"And why should the rest of the world have to rely on the word of a country that is still socially largely in the middle ages (support for unilateral wars of aggression, summary torture and execution of prisoners of war, mass civilian slaughter.. aka collatoral damage..., support for capital punishment, etc etc) that it won't use its power against us?"
Because that culturally archaic nation is the only one that has stated very clearly and succinctly that it doesn't if you write scathing internet postings about how much you hate "unilateral wars of aggression, summary torture and execution of prisoners of war, mass civilian slaughter.. aka collatoral damage..., support for capital punishment, etc etc".
When the rest of the world can promise to steward the internet in the style that America has, namely by not using their control over ICANN to in any way to disrupt the free flow of information and speech even when it violates their own laws, they can have it. Until that time, the rest of the world is just going to have to suffer with it being a pain in the ass to disrupt the freedom of speech, the free flow of information, and lack of taxes. If they want to control the internet, they are just going to have to do it the old fashion way. If you need help, give Iran or China a call. I am sure they would be more then happy to help filter out all that undesirable information. Don't like how the US is not helping disrupting the free flow of information? Build your own internet. The US is not forcing anyone to point towards their servers.
Sadly, a super majority of the population is not against drug tests. Most people give up the drugs when they get out of college. Passing a drug test is trivial if you don't do any, hence no real big concern. As to the ability to firing employees at will, there are some serious advantages to this practice that make this a much less black and white issue. Most notably, it makes American companies much leaner and more agile in the market. It also makes American companies much more willing to hire people. If they can fire you quickly of conditions change, they are far more likely to hire you in the first place. It is a trade off between job security and the ease of finding a job in the first place. You should also realize that firing someone for discriminatory reasons is as illegal in the US as it is for Europe.
Genetic discrimination on the other hand is a pretty clear cut situation. There is a super majority that recoils at the idea for good reason. The entire concept of genetic discrimination being nothing but pure evil is pretty deeply ingrained into the American psyche. The idea that an individual should be judged on their merits is a very core American value. The politician who votes for allowing genetic discrimination is going find himself jobless the next time an election comes around.
Really people, you are so full of doom and gloom you fail to see the good when it is right in front of your nose. The world is not one big black pit of despair. Life is good, your belly is full, you are going to live a long time, and no one is going to stop you from posting whatever you damn well please on Slashdot.
Pointing out that a vaguely totalitarian government that switched from being a communist state to an oligarchy is failing is not exactly a damning indictment of capitalism. The transition away from a planned economy was done in a terribly manner that let a few basically loot whatever wealth Russia had left over from its collapse. Russia's "managed democracy" as Putin likes to call it ensures the continuation of an oligarchy and cripples the democratic mechanisms of the nation that are supposed to act as a check against such blatant abuse. You don't need to argue with me that the current oligarchy held intact by Russia's "managed Democracy" has utterly failed the Russian people.
The Soviet Union's economy was never good. It was always terribly inefficient. Was the West scared shitless of the Soviet economy? Hell yes. Why? The West was convinced that the Soviet economy was kicking ass for the same reason why the Soviet's thought it was kicking ass right up to the point where it collapsed. The West was using spies to read the same economic reports that the Soviet leaders were reading. The problem of course was that economic reports were pure works of fiction. Soviet factories massively over reported their productivity to appease politicians.
As to starvation of the Soviet Union, it is true that the Soviet Union had all but eliminated starvation by the 80's. Of course, this had more to do with the fact that it was because they had all but abandoned collective farming and received large amounts of food aid from the West then the efficiency of planned economies.
Whatever the case, comparing the Soviet Union to the Russia of today and using that as proof that democracy and capitalism are failed systems is at best dishonest. Russia is not a democracy and it isn't a free market. Russia is closer to the Chinese system then it is to the American or European system.
I think your outlook is a little paranoid. The US and Europe are democracies. The nice thing about democracies is that they tend to outlaw things that the entire society consider unacceptable. I think you will find very few takers that will be for genetic discrimination, and plenty of people who will oppose it. It is only going to take one scandal where a company uses some for of genetic screening for attention to be brought to the practice and a law being enacting to make it illegal.
Shit, someone should have told the USSR and communist China that public ownership produces an economy of pure pwn4g3. It seems that the USSR got confused and collapsed despite the dandy state of its public economy in the early 90's. China on the other hand apparently forgot to tell its people that they are in fact not starving to death in the 60's and 70's because of their marvelous collective command economy. For some reason they got it in their head that millions were dying as their economy fail to provide the trivial basics, like food.
Command economies are a quick and easy way to mass starvation and crippling economic devastation.
You miss my point. My point is not if Google is good or bad. My point is that nationalizing successful companies at their peak while they are doing a perfectly good job at what they do is like shooting the market in the head and throwing the body into a pit of spikes. Arbitrarily nationalization any business that is doing good kills all entrepreneurial drive. You might as well tell all the entrepreneurs and people willing to take a risk to invest in such start ups to go fuck themselves. No sane entrepreneur or venture capitalist would spend a second in a market where the government punishes anyone who does well by seizing their business. No sane person would start a business in the US. Hell, they would move to Europe to start businesses.
You know your economic policy is broken when people flee to Europe to avoid nationalization.
That said, all of this is moot. The president who would authorized the nationalization of Google or any successful startup without it being a matter of life and death would be executed by the market, then executed by the public for fucking up the market so badly.
Nationalize Google? Are you joking me or just insane? You want to take one of the most innovative and successful companies that the US has right now a nationalize it!?
I have a better idea, how about you just send out a government hit squad to kill to put a bullet between the eyes of single entrepreneur in the US. It will accomplish the same sort of freeze in the growth of innovative small businesses but look far less insane.
Dude, Buy or build a DVR. Then you can wait and watch the whole season when you have a spare saturday.
My argument is that I don't have alternatives. I do, and I use them. Like I said, I missed a solid 4 episodes of BSG during season 2. I just downloaded them. Yeah, I could have also recorded them too. There are alternatives for sure. My bigger point is that I would have been more then happy to simply pay for it. Right now, when I miss an episode, no one gets any money when I do a work around to get it. If whoever is in control of how the show is aired simply had the wit to throw the show up to buy, I would give them money.
They can either get money and I watch the show, or not get money and I watch the show. Hell, make it so that I only have rights to it for a few days if they are terrified I won't buy the DvDs. Just stop being stupid and take the money I am offering.
Growth rate of US economy: not much. A few percent possibly. Growth rate of China's economy: huge. About 11% IIRC.
Which means China is on course to become the largest economy in the world in about 30 years' time. (Figures all OTOH, but there or thereabouts.)
