Different countries have different ideas, and American political ideological ideas are pretty extremist in a lot of ways.
I was born in the states, and believed in free speech as an absolute until I started to study history, social movements, and the law. I still value free speech, but I no longer consider it absolute, noting that neither does the law in the United States (even if it considers it a very strong default) nor do other countries (and their restrictions are still fairly limited and sensible).
I don't want to ban reasonable discussion, but I believe exceptions to free speech might sensibly include banning speech of klansmen, neo-fascists, and some similar groups. A very broad but not freedom of speech seems more sensible to me than either having it be nearly limitless or have it be restrictive. If one is restricting expression of the views of more than 5% of the country, one either has a fucked society or a fucked notion of free speech.
They're well-known criticisms because they're good criticisms. Taking the narrow view of liberty - that liberty from the state is the only kind worth thinking about, is in fact quite restrictive of people. Having a certain degree of independence from one's employer, not being squeezed by poverty, and knowing that many of one's basic needs are cared for by society as a whole rather than by a single terminable source gives people the security they need for actual independent living. Libertarian policies at best offer a good quality of life for those wealthy enough not to have this as a concern - it is a party of self-betterment for people who already have their basic needs and many of their luxury desires met, and don't want to keep contributing their fair share to the basic needs of others.
When the basic needs of some are not met and the luxury of others is satisfied, we should consider that an injustice.
To CATO? "I have never seen a more wretched hive of scum and villainy"... these are the people who propose dismantling all that is good in the state in favour of entrenched power interests. The public good, unless all one cares about is a public good that demands no virtue, no sacrifices, is far from their mind.
That's entirely fair, but I think we're better off seeing sites that give us the raw data and let us make baby steps at the problem. It's better to get this stuff out in the open so we can start to talk about what constitutes good and bad data-based reasoning, so we can make mistakes and learn how to do it right, than to let FoxNews (and a few other no-journalistic-standards organisations) blindside us with mistakes we don't need to handle.
Regarding that particular SAT score and per-student-spending analysis, I bet it could create a lot of interesting discussion.
I like the layout of ThisWeKnow, and it's probably the application that I can most imagine my mother using. DataMasher is a bit more cryptic, but much more powerful - I'm worried about people drawing the wrong implications from the simple analyses, but it's interesting in a "data mining, damn the statistics and causality" kind of way. Govpulse isn't really interesting to me.
I'd have a tough time chosing between ThisWeKnow and DataMasher, and I really hope both stick around after the award thing is over.
I think Gently's humour is a bit less accessible - I've had both series since my childhood and only recently did I really start to like Gently. Adams' writing for Dr Who was even more subtly funny.
We all define our own notion of the canon - we may orbit around the publisher or primary author, but we're not limited to that. I don't consider any Dr Who after the 7th Doctor to be canon, some of my friends consider everything but the movie to be canon, and there is disagreement about the books as well. People don't hold the same canon on Zelazny, Lovecraft, and plenty of others. I'm sure it'll be likewise with HHGTtG and this book. I don't think we should become too upset over new content unless we really need everyone on the same page.
It's not feasable to make every part of society completely bulletproof, societal trust is part of many areas of this. People keep the trust because they are supposed to and because it'd be a big hassle to do otherwise.
In a neighbourhood, one neighbour may have a shed she doesn't want you playing around in. She might tie it shut with a rope, use a padlock, or even an electronic lock, depending on how much she cares. None of this is meant as a challenge - untying the rope, picking the lock, or messing with the electronic lock are all within the capabilities of some people. It's not cute to say "Your lock was not good enough, that's why I was in your shed".
I've read 2600 for years (it's sometimes interesting when one can get past the juvenile attitude), and know people in the community. The standard preface of "I am just doing this for intellectual curiosity and do not laud nor do things like this" is more legal covering of asses than anything else. In some areas maybe we can't rely entirely on societal trust and it's accidentally helpful to have people prodding at these systems, but they're still a nuisance and I would not trust the community in general to use that knowledge responsibly. I've known too many people who have bad attitude towards society in general and who would take these things as far as they can for personal benefit.
