All I know of Torvald's involvement with Transmeta is what I've read on Slashdot and a few other sites, but in his defense I would guess he didn't screw up/wasn't ousted, as you flippantly jest. Rather, he probably left to focus more on his baby, Linux, after he realized it has more of a future than Transmeta. And that seems to be exactly what he has been doing, given the relatively rapid progression of kernel releases.
people who don't normally read these kinds of things get sucked in, and the leave having discovered an entire new world. Unfortunately, they think that because the world is new to them, it must be new to everybody.
If it achieved exactly that and nothing more, then it accomplished a worthy mission. Do you have any idea how many Americans (at least) there are that read and have an understanding of philosophy, even as presented in the Matrix? That's right, about a relative handful. If this movie did anything to improve that number, then I say bravo!
On a side note, it seems a lot of people criticize these movies for being redundant in their investigation of our perception of reality. Yes, perhaps it has been done before, but I think the Wachowski's deserve credit for their chosen method of doing so. The concept of the Matrix turned out to be a perfect way of showing (not telling, as my high-school lit teacher admonished us) that our "interface" with reality consists of a nervous system based on electrical impulses, and can conceivably be manipulated, or hacked if you will.
Further, what was more interesting to me was the conflict of determinism vs. choice, or materialism vs. idealism. That also happened to be the underlying conflict of the Cold War, for anyone who knows anything about Marxism, Soviet Communism, and the Enlightenment ideals of America and the West. I found it most enjoyable to see that conflict played out in the setting of the Matrix: man vs. machine; absolute determinism vs. absolute free will. Since Reloaded and Revolutions dealt more with that conflict, while The Matrix dealt mostly with the nature of reality, I enjoyed the second two movies just as much, and more in Reloaded's case, than the first.
Perhaps not legally, but as the old saying goes, if it's worth stealing, it's worth paying for. If you want the song, and it provides some value to you (eg entertainment), then why why do you expect to get it without exchanging something of value in return for it? At the least, wire or mail a buck to the artist. Ease of acquisition and lack of codified copyright do not a justification make.
What a clever way to get Europeans to accept the idea of microphones everywhere - "we're mapping noise pollution". So when the noise pollution is taken care of, will the mics go away, or will they be combined with public security video cameras so Big Brother will know not only where you are, but what you're saying?
The frickin-laser test also proved temporarily unworkable when Greenpeace sabotaged their operation to capture and airlift sharks to the laser test site in Colorado. Can't have a frickin-laser test without first mounting it on a shark's head. Of course, those Greenpeace spoilers are being disposed of as we speak, in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death, so they should be able to proceed with the real test shortly.
Interesting, but just what kind of minerals are on the moon? I was under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that the moon is mainly a lot of rock with few valuable natural resources.
Am I the only one who thinks that going to the moon at this point in history is not a good investment? For our current state of technology and economy, it is simply an unsustainable endeavor. We're still using chemical rockets for propulsion, and haven't even perfected nuclear fusion yet, forchrysakes.
Yeah, we can get there, but just think for moment how much cost and effort setting up and maintaining a permanent moonbase will cost us. You thought it was expensive to resupply the ISS, well how many bank-breaking rocket trips per year will it take to support a few people living on the moon, much less Mars?
Wouldn't a wiser investment be to put that space exploration money into fusion research, and the superconducting supercollider, and whatever other "high science" research projects are waiting in the wings or are just a glint in a Caltech professor's eye? How about we first devise a more workable propulsion system and more efficient and transportable energy source, things that also have the fringe benefit of being applicable on Earth, before we spend umpty-five-gazillion on going back to the moon?
So I'll try to engage in more of a dialogue...(in response to jsebrech's reply to your post and your subsequent reply).
Thanks for the interesting reply, Trillian. Unfortunately I only have time for one long, thought-out post per week, but I'll do my best to return the favor of a thorough answer. Forgive me if it leaves you wanting.
