"...In 31 of those 43 cases, a toddler found a gun and shot himself or herself."
There is something terribly wrong when a toddler turns to suicide. Is it bad upbringing? Genetics? Something they saw on TV? There are many suspects but I'll bet it's not those obvious ones.
Nobody seems to be paying attention to the devastating effect of sugar to human bodies, including the brains! Have you ever noticed that almost every brain addled, gun toting killer or suicide seeker is a consumer of sugar? A recent study of people who had suffered an unwanted death indicated that 93.3% of them had consumed sugar or other simple carbohydrates. Of those who enjoyed a wanted death, the percentage was even higher.
Lesson learned: Do not get your children hooked on sweets, even if the label says Gerber. They could turn on you at any moment. Think of the children!
no, I'm not going to finish that by saying '1000 words'. That would be insulting to those who already despise the stupid phrase.
But what is a picture worth? I spend my days at one of the most attractive places on earth where thousands of visitors from everywhere snap the same photos. One scene in particular must have been shot millions of times over the last 100 years. They line up so that they can stand in the exact spot for the best view. Each photographer walks away proud of their new acquisition.
Certain pictures do have value and are well protected. The hollow inside of Fort Knox. The Dead Sea scrolls (yes, the ones they haven't told you about). The blueprints for the Star Trek phaser weapon. The Royal Personage picking her nose...
But really, who would use this DRM? Web sites with sale-worthy photos show thumbnails and sell the full resolution image via email. Not much problem there. It's true that stock photo sellers have been ripped off badly and I'm sorry about that, but I assume they have watermarks, etc, offering some protection. Even Playboy magazine has come to realize that photos just aren't that compelling anymore.
OK, so we're mostly software geeks here who have a vague idea how the underlying digital hardware works. It's not surprising that we think of 'uploading' a mind into our limited area of expertise. But why?
Is there something wrong with biology and existing brains? We can grow brains. We are learning the first steps toward interfacing with them. Let's do what we can with real brains while adventurous explorers probe the distant frontier of digital brains.
Buyers should first consider the fate of Prince Prospero who hoped to avoid the death that awaited all the common people. You may have seen the movie "The Masque of the Red Death" starring Vincent Price. Or you may wish to read the very short story written by E. A. Poe in 1842... but with roots in the distant past: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hy...
Classes of people are different from individuals. You may believe that a certain individual is deserving of respect or not. But when you refer to an entire class of people disrespectfully you are probably wrong and not deserving of respect yourself.
Please note the difference between individuals and categories of people. A category cannot whine. But it seems that a majority of slashdotters can hate. Have you forgotten that without women you would not be here? Do you refer to your mother the way you disdainfully speak of 'women' here? It boggles the mind that some smartass can refer to half the world's population as whiners.
Looky here now; women, muslims, negroes, brown people, fat people, short people, homeless people, ugly people, retarded people, blind people and others frequently do have disadvantages. They become sensitive to certain words, gestures, behavior, innuendo...
It costs little to show a little respect. Maybe you are tall, wealthy and handsome. Maybe you don't fully understand others' perspective, but a small token of respect can be very important to them and might even come back to reward you. OK, probably not, but still...
Can a state enforce a law against the feds? Ask also if a county or a city can enforce a law against the feds. Where does jurisdiction begin and end? Can you and I as free citizens enforce a law within our home, papers and personal space against the feds?
Teachers and parents instill 'facts' into children.
Literal facts are often greatly simplified for the convenience of the teacher and the level of a child's supposed understanding. Why does the light go on when you flip the switch? -- Because there is electricity. That answer will tide the child over for a while, after which a similar pablum will be offered. Questions about sex and thoughtless answers can be crippling to future adults.
Teachers and parents rarely have real facts, but they feel the need to impress the child nevertheless so they pretend to know. They don't understand electricity, or automobile mechanics or current nutritional discoveries or ANYTHING. They fake it. They lie. The child who is slow to realize that faces a lifetime of ignorance.
Perhaps worse is the oppression of beliefs paraded as facts
From Aesop's fables to legends about Hercules, Moses, Jesus, Tesla and Batman the minds of children are filled with a strange brew. Facts are hard to separate from beliefs. As children grow older, many develop a more sophisticated view of at least some of these 'facts'. But even (especially?) into old age many people believe what they hear from conservative hate mongers, persuasive preachers, advertising fantasies and other questionable sources.
