You talk about "getting over it" - that costs hard work, as well as genuine show of goodwill and -faith from both sides. We haven't shown much of that in the ME, I'm afraid, what with our general pissing people around in the region.We have, somehow, always been able to find the worst dictators and parasites in the ME and make them our allies: Saddam in Iraq, the Shah in Iran and so on.
- and so on back in time - before that it was the Romans; perhaps a bit more relevant is European imperialism, during which time we walked all over the face of the locals there. That and the West's blind and uncritical support for Israel, due to our collective bad conscience.
One earthquake or well placed nuke and all their expensive energy modifications go dark
Earthquake? I think they may even have thought about that - there are ways to secure against them, you know. As for nuclear weapons, that would be a very good incentive to make friends with people in the region, don't you think?
Anyway, it is not as if the Sahara is "just one place"; it is actually 9,400,000 km2 (according to Wikipedia) compared to the US' 9,826,675 km2.
Why are environmentalists always negative focussing on the cables
Environmentlists - what a stupid word, as if it being concerned about the environment was a mere political view, but let it be - we are not all the same. Just as with any other label, there are many sorts; some will always whine, whether it is about cables that unreasonably can transport electricity even if it comes from the wrong sort of powerplant, or whether it is about something else.
Some of us - most, I think - are well aware that it is better to reach an acceptable compromise than getting nowhere, because we won't back down from our high and holy principles. As for species - I can't wee why any need to be threatened at all; certainly not if we are talking about only 1% or even 2% of the desert. It is a simple matter of looking before we jump.
...for yet another way to be dependent on this already-unstable region of the world which already has a choke-hold on energy production.
Depends on how you tackle the situation. One of the main reasons why we have such a strained relationship with the Middle East the fact that we have messed with the people in that region in a hostile way for a long time: Crusades, Imperialism etc - and Israel, of course. Perhaps we could approach it somewhat more diplomatically this time?
Handled the right way, this could mean that an impoverished region of Africa can finally get a chance to develop.
Of course not - I am employing exaggeration as a device for conveying humour; this is something we often do in Europe, and it appears that I have inadvertently been rude to the American minority on/. by expecting them to spot this.
... are you seriously telling us you know all of these?
Is that a trick question? As a matter of fact, I know, actively or passively, most of the ones used in European languages, as well as Chinese, but that is beside the point. It is actually possible to be something in the middle between Mrs Manners and GWB. If you refer to Djengis Khan as "Mr Khan" or just "Khan" you are committing the sin of trying to appear knowledgeable about the subject without having bothered to learn that fairly basic fact; you can hardly read about Djengis Khan without coming across expressions like "the Khan" which should tell you that it is not a personal or family name. The same applies for Chinese names - you hear Mao Zedong referred to as "Chairman Mao", and Hu Jintao as "President Hu"; based on that, is it then very clever to refer to "Mr Jintao"?
The key thing I take from someone saying "Mr Khan" or "Mr Jintao" is that they're at least making the effort to communicate in a civil manner, which certainly causes me no despair.
What I take from it is that some people think they can just free-wheel it through life without bothering to pick up even elementary knowledge on the way.
Computers will probably never be better than humans at handling names, although one can hope. Sometimes I despair when I read or hear somebody referring to eg. Djengis Khan as "Mr Khan" ("Khan" is a title, not a name) or even call Hu Jintao, "Mr Jintao"; you would have thought people would, by now, have caught on to the idea that something like half the world's population has the family name first.
On a completely different subject, though: Why is it that when you travel to the US, you get asked questions like "Are you coming to the US to commit an act of terror?" Does anybody expect to hear anything other than "No" in answer? Is it simply a sort of idiotic bullying tactic - treating you like a fool by forcing you to answer silly questions that clearly nobody takes serious?
One thing that always bothers me about when people play the "causation != correlation card" is that they then think they have proven that there is no reason to suspect a connection whatsoever. The correct position, when one has found a correlation, is that there certainly is reason to suspect some sort of connection - either A causes B, B causes A or an unknown C causes both A and B.
Often, also, the correlation in itself is reason enough to start taking some action - such as looking a lot closer at what is going on.
