There isn't really an analog in your typical open source community. In fact, smaller open source projects tend to be so grateful for any help that asshole behavior is tolerated -- or even considered the norm. It's a sad state of affairs for the majority of us who want to contribute, but have no interest in dealing with a cesspool of assholes.
Sorry, but that sounds like an excuse.
Humans are thoroughly reprehensible creatures. There's a reason the living world is dying around us: that's because humans ARE assholes that generally destroy everything they touch. In some cases, that wicked Shiva energy is channeled in directions that benefit others ("open source", or what many profiteers say the "lunatic fringe" rightly calls "free software", is an example.) But in most cases, that energy is expended in (temporarily) fluffing the arrogant and greedy who, coincidentally or not, often seem to hover like vultures around those small eddying pools of curiosity and itch-scratching, eyeing their opportunity to profit from the collective labors. In other words, when something good happens, it's almost always an accident, and if that accident is profound enough, it needs righteous assholes to defend or protect it (like Linus does with Linux.)
So, that leaves you with a simple choice: create something for the whole with assholes that might benefit more than your local group, or not--and try on your own to profit from the assholes you manage to convince your wares are gold.
Of course, we're not addressing the concern of talent or competency here--that's a whole other layer that ALSO gets determined by assholes, the ones usually up or downstream of your project/work, either as user or developer or anything in between. And that is the area Poettering laments in his piece--which, lets be honest, has a whining tone--and seems unable to reconcile with how he sees his software (hi, Lennart!) and a great many others do (practically everyone on the "wrong" side of the systemd thing.) As many have noted, if there's significant pushback, maybe some re-thinking is involved, but that seems in short supply, particularly given the lofty position he finds himself in. With great power comes great responsibility, and one hopes humility, and that's where things seem to break down for him and the systemd posse.
In the end, he and you can just walk away if that isn't your cup of tea. There's no shame in saying "Enough! I'm outta here!" Just don't hide behind the idea the "open source" community is worse than working in a commercial firm because assholes are contained by culture--that's disingenuous bullshit. Ask anyone who's worked at a big firm and I'm sure they can name LOTS of assholes they've been forced to deal with during their time there. If you're lucky, you can do work that interests you and work around and with the assholes with the work driving you forward. Since most aren't, they just deal. Only a few play the victim card, thank the Dieties, but this gosh-darned Internet gives them a platform to vent their spleen.
I love F/OSS, but the Stallmans of the world are simply living in a wishywashy black and white fantasy land.
Any legitimacy you might have had, poof! Gone in one sentence so internally contradictory is sounds as if it was spewed by the Palintroid.
There's NOTHING "wishy-washy" about Richard Stallman. It seems on some dim level you already know this as you ratchet the words "black and white fantasy land" immediately, if obliviously, after the words that preceded them. Here's a clue: when trying to be cute, cut down on the doublethink unless irony and sarcasm is OBVIOUS.
Your knob-polishing of GNOME (Miguel's Microsoft project) has buried your reason so deeply under the ideology of convenience that it appears you'll love just about anything. Your pronouncement of love doesn't sound like a passion for F/OSS, or even a remotely basic understanding of what it actually *is*; it comes comes across as an overture to work in Redmond with Miguel.
Be about it, then; as others have noted, GNOME has sucked for a long time, and derivatives of Silverlight won't lift it out of Suckville in any case. Go your own way; just don't pretend the result will truly be FOSS because we certainly won't.
Whoa. Marvel is not, nor has it *ever* been, a source of "alternative media". If you want "alternate" comics, find some Slow Death, Love and Rockets, hell, even Cerebus (or perhaps The Boys, if you're into superhero meta-commentary/farce.)
I don't know what is more depressing: that you seem to think Marvel produces "alternative" comics or that they are alternative "media". Marvel is NEITHER; they are about PRODUCT, as is Disney. The two corporation were made for each other.
That being said, I'm dropping any Marvel titles I might have been following--I truly loathe Disney, and won't have any part of their "Disneyification" of culture. That's not a great loss, though: since Garth Ennis left Punisher, what does Marvel have to offer, anyway?
I believe the majority of what you say is bullshit. You're thinking of the department of Homeland Security, specifically the ICE. But modern cops do tend to be clueless about electronic crime.
Umm, are you even remotely aware of A Clockwork Orange? The idea explicated there, and seemingly jumping from the page into our little gravity well every moment, is nearly fifty years old now, so the original poster's contention that many stupid thugs find their way into law enforcement is not even a new or original observation of emerging social trends. If anything, ACO didn't go far enough in its speculation of how near-term "law enforcement" might look. It's a sad thing when fictional near-future-dystopias are outstripped by "reality".
But, more to the point, how many smart, or even reasonable intelligent cops have you ran across? If you've enough experience with Johnny Law to state how "clueless" they are when concerned with computer crime, surely you have some experiential anecdote that would validate that view, as well as invalidate the contention that street cops are one step removed from knuckle-dragging stormtroopers? And, sorry, articles posted on/. don't count.
From a soldier's point of view it is rather easy to understand why all of the population might appear to be an enemy. Often that is an outright fact.
Yeah, that particularly happens when the soldier is part of an invading occupation force with dubious intention. AND the soldier is conditioned to believe they are (racially, religiously, socially) superior to the locals they are "defending". AND they are products of a militarized culture that glorifies violence as it cynically prattles about honor and respect.
Perhaps, just maybe, if foreign policy of oppressors such as the Washington Consensus were attacked and done away with by the people responsible for them (you know, the supposedly "free" people who stand on the sidelines as their killers are loosed on the world), the ethics of creating killing machines more efficient than Special Forces or Airborne soldiers wouldn't be debated by arrested adolescents (who've never smelled the burning flesh of their "enemies") in meaningless online forums.
In such a world, your utter bankruptcy of anything decent would be appropriately pilloried for the imperial apologia it is. I guess, as it stands, you'll just have to settle for my contempt....
Find a place a majority of the group agree the testing can take place and the rest will get it blocked. The simple matter is that there are times when the "possible" harm to marine life must be acceptable.
So, what say we "test" some DU in the load bearing members of your house to "firm up the foundation" and "protect you from external threat". Even more, let's say you have NO SAY WHATSOEVER in such implementation, because, quite frankly, you don't count as a rational being that anyone should care about (I sure as hell don't care about you.) That sound about right to you?
Per Larry Niven, "The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program". If one views the survival of the human species as important, rather than the survival of the ecosystem per se, then having an escape plan is ALWAYS good policy.
You realize this view is fundamentally against natural selection, don't you? I find it interesting that many otherwise rational humans--those that understand evolution, natural selection, and the order of Nature--fail to apply those principles to their own species. Generally, I attribute this to latent Protestantism (even moreso than Stirner egoism) as it makes no sense in the face of four billion years of historical evolution, nor the prospect of EVOLUTION TO COME. Certainly you don't see humanity as an end state of the evolutionary arc? Only in that (misguided) context is humanity "worth more" than any of the other species that have come before--or will after--us.
ELEs happen, and new species arise. Humans are more or less creating one right now, and based on their collective behavior, will fall victim to it AS WELL WE SHOULD. If the species was meant to be in space, its fundamental bodily makeup would already be moving toward a form factor befitting a gravity-free, cosmic-ray rich environment, and as we've yet to see such creatures develop, it's plainly evident our species isn't ready for that. Yes, you can attempt to "bootstrap" evolution by fucking and breeding in space, but if the result is different from humans, then they are, defacto, NOT human, n'est ce pas?
