"how could we confidently say that rotting meat doesn't automatically transform/spawn maggots?"
Technically you can't. All I can say is that if flies are kept away from the meat, the chances of a spontaneous maggot attack are zero.
What about falsifiable theorems?
A spontaneous maggot would falsify my meat-fly seperation theory.
My revised theory could be: If flies are kept away from the meat, the chances of a spontaneous maggot attack are virtually zero. However, the guy with the single maggot had better have extremly strong evidence that flys were in fact kept totally seperate from the meat. A similar "one maggot" contraversy can be seen in the cold-fussion "breakthrough" we all saw a while back, also I would argue that "piltdown man" falls into this category.
Other than that you seem to think of me as someone who thinks religion and politics is "a waste of time", I am not that person. I agree religion and science are "two ways of knowing", one of them however actually performs better in the real world than random expectation and thus is not a religion. As for politics it is indistingushable from civilization, but that doesn't mean I can't be skeptical about posturing politicians and the bizzare protocols of diplomacy.
You also seem to think I said the "Universe has always been", allthoght it's plausable I said nothing of the sort, I said "it just is". I also don't claim to have any answers to "the meaning of life the universe and everything" other than the trite "42", as I said the universe IS mainly hydrogen and ignorance. Paraphrasing someone else's sig, AFAIK - I am the univese thinking about itself.
"Unfortunately, it seems to be the case that the stronger the initial belief/hope, the harder the fall and stronger the disappointment."
Oh definitely, my wife turned into an alcoholic and left me with two teenagers after twenty years of marriage, I was pissed about it for a few years but now it seems like it happened to somebody else. I suppose that somewhere in the grand scheme of things 30yrs ago I was pissed to find out people diliberately create "spontanous maggots" for profit. Or maybe I've just been around the block a few times and simply expect it since God a phycics seem to know everything but for some odd reason are always asking for money. Either way James Randi's million dollar prize remains unclaimed.
BTW: Untestable scientific theories are called mataphysics not science, things like string theory fall into this category, this again is different from religion due to the track record of mathematical insights into physics. If you lump everything together that is ultimately based on faith (eg: religion, metaphysics and science) you end up with one category, so even if I accept that "science is a religion" what does it show other than everything is based on faith except the certinty that I exist, and even then I can only "prove" I exist to myself.
If you climb right up the abstraction levels as we have done to put religion in the same basket as science, all categories reduce to self and non-self, usefull to know but it's obvious bacteria can work that one out. Science and religion are fundementally different because faith and blind faith are fundementally different. To my way of thinking equating the two misses the point of both, OTHOH your sig is a great coversation starter.:)
In Australia people who wear ugg boots are known as Bogans, for some reason the rest of the planet wants to look like bogons and are willing to pay a fortune for our ugg boots, 'ceptin some damm yankee trademarked the name!
Nobody who is interested in a fair election wants a "reciept", they want a paper ballot that the voter can read (and presumably agree with) before putting it into the ballot box. Even if the machine is bulletproof, a reciept that the voter keeps is just asking for trouble in the form of stand-over tatics and vote selling.
I do agree with dumping the over-engineered and untrustworthy machines, the only valid reason for having a computer in the first place is to speed the results. However many other countries can manage to count their votes by hand in similar time frames, so I can't see that speed is a big problem to anyone except TV pundits on election night.
Also many of the traditional "dead people voting" type of "election hacking" could be neutered using a pot of indelible ink (ref: recent elections in Afganistan & Iraq), it's kind of hard to vote multiple times when your index finger turns purple after the first time.
"What "proof" do you have that the world actually exists as you perceive it?"
None, that is why I used the word faith, everything you can think of is based on faith except your own existance (I doubt therefore I may be, ect).
"Science is a religion" refers to an unshakable belief some people often show..."
Perhaps, but the fact that many people misundersatnd what science is does not make the statement correct. Science IS the scientific method, results are transitory and subject to revision via the method, the "republic of science" refers to the group of people who practice the method, it is not a house of worship or political party.
