I agree with lots of the posts from Americans I have seen here in slashdot before that state that if USA is *this* terrible why are people still willing to live there? I really can not understand it, what is it there in the USA that people, even some Britons (I live in Britain today) want to live there??
The GP was wrong in his interpretation of the court's decision.
They actually realized that a log of IP addresses and a log of URLs are two very different things, and convey different levels of information. This was actually mentioned in a footnote (quoting from the Wired article):
Surveillance techniques that enable the government to determine not only the IP addresses that a person accesses but also the uniform resource locators (URL) of the pages visited might be more constitutionally problematic. A URL, unlike an IP address, identifies the particular document within a website that a person views and thus reveals much more information about the persons Internet activity. For instance, a surveillance technique that captures IP addresses would show only that a person visited the New York Times' website at http://www.nytimes.com/ whereas a technique that captures URLs would also divulge the particular articles the person viewed.
An example is the difference between a log that shows "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-to-air_missi le, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_guidance" and one that shows "http://66.230.200.100". The latter is analogous to the numbers I'd dial into a phone in order to connect me to someone; the former is more indicative of the content of the communication.
Furthermore, just because a resource is "publicly available" doesn't mean that there's "no reasonable expectation of privacy." I expect that my Wikipedia browsing habits are between me, my ISP, and Wikipedia (and anyone else snooping on the line), likewise, although my Google searches are sent via GET URLs, that doesn't mean that they're public. (Particularly given that there's no alternative method, at least that I'm aware of, to use most search engines.) Libraries are public, also, but that doesn't mean that everyone's records are public information.
Yeah, the only thing the Redeemer statue demonstrates is that there are a lot of people in Brazil with cellphones.
The thing is only 77 years old. Give it a few more centuries and we'll talk. If you want interesting statues, the Easter Island heads were on the list of finalists, but apparently the Easter Islanders must've had trouble getting online.
I think this has been posted before, although not in an exact enough form for me to find it with a quick Google search.
Anyway, there's been a definite uptick in trolling lately; I don't know where exactly it's coming from (or, really, where it went for the past year or so) but I've seen a bunch of reposts of the old classics lately. (And the horsecock trolls; that seems new.)
I'm not disagreeing with you in the slightest, but I'd just point out that DHS is, by my reckoning anyway, definitely a "civilian" agency.
When I was thinking about 'non civilian agencies,' I meant the DoD and the MilDeps: Army, Navy, Air Force, the Three-Letter Agencies (NSA, NGA, DIA, MDA,...), etc. Some of them seem reasonably competent, or at least they keep their incompetence out of the limelight.
That the imbalance is exacerbated by migrant workers is definitely a possibility (of course, if the male/female statistics are based on the number of births in those M.E. countries, than it's probably unrelated), however, I think that leads to the question of "where are the migrant workers coming from, and what are their homes' sex ratios like?"
Things are definitely not any better in Asia. Whether as a result of sex-selection abortions, infanticide, disease / selective access to medical care, or some other reason, the male/female ratios in Asia are even further off than in the Middle East. (There are a lot of references on this, because it's obviously a big problem to any one in India...here's one.)
So if Oman, Saudi Arabia, and other M.E. countries are "male heavy" as a result of migrant workers (which, again, is only true if you're looking at adult statistics, which I'm not sure is the case) than that means the male/female ratio in whatever areas these workers are coming from -- presumably Asia -- even more dire, since their absence is serving to cover up the problem.
Two points: First, the physical changes to the drivers' licenses were only the tip of the Real ID iceberg; the bigger part of it was a big database that would contain all the same information as what's stored on the cards, and probably a lot more. This is where the increase in security came from (at least, according to the system's proponents). Instead of just examining the ID, someone at a terminal with access to the Giant Federal Database 'o Fun could swipe your card and see your photo and other information pop up on screen. So in order to "forge" an ID card and use it to get into a Federal Building, you'd not only have to create the physical card, but you'd also have to hack into the database and update the information there.
Obviously, this database thing does not go over well with a lot of people. The Federal government has a piss-poor history of IT and information security. The whole place, at least on the civilan/unclassified side, leaks like a sieve and loses computers and data at a terrifying rate. The last thing most people want is to be put into a national 'one stop shop' for stalking, ID theft, unwanted "investigation," data mining, etc.
Second: Although Canada and the U.S. are alike in many ways, they're not the same. Attitudes, particularly in regards to government, are quite different. What people find acceptable in Canada -- and what may actually work in Canada -- are not necessarily the same things that will work in the U.S. If you, as a Canadian, say that you have a similar Giant Central Database, and your government uses it responsibly and the whole thing doesn't devolve into a Brazilian bureaucratic nightmare, I'll take your word for it. However, that gives me no faith at all that a similar system wouldn't be an absolute terror, were it implemented here. Maybe you have more responsible leaders. Maybe we're paranoid. Maybe the water in D.C. is contaiminated with Brain Slug larvae. Who knows; but I don't trust my government further than I can throw it, and nothing I've seen recently has encouraged me to re-evaluate that decision.
