I don't believe in making it harder (or less financially attractive) for drug companies to cure diseases.
Ah I see now. You are simply a believer in "ends justify the means" method of government. So if by some fluke we get a life saving drug that only kings can afford and we only have to empty the public's coffers and convert all public knowledge to "Intellectual Property" to do it, so be it! No? After all when the few upper-class children get cured, the rest of us wont care that we are slaves to a few super-thieves and that 10 times more people will die since it is not "profitable" to cure poor.
What percentage of the new, life-saving drugs come from research primarily done in Canada?
A signifiant number per capita (the only measure that counts). I am personally familiar with some of those operations due to my line of business.
All this "thieving tyrant" talk isn't really curing anyone of cancer, is it?
No but it might help bring thieves to account and discourage further thievery. And if lucky, it might also result in a lot of lives being saved by making both research efficient and drug pricing low.
think the people who didn't die of cancer would argue with your emphasis.
Particularly the ones who died by not being to afford the $400 a day.
If you have a less-expensive model that has a long term track-record of producing more and better drugs, let's see the link.
Ah the age old cry of a thieving tyrant. You know, that is probably exactly the same tone in which some two-bit lordling in the middle ages would say to a rebellious peasant: "And if there is a place the likes of you have a voice in any of the kingdoms about, show me! No? Off with your head.".
Times on the other hand showed there was a better way after all.
On a serious note, yes, there are places like Canada, where at least partially an effort is being made. In Canada in return for the priviledge of 20 year patents, the drug prices are controlled. Perheaps you heard of that slight spat that the Northrn states are having with the FDA over importing those drugs to save their dying seniors?
Before being made into a servant of corporations, academia was by far the leading source of all research for the last few centuries. It was effective, efficient, self-controlling (peer review) and very prollific source of knowledge. That is where the research money should go.
Industry (drug manufacturers) are just that. Their part in this deal is to manufacture drugs as efficiently as possible and compete on free markets in their delivery.
Remember, capitalism, contrary to its name is supposed to benefit consumers most, not capitalists.
That's what drug companies do: cure people for a profit
That they do. Emphasis on profit. Deemphassis on cure.
The type of advocacy you're engaged in -- if it were turned into action -- would result in fewer cures.
No. There would be less frivolous drugs (viagra?) which consume bulk of the private research funds. Instead there would be publically founded research (which apparently is already done) coupled with a large array of generic drug makers, competing on manufacuring quality and price.
It is simply a choice of two approaches: 1 where everything is done for the drug companies to enable them monopoly status and vast profits at the expense of dying people and 2. where research is done for the benefit of all and the drug companies are competing aggressively on delivery of that research.
What we have now instead is the worst combination of all: an incestous relationship between people in government, handing out public funds and research to their cronies in chosen corporations to make a killing, and at the same time to try to appear as "saviours" of sick people.
Incentive to get filthy rich leads to death of science as we know it. It is a place where noone but the extremely wealthy can afford doing any reading since all information is "private property".
Again like many people before you, you made a mistake of confusing the cause with the effect. It is the effect of open research that flourished for the past few centuries that these people are now able to profit from its effects. They take what was built up by countless others before them and lock it down as their property.
The economic sucess of Western nations has far more to do with the culture and openness and free exchange of information which enabled education and discovery, then with capitalism which was made to work on this foundation. That is why capitalism does not perform nearly as well in societies where this culture of openness did not exist.
What a ripoff. A company gets almost 2 billion dollars and all their customers get is "not dying from cancer"?
Perheaps you could use some of their products to make your braincells function again...
Yes it is a ripoff because a particular company was gifted the money to make its monopoly and thus exorbitant pricing work. On something the public paid for. The proper way would be to have all generic drug makers make it.
You have fallen pray to the classic scam run by drug companies who make big eyes and in cute tearful voice say: "but, but... we cure people, we need public resarch, governmeny grants, patent laws for protection.." (and as soon as they get it, cue change to an evil monster and snickering voice) "And give us all your fucking money or die, suckers! And you cant make anyone else make this drug cheaper, we own it, yes we own your asses!"
Shouldn't all nations, no matter how small their medical research budget, share whatever they can?
Lo and behold, they already do. US and some of the US-influenced Western countries are the only ones under the spell of boundless greed who play the "Intellectual Property" games in this vicious manner. But it is changing. I am not sure which side will win this because the pressure to make everything a money-making opportunity for the top 1% of the world's population is increasing exponentially. I am sure NIH will be beaten soon into reversing this decision.
Even if it were not possible to say whether the US or USSR won the war - why can't it be both?