Science is used when you want the best possible explanation of natural phenonema. It may not be the correct explaination, but it is the best of all known alternatives as demonstrated by it's incredible track record. Religion is used when you want comfort and/or justification. The only thing in common between the two is that, like everything else extenal to my own being, they are both based of faith.
"It is this attitude that "proved" human flight was impossible and that rockets couldn't fly in a vacuum."
Maybe it "proved" something to some people but science itself operates under the assumption that you cannot prove a negative. Note that politicians use this ploy all the time, "prove you don't have WMD's", "prove that you are not enriching uranium", ect, politicians aren't stupid they do these things diliberately.
There is no rule that says a scientist cannot belive in God, Eientien is of course the classic example. Personally I belive the universe "just is", much like God "just is" to those who belive. I find it a whole lot less complicated to deal with a universe composed mainly of hydrogen and ignorance than to deal with the random miricales of an omnipotent supernatural being.
As for "spooky stuff", I was a great beliver up until my early twenties, mainly thanks to the likes of conmen such as Uri Geller and the general gullibility of youth. But now (at nearly 50) I am much more skeptical (cynical?), for more info on genuine skeptisim (as opposed to simply disagreeing with everything) I recommend reading James Randi and Carl Sagan. For those who think that science "spoils the magic of life" or that it's practitioners "have no conception of religious awe" you can't go past Richard Dawkins.
"But that is not surprising since the ancient greeks put more stock in math than mechanics."
The term "Archimedes screw" has nothing to do with Greek orgies.
"They didn't need mechanical devices because they had slaves."
I suppose next you will tell us that no slave was ever given a plough to work the fields. Slaves must be caught, bought, domesticated, fed, watered, clothed, housed, ect, they are not without cost, they are mearly the cheapest form of labour. Today's slaves are called "factory workers" or sometimes "hospitality workers" or some other euphemisim, the same economic equation is as relevent today as it was in ancient Greece.
The law may be an ass, illogical, immoral and piss CEO's off to no end, still doesn't mean you can ignore it. "Lobby" for change - yes, ignore it - no.
Also I doubt very much that the Russian government would even recognise the *IAA's much less listen to them, this deal was about a trade agreement that dwarfs the entire entertainment industry and their penny pinching concerns.
"Presumably because you don't own any copyrights yourself"
And according to the Russian laws that AllOfMP3 diligently followed, so can anyone else who has possesion. So far AllOfMP3 have been operating as a legitimate business, regardless of what your opinion on the matter is.
This guy agrees with you, fighting the AGW problem requires a political U turn from both the greens and the conservatives, I think if you look carefully at politicians on both sides you can see that happening now.
Like the GP I have watched predictions come true since the early eighties (the hockey-stick graph, polar amplification, glacial retreat, shorter winters, melting permafrost, just to mention a few). The GP pre-emptively crushed the type of posts you chose to reply with, the well known skeptic Carl Sagan could not have done better.
I hold a BSc but IANAC, I have followed the science & politics of this issue for well over two decades. - wooosh - Hear that? The political tide has turned, Murdoch, Bush and Howard have all quietly "gone green" this year. The recent election where I live was fought on two main issues, corruption and the "worst drought in 1000 years".
You my friend are now officially a luddite, no longer "main stream", please take your seat next to the creationists, flat-earther's and the guy selling buggy whips.
"...the countries with the worst environmental programs are exempt from the goals right now"
Worse still your xenophobic agenda is showing, why should "the west" not pay for the CO2 they have dumped since WW2, the idea that developing countries would somehow be allowed unlimited license to emit C02 under the kyoto deal is patently false propoganda. The idea was for industrial countries to compensate the rest of the world (in carbon credits) for emmisions they have already dumped into the atmosphere since 1950-something when they first started to soar. This is not a "lefty" plot to empower China, even the recently departed Milton Friedman was famous for coining the phrase "there is no such thing as a free lunch".
Despite all the political bullshit, media distortions and vested interests I would like to thank the US, it has consistently played "the" leading role in funding serious climate research.
"No, I'm not a parent since my wife doesn't want children."
Yes I can tell by the way you blame parents for everything, it's fairly obvious that you have only been on one side of the parent-child relationship. I'm not saying bad parents don't exist, it's just that the vast majority are not the clueless idiots you seem to think they are.
