Much of the centralized control and secrecy came out of Stalin and his...well...he was just fucked in the head. He brought the facism and violence to post-revolutionary Russia.
Popular myth. Lenin's Russia was no less violent than Stalin's, although I must admit, violence was not so obscene and "random" then (like these Stalin's era "commitments" on executions - yes, local rulers were declaring how many reactionists they will execute in the following year!).
For communism to work one has to change human nature: by brainwashing, tortures, indoctrination and what else. The problem is the same as with the tragedy of commons: everybody thinks "what does it matters if I don't work? Who am I in comparison with millions working for the common good? Noone will notice". And noone does, for sometime. And then more and more people start doing the same, and the system starts to fall apart. So instead of "corrupting" direct payment you have to find other means to make people work for common good: whacking, siberia and so on. But it is still not enough, as shown in many examples.
So violence and terror is built into the very core of every implementation of communism. And, had I the choice, I would always choose to live in the world of Microsofts than in the world of politruks, gulags and so on.
I think you are confusing what GNUstep is (the s is lower case, by the way). GNUstep is not a window manager, and GNUstep is not a desktop environment. GNUstep is an implementation of a set of APIs. If you are not a developer (as you point out), it has no more relevance to you than GTK or Qt.
No, I don't confuse it. I know that GNUstep can work with different WMs (Afterstep or, I think now preferred wmaker) and I know that it is an implementation. But for the sake of convenience when I write "I tried GNUstep" I mean "I tried to use the set of official GNUstep applications, i.e. Gworkspace, GNUMail plus few additional contributed applications". And you have to agree that although usage of an API or toolkit should not matter to an enduser, in fact it does. QT apps have different feeling than GTK ones - and even themeing doesn't fully change it.
But then finally you write what is important from my point of view:
So change it. There are bundles available which will put the menu bar (on every GNUstep app) at the top of the screen, where it belongs, or at the top of a each window. These are likely to be exposed via a configuration interface soon.
and
Take a look at Chameleon (due for official release in the next week or two). It's a complete theme engine for GNUstep. I've seen it running with widget images extracted from OS X, and since GNUstep and OS X both have the same ancestor (OPENSTEP) you get the OS X look and feel.
Ok, I'll give GNUstep another try when this is released. The only remaining concern then will be: ok, menubar at the top of the screen is nice, but what about GNUstep not-aware apps? This will really make them annoying, as then they will really stick out.
I was similarly converted to Apple, but I keep a linux box around and use it quite frequently. But thanks to the Mac, I now do everything in GNUStep.
I'm actually amazed that OS X hasn't spurred a renaissance for GNUStep.
Well, I am, as you wrote it, "a weenie" - I don't want to pay my 2 months salary for a freaking computer (I live in Poland and in fact my income is quite above average), so I only dream about having a Mac. Well, now with Mac Mini and new prices of iBooks I started to count money maybe to buy one, but back to the point:
I am a long Wmaker user and I tried GNUStep few times, but it simply doesn't work for me. I always do everything the wrong way there, and the menu in the upper left corner just annoys me. Mail.app (or what is it called) reminds me of a mailer program from CDE somewhere in the late nineties. And the whole thing is just ugly. OK, icons are nice, but widgets are terrible: scroll bars, radio button and so on...
Anyway, so far it was always like this: new GNUStep version announcement, apt-get install gnustep, a week or two of futile attempts to like it, apt-get remove gnustep and back to my combo of wmaker/sylpheed/firefox (now replaced by kde 3.3).
Well, maybe not to insightful, but GNUStep has a really long road ahead to be usable to me. And no, I am not a programmer so I am not able to contribute. So maybe I should quit complaining?;-)
But you are right, it would be nice if more of the MacOS X goodness was available to us in the cheap x86 world:-)
I hate to say this, but the problem with human space travel is that there is just nowhere to go.
I don't agree. Just one word: tourism. First sub-orbital flights, then orbit, then a few days at the space station, finally (in a distant future) maybe something like Freeside in Neuromancer.
Of course, there are obstacles: price, environmental impact, safety, but humans have already proved that they are willing to pay a lot for things with no apparent practical gain.
