No, NEVER give up the fight for increasing liberty. Never accept defeat. Even if they pass oppressive laws, never stop denouncing them, and never stop fighting them. Let these guys know in no uncertain terms that if they want to take our liberties, they are at least going to always have a fight on their hands --- always, and indefinitely.
There are many ways to "fight", including peaceful ones. There are organizations such as the Institute for Justice that fight for freedom within a legal framework; find such organizations that are fighting for liberty, and make them stronger by donating some spare change to them People are willing to spend a lot of money on things like their TV's, cars, houses, but for some reason it doesn't occur to people to spend money on their liberty. Liberty does not come easily or for free. Let's empower organizations that keep fighting back. Our ancestors gave their lives for liberty, we aren't willing to give our spare change for it?
It should also be pointed out the current South African government is making a heavy all-out attack on freedom of press in South Africa, as they are trying to push through a bill that would give them complete control of all media in South Africa (http://www.ngopulse.org/article/protection-information-bill-sa-media-under-attack "Protection of Information Bill: SA Media Under Attack").
The current South African government is also friendly with and aligning itself with the likes of Cuba (http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=128840 "Zuma writes off R1bn Cuban debt"; http://www.southafrica.info/news/international/zuma-josemarti-071210.htm "Zuma receives top Cuban honour").
I used to wonder why the US seemed to distrust and dislike the UN, but the more years pass, the more I realize the UN is really not helping the world the way they claim to, and in fact are in many ways dangerous and harmful - they are just another group of politicians fighting for more power and money.
These will be mostly fly-by-wire auto-pilot systems, with control systems to create virtual "roadways" in the air. The tech to do that is old already, it's the mechanical design that needs to catch up to make these things viable on a large scale. Yes there will be accidents, but it will most likely be safer than motor vehicles normalized 'per hour in the vehicle'.
People who want to blow shit up will find a way to blow shit up. If you can't do it with a plane you can do it just as easily with a car or truck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_bombing), problem solved.
The best we can do is take reasonable security and safety measures to minimize risk, then come to terms with the fact that we cannot eliminate risk completely, that we might die when we step out the house each day, and get on with our lives and get on with progress.
Just a general response to what will surely be the usual knee-jerk "ooh but the terrorists will love this" and "but just imagine an accident, no way is this safe" comments on the thread... can we all just please accept the fact that there will be a non-zero but probably statistically tiny number of terrorist attacks on such things, and yes also a non-zero but relatively small number of accidents with these things, and that yes this won't be 100% safe and yes people will die and yes it will be sad, but that we can't just halt all progress forever more unless all new inventions can be deemed 100% safe from either ?
Tens of thousands of people die every year in motor vehicle accidents, but we didn't stop the development of the motor vehicle just because it isn't 100% safe.
Terrorists blow stuff up. Accidents happen. People die. Shit happens. Get over it. We're still statistically safer than we've ever been at any point in human history.
You know what's even worse for morale? When a company ultimately goes bankrupt because they didn't tighten up spending.
Yahoo's real problem, if you ask me, is lack of a major value proposition in *anything*. They haven't really built much interesting or exciting in years. They're not getting their name out there or doing anything to create buzz (lower 'b'). Their most valuable asset seems to be a big userbase, but that's only useful if you actually do something exciting with that, a userbase is just unrealised potential. It wasn't that long ago that Yahoo was in the same position - in fact better position - than Google. Google has been throwing out new products and applications and looking aggressively for new revenue streams *relentlessly*.
So a company should keep loss-making people on longer just because it's Christmas? Sure it's a cold thing to have to do, but spending extra tens of millions of dollars just to be nice in difficult economic times is something I doubt just about any one of us would do either in the same position.
I think he meant 'easy' as in were in the best market position to be able to do so, as they were once one of the (if not the?) most popular search engines on the Web --- a position in which, by definition, you have it theoretically easier than *anyone else*, i.e. it would've been easier for them to be the next Google than Google. But the Google guys worked both smarter and harder. In that context, "easy" is indeed the best term and I understood it perfectly clearly.
