Perhaps the term brainwash is a little loaded, but it still is going to boil down to some degree of conditioning. But we still are talking about an area where obediance is of prime importance (ignoring all the "army of one" absurdities), you are not to act as an individal but as a member of x group, and not to solve the problem in a creative manner, but to solve the problem as you are told to by the guy above you.
This might be to increase survivability, and I have less problem with it now than in a draft situation, since all these kids know what their getting into now. In a draft it would be hard to promote "slaughtering these folk is good!"
Why does the military brainwash soldiers? Simple, to render them compliant, and no free thinking. "Just following orders" is the goal, sad to say. This might not be true of officers and specialists this is less true, but for your average grunt, then yes it is ideal to be nonthinking.
Do you think bootcamp exists only to bread skill? That is what the schooling afterwards is for.
Same thing with police forces having IQ caps, you don't want people to question their job.
y of the Commerce clause is a study of the history of economic development in the United States. Therefore, I would leave the Commerce clause in Constitution 3.0 unless you want to go back to having separate facilities for persons of difference races.
Gross exaggeration, and fallacy of the excluded middle.
Don't know why, it's not like its costing them more to provide broadband service, if anything its going down for them too. They are operating with a huge margin, so they can afford to lower prices to a reasonable level ($9 broadband here I come!).
Yes, I too am a moderate marxist, but I must agree with you. The picture most anti-capitalists paint reminds me of Captain Planet, where ever corporation existed only to make pollution, and not for any other reason.
I know people who own small businesses who are quite ethical, and often operate on small margins, that could be radically expanded if they wanted to be bastards. Sad to say these businesses are owned by people, just like you or me.
Some larger corporations though seem to operate outside ethics (Microsoft, probably Disney, many Telecoms, some of the big mining corps in Arizona, historically Dow, etc), and this is a disturbing thing. It seems once you no longer make a business a personal thing, and turn it into a "shareholder money making machine", its probability of being ethical drops greatly, though not completely.
If we go by profit as a negative metric of trustworthiness, then I suppose we should never trust anyone, since everyone wants a little extra in the bank.
Then how do you explain business' that act ethically (Google, Ben & Jerry's, etc) without external forces? Could it just be that ethics can be profitable too?
90% of business is image. People are more apt to pick ethical businesses. Therefore businesses must appear ethical. The appearence of ethical behavior generally is within the lines of actually acting ethical. Therefore (2) companies can be genuinely ethical (without external force outside the actual market)
I disagree completely. I don't think a profit motive, and ethics are naturally opposed, in that ethics does not preclude profit.
A corporation does have the goal of profit, but there still is the choice on how to do so, and some companies choose to go an ethical route in that profit, even if this ethical route is still guided by pure greed. Also some companies will not take the blind pursuit of profit to the maximum possible level since it would violate certain ethical tenents (we all know Google could rule the world with an iron fist, if they wanted).
The companies sported by the parent are a good example of this. Ben & Jerry's enviormental, and activist stance were purely motivated by image (in that image = profits), but this does not stop their stances from being ethical.
Too bad more businesses do not realize that word of mouth is the most important form of advertising. Impress a customer, and you get three more.
You do have some points though. In a way I'm getting old fashioned, I still don't quite trust the more "blog-y" forms of news, I know that everyone hails it as the wave of the future though. In theory I think that more instant electronic news might be a good thing, but in practice, right now, it doesn't seem to cut it, at least on a local front.
There should be more local level news, if kids aren't going to be getting papers. I've already noticed kids not knowing squat about local politics, but knowing more than me about the national or global level. Also it seems that online news is more towards what the reader wants to see, which is also a negative development (IMHO), in that they don't get other views imposed on them.
I'm going to have to think about this issue though, since you have a point with the speed and convienience (ignoring the fact that my RSS feeds take even more time away from being productive!), though I think there are other cultural counterpoints to. If it is innevitable, though, I guess society will trudge on.
No offence, but I think you are approaching this from a somewhat biased point of view. We (here on Slashdot) are a bunch of geeks, we have very long feed lists, and are completely comfortable with reading everything online. Most people have no idea what a feed is, much less an aggragater. Most people (myself included) find reading things on a computer screen unnatural, and uncomfortable (I only do so because most places with feeds don't have pulp).
I like reading the paper, nothing like spending the morning sitting on the porch reading pulp, sipping coffee, and yes, going through the ads. Teh interweb is missing something important ad wise, local groceries, and local stores (all in one place, not site by site). I love the online shopping, but I like actually going into stores more, especially for groceries. How many people went through the whole ad section Thanksgiving for specials?