Saying "the left thinks" or "the right thinks" is always dangerous anyway,
True, however what I said initially and should have reiterated more thoroughly is that the left is strongly influenced by relativism and materialism. It's no secret that Dialectical Materialism, the intellectual framework of Marxism, was extremely popular among the American left during the early and middle part of the past century (as it was among the left everywhere in the world). Of course, the term itself didn't trickle down to the rank and file, but leftist intellectual leaders of the time used it to construct their core idealogy.
I don't believe it's accurate and would like you to suply examples (beyond the at-hand issue of abortion, which I'll get to in a minute) of American leftists saying the end justifies the means.
No one says in the words "the end justifies the means", but many liberal policies are based on it. A few examples: progressive taxation, wealth redistribution, and affirmative action. Each is a case of government providing advantage / inflicting disadvantage to one group of people over others and justifying it by saying the end result of social equality will justify the means of transgressing upon the individual rights to private property and equal opportunity before the law.
I do agree with some of what you touched upon regarding free will. I DO believe that no one is inherently evil, and that societal and personal experiences shape and influence people. But that doesn't nullify personal responsibility. Relating it to a common Slashdot topic, playing a violent videogame doesn't release anyone from the responsibility of their actions.
Interesting. It sounds as if you're reaching for a social "Third Way", combining the strongest aspects of liberalism and conservatism/libertarianism. Scientific determination + personal responsibility. However, the two can't logically coexist. If you are determined solely by societal and personal experience, then you cannot control who you are and what you do, so how can you have any personal responsibility over your actions? The only way you can control your actions is if you have some measure of control over yourself, in which case personal responsibility would be possible. However, if even the minutest measure of personal control exists, then scientific determinism is negated.
Finally, I think the only absolute "right" IS personal happiness. I believe the goal society is to juggle between the happiness of its members. But I won't pretend to know the best way to do this. As I said, I don't think the end justifies the means (Nazi extermination of the Jews arguably might have left the remaining Germans a lot happier, likewise with Soviet executions of dissidents), and this is an issue I think people will be struggling with for all time.
The difference between us is that, being a Libertarian, I believe that there is no right to "happiness" whatsoever. There are a lot of reasons for that. One is that many people simply can't figure out what makes themselves happy, much less anyone else. If that's the case, how could society or the government even pretend to know? It's more likely that if happiness is a right, the government will waste untold resources trying to make everyone happy, failing many of them. Happiness is a nebulous and mercurial concept at best.
What is better is the right to the pursuit of happiness, as enshrined in the US Constitution. Everyone is responsible for his or her own happiness in life. Some achieve it, others don't, but c'est la vie. It's not one person's (or society's) respons
Nice straw man critique. First you completely evade responding directly to my arguments, opting instead for a general rebuttal that puts words on the screen without actually saying anything. Then you use a knee-jerk tactic of distorting my arguments, most likely because you don't really understand them, can't counter them, and don't want other readers to see that. Finally, you resort to calling me a troll disguised as an intellectual in a weak attempt to discredit me.
Standard, unoriginal verbal flailing from someone who's not informed enough to offer a more serious rebuttal. You probably even downloaded it from wittyrebuttals.com and filled in the blanks.
The logic is only poor when you don't understand it. As I said, the US isn't perfect. But our transgressions have been in spite of our founding ideals, not in concordance with them. Conversely, the transgressions of Communism have been in perfect accord with its founding ideals. In fact, under Communist ideals, it was good and right that tens of millions were murdered to create the perfect society.
Instead they're either disinterested in what goes on or dedicated to furthering some ill-concieved and short sighted political agenda that they usually don't even understand. The rights and freedoms this country was founded upon are far more important to our collective future than red-herring issues like abortion. The abortion debate iself is little more than a battle-front in the cultural wars between the loony left and the religious right.
Before criticizing others for not understanding the issues, you might want to learn about them a little more deeply yourself. The abortion debate goes to the heart of the preservation of freedom. In short, here's the crux of the debate.
