Endings are for children. The Little Engine That Could has an ending. I don't mean to insult you for preferring that the narrative wraps itself up in a tidy package. There is something satisfying about that, but I think that more adult and more complex stories don't lend themselves to that kind of storytelling. Endings, whether happy or sad, are always somewhat artificial. There is always more story to tell. I really didn't mind the way that Diamond Age ended at all. Sure, there were plenty of narrative loose ends to wrap up, but from a thematic standpoint, the story was over. The author's point(s) had been made.
Re:Can Oscar's be given posthumously?
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Batman Discussion
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To me, Batman Begins was much better than the new one. With BB, there was a strong and coherent theme, and the plot fit together in a way that made sense to me, or at least enough sense. This one is almost incoherent by comparison.
Re:Can Oscar's be given posthumously?
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Batman Discussion
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I've seen a lot of stupid comments get modded up in this thread, but this is one worth spending some points on. I don't have any atm, so I'm just commenting instead.
I agree with your assessment that this Joker was more "real". A comic can never match the nuanced delivery that Ledger gave... in the comics, dialogue is just words on a page. You can make some words bold, some in caps, yadda yadda... but it doesn't come close to the power to convey additional meaning that a good actor has. In the comics, printed words and images are the whole show.
That said, I felt that this Batman was mostly a failure. Once you make the Joker and Batman real people, they have to live in a world that's governed by logic. But this Batman was a total mess:
- When did the Joker have time to plant all of those bombs? The Joker had dozens of spots wired to blow. It was a criminal conspiracy of epic proportions. No one ever discovered all of those drums of gasoline?
- Why did the Joker's henchmen follow him when he was in the habit of shooting them? If your answer is because they are crazy like him, then how come these crazy people were so good at following the Joker's orders and executing his convoluted plans to the letter?
- Why was it so easy for the Joker to turn cops evil? Ramirez loves her mom so much that's she's willing to help the Joker kidnap Gordon's family?
- When the henchman had the bomb inside his body, why wasn't it discovered when the cops searched him before putting him in the cell? Even a rudimentary search would have found the apparatus, and the fact that it was all crudely sewn under the skin hid nothing.
- H
Also, I was unmoved by most of the action sequences. I felt like they were choppy and hard to follow. A well done action sequence has fluidity to it... the cause and effect relationships make a kind of sense. This version of Batman was more like a child playing with Batman action figures - random and totally free from logic, despite the more realistic renderings of the characters done by quality actors like Eckart and Ledger.
I'm not saying I hated this movie. I guess I was just frustrated by the fact that it was so close to greatness, but messed it up with some thoughtless choices.
I think your last point there is a very good one. It simply doesn't follow logically that stopping child porn will reduce child abuse. I ask myself, what if my access to adult porn was eliminated? Would I cease to be interested in chesty blonds? I THINK NOT. If anything, I'd be more motivated to stop playing GTA and go meet a real girl.
It doesn't matter anyhow. This effort is not even intended to stop child porn. It's to gain some press for Cuomo and others like him, and it's intended to stop piracy of intellectual property. But it won't stop anything at all. They killed Napster, and soon after, Bit Torrent was born. If they really do kill newsgroups, they will be replaced. And the circle of life continues!
I would think the disadvantages of the black market are pretty obvious - organized crime and the violence that comes with it. That's the number one reason that we should legalize most drugs. As bad as addiction is, it's not as bad as still having the addiction problem, but now the addicts are supplied by evil thugs. Sure, communism was bad, but is it really much better to have things run by a gangster who simply rubs out his rivals? I guess they do make the trains run on time, so there's that...
I agree that the US is going down much the same path. The Iraq war is like the world's largest welfare program. We subsidize our weapons industry by buying tons of gear at insane prices, and we pump tons of cash into our labor market by employing the bottom 10% of the current high school grads as killers.
The solution seems astonishingly simple. Do what Clinton did. If you embrace free markets and slash defense spending, you can have a healthy economy and balance the budget. The Republicans say they favor small government, but they are liars. They always run up a huge tab at the taxpayers expense. There's nothing "small government" about the Iraq war.
