as others have noted, there are enough rare earths, they aren't that rare. it's just that china, wihtout any work force laws or legal protections for its workers it is allowed to treat like slaves of the state, is able to parlay that into cheaper prices. so mining elsewhere withers and atrophies
if push came to shove, we can start new mines rather quickly
what worries me is manufacturing know how and infrastructure. it takes a generation to have a good manufacturing base, at least. and i'm not talking machines, i'm talking people. the manufacturing base is dying in the west, as everything moves to china
this is where china can really squeeze us, and we won't be able to react fast enough, because in a decade or two, we won't know how to make anything, it will all be made in china
we need to keep our manufacturing base, the whole spectrum of technologies and know how and expertise, humming along here
a rare earth is a rare earth, whether dug up in california or inner mongolia
but that 70 year old guy who knows how all about phase transitions in the manufacture of specialty glasses, or that 80 year old guy who knows all about resistance settings on collodial separation equipment, or whatever: when they go, its gone, the only other brain with that info is in shanghai
it's like us in the west watching iran trying to build a nuclear bomb and stumbling in its lack of knowhow. in 20-30 years, in a conflict, china could be in the same position, just watching us try to manufacture all sorts of high specialized industrial applications and us over here going "how do you do this?" "i dunno, the guy who knew that died 20 years ago" "well where's his knowledge backup?" "well, the bank of china bought that portfolio 10 years ago and moved it all to guangzhou, no one at the time thought it was a big deal"
i read your post in its entirety. i was attacking the idea that trust is even possible in the situation. and now i see we are actually in agreement, because you also think such trust is nonexistent. your point simply seems to be a lot of fools meanwhile still trust where there is none. therefore, we have no disagreement, because that is my point too. cheers
and since these entities simply cannot be trusted with keeping info safe, i think we are rapidly entering an age in which privacy simply doesn't exist
not out of any malevolence or malfeasance, but as a simple direct logical corollary to the growth of the internet and the unintended consequences of how things actually play out in the real world, regardless of anyone's intent
anything that gets in contact with the internet: it never dies
go walk on a beach so the directional microphones can't pick up what you say through the surf noise
but if you want it to be public, post it on the internet
because as the other story from yesterday about the government spying on facebook shows: you are in the absurd scenario of trusting the GOVERNMENT to make rules, and you are trusting the GOVERNMENT to enforce rules, about what? about what you put in wide open view on a public internet. to me, that expectation of yours is insane
why are you trusting the government to do this? even if they had the intent and the enforcement capacity to do so, you honestly think they will do a capable job? with what? the corporate subcontractors with the financial involvement with the corporations who are after your data? pffft
and say the government fails to protect your data. ok, they sue and prosecute the offending corporations. but your info is already in the database. the database that is now mirrored 50 times by 25 different entities! once it gets on the internet, IT NEVER DIES. so please, get real: if you don't want it to get in a database, DON'T PUT IT ON THE FREAKING INTERNET
it is that simple. all other point of views are, frankly, a form of absurdity in which
1. you distrust corporations and governments with your private info, 2. so you put that private info on a public internet, 3. trusting corporations and governments to keep that info safe from 4. the same corporations and governments!
(smacks forehead)
i have a hen house. to protect that hen house from the wolf in the woods, i will hire the wolf in the woods to guard the hen house. wtf?!
we're not talking about east german stasi looking to frame you. we're talking about police doing basic gum shoe investigative work of actual crimes. no different than any other undercover work
you have this bizarre point of view that the police are your enemy out to destroy your life for no particular reason. the police work for you. there are real criminal activities out there for which this behavior is perfectly moral and legal
a rodent, i'm sorry, a lagomorph engaged in quite offensive nonconsensual anthropocentric unbalanced orthogonal weight stressor torture. think of the post traumatic stress and joint wear and tear! quite offensive!
that you have no expectation of privacy when you stand naked in the middle of times square screaming the secrets of your sex life?
