The difference is people expect instant feedback/results from their new ideas in the same way they get instant results from almost everything else these days. The bottom line is it takes a lot of hard work and convincing to get an even vaguely new idea into circulation - exactly the same as it always did. Also it depends on the field, in technology new ideas are constantly being tried out and adopted or discarded.
Aside from the utterly laughable lunacy of such a claim, what this means is that his followers and people are so utterly disconnected from reality that they genuinely believe the rest of the world is like a bigger Libya. This is one area where the internet has a hugely positive effect - by normal Libyans sitting in internet cafes chatting with normal westerners, and coming to the realisation that in fact there's no particular reason why they shouldn't enjoy the same prosperity and freedom.
Apparently the blackberry phone is one of the more common models that was used to organise the riots, so I would say rather that they can afford large plasma TVs, iPads and designer clothes, they just wanted free stuff, and maybe to break someone else's stuff. The mentality of the so called "chav" can be really difficult to comprehend unless you've experienced it - think about someone that sees the world as a prison, with a particularly nasty prison culture, and likes it that way.
It's still an overreaction. If there are "protests" being organised, and these are of the illegal sort a la London, it should be relatively simple for BART to spot them in advance and have a response prepared. You don't shut off all the phones just because some drug dealer also uses the system. You track the drug dealer's calls and bust him.
Just because some mistake freedom for license doesn't mean freedom should be removed, online or offline. We have laws because some people just can't deal with freedom, but this is different since it's about a business model which depends entirely on selling user details for marketing purposes. As such, unlike the law, it is quite easy to escape, simply by not participating, or taken to the next level, by creating a competing operation which doesn't need such unsavoury practises to thrive. What that might be is anyone's guess, probably selling services like game participation or taking a cut from people who do.
I've heard it many times, and agree with it. Whatever we do is perfectly natural. Not neccessarily great for the rest of the biosphere, but definetely natural.
My point was that there hasn't been some group consensus decision reached that people would rather get adverts than remain anonymous. Most people don't have a clue that there is even a price, or potentially alternatives. Responsibility of some sort isn't the issue I'm referring to.
Nonsense, most people are blithely unaware of the amount of information that is being collated about them. All they know is they are getting cool stuff.
I have upwards of fifty tabs in three groups open in firefox on a $500 box right now, along with thunderbird, photoshop, notepad, reams of miscellaneous software like chat clients and antivirus, excel, a paused movie, and a music player, and I've had them open for the last two weeks straight with no difficulty.
Really? Bloated? Browser speed might have mattered back in the 90s, but I'll take that Firefox just works over a nanosecond improvement in page loading any day of the week, thanks. I mean Google are aware that basic off the shelf hardware can run 3D FPS MMORPGs without blinking, right? What web page do they imagine will beat that for a system hog? For a marketing company they didn't pick a very good selling point.
And then we get to the way chrome breaks a lot of websites. Who would have guessed that stripping out functionality would make a browser less functional?/rant
"All the children born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to this level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the deaths of grown persons To act consistently therefore, we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. (Book IV, Chap. V)"
He was a borderline psychopath who should be allowed nowhere near a rational argument.
I just do not have the blind faith in Science and Technology that some people have. I guess I am too much of a rationalist; my thinking is too tightly bound to the proven realities of this universe.
What blind faith? If you could cover 2% of the uninhabited portions of the Sahara in PV cells, you could supply 100% of the world's energy needs, replacing nuclear and fossil fuels entirely. Note I'm not recommending doing exactly that, but it underlines the point that we are drowning in energy. And once you have energy, everything else follows.
Yeah the entire presentation is flawed, unless civilisation somehow morphs to a stage where it will need more energy than arrives from the sun over the entire surface of the planet, since that's the primary source of heat. And right now we could supply the energy for the entire world with less than 2% of the uninhabited portions of the Sahara.
Contrast to today, when most of the population of developed countries, what around 15% of the global population, live relatively comfortable and healthy lives. Sounds to me like pretty conclusive evidence that things have improved.
Bluntly, Malthus was an idiot who wanted to kill poor people to preserve the wealthy. Anyone thinking that he had a serious point hidden in there, never mind something that could be "cheated", hasn't thought things through.
Well assuming the rest of it is right, we'll never physically exceed lightspeed anyway, so its a bit academic. That's not to say we won't come up with stargates or wormholes or warp drives or something; if we do however I don't think we'll need to be concerned about time travel.
It's really hard to not consider the old philosophical pondering "Is humanity inherently good, with evil capabilities, or inherently evil, with good tendencies" to be a fully answered question.
Nobody ever said it would be easy. We don't advance by utopian leaps, only by small steps, sometimes spread over many generations. Realising this and doing your bit leads, imho, to a more peaceful life. Well, that and sticking it right into scumbags whenever you come across them. Education, it's not just book larnin.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a perfectly normal pattern of behaviour for a species to exhibit, especially an apex predator like mankind.
The difference is people expect instant feedback/results from their new ideas in the same way they get instant results from almost everything else these days. The bottom line is it takes a lot of hard work and convincing to get an even vaguely new idea into circulation - exactly the same as it always did. Also it depends on the field, in technology new ideas are constantly being tried out and adopted or discarded.
