And, for your sake, I hope that your holidays were all spent in good solid loyal patriotic places in the USA so that there's nothing treasonous that they can infer from the pictures once they use the metadata to get a FISA warrant to look at the actual data.
Given that the GP has frequently noted in other posts that he is from Germany, and that he was involved in the (now decade-old) deCSS trial, I rather think that vacationing in the USA is one of the last things he wants to do...
For one thing, only if he did spend his holidays on this side of the pond would FISA warrants even be relevant.
There's risk everywhere. What about people with homes near sea level, or near beaches? What about people living in the southeast where hurricanes frequently hit? What about people in California, where there's earthquakes?
I live in a forested area that hasn't seen a forest fire in my lifetime, where tornadoes are piddly little things that you might see once or twice a year in the whole state, earthquakes are a 5.6 with the epicenter 200 miles away, hurricanes are just a somewhat larger than usual thunderstorm, and the sea is 3000 feet down (and a couple hundred miles away). We don't have poisonous snakes, spiders, or plants (beyond poison ivy-level), nor is there any significant danger of being attacked by dangerous wildlife (unless you wander off well into the woods and meet a bear that you then antagonize).
All that said, much as I love upstate NY, I don't think it's reasonable to try to restrict people from living in areas where all the above is not true. You just need to enforce a little common sense sometimes—like building to more resilient standards in an earthquake-prone area, having a safe place to shelter from tornadoes in the Midwest, and not building on the edge of a sand-cliff that's going to erode out from under you in 5 years just because it's got a gorgeous ocean view and easy access to the beach.
Frankly, any company that expects any given hire to have an extensive record of blog posts and tweets is not one I would really want to work for.
If you're interviewing for a programming job, nobody's going to ask you for your Twitter handle. They might, however, ask for your github login.
Which, in my view, is almost as bad.
Why, if I am an in-house programmer for a company, should it be assumed that I have any Open Source or otherwise freely available code I can point to as having written?
I write code for other people for a living, and they own it and don't want it shared; why should I have to write code for myself to develop a "portfolio" I can demonstrate on demand just tobe hireable?
(Note: the above does not actually represent my current status, as I, personally, do write code for personal projects. Some of it is even on GitHub, though most of my repos have only a small fraction of my own code in them, as they're forks. That said, I do know people whose attitude is much more like the one I have demonstrated above: excellent programmers, but with no inclination to do as a hobby what they already do for a living.)
The reason Android's adoption is high is pretty damn obvious to anyone who's actually paying attention: the phones occupying the space in carrier lineups that, seven years ago, would have been held by dumbphones are now cheap Android phones. People buy Android not because they're choosing it, but because that's what happens to come on their phone...which they use almost exclusively to talk and text. (And maybe check Twitter and Facebook.)
Dan Aris
You are right. That is preciously why no one is paying a premium to buy expensive Android phones like the Samsung S4 or HTC One.
Well, not "no one," but they're hardly the phones that are driving the bulk of Android's marketshare.
If this weren't posted as a reply to one of my own posts, it would definitely have gotten one of my mod points.;-)
Personally, I have a tendency to go just far enough to explain people's actions, without going far enough to come up with explanations that are uncharitable to them (not trying to claim this is a better way: just that it's mine). But you're right, a lot of people like Facebook and Twitter because they are narcissistic as well as extroverted.
Do not create an unnatural online presence - only do what feels right, which could be nothing at all
Do not create something that feels burdensome to manage, as it will go stale and you will look silly when I interview you
Do look at what other people have done. A lot of it has built up over time, time that you may not have. Nothing you can do about that.
If your employer wants your online passwords, and you don't have them, they may not believe you. You don't want to work for that company, not one bit
To follow from that, if your online presence helps you get a job, did you really want that job? Or would you prefer a harder-to-find employer that fits your style better?
Online presence means people can troll or otherwise make you look bad. Even if you do not allow comments, or use a platform that lends itself to discussion, they can show up in search results with a clear link back to your presence. It's just something to consider when you decide where and now to set up, or not to.
This part I particularly like. Good summary of how to go about creating a sensible online presence.
Some of us consider it our mission in life (well, not our only mission, and not even that important a mission, but anyhow) to salt Facebook with as many made up false identities as possible.
It's important to pollute the idea that the Zuck and his buddies have, that the Facebook database is a place filled with valuable minerals for data mining.
