Common misconception held particularly by Europeans, which is reinforced by the fact people keep repeating this meme without examining it critically; honestly, anyone who thinks the Conservative party in Britain, for example, would not be considered a right-wing party in the US is extremely mistaken.
I'm not sure if the UK is such a great example for Europe. I consider Labour also a conservative right-wing party. (Then again, the Dutch Labour party has helped privatize lots of vital infrastructure too. Economic liberalism has become a bit too standard in Europe.)
Your thinking is flawed. Not everything can be mapped onto a single scale. The fact that there are left-wing and right-wing authoritarians doesn't imply that all left- and rght-wingers are authoritarian. There are also liberals/libertarians on both sides.
Left and right are meaningless concepts by themselves. It's just a matter of where people like to sit in parliament. The nazis worked with the conservatives and not with the socialists, and I'd be pretty surprised if they didn't sit on the right side of the Reichstag.
In the end, though, left-right means what politicians want it to mean. In the 19th century, conservatives (supporting the things had always been, supporting the authority of the monarch, etc) were generally right, and liberals (people supporting the values of liberalism, including democracy, power to the people (or at least the bourgeoisie), civil rights, separation of power, basically the ideas behind the American and French revolutions) were on the left. Sometimes it was people in favour of religious/theocratic politics on the right and liberals on the left. During the 20th century, with the rise of socialists, liberals moved to the right in many countries, and often absorbed what few conservative ideas still remained. Also with western nations being mostly liberal, the existing system supported by conservatives was also mostly liberal. Nowadays it often looks more like the right is pro-corporate rights, while left the left is pro-people. The right is often more authoritarian, but not always, the left can just as easily display an authoritarian bent. There are lots of dimensions in the political landscape that aren't easily mapped together on a single left-right dimension.
In the end, though, left-right is mostly about tribalism. Who are the people on our side, and who are our opponents? This is most obvious in many African countries where political party lines are really divided along classical tribal lines. And the US seems to have a similar kind of neo-tribalism in politics: the political differences between Reps and Dems are really minor, they're mostly supporting the exact same system. It's only about whether your tribe or the opposing tribe is in power, and whose cronies get all the cushy jobs. It would be great to get out of that situation, but while approval voting can definitely play a role there, the real problem lies in the heads of the people.
Thanks, but I am already paying my ISP: I do not want to pay again for the right of playing online.
Then play on a PC. You're free to connect to whatever service you like. Of course some of those (WoW) will still cost money. See, you're only paying your ISP for your connection to the Internet. You're not paying them for whatever services people are offering online. You need to pay the people offering those services separately.
A better argument would be: "I'm already paying Sony to play games. I don't want to pay them again to play them online."
(Europeans readers right now are saying "No, the US doesn't count as a truly progressive state.")
That is indeed exactly what I was thinking. I regularly recognise some scary similarities between the US and various muslim countries. It's by no means universal to all Americans, fortunately, but then again, not all muslims are fanatical nutjobs either.
On the other hand, many Egyptian muslims responded to that attack by supporting the Copts. Something good might actually come out of this. A bit more democracy and a bit more religious tolerance would be an awfully nice change.
Aren't you making the exact same point as the parent: that news stations can publish known lies? Or is this suddenly about your favourite TV station being criticized, rather than a human being's free speech getting restricted by a court?
What does any of this have to do with the money he's in it for, according to you? I'm not claiming he's a paragon of virtue. He definitely has some serious ego issues, and he made plenty of mistakes and bad judgements, behaves erratically, and occasionally bordering on the malicious, when he feels wronged somehow. He has a strong internal sense of justice that he considers more important than any external laws or morality. But he's not in it for the money.
Sweden won't extradite someone they are pressing charges against, and won't extradite anyone if capital punishment is an option.
But is Sweden actually pressing charges against him? Quite recently, he was merely wanted for questioning. Charges were dropped because the prosecutor saw absolutely no case in it, and he got permission to leave the country. Only after that did a prosecutor from a different region pick it up and issue an international arrest warrant. For questioning. You've got to admit there's something fishy about that.
