God I wish. Half the people in office would be street sweepers if that were the case.... and the other half would be sweeping the other side of the street.
It wouldn't take all that many people to astroturf the most popular sites; maybe a few hundred, which wouldn't be that expensive at China's current wages.
The irony here is that Chinese wages are increasing, due to the chinese one child policy and their aging population; eventually it'll become far more expensive to play this sort of censorship game.
Besides, if tax dodgers respond to crackdowns by leaving the country, well, good riddance. One way to get rid of a leech is to get rid of them, so at least they're not siphoning state resources away from everyone else. Let them leech off another government instead, if they can (let's see you get better services from a bankrupt government like Greece, where large portions of the populace refuse to pay taxes).
For such emails, the best practice is to just ignore the emails; eventually the spammer will believe your account is inactive and stop emailing you.
One of the worst things you can do is hit the "Unsubscribe" button, because it means they now know your account is being monitored, and can sell it to an even worse spammer, continuing the downward spiral.
Windows DRM --> harder to get pirated Windows --> people looking to cheaper alternatives (linux) --> people learning how to work with those alternatives --> growing irrelevance of Microsoft.
Yes. You now have a few hundred times as much plutonium and uranium in your system as humans did a hundred years ago, though it's still so small as to be basically insignificant.
Also, you can do weird carbon dating tests on things, based on how the carbon-14 ratio changed in the atmosphere during the atmospheric nuclear testing days of 1940-1963, combined with the rate of CO2 production due to fossil fuels.
I do believe, like many other creators, that our creations are like our childs. You don't own your children. You have to feed them, care for them, and protect them until they are mature enough to have a life on their own. And then they are gone. They are as free as you are.
Yes, you are right. And that is why copyrights expire, just like children grow up.
When? When do copyrights expire? I'm thirty years old; I've never seen a copyright expire. My father is sixty years old; he's never seen a copyright expire. My grandfather may have seen a copyright expire, but he's been dead for over a decade so I don't know.
The GP may be wrong with his "Ideas are meant to be free!" hippie nonsense, but that doesn't make the current situation right either. The biggest problem with modern copyright law, as I see it, is that it has no notion of the fact that, after a certain amount of time, the value of the work ceases to be in the originality of the idea, but in the way the idea has entered the public consciousness. This is, I think, the original intent of works entering "public domain": the public itself is now the source of the value for the work, and should be the ones benefiting from it. At that point, the copyright institution is no longer rewarding a creator for his creativity, but merely creating a welfare state where the creator is leeching off of the public's thoughts.
For instance, look at Catcher in the Rye. In the early 50s, when it was first published, it was innovative and new and controversial, undoubtedly a creation worthy of reward. Over the years, it has incited a large amount of controversy, frequently being banned from libraries and classrooms, given the blame for a number of murders, etc. It has entered the public consciousness; the work itself is in many cases irrelevant compared to the reactions it has caused. At this point, it is impossible to disentangle whether the real worth of the novel is in the words themselves, that the author is saying to the public, or in the words and stories that the public are telling each other related to the work. The former may deserve reward for the writer, but the later surely does not, as it essentially lets the writer leech off of the public forever.
The Greeks figured out the Earth was round more than 2200 years ago. It was well accepted at the time of Columbus that the Earth was round; they just also knew that you couldn't sail west to get to China because the Earth was too big around. Ironically, it was Columbus who was wrong, using flawed calculations to convince Queen Isabella that he could sail west to get to China... and he would have died in the attempt, if he hadn't hit a wholly unknown continent smack dab in the way.
The real problem isn't that people are stupid--they are, but not as much as you'd think, and it's not the biggest problem--it's that they're gullible. When you look even briefly at crowd psychology, you quickly come upon well-documented effects like Groupthink and The Bystander Effect, all of which illustrate this basic problem: when a crowd of humans get together, everyone just sort of assumes that "the others" have already thought of everything, and that everyone can sort of coast along like lemmings. Nobody bothers to check facts, and you end up with the most idiotic things being "common knowledge," like that ludicrous idea that we only use 10% of our brains, or that Columbus "wanted to prove the world was round."
Who modded this Troll? He's absolutely correct: the apathy of the middle is why the extremists have taken over the airwaves. We've got "Tea Party" candidates on one side of the aisle talking about using guns to overthrow the government so we can abolish historically low taxes, and we've got crazy utopianists on the other side saying we've got to close all the banks and give the money to the people who pissed their money away in the first place. And what are the rational, facts-based people in the middle doing? Throwing up their hands and ignoring the whole process.
