- certainly not in many other countries. It begins to look like, if you want enjoy the freedom to create programs, you have to live in, say, China or some other country where being rich doesn't automatically mean being right no matter what.
Serously though, this sort of thing illustrates exactly what is wrong with patents; and I feel fairly confident that the more we see of big companies suing people for thinking and breathing, so to speak, the more likely is it that the patent system will be scrapped or changed in some fundamental way. Perhaps not in the US, where money equals truth, but in the rest of the world. Can you imagine Europe, China or Russia simply rolling over, saying 'Oh well, all meaningful ways of programming and all useful genes are owned by US companies, so all we can do is give up'? If so, would you mind sharing whatever you have been smoking?
In a way it is a good thing, because it has been obvious for years that the idea of patents is severely out of date.
Structured coding has so far been the only really big thing in programming; anything else since then has just been fads. Structured programming made it possible to write code that was reasonably easy to follow logically - compare a badly structured COBOL or FORTRAN program to well structured C program to see what I mean.
The things that have come in since then have been attempts at addressing minor shortcomings in the way people work; and not always very successfully. Compare C and C++: C is syntactically extremely simple, it gives you exactly what is necessary and nothing else. C++ tries to address the perceived shortcomings of C, mostly in the areas of reuse of code and initialisation of variables; but it comes at the cost of being an excessively complicated language and it requires a huge amount of self-discipline to avoid writing impenetrable, convoluted code.
FOSS is simply a reflection of human society; the way we function together as people. If you volunteer for something that you find gratifying in any way - it that out of self-interest or is it for the common good? You can't distinguish like that - it is both. What this guy is saying sounds more like 'you should only do things out of self-interest'; maybe this is because he like so many others is paranoid that doing something for other people could be seen as 'communist'.
So let's take this once again: 'Communism' and 'capitalism' are ideals about what is the best way to order a society. There has never been a communist society where people were not acting out of self-interest, and there has never been a capitalist society where people did not do something for others. People are people and their fundamental nature is such that both self-interest and altruism are important. My personal view is that most people would, on average, be most happy if society was more socialist than capitalist.
I'm not quite sure what to think about Mr Stallman. He certainly doesn't seem to be weighed down by self-doubt; but it is true that he has done a lot for those of us who enjoy computing and believe it shouldn't be yet another way for big corporations to make us pay though our noses. In that sense he is a true revolutionary: he is utterly convinced about the wrongness of the status quo and goes flat out to kick things over. When he started on the GNU project I don't think he was thinking about getting rich or famous, he just wanted to do something about what was and still is wrong. I respect that - a lot.
It's a funny thing though. He is an American, and what he does is seen as a fight for 'American values': freedom, fairness, equal opportunities etc. But to me as an un-American, this is socialism. A funny, old world, really; to you, as an American, socialism is either cruel totalitarianism or a stoned hippie-dream, but to many elsewhere it is about exactly those freedoms that you Americans value more than anything else. When I was young I used to think of it as 'Cristianity without God'; but of course the ideals are shared by most other religions. Wouldn't it be nice if people could put aside the labels of 'Christian', 'Communist' or whatever and see the person inside?
What you are saying amounts to simple denial of the facts.
Addiction to gaming, exercise, anorexia, work or other 'habitual' things cause the same things to happen in the brain as do nicotine, heroin, cocaine etc - as, indeed, you say yourself. The reason it is hard to get out of eg. heroin addiction is not because of the cold turkey, but because of the strong habit that is formed because of the things that happen in the brain as a result of the addiction. Addiction to games makes it feel terrible, fundamentally wrong if you don't play your games, just like the world feels totally wrong to a heroin addict, if he doesn't get his fix.
You can talk about 'only psychology' and lack of moral fibre all you like - as people always will when then have no understanding of what it is - but this is just nonsense. And stress and personal problems are not the reason why people get addicted. It is something that lies in our fundamental psychology: we learn, at a very deep and instinctive level, to distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' depending on whether the pleasure or pain circuits in the brain are activated when we do things. So if you get a mighty kick out of playing a computer game and you keep doing it for long enough, then you will instinctively feel - 'know' - that this is good, very good. And deciding against doing it becomes almost impossible, because it feels so fundamentally, so obviously right.
Calling it a 'detox' clinic is of course a buzzword that is meant to sell the idea, since 'detox' is a modern fad. But it doesn't make it any less relevant - breaking ingrained habits is infinitely harder than anything else in the world. Going cold turkey is only a small part of it, and the detox clinic, even in the case of heroin addiction, does a lot more than just pushing you through the withdrawal crisis. What you really need is 'detoxing' your habits and attitudes, and relearning what is really good and bad for you.
DRM is not all about music and films
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DRM and Democracy
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He has a good point - because DRM can easily be used for much more than controlling whether you can copy a CD or DVD.
Imagine this: At some point in the not too far future you can only watch the programs you have paid for - 'pay per view'. OK, fair enough, one might say, this is a bit like going to the cinema, and the upside is, you don't have to pay for things you don't care to watch. But most people's outlook on life, their political views, their religion and entire culture is overwhelmingly shaped by what they see on tv; and if we in the future can only watch what the tv company allows us to watch, there is a huge danger that most of the population will only be fed the political and religious views of whoever owns the information provider.
