You seem to have a very deterministic view of history. I guess you don't believe we can ever learn from our mistakes. Where is there room for free choice?
Personally I don't have anything against mcdonald's - except for the fact that they don't serve food there. But then I make it a choice of mine never to eat there, so I live blissfully ignorant to them for the most part.
You have been mis-informed.
The truth was that the american government was given a request by the japanese to begin a peace negotiation process almost a week before the first nuke was dropped on Hiroshima. There is every indication that the japanese government had already decided that it was time to get out of the war and were completely prepared to make real peace.
The American government ignored this request, and instead nuked two highly populated japanese cities in order to demonstrate ( mainly to the russian soviets ) that they were both able and willing to use this weapon. Also this gave them the oportunity to actually force the japanese to complete surrender rather than simply negotiate a peace which would have left japan unoccupied with american forces.
Sorry to have to correct you on a number of things:
Just look at Switzerland - the oldest democracy, and they are required to be armed.
Well actually Switzerland is not the oldest democracy. Anyone who's taken a bit of history knows that Athens was the first state to institute democracy. And even the Roman republic held elections. The first 3 Swiss cantons to create the confederation that eventually grew into the country of Switzerland first banded together in 1391, and the vikings had a system of elected chieftains and kings much earlier than this. As for where one draws the line of real "democracy" - the Swiss have always had a tradition of communal consensus in their government - but there was no established or pan-Swiss standards for this until Napoleon came and reformed the country's federal government in the image of the french republic.
As for the military tradition here, you're quite right - every man between 18 and 40 is required to do 2 weeks of military service every year. They are required to keep their military weapons and ammunition in their homes so that they can be ready to go to fight at any time. The Swiss Alps are riddled with bunkers, hidden gun batteries, underground tunnels etc. Also every building larger than a house built since the 1950s has to have bomb shelters in the basement - and the local governments maintain lists of how much bomb shelter space there is and who is assigned to what shelters.
It is interesting to note that the two countries with the lowest rates of violence with firearms in the world are Sweden and Switzerland. Sweden has the lowest personal gun ownership in Europe and Switzerland the highest. Just goes to show what culture does for people.
HUMOUR TYPE="in-joke" CLASS="slashdot"
Hmmm - looks like the ICAN II is not equipped with hexagonal jets. I guess the designers at NASA haven't been spending enough time in 1950s bathrooms to truly understand the subtle complexities of Zarathustra, Odysseyus and why the Trojan horse has "NO MEAT". /HUMOUR
Because Canada doesn't have anybody who is really an expert on building and operating launch vehicles, and the extra cost of pulling a team together and have them figure it out is much too much $$$. We build the probe, and hire someone else to shoot it up there.
First off, I applaud Wheat for coming back to give such a thorough response to the criticism of his book. I like to see good debates, they keep everyone on their toes.
However, I think that Wheat is simply wrong in a lot of what he says, both in his analysis of the film and in his response to the criticism.
Largely he defends his analysis on the grounds of his being able to see the "non-literal" symbolism of elements from the film, whereas Lampe is demanding a "literal" symbolism. I think that this is a mis-representation.
It is of course true that in literature we cannot take everything literally - to do so would make most great works meaningless, especially all poetic language. The human mind works in an associational manner, not a literal one; and great works of art are great precisely because they communicate with us on levels other than the literal.
This being said, I still think that a lot of the symbols Wheat chooses to see in 2001 are really just as Loony as Lampe points them out to be. How can I be so certain though, given that we want to look at the non-literal associational aspects of this work. Well quite simply. A symbol in a work of art has to be well-known enough that it is generally understandable by the audience, otherwise it ceases to be an element of the art, and merely the idiosyncratic associations of one individual.
A work of art, particularly something narative like a book or movie, must communicate, otherwise it is meaningless. This is true of both literal meanings and non-literal symbolism. If an artist puts elements into a work that are personally meanningful to him/herself but which aren't generally known to others than they can't reasonably expect anyone to understand or appreciate or even notice that these things exist. Therefore as a general rule artists don't do this, because it defeats the purpose of the art which is to express and communicate a meaning or message. It is true that some meanings and symbols might be visible only to people versed in a select culture or education, and their maybe hidden meanings that are only to be noticed by those with a special knowledge. But even in these circumstances it should be apparent that someone educated in field X will generally recognize references to X when they appear. If not than the art has failed.
So to say that something as obscure as a correlation between the year 2001, the number 9000 in the name Hal-9000 and the year related to Nietzche's Zarathustra ( 9001 ) are all a solid symbol is truly absurd. Even someone versed well in Nietzche would probably not notice this correlation, and therefore it seems very unlikely that this is intentional on the part of the film's creators. To say that any conceivable millenial year is a symbol for any other millenial year is absurd, not because it fundamentally can't be such a symbol, but that an audience isn't going to think that way unless the association is explicitly suggested to them by some other aspect of the film, which it isn't. Likewise to associate a hexagonal jet with bathroom tiles takes such an idiosyncratically unique perspective on such forms that it is pointless to work it into a film in a meaningful way.
