that the music/ publishing/ movie industry is powerful
but the open internet is even more powerful
iran and china, with all the legal justification they need, and a dire existential motivation to fight an open internet, have proven unable to control it
acta will not, and cannot defeat the open internet. the fact that it remain open is more useful and more important to all of us, governments included, to kowtow to distributors' need to control it to survive. in this contest, distributors die
technology has gotten to the point that piracy is simply the best distribution model around, for creators and consumers (oh, you thought the law was supposed to protect creators? it protects distributors: look at the contracts distributors sign with creators and tell me who really benefits). consumers get bounty, creators get ancillary revenue streams and distributors die. end of story
let them pass any law they want. no really: what is the value of an unenforceable law? people are getting upset about acta, but i really have to ask everyone: acta may sound diabolical and severe, but its toothless: there's no enforcement of it possible. sure, they may get the occasional grandmother with an unsecured router or a soccer mom who's kids friends take advantage of her hospitality, but that's going to stop technological progress?
let them fund stables of tens of thousands of lawyers and put behind them far reaching draconian laws. whoop de friggin doo. tens of millions of media hungry, technologically savvy and POOR teenagers has them all beat, and then some. the contest is a joke, the laws mean nothing, the game is over: technological progress wins, distributors die
we are simply living in a transition period in which we must suffer the bluster of morons from another media era who simply don't get the fundamental changes taking place around them
was as a nationalistic machismo chest thumping exercise
like two drunks at a party trying to impress the same chick by grandstanding who can catch steak knives in their mouth
i'm sorry, but for all those who see spacefaring as the noblest of mankind's pursuits, the actual reasons for getting our butts into space was amongst the basest of motivations: tribal rivalry
india wants to thump its chest now, china, brazil, etc., and let them. its an enjoyable quaint nationalistic pasttime at this point, like hosting the olympics or setting off a nuclear bomb
i await the peruvian national space program launching a man into space, i look forward to the jamaican space ageny's first man on the moon, all the way on down to vanuatu
the future will be chest thumping by multinational corporations. what better way for microsoft to win PR for its product line over google's than to have its probe to ganymede run on windows 7 starter? or have it actually serve up search returns for select searches, with a slight latency?
and if a man ever gets into space again, his craft and his suit will look like nascar. gloves by nike, second stage booster with "viagra" on the side. its the american way, privatize everything: space agency, healthcare, prison systems, hired mercenaries. god bless america. i'm sorry, is that trademarked?
1. i saw the republicans applauding virginia doing offshore drilling in the state of the union response. pfffft. yeah: let's turn the virginia coast into something ugly and polluted, and keep driving fossil fuel burning cars, with their smog and particulates and greenhouse pollutants. furthermore, someday even our domestic deposits will run out, and/ or (if they aren't already) prove to be extremely expensive to extract. gas prices will continue to climb inexorably since demand isn't going down. this is a denialist's "solution", that doesn't take into account the obvious, inevitable need to get off oil as a fuel source
2. battery technology, indeed, sucks. but you can, even with current technology, bulk up on the batteries some more, and extend driving ranges 2-3x. still, you won't be able to truck goods anywhere or take that cross country trip. big deal: obama is making the shrewd and intelligent and long-overdue investments in our rail infrastructure, which is the real answer to problem of insufficient battery tech
3. boron is rare. so wherever you mine it as a fuel source (turkey i think), you are just making trade offs in the geopolitical scarcity game, and the game of diminishing returns/ escalating costs
4. yes: irradiation of containment vessels is a real problem, and don't want to minimize it. however, it can be controlled and managed and minimized so that half-lives are quick and radiation is low power. it will all be very expensive to ramp up these fusion plants too. but its simply the best form of energy possible, and we are very rapidly approaching a world where our energy demands and our energy sources give us no other choice BUT to go to fusion
if they can get the crucial fusion fuel requirements down to just deuterium and lithium, maybe salted with a tiny amount of tritium secret sauce at best, then we're talking. until then, as you say, we're far away from practical fusion
whatever team does that though, they deserve 10 nobels and immortal fame. for they will deliver mankind to a new golden age
with the way oil prices are going, and how deep we have to dig now to get to oil, or how we have process things like shale and tar sands in order to get at it... and how great our advances so far in terms of genetics, biochemistry, materials science, and related processes, i confidently predict 100% of sources for plastics in the future will be from plant-based starting points
