Re:Well, this is the kind of thing you have to exp
on
Caught Before the Act
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· Score: 2
You have to ask yourself if a premise of "carry a gun or be shot" is better than a level playing field of nobody having guns at all
Problem is, the "level playing field of no guns at all" is an impossibility.
The government isn't going to disarm, and gun control is no more effective than cocaine or heroin control. If we can't keep crack or heroin (which have to be imported) off the streets, why would we think we could keep guns (which can be made in someone's basement with simple tools) away from the bad guys?
It's trite but true - when guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns. And the police and army too, of course. Neither are groups in which I have much trust.
Guns also level the "playing field" - if you're a small elderly person being attacked by a young, large, strong person with a baseball bat, a gun levels the odds real quick.
The fact that other nations with strong gun control have less crime doesn't meant that their lower crime rate is because of the gun control. (I.e., correlation != causality.) There are nations more armed than the US with less crime; Isreal and Switzerland come to mind. There are nations with few guns and horrible violence; about a million people in Rwanda were killed with machetes. Our society's problem with violence lies not in our guns but in ourselves - in our economic, criminal justice, and mental health systems, in our War on (some) Drugs, in lingering rascism, and in our in our cultural acceptance of violence.
Re:Well, this is the kind of thing you have to exp
on
Caught Before the Act
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· Score: 2
and the deaths of civilians of other countries (often in recent history by the US - although I'm sure such news is reported very differently there).
No argument there - the actions of the US government in other nations are often horrendous
Gun control is a prerequisite for genocide
--- So are guns, I'd say...;)
Fine, then, I'll give up my guns just as soon as my government gives up its guns. B-)
Not if it is your car. Have you ever had a car stolen?
That's why I have insurance. Surely freedom and privacy are worth a few dollars extra in premiums?
What about murder? Is not having an automated camera at the right place worth a few lives as well?
The solution to violent crime is not to install cameras all over the place in the hope that armed agents of the state will arrive to defend us. (It's more likely it will allow them to show up quicker to draw a chalk outline around the deceased.) The solution is to 1) put serious effort into economic systems and criminal justice systems that reduce the root causes of violent crime, and 2) ensure that ordinary citizens are able to defend themselves and other victims.
I'm no expert - the incident I describe above is my only experience. But what I did was something like this (hope I've got the terminology right):
A keyed lock has a set of tumblers that have to be depressed to a certain depth. When this happens, the cylinder can turn and the lock opens. Since this is an imperfect real-world system, one tumbler holds the cylinder a little bit more than the others. (If the lock is old and worn (like the one I picked was) or just cheap, probably a lot more.) If you try to turn the lock while you jiggle the tumbers, eventually you'll get that one tumbler at just the right height and the cylinder will turn just a little and hold that tumbler in place. Repeat for the other tumblers and eventually you'll get them all and the cylinder will turn. The more tumblers, and the better things fit together, the harder the lock is to pick.
Get two pieces of thin flat metal. A bobby pin broken in half worked for me. You need two tools, one to try to turn the cylinder of the lock, and the other to stick into the lock and rake across the tumblers. We'll call them the "tension wrench" and the "rake" (which might not be real names, but we'll use them anyway).
Lay these two piece flat out on the table. For the tension wrench, bend the very bottom bit (just like the last millimter or two) and bend it up at 90 degrees to make an L shape. That small bottom bit is what you hook into the top of the lock cylinder to apply pressure to turn it. (You only want a small bit to go into the lock so you won't interfere with the rake.)
For the rake, bend the bottom centimeter or so of the second piece to the side about 30 to 45 degrees.
Rake the tip of the bent part of the rake over the tumblers (i.e., stick it in the lock and pull it out while pressing down on the part where the jagged edge of your key goes) while applying tension with the tension wrench. You'll feel the cylinder turn just a tiny bit with each tumbler that you get in position.
I was really surprized at how easy it was. This is probably a factor of the lock being pretty old, though - which is why it's been replaced. See, another example of "cracking tools" being used for legitimate security analysis.
