... in the UK a lot of houses need upgraded aerials to receive digital TV and digital radio - is the cost of fitting these going to be met by the government / tax payers? We didn't need digital TV, or HD, or HD DVD, or Blue Ray, or DRM, or the Spice Girls but somehow the media industry is yanking our chains like this. Time for a revolution. Led by Germaine Greer.
Well I'm going to take your advice this week when I write to complain about proposals to reduce holiday visas to the UK to 3 months. Thanks for convincing me.
... led by teachers, kids are cajoled and numbed into becoming the mindless drones our governments want them to be.
The fact that the kid was browsing the Internet instead of doing classwork speaks more to the content of the lesson than anything else.
What we really need is open schooling - where kids decide what they learn and when they do it. There's nothing to rebel against if you have to be responsible for yourself (adults like us learn this lesson the first time we live away from home) and it's easier to learn when you're in the mood and you understand the real point of learning.
In the UK there is Summerhill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School) where lessons are optional and the kids decide on new teachers - and Sands School (http://www.sands-school.co.uk/Home.html) which I don't know much about. In India there's the National Institute of Open Schooling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_of_Open_Schooling) which follows a 'learner centric' model.
As a product of 70s and 80s schooling in the UK I can tell you that teachers added nothing but misery and mis-education to my life and that of my friends.
It must be at least 2000 years since the first school - and we still treat kids like cattle... it's time for a change.
Haven't you guys in the US got something like the UK's http://www.writetothem.com/? I've used it to write to my MP at least once - and I even got a reply!
... the one tech present that I have given this holiday, and would like to receive myself, is the Roomba 560. It actually vacuums my carpets. So I don't have to and I can do something else instead. No other gadget I've owned or given has ever managed to free my time to do something else - they all require care and attention and don't save me any time. (Apart from the cheap sat nav I bought from Maplins - it stops me from being late to appointments - but I even had to hack that.)
"SWL: Are there any current plans after Episode 3 to have a Half Life 3? DL: We haven't announced anything specific, but Half-Life won't end at Episode Three - hang on to your crowbars!"
Unless you thought 'crowbar' was in fact an allusion to 'penis' in which case you probably shouldn't have included it in the Slashdot story after all...
Which has fun comments like: "ummm... in no way whatsoever did doug say there would be a half-life three. could just be episode four. please stop brandying guesses as legitimate facts." - wow, brandying is a real word - it means "To preserve, flavor, or mix with brandy"
A few weeks ago I remember hearing/reading a comment from a US policeman who bemoaned the militarisation of the US police force, a few days later I was enjoying a night out in London and saw two unarmed policemen literally brow-beating two thugs into submission - letting a potentially violent incident descend into a petty argument. In the US I guess the two thugs would have been tasered, there would have been a small riot, couple of deaths, etc.
Good example of what's wrong with the enforcement powers our governments wield - too many weapons, too few conversations. I've never been one for total demilitarisation, but maybe it's about time we asked our governments to start keeping their dicks in their pants a bit more often.
Dear critics of the BBC - please note that for the majority of UK citizens any criticism of the BBC is worse than treason. They can lie about government dossiers, make sarcastic comments about people criticising their creative use of footage of the Queen walking in/out of doors, spend huge amounts of the BBC tax on uninspired floppy haired chat show hosts, send four or five news crews to the same news event (and have each of them deliberately insert their particular news programme's tag line into everything they say so the footage cannot be reused), make lots of reality TV shows that actually star celebrities (so, by definition, there's nothing real there...) and never tell us anything of real interest or knowledge... but NEVER criticise them in public on any UK street or office. The government could fall (pref at the hands of the BBC), life could end, but suggest that the BBC is wasting money! Never!
