I don't think you understand the situation. This is just a manifestation of simmering resentment from the Russians, over many issues.
The US has claimed the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty is no longer valid and is violating it, which seriously pisses off the Russians.
Americans have also been meeting rebels from Chechnya, which has upset the Russian administration. Add to it their conflicting views in Eastern Europe and the expelling of spies by the sack load, and you have plenty of trouble.
From the Russian point of view, there's the wounded pride of a fallen superpower and resentment at a right-wing US president trying to revive the cold war. So naturally, they try to fight back in every way they can.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has called the ABM treaty ``ancient history.''
Surely you can't casually dismiss a ballistic missile treaty and expect them to hold on to their end of the bargain in carrying a tourist abroad?
If the genetics companies are so concerned about people replanting this seed (accidentally, as it would seem in this case, or deliberately), then why is it not their responsibility to sell only plants that cannot produce seeds?
If the software/music companies are so concerned about people reproducing this file (accidentally, as it would seem in this case, or deliberately), then why is it not their responsibility to sell only files/CDs that cannot produce copies?
This is truly fantastic, and it doesn't end with poor farmers.
Speaking of poor farmers, would this have been such major news had it happened to, say, some helpless fellow in the Philippines or Thailand? On the other hand, if it can happen to someone in Canada, it can happen to "one of us", so it has a chilling effect.
One thing I find very interesting is how much nationality plays a role in a story like this. Had Monsanto - a big proponent of globalization - done this to some farmer in the developing world, the only coverage it would have gotten would be in left wing student newspapers. It's unlikely it would have made/. or the major news media (who would groan at the prospect - same old sweatshops and child labor stories, now this?).
Had it been in the US, it would definitely have been headline news all over the place, and Dubya would have had to ask Cheney to write a statement of some kind. Americans would even be asking "What is a genetically modified food?"
If it had happened in Europe, the effect would have been tremondous, since they are extremely sensitive to GM issues.
South America - well, probably would have made the local news, but nothing major. We only care about their currency crisis or carnivals.
I guess it's a good thing it happened in Canada, since it actually made news.
For a development so recent, there is considerable controvery over some basic details. For instance, consider GUI. Popular folklore attributes it to Parc, followed by Apple. But there is another viewpoint, the almost forgotten Engelbart. It's amazing that with all the people involved in these inventions still alive today, nobody quite agrees on who invented what. It's another matter trying to figure out who invented the first computer. I can't imagine what it will be like in a hundred years, when people look up contradictory records postulating various different accounts. Good luck trying to piece it together.
As for older theoretical subjects, one book you'll find invaluable is Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, in which he painstakingly traces back the history of various mathematical and computational developments.
Compare movie ratings in the US and Australia. In the US, it's done by the film industry. In Australia, it's done by the govt. There's a huge difference between the two.
More important than the censorship itself is who controls it. If it's the industry itself, there's a built-in balance. An industry will tend to censor itself as little as possible (for obvious reasons). A govt. will try to censor as much as possible (for obvious reasons). There's also the philosophical question of the state controlling the citizenry's right to free expression.
The Aussies have a govt. body with the rather Orwellian name of The Office of Film and Literature Classification . It censors games as well (I'm not sure if they come under film or literature, though "Move every zig for great justice" is memorable prose indeed). Ignore the cute kangaroo and try looking up some names. A search on "quake" reveals that Quake (the game) is MA15+ rated for "high level violence", whereas Earthquake Girls (the movie) is rated X. Of course, books are rated too, and in some cases, prohibited. Games in arcades have big ratings signs posted. There was a news item a couple of years ago of the New Zealand govt. having difficulty rating video games because govt. bureaucrats were having difficulty going past the first few levels in violent games. The very image of buttoned-up, middle-aged officials getting paid to struggle through "Toxic Waste Dump" makes you wonder if society has better ways of spending tax dollars. Canada, you are next.
There are some ironies, however. I've lived in both Australia and the US. Inspite of Australia having a govt. censor, you can see breasts on TV all the time, even at 9 PM, and (irony of ironies) even on a news program re. censorship on....state run TV. There is quite a bit of contrast in how the Land of the Free shudders in prude puritanical fear at the sight of nipples, while the laid-back Aussies appoint govt. censors and casually walk past pictures of bared breasts in malls and public places.
You can see movie posters with tits on full display. Sex and the City, which largely gets its high ratings on US cable from the shock that Americans feel at the sight of yuppie women baring breasts on a TV show and saying "fuck" several times, is regularly shown on open public broadcast in Australia. You can see breasts on the front pages of newspapers sometimes, lying there in a newstand stack as children walk past them to buy candies. Oddly, such obscenities haven't resulted in higher crime or moral turpitude.
OTOH, the problem with govt. censorship is just that - it's govt. censorship. They can ban movies if they don't feel the public should watch it. God forbid they should come across the old Mega TF mod that lets you shoot your opponent's head off and kick it around like a football....
People make this mistake often - there is no shortage of food.
It's mainly economic. Both China and India produce enough food to feed themselves. The world's food supply exceeds demand. There is no simple x=y equation, which lets the food get distributed to the hungry. The problem is that the demand side doesn't have the money to buy the food. No matter how much more you produce, they still won't be able to buy it.
Over the past few years, the European Union has dumped tons of excess butter, and recently North Korea asked for the quasi-mad cows being destroyed to be sent over there. The problem is that if a country does that, the prices go down.
Sure, salt water agriculture is a good thing, and it helps in areas that suffer in that particular niche area. But calm down if you think it will produce the food that the world needs - there's already more than is needed. People just don't have the economic means to buy it.
Why? Because of economic infrastructure, development, industrialization, subsidies, trade, etc. All this talk about golden rice, genetically engineered food, etc. distracts from a very simple fact. We already have enough food.
"There is a real fear that some politician riding his horse is going to say, 'I'm going to tell my constituents that I'm protecting their privacy,' " said Michael Turner of the Information Services Executive Council
Imagine that. A politician trying to protect his constituents....
Wait, this can be done better.
Senator's sysadmin: "We get signal!"
Senator: "Main screen turn on."
Lobbyist: "How are you gentlemen...all your privacy are belong to us!"
Lobbyist: "You have no time to ride your horse. Make your time."
I'm not saying that California is perfect. I'm saying it offers MORE economic and social choice than most other places.
In any case, all these things are relative - London is more racially segregated than california. When I say California is libertarian, I don't mean that it's perfect. All I'm saying that it offers MORE freedoms than most places in the world.
There's one very simple way to measure this - the number of people who go there, of their own will. For some reason, most hardware and software companies start up in California. And more migrants move there than any other place.
Maybe they don't share your opinion. Maybe they like it there. Whatever the reason, California is the most vibrant place for migrants from around the world, and for technology companies to be founded.
Again, I'm not saying it's perfect, but it offers more choices - to start a company, to immigrants looking for a new life, and for getting better bandwidth.
It's all relative, and the UK doesn't even come close to california. And it shows.
The only negative consequence I can think of is that it's going to increase the price of dope...:(
That's the only negative thing you can think of?
Here, let me add a few more...
1) If you are willing to let the cops film you, you are giving up your civil rights to walk around freely without someone monitoring you. This is possibly the very definition of freedom. If you give that up, you don't have a lot left...
2) Police states DO have lower rates of crime. Nobody disputes that. Saudi Arabia and Singapore monitor practically everything you do, and there's almost no crime. There's almost no innovation, art, or human expression of any kind either. If you want that kind of society, you're welcome to it.
3) Software is a global market. People don't realise it, but $$$ aren't the only thing that programmers, scientists and engineers look at. I can work in Singapore any time I want to, but I don't ever want to go back there because the only thing I remember is clean streets and deadly dull govt. propaganda on TV. The only free expression I encountered was hastily written on restroom walls.
4) You can't have the govt. surgically monitor the "bad guys" and let the "good guys" run around happily inventing things.
5) Britain already has a really bad image - an inbred monarchy, a racist class driven society, slow technology, foot-and-mouth-disease, and mad cow disease. Trust me, surveillance cameras aren't going to make anyone want to go there.
6) If the cops monitor you, who monitors the cops? Abuse is inevitable.
Britain is already leading the charge towards a monitored society, and satisfying bureaucratic deadweights. In contrast, libertarian places such as California are attracting all the talent. It's your choice.
I remember a lot of web sites that were derided as complete garbage - the ones that first showed live motion video, or message boards, or animations, etc.
I've been following the useless pages for years now. It captures the spirit of the net far better than a dozen Gartner analysts thrown in a bin. Check out the history, and all the old stuff. I wish someone would archive all these things that are REALLY important, before they disappear.
The first popular use of printing was to cater to porn or astrology. It's pathetic the way mainstream media journalists heap scorn on new things appearing on the net, and then desperately try to catch on and "get it".
1) Do not use prominent newspapers like the Washington Post to post classified ads as a signal to your contact. Instead, make a clever goatse.cx post as an AC - you will never be traced. Most surveillance agents browse/. at the +1 level, and even if they don't, there's no way they'd spot you out from the thousands of ACs.
2) Do not use real bridges and lamp-posts as drop-off points. Instead, join the blue team on a Team Fortress server and arrange to meet a red team dude on the bridge in 2fort5. Just nod (nobody pays that much attention) and drop off your backpack on the bridge. Watch out for the enemy snipers on the tower! They could be real intelligence agents...
Other options include spraying a wall with bullets in counterstrike or q3. The marks wear off pretty quickly and are impossible to log. No chance of detection there.
3) Use Windows for all your "work". You are guaranteed to lose your files, even the ones you want to keep.
4) Can't think of any more. oh well, add to the list...
When linux was young and hopping around in the excitement of its youth, there were many bold dreams and brave ideas. People talked of it replacing windows and leading to a revolutionary new world. Due to the large statistical numbers of programmers, marketers, companies involved, the movement has stabilized a lot.
At this point, no matter of marketing is going to make much difference. The direction has already been set - linux as a server OS for scripters and hackers, windows as a gui for ordinary users. Sure, you get the fanatics talking about how Joe Sixpack uses linux to teach his kids, but those are the priests preaching to the choir. I've seen even hardcore linux users generally have a windows partition - at least I did, for gaming and writing resumes.
Anyway, the point is - each OS has its strengths and builds momentum in its areas. Linux is good for servers, and excels there. Is marketing needed to highlight that point further? Doubt it. Will marketing make families switch to linux to use email and store their family photos? Doubt it.
Basically, the battle has stabilized. The fight is over servers. In that area, I don't see how marketing like this is going to help.
And one more thing - generally, these articles tend to say the things people already know. When I see these "convert the newbies" articles on/., from the tone and content, I wonder how many newbies actually see these things.
In any case, business decisions are made by managers after reading crap from Gartner and IDC. This doesn't make any difference. Realistically, the target audience is purchasing managers. will they read these "success stories" on the Linux International site and say - "Wow, that's impressive, I didn't know linux was so good. I will now install linux and try it out."
Come on...people at that level already know this shit. They don't need to be fed baby food. From what I've seen, linux marketing works best by word of mouth from enthusiastic users - not by propaganda sites/articles.
Nice buzzword, but think of it. Human programmers still need to look at something and tell the difference between two programs. Maybe it'll be "represented" in a different way. Ultimately, there will have to be something to describe what a program does - that something could be symbols, images, lines, whatever. It's still a representation.
They could call it a "different representation" language, but that would ruin the image.:)
In any case, if there's a page describing the different ways Java, C++ and Eidola handle classes and methods, it can't be all that revolutionary.
A computer is a luxury. In the real world, people who have money for luxuries can afford one (normally, after they get a TV. NOBODY would buy a PC before a TV - if you think they would, you need to leave pixel land and return to reality).
If they don't have money for a PC in the first place, they would just sell the PC and pay for other essentials.
The digital divide is just another symptom of the economic gap. You can't fix it by throwing around PCs. It's a fashionable idea for clueless idealists, though.
And let's face it - "digital divide" has a nice sound to it. So it'll stick around for a few years.
Unix was a system invented decades ago. Most software becomes obsolete after 5 years. This has not been the case with unix. Why is it still here?
A corollary - is unix holding up progress? If a brilliant new system were to be written that overthrew the establishment (like unix did in its day), it would need the momentum of people supporting it. Such a momentum isn't possible when the hacker community continues to support the well established unix way of thinking. Does this in some way impede the appearance of a completely new paradigm (like unix was in its day...)? What would be the conditions that could create such a new system? After all, it's unlikely that unix will be the research OS of choice for decades or centuries - it will have to give up at some point.
One thing I've found interesting is the level of disconnect between cause and effect in the US. The average American produces 70 times the level of pollution as the average person in a developing country, but most Americans I talk to never realise the damage they cause because they never see it . For instance, DDT is banned in the US as a toxic chemical, but it's exported for household use to developing nations.
If you only looked at the facts from an unbiased perspective, and actually had some contact with those who suffer the brunt of these damages, trust me, your opinion would be different.
Another thing I find interesting is that most Americans seem to get their opinion about scientific issues such as global warming and evolution from politicians and talk show hosts. The topmost post on this page is a guy quoting Rush Limbaugh on how volcanoes are more polluting than anything humans ever made (and it's been moderated up to 5). Guys....these people aren't educated enough to barely understand these topics, let alone form an opinion or explain it to others. Don't follow them like sheep. Columnists, politicians, left-wing and right-wing ideologues have agendas and try to sway your mind. Trust them as much as you would their expert knowledge on how to partition your HD for optimum seek times.
For issues on science, the best people to refer to are *scientists*. Yes, they are sometimes wrong, and they have competing theories, but they are heaps better and more reliable than anybody else, because they do it for a living and have to prove things more accurately and with greater impact on their lives than anybody else who talks about these things.
But then, judging by the wise posts in response to the article, what would scientists know....
I agree. People who get carried away with lines like "lock them up and throw away the key" often forget one important question - which is, who pays for it?
It costs over $50,000 a year to keep someone in prison, which is something like twice the average income. Now, why should I pay for someone to sit in a square box and rot away, possibly be abused and develop mental problems of a sexual nature, and then be released into society with no skills? Just because revenge feels good?
Countries that have get-tough-on-crime policies have worse crime rates and a fucked up society. The US has the largest prison population in the developed world, larger than some european nations put together.
I've lived in other countries with different approaches to crime. The ones that focus on lighter sentences + rehabilitation have lower crime rates and less expensive prison systems. Of course, they also don't have electorates that fall for catchy soundbites like 3 strikes and you're out.
If you were a soviet citizen, you'd be enthusiastically crying for the deporation to labor camps of the stupid people who bought *icing* on their *cakes* when they could be using their resources to build more powerful hydroelectric plants, or better tractors. Just think of all the stupid people in california who waste energy using electricity to play silly 3D games, or watch stupid sitcoms on TV (non-productive use of electricity), or huge movie theaters showing silly moving images that don't produce anything.
Yeah, have sympathy for a company that can afford to shell out a few million dollars to the local congressmen (of course, they are not expecting anything in return), and can afford to hire PR reps who whine about turning off the lights so their employees can make chips in the dark.
Guys like you need your heads rattled to see if they make a hollow sound. Sheesh. Check your temperature and see if you're alive.
I bet you probably snitch on your co-workers if they are playing games or reading email jokes, just to boost that 0.0000013 % improvement in the economy.
Andy Grove himself would send you a personal generic christmas greeting card.
While it's an accepted fact that the Internet will become a means for direct download or fan-to-fan music exchange, the RIAA continues to oppose these inevitable trends. At the same time, bands and musicians need to make money.
Simple question - If bands are to bypass the recording industry, how will they make money? Or if they are to work within the confines of the recording industry, how will the industry deal with the culture of free music exchange on the net?
Why do you have to cut-n-paste the exact text? Just reword the stuff. Copyrights don't apply to rewritten synopses.
Otherwise, movie reviews, book reviews, and bug reports would have ceased to exist a long time ago. In fact, these things make the original product even more popular, just consider the free publicity...
Has anybody calculated the number of people kept employed due to virus outbreaks and the millions of $ generated into the economy due to the spikes on sales charts of anti-virus companies?
Viruses are bad. Very bad.
At least, that's what symantec and McAfee say. They should know, they wouldn't exist if it weren't for them.
If it weren't for hypocrisy, this industry would have collapsed a long time ago.
The ethics of giving is a rarely considered subject. Generally, most donations are made irrationally, and often to satisfy the ego or personal preference of the donor.
Consider real ethical questions - if you were to donate $100, and if it were to save a life, would you instead give it to a school charity to buy a 17 inch monitor to replace a 15 inch one? Then comes the question of how you know you're really saving lives, or making a difference.
The sad thing is, people are pretty stupid. They give donations to charities which advertise on TV or which seem hip or trendy (thereby paying for the salaries of marketing execs who make a living off starving kids).
If you REALLY want to make a difference, why not spend a few minutes researching the subject (like you do with technical FAQs) and find out for yourself some tiny third world grass-roots organization that does genuine work, instead of the huge charities that are already well known and command millions in input revenue?
w/m
Multiple causes, multiple effects
on
Golden Rice
·
· Score: 5
people aren't starving or suffering from malnutrition because food isn't constructed properly, they're starving because not enough people care to do anything about it. Don't blame the food, blame society.
Like most complex social issues, you can't place the blame on just one thing.
Consider famine, for instance. The most popular view of famine is that it's caused by lack of food supply, and that the solution to it is supplying food to impoverished regions. But according to Nobel winner Amartya Sen , famines are not caused by lack of food supply, but due to economic and social factors - mainly purchasing ability and electoral feedback.
Famines never occur in democracies, because elected officials are responsive to feedback since they want to be elected again. During the 59-61 famine in China, between 14-40 million people died - a staggering number - yet nothing was done because a totalitarian system prevented the feedback loop between victims and govt. officials. In cases like this, genetic engineering or a better supply chain doesn't really help much.
The root cause of starvation is economic and social. Even China and India produce enough food to feed their entire populations - it's the way their system is structured that causes the problem. Of course, this doesn't mean that a more nutritious supplement doesn't help. IIRC, thiamine supplements in wheat/bread are required or encouraged by the FDA, in order to save American lives on a statistical scale. In large scale trials, thousands or millions of lives can be saved even with vitamin supplements, but that's not the main solution to nutritional problems.
The root cause is the underlying social and economic infrastructure, and that requires a bigger fix, and will save more lives in the long run.
However, because of the size of the problem, even a "minor fix" such as genetic engineering can save human lives on a massive scale. So it may well be a good solution in certain areas, providing the domino effect and technical details are resolved.
There are many quirky aspects to the place. The one I remember most about it is that its former king once held the Guinness record for being the world's heavist monarch.
"When Britain's Prince Charles married Diana, a special chair was built in Westminster Abbey for the King of Tonga. At his heaviest, in 1976, he weighed 462 pounds. By 1993, he had slimmed down to a slender 280 pounds."
Another thing I remember reading is that there's an age old custom - when the king walks around, people are supposed to be at a height below him. So apparently those around him fall down like ninepins when he goes around.
Here's a pic of him. He looks kinda like a l33t p1mp.
Tonga is also responsible for all those .to websites . One of the fastest to capitalize on the domain name craze, they did WAY better than the far more naive and ethical people of Tuvalu, who only recently started selling their.tv stuff, after a melodramatic business plan gone bad.
Tonga and its king inspire the kind of satirical lunacy that the teletubbies normally do.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think you understand the situation. This is just a manifestation of simmering resentment from the Russians, over many issues.
The US has claimed the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty is no longer valid and is violating it, which seriously pisses off the Russians.
Americans have also been meeting rebels from Chechnya, which has upset the Russian administration. Add to it their conflicting views in Eastern Europe and the expelling of spies by the sack load, and you have plenty of trouble.
From the Russian point of view, there's the wounded pride of a fallen superpower and resentment at a right-wing US president trying to revive the cold war. So naturally, they try to fight back in every way they can.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has called the ABM treaty ``ancient history.''
Surely you can't casually dismiss a ballistic missile treaty and expect them to hold on to their end of the bargain in carrying a tourist abroad?
w/m
If the genetics companies are so concerned about people replanting this seed (accidentally, as it would seem in this case, or deliberately), then why is it not their responsibility to sell only plants that cannot produce seeds?
If the software/music companies are so concerned about people reproducing this file (accidentally, as it would seem in this case, or deliberately), then why is it not their responsibility to sell only files/CDs that cannot produce copies?
w/m
This is truly fantastic, and it doesn't end with poor farmers.
Speaking of poor farmers, would this have been such major news had it happened to, say, some helpless fellow in the Philippines or Thailand? On the other hand, if it can happen to someone in Canada, it can happen to "one of us", so it has a chilling effect.
One thing I find very interesting is how much nationality plays a role in a story like this. Had Monsanto - a big proponent of globalization - done this to some farmer in the developing world, the only coverage it would have gotten would be in left wing student newspapers. It's unlikely it would have made
Had it been in the US, it would definitely have been headline news all over the place, and Dubya would have had to ask Cheney to write a statement of some kind. Americans would even be asking "What is a genetically modified food?"
If it had happened in Europe, the effect would have been tremondous, since they are extremely sensitive to GM issues.
South America - well, probably would have made the local news, but nothing major. We only care about their currency crisis or carnivals.
I guess it's a good thing it happened in Canada, since it actually made news.
w/m
is the one by gamespot. check it out . They even included the tetris author, roberta williams, and Nolan Bushnell (of Pong).
Any such list that doesn't count the influence of Pong and Atari is pure crap. Hmm...let me see, the *first* video game? Naah, not really influential.
BTW, why don't people post their own lists? That would be interesting to read.
w/m
For a development so recent, there is considerable controvery over some basic details. For instance, consider GUI. Popular folklore attributes it to Parc, followed by Apple. But there is another viewpoint, the almost forgotten Engelbart. It's amazing that with all the people involved in these inventions still alive today, nobody quite agrees on who invented what. It's another matter trying to figure out who invented the first computer. I can't imagine what it will be like in a hundred years, when people look up contradictory records postulating various different accounts. Good luck trying to piece it together.
As for older theoretical subjects, one book you'll find invaluable is Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, in which he painstakingly traces back the history of various mathematical and computational developments.
Who invented the zero?
w/m
It's just a question of who censors what.
....state run TV. There is quite a bit of contrast in how the Land of the Free shudders in prude puritanical fear at the sight of nipples, while the laid-back Aussies appoint govt. censors and casually walk past pictures of bared breasts in malls and public places.
Compare movie ratings in the US and Australia. In the US, it's done by the film industry. In Australia, it's done by the govt. There's a huge difference between the two.
More important than the censorship itself is who controls it. If it's the industry itself, there's a built-in balance. An industry will tend to censor itself as little as possible (for obvious reasons). A govt. will try to censor as much as possible (for obvious reasons). There's also the philosophical question of the state controlling the citizenry's right to free expression.
The Aussies have a govt. body with the rather Orwellian name of The Office of Film and Literature Classification . It censors games as well (I'm not sure if they come under film or literature, though "Move every zig for great justice" is memorable prose indeed). Ignore the cute kangaroo and try looking up some names. A search on "quake" reveals that Quake (the game) is MA15+ rated for "high level violence", whereas Earthquake Girls (the movie) is rated X. Of course, books are rated too, and in some cases, prohibited. Games in arcades have big ratings signs posted. There was a news item a couple of years ago of the New Zealand govt. having difficulty rating video games because govt. bureaucrats were having difficulty going past the first few levels in violent games. The very image of buttoned-up, middle-aged officials getting paid to struggle through "Toxic Waste Dump" makes you wonder if society has better ways of spending tax dollars. Canada, you are next.
There are some ironies, however. I've lived in both Australia and the US. Inspite of Australia having a govt. censor, you can see breasts on TV all the time, even at 9 PM, and (irony of ironies) even on a news program re. censorship on
You can see movie posters with tits on full display. Sex and the City, which largely gets its high ratings on US cable from the shock that Americans feel at the sight of yuppie women baring breasts on a TV show and saying "fuck" several times, is regularly shown on open public broadcast in Australia. You can see breasts on the front pages of newspapers sometimes, lying there in a newstand stack as children walk past them to buy candies. Oddly, such obscenities haven't resulted in higher crime or moral turpitude.
OTOH, the problem with govt. censorship is just that - it's govt. censorship. They can ban movies if they don't feel the public should watch it. God forbid they should come across the old Mega TF mod that lets you shoot your opponent's head off and kick it around like a football....
w/m
People make this mistake often - there is no shortage of food.
It's mainly economic. Both China and India produce enough food to feed themselves. The world's food supply exceeds demand. There is no simple x=y equation, which lets the food get distributed to the hungry. The problem is that the demand side doesn't have the money to buy the food. No matter how much more you produce, they still won't be able to buy it.
Over the past few years, the European Union has dumped tons of excess butter, and recently North Korea asked for the quasi-mad cows being destroyed to be sent over there. The problem is that if a country does that, the prices go down.
Sure, salt water agriculture is a good thing, and it helps in areas that suffer in that particular niche area. But calm down if you think it will produce the food that the world needs - there's already more than is needed. People just don't have the economic means to buy it.
Why? Because of economic infrastructure, development, industrialization, subsidies, trade, etc. All this talk about golden rice, genetically engineered food, etc. distracts from a very simple fact. We already have enough food.
w/m
"There is a real fear that some politician riding his horse is going to say, 'I'm going to tell my constituents that I'm protecting their privacy,' " said Michael Turner of the Information Services Executive Council
:)
Imagine that. A politician trying to protect his constituents....
Wait, this can be done better.
Senator's sysadmin: "We get signal!"
Senator: "Main screen turn on."
Lobbyist: "How are you gentlemen...all your privacy are belong to us!"
Lobbyist: "You have no time to ride your horse. Make your time."
Senator: "What you say!!"
Now, that's more like it.
w/m
I'm not saying that California is perfect. I'm saying it offers MORE economic and social choice than most other places.
In any case, all these things are relative - London is more racially segregated than california. When I say California is libertarian, I don't mean that it's perfect. All I'm saying that it offers MORE freedoms than most places in the world.
There's one very simple way to measure this - the number of people who go there, of their own will. For some reason, most hardware and software companies start up in California. And more migrants move there than any other place.
Maybe they don't share your opinion. Maybe they like it there. Whatever the reason, California is the most vibrant place for migrants from around the world, and for technology companies to be founded.
Again, I'm not saying it's perfect, but it offers more choices - to start a company, to immigrants looking for a new life, and for getting better bandwidth.
It's all relative, and the UK doesn't even come close to california. And it shows.
w/m
The only negative consequence I can think of is that it's going to increase the price of dope... :(
That's the only negative thing you can think of?
Here, let me add a few more...
1) If you are willing to let the cops film you, you are giving up your civil rights to walk around freely without someone monitoring you. This is possibly the very definition of freedom. If you give that up, you don't have a lot left...
2) Police states DO have lower rates of crime. Nobody disputes that. Saudi Arabia and Singapore monitor practically everything you do, and there's almost no crime. There's almost no innovation, art, or human expression of any kind either. If you want that kind of society, you're welcome to it.
3) Software is a global market. People don't realise it, but $$$ aren't the only thing that programmers, scientists and engineers look at. I can work in Singapore any time I want to, but I don't ever want to go back there because the only thing I remember is clean streets and deadly dull govt. propaganda on TV. The only free expression I encountered was hastily written on restroom walls.
4) You can't have the govt. surgically monitor the "bad guys" and let the "good guys" run around happily inventing things.
5) Britain already has a really bad image - an inbred monarchy, a racist class driven society, slow technology, foot-and-mouth-disease, and mad cow disease. Trust me, surveillance cameras aren't going to make anyone want to go there.
6) If the cops monitor you, who monitors the cops? Abuse is inevitable.
Britain is already leading the charge towards a monitored society, and satisfying bureaucratic deadweights. In contrast, libertarian places such as California are attracting all the talent. It's your choice.
w/m
I remember a lot of web sites that were derided as complete garbage - the ones that first showed live motion video, or message boards, or animations, etc.
I've been following the useless pages for years now. It captures the spirit of the net far better than a dozen Gartner analysts thrown in a bin. Check out the history, and all the old stuff. I wish someone would archive all these things that are REALLY important, before they disappear.
The first popular use of printing was to cater to porn or astrology. It's pathetic the way mainstream media journalists heap scorn on new things appearing on the net, and then desperately try to catch on and "get it".
Save it before it goes.
w/m
1) Do not use prominent newspapers like the Washington Post to post classified ads as a signal to your contact. Instead, make a clever goatse.cx post as an AC - you will never be traced. Most surveillance agents browse /. at the +1 level, and even if they don't, there's no way they'd spot you out from the thousands of ACs.
2) Do not use real bridges and lamp-posts as drop-off points. Instead, join the blue team on a Team Fortress server and arrange to meet a red team dude on the bridge in 2fort5. Just nod (nobody pays that much attention) and drop off your backpack on the bridge. Watch out for the enemy snipers on the tower! They could be real intelligence agents...
Other options include spraying a wall with bullets in counterstrike or q3. The marks wear off pretty quickly and are impossible to log. No chance of detection there.
3) Use Windows for all your "work". You are guaranteed to lose your files, even the ones you want to keep.
4) Can't think of any more. oh well, add to the list...
w/m
When linux was young and hopping around in the excitement of its youth, there were many bold dreams and brave ideas. People talked of it replacing windows and leading to a revolutionary new world. Due to the large statistical numbers of programmers, marketers, companies involved, the movement has stabilized a lot.
/., from the tone and content, I wonder how many newbies actually see these things.
At this point, no matter of marketing is going to make much difference. The direction has already been set - linux as a server OS for scripters and hackers, windows as a gui for ordinary users. Sure, you get the fanatics talking about how Joe Sixpack uses linux to teach his kids, but those are the priests preaching to the choir. I've seen even hardcore linux users generally have a windows partition - at least I did, for gaming and writing resumes.
Anyway, the point is - each OS has its strengths and builds momentum in its areas. Linux is good for servers, and excels there. Is marketing needed to highlight that point further? Doubt it. Will marketing make families switch to linux to use email and store their family photos? Doubt it.
Basically, the battle has stabilized. The fight is over servers. In that area, I don't see how marketing like this is going to help.
And one more thing - generally, these articles tend to say the things people already know. When I see these "convert the newbies" articles on
In any case, business decisions are made by managers after reading crap from Gartner and IDC. This doesn't make any difference. Realistically, the target audience is purchasing managers. will they read these "success stories" on the Linux International site and say - "Wow, that's impressive, I didn't know linux was so good. I will now install linux and try it out."
Come on...people at that level already know this shit. They don't need to be fed baby food. From what I've seen, linux marketing works best by word of mouth from enthusiastic users - not by propaganda sites/articles.
w/m
Nice buzzword, but think of it. Human programmers still need to look at something and tell the difference between two programs. Maybe it'll be "represented" in a different way. Ultimately, there will have to be something to describe what a program does - that something could be symbols, images, lines, whatever. It's still a representation.
:)
They could call it a "different representation" language, but that would ruin the image.
In any case, if there's a page describing the different ways Java, C++ and Eidola handle classes and methods, it can't be all that revolutionary.
w/m
A computer is a luxury. In the real world, people who have money for luxuries can afford one (normally, after they get a TV. NOBODY would buy a PC before a TV - if you think they would, you need to leave pixel land and return to reality).
If they don't have money for a PC in the first place, they would just sell the PC and pay for other essentials.
The digital divide is just another symptom of the economic gap. You can't fix it by throwing around PCs. It's a fashionable idea for clueless idealists, though.
And let's face it - "digital divide" has a nice sound to it. So it'll stick around for a few years.
w/m
Unix was a system invented decades ago. Most software becomes obsolete after 5 years. This has not been the case with unix. Why is it still here?
A corollary - is unix holding up progress? If a brilliant new system were to be written that overthrew the establishment (like unix did in its day), it would need the momentum of people supporting it. Such a momentum isn't possible when the hacker community continues to support the well established unix way of thinking. Does this in some way impede the appearance of a completely new paradigm (like unix was in its day...)? What would be the conditions that could create such a new system? After all, it's unlikely that unix will be the research OS of choice for decades or centuries - it will have to give up at some point.
w/m
"Two South Pacific islands have disappeared beneath the waves, as climate change raises sea levels to new heights.
They are Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea - which ironically means "the beach which is long-lasting" - in the island state of Kiribati"
That's from the BBC
One thing I've found interesting is the level of disconnect between cause and effect in the US. The average American produces 70 times the level of pollution as the average person in a developing country, but most Americans I talk to never realise the damage they cause because they never see it . For instance, DDT is banned in the US as a toxic chemical, but it's exported for household use to developing nations.
If you only looked at the facts from an unbiased perspective, and actually had some contact with those who suffer the brunt of these damages, trust me, your opinion would be different.
Another thing I find interesting is that most Americans seem to get their opinion about scientific issues such as global warming and evolution from politicians and talk show hosts. The topmost post on this page is a guy quoting Rush Limbaugh on how volcanoes are more polluting than anything humans ever made (and it's been moderated up to 5). Guys....these people aren't educated enough to barely understand these topics, let alone form an opinion or explain it to others. Don't follow them like sheep. Columnists, politicians, left-wing and right-wing ideologues have agendas and try to sway your mind. Trust them as much as you would their expert knowledge on how to partition your HD for optimum seek times.
For issues on science, the best people to refer to are *scientists*. Yes, they are sometimes wrong, and they have competing theories, but they are heaps better and more reliable than anybody else, because they do it for a living and have to prove things more accurately and with greater impact on their lives than anybody else who talks about these things.
But then, judging by the wise posts in response to the article, what would scientists know....
I agree. People who get carried away with lines like "lock them up and throw away the key" often forget one important question - which is, who pays for it?
It costs over $50,000 a year to keep someone in prison, which is something like twice the average income. Now, why should I pay for someone to sit in a square box and rot away, possibly be abused and develop mental problems of a sexual nature, and then be released into society with no skills? Just because revenge feels good?
Countries that have get-tough-on-crime policies have worse crime rates and a fucked up society. The US has the largest prison population in the developed world, larger than some european nations put together.
I've lived in other countries with different approaches to crime. The ones that focus on lighter sentences + rehabilitation have lower crime rates and less expensive prison systems. Of course, they also don't have electorates that fall for catchy soundbites like 3 strikes and you're out.
If you were a soviet citizen, you'd be enthusiastically crying for the deporation to labor camps of the stupid people who bought *icing* on their *cakes* when they could be using their resources to build more powerful hydroelectric plants, or better tractors. Just think of all the stupid people in california who waste energy using electricity to play silly 3D games, or watch stupid sitcoms on TV (non-productive use of electricity), or huge movie theaters showing silly moving images that don't produce anything.
:)
Yeah, have sympathy for a company that can afford to shell out a few million dollars to the local congressmen (of course, they are not expecting anything in return), and can afford to hire PR reps who whine about turning off the lights so their employees can make chips in the dark.
Guys like you need your heads rattled to see if they make a hollow sound. Sheesh. Check your temperature and see if you're alive.
I bet you probably snitch on your co-workers if they are playing games or reading email jokes, just to boost that 0.0000013 % improvement in the economy.
Andy Grove himself would send you a personal generic christmas greeting card.
I bet you're a bundle of fun at Christmas.
w/m
While it's an accepted fact that the Internet will become a means for direct download or fan-to-fan music exchange, the RIAA continues to oppose these inevitable trends. At the same time, bands and musicians need to make money.
Simple question - If bands are to bypass the recording industry, how will they make money? Or if they are to work within the confines of the recording industry, how will the industry deal with the culture of free music exchange on the net?
Why do you have to cut-n-paste the exact text? Just reword the stuff. Copyrights don't apply to rewritten synopses.
Otherwise, movie reviews, book reviews, and bug reports would have ceased to exist a long time ago. In fact, these things make the original product even more popular, just consider the free publicity...
Has anybody calculated the number of people kept employed due to virus outbreaks and the millions of $ generated into the economy due to the spikes on sales charts of anti-virus companies?
Viruses are bad. Very bad.
At least, that's what symantec and McAfee say. They should know, they wouldn't exist if it weren't for them.
If it weren't for hypocrisy, this industry would have collapsed a long time ago.
w/m
The ethics of giving is a rarely considered subject. Generally, most donations are made irrationally, and often to satisfy the ego or personal preference of the donor.
Consider real ethical questions - if you were to donate $100, and if it were to save a life, would you instead give it to a school charity to buy a 17 inch monitor to replace a 15 inch one? Then comes the question of how you know you're really saving lives, or making a difference.
The sad thing is, people are pretty stupid. They give donations to charities which advertise on TV or which seem hip or trendy (thereby paying for the salaries of marketing execs who make a living off starving kids).
If you REALLY want to make a difference, why not spend a few minutes researching the subject (like you do with technical FAQs) and find out for yourself some tiny third world grass-roots organization that does genuine work, instead of the huge charities that are already well known and command millions in input revenue?
w/m
people aren't starving or suffering from malnutrition because food isn't constructed properly, they're starving because not enough people care to do anything about it. Don't blame the food, blame society.
Like most complex social issues, you can't place the blame on just one thing.
Consider famine, for instance. The most popular view of famine is that it's caused by lack of food supply, and that the solution to it is supplying food to impoverished regions. But according to Nobel winner Amartya Sen , famines are not caused by lack of food supply, but due to economic and social factors - mainly purchasing ability and electoral feedback.
Famines never occur in democracies, because elected officials are responsive to feedback since they want to be elected again. During the 59-61 famine in China, between 14-40 million people died - a staggering number - yet nothing was done because a totalitarian system prevented the feedback loop between victims and govt. officials. In cases like this, genetic engineering or a better supply chain doesn't really help much.
The root cause of starvation is economic and social. Even China and India produce enough food to feed their entire populations - it's the way their system is structured that causes the problem. Of course, this doesn't mean that a more nutritious supplement doesn't help. IIRC, thiamine supplements in wheat/bread are required or encouraged by the FDA, in order to save American lives on a statistical scale. In large scale trials, thousands or millions of lives can be saved even with vitamin supplements, but that's not the main solution to nutritional problems.
The root cause is the underlying social and economic infrastructure, and that requires a bigger fix, and will save more lives in the long run.
However, because of the size of the problem, even a "minor fix" such as genetic engineering can save human lives on a massive scale. So it may well be a good solution in certain areas, providing the domino effect and technical details are resolved.
w/m
There are many quirky aspects to the place. The one I remember most about it is that its former king once held the Guinness record for being the world's heavist monarch.
.to websites . One of the fastest to capitalize on the domain name craze, they did WAY better than the far more naive and ethical people of Tuvalu, who only recently started selling their .tv stuff, after a melodramatic business plan gone bad.
"When Britain's Prince Charles married Diana, a special chair was built in Westminster Abbey for the King of Tonga. At his heaviest, in 1976, he weighed 462 pounds. By 1993, he had slimmed down to a slender 280 pounds."
Another thing I remember reading is that there's an age old custom - when the king walks around, people are supposed to be at a height below him. So apparently those around him fall down like ninepins when he goes around.
Here's a pic of him. He looks kinda like a l33t p1mp.
Tonga is also responsible for all those
Tonga and its king inspire the kind of satirical lunacy that the teletubbies normally do.
w/m