Exactly, other countries don't like the idea of giving different ethnic groups their own states because this interferes with their power.
It's not just them, though: liberals here in the west hate the idea of different ethnic groups having their own countries, because they think we should all be mashed together and be forced to get along somehow. Just look at some of the other comments to my posts here in this thread.
The idea of a region where people largely agree about social / moral / economic systems has never been realized and never will be no matter what scale you look at.
I'm sorry, that's hogwash. Small countries like Iceland or Andorra do not have any huge rifts in thinking between different groups of people. There's lots of small European countries where people get along just fine because the population is small and homogenous. Infighting becomes more and more of a problem as countries grow larger and more diverse.
Every region will have misogynists, creationists, etc.
The Scandinavian countries don't seem to have too many problems with misogyny, and creationism is something that's almost completely confined to the USA and some third-world countries. There's no significant number of creationists in western Europe, except perhaps among some immigrants (and even that's doubtful).
If one isn't happy because others don't conform to their ideal systems of thought, I suggest that they will never be happy.
It's not about others conforming to your thoughts, it's about whether those people have the ability to force their systems of thought on you through the law. Here in the US, even if you think Creationism is crap, if you live in certain areas, you might find Creationism forced on you because the voting public in those areas demands it to be taught in school to your children. In countries where no one believes in Creationism, this isn't a problem, so no one has to waste time with it just like they don't have to waste time debating whether the world is held up on Atlas's shoulders and whether the Titans created it, or any other such nonsense. When you live in a country where most people are like you and share your culture, you don't have to argue about silly crap like this all the time, like we do in America where we've been arguing whether this idiocy should be taught in schools for well over a century now.
You think infighting is a good idea? To waste time and energy constantly debating whether Creationism is real or not, or whether women should have equal rights?
Cultural diversity isn't a problem. People in different regions can maintain their own, separate cultures and be happy on their own, instead of having to constantly fight with other people in neighboring regions about whose culture is better and should be dominant. What you're advocating is not cultural diversity at all, but either cultural imperialism or a morass where no one is happy because no one gets to actually have their own distinct culture.
Sounds like they need to start their own, competing union.... Maybe some other EU countries will abandon the EU and join their union instead, since this new union wouldn't be all about supporting existing powerful players.
What's the alternative? Invade with guns blazing? That didn't work so well for Iraq; it led directly to ISIL. It hasn't worked out well for Afghanistan either. We already tried deposing an Iraqi government we didn't like and setting up a friendly government, and it got us here. How is doing the exact same thing going to work this time?
As for DeBeers, that didn't work because we (western nations) haven't actually done anything to DeBeers to stop the diamond trade. There's a DeBeers store not far from me in Manhattan NYC, even though they should be banned since they violate lots of anti-trust statutes. If we aren't actually going to hold corporations accountable to our laws, then we deserve whatever happens to us as a result.
If we would get off our asses and build SkyTran so we didn't need cars, we wouldn't be very worried about oil, but we're too stupid and shortsighted to free ourselves from our oil dependency, so as far as I'm concerned, we deserve whatever happens to us as a result.
So what? North Korea has been around quite a bit longer than I have, and doesn't show any signs that it'll disappear anytime soon. It's been happily subjugating people since the 1950s, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. You don't need a proper civil government that runs smoothly to have a successful country.
Not the same. We only armed the locals after invading and destroying their infrastructure and military, disbanding the army, and then trying to create a puppet government that didn't have any popular support, and didn't have a competent army because all the experienced people were sent packing after we defeated Saddam. Of course they dropped everything and ran: they didn't have anything to fight for or believe in.
The Kurds aren't like this at all: they're well organized and motivated, despite all our efforts to the contrary.
Sounds like a good idea: Israel is in sore need of allies in the region, so maybe if they became allies of the Kurds it could work to their mutual benefit.
I see, this makes perfect sense now. IMO, it'd be better if all these break-away regions broke away and became new countries. That's why they're in the EU, after all: the union facilitates free trade and a strong shared currency (in theory at least), so things would be better if all these regions broke away and then joined the EU as new member states, instead of their people constantly being angry that they're in an involuntary union with some other country they don't like so much.
BTW, which regions in Italy want to break away? I hadn't heard about that, though I'm familiar with Catalan and the Basque region wanting to break away from Spain.
Of course China would be against any self-determination; they're all about forcing people into a single union under an authoritarian government which only benefits one group.
To me, it feels more like North Dakota splitting from South Dakota while staying within the US, which a lot of people would consider mostly a non-issue.
