Quite the contrary. The correlation in fact goes in exactly the opposite direction, as shown here.
Basically, more wealth means better healthcare, less infant mortality, better family planning and more career options for women -- so they choose to have less kids. Most "rich" countries actually have negative net growth rates now.
Yes, but the average family is working twice as many hours. If you read the parent post, the utopia I was referring to was one in which people are provided with resources without having to work for them which is NOT the case in the industrialised west.
We are working more not less, so it makes sense that we are having less children. What the parent poster was suggesting is a utopia in which the robots do the work, and we all share the wealth without having to do any work for it. In that circumstance I was suggesting that people would breed.
I'd like to think that society is more dynamic than you describe.
Well, 'society' is an abstraction. It describes a group of people who are loosely tied together by some combination of language, culture and geography. Within those individuals there is a broad spread of capabilities, education, belief systems, behaviours, social development and intelligence.
Sure, some individuals in our present society could use the availability of abundant resources to enhance every aspect of the human experience, personal, cultural, technological and even extra-terrestial (ie. visiting the planets and the stars).
However, having personally met hundreds of individuals from a wide range of cultural backgrounds and socio-economic levels in society, I can assure you that a large percentage of our 'societies', in behavioural terms, have barely progressed further than pigs eating at a trough, let alone ready to expand their potential in the human realm.
If people are breeding out of control such that resources are depleted faster than they can be replentished, then *something* would have to happen. Controls on births? Maybe. A return to working for some or all of society? Maybe.
The most practical solution is to control births. Unfortunately, it is the one thing that most people find abhorent. Even in China with it's totalatarian regime, the one child policy was a continous battle to enforce, especially in the countryside. Imagine trying to introduce the idea in a 'democratic' society.
Even what you describe sounds better than the logical extension of what is happening now with 90% of the world working inhumane hours in terrible conditions and still starving.
That isn't even close to being true. Sure, there are plenty of people in Asia working in sweatshops to make our (Westerners) clothes and shoes. However, working in a rice-paddy is no picnic either. So in relative terms, what seems inhumane to us is in many cases an improvement in living standards for many workers in Asia. And they are not starving either. Their living conditions are what we would call a slum, but they are not starving by any stretch of the imagination.
As for those that are starving in Africa, that has nothing to do with working conditions, and everything to do with power and politics. African nations took economic aid, marked for tractors, fertilizer etc and used it to buy AK47's, then proceeded to dislocate and annihalate their former tribal enemies. Then when the economic aid ran dry, they sold the mining and mineral rights to multi-national corporations and used the money to buy even more AK47's.
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see the parent article mentioning population growth at all, merely human potential.
Exactly my point.
I hope we have more potential in us than just the ability to breed. : )
Well, we do, but motivating many people to expand their potential beyond eating, boozing, fucking and sleeping has historically required some kind of financial pressure or incentive.
Give them all the resources they need without any effort on their part, and a large percentage of the population will merely breed, and breed and breed. It's simple evolution. If you already have everything you need, your genes are gunna say "Replicate!".
Re:Nice to see the technology is catching up...
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Robot Sales Are Exploding
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At a certain point, a capitalist society has to mature beyond the infantile state of "mine!" that defines capitalism, and take care of all of its members, so that all of them can reach their full potential. If the resources are available to make it possible to feed, clothe, house and provide medical care for everyone, then it becomes the world's moral responsibility to do so; not doing so would be simply punitive and inhumane.
Your naivete has an endearing quality to it, like the idea of any utopia. However, history has shown that when people are given resources beyond their contribution, like you suggest, they tend to breed endlessly.
Your utopian vision would become a nightmare without some kind of restriction on the number of children people could have. Otherwise, the population would grow to a point when we couldn't even build enough robots to do all the work for the lazy bottom 50% of humanity.
Quite frankly, I think there is enough people already. Obviously, you don't.
Last time I was in California, Verizon were advertising special call rates, 7c/min to Canada, 9c to UK/France, 12c to Hong Kong/Singapore and 14c/min to all other states in the continental US!!! Ha ha.
So it was actually cheaper to call Europe from SoCal than it was to call Nevada or Arizona!
With phone cards now, I can call the US from OZ at 9c/minute. I'm expecting some US telemarketing companies to turn up on our shores anytime now.
Maybe there has never really been a Palestinian state per se,
That's not what I said. There DEFINITELY was a country known as Palestine before the Ottomans conquered it in the 1400's (not sure the exact date.
but this fact doesn't abrogate the Palestinians' rights to a home land of their own.
As soon as people start talking about 'rights' I run a mile. Because 'rights' are a human invention. When we start thinking that 'rights' are some kind of fundamental physical property of the world we live in, we do strange and violent things.
I feel that Palestinians participate in terrorism because they see that the world, particularly the major powers, are, for the most part, aligned to Israel.
No, I think that certain Palestinians committ terrorist acts because they are dirt poor, homeless and angry, and the money Hammas(a Lebanese organisation) pays to their families is the only way out of their desperate crushing poverty.
I am tiring of American policy in this situation, that it is Arafat who is the problem, that he must go. They believe that peace would erupt faster than you could say "Jimmy Carter".
Anyone who believes that would happen is an idiot.
As for the notion that nations are formed not by treaty but through wars, the Israelis and Palestinians know this all too well-- as conquerors and victims, respectively.
Right, so the conclusion would be that neither side is seeking peace, only victory.
