yet, i dont accept that it is dog eat dog capitalism to provide jobs to people without effort. its having detrimental effects on society.
10 years of advanced education does not exactly sound like "no effort" to me. I bet you did not try to obtain it, or else you would not be here ranting so. But then again your lack of ability to use the "shift" key should be a hint...
its going to an extent of creating a new kind of aristocracy that takes its members through education. they go into college, they instantly start thinking that they are separate from the society, higher, and entitled to more rights and expect and demand them.
The answer of course is to institute some method of ensuring that the chosen fields of education are beneficial to both the society and the student. Education is an expensive, time consuming and laborious process, therefore the current crap-shoot method of selecting the fields of study (or perhaps the overall types of education) is at fault.
But you cannot blame the whole thing on parents and the students. They simply follow the signals being sent to them by the powers-that-be.
and employees shouldnt demand huge wages like back in 1960s.
The wages of 1960s were at the level which finally allowed the "middle class" to form in America and for most people to be comfortably prosperous. What you are saying is that most Americans should expect to be dirt poor in this new "global economy", forever looking at their parents and grand-parents as those who were the final successful generation. Could you explain why is this supposed to be a benefit to the American populace? Why should not they demand that their government use all those stock piles of nuclear weapons to eradicate this new "global economy"? And this is not some theoretical musing here. All that xenophobia, lashing out abroad against any perceived foreign "enemy", increasingly viciously totalitarian political rhetoric and the like are fundamentally tied to this new, every day more depressing, "global reality". How is this a good thing for most people, again?
on the contrary. telecommuting is exploding. even spanish government is sending government workers home in a pilot project.
That is really going to work in a steel mill....
labor that cannot commute is labor that cannot be outsourced. i dont see a problem in that side.
Huh? Outsourcing is only one type of corporate movement, specific to certain industries such as IT, telephone centers etc. In many other sectors companies outright moved their entire divisions, or even the company itself abroad.
my opinion is that i.t. workers are the employees that experience the highest level of freedom in the world.
a heavy machine worker cant set up his own business. but an i.t. worker can easily set up his/her software production or i.t. counseling job with almost no investment. everything comes at a cost. we can set up a website and start running our own software house or it counseling in unbelievable ease from our home, but our jobs also can be outsourced easily. i say we are coming up profiting much more than we are losing. because setting up one's own business is dream of every employee after working 10 years.
This of course works also in the exact opposite direction: IT companies are some of the most easily destroyed of all companies out there as there are near to no barriers to entry for competitors. Most small scale IT companies do not live past 5 years. The bankruptcy rates are some of the highest amongst small IT companies. It is not a "career" to have with an expectation of long-term stability, which also reflects very negatively on any attempts at having a stable family life or raising children.
there are many countries who provide far bigger incentives to corporations. if you create such an environment, your companies would speedily run away to other countries.
Notice the utterly anti-competitive and dishonest nature of this scenario. Capital and corporations are free to move wherever... the workers are decidedly not.
This of course sets up the perfect "race to the bottom" scheme for the workers, where the least paid and most subservient "win" and are rewarded with below sustenance level "jobs" entailing no protections whatsoever. As soon as they attempt to gain some dignity or anything resembling just wages, the corporation finds another land of "opportunity" to move to. Lather, rinse, repeat.
1. i have a friend who started out as the pizza topping kid at a pizza hut. he is now the regional manager and is on an awesome salary with a car and phone. so yes it IS possible to move forward in hospitality. as i was saying it's all about attitude.
Right. For one of him, now many (with the same attitude and what not) did not? Hundreds most likely. Also how many pizza joints are multi-national corporations? Hell, how many have more then one store? This is in fact is your entire line of reasoning (which is quite common): "it worked for me, so it must be so for everyone else!" or "it worked for my pal so, naturally, everyone..." etc and so on. Perhaps you should look around outside of your self-centered bubble a bit.
2. maybe 100 years ago coal mniers died from black lung. not anymore - and i grew up in a coal mining town.
Its particle induced Emphysema and chronic Bronchitis, not just Pneumoconiosis (which is still quite common, despite of regulations). Coal mining is just inherently hazardous for one's health (as are many other industrial jobs). Again, you prefer your personal, very limited by its nature, experience over national statistics.
3. yes it's easy to "prove" anything if you come up with imaginary scenario's. i've never met anyone in real life who has had that kind of outsourcing debarcle happen to them, which makes me think it's a bit of a myth or atleast very rare.
See the point above about the world viewed from self-centered bubbles.
In fact this is one of the most common scenarios presently. As a matter of fact it is the very scenario of the Slashdot story to which we are responding. Further proof can be had from many other directions, such as proliferation of various 3-month (and the like) "schools" aimed at "re-training" scores of people being kicked out daily by these sorts of corporate maneuvers, all wholeheartedly endorsed by governments keen on the supposed riches to be brought by globalisation. Then there are statistics indicating that real income of a typical American family have declined since the levels in 1950-60s, while the income of the top 1% soared dramatically in recent decades. And on and on and on.
To counter all of that you have "but it didn't happen to me!". To which a logical answer is "Yet."
This has nothing to do with hypocrisy but with malicious propaganda put out by the proponents of dog-eat-dog "capitalism". The religious mantra is simple: "you make an effort to educate yourself and it will bring you prosperity". Every fucking politico out there whines about "lack of education" as a supposed reason for unemployment or destitute 3-job workers. They even go as far as to propose rapid immigration procedures (such as the H1B visas) to supposedly remedy this "problem" of insufficiently educated employees. "Education" is supposed to be the cure-all "solution" to all that outsourcing and other globalisation induced woes of the work-force.
It is a little wonder then that parents listen to this crap and "invest" in their kids' education, being assured that "free market" decidedly rewards such effort. Are they wrong? Of course. But this has a lot to do with vicious lies being fed to them daily and the fact that capitalism and "free market" are, in practice - as opposed to theory, barely above the level of the feudal order. Note that kids of the mogul dynasties have no such problems, finding VP and CEO positions completely irrespective of their field of studies (if any).
just because your job isn't very glamorous and you didn't start out as the VP of the company, that doesn't make a job self destructive or demeaning.
A majority of "service" jobs out there have absolutely zero advancement opportunities. One does not become a VP by "advancing" from a part-time burger flipper.
If a job is being destructive depends on a job. Most coal miners die of lung diseases and if it were not for the unions of old (now largely defunct) their salaries would be at the level of part-time burger flippers. Burger-flippers have insufficient income to raise their kids properly, so their jobs are destructive on their kids. Etc, and so on.
a large part of the problem isn't with employers, it's peoples attitudes.
Employers do not operate in social vacuum. The "peoples' attitudes" are what shapes the environment. If the "peoples' attitudes" are such as to find a Walmart job demeaning... then it is demeaning. Simply because the employees in question must live with these "people's attitudes" reflecting on them.
I started out in shit kicker helpdesk jobs which paid only slightly more than welfare, almost 10 years later and a lot of hardwork i'm now in a highly sort after technical role making about 10x what
i started on. and guess what? those 10 years weren't optional, that's just how long it takes to build the experience and skills high paying jobs need.
