I think the op was likely modded down as a result of tone. Use of words such as "abbo" are likely regarded as offensive to many (it is pejorative). The same comments could have been made (and indeed, if you look elsewhere in the postings) have been made without the pejorative sense.
To sum up the OP's actual points:
1. Most aboriginal knowledge is focused on survival level skills.
2. Modern Western culture expresses a guilt complex towards less complex societies.
The guilt complex is unjustified because societies which exist only on a subsistence level are of lower value and should be replaced by those capable of improving quality and quantity of life / knowledge.
I would tend to agree with these points with the provisos that modern Western culture has its own problems and no one culture has all the answers. I would also tend to seek out those areas where other cultures have positive value (and it may be, as in the case of a hypothetical culture where murder and cannibalism are the highest and only positive values that some cultures have no positive value--though I am not familiar with such at this point in history).
I wish there were a predator that would specialize on dumb people, and that nobody could stop. Something like a second ice age... Oh wait... we’ve got nukes. And to re-heat it after the best have survived, we do massive global warming. It’s a perfect plan!;))
What if that has already happened and this is the result?
not sure what the tie-in is, but in terms of numerology, I would think those who hold to it would find the twentieth of October of this year more significant... at least in Europe
can we state that a black hole would actually have a positive charge? It seems like it would be neutral - but I'm not a physicist (or a chemist) either. Though it would be an interesting twist on the Moby song, "We are all made of Stars"
unless we go to warp 4 and then eject the core causing it to explode in the time-traveling black hole and save us all. Of course, with no planet to speak of, we'd have some issues about where to land in the end.
since most of this thread is about the iphone - 5% failure rate... less than any other smart phone. And if you take something in to Apple, they don't usually "repair" it, they usually just give you a new phone. This is less true with their computers, although they do have a no-lemon policy (non-disclosed as far as I know).
Just noticed your sig - your conclusion only works if you... work. Flip knowledge over to the other side and you might convince your boss that his money (paid to you) and your knowledge equals the work he needs done... though I doubt it:)
Sony's BDP-N460 might also be a consideration here as it plays blu-ray, Netflix, Youtube... and Amazon VOD for more recent flicks. It does not, unfortunately play videos from personal storage.
I believe we have a number of secular "churches" commonly called things like "the Rotary club" or "the [insert city name] food bank" - generally run by well-intentioned people from across religious perspectives seeking to help those in need. Further, from history, government-based aid is a fairly recent evolution (not counting the free food given out on feast days a la ancient Rome which may or may not have had much significance) - religious-based aid and family-based aid are both far older (and even the modern welfare system is in large part an outgrowth of concerted efforts in various state-based religious bodies in Europe - Calvin's Geneva is one example, though there are others of course).
Could you post a link for your comments on Nestle et al.? While the issue is not solved by feeding, Bono and others are involved in educational programs as well. The "Feed the [insert nationality] children" campaigns of the 80s have given way to more general philanthropic programs that usually have a more holistic view of the problems facing the developing world (and the developed world... recently saw a number of signs for our food bank that talked about how many families in my own city had issues... this was not in itself holistic but it was informative).
It has been a while since I saw the film, but Jar-Jar struck me as the only bumbling idiot in the film - he took the place of the fully constructed c3p0.
The other Gungans had a carefree and somewhat absurd existence but their military strategy actually made some sense (apart from being outnumbered heavily). Further, they were to fill the place of the oppressed native in the midst of a war between two sets of colonizers (the human Naboo and the Trade Fed).
For such, you need a culture that is laid back and comparatively "lower" on the tech scale--again, while are certainly other choices, Lucas needed a people group with a different accent than General American English to illustrate this in an auditory fashion. He could just as easily have chosen a South African accent, an Indian accent, or even, though this would have had less effect, IMHO, a Chinese analog accent. The racism charge might still be applied, but I do not see much of a way around choosing a non-standard English accent from a former colony to achieve in an audible fashion what was achieved on screen in a visual fashion.
In that he was trying to create an analog of a stereotypically laid-back sea-going culture, how is directly linking it to the stereotypical Jamaican accent racist in a negative sense? Sci fi is all about taking the normal, real world cultures and throwing them into a new setting to explore other possibilities. By creating the direct linkage, Lucas allows viewers to more readily understand his analogy.
