Snooty Nose Kneeling fat man Transformer Earmuffs Pierre and Pierre Mittens Flying Monkey Two Aliens Bird in the hand Falcon
password: sekntrespemsfytsbdfn
somewhat different
What if multiple people needed to use the password
on
Inkblot Passwords
·
· Score: 1
What about passwords that need to be used by more than one person? I suppose if everyone involved got together and agreed on the meaning of the images before creating the password it might work. It would be hard to get a 20-character password from someone and try to remember it based on what they think the pass-symbols mean.
Also, this might be a trivial objection, but the symetry on those images at the bottom of the article made a lot of them look like "things with wings" or "things with arms". Maybe once I got used to the system I'd see more and be more creative with descriptions.
I remember reading recently (possibly on Slashdot) that the Defense Department was testing lasers as a missle defense (it's easier to shoot down a missle when you don't have to calculate your own missle's trajectory). So, the directed-energy weapons would probably be primarily for defense, although I suppose if they can shoot down missles they could up the power a bit and shoot down planes.
My idea isn't an answer to the non-trivial problem of helping blind people surf the web. It's simply a way to avoid a lawsuit from a rapacious lawyer hoping to make a big settlement by saying he's helping others.
I know it's non-technical solution, but give the blind a phone-number to call. Then a technical support rep can talk to the person on the phone for a few minutes and ask them a few odd questions. A real Turing test. If the applicant passes the test, they get an account.
As someone else pointed out. This question isn't being raised in the interest of the blind, it is being raised so a lawyer can figure out a class-action lawsuit to pursue. All you need to do to stop the lawyer is come up with a solution that will work. It doesn't have to be elegant or even automated, just sufficient to avoid a lawsuit.
Paper only lasts as a longer-term archive if stored properly; I don't know what causes disc media to rot, but I bet that good storage would solve the problem. It may be that the storage methods are too expensive for a home system, but as long as they were less expensive than the systems used by libraries to preserve old books it would be worth it.
Let's see, I'm not going to pay any money for a ticket to see the movie in a theater. I might rent it for $5 if it gets enough good reviews to make up for the drubbing the last two movies received.
Sure, spending $20 on grainy webcam shots of the prop-trailer sounds like a great deal!
What if a MMORPG did this every April Fool's day? Then, on April 2nd, the admins could restore the March 31st backup and the game would continue as normal. The people who wanted to be part of WRATH OF GOD day could log on and those who didn't like the idea would stay away.
It would be like being on the receiving end of a SimCity disaster.
Won't replace red/green/blue
on
Mastering Light
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· Score: 1
I may have misunderstood the article, but I didn't get the impression that a single crystal could produce different frequencies. One crystal, made of a certain combination of layers, would be able to change light from red to green, another crystal could change light from white to blue, etc. So you would still need separate crystals for each color. You couldn't simply change the composition of the crystal on the fly to give it different light-changing properties.
It may be that you can change these crystals on the fly by sending different types of current through them. I don't know enough (read: anything) about the materials that are used to make them.
If you like that type of stuff you might consider reading David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (Book 1 is all I've read). Hume methodically, scientifically, and ruthlessly tears down the relation between cause and effect that we human beings are almost hard-wired to believe in. It's a great read for scientists, since they are constantly trying to infer causes from effects.
Also, after nearly creating a cold, disjointed world of skepticism, he ends by saying he's going to pop of to the pub, have a smoke and play some backgammon to reassure himself of the importance of real life. It's a nice human touch after such rigorous brilliance.
And, if you want to feel humble, he wrote this revolutionary book in his early 20s. He made much better use of his 20s than I've made of mine.
I always liked the fact that Keanu was so flat in the first movie. My take on it is that he's sort of an idiot-savant: a perfect weapon for the simplified world of The Matrix, but real people would find him rather -- limited.
I'm sure Ewan would have given more depth to the role, but considering all of the schlock philosophy, the extra depth would have been out of place.
As a side note, that guy with the sideburns (was his character's name Dozer?) who always stayed on the ship was such a ridiculous hack that, next to him, Keanu looked like Olivier.
Two more questions about this... First, if the system is supported by businesses who will "gladly pay to for the service to reduce their insurance costs" (paraphrase of article), what happens when the system fails? What happens when they go back through the records and find out that photos of a terrorist carrying a bomb into the building, was sent to 3 users, all of whom ignored it?
Who will be sued? What will it do to the insurance benefit of having the system installed at a power plant? And, if the insurance benefit is reduced, who will be interested in supporting the system?