The left is influenced by the relativistic materialist philosophy that Lenin combined with with Marxism and Hegel's dialectics to create Soviet Communism. Relativism holds that there is no absolute truth or standard of morality, and that what is right and wrong is only what each society in each instance of history decides is right and wrong. Materialism holds that human beings are nothing but organic machines, and that whatever free will we think we have is a mere illusion. Every action we perform, every decision we make, is not a result of our own voltion, but rather a mechanical reaction to a complex combination of outside stimuli.
For example, if I decide to kill someone, it's not b/c I'm an inherently evil person, but rather b/c I have experienced a confluence of environmental stimuli that have essentially "programmed" me, or pushed the right buttons so to speak, which have caused me to inexorably kill a person. I am an automaton with no control over my actions, and free-will is merely the delusion of a mind unable to understand the complex and subtle stimuli that have caused my action.
Since people have no free-will (and no soul), and are simply organic automatons, then no individual human being is special or valuable in and of himself. All that matters is the overall happiness of society. Such is the relativistic end that justifies all means to the left, and Soviet Communism took that to its terminal conclusion by murdering or brainwashing all those that they thought detracted from the overall happiness of society, eg. people of Capitalist/bourgeousie bent or those who simply spoke or acted in ways not in accordance with state idealogy. In the USSR the tally came to around 40 million people. According to Relativism, murdering such people was not only not wrong, but right, b/c it contributed to the happiness of those who were left, and according to Materialism those individuals had no innate value anyway.
So, the Relativistic Materialist influence on the left leads them to the view that overal social happiness is the end that justifies the means, that no one is responsible for his or her actions b/c we're all just automatons, and that there is no absolute right or wrong. Therefore, abortion is merely a function of social happiness, and as such women who want it should clearly be allowed to "chose". Unborn babies make no contribution to social happiness (or economic production, which is one factor of social happiness), and since no individual human has value anyway, aborting an unborn baby is no more or less a transgression than clipping your toenails.
The right on the other hand takes the traditional Classical Liberal/Englightenment view, in that individual human beings have innate value and that there is an absolute truth and absolute right and wrong. Some on the right believe that value is endowed by God, (as America's founders did, hence "inalienable God-given rights"). Others are less religious and believe in the European Enlightenment and German idealist philosophies that man has free-will, and as such is an indenpendent, innately valuable individual, and that the protection of the individual against the tyranny of others is the highest goal of society. Regardless which method of reasoning is used, both agree that protecting the life of the individual is the en
Before we get all high and mighty, and conclude that we in the United States are so much better, superior, or luckier, remember about the prisoners the US is holding RIGHT NOW in Guantanamo Bay. [globalpolicy.org]
Spare me. The US hasn't murdered an estimated 56 MILLION of its own people simply for disagreeing with state ideaology. The entire Communist movement, including Cuba, N.Korea, and Vietnam has murdered OVER 100 MILLION people. Don't even try to give us a guilt trip by comparing America with Communist regimes. We're not perfect, but we're soooo far beyond Communist China in what we've contributed to the welfare of humanity that such a comparison is absurd.
I don't have a link, but here's a rough translation of the "Political Satire" she wrote:
"The Chinese government needs to become more open and transparent, crack down on corruption within its ranks, and institutionalize universal human rights protections for its citizens."
Overall I consider it a good idea, as I am personally not very lenient when it comes to the rights of convicted felons.
However, I was shocked to discover that a guy I knew during high school and worked with during high school summers was on the list. Even his picture. Later I discovered that he had been hooking up with a 17-year old girl in a mutually consenting relationship (some even said *she* pursued him) and he was I think 27, when her father found out, reported him, and pressed charges. Kind of a shitty deal for him, and made me start to wonder about current laws of consent. In a world where kids know all about sex from the Internet and Britney, and 40% of 16 year old girls are not virgins, is it just to charge an older guy for becoming involved with a significantly younger girl, even though she's no longer innocent and may have been just as much the instigator of the relationship as he was? The assumption of the law is that the older male is, by nature of experience, hormones, and ability to manipulate the young and naive, the instigator. But if that assumption is incorrect, should the law still apply?
