I remember the scene where Frodo greets Gandalf - wow was that... bad. They laugh, and not very convincingly, at a joke that is not funny. I will admit that the party was good though, but not good enough the bad. The length at the end, where the have the awards ceremony thing - that too made me want to puke. It's worse than the one at the end of Star Wars.
I think you misunderstood me. From what I read of the Simarillion, and I have to admit I was too bored to get very far, it was woefully lacking in any interesting details. All it has is the basic outlines of many stories. When Jackson did LOTR, he took out all the wonderful details and used the basic outline of the story as the backdrop for a special-effects war-movie. Since the Simarillion doesn't have a lot of wonderful details, Jackson can make his movie without having to ignore the good parts of the story.
The Hobbit was written as a children's book - a pleasant read and not too scary, with plenty of humor especially at the beginning. Jackson seemed to have a really difficult time with the lighthearted parts of LOTR. The reunion with Frodo at Rivendell is cringe-inducing. I wish they had asked someone else to do this - perhaps whoever directed the first Harry Potter movie. Jackson did a great job with bringing Middle-Earth to life in sets and costumes, but that hurdle has largely been crossed. The Hobbit needs someone who can take the sets and costumes and tell a story.
Given how Peter Jackson treated LOTR, taking only the outlines and filling them in with his own imagination, the Silmarillion seems like the perfect source for him. It would save him the trouble of having to throw out all the good stuff.
Based on Jackson's previous work in which all the good parts of the books removed and replaced by senseless battle, I'm guessing the first movie will be the battle with the goblins and wargs, the second movie will be the battle with the dragon, and the third movie will be the battle of five armies.
The only positive I can see is that since the Hobbit was intended as a children's book it doesn't have the intellectual depth and character definition of the trilogy, so I hopefully won't be as upset about all that gets left out or all the characters who are changed completely.
It does seem unfair that three books that each could have easily been two movies were made into one movie each, and now a book that could be one movie is being made into three.
You're right that you and I are using different definitions. I think that for a state the words "sovereign" and "independent" are pretty much synonymous ( I certainly don't agree with the definition of 'sovereign' that requires recognition from other countries - that's like claiming people with a certain skin color aren't human unless people of another skin color say they are). To me, "semi-independent" or "semi-sovereign" only makes sense when the power is not clear. For example, America refuses to let high ranking Taiwanese officials visit because we fear China's reaction. When American control of its borders is constrained by fear of China, does that not suggest our sovereignty, our independence, has been reduced? That is a small example. There are other examples where countries are even more constrained by fear of outside reaction and thus one might suggest they're only "semi-independent" or "semi-sovereign".
The key parts of the states not being sovereign are:
1. Any dispute as to what rights the state has are settled by the Federal Government. In other words, the states only have the rights the FG says they have.
2. If the states don't like the decision of the FG, they cannot leave (as you mentioned - 1861 to 1865).
3. Even on the question of limited sovereignty, the states lose. If you don't like the way your state treats you on any given issue, you can appeal to the FG. The FG may let the state have their way, or they may not - its entirely up to the FG and not at all up to the state.
For a long time it has been the case that the states only have as much leash as the FG gives them.
The states had three checks on the FG - the power to appoint senators, the state militias, the constitution. In modern politics the constitution means whatever the FG says it means, the states no longer appoint senators, and the state militias are subject to control by the FG. Contrary to the clear meaning of the Constitution and Judge Scalias writings, the states are not sovereign and have not been for a very long time.
Taiwan's democracy doesn't make China look bad any more than any other democracy makes China look bad. Taiwan's location is strategic for China. It sits between Japan and the South China Sea (which China has made clear it wants to dominate). Taiwan sits on a strategic supply route for South Korea and Japan. China views Taiwan as part of a potential buffer between the Pacific Ocean and China.
The other problem China has with Taiwan is that the hatred between the Chiang (whose forces occupied Taiwan) and Mao was strong enough that neither could accept the existence of the other. Prior to Chiang's occupation of Taiwan Mao made a statement supporting independence from Japan for Taiwan. But once Chiang moved to Taiwan, Taiwan suddenly became important to Mao. After 60 years of propaganda about how important it is to take Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party looks bad to their ultra-nationalists by their failure to do so, and even moderating their tone on the issue is difficult.
