Mostly because it wasn't thought through, I suspect. Recent research seems to indicate that gut bacteria have a large influence on things like immune system, ability to process nutrients and similar, so it seems that having a certain kind bacteria can make it difficult to lose rsp. gain weight. And of course, what we eat will influence what bacteria get established in our gut too. It may be a valid corollary from these observations, that if one were to completely change one's diet from the things that favour "obese bacteria" to the things that favour "lean bacteria" and keep it up long enough, one would end up losing weight. Certainly something to think about.
I can see you feel strongly about this, but I think you have to admit that it is common in America to admire successful business people, and that being successful in business often involves a certain amount of bending the concept of honesty - just take the cosmetics industry as an extreme example, but also to a great extent food and health products. Cosmetics in particular is sold largely on what can only be called misinformation - lies, in plain English. IOW, people are not without a certain degree of admiration for what is basically dishonesty. This is also in thread with the tendency to romanticise persons like Billy the Kid etc.
And of course, something similar is implicit in the unmistakable contempt for "suckers" and "gullible idiots". Apart from all that, it is true that "suckers" are born all the time, since we're all born naive.
What amazes me is not that there are so many that fall for scams, but that people seem to admire those that perpetrate them. Otherwise, how does one explain that this kind of saying is used so widely?
How likely is it that Amazon was hacked versus the likelihood of an internal Easter weekend glitch? Or is the most obvious and likely scenario true, and Amazon simply got caught implementing a wildly-unpopular new policy without telling anyone?"
It's a question of business, I would think. I don't think a company like Amazon would do something they had reasons to suspect would upset a major section of their customers - to my mind a better question is: did they bow to pressure from conservative groups? Either way, I don't think they have more customers that are Murky Christians than customers who are gay, and I find it hard to believe they would choose to do something that would alienate an important group of customers.
It is quite startling that your post is modded "informative" - just goes to show, eh?
Islam is the Middle East's response to the Mormon religion/cult
As far as I can see, you can say the same about more or less every major religion - Christianity was a protest-religion, founded as a "better" Judaism, which was in its turn a "better" Middle-East city-god religion etc. If you read the Bible closely, you can see that the history of the people of Israel was a long series of glorified atrocities, that Jesus allegedly was rather fond of children and "laid hands on them" - which could be interpreted in several ways, if your mind is dirty enough (mine is, apparently). And so on, and so on. It's all in the fucking Bible. Seriously.
You see, just like Christianity is not what is in the Bible, but what is in the minds of the Christians, Islam is not what is in the Qur'an, but what is in the hearts of the Muslims. If one were to look at Jesus the way you look at Muhammad, as simply a person, what do we see? A middle-class sort of guy, who for reasons unknown run away into the desert, then comes back as a wild-eyed preacher and trouble-maker who upsets the establishment by beeing too much of a smart-ass and then is executed because he stupidly walk right into a wasps' nest and starts kicking influential people in the fork. As you are aware, this is not the way Christians normally read the story - as I said, it is what is in the hearts of the believers that matters; both Christianity and Islam have lent their names to the worst atrocities imaginable, and still do - on the other hand, some of the best and most beautiful things we humans are capable of have sprung from religious roots as well. In other words, it is not the religion that determines this, it is WHAT IS IN YOUR HEART.
Why? Well, a game should be - a game. That is what most people expect, I think, that it is simply a game, something fun to do for a while instead of watching tv or going outside on a rainy day.
I find it highly dubious that "players obviously want it" - gold farming is similar to cheat sheets and drop stealing (in games where you fight monsters, they drop something and then somebody else steals it). If you are playing alone and don't have the patience or talent to do well in the game, perhaps it is OK to cheat, but in MMORPGs most people just want to get to higher levels by doing the work themselves; it gives a sense of achievement. And of course, skipping over doing it yourself means that you loose out on what is supposed to be the fun part: playing the game. If you buy yourself a highlevel character, it's like buying someone else's holiday pictures and bragging about how great it is to have those photos.
It is rather stupid to keep crying wolf, when there is little to nothing to raise the alarm about. Or, alternatively, it is very clever, if you want people to not take security warnings seriously; only, I can't see why anybody in America would wan't to achieve that.
Don't we hear these allegations all too often? It's "the Chinese and Russians" they say, and apparently it comes from the CIA or something, so we can't get to see any documentation. Perhaps some would like to think they can poison China's or Russia's reputations with this kind of stories, but as I point out, all they achieve is to weaken America's defence by undermining public trust in the agencies that are supposed to help protect them - it seems idiotic to me.
And objectively, why should China or Russia want to harm America? Like it or not, they are no longer likely to be enemies of America in a future, global conflict, which will probably be between the industrialised and developing nations. To my mind it seems more believable that the culprits are international criminal gangs; multinational companies have grown to almost nation-like power, and it seems almost unthinkable that international gangs haven't grown proportionally, especially since the introduction of the internet. They would certainly have an interest in staking out as much of the public infrastructure as they can. And, of course they might also see an interest in people not believing public security warnings.
