Instead, if you really need to work for your company, put a VPN client on a bootable CD and bring that with you. I don't know if Windows can be used that way, but Linux can. If you go on holiday, find something better to do than hanging over your laptop - there is a world out there to be discovered.
As for photos and videos - just keep them on memory cards till you come home, or if you are worried about customs officers looking at them, upload them to a place where can download them from later. And why bring videos and music with you at all? Read a book; or if you must, bring a media player instead of a laptop.
It is up to the individual whether they want to fight this fight, of course, but most of us probably have worthier causes to spend our energy on, when it is so easy to just roll with the blows and ignore the idiots; against stupidity even the gods fight in vain.
Freedom of the market.. it sounds nice.. but when I see what's happened with oil prices and the recent banking problems then regulations don't sound too bad.
I didn't say I believe in the so-called free market. I totally agree with you - there should be some significant regulations in place. The paradoxical thing is that lack of regulations doesn't mean more freedom overall, it only means that the strongest players are better able to bully everybody else out of business. The optimal market, where playground is most level, is somewhere in between total anarchy and extreme Communism; and it is probably a lot closer to Communism than most Americans have been brought up to believe.
You say that it isn't really a difficult issue - reality shows us that it is, even if it seems like it ought to be easy. It's like saying "The Middle East situation isn't really difficult - they just have to settle their differences"; the problem is of course that each side find it really difficult to come to terms with what it is going to take to settle their differences.
You're confusing freedom of speech with some sort of entitlement that forces private companies to provide some specific grade of tool to other people
But that is the whole point I am making. One person's freedom very often tends to take something away from another person's freedom; the whole concept of freedom is being slung around so much all the time, that it has become watered down to nothing more than an excuse for everybody's egotism. Spammers use "freedom of speech" to defend their "right" to pollute our mailboxes. "Freedom" is just an empty buzz-word now.
This issue is difficult because it is about the freedom of people to exchange information vs the freedom of the market. But in the current situation I think it is one of the very minor points; ensuring that not too many people lose their livelyhoods is the big issue now and will be so for some years.
It's called outsourcing, and you live in the wrong part of the world for this. If you want to do that sort of thing you'll have to move to China or India and work for companies in EU or USA. I know of one guy who moved to Beijing, but still works as contractor for American companies - all you need is a SkypeIn phone number (or similar) in the States, so people don't have to call overseas. The only downside is that you'll have to work US office hours - Chinese living costs are much lower than in the US, so you can offer your services at very competitive rates and still be amazingly well off.
Obama is the candidate of choice by nearly 90% of the rest of the world. It's no secret that if you want people to read your spam, you'll put his name in the header. He's popular.
That's as may be, but spammers in general are simply idiots who try to exploit people that are even dumber than themselves. I think you are overestimating their intellectual capabilities by quite a wide margin.
IMO it is more likely that these spam campaigns are yet another way of trying to piss off voters with the candidate named in the subject.
It strikes me as bizarre and hypocritical to see somebody complaining about dirty tricks in such a biased and one-sided piece. It's like stealing and then calling somebody else a thief for doing the same. So breaking in to the offices of your own side is "dirty", whereas lying isn't? Both are immoral, and if you can defend one, you can probably defend the other, given the right circumstances.
Apart from that, complaining about things, but not being willing to do anything serious about it is just whining. And I suspect that the reason why nobody wants to clean up the way American politics works is that this would expose a lot of filth in all camps.
there's less control here because the government simply doesn't fear us.
Not quite - there is just another kind of control in the West. Western governments have learned that they don't need to worry about opposition as long as you give them some harmless way of venting their anger; why do you think there are so many extremely loud idiots on American television? It's a very efficient way of controlling the population.
As for China and Malaysia - I don't know Malaysia, of course, but I think if there is one thing the Beijing Olympics have demonstrated, it is that the Chinese people are right behind their government in most cases. I suspect this is the case in Malaysia too; and that is something we have to take into account when we make wise about what happens in other countries.
In most countries the government has sprung from the same culture as the people they govern, and their actions are an expression of that culture. So if the Malaysian government oppresses conversions from Islam, it is not unreasonable to contemplate the possibility that most Malaysians think that this is the right thing to do. And if the government rules in accordance with the wishes of the people, do we have any right to interfere?
Try to look at it from their perspective - would you like some foreigners to come and criticize your country, your culture and everything you believe in and are proud of?
I don't know that it is fair to call it a loss. I realize that it is always annoying and inconvenient to have to accomodate the needs of others in the name of cooperation, but this is very much in the future of the world; it has to be if we are to not just survive, but create a great future. With the internet, globalisation, international travel etc, there are simply too many issues that can only be tackled by international cooperation. We are slowly approaching a situation where the idea of an actual international government becomes the natural thing.
Both the EU and the US are examples that this can actually be done. There is a lot of room for improvement, of course, but I'm confident that we will get there.
Oh, that's so pathetic. What you are really saying is "Whine, whine, it is so tough now that we are not on top of the heap anymore".
This is Capitalism - practically an American invention and one that you guys have worked oh so hard to teach the rest of the world for about a century or so. So the Chinese are able to do it better than you; tough shit. You made the rules: anything goes, as long as it means more profit.
"I won't raise your taxes", or "I won't attempt to further restrict the right to bear arms" would be widely regarded as a campaign promise, and would be damaging if broken.
