When can we get a reasonable, level-headed moderate? The more I think about the current administration, the more reasonable I think that libertarians are, because they're all about personal responsibility. Compared to today's "liberals" and "conservatives" our founding fathers would likely be considered to be libertarians. I'm registered as a Republican because I believe in true conservatism (small government, limited powers and no interference in private lives, etc) but in the last few years that seems to not be the Republican platform any more. It seems that both parties are out for totalitarianism, albeit through different methods but the end result is the same: powermongering and greed, with no thought or care about their "constituents."
What we have are two parties whose primary goal is maintaining the status quo. They may not ever state it, but politics, especially at the national level is a big business where the participants are interested in job security much more than the philosophies, platforms, whatever, they claim to stand for. In too many important areas, the desires of all mainstream politicians are the same. They may enter the business with ideals, but first, they must learn the system, and then they must learn to work the system. By the time they actually get established, they are the system and they are beholden to all the party structures that got them there. It is very difficult for politicians who swim at the edges of the mainstream. The whole committee structure is set up to leave out the representatives that don't conform.
The closest you can get to a libertarian is the libertarian "wings" of the Republican and Democratic Party. Since they won't let you do much if you aren't in one of the big 2, most politicans with libertarian leanings are in those parties, not independent or third parties.
As long as we have only 2 viable parties, we will have a disfunctional bipolar system where the 2 teams fight for the middle while smearing each other with whatever extremist label they can make stick. When there are only 2 sides, a negative campaign is at least as effective as a positive campaign. When a third tries to join in, they unite in laughing him off the field and the press goes along since most journalists can't deal with anything that has more than 2 sides.
Sorry for the rant. Follow the link in my sig if you want to pursue this topc. But, I think at this time, election reform is easily the most important issue that the political establishment isn't addressing. The current system works for those who can win, and change is hard when we want the people who benefit to be responsible for the change.
As scary as this might sound, I see no reason for anyone including the NSA to be banned from using publicly available information. This isn't like demanding phone records that are normally accessable only with a warrant.
That said, I do hope they use a little common sense and realize that profiles and other statements on the internet may be wildly inaccurate. And this is one more occassion to remind users that they should post nothing that they wouldn't want just anyone to see.
Re:Why Net Neurtality legislation is so important
on
DRM and Democracy
·
· Score: 1
They don't control the air that my WiFi signal travels through. If the access points can communicate directly without using a wireline carrier, you only need good neighbors. Currently, I can see 4 home networkss from here, 2 use no password for access. If any one of these neighbors could function as a repeater for me to get to the next node, which would similarly repeat to the next node, I'd never need to depend on a wireline carrier.
People are working on this, it's not just my wild dream:
It has lots of potential applications in countries that aren't wired, (the same third world places that skipped POTS and went straight to cell phones), and in countries where heavy handed governments already restrict access to the full web and real Google searches. It is hard for any government or other large entity to control a system where users communicate by passing packets amongst many individuals.
Re:Why Net Neurtality legislation is so important
on
DRM and Democracy
·
· Score: 1
It would be a shame to rely on the communications companies and government regulation to provide for our free speech. The only way to guarantee a right to free electronic speech is to encourage and facitate the spread of a true worldwide mesh.
The free flow of ideas is at least as important as the free flow of cash and labor. Yeah, we still don't have those problems resolved, but most of the thinking part of society recognizes the importance of the cash and labor flows. At this time, copyright discussion brings up goofy images of pirates and the threat of impoverished pop music stars. ie, no one talks about the real world where ideas become more valuable when shared and used as building blocks for new ideas and the number of people who make a living off of copyrighted materials is relatively small. If no proper provisions are made for "old" ideas to be "recycled" or reused, the most natural form of culture evolution is treated as a crime. If this crime could be enforced with any kind of success, we would have no "culture". Fortunately, stopping the reuse of ideas is like that old Utah law confining a growing lake to it's existing borders. It's unnatural and as all engineers know, the laws of nature trump the laws of man.
That's what i expected, an article about ipod filling kiosks, it would make more sense, and it doesn't take as big of an impulse to plunk a dollar or two into a machine. If it screws ups, you'd be out a lot of money with this thing.
They are so important, they make it into the paper even when the home team loses, and they make it into the paper for every single game. The best you can do in other academics is perhaps the Honor roll.
It's that time of year again for the nonsensical debate about whether having validictarians and salutatorians and other academic awards is a good idea since it can cause high or low self esteem. This debate never comes up when the top football players are identified and praised in school assemblies and community newspapers. Does someone think smart kids are more at risk for developing a big head?
You forgot to reference your quote which happens to be an opinion, not a fact. Whether or not you or I agree with it, it does seem to be a reasonable opinion, but it would help to know whose it is.
Whether or not you like AI and it's methods, they do attract the attention of quite a few people. It helps to have them on our side of this issue. If only/. type people were concerned about censorship, we wouldn't stand a chance.
Universities provide an inexpensive, but intelligent source of labor. Many undergrads will work for little more than the experience. Even if they don't know much, they are better than most low wage gophers. The grad students might be more useful, but again they are motivated by other factors such as experience and thesis materal. Lastly, the experience of working for a startup begets more startups.
Internet Security Systems, Checkpoint, Equifax, Hayes (awhile back), Scientific Atlanta, Homestarrunner, Netbank, Daystar
I'm sure there are more, but I just woke up and these leaped to my mind immediately
It also occurred to me that many of these are actually in the northern burbs (Norcross, Alpharetta, and others), not Atlanta itself, much like Silicon Valley is really Mountain View, Palo Alto, etc, and not San Francisco.
Whereas I like the idea that this puts the responsibility on the parent, it does suggest a potential "camel nose in the tent" kinda problem in that if this law pertaining solely to videogames becomes reality, someone could then use arguments similar to yours to generalize the law to other media. This is not an unusual strategy for patient people who want to enact major changes to the law. First pass a law aimed at something easy to demonize and then once it is passed and accepted as a legitimate law, go on to show how other media present the same problem.
But as a working professional, I don't have the same time to devote to the game that high-school and college students do.
Exactly. That's where I completely agree.
The problem is that it's not your fault. It's a game-design fault. Why does the game require ridiculous amounts of game time?
Exactly. Excuse me for what is possibly a me too post, but I don't see why your game standing must be proportional to time spent. Gaming should not be an hourly waged job. While skills do increase with practice, it is not a direct relationship. A player with limited time should be able to get to the "good stuff" without too much bother.
I also agree with the idea fixing the problem by modifying the ingame economy.
I just read the next paragraph and it resembles an ad, but I don't intend for it to be anything more than a presentation of how another developer has dealt with this problem. I play the game, but am not otherwise affiliated with Three Rings.
YoHoHo PuzzlePirates http://www.puzzlepirates.com/ has done what they still call it an experiment, and it certainly has flaws, but it is an interesting comparison. Some servers are set up with the traditional subscription model, but some others are set up as "Dubloon Oceans" where you can play at the lower levels completely for free, and then pay for the enhanced features such as owning ships, shops, or being captain your own crew. You pay for these features by buying dubloons directly from the game developer, Three Rings. But, to make things interesting, you can buy dubloons in the game with gold earned in the game and continue to enjoy these advanced features for "free". I wrote that with quotes, because it can be very time consuming to earn the money in game. Dubloons can be bought from Three Rings for less then $0.25 each, which means earning them by playing the game is an extremely poor paying job, if it means doing something you would rather not be doing for fun. This has split the world into 2 dominant groups, those that spend lots of time playing, have broad skills, and work hard to have decent clothes, ships, and houses, and the other group which has nice things, but only the skills that they find entertaining in the limited time they have to play. Unfortunately, other groups exist that don't enhance the game. First, is the beggars, those people who haven't figured out how to make or buy gold, so they beg for clothes and money. The other bothersome group consists of those who attempt to buy their way to the top without acquiring any skills at all. Just like real life, they might have fancy houses and throw swell parties, but no one wants to be on their crews and they usally don't want to work for someone else. Fortunately, since this is a pirate game, they can be targets for other pirates to attack.
