I have an N900 too and I love it, but I wouldn't claim that the nature of its software distribution makes it all that much more secure. Linux distribution package repositories have been tainted with malware in the past, in spite of the hope that community observation would guarantee their purity.
Countries that are beating the pants off the US in education tend to have even stronger unions and fewer (or none) private or parochial schools. That America's education system is all bungled up doesn't imply that public education in general is faulty.
Oh and also America's K-12 system could be fixed it, like Europe, the students were free to attend ANY public school they wished instead of being stuck in a one-choice monopoly. i.e. If a student is attending an inner-city school that is crumbling, he/she could go attend the better public suburban school located ~10 miles down the road.
The child goes to the local school because that local school is supported by the taxes paid by the student's family and community. The child's family does not help to support the better school some miles away, so is it any surprise that the child cannot attend it?
Or by Indians brought to Finland. When I bicycle around Nokia's facilities in Espoo, I always see groups of well-dressed, bespectacled Indians waiting for the bus. It came as a bit of a surprise, as while I knew that Nokia and other development houses attracted a steady stream of workers from other European Union countries, I had thought that the US was unique in its H1B craze.
I'm not sure you realize this, but the system of education in other countries is not the same system of education in the US.
The system of education in the other countries I mentioned is compulsory public education. Gatto opposes compulsory public education regardless of how it's implemented, because he claims that it is against liberty. Gatto doesn't want to adopt the lessons of compulsory public education systems in other nations where results are fine. Rather, he promotes the unschooling movement.
Gatto supports the unschooling movement and is, if not an outright libertarian, at least a fellow travel of libertarianism. His beef is with compulsory public education itself, not with how it is implemented.
When you have spent decades teaching in a public school, won a statewide "best teacher of the year" award, and written a book on the history of education which required years of research...
Right, and no one can criticize Smedley Butler's War is a Racket agitprop until they've risen themselves through the ranks of the Marines to become a general? No. Lunatic positions are lunatic positions, regardless of the author's past. Argument from authority is a fallacy.
John Taylor Gatto's writings are essentially the ravings of a crackpot. Clear refutations of his thesis that compulsory public schooling is evil include:
Countries that are beating the pants of the US in education (and demonstrating continued creativity) have even great enshrinement of public education in law, with homeschooling or parochial schooling virtually unheard of.
Gatto's vision of a pre-public education US where everyone was free and freethinking, determined to protect liberty at all costs, is essentially National Romantic hyperbole, and ignores the torrent of histories published over the last several decades which show that the US has always been dominated by oppressive elites and monied interests in spite of its claim to equal opportunity.
Gatto claims that US public education teaches people to accept their own social class and stay there, but again, there are countries that show greater class mobility than the US and have an even greater enshrinement of public education.
Color me skeptical; what are the chances this is not another overpriced "flagship" POS from Nokia?
That it is running Symbian indicates that it is midrange, even if at the higher end of midrange. The coming MeeGo device will be their next flagship after the N900.
Because cost of living is much lower in China than in, say, Silicon Valley, American employees working there can still be paid less than if they were based in the US.
It's not at all unusual for people from the Nordic countries to spend winter holidays in Bali. They have no problem spending that money. Even not-terribly-well-off Russians commonly go to Egypt or India these days. That Europeans travel more than Americans is not exclusively a phenomenon of people in tiny countries crossing the border into their neighbors.
The depressing statistics for the amount of (USA) Americans who hold passports makes the stereotype that Americans know little of the world outside their borders somewhat defensible. Certainly my peer group in Europe, who regularly move all over Europe and often to Asia or Africa, are much more active travelers than the same generation in the US.
But what are "natural rights"? The laws that prevent me from committing murder, rape, theft of concrete (ie not intellectual property) objects, cannibalism, and a number of other heinous crimes are all artificial laws "propped up not by nature but by government." Are these laws any more "natural" than copyright laws?
During the heyday of natural right theory, there was a belief that certain rights (to not get murdered or raped, etc.) were absolute, granted by God or Nature or whatever. Other rights, such as voting rights and copyright, were understood to be up for debate, for it was left to men to arrange those rights for the benefit of society at any given time. There was some controversy on certain points, but no one ever thought copyright a natural right, because with their firm grounding in a classical education, thinkers of the Enlightenment knew that copyright was a recent concept absent from those textbook past societies they considered just.
In a world without copyright, I agree that there would still be music and literature. But what about movies and games?
Most of the masterpieces of world cinema that I can think of were not expected to turn much of a profit, but the studios still went ahead with them anyway. They were realized through private patronage, state arts funding, or some combination of the two. Box-office earnings were only a nice extra. In Hong Kong, the film industry thrived in spite of massive piracy where it's hard to even find legitimate recordings for sale.
So, yes, there would still be films. And high-quality films with excellent cinematography, thought-provoking scripts and fine acting. If there wouldn't be any more more 200 million-dollar special effects extravaganzas, well, that's no big loss.
I was thinking of the insolvent welfare states such as Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy.