Huh? It's nothing like that at all. North Dakota and South Dakota are already split, and have been for a very long time. They're entirely separate states with no more relationship with each other than they have with Minnesota or Montana. They just happen to share part of their name.
Perhaps you meant "it feels more like Upstate New York splitting from NYC while staying within the US." (Which would actually be a great idea IMO.) We've actually done this before, sorta: during the Civil War, West Virginia broke away from Virginia and formed a new state so it could remain in the Union. We've also had many other states form by seceding from other states: Tennessee, for instance, used to be part of North Carolina, and Kentucky used to be part of Virginia. At one time early on, the 13 Colonies annexed everything to their west, all the way to the Mississippi River, drawing borders at the north and south mostly along latitude lines (or rivers, in the case of the Ohio river); later, these territories broke away and formed new states.
I'd like to see the US and Canada both break apart and reform into new, smaller nations. I think, for the residents in many of the new nations, life would be better than the current state. I think perhaps 6 new nations would be a good number; one nation would include the pacific northwest areas of NorCal, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and maybe Yukon and Alaska. The American southeast would be a single nation, and maybe the southwest too. The US New England states plus the Canadian Maritime provinces would be a single nation. With these regions separated from each other, we wouldn't have all the infighting we have now between clashing cultures (e.g. highly religious values in the Bible Belt versus socially liberal values in the northeast and northwest).
Americans might look on with bemusement; I can understand that. I guess it's a bit like Florida choosing to break away from the US, having a pro-Florida political party endlessly demonizing "them" (the rest of the US) as causing pretty much every economic and political woe Florida has going for it.
As an American, I'd be happy to see Florida secede from the US. We'd be better off without them. Let them deal with their own problems.
Am I missing something? Why would an independent Scotland be spurned by the EU? I thought this issue was about them separating from the UK; they should be able to then join the EU as a full member, and switch to the Euro currency if they wish (since right now they're still on the GBP just like the rest of the UK). An independent Scotland should in theory be a good thing for the EU, as a confederation works better with its members smaller and more equal to each other, rather than having a mix of small and large/powerful members, as the powerful members will be seen as bullies by the smaller members. An independent Scotland will reduce the size/power of the UK in the EU and add a new member that's on par with countries like Denmark, and maybe get more people on board with the Euro.
Is arming locals really that bad an idea though? Our problem in the past was that we picked religious zealots as our allies and armed them, while ignoring the not-so-religious ones we could have supported. Here with ISIS, we could arm the Kurds and support them; the Kurds are not terribly religious (not too different from your typical Sunday Christians here in the US), and are willing to fight ISIS, but we don't want to support them too much because we don't want them demanding their own state, because that works against our interest in keeping the region destabilized. If we stopped working towards keeping the region unstable, and instead helped out groups like the Kurds who want independence, which would make the whole region far more stable, groups like ISIS would die out.
They won't destroy the population, they'll just subjugate it. That's what authoritarian regimes do. Stalin killed millions of people in his great purge during and after WWII, but it's not like the Soviet Union suddenly collapsed due to lack of people. And the Soviet Union lasted for many decades.
What works in dealing with these things is to wall them off and ignore them, and arming neighboring regions to create a buffer zone.
You're an idiot. It's "TED", not "TEDx". Only a complete moron would make a mistake like that. You've demonstrated you know absolutely nothing about TED with such an idiotic mistake.
I don't think Stallman wants any software to be open-source but free software. He's FSF, not OSI, goals differ.
Yes, I know; as I said before, he's a bit of an extremist (some might disagree with the "a bit" part). I mistakenly said "open source" instead of "Free sotware" though.
Anyway, if some random application is closed-source and proprietary, you're locked in by the vendor as well, it's output is usually closed-source and proprietary as well, so you can be blocked out of the work you've done using this proprietary software, it can have bugs you can't debug or fix, you can be blocked from upgrading programs the software interacts with, libraries the software depends on, and even the OS version it is using.
Yes, that's all true, but it's still not nearly as bad as the platform and infrastructure being closed-source and proprietary. Usually, applications only have library dependencies anyway (at least on *nix systems), so upgrading the OS shouldn't be that much of a problem as long as you keep compatible libraries in place. The main problem with proprietary programs is the closed file formats/output. But again, this isn't nearly as bad as having a platform that's proprietary and has bugs you can't debug or fix. Cue the analogy about houses with bad foundations.
