Unethical is knowingly sentencing someone to die. There is not difference between sleeping with someone if you think you have AIDS and pulling out a revolver with a single bullet in it, spinning the chamber and then firing at someone.
It is true that some people are innocent who have AIDS. However, these are the victims. It is a horrible chain reaction which may sentence several innocent people to death because of the irresponsible actions of a single individual.
Why would you fear an invisible chip when you are innocent? If you do not intend to pass on this terrible disease which will take your life then why worry? This isn't a small matter of convenience. This is life and death. It is true that some people may find out that an innocent person has AIDS and this may hurt their ability to connect with their family. But this is not likely, and it's completely understandable to someone who has AIDS. What is the cost that others will not die in the way that you have?
Any other view would would be akin to a protecting a serial killer because you used to room with the guy and you're afraid of the social stigma.
I don't have an iPhone (I've got an N95) but I have noticed that I play more games on my mobile then on my XBox or PC. Mainly because it's always available and it's easier to get addicted to a game. Also, the mobile graphics have gotten good enough (at least on a small screen) that there's not really any reason to bother. With 8Gb of storage you can have some fairly immersive games.
Ahem,
I'm sorry I'm not a physicist; his name is Liftshitz? No way! Wasn't he criticized by the fabulously successful paper "F = ma", written by his arch enemy Dropshitz?
Um, no it's not, your notebook aside. I've got a reasonably new laptop and OO.o is too slow to be usable when compared with MS Office. I use MS Office 2007 and it's markedly faster. The reason I purchased it was I came across an application that a customer used which created malformed Excel files that Gnumeric and OO.o could not read (they lack a proper magic number at the beginning.) Otherwise I'd stick with Abiword and Gnumeric.
There is a reason why MS has such a large user base with Office. It's hard for some people to acknowledge but Office is a fantastically well thought out product that has undergone the most extensive real-world testing of any Office suite in the world. OO.o is nice if you don't have the cash, if you want to get work done then buy Office.
Hi, I find your link to CNN to be humorously incorrect but fun nonetheless. The true links to live election coverage are MS-NBC, Fox News and CNN. Be sure to wait until election day to tune in!
I would say that the right to I.P. comes from the right to all property. Historically mankind has tended to spear people who tried to steal the fruits of his labor. In various times in history roving gangs have joined together to try and "pirate" the work of other men. These pirates felt they had a right to rob, steal and pillage. As a Pastafarian, I have to be slightly sympathetic.
The trouble is, for most of us anyway, if someone came into our apartment/house and started carting away our prize LCD monitor - we'd try to stop them. Granted, this is slashdot, so the perp might need to be a midget on chemotherapy before it might be safe enough to. But most of us would be pissed.
This rule extends to most people on Earth, even the most heartfelt communists have things in their home they'd never give up. If you had to make everything in your house with your bare hands (like we used to do), then you'd be even more upset if someone tried to steal something.
This is why most societies developed a police force and militia. The former to protect from small time thieves, and the latter to protect from big ones (gangs and governments.)
Many societies went a bit further, like so: it's an attempt to say "I'm going to use the years of my life to produce some ideas (music, poetry, writing, inventions, etc.), then try to make my living from them." In other words, I'm going to be a professional idea man. In order to make this feasable, society set up a system called Intellectual Property (patents, copyright and to lesser extent trademark.) Then we modified our system designed to protect other forms of property to work with this new I.P.
This has been misused, so has police forces, militia, government and just about every other thing mankind has created. I tend to think the ends justify the means, in this issue.
However, it's ridiculous how long copyrights are now. It's absolutely crazy. Nobody should own an idea perpetually.
Also, the Patent office is either poorly staffed, overworked or staffed with morons. The next president should make this a campaign issue (although neither is.) We should have a five year period where old or junk patents are thrown away. Perhaps a new government agency that just combs through the patent books and throws away the junk.
Even better, I wonder if you could create what they used to call an expert system. Where each patent was created from constituent patents and was automatically defined by a huge ontology. This way we could find junk patents much easier.
This is a CS issue! Google, where are you?? This would be a profitable issue to solve.
Right, so you pay for it one way or another. I happen to like the idea of the individual paying for the care that they need. I don't pay very much taxes, I'd hate to be a rotter who lived on the work of others (which I think is a common cultural outlook found in America.) On the other hand, it is interesting to hear how other systems work.
and you should not feed it. Let alone give four mod points to the damned thing. I don't have health insurance, because I'm 26, healthy and don't have the money for it since I'm self employed. Last month I started having heart palpitations, so I went to th ER. I had blood work done, was on an EKG and immediately saw a doctor. They charged me ~$1,000. It was the best $1,000 I ever spent. Getting professional help is worth paying for, and the US system provides it. We happen to have the best system in the world (which is one of the reasons we get so many foreign doctors.) I don't think health care is something you can short change. If I'm having a heart attack, I'm not likely to go on PriceGrabber and pick the cheapest heart surgeon. And because of the ridiculously high cost of malpractice insurance, I certainly won't get one. But because of the high costs (and high pay rates) I have a better chance of getting a competent physician. Which is a worthwhile thing. Go capitalism!!
