While I am certain the religious content of this video will not be liked by many on Slashdot, it should be noted that this is not the first time this idea was used -- to mimic social media to explain history. In my opinion, the video was far more creative in the telling of its story as well. It creatively shows the story of Christmas with great insight and thoughtfulness.
One of the big pitfalls for roundabouts that I saw in Montana when they tried to implement them was not taking into account snow removal (at big deal in Bozeman, MT) and emergency vehicles. They placed large concrete islands in the middle of the intersection, and there was not enough room for the larger vehicles to navigate around it. The snow plows couldn't even see the island after a big storm and would run right over it.
They are not the end-all solution, but in certain circumstances, I can see where they would be beneficial.
The biggest threat that Netflix is going to face is the cost of bandwidth to the end users. Someone has to carry the cost of transmitting all of this video data across the Internet, and Netflix is rapidly becoming the biggest hog of them all. ISP's are no longer able to carry this cost and so will be looking to push it back to Netflix or onto their end users with higher prices. There is also the danger of the ISP's becoming their own content distribution centers and shutting out Netflix entirely.
It should be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Agreed, tax increases should be considered, however we have also lost a lot of jobs, and the consumer debt in America is very high. What this means is that there are fewer people who can actually afford to pay taxes. There comes a point where you can no longer increasing taxes because the damage caused to the economy due to lack of available capital actually results in less revenue for the government. We are dangerously close to that condition.
When you find yourself unable to increase revenue, you must cut back on your spending to balance your budget. I wonder if people would be more willing to pay more taxes if they felt they could trust government to use it wisely. Given the government's track record, I would rather have government cut back than to give them yet another loan to waste on their excesses.
In my post, I may have overstated the size a bit. So I guess we have one additional option -- instead of eliminating two programs, we can eliminate one and then all other government spending.:-)
Here is an article placing the current US deficit at $1.5 trillion:
Another interesting site is ShadowStats which shows a more accurate representation of government figures that they have been manipulating over the past three decades.
The sad thing is that all of these budget cuts don't even come close to addressing the problem. Nearly all of the government spending comes down to four programs: 1) national defense, 2) welfare, 3) Social Security, and 4) Medicare. If you eliminated every other department in the government, I think you would come to about half of any one of these programs. Our deficit (the amount of money we spend more than we bring in every year) is over $1.5 trillion.
The four programs are all basically the same size. For the sake of convenience, let us call is $750 billion each. In order to eliminate our deficit (we'll work on the actual debt later), we have two options:
1) Cut all four programs in half. 2) Eliminate two programs -- take your pick.
That is what it has come down to, plain and simple. But no one has the courage to do what it will take to steer the ship aright.
I was not attempting to open a debate on abortion, but rather to question how much the perceived improvements in life expectancy world-wide could possibly be affected by the practice.
As for sex education, condoms do absolutely nothing to combat sexually transmitted diseases, so while they may help reduce the number of pregnancies, they also fuel the rise of HIV and AIDS around the world. Abstinence and marital fidelity are the only effective methods that can stop this deadly trend. In fact, in light of the scientific and historical evidence, it is gross negligence bordering on manslaughter to promote "sex education" as a cure when millions suffer from the effects of this "civilised" education.
Your example of the unfertilized ovaries is completely off-base and has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand -- or even the debate about abortion. It is the ultimate straw man argument that ignores the real issues of a truly intellectual debate.
I would be curious to know if/how he took into account two items that could seriously skew the data. When you observe the initial dataset in the 1800s, all childhood deaths were reported including stillborn babies and so forth. With abortion, many of the poorer or unhealthy children are more likely to not enter the world. How much of an impact does this have on these figures? How much lower would the American lifespan be if we included the 1.5 million abortions we have every year?
Also, he calculates the figures in terms of dollars, but define a dollar. In 1910, a dollar was worth far more than it is today. I am assuming that he takes into account inflation, but I would be curious to see how.
All that said, that was a fascinating video. I would love to be able to play with the graph and move it back and forth at my own speed to track the various movements of each country through history and so forth. It be fantastic if they put together an interactive website to do just that.