Basically we see a lot of idiosyncratic personal association of Wheat's to these various elements, but to believe that because he has such an association therefore it must have been intentional on the part of Kubrick & Clarke is absurd. Given such criteria for literary analysis you can make up anything you like and have it be true.
One must have a literary criticism that is based on criteria that examines the art and the intentions the artist has to communicate through it. An expose of one man's personal associations to a piece of art might be interesting, but it has no claims to be anything more than that. This is not because of the nature of symbolism, but because of how we can realisticly attribute intention to a thing. If I had a personal association between a stop-sign and the death of my mother, it would be natural for me to feel sad when looking at a stop sign, but it would be psychosis for me to claim that the person who put the sign there wanted me to feel sad.
Since I've been in Switzerland ( about a year now ), I've noticed an amazing number of electric/hybrid/experimental car designs. They are much more popular than in the rest of Europe. I am told this is because the government invests heavily in paying for universities that love to have clever students play around and come up with lots of eccentric engineering designs.
Anyway, this is one vehicle that's quite popular here: The Twike. It's a hybrid electric/muscle power vehicle. Not really a car, more a souped-up bicycle. Great for commuting and going around town though.
I'm curious about your take on this point, since you seem more knowledgeable about these issues.
You say: 2. Diesel/biodiesel looks promising but a few problems remain - more polluting than normal gasoline, different performance issues, and such. However, they are more efficient overall. Paired with an electric motor, diesel engines could turn out to be cleaner and more effective than gasoline-only vehicles.
But the NYTimes article says: At the same time, compared with Europe, the United States has much dirtier diesel fuel - used by heavy trucks and in a slightly different form, as home heating oil - with far higher levels of sulphur.
Please respond. If you're knowledge of the cleanliness of diesel is based on North American grade diesel, wouldn't a switch to European-grade change this problem?
You say: [...] but really it is just a branch of the modern military, and a legitimate form of defense.
The report says: ( section 13.2 ) What is important is that its purpose is to intercept private and commercial communications, and not military communications.
You say: At the end of the day, Echelon is controlled by our democratic governments, and the information it reveals is used responsibly.
The report says: ( also section 13.2 ) As the protection of EU citizens depends on the legal situations in the individual Member States, which vary widely, and since in some cases parliamentary control bodies do not even exist, the degree of protection can hardly be said to be adequate.
I also wonder whether you have a brain in your head.
You say: It provided much defense against the nazi threat in WWII.
Yes, and if the Romans hadn't beat off the Carthaginians, we'd all be speaking Carthaginian-derived languages today. And if the Anglo-Saxons, of which you are so proud ( and yes I am one too ), hadn't killed the Britons and stolen their lands, we'd all be speaking some variation of Welsh. And if the Anglo-Saxons hadn't had their butts kicked by William the Conqueror, we'd all be speaking something much more like Dutch. And if the Austrians hadn't beaten off the Turks, we'd all be speaking Turkish.
My point is: beating down an invader or an oppressor in the past hardly gives you moral justification for being an invader and an oppressor today. Just because Echelon-like systems were used to defeat the Nazis and provide valuable information on the Soviets doesn't mean that its OK to be using it to spy on private people and businesses today.
You say: [...] our democratic Anglo Saxon realms [...] we should be strong, proud and altruistic [...] in its defense of the Anglo Saxon worldview [...]
Whoa, hold on there bucko!
Take off the white hood and put down the burning cross. Maybe its just me, but you sure do make yourself sound awfully racist talking like this.
Sure, the Echelon nations were settled/conquered/plundered largely by people of the British Iles, and they compose the dominant populations. But don't forget that within the UK, USA, Australia, NZ, Canada, there are many many non Anglo-Saxon people who are perfectly good citizens and share the same "values" you speak of. If you try to exclude them from being worthy of the same rights as others, you automatically invalidate your claims to any kind of democratic righteousnous. Also there are many Anglo-Saxons among us ( myself included ) who feel that this kind of espionage and surveillance of people and businesses, whatever their nationality is wrong and immoral. Evidently this "strong, proud and altruistic" nature you seem so misty-eyed about is not a genetic trait of Anglo-Saxon stock.
You seem very certain that the activities of the Intelligence agencies are scrutinized very thoroughly by the democratic bodies governing those nations. I think you need something of an education in the realities of the intelligence world. The truth is that most intelligence agencies operate with very little accountability to the public or to democratically elected officials. They operate this way by design as well as by convention.
