We have had Anarchy. The Spanish Civil war had a brief period where a balanced, respectful, and self-sustaining Anarchy existed for a short time. Then the Communists destroyed it, by working with the rich land owners to assume authority in the name of the people. The authorities, both Left and Right, colluded to destroy the freedom that "the masses" (in this case a few towns) had fought and died for.
And you know what? I'm pretty sure you WILL see anarchies develop in this century, because it is more efficient in the long term when decisions aren't made to suit the interests of the elite. You may not see it within a nation-state, but you may see it in new forms of sovereignity, possibly even virtual. There is no reason a strongly anarchic corporation couldn't exist. In some ways, companies are already experimenting with structures that resemble terrorist cells.
And I stand by my view of Jesus as an Anarchist. Obviously, the term didn't exist then, so really he wasn't. But he was subversive. He taught people to question authority, to seek their connection to the divine outside of the shallow formalism of the Temple. He advised people to render unto Caesar (don't act bad), but retain their integrity of character (thoughtCrime!).
He was part of a larger radical tide, but he stood alone, allied to no power but himself and his God. He suffered an agonizing death instead of making the easy decision to sell out. Any Anarchist would see this their romantic ideal.
You seem to be deliberately misunderstanding me: no, I do not think that "the masses" (not you, right? you aren't one of the masses. you're special. everyone else is the same, right?) know best. I think that a system built on respect for individual expression, contribution, and sacrifice leads to wiser policy choices. THAT is what I espouse.
Any form of government (even self-government, yes) is capable of good and bad things. (Your point?) Is involving the people who are affected by decisions MORE or LESS likely to result in non-stupid choices, do you think?
And, no, I didn't say anything about America. I'm not American. Everybody in the WORLD knows that the US isn't a democracy. They just go around shooting people in its name, thinking that everyone wants to be American.
You say that Pharisees inciting mobs to crucify someone who did no wrong is an example of Anarchy's weakness. I submit that a mob, as a tool of the elite (Pharisees) is not an example of Anarchy. It is basically the status quo. Show me a period where the elites could NOT mobilize mobs against their enemies, and I will show you an Anarchy.
I also submit that it was Jesus who was an Anarchist, railing against the corrupt power structure of the time (selling out their people to the Romans, who let them keep their positions of privelege). He was a shit disturber who could not be tolerated by the establishment. And like all threats to power and privilege, he was dealt with.
Many in this thread seem to want to view Anarchy as "mob rule" or "majority rule". Well, that aint it. In a healthy society based on Anarchist principles, there is no mob, because everyone is able to speak their mind at all times. There is no party line. There are no restrictions on what is legal thought. A mob is a bunch of people who have supressed their individuality, not a collection of individuals seeking common cause.
This argument (ANARCHY = MOB RULE) is mostly offered by those who don't want democracy, because they know that there are a lot of people out there with less than they have. And they want to protect their stake in The System. You don't sell out, you buy in.
In reality, no, I don't expect Anarchist utopia to spring fully formed from the foam of revolution. But as the organs of government and commerce fail humanity, there will be only one place to turn... ourselves. If we don't create a principled Anarchy, then we will just become part of a new Feudal Corporate age.
Power sharing in an Anarchy is hard. You work at it every day. It's tricky, it's a struggle, and it's worth it. Compare this to the system you have now, where you are ENCOURAGED to to hate politicians, where people are proud of not voting. Where "the masses" throw up their hands in defeat, passively accept that they can change nothing, and hope that somebody, somewhere knows what to do.
Maybe it's just me, but I prefer to have my voice heard. I want my power back, please. A vote every four years is not a good enough substitute. I want to disturb shit. I believe I am in good company.
Okay, satellite might be bad for that, even LEOs. How about the balloon or ever-flying solar planes? You could put up thousands for a few billion, and they'd be low enough that latency wouldn't be a problem (only 100km round trip, prolly). Of course, that rules out laser, but far-infrared might work.
