Figure out what people would have said about PDA's and cell phones thirty years ago had someone suggested they would exist. "Thats ridiculous..why would anyone EVER want that? I have my phone in the house, and I have my day-timer! Why carry around something that needs batteries?"
While I'm the first person to acknowledge that marketing pushes a lot of products on people that they don't really want or need, both of your examples here fail.
Day-timers are great for people that have 50 contacts and 5 items on their todo list. My mom used to carry around one of the 5x8 ones that was quite full. It didn't even fit in her purse, so it was very inconvenient. I kept demonstrating my PDA to her, that it was indeed easier to use than the laptop she used at the office, etc. Finally she lost her day-timer and freaked out. There was no way she was going to recall all the appointments she had made over the coming weeks and months. Luckily, she had only left it at an associate's office who called her the next day. She immediately switched to a PDA and within a month was able to use it far more efficiently than the day-timer. If she loses that, it's all on her laptop at work.
As for cell phones, I'm quite happy with mine. As long as you don't go nuts and start thinking that just cause it's ringing you have to answer it, you'll be okay. I turn it off when I don't want to be interrupted, and I put it on vibrate when I carry it so no one else is ever bothered by it. Two recent examples of being useful. Saturday we were driving to a friend's party an hour away. The driver had written the directions incorrectly, so I called my friend on the highway to get the right junction. Then Sunday a friend called while I was shopping to see if I wanted to head to another friend's house for the day -- he was just leaving home and could pick me up on the way. That's convenience and new opportunities that I'm glad to have.
That one idea for a new gadget (internet-enabled pacemakers) sounds like a bad idea doesn't mean they all are. If you could work out the security issues completely, network-enabled traffic signals could be very useful. Imagine an ambulance leaves the station in an emergency. The system operator could have the traffic signals along its path go red in both directions and ring they're own sirens, giving advanced notice to cars and pedestrians to clear the street.
As for worrying about giving your son a laptop, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. I had legos as a kid (no home computers), so I said, "Hang on. I'll put away my toys and be right over." And I don't feel I'm somehow scarred by it.:) Computers are tools, like toys, books, and guns. The key is to educate your children in their proper use before you let them use them. Some tools may have bigger consequences in misuse than others, and that should be discussed as well.
lets imagine having CNN.com shut down by china because they say anti-china things . . . Then because of a law in another country . . . Imagine a fella that posted a Pro Nazi letter that happened to be copied and sent to France
I'm guessing you didn't bother to read the article, or you skipped down to the part about the old French move against Yahoo. To summarize, two Italian men created a site illegal by Italian standards and hosted it with an ISP in the U.S. The police managed to get the password to the site content and replaced the images.
While I disagree with the Italian laws, this case is not a matter of some foreign government trampling the free speech rights of a U.S. citizen.
It's like claiming amnesty for your ideas rather than your person. You know your ideas will be censored in China, so you host them in a country with laws permitting such ideas.
In the case of amnesty, you need to be accepted by the country from whom you seek help. Should it work the same for ideas? If you are afraid your ideas will be censored by your home country, get someone in the hosting country to help you by maintaining your site. This way the police would have to act in the hosting company to censor the content.
So in this case, the Italian citizen should have contacted a U.S. citizen before being caught. The U.S. citizen could then maintain the site, and when the Italian police struck, would have simply fixed the site and changed the password. Then the Italians would have had to fight the case here in the U.S. where our laws would likely protect the content.
As I understand it, this is exactly what FreeNet is supposed to do without having to formalize a relationship with others to host your content. They host it merely by viewing it a few times without having to stick their own necks out.
If they had a backbone, they'd tell us to take our money and shove it.
Who is "they"? Do you believe that the average citizen of Afghanistan has any pull with the self-appointed leaders of the interim government? The leaders that will benefit from the kickbacks and support of their power are certainly not going to turn down the economic and military aid, and they have the only deciding voice.
For a country that loves to cry the virtues of democracy so loudly, the U.S. is amazingly steadfast in its support of totalitarian dictators. Again and again we oppose democracy for anyone but ourselves knowing it would require more effort to rape the world if we had to answer to the entire population rather than a few bozos at the top.
That's a far cry from "installing a US-friendly government"
Have you ever trained a dog?
Tell dog to sit
Show dog how to sit (push its ass to the ground)
Give dog a treat
Tell dog to sit
If dog sits, give it a treat
Go to step 4; repeat as necessary
You teach the dog that good behavior is rewarded with treats and bad behavior is punished by lack of treats. It works the same way with client nations. Good behavior (liberalization of investment, opening markets to foreign capital, relaxing capital flight restrictions) is rewarded with treats (economic aid, military training, investment). Bad behavior (workers rights, social programs, import tarrifs) is punished (capital flight, trade embargos, dumping cheap imports into local markets). It doesn't take long before the client is rolling over and playing dead on command.
Give it a rest.
No, you and the majority of the public have been resting for far too long. Turn off the television and open your eyes and ears to the rest of the world. Read about U.S. foreign policy. Investigate the actions of your elected officials. If you want to sleep through life, that is your choice, but don't whine when I won't lie down for the slaughter with you.
Only major conflicts? ROTFL! . . . WWII was the conclusion of 2000 years of organized warfare in Europe.
I don't see your point. Did you read the entire discussion for context? I made the point that the world and even the U.S. hasn't seen peace since WWII. Someone else rebutted saying that of course there's no peace because there's always at least one person somewhere in the world that is in conflict with another person. I replied that obviously if you look at every individual conflict there is no peace, which is not an interesting observation. However, if you restrict "conflict" to only major conflicts in the grand view the U.S. still hasn't been at peace.
The average high school student would say that's incorrect. They'd point to WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Balkans Conflict, and the current war in Afghanistan, claiming the U.S. has enjoyed many years of peace between all of those wars. But they would be wrong because they'd be limited to official records in history books (yes, I've read a couple).
You must include Guatemala, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua, Sudan, Congo, Iran, Indonesia, East Timor, Laos, Cambodia, Phillipines, etc. In many of those cases the U.S. military was directly involved. In other cases it was limited to military training, support, and aid. And still others we interfered directly in elections or supported coups.
As for American 'greed'
I never said American greed. I said Capitalism encourages greed by creating the cycle of capital as the fuel and ultimate prize. You need capital to make capital; the more capital you have, the faster you can make more; and capital is the ultimate reward. Without capital you cannot play the game, and those with a head start are nearly guaranteed to increase their lead.
