Oh, I'm not aware of Liberals playing with climate data- as I said elsewhere, it's about who's screwed us most recently and what the flavour is. The Liberals had Adscam, hints of ties to the mafia, corruption of the RCMP. The Conservatives had really stupid suppression of data, etc. My point was that loudly complaining that one government's failures and crises was overwhelmingly worse than another's simply exposes one's own biases on political issues. More concerned about environmental issues? You won't like the Cons. More concerned about fiscal issues? You won't like the Libs. More concerned about regional issues? Who you don't like depends on where you live.
The Cons and their supporters, in fact, say that "you do need to be specific in targeting the Liberals. They're anti-democracy, they don't like evidence getting in the way of their agenda. From political cronyism to outright subversion of state organs, to inappropriate use of the RCMP, to misdirecting federal funds. The other parties are not like this. True, the other parties sometimes have other faults, but this abhorrence of fiscal responsibility, accountability, and honesty in general is a Liberal thing."
See my point? All it does when you say "oh but these guys are so much worse" is expose which issues you care more about.
Uh, you may be forgetting Trudeau's imposition of martial law and warrantless arrests. Look, I'm not saying the Cons are good, I'm saying that all the parties are equally bad and that the system is allowing and even encouraging abuses of power. Pointing to any one party and saying "yes but they're doing the worst things" inevitably infers the other parties are somehow less bad, when experience seems to show us that the only real difference is who's fucked us most recently.
I know this will be shocking, but guess what Conservative supporters say about the Liberal party and its policies and supporters? Pull your head out of your bias, dude. "Blah blah oh the problems are really THIS party's fault" means that you're on the other team. Problems in democracies are systemic, not partisan.
No, he's right; people get confused about the _average_ life expectancy, which took a serious hit because you had a 50/50 shot of living to 12 years old or so, iirc. You ignore the first decade, and average life expectancy in the middle ages shoots up to somewhere north of 60, I think, and that includes endemic warfare and plague and drought, so really, not bad.
Regarding 2, Bengt Thordeman's "Armour of the Battle of Wisby" includes a survey of wounds from a 14th century mass grave, and very many of the deaths in historical combat seemed to be preceded by leg wounds. Specifically, one or both legs followed by an overhead strike to the top of the head with sword or hammer.
(sca) I found it particularly amusing, because there's an An Tir joke about "the kingmaker" being ankle-ankle-head. (/sca)
Disclaimer; the SCA does medievalISH combat with rules and equipment for safety; it's not authentic medieval fight styles, and there are other groups (like WMA) that focus on things like 15th century German fechtbuchs and who have more authority to speak on authentically historical modes and styles of combat.
That said, the SCA does swordfighting at full speed and often with full power (depending on the area), and there are some strong similarities with historical combat. The sticks used (for safety reasons) are roughly the same weight as the historical swords, and there's a strong social pressure to wear armour that is both save and as authentic as possible. Thus, there's a couple things I can comment on from personal experience. First, metal armour on limbs *noticeably* slows down shots. We accept plastic plates as long as they're covered ("best effort to look good" is the standard), so people will fight with plastic covered in canvas or leather, and there is a well-known tradeoff in the SCA between "looking good" in shiny metal armour and having the best possible speed.
I just finished building a fairly close replica of 14th century coat-of-plates armour. I had been using (poorly disguised) plastic before, and the difference when wearing 25 pounds of overlapping plates is quite noticeable. I look much better, of course, but I also work harder, sweat more, and need to take more breaks. The weight's all on my shoulders, so it's not wearing my legs out, but there's a noticeable weight when I'm moving. I recently got metal gauntlets, and they're noticeable as well; the hands move slower when there's a pound or two of metal on them. I hate to reference anime, but you know how Goku wears the heavy arm and leg weights in Dragonball Z? There's some truth to that; even the fat SCA fighters have bulkier shoulders and larger arms. (actually wearing weights around all day will just screw up your joints, by the way; it's the holding-heavy-things-out-from-your-body that does it)
There's a reason armour was attached where it was in the middle ages; suspending legs from a belt takes at least some of the weight off the legs when moving.
