Yea I read effervescent as well. For a moment I thought the article was about researchers who had managed to genetically engineer sharks to live in soda.
Considering Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Sun, Cisco, HP, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and a myriad of other companies with massive reach into other countries your statement about growth is simply asinine. There is no slavery in this country. I grew up with a middle income family bordering poverty at times; I wanted a car, I got out and found a job so I could buy the car. I bought the car, started a business with no initial capital. I financed myself through high school then went to college where I flew into debt. Now I'm out of college making damn good money with a clear view of what's ahead being debt free in two years and starting my company back up now that I'm 3000 miles away from where I grew up. To call that slavery is absurd.
I think you've completely missed my point. While you very well may be happy with your life, and I'm sure there are many like you as well, the vast majority of people arent aware of just how repressive the entirety of the system is. You may be debt free soon, but you'd be in a tiny majority once you get there. A man wiser than I once said that "debt is the slavery of the free". It was also said that "None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free."
As for Somalia and Kosovo sure we had other motives for intervening but it was to directly help one side getting slaughtered. Just like WWII only on a smaller scale. Deciding which countries to intervene in should be a public debate. No one suggested all moves were right or even that most were. Only that doing something is better than doing nothing. Isolationism doesn't work.
I'm not sure how you managed, but you've completely missed my point again. I am not advocating isolationism. I am advocating a non-invasive, non-exploitative foreign policy. I'll put this as simply as I can: Stopping massacres is good. Interfering to secure your own resources is bad.
The U.S. government directly decides who we get involved with but when enough people disagree with this they get voted out and course slowly shifts. Takes time to convince enough of the 300 million people in this country that action should change course.
Oh come on. You're not one of the fools who thinks that democracy is still functional in the US are you? The last election showed the rest of the world that the US is not a democracy at all because the vote is so easily manipulable by indirect means. Even if it wasn't the rest of the world is now aware that US citizens do *not* know whats good for them, and should have their country taken over and a new system of government instituted. Kinda like what the US is doing to Iraq at the moment. Before you get all huffy, that's not a serious comment, but a throwback to my initial comment in this thread.
I don't even know why anyone takes government seriously when they say they'll shut down something like this. That they'll just push it out of public view is, to me, not even doubtful.
You, my friend, know nothing of economics. You talk of growth, when all that has happened in the last hundred years is work hours have lengthened, disposable incomes as a fraction of total income have dropped, national debt has soared, retirement age has increased etc etc. Growth has nothing to do with it. It's about re-instituting global slavery, only this time they call it "market forces" and the slave-masters are the rulers of the private sector.
As for the supposed interventions that you talk about that were necessary, it's total BS. Ask yourself how the US government decides *which* countries to intervene in, and why. Take a look, a close honest look, and you'll find that no country is invaded and no action is taken unless there is political, economic or strategic capital to be made. There is no such thing as altruism in global politics, and anyone who thinks there is, is a fool.
Ethics are not absolute and vary from person to person. It is the job of the parents to teach and instill their idea of ethics into their own children. It is the responsibility of the school to educate, not to teach ethics or morality.
You're right, I shouldn't lay the blame on schools. However, in the western countries that I've had the chance to observe, parents have precious little time with their kids, say, weekends and school holidays, and the bulk of their education is done by schools. Education, at least to my understanding, *includes* ethics and morality, and I don't believe in this post modern rubbish about ethics, morality and everything else being relative. Everyone agrees stealing is wrong. Everyone agrees honesty is good. Everyone agrees in honor and justice and patience. While the specific manifestations of these ideas may vary, the underlying concepts themselves are static and uniform. Regardless, modern western society seems to actively discourage people from getting involved in the socio-political arena by ignoring these things and leaving kids to find their way in a world flooded with reality television, sport, MTV and other forms of mental novocaine.
Not sure you should speak for an entire country - I am American and the way you describe your family situation is exactly how I would describe mine.
