You missed a huge one: 11. If you make changes to the software and use it, you have to offer those changes to the public.
Re:Formal study vs. Hard Work
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 1
I assure you the vast majority of 15 year olds programming in Linux know much less about C than Dennis Ritchie does. They probably think they know more - and that's the problem.
Getting an education in computer science and learning it on your own should be no different. I'll show you: on your own, you look up reference materials. Then, you apply the knowledge you gained from those materials to accomplish tasks. In school, it's the same way: you learn from lecture, and then you do the homework to practice using that material. If your homework isn't properly reinforcing those ideas, then your professor isn't teaching the class properly. But that doesn't stop you from doing it on your own, now does it?
All education is for is to guide you to the best known way to do things. With just interest and drive, you're flying completely blind. Do you spend your time studying Java? Is it worth your time to study algorithms at all? Big-O notation? What about functional programming languages, should you study those? What about how to build a compiler? Networking? Hardware fundamentals? You could learn some of these things on your own, but for many of them, if you study on your own you're probably going to end up like the average Slashdot/Wikipedia idiot who doesn't have a deep enough understanding of the topic to be worth anything. You could end up an idiot coding PHP spaghetti. Education stops bad habits before they start. Education makes sure you study everything that is essential to your field. Weening the most important information out of books is way harder than getting it from a living person who can be responsive to your learning. Books are one-way communication; teaching is two-way.
And the fact is that you probably do not know more than the professor does about the subject (let's assume algorithms) they are teaching you. Oh, you may think you do, because after all, he can't even do basic computing task X (example: administrate a network) correctly, wow what moron he is! But the fact is that they aren't teaching you how to administrate a network, they are teaching you algorithms. If the professor really doesn't understand what he's teaching you, that's cause for concern, but at most reputable universities, you're usually safe in assuming it is you who is confused. The CS101 professor might not know how to program in C# or Java, but the fact is they probably know more about basic computing fundamentals than you do, so listen up.
Education is not a waste of time. The problem is that education causes people to think that they don't need to spend the hours "building their own stuff" to become good. It gives some people the illusion that they don't need to do all that hard work. A guy who started with a cheezy PC and wrote his own stuff might be good, or he might be a complete moron, doing things ass backward. But no matter what, the guy who worked hard on his own will always be worse off than the same guy who works hard on his own and goes to MIT.
This "ivory tower" bullshit has to stop.
Re:Formal study vs. Hard Work
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 1
True, but Bush was definitely part of that team. And believe you me, he works hard at having the fewest ethical constraints.
Re:Formal study vs. Hard Work
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 1
But you should always try. Perhaps I should change that to "the best you can be at what you do."
In any case, I never said he was a success at being president - just a success at winning the presidency.
Re:Formal study vs. Hard Work
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 1
I think he had other flaws too - he kept his head down I think (cutting off airflow), and I think his embrochure was unorthodox or something. My tutor told me this, so I guess I'm going on his word.
Re:Formal study vs. Hard Work
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
You've got to be kidding me. Bush looks like a dummy, and his policies might be completely terrible, but he knows his stuff, and he has worked hard to get to where he is. Bush knew his stuff solid at both debates (unless you still subscribe to that "wire" garbage), and he's put in a lot of effort to get to where he is. Winning a presidency is not an easy thing to do, and Bush is good enough that he makes it look like anyone can do it. True, he has Karl Rove, but believe me, you have to devote yourself to the task. In fact, look at places where Bush didn't work hard: failures.
I'm not talking about "success" as defined as "making lots of money" or "being the highest in the corporate ladder" or even "being promoted." I'm talking about "success" as "being the best at what you want to do." But on the other hand, if what you want to do is make lots of money or climb that corporate ladder, then you have to work at it. Guile and craft take a damn lot of work, and if you don't think so, there's a reason you're not crafty or guile...y. Now, of course it's not fair that those who are the best at their craft don't get promotions, but if you are in fact the best in your craft, the fact is you have succeeded. If you shun the "corporate machine" so much, don't complain when you get screwed by it.
Of course hard work will never guarantee success. But there's the rub - success is never guaranteed. But you can be damn sure that probability will drop damn close to zero if you don't work hard.
