More likely the cable companies are too expensive to buy. They aren't likely to want to encumber their customers with too many restrictions - people like recording the movie of the week, and why would CableCo want to take that ability away?
There's actually a very good reason for this idea of putting The Rightful King on the throne.
In a medieval society, the absolute worst tyrant on the throne was still better for the common people than a war of succession. If you put the King's son on the throne, there's at least a reasonable chance of stability, but if the line of succession is unclear, you often end up with a long, bloody war.
Your first part is true. Your second is a complete misreading of Tolkien.
Aragorn does not become King of Gondor and Arnor because he's descended from a royal bloodline. All of the Rangers are descended from Numenoreon aristocracy, and Aragorn is the scion of a less noble branch of the old Numenoreon Kings, something which Elrond alludes to when stating that if he wishes to follow in Turin's footsteps, he must make his line as great.
Aragorn doesn't reforge Narsil, march to Gondor, unseat Denethor, and lead Gondor against the enemy. He spends years wandering the wilderness as an ordinary man. In fact, he refuses every kingly offering (other than the re-forged Narsil) until near the end of the book, when the battle for Gondor is won. Tolkien is going back to the older, Germanic concept that the rightful King is not just the bloodline, but the deed. Aragorn walks the Paths of the Dead; he proves he has the right to call the Oathbreakers, he descends on the Corsairs, and he comes to Gondor in it's hour of need.
Even after unfurling his standard as a descendant of the royal household, he does not enter Gondor until invited. Like an old Anglo-Saxon or Norse King, he is ruler not by rules of primogeneture or a divine right (both concepts primarily introduced through the Catholic Church's alliance with the French royal family). He is rule because, yes, he has the required lineage, but because he's proven himself as fit to be King.
Tolkien's fall of Numenor is in fact a warning against the "absolute tyrant" being better. It mirrors mnot just the descnet of Rome and also of nations like Spain and France under idiot monarchs. Aragorn is restoring the way things ought to be - the monarch arising through both blood right and proving his suitability to rule (and, for that matter, finishing himself off when his powers faded toward senility). It's not strictly hierarchal, because Aragorn feels the need to have the approval of not only a peer group (the royal family of Rohan, the Stewards of Gondor, other leaders of Middle Earth) and of the people of Gondor themselves.
The closest concept in modern times would be if the next King of England were to be elevated, not as a result of being the issue of a mad Greek and the greedy scion of a German line, but by being elected by and from the House of Lords as the most suitable of the aristocracy to lead the nation.
You've misread Tolkien on one level though. While Tolkien uses the evil of Isengard (and it's impact in the Shire) to inveigh against the destruction of his homeland by cars and factories, as he saw it, you'll note if you have another look (as Brin certainly should, and pay attention this time!) that the Dwarves provide a vehicle for his exploration of how thins could and should be - consider the whole conversation Legolas and Gimli have around Gimli explaining that Dwarves would not simply dive in and ruin the caves, but develop them slowly, with consideration, care, and respect.
It would be a lot better if Brin could actually demonstrate his thesis. As it is, he starts out full of shit and continues - because the guys who save the day aren't the ubermen, they're the hobbits - the boring little rural guys. Frodo isn't some kick-arse hero, he's the bloke from the local pub packed off to fight Hitler.
Yeah, the capitalistic process never influences scientific research and publication, leading to Great Purity. Why, look at all that research on the harmful effects of smoking in the 1940s and 1950s. Promptly published, it immediately led to a drop off in smoking and saved millions of lives that would have been lost if scientists had buried it at the beheat of their employers.
Re:Science is open to everyone
on
Who Owns Science?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It also shows a number of flaws with the theory:
1/ Plato hardly started the philosophies that much of Western thinking are based upon. You may recall that Plato studied under Cratylus and was heavily influenced by Socrates. And Cratylus studied under...
2/ Many of Plato's views would likely be considered pretty horrible by those of us working in many of the major Enlightenment streams of thought. Western Civilisation may owe debts to Plato, but the like of Adam Smith, J S Mill, Woolstoncroft, Bertrand Russell, William Morris, and sundry others play a much more immediate role in our day to day lives, in much the same way that Rutherford splitting the atom is more meaningful for people getting their electricity in the US than Newton's work.