the waste management of fusion products, including irradiated containment vessels, is a serious issue, and its not my intent to belittle or whitewash that point
but the point is that there is no energy source anywhere that doesn't have downsides. think of the waste products in the production of solar panels and the massive amounts of land and expense needed to make a dent in power needs from solar. think of the effects of wind on migratory birds, and noise and landscape alterations from wind power. heck, tidal increases silting, which much be dredged, and that has environmental effects. geothermal efforts near san francisco were recently abandoned due to earthquake fears (based on near conclusive evidence a swiss earthquake was caused by geothermal energy research). we know what dams does to migratory aquatic life like salmon and the overall health of rivers and river communities. biofuel costs in terms of landscape utilization, fertilization pollution, processing pollution, eventual pollution from combustion... pick any energy source: its not "free" in terms of downsides
but fusion's downsides: initial infrastructure cost (big) and ongoing waste management costs (assuming all such pollution can be successfully mitigated and kept from the environment, then that's the only cost from pollution: the money you need to responsibly manage the waste), i assert, when taken in consideration with the zero scarcity of fuel sources and massive potential for energy returns (other energy sources are usually "boutique" and will never scale to our real needs), is the best energy source mankind will EVER discover (until some bizarre far future where physicists discover star trek-type energy sources, like, uh... zero point flux accretion... of course), and lead to a golden age of civilization and progress. i really believe that. so much evil today in this world can directly be traced to the moral, environmental, and other compromises we make for our energy needs. lots of cheap energy without environmental and geopolitical costs will be a first in the history of mankind, and will be a wonderful time to live. our period in history right now will be viewed as brutal and cruel and immoral as we view the times of the romans today
1. the way chinese and american research funding is going, self-sustaining ignition will probably happen in chengdu before it happens in chicago
2. if the usa does achieve ignition, it will probably share the knowledge. no, really: its in their soft-power interest to do so, and for all the geopolitical reasons i mentioned above. when the usa shares such energy independence knowledge, their enemies, mostly funded by energy scarcity resources, suffer, they don't benefit. and even if the usa doesn't share, or someone like china achieves it first and doesn't share the knowledge, the fact that ignition has been achieved somewhere, anywhere, will convince everyone else to quickly catch up with their own research: there's no groping in the dark anymore, the goal is starkly defined in technical aspects that any serious researcher in the world will understand, and all the purse strings will be opened quickly to capitalize on the bonanza. america being tight-lipped atom bomb secrets did not stop russia, china, britain, france, india, israel, pakistan, etc., or even basket case north korea from figuring it out, or, as with pakistan and khan, outright stealing the secrets (from the netherlands, in pakistan's case), and then selling it to libya, iran, etc.
3. i saw that keanu reeves/ morgan freeman "chain reaction" movie too. it was cute. but you do release that hollywood movies purposefully engage in paranoid delusional fantasy for entertainment value, not serious education about reality, right?
but notice the rhetoric over the healthcare debate. what i'm describing in terms of an attitude towards capitalism and deregulation as if it were a universal salve without any bad side-effects is certainly a common delusion. its an attitude also certainly not unique to the usa, but certainly most potent here. and of course, plenty of things should be privatized and deregulated, and work optimally and most efficiently, for society and for economic growth, that way. but there's also plenty of other industries/ companies/ sectors that must be regulated, and must be socialized (oooh! scary word!) to function maximally for the benefit of reliability and social good
but its low powered and has quick half-lives. additionally, there are no geopolitical overtones concerning fuel sources: you just need sea water. no climate changing pollution/ city-choking smog for that matter. no peak oil this or that, no bubbles and spikes in supply or pricing
additionally, if everyone had electric cars, there would be no petrodollars funding saudi arabia, a backwards fundamentalist regime that funds wahhabi madrassas in places like pakistan, that give rise to all of these well-funded (from saudi "charities") militant assholes in the muslim world
no funding of gas bag chavez in venezuela, no funding of neoimperial russia and putin, no funding for nigerian graft and corruption...
it will take a long time, but if we can remove the reason for the world to have any vested interests in backwards regimes, propping them up and preserving them unnaturally, and we instead let these regimes instead rise and fall on their own intrinsic value in governing fair societies, then we will have taken a mighty step forward in terms of progress in this world
of course, it will be decades before we're all driving electric cars powered by fusion plants. but one can dream, cant' they?