Err. No. If you see a linear trend line, it is generally foolish to extrapolate out that trend line 30 years. China has and will continue to see a lot of growth. Thinking that they are going to maintain 11% growth for the next 30 years on the other hand is close to insane.
People don't realize this, but business in China has a LOT of problems. The most obvious problems are the extremely high level of corruption and constant government meddling. China has a lot of people just starting to get out of third world style poverty and very cheap labor, but it isn't the business utopia people seem to think it is.
One of the other little talked about problems with China is their gross inefficiency. When the oil crunch comes, China and the developing world are going to be the ones to be hit the hardest. Granted, the first world will feel the burn too, especially in the indirect cost of having the developing world's economies getting a good shaking, but the pain in places like China will be much greater. The amount of oil it takes to grow the GDP in china 1% is significantly higher then that of US, and higher still then places like Europe and Japan.
I am not saying China can't become a super power, but it has some very serious hurdles to overcome first. China is still a mess politically, they are extremely bureaucratic and corrupt, their market is riding essentially only on the fact that they have cheap labor and a billion potential consumers, and their levels of oil consumption per percent of growth of the GDP makes the US look down right green. China has its share of problems. Boiling down China's rise as a super power to seeing a 11% growth rate is a naïvely simplistic way of examining the issue.
$5 is not a big deal to me. That is half the cost of a movie. Guess what? I would gladly watch two eposides (2 hours) of BSG over the usual shit 2 hour movies that get pumped out. Yes, I absolutely would pay $5 to see a BSG episode I missed. I am not the only one. Hell, there are plenty of people that would pay up to see their favorite shows simply because they don't know how to pirate.
Maybe the price isn't $5. Maybe it it is $2 or $3. Figuring out the price is some marketers job. Whatever the case, I WILL pay to see some shows, and I will almost certainly pay more to see those shows then they will ever make per person in terms of advertising. It is absolutely silly to refuse selling the show. The show is already pirated, pure and simple. They can either sell their non-pirated copy or people can download the pirated version. Like I said, look at iTunes. People WILL pay just to avoid the hassle of pirating.
You must be under 20 and completely uneducated in what happened during the cold war. The USSR didn't make the US 'stay at home'. The USSR made the US fucking bat shit crazy. Everything could go to hell in Iraq, and unless you live there, you wouldn't notice. During cold war though, if JFK had pushed the Soviets any harder during the Cuban missile crisis... well, you would have noticed the big ugly radioactive cloud that would encircle the earth and exterminate all human life. During the cold war everyone and their dog got guns from the US and the USSR to kill each other with. You think the US is meddlesome today and that during the Cold War the USSR kept that meddling in check? Try opening up a history book. The suffering the rest of the world had to endure as the US and USSR fought the Cold War makes these days look like a fucking utopia.
The US is meddlesome to be sure, but kicking over a theocracy and a dictatorship hardly qualifies as the high point in US meddling. I would consider the high point of US meddling being the time when entire world was split between US allies, USSR allies, and the poor dumb bastards in the middle. Me personally? I do not long for the good old days of literally countless military coos, toppled governments, rebels serving as proxy armies, and two nations pointing enough nukes at each other to kill everyone else in the world with just with the indirect radiation cloud and nuclear winter caused if the two ever went to war.
Honestly people, I know it is cool to say the US and Bush = sux0r, but get a fucking grip on reality. This is by not stretch of imagination the worst time in history. It isn't even the worst time in the past 50 years. This is just another minor hiccup that the people will forget roughly as quickly as they forgot the wars the US had in Serbia, Bosnia, Granada, Panama, Korea, Lebanon, exc, exc.
I'll believe anyone intends to give a shit about what is going on right now the second someone shows me that they gave a shit about all the other dozens of wars that have been fought. I am not saying what is going on right now is right. I am saying that wishing for the 'good old days' of the Cold War like it was a time of peace and tranquility is fucking stupid.
I personally think that the parent makes a good point. I liked both Enterprise and Firefly. My problem what that I just can't live by the damn TVs schedule. I am far too busy to be tied to a certain hour each week. Further, I really only want to see the show in order. This is exactly who I was more then happy to shell over money to Netflixs to see Enterprise and Firefly. Yes, I could have easily pirated both of those shows, but if you give me an easy way to pay for them, I am will happily take it.
Now, take Battle Star Galactica (BSG). I love the show. It is the first show in a very long time that I have tried to sit down and watch every single show. The biggest problem is that some times I miss a show. Once I miss a show I can either
A) Wait for rerun and watch the shows out of order B) Wait for the DvD to come out. C) Just go download it so that I can watch the next show in order.
Guess which one I pick?
I would be MORE then happy to shell out $5 to simply not go through the bother of getting it via bit-torrent and all the irritation that finding a decent connection can bring. Hell, I would pay them $5 to get tracker from their website and get the double satisfaction of gettin the show easily AND contributing more money then they make on commercials per person. They could even kill me access to the video after a week or two and I wouldn't be upset.
They don't though. If I miss an episode, the only option I have is to go pirate it. If some stupid bastard would simply let me give them my money, I would.
These businesses vastly underestimate how much people will pay for convince. iTunes is a perfect example. You can get anything you can get on iTunes via pirating. Yet iTunes some how manages to do AMAZING business. Why? If given the choice between shelling out a few dollars or pirating, most people will shell out a few bucks. Will there be people who pirate anyways? Sure. Who cares about them? Think of all the other dumb bastards that are aching to give you money if you would just FSUCKING take it.
Guys, everyone calm the hell down. This clearly is NOT from the RIAA as numerous posts have claimed. Just listen to the lines he has used. Look at the evidence.
But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare. Isn't this missing a "Dun dun duuhn!" sound effect?
"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away." "Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect." Clearly, the kids are getting a l33t Christian rock CD, like all video gamers. Totally Xtreme (too extreme for an E) dood!.
They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy? +1 irony
This evening, my daughters asked me. "Why do the other kids laugh at us?" I wanted to tell them the truth - it's because they wear old clothes and have cheap haircuts. I can't afford anything better for them right now. Corny lines... come on people, you must be feeling who is behind this silly post by now. It is at the tip of your tongue...
When my girls ask me questions like that, I feel like my heart is being wrenched out of my chest. Dramatic pause... come on people, you KNOW who wrote this.
I just shook my head, and tried to hold back the tears. "I don't know, Jenny. I don't know."
If this doesn't give away who wrote this, NOTHING will. Even the RIAA could not come up with such a cliche and corney line. There is only ONE culprete he could dredge up such a crappy plot with terrible dialoge. Hollywood! That is right, even the RIAA couldn't write such a horrible piece of fiction. Either that, or the RIAA hired out the guy who wrote Alien Vs Preditor to write this touching piece.
