Well, in this case you would still have some basic idea about what the corporation is doing (bottling soda).
Which would be preferable
I agree, that was actually my point. As long as I have a general idea about what's going on, I'm happy. However, I believe that potentially hazardous or questionable stuff, like chemical weapons, nuclear plants and so on, should be overseen - as opposed to running - by the officials. Even with safety rules, there is no guarantee that a company would comply -- in reality, short time profit or political goals are often more important than regulations. That's why you need an independent supervisor.
When it comes to the government, the best supervisor are probably the people themselves. Now, with secret activities and unclear regulations you don't have this kind of control. The President sets the agenda, it's true, but he doesn't replace all of the management because of that. Same generals are running Pentagon, same CIA agents are planning undercover operations and same people are working at the IRS (the IRS probably doesn't have any secret programs though:-) Ideally, the elected representatives would make sure that everything goes on as supposed to. In practice, they are relatively few. Most of them have their own political agendas and many are probably not even interested in fair play -- we're talking about politicians here:-) What I'm trying to say is that the more secrecy there is, the more difficult it is to discover misconduct and to fight corruption.
Why assume the error is in present rather than past levels of security? Perhaps those things that weren't classified a few years ago should have been. Where's your evidence that the Pentagon is classifying things it shouldn't?
I don't have it. And that's the problem - there probably just isn't any evidence at all, now that documents are being classified automatically. Actually, most information is potentially damaging. Still, it doesn't mean the public shouldn't see it.
Now, suppose that people from some agency invents a revolutionary new, extremely painful and in most cases fatal interrogation technique...
They should get raises and pats on the back. The job of people in defense research agencies is to sit around sipping energy drinks and thinking up fiendish and horrific new methods of inflicting pain on our enemies. As a citizen I want the nastiest, scariest, most feared military on the planet. Best guarantee of peace I know.
This is a bit offtopic, but I have to say that I strongly disagree. Come on, being the most feared thing on the planet will most definitely not guarantee peace. That would make the rest of the world a huge training camp for Al-Qaida. Most of the people outside the states would simply start hating its army and its citizens. For instance, pushing sharp metal things through some suspected terrorist's eyes or forcing prisoners to have sex with dogs or whatever might be a useful interrogation technique in the short term. In the long term it would ruin the credibility of the country using such techniques. Of course, there's also a moral side to this. I mean, if the only objective is killing enemies in the most painful way - then why do we even bother taking prisoners?
Electing folks and then second-guessing them all the time is nuts. It would be like the shareholders of Coke (to use your example) demanding to take part, individually, in each and every corporate decision. The regular business of Coca-Cola, Inc. (bottling soda) would grind to a halt
Well, in this case you would still have some basic idea about what the corporation is doing (bottling soda). If the Coca-Cola Inc. decides to enter a new market and start making, say, chemical weapons, then it would probably need to inform the shareholders about the new move. The production should then be overseen by the government.
If the President wants to know exactly what the NSA is doing in some deep-dark secret lab, he'll ask and be told.
Now, suppose that people from some agency invents a revolutionary new, extremely painful and in most cases fatal interrogation technique and start using it in the field. Or, suppose that the military is developing unique biological weapons, say a virus capable of wiping out a third of the world's population. Shouldn't it be your right to know about that particular use of your tax dollars and maybe even object to it? And even if the President would care about what goes on in deep-dark secret labs, he would still need to ask the right questions.
I'm not saying that every action of the state should require a public approval. None the less, I believe that the public deserves to have some general knowledge about what is going on. Now that Pentagon is classifying things that would probably be considered harmless a few years ago, the amount of the classified information must be growing quite rapidly. How would anyone then be able to question some of the not-so-harmless programs known only to a few dozens of people in the world?
According to Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html the freedom of speech is a universal human right. It shouldn't matter whether the violation is committed by a private company or a government -- it's not less of a violation because of that.
This discussion about voting rights is rapidly becoming offtopic. I'll try to clarify what I meant anyway.
