A technology that allows one to become completely independant from the rest of the world is a really good thing. With these solar/hydrogren cell packs, one could live in the middle of nowhere, with all the comforts you'd have in the city(assuming you raise/grow your own food). Technology like this puts that dream within the reach of the masses. No more would you need to live in a city, squished like sardines.
Yeah, but individuals spreading out away from the city centers and living where they want to live is called "sprawl" and that's eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil. I can practically hear the Gores and Naders screaming already.
Something that, as a european, really bothers me about the US is the lack of democracy, of respecting other people's ideas and beliefs.
Democracy has absolutely nothing to do with respecting other people's ideas and beliefs. In fact, protection of individual rights is an inherently un-democratic thing, because for it to have any meaning it must override the will of the majority. Otherwise, it would be perfectly all right to (for instance) hold a national referendum and have all the [insert socio/ethnic group here] rounded up and shot, so long as 50%+1 of the votes were "yes."
And as for whether respect for the ideas of others is more prevalent in the US or in Europe, that depends on which ideas you're talking about, and which European countries. Take, for instance, France's recent actions against Nazi-related items on eBay and Yahoo, or environmentalist destruction of genetically-engineered crops. The latter happens in the US, too, but the practice originated in Europe and is more widespread and openly-espoused there. Also, while the US export controls on crypto aren't anything to be proud of, there are no restrictions on domestic crypto use, unlike in the UK or (until recently) France.
That's not to say that there aren't cases where the US is worse. There are. For me, I'd rather have the US laws on politics, the Netherland's laws on drugs, Denmark's laws on sex, Taiwan's laws on copyright, and the tax laws of the Bahamas.
Imagine this: one day in the near future, Congress and the FBI finally get their way and install Carnivore boxes not only at the ISP level, but at your local computers also. If Richard Stallman urged a call to arms and geeks everywhere organized massive protests where they liberally shattered the Carnivore boxes into little bits, would you not join?
Absolutely. But that has nothing to do with technology, it has to do with violation of my privary and property rights. If instead of a Carnivore box they stationed a good old fashioned flesh-and-blood spy from the NSA to watch over my shoulder, I'd shatter him to little bits just as readily (assuming I could avoid a response from his peers).
You too, Mr Slashbot, are a Luddite, by that standard, make no mistake about it.
Hardly, unless you're stretching "Luddite" to mean "anyone who attempts to stop something they don't like from happening."
When someone shatters your own world-view, it is your right and duty to shatter his means, at whatever cost and to whatever ends
Ah yes. So what the Catholic Church did to Galileo in response to his shattering of their worldview was apparently all good and proper. The Skopes Monkey Trial? Shatter those evolutionists' means, by gum! Afghani women shattering the Taliban's world-view about what women are and are not allowed to do? Take them to the town square and "shatter their means" with thrown rocks.
scientific developments are a way of intelligent people placing power into the hands of the stupid (generally governments).... uhmmm... Guns, Atomic bombs, DNA - Genetic engineering.... i'm sure there's many more examples.
Well that's one mostly-bad (atomic bombs) to three mostly-good so far. Not exactly a terrible ratio.
Slashdot Mirror
A technology that allows one to become completely independant from the rest of the world is a really good thing. With these solar/hydrogren cell packs, one could live in the middle of nowhere, with all the comforts you'd have in the city(assuming you raise/grow your own food). Technology like this puts that dream within the reach of the masses. No more would you need to live in a city, squished like sardines.
Yeah, but individuals spreading out away from the city centers and living where they want to live is called "sprawl" and that's eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil. I can practically hear the Gores and Naders screaming already.
Something that, as a european, really bothers me about the US is the lack of democracy, of respecting other people's ideas and beliefs.
Democracy has absolutely nothing to do with respecting other people's ideas and beliefs. In fact, protection of individual rights is an inherently un -democratic thing, because for it to have any meaning it must override the will of the majority. Otherwise, it would be perfectly all right to (for instance) hold a national referendum and have all the [insert socio/ethnic group here] rounded up and shot, so long as 50%+1 of the votes were "yes."
And as for whether respect for the ideas of others is more prevalent in the US or in Europe, that depends on which ideas you're talking about, and which European countries. Take, for instance, France's recent actions against Nazi-related items on eBay and Yahoo, or environmentalist destruction of genetically-engineered crops. The latter happens in the US, too, but the practice originated in Europe and is more widespread and openly-espoused there. Also, while the US export controls on crypto aren't anything to be proud of, there are no restrictions on domestic crypto use, unlike in the UK or (until recently) France.
That's not to say that there aren't cases where the US is worse. There are. For me, I'd rather have the US laws on politics, the Netherland's laws on drugs, Denmark's laws on sex, Taiwan's laws on copyright, and the tax laws of the Bahamas.
He who writes the code should decide what to with errors, and where.
"C is the language that believes that the programmer knows what he wants and deserves to get it, good and hard."
-- H.L. Menken, paraphrased
Imagine this: one day in the near future, Congress and the FBI finally get their way and install Carnivore boxes not only at the ISP level, but at your local computers also. If Richard Stallman urged a call to arms and geeks everywhere organized massive protests where they liberally shattered the Carnivore boxes into little bits, would you not join?
Absolutely. But that has nothing to do with technology, it has to do with violation of my privary and property rights. If instead of a Carnivore box they stationed a good old fashioned flesh-and-blood spy from the NSA to watch over my shoulder, I'd shatter him to little bits just as readily (assuming I could avoid a response from his peers).
You too, Mr Slashbot, are a Luddite, by that standard, make no mistake about it.
Hardly, unless you're stretching "Luddite" to mean "anyone who attempts to stop something they don't like from happening."
When someone shatters your own world-view, it is your right and duty to shatter his means, at whatever cost and to whatever ends
Ah yes. So what the Catholic Church did to Galileo in response to his shattering of their worldview was apparently all good and proper. The Skopes Monkey Trial? Shatter those evolutionists' means, by gum! Afghani women shattering the Taliban's world-view about what women are and are not allowed to do? Take them to the town square and "shatter their means" with thrown rocks.
... and an almost-fanatical devotion to the...
scientific developments are a way of intelligent people placing power into the hands of the stupid (generally governments).... uhmmm... Guns, Atomic bombs, DNA - Genetic engineering.... i'm sure there's many more examples.
Well that's one mostly-bad (atomic bombs) to three mostly-good so far. Not exactly a terrible ratio.