As for the case of the UK, they are a member in some respects of the European Union and European community, and are moving towards more integration with Europe - and not with the "Anglo Saxon realms". As members of the European Union they would be in violation of treaties and human rights conventions to conduct or allow surveillance of European citizens. All this is outline in the report under discussion here - if you had bothered to read it.
In conclusion I've got to say that anyone who values democracy as you seem to should not subscribe to the hypocrisy of accepting any "undemocratic knife" to be used against anybody anywhere! This is contrary to the whole spirit and beliefs of this "Anglo Saxon worldview" and form the basis and constitution of all these "Anglo Saxon realms". To quote from one of the most eloquent "Anglo-Saxons" on this subject:
"He who sacrifices freedom for security will neither have nor deserve either"
-- Thomas Jefferson ( also Ben. Franklin said something very similar )
-- Begin NSA Keyword Spam --
Bomb Cocaine President Nuclear Suitcase Bomb
[... you get the idea...]
Computer Terrorism, Firewalls, Secure Internet Connections, ISS, Passwords,Encryption, Espionage
-- End NSA Keyword Spam --
2600 sued for publication of DeGMC source
on
2600 v. Ford Motors
·
· Score: 3
HUMOUR TYPE=SARCASM
In a related story, General Motors Corp. said they would be launching a second independant lawsuite against 2600 for their publishing of DeGMC source code.
This software potentially allows users to break the digital encryption on General Motors cars and trucks. A spokesman for the car manufacturer said: "This clearly infringes upon our intellectual property rights, and can seriously damage our business. What would happen if instead of paying us for the millions it costs us to manufacture and develop new cars, people were just downloading "cracked" versions from the internet?"
Emmanuel Goldstein, of the 2600 "hacker" magazine, defended the software on the grounds of fair-use laws: "This software is purely for the private use of individuals wishing to make full use of their GMC vehicles under existing fair use laws. It is simply impractical for most individuals to pirate whole automobiles, especially given the extensive cost of the bandwidth necessary to download a working GMC car or truck."
He also pointed out that the auto manufacturing giant is unable to show any real cases of this software being used to create stolen cars.
GMC lawyers said that the arguments of 2600 would be unlikely to stand up in court, and in a press release yesterday described the software as a "digital coat-hanger", and as a tool to aid car thieves. /HUMOUR
Surprised nobody noticed some of the glaring holes
in the technical quality of this article. Its really sad that tech writers on average have such a lousy grasp of what they're talking about and/or that they end up garbling facts trying to talk-down to the level of the average joe public.
Its also sad that so many of these articles end up on/. Example from the above article:
"Web browsers wait for data on port 80 and 8080"
Maybe I'm just being persnickity - but I've never had mozilla running from my inetd.
It is true the industrial revolution era factory workers did work longer on average than we work today, but if you look further back in history you will find that the average number of hours worked at almost any period was much less - and with many more holidays.
Average amount of work per day by stone-age hunter gatherers to survive: 2 hours.
"I can personally see where this has huge benefits. For example, if my Grandmother was in the hospital in critical condition, I would feel alot easier knowing I can check that she's OK anytime during the day by simply going to a web site. This frees up time for families with sick relatives and allows them to do such things as go to work to pay for the bills."
I don't know about anyone else - but personally I think this is the saddest comment on society that I've seen in a long time. Not only are people so disinterested in their older generation that they shove them off into isolated "communities" to whither and descend into dementia and death, but now you're saying you can't even be bothered to take time out of your working schedule to go visit your grandmother as she dies? That's totally sick and demented.
Sorry Granny, but honestly nobody likes you 'cause you're old and no longer a productive member of the tribe - so we're not going to give your dying hours more attention than a few clicks on a website.
Old people don't want to be stuffed off in retirement communities with lots of senile people. They want to be with their families. They want to have meaningful contact with LUCID people - just like everybody else. But how often have we heard the same thing: no time for granny, put her in a home, no time for little billy let the TV or some strangers raise him. Got to be productive, got to work. And then we wonder why kids grow up to kill each other and people generally feel like society is slipping?
In general people in our society work too much. Never before in the history of mankind have people spent so much time working and considered it normal. Even slaves in the Roman empire had more time off than your average worker today. We're amazingly rich as a society, we have technology that even a few decades ago would only have been fanciful stories - and are we enjoying the benefits of any of it?
An example where a perfect digital copy is absolutely necessary - any digital text.
With images and sound, the dropoff in quality is a gradual degredation, and it is hard to draw firm lines as to exactly when and where the image is no longer the same image anymore - or when the sound is no longer the same sound. Because it is a gradual drop-off there will always be some variation from person to person as to when that point is.
