"It doesn't do the most simple thing with the ranking information: If a candidate is the first choice of more than half the ballots, he should win. Borda doesn't guarantee that."
and that's the way it should be. if some guy wins 51% o the #1 votes, and some other guy wins 80% of the #2 votes, the guy with 80% of #2 should be president
the point is division via partisan rancor is the road to hell, and that's what squeaker wins represent in the current system, and what you for some reason still view as supeior
"The Borda Count makes the tactic of burying very attractive to voters: That is putting a major oppenent of your favourite dishonestly low in the ranking to hurt him. Instant Runoff Voting doesn't suffer from this at all. There are other ranking methods like Schulze that I recommend despite being a bit affected by that tactic, but with Borda this incentive is really strong.
Also, Borda is vulnerable to clone spam attacks. That means a party can increase its chances of winning by running more very similar candidates."
what you describe are minor tweaks compared to the manipulations going in the current system. borda is still enormously superior to what we have now. as for run offs: whatever. in countries where they do that, you'll find problems with that to. no system is perfect, and borda/ approval get a better description of the people's real will than the current system or run offs
result in a more mainstream choice? i am flabbergasted how such a conclusion could enter your mind
the 2000 election is an indisputable example of how the current system wound up choosing a president that was not mainstream. we got instead a cleavage of the country into left and right, with resentment and hatred festering
mccain was a better mainstream choice: his secondary appeal to democrats was much larger than his primary appeal to the right wing, which is what cost him the party's nomination. so if mccain was allowed to proceed to a final approval or borda vote, he would beat bush and gore on account of his much broader secondary appeal
meanwhile, our current system divides, it doesn't unite: it stokes the fires of partisanship, it cleaves the american people into two fiercely divided camps where the loudest most blind voices dominate
such voices would still exist if we voted borda or approval, but more moderate voices would come to dominate, simply because a different voting system rewards a different strategy and set of issues
partisan morons are tearing this country apart. we need less of them, not more of them, just look at the idiocy that dominates the discussion on healthcare right now. how do we get less partisans? we adopt a system which rewards them less. our current unideal system rewards partisan loudmouth bickering idiots, to tragic results
or are chinese people human beings, who desire freedom
if there is some magic genetic component in a chinese person that makes them needed to be controlled like a slave, then you win the argument
but if on the other hand, as i believe, that chinese people are just as yearning and desiring of freedom as people in the west, then surely you recognize that the west, regardless of all the problems the west has, better realizes the concept of personal freedom than the current chinese system does
so that in the end, your view of "ideological imperialism" is absurd, since all i am asking for is more freedom for you. the only ideological imperialism that actually exists is coming from beijing, not the west. beijing is trying to control you, i'm asking for you to LESS control over you. how is that imperialism? how in a million years do you view that as some sort malicious foreign influence? maybe its just a better way for chinese people to live? wheter or not i say it, as a westerner, or a chinese person says it?
in other words, when a chinese person compes up to you expressing a desire for more freedom, are they some sort of zombie under the influence of western imperialism? or perhaps they are expressing something human inside them that unites us, all humans, western or chinese, something stronger than any authoritarian system that beijing can devise, and stronger than any blind xenophobia you are suffering so strongly from, you actually view your own emancipation as a despicable foreign influence
as for more my desire to make the world one place: yes i wish upon the entire human race greater personal freedom. truly, i am an imperialistic monster LOL
just rank candidates in the order you like them. then, in a divisive election is an opportunity for everyone's second best choice to become the winner rather than partisan first choices, that one half of the population hates, barely edging out the other
now take as an example the disgusting 2000 presidential election: if people were allowed to merely rank candidates rather than be forced to pick one, who would have won? john mccain. however you think of him as a choice in the 2008 election, mccain was certainly a better choice than gore or bush in 2000, and the nation actually thought so. if the people were allowed to rank a list of candidates, his name would have come out as the number 2 choice of everyone, and he would have won. but the system worked against mccain. instead, various undemocratic closed door machinations led the republican party to choose monkey boy bush over the more deserving mccain, and so the democrats who would have ranked mccain second best never would have been able to register their approval of mccain over bush. borda voting does away with the whole party primary nonsense: democrats field 4 or 5 presidential candidates, republicans field 4 or 5 presidential candidates. and the voters merely rank them. then the voting system better reflects the nuances of public opinion, and allows for the candidate whom people really like to emerge. who should really lead the nation? by better reflecting the people's affinity or dislike. no more divisive partisan bullshit
easier to understand than borda voting with similar results: checkbox next to anyone you like. voting for no one and voting for everyone has the same effect. in between, are abilities to express approval and disapproval, and the winner is a simple tally of whomever gets the most votes
take a flight to port au prince and its obvious a lot of places in the world are not up the standards of tokyo or new york city, nevermind the fact that genuine slavery still thrives all over the world, including underground in the west, just as you demonstrate