Well, this seems a perfect application for linux: well-thought linux installation, perfectly in a form of LiveCD, separate/home partition, and then contents of the CD installed on the / partition. Updates: easy, just take a new version of LiveCD and do a complete reinstall.
I have always thought, that old grandma' is one of two kinds of perfect linux users: having no need to tinker. The other one being a geek of course - regular users are the worst, they want to tweak a bit, but in linux they often screw up completely.
as Stalin once said of the Pope, "How many divisions does Slashdot have?"
Nice quotation, but sooo out of context... First of all, while neither the Pope nor Slashdot have divisions, even despite enormous amount of Slashdot readers, the Catholic Church (i.e. the Pope) has a bit more followers. The second fact is that during the eighties JP2 was in touch with president Reagan (as Bush is surrounded by fighting protestants and JP2 many times condemned War on Iraq, now probably it is not the case). I doubt Cmdr Taco can call Bush and have a chat...
And finally: yes, despite the lack of divisions, the Pope liberated Poland in 1979, thus leading to so called "Solidarity carnival" in Poland in 1980-1981. If not for the USSR supporting Polish communist regime, communism in Poland would have ended right then.
So, as you can see in Iraq, "liberation" by front assault is not a solution, in fact "decapitation" strike neither, as the regime still has many many followers. So the only way to overthrow the regime is to wake the nation. And for this Iranians need somebody like the Pope was to Poles, Ghandi to people in India, Arafat to Palestinians, Mandela to blacks in the South Africa or, what an irony!, Khomeini to Iranians themselves in the days of Shah.
With such support as Iranian regime has now, which is bigger than support Husain had in Iraq, you would have a bloodbath there if the US "liberated" Iran, which would be incomparable with what is going on in Iraq.
Wow, that was long...
So, to comment your post, not one sentence: neither Slashdot can do anything (as I suspect that Iranians reading Slashdot are not supporters of the regime, so we will not open anyone's eyes), nor "divisions" you mention. Iranians have to do it themselves.
People write here about revert wars, bias and so on. For me the solution is simple: I use Wikipedia to get reasonably non controversial data. What is this strange name I encountered in a book? An esoteric piece of cutlery? A vegetable?
And if I read about Bush, Fox News, Stalin or whatever controversial subject, I just get careful and try to detect bias. That said, I do the same when I read mainstream press or watch TV.
Anyway, Wikipedia is much more reliable and less biased than communist encyclopedias from before 1989 (I come from Poland, I even have a few old encyclopedias I read from time to time just for fun - so out of touch with reality they are).
Product placements in movies have been on the rise over the past few years. If you've been to see National Treasure, then you know what I'm talking about. Good lord that had a lot of placement in it.
True. But "on the rise" is a good word: product placement was around always. Or, if not product placement then sponsor placement (like a face of a rich merchant among the Twelve Apostles - and accidentally the merchant paid for the painting)
But I must say that I prefer clever product placement to commercial breaks. Examples: Mercedes and BMW in "Transporter", mobiles in Matrix, main character fond of some drink (be it Martini, Coke, whatever), or just some designer's clothes. If it is not too much in the face, if it just leaves good impression about some product/logo/designer/whatever - then I am all for it.
A country can be communist AND totalitarian, but that doesn't make those two things interchangeable.
Well, while they are not interchangeable (there are totalitarian states that are not communist) there is an implication here: communist state is by definition totalitarian.
I'm at work so I don't have time to elaborate, but totalitarism is built into the very basic principles of communism. Let's take 'from each one according to capability, to each one according to needs'. How are you going to implement it? In capitalism you work to get income, in communism you get what you need, so you can quit working. "Nothing will happen, if I don't work, I'm just one person in xxx million country", and then everybody starts thinking like this and suddenly you need a system of control and oppresion.
So it is very easy to derail the system, just because people are lazy. Soviets were talking that communism will reach its goals when 'the new, soviet people will emerge', such people who will work freely for the happiness of all and will not try to exploit the system. How to breed such people?
Simple: brainwashing, propaganda, 'reformation' of free-minded, terror and, if all fails, extermination. Hell, not if all fails, as much as possible, just as a warning.
Sounds familiar? Yep, that's totalitarian state. And if you haven't lived under communist regime don't try to compare Bush's USA with USSR terror.