If he wants long-term stability, he should opt for a system that isn't too much cutting edge and also keep using it as he clearly has for the last 15 years: limits his use to what is necessary to get the job done. The only concession to newer technology, in my view, should be to use SATA drives, since they are more likely to still be around in 15 years; and make sure to have to physical drives - one for the system, one for data - that has been a lifesaver for me sometimes. And despite what they all say about real men and backups, just do it, regularly.
Probably the worst mistake you can make when upgrading is to go all-out for a new, hyper-giga machine. This is one of the things that always kills public instutions; they have chugged along happily for 40 years on a hand-crafted computer with ferrite-cores and running algol, and then they get the latest in high-end servers and all is chaos, because everything is completely different from what they are used to. To get a smooth transition, it is better to simply get a bigger and better machine and the continue to run the same apps on it; this lets people get used to the new hardware, and allows them time to istall and test newer SW little by little.
I am not a great admirer of North Korea, I have to say, but I feel that we have to stop the constantly confrontational approach to things. Haven't we seen enough times all through history that we tend to get what we wish for in that department? If what we want is confrontation, that is what we will get in the end; is it really worth it? There are better of defusing tensions that are all too rarely tried wholeheartedly, if at all. North Korea is a hornets' nest; don't whack it if you don't want to get stung - it might hurt.
Of course the purpose of launcing a communications satelite is also to test their skills at controlling an ICBM - if you can do one, you can do the other. Life is full of that kind of ambiguities and risks - I mean, if you go to a shop and buy a big kitchen knife you are potentially breaking the law when you take it home (at least in countries where you are not allowed to carry large knives); if you go and buy a crowbar, you "go equipped to commit a burglary" etc. What we want to achieve is not a world where nobody except the elite in the West are allowed to own potentially dangerous high-technology, but a world where nobody feels compelled to use it for weapons. To get there we need to help unstable countries get into a better frame of mind, and threatening them with overwhelming power is not the best way - one would have hoped Iraq etc etc would have taught us that by now. We should concentrate less on confrontation, name-calling and restrinctions and more on positive negotiations and mutual respect.
...the truth of the matter is, there is a high level of incompetence in the US government right now. The infrastructure is falling apart (we literally had a bridge fall down while people were driving over it), the social security has needed some fixes for a while now that were obvious, and yet no one has fixed them; the list goes on. If you can't take care of the basics, if you can't even maintain a balanced budget (which is where California especially is), then you fall into the category of incompetent. I stand by the four points I made in my previous post.
Oh, come on, be reasonable. The current administration is not responsible for the mechanical failings of infrastructure that is - what, several years old? And the same goes for social security etc - and they are desperately trying to fix things. And apart from that, if you want to achieve anything in the way of changing the way things are, being contrary and unreasonable is not the way forward; that only tells that you have given up and gone into sulking mode. The system is a huge and unwieldy juggernaut, and it is just not possible to rip the steering wheel around and turn the thing on a plate.
Also, I challenge your sweeping claim that "Government Is Incompetent" - as if everybody in all of every government is a moron, more or less. Take your example with maintaining a balanced budget - have you ever been in a situation where you have been forced into debt? And where you only earned just enough to get by before you got into debt? That is a situation I believe a lot of people in America are in now, so they will understand how it works: you still have to pay your bills and you also have to pay off your new debt - and it is very difficult to balance the budget in that situation. That is the situation the governments on all levels are in right now - they have to go out and spend a lot of money they don't have, because otherwise everything falls apart, and they can't increase their income, 'cause that means either increasing taxes on a population that can't pay them, or, God forbid, taking money from those that are seriously loaded. So the budget is unbalanced. They are doing their best, and it just isn't enough.
As for bridges falling down and the social security failing - well what do you expect, when regulations have been lax and governmental programmes have been underfunded for years - probably something like 8 years, if I am not much mistaken - it can hardly be otherwise.
I think you are perfectly right that more transparency is needed on all levels of government; but equally important is a populace that is willing and able to do the work needed, and go and find out about things - in many cases people just don't give a damn.
My chief worry is actually not so much about "increased powers" - I suspect they can already do most of this in one way or another. But centralising things means that an attacker only needs to find one weakness, so to speak, and then they would be able to wreak havoc on a grand scale.
I know it is a national pastime in America to be as negative about government and politicians as possible, and unfortunately it isn't all unjustified. But if you can't see anything good or positive even in your worst enemy, you are seriously blinkered; and what is worse, you cut yourself off from the possibility to communicate from a common basis and thus from any chance of exerting any influence. Isn't this what keeps all the stupid regional wars going for generations? The Middle East, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland until recently, much of Africa etc etc.
Your all-out, negative attitude actually plays into the hands of lousy politicians - they want you to think it is hopeless to try to change things, so they can't go on and line their own pockets they way they know best.