I'm not arguing about Putin misusing the situation in pursuit of his political agenda. Of course he does! This doesn't change the fact of a restrictive language policy, criticized not only by Russia but also by the EU commission.
You have 9 million Swedes jabbering away and neither Finland nor Norway have ever posed any relevant threat.
I'm definitely not saying that the Baltic languages don't deserve to exist or that they shouldn't be protected. I'm just having a hard time to imagine a language as a valid threat. You seem to think of it as a threat to the Latvian/Estonian culture -- but like it or not, the Baltic states do share historical and cultural heritage with Russia and many other countries. I don't really beleive this is something that can culturally make Estonia or Latvia a Russian province again. If the Soviet Union didn't succeed, who will? Heck, Sweden did the same thing in the 17th-18th centuries, trying to eradicate the languages and the different cultures of the Baltic region. It obviously didn't work. Many small countries (such as Switzerland) have two official languages -- and they still have a unique culture. Or look at Ireland, a country which by many has been considered English for 200 years until it broke free and developed a very strong new cultural self image. The English language is still official there -- but who cares!
As for Sweden, over 1 million people out of 9 have been born outside the country. Most of them have Swedish only as a second language. Many never actually learn Swedish. It's a bit of a problem, but nobody is denying them basic education in their native languages and they are able to vote and communicate with authorities and healthcare. For me and many others those are human rights. It doesn't mean you shouldn't protect a small language -- on the countrary, it should be encouraged. But those who don't master it shouldn't be denied access to the basic services of the society.
The Swedish language and culture themselves are constantly changing, shaped by the influence of the people living in the country. This is generally a good thing. Today, we are living under strong English influence. Before that it was French and German. The language and the culture of today is indeed very different from what it was a 100 years ago. This is quite normal and nothing to be afraid of. We hardly have any Viking words left -- but we do have a unique culture!
By the way, where do all those numbers and percentages come from?
I agree, 80 percent seems a bit high. According to this site: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ en.html the Russian language amounts to 29.7%. This is still quite big. The argument was basically that a large enough population speaking a second language should be a reason to make it official. Some might agree with that, and some may disagree. Simply calling someone Putin's propaganda lackey won't change that fact or convince anyone.
Now, I wouldn't jump to the conclusions about racism or a large economical impact. For me, this is a matter of being a part of the society. In my opinion, people who've lived in a country for a certain amount of time should be able to communicate with the officials even though they don't understand the language. Children should also be given education and healthcare using their native language (with the support of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child).
Today, a EU citizen moving to another EU country should be able to communicate with the country's officials in order to keep the labour market unrestricted. The Russian minority don't seem to have this right even though they appear to have it in the neighboring Finland. I myself live in Sweden where we don't even have an official language. When a foreign language becomes popular enough, the officials simply translate various Swedish forms into the new language and hire a new translator. When somebody have lived long enough in the country (a few years), he or she is entitled to participate in local elections -- which I think is rather important. In spite of that, the small Swedish language is very much alive and the streets have not been taken over by 150 million of Russians / Turks / Jews / whatever. Well, maybe except for the Old City in Stockholm:)
"I ANY country citizenship is not given BEFORE you have learned the LANGUAGE of that country. [...] Well, guess what, there you need to speak native language too:)"
Not correct. You don't actually need to know the Swedish language to become a citizen of the country. In fact, in many -- if not most -- countries babies born there will automatically gain full citizenship regardless of parent's nationalities or language. Even though the children themselves cannot speak any language at all by the time.
This document http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/dwn/opinions /estonia/es-op-en.pdf was drafted by the EU before Estonia was accepted as a EU member. It does express some concerns for the Russian minority and other issues, with fairly good explanations. Here is an excerpt (basically about a human rights issue):
The Estonian authorities should consider means to enable stateless children born in Estonia to be naturalised more easily, particularly with a view to the impending entry into effect of the European Convention on nationality agreed within the Council of Europe.
