I don't support him personally, but in your case, why not vote for Ron Paul? Vote for who you want to win, not some asshole who's convinced you he has the best chance to win. Better to stand for your principles and lose than abandon them to win. It's the latter choice (on the part of politicians and the public) that's given us the pathetic political situation we're in today.
Leftism is bad because it takes from those who earned and gives to those who don't deserve.
Uh, that's what the American government is all about. Right or Left, everybody's stealing from one group and giving it to some others, many of whom haven't earned it in any way. On the left you have the welfare system, which gives free money to poor people, and on the right you have super-rich tax breaks and "back room corporate deals", which gives free money to the fabulously wealthy.
You have two choices - either accept this premise, and decide which system of redistribution you think is "least unfair", or reject it entirely, and work to radically change our government and socio-economic system so that all kinds of involuntary redistribution are unnecessary and impossible to execute.
Oh, for reals? Who's the authoritarian ruler over the the Amish? Because their economy is pretty damn communist, and that seems to be working out for them just fine.
You're right that the Soviet Union could not work without authoritarian control. That doesn't mean that any form of community management of an economy is impossible without a dictator.
Surely you don't think that people will line up to work on road paving crews, in law firms, and as secretaries, all content to receive the same salary?
Where did this "everyone gets the same salary" thing come from? I guess it's been proposed in some extreme theoretical implementations of communism, but even the "bad" communists, like China and Russia didn't pay everyone the same.
The premise of a communist (read: community managed) economy is that people get paid according to what the community decides, rather than according to whatever the free market allows or doesn't allow.
So, if the community agrees that being a doctor (or a garbageman) is hard enough or unpleasant enough that it should be paid higher, they can do that.
The only difference is that salaries are being determined by direct democracy (assuming your government is a direct democracy), rather than the arbitrary and highly gameable system of the free market.
This article is so poor it hurts.
Then please, waste no time explaining why. I'm eager to hear you rebut the observations made in the article, if you have anything to say other than "I disagree with critics of the Chinese government, therefore this article sucks".
Yeah! And we could have companies that do the work of collecting all the reports from these people (let's call them "reporters"), packaging them up in easy-to-read or -watch installments, and distributing them to the public.
Of course, that kind of work would require a lot of money to do well. So small companies would have trouble.
Oh, hey, I know! All the little companies that distribute news could be purchased and merged together by extremely rich investors. That way we'd only have a few news sources to worry about, and they'd be really good at what they do.
This is a common misconception. Communism does not imply authoritarian control of the economy.
Large-scale implementations of communism have tended to use authoritarian control to force a communist economic model. This was, in my opinion, an astonishingly bad idea.
Communism simply means that the economy is managed by the community. If the community government is totalitarian, communism will be enforced through totalitarianism. If the community government is a decentralized direct democracy, then the economy will be managed through direct democratic involvement by all the people.
This is in contrast to capitalism, in which the economy is ostensibly managed by nobody, and in practice managed by those who control the lions share of money or resources. This commonly leads to a small number of successful capitalists gaining effective centralized control of the economy.
Since a capitalist economy cannot be managed by the community, there is no recourse should the economy become dominated by a small number of centralized companies or people. Despite the democratic, emergent properties of the community government, the economy can still easily slip into a model that is centralized in all but name.
So removing people's natural desire to work together or share knowledge about difficult skills is not a problem? You must have a lot of faith in people's selfishness.
Your sociopathic outlook makes you a perfect businessperson, but questionable human being.;)
Personally, I think most of these "havens" will disappear over time anyway. Look at India. Was the major outsourcing center for the support and call industry. But as competition for skilled employees increased, wages increased, and suddenly other countries were "cheaper".
<br> Unlikely. That's kind of like saying ghettos will disappear over time. Sure, when property is cheap, businesses and high paying jobs show up in a neighborhood. And soon it stops being a ghetto. But 30 years later, the businesses move out, rich people leave, city services decline, crime starts, people become homeless, and urban decay sets in. Ever notice how ghettos often have beautiful old architecture? In another era they were nice neighborhoods, but not nice enough to sustain themselves.<br> <br> So it goes with third world nations. Sometimes they're graced with business and high-paying jobs, but never enough to actually get out of debt and start stabilizing their own infrastructure. Then, when the business moves on, their economy crashes from the loss of jobs which people had grown dependent on. They decline into abject poverty until they're the cheapest workforce around again.
Peter Gibbons: I uh, I don't like my job, and, uh, I don't think I'm gonna go anymore.