most nations recognize the value of capitalism, but they yoke it with socially-conscious goals, to effective and ineffective results
but the usa is a cult of capitalism. they think it answers every question (it doesn't). they invoke market principles where market principles make no sense, such as in healthcare. they remove financial regulations and then act surprised when the markets bubble and burst (and then some of them, in their denial, even blame the government, magically somehow, for the market's failure, confusing cause and effect)
that space exploration should be privatized is yet another absurdity of the monomaniacal american obsession with elevating market principles as the driving force behind everything in the world. americans: of course capitalism is important. of course capitalism works. but capitalism is a beast of burden, it needs to be tamed and controlled. it needs to be fenced and given limits, or it will run roughshod and destroy your society with its extremes and stampedes of panic or greed. you need social safety nets, and you need to tame the excesses. understand this or understand nothing and be just a market fundamentalist, as foolish and blind to reality as any religious fundamentalist
which sounds like someone who starred in a '70s era pornographic movie
but the truth is that the world's first computer programmer was a woman. and if you look at her method for writing a computer program, it's really more like an extended effort at a clever hard hack. in which case, you're talking about the world's first hacker too
"punishing people who most likely didn't even know such a law exists does nothing but give us satisfaction with the thought that we wouldn't do that sort of thing, when of course, we likely would"
i've been in the kitty genovese situation in the new york subway. 10 of us made the call, and the alarm pull, and the alerting of the conductor and toll booth operator. as well as 5 of us guys and a gal holding the sleezebag perp down until cops came. as well as follow up with detectives from the nypd later. sure: some shrieked and ran away, but these were the MINORITY
the kitty genovese story as an outlier, not a definition of human behavior. herd behavior overcoming kindergarten sense of right and wrong is a RARITY, not a definition of humanity. we aren't herbivores. people point to the kitty genovese situation and say "see, that defines us". no, that's not an accurate description of human behavior. the kitty genovese situation was NOT the status quo or average situation. there's a thousand kitty genovese situations every day, and in the majority of them, someone makes the call
besides, it doesn't take knowledge of the law to counteract herd behavior. this supposition of yours is compete bullshit. we're not talking about not knowing vague arcana of the tax code, we're talking about face value obvious judgments from a kindergartener's sense of right and wrong: "someone is in trouble, call for help." if the herd behavior is enough to overcome this simple sense of morality, you SHOULD be punished, because you are truly deficient, and your deficiency resulted in harm, and will likely result in harm again: all you had to do was make a call. you are basically saying that complete bullshit excuses are acceptable
"what? murder is wrong? sorry, i didn't know that, i won't do it next time" or, since we're on the seinfeld kick: "was that wrong? should i not have done that?" its a joke, because its not a serious statement. no one with the slightest amount of functioning brain matter thinks that's a valid excuse for gross negligence. failure to act morally is a failure to act morally, whether by commission or omission, its equally indefensible and most definitely punishable
your position basically excuses evil
1. the bystander effect is a vague EFFECT, felt by everyone, but by no means the final word on your behavior. its not a law of nature like gravity. 2. but you go further than that and that says basically ignorance of the law excuses anything. 3. and even worse, you confuse horrible lack of understanding of simple right and wrong with ignorance of the law
and unfortunate. the idea should be to compel people to stop acting like herd animals, not accept the vile reality of the behavior
people also tend to litter. vast parts of german society just shrugged and accepted the rise of the third reich. so we just accept evil? "oh well"
the idea is society is supposed to enforce codes of conduct to elevate us somewhat above that of herbivores, especially when the modification to the behavior is very quick easy and low cost: you can't make a phone call if someone is being beaten? you can't walk to a garbage can to dispose of your trash?