And some argue that capitalism on the long run is impossible without democracy as middle class is the foundation of both and capitalism is impossible without choice and freedom. But as nowadays middle class diminishes and we have multinationals, we might as well head for new totalitarism...
Well... it seems I wasted some of my work time after all;-)
We place a value on human life all the time (aka cost benefit analyis)-is this immoral? Government/ private enterprise/people regularly make decisions that cost peoples lives for the sake of money, yet we don't hear the same outcry? Why exactly? These apparent contradictions have always interested me.
Wow, finally something really insightful! The problem is simple: either we see human life as the ultimate value and then abortion, euthanasia, death penalty, conscription have to be banned (which is the stance the Pope takes) or we recognise that there are other values and we always have to weigh life against them and then all of the above should be legal and additionally eugenics as well (plus killing severely mentally ill people for organs) - I don't remember the name, but there is this Australian (?) guy who argues that life of a newborn child or a person in coma is approximately as valuable as a life of a dog and so on.
I don't agree with him but at least his explanations are consistent, quite opposite to people who say: abortion-no, death penalty-yes. Or people who say: to kill a newborn-murder, abortion in 28th week-choice (the question then is: where to place the treshold and why?).
Well, I wouldn't call creation of a state which lasted some 1000 years, more than 400 of it pretty close to its maximum size, "lack of success". Galia: completely latinised, Spain - the same, (Northern) Africa, including Egypt - the same. Hell, 1000 years after the Fall of the Western Empire, Greeks in Byzantium still called themselves "Romans". I would say Romans were doing pretty well as occupants. Of course, we have to remember their few remarkable failures: German tribes (due to huge political and diplomatic mistakes during the rule of Tyberius), Palestine (due to incredible resistance of Jews, based mostly on Jews' sense of being "the Chosen Nation", so based on religion) and few others. But as a whole Romans did pretty well.
What was their way?
- "divide et impera": play on disputes between your opponents - be cruel to rebels but reward loyalty - don't destroy, rather modify (for example: don't change customs, religion, just add yours) - leave local elite in charge, just add some control over them - show possibility of becoming "a Roman" - with all good things coming with it.
And so on...
So basically as little change as possible, as long as they pay the taxes, let Roman goods in, provide soldiers, and don't talk about seccesion. And let "the Roman way" creep in into their lifes, slowly...
I think it worked, especially considering means of communication in those times: it is in some way much closer now from NY to Baghdad than it was from Rome to Lyon or Athenes.
Simple: while running Gnome apps along with XFCE4 (being gtk2 programs) is OK, throwing in KDE with its QT and kdelibs overhead causes memory use to increase significantly. Yeah, I know, memory is not that expensive now, but still I'd rather use it for something else than just to load additional libraries.
Hint: cars that drive very very close to each other, and follow a road to a tee, and consume very little compared to today's automobiles, and don't need a parking spot, and bring you right into most major cities, already exist: they're called a train, and they've been around forever.
Europe, and most of the world proves that moving people by train is convenient, ubiquitous, and quite livable. The United States proves that lobbying from powerful industries can kill viable, more sustainable transportation solutions very effectively.
You know, this is something I always wondered about. Everybody says how nice, convenient and cost-effective trains are and yet even in Europe, where there is huge taxation on petrol it is actually cheaper to drive long distances than to take a train. And you have to remember that in most European countries railways are heavily subsidised.
General consensus is such that cargo trains are more cost effective than trucks but passenger trains cannot be profitable. They have to be subsidised as they provide goods for everyone, not only for train passengers: less pollution, less traffic and so on.
So how is it exactly with economy of railway passenger transport? Anybody knows first hand? Is it actually more energy efficient? If so, then why is it more expensive?
Somebody already replied that whoever moderated parent as Funny is a fucking moron.
The problem with TB is it is poor man's disease (mostly), so there is not much money in it as patients with tuberculosis have no money for so called innovative drugs. Because of that there is not much research going on new treatments of TB. This makes Mr Gates' foundation even more valuable.
OK, this guy is a blood thirsty businness shark but this doesn't mean everything he does is mean. It is better if he spends some of his enormous amounts of money on TB research than hoard it or build yet another billions of dollars worth house.