Those are applications which do not have viable free alternatives. Running Windows does not require that you run Exchange or Sharepoint and running Exchange or Sharepoint on your Windows server does not require that your clients run Windows. You're creating a false dependency to try and justify using Microsoft everywhere.
Wrong. I'm not trying to justify MS, I'd like to see the company collapse and disappear and most of its technologies go by the wayside. I'm just pointing out the stark reality. No, running Windows does not require Exchange or SharePoint, but please find me a company of any size which doesn't run Outlook and Exchange. It's a de-facto standard in corporations. No, your typical home user doesn't use it, obviously, but every company out there bigger than 30 employees does. That's what I'm talking about with the "platform". It's not just Windows OS, it's the whole MS IT infrastructure that goes along with it in any corporation: Outlook/Exchange, SharePoint, AD, and lots more (don't forget Office). Linux/FOSS can't replace all that, there's still too many missing or broken bits.
Even if you do actually need Exchange for whatever reason that is only one server, the damn thing can be virtualized too if you really want, that creates no dependency on other parts of your infrastructure or workstations.
Corporations "need" Exchange because it provides them email + calendaring, which is pretty important for scheduling meetings so managers can sit around and waste time doing nothing. There's no Free alternatives to this that I'm aware of (I've heard of some other proprietary alternatives, but nothing that's ever gotten any serious marketshare). In theory, it's not really a hard problem, unlike, for instance, stitching together photos to create a panorama (lots of math involved there); it's just a little database work and some specially-formatted emails. But for some reason no one in FOSS has created fully compatible replacements for both the server and client; in fact, the FOSS community seems to have mostly given up on email clients these days thanks to webmail.
But anyway, using Exchange means also using Outlook, and Outlook only runs on Windows. (Yes, it's possible to use OWS in Linux/Firefox; I've done it, but it doesn't work very well. It needs to run on IE to get full functionality, including seeing new emails pop up, as is normal with Gmail.)
Like what? You talk about not needing to create FOSS applications because we need to focus on controlling the "platform" yet now you tell me that the problem isn't the platform but the applications, which is precisely what I told you.
Different applications. You (or was it someone else?) were talking about things like engineering, CAD, etc. applications. Those are usually standalone. They're not part of any kind of "infrastructure". (There are some exceptions, like DOORS and ClearCase, which need central servers.) Outlook/Exchange are, from a corporate point-of-view, infrastructure. As far as they're concerned, the company simply cannot run without Outlook and Exchange, because they rely on those for email communications and scheduling. That's what makes Outlook "infrastructure"; it's a necessary application, and it has a hard dependency on a backend server. Other networked applications have the potential to be like this; for instance, many companies (for some idiotic reason) depend on ClearCase for version control, and that too has a client that runs on the desktop, and a server. (I'm not going to suggest that anyone make a ClearCase clone (client or server), since git, Mercurial, Subversion, etc. are all available and work far better, but it's another example of the same thing but which isn't from MS.) There might be some similar stuff out there I haven't encountered.
There's a difference between not being lounge-chair comfortable, and simply not fitting in there at all (or having to have you legs pushed up against the seatback). I'm 6'1" (but thin) and I generally don't have much trouble, but then again I haven't flown in a couple of years, and it sounds like the airlines have reduced the space between rows since then. No one's expecting coach class to be spacious, but they are expecting to be able to fit in there without physical pain. I don't think that's too much to ask.
Yes, it does. Go to any big corporation and look at their IT department. It's dominated by Windows in the server room. Exchange, probably the most prominent example, only runs on Windows Server. Same with Active Directory. Yes, it's possible to use openldap or whatever, but no one actually does that with a Windows environment.
You don't need Windows Servers to interoperate with them, I'm not sure why you're saying that. What specifically is the problem you are having that you cannot overcome?
Try running Exchange or SharePoint on Linux.
We already can do that,
No, we can't. There's too many parts of the IT infrastructure that just aren't easily replaced by Linux/FOSS. Exchange is the biggest one, since just about every corporation out there relies on it (rightly or wrongly). Other networked applications frequently have the same problem, where they're made to only run on MS infrastructure, but MS components are of course the worst.