"I remember what I did on the internet at 16 in my room. I had a PC in my room with a password only I knew for internet access."
In many places a 16yo is considered responsible enough to drive a car, by the sounds of things you could not be trusted to drive a PC. That may or may not be due to the way you were raised by your parents. Take my word for it, if you do eventually have kids they WILL pull similar stunts on you, most people learn to lie through their teeth around the same time they learn to talk.
"I had a coworker who caught her 13 year old daughter talking to a 23 year old guy. The were already exchanging pictures!"
If it was my kid the first step would not be installing keyloggers, it would be to get on the PC and tell the 23yo to fuck off. Protecting your child and raising them into a well adjusted adult has virtually nothing to do with monitoring thier web access 24/7.
Why isn't the OP's tolerance enough, why is acceptance important, espesially from someone you don't know? And to paraphrase the GP, I would also like to know where the hell this "borg instinct" in humans came from? (We all have it, I'm not picking on you...,ok, I am a little bit.:)
The irony is that (so far) the "borg instinct" has resulted in a system where after 10,000yrs we cannot even agree to stop throwing high tech rocks at each other.
"I hope this passes. It's so absurd that it SHOULD wake people up."
If it does pass I'm gonna get a 400ft screen and put one comfortable chair in front of it. It will also have a stereo system so absurd it WILL wake people up.
Ummm, you need to read a little more about both these people, for starters Newton was head of the royal mint and is responsible for developing the "gold standard" that underpinned the financial world for three centuries.
A senior manager who wants a genuine estimate would ask the technical lead for it, but large consultancies often don't care about the team leaders reality. More often than not their budgets are designed to spend $X in time 'T' with 'P' people to get to stage 'S'. From this they expect to make back $X + $X1, similar financial practices are used to build things as diverse as houses and battleships.
With large consultancies (or incestous corporate "partnerships") your project is often part of a multi-million dollar contract that basically says "we will look after your IT needs for five years in return for skimming the cream from your expenditure", for the deal to work the money MUST be spent in such a way that it lasts five years. From memory, the ideal "estimate" for a project comes in at -5% to +15% of the "real cost", ouside of that range too often and the PM is out of that nice corner office. This leads to the bizzare situations I have witnessed where one executive gets into deep shit for saving millions in costs and another gets a fat bonus for shuffling account numbers and playing solitaire.
I used quotes for "real costs" since the "real" part is only in the minds of accountants. Even the PM's I have admired would spend a considerable amount of time shuffling account numbers to ensure their projects come within the acceptable range regardless of reality. Without all this accounting bullshit a large chunk of the population could be doing something more usefull, OTOH, without it we wouldn't have built the pyramids in the first place.
I was 12yo at the time, the whole class saw it happen but I doubt any told their parents since we were all guilty of riotous behaviour in music class, the head was "making an example" and was unprovoked since everyone froze when he entered the room. The kids parents did come down and the kid never came back to class. The headmaster survived another two years and then "disappeared", some of the kids said it was a heart attack others said he had gone insane. I have no idea what really became of him.
I figure he's probably dead but for what it's worth, the headmaster's name was Adamson, the year was 1971, the school was Bayswater HS, Australia.
"They shouldn't accept licenses that forces them to do evil. Kinda like not operating in countries where the laws force them to do evil."
I suppose Google shouldn't except cash either since it's the "root of all evil". OTOH: Trying to conform to everyone else's conflicting definitions of "evil", will in turn cast evil on their shareholders bank accounts and retirement funds.
"Do no evil" is a slogan that represents the founders ideals, it is not and has never been, a business plan! How many mega-corp "mission statements" can you point to that are as succinct, memorable and thought provoking as google's? Most of the ones I see ramble on about apple pie and boil down to nothing more than "Our company is the best, give us your money......please?".
Err, nobody is giving antything up, to stop people setting up cameras would require new laws banning cameras, ( more rules => less freedom. Right? Or did I misread you?).