Wireless is cool, and will shake up the wire guys. Bluetooth, Wireless LAN, GHz Cellular, it's all good. There's going to be an interesting mix of "last mile" technologies in the next decade.
I'm fine with DSL for now, but I can't wait till I can lock a transceiver onto a litte tripod inside my window and get a gigabit connection over infrared laser to a satellite.
I want a FPS that lets you blow holes in walls, accurately representing physical damage from weapons. Imagine Counter-Strike with realistic bullet physics: ricochets, windage, and weapon recoil that isn't predefined.
Hacking physics though, now that's a job and a half: figuring out a quick and dirty method of approximating the complexities of the real-world, and still have it look natural, making it look like a real environment filled with objects that have familiar properties and behaviours. And then blowing them up, REAL GOOD.
AFAIK, dark matter only accounts for about 25% of the "missing mass" of the universe. Besides normal matter and dark matter, there is also "dark energy". This is where most of the mass of the universe is supposedly locked up.
I used to believe the universe would eventually go through a Big Crunch/Big Bang cycle again. But the recent discovery of an expansionary force acting on galaxies (ie: the universe is increasing its rate of expansion, "blowing up quicker") has been a bit of a slap in the face for that point of view. So we're back to an open universe: it is basically a big firecracker destined for heat death.
Having a bunch of dead stars hanging around galaxies would seem to indicate a sort of "fossil history" of our galaxy. I wonder how far out these relic stars go out from the center... I mean, our system is pretty far out, but we may be the equivalent of the Earth in relation to an "Oort Cloud" of dark matter in our (somewhat bigger) galaxy.
A friend of a friend, who is doing post-grad work in Physics at Clown College, has just switched majors from particle physics to cosmology, which is a pretty big switch. I think he's smart: astronomy and cosmology are going to be the next Big Science soon enough.
I hang out with Raver-Geek types, the EastVan crew, and I've known plenty of different tech people from a variety of backgrounds. I would say that in some places, people can't wait to go home, and in other environments, where real geeks work, the work/play dialogue is pretty well mixed. This may be coming to an end as the Wild West mentality of dot-comdom changes over to the engineering and management hive-mind mentality.
In any case, I think it is useless to generalize: I've known too many types of people who were "technical" to think that one broad statement would adequately describe their social/work life.
What I have noticed is a dichotomy between the career/family people and the career/party people. Some geeks want kids and some serious settlin' down, and some never want a family, ever. Some go so far as to have their tubes tied, but most are just sick of the consumer nightmare that is family life. Why not spend their money on themselves? Go to a good party, see some great concerts, buy a GameCube and huge TV? Cats are almost as good as kids...;)
I say that Globalism is not really anything. All "isms" that we have inherited (Romantic-, Capitol-, Commun-, Anarch-, Social-, et al) are old ideas, most from the 1800s. To create a new "ism" seems pointless, because what is happening is a destruction of "isms" and a growth of recognition that you can't homogenize culture.
People see Globalism in terms of what they already understand: corporations see it as a merging of markets and economies, politicians/terrorists see it as a merging/domination of cultures, and most other people see it as a growing interconnection to people they otherwise wouldn't care to meet.
It appears that Globalism is just a tag, a useful but obscuring shorthand for what is happening to our world. But there are too many things happening at once for it to be accurate: the word "Globalism" seems to say that it is one force, or movement, when I would argue that it is definitely NOT an organized, self-identifying, and discrete "thing".
We are reaching beyond history in the real world, but trying to describe what is going on in terms of an all-encompassing historical view. In that, Globalism is an oxymoron: a word that means we don't yet 'get it'.
Only a simple mind would want a simple, violent resolution to a complex problem. There won't be one, no matter what happens to Bin Laden. Chop off one head, see two more pop up. Long term, painful, and (often frustrating) humanitarian measures will eventually work - see Ireland.
Several times in your Anonymous message, you indicate it is okay to kill innocents (future soldiers, entire cities) in pursuit of your own country's goals. You are unprincipled, arrogant, and cruel. Sound like anyone we know?