"How about this one though. Since WMA is supported in the iPod's hardware but is not enabled due to royalty issues, what's the excuse for other mp3 players who have AAC supported in hardware (yep, pretty much all of 'em) but don't enable that, even though no royalties are due?"
Uh, other MP3 players don't have AAC support because Apple won't let anyone else use it but them. If you recall, Apple threatend to sue Real when Real reverse engineered AAC so that they could break into the iPod market.
Anyone can use WMA. Not everyone can use Apple's format. If they could, everyone and their dog would be selling music for the iPod. So WMA has the ability to attach conditions to the music you are listening too. GOOD. I want a service that has the conditions of "you can load up as much as you want into your mp3 player, but you get you access cut if you drop the service". For someone who wants to actually explore music instead of downloading from my 'favorite' bands, that is a sweet deal. Exploring music at 1 dollar a pop is just flat out expensive and takes a gambling mentality. I don't want to own the damn music, I just want to listen to it and explore it. iTunes sucks at this, period.
I personally wish that instead of leveraging their near monopoly to drag everyone into the same pricing plan, Apple would open up and allow a plethora of pricing plans based upon the tastes of individual consumers.
It is up to them I suppose. I got my iPod as a gift, but you can be sure that my next purchased MP3 player won't be an iPod unless they open up, and it sure as hell won't be filled up with stuff from iTunes. It would be nice to have a pretty MP3 player with a slick interface, but
If you want an all you can eat subscription model, you ARE stuck if you have an iPod. Hell, you are not stuck with iTunes, you are just flat out stuck. This is what bothers me the most about my iPod. I don't buy music. I collect a pile of it, listen to it, and generally discard it. What I really want is something like Napster's or Real's "To Go" style where you pay a subscription fee for unliminted access to their library, but don't own any of it. For someone who wants to experiment wildly in music, $15 a month for all you can eat is a bargin.
I was all set to get a nice 5 gig Napster or Rhapsody compatable MP3 players, but my girlfriend bought me an iPod. Yeah, it is slick looking and has nice menus, but when it comes to functionality in terms of being an open system, it has some gapping holes in it. Most notably, it doesn't support WMA.
I just want an all you can eat service for my iPod. I don't give a damn who provides it. Hopefully Rhapsody will find a way to use Harmony to tell everyone to fuck off and offer the first all you can eat iPod service. I would take that in a second and never look back to Apple and their irritating closed system again.
You might be glad that apple is refusing to license out their FairPlay technology, but I sure as hell am not. Do you know what I really want? I want an all you can eat music buffet. I am more then happy to pay $15 a month to fill my iPod to the brim with new music. If I stop paying, they can cut me off. So it is like cable, only cheaper. I can live with that.
Two companies offer this. Neither of them will work with my iPod because Apple loves dishing out songs for a buck a hit. Bah. If I knew what I wanted, I wouldn't need an entire iPod full of music. Pay a buck per song when you just want to experiment and try new things is a joke. That is like paying for Cable TV by the show instead of a monthly 'all you can watch' deal. Paying by the show might work for the guy who just wants to see Friends and the nightly news, but for people who want to brows around it is a waste of money and an activity that has more to do with gambling rather then browsing.
The joke is on everyone else though. I compromised and just stop paying music for music. Now no one gets my dollar. I load up my iPod with a pile of RSS feeds and call it a day.
Wake me up when Apple pulls that stick out of their asses and realizes that one pricing scheme does not fit all. Apple is worse then Microsoft. At least Microsoft lets you use their DRM encrusted filth if you want to.
My money is on Real with their Rhapsody Harmony technology. Nothing like a little reverse engineering to say 'fuck you' to everyone.
A place like Microsoft is more likely to use a little discretion in its hiring of an advocate than the place that can't even afford to pay a lawyer.
A place like Microsoft goes to a respectable law firm that does corporate clients. The law firm then dolls out a lawyer they think can win the case. They do not send the lawyer in question a political questionnaire. They look at the lawyers records. In the case of Miers, it becomes readily apparent from a glance at her score card that she wins many cases.
You have a dramatically skewed view of how a corporate law firm works. Lawyers simply take cases, and clients simply take good lawyers. Good lawyers don't let their politics seep into their cases. This coincidently is also what makes a good judge. You want a person who has the ability to take on any case, do their best, and ignore their personal feelings on the matter. If the client can tell your political bias by looking at your case history, you are either working for an organization with a bias (like the ACLU, EFF, exc) or you have a bias. Microsoft doesn't want a sympathetic lawyer, they want a lawyer that wins.
Further, while it is true a lawyer can turn down any case, it is not common place, and it is rarely done over issues of conscience. One thing they beat into you all throughout law school is to ignore issues of conscience. If lawyers didn't do this, rapist and murders wouldn't have lawyers. I highly doubt Miers has ever turned down a case over an issue of conscience. When lawyers turn down cases, it is generally over money or what they think their ability to win is. That goes double and triple when talking about a law firm that deals in corporate law.
The types of cases Miers tells absolutely nothing about her potential bias. The only exception to this is what she does pro bono, and even then it is unwise to read too deeply into pro bono work. There are plenty of things to judge Miers over. Judge her over her effectiveness as a lawyer, the people she gives money to, her answer to Senate questions, and what people who work with her think of her. There is plenty to judge on. Judging on her on the cases she took in a corporate law firm is as silly as judging a doctor on the patients he operates on.
I think you answer your own complaint. Lawyers are like doctors. Doctors treat everyone, even rapist and murders. Lawyers are much the same. If anything, lawyers have an even more important ethical imperative then doctors. Everyone is entitled to representation. If tomorrow I am set up and wrongly accused of murdering someone, I sure as hell don't my lawyer to look at the facts, decide that I am probably guilty, and help the prosecutors put me away. Our justice system demands that my advocate represent me fully to the best of their abilities, regardless of their personal opinion.
Comparing engineers to lawyers is like comparing apples to oranges. Engineers are NOT duty bound to build anything they are told to. If your company tells you to build a nuclear bomb for a terrorist cell, you don't have some sacred duty to do it because you were order to do so. Lawyers on the other hand ARE duty bound to represent to the best of their abilities whomever the represent. Judges and juries are for deciding guilt and innocence. Lawyers are advocates sworn to represent their clients and specifically sworn to NOT judge.
A lawyer who tries to play judge will be disbarred, stripped of his ability to practice law, and very likely thrown in prison.
