Yeah, but who would rent a car if the contract sayed in bold letters Your credit card will be charged $150 each time our GPS monitoring system detects that you go above the speed limit???
According to the news articles on this, that is essentially what these people were doing. The top of the front page of his contract stated that the company was using GPS and would fine anyone using the vehicle irresponsibly.
What makes you think that most people on Slashdot have an iota of artistic knowledge? I think you should have asked the art professors your question.
Calling computer-generated art a fine art is like calling Moog music, "Classical." There is a difference between having an artist synthesize an expression and having a machine synthesize the expression (to which the audience then merely reacts). I've seen a lot of computer-generated art; it may be modern art, but I don't see it as a fine art.
I would say that the difference between graphic art and fine art is that fine art is intended to say something significant in itself, whereas graphic art is intended to attract attention, first to itself, then to its object. I believe that it is important that the artwork not overshadow its message; this would be difficult for computer generated art to do.
There is no need for him to have listened to a Java applet playing DNA as music, because scientists have been transcribing DNA to music for 3 decades. "Scientific American" introduced me to the idea; I believe it was illustrated on the cover of a 1976 issue.
Problem is that driving licences have been abused into being general ID's. IIRC In some parts of the US there is even legislation endorsing this perversion.
In Texas, non-drivers can get State ID cards from the motor vehicle department. Quite a few people in my poverty-stricken neighborhood in East Texas did not have a driver's license (and there is no bus service in the city of 80'000, either--crossing town meant hitching a ride with a private citizen or taxi or walking).
Let alone the bizare idea of someone losing their licence for something unrelated to driving, but possibly keeping it even for causing death or serious injury with a motor vehicle.
I am pleased to say that Texas has taken positive steps towards increasing public safety from motor vehicles. There is still a lot that could be done, but at least the State is not completely ignoring the issue. It took quite a bit of courage for them even to propose testing old people, even if the State chickened out a few weeks later. They were more successful in lowering the speed limit on a few roads that had higher fatalities after the limits were initially raised. Even so, a lot of people are allowed to operate a motor vehicle who should not be allowed to do so.
Speaking of operating a motor vehicle improperly, Texas has the situation of having a lot of people from Mexico driving on her roads. People in Mexico drive differently than people in the US. It is rare (as in, I haven't heard of it happening) to read of a dozen Irish or German or English-ethnic people dying in a single-car accident; I read about this happening to Mexicans every few months. They aren't qualified to be driving, apart from the fact that they got enough money to buy a motor vehicle. Sometimes, they don't even have a driver's license! The state dare not touch them, though, because it is not politically correct to focus on an ethnic group.
Maybe if we quit entitling morons to propel 3500 lbs of steel and aluminum over 60 mph, the temptation to impose such Orwellian intrusions would go away.
Can you imagine the outcry if you were to disqualify any group of people from driving in the US? Common sense and public welfare has no meaning in this context; people in the US demand the freedom of driving as they wish.
The Texas legislature considered a law requiring people over age 65 to take a driving exam. This was prompted because people over age 65 have the same per capita accidents as teenagers (IOW, the over-65 age group is a higher-risk driver group). There was such an outraged outcry that the proposal died within weeks. Why? Because the old coots have enough political clout to override the common good.
I've a list of various truisms about motor vehicles:
The most lethal device available to the average person is not a gun; it's a motor vehicle.
Dealers will sell a motor vehicle to anyone who has the money.
Ask the average male drivers to rate their driving skills, and most of them will consider themselves to be above-average drivers.
Forty thousand people die in motor vehicle accidents a year in the US, but people want to outlaw guns because of a few new stories.
As of a few years ago, it is illegal for any government agency in the US to get more than a small fraction (20%, I think) of its income from traffic tickets. This is the result of a US Congressman getting ticketed in a small Arkansas town that had used its speed trap to generate over 80% of the town's revenue. BTW, that town has gone bankrupt, and the police department in that town has disbanded.
For a long time, when I was a young man living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I thought that Albuquerque drivers were the worst drivers in the US. Then, I moved to Virginia, and learned that, though Virginians have different driving habits, they are just as bad in their own way as New Mexicans. For example, Virginia drivers cut off people who use turn signals. Every time I indicated that I was going to change lanes, the person behind me attempted to cut off my move. One woman in a convertible trailed several car lengths behind my vehicle for about 3 miles, until I signaled a lane change. I was amazed when she immediately accelerated another 15 mph, beeped her horn and cut off my vehicle as she passed me.
I moved back to New Mexico just before the big wave of Californians began moving into New Mexico (which begin in the early 1990s). As bad as New Mexican drivers are, it was easy to spot California drivers because the Californians were much more aggressive, drove faster and changed lanes much more frequently. It was easy to confirm they were Californians because they still had California license plates on their cars.
I moved to Texas in 1993, and to East Texas in 1994. In East Texas, drivers like to slow to about 5 mph a block before their turn and then make a 90 degree turn, even if they are in a 40 zone. The first time a Texas woman rear-ended and totaled my car, it was as I was stuck behind one of these slow-moving turners (the SMTs often don't indicate why they are slowing until they get much closer to their corner; by then, it's too late to change lanes). East Texans also don't like to make right turns on the red light, even though it is legal at most intersections.
Now, I'm in the Dallas area. The drivers are too aggressive, and not terribly bright. Red light runners are the leading cause of traffic death in the area. I see a traffic accident on Loop 635 at the same spot at least once a month.
I recently took a trip up through Chicago, into Indiana and then into Michigan. I was only there for a week, so I didn't get much of a feel for the driving. Generally, I didn't have trouble, though I did photograph a woman in a van attempting to push a semi-trailer. For the most part, the traffic violations I witnessed were people driving over the speed limit.
when I was living in East Texas, I realized that I needed to begin documenting the crazy driving I saw. I have to film it! That is one of the projects on my to-do list; set up a rig on my vehicle so that I can videotape and photograph all the nit-witted things I see every day.
I saw a car on Loop 635, as we were all doing about 70 mph, that suddenly began fishtailing wildly. Smoke was pouring from the tires. Apparently, the driver hadn't noticed until the last minute that there were road construction pylons in his lane. He eventually went up the side of the offramp hill and onto a service street.