If so many states now oppose Real ID, how is it that it passed into law in the first place?
Your question makes me believe that you still are under the impression that there is a direct connection between what the public desires and what laws get passed in Washington. I can assure you this is not the case.
Then there's the whole issue of saccades, which is why for example newspapers do not run sentences horizontally across the entire page, but rather split the page up into columns.
Bingo.
Although I'm sure there are places where 132 columns are great (using ncurses-based displays that are smart enough to respond to your terminal size, for instance), I really wouldn't want a text editor that's much wider than 80 columns for normal use, lest it encourage people to create really, REALLY long lines of code or text.
Despite the arbitrariness of "80 characters," , it does seem to be about the maximum width that's comfortable to read in one go. (Take an un-hardwrapped text file and open it in a very wide editor and try to read it; it's a PITA compared to reading a narrow column.)
With code, where you don't want a ton of softwrapping, it makes sense to have a conventional editor width that's also comfortable to read.
Vinge has six major novels, seven if you count his first (Grimm's World). I have no idea where the 'three' came from. (Clearly, I haven't had my coffee today.)
Personally though, I really only became a fan of him after reading A Fire Upon the Deep, and I'd recommend anyone who hasn't read his work to start there rather than going chronologically from the beginning.
I'll heartily second Vernor Vinge. Although, I think since he's only published three (?) novels at this point, it's difficult to compare him to Heinlein, Asimov, or Clarke, because they each have an entire canon behind them; I don't think there's any other author that I'm so eagerly awaiting new work from.
(Actually, I've been considering writing a review of his most recent book, Rainbows End [sic], because I think it's right up the alley of many Slashdot readers, at least those of whom haven't already read it. IMO, it is to our current, post-9/11, relentlessly paranoid time what Neuromancer was to the mid-1980s and Snow Crash was to the exuberant dot-com 90s; it's even better for being that without being particularly dystopian.)
Peter F. Hamilton is also quite entertaining, and I picked up his Night's Dawn trilogy while traveling a few years ago and thought it was solid, thoughtful, modern "space opera." (A genre that I'm glad to see being resurrected, after lingering in the pulp stacks for so long.)
And of course, anyone who hasn't read Stephenson's entire canon can turn in their geek credentials immediately. (Although an extension can be granted if you're just waiting for a week of spare time to settle in with the Baroque Cycle books; they're definitely what I'd call "vacation reading.")
In reality, one could explain ALL decision-making as nothing but chemical reactions or a response to past experiences (depending if you're a neurologist or a psychologist), but ultimately, I think that's an all-too convenient way for some to dodge the issue of personal responsibility and accountability for one's own behaviors and actions.
The idea that abandoning Free Will in favor of determinism (or Predestination; which is determinism with the addition of a diety) would lead to, shall we say... "adverse outcomes," isn't a new one. James Hogg explored it extensively in 1824, and I'm sure others did before that -- but Hogg's treatment is both compelling and entertaining.
I have no evidence either way that Heinlein ever read the book, but when reading it I was reminded of some of his more-modern takes on the same basic problem. Definitely worth reading.
Just to clarify, the "Liberals" you mean in this context are the "Liberal Democrats," correct? (Not being snarky, I'm not clear.)
I find U.K. politics interesting, but as an American I'm not entirely clear on the platforms of the various parties involved. The Liberal Democrats seem to be bordering on what I'd probably categorize as Libertarianism in the U.S., except that they also seem to favor a welfare state, which is a solidly leftist position in the U.S., and not generally favored by people who seek as a stated goal to minimize state interventionism in private life. (At least in any of the major parties; I'm sure there are individuals who have philosophies like that, but I've never seen a major party with that platform.) It strikes me as being something of a fine line to walk, to advocate a welfare state without being redistributivist, although they seem to be managing it.
Compared to U.S. politics (at the Federal level), which have all the variation of trench warfare -- with occasional forays across no-man's-land to broker deals that are to nobody's benefit in particular -- U.K. politics seems rather spirited.
Actually I think people are. I know people who shop around for gas and pay attention to price differences that are only a few cents.
If you're filling up once or twice a week, it's possible for the seemingly small savings of a few cents a gallon to add up.
(Of course it's stupid to drive across town for gas that's only a few cents cheaper, but it's not stupid to notice gas that's cheaper and fill up if you're below 1/2 a tank or so whenever you see it and when time permits.)