If you like Web Developer, you really should check out FireBug. It is truly an amazing tool available only for Firefox that allows you to debug JavaScript code, inspect elements, make changes on the fly -- basically Web Developer on steroids. The only limitation at this point is that it does not appear to work with the new Firefox yet. Hopefully it will be compatible before the new version comes out of beta.
This tool if for no other reason will ensure that Firefox is always on my machine even if I use Chrome for day-to-day browsing.
The early Christian church did not fight back against the oppressions of Rome. They were killed by the thousands in gladiator stadiums, torn apart by animals, and crucified for their faith. But they did not resist with arms. They did not fight back with armies or even political campaigns. They fought back with love, forgiveness, and peace. And in less than four hundred years, they defeated one of the strongest empires the world has ever seen.
The Christian church in China did not resist with politics or violence or terrorism while Mao tried to eradicate all Christianity from China. He killed thousands of Chinese Christians in an attempt to wipe them out, but when the restrictions were lifted, the church of 2 million Christians had peacefully grown to 80 million, and the heart of China is now being changed.
The Dutch and Norwegians peacefully resisted Nazi Germany and as a result, far fewer of their Jews were turned over and killed by the Nazi soldiers than those of neighboring countries who fought back.
History is replete with examples of the power of peaceful resistance. It is not an easy path, but there is victory at the end. Either way, people will die, but with pacifism, those who desire peace will not have blood on their hands, and their victory will be a true victory for goodness and justice and mercy. Violent revolutions only end with more violence and a government that is just as oppressive if not more so than the one they replaced because they had to become the enemy to defeat the enemy. Pacifism does not change what it is and so remains pure.
Violence begets violence, and with each death comes more desire for revenge and retribution. I think in the end we would find that far fewer people die as a result of pacifism -- even against the most evil of regimes -- than would have died if a war had been waged.
That final quote is clearly implying that this evidence is proof that we need government intervention. We should strenuously oppose this, and we need to be aware of the subtle messages to try to persuade us to change our minds. Don't give into the manipulation!
In fact, this entire episode is strong and conclusive evidence that we do not need government regulations in this area. The private sector exposed the problem and the companies made the appropriate changes. This is how it should be done. If we don't like a product or service, then we should take our business elsewhere. Facebook is not a right. It is not an entitlement. It is a website, people, and you are free to go and use a different website if you choose. Perhaps if more people did, Facebook would clean up their act. We need to regulate the Internet not the government. I would rather keep the government as far from the Internet as possible for my own peace of mind. They have enough power to be corrupted without giving them more.
How can putting a corrupt and greedy government in charge of regulating the Internet possibly be a good thing?
(I know this is a duplicate post.... I did not mean or intend to post this anonymously)
I second your endorsement of ESET NOD32. I used AVG for years, but finally the annoying pop-ups got to me. NOD32 is quiet, unobtrusive, and has a negligible impact on performance while seeming to be quite good at pointing out and blocking potential viruses. It is by far the best anti-virus program I have used yet. I have never had the need to turn it off for performance reasons even while gaming or doing digital recording. Great software.
Sure. Give them millions of dollars of grant money to do more research while we pass legislation to make manufacturing even more difficult in America so we can export the rest of our jobs to China where they can ignore all environmental laws. Of course, at present rate, the world-wide economy will soon be completely shot, so after we kill off a couple billion people from the resulting unrest, diseases, and famines, our human contribution will be greatly reduced... to negligible effect.
I don't really mind patches. They are usually quiet and seamless, working in the background and not interfering with my work.
The real killers are the updates that require a reboot, and these seem to be on the rise of late. Even worse, these are typically for software that I do not use (IE, Windows Media Player, etc.), but I am required to interrupt my work to reboot my machine so that I can be "secure".
One item I have not seen raised is possible infringement of child pornography laws. Is it that uncommon for a laptop to be running while someone is undressing in their bedroom. Should the staff of the school download pictures taken during that time, would that not make them guilty of possessing child pornography? I wonder if it has already happened.
The whole thing reeks of multiple privacy infringements. It is especially bad because the school made ownership of these laptops mandatory.
