My real problem with taking this stance is that they've pre-determined that constraining the distribution of their content is defined as, "winning."
That may be part of it, but you also have to remember that TV shows compete. Popular shows from different networks are often aired on the same time slot. That produces a clear "winner" in terms of ratings, and the network that owns that show can then charge higher ad prices for that particular time slot. It may also lead to the cancelling of a competitors show. That is also defined as a "win".
In my minds of the networks, if you had more on demand TV via streaming, it would lead to 9pm monday show A, B, and C having more equal viewing numbers, as consumers would dvr one, watch one, and stream the other. As it is now, the more popular 2 shows win out, make more ad money, and the 3rd show either makes less or gets cancelled.
Sucks for the 3rd show, sucks for consumers, but that competition (networks believe), makes them more money if they "win" the time slot.
Old thread, so likely no one will see this:), but wouldn't a tire tax unequally tax people depending on their road conditions and climate? I'm assuming that people living in cold areas with lots of de-icer and gravel would have to buy new tires quicker than people in moderate climates.
I don't understand the heat issue very well. Might be a dumb question, but couldn't the cold of space be used to effectively dump heat? Like the reactor is exposed directly to space via a hatch that opens?
There is also this company proposing a large solar array to power vasmir: http://www.adastrarocket.com/aarc/LunarCargo
Very interesting talk. One of several points the speaker made, was that the Chinese people are generally less distrustful of government. It is almost viewed as being within the family, paternal. This is generally the exact opposite of western democracies, where the government is considered "other".
Or if car manufacturers could standardize on battery packaging and connectors, you could pull into a 'battery swap' station and an attendant could hoist out your battery pack(s) and put in freshly charged ones ~5-10min.
Science does not de-reference God, It shows what the design of something is
Sure, science models natural designs, but in many fields, it also models the processes uses to create those designs. That is kinda the whole point about evolution:) If you can show that design X evolved naturally from steps 1-300, it certainly does de-reference God in that claims that God had a hand in the design have no proof. And that is what it always boils down to: ID cannot, ever, obtain proof. There are no experiments that can ever prove that a designer had a hand in a design. On the other hand, there are experiments that can show how certain designs evolved only by natural selection, natural mutation, and other processes.
I think the Texas law is intended to allow the ID proponent to pursue such a career in the absence of prejudicial discrimination that has nothing to do with the work..
I'm not sure of the exact ramifications of this law, but if it allows an ID proponent to teach, in a biology class, that the eye was designed by God, no matter how scientifically accurate the subsequent descriptions of the design of the eye are, it is a bad law. We should rightly be critical of ideas put forth in science class rooms that have no proof, and no possibility of ever gaining proof via the scientific method.
A good example is the data streaming in from the Solar Dynamics Orbiter and the Stereo A/B satellites just now. We are finding out that we really do not know our own sun nearly as well as we thought. SDO could die today, and the data already taken would generate decades of writing.
Is such science dependent on a belief in evolution? I fail to see how.
I don't know those two experiments' purpose, so I'm not sure if they have any ties to evolution/big bang, but I will assume that they don't. Sure, an astronomer doesn't need to believe in evolution to do good astronomy, and I don't think they should be discriminated against for believing in whatever they want, assuming that their belief doesn't degrade the scientific accuracy of their findings. However, I do think it shows a very clear lack of good scientific judgement if they can weight the evidence (lack of) for ID vs the evidence of natural evolution, and conclude that ID has more proof.
You needn't have bothered analyzing that data yourself. Liberal talk show hosts and sites have been clearly stating this and other trends for years. Mountains of evidence, displayed in nice neat graphs and summarized by some really great thinkers, falls on deaf ears.
That the republican/conservative trickle down economic theories are still somehow embraced by nearly half the country baffles me. Middle class wages have been literally stagnant for 10 years (after inflation), all the while corporate and high income brackets have had tremendous growth and in many instances, record profit.
Jon Stewart had a funny bit commenting on something similar when he said (paraphrasing): This trickle down of golden wealth is starting to feel more like a yellow shower...