What I find particularly interesting about recent events is that Gadaffi claimed that "Irish and Scottish mercenaries helped tame the riots".
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE77A0AW20110811
Aside from the utterly laughable lunacy of such a claim, what this means is that his followers and people are so utterly disconnected from reality that they genuinely believe the rest of the world is like a bigger Libya. This is one area where the internet has a hugely positive effect - by normal Libyans sitting in internet cafes chatting with normal westerners, and coming to the realisation that in fact there's no particular reason why they shouldn't enjoy the same prosperity and freedom.
At what point would you have called it "true communism"?
Apparently the blackberry phone is one of the more common models that was used to organise the riots, so I would say rather that they can afford large plasma TVs, iPads and designer clothes, they just wanted free stuff, and maybe to break someone else's stuff. The mentality of the so called "chav" can be really difficult to comprehend unless you've experienced it - think about someone that sees the world as a prison, with a particularly nasty prison culture, and likes it that way.
It's still an overreaction. If there are "protests" being organised, and these are of the illegal sort a la London, it should be relatively simple for BART to spot them in advance and have a response prepared. You don't shut off all the phones just because some drug dealer also uses the system. You track the drug dealer's calls and bust him.
I'm really looking forward to this.
I think they were doing that back with the Cyberpunk 2020 roleplaying game.
Just because some mistake freedom for license doesn't mean freedom should be removed, online or offline. We have laws because some people just can't deal with freedom, but this is different since it's about a business model which depends entirely on selling user details for marketing purposes. As such, unlike the law, it is quite easy to escape, simply by not participating, or taken to the next level, by creating a competing operation which doesn't need such unsavoury practises to thrive. What that might be is anyone's guess, probably selling services like game participation or taking a cut from people who do.
I've heard it many times, and agree with it. Whatever we do is perfectly natural. Not neccessarily great for the rest of the biosphere, but definetely natural.
My point was that there hasn't been some group consensus decision reached that people would rather get adverts than remain anonymous. Most people don't have a clue that there is even a price, or potentially alternatives. Responsibility of some sort isn't the issue I'm referring to.
Nonsense, most people are blithely unaware of the amount of information that is being collated about them. All they know is they are getting cool stuff.
I have upwards of fifty tabs in three groups open in firefox on a $500 box right now, along with thunderbird, photoshop, notepad, reams of miscellaneous software like chat clients and antivirus, excel, a paused movie, and a music player, and I've had them open for the last two weeks straight with no difficulty.
The F-22 Raptor costs $150 million a pop.
Maybe Mozilla could do its own open source search engine? Whatever Google's startup budget was, it wasn't tens of millions.
Really? Bloated? Browser speed might have mattered back in the 90s, but I'll take that Firefox just works over a nanosecond improvement in page loading any day of the week, thanks. I mean Google are aware that basic off the shelf hardware can run 3D FPS MMORPGs without blinking, right? What web page do they imagine will beat that for a system hog? For a marketing company they didn't pick a very good selling point.
And then we get to the way chrome breaks a lot of websites. Who would have guessed that stripping out functionality would make a browser less functional? /rant
I have to wonder some times just how much of the formation of the tea party was motivated simply by the fact that Obama isn't white.
A citation is needed here.
"All the children born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to this level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the deaths of grown persons To act consistently therefore, we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. (Book IV, Chap. V)"
He was a borderline psychopath who should be allowed nowhere near a rational argument.
I just do not have the blind faith in Science and Technology that some people have. I guess I am too much of a rationalist; my thinking is too tightly bound to the proven realities of this universe.
What blind faith? If you could cover 2% of the uninhabited portions of the Sahara in PV cells, you could supply 100% of the world's energy needs, replacing nuclear and fossil fuels entirely. Note I'm not recommending doing exactly that, but it underlines the point that we are drowning in energy. And once you have energy, everything else follows.
Yeah the entire presentation is flawed, unless civilisation somehow morphs to a stage where it will need more energy than arrives from the sun over the entire surface of the planet, since that's the primary source of heat. And right now we could supply the energy for the entire world with less than 2% of the uninhabited portions of the Sahara.
Contrast to today, when most of the population of developed countries, what around 15% of the global population, live relatively comfortable and healthy lives. Sounds to me like pretty conclusive evidence that things have improved.
Bluntly, Malthus was an idiot who wanted to kill poor people to preserve the wealthy. Anyone thinking that he had a serious point hidden in there, never mind something that could be "cheated", hasn't thought things through.
Well assuming the rest of it is right, we'll never physically exceed lightspeed anyway, so its a bit academic. That's not to say we won't come up with stargates or wormholes or warp drives or something; if we do however I don't think we'll need to be concerned about time travel.
Eppur si muove, and, eh, cheer up.
All I know is I had the batman theme tune going through my head while reading the summary.
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-batmaaaaan!
It's really hard to not consider the old philosophical pondering "Is humanity inherently good, with evil capabilities, or inherently evil, with good tendencies" to be a fully answered question.
Nobody ever said it would be easy. We don't advance by utopian leaps, only by small steps, sometimes spread over many generations. Realising this and doing your bit leads, imho, to a more peaceful life. Well, that and sticking it right into scumbags whenever you come across them. Education, it's not just book larnin.