Further, they're reticent to even report the problems they're having! Pure foolishness.
Of course, it is partly the fault of developers, as we often do not provide an accessible method of reporting errors (in a useful format, or often at all!). I think Talkback in Mozilla is a good idea, and I've heard KDE is getting something similar. I don't know if said tools have been useful to the developers in more than a statistical sense, though (how many people get crashes, so on and so forth), especially since many programs have the debugging info stripped.
[Systems then] were years and years in the making, debugged much more thoroughly than we can hope for today[...].
In my opinion, testing in the citadel can only do so much. Automated unit tests are wonderful, and in VERY specific circumstances can cover every aspect of a piece of code.
But I think it is more important to make your work available to others.
This idea of "test, test, test, test, test, test, test" reminds me of premature optimization.
First, I am working off of the assumption that we have limits in time, money, and effort. Not big limits, let's say, but limits. If that is true, which is more important: to debug against trivialities that may never occur, or to ensure basic functionality and fix issues as they occur or are discovered to possibly exist (graded by severity and commonality) and ensure that they do not happen again (if possible).
Deploying something, even to early adopters, gives you orders of magnitude better information on what is a problem and what is not.
Nota bene: I am not saying that sloppy programming should be done. Your code should be clean, understandable by others, and possess some beauty. Otherwise the fixing of the bugs will cost too much time.
I am also not saying that you should label something stable when it is not, just that you make it available to others.
Anyways, this is something to consider. ESR labeled this "release early, release often." I would like to add to that "release early, release often, and tell what you're releasing" (ie stable, milestone, developer, and you-so-crazy).
It's the need for new features. Every feature that gets added to a piece of software is a chance for a bug to creep in.
This is one of the reasons I consider the 'nix philosophy of many small, well-written programs working together to be a good one. Programs use programs.
One of the reaons that programs crash is that they require knowledge of the component programs. 'nix programmers (should) follow the principle of "define an input protocol and an output protocol. Be as flexible as possible with the input protocol, but do require it. Be as strict with the output protocol and make it human-readable."
This eliminates numerous programmer-factors problems. It allows for black boxing, unit testing, and allows you to isolate blame quickly. It also allows you to swap out components and split up effort in programming - as I think has been readily demonstrated by the 'nixes.
This development philosophy can really help kill off featuritis, as you can implement the feature as high-level as possible reducing the amount of code that requires it, thus reducing errors across the system.
I think that the core problem with features and software (and I do think you're on the right track) is the amount of virgin code introduced, and the quantity of white boxes required to understand the problem. My favorite example of this is TeX and LaTeX: I've never encountered a LaTeX error (they're getting pretty rare now), and I don't know anyone who's encountered a TeX error (you can find them on Usenet, but they're very old posts).
I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't all be better off using lightweight libraries that handle protocols to talk to programs and daemons than using heavyweight APIs and toolkits.
A similar coverage of this topic is done in The Truman Show, also a fun movie.
I'm having trouble being sure about it, but I think Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa might have had more philosophy. It had a deep questioning of the role one plays in society, and the nature of good and evil. Further, it didn't pound you over the head with it. Huzzah!
I really enjoyed the simulation argument. It was interesting, at the least, and unafraid to be unconventional.
However, the previous portion of your post was touching upon epistomology, and I'd like to try to explain a little bit about what I meant by "Truth."
It used to be hoped that we could all have Truth - our knowledge would be justified knowledge, and furthermore it would be true. That was around the middle ages, and it was stuck there for a while.
Then people starting thinking "well, these problems related to knowing that our knowledge is true are extremely hard to deal with, so what if we settled for having justified knowledge?"
And so entered in Empiricism, which offered a construct whereby we could have totally justified knowledge.
Well, not quite - if you buy the arguments of the Naturalists (which I do, but won't get into here).
The Naturalists say that knowledge is a pretty lofty goal. Why don't we settle for belief? I mean, not everyone can prove everything he believes, so therefore not all of the things floating in his head are knowledge, and it seems like we do a lot more work in belief than knowledge anyways, so why not have a theory of beliefs?
So, according to the Naturalists, we have a web of dependent beliefs. The closer something is to the center, the more it depends upon and the more it would rock the boat for it to be wrong. This would cover such things as "I am me," and "water is wet." On the outside it matters little whether something is true or not, and things often do flicker back and forth "that man approaching me is the man I saw several months ago and I can't remember his name," or, a bit further in but still tenuous "I think it's Thursday."
But all of these beliefs can be wrong.
So Naturalism has pretty much no support at all for Truth in the classical sense. So what do I mean, if I'm a Naturalist?
Well, the goal for a Naturalist is to keep his web of beliefs consistent with his experience. Part of that is ensuring that he does not have serious defects in his deductions, and one of the best ways to do that is to talk to other people.
Truth is that goal (reachable? I don't know) of having none of your beliefs conflict with each other, or with what you experience.
I'm settling for Lesser Truth, where all of your central beliefs do not contradict and seem to be consistent with reality.
So, what does this all matter if we are "living in a bubble" or in a simulation?
Let's say that we are living in a bubble that cannot be burst, or a very, very good simulation. The rational person, then, would still believe what his experience shows him and would attempt to believe along the lines of experience until the experience contradicted itself.
So, if the experience ever contradicts itself, then you're opened up to believing that there is perhaps an outer reality. Until then it's okay to conjecture about it, and it's even okay to put it in your web of beliefs --- provided you remember that it's unjustified.
The worth of arguing about things is that, done constructively, it produces a better understanding of the world in which we live: which is valuable even if we are living in a bubble. Consider a player of a game (a purely virtual device). Is it not valuable for him to understand the virtual world he is in?
Anyways, that's some epistomological background for an understanding of modern Truth as I was using the term. Maybe you'll find it useful.
The other things you mentioned have some other sources you might want to look into for a good discussion of.
Solipsism: a good discussion is in the book 10 Philosophical Mistakes by Adler. It's a fun read, if you're into this kind of thing. He believes he has a total disproof of solipsism in its modern form (or at least showing that it's very misguided). Not sure I agree with it, but it is interesting and very per
Seriously, I'll attempt to say something. If you find that it either answers or clarifies your question, I'll be happy. Wish me luck.;-)
A straw man argument is the case when you introduce flaws into another's argument. The point of extending an argument in the best way you can --- note that this means the way which would hurt your own argument the most should not introduce flaws. In fact, your extension to the argument should never be what you argue against[1].
The point of the extension is to provide answers that the original arguer[2] would have provided if he could respond to you. If it turns out that you are wrong about how he would cogently respond to your arguments, then it means that you did not fully grasp his argument to begin with, and the next round of debate ensues.
This is all based upon the theory that arguments (in philosophy, at least) should be one or lost based on fundamental logical flaws in one person or another's argument, not by nit picking.
One of my personal pet theories is that most arguments can be drastically reduced in form by cogent and amiable argumentation in a genre/species format (How do we agree? How do we disagree?). So far I have found this to be a very friendly and effective tool for solving mental conflicts --- provided the other person is willing to play ball.
Anyways, I hope this answered the question. If it didn't, reply with something I can work with, and I'll give it a shot. Or someone else will, this is Slashdot!
[1] Uless the argument was so ill stated to begin with that you have to rephrase it to argue against it --- in which case the honest thing to do is to clearly state the most cogent argument you can think of that could be equivalent to your opposition's statements.
[2] Or ideal if you see a flaw in his thinking that can be repaired and still leave whole his theory.
Movies affect the senses in order to affect the mind. Books turn that around.
