Privacy is a non starter in the race. People have the right to know, to study, to collect information. That right to know far surpasses anyone's supposed right to privacy. It becomes an absurd dance. How could you know if I were collecting too much information about you? I know! You must be allowed to search my records to make sure. Where did my right to privacy go? And if I store up that data in my photographic memory should you be allowed to cut my head off to make certain that I don't have too much information about you stored in my mind?
Wouldn't the Aztecs own the rights to their images rather than the government of Mexico. Aren't the tribal Aztecs who used these types of art long in their graves? Wasn't it Spanish governments that pounded the Aztec empire into the dust? Should the US government do the same and collect money every time an American Indian's image is used? Oh boy. Now I'm messed up. Aztecs are American Indians. But that is the other kind of American. Do they count?
The game is a'foot! First show concern for a non-problem and then propose a solution that will create more government jobs and stuff the government with more money. Ignore the fact that musical artists as well as others often have higher sales driven by the advertising effect of pirated materials.
The right wing introduced the nonsense economic theories which featured counter productive cost cuts. Business fell right in line as businesses usually lean towards right wing doctrines. As businesses cut raises, promotions, benefits and downgraded working conditions IT employees have responded with less concern about job performance.
Social parallels exist. For example our military has trouble getting volunteers. The bad press over lousy VA Hospital and follow up for war veterans tells most half way intelligent young people to stay away from military service. Whether it is giving your life in an instant on the battle field or giving your life minute by minute to a job people expect and demand to be very well rewarded for their efforts. Promises mean nothing. Too many have been promised much only to see the for sale sign or out of business sign on the door. It is all about businesses actually performing by holding up their end of the social contract.
Right off the top there would be a huge issue with jurisdiction. When people are blithering about creating a black hole that could swallow the entire planet just about every government could claim authority to act. Really bad places like Nigeria or Iran might insist that their verdicts are the only correct verdicts.
We haven't even really decided jurisdictional authorities within the US when things like the net or sales over the phone are involved. One day it's the sender's end of the line that has authority, the next day it is the receiver's end of the line. the next day the feds jump in and cite some really obscure law from a third state that they can put in play. Once in a while it is even a state in which the communication passes through without being viewed that grabs the authority. Even more absurd, deeply encrypted materials that can not be opened or viewed while passing through a state may still be subject to a powerful state action.
If you prove to be a super star you can do almost anything at work as long as you keep making them money or saving the day. But it is a dangerous game to play as there are other potential wizards who seek the same status. You see this clearly in sales orgs where the big number salesman can get away with anything short of rape or mayhem in the office.
It is fair to say that our current war is so expensive that we might be better off to simply lose an airplane or large building once a year or so rather than fight back if money is the only consideration. Worse yet the cumulative effect of these smaller wars may well destroy the US economy. There are only so many Koreas, N. Vietnams, Somalias, Cold wars, Desert Storms etc. that we can fight without economic ruin.
I have worked in a troubled business in which advancement and raises were excessively limited due to economic problems. It auto creates a very hostile and non productive work environment. It is the employees business to do what they are hired to do. It is the businesses obligation to have the money on hand to advance good workers and keep a reasonable work environment. The nickle and dime, Scrooge routine will steer a company right into their own dumpster.
Best Buy is large enough to have tested this product on numerous PCs before letting it off the shelves. I would think that they must have some concern for their reputation. Perhaps this is an example of some fool putting a buddy or family member in charge of a department who is not qualified to go to the toilet without an attendant. This is really, seriously stupid.
One is either for or against censorship. There is simply no in between. It is like pregnancy. You either are or are not pregnancy and just like pregnancy censorship gets bigger and bigger until you pop.
The US education system is troubled in such a way that devices may not help at all. Teachers are under serious pressure to aim their teaching at the middle and lower achievers which causes better students to be neglected. It is the only way to meet compulsory testing goals. After all the brighter students will do well on such tests despite being neglected whereas the mediocre middle and down right lousy students will score poorly. These days those scores can cost a teacher their job.
Really we need to aim our teaching at the brightest students and get the lesser students into work training programs and out of the way of the better students. Parents are the real problem in this regard. They bombard every official when their kid does poorly. And elected types tend to think in terms of the number of votes a position on an issue will get them.