And I find that both a relatively laudable goal, and a quite amusing poke in Facebook's eye. But that doesn't mean that it's going to come anywhere near the number of people on Facebook who put their real names in.
Who signs up to social media and internet forums with their real name?
Apart from you, obviously.
Well, first of all, 99% of people who aren't geeks. That is, after all, the point of social media for most people: to interact with other real people through the internet, many of whom they already know from real life, and who would be searching for them by their real name.
Second of all, how do you know this is my real name, and not just a plausible pseudonym (as opposed to the obvious online handles most people use, like AmiMoJo)?;-)
Frankly, any company that expects any given hire to have an extensive record of blog posts and tweets is not one I would really want to work for.
Not just because of the privacy implications, but because, in my view, that's expecting me to have a particular kind of personality: one that feels compelled to share everything, or at least a frequent chunk of what I do and think.
Unfortunately, this is just another manifestation of extroverts running most organizations and not even truly comprehending what it might be not to be an extrovert. So much of the hiring process and expectations in the workplace are centered around things that give extroverts a charge, but drain introverts' energy badly.
People buy Android because they want something billed as "better than iPhone, with a smaller pricetag." They're certainly not built for freedom, as anyone gets them.
Huh? That makes absolutely no sense.
I think he's trying to say that in the configurations in which the vast majority of people purchase and use Android phones, they are not particularly Open or Free. Nor would they particularly care, as Open and Free are very geekly ideals.
You are so 2012 - these days people (here in the UK) increasingly are deliberately asking for Android, because their friend was sold a Windows phone and there were no upgrades at all! (or apps). Everyone in the real workd knows the SGS4 is awesome, and those that cant afford it, get a Samsung Galaxy &*%$ instead, which is OK but not great.
Also: plastic or aluminium backs are irrelevant - people put the phone in a fake leather case anyway.
Well, I can't speak for the UK, so I can't tell whether you're right or not about that.
However, here in the real US world, most people wouldn't know a Samsung or an Android or a Windows phone if it walked up and introduced itself to them. That's a very geekly attitude. They recognize the iPhone, and they may or may not decide they want it. If they don't, by and large, they just go into the Verizon or AT&T store and let the salesdrones sell them whatever.
If you can find stats showing Android users spending more per capita on apps, though, I'll be very surprised.
Have you read the post someone made here from gamasutra about user conversion on iOS vs Android games? Or about how they can't even sell a top game for $0.99 on iOS? I guess not.
Actually, I tried to follow that link when I saw it elsewhere in this discussion, but it wouldn't load:-/ I presume it got slashdotted.
However, as was pointed out to the person who posted it, that's an anecdote, not statistics, and thus does nothing to refute the various other people who are pointing out that while Android may have 3/4 of the marketshare, iOS has 3/4 of the app revenue.
they're not even thinking of their phones as smartphones. They don't browse the web,
Perhaps you need to look at different web statistics. Android users do browse the web. But sure keep deluding yourself.
Thanks for the ad hom. Tastes cheesy.
You're right, I had forgotten about these stats on web browsing. Though do note that the numbers for the US look somewhat different from the global ones: here, the iOS percent is above 50 and still growing.
If you can find stats showing Android users spending more per capita on apps, though, I'll be very surprised.
That's a false dilemma you've got there. Android includes tools to manage the fragmentation. If you're having to individually target particular handsets, you're doing it wrong.
People buy Android, because they don't want to be overcharged for Apple's iOS walled garden, and don't want to be limited to only Apple's selections. I'm sure that some people buy Android because it's less expensive, but that's a perfectly legitimate reason for choosing it. Just because you're an Apple fanbois doesn't make it any less legitimate to remain cost conscious.
I think you've missed my point: they don't choose Android because it's cheaper. They just go to buy a cheap phone, and these days, that happens to be Android. They're not thinking about it in terms of iOS vs Android vs whatever. They're just going to buy a phone that'll do phone stuff.
I've seen more articles that say this is a myth than say it's true.
Do you have a reference link? I've not seen any articles saying this is a myth, and a lot giving what look like pretty solid statistics to show it to be true. I'll freely admit that I don't frequent Android-centric sites, though, so if you've got references, I'd be glad to see them.
So people are buying a better phone (does exactly what they want) for less money. Why does that bother you so much?