The problem of Greece has a lot to do with corruption in the minority of people who work in administration and very little to do with a welfare state, which is pretty negligible, actually. And taxation is fairly low there as well. Looks like you haven't read any more about the problem than the stereotypes posted around news sites recently, which blamed a generally mythical lazy, non-working, early-retiring Greek people for everything.
Recent histories of the US have tried very hard to overturn the myth that the American Revolution was about a nation groaning under high taxes and yearning for freedom. As much as "taxation without representation" was a hook they could use to get the plebes on their side (and not all of the took it -- the country was quite divided), the founding fathers were essentially fighting for their own desire for money and power.
BTW, this isn't limited to the United States. Lots of countries have made official victimhood the most desirable status one can aspire to. Unfortunately, their additional experience with leeching taxpayers to pay their victims has created a dearth of taxpayers. Funny how that happens.
If you're referring to welfare states, they are a lot closer to financial solvency than the US, which prides itself on its can-do, American dream, pull-youself-up-with-your-own-bootstraps anti-welfare spirit, but is saddled with debt unimaginable in a place like Finland or Sweden.
But honestly, do you believe the generation that is currently bitching and whining about copyright would contribute a red cent to a project to create a "masterpiece of world cinema" solely through private patronage?
Yes. There's always going to be fantastically wealthy people with an interest in the arts, even if the masses don't want to pay anything.
And I assure you, if the state tried funding it you'd hear the "liberals" (or more specifically, those calling themselves that) bitching about "big government" spending taxpayers money where it doesn't belong.
The United States isn't the only country in the world. In most of the European Union, a system of government arts funding is well entrenched and no one complains. And even in the US, there's a surprising amount of funding and tax breaks at the state level. Just the other day I was watching a Jim Jarmusch film, and the credits acknowledged vital help from the state of Louisiana, not a place people would necessarily think a bastion of enlightened culture.
A claim that movies are going to disappear if everyone downloads is silly considering that so many masterpieces of world cinema were realized through private patronage or state arts funding and were never intended to turn a profit.
Plato isn't the only person who wrote of Socrates' life. Xenophon was also a student of Socrates and depicted him in his works. While it is indeed true that often Socrates in Plato is a mere mouthpiece for Plato's ideas, Xenophon's testimony serves to show that Plato didn't completely depart from the historical man.
People who argue against public education in the US conveniently ignore the fact that nations beating the pants off the US in educational achievement, like Finland, have greater enshrinement of public education (homeschooling and parochial schools being quite rare). There is no necessary correlation between public education and low results.
Perhaps not a war criminal, but the very female Elena Ceausescu was just as fucked up and cruel as any male dictator. There's no guarantee that women in positions of military or political power are going to be more compassionate than males.
Only between 7 and 12 percent of American private sector workers belong to unions. They aren't a force large enough to be responsible for the doldrums of American industry. Meanwhile, places like the Nordic countries have 80% of their working population belonging to unions, and the economy is doing fine and quality of life is higher.
In the past, whenever someone has recommended XHTML on Slashdot, there are generally been cries of "It's too much work to make it validate!" Now, that might be true for Joe Average who just wants to put up a simple personal website (but he's more likely to use a CMS anyway), but if you're an experienced developer, than I for the life of me can't understand how writing valid XHTML can be considered too hard.
Closing tags, for example, should come naturally. Do you leave parentheses out when you're writing in a scripting language? Emacs at least at NXML-mode which shows you immediately if you've made a mistake that will not let the document validate.
And anyone who has had to extract data from a webpage ought to adore valid, semantically-meaningful XHTML, because it makes the process effortless whereas HTML requires specialized, not always accurate libs and a lot of work.
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I have an N900 too and I love it, but I wouldn't claim that the nature of its software distribution makes it all that much more secure. Linux distribution package repositories have been tainted with malware in the past, in spite of the hope that community observation would guarantee their purity.
Countries that are beating the pants off the US in education tend to have even stronger unions and fewer (or none) private or parochial schools. That America's education system is all bungled up doesn't imply that public education in general is faulty.
The child goes to the local school because that local school is supported by the taxes paid by the student's family and community. The child's family does not help to support the better school some miles away, so is it any surprise that the child cannot attend it?
Or by Indians brought to Finland. When I bicycle around Nokia's facilities in Espoo, I always see groups of well-dressed, bespectacled Indians waiting for the bus. It came as a bit of a surprise, as while I knew that Nokia and other development houses attracted a steady stream of workers from other European Union countries, I had thought that the US was unique in its H1B craze.
The system of education in the other countries I mentioned is compulsory public education. Gatto opposes compulsory public education regardless of how it's implemented, because he claims that it is against liberty. Gatto doesn't want to adopt the lessons of compulsory public education systems in other nations where results are fine. Rather, he promotes the unschooling movement.
Gatto supports the unschooling movement and is, if not an outright libertarian, at least a fellow travel of libertarianism. His beef is with compulsory public education itself, not with how it is implemented.
