We get the benefits of cash poor / resource rich countries, while the common people in those countries get very little if any benefit. One of those resources is labour. There has to be some debt if the worker making trainers gets only 4% of the selling price of the goods we buy.
http://pilger.carlton.com/print/69005
These regimes are overtly corrupt, and yet they are maintained in power by the actions of "democratic" western powers. Such was US involvement in Nicaragua and the successful subversion of elections after protracted terrorist actions against the (more) democratically elected government
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9005-decli ne -demo.html
There is a strong current that the poorest countries must be maintained in a state of poverty, and this is done by using the military of such countries to keep control of the populace.
The result is a world where the disparity between the richest 20% (us) and the poorest 20% has risen 50% between 1960 and 1989 (and has deteriorated further since) according to the UN
http://www.bigeye.com/chomsky.htm
These are our governments and representatives. We must take responsibility for their actions.
"A ship is safest in port, but that is not what it is for"
We have to take chances. To be honest, we are hugely in debt (ethically) to the third world. Our lavish lifestyles are to an uncomfortably large extent built on the suffering of people in the poorest countries on earth.
The comment about human rights is actually very funny, considering that the US government has been involved in supporting/funding/hiding some of the worst human rights abuses of this century (funny you should mention Indonesia, the blood of million people who died there after Suharto came to power is very much on US and British hands, not to mention East Timor which NOBODY would notice for years).
If individuals can reach outside of government activity and help other people in the blackest poverty holes in the world, I say that they should be applauded by all ethical and free-thinking people. The only way everyone will have any chance of living a decent life is if people help people.
Sorry if this sounds a bit preachy, but i feel strongly about these issues.
it is mostly the same as single transferrable vote, afaics, which is the way we do things in proprortional representation systems like ireland.
Computer system is great for that as it becomes easy to re-allocate votes down the preferences as candidates are removed (and to statistically re-allocate surpluses in multi-seat constituencies).
And to get OT, i'd love to have a GNU tool running all of this.
m
a not too strictly enforced uniform policy has its plus points. If you don't have a lot of cash around, it gives you a way to avoid having to compete in the clothes department, and to get away with wearing the same gear for weeks on end!
Really, kids usually form a uniform of their own anyway, and it will generally be highly branded and expensive
Cameras may be good or bad, but I think they are certainly significant.
The question should be "How much democratic input goes into making these policy decisions?"
I certainly doubt there is any kind of plebiscite, but I would be unsurprised to discover it was basically a bureaucratic/police decision with minimal democratic accountability.
Jhon is quite right, people should be questioning, and even directing the development of their community, society and country.
m
Re:MS fears US will mandate "OSS only" like Brazil
on
Microsoft and the GPL
·
· Score: 2
>If the US does that, taxpayers will be out >billions
poppycock! balderdash!
You have absolutely no understanding of the system you live in! How the hell can the tax-payers be out billions because they are buying (through govt. departments) cheaper software?
"Microsoft will pay less taxes" I hear you whine, well what do they pay the taxes with? taxpayers money...
Listen, if you believe what was posted (and i know it was a throwaway post, but maybe someone will read this) then you probably reply to all the crappy pyramid $5 in 5 envelopes spam you get. Moving money around may make an individual (Bill Gates, whoever) or an elite richer (like a casino) but it does not add wealth to a society or the world. Wealth is created through human labour, creativity, and effort. If lots of people develop OSS without big financial incentives (adding real wealth and value)... great! There is no need to spend more money on more expensive ways to duplicate some of that effort.
Really, think about it
m
Re:Organize, change conditions, then disband.
on
Dial U for Union
·
· Score: 1
IMHO, this is an excellent post. Many of the posts here appear to be from people who have little idea of what a union should be, and how many unions operate.
The point of it is solidarity, and a "united we stand" attitude. Car vandalism and garbage like that is not union activity, it is gansterism and thuggery. Form a union if you think you share aims with your co-workers (as Chelloveck says), and remember that a union is only as good as its members.
That is just the way markets work if the punters are ignorant. The economic theory of free and efficient markets is predicated on people having full information (like knowing the different prices/products available). If, as you say, people are dumb enough to waste money on tat on ebay... good luck to them (and better luck to the sellers;-)
m
I was just thinking along the same lines. I believe we can look at things such as good freely available code as being similar to roads, universities, sewers and water supply: a common good. These are things which can be invested in by bodies such as governments / philanthropists for the greater good of society at large.