Well, when or if that happens, you guys can fight it then. You got a nice constitution and everything, (though it may be a bit battered and tarnished right now), should be pretty good protections against that.
That's too short-sighted and dangerous an attitude for me to support, considering the gravity of the problem.
Everywhere I look, I see the government prying further and further into private life. I don't think it's a "problem" that can be pushed off until some time down the road, it's happening right now, almost inexorably. I think "the people" are losing right now, as it is; handing control of healthcare to the government is going to just accelerate that process further.
The problem is by bringing the government into healthcare, is creating a public interest in what used to be purely private affairs. Right now, it's not really anybody else's business if I smoke a cigarette, or have a few fingers of Jack D., in the privacy of my home after work. At most, it's between me, other people in my house, and perhaps with my insurance company. But if the government is going to pick up the entire tab for my healthcare, then suddenly there's a public interest in taking away my right to ingest what I want. (Or alternately, they can threaten to cut off my healthcare coverage if I don't comply with their lifestyle guidelines, and with a single-payer system, there won't be a lot of alternative choices.) After all, the people who don't drink or smoke, aren't going to want to see precious resources squandered on my consciously-chosen, obviously antisocial, habits.* It's the exact same argument that's used to justify seat-belt and helmet laws, and those got through just fine in 49 states without the weight of taxpayer healthcare to bolster them: this isn't just theoretical.
It's not clear that the Constitution would be of much help, either. Historically, the Constitution has been stretched, or just ignored, whenever it was convenient for the government to do so. Look at the bastardization of the Commerce Clause -- and that's ignoring an intent (limitation of Federal powers) that many of the founders felt strongly enough about to actually write down. There are no such enshrined protections for personal privacy.**
It is far easier to not give a government power, than for the people to give it and then try to get it back. Placing healthcare in the hands of the government -- particularly the Federal government -- would allow an unprecedented expansion of power into the private lives and choices of citizens. To give the government that power is a huge risk, and I'm not willing to take or support a gamble with stakes that high.
Bottom line: yes, the healthcare system is fucked up. But the government is fucked up even worse. In fact, they're probably the one bunch of weasels that I trust less than the weasels running the insurance companies. To give them the high ground from which they could wage war against lifestyles they disagree with is insane. If a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars per person, per year, is what we pay to keep politics as far from medicine as we can, than I think it's money well spent.
* Not only that, but do you really think that the hordes of Evangelicals, heck, even moderate Christians, are going to allow their tax dollars to be used in a public-health system for abortions or contraception? You'd be looking at a way to expand the Hyde Amendment to not only affect people on Medicare/Medicaid, but virtually everyone in the country. Particularly given the Supreme Court that's now in place, that's not a direction I want to go in.
** The entire 'right to privacy' in the U.S. rests on a rather shaky legal foundation; Google "penumbra argument" if you want to read about it. Although its effects are nice, it's mostly a legal fiction created by a few bright Supreme Court Justices, and it could evaporate just as quickly.
Well, seems like trying to fix CPS would be a better use of resources than gradually banning everything that can be a "stimulus," particularly when the disturbed people in question are so deeply warped that they'll inevitably be set off by something.
Of course, fixing CPS and similar agencies like it, is a tough problem -- one that no politician wants to tackle. Instead they prefer to just ban some porn and push the problem down to the next guy who comes along.
imagine everyone in a given city getting free calls 24/7.
Yeah, and so can the phone companies.
Ain't gonna happen. They'll just raise that $10/mo (what the hell is that for, anyway? Ten bucks a month to not use their network? WTF) until it's as high as the average person pays to use the cellular network. And then laugh all the way to the bank.
Re:Great, so engineers are Masons now?
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True. And I agree with you, the higher education system (actually, the entire educational system) is screwed up. (Although I have zero confidence in any of our political leaders to improve the situation, and I think they might make it worse.)
I think there's a difference though between having a monopoly over information itself, and over the sort of "vetting" that universities and technical schools / professional bodies provide.
There's no real information taught at any university, at least in the formal curriculum, that's not widely known. What a student is really buying from the university is the diploma -- a piece of paper that essentially backs up the graduate, and says "so-and-so University has declared this student to be something slightly more than a complete imbecile." That's it.
Nobody is willing to hire you without one, because they don't want to have to go to the work (perceived or actual) of determining whether you're really what you say you are. If I walk into an interview and say "sure, I'm a physicist, learned it all on my own in my spare time!" somebody might believe me, but more likely they're going to tell me to GTFO. It would be difficult for them to determine (particularly if they're just a HR drone and know nothing about physics themselves) whether I'm really as knowledgeable as I claim, or whether I just spent a few hours skimming Wikipedia that morning. Lacking either the means or the interest to test me themselves, they rely on the reputation of outside agencies -- universities, usually -- who get paid a lot of money to both educate and then certify students as "educated."
