Game playing has always been a part of cultures. It is a way of bringing up kids into the culture, of teaching them values without bashing them over the head. But IMHO, America doesn't really have a culture. It's culture resides in the perception of what America should be, rather than is (see DH Lawrences' O! America, I believe). America is still searching for identity.
We still have games, but these games are not created by the owners of the culture, but instead are the culture themselves. Each generation is faced with the task of finding its own identity, creating its own culture, and having very little to go upon except the artifacts of every day life, and of the past generation.
And, at least partially, I think that this is why we are seeing more, unpredictable, violent behavior, and suicide in youth. Not because Doom made them do it. But because they do not have a culture to belong to, that gives them inherent purpose in life. Yeah, this is getting mushy, but I think studies have shown that those brought up with a strong sense of tradition, of culture, are better adjusted as adults than those just cast into an artificial world of empty commercialism. This is the basis of movies like Fight Club.
It's just my perception that coming generations are having to build their own culture block by block from scratch, as the sense of any common culture goes away. The same thing is happening in Japan, where the previous culture is being left behind, leaving young people with a sense of isolation, with no common bond with previous generations.
Which is not to say this is an entirely dire situation. I love pop culture, I love Andy Warhol, I love the sense that there are codewords and a culture that only my generation alone shares.
that westerners should not try to tell starving countries that they're wrong for adopting dictatorial communism and systematically starving their own citizenry
Never said that. If there are human rights abuses, then as an equal (and not MORE than equal) entity in global politics, we can make a decision for ourselves to employ our own personal sanctions against that nation, and help its citizenry. However, we shouldn't try to dogmatically search out and destroy other people's forms of government or culture just because we don't think they are the Right way. We decided that the Native American's form of government and culture wasn't any good. We benevolently reformed them into an American-like democracy. We chopped up their land into individually owned pieces. We educated them in the ways of capitalism. Makes sense right? We ruined these people, who have only dregs and tatters of their culture and political system left. It's shameful. We've had a stinking blockade against that little tiny island Cuba for what, three DECADES now? Just because they harmed our pride with a little missile scare? Just because they didn't give in to big bully USA?
There is a fine line between helping people help themselves, and just forcing them to do something we want.
For their average expected lifespan of 35 years, threatened with serfdom, barbariansm, random pestilence and death due to diseases they didn't understand
Yeah, but is it a fair trade to increase my lifespan by a third and halve my quality of life? And by the way, unless you are talking about dirty middle-age Europeaners who had to have contact with the Arabs before they learned how to clean and heal themselves, people were living plenty longer than 35. And if you are talking about serfdom and barbarism those were nowhere more pronounced than in the (technology mongering) civilizations of Europe. Sure, other cultures had serfs and slaves, but in many cases they were treated with respect and had a specific role in the culture. You keep coming at this from an absolutist Eurocentric value system.
We still live with random pestilence and death. Or at least the majority of those in the third world, who got the shit end of our wonderful technological progress.
And look man, I dunno if you've noticed, but using Slashdot for anti-technology rants is about as dumb as banging your head with a rock.f you don't believe in the promise -- and the past -- of technology, the first thing you should do is fuck off this particular web site (if not all other web sites as well). And I'm not saying that to be rude... honest... it's just kinda obvious!
Yeah, I guess I shouldn't bring up anything the herd might not agree with. Conform, conform, conform. I would like to think of Slashdot as a place for intelligent discussion. And by the way, this is not an anti-technology rant. I am just *asking* you to *consider* the rationale for your basic assumption that technology is a good end in and of itself. Apparently questioning such a deep-seated belief has made you very uneasy and you have to strike out.
I'm sure Bill Joy will be expecting your response to his Wired article. Because, you know, he's just another one of those anti-technology nuts.