Money, hell; follow the employers. The CRTC's Vicechairman of Telecom worked for Rogers for 17 years. The Ontario regional commissoner worked for Alliance Atlantis, Atlantic/Nunavut was VP of Access, Quebec spent two decades at CBC, and Manitoba/Sask spent two decades at SaskTel. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/about/commissioners.htm Not to say the whole batch of 'em are crooked, but it seems like half the commissioners they've got don't just have industry experience, they worked for the companies they're now in charge of regulating. I don't know about you, but the Rogers group not even being/investigated/ for egregious harm to network access, while the CRTC telecom VP used to work for them, seems mighty suspicious.
Uh, the ideas are in competition with each other. "Free market" means there's no force (besides the reality of desert conditions) biasing selections, so "insulate tents" compares well and gets adopted more than "rub self down with cactus."
Many of the grunts have to deal with practical problems that officers do not, and find immediately workable solutions because there are millions of them, and they share tricks they figure out. It's a small free market of ideas, so good ideas frequently spread quickly. Of course, so do bad ones.
Well, you know what they say about two magnets with the same polarity, mister first-world-slashdot-poster.;D Since you care enough to flame people who make positive posts about Afghani efforts, I encourage you to send some of your comparatively enormous paycheck to charitable organizations in the third (or even the first) world. There's plenty of orphans (Oxfam, CCF) and broke geeks (EFF, CBLDF, FabFi) who could use your money more than I can use your vitriol. Or, you could try suggesting to people that repel you some things they could do to make a substantial difference in the world. Good luck!
Because I am not a clever man.;P Honestly, I thought of it, but the only mirror I could think of was archive.org, and they didn't have it. Thanks for linking it.
Woot! I do the same. I'm in the middle of setting up a "build-your-own" training project with Big Brothers/Sisters in my town, getting low-income youth some practical skills and hardware they might not otherwise have access to. High-income families and businesses will replace their computers every 3-5 years or so; those systems have a working life of over a decade, so why not get them into the hands of people that can use them? Most folks are pretty happy to have somewhere to contribute their old systems after they upgrade.
This is the reason I'm proud to call myself a geek. This is why I contribute to groups like EFF. This is why I tinker with networking hardware and try out Maker projects, even though I'm a software guy, and not necessarily a great one- because I'm sharing in the culture that can build a digital commons in the middle of the desert in one of the most war-torn regions of the planet using/scrap/. I mean, I'm sure Afghanistan is a great country, but the neighborhood's kinda rough- I have nothing but pride and admiration for FabFi and the people of Afghanistan.
It's probably going to get slashdotted pretty quick, so I'm going to copypasta some of their front page stuff here, and provide some of the links from their homepage at http://fabfi.fablab.af/;
FabFi is an open-source, FabLab-grown system using common building materials and off-the-shelf electronics to transmit wireless ethernet signals across distances of up to several miles. With Fabfi, communities can build their own wireless networks to gain high-speed internet connectivity---thus enabling them to access online educational, medical, and other resources.
In the summer of 2010, the Fab team set out to show that Fabfi could be both reliable and sustainable. Choosing Kenya as a pilot site Fabfolk seeded three Fablab students with the hardware to begin deploying a network as a community-operated business.
FabFi is a user-extensible long range point-to-point and mesh hybrid-wireless broadband transmission infrastructure. It is based on the simple idea that a network of simple, intelligent, interconnected devices can create reliable networks in unstable environments. We use simple physics to make low-cost devices communicate directionally for very long distances (physics is cool!), and flexible configurations to adapt to a large variety of conditions.
They build their own parabolic dishes to increase antenna gain, much like the coffee-cantennas, wok-antennas, and pringles-cantennas we've all heard of.
At first I was going to point out that document leaking that exposed corruption or dirty tricks was valuable, although LulzSec shouldn't have exposed the names of undercovers who are now in grave danger. Then I checked some analyses of the documents. According to http://www.unelected.org/analysis-of-lulzsecs-arizona-dps-document-dump the contents don't show any corruption or anything, it's just interoffice emails and stuff about Mexican cartels the AZPD are trying to fight. So, yeah, I agree with you; Wikileaks distributing proof of US political corruption, with an effort to scrub names to protect agents, good. LulzSec dumping police documents that amount to showing Mexican drug cartels the entirety of law enforcement operations trying to shut them down including the names of officers working against them in secret? Bad form.
I have some bad news for you; there are enough laws in America (and Canada, and England, etc.) that you break roughly 8 laws a day. You *are* a criminal acting to keep law enforcement from discovering the evidence to convict you.