Formal study vs. Hard Work
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This article is going to bring up the subject of formal study vs. hard work. It's very simple: You will get nowhere without hard work. But you will go farther and faster with formal study.
Example: Dizzy Gillespie was an amazing trumpet player, but the way he played was all wrong. Does this mean that our idea of the "right" way to play is wrong? No; Dizzy succeeded despite playing the wrong way, simply because he practiced so goddamned hard. But if you want to learn to play the trumpet, should you just shirk all advice and just practice? Of course not. You'll be a better player if you don't have obstacles - and the "right" way is "right" because it has fewer obstacles. Just don't think you can relax, because you'll get blown away by those who are working hard.
Now take for example the computer programmer. The computer programmer who studies on his own not only has to figure out what is going on from scratch (this is actually beneficial), but he has has to figure out what to study. An education in computer science will prepare this programmer for that. But all too often the computer programmer with an education uses this as a crutch - they soon become stagnant.
FAQ Can you succeed without working hard? No. So, do you need education? Maybe not, but it helps. Would you be better at what you want to do if you have education? Undoubtedly.
Professor James Ketelaar has a pet theory that the name "Japan" is actually derived from a Chinese phrase (spoken to Marco Polo) meaning "Land of the Midgets." I am not making this up.
Japan's name for itself has also changed over the years. They didn't always used to be "nippon." "Yamato" and some other really super long name that means something like "People who live in the grass fields...etc." have been used throughout history.
I use Blacksun which doesn't have the "unlimited" storage you had before, but they are very affordable and offer rsync, ssh, sftp, and the regular linux services as well as the typical dragndrop interface clients. Very nice, and their tech support is helpful and quick to respond!
freedom of choice means allowing people the option of running gpl'd software on any system they choose, including the aforementioned closed systems
The GPL doesn't care what you do with the program after you have it, as long as it does not involve distributing it to other people. The writer of the software is leveraging their power as writer of the software to make sure that however their program is used in a free manner. They can't control anything else besides that, so you do have mixed free/proprietary environments, and you do have the ability to run it on whatever machine you like. What you can't do is promise that someone can modify&run your software, then make the only way that they can modify&run the software is by infringing on your copyrights.
The issue of changing the machine shouldn't be a gpl-only thing. If I buy something, I should be allowed to mod it in any way I choose, consistent with local environmental and safety regulations. In other words, if I can mod my washing machine to use 50% less energy, that's my right. Ditto with modding my computer, or anything else. The manufacturer doesn't own it after its sold.
Unfortunately, the US government does not agree with you, so in countries (like the US) where such ridiculous limits exist, the GPL makes sure that your freedom to modify and run the program is not infringed.
I still don't think any of this support's Linus' decision. I think - none of his accusations make any sense.
I think you're viewing it from the wrong perspective.
It's the developer's perspective the FSF is approaching this from. Looking at your WalMart example, it certainly doesn't prevent other companies from selling non-locked systems. But that's not the point - this isn't about preventing other vendors from Doing the Right Thing. It's about making sure the companies that use someone's hard-written GPL code against their wishes.
I will concede that my previous argument was too strict. If you had a machine X that only accepted say, one program, then if I took GPL'd code and used it as the basis of a program that would make it run, it would be silly to say that I can't distribute that, because it could possibly incriminate people not even associated with said machine.
But the GPLv3 isn't as strict as you might think. It only makes two requirements: 1) that if there is a secret array of information that the software requires you to possess to make the software do the same basic thing, then that bit of information is part of the source code 2) that if you distribute GPL'd code, then you cannot sue someone for circumventing technology measures that are related to running the code.
So yeah, you can ship GPL code that only works with a machine if unmodified. But you aren't allowed to sue that user for changing the machine to make it work with modified code.