However, with a text it is a simple matter. You either have the text, complete and whole, or you don't have it. If I buy a cdrom with the complete works of william shakespeare on it, I need to be able to copy out the text of hamlet exactly. If the text gets mangled or corrupted in the copying process, it ceases to be the same text and therefore the copying process involved is insufficient for my rights of fair use. Hamlet's solliloquy is a given set of text, and as soon as you lose or change a few letters or words, it is no longer Hamlet's solliloquy - simple as that.
Now, if we take this one step further, and say that by its very nature any digital medium is a "textual" representation of audible / visible media, then the extension of the above becomes clear. In an analogue medium, there is no clear-cut way of transcribing an image or a sound exactly, and so a degredation of quality is intrinsic to the copying process. But a digital medium, by reducing any analogue media to a common set of binary values, it "textualizes" that medium - creating a set that is exactly reproduceable.
Now any cd or dvd player or computer acts as a very rapid "textual interpreter" reading and analyzing what is essentially a long body of written information and interpreting it into a form of sound and / or video. Now when we are sold a cd or a dvd, what we are purchasing is exactly that - a body of "text". We are not licensing the right to interpret that "text" as music necessarily, but we are purchasing that "text" as a finished product. So anything that prevents one from copying this "text" in its entirety is preventing fair use, because the resulting copy is no longer the same thing as the purchased product.
We might accept that there is no getting around a loss in quality when one makes a copy of a symphony from an LP to an audio cassette, but I think it would be absurd to accept that dropping a few notes here and there from a musical score of that same symphony would in any way qualify it for being "good enough" for fair use.
So in a nutshell, that's my perspective. Digital media have to either be exactly reproduceable or they simply are no longer the same thing.
Most important, Wladawsky-Berger said, the machines will be so simple that they will be no more difficult to operate than a kitchen appliance. That should reduce the need for highly skilled workers who are in increasingly short supply.
The reason that kitchen appliances are easy to use is that they have very little in the way of parts and function - they are SIMPLE machines. The reason that computers - ESPECIALLY servers are not easy to operate is that they have very very many parts ( both hardware-wise and software-wise ), they are very complexe machines and require in depth knowledge and skills.
Adding more and more sophisticated technologies into a computer ( such as self-diagnosing systems ) makes them MORE complexe, not less. This is pretty much a fundamental of technology:
More parts == More complexe == More breakdowns == More training & knowledge needed to operate
In this particular case they will either need to create this software to be very detailed and sophisticated in its configurations - to handle all the possibilities of a sophisticated server and the particular demands of one, or they will have to make the software just choose a lot of settings for you. In the first case the user who sets up and maintains the self-maintenance software will have to understand all the ins and outs of the server anyway - otherwise he/she wouldn't be able to configure it properly. In the second case the software becomes quite stupid and pointless - because if you can't configure it to your system, what's the point?
In the end there is no real reduction of need for skilled and knowledgeable server admins - just less need for them to be poking around in text files, and more need for them to be poking around in option menus - that's all.
id (which, for some reason, prefers to spell its name in all lower case)
I always thought this was to keep people from thinking it was I.D. ( as in: "please show me some I.D." ), because it is not supposed to be that but rather id ( as in the psychological term: ego / id ). And keeping the name in all lowercase was to aid in the clarity of that. I might be wrong, of course, but that's always been my thinking about it.
The FBI wants YOUR log files ( insert unlce same here )
So why don't we give them to them? How would things stand if slashdot and 20 other websites just voluntarily submitted their log files to a few select members at the DOJ. Say, one email per page-view, you know, just 'cause they were so interested in seeing them.
This would give a new meaning to the word slashdot effect.
Designed primarily for reconnaissance, the Global Hawk also could be equipped with eavesdropping devices such as those aboard the EP-3E Aries II spy plane being held by China, Ettinger said.
Northrop has built five Global Hawks so far. One crashed in 1999 when it accidentally received a test signal ordering it to terminate its flight by spiraling into the ground. Two more are being built, with further production to begin this fall.
[... ]
maybe someone will hack the control signals and fly it to their home?"
So in the future the chinese won't need to crash their fighter jets to get ahold of american spy plane - they'll just hire a few radio geeks. Now that's progress.
But you're using an economic scale of measurement to judge what is and is not "human" worth. Thinking in this way is exactly ( IMHO ) what makes for a world of economic disparity. There is more to the value and worth of human life than can be judged merely by economics. And creating an economic measuring stick brings all human life down to its most trivial and base level.
However, I don't think I can disagree with you that the amounts of money spent on the space program could have been used to feed and help people. This is perfectly true - it could have, just as in theory all the money which US citizens spend on coca-cola and pepsi in one week could feed all the malnurished poor children in america for a year. If only people would spend there money differently - if only these companies were more generous, if only, if only.