Incorrect. Latin was the common language of the Roman Empire and anyone who could read could read it. The Vulgate (i.e. vulgar, i.e. common, i.e. everyday readable) was written in the 4th century, though Latin translations existed before then from the original Greek and Hebrew texts. As the power of Rome waned and barbarian peoples like the Franks and the Germans gained or reasserted national identities, Latin was corrupted (into the Romance languages like French or Spanish) or replaced (by German or English). DRM and copyright were post-medieval reactions to technological advances; the lack of printing technology was not "a primitive DRM" or copyright but rather a situation that made DRM unnecessary.
Come the 16th century, your assertions make more sense; the Vulgate was readable only to those with special training (in Latin, a now dead language), and the advent of the printing press made books cheap, which made translations of the most popular works (like the Bible) a viable option. That same technology allowed anyone to print, which encouraged laws protecting an author's right to profit from his work (and not have it printed and sold without recompense by a company with a press).
As an interesting aside, early Christianity contrasted with the popular mystery religions of the time, which required payment for access to the spells that would ensure eternal life. Christianity didn't require payment for access to source documents, and in fact spread them freely.
I live in a tiny hole of a town, 60K people. I'm used to 1M. But, I've connected with a group of real low-tech hacker types that build things in a guy's garage/workshop. It's heavily SCA influenced, so there's a lot of recreation/sport armour, but there's also potato cannons, sculptures, bells, and we're slowly putting together an honest to god small cannon. I picked up blacksmithing and I'm edging my way (hah) into knives and casting this summer. It might be unique to this town, but there's also a sort of small non-profit robotics research lab that does autonomous and semi-autonomous aerial survey, plays with RC toys, etc.
It's maybe not a hackerspace in the while(Dew()){ code(); } sense, but "people coming together to make neat things" is, I think, a pretty universal human experience. Check your local college for the auto shop, maybe? There's got to be somebody doing something somewhere.
Thank you for that last sentence. I agree with your entire post, but too many people leave off the last bit when complaining about the problems with corporatism.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I'm not aware of Liberals playing with climate data- as I said elsewhere, it's about who's screwed us most recently and what the flavour is. The Liberals had Adscam, hints of ties to the mafia, corruption of the RCMP. The Conservatives had really stupid suppression of data, etc. My point was that loudly complaining that one government's failures and crises was overwhelmingly worse than another's simply exposes one's own biases on political issues. More concerned about environmental issues? You won't like the Cons. More concerned about fiscal issues? You won't like the Libs. More concerned about regional issues? Who you don't like depends on where you live.
The Cons and their supporters, in fact, say that "you do need to be specific in targeting the Liberals. They're anti-democracy, they don't like evidence getting in the way of their agenda. From political cronyism to outright subversion of state organs, to inappropriate use of the RCMP, to misdirecting federal funds. The other parties are not like this. True, the other parties sometimes have other faults, but this abhorrence of fiscal responsibility, accountability, and honesty in general is a Liberal thing."
See my point? All it does when you say "oh but these guys are so much worse" is expose which issues you care more about.
Uh, you may be forgetting Trudeau's imposition of martial law and warrantless arrests. Look, I'm not saying the Cons are good, I'm saying that all the parties are equally bad and that the system is allowing and even encouraging abuses of power. Pointing to any one party and saying "yes but they're doing the worst things" inevitably infers the other parties are somehow less bad, when experience seems to show us that the only real difference is who's fucked us most recently.
I know this will be shocking, but guess what Conservative supporters say about the Liberal party and its policies and supporters? Pull your head out of your bias, dude. "Blah blah oh the problems are really THIS party's fault" means that you're on the other team. Problems in democracies are systemic, not partisan.
No, he's right; people get confused about the _average_ life expectancy, which took a serious hit because you had a 50/50 shot of living to 12 years old or so, iirc. You ignore the first decade, and average life expectancy in the middle ages shoots up to somewhere north of 60, I think, and that includes endemic warfare and plague and drought, so really, not bad.
Regarding 2, Bengt Thordeman's "Armour of the Battle of Wisby" includes a survey of wounds from a 14th century mass grave, and very many of the deaths in historical combat seemed to be preceded by leg wounds. Specifically, one or both legs followed by an overhead strike to the top of the head with sword or hammer.