Look at the state of American farming. A few decades ago, most farming was done on family farms. It was more or less sustainable. But recently big corporations have evolve to do mega-farming on a mass scale. These corporate farms treat animals miserably, to get the most price/performance ration. They pollute their soil with harsh chemicals, pesticides, and now genetically engineered food, and keep on having to raise the stakes because land becomes less sustainable, insects become pesticide resistent, etc. etc. They are borrowing from peter to pay Paul. Now these mega farms produce so much by practicing non-sustainable agriculture with expensive technology, that they drive down the cost insanely, and they have run all the family farms out of business. Look at the dairy industry. In a decade or two there will be practically NO small dairy farms, just big corporate farms turning over cows like they were batteries.
And the third world is rushing to catch up with the rest of the post-industrial west. So they build up great polluting industries to catch up quick. Of course this screws the environment, and often native farmers, who then have to go and cut down rainforest, or import food into their country. It is totally destroying the sustainable way of life people had for a long time.
That is NOT progress. I would rather my food cost TWICE as much if it were sustainable, if people weren't indentured or put out of business to supply it, and if animals and the land were treated in a respectful and sustainable manner. Everything is not about how much shit you can acquire on the cheap.
So then it's all about making hardware manufacturer pay high fees to license the SDMI technology so they are "allowed" to play the media. Wow...that sounds familiar...
The thing with Linux today--I call it the bathtub. I can throw source in there. It's all floating around and it's available to everybody. But I as a vendor can take anything I want out of that bathtub and call it Linux.
Now if you think that's going to work for application developers, call me in a year or two when IBM's Linux is different than HP's Linux is different than Dell's Linux and (a customer) will have to recompile five times. You've broken it effectively. So you cannot depend on one Linux.
How is this not true? RedHat decides to take a certain version of the kernel, KDE, a peculiar flavor of gcc, and some other stuff, RedHat-ize it, and make a distribution out of it. Debian chooses another version of the kernel, Gnome, uses apt-get, and has a different distribution. Mandrake throws in some nice Mandrakish features. Others yet, take whatever other pieces they want and create a customized flavor of "Linux" (ok, perhaps not a customized codebase). We champion this as serving different needs. But isn't it still true that the same process has the potential for many conflicts? File system formats, hierarchy standards (file system standard and LSB notwithstanding), versions of applications, system policies, configuration tools, init scripts, custom scripts, etc. For all intents and purposes, Linux, as seen by the consumer, is fragmented. I think there should be a strong cohesive force to keep Linux, as the gestalt system, not just kernel, on track. Maybe LSB is it. Maybe not.
Yes, but we know that time travel can be achieved by attaining the exact speed of 88 mph (plus a flux capacitor)...so maybe we launched it yesterday, it went back 7 billion years in time, and now we are just trying to contact it.
Yeah, but watermarks don't prevent copying. So what the hell is the difference if my friend just makes a copy of the perfect-sounding media file. I can play it to my heart's content without any degradation, and short of the RIAA storming my house, who would ever know??
Yeah. For instance, public schools should not be allowed to sell kids minds to *mandatory* telivision programming in class (cough Channel One cough) in return for funding. Exclusive soda a vending machine contracts should probably be ripped out too. Give public schools the funding they need so they don't have to go out and pimp the minds they are trying to educate.
Increases in technology mean increases in productivity: by definition, doing more with less. Increases in productivity over time is the creation of true wealth, i.e., not more little pieces of paper, but the maximization of human activity.
People were plenty happy and productive for eons without making what we'd call technological progress. This idea of technology, of some absolute measure of "progress", seems peculiarly western to me. Native American empires, Asian empires, Middle-Eastern empires, all got along just fine without the feverish quest for technological innovation that we see today.
Were it not for the technological improvements over the last century, there would BE no wealth for us to discuss the charitable redistribution of.
There is absolutely no question that technology has improved and saved millions upon millions of lives directly, and that it has done much more good than harm.
*yawn* Our environment is slowly turning to shit. We've commoditized our bodies and minds to the point that psychological and physical ailments due to lifestyle are at all-time highs. The top percentile of the world live in a virtually gold encrusted paradise compared to the vast millions and billions of people who live in utter destitution, poverty, and disease (the same people who were doing just fine a few centuries or millenia ago, without all this wonderful technology). Technological improvements have created just as many problems as they have solved, they have just shifted those problems to those who don't yet possess the technology...out of sight, out of mind.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, it took 50% of the population of "modern" societies to work in agriculture in order to feed people. Today it takes less than 2%.