The point is: When a programmer makes the decision to GPL their code, they do it because they want users of it to have the power to make use of changes to their code (among other things), and they believe it is only fair that people who pass on their code or use it as a basis for their own code give their users the same freedom. So if my GPL'd code is used in something that denys user's freedom, I feel that my work has been stolen.:(
Ah ha! But when you accepted the limitations, those limitations rob you of your freedom (specifically, the freedom to alter that printer's software and run it). But, that software is GPL code - which requires that the person distributing the software (the printer vendors) allow that user all the freedoms guaranteed to GPL code. One of those freedoms is the freedom to modify and run that software. But you don't have that freedom thanks to the efforts of the printer vendor.
Contradiction, -><-, QED, game, set, match, checkmate. The printer company is curtailing the freedom they promised not to curtail! This is against the spirit of the GPL - but not the text of GPLv2. They are allowing you to modify the software, but it's pointless because modification is no good unless you can run that modifcation, per my last post.
Saying that the market will sort things out is like saying that we shouldn't sue violators of the GPL because the market will sort that out, too.
First of all, there are lots of things I disagree with (brand loyalty would most certainly exist), but most of it is beside the point.
The governments WOULD like to have access to your personal life. Not to find you when you did something wrong, but to be able to pull up information about every facet of your life at the push of a button. Taken to its most extreme, when you are on camera 24/7, this makes law enforcement and government much eaiser:
- If you are suspected of intent to commit a big crime, they can easily find out all about you - If you commited a crime, they have the evidence right away - If you are a political enemy, they have easy dirt on you...and I'm sure people more clever than me can think of other ways the system can be (ab)used.
You see, what makes us free is the freedom to break the law. How many laws have you broken in the last year alone? What if they had a system that could immediately identify the correct person who commited any crime within 24 hours after it was committed and sentence them for it? How much debt and prison time would you have? If such a system were in place, I think that society would become little more than a prison. The price we pay for our freedom is freedom - justice is very much relative, and the system we have now allows people room to live.
I take it you've never been to a protest, hippie-style coffee house, or PETA event. Certain liberals tend to get really annoying and say stupid things, and it really hurts me when I agree with them, because then they make me and my ideas look stupid.
This has nothing to do with rights or even anybody's specific point of view. It has everything to do with convincing people of your ideas. No matter how brilliant or correct your ideas are, the fact of life is that if you are an asshole, people will not like you, and what's more, they won't listen to what you have to say. In fact, in all likelihood, they will go against what you are saying if you are a real prick about it.
You know the story of rms' printer driver: he wanted to be able to modify the printer driver so it would bloody work right or work better. He couldn't do that, so he made GNU.
Now let's say the new rms. smr wants to fix his printer which is running embedded GPL software. Great, he thinks, I have the source code to this, so I can just fix the source and make my printer work/better.
Oops! The printer doesn't allow you to do this. This is an awful loophole that restricts your freedom to modify the program. You can modify it, but you might as well write it on on a piece of paper for all that's worth. What the user needs to be able to do is modify the software and use it to really have that freedom. GPLv3 protects this. Linus is really being a stubborn idiot about this.
A friend of mine had a bank account where he was able to make up his own "personal information" question that he would be asked over the phone. A correct question/response went like this:
Receptionist: What are you wearing? Client: I don't think that's an appropriate question.
First thought...more educated and informed than the masses of sheeples?
Here's the first thing everyone can do to help stop this: don't call people sheeple. You really sound like an idiot when you do. "Sheeple" makes rms's cute phrases (Treacherous Computing?) look clever.
What needs to happen now is for people to understand what is going on. This kind of activity has a draining effect on society, basically sapping them of their notion of "freedom." Ask your neighbors, your parents, your kids, your peers: many of them will tell you that they don't mind that they are being treated like criminals. "Why worry if you're not doing anything wrong?" is the typical response. These people don't understand what "freedom" means. These days the word has come to mean "freedom to love America" when in fact it's the opposite we need to allow. So you can start by making sure the people you know, and others if you can, that if our freedom does have a chance of disappearing, and you need to educate them as to what that means.
I'm not saying that this is happening now, though. We're getting closer, but the real danger comes from people who will welcome it when it comes. The single most important battle to be won is in the battle of ideas - that's politics these days.
