And if a "citizen" through acts of collusion with a member of the federal legislature attempts to have a law passed which fundamentally damages the national infrastructure and security, the rights of the country's citizens, and the ability for millions of businesses to rightfully function, then that "Citizen" has committed a crime against the nation (corporation or not) and the representatives that have colluded with that citizen should be censured and if necessary charged with criminal offense.
Time and time again, the arguments presented by the media have proven to be hollow, without basis in fact, and utterly grounded in the need to lay white knuckled fists on all intellectual property (including that which does not belong to them.) This is offensive at best and almost certainly should be considered illegal. Its time to wake up. You can't monopolize other peoples work anymore, and get away with it. There are simply too many ways to circumvent you. You are no longer significant in this equation. You better hustle up a new way to get relevant, or prepare yourself to go the way of buggy-whips and whale bone corsets.
For the love of all that's holy, please get the bankers and lawyers out of entertainment. They've been screwing it up for years and now they're trying drag the whole world into the black hole they've created. Just do us all a favor and go away please.
I'm sorry you can't use "Mein Kampf" as your standard measure, at least not as a measure for political center. Do you realize, that compared to the political norm that today, Ronald Reagan would have been considered a hippie. Coming out as a click head just informs me that associated yourself with a man whose brain is inversely proportional to his mouth. Sadly the world is rife with them (conservative and liberal.)
TIME magazine has one of the most illustrious histories of any publication in this country. The fact that it has degenerated into its current state is an indictment of the readership and not the publication. Its sadly had to compete with People and a host of vapid infotainment publications that has slowly bled it of its once famous gravitas. The historic images, classic images of the depression, VE Day in New York city, the launch of the Saturn V and man's first landing on the moon, the first ever images of the human embryo developing, the stories of the lives and times of people of the day from a committedly neutral editorial point of view. These were TIMEs bread and butter. I'll bet you're one of those guys who thinks that PBS news is a commie plot, yes? No?
That's saddest thing of all. A publication that tells the straight honest truth, without injecting a spin, or supporting a political view favoring a multinational corporate conglomerate (did I just see a FOX?), or even a publication that doesn't pander to a mouth breathing, knuckle dragging populace, is no longer relevant. Its an anachronism, pushed out by the serial brain farts emanating from Twitter. Its gorgeously rendered images displaced by a continuous flood of crappy, blurry, cell phone snap shots. I know, its a romantic delusion, all things must pass. It just saddens me that the foolish, ignorant, or profoundly irreverent among us, have eroded the beautiful and genteel things in life, and replaced them with fart jokes and MREs (I guess one leads to the other.)
I for one hope TIME hangs around for a while, maybe even finds its way back to greatness. Its a hope.
Its called simple economics. Provide clean, healthy, drug and disease free prostitutes in a crime free, regulated environment and Johns will flood there especially if the price is reasonable (which it will be if the prostitutes only have to work for themselves.) The market for illegal prostitution would almost certainly dry up, forcing pimps into another line of business.
As for slavery, there are places all over the world where women are kidnapped and made drug addicts to keep them under control. You are right, that many women choose this lifestyle because its the best they're going to do under their personal life circumstances and most of their alternatives are dark and sad. That doesn't make them slaves, but it is a problem, on dozens of levels. From the spread of disease to the funding of international organized crime, this is a trade that destroys our humanity and undermines the societies it invades.
As well, significant number of sex slaves are children. Adults from the all over the western world go to the far east to trade in child sex slavery. This is a practice that should result in the harshest of punishments, particularly from the government officials who profit from the trade.
Yes, yes, I know. Everyone knows why there are women at Google. Its their language and parsing skills. That big fat corpus collosum women have between their brain hemispheres just makes them inherently better language machines than men. Honestly though, I'd say that the skill makes them useful for more than just one thing. Yes?
Apparently you've never seen an episode of scared straight... with your free rent, free meals, and health care comes the right to be menaced, traded for a pack of cigarettes, raped repeatedly, beaten, killed and forced to join a prison gang for some small modicum of security. Of course if you're lucky you break federal law and end up in a club fed (especially if your crime was white collar and you helped the Fed by turning states evidence.) However, most go to state pens which for the most part are brutal, nasty places. where no sane person would want to set foot without an M-1 tank to even the score.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of bad people are in prison, and my sympathy and compassion are hard pressed when I hold them up against their victims. That said, we don't separate kids from adults, minor offenders from hard core offenders, in short, or any number of other things to reduce recidivism and promote a prison environment that is both humane and efficient at protecting society from its dregs while actively rehabilitating those it can.
The point is to show up bright and early with your toothbrush in hand, wave it high at all the neighbors and mayhaps a few of them will also arrive with whatever brushes they have. You know, start something. Begin a movement. Before long, the mansion is looking pretty spiffy.
Perhaps even Google's users will feel compelled to toss their two bits in to see what kind of difference it would make. Two bits, that's a quarter ($0.25 US), If everyone on the planet that uses Google shot in 25 cents, per day for let's say a week. Google could raise billions to stop slavery. Anything is possible, and when I say possible I don't mean like perhaps, maybe some day, but like the opportunity exists here and now for people of conscience and compassion to make a real difference in the world. All because Google decided to toss its two bits into a pot called "End Human Trafficking". Bravo, good job, keep going!
Yeah, he is a person. I bumped into him just the other day down on Castro st. in Mountain View. We were in a pub, drinking a pint, the door opened and suddenly there he was, so we invited him over to our table. The rainbow Google glasses were a wee bit odd, but he seemed like a genuinely pleasant fellow. Really bright, knew a lot about almost everything. We all left together, he hopped into his sports car... it was blinding! All that Chrome!
There should be a bluetooth device in every car that deactivates the phone, and causes it to play a message; "Sorry the person you're trying to contact is driving. Please try again when your call won't impact the safety of your recipient and others on the road." There should be an over-ride switch for maybe of a few medical specialties and certain critical management professional (i.e. life and death matters demanding continuous communication.)
Automate, don't legislate. Build the world to work the way you want it to, and eliminate the stupid stuff. People aren't bad, they're just lazy and stupid (its part of the genome.) So until you breed it out, account for the stupidity and make the infrastructure produce the desired results. This is the basic premise of Singapore, and its been working very well there (at least in the sense that people are for the most part, secure, healthy, employed and free to pursue interests that don't impinge on the well being of others.)
When the people whose job it is to create law that serves "ALL AMERICANS" are pandering for fat executive positions from the very people they should be regulating, there is no possibility of equitable law being written or enforced.
It is time to separate government and corporation, and change the laws that define corporation and "Human Beings". We can expect nothing but corporate slavery and the continued erosion of our human rights as long as corporations have the power to create laws in their favor.
This is a perfect example. Marilyn Monroe, one of the sexiest ladies that ever lived and a sex icon to this day,weighed over 160 lbs. That used to be perfectly normal. The ideal standard today is so bone thin that women have two choices... anorexia or giving up... there is no middle ground any more. Look at all the fashion models, human coat hangers, stick people, a life support system for bones.
Then you foist a fast food diet on people, and you're screwed. Ever see what they feed kids at school cafeterias? Why is it that when guys look at girls, the girls have to conform to some insane idea of beauty and physical form, and the same guys don't just have muffin tops, they look like hot air balloons at the belt line. Tell you what, when those same guys stop swilling beer and munching potato chips, those girls will stop sneaking ice cream.
Here's the stupid part. The human body is designed to get fat. Its because we all descended from folks who survived famines and disasters. The way they did it was they put weight on when times were good. Now there are no famines and we just balloon up. Worse, our food producers manipulate our genetic hunger for sweet and salty to grow their bottom line. Our society is not geared to support people with a normal weight. How many food commercials do your see a day? How many food billboards do you see on the road to work every day? How many fast food places do you pass driving around.
If it were a matter of just will power, there would be no fat people, nobody wants to look or feel that way. Criminalizing it with discrimination, stigma, and despotic abuse isn't the answer either. We need to move our culture as a whole to state of healthy and happy. Stop looking at one another as a mark to be taken, used, and sucked dry financially. Its time for us to take care of one another and that begins by getting honest about ourselves and how we choose to relate to one another.
If they can virtually display the clothing on "Perfect" models, then it should be trivial using a free version of something like DAZ 3D to take the clothing model and place it on a proper model of the buyer. What we need is a simple scanner in every shopping mall where a person can simply step in and get scanned and what pops out is a fully morphed model of you, which can now be used for buying clothes that will actually fit, and look good on you. In fact at $5-10 a head for scanning, this itself could be a great little business for a mall kiosk. Sell the clothing modeling software to all the clothing manufacturers and a simple viewer to any clothes shopper. People could send their models to friend and family. Imagine no more returns, the time savings alone could streamline the economy by billions of wasted dollars of time and effort.
There's a Levis store in the mid-west that will scan you, and a robot will cut and sew you a pair of perfect fitting jeans in just minutes. This would be an example of technology that doesn't need to judge people, it could just serve them, exactly as they already are.
Rather than making people crazy about trying to conform to some "brain damaged, impossible ideal", make the technology empower each of us to look and feel as good as we possibly can. This is good for people, its good for business and its good for society.
Despotic... yes?... no?... We only do surveillance in the name of the baby Jebus and the sanctity of apple pie. In fact its not even surveillance... we only watch the little brown people because we care... and we hug them with our laser guided missiles.
No, no, you're thinking lawyers... You sprinkle holy water on a banker and the place where his heart should be explodes in a rain of gold coins. Sprinkling holy water on a politician, now that is the best show in town... the head pops out, spins 7 times then shouts every lie it ever uttered backwards at the top of its lungs.
"And not content with that, with our hands behind our backs, We pull Jesus from a hat, Get into that! Get into that!" -- Karnevil 9 1st Impressions Part 1
Put links to founders of the "Middle East Spring" movement. Add virtual links to American and European Persian supporters and business people. links to leaders in the American Muslim movement. Make this resource a combination; "Open Hand", "Information Clearing House" for liberal and moderate Persian ideology, A celebration of Persian culture and a clear commitment from the west to be ready for and open to dialog to empower the future of a free, democratic and peaceful Iran.
Of course at the same time, we need to have "Come home to Moses" talk with Israel about changing their stance to one of causing peace in the Middle East instead of undermining it. There are so many brilliant Israeli people, who want an end to hostility, and are more than willing to work out coexistence. The ongoing growth of illegal settlements only destroy options and nail the future to rails that lead to inevitable violence and ultimately the genocide of Palestine. Certainly there must be a better answer.
Iran has incredible resources, and amazing people. If we could only convince the population to pull it back from theocracy, its future would be incredibly bright.
Actually what you say used to be true. Now the only classes that receives the governments benefit are those of wealth and power. There's been a steady process over the last 15 years to criminalize poverty and cut spending on government programs that support or protect the poor. Worse, the only programs designed to elevate the poor into the middle class (educational programs) have been gutted and the programs designed to ensure health and adequate nutrition for poor children have been eroded into virtual nonexistence.
There are still the entitlement programs SSI and Medicare, but with the recent Super-committee failure, resulting cuts in both are going to put millions of elderly on fixed incomes in jeopardy of losing their homes, their health and over the next few years threaten millions with the specter of serious poverty. As you say, the wealthy who don't need these benefits continue to receive them in spite of the continued drain on our depleted economy.
We live in paradoxical times. As the rate of change accelerates the need for making careful long term choices grows ever more important. Our society is in the state of perturbation (like everything else including the environment), we make one knee-jerk response after another and take no responsibility for the social forces or primal human drives the got us here. We need to manage greed. We need to enlighten ignorance and we need to put our best and brightest to the task of designing a future worth living in for all of us. It is abundantly clear that those who currently have the reins of our destiny have neither a vision for the future nor even a real capacity to manage even their basest drives. Humanity deserves better.
Design a platform composed from the ground up as a collection of clean, interlocking modular blocks, Those blocks are designed to allow the developer to choose from a wide range of functionality and would be designed to make platform extensibility a natural process. As the library of functionality grew, 99% of the time you could just pull a few blocks out, connect them and you'd be off to the races. If you needed anything new or particularly esoteric, you could just create a new block, and when done add it to the library so others could enjoy the fruits of your labor in the future (as you enjoyed theirs now.)
I'm tired of looking at 20 different systems with 20 different sets of advantages and disadvantages. Make the app platform core module uber-tight and way fast (maybe something LISPish.) Create a simple abstraction module that provided a smooth and consistent interface so library modules could easily be written in or ported to any popular language. Of course there would be the classes of modules to support various file types and interactions, network protocols and interaction, maybe natural language or device dependent smart formatting, you could start with all kinds of goodies in the cupboard. Build the thing from the ground up to sit on a hardware abstraction layer that allows the application to leverage any and all hardware and network resources available to it. This would allow you to tune the beasty to its selected environment without the need of screwing with the platform engines configuration.
Is it just me, or isn't there now sufficient experience and information available both from the "using end" and the "designing end" to build a platform that is both flexible enough to assimilate new technology, fully utilize existing technology and provide basic services that most of us seem to be asking for on fairly regular basis. I'm not interested in religious wars. I just want to be able to slap something together without getting a doctorate in the silly thing or go through a 2 year learning curve because the tech keeps changing under my feet.
Then again maybe I'm just pissing and moaning to myself and a holy grail is just a silly myth. I'd be interested to see how others feel?
The problem is that besides the fact that you might gain a little land in the extreme latitudes, you render huge regions in the tropical and temperate zones as dessert. The net loss of viable/arrible land for human habitat and development would be mind boggling. Anyone in extreme climates who thinks we should go through the kind of warming being described here, for their own benefit, at the detriment to billions of others living in more central latitudes is a shortsighted despot.
Slashdot Mirror
And if a "citizen" through acts of collusion with a member of the federal legislature attempts to have a law passed which fundamentally damages the national infrastructure and security, the rights of the country's citizens, and the ability for millions of businesses to rightfully function, then that "Citizen" has committed a crime against the nation (corporation or not) and the representatives that have colluded with that citizen should be censured and if necessary charged with criminal offense.
Time and time again, the arguments presented by the media have proven to be hollow, without basis in fact, and utterly grounded in the need to lay white knuckled fists on all intellectual property (including that which does not belong to them.) This is offensive at best and almost certainly should be considered illegal. Its time to wake up. You can't monopolize other peoples work anymore, and get away with it. There are simply too many ways to circumvent you. You are no longer significant in this equation. You better hustle up a new way to get relevant, or prepare yourself to go the way of buggy-whips and whale bone corsets.
For the love of all that's holy, please get the bankers and lawyers out of entertainment. They've been screwing it up for years and now they're trying drag the whole world into the black hole they've created. Just do us all a favor and go away please.
In the same way that cyanide is a cure for over-eating... it just has side effects.
I'm sorry you can't use "Mein Kampf" as your standard measure, at least not as a measure for political center. Do you realize, that compared to the political norm that today, Ronald Reagan would have been considered a hippie. Coming out as a click head just informs me that associated yourself with a man whose brain is inversely proportional to his mouth. Sadly the world is rife with them (conservative and liberal.)
TIME magazine has one of the most illustrious histories of any publication in this country. The fact that it has degenerated into its current state is an indictment of the readership and not the publication. Its sadly had to compete with People and a host of vapid infotainment publications that has slowly bled it of its once famous gravitas. The historic images, classic images of the depression, VE Day in New York city, the launch of the Saturn V and man's first landing on the moon, the first ever images of the human embryo developing, the stories of the lives and times of people of the day from a committedly neutral editorial point of view. These were TIMEs bread and butter. I'll bet you're one of those guys who thinks that PBS news is a commie plot, yes? No?
That's saddest thing of all. A publication that tells the straight honest truth, without injecting a spin, or supporting a political view favoring a multinational corporate conglomerate (did I just see a FOX?), or even a publication that doesn't pander to a mouth breathing, knuckle dragging populace, is no longer relevant. Its an anachronism, pushed out by the serial brain farts emanating from Twitter. Its gorgeously rendered images displaced by a continuous flood of crappy, blurry, cell phone snap shots. I know, its a romantic delusion, all things must pass. It just saddens me that the foolish, ignorant, or profoundly irreverent among us, have eroded the beautiful and genteel things in life, and replaced them with fart jokes and MREs (I guess one leads to the other.)
I for one hope TIME hangs around for a while, maybe even finds its way back to greatness. Its a hope.
Its called simple economics. Provide clean, healthy, drug and disease free prostitutes in a crime free, regulated environment and Johns will flood there especially if the price is reasonable (which it will be if the prostitutes only have to work for themselves.) The market for illegal prostitution would almost certainly dry up, forcing pimps into another line of business.
As for slavery, there are places all over the world where women are kidnapped and made drug addicts to keep them under control. You are right, that many women choose this lifestyle because its the best they're going to do under their personal life circumstances and most of their alternatives are dark and sad. That doesn't make them slaves, but it is a problem, on dozens of levels. From the spread of disease to the funding of international organized crime, this is a trade that destroys our humanity and undermines the societies it invades.
As well, significant number of sex slaves are children. Adults from the all over the western world go to the far east to trade in child sex slavery. This is a practice that should result in the harshest of punishments, particularly from the government officials who profit from the trade.
You're mistaking the women at Google for your Mom... a common mistake of the young and pimply... most cooks are men. Go figure.
Yes, yes, I know. Everyone knows why there are women at Google. Its their language and parsing skills. That big fat corpus collosum women have between their brain hemispheres just makes them inherently better language machines than men. Honestly though, I'd say that the skill makes them useful for more than just one thing. Yes?
Indeed, the plight of young engineers at Google having to perform sex acts is utterly appalling and must end immediately!
Apparently you've never seen an episode of scared straight... with your free rent, free meals, and health care comes the right to be menaced, traded for a pack of cigarettes, raped repeatedly, beaten, killed and forced to join a prison gang for some small modicum of security. Of course if you're lucky you break federal law and end up in a club fed (especially if your crime was white collar and you helped the Fed by turning states evidence.) However, most go to state pens which for the most part are brutal, nasty places. where no sane person would want to set foot without an M-1 tank to even the score.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of bad people are in prison, and my sympathy and compassion are hard pressed when I hold them up against their victims. That said, we don't separate kids from adults, minor offenders from hard core offenders, in short, or any number of other things to reduce recidivism and promote a prison environment that is both humane and efficient at protecting society from its dregs while actively rehabilitating those it can.
The point is to show up bright and early with your toothbrush in hand, wave it high at all the neighbors and mayhaps a few of them will also arrive with whatever brushes they have. You know, start something. Begin a movement. Before long, the mansion is looking pretty spiffy.
Perhaps even Google's users will feel compelled to toss their two bits in to see what kind of difference it would make. Two bits, that's a quarter ($0.25 US), If everyone on the planet that uses Google shot in 25 cents, per day for let's say a week. Google could raise billions to stop slavery. Anything is possible, and when I say possible I don't mean like perhaps, maybe some day, but like the opportunity exists here and now for people of conscience and compassion to make a real difference in the world. All because Google decided to toss its two bits into a pot called "End Human Trafficking". Bravo, good job, keep going!
Yeah, he is a person. I bumped into him just the other day down on Castro st. in Mountain View. We were in a pub, drinking a pint, the door opened and suddenly there he was, so we invited him over to our table. The rainbow Google glasses were a wee bit odd, but he seemed like a genuinely pleasant fellow. Really bright, knew a lot about almost everything. We all left together, he hopped into his sports car... it was blinding! All that Chrome!
Yeah, his hair and teeth fly out so fast that they can injure you!!!
There should be a bluetooth device in every car that deactivates the phone, and causes it to play a message; "Sorry the person you're trying to contact is driving. Please try again when your call won't impact the safety of your recipient and others on the road." There should be an over-ride switch for maybe of a few medical specialties and certain critical management professional (i.e. life and death matters demanding continuous communication.)
Automate, don't legislate. Build the world to work the way you want it to, and eliminate the stupid stuff. People aren't bad, they're just lazy and stupid (its part of the genome.) So until you breed it out, account for the stupidity and make the infrastructure produce the desired results. This is the basic premise of Singapore, and its been working very well there (at least in the sense that people are for the most part, secure, healthy, employed and free to pursue interests that don't impinge on the well being of others.)
Building routers 1 part at a time...
When the people whose job it is to create law that serves "ALL AMERICANS" are pandering for fat executive positions from the very people they should be regulating, there is no possibility of equitable law being written or enforced.
It is time to separate government and corporation, and change the laws that define corporation and "Human Beings". We can expect nothing but corporate slavery and the continued erosion of our human rights as long as corporations have the power to create laws in their favor.
And you smell like lamb chops!!!
This is a perfect example. Marilyn Monroe, one of the sexiest ladies that ever lived and a sex icon to this day,weighed over 160 lbs. That used to be perfectly normal. The ideal standard today is so bone thin that women have two choices... anorexia or giving up... there is no middle ground any more. Look at all the fashion models, human coat hangers, stick people, a life support system for bones.
Then you foist a fast food diet on people, and you're screwed. Ever see what they feed kids at school cafeterias? Why is it that when guys look at girls, the girls have to conform to some insane idea of beauty and physical form, and the same guys don't just have muffin tops, they look like hot air balloons at the belt line. Tell you what, when those same guys stop swilling beer and munching potato chips, those girls will stop sneaking ice cream.
Here's the stupid part. The human body is designed to get fat. Its because we all descended from folks who survived famines and disasters. The way they did it was they put weight on when times were good. Now there are no famines and we just balloon up. Worse, our food producers manipulate our genetic hunger for sweet and salty to grow their bottom line. Our society is not geared to support people with a normal weight. How many food commercials do your see a day? How many food billboards do you see on the road to work every day? How many fast food places do you pass driving around.
If it were a matter of just will power, there would be no fat people, nobody wants to look or feel that way. Criminalizing it with discrimination, stigma, and despotic abuse isn't the answer either. We need to move our culture as a whole to state of healthy and happy. Stop looking at one another as a mark to be taken, used, and sucked dry financially. Its time for us to take care of one another and that begins by getting honest about ourselves and how we choose to relate to one another.
If they can virtually display the clothing on "Perfect" models, then it should be trivial using a free version of something like DAZ 3D to take the clothing model and place it on a proper model of the buyer. What we need is a simple scanner in every shopping mall where a person can simply step in and get scanned and what pops out is a fully morphed model of you, which can now be used for buying clothes that will actually fit, and look good on you. In fact at $5-10 a head for scanning, this itself could be a great little business for a mall kiosk. Sell the clothing modeling software to all the clothing manufacturers and a simple viewer to any clothes shopper. People could send their models to friend and family. Imagine no more returns, the time savings alone could streamline the economy by billions of wasted dollars of time and effort.
There's a Levis store in the mid-west that will scan you, and a robot will cut and sew you a pair of perfect fitting jeans in just minutes. This would be an example of technology that doesn't need to judge people, it could just serve them, exactly as they already are.
Rather than making people crazy about trying to conform to some "brain damaged, impossible ideal", make the technology empower each of us to look and feel as good as we possibly can. This is good for people, its good for business and its good for society.
Despotic... yes?... no?... We only do surveillance in the name of the baby Jebus and the sanctity of apple pie. In fact its not even surveillance... we only watch the little brown people because we care... and we hug them with our laser guided missiles.
In a related scandal, Electronic Arts is being investigated for the use of virtual steroids in its pro sports game line.
OOOOHHhhh! You looked at it! Its dead!
No, no, you're thinking lawyers... You sprinkle holy water on a banker and the place where his heart should be explodes in a rain of gold coins. Sprinkling holy water on a politician, now that is the best show in town... the head pops out, spins 7 times then shouts every lie it ever uttered backwards at the top of its lungs.