however, you would be an intellectually dishonest fool if you can't see that on these issues real genuine progress has been made, nevermind the fact the job is still undone. slavery used to be an accepted fact of life from the highest echelons of society to the lowest, globally. not remotely is this true anymore
my reaction to the original poster was this absurdity that our problems are insurmountable. we have tackled problems of the same scale of heaviness and compexity before, like slavery, and we'll do it again
but as soon as you stop believing in progress, or are unable to see progress across the span of history, you yourself are as much as part of the problem as those actively engaging in transgressions against the natural world, or human decency, or whatever your pet peeve. because you have accepted those crimes. no, i don't accept them. neither should you (not speaking to you specifically, but in general to anyone who would stop believing in progress)
because we've been to thousands of life-bearing planetary systems, and we can safely say such a thing
(rolls eyes)
truth be told, life is on earth because we are at the right temperature/ pressure for water's triple point (solid/ gas/ liquid all close by). that makes earth ideal, as that's the most important determining factor, by far (the thermodynamics of a polar compound near its triple point is the anchor on which complex chemistries can be sustained and to eventually evolve)
so if you want to talk about ideal places for life, look for other common polar compounds near their triple point. for example: i'd look for places that bear the possibility for ammonia's triple point. but not say, methane or nirogen (too inert/ not polar)
your water monkey idea only would work in a large swampy ecosystem. none of which existed in the time and place we made the transition to bipedalism. on the contrary, the currently accepted theory, that we were evicted out of the trees when jungle changed to savannah, makes far more sense
that we could actually begin to care about the problems you elucidate, much as we have marginalized other seemingly intractable problems like slavery and basic sanitation. we could then voyage to the stars, with this newfound emphasis on living within our constraints. but to get to that better form of civilization, we have to surmount a lot of ingrained stupidity, not the least of which is yours, where you have
1. already declared the problems insurmountable. really? we can't solve these problems? 2. already declared us of deserving of extinction. really? who are you to make that judgment?
you're part of the problem, just as much a part of the problem as all of the people committing the sins and crimes you detest. because you've declared them the winners. they have not won. of course, in your eyes they have, but only because you are weak and spineless
the human foot is the stupidest most ugliest thing. the shape is completely pointless, the whole 5 wiggling toes thing is absurd and useless. to say toes help us grip and balance is to argue from the starting assumption that the human foot its the best design, which it obviously isn't. a truly intelligent design would be something like pan from greek legend: hooves. now a hoof is smart
and the foot is also the most accessible argument against intelligent design in your rhetorical toolbox. i mean come on, look at your damn foot: how can you look at a human foot and NOT see that it was once a monkey hand for gripping trees coopted into the need to walk instead, and that this "foot" is a relatively "new" development in our monkey lineage?
next time you're confronted with an intelligent design moron, take off your shoe, resist throwing it at them, and show them your foot
i cannot believe fincher is doing this. my esteem for the man just went into the toilet. the whole idea seems like such a narcissistic absurdity. just the effort of trying to imagine the kind of person a facebook movie would appeal to fills me with nausea
WHAT can be done has never been a problem with the human species. if we wanted to do it, we always figured out a way
all that ever mattered was the desire to do it
it really escapes your vast imagination about what a committed group of people can and can't do to change the world?
i mean, honestly, it feels rote and pedantic to me at this point, like i'm holding a little kid's hand. you want a list or something of possible tactics? why not ask that to yourself? you honestly cant' think of any. am i supposed to supply intellectual charity to a simpleton at this point and pedagogically list to you possible avenues of influence?
meanwhile, what exactly is your argument: if 2 million people in the west wanted to do something about china, they can do NOTHING that matters? that's your position? you really believe that?
the will to do something matters, that is all. the how something is done is an afterthought. as long as you convince enough people a tough job needs to get done, it gets done. its not like one guy figures out the perfect tactic by himself and that makes all the difference. the tactic is nothing. what matter is that a mass of people want to make the difference
if a group of people is dead set on doing something, they are going to do it. you realize that, right? motivation is everything. tactics are easy. we seem to be talking about 2 different things, and what you are concerning yourself is the afterthought
by absolutely no one, i hearby declare a moratorium on the phrase "cloud computing". at least on slashdot, i hope
the problem is, you aren't talking about anything when you use the phrase "cloud computing". you can talk about a specific software service on a specific channel, and what exactly is being serviced and for what reason and the implications of this service. then you have a concrete, valid topic of discussion
but when you say "cloud computing" you are referring to nothing in particular and therefore nothing at all. everyone knows what vague promising concept you are referring to when you use the phrase "cloud computing". we get it, we're excited by vague, promising big ideas out there on the edge too. science fiction is full of such ideas. emphasis on the word "fiction"
so at some point, you need to have a truly technical discussion, and drop the hype. much like real clouds, you're just full of hot air when you mention "cloud computing", at this point
now roll up your sleeves and get to realizing it and get into technical details, or you are just wasting our time
the world would be a much simpler place if no one actually cared about anyone else