Well somehow I think that you should be able to create information for a profit, just as you can build a car for profit. If a car is unlocked in the street, that doesn't make it public domain, does it?
That's an irrelevant example. If I steal your car, you no longer have use of it. If I copy your CD/MP3/software/TV show/whatever, you still have use of it.
Should you be able to profit from creating information? Sure; otherwise there's going to be a heck of a lot less information created. Songwriters, authors, and hackers have to eat, after all.
Should the mechanism for that profit be the state locking up people who make unauthorized copies? Nope. That's always been ethically questionable, and now in the "digital age" it's just no longer practical. (It's also worth noting that very little of the profits actually end up in the hands of the songwriters, authors, and hackers who create the information.)
We need a new pardigm to support authors and artists while not trying to prevent copying. My suggestion is unlimited copying (so long as authorship credit is preserved), with royalties required for for-profit use, sort of like what's now in effect for musical performances. (I can sing Bob Dylan songs to my friends and neighbors 'till my voice gives out and not pay a cent, but if I play in a bar where music is an profit-drawing attraction, the bar owner pays BMI or ASCAP who then pay Bob.)
Satan is portrayed as being an affable character that is liked by the townspeople.
Actually, in the episode where Jesus and Satan have the boxing match, Satan rips off the whole town by taking a dive. Not very affable. Besides, even if he was, don't we all know that evil may sometimes wear a pleasant face?
It's also one of the best meditations on the nature of evil I've ever seen - "I'm going to bet on Satan, 'cause evil's stronger than good! (Time passes.) Hey, Satan ripped me off! That's, uh, like, evil..."
Just as I pity people who claim to be fans of this show.
Fine, and we pity you as a brainwashed dupe of organized religion. Shall we throw a pity party for each other?
Actually, "burglar's implements" such as lockpicks are illegal to posess in some states.
A few months back, I had some time to kill. Inspired by a Richard Feynman story about picking locks, I made a set of lockpicks out of a bobby pin. I had no experience with locksmithing, but within twenty minutes I was able to pick the lock on my front door. (Which was very old and had loose tumblers - easy to pick.)
Making tools is one of the things human beings do well. That makes banning tools pretty useless, 'cause if we can't get them (be they lockpicks, handguns, or file transfer programs) we'll make them ourselves. It's our nature.
And kid porn, you don't think looking at that is harmful, I tell you what why don't we see what would happen to your opinion if your daughter or sister or whatever gets raped by some dirty old man that likes "'dem yung tings he seen online"
The argument that we should not portray anti-social behaviors because someone might take the depiction is an example is specious. It's the classic argument for censorship, adaptable to most any type of content - but perhaps best suited to "protecting the children." ("You don't hate children. Do you?")
Sexually abusing people - children or adults - is wrong. (Duh.) Murdering people is wrong. Stealing is wrong. Driving recklessly is wrong. That doesn't make it wrong to create or view images depiciting these things. If it did, we'd have no more action movies.
Child pornography is not some magic exception to the rights of free speech. Any reasonable laws against it must be based on the sexual abuse involved (if any) and on the inability of a child to enter into a binding contract to allow the distribution of their image and likeness, and not on the fact that the activities depicted may be abhorant.
It's reasonably complicated; consult Applied Cryptography or the Cyphernomicon for details. But the basic mechanism involves blinded digital signatures.
I'll try to give a paper and envelopes version of a simple scheme; replace the envelopes with blinding (a reversable encryption operation on a message that allows a blinded message to be signed without the signer knowing its contents) and physical signatures with digital ones. IANA crytographer, so I invite correction on this.
I want to send you an anonymous money order. I write up 100 of them, each of the form "This is money order [random large id string]; pay to bearer $42." and place each one in an envelope. I go to the bank with all 100. They choose 99 of them to open and see that they're all for $42. So they have a high degree of certainty that the one they didn't pick is also for $42. They sign the envelope with a special ink that stains through onto the money order, and take my $42 (plus a handling fee, no doubt). I take the envelope, open it, and send you the money order. You cash it for $42. The id string uniquely identifies each order and prevents double spending.