Some general, vague, macroscopic things are knowable just by the fact that should these major things be wrong a vast array of other things would be contradicted - but again that is also possible if some regime managed to color facts early on and do so sucessfully and others worked their way from there until the thing is "common knowledge" accepted by everyone, historians included. So in your example, in macroscopic terms, yes there was WWII, no it is not knowable who precisely "won" as far as German front is concerned (other then it was either USSR or the West) because the "evidence" is too unreliable. But the main point remains: history is but useless when it counts: in deciding historical grievances of various nationalist/religious groups. It will be invented and used and abused by everyone, including "historians" because such history will be "studied" by people who are severely biased and quickly a point will develop whereby the amount of confusion and obfuscation will exceed the capability to decipher the facts. This is true of most of our recent history.
Because if the former, it's simply not true that such beliefs are unquestioned, and if the latter, it's simply not true that they can cite vast amounts of historical evidence about anything.
I advise you to venture into some of these history nuts' forums and you will soon be crushed by a vast pile of "data" online (not to mention the hard copy stuff that they will point you to) up to the point that no sane analysis is possible.
But you are wrong; it's not simply the number of independent sources. Historians can, and do, evaluate them for bias, closeness to the events in question in time and space, and suchlike
Why yes, they can determine for example that: 1123 sources mention July 1st, 967 July 2nd, 625 June 1st, 425 July 31st, and 1341 a date in winter. From which they will quickly deduce that the event occured in Spring because if it did not, it would conflict with other previously "corraborated" eye-witness accounts. Thats history for you. If you think I am joking, you should read some of the eye-witness accounts of the events of September 11th and you would find out that vast majority of what we "know" about this very recent happening is conjecture and wild guesses combined with totally contradictory accounts and only being saved by some pieces of technology which create a modicum of sanity in this mess. I have no faith whatsoever in any data which difficult to fake technology is not able to corraborate, like that relating to many events in WWII for example.
So in conclusion, no I do not reject history totally but simply consider it far to unreliable to be useful when it counts.
Right, and given your own arguments about history being lies, you believe that those things happened because... ?
Because unless the entire world media + internet were somehow overpowered by some global conspiracy, one does not need a historian to see what went on with one's own eyes. That is what makes the difference.
Just because determining the truth can be difficult does not make it impossible, nor is it any the less necessary to try.
That is not a question of "difficult". It is a case of "impossible". Unlike physics for example, one cannot easilly verify the information expermentally and thus the only measure of reliability is the number of independent sources. And that is a lousy measure at best and only being somewhat trustworthy if the mode of delivery of information would be difficult to fake (as in live TV from various cameras run by various news organizations from opposing camps). Anything other then this level of cross-verification is just plain useless. That is how history can be only looked at as a vast collection of semi-probable, hopelessly biased, flights of boundless fancy. The only thing an individual can do is to assign his/her personal probability rating to these stories (which by definition is subjective and biased). And so goes on the unqestioning belief in the USA that it is America who won WWII while at the same time every Russian will tell you it was USSR. Both will recite vast amounts of historical "evidence" to validate their claim. And this is a global event which shaped the last century we are talking about. How much more unreliable must the information be about anything smaller?
the voice compression used on the GSM network will totally destroy your sound.
I had many phones over the years on both networks and many friends who were on both of these systems. Honestly they all vary wildly depending on area, phone model, where the person is etc etc. I did not however have difficulty conducting a conversation under most circumstances where ambient sound wasnt a major problem, and that is really the only criteria applicable to a phone as far as voice communication is concerned. This is not an area for audiophiles. Old poorly-amplified, analog, landline phones used to have 6kHz top frequency and people used them for many decades and contrary to what many techno-maniacs would like you to believe, the civilization as we know it did not come to a grinding halt because of it.
Now, we all know that TDMA sucks ass.... GSM over CDMA as a carrier protocol..
You know, I dont care what they do internally, what I do care about is that phones called "GSM" and providers calling themselves "GSM" are providing me with far more choices and far greater flexibility then those calling themselves "CDMA". If they choose to use pigeons for network synchronization, my hat off to them, as long as my communications quality does not suffer.
Sim cards are nice, but there is NOTHING GSM specific about them.
While true, this is splitting hair. I, as consumer, do not care what goes on with the standard and who has what included in it or not, I merely observe that those who call themselves "GSM" and provide phones called by manufacturers "GSM" do offer features which are not available from those who call their stuff "CDMA". Furthermore I find the services of these same "CDMA" providers to be designed to disadvantage me as much as possible while maximizing control over my affairs by the said provider. In the long run that is all that counts.
(incorrectly, as it happens)... (correctly, as it happens)
I am not taking sides on this, but you are and it leads to the logical question: how the fuck do you know? Your sources might be all biased and pushing anti-russian agenda or uncritically repeating after someone else with greater "authority". History is a cestpool and I came to conclusion after a loong time studying it that absolutely nothing can be trusted that did not happen to me personally. All of our so called history is written by people with this or that agenda. Perheaps things that happened thousands of years ago in long-extinct cultures with no relationship whatsoever to present societies, can (sometimes) be trustwotrthy to be free of political/social/ethnic bias, as little as the long-ago-withered-away data allows for.