I don't have to go far to see crazy things, either. Right in front of my apartment complex, in a 35 zone, I watched a large panel truck attempt a U-turn. He could not complete the turn in a single move. The truck backed up--and would have put its back end through a car's windshield if the car hadn't swerved into the next lane at the last second.
Meanwhile, some people get upset that handguns are legal...
You can be a ticket for driving the limit if conditions warrant slower usage.
In 1987, I was a student living in a Virginia college dorm. A friend across the hall was a volunteer police officer. One night when he was on duty, there was a heavy rain. The next day, my friend told me about a traffic accident he managed after the storm, in which a young woman (in her early 20s) had skidded on wet pavement and crashed into another vehicle. Among the woman's other troubles, she received a traffic ticket from my friend for driving faster than road conditions permitted. The woman protested in tears that she had been driving the speed limit, but it did her no good. She was only doing 30 or 35, but it was too fast for the road conditions.
I don't believe that Texas has a road condition law, because I should have seen it used if it did. Several years ago, East Texas police would issue tickets to the driver they believed was responsible for causing an accident, but they stopped that practice about a decade ago. As for poor road conditions, I was once stopped at a red light in the rain on a downhill stretch of road, when I noticed in my rear view mirror that the woman behind me was approaching much too quickly to stop in time to avoid hitting me. I hit my accelerator about the same time the woman behind me hit her brakes. I got about 50 feet down the street (running the red light in the process), and up to about 25 mph, when the woman's car rear-ended mine and totaled my vehicle. Her car had skidded the entire distance. If I hadn't run that red light, that woman probably would have killed my passenger or me (possibly I could have turned off the street--but, I didn't have much time to think of a plan right then). I don't believe the woman was ticketed, although her insurance company paid me enough for me to put the downpayment on a pickup truck.
All of which doesn't have a god damned thing to do with what he was saying. Since your reading comprehension appears to be straight out of... well, a US public school, let me help you. His statement was in reference to the fact that you can't protest in the US anymore without becoming a criminal.
If that's what he meant, that's what he should have said. That isn't what he said. Though I didn't write the post to which you replied, I came here to write a post identical to it. My big gripe with Michael's big gripe is that he completely overlooked the fact that in the US, there would be serious consequences to an employer who left their workers with $10 million in unpaid wages. It is highly unlikely that US police would use tear gas on people in that situation, because we don't let things reach the point of having a bankrupt company keeping its campus open with such a large backlog of unpaid wages.
Even if Michael *had* posted what you think he meant, I would still take issue with it. There are many protests in this country in which the protesters are not arrested or charged as criminals. What you cannot do is chain yourself across someone else's property and expect to no consequences for your actions. You cannot throw rocks, hit people, make threats, trespass, impede or shut down legitimate businesses and expect to walk away at the end of the day without a criminal charge. That's the way it should be. Otherwise, protesters become just a bunch of terrorists. At that point, the nation starts going into civil war. I think you should carefully consider whether your cause is really worth widespread death, terror and destruction before you start making non-peaceful demonstrations.
The cops in the US (and surrounding US events, like the meeting in quebec) certainly aren't as shy as the cops in other parts of the world.
You mean, like in Russia, where the police cracked down on public intoxication by arresting offenders, taking them out to the countryside and beating the daylights out of them? Or, Haiti, where they are likely to rape lone, unarmed women? Or, Mexico, where many police officers operate kidnapping and drug rings? Even a casual survey of world-wide police activities turns up a lot worse things than exist in the US.
I mean, they do shoot unarmed black men who are running away.
Your sentence construction implies that US cops in general have have repeatedly shot fleeing, unarmed Black men. The fact is, only a few officers have shot anyone, and there are even fewer cases in which unarmed, fleeing Black men were shot. Thus, it is inaccurate for you to refer to US police officers in this fashion.
They do sodomize suspects in bathrooms with broken broom handles.
You used the plural form, so I would expect you to be able to name at least two people treated in this manner. I don't think you can do it. So, I have to wonder why you characterized US police in general by a single incident in one corner of a very large country?
They do shoot guys something like 40 times for pulling wallets in a dark alley.
Name two.
And they do beat the bejeezus out of motorists who aren't offering any resistance.
Fleeing in a motor vehicle at 100 mph *IS* offering resistance. Other than that, I should note that I have been a US motorist offering no resistance to police for 20 years, but I have never been beaten by the police, nor have I witnessed any other motorist treated in this fashion, though some certainly would have deserved it.
Exactly how do you blow out of proportion a dude getting sodomized with a broken broom handle while in custody?
By pluralizing and generalizing a single incident. Urak used the plural form each time he referred to a lone incident or individual. There are many thousands of police officers spread across thousands of miles, but some people have chosen to voice disgust with the US police force in general on the basis of vague, overstated cases.
I appreciate your civil and intelligent reply to my post.
If the controllers of the collective cannot test all possible good ideas, how possibly could any individual? If the answer is that there are more individuals (or at least, more individuals posessing the capital to implement the ideas), then the socialist could rebut that the solution would be to replace a single socialist government with a series of smaller, decentralized ones.
It would seem to me that a characteristic of socialism is a strong centralized government. If that isn't an inherent characteristic, then it would seem to be the most common arrangement. Socialism needs to have extensive governmental control if it is to have control over wealth production. It would seem to me that by its nature, socialism would seek to expand to maximum size, while displacing all other powers.
In addition to the apparent nature of socialism to be monopolistic, there could only be a relatively small number of governmental agencies under any system; I'm pretty sure there will always be more people than governments. I think it is likely there would be more creative people looking for solutions than there could be government agencies. If these people have the means to implement their solutions--even if it requires more wealth than basic living and recreational expenses--then there could be millions of parallel solutions, instead of dozens to thousands.
I don't believe it is an accident that many of the great scientists of the 19th Century and earlier were unusually wealthy. I believe there were other people who could have done some of the some work, but their financial limitations prevented them from conducting that research. If the government had taken away the wealth of the scientists that had the finances, then only the research the government implemented would have been sufficiently funded. The efficient solution is not to take away the wealth from the wealthy (leaving the pool of total wealth nearly constant), but to teach everyone else how to create their own wealth (greatly and nonlinearly expanding the pool of wealth).