but people do care if someone else suffers, for better or worse. and so you must make peace with that, as butting out isn't an option, and never was, and never will be. its only an option if you can magically alter fundamental human nature
besides, forget altruism, you protect your own selfish interests by taking a keen interest as to whether or not your neighbor's house is on fire. the best defense has always been a good offense
i would rather the front line of the war between open societies and authoritarian societies be waged primarily in authoritarian societies, not my own. and making believe no such conflict exists is just delusional. all ideological systems either expand or contract, none of them exist in stasis, ever, in the history of the world, anywhere
so i would much rather be involved in extending openness to closed societies rather than be involved in a weak rearguard action protecting open societies form becoming closed. mainly because extending openness is the best way to reinforce openness at home, while giving up on closed societies and adopting a bunker mentality at home is pretty much accepting defeat before the enemy is even met
its a difference in personality, rather than worldview. the history of every epoch has always hewed to ideological divides, and the winner has always been the one on the offense. and i simply have no respect for authoritarianism. so i fight it, over there
coherent point of view on any issue in the world is a global one
your entire post consists of nothing more than an attempt at rationalizing your lack of concern for humanity past the rio grande or the straits of bosporus. you wish to say that you have no authority, therefore, you should have no conscience
you have it completely backwards: authority flows from conscience, not the other way around. on any issue, regardless of geography, anywhere in the world, at any time period in the history
look: if everyone in the west spent all of their effort perfecting the west to a state of such ideal civilization as the world has ever known, while the rest of the world was allowed to slide into the shitter, you tell me what would happen: the west would be destroyed by what lays outside its boundaries
this is not the days of sailing ships and the silk road. this is an era of the internet and jet air travel. nigerians scamming stupid western pensioners, someone sneezing in mexico city leading to someone dying in london, religious fundamentalists from riyadh driving airplanes into office towers in new york city: there is no way to isolate anything along the lines you wish to isolate them
there is only one region, only one neighborhood: the world. all other divisions are meaningless and arbitrary at this point of human development. those of us who realize that are just waiting for everyone else to catch up to this realization. not because i say so, but as a direct consequence of simple cause and effect in a modern technological world
you better care about what happens beyond your nations borders, because someone else most certainly does, and they may not have your interests or your values in mind. and meanwhile, those beyond your borders most certainly care about what happens where you live, and again, their agenda might not exactly jive with your ideal of perfected seclusion. the days of the hermit kingdom are over. get used to it. we live on a tiny ball of dirt and water, and you wish to divide it up by magic lines and think that has any validity in terms of actually being effective. maybe in 1609. certainly not in 2009
1. say these organizations are ineffectual. when they obviously aren't 2. press me for why i am not invading another country as a one man army, which suggests the intellectual dishonest concept that before YOU lift a finger, i must demonstrate substantial effort on my part (somehow, over a anonymous internet forum, i am required to present to you ironclad credentials of my efforts and you are dishonestly suggesting that you will actually believe them)
truth be told, in your posts, you are not describing to me a coherent understanding of the world you live in. what you are describing to me is your personality, your level of character: i don't care, and i'm angry at you for suggesting that i should
fine, go ahead and don't care what happens in iran and china. you go on with your bad self
but don't for a moment believe that your attitude is intellectually sound, responsible, moral, humanist, or even coherent
you don't have a coherent world viewpoint. what you have is an attempt at rationalizing your desire not to care about anyone else. again, that's fine. just know yourself and what you really are and stop attacking me just because i'm suggesting the really wacky far out concept that maybe you should care
"In the history of the world? It means nothing, its the blink on an eye"
its nice of you to sit so oblivious and detached from any concern for any suffering in the world. and yet to be so horribly upset by my call to actually care
i know its difficult for you to maintain the sneer on your upper lip as you look down from on yonder high at us mere mortals in the mud actually trying to care about the fate of other people in this world. i apologize. next time when i call for you to care about the suffering of your fellow human beings who made the error of being born outside the borders of your country, i'll try to keep in mind how difficult it is for you to do that
listen closely to what i am asking for: care about and be concerned if citizens in other countries are being abused. not even out of pure altruism, but also because if it goes down the shitter far away over there, it will affect you someday. do you really have a criticism of me for that suggestion?
one guy flat out murders a bystander. you yell "stop!" at him, and he pays you no attention. so you let him be
the other guy litters. you yell and "stop!" at him, and apologizes. you proceed to read him the riot act in high holy moral outrage
so in other words, your sense of moral conscience is not calibrated to the depth of a criminal's crime, but only to the level a criminal is willing to engage with you and attempt reconciliation for his crime
but in this simple analogy, we're glossing over a much more important point: yes, you weild a lot more influece in the west than you do in china, but the take home lesson from that observation is that YOU WIELD ANY INFLUENCE AT ALL. as a citizen of a western democcracy, your government LISTENS to you, the common citizen. do you know how rare and vital a gift that is, and how revealing how bad they really do have it elsewhere in the world in comparison?