But your argument belies two important things:
As somebody else mentioned: Canada and the US spend much more every year both internally and internationally on humanitarian aid of various kinds. I somehow doubt that this difference would make the problems of world hunger, disease etc. disappear.
If we stop funding long term R&D in favour of short-term humanitarian aid, we are abondoning a valuable and important avenue of increasing the standards of living across the board for all humans in the future. And we'd be doing it because of our 'conscience' - and that's because of emotional value. The ONLY thing in history which has ever yielded lasting improvements in the standards of living has been new technology. Fire, the Wheel, Agriculture, Irrigation, Public Sewage and Plumbing, electricity, etc. The list goes on and on. This is the only historically proven way to create lasting change in our overall quality of life. Abandoning this in the name of humanitarian purposes would be quite literally cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Its a very short-term kind of ethical system you're looking at were immediate use of dollars yields what immediate gains. I call that a very narrowly scoped ethical system. There are long-term benefits that can't be accounted for in dollars and cents terms because we have no way of tracking their returns over such long periods. Saying that we should therefore abandon these methods because of our own ignorance is a very poor policy.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to have a very deterministic view of history. I guess you don't believe we can ever learn from our mistakes. Where is there room for free choice?
Personally I don't have anything against mcdonald's - except for the fact that they don't serve food there. But then I make it a choice of mine never to eat there, so I live blissfully ignorant to them for the most part.
Oh yeah?
Go read the html spec, fuckwit
The truth was that the american government was given a request by the japanese to begin a peace negotiation process almost a week before the first nuke was dropped on Hiroshima. There is every indication that the japanese government had already decided that it was time to get out of the war and were completely prepared to make real peace.
The American government ignored this request, and instead nuked two highly populated japanese cities in order to demonstrate ( mainly to the russian soviets ) that they were both able and willing to use this weapon. Also this gave them the oportunity to actually force the japanese to complete surrender rather than simply negotiate a peace which would have left japan unoccupied with american forces.
Just look at Switzerland - the oldest democracy, and they are required to be armed.
Well actually Switzerland is not the oldest democracy. Anyone who's taken a bit of history knows that Athens was the first state to institute democracy. And even the Roman republic held elections. The first 3 Swiss cantons to create the confederation that eventually grew into the country of Switzerland first banded together in 1391, and the vikings had a system of elected chieftains and kings much earlier than this. As for where one draws the line of real "democracy" - the Swiss have always had a tradition of communal consensus in their government - but there was no established or pan-Swiss standards for this until Napoleon came and reformed the country's federal government in the image of the french republic.
As for the military tradition here, you're quite right - every man between 18 and 40 is required to do 2 weeks of military service every year. They are required to keep their military weapons and ammunition in their homes so that they can be ready to go to fight at any time. The Swiss Alps are riddled with bunkers, hidden gun batteries, underground tunnels etc. Also every building larger than a house built since the 1950s has to have bomb shelters in the basement - and the local governments maintain lists of how much bomb shelter space there is and who is assigned to what shelters.
It is interesting to note that the two countries with the lowest rates of violence with firearms in the world are Sweden and Switzerland. Sweden has the lowest personal gun ownership in Europe and Switzerland the highest. Just goes to show what culture does for people.
HUMOUR TYPE="in-joke" CLASS="slashdot"
/HUMOUR
Hmmm - looks like the ICAN II is not equipped with hexagonal jets. I guess the designers at NASA haven't been spending enough time in 1950s bathrooms to truly understand the subtle complexities of Zarathustra, Odysseyus and why the Trojan horse has "NO MEAT".
I have been dying for a Yopy since I first read about them! I want [ drool ], gasp, I need !
Because Canada doesn't have anybody who is really an expert on building and operating launch vehicles, and the extra cost of pulling a team together and have them figure it out is much too much $$$. We build the probe, and hire someone else to shoot it up there.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Your sig says:
Anything that can possibly happen, will eventually happen
I love irony.
Yes, thanks =)
However, I think that Wheat is simply wrong in a lot of what he says, both in his analysis of the film and in his response to the criticism.
Largely he defends his analysis on the grounds of his being able to see the "non-literal" symbolism of elements from the film, whereas Lampe is demanding a "literal" symbolism. I think that this is a mis-representation.
It is of course true that in literature we cannot take everything literally - to do so would make most great works meaningless, especially all poetic language. The human mind works in an associational manner, not a literal one; and great works of art are great precisely because they communicate with us on levels other than the literal.
This being said, I still think that a lot of the symbols Wheat chooses to see in 2001 are really just as Loony as Lampe points them out to be. How can I be so certain though, given that we want to look at the non-literal associational aspects of this work. Well quite simply. A symbol in a work of art has to be well-known enough that it is generally understandable by the audience, otherwise it ceases to be an element of the art, and merely the idiosyncratic associations of one individual.