Personally, I'd rather not see humans irradiate another planet looking for more species to kill.
Re:Farewell sweet Karma
on
Batman Discussion
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· Score: 3, Interesting
When every other line in the film is tacky, rushed, clumsy, and just flat out cliche it's hard to pick a 'favorite' amongst so much trash. So I apologize for not being able to deliver specifics here.
You're entitled to your opinion. I just don't think you "get" the movie, particularly when you (unfavorably) compare it to that extended TV show Burton put out two decades ago (which was not even equal to the POW!s and BIFF!s of the Cesar Romero/Adam West campiness.)
The Dark Knight is the definitive Batman film. The Joker is actually scary for once (as he was always meant to be!), and he is a truly worthy adversary to Batman--one that seemingly cannot be coped with because he is the true opposite of Batman, one that is beyond reason; he is most definitely not some camped-up clown like Nicholson or Romero. This Joker BELIEVES he is an Agent of Chaos, a Bringer of Disorder, and THAT is all the motivation he needs. When you add Nolan's words about society's gossamer veneer to Ledger's incredible performance, you have something that few other films will touch--this year or any other. (For what it's worth, this Joker is the equivalent of The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns Jokers, and an obvious homage to both of them.)
The last good year of American film was the turn of the century when The Matrix, American Beauty and Fight Club all came out within 12 months. We can only hope that The Dark Knight is the beginning of a similar stretch of cinema, though I have my doubts. Even so, it is a film in the same class as those films, and just as important, men in tights or not.
As I write this, your post has been modded down to -1, Troll. There is something SERIOUSLY wrong with moderation here on Slashdot. It's becoming almost worthless....
All of which is to say: you're absolutely right. Photoshop has been around and available to just about anyone for nearly 20 years. Beyond the fallacy of the image, why anyone would look at a print of any kind, regardless of source, and proclaim it to be "real" is beyond me. Here, the underlying premise is those Evil Arabs are doing it--while airbrushed photo ops here are glorious, real exchanges of meaning without a hint of "evil" to be seen. Yes, it's flag-waving at its finest, but worse, it shows how gullible people are today. And that you were modded so far down for recognizing this just shows how *angry* those gullible people are when their precious illusions are called into question.....
It's important not let your obvious bias make you forget that there are in fact people in the world worse than the police, and that's why they exist.
But that was the point--that is NOT why they exist.
The point in the previous post may have been obscured in that post's bombast--it was an emotional response to an obvious kook, but the point still stands: the police are the enforcers of the state, they are the protectors of property (not people); they are NOT forces for justice. While it is true that I sometimes am a beneficiary of their often uneven enforcement of arbitrary laws, I--and you--should not lose sight of their ultimate function: to protect those that have from those who do not. Further, "people just doing their jobs" has been a justification for millions of horrors throughout time; just because something is legal doesn't make it just.
On the whole, it might be easier for us if we get someone other than ourselves to "take out the trash", but that doesn't absolve us from the shared responsibility of that trash's creation. In my opinion, THAT is the greatest, yet most subtle, victimization the state creates in us: the separation of powers separates us from our responsibility to ourselves, our world and each other. Police are just the most obvious example of this dislocation of individual power, but they are hardly the only one.
Now, I'm not enough of an idealist (any more) to believe that people like your friend are simply misunderstood victims of the state, but the reality is most of us--and the Environment--ARE, whether we realize it or not (or can voice opposition to it or not.) I don't think it's "biased" to default to a suspicious stance regarding those who *voluntarily* seek to control the behavior of others, whether they are the foot soldiers standing on the Thin Blue Line or the Master Puppet sitting on the throne in the White House.
Some police are good, some are bad, and you can generally tell which are which by the societies they live in. Painting ALL Police as lazy, ignorant, thuggish monsters who are just the arm of THE MAN trying to "keep you down" just smacks of fever-swamp loonyness and a generally crackpot outlook on life.
Uhh. Let me guess: you're white, live in a gated community, and Fox is your primary news source? For you to insult others by calling their thinking "stupid, illogical" is more than the kettle calling the kettle black; it's farce.
Police ONLY exist to protect the profits of the owners of society. Your racist separation of North/South police forces into good and bad only exists in your fever dreams--they are ALL pigs. (How about YOU thinking for a minute: why do people become police officers? What possesses one person to the degree that they feel compelled to police others? Money? Fear of their own demons getting out? Because they're crusaders who want to believe in some artificial rules created by long-dead rich people? THAT sounds like pathology to me; at the very least, the police are NOT psychologically sound by *definition*, regardless of where they live.)
A "generally crackpot outlook on life" is certainly preferable to the "racist, fascist, statist slave outlook" possessed by you, sir.
And the best way to maximize profits is to give the consumer what they want. Companies that are successful are usually very good at delivering things people want and usually at a price people can afford.
Bullshit.
Companies MAY be successful as you say, but it's certainly not as categorical as you state.
Indeed, your description of how things work may be valid only in your Platonic Form World; down here on Terra, companies are ruled by the spiritual grandchilden of Carnegie, Rockefeller and Hearst. In this instance of reality, these people employ a whole industry (advertising) who's sole purpose is to CREATE WANT in the "people". THAT is how profits are maximized; whether people really want or need those things comes in a very distant second to freeing up their purse strings.
Government is always behind with technology (with one exception, below). When government catches up with technology that everyone else is using, they do it badly and it costs far too much.
Someone already noted the irony of this statement, so I'll move on to the idea behind why this view misses the point. Simply, all tech you have in your hands RIGHT NOW is of government origin (at some point. Even cutlery was a product of Richelieu.) Google for "military Keynesianism" to get just a taste of why that is--and the very real consequences behind it.
Governments--and all their derivatives, including corporations, NGOs, etc.--are built on concepts of control that favor those within their ranks at the expense of others (usually outside of those ranks, but not necessarily.) This is not to say these organizations are "evil" or that they cannot, often in spite of themselves, do "good"; that, again, is mistaking the map for the territory. Hierarchal organizations are about contol and privilege for those running them, and exposure and risk for those following them: "the devil take the hindmost" is, today, particularly appropriate for those furthest from the centers of power because the mechanisms of power are so ubiquitous and centralized.
People hold Katrina up as an example of Dubya's incompetence without acknowledging their own active participation in the mechanisms of power that allow him--and the Clintons, the Kennedy's, etc. etc. ad nauseum--to continue their marginalization of those they "serve". People like to point the finger at the "cause" or command chain responsible for disasters such as Katrina or Iraq, but they generally blanche when it comes to owning their piece of that structure and actually doing something about it.
Really, that's what/. is for: to make armchair activism or philosophical sophistry pass for a functional, creative, responsible, ACTIVE citizenry.
So, ultimately, the answer to the question of "governments keeping up with technology" is: Whatever. Perhaps if the question was:
how can we use technology to dissolve all nation states into localized tribal collectives?
it might be meaningful. But I imagine there are more than a few that think THAT question is stupid, too.
In the case of DRM, the worthiest undertaking may be to climb the corporate ladder; and effect change from the top down.