Of course it is easy to explain away afterwards anyway. When you say "I", you are talking about yourself only - "I am not going to take your money - my mate here will do that". There are ways of lying that are not technically lies.
But back to the bit about promising not to raise taxes or any similar statements. Isn't that simply either idiotic or dishonest? What if it becomes necessary to increase taxes? Should he let the country go bankrupt so he doesn't break his promise? I mean, that would be idiotic; McCain knows that, or I sincerely hope that he does - the alternative doesn't bear thinking about. So he must know that he can't realistically promise that he will never raise taxes, which leaves him with a dishonest statement. What he probably meant and what he should have said is: "I will do what I can to avoid raising taxes"; only that doesn't sound quite as catchy.
Personally I would feel much more confident about somebody who would say "We are going to have to take some tough decisions because we are in trouble". At least that would show that he has a basic grasp on reality.
The expression of disgust on former US president Bill Clinton's face during his speech to the Democratic National Convention as he says "Obama" lasts for just a fraction of a second.
This sounds like a rather thin story, scientifically; it is of course thick on propaganda. One thing is the question of what it actually is that is being detected - is it perhaps just that when the face changes from one expression to another, there will be moments when it looks happy, angry, tired or something? Another thing is the fact that nobody doesn't ever thinks and feels only one thing at a time - you can at the same time be happy at having just got a salary increase, angry because somebody has scratched your car, disgusted at something you've stepped in and so on. So if he was disgusted, does it necessarily have anything to do with Obama?
But apart from all that, in real life we often have to accept compromises and disappointments. Bill Clinton would probably have preferred to have his wife nominated rather than Obama; but he has decided that the greater cause is more important than his personal feelings. There is no reason to think that his support is not genuine and wholehearted; at least not in a fleeting facial expression. At the end of the day it is your actions that matter.
Are you really talking about the Romans, or was this just an anti-American screed
Now, why would I be anti-American? Because I think the Romans are being over-valued? You should be a little less paranoid.
Apart from that - critisizing America and American politics is not the same as hating America. The people that hate America are the ones that go and recruit suicide bombers, among other things. In fact, I would argue that people who offer honest, if sometimes harsh, criticism do so because they care about America and hate to see how bad things are going. Shouldn't a good friend try to shout some sense into your stupid head when he thinks you are acting like an idiot and hurting yourself and others around you?
Oh, give it a break already. Its like all these silly games they play in many countries about "definding our national language" - so computer terms have to be translated to something in the national language that nobody speaking that language really uses.
On a lighter note, though - you say that "languages based on a different alphabet systems are difficult to pronounce and spell phonetically". Have you checked out English recently? I would say there are few languages in the world that spell as un-phonetically as us. In fact, Chinese written in pinyin is a lot closer to the actual pronunciation of the language, it's just that they assign different sounds to the letters than we do.
Surely the most serious issue here is not whether a private email account was hacked or whether Sarah Palin tried to hide things from scrutiny, but the fact that she is putting government information - potentially sensitive and confidential - on a server outside government control. If this was a private company, she would probably be dismissed. It isn't much different from taking your work laptop computer home and leaving it in your car, something that usually has serious repercussions if it gets stolen.
This is something that should worry most American citizens - that and the fact that she seems to be even more ignorant about and less interested in international affairs than Bush. I really don't understand why it is that America keept electing politial leaders based on whether they appear to be good parents, "likeable" or good enough liars to look sincere when they talk about God. shouldn't they be elected for being good leaders, who have the knowledge and wisdom to handle the task? Who have the best interest of their people in mind? Who, in short, are aware that they are public servants and not divinely appointed kings?
Anyway, this is democracy, and America will get the leader they need; if you elect the McCain/Palin team, apparently you didn't learn the lesson with Bush and need another lesson.
The two distinguishing features of the Romans were that they were clever engineers and better at organising soldiers. They were not so much a superior civilization that conquered the barbarians by historic necessity, as a bunch of barbarians themselves, who had harvested the achievements of the Greeks, Egyptians, Persians etc etc. They just had a stronger military at a time when their neighbors didn't, and they got to write the history books; they, and later the Christian church, who in many ways were their heirs.
All those inventions you mention were not theirs.
Aqueducts: just canals on stilts, known and used for thousands of years in arid regions.
Sanitation: Known and used all over the world long before the Romans - have you ever heard of Skara Brae on the Orkney Islands? Occupied from 3100 BC and with advanced sewer system.
Roads: You are joking, right? Paved roads have been found everywhere there were people.
Medicine: the Greeks, Egyptians etc.
Education: organized schools are as old as human society, the idea of intellectual study for its own sake was invented by the Greeks, among others, and so on.
Health: in which sense? Health care? Do you think other cultures didn't take care of their sick?
Wine: Just read your Bible, mate. If we are to believe the Christians it was written well before the Romans and it mentions wine.
Public baths: Well, yes, obviously nobody ever washed before. Makes you wonder what Jesus smelled like.
Public order: There was a sort of police force in Rome itself, sort of, -ish: the quaestors. All four of them. I suspect the public order mostly just kept itself like in every other human society in the world. It is not as if it something the government has to force on people, normally.
Peace: Nonsense, and in plain contradiction of the known facts. The Roman empire existed by constantly waging war and perished when they could no longer keep it up. The so-called Pax Romana existed not because the Romans were there, but despite. You see, people generally just want to get on with their lives, they don't want to fight at every opportunity. And if the tribes of Gaul and elsewehere stopped fighting each other it was because they united against a common enemy, even after the occupation.