Raf
P.S. OK, as there are already more than 200 posts in this subject, probably all I've written is redundant, but what the heck...
Man and women are not equal and never will, remember the little birth thing and the children, man on the other side went hunt some animal a few thousand years ago.
Well, some of my friends call me sexist, but here I have to protest. Of course men and women are equal. The point is they are different but different!=(not equal).
Let us not compare apples and oranges. If one person has good artistic and social skills and the other knows innermost mysteries of computers they are obviously different, but are they unequal?
Here's something I did. Except for the jolly roger (which you can't really see anyways) and one of the textures, it's all code, even the lumpy rocks
Impressive, most impressive:-) but it brings a question (and I am too lazy to google for answer;-) ): do people publish code for such gems? Or rather keep it secret just showing stunning results?
I don't know why but seen IBM doing this stuff kinds of reminds me of Darth Vader changing camp after having been in the wrong one for most of is existence.:)
So, do you mean that now IBM will remove its evil looking mask to reveal its ugly face and then die silent yet glorious death on Linus' lap?;-)
Who has the most to lose if civilization breaks down, the guy living hand-to-mouth, owning little other than the clothes on his back and other depreciating assets, or the guy whose has land, stocks and intellectual property, assets that are worth little to nothing without government's ability to defend his ownership of them? Government might be keeping the poor guy alive but it is keeping the rich guy alive and rich.
Bullshit. If you're rich you can pay for your security, hire an army, build a castle - and in fact many rich people already do just that. Without the government they and their armies would be the only oasis of stability, so people would fight for the right to work for them, even if it meant being reduced to mere slaves. Sounds familiar? Yes, that's what happens in areas where the police appears only to stop huge riots and everyday it is easier to hear a gunshot than to see a police officer and people prefer bad safety of working for mafia or gangs to no safety of living on your own. And that's what used to happen after the collapse of Roman Empire: no government, rich people with enough money to hire an army living in at least some safety, poor people either dying of hunger or of violence or accepting leige - that's how feudalism started.
Yep. Most of the "artists" out there today owe more to their producers and marketing agents than to their talent. Oh, and their looks. Being blond with big knockers is a sure fire road to stardom.
Well, parent in this thread gave The Beatles as an example, so I'll do the same and give you two names: George Martin and Brian Eppstein. Without them there would have been no The Beatles. Without Martin's guidance, which helped Fab Four's talent a lot, and without Eppstein's tricks, without fancy suits and hairdos, which gave them some publicity and drew attention. Hell, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was even called by newspapers "George Martin's best album";-)
There are hundreds of good musicians out there - some of them are good enough to create something great out of themselves, but many need some help, some guidance. And if they want to reach further than local pub they definitely need some marketing - even if it is just a page on one of many independent music portals.
One of the quick ways of spotting this is to compare a song that you enjoy to its live performance. It should sound better live, but if the artist is just a commercial pre-packed product then they will probably sound like shit. -- Very true quote though.
Is it? Ever tried to listen to any life performance of "Sgt. Lonely Hearts Club Band" or the long suite on "The Abbey Road"? There is music for life performances and there is music which takes possibilities of a recording studio and creates magic with it - magic never to be present on stage.
And while some people think that only life performance equals true music, I strongly disagree - there are some things impossible to do on stage, which are beautiful and music without them would be poor...
Well, I haven't read/. yesterday, so this is probably going to be the last post in this thread;-)
This nice line: "In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed [x] result(s) from this page." reminds me of old communist times here in Poland, when you could read in a newspaper something like that (translated): "removed under the Control of Publications and Performations Act". So, the Soviet Union is no more, Eastern Block collapsed and now we see something like this in the Land of the Free...
Well, my old 15 inch Belinea is slowly dying, so I am out for a new monitor. Unfortunately cheapest LCDs here in Poland cost around 1500 PLN which is more or less 300 EUR - much more than what I get monthly as a PhD student. Compare it with 100 EUR 17 inch CRTs and the choice is simple.
And that's the problem: enviroment protection is all nice, but quite expensive.
But then, of course, none of my PCs ended on a landfill, as far as I know even my old K5 100MHz is still in use, happily running pirated Win '98, because quite a lot of people here cannot afford 400 EUR brand new PC.