Something I have been wondering about is will the massive adoption of tools like google start result in a reduction of linking, hence undermining the very web that google (and many other engines) crawls....
Any thoughts....?
All roads lead to Rome...
Following that to its (illogical, but amusing) conclusion, soon no one will click any links, they'll just go to Google to find what they need. Google itself will top the pagerankings, and the results of every Google search will be Google itself.
Short answer: there's no definitive evidence for any conclusion, although the discussion of some of the possibilities is interesting (Maiar, Valar, Eru Illuvatar...).
There are also VGA-DVI converters out there for those who might want to hook a 9600AIW to their LCD (like me). However, anyone know how much the image quality suffers compared to a similar card with native DVI-out?
That way, Americans would be less freaked out about losing their jobs to foreigners because it wouldn't happen so much, and the sweatshop employees that remained would actually be getting a significant level of monetary help.
You're assuming that Indian IT workers aren't already getting a significant level of monetary help. There's an article about this very phenomena in the latest issue of Fortune magazine, and one point it makes is that $2000/month salary for Indian call-center workers is princely. A 23-yr old Indian male was interviewed and said his goal is to own a house and a car by the time he's 28. He already has the car (and motorcycle).
The problem is, Americans see our $60,000/year jobs going over to India and morphing into $24,000/year jobs, and we automatically think "sweatshop!" "exploitation!". But that knee-jerk reaction doesn't take into account that India is a developing nation, the cost of living there is significantly less, and the (1 dollar : 46 rupee) exchange rate further magnifies the wage disparity in our eyes.
In any case, it seems to me that an interesting solution would be for "wealthy" countries to impose minimum wages on companies that do business in their country but employ people in other countries. E.g., if Nike had to pay its African workers, say, half of the U.S. minimum wage, or else be forbidden from doing any business at all in the States.
A better solution would be for America to adapt to globalization. That's not impossible, as so many seem to believe/fear. In fact, self-organizing adaptation is one of main strengths of capitalism. We did it when the Japanese took over the auto industry, and have been doing it with the steel industry, for two examples. We're the most creative nation in the world, and just as importantly, we have the economic, legal, and social structures to allow us put that creativity into practice. There's no reason we can't apply those advantages to the problems that globalization brings. Turn lemons into lemonade, so to speak.
And we can start with our dismal educational system. As one Indian business leader stated in that Fortune article, we need to retool our educational system so that it gives people the knowledge, skills, and work ethic needed to both create and take advantage of new economic opportunities that will inevitably arise with globalization.
Regardless, globalization may be painful for some, but if it helps bring the rest of the world out of the dark ages, then consider it a long-term investment that will eventually pay itself off ten-fold. Who knows, maybe one day, democratic, affluent India and (dare I say it) China will be exporting their call-center and IT jobs back to the US.
I think the reason is that we want to first be sure there is no indigenous life on Mars that we might harm by spreading our bacteria/DNA/whatever there. Prime Directive and all...
...the best chess player ever born was alive to hold the fort for a while longer.
No, if Bobby Fischer were still around today, he'd be kicking Deep Fritz and Deep Blue's butts with one cranial lobe tied behind his back. As it is, we humans just have to make do with Gary carrying the standard...
Your mistake is in putting all that stuff in your kids' rooms. Put the TV's, the console's, and the PC's in the common room, and make your kids play outside, eat dinner with the family, take violin lessons, and read books. They'll spend all their spare time downloading porn, playing computer games, and refreshing slashdot every thirty seconds in college anyway, so it's your job as a parent to expose them to some things they'll appreciate later in life, while you still can.
Slashdot Mirror
All I know of Torvald's involvement with Transmeta is what I've read on Slashdot and a few other sites, but in his defense I would guess he didn't screw up/wasn't ousted, as you flippantly jest. Rather, he probably left to focus more on his baby, Linux, after he realized it has more of a future than Transmeta. And that seems to be exactly what he has been doing, given the relatively rapid progression of kernel releases.