Morons like you traded all that for a welfare state
Yes, because you have to be moron to prefer taking care of actual people rather than making big, symbolic, and above all, expensive gestures.
Going to the moon was never more than President Kennedy's dick waving; he wanted to show the world that his testicles were bigger than those of the Soviet leaders, so the US spent huge amounts and took appalling risks with the lives of astronauts in order to plant a flag, using what now seems to be stone-age tools. Big achievement, but not hugely useful in itself; unlike the modest Sputnik, which ushered in the era of satelite communication and all the blessings of Sky TV (oops, there we go on the sarcasm again, sorry about that).
Having a proper, well equipped and well-funded space station would be useful, and a base on the Moon might in time become useful too. I would vote for going to Mars as well, but not in the haphazard way we went to the Moon, and it should ideally involve all nations capable of contributing to the project: the US, China, Russia, India, countries in Europe, and who knows, in South America and Africa as well - it will take many years before we are ready to go to Mars, and hopefully both Africa and S.Am. will have overcome their current struggles by then.
If open source is such a success, why aren't there any billion-dollar turnover open source companies?
It is not a question of if - open source is a resounding success; just look at how the GNU project has become the defining standard for much of UNIX, to the extent that companies like IBM, HP etc offer the GNU toolset on their proprietary systems. And GNU is only one part of open source - GNOME and KDE are other prime examples. And of course, there is Linux; need I say more?
Money isn't everything; it is certainly not the best measure of success.
... since when is its mankind's responsibility to save every variety of every species of animal on the planet? I know that we have been responsible for the extinction of many species, but does that now make us responsible for stopping extinction altogether?
As far as I can see, we have taken on that responsibility; if you want to be religious about it, the myths of the Christian religion say pretty explicitly that God set us to rule over all the other animals. And so on.
But from a more enlightened point of view, I think it follows thus: We have the power to cause extinctions - and we have done so for a long time, millennia, even, which is why most industrialised nations don't have much in the way of large fauna. We now also have the insight to avoid it, which is a good thing, because every time we kill off yet another species, we are in effect removing another stone in the foundation that we have built our existence on; one day it will be one stone too many, and then it will be too late to do anything about it.
So it is our responsibility to save as many species as possible; not out of bad conscience or romantic ideals, but in order to avoid an extinction event that will involve us in a very tangible way. You may not realise this, but we have already removed so many fish from the oceans, that fishing industries all over the world are having trouble catching enough to make it worthwhile - that ought to give us pause for thought, I think. Big problems are a lot closer than most of us imagine. We can do something about it - and therefore we have the responsibility to do so.
So why are you here? Other then to act like a smug ifag I mean.
Do I need any other purpose? And what is an iFag? A gay man, who works for Apple?
However, just because I am smug, and justifiably so, doesn't mean that I don't have a point - which is that far too many people have for far too long allowed the likes of Microsoft far too long a leash. I don't know why that is - their main products (Windows and Office) have for most of the time been cumbersome and faulty; perhaps the explanation is simply that only few people actually cared one way or the other. I think the main reason they are now crumbling at the edge is that people begin to realise that there is not much reason to keep paying money for what is mostly glitter, when you can get the same or better elsewhere.
It is remarkable how people pay for allowing others to screw them over well and good; it isn't just MS - it is this whole consumerism thing. We have built up a culture where we are more or less imprisoned in crap we don't need and probably don't actually want, and which is harmful to our health, not to mention the wallet.
When you buy and/or install Windows, you explicitly (although in very small print) give Microsoft permission to do exactly this, as far as I recall; it should be in your EULA. I can't say that it worries me a lot - I use Linux.
... what the hell does "non-harmonious" mean exactly?
It means "not in harmony with..." - "harmony" is a concept that has a long history in Chinese culture, and translating it into English loses most of its meaning. In my experience it is something that makes excellent sense to a Chinese, even if it doesn't seem obvious to an American. Apart from that, is it not simply ill-will on your part when you claim not to understand what is meant? To me it seems obvious that it means "not in harmony with whatever general principles", in which case it becomes simply a matter of knowing what those principles are.
