Reading this interview made me remember something I studied at university about startups and the IT industry: Ricardo Semler, boss of a Brazillian company named Semco was branching out into IT, and decided NOT to go for VC funding. In his opinion, the company would lose too much control with this, and therefore I think a sense of responsibility to be realistic with the money spent in breaking even. Semco's way was to start small and grow gradually, rather than go for all the huge funding deals...
Shouldn't this be the case for open source sometimes too? I think it's a bit more like non-profit coop/volunteer based work than just all out business, isn't it?
You ask why people shouldn't have the right to build things on land that they own.
I think if there is a reason for this (if in a city and when talking about something like a stretch of land with trees in it) it should be ecological: how does it hit the carbon emissions, how much does it warm the city by for example producing more driveways which are harmful for rainwater and reflect sunlight.
Who will live/use this place - will this use be helping/sustaining/contributing to the existing community living there? Did you take existing initiative or stimulate any to ensure your development would complement the area?
Are you planning to use ecological materials, local energy generation etc or are you sealing future users of your development into dependance on fossil fuels?
And what about habitats of birds or other animals - did you ask them if you could have it when you bought it? Where will they go? There are simple ways to reduce this damage. Did you take them into account?
Did children play there? Now do they have to be driven to a playground, or play in the street. Do any older residents use the area, do they know it's history?
The key argument is basically - what you are doing doesn't only have to benefit you in some way, it is part of an environment so it also has to be sustainable. That means it's got to last, and give value rather than take it away from what's around it (from materials to the community around it, to the global market and ecology).
You can argue against all of these reasons, but we are not the owners of this planet - we have a responsibility towards it as inhabitants of it and that should and will eventually have to take precedence over trying to build over it just because of short term gain. The price of ignoring this is the loss of basic needs due to the very real problems we cause and then face by too much unsustainable activity and growth.
Not a criticism to the poster - but just against the idea that private property and "right to build" is somehow a superior value to others.
I disagree with what you say there: I really don't think the key point is comparing the negatives between our few badly invested and very immature alternative energy sources: it's about changing the starting stance from which you make the comparison in the first place.
Basically we have discovered and used up an energy source which was finite, and it's downhill from there. It's called the earth, and it's nearing or past breaking point, even just from the point of view of global warming we really should stop everything NOW but no way is that going to happen, same with the end of cheap oil and water and therefore transport, food, irrigation - all of them are at crisis points, but the world is too stuck to it's ways to change anything. The result I think will be famine across the developed world - if we can't cheaply water crops, or cheaply bring in food using cheap transport - only the rich would be able to afford this. So the idea of just wieghing up the alternatives and switching to some other slightly better energy source and going on as before is just going to be a short term solution and in my opinion doesn't address the deeper problems.
I think we have to change our mindsets in extreme ways: it basically means going from the idea that it is a positive thing to want more than you have, to being happy with what you have already and trying to reduce even that. I don't mean you haven't done something like that already, but you didn't mention it in your post and I think it's crucial...
So in this case I think this should mean no more centralised energy resources: the people losing out on stuff like irrigation or water should be able to hold biofuel drivers and industry people accountable and be able to directly influence it through dialogue of some kind.
Brilliant idea, although maybe the internet connection doesn't have to be always on - this is good for getting information in, but it could be expensive. Would basic needs be better met by just having a lot of recycled computers set up in a MAN sized wifi network - so that for example a doctor or local council could have a database of people and could therefore use this for planning things out and just co-ordinating local work? GnuMED?
I heard, maybe it was on Buchanan/Huzinsky's Organisational Behaviour, that the real reason for the incident was the project management side of things - in this sense it was a project management disaster. Looks like the article backs up some of this: unreasonable requests from non-technical people, lack of communication between parties, delays that have to be made up for by cutting other things (like safety) etc.
Will it be possible to put creative commons stuff online and then refer to it from a web interface via the google API? And will it be possible to dump the entire database to flat file for offline use?
I think the creative commons is easy to have - just an "license" attribute.
I just read that and was interested to read more on King James 1 & IV, who was a very interesting character.
Here's a wikipedia article on his role in modern patent law, and a somewhat-religion-heavy-bio that goes in great length into the work he put into getting his version of the bible out. Not that I'm christian, but he seems to have been an intellectual and a writer (friend of Shakespeare) who even then valued free speech and human capacity (in this case to translate important stuff) higher than a blind allegiance to catholicism or protestantism - the subject of a huge war which was going on in the rest of europe during his reign.