Joanna: You're just not gonna go?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Joanna: Won't you get fired?
Peter Gibbons: I don't know, but I really don't like it, and, uh, I'm not gonna go.
Joanna: So you're gonna quit?
Peter Gibbons: Nuh-uh. Not really. Uh⦠I'm just gonna stop going.
Actually no, because if they're far away, their voice is lost in the general background noise of the area you're in. This is almost always the metaphorical problem with WiFi links - not a "quiet" signal, but a dirty one, with a lot of noise drowning out the signal.
So you can turn the megaphone around and crank it up as loud as you want, but all you'll be amplifying is background noise.
Amplifying wifi signals is pretty much always a bad idea, because the signal is two-way. It's like having a conversation with someone far away - if you have a megaphone they can hear you, but no matter how loud your megaphone is, you still won't be able to hear them.
However, if you have a point-to-point wireless link with the same amplification on both ends, it can be useful. Don't overuse it though, as too much amplification will distort the signal, and disrupt other people's attempts to use nearby frequencies (even pretty far away).
Your made-up scenario is pretty hilarious, mostly because your 'slang' reveals an obvious cluenessness and insulation from the realities of street crime.
However, for the sake of argument, here's a scenario that actually happened which demonstrates the value of skillful non-violent conflict resolution.
I agree that many people become cops to "Serve and Protect" and they want to help people.
And while a noble sentiment for joining the force and having generally good intentions should be honored and celebrated, they do not explain or excuse actual police behavior.
An important point to understand in general (and this applies to all kinds of people in many positions, not just police) is that even people who have very good abstract intentions can end up in situations where they succumb to the desire to do completely inappropriate and sometimes inhuman things. This is reflected very strongly both in behavioral studies and real life observations.
The environment a police officer operates in is very conducive to developing a dehumanizing perspective - people are mean to you, uncooperative, sometimes even threatening. Being on patrol is a stressful job which encourages grumpiness, fear, and aggression. However, it's a requirement, both legal and moral, that cops rise above this perspective, that they not perpetuate or participate in inappropriate behavior on the job. If they can't avoid this, they should really find a different profession. Unfortunately, we tend not to hold our officers to this high standard in practice.
The climate in most police forces is very conducive to dehumanization, and each officer plays a role, even if it's a small one. By not challenging inappropriate behavior, each officer lets the force at large slip further and further. So that then, in that moment of stress when tempers flare, there's nothing to stop an angry guy with a badge from doing something outrageous, like beating an unarmed person in custody, or locking him in a dog cage overnight in the basement, soaked with cold water.
These things happen not because cops are moustache-twirling villains who try to get power so they can torture innocents, but because as individuals they each allow abuse to go unchallenged, and therefore create a climate where it's understood to be, while perhaps not desirable, generally acceptable. So naturally, when a situation arises when abuse is an option, a shocking number of cops are ready to participate or stand by and passively support it.
So basically, good intentions aren't enough. We should expect good actions, and responsible policing of not just civilians, but of one's own behavior and the behavior of other officers. And since we give police so much trust in our communities, anything less should be considered flat-out unacceptable.
Your theory is that the police actually use pepper spray and tasers because they want to avoid the risk of injury to the crowd, not because they're concerned about publicity.
You can test this theory by observing the difference in control techniques used against protesters in the street and protesters who've been arrested. Protesters in police custody aren't pepper sprayed or tased. They're kicked, beaten with fists, flashlights and batons, slammed into walls, dragged up and down stairs, pulled around by their hair, ears, and even genitals.
The victims are the same people in both cases, and arguably they pose more of a threat to police when they're in the street. However, the difference is that in police custody there are no cameras and no independent observers - therefore, no risk of bad publicity.
I understand if you react with disbelief to these claims, thinking that doesn't happen in America. Experiencing or witnessing such things first hand is really the only way to prove it, since there's unfortunately no way to record evidence while in police custody.
A lack of it is a deterrent though - that's exactly the point. Many high tech tools for oppression of civilians are subtler than older forms, by which I mean they're harder for both the oppressed and independent observers to detect.
You can look at something like police who used to use batons and firehoses (visibly brutal) for crowd control, but now use pepper spray and tasers (which leave no marks) as an example.
Because of the subtle nature of these new technologies, they're used far, far more often than older, more overt methods were.
The ability to disguise oppressive actions means those actions will be taken more often. Simple as that.
