You make a good point. Breaking up the market place into a larger number of providers would seem to bring benefits to us (everyone). That's not happened here, though. As far as I am aware Eolas does not produce a web browser, so we simply get a impaired version of what's already out there and nothing in return.
I have no wish to take away from your satisfaction in seeing Microsoft get beaten at their own game, though. Enjoy.;)
But that in turn hurts Microsoft. If their products become less streamlined than they were, they are less attractive for users.
Why is that a good thing? Are you suggesting that Open Source software cannot compete? That it depends on Microsoft being hamstrung by litigation?
The better Microsoft's products are, the better for their users and the better for Open Source that must raise its game. Unless you want Microsoft's users to suffer (and that's a large number of people some of which are bound to be innocent), or unless you want Open Source software to suffer a lack of competition, then let Microsoft do their best. The more they improve their products, the more the standard of software rises for all of us.
So long as we can fight off the patent system, that is.
That's a strange post. Sometimes vile weapons are used against vile people. I think an intelligent person can see shades of grey and see the good that comes out of use of patents sometimes.
IN this case if it hurts MS then it's good, if it makes it harder to hack IE then that's even better.
Well if you can accept that I'm intelligent and that I simultaneously hold a different point of view to you, then I'll happily explain my position.
I think software patents are wrong. Leaving aside the unresolved issue of whether it is ethical to patent mathematical algorithms, the immediate effect of allowing software patents is to close the market and stifle innovation. Just to clarify the difference between copyright and patents, copyright allows you to protect how you did something. Patents allow you to say no-one else can try. Nor can anyone else do something that follows on or builds on the patented idea. Nor does the idea necessarily even need to have been acted upon by the patent holder. Patents turn creativity into a territory that you need to pay for. That's a brief summation of why I do not like patents in software. I've kept it brief because I really only want to illustrate that my opposition to these is not based on which company holds them, but from first principles. They are wrong.
You say that anything that hurts Microsoft is good, but my dislike of Microsoft is not an a priori value, that doesn't need to be defended. I dislike Microsoft because of their business practices (including software patents). If I see another company take up those same business practices, then it doesn't matter to me if they turn those practices on each other. The net effect is more patents, and more reinforcement and embedding of the patent system. Time will pass and the settlements and companies involved will become irrelevent history, but the system which I object to has been made stronger and more patents claimed.
To put it another way, the deer doesn't take satisfaction in seeing that there are now two lions fighting over who gets to eat it. And the deer, in this metaphor, by the way. represents mankinds creativity.
if I patent software and publically license it as beerware ad infinitium, do you chastise me for patenting?
I'd say your heart was in the right place, but I don't believe that allowing the patenting of software or mathematical algorithms is in the best interests of mankind, a nation, or even in the long-run, to the benefit of individuals. Do not confuse copyright - this is how I did it - with patents - only I am allowed to achieve something. At least that is what they mean when we're talking about software. So I'm afraid, yes - I would disapprove of even your generous use of the patent system, because by joining the system, you strengthen it, whatever you intentions. Fighting over territory doesn't return it to the commons.
I believe there would be a way out for you, in that you could simply publicly disclose your ideas. No need to join the patent system, but you've still enriched humanity.
Is my enemy's enemy my friend? I don't think so. If I chastise Microsoft for patenting software (which I do), then I can hardly endorse it in anyone else. When what you dislike is the weapons themselves, then it hardly matters who is using them on who.
It may be out in the open, but that doesn't make it public. Their parking lot is most likely THEIR PROPERTY.
I refer you back to the article which makes no mention of limiting its use to carparks. In fact it says that it was deployed in front of a Spar shop in Wales. These seldom have carparks. In Britain we tend to walk to shops. Additionally, it says that it is intended for general use by shops - no expressed willingness to limit it to car parks. Additionally, car parks dedicated to shops in the UK are usually for the general use of multiple shops - not just one, hence public place again. Additionally, we are discussing sound here - it does not magically stop at the borders of your property and you're kidding yourself if you think you can keep this at an effective level within your property without it spilling beyond the bounds of your property.
Doesn't work that way. A couple of years ago, a few teens on public transport harassed a girl about their age. Yours truly went over, sat down next to the girl and told the guys to fuck off. They did. End of story.