Telling someone they should kill themselves because you find their speech annoying... it really points to how much diversity in opinion you are willing to tolerate, doesn't it?
Reply with your name next time. Coward.
Re:Why write a book about it
on
Inside XML
·
· Score: 2
I'd like to point out that the CFL is much older than the NFL, and is still going strong.
But I do hope your little XFL thing lasts. I believe that at long last the US soul has been mirrored in sport: a pefect mix of agression, vanity, and reductive dualism that reflects everything that Americans hold dear.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
It all depends on your audience, of course. For my "professional writer" site, I use vanilla HTML and CSS to keep things simple. It might not look great on everything, but you it works just fine in Lynx, and it's always readable. Designing for an audience that uses the latest tools is easy, but so is presenting content in a basic fashion.
Obviously, a commercial site that expected to get every kind of user is going to have to break their back to make sure they support as many browser versions as practicable, while maintaining a sophisticated interface.
But I don't see what the problem here really is at the top end: just generate your pages from a database and stick the content into a template for the browser/platform in question. What's the big deal? If it matters, you can do it. Was it supposed to be easy, too?
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
I agree, Steven. I too have encountered the pissy behaviour of the lameness filter, just because I wrote a poem reply to a Troll that used repetition. I think if you are using a named account, you should be cut a lot more slack.
And as for the atomic holography... I'd be surprised to see applications like this for ordinary objects. Scanning objects to determine their structure might be possible, but you would probably prefer to go vector here, not bitmap. Maybe you could use this to grow crystals of carbon, silicon, and iron, other basic materials. You could even dope them.
I think matter computers are going to be wild. Just the fact that it's the exact opposite direction we are going now (ie: using energy to direct matter instead of using matter to direct energy) tells me this is a paradigm-shift kind of tech. Maybe with quantum computers made from atomic lasers, we can come up with a whole new way to model things (put some handles on chaos?), and THOSE will allow us to know how to build complex--even living--structures, one atom at a time.
It's something science fiction has promised us: so why shouldn't it be so?
Now, if only we could use lasers to transcend time and space, become enlightened, and quit abusing ourselves and our environment. That would be nice.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Now this is what I was talking about. High quality mineral deposits that could be easily used in constructing orbital platforms, space ships, etc.. I'm sure there would be a reason to bring some stuff back to Luna or Terra, but it would make sense to keep it up "high" in the gravity well... we might even send it off to other planets like Mars or the moons of Saturn and Jupiter for use there (again, either in orbit or on the surface).
The money is there. Maybe my nano-robot vision is a little wishful, but miniaturized refining technology of some sort could be used to remotely mine comets, asteroids, and moons.
It's a whole new frontier, just waiting for the first generation of prospectors. Having hiked the Chilcoot trail (of Yukon Gold Rush lore), I can tell you that people will do--and pay--almost anything for the chance to strike it rich.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Tres cool. Although I would say that "touch down" sounds a little gentle for 5km/h impact... maybe "bump down"? I can just imagine seeing it slowly fall to the surface, bounce once, kicking up a bunch of dust and pebbles, panels quivering as it settles down, slightly inclined but still online.
I think that asteroids are one of the coolest things we can study: they are much more useful for raw materials than bodies like the moon, since they have the energy bonus of being out of the Earth's gravity well. I can't wait for nano-robot-dispensing probes: just drop them on an asteroid and wait a few years while they sort the atoms into piles...
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
At only a few weeks of age, a kitten's bones have not yet hardened and become osseous. They are extremely soft and springy. In fact, if you take a week-old kitten and throw it to the floor, it will actually bounce! We do not recommend that you try this at home. The kitten may bounce under the furniture and be difficult to retrieve, as well as covered in unsightly household dust
I actually laughed out loud when I read this. I mean, come ON! How stupid do you have to be not to see this is a joke? Could it be any more deadpan?
