I would gladly give up network transparency (which I haven't used since I left college and VNC-type stuff is a fine enough replacement for) for the ability to change resolutions (and desktop size) without closing all graphical applications. That's how little I care about network transparency. Speed doesn't really bother me that much, but there is defintitely no elegance whatsoever in any of X.
There are NO nonproprietary useful old X windows apps. X is why my mother will never, ever be able to run Linux.
Hopefully we'll all abandon it when we try to keep up with Quartz and Longhorn in the future...vector based is the future...
There seemed to be no talk of 3d objects--merely drawing to a surface that could be drawn with accelerated transforms. Just like EVAS. EVAS does use OpenGL, presumably just as much as Longhorn will use Direct3D. There is only rumour/vapourspeak of 3d widgets in Longhorn, or 3d anything at all except that it uses 3d cards, at this time.
I didn't say Longhorn would have to change the API (although if it's not just performance enhancement they'll have to at least extend it, no?) I just said that Quartz would not need to change APIs to support this performance enhancement, because given the features of Quartz, it WOULD BE JUST A PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT!
Also, one GIGANTIC oops on your part, on a UI there will be FANTASTIC need for scaling in the future. Future displays will have more pixels then human beings will be able to discern--systems that can't scale resolution from handheld devices to 21" 4000x4000 lcd monitors without making things look like crap are broken systems. If Win32 (or perhaps even Longhorn) wants this ability, it WILL BREAK THEIR API--you can still run old programs, but they won't look nice when scaled up on future displays.
A 3d ui is eye candy, and even if it were useful idea it has nothing to do with Longhorn yet. A scalable 2d API will become a requirment.
The article seems to describe every window as being a texture. Does it actually say "vector", and I missed it? There's a big difference--if you have a vector representation of text or images, you can scale them up to see more detail on high resolution displays. If everything is just a textured bitmap, scaling up will just give you blurring.
But yeah, perhaps competition like this will force linux to enter the vector-based GUI world, which would be pretty cool.
It's defintely not a new idea, EVAS for Enlightenment 0.17 plans to do the exact same thing.
Nor am I convinced it would be difficult to add a performance enhancement like this in a vector-based GUI such as Apple's Quartz with very little change in the API.
I think the idea of everything being a textured surface really sucks. When you scale a texture up, things just get blurry, no matter what kind of hardware you have. When you scale a PDF or Postscript based interface up, things will actually look better.
Longhorn sounds good for eyecandy and selling hardware, but Quartz could actually be useful...
No, OS X isn't just alpha transparancies. Everything can be scaled, rotated, deformed, etc. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell this new every window is a texture hack is going to be as elegant as PDF-based Quartz.
Ways around that are to petition your HOA for a rule change, or move somewhere else. I may be reading too much in your comment but you seem to be willing to have your HOA curtail what you can do on your own property, but not the federal gov't.
Me thinks it be harder to petition the federal government to change laws or to move where federal laws don't apply.
Yeah, but shouldn't you have to tell the babysitter that you're doing so? I mean, maybe not exactly where you put cameras--but taping someone using your bathroom without their knowledge should be illegal, IMO.
Yeah, that's about how Gentoo linux is treating me too. (Why, oh why must it compile X servers for every video card?;)) It's got to be one of the easiest ways of getting KDE3. I wish I could get through to the review site to see what the bugs are that I haven't noticed yet.
What I'm not sure of now is whether portage has an equivalent to RPM dependency hell. My suspicion is that it should be less of a problem, just because source compatibility seems more common than binary compatibility, and because so far portage has been really good at figuring out dependencies on it's own. But ask me again in six months.
Democracy is about participating in government. Democracy is rule by the people. If you want to call that "mob rule", fine, but it's democracy. You are speaking Orwellian newspeak if you try to define it as something else. That doesn't mean mob rule is always a good thing or should never be restrained, but restricting the will of the majority, though sometimes necessary, is restricting democracy.
I believe in communities (not individuals) making decisions for themselves. I'm certainly not thinking about libertarianism or anarchy, and I don't think anything in my posts reflects either of those. My complaint is that when 250 million people have to get together to decide on issues for 250 million people, the contribution for any single person is nearly none. Thus apathy. Thus corruption.
I'm not asking to see less government, I just want it moved away from Washington. I want to pay the same level of taxes, but I want it to go to my City Council or School Board instead of Congress.