then you understand why posting your private life on the MOST PUBLIC MEDIUM INVENTED BY MANKIND is not just a legal no-starter, but really is a completely logically incoherent concept
the average joe just don't think like a computer scientist. a computer programmer can look at the internet and see a giant dataset ready to be be algorithmed to death. an IT guy, right before he or she hits the "Submit" button, can visualize the web spider that will arrive 10 minutes later, heuristically puree and flambee those words and pictures into an intelligent hierarchy, and offer it up for consumption to anyone typing search terms into a search engine 10 minutes later. the average joe just doesn't think like that
computer folk have a robots.txt file sitting between their brain and their fingers:
the policeman drives up and down the street, looks at cars, looks at people walking on the street, looking at residences...
is that a fishing expedition in your mind? of course not
but that's what you are calling a "fishing expedition" on the internet. you have this bizarre idea that information freely and openly and publicly published is somehow immune to public viewing of it by the government, by advertisers, by people you don't want to reconnect with. it's not just you, it's some sort of mass delusion, some sort of cognitive disconnect about the nature of the internet. people treat it as if it is their private keepsake box in their closet, when the internet is about the exact opposite of such a concept. you expect shock, dismay and disgust, that the police would look at something "private" when it isn't even remotely private. the problem is not the police. the problem is people who have this cognitive disconnect about the nature of the internet like you are demonstrating
the practice of law enforcement is an actual valid endeavour. what is going on here is less east german secret police tracking innocent civilians, and more plain old gum shoe police work against actual criminals
and really, to get right down to it: you don't have any protection from what you put out on the web being revealed. this includes old friends from high school, potential employers, spamvertisers... and the government. so if you don't want it revealed or shared, DON'T PUT IT ON THE WEB. why does this amazingly obvious fact escape people?
it just seems kind of insane to me that people want to share stuff in public on an open medium, and then act shocked and dismayed that someone MIGHT ACTUALLY SEE IT. its some sort of human pscyhological blind spot: for some unknown reason, people trust the web with really personal details, when the web is about the exact opposite of the kind of place you want to put those personal details. its as if people don't actually understand that the internet is the most searchable, most wide open medium invented by mankind, but we treat it as if it is our private diary stashed under our bed. why is that? what is the source of this glaring psychological defect so many of us share about the nature of the internet?
when you ruin your name, everything else goes down the toilet. electronics is such a cutthroat competitive environment, you can't ever play the game of ruining what people associate your brand name with
how did you indians get to north america from india before columbus?
(yes, i'm joking)
look, i understand why native americans are called indians: columbus got lost and thought he was in india. my problem is, it became readily apparent to everyone that he was NOT in india soon after, so why did the terminology continue for so long?
why the bleep does the usa still have something called a bureau of INDIAN affairs? tradition? a tradition of stupidity? when the ambassador from new delhi arrives in washington dc and knocks on the wrong door, isn't anyone a little embarrassed at this silliness?
it's insanity. at least canada has gone and revamped all of their official government lingo and calls native americans "first nation". while that terminology sounds a little patronizing, its still infinitely superior to the completely wrong terminology "indian"
why the bleep does the usa have a bureau of INDIAN affairs? to be fair, the spanish speaking american countries still have the term "indio" too, it's not all the usa's continuing error. but i simply don't get it. the linguistic error should have been corrected somewhere around the year 1500, right?
indian americans, children of immigrants from the indian subcontinent, and visitors from india must find this all very amusing. native americans, probably not so much
i'm certain the average north korean wouldn't think japanese and westerners were vampires who wanted to eat their babies and sell their organs on the capitalist market if they weren't immersed in propaganda, so yes, you are correct
we need to get corporate influence out of media, and politics. build firewalls of law: no corporate dollars allowed here
i'm not saying that would be easy, it would be easier to get a heroin junkie to quit, but that is what we have to do, no matter how hard
blogs function on rumor and gossip, not fact gathering. they aren't in any way superior to mass media, are of course inferior, and only serve to glue likeminded ideologues together in fellowship with a shared wall of self-reinforcing lies
also, pamphleteers WERE the mass media of their time!
mass media in a FREE SOCIETY does not function as any part of the state. do you live in a democracy? then the mass media is slave only to one master: its readers. and to get the most readers, it mustn't stray right or left, it would turn off readers, and lose revenue. so it hews dead center to the dead middle of the ideological bell curve and is MODERATE
"MSM has show itself collectively to be liars as well"
LOL
you're an idiot. as opposed to what: POLITICAL BLOGS??!! bwahahahaha!