You want things to change, fine: get off your butt and make a change. If you always do what you've always done, you'll always have what you have right now.
If "conservatives" believe the intent of the Constitution is as it's stated, then why did the five-member conservative majority in SCOTUS just give corporations free speech rights superior to those of actual human beings? Ever since Justice Alito changed the court to a five to four conservative majority, the Supreme Court has become increasingly activist, striking down key laws that limit the power of corporations, government executives, and well-heeled criminals (the less well-off criminals still get the shaft, though).
One of the reasons we've got to be really careful about any sort of "internet kill switch" bill is, even if the legislature makes it voluntary, the newly activist conservatives in the Supreme Court are sure to take the "voluntary" part out, if they can.
Hey, I wish I could depend on good-ole-boy bullshitting: the three management layers above me are staffed with women, and the hiring manager has told me outright that I won't be getting promoted because of my visual disability.
But don't let me interrupt your militant feminist rant.
How is that not consistent? For the vast majority of users, a phone is an appliance, just like a PC is an appliance, or a refrigerator, or a car. They don't know what is involved in maintaining that phone, or the security risks associated with using the phone, nor are they particularly inclined to care; they have more important things to do with their lives, like hold down a job, take care of kids, keep up with politics to be a better informed voter, etc. For these sorts of people, whom I suspect makes up at least 90% of the population (maybe more), it makes perfect sense to have a (for now) trusted source seamlessly take care of the security of the phone transparently, without them having to do a thing.
Note that this is exactly why Vista's UAC is the exact wrong way to handle security for the "normal" user: they don't know what's in their best interest, nor do they have the time and/or inclination to find out. Now, obviously they should take the time, but, seeing as they are already choosing not to, the only viable solution is to do it for them. It's the same reason programmers are told never to roll their own cryptography solution: for most of the population it's hard for them to get it right, and instead should rely on established solutions.
On the other hand, there is that other ten percent who does care and has time to learn the issues involved in privacy protection and information security. For these people, it makes perfect sense to allow them the option to "go it alone," to reject the one size fits all security that a default install would imply, and perform their updates manually.
...he seemed to think of the phone's owner more as a security threat than as the person who should be setting security policy.
To be fair, he does have a point, if in fact that was his view. I mean, how many zombified PCs are out there now, DDoSing servers and spamming the planet, just because their owners can't manage (at a bare minimum) to enable Automatic Updates? Millions? Tens of millions?
I know hating Google is in vogue these days, but let's be honest here: so far, they're no Microsoft. They're not a convicted monopoly; they've gone out of their way to invest real resources in opening their services, actually spending money to make it easier for people to migrate away from Gmail and Google Docs; they sponsor and promote open source; and they compete by constantly making their products better, rather than trying to strong-arm people into buying their junk. So yeah, until they show otherwise, I'm going to be cautiously optimistic and give them the benefit of the doubt.
The question is, is there a way for paranoid individuals to turn this capability off if they want to. Let the Joe Sixpacks of the world live in blissful ignorance, and let Google keep them from bringing the cell networks down with their inability to properly patch and protect their phones; just give me the ability to opt out if I know the risks, and choose to take them.
Heh, and I got modded Flamebait for it too. I kinda deserved it though; I made a bunch of claims without really backing most of them up, and, even worse, referred to great swaths of history with sweeping generalities that are easily quibbled by both sides of the debate.
I really do hope that we Americans can get over this stubborn cynicism that we've developed in recent decades, the one that says no large group can ever get anything meaningful accomplished. The space program is one of the greatest counterexamples of this, and yet even that is succumbing to the rot of endless recriminations for past mistakes. Heck, part of being human is going out there and making mistakes, but these days it seems that anytime anyone in government tries to take a risk--win or lose--there is a mad rush to make him fall on his sword. Is it any wonder we can't excel at anything anymore?
"The Media" is such a loaded phrase these days, that it's no surprise nobody "trusts" them. Years of politicians and everyone else slamming "traditional media", "Big media", "The Liberal Media", and "The Right-wing Media" mean that everyone associates "The Media" with whatever group they disagree with.
Liberals hate "The Media" because, to them, it means "Faux News" and all the other anti-facts news organizations they've been trained to hate.