People are equally greedy everywhere.
Having been everywhere, you're the expert, right? In my admittedly far fewer travels -- I still haven't been to Australia or Antarctica -- I have found that greed is not universal. Some societies breed more greed than others, just as some breed more violence or tolerance. I have found that Capitalist societies tend to instill more greed in the populace. Instead of having musicians make music for the love of music, they must make music that can be marketed widely.
The US just happens to have exceptional natural resources and a hybrid mix of the 'best of breed' immigrants from several continents.
Those have certainly helped the U.S. maintain its lead, but that doesn't discount the advantages of the largest military, a head start on capital from Europe, and a willingness to succeed at all costs, including slavery and genocide. That the U.S. has a higher standard of living than the developing nations does not justify the means of achieving it.
capitalism is geared towards . . . utilizing resources as efficiently as possible.
Yes, but you must define "efficiency." Is the goal to maximize the standard of living? Or to create equality? To better mankind? To improve scientific research? To lengthen the average lifespan?
No, it is none of the above. Capitalism is designed to maximize the efficiency of maximizing capital growth. For example, look at logging. If your goal is to provide timber for generation after generation, you would limit the logging to a level that can be replenished, creating an equilibrium between new growth and felled trees.
But that's not how logging proceeded for the majority of U.S. history. Instead, forests were clear-cut for centuries leaving barren fields. It cost more money to plant trees and log in strips, so every tree was taken. As well, the only way to save old growth forests that had historic or aesthetic value from loggers was to use public and privately donated capital to protect them. Capitalism doesn't allow for measuring aesthetic or good will except for converting it to a capital value.
And now the South American rainforest is disappearing at an alarming rate for timber and cattle to be exported to rich markets. It would be one thing if Brazilians decided they wanted to clear-cut their forests, but that's not what happens. Because the U.S. has such a large lead in capital, we are able to wield a disproportionate amount of power in developing countries, essentially taking whatever we want. Worse still, U.S. firms run the operations using U.S. capital, sending the profit back to the U.S. investors in a complete cycle.
The local population of a land, then, doesn't own the resources located on the land. They belong to whomever can provide the capital necessary to extract them. Sure, the locals get a few slave-wage jobs in conditions no U.S.-worker would ever accept until the resources are exhausted. Again, capitalism encourages the resources to be removed as quickly as possible since as the time taken increases, so do the costs: labor, equipment, bribes to officials, possibly intervening militarily.
Have you ever played any of the RTS games? If so, then you know the key to winning is to swoop in to a cache of resources and extract them as quickly as you can. The longer it takes, the more likely you'll have to defend your harvesters. As well, the faster you gain resources, the faster you can build your infrastructure and military. The U.S. views the world no differently than a typical player of StarCraft or Age of Empires.
Regular expressions is one of those tools that I end up teaching to anyone that doesn't know them whenever I start a new job. I don't use them in much of my applications, but I use them to write my applications and build tools. I follow the philosophy of building tools to solve problems knowing I'll need to solve the same problem again and again.
Another tool is shell scripting. At a past company Symantec Cafe was used for developing a Java application. When I joined, I immediately created shell scripts for myself to do automated builds for a couple reasons:
Cafe's editor, while nice, was not up to par for me -- it slowed me down too much.
I multitask a lot when I'm working, and having multiple shells open at once doing builds et al is handy.
The editor I use on Windows, CodeWright, lets you call batch files (and thus shell scripts through Cygwin) for CVS and compilation.
Cafe didn't (and still doesn't?) do automated builds, nor does it run on Linux.
I showed others how to use them, but only one other developer took the time to get used to it, never having used a shell before. The others complained that they shouldn't have to learn a new tool (shells and scripts) when Cafe sufficed. I explained the advantages, but to no avail.
Well, a few months later we finally hired a real QA and release engineer. Since we were building a J2EE application to run on Linux in testing and Solaris in deployment, we needed automated builds on Unix. There was a huge rush to get everyone up to speed on the new build system using shell scripts.
Hmm, that was a bit long-winded just to make the point that there are many useful tools to developers that don't involve the actual code they write. I've used regexps to create SQL data files and config files as mentioned. You'll learn many things, so keep open and don't stop learning.:)
By sending State Department officials to help build a new government. We provided intelligence from the CIA. And the IMF offers to lend them money for construction projects -- to be built by U.S. firms like Bechtel -- to rebuild after the war. All of these perks come with a price, and those that end up in power know that more perks will continue to flow so long as they do what we want.
Sure, we don't control the government as completely as if they were U.S. citizens sent to rule as the English did in their colonial days. However, in a democracy that's not the most efficient manner. In a capitalist society, you need to control the capital; the government will follow.
For example, the situation in many Latin and South American countries now is that the government is burdened with huge debts to the IMF and World Bank. However, transnational corporations are the ones that own the resources and land and factories. They get rich while the workers and citizens continue to experience a lower standard of living. Corporate profits are sent back to the U.S. because the first rule imposed by the IMF is the lifting of restrictions on capital flight. Thus, the debts can never be repaid and the economy continues to spiral downward.
Capitalism makes immediate profit more important so long as you can take the capital gains with you to better markets. It's okay if the Argentinian society self-destructs, destroying local industry, since the corporations that own those industries can take the money they've made and bring it back to the U.S. to invest in yet more markets. It encourages corporations to bleed the developing nations of their resources as that makes money in the short term that can be invested elsewhere.
Well, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a single year when "the world" has been at peace, without going back to before the first guy clubbed someone with an antelope femur.
I don't mean to include every little local conflict; I'm speaking only about major conflicts like the U.S.'s invasion of Southeast Asia, Indonesia's genecide in East Timor, Israel's invasion of Lebanon, etc.
What exactly do you think gave the US "market dominance"?
A strong penchant for greed. A huge head start with an established empire that was expanded immensely by WW2 (the U.S. replaced England as the world's most powerful empire). Access to a lot of natural resources, both locally and globally. Capital (wealth) from Europe. And the world's most powerful military.
