To sum up your post and signature (I'm going to get a lot of milage out of it), I'm going to defer to one of my favorite George Bernard Shaw quotes.
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
George Bernard Shaw
Your quote had such a profound effect on me that it occurred to me that our basic human condition is so primitive that even after 20 years of intellectual "incubation" (quality of incubation can be debated), AFTER ALL THAT, you still wonder if some of the output is sentient or just merely more "sentient" than an advanced chatter bot that's been inundated with knowledge for 20 years.
I can't wait until we're replaced by the machines.
I don't know about you, but I rarely use the Internet for "shit" anymore. While there are many people like yourself who might choose to use the Internet as a mindless entertainment tool, don't underestimate the rest of us who use the Internet for far more productive purposes.
I understand your argument and I do think you have a number of valid points, but I also think you're too focused on the immediate effects and immediate ROI of a $100 laptop. I don't believe people will immediately flock to using a $100 laptop to learn about diseases, technology, and building communities. Most likely people will use them as toys rather than for pure educational and informational purposes. However, using them as toys (especially programming toys) will have a huge impact in the long run just as the Commodore 64 and Apple had a huge impact on our society understanding/using computers in the long run.
Lastly, a good majority of the countries have the food and drinking water thing under control, but the kids need a good education and need to be exposed to technology. I think this laptop is for them, not the truely horrible countries that have bigger problems.
Preface: SBC = Evil, Verizon = Evil
I know you've read a lot crap about "deregulation" coming from the baby bells (SBC, Verizon) these days, and I can understand why the word would make you shudder. I shudder when I hear about thier brand of "deregulation". It's bullshit. It's really selective deregulation where they remove all the regulations that keep them from squashing and locking out the competition, while retaining the regulation that prevents competitors from building their own infrastructures.
Essentially it reads: After the patents for the telephone had expired the market flooded open with all sorts of new competition. After 13 years of competition, telephone use rose from 270,000 to 6,000,000 with service available practically everywhere with competition servicing areas where Ma Bell thought it wasn't worth it.
Lots of redudant phone networks strung everywhere.
Poor interoperability.
In addition to that, I'm sure a lot of the service was just plain shitty.
It was between 1913-1921 when Theodore Vail approached the government to help him with his little problem of competition. After going through a series of phases of regulation, the telephone system was finally nationalized on Auguest 1, 1918 during WWI for national security reasons.
So no. An unregulated market did not create a natural monopoly in the case of AT&T. If anything, it goes to show how good big companies like AT&T are good at selling the public bullshit regulation.
Communism is like having one big phone company. -Lenny Bruce-
You parse syntactically, not semantically, you four-digit, brown-skinned cunt.
Actually you're wrong you pedantically impetuous three fingered twat.
Parsing syntactically means you're interpreting the lexical structure whereas parsing semantically means you're interpreting the conceptual meaning of the lexical structure.
Most fundimentalists consider God to be even outside time. Unchanging, simply existing.
Unless you are claiming God is inanimate and never makes internal transitions from state to state, especially to yield external results then it sounds like you've turned "unchanging" into a nice weasel word that means you can still be animated but transcend time anyway.
Now before you respond to elaborate, I'm sure you're quite capable of resolving this rather easy "contradiction". It's EASY to come up with a hypothesis to fit ANY set of parameters when your imagination is untethered rather than restricted to what is sensibly observed and tested.
It's even easier when you're allowed to redefine words and assert the new logical implications of those redefinitions as fact.
bzzzt, wrong! people think that deaths and gunshots and things look as sanitized as they do on tv. A little more realism, I think, might be a GOOD thing.
Hate to break it to you, but real gunshots are usually not as gory as Hollywood's depiction, which isn't to say that reality can't be horribly gory and disturbing. IMO, the most disturbing part about violence for me is the real human suffering and senseless insanity rather than the actual blood and mutilation.
Nah, they hungry lions are waiting for the money to show up. There's no point in suing Free Beer...
That's a good point which I addressed in another post. While it's better to sue your competition for monetary gain, other times sueing your competition out of the market can be a good enough reason. You can usually charge premium prices if you have little to no competition.