Typical conservative POV: 1. American exceptionalism 2. American exceptionalism redux -- we're so freakin' awesome, God's chosen people etc 3. Strong on national defense 4. Self-reliance 5. Sloppy kisses for capitalism 6. Strong support for the average folk (working people who work for their money) 7. Everything that's wrong with this country starts and ends with liberals and they're the ones trying to tear it apart from the inside because the black filth of communism is pumping through their veins
It still baffles me that Republicans are able to maintain the image of your number 6. It should be blatantly obvious to anyone with half a brain that conservative policy has not, and will not, help the middle class.
That and "globalism" and "free trade" always seems to mean "transfer wealth away from the US". It is not the mutual trade and prosperity that was sold to us when NAFTA and other proposals were getting off the ground.
I would modify that statement slightly:
That and globalism and free trade always seems to mean "transfer of wealth away from the US middle class".
The mutual trade and prosperity was based on the now obviously false notion that wealth trickles down. Corporate profits (and high income bracket profits) are at an all time high across the vast majority of industries, yet average worker salaries have been stagnant for over a decade.
So that prosperity that was promised certainly did work out for some.
Very interesting article. Thank you for sharing it.
I acknowledge that various countries have different histories that contribute to their revolts, but what interests me is the timing of the revolts and the triggers that caused them. It seems to me that pointing our fingers at just social media, or just xyz, is probably too simplistic.
Here's another quite commonly accepted theory that lacks any scientific falsifiable whatsoever: That the conditions on this planet, at some point during its history, were exactly right for life to spontaneously form here.
To be precise, scientists wouldn't call that a theory. It is a hypothesis for some of them, and is actively being researched. If they successfully create life in the lab, over and over, in many different ways that line up with our best evidence about the state of the planet a long time ago, then it might become a theory. For others not involved in that research, working on, say, later evolutionary processes, the answer to how life began is irrelevant. God could have started it, aliens, whatever. The fact remains that there is evidence of evolution, it has predictive power, and can be falsified. What caused that first cell to form doesn't matter for later research.
Life exists here, so there must be an explanation for it. ID is just one such explanation. There are only a handful of others, and none of them have come anywhere even close to being proven, and none are falsifiable by any currently achievable technological means. Does that mean we simply cannot ever have a theory of how life began here?
The difference between the explanation that ID offers and the explanation that evolution offers, is that the various evolutionary hypothesis can be tested. You are correct that we don't have the ability to 100% accurately explain, say, the development of the eye, but there are experiments attempting to simulate it right now. There exists a way to gain evidence for the various hypothesis, where for the explanation provided by ID, there are none.
Now you could say, "but we have no idea if the eye will ever be explained!", and that is a fair question. But if you were a betting man, where would you put your money: in a scientific process that has proven itself time and time again in medicine, engineering, computers, and other areas, or in an untestable hypothesis (ID) that has no possibility of gathering evidence, no means of falsifiability, and in which the only place it can be even remotely considered possible is in the gaps in our knowledge.
For really, that is what it boils down to: Arguments that purport to support ID can only be derived from areas in which science cannot (at the moment) adequately explain an observed natural phenomenon. That leads religions down the road of having their core underpinning belief (that there is a designer of some sort) lose its explanatory power continually over time, as science explains more and more each day. The answer "God did it" in terms of natural observable phenomenon leaves believers with a "God of the Gaps", a god that only fits into the gaps in our knowledge.
Social media, wikileaks, the recession, the destabilization of Iraq's influence, a burning martyr, Obama's speech in Egypt, seeing another country revolt successfully, food prices rising.... I'm sure they all contributed in some way to the revolts. I doubt anyone knows the exact weight that each factor had, and it likely differs depending on which revolt you are talking about.
Why is the whole Islamic world up in arms against their own governments now? Because Wikileaks showed them what their governments were really up to, and it pushed a long-fermenting resentment over the top. A few people associated with Wikileaks did what the U.S. could not with the trillions of dollars they've put into their attempts to influence policy in the region. So, now we're going to simultaneously give Wikileaks its victory by taking advantage of the unrest it fermented, and prosecute the folks who brought us that victory.
It just doesn't seem fair.
I've seen that point raised often, but I haven't seen much evidence of it. My initial guess as to the timing of the revolts was that the recession was the tipping point of an already poor population. I suppose it was likely a combination of many factors, but I'm not sure that anyone can point to any single factor and say that it was the primary cause. Or can we? If you know of an article with some evidence, I'd be interested in reading it if you could provide a link.