Note that while Communism spread to other countries, the U.S. never intended to democratize the world. Instead it steadily built a global empire of totalitarian colonies beholden to U.S. power. Using the IMF and World Bank, the U.S. corrupts the elite to maintain their power from afar using capital to gain access to the country's natural resources. Those resources are then shipped to the U.S. rather than being used to better the lives of those living in the country. Capitalism is basically a huge wealth vacuum, sucking capital into its center of power.
While the U.S. continues to improve its standard of living overall, the poor in the U.S. are further distanced from the wealthy. When you compare the U.S. to its colonies the situation is far worse. Sure, some technology is leaking slowly into developing nations, but by and large the local population looks just like the U.S.: a few powerful elite in the center and a mass of poor doing the work.
It works just like the food pyrimad: on the bottom you have the plants (poor). They can support fewer herbivores (middle class). Those in turn can support far fewer carnivores (wealthy elite). And just as in 1984, you tie each level's survival to their ability to keep the level below them under control. Thus the elite only need control the middle class, who in turn control the poor.
I'm not saying Capitalism has no benefits to society, and I'm not claiming Communism is a great form of government. I believe that, like everything else in nature, society must continually evolve. Capitalism may spur innovation and production, but at what cost to society? Yes, my life is better off (access to technology and a fairly easy lifestyle), but the cost is many millions of starving poor or simply oppressed people throughout the world. I don't like knowing that other people are paying that price.
Oh please. That there is false information on the net does not discount the truth that can be found. Regardless, that many colonists gave blankets infected with smallpox to Native American tribes as "gifts" has been documented long before the Internet came around.
And #3 is obviously false because they would have been emailed rather than called on the phone. Duh!;)
Sure, the idea of telescreens in every home was scary, but it was just one facet of 1984. How about constant warfare to keep production levels high and boost GNP? Weapons are basically waste products: you build them and then throw them away. The world (and barely even the U.S.) hasn't been in a state of peace since WW2.
Whether it's a totalitarian controlling all information or a few media conglomerates, what's the difference? A small group of people decide what's important to the viewers. I just watched a program the other night that compared crime rates to the reporting of crime on TV. Crime reports went way up over the past ten years while the crime rate went down slightly. It gives the impression to the uninformed that crime has actually sky-rocketed out of control.
Keeping a high prison population is also a good waste product that boosts GNP. In the U.S. the prison population has gone from 200,000 in early 1970's to over 2 million in 2002. The majority of that is due to nonviolent drug offenders. Yet prison construction and technology is one of the highest growth industries in the U.S., and it's basically corporate welfare.
The article also claims that technology and democracy were responsible for the demise of Communism. This is not true. The USSR couldn't compete against the U.S. market dominance. Capitalism is geared toward utilizing resources as quickly as possible for maximum capital growth, and the U.S. works very hard to make sure we have access to the world's resources.
It's not just a coincidence that the U.S. has been trying to build a pipeline for natural gas through Afghanistan for the past few years with no luck. Now that we've installed a U.S.-friendly regime the pipeline will be built, and the engineers will have U.S. Rangers to guard their construction efforts.
In summary, the author saw a few differences between Orwell's vision and reality today and decided that everything was incorrect. We're suddenly living in a wonderful utopia and can go back to merrily consuming products without any worry about totalirianism or big brother. No thanks!
I figured it may be doable in the future, but it's interesting to know it's already available. I understand the fear that gun-confiscation laws could be passed (as they have been in the past), and having a registration database makes this enforceable.
It really comes down to this: if you can't trust the government to act responsibly, and have no way to enforce responsibility, then perhaps the form of government needs to be changed. For example, one problem with democracy is "tyranny of the majority": if the majority decides some action is a crime, it affects the minority that doesn't believe it's a crime. See drug prohibition for an example.
If you truly believe that democracy is the best form of government, then you have little right to complain when guns are outlawed by the majority. Then again, it would require a constitutional ammendement in the U.S. which requires far more than a simple majority vote to pass. Then again, gun ownership is viewed as the final form of enforcing responsible government when all other methods fail.
The point is that when a gun is used in a crime, the police have a starting point to use in tracking down who used the gun. In this way it is much the same as license plates: The license plate does not prevent a gangbanger or convicted felon from stealing the car - but when a car is seen leaving a crime, the license plate is used to help the police track down who did the crime by giving them a starting point for the investigation.
That would only work if the perpetrator left the gun at the scene. AFAIK gun registration is linked to a registration number etched into the gun (slide or barrel, I do not know). Now, if you have the gun you can test to see if it fired a bullet you found at the crime scene (unless this is total movie fantasy), but I doubt you'd be able to create a database of barrel markings that would be searchable like fingerprints. And if you could, people would just buy new barrels on the black market.
That being said, I'm still torn on gun registration. You already need to have a license to own a handgun (not shotgun and some rifles, correct?), so basically there's a list of people likely to own a gun. The only thing I really care about is that anyone owning or using a gun has been cleared on safety issues and that they are not "likely" to use it for crime. "Likely" currently is determined by whether or not they have a felony record and are sane, IIRC.
I respectfully submit that your analogy to a car is fundamentally flawed. It is a privalege to drive an automobile. It is a right to keep and bear arms, even if the government has a legitimate interest in regulating that right.
I think the analogy was quite appropriate. I have a right to ensure that anyone in my community owning a dangerous item knows how to -- and intends to -- use it safely. If you can't drive responsibly, you don't deserve to drive. If you can't use a gun responsibly, you don't deserve to have one. In other words, call it priviledge or right, it's the same: you only get to have it if you are responsible and safe with it.
If you decide to consciously kill people, you can do so with either the gun or car. That's covered by basic manslaughter laws. But if you aren't trained to use a gun or car safely, you should not be allowed to own one. I don't feel you have more of a right to own either one more than the other if you can't be trusted to be responsible and safe.
I've seen many drivers that I feel should have their licenses revoked for driving so poorly. I don't care if that's your livelihood if you are more likely to kill someone by driving -- take the bus or make other arrangements.
Similarly, I've read some stories (no first-hand knowledge thankfully) of people who stored their firearm irresponsibly or were careless and killed someone. They probably never considered the safety issue beyond the simplistic test you take for a license (I passed it after twenty minutes of skimming through the booklet, though I had been firing handguns for many years).