Conservatives hate "The Media" because, to them, it means "The Liberal Media", which seems to mean anything OTHER than Fox News.
Is anyone surprised that everyone hates a loaded word? Why not just ask if people trust "Terrorists"?
GP was talking about the NASA from the 60s, who was really careful about safety after losing an entire crew in a pure oxygen filled capsule, not the one that has spent the last thirty years under "can't do" Republican administrations. It's become a self-fulfilling prophecy: Republicans get into power claiming the government can't do anything right, they get into government and fire everyone competent, replacing them with industry lobbyists, and outsource everything they can, then government proceeds to fail because all it has left on staff are vultures greedily funneling taxpayer money into private hands. Rinse and repeat.
Er, yeah, you're comparing wind deaths in the entire world with coal deaths in the US? How about you make the comparison more meaningful and compare coal deaths in the entire world instead, so the comparison has some meaning?
Workplace safety laws are far better here than most places in the rest of the world. In the US, a few dozen people died in a coal mine explosion, making it the worst in several years. In China, an explosion earlier this year killed HUNDREDS of workers, but was considered a "miracle," mostly because they actually managed to not kill ALL of them this time.
We CAN fix this, but we're not going to do it by staying in our parents' indolent fantasy land, and pretending that we can keep selling our votes every year and government will just go away if we ignore it enough. We have to stop selling our participation every election, and get out there and make the changes that we need. And we have to do it quickly: the EU and Japan and the BRIC nations aren't suffering from the same government-phobia that we are, and are poised to toss us into the dustbin of history.
And we're not suffering from the same problems they are. I don't know why you're obsessed with "government-phobia". A distrust of government is warranted both by history, and by the current inability of government to address or even recognize real problems today. You seem to imply that you understand this which makes your ire even more misguided IMHO. Maybe you should worry more about real problems and not about what your parents think.
I'm not "obsessed with 'government-phobia'"; I'm responding to a person who basically said: "We got what we deserved for trusting government; 'When are you all going to learn that government is inherently bad; that it is inherently corrupt.'" Government is no more "inherently bad" than anything else; sure, left unchecked, as it has been for so long now, it can be bad, but not if it has been properly reigned in.
I am not suggesting that we should always trust the government to do the right thing. Far from it, actually: I am saying that we must be eternally vigilant against government over-reach and under-reach. What we should never do is throw up our hands and say, "Well, what did you expect? Government is evil! We should put our trust in X instead!" where X is whatever flavor-of-the-month that you think will solve all your problems for you.
Life is rough. Deal with it, because no Father God, or Mother Earch, or Uncle Sam or corporate overlord is going to do it for you.
You know, I am heartily sick of hearing that lazy mantra of the Baby Boomer generation. "When are you all going to learn that government is inherently bad; that it is inherently corrupt." Back in the '60s this was followed by, "All you need is love, man." By the 80s it became "Just trust the corporations. Deregulate everything, and the free market will take care of us." By 2000 it was, "All you need is God."
What the Boomers keep failing to understand is that government is not, and never has been, "The Man," some strange group controlled by an alien entity. Government is nothing more or less than the sum of its parts, namely the people who work to create and maintain it. In this country we happen to be blessed with a Democratic Republic, which means that group of people is everyone in the country. Everyone gets to participate, by running for office, by volunteering for a campaign or a cause, by discussing the issues with friends and family and coworkers, by voting.
The problem isn't that government is run by someone else, it's that the Boomers, our parents and grandparents, sold their participation, and continue selling their participation, for the dollars and promises of corporations. These corporations have turned around and used those votes to build a government that responds to their needs. This has the unfortunate result of giving us a government that doesn't respond to our needs, which only makes sense because we're not the ones with the votes anymore.
We CAN fix this, but we're not going to do it by staying in our parents' indolent fantasy land, and pretending that we can keep selling our votes every year and government will just go away if we ignore it enough. We have to stop selling our participation every election, and get out there and make the changes that we need. And we have to do it quickly: the EU and Japan and the BRIC nations aren't suffering from the same government-phobia that we are, and are poised to toss us into the dustbin of history.
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God I wish. Half the people in office would be street sweepers if that were the case. ... and the other half would be sweeping the other side of the street.
It wouldn't take all that many people to astroturf the most popular sites; maybe a few hundred, which wouldn't be that expensive at China's current wages.