Therefore, for a movie to be a "philosophical" movie, it is more important that it show the results of its motivation in a sensual manner (sensuous is acceptable as well, depending on your motivation;-) and allow the audience to create its own framework for analysis than to spell it out for them.
The point of the questioning in The Matrix was to provide an easily-graspable starting point for anyone to start thinking about what he had seen and felt from the movie. The action sequences were there --- at least in part --- for us to entertain ourselves with the construct so created.
Fiction lies within the realm of "what if." It is the responsibility of the fiction writer to produce an entertaining read for his audience (even if that audience is just himself). We ask a bit more of science fiction, in that the what if must also consider philosophical ramifications, but we often balk if said philosophy bits are presented in the raw and not worked into the story.
The point is that exposition and essay such as Descart and Herodotus wrote is completely inappropriate to a science fiction movie, and more suited to the medium in which they wrote. Otherwise they would have been writing plays or poems and songs such as their artistic bretheren were doing.
The dialogues of Plato also are ill-suited to the movie medium. The closest good (by which I mean literary or otherwise of artistic merit) movie to the dialogues would be Waking Life --- and even that is half-baked if considered as a philosophical essay.
The mistake is not in the creation, it is in the analysis of the critic: we do not analyse poems as we do philosophical journal articles, so why insist that movies serve as such?
Another thing that bugs me about the above post: the author is only considering what is actually said in the movie. In a visual and auditory medium, that is insipid: would Apocalypse Now play so well as a radio show?
Also, it is considered of higher intellectual integrity to kindly consider a piece's arguments and fill them out as you would if you were the person proposing them in opposition to your own arguments. Knocking a work because it does not address what you are arguing is of very low class. Perhaps you should read Aquinas, or talk to any Ancient Philosophy 101 teacher.
The point of philosophy is not to bash another's views, but to discover Truth and the constructs towards Truth. That's why we call it philosophy.
All the same, I thank you for your post because it was one of the first in its vein cogent enough to respond to.
PS: Yes, I feel the same way towards people who consider The Matrix to be the be-all-end-all of solipsistic philosophy. Then again, it's not the worst introduction to it, and I've been shocked by how few people are familiar with solipsistic arguments.
Quax, it's been a pleasure talking with you, and I hope to run into you again. Since you said:
You are absolutely right when pointing out that "If you cannot trust the government with data, and the task you have assigned your government requires such data, you are in deep trouble." is a much better sentence. Given the PATRIOT track record of the current US administration the libertarian solution of trying to cut back the governmental involvement as much as possible may be the only practical approach in your country. If your government is broken and the political processes are so arcane that there is not much hope that this can be mended any time soon, than the only sane choice will be to keep the government out of your life as much as possible.
and privacy was the point of the topic, I'll lay the topic to rest.
In electoral demographics, your electorate looks much the same as the US - large blocs, with a swing component. I wonder how much of this is due to the 1-choice election system that we share.
Like you, I am a swing voter. Unfortunately, I am so because anarcho-libertarianism is rarely on the ballot.;-)
A quick series of comments, I'd, again, appreciate a response.
[C]itizens should approach their government[...]As being the ultimate sovereign blessed with birth-rights that the government has to live up to
I think that this clashes with your view that government exists to serve the people. Allow me to explain:
If I serve another person, it is at that person's option (as well as mine, of course). Let us say that I am a janitor for a school. Part of my duty is to clean the wastebaskets of all the professors. I do not think it unreasonable that one of those professors would request that I not clean his wastebasket, as he has a bad habit of throwing away important things, and therefore he will clean it out at the end of the week himself. Quite reasonable. I would then not serve him (in that faculty, at least).
Most servant-served relationships are this way, except in the case of the doctor and the patient in which there is an exception: the doctor may have to serve the patient without the patient's consent if the patient is unable to give his consent and it is necessary to save the patient's life.
If you do not believe that the government makes people better, then I think we would be inclined to agree that the "serve" definition is closer to one of a janitor providing a service for the served.
But this is not the case at all with either of our governments, unfortunately. I cannot be sure about your country, but I do know that in the US that you cannot be a bank and not follow US banking regulations. They will put you in jail.
The argument could in turn be made that society has asked for these regulations to protect them from harm, and that the government merely provides this service. Yet this does not follow, as society could equally be served by non-compulsory methods (bank certification instead of compulsory licensing).
Also, this tendancy towards compulsory inclusion/exclusion indicates that society believes government does make people better. Perhaps a better statement would be "makes the people better." Takes care of them as a doctor or a nurse would, and without their consent if they are unqualified to give it.
But I am believe, and I think you would as well, that I am quite qualified to give or not give my consent to be forced to do business with only approved banks. You and I would both reject the notion of only being able to do business with approved newspapers, so what is different about banks?
Furthermore, it doesn't stop there. Consider taxes: inherent to the notion of taxes is the idea that society has a right to your property (land tax) and the fruits of your labor (income tax, sales tax from the seller's perspective).
The argument for this is that government provides a service for you, therefore you should pay for it, but you are not given the opportunity to grant your consent to individual services, so how can you be said to be liable for the costs associated with them? It just goes around in circles.
Much of this that I have said above is anarcho-capitalistic propaganda, of course. But I hope I have at least hinted that the notion of government serving the people does not necessarily coincide with the concept of the individual as sovreign. The only arguments that seem to support the serving notion of government as it is currently implemented work if society is sovreign over the individual.
Or maybe I'm not looking at this right.
I'll keep the rest of my comments brief.
[S]everal competing ID card vendors pretty much defeat the purpose of an ID card
[I]mpartially serving the citizens is the sole raison d'etre of a government in the first place
Hmmm...no. At least, not to my way of thinking. Let me explain what I think, and maybe you can see where the flaw is in my logic. If you do see a problem, let me know, as this is an area I have interest in.
Ok, would it be fair to say that your statement is basically "serving citizens is the cause of the government"? I hope so, because that's my interpretation of your statement.
If that is true, let's consider several other, similar, roles:
Serving customers is the cause of businesses.
That doesn't sound so wrong in a market-based system. In a demand-economy that might not be the case, but I'll avoid that since we seem to be talking market systems.
But, you see, I don't think we'd say that serving customers is the cause of business. It's more like what is necessary for them to continue their role.
The cause of business would, perhaps, be a gap between that which is desired, and that which is produced (again, assuming market-based systems). Enough people want something enough, and someone who can provide it notices and decides to provide it.
But let's say that that is understood when we say "serving customers is the cause of business."
Which customers?
For some businesses, that's pretty clear. Kinda. Sorta. At first glance.
Consider a computer store: they sell computers to people. It's what they do. So these people who buy computers are customers, right?
Well, the ones who buy computers are. Yes. But so are the computer companies that the computer store sells. Don't believe me? Unless the computer store provides the right environment for these computer companies, and unless they produce so much in sales for them, and unless they make sure their salespeople push the product, the computer companies will cease to give the computer store a good deal, which will harm their bottom line thus costing them money.
If you have to provide a product to someone to make money, they are your customer.
In turn, the other customers of the computer store might be: the government, the people they rent the property from, the local PTA and religious organizations, etc....
As you can see, the phrase "serving customers is the cause of business" becomes meaningless, as "serving customers" describes what the business does from day to day, not why they are there. In addition, the "customers" the business is serving are by no means clear to the supposed "consumer."
But that could be an isolated incident. After all, I came up with the statement, I could be knocking down paper tigers.
But the statement seemed reasonable at first. Let's look at another, similar statement.
Serving his family is the cause of the husband.