I live in Australia and recently visited the UK, I drove 3500 miles around the UK & Ireland and my reaction was "what fucking cameras?". The ones I saw were mainly installed in "trouble spots", railway stations, pubs, busy roads, shops, intersections, ect, similar to what we have here in many parts of Melbourne.
Freedom, as Bob Marley put it, is "a state of mind", we live (and die) by the rules and mores we each choose to follow. The basic tools for public security (a "common good") are private weapons, public oversight or some combination of the two. I choose public oversight with tight controls on weapons (as it is here in Australia and the UK), I just don't like the idea of getting shot at by a drunken teenager, nervous pensioner, ect. (BTW: I have been shot at on several occasions).
"But eventually, such a society will foster members who are soft and weak, and unfit to take care of themselves."
This has already happened. Personally I think it happened somewhere between climbing down from trees and living in caves, the bible is a bit more poetic, it says "we ate the fruit of the knowledge tree". Many people belive that taking care of "unfit" members of our species is what seperates us from the rest of the animals, at the very least the behaviour would account for one bite of the apple. Even our most "primative" societies really on specialists, the hunter, the warrior, the toolmaker, the old story teller with no teeth and a bung leg. It's not possible to build a tribe (let alone a civilization) without "the meek" AND "the warrior", just ask yourself: Where the hell are the societies where everyone is self-sufficient? Everyone needs somebody else to feed their supply line, nobody trully "takes care of themselves" but we thrive when we take care of each other.
With all due respect to you and your proffesion, there's an old saying: "to a carpenter everything looks like a nail", the analogy applies equally to other "specialists", including warriors.
Slashdot Mirror
A modern day example from the US would be "the government has a right to execute it's citezens".
"how could we confidently say that rotting meat doesn't automatically transform/spawn maggots?"
:)
Technically you can't. All I can say is that if flies are kept away from the meat, the chances of a spontaneous maggot attack are zero.
What about falsifiable theorems?
A spontaneous maggot would falsify my meat-fly seperation theory.
My revised theory could be: If flies are kept away from the meat, the chances of a spontaneous maggot attack are
virtually zero. However, the guy with the single maggot had better have extremly strong evidence that flys were in fact kept totally seperate from the meat. A similar "one maggot" contraversy can be seen in the cold-fussion "breakthrough" we all saw a while back, also I would argue that "piltdown man" falls into this category.
Other than that you seem to think of me as someone who thinks religion and politics is "a waste of time", I am not that person. I agree religion and science are "two ways of knowing", one of them however actually performs better in the real world than random expectation and thus is not a religion. As for politics it is indistingushable from civilization, but that doesn't mean I can't be skeptical about posturing politicians and the bizzare protocols of diplomacy.
You also seem to think I said the "Universe has always been", allthoght it's plausable I said nothing of the sort, I said "it just is". I also don't claim to have any answers to "the meaning of life the universe and everything" other than the trite "42", as I said the universe IS mainly hydrogen and ignorance. Paraphrasing someone else's sig, AFAIK - I am the univese thinking about itself.
"Unfortunately, it seems to be the case that the stronger the initial belief/hope, the harder the fall and stronger the disappointment."
Oh definitely, my wife turned into an alcoholic and left me with two teenagers after twenty years of marriage, I was pissed about it for a few years but now it seems like it happened to somebody else. I suppose that somewhere in the grand scheme of things 30yrs ago I was pissed to find out people diliberately create "spontanous maggots" for profit. Or maybe I've just been around the block a few times and simply expect it since God a phycics seem to know everything but for some odd reason are always asking for money. Either way James Randi's million dollar prize remains unclaimed.
BTW: Untestable scientific theories are called mataphysics not science, things like string theory fall into this category, this again is different from religion due to the track record of mathematical insights into physics. If you lump everything together that is ultimately based on faith (eg: religion, metaphysics and science) you end up with one category, so even if I accept that "science is a religion" what does it show other than everything is based on faith except the certinty that I exist, and even then I can only "prove" I exist to myself.
If you climb right up the abstraction levels as we have done to put religion in the same basket as science, all categories reduce to self and non-self, usefull to know but it's obvious bacteria can work that one out. Science and religion are fundementally different because faith and blind faith are fundementally different. To my way of thinking equating the two misses the point of both, OTHOH your sig is a great coversation starter.