And I don't for a second buy the argument that parody invites people to harm their pets. The REAL problem with pets these days are owners who don't take care of them properly, let them get hurt, breed indescriminately, and generally treat them as poorly as they treat their human pets, er.. children.
I found cat-drowing scenes in the movie Gummo to be truly disturbing, but I didn't for a SECOND think that the film should be banned and the producers brought to trial. How ridiculous!
The animal rights people can't develop a functioning sense of humour, they should at least be a little more tolerant. The FBI needs to get a fucking grip.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
You are the only truly aware person here.
I wasn't actually trying to make a statement, I was putting opposing views together to see what would emerge. Kind of a dialectical strange loop that I knew would provoke a reaction. I love the responses. I agree with everyone who says I'm a fool, that I'm contradicting myself. As a Taoist, I consider it a compliment.
Consider me a more sophisticated troll... the kind that gets modded up to 5 for throwing the Apple of Discord into a discussion.;P
I felt ill because of my lack of power over these domains. We ("human" we) aren't actually democratically saying "Yes! I agree."; these choices are being made by authoritarians and technocrats with no sense of responsibility for long term human "wellness", just their own selfish political or economic advantage. It's a sign we are sick, and THAT makes me sick.
It's 23h59 again. People should wake the hell up.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Raising genetically altered mammals for industrial purposes is cool, but growing industrial hemp is a crime. Custom-designing living beings is all good, but ingesting RU486 in the first trimester is murder.
Did I get something wrong here? Because the longer I think about it, the sicker I get...
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
I can't stand lameness filters. Can't stand a little creativity in text.
What? The use of repetition to establish rhythm is now verboten? I consider it a threat to my craft to have limits placed so arbitrarily: "Here, and no farther."
Fuck that.
I'm gonna do what I damn well please. Because I have that choice, and I'm me.
there is no such word as troll.
there is no such word as troll.
there is no such word as troll.
there is no such word as troll.
there is no such word.
there is no such.
there is no.
there is.
so there.
thex23
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Yes, of course! THAT's the answer to our problems. Let's brainwash our kids, enforce conformity, and exterminate the artists. I'm sure the world would be a much happier(umm, no), healthier (umm, no), and more humane (umm, no again) place to live.
Please go back to your hive and tell the Queen that we prefer to think for ourselves nowadays. Your brute-force method of implementing "common sense" makes you sound like a Fascist.
"Only that way can we insure that the new generations can learn from my generation's mistakes and fulfill our promises of greatness."
You obviously aren't the model for the new Master Race. The mistakes of past that should be learned from are based on the misadventures of small-minded technocrats who sought to eradicate free thought and make the world conform to their sense of morality.
[You should have been beaten more in English class... or is it your plan to do away with the inefficient rules of the English language, like the difference between "ensure" and "insure"? Doubleplusungood, citizen!]
And whose "promises of greatness" are we trying to keep? Yours?
Keep your dogma off my humanity.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
It's a conspiracy: get all the young'uns to smoke so much pot and use digital "assistance" so ubiquitously that they will eventually not care that their lives are being lived for them.
Personally, I find the holy triad of reefer, pen, and paper to be empowering. Something about lugging silicon around just isn't Jah-like.
And those doctors don't seem to have much to say when it comes to comparing this "trend" to past generations. Who is to say that these 10% of people are actually getting FURTHER in life because of technology than they would have if they had to rely on their smarts? Kids getting dumber? Nope. We're just leveling the playing field so that any idiot can fake it as long as he/she has their "organizer" with them.
Besides, they must have said the same thing when the printed page became popular: "Kids today are getting stupid: they can't even recite the entire Illiad without having the book with them."
And all this "can't distinguish between important and unimportant information" will get sorted out pretty soon. The ones who don't notice the "don't walk" signal while deleting spam off their PDAs will soon find themselves removed from the meme/gene pool...
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
As much as it freaks me out to think of playing Hyper-dimensional billiards with the members of our solar system, I like the idea of giving Terra an extra few (billion) years of life.