English has long been established as a main "trade-lingo"; I don't think anybody really minds except for the ones who feel that it somehow invalidates their local culture, being open to the world. But I wonder if we won't see it die out just like Latin and Greek did in the past - both languages were once the main language of trade, then of academia until they died out, simply because nobody actually used them in real life. With the increasing globalisation, there is no guarantee that English in any form will continue to be relevant forever; English is in many ways quirky and hard to learn above a basic level, and there are several other influential language that have simpler grammars and are easier to learn - Chinese, for example, just to mention my own favourite.
The laws of the UK only hold sway in UK, as far as I recall, so I think the risk of this being a danger to the whole world is a little overstated. The problems pointed out are real enough in their own right, I suppose, but very minor - but the lower end of the press and their minions are always whining over having to try to appear decent and honest. Strange, since there are plenty of newspapers and magazines out there that have no problem being both relevant and insightful, while still maintaining their integrity. The ones who whimper about this are the ones, like the Sun newspaper and the celeb-gossip magazines, who live on feeding their empty-headed readers a mostly fictional gruel of stupid gossip about famous people; it is a miracle that they aren't dragged to court and stripped bare every day of the year.
A balanced view on the UK laws is that maybe they are a bit off; but it is a minor problem, and I think in many cases they err far too much on the lenient side when it comes to the newsmedia.
I expect most/.ers to disagree with me, but I think it is worth keeping in mind that freedom of speech is not only not the same as a guaranteed right to speak anonymously, but it is actually intended to make anonymity irrelevant - at least when it comes to speaking your opinion about important issues of politicas, faith etc. - by giving legal protection from any persecution from the state. It is a very specific right, not meant to be a cover-all that gives anybody the right to say anything, however acrimonious, or spread rumours and snipe at people from a safe cover.
That aside - I don't know the specifics of this story. To me it seems obvious that if you have some important viewpoints and observations, you have the right to speak out about it in public and should have the courage to show your face - if you hide behind anonymity, you appear less credible, as if you are ashamed of yourself or you know that what you have to say is bullshit.
As far as I am concerned, it may be permissible to allow anonymity in some cases to protect those who might otherwise suffer unjust retaliation - eg. if they are whistleblowers, or particularly vulnerable witnesses in court - but I think it has to be limited to when there is a special need to show extra concern. I don't think this generally apllies to bloggers.
Science is sometimes about proving (or occasionally disproving) the obvious.
However, in this case it has a lot to do with the fact that certain elements - those who earned big money on pollution being allowed to happen - for many decades did everything they could to stop the government from taking appropriate action. Just like for climate change now, there were "pollution sceptics" and people advocating "common sense" and "freedom".
Another thing is that the harm caused by pollution has been hard to quantify, and therefore it has been hard to come out and say "This industry produces this amount of pollution, which causes this amount of extra death and disease, which costs society this amount of money" - if we can put a clear cost on pollution, we can justify things like pollution taxes or economic sanctions.
The scanned hardcopies are more readily electronically available than the electronic files used to generate them?
I don't know if you are aware, but it is not as simple as that. It is not actually mr Obama himself that sits in front of his PC every evening and types in this stuff after a busy day writing laws on his laptop. Somewhere in the system these laws are most likely available in electronic form, but if I know anything about bureaucracy it is that there is no such thing as just going in, identifying the right files and copying them out on a webserver. One has to address issues such as "proper procedures", "quality assurance", probably "security clearance" as well and a lot of other things. The administration knows that if they make the slightest mistake, the opposition will be all over them, pointing out how incompetent they are etc etc; so they will take it slowly and try to make sure they at least don't make the most elementary mistakes.
Other sites have pointed out that publishing PDFs containing scanned versions of the hardcopy of the legislation is more about giving the appearance of being "open" while frustrating those who want to do text searches on the legislation.
Or, to be fair, it could simply be because scanned hardcopies are easily available and therefore used as a first version, since speed is deemed to be important in this project. As I recall, many organisations with the need to handle large amounts of documents do it this way - they scan letters from clients, court documents and everything else, put it in a database and runs it through OCR if deemed necessary.
I think what we need here is a slightly more balanced outlook. I know it is traditional in public discource in America to go for maximum outrage rather than trying to see if there may be a slightly less hostile way to interpret things; I don't know why - is it that you don't want to be optimistic in case you might damage your face in the process of smiling? I'm not saying that Obama is always right, but some of the noises and moves he's making are not too bad.
It has always seemed to me that the Christians have got the wrong end of the stick. They say that - 1) mankind sinned by eating the fruit of knowledge, 2) that God was angry with us 3) that Jesus died to calm God's anger.
But if you think about it logically, God is supposed to be almighty, all-knowing, good and loving etc. - and it just doesn't add up. This good, loving and, not least, almighty God was not able to forgive the trivial transgression of having eaten some fruits - and that from a tree he himself has plonked down in the middle of the garden with a big sign on saying "Don't touch". I mean, come on, if you believe in God, at least show some respect and give him some credit instead of portraying him as the meanest and most loathsomely petty idiot around.
I think the real story, if there is a real story, is the other way round: mankind became self-aware and felt that the world and their lives were in fact far from perfect, because not only was there risk of disease and death, but now they knew about it too. Sp they were angry with God and have found it very hard to forgive him ever since. God even sent Jesus - or perhaps he incarnated as Jesus - to tell us that he will do anything to make peace with us, even die, if we will just forgive him. So the forgiveness has to go the other way - humans should forgive God for making the world like this.