More complicated algorithms allow the tracking of counterfiters while leaving legitimate transactions private, but they make my head hurt.
The reason I ask is that banner advertising is what pays for an awful lot of the web today... banner advertising is the only alternative to charging for access.
I expect that banner ads will eventually die, as advertisers are discovering that they're pretty ineffective. Clickthru rates are dropping, and ad blocking programs are becoming more popular (go Junkbuster!).
Fortunately, there are other possible sources of website revenue - sponsored links, merchandizing (get those/. tee shirts), affiliate programs, and voluntary contributions (works for NPR and PBS stations) come to mind.
If banner ads go away, then you will lose all of your free web pages.
Supported by advertizing != free. Just on the basic level, if Coke runs a banner ad on a site, where do you think the money for their ad budget comes from? It's figured into the cost of every can of carbonated caffeinated sugar you buy from them. Then there's the cost of your time to download the ad. Harder to measure is the psychological cost of being engulfed the sea of advertizing that encourages the culture of consumption in which we dwell.
That will require you to -- guess what -- identify yourself to facilitate payment.
You have to remember that a lot of these web sites out there need to track their users surfing habits. It's called Demographics and Marketing.
They can very easily track my surfing at their site without cookies, and they absolutely don't have to track my surfing habits between sites. If they want demographic information, they can bloody well do it the old-fashioned way by surveying their customers. A damn site better than spying on them, no?
It's not like tracking customers was new with the internet. Radio Shack directly asks you for your information at the checkout counter.
But the guy at Radio Shask is not following me around the mall to see what other stores I visit. And I know when they try to collect my info and can tell them "No." C'mon folks, there's no reason the guy at Rat Shack needs my phone number to sell me a headphone cable, or the lady at Home Depot needs my zip code when I buy some plywood. All they need to know is that the cash in my hand is legal tender. I've never had a problem in declining to answer their questions.
If people are really scared about cookies then simply turn them off and use sites that don't require cookies.
Better yet, use Junkbuster to accept cookies only from sites you choose. And you remove annoying banner ads too - whadda deal.
The thing to remember with cookies is that the information comes from the server.
The thing to remember about cookies is that the server giving you the cookie may come belong to scumbag banner companies like DoubleClick that wants to track your browsing. You movements between sites that serve ads from the same scumbag banner provider can be tracked quite easily.
Cookies are only a problem for the ultra-paranoid.
Bullshit. If you want to know the nefarious possibilities, see this chapter from Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing.. Scroll down to the heading "I want to know the age, sex, and zip code of every person who visited my site so that I can prepare a brochure for advertisers."
If not wanting my browsing habits tracked this way makes me "ultra-paranoid", sign me up.
But you don't have a big company name like "Names-R-Us" or something like that yet.
Hmmm...did you notice how many of the naming companies had meaningful names with the word "name" in there somewhere? Seems like they don't name themselves the same way they name their clients.
(that "stupidest idiots on the planet" thing is a direct quote-- and not a horribly exceptional utterance, either.)
Off-topic rant, but I'm seething: Nah, the stupidist idiots on the planet don't work for Amazon's customer service - they work for UPS's customer service. I actually blew my top and threw my phone into the wall yesterday, smashing it to bits in frustration after trying to get someone at UPS to understand my wish that they just leave my fscking package at my door, since I will not be there to sign for it (as I will be a work, imagine that). This, on top of the wonderful adventures I've already had this year in trying to get them to deal with two broken packages, and a lovely incident about two years back where they put my package on the truck after I'd arranged to come pick it up, has earned UPS top billing on my personal corporate shit list.
So do my personal boycotts mean anything to UPS, or (sliding back towards topic) amzazon.com, or Microsoft, or (leaving topic again) Proctor and Gamble? Maybe not. But I'm going to mention my boycotts to friends, family, and co-workers. I'm going to put my reasons for boycotting up on my web site. If every unsatisfied customer can cause 20 people to take their business elsewhere (impossible a few years ago, but with the web now...who knows?) it just might have an impact.