It sounds both as aweful and alien as the concept of a Dyson sphere, but I know that it is fully within the laws of physics, if not reason. The main issue is that we are dealing with a COMPLEX system here. Like the article said, without the Earth where it is, the orbits of Mercury and Venus would soon destabilize. I can only imagine the chaos...
It comes down to this: is it worth the gamble? Granted, that in a billion years we will probably understand a little more about the world, but the cost of failure...
Even if we are already living in other star systems, wouldn't the cradle of humanity still have a special place in our hearts? We could make it a living museum: only eco-tourists would be allowed to visit. Sounds good to me. Just don't get the same guys to do this that built that bridge on the Tacoma Narrows.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
I remember Sudbury fondly. The Big Nickle. I spent a couple of years there as a kid (like 5 or 6 years old). A few interesting things:
Sudbury is in a giant impact crater: everything is rock
they recently built an observatory down one of the old mines looking for evidence of neutrino interactions and proton decay
The surrounding terrain is so bleak they used to bring Apollo astronauts there to train (that's the Canadian Shield for ya)
every night, a little train would dump molten slag on a heap. I could see it frommy house, and it was really beautiful watching it spill down the slope in reds and oranges, with little flames here and there
Sudbury had (has?) a giant smokestack that was designed to put the crap so high up that nobody around the city would complain... just everyone else downwind
I went on a tour of an Inco mine, and got really creeped out by the "miner" mannequins and low ceilings.
I broke my leg when I hit a rock while sledding at my friend Neil's place on Kingcora Court. I had to drag myself across the street because my babysitter wouldn't carry a screaming 6 year old. Later that year, I filled my mom's AMC Gremlin's gas tank with water (I had a hose in my hand and asked her if she wanted a "fill up"... She said sure. I guess she wasn't paying attention.)
Subdury had a lot of beavers, and there was a controversy around dynamiting their dams back in the day
there are only two careers of interest in Sudbury (according to the movie Road Kill): hockey player or mass murderer.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
You didn't think that the SDI ("Star Wars") was for taking out ICBMs, did you? They didn't revive this stupid idea until it became clear that in the future they would be dealing with all sorts of entities (nation-states, corporations, other?) who had assets in orbit.
How do you stop somebody from offering anon. email, Web space to child molesters, recipes for tacNukes, and the secrets of the intelligence community when their server is in orbit? Fry it with a laser or particle beam weapon.
The real question is, will it really take 16 years for this to happen? Why not burn Billy Gates' birds outa tha sky?.. that's what *I* say.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Slashdot Mirror
And you know what? I'm pretty sure you WILL see anarchies develop in this century, because it is more efficient in the long term when decisions aren't made to suit the interests of the elite. You may not see it within a nation-state, but you may see it in new forms of sovereignity, possibly even virtual. There is no reason a strongly anarchic corporation couldn't exist. In some ways, companies are already experimenting with structures that resemble terrorist cells.
And I stand by my view of Jesus as an Anarchist. Obviously, the term didn't exist then, so really he wasn't. But he was subversive. He taught people to question authority, to seek their connection to the divine outside of the shallow formalism of the Temple. He advised people to render unto Caesar (don't act bad), but retain their integrity of character (thoughtCrime!).
He was part of a larger radical tide, but he stood alone, allied to no power but himself and his God. He suffered an agonizing death instead of making the easy decision to sell out. Any Anarchist would see this their romantic ideal.
You seem to be deliberately misunderstanding me: no, I do not think that "the masses" (not you, right? you aren't one of the masses. you're special. everyone else is the same, right?) know best. I think that a system built on respect for individual expression, contribution, and sacrifice leads to wiser policy choices. THAT is what I espouse.
Any form of government (even self-government, yes) is capable of good and bad things. (Your point?) Is involving the people who are affected by decisions MORE or LESS likely to result in non-stupid choices, do you think?
And, no, I didn't say anything about America. I'm not American. Everybody in the WORLD knows that the US isn't a democracy. They just go around shooting people in its name, thinking that everyone wants to be American.