Second question. What if businesses refuse to pay for it? What if, five years after the installation, they say (with some justification) "This system is protecting the citizenry, as well as our particular businesses. The taxpayer should shoulder some of the cost." (another version that would work: "Our local electric utility company is fighting against bankruptcy. In order to avoid going out of business and yet still protect the people, we will need the state to pay for the Terrorist Watch system for the next few years.") It seems very likely that this would happen. Once the possibility is put forth, businesses will continue to push to have the government pay more and more. And, since businesses are more organized then people, the government will eventually be forced to assume the entire cost of running the system.
This doesn't sound as bad as I first thought, but it also doesn't sound very effective.
First of all, a bunch of extra people watching the permiters of soft targets is a good thing. Many people would like to do that to contribute to their national security as long as a) it didn't infringe constitutional rights and b) they didn't have to be full-time security guards to do it (that is, they wouldn't have to change they're life substantially to help out)
a) This is satisfied by having the web cams only along secure perimiters. You expect to be watched around secure installations; it's a necessary evil. b) This is satisfied by software that selects only unusual changes, so the amature security guard doesn't have to look at an empty strech of fence forever on the off chance a Terrorist might show up.
The problem I see is the filtering of "unusual changes". Obviously, although most cameras will be looking at areas that have no movement and no change and are generally boring, some will be focused on gates, or on areas bordered by public streets and sidewalks. Those places will have a lot of movement and change. The software can't send the watchers an alert every time a car goes through a security gate or drives down a street, so it'll have to filter out a lot of activity that is "routine". So, all a Terrorist has to do to circumvent this is to do something inocuous every day near a camera until it's time to strike, when he goes to the exact same place and does the same thing, except with a lethal twist. The program has already filtered him out, so no alert is sent to the watchers.
On one hand, this would force terrorists to establish patterns before they struck, which would be better than nothing.
On the other hand, this type of preparation is similar to how they planned for 9/11. They did a lot of dry runs on airport security to figure out what would be suspicious and what wouldn't. These cameras would be a similar hurdle.
A significant difference between the cameras and airport security is that a Terrorist testing airport security probably has a good idea every time he alerts the suspicions of airport security guards, while, in regard to these cameras, he would not have any idea when his actions were sent to watchers. So figuring out what works and what doesn't would be less certain.
Still, having people watch the perimiters of soft targets would probably help the watchers feel better if nothing else. (Everyone keeps making jokes about Homeland Security because it seems to be giving advice on how to survive terrorism, and no real suggestions of how to prevent terrorism. This would allow us to feel that we're doing Something) Also, the filtering would probably be improved over time, so that something that might go unnoticed one year can be recognized the next.
Bartleby, an independant movie released last year with Crispin Glover is one of the best of underapreciated movies I've ever seen. If you thought "Office Space" was funny and subversive, you don't know what you're missing. Bartleby is far more subversive than that (rather bland) movie and insidiously funny. I don't know why this movie didn't get more press.
In addition to being very funny, the movie is also and adaption of Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener", and a brilliant one at that. "Bartleby the Scrivener" is about as depressing a story as you can find. To realize the potential for humor inside that story was a stroke of genius.
The one problem with the movie is that, the last 5 minutes are pedagogical. But that's not so bad either. If you didn't want to figure out the deeper meaning of the story when you read it, the movie explains it to you. If you don't need to be taught, you can simply turn the movie off at the last scene. That's a much better system than those movies that try to hammer home their point throughout the movie, destroying the narrative flow in order to say something.
It's too bad the movie didn't get wider public notice. The one consolation is that it will be shown to high-school american lit. classes for years to come.
Thanks for the clarification. Popular election of the Senate does throw the whole scheme out of whack. (I have, of course, been acustomed to thinking of popular elections as a good thing). The main problem I have with it is that I don't know how to insure the Senators against corruption by lobbyists. I admit that, because of the number of constituents per senator, there is very little safeguard against it with the present system. Also, the benefit of taking power away from Washington would probably outweight the danger of corruption.
Not to mention that it would make voters more concerned with what their local politicians are doing, which is definitely a good thing.
I should read The Federalist Papers again; it's been so long that I've forgotten them. That's where the user name comes from, by the way. It doesn't mean anything other than I though John Jay was an interesting footnote in history at the time I became a slashdot user (I didn't want to take Hamilton or Madison in case someone who knew what they were talking about wanted those names).
Sorry I can't offer any insights besides agreeing with you. You obviously know more about this than I have forgotten.