Code loses out in that it is not immediately important to most folk (not like water), but a strength is the ease with which people can get the benefit (expensive to provide drinking water to everybody in USA, pretty cheap to give everyone who is interested access to Linux downloads).
Most hackers would need fairly little encouragement to work on their pet projects. Main issue is infrastructure (CVS servers, etc.,).
m
i am doing phd research in a university environment, and publishing is very very important for anyone trying to make a career in this environment. If you don't publish, you won't be able to draw down lots of funding. If you don't publish and you don't draw down external funding, then you do not get promoted. Minimal credit is given for teaching (and then it is only in a bean counting number of hours measure which lends itself to abuse (espec. since you get credit for the hours even if no student picks your course!)).
Then again, rights are seldom won quietly and someone has to make a stand.
afaik, it's considered like searching your house, they need a warrant from a court, and to get that they need some sort of evidence that this is a necessary course of action.
(unless there are very extreme circumstances, i suppose, or its national security or something like that;-).
from my engineering lectures...
production of nitrogen oxides are mostly related to the temperature you burn the fuel at, and can be catalysed out again afterwards.
organic pollutants are a different issue, but really it should be possible to design an engine to give good and complete combustion of most kinds of fuel. Problem is only really if put corn-oil in a diesel engine, it will not be very well optimised.
m
bio-diesel is a good idea, especially since it makes the energy very portable (compared to current battery technologies), but a huge problem is the land consumption. One of the essays on www.dieoff.com suggests that if all energy we use today was to be produced from biomass, there would be three species on earth, humans, wheat, and yeast (an exageration , i am sure, but the point has some validity)
m
Most revolutions are not so much about feelings of freedom, but about new technologies which shift the balance of power/economics towards a group of people who haven't held it up till that point.
The net is only revolutionary in so far as it has achieved this (which it has, to a limited extent). Its true revolutionary potential lies in how far it can change the way we work and operate our societies.
BUT, remember, globally the internet is very small, and i believe it does little to change the lot of the billions living in subsistence economies. When their fortunes change, that WILL be a revolution
m
Slashdot Mirror
We get the benefits of cash poor / resource rich countries, while the common people in those countries get very little if any benefit. One of those resources is labour. There has to be some debt if the worker making trainers gets only 4% of the selling price of the goods we buy.
i ne -demo.html
http://pilger.carlton.com/print/69005
These regimes are overtly corrupt, and yet they are maintained in power by the actions of "democratic" western powers. Such was US involvement in Nicaragua and the successful subversion of elections after protracted terrorist actions against the (more) democratically elected government
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9005-decl
There is a strong current that the poorest countries must be maintained in a state of poverty, and this is done by using the military of such countries to keep control of the populace.
The result is a world where the disparity between the richest 20% (us) and the poorest 20% has risen 50% between 1960 and 1989 (and has deteriorated further since) according to the UN
http://www.bigeye.com/chomsky.htm
These are our governments and representatives. We must take responsibility for their actions.
m
I think Paulo Cuelho (spelling?) wrote
"A ship is safest in port, but that is not what it is for"
We have to take chances. To be honest, we are hugely in debt (ethically) to the third world. Our lavish lifestyles are to an uncomfortably large extent built on the suffering of people in the poorest countries on earth.
The comment about human rights is actually very funny, considering that the US government has been involved in supporting/funding/hiding some of the worst human rights abuses of this century (funny you should mention Indonesia, the blood of million people who died there after Suharto came to power is very much on US and British hands, not to mention East Timor which NOBODY would notice for years).
If individuals can reach outside of government activity and help other people in the blackest poverty holes in the world, I say that they should be applauded by all ethical and free-thinking people. The only way everyone will have any chance of living a decent life is if people help people.
Sorry if this sounds a bit preachy, but i feel strongly about these issues.
m
it is mostly the same as single transferrable vote, afaics, which is the way we do things in proprortional representation systems like ireland.
Computer system is great for that as it becomes easy to re-allocate votes down the preferences as candidates are removed (and to statistically re-allocate surpluses in multi-seat constituencies).