Being clever is great. Being clever in ways that hurt society is not.
You don't have it quite right. China is often said to operate under an arrangement with its citizens where the state leaves them alone provided they don't push into politics and don't threaten society.
It's bad if you want western political liberties. It's not so bad if you keep out of politics.
You're talking as if western libertene thought is a faith. It's another way to run a society, and one that we've probably taken a bit too far (even if its foundations are sound).
We'd probably be better off if parents (opressors!) were to make sure that youth in the US have better role models than our rappers. Consumerism has, at least in some areas, created terrible role models for children and given us a cultural rot that wastes potential of individuals and encourages crime. We may be able to find ways to combat this that are compatible with a libertene culture (with or without the state, we have an obligation to do cultural steering). China's taking a more direct route to fix an obvious problem, while the worst flavours of our political philosophies have a head-in-the-sand attitude, refusing to use the state to do any cultural maintenance/steering/enrichment and refusing to see it as an obligation outside the state. The latter are proposing a suicide pact where they would have us watch as society falls apart because to do anything else would mean not being "neutral".
I agree with you regarding them not getting the 1.0 right. I think a reasonably uniform license policy didn't likely hurt them, but cutting other planned half-baked features probably would've been good.
Having it be free software is right for the project because you're not giving software to kids with serious strings attached. Going with the lowest offer would betray the goals of the project. Politics is part of the cost of having a project that means something, and political discussions embody efforts to determine the details of that meaning.
I don't care about "these parts" and I suggest you shouldn't care either.
They wern't trying to just put computers into kids hands - you don't need a nonprofit for that - if you wanted to do that, you could open your checkbook and talk to Dell. The interesting task they were aiming for took most pieces of the puzzle they put together - the degree to which they made their own hardware may have been a mistake, but having a separate branding and having a different software platform for ultra-lowcost computing makes a lot of sense if they're aiming to open the door to community-friendly computing. Windows would not have been a good choice there.
Of course, what they were trying to do was very hard, and I predicted as well that it would not likely make it (particularly as until recently the software stack was rubbish - only the more recent builds have made it nice). The GPL really wasn't a problem, although they did not leverage it well because it was so hard for the OSS community to get the devices to work on them.
A far bigger problem than Sugar, if sugar is even a problem, is having a wingnut leading the company. Negroponte's most visible activity wrt the OLPC is to torpedo it. Ditching him would be a much better start than ditching sugar.
I don't think it's fair to lump all followers of a faith under the same brush. Many religious folk have a lot to lose from laws like this, and they know it - the core tenets of their (protestant or otherwise) faith may be deemed blasphemous to Catholicism. Both in the US and in other parts of the world there are religious folk who believe in a secular government mostly out of these concerns.
The public/private divide obscures comparison of the total cost to society of the various plans. If (public_cost + private_cost) of a single-payer system is lower, even if the public_cost is higher, then it is a good idea, particularly when we're feeling finance issues, to adopt a single-payer system. You *must* include the private cost in your comparison if you want the big picture.
One thing you can say about us Ivory Tower progressives - we know how to use punctuation:)
Economies have been around in many forms for thousands of years. Very few of them could be considered free-market in the sense you described. Many of them worked. Yes, they were constantly managed, controlled and monitored. Yes, they had problems. That does not mean that they are or were not worthwhile. There are costs, true, and we are willing to pay them.
Slashdot Mirror
Not everyone does.
Different countries have different ideas, and American political ideological ideas are pretty extremist in a lot of ways.
I was born in the states, and believed in free speech as an absolute until I started to study history, social movements, and the law. I still value free speech, but I no longer consider it absolute, noting that neither does the law in the United States (even if it considers it a very strong default) nor do other countries (and their restrictions are still fairly limited and sensible).