I think there are problems that have not been solved when governments attempt to create wealth (such as occurs when governments own the means of production--as in a monarchy or a socialistic system).
Wealth is a type of freedom. It enables a person to move or act in a way that they could not without it. Wealth is the ability to perform change (no pun intended). Thus, decreasing wealth will decrease freedom. Sometimes, immediate needs require a temporary loss of freedom, but it should only be a temporary loss.
Of course Communism != Fascism; they aren't the same thing, but are, rather, siblings. Fascism and Communism are forms of Socialism. In Marx's theory of social evolution, capitalistic systems would naturally evolve into socialistic systems. Ultimately (according to Marx), the systems would evolve into communism, in which there would be no property ownership and no set of laws to restrict people. Two important differences between Soviet Communism and Marxist Communism is that Marx believed the evolution simply occurred, but Lenin believed it could be caused (through the use of anarchy and revolution to tear down the old order), and the Soviet was to be an interim government until the people were trained for full-blown communism (after which time the government would be unnecessary and dissolved).
Most of the people bad-mouthing the US system are, so far as I can tell, merely babbling. They don't know much, if anything, about government or business, nor do they know if the system actually is bad, or what is bad about it. It is part of the culture to be blasé, cynical and critical.
Socialism, by definition, means that the means of production and distribution are owned collectively, generally by the state.
I suppose that will do for this discussion; Socialism means more than that, but what you stated is, I think, most appropriate for the current topic.
It's government, by definition, which means that the state dictates what activities will and will not be permitted. Some governments place fewer restrictions than others.
You make it sound like the main difference between one form of government and another is the number of restrictions. I think that would be a superficial analysis of government, analogious to claiming that the main difference between one math problem and another is the value of the results. The reason or means by which one arrives at a certain result usually is much more important than the actual result one gets.
A problem with socialism is that it decreases the efficiency of the accumulation of wealth. The collective acts as a drain on those creating the wealth, distributing the wealth to everyone, whether the others created similar wealth or not. Everyone is reduced (to some degree) towards the same value. A reason this is a bad thing is that the controllers of the collective cannot possibly have or test all the possible good ideas for the use of wealth; without the accumulation of wealth, it would be impossible for most major innovations to be developed. The only entity accumulating wealth is the collective, which, as I indicated, cannot be as diversified as a capitalistic system. Diversification can be a very good thing.
I don't know if they were put up to these outrageous lies or if they honestly believed the ridiculous stories they were so willing to tell me without and hint of shame. It never ceases to amaze me how many incompetents manage to obtain employment in technical fields for which they are clearly not qualified.
If you got a job working in this field, you would know. Actually, it doesn't really matter the field; most of the entry-level jobs I've had are pretty much the same. Here's the deal: You need a job. The company saw that you were young and hungry, and they needed warm bodies. You might even have some technical or college background, though probably no more than a year or 2. It doesn't matter, because no matter what you were told in college, it doesn't directly apply to what you are asked at this job. The company gave you a phone and a script and maybe some things to say, and then left you to deal with 50 or 100 people a day who are probably even more clueless (usually) than you are.
You are a commodity. For every one of you who quits, the company can hire 5 more, and they probably will before the end of the year. You will earn above minimum wage, but not by much. You might get a few days, or maybe even a week of training. In some companies, your most important goal is the number of interactions you handle, not the number you solve. I know of people who have been fired for spending the 5 to 15 minutes it took to solve incoming issues, when everyone else was giving scripted answers every 2 minutes.
I worked night shift in IS for a mid-size hospital several years ago. I'm pretty sure that minimum wage was $4-something an hour at that time; the hospital paid me $6.52 an hour as a computer operator. I had a few years of informal computer experience, a few semesters of computer training, and a degree in laser, electronics and optics technology; I was new in town to attend college. My job was to load various printers with paper and collect and distribute the reports, as well as run the system backups. If I should have a spare minute, I was supposed to grab some inventory cards and manually enter the inventory changes for various departments that were "too busy" to enter the information on their own.
I had been told I would be able to study my college coursework in my spare time at work, but the trick was that there would be no spare time as long as there were inventory changes, and there were always more inventory cards to do than could be done by our department. I spent most of my shift running around the hospital, swapping out either paper or magnetic tape. As the new guy in the department, I was expected to cover every Sunday morning, because no one else wanted that shift. The department manager told me as a warning that everyone in the department--including him!--was at risk for immediate dismissal at any moment. All the training for the job was "learn-as-you-go." Most of the other department personnel had been there for more than 10 years, ever since the Meditec system had been installed; they had been in a rut so long that they considered one man a genius because he could use Harvard Graphics. All of us found it interesting that the hospital couldn't give anyone in the department a raise, but they could spend half-a-million dollars building a new fountain in the reception area.
In light of the various job stresses at that place, I guess it wasn't too unusual that, when the kitchen manager made her daily call demanding to know why my department had not permanently repaired her department's network connection, I told her that she had a special type of port, and we would have to make a special purchase order to replace it. I honestly believed that was the correct answer; I thought that's what I had been told a day earlier. I didn't realize my error until I recited my conversation to a co-worker, who cut me off, saying, "You did *NOT* tell that woman that! I know you did not tell her that!"
Now, I'm working as a computer help desk technician. The work is easier, the environment is better, and I'm earning about twice as much money. The questions aren't any better. Depending on the contract I'm working, the customers may be even surlier. There have been days in which I have done nothing all day except handle phone calls as quickly as I could, either just logging the calls, or actually trying to troubleshoot them. Many customers act amazed that they can't get service as soon as they call, and a lot of them expect the phone technician to solve the problem without any further involvement from the customer after he has notified the help desk that there is a problem. One customer even demanded--and got--one of our technicians to reprogram the customer's entire system, a job that took over 4 hours, even though the customer was supposed to have done it himself.
The moral of the story is, the fault is not so much with the technician, as it is with the management who tries to do the job as cheaply as possible while promising the customer high-quality service. IT tries to handle high-customer volume for as little money as possible. People expect immediate service, as if they were the only customer, and they want that service at fast-food prices, or maybe even free. The guy on the telephone is just a drone, as close to being a slave as our society comes.