I've always wanted to sue Tomorrows World for the unrealised-future depression from which I now suffer... I still have to eat breakfast instead of those neat little pills they demonstrated, still have to pay freakin' nPower for my heating when I was promised geothermal energy, and I still can't roll to work in a large plastic ball or in a mini-plane or a personal hovercraft. So far I have been unable to move on with my life, or develop meaningful relationships because of this.;)
"A reporter isn't a superhuman essayist researcher, they are your surrogate, your proxy. When there is a fire on your street at two in the morning, and you can't be bothered to go out in the rain, a reporter goes along in your place, and tells you what's going on, but he only does what you'd do: gossips with the neighbours; gets a word or two from whichever member of the emergency services happens to be walking past; and passes that on."... from an interesting article at http://www.badscience.net/?p=550
These review guys are just journalists who claim to write reviews but are really just gossiping and passing on information they've been fed by manufacturers. They do the same with politics and science and anything else really - most of them should be ignored.
There was an interesting article about Mossman in the New Yorker a few months back - and indeed the manufacturers faun all over him like flies on s*** - he's got nothing to say except to dullard PHBs and neither has Pogue (whose podcasts are whiney c*** also).
I should have referred to some of the know insecurities in Windows - such as open ports with services linked to them, the Messenger Service, Admin access by default - none of which are seen in Linux distributions like Ubuntu. This despite the fact that Windows has been bundled with IE, and so intended for Internet access, for many years. MS should have closed these vulnerabilities as soon as they were discovered. So Windows is insecure by design, Ubuntu is not. Many people on this site have also recounted tales of parents and friends who are not geeks but preferred Ubuntu to Windows because it 'just works'. So your average user really doesn't care.
You're so wrong my friend - for the simple reason that Windows machines cannot connect safely to the Internet without a firewall whereas Linux machines can (well, Ubuntu anyway). Ubuntu does just plain work.
Ship PCs with Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or something else and I assure you that nobody would care. I mean, Mac OS is actually fashionable these days!
Well I see what you're saying - but I have to disagree that we need to know what a 'good democracy' is - all modern successful democracies are, as you say, impure in some way or another - but I think that's because there is no pure alternative. it's just not possible. It's the process of democracy that's important, not an end point or an ideal model. Just thinking about, and constantly trying to refine and change, the ideas of democracy is what we have to do. It's the process, not the end-point that's important.
Treading in someone else's domain is OK in my book - I mean who really cares. But sticking the boot in - well that's a different matter, and I'd agree with you that "creation science" is a good example of religion interfering with science - having the theory is OK but trying to suppress the scientific version of events is wrong. Trying to call a religious belief a 'science' is wrong too. I was taught the creation side of things in Sunday school as a child but not once did a Sunday teacher start to tell me that evolution was bunk - they knew better (in England - home of the great British compromise!) - as did my biology and science teachers at school. Not sure why it's changed in the US again (after the evolution trials many years ago) but it's a bad thing and has nothing to do with living a good and thoughtful life. In the UK there are groups of people trying out the creation science stuff but they know what will happen if they stick their heads too far up above the parapets (they'll be p****d on;) So what I'm saying is that people can make absurd claims if they want to - but once they start trying to interfere with scientific teaching or policy they need to be told where to get off in no uncertain terms. Creationists, religious fascists, cults, (homeopaths, vaccine-haters, Holocaust deniers) - they all need to get the hell out of our schools, government and TV and we need to tell them so without compromise. In the article we're discussing - they author is mixing religion with science and then coming unstuck as he tries refute anti-science claims by religious leaders. He should just say that they have nothing to do with each other and leave it at that.
... for the crappily insecure, services tied to ports, admin rights for all, Windows that they've been selling (or rather imposing on to) people who buy PCs. I mean they stuck IE in there and added wizards for connecting to the Internet right? But they never bothered to fix all the security holes. Why should I have to pay for AV and firewall - THEY should pay - so I want my money off them. Who's with me? I mean they don't sell cars without brakes do they?
Sorry to disagree, but democracy IS the end we are looking for - there is nothing more we can do to make things better than to have a democracy. That's it. So voting, or choosing not to vote, is part of that - i.e. you don't have to vote (unless you're in Australia) - but most people in democratic countries know that if they voted or not they still have a chance of a say in how their country is run and therefore they have a moral investment in it; I guess that's why democracies have less violent protests and guerrilla movements (except where democracy has broken down and the populace feel disenfranchised). Oh, and there's nothing "aristocratic" about thinking about 'higher, greater things' - we can all do it, even a pleb like me;)
Thanks for agreeing with me on some points though - such as saying that "participatory government focuses on concrete improvements to the way of life of the constituent"; you're right to link that "participatory government" with a democracy and right to indicate that the government will make "concrete improvements to the way of life of the constituents" but I'm surprised you don't see how that will allow the populace to think of "higher, greater things".