I don't want to ban reasonable discussion, but I believe exceptions to free speech might sensibly include banning speech of klansmen, neo-fascists, and some similar groups. A very broad but not freedom of speech seems more sensible to me than either having it be nearly limitless or have it be restrictive. If one is restricting expression of the views of more than 5% of the country, one either has a fucked society or a fucked notion of free speech.
They're well-known criticisms because they're good criticisms. Taking the narrow view of liberty - that liberty from the state is the only kind worth thinking about, is in fact quite restrictive of people. Having a certain degree of independence from one's employer, not being squeezed by poverty, and knowing that many of one's basic needs are cared for by society as a whole rather than by a single terminable source gives people the security they need for actual independent living. Libertarian policies at best offer a good quality of life for those wealthy enough not to have this as a concern - it is a party of self-betterment for people who already have their basic needs and many of their luxury desires met, and don't want to keep contributing their fair share to the basic needs of others.
When the basic needs of some are not met and the luxury of others is satisfied, we should consider that an injustice.
To CATO? "I have never seen a more wretched hive of scum and villainy"... these are the people who propose dismantling all that is good in the state in favour of entrenched power interests. The public good, unless all one cares about is a public good that demands no virtue, no sacrifices, is far from their mind.
Supplemental: the particular analysis you reference is here, and by odd coincidence I commented on it a few days ago.
That's entirely fair, but I think we're better off seeing sites that give us the raw data and let us make baby steps at the problem. It's better to get this stuff out in the open so we can start to talk about what constitutes good and bad data-based reasoning, so we can make mistakes and learn how to do it right, than to let FoxNews (and a few other no-journalistic-standards organisations) blindside us with mistakes we don't need to handle.
Regarding that particular SAT score and per-student-spending analysis, I bet it could create a lot of interesting discussion.
But I read it on the internet! It must be true!
More seriously, I wonder if this is because they report 0 when they lack data on something, or if they actually got a zero from some report.
I like the layout of ThisWeKnow, and it's probably the application that I can most imagine my mother using. DataMasher is a bit more cryptic, but much more powerful - I'm worried about people drawing the wrong implications from the simple analyses, but it's interesting in a "data mining, damn the statistics and causality" kind of way. Govpulse isn't really interesting to me.
I'd have a tough time chosing between ThisWeKnow and DataMasher, and I really hope both stick around after the award thing is over.
I think Gently's humour is a bit less accessible - I've had both series since my childhood and only recently did I really start to like Gently. Adams' writing for Dr Who was even more subtly funny.
We all define our own notion of the canon - we may orbit around the publisher or primary author, but we're not limited to that. I don't consider any Dr Who after the 7th Doctor to be canon, some of my friends consider everything but the movie to be canon, and there is disagreement about the books as well. People don't hold the same canon on Zelazny, Lovecraft, and plenty of others. I'm sure it'll be likewise with HHGTtG and this book. I don't think we should become too upset over new content unless we really need everyone on the same page.
I am nervous that the kids who grew up on Pokémon are all grown up and in the military now....
Are they going to throw Pokéballs at opposing forces?
It's not feasable to make every part of society completely bulletproof, societal trust is part of many areas of this. People keep the trust because they are supposed to and because it'd be a big hassle to do otherwise.
In a neighbourhood, one neighbour may have a shed she doesn't want you playing around in. She might tie it shut with a rope, use a padlock, or even an electronic lock, depending on how much she cares. None of this is meant as a challenge - untying the rope, picking the lock, or messing with the electronic lock are all within the capabilities of some people. It's not cute to say "Your lock was not good enough, that's why I was in your shed".
I've read 2600 for years (it's sometimes interesting when one can get past the juvenile attitude), and know people in the community. The standard preface of "I am just doing this for intellectual curiosity and do not laud nor do things like this" is more legal covering of asses than anything else. In some areas maybe we can't rely entirely on societal trust and it's accidentally helpful to have people prodding at these systems, but they're still a nuisance and I would not trust the community in general to use that knowledge responsibly. I've known too many people who have bad attitude towards society in general and who would take these things as far as they can for personal benefit.
