Democracy only works if those in power are committed to its preservation. Important policies and actions need to be discussed and public opinion allowed to influence final decisions. There is ample evidence that the U.S. and some other older democracies no longer really want their people involved in important decision making. They need to pay lip service to the concept. However, a combination of lies, secrecy and manipulation (partly by politicians themselves and partly by well funded PACs) ensure informed participation from the general population is next to impossible.
"Democracy" and "human rights" in these countries will no doubt remain for a long time as key justifications for very undemocratic foreign policies, but are well on the way to being dead in any meaningful sense.
... the police will now be allowed to examine the material to investigate whether a crime of 'communication of material to an enemy' has been committed
Miranda is clearly guilty, then, as he certainly communicated embarrassing information to dirty red commie journalists.
Sadly, many Western governments are unable to carry out some actions they want to if the general public knows about them, simply because most people consider them immoral and unacceptable. They are, then, presented with a dilemma. They can stop doing things their electorate would find objectionable, they can try to eliminate the ability of the electorate to influence government, or they can lie about what they are doing and try to keep it secret. The third is impossible if people like Snowden are allowed to tell people what their government is doing on their behalf.
Over the last 30 years or so, I have spent lesser or greater periods in over 50 countries. However, the last ten years have been mainly in South East Asia. I use Bangkok Thailand as my base and travel around from there.
I left England in 1979 and have been living and working in different places around the world ever since.
IMHO, your basic idea is right. Combine work you want to do with traveling and experiencing all the world has to offer. Those suggesting you simply skip working for a few years have no idea how difficult it can be to get back into the swim later.
Issues such as visas, living costs, easy access to good Internet connections and an environment conducive to working effectively vary tremendously from place to place. [If you have ideas about where you might go, and let me know, I might be able to provide more specific advice.]
Here are some pointers that you will probably not receive from others, especially those who have not done it. First and foremost, you need a clear plan on work/life balance and you need to be disciplined on adhering to it. I have seen many intelligent and talented people, faced with the temptations that exist in many parts of the world, simply self destruct because they lack structure in their lives. That does not mean you cannot take periods of a month or two to concentrate on traveling and enjoying life in a way that cannot easily be combined with work. It does mean that, any time you do this, you should set yourself a time limit for returning to your more structured lifestyle and stick to that time limit.
If staying more than a couple of weeks anywhere, try to escape from traveler ghettos and immerse yourself in the local culture. For instance, rent a room in an area where few foreigners live and eat in the places frequented by locals. This will take you out of your comfort zone, but will teach you more in a week about the realities of the society you are in than a year in a backpacker guest house.
If somebody was ordering assassinations of children just for the lulz and for minor economic gain, then yes, they'd be insane.
I think each individual involved in the decision to pick wars with strangers the other end of the world has his own justifications (rationalizations), but the fundamental rational is major financial gain for those involved in the defense industry. For the average American (let alone the poor inhabitants of the countries chosen as battlefields) spending of about $700,000,000,000 a year (an average of about $7,000 for each payer of federal taxes) to build the capability to blow people up at will makes no sense. However, for a small minority, wars are an amazing opportunity to profit.
Most likely, it was suicide. Here are the most obvious alternatives:
Government sanctioned assassination: possible, but unlikely. Certainly, under sufficiently important conditions, the government is willing to resort to this. It would need to be something like Aaron stumbling across evidence of a 9-11 cover-up as part of his Wkileaks activities. Nothing we already know about would be sufficient reason.
Non-government murder: possible, but very unlikely. There is no indication that he was in serious conflict with anyone.
Auto erotic accident: in his case, almost impossible. He would have been aware of the risks and too smart to suffer this.
If it was suicide, then what was the ultimate trigger? Bear in mind that suicide (at least, in modern Western societies) is rarely the result of the single event.
Acute depression with no particular cause: most probable. It would be interesting to know if his long-standing problems with episodes of depression were being treated, and (if so) how. Drug treatments are usually effective against acute depression, though this varies from person to person and relief of symptoms is usually not immediate, and long term drug use often subject to side effects and reduced effectiveness. Cognitive therapies are usually only effective against mild to moderate depression.