In Australia people who wear ugg boots are known as Bogans, for some reason the rest of the planet wants to look like bogons and are willing to pay a fortune for our ugg boots, 'ceptin some damm yankee trademarked the name!
Nobody who is interested in a fair election wants a "reciept", they want a paper ballot that the voter can read (and presumably agree with) before putting it into the ballot box. Even if the machine is bulletproof, a reciept that the voter keeps is just asking for trouble in the form of stand-over tatics and vote selling.
I do agree with dumping the over-engineered and untrustworthy machines, the only valid reason for having a computer in the first place is to speed the results. However many other countries can manage to count their votes by hand in similar time frames, so I can't see that speed is a big problem to anyone except TV pundits on election night.
Also many of the traditional "dead people voting" type of "election hacking" could be neutered using a pot of indelible ink (ref: recent elections in Afganistan & Iraq), it's kind of hard to vote multiple times when your index finger turns purple after the first time.
"You do realize that the wheel patent was in Australia, right?"
It was revenge for stealing our Ugg boots!
"What "proof" do you have that the world actually exists as you perceive it?"
None, that is why I used the word faith, everything you can think of is based on faith except your own existance (I doubt therefore I may be, ect).
"Science is a religion" refers to an unshakable belief some people often show..."
Perhaps, but the fact that many people misundersatnd what science is does not make the statement correct. Science IS the scientific method, results are transitory and subject to revision via the method, the "republic of science" refers to the group of people who practice the method, it is not a house of worship or political party.
Science is used when you want the best possible explanation of natural phenonema. It may not be the correct explaination, but it is the best of all known alternatives as demonstrated by it's incredible track record. Religion is used when you want comfort and/or justification. The only thing in common between the two is that, like everything else extenal to my own being, they are both based of faith.
"It is this attitude that "proved" human flight was impossible and that rockets couldn't fly in a vacuum."
Maybe it "proved" something to some people but science itself operates under the assumption that you cannot prove a negative. Note that politicians use this ploy all the time, "prove you don't have WMD's", "prove that you are not enriching uranium", ect, politicians aren't stupid they do these things diliberately.
There is no rule that says a scientist cannot belive in God, Eientien is of course the classic example. Personally I belive the universe "just is", much like God "just is" to those who belive. I find it a whole lot less complicated to deal with a universe composed mainly of hydrogen and ignorance than to deal with the random miricales of an omnipotent supernatural being.
As for "spooky stuff", I was a great beliver up until my early twenties, mainly thanks to the likes of conmen such as Uri Geller and the general gullibility of youth. But now (at nearly 50) I am much more skeptical (cynical?), for more info on genuine skeptisim (as opposed to simply disagreeing with everything) I recommend reading James Randi and Carl Sagan. For those who think that science "spoils the magic of life" or that it's practitioners "have no conception of religious awe" you can't go past Richard Dawkins.
Bob pays for a 12hr trick once a week and can still afford berr & pizza, on a military pay-check?
"But that is not surprising since the ancient greeks put more stock in math than mechanics."
The term "Archimedes screw" has nothing to do with Greek orgies.
"They didn't need mechanical devices because they had slaves."
I suppose next you will tell us that no slave was ever given a plough to work the fields. Slaves must be caught, bought, domesticated, fed, watered, clothed, housed, ect, they are not without cost, they are mearly the cheapest form of labour. Today's slaves are called "factory workers" or sometimes "hospitality workers" or some other euphemisim, the same economic equation is as relevent today as it was in ancient Greece.
The law may be an ass, illogical, immoral and piss CEO's off to no end, still doesn't mean you can ignore it. "Lobby" for change - yes, ignore it - no.
Also I doubt very much that the Russian government would even recognise the *IAA's much less listen to them, this deal was about a trade agreement that dwarfs the entire entertainment industry and their penny pinching concerns.
"Presumably because you don't own any copyrights yourself"
Bzzzzt, sorry try again!
"They can do what they like with it"
And according to the Russian laws that AllOfMP3 diligently followed, so can anyone else who has possesion. So far AllOfMP3 have been operating as a legitimate business, regardless of what your opinion on the matter is.