The other thing you can do is begin securing all aspects of your life. Try and use encryption over the internet; encrypt your emails and messages. Start using cash to buy stuff - the Japanese do it all the time; paying with credit or debit at a store is pretty much rare in Japan. Refuse to buy from the grocery store if they require your drivers license to prove you won't make cyanide when you buy peaches (are peach trees illegal now??).
But important: if you DO make a fuss, DO NOT LOOK LIKE AN ASSHOLE. This is probably what most of you are capable of doing. If you do "fight the man," please do so in an orderly, respectful, and unannoying manner. If you get asked for your license at the grocer's, don't scream about it - people want to get through the line. Simply refuse to purchase from the store, and explain to those around you that you are being asked for your driver's license to buy peaches. The worst thing that can happen is for your ideals to be tied in with obnoxious behavior (this is what happened to liberals).
Yes I can, because it's the "divide and conquer" technique - it delegates all the extra work to the states, and in turn to the people, and as an added bonus, you have the flexibility of the law (different states can change certain laws to better suit them). Each payroll department can handle their own business, because you don't need to transfer anything between states - it's just State Federal Government. It's more like a graph with a central point connecting to all 50 nodes, not a fully connected graph. You're making government more modular, and this is a good thing.
The fact is that New York's laws are incompatible with Montana's for a very good reason: they are not compatible locations. Just imagine if Wyoming's rent laws were the same as New York's. You'd have to move all the special cases into the Federal statues, and that would be inefficient.
It sounds like the only inefficiency is for you personally and I'd rather it be on the individual than the government. That way, more things get done.
English literacy was not America's (or any country's) strongpoint at that time, most people couldn't read. The idea of the electoral college was to make sure someone in the crowd could read when it came time to vote. English literacy being 90+% now obsoletes the EC's original purpose.
50% of Americans in 2004 believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in planning the 9/11 attacks. 37% of Americans preferred that schools teach creationism instead of evolution. I could keep going. Do you think that the ability to read words has made us more literate?
Anyway, the problem of having voters who could not read the names on the ballots was probably the very last reason to implement the EC.
By the way, the Old Testament actually has very good ideas in it that kept the Jews healthier for thousands of years. For example, when the plague struck, the Jewish rate of survival was actually particularly high.
How exactly is decentralizing power in the counties less efficient? The problems with inefficient bureaucracy turn up when a government body becomes too large, taking on duties for far too many things. Monolithic versus micro.
Slashdot Mirror
You missed a huge one:
11. If you make changes to the software and use it, you have to offer those changes to the public.
I assure you the vast majority of 15 year olds programming in Linux know much less about C than Dennis Ritchie does. They probably think they know more - and that's the problem.
Getting an education in computer science and learning it on your own should be no different. I'll show you: on your own, you look up reference materials. Then, you apply the knowledge you gained from those materials to accomplish tasks. In school, it's the same way: you learn from lecture, and then you do the homework to practice using that material. If your homework isn't properly reinforcing those ideas, then your professor isn't teaching the class properly. But that doesn't stop you from doing it on your own, now does it?
All education is for is to guide you to the best known way to do things. With just interest and drive, you're flying completely blind. Do you spend your time studying Java? Is it worth your time to study algorithms at all? Big-O notation? What about functional programming languages, should you study those? What about how to build a compiler? Networking? Hardware fundamentals? You could learn some of these things on your own, but for many of them, if you study on your own you're probably going to end up like the average Slashdot/Wikipedia idiot who doesn't have a deep enough understanding of the topic to be worth anything. You could end up an idiot coding PHP spaghetti. Education stops bad habits before they start. Education makes sure you study everything that is essential to your field. Weening the most important information out of books is way harder than getting it from a living person who can be responsive to your learning. Books are one-way communication; teaching is two-way.
And the fact is that you probably do not know more than the professor does about the subject (let's assume algorithms) they are teaching you. Oh, you may think you do, because after all, he can't even do basic computing task X (example: administrate a network) correctly, wow what moron he is! But the fact is that they aren't teaching you how to administrate a network, they are teaching you algorithms. If the professor really doesn't understand what he's teaching you, that's cause for concern, but at most reputable universities, you're usually safe in assuming it is you who is confused. The CS101 professor might not know how to program in C# or Java, but the fact is they probably know more about basic computing fundamentals than you do, so listen up.
Education is not a waste of time. The problem is that education causes people to think that they don't need to spend the hours "building their own stuff" to become good. It gives some people the illusion that they don't need to do all that hard work. A guy who started with a cheezy PC and wrote his own stuff might be good, or he might be a complete moron, doing things ass backward. But no matter what, the guy who worked hard on his own will always be worse off than the same guy who works hard on his own and goes to MIT.
This "ivory tower" bullshit has to stop.
True, but Bush was definitely part of that team. And believe you me, he works hard at having the fewest ethical constraints.
But you should always try. Perhaps I should change that to "the best you can be at what you do."
In any case, I never said he was a success at being president - just a success at winning the presidency.
I think he had other flaws too - he kept his head down I think (cutting off airflow), and I think his embrochure was unorthodox or something. My tutor told me this, so I guess I'm going on his word.
You've got to be kidding me. Bush looks like a dummy, and his policies might be completely terrible, but he knows his stuff, and he has worked hard to get to where he is. Bush knew his stuff solid at both debates (unless you still subscribe to that "wire" garbage), and he's put in a lot of effort to get to where he is. Winning a presidency is not an easy thing to do, and Bush is good enough that he makes it look like anyone can do it. True, he has Karl Rove, but believe me, you have to devote yourself to the task. In fact, look at places where Bush didn't work hard: failures.
I'm not talking about "success" as defined as "making lots of money" or "being the highest in the corporate ladder" or even "being promoted." I'm talking about "success" as "being the best at what you want to do." But on the other hand, if what you want to do is make lots of money or climb that corporate ladder, then you have to work at it. Guile and craft take a damn lot of work, and if you don't think so, there's a reason you're not crafty or guile...y. Now, of course it's not fair that those who are the best at their craft don't get promotions, but if you are in fact the best in your craft, the fact is you have succeeded. If you shun the "corporate machine" so much, don't complain when you get screwed by it.
Of course hard work will never guarantee success. But there's the rub - success is never guaranteed. But you can be damn sure that probability will drop damn close to zero if you don't work hard.
This article is going to bring up the subject of formal study vs. hard work. It's very simple: You will get nowhere without hard work. But you will go farther and faster with formal study.
Example: Dizzy Gillespie was an amazing trumpet player, but the way he played was all wrong. Does this mean that our idea of the "right" way to play is wrong? No; Dizzy succeeded despite playing the wrong way, simply because he practiced so goddamned hard. But if you want to learn to play the trumpet, should you just shirk all advice and just practice? Of course not. You'll be a better player if you don't have obstacles - and the "right" way is "right" because it has fewer obstacles. Just don't think you can relax, because you'll get blown away by those who are working hard.
Now take for example the computer programmer. The computer programmer who studies on his own not only has to figure out what is going on from scratch (this is actually beneficial), but he has has to figure out what to study. An education in computer science will prepare this programmer for that. But all too often the computer programmer with an education uses this as a crutch - they soon become stagnant.
FAQ
Can you succeed without working hard? No.
So, do you need education? Maybe not, but it helps.
Would you be better at what you want to do if you have education? Undoubtedly.
For what it's worth, Peter Norvig has already pointed this out (he cites research from John Hayes and Benjamin Bloom).
Check out his short essay on how to learn to program in 10 years.
Professor James Ketelaar has a pet theory that the name "Japan" is actually derived from a Chinese phrase (spoken to Marco Polo) meaning "Land of the Midgets." I am not making this up.
Japan's name for itself has also changed over the years. They didn't always used to be "nippon." "Yamato" and some other really super long name that means something like "People who live in the grass fields...etc." have been used throughout history.
I use Blacksun which doesn't have the "unlimited" storage you had before, but they are very affordable and offer rsync, ssh, sftp, and the regular linux services as well as the typical dragndrop interface clients. Very nice, and their tech support is helpful and quick to respond!
I'm sorry sir, you see, your policy clearly states that any claim made by you will not be paid by us.
How's the naked lady?