What Linux needs is a MS-DOS 6 style help command. When you type help it pops up a nice ncurses screen of all the different commands available on linux systems, briefly what they do and a link that can take them to a simplified, easy to read page of advanced things to do with the command.
How about info? man interface is crap, but info is pretty user friendly. OK, I admit, I mostly browse info in emacs where it is all flashy and colourful, but AFAIR it is quite easy to navigate also in console. Although a small bar with basic navigation keys on the bottom would help a lot. Of course still quite often if you type 'info foobar' all you get is a man page but that's a different story.
When was the last time you sat down and opened the encyclopedia instead of using the web?
Well, yesterday. I was sitting in a living room and wanted to check something - it was much easier to grab a printed encyclopedia than to go to my bedroom, wait for my computer to start (ok, it is not on 24/7), click on firefox, wait again, go to wikipedia, type, click, wait and then finally read. Maybe if I have a PDA, if it is always connected to the Web - then yes, maybe it will make printed encyclopedias obsolete for me - only mabye though...
Slashdot Mirror
It is getting offtopic, but I'll bite.
;-)
Much of the centralized control and secrecy came out of Stalin and his...well...he was just fucked in the head. He brought the facism and violence to post-revolutionary Russia.
Popular myth. Lenin's Russia was no less violent than Stalin's, although I must admit, violence was not so obscene and "random" then (like these Stalin's era "commitments" on executions - yes, local rulers were declaring how many reactionists they will execute in the following year!).
For communism to work one has to change human nature: by brainwashing, tortures, indoctrination and what else. The problem is the same as with the tragedy of commons: everybody thinks "what does it matters if I don't work? Who am I in comparison with millions working for the common good? Noone will notice". And noone does, for sometime. And then more and more people start doing the same, and the system starts to fall apart. So instead of "corrupting" direct payment you have to find other means to make people work for common good: whacking, siberia and so on. But it is still not enough, as shown in many examples.
So violence and terror is built into the very core of every implementation of communism. And, had I the choice, I would always choose to live in the world of Microsofts than in the world of politruks, gulags and so on.
Seems I have too much time at work today
Raf
I think you are confusing what GNUstep is (the s is lower case, by the way). GNUstep is not a window manager, and GNUstep is not a desktop environment. GNUstep is an implementation of a set of APIs. If you are not a developer (as you point out), it has no more relevance to you than GTK or Qt.
No, I don't confuse it. I know that GNUstep can work with different WMs (Afterstep or, I think now preferred wmaker) and I know that it is an implementation. But for the sake of convenience when I write "I tried GNUstep" I mean "I tried to use the set of official GNUstep applications, i.e. Gworkspace, GNUMail plus few additional contributed applications". And you have to agree that although usage of an API or toolkit should not matter to an enduser, in fact it does. QT apps have different feeling than GTK ones - and even themeing doesn't fully change it.
But then finally you write what is important from my point of view:
So change it. There are bundles available which will put the menu bar (on every GNUstep app) at the top of the screen, where it belongs, or at the top of a each window. These are likely to be exposed via a configuration interface soon.
and
Take a look at Chameleon (due for official release in the next week or two). It's a complete theme engine for GNUstep. I've seen it running with widget images extracted from OS X, and since GNUstep and OS X both have the same ancestor (OPENSTEP) you get the OS X look and feel.
Ok, I'll give GNUstep another try when this is released. The only remaining concern then will be: ok, menubar at the top of the screen is nice, but what about GNUstep not-aware apps? This will really make them annoying, as then they will really stick out.
Anyway, thanks for clarifications.
Raf
Well, I am, as you wrote it, "a weenie" - I don't want to pay my 2 months salary for a freaking computer (I live in Poland and in fact my income is quite above average), so I only dream about having a Mac. Well, now with Mac Mini and new prices of iBooks I started to count money maybe to buy one, but back to the point:
I am a long Wmaker user and I tried GNUStep few times, but it simply doesn't work for me. I always do everything the wrong way there, and the menu in the upper left corner just annoys me. Mail.app (or what is it called) reminds me of a mailer program from CDE somewhere in the late nineties. And the whole thing is just ugly. OK, icons are nice, but widgets are terrible: scroll bars, radio button and so on...