In fact the Roman Empire only stands out as a high point of civilization when you compare with the state of the Roman Empire after it crumbled.
Or not. We simply don't know - the alternatives, like trying to talk sense to each other rather than feeding the weapons industry and their pals in the armed forces never got an honest chance.
As opposed to all those civil targets bombed (gassed in the case of Japan) by the Axis forces?
No one is denying that our WWII enemies were bad. The question remains - is our ambition only to be no worse than them? Don't we want to be actually good as opposed to just looking good in comparison?
Both China and Russia have done their fair share of bad things. What they have never done, though, is throw nuclear bombs on two cities just because their opponent didn't immediately drop everything in their hands and throw themselves on their faces at your feet. Doing that was evil, simply. The US government knew at the time that Japan were going to capitulate very shortly, so eradicating two cities full of nothing but civilians was nothing more than an unnnecessary, cruel self-indulgence.
Maybe "the others" did things that were just as bad. But the fact remains: The US government decided to commit an act of pure evil. It is not a game of comparing the size of your dick to somebody else.
Common, but doesn't have to be
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Tech Vs. Business?
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· Score: 1, Insightful
It is a very common phenomenon, in my experience; in most companies management seem to fawn upon the sales staff and the technical staff are just workers that can be replaced at a moment's notice. Which is of course nonsense; it would venture to say that despite appearances, the production staff are the one part that a company can't do without. And in the case of technical staff - it certainly takes something like up to a year before a developer is fully up to speed and delivers their full potential.
The problem is one of respect - which is really a two-fold problem. One thing is the attitude of management - they need to fully realise how important the techies are and work towards integrating them in the decision processes of the company. They need to learn not just respect, but also how to show respect. As an example from a company I've been in: Management decided to introduce a reward scheme - your colleagues could nominate you to be a "Star" and the reward was... a horrible, star-shaped perspex sculpture. The sales and admin people loved it, but as I think you can guess, the techies did anything to avoid getting one of those. Now if the reqard had been something like the latest gadget, a technical manual or a TTY concole from the sixties with a built-in tape punch, that would have been great. Management hadn't learned how to communicate their respect to the technical staff, so they ended up feeling left out - again.
But perhaps the more important thing is self-respect. Technically minded people are very often introverts, who easily feel left outside. Social skills don't come as easy to us, so we will often end up expecting failure in situations that are not withing our professional area. We need to learn to respect ourselves and realise that we are immensely valuable, not just for our technical skills, but also on a more personal level. The thing about being introverted is that you think about things. A lot. We are the kind of people that are willing and able to think about what people bring to us; you wouldn't believe how rare that actually is - we have a lot to give to people around us, if only we believe in ourselves. It takes a lot of courage, though - I know, because I have been through that process. I don't know how many times I have felt like I had put not only my foot in my mouth, but thick socks, slalom-boots and skis as well; you just pick yourself up, say never mind and laugh with people when they laugh at you.
Of course not - being a forum where all countries in the world can meet to talk about things in the hope that they won't have to fight a war has no principles, obviously. That is where the ideals behind the Human Rights Declaration, UNICEF, FAO, WHO etc come from, from "no principles". I think what you mean is that the UN has no prejudices. UN is not there to impose the views of Western, post-WWII views on China or Burma. UN exists, because it is better to have a dialog than a war; even if it leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth. Who knows, maybe the Chinese feel sick every time they have listened to the American ambassador to the UN; but they stick to it because the alternatives are worse. And so shall we.
The UN is useless.
Or rather, the UN is wrong, because it is the UN and it is not under the control of America. Nuclear weapons have never really been anything but a dick-swinging contest; nobody has ever stooped low enough to use them - except, that is, for the Americans, and that against civil targets. Makes you think, doesn't it - it is also the US that wants to tell the rest of the world how they should think and behave. Good thing the Chinese and the Russians haven't followed your example.
The only way forward to a peaceful future is through dialog and compromise. The US brags of being "the leader of the free world" - well then take the lead towards peace. Fortunately even the Bush gorvernment seems to have realised that; they are smarter than you.
Teach the controversy - that is the latest tactic from the Creationists. I have a number of problems with what they propose; none of which have anything to do with talking about Creationism in a science class. After all, it is important not only to teach what science is, but also what it isn't, and what example could really be more suited that ID?
The problems I do have are centered around their driving motivations. A scientist genuinely searches for the truth; this is probably because as a scientist you are not as interested in the answer as in the quest to find it. It is quite common for a scientist to hold a strong opinion about something and then change his opinion in the light of new evidence; it happens many times every day all over the world. The Creationists, on the other hand, have decided what the truth is; or it has been revealed to them (the question being, of course, by whom?). They don't want to let evidence get in the way of their Truth, so the evidence is interpreted to fit with their conclusion.
This is why scientists so often are atheists - they say things like "if God exists, then he would probably manifest himself like thus; after all, that is what the Bible says". After a while one tends to run out of faith, because apparently God never, ever manifests himself in any way that we can detect. That is not to say that all scientists have rejected the possibility of the supernatural or even of God; but if he is real and not just a delusion, you would expect to find solid evidence of some sort somewhere. Let us see it and we will believe.