I doubt that 500 people is a fair assesment for "local" too. My old "local" paper served an area of over 3.5 million people. The one here (more rural) still serves 50,000+. Sure, not all these people read the paper, but it still is a very large potential market.
Also, what else will serve to aggragate local news? Television? No thanks, to quick, to jerky, to much pap. I really don't care is a dog is stuck in a well, if there is 30000 really nice looking fires, and a flashy car chase, I don't care how pretty your anchor is, I want substance. I especially like being able to choose my substance, and not have to sit through 30 minutes of ads and crap human-interest stories.
Its like the declaring of books to be dead by etext (a common/. thread of previous years). Sure, etext is nice, but its not a natural format. Some of us will convert, and/. will display a higher than normal amount of conversions. But the average person wants a book. The average person wants a paper.
If you don't mind me asking, what type of product/service did you advertise? I think it matters, since some things are not conductive of paper ads, like tech stuff.
Point granted with the Wisconsin/heat thing. Up there electricity or gas do become necessities for part of the year. I used to live up there, but moved to Arizona for the same reason, too damn cold. Here electricity becomes semi-essencial 4 months of the year to, in the form of cooling (at least in the desert regions). Too much, or not enough. But it still is not essencial to life. People lived in Wisconsin before electricity for heat, or even regular heating oil/coal. Ditto for Arizona and the air conditioning, and I'm not talking strictly about indigenous peoples.
Sadly, while not energy inefficient, desalinization isn't cost freindly, unless this has changed.
I wouldn't consider power a necessity of life, people can survive without electricity just fine, we have until pretty recently. Water is the basis of life itself.
As (fresh) water becomes more and more scarce the prices will rise to the point where it does become restrictive to the poorer regions of the world, and of the US.
Don't you think citing that Saddam wasn't democratic as a reason for invading is slightly off?
Democracy isn't the only decen political system out there. I am getting sick of America (the US) inflicting Democracy upon everyone, for the sake of democracy. Who fricken cares if they have a democracy or not? I personally don't. And by democracy, in the US definition, we mean our free-market capitalistic economy too, being that we view them (erroneously) as synonymously. Most of my countrymen (and I say this with some element of shame) seem to incapable of escaping their own damn point of view, we like the US, the US has a democracy, therefore EVERYONE should have a bloody democracy.
My favorite bumper sticker: "Be nice to America, or we'll bring democracy to your country!" Screw the american pro-demo bias. Please note that I'm not against democracy, I like it, PERSONALLY, but I would never cite it as a reason to bring death and destruction to innocent people. ESPECIALLY when it is taken (again, erroneously) as voting AND free-market. It really isn't very free when people don't have the right to choose no? I actually am a fan of some sort of benevolent dictatorship.
Sure, there were humanitarian issues involved with the invasion of Iraq, and I agree with our continued presence there, even if Bush lied through his teeth to get us there. But on the otherside, if I was Saddam I would be fighting for my own sovereignty too, including trying to keep the US out of my damn business, since it was commenly known that the grand plan was to conquer me (if you don't see this, look into the Clinton Era (and Clinton funded) think-tank, Project for a New American Century, which included Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney).
If you are to invade someone for humanitarian reasons BE HONEST about it, and say that is the reason. Or if you are invading someone to keep a toe hold in the region, and to stabalize the region BE HONEST about it (the so-called Domino Effect, within the policy of the Middle East). G.W. Bush flat lied, and twisted the truth to manipulate the public body. This is wrong by any means, even if the war is just.
And no, I'm not a rabid liberal screaming OIL WAR! Since I know that this was not the actual primary cause of the war, but neither was the stated reasons (Al Quiada, terriorism, WMD), they were propagandistic, as much as the oil argument.
Sorry, 2c from the rare and endangered freethinking moderate. Mod down at will.
So money = right to necessity of life. I find this reprehensible. How does money make you more entitled to a natural resource vital to survival? It's like saying that someone should charge for air.
I'm sorry. Regulate EVERYONE, rich or poor, since the water that these rich asshats can waste by virtue of bankroll (as if that determined the value of humans) support those who need it just as much, or more in certain regions of the world.
Fresh water is a rare, and severely limited resource, that is the most essencial resource for human (and all life's) survival. To say that some fat rich guy has a bigger entitlment because the fact that he happens to be rich, is absurd.
Someone really needs to make a full geek-reading list, with a decent poll size, and a decent amount people replying.
I'd say we either remove, or put O'Reilly in another catagory. Same thing with other tech manuals. I think my big Unix admin book is essential geek reading, but essential more in the fact that many people work with it, just like "Corn Plucking for Dummies" might be an essential farmer read, while we all know they read Kant for fun.
