the ability for the jury to declare a law unenforcible is paramount to a fair and equitable society.
Which makes jury nullification just as worrisome. One of the keys of the judicial branch is it protects the rights of the minority from the will of the majority (eg civil rights in the south during the early 20th century). Through jury nulification you have a small unaccountable group that can suspend the law at their whim through simple majority. Judges meanwhile are still accountable as public servants and can be checked through impeachment.
Re:It doesn't matter what the intention is.
on
Patents vs. Secrecy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's also no secret what is going on in Guantanimo, though without proof since everything is classified it's easy to for people to cover their ears and pretend everything is fine. That said, ultimately most people are more concerned with their day-to-day safety than the ideal of freedom. Those in public service know that they will be held more accountable for a failure of safety than by eroding freedoms. This isn't a recent thing, just look at the internment of Japanese Americans during WW2.
Re:If you can't patent it...
on
Patents vs. Secrecy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Just to play devil's advocate, I see classifying everything more as a "cover your ass" type policy than some high level conspiracy against the US citizens. If information was released under the FOIA that is linked in an incident (eg terrorism) somebody will pay. Most people don't care about the FOIA, something doesn't get released, it's on 60 minutes for 15 minutes, and then people forget about it. One memo linked to an incident and there will be outrage for years about how the goverment failed to protect its people.
Sadly, all but idealists would sacrifice liberty for security.
Not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for, but acousto optic modulators uses acoustic waves to change the refractive properties to diffract the incoming light to a known specific angle. So by sending a pulse through the material the beam changes angle and you can then reflect this part of the beam back.
One year later he's been out of high school for a year and works at the local grocery store behind the butcher block because he was left stranded and confused. He didn't make up his mind about his future in time for college deadlines, and still reads slashdot and their conflicting outlooks on the future.
See the problem was he didn't make a decision. You should always make a decision and go for it, it's better to change direction after making a wrong decision, than to continue not pursue anything at all. Even if he did make a "bad" decision like choose Philosophy as a major, he will still have access to college facilities (eg job fairs) to understand the CS job prospects, already being in the system he can change majors (and maybe bring some new perspectives from his philosphy education). Worst case he graduates with a degree in philosphy and can be a teacher or manager at the grocery store instead of just bagging groceries.
Nano technology is what's called a "disruptive" technology. That means that it will enable people to do things for pennies on the dollar that used to cost billions
Disruptive technology != doing things for pennies on the dollar. Disruptive technologies by their nature have a high barrier for entry (it is not an evolution of current technlogy), but it is high for both established and unestablished players in the market.
The only problem is that when a company can't compete off of it's "natural" barriers to entry, then it's only option is to compete off of "regulatory" barriers to entry
No it can leverage it's existing capital (since they probably have more than new players), and mindshare (eg brand name, existing marketing). The big players still have advantages with disruptive technology, just not as much of an advantage.
There are too many billions of dollars to be made by moving to nano-materials (you think car companies wouldn't like to have stronger, lighterweight materials). It will happen, even if some things can be made for pennies on the dollar, it just means we will find more complex things to make to charge more.
O2 comes to mind, it's such a small molecule it even permeates the lung tissues and dissolves into the blood ferchrissake!
So does CO! The problem is with nanoparticles, is it's difficult to understand enough to comprehend how either their physical or chemical nature will impact at the microscopic level, we then have to try to figure out how that will manifest itself at the macroscopic level.
Besides, people forming their own companies because of the treatment in the big sweatshops happens all the time, it's just that fresh meat arrives much faster than the industry can eat it.
That begs the question, even if you could organize a union, the attraction of the industry to new talent (what young programmer dreams of writing word processor software for a living), means it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the lock on labor to have widespread industry leverage. Essentially you will end up with a union that is a loose affiliation, with limited power like the Screen Actors Guild rather than one that has much more influence in the industry like UAW.
Looking through the comments there seems to be this constant notion that unionizing or other attempts to gain worker's rights will lead to outsourcing. So what?
Because it defeats the purpose of unionizing. Unless you can organize the entire labor pool of the world, there is no point to unionizing, since it puts you at a competitive disadvantage.
Are we all supposed to lay low and obey our masters because we're at their whim and could be replaced at any time?
It's sad that you view companies as our "masters." They are employers, exchanging money for our services. Rather than unionizing the workforce for leverage in negotiating with employers, organize the workforce to compete against them. Start your own company. Too often we look at unionizing to negotiate with "the man" let's start our own companies and do away with him altogether!
