I have a concrete block wall around my back yard. Part of it was built in 1958 by a real bricklayer. And part was rebuilt in 2000 (after a tree fell on it) by the former owner's migrant workers. Any half-blind moron can see the difference in in the results.
I agree with you; corruption is essentially a parasitic system that is designed to keep the rich on top and the poor "in their place". And that it is better to work for a living as best one can in that system, than to take the dole and lose all hope.
And one cannot fault everyday Russians (or anyone else) for doing whatever they have to, to keep a roof over their heads and food in their children's mouths.
But historically, Russia (and most of the world, for that matter) have run on corrupt systems. They're not easy to outgrow. Revolutions where the men in power merely change the colour of their uniforms, or where the poor rise up and slaughter the rich, don't accomplish positive change either.
It's a shame when resource-rich countries like Russia, Mexico, and [many others] waste their people and resources that way, but they need to grow beyond it on their own. No one can do it for them.
And modern contractors have the finishing phase down to "damn quick", too. Here in SoCal, where speed of turnover is everything, I've seen stickbuilt houses go from foundation to lived-in over the course of only a couple weeks. I've seen whole subdivisions completed in a matter of only a couple months.
Another point I haven't seen anyone bring up yet.. yeah, an automated housebuilder may be all great and wonderful and efficient, but NOW where are those 400,000 workers going to get a paycheck?? making automated housebuiler units??
Except that aluminum corrodes. After 30 years or so, aluminum siding can become downright porous, just from contact with the atmosphere. (A sad fact often discovered by people who had aluminum siding put on their houses.)
Frex, I have a 1969 travel trailer with aluminum siding, that I can no longer keep watertight -- it oozes water right through the aluminum skin, despite having been repainted and resealed religiously for most of its life. Conversely, my 1950 travel trailer, with steel siding and never once repainted since it left the factory (and at this point largely devoid of paint), doesn't leak at all.
I used to have an aluminum-framed gate on one of my kennels. It corroded down to "full of holes" in just a few years, merely from being damp for a while after the daily wash-down.
I recently read something that pointed out that "if political corruption provided jobs, and cleaning up that corruption put everyone out of work -- what was so bad about the corruption??"
Not to defend corruption (or crime) but given a weak economy with few other jobs available, one can see how the average person would rather have three meals a day and a roof over their head, regardless of where it comes from. Yeah, things might get a whole lot better over the long haul if the system was cleaned up, but in the short term, their kids would starve. So there's not much internal incentive to change the system.
And yes, I do agree that an economically strong Russia would probably be to everyone's benefit.
In other words, the Soviet system was exactly like the American system -- BEFORE the advent of "feelgood ejookashun" where it's more important to stroke the student's "self-esteem" (ignoring the fact that self-esteem is achieved by accomplishment, not by spoonfeeding) than to actually TEACH anything.
When I was in school (I graduated in 1972, in Montana), you learned whether you liked it or not, and no one cared if you "enjoyed" it. And social status derived directly from good grades; the eggheads were the most admired students, and everyone wanted to be like them. Your chances of success in life were regarded as directly tied to your grades -- and not just in a single field, but across the board (since we were required to take a broad spectrum of classes).
By the standards I grew up with here in America, the current generation is woefully under-educated.:(
"Hitting a federal building in Oklahoma killed mostly people who really weren't "them", though. It was a symbolic bombing, and not a very well chosen one at that."
In fact, it was kinda like killing your own kids to protest how expensive Day Care is.
BTW, I didn't know you were a Desert Storm vet, but I'm glad you made it back okay!
Addiction is NOT the *need* for something. It is the *inability to function without* that something.
So this isn't about the normal need for relevant information. It's about an abnormal requirement for information (relevant or not), and individuals who feel panic when deprived of that information. It's been around forever; availability of a new medium doesn't change that.
I personally know two people who literally have panic attacks if they are prevented from watching the evening TV news.