Except that cheap Android device are still a million years better than the old JavaME feature phones were. If people who buy cheap phones aren't buying your apps, maybe the issue is nobody is selling them a useful enough app? There's certainly an untapped market there. People should see that as an opportunity, not some sign of "weakness".
That may be the case, but then the problem is awareness. If these users aren't buying apps, I guarantee you it isn't because they're browsing through the Google Play store and just saying, "Meh, don't want to pay for any of these." (Partly because, IIRC, the stats show that they aren't even installing free apps.) It's because they're not even thinking of their phones as smartphones. They don't browse the web, they don't look at the Google Play store, many of them don't even realize that it exists.
If you want them to pay for your app, first you need to build it for the version of Android they're running, then you need to get them interested in your app, and finally you need to make them realize that they can actually get it.
So, yes, there is certainly a large potential untapped market for a really useful Android app. However, tapping it is far from trivial.
If you've got to target 6 or so major differences in versions—not to mention the differences in hardware—to reach the same percentage of Android users as you could reach in iOS users by targeting only iOS 6, that's got to say something about the ROI you can expect.
And that's not even taking into account the many datapoints showing that Android users buy something like half, or less, the amount of apps per device that iOS users do. (I don't have the numbers in front of me right now, but my memory suggests it was considerably less—like, closer to 10% than 50%.)
The reason Android's adoption is high is pretty damn obvious to anyone who's actually paying attention: the phones occupying the space in carrier lineups that, seven years ago, would have been held by dumbphones are now cheap Android phones. People buy Android not because they're choosing it, but because that's what happens to come on their phone...which they use almost exclusively to talk and text. (And maybe check Twitter and Facebook.)
Look, I shouldn't have to worry about these things.
Maybe this is the fundamental problem: that, as a society, we have collectively decided that we shouldn't have to worry about government.
This begets two problems. First, the exact problem you're complaining about: that not enough money gets spent on things, because people don't think they should have to worry about it, but they also don't want to pay more in taxes so that the government can pay someone competent to worry about it for them.
Second, you end up with the people who have more time on their hands (generally, the people with more money), or who care significantly more (generally, the people at the various fringes), being the ones who are most involved in government. The latter of those leads to divisiveness, and the former leads to monied interests having a disproportionate say.
So, in the end, I kind of agree with you that it would be nice not to have to worry about these things. They're the sort of thing that a well-run government should take care of on its own. But the way we as a society think about and treat our government has been pushing it in a direction for a few decades that would inevitably lead to just this kind of outcome.
The re-election rate has much more to do with gerrymandering than anything else. Stop letting Congresscritters choose who is allowed to vote them back into office, and you'll see some significant changes.
What happens to me if I don't pay the government in power? If I don't want any of the services they are offering and really want nothing to do with them?
Guess what? That's not possible.
If you live in a society with a government, you are benefiting from the services that government provides whether you like it or not. Their army, their police, the roads they build, the laws they make protecting the air and water...you literally cannot take a breath without benefiting from the services the government provides.
You say you want a place where people can be "free to live"? Let me tell you what that would end up like.
Within a generation, it would go one of two ways: Either it would be an absolute shithole that no one would ever actually want to go to, because too many people joined it who just wanted to do whatever the hell they wanted and screw the rest of the universe, or a body would emerge that functioned as a government. And if that body wanted to be able to provide anything meaningful to the people of the Free State beyond conflict mediation, it would have to be paid somehow. Donations might work for a little while, but I guarantee that wouldn't last.
Humans in groups naturally gravitate towards some form of governed society. It's just part of the way we're wired. Yes, I dare say something like the Free State project could probably work for a while—with small groups of people who voluntarily put themselves in that situation, and a way to screen out people who just want to mess everything up because they don't think anyone can stop them. But the reason I say "within a generation" is because these sorts of Utopian societies have been tried before, and they have invariably collapsed because the children didn't choose to be there, and don't all agree with the way they're set up.
So apparently, according to Eric Schmidt himself, they're planning on doing things at the shareholder meeting that they shouldn't be doing:
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
Naturally, the rules apply to what everyone else should be telling Google, not what Google should be telling everyone else. Because, as we all know, Google isn't evil! So we should just trust them, as if they were a "trusted friend."
Yep. Sounds like the kind of behaviour I expect from my "trusted friends," all right.
Then perhaps what we need is to find better ways of curing mental illness—ways that don't depend on potentially very dangerous pharmaceuticals, discovered almost purely through trial and error, that have serious, unpleasant, well-known side effects, and require you to pay the pharmaceutical industry for the privilege of continuing to live a normal life, for the rest of your life.
Dan Aris
It's more or less in the best interests of the pharmacology industry to offer treatments, rather than cures. The diabetes model gives an ongoing revenue stream, compared to a cure, which immediately stops revenue.
If, for example, someone was to actually come out with a cure for AIDS, it would piss a lot of companies off.
Oh, well, yes, that's obvious.
I was more or less meaning that we as a society should start demanding something better, rather than that there was any good reason for Big Pharma to change their ways.
Other countries are also diverse, and they manage to get it done. "Community involvement" is often low, but the political parties have an interest in watching each other, so there's pretty much a guarantee that enough volunteers will show up, if only to keep eyes on the other guys.
As someone who actually lives in the US....
No. No, there isn't. Political involvement here is quite low, and the odds of not being able to find sufficient volunteers to count votes and keep the other guys honest in a large number of precincts—especially more rural ones—are very, very high.
As a for instance, it would not surprise me in the least if the voting district where I used to live (a couple of years ago) couldn't muster more than 2-3 volunteers total.
It's not very brilliant, but it's a matter of law that both drug abusers and the mentally ill have a right to refuse treatment, and unless you can pin a sufficient criminal act on the former, or demonstrate a danger to society of the latter, then there's no way to force treatment.
It's also one thing to take a mentally ill person and medicate them to the point that they are stable enough that you are required to release them, and entirely another to implant them with a Norplant-type device to continue to administer corrective drugs after they've been released from protective custody. The second one is illegal enforcement of treatment after termination of medical power of attorney.
Then perhaps what we need is to find better ways of curing mental illness—ways that don't depend on potentially very dangerous pharmaceuticals, discovered almost purely through trial and error, that have serious, unpleasant, well-known side effects, and require you to pay the pharmaceutical industry for the privilege of continuing to live a normal life, for the rest of your life.
Slashdot Mirror
And, for your sake, I hope that your holidays were all spent in good solid loyal patriotic places in the USA so that there's nothing treasonous that they can infer from the pictures once they use the metadata to get a FISA warrant to look at the actual data.
Given that the GP has frequently noted in other posts that he is from Germany, and that he was involved in the (now decade-old) deCSS trial, I rather think that vacationing in the USA is one of the last things he wants to do...
For one thing, only if he did spend his holidays on this side of the pond would FISA warrants even be relevant.
Dan Aris
There's risk everywhere. What about people with homes near sea level, or near beaches? What about people living in the southeast where hurricanes frequently hit? What about people in California, where there's earthquakes?
I live in a forested area that hasn't seen a forest fire in my lifetime, where tornadoes are piddly little things that you might see once or twice a year in the whole state, earthquakes are a 5.6 with the epicenter 200 miles away, hurricanes are just a somewhat larger than usual thunderstorm, and the sea is 3000 feet down (and a couple hundred miles away). We don't have poisonous snakes, spiders, or plants (beyond poison ivy-level), nor is there any significant danger of being attacked by dangerous wildlife (unless you wander off well into the woods and meet a bear that you then antagonize).
All that said, much as I love upstate NY, I don't think it's reasonable to try to restrict people from living in areas where all the above is not true. You just need to enforce a little common sense sometimes—like building to more resilient standards in an earthquake-prone area, having a safe place to shelter from tornadoes in the Midwest, and not building on the edge of a sand-cliff that's going to erode out from under you in 5 years just because it's got a gorgeous ocean view and easy access to the beach.
Dan Aris
Frankly, any company that expects any given hire to have an extensive record of blog posts and tweets is not one I would really want to work for.
If you're interviewing for a programming job, nobody's going to ask you for your Twitter handle. They might, however, ask for your github login.
Which, in my view, is almost as bad.
Why, if I am an in-house programmer for a company, should it be assumed that I have any Open Source or otherwise freely available code I can point to as having written?
I write code for other people for a living, and they own it and don't want it shared; why should I have to write code for myself to develop a "portfolio" I can demonstrate on demand just tobe hireable?