Now imagine the company deciding to "outsource" your job, you getting kicked out in favor of some dude who gets paid your old initial wage for your current job, and then you being told that all other jobs available will require you to start back at the shit-kicker level, after you shell some money and half a year on "re-training" in a completely different field. Oh and bonus: the new shit kicker "entry" position now pays 80% of what your old shit-kicker "entry" job used to. Welcome to the Glory of Globalization! Have fun with that mortgage and those college tuitions for your kids!
the company i work for is a non union shop owned by a large international, so by your measure they should be raping and pilaging me. but they aren't, in fact it's the oppersite, they really do look after me.
I am getting a sense that you are suffering from the Stockholm syndrome. Get back to me after they are done with you.
and here is why it's not a human right - someone employing you isn't something you need to survive, you can easily go work for yourself if you don't like what's being offered, or you can move onto the next 100000 jobs out there.
That only works if its true. But it is not if all the job pre-requisites involve insane up-front investment on your part (either in ridiculous amounts of money - which most do not have - or a decade of time and effort). That is for example why it is unreasonable to demand that the work-force constantly "re-trains" (at their own expense) for whatever temporary short-term jobs are thrown their way, at each cycle the cost of "re-training" becoming higher (both monetarily and from the personal sacrifice points of view) and the target job ever less paying.
At some point these things cross the line from mere "adversity" level to a full-fledged survival threatening mode (particularly if you live in a place where medical care is a for-profit affair). That is how such societies devolve into a feudal-alike scenarios where 95% of all the wealth is concentrated in the top 5% of society and the rest are de-facto indentured slave force (where slaves have the "right" to choose any slave position... as long as it is a slave position that is).
It also does not work if all the "100000 jobs" are "race to the bottom" "employment opportunities" where the chief contest is who can do the most demeaning, self-destructive thing for the least amount of money, far below any poverty-level "standard" of living (which is why many of these "employees" hold 2 or 3 of them, while their kids never get to see their parents).
Secondly, a free market does not mean that people should be allowed to take advantage of the market, companies, and workers. The market should also be fair. Americans are fans of free markets because of their efficiency, but we also realize that the markets have to be regulated or they become unfair (see the American History during the industrial revolution and where Unions gained power).
Actually, this is an oversimplification. Many Americans (particularly Republicans and Libertarians) are fans of the "free market" (as in pretty much 100% unrestricted and unregulated), some other Americans are for "fair market" instead (although what is "fair" is subject to debate). Then there are those in between.
The current state of affairs is however that the prevailing position amongst those in power (which is the only thing that counts in the long run) is that "free market" is a cure-all wonder solution to all economic problems and those individuals are ramming through "reform" after "reform" to that end. Those for the "fair market" are resisting any way they can (read: "feebly").
The situation is of course not restricted to America, as the same kind of forces are at play all over the world. It is the eternal battle between those who are, despite of their many protestations, sociopaths (i.e. see only themselves as the center of the Universe and all others as mere objects, to be used as tools, abused and discarded when broken, since the Universe exists solely for the benefit of its "center") and those who see themselves as a part of a bigger whole and who wish for that whole and themselves to exist in mutually-beneficial harmony where no one is left to fend desperately for himself alone and where well being of the group's members takes precedence over rapidity of accumulation of possessions. There are even those who schizophrenically attempt to have the cake and eat it too, i.e. they believe that if only the entire world was arranged with unlimited and unbound personal greed as its sole Holy Purpose, then somehow (by means magical and divine) the society would end up being the inclusive, mutually-beneficial "got your back pal" arrangement sought by the second group.
Parent is not a troll. He's just telling the truth. When an Indian man always hires the same Indian company to do his work for 3 different American firms, it's ethnic/racial favoritism plain and simple.
You would have a point if a) the Indian company paid American income taxes, b) the Indian company adhered to all the American labor laws, c) the Indian company workers spend their earnings in America, amongst other things.
Why? Simply because the economic boundaries of most societies are also their national boundaries, i.e. their economies are designed to work as a unit within the national borders. If you operate inside such a unit, taking advantage of all of its benefits (tax breaks for job creation amongst others as was in this case) and then turn around and in order to maximize your profits redirect all of the economic benefits which your company is supposed to bring back to that society to another instead, abroad, it becomes a far bigger issue then mere "ethnic favoritism". It crosses the line into "economic sabotage".
what does this have to do with human rights? do you think you have a right to work at Neilsen's or something?
Well yes and no. The primary issue is that humans are not machines and therefore cannot be treated as such when hired by companies. There are some baseline societal "decency" rules that are in effect irrespective of what contract the company managed to foist on you. These involve sufficient notice of being fired, non-discrimination based on race or religion, safe work conditions etc and so on.
Then there is a general, society-wide expectation that Capitalism is supposed to work to the advantage of all members of the Capitalist society, not just the top richest 0.1%. Otherwise it is pointless as a "societal contract" between individuals and the society for majority of its members. An extension of that is that anyone willing to work hard has an expectation of being hired and rewarded for that work. So no, one cannot expect to work for Nielsen specifically but one can expect to find gainful employment with some company, otherwise (along with many other such indicators being unmet) the whole fucking thing is demonstrated to be a gigantic scam (which is my humble opinion of the state of the present societal arrangements around the globe).
May he indeed. By doing it yourself you spared me from compulsively doing the same. May his noodly appendage... err... do whatever... err... the noodly appendage is supposed to do with you!
Last I checked, it takes me about 15 minutes, including the download time to configure a strong Openswan connection between two machines using IPSec. Download, open each machine in separate SSH
sessions, copy and paste key IDs to the two config files, enter the IP addresses, save and restart IPSec. Done.
That is assuming that your Openswan happens to compile for your particular distro and kernel (never you mind it coming pre-packaged), that it talks to some oddball firmware implementation of IPSec (on which some genius consultant insists) etc and so on. You are of course neglecting to mention the million of different IPsec options that Openswan implements and are assuming that the defaults will work with whatever is at the other end of the link.
I use an IPSec with L2TP network at my office all the time. We have a proper CA and certificates issued to each of the mobile computers. took about 2 hours to setup.
Ah, you mean a monolithic, single-vendor "solution" with a pre-packaged custom IPSec implementation? You might as well use whatever else Microsoft has pre-packaged for their monoculture and call yourself an expert. Unfortunately the rest of us are faced with somewhat less trivial cases of mutiple-vendor, multiple OS environments. Which is where it all falls apart, because Microsoft has hidden about 95% of the configuration information behind their wizards with pre-selected (and pretty much for all practical purposes unchangeable) choices.
Which is the main reason for which some people in many shops just throw their hands up, say "fuck it" and order overpriced but "turn-key" end-to-end single-vendor VPN solutions from places like Cisco, complete with some contract-bound drones in India ready to program the thing for you remotely.