Why would you want to avoid irradiated foods? It is far healthier than foods that are infested with all sorts of bacteria.
Irradition destroys some of the vitamins in food, as well as affecting taste. Trading long shelf life for decreased nutrition makes sense if you're packing emergency rations in your bomb shelter, but I'd prefer not to do so for my everyday diet.
Now, if you prefer all your foods irradited, great. Labeling benefits us both - you get to seek them out, I get to avoid them. Markets work wonderfully when buyers and sellers meet in the marketplace with full knowledge, equal power, and all costs accounted for.
Actually, there was a very interesting article in Wired a while back about the Amish and technology. Very interesting - they're not completely anti-tech, but they very carefully, as a community, debate and analyze the effects of technologies before deciding whether to accept and apply them, and how.
For example, they might have phones, for emergency use - but install them in sheds or outhouses. Takes care of those telemarketer calls.
It's a very different notion of what's a "proper" use of technology from mine, but it is a very studied and considered one.
Then you must subscribe to the theory that the purpose of a species is to expand as quickly and over as much are as possible so as to maximize survival of the species?
Why would one subscribe to the idea that a species has a purpose? Species have no more "purpose" than do rocks, stars, or photons.
If not then you shouldn't care whether we kill ourselves off or not because the earth will recover within a couple thousand years of our demise
Well, I do have a certain sentimental attachment to humans, and would like to see them do well. I'd be pretty sad if the works of Bach, Hendrix, Shakespeare, Ginsberg, Da Vinci, and so on, were lost.
And also being a fan of Earth's ecosystem, I'd like to see humans (or the species they develop into, since I doubt Homo sap sap will still be around around outside of reservations a thousand years from now) straighten up and start acting as its guardians - and, eventually, perhaps as its vehicle of reproduction, as we terraform dead worlds.
Somtimes I think the unibomber was right... Well, accept for all that blowing up people part.
Ya know, when I read the Unibomber manifesto I had the same sort of reaction as when I read the Communist one: "Yes, you have identified some very real problems here, and have some interesting ideas about the root causes. But your proposed solution SUCKS!"
According to the US Centers for Disease Control, people who eat this stuff are eight times more likely to contract E-Coli 0157 food poisoning
800% of a small number is still a small number, so I'm not panicing yet. And I would bet you a nickel that those who contract food poisoning from organic fruits and vegetables didn't wash, scrub, or peel them first. (You should do this with non-organic veggies too, to remove waxes and pesticide residues. Unless you like that sort of thing, of course.)
There is no labor/capital axis, and the picture it draws is misleading.
Sure there is. It's between an economic system where wealth is based on trading our labor and working for a living (left, labor) versus one based on skimming wealth by ownership of capital resources (right, capital).
It's between a system of banks, global corporations, absentee ownership, and privately held natural resources designed to funnel the wealth produced by the many into the hands of a few (right, capital) versus a system of cooperatives, collectives, communes, credit unions, small businesses, and employee owned companies designed to allow the exchange of labor (left, labor). Either can be heavily regulated or a free market, authoritarian or libertarian. (Libertarian socialism can be see in the theories of American anarchists from the last 19th and early 20th centuries; perhaps Chomsky is the best-known contemporary thinker along those lines. Authoritarian capitalism can be seen today in Singapore.)
Back on topic. Beware of people who prommise to protect you.
On that, we can agree. If I really want to protect someone, not only must I agree to come to their defense in time of need, I must teach them to defend themselves and see that they have the appropriate tools. Anything else is not only impratical, it creates a power imbalance that over the long run can only lead to ruin - sure, I know that I'll never exploit my power over those I've sworn to defend, but what about those who come after me?
Of course, the state doesn't even promise to protect us; the Supreme Court has made it clear that police forces have no obligation to come to the aid of individual citizens.
Such pressures should be aimed at the corporations, their stockholders, and the appropriate governments.
