Ok, what's the point of this stressed metaphor? It doesn't make it easier to remember anything, it doesn't help in understanding anything (largely because the various splits, etc. happened for entirely different reasons), it adds a completely unnecessary layer of indirection and, quite honestly, I find the comparison insulting.
So the point is? Aside from "because we can"? What am I missing that makes this blog-level nonsense frontpage-worthy?
those "teenager repellant" buzz devices that some shops have used to prevent teenagers hanging around outside their store
Feel your pain. I'm a few years older and still have excellent hearing. It's crazy how noisy the normal urban environment is, and I often wonder why nobody gives a fuck until I realize that most people probably don't hear it or not as strongly as I do.
That is exactly what I've been missing from every single story on the subject. There are some fanatics who believe they actually get ill to the amount of feeling it in their bodies within minutes of getting near a signal source.
A TV show once made a 30-minute documentary about one such lunatic. The one thing they didn't do, the first thing I thought of when watching the crap, was to put him into a room shielded from outside influence with a device that has its power-on button disabled, or is hidden, or whatever, and have him tell them whether it's on or off. Repeat 10 times. Might take an hour or two, but they followed him around for at least a day for the rest of the bullshit, so that shouldn't matter.
this means that some homosexuals get executed in name of "traditional values", people are not allowed to use Twitter in name of "keeping society peaceful" et cetera.
Oh, I absolutely agree that there are positive and negative cultural elements, and I'm all for abolishing at least the worst of them. Like religion.
Nevertheless, the point is that there are side-effects. Yes, you might bring freedom to people and save the gay from execution. But maybe that same culture you bring also destroys the family and makes people unhappy who don't want to live in an ultra-competitive cuthroat world.
And one more word: The progressive values of today, are the traditional values of tomorrow. That islam or christianity that we see as ultra-conservative traditionalists? There was a time when they were considered revolutionaries, new-fangled stuff you shouldn't let your daughters near.
Obvious nonsense. It doesn't require a conspiracy or an intentional actor to happen.
Spread of cultural things back and forth is the best thing ever for world peace.
Except, of course, for the random indian tribe who has no immunity to the disease you bring and dies out. Friend, there are always side-effects to everything. The freedom and liberty you celebrate might erode the family unit that is the backbone of some other culture somewhere else. Who knows? Who are you to judge?
If there are jobs available then people should take them, rather than decide they'd rather get paid to do nothing.
Thank you for proving my point, that is exactly the attitude change I was talking about.
Not sure what you mean about living in a place that's too large; do you mean subsidised housing, or a town?
No, one of the fairly recent changes to the unemployment laws is that instead of giving you X â of unemployment benefits and leaving it to you how you split that up between your expenses, you now get unemployment benefits for a limited time and after that you get "unemployment benefits II" (it's actually called that, with a roman 2), which is much, much smaller, in fact it is just above the poverty level, but you also get seperate money (also fixed amounts) for rent, etc. basically, the money is split up. However, since the government now "pays your rent" (ignoring that they give you less money than before and the only reason the "pay the rent" is that they split it into dedicated sections) they get a say in how big your home can be. There's a formula saying how many square metres a family of X members can have, and if your home is 2 sqm bigger, the government can force you to move.
It's not subsidised. They just labeled a part of the old unemployment money "rent payment".
We're all in society together, and companies are going to want the best they can get for a given salary, and if people can't provide that then I'm not sure what you believe the answer to be. Just give up on some people (but pay them anyway) or try and foster a society which encourages people to earn an honest living even if that means study/commuting?
My argument isn't about economy, it's about society. You can treat unemployed people as temporarily in a tough spot and help them along, as a society that is helping each other out. Or you can treat them as parasites who are lazy bastards and need pressure and punishment to get their butts up and find a job.
Same amount of money flowing, but completely different social climate.
You realize this is a factual claim, not an opinion, right? Shouldn't you make a basic effort to know whether it's true or not before posting it?
We live in the most peaceful times in history, true.
However, we probably also live in the most rude times. There's a massive amount of non-criminal aggression out there, and it's not just trolling on the Internet. I posted about it in another comment, the way we treat unemployed or poor has turned from "here's some help, get better soon" to "get off your lazy butt, or I'll kick you".
Maybe "aggression" isn't the right word, but there's a certain "cold" in social relationships. 20 years ago, over here in Europe the american, Facebook way of friendship was the mark of a psychopath. You know, having 500 friends, none of whom you really know all that well? When I went to the US as a teenager, I was pretty surprised by the way people who had known me for 10 minutes treated me as a friend - but also could barely remember my name the next day.
I'm not judging. That's the american way, mostly due to people moving a lot more than people in Europe do, and the european way is... slower, more personal, warmer, but also not as welcoming to strangers (there are many places in my country where the saying is that you're not considered a local before the 3rd generation).
I did. It's clearly seen in the attitude towards unemployed. When I was young, unemployed people were helped and supported. It was clear they had put money into the unemployment benefits system when they were employed, so they were entitled to their benefits now. The task of the government was to play matchmaker between companies looking for people and people looking for jobs.
Today, the credo is that unemployed people are lazy bastards and need to be pressured into getting a new job. The government is watching closely that they follow all the (mostly new) rules on how many job applications to write and if they live in a place that is too large, they have to move to a small and cheaper one.
On is an attitude of being-in-this-together and the other is an attitude of competition and scarce resources.
Deconstruction is the allusion that abstractions do not have an existence, and yet they do. I do follow General Semantics in that regard - there are levels of abstraction and they are all "real" on their respective level
If you want to deconstruct, you have to define your terms. I believe you will stumble at the term "real". In the end, you'll have to withdraw to a purely mechanistic view and that's been falsified.
Don't know about BF4 in particular, but they sure are right about "cultural aggression". The most successful invasion the USA is continually running on the rest of the world isn't military.
I live in Europe. Most of the Americans view us as socialists, mostly because there used to be a cultural difference between Europe and the USA. Where in the US the basic concept is "everyone makes his own luck", Europe has a bigger focus on the social units you belong to - the family at the lowest level, the nation at the highest. That's why we have healthcare and unemployment benefits and all that, because we care for each other in addition to ourselves.
Both models have advantages and disadvantages. In the US, you can make it, there are more options for venture capital or starting your own company in general, and less obstacles. At the same time, the path is smaller and more dangerous. And if you fall, you fall alone.
But things change. With the constant battering from Hollywood, music, comics and other cultural exports, Europe is in crisis primarily because old and new social concepts are clashing, and we are the battlefield.
Now imagine Asia, where the social groups are even more important than the individual. What kind of havoc a US-spirit can wreck there.
Again, that is not a legal statement. Of course you can sue someone for a cent. But almost nobody bothers to actually do that. Which is why something like a government was invented so things that are too small or too big for individuals to worry about can be handled collectively.
Of course e-mail spam deprives me of use of my private property. But the damage is too small for an individual case to matter. The real damage is on the whole-society level, when you add up the millions of seconds.
It's the commons - the part of society that we all share. Like our communications ability or public spaces.
Because our justice system has turned from protecting the public good and society in general towards protecting individual property and particular interest laws.
That's why you can spam millions of people for years (do the math, even at half a second per mail, that's quite a few wasted lifetimes) and get a slap on the wrist ($4 mio? if he weren't a fool that would've been pocket change for an Internet criminal - see Kimble).
But copy a few MP3s and you're down for your life savings. Have a bit of pot on you and off to jail.
It's an entirely different tragedy of the commons - the justice system utterly fails to protect the public at large from deaths by a million cuts, i.e. by small offenses that multiply into the thousands and millions.
Perhaps a little tax competition between governments wouldn't be a bad thing? Competition keeps private companies on their toes, why not government? Monopolies are bad right?