A work of art, particularly something narative like a book or movie, must communicate, otherwise it is meaningless. This is true of both literal meanings and non-literal symbolism. If an artist puts elements into a work that are personally meanningful to him/herself but which aren't generally known to others than they can't reasonably expect anyone to understand or appreciate or even notice that these things exist. Therefore as a general rule artists don't do this, because it defeats the purpose of the art which is to express and communicate a meaning or message. It is true that some meanings and symbols might be visible only to people versed in a select culture or education, and their maybe hidden meanings that are only to be noticed by those with a special knowledge. But even in these circumstances it should be apparent that someone educated in field X will generally recognize references to X when they appear. If not than the art has failed.
So to say that something as obscure as a correlation between the year 2001, the number 9000 in the name Hal-9000 and the year related to Nietzche's Zarathustra ( 9001 ) are all a solid symbol is truly absurd. Even someone versed well in Nietzche would probably not notice this correlation, and therefore it seems very unlikely that this is intentional on the part of the film's creators. To say that any conceivable millenial year is a symbol for any other millenial year is absurd, not because it fundamentally can't be such a symbol, but that an audience isn't going to think that way unless the association is explicitly suggested to them by some other aspect of the film, which it isn't. Likewise to associate a hexagonal jet with bathroom tiles takes such an idiosyncratically unique perspective on such forms that it is pointless to work it into a film in a meaningful way.
Basically we see a lot of idiosyncratic personal association of Wheat's to these various elements, but to believe that because he has such an association therefore it must have been intentional on the part of Kubrick & Clarke is absurd. Given such criteria for literary analysis you can make up anything you like and have it be true.
One must have a literary criticism that is based on criteria that examines the art and the intentions the artist has to communicate through it. An expose of one man's personal associations to a piece of art might be interesting, but it has no claims to be anything more than that. This is not because of the nature of symbolism, but because of how we can realisticly attribute intention to a thing. If I had a personal association between a stop-sign and the death of my mother, it would be natural for me to feel sad when looking at a stop sign, but it would be psychosis for me to claim that the person who put the sign there wanted me to feel sad.
Anyway, this is one vehicle that's quite popular here: The Twike. It's a hybrid electric/muscle power vehicle. Not really a car, more a souped-up bicycle. Great for commuting and going around town though.
You say:
2. Diesel/biodiesel looks promising but a few problems remain - more polluting than normal gasoline, different performance issues, and such. However, they are more efficient overall. Paired with an electric motor, diesel engines could turn out to be cleaner and more effective than gasoline-only vehicles.
But the NYTimes article says:
At the same time, compared with Europe, the United States has much dirtier diesel fuel - used by heavy trucks and in a slightly different form, as home heating oil - with far higher levels of sulphur.
Please respond. If you're knowledge of the cleanliness of diesel is based on North American grade diesel, wouldn't a switch to European-grade change this problem?
You say:
[...] but really it is just a branch of the modern military, and a legitimate form of defense.
The report says: ( section 13.2 )
What is important is that its purpose is to intercept private and commercial communications, and not military communications.
You say:
At the end of the day, Echelon is controlled by our democratic governments, and the information it reveals is used responsibly.
The report says: ( also section 13.2 )
As the protection of EU citizens depends on the legal situations in the individual Member States, which vary widely, and since in some cases parliamentary control bodies do not even exist, the degree of protection can hardly be said to be adequate.
I also wonder whether you have a brain in your head.
You say:
It provided much defense against the nazi threat in WWII.
Yes, and if the Romans hadn't beat off the Carthaginians, we'd all be speaking Carthaginian-derived languages today. And if the Anglo-Saxons, of which you are so proud ( and yes I am one too ), hadn't killed the Britons and stolen their lands, we'd all be speaking some variation of Welsh. And if the Anglo-Saxons hadn't had their butts kicked by William the Conqueror, we'd all be speaking something much more like Dutch. And if the Austrians hadn't beaten off the Turks, we'd all be speaking Turkish.
My point is: beating down an invader or an oppressor in the past hardly gives you moral justification for being an invader and an oppressor today. Just because Echelon-like systems were used to defeat the Nazis and provide valuable information on the Soviets doesn't mean that its OK to be using it to spy on private people and businesses today.
You say:
[...] our democratic Anglo Saxon realms [...] we should be strong, proud and altruistic [...] in its defense of the Anglo Saxon worldview [...]
Whoa, hold on there bucko!
Take off the white hood and put down the burning cross. Maybe its just me, but you sure do make yourself sound awfully racist talking like this.