it will be a lot smaller, yes. and some superstar reporters will spin off from newspapers and become their own internet reporting gateways (see nikki finke: http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/ )
in this way the internet will "atomize" some newspaper reporting where the departments/ individual reporters will report directly to readers, unrelated to any particular newspaper, much like musicians don't need distributors anymore
but despite all the doom and gloom about newspapers and their fate, nothing on the internet can ever or will ever replace the service, for example, the poughkeepsie journal delivers for the residents of poughkeepsie, new york ( http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/ ). newspapers are reduced in prominence, income, and scope, yes. they are however, still indispensable and will always be important, especially in niche geographic areas, like poughkeepsie new york, where no one else can compete with them
if i were the new york times, i'd think about spinning off my state, international, and national bureaus into content gateways commensurate with their current importance and prominence, then i would focus on my city room and go head to head with the new york daily news, the current king of local city content (fuck the new york post and murdoch). but new york city is such a huge market, 3 daily local content bureaus will still do ok business
meanwhile, newsday is long island new york. this is still important and will always be important as a geographic niche. newsday is diminished, but secure
apple->movie industry: hostile natives, sending in missionaries and evangelists of the "future"
apple->print industry: conquest being launched, lift off seconds away
genuine future:
internet->music: free*
internet->movies: free**
internet->print: free***
*creators will make money from live gigs, promotions, advertising, personalized content, etc. no distributors needed. distributors will evolve into hype machines and portals/ gateways delivering mass audiences to content. creators will continue to sign contracts to them for a cut of revenue, for delivering audiences. but its not necessary to sign a contract at all to become successful, its voluntary and usually for the pop bands
**the movie industry has always, and will always, despite every new tech threatening to kill it, fill cinema houses and make money thataways
***ad revenue is real and genuine for newspapers and will always exist. it will be a lot smaller, yes. and some superstar reporters will spin off from newspapers and become their own internet reporting gateways (see nikki finke: http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/ ). in this way the internet will "atomize" some newspaper reporting where the departments/ individual reporters will report directly to readers, unrelated to any particular newspaper, much like musicians don't need distributors anymore. despite all the doom and gloom about newspapers, nothing on the internet can ever or will ever replace the service, for example, the poughkeepsie journal delivers for the residents of poughkeepsie, new york ( http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/ )
Slashdot Mirror
that the music/ publishing/ movie industry is powerful
but the open internet is even more powerful
iran and china, with all the legal justification they need, and a dire existential motivation to fight an open internet, have proven unable to control it
acta will not, and cannot defeat the open internet. the fact that it remain open is more useful and more important to all of us, governments included, to kowtow to distributors' need to control it to survive. in this contest, distributors die
there's no concordance in this college name
caving is relatively safe
(sorry, couldn't resist)
my dad was an avid spelunker before i was born. thank god/darwin he kept the relative danger to a minimum, or i wouldn't be here
ignore it
technology has gotten to the point that piracy is simply the best distribution model around, for creators and consumers (oh, you thought the law was supposed to protect creators? it protects distributors: look at the contracts distributors sign with creators and tell me who really benefits). consumers get bounty, creators get ancillary revenue streams and distributors die. end of story
let them pass any law they want. no really: what is the value of an unenforceable law? people are getting upset about acta, but i really have to ask everyone: acta may sound diabolical and severe, but its toothless: there's no enforcement of it possible. sure, they may get the occasional grandmother with an unsecured router or a soccer mom who's kids friends take advantage of her hospitality, but that's going to stop technological progress?
let them fund stables of tens of thousands of lawyers and put behind them far reaching draconian laws. whoop de friggin doo. tens of millions of media hungry, technologically savvy and POOR teenagers has them all beat, and then some. the contest is a joke, the laws mean nothing, the game is over: technological progress wins, distributors die
we are simply living in a transition period in which we must suffer the bluster of morons from another media era who simply don't get the fundamental changes taking place around them
was as a nationalistic machismo chest thumping exercise
like two drunks at a party trying to impress the same chick by grandstanding who can catch steak knives in their mouth
i'm sorry, but for all those who see spacefaring as the noblest of mankind's pursuits, the actual reasons for getting our butts into space was amongst the basest of motivations: tribal rivalry
india wants to thump its chest now, china, brazil, etc., and let them. its an enjoyable quaint nationalistic pasttime at this point, like hosting the olympics or setting off a nuclear bomb
i await the peruvian national space program launching a man into space, i look forward to the jamaican space ageny's first man on the moon, all the way on down to vanuatu
the future will be chest thumping by multinational corporations. what better way for microsoft to win PR for its product line over google's than to have its probe to ganymede run on windows 7 starter? or have it actually serve up search returns for select searches, with a slight latency?
and if a man ever gets into space again, his craft and his suit will look like nascar. gloves by nike, second stage booster with "viagra" on the side. its the american way, privatize everything: space agency, healthcare, prison systems, hired mercenaries. god bless america. i'm sorry, is that trademarked?