Extremely effective. That is what happens when your country has massive amounts of wealth concentrated in the hands of the top 1%. The tea party movement started out being (in my mind) somewhat rational. They were sick of unconstitutional laws, wall street bailouts, the recession, etc.. but their anger was very quickly captured by heavily funded political groups like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Armey#FreedomWorks
By the end of the propaganda (that hit its peak during the healthcare debates, but actually started the split second that Obama was elected), most tea party people actually believed that Obama bailed out the banks. My own conservative relatives were in disbelief when I told them that, no, actually Bush signed TARP into law.
I find it hilarious that poor right-wingers voted to let the rich not pay taxes (compared to average joe). The propaganda surely is working.
And the most frustrating thing is how well the propaganda is able to instill contradictory ideas in the minds of the far right. Like A) National debt is bad, B) therefore, cut taxes..., C) and don't touch my medicare or social security, and D) we can't cut defense or the terrorists win. How the heck do they expect the debt to go down? Friggin magic?
We most certainly can blame US citizens. You are free to think for yourself, choosing not too is not a defense. In a representative democracy there is much more you can do than just vote. But you know what, US citizens don't care as long as they still get cable.
It is a vicious circle though. Our country is extremely wealthy. Wealth breeds not only some corruption, but tends to concentrate power over time. Wealth is also used to give way more 'free speech/voice' to the wealthy than the average citizen can voice. Wealth has the power to greatly influence the minds of all citizens by misleading commercials, biased news sources, etc... Wealth lobbies and pushes for fewer regulations, thereby further concentrating power at the top, concentrating the ownership of media, etc...
The US has one of the largest income disparities in the entire world. Once that was allowed to happen, the circle is complete. The wealthy stay wealthy, and the masses stay ignorant. About the only way to break the cycle is a drastic event, like the great depression. Our current recession would have done it, if we had allowed it to continue spiraling down. But the masses were so subdued and mislead, that they allowed the government under Bush to hand those that caused the recession nearly a trillion of our tax payer dollars. And about the only sign of resistance that you saw from that was the tea party, however, even then, more than half of people who claim to be tea-party minded were so mislead that they actually think that Obama bailed out the banks. Their anger was misdirected quite efficiently by the Koch brothers and other organizations.
So yeah, in the end, you can blame the citizens for not voting properly. But it is hard to do when A) you don't have the right information to make an informed decision, and B) your choices are usually limited to the lesser of two evils, neither of which is going to make any meaningful changes (like reforming campaign finance laws, or making it easier for third parties).
Or, you know, handle the bulk of the dynamic stuff server side.
The problem isn't dynamic web pages, but rather the mechanics behind the scenes. Many front end web designers, those that learned how to design using javascript/css/html, now have available to them data via api's, ajax'y stuff, web services, etc... Instead of stopping to think what the best way is to obtain the dynamic content, they often just drop in a jquery library and pull in the data client side. After all, rarely would one of the front end designers have access to the actual database or application server, because for years, they were just the style/color/layout guy.
And for the record, it is quite possible to make a complex, ajax'y, dynamic site that is still 100% available to the handicapped. It takes a lot of design planning, experience and research, but it can be done.
And I'm not sure why we'd ever want to go back to only single apps for single purposes for single OS's. Outlawing web 2.0 would be, frankly, a huge step back in terms of getting valuable functions and data into people's hands. Not to mention the interaction and communities that have sprung up around easily accessible data and collaboration.
I'm not advocating pirating, but I think you are painting too rosy of a picture.
Download stores: incomplete content. Notice how big a deal it was when iTunes added the Beatles to the store? It had been what, 40-50 friggin years, and the right holders were still reluctant to add their content to the store. Just last night, I wanted to watch "I am legend" (for some odd reason hehe). I have netflix, xbox with Zune streaming, and the movie was not in either store. 4 year old movie, dvd only.... I can literally give you hundreds of examples of 10 year old content that is not available in any download store. And some of it not available on physical media either!. The right holder would rather let content die out then give it back to the public domain. There have been slashdot articles on that very issue: old 20's jazz and other art that is quite literally a national treasure, rotting away in locked music company rooms.
DRM: Sorry, DRM is alive and well in many forms of media. This isn't just about music. iTunes movies are still DRM'd, as are half the physical discs in stores still.