I've heard that driving tests in Germany are far more difficult than in America, and that's sad given how many fatal accidents there are each year in the U.S. I also feel the gun license should have a stricter test, but then again there are far fewer accidental gun deaths than car fatalities, so I'd make the driving test harder first. I was more surprised that I wasn't required to actually operate a gun to get a license to own one. Of course, you don't have to drive on the freeway during the test (never over 35 mph really) yet you're still licensed for freeway driving.
This seems backwards until you look at congress's history. 400,000 people die from smoking-related illnesses each year, yet tobacco is legal. Marijuana is illegal, yet to date there have been zero (0) cases of marijuana-related illness deaths. Go figure.
I surf at work occassionally because it is very important to take short breaks throughout the day to maintain optimum performance. My last boss agreed, and read/. as well. The key difference here is that I don't want watching ads to be my short break.
But now let's look at it from the point of view of the Architect. He has to provide a[n] income for his business, his family and his new car.
Honestly, that's the architect's concern -- not his customers'. In a capitalist society, each person must provide for their own lifestyle. It is not the responsibility of the government to support the software industry. The government, like a business, needs software to perform various functions. And like a business, it must make choices that are in its best interest.
If each government in the EU agrees to join this collective commons and share software with each other, then who pays for what will balance itself out. One may supply software for budgeting; another writes software for distributing welfare; and so on.
True, this will decrease the market for custom software firms, but it will increase the market for custom software developers. In the end it may be a wash, with the added bonus that the governments -- and thus the EU citizens -- are better off. I don't see where the moral argument comes into play, but let's address that anyway.
Now the free software advocates claim this second method is immoral and unethical. But I have to ask why?
First, I'd ask why you assume that "the free software advocates" -- which seems to imply all or a majority -- "claim this second method is immoral and unethical." I'm a free software advocate, and I don't see any moral or ethical problem with commercial software. Capitalism lets the market decide. If there weren't companies that felt they were deriving advantages from using free software, it wouldn't survive. Clearly, people want free software, there are developers willing to create it, and there are even some companies willing to pay for it.
Where some people, including Bill Gates, raise an issue is with governments declaring that they will focus on using free software or open source. They claim that it is improper for a publicly-funded institution to discriminate about what type of software they will use. However, this isn't discrimination but merely choice. Most companies want to use well-written software that meets their business needs rather than something buggy that barely satisfies their goals [this is not a comparison of free vs. proprietary software]. It's another business decision. If a government decides that proprietary software doesn't meet their needs, what's the problem?
This striving for awards is a large part of what makes this country great. . . . If instead you get everything handed to you without any effort, you become lazy.
I didn't say all rewards are bad. I said that many people tend to do things only when they expect a reward. There certainly is altruism in the world -- I just wish there was a lot more of it.
But I don't see very many people advocating that all roads should be cleaned for free, and that anybody who wants to be a paid Janitor is immoral and evil.
And I don't see the majority of free software people advocating that all software "should" be free, as that implies forcing the freedom by banning all proprietary software. Similarly, I haven't seen anyone saying paid software developers are immoral. I certainly wouldn't claim that, being one myself.
I believe that if this goes over in the EU, the governments will end up hiring a lot of developers to create software that will be shared among the governments. How is that any different than hiring a bunch of trash collectors and sharing any new learning that comes out of that?
In her article, she stated that when she puts up mp3s of a song, she sees an increase of her CD sales of all off her albums, past and present. Thus, shutting down the sharing of music costs her money, plain and simple. Read the article next time (duh) and you'll have you answers without having to chew on your foot.
But you may not know ahead of time. When you pay the architect $20,000, maybe none of your friends wants to build a house. Then, five years later, someone comes to your door and says they love your house and want to build one just like it.
If you dismiss them, you gain nothing. If you give them a copy of the plans, you gain nothing. So what's the difference? True, maybe they would be willing to pay you $500 for the plans, but you can't claim to lose $20,000 if they don't because you already paid it and got what you wanted.
It's sad, but our (U.S. for me) culture has such a strong desire to strive for awards that we don't do anything without the possibility of a payment of some sort. I get odd stares on the street if I pick up someone else's trash and throw it in the trash can, like, "You're not being paid to do that; why did you do that? How strange!" Maybe I did it just because I like a clean street rather than a dirty one? It's a similar impulse with creating Free Software.
On what continent do you believe Israel is located?
How is it fascist to only want to arrest those who are guilty of crimes?
That's not what you originally said. You said it was okay that they were arrested without being charged because they were probably guilty. In the U.S. when you are arrested you are charged and given a trial to determine your guilt or innocence. I'm not willing to throw out due process and just hope that the police only arrest guilty people.
Even though in overwhelming evidence, Israel does far less of the "Crimes" than its enemies.
Again, this is not true. The PLO does not expell Israelis, nor make mass arrests, nor perpetrate mass torture, nor bulldoze homes and build illegal settlements, nor does it occupy Israel. Both sides kill civilians with guns and bombs. They're both committing terrorism, yet Israel is doing far more of it than the Palestinians. I'd love it if they both stopped.
which is state-wide . . . aggression funded by many other countries with deep pockets.
The actions of a few hundred or thousand members of Fatah does not begin to compare to the levels of violence committed by the State of Israel, with its IDF, tanks, jets, artillery, and other high-tech arms supplied by the American taxpayer. Do you believe that the "other countries with deep pockets" even come close to the U.S. aid of over $3 billion annually?
PLO proclamation denying the Israelis the right to exist
The PLO voted to remove this from their articles many years ago. Since 1972 Arafat has officially accepted Israel's right to exist and worked toward a two-state settlement.
Israel entered honestly into the Oslo accords
No, Israel's first proposal included a map showing that Palestine -- which would not be an actual state -- would consist of roughly 27% of the existing West Bank area and none of the Gaza Strip. It's hardly honest to begin your comprimise by laying claim to yet more territory.
[Me:]
"If Israel had nothing to do with Jews I would still condemn the state's actions as terrorism."
Seems doubtful. Israel's Jewishness is the most stark thing setting it aside.
Doubtful or not, it's the truth. No, it is not Israel's Jewishness that I condemn; it's their use of terrorism. I condemn the Palestinian's use of terrorism. I condemn America's use of terrorism. I condemn terrorism, whether it's committed by Jews, Arabs, or Martians.
Often anti-semites claim that Jews are cunning devils who are too smart.
If they're so damn smart, you'd think they'd realize that their very own policy of violence and occupation is responsible for the Arab violence. Fortunately, many Israelis understand this and are working toward a peaceful solution.