if you have a mile length of road, on one end is pure fascism, and on the other is pure democracy
you have two guys on the road. one guy is a lot closer to fascism, and another a lot closer to democracy
the guy closer to democracy wiggles around a bit, and moves a few inches towards fascism. OMFG! IT'S A SLIPPERY UNSTOPPABLE SLOPE TO ORWELL
but, since its still mostly democracy, the next moment he wiggles a few inches back towards democracy. silence on your part
meanwhile, the other guy down there, right close fascism: he steps a couple of feet deeper towards fascism, cheerfully turns to you, and in classic propaganda, tells you of his great strides towards democracy
you might want to make sure to help him put it out, before the whole neighborhood is aflame. rather than watch his house burn down while you obsess over the fact the upstairs toilet's flush handle stays stuck
really, that's about the scale of comparison when it comes to the "stripping of our freedoms" under western governments (now there's a loaded concept) with what goes elsewhere in your world. do you think it made sense to focus only on fascist elements in great britain in 1939 as germany invaded poland? same concept in play here
as for your suggestion that you have very little influence over other world governments, while you can only wield influnece at home: this is like letting a murderer run away from a murder scene you witness because he won't stop when you yell "stop!" at him... meanwhile, the jaywalker stops and turns around and acts responsibly when you yell "stop!" so let's prosecute the hell out of the jaywalker instead of the murderer. your moral conscience should not be calibrated only to how receptive a criminal is to your prosecution of him, but by the scale of their crime
in fact, the very notion that you DO have influence at home, in a western democracy, speaks volumes about how good you really do have it in the west: your government listens to you. do you know how vital and fragile a concept that really is in the history of the world?
various practices of western governments. i won't aggrevate your prejudices too much by suggesting some of your fears of an unstoppable march to orwellian fascism in the west are somewhat hysterical or overhyped
but did any of you stop and think that what is going on in iran or china is perhaps exactly what your orwellian fears allude to? and that it might pay more dividends, at least in the realm of intellectual honesty, to criticize those governments rather than western governments?
because no matter how bad it is in the west, surely you can see how downright horrific it is in some other places in the world. not that the west doesn't have problems. not that horrible problems elsewhere doesn't mean you should ignore little problems close by. and of course, it is invalid to be only able to criticize practices in other countries, not your own
its just that, to me, there seems to be a lot of people in the west who fall into a ridiculous trap: some people's ability to criticize ends at the borders of their own countries. you are a human being, right? or does the rationale for your ability to judge right and wrong magically vaporize at the straits of bosporus or the rio grande?
while you make mountains out of molehills in the practices of governments in the west, all i am asking is that you sometimes actually pay attention to the real mountains outside your border. they represent a threat to you just as much, if not more. its not THAT big of a planet you know, and its not the days of slowly sailing ships. what happens in beijing and tehran does have a real and measurable impact on your life, and it isn't a good impact. some days, you should stop beating the drums of the evils of the west, and turn your moral and intellectual concerns outside your borders
the only valid moral and intellectual point of view is a global one, not a western one, nor an indian one, nor a chinese one. its just that, if you only concern yourself with criticism of the west, you fail this qualificiation for being able to consider yourself as having a truly human conscience
stand up, criticize beijing and tehran. it doesn't mean you are suddenly a dick cheney style neocon. the rationale and ability to criticize nonwestern governments does not start with the assumption that you are enamored of western governments. you can hate washington dc just as much as you hate beijing. criticizing the former does not mean you love the latter, and visa versa
where i realized that the college was not rewarding you for the difficult trickery of sending otherwise normal people into a frenzied foaming at the mouth by feigning just the right shade and color of idiocy
but that they are rewarding people for actually being idiots;-(
the first scenario is a high art form that demonstrates a supple mind well versed on various ideologies and common propagandistic tricks, and perhaps could be taught
the second is just too depressing to even think about
Alan: What about the claim that a jailbroken iPhone could crash cell phone towers--has anyone ever looked at the security of the software running cell phone towers?
Charlie: This is complete BS. You can diff a jailbroken kernel with a standard iPhone kernel and there are very few places that are changed. In particular, it doesn't mess with anything that has to do with the communication with the carrier. Even if it did do something crazy, which it doesn't, I would hope that the towers are robust enough to handle it. Just as the software in the iPhone should be able to handle any type of input it receives, the cell towers should too. I hope the carriers adequately test their equipment. If not, they can always give me a call, I'd be happy to help. In other words, if all it takes for a terrorist to take down cellular communication in this country is have a jailbroken iPhone, we're in trouble.
As an aside, that was another reason I liked the injection method of testing SMS messages locally. I think if I fuzzed the phone using the carrier network, I probably would have crashed something. Even though it would be unintended, I could see them throwing me in jail for that, and that's one place I don't want to visit!
"Just as the software in the iPhone should be able to handle any type of input it receives, the cell towers should too."
except Charlie just proved this to be false
"I think if I fuzzed the phone using the carrier network, I probably would have crashed something. Even though it would be unintended, I could see them throwing me in jail for that, and that's one place I don't want to visit!"