(Note: the above does not actually represent my current status, as I, personally, do write code for personal projects. Some of it is even on GitHub, though most of my repos have only a small fraction of my own code in them, as they're forks. That said, I do know people whose attitude is much more like the one I have demonstrated above: excellent programmers, but with no inclination to do as a hobby what they already do for a living.)
Dan Aris
The reason Android's adoption is high is pretty damn obvious to anyone who's actually paying attention: the phones occupying the space in carrier lineups that, seven years ago, would have been held by dumbphones are now cheap Android phones. People buy Android not because they're choosing it, but because that's what happens to come on their phone...which they use almost exclusively to talk and text. (And maybe check Twitter and Facebook.)
Dan Aris
You are right. That is preciously why no one is paying a premium to buy expensive Android phones like the Samsung S4 or HTC One.
Well, not "no one," but they're hardly the phones that are driving the bulk of Android's marketshare.
Dan Aris
If this weren't posted as a reply to one of my own posts, it would definitely have gotten one of my mod points. ;-)
Personally, I have a tendency to go just far enough to explain people's actions, without going far enough to come up with explanations that are uncharitable to them (not trying to claim this is a better way: just that it's mine). But you're right, a lot of people like Facebook and Twitter because they are narcissistic as well as extroverted.
This part I particularly like. Good summary of how to go about creating a sensible online presence.
Dan Aris
Some of us consider it our mission in life (well, not our only mission, and not even that important a mission, but anyhow) to salt Facebook with as many made up false identities as possible.
It's important to pollute the idea that the Zuck and his buddies have, that the Facebook database is a place filled with valuable minerals for data mining.
And I find that both a relatively laudable goal, and a quite amusing poke in Facebook's eye. But that doesn't mean that it's going to come anywhere near the number of people on Facebook who put their real names in.
Dan Aris
Who signs up to social media and internet forums with their real name?
Apart from you, obviously.
Well, first of all, 99% of people who aren't geeks. That is, after all, the point of social media for most people: to interact with other real people through the internet, many of whom they already know from real life, and who would be searching for them by their real name.
Second of all, how do you know this is my real name, and not just a plausible pseudonym (as opposed to the obvious online handles most people use, like AmiMoJo)? ;-)
Dan Aris
Frankly, any company that expects any given hire to have an extensive record of blog posts and tweets is not one I would really want to work for.
Not just because of the privacy implications, but because, in my view, that's expecting me to have a particular kind of personality: one that feels compelled to share everything, or at least a frequent chunk of what I do and think.
Unfortunately, this is just another manifestation of extroverts running most organizations and not even truly comprehending what it might be not to be an extrovert. So much of the hiring process and expectations in the workplace are centered around things that give extroverts a charge, but drain introverts' energy badly.
Just one of my big pet peeves X-P
Dan Aris
When I clicked through to RTFA, I found that the posts all date from 2009, and the article itself is dated 10/29/09. So maybe this is old news, folks?
The NYT interview with Laszlo Bock is from June 19, 2013. 3 days ago.
So...what's old news, again?
Dan Aris
People buy Android because they want something billed as "better than iPhone, with a smaller pricetag." They're certainly not built for freedom, as anyone gets them.
Huh? That makes absolutely no sense.
I think he's trying to say that in the configurations in which the vast majority of people purchase and use Android phones, they are not particularly Open or Free. Nor would they particularly care, as Open and Free are very geekly ideals.
Dan Aris
You are so 2012 - these days people (here in the UK) increasingly are deliberately asking for Android, because their friend was sold a Windows phone and there were no upgrades at all! (or apps). Everyone in the real workd knows the SGS4 is awesome, and those that cant afford it, get a Samsung Galaxy &*%$ instead, which is OK but not great.
Also: plastic or aluminium backs are irrelevant - people put the phone in a fake leather case anyway.
Well, I can't speak for the UK, so I can't tell whether you're right or not about that.
However, here in the real US world, most people wouldn't know a Samsung or an Android or a Windows phone if it walked up and introduced itself to them. That's a very geekly attitude. They recognize the iPhone, and they may or may not decide they want it. If they don't, by and large, they just go into the Verizon or AT&T store and let the salesdrones sell them whatever.
Dan Aris
If you can find stats showing Android users spending more per capita on apps, though, I'll be very surprised.
Have you read the post someone made here from gamasutra about user conversion on iOS vs Android games? Or about how they can't even sell a top game for $0.99 on iOS? I guess not.