Sure, the Echelon nations were settled/conquered/plundered largely by people of the British Iles, and they compose the dominant populations. But don't forget that within the UK, USA, Australia, NZ, Canada, there are many many non Anglo-Saxon people who are perfectly good citizens and share the same "values" you speak of. If you try to exclude them from being worthy of the same rights as others, you automatically invalidate your claims to any kind of democratic righteousnous. Also there are many Anglo-Saxons among us ( myself included ) who feel that this kind of espionage and surveillance of people and businesses, whatever their nationality is wrong and immoral. Evidently this "strong, proud and altruistic" nature you seem so misty-eyed about is not a genetic trait of Anglo-Saxon stock.
You seem very certain that the activities of the Intelligence agencies are scrutinized very thoroughly by the democratic bodies governing those nations. I think you need something of an education in the realities of the intelligence world. The truth is that most intelligence agencies operate with very little accountability to the public or to democratically elected officials. They operate this way by design as well as by convention.
As for the case of the UK, they are a member in some respects of the European Union and European community, and are moving towards more integration with Europe - and not with the "Anglo Saxon realms". As members of the European Union they would be in violation of treaties and human rights conventions to conduct or allow surveillance of European citizens. All this is outline in the report under discussion here - if you had bothered to read it.
In conclusion I've got to say that anyone who values democracy as you seem to should not subscribe to the hypocrisy of accepting any "undemocratic knife" to be used against anybody anywhere! This is contrary to the whole spirit and beliefs of this "Anglo Saxon worldview" and form the basis and constitution of all these "Anglo Saxon realms". To quote from one of the most eloquent "Anglo-Saxons" on this subject:
"He who sacrifices freedom for security will neither have nor deserve either"
-- Thomas Jefferson ( also Ben. Franklin said something very similar )
--
...]
Cheers,
corvi42
-- Begin NSA Keyword Spam --
Bomb Cocaine President Nuclear Suitcase Bomb
[... you get the idea
Computer Terrorism, Firewalls, Secure Internet Connections, ISS, Passwords,Encryption, Espionage
-- End NSA Keyword Spam --
In a related story, General Motors Corp. said they would be launching a second independant lawsuite against 2600 for their publishing of DeGMC source code.
This software potentially allows users to break the digital encryption on General Motors cars and trucks. A spokesman for the car manufacturer said: "This clearly infringes upon our intellectual property rights, and can seriously damage our business. What would happen if instead of paying us for the millions it costs us to manufacture and develop new cars, people were just downloading "cracked" versions from the internet?"
Emmanuel Goldstein, of the 2600 "hacker" magazine, defended the software on the grounds of fair-use laws: "This software is purely for the private use of individuals wishing to make full use of their GMC vehicles under existing fair use laws. It is simply impractical for most individuals to pirate whole automobiles, especially given the extensive cost of the bandwidth necessary to download a working GMC car or truck."
He also pointed out that the auto manufacturing giant is unable to show any real cases of this software being used to create stolen cars.
GMC lawyers said that the arguments of 2600 would be unlikely to stand up in court, and in a press release yesterday described the software as a "digital coat-hanger", and as a tool to aid car thieves.
/HUMOUR
Surprised nobody noticed some of the glaring holes
/. Example from the above article:
in the technical quality of this article. Its really sad that tech writers on average have such a lousy grasp of what they're talking about and/or that they end up garbling facts trying to talk-down to the level of the average joe public.
Its also sad that so many of these articles end up on
"Web browsers wait for data on port 80 and 8080"
Maybe I'm just being persnickity - but I've never had mozilla running from my inetd.
I'm sorry, but you're very much misinformed.
It is true the industrial revolution era factory workers did work longer on average than we work today, but if you look further back in history you will find that the average number of hours worked at almost any period was much less - and with many more holidays.
Average amount of work per day by stone-age hunter gatherers to survive: 2 hours.
I don't know about anyone else - but personally I think this is the saddest comment on society that I've seen in a long time. Not only are people so disinterested in their older generation that they shove them off into isolated "communities" to whither and descend into dementia and death, but now you're saying you can't even be bothered to take time out of your working schedule to go visit your grandmother as she dies? That's totally sick and demented.
Sorry Granny, but honestly nobody likes you 'cause you're old and no longer a productive member of the tribe - so we're not going to give your dying hours more attention than a few clicks on a website.
Old people don't want to be stuffed off in retirement communities with lots of senile people. They want to be with their families. They want to have meaningful contact with LUCID people - just like everybody else. But how often have we heard the same thing: no time for granny, put her in a home, no time for little billy let the TV or some strangers raise him. Got to be productive, got to work. And then we wonder why kids grow up to kill each other and people generally feel like society is slipping?
In general people in our society work too much. Never before in the history of mankind have people spent so much time working and considered it normal. Even slaves in the Roman empire had more time off than your average worker today. We're amazingly rich as a society, we have technology that even a few decades ago would only have been fanciful stories - and are we enjoying the benefits of any of it?