Corporations are the *originators* of these policies; they do so to PROTECT SHAREHOLDER INTEREST. As long there is value in artificial scarcity, DRM and its ilk (yes, copyrights, patents and every other government-sponsored legalistic chokehold on information) will thrive--and necessarily exist. If anyone "on the inside" sought to change these policies, they would be rightly seen as acting outside of their shareholder mandate and would be FIRED. (You could argue that such individuals could make convincing arguments that there is MORE shareholder value to be had by being open with information, but *any* initiative that appears as though it might impinge on future profits would quickly die a flaming death.)
How exactly am I a bigot? Please explain in detail.
Ok. Let's review from your earlier post.....
Well, if blacks commit a disproportionate amount of violent crimes, then clearly it makes sense to take away their guns, although I have no idea how this actually works.
When you group people such that you "take away their guns" (meaning, effectively, taking away weapons from EVERY black person), it's pretty understandable that you'll be viewed as a racist. The phrase "I have no idea how this actually works" doesn't save you because your view is already out there--established in the previous phrase; you just stated that you believe they SHOULD be stripped of their weapons, and that it's more a question of a logistics as to how to do it than *why* it should be done. Referencing statistics that may or may not exist to support this position doesn't make those stats unimpeachably correct any more than stating they exist makes them a reason for supporting the stripping an of entire (race) group of a (dubious) right. Couple that with your seeming cavalier attitude ("Well, if blacks") about the suggested course of action, and one would hope you might be able to understand why people reacted as they did to your post. Apparent positions such as yours often find expression in other ways regarding other peoples: by proffering "statistics" about that Other Group to direct a course of action based solely on that group's race, it isn't a small leap to calling you--and being correct in doing so--a racist.
Incidentally, if you put the word "white" in that phrase instead, it would make you no less a racist. Taking weapons out of *any* group's hands is an act of structuralist oppression, regardless of the racial element. (The only reason to deprive someone a weapon is to more effectively control them to suit the purposes of the established order.) However, given the historical oppression people of color have suffered in this country, it certainly adds fuel to the fire of outrage against your statement, and makes those mods far more understandable in the immediate context.
In fact, I believe that the best thing we could do in public education would be to have logic/critical thought instilled into the curriculum. But... yeah...
Truly a seditious idea, and one that, if you were continue to advocate it, would have you in a re-education center somewhere in Kansas before you could verbalize "police state".
If the good doctor is really serious about his research, he can take it offshore. There are likely plenty of places in the world that would allow him to do pursue his endeavor freely; hell, some might even provide him a few unpersons to practice with if those silly animals ever get too fast to catch. Might inconvenience him and the family a bit, the grant may not be as lucrative or the facilities so world-class, but I'm sure he'd be comforted in knowing that his work on behalf of all of us would continue. Of course, if this becomes a trend, it could create an "animal torturers gap" that only Dr. Strangelove would appreciate.....
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." -- Mohandas Gandhi
This country stopped being great with Shay's Rebellion, so I guess the seeming ethical contradiction of learned men of science torturing animals so their studies *may* save a few of their fellow men should not be surprising. The end justifies the means, after all, and, really, ethics are only for humans, right?
Lying with stats--how so? *You're* the one who said something about killing off the poor; being (relatively) rich, it obviously never crossed your mind that YOU should be among the first up against the wall: it's the rich that are sucking up all the planet's resources with reckless abandon; correspondingly, the best bang for buck is to take them out first. I didn't want to start a class war here--since I'm obviously a traitor to my class, but if that's what you want, I'm game.
Even so, linking the two ideas in the chain the way you did is pissing up the rope, not down it; that's why the post was written as it was: even with 6.3 billion souls sucking up the planet's oxygen, we're still barely functional hairless apes--only today we have indoor plumbing, an admittedly valuable technological advance (unless you're downstream, of course.) YOU seem to hold the idea that "technology==categorical progress". The central thesis--for after all, we *are* trying to impress each other (or our professors?) with this intellectual chest beating, right?--still remains unaddressed because humans HAVE remained UNCHANGED since before civilization, at least physically. The question remains open if we are "better off" thanks to civilization than those supposedly primitive sad sacks of 1000 centuries ago. In effect, is an over-populated planet suffering under the weight of civilization--itself rife with strife, discord and disassociation on its very best days--worth the ability to take a dump on someone down the river? As we are finally beginning to realize, the answer is less than an unqualified yes. (Of course, if you're a Futurist, then you'll be aiming to fling your feces at the stars, so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on the merits of that measure of progress.)
Right, cause that will destory all our knowledge stored on paper, our own memories, and the products of technology themselves (even if they don't work). I think your view is skewed very strongly toward the idea that "computers == technology".
Nah, just all the important stuff--didn't you watch Fight Club? But again, you missed the point: I was addressing the previous poster's dissing of all those items that have been superseded as we have marched into the Glorious Future. It's really all there in the context if you care to follow it......
I don't mean to appear snotty (which this post certainly appears after reading it over), but I don't expect to be held to a debate standard when posting here. As you've no doubt noticed in *this* post, there are plenty of false choices, straw men, etc. I basically will always go for the truthiness of style points on/., because, honestly, we're not here to exchange any real ideas, are we? I view things my way, and you (and the OP) view things your way; none of us are actually *doing* anything other mental gymnastics because none of us will walk away from our readings here with our thinking changed. I post contra the people who I think are collectively, unthinkingly dragging this whole thing down, and I imagine you might do the same, in some futile attempt to maintain self-respect and self-differentiation (particularly while at work.) Sometimes people agree with me, which is somewhat gratifying, because it means I'm not completely alone in my trains of thought, but I don't meet them after work any more than I meet those that vociferously disagree or attack me.
Think of all this as post-modern meta-commentary. And, yeah, I'm not all that proud of it.....
At first, I thought I would let this go--you're obviously too far gone with your progress uber alles shtick for anything I say to make any difference, but then I re-read what you wrote a couple of times, and I decided that a response *was* required, if only to clarify my point.
You're wrong about "subsitence (sic) level living"--that it is something to be ashamed of, pitied and destroyed. It is *precisely* that level of living required for a full life, both in terms of our existences and that of our species' birth planet. It may not bother you (likely never occured to you), but unless you have seeds that Monsanto doesn't know about--and are savvy enough to know what to do with them if you do, along with occupying the land to grow them on, your modern great society has put you thirty days from starvation EVEN WITH ALL THE TECHNOLOGY THAT EXISTS NOW. The "backwards" societies you casually dismiss, the ones that lived in harmony with the land for MILLENIA, have been systematically exterminated by your "progress" cultures because those "progress" cultures can live only by ever increasing growth at the expense of their localized resources, then that of their neighbors, then that of *their* neighbors, etc. etc. This is how technology has advanced--at the sword point of budding empires/civilizations (yes, I'm familiar with history, not that that means anything). MY POINT is that modern civilization is the ROOT CAUSE of the issues you so carelessly cast aside as the broken eggs to your wonderful omelet.