Perhaps the Israelis could help out in this situation by Getting the phuck out of the West Bank instead of building settlements as close to the Jordan as possible, making any notion of a state for Palestinians an impossibility.
Didn't Palestine disappear in 1416(?) when the Ottoman turks conquered it?
The notion that any nation has been formed without the use of blood and iron is historically absurd.
It looks shitty to us because it upsets our TV dinners when we watch it on the 7 o'clock news, but this kind of conflict has been going on all over the world for thousands of years.
No one is to blame, I repeat, NO ONE IS TO BLAME. This is a power struggle, an ongoing war and a revolution all wrapped into one conflict.
The only thing that can stop it is the same thing that gave Europe it's longest period of peace. Secular education.
I think you misunderstand. I got my information from a CBC interview with the judge who was involved in the case. I'm guessing that you were reading the PR put out by McDonalds and friends?? Other companies were delivering their coffee at the lower temperature. McDonalds raised the temperature from the (safe) norm to the (unsafe) higher temperature to increase market share.
I have it on good authority (ie. someone actually involved in the case), that the reason Macca's raised the temperature of the coffee was to reduce the number of refills. (ie. decrease costs, increase profits).
IOW, McDonalds offered a 'bottlemless cup' of coffee, but seeing as you have to wait for the coffee to cool before you can drink it, and given that the whole point of 'fast food' is the 'fast' bit, hotter coffee meant fewer refills.
FOR THIS REASON, customers refilled their coffee before leaving and took it into the car with them, where, given the scalding temperature of the coffee and the instability introduced by the moving vehicle, produced a situation where it was EXTREMELY LIKELY that you were going to be burned by a coffee spill.
The punitive damages was a consideration of how much McDonalds had profited from the combination of the marketing pull of 'bottlomless cup of coffee' and small number of refills due to the very high temperature.
Of course, my source may have just been making this up, but I don't think so.
For centuries the study of nature in the Western world was controlled by the Christian church.....[snip] When the disadvantages of Church dogma started dragging things down the church lost its grip on such study, and only then did serious work in hard science really take off.
Now technolgy is in the hands of the Church of the Closed Source? For a while, maybe. But the particular Imp Perverse that is technology won't stay bottled up for long. And like the Vatican, the proprietary technology vendors will look just as backward and ill-serving even of their own interests when the historians set about recording what happened.
Great post!
Despite the renaissance and the industrial revolution, the Church was still extremely powerful and influential on thought until the introduction of public education, which resulted in instruction in mathematics and the sciences for the general public.
Only after the majority of people were taught maths and science did the Church's influence begin to wane (except in the US, where there seems to be a religious revival. Oh, the irony of using 'smart bombs' in a religious crusade, but I digress).
Similarly now with computers and computer software. Most people don't have the slightest clue how anything on their computer works, and so need to rely on 'oracles' and 'high priests' from the proprietary software companies.
I think the solution to this is to get open-source software into all schools, and begin teaching children about computers as early as possible. In addition to this, adults need great teaching materials that are easy to understand on topics such as operating systems and programming. These need to be freely available on the internet and easily searchable.
Education will solve the problem a lot faster than evangelisation.
1a) Allowed for indefinite detention without charges being laid.
I know that's sort of implied, just wanted to make it more explicit. (Of course, the Americans seem to have introduced that ploicy too...)
Yes, but the Americans have had to use dubious loopholes like 'material witness', which was used to hold Jose Padilla and Maher Hawash, and 'illegal combantant' which I mentioned before. Interestingly, Maher(Mike) was threatened with indefinite detention in a military brig if he didn't confess to his 'crimes'. So while the policy is similar, the Americans have had to jump through some hoops.
Us suckers in the Land of OZ don't have a pesky Bill of Rights in our Constitution, so Williams and Co just trampled them by signing into law the demolition of common law (and who knows, maybe democracy?).
Ah well, New Zealand is looking really nice. The Warriors made it to the quarter finals, the All Blacks will probably win the world cup, their Prime Minister doesn't have her tongue in GWB's arse, real estate is cheap and the air is clean. I wonder if they'll have me?
Being the force behind Australia's equivalent of the Patriot Act
The ASIO bill was much worse than the Patriot Act. Among other things it 1. Removed habeus corpus from common law. 2. Made refusal to give testimony a crime (5 years) 3. Denial of legal counsel 4. Denial of ANY counsel (incommunicado) 5. Strip search without justification 6. Only avenue of complaint via letter, which you have to give to your interrogators, who will pass it on to the ombudsman (without 'misplacing' it, yeah right...)
The press goes on about Guantanomo bay, but at least the Americans had to invent a term 'illegal combatant', and it is still being challenged. With the ASIO bill, we signed 'Guantanomo Bay' into law!
Now the Govt. can pick you up off the street hold you incommunicado, without counsel, without any rights under common law, and then imprison you for 5 years even if you don't know anything.
And now we want this nazi motherfucker to be overlording our communications as well, reading our e-mails and listening to our phone calls.Sheesh.... we are so fucked.
Don't you think more people would vote and write to their representatives before risking their lives to overturn the government?
Well, they might do that for a while until they realised the futility of such a stupid course of action. You've got to vote for somebody. What makes you think that someone who denounces the status quo would even get on the ballot? And how many letters would you write before you realised that your 'representative' doesn't give a shit what you think?
Here, most of us don't even bother. If there was so much discontent, wouldn't Nader or someone get more votes?