Yeah, I've also grown irritated by him, not just over his reactionary tendency toward censorship, but how he now completely takes the credit for what Larry Sanger did. Even the 'urgent appeal for funds' message, with his carefully-preened PR-agency-screened smug look, includes him bragging deceitfully about being "the founder", as if he was the only one, when in reality he never had the idea, didn't think of the name, didn't create the first implementation, didn't build the first community, and had to be convinced by Sanger of the idea. I've met people like him over the years, they latch onto someone else's creation (someone who doesn't market themselves well) and parade around taking the credit, marketing himself as some kind of "visionary" and now charging a small fortune just to hear the great Wales talk about "he" created Wikipedia. Right. Call me irrational, but it doesn't make me feel like I want to donate, it just irritates me more every time I see his mug.
Uhrm, it's impossible to know if it will be raining in New York on 17 January 2014, but we most certainly can model weather, we can model climate, we most certainly can model and map average monthly rainfall patterns extremely well for every city / area, and we most certainly can use all of the above to make extremely valuable long-term planning decisions, such as where to best invest different agricultural resources, what kind of crops to grow in different areas, and other such.
If you can find general patterns, it can help to make planning decisions such as general resource allocations.
Wow, let's see what else we can apply this insightful reasoning to. "House cats are the same type of animal as lions, that eat people, so watch out!" "Politicians are from the same type of guys that gave us Hitler, and we know how well that turned out"... "Ships are the same type of vehicle that gave us the Titanic and we know how well that turned out!"... yes, clearly we can deduce a lot from this valuable inference pattern. I would've guessed you were trolling, but you managed to get +4 insightful, so go figure.
One of the failings of libertarianism is the idea that somehow money is more important that liberty and life.
Actually it isn't, that's a common reasoning error, please read and comprehend the below:
"A second intellectual mistake underlying statism is bit more slippery, however. Statists generally think that one's willingness to enforce a moral claim is a mark of the importance one attaches to that claim. Even if a free-market system does an excellent job of supplying food to the poor, the fact that such a system does not recognize any right to be fed shows its insensitivity to the importance of hunger relief. When libertarians claim that we have a right to drive a motorcycle without a helmet, but no right to be protected from starvation or discrimination, the statists conclude (not without justification, in the case of some libertarians!) that libertarians regard freedom from helmets as more important than freedom from starvation or discrimination. And so the statists, reasonably enough given their premises, dismiss the libertarian position as absurd."
In the case of cloud computing, most customers appear willing to sacrifice their privacy in exchange for some software convenience or feature. We simply don't know how this will turn out in the long run. It is conceivable that a few high profile privacy or security violations by a cloud provider will change everyone's perspective in the future.
It'll happen, but generally there is a market need for privacy and trust for these services, so I think for the most part companies will really try keep things reasonably secure, and for those that don't they'll just suffer market share loss. But probably not even significantly, history has shown that most users don't mind using insecure systems (cf. Windows throughout the latter half of the 90's).
Generally I trust the companies, but I would be concerned at the potential it creates for governments to decide they want to easily be able to peruse and analyze billions of private documents. They have no business doing that, but they will certainly try every chance they get.
I like having my email available on multiple devices.
I could do that in 1995 when I first got into computers, using UNIX (and X for visual clients), and it was already nothing new then either. The world has certainly done a massive 're-inventing the wheel, badly' here. I don't mind calling it 'The Cloud' or whatever, as long as we don't pretend this is something new, as the hype suggests. There are aspects that have gradually become more ubiquitous and more sophisticated in the implementation details, but not in the concept.
Yeah, Michael Moore is one of the last people I'd call a "voice of logic" (unless "logic" has suddenly become a relative term measurable against an 'even worse standard of thinking'), but looking at the "Funny" mod perhaps Nuke Mongoose was taking the piss (meaning, joking).
Um, international flights are not that expensive. You can get London - NY return tickets for less than $650. He could've stayed with friends or relatives overseas which keeps costs down. So if he was living with parents, it doesn't seem like such a stretch. Or he could've inherited a thousand bucks or so (I did, when I was 18, when one of my grandparents died), and spent that on a trip. Or a relative could've paid for the ticket, I know plenty of people whose parents have funded international plane tickets to get them across continents, especially if e.g. his friend is a first or second generation American he could have family in Europe or elsewhere. It's really not unrealistic.
