Improvements in technology don't automatically make our lives better, unless they are accompanied by improvements in society. We're in the doorstep of another major breakthrough regarding work automation. In theory, that should mean that we should be working less for (at least) the same wealth. In practice, inequality will increase, a few people will become wealthier and more people will loose their jobs and become poorer. So, Betteridge's law of headlines.
Indeed. Wasn't this exactly was Greece was already doing with half of the population?
No it wasn't. Greece's public sector is at 22%. Which is not small, but it is not the thing that got the country into trouble. Even the UK has more public sector employees let alone the northern european countries like Denmark and Norway that go up to 35%. [1] Anyway, the word universal on UBI does not mean "half the population" nor 22% of them, and that distinction is quite important.
Greece's main issues where the same issues that most countries face, only a bit bigger. Corruption was rampaging. The local (and european) elite were bathing themselves with public money. They owned the media and the governement for the last 20 years. The public insurance institutions' assets have been handed away again and again on pyramid schemes like the stockmarket bubble in the late 90's (Greece's stockmarket soared to 7000, only to return to 1000 a few months later). Public money were been wasted on a huge military budget as a result of under the table agreements between Greece and the US, Germany, France and sometimes Russia. At some point they even legitimized corruption and getting a cut for every agreement. Sure, there are many issues on public spending and efficiency that should've been improved, but that was only a small part of the problem.
Claiming that Greece has a UBI of a sorts is not backed up with data unfortunately. Greece has had issues with income inequality before the crisis struck, but with the austerity measures and the economy taking a dive, this has only gotten worse [2]
The problem with taxing the rich folks is not that they will move their money away. They are already doing that. You can not compete with tax havens. But what is evident from the recent Panama leak (and the swiss and Lux before it) is that governments are not only unwilling to tax them, but they are part of the scheme. You can not honestly believe that the US can not force Panama, the UK the Cayman or the EU Luxembourg to play nice and hand over the data.
How is it an absolute success? The U.S. citizens have the fewer and some of the most expensive options when it comes to fast internet through the phone lines. Same goes for mobile phones. If you're referring to the good old ground phones, then sure, there are options. But that's because the barrier to entry was very low and the cost pretty much the same, since everybody used Big Bell's infrastructure. The phone and internet market in the US has been exactly where the market has failed. Don't compare what you have now, with what you had 30 years ago. See what the US citizens have now in terms of broadband and phone value and what the rest of the developed world has.
And its not just the telcos. Health? Banking? Transportation? Prisons? All examples of failure. Unfortunately, Europe has been moving the free market way the past decade so we're going to see the same overseas.
Of course the market is failing. The market-driven model always fails on big markets (oil, telcos, banks, etc). Free-market economists quickly realized that there is a tendency for monopolies and oligopolies. They will eventually create trusts or use tactics like selling below cost to drive new companies out of their field. Enter the state-regulator: A small government with a singular goal; to regulate the market and ensure competition. The problem is that on big markets, the dominating companies are so powerful that they end up controlling a big chunk of the government. Or at least enough of it, so they can use it to ensure continuation of the mono/oligopoly.
It is a pretty nasty situation and hard to get out of it, since the only one with the power to break the cycle is the government which is already corrupted. That leaves us with "the people". Well, that is why most of the ppl that own banks and oil companies, also own a lot of media.
But TFA is not talking about whether space tourism is dirty. It is talking about the eulogies given by the CEO's. If the flight was just a regular air flight going to Maldives, nobody would be talking about heroes moving frontiers. We would be discussing whether the planes are properly maintained, the pilots having enough rest, etc. Now, we are willing to ignore those questions because it involves "space". The pilots may or may not be aware about the severity of the risk they were taking. The CEO may or may not have cut safety costs to turn a profit. But all those questions should be asked as we would have done if it was an airline company.
Having the guy that stands to make billions, talking about the heroic deaths of two of his employees that were doing their jobs (which is more or less trying to make him richer) is just disgusting. Yes, these are hard, risky (and comparatively well payed) jobs. But there is nothing heroic in being a pilot transporting rich tourists.
If we sentence someone to 1000 years in prison for beating and starving his child, I wonder how many thousands of years should the people that decided that this is just, should be condemned to.
Communists have the unique distinction of killing approximately 100,000,000 people in the last century.
Quoting "The black book of communism"? Really? That books is considered a joke by many scholars, lets say that it is at least controversial.
Even if you argue 100mil victims of communist regimes, you can hardly say that it is a "unique distinction". Capitalism has killed much more, fasism has had its share too. It is a mute arguement. If you want to argue against communism/capitalism/fasism, etc, at least do it with some serious arguments like the economics, liberties, their feasibility, which system is more just, etc.
"Is the open source community boycotting ebook formats?"
Hardly. Calibre is an excelent converter, library manager and it's compatible with most of the readers out there for syncing. You could try converting from pdf to e-pub with it, although PDF is a lousy input format.
Despite what most of the comments are focusing on, IMHO limited ISPs is not the issue here. There could be a dozen ISPs and still NN should be enforced.
TFA claims that if you don't like NN you have to leave the country. That's true. But guess what, that happens with every law in any country. It's a generic argument against any law. And there are many laws like NN. When a commodity is part of the structure of a country's economy there usually are laws that ensure equal access to it.
E.g. you can not force different car or truck owners to use different lanes and speeds just because you built and manage the road. There are state laws that deal with the speed limits, etc. If you don't like it, you have to move to another country.
GPLv3, on the other hand, makes restrictions upon what kind of hardware-software interactions are allowable. Forcing people, corporations, or whomever to use freely available code in a certain way is contradictory to freedom. Isn't that exactly what TiVo is doing? "Forcing people, corporations, or whomever to use freely available code in a certain way". The code is freely available, you can modify it but you can't use it because the hardware is locked. This is a gap in the GPL imho and it is now corrected. What is the point in modifying the source code if you can't use the modified version? It defeats the whole point of open-source.
"Novell is paying for their customers' peace of mind. Regardless of what Novell says (or what may be true), MS says that Linux violates MS' IP, implying that MS might sue Linux coders and/or users. That makes Novell's users nervous. They want guarantees that either MS' claims are false, or MS will not sue them, even if they are true. This contract provides that guarantee."
Microsoft is the one paying the big money here. Not Novell. So, the question is why does MS pays all this money for?
Well, at least the Greek government doesn't kidnap people. And it doesn't pretend that there are places that human rights do not exist. Please. We (Greeks) have an awful government but at least we don't have J.W.Bush
You didn't get the point. The state's decision should not be "an eye for an eye", but should be based on the fairest solution for the society and the individual. Rehabilitation, etc. This does not mean in any way that if a person imprisons someone, the state cannot imprison him. But we shouldn't kill someone because he killed too. Nor jail someone because he did too. We should base our judicial system in what is best for everyone. If that means jail time for someone that "had imprisoned his mother in a cell for several years" then that's what it means.
Also, let me point out that in the U.S. you have very high rates of murders comparing to Canada or the E.U. Why do you insist on believing that capital punishment is reducing murder rates? We seem to do much better without executing people.
Dialogue? There are two problems with that:
1) U.S.citizens, good luck getting some dialogue in with a bunch of Americans that want to "wipe you off the map." Who wants to listen to anything the Evil Doers(Iran and Korea) says anyway? U.S. doesn't.
2) U.S. citizens think their dictator is the son of God, you think you can have a dialogue with God? Good luck!
