I think when people look back from the future, peer to peer as a generic information distribution methodology rather than just a file sharing system could possibly become worthy of #1, although of course I'm certain that it's not the #1 for CNN right now.
When considering the implications this model could have applied to industries where it has not yet the potential is interesting. For example, people have been talking about a peer to peer energy grid which allows every consumer to also be a producer which combined with hydrogen cells (why aren't these on the list btw???) could cause lots of microproducers to solve the coming energy crisis. You could change communication networks to peer to peer. You could have automated cars running on peer to peer for traffic handling.
I think it has the potential to be one of those fundamentally new interdisciplinary ways of approaching all kinds of problems that has a massive impact on the way we live our lives.
Just like ecommerce wouldn't be where it is today without the porn business pioneering the whole thing, peer to peer born on the back of copyright infringement could become an industry shaker too.
This is even more pronounced if you were to break the states down by urban vs. rural counties. Large amounts of money flow out from urban centers to maintain infrastructure in rural areas that rural people otherwise couldn't afford to maintain themselves.
Do you think it would be a good idea to cut off this giant outflux from urban to rural areas? This is part of the problem with our political divisions. Everyone is just looking for excuses to create "us vs. them" divisions without looking at the actual facts. We're all in this together and things work better when we help shore up each others soft spots.
Republicans like to bitch and moan about welfare recipients when the majority of it goes to them. The only welfare recipients they want to cut off are the democratic ones in the cities.
>Additionally, to stave off the tired "tell that to
> the Iraqis who have died" comments, consider this:
> over 600,000 Iraqis died under the UN-supported
> sanctions, according to Amnesty International and
> Human Rights Campaign, as a direct result of those
> sanctions.
As a result of this war so far we've probably killed an upper estimate of 100,000, *which does not include Fallujah were the heaviest casualties were taken*. That's in a year and a half and this thing will probably continue for at least 4 more. In the meantime, the violence has been escalating rapidly. We'll most likely reach the 600,000 mark at least. We exceeded that by far in Vietnam.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6354133/
Perhaps doing something about changing the way the sanctions worked would have been more effective?
> First of all every government security agency in
> the world believed that Saddam had WMDs. You
> cannot call someone a liar if they act on what
> they believe to be truthful information.
Well, the CIA sure didn't believe it. Mr. Bush ignored them though because Dick Cheney had set up his own intelligence operation that would tell him what he wanted instead of the truth. Do a Google search on "Office of Special Plans"
>...clipped 2nd paragraph - the real question is whether or not that is a good thing in the manner that we have done it, not whether we have done it
> The US government sends more aid to other
> countries than any other country in the world.
> They probably (unsubstantiated) send more aid to
> other countries than the entire EU combined. The
> American people also donate more to charities
> foreign and domestic than any other country in
> the world (and that includes as percent of GDP
> and GNP).
I don't know anything about your second claim, but your first one is definitely not taking GDP into account.
"* Finally, one might note that U.S. foreign aid, which has fallen to the lowest percentage of GDP since World War II and lowest among OECD countries. Last week, the Bush administration rebuffed a global campaign to double levels of foreign aid from wealthy countries."
> First of all every government security agency in
> the world believed that Saddam had WMDs. You
> cannot call someone a liar if they act on what
> they believe to be truthful information.
Well, the CIA sure didn't believe it. Mr. Bush ignored them though because Dick Cheney had set up his own intelligence operation that would tell him what he wanted instead of the truth. Do a Google search on "Office of Special Plans"
> The US government sends more aid to other
> countries than any other country in the world.
> They probably (unsubstantiated) send more aid to
> other countries than the entire EU combined. The
> American people also donate more to charities
> foreign and domestic than any other country in
> the world (and that includes as percent of GDP
> and GNP).