This could be the wave of the future, a way to balance the needs of people with lives and money outside the game with the ability of some poor souls to devote lots of time to their ingame lives.
Nope, I'm pretty sure that's more due to the fact that they don't do stupid things as often.
Yeah, like doing all the dangerous jobs. Although the stereotypical testosterone-driven behaviour you cite can't be completely discounted, it is not nearly as important as differences in employment choices, which account for a significant part of the difference in male/female lifespan in the developed world.
Exactly! that's the point. Women aren't attracted to dangerous activities, including vocations, even when physical differences aren't a factor. And when they do take these jobs, they tend to be hypercareful. Men, for some strange reason, pride themselves in taking macho jobs. And some women aggravate the tendency by finding reckless men to be attractive.
The loss of material, intelligent or otherwise to the "permanent copyright" is an enormous consideration. An idea is that publishers or electronic media be required to produce a "library edition" which would be completely unprotected by DRM. The libraries, for their part of the bargain, might agree that this be uncirculating, or of limited circulation.
I can already anticipate the flaws, that the library edition would need price and purchase controls, that a work that doesn't leave the library isn't very useful, especially if it requires a television or computer to use. Can you imagine having to go to the library just to watch a movie?
Just because some rich, well connected kids amount to nothing doesn't mean it's worthless. A lot more kids without rich, well connected parents amount to nothing. And some talented, hard working kids without rwcp wind up in the burbs with lazy rich kids. Many and connections aint everything, but it helps.
I know exactly what your problem is, you probably drive right past my house near the intersection of State Bridge and Jones Bridge. Your problem isn't Atlanta, it's Fulton County where the politics are even worse. As long as we are perceived as being "rich", the county will spend no money on our roads. All that mess on State Bridge is courtesy of Georgia since the state owns that road. But, it will never be coordinated with the other roads because the county doesn't want it to be. That is why we are in the process of incorporating into a new city, probably called Johns Creek, and then maybe forming a new county called Milton. It's a pretty big local politics story that you might find very interesting if you intend to live in this area.
Back to your question, I'm not a traffic engineer, I've just lived here a long time and I'd go up to McGinnes Ferry to cross over or maybe even up to Forsyth or Hall. Fulton doesn't want to be anyone's quickest way to work.
That particular intersection is within Alpharetta's city limits. I think their traffic engineering department is much better than Atlanta's so it might be worth calling them up if you have concerns. Or maybe a councilman, they seem more responsive than that political patronage committee down in Atlanta.
I think I'm for the red light cameras. They make drivers more conservative. But, I'd hate to discover that they were being used to record the movements of citizens. If anyone has that idea, then I'm dead set against them.
Alpharetta now, but I've lived all over the Atlanta area and know where all the bad intersections are. But, when you aren't familiar with an intersection, drive conservatively and pay attention to how the other cars are handling it. Unless you are overly involved with your cell phone or something else, you'll usually do okay, even in Atlanta. The cops will go for someone easy usually. So far, all the red light cameras around here are huge and very visible. But, and I'm teaching my son how to drive right now, you pay attention to little details, always look the other drivers in the eye, etc. It's not enough to only see the big picture.
In the UK, most of the traffic police have been pulled off the roads and put onto other duties. Usually, this happens after a press release showing an increase in the public/a focus group's perception of what crime is currently the most scary. As a result, you can drive thousands of miles on the UK's motorways without encountering a police car because there may only be one traffic car within 50 miles of you and the rest of the police are trying to lower the second most scary crime stats.
In the US, driving around doing traffic is what the cops do while waiting for the more interesting work to be despatched. Since most crimes require the cop to drive to the scene, it makes sense to me. So what do UK cops do while waiting for the call?
You people have more scams that I've never heard of, not that I want to know how stealing number plates enables you to steal gas, but as expensive as gas is, that sounds like it could be a real problem.
If you really must panic stop to avoid running a red light, either the yellow light isn't long enough or you just aren't paying attention. If the traffic engineers are doing their job, the light will be timed properly or the high accident rate will get them fired.