I wouldn't worry too much; there is enough oil for at least another 30 years, and if you look at the pace of trends in the efficiencies and pricing of alternatives like solar, you'll see that solar is likely to become broadly affordable as a substitute before the price of oil starts to increase unreasonably. Depending on the timing, you may see a bit of an uptick in oil pricing, but this will be moderated by the corresponding increase in production of solar (and alternates) that increased pricing causes. More likely, we'll see alternatives becoming affordable long before we really start running out of oil. And we're still striking new fields of other 'oil equivalents', such as the recent major gas discovery off the coast of Israel - each of these buys a little more time and helps keep pricing in check.
The only worry is that there might be some instability in economies who rely on oil for most of their income, such as Nigeria and some middle Eastern countries, but somehow I think we're all going to be OK.
At the same time, this guy needs to read a bit more about data presentation.
Hans Rosling needs to "read a bit more about data presentation"!? Lol ---- that's like looking at some of John Carmack's work and saying "yeah it's OK but this guy, whoever he is, needs to learn a bit more about 3D programming". I'm not sure you realize who you are talking about; Hans Rosling has been one of the 'pioneers' of modern data visualization since probably before you were born. Your post is a classic example of the instinctive need of so many/. posters to try prove how smart they are by being "contrarian" and immediately criticizing something. The graphics isn't even horrible at all, it's pretty damn cool, and everything was very clear to me when I watched it, so perhaps you frankly if you struggled to see it I suggest you see an optometrist.
Slashdot Mirror
The Internet was nice while it lasted.
No, NEVER give up the fight for increasing liberty. Never accept defeat. Even if they pass oppressive laws, never stop denouncing them, and never stop fighting them. Let these guys know in no uncertain terms that if they want to take our liberties, they are at least going to always have a fight on their hands --- always, and indefinitely.
There are many ways to "fight", including peaceful ones. There are organizations such as the Institute for Justice that fight for freedom within a legal framework; find such organizations that are fighting for liberty, and make them stronger by donating some spare change to them People are willing to spend a lot of money on things like their TV's, cars, houses, but for some reason it doesn't occur to people to spend money on their liberty. Liberty does not come easily or for free. Let's empower organizations that keep fighting back. Our ancestors gave their lives for liberty, we aren't willing to give our spare change for it?
It should also be pointed out the current South African government is making a heavy all-out attack on freedom of press in South Africa, as they are trying to push through a bill that would give them complete control of all media in South Africa (http://www.ngopulse.org/article/protection-information-bill-sa-media-under-attack "Protection of Information Bill: SA Media Under Attack").
The current South African government is also friendly with and aligning itself with the likes of Cuba (http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=128840 "Zuma writes off R1bn Cuban debt"; http://www.southafrica.info/news/international/zuma-josemarti-071210.htm "Zuma receives top Cuban honour").
I used to wonder why the US seemed to distrust and dislike the UN, but the more years pass, the more I realize the UN is really not helping the world the way they claim to, and in fact are in many ways dangerous and harmful - they are just another group of politicians fighting for more power and money.
These will be mostly fly-by-wire auto-pilot systems, with control systems to create virtual "roadways" in the air. The tech to do that is old already, it's the mechanical design that needs to catch up to make these things viable on a large scale. Yes there will be accidents, but it will most likely be safer than motor vehicles normalized 'per hour in the vehicle'.
People who want to blow shit up will find a way to blow shit up. If you can't do it with a plane you can do it just as easily with a car or truck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_bombing), problem solved.
The best we can do is take reasonable security and safety measures to minimize risk, then come to terms with the fact that we cannot eliminate risk completely, that we might die when we step out the house each day, and get on with our lives and get on with progress.
Just a general response to what will surely be the usual knee-jerk "ooh but the terrorists will love this" and "but just imagine an accident, no way is this safe" comments on the thread ... can we all just please accept the fact that there will be a non-zero but probably statistically tiny number of terrorist attacks on such things, and yes also a non-zero but relatively small number of accidents with these things, and that yes this won't be 100% safe and yes people will die and yes it will be sad, but that we can't just halt all progress forever more unless all new inventions can be deemed 100% safe from either ?
Tens of thousands of people die every year in motor vehicle accidents, but we didn't stop the development of the motor vehicle just because it isn't 100% safe.
Terrorists blow stuff up. Accidents happen. People die. Shit happens. Get over it. We're still statistically safer than we've ever been at any point in human history.
You know what's even worse for morale? When a company ultimately goes bankrupt because they didn't tighten up spending.
Yahoo's real problem, if you ask me, is lack of a major value proposition in *anything*. They haven't really built much interesting or exciting in years. They're not getting their name out there or doing anything to create buzz (lower 'b'). Their most valuable asset seems to be a big userbase, but that's only useful if you actually do something exciting with that, a userbase is just unrealised potential. It wasn't that long ago that Yahoo was in the same position - in fact better position - than Google. Google has been throwing out new products and applications and looking aggressively for new revenue streams *relentlessly*.
Strawman much?
So a company should keep loss-making people on longer just because it's Christmas? Sure it's a cold thing to have to do, but spending extra tens of millions of dollars just to be nice in difficult economic times is something I doubt just about any one of us would do either in the same position.
I think he meant 'easy' as in were in the best market position to be able to do so, as they were once one of the (if not the?) most popular search engines on the Web --- a position in which, by definition, you have it theoretically easier than *anyone else*, i.e. it would've been easier for them to be the next Google than Google. But the Google guys worked both smarter and harder. In that context, "easy" is indeed the best term and I understood it perfectly clearly.
Yeah, I've also grown irritated by him, not just over his reactionary tendency toward censorship, but how he now completely takes the credit for what Larry Sanger did. Even the 'urgent appeal for funds' message, with his carefully-preened PR-agency-screened smug look, includes him bragging deceitfully about being "the founder", as if he was the only one, when in reality he never had the idea, didn't think of the name, didn't create the first implementation, didn't build the first community, and had to be convinced by Sanger of the idea. I've met people like him over the years, they latch onto someone else's creation (someone who doesn't market themselves well) and parade around taking the credit, marketing himself as some kind of "visionary" and now charging a small fortune just to hear the great Wales talk about "he" created Wikipedia. Right. Call me irrational, but it doesn't make me feel like I want to donate, it just irritates me more every time I see his mug.
Uhrm, it's impossible to know if it will be raining in New York on 17 January 2014, but we most certainly can model weather, we can model climate, we most certainly can model and map average monthly rainfall patterns extremely well for every city / area, and we most certainly can use all of the above to make extremely valuable long-term planning decisions, such as where to best invest different agricultural resources, what kind of crops to grow in different areas, and other such.
If you can find general patterns, it can help to make planning decisions such as general resource allocations.
These are the same type of guys ...
Wow, let's see what else we can apply this insightful reasoning to. "House cats are the same type of animal as lions, that eat people, so watch out!" "Politicians are from the same type of guys that gave us Hitler, and we know how well that turned out" ... "Ships are the same type of vehicle that gave us the Titanic and we know how well that turned out!" ... yes, clearly we can deduce a lot from this valuable inference pattern. I would've guessed you were trolling, but you managed to get +4 insightful, so go figure.
So if you use a different word to label a thing, it becomes a different thing? Wow.
The point of government isn't to "help people", it's to protect your fundamental rights, such as ownership of private property.
One of the failings of libertarianism is the idea that somehow money is more important that liberty and life.
Actually it isn't, that's a common reasoning error, please read and comprehend the below:
"A second intellectual mistake underlying statism is bit more slippery, however. Statists generally think that one's willingness to enforce a moral claim is a mark of the importance one attaches to that claim. Even if a free-market system does an excellent job of supplying food to the poor, the fact that such a system does not recognize any right to be fed shows its insensitivity to the importance of hunger relief. When libertarians claim that we have a right to drive a motorcycle without a helmet, but no right to be protected from starvation or discrimination, the statists conclude (not without justification, in the case of some libertarians!) that libertarians regard freedom from helmets as more important than freedom from starvation or discrimination. And so the statists, reasonably enough given their premises, dismiss the libertarian position as absurd."
