The Fifth Head of Cerberus is by far the most difficult book I have ever attempted to read, taking 3 months before I finally cracked the writing style and mood. By the end of it, I just wanted it over... I felt dirty, as though a part of me had been removed that could never be returned. My naivety died in reading that book.
Even now, just thinking about the book brings a darkness back into my spirit, which I cannot bring myself to look at. I feel hopeless and numb.
Such a profound and lasting impact I've never had from any other author. His words spoke directly into my soul, and I identified with - no, became - his characters in subtle yet powerful ways. I hope never to read his works again, but now they are a part of me.
If the book does not affect you, either you have not read the book, or your spirit is already broken.
About the only consensual requirement for The Internet is agreement on IP address allocation... and even that doesn't need to be globally unique - just look at all that RFC1918 overlap. It all comes down to routing.
Seriously, there's no reason why we can't have 203.2.192.124 in Australia, India, China, AND the USA. Your network provider (y'know, the one that shares routes with its peers) would work out which ones matter, and route accordingly. It just becomes extra admin overhead.
So then you've got DNS issues. Since anyone can run their own DNS server (and lots of people do on a micro scale), there's nothing stopping some commercial entity known for brutal efficiency (perhaps with a share price to defend) from running up a DNS service, making money by selling domains. Bureaucracy confronts market forces...
So if the UN want to run an Internet according to their rules - that's great. I wonder how long it would take before Enlightened Persons just start routing around the inevitable problems.
Naturally the big banks win, that's the nature of underwriting a low risk, fabulously popular IPO - it's easy money. The problem is they they either get accused of failing (new) shareholders if the IPO price is too high and drops, or accused of favouring their own high-value clients if the IPO price is too low and rises. In the public's eyes, it's all the underwriters' fault.
Nobody likes the big banks and their tactics, but given the cash grab that is an IPO (and especially looking at the last-minute changes in FB's valuation), you have to remember that FB are playing their investors as much as the banks, only FB ended up with most of the cash.
It's funny that when an IPO is priced too low, everyone first complains that it's the merchant banks doing favours for their already-wealthy customers (who naturally got the biggest IPO packages). Early investors (pre-IPO) may complain about the company failing to fully monetise. Then, when the founders take flight after selling their own shares at great profit, shareholders complain about deals done for management at the expense of the company's future.
Conversely, when an IPO is priced too high, everyone criticises the merchant banks, who have obviously lined their own pockets with a percentage of funds raised, although most of the money actually goes to the company that was looking for funds in the first place. This should be in the company's (and thus the shareholders') long-term interests - but who cares about that in these days of 2-4 year executive tenure with share options?!
Of course there should be accuracy in pricing an IPO, but who has ever fairly valued some of the crazy-assed business models of internet businesses over the last 20 years, and social media more recently..? For the life of the commercial Internet it's been 10% maths and 90% hype, and likely to remain so.
Coming to the table seems pointless... so our big polluters will ignore whatever's being done, and the small polluters will simply close shop and pollute even more in China...
Which is just the way we like it.
We (USA, Europe, Australia,...) currently live in a world-wide capitalist cycle, where those owning the means for production (China holds the baton now) set the rules, and where we've had generations of training to buy newer and cheaper, and the environmental cost has never been at issue. Perhaps China knows this better than anyone else, since they've ironically destroyed the solar manufacturing industry in the USA with US government grants, and without actually improving the technology. Refer Solyndra, among others.
While price remains the issue, there's no incentive for the purchaser to be environmental - be it a person, a company, or a nation.
China is going to be a bigger polluter than the USA? If global warming is a genuine problem for you, don't buy "Made in China". Don't buy a new iPhone, or a Philips CFL, or a pair of Levis 501s, or any paperback novels. Educate yourself and others; support local industry, local employment, and keep your money out of China. Despite what Fox screams, it's both patriotic and good for the planet!
It sticks it to those undercutting, polluting capitalists in China, who don't care about global warming. It also sticks it to those flag-waving patriots who outsource all responsibility (industry, jobs, knowledge, pollution, etc..) and keep the profits for no good cause... Yep, those evil Global Corporations.
But no, we keep buying room fans for $10 because they're a bargain, and new iPhones because they rock.
So governments charge local industry for greenhouse emissions, and landfill tariffs, and recycling fees, without changing consumer buying habits... Then everyone shakes their heads as local industry vanishes, but everyone buys Made in China because it's cheap.
So what matters to you? Do you really know enough about global warming to act differently to nearly every one of your compatriots? Or are you a sheep, cowed (heh) by generations of subservience to price?
Even if these kids get press coverage, nothing will change until we all learn how to pass up a bargain.
Apple could own fusion in its entirety, and license the technology back to the rest of the world? Try explaining that sort of strategy at a shareholder meeting!
If it's secure, it's traceable, otherwise you can duplicate it.
Hard currency is secure because it's hard to duplicate, not because it's traceable. Everyone seems to ignore the fact that every cash note has a unique serial number on it, and the technology exists to scan and record each note and who it went to.
Of course, nobody goes to this effort because it's only useful if everyone's doing it, or it's centrally managed. But how do I know that the ATM is not recording each serial number against my card? And really, what's stopping any other major cash handler from simply recording cash note serial numbers against transactions - y'know, in case someone comes asking questions later...
Once you've got the tracking thing working it doesn't matter if you're using hard cash, or virtual coin. It's all traceable.
Everyone seems to be getting all het-up about Google abusing trust, being deceptive, yada yada... But it's a fact: Google get headlines worldwide.
In a world of clouds, +1s, and Likes, people want to circumvent the 2001 P3P objectives because that's how they want the web to work in 2012. So if IE is quietly ignoring P3P for Google, what other unknown, untrusted, and non-headline-grabbing sites might have been doing the same thing for the last 10 years? It seems other browsers ignore P3P as pointless, but not IE.
It may be that by Google risking a minor PR hit, they might encourage Microsoft to drop the charade of P3P protection, and just maybe get enough people interested in pursuing a real solution.
The irony in all this is that China is still a communist country using capitalism to destabilise democracy.
China is communist by quirk of history only, much as the USA is democratic by quirk of history only. Both nations draw on their histories to unite their people. Neither speaks to modern realities having changed them.
China is clearly as capitalist as the USA, but while government in the USA is increasingly owned by corporate interests, in China it is the government that owns the corporations. While US corporations owned by disparate shareholders compete for relative advantage, Chinese corporations report to the Government who cares only for national advantage.
The outcome is thus not so much ironic, as inevitable.
Is this information really necessarily private, or is it private just because we worry that it leaves us somehow more vulnerable? Have any of us really thought through what "vulnerable" might mean?
US porn is not Australian porn, and is definitely not Italian or Dutch porn (just to pick two). Obviously, any US legislation requiring use of.xxx would only apply to US porn, and thus international porn would still be available to people operating from the USA.
I see no problem, except that maybe the US porn industry might find it easier to move offshore.
According to my reading of this article http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bloom07/bloom07_in dex.html in Edge(*), Creationist beliefs take hold when a child is not exposed to scientific process, or grows up in an environment hostile to science.
The problem is exacerbated when "trusted" authorities (parents, teachers, world leaders) show a disdain for science and scientific method. When these people state "it is only a theory", they are not necessarily lying, but are simply ignorant of science.
Children develop a world view which is intuitive: the world has been like this forever because it has not changed in my lifetime. When children observe scientific experiments, that are opened to a new way of thinking (structured/procedural/logical), that can slowly be developed to allow acceptance of things like geological timescales, and even that counter-intuitive idea of evolution. Without scientific exposure, the story told by the Creationist Museum feels right, which is the only trusted yardstick for right and wrong.