are you honestly implying mass media is anywhere remotely in the same universe as the free form artform of propaganda creation, half truth spreading, and smearmongering of the demagoguery and thuggish partisanship you see on blogs?
therefore they can't go right or left, as they would get less viewers. they have to focus, ideologically, on the dead middle of the bell curve of ideological belief to win the most viewers
but you are correct in that the mass media is radical, but not ideologically radical just... adrenally radical? what i mean by that is, any image or word that primes or pumps up the adrenal glands, causes you to react like a small furry mammal in flight or fight that sees a snake: grab your attention by the gut. because it wins viewers and therefore it wins mass media money. "if it bleeds it leads": sex and violence and pettiness appeals to the lizardlike lowest common denominator of attention getting of our brain
so mass media is "adrenally radical" not ideologically radical
however, i would say to you: who cares? it is what it is. you don't have to watch it, even though it is doing its damndest to make you by appealing to your lowest mental processes
i call myself a socialist on purpose, just to bait the knuckledraggers who think the simple obivous idea of the common good is somehow an evil. some of the idiots on the far right wouldn't even fund the building and maintenance of ROADS, or at least don't understand that is exactly what their retarded selfish ideology argues for
look at the rise of right wing blogs, and the people who would trust it more than they trust mass media
a media channel loses its credibility, its audience, and its advertisers when it lies. so it has to fact check. additionally, it must remain neutral and moderate, and not espouse an agenda, or it turns people off, which means less advertising revenue. moderation and neutrality is of paramount importance to mass media
when bush was in office the far left complained about the right wing mass media supporting the phony march of war on iraq, etc. well, there is no right wing mass media, and there is no left wing mass media, there is only mass media. the real problem is that the far right thinks it is liberal, and the far left think it is conservative, only because their own perspective is so far right (or left). move far right enough, and you can't tell the difference any more between moderate and lefty. move far left enough, and you can't tell the difference any more between moderate and right-wing
so now, with the internet, we see the rise of far right wing people and far left wing people walled off in their own media universe. their own little walled garden of self-reinforcing lies. obama is a "secret muslim". obama is not an american citizen. this is obviously insanity. but walled off on their own, in their own ideological echo chamber of lies, people begin to believe these obvious smears and lies rather than reality
so the pope is 100% correct: the internet has allowed reality and illusion to become inseparable for people. it takes energy to change your beliefs to align with reality. so why change your beliefs? just change your reality instead, by choosing your partisan blogs over mass media
there are a class of people now who distrust mass media, yet, exasperatingly, trust partisan blogs which lie all the time in support of an agenda, and openly do not care about the truth or fact checking or credibility, as long as they advance a cause
this is genuinely dangerous and scary. the internet is enabling the fractionating of society into walled fiefdoms of ideologues, and no real truth, or at least even common mythology. people pick and choose what they want to believe, regardless of reality. at least mass media made for a true commons of the people. now we only have open warfare amongst entrenched ideological gangs. and the internet makes that possible
reward for innovation should go to individuals, not corporations
corporations have gamed the system of innovation and turned the patent system into a luaghingstock. music distributors embed themselves in the system that should rightfully only reward the guy who wrote/ performed the song
yes, some innovation requires teams of people. then that team should be rewarded only, even if embedded in a corporation or a university
the problem is corporations. they should not get to spend on elections (but they do), they should be rewarded for individual human merit (but they do), they deserve nothing more than to be a legal entity that binds a profit/ loss statement
corporations need to have their "rights" constantly in check. but we live in a system where their rights constantly expand (because they have all the money). this is the source of much of the problems in our world
Slashdot Mirror
as others have noted, there are enough rare earths, they aren't that rare. it's just that china, wihtout any work force laws or legal protections for its workers it is allowed to treat like slaves of the state, is able to parlay that into cheaper prices. so mining elsewhere withers and atrophies
if push came to shove, we can start new mines rather quickly
