It isn't the *amount* that is disturbing: it is the curve of change, the *rate* of change, that is disturbing. Using the known data (including hundreds of thousands of years of ice cores), there is no precedence for the rate of change we are currently experiencing.
As far as a few degrees C: every erg of additional energy we store on earth help contribute to larger, more devastating storms, for instance. Every fraction of a degree increase allows pests such as beetles survive the winter cold in places like Alaska, allowing them to decimate millions of acres of pine trees in the summer.
Life itself is not fragile, just as your body is not fragile. Ecosystems are fragile. These little changes we are experiencing now will transform the earth a little. And if the *rate of change* does not decrease, the changes will get more dramatic.
The more *different* music people buy, the worse it is for the RIAA associates. Consider: if people by about 100M records a year (a number I just made up whole-cloth for illustory purposes), is it better for the RIAA members to sell 10,000 each of 10,000 records, or 5M each of 20 records?
And is it better for them to have new types of music (rap or grunge, for instance) popping up, or to have music that all sounds the same? Considering that it's difficult to select the next hot-selling group or musician if it's a "new" style of music, I suspect they want it all to sound the same.
The entire point of the RIAA controlling radio playlists is to push the music of a few select people, from a narrow style. That's partly why "country" sounds so much like pop these days, I think, because of the homogenizing affect of the RIAA.
But maybe I'm just overestimating their power, and underestimating the lack of musical taste of most of America.
More importantly, do you think it will ever gain traction among corporate users, or is its glitzy Aero interface destined to make it mainly a consumer OS?"
You're joking, right?
I hope so. Otherwise, you're not real observant. Of *course* it'll gain traction among corporate users. Because they have not fucking choice! What part of "vendor lock-in" is hard to grasp?
See, too many companies have millions of dollars of infrastructure tied up in MS-Windows, and other Microsoftware. They are not going to replace it overnight. And, by the time they really start to feel the burn, the worst will be over (at least as far as up-front cost goes: the pain never truly ends, but that's true no matter what). New PCs will come with MS-Vista (the 'MS' is to distinguish it from the health-care package that's been around for 20 years). Corporations will soon not have a choice. It'll be MS-Vista or nothing.
How many times do we have to go through this? We had this same debate when MS-Windows XP came out. This isn't our year. Maybe next year, but not this year.
Microsoft might be dying (I believe it is), but it takes a long, long time for a giant to decompose.
Really, he's suggesting that we shouldn't have cars that only let you go the minimum speed limit.
Using Mary Bono's analogy, DRM is more like a car that will only let you go 20kmh, even on the freeway. If we continue this analogy, people should get arrested for breaking copyright.
This analogy is really quite good: almost everyone speeds. There are very few people who only go the posted limit. Very few are really caught. Those caught are handed a minor rebuke, unless they do it a lot. Police let most speeders go by, as they are only speeding by a little bit. They wait to catch the big ones, the fellow doing 120kmh in a 90kmh zone.
Mary Bono should listen to herself talk. I bet she breaks the speed limit.
There are two reasons to have a database: fast search ability, and to ensure your data is cohesive, complete, and correct. A good RDBMS will allow you to code the *information* logic (rather than "business logic") into the datastore. That way, even if you have two or three or a dozen different parts accessing the same pieces of data, you can make sure they treat the data the same way.
That's one of the differences between a good RDBMS like MySQL, and a great one, like PostgreSQL. Stored procedures, triggers, and rules are there to enforce data integrity.
There's also an added benefit that stored procedures in some languages, like pl/pgsql in PostgreSQL, allow the RDBMS to create a better query plan over the whole procedure, making it more efficient than an external procedure that does the same thing.
This is one of the fundamentals of database design. Anyone who doesn't build referential integrity into their database isn't designing a database. They're simply using the RDBMS to cache values. This is handy feature, truly. But don't think it's the only thing an RDBMS does.