Strange that someone who lived so long ago ended up dealing with both patent law and free speech - issues that today are so crucial to some.
Oh give it time - just a proof of concept so far!
on
Ming + PHP5 + AI = Pretty
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I see lots of negative comments, and I really don't think this program deserves it since it's just at the first version and maybe it shouldn't even have been posted yet until it actually does something more visually appealing. What can be seen so far is just the potential. And for me this is really interesting. Only failing is that it's Flash not SVG but that's just my taste.
I notice for example that the author is also a poet who knows Neruda and uses a bit of surrealism. Vector based art is probably the best way of recreating what was pioneered by a similar artistic genre - Futurism - which used early 19th century typography to produce incredible works of art in written text, echoing the onomatopeia of battles and love of violence and war (ok nobody's perfect). So loads of text all over the place, and perhaps moving about - this is perfect media to showcase a program like this. There are lots of examples (try googling for futurist typography or go here http://www.colophon.com/gallery/futurism/14.html for a look at some of it).
So I think the author should merge some of his skills and a very good bit of software/art could result.
The other is an area less touched: improvisational scores - the rules by which experimental artists can improvise. No longer do people have to be bound by what can be printed, and there are now some examples of software based improvisation scores (wish I could find more examples of the more experimental of these, but am submerged by crap sw when I search). I made one in svg for example. So this program, if it's to merge vector graphics with AI, could go in this direction, maybe supplying some kind of interaction and participation in a live multimedia event or performance?
So I see lots of room for improvement but loads of potential here!
A few weeks back I pointed a friend to the creative commons website, so that he could look up information on copyright and see how it was moving forward. He was quite surprised and glad to see that things aren't the way he knew them to be in that area.
The same happens with musicians. They don't tend to know about this. Especially young, talented people who don't necessarily get much chance to get on the internet. I remember as a teenager I would read in all the music magazines about the dream of one day being signed to a major. Nowadays to me that means mostly negative things - problems. Like a big bank loan and surviving on gigs, giving away your rights etc. But to others the dream goes on.
Is there a good URL to point people to so that they can get clear concise guidance on why *not* to sign for one of the RIAA companies? Or even that showed what the options are, and examples of people like Ani DiFranco or companies like magnatunes and how to achieve their musical dreams and still avoid bad business decisions.
The URLs I find are always centred on how bad the RIAA is, or on the consumer side but there isn't to my knowledge a good musician centred site...
This seems a bit scary: I post my music on open source/creative commons sites like Opsound or the Open Source Archive because of the licensing side. But this is always a fear with online hosting.
From what I understand they are about to delete the entire music collection on mp3.com. I think this will be terrible - although I'm aware of most criticisms of the site.
One thing they might do is keep the mp3s somehow (I doubt there's an open license on that stuff - I wonder if each recording is mp3.com's property if published there?) or offer the most popular mp3.com artists some kind of transfer opportunity to their new for-pay service, or they might just abandon everything. In any case it's going to mean a lot of people with no hosting space, and a lot of lost music as a result of that deletion. I wonder where deleted artists will turn to once they lose the mp3.com hosting space?
And won't this really be a problem for someone who might not have the chance to maintain music they once put on mp3.com - maybe as a result of not being IT literate, or having since moved on from music, or died?
I listen to the middle eastern music section, the classical indian music section and some other world music related bits, and sometimes there's really wonderful stuff there from people who I would never hear if it wasn't for them being on the service. Who knows how their music got on the site?
There might be a few things there that won't be missed, but in my opinion, that's a lot of value they are deleting!
I can't see any buddhist imagery - unless you mean the little boy who bends spoons and his zen talk. The only buddhist thing was Neo's journey from self-doubt to faith in himself - and his power increased as he did, which is what a buddha goes through.
If you were a little atom looking at a sea of cells around you, it would probably seem plausible that somewhere in that huge sea there was someone a bit like you fighting the same battles you fight every day, but in a slightly different way, or with different hormones.
Of course this wouldn't matter since you would never meet your counterpart.
You'd have a vague idea that maybe the universe was not infinite because perhaps it was one day going to end. But something would tell you that it was somehow cyclic, and it would come back.
So in a sense it would be infinite.
And if you could travel really far, maybe you'd come to the end of the sea of cells. But you'd have to travel so far that you can safely say that your sea of cells is infinite as far as you're concerned.
Can someone post some currently available links to online declassified resources like those mentioned? I have at home lots of these relating to the US's involvement in the 1973 military coup in Chile - but they are paper based and it would be better to know about online links.
For people like me who oppose the war, these documents are extremely important in refuting people's arguments about how "we have to take out saddam because he's such an evil guy".
If the average pro-war person gave this as reason for the war after reading this kind of information - then it would be an informed perspective on it, and I would take you seriously.
certainly fits with buddhism
on
Lotus Nanotech
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· Score: 2
The lotus plant is a metaphor in some buddhist schools of thought. "The most beautiful lotus plant grows from the muddiest swamp" - meaning that if you go through loads of problems and shit in your life, you will become the best person possible.
If that means as a buddhist I have nanotech (albeit patented! - oi! shakyamuni should claim prior art!) shit repelling skin, all the better!
Yes, I had this problem on my puter: I have a compaq that comes with "same day support" - which in spain can mean a lot of things. One day my drive broke down. It was a fujitsu. The tech guy came the next day with a new one and even let me keep the old one for a few days while I submerged myself in hardware trying to mount it and copy my stuff out. Yes I do keep backups, but it's nice to just copy stuff back exactly how I had it.
Second time, same problem: hard disk just stopped. Same exact one as before (although I don't remember what it is just now exactly). The same day technician this time was a few days later than last time, because they'd "had to order the part from madrid". The guy didn't even check the drive. He just changed it. He said: All these fujitsu's just crash on us. I don't even check them anymore to find out why. We ordered in a seagate. This time everything was lost. The computer couldn't even read the broken drive.
I read this and thought: Great way to increase profitability: sack loads of people. Get the rest of the people to just work more - I'm sure the rest of the people at corel are delighted... Sometimes yes, there isn't really anything else you can do, and maybe it's even part of a downsizing plan so that the others don't really do more, and you're just cutting out middlemen.
A cool solution when the problem is just that the company will go bust if you don't close a section or start to decimate the employees is one I read a while back about how a recession was managed in the 80s in denmark I think: they just cut jobs in half and made it easier to work part time.
This was done at a government level though: it meant people could have 2 part time jobs and make the same or a little less than they used to, and also couples or families could both work part-time and get the same salary as if only one was working full. And it meant people could have one big cash job that might be boring, and another low cash job that was what they actually wanted to do. It apparently worked really well, and now they are an example of how you can save money and help people at the same time. Just vague memory of this though so I hope someone else can be more precise!
I agree that the responses do not get lightened up by the prospect of freedom like you - and that's admirable of you.
But I do not agree with the actual proposition: I believe that if you want to promote freedom, don't hide away in a new state: instead promote freedom right where you are. Be a pioneer of freedom and stand alone to fight for it where you are. If you're not doing that, you're probably not really going to fight for it when you get to your promised free-land and find that it's not exactly what you expected.
Yes, I'm not "American" (well I am, I'm south american, but in the states people take that name to mean them. In Chile, "America" means the continent). It's not about it being right or wrong, but it's the fact that it influences other people's culture. And the point that you can then argue is wether those other cultures should survive, be preserved, or if they are subject to "survival of the fittest".
As far as I'm concerned, one of my cultures was destroyed when the spaniards invaded northern chile and bolivia, and huge areas of that culture are now gone. But even though I've never even spent more than a couple of days in the places where my ancestors lived, I can still pick up a book or search the internet and learn about it. So yes, preserve it, but no, don't force people to keep it while they want to watch WWF, eat at McDonalds or whatever else.I don't want to impose my judgement on that. Otherwise you're teaching people to see their culture as obligatory...
That might be a good enough link to use for most pages in the bhutan broadcasting service.
For budding djs
on
Space Music
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· Score: 5, Informative
Or those wanting to do mixes of their own: http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/~dag/sounds.html - the sounds page belonging to the professor who converted them to human audible... Please post mp3 conversions if you do any! Thanks
Ale
This would make good children's software
on
P2P Roaming Chat
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· Score: 2
I see this being popular with younger surfers, too young to type, yet big enough to draw things with a mouse. Yes, there's security/wierdo infiltration considerations, but you don't usually leave your 2-3 year old alone with the computer that much anyway.