The final problem along these lines is the binary solution to any issue.
A thing is either: true or false; up or down; on or off; left or right... Shades of grey, as one of our regulars likes to say, are not tolerated. Sadly, many polarized opinions on Slashdot indicate the insidious penetration of this concept into the highest realms of intellectual intercourse.(?)
It is supremely difficult for a parent or teacher to say: "I don't know. Let's see if we can find the best answer to that question." Every child suffers as a result.
Weapons are the universal language on earth. Throughout history they have been the harbinger of cultural intersections be they families, tribes or nations. They mark territories and religious domains. The desire for weapons stimulates progress in many other areas of life not the least of which is the economy of every significant culture. Weapons are the Lowest Common Denominator of life on earth and the distinguishing factor separating intelligent from other life forms.
Instead of the Voyager Golden Record, send them a big bad bomb to enlighten and warn them about us.
The upside would be that the most skilled students would be admitted. The downside is that others will be disadvantaged not due to inability but to inexperience.
Two of my universities had a foreign language requirement. I attended and audited language classes on several occasions and in each case the classroom was full of native speakers of that language. My honors calculus class stunned me on the first day when the instructor discovered 3 advanced students and thereafter directed all his attention to them.
If these had been selection criteria, I would have failed; not because I was dumb or lazy but because others had a head start in some skill set. That is NOT a predictor of who will do well in school or in life.
I don't know the percentage of drone flights that are disabled. Is there a lot of that going on?
I also don't know the odds of a war against Russia, China or India. Are you suggesting we should arm ourselves for that? We haven't had any wars against such major powers in a very long time and our economic interdependence suggests we never will.
Our wars are less ambitious lately: war on drugs; war on terrorism; war on individual privacy... Drones have been working for that, piloted craft not so much. The F-35 seems particularly useless.
"And yet another bug in the slow-motion uber-expensive train-wreck that is the F-35 program."
Much of the expense of this boondoggle is due to accommodating a human on board. The tiny detail of ejector seat engineering is a fine example.
Why are we building such dinosaurs in this century? A similar pilotless craft could be faster, far more maneuverable, travel greater distances, and cost less. (Not to mention that no pilot would be at risk.)
Google could have a fully tested, state-of-the-art control system ready in 6 months (... or Lockheed could do it in 6 years at far greater cost). Use some of those remote pilots who work in comfortable quarters in Nebraska and you're ready to control the sky worldwide.
"It's interesting how someone's small waste of time can be snowballed into a collectively huge waste of time by so many others." - Will someone please mark the parent 'insightful'?
We've seen a great deal of bizarre 'art' since Warhol, etc. A great puzzle for me was Christo who would wrap shorelines with fabric, etc. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) but such eccentricities are becoming almost routine.
Whether or not it is art is not for me to say; but these things help stimulate a healthy imagination.
Reviews for John Smith and Maria Rodriguez are likely to become cumbersome and useless. In fact, only those with a unique name will be readily discoverable at this site.
Unless the soulless site owner decides to include other personally identifiable information. That would be risky without the express permission of the person being reviewed. OTOH, if a reviewer happens to mention the address / phone # / sexual orientation of the reviewed individual, could the site owner be held responsible in your country?
We can't expect politicians, bureaucrats or international business to cooperate freely with others around the world. They perceive a world of competition, a world of scarcity in which winning requires others to lose.
But there is another way.
Scientists and engineers around the world have cooperated in the most important projects of our time: the International Space Station; the LHC; the Genome Project; Linux... Scientists often cooperate on medical, climate and other research. Engineers cooperate on Github, maker mobs and elsewhere.
Scientists and engineers are generally more interested in the fruits of their labor than the ebb and flow of political/military interests. They (we) can simply ignore their small minded governments and cooperate toward a free and safe internet for all.
Turn carbon to diamonds for the screens of iDevices, for Tesla windshields, for hyperdrive exhaust nozzles, for polychromicanderlids... For your girlfriend, for the soles of your shoes, for the poor and disenfranchised, for data storage. Diamond is a controlled substance currently and it would be beneficial to the economy and to industry to have an unlimited supply.
All these celebrities have their Public Relations advisers who tell them which are the politically correct causes of the moment. Diseases, for instance, should draw sympathy but not too much repulsion; thus you will not see oozing ebola corpses or other rotting flesh in their promotional advertisements. Yes, a hungry child or crutch-using victim of Glaubner's disease can make an interesting poster ad. Fashions come and go among charitable promoters and unfortunately few currently support malaria and other major killers because other causes make more headlines.