I don't normally feed the trolls, but honestly man, I own two brand new systems that came with Vista. I have installed/serviced hundreds of customer's systems. Vista is dog slow with anything less than two gigabytes of memory and a decent video card. It's painfully slow on my brand new $800 laptop - that's just ridiculous. I've got to upgrade the memory, since you can't get a damn thing done on it.
This is frustrating because some of us hoped Vista would be an improvement on XP (remember when XP was universally considered less-than-trash on here? How the tables have turned.) I think that Vista has reduced functionality but more resource requirements (like idiotic.NET technology that has the same resources requirements as the idiotic Java technology but practically none of the platform independence.) More than that, except for the graphical paint it seems to have the exact same menus/functionality as Symbian s60. There really is nothing it does that my cell phone doesn't do.
> the mythical device convergence we've been hearing > about for ten years.
I have one, it's called the Nokia N95. I looked at buying an iPhone, I have several friends who made that choice. However, the fact that Apple locked it up was a deal killer for me. So I bought an N95, and honestly, it really delivers on those promises. I got rid of/don't use my digital camera, iPod, eeePc or (obviously) old cell phone. Since I got a VKB laser keyboard I don't even take my laptop with me much anymore (since Putty and GMail are the two biggest apps I use.)
This is our own fault. We allowed ourselves to become dependent on a single energy source. It's yet another case where homogeneous systems lead to failure. The good news is, the prices have risen enough that alternative energy has become economically feasible. In fact, several different energy sources have moved into the range of being cost-effective. This will allow a whole new generation of billionaires to capitalize on our energy lust.
They will be heralded as heroes, praised as brilliant entrepreneurs. And they will deliver to us light and heat and transportation. Just as the roughnecks, oil prospectors and oil "barons" once were. Then one day the energy sources they come up with will become eclipsed by something else. And the cycle will begin again.
I'd say that getting angry at the profits is a little of an over-reaction. After all, profit is the motive force. It's the reason all those men are spending their lives pushing around paper, digging oil wells and driving and building tankers (instead of playing World of Warcraft.) Contrary to current rhetoric, they aren't doing it because they like you as a person.
We just need to find alternative energy sources. If I ever move out of my parents basement (haha, I mean crappy apartment), I'd like to buy a place in the mountains where I could set up a micro-hydro system. It's one of the few systems that's both inexpensive and large enough to actually work. Then I would be one electric car away from energy independence.
No man can claim that you reached your ideas by succumbing to mass media propaganda. Those who are taken in will find it hard to believe that they are. It's nice to see another modestly rational person in a sea of insanity.
So you're talking about the Petey J. Random's in Cambodia, China, Cuba and Uganda? Oh yes, communism would fix the problem. Everyone knows, the redistribution of wealth makes everyone rich.
What is it about human nature that makes some of us enjoy doom and horror? Why is the dystopia far more prevalent than the utopia? Even when people (read: men and woman) are able to choose their job, live forty years longer than normal, eat themselves to death with plentiful food and enjoy more leisure time than any other period in human history; we still find dark futures lurking in everyone's minds.
Now a group of scientists is saying we can live forever, and what is the immediate reaction? That will never work! It will spell doom for humanity because of x, y and z.
Personally, I think humans will survive if we gain immortality. I also think we'll remain humans. Which will mean that some of us will still take risks to steal eachother's stuff. I think that I would commit suicide out of boredom after the first few hundred years. However, I'd like to find out.
If I had mod points I'd mod you up. Think for yourselves! There is no such thing as "fair and balanced" reporting. Everyone has an ax to grind.
I think FOX or CNN should up the journalistic ante and test their pundits on standardized tests. Then put a little icon in the lower left of the screen whenever they're on. I'd always prefer to watch that channel. Although, honestly, commentators already wear their ideas on their sleeves.
I think the fact that Fox News is hated by the Ignorant "Liberal" faction is proof that they're doing something right. It seems like any "fair and balanced" news channel would always cause both sides to get excited. And CNN doesn't generally piss "liberals" off.
Ok, but, nobody has written an easy way to do this! Thunderbird (for example) has no easy, seamless and simple way to do this (and certainly no way that is built in.) Blaming Outlook is a cheap cop-out.
Most business email is a matter of public record anyway. MS has very little reason to push these features. Particularly when the hard-core users don't even care enough to write the features for OSS clients.
It really is kind of sad, since people are sending postcards to everyone and do not know they're doing it.
I think this has more to do with shareholders than it does actual profit motives. The executives of a company MUST use DRM because they see the drop-off of their revenue due to piracy. It doesn't work, just like airline security doesn't work. But it does make people (investors) feel safer. Even if they are not safer.