The carrier should be paying you six figures for revealing the hack to them benignly, rather than with malintention
look, carriers: if there is a hack out there, someone will exploit it one day. your choices are:
1. have no idea who is doing what until something awful happens to your network and your customers and you need to pay big bucks to fix it, not to mention the financial hit from the hit to your reputation
2. offer up front a cash reward to anyone who discovers a bug (scaled to severity), and you will paying great rewards and still be paying 1/10th or 1/100th of what you would pay if you found the hack out the hard way
and instead, people like Charlie are under threat of jail for doing what they do in good faith, to your benefit
Slashdot Mirror
"It doesn't do the most simple thing with the ranking information: If a candidate is the first choice of more than half the ballots, he should win. Borda doesn't guarantee that."
and that's the way it should be. if some guy wins 51% o the #1 votes, and some other guy wins 80% of the #2 votes, the guy with 80% of #2 should be president
the point is division via partisan rancor is the road to hell, and that's what squeaker wins represent in the current system, and what you for some reason still view as supeior
"The Borda Count makes the tactic of burying very attractive to voters: That is putting a major oppenent of your favourite dishonestly low in the ranking to hurt him. Instant Runoff Voting doesn't suffer from this at all. There are other ranking methods like Schulze that I recommend despite being a bit affected by that tactic, but with Borda this incentive is really strong.
Also, Borda is vulnerable to clone spam attacks. That means a party can increase its chances of winning by running more very similar candidates."
what you describe are minor tweaks compared to the manipulations going in the current system. borda is still enormously superior to what we have now. as for run offs: whatever. in countries where they do that, you'll find problems with that to. no system is perfect, and borda/ approval get a better description of the people's real will than the current system or run offs
result in a more mainstream choice? i am flabbergasted how such a conclusion could enter your mind
the 2000 election is an indisputable example of how the current system wound up choosing a president that was not mainstream. we got instead a cleavage of the country into left and right, with resentment and hatred festering
mccain was a better mainstream choice: his secondary appeal to democrats was much larger than his primary appeal to the right wing, which is what cost him the party's nomination. so if mccain was allowed to proceed to a final approval or borda vote, he would beat bush and gore on account of his much broader secondary appeal
meanwhile, our current system divides, it doesn't unite: it stokes the fires of partisanship, it cleaves the american people into two fiercely divided camps where the loudest most blind voices dominate
such voices would still exist if we voted borda or approval, but more moderate voices would come to dominate, simply because a different voting system rewards a different strategy and set of issues
partisan morons are tearing this country apart. we need less of them, not more of them, just look at the idiocy that dominates the discussion on healthcare right now. how do we get less partisans? we adopt a system which rewards them less. our current unideal system rewards partisan loudmouth bickering idiots, to tragic results
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/chinese+people+are+not+pets/3097807
or are chinese people human beings, who desire freedom
if there is some magic genetic component in a chinese person that makes them needed to be controlled like a slave, then you win the argument
but if on the other hand, as i believe, that chinese people are just as yearning and desiring of freedom as people in the west, then surely you recognize that the west, regardless of all the problems the west has, better realizes the concept of personal freedom than the current chinese system does
so that in the end, your view of "ideological imperialism" is absurd, since all i am asking for is more freedom for you. the only ideological imperialism that actually exists is coming from beijing, not the west. beijing is trying to control you, i'm asking for you to LESS control over you. how is that imperialism? how in a million years do you view that as some sort malicious foreign influence? maybe its just a better way for chinese people to live? wheter or not i say it, as a westerner, or a chinese person says it?
in other words, when a chinese person compes up to you expressing a desire for more freedom, are they some sort of zombie under the influence of western imperialism? or perhaps they are expressing something human inside them that unites us, all humans, western or chinese, something stronger than any authoritarian system that beijing can devise, and stronger than any blind xenophobia you are suffering so strongly from, you actually view your own emancipation as a despicable foreign influence
as for more my desire to make the world one place: yes i wish upon the entire human race greater personal freedom. truly, i am an imperialistic monster LOL
in 2000, if it meant that the far far greater list of bush failures would never have happened
voting systems should better reflect the people's actual will, by being a little more complex
you're never going to get the nuance of the people's will 100%, but you can do a lot better. for example: borda voting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count
just rank candidates in the order you like them. then, in a divisive election is an opportunity for everyone's second best choice to become the winner rather than partisan first choices, that one half of the population hates, barely edging out the other