The Hobbesian "nasty, brutish, and short" world you seem to fear so much is likely just another facet of control of "progress" cultures: they convince their subjects that long lives, lived in little grey cubes, are better than shorter lives actually LIVED IN THE WORLD. Even with more and more anthropological evidence to suggest the opposite is true, the reality is that, 50 generations into civilization, there is so little left from what came before that there is no way to definitively know one way or the other if things truly were so hideous before the virus of civilization started strangling the planet. In other words, you say tomatoe, I say tomato (and, look, I didn't even have to leave/. to know that.)
Even so, the original question still stands: if things are so great, why are they not great everywhere? Why are there so many poor in THIS country? Why is fascism on the rise here instead of the great technological panacea you so assuredly predict and I'm obviously to stupid to see?
The answer, to an obviously inferior person such as myself, seems fairly evident: technological progress equals the total State (at the expense of the thoughts and feelings and life experiences of the individual.) As you imply, I'm not intelligent or life experienced enough to see things as I should--I'm too much of an idealist like the Huxleys, Orwells, Dicks, etc. etc.--and I would be better served--as would the Great Society--if I would just take my Prozac like a good little CreatureComfort.
You may have convinced yourself that you are happy--assuming any civilized person can truly know what that means, and I say more power to you. I think you DO need to ask yourself why you need to defend this position on a forum where you really can't know if I'm pulling your leg or not, where, in effect, your point of view seems to already proven itself true. Ponder that; I'll be simply "Sitting in (my) parents air conditioned basement" waiting for the transformation Churchill promised--heart to head--to happen.
And I'll work on getting that Prozac prescription filled. SIR, YES SIR.
Progress happens and the majority of people's lives get better and better in very real terms. If you are in an industry that is highly inefficient and modernization starts to come to it, whine all you want, but if you don't change you will get left behind.
Uh, no. Five billion people live on pennies a day. Just because YOU are comfortable doesn't mean their lives are better.
There has been no real progress in human development for nearly ten thousand years--not coincidentally around the time people started listening to others to tell them how to live their lives.
"Progress" has become the new opiate for the masses of little technoids; fortunately, all it will take to bring about the Techno Rapture is a global EMP.
I know you commented about the instability and cost of the "MS Communications solution"--by which I assume you mean the Communicator/Live Communications Server combo--but you may wish to look at it again. LCS 2005 is actually quite stable for an MS app.
Where I work, I recently switched from a Unix group to a Windows one--trying new things, learn new tricks, blah blah blah--and was given a project to establish federation using LCS. In researching LCS, I was actually pleasantly surprised at the SIP RFC compliance (Ok, there are some MS extensions, but at least they echo the SIMPLE working group), as well as the general functionality and stability of the application. If you're working in an MS shop, the presence capabilities of Communicator/LCS blend nicely with other MS apps, and if you're planning on passing support off to another organization, the management of LCS--whether doing federation, PIC, or remote access--*is* simple enough to do.
I agree the license cost is steep, but you may be able to get the accountants to buy off on LCS/Communicator for the security (TLS end-to-end) and the SOX compliance (logging, etc.) features alone.
That's quite a post. Though I would generally agree with most of what you said, I'm curious what in the original post spawned such a lengthy analysis? The part you quoted seems to be more a rant about the contradictory nature of libertarian-nationalists than a criticism of current class/labor relations.
Historical views of work are generally suspect, or at least should be: no catalog of activity as incomplete (and small) as what we know of the last six thousand years can be considered absolute, even if trends appear here and there. 21st-century man literally cannot know what prehistoric man thought, any more than a transplanted neanderthal would be expected to be a Top Gun. Hell, even 18th-century man is so different from us as to be almost a different species--they certainly breathed different air than we do, ate cleaner food than we do (when it was available at all), and, dare I say it, had more freedom than we do--the Edges of Civilization were much closer to them than us, meaning escape was a much greater, if more dangerous, possibility than it is today.
As technology has advanced, and populations have increased, personal freedom has correspondingly shrunk to the point today where we speak of, as you note, the value of property being the paramount expression of personal freedom (which is why more jail time is reserved for a chair through the front window of a Starbucks than the architect of an Enron-like ponzi scheme.) At the same time, mass production has reduced the actual value of individual experience to lowest common denominator, complete with built-in obsolescence, creating a never-ending loop upon which we tread our lives away.
I'm frankly at a loss about the whole thing--I think we have taken a wrong turn down the evolutionary path, fooling ourselves that we're so smart because we make things, as if that makes up for our inability to integrate with our environment. That fundamental alienation leads to the obsession with colonization and domination our species is absorbed by, to such a degree that many of us literally cannot conceive of another path, and actively scorn (and murder) those who question the collective evolutionary options we seem to mindlessly accept. (Like one post in this topic, where some individual boldly claimed that we are simple breeders for society to survive!)
In this context, a bunch of spoiled computer jockeys squabbling over whether to unionize or not seems, well, rather silly--kind of like a man starving to death because there's no Wendy's in his neighborhood, and he refuses to eat at Burger King. (The whole map-is-not-the-territory thing.)
The evil is when someone takes a liberty or property through force from someone else.
That's only your limited view. The reality is that property is theft.
Your body is composed of particles of star-stuff billions of years old. Do you really believe you can claim "ownership" of that, or anything else, for that matter? Even if your consciousness manages to "improve" the work of millions of related physical and biological processes, the net result is the material of you and everything else was here before you and will be here long after you. The same goes for the products of your labors.
Ownership is a shared delusion, like society and government. If you're looking for evil, try looking at Man's attempt to spread his deranged monkey-mind beyond the ravaged confines of his unfortunate birth-planet.
Intel has so many fabs that they number them in the 20s, with new ones coming on-line (and doing 65nm or less and 300mm at each instance) all the time. Q4 saw Intel gross 10.2 BILLION, and still disappoint. Do you honestly believe that if there wasn't anti-trust Intel wouldn't *BURY AMD ALIVE* with its production capacity, market partnerships, etc.?
When the next depression hits the US--not that far away, really--Intel will be able to sit out YEARS of underproduction while still slashing AMDs margins with cheaper chips made in state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities THAT THEY OWN THEMSELVES.
People want to see the giant fall, but the reality is that Intel will be standing tall at the end. AMD exists to ensure Intel's existence. While it may be an embaressment to Intel to not have the best product line, the numbers are what count, and Intel has plenty of that.
Actually, you're spot on. I do believe that the Internet is the best form of anarchocapitalism that we've ever seen and I hope to see it instill some faith in voluntary cooperation (ie, capitalism) over time.
I'm sorry for picking a nit here, but there is no such thing as "anarchocapitalism" (that is, outside the fevered dreams of the David Freidman cult; see why anarchocapitalism is an oxymoron here), and expecting technology designed to control information to deliver a society without hierarchy is farcical. Of course, that is not the point for the "anarchocapitalist", is it? All they are after is immediate economic freedom for themselves, a kind of supply-side, trickle-down freedom machine whose obvious flaws will be visited on those who are unfortunate enough to not be in on the ground floor when this wonderful world manifests itself from the struggles of all the oppressed millionaires.
Any "freedom" predicated on technology is simply another form of control: if you can turn it off, or point it at someone, then someone, in a play to exert control, inevitably will. Capitalism is inherently hierarchal, and the Internet is, as well. To expect either to change into a truly anarchic state is simply overshooting any real probability; you might as well expect a fish to evolve directly into an antelope.