England actually had a form of the draft that sent many young men into the coal mines. Others were directed into the armed forces. These were people not deemed able to succeed at higher callings due to poor school performance. It kept coal cheap and the armed forces populated. Other European nations weeded out lesser students after sixth grade and subjected them to real training as cooks or industrial workers.
If school courses are designed to strain the straight A students a bit the quality of school graduates is excellent. Try to redeem the mediocre middle and the schools fall apart.
Here we have an official who is in essence shifting blame to the unwashed masses. If he does not censor then the wretches will riot. History teaches the opposite. When censorship exists the masses may very well go into total riot and revolt.
I do wonder if people in the US knew a few things that are hushed up if they would not riot in the streets.
Since we are not allowed to know if even one, single, lone, terrorist attack in the US has been thwarted by these information lists just what can a citizen do? Sending mail to a congressman or voting according to a position on more of this information collection is absurd as we simply are not allowed to have a clue as to whether this tactic works at all. For all I know perhaps this nonsense simply creates jobs that fat cat politicians hand out to their buddies.
The decline in science and technology in America is enough to scare the hell out of me. The worst of it is that we can do nothing to fix it that the public would tolerate. Requirements for success by our school children would have to be drastic. American parents are in no way willing to put their kids through the kind of hell it takes to make competitive scholars. Some nations have genius scholars simply because extraordinary accomplishments are the only hope a young person has to avoid a living hell.
A lot of big players must really enjoy the contracts for building complex nuclear reactors. Make them better and simpler and these middlemen will not make as much money. You can bet that your local power company and the entire coal industry would be willing to kill anyone coming up with small, safe, efficient modes of power production or delivery.
If you think that paragraph is paranoia at work consider how many people the coal industry has been known to murder in the past. Time does not change greedy people.
The health of the Catholic church is much more robust than you might think. Many parishes have endowments that will fund them forever. And although young men are not joining the priesthood in large numbers in the US there are numerous nations in which faithful young men are joining the priesthood and serving within the US.
I am not a Catholic but I will say that the Catholic Church in America is doing tremendous good works and spreading the love of Christ as no other church can. I ma very impressed with their org. I have also noticed that atheists have never run a soup kitchen or built a single hospital.
No notion of equality exists in this blasphemy business. Does blasphemy against Islam count? How about blasphemy against Scientology? Anyone going to jail for suggesting that L. Ron Hubbard was a perverted idiot?
Perhaps the real answer is to allow individual citizens to study others, including corporations and the government using the same tools and tactics that are used to study citizens. Let the chips fall where they may. The chances are that unless someone is a really rotten egg that they will have just about the same number of negatives in their life history as everyone else. It sort of takes the power of negative information and castrates it.
Imagine being interviewed for a job and the guy mentions that pot possession incident in your past and your reply is that it is not equal to his drunk driving arrest nor his AA membership. Truth can be fun.
Here in America we can stop these censoring nations. We can revoke the business permits for any company inside the US that practices doing business with censoring nations. We might also consider criminal charges for violations of human rights for anyone who causes or contributes to censorship up to and including US officials who seek to censor porn within the US.
India has what are probably the largest red light districts in the entire world. One district in Calcutta has an estimated 500,000 working whores all the way from three years old up into their nineties.
That being a given just what the heck is porn supposed to do in that nation? It would be far better to get the men to wear condoms as the prostitutes often don't even know what a condom is and AIDS is a huge problem in that nation.
With some of the mind bending math that engineers must study it is no wonder at all that they often get very, very weird. As a society we have not yet faced the fact that education is actually a cause of a certain type of brain damage. It is easily observable in college sophomores who display all manner of weird social behavior. Areas of the brain that have important functions are not in proper use simple because the brain is being ravaged by excessive concentration and focus.
If you get around people in the trades much you soon find that they think that all college graduates and students are weirdos who don't know their asses from their elbows.
At the outer limit we see idiot savants who lack basic survival skills and yet display tremendous genius. Albert Einstein lived on the verge of being like that.
Slashdot Mirror
Place a stack of DVDs in a pneumatic device and you can pump data faster than on any type of existing system of delivery.