plant sources
http://consumerist.com/2010/01/new-coke-bottles-made-from-sugar-cane-soda-still-made-from-corn.html
i am more interested in ranting about healthcare. you have every right to now detest me, and/ or appreciate my honesty
1. i saw the republicans applauding virginia doing offshore drilling in the state of the union response. pfffft. yeah: let's turn the virginia coast into something ugly and polluted, and keep driving fossil fuel burning cars, with their smog and particulates and greenhouse pollutants. furthermore, someday even our domestic deposits will run out, and/ or (if they aren't already) prove to be extremely expensive to extract. gas prices will continue to climb inexorably since demand isn't going down. this is a denialist's "solution", that doesn't take into account the obvious, inevitable need to get off oil as a fuel source
2. battery technology, indeed, sucks. but you can, even with current technology, bulk up on the batteries some more, and extend driving ranges 2-3x. still, you won't be able to truck goods anywhere or take that cross country trip. big deal: obama is making the shrewd and intelligent and long-overdue investments in our rail infrastructure, which is the real answer to problem of insufficient battery tech
3. boron is rare. so wherever you mine it as a fuel source (turkey i think), you are just making trade offs in the geopolitical scarcity game, and the game of diminishing returns/ escalating costs
4. yes: irradiation of containment vessels is a real problem, and don't want to minimize it. however, it can be controlled and managed and minimized so that half-lives are quick and radiation is low power. it will all be very expensive to ramp up these fusion plants too. but its simply the best form of energy possible, and we are very rapidly approaching a world where our energy demands and our energy sources give us no other choice BUT to go to fusion
if they can get the crucial fusion fuel requirements down to just deuterium and lithium, maybe salted with a tiny amount of tritium secret sauce at best, then we're talking. until then, as you say, we're far away from practical fusion
whatever team does that though, they deserve 10 nobels and immortal fame. for they will deliver mankind to a new golden age
with the way oil prices are going, and how deep we have to dig now to get to oil, or how we have process things like shale and tar sands in order to get at it... and how great our advances so far in terms of genetics, biochemistry, materials science, and related processes, i confidently predict 100% of sources for plastics in the future will be from plant-based starting points
http://consumerist.com/2010/01/new-coke-bottles-made-from-sugar-cane-soda-still-made-from-corn.html
the waste management of fusion products, including irradiated containment vessels, is a serious issue, and its not my intent to belittle or whitewash that point
but the point is that there is no energy source anywhere that doesn't have downsides. think of the waste products in the production of solar panels and the massive amounts of land and expense needed to make a dent in power needs from solar. think of the effects of wind on migratory birds, and noise and landscape alterations from wind power. heck, tidal increases silting, which much be dredged, and that has environmental effects. geothermal efforts near san francisco were recently abandoned due to earthquake fears (based on near conclusive evidence a swiss earthquake was caused by geothermal energy research). we know what dams does to migratory aquatic life like salmon and the overall health of rivers and river communities. biofuel costs in terms of landscape utilization, fertilization pollution, processing pollution, eventual pollution from combustion... pick any energy source: its not "free" in terms of downsides
but fusion's downsides: initial infrastructure cost (big) and ongoing waste management costs (assuming all such pollution can be successfully mitigated and kept from the environment, then that's the only cost from pollution: the money you need to responsibly manage the waste), i assert, when taken in consideration with the zero scarcity of fuel sources and massive potential for energy returns (other energy sources are usually "boutique" and will never scale to our real needs), is the best energy source mankind will EVER discover (until some bizarre far future where physicists discover star trek-type energy sources, like, uh... zero point flux accretion... of course), and lead to a golden age of civilization and progress. i really believe that. so much evil today in this world can directly be traced to the moral, environmental, and other compromises we make for our energy needs. lots of cheap energy without environmental and geopolitical costs will be a first in the history of mankind, and will be a wonderful time to live. our period in history right now will be viewed as brutal and cruel and immoral as we view the times of the romans today
1. the way chinese and american research funding is going, self-sustaining ignition will probably happen in chengdu before it happens in chicago
2. if the usa does achieve ignition, it will probably share the knowledge. no, really: its in their soft-power interest to do so, and for all the geopolitical reasons i mentioned above. when the usa shares such energy independence knowledge, their enemies, mostly funded by energy scarcity resources, suffer, they don't benefit. and even if the usa doesn't share, or someone like china achieves it first and doesn't share the knowledge, the fact that ignition has been achieved somewhere, anywhere, will convince everyone else to quickly catch up with their own research: there's no groping in the dark anymore, the goal is starkly defined in technical aspects that any serious researcher in the world will understand, and all the purse strings will be opened quickly to capitalize on the bonanza. america being tight-lipped atom bomb secrets did not stop russia, china, britain, france, india, israel, pakistan, etc., or even basket case north korea from figuring it out, or, as with pakistan and khan, outright stealing the secrets (from the netherlands, in pakistan's case), and then selling it to libya, iran, etc.