No. It's propaganda. Or rather, strategy. Modern China is largely a result of the great Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. For a concrete example (ha ha ha, please shoot me) he wrote a detailed plan in his book The International Development of China a plan for the building of the Three Gorges Dam (in 1929!)
Anyway, in his VERY popular book The Three Principles of the People the concept of nationalism is highly stressed. It was his opinion that nationalism was the most important element in destroying the Confucian family-clan loyalty that he believed had held China back. He also (correctly) believed that it built powerful societies (which WW2 Japan, Germany, America and Italy all proved correct.)
If there is anything which makes Americans look like jackasses, it's the idiots like Nancy Pelosi who go over there and lecture the Chinese about Tibet. For one thing, Tibet has been part of China in several periods of Chinese history. Secondly, America was a moderately imperialist nation (Hawaii Anyone?) For us to lecture Chinese about Tibet is like inviting George Bush to teach English or Bill Clinton to give a sober lecture on the moral purity of abstinence.
I think that's basically what you're saying, anyway.
I do have to take issue with your vague assertion that "the US has not exactly made friends throughout the world recently." We have one tenth of the number of sworn enemies we had just fifty years ago. Hell, China makes every damned thing you can buy at Wal-Mart. Fifty years ago they fully intended to kill us (the Vietnam war was largely a war between China and the United States.) Now, they simply intend to humiliate us by making so much money they buy us out. And I hope that they do.
It's important to remember that governments do not matter, people matter. The actual end results are what matters. This is the problem with nationalism. Liberty matters, governments do not. Liberty matters, nationality does not.
First, I want to say that it's been really fun chatting with you on this particular thread.
On the issue of tyrants. Yes, you're right, it's only been recently that we have had an option other than tyranny. However, I kind of like that option. And these wise-guys are proposing to effectively cut off their subject's balls based on what I believe is a sensationalist religious fad.
world is not a nightmare place to be, for human beings In Christianity the Devil advocates absolute evil and destruction of all humanity. On the other hand, God advocates eternal life, mothers and apple pie and even puppies! Furthermore, if you are not for God then you are for the Devil.
My argument is that the evangelicals of this new religion treat things in a similar way. What sane human hopes to create a "nightmare place to be, for human beings"? Who are the grubby bastards who salivate at the sumptuous notion of an uninhabitable Earth? They don't exist. They are a nefarious Devil for this particular religion.
As far as I can tell, this religion seems to artificially separate the human from the natural. It then teaches the adherent to save Nature(tm), which effectively amounts to "save everything but the humans". Some of the things the evangelicals say are "humans are a disease, a cancer, etc." Statements like this by the high priests of this religion serve to elevate them above the rest of humanity by "realizing how terrible we are." Or some other pleasant and optimistic things.
The reason I find these religious wackos repugnant is they tend to favor the death of humans over other animal species. Case in point: birds eggs and the banning of DDT. This cost the lives of millions of real human beings! But they were merely brown skinned Africans or South American. We shouldn't get irate about that! We shouldn't put together a tribunal and execute their environmentalist murders as war criminals; they were just brown people! We had the ability to end Malaria and a host of other mosquito born illnesses but we didn't because of a few birds.
I'm glad the "environment" is ok and all those people are dead! Good thing our brilliant masters went out and did something!
You're correct in saying that magic fairies won't solve our problems. I'm not advocating that. However, I am saying that magic fairy prophets won't either. The bulk of what these folks are claiming goes against all of human history. We are an innovative species. I'm confident we'll come up with solutions regardless of the latest popular prophet's opinions. Look at the difference in perspective between pre-industrial Europe and post. Nobody was predicting the efficiencies we currently have. Nobody.
Most of the current popular ideologies are little more than paper thin justifications for tyrannical rule. Most tyrants have wanted to have you by the balls for the past millennia. It is only in our century that they have innovated a way to literally do it.
Furthermore, we are nature, we cannot destroy nature. The moment the corn stops growing because we are killing it, is the moment it will become uneconomical to kill corn. Despite what our saviors would like us to believe.
No, computers don't grow on trees, they grow on humans. It's a fairly simple thing, we tend to grow lots of things. Why classify them as unnatural? They occur in nature, no? In fact, silicon based computers seem to only occur based on humans. However, there are numerous carbon based computers which occur otherwise.
My point is, why classify them as unnatural? We humans are apes, we make computers. You would not be nearly as offended if someone were to say that ant-catching sticks grew on apes, would you? I'm sure you've seen the videos. What about shellfish opening rocks grow on birds? People computer, in the same way the universe peoples. We also fire, kill and circumnavigate. These are the things humans naturally do. To believe otherwise is to ignore the natural and create some other fairytale world. A religious world.
You are correct in your assessment. However,see my other two posts in this thread. The fact is, humanity has survived. We are incredibly innovative. And, I believe that as a collective, we are more innovative than a few sensationalist individuals whose ideas are currently en vogue right now. Throughout history there have been many brilliant individuals who made similar claims, and they were all wrong. This does not prove that the individuals who are making the prophesies right now are wrong. Only that they are exactly that, prophets.
Two years ago we were not engaged in a frenzy of "save the Earth" as we are now. One hundred years ago there were brilliant individuals making these claims (e.g. Sun Yat-Sen.) The idea is to gain some perspective on the current rush to "save" humanity. Which is perpetrated by the wise all-knowing saviors of our racce who evangelize how they can save us daily on the Discovery channel.
I understand and respect the idea. However, I also understand and respect Buddhism. Both are equally founded by bright individuals, hoping to "awaken" the human race. The difference is, the current crop of saviors hope to clip the balls of certain people in order to conform to their prophecies. I feel that the burden of proof has nowhere near begun to be displayed in order to justify such a incredible disenfranchisement of individual rights.
Your testes are your own. I (as a slashdotter) don't get to use them often, but when I do, I have the right to not use a rubber. Particularly in light of Al Gores previous prophecies, the internet notwithstanding.
This is yet another oft repeated syllogism. the fact is? Nazi Germany was quelled. Leninist communism was found to be a horrific tragedy (although Marxism was arguably partially implemented in every modern country.) We survived the cold war. We survived the great depression. And contrary to United States history classes, other human cultures were barely affected by either of these.
It's very chic right now to claim that humanity will not survive. History proves this incorrect.
I personally think that the naysayers have an agenda, and the agenda is dictatorial rule. Why else would they claim things which are are utterly incongruous with history?
Very good reply, you made quite a few excellent points. However, I feel that you are misunderstanding my position.
1. Correct. It's fairly uninformative to say we are nature. However, it is 100% true. Also, the original poster was trying to claim that we are some mystical thing "other than Nature (TM)". Which is some kind of holy and mystical thing which humans are not but can observe if they eat tofu and live in the rockies. At least that was the way I took it. The fact is, we are 100% nature and 100% natural.
2. You feel that way. I do not. This theory has been bandied about since The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich and even before that. Just yesterday I was reading San Min Chu I by Sun Yat-sen (1923ish, i can't honestly remember) and he states something similar to this (it's an AWESOME book for understanding modern China, I highly recommend it.) I also remember reading a pamphlet by Margaret Sanger back in the 1800s that said something similar. The truth is, neither of these forward thinking individuals had any way to predict the changes that have occurred in humanity since (or before, if you're honest.) Therefore, I call shenanigans.
3. I agree. We can make reasonable predictions about the future (see other posts quoting the population growth of Earth.) However, I don't think you can reasonably predict the population growth of Earth, just 50 years ago the calculation would've been grossly askew just because of the single child policy China now has. Also, I think most of these Harvard asshats generally have a chip on their shoulder and don't deserve the right to claim inevitability. Also, i think it's patently obvious that their motivation is political. All of them claim they have a "solution" and they can fix it. Hooray for our brilliant prophet saviors!
4. I think this dovetails with 3. Why does one group of humans have the right to cut off the balls of another group of humans? Particularly in the name of half-baked sensationalist pseudo-profundity? Most of the people who I've met who espouse these views heard them from the elitist ivy league graduates who are our saviors in flesh and blood. This feels too much like a religious belief system to humble ol' me.
5. I don't claim to be omniscient, I do, however, claim to be highly intoxicated! Which lends it's own kind of Friday evening perspective. My point is not that The Matrix will happen, that's silly, instead it is that The Industrial Revolution will happen, which is fact. When billions of humans get together and plot to survive then they will! It does not take a "Prophet" to save us. we will save ourselves. See Humanist Manifesto vol II.
Your post is very well written and I think you have a lot of good things to say. My primary points were:
1. We are nature, not seperate from it. 2. There have been many people who forecast apocalypse and were wrong. In fact, ALL of them. This does not preclude an apolalypse, it only shows that prophets have a burden of proof they must live up to before we take their predictions seriously. 3. We have NO idea what the world or humanity will be like in 20 years. Let alone a few hundred! Yes, it's true that we can guess at the rate of population growth. Unfortunately, we have no idea what those guesses mean. Will a super-virus arise next year which happens to kill 6,666,600,000 of us? Good thing we had backups! 4. The people who make these claims implicity assume that they are the ones who are qualified to fix the crisis. This "prophet syndrome" is an unfortunately contageous disease lately. Case in point, the original post where the poster implicity takes credit for prophesying the devestation from Katrina. Did this person actually do so? Not likely. Although they're happy to take credit and use it to bolster their argument. And nobody ever bothers to say anything. 5. Let us say that in 30 years we all use 1/100th of our current calorie intake because we are hooked into computer networks, similar to The Matrix. Nobody leaves the rock at all, in fact, we wander pristine mountain meadows as the only being alive in the world! If we want to. I don't say this will be true, only that it is one solution to the problem. The point is, we have no idea. And tyrants who wish to rule on the basis of half-assed prophecies are totally full of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Unethical is knowingly sentencing someone to die. There is not difference between sleeping with someone if you think you have AIDS and pulling out a revolver with a single bullet in it, spinning the chamber and then firing at someone.