I don't know anything about your second claim, but your first one is definitely not taking GDP into account.
http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/printerfriendlymedi a.php/prmID/127
"* Finally, one might note that U.S. foreign aid, which has fallen to the lowest percentage of GDP since World War II and lowest among OECD countries. Last week, the Bush administration rebuffed a global campaign to double levels of foreign aid from wealthy countries."
Technically, he's not running against Blair. Most americans also probably also don't know that the UK does not directly elect it's prime minister. It sure surprised me when I found out.
I'm sure someone will want to discredit the sources as biased, but if you do so please quote some statistics that are contrary when you do. Otherwise, such a statement wouldn't really address the issue. Also note that many of the statistics are pulled from Bureau of Justice reports.
African americans are convicted for drug related crimes in great disproportion to the frequency with which they commit these crimes relative to other ethnic groups. Further, they are sentenced more harshly relative to other ethnic groups. What do you think is the cause of this severe imbalance in law enforcement and the judicial process, and what can be done to correct the problem?
As a followup question, what effect does this have on the health of democracy in states where a criminal record can render one ineligible to vote?
You have said that recent CIA estimates of the instability and dire situation in Iraq represent the CIA "just guessing." Since you are choosing to disregard the intelligence community's considered assessment of the situation, on what basis do you formulate your contrary assessment of the situation in Iraq?
MMORPGs avoids one of the factors that make OSS less useful for game development. With MMORPGs you have a large and dedicated user base that will play the game consistently over a long period of time. These games can also develop incrementally with the addition of new features, graphic updates, areas, quests, etc. In addition, these games have a much longer lifespan than most other games. How many users does Everquest still have?
What would happen if a MMORPG was open source and had the kind of user-generated content ethos that is more common with MUDs?
The question of whether or not the replicants are human is the obvious one, and really nothing remarkable or new, but the real question the movie is implicitly asking is whether or not we are losing our humanity in the postmodern age. It's laced all throughout the movie but never brought to the surface explicitly like the obvious question is. Just as Frankenstein added a new variable to the archetypal myth of Prometheus (the fire becomes a person), Bladerunner added a new dynamic to the myth of Frankenstein. It is a powerful statement about our society, the way our cities are designed, the way our families and circles of friends interact, the way power is distributed, the way media and transportation infrastructure change social interaction, all focused through the lens of asking at what point we have lost what has made us fundamentally human for hundreds of thousands of years.
It brings to mind the recent slashdot-posted article about the singularity in human evolution that people are predicting may be about to happen. In Blade Runner, it has happened not through the creation of something new, but the loss of something old. In the end, the replicants are just a complex metaphor used to make an observation about today's world. This is the really case for most science fiction and I think that you can't get into the meat of the work until you starting looking at it that way.
By "standard" (whatever that means) economics do you mean the economics of today by which the US is starting to lose its global competitive edge, compared to the "unstandard" economics which proceeded it and gave us that edge? Are you also talking about the 90's dot-bomb boom that created one of the longest recessions of the century?
Now those are biased sources, but so are the ones that say that Reagan was the best...president...evah! When it comes to Reagan, nobody wants to look at the balanced picture, warts and all (including well over 100 indictments for corruption within his administration, indicating that corruption was widespread and endemic to his policies) because in truth he was very polarizing, and perhaps to blame more than anyone else for the strong political polarization we have today. He did some good things, he did some bad things, and where you come down on him has nothing to do with re-writing history. It has to do with what your politics are. Saying that people who don't agree with you are re-writing history is just a cheap and meaningless smear - an attempt to deflect the tough questions so you don't have to face them.
In addition, Reagan was just continuing a policy initiated by Truman. If anyone in the US should get credit for aiding the collapse of the communist regime in the USSR it's Truman, not Reagan. As you point out, Reagan's main contribution was that he didn't change how things were already headed.
Very good point. So he can spend a year in jail just because he is bringing a video camera into a movie theater, whether or not he even uses it. This is a clear case of a law that does not need to exist. It is not a crime by any stretch of the imagination, and when caught actually filming the movie he could have been tried under existing laws. Why does even the RIAA need this law?