Useless? I disagree. Fighting is not merely about proper technique. It's at least as much about having a good "feel" for the fight, pulling dirty tricks and thinking outside the box. Medieval swordfighting manuals feature quite a bit of wrestling and dirty tricks, and with good reason. Your opponent isn't always in front of you at the correct distance, on a even ground.
I thought it was $68k a year. But he is constantly travelling. And I don't think he's always sleeping in a mansion like he is right now. It could just as easily be on a couch in an apartment. Consider that leaders of many other organisations get at least twice as much, and get to own these kind of mansions, I'm not overly upset about Assange's income. There are much worse things to worry about here.
If this is simply an exponential growth issue, then it may not even be a bug. Maybe it's a bad design, maybe it's an unintended feature. But if in some game factories can build factories, then you can bet people are going to use it to achieve ridiculous growth.
That's what I was thinking. If the "cheater" label is public, then it looks to me like a libel case. Unless he really did cheat, of course, and current rumour has it that he did.
So sure, we could "make a living by manufacturing" those goods, but we'd have to compete with China and India on wages. Anyone here really support that idea? Dropping our wages to China and India's level?
It's possible to make labour a lot cheaper without reducing the income of workers. Remove tax on labour, and replace it with tax on the use of scarce resources (natural resources, land, clean air/water, etc). Everything that by using it, you deny to others (including future generations), should be taxed. Use that tax to replace income tax, and also levy that same tax on goods imported from countries that don't tax the use of scarce resources.
China and India will still be cheaper, but not by as much as they currently are. And at the same time, you're rewarding sustainable energy, production, etc, not just in your own country, but all around the world.
Acutally it is. Julian has shown time and again that he is only doing wikileaks for the money.
No he hasn't. He needs money to keep WikiLeaks alive, yes. But his salary is nothing compared to what most other people in charge of an organisation (for-profit or non-profit) would get.
I fully admit that some of his actions are bordering on blackmail, but I'm pretty sure he's doing it for WikiLeaks, and not for his own wallet.
According to Wikipedia, median income is around 76k.
Median, not average? That's pretty high, then. Median income is often about half of the average income (because the top 1% make so much). A median of 76k is staggering.
Seriously, 3% are EXCELLENT results in and of itself, and if compared to pretty much all of Europe, they are INTERGALATICALLY good.
That's just a number, and what it means depends entirely on what your role in that economy is. It's nice if investors are making a profit, but if you're unemployed, that doesn't help you a bit. I live in Netherland, and while our economy is probably not growing all that fast at the moment, it's easy for programmers to find a job. Not one that pays as well as a job in Silicon Valley, but it pays well enough (unless you want to be able to pay a mortgage for a house in Amsterdam on a single income; that just doesn't work).
This is a problem in more western countries. Everybody keeps complaining we need more science, tech, innovation and education, companies complain about the level of education of recent grads, yet nobody actually wants to invest in it. Companies don't want to pay decent salaries, politics don't want to invest in education and innovation, and students who chose science or technology end up either unemployed, or making less money than if they'd chosen something management-oriented.
If you care about science and tech, put your money where your mouth is.
Mine too, initially, but I get it now. Firstly he had only an hour, so there's not much time for polish. And secondly, the reason he won was his interaction with kids that were offering suggestions on what to add. Personally I think that's an awesome criterium for this job.
I think this news is excellent news for everybody involved: him, Lego, and the kids. I wish him the best of luck with his cool new job.
I often clicked "preview" twice. The first time was often completely unresponsive, and the second time it worked. Same with submit. But it was a really annoying bug nonetheless.
I agree that ~username was and still is completely useless.
~username/comments is still broken. So basically they fixed one bad bug, and introduced another.
Slashdot Mirror
Common misconception held particularly by Europeans, which is reinforced by the fact people keep repeating this meme without examining it critically; honestly, anyone who thinks the Conservative party in Britain, for example, would not be considered a right-wing party in the US is extremely mistaken.
I'm not sure if the UK is such a great example for Europe. I consider Labour also a conservative right-wing party. (Then again, the Dutch Labour party has helped privatize lots of vital infrastructure too. Economic liberalism has become a bit too standard in Europe.)