The irony here is that Chinese wages are increasing, due to the chinese one child policy and their aging population; eventually it'll become far more expensive to play this sort of censorship game.
Besides, if tax dodgers respond to crackdowns by leaving the country, well, good riddance. One way to get rid of a leech is to get rid of them, so at least they're not siphoning state resources away from everyone else. Let them leech off another government instead, if they can (let's see you get better services from a bankrupt government like Greece, where large portions of the populace refuse to pay taxes).
For such emails, the best practice is to just ignore the emails; eventually the spammer will believe your account is inactive and stop emailing you.
One of the worst things you can do is hit the "Unsubscribe" button, because it means they now know your account is being monitored, and can sell it to an even worse spammer, continuing the downward spiral.
And the fear's been borne out, hasn't it?
Windows DRM --> harder to get pirated Windows --> people looking to cheaper alternatives (linux) --> people learning how to work with those alternatives --> growing irrelevance of Microsoft.
Yes. You now have a few hundred times as much plutonium and uranium in your system as humans did a hundred years ago, though it's still so small as to be basically insignificant.
Also, you can do weird carbon dating tests on things, based on how the carbon-14 ratio changed in the atmosphere during the atmospheric nuclear testing days of 1940-1963, combined with the rate of CO2 production due to fossil fuels.
I do believe, like many other creators, that our creations are like our childs. You don't own your children. You have to feed them, care for them, and protect them until they are mature enough to have a life on their own. And then they are gone. They are as free as you are.
Yes, you are right. And that is why copyrights expire, just like children grow up.
When? When do copyrights expire? I'm thirty years old; I've never seen a copyright expire. My father is sixty years old; he's never seen a copyright expire. My grandfather may have seen a copyright expire, but he's been dead for over a decade so I don't know.
The GP may be wrong with his "Ideas are meant to be free!" hippie nonsense, but that doesn't make the current situation right either. The biggest problem with modern copyright law, as I see it, is that it has no notion of the fact that, after a certain amount of time, the value of the work ceases to be in the originality of the idea, but in the way the idea has entered the public consciousness. This is, I think, the original intent of works entering "public domain": the public itself is now the source of the value for the work, and should be the ones benefiting from it. At that point, the copyright institution is no longer rewarding a creator for his creativity, but merely creating a welfare state where the creator is leeching off of the public's thoughts.
For instance, look at Catcher in the Rye. In the early 50s, when it was first published, it was innovative and new and controversial, undoubtedly a creation worthy of reward. Over the years, it has incited a large amount of controversy, frequently being banned from libraries and classrooms, given the blame for a number of murders, etc. It has entered the public consciousness; the work itself is in many cases irrelevant compared to the reactions it has caused. At this point, it is impossible to disentangle whether the real worth of the novel is in the words themselves, that the author is saying to the public, or in the words and stories that the public are telling each other related to the work. The former may deserve reward for the writer, but the later surely does not, as it essentially lets the writer leech off of the public forever.
Yeah, about that...
The Greeks figured out the Earth was round more than 2200 years ago. It was well accepted at the time of Columbus that the Earth was round; they just also knew that you couldn't sail west to get to China because the Earth was too big around. Ironically, it was Columbus who was wrong, using flawed calculations to convince Queen Isabella that he could sail west to get to China... and he would have died in the attempt, if he hadn't hit a wholly unknown continent smack dab in the way.
The real problem isn't that people are stupid--they are, but not as much as you'd think, and it's not the biggest problem--it's that they're gullible. When you look even briefly at crowd psychology, you quickly come upon well-documented effects like Groupthink and The Bystander Effect, all of which illustrate this basic problem: when a crowd of humans get together, everyone just sort of assumes that "the others" have already thought of everything, and that everyone can sort of coast along like lemmings. Nobody bothers to check facts, and you end up with the most idiotic things being "common knowledge," like that ludicrous idea that we only use 10% of our brains, or that Columbus "wanted to prove the world was round."
"How many politicians up in arms about Google Wi-Fi sniffing will want to know more about this?"
Answer: none, since Microsoft isn't paying them to target AT&T.
Who modded this Troll? He's absolutely correct: the apathy of the middle is why the extremists have taken over the airwaves. We've got "Tea Party" candidates on one side of the aisle talking about using guns to overthrow the government so we can abolish historically low taxes, and we've got crazy utopianists on the other side saying we've got to close all the banks and give the money to the people who pissed their money away in the first place. And what are the rational, facts-based people in the middle doing? Throwing up their hands and ignoring the whole process.