Yet one more reason why my boys are going to be home-schooled.
I'm sorry. I misunderstood your response of "Dragonfly" as an actual answer. I will look into that as it may cover the features that Web Developer has. Thank you!
How does the RSS reader work? I like Firefox because I can just slide my mouse down the bookmark menu and see which sites have what updates.
Web Developer and Firebug are very useful development tools that allow you to debug JavaScript code, change HTML and CSS style-sheets on the fly, and return a lot of information regarding what is being rendered in the browser. They are fantastic tools that aid web development greatly, and to my knowledge, only Firefox has tools of this caliber.
I remember trying Opera several years ago, and while I liked the performance, it had some other quirks that were troublesome at that time. Since then, I have grown very fond of Firefox, and as when I considered switching to Chrome, I found that there are a couple key features I simply cannot be without.
1) RSS Feeds in my bookmarks. 2) Web Developer 3) Firebug
Funny about North Korea, but I wonder if it could be the other way around. With everyone expecting a missile attack from North Korea, who would be able to say whether a strike on American soil actually originated from there? With outside access to this kind of information being limited, we would have to trust our government and a few other nations with such capability that the North Koreans did, in fact, attack us. Also, don't forget that FEMA is planning major exercises around the country in late July.
Many may say that I am being too conspiratorial in this, but are there not many examples of our country doing similar things throughout history to start a war?
"I've hired you to start a war. It is a prestigious line of work with a long and glorious tradition." Vicini, "The Princess Bride"
The "extreme right-wingers" included anyone who voted for and/or supported Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin (Constitution Party) or Bob Barr (Libertarian). I would not consider these people to be "extreme right", especially when you consider that Ron Paul's views are actually closer to Ronald Reagan's views than most modern Republicans. If being a supporter of sound money, balanced budgets, and a humble foreign policy are "extreme", I have great fear for this country.
But really, this is beside the point. What Obama is talking about here is a violation of the due process of law. Under his system, anyone considered a danger to the government could be labeled a terrorist and locked away in jail even if they had not yet committed a crime! Furthermore, you would not be given a trial or a hearing of any kind, but you would be held indefinitely at the whim of the government.
This has nothing to do with a person's politics -- if they had targeted liberal groups like PETA or the Green Party it would be just as offensive. Yes, there are dangerous people on the fringes, but there are also dangerous people in the "mainstream". Our nation was also founded on the idea of personal freedom and protection of individual liberties including a fair trial. We are "innocent until proven guilty" to protect us from abuses in our government. This statement by Obama shows a serious interest in undermining these foundational principles in our society.
"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;
And then... they came for me... And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
Are you kidding me? Have you been paying attention at all? Obama is continuing all of the bad policies of George W. Bush and adding a few new ones for good measure.
Obama is consider locking up "potential" terrorists without trial. Remember that recently potential terrorists have been broadened to include anyone who has voted third party, been pro-life or pro-guns, or disagrees with government policies.
For those of you who still have rose-colored glasses regarding President Obama, you need to start paying attention. As good as he sounds in his speeches, he is rapidly moving our nation toward fascism.
The funny thing about vegemite is that the Australians eat it like we eat peanut butter, and many of them feel about peanut butter the same way we feel about vegemite. To each their own, I guess. To their credit, at least vegemite is healthier than peanut butter.
The peak generating capacity of North America is about 750 GW. Let's say 250 GW when levelized to base load. Therefore, to supply 100% of that with wind and batteries would cost roughly $6.2 trillion dollars. Now Al Gore says, "No problem. We can do that in just 10 years." WTF is he thinking?
I don't know. The last estimate I heard for the government "bailout" for our failing economy was $8 trillion. When the government is throwing around billions and trillions of dollars at a whim (throwing it at people who have proven that they have no business touching other people's money) what is another $6.2 trillion toward something that might actually be beneficial?;-)
$6.2 trillion just doesn't sound as big as it once did, and hyperinflation will make that even more true soon enough.
I was kind of surprised that there was no mention of the soundtrack for the expansion. From what I have heard, it is absolutely amazing and really adds to the feel of the various zones.