From the time people started bringing their PCs into work because the IT department ruled the minicomputers, this has been happening. The users are usually the first to start the revolution, and the entrenched "experts" are the last to figure it out. I remember how hard corporations fought against Apples, Commodores, and PCs in the '80s, until they learned to embrace them.
The *only* way to lock down information is to go back to the old idea of centrally-managed systems. Even that doesn't stop users from printing hardcopies, of course, but it helps cut down on the loss of massive amounts of information.
But, if you want to know why Microsoft is having no problem pushing DRM'd documents, look no further than corporate control of information. Never mind that the only way it will work is to turn every PC into essentially a dumb terminal, and not allow people to use anything other than Microsoft-approved hardware and software. Corporations want to put the genie back in the bottle, and Microsoft has given them the promise they wanted to hear.
In the end, corporations will spend a lot to curtail this, only to turn around and embrace it later. If your business methods don't hold up to the reality of evolving technology, it might be your business methods that are wrong, not the technology.
Of course, I'm just a dumb-ass IT guy. What the fuck do I know?
I figure at least some of the spam in my inbox is coded messages to terrorist cells. Think about it: steganographic images, code words in seemingly-random text, etc, mass-mailed to millions of people. It's easy to get on spam lists without raising suspicion, and those that send out spam are already on the legal fringe, and so try to avoid being noticed.
That's just one idea for using electronic communications. There are many others.
If the government were serious about combating terrorism, it would shut down the spam networks post-haste. Of course, a war on spam would certainly be as effective as a war on drugs, or a war on terrorism, so my inbox feels better already.
So I show a tendency to attend anti-Blair rallies. I suppose that'll flag me as a terrorist.
Meanwhile, real terrorists (the very, very few that actually exist) will lie low, meeting in areas where they *don't* use their ID cards, spending their moneys on tikka massala and otherwise proving how very British they are. Doesn't the government understand that profiling doesn't work? It distracts from the real indicator of a criminal: committing a crime.
And the instant somebody h4x0r5 the system, the system becomes obviously dangerous, rather than just dangerous.
I hope the US gets a system just like this. It seems Britain is trying to take our Stupidest Government In The World title.
I mean, I can make it sound like evil fascist DRM wielding maniacs out to rip us off in one breath and make it out to be a proper way to ensure the capitalistic market is protected while reserving the rights of the people who make the media in the next breath.
Not convincingly, you can't.
First, you'll have to convince me that one can "own" an idea, or even an expression, the same way they can own a car, or a knife, or a gold-plated frisbee. And that'll be a hard sell, my friend. I doubt very much you could convince me that DRM has anything to do with capitalism, and everything to do with greed and the desire to control citizens.
The attitude you express is part of the reason I distrust capitalism. Like communism, it sounds good on paper, but there's just no fucking way it can work. Human nature gets in the way every time.
You seem to have a solid grasp on science and rational thinking in general. How is it that you're still a Christian, given that religion is superstitious, irrational, and non-provable?
Because they are two different domains?
Science is about the naturalistic world, the world in which quarks dominate the very small, and gravity dominates the very large. It is about deep time, and deeper knowledge.
Religion explores the *why* of it all, the deeper meanings behind the quarks, and gravity, and the nature of thought and self-awareness. For some, it is the foundation of morality, which science has not fully addressed.
Science is about knowledge. Religion is about understanding.
(Note: I do not believe in God. There is much science does not answer, but human compassion and the desire to see the universe up close provides the only morality I need. But I understand where religion comes from. I just don't understand how folks turn religion into dogma.)
Alaskans might like that. There's always a secession movement going on, but it's usually because the rest of the country passes laws like this, not t'other way around. Alaska is a strange mix of independent, liberal, conservative, and crackhead -- and that pretty much defines every single person. It's just the ratio of the mix that changes.
I miss Alaska. It's the best state in the union, and deserves better than Stevens and Murkowski (father and daughter).