For reals. If you're playing some kinky "pretend dysfunctional relationship" game, why drag in a bunch of strangers who are genuinely concerned about the person's relationship and personal well-being?
That said, it's a totally ridiculous explanation for what is obviously a real dysfunctional relationship.
I think the idea that people's marriages are "their own business" is so deeply ingrained in our culture that we come up with whatever wacky fantasies we have to to justify not offering support when someone's obviously being oppressed and treated like shit.
Coincidentally, this is partly why so many people/are/ treated like shit in marriages: abusers rely on the privacy and "sanctity" of marriage to protect them from the consequences of what in any other circumstance is totally crazy anti-social behavior.
That would be a better solution. But that doesn't mean it's the only acceptable one.
The implied attitude of "Too late! You should've thought of that before you got married!" is extremely unhelpful and is part of what causes physically and psychologically abused people to stay with their abusers.
Marriage is a voluntary partnership, not a slave contract. If either side fails seriously in their commitment, the partnership is null and void, and either party is free to associate or disassociate as they see fit.
And yes, people can become abusive over time, the signs of a potential abuser are often extremely subtle or invisible for years. Sometimes drug or alcohol abuse, traumatic life experience (for example, being in a war) or latent mental illness can turn a very nice person into an abuser as well.
Smart-ass Slashdot commenters aren't interested in problems or solutions. They're interested in winning arguments. The sooner realizes that characterizing "environmentalists" as a homogeneous group of illogical, dishonest, extremists is simply a way of justifying one's own indifference or reinforcing an identity as a hard-bitten realist, the better. The snarky apathetic Slashdotter isn't about reasoned debate. It's about avoiding the need to discuss actual facts and complicated realities by dismissing those who disagree with you as irrational zealots.
I realize that it will take a while before they can provide a substantial fraction of our energy needs.
This is incorrect. It will take a while for it to be politically and economically convenient for government and business leaders to provide a substantial fraction of our energy needs sustainably.
That's primarily because people accept the energy status quo as a given, and are willing to tolerate the glacially slow transition which is required to keep said leaders comfortable. They're willing to confine themselves and their ideas to the framework which leaders have outline about which options are "on the table" and which aren't.
On a technical level, we can transition to sustainable energy in a few years. All that's missing is the political and economic will to do it.
Don't let them con you into being "realistic" within the framework of convenience they've laid out. If we all demand what we know can be done, it will happen. Otherwise it'll never happen, no matter how possible it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, McCain thinks torture is not OK, which is why the US don't torture anyone.
What's that? Oh...well that's not torture.
Oh and that? Hm...well see, that wasn't technically "the US".
Convenient how that works, huh?
I don't support him personally, but in your case, why not vote for Ron Paul? Vote for who you want to win, not some asshole who's convinced you he has the best chance to win. Better to stand for your principles and lose than abandon them to win. It's the latter choice (on the part of politicians and the public) that's given us the pathetic political situation we're in today.
Leftism is bad because it takes from those who earned and gives to those who don't deserve.
Uh, that's what the American government is all about. Right or Left, everybody's stealing from one group and giving it to some others, many of whom haven't earned it in any way. On the left you have the welfare system, which gives free money to poor people, and on the right you have super-rich tax breaks and "back room corporate deals", which gives free money to the fabulously wealthy.
You have two choices - either accept this premise, and decide which system of redistribution you think is "least unfair", or reject it entirely, and work to radically change our government and socio-economic system so that all kinds of involuntary redistribution are unnecessary and impossible to execute.
But it does not work without it.
Oh, for reals? Who's the authoritarian ruler over the the Amish? Because their economy is pretty damn communist, and that seems to be working out for them just fine.
You're right that the Soviet Union could not work without authoritarian control. That doesn't mean that any form of community management of an economy is impossible without a dictator.
Surely you don't think that people will line up to work on road paving crews, in law firms, and as secretaries, all content to receive the same salary?
Where did this "everyone gets the same salary" thing come from? I guess it's been proposed in some extreme theoretical implementations of communism, but even the "bad" communists, like China and Russia didn't pay everyone the same.
The premise of a communist (read: community managed) economy is that people get paid according to what the community decides, rather than according to whatever the free market allows or doesn't allow.
So, if the community agrees that being a doctor (or a garbageman) is hard enough or unpleasant enough that it should be paid higher, they can do that.
The only difference is that salaries are being determined by direct democracy (assuming your government is a direct democracy), rather than the arbitrary and highly gameable system of the free market.