This one is a bit different from the last one, but is very, very similar to the original "serving citizens is the cause of government."
The husband helps provide support and protection for the family. The husband is a chosen part of the family (chosen by the wife), and freely (well, most of the time) entered into the family.
But, again, the husband did not marry the wife in order to support and protect her. He married her so that they could be together, and so they would have a future together. And so they could have guilt-free sex with the approval of their parents. That's a big reason, too.;-)
Supporting and protecting is merely part of what he does if he wishes to be a good husband and member of the family.
(he'd also better knock her up when she wants and not before, but that's another topic).
Ok, let's take another example.
Laying eggs is the cause of chickens
Again we look at what the entity produces to determine what the cause is. Again it's "well, not quite".
In this case, however, we are a bit closer: something had to lay
If ID cards were introduced here, I'd want to see some kind of photographic identifier on the card. My debit card was swiped and copied last year and the thieves ran up about £1K ($1.5K) in a day. A simple mandatory photographic ID on cards would stop this kind of fraud, and potentially also halt the abuse of ID cards.
Well, you said that they swiped and copied your card. How would a mandatory photographic ID help? I mean, if they copied it onto a card with THEIR picture, they'd still be home free.
The only situation that would help in is if a) your photo was also stored by the credit card company, and compared to you as well as the photo on the card or b) the store makes a photocopy of your credit card with picture when you make a purchase (so there's a record for the cops. Not as trustworthy as above, but still a deterrent).
A photo on the card is a good portion of security, as it does make the cards harder to forge. But it doesn't stop the kind of fraud you're talking about.
There are all sorts of ways to secure identity. Most good smartcard rollouts specify an interaction protocol, and the data required, and let the individual implementors come up with something to please people.
Most people don't know just how much damage you can do with just someone's phone bill, and that's usually much easier to steal than their birth certificate.
The point is that there are many, many areas of poor security. Expecting a smartcard (which can be de-activated under many systems, unlike a phone bill or a birth certificate) to have a level of security as good as, or better than, a safe enclosed in concrete and buried in the Marianas Trench is a bit much.
Yes, that was hyperbole.
The thing is that most people tend to freak out whenever we put something security-related on a digital medium. Chill out.
If you do it correctly, you can have the cards not contain any information beyond keys used to access and prove identity. Those keys can be changed. Quickly (again, barring incompetence, which your example of biometrics does as well - if you have an incompetent bioreader, you will be locked out of your card. Bioreaders are much more complex than, say, a 4-key pad).
Security should be leveled. No one layer is enough. The basic security model of a good smartcard system goes something like:
You have to have the card.
You have to know something to use the card.
Even if you could somehow get to the information on the inside of the card, it wouldn't do you any good after time t.
You could optionally enhance this out to include:
You have to have the card.
You have to have something that's only with you to use the card (your face, your eye, your thumb).
You have to have a prior arrangement regarding your card and the specific place you are going to.
Your card, and your information to get to use the card has to match up with the information on file with the specific place you are going to.
You have to know something to use the card.
Even if you did have all of that, the keys on the card are automatically deactivated every t hours (24, 48, 72, 168, optionally with grace period).
As you can see, the level of security can quickly be ramped up to "insane."
Optionally, you could set a "policy identifier" that is part of the request sent to the smart card by the reader that states what meatspace authentication protocols were used. You could set your card to refuse anything that did not include certain checks.
This is mostly a "polite" check, and by no means should deactivate the other parts of authentication. It's just to give the places you do business with a list of the things they should do. Sure, the business could lie about it. The only thing that would get them, though, would be permission to interface with the security methods on your card.
As an idea of what could be done with this: you could have your smartcard set to have two keys. Depending upon the policy identifier, it would cause the smartcard to use either your low security key, or your high security key. The information you attach to each one could be different (two credit card numbers, one with a $200 limit, one with a $20,000 limit. Electronic cash, one with $20, one with $2,000).
Anyway, just something to think about: don't concentrate so much on one layer of security, like biometrics. It can be fooled. The difficulty of fooling one authentication mechanism goes up linearly. The difficulty of fooling combined authentication goes up exponentially (consider: you know your boss's passcharacter, but could you: get his card, look like him, look like him enough to fool people at the place he normally shops at while they're looking at a picture of him on their monitor, do it all before that night and before he notices? Oh, and self-employed people can't compete in this test.;-)
This is probably linked to the fact that Manga and Anime are recognized as high-level media in Japan.
I'd like to add something to this: the manga and anime that comes overseas tends to be recognized as high-level media.
While more Japanese than Americans will go see an animated show without the aid/insistence of a small child, Anime is not near as popular or as well-respected as other cinema forms.
And most manga is pulp, just like comics over here. Sure, more people read them over there, but not all that many.
People who view anime and manga as the height of Japanese culture[1] are completely ignoring the fact that most people in Japan do not catch the latest anime flick, whereas they are far more likely to watch the latest Hollywood movie that comes over.
I make a similar mistake myself: I tend to watch a lot of movies that are not mainstream. I tend to forget that others do not watch them. Most people have not seen Three Colors, nor have they seen Being John Malkovitch, nor have they seen Seven Samurai, for that matter.
So, just keep in mind: anime and manga have just about the same 1/10/90 split[2] as the other artforms. We just so happen to get the top 10% here.
[1] - Not saying that the above poster does this. Just making a general statement.
[2] - 1/10/90 means:
1% is literary
10% is good
90% is crap. Some of it may be enjoyable, but it's crap.
It's a general rule that happens to work out for many things.
If you can't imagine Sandra Day O'Conner doing the boogaloo while doing shoo-wop, shoo-bop for the king of soul, Funktavius Rehnquist, then I don't think you have a good understanding of just what it is that judges do.
I think I'm going to either go laugh my ass off about this concept, or scream until the nice people take me away.
I'd like to add to this that the Democrats aren't that far behind them. They are both heavily at fault for preventing some of the big things that would prevent this b***s***.
In my opinion, the only two "major" parties that I can name off the top of my head that are interested in getting REAL information to people and debating the ACTUAL issues at play (rather than just waving a flag and beating a drum) are the libertarians and the greens. Democrats and Republicans are the conspiracy of the status quo.
What we need in the government is change. I'm sick of seeing the same people pushing the same buttons and doing the same deals with the same distasteful characters, and practicing their realpolitik.
And I am positive that we will not see that with either a Republican or a Democrat holding the reins. If it did happen, I'd cheer it on.
Of course, I'd hope that this atmosphere of change could be lead towards my pet causes, but...the important thing is change.
It would be much better for everyone's skeletons to be exposed at once, than one or two people to have their closets aired out at a time.
As I recall, in 1930's Germany, everyone was required to fill out a big questionairre. Nothing was linked to it for quite a while. It had questions on it such as "do you own a gun?" and "what is your religion?"
People lost their privacy all at once. It was only later that the loss of rights came along.
Also remember: they knew they were jews. They knew where all the jews were. They still hated them for being jews. I just don't see how everyone knowing about everyone else will prevent things like that.
The argument that some people are protected only by anononimity only works so long as there is a reasonable expectation of anononimity, which I think there no longer is.
Right now the barrier-to-entry for really getting some dirt on a given person is pretty high. If you just go trolling for what you can find out about people, that's much different than what you can find out about a specific person you're looking for. I liken this to the fact that many hosts on the net are cracked, but cracking a specific host will probably take some time, knowledge, and effort.