3. i saw that keanu reeves/ morgan freeman "chain reaction" movie too. it was cute. but you do release that hollywood movies purposefully engage in paranoid delusional fantasy for entertainment value, not serious education about reality, right?
oh well, i guess in 2030 the usa will be invading bolivia
bolivia has the world's largest deposits of lithium, by a long shot
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/world/americas/03lithium.html
maybe its time we look off-world for unobtainium ;-P
but notice the rhetoric over the healthcare debate. what i'm describing in terms of an attitude towards capitalism and deregulation as if it were a universal salve without any bad side-effects is certainly a common delusion. its an attitude also certainly not unique to the usa, but certainly most potent here. and of course, plenty of things should be privatized and deregulated, and work optimally and most efficiently, for society and for economic growth, that way. but there's also plenty of other industries/ companies/ sectors that must be regulated, and must be socialized (oooh! scary word!) to function maximally for the benefit of reliability and social good
but its low powered and has quick half-lives. additionally, there are no geopolitical overtones concerning fuel sources: you just need sea water. no climate changing pollution/ city-choking smog for that matter. no peak oil this or that, no bubbles and spikes in supply or pricing
additionally, if everyone had electric cars, there would be no petrodollars funding saudi arabia, a backwards fundamentalist regime that funds wahhabi madrassas in places like pakistan, that give rise to all of these well-funded (from saudi "charities") militant assholes in the muslim world
no funding of gas bag chavez in venezuela, no funding of neoimperial russia and putin, no funding for nigerian graft and corruption...
it will take a long time, but if we can remove the reason for the world to have any vested interests in backwards regimes, propping them up and preserving them unnaturally, and we instead let these regimes instead rise and fall on their own intrinsic value in governing fair societies, then we will have taken a mighty step forward in terms of progress in this world
of course, it will be decades before we're all driving electric cars powered by fusion plants. but one can dream, cant' they?
most nations recognize the value of capitalism, but they yoke it with socially-conscious goals, to effective and ineffective results
but the usa is a cult of capitalism. they think it answers every question (it doesn't). they invoke market principles where market principles make no sense, such as in healthcare. they remove financial regulations and then act surprised when the markets bubble and burst (and then some of them, in their denial, even blame the government, magically somehow, for the market's failure, confusing cause and effect)
that space exploration should be privatized is yet another absurdity of the monomaniacal american obsession with elevating market principles as the driving force behind everything in the world. americans: of course capitalism is important. of course capitalism works. but capitalism is a beast of burden, it needs to be tamed and controlled. it needs to be fenced and given limits, or it will run roughshod and destroy your society with its extremes and stampedes of panic or greed. you need social safety nets, and you need to tame the excesses. understand this or understand nothing and be just a market fundamentalist, as foolish and blind to reality as any religious fundamentalist
doesn't impress the babes anymore
now you have to own your own Class-C before a woman even gives you a second glance
and even then, they'll still flock to those assholes strutting around with those Class-Bs
which sounds like someone who starred in a '70s era pornographic movie
but the truth is that the world's first computer programmer was a woman. and if you look at her method for writing a computer program, it's really more like an extended effort at a clever hard hack. in which case, you're talking about the world's first hacker too
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath
which is the oath taken by equine senators upon taking office. i think
"punishing people who most likely didn't even know such a law exists does nothing but give us satisfaction with the thought that we wouldn't do that sort of thing, when of course, we likely would"
i've been in the kitty genovese situation in the new york subway. 10 of us made the call, and the alarm pull, and the alerting of the conductor and toll booth operator. as well as 5 of us guys and a gal holding the sleezebag perp down until cops came. as well as follow up with detectives from the nypd later. sure: some shrieked and ran away, but these were the MINORITY
the kitty genovese story as an outlier, not a definition of human behavior. herd behavior overcoming kindergarten sense of right and wrong is a RARITY, not a definition of humanity. we aren't herbivores. people point to the kitty genovese situation and say "see, that defines us". no, that's not an accurate description of human behavior. the kitty genovese situation was NOT the status quo or average situation. there's a thousand kitty genovese situations every day, and in the majority of them, someone makes the call
besides, it doesn't take knowledge of the law to counteract herd behavior. this supposition of yours is compete bullshit. we're not talking about not knowing vague arcana of the tax code, we're talking about face value obvious judgments from a kindergartener's sense of right and wrong: "someone is in trouble, call for help." if the herd behavior is enough to overcome this simple sense of morality, you SHOULD be punished, because you are truly deficient, and your deficiency resulted in harm, and will likely result in harm again: all you had to do was make a call. you are basically saying that complete bullshit excuses are acceptable
"what? murder is wrong? sorry, i didn't know that, i won't do it next time" or, since we're on the seinfeld kick: "was that wrong? should i not have done that?" its a joke, because its not a serious statement. no one with the slightest amount of functioning brain matter thinks that's a valid excuse for gross negligence. failure to act morally is a failure to act morally, whether by commission or omission, its equally indefensible and most definitely punishable
your position basically excuses evil
1. the bystander effect is a vague EFFECT, felt by everyone, but by no means the final word on your behavior. its not a law of nature like gravity.