I guess you have a point, I'm just so climatized to liberals where I live (college town, mountain town, all that), that I generally just ignore them now. And the louder liberals here all get moderated down I think, but the louder Libertarians, it seems, get modded up.
Mind, that I'm not really insulting any of them. I just agree that Aynnie (if I may be so bold) seems to be the libertarian favorite.
I kind of equate her style of individuality with greed, in that both of them are embracing ones ego to a point that I think is harmful to society. Granted she makes it look good on paper, but Marx made communism look good on paper too. Perhaps, like Marx, it boils down to all things in moderation.
Its been awhile since I've had the time, or stomach, to read her, perhaps I should try it again for a purely objective reading of her, detatching all the stuff that extreme free market folk, and such, have attached to her.
It was mostly a joke, as that I think everyone and history has made a positive impact on the present (even if as a negative example). I guess I should have used the word "bitch-slap" instead of kill, or perhaps "talk common sense into".
I'm sorry for the badness. Every time I read Ayn Rand, though, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
A nerd is a member of the unwashed, and socially retarded (revolting) feild of intelligence, very smart, very single minded, completely inept. Think of Comic Book Guy.
A geek is also very intelligent, but has social skills, granted this isn't much, much less than the average person, but much more than the common nerd. They also have more diverse hobbies.
Nerds seem restricted to just CS, math, and physics. While geeks can be in anything that lets them obsess about things in intricate detail.
Yes! The whole series! Vurt, Pollen, Nymphomation (and some of the stories about Hobart in Pixel Juice). I'd also recommend Automated Alice, awesome geekified modern retelling of Alice in Wonderland. Hard to find any of his work Stateside, sadly. I don't think his newest novel is available here yet, and I don't think Amazon.co.uk ships here, sadly.
I wouldn't call it cyberpunk, I'd call it FEATHERpunk.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps the term brainwash is a little loaded, but it still is going to boil down to some degree of conditioning. But we still are talking about an area where obediance is of prime importance (ignoring all the "army of one" absurdities), you are not to act as an individal but as a member of x group, and not to solve the problem in a creative manner, but to solve the problem as you are told to by the guy above you.
This might be to increase survivability, and I have less problem with it now than in a draft situation, since all these kids know what their getting into now. In a draft it would be hard to promote "slaughtering these folk is good!"
Completely missed the point.
Why does the military brainwash soldiers? Simple, to render them compliant, and no free thinking. "Just following orders" is the goal, sad to say. This might not be true of officers and specialists this is less true, but for your average grunt, then yes it is ideal to be nonthinking.
Do you think bootcamp exists only to bread skill? That is what the schooling afterwards is for.
Same thing with police forces having IQ caps, you don't want people to question their job.
y of the Commerce clause is a study of the history of economic development in the United States. Therefore, I would leave the Commerce clause in Constitution 3.0 unless you want to go back to having separate facilities for persons of difference races.
Gross exaggeration, and fallacy of the excluded middle.
And only on Slashdot will you find refutation so vague, to claims so vague.
Don't know why, it's not like its costing them more to provide broadband service, if anything its going down for them too. They are operating with a huge margin, so they can afford to lower prices to a reasonable level ($9 broadband here I come!).
Yes, I too am a moderate marxist, but I must agree with you. The picture most anti-capitalists paint reminds me of Captain Planet, where ever corporation existed only to make pollution, and not for any other reason.
I know people who own small businesses who are quite ethical, and often operate on small margins, that could be radically expanded if they wanted to be bastards. Sad to say these businesses are owned by people, just like you or me.
Some larger corporations though seem to operate outside ethics (Microsoft, probably Disney, many Telecoms, some of the big mining corps in Arizona, historically Dow, etc), and this is a disturbing thing. It seems once you no longer make a business a personal thing, and turn it into a "shareholder money making machine", its probability of being ethical drops greatly, though not completely.
If we go by profit as a negative metric of trustworthiness, then I suppose we should never trust anyone, since everyone wants a little extra in the bank.
Then how do you explain business' that act ethically (Google, Ben & Jerry's, etc) without external forces? Could it just be that ethics can be profitable too?
90% of business is image. People are more apt to pick ethical businesses. Therefore businesses must appear ethical. The appearence of ethical behavior generally is within the lines of actually acting ethical. Therefore (2) companies can be genuinely ethical (without external force outside the actual market)
I disagree completely. I don't think a profit motive, and ethics are naturally opposed, in that ethics does not preclude profit.
A corporation does have the goal of profit, but there still is the choice on how to do so, and some companies choose to go an ethical route in that profit, even if this ethical route is still guided by pure greed. Also some companies will not take the blind pursuit of profit to the maximum possible level since it would violate certain ethical tenents (we all know Google could rule the world with an iron fist, if they wanted).