Think for a minute about what the phrase "speech against the government" could mean in China. Is saying "The Yang-tse river is so polluted!" considered speech against the Chinese government? Is complaining about your working conditions okay? Is criticizing the United States' copyright laws okay when your government has pledged time and time again to combat piracy?
"Speech against the government" means the same as in America: basically that you are plotting to overthrow the legal government. The Chinese are no more averse to fair and constructive criticism than any other government; one could argue that they are more open than most - one of the basic tenets in Mao's little red book is the idea of self-criticism. No, I am not arguing that this part of it was executed very well, but one can't deny that it is there.
One also has to distinguish between what the central government does - or tries to do - and what happens locally. If the local leaders are in the pockets of the local, rich business men, how much does it matter what the government in Beijing says? If you speak up against the factory in your town that pollutes, then the owner talks to his pal in the local government, who tells the local police chief to go and bother you. This is not "The Evil, Anti-Democratic Communism" at work, this is the effect of un-regulated capitalism, as far as I can see.
You don't think that everyone at BP, from the engineers, to the drillers, to the CEO isn't worried about their job right now?
Their job? The CEO is worried about his job? If there were any justice in this world, they should be fearing for their freedom, not just their jobs. I don't mean the man at the bottom of the pile, but those at the top; at the very least they have shown criminal negligence, and the punishment should be proportional to the damage they have caused. If you get 2 years + inside for selling cannabis, why should you not be locked up for good after having destroyed 100s of thousands of people's livelihoods and causing immeasurable environmental problems for generations to come - all because you were too greedy to be careful?
A very large part of the problems in this world are caused by this sick idea, that there should be no regulation of business, no matter what; what it means is that companies get to stuff their pockets, and when it goes wrong, the taxpayer gets to pay the bill - it is no more than a convoluted for of theft.
It really is staggering how much computers have changed in power over the years. One illustration is in Fred Hoyle's book "The Black Cloud", I believe, where he waxes lyrical over the immense power of their computer, which could perform tens of thousands of operations per minute!
HA! Right. If Google hadn't announced they'd collected it, they'd never destroy it. Remember, their entire business model is information. I think you trust in them a little too much if you think they'd just randomly destroy any information that might possibly have value.
I assume you have heard about making copies of harddisks? I think we can trust Google to have this insight too - the data are not going to be destroyed, of course, only the originals - possibly, after a backup has been made.
That, or they knew governments would, and planned so that they could still end up looking like the good guys, because hey, the big mean government is taking the data, and who knows what THOSE GUYS are going to do with it.
Well, I don't. I think people in America are a lot more paranoid about government than most. To me it doesn't seem like an incredibly big deal, to be honest. After all, what can they actually do with the data? I have regularly the opportunity to sift through largish datasets, being in charge of a number of big UNIXes and having to figure out from the logs why the hell it went wrong; I find that hard going sometimes, and that is just some 10MB of what must called clear text (which is not to say that the meaning is obvious). Just imagine having to wade through probably 100s of TB of randomly scrambled network packages.
Finding the network traffic relating to one or a few suspects may be just barely within the reach of the authorities with current technology, but there is no way they can start making a comprehensive map of everything all individuals have been doing on the net; there won't be technology available for it for a long time yet either.
And just think about how much serious crime still slips under the radar - ordinary citizens have little to fear from the government (apart from incompetence), whether they are malevolent or not. The only way a repressive government can keep their population under surveillance is by minimizing the amount of information people can exchange, which is one reason why North Korea is so completely shut off from the world; and even then it doesn't work very well.
I think everybody can see that it is important for a democratic society, that we are well informed about everything that goes on in the world - otherwise, the population can't make an informed choice in an election, just to mention an example. However, introducing a tax to bail out ailing, private companies is probably the least intelligent way of tackling the problem - it would be far better to boost public service media both financially and in terms of democratic transparency.
As well as, of course, investing more in network infrastructure and other things in order to stimulate the growth of whatever is going to replace the outdated media models. I have no idea what it will be; personally I hope it will resemble the BBC, but with a better management model.
... would be taken up by the opposition as the evil socialism...