Maybe it's the long lost Namshub of Enki...
people who don't normally read these kinds of things get sucked in, and the leave having discovered an entire new world. Unfortunately, they think that because the world is new to them, it must be new to everybody.
If it achieved exactly that and nothing more, then it accomplished a worthy mission. Do you have any idea how many Americans (at least) there are that read and have an understanding of philosophy, even as presented in the Matrix? That's right, about a relative handful. If this movie did anything to improve that number, then I say bravo!
On a side note, it seems a lot of people criticize these movies for being redundant in their investigation of our perception of reality. Yes, perhaps it has been done before, but I think the Wachowski's deserve credit for their chosen method of doing so. The concept of the Matrix turned out to be a perfect way of showing (not telling, as my high-school lit teacher admonished us) that our "interface" with reality consists of a nervous system based on electrical impulses, and can conceivably be manipulated, or hacked if you will.
Further, what was more interesting to me was the conflict of determinism vs. choice, or materialism vs. idealism. That also happened to be the underlying conflict of the Cold War, for anyone who knows anything about Marxism, Soviet Communism, and the Enlightenment ideals of America and the West. I found it most enjoyable to see that conflict played out in the setting of the Matrix: man vs. machine; absolute determinism vs. absolute free will. Since Reloaded and Revolutions dealt more with that conflict, while The Matrix dealt mostly with the nature of reality, I enjoyed the second two movies just as much, and more in Reloaded's case, than the first.
Now he's just seen as a coward.
As all bullies ultimately are.
Perhaps not legally, but as the old saying goes, if it's worth stealing, it's worth paying for. If you want the song, and it provides some value to you (eg entertainment), then why why do you expect to get it without exchanging something of value in return for it? At the least, wire or mail a buck to the artist. Ease of acquisition and lack of codified copyright do not a justification make.
What a clever way to get Europeans to accept the idea of microphones everywhere - "we're mapping noise pollution". So when the noise pollution is taken care of, will the mics go away, or will they be combined with public security video cameras so Big Brother will know not only where you are, but what you're saying?
The frickin-laser test also proved temporarily unworkable when Greenpeace sabotaged their operation to capture and airlift sharks to the laser test site in Colorado. Can't have a frickin-laser test without first mounting it on a shark's head. Of course, those Greenpeace spoilers are being disposed of as we speak, in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death, so they should be able to proceed with the real test shortly.
...and Super Smash brothers.
A mature Nintendo game? Hell really has frozen over.
Interesting, but just what kind of minerals are on the moon? I was under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that the moon is mainly a lot of rock with few valuable natural resources.
Am I the only one who thinks that going to the moon at this point in history is not a good investment? For our current state of technology and economy, it is simply an unsustainable endeavor. We're still using chemical rockets for propulsion, and haven't even perfected nuclear fusion yet, forchrysakes.
Yeah, we can get there, but just think for moment how much cost and effort setting up and maintaining a permanent moonbase will cost us. You thought it was expensive to resupply the ISS, well how many bank-breaking rocket trips per year will it take to support a few people living on the moon, much less Mars?
Wouldn't a wiser investment be to put that space exploration money into fusion research, and the superconducting supercollider, and whatever other "high science" research projects are waiting in the wings or are just a glint in a Caltech professor's eye? How about we first devise a more workable propulsion system and more efficient and transportable energy source, things that also have the fringe benefit of being applicable on Earth, before we spend umpty-five-gazillion on going back to the moon?
So I'll try to engage in more of a dialogue...(in response to jsebrech's reply to your post and your subsequent reply).
Thanks for the interesting reply, Trillian. Unfortunately I only have time for one long, thought-out post per week, but I'll do my best to return the favor of a thorough answer. Forgive me if it leaves you wanting.