You want things to change, fine: get off your butt and make a change. If you always do what you've always done, you'll always have what you have right now.
If "conservatives" believe the intent of the Constitution is as it's stated, then why did the five-member conservative majority in SCOTUS just give corporations free speech rights superior to those of actual human beings? Ever since Justice Alito changed the court to a five to four conservative majority, the Supreme Court has become increasingly activist, striking down key laws that limit the power of corporations, government executives, and well-heeled criminals (the less well-off criminals still get the shaft, though).
One of the reasons we've got to be really careful about any sort of "internet kill switch" bill is, even if the legislature makes it voluntary, the newly activist conservatives in the Supreme Court are sure to take the "voluntary" part out, if they can.
1) Accounting for inflation, postage rates for the USPS have remained the same over the past 40 years.
2) The USPS is losing money, not because it's unprofitable, but because health care costs too much in this country. Obama was right to push for health care reform, even if he didn't get enough reform to actually fix the problem.
Hey, I wish I could depend on good-ole-boy bullshitting: the three management layers above me are staffed with women, and the hiring manager has told me outright that I won't be getting promoted because of my visual disability.
But don't let me interrupt your militant feminist rant.
How is that not consistent? For the vast majority of users, a phone is an appliance, just like a PC is an appliance, or a refrigerator, or a car. They don't know what is involved in maintaining that phone, or the security risks associated with using the phone, nor are they particularly inclined to care; they have more important things to do with their lives, like hold down a job, take care of kids, keep up with politics to be a better informed voter, etc. For these sorts of people, whom I suspect makes up at least 90% of the population (maybe more), it makes perfect sense to have a (for now) trusted source seamlessly take care of the security of the phone transparently, without them having to do a thing.
Note that this is exactly why Vista's UAC is the exact wrong way to handle security for the "normal" user: they don't know what's in their best interest, nor do they have the time and/or inclination to find out. Now, obviously they should take the time, but, seeing as they are already choosing not to, the only viable solution is to do it for them. It's the same reason programmers are told never to roll their own cryptography solution: for most of the population it's hard for them to get it right, and instead should rely on established solutions.
On the other hand, there is that other ten percent who does care and has time to learn the issues involved in privacy protection and information security. For these people, it makes perfect sense to allow them the option to "go it alone," to reject the one size fits all security that a default install would imply, and perform their updates manually.
...he seemed to think of the phone's owner more as a security threat than as the person who should be setting security policy.
To be fair, he does have a point, if in fact that was his view. I mean, how many zombified PCs are out there now, DDoSing servers and spamming the planet, just because their owners can't manage (at a bare minimum) to enable Automatic Updates? Millions? Tens of millions?
I know hating Google is in vogue these days, but let's be honest here: so far, they're no Microsoft. They're not a convicted monopoly; they've gone out of their way to invest real resources in opening their services, actually spending money to make it easier for people to migrate away from Gmail and Google Docs; they sponsor and promote open source; and they compete by constantly making their products better, rather than trying to strong-arm people into buying their junk. So yeah, until they show otherwise, I'm going to be cautiously optimistic and give them the benefit of the doubt.
The question is, is there a way for paranoid individuals to turn this capability off if they want to. Let the Joe Sixpacks of the world live in blissful ignorance, and let Google keep them from bringing the cell networks down with their inability to properly patch and protect their phones; just give me the ability to opt out if I know the risks, and choose to take them.
Heh, and I got modded Flamebait for it too. I kinda deserved it though; I made a bunch of claims without really backing most of them up, and, even worse, referred to great swaths of history with sweeping generalities that are easily quibbled by both sides of the debate.
I really do hope that we Americans can get over this stubborn cynicism that we've developed in recent decades, the one that says no large group can ever get anything meaningful accomplished. The space program is one of the greatest counterexamples of this, and yet even that is succumbing to the rot of endless recriminations for past mistakes. Heck, part of being human is going out there and making mistakes, but these days it seems that anytime anyone in government tries to take a risk--win or lose--there is a mad rush to make him fall on his sword. Is it any wonder we can't excel at anything anymore?