US law requires that we sell Taiwan such defensive weapons as it needs, based purely on need and not on consultation with China. Neither US law nor treaty requires the US to defend Taiwan. Instead the US has to consider it a "grave" concern. It is deliberately ambiguous so that the US can dissuade both sides from launching hostilities with a certain expectation of how the US will respond.
Republic of China = the government that started in China in 1911, occupied Taiwan in 1945, and lost control of China in 1949.
The "Republic of China" is a "China" in the same way that the "Chinese Communist Party" is "Communist" and the same way that the "United States of America" consists of states. It started out that way, but it isn't anymore.
The USA no longer consists of independent states, the Chinese Communist Party is no longer communist, and the Republic of China" is no longer China.
Why should universities even offer degrees in fine arts? What good does it do society to create a group of people whose job seems to be creating "art" that nearly everyone hates and another group of people whose job seems to be telling people why they're cretins for hating it?
Do you ever use the concept of time-complexity or big-o notation? Do you know what it means when an algorithm is worst-case n-^2? 2^n? Would you have been able to learn that stuff without learning algebra first? Withing having gone beyond algebra to other math subjects such as calculus, would you have used your algebra over and over to the point were concepts such as time complexity and big-oh notation are trivial, or would you be digging through your books each time you needed to figure it out again? You mention statistics - how much can you really understand statistics if you haven't done calculus?
I have to agree with you on linear algebra though. I'm not sure what we were supposed to get out of that.
One problem is that many kids already face great difficulty with the concrete thinking. Even after learning all the rules for adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing fractions, you give them a problem like "Bob had a candy bar. He gave half to his sister and then half of what was left to his brother. After doing so, how much of his original candy bar did Bob have" and they have no clue how to begin. Such a person is not likely to enter a technical field. How many years should be spent teaching this person algebra?
I've recently been working with someone who is struggling with math and starting to learn some algebra. After a lot of work the kid seems to do ok picking up on the idea of letters representing numbers and manipulating those to solve simple problems. Similarly after a lot of work he can work with fractions. But getting to the point of using fractions and variables together is proving an extra challenge.
The fact is that most of use, once we graduate from school, never sit down and solve problems using the most difficult math we learned in school. But learning that highest math has other benefits.
1. I never find myself integrating, but I understand that concept which helps me understand the news, trends in behavior and stocks, and other phenomena because I have a feel for how these things work together.
2. I used calculus to learn physics. This reinforced the things I learned in calculus. It also made me capable of understanding trends in computer hardware.
3. As a computer guy, I use big-O concepts frequently. I couldn't have learned those without algebra. I wouldn't understand big-O concepts intuitively if I hadn't done the calculus and physics.
Even if a kid isn't going into a technical field, learning calculus will be useful, but it isn't required. And if he's not going on to do calculus, much of algebra won't be terribly useful.
But some algebra is still necessary. People need to know that symbolic logic exists. People need to understand the concept of functions. While solving a quadratic equation is something they're likely never going to use, learning to do so will reinforce concepts like fractions and variable substitution.
I can see letting kids graduate from high school without algebra. But if a college degree is to mean anything it should include at least a semester of algebra. I'm not sure it even makes sense to recruit students to a college if they haven't taken algebra.
Sometimes the government does provide the best solution for something.
OK...
It's just that when government doesn't provide the best solution we usually end up paying for it long after it is clear it isn't the best solution.
Kind of like IE6 then?
I chuckle as I read this on my non-IE browser.
With the internet, no one is accountable for viruses.
Most of the viruses propagate on Windows, for which a commercial entity (Microsoft) is accountable. Large amounts (most?) of the infrastructure runs on Linux, yet there is not the same proliferation of viruses.
Windows gets infected, but the propagation occurs on the internet. If you use Windows stand-alone, you don't get infected. And you can always go with Linux or Apple.
Microsoft has made some efforts to prevent infections. They largely haven't been successful but they have made quite a few efforts. But what owners of the internet have made efforts to virus-proof the internet?
Basically all of you criticisims can easily be levelled at private companies equally well.
With private companies I can do something about it - I can buy a competitor's product.
Had the internet been run by a for-profit private company, the viruses would hurt their profits and cause them to find solutions - in some cases solutions that only the owner of the network would be capable of implementing.
Again, the facts do not support your position. Most of the problem is with Windows. For a time, during the worst years, MS almost could bend the internet to its will, or at least bastardised versions of important protocols. That didn't help, in fact that did more harm than good.
Windows is most infected largely because it is the most popular and therefor the most targeted. But the propagation of those viruses is on the internet.
And people do have choices. How many times do you read on slashdot that people are using Linux or Apple to avoid viruses. I bought an Ipod rather than an Android precisely because I didn't want the viruses. I don't like that I can't program the thing, but given how badly run the internet is I figure Apple's restrictions on what goes on the device is the only way to keep my sanity.
Sometimes the government does provide the best solution for something. It's not impossible. It's just that when government doesn't provide the best solution we usually end up paying for it long after it is clear it isn't the best solution.
I still think the solution would have been better had it been created by someone else. I don't say this because the initial technology would have been better - but because the continuing need for improvement. With the internet, no one is accountable for viruses. Had the internet been run by a for-profit private company, the viruses would hurt their profits and cause them to find solutions - in some cases solutions that only the owner of the network would be capable of implementing.
Ok, I'm confused. Was there so much competition that an internet would have been built and deployed with or without the government, or were there so few other competitors that nothing would have happened without the government?
The eagerness for private companies to jump on the Internet to market to end-users is historical fact. Given such demand, why did not private companies create such a secure and accountable internet? Were the benefits not so obvious?
Doing it right takes time, and it usually takes trial-and-error. In most new industries there are quite a few attempts that fail, sometimes because the technology and the market aren't ready yet, sometimes because the because a company doesn't do things right.
There were, and are, privately-managed internets connecting companies (been there, done that, in the late '90's). The free market operated, just not like you expected, because "free marketers" usually fail to take into account that land-lines require laying cable on/in/over public lands, which requires franchise, which requires scale, which led to tiers of service providers and ISPs.
Remember modems? Computers can actually talk on phone lines. Part of the build up of technology is to use what's there. As demand increased the cooperation with government needed for new cable in public and private lands would have come - and it would come when the industry was ready for it.
As for competing technologies, the ultimate government-sponsored protocol set is the OSI stack. It competed with the US DARPA/University Researchers/Private Company derived technology and lost, now existing mostly as concepts (compare to an 7-Layer Taco Bell burrito -- google it), and impinges on us in the form of LDAP and Microsoft Exchange.
So there was a little bit of competition. What about all the other competitors that never were because they were pre-empted?
Remember Atari and Odyssey? They were a little bit of competition too. One was better than the other. Imagine where video games would be if we had decided at that point that we were done, that Atari was the standard for all future video games.
Fair enough, and in support of the point I was trying to make, which was the government didn't create the Internet to spread viruses et al.
They didn't create it for that purpose, but because they didn't create it in a commercial environment and let it grow and compete, they also didn't create it to prevent viruses and botnets. They built it with all the scrutiny and detail of an academic project, not the scrutiny and detail of a commercial product.
Perhaps it would have been better to keep the internet a government run system only for a small group of users instead of opening it up to everyone. Then the competing networks would have been free to borrow technology from the government's system while at the same time developing their own and competing with each other for safe secure computing, and the government's system with its small user-base would be safer from those who would misuse it.
I always figured it had to be the government. Who else would invent something designed to spread viruses, botnets and prn? Who else would create a monopoly service with no accountability? Who else would create something to keep me paying over and over again for the same software? Who else would create a communications network that is so unsecure that it took a decade to figure out how to safely use it for simple payment transactions (and even now isn't all that safe).
The benefits to connecting computers are obvious. Had the government not created the internet, private companies would have created competing internets. At first it would have been networks of networks within single companies. The later companies that do business together would have connected eventually forming networks of companies that do related business. Then companies would have realized they can market to smaller businesses and eventually even computer owning individuals. An internet, or perhaps a few internets, would have grown up
And at each step of the way, viruses would have been intolerable. Companies running networks or internetworks known to have viruses or to be otherwise unsafe would be pariahs. Security and accountability would have been built in at the beginning. Competing internetworks would try different technologies with the best becoming more popular. What technologies would they have developed to make a better internet?
Of course we'll never know. The government jumped in and did it so no one else could.
Editor's Note: An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado Tea Party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect. ABC News and Brian Ross apologize for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted.
The Muslim terrorists are right-wing nutjobs. They're the right wing of a different culture.
What's right wing about Muslim terrorists? Right wingers believe in individual freedom. Unlike left wingers, the right wing true freedom of religion as one of those freedoms (yes, even for Catholics who don't want to fund contraception). As far as I can tell, Muslim terrorists, like left-wingers, don't believe in true freedom of religion either.
And if it's a left-wing nutjob, it's swept under the rug by the mainstream news media (who will have been speculating that it was a right-wing nutjob for the 24 hours before that).
Excellent point about the automatic weapons. The 2nd amendment was written when there were no rapid fire guns, no hand grenades, and no nuclear weapons.
As for this facial recognition policy, I think it goes against a fundamental freedom to "move on". If I want to pick up and leave - go somewhere and start over, a very American inclination - I can't do that if people can find me wherever I go by using facial recognition combined with scanning crowds. Imagine the implications of this technology for the Federal Witness Protection Program. What if I reach 18 and want to get away from dominating parents, a vengeful psychotic ex-girlfriend, or bullies who harassed me through high school and seem to want to continue? It's already hard enough to do so with all the paperwork we have to file with the federal government just so you can get a job and earn some money.
The object oriented thing is interesting, particularly if it were stored in a computer system that could resolve the references for you.
Unfortunately requiring the congressmen to pay attention would invite a lot of ambiguity. How much attention does the congressman have to pay? How do we know if the Congressman is paying close attention with his ears while staring at the ceiling or if he's just staring at the ceiling? Requiring a summary to prove comprehension introduces the issue of who gets to judge the summary. Even a quiz has issues. Who selects the questions and their wording. Who judges the correctness of the answers.
It's pretty easy, however, to see if someone was in the room. And C-Span cameras can show voters what the congressman was up to. But we might need to ban cell phones and internet connections.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember the scene where Frodo greets Gandalf - wow was that ... bad. They laugh, and not very convincingly, at a joke that is not funny. I will admit that the party was good though, but not good enough the bad. The length at the end, where the have the awards ceremony thing - that too made me want to puke. It's worse than the one at the end of Star Wars.
I think you misunderstood me. From what I read of the Simarillion, and I have to admit I was too bored to get very far, it was woefully lacking in any interesting details. All it has is the basic outlines of many stories. When Jackson did LOTR, he took out all the wonderful details and used the basic outline of the story as the backdrop for a special-effects war-movie. Since the Simarillion doesn't have a lot of wonderful details, Jackson can make his movie without having to ignore the good parts of the story.
The Hobbit was written as a children's book - a pleasant read and not too scary, with plenty of humor especially at the beginning. Jackson seemed to have a really difficult time with the lighthearted parts of LOTR. The reunion with Frodo at Rivendell is cringe-inducing. I wish they had asked someone else to do this - perhaps whoever directed the first Harry Potter movie. Jackson did a great job with bringing Middle-Earth to life in sets and costumes, but that hurdle has largely been crossed. The Hobbit needs someone who can take the sets and costumes and tell a story.
Given how Peter Jackson treated LOTR, taking only the outlines and filling them in with his own imagination, the Silmarillion seems like the perfect source for him. It would save him the trouble of having to throw out all the good stuff.
Based on Jackson's previous work in which all the good parts of the books removed and replaced by senseless battle, I'm guessing the first movie will be the battle with the goblins and wargs, the second movie will be the battle with the dragon, and the third movie will be the battle of five armies.
The only positive I can see is that since the Hobbit was intended as a children's book it doesn't have the intellectual depth and character definition of the trilogy, so I hopefully won't be as upset about all that gets left out or all the characters who are changed completely.
It does seem unfair that three books that each could have easily been two movies were made into one movie each, and now a book that could be one movie is being made into three.