I hate to pop your argument, but Roberts also did free work for a gay rights organization and helped them to win an important ruling in gay rights that extended hate crime protection status to homosexuals. Are you saying that Roberts is a left wing liberal?
No, these lawyers really don't pick their cases. She was apart of a law firm. One day her boss came up to her and threw her a Microsoft case file and said, "this one is yours". She then went to work studying the law surrounding the case and came up with an argument to support them... just like any good lawyer would. That is the life inside of any generic law firm. Cases come and you take them. The people paying you know that you will do your best if for no other reason then to preserve your reputation. The entire idea that a lawyer MUST represent a client to the best of their ability is not only one of the core principles of the American judicial system, but failing to do so can get you disbarred. If you take a case and throw it, your ass is out on the street and you will never touch law again, period.
Seeing as she has absolutely no experience at all as a judge at any level how the hell else are we supposed to judge her? Looking at the cases and clients she worked for at least tells us something.
No, who her clients were and the cases she argued REALLY tell you absolutely nothing. That is like judging a doctor as a bad person for treating a mobster the police brought in. The doctor doesn't ask questions about the person is, he simply tries to apply the medicine as best he can, regardless of who they are. Lawyers are the exact same. If you work for a law firm and your boss gives you a case, you take it and represent them to the best of your abilities. Hell, the idea that everyone, even shitty people, gets legal representation is one of the core values of the American judicial system.
If she was given a Microsoft case and threw the case, then you are damn right you would have something to judge her on. She would have been disbarred and have absolutely zero chance a Supreme Court position.
All of that said, you can learn something of her abilities as a Justice from her past. First, if she was a good lawyer and argued logical cases, that says a lot about her. Someone who uses logical arguments to argue law is the kind of person you want to serve. If on the other hand she made emotional arguments and lost many cases, it would tell you that she is the sort of logical thinking law driven person that you would want to serve on the Supreme Court.
If it is her opinions you are after, then you will have to look outside of law. Does she contribute to certain charities? What is her reputation with the people whom she works with? Those sorts of questions are fair game. Finally, the Senate gets to question her. If they are doing their job, they should learn about how she intends to judge.
Finally, I would suggest all the democrats calm down. As far as anyone can tell, Bush picked someone who is moderate at best. Hell, up until the 90's she was a democrat. The far right is already looking a little pissed off about her nomination, which is a good sign. I personally think that in their loathing of Bush, democrats vastly underestimate what a moderate he is. Just because Democrats hate Bush doesn't make him right wing. I think democrats are confusing incompetent idiot for 'extreme right wing'. He might be an incompetent idiot, but being an incompetent idiot is a party neutral title. He pays lip service to the right, but if Roberts and Miers are what they appear to be, his heart seems to be firmly in the center. If Roberts and Miers turn out like what they appear to be, the Supreme Court just shifted LEFT, not right.
Democrats should crack open the Champaign because if these nominees turn out to be what they appear, the far right just lost big.
I think you are suffering from a pretty fundamental misunderstanding. If people are living 300+ years, they are not doing it in frail old bodies. Old people are old and frail because they are dying and their body is unable to renew itself. If people are living for 300+ years, it means that this entire problem has been solved one way or the other. You can't have a body that acts old and live forever. If your body DNA is degrading and you are spewing out cancer, your neurons are all dead, and you can't renew hear tissue and bone structures... guess what? You haven't found immortality.
If you live to be 300 years old, you will look and feel like a 30 year old. Let me tell you, THAT is something I could never get sick of. And hey, if I do get sick of it, I'll just kill myself. I would rather pick my own end then have then evolutions naturally intended limit.
Uploading yourself into a computer where suddenly all of your thoughts are a few orders faster, your memory is perfect, you can instantly access the collective knowledge of your civilization, and you can meld and perfectly understand anyone who is in a similar state of existance is going to change human nature. Hell, at that point I think it is safe to say that your motives are very likely to be very much inhuman (for better or for worse). I think that is one of the more intersting / scary aspects of singularity. Combine highly modified people and AIs with potentially completely alien intilligence, and you are talking about a very turbulent time.
I read the Age of Spirtual Machines and really enjoyed it. I think his time table might be a little too fast, but I don't think he is too terribly far off mark. The real issue I have with his writting is that he is so optimistic. Not that he has to be a downer, but I wouldn't mind it if he talked a little more about the ways it could all go to hell. It seems like he fully believes this singularity is coming, and he is hoping to hell that it is going to turn out okay. Singularities have a lot of unpleasent dead ends, paying them a little more lip services might not hurt. That said, I take his fatailistic view that if it is coming, it is coming, and there is nothing humanity is willing to do to stop it, so lets hope for the best.
I personally will read this new book of his. I might not agree with everything, but if it is anything like The Age of Spirtual Machines, it will be a fun read.
More likely, we would just automate more or let in more immigrants if suddenly everyone was highly educated. Unskilled labor is not terribly challenging to find in this world, especially if you are willing to offer first world pay. Personally, I see nothing wrong with driving the population towards more skilled jobs, all the while littling in unskilled labor. The unskilled labor gets better paying jobs then they could get in their homeland, and their kids get a crack at the high paying skilled jobs. Everyone wins and capitalism doesn't crumble.
The REAL problem is that the education system is disfunctional. Throw too many poor people at it, and it tends to crumble and grind out nothing but unskilled workers. 100 dollar computers might help, but the real problem is that at its core, the education system is broken. As to how in the hell you fix that? I'll be damned if I know. Funding is perhaps part of the problem, but I personally believe that there is some core defect to the system. Even well funded schools make their fair share of McDonald's workers. The largest issue probably has to do with the fact that the method of teaching that we have adopted is not the best method, and between Unions, the various levels of government, and poor imagination we have created a system that learns and changes at a snails pace. In a way this is good as it prevents radical changes that might render an entire class defective before trying something new, but on the other hand it means that even when the system has clearly failed, you continue to pump out rejects.
I have a feeling we will be uploading information directly to our head long before we find a way to 'fix' schools.
I have no real issue with the US being the ones not in control. My problem is the alternative. It isn't that I want the US in control, I just DON'T want the UN in control. In a body where Libya can be on any human rights body is one that is clearly broken. Handing off some of the control to free nations in Europe would be fine by me. Handing off control to Syria, Suadi Arabia, or China via the UN is a horrible idea.
That said, if you do a little research you will find that this is already close to the way things are. There are physical servers in the US, but there are also some in Asia and Europe. While the US might "techinically" control them, if the host nation wants to seize control because the US is doing something bad, I doubt there is much the US could do to stop them.
Want the US to not be the one's handling the Internet? Fine. Just pick some body other then the worthless UN.