what worries me is manufacturing know how and infrastructure. it takes a generation to have a good manufacturing base, at least. and i'm not talking machines, i'm talking people. the manufacturing base is dying in the west, as everything moves to china
this is where china can really squeeze us, and we won't be able to react fast enough, because in a decade or two, we won't know how to make anything, it will all be made in china
we need to keep our manufacturing base, the whole spectrum of technologies and know how and expertise, humming along here
a rare earth is a rare earth, whether dug up in california or inner mongolia
but that 70 year old guy who knows how all about phase transitions in the manufacture of specialty glasses, or that 80 year old guy who knows all about resistance settings on collodial separation equipment, or whatever: when they go, its gone, the only other brain with that info is in shanghai
it's like us in the west watching iran trying to build a nuclear bomb and stumbling in its lack of knowhow. in 20-30 years, in a conflict, china could be in the same position, just watching us try to manufacture all sorts of high specialized industrial applications and us over here going "how do you do this?" "i dunno, the guy who knew that died 20 years ago" "well where's his knowledge backup?" "well, the bank of china bought that portfolio 10 years ago and moved it all to guangzhou, no one at the time thought it was a big deal"
whatever these well meaning scientists do, make sure they do not awaken the one waiting, dreaming, in his house at R'lyeh
yeah but then they can use those laser devices that translate the vibrations in the window glass back into speech at long distances
i read your post in its entirety. i was attacking the idea that trust is even possible in the situation. and now i see we are actually in agreement, because you also think such trust is nonexistent. your point simply seems to be a lot of fools meanwhile still trust where there is none. therefore, we have no disagreement, because that is my point too. cheers
and since these entities simply cannot be trusted with keeping info safe, i think we are rapidly entering an age in which privacy simply doesn't exist
not out of any malevolence or malfeasance, but as a simple direct logical corollary to the growth of the internet and the unintended consequences of how things actually play out in the real world, regardless of anyone's intent
anything that gets in contact with the internet: it never dies
you are trusting facebook to actually keep it private
in what world do you live in which you have determined that facebook is worthy of that trust?
go walk on a beach so the directional microphones can't pick up what you say through the surf noise
but if you want it to be public, post it on the internet
because as the other story from yesterday about the government spying on facebook shows: you are in the absurd scenario of trusting the GOVERNMENT to make rules, and you are trusting the GOVERNMENT to enforce rules, about what? about what you put in wide open view on a public internet. to me, that expectation of yours is insane
why are you trusting the government to do this? even if they had the intent and the enforcement capacity to do so, you honestly think they will do a capable job? with what? the corporate subcontractors with the financial involvement with the corporations who are after your data? pffft
and say the government fails to protect your data. ok, they sue and prosecute the offending corporations. but your info is already in the database. the database that is now mirrored 50 times by 25 different entities! once it gets on the internet, IT NEVER DIES. so please, get real: if you don't want it to get in a database, DON'T PUT IT ON THE FREAKING INTERNET
it is that simple. all other point of views are, frankly, a form of absurdity in which
1. you distrust corporations and governments with your private info,
2. so you put that private info on a public internet,
3. trusting corporations and governments to keep that info safe from
4. the same corporations and governments!
(smacks forehead)
i have a hen house. to protect that hen house from the wolf in the woods, i will hire the wolf in the woods to guard the hen house. wtf?!
we're not talking about east german stasi looking to frame you. we're talking about police doing basic gum shoe investigative work of actual crimes. no different than any other undercover work
you have this bizarre point of view that the police are your enemy out to destroy your life for no particular reason. the police work for you. there are real criminal activities out there for which this behavior is perfectly moral and legal
a rodent, i'm sorry, a lagomorph engaged in quite offensive nonconsensual anthropocentric unbalanced orthogonal weight stressor torture. think of the post traumatic stress and joint wear and tear! quite offensive!
are you emotionally invested in the taxonomy of small furry mammals?
whatever you do, do NOT click this link, your level of offense might give you a heart attack, this is abu ghraib level offense:
http://www.fsinet.or.jp/~sokaisha/rabbit/991121/991121.htm
that you have no expectation of privacy when you stand naked in the middle of times square screaming the secrets of your sex life?