And to get OT, i'd love to have a GNU tool running all of this.
m
a not too strictly enforced uniform policy has its plus points. If you don't have a lot of cash around, it gives you a way to avoid having to compete in the clothes department, and to get away with wearing the same gear for weeks on end!
Really, kids usually form a uniform of their own anyway, and it will generally be highly branded and expensive
m
Cameras may be good or bad, but I think they are certainly significant.
The question should be "How much democratic input goes into making these policy decisions?"
I certainly doubt there is any kind of plebiscite, but I would be unsurprised to discover it was basically a bureaucratic/police decision with minimal democratic accountability.
Jhon is quite right, people should be questioning, and even directing the development of their community, society and country.
m
>If the US does that, taxpayers will be out >billions
poppycock! balderdash!
You have absolutely no understanding of the system you live in! How the hell can the tax-payers be out billions because they are buying (through govt. departments) cheaper software?
"Microsoft will pay less taxes" I hear you whine, well what do they pay the taxes with? taxpayers money...
Listen, if you believe what was posted (and i know it was a throwaway post, but maybe someone will read this) then you probably reply to all the crappy pyramid $5 in 5 envelopes spam you get. Moving money around may make an individual (Bill Gates, whoever) or an elite richer (like a casino) but it does not add wealth to a society or the world. Wealth is created through human labour, creativity, and effort. If lots of people develop OSS without big financial incentives (adding real wealth and value)... great! There is no need to spend more money on more expensive ways to duplicate some of that effort.
Really, think about it
m
IMHO, this is an excellent post. Many of the posts here appear to be from people who have little idea of what a union should be, and how many unions operate.
The point of it is solidarity, and a "united we stand" attitude. Car vandalism and garbage like that is not union activity, it is gansterism and thuggery. Form a union if you think you share aims with your co-workers (as Chelloveck says), and remember that a union is only as good as its members.
m
> Clarke and Kubrick chose Bowman's name at a stage of the project when they expected the crew to survive and return to Earth.
Odysseus gets to return to his family. How does the earlier version of the script change the naming choice!?!
m
That is just the way markets work if the punters are ignorant. The economic theory of free and efficient markets is predicated on people having full information (like knowing the different prices/products available). If, as you say, people are dumb enough to waste money on tat on ebay... good luck to them (and better luck to the sellers ;-)
m
get around the obsolescence thing by showing no actual hardware, just people discussing beautiful algorithms.
I was just thinking along the same lines. I believe we can look at things such as good freely available code as being similar to roads, universities, sewers and water supply: a common good. These are things which can be invested in by bodies such as governments / philanthropists for the greater good of society at large.
Code loses out in that it is not immediately important to most folk (not like water), but a strength is the ease with which people can get the benefit (expensive to provide drinking water to everybody in USA, pretty cheap to give everyone who is interested access to Linux downloads).
Most hackers would need fairly little encouragement to work on their pet projects. Main issue is infrastructure (CVS servers, etc.,).
m
Then again, rights are seldom won quietly and someone has to make a stand.
m
afaik, it's considered like searching your house, they need a warrant from a court, and to get that they need some sort of evidence that this is a necessary course of action.
;-).
(unless there are very extreme circumstances, i suppose, or its national security or something like that
from my engineering lectures...
production of nitrogen oxides are mostly related to the temperature you burn the fuel at, and can be catalysed out again afterwards.
organic pollutants are a different issue, but really it should be possible to design an engine to give good and complete combustion of most kinds of fuel. Problem is only really if put corn-oil in a diesel engine, it will not be very well optimised.
m
bio-diesel is a good idea, especially since it makes the energy very portable (compared to current battery technologies), but a huge problem is the land consumption. One of the essays on www.dieoff.com suggests that if all energy we use today was to be produced from biomass, there would be three species on earth, humans, wheat, and yeast (an exageration , i am sure, but the point has some validity)
m
Most revolutions are not so much about feelings of freedom, but about new technologies which shift the balance of power/economics towards a group of people who haven't held it up till that point. The net is only revolutionary in so far as it has achieved this (which it has, to a limited extent). Its true revolutionary potential lies in how far it can change the way we work and operate our societies. BUT, remember, globally the internet is very small, and i believe it does little to change the lot of the billions living in subsistence economies. When their fortunes change, that WILL be a revolution m