I was cleaning my apartment yesterday when I ran across one of the door-hangers advertising the Earthlink $39.95 deal. I can't remember if I threw it away or not. If someone wants it, I'll check to see if I still have it, somewhere. I probably threw it away, though. (Isn't that the way it always is? I was just holding it yesterday, after it had been in my apartment for months and months, and the day after I throw it out, someone asks for it! That's why my family hates throwing away anything.)
Columnist Dan Gillmor was doing fine as long as he was explaining the nature of the Avant! executive's legal evasions. Then, he wrote a peculiar, twisted paragraph that took the article in an entirely new direction:
"Julius Finkelstein, the deputy district attorney who persisted in his pursuit of justice, told a grand jury last year: ``Avant!'s entire existence is a fraud.'' If he's correct, as Tuesday's plea bargain strongly suggests -- if Avant! was founded and funded with criminal acts -- what right does it have to exist?"
There are miles of legal and corporate history that are brushed over by making such a paragraph. Gillmor hasn't even acknowledged that there are other considerations, precedents, that might help us form rational arguments and reach a rational conclusion. One might be suspicious of Gillmor's motives when he takes the typical exagerated courtroom rhetoric seriously. Before one could fully realize how strange that paragraph was, however, Gillmor springs another paragraph that is truly bizarre for this discussion. How can he in good conscience go from asking what right a company has to exist to making the dogmatic statement,
"The death penalty for human beings is wrong."
Nice segue! While Gillmor had the reader distracted with the issue of corrupt businesses, he snuck in a fly ball from left field that informs us without any discussion or consideration that the US Supreme Court and several million voters are simply wrong for supporting the human death penalty. What does the human death penalty have to do with this topic? Unfortunately, Gillmor doesn't really tell us. He simply starts hacking away, answering in a moment a controversial issue that much better minds than his have pondered for years.
Apparently, California's cities aren't the only things out there suffering power failures.
Q: Why would you want to punish the corporation instead of the executives?
A: Because the death penalty of a human being is abhorrent to the most of the civilized world.
The human death penalty has nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of "illegal companies." No one at Avant! is being sentenced to death. No mention was made of any executive being sentenced to death at any company. The reference in the "SiliconValley.com" article was a stupid comparison made by someone who couldn't pass up the chance to give out his opinion on an unrelated issue. I take it as a momentary lapse of professionalism on his part.
I'm sorry, but that is neodarwinian fascist nonsense.
Be that as it may, it is also an extremely popular, "scientific" explanation of human behavior that has captured the imagination of a wide segment of society. I've seen it echoed in several popular science journals, and people mutter "of course" when it is mentioned in a public forum. This is simply the ultimate end of Materialism; all reality can be described by physics alone--whether the origin of the Universe, or the origin of love. More than one scientist has gone so far as to say that humanity must soon accept the fact that a human is nothing more than a collection of chemical reactions, and that those reactions, including your thoughts, can be manipulated at will, like any chemical reaction.
Nobody is hard wired to do *anything*. We are all humans, and we all have a choice. We are not automatons, driven by instinct.
The ambiguity of the language allows one to believe as he wishes.
Humans have tendencies, which can either be strengthened or weakened. All people are capable of being profoundly evil or moral. Some have chosen to listen and believe destructive lines of thought. They make excuses for them, often dressing them in terms of science, popularity or profitability to justify or even dignify their choices. The current topic is exactly such a case.
My point is that porn and games tend to bring out these instincts you speak of, bot provide an outlet. Some men can be violent, but in the end that is their choice - they have no excuse. Even though games and porn may make it more likely that they be violent, they still have a choice.
Some people wish to abdicate themselves of responsibility.
Maybe my ideas seem strange because I am scottish and therefore from a really quite left wing
That is bizarre! In the United States, your views would be considered Conservative and Right Wing. *I* am considered to be far Right Wing, easily associated with the extreme "Religious Right." These are just labels, though, used not for their descriptive accuracy, but to ease the conscience of those who would immediately dismiss what we say; "He's just a Religious Right-Winger."
and catholic background
Again, that is considered Right Wing and Conservative in the United States. In fact, the most recognizable faction in Conservatism in the United States (and hence, of the "Right Wing") is the Roman Catholic Church. The Big Names of Conservatism in the United States often (maybe usually) are closely associated with the Roman Catholic Church; Buckley, Bork, Liddy, Limbaugh.
somewhat alien to american sensibilities, but I do think that where people cannot be responsible for themselves, the wider sommunity should step in.
That could be the sentiment of either side, depending on the specifics of what would trigger the interdiction and what steps would need to be taken.
I believe that those who abuse freedom are doomed to lose their freedom, if not at the hand of man, then by a power beyond men.
This would seem to apply to porn and violent games, to me.
I might complain about the game industry pandering, but a lot of people on this forum don't consider commercial porn to be pandering.
Maybe gas in the US is just abnormally cheap. Ever thought about that?
I have often heard of European Socialists making that claim; G. Gordon Liddy has often mentioned it over the last 5 years when denouncing Socialism, for example. What he points out, and CNN and other news sources have confirmed, is that European gas is so expensive because it is so highly taxed. Here is a CNN news comment from just a year ago:
"Tax and duties make up about 75 percent of the price of a litre of premium unleaded petrol, currently about 0.85 pounds ($1.21), but recent crude oil price rises have squeezed drivers even further."
So, you people in England are paying about 4 times the value of gas, mostly because of the taxes your government puts on it. That's insane! It shows that US gas isn't "abnormally cheap"; rather, European gas is abnormally, outrageously overpriced!
No matter what we do, in a century we won't have enough of it any more, and then what?
There are many tons of oil being created every year. It's really not so strange; take a bunch of algae, ferment it under high pressure and temperature, and it turns to oil. Even if it were true that no more oil were being created constantly, there are enourmous organic energy reserves on Earth. I refer you to an 8 November 1999 post from sci.physic's "Uncle Al."