But governments have ceded, by treaty, a large part of their power in these areas to the WTO! And in this speculative market, stockholders are largely apathetic so long as the stock price goes up - what does a day trader care about long term results?
Those who try to make the WTO affect non-trade laws are just lazy,
The WTO already affects non-trade laws, by making it illegal for member nations to impose reasonably strict environmental and labor conditions on the good that they import.
I am sick of people expecting government to solve our problems. Aparently, we can't protect ourselves from the mean, nasty corporations.
Government creates the mean nasty corporations. I'd like it to reign in its pets. Or have its creations become its masters?
I agree that comet was wrong for not disclosing the full truth. But a far more insidious evil is a government that decides to regulate everything and everyone.
We don't need more laws and regulations to deal with fsckheads like these guys. What's they've perpetrated is fraud, pure and simple, and that's well covered by exisiting law. Same as if Sony sold me you VCR that (they "forgot to disclose) happens to send to Sony HQ a list of your viewing habits, as well as sending back photographs of you slouched on the couch watching whatever gives you naughty thoughts.
Re:I really don't believe in this whole Zen concep
on
Interface Zen
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· Score: 2
Ok but why is this suddently so special to people?
Whadda mean, "suddenly"? The Buddha lived about 2500 years ago, and Bodhidharma brought the beginnings of Zen to China (the famous Shaolin temple) about 1500 years ago. It's hardly a new idea! American interest in Zen first became strong during the Beat movement and has been growing ever since.
Anyway...I have to say that never having been a touch typist, I just don't find Mr. Christiansen's complaints all that moving.
If I'd bothered to take "Personal Use Typing" in high school (back when Apple IIe's with Z-80 cards running CP/M were The Coolest Thing In The World), I might share his objections. But my typing style (such as it is) grew up on a computer keyboard, arrow keys and all. (Mostly the old PC version with the arrows on the numeric pad, though). "hjkl" are no more special to my hands than "M-x" (that's emacsish for "alt-x") or the arrow keys. And given the realities of the modern keyboard interface, studying touch typing now would be, IMHO, counterproductive - it's now an outdated methodology.
So long as entry isn't too painful (as it sometimes gets on the Mac I'm typing this on - I loathe the feel of this keyboard), I can still get flowing on content.
Slashdot Mirror
The government isn't going to disarm, and gun control is no more effective than cocaine or heroin control. If we can't keep crack or heroin (which have to be imported) off the streets, why would we think we could keep guns (which can be made in someone's basement with simple tools) away from the bad guys?
It's trite but true - when guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns. And the police and army too, of course. Neither are groups in which I have much trust.
Guns also level the "playing field" - if you're a small elderly person being attacked by a young, large, strong person with a baseball bat, a gun levels the odds real quick.
The fact that other nations with strong gun control have less crime doesn't meant that their lower crime rate is because of the gun control. (I.e., correlation != causality.) There are nations more armed than the US with less crime; Isreal and Switzerland come to mind. There are nations with few guns and horrible violence; about a million people in Rwanda were killed with machetes. Our society's problem with violence lies not in our guns but in ourselves - in our economic, criminal justice, and mental health systems, in our War on (some) Drugs, in lingering rascism, and in our in our cultural acceptance of violence.
I'm no expert - the incident I describe above is my only experience. But what I did was something like this (hope I've got the terminology right):
A keyed lock has a set of tumblers that have to be depressed to a certain depth. When this happens, the cylinder can turn and the lock opens. Since this is an imperfect real-world system, one tumbler holds the cylinder a little bit more than the others. (If the lock is old and worn (like the one I picked was) or just cheap, probably a lot more.) If you try to turn the lock while you jiggle the tumbers, eventually you'll get that one tumbler at just the right height and the cylinder will turn just a little and hold that tumbler in place. Repeat for the other tumblers and eventually you'll get them all and the cylinder will turn. The more tumblers, and the better things fit together, the harder the lock is to pick.