Good point! I'm typing this on an X40, and it's a great laptop. No optical drive, and I don't miss it, because it reduces the size and weight so much. It's really not much bigger or heavier than a eeepc, and it has a much much bigger screen and keyboard. A quick search of craigslist reveals that someone near me is selling one for 310, and another guy wants 340 for his.
My dad bought my mom a eeepc, and she never uses it. She says the keyboard and the screen are just too small for her.
I applaud the efforts to reduce laptop prices. That's a great trend, in the long run. But the biggest innovation of the mini notebook is eliminating the optical drive. Who needs one on a laptop? On the rare occasions when I really need to, I hook up a $60 USB DVD drive. Why carry that DVD burner with me everywhere I go?
companies that run without an It department or a regular IT consultant are dumb.
They do have a regular IT consultant... me.
Also who was the one that made the bonehead decision to use software that not only locks you in but locks you to the upgrade treadmill or you die? Why dont they have real accounting software that allows data migration?
Whoa, whoa... easy there, Tex. Take a deep breath. How would I know who made the original call to use Quicken? The business owner doesn't remember. That was back in 2001, or maybe even earlier. I haven't been working for this company that long. Point is, they're on it, before I got there. They don't want to switch - they know Quicken and they trust Quicken. I can recommend other software all I want, but it's their choice, not mine.
As an IT consultant, I often step into messed up situations that are not of my own making. Is that not the case for you? Does everyone in your world make the right choices before you get there? How nice for you. That's not how the real world works.
I didn't say difficult for me. I said difficult for the typical user who hires me. I have no doubt that it's easy for you too, but you're a/. reader. My small business owners are AOL users who cry out in fear if their computer makes a strange beep. But I do appreciate your recommendation of software, so thanks.
As far as swapping the CD drive, I agree, that's a pretty darn simple job that requires little training. But in the same way that you don't need to have a contractors license in most states to do some simple repairs to a house, I would hope that this law has enough sanity to allow someone to add RAM without becoming Magnum PI first.
I mean, even if they do, it's still a stupid law. But that type of allowance would make it much less stupid in my eyes. TFA did not make that clear.
Here's why they are really doing this, just in case anyone out there didn't already guess:
Some of the area's larger companies already employee technicians with PI licenses, a fact which generally doesn't apply to small computer repair shops.
And there you have it - big guys crushing little guys. Welcome to America. Don't dream of building a small business, being your own boss, and having some sort of independence. Oh hellz no! Work for the man, or don't work at all.
Didn't we have a revolution a couple hundred years back over stuff like this? Might be time for a new one soon... the old one is broken.
I really do get your point, but if the alternative to an unlicensed practitioner is no health care at all, then isn't the cure worse than the disease?
As to the question of how can a person with limited medical knowledge evaluate a medical practitioner, the answer is through the interwebs, of course! If a person has mostly favorable comments from all of the people he's treated, he can't be that bad of a doctor. The reputation system works well enough for ebay. I think it could be pretty effective here too. People are already evaluating doctors in this way.
I say keep the current system, but just don't make it mandatory. The rich folks will keep going to their fancy doctors, who can't really help them half the time anyway. If the poor people want to go see some local witch doctor, we should allow that. I mean, since we're so bloody uncivilized that we don't have a nationalized health care system, like most of the free world does. That would be preferable, of course.
From your answer, I would guess that you have never done this type of IT work before. For most small businesses, it's not nearly as simple as just chucking the old one and getting a new one. First and foremost, there's the small matter of migrating the data.
For instance, one firm that employs me has been using Quicken 2001 for their accounting needs. That product is no longer sold. Getting their crucial accounting data from that old program to some new software is far beyond the average user... FAR beyond. Just choosing a new program to migrate to is more than most small business owners want to deal with.
So, they're faced with the choice of either hiring me (or someone like me) to help them with that, or else attempting to do it themselves with the aid of tech support, which will be frustrating and time consuming at best. This law really hoses people like that. They'll be paying twice as much for that type of service, all so that some private dick can be clicking the keys.
I do think you're correct about a black market for computer repair being created. That's what happens every time the government tries to limit commerce. I'm not always against government regulation. I'm not one of those free market extremists who think that the government should be abolished. But, this is certainly too much.