Slashdot Mirror
"And why should the rest of the world have to rely on the word of a country that is still socially largely in the middle ages (support for unilateral wars of aggression, summary torture and execution of prisoners of war, mass civilian slaughter .. aka collatoral damage..., support for capital punishment, etc etc) that it won't use its power against us?"
.. aka collatoral damage..., support for capital punishment, etc etc".
Because that culturally archaic nation is the only one that has stated very clearly and succinctly that it doesn't if you write scathing internet postings about how much you hate "unilateral wars of aggression, summary torture and execution of prisoners of war, mass civilian slaughter
When the rest of the world can promise to steward the internet in the style that America has, namely by not using their control over ICANN to in any way to disrupt the free flow of information and speech even when it violates their own laws, they can have it. Until that time, the rest of the world is just going to have to suffer with it being a pain in the ass to disrupt the freedom of speech, the free flow of information, and lack of taxes. If they want to control the internet, they are just going to have to do it the old fashion way. If you need help, give Iran or China a call. I am sure they would be more then happy to help filter out all that undesirable information. Don't like how the US is not helping disrupting the free flow of information? Build your own internet. The US is not forcing anyone to point towards their servers.
Sadly, a super majority of the population is not against drug tests. Most people give up the drugs when they get out of college. Passing a drug test is trivial if you don't do any, hence no real big concern. As to the ability to firing employees at will, there are some serious advantages to this practice that make this a much less black and white issue. Most notably, it makes American companies much leaner and more agile in the market. It also makes American companies much more willing to hire people. If they can fire you quickly of conditions change, they are far more likely to hire you in the first place. It is a trade off between job security and the ease of finding a job in the first place. You should also realize that firing someone for discriminatory reasons is as illegal in the US as it is for Europe.
Genetic discrimination on the other hand is a pretty clear cut situation. There is a super majority that recoils at the idea for good reason. The entire concept of genetic discrimination being nothing but pure evil is pretty deeply ingrained into the American psyche. The idea that an individual should be judged on their merits is a very core American value. The politician who votes for allowing genetic discrimination is going find himself jobless the next time an election comes around.
Really people, you are so full of doom and gloom you fail to see the good when it is right in front of your nose. The world is not one big black pit of despair. Life is good, your belly is full, you are going to live a long time, and no one is going to stop you from posting whatever you damn well please on Slashdot.
Pointing out that a vaguely totalitarian government that switched from being a communist state to an oligarchy is failing is not exactly a damning indictment of capitalism. The transition away from a planned economy was done in a terribly manner that let a few basically loot whatever wealth Russia had left over from its collapse. Russia's "managed democracy" as Putin likes to call it ensures the continuation of an oligarchy and cripples the democratic mechanisms of the nation that are supposed to act as a check against such blatant abuse. You don't need to argue with me that the current oligarchy held intact by Russia's "managed Democracy" has utterly failed the Russian people.
The Soviet Union's economy was never good. It was always terribly inefficient. Was the West scared shitless of the Soviet economy? Hell yes. Why? The West was convinced that the Soviet economy was kicking ass for the same reason why the Soviet's thought it was kicking ass right up to the point where it collapsed. The West was using spies to read the same economic reports that the Soviet leaders were reading. The problem of course was that economic reports were pure works of fiction. Soviet factories massively over reported their productivity to appease politicians.
As to starvation of the Soviet Union, it is true that the Soviet Union had all but eliminated starvation by the 80's. Of course, this had more to do with the fact that it was because they had all but abandoned collective farming and received large amounts of food aid from the West then the efficiency of planned economies.
Whatever the case, comparing the Soviet Union to the Russia of today and using that as proof that democracy and capitalism are failed systems is at best dishonest. Russia is not a democracy and it isn't a free market. Russia is closer to the Chinese system then it is to the American or European system.
I think your outlook is a little paranoid. The US and Europe are democracies. The nice thing about democracies is that they tend to outlaw things that the entire society consider unacceptable. I think you will find very few takers that will be for genetic discrimination, and plenty of people who will oppose it. It is only going to take one scandal where a company uses some for of genetic screening for attention to be brought to the practice and a law being enacting to make it illegal.
Shit, someone should have told the USSR and communist China that public ownership produces an economy of pure pwn4g3. It seems that the USSR got confused and collapsed despite the dandy state of its public economy in the early 90's. China on the other hand apparently forgot to tell its people that they are in fact not starving to death in the 60's and 70's because of their marvelous collective command economy. For some reason they got it in their head that millions were dying as their economy fail to provide the trivial basics, like food.
Command economies are a quick and easy way to mass starvation and crippling economic devastation.
You miss my point. My point is not if Google is good or bad. My point is that nationalizing successful companies at their peak while they are doing a perfectly good job at what they do is like shooting the market in the head and throwing the body into a pit of spikes. Arbitrarily nationalization any business that is doing good kills all entrepreneurial drive. You might as well tell all the entrepreneurs and people willing to take a risk to invest in such start ups to go fuck themselves. No sane entrepreneur or venture capitalist would spend a second in a market where the government punishes anyone who does well by seizing their business. No sane person would start a business in the US. Hell, they would move to Europe to start businesses.
You know your economic policy is broken when people flee to Europe to avoid nationalization.
That said, all of this is moot. The president who would authorized the nationalization of Google or any successful startup without it being a matter of life and death would be executed by the market, then executed by the public for fucking up the market so badly.
Nationalize Google? Are you joking me or just insane? You want to take one of the most innovative and successful companies that the US has right now a nationalize it!?
I have a better idea, how about you just send out a government hit squad to kill to put a bullet between the eyes of single entrepreneur in the US. It will accomplish the same sort of freeze in the growth of innovative small businesses but look far less insane.
Dude, Buy or build a DVR. Then you can wait and watch the whole season when you have a spare saturday.
My argument is that I don't have alternatives. I do, and I use them. Like I said, I missed a solid 4 episodes of BSG during season 2. I just downloaded them. Yeah, I could have also recorded them too. There are alternatives for sure. My bigger point is that I would have been more then happy to simply pay for it. Right now, when I miss an episode, no one gets any money when I do a work around to get it. If whoever is in control of how the show is aired simply had the wit to throw the show up to buy, I would give them money.
They can either get money and I watch the show, or not get money and I watch the show. Hell, make it so that I only have rights to it for a few days if they are terrified I won't buy the DvDs. Just stop being stupid and take the money I am offering.
Growth rate of US economy: not much. A few percent possibly.
Growth rate of China's economy: huge. About 11% IIRC.
Which means China is on course to become the largest economy in the world in about 30 years' time. (Figures all OTOH, but there or thereabouts.)