now take as an example the disgusting 2000 presidential election: if people were allowed to merely rank candidates rather than be forced to pick one, who would have won? john mccain. however you think of him as a choice in the 2008 election, mccain was certainly a better choice than gore or bush in 2000, and the nation actually thought so. if the people were allowed to rank a list of candidates, his name would have come out as the number 2 choice of everyone, and he would have won. but the system worked against mccain. instead, various undemocratic closed door machinations led the republican party to choose monkey boy bush over the more deserving mccain, and so the democrats who would have ranked mccain second best never would have been able to register their approval of mccain over bush. borda voting does away with the whole party primary nonsense: democrats field 4 or 5 presidential candidates, republicans field 4 or 5 presidential candidates. and the voters merely rank them. then the voting system better reflects the nuances of public opinion, and allows for the candidate whom people really like to emerge. who should really lead the nation? by better reflecting the people's affinity or dislike. no more divisive partisan bullshit
another good system: approval voting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting
easier to understand than borda voting with similar results: checkbox next to anyone you like. voting for no one and voting for everyone has the same effect. in between, are abilities to express approval and disapproval, and the winner is a simple tally of whomever gets the most votes
take a flight to port au prince and its obvious a lot of places in the world are not up the standards of tokyo or new york city, nevermind the fact that genuine slavery still thrives all over the world, including underground in the west, just as you demonstrate
however, you would be an intellectually dishonest fool if you can't see that on these issues real genuine progress has been made, nevermind the fact the job is still undone. slavery used to be an accepted fact of life from the highest echelons of society to the lowest, globally. not remotely is this true anymore
my reaction to the original poster was this absurdity that our problems are insurmountable. we have tackled problems of the same scale of heaviness and compexity before, like slavery, and we'll do it again
but as soon as you stop believing in progress, or are unable to see progress across the span of history, you yourself are as much as part of the problem as those actively engaging in transgressions against the natural world, or human decency, or whatever your pet peeve. because you have accepted those crimes. no, i don't accept them. neither should you (not speaking to you specifically, but in general to anyone who would stop believing in progress)
because we've been to thousands of life-bearing planetary systems, and we can safely say such a thing
(rolls eyes)
truth be told, life is on earth because we are at the right temperature/ pressure for water's triple point (solid/ gas/ liquid all close by). that makes earth ideal, as that's the most important determining factor, by far (the thermodynamics of a polar compound near its triple point is the anchor on which complex chemistries can be sustained and to eventually evolve)
so if you want to talk about ideal places for life, look for other common polar compounds near their triple point. for example: i'd look for places that bear the possibility for ammonia's triple point. but not say, methane or nirogen (too inert/ not polar)
your water monkey idea only would work in a large swampy ecosystem. none of which existed in the time and place we made the transition to bipedalism. on the contrary, the currently accepted theory, that we were evicted out of the trees when jungle changed to savannah, makes far more sense
that we could actually begin to care about the problems you elucidate, much as we have marginalized other seemingly intractable problems like slavery and basic sanitation. we could then voyage to the stars, with this newfound emphasis on living within our constraints. but to get to that better form of civilization, we have to surmount a lot of ingrained stupidity, not the least of which is yours, where you have
1. already declared the problems insurmountable. really? we can't solve these problems?
2. already declared us of deserving of extinction. really? who are you to make that judgment?
you're part of the problem, just as much a part of the problem as all of the people committing the sins and crimes you detest. because you've declared them the winners. they have not won. of course, in your eyes they have, but only because you are weak and spineless
the human foot is the stupidest most ugliest thing. the shape is completely pointless, the whole 5 wiggling toes thing is absurd and useless. to say toes help us grip and balance is to argue from the starting assumption that the human foot its the best design, which it obviously isn't. a truly intelligent design would be something like pan from greek legend: hooves. now a hoof is smart
and the foot is also the most accessible argument against intelligent design in your rhetorical toolbox. i mean come on, look at your damn foot: how can you look at a human foot and NOT see that it was once a monkey hand for gripping trees coopted into the need to walk instead, and that this "foot" is a relatively "new" development in our monkey lineage?
next time you're confronted with an intelligent design moron, take off your shoe, resist throwing it at them, and show them your foot
you say it like this is some sort of stretch of the imagination, uwe boll making a myspace movie
david fincher of all people, he of fightclub and seven fame, is actually making a movie based on facebook:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10271662-36.html
i cannot believe fincher is doing this. my esteem for the man just went into the toilet. the whole idea seems like such a narcissistic absurdity. just the effort of trying to imagine the kind of person a facebook movie would appeal to fills me with nausea
WHAT can be done has never been a problem with the human species. if we wanted to do it, we always figured out a way
all that ever mattered was the desire to do it
it really escapes your vast imagination about what a committed group of people can and can't do to change the world?
i mean, honestly, it feels rote and pedantic to me at this point, like i'm holding a little kid's hand. you want a list or something of possible tactics? why not ask that to yourself? you honestly cant' think of any. am i supposed to supply intellectual charity to a simpleton at this point and pedagogically list to you possible avenues of influence?
meanwhile, what exactly is your argument: if 2 million people in the west wanted to do something about china, they can do NOTHING that matters? that's your position? you really believe that?
