have been for defence. But then keep in mind the US entered WWII incredibly late
I thought our politicians only saw it fit to buy decommissioned US junk, such as 30 year-old helicopters, and the odd fleet of dud tanks and fighter jets. Perhaps this is Howard's idea of renewable resources. Personally, I'd rather just put the grunts put to work in a more economic - imagine how much clean energy we could produce if we took our soldiers from the bloodbaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, and lined them up in a big grid of treadmill generators. We could put a picture of Kylie Minogue in front of them, and maybe a picture of Bin Laden behind her. This would pretty much motivate the lot of them.
Oh really? You're one deluded dude. I especially like all the pro-CCP-dicatorship propaganda you have set as your home page - it makes you look really independent when you claim that China is
Oh dear. Even the Chinese are buying the US trash about the war on terror. But then, you're not a typical Chinese, are you? You're in with the dictatorship. I suppose it suits your purpose to support the whole 'war on terror' ideology. I think you need to worry less about Islam, and more about your own government. Try reading some Marx and Lenin, and get a grip on what socialism is really about, and then have a good look at the pathetic excuse for a social system in your own country.
Developing robots for urban warfare isn't exactly going to decrease civilian deaths or injuries. It's going to increase them. The only thing it will decrease is the reports of dead US soliders. A great example of the twisted focus on 'our' deaths came recently here in Australia. The 2nd Australian solider was killed in Afghanistan. Absolutely everyone on the mainstream media and 2-party political system is falling over themselves to declare our fallen solider a hero. But no-one ever talks about the thousands of hero is Afghanistan, such as men, women and children who 'soldier on' after having their loved ones killed and injured, and classified as 'collateral damage'. These are the real heroes - the innocent civilians who face incredible hardship precisely because of our military and economic meddling in their country. Instead of developing better killing systems, we should develop a more just society. To all those drones protest that we need to fight terrorism - get a grip - we're creating the terrorism. Remove the cause, and the symptom will disintegrate.
Greenpeace needs media attention. Since they're not exactly best of friends with big business, it's really no surprise at all that they try to leverage whatever they can to thrust themselves into the spotlight. If they didn't take this approach, they wouldn't reach as many people. Reaching as many people as possible is the name of the game. There are bad ways of doing this ( email spam, fax spam, 'market researchers' calling at dinner time ), and there are creative ways of doing this. Apple are in the spotlight, and are fair game.
When the political party I'm in ( http://www.iso.org.au - a revolutionary socialist party ) puts candidates up for election, one of the conditions that they're bound by is that they're instantly recallable by an internal party vote ( another is that their salary is something like 25% above the minimum wage ).
... and NOT that people get to vote for those who have a say in how things are run. In this light, politicians are in fact a barrier between us and the decision-making process, and not there to facilitate democracy at all.
We also argue in taking this a step further, and making ALL politicians recallable by a popular vote. Politicians shouldn't be making policy. They should be implementing policy that we make. That's the whole point of democracy - that people have a say in how things are run
So yes, I think it certainly SHOULD be enshrined into law that if administrators ( we're getting rid of politicians ) don't do what they're installed to do, then they get removed and face a law-suit. Sounds good to me.
Failing this, I think that Senator Online is a brilliant step in this direction, and in fact side-stepping the whole idea of politicians who push their own policy. It's lateral thinking, and it might just work.
HUH? I found some screenshots. Approach reminds me of Access, and not a recent Access, but v2.0 of it. Trust me, leave this garbage behind. Gtk2 has *much* better UI design, including dropping the tired fixed-positioning in favour of dynamically resizing widgets, which really makes a huge difference.
Obviously I haven't actually *used* Approach, because:
a) I don't have a Windows PC
b) I'm not interested in Windows-only software
c) I don't need to pay anyone money for database software - my own suits my needs perfectly
But anyway, the looks didn't impress me. Admittedly I couldn't actually find screenshots on the software's official homepage, but I found one on a wikipedia page.
Also others have noted, giving end-users the ability to create database forms is a recipe for disaster. My target market is other developers.
WTF dude? This is the 2nd post that's complained about my attitude to OO languages, whereas I said nothing of the sort. I said that Python is anal. It is. If you take a look at the changelogs for a lot of projects, particularly smaller projects ( and I'm thinking Enlightenment-0.17 particularly ), almost half of the changes are people reformatting code. They like it like that. In my opinion, while they're not being particularly productive, this is their God-given right
Yes of course it's all OO under the hood. I didn't make any reference to being scared about Python's OO nature, I simply stated that I don't like anal constraints, such us those on code formatting. I've seen some pretty strangely formatted code in my time - everyone has their own style. I didn't like Python's style, and since I didn't have an option, I didn't pursue it. Perl appeared to do everything that Python could do, plus some good friends programmed in Perl, so I could work on stuff with them, plus the Perl community is huge compared to the Python community. There were plenty of reasons. There still are.
No. Web 'interfaces' suck. Read the 'forms' and 'datasheets' page on my website. I've spent a hell of a lot of time making sure the libraries will work well over slow network connections. Gtk2::Ex::DBI has built-in record paging ( which I hacked into it with a plain-text editor when I was on holiday in Cambodia ). Gtk2::Ex::Datasheet::DBI stores all data in the treemodel while you're working on it, and you send back big chunks of updates ( and / or inserts ) when you're done. So both work very well remotely. I realise that you need to install some libraries on the client PCs, whereas with a web-based solution you wouldn't have to, but frankly, it's more than work it, just for the incredible control over the GUI and huge feature-set that it brings. If someone wants to try to add a web interface, then they're more than welcome to, but it's not something I've ever seriously considered. I have written a PHP-based CRM package for our sales team, largely because they work from home ( and all around Australia ), and they also don't last long, so we're *always* getting new salespeople. It would be handy in this case, but still, a huge majority of my work is in a rich GUI environment like Gtk2, and I really like it this way.
Actually, it was basically abandoned after Access 2.0. What's been added since then ( apart from Product Activation )?.