The GPL doesn't care what you do with the program after you have it, as long as it does not involve distributing it to other people. The writer of the software is leveraging their power as writer of the software to make sure that however their program is used in a free manner. They can't control anything else besides that, so you do have mixed free/proprietary environments, and you do have the ability to run it on whatever machine you like. What you can't do is promise that someone can modify&run your software, then make the only way that they can modify&run the software is by infringing on your copyrights.
Unfortunately, the US government does not agree with you, so in countries (like the US) where such ridiculous limits exist, the GPL makes sure that your freedom to modify and run the program is not infringed.
I still don't think any of this support's Linus' decision. I think - none of his accusations make any sense.
I think you're viewing it from the wrong perspective.
:(
It's the developer's perspective the FSF is approaching this from. Looking at your WalMart example, it certainly doesn't prevent other companies from selling non-locked systems. But that's not the point - this isn't about preventing other vendors from Doing the Right Thing. It's about making sure the companies that use someone's hard-written GPL code against their wishes.
I will concede that my previous argument was too strict. If you had a machine X that only accepted say, one program, then if I took GPL'd code and used it as the basis of a program that would make it run, it would be silly to say that I can't distribute that, because it could possibly incriminate people not even associated with said machine.
But the GPLv3 isn't as strict as you might think. It only makes two requirements:
1) that if there is a secret array of information that the software requires you to possess to make the software do the same basic thing, then that bit of information is part of the source code
2) that if you distribute GPL'd code, then you cannot sue someone for circumventing technology measures that are related to running the code.
So yeah, you can ship GPL code that only works with a machine if unmodified. But you aren't allowed to sue that user for changing the machine to make it work with modified code.
The point is: When a programmer makes the decision to GPL their code, they do it because they want users of it to have the power to make use of changes to their code (among other things), and they believe it is only fair that people who pass on their code or use it as a basis for their own code give their users the same freedom. So if my GPL'd code is used in something that denys user's freedom, I feel that my work has been stolen.
Ah ha! But when you accepted the limitations, those limitations rob you of your freedom (specifically, the freedom to alter that printer's software and run it). But, that software is GPL code - which requires that the person distributing the software (the printer vendors) allow that user all the freedoms guaranteed to GPL code. One of those freedoms is the freedom to modify and run that software. But you don't have that freedom thanks to the efforts of the printer vendor.
Contradiction, -><-, QED, game, set, match, checkmate. The printer company is curtailing the freedom they promised not to curtail! This is against the spirit of the GPL - but not the text of GPLv2. They are allowing you to modify the software, but it's pointless because modification is no good unless you can run that modifcation, per my last post.
Saying that the market will sort things out is like saying that we shouldn't sue violators of the GPL because the market will sort that out, too.
First of all, there are lots of things I disagree with (brand loyalty would most certainly exist), but most of it is beside the point.
...and I'm sure people more clever than me can think of other ways the system can be (ab)used.
The governments WOULD like to have access to your personal life. Not to find you when you did something wrong, but to be able to pull up information about every facet of your life at the push of a button. Taken to its most extreme, when you are on camera 24/7, this makes law enforcement and government much eaiser:
- If you are suspected of intent to commit a big crime, they can easily find out all about you
- If you commited a crime, they have the evidence right away
- If you are a political enemy, they have easy dirt on you
You see, what makes us free is the freedom to break the law. How many laws have you broken in the last year alone? What if they had a system that could immediately identify the correct person who commited any crime within 24 hours after it was committed and sentence them for it? How much debt and prison time would you have? If such a system were in place, I think that society would become little more than a prison. The price we pay for our freedom is freedom - justice is very much relative, and the system we have now allows people room to live.
I take it you've never been to a protest, hippie-style coffee house, or PETA event. Certain liberals tend to get really annoying and say stupid things, and it really hurts me when I agree with them, because then they make me and my ideas look stupid.
This has nothing to do with rights or even anybody's specific point of view. It has everything to do with convincing people of your ideas. No matter how brilliant or correct your ideas are, the fact of life is that if you are an asshole, people will not like you, and what's more, they won't listen to what you have to say. In fact, in all likelihood, they will go against what you are saying if you are a real prick about it.