On the other hand, Creationists and their ilk will explain away the lack of evidence rather than face the logical conclusion, sometimes resorting to impressive intellectual feats of reinterpreting "God's will". Allegedly God hears our prayers and answers them, he is good and relieves our pain and cures our illnesses miraculously - so you pray for your child, who is slowly rotting away of some disease, in constant pain that no medicine can help; but to no avail. And then you are supposed to explain that away as "God's will that I don't understand"? To me that kind of "faith" has nothing to do with faith; it is simply unwillingness to face up to the truth. Truth is not something insanely complex, full of insoluble self-contradictions - this is why we call it "the plain truth"; it is generally plain and straightforward.
Apart from that whole discussion there is another, much more down-to-earth reason that Creationism should not be taught as if it were "another possibility on par with science" - public schools are publically funded. They are paid for by everybody, and it does not make sense or reason that you shold be made to pay for the religious indoctrination of your own children, unless you yourself agree with that religious view. Would Christian Creationists accept it if their children were taught Islam or Hinduism rather than the Christian religion? Of course not, and since public education is paid for by everybody, Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Atheists, Satanists and what have you, the only reasonable solution is to ban religion from education; and certainly from science education.
I don't think there is anything wrong with testing peoples' skills in principle. What I do have a problem with is when the test is verging on the idiotic - like when it is full of questions that are either ridiculously simple or relate to exotic stuff that is unlikely to be used. I mean, the test should test whether the candidate has skills that are relevant; please note that there are two aspects to consider: 1. Skills and 2. Relevance. If you need a programmer, do you actually need to test whether the candidate can give you the definition of an abstract base class without looking it up? Or do you need someone who can solve the problems he is given, relate to the customer's needs etc, who is able to go and ask if he doesn't know etc?
If you want to test candidates, give them something from a typical real-life problem and see how they tackle it. I worked with a guy once, who had almost encyclopedic knowledge about Oracle's SQL*Forms, but who was completely paralysed when faced with implementing a simple, real-life problem. You could show him, "look, here is a table, then you create input fields like this and voila, you are done" - but when you gave him another, equally simple table and told him to make a simple input form like the one before, he just couldn't do it. He had the knowledge, but not the skills.
It is not possible to have both a consistent and perfectly just set of laws.
True - fortunately justice is not the same as "the law"; justice itself is only what people in general (ie. "on average") feel is "right" for some reason, and the law will never be more than the set of compromises that the legislators have been able to put into law. Even the best of laws will quite often not match "justice" although it will try to get close.
And public order isn't the same as obeying the law to the letter. Public order is when there is a general absence of violent conflict, and daily life works as expected, to give a not too precise definition; this is as far as I can see the natural state of any society, whether they have laws in the formal sense or not. Which incidentally is why we have to make new laws all the time; laws are only made when the need arises to regulate something, and that need only arises when people can't find a way to sort out their problems on their own without upsetting the public order.
To be fair, I think this is probably just part of a major brainstorming session on how to solve our problems with climate change.
Personlly I think we now have little alternative but to endure the changes and try to adjust; we might save the situation IF there had been the polical will to make the sacrifices necessary, and IF everybody in the world genuinely saw the need. But we don't. However, it still makes sense to get rid of burning fossil fuels and wasting resources that cannot be replaced - we will need that skill. And it still makes sense to put an effort into saving bio-diversity everywhere on the planet, because we will need every bit of it that we can save.
But this idea - like the ideas with the space mirrors and spreading particles in the atmospere - is simply stupid. It's like paying off a debt with a loan - it isn't necessarily a bad idea, but before you engage in that, you want to be absolutely sure that it doesn't leave you worse off. I can see a lot of problems with this scheme without even having thought about it: we are spraying salt water up in the air - where is that salt going to end up? Or rather, how big a part of it will end up on land, where it could potentially be a problem?
And how many sea creatures - fish, jelly fish, dolphins etc - will this scheme kill by shredding them and blasting the up in the atmosphere? If we implement this, we will want it to have significant impact - but then the unintended side effect will most likely also be significant. As far as I can see, we can probably adjust somewhat to the worst of global warming, simply by not living beyond our means.
What you mean is probably that public order is antithetical to freedom; which is still a rather dubious statement. Democracy is not some magical substance that guarantees freedom or anything else - it is only a form of government that allows part of the citizens a measure of influence on the government's decision making. It is perfectly possible to imagine a democratic society where everybody is happy and feels no need for unrest. Democracy was not introduced because it looked like a bloody good idea at the time - it was introduced because it was hoped that it would help solve the problems with unrest caused by the government not representing the people.
Looking at the comments, I can see that people on this list - i.e. mostly Americans - are generally against trade unions. Now, putting to one side the question of whether it is actually a good idea or not, why are people against the idea?
I mean - as far as I can see, what most people say is that they've seen some spectacularly bad examples of what trade unions do to sitfle the freedom of workers and monopolise their area of trade, but surely that is only one side of the truth? I don't know about America, of course, but in Europe most of the benefits you enjoy as an employee are due to trade unions: the right to holidays, sick pay, 8 hour work days, protection against unfair dismissal and a lot of other things. That is not to say that unions are only good - what really is? But they aren't just bad either.
I think one of the problems with unions now is that they have grown old in their way of thinking. They still think they live in a world where workers suffer under appalling conditions and have no rights at all. If we could create a trade union that served our actual interests as they are today, maybe that would indeed be worth our while?