My favorite character was Jane, too bad we don't find out about her until the second book. The obsessive compulsive Japanese were kinda interesting, but that wasn't in the first book either.
Slashdot Mirror
When can we get a reasonable, level-headed moderate? The more I think about the current administration, the more reasonable I think that libertarians are, because they're all about personal responsibility. Compared to today's "liberals" and "conservatives" our founding fathers would likely be considered to be libertarians. I'm registered as a Republican because I believe in true conservatism (small government, limited powers and no interference in private lives, etc) but in the last few years that seems to not be the Republican platform any more. It seems that both parties are out for totalitarianism, albeit through different methods but the end result is the same: powermongering and greed, with no thought or care about their "constituents."
What we have are two parties whose primary goal is maintaining the status quo. They may not ever state it, but politics, especially at the national level is a big business where the participants are interested in job security much more than the philosophies, platforms, whatever, they claim to stand for. In too many important areas, the desires of all mainstream politicians are the same. They may enter the business with ideals, but first, they must learn the system, and then they must learn to work the system. By the time they actually get established, they are the system and they are beholden to all the party structures that got them there. It is very difficult for politicians who swim at the edges of the mainstream. The whole committee structure is set up to leave out the representatives that don't conform.
The closest you can get to a libertarian is the libertarian "wings" of the Republican and Democratic Party. Since they won't let you do much if you aren't in one of the big 2, most politicans with libertarian leanings are in those parties, not independent or third parties.
As long as we have only 2 viable parties, we will have a disfunctional bipolar system where the 2 teams fight for the middle while smearing each other with whatever extremist label they can make stick. When there are only 2 sides, a negative campaign is at least as effective as a positive campaign. When a third tries to join in, they unite in laughing him off the field and the press goes along since most journalists can't deal with anything that has more than 2 sides.
Sorry for the rant. Follow the link in my sig if you want to pursue this topc. But, I think at this time, election reform is easily the most important issue that the political establishment isn't addressing. The current system works for those who can win, and change is hard when we want the people who benefit to be responsible for the change.
As scary as this might sound, I see no reason for anyone including the NSA to be banned from using publicly available information. This isn't like demanding phone records that are normally accessable only with a warrant.
That said, I do hope they use a little common sense and realize that profiles and other statements on the internet may be wildly inaccurate. And this is one more occassion to remind users that they should post nothing that they wouldn't want just anyone to see.
They don't control the air that my WiFi signal travels through. If the access points can communicate directly without using a wireline carrier, you only need good neighbors. Currently, I can see 4 home networkss from here, 2 use no password for access. If any one of these neighbors could function as a repeater for me to get to the next node, which would similarly repeat to the next node, I'd never need to depend on a wireline carrier.
k
People are working on this, it's not just my wild dream:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_networ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11s
It has lots of potential applications in countries that aren't wired, (the same third world places that skipped POTS and went straight to cell phones), and in countries where heavy handed governments already restrict access to the full web and real Google searches. It is hard for any government or other large entity to control a system where users communicate by passing packets amongst many individuals.
It would be a shame to rely on the communications companies and government regulation to provide for our free speech. The only way to guarantee a right to free electronic speech is to encourage and facitate the spread of a true worldwide mesh.
The free flow of ideas is at least as important as the free flow of cash and labor. Yeah, we still don't have those problems resolved, but most of the thinking part of society recognizes the importance of the cash and labor flows. At this time, copyright discussion brings up goofy images of pirates and the threat of impoverished pop music stars. ie, no one talks about the real world where ideas become more valuable when shared and used as building blocks for new ideas and the number of people who make a living off of copyrighted materials is relatively small. If no proper provisions are made for "old" ideas to be "recycled" or reused, the most natural form of culture evolution is treated as a crime. If this crime could be enforced with any kind of success, we would have no "culture". Fortunately, stopping the reuse of ideas is like that old Utah law confining a growing lake to it's existing borders. It's unnatural and as all engineers know, the laws of nature trump the laws of man.
it's a consistent error, no music for the ipod, no games for the game machine. I wonder why? Surely they aren't that stupid.
That's what i expected, an article about ipod filling kiosks, it would make more sense, and it doesn't take as big of an impulse to plunk a dollar or two into a machine. If it screws ups, you'd be out a lot of money with this thing.
They are so important, they make it into the paper even when the home team loses, and they make it into the paper for every single game. The best you can do in other academics is perhaps the Honor roll.
It's that time of year again for the nonsensical debate about whether having validictarians and salutatorians and other academic awards is a good idea since it can cause high or low self esteem. This debate never comes up when the top football players are identified and praised in school assemblies and community newspapers. Does someone think smart kids are more at risk for developing a big head?
You forgot to reference your quote which happens to be an opinion, not a fact. Whether or not you or I agree with it, it does seem to be a reasonable opinion, but it would help to know whose it is.
/. type people were concerned about censorship, we wouldn't stand a chance.
Whether or not you like AI and it's methods, they do attract the attention of quite a few people. It helps to have them on our side of this issue. If only
Universities provide an inexpensive, but intelligent source of labor. Many undergrads will work for little more than the experience. Even if they don't know much, they are better than most low wage gophers. The grad students might be more useful, but again they are motivated by other factors such as experience and thesis materal. Lastly, the experience of working for a startup begets more startups.
Internet Security Systems, Checkpoint, Equifax, Hayes (awhile back), Scientific Atlanta, Homestarrunner, Netbank, Daystar
I'm sure there are more, but I just woke up and these leaped to my mind immediately
It also occurred to me that many of these are actually in the northern burbs (Norcross, Alpharetta, and others), not Atlanta itself, much like Silicon Valley is really Mountain View, Palo Alto, etc, and not San Francisco.
Whereas I like the idea that this puts the responsibility on the parent, it does suggest a potential "camel nose in the tent" kinda problem in that if this law pertaining solely to videogames becomes reality, someone could then use arguments similar to yours to generalize the law to other media. This is not an unusual strategy for patient people who want to enact major changes to the law. First pass a law aimed at something easy to demonize and then once it is passed and accepted as a legitimate law, go on to show how other media present the same problem.
Exactly. Excuse me for what is possibly a me too post, but I don't see why your game standing must be proportional to time spent. Gaming should not be an hourly waged job. While skills do increase with practice, it is not a direct relationship. A player with limited time should be able to get to the "good stuff" without too much bother.
I also agree with the idea fixing the problem by modifying the ingame economy.
I just read the next paragraph and it resembles an ad, but I don't intend for it to be anything more than a presentation of how another developer has dealt with this problem. I play the game, but am not otherwise affiliated with Three Rings.
YoHoHo PuzzlePirates http://www.puzzlepirates.com/ has done what they still call it an experiment, and it certainly has flaws, but it is an interesting comparison. Some servers are set up with the traditional subscription model, but some others are set up as "Dubloon Oceans" where you can play at the lower levels completely for free, and then pay for the enhanced features such as owning ships, shops, or being captain your own crew. You pay for these features by buying dubloons directly from the game developer, Three Rings. But, to make things interesting, you can buy dubloons in the game with gold earned in the game and continue to enjoy these advanced features for "free". I wrote that with quotes, because it can be very time consuming to earn the money in game. Dubloons can be bought from Three Rings for less then $0.25 each, which means earning them by playing the game is an extremely poor paying job, if it means doing something you would rather not be doing for fun. This has split the world into 2 dominant groups, those that spend lots of time playing, have broad skills, and work hard to have decent clothes, ships, and houses, and the other group which has nice things, but only the skills that they find entertaining in the limited time they have to play. Unfortunately, other groups exist that don't enhance the game. First, is the beggars, those people who haven't figured out how to make or buy gold, so they beg for clothes and money. The other bothersome group consists of those who attempt to buy their way to the top without acquiring any skills at all. Just like real life, they might have fancy houses and throw swell parties, but no one wants to be on their crews and they usally don't want to work for someone else. Fortunately, since this is a pirate game, they can be targets for other pirates to attack.
This could be the wave of the future, a way to balance the needs of people with lives and money outside the game with the ability of some poor souls to devote lots of time to their ingame lives.
Light Blue Optics Ltd. have developed [...] Some specs: [...] Green monochrome [...]
They will be recreating the experience of my first Compaq computer, but bigger than life.
Exactly! that's the point. Women aren't attracted to dangerous activities, including vocations, even when physical differences aren't a factor. And when they do take these jobs, they tend to be hypercareful. Men, for some strange reason, pride themselves in taking macho jobs. And some women aggravate the tendency by finding reckless men to be attractive.
The loss of material, intelligent or otherwise to the "permanent copyright" is an enormous consideration. An idea is that publishers or electronic media be required to produce a "library edition" which would be completely unprotected by DRM. The libraries, for their part of the bargain, might agree that this be uncirculating, or of limited circulation.
I can already anticipate the flaws, that the library edition would need price and purchase controls, that a work that doesn't leave the library isn't very useful, especially if it requires a television or computer to use. Can you imagine having to go to the library just to watch a movie?
Just because some rich, well connected kids amount to nothing doesn't mean it's worthless. A lot more kids without rich, well connected parents amount to nothing. And some talented, hard working kids without rwcp wind up in the burbs with lazy rich kids. Many and connections aint everything, but it helps.
I know exactly what your problem is, you probably drive right past my house near the intersection of State Bridge and Jones Bridge. Your problem isn't Atlanta, it's Fulton County where the politics are even worse. As long as we are perceived as being "rich", the county will spend no money on our roads. All that mess on State Bridge is courtesy of Georgia since the state owns that road. But, it will never be coordinated with the other roads because the county doesn't want it to be. That is why we are in the process of incorporating into a new city, probably called Johns Creek, and then maybe forming a new county called Milton. It's a pretty big local politics story that you might find very interesting if you intend to live in this area.
Back to your question, I'm not a traffic engineer, I've just lived here a long time and I'd go up to McGinnes Ferry to cross over or maybe even up to Forsyth or Hall. Fulton doesn't want to be anyone's quickest way to work.
That particular intersection is within Alpharetta's city limits. I think their traffic engineering department is much better than Atlanta's so it might be worth calling them up if you have concerns. Or maybe a councilman, they seem more responsive than that political patronage committee down in Atlanta.
I think I'm for the red light cameras. They make drivers more conservative. But, I'd hate to discover that they were being used to record the movements of citizens. If anyone has that idea, then I'm dead set against them.
Alpharetta now, but I've lived all over the Atlanta area and know where all the bad intersections are. But, when you aren't familiar with an intersection, drive conservatively and pay attention to how the other cars are handling it. Unless you are overly involved with your cell phone or something else, you'll usually do okay, even in Atlanta. The cops will go for someone easy usually. So far, all the red light cameras around here are huge and very visible. But, and I'm teaching my son how to drive right now, you pay attention to little details, always look the other drivers in the eye, etc. It's not enough to only see the big picture.
Oh duh, drive offs, didn't occur to me that they might steal a tag first. Yeah, they are a big problem here, too.
In the UK, most of the traffic police have been pulled off the roads and put onto other duties. Usually, this happens after a press release showing an increase in the public/a focus group's perception of what crime is currently the most scary. As a result, you can drive thousands of miles on the UK's motorways without encountering a police car because there may only be one traffic car within 50 miles of you and the rest of the police are trying to lower the second most scary crime stats.
In the US, driving around doing traffic is what the cops do while waiting for the more interesting work to be despatched. Since most crimes require the cop to drive to the scene, it makes sense to me. So what do UK cops do while waiting for the call?
You people have more scams that I've never heard of, not that I want to know how stealing number plates enables you to steal gas, but as expensive as gas is, that sounds like it could be a real problem.
If you really must panic stop to avoid running a red light, either the yellow light isn't long enough or you just aren't paying attention. If the traffic engineers are doing their job, the light will be timed properly or the high accident rate will get them fired.
My favorite character was Jane, too bad we don't find out about her until the second book. The obsessive compulsive Japanese were kinda interesting, but that wasn't in the first book either.