Or perhaps the global economy is such that only mega-corporations farming on a large scale with high-tech equipment and fertilizers and pesticides can even make farming an affordable practice.
Along with those changes have come massive decreases in poverty and massive increases in lifespan. Technological advances and the companying increases in productivity are the reason why.
Sounds like you're talking about the agricultural revolution that occurred between 10 and 12 thousand years ago. Strange how the savage Iroquois had built an agricultural economy the magnitude of which dwarfed anything from Europe, based on mound farming, without even the technology of the plow that all intelligent Europeans knew was absolutely necessary for farming.
The only reason why many nations starve is that they haven't enacted a political/economic system that maximizes human activity.
Translation: The only reason why many nations starve is that they haven't bought into the Western capitalist notion of raping their own natural resources for quick profit, and to hell with the next generation. The global economy has been clubbing third world countries to just hurry the hell up and exploit their resources and pollute their environment so they can be on economic par. And then, the largest of the polluters look back and say "Hey! Shame on you third world nations! Look at all the pollution and environmental destruction you are causing by desparately trying to scrabble up the global economic wall!"
Starving nation's politics/infrastructure is often so screwed up that the aid never gets to the people in need.
At least that's true. Perhaps we should stop f*ck ing around with other people's political, social and cultural systems to try to remake them in our own image. Perhaps we should help by not climbing on top of the mountain and then chastising everybody else for doing the same. Perhaps we should play fair, by the very same rules, regulations, treaties and accords we ourselves spearheaded. Nobody needs moral imperialists coming in and telling them they're starving because they just don't know how to eat right.
--
I apologize, that was sort of a mega-rant...do I sound bitter?
Yeah, but if you are like the poster, and just want to offload some money and feel good about it, United Way is an easy choice. Of course one could probably make a better choice by carefully researching each and every charity out there, or giving to local ones, etc.
Is it wrong for him to want to promote technology (which may improve society and thus save lives indirectly) rather than save a life?
Well, that's really the main question. I think in itself, it is at best a tenuous position that technology improves society and/or saves lives indirectly. One could argue that technology has done much more harm then good. Of course as geeks our basic assumption is the technology is the greatest thing on earth and will eventual cure all problems if we just give it time. Personally I would rather save somebody now than throw my money at technology and hope it will do something in the future. Whether Goldstein wins the DeCSS, or whether we finally get large cheap flat LCD screens, millions of people will still be illiterate, diseased, starving, dead or dying, tomorrow.
No, giving to different charities is not mutually exclusive, but if your goal really is to do the most people the most good, then I bet it would be best to give to the traditional feed-the-starving, house-the-homeless, cure-the-diseased type of charities.
Do you really believe that if someone cannot get this right then they are going to know if their vote is counted, let alone care?
Perhaps not, but since when does ignorance on the victims part make the act ok? If I were to steal something from somebody and they were too "stupid" to notice is that not a crime? It's just a slippery slope to go down. I cringe every time I see a reporter interview some ditzy kid, or some clueless streetwalker about their preference in canditate, and hear them respond in terms of personal characteristics or carriage, or because a friend told them that that was a good candidate. I think it is awful that campaigns are run like humongous product marketing efforts. But I *still* won't cross the line I mentioned above, for that one immigrant who came here to escape god knows what, doesn't know anything about the US, but still wants a voice in the democracy. To that person I'm not going to say that they are too stupid and discount their vote.
But yes, probably making a national standard with time-proven technology of paper and pen would help things a lot. Of course then there's the human counting margin of error, multiplied by the population size of the US in contrast to European countries.
Isn't United Way like a clearing house many other different charities? You can give to them and let them dole it out how they see fit, or you can specify a percentage or amount to go to each partner/child program, or you can donate directly to that program.