Well I've never been to America, I'm talking about "western" culture. I know that in Australia and the UK (I live in Aus and have many family members living in the UK), a family like mine (and yours I guess) would be the minority, not the majority. I think (but as I said I've never been so I can't be sure) that in the US, the social situation would be similar to Aus and the UK. Family is not revered as the paramount and most basic social bond in the way it is in eastern cultures. The things I've seen people do to family and call it "just business" in the west make my blood run cold. Here they say "you shouldn't mix business with family". Why? Because you can't trust family? In India, the opposite is true, there the most successful businesses are those run by families, because family members there trust each other implicitly.
Worst example ever. I am South African, and the events there are the very reason I believe what I believe. International pressure had little to do with the 1994 bloodless revolution, it was all internal. Sure, black activists sought refuge elsewhere, but the apartheid government was not put under much real pressure from outside. Yes, there constant reprimands from overseas, and there were sanctions, but none of these led to the downfall of the apartheid state, as it was (giving credit where credit is due) incredibly good at being self-sufficient, was immensely rich from diamond and gold exports as well as weapons sales (South Africa was and still is a major exporter of arms) and manged to get everything it needed from the quiet dealings it had with the same governments that decried its domestic policies. If you really think that South Africa fell because the US made a few movies about how bad the apartheid regime was then you probably also think that Saddam got all his weapons from the commies.
Umm... I'm not really referring to anything specific, but I guess when I think of the western system being broken three things stick out:
The total absence of any form of ethics in society, and the failure of schools to actually instill ethical values in students, opting rather to overwhelm them with sterilized information and a highly politicized but totally depraved morality.
The atrocious state of exploitative finance whereby money always flows uphill into the hands of the rich via the new system of slavery that we call "the banking system". Look into non-western forms of finance (such as Islamic finance) and you'll see that it's far more broken then you could possibly imagine.
The destruction of the family cell as the fundamental unit making up the societal structure. Look at Indian culture, watch a few of those family Bollywood movies, and you'll see how valued family is to that culture. If you know any traditional Indian families, see if you can spend some time with them and you'll see how enriching family can be. Indian culture isn't the only one that values family these days, it just sticks out to me as I am of Indian descent (although I now live in the west) and whenever I go back for a visit I am blown away by how close their lives are and how much more fulfilling it is to always have people around you that you can trust and rely on implicitly.
I've lived in numerous places, I've made it my life mission to get to know as much of the full gamut of human existence as possible.
East Asia only has the same problems that we have, because we export our problems, all wrapped up in a nice neat little package called "globalization".
I don't suppose anyone would agree with me if I said that we should just let the people in that country deal with their government the way they see fit? There are many places around the world right now that see the inbred offspring of the private sector and government in the US as a de-facto totalitarian state, but if anyone decided to assist in freeing the American people from the yokes of the capitalism cum fascism system, they'd get labeled "terrorist" on short order.
Here's a novel idea: Leave other countries and societies alone. It didn't work in Vietnam, it resulted in untold misery and suffering in Chile and its causing the same suffering in Afghanistan and Iraq. Interfering in other peoples' lives, even if you *do* mean well (which governments never do), very rarely works, if ever.
Actually, Japanese and indeed many other eastern civilizations had many of the economics problems of today solved. Some of these problems are so pervasive that people in the west just take for granted that they are fundamental limitations of humankind. Thanks to the west and its fundamentally broken social model upon which its economic and financial systems are based, ancient, long ago solved problems are rearing their ugly heads again.
Perhaps Japan has realized the folly in copying the West and its dizzyingly high but historically fleeting civilizational success and are attempting to reverse the cultural damage done to their society over the last half century or so. Oh wait, we're talking about internet stuff... right, right. Sorry I got a bit carried away there.
Firefox corrected some of the kitchensinkisms of Mozilla.
And then, as soon as Mozilla Suite was discontinued, it promptly replicated the whole kitchen sink mentality, somehow adding everything that's *not* useful in a stand alone browser (e.g., profles) and leaving things out that are (e.g., a reasonably useful download manager).
And lets not forget that when development happens, native fauna is endangered with resources are constrained and their resource consumption is restricted.
Lemme get this straight. We buy stuff from them, do stuff to it, and then sell it back to them at a profit. You think stopping this would be a good idea because...?
As I said, the word "light" has broad usage that is not always correct and sometimes contradictory. It stems from the fact that most people don't know that "light" is only part of the same spectrum as X-Rays, gamma rays, microwaves, radio waves etc. It's a case of common misunderstandings leading to common misrepresentations. A man wiser than myself once said "the limits of my language are the limits of my world".
Slashdot Mirror
We're also aware that /. is run by Americans, and that Americans aren't aware that there are any Universities in Canada.
Mods: That's a joke. That's "haha" as distinctly opposed to "die troll scumbag take this -1 and then we'll see who has the last laugh!".
Anything like this is easy if the Uni gives you its yearly showoff budget.
Yea I read effervescent as well. For a moment I thought the article was about researchers who had managed to genetically engineer sharks to live in soda.
I think you've completely missed my point. While you very well may be happy with your life, and I'm sure there are many like you as well, the vast majority of people arent aware of just how repressive the entirety of the system is. You may be debt free soon, but you'd be in a tiny majority once you get there. A man wiser than I once said that "debt is the slavery of the free". It was also said that "None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free."
As for Somalia and Kosovo sure we had other motives for intervening but it was to directly help one side getting slaughtered. Just like WWII only on a smaller scale. Deciding which countries to intervene in should be a public debate. No one suggested all moves were right or even that most were. Only that doing something is better than doing nothing. Isolationism doesn't work.I'm not sure how you managed, but you've completely missed my point again. I am not advocating isolationism. I am advocating a non-invasive, non-exploitative foreign policy. I'll put this as simply as I can: Stopping massacres is good. Interfering to secure your own resources is bad.
Oh come on. You're not one of the fools who thinks that democracy is still functional in the US are you? The last election showed the rest of the world that the US is not a democracy at all because the vote is so easily manipulable by indirect means. Even if it wasn't the rest of the world is now aware that US citizens do *not* know whats good for them, and should have their country taken over and a new system of government instituted. Kinda like what the US is doing to Iraq at the moment. Before you get all huffy, that's not a serious comment, but a throwback to my initial comment in this thread.
I don't even know why anyone takes government seriously when they say they'll shut down something like this. That they'll just push it out of public view is, to me, not even doubtful.
"economy depends on growth"
You, my friend, know nothing of economics. You talk of growth, when all that has happened in the last hundred years is work hours have lengthened, disposable incomes as a fraction of total income have dropped, national debt has soared, retirement age has increased etc etc. Growth has nothing to do with it. It's about re-instituting global slavery, only this time they call it "market forces" and the slave-masters are the rulers of the private sector.
As for the supposed interventions that you talk about that were necessary, it's total BS. Ask yourself how the US government decides *which* countries to intervene in, and why. Take a look, a close honest look, and you'll find that no country is invaded and no action is taken unless there is political, economic or strategic capital to be made. There is no such thing as altruism in global politics, and anyone who thinks there is, is a fool.
It really shouldn't be a fireable offense. Unless of course you don't wash your hands before getting back to food preparation.
Bad analogies are like slightly overripe peaches.
You're right, I shouldn't lay the blame on schools. However, in the western countries that I've had the chance to observe, parents have precious little time with their kids, say, weekends and school holidays, and the bulk of their education is done by schools. Education, at least to my understanding, *includes* ethics and morality, and I don't believe in this post modern rubbish about ethics, morality and everything else being relative. Everyone agrees stealing is wrong. Everyone agrees honesty is good. Everyone agrees in honor and justice and patience. While the specific manifestations of these ideas may vary, the underlying concepts themselves are static and uniform. Regardless, modern western society seems to actively discourage people from getting involved in the socio-political arena by ignoring these things and leaving kids to find their way in a world flooded with reality television, sport, MTV and other forms of mental novocaine.
Well I've never been to America, I'm talking about "western" culture. I know that in Australia and the UK (I live in Aus and have many family members living in the UK), a family like mine (and yours I guess) would be the minority, not the majority. I think (but as I said I've never been so I can't be sure) that in the US, the social situation would be similar to Aus and the UK. Family is not revered as the paramount and most basic social bond in the way it is in eastern cultures. The things I've seen people do to family and call it "just business" in the west make my blood run cold. Here they say "you shouldn't mix business with family". Why? Because you can't trust family? In India, the opposite is true, there the most successful businesses are those run by families, because family members there trust each other implicitly.
Worst example ever. I am South African, and the events there are the very reason I believe what I believe. International pressure had little to do with the 1994 bloodless revolution, it was all internal. Sure, black activists sought refuge elsewhere, but the apartheid government was not put under much real pressure from outside. Yes, there constant reprimands from overseas, and there were sanctions, but none of these led to the downfall of the apartheid state, as it was (giving credit where credit is due) incredibly good at being self-sufficient, was immensely rich from diamond and gold exports as well as weapons sales (South Africa was and still is a major exporter of arms) and manged to get everything it needed from the quiet dealings it had with the same governments that decried its domestic policies. If you really think that South Africa fell because the US made a few movies about how bad the apartheid regime was then you probably also think that Saddam got all his weapons from the commies.
Umm... I'm not really referring to anything specific, but I guess when I think of the western system being broken three things stick out:
I've lived in numerous places, I've made it my life mission to get to know as much of the full gamut of human existence as possible.
East Asia only has the same problems that we have, because we export our problems, all wrapped up in a nice neat little package called "globalization".
I don't suppose anyone would agree with me if I said that we should just let the people in that country deal with their government the way they see fit? There are many places around the world right now that see the inbred offspring of the private sector and government in the US as a de-facto totalitarian state, but if anyone decided to assist in freeing the American people from the yokes of the capitalism cum fascism system, they'd get labeled "terrorist" on short order. Here's a novel idea: Leave other countries and societies alone. It didn't work in Vietnam, it resulted in untold misery and suffering in Chile and its causing the same suffering in Afghanistan and Iraq. Interfering in other peoples' lives, even if you *do* mean well (which governments never do), very rarely works, if ever.
So, you're saying that putting in profiles into Firefox was as a debug tool? Seriously, dude, wtf.
Actually, Japanese and indeed many other eastern civilizations had many of the economics problems of today solved. Some of these problems are so pervasive that people in the west just take for granted that they are fundamental limitations of humankind. Thanks to the west and its fundamentally broken social model upon which its economic and financial systems are based, ancient, long ago solved problems are rearing their ugly heads again.
Perhaps Japan has realized the folly in copying the West and its dizzyingly high but historically fleeting civilizational success and are attempting to reverse the cultural damage done to their society over the last half century or so. Oh wait, we're talking about internet stuff... right, right. Sorry I got a bit carried away there.
And then, as soon as Mozilla Suite was discontinued, it promptly replicated the whole kitchen sink mentality, somehow adding everything that's *not* useful in a stand alone browser (e.g., profles) and leaving things out that are (e.g., a reasonably useful download manager).
Just when you thought every goatse joke had been made, you leave an opening like that. (Heh, "opening").
And lets not forget that when development happens, native fauna is endangered with resources are constrained and their resource consumption is restricted.
Hey, there's no problem with putting an opera house when enough people come there for safari. Just look, it worked for Sydney!
Lemme get this straight. We buy stuff from them, do stuff to it, and then sell it back to them at a profit. You think stopping this would be a good idea because...?
"That's a pretty snobbish thing to say." I believe you just proved his point.
It's just as technically wrong, and also just as conversationally acceptable.
As I said, the word "light" has broad usage that is not always correct and sometimes contradictory. It stems from the fact that most people don't know that "light" is only part of the same spectrum as X-Rays, gamma rays, microwaves, radio waves etc. It's a case of common misunderstandings leading to common misrepresentations. A man wiser than myself once said "the limits of my language are the limits of my world".
Dude, if you think atoms are weird, put down that electron microscope and go meet a girl. Now there's a *real* mystery.
Also FTFA, now you can actually *reply* to someone and still claim FRIST PSOT!