Then please, waste no time explaining why. I'm eager to hear you rebut the observations made in the article, if you have anything to say other than "I disagree with critics of the Chinese government, therefore this article sucks".
Yeah! And we could have companies that do the work of collecting all the reports from these people (let's call them "reporters"), packaging them up in easy-to-read or -watch installments, and distributing them to the public.
Of course, that kind of work would require a lot of money to do well. So small companies would have trouble.
Oh, hey, I know! All the little companies that distribute news could be purchased and merged together by extremely rich investors. That way we'd only have a few news sources to worry about, and they'd be really good at what they do.
This is a common misconception. Communism does not imply authoritarian control of the economy.
Large-scale implementations of communism have tended to use authoritarian control to force a communist economic model. This was, in my opinion, an astonishingly bad idea.
Communism simply means that the economy is managed by the community. If the community government is totalitarian, communism will be enforced through totalitarianism. If the community government is a decentralized direct democracy, then the economy will be managed through direct democratic involvement by all the people.
This is in contrast to capitalism, in which the economy is ostensibly managed by nobody, and in practice managed by those who control the lions share of money or resources. This commonly leads to a small number of successful capitalists gaining effective centralized control of the economy.
Since a capitalist economy cannot be managed by the community, there is no recourse should the economy become dominated by a small number of centralized companies or people. Despite the democratic, emergent properties of the community government, the economy can still easily slip into a model that is centralized in all but name.
So removing people's natural desire to work together or share knowledge about difficult skills is not a problem? You must have a lot of faith in people's selfishness.
;)
Your sociopathic outlook makes you a perfect businessperson, but questionable human being.
Personally, I think most of these "havens" will disappear over time anyway. Look at India. Was the major outsourcing center for the support and call industry. But as competition for skilled employees increased, wages increased, and suddenly other countries were "cheaper".
<br>
Unlikely. That's kind of like saying ghettos will disappear over time. Sure, when property is cheap, businesses and high paying jobs show up in a neighborhood. And soon it stops being a ghetto. But 30 years later, the businesses move out, rich people leave, city services decline, crime starts, people become homeless, and urban decay sets in. Ever notice how ghettos often have beautiful old architecture? In another era they were nice neighborhoods, but not nice enough to sustain themselves.<br>
<br>
So it goes with third world nations. Sometimes they're graced with business and high-paying jobs, but never enough to actually get out of debt and start stabilizing their own infrastructure. Then, when the business moves on, their economy crashes from the loss of jobs which people had grown dependent on. They decline into abject poverty until they're the cheapest workforce around again.
Citation needed.
Hackers, especially those attacking wireless networks, are looking for specific features that the XO delivers on:
- Extremely good wifi range (far better than the Eee)
- Very long battery life (again, better than the Eee)
Both of these features in a small, highly portable machine are perfect for extended wardriving, sniffing, etc.
Peter Gibbons: I uh, I don't like my job, and, uh, I don't think I'm gonna go anymore.
Joanna: You're just not gonna go?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Joanna: Won't you get fired?
Peter Gibbons: I don't know, but I really don't like it, and, uh, I'm not gonna go.
Joanna: So you're gonna quit?
Peter Gibbons: Nuh-uh. Not really. Uh⦠I'm just gonna stop going.
Actually no, because if they're far away, their voice is lost in the general background noise of the area you're in. This is almost always the metaphorical problem with WiFi links - not a "quiet" signal, but a dirty one, with a lot of noise drowning out the signal. So you can turn the megaphone around and crank it up as loud as you want, but all you'll be amplifying is background noise.
Amplifying wifi signals is pretty much always a bad idea, because the signal is two-way. It's like having a conversation with someone far away - if you have a megaphone they can hear you, but no matter how loud your megaphone is, you still won't be able to hear them.
However, if you have a point-to-point wireless link with the same amplification on both ends, it can be useful. Don't overuse it though, as too much amplification will distort the signal, and disrupt other people's attempts to use nearby frequencies (even pretty far away).
Your made-up scenario is pretty hilarious, mostly because your 'slang' reveals an obvious cluenessness and insulation from the realities of street crime.
However, for the sake of argument, here's a scenario that actually happened which demonstrates the value of skillful non-violent conflict resolution.
Actually, I believe they were a flying circus.
I agree that many people become cops to "Serve and Protect" and they want to help people.
And while a noble sentiment for joining the force and having generally good intentions should be honored and celebrated, they do not explain or excuse actual police behavior.