While it's nice to liberate information, I think it is just as geek-worthy to liberate people from poverty, starvation, disease, illiteracy, homelessness, etc. etc.
Ok, about now I don't give a damn who wins. Lots of people are clamoring that Bush won all the recounts, so he should just win. That's fine. However, let's just take a look at the electoral college. It exists ostensibly to mitigate the power of states with very large population while giving a boost to states with very low population - in other words it normalizes the voting power of states. I agree with this theoretical system. *However* if you look at how it is currently implemented, it does the exact opposite with respect to minimizing overwhelming majorities (one of its goals, as above). When states are winner-takes-all, that completely thwarts the purpose of the electoral college. For instance, in Florida, the guy who wins by even 1 vote gets ALL 25 electoral votes. This is the complete opposite of normalizing a vast majority, instead it amplifies a very narrow majority into a HUGE majority...hence the "wasted vote". It would be fairer if all states' electoral colleges proportionally represented the vote in their state. The electoral college would still be doing its job, because its job was to decrease or increase the voting power (read: electoral votes) relative to the state's size - its job was NOT (AFAIK) to tamper with the public opinion by implementing things like winner-takes-all.
If you consider this, then the electoral votes might be split down the middle in Florida, and Gore would end up with the (small) lead. However, the same thing would be done for every other state, so we would probably still have a dead tie...but at least it would be representative of public opinion, which I personally read as there being very little difference in the candidates as far many major policies, just aesthetic differences.
1. Americans don't know how to make ballot sheets.
Perhaps. But theoretically, each state is sovereign (or semi-sovereign), so they can determine their vote however they want. But, yes, I agree, there probably should be a federal standard accross all states and counties everywhere, for every type of office, so that when you go to vote, no matter what state you are in, you know how to.
2. Americans don't know how to count votes.
And what would you say if the voting machines themselvs are faulting and not punching cards correctly? Is that the voter's fault? It brings up the question of what technology we use to vote in the first place. Human counting is tedious and error-prone. But so are broken machines or buggy vote-counting software and apparatus. And by the way, AFAIK, there is no "intelligence barrier" to voting. Yes it means a lot of stupid people will vote, but as an American (left-leaning as I might be), it is incendiary to me that "if you are too stupid to follow the instructions, then you are too stupid to have your vote count". Whether you're stupid or not, the policies of your country still affect your life.
I would gladly pay an extra $6 on a CD burner if it meant more freedom to use the information I buy how I want.
You should already *have* that freedom...you shouldn't have to pay extra for it. You shouldn't have to pay for constitutional rights. Should I pay a "knife" tax to compensate for those people who might buy knives and stab others?
I check out KernelTraffic every rare once in a while, and it seems to me that the large codebase and barrier to entry is putting enough pressure on kernel developers, that Linus is actually revamping, and modularizing the kernel. It may not exactly be a microkernel with totally separate pieces, but the fundamental problem is the same. Microkernel architectures are no more a panacea than monolithic ones are. Who said microkernels where a "big deal"? Every engineering problem involves trade offs.
The difference is, in a democracy, people have *elected*, have chosen, to sell these rights. Under a monarchy or dictatorship they might not be able to. Many corrupt or dictatorial governments either look the other way, or gladly participate in the exploitation of their own people (sweatshops, coffee bean harvesting, etc. etc.). The difference is that democracies supposedly have a choice. Sucks to be you if you're stuck under a dictatorship that sells a big corporation rights to your labor, genes, etc.
Did anybody even follow the LizardTech link? Right on the front page is a link to a page describing DjVu. The whole product ("image format") seems geared towards scanning in Real Life documents and presenting them online. If you *read* the page it explains why it claims it is faster (first downloads high contrast data, then photographs and graphics, clarifying the image as it goes) and smaller (some wavelet kung foo). I don't see anywhere where they are pitching this as competition for gif or png, so everybody put down the flamethrowers. This is a very small niche product for digitizing and presenting real life mundane documents.
Slashdot Mirror
You are on the way to destruction, you have no chance, make your time!
(would be funnier if the caps-filter know what being facetious was)
Or maybe: "Jump? How high?"