Err. No. If you see a linear trend line, it is generally foolish to extrapolate out that trend line 30 years. China has and will continue to see a lot of growth. Thinking that they are going to maintain 11% growth for the next 30 years on the other hand is close to insane.
People don't realize this, but business in China has a LOT of problems. The most obvious problems are the extremely high level of corruption and constant government meddling. China has a lot of people just starting to get out of third world style poverty and very cheap labor, but it isn't the business utopia people seem to think it is.
One of the other little talked about problems with China is their gross inefficiency. When the oil crunch comes, China and the developing world are going to be the ones to be hit the hardest. Granted, the first world will feel the burn too, especially in the indirect cost of having the developing world's economies getting a good shaking, but the pain in places like China will be much greater. The amount of oil it takes to grow the GDP in china 1% is significantly higher then that of US, and higher still then places like Europe and Japan.
I am not saying China can't become a super power, but it has some very serious hurdles to overcome first. China is still a mess politically, they are extremely bureaucratic and corrupt, their market is riding essentially only on the fact that they have cheap labor and a billion potential consumers, and their levels of oil consumption per percent of growth of the GDP makes the US look down right green. China has its share of problems. Boiling down China's rise as a super power to seeing a 11% growth rate is a naïvely simplistic way of examining the issue.
$5 is not a big deal to me. That is half the cost of a movie. Guess what? I would gladly watch two eposides (2 hours) of BSG over the usual shit 2 hour movies that get pumped out. Yes, I absolutely would pay $5 to see a BSG episode I missed. I am not the only one. Hell, there are plenty of people that would pay up to see their favorite shows simply because they don't know how to pirate.
Maybe the price isn't $5. Maybe it it is $2 or $3. Figuring out the price is some marketers job. Whatever the case, I WILL pay to see some shows, and I will almost certainly pay more to see those shows then they will ever make per person in terms of advertising. It is absolutely silly to refuse selling the show. The show is already pirated, pure and simple. They can either sell their non-pirated copy or people can download the pirated version. Like I said, look at iTunes. People WILL pay just to avoid the hassle of pirating.
You must be under 20 and completely uneducated in what happened during the cold war. The USSR didn't make the US 'stay at home'. The USSR made the US fucking bat shit crazy. Everything could go to hell in Iraq, and unless you live there, you wouldn't notice. During cold war though, if JFK had pushed the Soviets any harder during the Cuban missile crisis... well, you would have noticed the big ugly radioactive cloud that would encircle the earth and exterminate all human life. During the cold war everyone and their dog got guns from the US and the USSR to kill each other with. You think the US is meddlesome today and that during the Cold War the USSR kept that meddling in check? Try opening up a history book. The suffering the rest of the world had to endure as the US and USSR fought the Cold War makes these days look like a fucking utopia.
The US is meddlesome to be sure, but kicking over a theocracy and a dictatorship hardly qualifies as the high point in US meddling. I would consider the high point of US meddling being the time when entire world was split between US allies, USSR allies, and the poor dumb bastards in the middle. Me personally? I do not long for the good old days of literally countless military coos, toppled governments, rebels serving as proxy armies, and two nations pointing enough nukes at each other to kill everyone else in the world with just with the indirect radiation cloud and nuclear winter caused if the two ever went to war.
Honestly people, I know it is cool to say the US and Bush = sux0r, but get a fucking grip on reality. This is by not stretch of imagination the worst time in history. It isn't even the worst time in the past 50 years. This is just another minor hiccup that the people will forget roughly as quickly as they forgot the wars the US had in Serbia, Bosnia, Granada, Panama, Korea, Lebanon, exc, exc.
I'll believe anyone intends to give a shit about what is going on right now the second someone shows me that they gave a shit about all the other dozens of wars that have been fought. I am not saying what is going on right now is right. I am saying that wishing for the 'good old days' of the Cold War like it was a time of peace and tranquility is fucking stupid.
I personally think that the parent makes a good point. I liked both Enterprise and Firefly. My problem what that I just can't live by the damn TVs schedule. I am far too busy to be tied to a certain hour each week. Further, I really only want to see the show in order. This is exactly who I was more then happy to shell over money to Netflixs to see Enterprise and Firefly. Yes, I could have easily pirated both of those shows, but if you give me an easy way to pay for them, I am will happily take it.
Now, take Battle Star Galactica (BSG). I love the show. It is the first show in a very long time that I have tried to sit down and watch every single show. The biggest problem is that some times I miss a show. Once I miss a show I can either
A) Wait for rerun and watch the shows out of order
B) Wait for the DvD to come out.
C) Just go download it so that I can watch the next show in order.
Guess which one I pick?
I would be MORE then happy to shell out $5 to simply not go through the bother of getting it via bit-torrent and all the irritation that finding a decent connection can bring. Hell, I would pay them $5 to get tracker from their website and get the double satisfaction of gettin the show easily AND contributing more money then they make on commercials per person. They could even kill me access to the video after a week or two and I wouldn't be upset.
They don't though. If I miss an episode, the only option I have is to go pirate it. If some stupid bastard would simply let me give them my money, I would.
These businesses vastly underestimate how much people will pay for convince. iTunes is a perfect example. You can get anything you can get on iTunes via pirating. Yet iTunes some how manages to do AMAZING business. Why? If given the choice between shelling out a few dollars or pirating, most people will shell out a few bucks. Will there be people who pirate anyways? Sure. Who cares about them? Think of all the other dumb bastards that are aching to give you money if you would just FSUCKING take it.
Guys, everyone calm the hell down. This clearly is NOT from the RIAA as numerous posts have claimed. Just listen to the lines he has used. Look at the evidence.
But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.
Isn't this missing a "Dun dun duuhn!" sound effect?
"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
Clearly, the kids are getting a l33t Christian rock CD, like all video gamers. Totally Xtreme (too extreme for an E) dood!.
They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?
+1 irony
This evening, my daughters asked me. "Why do the other kids laugh at us?"
I wanted to tell them the truth - it's because they wear old clothes and have cheap haircuts. I can't afford anything better for them right now.
Corny lines... come on people, you must be feeling who is behind this silly post by now. It is at the tip of your tongue...
When my girls ask me questions like that, I feel like my heart is being wrenched out of my chest.
Dramatic pause... come on people, you KNOW who wrote this.
I just shook my head, and tried to hold back the tears. "I don't know, Jenny. I don't know."
If this doesn't give away who wrote this, NOTHING will. Even the RIAA could not come up with such a cliche and corney line. There is only ONE culprete he could dredge up such a crappy plot with terrible dialoge. Hollywood! That is right, even the RIAA couldn't write such a horrible piece of fiction. Either that, or the RIAA hired out the guy who wrote Alien Vs Preditor to write this touching piece.