By the way, you keep implying that socialism is a bad or evil thing. You might want to avoid generalizations as that is what leads to racism and other stereotyping. For example, Israel is a democratic socialist republic, and I don't think you believe them to be evil because they practice socialism.
Democracy is based on the premise that the population to be governed have the right to choose how and by whom they are governed. The Thai people have done so, and their representatives have passed laws. Just as in the U.S., if the people disagree with those laws, it is up to them to change the laws or change their representatives. That is democracy pure and simple.
If we cared about the rights of Thai people, we wouldn't have interfered with their process of democracy. Remember, this isn't a dictator that decided to ban tobacco advertising. And how do you know that the Thai people were unhappy with the law? If they were unhappy, they would have done something to change it.
Finally, I don't believe that public advertising is free speech or a right of corporations. My senses are mine, and I should be able to control them. Advertising like billboards takes away my right to view nature and my surroundings unobstructed. Just because you want to sell cars does not give you the right to force an image of your car into my face.
Free speech says you have a right to speak and I have a right not to listen. But public advertising takes away my right not to listen. It is in my face; I must first see it and then look away. Therefore I have no way to never listen to your message.
Ponder billboards on the side of the freeway for a moment. They are designed to attract your attention -- and hold it -- in order to feed you a message and sell you a product or brand. Yet you're supposed to be focusing your attention on the road so you don't cause an accident! Doesn't that seem a little stupid?
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you. That's exactly it. I got stuck on Amnesty International and didn't think beyond it. :)
"Texas Moon" is slang for a bare ass, like "full moon." Therefore, "Under a Texas Moon" refers to someone singing under someone else's bare ass. ;)
All they got was a fscking T-shirt.
While I'm the first person to acknowledge that marketing pushes a lot of products on people that they don't really want or need, both of your examples here fail.
Day-timers are great for people that have 50 contacts and 5 items on their todo list. My mom used to carry around one of the 5x8 ones that was quite full. It didn't even fit in her purse, so it was very inconvenient. I kept demonstrating my PDA to her, that it was indeed easier to use than the laptop she used at the office, etc. Finally she lost her day-timer and freaked out. There was no way she was going to recall all the appointments she had made over the coming weeks and months. Luckily, she had only left it at an associate's office who called her the next day. She immediately switched to a PDA and within a month was able to use it far more efficiently than the day-timer. If she loses that, it's all on her laptop at work.
As for cell phones, I'm quite happy with mine. As long as you don't go nuts and start thinking that just cause it's ringing you have to answer it, you'll be okay. I turn it off when I don't want to be interrupted, and I put it on vibrate when I carry it so no one else is ever bothered by it. Two recent examples of being useful. Saturday we were driving to a friend's party an hour away. The driver had written the directions incorrectly, so I called my friend on the highway to get the right junction. Then Sunday a friend called while I was shopping to see if I wanted to head to another friend's house for the day -- he was just leaving home and could pick me up on the way. That's convenience and new opportunities that I'm glad to have.
That one idea for a new gadget (internet-enabled pacemakers) sounds like a bad idea doesn't mean they all are. If you could work out the security issues completely, network-enabled traffic signals could be very useful. Imagine an ambulance leaves the station in an emergency. The system operator could have the traffic signals along its path go red in both directions and ring they're own sirens, giving advanced notice to cars and pedestrians to clear the street.
As for worrying about giving your son a laptop, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. I had legos as a kid (no home computers), so I said, "Hang on. I'll put away my toys and be right over." And I don't feel I'm somehow scarred by it. :) Computers are tools, like toys, books, and guns. The key is to educate your children in their proper use before you let them use them. Some tools may have bigger consequences in misuse than others, and that should be discussed as well.
I'm guessing you didn't bother to read the article, or you skipped down to the part about the old French move against Yahoo. To summarize, two Italian men created a site illegal by Italian standards and hosted it with an ISP in the U.S. The police managed to get the password to the site content and replaced the images.
While I disagree with the Italian laws, this case is not a matter of some foreign government trampling the free speech rights of a U.S. citizen.
In the case of amnesty, you need to be accepted by the country from whom you seek help. Should it work the same for ideas? If you are afraid your ideas will be censored by your home country, get someone in the hosting country to help you by maintaining your site. This way the police would have to act in the hosting company to censor the content.
So in this case, the Italian citizen should have contacted a U.S. citizen before being caught. The U.S. citizen could then maintain the site, and when the Italian police struck, would have simply fixed the site and changed the password. Then the Italians would have had to fight the case here in the U.S. where our laws would likely protect the content.
As I understand it, this is exactly what FreeNet is supposed to do without having to formalize a relationship with others to host your content. They host it merely by viewing it a few times without having to stick their own necks out.
Who is "they"? Do you believe that the average citizen of Afghanistan has any pull with the self-appointed leaders of the interim government? The leaders that will benefit from the kickbacks and support of their power are certainly not going to turn down the economic and military aid, and they have the only deciding voice.
For a country that loves to cry the virtues of democracy so loudly, the U.S. is amazingly steadfast in its support of totalitarian dictators. Again and again we oppose democracy for anyone but ourselves knowing it would require more effort to rape the world if we had to answer to the entire population rather than a few bozos at the top.
That's a far cry from "installing a US-friendly government"
Have you ever trained a dog?
You teach the dog that good behavior is rewarded with treats and bad behavior is punished by lack of treats. It works the same way with client nations. Good behavior (liberalization of investment, opening markets to foreign capital, relaxing capital flight restrictions) is rewarded with treats (economic aid, military training, investment). Bad behavior (workers rights, social programs, import tarrifs) is punished (capital flight, trade embargos, dumping cheap imports into local markets). It doesn't take long before the client is rolling over and playing dead on command.
Give it a rest.
No, you and the majority of the public have been resting for far too long. Turn off the television and open your eyes and ears to the rest of the world. Read about U.S. foreign policy. Investigate the actions of your elected officials. If you want to sleep through life, that is your choice, but don't whine when I won't lie down for the slaughter with you.
I don't see your point. Did you read the entire discussion for context? I made the point that the world and even the U.S. hasn't seen peace since WWII. Someone else rebutted saying that of course there's no peace because there's always at least one person somewhere in the world that is in conflict with another person. I replied that obviously if you look at every individual conflict there is no peace, which is not an interesting observation. However, if you restrict "conflict" to only major conflicts in the grand view the U.S. still hasn't been at peace.