This situation reminds me of the way that Sony Records has been at odds with Sony's electronics division. This is what happens when a company gets too large - it begins to contradict itself.
When I was a kid in the 80s, the iPod of the day was a thing called the Sony Walkman. Sony could have dominated the mobile music market today as well, but they were so concerned about losing their music profits that they embraced DRM and made digital music players that no one wanted. Apple is sure glad they did!
And now it seems that Virgin is about to shoot itself in the foot in similar fashion. Good job, Virgin. Sending intimidating letters to 6 million of your customers, and let us know how that works out for you. Dumbshits.
Am I conversing with John Mclaughlin? You seem pretty sure of yourself, but I think your argument is as full of holes as a termite-invested house.
The fact that something has not been done is no proof that it can't be done. None at all. It's just not logically sound.
It way well be that it's harder to write a virus for Mac OS. That's probably the case. Nevertheless, I remain quite confident that if Mac were the dominant OS, viruses would sprout up all over the place. And since Mac is not the dominant OS, there's no way for you to prove me wrong, Mr. McLaughlin.
Ah yes... security through obscurity. You better hope that this "apple" stuff never catches on, or someone might decide it's worth the trouble to write a virus to go after the smug snotty douchebags of the world.
Could you explain to me, exactly, what the difference is between "mob rule" and the "will of the people"?
Isn't Democracy always "mob rule"? Is that so much worse that our representative form of government, which has been such a horrible failure recently? It seems to me that the alternative to mob rule is corporate rule. I'm fairly certain that mob rule is what our founding fathers had in mind. The only reason they went with a representative form of government is the practical concerns. Hasn't technology rendered most of those concerns moot? One no longer need ride several days on horseback to vote.
Also, I'm not sure what's wrong with people not voting on issues that they don't care about. You're right about gay marriage. Many people would have no particular opinion, and would skip that vote. Is that so bad? If people are so ambivalent on an issue that they can't be bothered to vote, then is there really a "will of the people"?
Besides, lots of people care about issues that do not directly effect them. I'm not gay, but I do care about that particular issue. So, I'd be sure to vote on that one.
Modern life is far too complex for everyone to have an opinion about everything. It's hard enough just trying to stay informed on a basic level about issues of huge import. What attracts me to the Metagovernment model is that, like open software, people are free to devote their energies to projects about which they are passionate. That's in stark contrast to the current system, where money rules all.
I'm not an advocate of open source government. I really haven't thought enough about the issue to have an opinion. But, I think you're misrepresenting the concept. The post that you replied to didn't say people needed to vote on "every" bill. It said "any" bill. That's a huge difference. It's not like we have 100 percent of the population voting now.
The chief advantage that I see of this proposed form of governance is that ideas would judged based on merit, similar to the way that the/. moderating system works. The good ideas would bubble up to the top, in theory. That's a stark contrast to the way things work now, where money is the only form of merit.
The problem that I see with it is that like any other system, it could be "gamed". Interests with large amounts of money could simply pay advocates under the table. In a sense, it's almost like simply taking the politicians out of the equations, and allowing the lobbyists to rule directly. Perhaps that wouldn't happen. Wikipedia works because the people who are trying to provide good information outnumber the vandals by a good margin. Maybe that would be the case with Metagovernment as well.
Also, it's sexist to say "congressmen". There are a few women in there, ya know. It only takes a few more keystrokes to say "members of congress".
What a load of horse shit. Folks in the military voted overwhelmingly for Bush in 2004. If that isn't a vote for the aggressive use of American military power, then what is? If they hate war so much, they should have joined the PEACE corps.
Our soldiers are bathed in the blood of the innocent. Life under Saddam was certainly brutal, but he wasn't going to kill anything like the number of Iraqis that the US military has killed.
>> NOT ONE OF US alive knows what the dead/departed/physically-separated think, know, or are located. NONE of us.
Given the total lack of scientific evidence for an afterlife, I do think it's a pretty safe assumption that the dead don't care. To me, that assumption is as safe as my other assumption, that the sun will rise tomorrow. NOT ONE OF US knows for certain that it will - not for certain. But, based on the evidence available, let's just say that the odds look pretty good for sunshine.