Being clever is great. Being clever in ways that hurt society is not.
Your idea of modern China is a mix of things that never happened and things that don't happen anymore.
China's government is rather corrupt, and it is full of nepotism (just like China's private industry). The other things you describe are not accurate.
You don't have it quite right. China is often said to operate under an arrangement with its citizens where the state leaves them alone provided they don't push into politics and don't threaten society.
It's bad if you want western political liberties. It's not so bad if you keep out of politics.
You're talking as if western libertene thought is a faith. It's another way to run a society, and one that we've probably taken a bit too far (even if its foundations are sound).
We'd probably be better off if parents (opressors!) were to make sure that youth in the US have better role models than our rappers. Consumerism has, at least in some areas, created terrible role models for children and given us a cultural rot that wastes potential of individuals and encourages crime. We may be able to find ways to combat this that are compatible with a libertene culture (with or without the state, we have an obligation to do cultural steering). China's taking a more direct route to fix an obvious problem, while the worst flavours of our political philosophies have a head-in-the-sand attitude, refusing to use the state to do any cultural maintenance/steering/enrichment and refusing to see it as an obligation outside the state. The latter are proposing a suicide pact where they would have us watch as society falls apart because to do anything else would mean not being "neutral".
I agree with you regarding them not getting the 1.0 right. I think a reasonably uniform license policy didn't likely hurt them, but cutting other planned half-baked features probably would've been good.
Having it be free software is right for the project because you're not giving software to kids with serious strings attached. Going with the lowest offer would betray the goals of the project. Politics is part of the cost of having a project that means something, and political discussions embody efforts to determine the details of that meaning.
I don't care about "these parts" and I suggest you shouldn't care either.
They wern't trying to just put computers into kids hands - you don't need a nonprofit for that - if you wanted to do that, you could open your checkbook and talk to Dell. The interesting task they were aiming for took most pieces of the puzzle they put together - the degree to which they made their own hardware may have been a mistake, but having a separate branding and having a different software platform for ultra-lowcost computing makes a lot of sense if they're aiming to open the door to community-friendly computing. Windows would not have been a good choice there.
Of course, what they were trying to do was very hard, and I predicted as well that it would not likely make it (particularly as until recently the software stack was rubbish - only the more recent builds have made it nice). The GPL really wasn't a problem, although they did not leverage it well because it was so hard for the OSS community to get the devices to work on them.
A far bigger problem than Sugar, if sugar is even a problem, is having a wingnut leading the company. Negroponte's most visible activity wrt the OLPC is to torpedo it. Ditching him would be a much better start than ditching sugar.
I don't think it's fair to lump all followers of a faith under the same brush. Many religious folk have a lot to lose from laws like this, and they know it - the core tenets of their (protestant or otherwise) faith may be deemed blasphemous to Catholicism. Both in the US and in other parts of the world there are religious folk who believe in a secular government mostly out of these concerns.
That's not what "creative" means. Difficult/requiring skill is different - they are orthoganal matters.
I would not be surprised to find these same senators lauding the homegrown Christian censorship software that's installed in libraries and the like.
If you provide the recliners and pipes, I've got the book and the time! Let's do this, people!
All of this presumes, of course, that my esteemed opponent is similarly inclined (or reclined, as the case may be).
Innovations in expression are not the same thing as not knowing how apostrophes work.
The public/private divide obscures comparison of the total cost to society of the various plans. If (public_cost + private_cost) of a single-payer system is lower, even if the public_cost is higher, then it is a good idea, particularly when we're feeling finance issues, to adopt a single-payer system. You *must* include the private cost in your comparison if you want the big picture.
One thing you can say about us Ivory Tower progressives - we know how to use punctuation :)
Economies have been around in many forms for thousands of years. Very few of them could be considered free-market in the sense you described. Many of them worked. Yes, they were constantly managed, controlled and monitored. Yes, they had problems. That does not mean that they are or were not worthwhile. There are costs, true, and we are willing to pay them.