Well, first let's get the obvious stuff out of the way. US GDP is 11 trillion, which is more than 3 times greater than that of Japan. I didn't mention it, but the general science policy of the US was formed under the influence of the belief that it can lead the world in every area, so no priorities were set at all. This, incidentally, is no longer true and US science (and its international cooperation programs) suffers a little bit.
In any case, R&D policy is not the only factor. But all other things equal, the country with a smarter R&D policy benefits. Soviet Union had excellent science and education, but it suffered from administrative problems that led to a systemic crisis. Coupled with a loss of direction this was fatal. If the USSR didn't have such ambitious industrial and scientific policies from the very beginning, it wouldn't become a world superpower that it was. Unexpectedly, Russia now spends slightly above 1% of its (measly) GDP on science and thus will probably stay in the socio-economic shithole it is in now.
The United States does lead the world in science, no doubt about that. But investing in nanotech and fuel and stem cells today is different from realising in 1980s that these things are going to be important and starting large research programmes then.
The slightly speculative (but reasonable) idea is that had the US treated foresight projects differently, it would have a better situation in research, the status of scientists would be higher, kids would be more enthusiastic about a career in research, there would not be irrational fears of anything "unnatural", such as stem cells, cloning and genetic engineering, and overall the US would be a better place.
Do not overgeneralize. For example, Sony has Aibos with very different designs, from cute (ERS-31*) to high-tech (AIBO ERS-210) to sci-fi (ERS-220).
The difference is not in marketing, it's in the lack of foresight American corporations have. American will use robots just as well as everyone else, only it will be Japanese robots.
In 1970 Japan ran their first technology foresight exercise. Several thousands of scientists, engineers and experts participated in a two-round Delphi study. The study attempted to predict the scientific and technological developments in the next 30 years. It led to the huge R&D push in the fields of 5th-generation computers, artificial intelligence and robotics.
For the curious, Japan runs its foresight projects every 5 years, so you can learn about technology that Japan will have in 2030 here. The reports are pretty damn accurate, with at least 80% of predicted developments coming to fruition.
The next country to introduce regular foresight exercises was, of course the Soviet Union, which started them in 1971. With more than 4% of the GDP spent on scientific research (higher than USA, Japan or any other country), it was at the forefront of the scientific and technological races.
The United States, however, mostly used such exercises in the military. Air Force, Navy and the Army used them to foresee, which technologies to kill people will be available in the future, and invest in them. The government and American corporations were largely uninterested in the foresight results. Consequently, corporations are largely preoccupied with short-term, although it is gradually changing because of the breathtaking pace of progress. Noone can ignore it anymore, not even American corporations.
The traffic and busyness are described in the book in the present tense. I agree that during the siege itself there probably wasn't anyone wondering outside, but the infrastructure should have been visible in all those bird-eye views, and the people should have been doing something outside before the Mordor army came. The problem is present in every episode - take Rohan, for example, there isn't a busy road outside of the city. In fact, one can barely discern the road, even though Rohan was an agricultural country and there was supposed to be lots of heavy traffic.
The parent put it very succinctly - the whole movie world of ME is just a few fortresses with plains between. While you are correct that organisationally there weren't many powers outside the main story points, it doesn't follow that there literally were no people outside of the few cities of ME.
The parent meant a slightly different thing. Look at Minas Tirith, for example. The books describe the gardens, the busy roads, everything. The movie has a city surrounded by empty boring plains.
Well, I am not a terrorist, hence I don't need to justify myself as one. However, I do support terrorism as a valid method of political opposition.
Your appeal to emotion is flawed. I can ask you how would you feel if a police officer shot you, a soldier shot you, etc. Does that mean we must dismantle army and police tomorrow?
As for their concerns, yes, some of them may enjoy doing what they do, but they would not have the widespread support they have and financial resources they have, if there weren't objective justifications for terrorist actions against USA.
PDAs do work for reading, because many have screens with better resolution than desktop monitors. And there are also slate tablet PCs that can be handled much easier than laptops, i.e. you don't need to pop open it, you can handle it like a (very heavy) newspaper.
Neither model will succeed in the long term, of course. The costs of creating content, costs of distributing, aggregating, hosting and filtering content will only go down. Expect most news to be just plain free in the future (may be even free as in speech - how would that be for news?:) ).
Sheesh. Nice country you have there. Only the last time I checked they were not called "cops", they were called "mercenaries at the service of a feudal lord" or something.
And instead of doing something about crimes committed by police you would rather call innocent people idiots.
And why a library records so sacrosanct when other private records such as phone conversations and financial records could already be examined by the government under RICO and other laws?
Perhaps, because the right to read is more important than the right to buy stuff or the right to talk on the phone?
Monarchs and politicians have always been surrounded by bodyguards. I find your assumption that your enemies being guarded somehow excuses your slaughtering the nearest civillian you see to be somewhat... idiotic.
No, they haven't been as late as in 19th century. Read up some history.
And terrorists are not looking for excuses, they simply want to make a point. They would be perfectly happy killing the politicians, but it's impossible. So they have to resort to killing civilians.
And yes, terrorists probably have goals beyond destroying our country and eradicating all traces of our culture from time and space, but does it really matter?
They don't care about your culture. They care about US bases in Saudi Arabia and billions of dollars US gives in military aid to Israel every year. You are free to ignore their points and pretend they want to destroy American freedoms or something, but that doesn't make it so. In that case you are a moron, and I don't mean it as an insult.
These are people with an agenda. Editors, ignore them. The silent majority enjoys the story, reads the summary, looks at pictures and follows the links. But people who enjoy the story do not feel the need to post messages supporting Roland, they just move on.
Why do you think terrorists today target innocents as opposed to 18-19th centuries and early 20th century, when they used to target monarchs, politicians and statesmen? Can it be because of the 10000 bodyguards that, for example, Bush has?
Osama doesn't want to kill American civilians, he doesn't care much about them. He has political goals which are largely related to American presence in Saudi Arabia and its support of Israel. Of course, you are free to believe the lies that "terrorists hate our freedom".
Sadly, even he is not capable of getting to Bush.
Terrorists are monsters. They are evil. We must kill them, because their only mission, their only wish in life is to kill us (anyone who opposes their views).
I think that anyone who can say that with a straight face must be severely retarded.
Don't you realise that many Arab fighters feel the same towards you. Particularly, many are under the impression that through the generous military help and political support of Israel, American people are somehow guilty of the suffering of women and children of Palestina.
Your attitude can only lead to one thing - the self-perpetuating spiral of escalating violence. Really, it's so obvious...
1) Terrorists are not monsters. Yes, they want to kill other people, but how is that different from presidents and kings? Of course, the masses are brainwashed to believe that Osama bin Laden is the devil's incarnate, but the "elite" knows the truth. He is just an enemy, nothing more, nothing less. 2) Car accidents kill orders of magnitude more people than terrorism. Do you support torture to be used against bad drivers who fail their driving tests?
Your arguments are really at the Dark Ages level. Since then we (the cultured intelligent minority, it seems) learned that you can't retain your humanity and build a better world through torture and blatant disregard for human rights of others.
I think even before that day comes it will be possible to stream everything you want from the Net. Come to think of it, it is already possible technologically using a broadband connection. The only problem is that we need to wait a year or two until the movie industry wisens up to online distribution they way music studios (and even book publishers to some extent) did. The second problem is lack of mobile broadband. By 2008-2010 it will probably be possible for first adopters to stream all media they need in urban areas.
Someone in cuba only gets 3 hours of sleep a day.. thats just.. hitler would be proud.
You do realise that our society made a lot of progress over the past millenium, don't you? 1000 years ago the best torturing techniques were often fatal and physically destructive to the detainee. How often do we read in historical fiction about prisoner who died from torture before the interrogators could extract the information they seeked? Today this risk is minimized through careful application of "harmless" torture methods that have very few long-lasting effects. The advances of psychology and medicine help torture the victims in such a way.
In case you still don't realise it, I shall explain that such methods are better than old-fashioned rack and scrching needles only in one respect - they do not kill or maim the victim. In every other respect - in the amount of pain and suffering, in ther loathsomeness and immorality they are exactly the same.
Zealots have rights too, you know. To say that you may torture someone because you need the information he has it to singlehandedly undo the centuries of progress, to cancel the ideas of humanism, to go back to the Dark Ages or earlier.
After all, you cannot expect to obtain a confession from a witch by giving her three hots and a cot, cable TV, good health care, yoga sessions, and self-improvement classes (such as with the US prison system). It's a value proposition situation: we must find a way to make the confession and acceptance of Our Saviour Jesus Christ more valuable to the witch than the reverse.
I'd say they are not "good guys", but are "the necessary evil" or "the least of two evils".
I have no doubts that some policemen and FBI agents are nice guys. Sure. You can even argue that most of them are. May be. But it should be clear that police and FBI are by their nature instruments of oppression. We should not pretend for a second that their goal is just to oppress "the bad guys", because the system doesn't work that way.
Please remember how many people are imprisoned for smoking some weed. This is a logical outcome of the system designed to oppress the citizens (even with the best of intentions).
It's too easy to become complacent and accept that "we need cops", "we need more cops", "we need to give cops more power", but this can only lead to a police state. It is a physical impossibility to arrive at a freer, more open, happier, more tolerant and more ethical society by supporting and empowering the police.
I may be wrong, but I suspect that most people buying Shuffle buy an "Apple iPod", not a "Shuffle".
Furthermore, while the ads may be intentionally exploiting Apple's ad campaigns, I am not sure it should be considered illegal or even unethical. After all, 1) Apple ads were manipulative in the first place, trying trick the customer into buying their product (as any ad that appeals to style does). 2) If a company is providing a similar product, why shouldn't it use similar marketing? The trademark laws are intended to protect the customer, not corporate profits.
Thanks for the reply and for the compliment. While I don't know about books/articles about this particular topic that describe my point of view, I'd recommend you read something on dialectics, preferably something by Hegel and Marx themselves (not to confuse with dianetics, which is an evil cult).
IMHO dialectics is the best approach to deal with contradictions. In this case there are two conflicting views 1) copyrights are property and artists have the right to profit from their work (thesis) and 2) ideas belong to everyone, limiting creativity is evil (antithesis). To achieve synthesis you need dialectics.
The best part about dialectics is that it works just fine in any area, not just in regards to patents.
You clearly have no idea how the laws work. And your forced analogies are invalid. Do you imply by them that it's OK to force you, the owner of a two-bedroom house, to let any number of boarders for free into your house after 15 years?
You wrongly see copyrights and patents as the same as real property. This is idiocy and it was explained millions of times why.
Your other problem is that you see everything in black and white. E.g. the old laws were "just fine" and new laws are a "lopsided mess". This view, of course, is patent nonsense.
All laws are compromises and it is possible to modify the laws in numerous ways, each with some advantages and some disadvantages. Unfortunately, you seem bent on thinking that anyone who doesn't share your outlook on the world is an assclown. I feel sorry for you, but I hope you may still grow up.
Slashdot Mirror
FUD! Cookies are evil => people scared => people disabling cookies -> sites that work without cookies (albeit with reduced functionality).
Repeat the same and people will be demanding that they can use something without trusted (by big brother) computers.
There is actually an entire wiki dedicated to collaborative writing of books already.
http compression would not help much for obvious reasons.
Well, first let's get the obvious stuff out of the way. US GDP is 11 trillion, which is more than 3 times greater than that of Japan. I didn't mention it, but the general science policy of the US was formed under the influence of the belief that it can lead the world in every area, so no priorities were set at all. This, incidentally, is no longer true and US science (and its international cooperation programs) suffers a little bit.
In any case, R&D policy is not the only factor. But all other things equal, the country with a smarter R&D policy benefits. Soviet Union had excellent science and education, but it suffered from administrative problems that led to a systemic crisis. Coupled with a loss of direction this was fatal. If the USSR didn't have such ambitious industrial and scientific policies from the very beginning, it wouldn't become a world superpower that it was. Unexpectedly, Russia now spends slightly above 1% of its (measly) GDP on science and thus will probably stay in the socio-economic shithole it is in now.
The United States does lead the world in science, no doubt about that. But investing in nanotech and fuel and stem cells today is different from realising in 1980s that these things are going to be important and starting large research programmes then.
The slightly speculative (but reasonable) idea is that had the US treated foresight projects differently, it would have a better situation in research, the status of scientists would be higher, kids would be more enthusiastic about a career in research, there would not be irrational fears of anything "unnatural", such as stem cells, cloning and genetic engineering, and overall the US would be a better place.
Do not overgeneralize. For example, Sony has Aibos with very different designs, from cute (ERS-31*) to high-tech (AIBO ERS-210) to sci-fi (ERS-220).
The difference is not in marketing, it's in the lack of foresight American corporations have. American will use robots just as well as everyone else, only it will be Japanese robots.
In 1970 Japan ran their first technology foresight exercise. Several thousands of scientists, engineers and experts participated in a two-round Delphi study. The study attempted to predict the scientific and technological developments in the next 30 years. It led to the huge R&D push in the fields of 5th-generation computers, artificial intelligence and robotics.
For the curious, Japan runs its foresight projects every 5 years, so you can learn about technology that Japan will have in 2030 here. The reports are pretty damn accurate, with at least 80% of predicted developments coming to fruition.
The next country to introduce regular foresight exercises was, of course the Soviet Union, which started them in 1971. With more than 4% of the GDP spent on scientific research (higher than USA, Japan or any other country), it was at the forefront of the scientific and technological races.
The United States, however, mostly used such exercises in the military. Air Force, Navy and the Army used them to foresee, which technologies to kill people will be available in the future, and invest in them. The government and American corporations were largely uninterested in the foresight results. Consequently, corporations are largely preoccupied with short-term, although it is gradually changing because of the breathtaking pace of progress. Noone can ignore it anymore, not even American corporations.
The traffic and busyness are described in the book in the present tense. I agree that during the siege itself there probably wasn't anyone wondering outside, but the infrastructure should have been visible in all those bird-eye views, and the people should have been doing something outside before the Mordor army came. The problem is present in every episode - take Rohan, for example, there isn't a busy road outside of the city. In fact, one can barely discern the road, even though Rohan was an agricultural country and there was supposed to be lots of heavy traffic.
The parent put it very succinctly - the whole movie world of ME is just a few fortresses with plains between. While you are correct that organisationally there weren't many powers outside the main story points, it doesn't follow that there literally were no people outside of the few cities of ME.
The parent meant a slightly different thing. Look at Minas Tirith, for example. The books describe the gardens, the busy roads, everything. The movie has a city surrounded by empty boring plains.
Well, I am not a terrorist, hence I don't need to justify myself as one. However, I do support terrorism as a valid method of political opposition.
Your appeal to emotion is flawed. I can ask you how would you feel if a police officer shot you, a soldier shot you, etc. Does that mean we must dismantle army and police tomorrow?
As for their concerns, yes, some of them may enjoy doing what they do, but they would not have the widespread support they have and financial resources they have, if there weren't objective justifications for terrorist actions against USA.
PDAs do work for reading, because many have screens with better resolution than desktop monitors. And there are also slate tablet PCs that can be handled much easier than laptops, i.e. you don't need to pop open it, you can handle it like a (very heavy) newspaper.
Neither model will succeed in the long term, of course. The costs of creating content, costs of distributing, aggregating, hosting and filtering content will only go down. Expect most news to be just plain free in the future (may be even free as in speech - how would that be for news? :) ).
Cops have killed people for less than that.
Sheesh. Nice country you have there. Only the last time I checked they were not called "cops", they were called "mercenaries at the service of a feudal lord" or something.
And instead of doing something about crimes committed by police you would rather call innocent people idiots.
And why a library records so sacrosanct when other private records such as phone conversations and financial records could already be examined by the government under RICO and other laws?
Perhaps, because the right to read is more important than the right to buy stuff or the right to talk on the phone?
Monarchs and politicians have always been surrounded by bodyguards. I find your assumption that your enemies being guarded somehow excuses your slaughtering the nearest civillian you see to be somewhat... idiotic.
No, they haven't been as late as in 19th century. Read up some history.
And terrorists are not looking for excuses, they simply want to make a point. They would be perfectly happy killing the politicians, but it's impossible. So they have to resort to killing civilians.
And yes, terrorists probably have goals beyond destroying our country and eradicating all traces of our culture from time and space, but does it really matter?
They don't care about your culture. They care about US bases in Saudi Arabia and billions of dollars US gives in military aid to Israel every year. You are free to ignore their points and pretend they want to destroy American freedoms or something, but that doesn't make it so. In that case you are a moron, and I don't mean it as an insult.
These are people with an agenda. Editors, ignore them. The silent majority enjoys the story, reads the summary, looks at pictures and follows the links. But people who enjoy the story do not feel the need to post messages supporting Roland, they just move on.
Why do you think terrorists today target innocents as opposed to 18-19th centuries and early 20th century, when they used to target monarchs, politicians and statesmen? Can it be because of the 10000 bodyguards that, for example, Bush has?
Osama doesn't want to kill American civilians, he doesn't care much about them. He has political goals which are largely related to American presence in Saudi Arabia and its support of Israel. Of course, you are free to believe the lies that "terrorists hate our freedom".
Sadly, even he is not capable of getting to Bush.
Terrorists are monsters. They are evil. We must kill them, because their only mission, their only wish in life is to kill us (anyone who opposes their views).
I think that anyone who can say that with a straight face must be severely retarded.
Don't you realise that many Arab fighters feel the same towards you. Particularly, many are under the impression that through the generous military help and political support of Israel, American people are somehow guilty of the suffering of women and children of Palestina.
Your attitude can only lead to one thing - the self-perpetuating spiral of escalating violence. Really, it's so obvious...
Do you really believe that or are you trolling?
1) Terrorists are not monsters. Yes, they want to kill other people, but how is that different from presidents and kings? Of course, the masses are brainwashed to believe that Osama bin Laden is the devil's incarnate, but the "elite" knows the truth. He is just an enemy, nothing more, nothing less.
2) Car accidents kill orders of magnitude more people than terrorism. Do you support torture to be used against bad drivers who fail their driving tests?
Your arguments are really at the Dark Ages level. Since then we (the cultured intelligent minority, it seems) learned that you can't retain your humanity and build a better world through torture and blatant disregard for human rights of others.
I think even before that day comes it will be possible to stream everything you want from the Net. Come to think of it, it is already possible technologically using a broadband connection. The only problem is that we need to wait a year or two until the movie industry wisens up to online distribution they way music studios (and even book publishers to some extent) did. The second problem is lack of mobile broadband. By 2008-2010 it will probably be possible for first adopters to stream all media they need in urban areas.
Someone in cuba only gets 3 hours of sleep a day.. thats just.. hitler would be proud.
You do realise that our society made a lot of progress over the past millenium, don't you? 1000 years ago the best torturing techniques were often fatal and physically destructive to the detainee. How often do we read in historical fiction about prisoner who died from torture before the interrogators could extract the information they seeked? Today this risk is minimized through careful application of "harmless" torture methods that have very few long-lasting effects. The advances of psychology and medicine help torture the victims in such a way.
In case you still don't realise it, I shall explain that such methods are better than old-fashioned rack and scrching needles only in one respect - they do not kill or maim the victim. In every other respect - in the amount of pain and suffering, in ther loathsomeness and immorality they are exactly the same.
What you said was horrible.
Zealots have rights too, you know. To say that you may torture someone because you need the information he has it to singlehandedly undo the centuries of progress, to cancel the ideas of humanism, to go back to the Dark Ages or earlier.
After all, you cannot expect to obtain a confession from a witch by giving her three hots and a cot, cable TV, good health care, yoga sessions, and self-improvement classes (such as with the US prison system). It's a value proposition situation: we must find a way to make the confession and acceptance of Our Saviour Jesus Christ more valuable to the witch than the reverse.
I'd say they are not "good guys", but are "the necessary evil" or "the least of two evils".
I have no doubts that some policemen and FBI agents are nice guys. Sure. You can even argue that most of them are. May be. But it should be clear that police and FBI are by their nature instruments of oppression. We should not pretend for a second that their goal is just to oppress "the bad guys", because the system doesn't work that way.
Please remember how many people are imprisoned for smoking some weed. This is a logical outcome of the system designed to oppress the citizens (even with the best of intentions).
It's too easy to become complacent and accept that "we need cops", "we need more cops", "we need to give cops more power", but this can only lead to a police state. It is a physical impossibility to arrive at a freer, more open, happier, more tolerant and more ethical society by supporting and empowering the police.
I may be wrong, but I suspect that most people buying Shuffle buy an "Apple iPod", not a "Shuffle".
Furthermore, while the ads may be intentionally exploiting Apple's ad campaigns, I am not sure it should be considered illegal or even unethical. After all,
1) Apple ads were manipulative in the first place, trying trick the customer into buying their product (as any ad that appeals to style does).
2) If a company is providing a similar product, why shouldn't it use similar marketing? The trademark laws are intended to protect the customer, not corporate profits.
Thanks for the reply and for the compliment. While I don't know about books/articles about this particular topic that describe my point of view, I'd recommend you read something on dialectics, preferably something by Hegel and Marx themselves (not to confuse with dianetics, which is an evil cult).
IMHO dialectics is the best approach to deal with contradictions. In this case there are two conflicting views 1) copyrights are property and artists have the right to profit from their work (thesis) and 2) ideas belong to everyone, limiting creativity is evil (antithesis). To achieve synthesis you need dialectics.
The best part about dialectics is that it works just fine in any area, not just in regards to patents.
You clearly have no idea how the laws work. And your forced analogies are invalid. Do you imply by them that it's OK to force you, the owner of a two-bedroom house, to let any number of boarders for free into your house after 15 years?
You wrongly see copyrights and patents as the same as real property. This is idiocy and it was explained millions of times why.
Your other problem is that you see everything in black and white. E.g. the old laws were "just fine" and new laws are a "lopsided mess". This view, of course, is patent nonsense.
All laws are compromises and it is possible to modify the laws in numerous ways, each with some advantages and some disadvantages. Unfortunately, you seem bent on thinking that anyone who doesn't share your outlook on the world is an assclown. I feel sorry for you, but I hope you may still grow up.