This guy agrees with you, fighting the AGW problem requires a political U turn from both the greens and the conservatives, I think if you look carefully at politicians on both sides you can see that happening now.
Like the GP I have watched predictions come true since the early eighties (the hockey-stick graph, polar amplification, glacial retreat, shorter winters, melting permafrost, just to mention a few). The GP pre-emptively crushed the type of posts you chose to reply with, the well known skeptic Carl Sagan could not have done better.
I hold a BSc but IANAC, I have followed the science & politics of this issue for well over two decades. - wooosh - Hear that? The political tide has turned, Murdoch, Bush and Howard have all quietly "gone green" this year. The recent election where I live was fought on two main issues, corruption and the "worst drought in 1000 years".
You my friend are now officially a luddite, no longer "main stream", please take your seat next to the creationists, flat-earther's and the guy selling buggy whips.
"...the countries with the worst environmental programs are exempt from the goals right now"
Worse still your xenophobic agenda is showing, why should "the west" not pay for the CO2 they have dumped since WW2, the idea that developing countries would somehow be allowed unlimited license to emit C02 under the kyoto deal is patently false propoganda. The idea was for industrial countries to compensate the rest of the world (in carbon credits) for emmisions they have already dumped into the atmosphere since 1950-something when they first started to soar. This is not a "lefty" plot to empower China, even the recently departed Milton Friedman was famous for coining the phrase "there is no such thing as a free lunch".
Despite all the political bullshit, media distortions and vested interests I would like to thank the US, it has consistently played "the" leading role in funding serious climate research.
"science is a religion"
No, science is a methodology based on the faith that the real world exists. It claims no insights into devine truth or spirituality.
"Don't even get started on how many people America has killed."
Why not, will your head explode or is it just that your strawman is a little fragile?
"No, I'm not a parent since my wife doesn't want children."
Yes I can tell by the way you blame parents for everything, it's fairly obvious that you have only been on one side of the parent-child relationship. I'm not saying bad parents don't exist, it's just that the vast majority are not the clueless idiots you seem to think they are.
"I remember what I did on the internet at 16 in my room. I had a PC in my room with a password only I knew for internet access."
In many places a 16yo is considered responsible enough to drive a car, by the sounds of things you could not be trusted to drive a PC. That may or may not be due to the way you were raised by your parents. Take my word for it, if you do eventually have kids they WILL pull similar stunts on you, most people learn to lie through their teeth around the same time they learn to talk.
"I had a coworker who caught her 13 year old daughter talking to a 23 year old guy. The were already exchanging pictures!"
If it was my kid the first step would not be installing keyloggers, it would be to get on the PC and tell the 23yo to fuck off. Protecting your child and raising them into a well adjusted adult has virtually nothing to do with monitoring thier web access 24/7.
Why isn't the OP's tolerance enough, why is acceptance important, espesially from someone you don't know? And to paraphrase the GP, I would also like to know where the hell this "borg instinct" in humans came from? (We all have it, I'm not picking on you...,ok, I am a little bit. :)
The irony is that (so far) the "borg instinct" has resulted in a system where after 10,000yrs we cannot even agree to stop throwing high tech rocks at each other.
"but at least you don't find abandoned ponies at the pound"
Shhhh, do you want people to know what's in dog food?
TFA: "How do developers handle moral dilemas?" - The same way "real" people do, principles are expensive, use them sparingly.
"I hope this passes. It's so absurd that it SHOULD wake people up."
If it does pass I'm gonna get a 400ft screen and put one comfortable chair in front of it. It will also have a stereo system so absurd it WILL wake people up.
"When someone tries to solicit a child online, its not just that persons fault. Its also the parents fault..."
If that "someone" knows they are talking to a minor then how the fuck is it anyone else's fault?
BTW: Just a guess here but your not a parent are you?
"How many drinks are too many before driving a school bus"
Trick question: I would drink myself unconsious before driving a school bus.
"Galileo and Newton were pure scientists."
Ummm, you need to read a little more about both these people, for starters Newton was head of the royal mint and is responsible for developing the "gold standard" that underpinned the financial world for three centuries.