"And not content with that, with our hands behind our backs, We pull Jesus from a hat, Get into that! Get into that!" -- Karnevil 9 1st Impressions Part 1
Put links to founders of the "Middle East Spring" movement. Add virtual links to American and European Persian supporters and business people. links to leaders in the American Muslim movement. Make this resource a combination; "Open Hand", "Information Clearing House" for liberal and moderate Persian ideology, A celebration of Persian culture and a clear commitment from the west to be ready for and open to dialog to empower the future of a free, democratic and peaceful Iran.
Of course at the same time, we need to have "Come home to Moses" talk with Israel about changing their stance to one of causing peace in the Middle East instead of undermining it. There are so many brilliant Israeli people, who want an end to hostility, and are more than willing to work out coexistence. The ongoing growth of illegal settlements only destroy options and nail the future to rails that lead to inevitable violence and ultimately the genocide of Palestine. Certainly there must be a better answer.
Iran has incredible resources, and amazing people. If we could only convince the population to pull it back from theocracy, its future would be incredibly bright.
Actually what you say used to be true. Now the only classes that receives the governments benefit are those of wealth and power. There's been a steady process over the last 15 years to criminalize poverty and cut spending on government programs that support or protect the poor. Worse, the only programs designed to elevate the poor into the middle class (educational programs) have been gutted and the programs designed to ensure health and adequate nutrition for poor children have been eroded into virtual nonexistence.
There are still the entitlement programs SSI and Medicare, but with the recent Super-committee failure, resulting cuts in both are going to put millions of elderly on fixed incomes in jeopardy of losing their homes, their health and over the next few years threaten millions with the specter of serious poverty. As you say, the wealthy who don't need these benefits continue to receive them in spite of the continued drain on our depleted economy.
We live in paradoxical times. As the rate of change accelerates the need for making careful long term choices grows ever more important. Our society is in the state of perturbation (like everything else including the environment), we make one knee-jerk response after another and take no responsibility for the social forces or primal human drives the got us here. We need to manage greed. We need to enlighten ignorance and we need to put our best and brightest to the task of designing a future worth living in for all of us. It is abundantly clear that those who currently have the reins of our destiny have neither a vision for the future nor even a real capacity to manage even their basest drives. Humanity deserves better.
Design a platform composed from the ground up as a collection of clean, interlocking modular blocks, Those blocks are designed to allow the developer to choose from a wide range of functionality and would be designed to make platform extensibility a natural process. As the library of functionality grew, 99% of the time you could just pull a few blocks out, connect them and you'd be off to the races. If you needed anything new or particularly esoteric, you could just create a new block, and when done add it to the library so others could enjoy the fruits of your labor in the future (as you enjoyed theirs now.)
I'm tired of looking at 20 different systems with 20 different sets of advantages and disadvantages. Make the app platform core module uber-tight and way fast (maybe something LISPish.) Create a simple abstraction module that provided a smooth and consistent interface so library modules could easily be written in or ported to any popular language. Of course there would be the classes of modules to support various file types and interactions, network protocols and interaction, maybe natural language or device dependent smart formatting, you could start with all kinds of goodies in the cupboard. Build the thing from the ground up to sit on a hardware abstraction layer that allows the application to leverage any and all hardware and network resources available to it. This would allow you to tune the beasty to its selected environment without the need of screwing with the platform engines configuration.
Is it just me, or isn't there now sufficient experience and information available both from the "using end" and the "designing end" to build a platform that is both flexible enough to assimilate new technology, fully utilize existing technology and provide basic services that most of us seem to be asking for on fairly regular basis. I'm not interested in religious wars. I just want to be able to slap something together without getting a doctorate in the silly thing or go through a 2 year learning curve because the tech keeps changing under my feet.
Then again maybe I'm just pissing and moaning to myself and a holy grail is just a silly myth. I'd be interested to see how others feel?
The problem is that besides the fact that you might gain a little land in the extreme latitudes, you render huge regions in the tropical and temperate zones as dessert. The net loss of viable/arrible land for human habitat and development would be mind boggling. Anyone in extreme climates who thinks we should go through the kind of warming being described here, for their own benefit, at the detriment to billions of others living in more central latitudes is a shortsighted despot.