Slashdot Mirror
Instead, if you really need to work for your company, put a VPN client on a bootable CD and bring that with you. I don't know if Windows can be used that way, but Linux can. If you go on holiday, find something better to do than hanging over your laptop - there is a world out there to be discovered.
As for photos and videos - just keep them on memory cards till you come home, or if you are worried about customs officers looking at them, upload them to a place where can download them from later. And why bring videos and music with you at all? Read a book; or if you must, bring a media player instead of a laptop.
It is up to the individual whether they want to fight this fight, of course, but most of us probably have worthier causes to spend our energy on, when it is so easy to just roll with the blows and ignore the idiots; against stupidity even the gods fight in vain.
Freedom of the market.. it sounds nice.. but when I see what's happened with oil prices and the recent banking problems then regulations don't sound too bad.
I didn't say I believe in the so-called free market. I totally agree with you - there should be some significant regulations in place. The paradoxical thing is that lack of regulations doesn't mean more freedom overall, it only means that the strongest players are better able to bully everybody else out of business. The optimal market, where playground is most level, is somewhere in between total anarchy and extreme Communism; and it is probably a lot closer to Communism than most Americans have been brought up to believe.
You say that it isn't really a difficult issue - reality shows us that it is, even if it seems like it ought to be easy. It's like saying "The Middle East situation isn't really difficult - they just have to settle their differences"; the problem is of course that each side find it really difficult to come to terms with what it is going to take to settle their differences.
You're confusing freedom of speech with some sort of entitlement that forces private companies to provide some specific grade of tool to other people
But that is the whole point I am making. One person's freedom very often tends to take something away from another person's freedom; the whole concept of freedom is being slung around so much all the time, that it has become watered down to nothing more than an excuse for everybody's egotism. Spammers use "freedom of speech" to defend their "right" to pollute our mailboxes. "Freedom" is just an empty buzz-word now.
This issue is difficult because it is about the freedom of people to exchange information vs the freedom of the market. But in the current situation I think it is one of the very minor points; ensuring that not too many people lose their livelyhoods is the big issue now and will be so for some years.
It's called outsourcing, and you live in the wrong part of the world for this. If you want to do that sort of thing you'll have to move to China or India and work for companies in EU or USA. I know of one guy who moved to Beijing, but still works as contractor for American companies - all you need is a SkypeIn phone number (or similar) in the States, so people don't have to call overseas. The only downside is that you'll have to work US office hours - Chinese living costs are much lower than in the US, so you can offer your services at very competitive rates and still be amazingly well off.
Obama is the candidate of choice by nearly 90% of the rest of the world. It's no secret that if you want people to read your spam, you'll put his name in the header. He's popular.
That's as may be, but spammers in general are simply idiots who try to exploit people that are even dumber than themselves. I think you are overestimating their intellectual capabilities by quite a wide margin.
IMO it is more likely that these spam campaigns are yet another way of trying to piss off voters with the candidate named in the subject.
It strikes me as bizarre and hypocritical to see somebody complaining about dirty tricks in such a biased and one-sided piece. It's like stealing and then calling somebody else a thief for doing the same. So breaking in to the offices of your own side is "dirty", whereas lying isn't? Both are immoral, and if you can defend one, you can probably defend the other, given the right circumstances.
Apart from that, complaining about things, but not being willing to do anything serious about it is just whining. And I suspect that the reason why nobody wants to clean up the way American politics works is that this would expose a lot of filth in all camps.
there's less control here because the government simply doesn't fear us.
Not quite - there is just another kind of control in the West. Western governments have learned that they don't need to worry about opposition as long as you give them some harmless way of venting their anger; why do you think there are so many extremely loud idiots on American television? It's a very efficient way of controlling the population.
As for China and Malaysia - I don't know Malaysia, of course, but I think if there is one thing the Beijing Olympics have demonstrated, it is that the Chinese people are right behind their government in most cases. I suspect this is the case in Malaysia too; and that is something we have to take into account when we make wise about what happens in other countries.
In most countries the government has sprung from the same culture as the people they govern, and their actions are an expression of that culture. So if the Malaysian government oppresses conversions from Islam, it is not unreasonable to contemplate the possibility that most Malaysians think that this is the right thing to do. And if the government rules in accordance with the wishes of the people, do we have any right to interfere?
Try to look at it from their perspective - would you like some foreigners to come and criticize your country, your culture and everything you believe in and are proud of?
I don't know that it is fair to call it a loss. I realize that it is always annoying and inconvenient to have to accomodate the needs of others in the name of cooperation, but this is very much in the future of the world; it has to be if we are to not just survive, but create a great future. With the internet, globalisation, international travel etc, there are simply too many issues that can only be tackled by international cooperation. We are slowly approaching a situation where the idea of an actual international government becomes the natural thing.
Both the EU and the US are examples that this can actually be done. There is a lot of room for improvement, of course, but I'm confident that we will get there.
Oh, that's so pathetic. What you are really saying is "Whine, whine, it is so tough now that we are not on top of the heap anymore".
This is Capitalism - practically an American invention and one that you guys have worked oh so hard to teach the rest of the world for about a century or so. So the Chinese are able to do it better than you; tough shit. You made the rules: anything goes, as long as it means more profit.
"I won't raise your taxes", or "I won't attempt to further restrict the right to bear arms" would be widely regarded as a campaign promise, and would be damaging if broken.
Of course it is easy to explain away afterwards anyway. When you say "I", you are talking about yourself only - "I am not going to take your money - my mate here will do that". There are ways of lying that are not technically lies.
But back to the bit about promising not to raise taxes or any similar statements. Isn't that simply either idiotic or dishonest? What if it becomes necessary to increase taxes? Should he let the country go bankrupt so he doesn't break his promise? I mean, that would be idiotic; McCain knows that, or I sincerely hope that he does - the alternative doesn't bear thinking about. So he must know that he can't realistically promise that he will never raise taxes, which leaves him with a dishonest statement. What he probably meant and what he should have said is: "I will do what I can to avoid raising taxes"; only that doesn't sound quite as catchy.
Personally I would feel much more confident about somebody who would say "We are going to have to take some tough decisions because we are in trouble". At least that would show that he has a basic grasp on reality.
The expression of disgust on former US president Bill Clinton's face during his speech to the Democratic National Convention as he says "Obama" lasts for just a fraction of a second.
This sounds like a rather thin story, scientifically; it is of course thick on propaganda. One thing is the question of what it actually is that is being detected - is it perhaps just that when the face changes from one expression to another, there will be moments when it looks happy, angry, tired or something? Another thing is the fact that nobody doesn't ever thinks and feels only one thing at a time - you can at the same time be happy at having just got a salary increase, angry because somebody has scratched your car, disgusted at something you've stepped in and so on. So if he was disgusted, does it necessarily have anything to do with Obama?
But apart from all that, in real life we often have to accept compromises and disappointments. Bill Clinton would probably have preferred to have his wife nominated rather than Obama; but he has decided that the greater cause is more important than his personal feelings. There is no reason to think that his support is not genuine and wholehearted; at least not in a fleeting facial expression. At the end of the day it is your actions that matter.
Are you really talking about the Romans, or was this just an anti-American screed
Now, why would I be anti-American? Because I think the Romans are being over-valued? You should be a little less paranoid.
Apart from that - critisizing America and American politics is not the same as hating America. The people that hate America are the ones that go and recruit suicide bombers, among other things. In fact, I would argue that people who offer honest, if sometimes harsh, criticism do so because they care about America and hate to see how bad things are going. Shouldn't a good friend try to shout some sense into your stupid head when he thinks you are acting like an idiot and hurting yourself and others around you?
Oh, give it a break already. Its like all these silly games they play in many countries about "definding our national language" - so computer terms have to be translated to something in the national language that nobody speaking that language really uses.
On a lighter note, though - you say that "languages based on a different alphabet systems are difficult to pronounce and spell phonetically". Have you checked out English recently? I would say there are few languages in the world that spell as un-phonetically as us. In fact, Chinese written in pinyin is a lot closer to the actual pronunciation of the language, it's just that they assign different sounds to the letters than we do.
Surely the most serious issue here is not whether a private email account was hacked or whether Sarah Palin tried to hide things from scrutiny, but the fact that she is putting government information - potentially sensitive and confidential - on a server outside government control. If this was a private company, she would probably be dismissed. It isn't much different from taking your work laptop computer home and leaving it in your car, something that usually has serious repercussions if it gets stolen.
This is something that should worry most American citizens - that and the fact that she seems to be even more ignorant about and less interested in international affairs than Bush. I really don't understand why it is that America keept electing politial leaders based on whether they appear to be good parents, "likeable" or good enough liars to look sincere when they talk about God. shouldn't they be elected for being good leaders, who have the knowledge and wisdom to handle the task? Who have the best interest of their people in mind? Who, in short, are aware that they are public servants and not divinely appointed kings?
Anyway, this is democracy, and America will get the leader they need; if you elect the McCain/Palin team, apparently you didn't learn the lesson with Bush and need another lesson.
The two distinguishing features of the Romans were that they were clever engineers and better at organising soldiers. They were not so much a superior civilization that conquered the barbarians by historic necessity, as a bunch of barbarians themselves, who had harvested the achievements of the Greeks, Egyptians, Persians etc etc. They just had a stronger military at a time when their neighbors didn't, and they got to write the history books; they, and later the Christian church, who in many ways were their heirs.
All those inventions you mention were not theirs.
Aqueducts: just canals on stilts, known and used for thousands of years in arid regions.
Sanitation: Known and used all over the world long before the Romans - have you ever heard of Skara Brae on the Orkney Islands? Occupied from 3100 BC and with advanced sewer system.
Roads: You are joking, right? Paved roads have been found everywhere there were people.
Medicine: the Greeks, Egyptians etc.
Education: organized schools are as old as human society, the idea of intellectual study for its own sake was invented by the Greeks, among others, and so on.
Health: in which sense? Health care? Do you think other cultures didn't take care of their sick?
Wine: Just read your Bible, mate. If we are to believe the Christians it was written well before the Romans and it mentions wine.
Public baths: Well, yes, obviously nobody ever washed before. Makes you wonder what Jesus smelled like.
Public order: There was a sort of police force in Rome itself, sort of, -ish: the quaestors. All four of them. I suspect the public order mostly just kept itself like in every other human society in the world. It is not as if it something the government has to force on people, normally.
Peace: Nonsense, and in plain contradiction of the known facts. The Roman empire existed by constantly waging war and perished when they could no longer keep it up. The so-called Pax Romana existed not because the Romans were there, but despite. You see, people generally just want to get on with their lives, they don't want to fight at every opportunity. And if the tribes of Gaul and elsewehere stopped fighting each other it was because they united against a common enemy, even after the occupation.
In fact the Roman Empire only stands out as a high point of civilization when you compare with the state of the Roman Empire after it crumbled.
it kept the peace during the Cold War.
Or not. We simply don't know - the alternatives, like trying to talk sense to each other rather than feeding the weapons industry and their pals in the armed forces never got an honest chance.
As opposed to all those civil targets bombed (gassed in the case of Japan) by the Axis forces?
No one is denying that our WWII enemies were bad. The question remains - is our ambition only to be no worse than them? Don't we want to be actually good as opposed to just looking good in comparison?
Both China and Russia have done their fair share of bad things. What they have never done, though, is throw nuclear bombs on two cities just because their opponent didn't immediately drop everything in their hands and throw themselves on their faces at your feet. Doing that was evil, simply. The US government knew at the time that Japan were going to capitulate very shortly, so eradicating two cities full of nothing but civilians was nothing more than an unnnecessary, cruel self-indulgence.
Maybe "the others" did things that were just as bad. But the fact remains: The US government decided to commit an act of pure evil. It is not a game of comparing the size of your dick to somebody else.
It is a very common phenomenon, in my experience; in most companies management seem to fawn upon the sales staff and the technical staff are just workers that can be replaced at a moment's notice. Which is of course nonsense; it would venture to say that despite appearances, the production staff are the one part that a company can't do without. And in the case of technical staff - it certainly takes something like up to a year before a developer is fully up to speed and delivers their full potential.
The problem is one of respect - which is really a two-fold problem. One thing is the attitude of management - they need to fully realise how important the techies are and work towards integrating them in the decision processes of the company. They need to learn not just respect, but also how to show respect. As an example from a company I've been in: Management decided to introduce a reward scheme - your colleagues could nominate you to be a "Star" and the reward was... a horrible, star-shaped perspex sculpture. The sales and admin people loved it, but as I think you can guess, the techies did anything to avoid getting one of those. Now if the reqard had been something like the latest gadget, a technical manual or a TTY concole from the sixties with a built-in tape punch, that would have been great. Management hadn't learned how to communicate their respect to the technical staff, so they ended up feeling left out - again.
But perhaps the more important thing is self-respect. Technically minded people are very often introverts, who easily feel left outside. Social skills don't come as easy to us, so we will often end up expecting failure in situations that are not withing our professional area. We need to learn to respect ourselves and realise that we are immensely valuable, not just for our technical skills, but also on a more personal level. The thing about being introverted is that you think about things. A lot. We are the kind of people that are willing and able to think about what people bring to us; you wouldn't believe how rare that actually is - we have a lot to give to people around us, if only we believe in ourselves. It takes a lot of courage, though - I know, because I have been through that process. I don't know how many times I have felt like I had put not only my foot in my mouth, but thick socks, slalom-boots and skis as well; you just pick yourself up, say never mind and laugh with people when they laugh at you.
The UN has no principles.
Of course not - being a forum where all countries in the world can meet to talk about things in the hope that they won't have to fight a war has no principles, obviously. That is where the ideals behind the Human Rights Declaration, UNICEF, FAO, WHO etc come from, from "no principles". I think what you mean is that the UN has no prejudices. UN is not there to impose the views of Western, post-WWII views on China or Burma. UN exists, because it is better to have a dialog than a war; even if it leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth. Who knows, maybe the Chinese feel sick every time they have listened to the American ambassador to the UN; but they stick to it because the alternatives are worse. And so shall we.
The UN is useless.
Or rather, the UN is wrong, because it is the UN and it is not under the control of America. Nuclear weapons have never really been anything but a dick-swinging contest; nobody has ever stooped low enough to use them - except, that is, for the Americans, and that against civil targets. Makes you think, doesn't it - it is also the US that wants to tell the rest of the world how they should think and behave. Good thing the Chinese and the Russians haven't followed your example.
The only way forward to a peaceful future is through dialog and compromise. The US brags of being "the leader of the free world" - well then take the lead towards peace. Fortunately even the Bush gorvernment seems to have realised that; they are smarter than you.
Teach the controversy - that is the latest tactic from the Creationists. I have a number of problems with what they propose; none of which have anything to do with talking about Creationism in a science class. After all, it is important not only to teach what science is, but also what it isn't, and what example could really be more suited that ID?
The problems I do have are centered around their driving motivations. A scientist genuinely searches for the truth; this is probably because as a scientist you are not as interested in the answer as in the quest to find it. It is quite common for a scientist to hold a strong opinion about something and then change his opinion in the light of new evidence; it happens many times every day all over the world. The Creationists, on the other hand, have decided what the truth is; or it has been revealed to them (the question being, of course, by whom?). They don't want to let evidence get in the way of their Truth, so the evidence is interpreted to fit with their conclusion.
This is why scientists so often are atheists - they say things like "if God exists, then he would probably manifest himself like thus; after all, that is what the Bible says". After a while one tends to run out of faith, because apparently God never, ever manifests himself in any way that we can detect. That is not to say that all scientists have rejected the possibility of the supernatural or even of God; but if he is real and not just a delusion, you would expect to find solid evidence of some sort somewhere. Let us see it and we will believe.
On the other hand, Creationists and their ilk will explain away the lack of evidence rather than face the logical conclusion, sometimes resorting to impressive intellectual feats of reinterpreting "God's will". Allegedly God hears our prayers and answers them, he is good and relieves our pain and cures our illnesses miraculously - so you pray for your child, who is slowly rotting away of some disease, in constant pain that no medicine can help; but to no avail. And then you are supposed to explain that away as "God's will that I don't understand"? To me that kind of "faith" has nothing to do with faith; it is simply unwillingness to face up to the truth. Truth is not something insanely complex, full of insoluble self-contradictions - this is why we call it "the plain truth"; it is generally plain and straightforward.
Apart from that whole discussion there is another, much more down-to-earth reason that Creationism should not be taught as if it were "another possibility on par with science" - public schools are publically funded. They are paid for by everybody, and it does not make sense or reason that you shold be made to pay for the religious indoctrination of your own children, unless you yourself agree with that religious view. Would Christian Creationists accept it if their children were taught Islam or Hinduism rather than the Christian religion? Of course not, and since public education is paid for by everybody, Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Atheists, Satanists and what have you, the only reasonable solution is to ban religion from education; and certainly from science education.
I don't think there is anything wrong with testing peoples' skills in principle. What I do have a problem with is when the test is verging on the idiotic - like when it is full of questions that are either ridiculously simple or relate to exotic stuff that is unlikely to be used. I mean, the test should test whether the candidate has skills that are relevant; please note that there are two aspects to consider: 1. Skills and 2. Relevance. If you need a programmer, do you actually need to test whether the candidate can give you the definition of an abstract base class without looking it up? Or do you need someone who can solve the problems he is given, relate to the customer's needs etc, who is able to go and ask if he doesn't know etc?
If you want to test candidates, give them something from a typical real-life problem and see how they tackle it. I worked with a guy once, who had almost encyclopedic knowledge about Oracle's SQL*Forms, but who was completely paralysed when faced with implementing a simple, real-life problem. You could show him, "look, here is a table, then you create input fields like this and voila, you are done" - but when you gave him another, equally simple table and told him to make a simple input form like the one before, he just couldn't do it. He had the knowledge, but not the skills.
It is not possible to have both a consistent and perfectly just set of laws.
True - fortunately justice is not the same as "the law"; justice itself is only what people in general (ie. "on average") feel is "right" for some reason, and the law will never be more than the set of compromises that the legislators have been able to put into law. Even the best of laws will quite often not match "justice" although it will try to get close.
And public order isn't the same as obeying the law to the letter. Public order is when there is a general absence of violent conflict, and daily life works as expected, to give a not too precise definition; this is as far as I can see the natural state of any society, whether they have laws in the formal sense or not. Which incidentally is why we have to make new laws all the time; laws are only made when the need arises to regulate something, and that need only arises when people can't find a way to sort out their problems on their own without upsetting the public order.
To be fair, I think this is probably just part of a major brainstorming session on how to solve our problems with climate change.
Personlly I think we now have little alternative but to endure the changes and try to adjust; we might save the situation IF there had been the polical will to make the sacrifices necessary, and IF everybody in the world genuinely saw the need. But we don't. However, it still makes sense to get rid of burning fossil fuels and wasting resources that cannot be replaced - we will need that skill. And it still makes sense to put an effort into saving bio-diversity everywhere on the planet, because we will need every bit of it that we can save.
But this idea - like the ideas with the space mirrors and spreading particles in the atmospere - is simply stupid. It's like paying off a debt with a loan - it isn't necessarily a bad idea, but before you engage in that, you want to be absolutely sure that it doesn't leave you worse off. I can see a lot of problems with this scheme without even having thought about it: we are spraying salt water up in the air - where is that salt going to end up? Or rather, how big a part of it will end up on land, where it could potentially be a problem?
And how many sea creatures - fish, jelly fish, dolphins etc - will this scheme kill by shredding them and blasting the up in the atmosphere? If we implement this, we will want it to have significant impact - but then the unintended side effect will most likely also be significant. As far as I can see, we can probably adjust somewhat to the worst of global warming, simply by not living beyond our means.
Public order is antithetical to democracy.
That is manifestly untrue.
What you mean is probably that public order is antithetical to freedom; which is still a rather dubious statement. Democracy is not some magical substance that guarantees freedom or anything else - it is only a form of government that allows part of the citizens a measure of influence on the government's decision making. It is perfectly possible to imagine a democratic society where everybody is happy and feels no need for unrest. Democracy was not introduced because it looked like a bloody good idea at the time - it was introduced because it was hoped that it would help solve the problems with unrest caused by the government not representing the people.
Looking at the comments, I can see that people on this list - i.e. mostly Americans - are generally against trade unions. Now, putting to one side the question of whether it is actually a good idea or not, why are people against the idea?
I mean - as far as I can see, what most people say is that they've seen some spectacularly bad examples of what trade unions do to sitfle the freedom of workers and monopolise their area of trade, but surely that is only one side of the truth? I don't know about America, of course, but in Europe most of the benefits you enjoy as an employee are due to trade unions: the right to holidays, sick pay, 8 hour work days, protection against unfair dismissal and a lot of other things. That is not to say that unions are only good - what really is? But they aren't just bad either.
I think one of the problems with unions now is that they have grown old in their way of thinking. They still think they live in a world where workers suffer under appalling conditions and have no rights at all. If we could create a trade union that served our actual interests as they are today, maybe that would indeed be worth our while?