At least, that makes more sense to me than the usual teachings of Christianity.
Countries like Russia, China, and India have had remarkable scientific achievements, but have been mired down by their inefficient socialist economies.
You misspelled "rampant institutionalized corruption at all levels of government".
Good Lord, this sort of tripe gets modded "Insightful" - don't people read or think about what they see here at all? Apparently not.
GP: Are Russia and India "socialist economies" at all? I wouldn't have thought so - I guess that you use the word in the American sense: "something evil". China, though, is still a socialist country - but then on the other hand, an expected growth in the region of 8% in 2009, while all the Arch-Capitalist countries in the world are in deep recession, doesn't really sound all that inefficient to me. But maybe I'm just stupid.
As for the parent - "rampant institutionalized corruption at all levels of government" - wow, you really know it all, don't you? Corruption in China is something that the central government works hard to eradicate (so that's one level of government where it isn't rampant) - it is something that goes on on the local level, as far as I know below the level of provincial government. There are three major contributing factors in this, IMO: one is that it is in many ways a traditional part of Chinese culture to give gifts when you are introduced to influential people.
Another one is the way local leaders have stepped into the traditional role of the local feudal lord - democracy as a form of government is not something that people in general just take on when they have lived under a fairly autocratic form of government for ~5000 years. Democracy has to be learned; that's how it happened in the West, certainly in Europe, where it took a couple of generations, actually. So people in rural areas still expect to have a "feudal lord" of sorts that they can give gifts so he will treat them more favourably.
And thirdly, this has become "rampant" only because of the introduction of some degree of Capitalism - after all, successful businesses have a lot more money and can therefore give better gifts. This is how corruption works in China and, I expect in most other countries. This is also why we have had scandals like the recent milk scandal or the one with the poisonous toys - local government officials have been all to willing to overlook irregularities in rich companies, and greed has led to this kind of ruthless fraud. The fact that the leaders of these companies tend to get executed indicates to me that the Chinese central government and the justice system takes the fight against crime and corruption very serious indeed.
I can imagine that the "Sir, yes sir" variant of military discipline could clash somewhat with the geekish type with mountain boots, beach shorts and half the shirt hanging out:-)
The thing is, there are many kinds of discipline - just because you don't dress sharpish and are servile to officers doesn't mean that you are undisciplined. I would argue that it takes a hell of a lot of discipline to stick with a difficult piece of code all through the night and the next day too.
"Kai" basically means something like "open (a door)" - which gives derived meanings like "begin"; I'm not quite sure how it came to mean "drive" as well. The traditional form of the character "che" is a picture of an ox-cart, BTW. If you are interested, this is a good place:
This results in tons and tons of words sounding exactly the same, and the only way to know them apart is by context.
It is, however, not as bad as you make it sound; the "context" is very often that certain meanings are expressed by certain combinations of words. The main reason why we think of Chinese as very confusing, I think, is that we associate 1 character with 1 word - which was the way it worked originally, but it would be more accurate to say that each character is a "mono-syllabic meme" which can occasionaly stand on its own, but more often is combined to form polysyllabic words. In this sense Chinese is actually not that dissimilar to most other languages.
Thus you have "qiche" (two characters) meaning "car" or "to ride a bicycle" - the ambiguity being an artifact of my inability to conveniently represent the tones of the language. Traditionally the "qi" part of it means "steam" and "che" means vehicle, so "qi" is still used in many combinations that are associated with steam and "che" is used as part of most vehicles.
No, but if you leave the key in its lock you can't consider it locked. DeCSS is a lock with its key permanently inside it. Such a lock is useless.
That is a different scenario - when you buy a thing, naturally it is yours and there shouldn't be a lock on it in the first place and nobody has the right to tell you how to use it. I mean, if you buy a knife, it is up to you whether you want to use it to open bottles and tighten screws, even if that goes against the intentions of the seller.
But everybody knows from context and whatever, that another person's home belongs to that person and that entering without permission is wrong.
young people 'feel that the law has no control over them. They just feel that they can go on the streets and do whatever they like.'
Seing that Mr Taylor is the father of Damilola Taylor, who was murdered, I almost feel ashamed to disagree with him. After such a painful loss it is not diffifult to understand that he will desperately want to see something, almost anything, done. But I don't think this is the right way - young people don't oppose the rules or disrespect the law simply because they don't feel that breaking them has no consequences. If that were the case, then harsher penalties would really work and prevent crime - which unfortunately they don't.
I think the problem is that some grow up feeling they are not part of normal society - they don't feel they receive the benefits of society and don't feel they owe society anything; so why follow the rules? Harsher punishments or taxing things does not address this problem - it would make more sense to try to find a way to integrate young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into society. They are perfectly able to follow the rules of the group or gang they belong to.
Slashdot Mirror
... why is it worded in such a way...