Exactly. In fact, it's exactly the opposite: capitalism rewards those who are the most greedy, who are willing to fuck others over for their own gain, and those who are able to manipulate the environment in which things are produced, purchased, and sold.
Just because it appears to be the fairest workable economic system at this time doesn't mean it's good, or even really fair. And it doesn't mean that others can't game the system to their advantage (which is true of every known economic system).
When lives are at stake due to lighted panels flipping you off as hard as they can, an entire city shuts down for a day. When lives are at stake because of evil, greedy fucks who run big corporations, people yawn, and say that's the way it should be.
Call me a cynic, but I really don't like people. We deserve a pandemic. We deserve ecological devastation (drought, famine, pestilence, that sort of thing). As long as our own greed allows us to fuck over other people, we deserve what we get.
You have many fields of science, and much bickering between them, etc. But it will never happen that physics turns out to be "right," thus making chemistry, biology, sociology (okay, not really a science), and psychology wrong.
Uhm. You do realize, most of these fields dovetail together quite nicely? There's very little inter-disciplinary bickering? You do know this, right?
Physics is not "right." Biology is not "right." There are hypothesis that are right, and hypothesis that are wrong, but they are not "Physics," or "biology." They are just merely "hypothesis."
Usually, physics is right, because it is the fundament of chemistry, which is a huge part of biology, which contributes largely to sociology. It's all a matter of scale.
I think I get what you're trying to say, but the "should be" clause bothers me. It sounds like you think you have some kind of entitlement to a world where computing works exactly the way you would like it to. I get the impression you would prefer that software developers should be compelled by some higher power to make computing the way you wish it were. Like you resent Bill Gates for going out and selling an operating system that doesn't perform according to your ideals.
Actually, we *should* live in a world where computers interoperate seamlessly, independent of OS or application. We *should* be farther along in our computing world, but Microsoft has actively set us back at least a decade. We *shouldn't* have to live in a world were corporations feel they are entitled to fuck over customers just because they can. We *deserve* better, as people, and as society.
We also deserve to live in a world with no child abuse; in a world where kids don't get a kick out of duct-taping a puppy's snout and paws, and baking it alive in the oven (true event). We *deserve* this, because we are *better* than this. Or, at least, we *should* be better than this.
But we aren't. And we don't. It isn't so much entitlement, it's hope and expectation. *Should* doesn't necessarily mean we expect entitlement. It means we expect better, and are disappointed when other aren't able to live up to our ideals of humanity.
At least, that's how I read the "should" in the GP post.
The man's not an idiot, no matter what you might think.
For certain definitions of "idiot," he is an idiot.
He presents himself as a visionary computer geek, when in fact he is simply a ruthless businessman who happened to be in the right place at the right time: at the beginning of the personal computer revolution (which started in the Altair days, not the IBM PC days), he was one of the few people with a business bent who understood that PCs were the next big thing.
The other person at the time with a fair knack for business: Steve Jobs.
Bill Gates has been making predictions and promises for years. Very few of either the predictions or promises come true. Very few. Did you read the first edition of The Road Ahead? Even at the time it was published, it was out-of-date. His concept of the future was pretty much like the past, only with racing stripes.
He missed the Internet, focusing instead on MSN: he thought the AOL model was the way to go.
He missed the DAP market.
He didn't even see the social aspect of the internet until it was too late.
He basically missed out on every single major revolution in computers, coming in only after the market has been established. So, as a computer geek, he is an idiot. As a business man, he's a fucking great big hungry cat, say of the lion variety. But as a geek, he's a fucking idiot.
As far as his philanthropy goes: back in the day, not long after he became the world's richest man, there were a bunch of articles describing what a tightwad he was. He gave almost nothing to charity, especially with respect to his immense wealth. The clincher came when he was outspent by almost 2 to 1 by Larry Ellison, who had half (or less) of the wealth of Gates. I don't know if you noticed, but Gates doesn't like being outdone by anyone. That's part of what makes him a ruthless business man. So, I suspect those negative articles kinda stuck in his craw.