Couldn't agree with you more... And well done for the above!
It's always good to have more than one option and to ensure that the choice of which to take is up to you, not them. If you grab a gun and go intruder hunting, what on Earth makes you think the dice are loaded in your favour not theirs? And even if for some reason you thought you had an edge, don't you think the stakes are a little high?
You may say that there are plenty of people out there who are breaking in to "rape/kill your women" but in a dangerous situation you weigh up the odds and take your best chance. I'd say that the large majority of people breaking into a house are there because they want to steal something - they're not hunting you. In that scenario, keeping out of their way is a lot less likely to get you killed than going looking for them. You could also say that keeping out of their way is a lot less likely to get you killed in the "Assassin" scenario too. Someone breaks into the front of your house, you run out of the back and keep running. Vice versa for the front. If you're trapped upstairs, you push the stereo round the bedroom door and brace the bed against it while you wait for the sirens. If they turn out to be a Hollywood Movie psycho-killer that breaks down the door... well at least you know where they're coming at you from and you can fall back to Plan B(low them away) then, rather bumbling down the stairs at them.
If you read my post again, you'll see that what I am advocating is (a) keep your options open (b) choose the one that has lowest risk of being killed. Your 'nobody rapes my woman attitude' is all very touching, but I would sooner loose my PC / TV / whatever, than be grieving for a dead boyfriend or spending the rest of my days looking after someone stuck in a wheelchair because their spine was damaged.
If you want to argue that there's a greater chance of people lying in wait for you outside, than of an intruder being a burglar, then you can argue that if you like. But the original poster said "I would have no choice but to shoot the intruder." The OP is wrong and if there's a choice between confronting the intruder and running away, I am very much advising you leg it just as fast as you can (though I don't mind if you want to trot along behind your women in case of stray shots).
Well at least unlike the previous poster, you have conceded that I have a right to be on a public street. Now to address the other point - my right to smash a car's speakers.
Important differences between a device designed to drive me away through discomfort and a car with heavy bass.
1. Intent - the device is intended to harrass people. This certainly constitutes a deliberate attempt to harras me which the car does not.
2. Duration - a car (except on the M25) is generally moving along and is a very temporary nuisance compared to a shop that is deploying this irritating noise all day every day and claiming a permanent part of the public street for itself.
3. Discrimination - the device is designed to target certain people based on their age, causing discomfort to people that the deployer has decided that they don't like.
4. Culpability. The nature of the discomfort is such that this could upset small children and babies without a parent being aware of the distress. Imagine trying to quieten your distressed child all the time being unaware that it was being targeted with some sort of sonic device that you couldn't detect. At least a thumping car bass is something that you can be aware of and identify the source of, rather than some mysterious irritation that you can't conciously identify.
There are laws in the UK about noise pollution that cars with thumping bass violate routinely. However, they escape prosecution for the fact that they are a temporary and passing nuisance, not normally aimed at people deliberately. This would change rapidly if someone parked their car outside your house and stayed there, pumping out that noise. In the latter case, someone would ask them to turn it down, call the police or, as you say, rip out their speakers. If you must bring analogy into this discussion, then that would be a much closer one to the situation we are discussing than you "walking down a public street, passing a car you thought was too loud." If they were deliberately parking these cars outside the houses of a segment of society they didn't like, then it would be an even better analogy.
But of course, the best analogy is one where someone deploys a device in a public area designed to drive away people he unilaterally didn't approve of. Like we're talking about.
You seem confused on several points. Firstly, this is aimed outside the shop into a public area. Secondly, it is not music, but a device designed to cause discomfort to me which it is entirely reasonable to counter somehow (i.e. make the equipment disfunctional).
I did a short stint as a Maths teacher. The hardest part was trying to remember I was on the other side now (I was trouble at school). We had some construction work going on at the school and there was some sort of crane-mounted pile driving going on so that every five seconds or so, the entire classroom would shake and rattle. Just in one perfect lull in the general chaos that was the bottom year 11 maths set, one kid calls out to another: "'Ere, Darren! Yer mama's coming!"
I have never had to try so hard not to laugh in my life.
Age discrimination preventing them from getting into bars.;) If you lived with your parents and couldn't go to pubs or clubs, where would you go to be with your friends?