(psst, this is +1 funny mods)
"How about this one though. Since WMA is supported in the iPod's hardware but is not enabled due to royalty issues, what's the excuse for other mp3 players who have AAC supported in hardware (yep, pretty much all of 'em) but don't enable that, even though no royalties are due?"
Uh, other MP3 players don't have AAC support because Apple won't let anyone else use it but them. If you recall, Apple threatend to sue Real when Real reverse engineered AAC so that they could break into the iPod market.
yeah, because WMA is so open.
Anyone can use WMA. Not everyone can use Apple's format. If they could, everyone and their dog would be selling music for the iPod. So WMA has the ability to attach conditions to the music you are listening too. GOOD. I want a service that has the conditions of "you can load up as much as you want into your mp3 player, but you get you access cut if you drop the service". For someone who wants to actually explore music instead of downloading from my 'favorite' bands, that is a sweet deal. Exploring music at 1 dollar a pop is just flat out expensive and takes a gambling mentality. I don't want to own the damn music, I just want to listen to it and explore it. iTunes sucks at this, period.
I personally wish that instead of leveraging their near monopoly to drag everyone into the same pricing plan, Apple would open up and allow a plethora of pricing plans based upon the tastes of individual consumers.
It is up to them I suppose. I got my iPod as a gift, but you can be sure that my next purchased MP3 player won't be an iPod unless they open up, and it sure as hell won't be filled up with stuff from iTunes. It would be nice to have a pretty MP3 player with a slick interface, but
If you want an all you can eat subscription model, you ARE stuck if you have an iPod. Hell, you are not stuck with iTunes, you are just flat out stuck. This is what bothers me the most about my iPod. I don't buy music. I collect a pile of it, listen to it, and generally discard it. What I really want is something like Napster's or Real's "To Go" style where you pay a subscription fee for unliminted access to their library, but don't own any of it. For someone who wants to experiment wildly in music, $15 a month for all you can eat is a bargin.
I was all set to get a nice 5 gig Napster or Rhapsody compatable MP3 players, but my girlfriend bought me an iPod. Yeah, it is slick looking and has nice menus, but when it comes to functionality in terms of being an open system, it has some gapping holes in it. Most notably, it doesn't support WMA.
I just want an all you can eat service for my iPod. I don't give a damn who provides it. Hopefully Rhapsody will find a way to use Harmony to tell everyone to fuck off and offer the first all you can eat iPod service. I would take that in a second and never look back to Apple and their irritating closed system again.
You might be glad that apple is refusing to license out their FairPlay technology, but I sure as hell am not. Do you know what I really want? I want an all you can eat music buffet. I am more then happy to pay $15 a month to fill my iPod to the brim with new music. If I stop paying, they can cut me off. So it is like cable, only cheaper. I can live with that.
Two companies offer this. Neither of them will work with my iPod because Apple loves dishing out songs for a buck a hit. Bah. If I knew what I wanted, I wouldn't need an entire iPod full of music. Pay a buck per song when you just want to experiment and try new things is a joke. That is like paying for Cable TV by the show instead of a monthly 'all you can watch' deal. Paying by the show might work for the guy who just wants to see Friends and the nightly news, but for people who want to brows around it is a waste of money and an activity that has more to do with gambling rather then browsing.
The joke is on everyone else though. I compromised and just stop paying music for music. Now no one gets my dollar. I load up my iPod with a pile of RSS feeds and call it a day.
Wake me up when Apple pulls that stick out of their asses and realizes that one pricing scheme does not fit all. Apple is worse then Microsoft. At least Microsoft lets you use their DRM encrusted filth if you want to.
My money is on Real with their Rhapsody Harmony technology. Nothing like a little reverse engineering to say 'fuck you' to everyone.
A place like Microsoft is more likely to use a little discretion in its hiring of an advocate than the place that can't even afford to pay a lawyer.
A place like Microsoft goes to a respectable law firm that does corporate clients. The law firm then dolls out a lawyer they think can win the case. They do not send the lawyer in question a political questionnaire. They look at the lawyers records. In the case of Miers, it becomes readily apparent from a glance at her score card that she wins many cases.
You have a dramatically skewed view of how a corporate law firm works. Lawyers simply take cases, and clients simply take good lawyers. Good lawyers don't let their politics seep into their cases. This coincidently is also what makes a good judge. You want a person who has the ability to take on any case, do their best, and ignore their personal feelings on the matter. If the client can tell your political bias by looking at your case history, you are either working for an organization with a bias (like the ACLU, EFF, exc) or you have a bias. Microsoft doesn't want a sympathetic lawyer, they want a lawyer that wins.
Further, while it is true a lawyer can turn down any case, it is not common place, and it is rarely done over issues of conscience. One thing they beat into you all throughout law school is to ignore issues of conscience. If lawyers didn't do this, rapist and murders wouldn't have lawyers. I highly doubt Miers has ever turned down a case over an issue of conscience. When lawyers turn down cases, it is generally over money or what they think their ability to win is. That goes double and triple when talking about a law firm that deals in corporate law.
The types of cases Miers tells absolutely nothing about her potential bias. The only exception to this is what she does pro bono, and even then it is unwise to read too deeply into pro bono work. There are plenty of things to judge Miers over. Judge her over her effectiveness as a lawyer, the people she gives money to, her answer to Senate questions, and what people who work with her think of her. There is plenty to judge on. Judging on her on the cases she took in a corporate law firm is as silly as judging a doctor on the patients he operates on.
I think you answer your own complaint. Lawyers are like doctors. Doctors treat everyone, even rapist and murders. Lawyers are much the same. If anything, lawyers have an even more important ethical imperative then doctors. Everyone is entitled to representation. If tomorrow I am set up and wrongly accused of murdering someone, I sure as hell don't my lawyer to look at the facts, decide that I am probably guilty, and help the prosecutors put me away. Our justice system demands that my advocate represent me fully to the best of their abilities, regardless of their personal opinion.
Comparing engineers to lawyers is like comparing apples to oranges. Engineers are NOT duty bound to build anything they are told to. If your company tells you to build a nuclear bomb for a terrorist cell, you don't have some sacred duty to do it because you were order to do so. Lawyers on the other hand ARE duty bound to represent to the best of their abilities whomever the represent. Judges and juries are for deciding guilt and innocence. Lawyers are advocates sworn to represent their clients and specifically sworn to NOT judge.
A lawyer who tries to play judge will be disbarred, stripped of his ability to practice law, and very likely thrown in prison.