This makes the assumption that the votes will be counted. Or that it matters who you vote for. Anyway, in my country, voting is compulsory, and we still get corrupt incompetent assholes elected to office, so I don't see how more people voting is going to help.
That is news to me. I thought voters had to be 18. Can you cite a link?
I'm 35 and my brother is 31, but my mother still considers us her children. Wow! Isn't it amazing how a word can have a different meaning in a diferrent context. BTW, you said that parents vote, parents can be under 18.
So basically, you're an angst-ridden young man who sees doom and disaster everywhere.
Right, don't like the message, so attack the messenger. Great politics, but now everyone know's you're stupid.
That's amusing. At some level you must realize that the majority is not with you, so "the people" really means "the discontented."
No, "the people" means "the majority", and when "the majority" becomes "the discontented", then the trouble happens all by itself. Of course, next comes the shooting, and the beating and the millions of political prisoners. But you're a while away from that yet. Maybe your kids will get to enjoy it.
Long before you can do anything, the FBI will infiltrate your group. Eventually you'll be sent to prison on weapons and conspiracy charges before firing a single shot.
Only as long as the number of discontents is managable, once everyone is discontent, then you need a police state to watch the whole population. And you need a bunch of secret police groups to watch the regular police, and one big central agency to watch the secret police, oh wait....
Meanwhile the sinister cabal that has always ruled the world will continue to do so. They are called parents, and they vote.
Ha, ha... idiot. Children vote too. What matters is whether or not the vote is counted. Or worse, whether or not it matters WHO you vote for. When those behind the scenes make all the decisions, what does it matter which clown appears on battleships in a flightsuit?
You'll have to forgive some of us who may not believe that the interests of the US are somehow magically the interests of the rest of the planet. Certainly the US feels no compunction to act honorably on any other agreements we may sign with them.
For example, we used to sell a lot of wheat to Iraq. Unsubsidised wheat that is. We supplied logistical vessels plus our SAS for the war in Iraq, and as a reward we will lose our Iraq wheat contracts to subsidised US wheat farmers.Yeah, the US is really looking out for us.
It's about time we moved to protect ourselves from the strong-arm tactics of US Inc.
No, vaccination is the biggest medical fraud in human history. HIV==AIDS is only the second biggest.
I am interested in your argument. Please share!
Well, probably a little long to go into here on slashdot, but I'll summarise the main points.
1) Pasteur was an academic and scientific failure. His academic scores rarely rose above a 'C', and he was unpublished. However he had friends in the govt. of France and was extremely ambitious. He started his "work" by plagiarising the work of Professor Pierre Jacques Antoine Bechamp. He copied Bechamp's description of an experiment Bechamp had conducted on anti-bodies and published it under his own name. Yes, Pasteur was a disgraceful thief.
Later he "performed" another experiment on human anti-bodies, which became the foundation for his subsequent "immunisation theory". Under closer scrutiny, the French Academy Of Sciences came to the conclusion that Pasteur's experiment only occurred in his imagination because the experiment was not reproducable by other scientists at the time. To which Pasteur insisted that they were doing it incorrectly. At no time were instructions supplied in order that Pasteur's experiments could be independently validated. All animal tests of injected 'vaccines' resulted in severe sickness or death of the animals. (See Pasteur Exposed : Germs Genes Vaccines AKA Bechamp or Pasteur by Ethel Douglas Hume (no ISBN) (very hard to obtain a copy now) )
2) The majority of Pasteur's scientific peers at the time completely rejected his theory of immunisation. Today this is explained as resistance to change, but at the time it was no such thing. Scientists of Pasteurs time rejected his theories for the following reasons. a) They could not reproduce the results of his experiments (the basis of the scientific method). b) The theory made little sense according to their current understanding of the immune system (in the 21st century we know an incredible amount about the immune system, and Pasteur's theory makes no sense at all) c) It didn't work. Hundreds of thousands of children were "vaccinated" or "innoculated" and the incidence of childhood disease did not decrease for the year. ( In fact statistics from the city of London showed the exact opposite. The greater number of vaccinations, the greater number of cases of disease)
3) Despite this, vaccination proceeded, both in Europe and the USA. Studies done by medical practictioner from their own records, or from Department of Health or School records, show that in outbreaks of diseases, children are infected regardless of whether they have been "vaccinated" or not. At least 20 such well documented studies are summarised in "Vaccination: The 'Hidden' Facts" (ISBN 0-646-08812-2) by Ian Sinclair.
4) Viera Scheibner Ph.D., who holds a doctorate in medical science, conducted a five year study into Sudden Infant Death Syndrome(SIDS). With the help of an electrical engineer, she created a device that monitored the vital signs of infants. The machine was calibrated to produce an 'alert' condition when a combination of measurements warned of a dangerous medical condition within the infants body. These readings were then correlated temporaly (time-shift causal) with any severe illnesses or subsequent death/near death. Her conclusion was that the most common correlation for severe/near fatal illness was early vaccination. Subsequent research showed that nearly all 'SIDS' death's occurred within a 48 hour period of the triple-antigen vaccine. (See Vaccination 100 Years of Orthodox Research shows that Vaccines Represent a Medical Assault on the Immune System (ISBN 0 646 15124 X) by Viera Scheibner Ph.D.)) This was also bourne out it Japan. For the five years that Japan conducted early vaccination (three month old infants), there were between 20-100 sudden infant deaths. When the Japanese authorities ceased early vaccination, this number dropped to 0 and has remained there since.
5) Given that any person with medical qualifications, who
The "HIV==AIDS" hypothesis is the biggest medical fraud in human history. http://www.virusmyth.net/
No, vaccination is the biggest medical fraud in human history. HIV==AIDS is only the second biggest.
Re:OK, Filesharing Is Counterfeiting
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All The Rave
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Shoplifting, counterfeiting, copyight infringement are all specific kinds of criminal behavior that can be subsumed under the broader label of theft.
I assume you think that by repeating that assertion you will eventually make it true. It's not true. In fact, it's just plain wrong. Counterfeiting and copyright infringement are not, and can not be subsumed under a broader label of theft except semantically. But semantically, I can call making false assertions on slashdot theft, when really it's either stupidity or lying.
Pro-filetheft advocates like to pretend that the only thing that can be stolen is a physical entity.
I make no such assertion or pretension. A person can hack into a bank's computer and transfer "money" from one account to another. The physical money does not either exist, or move. It is still theft, however. Copyright infringement is not theft, no matter how many times you assert it is. If it was theft, then it would be called theft, not copyright infringement. You don't seem to be able to understand that.
But, that is just deliberate wordsmithing by people who need to rationalize their illegal behavior.
It is you who is wordsmithing. Laws are both specific and ambiguous. They are specific on the types of behaviour we as a society wish to prevent, but ambiguous in their scope so as to minimize legal loopholes.
Western legal systems make a very well defined distinction between larceny and copyright infringement, and they do so for good reason. Charges for larceny include degrees of severity based on whether you used a deadly weapon to carry out the act, whether you corrupted company or government officials to aid you plus many other variations.
When persons evade taxes, they are not charged with larceny(theft), they are charged with tax evasion.
When persons demand money to prevent death or destruction, they are charged with extortion, not theft.
Specific laws are created for specific crimes. They carry different degrees of severity and different sentencing. You seem unable to grasp this concept.
Re:OK, Filesharing Is Counterfeiting
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Shoplifting, copyright infringement, counterfeiting...they're all forms of theft to me.
It's a good thing you don't work in the justice system. Laws are created for specific types of 'crimes' with specific types of 'punishments'. Hence, they are not the same to anyone that matters.
But, what's the difference between making illegal copies of a dollar bill and making illegal copies of a CD?
You should have stuck with your movie ticket analogy. A dollar bill is legal tender, so there is a big difference between making copies of a dollar bill and a CD. The differences between making a copy of a movie ticket and a CD are small.
None that I can see.
As I said, it's a good thing you don't work in the justice system, if you can't see the difference between counterfeiting legal tender and making a copy of a CD. Or maybe you are astroturfing for the record industry.
So, let's call filesharing counterfeiting.
Why? When it's obviously copyright infringement. Let's call it copyright infringement. Let the RIAA make false statements about it being theft.
Happy now?
Always.
Re:Decent book review
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All The Rave
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Or, it's rather like buying legitimate tickets to the Movie-of-the Week, printing perfect counterfeit tickets, and giving them away free outside the theater.
I'm not sure if you are trolling or just stupid. Printing counterfeit tickets is counterfeiting, not theft.
Copying CD's and selling them is copyright infringement, not theft.
Copying books and selling them is copyright infringement, not theft.
Shoplifting is theft.
Hey! One from three, maybe you were just trolling....
Doing the same thing using the Internet as the delivery vehicle doesn't change a thing.
I would put it to you that what it currently happening is NOT globalization. It is instead a mechanism being used by various powerful groups to further their economic goals. You can't call it globalization until I, as an individual can freely move from one country to another and secure gainful employment therin. Currently, a large company or corporation can easily outsource my job to India or various other countries around the world, but I cannot follow my job to one of these countries. I can't go get a job in China, India or Russia. So I, as an individual, am not on a level playing field.
Amen to that! Someone with mod points add a couple of "insightfuls".
Politicians of Western countries don't like the idea of taxpayers/ratepayers/wage-slaves up and moving to a country of their choice. And they don't like the idea of thousands of poverty stricken arriving at their shores in leaky boats either.
Net result is that western pollies get a lot of political mileage out of anti-globalisation sentiment, while quietly helping mega-multi-nationals screw us.
IBM's did not comment on SCO's latest suit but instead issued a statement. "All we needed to deal with the SCO threat was some sharks with frikkin lasers on their heads. Is that so hard? Really?"
My own family in Trinidad & Tobago (a small island near Cuba) know all too well how people working in corrupt postal offices will open up boxes if it looks like there's something good in them and then keep it for themselves.
Presumably, the guy who posted the original article was prepared to take that risk in Hungary.
It probably happens in a lot of other coutries too. A reliable mail system is something that we in first world countries take for granted.
I would be surprised if the level of theft in the DHL office was as high as the post office. It could be, but I would be surprised. Without government independent freight forwarders, then using your relatives to carry things for you is probably the best way to get items from foreign countries. Of course, if the Customs Service is as corrupt as the Postal Service then there is always a risk that the goods will be "confiscated" at the airport.
High levels of Government corruption can cause problems with freight. However, I have sent valuable packages to China, whose Govt. does not exactly have the most impeccable record, and they have arrived without incident. Admitedly, I have never sent anything to Russia, or Trinidad or Tobago.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite the contrary. The correlation in fact goes in exactly the opposite direction, as shown here.
Basically, more wealth means better healthcare, less infant mortality, better family planning and more career options for women -- so they choose to have less kids. Most "rich" countries actually have negative net growth rates now.