Slashdot Mirror
There isn't really an analog in your typical open source community. In fact, smaller open source projects tend to be so grateful for any help that asshole behavior is tolerated -- or even considered the norm. It's a sad state of affairs for the majority of us who want to contribute, but have no interest in dealing with a cesspool of assholes.
Sorry, but that sounds like an excuse.
Humans are thoroughly reprehensible creatures. There's a reason the living world is dying around us: that's because humans ARE assholes that generally destroy everything they touch. In some cases, that wicked Shiva energy is channeled in directions that benefit others ("open source", or what many profiteers say the "lunatic fringe" rightly calls "free software", is an example.) But in most cases, that energy is expended in (temporarily) fluffing the arrogant and greedy who, coincidentally or not, often seem to hover like vultures around those small eddying pools of curiosity and itch-scratching, eyeing their opportunity to profit from the collective labors. In other words, when something good happens, it's almost always an accident, and if that accident is profound enough, it needs righteous assholes to defend or protect it (like Linus does with Linux.)
So, that leaves you with a simple choice: create something for the whole with assholes that might benefit more than your local group, or not--and try on your own to profit from the assholes you manage to convince your wares are gold.
Of course, we're not addressing the concern of talent or competency here--that's a whole other layer that ALSO gets determined by assholes, the ones usually up or downstream of your project/work, either as user or developer or anything in between. And that is the area Poettering laments in his piece--which, lets be honest, has a whining tone--and seems unable to reconcile with how he sees his software (hi, Lennart!) and a great many others do (practically everyone on the "wrong" side of the systemd thing.) As many have noted, if there's significant pushback, maybe some re-thinking is involved, but that seems in short supply, particularly given the lofty position he finds himself in. With great power comes great responsibility, and one hopes humility, and that's where things seem to break down for him and the systemd posse.
In the end, he and you can just walk away if that isn't your cup of tea. There's no shame in saying "Enough! I'm outta here!" Just don't hide behind the idea the "open source" community is worse than working in a commercial firm because assholes are contained by culture--that's disingenuous bullshit. Ask anyone who's worked at a big firm and I'm sure they can name LOTS of assholes they've been forced to deal with during their time there. If you're lucky, you can do work that interests you and work around and with the assholes with the work driving you forward. Since most aren't, they just deal. Only a few play the victim card, thank the Dieties, but this gosh-darned Internet gives them a platform to vent their spleen.
Like I just did....
I love F/OSS, but the Stallmans of the world are simply living in a wishywashy black and white fantasy land.
Any legitimacy you might have had, poof! Gone in one sentence so internally contradictory is sounds as if it was spewed by the Palintroid.
There's NOTHING "wishy-washy" about Richard Stallman. It seems on some dim level you already know this as you ratchet the words "black and white fantasy land" immediately, if obliviously, after the words that preceded them. Here's a clue: when trying to be cute, cut down on the doublethink unless irony and sarcasm is OBVIOUS.
Your knob-polishing of GNOME (Miguel's Microsoft project) has buried your reason so deeply under the ideology of convenience that it appears you'll love just about anything. Your pronouncement of love doesn't sound like a passion for F/OSS, or even a remotely basic understanding of what it actually *is*; it comes comes across as an overture to work in Redmond with Miguel.
Be about it, then; as others have noted, GNOME has sucked for a long time, and derivatives of Silverlight won't lift it out of Suckville in any case. Go your own way; just don't pretend the result will truly be FOSS because we certainly won't.
Whoa. Marvel is not, nor has it *ever* been, a source of "alternative media". If you want "alternate" comics, find some Slow Death, Love and Rockets, hell, even Cerebus (or perhaps The Boys, if you're into superhero meta-commentary/farce.)
I don't know what is more depressing: that you seem to think Marvel produces "alternative" comics or that they are alternative "media". Marvel is NEITHER; they are about PRODUCT, as is Disney. The two corporation were made for each other.
That being said, I'm dropping any Marvel titles I might have been following--I truly loathe Disney, and won't have any part of their "Disneyification" of culture. That's not a great loss, though: since Garth Ennis left Punisher, what does Marvel have to offer, anyway?
I believe the majority of what you say is bullshit. You're thinking of the department of Homeland Security, specifically the ICE. But modern cops do tend to be clueless about electronic crime.
Umm, are you even remotely aware of A Clockwork Orange? The idea explicated there, and seemingly jumping from the page into our little gravity well every moment, is nearly fifty years old now, so the original poster's contention that many stupid thugs find their way into law enforcement is not even a new or original observation of emerging social trends. If anything, ACO didn't go far enough in its speculation of how near-term "law enforcement" might look. It's a sad thing when fictional near-future-dystopias are outstripped by "reality".
But, more to the point, how many smart, or even reasonable intelligent cops have you ran across? If you've enough experience with Johnny Law to state how "clueless" they are when concerned with computer crime, surely you have some experiential anecdote that would validate that view, as well as invalidate the contention that street cops are one step removed from knuckle-dragging stormtroopers? And, sorry, articles posted on /. don't count.
From a soldier's point of view it is rather easy to understand why all of the population might appear to be an enemy. Often that is an outright fact.
Yeah, that particularly happens when the soldier is part of an invading occupation force with dubious intention. AND the soldier is conditioned to believe they are (racially, religiously, socially) superior to the locals they are "defending". AND they are products of a militarized culture that glorifies violence as it cynically prattles about honor and respect.
Perhaps, just maybe, if foreign policy of oppressors such as the Washington Consensus were attacked and done away with by the people responsible for them (you know, the supposedly "free" people who stand on the sidelines as their killers are loosed on the world), the ethics of creating killing machines more efficient than Special Forces or Airborne soldiers wouldn't be debated by arrested adolescents (who've never smelled the burning flesh of their "enemies") in meaningless online forums.
In such a world, your utter bankruptcy of anything decent would be appropriately pilloried for the imperial apologia it is. I guess, as it stands, you'll just have to settle for my contempt....
Find a place a majority of the group agree the testing can take place and the rest will get it blocked. The simple matter is that there are times when the "possible" harm to marine life must be acceptable.
So, what say we "test" some DU in the load bearing members of your house to "firm up the foundation" and "protect you from external threat". Even more, let's say you have NO SAY WHATSOEVER in such implementation, because, quite frankly, you don't count as a rational being that anyone should care about (I sure as hell don't care about you.) That sound about right to you?
Per Larry Niven, "The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program". If one views the survival of the human species as important, rather than the survival of the ecosystem per se, then having an escape plan is ALWAYS good policy.
You realize this view is fundamentally against natural selection, don't you? I find it interesting that many otherwise rational humans--those that understand evolution, natural selection, and the order of Nature--fail to apply those principles to their own species. Generally, I attribute this to latent Protestantism (even moreso than Stirner egoism) as it makes no sense in the face of four billion years of historical evolution, nor the prospect of EVOLUTION TO COME. Certainly you don't see humanity as an end state of the evolutionary arc? Only in that (misguided) context is humanity "worth more" than any of the other species that have come before--or will after--us.
ELEs happen, and new species arise. Humans are more or less creating one right now, and based on their collective behavior, will fall victim to it AS WELL WE SHOULD. If the species was meant to be in space, its fundamental bodily makeup would already be moving toward a form factor befitting a gravity-free, cosmic-ray rich environment, and as we've yet to see such creatures develop, it's plainly evident our species isn't ready for that. Yes, you can attempt to "bootstrap" evolution by fucking and breeding in space, but if the result is different from humans, then they are, defacto, NOT human, n'est ce pas?