The problem is that a lack of science in schools feeds itself, and people without any grounding in science begin to call the whole of Science into question, and hearken back to the Good Old Days of Christian authoritarianism and intolerance.
* Note: I have not researched funding for Edge, so have no idea how militant or head-in-the-sand they are, but found the article interesting none-the-less.
I've often felt that as the rift between Science and Religion appears to become more divisive, the closer the two become in most people's minds.
There seems to be an awful lot of attention paid to the artefacts of science today - a nostalgic yearning to touch something of the vitality of the process of discovery. It's as though "science" and "discovery" are unattainable, except through contact with the objects of the past.
There is likewise a lot of effort put into seeking out the artefacts of religion - whether through archeology, or by personal pilgrimage. Spiritual growth is quickly lost or forgotten in the desire to simply encounter an object of the past, as though the modern world provides no access to the joy of spirit.
But what can we expect, when people "believe" the "miracles" of medical science, and at the same time "know" that science proves the power of prayer. Even scientific discussions in popular media can easily turn into acts of faith - obesity, global warming, cigarettes, and evolution are all fuelled by emotion instead of logic. For most people, science is religion and scientists are the High Priests.
Auctions such as this only increase the desirability of owning a piece of the past. To what end? Well, it certainly serves little scientific purpose - as has already been pointed out.
Scientists are supposed to be less dogmatic - although it does happen. Particularly when some newfangled idea threatens a long-established grants scheme.
Vanuatu has cows which spend their entire lives in the jungle, without access to modern growth hormones, antibiotics, or GMO feed. Australian cows get their antibiotics and hormones, but usually eat non-GMO feed because noone here believes in genetics. US beef has full access to all the modern conveniences.
Now, has anyone in Northern America ever eaten a steak without cheese sauce? Or any sauce for that matter? No gravy? No garlic butter, no pepper, no salt?
Australian beef is pretty good without sauce, but you haven't really had a good steak until you've had the local product in Vanuatu.
Maybe I'm biased, but then I never really understood the point of sauces with steak until I visited the USA. Sigh...
So if you're going to clone beef, or grow it in a vat, or whatever, at least start with a decent cow.
Windows itself never ceases to amaze me. That it can somehow coerce an otherwise reliable Linux server to boot into a toyland of colour and light, and remain stable for whole hours at a time!
Oh, but you're coming from OS X. I guess you're used to all those colour bubbles and stuff...
But the constant reboots allow you to thump your computer on a regular basis, which is where Windows really comes into its own. Reinforcing that machines are our slaves (and not the other way around!)
What's it going to take, them coming on TV and just announcing it?
Just be careful whose dogma you are accepting. For the same reason that accepting a single encyclopaedia article as "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" - just because you saw it on CNN or PBS doesn't mean it is reality.
This story offers an alternative to Moore's take on the modern world. While I don't know EPPC from a bar of soap, they have provided greater context on items in Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 - particularly in light of your apparent agreement with many of his assertions at face value.
If you have patience, you might read the entire article. If you are already emotionally committed, you might get only as far as the second paragraph before closing it up in disgust. Or if you're like me, you might read the intro and conclusion, and skim parts of the rest - particularly the bits on actual vote counting versus exit polls.
You fail to be able to take into account all the other information out there?
I don't accept all the conclusions of this EPPC report, but the context is helpful and, as you pointed out, more information is good.
Slashdot Mirror
Until you demand appeasement, or else violence.
Your Faith does not deserve my false words.
And your violence will destroy us all.
The Fifth Head of Cerberus is by far the most difficult book I have ever attempted to read, taking 3 months before I finally cracked the writing style and mood. By the end of it, I just wanted it over... I felt dirty, as though a part of me had been removed that could never be returned. My naivety died in reading that book.
Even now, just thinking about the book brings a darkness back into my spirit, which I cannot bring myself to look at. I feel hopeless and numb.