Essentially, picking Plato is arbitary. And that's the problem with most notions of identifying the "great thinkers", especially in collaborative areas that build and change over time; things are all too often reduced to popularity/PR contests. Hell, how many people think Edison was a great inventor?
What, to add a few more years to a war the US had already lost and was illegally expanding into Laos and Cambodia?
Gee, that sure was a good use of money. Propping up the corrupt South Vietnamese government, thousands more Americans and tens of thousands more Asians dead, and the US backing the Khmer Rouge. Much better than some stupid space program.
Re:Waste processing?
on
Tornado in a Can
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Certainly no-one aware of the problems associated with prion diseases will want more mechanically reclaimed meat.
Re:It does matter - people will care...
on
Tornado in a Can
·
· Score: 2
Chickens are omnivores; feeding them meat (including other chickens - which they'll eat anyway, in the wild) is less of a problem than with feeding cattle sheep remains.
...because US electoral laws are obviously doing such a stunning job...
The point here is that people find ways to circumvent all but the most blunt and draconian laws. The money ACT raise doesn't do them much good, for example, because TV advertising is tightly controlled and for the most part taxpayer funded.
You also aren't supposed to compel political speech from your subordinates...
True. And in New Zealand, employment discrimination on the basis of political views is explicitly barred. So any employee approached who felt like suing their employer would have a case. But I still doubt junior lawyers are going to harm their prospects by suing here, any more than they do in the States.
That's an interesting assumption - given the number of other world leading business live in Scandanavia.
I could reply, "See what happens to the US when all the non-executive jobs are farmed out to South East Asia and all the corporate profits are tax-free in the Bahamas. What will become of Halliburton and Raytheon when there are no taxpayers to underwrite defense spending?"
Well over 50 to 100 years. Read up on US Grant's presidency, or the pre-Civil War Tammany Hall machine, or the influence of Southern business on the question of slavery.
Riiight. That would be the crowd tht encompasses polyamorous socialist Richard Stallman and homophobic religious bigot Eric S Raymond. I can see a unified voice arising out of that mess.
That's only true if the benefits flow to the citizens. Check out Fortune's specials on executive looting, for example, or their coverage of income disparity.
Fact is, countries like Norway, which not having as good an average GDP as the US, have a much better income spread. Which citizenry are better off?
In a number of juristictions, this is the case (a company can have its charter revoked). Unfortunately, it has not been enforced anywhere in a good hundred years or so.
The only problem is when the government becomes, in effect, a corporation. What we have now is, in essence, a form of capitalo-anarchism, where the government is controlled by corporations. You could refer to this as the name by which it was popularised in Spain and Italy: Facism.
Right. That would be why a Republican dominated congress, senate, and Presidency (small government, limited welfare, strong personal responsibility laws, right?) would introduce into a national security bill a set of regulations protecting a particular company from any actions based on dangers that may lie in one of its products?
After all, that's the natural ideological bent of the Republican party!
Which futher props up the party machines, such as the famous Democratic ones in New York and Chigaco, as well as the RNC and the like. Which means more central control over senators and congresscritters - the precise opposite of what sentors, in particular, are meant to represent.
Even in New Zealand, where we don't generally have this problem, corruption of the process is creeping in. The local rich peoples' part, called ACT, regularly gets the most money (despite having generally poor electoral results: oddly enough, most people are underwhelmed by a manifesto that would only be good for a narrow range of the population).
However, many of the wealthy people who give money to ACT are apparently afraid of having their donations being published for reasons that are unclear to me; since there's a $5000 disclosure limit, a local law firm whose partners are pro-ACT helped people around this by taking donors' money, and then having the staff of the company make $4999 donations.
(Ironically enough a number of people who support ACT whine about more socially oriented companies such as Stephen Tindell's Warehouse chain getting involved in philanthropy; supporters such as economist Gareth Morgan trot out the line that companies becoming involved in social/political action are "stealing from owners"; Mr Morgan was rather silent on this little trick).
One of the problems with these sorts of regulations is that the unscrupulous will go to considerable lengths to evade the law and have the resources to help them: consider the aforementioned example, where secretaries, junior lawyers, and other employees are press-ganged into evading the law and supporting their bosses' favourite party.