They seemed clearly non-random to me. You really can't see that it's used for tone and emphasis? Curious.
Oh please, if you want to see bad healthcare systems, check out half the countries on the planet.
In the case of cloud computing, most customers appear willing to sacrifice their privacy in exchange for some software convenience or feature. We simply don't know how this will turn out in the long run. It is conceivable that a few high profile privacy or security violations by a cloud provider will change everyone's perspective in the future.
It'll happen, but generally there is a market need for privacy and trust for these services, so I think for the most part companies will really try keep things reasonably secure, and for those that don't they'll just suffer market share loss. But probably not even significantly, history has shown that most users don't mind using insecure systems (cf. Windows throughout the latter half of the 90's).
Generally I trust the companies, but I would be concerned at the potential it creates for governments to decide they want to easily be able to peruse and analyze billions of private documents. They have no business doing that, but they will certainly try every chance they get.
I like having my email available on multiple devices.
I could do that in 1995 when I first got into computers, using UNIX (and X for visual clients), and it was already nothing new then either. The world has certainly done a massive 're-inventing the wheel, badly' here. I don't mind calling it 'The Cloud' or whatever, as long as we don't pretend this is something new, as the hype suggests. There are aspects that have gradually become more ubiquitous and more sophisticated in the implementation details, but not in the concept.
Yeah, Michael Moore is one of the last people I'd call a "voice of logic" (unless "logic" has suddenly become a relative term measurable against an 'even worse standard of thinking'), but looking at the "Funny" mod perhaps Nuke Mongoose was taking the piss (meaning, joking).
"Yeah, there wasn't much he could do at the current time. There was no source of attack known and he can't personally gather intelligence on this."
So you think he should've done what -- just say "oh well, nothing we can do really - *shrug*"
Hmm, you said 'badger' ... Badger badger badger ...
Um, international flights are not that expensive. You can get London - NY return tickets for less than $650. He could've stayed with friends or relatives overseas which keeps costs down. So if he was living with parents, it doesn't seem like such a stretch. Or he could've inherited a thousand bucks or so (I did, when I was 18, when one of my grandparents died), and spent that on a trip. Or a relative could've paid for the ticket, I know plenty of people whose parents have funded international plane tickets to get them across continents, especially if e.g. his friend is a first or second generation American he could have family in Europe or elsewhere. It's really not unrealistic.
I wouldn't worry too much; there is enough oil for at least another 30 years, and if you look at the pace of trends in the efficiencies and pricing of alternatives like solar, you'll see that solar is likely to become broadly affordable as a substitute before the price of oil starts to increase unreasonably. Depending on the timing, you may see a bit of an uptick in oil pricing, but this will be moderated by the corresponding increase in production of solar (and alternates) that increased pricing causes. More likely, we'll see alternatives becoming affordable long before we really start running out of oil. And we're still striking new fields of other 'oil equivalents', such as the recent major gas discovery off the coast of Israel - each of these buys a little more time and helps keep pricing in check.
The only worry is that there might be some instability in economies who rely on oil for most of their income, such as Nigeria and some middle Eastern countries, but somehow I think we're all going to be OK.
At the same time, this guy needs to read a bit more about data presentation.
Hans Rosling needs to "read a bit more about data presentation"!? Lol ---- that's like looking at some of John Carmack's work and saying "yeah it's OK but this guy, whoever he is, needs to learn a bit more about 3D programming". I'm not sure you realize who you are talking about; Hans Rosling has been one of the 'pioneers' of modern data visualization since probably before you were born. Your post is a classic example of the instinctive need of so many /. posters to try prove how smart they are by being "contrarian" and immediately criticizing something. The graphics isn't even horrible at all, it's pretty damn cool, and everything was very clear to me when I watched it, so perhaps you frankly if you struggled to see it I suggest you see an optometrist.