Yeah, I never really got that "training" bit. I mean it's software. You use it. If you have a problem you read the manual. It's like a toaster.
But I suppose by the time I'm an old fart I'll have to take some whizbang pychotronic message broadcasting training session or something.
Game playing has always been a part of cultures. It is a way of bringing up kids into the culture, of teaching them values without bashing them over the head. But IMHO, America doesn't really have a culture. It's culture resides in the perception of what America should be, rather than is (see DH Lawrences' O! America, I believe). America is still searching for identity.
We still have games, but these games are not created by the owners of the culture, but instead are the culture themselves. Each generation is faced with the task of finding its own identity, creating its own culture, and having very little to go upon except the artifacts of every day life, and of the past generation.
And, at least partially, I think that this is why we are seeing more, unpredictable, violent behavior, and suicide in youth. Not because Doom made them do it. But because they do not have a culture to belong to, that gives them inherent purpose in life. Yeah, this is getting mushy, but I think studies have shown that those brought up with a strong sense of tradition, of culture, are better adjusted as adults than those just cast into an artificial world of empty commercialism. This is the basis of movies like Fight Club.
It's just my perception that coming generations are having to build their own culture block by block from scratch, as the sense of any common culture goes away. The same thing is happening in Japan, where the previous culture is being left behind, leaving young people with a sense of isolation, with no common bond with previous generations.
Which is not to say this is an entirely dire situation. I love pop culture, I love Andy Warhol, I love the sense that there are codewords and a culture that only my generation alone shares.
that westerners should not try to tell starving countries that they're wrong for adopting dictatorial communism and systematically starving their own citizenry
Never said that. If there are human rights abuses, then as an equal (and not MORE than equal) entity in global politics, we can make a decision for ourselves to employ our own personal sanctions against that nation, and help its citizenry. However, we shouldn't try to dogmatically search out and destroy other people's forms of government or culture just because we don't think they are the Right way. We decided that the Native American's form of government and culture wasn't any good. We benevolently reformed them into an American-like democracy. We chopped up their land into individually owned pieces. We educated them in the ways of capitalism. Makes sense right? We ruined these people, who have only dregs and tatters of their culture and political system left. It's shameful. We've had a stinking blockade against that little tiny island Cuba for what, three DECADES now? Just because they harmed our pride with a little missile scare? Just because they didn't give in to big bully USA?
There is a fine line between helping people help themselves, and just forcing them to do something we want.
For their average expected lifespan of 35 years, threatened with serfdom, barbariansm, random pestilence and death due to diseases they didn't understand
Yeah, but is it a fair trade to increase my lifespan by a third and halve my quality of life? And by the way, unless you are talking about dirty middle-age Europeaners who had to have contact with the Arabs before they learned how to clean and heal themselves, people were living plenty longer than 35. And if you are talking about serfdom and barbarism those were nowhere more pronounced than in the (technology mongering) civilizations of Europe. Sure, other cultures had serfs and slaves, but in many cases they were treated with respect and had a specific role in the culture. You keep coming at this from an absolutist Eurocentric value system.
We still live with random pestilence and death. Or at least the majority of those in the third world, who got the shit end of our wonderful technological progress.
And look man, I dunno if you've noticed, but using Slashdot for anti-technology rants is about as dumb as banging your head with a rock.f you don't believe in the promise -- and the past -- of technology, the first thing you should do is fuck off this particular web site (if not all other web sites as well). And I'm not saying that to be rude... honest... it's just kinda obvious!
Yeah, I guess I shouldn't bring up anything the herd might not agree with. Conform, conform, conform. I would like to think of Slashdot as a place for intelligent discussion. And by the way, this is not an anti-technology rant. I am just *asking* you to *consider* the rationale for your basic assumption that technology is a good end in and of itself. Apparently questioning such a deep-seated belief has made you very uneasy and you have to strike out.
I'm sure Bill Joy will be expecting your response to his Wired article. Because, you know, he's just another one of those anti-technology nuts.