Slashdot Mirror
The Mob was my first thought, too. I'm a sucker for conspiracy theory 8).
More likely the cable companies are too expensive to buy. They aren't likely to want to encumber their customers with too many restrictions - people like recording the movie of the week, and why would CableCo want to take that ability away?
Ooops. s/Turin/Berin/, of course.
Your first part is true. Your second is a complete misreading of Tolkien.
Aragorn does not become King of Gondor and Arnor because he's descended from a royal bloodline. All of the Rangers are descended from Numenoreon aristocracy, and Aragorn is the scion of a less noble branch of the old Numenoreon Kings, something which Elrond alludes to when stating that if he wishes to follow in Turin's footsteps, he must make his line as great.
Aragorn doesn't reforge Narsil, march to Gondor, unseat Denethor, and lead Gondor against the enemy. He spends years wandering the wilderness as an ordinary man. In fact, he refuses every kingly offering (other than the re-forged Narsil) until near the end of the book, when the battle for Gondor is won. Tolkien is going back to the older, Germanic concept that the rightful King is not just the bloodline, but the deed. Aragorn walks the Paths of the Dead; he proves he has the right to call the Oathbreakers, he descends on the Corsairs, and he comes to Gondor in it's hour of need.
Even after unfurling his standard as a descendant of the royal household, he does not enter Gondor until invited. Like an old Anglo-Saxon or Norse King, he is ruler not by rules of primogeneture or a divine right (both concepts primarily introduced through the Catholic Church's alliance with the French royal family). He is rule because, yes, he has the required lineage, but because he's proven himself as fit to be King.
Tolkien's fall of Numenor is in fact a warning against the "absolute tyrant" being better. It mirrors mnot just the descnet of Rome and also of nations like Spain and France under idiot monarchs. Aragorn is restoring the way things ought to be - the monarch arising through both blood right and proving his suitability to rule (and, for that matter, finishing himself off when his powers faded toward senility). It's not strictly hierarchal, because Aragorn feels the need to have the approval of not only a peer group (the royal family of Rohan, the Stewards of Gondor, other leaders of Middle Earth) and of the people of Gondor themselves.
The closest concept in modern times would be if the next King of England were to be elevated, not as a result of being the issue of a mad Greek and the greedy scion of a German line, but by being elected by and from the House of Lords as the most suitable of the aristocracy to lead the nation.
You've misread Tolkien on one level though. While Tolkien uses the evil of Isengard (and it's impact in the Shire) to inveigh against the destruction of his homeland by cars and factories, as he saw it, you'll note if you have another look (as Brin certainly should, and pay attention this time!) that the Dwarves provide a vehicle for his exploration of how thins could and should be - consider the whole conversation Legolas and Gimli have around Gimli explaining that Dwarves would not simply dive in and ruin the caves, but develop them slowly, with consideration, care, and respect.
And you'll note it's Sam the gardiner who becomes Mayor when they return. Frodo retires from public license.
It would be a lot better if Brin could actually demonstrate his thesis. As it is, he starts out full of shit and continues - because the guys who save the day aren't the ubermen, they're the hobbits - the boring little rural guys. Frodo isn't some kick-arse hero, he's the bloke from the local pub packed off to fight Hitler.
Yeah, the capitalistic process never influences scientific research and publication, leading to Great Purity. Why, look at all that research on the harmful effects of smoking in the 1940s and 1950s. Promptly published, it immediately led to a drop off in smoking and saved millions of lives that would have been lost if scientists had buried it at the beheat of their employers.
It also shows a number of flaws with the theory:
1/ Plato hardly started the philosophies that much of Western thinking are based upon. You may recall that Plato studied under Cratylus and was heavily influenced by Socrates. And Cratylus studied under...
2/ Many of Plato's views would likely be considered pretty horrible by those of us working in many of the major Enlightenment streams of thought. Western Civilisation may owe debts to Plato, but the like of Adam Smith, J S Mill, Woolstoncroft, Bertrand Russell, William Morris, and sundry others play a much more immediate role in our day to day lives, in much the same way that Rutherford splitting the atom is more meaningful for people getting their electricity in the US than Newton's work.