Celebrities have to strike a delicate balance between playing toward your sympathy, making them look heroic, and avoiding the impression of pandering and making them look arrogant. It's safe for them to promote puppies, breast cancer and internet-for-all.
L.S. (also Hands Off!) is a small utility program that runs on Mac OS. It can prevent anything on your Mac from 'phoning home', even itself. No more annoyances of software auto-updating to bring you the latest adware or otherwise crippled updates. You can run Adobe, Apple and Microsoft software without their constant reports about your activities. It can prevent the many parts of OS-X from connecting to Apple's scores of internet resources... Ah, but do you know what those BSD/OS parts are doing and why they are connecting? Not likely, so it may be best to let the operating system just do its thing.
From the summary: "...termination of some Symantec employees..."
Is this the first time that individuals were held responsible for online negligence? What happens to a CEO or CIO when data on millions of people slips out due to negligence? Has anyone ever been fired before (not just a flunky, but a responsible executive)?
The penalties for corporate irresponsibility are so small that there is no incentive to do the right thing. Actually, this case may be an exception because both Thawte and Symantec have a reputation to protect- they might actually fire an executive. The question remains (and you can ask the same of Wall Street criminals)- when has any executive ever paid for this kind of negligence?
Advertising? It is my impression that Ancestry requires members to pay dues. Why would you pay and still be faced with advertising? Most services are supported by one or the other.
I have a long family history that has been published in a book with occasional updates for over a century. AFAIK, they don't have most of this info. I considered exchanging my information for whatever the Mormons might have to add to it. But the more I learn about them, the less inclined I am to give them anything. They gather our information and lock it up behind a paywall. You pay to give it, you pay to get it. We need an Open Source (wiki?) approach to public record sharing.
from TFA: "I read somewhere, Technology is tool, and not a learning outcome." Yes. A Means to an End.
Define the End and then consider whether the computer is the best way to achieve it. If the End is a better crop yield, computer programming or Excel or Powerpoint would come later than the need for English language and Wikipedia (internet access). English language learning software will get the process started and doesn't require internet access.
If the End is a lower birth rate or a lower infant mortality rate... again English language and Wikipedia. If the End is a broad, classical education, of course English, Latin, Sanskrit and Wikipedia; but such an education would put these students far ahead of the rest of us who only do job training. If the End is to have programmers hired by Microsoft; yes, teach programming (but is this realistic?).
Games? How can anyone suggest that vast incredible waste of time? For the mildly intelligent and creative mind every new experience in computing or in life is more rewarding than the artificial and commercial reward of killing another imaginary alien.
"If Google was, in truth, motivated by the highest ideals of service to the public, then it should have declared the project a non-profit from the beginning, thereby extinguishing any fears that the company wanted to somehow make a profit from other people's work."
This assumes that non-profits are somehow honorable and trustworthy. I suppose that some are worthy but unless they are up front with their financials I don't trust them at all. The voice of experience.
OTOH, if Google donated the results of their acquisitions to the Library of Congress or other body above reproach, yeah go for it! I don't recall ever hearing of a lawsuit against the LoC, but too lazy to check.
Governments around the world agree; just use your name or '1234567'. It is estimated that governments (and taxpayers) will save billions on expensive technology used to decrypt worldwide communications. Garth Grunt (not his real name), representing an anonymous spy agency in an anonymous country says "Do the patriotic thing. Loosen up your security so that we can protect you better."
That's today's headline, now for the rumors behind the news...
"But the two fundamental rules of economics are: 1. We are in a universe of scarcity 2. People have ever increasing unlimited desires and wants"
Hogwash. You are obviously referring to the Science of Economics as taught to 7th graders. As adults, we now know that there is no such thing.
1- Scarcity appears not to exist for the Federation people. Your universe may differ. 2- Unlimited desires are a product of deficient education and excessive ego. Your universe may not have reached that level of maturity.
Yes, there are hints of communism, but note the badges and other indications of rank aboard the Enterprise. People may be equal, but some are obviously more equal.
None of this really matters to me. What rankles me is all the emotional moralistic crap they shoved down our throats (mostly the first series). A little subtlety would have helped cover the bad taste of the medicine.
Slashdot Mirror
"...In 31 of those 43 cases, a toddler found a gun and shot himself or herself."