I want the same social services for people who need it, but I want more say in how they are administered. For this to happen, the federal government has to stop displacing local government with federal spending and taxes.
So if they reduce taxes drastically, and eliminate social services while keeping defense pork, and local government raises taxes and provides the same services, that's not ideal but it's an improvement.
You can't make centralized power without corruption. Indeed, compared to nations of similiar or larger size (China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia), America is fantastically uncorrupt. If you still don't think it's good enough, and you care about people who need government help, then take power back from Washington or just give up.
Perhaps Europe was helped drasitically towards democracy in the World Wars, but only because we helpfully bombed many of the non-democracies. Potentially the United States saw more equality among races and genders--but I don't really think so. African Americans got the chance to serve in the military, women could work while their husbands were fighting--but it seems like as soon as the wars were over everything went back to the way it was. Only racial and gender gains during peace time (the 1920s or 60s) seems to have been really lasting.
If you haven't noticed by now, they are making quality, useable, innovative software for both the general consumer and corporate worlds.
This is both questionable and totally besides the point. Microsoft Research tends to be on the theoretical side of things--they make mostly prototypes and publish papers, rather than software they expect to sell someone. Complimenting Microsoft Research isn't complimenting the current state of Microsoft products--but rather their possible future ideas.
If you go here, I think you'll see they aren't actually selling most of the stuff their researching today: http://research.microsoft.com/
The complexity of our current government requires hierarchy. It doesn't have to be as complex as it is--but there will be some problems that eventually will have to be solved at a global level, such as the enviroment.
But hierarchy, or representatives choosing representatives, is always the enemy of democracy. Therefore, we need to maintain subsidiarity--government needs to accomplish its task on the smallest level possible. Cities solving their own problems, countries solving their problems, with internation organization solving the few remaining problems. Hierarchy should only be used when necessary.
It might be nice to have a country of part time politicians--but if we need more levels of seperation of power to do it, it's not worth it. Ideally, it wouldn't be all politicians also having a day job--it would be all people with day jobs also being politicians.
War had nothing to do with it. Apathy, greed, and lack of education are at the root of America's political problems. But while ailing, America is still a democracy, and if Americans get off their collective behinds, they can fix what is wrong.
War had everything to do with it. War means centralized power, centralized power means less self-government, less self-government means more apathy, more apathy means less bothering to stay informed, under-informed and apathetic people lead to greedy leaders.
The only solution is more self-government--empower individual cities and counties to do more for themselves. That requires higher levels of the government taking fewer taxes (which is possible if services are provided at a more local level), and more power for local authorities to regulate local economies.
No, that's not how it works in general. Some parts of the EU are appointed by elected representatives, others are elected directly.
I stand somewhat corrected. I would have done better to name the United Nations in my original post. In any event, it is still rather removed from the people. Not all of Europe is particularly excited about the Euro, from what I've heard.
Furthermore, to refer to elected representatives as a "ruling class" is, in general, incorrect. In a functioning democracy, representatives don't have power personally, they represent the power of their constituents. Only when democracy goes awry, representatives start acting in their own interest, and can hold on to their positions unreasonably, can they be said to have "power" and constitute a "ruling class".
Every democracy that has ever existed went awry on day one, by this definition. Certainly every Western government. You have power if you CAN act in your interest, even if you don't choose to. Unless there is a perfect candidate as competition, a representitive will always be able to act in their own interest. Keep in mind in the original post I was speaking of Star Trek (r) Federation planets and only refering slightly to European countries. I'm not willing to believe an entire planet can be a democracy.
Actually, that's not true. You are forgetting that most people don't spend all their time on elections. If you only have time and energy to participate in a few elections, you are more likely to get what you want if you elect representatives that then take on the burden of negotiating and choosing other representatives for you.
That's a good argument for adding ONE layer, but once you vote for one representative, that representive SHOULD be spending all of their time on government, therefore further layers are unneccesary. Further layers always make things less democratic. Such layers may be needed if the government is too large (either because it governs a large area or because it provides so many services), but that's the dilemma--you can be democratic or you can be big, but not both.
Two World Wars forced America to abandon democracy in exchange for power and size--why Europe is determined to do the same thing in a time of peace is beyond me.
No, that's not how it works in general. Some parts of the EU are appointed by elected representatives, others are elected directly.
I stand somewhat corrected. I would have done better to name the United Nations in my original post. In any event, it is still rather removed from the people. Not all of Europe is particularly excited about the Euro, from what I've heard.
Furthermore, to refer to elected representatives as a "ruling class" is, in general, incorrect. In a functioning democracy, representatives don't have power personally, they represent the power of their constituents. Only when democracy goes awry, representatives start acting in their own interest, and can hold on to their positions unreasonably, can they be said to have "power" and constitute a "ruling class".
Every democracy that has ever existed went awry on day one, by this definition. Certainly every Western government. In any event, you have power if you CAN act in your interest, even if you don't choose to. Unless there is a perfect candidate as competition, a representitive will always be able to act in their own interest. Even if they are perfect representatives, they are still a ruling class. Keep in mind in the original post I was speaking of Star Trek (r) Federation planets more so than European countries. Which are not as likely to be real democracies.
Actually, that's not true. You are forgetting that most people don't spend all their time on elections. If you only have time and energy to participate in a few elections, you are more likely to get what you want if you elect representatives that then take on the burden of negotiating and choosing other representatives for you.
That's a good argument for adding ONE layer, but once you vote for one representative, that representive SHOULD be spending all of their time on government, therefore further layers are unneccesary. Further layers always make things less democratic. Such layers may be needed if the government is too large (either because it governs a large area or because it provides so many services), but that's the dilemma--you can be democratic or you can be big, but not both.
Two World Wars forced America to abandon democracy in exchange for power and size--why Europe is determined to do the same thing in a time of peace is beyond me.
Now wait, I didn't say that European countries weren't democratic--the ruling class is chosen democratically. And then that ruling class gets to pick who controls the European Union, right? You didn't get a big continent wide election to pick the President of the European Union, right?
At best, the European Union is like the United States Senate back in the 19th century when Senators were chosen by the legislature of each state. A European citizen gets to elect the people who appoint the people who appoint the people who run the European Union. The more layers of government you add, the less direct control people are going to have in what's going on.
I'm sure most of the European Union members are more democratic than the United States, simply because they are much smaller, therefore each vote counts more than each American vote. Democracy has serious scaling problems.
Remember, both his title and my comment said populist which is quite different from either democracy or idealism. The Federation is certainly idealistic, and supposedly democratic. (Although that's certainly never emphasized. More likely they're democratic in the same way that the European Union or World Trade Organization are democratic--chosen by the ruling class of each province, which may or may not be democratic. It also appears to be really racist--why are so many damn white Earthlings in charge?) But democracy and idealism can have faith in ruling institutions, Populism never can. Populists say the people are Right, Good and Honest, their leaders are eternally Corrupt and Scheming. Just like in Star Wars.
The Federation so very, very rarely finds itself being the little guy in any dispute--they're basically the United States of the galaxy, somewhat more enlightened and consistent. It may be more idealistic, more democratic, but when so many of your episodes are about crushing the corrupt underdog, you aren't being populist. The heroes of star trek are human, but the Federation technology makes them godlike compared to most of the peoples they encounter.
All of this totally ignores the pro-Cold War original Star Trek episodes. With really obviously evil Klingons/Romulans playing the part of Communists.
Star Wars, especially Episode I, is just saying that all Human Social Institutions are corruptable. The aristocracy is pretty damn evil in all of the movies most of the time. To say democracy or any social is system can fail does not mean you support fascism or anything else--you're just stating the truth.
It's also all missing the point. Both of these are just television shows. To find out whether they really support fascism/democracy whatever isn't in the obscure logical conclusions we derive from the ethics involved--because the authors probably didn't think very hard about that. It's in who is portrayed as good and evil. THAT's why I said PRIMA FACIE--because you're only SUPPOSED to look at the surface, because that's really all the credit I play to give either Trek or Wars. And on the surface, Trek is pro-establishment, Wars is anti-.
What puzzles me the most is how Brin keeps pointing out that the aristocrat/heroes actions in Star Wars always end up being meaningless, and somehow thinks that supports his ideas.
The odd thing is I still like Star Trek a lot better.
Yeah, good except that it makes no sense. In what possible way is Star Trek more populist than Star Wars? Who are the good guys in star trek? The clean, orderly, civilized, educated, powerful, noble, superior bureucrats of the Federation. The bad guys are the unelightened scum of the universe.
Who are the bad guys in Star Wars? Well, except that the dress in black and kill people, they act basically like the Federation. The good guys? Oppressed peoples.
He might have a good idea or two, but calling Star Trek populist is prima facie idiotic.
Yes again in a perfect world we would have our privacy at work but the world is not perfect. We need to deal with it the way it's been dealt to us.
This is nonsense. We live in a democracy, even the constitution can be amended. The hand that's been dealt to us is that we're allowed to change the hand that's been dealt to us. If we think we should have privacy at work, we can change the laws so that we do.
As to why it would be a good idea for the university to make it their own policy not to search aggressivly--because students are going to be more fearful of being honest in class if they are opening themselves to a vast bureacracy rather than a single professor.
The police are not obligated to take every possible action to solve every possible crime. In fact, cops getting sued for doing too little to do their jobs is a lot less often (if ever) than getting sued for being too aggressive. If they are indeed employed by the University, the University has a right to decide how much they are willing to treat faculty like criminals in order to discover vandals.
If they choose to disregard this right, they should be embarrassed. I certainly think less of Virginia Tech now, as no doubt do many readers of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Thus the Virginia Tech has lost the battle.
You can claim about no one having the right to do this or that as much as you want--but this isn't about legal rights, it's about public opinion, amongst an audience that cares a lot more about academic freedom then catching every last 'punk assed hooligan'.
Regardless of what you think about their actions, this is incontestible: Virginia Tech should be embarrassed for being so stupid, for not seeing what's in their own best interest.
You could tell the press. Just because it's legal for a school to do something doesn't mean I shouldn't consider working for/attending/donating some other school because they do it. Universities care about the opinions of people other than lawyers, or at least they would if sufficiently self-interested.
Employers right to access company hardware trumps any privacy for the employee.
You and everyone else here talking about legal rights misses the point. It does not say in this article that McCaughey is suing Virginia Tech. The point is not whether a coporation has the right to do this, but whether a UNIVERSITY should do this. (I said SHOULD, not CAN, not HAS LEGAL RIGHT TO). Is it in a university's best interest to seize faculty machines over a little graffiti? What kind of impact will that have on student/professor relationships, academic freedom or faculty recruiting? Perhaps, for the sake of the University, privacy should trump attempts to stop graffiti.
I imagine McCaughey's attitude is "well, you have a bad policy, so you deal with the bad PR". I say she did a good job.
Like it or not campus police work for the college and represent the authority of the college in these matters. I say good job.
You don't know enough to say that. There is a discrepancy in stories between the professor and the campus police--whoever is speaking mistruth did a bad job. The college doesn't have the authority to lie. And I'm not even sure that "campus police represent the college", on some campuses, they can arrest people--they're real cops. Wouldn't the 4th amendment then constrain them?
Switching gears back to legal rights, I wonder, if a student submits work to the professor, does the university automatically get the right to see that work? In a world with more and more property owned by coprorations and governments, isn't it time to reevaluate this "Employers right to access company hardware trumps any privacy for the employee" rule?
People protesting globalization aren't JUST protesting multinational corporations. They're protesting large, nondemocratic institutions dominating communities and individuals. These institutions are governments AND corporations AND strange multi-national bureaucracies no one understands and no one votes for, such as the IMF and the WTO. That's why both Left and Right people are upset about globalism.
Globalism, whether corporate-oriented or not, is always the enemy of democracy, simply because different democracies will always decide things differently, which is incompatible with global lawmaking. Anyone who claims people are confusing gloablism with "corporatism" is the only one confused--corporations don't matter. The issue is global control vs. local and democratic control, not corporations vs. governments.
Whatever you do, don't let globalism seduce you with, "Well, gee, maybe a world government will make everyone use MY solutions to global social problems!" Because, being that there are so many solutions proposed, the chance of that happening is nil.
Slashdot Mirror
Hopefully we'll all abandon it when we try to keep up with Quartz and Longhorn in the future...vector based is the future...
I didn't say Longhorn would have to change the API (although if it's not just performance enhancement they'll have to at least extend it, no?) I just said that Quartz would not need to change APIs to support this performance enhancement, because given the features of Quartz, it WOULD BE JUST A PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT!
Also, one GIGANTIC oops on your part, on a UI there will be FANTASTIC need for scaling in the future. Future displays will have more pixels then human beings will be able to discern--systems that can't scale resolution from handheld devices to 21" 4000x4000 lcd monitors without making things look like crap are broken systems. If Win32 (or perhaps even Longhorn) wants this ability, it WILL BREAK THEIR API--you can still run old programs, but they won't look nice when scaled up on future displays.
A 3d ui is eye candy, and even if it were useful idea it has nothing to do with Longhorn yet. A scalable 2d API will become a requirment.
It was true for me earlier, but now it seems to work fine.
But yeah, perhaps competition like this will force linux to enter the vector-based GUI world, which would be pretty cool.
Nor am I convinced it would be difficult to add a performance enhancement like this in a vector-based GUI such as Apple's Quartz with very little change in the API.
I think the idea of everything being a textured surface really sucks. When you scale a texture up, things just get blurry, no matter what kind of hardware you have. When you scale a PDF or Postscript based interface up, things will actually look better.
Longhorn sounds good for eyecandy and selling hardware, but Quartz could actually be useful...
No, OS X isn't just alpha transparancies. Everything can be scaled, rotated, deformed, etc. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell this new every window is a texture hack is going to be as elegant as PDF-based Quartz.
yeah, you may notice hues not being quite correct, due to Doppler effects on your gameplay...
I suspect e-mail has way more chance of getting through than a plain letter, because no one needs anti-biotics after checking a congressman's e-mail.
Me thinks it be harder to petition the federal government to change laws or to move where federal laws don't apply.
Yeah, but shouldn't you have to tell the babysitter that you're doing so? I mean, maybe not exactly where you put cameras--but taping someone using your bathroom without their knowledge should be illegal, IMO.
Wouldn't you rather have Time publish a free ad for you?
What I'm not sure of now is whether portage has an equivalent to RPM dependency hell. My suspicion is that it should be less of a problem, just because source compatibility seems more common than binary compatibility, and because so far portage has been really good at figuring out dependencies on it's own. But ask me again in six months.
I believe in communities (not individuals) making decisions for themselves. I'm certainly not thinking about libertarianism or anarchy, and I don't think anything in my posts reflects either of those. My complaint is that when 250 million people have to get together to decide on issues for 250 million people, the contribution for any single person is nearly none. Thus apathy. Thus corruption.
I'm not asking to see less government, I just want it moved away from Washington. I want to pay the same level of taxes, but I want it to go to my City Council or School Board instead of Congress. I want the same social services for people who need it, but I want more say in how they are administered. For this to happen, the federal government has to stop displacing local government with federal spending and taxes.
So if they reduce taxes drastically, and eliminate social services while keeping defense pork, and local government raises taxes and provides the same services, that's not ideal but it's an improvement.
You can't make centralized power without corruption. Indeed, compared to nations of similiar or larger size (China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia), America is fantastically uncorrupt. If you still don't think it's good enough, and you care about people who need government help, then take power back from Washington or just give up.
Perhaps Europe was helped drasitically towards democracy in the World Wars, but only because we helpfully bombed many of the non-democracies. Potentially the United States saw more equality among races and genders--but I don't really think so. African Americans got the chance to serve in the military, women could work while their husbands were fighting--but it seems like as soon as the wars were over everything went back to the way it was. Only racial and gender gains during peace time (the 1920s or 60s) seems to have been really lasting.
This is both questionable and totally besides the point. Microsoft Research tends to be on the theoretical side of things--they make mostly prototypes and publish papers, rather than software they expect to sell someone. Complimenting Microsoft Research isn't complimenting the current state of Microsoft products--but rather their possible future ideas.
If you go here, I think you'll see they aren't actually selling most of the stuff their researching today: http://research.microsoft.com/
But hierarchy, or representatives choosing representatives, is always the enemy of democracy. Therefore, we need to maintain subsidiarity--government needs to accomplish its task on the smallest level possible. Cities solving their own problems, countries solving their problems, with internation organization solving the few remaining problems. Hierarchy should only be used when necessary.
It might be nice to have a country of part time politicians--but if we need more levels of seperation of power to do it, it's not worth it. Ideally, it wouldn't be all politicians also having a day job--it would be all people with day jobs also being politicians.
War had nothing to do with it. Apathy, greed, and lack of education are at the root of America's political problems. But while ailing, America is still a democracy, and if Americans get off their collective behinds, they can fix what is wrong.