Threats of patents hasn't seemed to slow US Linux development, so why would it have any affect on EU Linux development?
Because there's not much financial incentive to sue Linux developers at this stage. The purpose of any lawsuit against Linux or any other Open Source project will be able controlling your competition.
Like I mentioned in another post, Open Source projects ARE being stalked by their commercial counterparts at the moment, but they are very reluctant to attempt these lawsuits when the largest economy in the world (The EU) is currently a safe-haven for software patents.
If they sue now, they risk scaring off the EU and controlling the IP rights in the EU.
I know it looks like SCO/Microsoft FUD targeting Linux, but if you look more closely this is Pro-Open Source FUD targeting the EU and scaring them away from Software Patents. (IE, This is Anti software patent FUD. AKA, the good kind)
Unlike SCO/MS FUD. There's a lot of truth to this FUD.
1. SCO accused Linux of violating COPYRIGHT infringement, which we now know is crap and at the time deserved a healthy portion of skepticism.
2. Accusing Linux of PATENT infringement is a whole different story. Today's situation is a HUGE minefield consisting of hundreds of thousands of software patents that most software developers might be infringing on this moment. Not only is it likely that Linux is infringing on someone's patent, it's likely most software companies infringe on one or many software patents somewhere or another.
The worse that can happen is those portions will be recoded to be patent free in days or weeks.
Again, that's true with copyright infringment. It's often VERY difficult to recode an entirely different method to achieve something, ESPECIALLY if you want the new method to be compatible with the first method.
At this time, many lawyers have advised their clients to postpone litigation at this point pending the CIID passing in Europe.
They understand that sueing open source projects at this point would:
* Scare away the Europeans from adopting software patents and turn them into an open source safe-haven by creating a good public case against software patents.
* Have no financial benefit whatsoever.
If Linux/Open Source projects/foundations haven't been sued yet, it's because it is currently being stalked by a hungry pride of lions who want to gaurantee they capture their prey.
How is bringing up two legitimate concerns (especially a SECURITY CONCERN) a troll?
Philadelphia hasn't exactly given out any detailed specifications that have allievate these concerns, let alone made any promises that these issues would resolved (if they keep their promises)
I'm as anti-defacto-telco-monopoly as anybody else here, but shouldn't ANY proposed alternative to the defacto-telco-monopolies be vetted first with legitimate concerns?
Looks like some people don't like to be proven wrong.
If I had disagreed with everything he'd said, I would have responded, but that wasn't the case. In fact, I actually conceeded a number of points already (which he accused me again of disagreeing) and then protracted numerous irrelivant and long winded arguments.
When he ignored my where I had made concessions, that's when he turned into a brick wall.
If you're going to accuse me of disagreeing with you on points I've already stated I agree with, then forget it.
Who ironically considers winning the slightest majority a mandate.;)
Seriously though, as much we would like to tell ourselves that municipal broadband is a non-partisan issue, we'd be doing ourselves a disservice ignoring the tremendous influence that partisan politics has in shaping the debate into many little packages of false dichotomies.
I personally believe if we as a society was determined enough, we could come up with a series of solutions that could encourage REAL infrastucture based competition (not pseudo-deregulation) AND municipal and state's rights (not lip service).
I understand that these objectives tend to be at odds with each other, but I also understand that engineering a solution requires one to make comprimises in minor principles to strengthen the principles of the entire objective.
But before we get to that point, I believe we need to start trashing ALL political parties whom seem to do a great job dividing and preventing us from having a productive discussion (outside the confines of each party's respective gospel) to where WE can come to our OWN conclusions and consensus.
So don't get offended if someone says something mean about "your" political party. Reply back with something especially vitriolic, and keep doing it until the idea of aligning yourself with a Republican or Democrat seems like a rediculous idea.
If you choose to insult again, I will simply ignore you. I call it shunning and it's a marvelous technique. Your choice.
If you weren't so long winded I might have considered rebutting and conceded each individual assertion, tangent and supporting argument, but at this point in time I'm exhausted and find this exercise to be pointless.