I'd do it as SVG, and have everyone be able to select object oriented avatars that could inherit different characteristics like clothes or noises. Quick transfer when you go to another land. And I'd let older people create the base class for the avatars, so that they could be copyrighted cartoon characters or other things that appeal to children. There's the napster-like content...
Ale
referrer blocked
on
E3 Wrapup
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· Score: 2, Redundant
I just went in through the google cache, and it loaded just fine, no/. effect, so it's probably referrer-blocked...
You'd get very wierd effects spraying valium. Firstly, middle aged housewives from all over the world would join up en masse to the enemy country where the spray was going to happen. Second, why spray when you can sell it in local markets, encourage it's illegal growth etc? A drugged up army and an addicted country is an easy thing to get, whatever your motive.And I think this is already being done, by many countries in many different kinds of war around the world.
The hard part is building the nation back once you've addicted them all to the "ecological" sprays you might have used.
Ecology is like security: it's long term, continuous: a path, not a door - and in these cases, it's going to be too late: peace is much more ecological.
Ok not that I do this stuff myself, but this is what I try to do:
I try and encourage my children to learn things on their own, with as little help as possible, to be proud of the things they've learnt. But privacy is an issue for me. They are really small so privacy is not such a big deal, but I know it will be.
I was really sad to read that post and see what had happened to you in london. I've heard a lot of people: my partner, her mother, her ex husband, as well as many friends - who have gone through similar experiences. The key is that whilst most people had to deal with this on their own, or had even worse experiences after they said it to someone, a precious few actually were able to say it to their parents, and miraculously, their parents did not freak out but actually helped deal with the situation!
I know it comes with experience. It's not something you can learn and apply from theory, but when my children get to the age where they will be more in danger of having this kind of experience (and the days are getting closer) - I don't want it to happen of course, but I want to be able to help! When my partner told her mum it had happened, she just comforted her, and told her about when she'd gone through the same. And then, without involving her daughter at all, she dealt with the guy who'd tried to rape her, and he was never seen again.
So what should I do? I want my children to know what's best, but I don't want to invade their space... I think strength, wisdom, respect are the key. Maybe these are the qualities that guarantee that my parenthood will be positive.
Slashdot Mirror
Reading this interview made me remember something I studied at university about startups and the IT industry: Ricardo Semler, boss of a Brazillian company named Semco was branching out into IT, and decided NOT to go for VC funding. In his opinion, the company would lose too much control with this, and therefore I think a sense of responsibility to be realistic with the money spent in breaking even. Semco's way was to start small and grow gradually, rather than go for all the huge funding deals...
Shouldn't this be the case for open source sometimes too? I think it's a bit more like non-profit coop/volunteer based work than just all out business, isn't it?
You ask why people shouldn't have the right to build things on land that they own.
I think if there is a reason for this (if in a city and when talking about something like a stretch of land with trees in it) it should be ecological: how does it hit the carbon emissions, how much does it warm the city by for example producing more driveways which are harmful for rainwater and reflect sunlight.
Who will live/use this place - will this use be helping/sustaining/contributing to the existing community living there? Did you take existing initiative or stimulate any to ensure your development would complement the area?
Are you planning to use ecological materials, local energy generation etc or are you sealing future users of your development into dependance on fossil fuels?
And what about habitats of birds or other animals - did you ask them if you could have it when you bought it? Where will they go? There are simple ways to reduce this damage. Did you take them into account?
Did children play there? Now do they have to be driven to a playground, or play in the street. Do any older residents use the area, do they know it's history?
The key argument is basically - what you are doing doesn't only have to benefit you in some way, it is part of an environment so it also has to be sustainable. That means it's got to last, and give value rather than take it away from what's around it (from materials to the community around it, to the global market and ecology).
You can argue against all of these reasons, but we are not the owners of this planet - we have a responsibility towards it as inhabitants of it and that should and will eventually have to take precedence over trying to build over it just because of short term gain. The price of ignoring this is the loss of basic needs due to the very real problems we cause and then face by too much unsustainable activity and growth.
Not a criticism to the poster - but just against the idea that private property and "right to build" is somehow a superior value to others.
Ale
I disagree with what you say there: I really don't think the key point is comparing the negatives between our few badly invested and very immature alternative energy sources: it's about changing the starting stance from which you make the comparison in the first place.
Basically we have discovered and used up an energy source which was finite, and it's downhill from there. It's called the earth, and it's nearing or past breaking point, even just from the point of view of global warming we really should stop everything NOW but no way is that going to happen, same with the end of cheap oil and water and therefore transport, food, irrigation - all of them are at crisis points, but the world is too stuck to it's ways to change anything. The result I think will be famine across the developed world - if we can't cheaply water crops, or cheaply bring in food using cheap transport - only the rich would be able to afford this. So the idea of just wieghing up the alternatives and switching to some other slightly better energy source and going on as before is just going to be a short term solution and in my opinion doesn't address the deeper problems.
I think we have to change our mindsets in extreme ways: it basically means going from the idea that it is a positive thing to want more than you have, to being happy with what you have already and trying to reduce even that. I don't mean you haven't done something like that already, but you didn't mention it in your post and I think it's crucial...
So in this case I think this should mean no more centralised energy resources: the people losing out on stuff like irrigation or water should be able to hold biofuel drivers and industry people accountable and be able to directly influence it through dialogue of some kind.
Brilliant idea, although maybe the internet connection doesn't have to be always on - this is good for getting information in, but it could be expensive. Would basic needs be better met by just having a lot of recycled computers set up in a MAN sized wifi network - so that for example a doctor or local council could have a database of people and could therefore use this for planning things out and just co-ordinating local work? GnuMED?
I heard, maybe it was on Buchanan/Huzinsky's Organisational Behaviour, that the real reason for the incident was the project management side of things - in this sense it was a project management disaster. Looks like the article backs up some of this: unreasonable requests from non-technical people, lack of communication between parties, delays that have to be made up for by cutting other things (like safety) etc.
So is this a myth too?
Will it be possible to put creative commons stuff online and then refer to it from a web interface via the google API? And will it be possible to dump the entire database to flat file for offline use?
I think the creative commons is easy to have - just an "license" attribute.
Here's a wikipedia article on his role in modern patent law, and a somewhat-religion-heavy-bio that goes in great length into the work he put into getting his version of the bible out. Not that I'm christian, but he seems to have been an intellectual and a writer (friend of Shakespeare) who even then valued free speech and human capacity (in this case to translate important stuff) higher than a blind allegiance to catholicism or protestantism - the subject of a huge war which was going on in the rest of europe during his reign.
Strange that someone who lived so long ago ended up dealing with both patent law and free speech - issues that today are so crucial to some.
I see lots of negative comments, and I really don't think this program deserves it since it's just at the first version and maybe it shouldn't even have been posted yet until it actually does something more visually appealing. What can be seen so far is just the potential. And for me this is really interesting. Only failing is that it's Flash not SVG but that's just my taste.
I notice for example that the author is also a poet who knows Neruda and uses a bit of surrealism. Vector based art is probably the best way of recreating what was pioneered by a similar artistic genre - Futurism - which used early 19th century typography to produce incredible works of art in written text, echoing the onomatopeia of battles and love of violence and war (ok nobody's perfect). So loads of text all over the place, and perhaps moving about - this is perfect media to showcase a program like this. There are lots of examples (try googling for futurist typography or go here http://www.colophon.com/gallery/futurism/14.html for a look at some of it).
So I think the author should merge some of his skills and a very good bit of software/art could result.
The other is an area less touched: improvisational scores - the rules by which experimental artists can improvise. No longer do people have to be bound by what can be printed, and there are now some examples of software based improvisation scores (wish I could find more examples of the more experimental of these, but am submerged by crap sw when I search). I made one in svg for example. So this program, if it's to merge vector graphics with AI, could go in this direction, maybe supplying some kind of interaction and participation in a live multimedia event or performance?
So I see lots of room for improvement but loads of potential here!
A few weeks back I pointed a friend to the creative commons website, so that he could look up information on copyright and see how it was moving forward. He was quite surprised and glad to see that things aren't the way he knew them to be in that area.
The same happens with musicians. They don't tend to know about this. Especially young, talented people who don't necessarily get much chance to get on the internet. I remember as a teenager I would read in all the music magazines about the dream of one day being signed to a major. Nowadays to me that means mostly negative things - problems. Like a big bank loan and surviving on gigs, giving away your rights etc. But to others the dream goes on.
Is there a good URL to point people to so that they can get clear concise guidance on why *not* to sign for one of the RIAA companies? Or even that showed what the options are, and examples of people like Ani DiFranco or companies like magnatunes and how to achieve their musical dreams and still avoid bad business decisions.
The URLs I find are always centred on how bad the RIAA is, or on the consumer side but there isn't to my knowledge a good musician centred site...
Ale
This seems a bit scary: I post my music on open source/creative commons sites like Opsound or the Open Source Archive because of the licensing side. But this is always a fear with online hosting.
From what I understand they are about to delete the entire music collection on mp3.com. I think this will be terrible - although I'm aware of most criticisms of the site.
One thing they might do is keep the mp3s somehow (I doubt there's an open license on that stuff - I wonder if each recording is mp3.com's property if published there?) or offer the most popular mp3.com artists some kind of transfer opportunity to their new for-pay service, or they might just abandon everything. In any case it's going to mean a lot of people with no hosting space, and a lot of lost music as a result of that deletion. I wonder where deleted artists will turn to once they lose the mp3.com hosting space?
And won't this really be a problem for someone who might not have the chance to maintain music they once put on mp3.com - maybe as a result of not being IT literate, or having since moved on from music, or died?
I listen to the middle eastern music section, the classical indian music section and some other world music related bits, and sometimes there's really wonderful stuff there from people who I would never hear if it wasn't for them being on the service. Who knows how their music got on the site?
There might be a few things there that won't be missed, but in my opinion, that's a lot of value they are deleting!
I can't see any buddhist imagery - unless you mean the little boy who bends spoons and his zen talk. The only buddhist thing was Neo's journey from self-doubt to faith in himself - and his power increased as he did, which is what a buddha goes through.
If you were a little atom looking at a sea of cells around you, it would probably seem plausible that somewhere in that huge sea there was someone a bit like you fighting the same battles you fight every day, but in a slightly different way, or with different hormones.
Of course this wouldn't matter since you would never meet your counterpart.
You'd have a vague idea that maybe the universe was not infinite because perhaps it was one day going to end. But something would tell you that it was somehow cyclic, and it would come back.
So in a sense it would be infinite.
And if you could travel really far, maybe you'd come to the end of the sea of cells. But you'd have to travel so far that you can safely say that your sea of cells is infinite as far as you're concerned.
Ale
Can someone post some currently available links to online declassified resources like those mentioned? I have at home lots of these relating to the US's involvement in the 1973 military coup in Chile - but they are paper based and it would be better to know about online links.
For people like me who oppose the war, these documents are extremely important in refuting people's arguments about how "we have to take out saddam because he's such an evil guy".
If the average pro-war person gave this as reason for the war after reading this kind of information - then it would be an informed perspective on it, and I would take you seriously.
The lotus plant is a metaphor in some buddhist schools of thought. "The most beautiful lotus plant grows from the muddiest swamp" - meaning that if you go through loads of problems and shit in your life, you will become the best person possible.
If that means as a buddhist I have nanotech (albeit patented! - oi! shakyamuni should claim prior art!) shit repelling skin, all the better!
Ale
Yes, I had this problem on my puter: I have a compaq that comes with "same day support" - which in spain can mean a lot of things. One day my drive broke down. It was a fujitsu. The tech guy came the next day with a new one and even let me keep the old one for a few days while I submerged myself in hardware trying to mount it and copy my stuff out. Yes I do keep backups, but it's nice to just copy stuff back exactly how I had it.
Second time, same problem: hard disk just stopped. Same exact one as before (although I don't remember what it is just now exactly). The same day technician this time was a few days later than last time, because they'd "had to order the part from madrid". The guy didn't even check the drive. He just changed it. He said: All these fujitsu's just crash on us. I don't even check them anymore to find out why. We ordered in a seagate. This time everything was lost. The computer couldn't even read the broken drive.
Ale
I read this and thought: Great way to increase profitability: sack loads of people. Get the rest of the people to just work more - I'm sure the rest of the people at corel are delighted... Sometimes yes, there isn't really anything else you can do, and maybe it's even part of a downsizing plan so that the others don't really do more, and you're just cutting out middlemen.
A cool solution when the problem is just that the company will go bust if you don't close a section or start to decimate the employees is one I read a while back about how a recession was managed in the 80s in denmark I think: they just cut jobs in half and made it easier to work part time.