We have that situation to some extent already - at least in the US - but people can still pick up independent or even foreign channels and thus have a real chance to not be totally boxed in. But what if you can only watch what you are allowed to watch? In the beginning 'allowed to' would be about having paid for the program, but it wouldn't stay limited to that for very long. And that is what DRM is really about, if you ask me: mindcontrol.
.. an event even more catastrophic than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The attack on the World Trading Centre was bad, no doubt, but 'catastrophic'? Hurricane Katrina was a catastrophe, the tsunami was one, global warming is becoming one, and the Bush administration is worse than one; I wouldn't, however, call the terror attacks a 'catastrophe'. I thought the Americans were supposed to be 'thick skinned' and 'resilient', but since those attacks you have panicked and run around like decapitated chickens, allowing a moron like Bush and his fascist cronies to run wild over you.
I think you guys should get rid of them - people like Bush, Ashcroft, Chenie and Rice are the main reason why America has problems in the world.
Sigh - once again we see the tsunami of uninformed drivel that is provoked every time China is said to have done anything.
- when they were an isolated, communist state, that was SO EVIL!!!! - so they opened up, introduced market economy and started outcompeting America, and that is SO EVIL!!! - but they didn't respect copyright, and that was SO EVIL!!! - so now they introduce laws that protect copyright holders, and that is SO EVIL!!!
Hmmm, do we see a tendency here? It seems that China can do nothing right, no matter what.
Plus all the nonsense about whether they are really communists or not. 'Communism' and 'capitalism' as political and economical systems both have their roots in Victorian England, and just as you wouldn't expect 'capitalism' to stay the same through the > 100 years since then, you can't expect communism to be the same now as it was then. The world changes and our ideas change with it. Or, at least this is what happens outside the USA.
In my opinion what China has now is communism - not quite the thing Karl Marx described, but essentially the same. I personally think it is good, far better than what you have in the US. It is still far from perfect, but it is evolving and improving, which is what USA's system doesn't.
China and the Chinese leaders have shown great courage and made huge progress. In the beginning of the 20th century China was a backward, chaotic country with an absolute monarch, who lived in total isolation from his people. Only 50 years later China was one of the world's superpowers, and in the last ~20 years or so they have evolved from being a closed country that was limping behind socially, economically and politically to being the emerging leader of the world in all areas, whether you or anybody else like it or not. Everybody who knows about these things agree about this, even American economists are in little doubt; it's only a matter of time when America will be relegated to second or third position.
And that, in essence, is why you Americans keep whining about how bad China is; not because you really care one bit about the plight of other people. If you had cared, you wouldn't keep going on about China, but rather talked about the poverty in India, the hunger in Africa etc etc. You don't, however.
It's weird to see how 'ethics' is used as a cheap and easy excuse for not doing the right thing; how can it not be right to save the lives of children?
But of course, this is not about save the lives of poor children - it is just yet another way to earn money from the poor. If we really wanted to put an end to unnecessary suffering, it would be far more relevant to try ending poverty; it is after all not as if we in the western world couldn't it if we really wanted to.
However, there is a more sinister side to the debate about genetically modified plants: gene pollution. It works like this: you grow your modified plant, the bees (or wind) comes and takes pollen away, and some of it pollinates wild plants - or the neighbor farmer's unmodified crop.
In the first case wild plant species now carry the modification, and it may or may not pop up later in circumstances that are very unfortunate. In the second case the farmer's crop is suddenly 'illegal', because it now contains patented genes that he has not paid any ryalties for using.
Now that's the REAL ethical challenge when it comes to genetic modification.
Why would I want the playing field artificially leveled? My playing field greatly favors me because I am better at my job than most people. A collective bargaining agreement would end that advantage. I could only do as well as anyone else.
Indeed, why should anybody care the least for other people? Children starve to death at the rate of one per second or so - so what? I am well fed. Young teenage girls get raped and infected with HIV - who cares? People work their whole life for a company, but get kicked out, 'just because', and end up cheated out of their old age pension on top of it - yeah, big deal. Your mother is terminally ill with cancer because your family hasn't got enough money and society doesn't care one bit; just one more lazy, useless slob gotten rid, am I right?
You see, it is all very well talking these high and mighty words, but you too can end up at the bottom without a fighting chance. Perhaps you will care then; but it would have been more worthy if had not first shown yourself to be a selfish twit. And don't get started on the nonsense about this being only about business or something like that, because in reality it never stops there. If you are a unconcientious and heartless egotist in business, then that is likely to be what you are in all your dealings, even if you are able to explain it all away in your own mind.
Fortunately this kind of sentiment is much less prevalent in most other industrialised countries. In most of Europe companies have a legal obligation to take care of their employees, and many companies are proud of the fact that they do. And of course, by doing so they tend to get employees that are much more loyal to the company. It may be that the only thing that inspires an American to work hard is money, but I (sys admin) and most of my colleagues (UNIX developers) are motivated much more by the feeling of responsibility to each other and to the company, and by knowing that we are valued and respected by our company and our customers. American companies could learn a lot from this, I think.
Now we're going to have yet another tsunami of overly confident drivel about such words as democracy, freedom etc, that you Americans don't really have much insight into. So, to repeat myself:
Democracy - a system for electing your leaders.
Americans think that democracy is something God given which holds some kind of magical power, and that it means that you have an American style election circus. In the rest of the world we are a bit more openminded; we know that democracy is no more than one ingredient in the cocktail that forms a stable and fair society, and history has shown from time to time that it isn't always necessary; nor does it have to take the form of periodical elections of government.