As a courtesy to those whom you will engage in future debates, I suggest you strive for and extend the courtesy of brevity. You might find you'll be received with a lot less contempt.
I am going to be blunt. You just made it very clear that you have very little grasp or practical understanding as to how to influence politics in your own country let alone a 3rd world nation where people still feel they need to whisper their dissent.
Your advice also indicates that you've had the luxery of not experiencing the many caveats that come with your advice.
Of course, I wouldn't expect anything less from someone who believes anyone can just "deal with corruption by *not dealing with it*"
I avoid the necessity of interaction as much as possible.
I'm sorry, I made the mistake that we were sharing the same assumptions.
Everybody in the 3rd world knows political corruption is the biggest problem they face.
There are a million tangible deeds you can do to fix economic and educational problems. Making computers and other tools very affordable to 3rd world nations is a great way to help. Providing $100 computers is a tangible solution, achievable, and given enough time will have a significant impact on the economy, education and politics.
Everybody in the 3rd world knows political corruption is the biggest problem they face.
MY POINT: How do you suggest we go about fixing the political problem?
Yes, I am that obtuse. Visions of utopia can easily slide into restrictions on freedom and mass murder.
First, you sound like a real sucker for a good slippery-slope argument.
Second, visions of utopia do not "easily slide" let alone "slide" into Communist Empires and 3rd Reich's. Visions of utopia are expertly manipulated by ambitious demagogues who prey on their subject's dreams and their obtuse conceptual models of them. They inject their own ambition and plans into the visions of others, riding on the merits of whatever vision is popular at the time to achieve their own goals.
Third, maybe if you bothered to consider the reality and circumstances of scenarios you'd be able to discern which slippery-slopes pose a real threat and "threats" that amount to supposition and scare tactics at best.
Oh wait, we already live in that world. So what is his beef with people making decisions for themselves?
Why is it that you've automatically assumed that his dislike for propietary software means he wants to take away your freedom to create and purchase proprietary software?
Do you have any idea whatsoever what life is like outside your own little clique?
Do you?
These people don't have flushing toilets, or phones, or TVs, or any other luxury you take for granted.
I'll give you FLUSHING toilets, but you're dead wrong with phones and TVs these days. (with the exception of the poorest of the poor.)
While TV is the most popular of the three luxuries (doesn't require specialized infrastructure) and easiest to share, phones are a trickier matter. However, there are many ways to install a bare bones phone infrastructure and connect with the outside world these days.
Lastly, while $100 is very expensive for your average worker, it's nowhere close to being a HUGE amount of money for a third-world village or a local business these days. (Again, with exception of the poorest of the poor).
Thank god the people investing their time in this project have a lot more first hand experience and commonsense than you.
Are you Prescribing a Political Panacea?
on
The Hundred-Buck PC
·
· Score: 1
Assuming you have a prescription for the 3rd world's political problems, you seem to have quickly forgotten how the upper class operates campaigns to divide and rule the uneducated poor politically and how this is facilitated by an economic and educational divide that is unfathomable by most in the 1st world.
While many people are very quick to prescribe democracy and capitalism for these ailing nations, you're about 20 years too late. While democracy and capitalism have certainly helped the majority of 3rd world countries who have adopted these institutions, democracy and capitalism aren't political and economic panaceas (even for 1st world countries) that automatically overcome crime, corruption and ignorance.
While you were correct to conclude the problems are heavily influenced by politics, you severely underestimate how economics, technology, and education contribute to the political problem. You *seemed* to conclude (you actually concluded very little) that focusing solely on a political fix will not only keep and persevere without an educated and vigilant public, but will also proliferate and mend all the other problems by default.
In conclusion, I disagree with you. I believe you are setting yourself up for failure if you try to fix the political problems of a developing country while ignoring its economic, technology, and education problems. Furthermore, I believe one couldn't possibly identify and understand the political problems of a country if they don't understand what's feeding it.
Slashdot Mirror
To sum up your post and signature (I'm going to get a lot of milage out of it), I'm going to defer to one of my favorite George Bernard Shaw quotes.