Economics to me is philosophical today. How else can you account for nearly every American putting faith in legal counterfeiting (inflation) and legal bubble-building (artificially low interest rates and artificially high loan acceptance due to FNMA)?
I think you mean psychological. Where the mindset of the people has as much impact on the economy as the underlying fundamentals. As for "legal counterfeiting" and artificial bubble-building the alternative is "artificial shortages" (deflation), and wider boom-bust swings, where the rich get richer even moreso than what occurs today.
Actually, I would consider the study of economics more along the lines of meteorology. Both are equally competent at predicting the future.
I agree. Just as the basics of meteorology are ground in physics, economics also is based on some fundamental rules that have been demonstrated. It's not necessarily the fundamentals are flawed, but the size of the overall system makes it difficult to completely comprehend all variables.
Wasn't the point of the Merger to increase revenue of both companies rather than to shut one down
No the point of a merger is to increase profitability of both companies.
Of course mergers are never a benefit to the consumer, buying companies shareholders, or the employees of both companies (one gets laid off while the other picks up the slack with no pay raise).
What a short-sighted attitude, mergers != less competition. Sometimes it's better for consumers to get savings from economies of scale at the sacrifice of some competition. As long as an industry continues to have healthy competition (in this case Gamestop goes against Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Amazon.com, etc.), when two companies merge the new company can be more aggressive relative to the others in the industry, and actually increase competition. The buying company shareholders can benefit long term by holding a bigger, more profitable company. As for the employees, yes it sucks they lose their jobs, but it's because their jobs are redundant. Jobs exist not to employ people, but to fill a need.
Personally, I think business mergers should be outlawed... It decreases competition and actually hurts capitalism (the economy) in general. Only indviduals should only be allowed to own stock in corporations and corporations should be forbidden in owning stock in other corporations.
As I mentioned before, sometimes it hurts competition, sometimes it helps competition. Forbidding corporations from making investments in other companies hurts capitalism too. Sometimes there are startups with great ideas that need to raise capital, sometimes larger companies need to acquire specific technology to move forward. Many times the big guy, the little guy, and even the consumer wins.
Then again, the stockmarket is a good way to ruin a good company with a good business model, but shitty investors who are out to suck the comapny dry of all its venture capital.
Then again the stockmarket is a good way to make a good company with a good business model even better, and reduce risk to investors. Venture capitalists are typically much more money hungry than stock investors. They are looking for much greater rates of return because they are taking more risk.
and also, for the most part bugs AREN'T costly. 99% of software no one dies if it crashes. and software that IS that critical does get that kind of treatment and never does fail.
Exactly, it's the customer's responsibility to demand a certain level of quality they feel comfortable with and pay accordingly. Just as you don't use the same cheap metal for a skyscraper that you do for a back yard fence. There are markets for high quality programs as well as low quality programs, it's up to the customer to find their comfort level.
There was a time ~1999-2000, when at every month at least one new innovative, fresh and enjoyable masterpiece of a game was guaranteed to come out.
In 1999 and 2000 was the end of the playstation lifecycle, and people were complaining about a lack of "innovative" games. People always complain not enough great games come out.
Last summers drought of halfway decent games was indicative of this malaise
And what about last holiday season, where there were lots of great games all coming out at the same time. I'm thinking the summer drought was more indicative that, because of increased expense, games need to be released during the holiday season.
fixation on online play(for more revenue),
Online play is something more and more gamers are demanding.
The survey questions may be leading to incorrect conclusions. As people grow up typically video games become less important. Asking a group if their interest in video games is declining, may just reflect that 17 year olds are less interested in video games than 13 year olds; not necessarily that 13 year olds in 2005 are less interested than 13 year olds in 2000.
Then why is so much precious shelf space devoted to water and dirt?
Value added product differentiation. That is why companies are attacking digital and not the analog loophole. The reason people buy water and not just collect rain water in a bucket is convenience and quality. Now if distilled water fell from the sky into your glass at your whim, would you ever buy bottled water? Digital downloads have same quality, better convenience, at no cost.
It would be nice if video game employees would be properly compensated for their hard work and dedication as opposed to just working at $13-18 / hour if you converted their salaries to wages.
Video game employees should be classified properly as hourly workers, which may or may not increase how much money they take home. You can't say X job deserves Y money, when there is a long line of people who would gladly do the job for less. Many programmers would work for free just for the pride of getting their names on a video game.
FYI- there is *NO* such thing as Intellectual Property. It doesn't exist. It's not a material object.
