Here in Europe we send our wacko ex-politicians to serve on the EU commision. Neil Kinnock... Chris Patten.. Edith Cressant..Martin Bangemann
Maybe you Canadians should come back to the bosom of the mother country and then you'd be able to do the same.
Actually thinking about wierdo things that the EU spends vast amounts of money on, trying to make contact with aliens doesn't sound quite as crazy as it first appears.
I've read Doc Searls for a few years in Linux Journal and occasional web articles and I always come away asking myself "what is he talking about?" His articles refer to other articles or weblogs and to converstaions with other people (who have always been friends of his for years) and he writes about the conversations they have, or some address he has given at some conference that I have never heard of, and they all seem to know what the everyone else one is talking about. But to me it might as well be two people talking in Klingon to each other.
Do they all really know what they are on about or are all these clued up people afraid to admit to each other that they don't understand what's going on.
I hear a couple of phrases like "Markets are conversations" which I can can parse but not comprehend, lots of "hip" phrases like "The Cluetrain Manifesto" but what does it all have to do with the price of sliced bread, to use a British idiom, or put it another way what does it have to do with me doing things like wasting time on Slashdot or buying books on Amazon.
Can anyone please translate what he says into normal english?
Perhaps you can quote a few examples of good journalism, no.. scratch that, make it just a few examples of journalism, in the News of the World. Although I'm making the great leap of faith that you, as a possible NotW reader actually knows what journlism is.
Your conflating of the terms "backwards" and "conservative" is off the mark. I'd class myself as conservative but I wouldn't want to be seen in the same room as the thick bastards on the Kansas school board.
What they have done is not conservative it is criminally stupid.
"China has its own weaknesses (poverty of so many & massive industrial pollution to name two big ones)"
I think totalitarian government,the imprisonment and torture of dissidents and destroying Tibet might just creep into a top three list of weaknesses ahead of your two choices.
There probably has been, you may just not have noticed. Do you think newspapers were full of headlines like "Austrian Scientist explains Brownian Motion" or "Measurement of Plancks Constant Promises Unlimited Energy" Of course not, these things usually take a few years to reach the general conciousness.
You never know which recent dicoveries will be seen as revolutionary in the future.
You overestimate the usefulness of an analogy, which is, I freely admit, a not uncommon failing of many arguments presented on Slashdot, in what is a discussion about a subject which is, by it's very nature, not very amenable to analogies.
What makes it worst is that your analogy is not even a very good one.
All this means as that it's not really worth much time and effort respoding to your post.
If "true democracy" Swiss style is so great then why didn't women get the vote in elections untils some time in the 1970s and in some Cantons not until around 1990s in some cantonal elections ?
It doesn't quite sound like a "true democracy" if 50% of the population can't vote
I suspect that your comment really means that you find a half-naked, inter-racial menage-a-trois a bit distasteful and possibly even a bit icky.
I think that a sucessful businessman like Mark Shuttleworth knows a bit more about marketing than some humourless, wee-free, no footie on a Sunday type on Slashdot
Mr Marshall writes that "However, when it comes to software professionals, there is no such argument. Any software that they write, irrespective of whether it is during or outside normal working hours, legally belongs to their employer"
IANAL but I don't believe that this is the case for the UK, unless a contract states otherwise and someone is stupid enough to sign it.
I would be very interested to find out if Mr Marshall bases his opinion on any law or precedent, or if he is just wildly guessing.
If the cases in the Netherlands are anything like the cases that have been cited here in the UK as the reasons for us having a National Childrens Database, then it was not the "linking of information that's already been gathered" that would have prevented the deaths but people doing their jobs properly.
I'd be very surprised if it was any different in NL.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to be suffering under the misapprehension that there is a fundamental difference between news and opinion. If there is, it is only of degree.
Here in Europe we send our wacko ex-politicians to serve on the EU commision. Neil Kinnock... Chris Patten.. Edith Cressant..Martin Bangemann
Maybe you Canadians should come back to the bosom of the mother country and then you'd be able to do the same.
Actually thinking about wierdo things that the EU spends vast amounts of money on, trying to make contact with aliens doesn't sound quite as crazy as it first appears.
Vote Tory at the next election. They've promised to abolish the DTI because it's a complete waste of time amd money.
I've read Doc Searls for a few years in Linux Journal and occasional web articles and I always come away asking myself "what is he talking about?" His articles refer to other articles or weblogs and to converstaions with other people (who have always been friends of his for years) and he writes about the conversations they have, or some address he has given at some conference that I have never heard of, and they all seem to know what the everyone else one is talking about. But to me it might as well be two people talking in Klingon to each other.