One embarrassment of Environmentalism is that, like a rabbit, it
leaves little pellets of its waste wherever it goes. We turn to
"World Energy Outlook" published by the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development of the International Energy Agency
(Rue de Andre-Pascal, Paris CEDEX 16, France). This compost heap
of Socialist hallucination and money mastication is supported by
the governments of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark,
Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden,
New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Japan, Switzerland, Turkey,
United Kingdom, and the United States - your tax money at work.
The scholarly 473 page tome is dated 1982. We can verify how
dire predictions of the End of the World came to fruition.
Natural Gas: The International Energy Agency's worst case
projections of natural gas consumption were generously exceeded
by a decade of vigorous global growth and wastrel devourment. By
the book - page 365 - the world runs short of natural gas in
2010. In 1999 planetary natural gas reserves are at an all time
high and booming. "These scenarios, which are based on detailed
production assessment through 1990 and on hypothetical
developments thereafter..." are meaningless. Any economic policy
based upon these "expert" projections would have been ruinous (as
per expert prediction). Note the magnitude of error: 1996
annual planetary natural gas production was 82 trillion cubic
feet, 22% of all energy produced. Who are these fools, and why
were/are we paying them to be protractedly, loudly stupid?
Technically, and contrary to common belief, geckos don't use suction at all to cling to walls and ceilings. Instead, geckos have hundreds or thousands of tiny "hairs" on their pads that cling to surfaces. Geckos are more like velcro than like suction cups.
What is wrong with these people? Why aren't they embarrased about releasing code that is so badly documented?
It's part of the larger movement toward the vulgarization of society. Techies may have high math scores, but apparently have poor language skills, particularly written language skills.
Slashdot Mirror
According to the news articles on this, that is essentially what these people were doing. The top of the front page of his contract stated that the company was using GPS and would fine anyone using the vehicle irresponsibly.
Calling computer-generated art a fine art is like calling Moog music, "Classical." There is a difference between having an artist synthesize an expression and having a machine synthesize the expression (to which the audience then merely reacts). I've seen a lot of computer-generated art; it may be modern art, but I don't see it as a fine art.
I would say that the difference between graphic art and fine art is that fine art is intended to say something significant in itself, whereas graphic art is intended to attract attention, first to itself, then to its object. I believe that it is important that the artwork not overshadow its message; this would be difficult for computer generated art to do.
http://www.ijele.com/ijele/vol1.2/enwonwu2.html
In Texas, non-drivers can get State ID cards from the motor vehicle department. Quite a few people in my poverty-stricken neighborhood in East Texas did not have a driver's license (and there is no bus service in the city of 80'000, either--crossing town meant hitching a ride with a private citizen or taxi or walking).
Let alone the bizare idea of someone losing their licence for something unrelated to driving, but possibly keeping it even for causing death or serious injury with a motor vehicle.
I am pleased to say that Texas has taken positive steps towards increasing public safety from motor vehicles. There is still a lot that could be done, but at least the State is not completely ignoring the issue. It took quite a bit of courage for them even to propose testing old people, even if the State chickened out a few weeks later. They were more successful in lowering the speed limit on a few roads that had higher fatalities after the limits were initially raised. Even so, a lot of people are allowed to operate a motor vehicle who should not be allowed to do so.
Speaking of operating a motor vehicle improperly, Texas has the situation of having a lot of people from Mexico driving on her roads. People in Mexico drive differently than people in the US. It is rare (as in, I haven't heard of it happening) to read of a dozen Irish or German or English-ethnic people dying in a single-car accident; I read about this happening to Mexicans every few months. They aren't qualified to be driving, apart from the fact that they got enough money to buy a motor vehicle. Sometimes, they don't even have a driver's license! The state dare not touch them, though, because it is not politically correct to focus on an ethnic group.
Can you imagine the outcry if you were to disqualify any group of people from driving in the US? Common sense and public welfare has no meaning in this context; people in the US demand the freedom of driving as they wish.
The Texas legislature considered a law requiring people over age 65 to take a driving exam. This was prompted because people over age 65 have the same per capita accidents as teenagers (IOW, the over-65 age group is a higher-risk driver group). There was such an outraged outcry that the proposal died within weeks. Why? Because the old coots have enough political clout to override the common good.
I've a list of various truisms about motor vehicles:
The most lethal device available to the average person is not a gun; it's a motor vehicle.
Dealers will sell a motor vehicle to anyone who has the money.
Ask the average male drivers to rate their driving skills, and most of them will consider themselves to be above-average drivers.
Forty thousand people die in motor vehicle accidents a year in the US, but people want to outlaw guns because of a few new stories.
I moved back to New Mexico just before the big wave of Californians began moving into New Mexico (which begin in the early 1990s). As bad as New Mexican drivers are, it was easy to spot California drivers because the Californians were much more aggressive, drove faster and changed lanes much more frequently. It was easy to confirm they were Californians because they still had California license plates on their cars.
I moved to Texas in 1993, and to East Texas in 1994. In East Texas, drivers like to slow to about 5 mph a block before their turn and then make a 90 degree turn, even if they are in a 40 zone. The first time a Texas woman rear-ended and totaled my car, it was as I was stuck behind one of these slow-moving turners (the SMTs often don't indicate why they are slowing until they get much closer to their corner; by then, it's too late to change lanes). East Texans also don't like to make right turns on the red light, even though it is legal at most intersections.
Now, I'm in the Dallas area. The drivers are too aggressive, and not terribly bright. Red light runners are the leading cause of traffic death in the area. I see a traffic accident on Loop 635 at the same spot at least once a month.
I recently took a trip up through Chicago, into Indiana and then into Michigan. I was only there for a week, so I didn't get much of a feel for the driving. Generally, I didn't have trouble, though I did photograph a woman in a van attempting to push a semi-trailer. For the most part, the traffic violations I witnessed were people driving over the speed limit.
when I was living in East Texas, I realized that I needed to begin documenting the crazy driving I saw. I have to film it! That is one of the projects on my to-do list; set up a rig on my vehicle so that I can videotape and photograph all the nit-witted things I see every day.
I saw a car on Loop 635, as we were all doing about 70 mph, that suddenly began fishtailing wildly. Smoke was pouring from the tires. Apparently, the driver hadn't noticed until the last minute that there were road construction pylons in his lane. He eventually went up the side of the offramp hill and onto a service street.