Which section of the population has children earliest and most frequently in life? Those without employment or education.
Everyone needs some meaning and purpose in their lives. If having children is the only purpose left to you, then you do. You say yourself that you had an education and an actual life to get started. Provide these and children will grow up with something else to do than sit around and breed.
I own a gun. If a criminal enters my house to do me harm, I will have no choice but to kill him with this gun. That doesn't mean I want to kill everyone with this gun.
You could always try running away. Unless you're targetted by assassins, then they're after your iPod not you. Better to get you and your familiy (if any) out of there than go after an intruder who is just as likely to be able to shoot you in return.
Besides this device isn't aimed at people in the store - it's aimed at the streets outside, so it's a bad analogy.
Don't be too despondent. I've lived in some pretty destitute areas in the UK, seen plenty of abuse (including happy slapping), but there is still a lot of good here too. Never start thinking of groups of people as some outside group to yourself and the human race (chavs, unemployed, rich people, whatever). Stereotypes get us nowhere and are false anyway. Don't see a dozen 14-17 year olds hassling people and start thinking "kids today." Think - "there's a dozen kids out of how many in this urban area?"
Ignorance ain't bliss and we can always use one more helping hand.
So this is to be used to control access to public areas, then? Sounds like I'd be perfectly justified in smashing one of these devices to bits if it was causing me distress in an area I had a right to be in. Besides - what's wrong with teenagers? Whoever invented this device (if it worked) is a frightened individual.
And ironically, mine went down shortly after posting. I've just been able to reconnect. It's a shame that the parent was modded down Offtopic though whilst I went to +3 Interesting. It might be nice if the parent had posted more than just nonsense? but there was nothing offensive in that alone. We should always question things...
Africa can certainly produce enough food to feed itself with modern sustainable farming. It's problems have been mostly civil strife and partly a global economic system that makes it financially ordained that cash-crop for sale be grown, rather than a nutritionally balanced range of crops.
The first of these problems wont be fixed by GM crops and the second would be better addressed by fixing the underlying problem rather than producing, say, rice rich in vitamin D (an incomplete solution).
The immediate downsides of GMO farming are twofold: Firstly, an enforced tithe to the patent holders annually, which cannot be escaped from or realistically negotiated for a fair price, seeing as GMO crops cannot be got rid of and cannot be obtained from a competitor. Secondly, an eggs in one-basket situation of genetic mono-culture... google for the Irish potato famine, sometime.
And thirdly (THREE downsides), an ethically fucked up situation in which people must pay for the right to work to feed themselves. Very medieval. You can be sure that African nations are not in a position to fairly negotiate with US corporations.
If they need oxygen and have enough energy for interstellar travel, they'd probably be best off stopping by an ice world (say Europa) and taking Oxygen from the old H2O. Nice and compact (easier than vacuuming up lots of Earth's atmosphere) and probably less filtering. The Sun-Slingshot idea is a great idea but we'd have to be talking ships of a staggering mass before they caused any harm.
I think the concern of the Canadian minister in the original article was not so much that a lack of guns on the moon would make us defenceless against the aliens, but that the presence of weapons in space might make the aliens bother to flatten us.
Even if you can't (or don't) want to learn anything, slaves are always a good thing to have. Especially if they are of "lesser race" so they can be killed or tortured without any guilt if they don't obey you.
We don't need to travel interstellar distances to acquire slaves so I don't see why an alien species would. Allowing for an ethical system that considered slavery okay for "lesser races" akin to humans using beasts of burden, you have to ask what humans would be so much cheaper / better at than automated systems. We've long since replaced horses with tractors, cars and bikes. A more advanced civilisation might have more advanced needs, but are they likely to be looking for the equivalent of horses or the equivalent of cars. Do they want humans solving their technical problems or computers?
Assuming that an alien species did want a biologically based slave race, why come all this way for humans? Give us another fifty years and we will be able to created an engineered sub-race for ourselves if we want (I hope we don't). Therefore, I'd expect aliens to have that capacity too. With human's need for long dormant periods (sleep), slow development cycle (five to six years before being capable of even basic tasks), low reproduction cycle, too weak for heavy tasks, too big for delicate tasks; quite frankly, they aren't worth the shipping costs.