See above where I comment about what I hereby dub News Anxiety Disorder, the compulsion to know "what's happening" and a sort of panic attack when prevented from doing so. You make a good point that even in the most primitive times, there probably were people who just HAD to keep track of how many bison were in every herd they knew about, how many birds their neighbour shot last week, how many people complained of the smell from the privy, etc, etc, as if their lives depended on it. Perhaps it's fundamentally a specific survival instinct run amok (or failing to mature**), to the point that it overwhelms other instincts and behaviours.
** A lot of little kids exhibit a sort of news anxiety disorder, but most outgrow it, along with the other sociopathic behaviours that are normal in kids but not in adults.
There have always been people who are addicted to "news". If they don't know "what's happening in the world", or are prevented from accessing their favourite news medium, they actually suffer a sort of panic attack. Some are quite unreasonable about it, such as making everyone else in the house stop talking for the duration of the evening TV news.
I've observed this disorder not only with the internet, but in previous eras when the primary news media were television, radio, and newspapers. I've read about people in the 1800s who got quite upset if they didn't have access to the latest broadsheet. In one form or another, it probably goes back to the era of town criers.
I have a suspicion that it derives from an abnormal compulsion to "take control" over one's environment, and knowing "what's happening" helps provide an enabling comfort zone.
While reading your post I was struck by the exact parallel to privacy, and shortsighted arguments to the effect of "If I'm not doing anything wrong, why do I need privacy?"
I conclude that privacy and anonymity are essentially congruent freedoms.
From everything I've heard and read, SP2 works fine on a clean new install, but is somewhat likely to screw up on an established box (with lots of tweaks already made, and lots of apps installed).
It's been pointed out that SP2 is almost an entirely new OS. So what it really does is an *OS upgrade*, not just an update. And XP has never upgraded gracefully, way back to its earliest beta days. In that light, SP2's misbehaviour on established boxes is not too surprising.
I saved and looked at a chunk where I know the width of a structure, and it is indeed about 1 meter per pixel (my concrete is 15 feet wide, displayed by 5 pixels).
I can see the striping on a two-lane highway, tho it's real blurry.
Would be nice if there was an uncompressed version, eh? (Well, if you have broadband, anyway!)
I'm looking at my house right now. A tree that was cut down early in 2003 is still there. A circular path started in summer 2002 (made by exercising a horse, so it's very visible) is also there. And by the amount of greenery here in the desert, and that our veggie garden had already died off, it is probably early in the dry season. So at least in my neighbourhood, the image appears to date from about July of 2002.
The resolution is good enough that I can see the single stripe down the middle of a nearby two-lane highway. I can also see two cars and an 18-wheeler. The smallest visible object is a 4x8 sheet of plywood atop the shelter in my corral. I can also see my kennel concrete, which at that point is 15 feet wide, represented by 5 pixels on the saved image (you can pillage them via Moz's Page Info function). So there's the max resolution -- one pixel = about 3 feet (plus or minus some blurring).
I think I was just using Star Trek as a shared example of a place one might find "pointless futurism" (since the parent post mentioned ST too).
[big silly grin] At one time I could have ID'd any ST-TOS still by episode and scene, and supplied the matching dialog to boot. But I don't think I've seen any of TOS since the late 1970s, and by now all the specifics have fallen out of my head, or got overwritten during an upgrade to Star Wars:) I do vaguely recall some odd-shaped furniture here and there in TOS, tho nothing specific.
One thing that does come to mind is that all the beds looked horribly uncomfortable!
Sliding doors (and their cousin the pocket door) are a matter of practicality for the location; they've been around in various forms for centuries. Many older homes and nearly all older house trailers use pocket doors. They may even predate the hinged door, given that a pocket door (aka sliding door) is really just a gate that can be picked up and moved sideways, to which has been added a handy sliding track. Hinged doors require a lot more supporting architecture (frame, latch, etc.)