Personally, I'd rather not see humans irradiate another planet looking for more species to kill.
When every other line in the film is tacky, rushed, clumsy, and just flat out cliche it's hard to pick a 'favorite' amongst so much trash. So I apologize for not being able to deliver specifics here.
You're entitled to your opinion. I just don't think you "get" the movie, particularly when you (unfavorably) compare it to that extended TV show Burton put out two decades ago (which was not even equal to the POW!s and BIFF!s of the Cesar Romero/Adam West campiness.)
The Dark Knight is the definitive Batman film. The Joker is actually scary for once (as he was always meant to be!), and he is a truly worthy adversary to Batman--one that seemingly cannot be coped with because he is the true opposite of Batman, one that is beyond reason; he is most definitely not some camped-up clown like Nicholson or Romero. This Joker BELIEVES he is an Agent of Chaos, a Bringer of Disorder, and THAT is all the motivation he needs. When you add Nolan's words about society's gossamer veneer to Ledger's incredible performance, you have something that few other films will touch--this year or any other. (For what it's worth, this Joker is the equivalent of The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns Jokers, and an obvious homage to both of them.)
The last good year of American film was the turn of the century when The Matrix, American Beauty and Fight Club all came out within 12 months. We can only hope that The Dark Knight is the beginning of a similar stretch of cinema, though I have my doubts. Even so, it is a film in the same class as those films, and just as important, men in tights or not.
As I write this, your post has been modded down to -1, Troll. There is something SERIOUSLY wrong with moderation here on Slashdot. It's becoming almost worthless....
All of which is to say: you're absolutely right. Photoshop has been around and available to just about anyone for nearly 20 years. Beyond the fallacy of the image, why anyone would look at a print of any kind, regardless of source, and proclaim it to be "real" is beyond me. Here, the underlying premise is those Evil Arabs are doing it--while airbrushed photo ops here are glorious, real exchanges of meaning without a hint of "evil" to be seen. Yes, it's flag-waving at its finest, but worse, it shows how gullible people are today. And that you were modded so far down for recognizing this just shows how *angry* those gullible people are when their precious illusions are called into question.....
It's important not let your obvious bias make you forget that there are in fact people in the world worse than the police, and that's why they exist.
But that was the point--that is NOT why they exist.
The point in the previous post may have been obscured in that post's bombast--it was an emotional response to an obvious kook, but the point still stands: the police are the enforcers of the state, they are the protectors of property (not people); they are NOT forces for justice. While it is true that I sometimes am a beneficiary of their often uneven enforcement of arbitrary laws, I--and you--should not lose sight of their ultimate function: to protect those that have from those who do not. Further, "people just doing their jobs" has been a justification for millions of horrors throughout time; just because something is legal doesn't make it just.
On the whole, it might be easier for us if we get someone other than ourselves to "take out the trash", but that doesn't absolve us from the shared responsibility of that trash's creation. In my opinion, THAT is the greatest, yet most subtle, victimization the state creates in us: the separation of powers separates us from our responsibility to ourselves, our world and each other. Police are just the most obvious example of this dislocation of individual power, but they are hardly the only one.
Now, I'm not enough of an idealist (any more) to believe that people like your friend are simply misunderstood victims of the state, but the reality is most of us--and the Environment--ARE, whether we realize it or not (or can voice opposition to it or not.) I don't think it's "biased" to default to a suspicious stance regarding those who *voluntarily* seek to control the behavior of others, whether they are the foot soldiers standing on the Thin Blue Line or the Master Puppet sitting on the throne in the White House.
Some police are good, some are bad, and you can generally tell which are which by the societies they live in. Painting ALL Police as lazy, ignorant, thuggish monsters who are just the arm of THE MAN trying to "keep you down" just smacks of fever-swamp loonyness and a generally crackpot outlook on life.
Uhh. Let me guess: you're white, live in a gated community, and Fox is your primary news source? For you to insult others by calling their thinking "stupid, illogical" is more than the kettle calling the kettle black; it's farce.
Police ONLY exist to protect the profits of the owners of society. Your racist separation of North/South police forces into good and bad only exists in your fever dreams--they are ALL pigs. (How about YOU thinking for a minute: why do people become police officers? What possesses one person to the degree that they feel compelled to police others? Money? Fear of their own demons getting out? Because they're crusaders who want to believe in some artificial rules created by long-dead rich people? THAT sounds like pathology to me; at the very least, the police are NOT psychologically sound by *definition*, regardless of where they live.)
A "generally crackpot outlook on life" is certainly preferable to the "racist, fascist, statist slave outlook" possessed by you, sir.
And the best way to maximize profits is to give the consumer what they want. Companies that are successful are usually very good at delivering things people want and usually at a price people can afford.
Bullshit.
Companies MAY be successful as you say, but it's certainly not as categorical as you state.
Indeed, your description of how things work may be valid only in your Platonic Form World; down here on Terra, companies are ruled by the spiritual grandchilden of Carnegie, Rockefeller and Hearst. In this instance of reality, these people employ a whole industry (advertising) who's sole purpose is to CREATE WANT in the "people". THAT is how profits are maximized; whether people really want or need those things comes in a very distant second to freeing up their purse strings.
Government is always behind with technology (with one exception, below). When government catches up with technology that everyone else is using, they do it badly and it costs far too much.
/. is for: to make armchair activism or philosophical sophistry pass for a functional, creative, responsible, ACTIVE citizenry.
Someone already noted the irony of this statement, so I'll move on to the idea behind why this view misses the point. Simply, all tech you have in your hands RIGHT NOW is of government origin (at some point. Even cutlery was a product of Richelieu.) Google for "military Keynesianism" to get just a taste of why that is--and the very real consequences behind it.
Governments--and all their derivatives, including corporations, NGOs, etc.--are built on concepts of control that favor those within their ranks at the expense of others (usually outside of those ranks, but not necessarily.) This is not to say these organizations are "evil" or that they cannot, often in spite of themselves, do "good"; that, again, is mistaking the map for the territory. Hierarchal organizations are about contol and privilege for those running them, and exposure and risk for those following them: "the devil take the hindmost" is, today, particularly appropriate for those furthest from the centers of power because the mechanisms of power are so ubiquitous and centralized.
People hold Katrina up as an example of Dubya's incompetence without acknowledging their own active participation in the mechanisms of power that allow him--and the Clintons, the Kennedy's, etc. etc. ad nauseum--to continue their marginalization of those they "serve". People like to point the finger at the "cause" or command chain responsible for disasters such as Katrina or Iraq, but they generally blanche when it comes to owning their piece of that structure and actually doing something about it.
Really, that's what
So, ultimately, the answer to the question of "governments keeping up with technology" is: Whatever. Perhaps if the question was:
how can we use technology to dissolve all nation states into localized tribal collectives?
it might be meaningful. But I imagine there are more than a few that think THAT question is stupid, too.
In the case of DRM, the worthiest undertaking may be to climb the corporate ladder; and effect change from the top down.
