Nah, the public attitude to technology is hardly the 19th-century "yay progress" you seem to be presenting it as. Public faith in technology in general is probably lower now than it has ever been. Look at the paranoia against genetically modified foods, nuclear power and cellphone emissions. Blockbuster films present fusion power as highly dangerous and nobody complains.
It's only that the public knows that computers are being used for many important things such as their bank accounts and have currently no reason to suspect that voting systems are less reliable than these things. If this issue were only to get more press then the public would quickly turn against them.
So "monopoly power" is good thing in your mind evidently.
I don't see what this discussion has to do with monopolies. Clearly Google does not have a monopoly; if a competitor with better search comes along, they can topple Google.
BTW, shareholders just happen to own the company.
The concept of ownership is vague, abstract and complex in the stock market, and I don't think the discussion can be reduced to a question of fundamental private property rights. A shareholder does not own a company in the same way that I own my fridge. I think it's more appropriate to see it as a contract between the shareholder and the company. The contract can stipulate varying amounts of control without necessarily being "evil".
I think a similar approach was tried in Russia around 1917.
Invoking communism is bogus here. Google is a company, not a state. Companies do not have to be democratic, and generally speaking completely different principles apply. Your argument is similar to saying that we can't know Greenpeace (or insert_your_favorite_nonprofit) is actually acting for the public good, since the public doesn't get equal voting rights on its activities.
Horrible idea IMHO. What good would that do? You think there would be less bugs? Most developers are already doing their best to avoid all security problems, but they're only human and some slip through the cracks. Your proposal would only discourage developers from working on a project for fear of being branded a bugster, and would do nothing at all for security.
But it's precisely because of their "no evil" attitude that they want to implement a media-style stock structure.
The real "little people" here are not stockholders --- those stockholders with voting power in a normal corporation are generally rich institutional investors anyway. The "little people" are Google's everyday users. And if Google loses control to external stockholders, we can expect lots of evil things to happen as Google begins using sleazy tactics to squeeze every penny out of its users. Google wants to keep offering its current level of not-evil management and this is the only way to do it.
What most Google-bashers don't understand is that when Google talks about not being evil, it's always thinking of the general public that uses their search engine, not special interest groups. In the past, they've been extremely tough and uncompromising with advertisers and webmasters to protect the interests of their users. And now, similarly, they're being tough and uncompromising with shareholders.
I've tried a few searches and I'm not blown away by Teoma. Sometimes it did slightly better than Google, sometimes it did slightly worse. These guys don't yet have what it takes to crush Google like Google crushed Altavista. Also, they use Google ads...
I understand that it may be difficult for us NOW to understand what the critics were saying in 1954 but you have to remember that writings were influenced by the conservative nature of the times.
Erm... you quote Edmund Wilson and then talk about "conservative" times? You realize that Wilson was a friend of Nabokov (who wrote Lolita) and that he wrote an erotic novel which was censored by the American government at the time? He was anything but conservative AFAIK.
Actually, many literary critics continue to think even today that LOTR is trash. I don't actually see much change in the opinions towards it. It's popular with the masses, less so with the literary people.
Games like Densh de Go, and the Tokimeki series are easy to play for long and short periods of time
Er, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that the missing "a" in "densha" was the result of a typo. Anyway...
Neither of those games are poster children for excellent games that didn't make it in the West, IMHO. Gameplay-wise, they sorta... um... suck. They're sort of the Japanese equivalent of those reams of horrible EA sports games. Team sports are intrinsically a bad video game concept and we all know those games only sell on Western soil because American audiences like sports and for the most part don't really know or care about actual gameplay. Similarly, train driving in Densha de Go is mind-numbingly boring and it only sells because many Japanese people have this dream of being train conductors, and Tokimeki Memorial, with its exciting multiple-choice gameplay, panders mainly to otaku who like to look at anime high school girls. Be careful not to let the freshness and Japaneseness of these genres blind you to their fundamental suckiness. They're no better than Deer Hunter really.
That said, I can point to a few genuinely good Japanese games that they haven't bothered to export. Hand-oriented rhythm games like Beatmania IIDX and Pop'n'Music, interesting shooters like Espgaluda, and adventure games like Gyakuten Saiban. There are a few gems but on the whole, Western gamers aren't missing out on all that much IMHO. Most of the really great stuff makes it over.