Although this system does lead to a whole lot of problems, I personally don't have a great replacement for it. Yeah, it would be nice if HR departments cared less about what little pieces of paper you had, and were more willing to evaluate applicants on their merits and self-training, but I think requiring that might do bad things to the job market, since it would make finding new hires such a major ordeal.
I'm certainly open to better ways to do it, though. But at any rate, I think there's a major difference between that sort of 'certification centralization' and outright censorship of material except from a chosen few people.
Take the total amount spent by US citizens (and employers) per capita compared to what we spend on "evil-socialized-communist" health-care in Canada, you guys spend multiple times as much for a system that sucks.
Here's the problem that I have with the constant U.S./Canada comparisons: how do we know that the same services are being delivered at that price?
I don't think that any country, even Canada, has the range of lifestyle and dietary issues that we have here in the U.S., and which drive a large portion of healthcare costs. Even if the systems were exactly the same in the U.S. and $RANDOM_COUNTRY, what's to say that the per-capita cost would be the same? There are a lot of things that can change costs; it's not like "keeping one person healthy" is some sort of fixed constant.
Furthermore, speaking as an American, I have an idea of how people get when they know their tax money is being spent on something. A publicly-funded, single-payer healthcare system would be an invitation for the government to start regulating all sorts of stuff. People would demand it -- they're not going to want their tax dollars used to pay for "some asshole's smoking habit," or somebody else who likes to drive without a seatbelt, or someone else who likes to go hang-gliding at night.
Perhaps this doesn't happen in other countries with public healthcare. I'm glad to hear it. But America is a basically intolerant country full of intolerant people who love to dictate how the people around them can live their lives. A public healthcare system would be a wonderful bully pulpit that they could use to essentially dictate everything: from what you can eat, to how much exercise you have to do, to what kind of recreation you do -- or you'll lose your only source for health care.
If the difference in per-capita cost between Canada's system and the U.S.'s is what it takes to keep the various strains of Puritans, neo-prohibitionists, safety freaks, militant vegetarians, anti-gunners, etc. that we breed in this country -- basically whatever crackheads happen to be inhabiting Congress now, or at any point in the future -- from getting a firmer grip on private life, than that's a price I'm happy to pay. And considering the greater sacrifices that have been made over the years for the poor excuse for a 'free society' that we have left, I'm not really interested in a lot of whining otherwise.
He forgot the tags.
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This is the most popular type of explosive used when making car bombs. They've known it for years. McVeigh used this. It's been on prime time news.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the GP was being a wee bit sarcastic.
Great, so engineers are Masons now?
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But on the other hand, it is illegal without a licence, and for a very good reason, and to give this knowlegde to unlicenced kids?
I think this is a terrible attitude, and it's sad.
You need a license to buy explosives, not to learn about them. One of the precepts of our entire society is that information isn't sectioned off into little 'need-to-know' chunks, controlled by cabals or trade organizations.
You can't practice medicine without a license either, but nobody goes around trying to lock up all the first-aid manuals or anatomy textbooks. We don't let random individuals set up shop as Professional Engineers and start greenlighting bridges, but anyone who wants to can go and read about finite element analysis; there's no secrets there.
Turning society into a series of closed, medieval-Masonic-ish 'knowledge cults' isn't going to help us in the long run. And frankly, if that sort of secrecy is what's required to "protect" society from terrorists, I seriously question the value of what you're preserving.
I'm not entirely certain, but I think the "Horsecock" meme might have gotten started over on K5... at least, it seems to be more prevalent there, and I saw it there before I ever saw it on Slashdot. (In fact, there is a post on K5 asking people to up-mod the GP.)
At any rate, it seems like it's been a while since I've seen a new troll on/.; while the lack of trolling is undoubtedly a good thing overall, I have to admit that I got a fair bit of amusement out of the old GNAA/Hot Grits/Stephen King/priorities posts, at least initially. But then they all seemed to disappear, whether because of the moderation system working, or a mildew epidemic in basements somewhere, I'm not sure.
As much as I'm supportive of any program that might, conceivably, provide a partial alternative to our petroleum addiction, I have seen several pieces lately about ethanol vs. biodiesel, which seem to indicate that biodiesel is a much more realistic alternative to gasoline than ethanol is, but that its major shortcoming is that it doesn't reward corn production.
While I don't have the background to really comment or hold an opinion one way or another, I just think it's a mistake to look too hard for "one solution" that we need to put all our money and hopes in. We need to be looking all over the place, and we need to realize that the final solution might not involve all the cars in the country running on the same fuel. There might be certain fuels that are preferable in certain regions or for certain types of vehicles, and although it might fundamentally alter the transportation network and your ability to drive one vehicle anywhere, that might not be a terrible outcome.