Monopolies are generally bad but as in most things there are exceptions. Governments are what's called a "natural monopoly" - you can't have two states on the same territory competing for... well, what, actually?
No, I think applying economic thinking to political entities is wrong. You're trying to ride your sheep and shear your horses.
I don't think there is anyone out there that would claim their is not room for efficiency gains in government.
I think efficiency shouldn't be a governments #1 priority. How about liberty, democracy, society and culture and all the other non-economic values?
A better solution would be for Italy to simply lower their taxes until it did NOT make business sense to go through such contortions to avoid them anymore.
Because the race to the bottom has been demonstrated to be such a great idea in all other areas, yes? Healthcare, social security, heck anything with humans in it.
No, states should not have to compete. When you make business in a country you ought to pay its taxes, period. Tax evasion like this should be illegal, and if Google or anyone else doesn't like it - well, nobody forces them to sell ads in Italy.
Forgetting is a benefit. We all have things in our lives we do not want to remember, or want to remember differently than they truly were. That perfect holiday you had, the love of your life, how you met your wife, etc.
In many relationships and friendships, selective memory is what keeps them together. Remembering the good times and forgetting the troubles.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, what's the point of this stressed metaphor? It doesn't make it easier to remember anything, it doesn't help in understanding anything (largely because the various splits, etc. happened for entirely different reasons), it adds a completely unnecessary layer of indirection and, quite honestly, I find the comparison insulting.
So the point is? Aside from "because we can"? What am I missing that makes this blog-level nonsense frontpage-worthy?
those "teenager repellant" buzz devices that some shops have used to prevent teenagers hanging around outside their store
Feel your pain. I'm a few years older and still have excellent hearing. It's crazy how noisy the normal urban environment is, and I often wonder why nobody gives a fuck until I realize that most people probably don't hear it or not as strongly as I do.
Because making the parents wear a tin foil hat wouldn't help? Wait, maybe it would. Heck, it's worth a try.
until I talked him into a blind test
That is exactly what I've been missing from every single story on the subject. There are some fanatics who believe they actually get ill to the amount of feeling it in their bodies within minutes of getting near a signal source.
A TV show once made a 30-minute documentary about one such lunatic. The one thing they didn't do, the first thing I thought of when watching the crap, was to put him into a room shielded from outside influence with a device that has its power-on button disabled, or is hidden, or whatever, and have him tell them whether it's on or off. Repeat 10 times. Might take an hour or two, but they followed him around for at least a day for the rest of the bullshit, so that shouldn't matter.
this means that some homosexuals get executed in name of "traditional values", people are not allowed to use Twitter in name of "keeping society peaceful" et cetera.
Oh, I absolutely agree that there are positive and negative cultural elements, and I'm all for abolishing at least the worst of them. Like religion.
Nevertheless, the point is that there are side-effects. Yes, you might bring freedom to people and save the gay from execution. But maybe that same culture you bring also destroys the family and makes people unhappy who don't want to live in an ultra-competitive cuthroat world.
And one more word: The progressive values of today, are the traditional values of tomorrow. That islam or christianity that we see as ultra-conservative traditionalists? There was a time when they were considered revolutionaries, new-fangled stuff you shouldn't let your daughters near.
That's utter and complete bollocks.
The press has run some, uhm, "interesting" articles, but this particular spin is coming loudly and clearly out of politics, not the media.
By who? US Government?
Obvious nonsense. It doesn't require a conspiracy or an intentional actor to happen.
Spread of cultural things back and forth is the best thing ever for world peace.
Except, of course, for the random indian tribe who has no immunity to the disease you bring and dies out. Friend, there are always side-effects to everything. The freedom and liberty you celebrate might erode the family unit that is the backbone of some other culture somewhere else. Who knows? Who are you to judge?
If there are jobs available then people should take them, rather than decide they'd rather get paid to do nothing.
Thank you for proving my point, that is exactly the attitude change I was talking about.
