That is actually touching on a good point that I didn't directly address. If you are rich enough and value your privacy that much, then you certainly can try to control your email better by using your own email server. Doesn't always work as well as it might. There was a certain H. Clinton who tried that approach...
Rather than chase (or get sucked) down that rabbit hole, let me just say that I think regular people should also have the freedom to control their own email. They should even be allowed to use "full-service" email systems such as Gmail without sacrificing their Constitutional rights.
What makes it especially bad in the case of the google is the hypocrisy of the "Don't be evil" thing. There are ways to make email less evil and less subject to abuse, but the google has chosen (and is continuing to choose) not to use them. I am admitting that the google is offering a highly attractive email system, but they are offering it in an EVIL way.
Perhaps I should try to back this conversation away from Gmail? It was merely an example I selected for the larger point of "possession"... Or should I try to defend the selection of that example on the grounds that Gmail is so easily abused in so many ways, while still being so prevalent?
Let me say that if there were a better option available, then I would drop Gmail in the proverbial New York minute, and I certainly would not use Gmail for any "subversive" email that would actually do something like unfairly upset #PresidentTweety. (Yes, I'm sure (or hopeful?) that much of my email (and public comments like this one) would upset him, but I think I'm quite fair about it. Plus it's too easy to do.)
Yes, I know that quite well. Do you know that there were protocols before POP3? Ever heard of SMTP, for example?
Look, I don't want to berate you for the shallowness of your reply. I would like to encourage deep and thoughtful discussions, even on Slashdot. Your reply was not part of one of them, and was closer to the category of "If you have nothing to say, then..." At this point I think I would be delusional if I were seriously anticipating such discussions on Slashdot, but my excuse is that I sometimes write to clarify my own analyses and thoughts. It would be great if a deeper discussion developed, but I'm not expecting many of them.
Still, you did manage to touch on a slightly deeper issue, though I had actually mentioned it tangentially in my comment. The encrypted backup on the google's servers could also be used to provide email access on all of your devices. It would be trickier to implement on portable devices with limited resources, but user options could let us decide the degree to which we wanted to risk our privacy (including via exposure to warrantless searches) in exchange for convenience. More could be said, but I'm going to turn to the deeper issue underlying the lack of choice:
PROFIT! In order to absolutely maximize profits, companies like the google want to minimize costs by reducing your choices. Additional options would incur development and operational (including support) costs, so one of the many abuses of monopolists is that they prefer to force ALL of their customers to do everything in the most profitable way from THEIR perspective. The complicated reality is that the victims (AKA customers) are different and have different priorities and would exercise their freedom differently if they were allowed to. Our best hope for REAL improvements in Gmail would be a serious threat from a superior email service. Yahoo obviously failed to develop into such a threat, and though Microsoft or Apple still could, so far they are just preferring to copy the google's game plan as closely as possible.
Me? I think freedom is more important than money. (Time is in between.)
This would NOT be an issue in this same way if we were allowed to retrain physical possession of our email. That would put the 9 points on OUR side.
Let me illustrate by example of how Gmail could work. There could be an option to store the email on our own computers. Generous as the google is with their storage allocation, I have way more than that in my OWN physical possession and I could, if allowed, possess my own email there.
This could even be done in a way that is compatible with Gmail's business model. If I elect to use the option of local storage, then I would agree to run a special kind of search program on my computer. That search program would then issue search queries to the google's ad servers and, without ever examining my email on their servers, the appropriate advertisements could be served to my computer. (In my case, that means to be ignored, since I have a personal policy against feeding the google now that they've clearly gone to the dark side. Latest evidence I've read was in How Google Works.)
If the google actually valued my privacy, they could throw in an option to encrypt the email end-to-end, even while it is on their servers. That could include while it is on their services for backup purposes, too, which would mean that they would never have any "possession" of the clear text version of my personal email, and I would retain the possession of the decryption key. If the House of so-called Representatives then wanted to read my email, they might need to consider the actual Bill of Rights. You know, the stuff about warrants and probable cause and all that jazz.
Oh well. Nobody expects the Email Inquisition. Y'all have a nice day, hear?
Yes, you are missing something. Solar energy is NOT the only form of renewable energy.
Old version is hydroelectricity.
New versions include solar, but wind power is probably larger. I'd need to check the stats. (Then again, wind power is also an old technology. It's just the electric part that is newish.)
If you really have mod points and use them so aggressively, then it explains quite a bit about the state of moderation on Slashdot. Can't recall the last time I had a mod point to bestow.
Those shallow little potshots... Why bother? You need to confirm your prejudices and hatreds? You think it makes your beliefs stronger because you get to read them again?
"Reality? Bah! What a concept!"
At least that seems to be the new motto of #PresdientTweety's administration, and if so, it goes far towards explaining why they [mostly Bannon and his cronies] seem to be imitating so many of China's authoritarian government techniques and even policies.
