Logically, you're not capable of voting if you're dead - your statement is patriotic but makes no sense.
Yes, but your progeny, your fellow countrymen, and their progeny may be able to vote because of your death. Or do you think that the world ends when you die?
And the explanation why we can do it just like that is that our brains are neural nets, and this is the kind of things neural nets can do. You can't conclude that brains are neural nets because neural nets can do some of the same things that a brain can do. That's like saying that a helicopter is a type of hummingbird, because hummingbirds can fly forward, backward, up, and down, and hover, and helicopters do those same things also. The end result is the same, but hummingbirds and helicopters use different mechanisms. Brains and neural nets do the same kinds of things, but we can't conclude that therefore the brain is a neural net. The evidence will be when we find an organic structure that is a neural net in the brain.
This is part of the total awareness information project. I just wrote about it for the "FBI data-mining grocery card purchases" submission today, so here is a link.
Shortly after 9/11, Admiral Poindexter announced a plan to gather *all* electronic data ( phone calls, internet traffic, email, credit card purchases, bank records, court records, everything ) into a gigantic database. There was some public outcry, so the project was nixed, but the wikipedia article shows that many of the functions were farmed out to smaller projects and agencies. Earlier the former Quest CEO said that they were approached by the government to do blanket wire-taps for *all* of their phone traffic months before 9/11.
It's no longer paranoia to say that they are watching us. They are tracking absolutely everything we do.
Folks, don't be surprised. We were told about this back in 2002, when Admiral Poindexter announced the Total Information Awareness program. It was to be a giant database of all electronic records of all Americans -- your credit card records, grocery discount card purchases, phone calls, tax records, internet traffic, bank records, medical records, court records, everything. The logo of the program was the All-Seeing Eye on top of a pyramid, beaming its gaze over the United States. The motto was "Scientia est Poder", "Knowledge is Power". ( Are we to conclude then that total information awareness then means complete and absolute power? )
Because of public outcry, the project was supposedly canceled. But in reality, the various functions were just farmed out to different entities -- see the wikipedia article.
Now we have a guy testifying before congress that the NSA monitors all internet traffic. The former CEO of Qwest communications testified that the government asked them to monitor all phone calls months before 9/11. Wayne Madsen, former CIA agent, claims that recent theft of personal information from laptops is a black op to populate the TIA database ( he maintains a list of database thefts on the pay section of his site. ).
This is just like when Nazi Germany started keeping records of the entire population so they knew where the Jews were when it came time to round them all up. They were assisted by the lasted record-keeping machinery and techniques from IBM. Now the US government is keeping track of everyone using the latest database technology.
It isn't surprising that monkeys can understand an abstraction like 'numbers' - a brain is a neural network, and neural nets are 'abstraction engines' by definition. Well, then the question arises is how do monkeys evolve understanding of 'number' in the abstract, while other organisms with similar or larger brains show no such ability? How do we measure the power or ability of a neural network and compare that to the power and structure of an organic brain? If ape brains are powerful enough to understand number, why haven't they developed some sort of sign language?
For me, I don't buy the theory that an organic brain or mind is anything like a computer or a neural network. All of the devices we have created using math and logic seem to be good at solving the kinds of problems that math and logic were designed for, such as solving math problems and playing chess. However, simple things that almost any organism can do, such as navigate a path in the woods or in a field, remain a serious challenge. If neural networks are so good at recognizing patterns, we should have pretty good face recognition, voice recognition, or dictation software.
It's almost like that organic brains a computers are at odds with each other -- things that are simple for organic brains, like navigating a 6-legged organism on a plant, are hard for computers, and things that are easy for computers, such as factoring large numbers, are hard for computers. Or, at least, the abilities of computers seem to be a small subset of the ability of an organic brain.
I think there's one other factor -- the common user has lost their implicit, naive trust of Microsoft. For a long time, average computer users believed in Microsoft the way they believed in Ford or GM. Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows XP were all part of the steady march of technological progress that was improving American lives. People upgraded simply to upgrade. After all, it's an upgrade -- it has to be good, right? Then, at some time from Windows ME to Windows XP, finally culminating in Vista, people started picking up on the fact that the user interfaces from Windows 95 to Windows Vista are basically identical -- yes, there are under the hood upgrades, and better support for newer hardware, but basically, it's the same user interface paradigm -- and that MS hasn't released a steady stream of improved products. Their quality has variable. Now MS is starting to look like a clunky American car manufacturer who continues to hang on despite cranking out substandard products.