Look at the state of American farming. A few decades ago, most farming was done on family farms. It was more or less sustainable. But recently big corporations have evolve to do mega-farming on a mass scale. These corporate farms treat animals miserably, to get the most price/performance ration. They pollute their soil with harsh chemicals, pesticides, and now genetically engineered food, and keep on having to raise the stakes because land becomes less sustainable, insects become pesticide resistent, etc. etc. They are borrowing from peter to pay Paul. Now these mega farms produce so much by practicing non-sustainable agriculture with expensive technology, that they drive down the cost insanely, and they have run all the family farms out of business. Look at the dairy industry. In a decade or two there will be practically NO small dairy farms, just big corporate farms turning over cows like they were batteries.
And the third world is rushing to catch up with the rest of the post-industrial west. So they build up great polluting industries to catch up quick. Of course this screws the environment, and often native farmers, who then have to go and cut down rainforest, or import food into their country. It is totally destroying the sustainable way of life people had for a long time.
That is NOT progress. I would rather my food cost TWICE as much if it were sustainable, if people weren't indentured or put out of business to supply it, and if animals and the land were treated in a respectful and sustainable manner. Everything is not about how much shit you can acquire on the cheap.
So then it's all about making hardware manufacturer pay high fees to license the SDMI technology so they are "allowed" to play the media. Wow...that sounds familiar...
How is this not true? RedHat decides to take a certain version of the kernel, KDE, a peculiar flavor of gcc, and some other stuff, RedHat-ize it, and make a distribution out of it. Debian chooses another version of the kernel, Gnome, uses apt-get, and has a different distribution. Mandrake throws in some nice Mandrakish features. Others yet, take whatever other pieces they want and create a customized flavor of "Linux" (ok, perhaps not a customized codebase). We champion this as serving different needs. But isn't it still true that the same process has the potential for many conflicts? File system formats, hierarchy standards (file system standard and LSB notwithstanding), versions of applications, system policies, configuration tools, init scripts, custom scripts, etc. For all intents and purposes, Linux, as seen by the consumer, is fragmented. I think there should be a strong cohesive force to keep Linux, as the gestalt system, not just kernel, on track. Maybe LSB is it. Maybe not.
Yes, but we know that time travel can be achieved by attaining the exact speed of 88 mph (plus a flux capacitor)...so maybe we launched it yesterday, it went back 7 billion years in time, and now we are just trying to contact it.
Yeah, but watermarks don't prevent copying. So what the hell is the difference if my friend just makes a copy of the perfect-sounding media file. I can play it to my heart's content without any degradation, and short of the RIAA storming my house, who would ever know??
Yeah, the lawyers and spammers would probably compete them out of existence.
Yeah. For instance, public schools should not be allowed to sell kids minds to *mandatory* telivision programming in class (cough Channel One cough) in return for funding. Exclusive soda a vending machine contracts should probably be ripped out too. Give public schools the funding they need so they don't have to go out and pimp the minds they are trying to educate.
Increases in technology mean increases in productivity: by definition, doing more with less. Increases in productivity over time is the creation of true wealth, i.e., not more little pieces of paper, but the maximization of human activity.
People were plenty happy and productive for eons without making what we'd call technological progress. This idea of technology, of some absolute measure of "progress", seems peculiarly western to me. Native American empires, Asian empires, Middle-Eastern empires, all got along just fine without the feverish quest for technological innovation that we see today.
Were it not for the technological improvements over the last century, there would BE no wealth for us to discuss the charitable redistribution of.
There is absolutely no question that technology has improved and saved millions upon millions of lives directly, and that it has done much more good than harm.
*yawn* Our environment is slowly turning to shit. We've commoditized our bodies and minds to the point that psychological and physical ailments due to lifestyle are at all-time highs. The top percentile of the world live in a virtually gold encrusted paradise compared to the vast millions and billions of people who live in utter destitution, poverty, and disease (the same people who were doing just fine a few centuries or millenia ago, without all this wonderful technology). Technological improvements have created just as many problems as they have solved, they have just shifted those problems to those who don't yet possess the technology...out of sight, out of mind.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, it took 50% of the population of "modern" societies to work in agriculture in order to feed people. Today it takes less than 2%.