Yeah, almost all of those tricks rely on division by zero. Boring. I once saw a much more interesting one: relying on the fact that there are 2 possible results for the complex exponentiation of a complex number. Can't find it now, though.
I don't find this so unfair. The academically inclined people will be earning 100k$ a year in prestigious jobs while many of the athletes are going to work for McDonalds after they graduate. Those poor souls might as well get recognition while they can.
As for whether lack of recognition contributes to the anti-intellectual atmosphere in the US --- nahhh. The mathletes are going to be more popular if they manage to hide their nerdy achievements.
there's some kind of kidnapping wave there that I haven't heard about.
The overall Japanese crime rate has been increasing in the past few years (see e.g. this article), bringing it in line with most Western European countries (though still much lower than the US). Nothing to really worry about (especially as far as kidnapping goes!), but as a result, crime is permanently on the news nowadays and it has led to a kind of mass hysteria in much of the Japanese public. Along with the Japanese liking for high-tech solutions, it's not surprising that a proposal like this would come up.
18 is the age where you can vote and you can be put in jail, surely the most important things as far as your fundamental rights go. Ability to vote implies that you're responsible enough to affect the workings of the state (which is able to modify all of the other age limits). The drinking at 21 business is only a minor kludge to please prohibition symphatizers, and it's fairly meaningless in practice anyway.
Giving the government the ability to withdraw your rights through a test is a potential nightmare for abuse. It's all too easy to enumerate many potentially grave problems with this scheme, and what are the big benefits justifying such a dangerous policy? Just off the top of my head, it would be easy for the test to be written in such a way as to disadvantage certain disliked segments of the population, for example.
Nah, it's better to throw away such utopian ideas and accept that the age limit is good enough. It's the most effective and most democratic scheme we're likely to find.
Considering that Japan is 99% ethnically homogeneous (by which I mean that only 1% of the population consists of immigrants or descendents of immigrants from the past few hundred years), Japanese people do look generally more alike than Americans. Walking around in an American city you see people of black, latino, italian descent etc, which have major differences in features. In Japan you have only minor facial differences to go by.
I'm not sure how this is supposed to be a "stereotype", it's simply a fact. (That said, it's true that Japanese don't necessarily look more alike than members of other longtime ethnic groups, and that people who are not experienced at looking at Asian people will not be good at noticing the differences that exist.)
Yes, this is a well-known disorder. Sometimes it is indeed caused by genes. Before coming to that conclusion, though, it's best to try cures based on the idea that it's a habit.
gates either knows nothing about economics or is really trying to push some BS onto us.
Gates surely does know a thing or two about economics, or else he would hardly have been able to gather all that money. I vote for the BS.
I find it funny, though, that some of the exact same people who are complaining about outsourcing are defending open source on an economic basis. IMHO, saying that Indian people are stealing American jobs is also just like saying "volunteer work is causing unemployment for people who wish to do the same work for pay" (except that in the case of outsourcing, instead of people working for zero pay you have people who are working for almost zero pay --- no essential difference, though).
I agree, this scam was much more convincing than most of the 419s I've seen. But there are still plenty of cues that it's a scam (spelling and grammar mistakes, cheapo web design, all-around stupidity of proposal).
You're right, I take back the "tiny fraction". That was an exaggeration. My point was only that we can't extrapolate contributions to wikipedia proportional to the populations of those countries.
Well, I'm sorry you feel strongly about defending your wikipedia, but I'm browsing through the French wikipedia right now and on every topic I've visited, the French wikipedia either had a much shorter article or none at all. This applies even to many France-related topics like "Charles de Gaulle" and "Jacques Chirac". Although the standards of writing are just as high, it is pretty tiny right now. I don't think there's anything misleading about the claims I made.
That said, someone else made a good point about the English wikipedia acting as backup for the colonies when more in-depth information is needed, which I hadn't thought of. Seen in that light, the other wikipedias do seem more useful than I had thought. I now see that they're not just tiny, useless independent encyclopedias but a way of making a part of the main wikipedia easier to read for many. I'll be less disparaging of them in the future.
Really? According to the CIA world factbook, the literacy rate in India is only 60% (compare with ~99% in Western countries). How are people going to contribute to wikipedia if they can't even read? I'll admit that China is rather better, with 86%, and maybe I shouldn't have put it in the same bucket as India. But it's hardly "racist" to point out the undeniable fact that poorer countries have lower standards of education than wealthier ones. Real racism --- which I abhor --- is thinking of other races as fundamentally, genetically inferior, and I never said anything about that.
It's counterproductive to ignore the facts about differences between countries and cultures for the sake of a simplistic "multiculturalism". Real multiculturalism means understanding and accepting those differences, not pretending they don't exist.
I agree, this statistic is extremely dubious. Much as I would like Wikipedia to be bigger than slashdot, I don't think it's true right now. I don't see why I should install this useless toolbar that tracks my every move, and I think a large proportion of slashdotters feel the same.
Slashdot Mirror
It's only that the public knows that computers are being used for many important things such as their bank accounts and have currently no reason to suspect that voting systems are less reliable than these things. If this issue were only to get more press then the public would quickly turn against them.
I don't see what this discussion has to do with monopolies. Clearly Google does not have a monopoly; if a competitor with better search comes along, they can topple Google.
BTW, shareholders just happen to own the company.
The concept of ownership is vague, abstract and complex in the stock market, and I don't think the discussion can be reduced to a question of fundamental private property rights. A shareholder does not own a company in the same way that I own my fridge. I think it's more appropriate to see it as a contract between the shareholder and the company. The contract can stipulate varying amounts of control without necessarily being "evil".
I think a similar approach was tried in Russia around 1917.
Invoking communism is bogus here. Google is a company, not a state. Companies do not have to be democratic, and generally speaking completely different principles apply. Your argument is similar to saying that we can't know Greenpeace (or insert_your_favorite_nonprofit) is actually acting for the public good, since the public doesn't get equal voting rights on its activities.
Not to mention the Japanese navy. Aw yeah, sexy seamen.
I dont.
Horrible idea IMHO. What good would that do? You think there would be less bugs? Most developers are already doing their best to avoid all security problems, but they're only human and some slip through the cracks. Your proposal would only discourage developers from working on a project for fear of being branded a bugster, and would do nothing at all for security.
Death by listening to boring debate on agricultural subsidy bills?
The real "little people" here are not stockholders --- those stockholders with voting power in a normal corporation are generally rich institutional investors anyway. The "little people" are Google's everyday users. And if Google loses control to external stockholders, we can expect lots of evil things to happen as Google begins using sleazy tactics to squeeze every penny out of its users. Google wants to keep offering its current level of not-evil management and this is the only way to do it.
What most Google-bashers don't understand is that when Google talks about not being evil, it's always thinking of the general public that uses their search engine, not special interest groups. In the past, they've been extremely tough and uncompromising with advertisers and webmasters to protect the interests of their users. And now, similarly, they're being tough and uncompromising with shareholders.
I've tried a few searches and I'm not blown away by Teoma. Sometimes it did slightly better than Google, sometimes it did slightly worse. These guys don't yet have what it takes to crush Google like Google crushed Altavista. Also, they use Google ads...
Erm... you quote Edmund Wilson and then talk about "conservative" times? You realize that Wilson was a friend of Nabokov (who wrote Lolita) and that he wrote an erotic novel which was censored by the American government at the time? He was anything but conservative AFAIK.
Actually, many literary critics continue to think even today that LOTR is trash. I don't actually see much change in the opinions towards it. It's popular with the masses, less so with the literary people.
Er, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that the missing "a" in "densha" was the result of a typo. Anyway...
Neither of those games are poster children for excellent games that didn't make it in the West, IMHO. Gameplay-wise, they sorta ... um ... suck. They're sort of the Japanese equivalent of those reams of horrible EA sports games. Team sports are intrinsically a bad video game concept and we all know those games only sell on Western soil because American audiences like sports and for the most part don't really know or care about actual gameplay. Similarly, train driving in Densha de Go is mind-numbingly boring and it only sells because many Japanese people have this dream of being train conductors, and Tokimeki Memorial, with its exciting multiple-choice gameplay, panders mainly to otaku who like to look at anime high school girls. Be careful not to let the freshness and Japaneseness of these genres blind you to their fundamental suckiness. They're no better than Deer Hunter really.
That said, I can point to a few genuinely good Japanese games that they haven't bothered to export. Hand-oriented rhythm games like Beatmania IIDX and Pop'n'Music, interesting shooters like Espgaluda, and adventure games like Gyakuten Saiban. There are a few gems but on the whole, Western gamers aren't missing out on all that much IMHO. Most of the really great stuff makes it over.
Yeah, almost all of those tricks rely on division by zero. Boring. I once saw a much more interesting one: relying on the fact that there are 2 possible results for the complex exponentiation of a complex number. Can't find it now, though.
As for whether lack of recognition contributes to the anti-intellectual atmosphere in the US --- nahhh. The mathletes are going to be more popular if they manage to hide their nerdy achievements.
Sendmail. WU-FTPD. BIND.
I mean, not that I'm a fan of Microsoft, but aren't you being a little selective in your choices of hole-riddled software?
The overall Japanese crime rate has been increasing in the past few years (see e.g. this article), bringing it in line with most Western European countries (though still much lower than the US). Nothing to really worry about (especially as far as kidnapping goes!), but as a result, crime is permanently on the news nowadays and it has led to a kind of mass hysteria in much of the Japanese public. Along with the Japanese liking for high-tech solutions, it's not surprising that a proposal like this would come up.
Actually Japanese people can pronounce "v"s. More like Dyuuku Nyuukemu Folevuaa :-).
18 is the age where you can vote and you can be put in jail, surely the most important things as far as your fundamental rights go. Ability to vote implies that you're responsible enough to affect the workings of the state (which is able to modify all of the other age limits). The drinking at 21 business is only a minor kludge to please prohibition symphatizers, and it's fairly meaningless in practice anyway.
Nah, it's better to throw away such utopian ideas and accept that the age limit is good enough. It's the most effective and most democratic scheme we're likely to find.
I'm not sure how this is supposed to be a "stereotype", it's simply a fact. (That said, it's true that Japanese don't necessarily look more alike than members of other longtime ethnic groups, and that people who are not experienced at looking at Asian people will not be good at noticing the differences that exist.)
Yes, this is a well-known disorder. Sometimes it is indeed caused by genes. Before coming to that conclusion, though, it's best to try cures based on the idea that it's a habit.
Gates surely does know a thing or two about economics, or else he would hardly have been able to gather all that money. I vote for the BS.
I find it funny, though, that some of the exact same people who are complaining about outsourcing are defending open source on an economic basis. IMHO, saying that Indian people are stealing American jobs is also just like saying "volunteer work is causing unemployment for people who wish to do the same work for pay" (except that in the case of outsourcing, instead of people working for zero pay you have people who are working for almost zero pay --- no essential difference, though).
I agree, this scam was much more convincing than most of the 419s I've seen. But there are still plenty of cues that it's a scam (spelling and grammar mistakes, cheapo web design, all-around stupidity of proposal).
You're right, I take back the "tiny fraction". That was an exaggeration. My point was only that we can't extrapolate contributions to wikipedia proportional to the populations of those countries.
That said, someone else made a good point about the English wikipedia acting as backup for the colonies when more in-depth information is needed, which I hadn't thought of. Seen in that light, the other wikipedias do seem more useful than I had thought. I now see that they're not just tiny, useless independent encyclopedias but a way of making a part of the main wikipedia easier to read for many. I'll be less disparaging of them in the future.
Really? According to the CIA world factbook, the literacy rate in India is only 60% (compare with ~99% in Western countries). How are people going to contribute to wikipedia if they can't even read? I'll admit that China is rather better, with 86%, and maybe I shouldn't have put it in the same bucket as India. But it's hardly "racist" to point out the undeniable fact that poorer countries have lower standards of education than wealthier ones. Real racism --- which I abhor --- is thinking of other races as fundamentally, genetically inferior, and I never said anything about that.
It's counterproductive to ignore the facts about differences between countries and cultures for the sake of a simplistic "multiculturalism". Real multiculturalism means understanding and accepting those differences, not pretending they don't exist.
I agree, this statistic is extremely dubious. Much as I would like Wikipedia to be bigger than slashdot, I don't think it's true right now. I don't see why I should install this useless toolbar that tracks my every move, and I think a large proportion of slashdotters feel the same.