Legal problems: unlikely as a major cause. I personally believe he would have relished fighting his legal persecution. Any suicide as a reaction to the prospect of a long prison sentence would have needed the case to be much further advanced.
Blackmail (by the government): very possible. Many people have secrets (often not illegal) that they desperately want to keep from others. Given his involvement with Wikileaks, the government would definitely have tried to blackmail him if they had anything they could use for that purpose.
Personal relationship problems: possible, but no evidence to support that theory.
Really, there is nothing except supposition to support foul play. Without something concrete to go on, his family and close friends should be left to grieve in peace.
RIP, Aaron. I only know you through your Internet freedom advocacy, but regret your passing.
This means that it is possible to install Ubuntu (and several other Linux distributions) not that it is sold with Ubuntu already installed. For most buyers, the experience out of the box is what counts. Fwiiw, I think this will be perfectly acceptable for most bearing in mind the price tag.
While the hardware challenges are undoubtedly substantial, the basic idea is just a variation on time division multiplexing, which has been extensively used since the days of the telegraph, well before 1900. If this receives a patent, I hope it is for some hardware advance and not just because of the sharing of the fibre.
Can an expert on modern English comment on the summary's use of the word "moxie" as presumably meaning "capable". I have always thought "moxie" to be something only a person could have and mean "strength of character" or similar. Is there a difference in American versus British English?
I strongly suspect that few of the posters have actually shipped stuff by sea to the tropics, or viewed the typical handling of containers in a container yard.
As others have stated, the main risk of total loss is through pilferage. However, ships cargo gets much rougher handling than your checked baggage when traveling by air. The posters who say that lots of electronics gets shipped from the Far East to the US and Europe are correct. To get an idea of why most of it arrives undamaged, take a good look at the packaging your last Chinese made monitor arrived in. You could drop it from 20 feet and leave it for several hours in a sauna with no ill effects. If you want to just pack your stuff securely so it is not rolling around, then maybe you will get lucky, but I would not count on it.
The first use of the name X was for X1 in June 1984. It originated at MIT. The name X was used to distinguish it from the earlier and rather different W (now you know why a Window system was abbreviate as "X": it was basically "W" mark 2). The obvious follow up question is when was W released? I cannot remember (perhaps never knew) and am too lazy to search the Internet to find out.
It is clear the reopening of Sweden's investigation into Assange, and the extradition proceedings, were at the behest of the Americans, but I am puzzled. Why does the US want to eventually extradite Assange from Sweden rather than more quickly from the UK? In this kind of political case, the UK is likely to be at least as cooperative as Sweden. Who has a good theory?
what I'm curious about is how long a reverse-terrorist attack will take to happen (enough westerners are so pissed off at islam that I do wonder how long it will be before some christian crashes a plane into a mosque or equiv).
I think an interesting example of this is the Anders Brevick affair: a middle class, white Christian male murders 77 mostly teenage victims to protest the increased acceptance of Islam in his country. A small proportion of the population anywhere that (i) feels irrationally strongly about some issue; and (ii) is powerless to fight it in any other way will convince themselves that it is helpful to protest the perceived (often real) wrong by attacking innocent third parties. Demonizing groups that are already extremely angry will make them even more unhappy and possibly turn 0.001% of them into terrorists.
The only valid reasons an airline employee might have to refuse boarding to a passenger with a damaged passport are:
It is being proffered as proof of identity and is so badly damaged (for instance, the photograph is unrecognizable) as to be inadequate for that purpose. Or
(Only if boarding an international flight) the employee has a reasonable concern that the immigration official at the destination might refuse entry based on the condition of the passport. This is because the airline becomes responsible for returning you to your starting point should this occur. Airlines (and individual airline staff) vary in their strictness over this kind of issue. I strongly suspect that this was the real reason for refusing boarding, and the statements about the passport being a privilege was just a gratuitous (and rude and insensitive) comment.
First, unless you are an expert debater, recognize that others can argue this better than you can. I suggest you ask him to spend 10 minutes watching the educational video on SOPA/PIPA put together by the folks at Khan Academy. Next suggest that he browse Doc Searl's (Harvard Law School) blog post on why SOPA/PIPA is a disaster waiting to happen. You might casually ask why he thinks even the sponsors of SOPA (once educated on the issues) have withdrawn their support.