Essentially, picking Plato is arbitary. And that's the problem with most notions of identifying the "great thinkers", especially in collaborative areas that build and change over time; things are all too often reduced to popularity/PR contests. Hell, how many people think Edison was a great inventor?
What, to add a few more years to a war the US had already lost and was illegally expanding into Laos and Cambodia?
Gee, that sure was a good use of money. Propping up the corrupt South Vietnamese government, thousands more Americans and tens of thousands more Asians dead, and the US backing the Khmer Rouge. Much better than some stupid space program.
Certainly no-one aware of the problems associated with prion diseases will want more mechanically reclaimed meat.
Chickens are omnivores; feeding them meat (including other chickens - which they'll eat anyway, in the wild) is less of a problem than with feeding cattle sheep remains.
The point here is that people find ways to circumvent all but the most blunt and draconian laws. The money ACT raise doesn't do them much good, for example, because TV advertising is tightly controlled and for the most part taxpayer funded.
True. And in New Zealand, employment discrimination on the basis of political views is explicitly barred. So any employee approached who felt like suing their employer would have a case. But I still doubt junior lawyers are going to harm their prospects by suing here, any more than they do in the States.
That's an interesting assumption - given the number of other world leading business live in Scandanavia.
I could reply, "See what happens to the US when all the non-executive jobs are farmed out to South East Asia and all the corporate profits are tax-free in the Bahamas. What will become of Halliburton and Raytheon when there are no taxpayers to underwrite defense spending?"
Well over 50 to 100 years. Read up on US Grant's presidency, or the pre-Civil War Tammany Hall machine, or the influence of Southern business on the question of slavery.
Riiight. That would be the crowd tht encompasses polyamorous socialist Richard Stallman and homophobic religious bigot Eric S Raymond. I can see a unified voice arising out of that mess.
That's only true if the benefits flow to the citizens. Check out Fortune's specials on executive looting, for example, or their coverage of income disparity.
Fact is, countries like Norway, which not having as good an average GDP as the US, have a much better income spread. Which citizenry are better off?
In a number of juristictions, this is the case (a company can have its charter revoked). Unfortunately, it has not been enforced anywhere in a good hundred years or so.
The only problem is when the government becomes, in effect, a corporation. What we have now is, in essence, a form of capitalo-anarchism, where the government is controlled by corporations.
You could refer to this as the name by which it was popularised in Spain and Italy: Facism.
Right. That would be why a Republican dominated congress, senate, and Presidency (small government, limited welfare, strong personal responsibility laws, right?) would introduce into a national security bill a set of regulations protecting a particular company from any actions based on dangers that may lie in one of its products?
After all, that's the natural ideological bent of the Republican party!
Which futher props up the party machines, such as the famous Democratic ones in New York and Chigaco, as well as the RNC and the like. Which means more central control over senators and congresscritters - the precise opposite of what sentors, in particular, are meant to represent.
Even in New Zealand, where we don't generally have this problem, corruption of the process is creeping in. The local rich peoples' part, called ACT, regularly gets the most money (despite having generally poor electoral results: oddly enough, most people are underwhelmed by a manifesto that would only be good for a narrow range of the population).
However, many of the wealthy people who give money to ACT are apparently afraid of having their donations being published for reasons that are unclear to me; since there's a $5000 disclosure limit, a local law firm whose partners are pro-ACT helped people around this by taking donors' money, and then having the staff of the company make $4999 donations.
(Ironically enough a number of people who support ACT whine about more socially oriented companies such as Stephen Tindell's Warehouse chain getting involved in philanthropy; supporters such as economist Gareth Morgan trot out the line that companies becoming involved in social/political action are "stealing from owners"; Mr Morgan was rather silent on this little trick).
One of the problems with these sorts of regulations is that the unscrupulous will go to considerable lengths to evade the law and have the resources to help them: consider the aforementioned example, where secretaries, junior lawyers, and other employees are press-ganged into evading the law and supporting their bosses' favourite party.
You sound as though this makes it different someho wfrom the Rational tools.
I'd be happy with anything they did that made the Rational suite faster and less buggy.
When NYC make it nigh-impossible for cancer patients to travel the subway, slashdiots line up to tell the cencer patients it's their own damn fault.
When the Bush administration proposes taking away wireless networks - oh the outrage, oh the humanity.