No, it fixes a very important issue.
You know the story of rms' printer driver: he wanted to be able to modify the printer driver so it would bloody work right or work better. He couldn't do that, so he made GNU.
Now let's say the new rms. smr wants to fix his printer which is running embedded GPL software. Great, he thinks, I have the source code to this, so I can just fix the source and make my printer work/better.
Oops! The printer doesn't allow you to do this. This is an awful loophole that restricts your freedom to modify the program. You can modify it, but you might as well write it on on a piece of paper for all that's worth. What the user needs to be able to do is modify the software and use it to really have that freedom. GPLv3 protects this. Linus is really being a stubborn idiot about this.
A friend of mine had a bank account where he was able to make up his own "personal information" question that he would be asked over the phone. A correct question/response went like this:
Receptionist: What are you wearing?
Client: I don't think that's an appropriate question.
Here's the first thing everyone can do to help stop this: don't call people sheeple. You really sound like an idiot when you do. "Sheeple" makes rms's cute phrases (Treacherous Computing?) look clever.
What needs to happen now is for people to understand what is going on. This kind of activity has a draining effect on society, basically sapping them of their notion of "freedom." Ask your neighbors, your parents, your kids, your peers: many of them will tell you that they don't mind that they are being treated like criminals. "Why worry if you're not doing anything wrong?" is the typical response. These people don't understand what "freedom" means. These days the word has come to mean "freedom to love America" when in fact it's the opposite we need to allow. So you can start by making sure the people you know, and others if you can, that if our freedom does have a chance of disappearing, and you need to educate them as to what that means.
I'm not saying that this is happening now, though. We're getting closer, but the real danger comes from people who will welcome it when it comes. The single most important battle to be won is in the battle of ideas - that's politics these days.
The other thing you can do is begin securing all aspects of your life. Try and use encryption over the internet; encrypt your emails and messages. Start using cash to buy stuff - the Japanese do it all the time; paying with credit or debit at a store is pretty much rare in Japan. Refuse to buy from the grocery store if they require your drivers license to prove you won't make cyanide when you buy peaches (are peach trees illegal now??).
But important: if you DO make a fuss, DO NOT LOOK LIKE AN ASSHOLE. This is probably what most of you are capable of doing. If you do "fight the man," please do so in an orderly, respectful, and unannoying manner. If you get asked for your license at the grocer's, don't scream about it - people want to get through the line. Simply refuse to purchase from the store, and explain to those around you that you are being asked for your driver's license to buy peaches. The worst thing that can happen is for your ideals to be tied in with obnoxious behavior (this is what happened to liberals).
Yes I can, because it's the "divide and conquer" technique - it delegates all the extra work to the states, and in turn to the people, and as an added bonus, you have the flexibility of the law (different states can change certain laws to better suit them). Each payroll department can handle their own business, because you don't need to transfer anything between states - it's just State Federal Government. It's more like a graph with a central point connecting to all 50 nodes, not a fully connected graph. You're making government more modular, and this is a good thing.
The fact is that New York's laws are incompatible with Montana's for a very good reason: they are not compatible locations. Just imagine if Wyoming's rent laws were the same as New York's. You'd have to move all the special cases into the Federal statues, and that would be inefficient.
It sounds like the only inefficiency is for you personally and I'd rather it be on the individual than the government. That way, more things get done.
I agree with you, but your comment reminded me that we are debating a 200-year old issue, and that made me laugh.
Good thing we don't have a democracy then!
50% of Americans in 2004 believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in planning the 9/11 attacks. 37% of Americans preferred that schools teach creationism instead of evolution. I could keep going. Do you think that the ability to read words has made us more literate?
Anyway, the problem of having voters who could not read the names on the ballots was probably the very last reason to implement the EC.
By the way, the Old Testament actually has very good ideas in it that kept the Jews healthier for thousands of years. For example, when the plague struck, the Jewish rate of survival was actually particularly high.
How exactly is decentralizing power in the counties less efficient? The problems with inefficient bureaucracy turn up when a government body becomes too large, taking on duties for far too many things. Monolithic versus micro.