But let's say that we do not have a reasonable expectation of anonymity anymore. Why should we make things even easier? If you could get a system together where people would have to expend as much effort as now to gather information on a specific person, and still have it all on file, then maybe we'd be talking about something good. Maybe.
it would be fantastic protection from hate-crimes if everything (including real life) was logged.
That would be very nice. If it was combined with your bit about finding out everything about the people running the joint. I'm going to resort to pragmatics here, because I'm tired and can't come up with a cogent argument. Sorry.
Pragmatically, I do not think it is possible to construct the system that you describe. Just as I do not think it is possible to have a fair system where everyone is in charge (democratic communism). I'm not saying that what you want is communism, just saying they're equally impossible to implement while maintaining the spirit of what you want. Moral objections aside.
Unfortunately, total exposure is not a successful option. At least, not yet.
You can find many instances of this in small towns, where everyone knows everything about everyone else. The problem is that it often disallows people to make mistakes.
One of the things that people complain so often about regarding the internet (and, to a lesser degree, regarding newspapers) is that once something is said, it's there forever and ever and ever. And you can search for it, and find it.
This wouldn't be such a problem except
people change their minds
decisions are made in context, hindsight-judgement is often made without.
If I used to be a libertarian, and I became a communist because I realized that my views were wrong, then that would be my decision. But later on, let's say that there comes a "blue scare" - the libbys are coming to steal your children and rape your horses! Let's get a list of these preverts, and exterminate them!
And, gosh...there you are in the newspaper oh-so-long-ago talking about the joys of libertarianism. Never mind that you're a good, decent commie now. You're gonna fry.
Now imagine that with all your information. Ever looked at your credit history and wonder who the hell was doing those transactions, as it sure wasn't you? Imagine that on a grand scale.
Also, what if you fucked up royally? These days bankruptcy is wiped off your record after a while. A long while, but it does get done. Imagine if that was never wiped. Remember that story about employers requesting credit histories? Well, now they wouldn't have to request them. They'd already have them. And it would be forever, and ever and ever.
This wouldn't be helped by the fact that everyone would have access to everyone else's record. There's an interesting rule in psychology, it's called externalism (I think it's called that): everything you do is motivated by external factors. Everything others do is motivated by internal factors. Want an example of this? Remember that time when you were at work, and your boss had this really bad look on his face? What's the first thing you think? "Uh oh. Someone did something. Hope it wasn't me."
Externalism is supported by experience, but...it has some dire consequences. People tend to think that your negative actions were intentional, and their own negative actions were unavoidable.
If that's not enough for you, there is a cheaper argument: there are people in this country who can't stand certain things about certain people. I'll take the simple one of being gay as an example. Some people hate or fear gays (I admit, I am terribly frightened of the fashion gap. I just know that some day I'm going to NEED to be able to identify an Armani jacket, and I'm not going to be able to do it, and that freaking queer is going to get the girl. Errr...yeah, that's it). Non-flaming gays are protected by the fact that they're a bit difficult to casually pick out unless you've got better gaydar than most breeders have.
What do you think would happen if those people who can't stand gays could easily find out who was gay?
Oh, sure. Many would discover that they were surrounded by them, and would think "gosh, there's so many. Maybe it IS natural." There'd be some tension for a while, and then things would blow over as people just learned to accept it.
On the other hand, there are those in whom this would instill a "bunker" mentality. Defense against the gays. Maybe...an active defense? Deny them jobs. Deny them social memberships. Deny them your vote. Deny them their life?
And not all towns have a bunch of gays. Some small towns will undoubtedly have only women in uncomfortable shoes, and only manly lumberjacks with heavy loafers and boots.
An insular population, in other words. Us against them can easily breed there, and this lack of any privacy would give them easy, local targets to vent their rage upon.
Remember, many people go around doing what they do without moral regret: because they don't think it's wrong.
Your lack of privacy bit only works if people think that what they're doing is wrong. That is not the case, most of the time.
While privacy is not a constitutional right it probably would have been[...]
Well, we do have the right to be free of unreasonable search and seisure. That smacks to me of a type of privacy.
Also, the Supremes have ruled before that forcing people to give up privacy in order to partake of public services is a serious no-no (within reason. The library DOES have to know your name and such so they can send you your tab).
I would like to add a bit to this. The modern "liberal" movement essentially hijacked the term "liberal." It used to refer to what we would now call neo-liberalism, or free-market.
This is not to say that the label as applied to "liberals" is completely unjustified: the liberals of old believed that the free market was a good way to promote personal freedom. The New Deal Liberal (the longer term for what many people think of as "liberal") believes that government can be used to promote personal freedom. Both are oriented towards personal freedom, they just take radically different approaches.
This causes the huge confusion related to libertarian. I remember trying to talk to my step-dad (a Republican) about libertarians, and he was absolutely convinced that libertarians were communists. Because they had the word "liberal" in their title. Kinda. Sorta.
Chomsky and Nader, two of the more influential "liberals" have tried to distinguish themselves by calling themselves "socialist libertarians", and calling libertarians "neo-liberal libertarians" or "free-market libertarians." The goal here is to a) clear up some massive confusion in terminology, and b) separate the "socialist libertarians" (greens and many, many others) from the "socialist authoritarians" (Communists, Democrats, Republicans - though those last two are hazy. I say that mostly based upon the way they tend to vote).
One of the perils of free speech is one of lexicon: many concepts are usually gathered under one word. What do you do when someone starts using that word to mean what they consider to be a significant subset (the "true" subset) of the word? People often forget this, but one of the elements of speech being free is being able to choose your own words - even when those words are wrong. Just something to think about.
What you want to do with ANY corrupt ISO you get is to use rsync. Most likely the amount corrupt is less than half of the CD, and rsync will deal well with that. You can even use the rsync from the German mirror (for Knoppix), which is always the latest. Thus, *you* get the latest. Also use this to upgrade your CD. Works very, very well. Turns even a 16Kbps download into a PDQ one.
Re:The Truth That Dare Not Speak Its Name
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The Tyranny of Email
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Position everyone from CEO in his corner office through cube dweller to mail clerk on his mailbench so that their computer monitors -- what they are currently "working on" -- is viewable by anyone walking casually nearby.
Actually, I see this as lowing productivity. However productivity-leeching playing around is, what's even worse is the "hey, what's that you're doing" syndrome that happens all the time when your stuff is visible to everyone else.
Also bad is the "hey, why aren't you working on my project?" syndrome. Closely related to the also-problematic "I walked by and he wasn't working on your problem" syndrome. When someone doesn't know what you're working on, they at least have to ask you or come into your workspace, requiring more effort and also allowing you to say your peace.
Not much worse than having to convince people 5-10 times a day that what you're working on is necessary (especially if what you're working on is indirectly needed to work on what they want you to work on).
Another big problem is when you're checking out help sites or online documentation sites, or looking for a special program, and it looks like play to other people (many sites don't look all that professional, and on top of that many people are innately suspicious that others do not do near the amount of work they do).
However distracting websites can be, people can harm productivity much worse.
At the end of each month, have IT run and post a report with every employee's name and the amount of time he spent parked on what particular web sites.
This could be a good idea. You have to watch out for what sort of political climate it can foster, though.
On a side note, there is a plugin for the jabberd Jabber server that collects statistics about who uses Jabber, how much, and to whom they speak and optionally posts the info on a web page. Similar theory.
You want to increase productivity, you restrict web access.
Enh. Often times this does more harm than good. First off, this can be solved by your previous suggestion of posting who spends time at what sites (social pressure with a technological implementation). If you remove web access, people are just as likely to spend a bunch of time at the water cooler or wandering around, and there is no way to track that without serious effort on the part of management or a crippling rat-on-your-neighbor support policy.