Yes, but the average family is working twice as many hours. If you read the parent post, the utopia I was referring to was one in which people are provided with resources without having to work for them which is NOT the case in the industrialised west.
We are working more not less, so it makes sense that we are having less children. What the parent poster was suggesting is a utopia in which the robots do the work, and we all share the wealth without having to do any work for it. In that circumstance I was suggesting that people would breed.
I'd like to think that society is more dynamic than you describe.
Well, 'society' is an abstraction. It describes a group of people who are loosely tied together by some combination of language, culture and geography. Within those individuals there is a broad spread of capabilities, education, belief systems, behaviours, social development and intelligence.
Sure, some individuals in our present society could use the availability of abundant resources to enhance every aspect of the human experience, personal, cultural, technological and even extra-terrestial (ie. visiting the planets and the stars).
However, having personally met hundreds of individuals from a wide range of cultural backgrounds and socio-economic levels in society, I can assure you that a large percentage of our 'societies', in behavioural terms, have barely progressed further than pigs eating at a trough, let alone ready to expand their potential in the human realm.
If people are breeding out of control such that resources are depleted faster than they can be replentished, then *something* would have to happen. Controls on births? Maybe. A return to working for some or all of society? Maybe.
The most practical solution is to control births. Unfortunately, it is the one thing that most people find abhorent. Even in China with it's totalatarian regime, the one child policy was a continous battle to enforce, especially in the countryside. Imagine trying to introduce the idea in a 'democratic' society.
Even what you describe sounds better than the logical extension of what is happening now with 90% of the world working inhumane hours in terrible conditions and still starving.
That isn't even close to being true. Sure, there are plenty of people in Asia working in sweatshops to make our (Westerners) clothes and shoes. However, working in a rice-paddy is no picnic either. So in relative terms, what seems inhumane to us is in many cases an improvement in living standards for many workers in Asia. And they are not starving either. Their living conditions are what we would call a slum, but they are not starving by any stretch of the imagination.
As for those that are starving in Africa, that has nothing to do with working conditions, and everything to do with power and politics. African nations took economic aid, marked for tractors, fertilizer etc and used it to buy AK47's, then proceeded to dislocate and annihalate their former tribal enemies. Then when the economic aid ran dry, they sold the mining and mineral rights to multi-national corporations and used the money to buy even more AK47's.
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see the parent article mentioning population growth at all, merely human potential.
Exactly my point.
I hope we have more potential in us than just the ability to breed. : )
Well, we do, but motivating many people to expand their potential beyond eating, boozing, fucking and sleeping has historically required some kind of financial pressure or incentive.
Give them all the resources they need without any effort on their part, and a large percentage of the population will merely breed, and breed and breed. It's simple evolution. If you already have everything you need, your genes are gunna say "Replicate!".
At a certain point, a capitalist society has to mature beyond the infantile state of "mine!" that defines capitalism, and take care of all of its members, so that all of them can reach their full potential. If the resources are available to make it possible to feed, clothe, house and provide medical care for everyone, then it becomes the world's moral responsibility to do so; not doing so would be simply punitive and inhumane.
Your naivete has an endearing quality to it, like the idea of any utopia. However, history has shown that when people are given resources beyond their contribution, like you suggest, they tend to breed endlessly.
Your utopian vision would become a nightmare without some kind of restriction on the number of children people could have. Otherwise, the population would grow to a point when we couldn't even build enough robots to do all the work for the lazy bottom 50% of humanity.
Quite frankly, I think there is enough people already. Obviously, you don't.
Last time I was in California, Verizon were advertising special call rates, 7c/min to Canada, 9c to UK/France, 12c to Hong Kong/Singapore and 14c/min to all other states in the continental US!!! Ha ha.
So it was actually cheaper to call Europe from SoCal than it was to call Nevada or Arizona!
With phone cards now, I can call the US from OZ at 9c/minute. I'm expecting some US telemarketing companies to turn up on our shores anytime now.
Maybe there has never really been a Palestinian state per se,
That's not what I said. There DEFINITELY was a country known as Palestine before the Ottomans conquered it in the 1400's (not sure the exact date.
but this fact doesn't abrogate the Palestinians' rights to a home land of their own.
As soon as people start talking about 'rights' I run a mile. Because 'rights' are a human invention. When we start thinking that 'rights' are some kind of fundamental physical property of the world we live in, we do strange and violent things.
I feel that Palestinians participate in terrorism because they see that the world, particularly the major powers, are, for the most part, aligned to Israel.
No, I think that certain Palestinians committ terrorist acts because they are dirt poor, homeless and angry, and the money Hammas(a Lebanese organisation) pays to their families is the only way out of their desperate crushing poverty.
I am tiring of American policy in this situation, that it is Arafat who is the problem, that he must go. They believe that peace would erupt faster than you could say "Jimmy Carter".
Anyone who believes that would happen is an idiot.
As for the notion that nations are formed not by treaty but through wars, the Israelis and Palestinians know this all too well-- as conquerors and victims, respectively.
Right, so the conclusion would be that neither side is seeking peace, only victory.
This sounds like one of those loops that those AIs get into when talking to each other...
.
Actually it's called a fruit loop
Perhaps the Israelis could help out in this situation by Getting the phuck out of the West Bank instead of building settlements as close to the Jordan as possible, making any notion of a state for Palestinians an impossibility.
Didn't Palestine disappear in 1416(?) when the Ottoman turks conquered it?
The notion that any nation has been formed without the use of blood and iron is historically absurd.