A better example would be the Star Trek notion of how a table and chairs would look -- you're not sure what it is, how to use it, or where the heck you'd sit. In the real world, tables and chairs have remained fundamentally unchanged since their inception, with the only real innovation being the chairback. And there's never any question about where to park your butt. Yeah, occasional oddities come down the pipe, but they've never become mainstream *for a reason*: they lack realworld functionality.
Remember the Clapper? "Clap on, clap off..." Nifty gadget, but not very useful outside of a niche market -- they're cheap enough, but you don't see Clappers controlling every switchable device in every home, do you?? Of course not, because 99% of the time, a plain old light switch is easier to use and less prone to make mistakes.
As you say, most such gadgets, however clever, are solutions in search of a problem that doesn't exist, or only exists in niche markets.
What a totally weird image -- a streetful of people hurrying about their business, all bobbing their heads and waving their hands like a flock of demented pigeons on speed:)
I suppose if "everyone is doing it" most folk wouldn't feel self-conscious about it. Even so... I'm reminded of some old SF movie where an alien tries to imitate a person who has a nervous tick.
It's a method of aggressively getting into someone else's personal space, in this case represented by the vehicle's "envelope", and thereby exerting personal dominance. Casually passing by (as one normally would on the road) doesn't trigger the "invasion of personal space" thing, but deliberately sitting there DOES.
No vehicle required, either. Works the same if you walk beside someone on a city sidewalk, or if in an otherwise lightly-used seating area, you sit immediately beside someone without asking. Most of the time they'll get up and move away.
Occurs to me that stuff like gov't RFID chips is a sort of dominance game as imposed on us by the gov't. They get to lean, and we get to buckle.
Slashdot Mirror
Or pay off whoever is DoS'ing your house ;)
If you know of any Sears catalog structures still standing, I've been told that the U.S. Historical Register is interested in including them.
My own house was a "U-Build-It" kit, according to the building permit, and cost about $5000 in 1956.
I have a concrete block wall around my back yard. Part of it was built in 1958 by a real bricklayer. And part was rebuilt in 2000 (after a tree fell on it) by the former owner's migrant workers. Any half-blind moron can see the difference in in the results.
I agree with you; corruption is essentially a parasitic system that is designed to keep the rich on top and the poor "in their place". And that it is better to work for a living as best one can in that system, than to take the dole and lose all hope.
And one cannot fault everyday Russians (or anyone else) for doing whatever they have to, to keep a roof over their heads and food in their children's mouths.
But historically, Russia (and most of the world, for that matter) have run on corrupt systems. They're not easy to outgrow. Revolutions where the men in power merely change the colour of their uniforms, or where the poor rise up and slaughter the rich, don't accomplish positive change either.
It's a shame when resource-rich countries like Russia, Mexico, and [many others] waste their people and resources that way, but they need to grow beyond it on their own. No one can do it for them.
And modern contractors have the finishing phase down to "damn quick", too. Here in SoCal, where speed of turnover is everything, I've seen stickbuilt houses go from foundation to lived-in over the course of only a couple weeks. I've seen whole subdivisions completed in a matter of only a couple months.
Another point I haven't seen anyone bring up yet.. yeah, an automated housebuilder may be all great and wonderful and efficient, but NOW where are those 400,000 workers going to get a paycheck?? making automated housebuiler units??
Except that aluminum corrodes. After 30 years or so, aluminum siding can become downright porous, just from contact with the atmosphere. (A sad fact often discovered by people who had aluminum siding put on their houses.)
Frex, I have a 1969 travel trailer with aluminum siding, that I can no longer keep watertight -- it oozes water right through the aluminum skin, despite having been repainted and resealed religiously for most of its life. Conversely, my 1950 travel trailer, with steel siding and never once repainted since it left the factory (and at this point largely devoid of paint), doesn't leak at all.
I used to have an aluminum-framed gate on one of my kennels. It corroded down to "full of holes" in just a few years, merely from being damp for a while after the daily wash-down.
I recently read something that pointed out that "if political corruption provided jobs, and cleaning up that corruption put everyone out of work -- what was so bad about the corruption??"