I'm still baffled why movie/music companies haven't created 'one store to rule them all' and instead are sitting on their hands letting individual companies (apple, netflix, etc..) offer partial selections. They would make so much money if all content were available to people instantly. Last night I would have payed 5 bucks to watch a 4 year old movie that I had seen 2 times already. Convenience and impulse buying are why the most coveted spot in a grocery store is the wall of goods right at the check out line. The movie/music industry has the ability to use that coveted spot, and they won't. So some people get frustrated, and end up downloading a copy. I honestly can't blame them.
I took for granted comments about the safety of PBR's, but decided this time to read some criticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor#Criticisms_of_the_reactor_design
It sure doesn't sound like the best solution to me. Especially considering that only one plant has run for a couple decades (Germany) and it was found to have leaked and is also highly irradiated now. From the wiki article, it sounds like China is going ahead with a bunch of new plants, but only time will tell how that turns out.
I'd rather us stick with BWR/PWR's but just have many more safety layers (like...why weren't the generators inside a strong structure to being with....). At least until PBR's or MSR's have further testing.
After reading a description of Atlantis, I doubt you'll ever find it (or that it ever existed). I have a hard time believing that any civilization could be so orderly to get all citizens to build their cities in circles. And building a circular canal means a spoke and ring system of waterways, when any semi-sane engineer would just settle for a spoke and hub system, no need to lay out perfect rings. Even enormously planned communities like Washington, D. C. and Brasilia have less structural control than what's implied.
I think that you'll find many examples of ancient civilizations with rigid building styles if you spend some time googling. The Anasazi in the US Southwest built all their cultural centers as semi-circles. Google "chaco canyon ruins" for a list of images (and I'd highly recommend visiting if you can, the ruins are only partially excavated and you can find pottery all over the place to look at, but of course it is illegal to take any). In general, almost all of the earliest city states had centrally controlled building operations. That is one of the main ways that archaeologists have of identifying different cultures: building style and building placement.
And even in places without much central control of building, there are also sites in Turkey and other areas of the near east, where necessities of the times shaped cities and towns. For instance, many towns built their houses side by side, in a circle, so that the outer wall of the houses formed one big circular wall for defense.
There is also some evidence that even as far back as the megalithic period, that some sorts of universal measurement were being used. The 'megalithic yard', for example, is believed by some to have been derived by a simple astronomical observation combine with some strings and plumb bobs, giving ancient folks all over a standard unit of measure!. I am not sure how widely that belief is held in academia, I just read a book on it years ago.
In modern times, it is pretty hard to imagine rigid city plans, but during pre-history (and essentially pre-history in the case of the Anasazi) it was pretty common.
I was only able to find one researcher putting forth the notion that Atlantis was completely fabricated by Plato:
Quote from the google hit in 2001
"But now Alan F. Alford, one of the world's authorities on ancient mythology, claims to have uncovered the truth: the Greek philosopher invented Atlantis as a metaphor for the ancient version of our 'Big Bang' theory."
It is hard to google about Atlantis. There are a million crackpot sites you need to weed through, so if you have more sources, by all means, share them. I was under the impression that there was no real proof about Atlantis being real or merely a story.
Isn't there a law against facilitating copyright infringement? It seems like the wording of the accusation was incorrect (charged with actually copying), but weren't his acts still illegal?
Every time a thread like this comes up, we hear anecdotal accounts of many different situations. Has anyone ever found or compiled actual stats about what works the best across the widest spread of computer setups? I'm sitting here at work typing on my Ubuntu box, but I'd be willing to wager that overall, windows installs easier on a wider range of hardware, and that video, audio, and other multimedia/gaming things work better in windows.
My anecdotal experience: Having built ~15 pc's for my home and having wiped and reapplied a new OS on ~10 work computers over the course of ~15 years, I have only had one problem with Windows not recognizing a device (scanner). At home, having tried gentoo a couple times, ubuntu a couple times, and then at work having tried (and eventually started using) Ubuntu, there were far more problems with the linux installs. Mainly multi-monitor/video and audio issues.
That said, I, nor my company, have ever gone out of their way to determine compatibility with linux before purchasing a desktop. It is likely that my lopsided experience is due to hardware vendors selling windows compatible hardware more predominantly and by default.
Slashdot Mirror
My real problem with taking this stance is that they've pre-determined that constraining the distribution of their content is defined as, "winning."