And yet, as your thoughtful response itself illustrates, this mindset is in the process of dying out, even in America. The anti-Communists needed the Cold War and USSR to make their propaganda and indoctrination seem credible. It is also worth remembering that American anti-anything-that-smacks-of-socialism is a fairly new thing, historically, and it has never been much more than twisted words. When you look at the facts on the ground, many, if not most, Americans practice what can only be called socialist ideals: they care about the weak in society, they care about the environment, they want to share their wealth and so on.
There is such a thing as being realistic, though. Is it realistic to demand that everybody in the world must be open-minded and tolerant? I don't think so - at least not at the moment. And does it really make sense to allow a minority of hate-mongerers to stir up trouble for the sake of a principle? There is nothing wrong with protecting the freedom of speech, but it is being abused by a very small minority to cause devastation, and I don't think that can be right either.
Perhaps we should look more closely to the "responsibility" part of freedom; how about this: you have freedom of speech, but every death you cause counts as homicide? A bit on the extreme side, perhaps?
Freedom has a cost associated with it - why should others be forced to pick up the bill for your freedom?
Well, that would explain it all. The queen has been chatting on the mobile all day instead of raising her kids, and of course, if you flash your mobile around in a rough area, you are sure to get mugged, which explains why they don't return home. Case solved!
C++'s requirements are horrible and make it the monster it is
I don't think you are right there. I used to be very sceptical about C++, but I have had to develop some tools with it recently, and my respect for it has grown a good deal.
It is true that C++ programs can be real horrors to maintain and even to write, but I think the problem often lies with the design of the toolset used. That and the fact that C++ operates on a higher level of abstraction and therefore requires much more careful consideration and planning. The problems I have seen in the past have all been centered around people not quite understanding the nature of C++ and wanting to immediately put all those bright new features to "good" use, by overloading everything and indiscriminately inheriting from any number of classes.
The secret to good programming has always been to keep it simple - this is twice as important in C++, and the language has some great features for doing so, but you really have to understand what it is you are trying to achieve.
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't born at that time;
I was; or it feels that way sometimes.
You talk about "getting over it" - that costs hard work, as well as genuine show of goodwill and -faith from both sides. We haven't shown much of that in the ME, I'm afraid, what with our general pissing people around in the region.We have, somehow, always been able to find the worst dictators and parasites in the ME and make them our allies: Saddam in Iraq, the Shah in Iran and so on.
- and so on back in time - before that it was the Romans; perhaps a bit more relevant is European imperialism, during which time we walked all over the face of the locals there. That and the West's blind and uncritical support for Israel, due to our collective bad conscience.
That would be the one formerly called i5/OS: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_i)?
One earthquake or well placed nuke and all their expensive energy modifications go dark
Earthquake? I think they may even have thought about that - there are ways to secure against them, you know. As for nuclear weapons, that would be a very good incentive to make friends with people in the region, don't you think?
Anyway, it is not as if the Sahara is "just one place"; it is actually 9,400,000 km2 (according to Wikipedia) compared to the US' 9,826,675 km2.
Why are environmentalists always negative focussing on the cables
Environmentlists - what a stupid word, as if it being concerned about the environment was a mere political view, but let it be - we are not all the same. Just as with any other label, there are many sorts; some will always whine, whether it is about cables that unreasonably can transport electricity even if it comes from the wrong sort of powerplant, or whether it is about something else.
Some of us - most, I think - are well aware that it is better to reach an acceptable compromise than getting nowhere, because we won't back down from our high and holy principles. As for species - I can't wee why any need to be threatened at all; certainly not if we are talking about only 1% or even 2% of the desert. It is a simple matter of looking before we jump.
...for yet another way to be dependent on this already-unstable region of the world which already has a choke-hold on energy production.
Depends on how you tackle the situation. One of the main reasons why we have such a strained relationship with the Middle East the fact that we have messed with the people in that region in a hostile way for a long time: Crusades, Imperialism etc - and Israel, of course. Perhaps we could approach it somewhat more diplomatically this time?
Handled the right way, this could mean that an impoverished region of Africa can finally get a chance to develop.
Oh, come now - are you seriously saying...
Of course not - I am employing exaggeration as a device for conveying humour; this is something we often do in Europe, and it appears that I have inadvertently been rude to the American minority on /. by expecting them to spot this.
... are you seriously telling us you know all of these?
Is that a trick question? As a matter of fact, I know, actively or passively, most of the ones used in European languages, as well as Chinese, but that is beside the point. It is actually possible to be something in the middle between Mrs Manners and GWB. If you refer to Djengis Khan as "Mr Khan" or just "Khan" you are committing the sin of trying to appear knowledgeable about the subject without having bothered to learn that fairly basic fact; you can hardly read about Djengis Khan without coming across expressions like "the Khan" which should tell you that it is not a personal or family name. The same applies for Chinese names - you hear Mao Zedong referred to as "Chairman Mao", and Hu Jintao as "President Hu"; based on that, is it then very clever to refer to "Mr Jintao"?
The key thing I take from someone saying "Mr Khan" or "Mr Jintao" is that they're at least making the effort to communicate in a civil manner, which certainly causes me no despair.
What I take from it is that some people think they can just free-wheel it through life without bothering to pick up even elementary knowledge on the way.
I have to say, it sounds painful; they need to eat more fibre.
Computers will probably never be better than humans at handling names, although one can hope. Sometimes I despair when I read or hear somebody referring to eg. Djengis Khan as "Mr Khan" ("Khan" is a title, not a name) or even call Hu Jintao, "Mr Jintao"; you would have thought people would, by now, have caught on to the idea that something like half the world's population has the family name first.
On a completely different subject, though: Why is it that when you travel to the US, you get asked questions like "Are you coming to the US to commit an act of terror?" Does anybody expect to hear anything other than "No" in answer? Is it simply a sort of idiotic bullying tactic - treating you like a fool by forcing you to answer silly questions that clearly nobody takes serious?
... the whole causation != correlation argument.
One thing that always bothers me about when people play the "causation != correlation card" is that they then think they have proven that there is no reason to suspect a connection whatsoever. The correct position, when one has found a correlation, is that there certainly is reason to suspect some sort of connection - either A causes B, B causes A or an unknown C causes both A and B.
Often, also, the correlation in itself is reason enough to start taking some action - such as looking a lot closer at what is going on.
Morons like you traded all that for a welfare state
Yes, because you have to be moron to prefer taking care of actual people rather than making big, symbolic, and above all, expensive gestures.
Going to the moon was never more than President Kennedy's dick waving; he wanted to show the world that his testicles were bigger than those of the Soviet leaders, so the US spent huge amounts and took appalling risks with the lives of astronauts in order to plant a flag, using what now seems to be stone-age tools. Big achievement, but not hugely useful in itself; unlike the modest Sputnik, which ushered in the era of satelite communication and all the blessings of Sky TV (oops, there we go on the sarcasm again, sorry about that).
Having a proper, well equipped and well-funded space station would be useful, and a base on the Moon might in time become useful too. I would vote for going to Mars as well, but not in the haphazard way we went to the Moon, and it should ideally involve all nations capable of contributing to the project: the US, China, Russia, India, countries in Europe, and who knows, in South America and Africa as well - it will take many years before we are ready to go to Mars, and hopefully both Africa and S.Am. will have overcome their current struggles by then.
- and the value of nothing.
If open source is such a success, why aren't there any billion-dollar turnover open source companies?
It is not a question of if - open source is a resounding success; just look at how the GNU project has become the defining standard for much of UNIX, to the extent that companies like IBM, HP etc offer the GNU toolset on their proprietary systems. And GNU is only one part of open source - GNOME and KDE are other prime examples. And of course, there is Linux; need I say more?
Money isn't everything; it is certainly not the best measure of success.
... since when is its mankind's responsibility to save every variety of every species of animal on the planet? I know that we have been responsible for the extinction of many species, but does that now make us responsible for stopping extinction altogether?
As far as I can see, we have taken on that responsibility; if you want to be religious about it, the myths of the Christian religion say pretty explicitly that God set us to rule over all the other animals. And so on.
But from a more enlightened point of view, I think it follows thus: We have the power to cause extinctions - and we have done so for a long time, millennia, even, which is why most industrialised nations don't have much in the way of large fauna. We now also have the insight to avoid it, which is a good thing, because every time we kill off yet another species, we are in effect removing another stone in the foundation that we have built our existence on; one day it will be one stone too many, and then it will be too late to do anything about it.