As a bit of unsolicited but hopefully constructive criticism, I have to say, capitalizing roughly every third word or so is going to cause some people to perceive you as a raving lunatic. I'm not one of those people, but... you might want to think about going a bit easier on the caps.
I think this is a very thoughtful and rational post. I was about to say that I totally agreed with you, but then I realized that I don't.
Were the 50's and 60's better? Racism, male chauvinist oinks, and the boys club mentality... Add on the lack of being able to fly easily, travel easily, or have any luxuries.
No phone, no lights, no motor cars, Not a single luxury! Well, the 50's were not quite as primitive as can be. I especially don't understand your comment about not traveling easily. Maybe airplane tickets were more expensive, but gas was certainly a lot cheaper. A lot, lot, lot, cheaper. So short distance travel was much easier then.
You know you can live like the 50's and 60's. I am serious here. Get rid of your cable subscription, your cell phone subscription, have a single car, and everything that you did not have in the 50's and 60's. And you can live quite well.
The cable TV thing is certainly valid, but I find the Internet and cell phones to be more indispensable than than you seem to. I would be totally unable to find a decent paying job in my area without the Internet. And while I do pay for a cell phone, I don't pay for a land line, so that cost is somewhat offset. My main point here is, I think it's a pretty serious disadvantage to try to compete with people for jobs who do have cell phones and Internet access. Besides, all that cheap foreign labor that you mentioned has dropped the cost of clothing and other essentials to bargain levels, helping to offset increased tech costs.
The problem is not immigration.
On that much we agree.
The immigration levels at the time you talk so fondly of were per-capita higher than now.
True, but who cares about per-capita? As I said, I agree that immigration is not the problem. The problem is that the Earth's population is now 6.6 billion people. The western world has slowed down on the baby making to the point where our native-born population is shrinking. But the rest of the world didn't get the memo.
And that is the real issue. The wage inequality of which you speak is just made worse by that. I certainly agree that people in the second and third world as just as good in every way as the people in the rich countries. The issue is that there are so very many of them. World population is way up, but the amount of arable land is not up much, if any. The amount of fresh water is not up. And then, of course, there's oil...
So, to sum up, I think that your statements about the new costs added to modern life by technology are somewhat overstated, while you ignore the massive inflationary pressures created by the exploding world population. I don't have a particular solution in mind to these issues. Humanity probably has some very very hard times ahead, and I don't see a way out. But, I'm often incorrect, and hopefully this is one of those times.
That's pretty good. Maybe it can be a new meme around here. Dawkins deserves his own meme, considering that he coined the term in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.
Probably true, in as much as smart people are not as likely to turn to selling drugs or prostitution (or similar dangerous endeavors) in order to survive, simply because they have more options than the intelligence-challenged. And one would assume that getting involved in that sort of thing makes one far more likely to both be murdered and commit murder.
I'd be fascinated to learn how big that difference really is, but I think it's the sort of study that doesn't get done. It smacks too much of justification for eugenics. And we all know where that will get us... KAAAAAAAAAAHN!!!
That said, intelligent people may be just as likely to commit certain types of murder as the dumb-dumbs, such as murder of one's spouse. Insane jealous rage doesn't care to listen to logic, no matter how smart the brain that hatched it. And I think engineers are probably more likely to get cheated on than other professions. That's just a hunch, based on a bit of anecdotal evidence (all of the sexy engineer trophy wives that I've bedded, har har).
Ayman Al-Zawahiri is a doctor. He's a top Al-Qaeda guy - arrested decades ago in connection with the murder of Anwar Sadat, and he also wrote a lot of Al-Qaeda's various manifestos. He has a masters in surgery. That's not quite like an engineer, but it's not exactly totally different, either.
And then of course there's the Unabomer, Ted Kaczynski. He has a PhD in Math.
Of course, there are plenty of stupid people who become terrorists. They just tend to not be as good at it... for some mysterious reason. And so they do not become nearly as famous as the smart terrorists.
It's somewhat disturbing that intelligence is no safeguard against feelings of murderous rage (aren't the smarties supposed to "know better?"), but such condition is hardly limited to the intelligent.