Yes, a lot of people are buying HDTVs. But even with an HDTV, most people can't notice any difference in quality between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. That's what matters; if Blu-Ray does offer some quality increase over HD-DVD, due to its greater capacity, it's not noticeable.
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I agree with lots of the posts from Americans I have seen here in slashdot before that state that if USA is *this* terrible why are people still willing to live there? I really can not understand it, what is it there in the USA that people, even some Britons (I live in Britain today) want to live there??
Guns. Lots of guns.
And low taxes.
They actually realized that a log of IP addresses and a log of URLs are two very different things, and convey different levels of information. This was actually mentioned in a footnote (quoting from the Wired article):
An example is the difference between a log that shows "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-to-air_miss
Furthermore, just because a resource is "publicly available" doesn't mean that there's "no reasonable expectation of privacy." I expect that my Wikipedia browsing habits are between me, my ISP, and Wikipedia (and anyone else snooping on the line), likewise, although my Google searches are sent via GET URLs, that doesn't mean that they're public. (Particularly given that there's no alternative method, at least that I'm aware of, to use most search engines.) Libraries are public, also, but that doesn't mean that everyone's records are public information.
Yeah, the only thing the Redeemer statue demonstrates is that there are a lot of people in Brazil with cellphones.
The thing is only 77 years old. Give it a few more centuries and we'll talk. If you want interesting statues, the Easter Island heads were on the list of finalists, but apparently the Easter Islanders must've had trouble getting online.
I think this has been posted before, although not in an exact enough form for me to find it with a quick Google search.
Anyway, there's been a definite uptick in trolling lately; I don't know where exactly it's coming from (or, really, where it went for the past year or so) but I've seen a bunch of reposts of the old classics lately. (And the horsecock trolls; that seems new.)
Wonder what changed?
I'm not disagreeing with you in the slightest, but I'd just point out that DHS is, by my reckoning anyway, definitely a "civilian" agency.
...), etc. Some of them seem reasonably competent, or at least they keep their incompetence out of the limelight.
When I was thinking about 'non civilian agencies,' I meant the DoD and the MilDeps: Army, Navy, Air Force, the Three-Letter Agencies (NSA, NGA, DIA, MDA,
That the imbalance is exacerbated by migrant workers is definitely a possibility (of course, if the male/female statistics are based on the number of births in those M.E. countries, than it's probably unrelated), however, I think that leads to the question of "where are the migrant workers coming from, and what are their homes' sex ratios like?"
Things are definitely not any better in Asia. Whether as a result of sex-selection abortions, infanticide, disease / selective access to medical care, or some other reason, the male/female ratios in Asia are even further off than in the Middle East. (There are a lot of references on this, because it's obviously a big problem to any one in India...here's one.)
So if Oman, Saudi Arabia, and other M.E. countries are "male heavy" as a result of migrant workers (which, again, is only true if you're looking at adult statistics, which I'm not sure is the case) than that means the male/female ratio in whatever areas these workers are coming from -- presumably Asia -- even more dire, since their absence is serving to cover up the problem.
Well that'd put them out of business in ... what, about a year?
Two points: First, the physical changes to the drivers' licenses were only the tip of the Real ID iceberg; the bigger part of it was a big database that would contain all the same information as what's stored on the cards, and probably a lot more. This is where the increase in security came from (at least, according to the system's proponents). Instead of just examining the ID, someone at a terminal with access to the Giant Federal Database 'o Fun could swipe your card and see your photo and other information pop up on screen. So in order to "forge" an ID card and use it to get into a Federal Building, you'd not only have to create the physical card, but you'd also have to hack into the database and update the information there.
Obviously, this database thing does not go over well with a lot of people. The Federal government has a piss-poor history of IT and information security. The whole place, at least on the civilan/unclassified side, leaks like a sieve and loses computers and data at a terrifying rate. The last thing most people want is to be put into a national 'one stop shop' for stalking, ID theft, unwanted "investigation," data mining, etc.
Second: Although Canada and the U.S. are alike in many ways, they're not the same. Attitudes, particularly in regards to government, are quite different. What people find acceptable in Canada -- and what may actually work in Canada -- are not necessarily the same things that will work in the U.S. If you, as a Canadian, say that you have a similar Giant Central Database, and your government uses it responsibly and the whole thing doesn't devolve into a Brazilian bureaucratic nightmare, I'll take your word for it. However, that gives me no faith at all that a similar system wouldn't be an absolute terror, were it implemented here. Maybe you have more responsible leaders. Maybe we're paranoid. Maybe the water in D.C. is contaiminated with Brain Slug larvae. Who knows; but I don't trust my government further than I can throw it, and nothing I've seen recently has encouraged me to re-evaluate that decision.