Since the Oracle take over, it seems all Sun's products have been degraded. The likely consequences of allowing Oracle monopoly control of Sun were clear from the beginning. The interference with Java, OpenOffice and MySQL was bad enough, but they are now allowing Sun to emit dangerous plasma clouds. When are the responsible authorities going to take action to prevent Oracle from inconveniencing us all in this way.
Perhaps, you would care to reread Judges 21. Here are some selected highlights:
10 So the assembly sent twelve thousand fighting men with instructions to go to Jabesh Gilead and put to the sword those living there, including the women and children.
11 “This is what you are to do,” they said. “Kill every male and every woman who is not a virgin.”
12 They found among the people living in Jabesh Gilead four hundred young women who had never slept with a man, and they took them to the camp at Shiloh in Canaan.
...
20 So they instructed the Benjamites, saying, “Go and hide in the vineyards
21 and watch. When the young women of Shiloh come out to join in the dancing, rush from the vineyards and each of you seize one of them to be your wife.
...
23 So that is what the Benjamites did. While the young women were dancing, each man caught one and carried her off to be his wife. Then they returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the towns and settled in them.
This is according to the most recent translations. Trust me, the older translations are worse.
If you will claim that it glorifies violence, would you also say that the Diary of Anne Frank glorifies violence? Because both are the same style of literature-- that is, historical writings, and both contain violence.
I guess I was not very observant, but I failed to read any approval of the violence in the Diary of Anne Frank. When "the lord" burns people who murmur against him, tells his people to kill all the non virgins of a town they have captured, but keep and rape all the virgins, mandates death for homosexuals, and a thousand other acts of violence in the OT, it is in the context that everything God does is beyond approach.
It's the Old Testament! THAT, isn't a childrens story!
It also is of dubious artistic merit, contains explicit sex scenes and glorifies violence. If one is going to justify censorship at all, I can see no reason why the sale and possession of this filth should not be banned.
I am not a history buff, but even my hazy recollections were enough to know that your post contains some pretty dubious thinking
Catalonia wasn't a nation then (otherwise they wouldn't have taken part in the war to choose Spain's next king, would they?)
Based on this logic, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, Portugal and the Holy Roman Empire would not have been nations either, since they most definitely took part in the war. Nevertheless, I would tend to accept that Catalonia's independence by that point in its history was questionable.
Feel free to point _any_ time of history before 1714 when Catalonia was an unified entity
The same Wikipedia article you researched contains these quotes:
... after the defeat of Emir Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqiwas's troops at Tours in 732 local Visigoths regained autonomy, though they voluntarily made themselves tributary to the emerging Frankish kingdom, [emphasis mine]
and
As part of the Crown of Aragon — most historians would say the dominant part — the Catalans became a maritime power, expanding by trade and conquest into Valencia, the Balearic Islands, and even Sardinia and Sicily.
This second quote suggests to me that, at a certain point of time, the Crown of Aragon amounted to a Catalonian empire. As with all empires, it eventually collapsed, but Catalonia has arguably as much right to a claim of nationhood as England, (previously the centre of the British Empire, and now a constituent part of the United Kingdom)
This brings up some interesting points: if you have a property interest in a domain, then what do you pay the yearly fee for?
Administrative costs. In a similar way, once I stake a claim to a particular trademark, I continue to own it as long as I do not abandon it. IMHO, this is an easy decision, though I agree there will be pressure in some quarters to get it quashed.
For those who do not have the time to read this quite convincing 31 page paper, here is one quote from the introduction confirming that credible sources cite second hand smoke as a risk factor for lung cancer:
Second hand smoke (SHS) is also an established cause of both lung cancer and cardiovascular
disease (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2004, 2006, 2010).
Right now, the focus seems to be on the UAV market. If the technology is ever used for manned flight, this will not be for a long time. Whether the technology is truly a major advance for UAVs in constrained spaces (the current objective) we shall need to wait and see. From the company website:
The current status of D-DALUS
D-DALUS is currently in prototype stage. Over recent weeks IAT21 have conducted extensive constrained flight tests in a specially prepared laboratory near Salzburg, including the transition from vertical to forward flight, and are now ready to move to an open test range for free flight tests. In trials to date D-DALUS has met the performance criteria placed upon it and appears to be scalable, becoming more efficient and less complex as it increases in size. It will therefore be ideally suited for applications that range from maritime search and rescue, through the carriage of freight, to operating alongside and within buildings during fires or, for example, nuclear accidents.