So it is our responsibility to save as many species as possible; not out of bad conscience or romantic ideals, but in order to avoid an extinction event that will involve us in a very tangible way. You may not realise this, but we have already removed so many fish from the oceans, that fishing industries all over the world are having trouble catching enough to make it worthwhile - that ought to give us pause for thought, I think. Big problems are a lot closer than most of us imagine. We can do something about it - and therefore we have the responsibility to do so.
So why are you here? Other then to act like a smug ifag I mean.
Do I need any other purpose? And what is an iFag? A gay man, who works for Apple?
However, just because I am smug, and justifiably so, doesn't mean that I don't have a point - which is that far too many people have for far too long allowed the likes of Microsoft far too long a leash. I don't know why that is - their main products (Windows and Office) have for most of the time been cumbersome and faulty; perhaps the explanation is simply that only few people actually cared one way or the other. I think the main reason they are now crumbling at the edge is that people begin to realise that there is not much reason to keep paying money for what is mostly glitter, when you can get the same or better elsewhere.
It is remarkable how people pay for allowing others to screw them over well and good; it isn't just MS - it is this whole consumerism thing. We have built up a culture where we are more or less imprisoned in crap we don't need and probably don't actually want, and which is harmful to our health, not to mention the wallet.
When you buy and/or install Windows, you explicitly (although in very small print) give Microsoft permission to do exactly this, as far as I recall; it should be in your EULA. I can't say that it worries me a lot - I use Linux.
... what the hell does "non-harmonious" mean exactly?
It means "not in harmony with ..." - "harmony" is a concept that has a long history in Chinese culture, and translating it into English loses most of its meaning. In my experience it is something that makes excellent sense to a Chinese, even if it doesn't seem obvious to an American. Apart from that, is it not simply ill-will on your part when you claim not to understand what is meant? To me it seems obvious that it means "not in harmony with whatever general principles", in which case it becomes simply a matter of knowing what those principles are.
Think for a minute about what the phrase "speech against the government" could mean in China. Is saying "The Yang-tse river is so polluted!" considered speech against the Chinese government? Is complaining about your working conditions okay? Is criticizing the United States' copyright laws okay when your government has pledged time and time again to combat piracy?
"Speech against the government" means the same as in America: basically that you are plotting to overthrow the legal government. The Chinese are no more averse to fair and constructive criticism than any other government; one could argue that they are more open than most - one of the basic tenets in Mao's little red book is the idea of self-criticism. No, I am not arguing that this part of it was executed very well, but one can't deny that it is there.
One also has to distinguish between what the central government does - or tries to do - and what happens locally. If the local leaders are in the pockets of the local, rich business men, how much does it matter what the government in Beijing says? If you speak up against the factory in your town that pollutes, then the owner talks to his pal in the local government, who tells the local police chief to go and bother you. This is not "The Evil, Anti-Democratic Communism" at work, this is the effect of un-regulated capitalism, as far as I can see.
You don't think that everyone at BP, from the engineers, to the drillers, to the CEO isn't worried about their job right now?
Their job? The CEO is worried about his job? If there were any justice in this world, they should be fearing for their freedom, not just their jobs. I don't mean the man at the bottom of the pile, but those at the top; at the very least they have shown criminal negligence, and the punishment should be proportional to the damage they have caused. If you get 2 years + inside for selling cannabis, why should you not be locked up for good after having destroyed 100s of thousands of people's livelihoods and causing immeasurable environmental problems for generations to come - all because you were too greedy to be careful?
A very large part of the problems in this world are caused by this sick idea, that there should be no regulation of business, no matter what; what it means is that companies get to stuff their pockets, and when it goes wrong, the taxpayer gets to pay the bill - it is no more than a convoluted for of theft.
The oil spill is all natural
- just like strychnine and arsenic. Enjoy.
It really is staggering how much computers have changed in power over the years. One illustration is in Fred Hoyle's book "The Black Cloud", I believe, where he waxes lyrical over the immense power of their computer, which could perform tens of thousands of operations per minute!