That may be part of it, but you also have to remember that TV shows compete. Popular shows from different networks are often aired on the same time slot. That produces a clear "winner" in terms of ratings, and the network that owns that show can then charge higher ad prices for that particular time slot. It may also lead to the cancelling of a competitors show. That is also defined as a "win".
In my minds of the networks, if you had more on demand TV via streaming, it would lead to 9pm monday show A, B, and C having more equal viewing numbers, as consumers would dvr one, watch one, and stream the other. As it is now, the more popular 2 shows win out, make more ad money, and the 3rd show either makes less or gets cancelled.
Sucks for the 3rd show, sucks for consumers, but that competition (networks believe), makes them more money if they "win" the time slot.
Old thread, so likely no one will see this:), but wouldn't a tire tax unequally tax people depending on their road conditions and climate? I'm assuming that people living in cold areas with lots of de-icer and gravel would have to buy new tires quicker than people in moderate climates.
I don't understand the heat issue very well. Might be a dumb question, but couldn't the cold of space be used to effectively dump heat? Like the reactor is exposed directly to space via a hatch that opens?
There is also this company proposing a large solar array to power vasmir: http://www.adastrarocket.com/aarc/LunarCargo
More than that though, it is misleading to attempt an understanding of Chinese society from a western perspective.
http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_jacques_understanding_the_rise_of_china.html
Very interesting talk. One of several points the speaker made, was that the Chinese people are generally less distrustful of government. It is almost viewed as being within the family, paternal. This is generally the exact opposite of western democracies, where the government is considered "other".
The article mentions that 1 or more of these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_Affordable_Fission_Engine
Would be the likely power source for the VASMIR
Or if car manufacturers could standardize on battery packaging and connectors, you could pull into a 'battery swap' station and an attendant could hoist out your battery pack(s) and put in freshly charged ones ~5-10min.
Science does not de-reference God, It shows what the design of something is
Sure, science models natural designs, but in many fields, it also models the processes uses to create those designs. That is kinda the whole point about evolution:) If you can show that design X evolved naturally from steps 1-300, it certainly does de-reference God in that claims that God had a hand in the design have no proof. And that is what it always boils down to: ID cannot, ever, obtain proof. There are no experiments that can ever prove that a designer had a hand in a design. On the other hand, there are experiments that can show how certain designs evolved only by natural selection, natural mutation, and other processes.
I think the Texas law is intended to allow the ID proponent to pursue such a career in the absence of prejudicial discrimination that has nothing to do with the work..
I'm not sure of the exact ramifications of this law, but if it allows an ID proponent to teach, in a biology class, that the eye was designed by God, no matter how scientifically accurate the subsequent descriptions of the design of the eye are, it is a bad law. We should rightly be critical of ideas put forth in science class rooms that have no proof, and no possibility of ever gaining proof via the scientific method.
A good example is the data streaming in from the Solar Dynamics Orbiter and the Stereo A/B satellites just now. We are finding out that we really do not know our own sun nearly as well as we thought. SDO could die today, and the data already taken would generate decades of writing.
Is such science dependent on a belief in evolution? I fail to see how.
I don't know those two experiments' purpose, so I'm not sure if they have any ties to evolution/big bang, but I will assume that they don't. Sure, an astronomer doesn't need to believe in evolution to do good astronomy, and I don't think they should be discriminated against for believing in whatever they want, assuming that their belief doesn't degrade the scientific accuracy of their findings. However, I do think it shows a very clear lack of good scientific judgement if they can weight the evidence (lack of) for ID vs the evidence of natural evolution, and conclude that ID has more proof.
You needn't have bothered analyzing that data yourself. Liberal talk show hosts and sites have been clearly stating this and other trends for years. Mountains of evidence, displayed in nice neat graphs and summarized by some really great thinkers, falls on deaf ears.
That the republican/conservative trickle down economic theories are still somehow embraced by nearly half the country baffles me. Middle class wages have been literally stagnant for 10 years (after inflation), all the while corporate and high income brackets have had tremendous growth and in many instances, record profit.
Jon Stewart had a funny bit commenting on something similar when he said (paraphrasing): This trickle down of golden wealth is starting to feel more like a yellow shower...