Of course the reality is rather more complicated. Perhaps the deepest underlying reality is that petrochemicals are limited, and the Chinese government is only being realistic in moving away from oil and they can't help being authoritarian in how they are doing it. When your only hammer is "authoritarianism", then everything looks like a nail, eh? The coal reserves are much larger, but still limited and the externalities are much larger, again making it realistic to move away from coal and once again the Chinese government can't help but do things in an authoritarian way. Yes, climate change is a real concern, but I think the Chinese government doesn't really care that much. They just want results and if "climate change" helps ratchet up the pressure for the results they want, then that's okay.
Even if they are successful, to my mind that does not justify remaking America in China's authoritarian image. However, from the Chinese perspective things look quite different. Only when there is a strong authoritarian government (with the "mandate of heaven") does anything get done, and the alternatives are chaos and anarchy and even civil war. You know how it is, but even China has a few bad centuries now and then. From their long-term perspective, the normal situation is a strong dictatorship (normally emperors, but now communists) and under that "normal" dictatorship China is "normally" the most civilized and most advanced and most peaceful civilization in the world.
Or else. Troublemakers will be disposed of. Drop that mandate on 'em. Hard.
In this particular case, they are actually right to be pushing for renewable energy as fast as they can.
And if they were wrong? Well, that's the problem with dictators. "Wrong" is not in their dictionary. At least not as regards themselves.
P.S. I'm still expecting the Chinese to invade North Korea and Taiwan this spring. Opportunity beckons, this offer expires soon, and so they are going to make the Donald an offer he can't refuse... The Art of War versus The Art of the Deal.
I knew that reply was going to be here, but I feel like you mostly wasted your thoughtful reply on an invisible AC.
I would say the same thing, but perhaps too briefly as "Improvements in network communications have largely addressed the communications problems that technical conferences used to help with." You didn't mention bandwidth, but I think conferences have also become relatively slow mechanisms when it comes to information exchange. The logistical problems are the same as they ever were and require the same amounts of preparation and lead times. Only the marketing has gotten slicker (but shallower).
Going meta again, but I think the question would have been more useful with some background about trends in attendance. Maybe they're bigger and better than ever and it's just me who's gotten jaded?
Well, if your [gtall's] comment is supposed to be related to something that I wrote (and the context as a "Reply" says it is supposed to be), then you need to clarify the connection. I can think of a couple of other approaches to explaining alternative thinking, but I cannot detect if you are thinking at all, at least in relation to what I wrote, so it's basically impossible to guess where to start with a reply that might be relevant.
Grasping at the straw of "value" (though I only mentioned it as a verb near the end, and quite tangentially), one way to think of "monetary value" is that traditional economists are looking where the light is better, even though they lost their wallets in a completely different place. They like money because they can count it, and then they jumped off the deep end to assuming that value was associated with money and that everything worth measuring can be reduced to monetary values. They sort of understand that time is frequently important, and a lot of their modified versions of money have time-related labels, but mostly they are arguing about which formula is best for determining how many angels can dance on the head of the pin. In the end, their values are just clever opinions, even when endorsed with fancy Nobel prizes.
However, their "monetary values" then drive the priorities in ways that destroy freedom. Increasing human freedom (such as it is and while we last) is one of my pet projects. My sig captures part of it.
The solution is to rethink economics in terms of time. I call it ekronomics, and when you start looking at things from that perspective, the problems and their solutions look quite different.
The foundation is to consider the types of time. Essential working time is the main focus of your comment, and in advanced countries the average is quite low. Looking at the demographics of the job types you can get a rough estimate, which looks to be on the order of 2 hours per week. In contrast, in an extremely poor society, everyone is working all the time trying to produce the essentials and they are still starving.
The rest of the time can be divided into two main categories: investment and recreation. The investment time improves future productivity and includes things like advanced education, research, and new infrastructure. The more human time a country can direct in this direction, the faster it will become "advanced" and more competitive with other nations. Singapore is an interesting example.
Recreation is a funny category in a lot of ways. For one thing, the demand and the supply is inexhaustible. There are limits to how much food you can eat, and you consume the food you do eat, but you can always watch another movie (or read another book or whatever) if you have the time, and the movie isn't consumed when you watch it. There's also some confusion because the producers are highly valued, but it is the choices of the consumers that make their creative productions valuable...
The Fermi Paradox is one of my favorite speculative topics and now I think the "solution" is that naturally evolved intelligence (like us) sometimes produces Artificial Super-Intelligence (ASI) before it goes away, and the ASIs don't have anything to say to us. I'd actually go farther and speculate on two types of ASIs, one type driven by curiosity (which would motivate them to study us) and the other type driven by efficiency (which would motivate them to ignore us unless they wanted our resources, in which case they would immediately destroy us). I used to speculate the second type would go all the way to Dyson spheres, even on a galactic level that might account for much of the missing matter, but I've dropped that speculation for now... I still speculate that the first type might be gambling quatloos on our surviving long enough to replace ourselves, and our odds are falling fast.
Anyway, an interesting recent book I'd recommend on the topic is Our Final Invention by James Barrat. On the specific topic of automation in the Internet age, the only one that comes to mind just now is The Lights in the Tunnel by Martin Ford, which is older and kind of misdirected IMO. Now that I think about it from that perspective, How Google Works by Schmidt and Rosenberg also strikes me as relevant, but mostly because they are ignoring the non-google part of the universe. (My main conclusion from that book was actually that the golden google palace is full of clever programmers who are also shallow thinkers--and that's how they want it.)