With heavy elements available on countless worlds, the only thing worth plundering Earth for is information, whether philosophical, mathematical, or our DNA. All of which is more efficiently achieved by saying: "can we have that please, here's a high-temperature super-conductor."
I suppose there could be a use for us as entertainment, assuming Aliens had a vaguely similar psychology to us. But if so, then we're probably more fun to watch in our native environment, in which case they're probably absorbing the Internet right now, and I'd just like to say a big "HELLO!" to our friends from Hyperspace and all the fans of "H4rm0ny's Life." Thanks,
The Europeans prevailed in many smaller conflicts in the Americas in a similar way. The native Americans did not maximize their own natural advatages...often because they lacked the proper advantage.
What they lacked was unity. If all native american tribes worked together against European invaders, the settlers would have been kicked off the continent. However, the Europeans were able to take the country piece by piece. Now of course modern mankind is all united and could never be susceptible to one faction (let's hypothetically call this entity a "nation") forming alliances, accepting bribes or declaring a neutrality, so aliens couldn't possibly pick and choose their battles at a time scale to suit them.
Aliens trying to take advantage of us and our resources seems much more likely than simple trying to wipe us out.
Interesting question - would a race of beings / being capable of interstellar travel have anything to learn from us as a species? It's hard to imagine us having an edge in Physics. Just about concievable we had some minor insights into Chemistry they could borrow (note I'm basing this on the lowest levels of technology a race would require for interstellar travel). Our biology is the only thing that I can concieve of even being of remotely possible interest to them. More abstract things could be of interest, though. Maybe they're interested in our philosophies and cultural values. Imagine the irritation to the World's rich and powerful, when the super advanced aliens arrive and say "Take us to your musicians."
Saw one of these outside Bordeaux (can't remember where). Unbelievably they were open air near a main road and (the best bit) there were two of them - one signposted men and the other women!
Not contradicting your point, but questioning where gas would not be available. Yes - the article says remote rural areas, but if we can get people to them, then why can't they purchase cylinders of gas or drive a tanker there to a central gas tank locally?
Slashdot Mirror
You make a good point. Breaking up the market place into a larger number of providers would seem to bring benefits to us (everyone). That's not happened here, though. As far as I am aware Eolas does not produce a web browser, so we simply get a impaired version of what's already out there and nothing in return.
I have no wish to take away from your satisfaction in seeing Microsoft get beaten at their own game, though. Enjoy.
But that in turn hurts Microsoft. If their products become less streamlined than they were, they are less attractive for users.
Why is that a good thing? Are you suggesting that Open Source software cannot compete? That it depends on Microsoft being hamstrung by litigation?
The better Microsoft's products are, the better for their users and the better for Open Source that must raise its game. Unless you want Microsoft's users to suffer (and that's a large number of people some of which are bound to be innocent), or unless you want Open Source software to suffer a lack of competition, then let Microsoft do their best. The more they improve their products, the more the standard of software rises for all of us.
So long as we can fight off the patent system, that is.
That's a strange post. Sometimes vile weapons are used against vile people. I think an intelligent person can see shades of grey and see the good that comes out of use of patents sometimes.
IN this case if it hurts MS then it's good, if it makes it harder to hack IE then that's even better.
Well if you can accept that I'm intelligent and that I simultaneously hold a different point of view to you, then I'll happily explain my position.
I think software patents are wrong. Leaving aside the unresolved issue of whether it is ethical to patent mathematical algorithms, the immediate effect of allowing software patents is to close the market and stifle innovation. Just to clarify the difference between copyright and patents, copyright allows you to protect how you did something. Patents allow you to say no-one else can try. Nor can anyone else do something that follows on or builds on the patented idea. Nor does the idea necessarily even need to have been acted upon by the patent holder. Patents turn creativity into a territory that you need to pay for. That's a brief summation of why I do not like patents in software. I've kept it brief because I really only want to illustrate that my opposition to these is not based on which company holds them, but from first principles. They are wrong.
You say that anything that hurts Microsoft is good, but my dislike of Microsoft is not an a priori value, that doesn't need to be defended. I dislike Microsoft because of their business practices (including software patents). If I see another company take up those same business practices, then it doesn't matter to me if they turn those practices on each other. The net effect is more patents, and more reinforcement and embedding of the patent system. Time will pass and the settlements and companies involved will become irrelevent history, but the system which I object to has been made stronger and more patents claimed.
To put it another way, the deer doesn't take satisfaction in seeing that there are now two lions fighting over who gets to eat it. And the deer, in this metaphor, by the way. represents mankinds creativity.
if I patent software and publically license it as beerware ad infinitium, do you chastise me for patenting?
I'd say your heart was in the right place, but I don't believe that allowing the patenting of software or mathematical algorithms is in the best interests of mankind, a nation, or even in the long-run, to the benefit of individuals. Do not confuse copyright - this is how I did it - with patents - only I am allowed to achieve something. At least that is what they mean when we're talking about software. So I'm afraid, yes - I would disapprove of even your generous use of the patent system, because by joining the system, you strengthen it, whatever you intentions. Fighting over territory doesn't return it to the commons.
I believe there would be a way out for you, in that you could simply publicly disclose your ideas. No need to join the patent system, but you've still enriched humanity.
Is my enemy's enemy my friend? I don't think so. If I chastise Microsoft for patenting software (which I do), then I can hardly endorse it in anyone else. When what you dislike is the weapons themselves, then it hardly matters who is using them on who.
It may be out in the open, but that doesn't make it public. Their parking lot is most likely THEIR PROPERTY.
I refer you back to the article which makes no mention of limiting its use to carparks. In fact it says that it was deployed in front of a Spar shop in Wales. These seldom have carparks. In Britain we tend to walk to shops. Additionally, it says that it is intended for general use by shops - no expressed willingness to limit it to car parks. Additionally, car parks dedicated to shops in the UK are usually for the general use of multiple shops - not just one, hence public place again. Additionally, we are discussing sound here - it does not magically stop at the borders of your property and you're kidding yourself if you think you can keep this at an effective level within your property without it spilling beyond the bounds of your property.
I think that will do for now.
Doesn't work that way. A couple of years ago, a few teens on public transport harassed a girl about their age. Yours truly went over, sat down next to the girl and told the guys to fuck off. They did. End of story.
Couldn't agree with you more... And well done for the above!
What better way to undermine democracy in the West?
It's always good to have more than one option and to ensure that the choice of which to take is up to you, not them. If you grab a gun and go intruder hunting, what on Earth makes you think the dice are loaded in your favour not theirs? And even if for some reason you thought you had an edge, don't you think the stakes are a little high?
You may say that there are plenty of people out there who are breaking in to "rape/kill your women" but in a dangerous situation you weigh up the odds and take your best chance. I'd say that the large majority of people breaking into a house are there because they want to steal something - they're not hunting you. In that scenario, keeping out of their way is a lot less likely to get you killed than going looking for them. You could also say that keeping out of their way is a lot less likely to get you killed in the "Assassin" scenario too. Someone breaks into the front of your house, you run out of the back and keep running. Vice versa for the front. If you're trapped upstairs, you push the stereo round the bedroom door and brace the bed against it while you wait for the sirens. If they turn out to be a Hollywood Movie psycho-killer that breaks down the door... well at least you know where they're coming at you from and you can fall back to Plan B(low them away) then, rather bumbling down the stairs at them.
If you read my post again, you'll see that what I am advocating is (a) keep your options open (b) choose the one that has lowest risk of being killed. Your 'nobody rapes my woman attitude' is all very touching, but I would sooner loose my PC / TV / whatever, than be grieving for a dead boyfriend or spending the rest of my days looking after someone stuck in a wheelchair because their spine was damaged.
If you want to argue that there's a greater chance of people lying in wait for you outside, than of an intruder being a burglar, then you can argue that if you like. But the original poster said "I would have no choice but to shoot the intruder." The OP is wrong and if there's a choice between confronting the intruder and running away, I am very much advising you leg it just as fast as you can (though I don't mind if you want to trot along behind your women in case of stray shots).
My £0.02.
Well at least unlike the previous poster, you have conceded that I have a right to be on a public street. Now to address the other point - my right to smash a car's speakers.
Important differences between a device designed to drive me away through discomfort and a car with heavy bass.
1. Intent - the device is intended to harrass people. This certainly constitutes a deliberate attempt to harras me which the car does not. 2. Duration - a car (except on the M25) is generally moving along and is a very temporary nuisance compared to a shop that is deploying this irritating noise all day every day and claiming a permanent part of the public street for itself. 3. Discrimination - the device is designed to target certain people based on their age, causing discomfort to people that the deployer has decided that they don't like. 4. Culpability. The nature of the discomfort is such that this could upset small children and babies without a parent being aware of the distress. Imagine trying to quieten your distressed child all the time being unaware that it was being targeted with some sort of sonic device that you couldn't detect. At least a thumping car bass is something that you can be aware of and identify the source of, rather than some mysterious irritation that you can't conciously identify.
There are laws in the UK about noise pollution that cars with thumping bass violate routinely. However, they escape prosecution for the fact that they are a temporary and passing nuisance, not normally aimed at people deliberately. This would change rapidly if someone parked their car outside your house and stayed there, pumping out that noise. In the latter case, someone would ask them to turn it down, call the police or, as you say, rip out their speakers. If you must bring analogy into this discussion, then that would be a much closer one to the situation we are discussing than you "walking down a public street, passing a car you thought was too loud." If they were deliberately parking these cars outside the houses of a segment of society they didn't like, then it would be an even better analogy.
But of course, the best analogy is one where someone deploys a device in a public area designed to drive away people he unilaterally didn't approve of. Like we're talking about.
Yes I do have a right to be there.
You seem confused on several points. Firstly, this is aimed outside the shop into a public area. Secondly, it is not music, but a device designed to cause discomfort to me which it is entirely reasonable to counter somehow (i.e. make the equipment disfunctional).
I did a short stint as a Maths teacher. The hardest part was trying to remember I was on the other side now (I was trouble at school). We had some construction work going on at the school and there was some sort of crane-mounted pile driving going on so that every five seconds or so, the entire classroom would shake and rattle. Just in one perfect lull in the general chaos that was the bottom year 11 maths set, one kid calls out to another: "'Ere, Darren! Yer mama's coming!"
I have never had to try so hard not to laugh in my life.
Age discrimination preventing them from getting into bars.
I'm going to take this inventor to court for discrimination against the abled.
Kids having kids, that's the problem!
Which section of the population has children earliest and most frequently in life? Those without employment or education.
Everyone needs some meaning and purpose in their lives. If having children is the only purpose left to you, then you do. You say yourself that you had an education and an actual life to get started. Provide these and children will grow up with something else to do than sit around and breed.
I own a gun. If a criminal enters my house to do me harm, I will have no choice but to kill him with this gun. That doesn't mean I want to kill everyone with this gun.
You could always try running away. Unless you're targetted by assassins, then they're after your iPod not you. Better to get you and your familiy (if any) out of there than go after an intruder who is just as likely to be able to shoot you in return.
Besides this device isn't aimed at people in the store - it's aimed at the streets outside, so it's a bad analogy.
Don't be too despondent. I've lived in some pretty destitute areas in the UK, seen plenty of abuse (including happy slapping), but there is still a lot of good here too. Never start thinking of groups of people as some outside group to yourself and the human race (chavs, unemployed, rich people, whatever). Stereotypes get us nowhere and are false anyway. Don't see a dozen 14-17 year olds hassling people and start thinking "kids today." Think - "there's a dozen kids out of how many in this urban area?"
Ignorance ain't bliss and we can always use one more helping hand.
So this is to be used to control access to public areas, then? Sounds like I'd be perfectly justified in smashing one of these devices to bits if it was causing me distress in an area I had a right to be in. Besides - what's wrong with teenagers? Whoever invented this device (if it worked) is a frightened individual.
And ironically, mine went down shortly after posting. I've just been able to reconnect. It's a shame that the parent was modded down Offtopic though whilst I went to +3 Interesting. It might be nice if the parent had posted more than just nonsense? but there was nothing offensive in that alone. We should always question things...
especially if the pope says it's okay.
nonsense?
Africa can certainly produce enough food to feed itself with modern sustainable farming. It's problems have been mostly civil strife and partly a global economic system that makes it financially ordained that cash-crop for sale be grown, rather than a nutritionally balanced range of crops.
The first of these problems wont be fixed by GM crops and the second would be better addressed by fixing the underlying problem rather than producing, say, rice rich in vitamin D (an incomplete solution).
The immediate downsides of GMO farming are twofold: Firstly, an enforced tithe to the patent holders annually, which cannot be escaped from or realistically negotiated for a fair price, seeing as GMO crops cannot be got rid of and cannot be obtained from a competitor. Secondly, an eggs in one-basket situation of genetic mono-culture... google for the Irish potato famine, sometime.
And thirdly (THREE downsides), an ethically fucked up situation in which people must pay for the right to work to feed themselves. Very medieval. You can be sure that African nations are not in a position to fairly negotiate with US corporations.
If they need oxygen and have enough energy for interstellar travel, they'd probably be best off stopping by an ice world (say Europa) and taking Oxygen from the old H2O. Nice and compact (easier than vacuuming up lots of Earth's atmosphere) and probably less filtering. The Sun-Slingshot idea is a great idea but we'd have to be talking ships of a staggering mass before they caused any harm.
I think the concern of the Canadian minister in the original article was not so much that a lack of guns on the moon would make us defenceless against the aliens, but that the presence of weapons in space might make the aliens bother to flatten us.
Even if you can't (or don't) want to learn anything, slaves are always a good thing to have. Especially if they are of "lesser race" so they can be killed or tortured without any guilt if they don't obey you.
We don't need to travel interstellar distances to acquire slaves so I don't see why an alien species would. Allowing for an ethical system that considered slavery okay for "lesser races" akin to humans using beasts of burden, you have to ask what humans would be so much cheaper / better at than automated systems. We've long since replaced horses with tractors, cars and bikes. A more advanced civilisation might have more advanced needs, but are they likely to be looking for the equivalent of horses or the equivalent of cars. Do they want humans solving their technical problems or computers?
Assuming that an alien species did want a biologically based slave race, why come all this way for humans? Give us another fifty years and we will be able to created an engineered sub-race for ourselves if we want (I hope we don't). Therefore, I'd expect aliens to have that capacity too. With human's need for long dormant periods (sleep), slow development cycle (five to six years before being capable of even basic tasks), low reproduction cycle, too weak for heavy tasks, too big for delicate tasks; quite frankly, they aren't worth the shipping costs.
With heavy elements available on countless worlds, the only thing worth plundering Earth for is information, whether philosophical, mathematical, or our DNA. All of which is more efficiently achieved by saying: "can we have that please, here's a high-temperature super-conductor."
I suppose there could be a use for us as entertainment, assuming Aliens had a vaguely similar psychology to us. But if so, then we're probably more fun to watch in our native environment, in which case they're probably absorbing the Internet right now, and I'd just like to say a big "HELLO!" to our friends from Hyperspace and all the fans of "H4rm0ny's Life." Thanks,
-H,.
The Europeans prevailed in many smaller conflicts in the Americas in a similar way. The native Americans did not maximize their own natural advatages...often because they lacked the proper advantage.
What they lacked was unity. If all native american tribes worked together against European invaders, the settlers would have been kicked off the continent. However, the Europeans were able to take the country piece by piece. Now of course modern mankind is all united and could never be susceptible to one faction (let's hypothetically call this entity a "nation") forming alliances, accepting bribes or declaring a neutrality, so aliens couldn't possibly pick and choose their battles at a time scale to suit them.
Aliens trying to take advantage of us and our resources seems much more likely than simple trying to wipe us out.
Interesting question - would a race of beings / being capable of interstellar travel have anything to learn from us as a species? It's hard to imagine us having an edge in Physics. Just about concievable we had some minor insights into Chemistry they could borrow (note I'm basing this on the lowest levels of technology a race would require for interstellar travel). Our biology is the only thing that I can concieve of even being of remotely possible interest to them. More abstract things could be of interest, though. Maybe they're interested in our philosophies and cultural values. Imagine the irritation to the World's rich and powerful, when the super advanced aliens arrive and say "Take us to your musicians."
Saw one of these outside Bordeaux (can't remember where). Unbelievably they were open air near a main road and (the best bit) there were two of them - one signposted men and the other women!
Not contradicting your point, but questioning where gas would not be available. Yes - the article says remote rural areas, but if we can get people to them, then why can't they purchase cylinders of gas or drive a tanker there to a central gas tank locally?