It was also around the time that Gates got married.
There's a reason they call it the "Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation."
And it doesn't really matter anyway. He has a lot of making up to do before the good he does outweighs the harm he has already done.
Isn't it funny? People get all defensive about MS-Windows to the point of name-calling. Think they might be compensating for an under-developed platform?
Sounds like a Truther to me. We need to believe that there was a conspiracy of a magnitude that spanned numerous people who were able to coordinate illegal and treasonous actions. People who planned and coordinated a coup of 10 million votes....secretly. Pass the cool aid.
10 million votes is nothing. It's not like it's ten million voters. Just their votes.
I know if I was admin of several thousand paperless electronic voting systems, I could probably swing the vote easily enough. And I'm just one person. You don't require a large conspiracy, just a few key people.
You seem to have this idea that all good things come from government. "most major scientic breakthroughs"?? It is to laugh.
Hm. Many medical breakthroughs are done at universities with (you guessed it) heavy government funding. Government funding of DoD and NASA has led to many of the conveniences of modern life. Fact is, government funding contributes to a significant part of the economy. The government is directly and indirectly responsible for a great deal of scientific knowledge, either through directed research, or general grants.
Pure capitalism isn't very good for the economy, the government, or the people. It's too much like anarchy, in which no law applies. Capitalism requires regulation, just as a well-functioning society requires laws. (I believe a well-functioning society should also respect liberty and freedom, as well, but that's another debate entirely.)
An interesting discussion might be about the amount, type, and quality of government regulation. But, that's a debate for another day. Say, a day in which the separation of corporations and state is guarded as zealously as the separation of church and state. On that day, we can start talking about corporate regulations and the rule of law.
People teach teach themselves. If they don't want to learn, they won't. Period. Full stop.
Teachers can do two things: present information in an engaging, open manner. And they can inspire students to *want* to learn. That's all a teacher can really do. If they think they are "teaching," they are absolutely mistaken about their powers.
It might be the duty of the teacher to ensure the student learns something, but that really isn't within their power. They can try to get the student to learn, but the student is the active participant. Or not.
If you want an education, you must get it yourself, or you won't get it at all-- no matter how fine the institution is.
Although GWB and his cronies are apparently in love with the concept of pre-crime, my understanding is that there is NO WAY to catch someone BEFORE they commit the crime - using cameras or any other means. I fail to see the point of the above statement.
Caught in the act? Red-handed? With their pants down? Hands in the cookie jar?
Any of that ring a bell?
Cameras will certainly catch more criminals. We are *all* criminals; if we aren't now, we will be as new laws are passed. And new laws pass all the time, laws prohibiting us from cursing in public, spitting our gum out on the sidewalk, etc. There are many laws on the book that are unenforceable today that would be trivial to enforce with cameras: laws against carrying ice-cream in your pocket on Sunday, laws disallowing you from bartering, laws allowing jail time for leering at a woman.
I don't trust those in charge of the cameras enough to allow them to monitor my daily life. That's why the US Constitution was written as an enumeration of federal rights, rather than individual rights. The 9th amendment specifically states the constitution doesn't limit individual rights, and that anything not listed is pretty much a right, up to the states and cities to decide upon.
But, that's where a lot of this is being pushed, through the states and the cities and the counties and whatnot. Oh, well. I guess liberty was too good to last.
Slashdot Mirror
This is just wonderful. Politicians will listen to Bill Gates, but not to actual teachers.
No wonder education in America is fucked.
It isn't the *amount* that is disturbing: it is the curve of change, the *rate* of change, that is disturbing. Using the known data (including hundreds of thousands of years of ice cores), there is no precedence for the rate of change we are currently experiencing.
As far as a few degrees C: every erg of additional energy we store on earth help contribute to larger, more devastating storms, for instance. Every fraction of a degree increase allows pests such as beetles survive the winter cold in places like Alaska, allowing them to decimate millions of acres of pine trees in the summer.