Having to set up some corporate VPNs in the past, I cannot even fathom why anyone in their right mind would choose IPsec over, say, OpenVPN, other then being forced into it by some idiot vendor or a moron manager. The difference in complexity, amount of work on the part of the network designer and sysadmins is just astronomically different between the two solutions.
From first-hand experience I can only confirm that IPsec is for masochists. Anyone I know who ever tried to deploy the thing does only so once.
Also note that more convoluted and difficult to control a security solution is, more chances of security vulnerabilities, both from the perspective of possible errors in design and implementation of such complex schemes, but also (more likely in practice) from the perspective of faulty deployment by people who do not have time to parse word by word 300 page deployment manuals bristling with obscure acronyms and arcane cryptography concepts.
Civil (or any other kind of) political debate is ended the instant someone throws a punch, tosses a handful of feces, quotes Goldberg as an authority on anything or claims that "Hitler was a liberal" etc.
You anti-smoking is not no smoking signs, it involves arresting and jailing people who choose to smaoke where it is outlawed.
Who knew?!! And it would seem that this "outrage" is equally applicable to any other law! I mean you dump your industrial toxic sludge on a public street (which is what smoking in effect is in a public place context) and... they arrest you... and jail you! Who ever heard of such a thing?! What happened to all that personal freedom to fuck everyone else around you!! How dare they?!! What's next?! They will actually charge you if you bring your gun to a shopping mall and shoot at some beer cans you've put at the rim of the court fountain! Can you imagine that encroachment on your personal freedom?!! Islamolibodemocommiefascists!!!
And don't forget, there were concentration camps in the US during WWII as well.
More "islamolibocommiefascist" conspiracies! Those "liberals" were sure busy spreading... err... liberty? That must be why they used all that Zyclon gas in all those American internment camps, no?
Both Hitler and FDR were fascists. Only difference: Hitler was evil, FDR was not.
With the exception of all that Gestapo stuff... and that bit with the crematoriums. And that free press thing. And that one-peoples-one-party-one-fuhrer thingie. And that "lebensraum" hangup. And in fact that whole "fascisti" "corporativismo" thing...
Look, you, like Goldberg, have no fucking clue what fascism is. Any discussion with you on comparative features of any political systems versus those of fascism is therefore pointless.
Ad hominem #3. Now all you need to do to show your leftoid moonbat cred is you yell "But, Halliburton!" and storm off congratulation yourself on your witty repartee.
Well, Haliburton was not mentioned by me, but by you. So you, by your own logic, now qualify for the wholly-non-ad-hominem label of "leftoid moonbat". Congratulations!
Fortuntately anyone reading with that has at least a room temperature IQ will see right through your flawed arguments,lack of rebuttal, and blatant ad hominems.
You've been thoroughly and completely rebutted every step of the way. The fact that you are the only person not recognizing this is the very source of all the comedy.
Thanks for exposing yourself as a moonbat.
I believe it was you who, by one of your own marvelously crafted gems of utter illogic you are so fond of, a mere few sentences earlier, labeled yourself a "leftoid moonbat". Are you now adding some confusion over the meaning of pronouns of "you" and "I" to your already impressive list of feats of mental dysfunction?
You've failed to refute any of my points in a logical manner, now you demonstrate failure at reading and comprehension. In today's American political climate, "liberal" and "progressive" are often used interchangeably.
You really make me laugh. "Reading and comprehension"? It is the very people suffering from both who confuse "liberal" and "progressive"! Not to mention labeling everything they disagree with as "fascist".
Nice ad hominem fallacy, my friend. You are attacking the messenger instead of refuting the message.
Sometimes it is quite justified. Mr. Goldberg is the political equivalent of the disheveled, booze smelling guy standing on the street corner with a badly hand scrawled sign reading "The End Is Neigh!". Quoting him with any purpose other then jest should be simply embarrassing to any self-respecting individual.
Except today the term "liberal" is interchangeable with the term "progressive".
No it is not. That is why Tony Blair is an economic "liberal" ("free trade" etc) but not a "progressive" (i.e. someone espousing socially-oriented policies which usually involve measures incompatible with "free trade"). A "progressive" position is "fair trade" as opposed the "liberal" "free trade". Etc and so on.
Classical Liberals have more in common with today's conservatives than with today's Democrat party.
Nothing has changed in the definition of "liberal". It is your attempt at mis-labellings your opponents that has you tied in illogical knots. Whatever positions the Democratic party holds, they have to be considered individually. Some are "liberal", some "progressive" and some downright "corporatist", amongst many others. Their very recent vote on FISA is anything but "liberal" (or "progressive") by any measurement.
And the vast majority of Democrats don't want you to own guns, smoke, eat red meat, drive an SUV, and a myriad of other behaviors they don't approve of.
I am arguing with a guy who attempts to draw equivalence between mass murder in concentration camps and anti-smoking signs. I probably should stop interacting with the raving maniac right about now....
Sort of like FDR interning Japanese-American citizens in camps, right?
Also what does FDR have anything to do with this? You were claiming (based on Goldberg's insane ravings) that Hitler was a "liberal". FDR is as relevant to the discussion as is Napoleon Bonaparte and Ramses the IIIrd.
Adolf Hitler and the "progressives" have an awful lot in common when you look at their platforms.
Oh so now we are talking "progressives", no longer "liberals", huh? Very well then, common what exactly? Unquestioning support for large businesses and aristocracy? Union busting? Worship of nationalism and militarism? Foreign conquests? Unitary executive under all-powerful Führer? Secret police with unlimited powers? Wide spread wiretapping and domestic espionage (to protect the Germans from Jewish and Communist "terrorists")? Etc and so on. Do tell.
But, you obviously won't because you have a pre-concieved notion of what the linked book contains. How "open minded" of you.
It depends. One can be so "open minded" as to have his brains fall out. Which is apparently your affliction.
Because Hitler WAS a liberal.
In the back of that book Goldberg lists the entire Nazi Party Platform. Modern liberal Democrats favor the overwhelming majority of those "ideals".
You have lost all credibility by even attempting to foist such complete, moronic nonsense. That and using anything written by Goldberg as "reference".
Point of logic: irrespective of what modern US Democratic party is up to, the very term "liberal" refers to a position which emphasizes... err... liberty (although traditionally in less extreme anti-government forms then "libertarianism"). Hence the name (or haven't you noticed?). For example, de-regulation (i.e. "liberty") of all industry is a "liberal" political position. Same for "free trade". Minimal taxation. Small government. Etc and so on.
Adolf Hitler and the NAZI party... err... not so big on liberties. Particularly those of Jewry, Communists, Poles etc.
Incidentally, the traditional Western "left-wing" political spectrum was never overtly "liberal" in the realm of economics, although it does hold quite "liberal" positions outside of it in areas dealing with personal affairs, such as same-sex marriages etc.
Which made me laugh again, just thinking of what the Mr. "liberal" Adolf would say about gays and lesbians (hint: fast track to Auschwitz).
Seriously, this really is much ado about nothing. It's just an anti-stupid lawsuit law, to protect teachers who simply ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that not everyone believes ToE is correct.