If so many states now oppose Real ID, how is it that it passed into law in the first place?
Your question makes me believe that you still are under the impression that there is a direct connection between what the public desires and what laws get passed in Washington. I can assure you this is not the case.
Then there's the whole issue of saccades, which is why for example newspapers do not run sentences horizontally across the entire page, but rather split the page up into columns.
Bingo.
Although I'm sure there are places where 132 columns are great (using ncurses-based displays that are smart enough to respond to your terminal size, for instance), I really wouldn't want a text editor that's much wider than 80 columns for normal use, lest it encourage people to create really, REALLY long lines of code or text.
Despite the arbitrariness of "80 characters," , it does seem to be about the maximum width that's comfortable to read in one go. (Take an un-hardwrapped text file and open it in a very wide editor and try to read it; it's a PITA compared to reading a narrow column.)
With code, where you don't want a ton of softwrapping, it makes sense to have a conventional editor width that's also comfortable to read.
Vinge has six major novels, seven if you count his first (Grimm's World). I have no idea where the 'three' came from. (Clearly, I haven't had my coffee today.)
Personally though, I really only became a fan of him after reading A Fire Upon the Deep, and I'd recommend anyone who hasn't read his work to start there rather than going chronologically from the beginning.
I'll heartily second Vernor Vinge. Although, I think since he's only published three (?) novels at this point, it's difficult to compare him to Heinlein, Asimov, or Clarke, because they each have an entire canon behind them; I don't think there's any other author that I'm so eagerly awaiting new work from.
(Actually, I've been considering writing a review of his most recent book, Rainbows End [sic], because I think it's right up the alley of many Slashdot readers, at least those of whom haven't already read it. IMO, it is to our current, post-9/11, relentlessly paranoid time what Neuromancer was to the mid-1980s and Snow Crash was to the exuberant dot-com 90s; it's even better for being that without being particularly dystopian.)
Peter F. Hamilton is also quite entertaining, and I picked up his Night's Dawn trilogy while traveling a few years ago and thought it was solid, thoughtful, modern "space opera." (A genre that I'm glad to see being resurrected, after lingering in the pulp stacks for so long.)
And of course, anyone who hasn't read Stephenson's entire canon can turn in their geek credentials immediately. (Although an extension can be granted if you're just waiting for a week of spare time to settle in with the Baroque Cycle books; they're definitely what I'd call "vacation reading.")
In reality, one could explain ALL decision-making as nothing but chemical reactions or a response to past experiences (depending if you're a neurologist or a psychologist), but ultimately, I think that's an all-too convenient way for some to dodge the issue of personal responsibility and accountability for one's own behaviors and actions.
The idea that abandoning Free Will in favor of determinism (or Predestination; which is determinism with the addition of a diety) would lead to, shall we say... "adverse outcomes," isn't a new one. James Hogg explored it extensively in 1824, and I'm sure others did before that -- but Hogg's treatment is both compelling and entertaining.
I have no evidence either way that Heinlein ever read the book, but when reading it I was reminded of some of his more-modern takes on the same basic problem. Definitely worth reading.
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, by James Hogg, 1824.
Just to clarify, the "Liberals" you mean in this context are the "Liberal Democrats," correct? (Not being snarky, I'm not clear.)
I find U.K. politics interesting, but as an American I'm not entirely clear on the platforms of the various parties involved. The Liberal Democrats seem to be bordering on what I'd probably categorize as Libertarianism in the U.S., except that they also seem to favor a welfare state, which is a solidly leftist position in the U.S., and not generally favored by people who seek as a stated goal to minimize state interventionism in private life. (At least in any of the major parties; I'm sure there are individuals who have philosophies like that, but I've never seen a major party with that platform.) It strikes me as being something of a fine line to walk, to advocate a welfare state without being redistributivist, although they seem to be managing it.
Compared to U.S. politics (at the Federal level), which have all the variation of trench warfare -- with occasional forays across no-man's-land to broker deals that are to nobody's benefit in particular -- U.K. politics seems rather spirited.
Actually I think people are. I know people who shop around for gas and pay attention to price differences that are only a few cents.
If you're filling up once or twice a week, it's possible for the seemingly small savings of a few cents a gallon to add up.
(Of course it's stupid to drive across town for gas that's only a few cents cheaper, but it's not stupid to notice gas that's cheaper and fill up if you're below 1/2 a tank or so whenever you see it and when time permits.)
Well, when or if that happens, you guys can fight it then. You got a nice constitution and everything, (though it may be a bit battered and tarnished right now), should be pretty good protections against that.
That's too short-sighted and dangerous an attitude for me to support, considering the gravity of the problem.