Not to defend corruption (or crime) but given a weak economy with few other jobs available, one can see how the average person would rather have three meals a day and a roof over their head, regardless of where it comes from. Yeah, things might get a whole lot better over the long haul if the system was cleaned up, but in the short term, their kids would starve. So there's not much internal incentive to change the system.
And yes, I do agree that an economically strong Russia would probably be to everyone's benefit.
I'm reminded of this bit of wisdom:
"Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny." -- Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (1961)
In other words, the Soviet system was exactly like the American system -- BEFORE the advent of "feelgood ejookashun" where it's more important to stroke the student's "self-esteem" (ignoring the fact that self-esteem is achieved by accomplishment, not by spoonfeeding) than to actually TEACH anything.
:(
When I was in school (I graduated in 1972, in Montana), you learned whether you liked it or not, and no one cared if you "enjoyed" it. And social status derived directly from good grades; the eggheads were the most admired students, and everyone wanted to be like them. Your chances of success in life were regarded as directly tied to your grades -- and not just in a single field, but across the board (since we were required to take a broad spectrum of classes).
By the standards I grew up with here in America, the current generation is woefully under-educated.
Good point. Rumours (word of mouth) were the first "news source".
LOL!! For the nitpickers among us, I shoulda said "the ability to function without something *abnormal* to the organism".
h tm
As to the perils of dihydrogen monoxide addiction... http://home.earthlink.net/~thesandpit/misc/water.
"Hitting a federal building in Oklahoma killed mostly people who really weren't "them", though. It was a symbolic bombing, and not a very well chosen one at that."
In fact, it was kinda like killing your own kids to protest how expensive Day Care is.
BTW, I didn't know you were a Desert Storm vet, but I'm glad you made it back okay!
Addiction is NOT the *need* for something. It is the *inability to function without* that something.
So this isn't about the normal need for relevant information. It's about an abnormal requirement for information (relevant or not), and individuals who feel panic when deprived of that information. It's been around forever; availability of a new medium doesn't change that.
I personally know two people who literally have panic attacks if they are prevented from watching the evening TV news.
See above where I comment about what I hereby dub News Anxiety Disorder, the compulsion to know "what's happening" and a sort of panic attack when prevented from doing so. You make a good point that even in the most primitive times, there probably were people who just HAD to keep track of how many bison were in every herd they knew about, how many birds their neighbour shot last week, how many people complained of the smell from the privy, etc, etc, as if their lives depended on it. Perhaps it's fundamentally a specific survival instinct run amok (or failing to mature**), to the point that it overwhelms other instincts and behaviours.
** A lot of little kids exhibit a sort of news anxiety disorder, but most outgrow it, along with the other sociopathic behaviours that are normal in kids but not in adults.
There have always been people who are addicted to "news". If they don't know "what's happening in the world", or are prevented from accessing their favourite news medium, they actually suffer a sort of panic attack. Some are quite unreasonable about it, such as making everyone else in the house stop talking for the duration of the evening TV news.
I've observed this disorder not only with the internet, but in previous eras when the primary news media were television, radio, and newspapers. I've read about people in the 1800s who got quite upset if they didn't have access to the latest broadsheet. In one form or another, it probably goes back to the era of town criers.
I have a suspicion that it derives from an abnormal compulsion to "take control" over one's environment, and knowing "what's happening" helps provide an enabling comfort zone.
While reading your post I was struck by the exact parallel to privacy, and shortsighted arguments to the effect of "If I'm not doing anything wrong, why do I need privacy?"
I conclude that privacy and anonymity are essentially congruent freedoms.
From everything I've heard and read, SP2 works fine on a clean new install, but is somewhat likely to screw up on an established box (with lots of tweaks already made, and lots of apps installed).
It's been pointed out that SP2 is almost an entirely new OS. So what it really does is an *OS upgrade*, not just an update. And XP has never upgraded gracefully, way back to its earliest beta days. In that light, SP2's misbehaviour on established boxes is not too surprising.