Estonian citizenship seems to be a highly controversial issue which provokes heated debates -- which is quite understandable, given the country's history. The grandparent made many thoughtless and highly questionable remarks. In spite of that, I believe he does have a point. The issue here, as I see it, is that a substantial part of the Russian population living in Estonia have been born and raised in the country, although they only speak Russian. Many of them are old and quite unable to master a second language. Some people (among them EU officials) believe that this in itself is reason enough to receive a citizenship.
Yes, but the problem is that the actual journals are going the way of dodo. Today, the libraries are often forced to pay for electronical subscriptions instead of buying hard copies, effectively losing control of the information. The library have to pay per view and in most cases cannot choose what journals to subscribe to - they come in packages, take it or leave it.
The price tag is already pretty high and the market is totally dominated by a few companies. At my local university library for instance, 2/3 of the fundings are spent on the electronical subscriptions. Quite a few of the bundled journals are readily accessible from the Internet, but the library will still have to pay for the whole package, something that many smaller libraries are finding increasingly difficult. That's making it harder to find the information you need, even at your local campus. Google Scholar is therefore a great alternative.
Hey, now at last it should be possible to design gravestones using the latest clip art from MS Office! I wonder how long it would take until Clippy start saying stuff like "It looks like you're writing a gravestone..."
Wait, what if someone would discover those plates 10 000 years later? Surely, no hard drive can survive that long? Probably not many books either. The only things left of our civilization would be huge sewer systems - and the stone plates.
Let's see, what should we teach the future generations about? The deCSS code should be a natural choice...
Couldn't the emulation mode actually kill many of the Linux drivers? After all, why should the hardware manufacturers bother writing native drivers if those written for Windows could do nearly as well? No native drivers would mean performance hits and compatibility problems.
The "good spam" is probably only good for the spammer (but then, so is the ordinary spam). After all, spam - any spam - is defined as "unwanted email". It could be relevant, but I still don't want it. How could it possibly be good? Targeted spam is just as evil when it's in my inbox.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you can blame them for not trying. Anyway, how do you make money by creating yet another programming language? The OAK language was initially designed as a home appliance platform. It was mainly written by a few (less than ten) programmers in about one and a half year. However, they didn't quite succeeded in selling their product. The appliance manufacturers weren't all that excited about putting Motorola processors and megs of RAM in toasters and VCR's, while the interactive TV companies chose a different solution.
After a few failures a new radical decision was taken. The OAK language was redesigned (Bill Joy was the man behind the transformation) to run on desktop computers, with the Web development in mind, and so Java was born - in just a few months! The source code was set free in order to gain market share (not so in later Java versions, I beleive) - and hey, for a failed project, it's quite impressive (even if it isn't such a great source of income).
So, how would I tell the difference between the "self-contained executable document" of yours and a virus? Why would I want to pollute my hard drive with hundreds of Office Viewer copies just in order to be able to read some mail? Why not just use an open standard (XML) so that every mail program will be able to interpret your document?
If you want to send a https authentication password to someone, why not just do it? It's not a MS Office feauture, but even if it was, how many people would use it? Frankly, I don't beleive something like that would give Open Office a bigger market share. If you need security, use PGP. I'm the Joe Average you're talking about, and I don't need the extra features. In fact, I'm sick and tired of them. 1001 ways to change your button panel is clearly an overkill and is NOT the revolutionizing feature I always wanted. I want a reasonably priced, fast and stable application which is easy to use. Currently, all the extra MS Office features created since Office 6 are mostly in the way (for me, at least).
This is actually nothing compared to SORM or "system for ensuring investigative activity" - the Russian equivalent (more or less), which is perfectly legal in Russia and is enforced by Russian authorities so they can monitor the telephone network, fax lines and paging services.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh no, you beat me to it!
Now I need a patent for posting a sarcastic remark through the Slashdot comment model and sue you guys for royalties.
I better hurry patenting the wheel before it's too late... the one purchasable through a shopping cart model that is.
Which would be preferable
I agree, that was actually my point. As long as I have a general idea about what's going on, I'm happy. However, I believe that potentially hazardous or questionable stuff, like chemical weapons, nuclear plants and so on, should be overseen - as opposed to running - by the officials. Even with safety rules, there is no guarantee that a company would comply -- in reality, short time profit or political goals are often more important than regulations. That's why you need an independent supervisor.