History is a study of authoritative lies. Dont trust any of it.
In your example I would not be surprised that Inqushes were wiped away after they tried to murder they way to supermacy. Something along the lines of what I hear happened in Chechnya, where, I am told, the Islamic radicals went on a rampage of kidnappings, murder and other unspeakable attrocities after establishing a Sharia law-based Islamic state in Chechnya after Yeltsin withdrew the Red Army out of there in defeat. As in their victory only encouraged them to expand their war until it became obvious they will not stop until there is Sharia law in Finland. And you would never know this from all of these "poor molested Chechyan Muslims" type of historians. Where is the truth? No Idea.
And you know, I lied: regardless of the so-called history, I will go with the side that does not make children drink their own piss and then burns them and rips them to shreads with explosives.
CDMA so I have warm fuzzy feelings. It really amazing to be in the middle of a rural farm field and get an excellent signal.
You are being bamboozled. The CDMA network is only capable of doing this because the equipment is newer and the transmitters more powerful. The GSM system would be capable of the same should they choose to upgrade it. GSM while theoretically inferior on some technical sides, has a far superior consumer strength to it, with far more handsets and total freedom of changing your devices as your account (and your phonebook) moves with the SIM card and not a secret-mojo-serial-number phone, which results in you having to get 3 accounts for your phone, pda and laptop. And forget about things like bluetooth unless you a proud owner of one of the 2 bluetooth enabled CDMA phones on the planet.
Oh and on signal qualtity, in my city there are both CDMA and GSM networks and I tried them both (for years at a time). Within the city boundaries was no difference, with exception of some areas where CDMA was stronger and others where GSM ruled. I dont travel in rural areas but the coverage is a direct function of investment in equipment not some magical "standard" quality.
Err, perheaps in some ivory-tower, elitist, theoretical manner. In practice CDMA phones lack flexibility and features.
Such as a SIM card that stores your phonebook and other info, which can be moved from phone to phone so you dont need some assholes determining what you can use. Between a phone and a CF-card modem? GPRS? Etc. Etc.
Less "performance"? Who gives a fuck about performance which you cant use?
CDMA is a standard designed for the carriers and against consumers. It is meant to be restrictive and demanding multiple accounts for multiple devices while dangling a carrot of some supposedly superior qualities which you and I will never get to see on our crippled-to-oblivion, pay-per-even-thinking-about-it handsets.
There is a reason Betamax lost. Sony, just like CDMA carriers, were arrogant, self-absorbed, greedy assholes who believed they will get the entire planet by the balls. The result? Planet: 1, Sony: 0.
The same will happen (as is already happening) to CDMA.
So as a whole the problem is probably part IP, part marketing/management,
No, its the usual culprit: blind, pin-headed, unreasoning, narrow-minded, animalistic, slimey, vicious corporate greed. You know those air-head jocks from the football team in you old high-school? They are running the (ATI, Nvidia, insert random corporation) show now. "Intellectual Property" - oh how satisfying it must be to "own" something named "intellectual", the only way they will ever get to be associated with the word.
If you think this is a troll, reflect on this gem of the Western business culture of today, meritless and brainless: average CEO is earning >500 times worker's salary. I would venture he/she is also having 1/500 of their brainpower although 500 times their greed (Darl McBride? Carly Fiorina anyone?). Wait till the number gets to 10000. I can't wait to miss that bright future.
I'm a big fan of following things to see where they lead, but going from home schooling to Nazism and civil war in one sentance seems a bit much
I am not a big fan of trying things blindly and seeing where they lead when logical analysis seems to indicate they would have potentially significant detrimental effects. Its rather simple really: the more clan/sect/name-your-inwards-looking-group has the ability to segregate and insulate its children from all the others, more "us vs them" mentality, fobia of others who are "different", paranoia and eventually, inevietably, hostility will develop. This is not something I made up, but a mere observation of humanity's loooooong and very bloody history of such things. That's how people behave. Enshrining "values" into children, implies their parent's values, which are in most cases totally incompatible with those of most other groups. I cannot believe that people miss this simple fact. The only way you can blunt this effect is to form mixed groups and work on creating conditions where kids of different backgrounds can bond. And many parents will fight you because you are interfering with their pet hobby: inter-group warfare and hatred. You are messing up painstakingly constructed mythologies which explain to kids in Zionist school how Arabs are root of all evil and Christians tools to be used, kids in Moslem schools how Jews and Christians are root of all evil and immorality, kids in Christian schools how Jews are useful until Rapture comes and Arabs evil, etc etc.