What'd be better is to focus instead on taking over the platform, rather than trying to make Free alternatives to every single proprietary program out there. It's a much smaller and more manageable task, and the benefits are far greater. It really doesn't matter that much if your engineering design program is proprietary; yeah, it'd be better if it were Free or at least open-source, it'd be nice if they used open file formats, etc., but that one program only affects that one function you do on your computer, it doesn't lock you into an entire IT ecosystem you may not want. The platform being proprietary, however, does; just look at what a lock Microsoft has in the enterprise space. You can't easily mix-and-match different components from different vendors (proprietary and/or Free/open-source), because MS's platform software doesn't play well with others. One day, you might decide to switch from your engineering design program to a competing program, and doing so probably won't be a big deal at all (except for the file format problem), as it'll all run on the same platform, and won't require you to change out your desktop computers, OSes, servers, storage subsystems, etc. But your use of a proprietary platform (Windows) has a huge effect on your IT systems.
What's more, we already have a Free platform with Linux (running on both servers and desktops), it just isn't in widespread use on desktops yet (and by extension, because Windows is used on corporate desktops almost exclusively, they also run Windows servers heavily to interoperate with them). Sure, Linux is dominating in webservers because it's cheap and fast (and good), but that's because webservers don't need to tie into corporate desktops or other MS programs like Outlook.
So forget simulations and manufacturing programs; you're not going to find a bunch of volunteers to work on that stuff for free, and if you did, they wouldn't have the domain knowledge necessary to do so anyway (there are some exceptions out there, but they're exceptions). We should concentrate on taking over the infrastructure, not the applications. The applications will be ported by their vendors when there's enough demand.
Yes, when you start talking about metro areas, it does get really fuzzy. NYC is a bit of a special area because it annexed many of its outlying cities back in the 1800s, and calls them "boroughs" now (previously, Manhattan was "NYC"), so all the crime city-wide is part of that one city's statistics. Most cities don't do that. But even there, NYC has a larger metro area beyond its boroughs. Newark, one city I mentioned several times, is really just part of NYC's metro area; in fact, most of northern NJ is part of the NYC metro area, plus a large chunk of Long Island (beyond Queens and Brooklyn). There's trains running to Summit and Morristown NJ and beyond, with people commuting back and forth to NYC every day, so those cities are part of the metro area, but should they be lumped in with NYC's crime stats? Honestly, I don't know, it's really debateable. Same goes for LA: if you look at that crime stat list, a bunch of cities there are really just parts of LA. Should they all be lumped together? You could argue it either way. On one hand, they're kinda part of the same "city", even though the "city" is divided into separate municipalities. On the other hand, Morristown NJ and Bronx NY are really different places with totally different demographics, and it really takes a long time to commute between the two (Manhattan is kinda central to them, so people commute from both to Manhattan, plus the transit links are set up to make that more efficient whereas going between the outlying areas is a real PITA sometimes), so it's not like crime in the Bronx is going to affect you in Morristown.
But you do have a good point here: if you're looking at which city is safe to live in, you have to consider where in that area you would likely be living, and if that's included in the crime stats or not.
However, my other analysis of demographs in each city (in response to another poster trying to blame it all on black people) is still correct, because my demographic information was from those cities proper, not their metro areas.
As for degree of violence (i.e. emotionality) it tends to be higher among those who grow up not being exposed to "foreign ideas". They tend to form a ridgid mind-set that's especially favorable to us-vs-them thinking, and to not caring about what happens to "them"..... People who grow up in cities tend to be exposed to people living and believing in lots of different ways. They may not like it, but they're used to it.
One problem I have with this assertion is that, in the rural areas, there really aren't any "thems". In the small rural communties, everyone knows everyone else, and there usually aren't many outsiders. It's not like most of the crime in rural areas is directed at outsiders who just moved in.
Rural isn't particularly safe, because of poor enforcement (for fairly obvious reasons).
Yes, but on the other hand, people in rural areas tend to be well-armed, unlike city-dwellers. Break into some random trailer home in the country and you're very likely to get shot. Rural people rely less on law enforcement and tend exercise self-defense more. (This gun culture might also contribute more to accidental shootings and the like, but that's beside the point, we're talking about crime rates here.)
The highest-crime areas seem to be cities where there's a lot of poverty, and especially a drug problem (just like violent crime was a big problem in the 20s with Prohibition). Stick a bunch of people into a small area, give them no opportunity, no hope, no jobs, a poor education, all adding up to no future, give them one avenue for employment which is extremely profitable (unlike anything else they can do) but also illegal and overly enforced (compared to every other crime), and it all adds up to a recipe for violence, and then make it so these people all rely on money to survive and it's even worse. At least in rural areas, the cost of living is dirt cheap and you can grow your own food if you want, and you can even buy your own home on poverty-level wages.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly, other countries don't like the idea of giving different ethnic groups their own states because this interferes with their power.