This was done at a government level though: it meant people could have 2 part time jobs and make the same or a little less than they used to, and also couples or families could both work part-time and get the same salary as if only one was working full. And it meant people could have one big cash job that might be boring, and another low cash job that was what they actually wanted to do. It apparently worked really well, and now they are an example of how you can save money and help people at the same time. Just vague memory of this though so I hope someone else can be more precise!
Ale
This is the only link on google with some details half way down the page on what looks like this is about. Search for "mouse"
I agree that the responses do not get lightened up by the prospect of freedom like you - and that's admirable of you.
But I do not agree with the actual proposition: I believe that if you want to promote freedom, don't hide away in a new state: instead promote freedom right where you are. Be a pioneer of freedom and stand alone to fight for it where you are. If you're not doing that, you're probably not really going to fight for it when you get to your promised free-land and find that it's not exactly what you expected.
Ale
Yes, I'm not "American" (well I am, I'm south american, but in the states people take that name to mean them. In Chile, "America" means the continent). It's not about it being right or wrong, but it's the fact that it influences other people's culture. And the point that you can then argue is wether those other cultures should survive, be preserved, or if they are subject to "survival of the fittest".
As far as I'm concerned, one of my cultures was destroyed when the spaniards invaded northern chile and bolivia, and huge areas of that culture are now gone. But even though I've never even spent more than a couple of days in the places where my ancestors lived, I can still pick up a book or search the internet and learn about it. So yes, preserve it, but no, don't force people to keep it while they want to watch WWF, eat at McDonalds or whatever else.I don't want to impose my judgement on that. Otherwise you're teaching people to see their culture as obligatory...
This is a tiny country, and they don't need a slashdotting.m .bt+bhutan
http://www.google.com/search?q=+site%3Awww.bbs.co
That might be a good enough link to use for most pages in the bhutan broadcasting service.
Or those wanting to do mixes of their own: http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/~dag/sounds.html - the sounds page belonging to the professor who converted them to human audible... Please post mp3 conversions if you do any! Thanks
Ale
I see this being popular with younger surfers, too young to type, yet big enough to draw things with a mouse. Yes, there's security/wierdo infiltration considerations, but you don't usually leave your 2-3 year old alone with the computer that much anyway.
I'd do it as SVG, and have everyone be able to select object oriented avatars that could inherit different characteristics like clothes or noises. Quick transfer when you go to another land. And I'd let older people create the base class for the avatars, so that they could be copyrighted cartoon characters or other things that appeal to children. There's the napster-like content...
Ale
I just went in through the google cache, and it loaded just fine, no /. effect, so it's probably referrer-blocked...
I would also find this useless.
You'd get very wierd effects spraying valium. Firstly, middle aged housewives from all over the world would join up en masse to the enemy country where the spray was going to happen. Second, why spray when you can sell it in local markets, encourage it's illegal growth etc? A drugged up army and an addicted country is an easy thing to get, whatever your motive.And I think this is already being done, by many countries in many different kinds of war around the world.
The hard part is building the nation back once you've addicted them all to the "ecological" sprays you might have used.
Ecology is like security: it's long term, continuous: a path, not a door - and in these cases, it's going to be too late: peace is much more ecological.
Ok not that I do this stuff myself, but this is what I try to do:
I try and encourage my children to learn things on their own, with as little help as possible, to be proud of the things they've learnt. But privacy is an issue for me. They are really small so privacy is not such a big deal, but I know it will be.
I was really sad to read that post and see what had happened to you in london. I've heard a lot of people: my partner, her mother, her ex husband, as well as many friends - who have gone through similar experiences. The key is that whilst most people had to deal with this on their own, or had even worse experiences after they said it to someone, a precious few actually were able to say it to their parents, and miraculously, their parents did not freak out but actually helped deal with the situation!
I know it comes with experience. It's not something you can learn and apply from theory, but when my children get to the age where they will be more in danger of having this kind of experience (and the days are getting closer) - I don't want it to happen of course, but I want to be able to help! When my partner told her mum it had happened, she just comforted her, and told her about when she'd gone through the same. And then, without involving her daughter at all, she dealt with the guy who'd tried to rape her, and he was never seen again.
So what should I do? I want my children to know what's best, but I don't want to invade their space... I think strength, wisdom, respect are the key. Maybe these are the qualities that guarantee that my parenthood will be positive.
Ale