This is clearly starting to thread on contested historical turf. I have seen at least 5 versions of the Niemöller quote, some have Christians, some Unionists, some insert other groups in the list. Anyhow, to make things complicated, many Christians after the WWII were uncomfortable with the types of activity German Christian Faith Movement and others were engaged into and a plethora of various contradictory explanations, ever-mutating quotes etc appeared ever since. I simply cannot tell what versions of history are correct beyond these simple facts: Germany was at least nominally, majority Christan faith during the Nazi rule. Hitler used religious imagery and professed to be a Christian in many speaches and evidence
still exists of his active pursuit of his image as a devout believer. That is all that I have to go by and unfortunately it seems that a strong link between (supposed) Christian beliefs and Hitler does exist.
If it were only so easy. Unfortunately that leads to deepening of clique divisions and fracturing of the society along ever increasing gaps between various religious/ethnic sects. Parents pass on all their superstitions, ignorance, paranoia and hatreds of other groups onto their kids in full force, not tempered by attempts at unification of the society by (however incompetent) public school system. Home schooling or private schools along religious/racial/ethnic/economic divisions are a recipe for massive friction, possibly culminating in Nazi-style persecutions, witch hunts and eventually civil warfare down the road.
As far as Hiter goes, he hated christians, Catholics in particular, and Polish Catholics the worst.
Who really knows what he thought but the outside appearances (and the way the German masses were understanding it) was that of Christianity and so for the purpose of classifying Nazis as "anti-religion" that didnt wash. That was my whole beef with the previous poster.
Also I believe that Hitler harbored a deep personal hatred of Jews, athough if it was caused by something other then religion is a matter of academic (and rather futile) discussion at this point.
Trouble is that one person's wisdom is another person's stupidity, one person's ethics is another's "inhibitions preventing success", one person's responsibility is another person's "dangerous altruism" (Ann Ryand) etc. In a homogenic, single-religion, single-culture society, these are easy to fix by teaching kids the prevailing values of that society. In a big (and increasing) mess of cultures and viewpoints, its next to impossible without a wrath of some offended zealot clique. So schools cop out by taking the easy "non-confrontational" way out. I cant blame them, they are not set up (and should not be) to wage religious/societal wars on behalf of some group versus all the other groups.
Err...Wermacht had "Got mit Uns" on their beltbuckles... I think you got Adolf there by mistake. He claimed to be on a mission from God and was supposed to be a devout Christian (hence his hangup on Jews, you know Judas and all that jazz).
Additionally, as far as I know, Tzarist Russia was just as bloody and insane as the October revolution crew who were aiming at getting rid of the feudal lords, so Lenin is out. Stalin came later and had no excuse.
Face it atheism as a religion is no better than christianity
All religions, or religion like-dogmas can be made to serve evil people, Christianity (as proven many times throught history) included. What makes a difference is a conscience and that is not related to any religion, although most religions would like to claim that only they have a monopoly on it.
Agnostics are intellectual cowards. Reason tells you that there is no god.
As an atheism-leaning agnostic I have to take issue with this.
Reson is based on empirical data coupled with logic. We formulate models of the physcial universe and verify them by testing them against new phenomena. This process is by definition incremental and limited by our modelling/information processing capability. While I agree that none of the various wacky deities people believe in can possibly exists (just out of sheer ridiculousnens, illogic and political expedience of their supposed teachings) there are theoretical possiblilities of super-intelligent beings to exist. Limits of such intelligence and powers associated with it we havent foggiest clue about. While they might not exist at all, one cannot out of hand dismiss it. So it all bails down to what you mean by "God"? Is it possible that universe is a result of some pan-dimentional super-intelligence? Who knows. Is it likely that timeless and powerful beyond measure being would show up for conversation with some dude on evils of pork and adultery? Not bloody likely.
But one has to be intellectually honest and answer as any scientist would in absence of definitive data: we just dont know.
but fine, you are right, copyrights and patents are evil, and all scientific research should be free.
One last question, who exactly is going to pay for all this research? Last time I checked, scientists can't just sit in their room and do chemistry experiments. They need equipment, expensive equipment. They need food. Most scientists I know aren't willing to work for free.
If you want to talk constructive, sure. What should be going on is that all fundamental science should be domain of academia, not private industry. Private industry could finance some of it through foundations but with explicit understanding that the results are property of human race. By doing so, you get your scientists rewarded, you remove pressure to funnell efforts into "viagras" and ignore rare deseases, etc. Same can be applied for art, where foundation can sponsor true art on a patronage system. These can be private etc and public can contribute directy by paying for performances. None of these need patents and copyrights. The motivational force of patents is at this point outweighted by their vast negative repercussions, most patents long-outlive the usefulness of the invention and are used as a mechamism to destroy opponents. Most consumers would benefit from stronger competition between companies in the marketplace not in the courtroom. So patents go. In this scenario, artists (good ones) get paid, scientists (good ones) get paid, inventors get paid (if they can bring their improvement to market and compete with it) and society at large benefits from free access to information and thus education and experimentation being sped up dramatically.