There is no such thing as privacy. It doesn't exist. It's not a material object. You can't invade somebody's privacy like invading something real like their home./sarcasm
We can legally define things that otherwise do not exist. You can just keep playing the "I don't believe it game" same as those hippies who don't think people can own land.
To say that someone *owns* an idea is absurd. To say that someone owns the way the idea was implemented in a physical manifestation is not.
But IP grants "exclusive rights," not ownership. Anybody can look at your idea, reverse engineer(DMCA has not been upheld), do analysis, time/format shift, make backups, etc. They just can't distribute a copy of it.
Electro-chemical reactions still have desires, patterns that they attempt to impose on the rest of the universe. And we are in fact able to impose those patterns on the universe at will. Being conscious means that you can analyze and adapt to the universe around you.
Concious thought is still just a bunch of electrical impulses running through your brain. The reason it seems magical, is because it is so complex we cannot fully understand the cause-effect mechanisms. Let me give you an example.
There is a plate of food in front of a person. They can decide to eat, or not eat it. How is the decision made? Well a bunch of electrical impulses run through the brain, the nervous system, maybe trigerring chemical release (eg salivating), all working to to decide whether or not they like the taste, how hungry they are, is the food safe, etc. The only reason we have the illusion of choice is because we don't fully comprehend how the brain works. It's just like why we can't predict the weather. It's not because "mother nature" makes arbitrary decisions. It's because the system is just so complex, we can't fully model it to get a completely accurate stimulus-response prediciton.
If we knew the state of the brain like if the person was starving for the last 10 days, it would be easy to predict the response which would be they would eat the food. Unfortunately to fully understand everything a person does you have to fully understand the brain of the person, and it's history (since the brain creates new connections based on stimulus).
Our soldiers must be prevented from carrying out their task, even though it is hopelessly improbable that all 100,000 would fail.
You say hopelessly improbable, except your plan is flawed. You're sending people into the past, not changing their x,y,z coordinates in the universe. What happens if it's June when you send them back in time to December. The earth is on the other side of the sun, you have just created 100,000 floating bodies in space; nobody in the past knows what happened as space is big enough to hide those bodies. Let's say you recognize the isseue and send them out 10:00AM March 4, 2010 back to 10:00AM March 4, 2000. Ooops, the earth is moving around the galaxy, the galaxy is moving through the universe, etc. Those soldiers are still floating in space millions of miles away.
There are alot of possible reasons why we may not know about time travel: 1. Time travel is impossible 2. Time travel is possible, but our cause-effect understanding of the universe prevents us from knowing how to do it 3. Time travel is possible, somebody created a machine, gone in the past, and the universe has "conspired" so we just haven't noticed their presence. (eg. The bottle is still there waiting at the bottom of the tar pit, or the 100k soldiers floating in space) 4. As you said alternate timelines
Which is more likely--that the universe conspires through strange twists of fate to thwart every attempt to change the past, no matter how minor, or the universe simply does not permit (practical) time travel?
You use the word "conspire" as if the universe has an active role in thwarting your action. What actually is being described is the timeline already took into account your actions, you're just playing out your role. You can't change the past because you were part of the past.
If I knew the future, I would try to change it. There is no future you could show me that would not make me want to try to change it (at least in some small way), simply to see if it could be done. Free will or not, this is my nature.
Your nature to try and change the universe is based on the electro-chemical reactions in your brain. Unless there is some "free will" that is outside of the governing of the universe, your actions would be fixed. For a given set of stimulus you would have a set of reactions that would be predictable. You couldn't change the future or the past, all you can do is play your part.
Kick out the evil oppressive jerks, get your freedom, but now you no longer have the experience to make things smooth.
And what you end up with is some other evil opprssive jerks take over. You either get those who just want to move into the power vaccuum to be in control, or you get those who have a "vision" of how things should be and work at all costs (including the wellbeing of those they want to help) to make that vision come true. All democracy does is have that transition without all the bombs and shooting and stuff. The average people always end up being ruled by some "elite" class.
I wonder when they decided to change the spelling.
Change from Old Spanish to Modern Spanish. X had the "heh" sound (as in Mexico), but has transitioned to a "sh" sound (as in Ixtacihuatl)/"gs" sound as in explorar. Words have changed to reflect the new usage, but names proper names are blurry, so you will see Mexico, Mejico; Xavier, Javier; Quijote, Quixote
Slashdot Mirror
the ability for the jury to declare a law unenforcible is paramount to a fair and equitable society.