the will to do something matters, that is all. the how something is done is an afterthought. as long as you convince enough people a tough job needs to get done, it gets done. its not like one guy figures out the perfect tactic by himself and that makes all the difference. the tactic is nothing. what matter is that a mass of people want to make the difference
if a group of people is dead set on doing something, they are going to do it. you realize that, right? motivation is everything. tactics are easy. we seem to be talking about 2 different things, and what you are concerning yourself is the afterthought
by absolutely no one, i hearby declare a moratorium on the phrase "cloud computing". at least on slashdot, i hope
the problem is, you aren't talking about anything when you use the phrase "cloud computing". you can talk about a specific software service on a specific channel, and what exactly is being serviced and for what reason and the implications of this service. then you have a concrete, valid topic of discussion
but when you say "cloud computing" you are referring to nothing in particular and therefore nothing at all. everyone knows what vague promising concept you are referring to when you use the phrase "cloud computing". we get it, we're excited by vague, promising big ideas out there on the edge too. science fiction is full of such ideas. emphasis on the word "fiction"
so at some point, you need to have a truly technical discussion, and drop the hype. much like real clouds, you're just full of hot air when you mention "cloud computing", at this point
now roll up your sleeves and get to realizing it and get into technical details, or you are just wasting our time
the world would be a much simpler place if no one actually cared about anyone else
but people do care if someone else suffers, for better or worse. and so you must make peace with that, as butting out isn't an option, and never was, and never will be. its only an option if you can magically alter fundamental human nature
besides, forget altruism, you protect your own selfish interests by taking a keen interest as to whether or not your neighbor's house is on fire. the best defense has always been a good offense
i would rather the front line of the war between open societies and authoritarian societies be waged primarily in authoritarian societies, not my own. and making believe no such conflict exists is just delusional. all ideological systems either expand or contract, none of them exist in stasis, ever, in the history of the world, anywhere
so i would much rather be involved in extending openness to closed societies rather than be involved in a weak rearguard action protecting open societies form becoming closed. mainly because extending openness is the best way to reinforce openness at home, while giving up on closed societies and adopting a bunker mentality at home is pretty much accepting defeat before the enemy is even met
its a difference in personality, rather than worldview. the history of every epoch has always hewed to ideological divides, and the winner has always been the one on the offense. and i simply have no respect for authoritarianism. so i fight it, over there
coherent point of view on any issue in the world is a global one
your entire post consists of nothing more than an attempt at rationalizing your lack of concern for humanity past the rio grande or the straits of bosporus. you wish to say that you have no authority, therefore, you should have no conscience
you have it completely backwards: authority flows from conscience, not the other way around. on any issue, regardless of geography, anywhere in the world, at any time period in the history
look: if everyone in the west spent all of their effort perfecting the west to a state of such ideal civilization as the world has ever known, while the rest of the world was allowed to slide into the shitter, you tell me what would happen: the west would be destroyed by what lays outside its boundaries
this is not the days of sailing ships and the silk road. this is an era of the internet and jet air travel. nigerians scamming stupid western pensioners, someone sneezing in mexico city leading to someone dying in london, religious fundamentalists from riyadh driving airplanes into office towers in new york city: there is no way to isolate anything along the lines you wish to isolate them
there is only one region, only one neighborhood: the world. all other divisions are meaningless and arbitrary at this point of human development. those of us who realize that are just waiting for everyone else to catch up to this realization. not because i say so, but as a direct consequence of simple cause and effect in a modern technological world
you better care about what happens beyond your nations borders, because someone else most certainly does, and they may not have your interests or your values in mind. and meanwhile, those beyond your borders most certainly care about what happens where you live, and again, their agenda might not exactly jive with your ideal of perfected seclusion. the days of the hermit kingdom are over. get used to it. we live on a tiny ball of dirt and water, and you wish to divide it up by magic lines and think that has any validity in terms of actually being effective. maybe in 1609. certainly not in 2009
amnesty international, doctors without borders, financial and emotional support to dissidents, etc.
but your refinements of my point are otherwise dead on, thank you
doctor's without borders?
the international criminal court?
this is now your opportunity to:
1. say these organizations are ineffectual. when they obviously aren't
2. press me for why i am not invading another country as a one man army, which suggests the intellectual dishonest concept that before YOU lift a finger, i must demonstrate substantial effort on my part (somehow, over a anonymous internet forum, i am required to present to you ironclad credentials of my efforts and you are dishonestly suggesting that you will actually believe them)
truth be told, in your posts, you are not describing to me a coherent understanding of the world you live in. what you are describing to me is your personality, your level of character: i don't care, and i'm angry at you for suggesting that i should
fine, go ahead and don't care what happens in iran and china. you go on with your bad self
but don't for a moment believe that your attitude is intellectually sound, responsible, moral, humanist, or even coherent
you don't have a coherent world viewpoint. what you have is an attempt at rationalizing your desire not to care about anyone else. again, that's fine. just know yourself and what you really are and stop attacking me just because i'm suggesting the really wacky far out concept that maybe you should care
"In the history of the world? It means nothing, its the blink on an eye"
its nice of you to sit so oblivious and detached from any concern for any suffering in the world. and yet to be so horribly upset by my call to actually care
i know its difficult for you to maintain the sneer on your upper lip as you look down from on yonder high at us mere mortals in the mud actually trying to care about the fate of other people in this world. i apologize. next time when i call for you to care about the suffering of your fellow human beings who made the error of being born outside the borders of your country, i'll try to keep in mind how difficult it is for you to do that
listen closely to what i am asking for: care about and be concerned if citizens in other countries are being abused. not even out of pure altruism, but also because if it goes down the shitter far away over there, it will affect you someday. do you really have a criticism of me for that suggestion?
one guy flat out murders a bystander. you yell "stop!" at him, and he pays you no attention. so you let him be
the other guy litters. you yell and "stop!" at him, and apologizes. you proceed to read him the riot act in high holy moral outrage
so in other words, your sense of moral conscience is not calibrated to the depth of a criminal's crime, but only to the level a criminal is willing to engage with you and attempt reconciliation for his crime
but in this simple analogy, we're glossing over a much more important point: yes, you weild a lot more influece in the west than you do in china, but the take home lesson from that observation is that YOU WIELD ANY INFLUENCE AT ALL. as a citizen of a western democcracy, your government LISTENS to you, the common citizen. do you know how rare and vital a gift that is, and how revealing how bad they really do have it elsewhere in the world in comparison?