On the downside, companies would need to capitalize on new inventions fast, because competitors would be breathing at their necks copying the invention as soon as they can and driving the price down. There would be still a window of opportunity from product inroduction to copies appearing but it would be short. No longer a brand name, or who did it first, but actual product quality would count. Some companies would cease to invent and focus on copying, but some shrewder ones would find a way to slow down the copycats with good marketing etc. Too bad all those consumers would benefit again.
If you really cared about thousands of people dying, why aren't you in Africa, volunteering at health clinics
Valid point, perheaps because I am just human and there are people better then me who do these things. That does not mean that I should do absolutely nothing.
Or could it be you are just creating an elaborate ruse for why you should be allowed to download music/movies without rewarding the artist who created them
Believe or not I dont listen to music much, neither do I watch TV. Too busy with software. On top of that this is far beyond music. What gets me going are news of things like Monsanto suing a farmer because their "proprietary" canola spread on his field and winning.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah I see now. You are simply a believer in "ends justify the means" method of government. So if by some fluke we get a life saving drug that only kings can afford and we only have to empty the public's coffers and convert all public knowledge to "Intellectual Property" to do it, so be it! No? After all when the few upper-class children get cured, the rest of us wont care that we are slaves to a few super-thieves and that 10 times more people will die since it is not "profitable" to cure poor.
A signifiant number per capita (the only measure that counts). I am personally familiar with some of those operations due to my line of business.
All this "thieving tyrant" talk isn't really curing anyone of cancer, is it?
No but it might help bring thieves to account and discourage further thievery. And if lucky, it might also result in a lot of lives being saved by making both research efficient and drug pricing low.
Particularly the ones who died by not being to afford the $400 a day.
If you have a less-expensive model that has a long term track-record of producing more and better drugs, let's see the link.
Ah the age old cry of a thieving tyrant. You know, that is probably exactly the same tone in which some two-bit lordling in the middle ages would say to a rebellious peasant: "And if there is a place the likes of you have a voice in any of the kingdoms about, show me! No? Off with your head.".
Times on the other hand showed there was a better way after all.
On a serious note, yes, there are places like Canada, where at least partially an effort is being made. In Canada in return for the priviledge of 20 year patents, the drug prices are controlled. Perheaps you heard of that slight spat that the Northrn states are having with the FDA over importing those drugs to save their dying seniors?
Before being made into a servant of corporations, academia was by far the leading source of all research for the last few centuries. It was effective, efficient, self-controlling (peer review) and very prollific source of knowledge. That is where the research money should go.
Industry (drug manufacturers) are just that. Their part in this deal is to manufacture drugs as efficiently as possible and compete on free markets in their delivery.
Remember, capitalism, contrary to its name is supposed to benefit consumers most, not capitalists.
That they do. Emphasis on profit. Deemphassis on cure.
The type of advocacy you're engaged in -- if it were turned into action -- would result in fewer cures.
No. There would be less frivolous drugs (viagra?) which consume bulk of the private research funds. Instead there would be publically founded research (which apparently is already done) coupled with a large array of generic drug makers, competing on manufacuring quality and price.
It is simply a choice of two approaches: 1 where everything is done for the drug companies to enable them monopoly status and vast profits at the expense of dying people and 2. where research is done for the benefit of all and the drug companies are competing aggressively on delivery of that research.
What we have now instead is the worst combination of all: an incestous relationship between people in government, handing out public funds and research to their cronies in chosen corporations to make a killing, and at the same time to try to appear as "saviours" of sick people.
Incentive to get filthy rich leads to death of science as we know it. It is a place where noone but the extremely wealthy can afford doing any reading since all information is "private property".
Again like many people before you, you made a mistake of confusing the cause with the effect. It is the effect of open research that flourished for the past few centuries that these people are now able to profit from its effects. They take what was built up by countless others before them and lock it down as their property.
The economic sucess of Western nations has far more to do with the culture and openness and free exchange of information which enabled education and discovery, then with capitalism which was made to work on this foundation. That is why capitalism does not perform nearly as well in societies where this culture of openness did not exist.
Perheaps you could use some of their products to make your braincells function again...
Yes it is a ripoff because a particular company was gifted the money to make its monopoly and thus exorbitant pricing work. On something the public paid for. The proper way would be to have all generic drug makers make it.
You have fallen pray to the classic scam run by drug companies who make big eyes and in cute tearful voice say: "but, but ... we cure people, we need public resarch, governmeny grants, patent laws for protection .." (and as soon as they get it, cue change to an evil monster and snickering voice) "And give us all your fucking money or die, suckers! And you cant make anyone else make this drug cheaper, we own it, yes we own your asses!"
Lo and behold, they already do. US and some of the US-influenced Western countries are the only ones under the spell of boundless greed who play the "Intellectual Property" games in this vicious manner. But it is changing. I am not sure which side will win this because the pressure to make everything a money-making opportunity for the top 1% of the world's population is increasing exponentially. I am sure NIH will be beaten soon into reversing this decision.