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
George Bernard Shaw
Your quote had such a profound effect on me that it occurred to me that our basic human condition is so primitive that even after 20 years of intellectual "incubation" (quality of incubation can be debated), AFTER ALL THAT, you still wonder if some of the output is sentient or just merely more "sentient" than an advanced chatter bot that's been inundated with knowledge for 20 years.
I can't wait until we're replaced by the machines.
I don't know about you, but I rarely use the Internet for "shit" anymore. While there are many people like yourself who might choose to use the Internet as a mindless entertainment tool, don't underestimate the rest of us who use the Internet for far more productive purposes.
I understand your argument and I do think you have a number of valid points, but I also think you're too focused on the immediate effects and immediate ROI of a $100 laptop. I don't believe people will immediately flock to using a $100 laptop to learn about diseases, technology, and building communities. Most likely people will use them as toys rather than for pure educational and informational purposes. However, using them as toys (especially programming toys) will have a huge impact in the long run just as the Commodore 64 and Apple had a huge impact on our society understanding/using computers in the long run.
Lastly, a good majority of the countries have the food and drinking water thing under control, but the kids need a good education and need to be exposed to technology. I think this laptop is for them, not the truely horrible countries that have bigger problems.
Preface: SBC = Evil, Verizon = Evil I know you've read a lot crap about "deregulation" coming from the baby bells (SBC, Verizon) these days, and I can understand why the word would make you shudder. I shudder when I hear about thier brand of "deregulation". It's bullshit. It's really selective deregulation where they remove all the regulations that keep them from squashing and locking out the competition, while retaining the regulation that prevents competitors from building their own infrastructures.
Having said that, let's move on.
Please read this history of Ma Bell. It's long but it's a great eye opener.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cjv14n2-6.html
Essentially it reads: After the patents for the telephone had expired the market flooded open with all sorts of new competition. After 13 years of competition, telephone use rose from 270,000 to 6,000,000 with service available practically everywhere with competition servicing areas where Ma Bell thought it wasn't worth it.
It was between 1913-1921 when Theodore Vail approached the government to help him with his little problem of competition. After going through a series of phases of regulation, the telephone system was finally nationalized on Auguest 1, 1918 during WWI for national security reasons.
So no. An unregulated market did not create a natural monopoly in the case of AT&T. If anything, it goes to show how good big companies like AT&T are good at selling the public bullshit regulation.
Communism is like having one big phone company. -Lenny Bruce-You parse syntactically, not semantically, you four-digit, brown-skinned cunt.
Actually you're wrong you pedantically impetuous three fingered twat.
Parsing syntactically means you're interpreting the lexical structure whereas parsing semantically means you're interpreting the conceptual meaning of the lexical structure.
Who ever modded this up has Oedipus Complex.
Oedipus was in love with his grandmother???
Especially one that no congressman would dare vote against.
That would fix the problem.
Seriously,
Most fundimentalists consider God to be even outside time. Unchanging, simply existing.
Unless you are claiming God is inanimate and never makes internal transitions from state to state, especially to yield external results then it sounds like you've turned "unchanging" into a nice weasel word that means you can still be animated but transcend time anyway.
Now before you respond to elaborate, I'm sure you're quite capable of resolving this rather easy "contradiction". It's EASY to come up with a hypothesis to fit ANY set of parameters when your imagination is untethered rather than restricted to what is sensibly observed and tested.
It's even easier when you're allowed to redefine words and assert the new logical implications of those redefinitions as fact.
...because that would clearly be equivilant to child molestation.
bzzzt, wrong! people think that deaths and gunshots and things look as sanitized as they do on tv. A little more realism, I think, might be a GOOD thing.
Hate to break it to you, but real gunshots are usually not as gory as Hollywood's depiction, which isn't to say that reality can't be horribly gory and disturbing. IMO, the most disturbing part about violence for me is the real human suffering and senseless insanity rather than the actual blood and mutilation.
I would think most doctors would agree with me.
Nah, they hungry lions are waiting for the money to show up. There's no point in suing Free Beer...
That's a good point which I addressed in another post. While it's better to sue your competition for monetary gain, other times sueing your competition out of the market can be a good enough reason. You can usually charge premium prices if you have little to no competition.