It sorta makes me wonder how many doctors, engineers, and mathematicians get away with regular old-fashioned non-terroristical murder each year. I would not be surprised to learn that smart people commit murder at the same rate as anyone else, but simply have a much better shot at getting away with it.
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Endings are for children. The Little Engine That Could has an ending. I don't mean to insult you for preferring that the narrative wraps itself up in a tidy package. There is something satisfying about that, but I think that more adult and more complex stories don't lend themselves to that kind of storytelling. Endings, whether happy or sad, are always somewhat artificial. There is always more story to tell. I really didn't mind the way that Diamond Age ended at all. Sure, there were plenty of narrative loose ends to wrap up, but from a thematic standpoint, the story was over. The author's point(s) had been made.
To me, Batman Begins was much better than the new one. With BB, there was a strong and coherent theme, and the plot fit together in a way that made sense to me, or at least enough sense. This one is almost incoherent by comparison.
I've seen a lot of stupid comments get modded up in this thread, but this is one worth spending some points on. I don't have any atm, so I'm just commenting instead.
I agree with your assessment that this Joker was more "real". A comic can never match the nuanced delivery that Ledger gave... in the comics, dialogue is just words on a page. You can make some words bold, some in caps, yadda yadda... but it doesn't come close to the power to convey additional meaning that a good actor has. In the comics, printed words and images are the whole show.
That said, I felt that this Batman was mostly a failure. Once you make the Joker and Batman real people, they have to live in a world that's governed by logic. But this Batman was a total mess:
- When did the Joker have time to plant all of those bombs? The Joker had dozens of spots wired to blow. It was a criminal conspiracy of epic proportions. No one ever discovered all of those drums of gasoline?
- Why did the Joker's henchmen follow him when he was in the habit of shooting them? If your answer is because they are crazy like him, then how come these crazy people were so good at following the Joker's orders and executing his convoluted plans to the letter?
- Why was it so easy for the Joker to turn cops evil? Ramirez loves her mom so much that's she's willing to help the Joker kidnap Gordon's family?
- When the henchman had the bomb inside his body, why wasn't it discovered when the cops searched him before putting him in the cell? Even a rudimentary search would have found the apparatus, and the fact that it was all crudely sewn under the skin hid nothing.
- H
Also, I was unmoved by most of the action sequences. I felt like they were choppy and hard to follow. A well done action sequence has fluidity to it... the cause and effect relationships make a kind of sense. This version of Batman was more like a child playing with Batman action figures - random and totally free from logic, despite the more realistic renderings of the characters done by quality actors like Eckart and Ledger.
I'm not saying I hated this movie. I guess I was just frustrated by the fact that it was so close to greatness, but messed it up with some thoughtless choices.
I think your last point there is a very good one. It simply doesn't follow logically that stopping child porn will reduce child abuse. I ask myself, what if my access to adult porn was eliminated? Would I cease to be interested in chesty blonds? I THINK NOT. If anything, I'd be more motivated to stop playing GTA and go meet a real girl.
It doesn't matter anyhow. This effort is not even intended to stop child porn. It's to gain some press for Cuomo and others like him, and it's intended to stop piracy of intellectual property. But it won't stop anything at all. They killed Napster, and soon after, Bit Torrent was born. If they really do kill newsgroups, they will be replaced. And the circle of life continues!
I would think the disadvantages of the black market are pretty obvious - organized crime and the violence that comes with it. That's the number one reason that we should legalize most drugs. As bad as addiction is, it's not as bad as still having the addiction problem, but now the addicts are supplied by evil thugs. Sure, communism was bad, but is it really much better to have things run by a gangster who simply rubs out his rivals? I guess they do make the trains run on time, so there's that...
I agree that the US is going down much the same path. The Iraq war is like the world's largest welfare program. We subsidize our weapons industry by buying tons of gear at insane prices, and we pump tons of cash into our labor market by employing the bottom 10% of the current high school grads as killers.
The solution seems astonishingly simple. Do what Clinton did. If you embrace free markets and slash defense spending, you can have a healthy economy and balance the budget. The Republicans say they favor small government, but they are liars. They always run up a huge tab at the taxpayers expense. There's nothing "small government" about the Iraq war.