Some general, vague, macroscopic things are knowable just by the fact that should these major things be wrong a vast array of other things would be contradicted - but again that is also possible if some regime managed to color facts early on and do so sucessfully and others worked their way from there until the thing is "common knowledge" accepted by everyone, historians included. So in your example, in macroscopic terms, yes there was WWII, no it is not knowable who precisely "won" as far as German front is concerned (other then it was either USSR or the West) because the "evidence" is too unreliable. But the main point remains: history is but useless when it counts: in deciding historical grievances of various nationalist/religious groups. It will be invented and used and abused by everyone, including "historians" because such history will be "studied" by people who are severely biased and quickly a point will develop whereby the amount of confusion and obfuscation will exceed the capability to decipher the facts. This is true of most of our recent history.
Because if the former, it's simply not true that such beliefs are unquestioned, and if the latter, it's simply not true that they can cite vast amounts of historical evidence about anything.
I advise you to venture into some of these history nuts' forums and you will soon be crushed by a vast pile of "data" online (not to mention the hard copy stuff that they will point you to) up to the point that no sane analysis is possible.
But you are wrong; it's not simply the number of independent sources. Historians can, and do, evaluate them for bias, closeness to the events in question in time and space, and suchlike
Why yes, they can determine for example that: 1123 sources mention July 1st, 967 July 2nd, 625 June 1st, 425 July 31st, and 1341 a date in winter. From which they will quickly deduce that the event occured in Spring because if it did not, it would conflict with other previously "corraborated" eye-witness accounts. Thats history for you. If you think I am joking, you should read some of the eye-witness accounts of the events of September 11th and you would find out that vast majority of what we "know" about this very recent happening is conjecture and wild guesses combined with totally contradictory accounts and only being saved by some pieces of technology which create a modicum of sanity in this mess. I have no faith whatsoever in any data which difficult to fake technology is not able to corraborate, like that relating to many events in WWII for example.
So in conclusion, no I do not reject history totally but simply consider it far to unreliable to be useful when it counts.
Because unless the entire world media + internet were somehow overpowered by some global conspiracy, one does not need a historian to see what went on with one's own eyes. That is what makes the difference.
Just because determining the truth can be difficult does not make it impossible, nor is it any the less necessary to try.
That is not a question of "difficult". It is a case of "impossible". Unlike physics for example, one cannot easilly verify the information expermentally and thus the only measure of reliability is the number of independent sources. And that is a lousy measure at best and only being somewhat trustworthy if the mode of delivery of information would be difficult to fake (as in live TV from various cameras run by various news organizations from opposing camps). Anything other then this level of cross-verification is just plain useless. That is how history can be only looked at as a vast collection of semi-probable, hopelessly biased, flights of boundless fancy. The only thing an individual can do is to assign his/her personal probability rating to these stories (which by definition is subjective and biased). And so goes on the unqestioning belief in the USA that it is America who won WWII while at the same time every Russian will tell you it was USSR. Both will recite vast amounts of historical "evidence" to validate their claim. And this is a global event which shaped the last century we are talking about. How much more unreliable must the information be about anything smaller?
I had many phones over the years on both networks and many friends who were on both of these systems. Honestly they all vary wildly depending on area, phone model, where the person is etc etc. I did not however have difficulty conducting a conversation under most circumstances where ambient sound wasnt a major problem, and that is really the only criteria applicable to a phone as far as voice communication is concerned. This is not an area for audiophiles. Old poorly-amplified, analog, landline phones used to have 6kHz top frequency and people used them for many decades and contrary to what many techno-maniacs would like you to believe, the civilization as we know it did not come to a grinding halt because of it.
You know, I dont care what they do internally, what I do care about is that phones called "GSM" and providers calling themselves "GSM" are providing me with far more choices and far greater flexibility then those calling themselves "CDMA". If they choose to use pigeons for network synchronization, my hat off to them, as long as my communications quality does not suffer.
While true, this is splitting hair. I, as consumer, do not care what goes on with the standard and who has what included in it or not, I merely observe that those who call themselves "GSM" and provide phones called by manufacturers "GSM" do offer features which are not available from those who call their stuff "CDMA". Furthermore I find the services of these same "CDMA" providers to be designed to disadvantage me as much as possible while maximizing control over my affairs by the said provider. In the long run that is all that counts.
I am not taking sides on this, but you are and it leads to the logical question: how the fuck do you know? Your sources might be all biased and pushing anti-russian agenda or uncritically repeating after someone else with greater "authority". History is a cestpool and I came to conclusion after a loong time studying it that absolutely nothing can be trusted that did not happen to me personally. All of our so called history is written by people with this or that agenda. Perheaps things that happened thousands of years ago in long-extinct cultures with no relationship whatsoever to present societies, can (sometimes) be trustwotrthy to be free of political/social/ethnic bias, as little as the long-ago-withered-away data allows for.
History is a study of authoritative lies. Dont trust any of it.