Which must, by definition, also entail telling kids that all genetics-based research, drugs and therapies resulting from thereof and all related fields of bacteriology and microbiology are bogus and a figment of these "ToE believers'" imaginations. You ID turkeys can't have it both ways, you know, to claim that evolution is an "unproven theory" and at the same time reap all the benefits of science which wholly depends on our discovery of evolutionary processes (and in some cases even on the processes themselves).
But then again, logic was never the primary concern of power hungry religion peddlers, control of the minds of people was.
We're having a political discussion, I provide links and my post gets modded "Troll", whereas you offer hard facts like "owned by hard-core right-winger billionaires, run by hard-core right-winger CEOs and hard-core right-winger board of directors" and "politically-motivated brain-washing psychological warfare donkey-dung", so of course that rates "Interesting."
Clearly you understand your audience better than I do. But I've got better things to do than pursue this.
You are confused as to the difference between offering a logical argument versus offering "links". Internet "links" in and by themselves are useless in the task of presenting logical arguments. The links can bolster your arguments but only if they point to a) pertinent information in line with your argument and b) the linked information itself is a result of another well thought out logical argument. I could for example provide links to a porn site and then moan that I was not taken seriously in a dispute about quantum physics. Neither will I score points by linking to flashing and blinking all-caps website run by a "persecuted" crank "inventor" of a perpetual motion/time travel machine combo, even if he claims to agree with me.
Case in point: I simply pointed out the (rather patently obvious) truth about the nature of ownership and control of media conglomerates. You provided a link to a "study" whose premises are laughable, like for example an utterly ridiculous claim that places like Drudge Report are promoting left-wing ideas - in an executive summary no less! That is how I win this argument. Your "link" has near zero value for you as it drastically contradicts everyday experiences of most of the Slashdot readers, while my observation (however "link"-free) is in line with that experience.
In fact, by linking to such a pile of utter malicious garbage (which I likened to "donkey dung") you have reduced the credibility of your own argument. You would have been better off not linking to it.
The fairness doctrine does not apply to news media which is uniformly biased to Dems/liberals. What'll happen is that the obligation to provide "balance" to political talk radio and other venues where
conservatives dominate will be so onerous that it will force those shows off the air. The libs already own the news media, hence conservatives won't have a voice, so yeah, you bring back the FD and you censor conservative opinion.
Oh yea, the "liberal media" idiocy. Look, let me point out to you this rather easily verifiable fact: nearly all media in the USA is owned by hard-core right-winger billionaires, run by hard-core right-winger CEOs and hard-core right-winger board of directors and then somehow (probably by magic, due to all that Communist pixie dust spread by Rupert Murdoch) it scores "left of center"?! What "center"?!! By our standards here in Canada the Democrats are Center-right, the Republicans far-right. I am sure the "center" is even further right from the view of people in some European countries.
That "study" is a load of politically-motivated brain-washing psychological warfare donkey-dung, sponsored by people who believe Adolf Hitler was a "liberal", nothing more.
I think you are incredibly naieve to think that the means of propogation of information can not be controlled.
Naive? The only possible method of controlling propagation of information is to control all means of such propagation. That means a totalitarian police state whereby all digital communications are continuously inspected by the police and no digital communication outside of the police controlled channels is (physically) allowed. Due to the properties of information there is simply no other way.
You are also incredibly naieve to think that information once released can not be destroyed.
Really? OK, let's try this experiment: I am hereby releasing the information sample, in form of a numerical sequence "6617721636173". Now it is out. You destroy it. Prove your case by demonstrating that no copies remain anywhere on Earth.
There are historical precedents for both and from all ages including our own.
Such as? Even if you burn down all the "heretic" books, there is no guarantee that some "heathen" did not hide some copies somewhere to be found in 2045.
However, in jurisdictions where the rule of law prevails, she can stop people from making a profit, or posting it on youtube, or selling tapes or dvds of the video. I don't see anything wrong with that.
No, she cannot. Unless some sort of global "Intellectual Property" police gets to inspect all digital communications on Earth in real time, it will take hours if not days before each new copy is removed from some random website, YouTube included (which happens daily). As to selling, you must be kidding. Every second spam email from some "porn site de-jour" contains the phrase "Paris Hilton Video".
If someone steals my credit history or medical records and tries to profit from that act, then I should have some legal recourse.
You are completely confused. Your recourse is against the use of information, i.e. physical objects (such as money) changing hands based upon it (if you can track such exchanges down). Not the propagation of information itself, which cannot be stopped for reasons outlined above. No matter what you do the identity thief or whomever used that information, you cannot stop the propagation after the fact! Personal data leaked to the Internet is permanently leaked, unless of course the totalitarian global police state comes to be.
A better question is whether information existed at or before the time of the big bang. If it did exist, is it the same information today or did it change? Obviously, much of what we call information has changed since the big bang.
Really? OK, how did number 4 change? Number 9? Any other integer? How about properties of mathematical equations? Etc and so on. And since all other information can be expressed in form of numerical sequences, the same applies to all other possible information. But in fact we do not know the true nature of information, only that it is directly tied to various phenomena such as consciousness. But this is an entire other discussion.
OTOH, if what we call information didn't exist before the big bang, then it must have been created. This raises even more questions. Can information also be destroyed? Does newly created information have to follow the precepts of older information?
OTGH, we have to consider that this could be a false dichotomy and that the universe doesn't really give a rat's ass what we think.
See above. The important point however is that even if we do not know the true nature of information, we do know some of its properties. And those are incompatible with the notion of "Intellectual Property", "copyrights" and other means of attempting to create artificial pretenses of, amongst other things, scarcity, so that some select few individuals get to become very rich by controlling and dominating all the future means of communication of our society (as that is the only way to achieve their desired effect).
I wholeheartedly agree. I think it was a small minority that held that view, although what skews memory is that they were very vocal about it. It seemed that they had some great emotional investment in finding Hans innocent, probably because they somehow identified with him (although I have hard times imagining it).
The logical problem with your arguments (I'm being generous here) is that you focus solely on the taking of information from conglomerates.
That is not true. I focus on properties of information itself, irrespective of who uses it. It just so happens that big conglomerates are at a forefront of promulgation of the insanity of "Intellectual Property" because they are the ones who reap a vast majority of profits from this scheme. But the arguments I make are equally applicable to all entities, small businesses and individuals included.
I'm sure you would have serious problems with someone taking your personal photos, videos, etc from you.
Define "taking".
Information, amongst its many unique properties, has an ability for propagation. That property can be controlled by individuals, i.e. I may simply not give you my photos and videos. Buy if I do however (or you break into my house and steal them) then I do in fact lose the ability to control them (irrespective of my wishes) because all the subsequent propagation is no longer performed (and thus controlled) by me. That is why the Paris Hilton home-made porn video is permanently out, no matter how many lawsuits she files. Any lawsuits to stop propagation of information are like trying to sue the force of gravity.
A good example that illustrates this is a flame. You have a candle burning and it is "yours". If I take another candle, one I bought, and if you allow me to touch that flame with my candle, it will burn. But at that instant the flame ceases to be "yours" because now I can allow other people to touch my candle. At the moment of propagation of the flame you lost all control of it.