Mostly dismissed your comments as light scanning, which was clearly justified by your closing diss of Hillary. Not saying that I like her, but I'm already pretty certain that you can't convince me she was such an exceptionally bad candidate and I had no problem voting for her, even if I would have preferred a less conservative option. If you actually think you have some NEW reason to hate her that doesn't go back to fake news or misogyny, go ahead.
As for the rest of it... Well, you obviously paid even less attention to what I actually wrote than my light scan. Next you'll be telling me that you have a guaranteed compression algorithm that will make any file at least one bit smaller, right?
Unless you have something new or interesting to say, I'm filing this as pointless and closed.
No. Go study some information theory. Reality is not like that.
You cannot pretend the complexity does not exist. If you force the legislature to ignore the complexities (by compressing their legislation), then the complexities will still exist and will be resolved somewhere else. If you prevent the bureaucracy (as part of the executive branch) from addressing the complexities (by compressing their regulations), then the complexities will still exist and will be resolved somewhere else. If you prevent the judges from addressing the complexities (perhaps by burning all the old rulings and abandoning res gestae), then the complexities will still exist and will still be resolved, probably at random. (Just a traditional analysis from the perspective of the American constitution, though there are other approaches and they all wind up at the same place.)
I'm not saying that principles are bad. I would even agree that it is better if principles can be expressed concisely. However, principles can only guide you and you cannot appeal to first principles every time you encounter a complexity. (Unless NP = P? I don't think so.)
Right now I'm thinking you might be one of the angry losers who supported #PresidentTweety for his delusional lies about delusional greatness. America is NOT going to wind the clock backwards. If it tried, the nation would merely sink into obscurity.
If you are one of them, have you already started thinking about who you are going to blame next? I bet you won't blame #PresidentTweety or yourself. Or are you going to pretend to be surprised by the utterly vile persistence of reality?
Unclear to me where you are going, but arbitrary word limits do not seem to be the solution to any problem I can understand. If your word limits on laws force the laws to be unclear or leave things unspecified, then the decisions will be made elsewhere. Perhaps within the bureaucracy or by the courts, but you can't just say shorter is better.
Good suggestions and I want to agree with you, but I think that whatever rules you have, there are some people who value "winning" above everything. You need to assume that those people will cheat and twist the rules, and no matter how you change the rules, they will just look for new ways to cheat.
Maybe the biggest problem in today's America is that all the rules are being written by professional politicians who have become highly responsive to bribes from people of that sort? With #PresidentTweety they've finally closed the loop completely, with the politicians and their cronies alternating between corporate and governmental service, except that it's really self-service on both sides and phuck the citizen peasants. Sideways and twice on Sundays.
In accord with my sig, I think we could do better if freedom were actually an operative principle here. Details available upon request? Seems to have become something of a punchline in that shallow flaming is apparently so much more amusing to the noisiest posters on Slashdot (and elsewhere).
The reality is rather more complicated than your feeble attempt at a joke might suggest. Not really blaming you. I wanted to think of some humorous aspect of the entire situation and came up drier than your attempted witticism.
President Obama inherited a mess. The roots of the problem go back way before 2013, 2008, or even 2000. The entire governmental system has become hopelessly distorted by partisan politics. The founders hated political parties and understood the risks of putting party ahead of country. They probably would have outlawed political parties if they could have figured out any way to prevent the leopard from changing its spots, but at least they tried to isolate the sickness and keep it out of the judicial branch. Most prominently, that's why federal judges were appointed for life.
A lot of people would point at Bush v Gore as the breaking point, but I actually think that was just the harvest. The seeds were planted decades before. Maybe Ike deserves the negative credit for trying to defuse two of his political adversaries by putting them on the Court? Or FDR for his attempts to pack the Court, though at least he failed in his bum's rush approach and had to wait for time to do its little ravaging act? Or maybe we should just jump all the way back to Marbury v Madison and President John Adams?
Anyway, at this point I think whatever Obama did badly, #PresidentTweety is about to do worse.
So now you have me wondering exactly how many history or law or legal history books you have read about the Supreme Court. Hey, I'll give you partial credit for well done fiction about the court. I kind of lost count during my first course on the history of the common law some decades ago.
However, considering how poorly you read, I guess I can't promise any credit at all. You have already failed the course. Or are you just faking your confusion about Ike's picks?
Given your apparent density, I was actually considering the next obvious question. It would be asking you if you could give a single example of a ruling that resembled your claim of "unleashed" justices since the death of Ike's "bad" (in Ike's own opinion) picks for the court. However, you actually surprised me by jumping to one of the most persuasive examples, Roberts' quirky ruling on ObamaCare.
Of course I was already a couple of steps ahead of you. Also on both flanks, though I object on principle to stabbing you in the back, too. Do you even know what went wrong with Ike's picks? It was precisely because they were strategic political picks. The idea was to get them "safely" out of politics by giving them "relatively harmless" sinecures on the Supreme Court. In particular Ike wanted to make certain that Earl Warren would not run for president.