Or perhaps the global economy is such that only mega-corporations farming on a large scale with high-tech equipment and fertilizers and pesticides can even make farming an affordable practice.
Along with those changes have come massive decreases in poverty and massive increases in lifespan. Technological advances and the companying increases in productivity are the reason why.
Sounds like you're talking about the agricultural revolution that occurred between 10 and 12 thousand years ago. Strange how the savage Iroquois had built an agricultural economy the magnitude of which dwarfed anything from Europe, based on mound farming, without even the technology of the plow that all intelligent Europeans knew was absolutely necessary for farming.
The only reason why many nations starve is that they haven't enacted a political/economic system that maximizes human activity.
Translation: The only reason why many nations starve is that they haven't bought into the Western capitalist notion of raping their own natural resources for quick profit, and to hell with the next generation. The global economy has been clubbing third world countries to just hurry the hell up and exploit their resources and pollute their environment so they can be on economic par. And then, the largest of the polluters look back and say "Hey! Shame on you third world nations! Look at all the pollution and environmental destruction you are causing by desparately trying to scrabble up the global economic wall!"
Starving nation's politics/infrastructure is often so screwed up that the aid never gets to the people in need.
At least that's true. Perhaps we should stop f*ck ing around with other people's political, social and cultural systems to try to remake them in our own image. Perhaps we should help by not climbing on top of the mountain and then chastising everybody else for doing the same. Perhaps we should play fair, by the very same rules, regulations, treaties and accords we ourselves spearheaded. Nobody needs moral imperialists coming in and telling them they're starving because they just don't know how to eat right.
--
I apologize, that was sort of a mega-rant...do I sound bitter?
You know, it's almost like Red Hat was trying to create an integrated product that met its (paying) clients' needs...
Yeah, but if you are like the poster, and just want to offload some money and feel good about it, United Way is an easy choice. Of course one could probably make a better choice by carefully researching each and every charity out there, or giving to local ones, etc.
Gee, I thought ESR was the Accidental Revolutionary.
Is it wrong for him to want to promote technology (which may improve society and thus save lives indirectly) rather than save a life?
Well, that's really the main question. I think in itself, it is at best a tenuous position that technology improves society and/or saves lives indirectly. One could argue that technology has done much more harm then good. Of course as geeks our basic assumption is the technology is the greatest thing on earth and will eventual cure all problems if we just give it time. Personally I would rather save somebody now than throw my money at technology and hope it will do something in the future. Whether Goldstein wins the DeCSS, or whether we finally get large cheap flat LCD screens, millions of people will still be illiterate, diseased, starving, dead or dying, tomorrow.
No, giving to different charities is not mutually exclusive, but if your goal really is to do the most people the most good, then I bet it would be best to give to the traditional feed-the-starving, house-the-homeless, cure-the-diseased type of charities.
Do you really believe that if someone cannot get this right then they are going to know if their vote is counted, let alone care?
Perhaps not, but since when does ignorance on the victims part make the act ok? If I were to steal something from somebody and they were too "stupid" to notice is that not a crime? It's just a slippery slope to go down. I cringe every time I see a reporter interview some ditzy kid, or some clueless streetwalker about their preference in canditate, and hear them respond in terms of personal characteristics or carriage, or because a friend told them that that was a good candidate. I think it is awful that campaigns are run like humongous product marketing efforts. But I *still* won't cross the line I mentioned above, for that one immigrant who came here to escape god knows what, doesn't know anything about the US, but still wants a voice in the democracy. To that person I'm not going to say that they are too stupid and discount their vote.
But yes, probably making a national standard with time-proven technology of paper and pen would help things a lot. Of course then there's the human counting margin of error, multiplied by the population size of the US in contrast to European countries.
Isn't United Way like a clearing house many other different charities? You can give to them and let them dole it out how they see fit, or you can specify a percentage or amount to go to each partner/child program, or you can donate directly to that program.