Anyway, so far it was always like this: new GNUStep version announcement, apt-get install gnustep, a week or two of futile attempts to like it, apt-get remove gnustep and back to my combo of wmaker/sylpheed/firefox (now replaced by kde 3.3).
Well, maybe not to insightful, but GNUStep has a really long road ahead to be usable to me. And no, I am not a programmer so I am not able to contribute. So maybe I should quit complaining?
But you are right, it would be nice if more of the MacOS X goodness was available to us in the cheap x86 world
Raf
I don't agree. Just one word: tourism. First sub-orbital flights, then orbit, then a few days at the space station, finally (in a distant future) maybe something like Freeside in Neuromancer.
Of course, there are obstacles: price, environmental impact, safety, but humans have already proved that they are willing to pay a lot for things with no apparent practical gain.
Cheers
Raf
No software instalation?
/home partition, and then contents of the CD installed on the / partition. Updates: easy, just take a new version of LiveCD and do a complete reinstall.
No configuration?
Well, this seems a perfect application for linux: well-thought linux installation, perfectly in a form of LiveCD, separate
I have always thought, that old grandma' is one of two kinds of perfect linux users: having no need to tinker. The other one being a geek of course - regular users are the worst, they want to tweak a bit, but in linux they often screw up completely.
Cheers
Raf
Nice quotation, but sooo out of context... First of all, while neither the Pope nor Slashdot have divisions, even despite enormous amount of Slashdot readers, the Catholic Church (i.e. the Pope) has a bit more followers. The second fact is that during the eighties JP2 was in touch with president Reagan (as Bush is surrounded by fighting protestants and JP2 many times condemned War on Iraq, now probably it is not the case). I doubt Cmdr Taco can call Bush and have a chat...
And finally: yes, despite the lack of divisions, the Pope liberated Poland in 1979, thus leading to so called "Solidarity carnival" in Poland in 1980-1981. If not for the USSR supporting Polish communist regime, communism in Poland would have ended right then.
So, as you can see in Iraq, "liberation" by front assault is not a solution, in fact "decapitation" strike neither, as the regime still has many many followers. So the only way to overthrow the regime is to wake the nation. And for this Iranians need somebody like the Pope was to Poles, Ghandi to people in India, Arafat to Palestinians, Mandela to blacks in the South Africa or, what an irony!, Khomeini to Iranians themselves in the days of Shah.
With such support as Iranian regime has now, which is bigger than support Husain had in Iraq, you would have a bloodbath there if the US "liberated" Iran, which would be incomparable with what is going on in Iraq.
Wow, that was long...
So, to comment your post, not one sentence: neither Slashdot can do anything (as I suspect that Iranians reading Slashdot are not supporters of the regime, so we will not open anyone's eyes), nor "divisions" you mention. Iranians have to do it themselves.
Raf
People write here about revert wars, bias and so on. For me the solution is simple: I use Wikipedia to get reasonably non controversial data. What is this strange name I encountered in a book? An esoteric piece of cutlery? A vegetable?
And if I read about Bush, Fox News, Stalin or whatever controversial subject, I just get careful and try to detect bias. That said, I do the same when I read mainstream press or watch TV.
Anyway, Wikipedia is much more reliable and less biased than communist encyclopedias from before 1989 (I come from Poland, I even have a few old encyclopedias I read from time to time just for fun - so out of touch with reality they are).
Cheers
Raf
True. But "on the rise" is a good word: product placement was around always. Or, if not product placement then sponsor placement (like a face of a rich merchant among the Twelve Apostles - and accidentally the merchant paid for the painting)
But I must say that I prefer clever product placement to commercial breaks. Examples: Mercedes and BMW in "Transporter", mobiles in Matrix, main character fond of some drink (be it Martini, Coke, whatever), or just some designer's clothes. If it is not too much in the face, if it just leaves good impression about some product/logo/designer/whatever - then I am all for it.
Raf
Well, while they are not interchangeable (there are totalitarian states that are not communist) there is an implication here: communist state is by definition totalitarian.