It is true that some people are innocent who have AIDS. However, these are the victims. It is a horrible chain reaction which may sentence several innocent people to death because of the irresponsible actions of a single individual.
Why would you fear an invisible chip when you are innocent? If you do not intend to pass on this terrible disease which will take your life then why worry? This isn't a small matter of convenience. This is life and death. It is true that some people may find out that an innocent person has AIDS and this may hurt their ability to connect with their family. But this is not likely, and it's completely understandable to someone who has AIDS. What is the cost that others will not die in the way that you have?
Any other view would would be akin to a protecting a serial killer because you used to room with the guy and you're afraid of the social stigma.
I don't have an iPhone (I've got an N95) but I have noticed that I play more games on my mobile then on my XBox or PC. Mainly because it's always available and it's easier to get addicted to a game. Also, the mobile graphics have gotten good enough (at least on a small screen) that there's not really any reason to bother. With 8Gb of storage you can have some fairly immersive games.
Ahem, I'm sorry I'm not a physicist; his name is Liftshitz? No way! Wasn't he criticized by the fabulously successful paper "F = ma", written by his arch enemy Dropshitz?
Um, no it's not, your notebook aside. I've got a reasonably new laptop and OO.o is too slow to be usable when compared with MS Office. I use MS Office 2007 and it's markedly faster. The reason I purchased it was I came across an application that a customer used which created malformed Excel files that Gnumeric and OO.o could not read (they lack a proper magic number at the beginning.) Otherwise I'd stick with Abiword and Gnumeric.
There is a reason why MS has such a large user base with Office. It's hard for some people to acknowledge but Office is a fantastically well thought out product that has undergone the most extensive real-world testing of any Office suite in the world. OO.o is nice if you don't have the cash, if you want to get work done then buy Office.
At least as things stand now, anyway.
Hi, I find your link to CNN to be humorously incorrect but fun nonetheless. The true links to live election coverage are MS-NBC, Fox News and CNN. Be sure to wait until election day to tune in!
I would say that the right to I.P. comes from the right to all property. Historically mankind has tended to spear people who tried to steal the fruits of his labor. In various times in history roving gangs have joined together to try and "pirate" the work of other men. These pirates felt they had a right to rob, steal and pillage. As a Pastafarian, I have to be slightly sympathetic.
The trouble is, for most of us anyway, if someone came into our apartment/house and started carting away our prize LCD monitor - we'd try to stop them. Granted, this is slashdot, so the perp might need to be a midget on chemotherapy before it might be safe enough to. But most of us would be pissed.
This rule extends to most people on Earth, even the most heartfelt communists have things in their home they'd never give up. If you had to make everything in your house with your bare hands (like we used to do), then you'd be even more upset if someone tried to steal something.
This is why most societies developed a police force and militia. The former to protect from small time thieves, and the latter to protect from big ones (gangs and governments.)
Many societies went a bit further, like so: it's an attempt to say "I'm going to use the years of my life to produce some ideas (music, poetry, writing, inventions, etc.), then try to make my living from them." In other words, I'm going to be a professional idea man. In order to make this feasable, society set up a system called Intellectual Property (patents, copyright and to lesser extent trademark.) Then we modified our system designed to protect other forms of property to work with this new I.P.
This has been misused, so has police forces, militia, government and just about every other thing mankind has created. I tend to think the ends justify the means, in this issue.
However, it's ridiculous how long copyrights are now. It's absolutely crazy. Nobody should own an idea perpetually.
Also, the Patent office is either poorly staffed, overworked or staffed with morons. The next president should make this a campaign issue (although neither is.) We should have a five year period where old or junk patents are thrown away. Perhaps a new government agency that just combs through the patent books and throws away the junk.
Even better, I wonder if you could create what they used to call an expert system. Where each patent was created from constituent patents and was automatically defined by a huge ontology. This way we could find junk patents much easier.
This is a CS issue! Google, where are you?? This would be a profitable issue to solve.
Right, so you pay for it one way or another. I happen to like the idea of the individual paying for the care that they need. I don't pay very much taxes, I'd hate to be a rotter who lived on the work of others (which I think is a common cultural outlook found in America.) On the other hand, it is interesting to hear how other systems work.
and you should not feed it. Let alone give four mod points to the damned thing. I don't have health insurance, because I'm 26, healthy and don't have the money for it since I'm self employed. Last month I started having heart palpitations, so I went to th ER. I had blood work done, was on an EKG and immediately saw a doctor. They charged me ~$1,000. It was the best $1,000 I ever spent. Getting professional help is worth paying for, and the US system provides it. We happen to have the best system in the world (which is one of the reasons we get so many foreign doctors.) I don't think health care is something you can short change. If I'm having a heart attack, I'm not likely to go on PriceGrabber and pick the cheapest heart surgeon. And because of the ridiculously high cost of malpractice insurance, I certainly won't get one. But because of the high costs (and high pay rates) I have a better chance of getting a competent physician. Which is a worthwhile thing. Go capitalism!!