Not sure what you mean about living in a place that's too large; do you mean subsidised housing, or a town?
No, one of the fairly recent changes to the unemployment laws is that instead of giving you X â of unemployment benefits and leaving it to you how you split that up between your expenses, you now get unemployment benefits for a limited time and after that you get "unemployment benefits II" (it's actually called that, with a roman 2), which is much, much smaller, in fact it is just above the poverty level, but you also get seperate money (also fixed amounts) for rent, etc. basically, the money is split up. However, since the government now "pays your rent" (ignoring that they give you less money than before and the only reason the "pay the rent" is that they split it into dedicated sections) they get a say in how big your home can be. There's a formula saying how many square metres a family of X members can have, and if your home is 2 sqm bigger, the government can force you to move.
It's not subsidised. They just labeled a part of the old unemployment money "rent payment".
We're all in society together, and companies are going to want the best they can get for a given salary, and if people can't provide that then I'm not sure what you believe the answer to be. Just give up on some people (but pay them anyway) or try and foster a society which encourages people to earn an honest living even if that means study/commuting?
My argument isn't about economy, it's about society. You can treat unemployed people as temporarily in a tough spot and help them along, as a society that is helping each other out. Or you can treat them as parasites who are lazy bastards and need pressure and punishment to get their butts up and find a job.
Same amount of money flowing, but completely different social climate.
American cultural influence is largely based on individuals having choice
And science is rapidly proving how much that "free choice" is an illusion and how dramatically you are influenced by even small environmental factor.s
If you find out that your ideology is based on a wrong assumption - what do you do?
(IMHO individual freedom is more important than cultural preservation)
Individual freedom is a part of culture.
You realize this is a factual claim, not an opinion, right? Shouldn't you make a basic effort to know whether it's true or not before posting it?
We live in the most peaceful times in history, true.
However, we probably also live in the most rude times. There's a massive amount of non-criminal aggression out there, and it's not just trolling on the Internet. I posted about it in another comment, the way we treat unemployed or poor has turned from "here's some help, get better soon" to "get off your lazy butt, or I'll kick you".
Maybe "aggression" isn't the right word, but there's a certain "cold" in social relationships. 20 years ago, over here in Europe the american, Facebook way of friendship was the mark of a psychopath. You know, having 500 friends, none of whom you really know all that well? When I went to the US as a teenager, I was pretty surprised by the way people who had known me for 10 minutes treated me as a friend - but also could barely remember my name the next day.
I'm not judging. That's the american way, mostly due to people moving a lot more than people in Europe do, and the european way is... slower, more personal, warmer, but also not as welcoming to strangers (there are many places in my country where the saying is that you're not considered a local before the 3rd generation).
I'm not sure if that is propaganda or just utter and total rubbish.
I actually have a good example: The pension system in my country. Yeah, the usual argument is demographics and bla bla bla.
Truth is: It was on purpose ruined by politicians who abused pension funds to fund projects that had nothing to do with pensions.
A professor of economics did the math - the old system would have been sustainable, if it had not been plundered.
Clashing? Do explain
I did. It's clearly seen in the attitude towards unemployed. When I was young, unemployed people were helped and supported. It was clear they had put money into the unemployment benefits system when they were employed, so they were entitled to their benefits now. The task of the government was to play matchmaker between companies looking for people and people looking for jobs.
Today, the credo is that unemployed people are lazy bastards and need to be pressured into getting a new job. The government is watching closely that they follow all the (mostly new) rules on how many job applications to write and if they live in a place that is too large, they have to move to a small and cheaper one.
On is an attitude of being-in-this-together and the other is an attitude of competition and scarce resources.
It is owned by EA.
Deconstruction is the allusion that abstractions do not have an existence, and yet they do. I do follow General Semantics in that regard - there are levels of abstraction and they are all "real" on their respective level
If you want to deconstruct, you have to define your terms. I believe you will stumble at the term "real". In the end, you'll have to withdraw to a purely mechanistic view and that's been falsified.