I hate to pop your argument, but Roberts also did free work for a gay rights organization and helped them to win an important ruling in gay rights that extended hate crime protection status to homosexuals. Are you saying that Roberts is a left wing liberal?
No, these lawyers really don't pick their cases. She was apart of a law firm. One day her boss came up to her and threw her a Microsoft case file and said, "this one is yours". She then went to work studying the law surrounding the case and came up with an argument to support them... just like any good lawyer would. That is the life inside of any generic law firm. Cases come and you take them. The people paying you know that you will do your best if for no other reason then to preserve your reputation. The entire idea that a lawyer MUST represent a client to the best of their ability is not only one of the core principles of the American judicial system, but failing to do so can get you disbarred. If you take a case and throw it, your ass is out on the street and you will never touch law again, period.
Seeing as she has absolutely no experience at all as a judge at any level how the hell else are we supposed to judge her? Looking at the cases and clients she worked for at least tells us something.
No, who her clients were and the cases she argued REALLY tell you absolutely nothing. That is like judging a doctor as a bad person for treating a mobster the police brought in. The doctor doesn't ask questions about the person is, he simply tries to apply the medicine as best he can, regardless of who they are. Lawyers are the exact same. If you work for a law firm and your boss gives you a case, you take it and represent them to the best of your abilities. Hell, the idea that everyone, even shitty people, gets legal representation is one of the core values of the American judicial system.
If she was given a Microsoft case and threw the case, then you are damn right you would have something to judge her on. She would have been disbarred and have absolutely zero chance a Supreme Court position.
All of that said, you can learn something of her abilities as a Justice from her past. First, if she was a good lawyer and argued logical cases, that says a lot about her. Someone who uses logical arguments to argue law is the kind of person you want to serve. If on the other hand she made emotional arguments and lost many cases, it would tell you that she is the sort of logical thinking law driven person that you would want to serve on the Supreme Court.
If it is her opinions you are after, then you will have to look outside of law. Does she contribute to certain charities? What is her reputation with the people whom she works with? Those sorts of questions are fair game. Finally, the Senate gets to question her. If they are doing their job, they should learn about how she intends to judge.
Finally, I would suggest all the democrats calm down. As far as anyone can tell, Bush picked someone who is moderate at best. Hell, up until the 90's she was a democrat. The far right is already looking a little pissed off about her nomination, which is a good sign. I personally think that in their loathing of Bush, democrats vastly underestimate what a moderate he is. Just because Democrats hate Bush doesn't make him right wing. I think democrats are confusing incompetent idiot for 'extreme right wing'. He might be an incompetent idiot, but being an incompetent idiot is a party neutral title. He pays lip service to the right, but if Roberts and Miers are what they appear to be, his heart seems to be firmly in the center. If Roberts and Miers turn out like what they appear to be, the Supreme Court just shifted LEFT, not right.
Democrats should crack open the Champaign because if these nominees turn out to be what they appear, the far right just lost big.
I think you are suffering from a pretty fundamental misunderstanding. If people are living 300+ years, they are not doing it in frail old bodies. Old people are old and frail because they are dying and their body is unable to renew itself. If people are living for 300+ years, it means that this entire problem has been solved one way or the other. You can't have a body that acts old and live forever. If your body DNA is degrading and you are spewing out cancer, your neurons are all dead, and you can't renew hear tissue and bone structures... guess what? You haven't found immortality.
If you live to be 300 years old, you will look and feel like a 30 year old. Let me tell you, THAT is something I could never get sick of. And hey, if I do get sick of it, I'll just kill myself. I would rather pick my own end then have then evolutions naturally intended limit.
Uploading yourself into a computer where suddenly all of your thoughts are a few orders faster, your memory is perfect, you can instantly access the collective knowledge of your civilization, and you can meld and perfectly understand anyone who is in a similar state of existance is going to change human nature. Hell, at that point I think it is safe to say that your motives are very likely to be very much inhuman (for better or for worse). I think that is one of the more intersting / scary aspects of singularity. Combine highly modified people and AIs with potentially completely alien intilligence, and you are talking about a very turbulent time.
I read the Age of Spirtual Machines and really enjoyed it. I think his time table might be a little too fast, but I don't think he is too terribly far off mark. The real issue I have with his writting is that he is so optimistic. Not that he has to be a downer, but I wouldn't mind it if he talked a little more about the ways it could all go to hell. It seems like he fully believes this singularity is coming, and he is hoping to hell that it is going to turn out okay. Singularities have a lot of unpleasent dead ends, paying them a little more lip services might not hurt. That said, I take his fatailistic view that if it is coming, it is coming, and there is nothing humanity is willing to do to stop it, so lets hope for the best.
I personally will read this new book of his. I might not agree with everything, but if it is anything like The Age of Spirtual Machines, it will be a fun read.
More likely, we would just automate more or let in more immigrants if suddenly everyone was highly educated. Unskilled labor is not terribly challenging to find in this world, especially if you are willing to offer first world pay. Personally, I see nothing wrong with driving the population towards more skilled jobs, all the while littling in unskilled labor. The unskilled labor gets better paying jobs then they could get in their homeland, and their kids get a crack at the high paying skilled jobs. Everyone wins and capitalism doesn't crumble.
The REAL problem is that the education system is disfunctional. Throw too many poor people at it, and it tends to crumble and grind out nothing but unskilled workers. 100 dollar computers might help, but the real problem is that at its core, the education system is broken. As to how in the hell you fix that? I'll be damned if I know. Funding is perhaps part of the problem, but I personally believe that there is some core defect to the system. Even well funded schools make their fair share of McDonald's workers. The largest issue probably has to do with the fact that the method of teaching that we have adopted is not the best method, and between Unions, the various levels of government, and poor imagination we have created a system that learns and changes at a snails pace. In a way this is good as it prevents radical changes that might render an entire class defective before trying something new, but on the other hand it means that even when the system has clearly failed, you continue to pump out rejects.
I have a feeling we will be uploading information directly to our head long before we find a way to 'fix' schools.
I have no real issue with the US being the ones not in control. My problem is the alternative. It isn't that I want the US in control, I just DON'T want the UN in control. In a body where Libya can be on any human rights body is one that is clearly broken. Handing off some of the control to free nations in Europe would be fine by me. Handing off control to Syria, Suadi Arabia, or China via the UN is a horrible idea.
That said, if you do a little research you will find that this is already close to the way things are. There are physical servers in the US, but there are also some in Asia and Europe. While the US might "techinically" control them, if the host nation wants to seize control because the US is doing something bad, I doubt there is much the US could do to stop them.
Want the US to not be the one's handling the Internet? Fine. Just pick some body other then the worthless UN.