It's not just them, though: liberals here in the west hate the idea of different ethnic groups having their own countries, because they think we should all be mashed together and be forced to get along somehow. Just look at some of the other comments to my posts here in this thread.
The idea of a region where people largely agree about social / moral / economic systems has never been realized and never will be no matter what scale you look at.
I'm sorry, that's hogwash. Small countries like Iceland or Andorra do not have any huge rifts in thinking between different groups of people. There's lots of small European countries where people get along just fine because the population is small and homogenous. Infighting becomes more and more of a problem as countries grow larger and more diverse.
Every region will have misogynists, creationists, etc.
The Scandinavian countries don't seem to have too many problems with misogyny, and creationism is something that's almost completely confined to the USA and some third-world countries. There's no significant number of creationists in western Europe, except perhaps among some immigrants (and even that's doubtful).
If one isn't happy because others don't conform to their ideal systems of thought, I suggest that they will never be happy.
It's not about others conforming to your thoughts, it's about whether those people have the ability to force their systems of thought on you through the law. Here in the US, even if you think Creationism is crap, if you live in certain areas, you might find Creationism forced on you because the voting public in those areas demands it to be taught in school to your children. In countries where no one believes in Creationism, this isn't a problem, so no one has to waste time with it just like they don't have to waste time debating whether the world is held up on Atlas's shoulders and whether the Titans created it, or any other such nonsense. When you live in a country where most people are like you and share your culture, you don't have to argue about silly crap like this all the time, like we do in America where we've been arguing whether this idiocy should be taught in schools for well over a century now.
You think infighting is a good idea? To waste time and energy constantly debating whether Creationism is real or not, or whether women should have equal rights?
Cultural diversity isn't a problem. People in different regions can maintain their own, separate cultures and be happy on their own, instead of having to constantly fight with other people in neighboring regions about whose culture is better and should be dominant. What you're advocating is not cultural diversity at all, but either cultural imperialism or a morass where no one is happy because no one gets to actually have their own distinct culture.
Sounds like they need to start their own, competing union.... Maybe some other EU countries will abandon the EU and join their union instead, since this new union wouldn't be all about supporting existing powerful players.
What's the alternative? Invade with guns blazing? That didn't work so well for Iraq; it led directly to ISIL. It hasn't worked out well for Afghanistan either. We already tried deposing an Iraqi government we didn't like and setting up a friendly government, and it got us here. How is doing the exact same thing going to work this time?
As for DeBeers, that didn't work because we (western nations) haven't actually done anything to DeBeers to stop the diamond trade. There's a DeBeers store not far from me in Manhattan NYC, even though they should be banned since they violate lots of anti-trust statutes. If we aren't actually going to hold corporations accountable to our laws, then we deserve whatever happens to us as a result.
If we would get off our asses and build SkyTran so we didn't need cars, we wouldn't be very worried about oil, but we're too stupid and shortsighted to free ourselves from our oil dependency, so as far as I'm concerned, we deserve whatever happens to us as a result.
So what? North Korea has been around quite a bit longer than I have, and doesn't show any signs that it'll disappear anytime soon. It's been happily subjugating people since the 1950s, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. You don't need a proper civil government that runs smoothly to have a successful country.
Not the same. We only armed the locals after invading and destroying their infrastructure and military, disbanding the army, and then trying to create a puppet government that didn't have any popular support, and didn't have a competent army because all the experienced people were sent packing after we defeated Saddam. Of course they dropped everything and ran: they didn't have anything to fight for or believe in.
The Kurds aren't like this at all: they're well organized and motivated, despite all our efforts to the contrary.
Sounds like a good idea: Israel is in sore need of allies in the region, so maybe if they became allies of the Kurds it could work to their mutual benefit.
I see, this makes perfect sense now. IMO, it'd be better if all these break-away regions broke away and became new countries. That's why they're in the EU, after all: the union facilitates free trade and a strong shared currency (in theory at least), so things would be better if all these regions broke away and then joined the EU as new member states, instead of their people constantly being angry that they're in an involuntary union with some other country they don't like so much.
BTW, which regions in Italy want to break away? I hadn't heard about that, though I'm familiar with Catalan and the Basque region wanting to break away from Spain.
Of course China would be against any self-determination; they're all about forcing people into a single union under an authoritarian government which only benefits one group.
So what's the problem with that?
To me, it feels more like North Dakota splitting from South Dakota while staying within the US, which a lot of people would consider mostly a non-issue.