Such a profound and lasting impact I've never had from any other author. His words spoke directly into my soul, and I identified with - no, became - his characters in subtle yet powerful ways. I hope never to read his works again, but now they are a part of me.
If the book does not affect you, either you have not read the book, or your spirit is already broken.
About the only consensual requirement for The Internet is agreement on IP address allocation... and even that doesn't need to be globally unique - just look at all that RFC1918 overlap. It all comes down to routing.
Seriously, there's no reason why we can't have 203.2.192.124 in Australia, India, China, AND the USA. Your network provider (y'know, the one that shares routes with its peers) would work out which ones matter, and route accordingly. It just becomes extra admin overhead.
So then you've got DNS issues. Since anyone can run their own DNS server (and lots of people do on a micro scale), there's nothing stopping some commercial entity known for brutal efficiency (perhaps with a share price to defend) from running up a DNS service, making money by selling domains. Bureaucracy confronts market forces...
So if the UN want to run an Internet according to their rules - that's great. I wonder how long it would take before Enlightened Persons just start routing around the inevitable problems.
And then we're back here again :)
Naturally the big banks win, that's the nature of underwriting a low risk, fabulously popular IPO - it's easy money. The problem is they they either get accused of failing (new) shareholders if the IPO price is too high and drops, or accused of favouring their own high-value clients if the IPO price is too low and rises. In the public's eyes, it's all the underwriters' fault.
Nobody likes the big banks and their tactics, but given the cash grab that is an IPO (and especially looking at the last-minute changes in FB's valuation), you have to remember that FB are playing their investors as much as the banks, only FB ended up with most of the cash.
It's funny that when an IPO is priced too low, everyone first complains that it's the merchant banks doing favours for their already-wealthy customers (who naturally got the biggest IPO packages). Early investors (pre-IPO) may complain about the company failing to fully monetise. Then, when the founders take flight after selling their own shares at great profit, shareholders complain about deals done for management at the expense of the company's future.
Conversely, when an IPO is priced too high, everyone criticises the merchant banks, who have obviously lined their own pockets with a percentage of funds raised, although most of the money actually goes to the company that was looking for funds in the first place. This should be in the company's (and thus the shareholders') long-term interests - but who cares about that in these days of 2-4 year executive tenure with share options?!
Of course there should be accuracy in pricing an IPO, but who has ever fairly valued some of the crazy-assed business models of internet businesses over the last 20 years, and social media more recently..? For the life of the commercial Internet it's been 10% maths and 90% hype, and likely to remain so.
How long can a troll go?
It's a prank, and Slashdot went for it faster than a bull charging at a red rag.
Find a single-word anagram for "Shalmendo". Or to really spell it out, find a two-word anagram for "Shalmendo Ice-Yurt".
This suddenly looks like a stoopid school prank. Has anyone else thought of anagrams?
Ref: anagram solver
Yep. Hilarious.
Coming to the table seems pointless... so our big polluters will ignore whatever's being done, and the small polluters will simply close shop and pollute even more in China...
Which is just the way we like it.
We (USA, Europe, Australia, ...) currently live in a world-wide capitalist cycle, where those owning the means for production (China holds the baton now) set the rules, and where we've had generations of training to buy newer and cheaper, and the environmental cost has never been at issue. Perhaps China knows this better than anyone else, since they've ironically destroyed the solar manufacturing industry in the USA with US government grants, and without actually improving the technology. Refer Solyndra, among others.
While price remains the issue, there's no incentive for the purchaser to be environmental - be it a person, a company, or a nation.
China is going to be a bigger polluter than the USA? If global warming is a genuine problem for you, don't buy "Made in China". Don't buy a new iPhone, or a Philips CFL, or a pair of Levis 501s, or any paperback novels. Educate yourself and others; support local industry, local employment, and keep your money out of China. Despite what Fox screams, it's both patriotic and good for the planet!
It sticks it to those undercutting, polluting capitalists in China, who don't care about global warming. It also sticks it to those flag-waving patriots who outsource all responsibility (industry, jobs, knowledge, pollution, etc..) and keep the profits for no good cause... Yep, those evil Global Corporations.
But no, we keep buying room fans for $10 because they're a bargain, and new iPhones because they rock.
So governments charge local industry for greenhouse emissions, and landfill tariffs, and recycling fees, without changing consumer buying habits... Then everyone shakes their heads as local industry vanishes, but everyone buys Made in China because it's cheap.
So what matters to you? Do you really know enough about global warming to act differently to nearly every one of your compatriots? Or are you a sheep, cowed (heh) by generations of subservience to price?
Even if these kids get press coverage, nothing will change until we all learn how to pass up a bargain.
Apple could own fusion in its entirety, and license the technology back to the rest of the world? Try explaining that sort of strategy at a shareholder meeting!
I refer you to that well-known product from Good Ol' Boys Systems: The Tenne-C programming language.
Tenne-C
Hard currency is secure because it's hard to duplicate, not because it's traceable. Everyone seems to ignore the fact that every cash note has a unique serial number on it, and the technology exists to scan and record each note and who it went to.
Of course, nobody goes to this effort because it's only useful if everyone's doing it, or it's centrally managed. But how do I know that the ATM is not recording each serial number against my card? And really, what's stopping any other major cash handler from simply recording cash note serial numbers against transactions - y'know, in case someone comes asking questions later...
Once you've got the tracking thing working it doesn't matter if you're using hard cash, or virtual coin. It's all traceable.
Not in Australia, they're not. That's an (almost) uniquely American artefact.
Everyone seems to be getting all het-up about Google abusing trust, being deceptive, yada yada... But it's a fact: Google get headlines worldwide.
In a world of clouds, +1s, and Likes, people want to circumvent the 2001 P3P objectives because that's how they want the web to work in 2012. So if IE is quietly ignoring P3P for Google, what other unknown, untrusted, and non-headline-grabbing sites might have been doing the same thing for the last 10 years? It seems other browsers ignore P3P as pointless, but not IE.
It may be that by Google risking a minor PR hit, they might encourage Microsoft to drop the charade of P3P protection, and just maybe get enough people interested in pursuing a real solution.
China is communist by quirk of history only, much as the USA is democratic by quirk of history only. Both nations draw on their histories to unite their people. Neither speaks to modern realities having changed them.
China is clearly as capitalist as the USA, but while government in the USA is increasingly owned by corporate interests, in China it is the government that owns the corporations. While US corporations owned by disparate shareholders compete for relative advantage, Chinese corporations report to the Government who cares only for national advantage.
The outcome is thus not so much ironic, as inevitable.
Is this information really necessarily private, or is it private just because we worry that it leaves us somehow more vulnerable? Have any of us really thought through what "vulnerable" might mean?
Some alternative thinking: Our data, ourselves at The Boston Globe.
> For a while now, I've been wondering what the purpose of the USA economy is.
Look up the Story of Stuff, and discover the magic of your own economy! As someone else pointed out, the US economy depends on an active B Ark.
US porn is not Australian porn, and is definitely not Italian or Dutch porn (just to pick two). Obviously, any US legislation requiring use of .xxx would only apply to US porn, and thus international porn would still be available to people operating from the USA.
I see no problem, except that maybe the US porn industry might find it easier to move offshore.
According to my reading of this article http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bloom07/bloom07_in dex.html in Edge(*), Creationist beliefs take hold when a child is not exposed to scientific process, or grows up in an environment hostile to science.
The problem is exacerbated when "trusted" authorities (parents, teachers, world leaders) show a disdain for science and scientific method. When these people state "it is only a theory", they are not necessarily lying, but are simply ignorant of science.