Typical conservative POV:
1. American exceptionalism
2. American exceptionalism redux -- we're so freakin' awesome, God's chosen people etc
3. Strong on national defense
4. Self-reliance
5. Sloppy kisses for capitalism
6. Strong support for the average folk (working people who work for their money)
7. Everything that's wrong with this country starts and ends with liberals and they're the ones trying to tear it apart from the inside because the black filth of communism is pumping through their veins
It still baffles me that Republicans are able to maintain the image of your number 6. It should be blatantly obvious to anyone with half a brain that conservative policy has not, and will not, help the middle class.
That and "globalism" and "free trade" always seems to mean "transfer wealth away from the US". It is not the mutual trade and prosperity that was sold to us when NAFTA and other proposals were getting off the ground.
I would modify that statement slightly:
That and globalism and free trade always seems to mean "transfer of wealth away from the US middle class".
The mutual trade and prosperity was based on the now obviously false notion that wealth trickles down. Corporate profits (and high income bracket profits) are at an all time high across the vast majority of industries, yet average worker salaries have been stagnant for over a decade.
So that prosperity that was promised certainly did work out for some.
Very interesting article. Thank you for sharing it.
I acknowledge that various countries have different histories that contribute to their revolts, but what interests me is the timing of the revolts and the triggers that caused them. It seems to me that pointing our fingers at just social media, or just xyz, is probably too simplistic.
Here's another quite commonly accepted theory that lacks any scientific falsifiable whatsoever: That the conditions on this planet, at some point during its history, were exactly right for life to spontaneously form here.
To be precise, scientists wouldn't call that a theory. It is a hypothesis for some of them, and is actively being researched. If they successfully create life in the lab, over and over, in many different ways that line up with our best evidence about the state of the planet a long time ago, then it might become a theory. For others not involved in that research, working on, say, later evolutionary processes, the answer to how life began is irrelevant. God could have started it, aliens, whatever. The fact remains that there is evidence of evolution, it has predictive power, and can be falsified. What caused that first cell to form doesn't matter for later research.
Life exists here, so there must be an explanation for it. ID is just one such explanation. There are only a handful of others, and none of them have come anywhere even close to being proven, and none are falsifiable by any currently achievable technological means. Does that mean we simply cannot ever have a theory of how life began here?
The difference between the explanation that ID offers and the explanation that evolution offers, is that the various evolutionary hypothesis can be tested. You are correct that we don't have the ability to 100% accurately explain, say, the development of the eye, but there are experiments attempting to simulate it right now. There exists a way to gain evidence for the various hypothesis, where for the explanation provided by ID, there are none.
Now you could say, "but we have no idea if the eye will ever be explained!", and that is a fair question. But if you were a betting man, where would you put your money: in a scientific process that has proven itself time and time again in medicine, engineering, computers, and other areas, or in an untestable hypothesis (ID) that has no possibility of gathering evidence, no means of falsifiability, and in which the only place it can be even remotely considered possible is in the gaps in our knowledge.
For really, that is what it boils down to: Arguments that purport to support ID can only be derived from areas in which science cannot (at the moment) adequately explain an observed natural phenomenon. That leads religions down the road of having their core underpinning belief (that there is a designer of some sort) lose its explanatory power continually over time, as science explains more and more each day. The answer "God did it" in terms of natural observable phenomenon leaves believers with a "God of the Gaps", a god that only fits into the gaps in our knowledge.
Social media, wikileaks, the recession, the destabilization of Iraq's influence, a burning martyr, Obama's speech in Egypt, seeing another country revolt successfully, food prices rising.... I'm sure they all contributed in some way to the revolts. I doubt anyone knows the exact weight that each factor had, and it likely differs depending on which revolt you are talking about.
Why is the whole Islamic world up in arms against their own governments now? Because Wikileaks showed them what their governments were really up to, and it pushed a long-fermenting resentment over the top. A few people associated with Wikileaks did what the U.S. could not with the trillions of dollars they've put into their attempts to influence policy in the region. So, now we're going to simultaneously give Wikileaks its victory by taking advantage of the unrest it fermented, and prosecute the folks who brought us that victory.
It just doesn't seem fair.
I've seen that point raised often, but I haven't seen much evidence of it. My initial guess as to the timing of the revolts was that the recession was the tipping point of an already poor population. I suppose it was likely a combination of many factors, but I'm not sure that anyone can point to any single factor and say that it was the primary cause. Or can we? If you know of an article with some evidence, I'd be interested in reading it if you could provide a link.
I can tell you from personal experience that the police have never been your cuddly friend
Exactly right. They even made a documentary about it in 1975 :)
Is the propaganda that effective?
Extremely effective. That is what happens when your country has massive amounts of wealth concentrated in the hands of the top 1%. The tea party movement started out being (in my mind) somewhat rational. They were sick of unconstitutional laws, wall street bailouts, the recession, etc.. but their anger was very quickly captured by heavily funded political groups like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Armey#FreedomWorks
By the end of the propaganda (that hit its peak during the healthcare debates, but actually started the split second that Obama was elected), most tea party people actually believed that Obama bailed out the banks. My own conservative relatives were in disbelief when I told them that, no, actually Bush signed TARP into law.
I find it hilarious that poor right-wingers voted to let the rich not pay taxes (compared to average joe). The propaganda surely is working.
And the most frustrating thing is how well the propaganda is able to instill contradictory ideas in the minds of the far right. Like A) National debt is bad, B) therefore, cut taxes..., C) and don't touch my medicare or social security, and D) we can't cut defense or the terrorists win. How the heck do they expect the debt to go down? Friggin magic?
We most certainly can blame US citizens. You are free to think for yourself, choosing not too is not a defense. In a representative democracy there is much more you can do than just vote. But you know what, US citizens don't care as long as they still get cable.
It is a vicious circle though. Our country is extremely wealthy. Wealth breeds not only some corruption, but tends to concentrate power over time. Wealth is also used to give way more 'free speech/voice' to the wealthy than the average citizen can voice. Wealth has the power to greatly influence the minds of all citizens by misleading commercials, biased news sources, etc... Wealth lobbies and pushes for fewer regulations, thereby further concentrating power at the top, concentrating the ownership of media, etc...
The US has one of the largest income disparities in the entire world. Once that was allowed to happen, the circle is complete. The wealthy stay wealthy, and the masses stay ignorant. About the only way to break the cycle is a drastic event, like the great depression. Our current recession would have done it, if we had allowed it to continue spiraling down. But the masses were so subdued and mislead, that they allowed the government under Bush to hand those that caused the recession nearly a trillion of our tax payer dollars. And about the only sign of resistance that you saw from that was the tea party, however, even then, more than half of people who claim to be tea-party minded were so mislead that they actually think that Obama bailed out the banks. Their anger was misdirected quite efficiently by the Koch brothers and other organizations.
So yeah, in the end, you can blame the citizens for not voting properly. But it is hard to do when A) you don't have the right information to make an informed decision, and B) your choices are usually limited to the lesser of two evils, neither of which is going to make any meaningful changes (like reforming campaign finance laws, or making it easier for third parties).
Or, you know, handle the bulk of the dynamic stuff server side.
The problem isn't dynamic web pages, but rather the mechanics behind the scenes. Many front end web designers, those that learned how to design using javascript/css/html, now have available to them data via api's, ajax'y stuff, web services, etc... Instead of stopping to think what the best way is to obtain the dynamic content, they often just drop in a jquery library and pull in the data client side. After all, rarely would one of the front end designers have access to the actual database or application server, because for years, they were just the style/color/layout guy.
And for the record, it is quite possible to make a complex, ajax'y, dynamic site that is still 100% available to the handicapped. It takes a lot of design planning, experience and research, but it can be done.
And I'm not sure why we'd ever want to go back to only single apps for single purposes for single OS's. Outlawing web 2.0 would be, frankly, a huge step back in terms of getting valuable functions and data into people's hands. Not to mention the interaction and communities that have sprung up around easily accessible data and collaboration.
I'm not advocating pirating, but I think you are painting too rosy of a picture.
Download stores: incomplete content. Notice how big a deal it was when iTunes added the Beatles to the store? It had been what, 40-50 friggin years, and the right holders were still reluctant to add their content to the store. Just last night, I wanted to watch "I am legend" (for some odd reason hehe). I have netflix, xbox with Zune streaming, and the movie was not in either store. 4 year old movie, dvd only.... I can literally give you hundreds of examples of 10 year old content that is not available in any download store. And some of it not available on physical media either!. The right holder would rather let content die out then give it back to the public domain. There have been slashdot articles on that very issue: old 20's jazz and other art that is quite literally a national treasure, rotting away in locked music company rooms.
DRM: Sorry, DRM is alive and well in many forms of media. This isn't just about music. iTunes movies are still DRM'd, as are half the physical discs in stores still.
I'm still baffled why movie/music companies haven't created 'one store to rule them all' and instead are sitting on their hands letting individual companies (apple, netflix, etc..) offer partial selections. They would make so much money if all content were available to people instantly. Last night I would have payed 5 bucks to watch a 4 year old movie that I had seen 2 times already. Convenience and impulse buying are why the most coveted spot in a grocery store is the wall of goods right at the check out line. The movie/music industry has the ability to use that coveted spot, and they won't. So some people get frustrated, and end up downloading a copy. I honestly can't blame them.
I took for granted comments about the safety of PBR's, but decided this time to read some criticism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor#Criticisms_of_the_reactor_design
It sure doesn't sound like the best solution to me. Especially considering that only one plant has run for a couple decades (Germany) and it was found to have leaked and is also highly irradiated now. From the wiki article, it sounds like China is going ahead with a bunch of new plants, but only time will tell how that turns out.
I'd rather us stick with BWR/PWR's but just have many more safety layers (like...why weren't the generators inside a strong structure to being with....). At least until PBR's or MSR's have further testing.
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After reading a description of Atlantis, I doubt you'll ever find it (or that it ever existed). I have a hard time believing that any civilization could be so orderly to get all citizens to build their cities in circles. And building a circular canal means a spoke and ring system of waterways, when any semi-sane engineer would just settle for a spoke and hub system, no need to lay out perfect rings. Even enormously planned communities like Washington, D. C. and Brasilia have less structural control than what's implied.
I think that you'll find many examples of ancient civilizations with rigid building styles if you spend some time googling. The Anasazi in the US Southwest built all their cultural centers as semi-circles. Google "chaco canyon ruins" for a list of images (and I'd highly recommend visiting if you can, the ruins are only partially excavated and you can find pottery all over the place to look at, but of course it is illegal to take any). In general, almost all of the earliest city states had centrally controlled building operations. That is one of the main ways that archaeologists have of identifying different cultures: building style and building placement.
And even in places without much central control of building, there are also sites in Turkey and other areas of the near east, where necessities of the times shaped cities and towns. For instance, many towns built their houses side by side, in a circle, so that the outer wall of the houses formed one big circular wall for defense.
There is also some evidence that even as far back as the megalithic period, that some sorts of universal measurement were being used. The 'megalithic yard', for example, is believed by some to have been derived by a simple astronomical observation combine with some strings and plumb bobs, giving ancient folks all over a standard unit of measure!. I am not sure how widely that belief is held in academia, I just read a book on it years ago.
In modern times, it is pretty hard to imagine rigid city plans, but during pre-history (and essentially pre-history in the case of the Anasazi) it was pretty common.
I was only able to find one researcher putting forth the notion that Atlantis was completely fabricated by Plato:
Quote from the google hit in 2001
"But now Alan F. Alford, one of the world's authorities on ancient mythology, claims to have uncovered the truth: the Greek philosopher invented Atlantis as a metaphor for the ancient version of our 'Big Bang' theory."
It is hard to google about Atlantis. There are a million crackpot sites you need to weed through, so if you have more sources, by all means, share them. I was under the impression that there was no real proof about Atlantis being real or merely a story.
Isn't there a law against facilitating copyright infringement? It seems like the wording of the accusation was incorrect (charged with actually copying), but weren't his acts still illegal?
Every time a thread like this comes up, we hear anecdotal accounts of many different situations. Has anyone ever found or compiled actual stats about what works the best across the widest spread of computer setups? I'm sitting here at work typing on my Ubuntu box, but I'd be willing to wager that overall, windows installs easier on a wider range of hardware, and that video, audio, and other multimedia/gaming things work better in windows.
My anecdotal experience: Having built ~15 pc's for my home and having wiped and reapplied a new OS on ~10 work computers over the course of ~15 years, I have only had one problem with Windows not recognizing a device (scanner). At home, having tried gentoo a couple times, ubuntu a couple times, and then at work having tried (and eventually started using) Ubuntu, there were far more problems with the linux installs. Mainly multi-monitor/video and audio issues.
That said, I, nor my company, have ever gone out of their way to determine compatibility with linux before purchasing a desktop. It is likely that my lopsided experience is due to hardware vendors selling windows compatible hardware more predominantly and by default.
Not if he was trying to get sound to work to play a game.