I don't normally feed the trolls, but honestly man, I own two brand new systems that came with Vista. I have installed/serviced hundreds of customer's systems. Vista is dog slow with anything less than two gigabytes of memory and a decent video card. It's painfully slow on my brand new $800 laptop - that's just ridiculous. I've got to upgrade the memory, since you can't get a damn thing done on it. This is frustrating because some of us hoped Vista would be an improvement on XP (remember when XP was universally considered less-than-trash on here? How the tables have turned.) I think that Vista has reduced functionality but more resource requirements (like idiotic .NET technology that has the same resources requirements as the idiotic Java technology but practically none of the platform independence.) More than that, except for the graphical paint it seems to have the exact same menus/functionality as Symbian s60. There really is nothing it does that my cell phone doesn't do.
> the mythical device convergence we've been hearing > about for ten years.
I have one, it's called the Nokia N95. I looked at buying an iPhone, I have several friends who made that choice. However, the fact that Apple locked it up was a deal killer for me. So I bought an N95, and honestly, it really delivers on those promises. I got rid of/don't use my digital camera, iPod, eeePc or (obviously) old cell phone. Since I got a VKB laser keyboard I don't even take my laptop with me much anymore (since Putty and GMail are the two biggest apps I use.)
This is our own fault. We allowed ourselves to become dependent on a single energy source. It's yet another case where homogeneous systems lead to failure. The good news is, the prices have risen enough that alternative energy has become economically feasible. In fact, several different energy sources have moved into the range of being cost-effective. This will allow a whole new generation of billionaires to capitalize on our energy lust.
They will be heralded as heroes, praised as brilliant entrepreneurs. And they will deliver to us light and heat and transportation. Just as the roughnecks, oil prospectors and oil "barons" once were. Then one day the energy sources they come up with will become eclipsed by something else. And the cycle will begin again.
I'd say that getting angry at the profits is a little of an over-reaction. After all, profit is the motive force. It's the reason all those men are spending their lives pushing around paper, digging oil wells and driving and building tankers (instead of playing World of Warcraft.) Contrary to current rhetoric, they aren't doing it because they like you as a person.
We just need to find alternative energy sources. If I ever move out of my parents basement (haha, I mean crappy apartment), I'd like to buy a place in the mountains where I could set up a micro-hydro system. It's one of the few systems that's both inexpensive and large enough to actually work. Then I would be one electric car away from energy independence.
No man can claim that you reached your ideas by succumbing to mass media propaganda. Those who are taken in will find it hard to believe that they are. It's nice to see another modestly rational person in a sea of insanity.
So you're talking about the Petey J. Random's in Cambodia, China, Cuba and Uganda? Oh yes, communism would fix the problem. Everyone knows, the redistribution of wealth makes everyone rich.
What is it about human nature that makes some of us enjoy doom and horror? Why is the dystopia far more prevalent than the utopia? Even when people (read: men and woman) are able to choose their job, live forty years longer than normal, eat themselves to death with plentiful food and enjoy more leisure time than any other period in human history; we still find dark futures lurking in everyone's minds.
Now a group of scientists is saying we can live forever, and what is the immediate reaction? That will never work! It will spell doom for humanity because of x, y and z.
Personally, I think humans will survive if we gain immortality. I also think we'll remain humans. Which will mean that some of us will still take risks to steal eachother's stuff. I think that I would commit suicide out of boredom after the first few hundred years. However, I'd like to find out.
Heh. Boredom as the impetus behind war.
If I had mod points I'd mod you up. Think for yourselves! There is no such thing as "fair and balanced" reporting. Everyone has an ax to grind.
I think FOX or CNN should up the journalistic ante and test their pundits on standardized tests. Then put a little icon in the lower left of the screen whenever they're on. I'd always prefer to watch that channel. Although, honestly, commentators already wear their ideas on their sleeves.
I think the fact that Fox News is hated by the Ignorant "Liberal" faction is proof that they're doing something right. It seems like any "fair and balanced" news channel would always cause both sides to get excited. And CNN doesn't generally piss "liberals" off.
Ok, but, nobody has written an easy way to do this! Thunderbird (for example) has no easy, seamless and simple way to do this (and certainly no way that is built in.) Blaming Outlook is a cheap cop-out.
Most business email is a matter of public record anyway. MS has very little reason to push these features. Particularly when the hard-core users don't even care enough to write the features for OSS clients.
It really is kind of sad, since people are sending postcards to everyone and do not know they're doing it.
I think this has more to do with shareholders than it does actual profit motives. The executives of a company MUST use DRM because they see the drop-off of their revenue due to piracy. It doesn't work, just like airline security doesn't work. But it does make people (investors) feel safer. Even if they are not safer.
No. It's propaganda. Or rather, strategy. Modern China is largely a result of the great Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. For a concrete example (ha ha ha, please shoot me) he wrote a detailed plan in his book The International Development of China a plan for the building of the Three Gorges Dam (in 1929!)
Anyway, in his VERY popular book The Three Principles of the People the concept of nationalism is highly stressed. It was his opinion that nationalism was the most important element in destroying the Confucian family-clan loyalty that he believed had held China back. He also (correctly) believed that it built powerful societies (which WW2 Japan, Germany, America and Italy all proved correct.)
If there is anything which makes Americans look like jackasses, it's the idiots like Nancy Pelosi who go over there and lecture the Chinese about Tibet. For one thing, Tibet has been part of China in several periods of Chinese history. Secondly, America was a moderately imperialist nation (Hawaii Anyone?) For us to lecture Chinese about Tibet is like inviting George Bush to teach English or Bill Clinton to give a sober lecture on the moral purity of abstinence.
I think that's basically what you're saying, anyway.
I do have to take issue with your vague assertion that "the US has not exactly made friends throughout the world recently." We have one tenth of the number of sworn enemies we had just fifty years ago. Hell, China makes every damned thing you can buy at Wal-Mart. Fifty years ago they fully intended to kill us (the Vietnam war was largely a war between China and the United States.) Now, they simply intend to humiliate us by making so much money they buy us out. And I hope that they do.
It's important to remember that governments do not matter, people matter. The actual end results are what matters. This is the problem with nationalism. Liberty matters, governments do not. Liberty matters, nationality does not.
And those in the West to criticize China on this issue are often entirely ignorant of the gross infringements on our liberty here in the west.
On the issue of tyrants. Yes, you're right, it's only been recently that we have had an option other than tyranny. However, I kind of like that option. And these wise-guys are proposing to effectively cut off their subject's balls based on what I believe is a sensationalist religious fad. world is not a nightmare place to be, for human beings In Christianity the Devil advocates absolute evil and destruction of all humanity. On the other hand, God advocates eternal life, mothers and apple pie and even puppies! Furthermore, if you are not for God then you are for the Devil.
My argument is that the evangelicals of this new religion treat things in a similar way. What sane human hopes to create a "nightmare place to be, for human beings"? Who are the grubby bastards who salivate at the sumptuous notion of an uninhabitable Earth? They don't exist. They are a nefarious Devil for this particular religion.
As far as I can tell, this religion seems to artificially separate the human from the natural. It then teaches the adherent to save Nature(tm), which effectively amounts to "save everything but the humans". Some of the things the evangelicals say are "humans are a disease, a cancer, etc." Statements like this by the high priests of this religion serve to elevate them above the rest of humanity by "realizing how terrible we are." Or some other pleasant and optimistic things.
The reason I find these religious wackos repugnant is they tend to favor the death of humans over other animal species. Case in point: birds eggs and the banning of DDT. This cost the lives of millions of real human beings! But they were merely brown skinned Africans or South American. We shouldn't get irate about that! We shouldn't put together a tribunal and execute their environmentalist murders as war criminals; they were just brown people! We had the ability to end Malaria and a host of other mosquito born illnesses but we didn't because of a few birds.
I'm glad the "environment" is ok and all those people are dead! Good thing our brilliant masters went out and did something!
Cheers.
You're correct in saying that magic fairies won't solve our problems. I'm not advocating that. However, I am saying that magic fairy prophets won't either. The bulk of what these folks are claiming goes against all of human history. We are an innovative species. I'm confident we'll come up with solutions regardless of the latest popular prophet's opinions. Look at the difference in perspective between pre-industrial Europe and post. Nobody was predicting the efficiencies we currently have. Nobody.
Most of the current popular ideologies are little more than paper thin justifications for tyrannical rule. Most tyrants have wanted to have you by the balls for the past millennia. It is only in our century that they have innovated a way to literally do it.
Furthermore, we are nature, we cannot destroy nature. The moment the corn stops growing because we are killing it, is the moment it will become uneconomical to kill corn. Despite what our saviors would like us to believe.
Cheers.
No, computers don't grow on trees, they grow on humans. It's a fairly simple thing, we tend to grow lots of things. Why classify them as unnatural? They occur in nature, no? In fact, silicon based computers seem to only occur based on humans. However, there are numerous carbon based computers which occur otherwise.
My point is, why classify them as unnatural? We humans are apes, we make computers. You would not be nearly as offended if someone were to say that ant-catching sticks grew on apes, would you? I'm sure you've seen the videos. What about shellfish opening rocks grow on birds? People computer, in the same way the universe peoples. We also fire, kill and circumnavigate. These are the things humans naturally do. To believe otherwise is to ignore the natural and create some other fairytale world. A religious world.
You are correct in your assessment. However,see my other two posts in this thread. The fact is, humanity has survived. We are incredibly innovative. And, I believe that as a collective, we are more innovative than a few sensationalist individuals whose ideas are currently en vogue right now. Throughout history there have been many brilliant individuals who made similar claims, and they were all wrong. This does not prove that the individuals who are making the prophesies right now are wrong. Only that they are exactly that, prophets.