don't you think they deserve what you have?
if you have a mile length of road, on one end is pure fascism, and on the other is pure democracy
you have two guys on the road. one guy is a lot closer to fascism, and another a lot closer to democracy
the guy closer to democracy wiggles around a bit, and moves a few inches towards fascism. OMFG! IT'S A SLIPPERY UNSTOPPABLE SLOPE TO ORWELL
but, since its still mostly democracy, the next moment he wiggles a few inches back towards democracy. silence on your part
meanwhile, the other guy down there, right close fascism: he steps a couple of feet deeper towards fascism, cheerfully turns to you, and in classic propaganda, tells you of his great strides towards democracy
and you believe him
you might want to make sure to help him put it out, before the whole neighborhood is aflame. rather than watch his house burn down while you obsess over the fact the upstairs toilet's flush handle stays stuck
really, that's about the scale of comparison when it comes to the "stripping of our freedoms" under western governments (now there's a loaded concept) with what goes elsewhere in your world. do you think it made sense to focus only on fascist elements in great britain in 1939 as germany invaded poland? same concept in play here
as for your suggestion that you have very little influence over other world governments, while you can only wield influnece at home: this is like letting a murderer run away from a murder scene you witness because he won't stop when you yell "stop!" at him... meanwhile, the jaywalker stops and turns around and acts responsibly when you yell "stop!" so let's prosecute the hell out of the jaywalker instead of the murderer. your moral conscience should not be calibrated only to how receptive a criminal is to your prosecution of him, but by the scale of their crime
in fact, the very notion that you DO have influence at home, in a western democracy, speaks volumes about how good you really do have it in the west: your government listens to you. do you know how vital and fragile a concept that really is in the history of the world?
various practices of western governments. i won't aggrevate your prejudices too much by suggesting some of your fears of an unstoppable march to orwellian fascism in the west are somewhat hysterical or overhyped
but did any of you stop and think that what is going on in iran or china is perhaps exactly what your orwellian fears allude to? and that it might pay more dividends, at least in the realm of intellectual honesty, to criticize those governments rather than western governments?
because no matter how bad it is in the west, surely you can see how downright horrific it is in some other places in the world. not that the west doesn't have problems. not that horrible problems elsewhere doesn't mean you should ignore little problems close by. and of course, it is invalid to be only able to criticize practices in other countries, not your own
its just that, to me, there seems to be a lot of people in the west who fall into a ridiculous trap: some people's ability to criticize ends at the borders of their own countries. you are a human being, right? or does the rationale for your ability to judge right and wrong magically vaporize at the straits of bosporus or the rio grande?
while you make mountains out of molehills in the practices of governments in the west, all i am asking is that you sometimes actually pay attention to the real mountains outside your border. they represent a threat to you just as much, if not more. its not THAT big of a planet you know, and its not the days of slowly sailing ships. what happens in beijing and tehran does have a real and measurable impact on your life, and it isn't a good impact. some days, you should stop beating the drums of the evils of the west, and turn your moral and intellectual concerns outside your borders
the only valid moral and intellectual point of view is a global one, not a western one, nor an indian one, nor a chinese one. its just that, if you only concern yourself with criticism of the west, you fail this qualificiation for being able to consider yourself as having a truly human conscience
stand up, criticize beijing and tehran. it doesn't mean you are suddenly a dick cheney style neocon. the rationale and ability to criticize nonwestern governments does not start with the assumption that you are enamored of western governments. you can hate washington dc just as much as you hate beijing. criticizing the former does not mean you love the latter, and visa versa
where i realized that the college was not rewarding you for the difficult trickery of sending otherwise normal people into a frenzied foaming at the mouth by feigning just the right shade and color of idiocy
but that they are rewarding people for actually being idiots ;-(
the first scenario is a high art form that demonstrates a supple mind well versed on various ideologies and common propagandistic tricks, and perhaps could be taught
the second is just too depressing to even think about
someone with the handle "adult film producer" is the last person you want to be talking about this subject matter with
DoS or gain root to a celltower?:
"Just as the software in the iPhone should be able to handle any type of input it receives, the cell towers should too."
except Charlie just proved this to be false
"I think if I fuzzed the phone using the carrier network, I probably would have crashed something. Even though it would be unintended, I could see them throwing me in jail for that, and that's one place I don't want to visit!"
The carrier should be paying you six figures for revealing the hack to them benignly, rather than with malintention
look, carriers: if there is a hack out there, someone will exploit it one day. your choices are:
1. have no idea who is doing what until something awful happens to your network and your customers and you need to pay big bucks to fix it, not to mention the financial hit from the hit to your reputation
2. offer up front a cash reward to anyone who discovers a bug (scaled to severity), and you will paying great rewards and still be paying 1/10th or 1/100th of what you would pay if you found the hack out the hard way
and instead, people like Charlie are under threat of jail for doing what they do in good faith, to your benefit
talk about shortsighted
you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar