Being an asshole is not a crime. I'm not saying pressing charges was a nice or even moral thing to do; I'm saying it's stupid to expect the local authorities not to prosecute the actual, identifiable crime of destroying someone else's property.
And again, nobody seems to have established what the original crime was - Psychologically abusing someone? Are we going to define "making a fake myspace profile to verbally abuse someone" psychological abuse? Where do you draw those lines? Are we supposed to enact draconian laws to protect borderline cases like this one, knowing full well that they're going to apply to a hell of a lot of cases where we don't want people going to jail (Like the "psycho ex-girlfriend" example someone proposed)? Or should we just leave it to the lynch mob to decide?
Or, maybe, they just think one supposed crime (Is driving someone to suicide a crime? How the hell do you figure that?) isn't justification for committing another.
Historically, whenever Brazil goes for long enough without a supplier of X, it develops its own X. Cases in point: Industries during WWI, ethanol-fuelled cars. Network equipment nowadays is a commodity, no matter what the Cisco fanboys try to claim.
Countries aren't supposed to treat businesses like criminals
If they're breaking the law, that's exactly how they should be treated. It definitely beats giving corporations total immunity from any real legal consequences. By all means, protect the shareholders, but the actual decision-makers - the people who consciously decide to do this sort of thing - should be treated as common criminals. This is obvious, people. The imperative to "attract foreign investment" does not trump the rule of the law, and in any case, the way to attract foreign investment is to relax tax law, not ignore it. The whole situation is not entirely unlike Enron; did anyone complain about what happened to Ken Lay and his cronies? Most people complained about them not getting enough punishment, at the time.
Finally, your argument about Libertarianism in general (I'll use the capital 'L' here) seems to demonstrate a belief on your part that libertarian policies have to be extreme, black and white, all-or-nothing policies. One could very easily be libertarian, but recognize the need for some government intervention (for example, even libertarian economists argue that public goods have to be managed by the government, as supply and demand are obfuscated). It's absurd to say, "Extreme libertarianism has a certain pitfalls, so we need to abandon the idea completely." I'm not an anarchist by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems completely obvious that we rely too much on the government to solve our problems, that 100 years ago we were much more self-reliant, that 100 years ago we weren't as interested in policing the world, and that we'll be much better off if our government becomes more frugal and fiscally responsible (and yes, the Republicans have been more fiscally irresponsible than the Democrats over the last two decades).
I'm not saying all libertarianism is the "let's get rid of all government agencies" anarcho-capitalist nut form of libertarianism. But using the scare word "nanny state" tends to mark one as part of that particular movement. You don't even need to go to the Libertarian party to find that kind of nutcase: Ron Paul is a good example himself (And I think he's the least of all evils among the Republican candidates!).
I do think Americans today have an appalling culture of entitlement, but it doesn't extend just to the government - It extends to everything. See any record of frivolous lawsuits - any notorious "people suing over slick floors" case demonstrates that Americans don't just think the Government is responsible for solving their problems, they think whomever is closest is. This is a cultural, not governmental, issue. And ultimately there are simply too many things that the government is better empowered to provide - Private enterprise can't protect your human rights (Not that government does that all the time - But it can.) or keep the economy from collapsing under the weight of its own greed. Private enterprises can't eradicate social ills because that's against their own self-interest. Private security forces, unlike (Decent) police forces, have no interest at all in preventing or eliminating crime. Ultimately it comes down to the fact that the government is just better and more efficient at doing lots of things. Most political debate nowadays revolves around which things the government should be allowed to take care of. Generally, when someone talks about the "nanny state," when talking about a fairly laissez-faire society like the US, I tend to think that they're on the camp that believes virtually nothing should be in the sphere of government control.
Besides - maybe as a reaction to communism - libertarianism nowadays is a cool fad, and a lot of libertarians are nothing more than slightly worse-dressed Conservatives.
And it's well-documented that economic liberalism was abandoned for the most part during the depression.
Mostly because it caused the depression. FDR's policies pulled the US out of the depression and put in place measures to prevent that sort of catastrophe from ever happening again. Right-wing nuts (As I define them; like all scare words it's fuzzy) are generally wanton to point at any attempt by any government at doing anything at all (With a few exceptions like "matters of national security," which usually means killing people, or economic intervention that is pro-business) and scream "nanny state."
The US never had anything that qualifies as a nanny state. The US doesn't even have national healthcare! Virtually all "nanny state" policies of the US government were introduced by conservatives - namely the ridiculously high drinking age, the stupid restrictions on most drugs, and the continued attempt of the US government to keep people from contracting STDs or get pregnant by telling them nothing about prophylactics.
Besides - Your argument is that FDR attempted to solve all of the nation's problems through government programs. That can be said of anyone president, prime minister, senator, MP or representative, anywhere, ever - Their ONLY tool is government programs and legislation. Saying that they tried to resolve the nation's problems by implementing government programs is a beautiful piece of circular reasoning - Everything George W. has done was try to solve the nation's (perceived) problems through government interfvention. By your definition, the only state that isn't a "nanny state" is one that does nothing at all, and thus doesn't need an executive power, since there's nothing to execute.
And finally: Libertarianism preaches complete and full laissez-faire capitalism. An economic system with central banking - like what any civilized nation has - is not laissez-faire, given how, necessarily, there is government intervention. If you remove all government intervention, that creates a vacuum; nobody is setting the interest rates any more. Money loses its value fast because there's nobody enforcing its value. Hence, you either devolve to an inefficient barter system, use scrip (Which is no basis for a monetary system) or use an universally agreed upon standard - The gold/silver/uranium/petroleum/latinum standard, in which value of money is based on a fixed or fluctuating quantity of some inherently valuable commodity. Unfortunately, given fast enough communications and the presence of corporations, among other numerous factors which are absolutely inherent to modern means of production, such economies are doomed to fail, simply because they're at the mercy of the value of that particular commodity, and there's nobody around to keep the economy from killing itself in a spiral of inflation or deflation. There certainly is an invisible hand of the market, but there isn't an invisible brain of the market; the system isn't smart enough to self-regulate into stability without periodic economic disaster.
FDR implemented the nanny state during the Great Depression
Right-wing nuts like to think of ANY government intervention whatsoever as "the nanny state" bogeyman. The truth is that if the US had continued to operate under laissez-faire capitalism (Which, along with some absolutely brilliant examples of the government trying to protect the nation's business - another thing that right-wingers never seem to complain about), it would have tanked economically. Completely unregulated (That is, Libertarian) economies have to operate on an objective, universally agreed upon standard - You can't have a FED to take care of things for you. Economies running on the gold standard tank.
Well, at least y'all would still have had your guns.
Wikipedia's problem is not transparently serious problems - it's insidious, hard-to-spot inaccuracy. If I tell you that Napoleon died in 1934 from Syphilis contracted by sleeping with Gerald Butler's mother, you'll recognise that as false and thus go on your merry way. If I tell you, though, that he died in June of 1821, you won't notice, despite it being just as wrong. Random vandalism isn't a problem; people deliberately pushing an agenda is.
And how are they punished? Supposing fines don't work and the person persists in stealing, burning buildings down, or whatever --- they end up in jail, where the real barbarity begins. If a child commits these acts, their fate is much the same. Society apparently has no problem with locking people up in cages to be abused. You can call it punishment, or rehabilitation, or whatever. They still end up abused.
What is this, argumentum ad ass-rape? The fact that people get abused in jail does not mean that the purpose of jail is for the people inside to be abused. And again: threat of punishment is no foundation for any sort of real moral compass; you said it yourself: you raise a child to believe in punishment as the reason not to do wrong, that child is going to do wrong the moment he thinks he'll get away with it.
I could make the point that children are not adults, but I'm not going to.
Instead I'm going to point out it's not the same thing. In fact, no modern democracy uses force on criminals the same way you're advocating using on children; criminals aren't beaten with sticks as punishment, or slapped on the wrist when they steal. Force (at least when the law enforcement institutions work) is used to apprehend criminals, not as punishment; police forces don't exist to punish, but rather to make sure criminals are apprehended so they can be punished, removed from society for society's safety, and/or rehabilitated. Ideally for them, criminals would give themselves up and walk into precincts handcuffed... unfortunately they don't, which is where truncheons and guns come in.
I'm all for using force to keep children from hurting others and themselves, but using it as punishment is barbaric; the fact is, we don't use the cane or torture devices on criminals in prisons - why would we do the smaller-scale equivalent on children for much lesser infractions?
Besides, the primary lesson corporal punishment teaches is "I'm bigger than you, so I get to tell you what to do." It raises bullies, and children educated primarily through punishment, corporal punishment in particular, will stop being behaved as soon as their parents aren't around to beat the shit out of them any more.
Excuse me, but are you comparing misbehaving children to murderers, rapists and child molesters? Please report to your nearest reproductive health clinic for a swift and thorough removal of your ability to reproduce. Thank you.
Because 30 years from now our personal computers which contain our chat logs and browsing histories will not merely still exist, but also be accessible, still have that data, and be open for public scrutiny!
Oh wait, no. My chat logs do go back a long ways, but my browsing history is wiped every week; I don't expect them to exist beyond this box in any form except as a CD archived somewhere I have access to. And 30 years from now, having stupid pictures of yourself on MySpace will be the norm for people running for office - So it'll be socially acceptable; I expect even that some candidates will use them in publicity, if they are non-embarrassing enough; JFK had pictures of him doing all sorts of "regular guy" stuff. Publishing selected parts of one's earlier web identity will serve the same purpose in the future; a generation of people who grew up with MySpace will have more identification and affinity with a politician with a similar background.
Except we have clean ways of generating energy, but they are only cost-effective in large-scale, immobile installations. The way to make a wind-powered, or solar-powered, or nuclear-powered car is to find ways of storing cleanly generated energy in ways which can be deployed in a car. Clean cars do help reduce pollution, by making it possible to power the most pollutant devices we have today using cleanly generated electric energy.
Games are a media, like books and film and images, and each media has its strengths. Books are good for teaching because (Besides touching on literacy skills), they can be read over again, at the reader's own pace; films are good for teaching because they compress information relatively densely, and are much better at giving a sense of scale or displaying events than a book (What's better? Telling people about the size of the universe, or showing them Powers of Ten?).
Games are good for helping students understand complex systems by interacting with them. Being able to play with a historically accurate strategic wargame is more interesting, and provides a deeper insight, than just reading what happened during a war. Being able to watch small simulated lifeforms reproduce on a screen is a stunning display of natural selection. There are some subjects which are better explained through a particular media.
I hope parent is merely a troll (Grandma + config file is rapidly turning into a troll meme) but I'll bite. 1998 called; they want their lack of GUI configuration tools back.
On my Ubuntu box, I have had to manually edit configuration files to do two things:
Install and configure beta software
Install and configure Apache + MediaWiki
Configure Vi
The one other type of config file I've had to edit regularly in the recent past are xorg.conf files. A computer that comes with Linux preinstalled would never need xorg.conf twiddlery; reconfiguring it when you upgrade your graphics cards isn't a particularly difficult thing to do (If you're the sort of person who is likely to upgrade your own hardware, then you can do it).
The real reason Dell won't offer Linux PCs is plainly that it's not a good deal for them. It would mean more expensive Windows licenses, and it would mean less money for them from all the people paying them to bundle crapware with their boxes. The only way to have good, high-quality Linux PCs is to have an OEM willing to sell nothing but Linux boxes. Preferably one willing to sell well-designed, high-end computers and laptops with fully compatible hardware and pre-installed, thoroughly tested desktop environments and proprietary format support. Hopefully, packaged with a nice manual and long-term tech support for a particular set of "supported" packages too (Like Canonical does with Ubuntu).
Any problem that relies solely on driver education/training is doomed to failure, because most drivers don't care or don't want to be trained. They just want it to run.
It takes five seconds for me to migrate from Google to Yahoo. Total cost of operation: risible.
The only thing Google has on everyone else is mindshare and arguably, quality. That does not qualify as a monopoly, specially since they don't charge anything for their search services which can only loosely be considered their 'product'.
I'm a luddite I admit, but what makes IM so great?
There's no way to archive the messages is there?
Yes there is. It's called message logging. GTalk even archives to your Gmail account for you.
Is there a way to catalog the information into a searchable index?
Yes.
How can you "forward" an im to another person or group of people? Can you thread the information into a cohesive timeline?
Meet Copy and Paste. Copy and Paste, meet Buskaat.
I definitely have uses for irc (which is kinda like im I guess) but if it were my sole means of electronic communication I wouldn't get anything done. What am I missing?
IM is akin to talking in person, or to phones. You can get more done through an IM conversation because you get instant feedback. Email's sole advantage is that the person doesn't have to be online, or near his keyboard, or have time to talk to you.
Apple will implement the API and tie it with all the goodness of Mac OS X and none of the badness of Windows.
Linux will implement the API and tie it with all the goodness of... well Linux, and none of the badness of Windows.
Except, the Windows API is A) Not open, and B) Responsible for a lot of Windows' badness.
How a species that has long been known to be unable to reproduce (Slashdotters) would 'evolve' is still a mystery. I've got Richard Dawkins on the line, maybe he could clarify things for me. More information to come later.
Imagine, back in the real world: would you reach for a pen and wait for it to attach itself to your hand? of course not, you close your fingers to pick it up.natural.
Slashdot Mirror
Being an asshole is not a crime. I'm not saying pressing charges was a nice or even moral thing to do; I'm saying it's stupid to expect the local authorities not to prosecute the actual, identifiable crime of destroying someone else's property.
And again, nobody seems to have established what the original crime was - Psychologically abusing someone? Are we going to define "making a fake myspace profile to verbally abuse someone" psychological abuse? Where do you draw those lines? Are we supposed to enact draconian laws to protect borderline cases like this one, knowing full well that they're going to apply to a hell of a lot of cases where we don't want people going to jail (Like the "psycho ex-girlfriend" example someone proposed)? Or should we just leave it to the lynch mob to decide?
Or, maybe, they just think one supposed crime (Is driving someone to suicide a crime? How the hell do you figure that?) isn't justification for committing another.
Historically, whenever Brazil goes for long enough without a supplier of X, it develops its own X. Cases in point: Industries during WWI, ethanol-fuelled cars. Network equipment nowadays is a commodity, no matter what the Cisco fanboys try to claim.
If they're breaking the law, that's exactly how they should be treated. It definitely beats giving corporations total immunity from any real legal consequences. By all means, protect the shareholders, but the actual decision-makers - the people who consciously decide to do this sort of thing - should be treated as common criminals. This is obvious, people. The imperative to "attract foreign investment" does not trump the rule of the law, and in any case, the way to attract foreign investment is to relax tax law, not ignore it. The whole situation is not entirely unlike Enron; did anyone complain about what happened to Ken Lay and his cronies? Most people complained about them not getting enough punishment, at the time.
I'm not saying all libertarianism is the "let's get rid of all government agencies" anarcho-capitalist nut form of libertarianism. But using the scare word "nanny state" tends to mark one as part of that particular movement. You don't even need to go to the Libertarian party to find that kind of nutcase: Ron Paul is a good example himself (And I think he's the least of all evils among the Republican candidates!).
I do think Americans today have an appalling culture of entitlement, but it doesn't extend just to the government - It extends to everything. See any record of frivolous lawsuits - any notorious "people suing over slick floors" case demonstrates that Americans don't just think the Government is responsible for solving their problems, they think whomever is closest is. This is a cultural, not governmental, issue. And ultimately there are simply too many things that the government is better empowered to provide - Private enterprise can't protect your human rights (Not that government does that all the time - But it can.) or keep the economy from collapsing under the weight of its own greed. Private enterprises can't eradicate social ills because that's against their own self-interest. Private security forces, unlike (Decent) police forces, have no interest at all in preventing or eliminating crime. Ultimately it comes down to the fact that the government is just better and more efficient at doing lots of things. Most political debate nowadays revolves around which things the government should be allowed to take care of. Generally, when someone talks about the "nanny state," when talking about a fairly laissez-faire society like the US, I tend to think that they're on the camp that believes virtually nothing should be in the sphere of government control.
Besides - maybe as a reaction to communism - libertarianism nowadays is a cool fad, and a lot of libertarians are nothing more than slightly worse-dressed Conservatives.
Mostly because it caused the depression. FDR's policies pulled the US out of the depression and put in place measures to prevent that sort of catastrophe from ever happening again. Right-wing nuts (As I define them; like all scare words it's fuzzy) are generally wanton to point at any attempt by any government at doing anything at all (With a few exceptions like "matters of national security," which usually means killing people, or economic intervention that is pro-business) and scream "nanny state."
The US never had anything that qualifies as a nanny state. The US doesn't even have national healthcare! Virtually all "nanny state" policies of the US government were introduced by conservatives - namely the ridiculously high drinking age, the stupid restrictions on most drugs, and the continued attempt of the US government to keep people from contracting STDs or get pregnant by telling them nothing about prophylactics.
Besides - Your argument is that FDR attempted to solve all of the nation's problems through government programs. That can be said of anyone president, prime minister, senator, MP or representative, anywhere, ever - Their ONLY tool is government programs and legislation. Saying that they tried to resolve the nation's problems by implementing government programs is a beautiful piece of circular reasoning - Everything George W. has done was try to solve the nation's (perceived) problems through government interfvention. By your definition, the only state that isn't a "nanny state" is one that does nothing at all, and thus doesn't need an executive power, since there's nothing to execute.
And finally: Libertarianism preaches complete and full laissez-faire capitalism. An economic system with central banking - like what any civilized nation has - is not laissez-faire, given how, necessarily, there is government intervention. If you remove all government intervention, that creates a vacuum; nobody is setting the interest rates any more. Money loses its value fast because there's nobody enforcing its value. Hence, you either devolve to an inefficient barter system, use scrip (Which is no basis for a monetary system) or use an universally agreed upon standard - The gold/silver/uranium/petroleum/latinum standard, in which value of money is based on a fixed or fluctuating quantity of some inherently valuable commodity. Unfortunately, given fast enough communications and the presence of corporations, among other numerous factors which are absolutely inherent to modern means of production, such economies are doomed to fail, simply because they're at the mercy of the value of that particular commodity, and there's nobody around to keep the economy from killing itself in a spiral of inflation or deflation. There certainly is an invisible hand of the market, but there isn't an invisible brain of the market; the system isn't smart enough to self-regulate into stability without periodic economic disaster.
Right-wing nuts like to think of ANY government intervention whatsoever as "the nanny state" bogeyman. The truth is that if the US had continued to operate under laissez-faire capitalism (Which, along with some absolutely brilliant examples of the government trying to protect the nation's business - another thing that right-wingers never seem to complain about), it would have tanked economically. Completely unregulated (That is, Libertarian) economies have to operate on an objective, universally agreed upon standard - You can't have a FED to take care of things for you. Economies running on the gold standard tank.
Well, at least y'all would still have had your guns.
Wikipedia's problem is not transparently serious problems - it's insidious, hard-to-spot inaccuracy. If I tell you that Napoleon died in 1934 from Syphilis contracted by sleeping with Gerald Butler's mother, you'll recognise that as false and thus go on your merry way. If I tell you, though, that he died in June of 1821, you won't notice, despite it being just as wrong. Random vandalism isn't a problem; people deliberately pushing an agenda is.
Another one for class of 2029: "ESR has always been irrelevant."
What is this, argumentum ad ass-rape? The fact that people get abused in jail does not mean that the purpose of jail is for the people inside to be abused. And again: threat of punishment is no foundation for any sort of real moral compass; you said it yourself: you raise a child to believe in punishment as the reason not to do wrong, that child is going to do wrong the moment he thinks he'll get away with it.
I could make the point that children are not adults, but I'm not going to.
Instead I'm going to point out it's not the same thing. In fact, no modern democracy uses force on criminals the same way you're advocating using on children; criminals aren't beaten with sticks as punishment, or slapped on the wrist when they steal. Force (at least when the law enforcement institutions work) is used to apprehend criminals, not as punishment; police forces don't exist to punish, but rather to make sure criminals are apprehended so they can be punished, removed from society for society's safety, and/or rehabilitated. Ideally for them, criminals would give themselves up and walk into precincts handcuffed... unfortunately they don't, which is where truncheons and guns come in.
I'm all for using force to keep children from hurting others and themselves, but using it as punishment is barbaric; the fact is, we don't use the cane or torture devices on criminals in prisons - why would we do the smaller-scale equivalent on children for much lesser infractions?
Besides, the primary lesson corporal punishment teaches is "I'm bigger than you, so I get to tell you what to do." It raises bullies, and children educated primarily through punishment, corporal punishment in particular, will stop being behaved as soon as their parents aren't around to beat the shit out of them any more.
Excuse me, but are you comparing misbehaving children to murderers, rapists and child molesters? Please report to your nearest reproductive health clinic for a swift and thorough removal of your ability to reproduce. Thank you.
Because 30 years from now our personal computers which contain our chat logs and browsing histories will not merely still exist, but also be accessible, still have that data, and be open for public scrutiny!
Oh wait, no. My chat logs do go back a long ways, but my browsing history is wiped every week; I don't expect them to exist beyond this box in any form except as a CD archived somewhere I have access to. And 30 years from now, having stupid pictures of yourself on MySpace will be the norm for people running for office - So it'll be socially acceptable; I expect even that some candidates will use them in publicity, if they are non-embarrassing enough; JFK had pictures of him doing all sorts of "regular guy" stuff. Publishing selected parts of one's earlier web identity will serve the same purpose in the future; a generation of people who grew up with MySpace will have more identification and affinity with a politician with a similar background.
You might think that explains the name "noughts and crosses".
Except we have clean ways of generating energy, but they are only cost-effective in large-scale, immobile installations. The way to make a wind-powered, or solar-powered, or nuclear-powered car is to find ways of storing cleanly generated energy in ways which can be deployed in a car. Clean cars do help reduce pollution, by making it possible to power the most pollutant devices we have today using cleanly generated electric energy.
Games are a media, like books and film and images, and each media has its strengths. Books are good for teaching because (Besides touching on literacy skills), they can be read over again, at the reader's own pace; films are good for teaching because they compress information relatively densely, and are much better at giving a sense of scale or displaying events than a book (What's better? Telling people about the size of the universe, or showing them Powers of Ten?).
Games are good for helping students understand complex systems by interacting with them. Being able to play with a historically accurate strategic wargame is more interesting, and provides a deeper insight, than just reading what happened during a war. Being able to watch small simulated lifeforms reproduce on a screen is a stunning display of natural selection. There are some subjects which are better explained through a particular media.
None of those things are the domain of "grandma" though. I agree that Xorg is sorely lacking in user-friendliness, though.
I hope parent is merely a troll (Grandma + config file is rapidly turning into a troll meme) but I'll bite. 1998 called; they want their lack of GUI configuration tools back.
On my Ubuntu box, I have had to manually edit configuration files to do two things:
- Install and configure beta software
- Install and configure Apache + MediaWiki
- Configure Vi
The one other type of config file I've had to edit regularly in the recent past are xorg.conf files. A computer that comes with Linux preinstalled would never need xorg.conf twiddlery; reconfiguring it when you upgrade your graphics cards isn't a particularly difficult thing to do (If you're the sort of person who is likely to upgrade your own hardware, then you can do it).The real reason Dell won't offer Linux PCs is plainly that it's not a good deal for them. It would mean more expensive Windows licenses, and it would mean less money for them from all the people paying them to bundle crapware with their boxes. The only way to have good, high-quality Linux PCs is to have an OEM willing to sell nothing but Linux boxes. Preferably one willing to sell well-designed, high-end computers and laptops with fully compatible hardware and pre-installed, thoroughly tested desktop environments and proprietary format support. Hopefully, packaged with a nice manual and long-term tech support for a particular set of "supported" packages too (Like Canonical does with Ubuntu).
Hey, I can dream.
Legal isn't the same as moral. Just because there's no law against something doesn't make it morally acceptable.
Any problem that relies solely on driver education/training is doomed to failure, because most drivers don't care or don't want to be trained. They just want it to run.
It takes five seconds for me to migrate from Google to Yahoo. Total cost of operation: risible.
The only thing Google has on everyone else is mindshare and arguably, quality. That does not qualify as a monopoly, specially since they don't charge anything for their search services which can only loosely be considered their 'product'.
Except, the Windows API is A) Not open, and B) Responsible for a lot of Windows' badness.
How a species that has long been known to be unable to reproduce (Slashdotters) would 'evolve' is still a mystery. I've got Richard Dawkins on the line, maybe he could clarify things for me. More information to come later.
I'm telekinetic, you insensitive clod!