I'm at work so I don't have time to elaborate, but totalitarism is built into the very basic principles of communism. Let's take 'from each one according to capability, to each one according to needs'. How are you going to implement it? In capitalism you work to get income, in communism you get what you need, so you can quit working. "Nothing will happen, if I don't work, I'm just one person in xxx million country", and then everybody starts thinking like this and suddenly you need a system of control and oppresion.
So it is very easy to derail the system, just because people are lazy. Soviets were talking that communism will reach its goals when 'the new, soviet people will emerge', such people who will work freely for the happiness of all and will not try to exploit the system. How to breed such people?
Simple: brainwashing, propaganda, 'reformation' of free-minded, terror and, if all fails, extermination. Hell, not if all fails, as much as possible, just as a warning.
Sounds familiar? Yep, that's totalitarian state. And if you haven't lived under communist regime don't try to compare Bush's USA with USSR terror.
And some argue that capitalism on the long run is impossible without democracy as middle class is the foundation of both and capitalism is impossible without choice and freedom. But as nowadays middle class diminishes and we have multinationals, we might as well head for new totalitarism...
Well... it seems I wasted some of my work time after all
Raf
Wow, finally something really insightful! The problem is simple: either we see human life as the ultimate value and then abortion, euthanasia, death penalty, conscription have to be banned (which is the stance the Pope takes) or we recognise that there are other values and we always have to weigh life against them and then all of the above should be legal and additionally eugenics as well (plus killing severely mentally ill people for organs) - I don't remember the name, but there is this Australian (?) guy who argues that life of a newborn child or a person in coma is approximately as valuable as a life of a dog and so on.
I don't agree with him but at least his explanations are consistent, quite opposite to people who say: abortion-no, death penalty-yes. Or people who say: to kill a newborn-murder, abortion in 28th week-choice (the question then is: where to place the treshold and why?).
A bit of rambling after allergy tests...
Raf
Well, I wouldn't call creation of a state which lasted some 1000 years, more than 400 of it pretty close to its maximum size, "lack of success". Galia: completely latinised, Spain - the same, (Northern) Africa, including Egypt - the same. Hell, 1000 years after the Fall of the Western Empire, Greeks in Byzantium still called themselves "Romans". I would say Romans were doing pretty well as occupants. Of course, we have to remember their few remarkable failures: German tribes (due to huge political and diplomatic mistakes during the rule of Tyberius), Palestine (due to incredible resistance of Jews, based mostly on Jews' sense of being "the Chosen Nation", so based on religion) and few others. But as a whole Romans did pretty well.
What was their way?
- "divide et impera": play on disputes between your opponents
- be cruel to rebels but reward loyalty
- don't destroy, rather modify (for example: don't change customs, religion, just add yours)
- leave local elite in charge, just add some control over them
- show possibility of becoming "a Roman" - with all good things coming with it.
And so on...
So basically as little change as possible, as long as they pay the taxes, let Roman goods in, provide soldiers, and don't talk about seccesion. And let "the Roman way" creep in into their lifes, slowly...
I think it worked, especially considering means of communication in those times: it is in some way much closer now from NY to Baghdad than it was from Rome to Lyon or Athenes.
Raf
Simple: while running Gnome apps along with XFCE4 (being gtk2 programs) is OK, throwing in KDE with its QT and kdelibs overhead causes memory use to increase significantly. Yeah, I know, memory is not that expensive now, but still I'd rather use it for something else than just to load additional libraries.
Raf
You know, this is something I always wondered about. Everybody says how nice, convenient and cost-effective trains are and yet even in Europe, where there is huge taxation on petrol it is actually cheaper to drive long distances than to take a train. And you have to remember that in most European countries railways are heavily subsidised.
General consensus is such that cargo trains are more cost effective than trucks but passenger trains cannot be profitable. They have to be subsidised as they provide goods for everyone, not only for train passengers: less pollution, less traffic and so on.
So how is it exactly with economy of railway passenger transport? Anybody knows first hand? Is it actually more energy efficient? If so, then why is it more expensive?
Raf
Somebody already replied that whoever moderated parent as Funny is a fucking moron.
The problem with TB is it is poor man's disease (mostly), so there is not much money in it as patients with tuberculosis have no money for so called innovative drugs. Because of that there is not much research going on new treatments of TB. This makes Mr Gates' foundation even more valuable.