In your example I would not be surprised that Inqushes were wiped away after they tried to murder they way to supermacy. Something along the lines of what I hear happened in Chechnya, where, I am told, the Islamic radicals went on a rampage of kidnappings, murder and other unspeakable attrocities after establishing a Sharia law-based Islamic state in Chechnya after Yeltsin withdrew the Red Army out of there in defeat. As in their victory only encouraged them to expand their war until it became obvious they will not stop until there is Sharia law in Finland. And you would never know this from all of these "poor molested Chechyan Muslims" type of historians. Where is the truth? No Idea.
And you know, I lied: regardless of the so-called history, I will go with the side that does not make children drink their own piss and then burns them and rips them to shreads with explosives.
You are being bamboozled. The CDMA network is only capable of doing this because the equipment is newer and the transmitters more powerful. The GSM system would be capable of the same should they choose to upgrade it. GSM while theoretically inferior on some technical sides, has a far superior consumer strength to it, with far more handsets and total freedom of changing your devices as your account (and your phonebook) moves with the SIM card and not a secret-mojo-serial-number phone, which results in you having to get 3 accounts for your phone, pda and laptop. And forget about things like bluetooth unless you a proud owner of one of the 2 bluetooth enabled CDMA phones on the planet.
Oh and on signal qualtity, in my city there are both CDMA and GSM networks and I tried them both (for years at a time). Within the city boundaries was no difference, with exception of some areas where CDMA was stronger and others where GSM ruled. I dont travel in rural areas but the coverage is a direct function of investment in equipment not some magical "standard" quality.
Err, perheaps in some ivory-tower, elitist, theoretical manner. In practice CDMA phones lack flexibility and features.
Such as a SIM card that stores your phonebook and other info, which can be moved from phone to phone so you dont need some assholes determining what you can use. Between a phone and a CF-card modem? GPRS? Etc. Etc.
Less "performance"? Who gives a fuck about performance which you cant use?
CDMA is a standard designed for the carriers and against consumers. It is meant to be restrictive and demanding multiple accounts for multiple devices while dangling a carrot of some supposedly superior qualities which you and I will never get to see on our crippled-to-oblivion, pay-per-even-thinking-about-it handsets.
There is a reason Betamax lost. Sony, just like CDMA carriers, were arrogant, self-absorbed, greedy assholes who believed they will get the entire planet by the balls. The result? Planet: 1, Sony: 0.
The same will happen (as is already happening) to CDMA.
No, its the usual culprit: blind, pin-headed, unreasoning, narrow-minded, animalistic, slimey, vicious corporate greed. You know those air-head jocks from the football team in you old high-school? They are running the (ATI, Nvidia, insert random corporation) show now. "Intellectual Property" - oh how satisfying it must be to "own" something named "intellectual", the only way they will ever get to be associated with the word.
If you think this is a troll, reflect on this gem of the Western business culture of today, meritless and brainless: average CEO is earning >500 times worker's salary. I would venture he/she is also having 1/500 of their brainpower although 500 times their greed (Darl McBride? Carly Fiorina anyone?). Wait till the number gets to 10000. I can't wait to miss that bright future.
I am not a big fan of trying things blindly and seeing where they lead when logical analysis seems to indicate they would have potentially significant detrimental effects. Its rather simple really: the more clan/sect/name-your-inwards-looking-group has the ability to segregate and insulate its children from all the others, more "us vs them" mentality, fobia of others who are "different", paranoia and eventually, inevietably, hostility will develop. This is not something I made up, but a mere observation of humanity's loooooong and very bloody history of such things. That's how people behave. Enshrining "values" into children, implies their parent's values, which are in most cases totally incompatible with those of most other groups. I cannot believe that people miss this simple fact. The only way you can blunt this effect is to form mixed groups and work on creating conditions where kids of different backgrounds can bond. And many parents will fight you because you are interfering with their pet hobby: inter-group warfare and hatred. You are messing up painstakingly constructed mythologies which explain to kids in Zionist school how Arabs are root of all evil and Christians tools to be used, kids in Moslem schools how Jews and Christians are root of all evil and immorality, kids in Christian schools how Jews are useful until Rapture comes and Arabs evil, etc etc.
This is clearly starting to thread on contested historical turf. I have seen at least 5 versions of the Niemöller quote, some have Christians, some Unionists, some insert other groups in the list. Anyhow, to make things complicated, many Christians after the WWII were uncomfortable with the types of activity German Christian Faith Movement and others were engaged into and a plethora of various contradictory explanations, ever-mutating quotes etc appeared ever since. I simply cannot tell what versions of history are correct beyond these simple facts: Germany was at least nominally, majority Christan faith during the Nazi rule. Hitler used religious imagery and professed to be a Christian in many speaches and evidence still exists of his active pursuit of his image as a devout believer. That is all that I have to go by and unfortunately it seems that a strong link between (supposed) Christian beliefs and Hitler does exist.