Do you have kids? Ever take a picture of them in the bath? It's okay to share them as well because it's information and cannot be stolen. How about digitized medical records? Again, under your system it's information and cannot be stolen. Why it's practically begging to be shared with the world.
See above. It has nothing whatsoever to do with my "wishes", it has everything to do with properties of information. All you can do is to control the initial propagation. After that you no longer have the ability.
It gets even worse for some other kinds of information. Your brilliant invention you are working on just might be discovered by some other dude at the other end of the planet whom you never met because it so happened that he and you got the same idea. It is because information has another unique property: identical information can be acquired by independent entities by wholly independent means. That is why some philosophers keep arguing about the fundamental nature of information, in particular about if information is "discovered" (i.e. it somehow exists outside the physical universe) or if it is "invented".
So be it, but any problem that cannot be solved because of an existing technology means that there is a market for a new technology.
The point being of course that some technologies cannot be replaced without massive societal changes, no matter what you do. And that it is those changes, not the technology itself, which limit, or sometimes prohibit, any usefulness of the technology.
Use nuclear power.
Sure, a nuclear reactor will really solve your problem of massive inefficiency in coal processing (where most of the input goes to waste). Not only that, but easily fissionable Uranium is even more finite then oil and all the rosy nuclear power scenarios depend on fast breeder reactors which run on the common variety of Uranium whilst converting it into plutonium. That will do wonders for global nuclear arms non-proliferation.
Again, you take a simple all or nothing approach. Future fuels portfolio is going to be a mix. Biofuels plays a part of that mix. First off, at today's oil prices, switching to any alternative fuel mix is ultimately profitable and so its a no-brainer.
And I keep telling you that there is no scientifically feasible mix of technologies that even approaches the energy output and density of fossil fuels, short of nuclear power in every car.
There is nothing you can practically do (short of mass use of nuclear power) because it is against the laws of physics. Thermodynamics in particular. We took what was in essence a battery that charged over the period of hundreds of millions of years and proceeded to discharge it within a few centuries. It would take some more hundreds of millions of years to recharge it via solar energy. There is just nothing you can do to get around it. Ergo our civilization must adapt to much, much lower energy consumption (or blow itself up with plutonium - never you mind all that nuclear waste and pollution if it does not).
That's actually factually incorrect. I think you can conservatively say that the average solar flux is about 500 watts per square meter. If you've got a roof that's 4 square meters, and a good conversion, with a bit of storage for peak moments, that's more than enough solar energy to run a house. The earth is actually pretty big... you know, its a planet!
Sigh. Total amount of energy captured by all photosynthesis on the planet is about 3 zetajoulles, including all plankton in all oceans which amounts for about 90% of that figure, worldwide energy consumption was 0.487 ZJ in 2005 (electrical energy consumed amounted to mere 0.0567 ZJ, rest was oil and coal). That means if you were to chop down all trees and mow down all crops down to every last blade of grass on land and convert all of it with 100% efficiency into oil, you would be still short of one year's oil consumption (and that does not include all the oil used for non-energy applications, such as plastic). Those are the numbers.
Levelling is not that hard in an era of GPS and laser levels.
Yea, you pound the ground flat with your GPS and move the thousands of tons of rocks with your laser!
Railroads can build themselves out by transporting goods across existing lines to expansion areas, so you have none of the goofy weight problem you have when building roads for cars.
Yes they just build themselves. That is why an estimated cost of laying down new rail is about $5 million per mile for four freight tracks and about $3 million per mile for passenger high speed rail. On flat land. And that does not even include the right of way costs.
I mean, when the USA wanted to build railroads, we did, and fairly quickly.
It took a century or so. A single trans-continental line took 7 years of Appollo-program-style effort.
Slashdot Mirror
10 years of advanced education does not exactly sound like "no effort" to me. I bet you did not try to obtain it, or else you would not be here ranting so. But then again your lack of ability to use the "shift" key should be a hint...
The answer of course is to institute some method of ensuring that the chosen fields of education are beneficial to both the society and the student. Education is an expensive, time consuming and laborious process, therefore the current crap-shoot method of selecting the fields of study (or perhaps the overall types of education) is at fault.
But you cannot blame the whole thing on parents and the students. They simply follow the signals being sent to them by the powers-that-be.
The wages of 1960s were at the level which finally allowed the "middle class" to form in America and for most people to be comfortably prosperous. What you are saying is that most Americans should expect to be dirt poor in this new "global economy", forever looking at their parents and grand-parents as those who were the final successful generation. Could you explain why is this supposed to be a benefit to the American populace? Why should not they demand that their government use all those stock piles of nuclear weapons to eradicate this new "global economy"? And this is not some theoretical musing here. All that xenophobia, lashing out abroad against any perceived foreign "enemy", increasingly viciously totalitarian political rhetoric and the like are fundamentally tied to this new, every day more depressing, "global reality". How is this a good thing for most people, again?
That is really going to work in a steel mill....
Huh? Outsourcing is only one type of corporate movement, specific to certain industries such as IT, telephone centers etc. In many other sectors companies outright moved their entire divisions, or even the company itself abroad.
This of course works also in the exact opposite direction: IT companies are some of the most easily destroyed of all companies out there as there are near to no barriers to entry for competitors. Most small scale IT companies do not live past 5 years. The bankruptcy rates are some of the highest amongst small IT companies. It is not a "career" to have with an expectation of long-term stability, which also reflects very negatively on any attempts at having a stable family life or raising children.
Notice the utterly anti-competitive and dishonest nature of this scenario. Capital and corporations are free to move wherever ... the workers are decidedly not.
This of course sets up the perfect "race to the bottom" scheme for the workers, where the least paid and most subservient "win" and are rewarded with below sustenance level "jobs" entailing no protections whatsoever. As soon as they attempt to gain some dignity or anything resembling just wages, the corporation finds another land of "opportunity" to move to. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Right. For one of him, now many (with the same attitude and what not) did not? Hundreds most likely. Also how many pizza joints are multi-national corporations? Hell, how many have more then one store? This is in fact is your entire line of reasoning (which is quite common): "it worked for me, so it must be so for everyone else!" or "it worked for my pal so, naturally, everyone ..." etc and so on. Perhaps you should look around outside of your self-centered bubble a bit.
Its particle induced Emphysema and chronic Bronchitis, not just Pneumoconiosis (which is still quite common, despite of regulations). Coal mining is just inherently hazardous for one's health (as are many other industrial jobs). Again, you prefer your personal, very limited by its nature, experience over national statistics.
See the point above about the world viewed from self-centered bubbles.
In fact this is one of the most common scenarios presently. As a matter of fact it is the very scenario of the Slashdot story to which we are responding. Further proof can be had from many other directions, such as proliferation of various 3-month (and the like) "schools" aimed at "re-training" scores of people being kicked out daily by these sorts of corporate maneuvers, all wholeheartedly endorsed by governments keen on the supposed riches to be brought by globalisation. Then there are statistics indicating that real income of a typical American family have declined since the levels in 1950-60s, while the income of the top 1% soared dramatically in recent decades. And on and on and on.