Is this really the case in the US? Yes, this really is the case. I'm related to some of these people. I've spoken with some others in my personal life, and heard yet more call in to local radio shows.
There is a small percentage of the population that honestly believes that there are waves of Jihadists who are somehow going to come over here and start beheading people and turning every major metropolis into downtown Baghdad. We are in a clash of civilization; Muslims will not rest until we are either converted to Islam or beheaded; therefore, we must completely destroy them before they destroy us.
So Iran is an example of CIA success? Didn't they help get the Shaw into power in the 50s?
Were you in a coma at the end of the 70s, beginning of the 80s? Well, I was 5 in 1983...
Vietnam and Greece would be two examples of CIA blowback, but I'm sure there are more. I can't think of any CIA backed governments in existence at this time. OK, so their guys don't have staying power, but they do seem to be capable of overthrowing governments, right? I didn't claim that they could keep their guys in power.
Which might be a silver lining in the next few years...
Can you refer me to some cases where their guy didn't get in? I'm aware of several cases where the guy they supported ultimately won ( mostly in South America, but Iran also comes to mind ), but I haven't yet heard about their failures, aside from the Bay of Pigs.
Okay, but don't they have a rather good record of overthrowing democratically elected governments abroad? What paltry pile of questionable intelligence were they acting on then, and how much better do they have it now?
Let's not lose focus on what this is. The phone companies are turning over a few calls or switching over a few conversations to the NSA. This is the Total Information Awareness project. The phone companies are turning over *all* records of *all* conversation to some agency or agencies that is creating a aggregate database of all information on all Americans. All phone records, all credit card records, all legal records, school records, anything and everything electronic. Not surprisingly, the original logo for this agency/project was the All Seeing Eye scanning the United States.
This project was proposed shortly after 9/11, and supposedly scuttled after public outcry. But wikipedia claims that the various functions were farmed out to different agencies and projects.
They could be normal, large dragonflies. I'm from Ohio, and I'm into bugs. When I first traveled into southern states, I was surprised about how large the insects were. They were either the same bug that got larger because of a longer growing season, or a larger species.
If these protesters traveled hundreds of miles south to protest, they may not exactly be used to the local fauna.
My thought was that these people are probably witnessing cicadas. They are loud, big, and have a large silhouette. They make themselves known. But, although they are a relatively common bug, your average person, who takes no notice of insects on a daily basis, is totally ignorant about what they look like, and probably couldn't identify one, either by sound or by sight.
It would be interesting to know if this protest happened when cicadas are "in season" in that area.
Don't get me wrong -- I want to enjoy space, I love astronomy and astrophysics.
Unfortunately, I don't think we can do both. Politicians have only a limited attention span and a limited budget. The rainforest is burning right now. The coral reefs are dying right now. They won't have the biodiversity in 100 years that they do right now. Mars, the moon, the stars, and all the other planets will be basically the same in 1,000 years as they are now.
And if any of these events really do threaten our existence as a species, there's no way we can survive in space. The chances of a meteor strike are millions of times less likely than the south American Rain forest being mostly gone in 100 years. If we can't figure out how to keep ourselves alive in this garden of eden, there's no way we'll be able to do it on a lifeless, oxygenless rock in space. It's like a rich kid who has servants telling his parents, "I don't need all this crap. I can do fine on my own! I'm going to go into the desert, you know, live off the land." Good luck.
I know what I'm about to say is anathema to many geeks, but just hear me out before you open the can of napalm. With our limited budget and socio-political 'attention span', I say that research money is much better spent doing research here on earth.
Understanding the true nature of the heavens, getting off of our own planet, and traveling to the stars has been a dream of mankind probably since the beginning. But as we learn more about it, we also learn how inhospitable and impractical is it to make a living out there. The cool factor is off the scale, but the idea that we are going to colonize first our solar system, second the galaxy, seems a little bogus to me.
I don't forsee any self-sustaining extra-terrestrial colony in the near future. The moon is dead; Mars is dead; those places have nothing to eat and nothing to breath. Our closest experiment, Biosphere 2, needed imports of oxygen. The vertebrates and pollinating insects died. Any people living out in space would be totally dependent on resources constantly shipped in from the earth. Anything they might mine and ship back would be extremely unprofitable due to costs of launch and shipping. Can you imagine the cost of blasting rocks off of Mars and shipping them to Earth?
We would see a lot of cool things, learn a lot of great things, do some wonderful experiments, understand the solar system better, etc. etc., but with our limited budget, I think we might have more pressing needs.
Here on earth, we are living in a cornucopia of biodiversity. We are living in the midst of a great library of genes, compiled over the past several million years. Sadly, there is a four-alarm blaze in the library, happening right now, and we are doing very little to stop it. We won't be finding any new medicines or genes on Mars. They are already right here on earth, right under our noses, in the rainforests and deserts.
I know we need to get off this rock if we have any hope for long term survival. But I think, as Biosphere 2 showed, we also need to have an understanding of the biosphere in order to have any long-term prospects in space, especially in the case that convoys from Earth are not available. Mars and the moon will always be out there, quietly waiting for us... We are in the middle of an emergency, and those celestial bodies can wait another few centures.
Re:I've never got the point of wireless synching..
on
ZOMG New Zunes
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I stand formerly ignorant, now informed. Thank you.
Re:I've never got the point of wireless synching..
on
ZOMG New Zunes
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· Score: 1
How difficult is it to plug your player in before you go to bed and in the morning it's charged and synched. Well, it wouldn't be any more difficult, provided we actually had a combination data/power cable. But AFAIK, we don't. As it is, adding another cable increases the likelihood of having a spaghetti octopus under your desk. I don't know if the increase is logarithmic or exponential, but somebody somewhere must have done the math...
Anytime you see a reference to Einstein, or the e=mc^2 equation, there's a good chance that the exciting new technology is bunk.
. The reason the battery lasts so long is that neutron beta-decay into protons is the world's most concentrated source of electricity, truly demonstrating Einstein's theory E=MC2. Can we formalize this rule? It could be as important as Godwin's for understanding internet discourse.
Try to lose the stereotype of us Injuns sitting around in our teepees, smoking peyote...
The real reason we want federal recognition of our tribes is so that we can build some casinos and get special college tuition consideration. Yeah, and I'm the one employing stereotypes...
Would we be so quick to say "Oh well, the Jews lost out in the history of the world" as we are some tribe on an island? You seem to be putting more value on one group of people versus another. Why? Sorry, I wasn't clear in what I was trying to communicate. I'm asking why we, as a culture, put more value on certain groups of people ( say, Jews ) over others ( say, tribes in the middle of the amazon ). Personally, I think cultural extinction is bad for anyone, whether they are westerners, Native Americans, or whomever. However, I've noticed that when people say that loss of culture of, say, pacific islanders, is a natural process and there's nothing we can do about it, there is general silent agreement. But if someone were to say that the planned extermination of the Jews or the Gypsies during WWII were a natural process, that person is rightly taken to the cleaners.
When there's talk about some tribe in the jungle losing their language or becoming extinct, I often hear people say "Oh, that sucks, but they're relatively unimportant. There isn't really anything we can do. They'll just have to adapt to the modern world." However, when they story is about Hitler trying to exterminate the Jews, I never hear "Well, the Jews are relatively unimportant. If their language, culture, and religion dies, it just means they couldn't adapt to the modern world." If anyone suggests that the holocaust was inevitable, they are branded as a racist or anti-semite, and rightly so. However, when we report on the extinction of languages, a poster on slashdot says "This is a good thing", and gets modded +5.
So, it seems that as a society, we are willing to accept the annihilation of some groups as natural or inevitable, while others are great tragedies and losses to humankind, nevermind the horror that those who are being annihilated experience. Why?
the fact that the only reason there are so many different languages on earth is because of historic geographic isolation of all the different peoples. This is false. In africa, the amazon, and other places with lots of tribes and villages living close to one another, who regularly trade and intermarry, it is commonplace for a person growing up to speak five or six languages. Linguists theorize that this was the norm for human evolution, since children are so good at learning multiple languages.
When languages die out, it's because of an 'official language' that children must learn ( and learn in ) in school, and also use to interact with the government and other official entities. When children live in environments of multiple ethnicities with relatively similar levels of power, they learn many languages. When there is one dominant ethnicity and language, the members of which run the schools, government, businesses, and churches, children learn that dominant language ( and get ridiculed for speaking any of that silly country language ). The child quickly learns that speaking the dominant language means being successful, while speaking your mother tongue ( or grandmother's tongue ) means poverty and low social status ( i.e. being a 'dirty indian' or 'po white trash/black folk'). It's a matter of assimilation, not natural evolution.
Personally, I believe with projects like the OLPC, a global lingua franca will arise, or perhaps continentally regional lingua francas, for communications on the global communications network. However, people will continue to speak their native language at home. I have friends in Finland who are very conversant in 'digital english' -- written English over the internet. You would never guess they weren't English speaks from their online writings. More formal written English, not so good, and spoken English, sometimes pretty bad. However, they all continue to speak Finnish at home.
I guess it depends on which side of the extinction you are facing.
Let me put it this way: would it be a good things if most of the worlds religions are facing extinction, wouldn't that be a good thing? Less wars? If most of the world's cuisines were facing extinction, wouldn't that be a good thing? Music styles and dance?
Try chatting with a Native North American one day, and ask how they feel about the extinction of indigenous languages. Here in the United States, indigenous people suffered deliberate attempts at extermination, marginalization, and assimilation. At various times, it was illegal to speak Native languages, practice Native religions, or hold traditional dances or ceremonies, such as weddings. A lot of Native tradition have disappeared, and those that still exist are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Not many Native Americans I've spoke to are happy about the state of affairs.
Some might answer, "Oh well, that's the way things go. Who cares if we lose a culture in the middle of the amazon? In history, there are winners and losers. It sucks, but it happens." Are those people willing to say the same thing about the annihilation that Jews were facing during WWII? If Hitler had conquered the world, he may have succeeded in exterminating the Jews. Would we be so quick to say "Oh well, the Jews lost out in the history of the world" as we are some tribe on an island? Why or why not?
Slashdot Mirror
This is part of the total awareness information project. I just wrote about it for the "FBI data-mining grocery card purchases" submission today, so here is a link.
Shortly after 9/11, Admiral Poindexter announced a plan to gather *all* electronic data ( phone calls, internet traffic, email, credit card purchases, bank records, court records, everything ) into a gigantic database. There was some public outcry, so the project was nixed, but the wikipedia article shows that many of the functions were farmed out to smaller projects and agencies. Earlier the former Quest CEO said that they were approached by the government to do blanket wire-taps for *all* of their phone traffic months before 9/11.
It's no longer paranoia to say that they are watching us. They are tracking absolutely everything we do.
Folks, don't be surprised. We were told about this back in 2002, when Admiral Poindexter announced the Total Information Awareness program. It was to be a giant database of all electronic records of all Americans -- your credit card records, grocery discount card purchases, phone calls, tax records, internet traffic, bank records, medical records, court records, everything. The logo of the program was the All-Seeing Eye on top of a pyramid, beaming its gaze over the United States. The motto was "Scientia est Poder", "Knowledge is Power". ( Are we to conclude then that total information awareness then means complete and absolute power? )
.
Because of public outcry, the project was supposedly canceled. But in reality, the various functions were just farmed out to different entities -- see the wikipedia article.
Now we have a guy testifying before congress that the NSA monitors all internet traffic. The former CEO of Qwest communications testified that the government asked them to monitor all phone calls months before 9/11. Wayne Madsen, former CIA agent, claims that recent theft of personal information from laptops is a black op to populate the TIA database ( he maintains a list of database thefts on the pay section of his site. )
This is just like when Nazi Germany started keeping records of the entire population so they knew where the Jews were when it came time to round them all up. They were assisted by the lasted record-keeping machinery and techniques from IBM. Now the US government is keeping track of everyone using the latest database technology.
Check out the 10 steps to Facism that Naomi Wolf outlined in her book, "The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot". This is step #4, "Set up an internal surveillance system". It's disturbing to see how many other steps we can check off in present-day America.
For me, I don't buy the theory that an organic brain or mind is anything like a computer or a neural network. All of the devices we have created using math and logic seem to be good at solving the kinds of problems that math and logic were designed for, such as solving math problems and playing chess. However, simple things that almost any organism can do, such as navigate a path in the woods or in a field, remain a serious challenge. If neural networks are so good at recognizing patterns, we should have pretty good face recognition, voice recognition, or dictation software.
It's almost like that organic brains a computers are at odds with each other -- things that are simple for organic brains, like navigating a 6-legged organism on a plant, are hard for computers, and things that are easy for computers, such as factoring large numbers, are hard for computers. Or, at least, the abilities of computers seem to be a small subset of the ability of an organic brain.
I think there's one other factor -- the common user has lost their implicit, naive trust of Microsoft. For a long time, average computer users believed in Microsoft the way they believed in Ford or GM. Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows XP were all part of the steady march of technological progress that was improving American lives. People upgraded simply to upgrade. After all, it's an upgrade -- it has to be good, right? Then, at some time from Windows ME to Windows XP, finally culminating in Vista, people started picking up on the fact that the user interfaces from Windows 95 to Windows Vista are basically identical -- yes, there are under the hood upgrades, and better support for newer hardware, but basically, it's the same user interface paradigm -- and that MS hasn't released a steady stream of improved products. Their quality has variable. Now MS is starting to look like a clunky American car manufacturer who continues to hang on despite cranking out substandard products.
There is a small percentage of the population that honestly believes that there are waves of Jihadists who are somehow going to come over here and start beheading people and turning every major metropolis into downtown Baghdad. We are in a clash of civilization; Muslims will not rest until we are either converted to Islam or beheaded; therefore, we must completely destroy them before they destroy us.
Which might be a silver lining in the next few years...
Can you refer me to some cases where their guy didn't get in? I'm aware of several cases where the guy they supported ultimately won ( mostly in South America, but Iran also comes to mind ), but I haven't yet heard about their failures, aside from the Bay of Pigs.
Okay, but don't they have a rather good record of overthrowing democratically elected governments abroad? What paltry pile of questionable intelligence were they acting on then, and how much better do they have it now?
Let's not lose focus on what this is. The phone companies are turning over a few calls or switching over a few conversations to the NSA. This is the Total Information Awareness project. The phone companies are turning over *all* records of *all* conversation to some agency or agencies that is creating a aggregate database of all information on all Americans. All phone records, all credit card records, all legal records, school records, anything and everything electronic. Not surprisingly, the original logo for this agency/project was the All Seeing Eye scanning the United States.
This project was proposed shortly after 9/11, and supposedly scuttled after public outcry. But wikipedia claims that the various functions were farmed out to different agencies and projects.
Call me paranoid, but I think it has to do with anthrax.
Another thought occurs to me --
They could be normal, large dragonflies. I'm from Ohio, and I'm into bugs. When I first traveled into southern states, I was surprised about how large the insects were. They were either the same bug that got larger because of a longer growing season, or a larger species.
If these protesters traveled hundreds of miles south to protest, they may not exactly be used to the local fauna.
My thought was that these people are probably witnessing cicadas. They are loud, big, and have a large silhouette. They make themselves known. But, although they are a relatively common bug, your average person, who takes no notice of insects on a daily basis, is totally ignorant about what they look like, and probably couldn't identify one, either by sound or by sight.
It would be interesting to know if this protest happened when cicadas are "in season" in that area.
Don't get me wrong -- I want to enjoy space, I love astronomy and astrophysics.
Unfortunately, I don't think we can do both. Politicians have only a limited attention span and a limited budget. The rainforest is burning right now. The coral reefs are dying right now. They won't have the biodiversity in 100 years that they do right now. Mars, the moon, the stars, and all the other planets will be basically the same in 1,000 years as they are now.
And if any of these events really do threaten our existence as a species, there's no way we can survive in space. The chances of a meteor strike are millions of times less likely than the south American Rain forest being mostly gone in 100 years. If we can't figure out how to keep ourselves alive in this garden of eden, there's no way we'll be able to do it on a lifeless, oxygenless rock in space. It's like a rich kid who has servants telling his parents, "I don't need all this crap. I can do fine on my own! I'm going to go into the desert, you know, live off the land." Good luck.
I know what I'm about to say is anathema to many geeks, but just hear me out before you open the can of napalm. With our limited budget and socio-political 'attention span', I say that research money is much better spent doing research here on earth.
Understanding the true nature of the heavens, getting off of our own planet, and traveling to the stars has been a dream of mankind probably since the beginning. But as we learn more about it, we also learn how inhospitable and impractical is it to make a living out there. The cool factor is off the scale, but the idea that we are going to colonize first our solar system, second the galaxy, seems a little bogus to me.