War had everything to do with it. War means centralized power, centralized power means less self-government, less self-government means more apathy, more apathy means less bothering to stay informed, under-informed and apathetic people lead to greedy leaders.
The only solution is more self-government--empower individual cities and counties to do more for themselves. That requires higher levels of the government taking fewer taxes (which is possible if services are provided at a more local level), and more power for local authorities to regulate local economies.
No, that's not how it works in general. Some parts of the EU are appointed by elected representatives, others are elected directly.
I stand somewhat corrected. I would have done better to name the United Nations in my original post. In any event, it is still rather removed from the people. Not all of Europe is particularly excited about the Euro, from what I've heard.
Furthermore, to refer to elected representatives as a "ruling class" is, in general, incorrect. In a functioning democracy, representatives don't have power personally, they represent the power of their constituents. Only when democracy goes awry, representatives start acting in their own interest, and can hold on to their positions unreasonably, can they be said to have "power" and constitute a "ruling class".
Every democracy that has ever existed went awry on day one, by this definition. Certainly every Western government. You have power if you CAN act in your interest, even if you don't choose to. Unless there is a perfect candidate as competition, a representitive will always be able to act in their own interest. Keep in mind in the original post I was speaking of Star Trek (r) Federation planets and only refering slightly to European countries. I'm not willing to believe an entire planet can be a democracy.
Actually, that's not true. You are forgetting that most people don't spend all their time on elections. If you only have time and energy to participate in a few elections, you are more likely to get what you want if you elect representatives that then take on the burden of negotiating and choosing other representatives for you.
That's a good argument for adding ONE layer, but once you vote for one representative, that representive SHOULD be spending all of their time on government, therefore further layers are unneccesary. Further layers always make things less democratic. Such layers may be needed if the government is too large (either because it governs a large area or because it provides so many services), but that's the dilemma--you can be democratic or you can be big, but not both.
Two World Wars forced America to abandon democracy in exchange for power and size--why Europe is determined to do the same thing in a time of peace is beyond me.
I stand somewhat corrected. I would have done better to name the United Nations in my original post. In any event, it is still rather removed from the people. Not all of Europe is particularly excited about the Euro, from what I've heard.
Furthermore, to refer to elected representatives as a "ruling class" is, in general, incorrect. In a functioning democracy, representatives don't have power personally, they represent the power of their constituents. Only when democracy goes awry, representatives start acting in their own interest, and can hold on to their positions unreasonably, can they be said to have "power" and constitute a "ruling class".
Every democracy that has ever existed went awry on day one, by this definition. Certainly every Western government. In any event, you have power if you CAN act in your interest, even if you don't choose to. Unless there is a perfect candidate as competition, a representitive will always be able to act in their own interest. Even if they are perfect representatives, they are still a ruling class. Keep in mind in the original post I was speaking of Star Trek (r) Federation planets more so than European countries. Which are not as likely to be real democracies.
Actually, that's not true. You are forgetting that most people don't spend all their time on elections. If you only have time and energy to participate in a few elections, you are more likely to get what you want if you elect representatives that then take on the burden of negotiating and choosing other representatives for you.
That's a good argument for adding ONE layer, but once you vote for one representative, that representive SHOULD be spending all of their time on government, therefore further layers are unneccesary. Further layers always make things less democratic. Such layers may be needed if the government is too large (either because it governs a large area or because it provides so many services), but that's the dilemma--you can be democratic or you can be big, but not both.
Two World Wars forced America to abandon democracy in exchange for power and size--why Europe is determined to do the same thing in a time of peace is beyond me.
At best, the European Union is like the United States Senate back in the 19th century when Senators were chosen by the legislature of each state. A European citizen gets to elect the people who appoint the people who appoint the people who run the European Union. The more layers of government you add, the less direct control people are going to have in what's going on.
I'm sure most of the European Union members are more democratic than the United States, simply because they are much smaller, therefore each vote counts more than each American vote. Democracy has serious scaling problems.
The Federation so very, very rarely finds itself being the little guy in any dispute--they're basically the United States of the galaxy, somewhat more enlightened and consistent. It may be more idealistic, more democratic, but when so many of your episodes are about crushing the corrupt underdog, you aren't being populist. The heroes of star trek are human, but the Federation technology makes them godlike compared to most of the peoples they encounter.