To counter all of that you have "but it didn't happen to me!". To which a logical answer is "Yet."
This has nothing to do with hypocrisy but with malicious propaganda put out by the proponents of dog-eat-dog "capitalism". The religious mantra is simple: "you make an effort to educate yourself and it will bring you prosperity". Every fucking politico out there whines about "lack of education" as a supposed reason for unemployment or destitute 3-job workers. They even go as far as to propose rapid immigration procedures (such as the H1B visas) to supposedly remedy this "problem" of insufficiently educated employees. "Education" is supposed to be the cure-all "solution" to all that outsourcing and other globalisation induced woes of the work-force.
It is a little wonder then that parents listen to this crap and "invest" in their kids' education, being assured that "free market" decidedly rewards such effort. Are they wrong? Of course. But this has a lot to do with vicious lies being fed to them daily and the fact that capitalism and "free market" are, in practice - as opposed to theory, barely above the level of the feudal order. Note that kids of the mogul dynasties have no such problems, finding VP and CEO positions completely irrespective of their field of studies (if any).
A majority of "service" jobs out there have absolutely zero advancement opportunities. One does not become a VP by "advancing" from a part-time burger flipper.
If a job is being destructive depends on a job. Most coal miners die of lung diseases and if it were not for the unions of old (now largely defunct) their salaries would be at the level of part-time burger flippers. Burger-flippers have insufficient income to raise their kids properly, so their jobs are destructive on their kids. Etc, and so on.
Employers do not operate in social vacuum. The "peoples' attitudes" are what shapes the environment. If the "peoples' attitudes" are such as to find a Walmart job demeaning ... then it is demeaning. Simply because the employees in question must live with these "people's attitudes" reflecting on them.
Now imagine the company deciding to "outsource" your job, you getting kicked out in favor of some dude who gets paid your old initial wage for your current job, and then you being told that all other jobs available will require you to start back at the shit-kicker level, after you shell some money and half a year on "re-training" in a completely different field. Oh and bonus: the new shit kicker "entry" position now pays 80% of what your old shit-kicker "entry" job used to. Welcome to the Glory of Globalization! Have fun with that mortgage and those college tuitions for your kids!
I am getting a sense that you are suffering from the Stockholm syndrome. Get back to me after they are done with you.
That only works if its true. But it is not if all the job pre-requisites involve insane up-front investment on your part (either in ridiculous amounts of money - which most do not have - or a decade of time and effort). That is for example why it is unreasonable to demand that the work-force constantly "re-trains" (at their own expense) for whatever temporary short-term jobs are thrown their way, at each cycle the cost of "re-training" becoming higher (both monetarily and from the personal sacrifice points of view) and the target job ever less paying.
At some point these things cross the line from mere "adversity" level to a full-fledged survival threatening mode (particularly if you live in a place where medical care is a for-profit affair). That is how such societies devolve into a feudal-alike scenarios where 95% of all the wealth is concentrated in the top 5% of society and the rest are de-facto indentured slave force (where slaves have the "right" to choose any slave position ... as long as it is a slave position that is).
It also does not work if all the "100000 jobs" are "race to the bottom" "employment opportunities" where the chief contest is who can do the most demeaning, self-destructive thing for the least amount of money, far below any poverty-level "standard" of living (which is why many of these "employees" hold 2 or 3 of them, while their kids never get to see their parents).
Actually, this is an oversimplification. Many Americans (particularly Republicans and Libertarians) are fans of the "free market" (as in pretty much 100% unrestricted and unregulated), some other Americans are for "fair market" instead (although what is "fair" is subject to debate). Then there are those in between.
The current state of affairs is however that the prevailing position amongst those in power (which is the only thing that counts in the long run) is that "free market" is a cure-all wonder solution to all economic problems and those individuals are ramming through "reform" after "reform" to that end. Those for the "fair market" are resisting any way they can (read: "feebly").
The situation is of course not restricted to America, as the same kind of forces are at play all over the world. It is the eternal battle between those who are, despite of their many protestations, sociopaths (i.e. see only themselves as the center of the Universe and all others as mere objects, to be used as tools, abused and discarded when broken, since the Universe exists solely for the benefit of its "center") and those who see themselves as a part of a bigger whole and who wish for that whole and themselves to exist in mutually-beneficial harmony where no one is left to fend desperately for himself alone and where well being of the group's members takes precedence over rapidity of accumulation of possessions. There are even those who schizophrenically attempt to have the cake and eat it too, i.e. they believe that if only the entire world was arranged with unlimited and unbound personal greed as its sole Holy Purpose, then somehow (by means magical and divine) the society would end up being the inclusive, mutually-beneficial "got your back pal" arrangement sought by the second group.
You would have a point if a) the Indian company paid American income taxes, b) the Indian company adhered to all the American labor laws, c) the Indian company workers spend their earnings in America, amongst other things.
Why? Simply because the economic boundaries of most societies are also their national boundaries, i.e. their economies are designed to work as a unit within the national borders. If you operate inside such a unit, taking advantage of all of its benefits (tax breaks for job creation amongst others as was in this case) and then turn around and in order to maximize your profits redirect all of the economic benefits which your company is supposed to bring back to that society to another instead, abroad, it becomes a far bigger issue then mere "ethnic favoritism". It crosses the line into "economic sabotage".
Well yes and no. The primary issue is that humans are not machines and therefore cannot be treated as such when hired by companies. There are some baseline societal "decency" rules that are in effect irrespective of what contract the company managed to foist on you. These involve sufficient notice of being fired, non-discrimination based on race or religion, safe work conditions etc and so on.
Then there is a general, society-wide expectation that Capitalism is supposed to work to the advantage of all members of the Capitalist society, not just the top richest 0.1%. Otherwise it is pointless as a "societal contract" between individuals and the society for majority of its members. An extension of that is that anyone willing to work hard has an expectation of being hired and rewarded for that work. So no, one cannot expect to work for Nielsen specifically but one can expect to find gainful employment with some company, otherwise (along with many other such indicators being unmet) the whole fucking thing is demonstrated to be a gigantic scam (which is my humble opinion of the state of the present societal arrangements around the globe).
May he indeed. By doing it yourself you spared me from compulsively doing the same. May his noodly appendage ... err ... do whatever ... err ... the noodly appendage is supposed to do with you!
That is assuming that your Openswan happens to compile for your particular distro and kernel (never you mind it coming pre-packaged), that it talks to some oddball firmware implementation of IPSec (on which some genius consultant insists) etc and so on. You are of course neglecting to mention the million of different IPsec options that Openswan implements and are assuming that the defaults will work with whatever is at the other end of the link.