Someone correct me if I'm misremembering, but didn't SP2 get built (or at least mostly so) prior to M$ acquiring Virtual PC??
I saved and looked at a chunk where I know the width of a structure, and it is indeed about 1 meter per pixel (my concrete is 15 feet wide, displayed by 5 pixels).
I can see the striping on a two-lane highway, tho it's real blurry.
Would be nice if there was an uncompressed version, eh? (Well, if you have broadband, anyway!)
I'm looking at my house right now. A tree that was cut down early in 2003 is still there. A circular path started in summer 2002 (made by exercising a horse, so it's very visible) is also there. And by the amount of greenery here in the desert, and that our veggie garden had already died off, it is probably early in the dry season. So at least in my neighbourhood, the image appears to date from about July of 2002.
The resolution is good enough that I can see the single stripe down the middle of a nearby two-lane highway. I can also see two cars and an 18-wheeler. The smallest visible object is a 4x8 sheet of plywood atop the shelter in my corral. I can also see my kennel concrete, which at that point is 15 feet wide, represented by 5 pixels on the saved image (you can pillage them via Moz's Page Info function). So there's the max resolution -- one pixel = about 3 feet (plus or minus some blurring).
I think I was just using Star Trek as a shared example of a place one might find "pointless futurism" (since the parent post mentioned ST too).
:) I do vaguely recall some odd-shaped furniture here and there in TOS, tho nothing specific.
[big silly grin] At one time I could have ID'd any ST-TOS still by episode and scene, and supplied the matching dialog to boot. But I don't think I've seen any of TOS since the late 1970s, and by now all the specifics have fallen out of my head, or got overwritten during an upgrade to Star Wars
One thing that does come to mind is that all the beds looked horribly uncomfortable!
Sliding doors (and their cousin the pocket door) are a matter of practicality for the location; they've been around in various forms for centuries. Many older homes and nearly all older house trailers use pocket doors. They may even predate the hinged door, given that a pocket door (aka sliding door) is really just a gate that can be picked up and moved sideways, to which has been added a handy sliding track. Hinged doors require a lot more supporting architecture (frame, latch, etc.)
A better example would be the Star Trek notion of how a table and chairs would look -- you're not sure what it is, how to use it, or where the heck you'd sit. In the real world, tables and chairs have remained fundamentally unchanged since their inception, with the only real innovation being the chairback. And there's never any question about where to park your butt. Yeah, occasional oddities come down the pipe, but they've never become mainstream *for a reason*: they lack realworld functionality.
Remember the Clapper? "Clap on, clap off..." Nifty gadget, but not very useful outside of a niche market -- they're cheap enough, but you don't see Clappers controlling every switchable device in every home, do you?? Of course not, because 99% of the time, a plain old light switch is easier to use and less prone to make mistakes.
As you say, most such gadgets, however clever, are solutions in search of a problem that doesn't exist, or only exists in niche markets.
What a totally weird image -- a streetful of people hurrying about their business, all bobbing their heads and waving their hands like a flock of demented pigeons on speed :)
I suppose if "everyone is doing it" most folk wouldn't feel self-conscious about it. Even so... I'm reminded of some old SF movie where an alien tries to imitate a person who has a nervous tick.
Good thought, especially for those of us who tend to wave our arms around, and if we sat on our hands would be rendered mute :)
However, what about deaf folks' signed communication, which is purposeful (tensioned) by its nature?
Dominance games.
It's a method of aggressively getting into someone else's personal space, in this case represented by the vehicle's "envelope", and thereby exerting personal dominance. Casually passing by (as one normally would on the road) doesn't trigger the "invasion of personal space" thing, but deliberately sitting there DOES.
No vehicle required, either. Works the same if you walk beside someone on a city sidewalk, or if in an otherwise lightly-used seating area, you sit immediately beside someone without asking. Most of the time they'll get up and move away.
Occurs to me that stuff like gov't RFID chips is a sort of dominance game as imposed on us by the gov't. They get to lean, and we get to buckle.