Corporations are the *originators* of these policies; they do so to PROTECT SHAREHOLDER INTEREST. As long there is value in artificial scarcity, DRM and its ilk (yes, copyrights, patents and every other government-sponsored legalistic chokehold on information) will thrive--and necessarily exist. If anyone "on the inside" sought to change these policies, they would be rightly seen as acting outside of their shareholder mandate and would be FIRED. (You could argue that such individuals could make convincing arguments that there is MORE shareholder value to be had by being open with information, but *any* initiative that appears as though it might impinge on future profits would quickly die a flaming death.)
How this comment was modded up is beyond me.....
How exactly am I a bigot? Please explain in detail.
.....
Ok. Let's review from your earlier post
Well, if blacks commit a disproportionate amount of violent crimes, then clearly it makes sense to take away their guns, although I have no idea how this actually works.
When you group people such that you "take away their guns" (meaning, effectively, taking away weapons from EVERY black person), it's pretty understandable that you'll be viewed as a racist. The phrase "I have no idea how this actually works" doesn't save you because your view is already out there--established in the previous phrase; you just stated that you believe they SHOULD be stripped of their weapons, and that it's more a question of a logistics as to how to do it than *why* it should be done. Referencing statistics that may or may not exist to support this position doesn't make those stats unimpeachably correct any more than stating they exist makes them a reason for supporting the stripping an of entire (race) group of a (dubious) right. Couple that with your seeming cavalier attitude ("Well, if blacks") about the suggested course of action, and one would hope you might be able to understand why people reacted as they did to your post. Apparent positions such as yours often find expression in other ways regarding other peoples: by proffering "statistics" about that Other Group to direct a course of action based solely on that group's race, it isn't a small leap to calling you--and being correct in doing so--a racist.
Incidentally, if you put the word "white" in that phrase instead, it would make you no less a racist. Taking weapons out of *any* group's hands is an act of structuralist oppression, regardless of the racial element. (The only reason to deprive someone a weapon is to more effectively control them to suit the purposes of the established order.) However, given the historical oppression people of color have suffered in this country, it certainly adds fuel to the fire of outrage against your statement, and makes those mods far more understandable in the immediate context.
Does that help?
In fact, I believe that the best thing we could do in public education would be to have logic/critical thought instilled into the curriculum. But... yeah...
Truly a seditious idea, and one that, if you were continue to advocate it, would have you in a re-education center somewhere in Kansas before you could verbalize "police state".
If the good doctor is really serious about his research, he can take it offshore. There are likely plenty of places in the world that would allow him to do pursue his endeavor freely; hell, some might even provide him a few unpersons to practice with if those silly animals ever get too fast to catch. Might inconvenience him and the family a bit, the grant may not be as lucrative or the facilities so world-class, but I'm sure he'd be comforted in knowing that his work on behalf of all of us would continue. Of course, if this becomes a trend, it could create an "animal torturers gap" that only Dr. Strangelove would appreciate.....
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." -- Mohandas Gandhi
This country stopped being great with Shay's Rebellion, so I guess the seeming ethical contradiction of learned men of science torturing animals so their studies *may* save a few of their fellow men should not be surprising. The end justifies the means, after all, and, really, ethics are only for humans, right?
Lying with stats--how so? *You're* the one who said something about killing off the poor; being (relatively) rich, it obviously never crossed your mind that YOU should be among the first up against the wall: it's the rich that are sucking up all the planet's resources with reckless abandon; correspondingly, the best bang for buck is to take them out first. I didn't want to start a class war here--since I'm obviously a traitor to my class, but if that's what you want, I'm game.
/., because, honestly, we're not here to exchange any real ideas, are we? I view things my way, and you (and the OP) view things your way; none of us are actually *doing* anything other mental gymnastics because none of us will walk away from our readings here with our thinking changed. I post contra the people who I think are collectively, unthinkingly dragging this whole thing down, and I imagine you might do the same, in some futile attempt to maintain self-respect and self-differentiation (particularly while at work.) Sometimes people agree with me, which is somewhat gratifying, because it means I'm not completely alone in my trains of thought, but I don't meet them after work any more than I meet those that vociferously disagree or attack me.
Even so, linking the two ideas in the chain the way you did is pissing up the rope, not down it; that's why the post was written as it was: even with 6.3 billion souls sucking up the planet's oxygen, we're still barely functional hairless apes--only today we have indoor plumbing, an admittedly valuable technological advance (unless you're downstream, of course.) YOU seem to hold the idea that "technology==categorical progress". The central thesis--for after all, we *are* trying to impress each other (or our professors?) with this intellectual chest beating, right?--still remains unaddressed because humans HAVE remained UNCHANGED since before civilization, at least physically. The question remains open if we are "better off" thanks to civilization than those supposedly primitive sad sacks of 1000 centuries ago. In effect, is an over-populated planet suffering under the weight of civilization--itself rife with strife, discord and disassociation on its very best days--worth the ability to take a dump on someone down the river? As we are finally beginning to realize, the answer is less than an unqualified yes. (Of course, if you're a Futurist, then you'll be aiming to fling your feces at the stars, so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on the merits of that measure of progress.)
Right, cause that will destory all our knowledge stored on paper, our own memories, and the products of technology themselves (even if they don't work). I think your view is skewed very strongly toward the idea that "computers == technology".
Nah, just all the important stuff--didn't you watch Fight Club? But again, you missed the point: I was addressing the previous poster's dissing of all those items that have been superseded as we have marched into the Glorious Future. It's really all there in the context if you care to follow it......
I don't mean to appear snotty (which this post certainly appears after reading it over), but I don't expect to be held to a debate standard when posting here. As you've no doubt noticed in *this* post, there are plenty of false choices, straw men, etc. I basically will always go for the truthiness of style points on
Think of all this as post-modern meta-commentary. And, yeah, I'm not all that proud of it.....
At first, I thought I would let this go--you're obviously too far gone with your progress uber alles shtick for anything I say to make any difference, but then I re-read what you wrote a couple of times, and I decided that a response *was* required, if only to clarify my point.
/. to know that.)
You're wrong about "subsitence (sic) level living"--that it is something to be ashamed of, pitied and destroyed. It is *precisely* that level of living required for a full life, both in terms of our existences and that of our species' birth planet. It may not bother you (likely never occured to you), but unless you have seeds that Monsanto doesn't know about--and are savvy enough to know what to do with them if you do, along with occupying the land to grow them on, your modern great society has put you thirty days from starvation EVEN WITH ALL THE TECHNOLOGY THAT EXISTS NOW. The "backwards" societies you casually dismiss, the ones that lived in harmony with the land for MILLENIA, have been systematically exterminated by your "progress" cultures because those "progress" cultures can live only by ever increasing growth at the expense of their localized resources, then that of their neighbors, then that of *their* neighbors, etc. etc. This is how technology has advanced--at the sword point of budding empires/civilizations (yes, I'm familiar with history, not that that means anything). MY POINT is that modern civilization is the ROOT CAUSE of the issues you so carelessly cast aside as the broken eggs to your wonderful omelet.