People tend to be arrogant - we don't know of anything outside ourselves and so it must not exist. Strangely, and I do find it quite strange, many of my fellow Christians intimate that there cannot be life anywhere but here. How that fits with belief in someone else we cannot see or prove, I don't know. It seems to me best to suggest that there might be aliens and there might not be. If the purpose of the universe does not involve such (again, remembering I am a Christian here), then they would not exist. If their existence does fit in with God's plan, then they certainly exist (some have suggested that this is perhaps the identity of "angels" from CS Lewis to various others). The question then becomes not, do they exist, but, what relevance to life on earth do other beings elsewhere have (which might change should there ever be a point of contact).
I really think people would go to the movies more often if prices were cut in half of their current state. If I can spend 20 and have a private date with my wife at home with a large screen TV I already have, why would I spend 30 or 40 driving to a theater for a screen not much bigger with teenagers yelling and loudly making out in the back.
Agreed, but with Star Wars, it carefully followed the standard development of a saga common to most literature of that genre. Star Wars was successful in part because it followed the form in a new and unexpected way. The others failed because they saw the success of movies like StarWars and didn't understand the value of tradition in people's mindsets. They also had issues with... acting...
the book industry learned its lesson from looking at big content. We see lots of "free" digital copies floating around the net of pretty much any book you can name. People still pay for books - even with the advent of cheaper and easy to read e-book systems, physical books are still sold. Not only that, but even with free digital copies, "extra" material included in many for-pay ebooks still generates sales. It is nowhere near what it could be at this point, but most authors and publishers seem to be of the opinion that book sales increase the more the word gets out about an individual title. Baen books is a great example of this and Tor and others have recently started publishing free ebooks of the first title in a series. It simply makes sense to offer things for free in order to generate later sales (some in the music industry are catching on like Coldplay and its free live album).
If I have a VanGogh in my house worth 2.000.000,00 euro and I refuse to let you come in and take a picture of it or do a copy but you do so anyway, are you breaking the law? While I find most of the modern rhetoric about filesharing to be nonsense (there are a ton of fair use issues trampled on in the courts and by companies), if Disney refuses to sell me something I want, it is their choice, not mine. While I might like to have a copy of Song of the South (or more to my tastes, the Password is Courage for its completion of the WWII prison camp escape film genre), it is the copyright owner's privilege to sell or to not sell. I think there ought to be stricter control of this - movies should go out of copyright after only a handful of years if the copyright holder refuses to sell, but as the law now stands, Disney (or NBC Universal or Turner or whoever) still has a right to sell what it wishes.
While I agree with you that there should be laws protecting people and that blackmail of a mother because of a child's act or attempts to post information about minors to extort money should be illegal, the issue presented by the op is not one of whether or not the act should be legal but of whether the judge has the authority to order the release of the IPs from an American company. Wikimedia is based in California (at least, the address in whois states Cali as the registrant address) and a British judge has no authority of any kind over a company who runs its servers from anywhere outside Britain (or presumably the EU and treaty partners--ACTA will "fix" this apparently).
In addition to the Live services listed in other comments, other "Live" services are available: SkyDrive is free, Mesh is free (and works quite well--better than MobileMe and right up there with box.net and with more free space) and then there's office online which will apparently have a free googledoc's-esque system in the future.
What should happen, is that since they've determined that they can't have the computers off overnight, they should switch to something like folding@home or some such or get a contract with some company willing to pay for cycles and use the overnight time only. This could make the district money. I can only hope my school system does this (same policy) but I have my doubts.
Since they've gotten rid of significant numbers in their IT department, couldn't it be possible that they've lost everyone who knows how to create a new image and then push it? A lot of the tech people in my area are merely running on the work established by knowledgeable former employees (which is unfortunate but simply the way it is).
It's much worse than that, if I contract someone to repair my roof, refuse to give them the money I agreed with you was needed and then proceed to buy a bird bath instead, I definitely deserve to have my roof leak when the repairs I paid for were not enough. The Corps can only be held partly responsible here. At fault are a number of people and focusing blame on only one is likely political blameshifting to protect those with more power. Balance is needed and proper accountability will point the finger as needed... at local politicians, resource managers, etc.
This is part of the problem in Europe. The assumption made in tax law is that you will cheat on your taxes. If you have a sense of obligation to obey the law, you will sometimes have a hard time paying all of them. If tax law in Italy, for example, were adequately enforced in the first place, none of the extra "taxes" would be needed. But what am I saying... enforcement in Italy!