It was NOT the case that their progressive, dare I say liberal, political views were a surprise to anyone. Maybe that's what confused you somehow? Really hard to follow your attempts at "logic" there. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough on my point, which was that the soon-to-be-fake Republicans learned a crucial lesson there: Supreme Court justices last a long time.
Now back to the eastern front defended by Roberts. Turns out that was a political stunt, too. It is NOT the case that Roberts decided to change his principles. It is merely the case that Roberts can count to 5. If Roberts could have gotten four votes going the other way, then he surely would have joined the 5-4 anti-Obama ruling, even though it would have looked a bit bad. However, it looks rather worse to be on the 4-5 losing end, so that time he decided it was better to switch his vote and create the 6-3 "clear" decision. Bonus points in that he managed to twist the written decision in his preferred direction and still leave a little shiv in the law's back. (Both senses of "law" there.)
Anyway, if you can't do better (and I'm betting against), then I'm just going to regard this typical-for-today's-Slashdot discussion as pointless and closed. Also, mooted, assuming that #PresidentTweety doesn't change his mind before 8 o'clock. I have already predicted that Trump's pick will be mostly based on personal loyalty, and I can even pick a couple of test issues that could be checked immediately... Not worth it.
I have to strongly disagree with you on this, but I'm not sure what context you have or where you are coming from. I think the so-called Republicans have become EXTREMELY careful about picking judges, and most careful of all when it comes to SCOTUS. At this point I'm confident they have identified all the warning signs of a potentially "unstable" nominee, and they won't take ANY chances on such.
Their caution is actually mostly due to a real Republican called Ike. You've probably heard of him, even if you're some kind of whippersnapper. I'm not certain of the exact words, though there are many sources for the gist. The longest one (I could find easily) that has a direct quote cites his words as "I have made two mistakes, and they are both sitting on the Supreme Court." He was summarizing his presidency in an interview.
I actually thinks that what is going on now is that #PresidentTweety is asking them, just as you suggested. He already had a list of extremist candidates that even crazy Cruz would accept. However, I think that all of the ones he has spoken to so far were NOT sufficiently convincing of their personal loyalty, and Trump is putting that ahead of the vetting they've already gone through. Considering how leaky his people are and the lack of a leaked short list so far, I think he may still be in the telephone interview stage. If he doesn't start face-to-face interviews soon, he may be about to pull another Trumper, perhaps nominating one of his personal lawyers.
By the time you get your historical perspective the damage will be quite irreversible. The kind of dictatorship that #PresidentTweety is obviously seeking to impose from day one of his reign poses a potentially fatal threat to America's constitutional government.
Some people think climate change is the elephant in the room. However, I'm quite confident that it's already too late to worry about averting human-induced climate change, but at least I think that problem isn't an existential crisis for humanity. More of a profit opportunity for owners of real estate around the poles.
Anyway, the "discussion" can safely be regarded as pointless and closed. Should I now predict you won't follow your own rude and mindless advice and just "Shut. The. Fuck. Up."?
Again, the reply skips over my key word of "loyalty". Did I need to be more explicit and say that "personal loyalty to ME, #PresidentTweety" is at the top of his list of qualifications?
If he can't find an actual judge who can convince him of sufficient personal loyalty, I wouldn't be surprised if he jumps the shark and *gasp* lies again. It's not like Ted Cruz deserves any honesty at this late date or that the Donald's promises are worth the thin air they vanish into. Trump may well pull a name out of the completely sunless place.
I think it's a very slim hope. You didn't even mention "loyalty", which is my main concern. I also think it is the reason #PresidentTweety hasn't already nominated anyone. I think he is interviewing the candidates, perhaps during the commercials in his favorite shows, and they keep acting like principled judges, not loyal sycophants.
He may be forced to go outside the rules of normality (again). Maybe he'll nominate Kellyanne Conway or the Bannon himself?
I would like to believe that there are 40 Democratic politicians with that much backbone, however it wouldn't matter if there were. The so-called Republicans would simply change the filibuster rules at the start of the next session. Simple majority will suffice.
However, it is possible that they will be afraid to exercise that nuclear option until they are certain that they have converted America into a one-party state. They came close once before, but Teddy Roosevelt rode the rescue of democracy that time. If you can see any similar so-called Republicans these days, I'm curious who you think they are. If you limit the candidates to former presidents, then I am certain Dubya can be eliminated and Poppy is too old.
Thanks for the interesting link. It's actually tightly related to my speculations that China is about to launch a double invasion of North Korea and Taiwan, essentially imposing "a deal" on #PresidentTweety where he will have to let them have Taiwan back in exchange for "solving" the problem that is North Korea. I don't want to go into all the details here, but I already mentioned the secondary benefits of focusing the Chinese people on outside enemies.
Dictators LOVE having lots of enemies to blame and attack. (Yes, I acknowledge that even non-dictators can have enemies, but they don't NEED enemies the way dictators do.)
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That is actually touching on a good point that I didn't directly address. If you are rich enough and value your privacy that much, then you certainly can try to control your email better by using your own email server. Doesn't always work as well as it might. There was a certain H. Clinton who tried that approach...
Rather than chase (or get sucked) down that rabbit hole, let me just say that I think regular people should also have the freedom to control their own email. They should even be allowed to use "full-service" email systems such as Gmail without sacrificing their Constitutional rights.
What makes it especially bad in the case of the google is the hypocrisy of the "Don't be evil" thing. There are ways to make email less evil and less subject to abuse, but the google has chosen (and is continuing to choose) not to use them. I am admitting that the google is offering a highly attractive email system, but they are offering it in an EVIL way.
Perhaps I should try to back this conversation away from Gmail? It was merely an example I selected for the larger point of "possession"... Or should I try to defend the selection of that example on the grounds that Gmail is so easily abused in so many ways, while still being so prevalent?
Let me say that if there were a better option available, then I would drop Gmail in the proverbial New York minute, and I certainly would not use Gmail for any "subversive" email that would actually do something like unfairly upset #PresidentTweety. (Yes, I'm sure (or hopeful?) that much of my email (and public comments like this one) would upset him, but I think I'm quite fair about it. Plus it's too easy to do.)
Too shallow. Also feeble. No reply merited.
Yes, I know that quite well. Do you know that there were protocols before POP3? Ever heard of SMTP, for example?
Look, I don't want to berate you for the shallowness of your reply. I would like to encourage deep and thoughtful discussions, even on Slashdot. Your reply was not part of one of them, and was closer to the category of "If you have nothing to say, then..." At this point I think I would be delusional if I were seriously anticipating such discussions on Slashdot, but my excuse is that I sometimes write to clarify my own analyses and thoughts. It would be great if a deeper discussion developed, but I'm not expecting many of them.
Still, you did manage to touch on a slightly deeper issue, though I had actually mentioned it tangentially in my comment. The encrypted backup on the google's servers could also be used to provide email access on all of your devices. It would be trickier to implement on portable devices with limited resources, but user options could let us decide the degree to which we wanted to risk our privacy (including via exposure to warrantless searches) in exchange for convenience. More could be said, but I'm going to turn to the deeper issue underlying the lack of choice:
PROFIT! In order to absolutely maximize profits, companies like the google want to minimize costs by reducing your choices. Additional options would incur development and operational (including support) costs, so one of the many abuses of monopolists is that they prefer to force ALL of their customers to do everything in the most profitable way from THEIR perspective. The complicated reality is that the victims (AKA customers) are different and have different priorities and would exercise their freedom differently if they were allowed to. Our best hope for REAL improvements in Gmail would be a serious threat from a superior email service. Yahoo obviously failed to develop into such a threat, and though Microsoft or Apple still could, so far they are just preferring to copy the google's game plan as closely as possible.
Me? I think freedom is more important than money. (Time is in between.)
This would NOT be an issue in this same way if we were allowed to retrain physical possession of our email. That would put the 9 points on OUR side.
Let me illustrate by example of how Gmail could work. There could be an option to store the email on our own computers. Generous as the google is with their storage allocation, I have way more than that in my OWN physical possession and I could, if allowed, possess my own email there.
This could even be done in a way that is compatible with Gmail's business model. If I elect to use the option of local storage, then I would agree to run a special kind of search program on my computer. That search program would then issue search queries to the google's ad servers and, without ever examining my email on their servers, the appropriate advertisements could be served to my computer. (In my case, that means to be ignored, since I have a personal policy against feeding the google now that they've clearly gone to the dark side. Latest evidence I've read was in How Google Works .)
If the google actually valued my privacy, they could throw in an option to encrypt the email end-to-end, even while it is on their servers. That could include while it is on their services for backup purposes, too, which would mean that they would never have any "possession" of the clear text version of my personal email, and I would retain the possession of the decryption key. If the House of so-called Representatives then wanted to read my email, they might need to consider the actual Bill of Rights. You know, the stuff about warrants and probable cause and all that jazz.
Oh well. Nobody expects the Email Inquisition. Y'all have a nice day, hear?
Yes, you are missing something. Solar energy is NOT the only form of renewable energy.
Old version is hydroelectricity.
New versions include solar, but wind power is probably larger. I'd need to check the stats. (Then again, wind power is also an old technology. It's just the electric part that is newish.)
If you really have mod points and use them so aggressively, then it explains quite a bit about the state of moderation on Slashdot. Can't recall the last time I had a mod point to bestow.
Those shallow little potshots... Why bother? You need to confirm your prejudices and hatreds? You think it makes your beliefs stronger because you get to read them again?
"Reality? Bah! What a concept!"
At least that seems to be the new motto of #PresdientTweety's administration, and if so, it goes far towards explaining why they [mostly Bannon and his cronies] seem to be imitating so many of China's authoritarian government techniques and even policies.
Of course the reality is rather more complicated. Perhaps the deepest underlying reality is that petrochemicals are limited, and the Chinese government is only being realistic in moving away from oil and they can't help being authoritarian in how they are doing it. When your only hammer is "authoritarianism", then everything looks like a nail, eh? The coal reserves are much larger, but still limited and the externalities are much larger, again making it realistic to move away from coal and once again the Chinese government can't help but do things in an authoritarian way. Yes, climate change is a real concern, but I think the Chinese government doesn't really care that much. They just want results and if "climate change" helps ratchet up the pressure for the results they want, then that's okay.
Even if they are successful, to my mind that does not justify remaking America in China's authoritarian image. However, from the Chinese perspective things look quite different. Only when there is a strong authoritarian government (with the "mandate of heaven") does anything get done, and the alternatives are chaos and anarchy and even civil war. You know how it is, but even China has a few bad centuries now and then. From their long-term perspective, the normal situation is a strong dictatorship (normally emperors, but now communists) and under that "normal" dictatorship China is "normally" the most civilized and most advanced and most peaceful civilization in the world.
Or else. Troublemakers will be disposed of. Drop that mandate on 'em. Hard.
In this particular case, they are actually right to be pushing for renewable energy as fast as they can.
And if they were wrong? Well, that's the problem with dictators. "Wrong" is not in their dictionary. At least not as regards themselves.
P.S. I'm still expecting the Chinese to invade North Korea and Taiwan this spring. Opportunity beckons, this offer expires soon, and so they are going to make the Donald an offer he can't refuse... The Art of War versus The Art of the Deal .
What part of "pointless and closed" were you unable to understand.
I knew that reply was going to be here, but I feel like you mostly wasted your thoughtful reply on an invisible AC.
I would say the same thing, but perhaps too briefly as "Improvements in network communications have largely addressed the communications problems that technical conferences used to help with." You didn't mention bandwidth, but I think conferences have also become relatively slow mechanisms when it comes to information exchange. The logistical problems are the same as they ever were and require the same amounts of preparation and lead times. Only the marketing has gotten slicker (but shallower).
Going meta again, but I think the question would have been more useful with some background about trends in attendance. Maybe they're bigger and better than ever and it's just me who's gotten jaded?
Well, if your [gtall's] comment is supposed to be related to something that I wrote (and the context as a "Reply" says it is supposed to be), then you need to clarify the connection. I can think of a couple of other approaches to explaining alternative thinking, but I cannot detect if you are thinking at all, at least in relation to what I wrote, so it's basically impossible to guess where to start with a reply that might be relevant.
Grasping at the straw of "value" (though I only mentioned it as a verb near the end, and quite tangentially), one way to think of "monetary value" is that traditional economists are looking where the light is better, even though they lost their wallets in a completely different place. They like money because they can count it, and then they jumped off the deep end to assuming that value was associated with money and that everything worth measuring can be reduced to monetary values. They sort of understand that time is frequently important, and a lot of their modified versions of money have time-related labels, but mostly they are arguing about which formula is best for determining how many angels can dance on the head of the pin. In the end, their values are just clever opinions, even when endorsed with fancy Nobel prizes.
However, their "monetary values" then drive the priorities in ways that destroy freedom. Increasing human freedom (such as it is and while we last) is one of my pet projects. My sig captures part of it.
Does any of that address your actual confusion?
The solution is to rethink economics in terms of time. I call it ekronomics, and when you start looking at things from that perspective, the problems and their solutions look quite different.
The foundation is to consider the types of time. Essential working time is the main focus of your comment, and in advanced countries the average is quite low. Looking at the demographics of the job types you can get a rough estimate, which looks to be on the order of 2 hours per week. In contrast, in an extremely poor society, everyone is working all the time trying to produce the essentials and they are still starving.
The rest of the time can be divided into two main categories: investment and recreation. The investment time improves future productivity and includes things like advanced education, research, and new infrastructure. The more human time a country can direct in this direction, the faster it will become "advanced" and more competitive with other nations. Singapore is an interesting example.
Recreation is a funny category in a lot of ways. For one thing, the demand and the supply is inexhaustible. There are limits to how much food you can eat, and you consume the food you do eat, but you can always watch another movie (or read another book or whatever) if you have the time, and the movie isn't consumed when you watch it. There's also some confusion because the producers are highly valued, but it is the choices of the consumers that make their creative productions valuable...
The Fermi Paradox is one of my favorite speculative topics and now I think the "solution" is that naturally evolved intelligence (like us) sometimes produces Artificial Super-Intelligence (ASI) before it goes away, and the ASIs don't have anything to say to us. I'd actually go farther and speculate on two types of ASIs, one type driven by curiosity (which would motivate them to study us) and the other type driven by efficiency (which would motivate them to ignore us unless they wanted our resources, in which case they would immediately destroy us). I used to speculate the second type would go all the way to Dyson spheres, even on a galactic level that might account for much of the missing matter, but I've dropped that speculation for now... I still speculate that the first type might be gambling quatloos on our surviving long enough to replace ourselves, and our odds are falling fast.
Anyway, an interesting recent book I'd recommend on the topic is Our Final Invention by James Barrat. On the specific topic of automation in the Internet age, the only one that comes to mind just now is The Lights in the Tunnel by Martin Ford, which is older and kind of misdirected IMO. Now that I think about it from that perspective, How Google Works by Schmidt and Rosenberg also strikes me as relevant, but mostly because they are ignoring the non-google part of the universe. (My main conclusion from that book was actually that the golden google palace is full of clever programmers who are also shallow thinkers--and that's how they want it.)
What part of "pointless and closed" were you unable to understand?
P.S. I spent more time typing that ACK than I spent glancing at your comment to confirm p&c.
Mostly dismissed your comments as light scanning, which was clearly justified by your closing diss of Hillary. Not saying that I like her, but I'm already pretty certain that you can't convince me she was such an exceptionally bad candidate and I had no problem voting for her, even if I would have preferred a less conservative option. If you actually think you have some NEW reason to hate her that doesn't go back to fake news or misogyny, go ahead.
As for the rest of it... Well, you obviously paid even less attention to what I actually wrote than my light scan. Next you'll be telling me that you have a guaranteed compression algorithm that will make any file at least one bit smaller, right?
Unless you have something new or interesting to say, I'm filing this as pointless and closed.
No. Go study some information theory. Reality is not like that.
You cannot pretend the complexity does not exist. If you force the legislature to ignore the complexities (by compressing their legislation), then the complexities will still exist and will be resolved somewhere else. If you prevent the bureaucracy (as part of the executive branch) from addressing the complexities (by compressing their regulations), then the complexities will still exist and will be resolved somewhere else. If you prevent the judges from addressing the complexities (perhaps by burning all the old rulings and abandoning res gestae), then the complexities will still exist and will still be resolved, probably at random. (Just a traditional analysis from the perspective of the American constitution, though there are other approaches and they all wind up at the same place.)
I'm not saying that principles are bad. I would even agree that it is better if principles can be expressed concisely. However, principles can only guide you and you cannot appeal to first principles every time you encounter a complexity. (Unless NP = P? I don't think so.)
Right now I'm thinking you might be one of the angry losers who supported #PresidentTweety for his delusional lies about delusional greatness. America is NOT going to wind the clock backwards. If it tried, the nation would merely sink into obscurity.
If you are one of them, have you already started thinking about who you are going to blame next? I bet you won't blame #PresidentTweety or yourself. Or are you going to pretend to be surprised by the utterly vile persistence of reality?
Unclear to me where you are going, but arbitrary word limits do not seem to be the solution to any problem I can understand. If your word limits on laws force the laws to be unclear or leave things unspecified, then the decisions will be made elsewhere. Perhaps within the bureaucracy or by the courts, but you can't just say shorter is better.
Good suggestions and I want to agree with you, but I think that whatever rules you have, there are some people who value "winning" above everything. You need to assume that those people will cheat and twist the rules, and no matter how you change the rules, they will just look for new ways to cheat.
Maybe the biggest problem in today's America is that all the rules are being written by professional politicians who have become highly responsive to bribes from people of that sort? With #PresidentTweety they've finally closed the loop completely, with the politicians and their cronies alternating between corporate and governmental service, except that it's really self-service on both sides and phuck the citizen peasants. Sideways and twice on Sundays.
In accord with my sig, I think we could do better if freedom were actually an operative principle here. Details available upon request? Seems to have become something of a punchline in that shallow flaming is apparently so much more amusing to the noisiest posters on Slashdot (and elsewhere).
The reality is rather more complicated than your feeble attempt at a joke might suggest. Not really blaming you. I wanted to think of some humorous aspect of the entire situation and came up drier than your attempted witticism.
President Obama inherited a mess. The roots of the problem go back way before 2013, 2008, or even 2000. The entire governmental system has become hopelessly distorted by partisan politics. The founders hated political parties and understood the risks of putting party ahead of country. They probably would have outlawed political parties if they could have figured out any way to prevent the leopard from changing its spots, but at least they tried to isolate the sickness and keep it out of the judicial branch. Most prominently, that's why federal judges were appointed for life.
A lot of people would point at Bush v Gore as the breaking point, but I actually think that was just the harvest. The seeds were planted decades before. Maybe Ike deserves the negative credit for trying to defuse two of his political adversaries by putting them on the Court? Or FDR for his attempts to pack the Court, though at least he failed in his bum's rush approach and had to wait for time to do its little ravaging act? Or maybe we should just jump all the way back to Marbury v Madison and President John Adams?
Anyway, at this point I think whatever Obama did badly, #PresidentTweety is about to do worse.
Nobody expects the Email Inquisition.
So now you have me wondering exactly how many history or law or legal history books you have read about the Supreme Court. Hey, I'll give you partial credit for well done fiction about the court. I kind of lost count during my first course on the history of the common law some decades ago.
However, considering how poorly you read, I guess I can't promise any credit at all. You have already failed the course. Or are you just faking your confusion about Ike's picks?
Given your apparent density, I was actually considering the next obvious question. It would be asking you if you could give a single example of a ruling that resembled your claim of "unleashed" justices since the death of Ike's "bad" (in Ike's own opinion) picks for the court. However, you actually surprised me by jumping to one of the most persuasive examples, Roberts' quirky ruling on ObamaCare.
Of course I was already a couple of steps ahead of you. Also on both flanks, though I object on principle to stabbing you in the back, too. Do you even know what went wrong with Ike's picks? It was precisely because they were strategic political picks. The idea was to get them "safely" out of politics by giving them "relatively harmless" sinecures on the Supreme Court. In particular Ike wanted to make certain that Earl Warren would not run for president.