Two years ago we were not engaged in a frenzy of "save the Earth" as we are now. One hundred years ago there were brilliant individuals making these claims (e.g. Sun Yat-Sen.) The idea is to gain some perspective on the current rush to "save" humanity. Which is perpetrated by the wise all-knowing saviors of our racce who evangelize how they can save us daily on the Discovery channel.
I understand and respect the idea. However, I also understand and respect Buddhism. Both are equally founded by bright individuals, hoping to "awaken" the human race. The difference is, the current crop of saviors hope to clip the balls of certain people in order to conform to their prophecies. I feel that the burden of proof has nowhere near begun to be displayed in order to justify such a incredible disenfranchisement of individual rights.
Your testes are your own. I (as a slashdotter) don't get to use them often, but when I do, I have the right to not use a rubber. Particularly in light of Al Gores previous prophecies, the internet notwithstanding.
Chees.
This is yet another oft repeated syllogism. the fact is? Nazi Germany was quelled. Leninist communism was found to be a horrific tragedy (although Marxism was arguably partially implemented in every modern country.) We survived the cold war. We survived the great depression. And contrary to United States history classes, other human cultures were barely affected by either of these.
It's very chic right now to claim that humanity will not survive. History proves this incorrect.
I personally think that the naysayers have an agenda, and the agenda is dictatorial rule. Why else would they claim things which are are utterly incongruous with history?
Very good reply, you made quite a few excellent points. However, I feel that you are misunderstanding my position.
1. Correct. It's fairly uninformative to say we are nature. However, it is 100% true. Also, the original poster was trying to claim that we are some mystical thing "other than Nature (TM)". Which is some kind of holy and mystical thing which humans are not but can observe if they eat tofu and live in the rockies. At least that was the way I took it. The fact is, we are 100% nature and 100% natural.
2. You feel that way. I do not. This theory has been bandied about since The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich and even before that. Just yesterday I was reading San Min Chu I by Sun Yat-sen (1923ish, i can't honestly remember) and he states something similar to this (it's an AWESOME book for understanding modern China, I highly recommend it.) I also remember reading a pamphlet by Margaret Sanger back in the 1800s that said something similar. The truth is, neither of these forward thinking individuals had any way to predict the changes that have occurred in humanity since (or before, if you're honest.) Therefore, I call shenanigans.
3. I agree. We can make reasonable predictions about the future (see other posts quoting the population growth of Earth.) However, I don't think you can reasonably predict the population growth of Earth, just 50 years ago the calculation would've been grossly askew just because of the single child policy China now has. Also, I think most of these Harvard asshats generally have a chip on their shoulder and don't deserve the right to claim inevitability. Also, i think it's patently obvious that their motivation is political. All of them claim they have a "solution" and they can fix it. Hooray for our brilliant prophet saviors!
4. I think this dovetails with 3. Why does one group of humans have the right to cut off the balls of another group of humans? Particularly in the name of half-baked sensationalist pseudo-profundity? Most of the people who I've met who espouse these views heard them from the elitist ivy league graduates who are our saviors in flesh and blood. This feels too much like a religious belief system to humble ol' me.
5. I don't claim to be omniscient, I do, however, claim to be highly intoxicated! Which lends it's own kind of Friday evening perspective. My point is not that The Matrix will happen, that's silly, instead it is that The Industrial Revolution will happen, which is fact. When billions of humans get together and plot to survive then they will! It does not take a "Prophet" to save us. we will save ourselves. See Humanist Manifesto vol II.
Cheers.
Your post is very well written and I think you have a lot of good things to say. My primary points were:
1. We are nature, not seperate from it.
2. There have been many people who forecast apocalypse and were wrong. In fact, ALL of them. This does not preclude an apolalypse, it only shows that prophets have a burden of proof they must live up to before we take their predictions seriously.
3. We have NO idea what the world or humanity will be like in 20 years. Let alone a few hundred! Yes, it's true that we can guess at the rate of population growth. Unfortunately, we have no idea what those guesses mean. Will a super-virus arise next year which happens to kill 6,666,600,000 of us? Good thing we had backups!
4. The people who make these claims implicity assume that they are the ones who are qualified to fix the crisis. This "prophet syndrome" is an unfortunately contageous disease lately. Case in point, the original post where the poster implicity takes credit for prophesying the devestation from Katrina. Did this person actually do so? Not likely. Although they're happy to take credit and use it to bolster their argument. And nobody ever bothers to say anything.
5. Let us say that in 30 years we all use 1/100th of our current calorie intake because we are hooked into computer networks, similar to The Matrix. Nobody leaves the rock at all, in fact, we wander pristine mountain meadows as the only being alive in the world! If we want to. I don't say this will be true, only that it is one solution to the problem. The point is, we have no idea. And tyrants who wish to rule on the basis of half-assed prophecies are totally full of it.
Cheers.