There is something terribly wrong when a toddler turns to suicide. Is it bad upbringing? Genetics? Something they saw on TV? There are many suspects but I'll bet it's not those obvious ones.
Nobody seems to be paying attention to the devastating effect of sugar to human bodies, including the brains! Have you ever noticed that almost every brain addled, gun toting killer or suicide seeker is a consumer of sugar? A recent study of people who had suffered an unwanted death indicated that 93.3% of them had consumed sugar or other simple carbohydrates. Of those who enjoyed a wanted death, the percentage was even higher.
Lesson learned: Do not get your children hooked on sweets, even if the label says Gerber. They could turn on you at any moment. Think of the children!
no, I'm not going to finish that by saying '1000 words'. That would be insulting to those who already despise the stupid phrase.
But what is a picture worth? I spend my days at one of the most attractive places on earth where thousands of visitors from everywhere snap the same photos. One scene in particular must have been shot millions of times over the last 100 years. They line up so that they can stand in the exact spot for the best view. Each photographer walks away proud of their new acquisition.
Certain pictures do have value and are well protected. The hollow inside of Fort Knox. The Dead Sea scrolls (yes, the ones they haven't told you about). The blueprints for the Star Trek phaser weapon. The Royal Personage picking her nose...
But really, who would use this DRM? Web sites with sale-worthy photos show thumbnails and sell the full resolution image via email. Not much problem there. It's true that stock photo sellers have been ripped off badly and I'm sorry about that, but I assume they have watermarks, etc, offering some protection. Even Playboy magazine has come to realize that photos just aren't that compelling anymore.
OK, so we're mostly software geeks here who have a vague idea how the underlying digital hardware works. It's not surprising that we think of 'uploading' a mind into our limited area of expertise. But why?
Is there something wrong with biology and existing brains? We can grow brains. We are learning the first steps toward interfacing with them. Let's do what we can with real brains while adventurous explorers probe the distant frontier of digital brains.
Buyers should first consider the fate of Prince Prospero who hoped to avoid the death that awaited all the common people. You may have seen the movie "The Masque of the Red Death" starring Vincent Price. Or you may wish to read the very short story written by E. A. Poe in 1842 ... but with roots in the distant past:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hy...
So much hate here!
Classes of people are different from individuals. You may believe that a certain individual is deserving of respect or not. But when you refer to an entire class of people disrespectfully you are probably wrong and not deserving of respect yourself.
Please note the difference between individuals and categories of people. A category cannot whine. But it seems that a majority of slashdotters can hate. Have you forgotten that without women you would not be here? Do you refer to your mother the way you disdainfully speak of 'women' here? It boggles the mind that some smartass can refer to half the world's population as whiners.
Looky here now; women, muslims, negroes, brown people, fat people, short people, homeless people, ugly people, retarded people, blind people and others frequently do have disadvantages. They become sensitive to certain words, gestures, behavior, innuendo...
It costs little to show a little respect. Maybe you are tall, wealthy and handsome. Maybe you don't fully understand others' perspective, but a small token of respect can be very important to them and might even come back to reward you. OK, probably not, but still...
Can a state enforce a law against the feds? Ask also if a county or a city can enforce a law against the feds. Where does jurisdiction begin and end? Can you and I as free citizens enforce a law within our home, papers and personal space against the feds?
Teachers and parents instill 'facts' into children.
Literal facts are often greatly simplified for the convenience of the teacher and the level of a child's supposed understanding. Why does the light go on when you flip the switch? -- Because there is electricity. That answer will tide the child over for a while, after which a similar pablum will be offered. Questions about sex and thoughtless answers can be crippling to future adults.
Teachers and parents rarely have real facts, but they feel the need to impress the child nevertheless so they pretend to know. They don't understand electricity, or automobile mechanics or current nutritional discoveries or ANYTHING. They fake it. They lie. The child who is slow to realize that faces a lifetime of ignorance.
Perhaps worse is the oppression of beliefs paraded as facts
From Aesop's fables to legends about Hercules, Moses, Jesus, Tesla and Batman the minds of children are filled with a strange brew. Facts are hard to separate from beliefs. As children grow older, many develop a more sophisticated view of at least some of these 'facts'. But even (especially?) into old age many people believe what they hear from conservative hate mongers, persuasive preachers, advertising fantasies and other questionable sources.
The final problem along these lines is the binary solution to any issue.