Privacy is a non starter in the race. People have the right to know, to study, to collect information. That right to know far surpasses anyone's supposed right to privacy. It becomes an absurd dance. How could you know if I were collecting too much information about you? I know! You must be allowed to search my records to make sure. Where did my right to privacy go? And if I store up that data in my photographic memory should you be allowed to cut my head off to make certain that I don't have too much information about you stored in my mind?
Wouldn't the Aztecs own the rights to their images rather than the government of Mexico. Aren't the tribal Aztecs who used these types of art long in their graves? Wasn't it Spanish governments that pounded the Aztec empire into the dust? Should the US government do the same and collect money every time an American Indian's image is used? Oh boy. Now I'm messed up. Aztecs are American Indians. But that is the other kind of American. Do they count?
The game is a'foot! First show concern for a non-problem and then propose a solution that will create more government jobs and stuff the government with more money. Ignore the fact that musical artists as well as others often have higher sales driven by the advertising effect of pirated materials.
The right wing introduced the nonsense economic theories which featured counter productive cost cuts. Business fell right in line as businesses usually lean towards right wing doctrines. As businesses cut raises, promotions, benefits and downgraded working conditions IT employees have responded with less concern about job performance.
Social parallels exist. For example our military has trouble getting volunteers. The bad press over lousy VA Hospital and follow up for war veterans tells most half way intelligent young people to stay away from military service. Whether it is giving your life in an instant on the battle field or giving your life minute by minute to a job people expect and demand to be very well rewarded for their efforts. Promises mean nothing. Too many have been promised much only to see the for sale sign or out of business sign on the door. It is all about businesses actually performing by holding up their end of the social contract.
Right off the top there would be a huge issue with jurisdiction. When people are blithering about creating a black hole that could swallow the entire planet just about every government could claim authority to act. Really bad places like Nigeria or Iran might insist that their verdicts are the only correct verdicts.
We haven't even really decided jurisdictional authorities within the US when things like the net or sales over the phone are involved. One day it's the sender's end of the line that has authority, the next day it is the receiver's end of the line. the next day the feds jump in and cite some really obscure law from a third state that they can put in play. Once in a while it is even a state in which the communication passes through without being viewed that grabs the authority. Even more absurd, deeply encrypted materials that can not be opened or viewed while passing through a state may still be subject to a powerful state action.
If you prove to be a super star you can do almost anything at work as long as you keep making them money or saving the day. But it is a dangerous game to play as there are other potential wizards who seek the same status. You see this clearly in sales orgs where the big number salesman can get away with anything short of rape or mayhem in the office.
It sounds to me like a bunch of US tax avoiders may well have lost their financial behinds in that bank. Justice!
It is fair to say that our current war is so expensive that we might be better off to simply lose an airplane or large building once a year or so rather than fight back if money is the only consideration. Worse yet the cumulative effect of these smaller wars may well destroy the US economy. There are only so many Koreas, N. Vietnams, Somalias, Cold wars, Desert Storms etc. that we can fight without economic ruin.
I have worked in a troubled business in which advancement and raises were excessively limited due to economic problems. It auto creates a very hostile and non productive work environment. It is the employees business to do what they are hired to do. It is the businesses obligation to have the money on hand to advance good workers and keep a reasonable work environment. The nickle and dime, Scrooge routine will steer a company right into their own dumpster.
Best Buy is large enough to have tested this product on numerous PCs before letting it off the shelves. I would think that they must have some concern for their reputation. Perhaps this is an example of some fool putting a buddy or family member in charge of a department who is not qualified to go to the toilet without an attendant. This is really, seriously stupid.
One is either for or against censorship. There is simply no in between. It is like pregnancy. You either are or are not pregnancy and just like pregnancy censorship gets bigger and bigger until you pop.
The US education system is troubled in such a way that devices may not help at all. Teachers are under serious pressure to aim their teaching at the middle and lower achievers which causes better students to be neglected. It is the only way to meet compulsory testing goals. After all the brighter students will do well on such tests despite being neglected whereas the mediocre middle and down right lousy students will score poorly. These days those scores can cost a teacher their job.
Really we need to aim our teaching at the brightest students and get the lesser students into work training programs and out of the way of the better students. Parents are the real problem in this regard. They bombard every official when their kid does poorly. And elected types tend to think in terms of the number of votes a position on an issue will get them.