Mostly because it wasn't thought through, I suspect. Recent research seems to indicate that gut bacteria have a large influence on things like immune system, ability to process nutrients and similar, so it seems that having a certain kind bacteria can make it difficult to lose rsp. gain weight. And of course, what we eat will influence what bacteria get established in our gut too. It may be a valid corollary from these observations, that if one were to completely change one's diet from the things that favour "obese bacteria" to the things that favour "lean bacteria" and keep it up long enough, one would end up losing weight. Certainly something to think about.
I can see you feel strongly about this, but I think you have to admit that it is common in America to admire successful business people, and that being successful in business often involves a certain amount of bending the concept of honesty - just take the cosmetics industry as an extreme example, but also to a great extent food and health products. Cosmetics in particular is sold largely on what can only be called misinformation - lies, in plain English. IOW, people are not without a certain degree of admiration for what is basically dishonesty. This is also in thread with the tendency to romanticise persons like Billy the Kid etc.
And of course, something similar is implicit in the unmistakable contempt for "suckers" and "gullible idiots". Apart from all that, it is true that "suckers" are born all the time, since we're all born naive.
'there's a sucker born every minute,'
What amazes me is not that there are so many that fall for scams, but that people seem to admire those that perpetrate them. Otherwise, how does one explain that this kind of saying is used so widely?
How likely is it that Amazon was hacked versus the likelihood of an internal Easter weekend glitch? Or is the most obvious and likely scenario true, and Amazon simply got caught implementing a wildly-unpopular new policy without telling anyone?"
It's a question of business, I would think. I don't think a company like Amazon would do something they had reasons to suspect would upset a major section of their customers - to my mind a better question is: did they bow to pressure from conservative groups? Either way, I don't think they have more customers that are Murky Christians than customers who are gay, and I find it hard to believe they would choose to do something that would alienate an important group of customers.
It is quite startling that your post is modded "informative" - just goes to show, eh?
Islam is the Middle East's response to the Mormon religion/cult
As far as I can see, you can say the same about more or less every major religion - Christianity was a protest-religion, founded as a "better" Judaism, which was in its turn a "better" Middle-East city-god religion etc. If you read the Bible closely, you can see that the history of the people of Israel was a long series of glorified atrocities, that Jesus allegedly was rather fond of children and "laid hands on them" - which could be interpreted in several ways, if your mind is dirty enough (mine is, apparently). And so on, and so on. It's all in the fucking Bible. Seriously.
You see, just like Christianity is not what is in the Bible, but what is in the minds of the Christians, Islam is not what is in the Qur'an, but what is in the hearts of the Muslims. If one were to look at Jesus the way you look at Muhammad, as simply a person, what do we see? A middle-class sort of guy, who for reasons unknown run away into the desert, then comes back as a wild-eyed preacher and trouble-maker who upsets the establishment by beeing too much of a smart-ass and then is executed because he stupidly walk right into a wasps' nest and starts kicking influential people in the fork. As you are aware, this is not the way Christians normally read the story - as I said, it is what is in the hearts of the believers that matters; both Christianity and Islam have lent their names to the worst atrocities imaginable, and still do - on the other hand, some of the best and most beautiful things we humans are capable of have sprung from religious roots as well. In other words, it is not the religion that determines this, it is WHAT IS IN YOUR HEART.
Why? Well, a game should be - a game. That is what most people expect, I think, that it is simply a game, something fun to do for a while instead of watching tv or going outside on a rainy day.
I find it highly dubious that "players obviously want it" - gold farming is similar to cheat sheets and drop stealing (in games where you fight monsters, they drop something and then somebody else steals it). If you are playing alone and don't have the patience or talent to do well in the game, perhaps it is OK to cheat, but in MMORPGs most people just want to get to higher levels by doing the work themselves; it gives a sense of achievement. And of course, skipping over doing it yourself means that you loose out on what is supposed to be the fun part: playing the game. If you buy yourself a highlevel character, it's like buying someone else's holiday pictures and bragging about how great it is to have those photos.
It is rather stupid to keep crying wolf, when there is little to nothing to raise the alarm about. Or, alternatively, it is very clever, if you want people to not take security warnings seriously; only, I can't see why anybody in America would wan't to achieve that.
Don't we hear these allegations all too often? It's "the Chinese and Russians" they say, and apparently it comes from the CIA or something, so we can't get to see any documentation. Perhaps some would like to think they can poison China's or Russia's reputations with this kind of stories, but as I point out, all they achieve is to weaken America's defence by undermining public trust in the agencies that are supposed to help protect them - it seems idiotic to me.
And objectively, why should China or Russia want to harm America? Like it or not, they are no longer likely to be enemies of America in a future, global conflict, which will probably be between the industrialised and developing nations. To my mind it seems more believable that the culprits are international criminal gangs; multinational companies have grown to almost nation-like power, and it seems almost unthinkable that international gangs haven't grown proportionally, especially since the introduction of the internet. They would certainly have an interest in staking out as much of the public infrastructure as they can. And, of course they might also see an interest in people not believing public security warnings.