Which makes jury nullification just as worrisome. One of the keys of the judicial branch is it protects the rights of the minority from the will of the majority (eg civil rights in the south during the early 20th century). Through jury nulification you have a small unaccountable group that can suspend the law at their whim through simple majority. Judges meanwhile are still accountable as public servants and can be checked through impeachment.
It's also no secret what is going on in Guantanimo, though without proof since everything is classified it's easy to for people to cover their ears and pretend everything is fine.
That said, ultimately most people are more concerned with their day-to-day safety than the ideal of freedom. Those in public service know that they will be held more accountable for a failure of safety than by eroding freedoms. This isn't a recent thing, just look at the internment of Japanese Americans during WW2.
Just to play devil's advocate, I see classifying everything more as a "cover your ass" type policy than some high level conspiracy against the US citizens.
If information was released under the FOIA that is linked in an incident (eg terrorism) somebody will pay. Most people don't care about the FOIA, something doesn't get released, it's on 60 minutes for 15 minutes, and then people forget about it. One memo linked to an incident and there will be outrage for years about how the goverment failed to protect its people.
Sadly, all but idealists would sacrifice liberty for security.
Not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for, but acousto optic modulators uses acoustic waves to change the refractive properties to diffract the incoming light to a known specific angle. So by sending a pulse through the material the beam changes angle and you can then reflect this part of the beam back.
One year later he's been out of high school for a year and works at the local grocery store behind the butcher block because he was left stranded and confused. He didn't make up his mind about his future in time for college deadlines, and still reads slashdot and their conflicting outlooks on the future.
See the problem was he didn't make a decision. You should always make a decision and go for it, it's better to change direction after making a wrong decision, than to continue not pursue anything at all. Even if he did make a "bad" decision like choose Philosophy as a major, he will still have access to college facilities (eg job fairs) to understand the CS job prospects, already being in the system he can change majors (and maybe bring some new perspectives from his philosphy education). Worst case he graduates with a degree in philosphy and can be a teacher or manager at the grocery store instead of just bagging groceries.
Nano technology is what's called a "disruptive" technology. That means that it will enable people to do things for pennies on the dollar that used to cost billions
Disruptive technology != doing things for pennies on the dollar. Disruptive technologies by their nature have a high barrier for entry (it is not an evolution of current technlogy), but it is high for both established and unestablished players in the market.
The only problem is that when a company can't compete off of it's "natural" barriers to entry, then it's only option is to compete off of "regulatory" barriers to entry
No it can leverage it's existing capital (since they probably have more than new players), and mindshare (eg brand name, existing marketing). The big players still have advantages with disruptive technology, just not as much of an advantage.
There are too many billions of dollars to be made by moving to nano-materials (you think car companies wouldn't like to have stronger, lighterweight materials). It will happen, even if some things can be made for pennies on the dollar, it just means we will find more complex things to make to charge more.
O2 comes to mind, it's such a small molecule it even permeates the lung tissues and dissolves into the blood ferchrissake!
So does CO! The problem is with nanoparticles, is it's difficult to understand enough to comprehend how either their physical or chemical nature will impact at the microscopic level, we then have to try to figure out how that will manifest itself at the macroscopic level.
. . . blaim . . . ?
Too much beer
Besides, people forming their own companies because of the treatment in the big sweatshops happens all the time, it's just that fresh meat arrives much faster than the industry can eat it.
That begs the question, even if you could organize a union, the attraction of the industry to new talent (what young programmer dreams of writing word processor software for a living), means it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the lock on labor to have widespread industry leverage.
Essentially you will end up with a union that is a loose affiliation, with limited power like the Screen Actors Guild rather than one that has much more influence in the industry like UAW.
Looking through the comments there seems to be this constant notion that unionizing or other attempts to gain worker's rights will lead to outsourcing. So what?
Because it defeats the purpose of unionizing. Unless you can organize the entire labor pool of the world, there is no point to unionizing, since it puts you at a competitive disadvantage.
Are we all supposed to lay low and obey our masters because we're at their whim and could be replaced at any time?
It's sad that you view companies as our "masters." They are employers, exchanging money for our services. Rather than unionizing the workforce for leverage in negotiating with employers, organize the workforce to compete against them. Start your own company. Too often we look at unionizing to negotiate with "the man" let's start our own companies and do away with him altogether!
Economics to me is philosophical today. How else can you account for nearly every American putting faith in legal counterfeiting (inflation) and legal bubble-building (artificially low interest rates and artificially high loan acceptance due to FNMA)?
I think you mean psychological. Where the mindset of the people has as much impact on the economy as the underlying fundamentals.
As for "legal counterfeiting" and artificial bubble-building the alternative is "artificial shortages" (deflation), and wider boom-bust swings, where the rich get richer even moreso than what occurs today.
Actually, I would consider the study of economics more along the lines of meteorology. Both are equally competent at predicting the future.
I agree. Just as the basics of meteorology are ground in physics, economics also is based on some fundamental rules that have been demonstrated. It's not necessarily the fundamentals are flawed, but the size of the overall system makes it difficult to completely comprehend all variables.
Wasn't the point of the Merger to increase revenue of both companies rather than to shut one down
No the point of a merger is to increase profitability of both companies.
Of course mergers are never a benefit to the consumer, buying companies shareholders, or the employees of both companies (one gets laid off while the other picks up the slack with no pay raise).
What a short-sighted attitude, mergers != less competition. Sometimes it's better for consumers to get savings from economies of scale at the sacrifice of some competition. As long as an industry continues to have healthy competition (in this case Gamestop goes against Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Amazon.com, etc.), when two companies merge the new company can be more aggressive relative to the others in the industry, and actually increase competition.
The buying company shareholders can benefit long term by holding a bigger, more profitable company. As for the employees, yes it sucks they lose their jobs, but it's because their jobs are redundant. Jobs exist not to employ people, but to fill a need.
Personally, I think business mergers should be outlawed... It decreases competition and actually hurts capitalism (the economy) in general. Only indviduals should only be allowed to own stock in corporations and corporations should be forbidden in owning stock in other corporations.
As I mentioned before, sometimes it hurts competition, sometimes it helps competition. Forbidding corporations from making investments in other companies hurts capitalism too. Sometimes there are startups with great ideas that need to raise capital, sometimes larger companies need to acquire specific technology to move forward. Many times the big guy, the little guy, and even the consumer wins.
Then again, the stockmarket is a good way to ruin a good company with a good business model, but shitty investors who are out to suck the comapny dry of all its venture capital.
Then again the stockmarket is a good way to make a good company with a good business model even better, and reduce risk to investors. Venture capitalists are typically much more money hungry than stock investors. They are looking for much greater rates of return because they are taking more risk.
and also, for the most part bugs AREN'T costly. 99% of software no one dies if it crashes. and software that IS that critical does get that kind of treatment and never does fail.
Exactly, it's the customer's responsibility to demand a certain level of quality they feel comfortable with and pay accordingly. Just as you don't use the same cheap metal for a skyscraper that you do for a back yard fence. There are markets for high quality programs as well as low quality programs, it's up to the customer to find their comfort level.
Is this episode of Nova brought to us by a grant by the Chubb Corporation?
There was a time ~1999-2000, when at every month at least one new innovative, fresh and enjoyable masterpiece of a game was guaranteed to come out.
In 1999 and 2000 was the end of the playstation lifecycle, and people were complaining about a lack of "innovative" games. People always complain not enough great games come out.
Last summers drought of halfway decent games was indicative of this malaise
And what about last holiday season, where there were lots of great games all coming out at the same time. I'm thinking the summer drought was more indicative that, because of increased expense, games need to be released during the holiday season.
fixation on online play(for more revenue),
Online play is something more and more gamers are demanding.
The survey questions may be leading to incorrect conclusions. As people grow up typically video games become less important. Asking a group if their interest in video games is declining, may just reflect that 17 year olds are less interested in video games than 13 year olds; not necessarily that 13 year olds in 2005 are less interested than 13 year olds in 2000.
Then why is so much precious shelf space devoted to water and dirt?
Value added product differentiation. That is why companies are attacking digital and not the analog loophole. The reason people buy water and not just collect rain water in a bucket is convenience and quality. Now if distilled water fell from the sky into your glass at your whim, would you ever buy bottled water? Digital downloads have same quality, better convenience, at no cost.
The free cheese whets my appetite and makes me more inclined to buy a half pound of the stuff for later.
What if you can feed yourself on free cheese, will you still be inclined to buy it? Most people aren't going to pay for something they can get free.
It would be nice if video game employees would be properly compensated for their hard work and dedication as opposed to just working at $13-18 / hour if you converted their salaries to wages.
Video game employees should be classified properly as hourly workers, which may or may not increase how much money they take home. You can't say X job deserves Y money, when there is a long line of people who would gladly do the job for less. Many programmers would work for free just for the pride of getting their names on a video game.
FYI- there is *NO* such thing as Intellectual Property. It doesn't exist. It's not a material object.
/sarcasm
There is no such thing as privacy. It doesn't exist. It's not a material object. You can't invade somebody's privacy like invading something real like their home.
We can legally define things that otherwise do not exist. You can just keep playing the "I don't believe it game" same as those hippies who don't think people can own land.
To say that someone *owns* an idea is absurd. To say that someone owns the way the idea was implemented in a physical manifestation is not.
But IP grants "exclusive rights," not ownership. Anybody can look at your idea, reverse engineer(DMCA has not been upheld), do analysis, time/format shift, make backups, etc. They just can't distribute a copy of it.
Electro-chemical reactions still have desires, patterns that they attempt to impose on the rest of the universe. And we are in fact able to impose those patterns on the universe at will. Being conscious means that you can analyze and adapt to the universe around you.
Concious thought is still just a bunch of electrical impulses running through your brain. The reason it seems magical, is because it is so complex we cannot fully understand the cause-effect mechanisms. Let me give you an example.
There is a plate of food in front of a person. They can decide to eat, or not eat it. How is the decision made? Well a bunch of electrical impulses run through the brain, the nervous system, maybe trigerring chemical release (eg salivating), all working to to decide whether or not they like the taste, how hungry they are, is the food safe, etc. The only reason we have the illusion of choice is because we don't fully comprehend how the brain works.
It's just like why we can't predict the weather. It's not because "mother nature" makes arbitrary decisions. It's because the system is just so complex, we can't fully model it to get a completely accurate stimulus-response prediciton.
If we knew the state of the brain like if the person was starving for the last 10 days, it would be easy to predict the response which would be they would eat the food. Unfortunately to fully understand everything a person does you have to fully understand the brain of the person, and it's history (since the brain creates new connections based on stimulus).
Our soldiers must be prevented from carrying out their task, even though it is hopelessly improbable that all 100,000 would fail.
You say hopelessly improbable, except your plan is flawed. You're sending people into the past, not changing their x,y,z coordinates in the universe. What happens if it's June when you send them back in time to December. The earth is on the other side of the sun, you have just created 100,000 floating bodies in space; nobody in the past knows what happened as space is big enough to hide those bodies. Let's say you recognize the isseue and send them out 10:00AM March 4, 2010 back to 10:00AM March 4, 2000. Ooops, the earth is moving around the galaxy, the galaxy is moving through the universe, etc. Those soldiers are still floating in space millions of miles away.
There are alot of possible reasons why we may not know about time travel:
1. Time travel is impossible
2. Time travel is possible, but our cause-effect understanding of the universe prevents us from knowing how to do it
3. Time travel is possible, somebody created a machine, gone in the past, and the universe has "conspired" so we just haven't noticed their presence. (eg. The bottle is still there waiting at the bottom of the tar pit, or the 100k soldiers floating in space)
4. As you said alternate timelines
Which is more likely--that the universe conspires through strange twists of fate to thwart every attempt to change the past, no matter how minor, or the universe simply does not permit (practical) time travel?
You use the word "conspire" as if the universe has an active role in thwarting your action. What actually is being described is the timeline already took into account your actions, you're just playing out your role. You can't change the past because you were part of the past.
If I knew the future, I would try to change it. There is no future you could show me that would not make me want to try to change it (at least in some small way), simply to see if it could be done. Free will or not, this is my nature.
Your nature to try and change the universe is based on the electro-chemical reactions in your brain. Unless there is some "free will" that is outside of the governing of the universe, your actions would be fixed. For a given set of stimulus you would have a set of reactions that would be predictable. You couldn't change the future or the past, all you can do is play your part.
Kick out the evil oppressive jerks, get your freedom, but now you no longer have the experience to make things smooth.
And what you end up with is some other evil opprssive jerks take over. You either get those who just want to move into the power vaccuum to be in control, or you get those who have a "vision" of how things should be and work at all costs (including the wellbeing of those they want to help) to make that vision come true.
All democracy does is have that transition without all the bombs and shooting and stuff. The average people always end up being ruled by some "elite" class.
I wonder when they decided to change the spelling.
Change from Old Spanish to Modern Spanish. X had the "heh" sound (as in Mexico), but has transitioned to a "sh" sound (as in Ixtacihuatl)/"gs" sound as in explorar. Words have changed to reflect the new usage, but names proper names are blurry, so you will see Mexico, Mejico; Xavier, Javier; Quijote, Quixote