(sca) I found it particularly amusing, because there's an An Tir joke about "the kingmaker" being ankle-ankle-head. (/sca)
Disclaimer; the SCA does medievalISH combat with rules and equipment for safety; it's not authentic medieval fight styles, and there are other groups (like WMA) that focus on things like 15th century German fechtbuchs and who have more authority to speak on authentically historical modes and styles of combat.
That said, the SCA does swordfighting at full speed and often with full power (depending on the area), and there are some strong similarities with historical combat. The sticks used (for safety reasons) are roughly the same weight as the historical swords, and there's a strong social pressure to wear armour that is both save and as authentic as possible. Thus, there's a couple things I can comment on from personal experience. First, metal armour on limbs *noticeably* slows down shots. We accept plastic plates as long as they're covered ("best effort to look good" is the standard), so people will fight with plastic covered in canvas or leather, and there is a well-known tradeoff in the SCA between "looking good" in shiny metal armour and having the best possible speed.
I just finished building a fairly close replica of 14th century coat-of-plates armour. I had been using (poorly disguised) plastic before, and the difference when wearing 25 pounds of overlapping plates is quite noticeable. I look much better, of course, but I also work harder, sweat more, and need to take more breaks. The weight's all on my shoulders, so it's not wearing my legs out, but there's a noticeable weight when I'm moving. I recently got metal gauntlets, and they're noticeable as well; the hands move slower when there's a pound or two of metal on them. I hate to reference anime, but you know how Goku wears the heavy arm and leg weights in Dragonball Z? There's some truth to that; even the fat SCA fighters have bulkier shoulders and larger arms. (actually wearing weights around all day will just screw up your joints, by the way; it's the holding-heavy-things-out-from-your-body that does it)
There's a reason armour was attached where it was in the middle ages; suspending legs from a belt takes at least some of the weight off the legs when moving.
Money, hell; follow the employers. The CRTC's Vicechairman of Telecom worked for Rogers for 17 years. The Ontario regional commissoner worked for Alliance Atlantis, Atlantic/Nunavut was VP of Access, Quebec spent two decades at CBC, and Manitoba/Sask spent two decades at SaskTel. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/about/commissioners.htm Not to say the whole batch of 'em are crooked, but it seems like half the commissioners they've got don't just have industry experience, they worked for the companies they're now in charge of regulating. I don't know about you, but the Rogers group not even being /investigated/ for egregious harm to network access, while the CRTC telecom VP used to work for them, seems mighty suspicious.
Uh, the ideas are in competition with each other. "Free market" means there's no force (besides the reality of desert conditions) biasing selections, so "insulate tents" compares well and gets adopted more than "rub self down with cactus."
Many of the grunts have to deal with practical problems that officers do not, and find immediately workable solutions because there are millions of them, and they share tricks they figure out. It's a small free market of ideas, so good ideas frequently spread quickly. Of course, so do bad ones.
Everyone will admit to playing video games.
repels me.
Well, you know what they say about two magnets with the same polarity, mister first-world-slashdot-poster. ;D Since you care enough to flame people who make positive posts about Afghani efforts, I encourage you to send some of your comparatively enormous paycheck to charitable organizations in the third (or even the first) world. There's plenty of orphans (Oxfam, CCF) and broke geeks (EFF, CBLDF, FabFi) who could use your money more than I can use your vitriol. Or, you could try suggesting to people that repel you some things they could do to make a substantial difference in the world. Good luck!
Because I am not a clever man. ;P Honestly, I thought of it, but the only mirror I could think of was archive.org, and they didn't have it. Thanks for linking it.
Woot! I do the same. I'm in the middle of setting up a "build-your-own" training project with Big Brothers/Sisters in my town, getting low-income youth some practical skills and hardware they might not otherwise have access to. High-income families and businesses will replace their computers every 3-5 years or so; those systems have a working life of over a decade, so why not get them into the hands of people that can use them? Most folks are pretty happy to have somewhere to contribute their old systems after they upgrade.
This is the reason I'm proud to call myself a geek. This is why I contribute to groups like EFF. This is why I tinker with networking hardware and try out Maker projects, even though I'm a software guy, and not necessarily a great one- because I'm sharing in the culture that can build a digital commons in the middle of the desert in one of the most war-torn regions of the planet using /scrap/. I mean, I'm sure Afghanistan is a great country, but the neighborhood's kinda rough- I have nothing but pride and admiration for FabFi and the people of Afghanistan.