Slashdot Mirror
While I am certain the religious content of this video will not be liked by many on Slashdot, it should be noted that this is not the first time this idea was used -- to mimic social media to explain history. In my opinion, the video was far more creative in the telling of its story as well. It creatively shows the story of Christmas with great insight and thoughtfulness.
A Social Network Christmas
One of the big pitfalls for roundabouts that I saw in Montana when they tried to implement them was not taking into account snow removal (at big deal in Bozeman, MT) and emergency vehicles. They placed large concrete islands in the middle of the intersection, and there was not enough room for the larger vehicles to navigate around it. The snow plows couldn't even see the island after a big storm and would run right over it.
They are not the end-all solution, but in certain circumstances, I can see where they would be beneficial.
The biggest threat that Netflix is going to face is the cost of bandwidth to the end users. Someone has to carry the cost of transmitting all of this video data across the Internet, and Netflix is rapidly becoming the biggest hog of them all. ISP's are no longer able to carry this cost and so will be looking to push it back to Netflix or onto their end users with higher prices. There is also the danger of the ISP's becoming their own content distribution centers and shutting out Netflix entirely.
It should be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Agreed, tax increases should be considered, however we have also lost a lot of jobs, and the consumer debt in America is very high. What this means is that there are fewer people who can actually afford to pay taxes. There comes a point where you can no longer increasing taxes because the damage caused to the economy due to lack of available capital actually results in less revenue for the government. We are dangerously close to that condition.
When you find yourself unable to increase revenue, you must cut back on your spending to balance your budget. I wonder if people would be more willing to pay more taxes if they felt they could trust government to use it wisely. Given the government's track record, I would rather have government cut back than to give them yet another loan to waste on their excesses.
Here is a chart of the spending by department.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?get_gallerynr=172
In my post, I may have overstated the size a bit. So I guess we have one additional option -- instead of eliminating two programs, we can eliminate one and then all other government spending. :-)
Here is an article placing the current US deficit at $1.5 trillion:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aNaqecavD9ek
Another interesting site is ShadowStats which shows a more accurate representation of government figures that they have been manipulating over the past three decades.
http://www.shadowstats.com/
The sad thing is that all of these budget cuts don't even come close to addressing the problem. Nearly all of the government spending comes down to four programs: 1) national defense, 2) welfare, 3) Social Security, and 4) Medicare. If you eliminated every other department in the government, I think you would come to about half of any one of these programs. Our deficit (the amount of money we spend more than we bring in every year) is over $1.5 trillion.
The four programs are all basically the same size. For the sake of convenience, let us call is $750 billion each. In order to eliminate our deficit (we'll work on the actual debt later), we have two options:
1) Cut all four programs in half.
2) Eliminate two programs -- take your pick.
That is what it has come down to, plain and simple. But no one has the courage to do what it will take to steer the ship aright.
Thanks!
I was not attempting to open a debate on abortion, but rather to question how much the perceived improvements in life expectancy world-wide could possibly be affected by the practice.
As for sex education, condoms do absolutely nothing to combat sexually transmitted diseases, so while they may help reduce the number of pregnancies, they also fuel the rise of HIV and AIDS around the world. Abstinence and marital fidelity are the only effective methods that can stop this deadly trend. In fact, in light of the scientific and historical evidence, it is gross negligence bordering on manslaughter to promote "sex education" as a cure when millions suffer from the effects of this "civilised" education.
Your example of the unfertilized ovaries is completely off-base and has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand -- or even the debate about abortion. It is the ultimate straw man argument that ignores the real issues of a truly intellectual debate.
I would be curious to know if/how he took into account two items that could seriously skew the data. When you observe the initial dataset in the 1800s, all childhood deaths were reported including stillborn babies and so forth. With abortion, many of the poorer or unhealthy children are more likely to not enter the world. How much of an impact does this have on these figures? How much lower would the American lifespan be if we included the 1.5 million abortions we have every year?
Also, he calculates the figures in terms of dollars, but define a dollar. In 1910, a dollar was worth far more than it is today. I am assuming that he takes into account inflation, but I would be curious to see how.