When it comes to the government, the best supervisor are probably the people themselves. Now, with secret activities and unclear regulations you don't have this kind of control. The President sets the agenda, it's true, but he doesn't replace all of the management because of that. Same generals are running Pentagon, same CIA agents are planning undercover operations and same people are working at the IRS (the IRS probably doesn't have any secret programs though
Why assume the error is in present rather than past levels of security? Perhaps those things that weren't classified a few years ago should have been. Where's your evidence that the Pentagon is classifying things it shouldn't?
I don't have it. And that's the problem - there probably just isn't any evidence at all, now that documents are being classified automatically. Actually, most information is potentially damaging. Still, it doesn't mean the public shouldn't see it.
They should get raises and pats on the back. The job of people in defense research agencies is to sit around sipping energy drinks and thinking up fiendish and horrific new methods of inflicting pain on our enemies. As a citizen I want the nastiest, scariest, most feared military on the planet. Best guarantee of peace I know.
This is a bit offtopic, but I have to say that I strongly disagree. Come on, being the most feared thing on the planet will most definitely not guarantee peace. That would make the rest of the world a huge training camp for Al-Qaida. Most of the people outside the states would simply start hating its army and its citizens. For instance, pushing sharp metal things through some suspected terrorist's eyes or forcing prisoners to have sex with dogs or whatever might be a useful interrogation technique in the short term. In the long term it would ruin the credibility of the country using such techniques. Of course, there's also a moral side to this. I mean, if the only objective is killing enemies in the most painful way - then why do we even bother taking prisoners?
Electing folks and then second-guessing them all the time is nuts. It would be like the shareholders of Coke (to use your example) demanding to take part, individually, in each and every corporate decision. The regular business of Coca-Cola, Inc. (bottling soda) would grind to a halt
Well, in this case you would still have some basic idea about what the corporation is doing (bottling soda). If the Coca-Cola Inc. decides to enter a new market and start making, say, chemical weapons, then it would probably need to inform the shareholders about the new move. The production should then be overseen by the government.
If the President wants to know exactly what the NSA is doing in some deep-dark secret lab, he'll ask and be told.
Now, suppose that people from some agency invents a revolutionary new, extremely painful and in most cases fatal interrogation technique and start using it in the field. Or, suppose that the military is developing unique biological weapons, say a virus capable of wiping out a third of the world's population. Shouldn't it be your right to know about that particular use of your tax dollars and maybe even object to it? And even if the President would care about what goes on in deep-dark secret labs, he would still need to ask the right questions.
I'm not saying that every action of the state should require a public approval. None the less, I believe that the public deserves to have some general knowledge about what is going on. Now that Pentagon is classifying things that would probably be considered harmless a few years ago, the amount of the classified information must be growing quite rapidly. How would anyone then be able to question some of the not-so-harmless programs known only to a few dozens of people in the world?
According to Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html the freedom of speech is a universal human right. It shouldn't matter whether the violation is committed by a private company or a government -- it's not less of a violation because of that.
As long as TV and doughnuts are available, Omar should be fine. Instead of Bud he'll probably just drink Mecca-Cola (http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3 604,870413,00.html) at some local tea joint.
Sorry we forgot to pack any porn on the hard disk.
That's actually good, or they might've got a terribly wrong idea about the proper way of greeting the Earthlings once they arrive.
This discussion about voting rights is rapidly becoming offtopic. I'll try to clarify what I meant anyway.
I'm not arguing about Putin misusing the situation in pursuit of his political agenda. Of course he does! This doesn't change the fact of a restrictive language policy, criticized not only by Russia but also by the EU commission.
You have 9 million Swedes jabbering away and neither Finland nor Norway have ever posed any relevant threat.