If it were only so easy. Unfortunately that leads to deepening of clique divisions and fracturing of the society along ever increasing gaps between various religious/ethnic sects. Parents pass on all their superstitions, ignorance, paranoia and hatreds of other groups onto their kids in full force, not tempered by attempts at unification of the society by (however incompetent) public school system. Home schooling or private schools along religious/racial/ethnic/economic divisions are a recipe for massive friction, possibly culminating in Nazi-style persecutions, witch hunts and eventually civil warfare down the road.
Who really knows what he thought but the outside appearances (and the way the German masses were understanding it) was that of Christianity and so for the purpose of classifying Nazis as "anti-religion" that didnt wash. That was my whole beef with the previous poster.
Also I believe that Hitler harbored a deep personal hatred of Jews, athough if it was caused by something other then religion is a matter of academic (and rather futile) discussion at this point.
Trouble is that one person's wisdom is another person's stupidity, one person's ethics is another's "inhibitions preventing success", one person's responsibility is another person's "dangerous altruism" (Ann Ryand) etc. In a homogenic, single-religion, single-culture society, these are easy to fix by teaching kids the prevailing values of that society. In a big (and increasing) mess of cultures and viewpoints, its next to impossible without a wrath of some offended zealot clique. So schools cop out by taking the easy "non-confrontational" way out. I cant blame them, they are not set up (and should not be) to wage religious/societal wars on behalf of some group versus all the other groups.
Err...Wermacht had "Got mit Uns" on their beltbuckles... I think you got Adolf there by mistake. He claimed to be on a mission from God and was supposed to be a devout Christian (hence his hangup on Jews, you know Judas and all that jazz).
Additionally, as far as I know, Tzarist Russia was just as bloody and insane as the October revolution crew who were aiming at getting rid of the feudal lords, so Lenin is out. Stalin came later and had no excuse.
Face it atheism as a religion is no better than christianity
All religions, or religion like-dogmas can be made to serve evil people, Christianity (as proven many times throught history) included. What makes a difference is a conscience and that is not related to any religion, although most religions would like to claim that only they have a monopoly on it.
As an atheism-leaning agnostic I have to take issue with this.
Reson is based on empirical data coupled with logic. We formulate models of the physcial universe and verify them by testing them against new phenomena. This process is by definition incremental and limited by our modelling/information processing capability. While I agree that none of the various wacky deities people believe in can possibly exists (just out of sheer ridiculousnens, illogic and political expedience of their supposed teachings) there are theoretical possiblilities of super-intelligent beings to exist. Limits of such intelligence and powers associated with it we havent foggiest clue about. While they might not exist at all, one cannot out of hand dismiss it. So it all bails down to what you mean by "God"? Is it possible that universe is a result of some pan-dimentional super-intelligence? Who knows. Is it likely that timeless and powerful beyond measure being would show up for conversation with some dude on evils of pork and adultery? Not bloody likely.
But one has to be intellectually honest and answer as any scientist would in absence of definitive data: we just dont know.
If you want to talk constructive, sure. What should be going on is that all fundamental science should be domain of academia, not private industry. Private industry could finance some of it through foundations but with explicit understanding that the results are property of human race. By doing so, you get your scientists rewarded, you remove pressure to funnell efforts into "viagras" and ignore rare deseases, etc. Same can be applied for art, where foundation can sponsor true art on a patronage system. These can be private etc and public can contribute directy by paying for performances. None of these need patents and copyrights. The motivational force of patents is at this point outweighted by their vast negative repercussions, most patents long-outlive the usefulness of the invention and are used as a mechamism to destroy opponents. Most consumers would benefit from stronger competition between companies in the marketplace not in the courtroom. So patents go. In this scenario, artists (good ones) get paid, scientists (good ones) get paid, inventors get paid (if they can bring their improvement to market and compete with it) and society at large benefits from free access to information and thus education and experimentation being sped up dramatically.
On the downside, companies would need to capitalize on new inventions fast, because competitors would be breathing at their necks copying the invention as soon as they can and driving the price down. There would be still a window of opportunity from product inroduction to copies appearing but it would be short. No longer a brand name, or who did it first, but actual product quality would count. Some companies would cease to invent and focus on copying, but some shrewder ones would find a way to slow down the copycats with good marketing etc. Too bad all those consumers would benefit again.
If you really cared about thousands of people dying, why aren't you in Africa, volunteering at health clinics
Valid point, perheaps because I am just human and there are people better then me who do these things. That does not mean that I should do absolutely nothing.
Or could it be you are just creating an elaborate ruse for why you should be allowed to download music/movies without rewarding the artist who created them
Believe or not I dont listen to music much, neither do I watch TV. Too busy with software. On top of that this is far beyond music. What gets me going are news of things like Monsanto suing a farmer because their "proprietary" canola spread on his field and winning.