"The causal chain that leads democracy to achieve 'greater things' is powerful but indirect" - yes! At least we agree on one thing - though I would put it more directly of course.
I'm not saying that some people don't think that religion and science have things to do with each other - what I am saying that these people are wrong. Religion and science attend to different problem spaces - the first is for how we should lead good and productive lives - the second is for how things work. Getting these two mixed up is a freakin' disaster and a distraction. "AIDS in Africa vs Vatican against condoms" for example (and not meaning to attack Catholics at all). Or "civil engineers vs the land bridge built by Hindu gods" (not meaning to attack civil engineers at all;).
A little bit of democracy, a little bit of science. More democracy, more science. That's my belief. I mean how many scientific papers did the produce during the UK's agricultural and industrial revolutions? Ha ha - only joking... What I mean to say is that I did not mention "technological progress" - I said "science" - they're different things. I think even the article we are discussing says that in a way.
Unfortunately you basically make a good point for me when you say "Slavery and racism was widespread in both countries and women couldn't vote until relatively recently" because now there's no slavery (or at least less of it) and women have more rights there is obviously a greater pool of potential smart people to further scientific investigation, and slavery and better rights for women tend to occur more often in democratic countries (I mean, a country where women have no rights will never allow them to vote so it's not democratic).
Slashdot Mirror
Damn straight.
... http://www.getlyrics.com/song/disposable+heroes+of+hiphoprisy/television%2C+the+drug+of+the+nation
the disposable heroes of hiphoprisy said it best
... in the UK a lot of houses need upgraded aerials to receive digital TV and digital radio - is the cost of fitting these going to be met by the government / tax payers?
We didn't need digital TV, or HD, or HD DVD, or Blue Ray, or DRM, or the Spice Girls but somehow the media industry is yanking our chains like this.
Time for a revolution. Led by Germaine Greer.
Well I'm going to take your advice this week when I write to complain about proposals to reduce holiday visas to the UK to 3 months.
Thanks for convincing me.
... led by teachers, kids are cajoled and numbed into becoming the mindless drones our governments want them to be.
... it's time for a change.
The fact that the kid was browsing the Internet instead of doing classwork speaks more to the content of the lesson than anything else.
What we really need is open schooling - where kids decide what they learn and when they do it. There's nothing to rebel against if you have to be responsible for yourself (adults like us learn this lesson the first time we live away from home) and it's easier to learn when you're in the mood and you understand the real point of learning.
In the UK there is Summerhill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School) where lessons are optional and the kids decide on new teachers - and Sands School (http://www.sands-school.co.uk/Home.html) which I don't know much about. In India there's the National Institute of Open Schooling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_of_Open_Schooling) which follows a 'learner centric' model.
As a product of 70s and 80s schooling in the UK I can tell you that teachers added nothing but misery and mis-education to my life and that of my friends.
It must be at least 2000 years since the first school - and we still treat kids like cattle
Haven't you guys in the US got something like the UK's http://www.writetothem.com/?
I've used it to write to my MP at least once - and I even got a reply!
... the one tech present that I have given this holiday, and would like to receive myself, is the Roomba 560. It actually vacuums my carpets. So I don't have to and I can do something else instead. No other gadget I've owned or given has ever managed to free my time to do something else - they all require care and attention and don't save me any time. (Apart from the cheap sat nav I bought from Maplins - it stops me from being late to appointments - but I even had to hack that.)
Or indeed with penises instead of crowbars ;) (hold on while I patent the idea of dynamically replacing in-game weapons with sexual aids...)
"There's a riff that OpenSocial could die on the vine," said Forrester Research senior analyst Jeremiah Owyang
Riff? Die on the vine?
... the few extra words in the Ars 'article':
"SWL: Are there any current plans after Episode 3 to have a Half Life 3?