2. but you go further than that and that says basically ignorance of the law excuses anything.
3. and even worse, you confuse horrible lack of understanding of simple right and wrong with ignorance of the law
frankly, you are completely full of shit
and unfortunate. the idea should be to compel people to stop acting like herd animals, not accept the vile reality of the behavior
people also tend to litter. vast parts of german society just shrugged and accepted the rise of the third reich. so we just accept evil? "oh well"
the idea is society is supposed to enforce codes of conduct to elevate us somewhat above that of herbivores, especially when the modification to the behavior is very quick easy and low cost: you can't make a phone call if someone is being beaten? you can't walk to a garbage can to dispose of your trash?
for newspapers and will always exist
it will be a lot smaller, yes. and some superstar reporters will spin off from newspapers and become their own internet reporting gateways (see nikki finke: http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/ )
in this way the internet will "atomize" some newspaper reporting where the departments/ individual reporters will report directly to readers, unrelated to any particular newspaper, much like musicians don't need distributors anymore
but despite all the doom and gloom about newspapers and their fate, nothing on the internet can ever or will ever replace the service, for example, the poughkeepsie journal delivers for the residents of poughkeepsie, new york ( http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/ ). newspapers are reduced in prominence, income, and scope, yes. they are however, still indispensable and will always be important, especially in niche geographic areas, like poughkeepsie new york, where no one else can compete with them
if i were the new york times, i'd think about spinning off my state, international, and national bureaus into content gateways commensurate with their current importance and prominence, then i would focus on my city room and go head to head with the new york daily news, the current king of local city content (fuck the new york post and murdoch). but new york city is such a huge market, 3 daily local content bureaus will still do ok business
meanwhile, newsday is long island new york. this is still important and will always be important as a geographic niche. newsday is diminished, but secure
apple->music industry: conquered
apple->movie industry: hostile natives, sending in missionaries and evangelists of the "future"
apple->print industry: conquest being launched, lift off seconds away
genuine future:
internet->music: free*
internet->movies: free**
internet->print: free***
*creators will make money from live gigs, promotions, advertising, personalized content, etc. no distributors needed. distributors will evolve into hype machines and portals/ gateways delivering mass audiences to content. creators will continue to sign contracts to them for a cut of revenue, for delivering audiences. but its not necessary to sign a contract at all to become successful, its voluntary and usually for the pop bands
**the movie industry has always, and will always, despite every new tech threatening to kill it, fill cinema houses and make money thataways
***ad revenue is real and genuine for newspapers and will always exist. it will be a lot smaller, yes. and some superstar reporters will spin off from newspapers and become their own internet reporting gateways (see nikki finke: http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/ ). in this way the internet will "atomize" some newspaper reporting where the departments/ individual reporters will report directly to readers, unrelated to any particular newspaper, much like musicians don't need distributors anymore. despite all the doom and gloom about newspapers, nothing on the internet can ever or will ever replace the service, for example, the poughkeepsie journal delivers for the residents of poughkeepsie, new york ( http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/ )
had sarlacci
the advanced tech previously used was called "human witness". sometimes this tech was updated to a more advanced model called "private investigator"
and even if there were no drones, you have this thing called the cell phone camera, in the hands of every teenager