I don't have to go far to see crazy things, either. Right in front of my apartment complex, in a 35 zone, I watched a large panel truck attempt a U-turn. He could not complete the turn in a single move. The truck backed up--and would have put its back end through a car's windshield if the car hadn't swerved into the next lane at the last second.
Meanwhile, some people get upset that handguns are legal...
In 1987, I was a student living in a Virginia college dorm. A friend across the hall was a volunteer police officer. One night when he was on duty, there was a heavy rain. The next day, my friend told me about a traffic accident he managed after the storm, in which a young woman (in her early 20s) had skidded on wet pavement and crashed into another vehicle. Among the woman's other troubles, she received a traffic ticket from my friend for driving faster than road conditions permitted. The woman protested in tears that she had been driving the speed limit, but it did her no good. She was only doing 30 or 35, but it was too fast for the road conditions.
I don't believe that Texas has a road condition law, because I should have seen it used if it did. Several years ago, East Texas police would issue tickets to the driver they believed was responsible for causing an accident, but they stopped that practice about a decade ago. As for poor road conditions, I was once stopped at a red light in the rain on a downhill stretch of road, when I noticed in my rear view mirror that the woman behind me was approaching much too quickly to stop in time to avoid hitting me. I hit my accelerator about the same time the woman behind me hit her brakes. I got about 50 feet down the street (running the red light in the process), and up to about 25 mph, when the woman's car rear-ended mine and totaled my vehicle. Her car had skidded the entire distance. If I hadn't run that red light, that woman probably would have killed my passenger or me (possibly I could have turned off the street--but, I didn't have much time to think of a plan right then). I don't believe the woman was ticketed, although her insurance company paid me enough for me to put the downpayment on a pickup truck.
At it's peak, 1 out of 3 Russians served time in the Stalin-era Gulag. That's a bit higher percentage than citizens in the US with prison time.
You more than make up for it with the bad drivers on your unsafe highways and with the Basques.
Great country the US.
Yes, it is; it is the greatest country that has ever existed.
If that's what he meant, that's what he should have said. That isn't what he said. Though I didn't write the post to which you replied, I came here to write a post identical to it. My big gripe with Michael's big gripe is that he completely overlooked the fact that in the US, there would be serious consequences to an employer who left their workers with $10 million in unpaid wages. It is highly unlikely that US police would use tear gas on people in that situation, because we don't let things reach the point of having a bankrupt company keeping its campus open with such a large backlog of unpaid wages.
Even if Michael *had* posted what you think he meant, I would still take issue with it. There are many protests in this country in which the protesters are not arrested or charged as criminals. What you cannot do is chain yourself across someone else's property and expect to no consequences for your actions. You cannot throw rocks, hit people, make threats, trespass, impede or shut down legitimate businesses and expect to walk away at the end of the day without a criminal charge. That's the way it should be. Otherwise, protesters become just a bunch of terrorists. At that point, the nation starts going into civil war. I think you should carefully consider whether your cause is really worth widespread death, terror and destruction before you start making non-peaceful demonstrations.
You mean, like in Russia, where the police cracked down on public intoxication by arresting offenders, taking them out to the countryside and beating the daylights out of them? Or, Haiti, where they are likely to rape lone, unarmed women? Or, Mexico, where many police officers operate kidnapping and drug rings? Even a casual survey of world-wide police activities turns up a lot worse things than exist in the US.
I mean, they do shoot unarmed black men who are running away.
Your sentence construction implies that US cops in general have have repeatedly shot fleeing, unarmed Black men. The fact is, only a few officers have shot anyone, and there are even fewer cases in which unarmed, fleeing Black men were shot. Thus, it is inaccurate for you to refer to US police officers in this fashion.
They do sodomize suspects in bathrooms with broken broom handles.
You used the plural form, so I would expect you to be able to name at least two people treated in this manner. I don't think you can do it. So, I have to wonder why you characterized US police in general by a single incident in one corner of a very large country?
They do shoot guys something like 40 times for pulling wallets in a dark alley.
Name two.
And they do beat the bejeezus out of motorists who aren't offering any resistance.
Fleeing in a motor vehicle at 100 mph *IS* offering resistance. Other than that, I should note that I have been a US motorist offering no resistance to police for 20 years, but I have never been beaten by the police, nor have I witnessed any other motorist treated in this fashion, though some certainly would have deserved it.
By pluralizing and generalizing a single incident. Urak used the plural form each time he referred to a lone incident or individual. There are many thousands of police officers spread across thousands of miles, but some people have chosen to voice disgust with the US police force in general on the basis of vague, overstated cases.
If the controllers of the collective cannot test all possible good ideas, how possibly could any individual? If the answer is that there are more individuals (or at least, more individuals posessing the capital to implement the ideas), then the socialist could rebut that the solution would be to replace a single socialist government with a series of smaller, decentralized ones.
It would seem to me that a characteristic of socialism is a strong centralized government. If that isn't an inherent characteristic, then it would seem to be the most common arrangement. Socialism needs to have extensive governmental control if it is to have control over wealth production. It would seem to me that by its nature, socialism would seek to expand to maximum size, while displacing all other powers.
In addition to the apparent nature of socialism to be monopolistic, there could only be a relatively small number of governmental agencies under any system; I'm pretty sure there will always be more people than governments. I think it is likely there would be more creative people looking for solutions than there could be government agencies. If these people have the means to implement their solutions--even if it requires more wealth than basic living and recreational expenses--then there could be millions of parallel solutions, instead of dozens to thousands.
I don't believe it is an accident that many of the great scientists of the 19th Century and earlier were unusually wealthy. I believe there were other people who could have done some of the some work, but their financial limitations prevented them from conducting that research. If the government had taken away the wealth of the scientists that had the finances, then only the research the government implemented would have been sufficiently funded. The efficient solution is not to take away the wealth from the wealthy (leaving the pool of total wealth nearly constant), but to teach everyone else how to create their own wealth (greatly and nonlinearly expanding the pool of wealth).
I think there are problems that have not been solved when governments attempt to create wealth (such as occurs when governments own the means of production--as in a monarchy or a socialistic system).