Actually, I tried to follow that link when I saw it elsewhere in this discussion, but it wouldn't load :-/ I presume it got slashdotted.
However, as was pointed out to the person who posted it, that's an anecdote, not statistics, and thus does nothing to refute the various other people who are pointing out that while Android may have 3/4 of the marketshare, iOS has 3/4 of the app revenue.
Dan Aris
You say that like it's a bad thing (from an app developer standpoint)...
they're not even thinking of their phones as smartphones. They don't browse the web,
Perhaps you need to look at different web statistics. Android users do browse the web. But sure keep deluding yourself.
Thanks for the ad hom. Tastes cheesy.
You're right, I had forgotten about these stats on web browsing. Though do note that the numbers for the US look somewhat different from the global ones: here, the iOS percent is above 50 and still growing.
If you can find stats showing Android users spending more per capita on apps, though, I'll be very surprised.
Dan Aris
That's a false dilemma you've got there. Android includes tools to manage the fragmentation. If you're having to individually target particular handsets, you're doing it wrong.
People buy Android, because they don't want to be overcharged for Apple's iOS walled garden, and don't want to be limited to only Apple's selections. I'm sure that some people buy Android because it's less expensive, but that's a perfectly legitimate reason for choosing it. Just because you're an Apple fanbois doesn't make it any less legitimate to remain cost conscious.
I think you've missed my point: they don't choose Android because it's cheaper. They just go to buy a cheap phone, and these days, that happens to be Android. They're not thinking about it in terms of iOS vs Android vs whatever. They're just going to buy a phone that'll do phone stuff.
Dan Aris
I've seen more articles that say this is a myth than say it's true.
Do you have a reference link? I've not seen any articles saying this is a myth, and a lot giving what look like pretty solid statistics to show it to be true. I'll freely admit that I don't frequent Android-centric sites, though, so if you've got references, I'd be glad to see them.
So people are buying a better phone (does exactly what they want) for less money. Why does that bother you so much?
It doesn't. Where did you get that idea?
Dan Aris
Except that cheap Android device are still a million years better than the old JavaME feature phones were. If people who buy cheap phones aren't buying your apps, maybe the issue is nobody is selling them a useful enough app? There's certainly an untapped market there. People should see that as an opportunity, not some sign of "weakness".
That may be the case, but then the problem is awareness. If these users aren't buying apps, I guarantee you it isn't because they're browsing through the Google Play store and just saying, "Meh, don't want to pay for any of these." (Partly because, IIRC, the stats show that they aren't even installing free apps.) It's because they're not even thinking of their phones as smartphones. They don't browse the web, they don't look at the Google Play store, many of them don't even realize that it exists.
If you want them to pay for your app, first you need to build it for the version of Android they're running, then you need to get them interested in your app, and finally you need to make them realize that they can actually get it.
So, yes, there is certainly a large potential untapped market for a really useful Android app. However, tapping it is far from trivial.
Dan Aris
...who's going to buy your app?
If you've got to target 6 or so major differences in versions—not to mention the differences in hardware—to reach the same percentage of Android users as you could reach in iOS users by targeting only iOS 6, that's got to say something about the ROI you can expect.
And that's not even taking into account the many datapoints showing that Android users buy something like half, or less, the amount of apps per device that iOS users do. (I don't have the numbers in front of me right now, but my memory suggests it was considerably less—like, closer to 10% than 50%.)
The reason Android's adoption is high is pretty damn obvious to anyone who's actually paying attention: the phones occupying the space in carrier lineups that, seven years ago, would have been held by dumbphones are now cheap Android phones. People buy Android not because they're choosing it, but because that's what happens to come on their phone...which they use almost exclusively to talk and text. (And maybe check Twitter and Facebook.)
Dan Aris
Look, I shouldn't have to worry about these things.
Maybe this is the fundamental problem: that, as a society, we have collectively decided that we shouldn't have to worry about government.
This begets two problems. First, the exact problem you're complaining about: that not enough money gets spent on things, because people don't think they should have to worry about it, but they also don't want to pay more in taxes so that the government can pay someone competent to worry about it for them.
Second, you end up with the people who have more time on their hands (generally, the people with more money), or who care significantly more (generally, the people at the various fringes), being the ones who are most involved in government. The latter of those leads to divisiveness, and the former leads to monied interests having a disproportionate say.