Do they all really know what they are on about or are all these clued up people afraid to admit to each other that they don't understand what's going on.
I hear a couple of phrases like "Markets are conversations" which I can can parse but not comprehend, lots of "hip" phrases like "The Cluetrain Manifesto" but what does it all have to do with the price of sliced bread, to use a British idiom, or put it another way what does it have to do with me doing things like wasting time on Slashdot or buying books on Amazon.
Can anyone please translate what he says into normal english?
Perhaps you can quote a few examples of good journalism, no.. scratch that, make it just a few examples of journalism, in the News of the World. Although I'm making the great leap of faith that you, as a possible NotW reader actually knows what journlism is.
I demand that Kansas schools teach Big Blue Teddyism alongside Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.
Have you been touched by his furry appendage.
Your conflating of the terms "backwards" and "conservative" is off the mark. I'd class myself as conservative but I wouldn't want to be seen in the same room as the thick bastards on the Kansas school board.
What they have done is not conservative it is criminally stupid.
So, by your argument, forcing integration down the throats of southern parents and school boards was wrong as well ?
What is the point of having values if you dont try to teach them to anyone?
"But have you ever considered how HARD it is to maintain civil order in a country with 1.4 billion people? "
Someone did, and then tried to do something about it, but we stopped him and his plans in 1945.
"so we will know exactly when someone is talking out of their ass"
I think you've proved your own point quite nicely thank-you
"China has its own weaknesses (poverty of so many & massive industrial pollution to name two big ones)"
I think totalitarian government,the imprisonment and torture of dissidents and destroying Tibet might just creep into a top three list of weaknesses ahead of your two choices.
There probably has been, you may just not have noticed. Do you think newspapers were full of headlines like "Austrian Scientist explains Brownian Motion" or "Measurement of Plancks Constant Promises Unlimited Energy" Of course not, these things usually take a few years to reach the general conciousness.
You never know which recent dicoveries will be seen as revolutionary in the future.
or as we used to say in the UK, "Pull the other one, it's get bells on"
Or as I say today, "40 cents for a product description!?!?! Fuck off!"
You overestimate the usefulness of an analogy, which is, I freely admit, a not uncommon failing of many arguments presented on Slashdot, in what is a discussion about a subject which is, by it's very nature, not very amenable to analogies.
What makes it worst is that your analogy is not even a very good one.
All this means as that it's not really worth much time and effort respoding to your post.
Flame off!
I, for one, welcome our old patent wielding overlords
If "true democracy" Swiss style is so great then why didn't women get the vote in elections untils some time in the 1970s and in some Cantons not until around 1990s in some cantonal elections ?
c hronology-womens-right-vote-switzerland.html
It doesn't quite sound like a "true democracy" if 50% of the population can't vote
http://history-switzerland.geschichte-schweiz.ch/
except that the quote you're reusing is:
"Alas! poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio"
Not "I knew him well"
I hate people misquoting Shakespeare.
Except at cricket & rugby
I suspect that your comment really means that you find a half-naked, inter-racial menage-a-trois a bit distasteful and possibly even a bit icky.
I think that a sucessful businessman like Mark Shuttleworth knows a bit more about marketing than some humourless, wee-free, no footie on a Sunday type on Slashdot
I think you mean Augean stables.
l
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/stables.htm
"But as a symbol, he can be everlasting."
For fucks sake! He's just some guy who works at a corporation. He's not Spartacus or Ghandi or whatever.
"I'm sure that many of us would secretly welcome the collapse of the virtual monopoly that currently exists in the desktop software market."
Secretly ?!?!?
I'd be celebrating as if it was the Berlin wall coming down, Hogmanay, my birthday and Newcastle United winning the English Premiership all at once.
Mr Marshall writes that "However, when it comes to software professionals, there is no such argument. Any software that they write, irrespective of whether it is during or outside normal working hours, legally belongs to their employer"
IANAL but I don't believe that this is the case for the UK, unless a contract states otherwise and someone is stupid enough to sign it.
I would be very interested to find out if Mr Marshall bases his opinion on any law or precedent, or if he is just wildly guessing.
If the cases in the Netherlands are anything like the cases that have been cited here in the UK as the reasons for us having a National Childrens Database, then it was not the "linking of information that's already been gathered" that would have prevented the deaths but people doing their jobs properly.
I'd be very surprised if it was any different in NL.
"Because of the pervasive (mis?)conception that Linux requires a lot of geeky tweaking to get it to work"
You've never tried to get ACPI suspend-to-ram and suspend-to-disk working on a laptop have you?