Something to think about anyway....
An example where a perfect digital copy is absolutely necessary - any digital text.
With images and sound, the dropoff in quality is a gradual degredation, and it is hard to draw firm lines as to exactly when and where the image is no longer the same image anymore - or when the sound is no longer the same sound. Because it is a gradual drop-off there will always be some variation from person to person as to when that point is.
However, with a text it is a simple matter. You either have the text, complete and whole, or you don't have it. If I buy a cdrom with the complete works of william shakespeare on it, I need to be able to copy out the text of hamlet exactly. If the text gets mangled or corrupted in the copying process, it ceases to be the same text and therefore the copying process involved is insufficient for my rights of fair use. Hamlet's solliloquy is a given set of text, and as soon as you lose or change a few letters or words, it is no longer Hamlet's solliloquy - simple as that.
Now, if we take this one step further, and say that by its very nature any digital medium is a "textual" representation of audible / visible media, then the extension of the above becomes clear. In an analogue medium, there is no clear-cut way of transcribing an image or a sound exactly, and so a degredation of quality is intrinsic to the copying process. But a digital medium, by reducing any analogue media to a common set of binary values, it "textualizes" that medium - creating a set that is exactly reproduceable.
Now any cd or dvd player or computer acts as a very rapid "textual interpreter" reading and analyzing what is essentially a long body of written information and interpreting it into a form of sound and / or video. Now when we are sold a cd or a dvd, what we are purchasing is exactly that - a body of "text". We are not licensing the right to interpret that "text" as music necessarily, but we are purchasing that "text" as a finished product. So anything that prevents one from copying this "text" in its entirety is preventing fair use, because the resulting copy is no longer the same thing as the purchased product.
We might accept that there is no getting around a loss in quality when one makes a copy of a symphony from an LP to an audio cassette, but I think it would be absurd to accept that dropping a few notes here and there from a musical score of that same symphony would in any way qualify it for being "good enough" for fair use.
So in a nutshell, that's my perspective. Digital media have to either be exactly reproduceable or they simply are no longer the same thing.
The reason that kitchen appliances are easy to use is that they have very little in the way of parts and function - they are SIMPLE machines. The reason that computers - ESPECIALLY servers are not easy to operate is that they have very very many parts ( both hardware-wise and software-wise ), they are very complexe machines and require in depth knowledge and skills.
Adding more and more sophisticated technologies into a computer ( such as self-diagnosing systems ) makes them MORE complexe, not less. This is pretty much a fundamental of technology:
In this particular case they will either need to create this software to be very detailed and sophisticated in its configurations - to handle all the possibilities of a sophisticated server and the particular demands of one, or they will have to make the software just choose a lot of settings for you. In the first case the user who sets up and maintains the self-maintenance software will have to understand all the ins and outs of the server anyway - otherwise he/she wouldn't be able to configure it properly. In the second case the software becomes quite stupid and pointless - because if you can't configure it to your system, what's the point?In the end there is no real reduction of need for skilled and knowledgeable server admins - just less need for them to be poking around in text files, and more need for them to be poking around in option menus - that's all.
I always thought this was to keep people from thinking it was I.D. ( as in: "please show me some I.D." ), because it is not supposed to be that but rather id ( as in the psychological term: ego / id ). And keeping the name in all lowercase was to aid in the clarity of that. I might be wrong, of course, but that's always been my thinking about it.
The FBI wants YOUR log files ( insert unlce same here )
So why don't we give them to them? How would things stand if slashdot and 20 other websites just voluntarily submitted their log files to a few select members at the DOJ. Say, one email per page-view, you know, just 'cause they were so interested in seeing them.
This would give a new meaning to the word slashdot effect.
Northrop has built five Global Hawks so far. One crashed in 1999 when it accidentally received a test signal ordering it to terminate its flight by spiraling into the ground. Two more are being built, with further production to begin this fall.
[ ... ]
maybe someone will hack the control signals and fly it to their home?"
So in the future the chinese won't need to crash their fighter jets to get ahold of american spy plane - they'll just hire a few radio geeks. Now that's progress.
But you're using an economic scale of measurement to judge what is and is not "human" worth. Thinking in this way is exactly ( IMHO ) what makes for a world of economic disparity. There is more to the value and worth of human life than can be judged merely by economics. And creating an economic measuring stick brings all human life down to its most trivial and base level.
However, I don't think I can disagree with you that the amounts of money spent on the space program could have been used to feed and help people. This is perfectly true - it could have, just as in theory all the money which US citizens spend on coca-cola and pepsi in one week could feed all the malnurished poor children in america for a year. If only people would spend there money differently - if only these companies were more generous, if only, if only.
But your argument belies two important things: