I don't think Totilo has really used his imagination with this one. Think about a movie about, say, an underdog football team, or a champion chess player playing a computer, or a boxer, uh... boxing.
The human drama, which is what the story is, can play itself out in the context of a game, just as it can play out in the game-like atmosphere of a business or a relationship.
In a nutshell, the story theory is that the protagonist faces a challenge that shatters his world -- he can't go back to his world they way he used to live it. Think Luke after his parents were killed by stormtroopers. He can either hook up with some crazy old man or wander around Tatooine, but he just won't be helping Uncle Owen farm moisture tomorrow.
Same thing when the star quarterback steps out onto the field for the championship game or the chess player sits down in front the the computer. They are either going to become a champion, or blow the biggest chance of their life. Either way, they can't go back to the anonymity they used to live everyday. What a better set up for the human drama?
Us here on slashdot have seen this played out a million times in almost every game. The crisis might be a little hoakey or even flat out weird -- resucing Dr. Light from Dr. Wiley, or eating all of the pellets without getting caught by a ghost. It is a challenge, and there is no rest for the protagonist. They must make their way into a brave new world.
Wars have a nasty tendency of spilling over into areas where they are not welcome.
In an ideal world, I would just like to read slashdot articles about exciting new discoveries and great new software and hardware. However, we now live in an era where science is being threatened in the school, where research grants are being cut, and scientific texts are being re-written by political hacks so that they are more friendly to administration policy. We are in a war, and we must discuss these types of issues so that we are never disallowed from discussing science *altogether*, at our leisure.
We can't just retreat into our villas, saying that the armies will never fight in our fields. We might suddenly find ourselves behind enemy lines when the enemies conquer the capital.
To get a bit more specific, Finnish and Hungarian belong to the Finno-Ugric language family. Most of the rest of Europe speak languages in the Indo-European family.
Hungarian and Finnish are mutually unintelligible. They look pretty dissimilar in written form. The closest language to Finnish is Estonian -- I'm not sure if Estonia is considered Europe. It was part of the Soviet Union; now it is independent and a member of the EU. Finns and Estonians can *basically* understand each other and the written languages look pretty similar.
I think that the most commonly accepted theory is that the Finns are descendant from the Mongolian Huns who conquered a lot of Asia and Eastern Europe.
As far as the impact for Finns, it just makes them harder to pigeon-hole. People usually think they are just another group of Scandinavians, like Danes or Norwegians, but then they find out that they speak a totally different language. Then, people usually assume that they must be Russian or Slavic. But they aren't. They are Finnish;)
It is true that Finland has been heavily influenced by Russia and Sweden, but still they are fairly unique. It is an interesting culture.
I got modded down as 'troll' and 'offtopic' for stating this ealier, but aside from the corporate competition, there is also the social/ethnic competition between Swedes and Finns. Actually, I think it is felt more by the Finns that they are in the shadow of Sweden. Sweden ruled Finland for a long time, and Sweden is wealthier than Finland, and Finns sort of have this complex about not being wholly Scandinavian.
I am not just making this up. If you read the Finnish epic, which is said to characterize the finnish temperament, the hero Vainamoinen is actually an anti-hero. He is born old, never in his prime. One of the first stories about him is when he approaches a young bathing maiden and she runs away screaming. In the climax of the story, he rallies the troops to win back a magical device from a tribe of harpies, only to lose it in the sea during the epic battle. He's just not a winner.
The parent I posed my original topic had said that 'a better tech had come along'. What a socially naive geek perspective. Sure, new things just drop out of the sky like clockwork. People are never motivated by petty social identies, like Ohio State vs. Michigan, US vs. Canada, MS vs. Apple, Ericsson vs. Nokia, or Finland vs. Swedend.
So my votes goes for a Nokia vs. Ericsson, Finland vs. Sweden thing.
I think it says more about the Finnish/Swedish rivalry than anything else. Bluetooth was developed by Ericsson, a Swedish company, and is named for an old Danish king, Harald Bluetooth.
Nokia is a Finnish company, and the Finns sort of have a complex about not being totally Scandinavian (their language and culture, although influenced by Sweden, originated from somewhere else totally, probably the Huns way back when), and being overshadowed by Sweden, so they have to do this to over compensate.
I guess the question depends on how much value you think that campaigning brings to the constituency. If the candidate coming to your state and making a speech shortly before an election is a good thing for you, then you want more campaigning. If you are interested in the national interest as a whole, you want the candidates going to as many states as possible.
We have 50 states. No matter what system we go to, candidates will never go to Alaska or Hawaii. Too much time and money for too little votes. It's a similar problem for most other states. The US is huge and some areas are sparsely populated. We have a system that gets the candidates to the most states possible.
The reality is that if we had strictly proportional representation of the electoral college, candidates would not waste their time with the 10-12 swing states, and certainly not most other states. They would only need court votes in the densely populated NY, NY and LA, CA. So I think we have the best system, given our size, political division, and population density.
However, there is the question of whether having a candidate running around in your state giving speeches before the election really does anything at all for you. It makes sense in the case of a congressperson, but the president really do anything for constiuents in a particular locale -- that's the job of their congressperson.
It sounds like we rather need to monitor the electronic communications of our congresspeople, especially the ones who chair the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.
I have thought a lot about it. I've also traveled around the world, in a non-tourist capacity, and witnessed the reality first-hand.
If excessive taxation caused the middle class to shrink, Europe would have a small, rich, wealthy class, and throngs of poor people, and relatively unregulated, untaxed places like Africa and South America should have a burgeoning middle class.
But in fact the exact opposite is true. Places without regulation like South America have a wealthy, ruling class of a few, well-connected families. The other 95% of the population are living on the edge. It wasn't until I lived in South America that I saw homeless families -- mom, dad, and kids -- living on the streets. Until then, I had thought that a homeless person was just a crazy guy who heard voices and couldn't hold down a job.
So then in Europe, with high taxes, extensive regulation, and strong unions, we see the largest middle classes and the highest standards of living. So, the reality is the opposite of what your theory predicts. The states with the most regulation, highest taxes, and stongest unions are those with most highest per capita income and the highest standard of living.
Without government regulation, greedy wealthy people will exploit the average joe to maintain their wealth. There are good, honest rich people who want to treat people humanely and compete fairly in the marketplace. However, they are quickly outcompeted by rich people with no ethics, who have no problem bribing officials and having people killed to get what they want. You can't compete with a cheater when you are playing fairly. So what happens is that a kleptocracy arises -- the best cheaters rise to the top.
What government regulation does is keep the game fair, so that honest players have a chance at winning. It's not a perfect solution, but it is far better than the alternative.
Again, I with you would think more critically about these issues. As the slashdot sig goes, the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'. I am glad you and your friends are having a good experience with work, but your situation is not representative of reality for most Americans. You can't just look at what is immediately in front of you and think, "Things are going well for me; therefore, things are going well for all Americans."
"Incidently, I read something like for every dollar of work shipped out overseas, we get to see 1.30 in return."
I wish you would think more critically about the 'we' part. When a company offshores, the extra 30 cents is only seen by the owners and shareholders. The people who get laid off don't see that 30 cents. That 30 cents helps those who make their living off the interests of their investments, but the bast majority of Americans make their living from a paycheck.
I am glad that you are fortunate enough to have a good job that allows you to do interesting work. However, the American middle class is shrinking. The American middle class is at a 70 year low. The Middle Class Squeeze at 25-Year High in 2005. Worker productivity has been steadily improving over the past two decades, but worker wages have been declining. Somebody is pocketing the difference, and the person who is doing more while making less is getting screwed.
I think that the parliamentary system was originally concieved that voters would vote for a party, but I don't think that's the case anymore, at least in most parliamentary systems today. I know in Canada that voters vote for a candidate.
But in any case, I think it might be better to have voters vote for a party on the basis of its platform, rather than voting for a charming individual on the basis of his public speaking ability, or how much personal warmth he has. Charming individuals can get away with murder, especially when they have a podium. I think voters may be more willing to hold a faceless, abstract party accountable for not keeping their promises and sticking to the platform.
No, but child and slave labor drive down wages in general. When there are more plentiful jobs making more money, there is more competition for those jobs, which drives up the cost of labor.
Remember, we are competing against an economy, not individual workers.
I actually like the electoral college. If the president won based solely on the nationwide percentage of votes, they would only campaign in New York and California. As flawed as the system is, currently the candidates shuttle back and forth between about 12 swing states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, etc. These states have relatively large populations, but whose votes are up for grabs.
I see your URL links to the libertarian party website. I'm interested to know, would you be in favor of the US moving to a parliamentary system to allow for a broader range of political views being heard? What changes would you make to the American political/electoral system?
Why would the demographics
Exit polling is just randomly selecting people who are exiting the polls, and asking who they voted for. Take that data, extrapolated it out using scientific, mathematical methods, determine how many people actually voted for which candidate, within a margin of error.
Basically, what are you claiming? Demographic changes from the 2000 to the 2004 elections caused the exit poling to be wrong? That doesn't make any sense at all.
This has always bothered me, ever since I heard about it.
Aren't statistics a science?
So for all you geeks out there who believe in objective, external reality, who believe in science as a way of knowing reality, here we have the best science to date to detect electoral fraud telling us that the election was stolen, and people are fucking quoting Mark Twain "Lies, damn lies, and statistics" and shit like that.
Where is the outrage? Almost everyone who frequents/. should have a good idea of how shitty these diebold machines are and how easy they are to hack. Can't you see what is going on here?
Let's assume that Achmed in Chicago is calling OBL every week and negotiating deals for goats, and he is really, actually, buying goats. The government is listening, and for 6 months, all they are getting is goat deals. Do you think that Achmed in Chicago is not going to be rounded up and tortured to find out what they are *really* talking about? How they are *really* secretly communicating when they are not on the phone? What the code word 'goat' really means?
You're right in one sense -- it would be easier to have a one-man conspiracy than any other kind of multiple person conspiracy, but on the other hand, how did they trigger this loser to do it? I'm getting premonitions of "CIA mind control"....
I am a geek, but I have seriously problems with math ability. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree. However, I like to keep up on math and science news as much as possible, inasmuch as I can understand it.
IIRC, string theory *does* make predictions, but the amount of energy required to run an experiement would be literally almost astronomical, so we have no practical way of testing it.
I think according to concensus on what the 'scientific method' is, that makes it a hypothesis -- an educated guess, based on evidence. After it has sucessfully passed a few rounds of experiment, then we can say that it is a theory.
So, bottom line, it is scientific, as much as any other hypothesis. However, it's not a theory.
I asked the question about Ex Post Facto ( e.g. 'retroactive' ) laws and their constitutionality earlier in a slashdot discussion. Ex Post Facto laws are specifically decalred unconstitutional in Article 1, section 9 of the constitution. As far as what Ex Post Fact laws actually are, the Supreme Court ruled in Calder v. Bull that there were four types. One of which is a law that makes legal something that was illegal in the past.
So congress can pass a law making legal what Bush is doing. But he is still guilty of a crime for having done it when it was illegal, before congress passed the law. A law cannot make any illegal activity retroactively legal.
Of course, it's up the the Supreme Court, who appointed Bush in 2000, to rule appropriately on such bills. After all, the constitution really *is* just a piece of paper. It's up to us to make sure it is enforced.
Dude, it will get to the President today. He'll sign it. The Republicans need this to campaign on. They won't leave congress without it.
Congress and the president were able to get a bill signed and passed *overnight* with that whole Terry Schiavo bullshit. The president flew out of his Crawford vill to DC to sign the bill.
Slashdot Mirror
You are right! How did I miss that? I have to turn in my geek credentials now.
I don't think Totilo has really used his imagination with this one. Think about a movie about, say, an underdog football team, or a champion chess player playing a computer, or a boxer, uh... boxing.
The human drama, which is what the story is, can play itself out in the context of a game, just as it can play out in the game-like atmosphere of a business or a relationship.
In a nutshell, the story theory is that the protagonist faces a challenge that shatters his world -- he can't go back to his world they way he used to live it. Think Luke after his parents were killed by stormtroopers. He can either hook up with some crazy old man or wander around Tatooine, but he just won't be helping Uncle Owen farm moisture tomorrow.
Same thing when the star quarterback steps out onto the field for the championship game or the chess player sits down in front the the computer. They are either going to become a champion, or blow the biggest chance of their life. Either way, they can't go back to the anonymity they used to live everyday. What a better set up for the human drama?
Us here on slashdot have seen this played out a million times in almost every game. The crisis might be a little hoakey or even flat out weird -- resucing Dr. Light from Dr. Wiley, or eating all of the pellets without getting caught by a ghost. It is a challenge, and there is no rest for the protagonist. They must make their way into a brave new world.
Yes -- desirable in the sense that they can get a job there.
Wars have a nasty tendency of spilling over into areas where they are not welcome.
In an ideal world, I would just like to read slashdot articles about exciting new discoveries and great new software and hardware. However, we now live in an era where science is being threatened in the school, where research grants are being cut, and scientific texts are being re-written by political hacks so that they are more friendly to administration policy. We are in a war, and we must discuss these types of issues so that we are never disallowed from discussing science *altogether*, at our leisure.
We can't just retreat into our villas, saying that the armies will never fight in our fields. We might suddenly find ourselves behind enemy lines when the enemies conquer the capital.
To get a bit more specific, Finnish and Hungarian belong to the Finno-Ugric language family. Most of the rest of Europe speak languages in the Indo-European family.
;)
Hungarian and Finnish are mutually unintelligible. They look pretty dissimilar in written form. The closest language to Finnish is Estonian -- I'm not sure if Estonia is considered Europe. It was part of the Soviet Union; now it is independent and a member of the EU. Finns and Estonians can *basically* understand each other and the written languages look pretty similar.
I think that the most commonly accepted theory is that the Finns are descendant from the Mongolian Huns who conquered a lot of Asia and Eastern Europe.
As far as the impact for Finns, it just makes them harder to pigeon-hole. People usually think they are just another group of Scandinavians, like Danes or Norwegians, but then they find out that they speak a totally different language. Then, people usually assume that they must be Russian or Slavic. But they aren't. They are Finnish
It is true that Finland has been heavily influenced by Russia and Sweden, but still they are fairly unique. It is an interesting culture.
Sorry, I missed a word: the name of the Finnish epic is the 'Kalevala'.
I got modded down as 'troll' and 'offtopic' for stating this ealier, but aside from the corporate competition, there is also the social/ethnic competition between Swedes and Finns. Actually, I think it is felt more by the Finns that they are in the shadow of Sweden. Sweden ruled Finland for a long time, and Sweden is wealthier than Finland, and Finns sort of have this complex about not being wholly Scandinavian.
I am not just making this up. If you read the Finnish epic, which is said to characterize the finnish temperament, the hero Vainamoinen is actually an anti-hero. He is born old, never in his prime. One of the first stories about him is when he approaches a young bathing maiden and she runs away screaming. In the climax of the story, he rallies the troops to win back a magical device from a tribe of harpies, only to lose it in the sea during the epic battle. He's just not a winner.
The parent I posed my original topic had said that 'a better tech had come along'. What a socially naive geek perspective. Sure, new things just drop out of the sky like clockwork. People are never motivated by petty social identies, like Ohio State vs. Michigan, US vs. Canada, MS vs. Apple, Ericsson vs. Nokia, or Finland vs. Swedend.
So my votes goes for a Nokia vs. Ericsson, Finland vs. Sweden thing.
I think it says more about the Finnish/Swedish rivalry than anything else. Bluetooth was developed by Ericsson, a Swedish company, and is named for an old Danish king, Harald Bluetooth.