It looks shitty to us because it upsets our TV dinners when we watch it on the 7 o'clock news, but this kind of conflict has been going on all over the world for thousands of years.
No one is to blame, I repeat, NO ONE IS TO BLAME. This is a power struggle, an ongoing war and a revolution all wrapped into one conflict.
The only thing that can stop it is the same thing that gave Europe it's longest period of peace. Secular education.
I think you misunderstand. I got my information from a CBC interview with the judge who was involved in the case. I'm guessing that you were reading the PR put out by McDonalds and friends?? Other companies were delivering their coffee at the lower temperature. McDonalds raised the temperature from the (safe) norm to the (unsafe) higher temperature to increase market share.
I have it on good authority (ie. someone actually involved in the case), that the reason Macca's raised the temperature of the coffee was to reduce the number of refills. (ie. decrease costs, increase profits).
IOW, McDonalds offered a 'bottlemless cup' of coffee, but seeing as you have to wait for the coffee to cool before you can drink it, and given that the whole point of 'fast food' is the 'fast' bit, hotter coffee meant fewer refills.
FOR THIS REASON, customers refilled their coffee before leaving and took it into the car with them, where, given the scalding temperature of the coffee and the instability introduced by the moving vehicle, produced a situation where it was EXTREMELY LIKELY that you were going to be burned by a coffee spill.
The punitive damages was a consideration of how much McDonalds had profited from the combination of the marketing pull of 'bottlomless cup of coffee' and small number of refills due to the very high temperature.
Of course, my source may have just been making this up, but I don't think so.
For centuries the study of nature in the Western world was controlled by the Christian church. ....[snip] When the disadvantages of Church dogma started dragging things down the church lost its grip on such study, and only then did serious work in hard science really take off.
Now technolgy is in the hands of the Church of the Closed Source? For a while, maybe. But the particular Imp Perverse that is technology won't stay bottled up for long. And like the Vatican, the proprietary technology vendors will look just as backward and ill-serving even of their own interests when the historians set about recording what happened.
Great post!
Despite the renaissance and the industrial revolution, the Church was still extremely powerful and influential on thought until the introduction of public education, which resulted in instruction in mathematics and the sciences for the general public.
Only after the majority of people were taught maths and science did the Church's influence begin to wane (except in the US, where there seems to be a religious revival. Oh, the irony of using 'smart bombs' in a religious crusade, but I digress).
Similarly now with computers and computer software. Most people don't have the slightest clue how anything on their computer works, and so need to rely on 'oracles' and 'high priests' from the proprietary software companies.
I think the solution to this is to get open-source software into all schools, and begin teaching children about computers as early as possible. In addition to this, adults need great teaching materials that are easy to understand on topics such as operating systems and programming. These need to be freely available on the internet and easily searchable.
Education will solve the problem a lot faster than evangelisation.
1a) Allowed for indefinite detention without charges being laid.
I know that's sort of implied, just wanted to make it more explicit. (Of course, the Americans seem to have introduced that ploicy too...)
Yes, but the Americans have had to use dubious loopholes like 'material witness', which was used to hold Jose Padilla and Maher Hawash, and 'illegal combantant' which I mentioned before.
Interestingly, Maher(Mike) was threatened with indefinite detention in a military brig if he didn't confess to his 'crimes'. So while the policy is similar, the Americans have had to jump through some hoops.
Us suckers in the Land of OZ don't have a pesky Bill of Rights in our Constitution, so Williams and Co just trampled them by signing into law the demolition of common law (and who knows, maybe democracy?).
Ah well, New Zealand is looking really nice. The Warriors made it to the quarter finals, the All Blacks will probably win the world cup, their Prime Minister doesn't have her tongue in GWB's arse, real estate is cheap and the air is clean. I wonder if they'll have me?
Being the force behind Australia's equivalent of the Patriot Act
...)
.... we are so fucked.
The ASIO bill was much worse than the Patriot Act. Among other things it
1. Removed habeus corpus from common law.
2. Made refusal to give testimony a crime (5 years)
3. Denial of legal counsel
4. Denial of ANY counsel (incommunicado)
5. Strip search without justification
6. Only avenue of complaint via letter, which you have to give to your interrogators, who will pass it on to the ombudsman (without 'misplacing' it, yeah right
The press goes on about Guantanomo bay, but at least the Americans had to invent a term 'illegal combatant', and it is still being challenged. With the ASIO bill, we signed 'Guantanomo Bay' into law!
Now the Govt. can pick you up off the street hold you incommunicado, without counsel, without any rights under common law, and then imprison you for 5 years even if you don't know anything.
And now we want this nazi motherfucker to be overlording our communications as well, reading our e-mails and listening to our phone calls.Sheesh
I will never call this man a pinup.... NEVER do you hear me?!
/. ed's meant to say was "Can you go from a Luddite to a pimp in one step?"
Must have been a typo. I think what the
Don't you think more people would vote and write to their representatives before risking their lives to overturn the government?
Well, they might do that for a while until they realised the futility of such a stupid course of action. You've got to vote for somebody. What makes you think that someone who denounces the status quo would even get on the ballot? And how many letters would you write before you realised that your 'representative' doesn't give a shit what you think?
Here, most of us don't even bother. If there was so much discontent, wouldn't Nader or someone get more votes?
This makes the assumption that the votes will be counted. Or that it matters who you vote for. Anyway, in my country, voting is compulsory, and we still get corrupt incompetent assholes elected to office, so I don't see how more people voting is going to help.