Good point! I'm typing this on an X40, and it's a great laptop. No optical drive, and I don't miss it, because it reduces the size and weight so much. It's really not much bigger or heavier than a eeepc, and it has a much much bigger screen and keyboard. A quick search of craigslist reveals that someone near me is selling one for 310, and another guy wants 340 for his.
My dad bought my mom a eeepc, and she never uses it. She says the keyboard and the screen are just too small for her.
I applaud the efforts to reduce laptop prices. That's a great trend, in the long run. But the biggest innovation of the mini notebook is eliminating the optical drive. Who needs one on a laptop? On the rare occasions when I really need to, I hook up a $60 USB DVD drive. Why carry that DVD burner with me everywhere I go?
They do have a regular IT consultant... me.
Whoa, whoa... easy there, Tex. Take a deep breath. How would I know who made the original call to use Quicken? The business owner doesn't remember. That was back in 2001, or maybe even earlier. I haven't been working for this company that long. Point is, they're on it, before I got there. They don't want to switch - they know Quicken and they trust Quicken. I can recommend other software all I want, but it's their choice, not mine.
As an IT consultant, I often step into messed up situations that are not of my own making. Is that not the case for you? Does everyone in your world make the right choices before you get there? How nice for you. That's not how the real world works.
I didn't say difficult for me. I said difficult for the typical user who hires me. I have no doubt that it's easy for you too, but you're a /. reader. My small business owners are AOL users who cry out in fear if their computer makes a strange beep. But I do appreciate your recommendation of software, so thanks.
As far as swapping the CD drive, I agree, that's a pretty darn simple job that requires little training. But in the same way that you don't need to have a contractors license in most states to do some simple repairs to a house, I would hope that this law has enough sanity to allow someone to add RAM without becoming Magnum PI first.
I mean, even if they do, it's still a stupid law. But that type of allowance would make it much less stupid in my eyes. TFA did not make that clear.
And there you have it - big guys crushing little guys. Welcome to America. Don't dream of building a small business, being your own boss, and having some sort of independence. Oh hellz no! Work for the man, or don't work at all.
Didn't we have a revolution a couple hundred years back over stuff like this? Might be time for a new one soon... the old one is broken.
I really do get your point, but if the alternative to an unlicensed practitioner is no health care at all, then isn't the cure worse than the disease?
As to the question of how can a person with limited medical knowledge evaluate a medical practitioner, the answer is through the interwebs, of course! If a person has mostly favorable comments from all of the people he's treated, he can't be that bad of a doctor. The reputation system works well enough for ebay. I think it could be pretty effective here too. People are already evaluating doctors in this way.
I say keep the current system, but just don't make it mandatory. The rich folks will keep going to their fancy doctors, who can't really help them half the time anyway. If the poor people want to go see some local witch doctor, we should allow that. I mean, since we're so bloody uncivilized that we don't have a nationalized health care system, like most of the free world does. That would be preferable, of course.
From your answer, I would guess that you have never done this type of IT work before. For most small businesses, it's not nearly as simple as just chucking the old one and getting a new one. First and foremost, there's the small matter of migrating the data.
For instance, one firm that employs me has been using Quicken 2001 for their accounting needs. That product is no longer sold. Getting their crucial accounting data from that old program to some new software is far beyond the average user... FAR beyond. Just choosing a new program to migrate to is more than most small business owners want to deal with.
So, they're faced with the choice of either hiring me (or someone like me) to help them with that, or else attempting to do it themselves with the aid of tech support, which will be frustrating and time consuming at best. This law really hoses people like that. They'll be paying twice as much for that type of service, all so that some private dick can be clicking the keys.
I do think you're correct about a black market for computer repair being created. That's what happens every time the government tries to limit commerce. I'm not always against government regulation. I'm not one of those free market extremists who think that the government should be abolished. But, this is certainly too much.
Yes, this was clearly aftshadowing, which is far less impressive.
This situation reminds me of the way that Sony Records has been at odds with Sony's electronics division. This is what happens when a company gets too large - it begins to contradict itself.