So, in the end, I kind of agree with you that it would be nice not to have to worry about these things. They're the sort of thing that a well-run government should take care of on its own. But the way we as a society think about and treat our government has been pushing it in a direction for a few decades that would inevitably lead to just this kind of outcome.
Dan Aris
The re-election rate has much more to do with gerrymandering than anything else. Stop letting Congresscritters choose who is allowed to vote them back into office, and you'll see some significant changes.
What happens to me if I don't pay the government in power? If I don't want any of the services they are offering and really want nothing to do with them?
Guess what? That's not possible.
If you live in a society with a government, you are benefiting from the services that government provides whether you like it or not. Their army, their police, the roads they build, the laws they make protecting the air and water...you literally cannot take a breath without benefiting from the services the government provides.
You say you want a place where people can be "free to live"? Let me tell you what that would end up like.
Within a generation, it would go one of two ways: Either it would be an absolute shithole that no one would ever actually want to go to, because too many people joined it who just wanted to do whatever the hell they wanted and screw the rest of the universe, or a body would emerge that functioned as a government. And if that body wanted to be able to provide anything meaningful to the people of the Free State beyond conflict mediation, it would have to be paid somehow. Donations might work for a little while, but I guarantee that wouldn't last.
Humans in groups naturally gravitate towards some form of governed society. It's just part of the way we're wired. Yes, I dare say something like the Free State project could probably work for a while—with small groups of people who voluntarily put themselves in that situation, and a way to screen out people who just want to mess everything up because they don't think anyone can stop them. But the reason I say "within a generation" is because these sorts of Utopian societies have been tried before, and they have invariably collapsed because the children didn't choose to be there, and don't all agree with the way they're set up.
Dan Aris
So apparently, according to Eric Schmidt himself, they're planning on doing things at the shareholder meeting that they shouldn't be doing:
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
Naturally, the rules apply to what everyone else should be telling Google, not what Google should be telling everyone else. Because, as we all know, Google isn't evil! So we should just trust them, as if they were a "trusted friend."
Yep. Sounds like the kind of behaviour I expect from my "trusted friends," all right.
Dan Aris
Then perhaps what we need is to find better ways of curing mental illness—ways that don't depend on potentially very dangerous pharmaceuticals, discovered almost purely through trial and error, that have serious, unpleasant, well-known side effects, and require you to pay the pharmaceutical industry for the privilege of continuing to live a normal life, for the rest of your life.
Dan Aris
It's more or less in the best interests of the pharmacology industry to offer treatments, rather than cures. The diabetes model gives an ongoing revenue stream, compared to a cure, which immediately stops revenue.
If, for example, someone was to actually come out with a cure for AIDS, it would piss a lot of companies off.
Oh, well, yes, that's obvious.
I was more or less meaning that we as a society should start demanding something better, rather than that there was any good reason for Big Pharma to change their ways.
Dan Aris
I call bullshit.
Other countries are also diverse, and they manage to get it done. "Community involvement" is often low, but the political parties have an interest in watching each other, so there's pretty much a guarantee that enough volunteers will show up, if only to keep eyes on the other guys.
As someone who actually lives in the US....
No. No, there isn't. Political involvement here is quite low, and the odds of not being able to find sufficient volunteers to count votes and keep the other guys honest in a large number of precincts—especially more rural ones—are very, very high.
As a for instance, it would not surprise me in the least if the voting district where I used to live (a couple of years ago) couldn't muster more than 2-3 volunteers total.
Dan Aris
It's not very brilliant, but it's a matter of law that both drug abusers and the mentally ill have a right to refuse treatment, and unless you can pin a sufficient criminal act on the former, or demonstrate a danger to society of the latter, then there's no way to force treatment.
It's also one thing to take a mentally ill person and medicate them to the point that they are stable enough that you are required to release them, and entirely another to implant them with a Norplant-type device to continue to administer corrective drugs after they've been released from protective custody. The second one is illegal enforcement of treatment after termination of medical power of attorney.
Then perhaps what we need is to find better ways of curing mental illness—ways that don't depend on potentially very dangerous pharmaceuticals, discovered almost purely through trial and error, that have serious, unpleasant, well-known side effects, and require you to pay the pharmaceutical industry for the privilege of continuing to live a normal life, for the rest of your life.
Dan Aris