Life itself is not fragile, just as your body is not fragile. Ecosystems are fragile. These little changes we are experiencing now will transform the earth a little. And if the *rate of change* does not decrease, the changes will get more dramatic.
The more *different* music people buy, the worse it is for the RIAA associates. Consider: if people by about 100M records a year (a number I just made up whole-cloth for illustory purposes), is it better for the RIAA members to sell 10,000 each of 10,000 records, or 5M each of 20 records?
And is it better for them to have new types of music (rap or grunge, for instance) popping up, or to have music that all sounds the same? Considering that it's difficult to select the next hot-selling group or musician if it's a "new" style of music, I suspect they want it all to sound the same.
The entire point of the RIAA controlling radio playlists is to push the music of a few select people, from a narrow style. That's partly why "country" sounds so much like pop these days, I think, because of the homogenizing affect of the RIAA.
But maybe I'm just overestimating their power, and underestimating the lack of musical taste of most of America.
More importantly, do you think it will ever gain traction among corporate users, or is its glitzy Aero interface destined to make it mainly a consumer OS?"
You're joking, right?
I hope so. Otherwise, you're not real observant. Of *course* it'll gain traction among corporate users. Because they have not fucking choice! What part of "vendor lock-in" is hard to grasp?
See, too many companies have millions of dollars of infrastructure tied up in MS-Windows, and other Microsoftware. They are not going to replace it overnight. And, by the time they really start to feel the burn, the worst will be over (at least as far as up-front cost goes: the pain never truly ends, but that's true no matter what). New PCs will come with MS-Vista (the 'MS' is to distinguish it from the health-care package that's been around for 20 years). Corporations will soon not have a choice. It'll be MS-Vista or nothing.
How many times do we have to go through this? We had this same debate when MS-Windows XP came out. This isn't our year. Maybe next year, but not this year.
Microsoft might be dying (I believe it is), but it takes a long, long time for a giant to decompose.
Really, he's suggesting that we shouldn't have cars that only let you go the minimum speed limit.
Using Mary Bono's analogy, DRM is more like a car that will only let you go 20kmh, even on the freeway. If we continue this analogy, people should get arrested for breaking copyright.
This analogy is really quite good: almost everyone speeds. There are very few people who only go the posted limit. Very few are really caught. Those caught are handed a minor rebuke, unless they do it a lot. Police let most speeders go by, as they are only speeding by a little bit. They wait to catch the big ones, the fellow doing 120kmh in a 90kmh zone.
Mary Bono should listen to herself talk. I bet she breaks the speed limit.
The problem comes with referential integrity.
There are two reasons to have a database: fast search ability, and to ensure your data is cohesive, complete, and correct. A good RDBMS will allow you to code the *information* logic (rather than "business logic") into the datastore. That way, even if you have two or three or a dozen different parts accessing the same pieces of data, you can make sure they treat the data the same way.
That's one of the differences between a good RDBMS like MySQL, and a great one, like PostgreSQL. Stored procedures, triggers, and rules are there to enforce data integrity.
There's also an added benefit that stored procedures in some languages, like pl/pgsql in PostgreSQL, allow the RDBMS to create a better query plan over the whole procedure, making it more efficient than an external procedure that does the same thing.
This is one of the fundamentals of database design. Anyone who doesn't build referential integrity into their database isn't designing a database. They're simply using the RDBMS to cache values. This is handy feature, truly. But don't think it's the only thing an RDBMS does.
From the time people started bringing their PCs into work because the IT department ruled the minicomputers, this has been happening. The users are usually the first to start the revolution, and the entrenched "experts" are the last to figure it out. I remember how hard corporations fought against Apples, Commodores, and PCs in the '80s, until they learned to embrace them.
The *only* way to lock down information is to go back to the old idea of centrally-managed systems. Even that doesn't stop users from printing hardcopies, of course, but it helps cut down on the loss of massive amounts of information.