I don't forsee any self-sustaining extra-terrestrial colony in the near future. The moon is dead; Mars is dead; those places have nothing to eat and nothing to breath. Our closest experiment, Biosphere 2, needed imports of oxygen. The vertebrates and pollinating insects died. Any people living out in space would be totally dependent on resources constantly shipped in from the earth. Anything they might mine and ship back would be extremely unprofitable due to costs of launch and shipping. Can you imagine the cost of blasting rocks off of Mars and shipping them to Earth?
We would see a lot of cool things, learn a lot of great things, do some wonderful experiments, understand the solar system better, etc. etc., but with our limited budget, I think we might have more pressing needs.
Here on earth, we are living in a cornucopia of biodiversity. We are living in the midst of a great library of genes, compiled over the past several million years. Sadly, there is a four-alarm blaze in the library, happening right now, and we are doing very little to stop it. We won't be finding any new medicines or genes on Mars. They are already right here on earth, right under our noses, in the rainforests and deserts.
I know we need to get off this rock if we have any hope for long term survival. But I think, as Biosphere 2 showed, we also need to have an understanding of the biosphere in order to have any long-term prospects in space, especially in the case that convoys from Earth are not available. Mars and the moon will always be out there, quietly waiting for us... We are in the middle of an emergency, and those celestial bodies can wait another few centures.
I stand formerly ignorant, now informed. Thank you.
The real reason we want federal recognition of our tribes is so that we can build some casinos and get special college tuition consideration. Yeah, and I'm the one employing stereotypes...
When there's talk about some tribe in the jungle losing their language or becoming extinct, I often hear people say "Oh, that sucks, but they're relatively unimportant. There isn't really anything we can do. They'll just have to adapt to the modern world." However, when they story is about Hitler trying to exterminate the Jews, I never hear "Well, the Jews are relatively unimportant. If their language, culture, and religion dies, it just means they couldn't adapt to the modern world." If anyone suggests that the holocaust was inevitable, they are branded as a racist or anti-semite, and rightly so. However, when we report on the extinction of languages, a poster on slashdot says "This is a good thing", and gets modded +5.
So, it seems that as a society, we are willing to accept the annihilation of some groups as natural or inevitable, while others are great tragedies and losses to humankind, nevermind the horror that those who are being annihilated experience. Why?
When languages die out, it's because of an 'official language' that children must learn ( and learn in ) in school, and also use to interact with the government and other official entities. When children live in environments of multiple ethnicities with relatively similar levels of power, they learn many languages. When there is one dominant ethnicity and language, the members of which run the schools, government, businesses, and churches, children learn that dominant language ( and get ridiculed for speaking any of that silly country language ). The child quickly learns that speaking the dominant language means being successful, while speaking your mother tongue ( or grandmother's tongue ) means poverty and low social status ( i.e. being a 'dirty indian' or 'po white trash/black folk'). It's a matter of assimilation, not natural evolution.
Personally, I believe with projects like the OLPC, a global lingua franca will arise, or perhaps continentally regional lingua francas, for communications on the global communications network. However, people will continue to speak their native language at home. I have friends in Finland who are very conversant in 'digital english' -- written English over the internet. You would never guess they weren't English speaks from their online writings. More formal written English, not so good, and spoken English, sometimes pretty bad. However, they all continue to speak Finnish at home.
I guess it depends on which side of the extinction you are facing.
Let me put it this way: would it be a good things if most of the worlds religions are facing extinction, wouldn't that be a good thing? Less wars? If most of the world's cuisines were facing extinction, wouldn't that be a good thing? Music styles and dance?
Try chatting with a Native North American one day, and ask how they feel about the extinction of indigenous languages. Here in the United States, indigenous people suffered deliberate attempts at extermination, marginalization, and assimilation. At various times, it was illegal to speak Native languages, practice Native religions, or hold traditional dances or ceremonies, such as weddings. A lot of Native tradition have disappeared, and those that still exist are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Not many Native Americans I've spoke to are happy about the state of affairs.
Some might answer, "Oh well, that's the way things go. Who cares if we lose a culture in the middle of the amazon? In history, there are winners and losers. It sucks, but it happens." Are those people willing to say the same thing about the annihilation that Jews were facing during WWII? If Hitler had conquered the world, he may have succeeded in exterminating the Jews. Would we be so quick to say "Oh well, the Jews lost out in the history of the world" as we are some tribe on an island? Why or why not?
Would you take it over, say, Win95, 98, NT, 2000 or XP?