A thing is either: true or false; up or down; on or off; left or right... Shades of grey, as one of our regulars likes to say, are not tolerated. Sadly, many polarized opinions on Slashdot indicate the insidious penetration of this concept into the highest realms of intellectual intercourse.(?)
It is supremely difficult for a parent or teacher to say:
"I don't know. Let's see if we can find the best answer to that question."
Every child suffers as a result.
Weapons are the universal language on earth. Throughout history they have been the harbinger of cultural intersections be they families, tribes or nations. They mark territories and religious domains. The desire for weapons stimulates progress in many other areas of life not the least of which is the economy of every significant culture. Weapons are the Lowest Common Denominator of life on earth and the distinguishing factor separating intelligent from other life forms.
Instead of the Voyager Golden Record, send them a big bad bomb to enlighten and warn them about us.
The upside would be that the most skilled students would be admitted. The downside is that others will be disadvantaged not due to inability but to inexperience.
Two of my universities had a foreign language requirement. I attended and audited language classes on several occasions and in each case the classroom was full of native speakers of that language. My honors calculus class stunned me on the first day when the instructor discovered 3 advanced students and thereafter directed all his attention to them.
If these had been selection criteria, I would have failed; not because I was dumb or lazy but because others had a head start in some skill set. That is NOT a predictor of who will do well in school or in life.
"IRAN managed to hijack a US drone."
I don't know the percentage of drone flights that are disabled. Is there a lot of that going on?
I also don't know the odds of a war against Russia, China or India. Are you suggesting we should arm ourselves for that? We haven't had any wars against such major powers in a very long time and our economic interdependence suggests we never will.
Our wars are less ambitious lately: war on drugs; war on terrorism; war on individual privacy ... Drones have been working for that, piloted craft not so much. The F-35 seems particularly useless.
"And yet another bug in the slow-motion uber-expensive train-wreck that is the F-35 program."
Much of the expense of this boondoggle is due to accommodating a human on board. The tiny detail of ejector seat engineering is a fine example.
Why are we building such dinosaurs in this century? A similar pilotless craft could be faster, far more maneuverable, travel greater distances, and cost less. (Not to mention that no pilot would be at risk.)
Google could have a fully tested, state-of-the-art control system ready in 6 months (... or Lockheed could do it in 6 years at far greater cost). Use some of those remote pilots who work in comfortable quarters in Nebraska and you're ready to control the sky worldwide.
"It's interesting how someone's small waste of time can be snowballed into a collectively huge waste of time by so many others." - Will someone please mark the parent 'insightful'?
We've seen a great deal of bizarre 'art' since Warhol, etc. A great puzzle for me was Christo who would wrap shorelines with fabric, etc. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) but such eccentricities are becoming almost routine.
Whether or not it is art is not for me to say; but these things help stimulate a healthy imagination.
Reviews for John Smith and Maria Rodriguez are likely to become cumbersome and useless. In fact, only those with a unique name will be readily discoverable at this site.
Unless the soulless site owner decides to include other personally identifiable information. That would be risky without the express permission of the person being reviewed. OTOH, if a reviewer happens to mention the address / phone # / sexual orientation of the reviewed individual, could the site owner be held responsible in your country?
We can't expect politicians, bureaucrats or international business to cooperate freely with others around the world. They perceive a world of competition, a world of scarcity in which winning requires others to lose.
But there is another way.
Scientists and engineers around the world have cooperated in the most important projects of our time: the International Space Station; the LHC; the Genome Project; Linux... Scientists often cooperate on medical, climate and other research. Engineers cooperate on Github, maker mobs and elsewhere.
Scientists and engineers are generally more interested in the fruits of their labor than the ebb and flow of political/military interests. They (we) can simply ignore their small minded governments and cooperate toward a free and safe internet for all.
Turn carbon to diamonds for the screens of iDevices, for Tesla windshields, for hyperdrive exhaust nozzles, for polychromicanderlids... For your girlfriend, for the soles of your shoes, for the poor and disenfranchised, for data storage. Diamond is a controlled substance currently and it would be beneficial to the economy and to industry to have an unlimited supply.
All these celebrities have their Public Relations advisers who tell them which are the politically correct causes of the moment. Diseases, for instance, should draw sympathy but not too much repulsion; thus you will not see oozing ebola corpses or other rotting flesh in their promotional advertisements. Yes, a hungry child or crutch-using victim of Glaubner's disease can make an interesting poster ad. Fashions come and go among charitable promoters and unfortunately few currently support malaria and other major killers because other causes make more headlines.