DL: We haven't announced anything specific, but Half-Life won't end at Episode Three - hang on to your crowbars!"
Unless you thought 'crowbar' was in fact an allusion to 'penis' in which case you probably shouldn't have included it in the Slashdot story after all...
Or even a link to the original article: http://www.stuffwelike.com/stuffwelike/2007/12/12/half-life-3-world-exclusive/
Which has fun comments like:
"ummm... in no way whatsoever did doug say there would be a half-life three. could just be episode four. please stop brandying guesses as legitimate facts." - wow, brandying is a real word - it means "To preserve, flavor, or mix with brandy"
Excellent post my friend.
A few weeks ago I remember hearing/reading a comment from a US policeman who bemoaned the militarisation of the US police force, a few days later I was enjoying a night out in London and saw two unarmed policemen literally brow-beating two thugs into submission - letting a potentially violent incident descend into a petty argument. In the US I guess the two thugs would have been tasered, there would have been a small riot, couple of deaths, etc.
Good example of what's wrong with the enforcement powers our governments wield - too many weapons, too few conversations. I've never been one for total demilitarisation, but maybe it's about time we asked our governments to start keeping their dicks in their pants a bit more often.
Dear critics of the BBC - please note that for the majority of UK citizens any criticism of the BBC is worse than treason. They can lie about government dossiers, make sarcastic comments about people criticising their creative use of footage of the Queen walking in/out of doors, spend huge amounts of the BBC tax on uninspired floppy haired chat show hosts, send four or five news crews to the same news event (and have each of them deliberately insert their particular news programme's tag line into everything they say so the footage cannot be reused), make lots of reality TV shows that actually star celebrities (so, by definition, there's nothing real there...) and never tell us anything of real interest or knowledge ... but NEVER criticise them in public on any UK street or office.
The government could fall (pref at the hands of the BBC), life could end, but suggest that the BBC is wasting money! Never!
Maximum respect for this comment! I was looking for the first mention of Joe 90 too!
I've always wanted to sue Tomorrows World for the unrealised-future depression from which I now suffer ... I still have to eat breakfast instead of those neat little pills they demonstrated, still have to pay freakin' nPower for my heating when I was promised geothermal energy, and I still can't roll to work in a large plastic ball or in a mini-plane or a personal hovercraft. So far I have been unable to move on with my life, or develop meaningful relationships because of this. ;)
Remember the Gangsta Rap? So cool...
http://www.theforce.net/fanfilms/shortfilms/troops/
"A reporter isn't a superhuman essayist researcher, they are your surrogate, your proxy. When there is a fire on your street at two in the morning, and you can't be bothered to go out in the rain, a reporter goes along in your place, and tells you what's going on, but he only does what you'd do: gossips with the neighbours; gets a word or two from whichever member of the emergency services happens to be walking past; and passes that on." ... from an interesting article at http://www.badscience.net/?p=550
These review guys are just journalists who claim to write reviews but are really just gossiping and passing on information they've been fed by manufacturers. They do the same with politics and science and anything else really - most of them should be ignored.
There was an interesting article about Mossman in the New Yorker a few months back - and indeed the manufacturers faun all over him like flies on s*** - he's got nothing to say except to dullard PHBs and neither has Pogue (whose podcasts are whiney c*** also).
I should have referred to some of the know insecurities in Windows - such as open ports with services linked to them, the Messenger Service, Admin access by default - none of which are seen in Linux distributions like Ubuntu. This despite the fact that Windows has been bundled with IE, and so intended for Internet access, for many years. MS should have closed these vulnerabilities as soon as they were discovered. So Windows is insecure by design, Ubuntu is not.
Many people on this site have also recounted tales of parents and friends who are not geeks but preferred Ubuntu to Windows because it 'just works'. So your average user really doesn't care.
You're so wrong my friend - for the simple reason that Windows machines cannot connect safely to the Internet without a firewall whereas Linux machines can (well, Ubuntu anyway). Ubuntu does just plain work.
Ship PCs with Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or something else and I assure you that nobody would care. I mean, Mac OS is actually fashionable these days!