England actually had a form of the draft that sent many young men into the coal mines. Others were directed into the armed forces. These were people not deemed able to succeed at higher callings due to poor school performance. It kept coal cheap and the armed forces populated. Other European nations weeded out lesser students after sixth grade and subjected them to real training as cooks or industrial workers.
If school courses are designed to strain the straight A students a bit the quality of school graduates is excellent. Try to redeem the mediocre middle and the schools fall apart.
Here we have an official who is in essence shifting blame to the unwashed masses. If he does not censor then the wretches will riot. History teaches the opposite. When censorship exists the masses may very well go into total riot and revolt.
I do wonder if people in the US knew a few things that are hushed up if they would not riot in the streets.
There are plenty of spamers located right here in the US who need some serious behavioral corrections.
Since we are not allowed to know if even one, single, lone, terrorist attack in the US has been thwarted by these information lists just what can a citizen do? Sending mail to a congressman or voting according to a position on more of this information collection is absurd as we simply are not allowed to have a clue as to whether this tactic works at all. For all I know perhaps this nonsense simply creates jobs that fat cat politicians hand out to their buddies.
The decline in science and technology in America is enough to scare the hell out of me. The worst of it is that we can do nothing to fix it that the public would tolerate. Requirements for success by our school children would have to be drastic. American parents are in no way willing to put their kids through the kind of hell it takes to make competitive scholars. Some nations have genius scholars simply because extraordinary accomplishments are the only hope a young person has to avoid a living hell.
A lot of big players must really enjoy the contracts for building complex nuclear reactors. Make them better and simpler and these middlemen will not make as much money. You can bet that your local power company and the entire coal industry would be willing to kill anyone coming up with small, safe, efficient modes of power production or delivery.
If you think that paragraph is paranoia at work consider how many people the coal industry has been known to murder in the past. Time does not change greedy people.
With the world economy falling downward China may well soon be willing to sell their sisters' socks with their sisters still in them.
The health of the Catholic church is much more robust than you might think. Many parishes have endowments that will fund them forever. And although young men are not joining the priesthood in large numbers in the US there are numerous nations in which faithful young men are joining the priesthood and serving within the US.
I am not a Catholic but I will say that the Catholic Church in America is doing tremendous good works and spreading the love of Christ as no other church can. I ma very impressed with their org. I have also noticed that atheists have never run a soup kitchen or built a single hospital.
No notion of equality exists in this blasphemy business. Does blasphemy against Islam count? How about blasphemy against Scientology? Anyone going to jail for suggesting that L. Ron Hubbard was a perverted idiot?
Perhaps the real answer is to allow individual citizens to study others, including corporations and the government using the same tools and tactics that are used to study citizens. Let the chips fall where they may. The chances are that unless someone is a really rotten egg that they will have just about the same number of negatives in their life history as everyone else. It sort of takes the power of negative information and castrates it.
Imagine being interviewed for a job and the guy mentions that pot possession incident in your past and your reply is that it is not equal to his drunk driving arrest nor his AA membership. Truth can be fun.
Here in America we can stop these censoring nations. We can revoke the business permits for any company inside the US that practices doing business with censoring nations. We might also consider criminal charges for violations of human rights for anyone who causes or contributes to censorship up to and including US officials who seek to censor porn within the US.
India has what are probably the largest red light districts in the entire world. One district in Calcutta has an estimated 500,000 working whores all the way from three years old up into their nineties.
That being a given just what the heck is porn supposed to do in that nation? It would be far better to get the men to wear condoms as the prostitutes often don't even know what a condom is and AIDS is a huge problem in that nation.
With some of the mind bending math that engineers must study it is no wonder at all that they often get very, very weird. As a society we have not yet faced the fact that education is actually a cause of a certain type of brain damage. It is easily observable in college sophomores who display all manner of weird social behavior. Areas of the brain that have important functions are not in proper use simple because the brain is being ravaged by excessive concentration and focus.
If you get around people in the trades much you soon find that they think that all college graduates and students are weirdos who don't know their asses from their elbows.
At the outer limit we see idiot savants who lack basic survival skills and yet display tremendous genius. Albert Einstein lived on the verge of being like that.