"The Media" is such a loaded phrase these days, that it's no surprise nobody "trusts" them. Years of politicians and everyone else slamming "traditional media", "Big media", "The Liberal Media", and "The Right-wing Media" mean that everyone associates "The Media" with whatever group they disagree with.
Liberals hate "The Media" because, to them, it means "Faux News" and all the other anti-facts news organizations they've been trained to hate.
Conservatives hate "The Media" because, to them, it means "The Liberal Media", which seems to mean anything OTHER than Fox News.
Is anyone surprised that everyone hates a loaded word? Why not just ask if people trust "Terrorists"?
GP was talking about the NASA from the 60s, who was really careful about safety after losing an entire crew in a pure oxygen filled capsule, not the one that has spent the last thirty years under "can't do" Republican administrations. It's become a self-fulfilling prophecy: Republicans get into power claiming the government can't do anything right, they get into government and fire everyone competent, replacing them with industry lobbyists, and outsource everything they can, then government proceeds to fail because all it has left on staff are vultures greedily funneling taxpayer money into private hands. Rinse and repeat.
Er, yeah, you're comparing wind deaths in the entire world with coal deaths in the US? How about you make the comparison more meaningful and compare coal deaths in the entire world instead, so the comparison has some meaning?
Workplace safety laws are far better here than most places in the rest of the world. In the US, a few dozen people died in a coal mine explosion, making it the worst in several years. In China, an explosion earlier this year killed HUNDREDS of workers, but was considered a "miracle," mostly because they actually managed to not kill ALL of them this time.
We CAN fix this, but we're not going to do it by staying in our parents' indolent fantasy land, and pretending that we can keep selling our votes every year and government will just go away if we ignore it enough. We have to stop selling our participation every election, and get out there and make the changes that we need. And we have to do it quickly: the EU and Japan and the BRIC nations aren't suffering from the same government-phobia that we are, and are poised to toss us into the dustbin of history.
And we're not suffering from the same problems they are. I don't know why you're obsessed with "government-phobia". A distrust of government is warranted both by history, and by the current inability of government to address or even recognize real problems today. You seem to imply that you understand this which makes your ire even more misguided IMHO. Maybe you should worry more about real problems and not about what your parents think.
I'm not "obsessed with 'government-phobia'"; I'm responding to a person who basically said: "We got what we deserved for trusting government; 'When are you all going to learn that government is inherently bad; that it is inherently corrupt.'" Government is no more "inherently bad" than anything else; sure, left unchecked, as it has been for so long now, it can be bad, but not if it has been properly reigned in.
I am not suggesting that we should always trust the government to do the right thing. Far from it, actually: I am saying that we must be eternally vigilant against government over-reach and under-reach. What we should never do is throw up our hands and say, "Well, what did you expect? Government is evil! We should put our trust in X instead!" where X is whatever flavor-of-the-month that you think will solve all your problems for you.
Life is rough. Deal with it, because no Father God, or Mother Earch, or Uncle Sam or corporate overlord is going to do it for you.
You know, I am heartily sick of hearing that lazy mantra of the Baby Boomer generation. "When are you all going to learn that government is inherently bad; that it is inherently corrupt." Back in the '60s this was followed by, "All you need is love, man." By the 80s it became "Just trust the corporations. Deregulate everything, and the free market will take care of us." By 2000 it was, "All you need is God."
What the Boomers keep failing to understand is that government is not, and never has been, "The Man," some strange group controlled by an alien entity. Government is nothing more or less than the sum of its parts, namely the people who work to create and maintain it. In this country we happen to be blessed with a Democratic Republic, which means that group of people is everyone in the country. Everyone gets to participate, by running for office, by volunteering for a campaign or a cause, by discussing the issues with friends and family and coworkers, by voting.
The problem isn't that government is run by someone else, it's that the Boomers, our parents and grandparents, sold their participation, and continue selling their participation, for the dollars and promises of corporations. These corporations have turned around and used those votes to build a government that responds to their needs. This has the unfortunate result of giving us a government that doesn't respond to our needs, which only makes sense because we're not the ones with the votes anymore.
We CAN fix this, but we're not going to do it by staying in our parents' indolent fantasy land, and pretending that we can keep selling our votes every year and government will just go away if we ignore it enough. We have to stop selling our participation every election, and get out there and make the changes that we need. And we have to do it quickly: the EU and Japan and the BRIC nations aren't suffering from the same government-phobia that we are, and are poised to toss us into the dustbin of history.