The companies sported by the parent are a good example of this. Ben & Jerry's enviormental, and activist stance were purely motivated by image (in that image = profits), but this does not stop their stances from being ethical.
Too bad more businesses do not realize that word of mouth is the most important form of advertising. Impress a customer, and you get three more.
You do have some points though. In a way I'm getting old fashioned, I still don't quite trust the more "blog-y" forms of news, I know that everyone hails it as the wave of the future though. In theory I think that more instant electronic news might be a good thing, but in practice, right now, it doesn't seem to cut it, at least on a local front.
There should be more local level news, if kids aren't going to be getting papers. I've already noticed kids not knowing squat about local politics, but knowing more than me about the national or global level. Also it seems that online news is more towards what the reader wants to see, which is also a negative development (IMHO), in that they don't get other views imposed on them.
I'm going to have to think about this issue though, since you have a point with the speed and convienience (ignoring the fact that my RSS feeds take even more time away from being productive!), though I think there are other cultural counterpoints to. If it is innevitable, though, I guess society will trudge on.
No offence, but I think you are approaching this from a somewhat biased point of view. We (here on Slashdot) are a bunch of geeks, we have very long feed lists, and are completely comfortable with reading everything online. Most people have no idea what a feed is, much less an aggragater. Most people (myself included) find reading things on a computer screen unnatural, and uncomfortable (I only do so because most places with feeds don't have pulp).
/. thread of previous years). Sure, etext is nice, but its not a natural format. Some of us will convert, and /. will display a higher than normal amount of conversions. But the average person wants a book. The average person wants a paper.
I like reading the paper, nothing like spending the morning sitting on the porch reading pulp, sipping coffee, and yes, going through the ads. Teh interweb is missing something important ad wise, local groceries, and local stores (all in one place, not site by site). I love the online shopping, but I like actually going into stores more, especially for groceries. How many people went through the whole ad section Thanksgiving for specials?
I doubt that 500 people is a fair assesment for "local" too. My old "local" paper served an area of over 3.5 million people. The one here (more rural) still serves 50,000+. Sure, not all these people read the paper, but it still is a very large potential market.
Also, what else will serve to aggragate local news? Television? No thanks, to quick, to jerky, to much pap. I really don't care is a dog is stuck in a well, if there is 30000 really nice looking fires, and a flashy car chase, I don't care how pretty your anchor is, I want substance. I especially like being able to choose my substance, and not have to sit through 30 minutes of ads and crap human-interest stories.
Its like the declaring of books to be dead by etext (a common
If you don't mind me asking, what type of product/service did you advertise? I think it matters, since some things are not conductive of paper ads, like tech stuff.
Point granted with the Wisconsin/heat thing. Up there electricity or gas do become necessities for part of the year. I used to live up there, but moved to Arizona for the same reason, too damn cold. Here electricity becomes semi-essencial 4 months of the year to, in the form of cooling (at least in the desert regions). Too much, or not enough. But it still is not essencial to life. People lived in Wisconsin before electricity for heat, or even regular heating oil/coal. Ditto for Arizona and the air conditioning, and I'm not talking strictly about indigenous peoples.
Sadly, while not energy inefficient, desalinization isn't cost freindly, unless this has changed.
Cite something.
Beyond that, what the free-market does to water supplies contracted out to corporations has borne out a common trend of folly.
I wouldn't consider power a necessity of life, people can survive without electricity just fine, we have until pretty recently. Water is the basis of life itself.
As (fresh) water becomes more and more scarce the prices will rise to the point where it does become restrictive to the poorer regions of the world, and of the US.
Completely OT, and possibly flamebait:
Don't you think citing that Saddam wasn't democratic as a reason for invading is slightly off?
Democracy isn't the only decen political system out there. I am getting sick of America (the US) inflicting Democracy upon everyone, for the sake of democracy. Who fricken cares if they have a democracy or not? I personally don't. And by democracy, in the US definition, we mean our free-market capitalistic economy too, being that we view them (erroneously) as synonymously. Most of my countrymen (and I say this with some element of shame) seem to incapable of escaping their own damn point of view, we like the US, the US has a democracy, therefore EVERYONE should have a bloody democracy.
My favorite bumper sticker: "Be nice to America, or we'll bring democracy to your country!" Screw the american pro-demo bias. Please note that I'm not against democracy, I like it, PERSONALLY, but I would never cite it as a reason to bring death and destruction to innocent people. ESPECIALLY when it is taken (again, erroneously) as voting AND free-market. It really isn't very free when people don't have the right to choose no? I actually am a fan of some sort of benevolent dictatorship.