If he wants long-term stability, he should opt for a system that isn't too much cutting edge and also keep using it as he clearly has for the last 15 years: limits his use to what is necessary to get the job done. The only concession to newer technology, in my view, should be to use SATA drives, since they are more likely to still be around in 15 years; and make sure to have to physical drives - one for the system, one for data - that has been a lifesaver for me sometimes. And despite what they all say about real men and backups, just do it, regularly.
Probably the worst mistake you can make when upgrading is to go all-out for a new, hyper-giga machine. This is one of the things that always kills public instutions; they have chugged along happily for 40 years on a hand-crafted computer with ferrite-cores and running algol, and then they get the latest in high-end servers and all is chaos, because everything is completely different from what they are used to. To get a smooth transition, it is better to simply get a bigger and better machine and the continue to run the same apps on it; this lets people get used to the new hardware, and allows them time to istall and test newer SW little by little.
I am not a great admirer of North Korea, I have to say, but I feel that we have to stop the constantly confrontational approach to things. Haven't we seen enough times all through history that we tend to get what we wish for in that department? If what we want is confrontation, that is what we will get in the end; is it really worth it? There are better of defusing tensions that are all too rarely tried wholeheartedly, if at all. North Korea is a hornets' nest; don't whack it if you don't want to get stung - it might hurt.
Of course the purpose of launcing a communications satelite is also to test their skills at controlling an ICBM - if you can do one, you can do the other. Life is full of that kind of ambiguities and risks - I mean, if you go to a shop and buy a big kitchen knife you are potentially breaking the law when you take it home (at least in countries where you are not allowed to carry large knives); if you go and buy a crowbar, you "go equipped to commit a burglary" etc. What we want to achieve is not a world where nobody except the elite in the West are allowed to own potentially dangerous high-technology, but a world where nobody feels compelled to use it for weapons. To get there we need to help unstable countries get into a better frame of mind, and threatening them with overwhelming power is not the best way - one would have hoped Iraq etc etc would have taught us that by now. We should concentrate less on confrontation, name-calling and restrinctions and more on positive negotiations and mutual respect.
...the truth of the matter is, there is a high level of incompetence in the US government right now. The infrastructure is falling apart (we literally had a bridge fall down while people were driving over it), the social security has needed some fixes for a while now that were obvious, and yet no one has fixed them; the list goes on. If you can't take care of the basics, if you can't even maintain a balanced budget (which is where California especially is), then you fall into the category of incompetent. I stand by the four points I made in my previous post.
Oh, come on, be reasonable. The current administration is not responsible for the mechanical failings of infrastructure that is - what, several years old? And the same goes for social security etc - and they are desperately trying to fix things. And apart from that, if you want to achieve anything in the way of changing the way things are, being contrary and unreasonable is not the way forward; that only tells that you have given up and gone into sulking mode. The system is a huge and unwieldy juggernaut, and it is just not possible to rip the steering wheel around and turn the thing on a plate.
Also, I challenge your sweeping claim that "Government Is Incompetent" - as if everybody in all of every government is a moron, more or less. Take your example with maintaining a balanced budget - have you ever been in a situation where you have been forced into debt? And where you only earned just enough to get by before you got into debt? That is a situation I believe a lot of people in America are in now, so they will understand how it works: you still have to pay your bills and you also have to pay off your new debt - and it is very difficult to balance the budget in that situation. That is the situation the governments on all levels are in right now - they have to go out and spend a lot of money they don't have, because otherwise everything falls apart, and they can't increase their income, 'cause that means either increasing taxes on a population that can't pay them, or, God forbid, taking money from those that are seriously loaded. So the budget is unbalanced. They are doing their best, and it just isn't enough.
As for bridges falling down and the social security failing - well what do you expect, when regulations have been lax and governmental programmes have been underfunded for years - probably something like 8 years, if I am not much mistaken - it can hardly be otherwise.
I think you are perfectly right that more transparency is needed on all levels of government; but equally important is a populace that is willing and able to do the work needed, and go and find out about things - in many cases people just don't give a damn.
My chief worry is actually not so much about "increased powers" - I suspect they can already do most of this in one way or another. But centralising things means that an attacker only needs to find one weakness, so to speak, and then they would be able to wreak havoc on a grand scale.
I know it is a national pastime in America to be as negative about government and politicians as possible, and unfortunately it isn't all unjustified. But if you can't see anything good or positive even in your worst enemy, you are seriously blinkered; and what is worse, you cut yourself off from the possibility to communicate from a common basis and thus from any chance of exerting any influence. Isn't this what keeps all the stupid regional wars going for generations? The Middle East, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland until recently, much of Africa etc etc.
Your all-out, negative attitude actually plays into the hands of lousy politicians - they want you to think it is hopeless to try to change things, so they can't go on and line their own pockets they way they know best.
English has long been established as a main "trade-lingo"; I don't think anybody really minds except for the ones who feel that it somehow invalidates their local culture, being open to the world. But I wonder if we won't see it die out just like Latin and Greek did in the past - both languages were once the main language of trade, then of academia until they died out, simply because nobody actually used them in real life. With the increasing globalisation, there is no guarantee that English in any form will continue to be relevant forever; English is in many ways quirky and hard to learn above a basic level, and there are several other influential language that have simpler grammars and are easier to learn - Chinese, for example, just to mention my own favourite.