I'm definitely not saying that the Baltic languages don't deserve to exist or that they shouldn't be protected. I'm just having a hard time to imagine a language as a valid threat. You seem to think of it as a threat to the Latvian/Estonian culture -- but like it or not, the Baltic states do share historical and cultural heritage with Russia and many other countries. I don't really beleive this is something that can culturally make Estonia or Latvia a Russian province again. If the Soviet Union didn't succeed, who will? Heck, Sweden did the same thing in the 17th-18th centuries, trying to eradicate the languages and the different cultures of the Baltic region. It obviously didn't work. Many small countries (such as Switzerland) have two official languages -- and they still have a unique culture. Or look at Ireland, a country which by many has been considered English for 200 years until it broke free and developed a very strong new cultural self image. The English language is still official there -- but who cares!
As for Sweden, over 1 million people out of 9 have been born outside the country. Most of them have Swedish only as a second language. Many never actually learn Swedish. It's a bit of a problem, but nobody is denying them basic education in their native languages and they are able to vote and communicate with authorities and healthcare. For me and many others those are human rights. It doesn't mean you shouldn't protect a small language -- on the countrary, it should be encouraged. But those who don't master it shouldn't be denied access to the basic services of the society.
The Swedish language and culture themselves are constantly changing, shaped by the influence of the people living in the country. This is generally a good thing. Today, we are living under strong English influence. Before that it was French and German. The language and the culture of today is indeed very different from what it was a 100 years ago. This is quite normal and nothing to be afraid of. We hardly have any Viking words left -- but we do have a unique culture!
By the way, where do all those numbers and percentages come from?
/ en.html the Russian language amounts to 29.7%. This is still quite big. The argument was basically that a large enough population speaking a second language should be a reason to make it official. Some might agree with that, and some may disagree. Simply calling someone Putin's propaganda lackey won't change that fact or convince anyone.
:)
I agree, 80 percent seems a bit high. According to this site: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos
Now, I wouldn't jump to the conclusions about racism or a large economical impact. For me, this is a matter of being a part of the society. In my opinion, people who've lived in a country for a certain amount of time should be able to communicate with the officials even though they don't understand the language. Children should also be given education and healthcare using their native language (with the support of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child).
Today, a EU citizen moving to another EU country should be able to communicate with the country's officials in order to keep the labour market unrestricted. The Russian minority don't seem to have this right even though they appear to have it in the neighboring Finland. I myself live in Sweden where we don't even have an official language. When a foreign language becomes popular enough, the officials simply translate various Swedish forms into the new language and hire a new translator. When somebody have lived long enough in the country (a few years), he or she is entitled to participate in local elections -- which I think is rather important. In spite of that, the small Swedish language is very much alive and the streets have not been taken over by 150 million of Russians / Turks / Jews / whatever. Well, maybe except for the Old City in Stockholm
"I ANY country citizenship is not given BEFORE you have learned the LANGUAGE of that country. [...] Well, guess what, there you need to speak native language too :)"
s /estonia/es-op-en.pdf was drafted by the EU before Estonia was accepted as a EU member. It does express some concerns for the Russian minority and other issues, with fairly good explanations. Here is an excerpt (basically about a human rights issue):
Not correct. You don't actually need to know the Swedish language to become a citizen of the country. In fact, in many -- if not most -- countries babies born there will automatically gain full citizenship regardless of parent's nationalities or language. Even though the children themselves cannot speak any language at all by the time.
This document http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/dwn/opinion
The Estonian authorities should consider means to enable stateless children born in Estonia to be naturalised more easily, particularly with a view to the impending entry into effect of the European Convention on nationality agreed within the Council of Europe.
Estonian citizenship seems to be a highly controversial issue which provokes heated debates -- which is quite understandable, given the country's history. The grandparent made many thoughtless and highly questionable remarks. In spite of that, I believe he does have a point. The issue here, as I see it, is that a substantial part of the Russian population living in Estonia have been born and raised in the country, although they only speak Russian. Many of them are old and quite unable to master a second language. Some people (among them EU officials) believe that this in itself is reason enough to receive a citizenship.
Yes, but the problem is that the actual journals are going the way of dodo. Today, the libraries are often forced to pay for electronical subscriptions instead of buying hard copies, effectively losing control of the information. The library have to pay per view and in most cases cannot choose what journals to subscribe to - they come in packages, take it or leave it.