Children develop a world view which is intuitive: the world has been like this forever because it has not changed in my lifetime. When children observe scientific experiments, that are opened to a new way of thinking (structured/procedural/logical), that can slowly be developed to allow acceptance of things like geological timescales, and even that counter-intuitive idea of evolution. Without scientific exposure, the story told by the Creationist Museum feels right, which is the only trusted yardstick for right and wrong.
The problem is that a lack of science in schools feeds itself, and people without any grounding in science begin to call the whole of Science into question, and hearken back to the Good Old Days of Christian authoritarianism and intolerance.
* Note: I have not researched funding for Edge, so have no idea how militant or head-in-the-sand they are, but found the article interesting none-the-less.
I've often felt that as the rift between Science and Religion appears to become more divisive, the closer the two become in most people's minds.
There seems to be an awful lot of attention paid to the artefacts of science today - a nostalgic yearning to touch something of the vitality of the process of discovery. It's as though "science" and "discovery" are unattainable, except through contact with the objects of the past.
There is likewise a lot of effort put into seeking out the artefacts of religion - whether through archeology, or by personal pilgrimage. Spiritual growth is quickly lost or forgotten in the desire to simply encounter an object of the past, as though the modern world provides no access to the joy of spirit.
But what can we expect, when people "believe" the "miracles" of medical science, and at the same time "know" that science proves the power of prayer. Even scientific discussions in popular media can easily turn into acts of faith - obesity, global warming, cigarettes, and evolution are all fuelled by emotion instead of logic. For most people, science is religion and scientists are the High Priests.
Auctions such as this only increase the desirability of owning a piece of the past. To what end? Well, it certainly serves little scientific purpose - as has already been pointed out.
The problem isn't religion - it's dogma.
Scientists are supposed to be less dogmatic - although it does happen. Particularly when some newfangled idea threatens a long-established grants scheme.
Hmmm... or is that how religions work?
Vanuatu has cows which spend their entire lives in the jungle, without access to modern growth hormones, antibiotics, or GMO feed.
Australian cows get their antibiotics and hormones, but usually eat non-GMO feed because noone here believes in genetics.
US beef has full access to all the modern conveniences.
Now, has anyone in Northern America ever eaten a steak without cheese sauce? Or any sauce for that matter? No gravy? No garlic butter, no pepper, no salt?
Australian beef is pretty good without sauce, but you haven't really had a good steak until you've had the local product in Vanuatu.
Maybe I'm biased, but then I never really understood the point of sauces with steak until I visited the USA. Sigh...
So if you're going to clone beef, or grow it in a vat, or whatever, at least start with a decent cow.
You need to get out more, and have a look around.
Most of the world stopped looking up to the USA a long time ago, but the response to _September 11_ only served to confirmed suspicions.
Windows itself never ceases to amaze me. That it can somehow coerce an otherwise reliable Linux server to boot into a toyland of colour and light, and remain stable for whole hours at a time!
Oh, but you're coming from OS X. I guess you're used to all those colour bubbles and stuff...
But the constant reboots allow you to thump your computer on a regular basis, which is where Windows really comes into its own. Reinforcing that machines are our slaves (and not the other way around!)
And viruses. Don't forget the viruses...!
Just be careful whose dogma you are accepting. For the same reason that accepting a single encyclopaedia article as "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" - just because you saw it on CNN or PBS doesn't mean it is reality.
This story offers an alternative to Moore's take on the modern world. While I don't know EPPC from a bar of soap, they have provided greater context on items in Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 - particularly in light of your apparent agreement with many of his assertions at face value.
If you have patience, you might read the entire article. If you are already emotionally committed, you might get only as far as the second paragraph before closing it up in disgust. Or if you're like me, you might read the intro and conclusion, and skim parts of the rest - particularly the bits on actual vote counting versus exit polls.
I don't accept all the conclusions of this EPPC report, but the context is helpful and, as you pointed out, more information is good.