When I was a kid in the 80s, the iPod of the day was a thing called the Sony Walkman. Sony could have dominated the mobile music market today as well, but they were so concerned about losing their music profits that they embraced DRM and made digital music players that no one wanted. Apple is sure glad they did!
And now it seems that Virgin is about to shoot itself in the foot in similar fashion. Good job, Virgin. Sending intimidating letters to 6 million of your customers, and let us know how that works out for you. Dumbshits.
Am I conversing with John Mclaughlin? You seem pretty sure of yourself, but I think your argument is as full of holes as a termite-invested house.
The fact that something has not been done is no proof that it can't be done. None at all. It's just not logically sound.
It way well be that it's harder to write a virus for Mac OS. That's probably the case. Nevertheless, I remain quite confident that if Mac were the dominant OS, viruses would sprout up all over the place. And since Mac is not the dominant OS, there's no way for you to prove me wrong, Mr. McLaughlin.
Ah yes... security through obscurity. You better hope that this "apple" stuff never catches on, or someone might decide it's worth the trouble to write a virus to go after the smug snotty douchebags of the world.
Could you explain to me, exactly, what the difference is between "mob rule" and the "will of the people"?
Isn't Democracy always "mob rule"? Is that so much worse that our representative form of government, which has been such a horrible failure recently? It seems to me that the alternative to mob rule is corporate rule. I'm fairly certain that mob rule is what our founding fathers had in mind. The only reason they went with a representative form of government is the practical concerns. Hasn't technology rendered most of those concerns moot? One no longer need ride several days on horseback to vote.
Also, I'm not sure what's wrong with people not voting on issues that they don't care about. You're right about gay marriage. Many people would have no particular opinion, and would skip that vote. Is that so bad? If people are so ambivalent on an issue that they can't be bothered to vote, then is there really a "will of the people"?
Besides, lots of people care about issues that do not directly effect them. I'm not gay, but I do care about that particular issue. So, I'd be sure to vote on that one.
Modern life is far too complex for everyone to have an opinion about everything. It's hard enough just trying to stay informed on a basic level about issues of huge import. What attracts me to the Metagovernment model is that, like open software, people are free to devote their energies to projects about which they are passionate. That's in stark contrast to the current system, where money rules all.
I'm not an advocate of open source government. I really haven't thought enough about the issue to have an opinion. But, I think you're misrepresenting the concept. The post that you replied to didn't say people needed to vote on "every" bill. It said "any" bill. That's a huge difference. It's not like we have 100 percent of the population voting now.
/. moderating system works. The good ideas would bubble up to the top, in theory. That's a stark contrast to the way things work now, where money is the only form of merit.
The chief advantage that I see of this proposed form of governance is that ideas would judged based on merit, similar to the way that the
The problem that I see with it is that like any other system, it could be "gamed". Interests with large amounts of money could simply pay advocates under the table. In a sense, it's almost like simply taking the politicians out of the equations, and allowing the lobbyists to rule directly. Perhaps that wouldn't happen. Wikipedia works because the people who are trying to provide good information outnumber the vandals by a good margin. Maybe that would be the case with Metagovernment as well.
Also, it's sexist to say "congressmen". There are a few women in there, ya know. It only takes a few more keystrokes to say "members of congress".
What a load of horse shit. Folks in the military voted overwhelmingly for Bush in 2004. If that isn't a vote for the aggressive use of American military power, then what is? If they hate war so much, they should have joined the PEACE corps.
Our soldiers are bathed in the blood of the innocent. Life under Saddam was certainly brutal, but he wasn't going to kill anything like the number of Iraqis that the US military has killed.
Hehe, I was literally LOL at this. Good one!
>> NOT ONE OF US alive knows what the dead/departed/physically-separated think, know, or are located. NONE of us.
Given the total lack of scientific evidence for an afterlife, I do think it's a pretty safe assumption that the dead don't care. To me, that assumption is as safe as my other assumption, that the sun will rise tomorrow. NOT ONE OF US knows for certain that it will - not for certain. But, based on the evidence available, let's just say that the odds look pretty good for sunshine.
As a bit of unsolicited but hopefully constructive criticism, I have to say, capitalizing roughly every third word or so is going to cause some people to perceive you as a raving lunatic. I'm not one of those people, but... you might want to think about going a bit easier on the caps.