Everywhere I look, I see the government prying further and further into private life. I don't think it's a "problem" that can be pushed off until some time down the road, it's happening right now, almost inexorably. I think "the people" are losing right now, as it is; handing control of healthcare to the government is going to just accelerate that process further.
The problem is by bringing the government into healthcare, is creating a public interest in what used to be purely private affairs. Right now, it's not really anybody else's business if I smoke a cigarette, or have a few fingers of Jack D., in the privacy of my home after work. At most, it's between me, other people in my house, and perhaps with my insurance company. But if the government is going to pick up the entire tab for my healthcare, then suddenly there's a public interest in taking away my right to ingest what I want. (Or alternately, they can threaten to cut off my healthcare coverage if I don't comply with their lifestyle guidelines, and with a single-payer system, there won't be a lot of alternative choices.) After all, the people who don't drink or smoke, aren't going to want to see precious resources squandered on my consciously-chosen, obviously antisocial, habits.* It's the exact same argument that's used to justify seat-belt and helmet laws, and those got through just fine in 49 states without the weight of taxpayer healthcare to bolster them: this isn't just theoretical.
It's not clear that the Constitution would be of much help, either. Historically, the Constitution has been stretched, or just ignored, whenever it was convenient for the government to do so. Look at the bastardization of the Commerce Clause -- and that's ignoring an intent (limitation of Federal powers) that many of the founders felt strongly enough about to actually write down. There are no such enshrined protections for personal privacy.**
It is far easier to not give a government power, than for the people to give it and then try to get it back. Placing healthcare in the hands of the government -- particularly the Federal government -- would allow an unprecedented expansion of power into the private lives and choices of citizens. To give the government that power is a huge risk, and I'm not willing to take or support a gamble with stakes that high.
Bottom line: yes, the healthcare system is fucked up. But the government is fucked up even worse. In fact, they're probably the one bunch of weasels that I trust less than the weasels running the insurance companies. To give them the high ground from which they could wage war against lifestyles they disagree with is insane. If a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars per person, per year, is what we pay to keep politics as far from medicine as we can, than I think it's money well spent.
* Not only that, but do you really think that the hordes of Evangelicals, heck, even moderate Christians, are going to allow their tax dollars to be used in a public-health system for abortions or contraception? You'd be looking at a way to expand the Hyde Amendment to not only affect people on Medicare/Medicaid, but virtually everyone in the country. Particularly given the Supreme Court that's now in place, that's not a direction I want to go in.
** The entire 'right to privacy' in the U.S. rests on a rather shaky legal foundation; Google "penumbra argument" if you want to read about it. Although its effects are nice, it's mostly a legal fiction created by a few bright Supreme Court Justices, and it could evaporate just as quickly.
Well, seems like trying to fix CPS would be a better use of resources than gradually banning everything that can be a "stimulus," particularly when the disturbed people in question are so deeply warped that they'll inevitably be set off by something.
Of course, fixing CPS and similar agencies like it, is a tough problem -- one that no politician wants to tackle. Instead they prefer to just ban some porn and push the problem down to the next guy who comes along.
imagine everyone in a given city getting free calls 24/7.
Yeah, and so can the phone companies.
Ain't gonna happen. They'll just raise that $10/mo (what the hell is that for, anyway? Ten bucks a month to not use their network? WTF) until it's as high as the average person pays to use the cellular network. And then laugh all the way to the bank.
True. And I agree with you, the higher education system (actually, the entire educational system) is screwed up. (Although I have zero confidence in any of our political leaders to improve the situation, and I think they might make it worse.)
I think there's a difference though between having a monopoly over information itself, and over the sort of "vetting" that universities and technical schools / professional bodies provide.
There's no real information taught at any university, at least in the formal curriculum, that's not widely known. What a student is really buying from the university is the diploma -- a piece of paper that essentially backs up the graduate, and says "so-and-so University has declared this student to be something slightly more than a complete imbecile." That's it.
Nobody is willing to hire you without one, because they don't want to have to go to the work (perceived or actual) of determining whether you're really what you say you are. If I walk into an interview and say "sure, I'm a physicist, learned it all on my own in my spare time!" somebody might believe me, but more likely they're going to tell me to GTFO. It would be difficult for them to determine (particularly if they're just a HR drone and know nothing about physics themselves) whether I'm really as knowledgeable as I claim, or whether I just spent a few hours skimming Wikipedia that morning. Lacking either the means or the interest to test me themselves, they rely on the reputation of outside agencies -- universities, usually -- who get paid a lot of money to both educate and then certify students as "educated."
Although this system does lead to a whole lot of problems, I personally don't have a great replacement for it. Yeah, it would be nice if HR departments cared less about what little pieces of paper you had, and were more willing to evaluate applicants on their merits and self-training, but I think requiring that might do bad things to the job market, since it would make finding new hires such a major ordeal.