Slashdot Mirror
Democracy only works if those in power are committed to its preservation. Important policies and actions need to be discussed and public opinion allowed to influence final decisions. There is ample evidence that the U.S. and some other older democracies no longer really want their people involved in important decision making. They need to pay lip service to the concept. However, a combination of lies, secrecy and manipulation (partly by politicians themselves and partly by well funded PACs) ensure informed participation from the general population is next to impossible.
"Democracy" and "human rights" in these countries will no doubt remain for a long time as key justifications for very undemocratic foreign policies, but are well on the way to being dead in any meaningful sense.
Miranda is clearly guilty, then, as he certainly communicated embarrassing information to dirty red commie journalists.
Sadly, many Western governments are unable to carry out some actions they want to if the general public knows about them, simply because most people consider them immoral and unacceptable. They are, then, presented with a dilemma. They can stop doing things their electorate would find objectionable, they can try to eliminate the ability of the electorate to influence government, or they can lie about what they are doing and try to keep it secret. The third is impossible if people like Snowden are allowed to tell people what their government is doing on their behalf.
Over the last 30 years or so, I have spent lesser or greater periods in over 50 countries. However, the last ten years have been mainly in South East Asia. I use Bangkok Thailand as my base and travel around from there.
IMHO, your basic idea is right. Combine work you want to do with traveling and experiencing all the world has to offer. Those suggesting you simply skip working for a few years have no idea how difficult it can be to get back into the swim later.
Issues such as visas, living costs, easy access to good Internet connections and an environment conducive to working effectively vary tremendously from place to place. [If you have ideas about where you might go, and let me know, I might be able to provide more specific advice.]
Here are some pointers that you will probably not receive from others, especially those who have not done it. First and foremost, you need a clear plan on work/life balance and you need to be disciplined on adhering to it. I have seen many intelligent and talented people, faced with the temptations that exist in many parts of the world, simply self destruct because they lack structure in their lives. That does not mean you cannot take periods of a month or two to concentrate on traveling and enjoying life in a way that cannot easily be combined with work. It does mean that, any time you do this, you should set yourself a time limit for returning to your more structured lifestyle and stick to that time limit.
If staying more than a couple of weeks anywhere, try to escape from traveler ghettos and immerse yourself in the local culture. For instance, rent a room in an area where few foreigners live and eat in the places frequented by locals. This will take you out of your comfort zone, but will teach you more in a week about the realities of the society you are in than a year in a backpacker guest house.
If you have specific questions, ask away!
I think each individual involved in the decision to pick wars with strangers the other end of the world has his own justifications (rationalizations), but the fundamental rational is major financial gain for those involved in the defense industry. For the average American (let alone the poor inhabitants of the countries chosen as battlefields) spending of about $700,000,000,000 a year (an average of about $7,000 for each payer of federal taxes) to build the capability to blow people up at will makes no sense. However, for a small minority, wars are an amazing opportunity to profit.
If it was suicide, then what was the ultimate trigger? Bear in mind that suicide (at least, in modern Western societies) is rarely the result of the single event.
Really, there is nothing except supposition to support foul play. Without something concrete to go on, his family and close friends should be left to grieve in peace.
RIP, Aaron. I only know you through your Internet freedom advocacy, but regret your passing.
You have obviously never seen Brainfuck or any large program written in APL. They both make figuring out Forth programs seem like a breeze.
This means that it is possible to install Ubuntu (and several other Linux distributions) not that it is sold with Ubuntu already installed. For most buyers, the experience out of the box is what counts. Fwiiw, I think this will be perfectly acceptable for most bearing in mind the price tag.
While the hardware challenges are undoubtedly substantial, the basic idea is just a variation on time division multiplexing, which has been extensively used since the days of the telegraph, well before 1900. If this receives a patent, I hope it is for some hardware advance and not just because of the sharing of the fibre.