That website presents a pretty comprehensive argument, and it does raise the specter of complications my friends and I haven't discussed in our barroom arguments. I'll have to ruminate on this for a bit outside of working hours. Thanks for the links.
On a lesser note: after rereading the 17th amendment, I don't quite understand what your objection to it is.
Having easier registration rules is only one part of the solution, and won't really fix much in the current system. Because the most states have a "winner take all" system, any candidate that doesn't have enormous numbers of backers to begin with isn't going to win anyways. The rest of the solution to this is to have representational voting and runoff elections.
If you are voting in Massachusetts or Texas, and you vote against the state-wide party bias, your vote is thrown away. The winner takes all the electoral seats in the state and you wasted your time voting. (The electoral college, by the way, should go, too, but it's small fry compared to the other problems). This is the main reason the two parties are still in power.
The problem with proportional voting, is that the winner may not have a mandate (not that that has stopped Bush, but in theory it should be a problem). So, if no candidate gets a majority, you have a run-off among the top contenders.
Think of how this would have worked in the last election. The people who were on the fence about Nader vs. Gore would have voted for Nader. Nader would have won somewhere between 5-15% of the vote, enough to be an obvious contender instead of being covered up with statistics (he got no electoral votes, he couldn't have had an important position). Then, Bush and Gore would have had a run-off, with a Dem/Rep winning. So far, it's business as usual. In 2004, Nader's party would have much more clout since they got somewhere between 1/9th to 1/3rd of the votes that the major parties got. They would be able to get more air-time and respect instead of having to start over from basically zero. A multiparty system would appear within 4 election cycles.
Now that I think about it, getting rid of the electoral college would have the same effect as insisting on proportional represntation of electoral college seats. If 15m people live in a state, and 13m votes go to the Republican candidate, the other 2m would protest if their votes were also counted as votes for the Republican. However, since there is this "electoral college" gimick, people don't seem to notice/care that they aren't represented.
Another great use would be enabling the keyboard switch from standard English alphabet characters to Chinese or Greek or whatever alphabet the user wanted. Admittedly, I've never been in a situation where two users comfortable with different alphabets used the same computer, but the problem must arise sometimes, and not having to switch keyboards would be nice. (possible example: a Chinese-American immigrant writing reports for his business in English and writing home to his parents in Cantonese?)
These are such a compelling arguments for in-person voting, that I am going to be against any online voting plans I hear proposed. This isn't because I'm afraid of my own vote being stolen or forced. I do not want to admit the danger of other voters being forced to vote against their will and nullifing the effect of my vote.
I don't think you're ignorant of economics, but I'm stuck at the same point you are. I don't know how to advance beyond the first question.
Money is just a universal means of exchange, so that for all stuff this equation should hold: X*money=Y*stuff. So, what you are saying is why are people still motivated by the desire to have more stuff.
Ever since A.Smith, it been generally believed that if everyone is powered by a burning desire for stuff and the ability to choose their employment, all the pieces needed for community life will naturally fall into place.
The problem is, this is based entirely on self-interest, and self-interest has been found through experience to be short-sighted. So, things like wellfare and public transportation and government can only be enacted by laws and threats (sure, there's a bit of a paradox about who makes the laws and threatens whom, but the short-sightedness helps work this out).
So critics point out that self interest alone does not make the economy work: there are things that self-interest does not make magically appear.
In addition, the current economic activity seems to prove these flaws. When the Bush team is at the reins, greed always seems to win over common sense and every change in regulation seems designed to benefit greedy rather than help the poor. The average observer worries that since the desire for stuff is so powerful that it can corrupt laws and regulations, maybe we should use another quality as the spur for the economy.
Here's an example of a replacement: A common slashdot sentiment is to posit an economy based on the "Desire for recognition and urge to explore". It's a nice idea, but no one has proven that it works; it sounds too utopian. And I personally can think of no proof for it.
So, motivation for money has very bad effects, but it has enormous benefits. Another theory will have to be proven to surpass the enormous benefits of the system in use today (and not have worse effects). And, the greatest challenge to capitalism failed spectacularly. People argue that's more a fault of the way the experiment in Socialism was carried out rather than a flaw in the theory of Socialism, but even if that's true, it still means that people will be nervous about going that way for quite some time.
In conclusion, I agree with you that question worth raising, but I don't have any idea where to go or an answer.