That is news to me. I thought voters had to be 18. Can you cite a link?
I'm 35 and my brother is 31, but my mother still considers us her children. Wow! Isn't it amazing how a word can have a different meaning in a diferrent context.
BTW, you said that parents vote, parents can be under 18.
So basically, you're an angst-ridden young man who sees doom and disaster everywhere.
... idiot. Children vote too. What matters is whether or not the vote is counted. Or worse, whether or not it matters WHO you vote for. When those behind the scenes make all the decisions, what does it matter which clown appears on battleships in a flightsuit?
Right, don't like the message, so attack the messenger. Great politics, but now everyone know's you're stupid.
That's amusing. At some level you must realize that the majority is not with you, so "the people" really means "the discontented."
No, "the people" means "the majority", and when "the majority" becomes "the discontented", then the trouble happens all by itself. Of course, next comes the shooting, and the beating and the millions of political prisoners. But you're a while away from that yet. Maybe your kids will get to enjoy it.
Long before you can do anything, the FBI will infiltrate your group. Eventually you'll be sent to prison on weapons and conspiracy charges before firing a single shot.
Only as long as the number of discontents is managable, once everyone is discontent, then you need a police state to watch the whole population. And you need a bunch of secret police groups to watch the regular police, and one big central agency to watch the secret police, oh wait....
Meanwhile the sinister cabal that has always ruled the world will continue to do so. They are called parents, and they vote.
Ha, ha
So why exactly do we not have to worry about smallpox and polio anymore?
Oh wait, I guess we do, since nobody gets vaccinated for it anymore.
I wrote a long reply, but was unable to post it due to slashdot's idiotic "Please use fewer 'junk' characters' filter.
God forbid that someone would actually post NUMBERS OR REFERENCES TO SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS on slashdot.
If you supply me with an e-mail address I can email you my reply, otherwise your ignorance will just have to be the last word.
You'll have to forgive some of us who may not believe that the interests of the US are somehow magically the interests of the rest of the planet. Certainly the US feels no compunction to act honorably on any other agreements we may sign with them.
For example, we used to sell a lot of wheat to Iraq. Unsubsidised wheat that is. We supplied logistical vessels plus our SAS for the war in Iraq, and as a reward we will lose our Iraq wheat contracts to subsidised US wheat farmers.Yeah, the US is really looking out for us.
It's about time we moved to protect ourselves from the strong-arm tactics of US Inc.
No, vaccination is the biggest medical fraud in human history. HIV==AIDS is only the second biggest.
I am interested in your argument. Please share!
Well, probably a little long to go into here on slashdot, but I'll summarise the main points.
1) Pasteur was an academic and scientific failure. His academic scores rarely rose above a 'C', and he was unpublished. However he had friends in the govt. of France and was extremely ambitious. He started his "work" by plagiarising the work of Professor Pierre Jacques Antoine Bechamp. He copied Bechamp's description of an experiment Bechamp had conducted on anti-bodies and published it under his own name. Yes, Pasteur was a disgraceful thief.
Later he "performed" another experiment on human anti-bodies, which became the foundation for his subsequent "immunisation theory". Under closer scrutiny, the French Academy Of Sciences came to the conclusion that Pasteur's experiment only occurred in his imagination because the experiment was not reproducable by other scientists at the time.
To which Pasteur insisted that they were doing it incorrectly. At no time were instructions supplied in order that Pasteur's experiments could be independently validated.
All animal tests of injected 'vaccines' resulted in severe sickness or death of the animals. (See Pasteur Exposed : Germs Genes Vaccines AKA Bechamp or Pasteur by Ethel Douglas Hume (no ISBN) (very hard to obtain a copy now) )
2) The majority of Pasteur's scientific peers at the time completely rejected his theory of immunisation. Today this is explained as resistance to change, but at the time it was no such thing. Scientists of Pasteurs time rejected his theories for the following reasons.
a) They could not reproduce the results of his experiments (the basis of the scientific method).
b) The theory made little sense according to their current understanding of the immune system (in the 21st century we know an incredible amount about the immune system, and Pasteur's theory makes no sense at all)
c) It didn't work. Hundreds of thousands of children were "vaccinated" or "innoculated" and the incidence of childhood disease did not decrease for the year. ( In fact statistics from the city of London showed the exact opposite. The greater number of vaccinations, the greater number of cases of disease)
3) Despite this, vaccination proceeded, both in Europe and the USA. Studies done by medical practictioner from their own records, or from Department of Health or School records, show that in outbreaks of diseases, children are infected regardless of whether they have been "vaccinated" or not. At least 20 such well documented studies are summarised in "Vaccination: The 'Hidden' Facts" (ISBN 0-646-08812-2) by Ian Sinclair.
4) Viera Scheibner Ph.D., who holds a doctorate in medical science, conducted a five year study into Sudden Infant Death Syndrome(SIDS). With the help of an electrical engineer, she created a device that monitored the vital signs of infants. The machine was calibrated to produce an 'alert' condition when a combination of measurements warned of a dangerous medical condition within the infants body. These readings were then correlated temporaly (time-shift causal) with any severe illnesses or subsequent death/near death. Her conclusion was that the most common correlation for severe/near fatal illness was early vaccination. Subsequent research showed that nearly all 'SIDS' death's occurred within a 48 hour period of the triple-antigen vaccine. (See Vaccination 100 Years of Orthodox Research shows that Vaccines Represent a Medical Assault on the Immune System (ISBN 0 646 15124 X) by Viera Scheibner Ph.D.))