All that said, that was a fascinating video. I would love to be able to play with the graph and move it back and forth at my own speed to track the various movements of each country through history and so forth. It be fantastic if they put together an interactive website to do just that.
If you like Web Developer, you really should check out FireBug. It is truly an amazing tool available only for Firefox that allows you to debug JavaScript code, inspect elements, make changes on the fly -- basically Web Developer on steroids. The only limitation at this point is that it does not appear to work with the new Firefox yet. Hopefully it will be compatible before the new version comes out of beta.
This tool if for no other reason will ensure that Firefox is always on my machine even if I use Chrome for day-to-day browsing.
The early Christian church did not fight back against the oppressions of Rome. They were killed by the thousands in gladiator stadiums, torn apart by animals, and crucified for their faith. But they did not resist with arms. They did not fight back with armies or even political campaigns. They fought back with love, forgiveness, and peace. And in less than four hundred years, they defeated one of the strongest empires the world has ever seen.
The Christian church in China did not resist with politics or violence or terrorism while Mao tried to eradicate all Christianity from China. He killed thousands of Chinese Christians in an attempt to wipe them out, but when the restrictions were lifted, the church of 2 million Christians had peacefully grown to 80 million, and the heart of China is now being changed.
The Dutch and Norwegians peacefully resisted Nazi Germany and as a result, far fewer of their Jews were turned over and killed by the Nazi soldiers than those of neighboring countries who fought back.
History is replete with examples of the power of peaceful resistance. It is not an easy path, but there is victory at the end. Either way, people will die, but with pacifism, those who desire peace will not have blood on their hands, and their victory will be a true victory for goodness and justice and mercy. Violent revolutions only end with more violence and a government that is just as oppressive if not more so than the one they replaced because they had to become the enemy to defeat the enemy. Pacifism does not change what it is and so remains pure.
Violence begets violence, and with each death comes more desire for revenge and retribution. I think in the end we would find that far fewer people die as a result of pacifism -- even against the most evil of regimes -- than would have died if a war had been waged.
That final quote is clearly implying that this evidence is proof that we need government intervention. We should strenuously oppose this, and we need to be aware of the subtle messages to try to persuade us to change our minds. Don't give into the manipulation!
In fact, this entire episode is strong and conclusive evidence that we do not need government regulations in this area. The private sector exposed the problem and the companies made the appropriate changes. This is how it should be done. If we don't like a product or service, then we should take our business elsewhere. Facebook is not a right. It is not an entitlement. It is a website, people, and you are free to go and use a different website if you choose. Perhaps if more people did, Facebook would clean up their act. We need to regulate the Internet not the government. I would rather keep the government as far from the Internet as possible for my own peace of mind. They have enough power to be corrupted without giving them more.
How can putting a corrupt and greedy government in charge of regulating the Internet possibly be a good thing?
(I know this is a duplicate post.... I did not mean or intend to post this anonymously)
I second your endorsement of ESET NOD32. I used AVG for years, but finally the annoying pop-ups got to me. NOD32 is quiet, unobtrusive, and has a negligible impact on performance while seeming to be quite good at pointing out and blocking potential viruses. It is by far the best anti-virus program I have used yet. I have never had the need to turn it off for performance reasons even while gaming or doing digital recording. Great software.
Sure. Give them millions of dollars of grant money to do more research while we pass legislation to make manufacturing even more difficult in America so we can export the rest of our jobs to China where they can ignore all environmental laws. Of course, at present rate, the world-wide economy will soon be completely shot, so after we kill off a couple billion people from the resulting unrest, diseases, and famines, our human contribution will be greatly reduced... to negligible effect.
So no. Not really.
I don't really mind patches. They are usually quiet and seamless, working in the background and not interfering with my work.
The real killers are the updates that require a reboot, and these seem to be on the rise of late. Even worse, these are typically for software that I do not use (IE, Windows Media Player, etc.), but I am required to interrupt my work to reboot my machine so that I can be "secure".
One item I have not seen raised is possible infringement of child pornography laws. Is it that uncommon for a laptop to be running while someone is undressing in their bedroom. Should the staff of the school download pictures taken during that time, would that not make them guilty of possessing child pornography? I wonder if it has already happened.