Democracy doesn't work when the powers of society are not properly seperated and in balance with each other; nor does it work when the population is uneducated and/or ignorant about essential parts of reality. So in America people are ignorant to the extent that they can hardly find Europe on a map of the world and so uneducated that a significant segment of the population are under the thumbs of the medievalistic minsets of religious extremists, and believe in even the most outrageous nonsense, as long as it comes with a Bible quotation. No wonder you think you have democracy, even though all it means is that you get to choose between two of the runners up to 'The Upperclass Twit of the Year Competition'.
Freedom - being allowed to do what you want
Freedom of speech is only essential if you have something to say; you don't want to get in trouble for having dissenting opinions. On the other hand, every society have subjects that are taboo, and if they have laws forbidding them, these laws in general express what most people in that society think of as self-evident; even if outsiders don't understand it.
Take America - for you it is Communism. Oh yes, you have tame pet 'Communist Party', just like China has a tame 'Catholic Church'. They are alllowed to exist because they are considered harmless and people need a village idiot. But if they suddenly began to grow in power and influence, there would be serious trouble, I'm sure. And I am sure that if a law was suggested that would forbid communism and the communist party, it would probably have quite a lot popular support in USA.
To understand all the crap we hear about democracy and freedom of speech in China, we have to understand a bit more than the Superbowl and Big Brother; it is simply not true that the Chinese population are pining for those things. Yes, it is probably a good thing to introduce more of both over time, but democracy and freedom of speech require skills and education, as I noted above. Just look to Russia to see what happens if you simply throw it at a nation that hasn't been used to it and therefore has no experience - you get huge, organized criminal organisations, corruption etc etc.
Even we in the West didn't do it from one day to another - it took many decades, and it involved fundamental changes in the way people think - our culture, if you will. It also involved a lot of internal conflicts and violence as well as a few revolutions. And we still haven't reached the goal, as far as I can see.
So, basically, why don't you just shut up and let them get on with it? China right now has a government who are obviously committed to improving things for the people. They are aware of the huge, looming problems with environment, the problem of the growing divide between rich and poor etc etc. They also have very good reasons to believe that foreign governments like the American wouldn't at all mind if the so called democracy activists, Christian missionaries and what have you could create enough problems to weaken the Chinese nation; so doesn't it make good sense to censor them?
I don't think the Chinese leaders think democracy is bad, or religion for that matter; they just want to keep out enemy influences. America had the Communist persecutions, and there are people who will still argue tha
I remember seeing this sort of thing in a backwater like Denmark years ago - more than 6, perhaps as much as 10 years.
Apart from that, this sort of thing is yet another example that sums up all the most stupid things in modern society. You take 'modern technology' (in this case a simple process that has been known at least since Roman times) and use it for the most pathetic and useless thing you can imagine; and then you just market it as 'Wow, soooo cool'. Sometimes I think the people who 'invent' kind of things must be laughing themselves silly. Just imagine getting people to pay more money for something that is worse than anything anybody could make on their own with no effort at all.
So, why was it again that anyone would buy this? Why pay for: a glass of water, a spoonful of instant coffee, a little bit of milk powder or similar and 20+ additives which they hope will disguise the fact that the actual coffee is crap; plus of course a container and half a handful of quicklime - I mean, why, for heaven's sake?
The Inuit peoples survived for thousands of years on a diet of pure raw meat
You obviously know it all, don't you? 'Eskimo' possibly means something like 'those who eat raw meat' (look in Wikipedia), However, there is no reason to think that they only ate raw meat - they have certainly known fire as long as they have been in existence. Also, one would think the existence of cooking pots to be indicative of something, though of course you never know.
The problem with modern diet is not meat as such, I think, but the fact that ready-made meals of poor quality as well as snacks are almost impossible to avoid. When I changed my lifestyle some years ago, my biggest problem was exactly that: if you have a little change in your pocket, it can be incredibly difficult not to end up eating something you shouldn't. I had to do almost silly things to change my habits, like never carry cash at all (it is after all a little bit too silly to buy an icecream on your creditcard), only eat a packed lunch at work, always only eat dinners I have cooked myself (thus removing additives that cover up the low quality of the ingredients), never go shopping when hungry etc etc.
One thing that strikes me when the talk is on China and 'democracy' is that we just hear about how they arrest 'pro-democracy activist'; but we never hear any details about what these alleged activists actually stand for. It may be because I am blind and deaf and very, very evil (as well as stupid etc etc), but I can imagine many different kinds of activity that the activists themselves would describe as 'pro-democracy' and which others would not.
The sad truth is, the one sure way to win a lot easy sympathy from people in the US is to claim that you are 'pro-democracy' or 'religious' and being oppressed by the evil Commies. But just take the word 'democracy' - it can't always be taken at face value; after all we have the 'Democratic People's Republic of Korea' (N. Korea), the 'Democratic Republic of Congo' and not long ago the 'German Democratic Republic'.
So is there any reliable information available about these persons did and stood for? Is it possible that their variant of activism was illegal, not because they talked about democracy, but because they were engaged in subversive activities (something that is illegal in most countries, I would think)?
I don't know if I should laugh or cry when I hear this kind of oversimplified nonsense - it displays the same level of understanding as the average Hollywood movie's understanding of history, science and reality in general (ie. whatever sells the movie or sounds good in a slogan must be true).
Let's take Marx - he lived in an era where belonging to the working class meant that you were desperately poor, and where the middle and upper classes believed that different classes were almost different species; rich people in general would treat their dogs, cats and horses with more kindness and respect than they would a worker. This is the proper background for his ideas - in that age the only way to improve the conditions for the poorest people seemed to be violent revolution, and democracy certainly didn't seem to be something to rely on; it was only available to the top of society anyway. So the options seemed to be either the dictature of the wealthy or the dictature of the proletariat.
The problem with communism has never been that the ideas were wrong - only a heartless egotist would say that helping those in need is wrong, and only and idiot would say that there should be no restrictions in place for big business (unless you ARE one of those big businesses - only Microsoft thinks it is OK for Microsoft to be a monopoly). The real problem with communism has been that the writings of Karl Marx have been turned into a bible, a fundamental truth that can never, never change, and that has been seized by the reactionaries and is being used to promote a scary image of anything that smacks of limiting the profits of the few small segment of society that owns almost everything.
Meanwhile the communist idea has evolved and keeps evolving; the parts that are wrong, outdated or simply stupid are being thrown out and new parts come in. This is what you see in China - yes, they have some sort market economy and you can own property, but the system is fundamentally communism, a communism that evolves and improves. They are doing the right thing.
In fact, if you google for that, you probably only get stupid comments from the crowd of people who can't be bothered to look up the correct spelling, which is Tiananmen - 'tian' meaning 'heaven', 'an' meaning 'peace' and 'men' meaning 'door'.
When people used this kind of 'speak', whether it is techspeak or corporate speak or whatever, I suspect it simply is an attempt to cover their incompetence. It is a sort of general waffling around; if you really know what you are talking about, you will simply say it. Why would a manager say 'realignment' instead of 'firing people'? Simply because he is afraid; insecure, simply, maybe bad conscience. Think about it - if you manage a company and you realize that you actually have to fire some people, and you really feel this is the right thing to do; wouldn't you simply say something like 'This is our situation - I have to fire x people. I hate it as much as anybody, but we have to do it. We will go about it like this...'?
As for whether you have to talk like the suits - I don't know. I certainly know I wouldn't do it; being competent and speaking clearly are two of the fundamental values in my view of the world, and also the main reasons for my career success.
I've not yet seen a reason to have the.xxx domain. I'm not opposed, per se, but I have a hard time understanding the point to it. It seems more like a fun hot button to oppose the US. If that's the case, cool, enjoy tilting at that particular windmill.
You're right, there's no particular reason for wanting an xxx domain other than it might seem 'cool' to some.
And it is not the reason why people in the world oppose the US. There are many arguments why USA shouldn't have the control over the TLDs, but I suspect at the bottom of it all is the pervasive feeling that USA has for too long seen themselves as the obvious owner and ruler of the world, and that USA has little more than contempt to spare for other countries, cultures and people. I am not saying that this is how people in USA actually think, but it is the concept that seems to best sum up your foreign politics. On top of that the US are widely seen as superficial, hypocritical, selfish and untrustworthy.
And that, I think, is why everybody digs their heels in - people on all levels are very much beginning to have had enough, simply.
What I don't understand is why the nation that once seemed to be something like the guardian of the world has now become such a monster, to put not too fine a point on it.
Not that I find it unlikely that Lenovo should do this or that the Chinese intelligence services may find it attractive to have this kind of access to Computers in the US; but I doubt it would be all that effective. You have too little control over where these machines end up, for one thing.
The sad fact is that all governments spy; of course China spies on the US and countries in Europe. The US has spies both abroad and at home - we all know that it happens, and instead of giving howl of righteous outrage, we simply have take this into account.
Nobody is likely to lose anything - it is the fundamental nature of the internet that you can communicate across network boundaries. I don't understand why some people seem to be too boneheaded to just accept the fact, that all we are talking about is a strife about who gets to decide what the top level domains are and how they are administrated. In the very worst case we could have a situation where one domain name resolves to many IP addresses depending on which DNS server you query. That would be annoying, and it would probably cause enough problems for some businesses that it would be sorted out in the end.
The scenario that is described would require whole regions to be somehow confined behind a single switch or firewall - not bloody likely, if you ask me. Not even China have achieved anything like that, and they are supposed to be the world leaders in this kind of thing, if one is to believe the squabbling crowds of parrots on/.
No, the real isolation and fragmentation on the internet comes from what in your head - or rather what's not in your head, namely knowledge about the world around you. Example - because English has traditionally been so widely used, most native English speakers have felt little incentive to learn other languages - as the original post illustrates. Everybody else on the internet, however, know not only their own language, but are reasonably fluent in English and read articles in both English and their native languages; thus they are likely to have a much wider knowledge and outlook than eg. Americans. This is going to hurt both England and USA more and more in the future - just think about how hard it is for American companies to establish themselves in China; they have to hire expensive experts in Chinese language and culture. On the other hand, the Chinese already speak English - a Chinese company doesn't have that hurdle to overcome if they want to establish themselves in the US; all in all, they have easy access to the colossal Chinese market, and they can go right out in the world and take on the international community as well.
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- certainly not in many other countries. It begins to look like, if you want enjoy the freedom to create programs, you have to live in, say, China or some other country where being rich doesn't automatically mean being right no matter what.
Serously though, this sort of thing illustrates exactly what is wrong with patents; and I feel fairly confident that the more we see of big companies suing people for thinking and breathing, so to speak, the more likely is it that the patent system will be scrapped or changed in some fundamental way. Perhaps not in the US, where money equals truth, but in the rest of the world. Can you imagine Europe, China or Russia simply rolling over, saying 'Oh well, all meaningful ways of programming and all useful genes are owned by US companies, so all we can do is give up'? If so, would you mind sharing whatever you have been smoking?
In a way it is a good thing, because it has been obvious for years that the idea of patents is severely out of date.
Structured coding has so far been the only really big thing in programming; anything else since then has just been fads. Structured programming made it possible to write code that was reasonably easy to follow logically - compare a badly structured COBOL or FORTRAN program to well structured C program to see what I mean.
The things that have come in since then have been attempts at addressing minor shortcomings in the way people work; and not always very successfully. Compare C and C++: C is syntactically extremely simple, it gives you exactly what is necessary and nothing else. C++ tries to address the perceived shortcomings of C, mostly in the areas of reuse of code and initialisation of variables; but it comes at the cost of being an excessively complicated language and it requires a huge amount of self-discipline to avoid writing impenetrable, convoluted code.
So true.
FOSS is simply a reflection of human society; the way we function together as people. If you volunteer for something that you find gratifying in any way - it that out of self-interest or is it for the common good? You can't distinguish like that - it is both. What this guy is saying sounds more like 'you should only do things out of self-interest'; maybe this is because he like so many others is paranoid that doing something for other people could be seen as 'communist'.
So let's take this once again: 'Communism' and 'capitalism' are ideals about what is the best way to order a society. There has never been a communist society where people were not acting out of self-interest, and there has never been a capitalist society where people did not do something for others. People are people and their fundamental nature is such that both self-interest and altruism are important. My personal view is that most people would, on average, be most happy if society was more socialist than capitalist.
I'm not quite sure what to think about Mr Stallman. He certainly doesn't seem to be weighed down by self-doubt; but it is true that he has done a lot for those of us who enjoy computing and believe it shouldn't be yet another way for big corporations to make us pay though our noses. In that sense he is a true revolutionary: he is utterly convinced about the wrongness of the status quo and goes flat out to kick things over. When he started on the GNU project I don't think he was thinking about getting rich or famous, he just wanted to do something about what was and still is wrong. I respect that - a lot.
It's a funny thing though. He is an American, and what he does is seen as a fight for 'American values': freedom, fairness, equal opportunities etc. But to me as an un-American, this is socialism. A funny, old world, really; to you, as an American, socialism is either cruel totalitarianism or a stoned hippie-dream, but to many elsewhere it is about exactly those freedoms that you Americans value more than anything else. When I was young I used to think of it as 'Cristianity without God'; but of course the ideals are shared by most other religions. Wouldn't it be nice if people could put aside the labels of 'Christian', 'Communist' or whatever and see the person inside?
What you are saying amounts to simple denial of the facts.
Addiction to gaming, exercise, anorexia, work or other 'habitual' things cause the same things to happen in the brain as do nicotine, heroin, cocaine etc - as, indeed, you say yourself. The reason it is hard to get out of eg. heroin addiction is not because of the cold turkey, but because of the strong habit that is formed because of the things that happen in the brain as a result of the addiction. Addiction to games makes it feel terrible, fundamentally wrong if you don't play your games, just like the world feels totally wrong to a heroin addict, if he doesn't get his fix.
You can talk about 'only psychology' and lack of moral fibre all you like - as people always will when then have no understanding of what it is - but this is just nonsense. And stress and personal problems are not the reason why people get addicted. It is something that lies in our fundamental psychology: we learn, at a very deep and instinctive level, to distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' depending on whether the pleasure or pain circuits in the brain are activated when we do things. So if you get a mighty kick out of playing a computer game and you keep doing it for long enough, then you will instinctively feel - 'know' - that this is good, very good. And deciding against doing it becomes almost impossible, because it feels so fundamentally, so obviously right.
Calling it a 'detox' clinic is of course a buzzword that is meant to sell the idea, since 'detox' is a modern fad. But it doesn't make it any less relevant - breaking ingrained habits is infinitely harder than anything else in the world. Going cold turkey is only a small part of it, and the detox clinic, even in the case of heroin addiction, does a lot more than just pushing you through the withdrawal crisis. What you really need is 'detoxing' your habits and attitudes, and relearning what is really good and bad for you.
He has a good point - because DRM can easily be used for much more than controlling whether you can copy a CD or DVD.
Imagine this: At some point in the not too far future you can only watch the programs you have paid for - 'pay per view'. OK, fair enough, one might say, this is a bit like going to the cinema, and the upside is, you don't have to pay for things you don't care to watch. But most people's outlook on life, their political views, their religion and entire culture is overwhelmingly shaped by what they see on tv; and if we in the future can only watch what the tv company allows us to watch, there is a huge danger that most of the population will only be fed the political and religious views of whoever owns the information provider.
We have that situation to some extent already - at least in the US - but people can still pick up independent or even foreign channels and thus have a real chance to not be totally boxed in. But what if you can only watch what you are allowed to watch? In the beginning 'allowed to' would be about having paid for the program, but it wouldn't stay limited to that for very long. And that is what DRM is really about, if you ask me: mindcontrol.
.. an event even more catastrophic than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The attack on the World Trading Centre was bad, no doubt, but 'catastrophic'? Hurricane Katrina was a catastrophe, the tsunami was one, global warming is becoming one, and the Bush administration is worse than one; I wouldn't, however, call the terror attacks a 'catastrophe'. I thought the Americans were supposed to be 'thick skinned' and 'resilient', but since those attacks you have panicked and run around like decapitated chickens, allowing a moron like Bush and his fascist cronies to run wild over you.
I think you guys should get rid of them - people like Bush, Ashcroft, Chenie and Rice are the main reason why America has problems in the world.
Sigh - once again we see the tsunami of uninformed drivel that is provoked every time China is said to have done anything.
- when they were an isolated, communist state, that was SO EVIL!!!!
- so they opened up, introduced market economy and started outcompeting America, and that is SO EVIL!!!
- but they didn't respect copyright, and that was SO EVIL!!!
- so now they introduce laws that protect copyright holders, and that is SO EVIL!!!
Hmmm, do we see a tendency here? It seems that China can do nothing right, no matter what.
Plus all the nonsense about whether they are really communists or not. 'Communism' and 'capitalism' as political and economical systems both have their roots in Victorian England, and just as you wouldn't expect 'capitalism' to stay the same through the > 100 years since then, you can't expect communism to be the same now as it was then. The world changes and our ideas change with it. Or, at least this is what happens outside the USA.
In my opinion what China has now is communism - not quite the thing Karl Marx described, but essentially the same. I personally think it is good, far better than what you have in the US. It is still far from perfect, but it is evolving and improving, which is what USA's system doesn't.
China and the Chinese leaders have shown great courage and made huge progress. In the beginning of the 20th century China was a backward, chaotic country with an absolute monarch, who lived in total isolation from his people. Only 50 years later China was one of the world's superpowers, and in the last ~20 years or so they have evolved from being a closed country that was limping behind socially, economically and politically to being the emerging leader of the world in all areas, whether you or anybody else like it or not. Everybody who knows about these things agree about this, even American economists are in little doubt; it's only a matter of time when America will be relegated to second or third position.
And that, in essence, is why you Americans keep whining about how bad China is; not because you really care one bit about the plight of other people. If you had cared, you wouldn't keep going on about China, but rather talked about the poverty in India, the hunger in Africa etc etc. You don't, however.
It's weird to see how 'ethics' is used as a cheap and easy excuse for not doing the right thing; how can it not be right to save the lives of children?
But of course, this is not about save the lives of poor children - it is just yet another way to earn money from the poor. If we really wanted to put an end to unnecessary suffering, it would be far more relevant to try ending poverty; it is after all not as if we in the western world couldn't it if we really wanted to.
However, there is a more sinister side to the debate about genetically modified plants: gene pollution. It works like this: you grow your modified plant, the bees (or wind) comes and takes pollen away, and some of it pollinates wild plants - or the neighbor farmer's unmodified crop.
In the first case wild plant species now carry the modification, and it may or may not pop up later in circumstances that are very unfortunate. In the second case the farmer's crop is suddenly 'illegal', because it now contains patented genes that he has not paid any ryalties for using.
Now that's the REAL ethical challenge when it comes to genetic modification.
This sounds like prime feeding grounds for loan sharks. We already have more than enough of that, thank you.
Why would I want the playing field artificially leveled? My playing field greatly favors me because I am better at my job than most people. A collective bargaining agreement would end that advantage. I could only do as well as anyone else.
Indeed, why should anybody care the least for other people? Children starve to death at the rate of one per second or so - so what? I am well fed. Young teenage girls get raped and infected with HIV - who cares? People work their whole life for a company, but get kicked out, 'just because', and end up cheated out of their old age pension on top of it - yeah, big deal. Your mother is terminally ill with cancer because your family hasn't got enough money and society doesn't care one bit; just one more lazy, useless slob gotten rid, am I right?
You see, it is all very well talking these high and mighty words, but you too can end up at the bottom without a fighting chance. Perhaps you will care then; but it would have been more worthy if had not first shown yourself to be a selfish twit. And don't get started on the nonsense about this being only about business or something like that, because in reality it never stops there. If you are a unconcientious and heartless egotist in business, then that is likely to be what you are in all your dealings, even if you are able to explain it all away in your own mind.
Fortunately this kind of sentiment is much less prevalent in most other industrialised countries. In most of Europe companies have a legal obligation to take care of their employees, and many companies are proud of the fact that they do. And of course, by doing so they tend to get employees that are much more loyal to the company. It may be that the only thing that inspires an American to work hard is money, but I (sys admin) and most of my colleagues (UNIX developers) are motivated much more by the feeling of responsibility to each other and to the company, and by knowing that we are valued and respected by our company and our customers. American companies could learn a lot from this, I think.
Now we're going to have yet another tsunami of overly confident drivel about such words as democracy, freedom etc, that you Americans don't really have much insight into. So, to repeat myself:
Democracy - a system for electing your leaders.
Americans think that democracy is something God given which holds some kind of magical power, and that it means that you have an American style election circus. In the rest of the world we are a bit more openminded; we know that democracy is no more than one ingredient in the cocktail that forms a stable and fair society, and history has shown from time to time that it isn't always necessary; nor does it have to take the form of periodical elections of government.
Democracy doesn't work when the powers of society are not properly seperated and in balance with each other; nor does it work when the population is uneducated and/or ignorant about essential parts of reality. So in America people are ignorant to the extent that they can hardly find Europe on a map of the world and so uneducated that a significant segment of the population are under the thumbs of the medievalistic minsets of religious extremists, and believe in even the most outrageous nonsense, as long as it comes with a Bible quotation. No wonder you think you have democracy, even though all it means is that you get to choose between two of the runners up to 'The Upperclass Twit of the Year Competition'.
Freedom - being allowed to do what you want
Freedom of speech is only essential if you have something to say; you don't want to get in trouble for having dissenting opinions. On the other hand, every society have subjects that are taboo, and if they have laws forbidding them, these laws in general express what most people in that society think of as self-evident; even if outsiders don't understand it.
Take America - for you it is Communism. Oh yes, you have tame pet 'Communist Party', just like China has a tame 'Catholic Church'. They are alllowed to exist because they are considered harmless and people need a village idiot. But if they suddenly began to grow in power and influence, there would be serious trouble, I'm sure. And I am sure that if a law was suggested that would forbid communism and the communist party, it would probably have quite a lot popular support in USA.
To understand all the crap we hear about democracy and freedom of speech in China, we have to understand a bit more than the Superbowl and Big Brother; it is simply not true that the Chinese population are pining for those things. Yes, it is probably a good thing to introduce more of both over time, but democracy and freedom of speech require skills and education, as I noted above. Just look to Russia to see what happens if you simply throw it at a nation that hasn't been used to it and therefore has no experience - you get huge, organized criminal organisations, corruption etc etc.
Even we in the West didn't do it from one day to another - it took many decades, and it involved fundamental changes in the way people think - our culture, if you will. It also involved a lot of internal conflicts and violence as well as a few revolutions. And we still haven't reached the goal, as far as I can see.
So, basically, why don't you just shut up and let them get on with it? China right now has a government who are obviously committed to improving things for the people. They are aware of the huge, looming problems with environment, the problem of the growing divide between rich and poor etc etc. They also have very good reasons to believe that foreign governments like the American wouldn't at all mind if the so called democracy activists, Christian missionaries and what have you could create enough problems to weaken the Chinese nation; so doesn't it make good sense to censor them?
I don't think the Chinese leaders think democracy is bad, or religion for that matter; they just want to keep out enemy influences. America had the Communist persecutions, and there are people who will still argue tha
I remember seeing this sort of thing in a backwater like Denmark years ago - more than 6, perhaps as much as 10 years.
Apart from that, this sort of thing is yet another example that sums up all the most stupid things in modern society. You take 'modern technology' (in this case a simple process that has been known at least since Roman times) and use it for the most pathetic and useless thing you can imagine; and then you just market it as 'Wow, soooo cool'. Sometimes I think the people who 'invent' kind of things must be laughing themselves silly. Just imagine getting people to pay more money for something that is worse than anything anybody could make on their own with no effort at all.
So, why was it again that anyone would buy this? Why pay for: a glass of water, a spoonful of instant coffee, a little bit of milk powder or similar and 20+ additives which they hope will disguise the fact that the actual coffee is crap; plus of course a container and half a handful of quicklime - I mean, why, for heaven's sake?
Well I have - it's called privacy.
The Inuit peoples survived for thousands of years on a diet of pure raw meat
p roducts_feed.cgi?Operation=ItemLookup&ItemId=00607 65313) - it's quite good.
You obviously know it all, don't you? 'Eskimo' possibly means something like 'those who eat raw meat' (look in Wikipedia), However, there is no reason to think that they only ate raw meat - they have certainly known fire as long as they have been in existence. Also, one would think the existence of cooking pots to be indicative of something, though of course you never know.
The problem with modern diet is not meat as such, I think, but the fact that ready-made meals of poor quality as well as snacks are almost impossible to avoid. When I changed my lifestyle some years ago, my biggest problem was exactly that: if you have a little change in your pocket, it can be incredibly difficult not to end up eating something you shouldn't. I had to do almost silly things to change my habits, like never carry cash at all (it is after all a little bit too silly to buy an icecream on your creditcard), only eat a packed lunch at work, always only eat dinners I have cooked myself (thus removing additives that cover up the low quality of the ingredients), never go shopping when hungry etc etc.
Try reading 'You, The Owner's Manual' (http://www.sciencedaily.com/cgi-bin/apf4/amazon_
go and look in your mouth
- or for that matter look in the mouth of a gorilla. It has some serious canines, but is totally vegetarian.
One thing that strikes me when the talk is on China and 'democracy' is that we just hear about how they arrest 'pro-democracy activist'; but we never hear any details about what these alleged activists actually stand for. It may be because I am blind and deaf and very, very evil (as well as stupid etc etc), but I can imagine many different kinds of activity that the activists themselves would describe as 'pro-democracy' and which others would not.
The sad truth is, the one sure way to win a lot easy sympathy from people in the US is to claim that you are 'pro-democracy' or 'religious' and being oppressed by the evil Commies. But just take the word 'democracy' - it can't always be taken at face value; after all we have the 'Democratic People's Republic of Korea' (N. Korea), the 'Democratic Republic of Congo' and not long ago the 'German Democratic Republic'.
So is there any reliable information available about these persons did and stood for? Is it possible that their variant of activism was illegal, not because they talked about democracy, but because they were engaged in subversive activities (something that is illegal in most countries, I would think)?
I don't know if I should laugh or cry when I hear this kind of oversimplified nonsense - it displays the same level of understanding as the average Hollywood movie's understanding of history, science and reality in general (ie. whatever sells the movie or sounds good in a slogan must be true).