then you understand why posting your private life on the MOST PUBLIC MEDIUM INVENTED BY MANKIND is not just a legal no-starter, but really is a completely logically incoherent concept
the average joe just don't think like a computer scientist. a computer programmer can look at the internet and see a giant dataset ready to be be algorithmed to death. an IT guy, right before he or she hits the "Submit" button, can visualize the web spider that will arrive 10 minutes later, heuristically puree and flambee those words and pictures into an intelligent hierarchy, and offer it up for consumption to anyone typing search terms into a search engine 10 minutes later. the average joe just doesn't think like that
computer folk have a robots.txt file sitting between their brain and their fingers:
the average joe has no such mental robots.txt
the policeman drives up and down the street, looks at cars, looks at people walking on the street, looking at residences...
is that a fishing expedition in your mind? of course not
but that's what you are calling a "fishing expedition" on the internet. you have this bizarre idea that information freely and openly and publicly published is somehow immune to public viewing of it by the government, by advertisers, by people you don't want to reconnect with. it's not just you, it's some sort of mass delusion, some sort of cognitive disconnect about the nature of the internet. people treat it as if it is their private keepsake box in their closet, when the internet is about the exact opposite of such a concept. you expect shock, dismay and disgust, that the police would look at something "private" when it isn't even remotely private. the problem is not the police. the problem is people who have this cognitive disconnect about the nature of the internet like you are demonstrating
the practice of law enforcement is an actual valid endeavour. what is going on here is less east german secret police tracking innocent civilians, and more plain old gum shoe police work against actual criminals
and really, to get right down to it: you don't have any protection from what you put out on the web being revealed. this includes old friends from high school, potential employers, spamvertisers... and the government. so if you don't want it revealed or shared, DON'T PUT IT ON THE WEB. why does this amazingly obvious fact escape people?
it just seems kind of insane to me that people want to share stuff in public on an open medium, and then act shocked and dismayed that someone MIGHT ACTUALLY SEE IT. its some sort of human pscyhological blind spot: for some unknown reason, people trust the web with really personal details, when the web is about the exact opposite of the kind of place you want to put those personal details. its as if people don't actually understand that the internet is the most searchable, most wide open medium invented by mankind, but we treat it as if it is our private diary stashed under our bed. why is that? what is the source of this glaring psychological defect so many of us share about the nature of the internet?
the new Gateway 2000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway,_Inc.
when you ruin your name, everything else goes down the toilet. electronics is such a cutthroat competitive environment, you can't ever play the game of ruining what people associate your brand name with
because there's also this:
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/06/suit-alleges-that-dell-shipped-12-million-faulty-computers.ars
bye bye dell
how did you indians get to north america from india before columbus?
(yes, i'm joking)
look, i understand why native americans are called indians: columbus got lost and thought he was in india. my problem is, it became readily apparent to everyone that he was NOT in india soon after, so why did the terminology continue for so long?
i mean look at this:
http://www.bia.gov/
wtf?!
why the bleep does the usa still have something called a bureau of INDIAN affairs? tradition? a tradition of stupidity? when the ambassador from new delhi arrives in washington dc and knocks on the wrong door, isn't anyone a little embarrassed at this silliness?
it's insanity. at least canada has gone and revamped all of their official government lingo and calls native americans "first nation". while that terminology sounds a little patronizing, its still infinitely superior to the completely wrong terminology "indian"
why the bleep does the usa have a bureau of INDIAN affairs? to be fair, the spanish speaking american countries still have the term "indio" too, it's not all the usa's continuing error. but i simply don't get it. the linguistic error should have been corrected somewhere around the year 1500, right?
indian americans, children of immigrants from the indian subcontinent, and visitors from india must find this all very amusing. native americans, probably not so much
you can get pirated copies of those souls for free
that's what makes the devils so mad: people aren't really sacrificing anything anymore
alchemy is laughable, in 2010
alchemy is respectable, in 1710
what exactly is the point of applying 2010 standards to 1710?
i'm certain the average north korean wouldn't think japanese and westerners were vampires who wanted to eat their babies and sell their organs on the capitalist market if they weren't immersed in propaganda, so yes, you are correct
we need to get corporate influence out of media, and politics. build firewalls of law: no corporate dollars allowed here
i'm not saying that would be easy, it would be easier to get a heroin junkie to quit, but that is what we have to do, no matter how hard
i don't think they would be reading kierkegaard if glenn beck wasn't whipping them into a froth with his demagoguery
in other words, the media doesn't make people dumb, they are just dumb, and the media stoops to their level
blogs function on rumor and gossip, not fact gathering. they aren't in any way superior to mass media, are of course inferior, and only serve to glue likeminded ideologues together in fellowship with a shared wall of self-reinforcing lies
also, pamphleteers WERE the mass media of their time!