The price tag is already pretty high and the market is totally dominated by a few companies. At my local university library for instance, 2/3 of the fundings are spent on the electronical subscriptions. Quite a few of the bundled journals are readily accessible from the Internet, but the library will still have to pay for the whole package, something that many smaller libraries are finding increasingly difficult. That's making it harder to find the information you need, even at your local campus. Google Scholar is therefore a great alternative.
I wouldn't call the whole bittorrent system illegal - after all, you might as well use it to share legit stuff. Or am I missing something?
It's possible to obtain a *fast* java program by compiling directly to native machine code: http://gcc.gnu.org/java/
In addition to that, you could use a native GUI - like GTK - instead of Swing, which should speed things up considerably.
You're right! Without Gates the life after death would be boring and meaningless ;-)
Hey, now at last it should be possible to design gravestones using the latest clip art from MS Office! I wonder how long it would take until Clippy start saying stuff like "It looks like you're writing a gravestone..."
Wait, what if someone would discover those plates 10 000 years later? Surely, no hard drive can survive that long? Probably not many books either. The only things left of our civilization would be huge sewer systems - and the stone plates.
...
Let's see, what should we teach the future generations about? The deCSS code should be a natural choice
Couldn't the emulation mode actually kill many of the Linux drivers? After all, why should the hardware manufacturers bother writing native drivers if those written for Windows could do nearly as well? No native drivers would mean performance hits and compatibility problems.
The CIA use to commit murder and other terrorist acts. They don't obey international laws. You support them simply by paying taxes.
Don't worry, you can have this knowledge for less than half the book price! Just give me your credit card number and I'll send you the info.
You don't even have to supply any personal information (name, address etc) - your integrity shall be protected!
The "good spam" is probably only good for the spammer (but then, so is the ordinary spam). After all, spam - any spam - is defined as "unwanted email". It could be relevant, but I still don't want it. How could it possibly be good? Targeted spam is just as evil when it's in my inbox.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you can blame them for not trying. Anyway, how do you make money by creating yet another programming language? The OAK language was initially designed as a home appliance platform. It was mainly written by a few (less than ten) programmers in about one and a half year. However, they didn't quite succeeded in selling their product. The appliance manufacturers weren't all that excited about putting Motorola processors and megs of RAM in toasters and VCR's, while the interactive TV companies chose a different solution.
After a few failures a new radical decision was taken. The OAK language was redesigned (Bill Joy was the man behind the transformation) to run on desktop computers, with the Web development in mind, and so Java was born - in just a few months! The source code was set free in order to gain market share (not so in later Java versions, I beleive) - and hey, for a failed project, it's quite impressive (even if it isn't such a great source of income).
So, how would I tell the difference between the "self-contained executable document" of yours and a virus? Why would I want to pollute my hard drive with hundreds of Office Viewer copies just in order to be able to read some mail? Why not just use an open standard (XML) so that every mail program will be able to interpret your document?
If you want to send a https authentication password to someone, why not just do it? It's not a MS Office feauture, but even if it was, how many people would use it? Frankly, I don't beleive something like that would give Open Office a bigger market share. If you need security, use PGP. I'm the Joe Average you're talking about, and I don't need the extra features. In fact, I'm sick and tired of them. 1001 ways to change your button panel is clearly an overkill and is NOT the revolutionizing feature I always wanted. I want a reasonably priced, fast and stable application which is easy to use. Currently, all the extra MS Office features created since Office 6 are mostly in the way (for me, at least).
Hey, this is dangerous! If you shrink Windows any further it might just collapse to the size of a black hole and swallow everything in the universe!
This is actually nothing compared to SORM or "system for ensuring investigative activity" - the Russian equivalent (more or less), which is perfectly legal in Russia and is enforced by Russian authorities so they can monitor the telephone network, fax lines and paging services.
More info at http://www.libertarium.ru/libertarium/14424
Actually, IE used about 99% of my CPU when I tried to open kitchensink.xml - it gave up after 20 seconds or so.