HA! Right. If Google hadn't announced they'd collected it, they'd never destroy it. Remember, their entire business model is information. I think you trust in them a little too much if you think they'd just randomly destroy any information that might possibly have value.
I assume you have heard about making copies of harddisks? I think we can trust Google to have this insight too - the data are not going to be destroyed, of course, only the originals - possibly, after a backup has been made.
That, or they knew governments would, and planned so that they could still end up looking like the good guys, because hey, the big mean government is taking the data, and who knows what THOSE GUYS are going to do with it.
Well, I don't. I think people in America are a lot more paranoid about government than most. To me it doesn't seem like an incredibly big deal, to be honest. After all, what can they actually do with the data? I have regularly the opportunity to sift through largish datasets, being in charge of a number of big UNIXes and having to figure out from the logs why the hell it went wrong; I find that hard going sometimes, and that is just some 10MB of what must called clear text (which is not to say that the meaning is obvious). Just imagine having to wade through probably 100s of TB of randomly scrambled network packages.
Finding the network traffic relating to one or a few suspects may be just barely within the reach of the authorities with current technology, but there is no way they can start making a comprehensive map of everything all individuals have been doing on the net; there won't be technology available for it for a long time yet either.
And just think about how much serious crime still slips under the radar - ordinary citizens have little to fear from the government (apart from incompetence), whether they are malevolent or not. The only way a repressive government can keep their population under surveillance is by minimizing the amount of information people can exchange, which is one reason why North Korea is so completely shut off from the world; and even then it doesn't work very well.
Well, the subject title says it all, really.
I think everybody can see that it is important for a democratic society, that we are well informed about everything that goes on in the world - otherwise, the population can't make an informed choice in an election, just to mention an example. However, introducing a tax to bail out ailing, private companies is probably the least intelligent way of tackling the problem - it would be far better to boost public service media both financially and in terms of democratic transparency.
As well as, of course, investing more in network infrastructure and other things in order to stimulate the growth of whatever is going to replace the outdated media models. I have no idea what it will be; personally I hope it will resemble the BBC, but with a better management model.
... would be taken up by the opposition as the evil socialism...
And yet, as your thoughtful response itself illustrates, this mindset is in the process of dying out, even in America. The anti-Communists needed the Cold War and USSR to make their propaganda and indoctrination seem credible. It is also worth remembering that American anti-anything-that-smacks-of-socialism is a fairly new thing, historically, and it has never been much more than twisted words. When you look at the facts on the ground, many, if not most, Americans practice what can only be called socialist ideals: they care about the weak in society, they care about the environment, they want to share their wealth and so on.
Honestly, where does it stop?
There is such a thing as being realistic, though. Is it realistic to demand that everybody in the world must be open-minded and tolerant? I don't think so - at least not at the moment. And does it really make sense to allow a minority of hate-mongerers to stir up trouble for the sake of a principle? There is nothing wrong with protecting the freedom of speech, but it is being abused by a very small minority to cause devastation, and I don't think that can be right either.
Perhaps we should look more closely to the "responsibility" part of freedom; how about this: you have freedom of speech, but every death you cause counts as homicide? A bit on the extreme side, perhaps?
Freedom has a cost associated with it - why should others be forced to pick up the bill for your freedom?
Well, that would explain it all. The queen has been chatting on the mobile all day instead of raising her kids, and of course, if you flash your mobile around in a rough area, you are sure to get mugged, which explains why they don't return home. Case solved!
C++'s requirements are horrible and make it the monster it is
I don't think you are right there. I used to be very sceptical about C++, but I have had to develop some tools with it recently, and my respect for it has grown a good deal.
It is true that C++ programs can be real horrors to maintain and even to write, but I think the problem often lies with the design of the toolset used. That and the fact that C++ operates on a higher level of abstraction and therefore requires much more careful consideration and planning. The problems I have seen in the past have all been centered around people not quite understanding the nature of C++ and wanting to immediately put all those bright new features to "good" use, by overloading everything and indiscriminately inheriting from any number of classes.
The secret to good programming has always been to keep it simple - this is twice as important in C++, and the language has some great features for doing so, but you really have to understand what it is you are trying to achieve.