You're right that you and I are using different definitions. I think that for a state the words "sovereign" and "independent" are pretty much synonymous ( I certainly don't agree with the definition of 'sovereign' that requires recognition from other countries - that's like claiming people with a certain skin color aren't human unless people of another skin color say they are). To me, "semi-independent" or "semi-sovereign" only makes sense when the power is not clear. For example, America refuses to let high ranking Taiwanese officials visit because we fear China's reaction. When American control of its borders is constrained by fear of China, does that not suggest our sovereignty, our independence, has been reduced? That is a small example. There are other examples where countries are even more constrained by fear of outside reaction and thus one might suggest they're only "semi-independent" or "semi-sovereign".
The key parts of the states not being sovereign are:
1. Any dispute as to what rights the state has are settled by the Federal Government. In other words, the states only have the rights the FG says they have.
2. If the states don't like the decision of the FG, they cannot leave (as you mentioned - 1861 to 1865).
3. Even on the question of limited sovereignty, the states lose. If you don't like the way your state treats you on any given issue, you can appeal to the FG. The FG may let the state have their way, or they may not - its entirely up to the FG and not at all up to the state.
For a long time it has been the case that the states only have as much leash as the FG gives them.
The states had three checks on the FG - the power to appoint senators, the state militias, the constitution. In modern politics the constitution means whatever the FG says it means, the states no longer appoint senators, and the state militias are subject to control by the FG. Contrary to the clear meaning of the Constitution and Judge Scalias writings, the states are not sovereign and have not been for a very long time.
Taiwan's democracy doesn't make China look bad any more than any other democracy makes China look bad. Taiwan's location is strategic for China. It sits between Japan and the South China Sea (which China has made clear it wants to dominate). Taiwan sits on a strategic supply route for South Korea and Japan. China views Taiwan as part of a potential buffer between the Pacific Ocean and China.
The other problem China has with Taiwan is that the hatred between the Chiang (whose forces occupied Taiwan) and Mao was strong enough that neither could accept the existence of the other. Prior to Chiang's occupation of Taiwan Mao made a statement supporting independence from Japan for Taiwan. But once Chiang moved to Taiwan, Taiwan suddenly became important to Mao. After 60 years of propaganda about how important it is to take Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party looks bad to their ultra-nationalists by their failure to do so, and even moderating their tone on the issue is difficult.
US law requires that we sell Taiwan such defensive weapons as it needs, based purely on need and not on consultation with China. Neither US law nor treaty requires the US to defend Taiwan. Instead the US has to consider it a "grave" concern. It is deliberately ambiguous so that the US can dissuade both sides from launching hostilities with a certain expectation of how the US will respond.
Republic of China = the government that started in China in 1911, occupied Taiwan in 1945, and lost control of China in 1949.
The "Republic of China" is a "China" in the same way that the "Chinese Communist Party" is "Communist" and the same way that the "United States of America" consists of states. It started out that way, but it isn't anymore.
The USA no longer consists of independent states, the Chinese Communist Party is no longer communist, and the Republic of China" is no longer China.
Why should universities even offer degrees in fine arts? What good does it do society to create a group of people whose job seems to be creating "art" that nearly everyone hates and another group of people whose job seems to be telling people why they're cretins for hating it?
Do you ever use the concept of time-complexity or big-o notation? Do you know what it means when an algorithm is worst-case n-^2? 2^n? Would you have been able to learn that stuff without learning algebra first? Withing having gone beyond algebra to other math subjects such as calculus, would you have used your algebra over and over to the point were concepts such as time complexity and big-oh notation are trivial, or would you be digging through your books each time you needed to figure it out again? You mention statistics - how much can you really understand statistics if you haven't done calculus?
I have to agree with you on linear algebra though. I'm not sure what we were supposed to get out of that.
One problem is that many kids already face great difficulty with the concrete thinking. Even after learning all the rules for adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing fractions, you give them a problem like "Bob had a candy bar. He gave half to his sister and then half of what was left to his brother. After doing so, how much of his original candy bar did Bob have" and they have no clue how to begin. Such a person is not likely to enter a technical field. How many years should be spent teaching this person algebra?
I've recently been working with someone who is struggling with math and starting to learn some algebra. After a lot of work the kid seems to do ok picking up on the idea of letters representing numbers and manipulating those to solve simple problems. Similarly after a lot of work he can work with fractions. But getting to the point of using fractions and variables together is proving an extra challenge.