I think this is a very thoughtful and rational post. I was about to say that I totally agreed with you, but then I realized that I don't.
Were the 50's and 60's better? Racism, male chauvinist oinks, and the boys club mentality... Add on the lack of being able to fly easily, travel easily, or have any luxuries.
No phone, no lights, no motor cars, Not a single luxury! Well, the 50's were not quite as primitive as can be. I especially don't understand your comment about not traveling easily. Maybe airplane tickets were more expensive, but gas was certainly a lot cheaper. A lot, lot, lot, cheaper. So short distance travel was much easier then.
You know you can live like the 50's and 60's. I am serious here. Get rid of your cable subscription, your cell phone subscription, have a single car, and everything that you did not have in the 50's and 60's. And you can live quite well.
The cable TV thing is certainly valid, but I find the Internet and cell phones to be more indispensable than than you seem to. I would be totally unable to find a decent paying job in my area without the Internet. And while I do pay for a cell phone, I don't pay for a land line, so that cost is somewhat offset. My main point here is, I think it's a pretty serious disadvantage to try to compete with people for jobs who do have cell phones and Internet access. Besides, all that cheap foreign labor that you mentioned has dropped the cost of clothing and other essentials to bargain levels, helping to offset increased tech costs.
The problem is not immigration.
On that much we agree.
The immigration levels at the time you talk so fondly of were per-capita higher than now.
True, but who cares about per-capita? As I said, I agree that immigration is not the problem. The problem is that the Earth's population is now 6.6 billion people. The western world has slowed down on the baby making to the point where our native-born population is shrinking. But the rest of the world didn't get the memo.
And that is the real issue. The wage inequality of which you speak is just made worse by that. I certainly agree that people in the second and third world as just as good in every way as the people in the rich countries. The issue is that there are so very many of them. World population is way up, but the amount of arable land is not up much, if any. The amount of fresh water is not up. And then, of course, there's oil...
So, to sum up, I think that your statements about the new costs added to modern life by technology are somewhat overstated, while you ignore the massive inflationary pressures created by the exploding world population. I don't have a particular solution in mind to these issues. Humanity probably has some very very hard times ahead, and I don't see a way out. But, I'm often incorrect, and hopefully this is one of those times.
That's pretty good. Maybe it can be a new meme around here. Dawkins deserves his own meme, considering that he coined the term in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.
Probably true, in as much as smart people are not as likely to turn to selling drugs or prostitution (or similar dangerous endeavors) in order to survive, simply because they have more options than the intelligence-challenged. And one would assume that getting involved in that sort of thing makes one far more likely to both be murdered and commit murder.
I'd be fascinated to learn how big that difference really is, but I think it's the sort of study that doesn't get done. It smacks too much of justification for eugenics. And we all know where that will get us... KAAAAAAAAAAHN!!!
That said, intelligent people may be just as likely to commit certain types of murder as the dumb-dumbs, such as murder of one's spouse. Insane jealous rage doesn't care to listen to logic, no matter how smart the brain that hatched it. And I think engineers are probably more likely to get cheated on than other professions. That's just a hunch, based on a bit of anecdotal evidence (all of the sexy engineer trophy wives that I've bedded, har har).
Ayman Al-Zawahiri is a doctor. He's a top Al-Qaeda guy - arrested decades ago in connection with the murder of Anwar Sadat, and he also wrote a lot of Al-Qaeda's various manifestos. He has a masters in surgery. That's not quite like an engineer, but it's not exactly totally different, either.
And then of course there's the Unabomer, Ted Kaczynski. He has a PhD in Math.
Of course, there are plenty of stupid people who become terrorists. They just tend to not be as good at it... for some mysterious reason. And so they do not become nearly as famous as the smart terrorists.
It's somewhat disturbing that intelligence is no safeguard against feelings of murderous rage (aren't the smarties supposed to "know better?"), but such condition is hardly limited to the intelligent.
It sorta makes me wonder how many doctors, engineers, and mathematicians get away with regular old-fashioned non-terroristical murder each year. I would not be surprised to learn that smart people commit murder at the same rate as anyone else, but simply have a much better shot at getting away with it.