Iran and Korea don't want to wipe out the U.S., that is just what their leaders tell them, ya know, propaganda. Get them people your government won't educate properly all riled up and ready to die for their country, after all, it is easier than building a civilized nation. For the Americans it helps get people sitting in front of the tv, together, and ignore their living conditions, or better- blame it on the terrorists, rather than their government. It's not like they know any better, their education system is a joke, pair that up with daily brainwashing, I'm sure you can understand why they'd want to kill all easterners. They're mad as hell, maybe they think if they kill us all they won't have to hear anymore boring propaganda, and try making some real art again- they've forgotten to for about 500 years. One of the biggest things they use against Iran, along with terrorists, is our conflict with Iraq. Can you believe that? Iraq doesn't make statements about it, but some desperate and angry Americans do...very silly people really. Not the type who should have any weapons leaving their land, let alone nukes across the world.
For the Americans hating N.Koreans rounds out their life quite well, they believe they're the great race and greatest nation under the greatest ruler (God), and there's a great evil (terrorism) out there. It's unifying. Oh yeah, and you're required by law to agree with the big little guy.
If Iran or Korea ever acted on a nation with nuclear weapons, it'd be a global relations disaster, they don't want that. The intelligent people in U.S. know this, however they know better than to tell their people a fraction of the truth. Then they'd lose their "edge"
As for being hostile to them, I never thought giving aid was a hostile action. We've not fought them, or threatened to, we've made very calculated actions with this country. You must understand it's an illusion they are creating, in order to get more aid. And if you look at the facts, IT'S WORKING WELL!
It doesn't matter if you don't like exit polls. There is always a margin error in exit polls. The problems start when strange coincidences are happening:
http://www.nogw.com/images/exit_poll.jpg
Just check the differences from the exit polls to the vote count between paper ballots and electronic voting.
Horrible example.
But in your own example, it would like if the police went after the manufacturer of the gun instead of the shooter. The PirateBay is not responsible for the use of torrents. Downloading TES:Oblivion would be perfectly legal in my country, as long as I also have had an original copy bought. It is not PirateBay's fault if I don't have the copy. PirateBay is legal, I am legal if I have bought a copy. Perhaps someone downloading from me could be illegal, but again that's not PirateBay's fault. That's his responsibility.
Actually it is like selling guns. There are legal, and illegal ways to use them. Actually, most of the times, using guns is illegal. Using torrents is not. Why isn't anyone arresting people that sell guns? Well, maybe because these people have the power to control the governments?
There's an interesting example though. In Amsterdam (Netherlands) the state (city?) bought a few thousand bicycles and left them skattered in many places. So, if I wanted to travel between two places with a bike, I just grabbed a bike and went. Bikes where everywhere. A great plan indeed. Everybody was happy.
What happened? Some ppl stole most of the bicycles from the streets and they started selling them back. You could no longer find a bicycle for free, so you had to buy one and lock it so they wouldn't steal it.
In open source you can have the first, without having to worry about the second. You can keep copying it and there will never be a shortage. The only similar thing that can happen, is that a certain big corporation can attack you for pattent infringement and take all your bikes when you are forced to close down your project:)
P.S. (sorry about the spelling. English is not my native language)
They are right. I read their announcement with a broken browser within a broken window manager based on broken libraries on top of a broken X-server sitting over a broken kernel.
Maybe there are some killer insects leaving in Brazil's country that I've never heard of. But I haven't heard of a bug that kills 1.000.000 people in Middle East. I think that kind of bugs only live in South US
Safety measures can't stop anyone that wants to hurt people. Even if you put a dozen arm guards in each plain, and have to go through every type of scanner.
If I was a terrorist, who could stop me from entering a plane, a bus, a supermarket, an underground parking lot and blowing up the building thus killing a lot of people? It is impossible to stop people if they want to hurt other people. The only way is to reduce the number of people that would want to hurt you.
A good strategy in order to achieve this is to: - Stop killing people for oil. - Stop supporting juntas in south america and Middle East. - End the warmongering - Stop funding extremists in the world. Most of the terrorist aattacks in the US were made by ppl that used to be funded by the us goverment a few years back (e.x. Talibans)
Slashdot Mirror
Improvements in technology don't automatically make our lives better, unless they are accompanied by improvements in society. We're in the doorstep of another major breakthrough regarding work automation. In theory, that should mean that we should be working less for (at least) the same wealth. In practice, inequality will increase, a few people will become wealthier and more people will loose their jobs and become poorer. So, Betteridge's law of headlines.
Indeed. Wasn't this exactly was Greece was already doing with half of the population?
No it wasn't. Greece's public sector is at 22%. Which is not small, but it is not the thing that got the country into trouble. Even the UK has more public sector employees let alone the northern european countries like Denmark and Norway that go up to 35%. [1] Anyway, the word universal on UBI does not mean "half the population" nor 22% of them, and that distinction is quite important.
Greece's main issues where the same issues that most countries face, only a bit bigger. Corruption was rampaging. The local (and european) elite were bathing themselves with public money. They owned the media and the governement for the last 20 years. The public insurance institutions' assets have been handed away again and again on pyramid schemes like the stockmarket bubble in the late 90's (Greece's stockmarket soared to 7000, only to return to 1000 a few months later). Public money were been wasted on a huge military budget as a result of under the table agreements between Greece and the US, Germany, France and sometimes Russia. At some point they even legitimized corruption and getting a cut for every agreement. Sure, there are many issues on public spending and efficiency that should've been improved, but that was only a small part of the problem.
Claiming that Greece has a UBI of a sorts is not backed up with data unfortunately. Greece has had issues with income inequality before the crisis struck, but with the austerity measures and the economy taking a dive, this has only gotten worse [2]
The problem with taxing the rich folks is not that they will move their money away. They are already doing that. You can not compete with tax havens. But what is evident from the recent Panama leak (and the swiss and Lux before it) is that governments are not only unwilling to tax them, but they are part of the scheme. You can not honestly believe that the US can not force Panama, the UK the Cayman or the EU Luxembourg to play nice and hand over the data.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_sector
[2] http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2015/04/how-greek-austerity-has-stoked-inequality/
How is it an absolute success? The U.S. citizens have the fewer and some of the most expensive options when it comes to fast internet through the phone lines. Same goes for mobile phones. If you're referring to the good old ground phones, then sure, there are options. But that's because the barrier to entry was very low and the cost pretty much the same, since everybody used Big Bell's infrastructure. The phone and internet market in the US has been exactly where the market has failed. Don't compare what you have now, with what you had 30 years ago. See what the US citizens have now in terms of broadband and phone value and what the rest of the developed world has.
And its not just the telcos. Health? Banking? Transportation? Prisons? All examples of failure. Unfortunately, Europe has been moving the free market way the past decade so we're going to see the same overseas.
Of course the market is failing. The market-driven model always fails on big markets (oil, telcos, banks, etc). Free-market economists quickly realized that there is a tendency for monopolies and oligopolies. They will eventually create trusts or use tactics like selling below cost to drive new companies out of their field. Enter the state-regulator: A small government with a singular goal; to regulate the market and ensure competition. The problem is that on big markets, the dominating companies are so powerful that they end up controlling a big chunk of the government. Or at least enough of it, so they can use it to ensure continuation of the mono/oligopoly.
It is a pretty nasty situation and hard to get out of it, since the only one with the power to break the cycle is the government which is already corrupted. That leaves us with "the people". Well, that is why most of the ppl that own banks and oil companies, also own a lot of media.
But TFA is not talking about whether space tourism is dirty. It is talking about the eulogies given by the CEO's. If the flight was just a regular air flight going to Maldives, nobody would be talking about heroes moving frontiers. We would be discussing whether the planes are properly maintained, the pilots having enough rest, etc. Now, we are willing to ignore those questions because it involves "space". The pilots may or may not be aware about the severity of the risk they were taking. The CEO may or may not have cut safety costs to turn a profit. But all those questions should be asked as we would have done if it was an airline company.
Having the guy that stands to make billions, talking about the heroic deaths of two of his employees that were doing their jobs (which is more or less trying to make him richer) is just disgusting. Yes, these are hard, risky (and comparatively well payed) jobs. But there is nothing heroic in being a pilot transporting rich tourists.
If we sentence someone to 1000 years in prison for beating and starving his child, I wonder how many thousands of years should the people that decided that this is just, should be condemned to.
Communists have the unique distinction of killing approximately 100,000,000 people in the last century.
Quoting "The black book of communism"? Really? That books is considered a joke by many scholars, lets say that it is at least controversial. Even if you argue 100mil victims of communist regimes, you can hardly say that it is a "unique distinction". Capitalism has killed much more, fasism has had its share too. It is a mute arguement. If you want to argue against communism/capitalism/fasism, etc, at least do it with some serious arguments like the economics, liberties, their feasibility, which system is more just, etc.
"Is the open source community boycotting ebook formats?"
Hardly. Calibre is an excelent converter, library manager and it's compatible with most of the readers out there for syncing. You could try converting from pdf to e-pub with it, although PDF is a lousy input format.
Despite what most of the comments are focusing on, IMHO limited ISPs is not the issue here. There could be a dozen ISPs and still NN should be enforced.
TFA claims that if you don't like NN you have to leave the country. That's true. But guess what, that happens with every law in any country. It's a generic argument against any law. And there are many laws like NN. When a commodity is part of the structure of a country's economy there usually are laws that ensure equal access to it.
E.g. you can not force different car or truck owners to use different lanes and speeds just because you built and manage the road. There are state laws that deal with the speed limits, etc. If you don't like it, you have to move to another country.
America ain't communist, and communism seems to be on the decline. So it is kind of hard to disprove that the red-scare tactics didn't work.
France also ain't communist. And this proves?
"Novell is paying for their customers' peace of mind. Regardless of what Novell says (or what may be true), MS says that Linux violates MS' IP, implying that MS might sue Linux coders and/or users. That makes Novell's users nervous. They want guarantees that either MS' claims are false, or MS will not sue them, even if they are true. This contract provides that guarantee."
Microsoft is the one paying the big money here. Not Novell. So, the question is why does MS pays all this money for?
Well, at least the Greek government doesn't kidnap people. And it doesn't pretend that there are places that human rights do not exist. Please. We (Greeks) have an awful government but at least we don't have J.W.Bush
You didn't get the point. The state's decision should not be "an eye for an eye", but should be based on the fairest solution for the society and the individual. Rehabilitation, etc. This does not mean in any way that if a person imprisons someone, the state cannot imprison him. But we shouldn't kill someone because he killed too. Nor jail someone because he did too. We should base our judicial system in what is best for everyone. If that means jail time for someone that "had imprisoned his mother in a cell for several years" then that's what it means.
Also, let me point out that in the U.S. you have very high rates of murders comparing to Canada or the E.U. Why do you insist on believing that capital punishment is reducing murder rates? We seem to do much better without executing people.
Dialogue? There are two problems with that: 1) U.S.citizens, good luck getting some dialogue in with a bunch of Americans that want to "wipe you off the map." Who wants to listen to anything the Evil Doers(Iran and Korea) says anyway? U.S. doesn't. 2) U.S. citizens think their dictator is the son of God, you think you can have a dialogue with God? Good luck! Iran and Korea don't want to wipe out the U.S., that is just what their leaders tell them, ya know, propaganda. Get them people your government won't educate properly all riled up and ready to die for their country, after all, it is easier than building a civilized nation. For the Americans it helps get people sitting in front of the tv, together, and ignore their living conditions, or better- blame it on the terrorists, rather than their government. It's not like they know any better, their education system is a joke, pair that up with daily brainwashing, I'm sure you can understand why they'd want to kill all easterners. They're mad as hell, maybe they think if they kill us all they won't have to hear anymore boring propaganda, and try making some real art again- they've forgotten to for about 500 years. One of the biggest things they use against Iran, along with terrorists, is our conflict with Iraq. Can you believe that? Iraq doesn't make statements about it, but some desperate and angry Americans do...very silly people really. Not the type who should have any weapons leaving their land, let alone nukes across the world. For the Americans hating N.Koreans rounds out their life quite well, they believe they're the great race and greatest nation under the greatest ruler (God), and there's a great evil (terrorism) out there. It's unifying. Oh yeah, and you're required by law to agree with the big little guy. If Iran or Korea ever acted on a nation with nuclear weapons, it'd be a global relations disaster, they don't want that. The intelligent people in U.S. know this, however they know better than to tell their people a fraction of the truth. Then they'd lose their "edge" As for being hostile to them, I never thought giving aid was a hostile action. We've not fought them, or threatened to, we've made very calculated actions with this country. You must understand it's an illusion they are creating, in order to get more aid. And if you look at the facts, IT'S WORKING WELL!
You're so right! Just look at how many countries N.Korea and Iran have invaded in the past decades and how many the U.S.
It doesn't matter if you don't like exit polls. There is always a margin error in exit polls. The problems start when strange coincidences are happening: http://www.nogw.com/images/exit_poll.jpg Just check the differences from the exit polls to the vote count between paper ballots and electronic voting.
Indeed, we are getting slower and smellier. But smaller? No way. We 've got McDonalds too. We're about to outfat you, you american piece of BigMac :)
Horrible example. But in your own example, it would like if the police went after the manufacturer of the gun instead of the shooter. The PirateBay is not responsible for the use of torrents. Downloading TES:Oblivion would be perfectly legal in my country, as long as I also have had an original copy bought. It is not PirateBay's fault if I don't have the copy. PirateBay is legal, I am legal if I have bought a copy. Perhaps someone downloading from me could be illegal, but again that's not PirateBay's fault. That's his responsibility.
Actually it is like selling guns. There are legal, and illegal ways to use them. Actually, most of the times, using guns is illegal. Using torrents is not. Why isn't anyone arresting people that sell guns? Well, maybe because these people have the power to control the governments?
There's an interesting example though. In Amsterdam (Netherlands) the state (city?) bought a few thousand bicycles and left them skattered in many places. So, if I wanted to travel between two places with a bike, I just grabbed a bike and went. Bikes where everywhere. A great plan indeed. Everybody was happy.
:)
What happened? Some ppl stole most of the bicycles from the streets and they started selling them back. You could no longer find a bicycle for free, so you had to buy one and lock it so they wouldn't steal it.
In open source you can have the first, without having to worry about the second. You can keep copying it and there will never be a shortage. The only similar thing that can happen, is that a certain big corporation can attack you for pattent infringement and take all your bikes when you are forced to close down your project
P.S. (sorry about the spelling. English is not my native language)
oops. How neet :P. Thank you :)
They are right. I read their announcement with a broken browser within a broken window manager based on broken libraries on top of a broken X-server sitting over a broken kernel.
I nead a break...
Maybe there are some killer insects leaving in Brazil's country that I've never heard of. But I haven't heard of a bug that kills 1.000.000 people in Middle East. I think that kind of bugs only live in South US
Safety measures can't stop anyone that wants to hurt people. Even if you put a dozen arm guards in each plain, and have to go through every type of scanner.
If I was a terrorist, who could stop me from entering a plane, a bus, a supermarket, an underground parking lot and blowing up the building thus killing a lot of people? It is impossible to stop people if they want to hurt other people. The only way is to reduce the number of people that would want to hurt you.
A good strategy in order to achieve this is to:
- Stop killing people for oil.
- Stop supporting juntas in south america and Middle East.
- End the warmongering
- Stop funding extremists in the world. Most of the terrorist aattacks in the US were made by ppl that used to be funded by the us goverment a few years back (e.x. Talibans)