Ah, you mean a monolithic, single-vendor "solution" with a pre-packaged custom IPSec implementation? You might as well use whatever else Microsoft has pre-packaged for their monoculture and call yourself an expert. Unfortunately the rest of us are faced with somewhat less trivial cases of mutiple-vendor, multiple OS environments. Which is where it all falls apart, because Microsoft has hidden about 95% of the configuration information behind their wizards with pre-selected (and pretty much for all practical purposes unchangeable) choices.
Which is the main reason for which some people in many shops just throw their hands up, say "fuck it" and order overpriced but "turn-key" end-to-end single-vendor VPN solutions from places like Cisco, complete with some contract-bound drones in India ready to program the thing for you remotely.
I concur.
Having to set up some corporate VPNs in the past, I cannot even fathom why anyone in their right mind would choose IPsec over, say, OpenVPN, other then being forced into it by some idiot vendor or a moron manager. The difference in complexity, amount of work on the part of the network designer and sysadmins is just astronomically different between the two solutions.
From first-hand experience I can only confirm that IPsec is for masochists. Anyone I know who ever tried to deploy the thing does only so once.
Also note that more convoluted and difficult to control a security solution is, more chances of security vulnerabilities, both from the perspective of possible errors in design and implementation of such complex schemes, but also (more likely in practice) from the perspective of faulty deployment by people who do not have time to parse word by word 300 page deployment manuals bristling with obscure acronyms and arcane cryptography concepts.
Civil (or any other kind of) political debate is ended the instant someone throws a punch, tosses a handful of feces, quotes Goldberg as an authority on anything or claims that "Hitler was a liberal" etc.
Who knew?!! And it would seem that this "outrage" is equally applicable to any other law! I mean you dump your industrial toxic sludge on a public street (which is what smoking in effect is in a public place context) and ... they arrest you ... and jail you! Who ever heard of such a thing?! What happened to all that personal freedom to fuck everyone else around you!! How dare they?!! What's next?! They will actually charge you if you bring your gun to a shopping mall and shoot at some beer cans you've put at the rim of the court fountain! Can you imagine that encroachment on your personal freedom?!! Islamolibodemocommiefascists!!!
More "islamolibocommiefascist" conspiracies! Those "liberals" were sure busy spreading ... err ... liberty? That must be why they used all that Zyclon gas in all those American internment camps, no?
With the exception of all that Gestapo stuff ... and that bit with the crematoriums. And that free press thing. And that one-peoples-one-party-one-fuhrer thingie. And that "lebensraum" hangup. And in fact that whole "fascisti" "corporativismo" thing ...
Look, you, like Goldberg, have no fucking clue what fascism is. Any discussion with you on comparative features of any political systems versus those of fascism is therefore pointless.
Well, Haliburton was not mentioned by me, but by you. So you, by your own logic, now qualify for the wholly-non-ad-hominem label of "leftoid moonbat". Congratulations!
You've been thoroughly and completely rebutted every step of the way. The fact that you are the only person not recognizing this is the very source of all the comedy.
I believe it was you who, by one of your own marvelously crafted gems of utter illogic you are so fond of, a mere few sentences earlier, labeled yourself a "leftoid moonbat". Are you now adding some confusion over the meaning of pronouns of "you" and "I" to your already impressive list of feats of mental dysfunction?
You really make me laugh. "Reading and comprehension"? It is the very people suffering from both who confuse "liberal" and "progressive"! Not to mention labeling everything they disagree with as "fascist".
Sometimes it is quite justified. Mr. Goldberg is the political equivalent of the disheveled, booze smelling guy standing on the street corner with a badly hand scrawled sign reading "The End Is Neigh!". Quoting him with any purpose other then jest should be simply embarrassing to any self-respecting individual.
No it is not. That is why Tony Blair is an economic "liberal" ("free trade" etc) but not a "progressive" (i.e. someone espousing socially-oriented policies which usually involve measures incompatible with "free trade"). A "progressive" position is "fair trade" as opposed the "liberal" "free trade". Etc and so on.
Nothing has changed in the definition of "liberal". It is your attempt at mis-labellings your opponents that has you tied in illogical knots. Whatever positions the Democratic party holds, they have to be considered individually. Some are "liberal", some "progressive" and some downright "corporatist", amongst many others. Their very recent vote on FISA is anything but "liberal" (or "progressive") by any measurement.
I am arguing with a guy who attempts to draw equivalence between mass murder in concentration camps and anti-smoking signs. I probably should stop interacting with the raving maniac right about now ....
Also what does FDR have anything to do with this? You were claiming (based on Goldberg's insane ravings) that Hitler was a "liberal". FDR is as relevant to the discussion as is Napoleon Bonaparte and Ramses the IIIrd.
Oh so now we are talking "progressives", no longer "liberals", huh? Very well then, common what exactly? Unquestioning support for large businesses and aristocracy? Union busting? Worship of nationalism and militarism? Foreign conquests? Unitary executive under all-powerful Führer? Secret police with unlimited powers? Wide spread wiretapping and domestic espionage (to protect the Germans from Jewish and Communist "terrorists")? Etc and so on. Do tell.
It depends. One can be so "open minded" as to have his brains fall out. Which is apparently your affliction.
You have lost all credibility by even attempting to foist such complete, moronic nonsense. That and using anything written by Goldberg as "reference".
Point of logic: irrespective of what modern US Democratic party is up to, the very term "liberal" refers to a position which emphasizes ... err ... liberty (although traditionally in less extreme anti-government forms then "libertarianism"). Hence the name (or haven't you noticed?). For example, de-regulation (i.e. "liberty") of all industry is a "liberal" political position. Same for "free trade". Minimal taxation. Small government. Etc and so on.
Adolf Hitler and the NAZI party ... err ... not so big on liberties. Particularly those of Jewry, Communists, Poles etc.
Incidentally, the traditional Western "left-wing" political spectrum was never overtly "liberal" in the realm of economics, although it does hold quite "liberal" positions outside of it in areas dealing with personal affairs, such as same-sex marriages etc.
Which made me laugh again, just thinking of what the Mr. "liberal" Adolf would say about gays and lesbians (hint: fast track to Auschwitz).
Which must, by definition, also entail telling kids that all genetics-based research, drugs and therapies resulting from thereof and all related fields of bacteriology and microbiology are bogus and a figment of these "ToE believers'" imaginations. You ID turkeys can't have it both ways, you know, to claim that evolution is an "unproven theory" and at the same time reap all the benefits of science which wholly depends on our discovery of evolutionary processes (and in some cases even on the processes themselves).
But then again, logic was never the primary concern of power hungry religion peddlers, control of the minds of people was.
You are confused as to the difference between offering a logical argument versus offering "links". Internet "links" in and by themselves are useless in the task of presenting logical arguments. The links can bolster your arguments but only if they point to a) pertinent information in line with your argument and b) the linked information itself is a result of another well thought out logical argument. I could for example provide links to a porn site and then moan that I was not taken seriously in a dispute about quantum physics. Neither will I score points by linking to flashing and blinking all-caps website run by a "persecuted" crank "inventor" of a perpetual motion/time travel machine combo, even if he claims to agree with me.