People are going to "take breaks." and some people are better about their time than others. I've met people who can stay on AIM all day and still get a lot of work done. I've met many more sysadmins and programmers who can hang out on IRC all day and still get a lot of work done. I've met still more secretaries who can leave their email app open all the time and still get a shocking amount of work done (there are some really good secretaries/personal assistants out there, though there are quite a few useless ones as well).
In short, removing distractions doesn't help all that much unless it is followed up by enforcement of work habits. That's not all that efficient when you could've just enforced the work habits to begin with, and even that is not all that effective when compared to a system where if you don't get your work done, you get fired.
(note: there are many variances on this system. Quality circles to peer mentoring. I'm talking about a system, not an implementation of the "no work, get fired" policy)
Slashdot Mirror
Further, they're reticent to even report the problems they're having! Pure foolishness.
Of course, it is partly the fault of developers, as we often do not provide an accessible method of reporting errors (in a useful format, or often at all!). I think Talkback in Mozilla is a good idea, and I've heard KDE is getting something similar. I don't know if said tools have been useful to the developers in more than a statistical sense, though (how many people get crashes, so on and so forth), especially since many programs have the debugging info stripped.
In my opinion, testing in the citadel can only do so much. Automated unit tests are wonderful, and in VERY specific circumstances can cover every aspect of a piece of code.
But I think it is more important to make your work available to others.
This idea of "test, test, test, test, test, test, test" reminds me of premature optimization.
First, I am working off of the assumption that we have limits in time, money, and effort. Not big limits, let's say, but limits. If that is true, which is more important: to debug against trivialities that may never occur, or to ensure basic functionality and fix issues as they occur or are discovered to possibly exist (graded by severity and commonality) and ensure that they do not happen again (if possible).
Deploying something, even to early adopters, gives you orders of magnitude better information on what is a problem and what is not.
Nota bene: I am not saying that sloppy programming should be done. Your code should be clean, understandable by others, and possess some beauty. Otherwise the fixing of the bugs will cost too much time.
I am also not saying that you should label something stable when it is not, just that you make it available to others.
Anyways, this is something to consider. ESR labeled this "release early, release often." I would like to add to that "release early, release often, and tell what you're releasing" (ie stable, milestone, developer, and you-so-crazy).
This is one of the reasons I consider the 'nix philosophy of many small, well-written programs working together to be a good one. Programs use programs.
One of the reaons that programs crash is that they require knowledge of the component programs. 'nix programmers (should) follow the principle of "define an input protocol and an output protocol. Be as flexible as possible with the input protocol, but do require it. Be as strict with the output protocol and make it human-readable."
This eliminates numerous programmer-factors problems. It allows for black boxing, unit testing, and allows you to isolate blame quickly. It also allows you to swap out components and split up effort in programming - as I think has been readily demonstrated by the 'nixes.
This development philosophy can really help kill off featuritis, as you can implement the feature as high-level as possible reducing the amount of code that requires it, thus reducing errors across the system.
I think that the core problem with features and software (and I do think you're on the right track) is the amount of virgin code introduced, and the quantity of white boxes required to understand the problem. My favorite example of this is TeX and LaTeX: I've never encountered a LaTeX error (they're getting pretty rare now), and I don't know anyone who's encountered a TeX error (you can find them on Usenet, but they're very old posts).
I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't all be better off using lightweight libraries that handle protocols to talk to programs and daemons than using heavyweight APIs and toolkits.
Hey, I read it. ;-)
Right on with R&GaD. Kick ass play and film.
A similar coverage of this topic is done in The Truman Show, also a fun movie.
I'm having trouble being sure about it, but I think Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa might have had more philosophy. It had a deep questioning of the role one plays in society, and the nature of good and evil. Further, it didn't pound you over the head with it. Huzzah!
I really enjoyed the simulation argument. It was interesting, at the least, and unafraid to be unconventional.
However, the previous portion of your post was touching upon epistomology, and I'd like to try to explain a little bit about what I meant by "Truth."
It used to be hoped that we could all have Truth - our knowledge would be justified knowledge, and furthermore it would be true. That was around the middle ages, and it was stuck there for a while.
Then people starting thinking "well, these problems related to knowing that our knowledge is true are extremely hard to deal with, so what if we settled for having justified knowledge?"
And so entered in Empiricism, which offered a construct whereby we could have totally justified knowledge.
Well, not quite - if you buy the arguments of the Naturalists (which I do, but won't get into here).
The Naturalists say that knowledge is a pretty lofty goal. Why don't we settle for belief? I mean, not everyone can prove everything he believes, so therefore not all of the things floating in his head are knowledge, and it seems like we do a lot more work in belief than knowledge anyways, so why not have a theory of beliefs?
So, according to the Naturalists, we have a web of dependent beliefs. The closer something is to the center, the more it depends upon and the more it would rock the boat for it to be wrong. This would cover such things as "I am me," and "water is wet." On the outside it matters little whether something is true or not, and things often do flicker back and forth "that man approaching me is the man I saw several months ago and I can't remember his name," or, a bit further in but still tenuous "I think it's Thursday."
But all of these beliefs can be wrong.
So Naturalism has pretty much no support at all for Truth in the classical sense. So what do I mean, if I'm a Naturalist?
Well, the goal for a Naturalist is to keep his web of beliefs consistent with his experience. Part of that is ensuring that he does not have serious defects in his deductions, and one of the best ways to do that is to talk to other people.
Truth is that goal (reachable? I don't know) of having none of your beliefs conflict with each other, or with what you experience.
I'm settling for Lesser Truth, where all of your central beliefs do not contradict and seem to be consistent with reality.
So, what does this all matter if we are "living in a bubble" or in a simulation?
Let's say that we are living in a bubble that cannot be burst, or a very, very good simulation. The rational person, then, would still believe what his experience shows him and would attempt to believe along the lines of experience until the experience contradicted itself.
So, if the experience ever contradicts itself, then you're opened up to believing that there is perhaps an outer reality. Until then it's okay to conjecture about it, and it's even okay to put it in your web of beliefs --- provided you remember that it's unjustified.
The worth of arguing about things is that, done constructively, it produces a better understanding of the world in which we live: which is valuable even if we are living in a bubble. Consider a player of a game (a purely virtual device). Is it not valuable for him to understand the virtual world he is in?
Anyways, that's some epistomological background for an understanding of modern Truth as I was using the term. Maybe you'll find it useful.
The other things you mentioned have some other sources you might want to look into for a good discussion of.
Let's ride this thread!
Seriously, I'll attempt to say something. If you find that it either answers or clarifies your question, I'll be happy. Wish me luck. ;-)
A straw man argument is the case when you introduce flaws into another's argument. The point of extending an argument in the best way you can --- note that this means the way which would hurt your own argument the most should not introduce flaws. In fact, your extension to the argument should never be what you argue against[1].
The point of the extension is to provide answers that the original arguer[2] would have provided if he could respond to you. If it turns out that you are wrong about how he would cogently respond to your arguments, then it means that you did not fully grasp his argument to begin with, and the next round of debate ensues.
This is all based upon the theory that arguments (in philosophy, at least) should be one or lost based on fundamental logical flaws in one person or another's argument, not by nit picking.
One of my personal pet theories is that most arguments can be drastically reduced in form by cogent and amiable argumentation in a genre/species format (How do we agree? How do we disagree?). So far I have found this to be a very friendly and effective tool for solving mental conflicts --- provided the other person is willing to play ball.
Anyways, I hope this answered the question. If it didn't, reply with something I can work with, and I'll give it a shot. Or someone else will, this is Slashdot!
[1] Uless the argument was so ill stated to begin with that you have to rephrase it to argue against it --- in which case the honest thing to do is to clearly state the most cogent argument you can think of that could be equivalent to your opposition's statements.
[2] Or ideal if you see a flaw in his thinking that can be repaired and still leave whole his theory.
The message must be appropriate to the medium.
Movies affect the senses in order to affect the mind. Books turn that around.
Therefore, for a movie to be a "philosophical" movie, it is more important that it show the results of its motivation in a sensual manner (sensuous is acceptable as well, depending on your motivation ;-) and allow the audience to create its own framework for analysis than to spell it out for them.
The point of the questioning in The Matrix was to provide an easily-graspable starting point for anyone to start thinking about what he had seen and felt from the movie. The action sequences were there --- at least in part --- for us to entertain ourselves with the construct so created.
Fiction lies within the realm of "what if." It is the responsibility of the fiction writer to produce an entertaining read for his audience (even if that audience is just himself). We ask a bit more of science fiction, in that the what if must also consider philosophical ramifications, but we often balk if said philosophy bits are presented in the raw and not worked into the story.
The point is that exposition and essay such as Descart and Herodotus wrote is completely inappropriate to a science fiction movie, and more suited to the medium in which they wrote. Otherwise they would have been writing plays or poems and songs such as their artistic bretheren were doing.
The dialogues of Plato also are ill-suited to the movie medium. The closest good (by which I mean literary or otherwise of artistic merit) movie to the dialogues would be Waking Life --- and even that is half-baked if considered as a philosophical essay.
The mistake is not in the creation, it is in the analysis of the critic: we do not analyse poems as we do philosophical journal articles, so why insist that movies serve as such?
Another thing that bugs me about the above post: the author is only considering what is actually said in the movie. In a visual and auditory medium, that is insipid: would Apocalypse Now play so well as a radio show?
Also, it is considered of higher intellectual integrity to kindly consider a piece's arguments and fill them out as you would if you were the person proposing them in opposition to your own arguments. Knocking a work because it does not address what you are arguing is of very low class. Perhaps you should read Aquinas, or talk to any Ancient Philosophy 101 teacher.
The point of philosophy is not to bash another's views, but to discover Truth and the constructs towards Truth. That's why we call it philosophy.
All the same, I thank you for your post because it was one of the first in its vein cogent enough to respond to.
PS: Yes, I feel the same way towards people who consider The Matrix to be the be-all-end-all of solipsistic philosophy. Then again, it's not the worst introduction to it, and I've been shocked by how few people are familiar with solipsistic arguments.
There already is a standard: do you trust the people who've put out the product? Does it have a track record?
No? Well, then you don't trust it. Voila.
"Trusted" mearly means that the product has security and stability as one of its main goals.
Quax, it's been a pleasure talking with you, and I hope to run into you again. Since you said:
and privacy was the point of the topic, I'll lay the topic to rest.
Thanks for the reply.
In electoral demographics, your electorate looks much the same as the US - large blocs, with a swing component. I wonder how much of this is due to the 1-choice election system that we share.
Like you, I am a swing voter. Unfortunately, I am so because anarcho-libertarianism is rarely on the ballot. ;-)
A quick series of comments, I'd, again, appreciate a response.
I think that this clashes with your view that government exists to serve the people. Allow me to explain:
If I serve another person, it is at that person's option (as well as mine, of course). Let us say that I am a janitor for a school. Part of my duty is to clean the wastebaskets of all the professors. I do not think it unreasonable that one of those professors would request that I not clean his wastebasket, as he has a bad habit of throwing away important things, and therefore he will clean it out at the end of the week himself. Quite reasonable. I would then not serve him (in that faculty, at least).
Most servant-served relationships are this way, except in the case of the doctor and the patient in which there is an exception: the doctor may have to serve the patient without the patient's consent if the patient is unable to give his consent and it is necessary to save the patient's life.
If you do not believe that the government makes people better, then I think we would be inclined to agree that the "serve" definition is closer to one of a janitor providing a service for the served.
But this is not the case at all with either of our governments, unfortunately. I cannot be sure about your country, but I do know that in the US that you cannot be a bank and not follow US banking regulations. They will put you in jail.
The argument could in turn be made that society has asked for these regulations to protect them from harm, and that the government merely provides this service. Yet this does not follow, as society could equally be served by non-compulsory methods (bank certification instead of compulsory licensing).
Also, this tendancy towards compulsory inclusion/exclusion indicates that society believes government does make people better. Perhaps a better statement would be "makes the people better." Takes care of them as a doctor or a nurse would, and without their consent if they are unqualified to give it.
But I am believe, and I think you would as well, that I am quite qualified to give or not give my consent to be forced to do business with only approved banks. You and I would both reject the notion of only being able to do business with approved newspapers, so what is different about banks?
Furthermore, it doesn't stop there. Consider taxes: inherent to the notion of taxes is the idea that society has a right to your property (land tax) and the fruits of your labor (income tax, sales tax from the seller's perspective).
The argument for this is that government provides a service for you, therefore you should pay for it, but you are not given the opportunity to grant your consent to individual services, so how can you be said to be liable for the costs associated with them? It just goes around in circles.
Much of this that I have said above is anarcho-capitalistic propaganda, of course. But I hope I have at least hinted that the notion of government serving the people does not necessarily coincide with the concept of the individual as sovreign. The only arguments that seem to support the serving notion of government as it is currently implemented work if society is sovreign over the individual.
Or maybe I'm not looking at this right.
I'll keep the rest of my comments brief.
Hmmm...no. At least, not to my way of thinking. Let me explain what I think, and maybe you can see where the flaw is in my logic. If you do see a problem, let me know, as this is an area I have interest in.
Ok, would it be fair to say that your statement is basically "serving citizens is the cause of the government"? I hope so, because that's my interpretation of your statement.
If that is true, let's consider several other, similar, roles:
That doesn't sound so wrong in a market-based system. In a demand-economy that might not be the case, but I'll avoid that since we seem to be talking market systems.
But, you see, I don't think we'd say that serving customers is the cause of business. It's more like what is necessary for them to continue their role.
The cause of business would, perhaps, be a gap between that which is desired, and that which is produced (again, assuming market-based systems). Enough people want something enough, and someone who can provide it notices and decides to provide it.
But let's say that that is understood when we say "serving customers is the cause of business."
Which customers?
For some businesses, that's pretty clear. Kinda. Sorta. At first glance.
Consider a computer store: they sell computers to people. It's what they do. So these people who buy computers are customers, right?
Well, the ones who buy computers are. Yes. But so are the computer companies that the computer store sells. Don't believe me? Unless the computer store provides the right environment for these computer companies, and unless they produce so much in sales for them, and unless they make sure their salespeople push the product, the computer companies will cease to give the computer store a good deal, which will harm their bottom line thus costing them money.
If you have to provide a product to someone to make money, they are your customer.
In turn, the other customers of the computer store might be: the government, the people they rent the property from, the local PTA and religious organizations, etc....
As you can see, the phrase "serving customers is the cause of business" becomes meaningless, as "serving customers" describes what the business does from day to day, not why they are there. In addition, the "customers" the business is serving are by no means clear to the supposed "consumer."
But that could be an isolated incident. After all, I came up with the statement, I could be knocking down paper tigers.
But the statement seemed reasonable at first. Let's look at another, similar statement.