Get two pieces of thin flat metal. A bobby pin broken in half worked for me. You need two tools, one to try to turn the cylinder of the lock, and the other to stick into the lock and rake across the tumblers. We'll call them the "tension wrench" and the "rake" (which might not be real names, but we'll use them anyway).
Lay these two piece flat out on the table. For the tension wrench, bend the very bottom bit (just like the last millimter or two) and bend it up at 90 degrees to make an L shape. That small bottom bit is what you hook into the top of the lock cylinder to apply pressure to turn it. (You only want a small bit to go into the lock so you won't interfere with the rake.)
For the rake, bend the bottom centimeter or so of the second piece to the side about 30 to 45 degrees.
Rake the tip of the bent part of the rake over the tumblers (i.e., stick it in the lock and pull it out while pressing down on the part where the jagged edge of your key goes) while applying tension with the tension wrench. You'll feel the cylinder turn just a tiny bit with each tumbler that you get in position.
I was really surprized at how easy it was. This is probably a factor of the lock being pretty old, though - which is why it's been replaced. See, another example of "cracking tools" being used for legitimate security analysis.
Should you be able to profit from creating information? Sure; otherwise there's going to be a heck of a lot less information created. Songwriters, authors, and hackers have to eat, after all.
Should the mechanism for that profit be the state locking up people who make unauthorized copies? Nope. That's always been ethically questionable, and now in the "digital age" it's just no longer practical. (It's also worth noting that very little of the profits actually end up in the hands of the songwriters, authors, and hackers who create the information.)
We need a new pardigm to support authors and artists while not trying to prevent copying. My suggestion is unlimited copying (so long as authorship credit is preserved), with royalties required for for-profit use, sort of like what's now in effect for musical performances. (I can sing Bob Dylan songs to my friends and neighbors 'till my voice gives out and not pay a cent, but if I play in a bar where music is an profit-drawing attraction, the bar owner pays BMI or ASCAP who then pay Bob.)
It's also one of the best meditations on the nature of evil I've ever seen - "I'm going to bet on Satan, 'cause evil's stronger than good! (Time passes.) Hey, Satan ripped me off! That's, uh, like, evil..."
Fine, and we pity you as a brainwashed dupe of organized religion. Shall we throw a pity party for each other?Making tools is one of the things human beings do well. That makes banning tools pretty useless, 'cause if we can't get them (be they lockpicks, handguns, or file transfer programs) we'll make them ourselves. It's our nature.
Sexually abusing people - children or adults - is wrong. (Duh.) Murdering people is wrong. Stealing is wrong. Driving recklessly is wrong. That doesn't make it wrong to create or view images depiciting these things. If it did, we'd have no more action movies.
Child pornography is not some magic exception to the rights of free speech. Any reasonable laws against it must be based on the sexual abuse involved (if any) and on the inability of a child to enter into a binding contract to allow the distribution of their image and likeness, and not on the fact that the activities depicted may be abhorant.
I'll try to give a paper and envelopes version of a simple scheme; replace the envelopes with blinding (a reversable encryption operation on a message that allows a blinded message to be signed without the signer knowing its contents) and physical signatures with digital ones. IANA crytographer, so I invite correction on this.
I want to send you an anonymous money order. I write up 100 of them, each of the form "This is money order [random large id string]; pay to bearer $42." and place each one in an envelope. I go to the bank with all 100. They choose 99 of them to open and see that they're all for $42. So they have a high degree of certainty that the one they didn't pick is also for $42. They sign the envelope with a special ink that stains through onto the money order, and take my $42 (plus a handling fee, no doubt). I take the envelope, open it, and send you the money order. You cash it for $42. The id string uniquely identifies each order and prevents double spending.
More complicated algorithms allow the tracking of counterfiters while leaving legitimate transactions private, but they make my head hurt.
Fortunately, there are other possible sources of website revenue - sponsored links, merchandizing (get those /. tee shirts), affiliate programs, and voluntary contributions (works for NPR and PBS stations) come to mind.