The Hobbesian "nasty, brutish, and short" world you seem to fear so much is likely just another facet of control of "progress" cultures: they convince their subjects that long lives, lived in little grey cubes, are better than shorter lives actually LIVED IN THE WORLD. Even with more and more anthropological evidence to suggest the opposite is true, the reality is that, 50 generations into civilization, there is so little left from what came before that there is no way to definitively know one way or the other if things truly were so hideous before the virus of civilization started strangling the planet. In other words, you say tomatoe, I say tomato (and, look, I didn't even have to leave
Even so, the original question still stands: if things are so great, why are they not great everywhere? Why are there so many poor in THIS country? Why is fascism on the rise here instead of the great technological panacea you so assuredly predict and I'm obviously to stupid to see?
The answer, to an obviously inferior person such as myself, seems fairly evident: technological progress equals the total State (at the expense of the thoughts and feelings and life experiences of the individual.) As you imply, I'm not intelligent or life experienced enough to see things as I should--I'm too much of an idealist like the Huxleys, Orwells, Dicks, etc. etc.--and I would be better served--as would the Great Society--if I would just take my Prozac like a good little CreatureComfort.
You may have convinced yourself that you are happy--assuming any civilized person can truly know what that means, and I say more power to you. I think you DO need to ask yourself why you need to defend this position on a forum where you really can't know if I'm pulling your leg or not, where, in effect, your point of view seems to already proven itself true. Ponder that; I'll be simply "Sitting in (my) parents air conditioned basement" waiting for the transformation Churchill promised--heart to head--to happen.
And I'll work on getting that Prozac prescription filled. SIR, YES SIR.
Progress happens and the majority of people's lives get better and better in very real terms. If you are in an industry that is highly inefficient and modernization starts to come to it, whine all you want, but if you don't change you will get left behind.
Uh, no. Five billion people live on pennies a day. Just because YOU are comfortable doesn't mean their lives are better.
There has been no real progress in human development for nearly ten thousand years--not coincidentally around the time people started listening to others to tell them how to live their lives.
"Progress" has become the new opiate for the masses of little technoids; fortunately, all it will take to bring about the Techno Rapture is a global EMP.
Where's Snake Plissken when you really need him?
I know you commented about the instability and cost of the "MS Communications solution"--by which I assume you mean the Communicator/Live Communications Server combo--but you may wish to look at it again. LCS 2005 is actually quite stable for an MS app.
Where I work, I recently switched from a Unix group to a Windows one--trying new things, learn new tricks, blah blah blah--and was given a project to establish federation using LCS. In researching LCS, I was actually pleasantly surprised at the SIP RFC compliance (Ok, there are some MS extensions, but at least they echo the SIMPLE working group), as well as the general functionality and stability of the application. If you're working in an MS shop, the presence capabilities of Communicator/LCS blend nicely with other MS apps, and if you're planning on passing support off to another organization, the management of LCS--whether doing federation, PIC, or remote access--*is* simple enough to do.
I agree the license cost is steep, but you may be able to get the accountants to buy off on LCS/Communicator for the security (TLS end-to-end) and the SOX compliance (logging, etc.) features alone.
That's quite a post. Though I would generally agree with most of what you said, I'm curious what in the original post spawned such a lengthy analysis? The part you quoted seems to be more a rant about the contradictory nature of libertarian-nationalists than a criticism of current class/labor relations.
Historical views of work are generally suspect, or at least should be: no catalog of activity as incomplete (and small) as what we know of the last six thousand years can be considered absolute, even if trends appear here and there. 21st-century man literally cannot know what prehistoric man thought, any more than a transplanted neanderthal would be expected to be a Top Gun. Hell, even 18th-century man is so different from us as to be almost a different species--they certainly breathed different air than we do, ate cleaner food than we do (when it was available at all), and, dare I say it, had more freedom than we do--the Edges of Civilization were much closer to them than us, meaning escape was a much greater, if more dangerous, possibility than it is today.
As technology has advanced, and populations have increased, personal freedom has correspondingly shrunk to the point today where we speak of, as you note, the value of property being the paramount expression of personal freedom (which is why more jail time is reserved for a chair through the front window of a Starbucks than the architect of an Enron-like ponzi scheme.) At the same time, mass production has reduced the actual value of individual experience to lowest common denominator, complete with built-in obsolescence, creating a never-ending loop upon which we tread our lives away.
I'm frankly at a loss about the whole thing--I think we have taken a wrong turn down the evolutionary path, fooling ourselves that we're so smart because we make things, as if that makes up for our inability to integrate with our environment. That fundamental alienation leads to the obsession with colonization and domination our species is absorbed by, to such a degree that many of us literally cannot conceive of another path, and actively scorn (and murder) those who question the collective evolutionary options we seem to mindlessly accept. (Like one post in this topic, where some individual boldly claimed that we are simple breeders for society to survive!)
In this context, a bunch of spoiled computer jockeys squabbling over whether to unionize or not seems, well, rather silly--kind of like a man starving to death because there's no Wendy's in his neighborhood, and he refuses to eat at Burger King. (The whole map-is-not-the-territory thing.)
The evil is when someone takes a liberty or property through force from someone else.
That's only your limited view. The reality is that property is theft.
Your body is composed of particles of star-stuff billions of years old. Do you really believe you can claim "ownership" of that, or anything else, for that matter? Even if your consciousness manages to "improve" the work of millions of related physical and biological processes, the net result is the material of you and everything else was here before you and will be here long after you. The same goes for the products of your labors.
Ownership is a shared delusion, like society and government. If you're looking for evil, try looking at Man's attempt to spread his deranged monkey-mind beyond the ravaged confines of his unfortunate birth-planet.
You obviously missed the poster's point.
Intel has so many fabs that they number them in the 20s, with new ones coming on-line (and doing 65nm or less and 300mm at each instance) all the time. Q4 saw Intel gross 10.2 BILLION, and still disappoint. Do you honestly believe that if there wasn't anti-trust Intel wouldn't *BURY AMD ALIVE* with its production capacity, market partnerships, etc.?
When the next depression hits the US--not that far away, really--Intel will be able to sit out YEARS of underproduction while still slashing AMDs margins with cheaper chips made in state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities THAT THEY OWN THEMSELVES.
People want to see the giant fall, but the reality is that Intel will be standing tall at the end. AMD exists to ensure Intel's existence. While it may be an embaressment to Intel to not have the best product line, the numbers are what count, and Intel has plenty of that.
Actually, you're spot on. I do believe that the Internet is the best form of anarchocapitalism that we've ever seen and I hope to see it instill some faith in voluntary cooperation (ie, capitalism) over time.
I'm sorry for picking a nit here, but there is no such thing as "anarchocapitalism" (that is, outside the fevered dreams of the David Freidman cult; see why anarchocapitalism is an oxymoron here), and expecting technology designed to control information to deliver a society without hierarchy is farcical. Of course, that is not the point for the "anarchocapitalist", is it? All they are after is immediate economic freedom for themselves, a kind of supply-side, trickle-down freedom machine whose obvious flaws will be visited on those who are unfortunate enough to not be in on the ground floor when this wonderful world manifests itself from the struggles of all the oppressed millionaires.
Any "freedom" predicated on technology is simply another form of control: if you can turn it off, or point it at someone, then someone, in a play to exert control, inevitably will. Capitalism is inherently hierarchal, and the Internet is, as well. To expect either to change into a truly anarchic state is simply overshooting any real probability; you might as well expect a fish to evolve directly into an antelope.