Wealth is a type of freedom. It enables a person to move or act in a way that they could not without it. Wealth is the ability to perform change (no pun intended). Thus, decreasing wealth will decrease freedom. Sometimes, immediate needs require a temporary loss of freedom, but it should only be a temporary loss.
Of course Communism != Fascism; they aren't the same thing, but are, rather, siblings. Fascism and Communism are forms of Socialism. In Marx's theory of social evolution, capitalistic systems would naturally evolve into socialistic systems. Ultimately (according to Marx), the systems would evolve into communism, in which there would be no property ownership and no set of laws to restrict people. Two important differences between Soviet Communism and Marxist Communism is that Marx believed the evolution simply occurred, but Lenin believed it could be caused (through the use of anarchy and revolution to tear down the old order), and the Soviet was to be an interim government until the people were trained for full-blown communism (after which time the government would be unnecessary and dissolved).
Most of the people bad-mouthing the US system are, so far as I can tell, merely babbling. They don't know much, if anything, about government or business, nor do they know if the system actually is bad, or what is bad about it. It is part of the culture to be blasé, cynical and critical.
I suppose that will do for this discussion; Socialism means more than that, but what you stated is, I think, most appropriate for the current topic.
It's government, by definition, which means that the state dictates what activities will and will not be permitted. Some governments place fewer restrictions than others.
You make it sound like the main difference between one form of government and another is the number of restrictions. I think that would be a superficial analysis of government, analogious to claiming that the main difference between one math problem and another is the value of the results. The reason or means by which one arrives at a certain result usually is much more important than the actual result one gets.
A problem with socialism is that it decreases the efficiency of the accumulation of wealth. The collective acts as a drain on those creating the wealth, distributing the wealth to everyone, whether the others created similar wealth or not. Everyone is reduced (to some degree) towards the same value. A reason this is a bad thing is that the controllers of the collective cannot possibly have or test all the possible good ideas for the use of wealth; without the accumulation of wealth, it would be impossible for most major innovations to be developed. The only entity accumulating wealth is the collective, which, as I indicated, cannot be as diversified as a capitalistic system. Diversification can be a very good thing.
If you got a job working in this field, you would know. Actually, it doesn't really matter the field; most of the entry-level jobs I've had are pretty much the same. Here's the deal: You need a job. The company saw that you were young and hungry, and they needed warm bodies. You might even have some technical or college background, though probably no more than a year or 2. It doesn't matter, because no matter what you were told in college, it doesn't directly apply to what you are asked at this job. The company gave you a phone and a script and maybe some things to say, and then left you to deal with 50 or 100 people a day who are probably even more clueless (usually) than you are.
You are a commodity. For every one of you who quits, the company can hire 5 more, and they probably will before the end of the year. You will earn above minimum wage, but not by much. You might get a few days, or maybe even a week of training. In some companies, your most important goal is the number of interactions you handle, not the number you solve. I know of people who have been fired for spending the 5 to 15 minutes it took to solve incoming issues, when everyone else was giving scripted answers every 2 minutes.
I worked night shift in IS for a mid-size hospital several years ago. I'm pretty sure that minimum wage was $4-something an hour at that time; the hospital paid me $6.52 an hour as a computer operator. I had a few years of informal computer experience, a few semesters of computer training, and a degree in laser, electronics and optics technology; I was new in town to attend college. My job was to load various printers with paper and collect and distribute the reports, as well as run the system backups. If I should have a spare minute, I was supposed to grab some inventory cards and manually enter the inventory changes for various departments that were "too busy" to enter the information on their own.
I had been told I would be able to study my college coursework in my spare time at work, but the trick was that there would be no spare time as long as there were inventory changes, and there were always more inventory cards to do than could be done by our department. I spent most of my shift running around the hospital, swapping out either paper or magnetic tape. As the new guy in the department, I was expected to cover every Sunday morning, because no one else wanted that shift. The department manager told me as a warning that everyone in the department--including him!--was at risk for immediate dismissal at any moment. All the training for the job was "learn-as-you-go." Most of the other department personnel had been there for more than 10 years, ever since the Meditec system had been installed; they had been in a rut so long that they considered one man a genius because he could use Harvard Graphics. All of us found it interesting that the hospital couldn't give anyone in the department a raise, but they could spend half-a-million dollars building a new fountain in the reception area.
In light of the various job stresses at that place, I guess it wasn't too unusual that, when the kitchen manager made her daily call demanding to know why my department had not permanently repaired her department's network connection, I told her that she had a special type of port, and we would have to make a special purchase order to replace it. I honestly believed that was the correct answer; I thought that's what I had been told a day earlier. I didn't realize my error until I recited my conversation to a co-worker, who cut me off, saying, "You did *NOT* tell that woman that! I know you did not tell her that!"
Now, I'm working as a computer help desk technician. The work is easier, the environment is better, and I'm earning about twice as much money. The questions aren't any better. Depending on the contract I'm working, the customers may be even surlier. There have been days in which I have done nothing all day except handle phone calls as quickly as I could, either just logging the calls, or actually trying to troubleshoot them. Many customers act amazed that they can't get service as soon as they call, and a lot of them expect the phone technician to solve the problem without any further involvement from the customer after he has notified the help desk that there is a problem. One customer even demanded--and got--one of our technicians to reprogram the customer's entire system, a job that took over 4 hours, even though the customer was supposed to have done it himself.
The moral of the story is, the fault is not so much with the technician, as it is with the management who tries to do the job as cheaply as possible while promising the customer high-quality service. IT tries to handle high-customer volume for as little money as possible. People expect immediate service, as if they were the only customer, and they want that service at fast-food prices, or maybe even free. The guy on the telephone is just a drone, as close to being a slave as our society comes.
"Julius Finkelstein, the deputy district attorney who persisted in his pursuit of justice, told a grand jury last year: ``Avant!'s entire existence is a fraud.'' If he's correct, as Tuesday's plea bargain strongly suggests -- if Avant! was founded and funded with criminal acts -- what right does it have to exist?"