This one is a bit different from the last one, but is very, very similar to the original "serving citizens is the cause of government."
The husband helps provide support and protection for the family. The husband is a chosen part of the family (chosen by the wife), and freely (well, most of the time) entered into the family.
But, again, the husband did not marry the wife in order to support and protect her. He married her so that they could be together, and so they would have a future together. And so they could have guilt-free sex with the approval of their parents. That's a big reason, too. ;-)
Supporting and protecting is merely part of what he does if he wishes to be a good husband and member of the family.
(he'd also better knock her up when she wants and not before, but that's another topic).
Ok, let's take another example.
Again we look at what the entity produces to determine what the cause is. Again it's "well, not quite".
In this case, however, we are a bit closer: something had to lay
Well, you said that they swiped and copied your card. How would a mandatory photographic ID help? I mean, if they copied it onto a card with THEIR picture, they'd still be home free.
The only situation that would help in is if a) your photo was also stored by the credit card company, and compared to you as well as the photo on the card or b) the store makes a photocopy of your credit card with picture when you make a purchase (so there's a record for the cops. Not as trustworthy as above, but still a deterrent).
A photo on the card is a good portion of security, as it does make the cards harder to forge. But it doesn't stop the kind of fraud you're talking about.
There are all sorts of ways to secure identity. Most good smartcard rollouts specify an interaction protocol, and the data required, and let the individual implementors come up with something to please people.
Most people don't know just how much damage you can do with just someone's phone bill, and that's usually much easier to steal than their birth certificate.
The point is that there are many, many areas of poor security. Expecting a smartcard (which can be de-activated under many systems, unlike a phone bill or a birth certificate) to have a level of security as good as, or better than, a safe enclosed in concrete and buried in the Marianas Trench is a bit much.
Yes, that was hyperbole.
The thing is that most people tend to freak out whenever we put something security-related on a digital medium. Chill out.
If you do it correctly, you can have the cards not contain any information beyond keys used to access and prove identity. Those keys can be changed. Quickly (again, barring incompetence, which your example of biometrics does as well - if you have an incompetent bioreader, you will be locked out of your card. Bioreaders are much more complex than, say, a 4-key pad).
Security should be leveled. No one layer is enough. The basic security model of a good smartcard system goes something like:
You could optionally enhance this out to include:
As you can see, the level of security can quickly be ramped up to "insane."
Optionally, you could set a "policy identifier" that is part of the request sent to the smart card by the reader that states what meatspace authentication protocols were used. You could set your card to refuse anything that did not include certain checks.
This is mostly a "polite" check, and by no means should deactivate the other parts of authentication. It's just to give the places you do business with a list of the things they should do. Sure, the business could lie about it. The only thing that would get them, though, would be permission to interface with the security methods on your card.
As an idea of what could be done with this: you could have your smartcard set to have two keys. Depending upon the policy identifier, it would cause the smartcard to use either your low security key, or your high security key. The information you attach to each one could be different (two credit card numbers, one with a $200 limit, one with a $20,000 limit. Electronic cash, one with $20, one with $2,000).
Anyway, just something to think about: don't concentrate so much on one layer of security, like biometrics. It can be fooled. The difficulty of fooling one authentication mechanism goes up linearly. The difficulty of fooling combined authentication goes up exponentially (consider: you know your boss's passcharacter, but could you: get his card, look like him, look like him enough to fool people at the place he normally shops at while they're looking at a picture of him on their monitor, do it all before that night and before he notices? Oh, and self-employed people can't compete in this test. ;-)
Surely you jest. I mean, who'd need all of that to store a porn collection?
Whoops, typo. Revised version:
Who'd need just that to store a porn collection?
Hardly a decent "collection" without some variety and historical context, not to mention some "best ofs."
I mean, if you're stepping up to "collection," from "stash," you have to do your duty to librarians over the world.
Wait, that sounds pretty kinky...and it's not in my collection! Oh, woe is me!
I'll refrain from making snide comments about the number of exclamation marks. I'll assume that you were making backups for personal use.
Instead, I'll make a snide comment to this effect:
It is not that they are "experts," it is that they are "professionals." Which merely means that they get paid. Hmm....
I'd like to add something to this: the manga and anime that comes overseas tends to be recognized as high-level media.
While more Japanese than Americans will go see an animated show without the aid/insistence of a small child, Anime is not near as popular or as well-respected as other cinema forms.
And most manga is pulp, just like comics over here. Sure, more people read them over there, but not all that many.
People who view anime and manga as the height of Japanese culture[1] are completely ignoring the fact that most people in Japan do not catch the latest anime flick, whereas they are far more likely to watch the latest Hollywood movie that comes over.
I make a similar mistake myself: I tend to watch a lot of movies that are not mainstream. I tend to forget that others do not watch them. Most people have not seen Three Colors, nor have they seen Being John Malkovitch, nor have they seen Seven Samurai, for that matter.
So, just keep in mind: anime and manga have just about the same 1/10/90 split[2] as the other artforms. We just so happen to get the top 10% here.
[1] - Not saying that the above poster does this. Just making a general statement.
[2] - 1/10/90 means:
- 1% is literary
- 10% is good
- 90% is crap. Some of it may be enjoyable, but it's crap.
It's a general rule that happens to work out for many things.I found out about this story on news.google.com
Slashdot's report was the highest ranked one - above National Geographic, and the Los Angeles Daily.
In the "honorable mention" category were CNN and NBC.
If only I could see the faces of the editors for those news agencies when they saw that...
If you can't imagine Sandra Day O'Conner doing the boogaloo while doing shoo-wop, shoo-bop for the king of soul, Funktavius Rehnquist, then I don't think you have a good understanding of just what it is that judges do.
I think I'm going to either go laugh my ass off about this concept, or scream until the nice people take me away.
I'd like to add to this that the Democrats aren't that far behind them. They are both heavily at fault for preventing some of the big things that would prevent this b***s***.
In my opinion, the only two "major" parties that I can name off the top of my head that are interested in getting REAL information to people and debating the ACTUAL issues at play (rather than just waving a flag and beating a drum) are the libertarians and the greens. Democrats and Republicans are the conspiracy of the status quo.
What we need in the government is change. I'm sick of seeing the same people pushing the same buttons and doing the same deals with the same distasteful characters, and practicing their realpolitik.
And I am positive that we will not see that with either a Republican or a Democrat holding the reins. If it did happen, I'd cheer it on.
Of course, I'd hope that this atmosphere of change could be lead towards my pet causes, but...the important thing is change.
Great post, btw.
As I recall, in 1930's Germany, everyone was required to fill out a big questionairre. Nothing was linked to it for quite a while. It had questions on it such as "do you own a gun?" and "what is your religion?"
People lost their privacy all at once. It was only later that the loss of rights came along.
Also remember: they knew they were jews. They knew where all the jews were. They still hated them for being jews. I just don't see how everyone knowing about everyone else will prevent things like that.
Right now the barrier-to-entry for really getting some dirt on a given person is pretty high. If you just go trolling for what you can find out about people, that's much different than what you can find out about a specific person you're looking for. I liken this to the fact that many hosts on the net are cracked, but cracking a specific host will probably take some time, knowledge, and effort.
But let's say that we do not have a reasonable expectation of anonymity anymore. Why should we make things even easier? If you could get a system together where people would have to expend as much effort as now to gather information on a specific person, and still have it all on file, then maybe we'd be talking about something good. Maybe.
That would be very nice. If it was combined with your bit about finding out everything about the people running the joint. I'm going to resort to pragmatics here, because I'm tired and can't come up with a cogent argument. Sorry.