Slashdot Mirror
Snooty Nose
Kneeling fat man
Transformer
Earmuffs
Pierre and Pierre
Mittens
Flying Monkey
Two Aliens
Bird in the hand
Falcon
password: sekntrespemsfytsbdfn
somewhat different
What about passwords that need to be used by more than one person? I suppose if everyone involved got together and agreed on the meaning of the images before creating the password it might work. It would be hard to get a 20-character password from someone and try to remember it based on what they think the pass-symbols mean.
Also, this might be a trivial objection, but the symetry on those images at the bottom of the article made a lot of them look like "things with wings" or "things with arms". Maybe once I got used to the system I'd see more and be more creative with descriptions.
I remember reading recently (possibly on Slashdot) that the Defense Department was testing lasers as a missle defense (it's easier to shoot down a missle when you don't have to calculate your own missle's trajectory). So, the directed-energy weapons would probably be primarily for defense, although I suppose if they can shoot down missles they could up the power a bit and shoot down planes.
The XPrize competitor da Vinci Project intends to use this idea. I don't know how feasable their proposal is.
My idea isn't an answer to the non-trivial problem of helping blind people surf the web. It's simply a way to avoid a lawsuit from a rapacious lawyer hoping to make a big settlement by saying he's helping others.
I know it's non-technical solution, but give the blind a phone-number to call. Then a technical support rep can talk to the person on the phone for a few minutes and ask them a few odd questions. A real Turing test. If the applicant passes the test, they get an account.
As someone else pointed out. This question isn't being raised in the interest of the blind, it is being raised so a lawyer can figure out a class-action lawsuit to pursue. All you need to do to stop the lawyer is come up with a solution that will work. It doesn't have to be elegant or even automated, just sufficient to avoid a lawsuit.
Paper only lasts as a longer-term archive if stored properly; I don't know what causes disc media to rot, but I bet that good storage would solve the problem. It may be that the storage methods are too expensive for a home system, but as long as they were less expensive than the systems used by libraries to preserve old books it would be worth it.
Let's see, I'm not going to pay any money for a ticket to see the movie in a theater. I might rent it for $5 if it gets enough good reviews to make up for the drubbing the last two movies received.
Sure, spending $20 on grainy webcam shots of the prop-trailer sounds like a great deal!
What if a MMORPG did this every April Fool's day? Then, on April 2nd, the admins could restore the March 31st backup and the game would continue as normal. The people who wanted to be part of WRATH OF GOD day could log on and those who didn't like the idea would stay away.
It would be like being on the receiving end of a SimCity disaster.
I may have misunderstood the article, but I didn't get the impression that a single crystal could produce different frequencies. One crystal, made of a certain combination of layers, would be able to change light from red to green, another crystal could change light from white to blue, etc. So you would still need separate crystals for each color. You couldn't simply change the composition of the crystal on the fly to give it different light-changing properties.
It may be that you can change these crystals on the fly by sending different types of current through them. I don't know enough (read: anything) about the materials that are used to make them.
If you like that type of stuff you might consider reading David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (Book 1 is all I've read). Hume methodically, scientifically, and ruthlessly tears down the relation between cause and effect that we human beings are almost hard-wired to believe in. It's a great read for scientists, since they are constantly trying to infer causes from effects.
Also, after nearly creating a cold, disjointed world of skepticism, he ends by saying he's going to pop of to the pub, have a smoke and play some backgammon to reassure himself of the importance of real life. It's a nice human touch after such rigorous brilliance.
And, if you want to feel humble, he wrote this revolutionary book in his early 20s. He made much better use of his 20s than I've made of mine.
which also means with two batteries you can run it non stop
An unexpected but not entirely useless feature. It would be useful for getting rid of the cat.
I always liked the fact that Keanu was so flat in the first movie. My take on it is that he's sort of an idiot-savant: a perfect weapon for the simplified world of The Matrix, but real people would find him rather -- limited.
I'm sure Ewan would have given more depth to the role, but considering all of the schlock philosophy, the extra depth would have been out of place.
As a side note, that guy with the sideburns (was his character's name Dozer?) who always stayed on the ship was such a ridiculous hack that, next to him, Keanu looked like Olivier.
Two more questions about this...
First, if the system is supported by businesses who will "gladly pay to for the service to reduce their insurance costs" (paraphrase of article), what happens when the system fails? What happens when they go back through the records and find out that photos of a terrorist carrying a bomb into the building, was sent to 3 users, all of whom ignored it?
Who will be sued? What will it do to the insurance benefit of having the system installed at a power plant? And, if the insurance benefit is reduced, who will be interested in supporting the system?