Case in point: I simply pointed out the (rather patently obvious) truth about the nature of ownership and control of media conglomerates. You provided a link to a "study" whose premises are laughable, like for example an utterly ridiculous claim that places like Drudge Report are promoting left-wing ideas - in an executive summary no less! That is how I win this argument. Your "link" has near zero value for you as it drastically contradicts everyday experiences of most of the Slashdot readers, while my observation (however "link"-free) is in line with that experience.
In fact, by linking to such a pile of utter malicious garbage (which I likened to "donkey dung") you have reduced the credibility of your own argument. You would have been better off not linking to it.
Oh yea, the "liberal media" idiocy. Look, let me point out to you this rather easily verifiable fact: nearly all media in the USA is owned by hard-core right-winger billionaires, run by hard-core right-winger CEOs and hard-core right-winger board of directors and then somehow (probably by magic, due to all that Communist pixie dust spread by Rupert Murdoch) it scores "left of center"?! What "center"?!! By our standards here in Canada the Democrats are Center-right, the Republicans far-right. I am sure the "center" is even further right from the view of people in some European countries.
That "study" is a load of politically-motivated brain-washing psychological warfare donkey-dung, sponsored by people who believe Adolf Hitler was a "liberal", nothing more.
Naive? The only possible method of controlling propagation of information is to control all means of such propagation. That means a totalitarian police state whereby all digital communications are continuously inspected by the police and no digital communication outside of the police controlled channels is (physically) allowed. Due to the properties of information there is simply no other way.
Really? OK, let's try this experiment: I am hereby releasing the information sample, in form of a numerical sequence "6617721636173". Now it is out. You destroy it. Prove your case by demonstrating that no copies remain anywhere on Earth.
Such as? Even if you burn down all the "heretic" books, there is no guarantee that some "heathen" did not hide some copies somewhere to be found in 2045.
No, she cannot. Unless some sort of global "Intellectual Property" police gets to inspect all digital communications on Earth in real time, it will take hours if not days before each new copy is removed from some random website, YouTube included (which happens daily). As to selling, you must be kidding. Every second spam email from some "porn site de-jour" contains the phrase "Paris Hilton Video".
You are completely confused. Your recourse is against the use of information, i.e. physical objects (such as money) changing hands based upon it (if you can track such exchanges down). Not the propagation of information itself, which cannot be stopped for reasons outlined above. No matter what you do the identity thief or whomever used that information, you cannot stop the propagation after the fact! Personal data leaked to the Internet is permanently leaked, unless of course the totalitarian global police state comes to be.
Really? OK, how did number 4 change? Number 9? Any other integer? How about properties of mathematical equations? Etc and so on. And since all other information can be expressed in form of numerical sequences, the same applies to all other possible information. But in fact we do not know the true nature of information, only that it is directly tied to various phenomena such as consciousness. But this is an entire other discussion.
See above. The important point however is that even if we do not know the true nature of information, we do know some of its properties. And those are incompatible with the notion of "Intellectual Property", "copyrights" and other means of attempting to create artificial pretenses of, amongst other things, scarcity, so that some select few individuals get to become very rich by controlling and dominating all the future means of communication of our society (as that is the only way to achieve their desired effect).
I wholeheartedly agree. I think it was a small minority that held that view, although what skews memory is that they were very vocal about it. It seemed that they had some great emotional investment in finding Hans innocent, probably because they somehow identified with him (although I have hard times imagining it).
That is not true. I focus on properties of information itself, irrespective of who uses it. It just so happens that big conglomerates are at a forefront of promulgation of the insanity of "Intellectual Property" because they are the ones who reap a vast majority of profits from this scheme. But the arguments I make are equally applicable to all entities, small businesses and individuals included.
Define "taking".
Information, amongst its many unique properties, has an ability for propagation. That property can be controlled by individuals, i.e. I may simply not give you my photos and videos. Buy if I do however (or you break into my house and steal them) then I do in fact lose the ability to control them (irrespective of my wishes) because all the subsequent propagation is no longer performed (and thus controlled) by me. That is why the Paris Hilton home-made porn video is permanently out, no matter how many lawsuits she files. Any lawsuits to stop propagation of information are like trying to sue the force of gravity.
A good example that illustrates this is a flame. You have a candle burning and it is "yours". If I take another candle, one I bought, and if you allow me to touch that flame with my candle, it will burn. But at that instant the flame ceases to be "yours" because now I can allow other people to touch my candle. At the moment of propagation of the flame you lost all control of it.
See above. It has nothing whatsoever to do with my "wishes", it has everything to do with properties of information. All you can do is to control the initial propagation. After that you no longer have the ability.
It gets even worse for some other kinds of information. Your brilliant invention you are working on just might be discovered by some other dude at the other end of the planet whom you never met because it so happened that he and you got the same idea. It is because information has another unique property: identical information can be acquired by independent entities by wholly independent means. That is why some philosophers keep arguing about the fundamental nature of information, in particular about if information is "discovered" (i.e. it somehow exists outside the physical universe) or if it is "invented".
The point being of course that some technologies cannot be replaced without massive societal changes, no matter what you do. And that it is those changes, not the technology itself, which limit, or sometimes prohibit, any usefulness of the technology.
Sure, a nuclear reactor will really solve your problem of massive inefficiency in coal processing (where most of the input goes to waste). Not only that, but easily fissionable Uranium is even more finite then oil and all the rosy nuclear power scenarios depend on fast breeder reactors which run on the common variety of Uranium whilst converting it into plutonium. That will do wonders for global nuclear arms non-proliferation.
And I keep telling you that there is no scientifically feasible mix of technologies that even approaches the energy output and density of fossil fuels, short of nuclear power in every car.
There is nothing you can practically do (short of mass use of nuclear power) because it is against the laws of physics. Thermodynamics in particular. We took what was in essence a battery that charged over the period of hundreds of millions of years and proceeded to discharge it within a few centuries. It would take some more hundreds of millions of years to recharge it via solar energy. There is just nothing you can do to get around it. Ergo our civilization must adapt to much, much lower energy consumption (or blow itself up with plutonium - never you mind all that nuclear waste and pollution if it does not).
Sigh. Total amount of energy captured by all photosynthesis on the planet is about 3 zetajoulles, including all plankton in all oceans which amounts for about 90% of that figure, worldwide energy consumption was 0.487 ZJ in 2005 (electrical energy consumed amounted to mere 0.0567 ZJ, rest was oil and coal). That means if you were to chop down all trees and mow down all crops down to every last blade of grass on land and convert all of it with 100% efficiency into oil, you would be still short of one year's oil consumption (and that does not include all the oil used for non-energy applications, such as plastic). Those are the numbers.
Yea, you pound the ground flat with your GPS and move the thousands of tons of rocks with your laser!
Yes they just build themselves. That is why an estimated cost of laying down new rail is about $5 million per mile for four freight tracks and about $3 million per mile for passenger high speed rail. On flat land. And that does not even include the right of way costs.
It took a century or so. A single trans-continental line took 7 years of Appollo-program-style effort.
Yes you are right, I somehow remembered the date as 1769. My bad.