Right, and no one can criticize Smedley Butler's War is a Racket agitprop until they've risen themselves through the ranks of the Marines to become a general? No. Lunatic positions are lunatic positions, regardless of the author's past. Argument from authority is a fallacy.
John Taylor Gatto's writings are essentially the ravings of a crackpot. Clear refutations of his thesis that compulsory public schooling is evil include:
That it is running Symbian indicates that it is midrange, even if at the higher end of midrange. The coming MeeGo device will be their next flagship after the N900.
Because cost of living is much lower in China than in, say, Silicon Valley, American employees working there can still be paid less than if they were based in the US.
It's not at all unusual for people from the Nordic countries to spend winter holidays in Bali. They have no problem spending that money. Even not-terribly-well-off Russians commonly go to Egypt or India these days. That Europeans travel more than Americans is not exclusively a phenomenon of people in tiny countries crossing the border into their neighbors.
The depressing statistics for the amount of (USA) Americans who hold passports makes the stereotype that Americans know little of the world outside their borders somewhat defensible. Certainly my peer group in Europe, who regularly move all over Europe and often to Asia or Africa, are much more active travelers than the same generation in the US.
During the heyday of natural right theory, there was a belief that certain rights (to not get murdered or raped, etc.) were absolute, granted by God or Nature or whatever. Other rights, such as voting rights and copyright, were understood to be up for debate, for it was left to men to arrange those rights for the benefit of society at any given time. There was some controversy on certain points, but no one ever thought copyright a natural right, because with their firm grounding in a classical education, thinkers of the Enlightenment knew that copyright was a recent concept absent from those textbook past societies they considered just.
Most of the masterpieces of world cinema that I can think of were not expected to turn much of a profit, but the studios still went ahead with them anyway. They were realized through private patronage, state arts funding, or some combination of the two. Box-office earnings were only a nice extra. In Hong Kong, the film industry thrived in spite of massive piracy where it's hard to even find legitimate recordings for sale.
So, yes, there would still be films. And high-quality films with excellent cinematography, thought-provoking scripts and fine acting. If there wouldn't be any more more 200 million-dollar special effects extravaganzas, well, that's no big loss.
Norse? What is this, the 12th century?
The problem of Greece has a lot to do with corruption in the minority of people who work in administration and very little to do with a welfare state, which is pretty negligible, actually. And taxation is fairly low there as well. Looks like you haven't read any more about the problem than the stereotypes posted around news sites recently, which blamed a generally mythical lazy, non-working, early-retiring Greek people for everything.
Recent histories of the US have tried very hard to overturn the myth that the American Revolution was about a nation groaning under high taxes and yearning for freedom. As much as "taxation without representation" was a hook they could use to get the plebes on their side (and not all of the took it -- the country was quite divided), the founding fathers were essentially fighting for their own desire for money and power.
If you're referring to welfare states, they are a lot closer to financial solvency than the US, which prides itself on its can-do, American dream, pull-youself-up-with-your-own-bootstraps anti-welfare spirit, but is saddled with debt unimaginable in a place like Finland or Sweden.
Yes. There's always going to be fantastically wealthy people with an interest in the arts, even if the masses don't want to pay anything.
The United States isn't the only country in the world. In most of the European Union, a system of government arts funding is well entrenched and no one complains. And even in the US, there's a surprising amount of funding and tax breaks at the state level. Just the other day I was watching a Jim Jarmusch film, and the credits acknowledged vital help from the state of Louisiana, not a place people would necessarily think a bastion of enlightened culture.
A claim that movies are going to disappear if everyone downloads is silly considering that so many masterpieces of world cinema were realized through private patronage or state arts funding and were never intended to turn a profit.
XeTeX has already been around for a while now and typesets all the Unicode you want painlessly.
Plato isn't the only person who wrote of Socrates' life. Xenophon was also a student of Socrates and depicted him in his works. While it is indeed true that often Socrates in Plato is a mere mouthpiece for Plato's ideas, Xenophon's testimony serves to show that Plato didn't completely depart from the historical man.
People who argue against public education in the US conveniently ignore the fact that nations beating the pants off the US in educational achievement, like Finland, have greater enshrinement of public education (homeschooling and parochial schools being quite rare). There is no necessary correlation between public education and low results.
Perhaps not a war criminal, but the very female Elena Ceausescu was just as fucked up and cruel as any male dictator. There's no guarantee that women in positions of military or political power are going to be more compassionate than males.
Only between 7 and 12 percent of American private sector workers belong to unions. They aren't a force large enough to be responsible for the doldrums of American industry. Meanwhile, places like the Nordic countries have 80% of their working population belonging to unions, and the economy is doing fine and quality of life is higher.
Closing tags, for example, should come naturally. Do you leave parentheses out when you're writing in a scripting language? Emacs at least at NXML-mode which shows you immediately if you've made a mistake that will not let the document validate.
And anyone who has had to extract data from a webpage ought to adore valid, semantically-meaningful XHTML, because it makes the process effortless whereas HTML requires specialized, not always accurate libs and a lot of work.
You've also long been able to kill Gnash without taking the browser with it.