Your thinking is flawed. Not everything can be mapped onto a single scale. The fact that there are left-wing and right-wing authoritarians doesn't imply that all left- and rght-wingers are authoritarian. There are also liberals/libertarians on both sides.
Left and right are meaningless concepts by themselves. It's just a matter of where people like to sit in parliament. The nazis worked with the conservatives and not with the socialists, and I'd be pretty surprised if they didn't sit on the right side of the Reichstag.
In the end, though, left-right means what politicians want it to mean. In the 19th century, conservatives (supporting the things had always been, supporting the authority of the monarch, etc) were generally right, and liberals (people supporting the values of liberalism, including democracy, power to the people (or at least the bourgeoisie), civil rights, separation of power, basically the ideas behind the American and French revolutions) were on the left. Sometimes it was people in favour of religious/theocratic politics on the right and liberals on the left. During the 20th century, with the rise of socialists, liberals moved to the right in many countries, and often absorbed what few conservative ideas still remained. Also with western nations being mostly liberal, the existing system supported by conservatives was also mostly liberal. Nowadays it often looks more like the right is pro-corporate rights, while left the left is pro-people. The right is often more authoritarian, but not always, the left can just as easily display an authoritarian bent. There are lots of dimensions in the political landscape that aren't easily mapped together on a single left-right dimension.
In the end, though, left-right is mostly about tribalism. Who are the people on our side, and who are our opponents? This is most obvious in many African countries where political party lines are really divided along classical tribal lines. And the US seems to have a similar kind of neo-tribalism in politics: the political differences between Reps and Dems are really minor, they're mostly supporting the exact same system. It's only about whether your tribe or the opposing tribe is in power, and whose cronies get all the cushy jobs. It would be great to get out of that situation, but while approval voting can definitely play a role there, the real problem lies in the heads of the people.
Thanks, but I am already paying my ISP: I do not want to pay again for the right of playing online.
Then play on a PC. You're free to connect to whatever service you like. Of course some of those (WoW) will still cost money. See, you're only paying your ISP for your connection to the Internet. You're not paying them for whatever services people are offering online. You need to pay the people offering those services separately.
A better argument would be: "I'm already paying Sony to play games. I don't want to pay them again to play them online."
(Europeans readers right now are saying "No, the US doesn't count as a truly progressive state.")
That is indeed exactly what I was thinking. I regularly recognise some scary similarities between the US and various muslim countries. It's by no means universal to all Americans, fortunately, but then again, not all muslims are fanatical nutjobs either.
On the other hand, many Egyptian muslims responded to that attack by supporting the Copts. Something good might actually come out of this. A bit more democracy and a bit more religious tolerance would be an awfully nice change.
At least they don't hide what fuckwads they are. They pretty much tell you flat out how things are going to be.
Do they? Did they tell in advance that OtherOS was going to be removed some day?
Personally, I trust Sony less than Microsoft. Less than Oracle, even.
Aren't you making the exact same point as the parent: that news stations can publish known lies? Or is this suddenly about your favourite TV station being criticized, rather than a human being's free speech getting restricted by a court?
And aren't US prisons already rife with gang activity? Would they rather see roleplayers join one of the existing gangs?
What does any of this have to do with the money he's in it for, according to you? I'm not claiming he's a paragon of virtue. He definitely has some serious ego issues, and he made plenty of mistakes and bad judgements, behaves erratically, and occasionally bordering on the malicious, when he feels wronged somehow. He has a strong internal sense of justice that he considers more important than any external laws or morality. But he's not in it for the money.
Sweden won't extradite someone they are pressing charges against, and won't extradite anyone if capital punishment is an option.
But is Sweden actually pressing charges against him? Quite recently, he was merely wanted for questioning. Charges were dropped because the prosecutor saw absolutely no case in it, and he got permission to leave the country. Only after that did a prosecutor from a different region pick it up and issue an international arrest warrant. For questioning. You've got to admit there's something fishy about that.
Useless? I disagree. Fighting is not merely about proper technique. It's at least as much about having a good "feel" for the fight, pulling dirty tricks and thinking outside the box. Medieval swordfighting manuals feature quite a bit of wrestling and dirty tricks, and with good reason. Your opponent isn't always in front of you at the correct distance, on a even ground.