A senior manager who wants a genuine estimate would ask the technical lead for it, but large consultancies often don't care about the team leaders reality. More often than not their budgets are designed to spend $X in time 'T' with 'P' people to get to stage 'S'. From this they expect to make back $X + $X1, similar financial practices are used to build things as diverse as houses and battleships.
With large consultancies (or incestous corporate "partnerships") your project is often part of a multi-million dollar contract that basically says "we will look after your IT needs for five years in return for skimming the cream from your expenditure", for the deal to work the money MUST be spent in such a way that it lasts five years. From memory, the ideal "estimate" for a project comes in at -5% to +15% of the "real cost", ouside of that range too often and the PM is out of that nice corner office. This leads to the bizzare situations I have witnessed where one executive gets into deep shit for saving millions in costs and another gets a fat bonus for shuffling account numbers and playing solitaire.
I used quotes for "real costs" since the "real" part is only in the minds of accountants. Even the PM's I have admired would spend a considerable amount of time shuffling account numbers to ensure their projects come within the acceptable range regardless of reality. Without all this accounting bullshit a large chunk of the population could be doing something more usefull, OTOH, without it we wouldn't have built the pyramids in the first place.
I was 12yo at the time, the whole class saw it happen but I doubt any told their parents since we were all guilty of riotous behaviour in music class, the head was "making an example" and was unprovoked since everyone froze when he entered the room. The kids parents did come down and the kid never came back to class. The headmaster survived another two years and then "disappeared", some of the kids said it was a heart attack others said he had gone insane. I have no idea what really became of him.
I figure he's probably dead but for what it's worth, the headmaster's name was Adamson, the year was 1971, the school was Bayswater HS, Australia.
"They shouldn't accept licenses that forces them to do evil. Kinda like not operating in countries where the laws force them to do evil."
I suppose Google shouldn't except cash either since it's the "root of all evil". OTOH: Trying to conform to everyone else's conflicting definitions of "evil", will in turn cast evil on their shareholders bank accounts and retirement funds.
"Do no evil" is a slogan that represents the founders ideals, it is not and has never been, a business plan! How many mega-corp "mission statements" can you point to that are as succinct, memorable and thought provoking as google's? Most of the ones I see ramble on about apple pie and boil down to nothing more than "Our company is the best, give us your money......please?".
"you would willing give up freedom for security"
Err, nobody is giving antything up, to stop people setting up cameras would require new laws banning cameras, ( more rules => less freedom. Right? Or did I misread you?).
I live in Australia and recently visited the UK, I drove 3500 miles around the UK & Ireland and my reaction was "what fucking cameras?". The ones I saw were mainly installed in "trouble spots", railway stations, pubs, busy roads, shops, intersections, ect, similar to what we have here in many parts of Melbourne.
Freedom, as Bob Marley put it, is "a state of mind", we live (and die) by the rules and mores we each choose to follow. The basic tools for public security (a "common good") are private weapons, public oversight or some combination of the two. I choose public oversight with tight controls on weapons (as it is here in Australia and the UK), I just don't like the idea of getting shot at by a drunken teenager, nervous pensioner, ect. (BTW: I have been shot at on several occasions).
"But eventually, such a society will foster members who are soft and weak, and unfit to take care of themselves."
This has already happened. Personally I think it happened somewhere between climbing down from trees and living in caves, the bible is a bit more poetic, it says "we ate the fruit of the knowledge tree". Many people belive that taking care of "unfit" members of our species is what seperates us from the rest of the animals, at the very least the behaviour would account for one bite of the apple. Even our most "primative" societies really on specialists, the hunter, the warrior, the toolmaker, the old story teller with no teeth and a bung leg. It's not possible to build a tribe (let alone a civilization) without "the meek" AND "the warrior", just ask yourself: Where the hell are the societies where everyone is self-sufficient? Everyone needs somebody else to feed their supply line, nobody trully "takes care of themselves" but we thrive when we take care of each other.
With all due respect to you and your proffesion, there's an old saying: "to a carpenter everything looks like a nail", the analogy applies equally to other "specialists", including warriors.