The average high school student would say that's incorrect. They'd point to WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Balkans Conflict, and the current war in Afghanistan, claiming the U.S. has enjoyed many years of peace between all of those wars. But they would be wrong because they'd be limited to official records in history books (yes, I've read a couple).
You must include Guatemala, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua, Sudan, Congo, Iran, Indonesia, East Timor, Laos, Cambodia, Phillipines, etc. In many of those cases the U.S. military was directly involved. In other cases it was limited to military training, support, and aid. And still others we interfered directly in elections or supported coups.
As for American 'greed'
I never said American greed. I said Capitalism encourages greed by creating the cycle of capital as the fuel and ultimate prize. You need capital to make capital; the more capital you have, the faster you can make more; and capital is the ultimate reward. Without capital you cannot play the game, and those with a head start are nearly guaranteed to increase their lead.
People are equally greedy everywhere.
Having been everywhere, you're the expert, right? In my admittedly far fewer travels -- I still haven't been to Australia or Antarctica -- I have found that greed is not universal. Some societies breed more greed than others, just as some breed more violence or tolerance. I have found that Capitalist societies tend to instill more greed in the populace. Instead of having musicians make music for the love of music, they must make music that can be marketed widely.
The US just happens to have exceptional natural resources and a hybrid mix of the 'best of breed' immigrants from several continents.
Those have certainly helped the U.S. maintain its lead, but that doesn't discount the advantages of the largest military, a head start on capital from Europe, and a willingness to succeed at all costs, including slavery and genocide. That the U.S. has a higher standard of living than the developing nations does not justify the means of achieving it.
Yes, but you must define "efficiency." Is the goal to maximize the standard of living? Or to create equality? To better mankind? To improve scientific research? To lengthen the average lifespan?
No, it is none of the above. Capitalism is designed to maximize the efficiency of maximizing capital growth. For example, look at logging. If your goal is to provide timber for generation after generation, you would limit the logging to a level that can be replenished, creating an equilibrium between new growth and felled trees.
But that's not how logging proceeded for the majority of U.S. history. Instead, forests were clear-cut for centuries leaving barren fields. It cost more money to plant trees and log in strips, so every tree was taken. As well, the only way to save old growth forests that had historic or aesthetic value from loggers was to use public and privately donated capital to protect them. Capitalism doesn't allow for measuring aesthetic or good will except for converting it to a capital value.
And now the South American rainforest is disappearing at an alarming rate for timber and cattle to be exported to rich markets. It would be one thing if Brazilians decided they wanted to clear-cut their forests, but that's not what happens. Because the U.S. has such a large lead in capital, we are able to wield a disproportionate amount of power in developing countries, essentially taking whatever we want. Worse still, U.S. firms run the operations using U.S. capital, sending the profit back to the U.S. investors in a complete cycle.
The local population of a land, then, doesn't own the resources located on the land. They belong to whomever can provide the capital necessary to extract them. Sure, the locals get a few slave-wage jobs in conditions no U.S.-worker would ever accept until the resources are exhausted. Again, capitalism encourages the resources to be removed as quickly as possible since as the time taken increases, so do the costs: labor, equipment, bribes to officials, possibly intervening militarily.
Have you ever played any of the RTS games? If so, then you know the key to winning is to swoop in to a cache of resources and extract them as quickly as you can. The longer it takes, the more likely you'll have to defend your harvesters. As well, the faster you gain resources, the faster you can build your infrastructure and military. The U.S. views the world no differently than a typical player of StarCraft or Age of Empires.
Another tool is shell scripting. At a past company Symantec Cafe was used for developing a Java application. When I joined, I immediately created shell scripts for myself to do automated builds for a couple reasons:
I showed others how to use them, but only one other developer took the time to get used to it, never having used a shell before. The others complained that they shouldn't have to learn a new tool (shells and scripts) when Cafe sufficed. I explained the advantages, but to no avail.
Well, a few months later we finally hired a real QA and release engineer. Since we were building a J2EE application to run on Linux in testing and Solaris in deployment, we needed automated builds on Unix. There was a huge rush to get everyone up to speed on the new build system using shell scripts.
Hmm, that was a bit long-winded just to make the point that there are many useful tools to developers that don't involve the actual code they write. I've used regexps to create SQL data files and config files as mentioned. You'll learn many things, so keep open and don't stop learning. :)
By sending State Department officials to help build a new government. We provided intelligence from the CIA. And the IMF offers to lend them money for construction projects -- to be built by U.S. firms like Bechtel -- to rebuild after the war. All of these perks come with a price, and those that end up in power know that more perks will continue to flow so long as they do what we want.
Sure, we don't control the government as completely as if they were U.S. citizens sent to rule as the English did in their colonial days. However, in a democracy that's not the most efficient manner. In a capitalist society, you need to control the capital; the government will follow.
For example, the situation in many Latin and South American countries now is that the government is burdened with huge debts to the IMF and World Bank. However, transnational corporations are the ones that own the resources and land and factories. They get rich while the workers and citizens continue to experience a lower standard of living. Corporate profits are sent back to the U.S. because the first rule imposed by the IMF is the lifting of restrictions on capital flight. Thus, the debts can never be repaid and the economy continues to spiral downward.
Capitalism makes immediate profit more important so long as you can take the capital gains with you to better markets. It's okay if the Argentinian society self-destructs, destroying local industry, since the corporations that own those industries can take the money they've made and bring it back to the U.S. to invest in yet more markets. It encourages corporations to bleed the developing nations of their resources as that makes money in the short term that can be invested elsewhere.
I don't mean to include every little local conflict; I'm speaking only about major conflicts like the U.S.'s invasion of Southeast Asia, Indonesia's genecide in East Timor, Israel's invasion of Lebanon, etc.
What exactly do you think gave the US "market dominance"?
A strong penchant for greed. A huge head start with an established empire that was expanded immensely by WW2 (the U.S. replaced England as the world's most powerful empire). Access to a lot of natural resources, both locally and globally. Capital (wealth) from Europe. And the world's most powerful military.