Pragmatically, I do not think it is possible to construct the system that you describe. Just as I do not think it is possible to have a fair system where everyone is in charge (democratic communism). I'm not saying that what you want is communism, just saying they're equally impossible to implement while maintaining the spirit of what you want. Moral objections aside.
Unfortunately, total exposure is not a successful option. At least, not yet.
You can find many instances of this in small towns, where everyone knows everything about everyone else. The problem is that it often disallows people to make mistakes.
One of the things that people complain so often about regarding the internet (and, to a lesser degree, regarding newspapers) is that once something is said, it's there forever and ever and ever. And you can search for it, and find it.
This wouldn't be such a problem except
If I used to be a libertarian, and I became a communist because I realized that my views were wrong, then that would be my decision. But later on, let's say that there comes a "blue scare" - the libbys are coming to steal your children and rape your horses! Let's get a list of these preverts, and exterminate them!
And, gosh...there you are in the newspaper oh-so-long-ago talking about the joys of libertarianism. Never mind that you're a good, decent commie now. You're gonna fry.
Now imagine that with all your information. Ever looked at your credit history and wonder who the hell was doing those transactions, as it sure wasn't you? Imagine that on a grand scale.
Also, what if you fucked up royally? These days bankruptcy is wiped off your record after a while. A long while, but it does get done. Imagine if that was never wiped. Remember that story about employers requesting credit histories? Well, now they wouldn't have to request them. They'd already have them. And it would be forever, and ever and ever.
This wouldn't be helped by the fact that everyone would have access to everyone else's record. There's an interesting rule in psychology, it's called externalism (I think it's called that): everything you do is motivated by external factors. Everything others do is motivated by internal factors. Want an example of this? Remember that time when you were at work, and your boss had this really bad look on his face? What's the first thing you think? "Uh oh. Someone did something. Hope it wasn't me."
Externalism is supported by experience, but...it has some dire consequences. People tend to think that your negative actions were intentional, and their own negative actions were unavoidable.
If that's not enough for you, there is a cheaper argument: there are people in this country who can't stand certain things about certain people. I'll take the simple one of being gay as an example. Some people hate or fear gays (I admit, I am terribly frightened of the fashion gap. I just know that some day I'm going to NEED to be able to identify an Armani jacket, and I'm not going to be able to do it, and that freaking queer is going to get the girl. Errr...yeah, that's it). Non-flaming gays are protected by the fact that they're a bit difficult to casually pick out unless you've got better gaydar than most breeders have.
What do you think would happen if those people who can't stand gays could easily find out who was gay?
Oh, sure. Many would discover that they were surrounded by them, and would think "gosh, there's so many. Maybe it IS natural." There'd be some tension for a while, and then things would blow over as people just learned to accept it.
On the other hand, there are those in whom this would instill a "bunker" mentality. Defense against the gays. Maybe...an active defense? Deny them jobs. Deny them social memberships. Deny them your vote. Deny them their life?
And not all towns have a bunch of gays. Some small towns will undoubtedly have only women in uncomfortable shoes, and only manly lumberjacks with heavy loafers and boots.
An insular population, in other words. Us against them can easily breed there, and this lack of any privacy would give them easy, local targets to vent their rage upon.
Remember, many people go around doing what they do without moral regret: because they don't think it's wrong.
Your lack of privacy bit only works if people think that what they're doing is wrong. That is not the case, most of the time.
Well, we do have the right to be free of unreasonable search and seisure. That smacks to me of a type of privacy.
Also, the Supremes have ruled before that forcing people to give up privacy in order to partake of public services is a serious no-no (within reason. The library DOES have to know your name and such so they can send you your tab).
I would like to add a bit to this. The modern "liberal" movement essentially hijacked the term "liberal." It used to refer to what we would now call neo-liberalism, or free-market.
This is not to say that the label as applied to "liberals" is completely unjustified: the liberals of old believed that the free market was a good way to promote personal freedom. The New Deal Liberal (the longer term for what many people think of as "liberal") believes that government can be used to promote personal freedom. Both are oriented towards personal freedom, they just take radically different approaches.
This causes the huge confusion related to libertarian. I remember trying to talk to my step-dad (a Republican) about libertarians, and he was absolutely convinced that libertarians were communists. Because they had the word "liberal" in their title. Kinda. Sorta.
Chomsky and Nader, two of the more influential "liberals" have tried to distinguish themselves by calling themselves "socialist libertarians", and calling libertarians "neo-liberal libertarians" or "free-market libertarians." The goal here is to a) clear up some massive confusion in terminology, and b) separate the "socialist libertarians" (greens and many, many others) from the "socialist authoritarians" (Communists, Democrats, Republicans - though those last two are hazy. I say that mostly based upon the way they tend to vote).
One of the perils of free speech is one of lexicon: many concepts are usually gathered under one word. What do you do when someone starts using that word to mean what they consider to be a significant subset (the "true" subset) of the word? People often forget this, but one of the elements of speech being free is being able to choose your own words - even when those words are wrong. Just something to think about.
What you want to do with ANY corrupt ISO you get is to use rsync. Most likely the amount corrupt is less than half of the CD, and rsync will deal well with that. You can even use the rsync from the German mirror (for Knoppix), which is always the latest. Thus, *you* get the latest. Also use this to upgrade your CD. Works very, very well. Turns even a 16Kbps download into a PDQ one.
Actually, I see this as lowing productivity. However productivity-leeching playing around is, what's even worse is the "hey, what's that you're doing" syndrome that happens all the time when your stuff is visible to everyone else.
Also bad is the "hey, why aren't you working on my project?" syndrome. Closely related to the also-problematic "I walked by and he wasn't working on your problem" syndrome. When someone doesn't know what you're working on, they at least have to ask you or come into your workspace, requiring more effort and also allowing you to say your peace.
Not much worse than having to convince people 5-10 times a day that what you're working on is necessary (especially if what you're working on is indirectly needed to work on what they want you to work on).
Another big problem is when you're checking out help sites or online documentation sites, or looking for a special program, and it looks like play to other people (many sites don't look all that professional, and on top of that many people are innately suspicious that others do not do near the amount of work they do).
However distracting websites can be, people can harm productivity much worse.
This could be a good idea. You have to watch out for what sort of political climate it can foster, though.
On a side note, there is a plugin for the jabberd Jabber server that collects statistics about who uses Jabber, how much, and to whom they speak and optionally posts the info on a web page. Similar theory.
Enh. Often times this does more harm than good. First off, this can be solved by your previous suggestion of posting who spends time at what sites (social pressure with a technological implementation). If you remove web access, people are just as likely to spend a bunch of time at the water cooler or wandering around, and there is no way to track that without serious effort on the part of management or a crippling rat-on-your-neighbor support policy.
People are going to "take breaks." and some people are better about their time than others. I've met people who can stay on AIM all day and still get a lot of work done. I've met many more sysadmins and programmers who can hang out on IRC all day and still get a lot of work done. I've met still more secretaries who can leave their email app open all the time and still get a shocking amount of work done (there are some really good secretaries/personal assistants out there, though there are quite a few useless ones as well).
In short, removing distractions doesn't help all that much unless it is followed up by enforcement of work habits. That's not all that efficient when you could've just enforced the work habits to begin with, and even that is not all that effective when compared to a system where if you don't get your work done, you get fired.
(note: there are many variances on this system. Quality circles to peer mentoring. I'm talking about a system, not an implementation of the "no work, get fired" policy)