Sure, there were humanitarian issues involved with the invasion of Iraq, and I agree with our continued presence there, even if Bush lied through his teeth to get us there. But on the otherside, if I was Saddam I would be fighting for my own sovereignty too, including trying to keep the US out of my damn business, since it was commenly known that the grand plan was to conquer me (if you don't see this, look into the Clinton Era (and Clinton funded) think-tank, Project for a New American Century, which included Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney).
If you are to invade someone for humanitarian reasons BE HONEST about it, and say that is the reason. Or if you are invading someone to keep a toe hold in the region, and to stabalize the region BE HONEST about it (the so-called Domino Effect, within the policy of the Middle East). G.W. Bush flat lied, and twisted the truth to manipulate the public body. This is wrong by any means, even if the war is just.
And no, I'm not a rabid liberal screaming OIL WAR! Since I know that this was not the actual primary cause of the war, but neither was the stated reasons (Al Quiada, terriorism, WMD), they were propagandistic, as much as the oil argument.
Sorry, 2c from the rare and endangered freethinking moderate. Mod down at will.
Footnote:
- Meta google story analysis.
So money = right to necessity of life. I find this reprehensible. How does money make you more entitled to a natural resource vital to survival? It's like saying that someone should charge for air.
I'm sorry. Regulate EVERYONE, rich or poor, since the water that these rich asshats can waste by virtue of bankroll (as if that determined the value of humans) support those who need it just as much, or more in certain regions of the world.
Fresh water is a rare, and severely limited resource, that is the most essencial resource for human (and all life's) survival. To say that some fat rich guy has a bigger entitlment because the fact that he happens to be rich, is absurd.
Moral of the story: "don't lick urinals".
Ways to get a disease from a urinal:
1) Direct contact (i.e. playing in pee, licking, etc)
2) Splash, which all urinals have by nature.
So, either way it is there, but hard to catch, unless people pee on the flush handle within 15 minutes of your use.
Don't tell that to Google, they might go and do that, it has all the right components. killing MS, knowing everything, and control!
Someone really needs to make a full geek-reading list, with a decent poll size, and a decent amount people replying.
I'd say we either remove, or put O'Reilly in another catagory. Same thing with other tech manuals. I think my big Unix admin book is essential geek reading, but essential more in the fact that many people work with it, just like "Corn Plucking for Dummies" might be an essential farmer read, while we all know they read Kant for fun.
I guess you have a point, I'm just so climatized to liberals where I live (college town, mountain town, all that), that I generally just ignore them now. And the louder liberals here all get moderated down I think, but the louder Libertarians, it seems, get modded up.
Mind, that I'm not really insulting any of them. I just agree that Aynnie (if I may be so bold) seems to be the libertarian favorite.
I kind of equate her style of individuality with greed, in that both of them are embracing ones ego to a point that I think is harmful to society. Granted she makes it look good on paper, but Marx made communism look good on paper too. Perhaps, like Marx, it boils down to all things in moderation.
Its been awhile since I've had the time, or stomach, to read her, perhaps I should try it again for a purely objective reading of her, detatching all the stuff that extreme free market folk, and such, have attached to her.
It was mostly a joke, as that I think everyone and history has made a positive impact on the present (even if as a negative example). I guess I should have used the word "bitch-slap" instead of kill, or perhaps "talk common sense into".
I'm sorry for the badness. Every time I read Ayn Rand, though, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
And, of course, geeks bite the heads of off chickens.
I disagree with your definitions!
A nerd is a member of the unwashed, and socially retarded (revolting) feild of intelligence, very smart, very single minded, completely inept. Think of Comic Book Guy.
A geek is also very intelligent, but has social skills, granted this isn't much, much less than the average person, but much more than the common nerd. They also have more diverse hobbies.
Nerds seem restricted to just CS, math, and physics. While geeks can be in anything that lets them obsess about things in intricate detail.
Yes! The whole series! Vurt, Pollen, Nymphomation (and some of the stories about Hobart in Pixel Juice). I'd also recommend Automated Alice, awesome geekified modern retelling of Alice in Wonderland. Hard to find any of his work Stateside, sadly. I don't think his newest novel is available here yet, and I don't think Amazon.co.uk ships here, sadly.
I wouldn't call it cyberpunk, I'd call it FEATHERpunk.
Not geeky enough.
I was hoping for Illuminatus!
Lem's Memoir Found in a Bathtub.
Or of course The Crying of Lot 49.
(I personally was hoping for Vurt, by Jeff Noon, but no one likes him)