Well I see what you're saying - but I have to disagree that we need to know what a 'good democracy' is - all modern successful democracies are, as you say, impure in some way or another - but I think that's because there is no pure alternative. it's just not possible. It's the process of democracy that's important, not an end point or an ideal model. Just thinking about, and constantly trying to refine and change, the ideas of democracy is what we have to do. It's the process, not the end-point that's important.
Yeah - I know they do - damn!
Treading in someone else's domain is OK in my book - I mean who really cares. But sticking the boot in - well that's a different matter, and I'd agree with you that "creation science" is a good example of religion interfering with science - having the theory is OK but trying to suppress the scientific version of events is wrong. Trying to call a religious belief a 'science' is wrong too. I was taught the creation side of things in Sunday school as a child but not once did a Sunday teacher start to tell me that evolution was bunk - they knew better (in England - home of the great British compromise!) - as did my biology and science teachers at school. Not sure why it's changed in the US again (after the evolution trials many years ago) but it's a bad thing and has nothing to do with living a good and thoughtful life. In the UK there are groups of people trying out the creation science stuff but they know what will happen if they stick their heads too far up above the parapets (they'll be p****d on ;)
So what I'm saying is that people can make absurd claims if they want to - but once they start trying to interfere with scientific teaching or policy they need to be told where to get off in no uncertain terms. Creationists, religious fascists, cults, (homeopaths, vaccine-haters, Holocaust deniers) - they all need to get the hell out of our schools, government and TV and we need to tell them so without compromise.
In the article we're discussing - they author is mixing religion with science and then coming unstuck as he tries refute anti-science claims by religious leaders. He should just say that they have nothing to do with each other and leave it at that.
... for the crappily insecure, services tied to ports, admin rights for all, Windows that they've been selling (or rather imposing on to) people who buy PCs. I mean they stuck IE in there and added wizards for connecting to the Internet right? But they never bothered to fix all the security holes. Why should I have to pay for AV and firewall - THEY should pay - so I want my money off them. Who's with me?
I mean they don't sell cars without brakes do they?
Sorry to disagree, but democracy IS the end we are looking for - there is nothing more we can do to make things better than to have a democracy. That's it. So voting, or choosing not to vote, is part of that - i.e. you don't have to vote (unless you're in Australia) - but most people in democratic countries know that if they voted or not they still have a chance of a say in how their country is run and therefore they have a moral investment in it; I guess that's why democracies have less violent protests and guerrilla movements (except where democracy has broken down and the populace feel disenfranchised). Oh, and there's nothing "aristocratic" about thinking about 'higher, greater things' - we can all do it, even a pleb like me ;)
Thanks for agreeing with me on some points though - such as saying that "participatory government focuses on concrete improvements to the way of life of the constituent"; you're right to link that "participatory government" with a democracy and right to indicate that the government will make "concrete improvements to the way of life of the constituents" but I'm surprised you don't see how that will allow the populace to think of "higher, greater things".
"The causal chain that leads democracy to achieve 'greater things' is powerful but indirect" - yes! At least we agree on one thing - though I would put it more directly of course.
I'm not saying that some people don't think that religion and science have things to do with each other - what I am saying that these people are wrong. Religion and science attend to different problem spaces - the first is for how we should lead good and productive lives - the second is for how things work. Getting these two mixed up is a freakin' disaster and a distraction. "AIDS in Africa vs Vatican against condoms" for example (and not meaning to attack Catholics at all). Or "civil engineers vs the land bridge built by Hindu gods" (not meaning to attack civil engineers at all ;).
A little bit of democracy, a little bit of science. More democracy, more science. That's my belief. I mean how many scientific papers did the produce during the UK's agricultural and industrial revolutions? Ha ha - only joking ... What I mean to say is that I did not mention "technological progress" - I said "science" - they're different things. I think even the article we are discussing says that in a way.
Unfortunately you basically make a good point for me when you say "Slavery and racism was widespread in both countries and women couldn't vote until relatively recently" because now there's no slavery (or at least less of it) and women have more rights there is obviously a greater pool of potential smart people to further scientific investigation, and slavery and better rights for women tend to occur more often in democratic countries (I mean, a country where women have no rights will never allow them to vote so it's not democratic).