It was NOT the case that their progressive, dare I say liberal, political views were a surprise to anyone. Maybe that's what confused you somehow? Really hard to follow your attempts at "logic" there. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough on my point, which was that the soon-to-be-fake Republicans learned a crucial lesson there: Supreme Court justices last a long time.
Now back to the eastern front defended by Roberts. Turns out that was a political stunt, too. It is NOT the case that Roberts decided to change his principles. It is merely the case that Roberts can count to 5. If Roberts could have gotten four votes going the other way, then he surely would have joined the 5-4 anti-Obama ruling, even though it would have looked a bit bad. However, it looks rather worse to be on the 4-5 losing end, so that time he decided it was better to switch his vote and create the 6-3 "clear" decision. Bonus points in that he managed to twist the written decision in his preferred direction and still leave a little shiv in the law's back. (Both senses of "law" there.)
Anyway, if you can't do better (and I'm betting against), then I'm just going to regard this typical-for-today's-Slashdot discussion as pointless and closed. Also, mooted, assuming that #PresidentTweety doesn't change his mind before 8 o'clock. I have already predicted that Trump's pick will be mostly based on personal loyalty, and I can even pick a couple of test issues that could be checked immediately... Not worth it.
I have to strongly disagree with you on this, but I'm not sure what context you have or where you are coming from. I think the so-called Republicans have become EXTREMELY careful about picking judges, and most careful of all when it comes to SCOTUS. At this point I'm confident they have identified all the warning signs of a potentially "unstable" nominee, and they won't take ANY chances on such.
Their caution is actually mostly due to a real Republican called Ike. You've probably heard of him, even if you're some kind of whippersnapper. I'm not certain of the exact words, though there are many sources for the gist. The longest one (I could find easily) that has a direct quote cites his words as "I have made two mistakes, and they are both sitting on the Supreme Court." He was summarizing his presidency in an interview.
I actually thinks that what is going on now is that #PresidentTweety is asking them, just as you suggested. He already had a list of extremist candidates that even crazy Cruz would accept. However, I think that all of the ones he has spoken to so far were NOT sufficiently convincing of their personal loyalty, and Trump is putting that ahead of the vetting they've already gone through. Considering how leaky his people are and the lack of a leaked short list so far, I think he may still be in the telephone interview stage. If he doesn't start face-to-face interviews soon, he may be about to pull another Trumper, perhaps nominating one of his personal lawyers.
By the time you get your historical perspective the damage will be quite irreversible. The kind of dictatorship that #PresidentTweety is obviously seeking to impose from day one of his reign poses a potentially fatal threat to America's constitutional government.
Some people think climate change is the elephant in the room. However, I'm quite confident that it's already too late to worry about averting human-induced climate change, but at least I think that problem isn't an existential crisis for humanity. More of a profit opportunity for owners of real estate around the poles.
Anyway, the "discussion" can safely be regarded as pointless and closed. Should I now predict you won't follow your own rude and mindless advice and just "Shut. The. Fuck. Up."?
Bush v Gore.
I regard this branch of the "discussion" as pointless and closed.
Again, the reply skips over my key word of "loyalty". Did I need to be more explicit and say that "personal loyalty to ME, #PresidentTweety" is at the top of his list of qualifications?
If he can't find an actual judge who can convince him of sufficient personal loyalty, I wouldn't be surprised if he jumps the shark and *gasp* lies again. It's not like Ted Cruz deserves any honesty at this late date or that the Donald's promises are worth the thin air they vanish into. Trump may well pull a name out of the completely sunless place.
I think it's a very slim hope. You didn't even mention "loyalty", which is my main concern. I also think it is the reason #PresidentTweety hasn't already nominated anyone. I think he is interviewing the candidates, perhaps during the commercials in his favorite shows, and they keep acting like principled judges, not loyal sycophants.
He may be forced to go outside the rules of normality (again). Maybe he'll nominate Kellyanne Conway or the Bannon himself?
I would like to believe that there are 40 Democratic politicians with that much backbone, however it wouldn't matter if there were. The so-called Republicans would simply change the filibuster rules at the start of the next session. Simple majority will suffice.
However, it is possible that they will be afraid to exercise that nuclear option until they are certain that they have converted America into a one-party state. They came close once before, but Teddy Roosevelt rode the rescue of democracy that time. If you can see any similar so-called Republicans these days, I'm curious who you think they are. If you limit the candidates to former presidents, then I am certain Dubya can be eliminated and Poppy is too old.
Thanks for the interesting link. It's actually tightly related to my speculations that China is about to launch a double invasion of North Korea and Taiwan, essentially imposing "a deal" on #PresidentTweety where he will have to let them have Taiwan back in exchange for "solving" the problem that is North Korea. I don't want to go into all the details here, but I already mentioned the secondary benefits of focusing the Chinese people on outside enemies.
Dictators LOVE having lots of enemies to blame and attack. (Yes, I acknowledge that even non-dictators can have enemies, but they don't NEED enemies the way dictators do.)