I also submit that it was Jesus who was an Anarchist, railing against the corrupt power structure of the time (selling out their people to the Romans, who let them keep their positions of privelege). He was a shit disturber who could not be tolerated by the establishment. And like all threats to power and privilege, he was dealt with.
Many in this thread seem to want to view Anarchy as "mob rule" or "majority rule". Well, that aint it. In a healthy society based on Anarchist principles, there is no mob, because everyone is able to speak their mind at all times. There is no party line. There are no restrictions on what is legal thought. A mob is a bunch of people who have supressed their individuality, not a collection of individuals seeking common cause.
This argument (ANARCHY = MOB RULE) is mostly offered by those who don't want democracy, because they know that there are a lot of people out there with less than they have. And they want to protect their stake in The System. You don't sell out, you buy in.
In reality, no, I don't expect Anarchist utopia to spring fully formed from the foam of revolution. But as the organs of government and commerce fail humanity, there will be only one place to turn... ourselves. If we don't create a principled Anarchy, then we will just become part of a new Feudal Corporate age.
Power sharing in an Anarchy is hard. You work at it every day. It's tricky, it's a struggle, and it's worth it. Compare this to the system you have now, where you are ENCOURAGED to to hate politicians, where people are proud of not voting. Where "the masses" throw up their hands in defeat, passively accept that they can change nothing, and hope that somebody, somewhere knows what to do.
Maybe it's just me, but I prefer to have my voice heard. I want my power back, please. A vote every four years is not a good enough substitute. I want to disturb shit. I believe I am in good company.
Okay, satellite might be bad for that, even LEOs. How about the balloon or ever-flying solar planes? You could put up thousands for a few billion, and they'd be low enough that latency wouldn't be a problem (only 100km round trip, prolly). Of course, that rules out laser, but far-infrared might work.
I'm fine with DSL for now, but I can't wait till I can lock a transceiver onto a litte tripod inside my window and get a gigabit connection over infrared laser to a satellite.
I want a FPS that lets you blow holes in walls, accurately representing physical damage from weapons. Imagine Counter-Strike with realistic bullet physics: ricochets, windage, and weapon recoil that isn't predefined.
Hacking physics though, now that's a job and a half: figuring out a quick and dirty method of approximating the complexities of the real-world, and still have it look natural, making it look like a real environment filled with objects that have familiar properties and behaviours. And then blowing them up, REAL GOOD.
I used to believe the universe would eventually go through a Big Crunch/Big Bang cycle again. But the recent discovery of an expansionary force acting on galaxies (ie: the universe is increasing its rate of expansion, "blowing up quicker") has been a bit of a slap in the face for that point of view. So we're back to an open universe: it is basically a big firecracker destined for heat death.
Having a bunch of dead stars hanging around galaxies would seem to indicate a sort of "fossil history" of our galaxy. I wonder how far out these relic stars go out from the center... I mean, our system is pretty far out, but we may be the equivalent of the Earth in relation to an "Oort Cloud" of dark matter in our (somewhat bigger) galaxy.
A friend of a friend, who is doing post-grad work in Physics at Clown College, has just switched majors from particle physics to cosmology, which is a pretty big switch. I think he's smart: astronomy and cosmology are going to be the next Big Science soon enough.
I hang out with Raver-Geek types, the EastVan crew, and I've known plenty of different tech people from a variety of backgrounds. I would say that in some places, people can't wait to go home, and in other environments, where real geeks work, the work/play dialogue is pretty well mixed. This may be coming to an end as the Wild West mentality of dot-comdom changes over to the engineering and management hive-mind mentality.
In any case, I think it is useless to generalize: I've known too many types of people who were "technical" to think that one broad statement would adequately describe their social/work life.