OK, this guy is a blood thirsty businness shark but this doesn't mean everything he does is mean. It is better if he spends some of his enormous amounts of money on TB research than hoard it or build yet another billions of dollars worth house.
Raf
P.S. OK, as there are already more than 200 posts in this subject, probably all I've written is redundant, but what the heck...
Well, some of my friends call me sexist, but here I have to protest. Of course men and women are equal. The point is they are different but different!=(not equal).
Let us not compare apples and oranges. If one person has good artistic and social skills and the other knows innermost mysteries of computers they are obviously different, but are they unequal?
Raf
And it seems that you can still see the ancient silk trade route through Middle Asia leading from Middle East to China
Raf
Impressive, most impressive
Raf
So, do you mean that now IBM will remove its evil looking mask to reveal its ugly face and then die silent yet glorious death on Linus' lap?
Raf
Bullshit. If you're rich you can pay for your security, hire an army, build a castle - and in fact many rich people already do just that. Without the government they and their armies would be the only oasis of stability, so people would fight for the right to work for them, even if it meant being reduced to mere slaves. Sounds familiar? Yes, that's what happens in areas where the police appears only to stop huge riots and everyday it is easier to hear a gunshot than to see a police officer and people prefer bad safety of working for mafia or gangs to no safety of living on your own. And that's what used to happen after the collapse of Roman Empire: no government, rich people with enough money to hire an army living in at least some safety, poor people either dying of hunger or of violence or accepting leige - that's how feudalism started.
Raf
Well, parent in this thread gave The Beatles as an example, so I'll do the same and give you two names: George Martin and Brian Eppstein. Without them there would have been no The Beatles. Without Martin's guidance, which helped Fab Four's talent a lot, and without Eppstein's tricks, without fancy suits and hairdos, which gave them some publicity and drew attention. Hell, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was even called by newspapers "George Martin's best album"
There are hundreds of good musicians out there - some of them are good enough to create something great out of themselves, but many need some help, some guidance. And if they want to reach further than local pub they definitely need some marketing - even if it is just a page on one of many independent music portals.
Raf
Is it? Ever tried to listen to any life performance of "Sgt. Lonely Hearts Club Band" or the long suite on "The Abbey Road"? There is music for life performances and there is music which takes possibilities of a recording studio and creates magic with it - magic never to be present on stage.
And while some people think that only life performance equals true music, I strongly disagree - there are some things impossible to do on stage, which are beautiful and music without them would be poor...
Raf
Well, I haven't read /. yesterday, so this is probably going to be the last post in this thread ;-)
This nice line: "In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed [x] result(s) from this page." reminds me of old communist times here in Poland, when you could read in a newspaper something like that (translated): "removed under the Control of Publications and Performations Act". So, the Soviet Union is no more, Eastern Block collapsed and now we see something like this in the Land of the Free...
Sad...
Raf
Well, my old 15 inch Belinea is slowly dying, so I am out for a new monitor. Unfortunately cheapest LCDs here in Poland cost around 1500 PLN which is more or less 300 EUR - much more than what I get monthly as a PhD student. Compare it with 100 EUR 17 inch CRTs and the choice is simple.
And that's the problem: enviroment protection is all nice, but quite expensive.
But then, of course, none of my PCs ended on a landfill, as far as I know even my old K5 100MHz is still in use, happily running pirated Win '98, because quite a lot of people here cannot afford 400 EUR brand new PC.
Raf
How about info? man interface is crap, but info is pretty user friendly. OK, I admit, I mostly browse info in emacs where it is all flashy and colourful, but AFAIR it is quite easy to navigate also in console. Although a small bar with basic navigation keys on the bottom would help a lot. Of course still quite often if you type 'info foobar' all you get is a man page but that's a different story.
Raf
Well, yesterday. I was sitting in a living room and wanted to check something - it was much easier to grab a printed encyclopedia than to go to my bedroom, wait for my computer to start (ok, it is not on 24/7), click on firefox, wait again, go to wikipedia, type, click, wait and then finally read. Maybe if I have a PDA, if it is always connected to the Web - then yes, maybe it will make printed encyclopedias obsolete for me - only mabye though...
Raf