Huh? It's nothing like that at all. North Dakota and South Dakota are already split, and have been for a very long time. They're entirely separate states with no more relationship with each other than they have with Minnesota or Montana. They just happen to share part of their name.
Perhaps you meant "it feels more like Upstate New York splitting from NYC while staying within the US." (Which would actually be a great idea IMO.) We've actually done this before, sorta: during the Civil War, West Virginia broke away from Virginia and formed a new state so it could remain in the Union. We've also had many other states form by seceding from other states: Tennessee, for instance, used to be part of North Carolina, and Kentucky used to be part of Virginia. At one time early on, the 13 Colonies annexed everything to their west, all the way to the Mississippi River, drawing borders at the north and south mostly along latitude lines (or rivers, in the case of the Ohio river); later, these territories broke away and formed new states.
Yes, just remove "Scotland, " from the name.
Of course, Scotland can never secede from Great Britain, unless they dig a big canal on the border and turn their country into a separate island.
There's nothing silly about such debates.
I'd like to see the US and Canada both break apart and reform into new, smaller nations. I think, for the residents in many of the new nations, life would be better than the current state. I think perhaps 6 new nations would be a good number; one nation would include the pacific northwest areas of NorCal, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and maybe Yukon and Alaska. The American southeast would be a single nation, and maybe the southwest too. The US New England states plus the Canadian Maritime provinces would be a single nation. With these regions separated from each other, we wouldn't have all the infighting we have now between clashing cultures (e.g. highly religious values in the Bible Belt versus socially liberal values in the northeast and northwest).
Americans might look on with bemusement; I can understand that. I guess it's a bit like Florida choosing to break away from the US, having a pro-Florida political party endlessly demonizing "them" (the rest of the US) as causing pretty much every economic and political woe Florida has going for it.
As an American, I'd be happy to see Florida secede from the US. We'd be better off without them. Let them deal with their own problems.
Am I missing something? Why would an independent Scotland be spurned by the EU? I thought this issue was about them separating from the UK; they should be able to then join the EU as a full member, and switch to the Euro currency if they wish (since right now they're still on the GBP just like the rest of the UK). An independent Scotland should in theory be a good thing for the EU, as a confederation works better with its members smaller and more equal to each other, rather than having a mix of small and large/powerful members, as the powerful members will be seen as bullies by the smaller members. An independent Scotland will reduce the size/power of the UK in the EU and add a new member that's on par with countries like Denmark, and maybe get more people on board with the Euro.
Is arming locals really that bad an idea though? Our problem in the past was that we picked religious zealots as our allies and armed them, while ignoring the not-so-religious ones we could have supported. Here with ISIS, we could arm the Kurds and support them; the Kurds are not terribly religious (not too different from your typical Sunday Christians here in the US), and are willing to fight ISIS, but we don't want to support them too much because we don't want them demanding their own state, because that works against our interest in keeping the region destabilized. If we stopped working towards keeping the region unstable, and instead helped out groups like the Kurds who want independence, which would make the whole region far more stable, groups like ISIS would die out.
They won't destroy the population, they'll just subjugate it. That's what authoritarian regimes do. Stalin killed millions of people in his great purge during and after WWII, but it's not like the Soviet Union suddenly collapsed due to lack of people. And the Soviet Union lasted for many decades.
What works in dealing with these things is to wall them off and ignore them, and arming neighboring regions to create a buffer zone.
You're an idiot. It's "TED", not "TEDx". Only a complete moron would make a mistake like that. You've demonstrated you know absolutely nothing about TED with such an idiotic mistake.
I don't think Stallman wants any software to be open-source but free software. He's FSF, not OSI, goals differ.
Yes, I know; as I said before, he's a bit of an extremist (some might disagree with the "a bit" part). I mistakenly said "open source" instead of "Free sotware" though.
Anyway, if some random application is closed-source and proprietary, you're locked in by the vendor as well, it's output is usually closed-source and proprietary as well, so you can be blocked out of the work you've done using this proprietary software, it can have bugs you can't debug or fix, you can be blocked from upgrading programs the software interacts with, libraries the software depends on, and even the OS version it is using.
Yes, that's all true, but it's still not nearly as bad as the platform and infrastructure being closed-source and proprietary. Usually, applications only have library dependencies anyway (at least on *nix systems), so upgrading the OS shouldn't be that much of a problem as long as you keep compatible libraries in place. The main problem with proprietary programs is the closed file formats/output. But again, this isn't nearly as bad as having a platform that's proprietary and has bugs you can't debug or fix. Cue the analogy about houses with bad foundations.