The whole thing reeks of multiple privacy infringements. It is especially bad because the school made ownership of these laptops mandatory.
Yet one more reason why my boys are going to be home-schooled.
I'm sorry. I misunderstood your response of "Dragonfly" as an actual answer. I will look into that as it may cover the features that Web Developer has. Thank you!
How does the RSS reader work? I like Firefox because I can just slide my mouse down the bookmark menu and see which sites have what updates.
Web Developer and Firebug are very useful development tools that allow you to debug JavaScript code, change HTML and CSS style-sheets on the fly, and return a lot of information regarding what is being rendered in the browser. They are fantastic tools that aid web development greatly, and to my knowledge, only Firefox has tools of this caliber.
I remember trying Opera several years ago, and while I liked the performance, it had some other quirks that were troublesome at that time. Since then, I have grown very fond of Firefox, and as when I considered switching to Chrome, I found that there are a couple key features I simply cannot be without.
1) RSS Feeds in my bookmarks.
2) Web Developer
3) Firebug
Does Opera have similar functionality?
Funny about North Korea, but I wonder if it could be the other way around. With everyone expecting a missile attack from North Korea, who would be able to say whether a strike on American soil actually originated from there? With outside access to this kind of information being limited, we would have to trust our government and a few other nations with such capability that the North Koreans did, in fact, attack us. Also, don't forget that FEMA is planning major exercises around the country in late July.
Many may say that I am being too conspiratorial in this, but are there not many examples of our country doing similar things throughout history to start a war?
The "extreme right-wingers" included anyone who voted for and/or supported Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin (Constitution Party) or Bob Barr (Libertarian). I would not consider these people to be "extreme right", especially when you consider that Ron Paul's views are actually closer to Ronald Reagan's views than most modern Republicans. If being a supporter of sound money, balanced budgets, and a humble foreign policy are "extreme", I have great fear for this country.
But really, this is beside the point. What Obama is talking about here is a violation of the due process of law. Under his system, anyone considered a danger to the government could be labeled a terrorist and locked away in jail even if they had not yet committed a crime! Furthermore, you would not be given a trial or a hearing of any kind, but you would be held indefinitely at the whim of the government.
This has nothing to do with a person's politics -- if they had targeted liberal groups like PETA or the Green Party it would be just as offensive. Yes, there are dangerous people on the fringes, but there are also dangerous people in the "mainstream". Our nation was also founded on the idea of personal freedom and protection of individual liberties including a fair trial. We are "innocent until proven guilty" to protect us from abuses in our government. This statement by Obama shows a serious interest in undermining these foundational principles in our society.
An old quote apparently by Martin Niemoller in Nazi Germany really describes the problem well:
Are you kidding me? Have you been paying attention at all? Obama is continuing all of the bad policies of George W. Bush and adding a few new ones for good measure.
Don't believe me? Check out this little tidbit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21obama.html?_r=2&emc=eta1
Obama is consider locking up "potential" terrorists without trial. Remember that recently potential terrorists have been broadened to include anyone who has voted third party, been pro-life or pro-guns, or disagrees with government policies.
For those of you who still have rose-colored glasses regarding President Obama, you need to start paying attention. As good as he sounds in his speeches, he is rapidly moving our nation toward fascism.
The funny thing about vegemite is that the Australians eat it like we eat peanut butter, and many of them feel about peanut butter the same way we feel about vegemite. To each their own, I guess. To their credit, at least vegemite is healthier than peanut butter.
I don't know. The last estimate I heard for the government "bailout" for our failing economy was $8 trillion. When the government is throwing around billions and trillions of dollars at a whim (throwing it at people who have proven that they have no business touching other people's money) what is another $6.2 trillion toward something that might actually be beneficial? ;-)
$6.2 trillion just doesn't sound as big as it once did, and hyperinflation will make that even more true soon enough.
I was kind of surprised that there was no mention of the soundtrack for the expansion. From what I have heard, it is absolutely amazing and really adds to the feel of the various zones.
Here are a couple examples:
Totems of the Grizzlemaw
Arthas, My Son