Saying "the left thinks" or "the right thinks" is always dangerous anyway,
True, however what I said initially and should have reiterated more thoroughly is that the left is strongly influenced by relativism and materialism. It's no secret that Dialectical Materialism, the intellectual framework of Marxism, was extremely popular among the American left during the early and middle part of the past century (as it was among the left everywhere in the world). Of course, the term itself didn't trickle down to the rank and file, but leftist intellectual leaders of the time used it to construct their core idealogy.
I don't believe it's accurate and would like you to suply examples (beyond the at-hand issue of abortion, which I'll get to in a minute) of American leftists saying the end justifies the means.
No one says in the words "the end justifies the means", but many liberal policies are based on it. A few examples: progressive taxation, wealth redistribution, and affirmative action. Each is a case of government providing advantage / inflicting disadvantage to one group of people over others and justifying it by saying the end result of social equality will justify the means of transgressing upon the individual rights to private property and equal opportunity before the law.
I do agree with some of what you touched upon regarding free will. I DO believe that no one is inherently evil, and that societal and personal experiences shape and influence people. But that doesn't nullify personal responsibility. Relating it to a common Slashdot topic, playing a violent videogame doesn't release anyone from the responsibility of their actions.
Interesting. It sounds as if you're reaching for a social "Third Way", combining the strongest aspects of liberalism and conservatism/libertarianism. Scientific determination + personal responsibility. However, the two can't logically coexist. If you are determined solely by societal and personal experience, then you cannot control who you are and what you do, so how can you have any personal responsibility over your actions? The only way you can control your actions is if you have some measure of control over yourself, in which case personal responsibility would be possible. However, if even the minutest measure of personal control exists, then scientific determinism is negated.
Finally, I think the only absolute "right" IS personal happiness. I believe the goal society is to juggle between the happiness of its members. But I won't pretend to know the best way to do this. As I said, I don't think the end justifies the means (Nazi extermination of the Jews arguably might have left the remaining Germans a lot happier, likewise with Soviet executions of dissidents), and this is an issue I think people will be struggling with for all time.
The difference between us is that, being a Libertarian, I believe that there is no right to "happiness" whatsoever. There are a lot of reasons for that. One is that many people simply can't figure out what makes themselves happy, much less anyone else. If that's the case, how could society or the government even pretend to know? It's more likely that if happiness is a right, the government will waste untold resources trying to make everyone happy, failing many of them. Happiness is a nebulous and mercurial concept at best.
What is better is the right to the pursuit of happiness, as enshrined in the US Constitution. Everyone is responsible for his or her own happiness in life. Some achieve it, others don't, but c'est la vie. It's not one person's (or society's) respons
Nice straw man critique. First you completely evade responding directly to my arguments, opting instead for a general rebuttal that puts words on the screen without actually saying anything. Then you use a knee-jerk tactic of distorting my arguments, most likely because you don't really understand them, can't counter them, and don't want other readers to see that. Finally, you resort to calling me a troll disguised as an intellectual in a weak attempt to discredit me.
Standard, unoriginal verbal flailing from someone who's not informed enough to offer a more serious rebuttal. You probably even downloaded it from wittyrebuttals.com and filled in the blanks.
The logic is only poor when you don't understand it. As I said, the US isn't perfect. But our transgressions have been in spite of our founding ideals, not in concordance with them. Conversely, the transgressions of Communism have been in perfect accord with its founding ideals. In fact, under Communist ideals, it was good and right that tens of millions were murdered to create the perfect society.
Instead they're either disinterested in what goes on or dedicated to furthering some ill-concieved and short sighted political agenda that they usually don't even understand. The rights and freedoms this country was founded upon are far more important to our collective future than red-herring issues like abortion. The abortion debate iself is little more than a battle-front in the cultural wars between the loony left and the religious right.
Before criticizing others for not understanding the issues, you might want to learn about them a little more deeply yourself. The abortion debate goes to the heart of the preservation of freedom. In short, here's the crux of the debate.
The left is influenced by the relativistic materialist philosophy that Lenin combined with with Marxism and Hegel's dialectics to create Soviet Communism. Relativism holds that there is no absolute truth or standard of morality, and that what is right and wrong is only what each society in each instance of history decides is right and wrong. Materialism holds that human beings are nothing but organic machines, and that whatever free will we think we have is a mere illusion. Every action we perform, every decision we make, is not a result of our own voltion, but rather a mechanical reaction to a complex combination of outside stimuli.
For example, if I decide to kill someone, it's not b/c I'm an inherently evil person, but rather b/c I have experienced a confluence of environmental stimuli that have essentially "programmed" me, or pushed the right buttons so to speak, which have caused me to inexorably kill a person. I am an automaton with no control over my actions, and free-will is merely the delusion of a mind unable to understand the complex and subtle stimuli that have caused my action.
Since people have no free-will (and no soul), and are simply organic automatons, then no individual human being is special or valuable in and of himself. All that matters is the overall happiness of society. Such is the relativistic end that justifies all means to the left, and Soviet Communism took that to its terminal conclusion by murdering or brainwashing all those that they thought detracted from the overall happiness of society, eg. people of Capitalist/bourgeousie bent or those who simply spoke or acted in ways not in accordance with state idealogy. In the USSR the tally came to around 40 million people. According to Relativism, murdering such people was not only not wrong, but right, b/c it contributed to the happiness of those who were left, and according to Materialism those individuals had no innate value anyway.
So, the Relativistic Materialist influence on the left leads them to the view that overal social happiness is the end that justifies the means, that no one is responsible for his or her actions b/c we're all just automatons, and that there is no absolute right or wrong. Therefore, abortion is merely a function of social happiness, and as such women who want it should clearly be allowed to "chose". Unborn babies make no contribution to social happiness (or economic production, which is one factor of social happiness), and since no individual human has value anyway, aborting an unborn baby is no more or less a transgression than clipping your toenails.
The right on the other hand takes the traditional Classical Liberal/Englightenment view, in that individual human beings have innate value and that there is an absolute truth and absolute right and wrong. Some on the right believe that value is endowed by God, (as America's founders did, hence "inalienable God-given rights"). Others are less religious and believe in the European Enlightenment and German idealist philosophies that man has free-will, and as such is an indenpendent, innately valuable individual, and that the protection of the individual against the tyranny of others is the highest goal of society. Regardless which method of reasoning is used, both agree that protecting the life of the individual is the en
Before we get all high and mighty, and conclude that we in the United States are so much better, superior, or luckier, remember about the prisoners the US is holding RIGHT NOW in Guantanamo Bay. [globalpolicy.org]
Spare me. The US hasn't murdered an estimated 56 MILLION of its own people simply for disagreeing with state ideaology. The entire Communist movement, including Cuba, N.Korea, and Vietnam has murdered OVER 100 MILLION people. Don't even try to give us a guilt trip by comparing America with Communist regimes. We're not perfect, but we're soooo far beyond Communist China in what we've contributed to the welfare of humanity that such a comparison is absurd.
I don't have a link, but here's a rough translation of the "Political Satire" she wrote:
"The Chinese government needs to become more open and transparent, crack down on corruption within its ranks, and institutionalize universal human rights protections for its citizens."
Funny stuff, huh.
NC has had this for a while too:
m
http://sbi.jus.state.nc.us/DOJHAHT/SOR/Default.ht
Overall I consider it a good idea, as I am personally not very lenient when it comes to the rights of convicted felons.
However, I was shocked to discover that a guy I knew during high school and worked with during high school summers was on the list. Even his picture. Later I discovered that he had been hooking up with a 17-year old girl in a mutually consenting relationship (some even said *she* pursued him) and he was I think 27, when her father found out, reported him, and pressed charges. Kind of a shitty deal for him, and made me start to wonder about current laws of consent. In a world where kids know all about sex from the Internet and Britney, and 40% of 16 year old girls are not virgins, is it just to charge an older guy for becoming involved with a significantly younger girl, even though she's no longer innocent and may have been just as much the instigator of the relationship as he was? The assumption of the law is that the older male is, by nature of experience, hormones, and ability to manipulate the young and naive, the instigator. But if that assumption is incorrect, should the law still apply?
Something I have been wondering about is will the massive adoption of tools like google start result in a reduction of linking, hence undermining the very web that google (and many other engines) crawls. ...
Any thoughts....?
All roads lead to Rome...
Following that to its (illogical, but amusing) conclusion, soon no one will click any links, they'll just go to Google to find what they need. Google itself will top the pagerankings, and the results of every Google search will be Google itself.
All searches lead to Google...
FWIW, here's an excellent discourse on just who Tom Bombadil really is:
The Riddle of Tom Bombadil
Short answer: there's no definitive evidence for any conclusion, although the discussion of some of the possibilities is interesting (Maiar, Valar, Eru Illuvatar...).
There are also VGA-DVI converters out there for those who might want to hook a 9600AIW to their LCD (like me). However, anyone know how much the image quality suffers compared to a similar card with native DVI-out?
Yeah, but you were sucking cock for a living, NOT coding .NET applications.
So you were WORTH MORE to society.
lmao...
That way, Americans would be less freaked out about losing their jobs to foreigners because it wouldn't happen so much, and the sweatshop employees that remained would actually be getting a significant level of monetary help.
You're assuming that Indian IT workers aren't already getting a significant level of monetary help. There's an article about this very phenomena in the latest issue of Fortune magazine, and one point it makes is that $2000/month salary for Indian call-center workers is princely. A 23-yr old Indian male was interviewed and said his goal is to own a house and a car by the time he's 28. He already has the car (and motorcycle).
The problem is, Americans see our $60,000/year jobs going over to India and morphing into $24,000/year jobs, and we automatically think "sweatshop!" "exploitation!". But that knee-jerk reaction doesn't take into account that India is a developing nation, the cost of living there is significantly less, and the (1 dollar : 46 rupee) exchange rate further magnifies the wage disparity in our eyes.
In any case, it seems to me that an interesting solution would be for "wealthy" countries to impose minimum wages on companies that do business in their country but employ people in other countries. E.g., if Nike had to pay its African workers, say, half of the U.S. minimum wage, or else be forbidden from doing any business at all in the States.
A better solution would be for America to adapt to globalization. That's not impossible, as so many seem to believe/fear. In fact, self-organizing adaptation is one of main strengths of capitalism. We did it when the Japanese took over the auto industry, and have been doing it with the steel industry, for two examples. We're the most creative nation in the world, and just as importantly, we have the economic, legal, and social structures to allow us put that creativity into practice. There's no reason we can't apply those advantages to the problems that globalization brings. Turn lemons into lemonade, so to speak.
And we can start with our dismal educational system. As one Indian business leader stated in that Fortune article, we need to retool our educational system so that it gives people the knowledge, skills, and work ethic needed to both create and take advantage of new economic opportunities that will inevitably arise with globalization.
Regardless, globalization may be painful for some, but if it helps bring the rest of the world out of the dark ages, then consider it a long-term investment that will eventually pay itself off ten-fold. Who knows, maybe one day, democratic, affluent India and (dare I say it) China will be exporting their call-center and IT jobs back to the US.
I think the reason is that we want to first be sure there is no indigenous life on Mars that we might harm by spreading our bacteria/DNA/whatever there. Prime Directive and all...
...the best chess player ever born was alive to hold the fort for a while longer.
No, if Bobby Fischer were still around today, he'd be kicking Deep Fritz and Deep Blue's butts with one cranial lobe tied behind his back. As it is, we humans just have to make do with Gary carrying the standard...
Your mistake is in putting all that stuff in your kids' rooms. Put the TV's, the console's, and the PC's in the common room, and make your kids play outside, eat dinner with the family, take violin lessons, and read books. They'll spend all their spare time downloading porn, playing computer games, and refreshing slashdot every thirty seconds in college anyway, so it's your job as a parent to expose them to some things they'll appreciate later in life, while you still can.