I'm certainly open to better ways to do it, though. But at any rate, I think there's a major difference between that sort of 'certification centralization' and outright censorship of material except from a chosen few people.
Take the total amount spent by US citizens (and employers) per capita compared to what we spend on "evil-socialized-communist" health-care in Canada, you guys spend multiple times as much for a system that sucks.
Here's the problem that I have with the constant U.S./Canada comparisons: how do we know that the same services are being delivered at that price?
I don't think that any country, even Canada, has the range of lifestyle and dietary issues that we have here in the U.S., and which drive a large portion of healthcare costs. Even if the systems were exactly the same in the U.S. and $RANDOM_COUNTRY, what's to say that the per-capita cost would be the same? There are a lot of things that can change costs; it's not like "keeping one person healthy" is some sort of fixed constant.
Furthermore, speaking as an American, I have an idea of how people get when they know their tax money is being spent on something. A publicly-funded, single-payer healthcare system would be an invitation for the government to start regulating all sorts of stuff. People would demand it -- they're not going to want their tax dollars used to pay for "some asshole's smoking habit," or somebody else who likes to drive without a seatbelt, or someone else who likes to go hang-gliding at night.
Perhaps this doesn't happen in other countries with public healthcare. I'm glad to hear it. But America is a basically intolerant country full of intolerant people who love to dictate how the people around them can live their lives. A public healthcare system would be a wonderful bully pulpit that they could use to essentially dictate everything: from what you can eat, to how much exercise you have to do, to what kind of recreation you do -- or you'll lose your only source for health care.
If the difference in per-capita cost between Canada's system and the U.S.'s is what it takes to keep the various strains of Puritans, neo-prohibitionists, safety freaks, militant vegetarians, anti-gunners, etc. that we breed in this country -- basically whatever crackheads happen to be inhabiting Congress now, or at any point in the future -- from getting a firmer grip on private life, than that's a price I'm happy to pay. And considering the greater sacrifices that have been made over the years for the poor excuse for a 'free society' that we have left, I'm not really interested in a lot of whining otherwise.
This is the most popular type of explosive used when making car bombs. They've known it for years. McVeigh used this. It's been on prime time news.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the GP was being a wee bit sarcastic.
But on the other hand, it is illegal without a licence, and for a very good reason, and to give this knowlegde to unlicenced kids?
I think this is a terrible attitude, and it's sad.
You need a license to buy explosives, not to learn about them. One of the precepts of our entire society is that information isn't sectioned off into little 'need-to-know' chunks, controlled by cabals or trade organizations.
You can't practice medicine without a license either, but nobody goes around trying to lock up all the first-aid manuals or anatomy textbooks. We don't let random individuals set up shop as Professional Engineers and start greenlighting bridges, but anyone who wants to can go and read about finite element analysis; there's no secrets there.
Turning society into a series of closed, medieval-Masonic-ish 'knowledge cults' isn't going to help us in the long run. And frankly, if that sort of secrecy is what's required to "protect" society from terrorists, I seriously question the value of what you're preserving.
I'm not entirely certain, but I think the "Horsecock" meme might have gotten started over on K5 ... at least, it seems to be more prevalent there, and I saw it there before I ever saw it on Slashdot. (In fact, there is a post on K5 asking people to up-mod the GP.)
/.; while the lack of trolling is undoubtedly a good thing overall, I have to admit that I got a fair bit of amusement out of the old GNAA/Hot Grits/Stephen King/priorities posts, at least initially. But then they all seemed to disappear, whether because of the moderation system working, or a mildew epidemic in basements somewhere, I'm not sure.
At any rate, it seems like it's been a while since I've seen a new troll on
Glad to see that the universe is back in balance.
As much as I'm supportive of any program that might, conceivably, provide a partial alternative to our petroleum addiction, I have seen several pieces lately about ethanol vs. biodiesel, which seem to indicate that biodiesel is a much more realistic alternative to gasoline than ethanol is, but that its major shortcoming is that it doesn't reward corn production.
While I don't have the background to really comment or hold an opinion one way or another, I just think it's a mistake to look too hard for "one solution" that we need to put all our money and hopes in. We need to be looking all over the place, and we need to realize that the final solution might not involve all the cars in the country running on the same fuel. There might be certain fuels that are preferable in certain regions or for certain types of vehicles, and although it might fundamentally alter the transportation network and your ability to drive one vehicle anywhere, that might not be a terrible outcome.
That doesn't make sense.
Yes, a lot of people are buying HDTVs. But even with an HDTV, most people can't notice any difference in quality between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. That's what matters; if Blu-Ray does offer some quality increase over HD-DVD, due to its greater capacity, it's not noticeable.