I thought it was $68k a year. But he is constantly travelling. And I don't think he's always sleeping in a mansion like he is right now. It could just as easily be on a couch in an apartment. Consider that leaders of many other organisations get at least twice as much, and get to own these kind of mansions, I'm not overly upset about Assange's income. There are much worse things to worry about here.
If this is simply an exponential growth issue, then it may not even be a bug. Maybe it's a bad design, maybe it's an unintended feature. But if in some game factories can build factories, then you can bet people are going to use it to achieve ridiculous growth.
Then maybe they shouldn't include any skill-based game. It's not as if it's hard to make card-counting ineffective.
That's what I was thinking. If the "cheater" label is public, then it looks to me like a libel case. Unless he really did cheat, of course, and current rumour has it that he did.
So sure, we could "make a living by manufacturing" those goods, but we'd have to compete with China and India on wages. Anyone here really support that idea? Dropping our wages to China and India's level?
It's possible to make labour a lot cheaper without reducing the income of workers. Remove tax on labour, and replace it with tax on the use of scarce resources (natural resources, land, clean air/water, etc). Everything that by using it, you deny to others (including future generations), should be taxed. Use that tax to replace income tax, and also levy that same tax on goods imported from countries that don't tax the use of scarce resources.
China and India will still be cheaper, but not by as much as they currently are. And at the same time, you're rewarding sustainable energy, production, etc, not just in your own country, but all around the world.
Acutally it is. Julian has shown time and again that he is only doing wikileaks for the money.
No he hasn't. He needs money to keep WikiLeaks alive, yes. But his salary is nothing compared to what most other people in charge of an organisation (for-profit or non-profit) would get.
I fully admit that some of his actions are bordering on blackmail, but I'm pretty sure he's doing it for WikiLeaks, and not for his own wallet.
Besides, the NYT is the lapdog of the liberal left, and not likely to leak anything of importance.
Yet a lot of people in the US are claiming that the WikiLeaks stuff (which NYT helped in getting published) is very important.
Your "lapdog" comment shows your bias. It's not something you can draw credible conclusions from (except about you).
Of course back then, $30k was still worth something.
According to Wikipedia, median income is around 76k.
Median, not average? That's pretty high, then. Median income is often about half of the average income (because the top 1% make so much). A median of 76k is staggering.
Seriously, 3% are EXCELLENT results in and of itself, and if compared to pretty much all of Europe, they are INTERGALATICALLY good.
That's just a number, and what it means depends entirely on what your role in that economy is. It's nice if investors are making a profit, but if you're unemployed, that doesn't help you a bit. I live in Netherland, and while our economy is probably not growing all that fast at the moment, it's easy for programmers to find a job. Not one that pays as well as a job in Silicon Valley, but it pays well enough (unless you want to be able to pay a mortgage for a house in Amsterdam on a single income; that just doesn't work).
This is a problem in more western countries. Everybody keeps complaining we need more science, tech, innovation and education, companies complain about the level of education of recent grads, yet nobody actually wants to invest in it. Companies don't want to pay decent salaries, politics don't want to invest in education and innovation, and students who chose science or technology end up either unemployed, or making less money than if they'd chosen something management-oriented.
If you care about science and tech, put your money where your mouth is.
I'd quit my (better payed) job not thinking twice if I get offered that position.
I wouldn't, but only because I've got a mortgage and a kid.
And I don't want to move to the US, of course.
Mine too, initially, but I get it now. Firstly he had only an hour, so there's not much time for polish. And secondly, the reason he won was his interaction with kids that were offering suggestions on what to add. Personally I think that's an awesome criterium for this job.
I think this news is excellent news for everybody involved: him, Lego, and the kids. I wish him the best of luck with his cool new job.
I often clicked "preview" twice. The first time was often completely unresponsive, and the second time it worked. Same with submit. But it was a really annoying bug nonetheless.
I agree that ~username was and still is completely useless.
~username/comments is still broken. So basically they fixed one bad bug, and introduced another.