Those are applications which do not have viable free alternatives. Running Windows does not require that you run Exchange or Sharepoint and running Exchange or Sharepoint on your Windows server does not require that your clients run Windows. You're creating a false dependency to try and justify using Microsoft everywhere.
Wrong. I'm not trying to justify MS, I'd like to see the company collapse and disappear and most of its technologies go by the wayside. I'm just pointing out the stark reality. No, running Windows does not require Exchange or SharePoint, but please find me a company of any size which doesn't run Outlook and Exchange. It's a de-facto standard in corporations. No, your typical home user doesn't use it, obviously, but every company out there bigger than 30 employees does. That's what I'm talking about with the "platform". It's not just Windows OS, it's the whole MS IT infrastructure that goes along with it in any corporation: Outlook/Exchange, SharePoint, AD, and lots more (don't forget Office). Linux/FOSS can't replace all that, there's still too many missing or broken bits.
Even if you do actually need Exchange for whatever reason that is only one server, the damn thing can be virtualized too if you really want, that creates no dependency on other parts of your infrastructure or workstations.
Corporations "need" Exchange because it provides them email + calendaring, which is pretty important for scheduling meetings so managers can sit around and waste time doing nothing. There's no Free alternatives to this that I'm aware of (I've heard of some other proprietary alternatives, but nothing that's ever gotten any serious marketshare). In theory, it's not really a hard problem, unlike, for instance, stitching together photos to create a panorama (lots of math involved there); it's just a little database work and some specially-formatted emails. But for some reason no one in FOSS has created fully compatible replacements for both the server and client; in fact, the FOSS community seems to have mostly given up on email clients these days thanks to webmail.
But anyway, using Exchange means also using Outlook, and Outlook only runs on Windows. (Yes, it's possible to use OWS in Linux/Firefox; I've done it, but it doesn't work very well. It needs to run on IE to get full functionality, including seeing new emails pop up, as is normal with Gmail.)
Like what? You talk about not needing to create FOSS applications because we need to focus on controlling the "platform" yet now you tell me that the problem isn't the platform but the applications, which is precisely what I told you.
Different applications. You (or was it someone else?) were talking about things like engineering, CAD, etc. applications. Those are usually standalone. They're not part of any kind of "infrastructure". (There are some exceptions, like DOORS and ClearCase, which need central servers.) Outlook/Exchange are, from a corporate point-of-view, infrastructure. As far as they're concerned, the company simply cannot run without Outlook and Exchange, because they rely on those for email communications and scheduling. That's what makes Outlook "infrastructure"; it's a necessary application, and it has a hard dependency on a backend server. Other networked applications have the potential to be like this; for instance, many companies (for some idiotic reason) depend on ClearCase for version control, and that too has a client that runs on the desktop, and a server. (I'm not going to suggest that anyone make a ClearCase clone (client or server), since git, Mercurial, Subversion, etc. are all available and work far better, but it's another example of the same thing but which isn't from MS.) There might be some similar stuff out there I haven't encountered.
There's a difference between not being lounge-chair comfortable, and simply not fitting in there at all (or having to have you legs pushed up against the seatback). I'm 6'1" (but thin) and I generally don't have much trouble, but then again I haven't flown in a couple of years, and it sounds like the airlines have reduced the space between rows since then. No one's expecting coach class to be spacious, but they are expecting to be able to fit in there without physical pain. I don't think that's too much to ask.
No it doesn't.
Yes, it does. Go to any big corporation and look at their IT department. It's dominated by Windows in the server room. Exchange, probably the most prominent example, only runs on Windows Server. Same with Active Directory. Yes, it's possible to use openldap or whatever, but no one actually does that with a Windows environment.
You don't need Windows Servers to interoperate with them, I'm not sure why you're saying that. What specifically is the problem you are having that you cannot overcome?
Try running Exchange or SharePoint on Linux.
We already can do that,
No, we can't. There's too many parts of the IT infrastructure that just aren't easily replaced by Linux/FOSS. Exchange is the biggest one, since just about every corporation out there relies on it (rightly or wrongly). Other networked applications frequently have the same problem, where they're made to only run on MS infrastructure, but MS components are of course the worst.