Can an expert on modern English comment on the summary's use of the word "moxie" as presumably meaning "capable". I have always thought "moxie" to be something only a person could have and mean "strength of character" or similar. Is there a difference in American versus British English?
As others have stated, the main risk of total loss is through pilferage. However, ships cargo gets much rougher handling than your checked baggage when traveling by air. The posters who say that lots of electronics gets shipped from the Far East to the US and Europe are correct. To get an idea of why most of it arrives undamaged, take a good look at the packaging your last Chinese made monitor arrived in. You could drop it from 20 feet and leave it for several hours in a sauna with no ill effects. If you want to just pack your stuff securely so it is not rolling around, then maybe you will get lucky, but I would not count on it.
The first use of the name X was for X1 in June 1984. It originated at MIT. The name X was used to distinguish it from the earlier and rather different W (now you know why a Window system was abbreviate as "X": it was basically "W" mark 2). The obvious follow up question is when was W released? I cannot remember (perhaps never knew) and am too lazy to search the Internet to find out.
Perhaps, the most fun use of an old smart phone is the mobile phone throwing contest
It is clear the reopening of Sweden's investigation into Assange, and the extradition proceedings, were at the behest of the Americans, but I am puzzled. Why does the US want to eventually extradite Assange from Sweden rather than more quickly from the UK? In this kind of political case, the UK is likely to be at least as cooperative as Sweden. Who has a good theory?
I think an interesting example of this is the Anders Brevick affair: a middle class, white Christian male murders 77 mostly teenage victims to protest the increased acceptance of Islam in his country. A small proportion of the population anywhere that (i) feels irrationally strongly about some issue; and (ii) is powerless to fight it in any other way will convince themselves that it is helpful to protest the perceived (often real) wrong by attacking innocent third parties. Demonizing groups that are already extremely angry will make them even more unhappy and possibly turn 0.001% of them into terrorists.
First, unless you are an expert debater, recognize that others can argue this better than you can. I suggest you ask him to spend 10 minutes watching the educational video on SOPA/PIPA put together by the folks at Khan Academy. Next suggest that he browse Doc Searl's (Harvard Law School) blog post on why SOPA/PIPA is a disaster waiting to happen. You might casually ask why he thinks even the sponsors of SOPA (once educated on the issues) have withdrawn their support.
Since the Oracle take over, it seems all Sun's products have been degraded. The likely consequences of allowing Oracle monopoly control of Sun were clear from the beginning. The interference with Java, OpenOffice and MySQL was bad enough, but they are now allowing Sun to emit dangerous plasma clouds. When are the responsible authorities going to take action to prevent Oracle from inconveniencing us all in this way.
This is according to the most recent translations. Trust me, the older translations are worse.
I guess I was not very observant, but I failed to read any approval of the violence in the Diary of Anne Frank. When "the lord" burns people who murmur against him, tells his people to kill all the non virgins of a town they have captured, but keep and rape all the virgins, mandates death for homosexuals, and a thousand other acts of violence in the OT, it is in the context that everything God does is beyond approach.
It also is of dubious artistic merit, contains explicit sex scenes and glorifies violence. If one is going to justify censorship at all, I can see no reason why the sale and possession of this filth should not be banned.
I am not a history buff, but even my hazy recollections were enough to know that your post contains some pretty dubious thinking
Based on this logic, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, Portugal and the Holy Roman Empire would not have been nations either, since they most definitely took part in the war. Nevertheless, I would tend to accept that Catalonia's independence by that point in its history was questionable.
The same Wikipedia article you researched contains these quotes:
and
This second quote suggests to me that, at a certain point of time, the Crown of Aragon amounted to a Catalonian empire. As with all empires, it eventually collapsed, but Catalonia has arguably as much right to a claim of nationhood as England, (previously the centre of the British Empire, and now a constituent part of the United Kingdom)
Administrative costs. In a similar way, once I stake a claim to a particular trademark, I continue to own it as long as I do not abandon it. IMHO, this is an easy decision, though I agree there will be pressure in some quarters to get it quashed.
For those who do not have the time to read this quite convincing 31 page paper, here is one quote from the introduction confirming that credible sources cite second hand smoke as a risk factor for lung cancer: