The interesting thing is how what used to be a rather exact replication of some hinduist drivel (force, levitation, telekinesis, gurus, etc.) turned into a much more scientific (albeit bordering on pseudoscientific) vision in prequels.
I personally applaud Lucas for silently dropping the hinduism/New Age crap that was popular in 1970s. Midichlorians are the way to go.
You are not looking deep enough. Do you seriously think that Yahoo and ZiffDavis do not have a well thought-out content policy? That media adopts this content model (sensationalistic, trivial and pointless bits of unrelated information, served in easy to digest chunks interspersed with ads) means something. It didn't happen by itself and it's not unimportant. Yes, the individual editor may not think twice about why he is adding that story, just like a cell in your body does not think about why it's contracting or producing some hormone. But the system as a whole was created (partly by design, partly through a sequence of small evolutionary changes) to achieve certain result and thus to benefit certain parties.
It just so happens that the result is uninformed, intellectually lazy unmotivated public.
May be Slashdot editors hope that you place the stories close enough to each other, they would combine into a new, heavier story, releasing a lot of energy in the process? Yeah, that makes sense to me.
You are right that Yahoo and other media companies are trying to manipulate you. You are wrong about the goal of manipulation, though. They don't want to make you believe that Google has problems, they want to divert your attention from zillions of real issues in the world by regularly posting sensationalist drivel. You (and thousands of others) treat this story as if it was important. Yet, I can easily name 100 world issues that are singificantly (that is at least an order of mangnitude) more important to you than whether Google Video player is patched or not.
As far as Yahoo!'s real goals are concerned, they achieved them completely.
Read "Overload" by Arthur Hailey. It's got a great description (in a fictionalised context) of the issues surrounding power generation. Environmentalism stopped being rational decades ago, now it's just about getting publicity through creating an impression that you are tough. In some cases the actions of Greenpeach, PETA and other similar pseudo-green organisations might accidentally do some good, but then I expect that Philip Morris, Shell and Monsanto do something good some of the time too.
They're coming closer to giving us what we expect computers to give their users in Sci-Fi movies.
What? The... Fuck! They are coming closer to replicating using a variety of DHTML tricks some of the features that were available in computing for many years. They are reinventing the bicycle. Yes, an argument can be made about advantages of webservices, but please don't pretend that the functionality of these webservices by Google is in any way innovative.
Why don't you stop forcing your own preferences on everyone else. It's great that you "know" what is the one and only purpose of science fiction, but since you are not writing any, noone is going to take your opinion as gospel.
There is at least one sci-fi reader in the world, who isn't interested in people in novel situations. I like fiction, which is purely about technology. This makes such fiction as valid a genre as fiction about people. No matter how much you might want that people like me didn't exist, this is not going to change anything.
Private companies are not inherently cheaper. The "incentive" you speak of can only exist if there is strong competition and a large market. This is like natural selection - you need a large enough pool of companies so that you can weed out the less efficient ones.
There is little competitive pressure in the space industry - that's why we saw tens of companies going out of the business of making jet airliners and so few companies going out of the business of making rockets. When you don't have competitive pressure, it all depends on the R&D. And private R&D is no more efficient than that done by government.
Shit, this means the improvements in graphics of multi-platform games will stop in 1 year again.:( I hate how all these games (like San Andreas) have shit graphics because the PS2 is so weak.
There is another cool little factoid that is almost never mentioned (sorry, can't get a reference, but it's all in the corresponding Wikipedia article). The reality is that chemical weapons were used by BOTH Iraq and Iran and that particular attack happened while Iran military was in the city of Halabja, which they entered with assistence from the not-so-patriotic Halabja local. The gas attack may have been overkill, but it's certainly isn't anything special. I mean, when the US bombs Panama and kills 3000 civilians, it's ok (I think most people outside of Panama would be very surprised to hear that such a thing really happened a decade ago), but when Saddam fights a war and there is some collateral damage, it's a horrible crime...
I was curious and googled for this guy's name. Here is what I found:
During a vicious electrical storm in his hometown of Dayton, Tennessee, he went out to fix a blown transformer. Lightning hit the transformer and burned both of his arms off to the shoulders.
I guess you can blame the guy for going outside during a storm, but then again, he was just trying to do his difficult and risky job.
The linked page also has some amazing images, including this one
Let me tell you - it's not worth it without the corresponding benefits. Don't let your government take your rights to private property from you, unless it's willing to guarantee you a good job, free housing, food, free education, free health care and other stuff.
It should have been: In Soviet Russia, the government funnel money to contruction organisations to build homes and gives them to everyone for free in order to reorganize the country! The wealthy cronies (including prominent artists, scientists and cosmonauts) get slightly better homes. There is a constitutional right to housing in Soviet Russia and there are no homeless people. Weird.
Article 44. Citizens of the USSR have the rights to housing. This right is ensured by the development and upkeep of state and socially-owned housing; by assistance for co-operative and individual house building; by fair distribution, under public control, of the housing that becomes available through fulfillment of the programme of building well-appointed dwellings, and by low rents and low charges for utility services. Citizens of the USSR shall take good care of the housing allocated to them.
A person can be both smart and stupid at the same time. A Ph.D. and a job at MIT does not mean you won't hold stupid ideas outside of your area(s) of interest. Being able to realise your own incompetence is a great and valuable skill, which most people, sadly, don't possess. You don't realise that what you say doesn't make much sense and try to make claims about Soviet Union, which are demonstrably false (for example, people in the USSR didn't stand in line for bread *). I am not trying to tell you ridiculous things about optics, because I realise my limitations in this area. I don't even know what a dielectric filter is.:-( You are in the same position in regards to socialism. I showed enough completely idiotic statements that you made. If you are really intelligent, your only course of action should be to hang your head in shame and cry (you don't have to literally kill yourself, that was a rhetorical device). Then sit and listen to what I tell you, because I know more than you about it.
Were you some party goon or something? You've got all the marks of a brainwash case: hyperbolic statement, over-emotional reaction to dissenting views... Look, I suspect that I know more about brainwashing than you do. Right now there are three books on my table - "The Lost Reason", "The Mind Manipulation" and "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World" (kind of lame too, but anyway). It's the Americans who are brainwashed about communism, they have an irrational fear of it, but if they knew the truth about it, they would have probably embraced it. More than half of the Americans believed in a 1987 poll about US constitution that the words "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" are taken from one of the articles of the US Consitution! You are brainwashed and you don't know enough to realise the limits of your competence and that you are wrong.
My previous reply should have been enough to show that (in this particular context) you are a clueless idiot (your irrelevant qualifications in optics notwithstanding). In case it wasn't, I can say it again - you are a clueless idiot. Much of what you say is demonstrably false and is not even controversial. You believe whatever anti-communist propaganda was unleashed on you and you don't question anything. You are, indeed a clueless moron. My advice to you would be - assume for a second that danila may be right and you are in fact an idiot. What would be an objective way of testing this assertion? May be it should involve making a list of statements that both you and danila made in the discussion and trying to factcheck these using primary sources. If it turns out that many of your claims were really not true, this may suggest that further evaluation of your cognitive capabilities may be in order. Try this, it can be fun and will lead to personal development regardless of the outcome.
* Excluding the German blocade of the Leningrad and other special circumstances. The general bread shortages started only in early 1990s (with the transition to unregulated free market) and there are reasons to believe that these shortages were intentionally created. There were no lines for bread in the Soviet Union.
First, I want to make my position clear. I've been interested in these and related issues and I made an effort to learn and understand a little bit. I am aware of some of the conflicting views, arguments pro and contra, the logical flaws in the reasoning of both sides, the facts, the commonly misrepresentations of facts and on the basis of all this I can say that my opinion is pretty damn informed. You, on the other hand, is a clueless guy, who believed in the demagogic fallacy that freedom equals libertarianism and who spouts that garbage without as much as a second thought, adding demonstrably false claims and totally idiotic arguments that do not make sense. In other words, you behave like a moron. And if someone behaves like a moron, sounds like a moron and looks like a moron, chances are that he is indeed a moron. This is where we stand in regards to the intellectual abilities and knowledge of you and me, your humble opponent.
Now while I sometimes do indulge in groundless fantasies, I shall not be deluded to think that I can persuade you. You know too little, you understand too little, you don't think enough and you are wrongly overconfident in your knowledge. One can't argue with a fool and generally one shouldn't do that... but then again, we are on Slashdot.
On second, thought, however, your stupidity is too much even by the local standards. You argue that libertarianism is about freedom and so imply that everyone who supports freedom should agree with you, because you are a libertarian. You imply that Sweden is a slave-ownership society, because Swedes are forced to work for free for 8 months every year. You admit that a capitalist society naturally causes inequality, but then you argue that since this inequality is caused by the nature of capitalism, this must be good. You also make a false claim that Americans work harder than other people, which (the claim, that is) is not surprising, given how little Americans know and care about the rest of the world. I guess, the exploited workers all other the world toiling for their MNC masters should be glad that they are not forced to work as hard as Americans do. You also make an unbased claim that money is the only motivation, while even the Harvard Business Review (they had an issue on that in autumn 2003, IIRC) now admits that the money isn't a motivator at all, much less a good one. In your infinite ignorance you claim that the USSR failed, even though by many economic indicators it was in the world top 10 and had almost constant economic growth up to the 1989. You make a totally idiotic claim that people produced only what they were bribed to, the comment so idiotic I am at loss for words.
Overall, birge, you are really very stupid. Not just a little stupid and not just a bit ignorant, but world-record-setting stupid. I mean, you may be just a bit below average by American standards, but you would be considered a hopeless case in pretty much every other country. The usual advice of "go and read a book" does not apply here, since reading is only beneficial when the person has a capacity for learning, a capacity, which you seem to utterly lack. So my advice to you would rather be "go an kill yourself". You will do the world a favour.
And let that be a lesson to all parents in America. If you think that your child might be a libertarian, take him to the developmental psychiatrist.
I am really annoyed by the inability of people to think logically and by irrationality of their beliefs (which obviously includes libertarians). Sorry for calling you a moron. But the points you were making didn't make ANY sense. You called the USA socialist, which it isn't. You claimed that socialist countries have high corruption (according to some moron), while they don't (not sure we can trust this particular survey, but on this topic most surveys agree).
As for your last question, the reason why we need socialism is that markets do not work (obviously, being a libertarian, you are no more able to comprehend this than a scientologist can realise that Xenu is a load of claptrap). Capitalist free market systems bring suffering to people. Socialist systems increase net happiness. Yes, they deprive the richest 1% of the ability to accumulate unlimited wealth unobstructed, but this is compensated by a great increase in quality of life for the remaining 99%. Socialism makes a more just, fair and happy society possible, which is why people there generally accept higher taxation.
Market system is not the natural way of things. Money is a socio-economic construct. Your money are not yours in the way that your eye and your hand are yours. Your money is a right to take some things from other people, and this right is given to you by the society according to the rules that society sees fit to implement. Your complaints are no more valid than if you were saying "Why can't everyone give me money for free - I believe this would be fair and logical".
If you are not happy about someone taking your money, I guess, you need to get out of society. All governments tax people and socialist governments differ only quantiatively. As for corruption, are you aware that some of the least corrupt countries are all socialist states? Denmark, Sweden, Finland, etc.
Though, after I read that you imply that the US federal government is a socialist one, I guess, it just proves once again that libertarian people are missing some grey matter. You are a moron who doesn't know anything about socialism if you think the US is socialist. Crawl back to your libertarian hole and STFU.
Well, then all stories are FOR people, because almost by definition people are the ones who read the stories. It doesn't mean that the stories should be ABOUT people as well.
So, yes, I am surprised. You are a fan of science and technology and still you make a logical error of sayint that fiction books about science and technology are a "no-no" for some obscure reason.
Why would socialist governments steal the wealth and labour from you? And who would they give it too? They can't give it to corporations or the richest 1%, like the government does it in the USA. The government itself can't spend too much on itself, because that won't be comme il faut in a socialist state. I guess the only way to use that wealth and labour is to spend it on... (drumroll!) society! That is, on people like you and me. Which sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
Also, I don't quite understand why you call it stealing. The last time I checked, all socialist governments paid salaries to all workers, just like in capitalist countries. The only differences are that a) the right to have a suitable job is guaranteed by the state in many socialist countries and b) the taxes (and income from state-owned companies) was spent to make people's lives better.
I don't understand this notion of, "We need to have our kids using computers from birth to better prepare them for the future." I didn't use a computer until middle school, then just for word processing. That certainly didn't hinder me from my current position as a PhD. student in engineering. Yeah, I don't understand why the adults need to use computers all the time as well. My dad got a PhD without a computer - my mom typed each edition of the dissertation on a typewriter. BTW, I am not sure that my grandfather had a typewriter when he defended his PhD... In other words, your argument is fallacious.
Think about it, many of us didn't have all of these technological toys when we were little, and we seemed to adapt just fine. Computer usage isn't some sort of esoteric skill that requires years of training to master. It's not like you're trying to levitate cars with your mind. We don't use computers because we must, we use them, because they are available and are useful. For some purposes computers are better than books, films or personal experiences. Denying kids that is like denying a kid with diabetes the use of a portable insulin pump, arguing that his dad didn't have such luxury and managed just fine (read he is still alive).
Perhaps if children were exposed to life outside of the digital babysitter they would develop their imaginations more, and become more creative, healthier (mentally and physically) people. Maybe if more kids ran around outside more often, child obesity wouldn't be so prevelent in our society. Wrong. Wrong. People do not become creative from running outside, they become creative from reading books, having good parents and opportunities to express their creativity. Life outside doesn't enter the equation, unless you believe in some magical substance available only deep in the forest or something. And people don't become obese from lack of exercise, they become obese from eating too much (including too much of junk food). If your kid is gaining weight, adjust his diet.
Overall, as with most things a balance is what is necessary. Sure I had my Atari when I was a kid, but I was only allowed to play with it for a certain amount of time. Just as TV was limited. The same can be done with a computer, especially if your child doesn't have all of these technological wonders in their bedroom. Show your child all that the world has to offer and what the imagination can do with it. Why limit a good thing? Simply don't let your kid play stupid arcade games. Watch what he does with his time so that his life doesn't degenerate into a struggle between pleasurable but stupid things (TV) and boring, but useful (going outside). Let him read good books, watch good films and play good games.
And a final thought on, "what you want your kid to be when he/she grows up." - that decision should ultimately be left up to your child once they're old enough to make it, not one that should be forced on them from birth. I've seen many a miserable engineer and computer scientist for just that reason. Chosing a profession for the kid is indeed idiotic. But I would argue that a parent who doesn't want the kid to be a smart, rational, intelligent, kind and ethical person, when he/she grows up, should not be allowed to raise kids.
Yes, it did. But nowhere near as often 20 or 30 years ago. News coverage really isn't relevant to the cases I'm talking about. These are local happenings, that did not happen to anything near this frequency in this area 20 and 30 years ago.
Did it ever occur to you that it might be the same gang of ruthless robbers, not a part of a national trend?
I don't know what do the kids learn about nature. Apparently, only 10-15% of American adults can define what a molecule is, 50% don't know how long it takes for the Earth to go around the Sun, etc. If I ever have kids, I'd rather have a child who reads a lot and watches a lot of good documentary films than a kid, who spent all his time outside, pretending to "learn about nature".
Your last paragraph sounds suspiciously close to something that an Amish would say - "all the education my kids will ever need they can learn in the family". This is bullshit. Yes, if you compare an urban idiot that spends 4 hours watching TV, 6 hours playing on an Xbox and does nothing of consequence at school, then a rural idiot that falls into streams and gets wet starts to sound rather attractive. But please don't fool yourself for a second thinking that this child will amount to much in the future society.
Yes, the future. Your kid will not live in the past, where harvesting and pruning were of any importance. He/she will live in the posthuman era, where nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence, space colonisation, virtual reality and genetic engineering will be much more important. And today the best way to prepare for that future is to sit in front of the computer and browse the Internet, no matter what technophobe luddites think about it.
Please realise that a lot of our attitude towards nature is shaped by our past. People were animals, then they were farmers, of course they considered nature important. But now - how many trees can you recognize? How many bird species? Do you think that's important knowledge?
What use is nature to modern people today? It can be healthy to spend time there (better air, less noise), it can be a pleasant environment, it is a place to carry out some activities (paragliding, fishing), but that's pretty much it.
The kids refuse to go outside for a reason and you stated it yourself. It's just pretty damn boring to sit in the middle of the forest. Kids in the past didn't have Internet, computer games, DVD players and Disneyland - that's why they had to go outside and play with a stick pretending it's a horse, not because it's so terribly funny and engaging and not because it was so great outside. And they had to do it uphill both way too.
It is perfectly rational to spend less time outside and prefer technology to nature, so don't force the outdated values on your kids. Consider that according to most adequate forecasts we will be able to spend time in convincing virtual reality simulations by 2015-2020. Simply put, what's the point of going outside today?
Obviously, you should not, as another poster suggested, jack them into the Matrix already. Take them outside sometimes, go to the countryside, take boat trips, go to forests, to parks, etc., but don't try to overemphasise that and don't even think about preventing access to technology. Computers are the books of today - and just as it would be idiotic 3000 years ago for a father to stop his kids from reading until they were 13, so it limiting access to technology for modern kids (it goes without saying that you should influence what they watch, what they read and what they play).
BTW, the book (that ironically blames "sensationalist media coverage") appears to be sensationalist bullshit itself. There are no paranoid parents in other countries and yet it's normal that urban people spend less time in the woods. They wouldn't be much of urban people otherwise.
If you want to raise a well-adjusted kid, do what normal people do (I don't know if you are exposed to normality much in the States). While the kid is young, take him outside (don't expose to direct sunlight, though, or the warranty is void) in a baby carriage for brief periods of time (read a child rearing book). Go in park or something. When he is older, make sure that there is some place to play outside, ride a bike or something. Take him to some countryside trips a few times a year. Spend some time every year in a resort with "nature" around.
But please, I dare you, don't think for a second that something terrible might happen if you child is not outside for 12 hours every day. It's normal for kids to spend hours in front of the PC or a TV. Yes, it's not great for the health (and you should ensure that they prefer watching good DVDs to mindlessly consuming TV drivel), but it won't kill them. Don't look for any "balance", that would be idiotic - just take them outside sometimes so that they don't forget what it's like, that they get enough exercise and are exposed to sun for 15 minutes each day (hands and face is enough) to get their dose of vitamin D. That's it - trust me, they will be fine.
It's much more important and more difficult to raise intelligent children that love to learn. Get them reading ASAP and then they will be able to sit with a book (or a PDA/Tablet) near the nearest lake, waterfall, pasture or swamp.
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The interesting thing is how what used to be a rather exact replication of some hinduist drivel (force, levitation, telekinesis, gurus, etc.) turned into a much more scientific (albeit bordering on pseudoscientific) vision in prequels.
I personally applaud Lucas for silently dropping the hinduism/New Age crap that was popular in 1970s. Midichlorians are the way to go.
You are not looking deep enough. Do you seriously think that Yahoo and ZiffDavis do not have a well thought-out content policy? That media adopts this content model (sensationalistic, trivial and pointless bits of unrelated information, served in easy to digest chunks interspersed with ads) means something. It didn't happen by itself and it's not unimportant. Yes, the individual editor may not think twice about why he is adding that story, just like a cell in your body does not think about why it's contracting or producing some hormone. But the system as a whole was created (partly by design, partly through a sequence of small evolutionary changes) to achieve certain result and thus to benefit certain parties.
It just so happens that the result is uninformed, intellectually lazy unmotivated public.
May be Slashdot editors hope that you place the stories close enough to each other, they would combine into a new, heavier story, releasing a lot of energy in the process? Yeah, that makes sense to me.
You are right that Yahoo and other media companies are trying to manipulate you. You are wrong about the goal of manipulation, though. They don't want to make you believe that Google has problems, they want to divert your attention from zillions of real issues in the world by regularly posting sensationalist drivel. You (and thousands of others) treat this story as if it was important. Yet, I can easily name 100 world issues that are singificantly (that is at least an order of mangnitude) more important to you than whether Google Video player is patched or not.
As far as Yahoo!'s real goals are concerned, they achieved them completely.
Read "Overload" by Arthur Hailey. It's got a great description (in a fictionalised context) of the issues surrounding power generation. Environmentalism stopped being rational decades ago, now it's just about getting publicity through creating an impression that you are tough. In some cases the actions of Greenpeach, PETA and other similar pseudo-green organisations might accidentally do some good, but then I expect that Philip Morris, Shell and Monsanto do something good some of the time too.
They're coming closer to giving us what we expect computers to give their users in Sci-Fi movies.
What? The... Fuck! They are coming closer to replicating using a variety of DHTML tricks some of the features that were available in computing for many years. They are reinventing the bicycle. Yes, an argument can be made about advantages of webservices, but please don't pretend that the functionality of these webservices by Google is in any way innovative.
Why don't you stop forcing your own preferences on everyone else. It's great that you "know" what is the one and only purpose of science fiction, but since you are not writing any, noone is going to take your opinion as gospel.
There is at least one sci-fi reader in the world, who isn't interested in people in novel situations. I like fiction, which is purely about technology. This makes such fiction as valid a genre as fiction about people. No matter how much you might want that people like me didn't exist, this is not going to change anything.
Private companies are not inherently cheaper. The "incentive" you speak of can only exist if there is strong competition and a large market. This is like natural selection - you need a large enough pool of companies so that you can weed out the less efficient ones.
There is little competitive pressure in the space industry - that's why we saw tens of companies going out of the business of making jet airliners and so few companies going out of the business of making rockets. When you don't have competitive pressure, it all depends on the R&D. And private R&D is no more efficient than that done by government.
Shit, this means the improvements in graphics of multi-platform games will stop in 1 year again. :( I hate how all these games (like San Andreas) have shit graphics because the PS2 is so weak.
There is another cool little factoid that is almost never mentioned (sorry, can't get a reference, but it's all in the corresponding Wikipedia article). The reality is that chemical weapons were used by BOTH Iraq and Iran and that particular attack happened while Iran military was in the city of Halabja, which they entered with assistence from the not-so-patriotic Halabja local. The gas attack may have been overkill, but it's certainly isn't anything special. I mean, when the US bombs Panama and kills 3000 civilians, it's ok (I think most people outside of Panama would be very surprised to hear that such a thing really happened a decade ago), but when Saddam fights a war and there is some collateral damage, it's a horrible crime...
I was curious and googled for this guy's name. Here is what I found:
During a vicious electrical storm in his hometown of Dayton, Tennessee, he went out to fix a blown transformer. Lightning hit the transformer and burned both of his arms off to the shoulders.
I guess you can blame the guy for going outside during a storm, but then again, he was just trying to do his difficult and risky job.
The linked page also has some amazing images, including this one
Let me tell you - it's not worth it without the corresponding benefits. Don't let your government take your rights to private property from you, unless it's willing to guarantee you a good job, free housing, food, free education, free health care and other stuff.
It should have been:
In Soviet Russia, the government funnel money to contruction organisations to build homes and gives them to everyone for free in order to reorganize the country! The wealthy cronies (including prominent artists, scientists and cosmonauts) get slightly better homes. There is a constitutional right to housing in Soviet Russia and there are no homeless people. Weird.
Article 44. Citizens of the USSR have the rights to housing. This right is ensured by the development and upkeep of state and socially-owned housing; by assistance for co-operative and individual house building; by fair distribution, under public control, of the housing that becomes available through fulfillment of the programme of building well-appointed dwellings, and by low rents and low charges for utility services. Citizens of the USSR shall take good care of the housing allocated to them.
A person can be both smart and stupid at the same time. A Ph.D. and a job at MIT does not mean you won't hold stupid ideas outside of your area(s) of interest. Being able to realise your own incompetence is a great and valuable skill, which most people, sadly, don't possess. You don't realise that what you say doesn't make much sense and try to make claims about Soviet Union, which are demonstrably false (for example, people in the USSR didn't stand in line for bread *). I am not trying to tell you ridiculous things about optics, because I realise my limitations in this area. I don't even know what a dielectric filter is. :-( You are in the same position in regards to socialism. I showed enough completely idiotic statements that you made. If you are really intelligent, your only course of action should be to hang your head in shame and cry (you don't have to literally kill yourself, that was a rhetorical device). Then sit and listen to what I tell you, because I know more than you about it.
Were you some party goon or something? You've got all the marks of a brainwash case: hyperbolic statement, over-emotional reaction to dissenting views...
Look, I suspect that I know more about brainwashing than you do. Right now there are three books on my table - "The Lost Reason", "The Mind Manipulation" and "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World" (kind of lame too, but anyway). It's the Americans who are brainwashed about communism, they have an irrational fear of it, but if they knew the truth about it, they would have probably embraced it. More than half of the Americans believed in a 1987 poll about US constitution that the words "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" are taken from one of the articles of the US Consitution! You are brainwashed and you don't know enough to realise the limits of your competence and that you are wrong.
My previous reply should have been enough to show that (in this particular context) you are a clueless idiot (your irrelevant qualifications in optics notwithstanding). In case it wasn't, I can say it again - you are a clueless idiot. Much of what you say is demonstrably false and is not even controversial. You believe whatever anti-communist propaganda was unleashed on you and you don't question anything. You are, indeed a clueless moron. My advice to you would be - assume for a second that danila may be right and you are in fact an idiot. What would be an objective way of testing this assertion? May be it should involve making a list of statements that both you and danila made in the discussion and trying to factcheck these using primary sources. If it turns out that many of your claims were really not true, this may suggest that further evaluation of your cognitive capabilities may be in order. Try this, it can be fun and will lead to personal development regardless of the outcome.
* Excluding the German blocade of the Leningrad and other special circumstances. The general bread shortages started only in early 1990s (with the transition to unregulated free market) and there are reasons to believe that these shortages were intentionally created. There were no lines for bread in the Soviet Union.
First, I want to make my position clear. I've been interested in these and related issues and I made an effort to learn and understand a little bit. I am aware of some of the conflicting views, arguments pro and contra, the logical flaws in the reasoning of both sides, the facts, the commonly misrepresentations of facts and on the basis of all this I can say that my opinion is pretty damn informed. You, on the other hand, is a clueless guy, who believed in the demagogic fallacy that freedom equals libertarianism and who spouts that garbage without as much as a second thought, adding demonstrably false claims and totally idiotic arguments that do not make sense. In other words, you behave like a moron. And if someone behaves like a moron, sounds like a moron and looks like a moron, chances are that he is indeed a moron. This is where we stand in regards to the intellectual abilities and knowledge of you and me, your humble opponent.
Now while I sometimes do indulge in groundless fantasies, I shall not be deluded to think that I can persuade you. You know too little, you understand too little, you don't think enough and you are wrongly overconfident in your knowledge. One can't argue with a fool and generally one shouldn't do that... but then again, we are on Slashdot.
On second, thought, however, your stupidity is too much even by the local standards. You argue that libertarianism is about freedom and so imply that everyone who supports freedom should agree with you, because you are a libertarian. You imply that Sweden is a slave-ownership society, because Swedes are forced to work for free for 8 months every year. You admit that a capitalist society naturally causes inequality, but then you argue that since this inequality is caused by the nature of capitalism, this must be good. You also make a false claim that Americans work harder than other people, which (the claim, that is) is not surprising, given how little Americans know and care about the rest of the world. I guess, the exploited workers all other the world toiling for their MNC masters should be glad that they are not forced to work as hard as Americans do. You also make an unbased claim that money is the only motivation, while even the Harvard Business Review (they had an issue on that in autumn 2003, IIRC) now admits that the money isn't a motivator at all, much less a good one. In your infinite ignorance you claim that the USSR failed, even though by many economic indicators it was in the world top 10 and had almost constant economic growth up to the 1989. You make a totally idiotic claim that people produced only what they were bribed to, the comment so idiotic I am at loss for words.
Overall, birge, you are really very stupid. Not just a little stupid and not just a bit ignorant, but world-record-setting stupid. I mean, you may be just a bit below average by American standards, but you would be considered a hopeless case in pretty much every other country. The usual advice of "go and read a book" does not apply here, since reading is only beneficial when the person has a capacity for learning, a capacity, which you seem to utterly lack. So my advice to you would rather be "go an kill yourself". You will do the world a favour.
And let that be a lesson to all parents in America. If you think that your child might be a libertarian, take him to the developmental psychiatrist.
In fact, the historical performance of supercomputers is one of the strongest proofs that the Moore's Law will continue unabated forever (*)
c ial/projected.php
http://www.top500.org/lists/2004/11/perfdevel-spe
The total performance of the 500 fastest supercomputers has been increasing almost perfectly exponentially from 1993. The graph is very impressive.
* Insert standard disclaimer about forward-looking statements here.
I am really annoyed by the inability of people to think logically and by irrationality of their beliefs (which obviously includes libertarians). Sorry for calling you a moron. But the points you were making didn't make ANY sense. You called the USA socialist, which it isn't. You claimed that socialist countries have high corruption (according to some moron), while they don't (not sure we can trust this particular survey, but on this topic most surveys agree).
As for your last question, the reason why we need socialism is that markets do not work (obviously, being a libertarian, you are no more able to comprehend this than a scientologist can realise that Xenu is a load of claptrap). Capitalist free market systems bring suffering to people. Socialist systems increase net happiness. Yes, they deprive the richest 1% of the ability to accumulate unlimited wealth unobstructed, but this is compensated by a great increase in quality of life for the remaining 99%. Socialism makes a more just, fair and happy society possible, which is why people there generally accept higher taxation.
Market system is not the natural way of things. Money is a socio-economic construct. Your money are not yours in the way that your eye and your hand are yours. Your money is a right to take some things from other people, and this right is given to you by the society according to the rules that society sees fit to implement. Your complaints are no more valid than if you were saying "Why can't everyone give me money for free - I believe this would be fair and logical".
If you are not happy about someone taking your money, I guess, you need to get out of society. All governments tax people and socialist governments differ only quantiatively. As for corruption, are you aware that some of the least corrupt countries are all socialist states? Denmark, Sweden, Finland, etc.
Though, after I read that you imply that the US federal government is a socialist one, I guess, it just proves once again that libertarian people are missing some grey matter. You are a moron who doesn't know anything about socialism if you think the US is socialist. Crawl back to your libertarian hole and STFU.
Following your logic, taking a dump must also be a very important activity. But I guess we have very different ideas of what "important" means.
Well, then all stories are FOR people, because almost by definition people are the ones who read the stories. It doesn't mean that the stories should be ABOUT people as well.
So, yes, I am surprised. You are a fan of science and technology and still you make a logical error of sayint that fiction books about science and technology are a "no-no" for some obscure reason.
Why would socialist governments steal the wealth and labour from you? And who would they give it too? They can't give it to corporations or the richest 1%, like the government does it in the USA. The government itself can't spend too much on itself, because that won't be comme il faut in a socialist state. I guess the only way to use that wealth and labour is to spend it on... (drumroll!) society! That is, on people like you and me. Which sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
Also, I don't quite understand why you call it stealing. The last time I checked, all socialist governments paid salaries to all workers, just like in capitalist countries. The only differences are that a) the right to have a suitable job is guaranteed by the state in many socialist countries and b) the taxes (and income from state-owned companies) was spent to make people's lives better.
I don't understand this notion of, "We need to have our kids using computers from birth to better prepare them for the future." I didn't use a computer until middle school, then just for word processing. That certainly didn't hinder me from my current position as a PhD. student in engineering.
Yeah, I don't understand why the adults need to use computers all the time as well. My dad got a PhD without a computer - my mom typed each edition of the dissertation on a typewriter. BTW, I am not sure that my grandfather had a typewriter when he defended his PhD... In other words, your argument is fallacious.
Think about it, many of us didn't have all of these technological toys when we were little, and we seemed to adapt just fine. Computer usage isn't some sort of esoteric skill that requires years of training to master. It's not like you're trying to levitate cars with your mind.
We don't use computers because we must, we use them, because they are available and are useful. For some purposes computers are better than books, films or personal experiences. Denying kids that is like denying a kid with diabetes the use of a portable insulin pump, arguing that his dad didn't have such luxury and managed just fine (read he is still alive).
Perhaps if children were exposed to life outside of the digital babysitter they would develop their imaginations more, and become more creative, healthier (mentally and physically) people. Maybe if more kids ran around outside more often, child obesity wouldn't be so prevelent in our society.
Wrong. Wrong. People do not become creative from running outside, they become creative from reading books, having good parents and opportunities to express their creativity. Life outside doesn't enter the equation, unless you believe in some magical substance available only deep in the forest or something. And people don't become obese from lack of exercise, they become obese from eating too much (including too much of junk food). If your kid is gaining weight, adjust his diet.
Overall, as with most things a balance is what is necessary. Sure I had my Atari when I was a kid, but I was only allowed to play with it for a certain amount of time. Just as TV was limited. The same can be done with a computer, especially if your child doesn't have all of these technological wonders in their bedroom. Show your child all that the world has to offer and what the imagination can do with it.
Why limit a good thing? Simply don't let your kid play stupid arcade games. Watch what he does with his time so that his life doesn't degenerate into a struggle between pleasurable but stupid things (TV) and boring, but useful (going outside). Let him read good books, watch good films and play good games.
And a final thought on, "what you want your kid to be when he/she grows up." - that decision should ultimately be left up to your child once they're old enough to make it, not one that should be forced on them from birth. I've seen many a miserable engineer and computer scientist for just that reason.
Chosing a profession for the kid is indeed idiotic. But I would argue that a parent who doesn't want the kid to be a smart, rational, intelligent, kind and ethical person, when he/she grows up, should not be allowed to raise kids.
Yes, it did. But nowhere near as often 20 or 30 years ago. News coverage really isn't relevant to the cases I'm talking about. These are local happenings, that did not happen to anything near this frequency in this area 20 and 30 years ago.
Did it ever occur to you that it might be the same gang of ruthless robbers, not a part of a national trend?
I don't know what do the kids learn about nature. Apparently, only 10-15% of American adults can define what a molecule is, 50% don't know how long it takes for the Earth to go around the Sun, etc. If I ever have kids, I'd rather have a child who reads a lot and watches a lot of good documentary films than a kid, who spent all his time outside, pretending to "learn about nature".
Your last paragraph sounds suspiciously close to something that an Amish would say - "all the education my kids will ever need they can learn in the family". This is bullshit. Yes, if you compare an urban idiot that spends 4 hours watching TV, 6 hours playing on an Xbox and does nothing of consequence at school, then a rural idiot that falls into streams and gets wet starts to sound rather attractive. But please don't fool yourself for a second thinking that this child will amount to much in the future society.
Yes, the future. Your kid will not live in the past, where harvesting and pruning were of any importance. He/she will live in the posthuman era, where nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence, space colonisation, virtual reality and genetic engineering will be much more important. And today the best way to prepare for that future is to sit in front of the computer and browse the Internet, no matter what technophobe luddites think about it.
Please realise that a lot of our attitude towards nature is shaped by our past. People were animals, then they were farmers, of course they considered nature important. But now - how many trees can you recognize? How many bird species? Do you think that's important knowledge?
What use is nature to modern people today? It can be healthy to spend time there (better air, less noise), it can be a pleasant environment, it is a place to carry out some activities (paragliding, fishing), but that's pretty much it.
The kids refuse to go outside for a reason and you stated it yourself. It's just pretty damn boring to sit in the middle of the forest. Kids in the past didn't have Internet, computer games, DVD players and Disneyland - that's why they had to go outside and play with a stick pretending it's a horse, not because it's so terribly funny and engaging and not because it was so great outside. And they had to do it uphill both way too.
It is perfectly rational to spend less time outside and prefer technology to nature, so don't force the outdated values on your kids. Consider that according to most adequate forecasts we will be able to spend time in convincing virtual reality simulations by 2015-2020. Simply put, what's the point of going outside today?
Obviously, you should not, as another poster suggested, jack them into the Matrix already. Take them outside sometimes, go to the countryside, take boat trips, go to forests, to parks, etc., but don't try to overemphasise that and don't even think about preventing access to technology. Computers are the books of today - and just as it would be idiotic 3000 years ago for a father to stop his kids from reading until they were 13, so it limiting access to technology for modern kids (it goes without saying that you should influence what they watch, what they read and what they play).
BTW, the book (that ironically blames "sensationalist media coverage") appears to be sensationalist bullshit itself. There are no paranoid parents in other countries and yet it's normal that urban people spend less time in the woods. They wouldn't be much of urban people otherwise.
If you want to raise a well-adjusted kid, do what normal people do (I don't know if you are exposed to normality much in the States). While the kid is young, take him outside (don't expose to direct sunlight, though, or the warranty is void) in a baby carriage for brief periods of time (read a child rearing book). Go in park or something. When he is older, make sure that there is some place to play outside, ride a bike or something. Take him to some countryside trips a few times a year. Spend some time every year in a resort with "nature" around.
But please, I dare you, don't think for a second that something terrible might happen if you child is not outside for 12 hours every day. It's normal for kids to spend hours in front of the PC or a TV. Yes, it's not great for the health (and you should ensure that they prefer watching good DVDs to mindlessly consuming TV drivel), but it won't kill them. Don't look for any "balance", that would be idiotic - just take them outside sometimes so that they don't forget what it's like, that they get enough exercise and are exposed to sun for 15 minutes each day (hands and face is enough) to get their dose of vitamin D. That's it - trust me, they will be fine.
It's much more important and more difficult to raise intelligent children that love to learn. Get them reading ASAP and then they will be able to sit with a book (or a PDA/Tablet) near the nearest lake, waterfall, pasture or swamp.