While it's nice to liberate information, I think it is just as geek-worthy to liberate people from poverty, starvation, disease, illiteracy, homelessness, etc. etc.
Ok, about now I don't give a damn who wins. Lots of people are clamoring that Bush won all the recounts, so he should just win. That's fine. However, let's just take a look at the electoral college. It exists ostensibly to mitigate the power of states with very large population while giving a boost to states with very low population - in other words it normalizes the voting power of states. I agree with this theoretical system. *However* if you look at how it is currently implemented, it does the exact opposite with respect to minimizing overwhelming majorities (one of its goals, as above). When states are winner-takes-all, that completely thwarts the purpose of the electoral college. For instance, in Florida, the guy who wins by even 1 vote gets ALL 25 electoral votes. This is the complete opposite of normalizing a vast majority, instead it amplifies a very narrow majority into a HUGE majority...hence the "wasted vote". It would be fairer if all states' electoral colleges proportionally represented the vote in their state. The electoral college would still be doing its job, because its job was to decrease or increase the voting power (read: electoral votes) relative to the state's size - its job was NOT (AFAIK) to tamper with the public opinion by implementing things like winner-takes-all.
If you consider this, then the electoral votes might be split down the middle in Florida, and Gore would end up with the (small) lead. However, the same thing would be done for every other state, so we would probably still have a dead tie...but at least it would be representative of public opinion, which I personally read as there being very little difference in the candidates as far many major policies, just aesthetic differences.
Which brings me to my sig...
1. Americans don't know how to make ballot sheets.
Perhaps. But theoretically, each state is sovereign (or semi-sovereign), so they can determine their vote however they want. But, yes, I agree, there probably should be a federal standard accross all states and counties everywhere, for every type of office, so that when you go to vote, no matter what state you are in, you know how to.
2. Americans don't know how to count votes.
And what would you say if the voting machines themselvs are faulting and not punching cards correctly? Is that the voter's fault? It brings up the question of what technology we use to vote in the first place. Human counting is tedious and error-prone. But so are broken machines or buggy vote-counting software and apparatus. And by the way, AFAIK, there is no "intelligence barrier" to voting. Yes it means a lot of stupid people will vote, but as an American (left-leaning as I might be), it is incendiary to me that "if you are too stupid to follow the instructions, then you are too stupid to have your vote count". Whether you're stupid or not, the policies of your country still affect your life.
I would gladly pay an extra $6 on a CD burner if it meant more freedom to use the information I buy how I want.
You should already *have* that freedom...you shouldn't have to pay extra for it. You shouldn't have to pay for constitutional rights. Should I pay a "knife" tax to compensate for those people who might buy knives and stab others?
I check out KernelTraffic every rare once in a while, and it seems to me that the large codebase and barrier to entry is putting enough pressure on kernel developers, that Linus is actually revamping, and modularizing the kernel. It may not exactly be a microkernel with totally separate pieces, but the fundamental problem is the same. Microkernel architectures are no more a panacea than monolithic ones are. Who said microkernels where a "big deal"? Every engineering problem involves trade offs.
The difference is, in a democracy, people have *elected*, have chosen, to sell these rights. Under a monarchy or dictatorship they might not be able to. Many corrupt or dictatorial governments either look the other way, or gladly participate in the exploitation of their own people (sweatshops, coffee bean harvesting, etc. etc.). The difference is that democracies supposedly have a choice. Sucks to be you if you're stuck under a dictatorship that sells a big corporation rights to your labor, genes, etc.
Did anybody even follow the LizardTech link? Right on the front page is a link to a page describing DjVu. The whole product ("image format") seems geared towards scanning in Real Life documents and presenting them online. If you *read* the page it explains why it claims it is faster (first downloads high contrast data, then photographs and graphics, clarifying the image as it goes) and smaller (some wavelet kung foo). I don't see anywhere where they are pitching this as competition for gif or png, so everybody put down the flamethrowers. This is a very small niche product for digitizing and presenting real life mundane documents.