The laws of the UK only hold sway in UK, as far as I recall, so I think the risk of this being a danger to the whole world is a little overstated. The problems pointed out are real enough in their own right, I suppose, but very minor - but the lower end of the press and their minions are always whining over having to try to appear decent and honest. Strange, since there are plenty of newspapers and magazines out there that have no problem being both relevant and insightful, while still maintaining their integrity. The ones who whimper about this are the ones, like the Sun newspaper and the celeb-gossip magazines, who live on feeding their empty-headed readers a mostly fictional gruel of stupid gossip about famous people; it is a miracle that they aren't dragged to court and stripped bare every day of the year.
A balanced view on the UK laws is that maybe they are a bit off; but it is a minor problem, and I think in many cases they err far too much on the lenient side when it comes to the newsmedia.
I expect most /.ers to disagree with me, but I think it is worth keeping in mind that freedom of speech is not only not the same as a guaranteed right to speak anonymously, but it is actually intended to make anonymity irrelevant - at least when it comes to speaking your opinion about important issues of politicas, faith etc. - by giving legal protection from any persecution from the state. It is a very specific right, not meant to be a cover-all that gives anybody the right to say anything, however acrimonious, or spread rumours and snipe at people from a safe cover.
That aside - I don't know the specifics of this story. To me it seems obvious that if you have some important viewpoints and observations, you have the right to speak out about it in public and should have the courage to show your face - if you hide behind anonymity, you appear less credible, as if you are ashamed of yourself or you know that what you have to say is bullshit.
As far as I am concerned, it may be permissible to allow anonymity in some cases to protect those who might otherwise suffer unjust retaliation - eg. if they are whistleblowers, or particularly vulnerable witnesses in court - but I think it has to be limited to when there is a special need to show extra concern. I don't think this generally apllies to bloggers.
Now, go on, hate me forever and all that.
Pollution is bad for you. Well Duh...
Science is sometimes about proving (or occasionally disproving) the obvious.
However, in this case it has a lot to do with the fact that certain elements - those who earned big money on pollution being allowed to happen - for many decades did everything they could to stop the government from taking appropriate action. Just like for climate change now, there were "pollution sceptics" and people advocating "common sense" and "freedom".
Another thing is that the harm caused by pollution has been hard to quantify, and therefore it has been hard to come out and say "This industry produces this amount of pollution, which causes this amount of extra death and disease, which costs society this amount of money" - if we can put a clear cost on pollution, we can justify things like pollution taxes or economic sanctions.
The scanned hardcopies are more readily electronically available than the electronic files used to generate them?
I don't know if you are aware, but it is not as simple as that. It is not actually mr Obama himself that sits in front of his PC every evening and types in this stuff after a busy day writing laws on his laptop. Somewhere in the system these laws are most likely available in electronic form, but if I know anything about bureaucracy it is that there is no such thing as just going in, identifying the right files and copying them out on a webserver. One has to address issues such as "proper procedures", "quality assurance", probably "security clearance" as well and a lot of other things. The administration knows that if they make the slightest mistake, the opposition will be all over them, pointing out how incompetent they are etc etc; so they will take it slowly and try to make sure they at least don't make the most elementary mistakes.
Other sites have pointed out that publishing PDFs containing scanned versions of the hardcopy of the legislation is more about giving the appearance of being "open" while frustrating those who want to do text searches on the legislation.
Or, to be fair, it could simply be because scanned hardcopies are easily available and therefore used as a first version, since speed is deemed to be important in this project. As I recall, many organisations with the need to handle large amounts of documents do it this way - they scan letters from clients, court documents and everything else, put it in a database and runs it through OCR if deemed necessary.
I think what we need here is a slightly more balanced outlook. I know it is traditional in public discource in America to go for maximum outrage rather than trying to see if there may be a slightly less hostile way to interpret things; I don't know why - is it that you don't want to be optimistic in case you might damage your face in the process of smiling? I'm not saying that Obama is always right, but some of the noises and moves he's making are not too bad.
It has always seemed to me that the Christians have got the wrong end of the stick. They say that - 1) mankind sinned by eating the fruit of knowledge, 2) that God was angry with us 3) that Jesus died to calm God's anger.
But if you think about it logically, God is supposed to be almighty, all-knowing, good and loving etc. - and it just doesn't add up. This good, loving and, not least, almighty God was not able to forgive the trivial transgression of having eaten some fruits - and that from a tree he himself has plonked down in the middle of the garden with a big sign on saying "Don't touch". I mean, come on, if you believe in God, at least show some respect and give him some credit instead of portraying him as the meanest and most loathsomely petty idiot around.