Threats of patents hasn't seemed to slow US Linux development, so why would it have any affect on EU Linux development?
Because there's not much financial incentive to sue Linux developers at this stage. The purpose of any lawsuit against Linux or any other Open Source project will be able controlling your competition.
Like I mentioned in another post, Open Source projects ARE being stalked by their commercial counterparts at the moment, but they are very reluctant to attempt these lawsuits when the largest economy in the world (The EU) is currently a safe-haven for software patents.
If they sue now, they risk scaring off the EU and controlling the IP rights in the EU.
Trust me. The threat is definitely looming.
I know it looks like SCO/Microsoft FUD targeting Linux, but if you look more closely this is Pro-Open Source FUD targeting the EU and scaring them away from Software Patents. (IE, This is Anti software patent FUD. AKA, the good kind)
Unlike SCO/MS FUD. There's a lot of truth to this FUD.
1. SCO accused Linux of violating COPYRIGHT infringement, which we now know is crap and at the time deserved a healthy portion of skepticism.
2. Accusing Linux of PATENT infringement is a whole different story. Today's situation is a HUGE minefield consisting of hundreds of thousands of software patents that most software developers might be infringing on this moment. Not only is it likely that Linux is infringing on someone's patent, it's likely most software companies infringe on one or many software patents somewhere or another.
The worse that can happen is those portions will be recoded to be patent free in days or weeks.
Again, that's true with copyright infringment. It's often VERY difficult to recode an entirely different method to achieve something, ESPECIALLY if you want the new method to be compatible with the first method.
At this time, many lawyers have advised their clients to postpone litigation at this point pending the CIID passing in Europe.
They understand that sueing open source projects at this point would:
* Scare away the Europeans from adopting software patents and turn them into an open source safe-haven by creating a good public case against software patents.
* Have no financial benefit whatsoever.
If Linux/Open Source projects/foundations haven't been sued yet, it's because it is currently being stalked by a hungry pride of lions who want to gaurantee they capture their prey.
Antelopes are skittish for a reason.
How is bringing up two legitimate concerns (especially a SECURITY CONCERN) a troll?
Philadelphia hasn't exactly given out any detailed specifications that have allievate these concerns, let alone made any promises that these issues would resolved (if they keep their promises)
I'm as anti-defacto-telco-monopoly as anybody else here, but shouldn't ANY proposed alternative to the defacto-telco-monopolies be vetted first with legitimate concerns?
Looks like some people don't like to be proven wrong.
If I had disagreed with everything he'd said, I would have responded, but that wasn't the case. In fact, I actually conceeded a number of points already (which he accused me again of disagreeing) and then protracted numerous irrelivant and long winded arguments.
When he ignored my where I had made concessions, that's when he turned into a brick wall.
If you're going to accuse me of disagreeing with you on points I've already stated I agree with, then forget it.
And usually that person is a republican.
;)
Who ironically considers winning the slightest majority a mandate.
Seriously though, as much we would like to tell ourselves that municipal broadband is a non-partisan issue, we'd be doing ourselves a disservice ignoring the tremendous influence that partisan politics has in shaping the debate into many little packages of false dichotomies.
I personally believe if we as a society was determined enough, we could come up with a series of solutions that could encourage REAL infrastucture based competition (not pseudo-deregulation) AND municipal and state's rights (not lip service).
I understand that these objectives tend to be at odds with each other, but I also understand that engineering a solution requires one to make comprimises in minor principles to strengthen the principles of the entire objective.
But before we get to that point, I believe we need to start trashing ALL political parties whom seem to do a great job dividing and preventing us from having a productive discussion (outside the confines of each party's respective gospel) to where WE can come to our OWN conclusions and consensus.
So don't get offended if someone says something mean about "your" political party. Reply back with something especially vitriolic, and keep doing it until the idea of aligning yourself with a Republican or Democrat seems like a rediculous idea.
If you choose to insult again, I will simply ignore you. I call it shunning and it's a marvelous technique. Your choice.
If you weren't so long winded I might have considered rebutting and conceded each individual assertion, tangent and supporting argument, but at this point in time I'm exhausted and find this exercise to be pointless.