All of this totally ignores the pro-Cold War original Star Trek episodes. With really obviously evil Klingons/Romulans playing the part of Communists.
Star Wars, especially Episode I, is just saying that all Human Social Institutions are corruptable. The aristocracy is pretty damn evil in all of the movies most of the time. To say democracy or any social is system can fail does not mean you support fascism or anything else--you're just stating the truth.
It's also all missing the point. Both of these are just television shows. To find out whether they really support fascism/democracy whatever isn't in the obscure logical conclusions we derive from the ethics involved--because the authors probably didn't think very hard about that. It's in who is portrayed as good and evil. THAT's why I said PRIMA FACIE--because you're only SUPPOSED to look at the surface, because that's really all the credit I play to give either Trek or Wars. And on the surface, Trek is pro-establishment, Wars is anti-.
What puzzles me the most is how Brin keeps pointing out that the aristocrat/heroes actions in Star Wars always end up being meaningless, and somehow thinks that supports his ideas.
The odd thing is I still like Star Trek a lot better.
Who are the bad guys in Star Wars? Well, except that the dress in black and kill people, they act basically like the Federation. The good guys? Oppressed peoples.
He might have a good idea or two, but calling Star Trek populist is prima facie idiotic.
This is nonsense. We live in a democracy, even the constitution can be amended. The hand that's been dealt to us is that we're allowed to change the hand that's been dealt to us. If we think we should have privacy at work, we can change the laws so that we do.
As to why it would be a good idea for the university to make it their own policy not to search aggressivly--because students are going to be more fearful of being honest in class if they are opening themselves to a vast bureacracy rather than a single professor.
The police are not obligated to take every possible action to solve every possible crime. In fact, cops getting sued for doing too little to do their jobs is a lot less often (if ever) than getting sued for being too aggressive. If they are indeed employed by the University, the University has a right to decide how much they are willing to treat faculty like criminals in order to discover vandals.
If they choose to disregard this right, they should be embarrassed. I certainly think less of Virginia Tech now, as no doubt do many readers of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Thus the Virginia Tech has lost the battle.
You can claim about no one having the right to do this or that as much as you want--but this isn't about legal rights, it's about public opinion, amongst an audience that cares a lot more about academic freedom then catching every last 'punk assed hooligan'.
Regardless of what you think about their actions, this is incontestible: Virginia Tech should be embarrassed for being so stupid, for not seeing what's in their own best interest.
You could tell the press. Just because it's legal for a school to do something doesn't mean I shouldn't consider working for/attending/donating some other school because they do it. Universities care about the opinions of people other than lawyers, or at least they would if sufficiently self-interested.
You and everyone else here talking about legal rights misses the point. It does not say in this article that McCaughey is suing Virginia Tech. The point is not whether a coporation has the right to do this, but whether a UNIVERSITY should do this. (I said SHOULD, not CAN, not HAS LEGAL RIGHT TO). Is it in a university's best interest to seize faculty machines over a little graffiti? What kind of impact will that have on student/professor relationships, academic freedom or faculty recruiting? Perhaps, for the sake of the University, privacy should trump attempts to stop graffiti.
I imagine McCaughey's attitude is "well, you have a bad policy, so you deal with the bad PR". I say she did a good job.
Like it or not campus police work for the college and represent the authority of the college in these matters. I say good job.
You don't know enough to say that. There is a discrepancy in stories between the professor and the campus police--whoever is speaking mistruth did a bad job. The college doesn't have the authority to lie. And I'm not even sure that "campus police represent the college", on some campuses, they can arrest people--they're real cops. Wouldn't the 4th amendment then constrain them?
Switching gears back to legal rights, I wonder, if a student submits work to the professor, does the university automatically get the right to see that work? In a world with more and more property owned by coprorations and governments, isn't it time to reevaluate this "Employers right to access company hardware trumps any privacy for the employee" rule?
Globalism, whether corporate-oriented or not, is always the enemy of democracy, simply because different democracies will always decide things differently, which is incompatible with global lawmaking. Anyone who claims people are confusing gloablism with "corporatism" is the only one confused--corporations don't matter. The issue is global control vs. local and democratic control, not corporations vs. governments.
Whatever you do, don't let globalism seduce you with, "Well, gee, maybe a world government will make everyone use MY solutions to global social problems!" Because, being that there are so many solutions proposed, the chance of that happening is nil.
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