Yeah, but he didn't get caught distributing the movie over the internet, just filming it in the theater. Is it okay to punish people for crimes that they may or may not have potentially committed in the future (and without even proof of intent) had they not been arrested before they did it?
All he did is videotape a movie, which is a single instance of copyright violation. He didn't share it with anyone else, so talking about corporate losses due to torrent and network downloads doesn't seem legally applicable to this case to me, but then of course I'm not a legal expert. How is it applicable?
For what it's worth, though, I'm more concerned about the jail term stuck to this law than the fine.
Yeah, and it was never even made freely available, nor the intent to do so displayed. It sounds like all they have him for is taping the movie - not distributing it - so the damages are limited to that one instance, not some wide spread piracy.
"The teen could be charged under a law that went into effect Jan. 1 and makes taking a recording device into a movie theater a crime punishable by up to one year in jail and a maximum fine of $2,500."
Potentially a year in jail for videotaping a movie? He didn't distribute it yet so they can't punish him for more broad piracy issues. A year in jail for a single instance of copyright violation? Could this be argued as a violation of 8th ammendment rights?
Flexcar is a system kind of like the use-and-abandon infrastructure you suggest, although not quite as robust since it still has some vestiges of a car rental format. I think this is an issue of critical mass though. If enough people were committed to using such a system, then the car-swapping could work a lot more efficiently.
http://www.flexcar.com/
A friend of mine uses it to supplement traditional mass transit and it works well for him.
This still doesn't solve some problems though. First the inhumane aspects of automobile related deaths. Second the efficiencies of auto-pilot in reducing congestion, since auto-piloted cars could coordinate for much more efficient vehicle routing. Third the personal convenience of auto-pilot - being able to sit back and read while you await your destination. It would, however, give us more flexibility in rapidly changing energy sources. I would still like to see the driver taken out of the car...
I hope that the automobile will go down as one of the great engineering disasters of history and a strange historical footnote. While the infrastructure impact has been massive economically, the large numbers of deaths every day related to automobile use, the destabilization of international politics cause by oil dependency, and the devastation of the environment are simply a huge disaster.
Current mass transit systems have serious shortcomings that prevent 100% adoption though, so what problems do we need to resolve for a public transportation system to be appealing enough that private transportation is no longer a desirable alternative?
1. It needs to get you there quickly. You shouldn't have to transfer between different lines and different modes of transport and arrive at your destination 45 minutes later when you could have been there in 10 minutes via car.
2. It needs to provide door to door service. You shouldn't have to walk a few blocks, hop in a car, or take a bus, to get to a station and board public transportation.
3. It needs to be cheap. Public transportation already wins here when you factor in all the extended costs of car ownership. Most of the time your car sits unused in a driveway, garage, or parking space, and in the bigger picture that's just money ticking away by the minute in terms of us having a *much* larger fleet of vehicles overall than we need.
4. It needs to always be available. It can't stop running from 12am until 6am.
5. Travel needs to be private/not shared between passengers. You should have a car/coach/capsule that is private for you or you and companions for the duration of your trip.
6. It needs to be comfortable. A public system could have many advantages here, not having to drive is one of the biggest.
7. It needs to be be ubiquitous and extend everywhere. You should be able to go anywhere using the system that you can with a car.
I think all of these criteria could be met by replacing our entire road system, down to the last street and cul-de-sac, with a tube or rail system and having numerous individual cars/capsules that arrive on demand and take you where you want to go, all routed by computers (kind of reminiscent of the old pneumatic tube message systems). The cars/capsules could be privately owned, but I think it would work much better if they were shared/pooled to dramatically reduce the costs. I can think of ways to combine/support both options.
You would only need private/off-grid vehicles for specialized tasks. They could be designed to connect to the grid to get to a location and then detach and run independently at the job site.