Supported by advertizing != free. Just on the basic level, if Coke runs a banner ad on a site, where do you think the money for their ad budget comes from? It's figured into the cost of every can of carbonated caffeinated sugar you buy from them. Then there's the cost of your time to download the ad. Harder to measure is the psychological cost of being engulfed the sea of advertizing that encourages the culture of consumption in which we dwell. Nope. Anonymous digital cash is a solved problem.If not wanting my browsing habits tracked this way makes me "ultra-paranoid", sign me up.
So do my personal boycotts mean anything to UPS, or (sliding back towards topic) amzazon.com, or Microsoft, or (leaving topic again) Proctor and Gamble? Maybe not. But I'm going to mention my boycotts to friends, family, and co-workers. I'm going to put my reasons for boycotting up on my web site. If every unsatisfied customer can cause 20 people to take their business elsewhere (impossible a few years ago, but with the web now...who knows?) it just might have an impact.
Now, if you prefer all your foods irradited, great. Labeling benefits us both - you get to seek them out, I get to avoid them. Markets work wonderfully when buyers and sellers meet in the marketplace with full knowledge, equal power, and all costs accounted for.
Actually, there was a very interesting article in Wired a while back about the Amish and technology. Very interesting - they're not completely anti-tech, but they very carefully, as a community, debate and analyze the effects of technologies before deciding whether to accept and apply them, and how.
For example, they might have phones, for emergency use - but install them in sheds or outhouses. Takes care of those telemarketer calls.
It's a very different notion of what's a "proper" use of technology from mine, but it is a very studied and considered one.
Not directed at me, but:
Why would one subscribe to the idea that a species has a purpose? Species have no more "purpose" than do rocks, stars, or photons.
Well, I do have a certain sentimental attachment to humans, and would like to see them do well. I'd be pretty sad if the works of Bach, Hendrix, Shakespeare, Ginsberg, Da Vinci, and so on, were lost.
And also being a fan of Earth's ecosystem, I'd like to see humans (or the species they develop into, since I doubt Homo sap sap will still be around around outside of reservations a thousand years from now) straighten up and start acting as its guardians - and, eventually, perhaps as its vehicle of reproduction, as we terraform dead worlds.
It's between a system of banks, global corporations, absentee ownership, and privately held natural resources designed to funnel the wealth produced by the many into the hands of a few (right, capital) versus a system of cooperatives, collectives, communes, credit unions, small businesses, and employee owned companies designed to allow the exchange of labor (left, labor). Either can be heavily regulated or a free market, authoritarian or libertarian. (Libertarian socialism can be see in the theories of American anarchists from the last 19th and early 20th centuries; perhaps Chomsky is the best-known contemporary thinker along those lines. Authoritarian capitalism can be seen today in Singapore.)
On that, we can agree. If I really want to protect someone, not only must I agree to come to their defense in time of need, I must teach them to defend themselves and see that they have the appropriate tools. Anything else is not only impratical, it creates a power imbalance that over the long run can only lead to ruin - sure, I know that I'll never exploit my power over those I've sworn to defend, but what about those who come after me?Of course, the state doesn't even promise to protect us; the Supreme Court has made it clear that police forces have no obligation to come to the aid of individual citizens.
Anyway...I have to say that never having been a touch typist, I just don't find Mr. Christiansen's complaints all that moving.
If I'd bothered to take "Personal Use Typing" in high school (back when Apple IIe's with Z-80 cards running CP/M were The Coolest Thing In The World), I might share his objections. But my typing style (such as it is) grew up on a computer keyboard, arrow keys and all. (Mostly the old PC version with the arrows on the numeric pad, though). "hjkl" are no more special to my hands than "M-x" (that's emacsish for "alt-x") or the arrow keys. And given the realities of the modern keyboard interface, studying touch typing now would be, IMHO, counterproductive - it's now an outdated methodology.
So long as entry isn't too painful (as it sometimes gets on the Mac I'm typing this on - I loathe the feel of this keyboard), I can still get flowing on content.