Second question. What if businesses refuse to pay for it? What if, five years after the installation, they say (with some justification) "This system is protecting the citizenry, as well as our particular businesses. The taxpayer should shoulder some of the cost." (another version that would work: "Our local electric utility company is fighting against bankruptcy. In order to avoid going out of business and yet still protect the people, we will need the state to pay for the Terrorist Watch system for the next few years.") It seems very likely that this would happen. Once the possibility is put forth, businesses will continue to push to have the government pay more and more. And, since businesses are more organized then people, the government will eventually be forced to assume the entire cost of running the system.
This doesn't sound as bad as I first thought, but it also doesn't sound very effective.
First of all, a bunch of extra people watching the permiters of soft targets is a good thing. Many people would like to do that to contribute to their national security as long as
a) it didn't infringe constitutional rights and
b) they didn't have to be full-time security guards to do it (that is, they wouldn't have to change they're life substantially to help out)
a) This is satisfied by having the web cams only along secure perimiters. You expect to be watched around secure installations; it's a necessary evil.
b) This is satisfied by software that selects only unusual changes, so the amature security guard doesn't have to look at an empty strech of fence forever on the off chance a Terrorist might show up.
The problem I see is the filtering of "unusual changes". Obviously, although most cameras will be looking at areas that have no movement and no change and are generally boring, some will be focused on gates, or on areas bordered by public streets and sidewalks. Those places will have a lot of movement and change. The software can't send the watchers an alert every time a car goes through a security gate or drives down a street, so it'll have to filter out a lot of activity that is "routine". So, all a Terrorist has to do to circumvent this is to do something inocuous every day near a camera until it's time to strike, when he goes to the exact same place and does the same thing, except with a lethal twist. The program has already filtered him out, so no alert is sent to the watchers.
On one hand, this would force terrorists to establish patterns before they struck, which would be better than nothing.
On the other hand, this type of preparation is similar to how they planned for 9/11. They did a lot of dry runs on airport security to figure out what would be suspicious and what wouldn't. These cameras would be a similar hurdle.
A significant difference between the cameras and airport security is that a Terrorist testing airport security probably has a good idea every time he alerts the suspicions of airport security guards, while, in regard to these cameras, he would not have any idea when his actions were sent to watchers. So figuring out what works and what doesn't would be less certain.
Still, having people watch the perimiters of soft targets would probably help the watchers feel better if nothing else. (Everyone keeps making jokes about Homeland Security because it seems to be giving advice on how to survive terrorism, and no real suggestions of how to prevent terrorism. This would allow us to feel that we're doing Something) Also, the filtering would probably be improved over time, so that something that might go unnoticed one year can be recognized the next.
Bartleby, an independant movie released last year with Crispin Glover is one of the best of underapreciated movies I've ever seen. If you thought "Office Space" was funny and subversive, you don't know what you're missing. Bartleby is far more subversive than that (rather bland) movie and insidiously funny. I don't know why this movie didn't get more press.
In addition to being very funny, the movie is also and adaption of Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener", and a brilliant one at that. "Bartleby the Scrivener" is about as depressing a story as you can find. To realize the potential for humor inside that story was a stroke of genius.
The one problem with the movie is that, the last 5 minutes are pedagogical. But that's not so bad either. If you didn't want to figure out the deeper meaning of the story when you read it, the movie explains it to you. If you don't need to be taught, you can simply turn the movie off at the last scene. That's a much better system than those movies that try to hammer home their point throughout the movie, destroying the narrative flow in order to say something.
It's too bad the movie didn't get wider public notice. The one consolation is that it will be shown to high-school american lit. classes for years to come.
Thanks for the clarification. Popular election of the Senate does throw the whole scheme out of whack. (I have, of course, been acustomed to thinking of popular elections as a good thing). The main problem I have with it is that I don't know how to insure the Senators against corruption by lobbyists. I admit that, because of the number of constituents per senator, there is very little safeguard against it with the present system. Also, the benefit of taking power away from Washington would probably outweight the danger of corruption.
Not to mention that it would make voters more concerned with what their local politicians are doing, which is definitely a good thing.
I should read The Federalist Papers again; it's been so long that I've forgotten them. That's where the user name comes from, by the way. It doesn't mean anything other than I though John Jay was an interesting footnote in history at the time I became a slashdot user (I didn't want to take Hamilton or Madison in case someone who knew what they were talking about wanted those names).
Sorry I can't offer any insights besides agreeing with you. You obviously know more about this than I have forgotten.
I knew there was a reason the EC was a good thing. By the time I finished blowing off steam I had forgotten that thread. Thanks for correcting me.