As a courtesy to those whom you will engage in future debates, I suggest you strive for and extend the courtesy of brevity. You might find you'll be received with a lot less contempt.
I am going to be blunt. You just made it very clear that you have very little grasp or practical understanding as to how to influence politics in your own country let alone a 3rd world nation where people still feel they need to whisper their dissent.
Your advice also indicates that you've had the luxery of not experiencing the many caveats that come with your advice.
Of course, I wouldn't expect anything less from someone who believes anyone can just "deal with corruption by *not dealing with it*"
I avoid the necessity of interaction as much as possible.
You've made that abundantly clear.
I'm sorry, I made the mistake that we were sharing the same assumptions.
Everybody in the 3rd world knows political corruption is the biggest problem they face.
There are a million tangible deeds you can do to fix economic and educational problems. Making computers and other tools very affordable to 3rd world nations is a great way to help. Providing $100 computers is a tangible solution, achievable, and given enough time will have a significant impact on the economy, education and politics.
Everybody in the 3rd world knows political corruption is the biggest problem they face.
MY POINT: How do you suggest we go about fixing the political problem?
Yes, I am that obtuse. Visions of utopia can easily slide into restrictions on freedom and mass murder.
First, you sound like a real sucker for a good slippery-slope argument.
Second, visions of utopia do not "easily slide" let alone "slide" into Communist Empires and 3rd Reich's. Visions of utopia are expertly manipulated by ambitious demagogues who prey on their subject's dreams and their obtuse conceptual models of them. They inject their own ambition and plans into the visions of others, riding on the merits of whatever vision is popular at the time to achieve their own goals.
Third, maybe if you bothered to consider the reality and circumstances of scenarios you'd be able to discern which slippery-slopes pose a real threat and "threats" that amount to supposition and scare tactics at best.
Oh wait, we already live in that world. So what is his beef with people making decisions for themselves?
Why is it that you've automatically assumed that his dislike for propietary software means he wants to take away your freedom to create and purchase proprietary software?
Are you that obtuse?
Right, because nobody has ever thought of doing that these days.
HINT: Gov't overthrows only tend to work when a big country like the US supports it.
Do you have any idea whatsoever what life is like outside your own little clique?
Do you?
These people don't have flushing toilets, or phones, or TVs, or any other luxury you take for granted.
I'll give you FLUSHING toilets, but you're dead wrong with phones and TVs these days. (with the exception of the poorest of the poor.)
While TV is the most popular of the three luxuries (doesn't require specialized infrastructure) and easiest to share, phones are a trickier matter. However, there are many ways to install a bare bones phone infrastructure and connect with the outside world these days.
Lastly, while $100 is very expensive for your average worker, it's nowhere close to being a HUGE amount of money for a third-world village or a local business these days. (Again, with exception of the poorest of the poor).
Thank god the people investing their time in this project have a lot more first hand experience and commonsense than you.
Assuming you have a prescription for the 3rd world's political problems, you seem to have quickly forgotten how the upper class operates campaigns to divide and rule the uneducated poor politically and how this is facilitated by an economic and educational divide that is unfathomable by most in the 1st world.
While many people are very quick to prescribe democracy and capitalism for these ailing nations, you're about 20 years too late. While democracy and capitalism have certainly helped the majority of 3rd world countries who have adopted these institutions, democracy and capitalism aren't political and economic panaceas (even for 1st world countries) that automatically overcome crime, corruption and ignorance.
While you were correct to conclude the problems are heavily influenced by politics, you severely underestimate how economics, technology, and education contribute to the political problem. You *seemed* to conclude (you actually concluded very little) that focusing solely on a political fix will not only keep and persevere without an educated and vigilant public, but will also proliferate and mend all the other problems by default.
In conclusion, I disagree with you. I believe you are setting yourself up for failure if you try to fix the political problems of a developing country while ignoring its economic, technology, and education problems. Furthermore, I believe one couldn't possibly identify and understand the political problems of a country if they don't understand what's feeding it.
Sorry: Here's a better link.
Link