I wonder how, cost-wise, this would compare to the entire road and automobile infrastructure, including what we each pay for private car ownership and maintenance. There are lots of interesting implications to this. What effect does it have on the idea of a neighborhood? The commercial strip? What do we do with all of the reclaimed space if roads are replaced by something with a much smaller footprint (do urban homeowners all get their lots extended by several yards or do we create some new system of a public greenspace grid)?
Is this a bad idea? What kinds of systems are being proposed out there for this kind of a broad shift toward something that is more humane, convenient, and cost-effective, then the mess we have today?
Slashdot Mirror
I think when people look back from the future, peer to peer as a generic information distribution methodology rather than just a file sharing system could possibly become worthy of #1, although of course I'm certain that it's not the #1 for CNN right now.
When considering the implications this model could have applied to industries where it has not yet the potential is interesting. For example, people have been talking about a peer to peer energy grid which allows every consumer to also be a producer which combined with hydrogen cells (why aren't these on the list btw???) could cause lots of microproducers to solve the coming energy crisis. You could change communication networks to peer to peer. You could have automated cars running on peer to peer for traffic handling.
I think it has the potential to be one of those fundamentally new interdisciplinary ways of approaching all kinds of problems that has a massive impact on the way we live our lives.
Just like ecommerce wouldn't be where it is today without the porn business pioneering the whole thing, peer to peer born on the back of copyright infringement could become an industry shaker too.
Jude Law is the best replacement I can think of. I think he would do pretty well, actually.
| Democrats are more concerned with city issues. The
| city issues often come at the expense more rural
| areas.
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09
This is even more pronounced if you were to break the states down by urban vs. rural counties. Large amounts of money flow out from urban centers to maintain infrastructure in rural areas that rural people otherwise couldn't afford to maintain themselves.
Do you think it would be a good idea to cut off this giant outflux from urban to rural areas? This is part of the problem with our political divisions. Everyone is just looking for excuses to create "us vs. them" divisions without looking at the actual facts. We're all in this together and things work better when we help shore up each others soft spots.
Republicans like to bitch and moan about welfare recipients when the majority of it goes to them. The only welfare recipients they want to cut off are the democratic ones in the cities.
>Additionally, to stave off the tired "tell that to > the Iraqis who have died" comments, consider this: > over 600,000 Iraqis died under the UN-supported > sanctions, according to Amnesty International and > Human Rights Campaign, as a direct result of those > sanctions. As a result of this war so far we've probably killed an upper estimate of 100,000, *which does not include Fallujah were the heaviest casualties were taken*. That's in a year and a half and this thing will probably continue for at least 4 more. In the meantime, the violence has been escalating rapidly. We'll most likely reach the 600,000 mark at least. We exceeded that by far in Vietnam. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6354133/ Perhaps doing something about changing the way the sanctions worked would have been more effective?
> First of all every government security agency in
e dia.php/prmID/127
> the world believed that Saddam had WMDs. You
> cannot call someone a liar if they act on what
> they believe to be truthful information.
Well, the CIA sure didn't believe it. Mr. Bush ignored them though because Dick Cheney had set up his own intelligence operation that would tell him what he wanted instead of the truth. Do a Google search on "Office of Special Plans"
>...clipped 2nd paragraph - the real question is whether or not that is a good thing in the manner that we have done it, not whether we have done it
> The US government sends more aid to other
> countries than any other country in the world.
> They probably (unsubstantiated) send more aid to
> other countries than the entire EU combined. The
> American people also donate more to charities
> foreign and domestic than any other country in
> the world (and that includes as percent of GDP
> and GNP).
I don't know anything about your second claim, but your first one is definitely not taking GDP into account.
http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/printerfriendlym
"* Finally, one might note that U.S. foreign aid, which has fallen to the lowest percentage of GDP since World War II and lowest among OECD countries. Last week, the Bush administration rebuffed a global campaign to double levels of foreign aid from wealthy countries."
> First of all every government security agency in > the world believed that Saddam had WMDs. You > cannot call someone a liar if they act on what > they believe to be truthful information. Well, the CIA sure didn't believe it. Mr. Bush ignored them though because Dick Cheney had set up his own intelligence operation that would tell him what he wanted instead of the truth. Do a Google search on "Office of Special Plans" > The US government sends more aid to other > countries than any other country in the world. > They probably (unsubstantiated) send more aid to > other countries than the entire EU combined. The > American people also donate more to charities > foreign and domestic than any other country in > the world (and that includes as percent of GDP > and GNP). I don't know anything about your second claim, but your first one is definitely not taking GDP into account. http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/printerfriendlymedi a.php/prmID/127
"* Finally, one might note that U.S. foreign aid, which has fallen to the lowest percentage of GDP since World War II and lowest among OECD countries. Last week, the Bush administration rebuffed a global campaign to double levels of foreign aid from wealthy countries."
Technically, he's not running against Blair. Most americans also probably also don't know that the UK does not directly elect it's prime minister. It sure surprised me when I found out.
I forgot to log in. Sorry. That wasn't meant to be anonymous. It was me.
Good question, and as a corollary: How does the criminalization of an ethnicity effect their self-perception?
Can you back that up?
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/racepris.htm
Here is Human Rights Watch:
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/drugs/war/key-facts .htm
I'm sure someone will want to discredit the sources as biased, but if you do so please quote some statistics that are contrary when you do. Otherwise, such a statement wouldn't really address the issue. Also note that many of the statistics are pulled from Bureau of Justice reports.
By having it both ways himself? Who has a greater responsibility here?
As a followup question, what effect does this have on the health of democracy in states where a criminal record can render one ineligible to vote?
You have said that recent CIA estimates of the instability and dire situation in Iraq represent the CIA "just guessing." Since you are choosing to disregard the intelligence community's considered assessment of the situation, on what basis do you formulate your contrary assessment of the situation in Iraq?
What would happen if a MMORPG was open source and had the kind of user-generated content ethos that is more common with MUDs?
It brings to mind the recent slashdot-posted article about the singularity in human evolution that people are predicting may be about to happen. In Blade Runner, it has happened not through the creation of something new, but the loss of something old. In the end, the replicants are just a complex metaphor used to make an observation about today's world. This is the really case for most science fiction and I think that you can't get into the meat of the work until you starting looking at it that way.
By "standard" (whatever that means) economics do you mean the economics of today by which the US is starting to lose its global competitive edge, compared to the "unstandard" economics which proceeded it and gave us that edge? Are you also talking about the 90's dot-bomb boom that created one of the longest recessions of the century?
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/06/08/ reaganomics/index.html
As regard's Reagan's popularity, it's certainly debateable who is re-writing history.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/06/07/ reagan/index.html
Now those are biased sources, but so are the ones that say that Reagan was the best...president...evah! When it comes to Reagan, nobody wants to look at the balanced picture, warts and all (including well over 100 indictments for corruption within his administration, indicating that corruption was widespread and endemic to his policies) because in truth he was very polarizing, and perhaps to blame more than anyone else for the strong political polarization we have today. He did some good things, he did some bad things, and where you come down on him has nothing to do with re-writing history. It has to do with what your politics are. Saying that people who don't agree with you are re-writing history is just a cheap and meaningless smear - an attempt to deflect the tough questions so you don't have to face them.
The guy who dropped the ball w/Red China. What does this have to do with the USSR and Reagan?
In addition, Reagan was just continuing a policy initiated by Truman. If anyone in the US should get credit for aiding the collapse of the communist regime in the USSR it's Truman, not Reagan. As you point out, Reagan's main contribution was that he didn't change how things were already headed.
Very good point. So he can spend a year in jail just because he is bringing a video camera into a movie theater, whether or not he even uses it. This is a clear case of a law that does not need to exist. It is not a crime by any stretch of the imagination, and when caught actually filming the movie he could have been tried under existing laws. Why does even the RIAA need this law?
Yeah, but he didn't get caught distributing the movie over the internet, just filming it in the theater. Is it okay to punish people for crimes that they may or may not have potentially committed in the future (and without even proof of intent) had they not been arrested before they did it?
All he did is videotape a movie, which is a single instance of copyright violation. He didn't share it with anyone else, so talking about corporate losses due to torrent and network downloads doesn't seem legally applicable to this case to me, but then of course I'm not a legal expert. How is it applicable?
For what it's worth, though, I'm more concerned about the jail term stuck to this law than the fine.
Yeah, and it was never even made freely available, nor the intent to do so displayed. It sounds like all they have him for is taping the movie - not distributing it - so the damages are limited to that one instance, not some wide spread piracy.
"The teen could be charged under a law that went into effect Jan. 1 and makes taking a recording device into a movie theater a crime punishable by up to one year in jail and a maximum fine of $2,500."
Potentially a year in jail for videotaping a movie? He didn't distribute it yet so they can't punish him for more broad piracy issues. A year in jail for a single instance of copyright violation? Could this be argued as a violation of 8th ammendment rights?
http://www.flexcar.com/
A friend of mine uses it to supplement traditional mass transit and it works well for him.
This still doesn't solve some problems though. First the inhumane aspects of automobile related deaths. Second the efficiencies of auto-pilot in reducing congestion, since auto-piloted cars could coordinate for much more efficient vehicle routing. Third the personal convenience of auto-pilot - being able to sit back and read while you await your destination. It would, however, give us more flexibility in rapidly changing energy sources. I would still like to see the driver taken out of the car...
Current mass transit systems have serious shortcomings that prevent 100% adoption though, so what problems do we need to resolve for a public transportation system to be appealing enough that private transportation is no longer a desirable alternative?
1. It needs to get you there quickly. You shouldn't have to transfer between different lines and different modes of transport and arrive at your destination 45 minutes later when you could have been there in 10 minutes via car.
2. It needs to provide door to door service. You shouldn't have to walk a few blocks, hop in a car, or take a bus, to get to a station and board public transportation.
3. It needs to be cheap. Public transportation already wins here when you factor in all the extended costs of car ownership. Most of the time your car sits unused in a driveway, garage, or parking space, and in the bigger picture that's just money ticking away by the minute in terms of us having a *much* larger fleet of vehicles overall than we need.
4. It needs to always be available. It can't stop running from 12am until 6am.
5. Travel needs to be private/not shared between passengers. You should have a car/coach/capsule that is private for you or you and companions for the duration of your trip.
6. It needs to be comfortable. A public system could have many advantages here, not having to drive is one of the biggest.
7. It needs to be be ubiquitous and extend everywhere. You should be able to go anywhere using the system that you can with a car.
I think all of these criteria could be met by replacing our entire road system, down to the last street and cul-de-sac, with a tube or rail system and having numerous individual cars/capsules that arrive on demand and take you where you want to go, all routed by computers (kind of reminiscent of the old pneumatic tube message systems). The cars/capsules could be privately owned, but I think it would work much better if they were shared/pooled to dramatically reduce the costs. I can think of ways to combine/support both options.
You would only need private/off-grid vehicles for specialized tasks. They could be designed to connect to the grid to get to a location and then detach and run independently at the job site.
I wonder how, cost-wise, this would compare to the entire road and automobile infrastructure, including what we each pay for private car ownership and maintenance. There are lots of interesting implications to this. What effect does it have on the idea of a neighborhood? The commercial strip? What do we do with all of the reclaimed space if roads are replaced by something with a much smaller footprint (do urban homeowners all get their lots extended by several yards or do we create some new system of a public greenspace grid)?
Is this a bad idea? What kinds of systems are being proposed out there for this kind of a broad shift toward something that is more humane, convenient, and cost-effective, then the mess we have today?