The fact is that most of use, once we graduate from school, never sit down and solve problems using the most difficult math we learned in school. But learning that highest math has other benefits.
1. I never find myself integrating, but I understand that concept which helps me understand the news, trends in behavior and stocks, and other phenomena because I have a feel for how these things work together.
2. I used calculus to learn physics. This reinforced the things I learned in calculus. It also made me capable of understanding trends in computer hardware.
3. As a computer guy, I use big-O concepts frequently. I couldn't have learned those without algebra. I wouldn't understand big-O concepts intuitively if I hadn't done the calculus and physics.
Even if a kid isn't going into a technical field, learning calculus will be useful, but it isn't required. And if he's not going on to do calculus, much of algebra won't be terribly useful.
But some algebra is still necessary. People need to know that symbolic logic exists. People need to understand the concept of functions. While solving a quadratic equation is something they're likely never going to use, learning to do so will reinforce concepts like fractions and variable substitution.
I can see letting kids graduate from high school without algebra. But if a college degree is to mean anything it should include at least a semester of algebra. I'm not sure it even makes sense to recruit students to a college if they haven't taken algebra.
Sometimes the government does provide the best solution for something.
OK...
It's just that when government doesn't provide the best solution we usually end up paying for it long after it is clear it isn't the best solution.
Kind of like IE6 then?
I chuckle as I read this on my non-IE browser.
With the internet, no one is accountable for viruses.
Most of the viruses propagate on Windows, for which a commercial entity (Microsoft) is accountable. Large amounts (most?) of the infrastructure runs on Linux, yet there is not the same proliferation of viruses.
Windows gets infected, but the propagation occurs on the internet. If you use Windows stand-alone, you don't get infected. And you can always go with Linux or Apple.
Microsoft has made some efforts to prevent infections. They largely haven't been successful but they have made quite a few efforts. But what owners of the internet have made efforts to virus-proof the internet?
Basically all of you criticisims can easily be levelled at private companies equally well.
With private companies I can do something about it - I can buy a competitor's product.
Had the internet been run by a for-profit private company, the viruses would hurt their profits and cause them to find solutions - in some cases solutions that only the owner of the network would be capable of implementing.
Again, the facts do not support your position. Most of the problem is with Windows. For a time, during the worst years, MS almost could bend the internet to its will, or at least bastardised versions of important protocols. That didn't help, in fact that did more harm than good.
Windows is most infected largely because it is the most popular and therefor the most targeted. But the propagation of those viruses is on the internet.
And people do have choices. How many times do you read on slashdot that people are using Linux or Apple to avoid viruses. I bought an Ipod rather than an Android precisely because I didn't want the viruses. I don't like that I can't program the thing, but given how badly run the internet is I figure Apple's restrictions on what goes on the device is the only way to keep my sanity.
Sometimes the government does provide the best solution for something. It's not impossible. It's just that when government doesn't provide the best solution we usually end up paying for it long after it is clear it isn't the best solution.
I still think the solution would have been better had it been created by someone else. I don't say this because the initial technology would have been better - but because the continuing need for improvement. With the internet, no one is accountable for viruses. Had the internet been run by a for-profit private company, the viruses would hurt their profits and cause them to find solutions - in some cases solutions that only the owner of the network would be capable of implementing.
Ok, I'm confused. Was there so much competition that an internet would have been built and deployed with or without the government, or were there so few other competitors that nothing would have happened without the government?
Your hindsight suffers from macular degeneration.
The eagerness for private companies to jump on the Internet to market to end-users is historical fact. Given such demand, why did not private companies create such a secure and accountable internet? Were the benefits not so obvious?
Doing it right takes time, and it usually takes trial-and-error. In most new industries there are quite a few attempts that fail, sometimes because the technology and the market aren't ready yet, sometimes because the because a company doesn't do things right.
There were, and are, privately-managed internets connecting companies (been there, done that, in the late '90's). The free market operated, just not like you expected, because "free marketers" usually fail to take into account that land-lines require laying cable on/in/over public lands, which requires franchise, which requires scale, which led to tiers of service providers and ISPs.
Remember modems? Computers can actually talk on phone lines. Part of the build up of technology is to use what's there. As demand increased the cooperation with government needed for new cable in public and private lands would have come - and it would come when the industry was ready for it.