Nokia is a Finnish company, and the Finns sort of have a complex about not being totally Scandinavian (their language and culture, although influenced by Sweden, originated from somewhere else totally, probably the Huns way back when), and being overshadowed by Sweden, so they have to do this to over compensate.
;)
I guess the question depends on how much value you think that campaigning brings to the constituency. If the candidate coming to your state and making a speech shortly before an election is a good thing for you, then you want more campaigning. If you are interested in the national interest as a whole, you want the candidates going to as many states as possible.
We have 50 states. No matter what system we go to, candidates will never go to Alaska or Hawaii. Too much time and money for too little votes. It's a similar problem for most other states. The US is huge and some areas are sparsely populated. We have a system that gets the candidates to the most states possible. The reality is that if we had strictly proportional representation of the electoral college, candidates would not waste their time with the 10-12 swing states, and certainly not most other states. They would only need court votes in the densely populated NY, NY and LA, CA. So I think we have the best system, given our size, political division, and population density.
However, there is the question of whether having a candidate running around in your state giving speeches before the election really does anything at all for you. It makes sense in the case of a congressperson, but the president really do anything for constiuents in a particular locale -- that's the job of their congressperson.
It sounds like we rather need to monitor the electronic communications of our congresspeople, especially the ones who chair the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.
So can you tell us what skills specfically companies are looking for?
I have thought a lot about it. I've also traveled around the world, in a non-tourist capacity, and witnessed the reality first-hand.
If excessive taxation caused the middle class to shrink, Europe would have a small, rich, wealthy class, and throngs of poor people, and relatively unregulated, untaxed places like Africa and South America should have a burgeoning middle class.
But in fact the exact opposite is true. Places without regulation like South America have a wealthy, ruling class of a few, well-connected families. The other 95% of the population are living on the edge. It wasn't until I lived in South America that I saw homeless families -- mom, dad, and kids -- living on the streets. Until then, I had thought that a homeless person was just a crazy guy who heard voices and couldn't hold down a job.
So then in Europe, with high taxes, extensive regulation, and strong unions, we see the largest middle classes and the highest standards of living. So, the reality is the opposite of what your theory predicts. The states with the most regulation, highest taxes, and stongest unions are those with most highest per capita income and the highest standard of living.
Without government regulation, greedy wealthy people will exploit the average joe to maintain their wealth. There are good, honest rich people who want to treat people humanely and compete fairly in the marketplace. However, they are quickly outcompeted by rich people with no ethics, who have no problem bribing officials and having people killed to get what they want. You can't compete with a cheater when you are playing fairly. So what happens is that a kleptocracy arises -- the best cheaters rise to the top.
What government regulation does is keep the game fair, so that honest players have a chance at winning. It's not a perfect solution, but it is far better than the alternative.
Again, I with you would think more critically about these issues. As the slashdot sig goes, the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'. I am glad you and your friends are having a good experience with work, but your situation is not representative of reality for most Americans. You can't just look at what is immediately in front of you and think, "Things are going well for me; therefore, things are going well for all Americans."
"Incidently, I read something like for every dollar of work shipped out overseas, we get to see 1.30 in return."
I wish you would think more critically about the 'we' part. When a company offshores, the extra 30 cents is only seen by the owners and shareholders. The people who get laid off don't see that 30 cents. That 30 cents helps those who make their living off the interests of their investments, but the bast majority of Americans make their living from a paycheck.
I am glad that you are fortunate enough to have a good job that allows you to do interesting work. However, the American middle class is shrinking. The American middle class is at a 70 year low. The Middle Class Squeeze at 25-Year High in 2005. Worker productivity has been steadily improving over the past two decades, but worker wages have been declining. Somebody is pocketing the difference, and the person who is doing more while making less is getting screwed.
I think that the parliamentary system was originally concieved that voters would vote for a party, but I don't think that's the case anymore, at least in most parliamentary systems today. I know in Canada that voters vote for a candidate.
But in any case, I think it might be better to have voters vote for a party on the basis of its platform, rather than voting for a charming individual on the basis of his public speaking ability, or how much personal warmth he has. Charming individuals can get away with murder, especially when they have a podium. I think voters may be more willing to hold a faceless, abstract party accountable for not keeping their promises and sticking to the platform.
No, but child and slave labor drive down wages in general. When there are more plentiful jobs making more money, there is more competition for those jobs, which drives up the cost of labor.
Remember, we are competing against an economy, not individual workers.
I actually like the electoral college. If the president won based solely on the nationwide percentage of votes, they would only campaign in New York and California. As flawed as the system is, currently the candidates shuttle back and forth between about 12 swing states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, etc. These states have relatively large populations, but whose votes are up for grabs.
I see your URL links to the libertarian party website. I'm interested to know, would you be in favor of the US moving to a parliamentary system to allow for a broader range of political views being heard? What changes would you make to the American political/electoral system?
Why would the demographics Exit polling is just randomly selecting people who are exiting the polls, and asking who they voted for. Take that data, extrapolated it out using scientific, mathematical methods, determine how many people actually voted for which candidate, within a margin of error.
Basically, what are you claiming? Demographic changes from the 2000 to the 2004 elections caused the exit poling to be wrong? That doesn't make any sense at all.
This has always bothered me, ever since I heard about it.
/. should have a good idea of how shitty these diebold machines are and how easy they are to hack. Can't you see what is going on here?
Aren't statistics a science?
So for all you geeks out there who believe in objective, external reality, who believe in science as a way of knowing reality, here we have the best science to date to detect electoral fraud telling us that the election was stolen, and people are fucking quoting Mark Twain "Lies, damn lies, and statistics" and shit like that.
Where is the outrage? Almost everyone who frequents
Let's assume that Achmed in Chicago is calling OBL every week and negotiating deals for goats, and he is really, actually, buying goats. The government is listening, and for 6 months, all they are getting is goat deals. Do you think that Achmed in Chicago is not going to be rounded up and tortured to find out what they are *really* talking about? How they are *really* secretly communicating when they are not on the phone? What the code word 'goat' really means?
You're right in one sense -- it would be easier to have a one-man conspiracy than any other kind of multiple person conspiracy, but on the other hand, how did they trigger this loser to do it? I'm getting premonitions of "CIA mind control"....
I am a geek, but I have seriously problems with math ability. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree. However, I like to keep up on math and science news as much as possible, inasmuch as I can understand it.
IIRC, string theory *does* make predictions, but the amount of energy required to run an experiement would be literally almost astronomical, so we have no practical way of testing it. I think according to concensus on what the 'scientific method' is, that makes it a hypothesis -- an educated guess, based on evidence. After it has sucessfully passed a few rounds of experiment, then we can say that it is a theory.
So, bottom line, it is scientific, as much as any other hypothesis. However, it's not a theory.
I guess I didn't. Thanks for the lession :) !
I asked the question about Ex Post Facto ( e.g. 'retroactive' ) laws and their constitutionality earlier in a slashdot discussion. Ex Post Facto laws are specifically decalred unconstitutional in Article 1, section 9 of the constitution. As far as what Ex Post Fact laws actually are, the Supreme Court ruled in Calder v. Bull that there were four types. One of which is a law that makes legal something that was illegal in the past.
So congress can pass a law making legal what Bush is doing. But he is still guilty of a crime for having done it when it was illegal, before congress passed the law. A law cannot make any illegal activity retroactively legal.
Of course, it's up the the Supreme Court, who appointed Bush in 2000, to rule appropriately on such bills. After all, the constitution really *is* just a piece of paper. It's up to us to make sure it is enforced.
Dude, it will get to the President today. He'll sign it. The Republicans need this to campaign on. They won't leave congress without it.
Congress and the president were able to get a bill signed and passed *overnight* with that whole Terry Schiavo bullshit. The president flew out of his Crawford vill to DC to sign the bill.