Let's take Marx - he lived in an era where belonging to the working class meant that you were desperately poor, and where the middle and upper classes believed that different classes were almost different species; rich people in general would treat their dogs, cats and horses with more kindness and respect than they would a worker. This is the proper background for his ideas - in that age the only way to improve the conditions for the poorest people seemed to be violent revolution, and democracy certainly didn't seem to be something to rely on; it was only available to the top of society anyway. So the options seemed to be either the dictature of the wealthy or the dictature of the proletariat.
The problem with communism has never been that the ideas were wrong - only a heartless egotist would say that helping those in need is wrong, and only and idiot would say that there should be no restrictions in place for big business (unless you ARE one of those big businesses - only Microsoft thinks it is OK for Microsoft to be a monopoly). The real problem with communism has been that the writings of Karl Marx have been turned into a bible, a fundamental truth that can never, never change, and that has been seized by the reactionaries and is being used to promote a scary image of anything that smacks of limiting the profits of the few small segment of society that owns almost everything.
Meanwhile the communist idea has evolved and keeps evolving; the parts that are wrong, outdated or simply stupid are being thrown out and new parts come in. This is what you see in China - yes, they have some sort market economy and you can own property, but the system is fundamentally communism, a communism that evolves and improves. They are doing the right thing.
if you google for "Tienamen Square"
In fact, if you google for that, you probably only get stupid comments from the crowd of people who can't be bothered to look up the correct spelling, which is Tiananmen - 'tian' meaning 'heaven', 'an' meaning 'peace' and 'men' meaning 'door'.
When people used this kind of 'speak', whether it is techspeak or corporate speak or whatever, I suspect it simply is an attempt to cover their incompetence. It is a sort of general waffling around; if you really know what you are talking about, you will simply say it. Why would a manager say 'realignment' instead of 'firing people'? Simply because he is afraid; insecure, simply, maybe bad conscience. Think about it - if you manage a company and you realize that you actually have to fire some people, and you really feel this is the right thing to do; wouldn't you simply say something like 'This is our situation - I have to fire x people. I hate it as much as anybody, but we have to do it. We will go about it like this ...'?
As for whether you have to talk like the suits - I don't know. I certainly know I wouldn't do it; being competent and speaking clearly are two of the fundamental values in my view of the world, and also the main reasons for my career success.
Outlook must be the most amazing load of crap I have ever seen.
Jack Abramoff ...
Why would I want to do that? And who is Abram anyway?
I've not yet seen a reason to have the .xxx domain. I'm not opposed, per se, but I have a hard time understanding the point to it. It seems more like a fun hot button to oppose the US. If that's the case, cool, enjoy tilting at that particular windmill.
You're right, there's no particular reason for wanting an xxx domain other than it might seem 'cool' to some.
And it is not the reason why people in the world oppose the US. There are many arguments why USA shouldn't have the control over the TLDs, but I suspect at the bottom of it all is the pervasive feeling that USA has for too long seen themselves as the obvious owner and ruler of the world, and that USA has little more than contempt to spare for other countries, cultures and people. I am not saying that this is how people in USA actually think, but it is the concept that seems to best sum up your foreign politics. On top of that the US are widely seen as superficial, hypocritical, selfish and untrustworthy.
And that, I think, is why everybody digs their heels in - people on all levels are very much beginning to have had enough, simply.
What I don't understand is why the nation that once seemed to be something like the guardian of the world has now become such a monster, to put not too fine a point on it.
Not that I find it unlikely that Lenovo should do this or that the Chinese intelligence services may find it attractive to have this kind of access to Computers in the US; but I doubt it would be all that effective. You have too little control over where these machines end up, for one thing.
The sad fact is that all governments spy; of course China spies on the US and countries in Europe. The US has spies both abroad and at home - we all know that it happens, and instead of giving howl of righteous outrage, we simply have take this into account.
Nobody is likely to lose anything - it is the fundamental nature of the internet that you can communicate across network boundaries. I don't understand why some people seem to be too boneheaded to just accept the fact, that all we are talking about is a strife about who gets to decide what the top level domains are and how they are administrated. In the very worst case we could have a situation where one domain name resolves to many IP addresses depending on which DNS server you query. That would be annoying, and it would probably cause enough problems for some businesses that it would be sorted out in the end.
/.
The scenario that is described would require whole regions to be somehow confined behind a single switch or firewall - not bloody likely, if you ask me. Not even China have achieved anything like that, and they are supposed to be the world leaders in this kind of thing, if one is to believe the squabbling crowds of parrots on
No, the real isolation and fragmentation on the internet comes from what in your head - or rather what's not in your head, namely knowledge about the world around you. Example - because English has traditionally been so widely used, most native English speakers have felt little incentive to learn other languages - as the original post illustrates. Everybody else on the internet, however, know not only their own language, but are reasonably fluent in English and read articles in both English and their native languages; thus they are likely to have a much wider knowledge and outlook than eg. Americans. This is going to hurt both England and USA more and more in the future - just think about how hard it is for American companies to establish themselves in China; they have to hire expensive experts in Chinese language and culture. On the other hand, the Chinese already speak English - a Chinese company doesn't have that hurdle to overcome if they want to establish themselves in the US; all in all, they have easy access to the colossal Chinese market, and they can go right out in the world and take on the international community as well.