As for competing technologies, the ultimate government-sponsored protocol set is the OSI stack. It competed with the US DARPA/University Researchers/Private Company derived technology and lost, now existing mostly as concepts (compare to an 7-Layer Taco Bell burrito -- google it), and impinges on us in the form of LDAP and Microsoft Exchange.
So there was a little bit of competition. What about all the other competitors that never were because they were pre-empted?
Remember Atari and Odyssey? They were a little bit of competition too. One was better than the other. Imagine where video games would be if we had decided at that point that we were done, that Atari was the standard for all future video games.
Fair enough, and in support of the point I was trying to make, which was the government didn't create the Internet to spread viruses et al.
They didn't create it for that purpose, but because they didn't create it in a commercial environment and let it grow and compete, they also didn't create it to prevent viruses and botnets. They built it with all the scrutiny and detail of an academic project, not the scrutiny and detail of a commercial product.
Perhaps it would have been better to keep the internet a government run system only for a small group of users instead of opening it up to everyone. Then the competing networks would have been free to borrow technology from the government's system while at the same time developing their own and competing with each other for safe secure computing, and the government's system with its small user-base would be safer from those who would misuse it.
I always figured it had to be the government. Who else would invent something designed to spread viruses, botnets and prn? Who else would create a monopoly service with no accountability? Who else would create something to keep me paying over and over again for the same software? Who else would create a communications network that is so unsecure that it took a decade to figure out how to safely use it for simple payment transactions (and even now isn't all that safe).
The benefits to connecting computers are obvious. Had the government not created the internet, private companies would have created competing internets. At first it would have been networks of networks within single companies. The later companies that do business together would have connected eventually forming networks of companies that do related business. Then companies would have realized they can market to smaller businesses and eventually even computer owning individuals. An internet, or perhaps a few internets, would have grown up
And at each step of the way, viruses would have been intolerable. Companies running networks or internetworks known to have viruses or to be otherwise unsafe would be pariahs. Security and accountability would have been built in at the beginning. Competing internetworks would try different technologies with the best becoming more popular. What technologies would they have developed to make a better internet?
Of course we'll never know. The government jumped in and did it so no one else could.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/aurora-dark-knight-shooting-suspect-identified-james-holmes/story?id=16818889#.UAl230R8s9t
The Muslim terrorists are right-wing nutjobs. They're the right wing of a different culture.
What's right wing about Muslim terrorists? Right wingers believe in individual freedom. Unlike left wingers, the right wing true freedom of religion as one of those freedoms (yes, even for Catholics who don't want to fund contraception). As far as I can tell, Muslim terrorists, like left-wingers, don't believe in true freedom of religion either.
And if it's a left-wing nutjob, it's swept under the rug by the mainstream news media (who will have been speculating that it was a right-wing nutjob for the 24 hours before that).
It's funny that you were modded "Troll".
Excellent point about the automatic weapons. The 2nd amendment was written when there were no rapid fire guns, no hand grenades, and no nuclear weapons.
As for this facial recognition policy, I think it goes against a fundamental freedom to "move on". If I want to pick up and leave - go somewhere and start over, a very American inclination - I can't do that if people can find me wherever I go by using facial recognition combined with scanning crowds. Imagine the implications of this technology for the Federal Witness Protection Program. What if I reach 18 and want to get away from dominating parents, a vengeful psychotic ex-girlfriend, or bullies who harassed me through high school and seem to want to continue? It's already hard enough to do so with all the paperwork we have to file with the federal government just so you can get a job and earn some money.
The object oriented thing is interesting, particularly if it were stored in a computer system that could resolve the references for you.
Unfortunately requiring the congressmen to pay attention would invite a lot of ambiguity. How much attention does the congressman have to pay? How do we know if the Congressman is paying close attention with his ears while staring at the ceiling or if he's just staring at the ceiling? Requiring a summary to prove comprehension introduces the issue of who gets to judge the summary. Even a quiz has issues. Who selects the questions and their wording. Who judges the correctness of the answers.
It's pretty easy, however, to see if someone was in the room. And C-Span cameras can show voters what the congressman was up to. But we might need to ban cell phones and internet connections.