Slashdot Mirror
To sum up the OP's actual points:
1. Most aboriginal knowledge is focused on survival level skills.
2. Modern Western culture expresses a guilt complex towards less complex societies.
The guilt complex is unjustified because societies which exist only on a subsistence level are of lower value and should be replaced by those capable of improving quality and quantity of life / knowledge.
I would tend to agree with these points with the provisos that modern Western culture has its own problems and no one culture has all the answers. I would also tend to seek out those areas where other cultures have positive value (and it may be, as in the case of a hypothetical culture where murder and cannibalism are the highest and only positive values that some cultures have no positive value--though I am not familiar with such at this point in history).
I wish there were a predator that would specialize on dumb people, and that nobody could stop. Something like a second ice age... Oh wait... we’ve got nukes. And to re-heat it after the best have survived, we do massive global warming. It’s a perfect plan! ;))
What if that has already happened and this is the result?
not sure what the tie-in is, but in terms of numerology, I would think those who hold to it would find the twentieth of October of this year more significant... at least in Europe
can we state that a black hole would actually have a positive charge? It seems like it would be neutral - but I'm not a physicist (or a chemist) either. Though it would be an interesting twist on the Moby song, "We are all made of Stars"
unless we go to warp 4 and then eject the core causing it to explode in the time-traveling black hole and save us all. Of course, with no planet to speak of, we'd have some issues about where to land in the end.
since most of this thread is about the iphone - 5% failure rate... less than any other smart phone. And if you take something in to Apple, they don't usually "repair" it, they usually just give you a new phone. This is less true with their computers, although they do have a no-lemon policy (non-disclosed as far as I know).
Just noticed your sig - your conclusion only works if you... work. Flip knowledge over to the other side and you might convince your boss that his money (paid to you) and your knowledge equals the work he needs done... though I doubt it :)
Sony's BDP-N460 might also be a consideration here as it plays blu-ray, Netflix, Youtube... and Amazon VOD for more recent flicks. It does not, unfortunately play videos from personal storage.
I believe we have a number of secular "churches" commonly called things like "the Rotary club" or "the [insert city name] food bank" - generally run by well-intentioned people from across religious perspectives seeking to help those in need. Further, from history, government-based aid is a fairly recent evolution (not counting the free food given out on feast days a la ancient Rome which may or may not have had much significance) - religious-based aid and family-based aid are both far older (and even the modern welfare system is in large part an outgrowth of concerted efforts in various state-based religious bodies in Europe - Calvin's Geneva is one example, though there are others of course).
Could you post a link for your comments on Nestle et al.? While the issue is not solved by feeding, Bono and others are involved in educational programs as well. The "Feed the [insert nationality] children" campaigns of the 80s have given way to more general philanthropic programs that usually have a more holistic view of the problems facing the developing world (and the developed world... recently saw a number of signs for our food bank that talked about how many families in my own city had issues... this was not in itself holistic but it was informative).
It has been a while since I saw the film, but Jar-Jar struck me as the only bumbling idiot in the film - he took the place of the fully constructed c3p0.
The other Gungans had a carefree and somewhat absurd existence but their military strategy actually made some sense (apart from being outnumbered heavily). Further, they were to fill the place of the oppressed native in the midst of a war between two sets of colonizers (the human Naboo and the Trade Fed).
For such, you need a culture that is laid back and comparatively "lower" on the tech scale--again, while are certainly other choices, Lucas needed a people group with a different accent than General American English to illustrate this in an auditory fashion. He could just as easily have chosen a South African accent, an Indian accent, or even, though this would have had less effect, IMHO, a Chinese analog accent. The racism charge might still be applied, but I do not see much of a way around choosing a non-standard English accent from a former colony to achieve in an audible fashion what was achieved on screen in a visual fashion.
In that he was trying to create an analog of a stereotypically laid-back sea-going culture, how is directly linking it to the stereotypical Jamaican accent racist in a negative sense? Sci fi is all about taking the normal, real world cultures and throwing them into a new setting to explore other possibilities. By creating the direct linkage, Lucas allows viewers to more readily understand his analogy.
People tend to be arrogant - we don't know of anything outside ourselves and so it must not exist. Strangely, and I do find it quite strange, many of my fellow Christians intimate that there cannot be life anywhere but here. How that fits with belief in someone else we cannot see or prove, I don't know. It seems to me best to suggest that there might be aliens and there might not be. If the purpose of the universe does not involve such (again, remembering I am a Christian here), then they would not exist. If their existence does fit in with God's plan, then they certainly exist (some have suggested that this is perhaps the identity of "angels" from CS Lewis to various others). The question then becomes not, do they exist, but, what relevance to life on earth do other beings elsewhere have (which might change should there ever be a point of contact).
point :)
I really think people would go to the movies more often if prices were cut in half of their current state. If I can spend 20 and have a private date with my wife at home with a large screen TV I already have, why would I spend 30 or 40 driving to a theater for a screen not much bigger with teenagers yelling and loudly making out in the back.
Agreed, but with Star Wars, it carefully followed the standard development of a saga common to most literature of that genre. Star Wars was successful in part because it followed the form in a new and unexpected way. The others failed because they saw the success of movies like StarWars and didn't understand the value of tradition in people's mindsets. They also had issues with ... acting...
and there's always the public library
the book industry learned its lesson from looking at big content. We see lots of "free" digital copies floating around the net of pretty much any book you can name. People still pay for books - even with the advent of cheaper and easy to read e-book systems, physical books are still sold. Not only that, but even with free digital copies, "extra" material included in many for-pay ebooks still generates sales. It is nowhere near what it could be at this point, but most authors and publishers seem to be of the opinion that book sales increase the more the word gets out about an individual title. Baen books is a great example of this and Tor and others have recently started publishing free ebooks of the first title in a series. It simply makes sense to offer things for free in order to generate later sales (some in the music industry are catching on like Coldplay and its free live album).
If I have a VanGogh in my house worth 2.000.000,00 euro and I refuse to let you come in and take a picture of it or do a copy but you do so anyway, are you breaking the law? While I find most of the modern rhetoric about filesharing to be nonsense (there are a ton of fair use issues trampled on in the courts and by companies), if Disney refuses to sell me something I want, it is their choice, not mine. While I might like to have a copy of Song of the South (or more to my tastes, the Password is Courage for its completion of the WWII prison camp escape film genre), it is the copyright owner's privilege to sell or to not sell. I think there ought to be stricter control of this - movies should go out of copyright after only a handful of years if the copyright holder refuses to sell, but as the law now stands, Disney (or NBC Universal or Turner or whoever) still has a right to sell what it wishes.
While I agree with you that there should be laws protecting people and that blackmail of a mother because of a child's act or attempts to post information about minors to extort money should be illegal, the issue presented by the op is not one of whether or not the act should be legal but of whether the judge has the authority to order the release of the IPs from an American company. Wikimedia is based in California (at least, the address in whois states Cali as the registrant address) and a British judge has no authority of any kind over a company who runs its servers from anywhere outside Britain (or presumably the EU and treaty partners--ACTA will "fix" this apparently).
In addition to the Live services listed in other comments, other "Live" services are available: SkyDrive is free, Mesh is free (and works quite well--better than MobileMe and right up there with box.net and with more free space) and then there's office online which will apparently have a free googledoc's-esque system in the future.
What should happen, is that since they've determined that they can't have the computers off overnight, they should switch to something like folding@home or some such or get a contract with some company willing to pay for cycles and use the overnight time only. This could make the district money. I can only hope my school system does this (same policy) but I have my doubts.
Since they've gotten rid of significant numbers in their IT department, couldn't it be possible that they've lost everyone who knows how to create a new image and then push it? A lot of the tech people in my area are merely running on the work established by knowledgeable former employees (which is unfortunate but simply the way it is).
It's much worse than that, if I contract someone to repair my roof, refuse to give them the money I agreed with you was needed and then proceed to buy a bird bath instead, I definitely deserve to have my roof leak when the repairs I paid for were not enough. The Corps can only be held partly responsible here. At fault are a number of people and focusing blame on only one is likely political blameshifting to protect those with more power. Balance is needed and proper accountability will point the finger as needed ... at local politicians, resource managers, etc.
This is part of the problem in Europe. The assumption made in tax law is that you will cheat on your taxes. If you have a sense of obligation to obey the law, you will sometimes have a hard time paying all of them. If tax law in Italy, for example, were adequately enforced in the first place, none of the extra "taxes" would be needed. But what am I saying... enforcement in Italy!