I think the real story, if there is a real story, is the other way round: mankind became self-aware and felt that the world and their lives were in fact far from perfect, because not only was there risk of disease and death, but now they knew about it too. Sp they were angry with God and have found it very hard to forgive him ever since. God even sent Jesus - or perhaps he incarnated as Jesus - to tell us that he will do anything to make peace with us, even die, if we will just forgive him. So the forgiveness has to go the other way - humans should forgive God for making the world like this.
At least, that makes more sense to me than the usual teachings of Christianity.
Countries like Russia, China, and India have had remarkable scientific achievements, but have been mired down by their inefficient socialist economies.
You misspelled "rampant institutionalized corruption at all levels of government".
Good Lord, this sort of tripe gets modded "Insightful" - don't people read or think about what they see here at all? Apparently not.
GP: Are Russia and India "socialist economies" at all? I wouldn't have thought so - I guess that you use the word in the American sense: "something evil". China, though, is still a socialist country - but then on the other hand, an expected growth in the region of 8% in 2009, while all the Arch-Capitalist countries in the world are in deep recession, doesn't really sound all that inefficient to me. But maybe I'm just stupid.
As for the parent - "rampant institutionalized corruption at all levels of government" - wow, you really know it all, don't you? Corruption in China is something that the central government works hard to eradicate (so that's one level of government where it isn't rampant) - it is something that goes on on the local level, as far as I know below the level of provincial government. There are three major contributing factors in this, IMO: one is that it is in many ways a traditional part of Chinese culture to give gifts when you are introduced to influential people.
Another one is the way local leaders have stepped into the traditional role of the local feudal lord - democracy as a form of government is not something that people in general just take on when they have lived under a fairly autocratic form of government for ~5000 years. Democracy has to be learned; that's how it happened in the West, certainly in Europe, where it took a couple of generations, actually. So people in rural areas still expect to have a "feudal lord" of sorts that they can give gifts so he will treat them more favourably.
And thirdly, this has become "rampant" only because of the introduction of some degree of Capitalism - after all, successful businesses have a lot more money and can therefore give better gifts. This is how corruption works in China and, I expect in most other countries. This is also why we have had scandals like the recent milk scandal or the one with the poisonous toys - local government officials have been all to willing to overlook irregularities in rich companies, and greed has led to this kind of ruthless fraud. The fact that the leaders of these companies tend to get executed indicates to me that the Chinese central government and the justice system takes the fight against crime and corruption very serious indeed.
I can imagine that the "Sir, yes sir" variant of military discipline could clash somewhat with the geekish type with mountain boots, beach shorts and half the shirt hanging out :-)
The thing is, there are many kinds of discipline - just because you don't dress sharpish and are servile to officers doesn't mean that you are undisciplined. I would argue that it takes a hell of a lot of discipline to stick with a difficult piece of code all through the night and the next day too.
"Kai" basically means something like "open (a door)" - which gives derived meanings like "begin"; I'm not quite sure how it came to mean "drive" as well. The traditional form of the character "che" is a picture of an ox-cart, BTW. If you are interested, this is a good place:
http://www.zhongwen.com/noads.htm
This results in tons and tons of words sounding exactly the same, and the only way to know them apart is by context.
It is, however, not as bad as you make it sound; the "context" is very often that certain meanings are expressed by certain combinations of words. The main reason why we think of Chinese as very confusing, I think, is that we associate 1 character with 1 word - which was the way it worked originally, but it would be more accurate to say that each character is a "mono-syllabic meme" which can occasionaly stand on its own, but more often is combined to form polysyllabic words. In this sense Chinese is actually not that dissimilar to most other languages.
Thus you have "qiche" (two characters) meaning "car" or "to ride a bicycle" - the ambiguity being an artifact of my inability to conveniently represent the tones of the language. Traditionally the "qi" part of it means "steam" and "che" means vehicle, so "qi" is still used in many combinations that are associated with steam and "che" is used as part of most vehicles.
No, but if you leave the key in its lock you can't consider it locked. DeCSS is a lock with its key permanently inside it. Such a lock is useless.
That is a different scenario - when you buy a thing, naturally it is yours and there shouldn't be a lock on it in the first place and nobody has the right to tell you how to use it. I mean, if you buy a knife, it is up to you whether you want to use it to open bottles and tighten screws, even if that goes against the intentions of the seller.
But everybody knows from context and whatever, that another person's home belongs to that person and that entering without permission is wrong.
young people 'feel that the law has no control over them. They just feel that they can go on the streets and do whatever they like.'
Seing that Mr Taylor is the father of Damilola Taylor, who was murdered, I almost feel ashamed to disagree with him. After such a painful loss it is not diffifult to understand that he will desperately want to see something, almost anything, done. But I don't think this is the right way - young people don't oppose the rules or disrespect the law simply because they don't feel that breaking them has no consequences. If that were the case, then harsher penalties would really work and prevent crime - which unfortunately they don't.
I think the problem is that some grow up feeling they are not part of normal society - they don't feel they receive the benefits of society and don't feel they owe society anything; so why follow the rules? Harsher punishments or taxing things does not address this problem - it would make more sense to try to find a way to integrate young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into society. They are perfectly able to follow the rules of the group or gang they belong to.