But, if you want to know why Microsoft is having no problem pushing DRM'd documents, look no further than corporate control of information. Never mind that the only way it will work is to turn every PC into essentially a dumb terminal, and not allow people to use anything other than Microsoft-approved hardware and software. Corporations want to put the genie back in the bottle, and Microsoft has given them the promise they wanted to hear.
In the end, corporations will spend a lot to curtail this, only to turn around and embrace it later. If your business methods don't hold up to the reality of evolving technology, it might be your business methods that are wrong, not the technology.
Of course, I'm just a dumb-ass IT guy. What the fuck do I know?
I figure at least some of the spam in my inbox is coded messages to terrorist cells. Think about it: steganographic images, code words in seemingly-random text, etc, mass-mailed to millions of people. It's easy to get on spam lists without raising suspicion, and those that send out spam are already on the legal fringe, and so try to avoid being noticed.
That's just one idea for using electronic communications. There are many others.
If the government were serious about combating terrorism, it would shut down the spam networks post-haste. Of course, a war on spam would certainly be as effective as a war on drugs, or a war on terrorism, so my inbox feels better already.
When measures which are truly invasive are proposed I'll care and be out there marching for it.
From the sound of it, you wouldn't know something "invasive" if it crawled up your ass and took a picture of your upper GI.
I personally feel listening in on my phone conversations and tracking where I'm driving is just a tich invasive. But I *am* kinda sensitive that way.
So I show a tendency to attend anti-Blair rallies. I suppose that'll flag me as a terrorist.
Meanwhile, real terrorists (the very, very few that actually exist) will lie low, meeting in areas where they *don't* use their ID cards, spending their moneys on tikka massala and otherwise proving how very British they are. Doesn't the government understand that profiling doesn't work? It distracts from the real indicator of a criminal: committing a crime.
And the instant somebody h4x0r5 the system, the system becomes obviously dangerous, rather than just dangerous.
I hope the US gets a system just like this. It seems Britain is trying to take our Stupidest Government In The World title.
I mean, I can make it sound like evil fascist DRM wielding maniacs out to rip us off in one breath and make it out to be a proper way to ensure the capitalistic market is protected while reserving the rights of the people who make the media in the next breath.
Not convincingly, you can't.
First, you'll have to convince me that one can "own" an idea, or even an expression, the same way they can own a car, or a knife, or a gold-plated frisbee. And that'll be a hard sell, my friend. I doubt very much you could convince me that DRM has anything to do with capitalism, and everything to do with greed and the desire to control citizens.
The attitude you express is part of the reason I distrust capitalism. Like communism, it sounds good on paper, but there's just no fucking way it can work. Human nature gets in the way every time.
You seem to have a solid grasp on science and rational thinking in general. How is it that you're still a Christian, given that religion is superstitious, irrational, and non-provable?
Because they are two different domains?
Science is about the naturalistic world, the world in which quarks dominate the very small, and gravity dominates the very large. It is about deep time, and deeper knowledge.
Religion explores the *why* of it all, the deeper meanings behind the quarks, and gravity, and the nature of thought and self-awareness. For some, it is the foundation of morality, which science has not fully addressed.
Science is about knowledge. Religion is about understanding.
(Note: I do not believe in God. There is much science does not answer, but human compassion and the desire to see the universe up close provides the only morality I need. But I understand where religion comes from. I just don't understand how folks turn religion into dogma.)
Alaskans might like that. There's always a secession movement going on, but it's usually because the rest of the country passes laws like this, not t'other way around. Alaska is a strange mix of independent, liberal, conservative, and crackhead -- and that pretty much defines every single person. It's just the ratio of the mix that changes.
I miss Alaska. It's the best state in the union, and deserves better than Stevens and Murkowski (father and daughter).
I've just added it to my petition to shoot anyone who uses "impact" when they mean "use." People who use "utilize" would be be mandatorily sterilized.
The market is not known for rewarding altruism.
Exactly. In fact, it's exactly the opposite: capitalism rewards those who are the most greedy, who are willing to fuck others over for their own gain, and those who are able to manipulate the environment in which things are produced, purchased, and sold.
Just because it appears to be the fairest workable economic system at this time doesn't mean it's good, or even really fair. And it doesn't mean that others can't game the system to their advantage (which is true of every known economic system).
When lives are at stake due to lighted panels flipping you off as hard as they can, an entire city shuts down for a day. When lives are at stake because of evil, greedy fucks who run big corporations, people yawn, and say that's the way it should be.
Call me a cynic, but I really don't like people. We deserve a pandemic. We deserve ecological devastation (drought, famine, pestilence, that sort of thing). As long as our own greed allows us to fuck over other people, we deserve what we get.
As a counterexample, look at science.
Yes, let's.
You have many fields of science, and much bickering between them, etc. But it will never happen that physics turns out to be "right," thus making chemistry, biology, sociology (okay, not really a science), and psychology wrong.
Uhm. You do realize, most of these fields dovetail together quite nicely? There's very little inter-disciplinary bickering? You do know this, right?
Physics is not "right." Biology is not "right." There are hypothesis that are right, and hypothesis that are wrong, but they are not "Physics," or "biology." They are just merely "hypothesis."
Usually, physics is right, because it is the fundament of chemistry, which is a huge part of biology, which contributes largely to sociology. It's all a matter of scale.
Thanks for letting me clear that up.
I think I get what you're trying to say, but the "should be" clause bothers me. It sounds like you think you have some kind of entitlement to a world where computing works exactly the way you would like it to. I get the impression you would prefer that software developers should be compelled by some higher power to make computing the way you wish it were. Like you resent Bill Gates for going out and selling an operating system that doesn't perform according to your ideals.
Actually, we *should* live in a world where computers interoperate seamlessly, independent of OS or application. We *should* be farther along in our computing world, but Microsoft has actively set us back at least a decade. We *shouldn't* have to live in a world were corporations feel they are entitled to fuck over customers just because they can. We *deserve* better, as people, and as society.
We also deserve to live in a world with no child abuse; in a world where kids don't get a kick out of duct-taping a puppy's snout and paws, and baking it alive in the oven (true event). We *deserve* this, because we are *better* than this. Or, at least, we *should* be better than this.
But we aren't. And we don't. It isn't so much entitlement, it's hope and expectation. *Should* doesn't necessarily mean we expect entitlement. It means we expect better, and are disappointed when other aren't able to live up to our ideals of humanity.
At least, that's how I read the "should" in the GP post.
The man's not an idiot, no matter what you might think.
For certain definitions of "idiot," he is an idiot.
He presents himself as a visionary computer geek, when in fact he is simply a ruthless businessman who happened to be in the right place at the right time: at the beginning of the personal computer revolution (which started in the Altair days, not the IBM PC days), he was one of the few people with a business bent who understood that PCs were the next big thing.
The other person at the time with a fair knack for business: Steve Jobs.
Bill Gates has been making predictions and promises for years. Very few of either the predictions or promises come true. Very few. Did you read the first edition of The Road Ahead? Even at the time it was published, it was out-of-date. His concept of the future was pretty much like the past, only with racing stripes.
He missed the Internet, focusing instead on MSN: he thought the AOL model was the way to go.
He missed the DAP market.
He didn't even see the social aspect of the internet until it was too late.
He basically missed out on every single major revolution in computers, coming in only after the market has been established. So, as a computer geek, he is an idiot. As a business man, he's a fucking great big hungry cat, say of the lion variety. But as a geek, he's a fucking idiot.
As far as his philanthropy goes: back in the day, not long after he became the world's richest man, there were a bunch of articles describing what a tightwad he was. He gave almost nothing to charity, especially with respect to his immense wealth. The clincher came when he was outspent by almost 2 to 1 by Larry Ellison, who had half (or less) of the wealth of Gates. I don't know if you noticed, but Gates doesn't like being outdone by anyone. That's part of what makes him a ruthless business man. So, I suspect those negative articles kinda stuck in his craw.
It was also around the time that Gates got married.
There's a reason they call it the "Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation."
And it doesn't really matter anyway. He has a lot of making up to do before the good he does outweighs the harm he has already done.
Or did you mean that because there are McDonalds restaurants everywhere...people go in there to eat rather than go to a grocery store?
Hmmm..
Of course, your username *is* FatSean.
Isn't it funny? People get all defensive about MS-Windows to the point of name-calling. Think they might be compensating for an under-developed platform?
Sounds like a Truther to me. We need to believe that there was a conspiracy of a magnitude that spanned numerous people who were able to coordinate illegal and treasonous actions. People who planned and coordinated a coup of 10 million votes....secretly. Pass the cool aid.
10 million votes is nothing. It's not like it's ten million voters. Just their votes.
I know if I was admin of several thousand paperless electronic voting systems, I could probably swing the vote easily enough. And I'm just one person. You don't require a large conspiracy, just a few key people.
Sleep tight.
You seem to have this idea that all good things come from government. "most major scientic breakthroughs"?? It is to laugh.
Hm. Many medical breakthroughs are done at universities with (you guessed it) heavy government funding. Government funding of DoD and NASA has led to many of the conveniences of modern life. Fact is, government funding contributes to a significant part of the economy. The government is directly and indirectly responsible for a great deal of scientific knowledge, either through directed research, or general grants.
Pure capitalism isn't very good for the economy, the government, or the people. It's too much like anarchy, in which no law applies. Capitalism requires regulation, just as a well-functioning society requires laws. (I believe a well-functioning society should also respect liberty and freedom, as well, but that's another debate entirely.)
An interesting discussion might be about the amount, type, and quality of government regulation. But, that's a debate for another day. Say, a day in which the separation of corporations and state is guarded as zealously as the separation of church and state. On that day, we can start talking about corporate regulations and the rule of law.
I believe they currently need a warrant. They have dogs sniff, the dogs go berserk, they have probable cause, and they get a warrant.
I believe that's how it's currently done. I may be wrong.
Bush is saying they don't need probably cause-- they can just open it.
The problem is, teachers can't teach. They can't.
People teach teach themselves. If they don't want to learn, they won't. Period. Full stop.
Teachers can do two things: present information in an engaging, open manner. And they can inspire students to *want* to learn. That's all a teacher can really do. If they think they are "teaching," they are absolutely mistaken about their powers.
It might be the duty of the teacher to ensure the student learns something, but that really isn't within their power. They can try to get the student to learn, but the student is the active participant. Or not.
If you want an education, you must get it yourself, or you won't get it at all-- no matter how fine the institution is.
Although GWB and his cronies are apparently in love with the concept of pre-crime, my understanding is that there is NO WAY to catch someone BEFORE they commit the crime - using cameras or any other means. I fail to see the point of the above statement.
Caught in the act? Red-handed? With their pants down? Hands in the cookie jar?
Any of that ring a bell?
Cameras will certainly catch more criminals. We are *all* criminals; if we aren't now, we will be as new laws are passed. And new laws pass all the time, laws prohibiting us from cursing in public, spitting our gum out on the sidewalk, etc. There are many laws on the book that are unenforceable today that would be trivial to enforce with cameras: laws against carrying ice-cream in your pocket on Sunday, laws disallowing you from bartering, laws allowing jail time for leering at a woman.
I don't trust those in charge of the cameras enough to allow them to monitor my daily life. That's why the US Constitution was written as an enumeration of federal rights, rather than individual rights. The 9th amendment specifically states the constitution doesn't limit individual rights, and that anything not listed is pretty much a right, up to the states and cities to decide upon.
But, that's where a lot of this is being pushed, through the states and the cities and the counties and whatnot. Oh, well. I guess liberty was too good to last.