It's probably going to get slashdotted pretty quick, so I'm going to copypasta some of their front page stuff here, and provide some of the links from their homepage at http://fabfi.fablab.af/;
FabFi is an open-source, FabLab-grown system using common building materials and off-the-shelf electronics to transmit wireless ethernet signals across distances of up to several miles. With Fabfi, communities can build their own wireless networks to gain high-speed internet connectivity---thus enabling them to access online educational, medical, and other resources.
In the summer of 2010, the Fab team set out to show that Fabfi could be both reliable and sustainable. Choosing Kenya as a pilot site Fabfolk seeded three Fablab students with the hardware to begin deploying a network as a community-operated business.
FabFi is a user-extensible long range point-to-point and mesh hybrid-wireless broadband transmission infrastructure. It is based on the simple idea that a network of simple, intelligent, interconnected devices can create reliable networks in unstable environments. We use simple physics to make low-cost devices communicate directionally for very long distances (physics is cool!), and flexible configurations to adapt to a large variety of conditions.
They build their own parabolic dishes to increase antenna gain, much like the coffee-cantennas, wok-antennas, and pringles-cantennas we've all heard of.
Their blog is at http://fabfiblog.fabfolk.com/
Their Facebook page is at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=140474289914
At first I was going to point out that document leaking that exposed corruption or dirty tricks was valuable, although LulzSec shouldn't have exposed the names of undercovers who are now in grave danger. Then I checked some analyses of the documents. According to http://www.unelected.org/analysis-of-lulzsecs-arizona-dps-document-dump the contents don't show any corruption or anything, it's just interoffice emails and stuff about Mexican cartels the AZPD are trying to fight. So, yeah, I agree with you; Wikileaks distributing proof of US political corruption, with an effort to scrub names to protect agents, good. LulzSec dumping police documents that amount to showing Mexican drug cartels the entirety of law enforcement operations trying to shut them down including the names of officers working against them in secret? Bad form.
I have some bad news for you; there are enough laws in America (and Canada, and England, etc.) that you break roughly 8 laws a day. You *are* a criminal acting to keep law enforcement from discovering the evidence to convict you.
I've got the same combination on my luggage.
What, and break the release numbers in 2112? I think not. /sarcasm
Latin, which only the clergy could read.
Incorrect. Latin was the common language of the Roman Empire and anyone who could read could read it. The Vulgate (i.e. vulgar, i.e. common, i.e. everyday readable) was written in the 4th century, though Latin translations existed before then from the original Greek and Hebrew texts. As the power of Rome waned and barbarian peoples like the Franks and the Germans gained or reasserted national identities, Latin was corrupted (into the Romance languages like French or Spanish) or replaced (by German or English). DRM and copyright were post-medieval reactions to technological advances; the lack of printing technology was not "a primitive DRM" or copyright but rather a situation that made DRM unnecessary.
Come the 16th century, your assertions make more sense; the Vulgate was readable only to those with special training (in Latin, a now dead language), and the advent of the printing press made books cheap, which made translations of the most popular works (like the Bible) a viable option. That same technology allowed anyone to print, which encouraged laws protecting an author's right to profit from his work (and not have it printed and sold without recompense by a company with a press).
As an interesting aside, early Christianity contrasted with the popular mystery religions of the time, which required payment for access to the spells that would ensure eternal life. Christianity didn't require payment for access to source documents, and in fact spread them freely.
I live in a tiny hole of a town, 60K people. I'm used to 1M. But, I've connected with a group of real low-tech hacker types that build things in a guy's garage/workshop. It's heavily SCA influenced, so there's a lot of recreation/sport armour, but there's also potato cannons, sculptures, bells, and we're slowly putting together an honest to god small cannon. I picked up blacksmithing and I'm edging my way (hah) into knives and casting this summer. It might be unique to this town, but there's also a sort of small non-profit robotics research lab that does autonomous and semi-autonomous aerial survey, plays with RC toys, etc.
It's maybe not a hackerspace in the while(Dew()){ code(); } sense, but "people coming together to make neat things" is, I think, a pretty universal human experience. Check your local college for the auto shop, maybe? There's got to be somebody doing something somewhere.
Thanks.
Well, according to Herodotus, Africa is the home of the unicorn. I'm sure they can use them for fuel.
Thank you for that last sentence. I agree with your entire post, but too many people leave off the last bit when complaining about the problems with corporatism.
Thanks, man.
Michelangelo copied Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. If 90% are useless, 10% are necessary.