There are filler classes, and sometimes they are mandatory. The capacity of the brain is limited, and you have to prioritize. Studying for a class through a whole semester just so you can mention it in a discussion seems like a waste of brainpower to me, as you can achieve similar effect by watching TV or surfing on the net for far less time. They are not good to extend your horizons because filer classes usually get assigned to bad teachers. Also, there is a lot of evil pseudoscience that damages your mind instead of building it, like the mandatory legal courses.
There is a finite amount of fossile fuels underground, the worst case scenario is that we develop a way to extract and burn most of it, wich would raise global temperatures by about 6 degrees, regardless of speed.
Assuming that the problem of a voting system gets solved, direct democracy might work. Of course, there are several levels of how directly the public can interfere with policy, but let's assume that anyone can start a referendum, everyone gets notified about it and has a chance to vote.
How do you maximize participation by 'normal folk' on complex issues? What level of participation could be considered quorate?
You don't. The reason direct democracy can work is because there will be too much thing to vote on, so most people will only care about the things they care about, wich means they are likely to be knowledgable on the matter. By that logic, the necessary level of participation could be arbitrarily low (it's easy to imagine decisions that only affect a handful of people).
Sadly there is a chance that the politicians and demagogues of today would assemble large activist crowds, similar of today's party fanbases, and command them how to vote on every possibility. But even this would still be a step forward, as it would be analogous to a parliamental system where the number of votes parties have are decided based on their current popularity instead of the one they had years ago based on false promises.
And call me naive, but I'm optimistic about this. I believe that the current state of the "dumb crowd" is a result of the political system actively discouraging people from politics. When people get treated like adults, they will behave like adults. When people are given responsibilities they will become responsible. And when people choose wrong, and then they suffer the consequences, but can't blame the politicians or the government or the system but themselves, but then they realize that it's not over and say "Let's just change it back!", THAT will be the start of democracy.
One issue I see with a global version of something like this is all of the people in the world who haven't even heard of the Internet.
A much bigger issue with it would be all the people who haven't heard of democracy. Even in western countries, direct democracy should be implemented very conservatively, step by step. A new form of government is always a huge challenge, and it takes generations for a society to get used to it, develop a political culture to run it effectively, and be ready for the next step. You shouldn't rush these things globally, a lot of countries aren't even ready for democracy yet.
If someone hurts your rights, you have to take legal action yourself. Why would the content industry be an exception? And in fact, the DMCA already requires service providers to police their users, as they are bound to remove content upon mere accusations without any proof that it actually infringes the IP of the rightsholder. The content industry should not be treated differently from any other one: if they think someone is hurting their rights they should stand up for themselves and take legal action against the person in question, not run to the government/service provider to help.
In the beginning, Google didn't patent much for a reason. Now they are forced to buy up heaps of bogus patents to defend themselves after being hit by others, but you can't say they didn't try.
It's not necessarily because of ignorant programmers, reusing existing code is not a bad thing in itself. But yes, Javascript is mostly copy&paste because it's very modular. Big programs are rare, it's mostly just snippets of code implementing specific controls so it's very easy to copy.
If they prosecuted the ones uploading the content, thus committing the crime, you would be right. But holding storage/service providers liable is an attack against free communication.
Slashdot Mirror
Packing cylinders into cuboids can be reduced to packing circles in rectangles, which is already solved.
The once united global net will be fractured into small national networks if these legislations spread.
There are filler classes, and sometimes they are mandatory. The capacity of the brain is limited, and you have to prioritize. Studying for a class through a whole semester just so you can mention it in a discussion seems like a waste of brainpower to me, as you can achieve similar effect by watching TV or surfing on the net for far less time. They are not good to extend your horizons because filer classes usually get assigned to bad teachers. Also, there is a lot of evil pseudoscience that damages your mind instead of building it, like the mandatory legal courses.
What source do you need? That fossile fuel is not renewable?
There is a finite amount of fossile fuels underground, the worst case scenario is that we develop a way to extract and burn most of it, wich would raise global temperatures by about 6 degrees, regardless of speed.
Assuming that the problem of a voting system gets solved, direct democracy might work. Of course, there are several levels of how directly the public can interfere with policy, but let's assume that anyone can start a referendum, everyone gets notified about it and has a chance to vote.
You don't. The reason direct democracy can work is because there will be too much thing to vote on, so most people will only care about the things they care about, wich means they are likely to be knowledgable on the matter. By that logic, the necessary level of participation could be arbitrarily low (it's easy to imagine decisions that only affect a handful of people).
Sadly there is a chance that the politicians and demagogues of today would assemble large activist crowds, similar of today's party fanbases, and command them how to vote on every possibility. But even this would still be a step forward, as it would be analogous to a parliamental system where the number of votes parties have are decided based on their current popularity instead of the one they had years ago based on false promises.
And call me naive, but I'm optimistic about this. I believe that the current state of the "dumb crowd" is a result of the political system actively discouraging people from politics. When people get treated like adults, they will behave like adults. When people are given responsibilities they will become responsible. And when people choose wrong, and then they suffer the consequences, but can't blame the politicians or the government or the system but themselves, but then they realize that it's not over and say "Let's just change it back!", THAT will be the start of democracy.
A much bigger issue with it would be all the people who haven't heard of democracy. Even in western countries, direct democracy should be implemented very conservatively, step by step. A new form of government is always a huge challenge, and it takes generations for a society to get used to it, develop a political culture to run it effectively, and be ready for the next step. You shouldn't rush these things globally, a lot of countries aren't even ready for democracy yet.
If you left your door wide open you would have been robbed even back then.
Publishers, not developers.
could that yeast brew.
If someone hurts your rights, you have to take legal action yourself. Why would the content industry be an exception? And in fact, the DMCA already requires service providers to police their users, as they are bound to remove content upon mere accusations without any proof that it actually infringes the IP of the rightsholder. The content industry should not be treated differently from any other one: if they think someone is hurting their rights they should stand up for themselves and take legal action against the person in question, not run to the government/service provider to help.
The problem is that not all companies use patents directly, some of them create small troll firms and hand over the patents to them.
In the beginning, Google didn't patent much for a reason. Now they are forced to buy up heaps of bogus patents to defend themselves after being hit by others, but you can't say they didn't try.
The more versions out, the more difficult it becomes to build an app that works on every single one.
Better for the college, but worse for the students as they end up wasting years of their lives.
Considering how even Android manufacturers lag behind the current version I really hope they don't do the same rapid release as with Firefox.
Some universities in my country have too many freshmen so they deliberately try to make half of them drop out.
It's not necessarily because of ignorant programmers, reusing existing code is not a bad thing in itself. But yes, Javascript is mostly copy&paste because it's very modular. Big programs are rare, it's mostly just snippets of code implementing specific controls so it's very easy to copy.
If they prosecuted the ones uploading the content, thus committing the crime, you would be right. But holding storage/service providers liable is an attack against free communication.
You shouldn't leave it to faith, a properly working democracy should make it the government's interest to do the right thing.
Well, by this definition everything is random as the Universe is governed by quantum mechanics.
She completed a full research on the topic in less than 2 months. It must have been a proper and thorough.
Something is random if you don't have the information to predict it. Distinguishing between "false" and "true" randomness is pointless.
This guy is a bad man but that shouldn't be a reason to make parenting illegal.
Allowing nationstates to interfere with the Internet in ways like this will lead to the fracturing of the global network.
Exactly, they have bought off radios to play the same 10 songs all the time, but they can't do this with file sharing.