What I have noticed is a dichotomy between the career/family people and the career/party people. Some geeks want kids and some serious settlin' down, and some never want a family, ever. Some go so far as to have their tubes tied, but most are just sick of the consumer nightmare that is family life. Why not spend their money on themselves? Go to a good party, see some great concerts, buy a GameCube and huge TV? Cats are almost as good as kids... ;)
People see Globalism in terms of what they already understand: corporations see it as a merging of markets and economies, politicians/terrorists see it as a merging/domination of cultures, and most other people see it as a growing interconnection to people they otherwise wouldn't care to meet.
It appears that Globalism is just a tag, a useful but obscuring shorthand for what is happening to our world. But there are too many things happening at once for it to be accurate: the word "Globalism" seems to say that it is one force, or movement, when I would argue that it is definitely NOT an organized, self-identifying, and discrete "thing".
We are reaching beyond history in the real world, but trying to describe what is going on in terms of an all-encompassing historical view. In that, Globalism is an oxymoron: a word that means we don't yet 'get it'.
Several times in your Anonymous message, you indicate it is okay to kill innocents (future soldiers, entire cities) in pursuit of your own country's goals. You are unprincipled, arrogant, and cruel. Sound like anyone we know?
Telling someone they should kill themselves because you find their speech annoying... it really points to how much diversity in opinion you are willing to tolerate, doesn't it?
Reply with your name next time. Coward.
But I do hope your little XFL thing lasts. I believe that at long last the US soul has been mirrored in sport: a pefect mix of agression, vanity, and reductive dualism that reflects everything that Americans hold dear.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Obviously, a commercial site that expected to get every kind of user is going to have to break their back to make sure they support as many browser versions as practicable, while maintaining a sophisticated interface.
But I don't see what the problem here really is at the top end: just generate your pages from a database and stick the content into a template for the browser/platform in question. What's the big deal? If it matters, you can do it. Was it supposed to be easy, too?
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
And as for the atomic holography... I'd be surprised to see applications like this for ordinary objects. Scanning objects to determine their structure might be possible, but you would probably prefer to go vector here, not bitmap. Maybe you could use this to grow crystals of carbon, silicon, and iron, other basic materials. You could even dope them.
I think matter computers are going to be wild. Just the fact that it's the exact opposite direction we are going now (ie: using energy to direct matter instead of using matter to direct energy) tells me this is a paradigm-shift kind of tech. Maybe with quantum computers made from atomic lasers, we can come up with a whole new way to model things (put some handles on chaos?), and THOSE will allow us to know how to build complex--even living--structures, one atom at a time.
It's something science fiction has promised us: so why shouldn't it be so?
Now, if only we could use lasers to transcend time and space, become enlightened, and quit abusing ourselves and our environment. That would be nice.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
The money is there. Maybe my nano-robot vision is a little wishful, but miniaturized refining technology of some sort could be used to remotely mine comets, asteroids, and moons.
It's a whole new frontier, just waiting for the first generation of prospectors. Having hiked the Chilcoot trail (of Yukon Gold Rush lore), I can tell you that people will do--and pay--almost anything for the chance to strike it rich.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
I think that asteroids are one of the coolest things we can study: they are much more useful for raw materials than bodies like the moon, since they have the energy bonus of being out of the Earth's gravity well. I can't wait for nano-robot-dispensing probes: just drop them on an asteroid and wait a few years while they sort the atoms into piles...
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
At only a few weeks of age, a kitten's bones have not yet hardened and become osseous. They are extremely soft and springy. In fact, if you take a week-old kitten and throw it to the floor, it will actually bounce! We do not recommend that you try this at home. The kitten may bounce under the furniture and be difficult to retrieve, as well as covered in unsightly household dust
I actually laughed out loud when I read this. I mean, come ON! How stupid do you have to be not to see this is a joke? Could it be any more deadpan?
And I don't for a second buy the argument that parody invites people to harm their pets. The REAL problem with pets these days are owners who don't take care of them properly, let them get hurt, breed indescriminately, and generally treat them as poorly as they treat their human pets, er.. children.