Note that while Communism spread to other countries, the U.S. never intended to democratize the world. Instead it steadily built a global empire of totalitarian colonies beholden to U.S. power. Using the IMF and World Bank, the U.S. corrupts the elite to maintain their power from afar using capital to gain access to the country's natural resources. Those resources are then shipped to the U.S. rather than being used to better the lives of those living in the country. Capitalism is basically a huge wealth vacuum, sucking capital into its center of power.
While the U.S. continues to improve its standard of living overall, the poor in the U.S. are further distanced from the wealthy. When you compare the U.S. to its colonies the situation is far worse. Sure, some technology is leaking slowly into developing nations, but by and large the local population looks just like the U.S.: a few powerful elite in the center and a mass of poor doing the work.
It works just like the food pyrimad: on the bottom you have the plants (poor). They can support fewer herbivores (middle class). Those in turn can support far fewer carnivores (wealthy elite). And just as in 1984, you tie each level's survival to their ability to keep the level below them under control. Thus the elite only need control the middle class, who in turn control the poor.
I'm not saying Capitalism has no benefits to society, and I'm not claiming Communism is a great form of government. I believe that, like everything else in nature, society must continually evolve. Capitalism may spur innovation and production, but at what cost to society? Yes, my life is better off (access to technology and a fairly easy lifestyle), but the cost is many millions of starving poor or simply oppressed people throughout the world. I don't like knowing that other people are paying that price.
He was a member of the Party, but not the Inner Party. In other words, Winston Smith was middle class.
And #3 is obviously false because they would have been emailed rather than called on the phone. Duh! ;)
Whether it's a totalitarian controlling all information or a few media conglomerates, what's the difference? A small group of people decide what's important to the viewers. I just watched a program the other night that compared crime rates to the reporting of crime on TV. Crime reports went way up over the past ten years while the crime rate went down slightly. It gives the impression to the uninformed that crime has actually sky-rocketed out of control.
Keeping a high prison population is also a good waste product that boosts GNP. In the U.S. the prison population has gone from 200,000 in early 1970's to over 2 million in 2002. The majority of that is due to nonviolent drug offenders. Yet prison construction and technology is one of the highest growth industries in the U.S., and it's basically corporate welfare.
The article also claims that technology and democracy were responsible for the demise of Communism. This is not true. The USSR couldn't compete against the U.S. market dominance. Capitalism is geared toward utilizing resources as quickly as possible for maximum capital growth, and the U.S. works very hard to make sure we have access to the world's resources.
It's not just a coincidence that the U.S. has been trying to build a pipeline for natural gas through Afghanistan for the past few years with no luck. Now that we've installed a U.S.-friendly regime the pipeline will be built, and the engineers will have U.S. Rangers to guard their construction efforts.
In summary, the author saw a few differences between Orwell's vision and reality today and decided that everything was incorrect. We're suddenly living in a wonderful utopia and can go back to merrily consuming products without any worry about totalirianism or big brother. No thanks!
It really comes down to this: if you can't trust the government to act responsibly, and have no way to enforce responsibility, then perhaps the form of government needs to be changed. For example, one problem with democracy is "tyranny of the majority": if the majority decides some action is a crime, it affects the minority that doesn't believe it's a crime. See drug prohibition for an example.
If you truly believe that democracy is the best form of government, then you have little right to complain when guns are outlawed by the majority. Then again, it would require a constitutional ammendement in the U.S. which requires far more than a simple majority vote to pass. Then again, gun ownership is viewed as the final form of enforcing responsible government when all other methods fail.
That would only work if the perpetrator left the gun at the scene. AFAIK gun registration is linked to a registration number etched into the gun (slide or barrel, I do not know). Now, if you have the gun you can test to see if it fired a bullet you found at the crime scene (unless this is total movie fantasy), but I doubt you'd be able to create a database of barrel markings that would be searchable like fingerprints. And if you could, people would just buy new barrels on the black market.
That being said, I'm still torn on gun registration. You already need to have a license to own a handgun (not shotgun and some rifles, correct?), so basically there's a list of people likely to own a gun. The only thing I really care about is that anyone owning or using a gun has been cleared on safety issues and that they are not "likely" to use it for crime. "Likely" currently is determined by whether or not they have a felony record and are sane, IIRC.
I think the analogy was quite appropriate. I have a right to ensure that anyone in my community owning a dangerous item knows how to -- and intends to -- use it safely. If you can't drive responsibly, you don't deserve to drive. If you can't use a gun responsibly, you don't deserve to have one. In other words, call it priviledge or right, it's the same: you only get to have it if you are responsible and safe with it.
If you decide to consciously kill people, you can do so with either the gun or car. That's covered by basic manslaughter laws. But if you aren't trained to use a gun or car safely, you should not be allowed to own one. I don't feel you have more of a right to own either one more than the other if you can't be trusted to be responsible and safe.
I've seen many drivers that I feel should have their licenses revoked for driving so poorly. I don't care if that's your livelihood if you are more likely to kill someone by driving -- take the bus or make other arrangements.
Similarly, I've read some stories (no first-hand knowledge thankfully) of people who stored their firearm irresponsibly or were careless and killed someone. They probably never considered the safety issue beyond the simplistic test you take for a license (I passed it after twenty minutes of skimming through the booklet, though I had been firing handguns for many years).
I've heard that driving tests in Germany are far more difficult than in America, and that's sad given how many fatal accidents there are each year in the U.S. I also feel the gun license should have a stricter test, but then again there are far fewer accidental gun deaths than car fatalities, so I'd make the driving test harder first. I was more surprised that I wasn't required to actually operate a gun to get a license to own one. Of course, you don't have to drive on the freeway during the test (never over 35 mph really) yet you're still licensed for freeway driving.
This seems backwards until you look at congress's history. 400,000 people die from smoking-related illnesses each year, yet tobacco is legal. Marijuana is illegal, yet to date there have been zero (0) cases of marijuana-related illness deaths. Go figure.
I surf at work occassionally because it is very important to take short breaks throughout the day to maintain optimum performance. My last boss agreed, and read /. as well. The key difference here is that I don't want watching ads to be my short break.
Honestly, that's the architect's concern -- not his customers'. In a capitalist society, each person must provide for their own lifestyle. It is not the responsibility of the government to support the software industry. The government, like a business, needs software to perform various functions. And like a business, it must make choices that are in its best interest.
If each government in the EU agrees to join this collective commons and share software with each other, then who pays for what will balance itself out. One may supply software for budgeting; another writes software for distributing welfare; and so on.