Everything you said is true. There's just one thing to add:
The problem with a million man army is that you have to feed it and once we cut that off, the Chinese have a million starving, trained men with guns.
Pray that they're in your enemies territory at the time.
Russia won WW2 through their burned earth strategy, but it cost them their industrial base and contributed greatly to them losing the Cold War.
Don't know about BF4 in particular, but they sure are right about "cultural aggression". The most successful invasion the USA is continually running on the rest of the world isn't military.
I live in Europe. Most of the Americans view us as socialists, mostly because there used to be a cultural difference between Europe and the USA. Where in the US the basic concept is "everyone makes his own luck", Europe has a bigger focus on the social units you belong to - the family at the lowest level, the nation at the highest. That's why we have healthcare and unemployment benefits and all that, because we care for each other in addition to ourselves.
Both models have advantages and disadvantages. In the US, you can make it, there are more options for venture capital or starting your own company in general, and less obstacles. At the same time, the path is smaller and more dangerous. And if you fall, you fall alone.
But things change. With the constant battering from Hollywood, music, comics and other cultural exports, Europe is in crisis primarily because old and new social concepts are clashing, and we are the battlefield.
Now imagine Asia, where the social groups are even more important than the individual. What kind of havoc a US-spirit can wreck there.
20 million? Are you living in 1998? Spammers these days send out on the order of magnitude of a billion e-mails.
Again, that is not a legal statement. Of course you can sue someone for a cent. But almost nobody bothers to actually do that. Which is why something like a government was invented so things that are too small or too big for individuals to worry about can be handled collectively.
We mean the same thing.
Of course e-mail spam deprives me of use of my private property. But the damage is too small for an individual case to matter. The real damage is on the whole-society level, when you add up the millions of seconds.
It's the commons - the part of society that we all share. Like our communications ability or public spaces.
Because our justice system has turned from protecting the public good and society in general towards protecting individual property and particular interest laws.
That's why you can spam millions of people for years (do the math, even at half a second per mail, that's quite a few wasted lifetimes) and get a slap on the wrist ($4 mio? if he weren't a fool that would've been pocket change for an Internet criminal - see Kimble).
But copy a few MP3s and you're down for your life savings. Have a bit of pot on you and off to jail.
It's an entirely different tragedy of the commons - the justice system utterly fails to protect the public at large from deaths by a million cuts, i.e. by small offenses that multiply into the thousands and millions.
Perhaps a little tax competition between governments wouldn't be a bad thing? Competition keeps private companies on their toes, why not government? Monopolies are bad right?
Monopolies are generally bad but as in most things there are exceptions. Governments are what's called a "natural monopoly" - you can't have two states on the same territory competing for... well, what, actually?
No, I think applying economic thinking to political entities is wrong. You're trying to ride your sheep and shear your horses.
I don't think there is anyone out there that would claim their is not room for efficiency gains in government.
I think efficiency shouldn't be a governments #1 priority. How about liberty, democracy, society and culture and all the other non-economic values?
A better solution would be for Italy to simply lower their taxes until it did NOT make business sense to go through such contortions to avoid them anymore.
Because the race to the bottom has been demonstrated to be such a great idea in all other areas, yes? Healthcare, social security, heck anything with humans in it.
No, states should not have to compete. When you make business in a country you ought to pay its taxes, period. Tax evasion like this should be illegal, and if Google or anyone else doesn't like it - well, nobody forces them to sell ads in Italy.
More importantly: Do we want to?
Forgetting is a benefit. We all have things in our lives we do not want to remember, or want to remember differently than they truly were. That perfect holiday you had, the love of your life, how you met your wife, etc.
In many relationships and friendships, selective memory is what keeps them together. Remembering the good times and forgetting the troubles.
But the probem is if these glasses are used by everyone knowing peoples names and birthdays will no longer impress people.
It's not about impressing people.