I found cat-drowing scenes in the movie Gummo to be truly disturbing, but I didn't for a SECOND think that the film should be banned and the producers brought to trial. How ridiculous!
The animal rights people can't develop a functioning sense of humour, they should at least be a little more tolerant.
The FBI needs to get a fucking grip.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Consider me a more sophisticated troll... the kind that gets modded up to 5 for throwing the Apple of Discord into a discussion. ;P
I felt ill because of my lack of power over these domains. We ("human" we) aren't actually democratically saying "Yes! I agree."; these choices are being made by authoritarians and technocrats with no sense of responsibility for long term human "wellness", just their own selfish political or economic advantage. It's a sign we are sick, and THAT makes me sick.
It's 23h59 again. People should wake the hell up.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Raising genetically altered mammals for industrial purposes is cool, but growing industrial hemp is a crime. Custom-designing living beings is all good, but ingesting RU486 in the first trimester is murder.
Did I get something wrong here? Because the longer I think about it, the sicker I get...
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
What? The use of repetition to establish rhythm is now verboten? I consider it a threat to my craft to have limits placed so arbitrarily: "Here, and no farther."
Fuck that.
I'm gonna do what I damn well please. Because I have that choice, and I'm me.
there is no such word as troll.
there is no such word as troll.
there is no such word as troll.
there is no such word as troll.
there is no such word.
there is no such.
there is no.
there is.
so there.
thex23
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Please go back to your hive and tell the Queen that we prefer to think for ourselves nowadays. Your brute-force method of implementing "common sense" makes you sound like a Fascist.
"Only that way can we insure that the new generations can learn from my generation's mistakes and fulfill our promises of greatness."
You obviously aren't the model for the new Master Race. The mistakes of past that should be learned from are based on the misadventures of small-minded technocrats who sought to eradicate free thought and make the world conform to their sense of morality.
[You should have been beaten more in English class... or is it your plan to do away with the inefficient rules of the English language, like the difference between "ensure" and "insure"? Doubleplusungood, citizen!]
And whose "promises of greatness" are we trying to keep? Yours?
Keep your dogma off my humanity.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
It's a conspiracy: get all the young'uns to smoke so much pot and use digital "assistance" so ubiquitously that they will eventually not care that their lives are being lived for them.
Personally, I find the holy triad of reefer, pen, and paper to be empowering. Something about lugging silicon around just isn't Jah-like.
And those doctors don't seem to have much to say when it comes to comparing this "trend" to past generations. Who is to say that these 10% of people are actually getting FURTHER in life because of technology than they would have if they had to rely on their smarts? Kids getting dumber? Nope. We're just leveling the playing field so that any idiot can fake it as long as he/she has their "organizer" with them.
Besides, they must have said the same thing when the printed page became popular: "Kids today are getting stupid: they can't even recite the entire Illiad without having the book with them."
And all this "can't distinguish between important and unimportant information" will get sorted out pretty soon. The ones who don't notice the "don't walk" signal while deleting spam off their PDAs will soon find themselves removed from the meme/gene pool...
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
It sounds both as aweful and alien as the concept of a Dyson sphere, but I know that it is fully within the laws of physics, if not reason. The main issue is that we are dealing with a COMPLEX system here. Like the article said, without the Earth where it is, the orbits of Mercury and Venus would soon destabilize. I can only imagine the chaos...
It comes down to this: is it worth the gamble? Granted, that in a billion years we will probably understand a little more about the world, but the cost of failure...
Even if we are already living in other star systems, wouldn't the cradle of humanity still have a special place in our hearts? We could make it a living museum: only eco-tourists would be allowed to visit. Sounds good to me. Just don't get the same guys to do this that built that bridge on the Tacoma Narrows.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
How do you stop somebody from offering anon. email, Web space to child molesters, recipes for tacNukes, and the secrets of the intelligence community when their server is in orbit? Fry it with a laser or particle beam weapon.
The real question is, will it really take 16 years for this to happen? Why not burn Billy Gates' birds outa tha sky?.. that's what *I* say.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.