True, this will decrease the market for custom software firms, but it will increase the market for custom software developers. In the end it may be a wash, with the added bonus that the governments -- and thus the EU citizens -- are better off. I don't see where the moral argument comes into play, but let's address that anyway.
Now the free software advocates claim this second method is immoral and unethical. But I have to ask why?
First, I'd ask why you assume that "the free software advocates" -- which seems to imply all or a majority -- "claim this second method is immoral and unethical." I'm a free software advocate, and I don't see any moral or ethical problem with commercial software. Capitalism lets the market decide. If there weren't companies that felt they were deriving advantages from using free software, it wouldn't survive. Clearly, people want free software, there are developers willing to create it, and there are even some companies willing to pay for it.
Where some people, including Bill Gates, raise an issue is with governments declaring that they will focus on using free software or open source. They claim that it is improper for a publicly-funded institution to discriminate about what type of software they will use. However, this isn't discrimination but merely choice. Most companies want to use well-written software that meets their business needs rather than something buggy that barely satisfies their goals [this is not a comparison of free vs. proprietary software]. It's another business decision. If a government decides that proprietary software doesn't meet their needs, what's the problem?
This striving for awards is a large part of what makes this country great. . . . If instead you get everything handed to you without any effort, you become lazy.
I didn't say all rewards are bad. I said that many people tend to do things only when they expect a reward. There certainly is altruism in the world -- I just wish there was a lot more of it.
But I don't see very many people advocating that all roads should be cleaned for free, and that anybody who wants to be a paid Janitor is immoral and evil.
And I don't see the majority of free software people advocating that all software "should" be free, as that implies forcing the freedom by banning all proprietary software. Similarly, I haven't seen anyone saying paid software developers are immoral. I certainly wouldn't claim that, being one myself.
I believe that if this goes over in the EU, the governments will end up hiring a lot of developers to create software that will be shared among the governments. How is that any different than hiring a bunch of trash collectors and sharing any new learning that comes out of that?
In her article, she stated that when she puts up mp3s of a song, she sees an increase of her CD sales of all off her albums, past and present. Thus, shutting down the sharing of music costs her money, plain and simple. Read the article next time (duh) and you'll have you answers without having to chew on your foot.
Oh sure, blame Canada!
If you dismiss them, you gain nothing. If you give them a copy of the plans, you gain nothing. So what's the difference? True, maybe they would be willing to pay you $500 for the plans, but you can't claim to lose $20,000 if they don't because you already paid it and got what you wanted.
It's sad, but our (U.S. for me) culture has such a strong desire to strive for awards that we don't do anything without the possibility of a payment of some sort. I get odd stares on the street if I pick up someone else's trash and throw it in the trash can, like, "You're not being paid to do that; why did you do that? How strange!" Maybe I did it just because I like a clean street rather than a dirty one? It's a similar impulse with creating Free Software.
Luckily, some people really do like to give.
On what continent do you believe Israel is located?
How is it fascist to only want to arrest those who are guilty of crimes?
That's not what you originally said. You said it was okay that they were arrested without being charged because they were probably guilty. In the U.S. when you are arrested you are charged and given a trial to determine your guilt or innocence. I'm not willing to throw out due process and just hope that the police only arrest guilty people.
Even though in overwhelming evidence, Israel does far less of the "Crimes" than its enemies.
Again, this is not true. The PLO does not expell Israelis, nor make mass arrests, nor perpetrate mass torture, nor bulldoze homes and build illegal settlements, nor does it occupy Israel. Both sides kill civilians with guns and bombs. They're both committing terrorism, yet Israel is doing far more of it than the Palestinians. I'd love it if they both stopped.
which is state-wide . . . aggression funded by many other countries with deep pockets.
The actions of a few hundred or thousand members of Fatah does not begin to compare to the levels of violence committed by the State of Israel, with its IDF, tanks, jets, artillery, and other high-tech arms supplied by the American taxpayer. Do you believe that the "other countries with deep pockets" even come close to the U.S. aid of over $3 billion annually?
PLO proclamation denying the Israelis the right to exist
The PLO voted to remove this from their articles many years ago. Since 1972 Arafat has officially accepted Israel's right to exist and worked toward a two-state settlement.
Israel entered honestly into the Oslo accords
No, Israel's first proposal included a map showing that Palestine -- which would not be an actual state -- would consist of roughly 27% of the existing West Bank area and none of the Gaza Strip. It's hardly honest to begin your comprimise by laying claim to yet more territory.
[Me:] "If Israel had nothing to do with Jews I would still condemn the state's actions as terrorism."
Seems doubtful. Israel's Jewishness is the most stark thing setting it aside.
Doubtful or not, it's the truth. No, it is not Israel's Jewishness that I condemn; it's their use of terrorism. I condemn the Palestinian's use of terrorism. I condemn America's use of terrorism. I condemn terrorism, whether it's committed by Jews, Arabs, or Martians.
Often anti-semites claim that Jews are cunning devils who are too smart.
If they're so damn smart, you'd think they'd realize that their very own policy of violence and occupation is responsible for the Arab violence. Fortunately, many Israelis understand this and are working toward a peaceful solution.
By the way, you keep implying that socialism is a bad or evil thing. You might want to avoid generalizations as that is what leads to racism and other stereotyping. For example, Israel is a democratic socialist republic, and I don't think you believe them to be evil because they practice socialism.
If we cared about the rights of Thai people, we wouldn't have interfered with their process of democracy. Remember, this isn't a dictator that decided to ban tobacco advertising. And how do you know that the Thai people were unhappy with the law? If they were unhappy, they would have done something to change it.
Finally, I don't believe that public advertising is free speech or a right of corporations. My senses are mine, and I should be able to control them. Advertising like billboards takes away my right to view nature and my surroundings unobstructed. Just because you want to sell cars does not give you the right to force an image of your car into my face.
Free speech says you have a right to speak and I have a right not to listen. But public advertising takes away my right not to listen. It is in my face; I must first see it and then look away. Therefore I have no way to never listen to your message.
Ponder billboards on the side of the freeway for a moment. They are designed to attract your attention -- and hold it -- in order to feed you a message and sell you a product or brand. Yet you're supposed to be focusing your attention on the road so you don't cause an accident! Doesn't that seem a little stupid?