mass media in a FREE SOCIETY does not function as any part of the state. do you live in a democracy? then the mass media is slave only to one master: its readers. and to get the most readers, it mustn't stray right or left, it would turn off readers, and lose revenue. so it hews dead center to the dead middle of the ideological bell curve and is MODERATE
"MSM has show itself collectively to be liars as well"
LOL
you're an idiot. as opposed to what: POLITICAL BLOGS??!! bwahahahaha!
are you honestly implying mass media is anywhere remotely in the same universe as the free form artform of propaganda creation, half truth spreading, and smearmongering of the demagoguery and thuggish partisanship you see on blogs?
you're an idiot, you really are
therefore they can't go right or left, as they would get less viewers. they have to focus, ideologically, on the dead middle of the bell curve of ideological belief to win the most viewers
but you are correct in that the mass media is radical, but not ideologically radical just... adrenally radical? what i mean by that is, any image or word that primes or pumps up the adrenal glands, causes you to react like a small furry mammal in flight or fight that sees a snake: grab your attention by the gut. because it wins viewers and therefore it wins mass media money. "if it bleeds it leads": sex and violence and pettiness appeals to the lizardlike lowest common denominator of attention getting of our brain
so mass media is "adrenally radical" not ideologically radical
however, i would say to you: who cares? it is what it is. you don't have to watch it, even though it is doing its damndest to make you by appealing to your lowest mental processes
i call myself a socialist on purpose, just to bait the knuckledraggers who think the simple obivous idea of the common good is somehow an evil. some of the idiots on the far right wouldn't even fund the building and maintenance of ROADS, or at least don't understand that is exactly what their retarded selfish ideology argues for
look at the rise of right wing blogs, and the people who would trust it more than they trust mass media
a media channel loses its credibility, its audience, and its advertisers when it lies. so it has to fact check. additionally, it must remain neutral and moderate, and not espouse an agenda, or it turns people off, which means less advertising revenue. moderation and neutrality is of paramount importance to mass media
when bush was in office the far left complained about the right wing mass media supporting the phony march of war on iraq, etc. well, there is no right wing mass media, and there is no left wing mass media, there is only mass media. the real problem is that the far right thinks it is liberal, and the far left think it is conservative, only because their own perspective is so far right (or left). move far right enough, and you can't tell the difference any more between moderate and lefty. move far left enough, and you can't tell the difference any more between moderate and right-wing
so now, with the internet, we see the rise of far right wing people and far left wing people walled off in their own media universe. their own little walled garden of self-reinforcing lies. obama is a "secret muslim". obama is not an american citizen. this is obviously insanity. but walled off on their own, in their own ideological echo chamber of lies, people begin to believe these obvious smears and lies rather than reality
so the pope is 100% correct: the internet has allowed reality and illusion to become inseparable for people. it takes energy to change your beliefs to align with reality. so why change your beliefs? just change your reality instead, by choosing your partisan blogs over mass media
there are a class of people now who distrust mass media, yet, exasperatingly, trust partisan blogs which lie all the time in support of an agenda, and openly do not care about the truth or fact checking or credibility, as long as they advance a cause
this is genuinely dangerous and scary. the internet is enabling the fractionating of society into walled fiefdoms of ideologues, and no real truth, or at least even common mythology. people pick and choose what they want to believe, regardless of reality. at least mass media made for a true commons of the people. now we only have open warfare amongst entrenched ideological gangs. and the internet makes that possible
reward for innovation should go to individuals, not corporations
corporations have gamed the system of innovation and turned the patent system into a luaghingstock. music distributors embed themselves in the system that should rightfully only reward the guy who wrote/ performed the song
yes, some innovation requires teams of people. then that team should be rewarded only, even if embedded in a corporation or a university
the problem is corporations. they should not get to spend on elections (but they do), they should be rewarded for individual human merit (but they do), they deserve nothing more than to be a legal entity that binds a profit/ loss statement
corporations need to have their "rights" constantly in check. but we live in a system where their rights constantly expand (because they have all the money). this is the source of much of the problems in our world