This was also bourne out it Japan. For the five years that Japan conducted early vaccination (three month old infants), there were between 20-100 sudden infant deaths. When the Japanese authorities ceased early vaccination, this number dropped to 0 and has remained there since.
5) Given that any person with medical qualifications, who
The "HIV==AIDS" hypothesis is the biggest medical fraud in human history. http://www.virusmyth.net/
No, vaccination is the biggest medical fraud in human history. HIV==AIDS is only the second biggest.
Shoplifting, counterfeiting, copyight infringement are all specific kinds of criminal behavior that can be subsumed under the broader label of theft.
I assume you think that by repeating that assertion you will eventually make it true. It's not true. In fact, it's just plain wrong.
Counterfeiting and copyright infringement are not, and can not be subsumed under a broader label of theft except semantically. But semantically, I can call making false assertions on slashdot theft, when really it's either stupidity or lying.
Pro-filetheft advocates like to pretend that the only thing that can be stolen is a physical entity.
I make no such assertion or pretension. A person can hack into a bank's computer and transfer "money" from one account to another. The physical money does not either exist, or move. It is still theft, however. Copyright infringement is not theft, no matter how many times you assert it is. If it was theft, then it would be called theft, not copyright infringement. You don't seem to be able to understand that.
But, that is just deliberate wordsmithing by people who need to rationalize their illegal behavior.
It is you who is wordsmithing. Laws are both specific and ambiguous. They are specific on the types of behaviour we as a society wish to prevent, but ambiguous in their scope so as to minimize legal loopholes.
Western legal systems make a very well defined distinction between larceny and copyright infringement, and they do so for good reason. Charges for larceny include degrees of severity based on whether you used a deadly weapon to carry out the act, whether you corrupted company or government officials to aid you plus many other variations.
When persons evade taxes, they are not charged with larceny(theft), they are charged with tax evasion.
When persons demand money to prevent death or destruction, they are charged with extortion, not theft.
Specific laws are created for specific crimes. They carry different degrees of severity and different sentencing. You seem unable to grasp this concept.
Shoplifting, copyright infringement, counterfeiting...they're all forms of theft to me.
It's a good thing you don't work in the justice system. Laws are created for specific types of 'crimes' with specific types of 'punishments'. Hence, they are not the same to anyone that matters.
But, what's the difference between making illegal copies of a dollar bill and making illegal copies of a CD?
You should have stuck with your movie ticket analogy. A dollar bill is legal tender, so there is a big difference between making copies of a dollar bill and a CD. The differences between making a copy of a movie ticket and a CD are small.
None that I can see.
As I said, it's a good thing you don't work in the justice system, if you can't see the difference between counterfeiting legal tender and making a copy of a CD. Or maybe you are astroturfing for the record industry.
So, let's call filesharing counterfeiting.
Why? When it's obviously copyright infringement. Let's call it copyright infringement. Let the RIAA make false statements about it being theft.
Happy now?
Always.
Or, it's rather like buying legitimate tickets to the Movie-of-the Week, printing perfect counterfeit tickets, and giving them away free outside the theater.
I'm not sure if you are trolling or just stupid. Printing counterfeit tickets is counterfeiting, not theft.
Copying CD's and selling them is copyright infringement, not theft.
Copying books and selling them is copyright infringement, not theft.
Shoplifting is theft.
Hey! One from three, maybe you were just trolling
Doing the same thing using the Internet as the delivery vehicle doesn't change a thing.
That's right, you are still wrong.
I would put it to you that what it currently happening is NOT globalization. It is instead a mechanism being used by various powerful groups to further their economic goals. You can't call it globalization until I, as an individual can freely move from one country to another and secure gainful employment therin. Currently, a large company or corporation can easily outsource my job to India or various other countries around the world, but I cannot follow my job to one of these countries. I can't go get a job in China, India or Russia. So I, as an individual, am not on a level playing field.
Amen to that! Someone with mod points add a couple of "insightfuls".
Politicians of Western countries don't like the idea of taxpayers/ratepayers/wage-slaves up and moving to a country of their choice. And they don't like the idea of thousands of poverty stricken arriving at their shores in leaky boats either.
Net result is that western pollies get a lot of political mileage out of anti-globalisation sentiment, while quietly helping mega-multi-nationals screw us.
IBM's did not comment on SCO's latest suit but instead issued a statement.
"All we needed to deal with the SCO threat was some sharks with frikkin lasers on their heads. Is that so hard? Really?"
My own family in Trinidad & Tobago (a small island near Cuba) know all too well how people working in corrupt postal offices will open up boxes if it looks like there's something good in them and then keep it for themselves.
Presumably, the guy who posted the original article was prepared to take that risk in Hungary.
It probably happens in a lot of other coutries too. A reliable mail system is something that we in first world countries take for granted.
I would be surprised if the level of theft in the DHL office was as high as the post office. It could be, but I would be surprised. Without government independent freight forwarders, then using your relatives to carry things for you is probably the best way to get items from foreign countries. Of course, if the Customs Service is as corrupt as the Postal Service then there is always a risk that the goods will be "confiscated" at the airport.
High levels of Government corruption can cause problems with freight. However, I have sent valuable packages to China, whose Govt. does not exactly have the most impeccable record, and they have arrived without incident. Admitedly, I have never sent anything to Russia, or Trinidad or Tobago.