There are miles of legal and corporate history that are brushed over by making such a paragraph. Gillmor hasn't even acknowledged that there are other considerations, precedents, that might help us form rational arguments and reach a rational conclusion. One might be suspicious of Gillmor's motives when he takes the typical exagerated courtroom rhetoric seriously. Before one could fully realize how strange that paragraph was, however, Gillmor springs another paragraph that is truly bizarre for this discussion. How can he in good conscience go from asking what right a company has to exist to making the dogmatic statement,
"The death penalty for human beings is wrong."
Nice segue! While Gillmor had the reader distracted with the issue of corrupt businesses, he snuck in a fly ball from left field that informs us without any discussion or consideration that the US Supreme Court and several million voters are simply wrong for supporting the human death penalty. What does the human death penalty have to do with this topic? Unfortunately, Gillmor doesn't really tell us. He simply starts hacking away, answering in a moment a controversial issue that much better minds than his have pondered for years.
Apparently, California's cities aren't the only things out there suffering power failures.
A: Because the death penalty of a human being is abhorrent to the most of the civilized world.
The human death penalty has nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of "illegal companies." No one at Avant! is being sentenced to death. No mention was made of any executive being sentenced to death at any company. The reference in the "SiliconValley.com" article was a stupid comparison made by someone who couldn't pass up the chance to give out his opinion on an unrelated issue. I take it as a momentary lapse of professionalism on his part.
Be that as it may, it is also an extremely popular, "scientific" explanation of human behavior that has captured the imagination of a wide segment of society. I've seen it echoed in several popular science journals, and people mutter "of course" when it is mentioned in a public forum. This is simply the ultimate end of Materialism; all reality can be described by physics alone--whether the origin of the Universe, or the origin of love. More than one scientist has gone so far as to say that humanity must soon accept the fact that a human is nothing more than a collection of chemical reactions, and that those reactions, including your thoughts, can be manipulated at will, like any chemical reaction.
Nobody is hard wired to do *anything*. We are all humans, and we all have a choice. We are not automatons, driven by instinct.
The ambiguity of the language allows one to believe as he wishes.
Humans have tendencies, which can either be strengthened or weakened. All people are capable of being profoundly evil or moral. Some have chosen to listen and believe destructive lines of thought. They make excuses for them, often dressing them in terms of science, popularity or profitability to justify or even dignify their choices. The current topic is exactly such a case.
My point is that porn and games tend to bring out these instincts you speak of, bot provide an outlet. Some men can be violent, but in the end that is their choice - they have no excuse. Even though games and porn may make it more likely that they be violent, they still have a choice.
Some people wish to abdicate themselves of responsibility.
Maybe my ideas seem strange because I am scottish and therefore from a really quite left wing
That is bizarre! In the United States, your views would be considered Conservative and Right Wing. *I* am considered to be far Right Wing, easily associated with the extreme "Religious Right." These are just labels, though, used not for their descriptive accuracy, but to ease the conscience of those who would immediately dismiss what we say; "He's just a Religious Right-Winger."
and catholic background
Again, that is considered Right Wing and Conservative in the United States. In fact, the most recognizable faction in Conservatism in the United States (and hence, of the "Right Wing") is the Roman Catholic Church. The Big Names of Conservatism in the United States often (maybe usually) are closely associated with the Roman Catholic Church; Buckley, Bork, Liddy, Limbaugh.
somewhat alien to american sensibilities, but I do think that where people cannot be responsible for themselves, the wider sommunity should step in.
That could be the sentiment of either side, depending on the specifics of what would trigger the interdiction and what steps would need to be taken.
I believe that those who abuse freedom are doomed to lose their freedom, if not at the hand of man, then by a power beyond men.
This would seem to apply to porn and violent games, to me.
I might complain about the game industry pandering, but a lot of people on this forum don't consider commercial porn to be pandering.
I have often heard of European Socialists making that claim; G. Gordon Liddy has often mentioned it over the last 5 years when denouncing Socialism, for example. What he points out, and CNN and other news sources have confirmed, is that European gas is so expensive because it is so highly taxed. Here is a CNN news comment from just a year ago:
"Tax and duties make up about 75 percent of the price of a litre of premium unleaded petrol, currently about 0.85 pounds ($1.21), but recent crude oil price rises have squeezed drivers even further."
So, you people in England are paying about 4 times the value of gas, mostly because of the taxes your government puts on it. That's insane! It shows that US gas isn't "abnormally cheap"; rather, European gas is abnormally, outrageously overpriced!
There are many tons of oil being created every year. It's really not so strange; take a bunch of algae, ferment it under high pressure and temperature, and it turns to oil. Even if it were true that no more oil were being created constantly, there are enourmous organic energy reserves on Earth. I refer you to an 8 November 1999 post from sci.physic's "Uncle Al."
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=oil++group:sci.p hysics&num=30&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&scoring=r&as_drrb =b&as_mind=29&as_minm=3&as_miny=1999&as_maxd=19&as _maxm=5&as_maxy=2001&rnum=16&ic=1&selm=382612B4.1C 77F37D%40hate.spam.net
One embarrassment of Environmentalism is that, like a rabbit, it leaves little pellets of its waste wherever it goes. We turn to "World Energy Outlook" published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development of the International Energy Agency (Rue de Andre-Pascal, Paris CEDEX 16, France). This compost heap of Socialist hallucination and money mastication is supported by the governments of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Japan, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States - your tax money at work. The scholarly 473 page tome is dated 1982. We can verify how dire predictions of the End of the World came to fruition.
Natural Gas: The International Energy Agency's worst case projections of natural gas consumption were generously exceeded by a decade of vigorous global growth and wastrel devourment. By the book - page 365 - the world runs short of natural gas in 2010. In 1999 planetary natural gas reserves are at an all time high and booming. "These scenarios, which are based on detailed production assessment through 1990 and on hypothetical developments thereafter..." are meaningless. Any economic policy based upon these "expert" projections would have been ruinous (as per expert prediction). Note the magnitude of error: 1996 annual planetary natural gas production was 82 trillion cubic feet, 22% of all energy produced. Who are these fools, and why were/are we paying them to be protractedly, loudly stupid?
(More available from the link)
It's part of the larger movement toward the vulgarization of society. Techies may have high math scores, but apparently have poor language skills, particularly written language skills.