What'd be better is to focus instead on taking over the platform, rather than trying to make Free alternatives to every single proprietary program out there. It's a much smaller and more manageable task, and the benefits are far greater. It really doesn't matter that much if your engineering design program is proprietary; yeah, it'd be better if it were Free or at least open-source, it'd be nice if they used open file formats, etc., but that one program only affects that one function you do on your computer, it doesn't lock you into an entire IT ecosystem you may not want. The platform being proprietary, however, does; just look at what a lock Microsoft has in the enterprise space. You can't easily mix-and-match different components from different vendors (proprietary and/or Free/open-source), because MS's platform software doesn't play well with others. One day, you might decide to switch from your engineering design program to a competing program, and doing so probably won't be a big deal at all (except for the file format problem), as it'll all run on the same platform, and won't require you to change out your desktop computers, OSes, servers, storage subsystems, etc. But your use of a proprietary platform (Windows) has a huge effect on your IT systems.
What's more, we already have a Free platform with Linux (running on both servers and desktops), it just isn't in widespread use on desktops yet (and by extension, because Windows is used on corporate desktops almost exclusively, they also run Windows servers heavily to interoperate with them). Sure, Linux is dominating in webservers because it's cheap and fast (and good), but that's because webservers don't need to tie into corporate desktops or other MS programs like Outlook.
So forget simulations and manufacturing programs; you're not going to find a bunch of volunteers to work on that stuff for free, and if you did, they wouldn't have the domain knowledge necessary to do so anyway (there are some exceptions out there, but they're exceptions). We should concentrate on taking over the infrastructure, not the applications. The applications will be ported by their vendors when there's enough demand.
Yes, when you start talking about metro areas, it does get really fuzzy. NYC is a bit of a special area because it annexed many of its outlying cities back in the 1800s, and calls them "boroughs" now (previously, Manhattan was "NYC"), so all the crime city-wide is part of that one city's statistics. Most cities don't do that. But even there, NYC has a larger metro area beyond its boroughs. Newark, one city I mentioned several times, is really just part of NYC's metro area; in fact, most of northern NJ is part of the NYC metro area, plus a large chunk of Long Island (beyond Queens and Brooklyn). There's trains running to Summit and Morristown NJ and beyond, with people commuting back and forth to NYC every day, so those cities are part of the metro area, but should they be lumped in with NYC's crime stats? Honestly, I don't know, it's really debateable. Same goes for LA: if you look at that crime stat list, a bunch of cities there are really just parts of LA. Should they all be lumped together? You could argue it either way. On one hand, they're kinda part of the same "city", even though the "city" is divided into separate municipalities. On the other hand, Morristown NJ and Bronx NY are really different places with totally different demographics, and it really takes a long time to commute between the two (Manhattan is kinda central to them, so people commute from both to Manhattan, plus the transit links are set up to make that more efficient whereas going between the outlying areas is a real PITA sometimes), so it's not like crime in the Bronx is going to affect you in Morristown.
But you do have a good point here: if you're looking at which city is safe to live in, you have to consider where in that area you would likely be living, and if that's included in the crime stats or not.
However, my other analysis of demographs in each city (in response to another poster trying to blame it all on black people) is still correct, because my demographic information was from those cities proper, not their metro areas.
As for degree of violence (i.e. emotionality) it tends to be higher among those who grow up not being exposed to "foreign ideas". They tend to form a ridgid mind-set that's especially favorable to us-vs-them thinking, and to not caring about what happens to "them". .... People who grow up in cities tend to be exposed to people living and believing in lots of different ways. They may not like it, but they're used to it.
One problem I have with this assertion is that, in the rural areas, there really aren't any "thems". In the small rural communties, everyone knows everyone else, and there usually aren't many outsiders. It's not like most of the crime in rural areas is directed at outsiders who just moved in.
Rural isn't particularly safe, because of poor enforcement (for fairly obvious reasons).
Yes, but on the other hand, people in rural areas tend to be well-armed, unlike city-dwellers. Break into some random trailer home in the country and you're very likely to get shot. Rural people rely less on law enforcement and tend exercise self-defense more. (This gun culture might also contribute more to accidental shootings and the like, but that's beside the point, we're talking about crime rates here.)
The highest-crime areas seem to be cities where there's a lot of poverty, and especially a drug problem (just like violent crime was a big problem in the 20s with Prohibition). Stick a bunch of people into a small area, give them no opportunity, no hope, no jobs, a poor education, all adding up to no future, give them one avenue for employment which is extremely profitable (unlike anything else they can do) but also illegal and overly enforced (compared to every other crime), and it all adds up to a recipe for violence, and then make it so these people all rely on money to survive and it's even worse. At least in rural areas, the cost of living is dirt cheap and you can grow your own food if you want, and you can even buy your own home on poverty-level wages.