That website presents a pretty comprehensive argument, and it does raise the specter of complications my friends and I haven't discussed in our barroom arguments. I'll have to ruminate on this for a bit outside of working hours. Thanks for the links.
On a lesser note: after rereading the 17th amendment, I don't quite understand what your objection to it is.
Having easier registration rules is only one part of the solution, and won't really fix much in the current system. Because the most states have a "winner take all" system, any candidate that doesn't have enormous numbers of backers to begin with isn't going to win anyways. The rest of the solution to this is to have representational voting and runoff elections.
If you are voting in Massachusetts or Texas, and you vote against the state-wide party bias, your vote is thrown away. The winner takes all the electoral seats in the state and you wasted your time voting. (The electoral college, by the way, should go, too, but it's small fry compared to the other problems). This is the main reason the two parties are still in power.
The problem with proportional voting, is that the winner may not have a mandate (not that that has stopped Bush, but in theory it should be a problem). So, if no candidate gets a majority, you have a run-off among the top contenders.
Think of how this would have worked in the last election. The people who were on the fence about Nader vs. Gore would have voted for Nader. Nader would have won somewhere between 5-15% of the vote, enough to be an obvious contender instead of being covered up with statistics (he got no electoral votes, he couldn't have had an important position). Then, Bush and Gore would have had a run-off, with a Dem/Rep winning. So far, it's business as usual. In 2004, Nader's party would have much more clout since they got somewhere between 1/9th to 1/3rd of the votes that the major parties got. They would be able to get more air-time and respect instead of having to start over from basically zero. A multiparty system would appear within 4 election cycles.
Now that I think about it, getting rid of the electoral college would have the same effect as insisting on proportional represntation of electoral college seats. If 15m people live in a state, and 13m votes go to the Republican candidate, the other 2m would protest if their votes were also counted as votes for the Republican. However, since there is this "electoral college" gimick, people don't seem to notice/care that they aren't represented.
That was an excellent description. Thanks.
Another great use would be enabling the keyboard switch from standard English alphabet characters to Chinese or Greek or whatever alphabet the user wanted. Admittedly, I've never been in a situation where two users comfortable with different alphabets used the same computer, but the problem must arise sometimes, and not having to switch keyboards would be nice. (possible example: a Chinese-American immigrant writing reports for his business in English and writing home to his parents in Cantonese?)
These are such a compelling arguments for in-person voting, that I am going to be against any online voting plans I hear proposed. This isn't because I'm afraid of my own vote being stolen or forced. I do not want to admit the danger of other voters being forced to vote against their will and nullifing the effect of my vote.
I don't think you're ignorant of economics, but I'm stuck at the same point you are. I don't know how to advance beyond the first question.
Money is just a universal means of exchange, so that for all stuff this equation should hold: X*money=Y*stuff. So, what you are saying is why are people still motivated by the desire to have more stuff.
Ever since A.Smith, it been generally believed that if everyone is powered by a burning desire for stuff and the ability to choose their employment, all the pieces needed for community life will naturally fall into place.
The problem is, this is based entirely on self-interest, and self-interest has been found through experience to be short-sighted. So, things like wellfare and public transportation and government can only be enacted by laws and threats (sure, there's a bit of a paradox about who makes the laws and threatens whom, but the short-sightedness helps work this out).
So critics point out that self interest alone does not make the economy work: there are things that self-interest does not make magically appear.
In addition, the current economic activity seems to prove these flaws. When the Bush team is at the reins, greed always seems to win over common sense and every change in regulation seems designed to benefit greedy rather than help the poor. The average observer worries that since the desire for stuff is so powerful that it can corrupt laws and regulations, maybe we should use another quality as the spur for the economy.
Here's an example of a replacement: A common slashdot sentiment is to posit an economy based on the "Desire for recognition and urge to explore". It's a nice idea, but no one has proven that it works; it sounds too utopian. And I personally can think of no proof for it.
So, motivation for money has very bad effects, but it has enormous benefits. Another theory will have to be proven to surpass the enormous benefits of the system in use today (and not have worse effects). And, the greatest challenge to capitalism failed spectacularly. People argue that's more a fault of the way the experiment in Socialism was carried out rather than a flaw in the theory of Socialism, but even if that's true, it still means that people will be nervous about going that way for quite some time.
In conclusion, I agree with you that question worth raising, but I don't have any idea where to go or an answer.
Those look very interesting. The guass rifle, especially, looks like the kind of thing that young boys would like. Thanks for the tips.