Celebrities have to strike a delicate balance between playing toward your sympathy, making them look heroic, and avoiding the impression of pandering and making them look arrogant. It's safe for them to promote puppies, breast cancer and internet-for-all.
L.S. (also Hands Off!) is a small utility program that runs on Mac OS. It can prevent anything on your Mac from 'phoning home', even itself. No more annoyances of software auto-updating to bring you the latest adware or otherwise crippled updates. You can run Adobe, Apple and Microsoft software without their constant reports about your activities. It can prevent the many parts of OS-X from connecting to Apple's scores of internet resources ... Ah, but do you know what those BSD/OS parts are doing and why they are connecting? Not likely, so it may be best to let the operating system just do its thing.
From the summary: "...termination of some Symantec employees..."
Is this the first time that individuals were held responsible for online negligence? What happens to a CEO or CIO when data on millions of people slips out due to negligence? Has anyone ever been fired before (not just a flunky, but a responsible executive)?
The penalties for corporate irresponsibility are so small that there is no incentive to do the right thing. Actually, this case may be an exception because both Thawte and Symantec have a reputation to protect- they might actually fire an executive. The question remains (and you can ask the same of Wall Street criminals)- when has any executive ever paid for this kind of negligence?
Thousands are being laid off at HP, Qualcomm and others.
Most have little hope of an equivalent job.
So much for the urgent need for programmers.
Advertising? It is my impression that Ancestry requires members to pay dues. Why would you pay and still be faced with advertising? Most services are supported by one or the other.
I have a long family history that has been published in a book with occasional updates for over a century. AFAIK, they don't have most of this info. I considered exchanging my information for whatever the Mormons might have to add to it. But the more I learn about them, the less inclined I am to give them anything. They gather our information and lock it up behind a paywall. You pay to give it, you pay to get it. We need an Open Source (wiki?) approach to public record sharing.
from TFA: "I read somewhere, Technology is tool, and not a learning outcome."
Yes. A Means to an End.
Define the End and then consider whether the computer is the best way to achieve it. If the End is a better crop yield, computer programming or Excel or Powerpoint would come later than the need for English language and Wikipedia (internet access). English language learning software will get the process started and doesn't require internet access.
If the End is a lower birth rate or a lower infant mortality rate ... again English language and Wikipedia. If the End is a broad, classical education, of course English, Latin, Sanskrit and Wikipedia; but such an education would put these students far ahead of the rest of us who only do job training. If the End is to have programmers hired by Microsoft; yes, teach programming (but is this realistic?).
Games? How can anyone suggest that vast incredible waste of time? For the mildly intelligent and creative mind every new experience in computing or in life is more rewarding than the artificial and commercial reward of killing another imaginary alien.
"If Google was, in truth, motivated by the highest ideals of service to the public, then it should have declared the project a non-profit from the beginning, thereby extinguishing any fears that the company wanted to somehow make a profit from other people's work."
This assumes that non-profits are somehow honorable and trustworthy. I suppose that some are worthy but unless they are up front with their financials I don't trust them at all. The voice of experience.
OTOH, if Google donated the results of their acquisitions to the Library of Congress or other body above reproach, yeah go for it! I don't recall ever hearing of a lawsuit against the LoC, but too lazy to check.
This just in ...
Governments around the world agree; just use your name or '1234567'. It is estimated that governments (and taxpayers) will save billions on expensive technology used to decrypt worldwide communications. Garth Grunt (not his real name), representing an anonymous spy agency in an anonymous country says "Do the patriotic thing. Loosen up your security so that we can protect you better."
That's today's headline, now for the rumors behind the news...
"But the two fundamental rules of economics are:
1. We are in a universe of scarcity
2. People have ever increasing unlimited desires and wants"
Hogwash. You are obviously referring to the Science of Economics as taught to 7th graders. As adults, we now know that there is no such thing.
1- Scarcity appears not to exist for the Federation people. Your universe may differ.
2- Unlimited desires are a product of deficient education and excessive ego. Your universe may not have reached that level of maturity.
Yes, there are hints of communism, but note the badges and other indications of rank aboard the Enterprise. People may be equal, but some are obviously more equal.
None of this really matters to me. What rankles me is all the emotional moralistic crap they shoved down our throats (mostly the first series). A little subtlety would have helped cover the bad taste of the medicine.