An important point to understand in general (and this applies to all kinds of people in many positions, not just police) is that even people who have very good abstract intentions can end up in situations where they succumb to the desire to do completely inappropriate and sometimes inhuman things. This is reflected very strongly both in behavioral studies and real life observations.
The environment a police officer operates in is very conducive to developing a dehumanizing perspective - people are mean to you, uncooperative, sometimes even threatening. Being on patrol is a stressful job which encourages grumpiness, fear, and aggression. However, it's a requirement, both legal and moral, that cops rise above this perspective, that they not perpetuate or participate in inappropriate behavior on the job. If they can't avoid this, they should really find a different profession. Unfortunately, we tend not to hold our officers to this high standard in practice.
The climate in most police forces is very conducive to dehumanization, and each officer plays a role, even if it's a small one. By not challenging inappropriate behavior, each officer lets the force at large slip further and further. So that then, in that moment of stress when tempers flare, there's nothing to stop an angry guy with a badge from doing something outrageous, like beating an unarmed person in custody, or locking him in a dog cage overnight in the basement, soaked with cold water.
These things happen not because cops are moustache-twirling villains who try to get power so they can torture innocents, but because as individuals they each allow abuse to go unchallenged, and therefore create a climate where it's understood to be, while perhaps not desirable, generally acceptable. So naturally, when a situation arises when abuse is an option, a shocking number of cops are ready to participate or stand by and passively support it.
So basically, good intentions aren't enough. We should expect good actions, and responsible policing of not just civilians, but of one's own behavior and the behavior of other officers. And since we give police so much trust in our communities, anything less should be considered flat-out unacceptable.
Your theory is that the police actually use pepper spray and tasers because they want to avoid the risk of injury to the crowd, not because they're concerned about publicity.
You can test this theory by observing the difference in control techniques used against protesters in the street and protesters who've been arrested. Protesters in police custody aren't pepper sprayed or tased. They're kicked, beaten with fists, flashlights and batons, slammed into walls, dragged up and down stairs, pulled around by their hair, ears, and even genitals.
The victims are the same people in both cases, and arguably they pose more of a threat to police when they're in the street. However, the difference is that in police custody there are no cameras and no independent observers - therefore, no risk of bad publicity.
I understand if you react with disbelief to these claims, thinking that doesn't happen in America. Experiencing or witnessing such things first hand is really the only way to prove it, since there's unfortunately no way to record evidence while in police custody.
A lack of it is a deterrent though - that's exactly the point. Many high tech tools for oppression of civilians are subtler than older forms, by which I mean they're harder for both the oppressed and independent observers to detect.
You can look at something like police who used to use batons and firehoses (visibly brutal) for crowd control, but now use pepper spray and tasers (which leave no marks) as an example.
Because of the subtle nature of these new technologies, they're used far, far more often than older, more overt methods were.
The ability to disguise oppressive actions means those actions will be taken more often. Simple as that.
Yes, Slashdot. Please tell me the ways of these mysterious "women" you understand so well.
Seriously though, I hope nobody's actually reading these school-yard blusterings about what all women are like for real information.
Everyone has gripes about their spouse, but only opinionated know-it-alls generalize them into "rules" which apply to everyone's spouse.
For reals. If you're playing some kinky "pretend dysfunctional relationship" game, why drag in a bunch of strangers who are genuinely concerned about the person's relationship and personal well-being?
/are/ treated like shit in marriages: abusers rely on the privacy and "sanctity" of marriage to protect them from the consequences of what in any other circumstance is totally crazy anti-social behavior.
That said, it's a totally ridiculous explanation for what is obviously a real dysfunctional relationship.
I think the idea that people's marriages are "their own business" is so deeply ingrained in our culture that we come up with whatever wacky fantasies we have to to justify not offering support when someone's obviously being oppressed and treated like shit.
Coincidentally, this is partly why so many people
That would be a better solution. But that doesn't mean it's the only acceptable one.
The implied attitude of "Too late! You should've thought of that before you got married!" is extremely unhelpful and is part of what causes physically and psychologically abused people to stay with their abusers.
Marriage is a voluntary partnership, not a slave contract. If either side fails seriously in their commitment, the partnership is null and void, and either party is free to associate or disassociate as they see fit.
And yes, people can become abusive over time, the signs of a potential abuser are often extremely subtle or invisible for years. Sometimes drug or alcohol abuse, traumatic life experience (for example, being in a war) or latent mental illness can turn a very nice person into an abuser as well.
Smart-ass Slashdot commenters aren't interested in problems or solutions. They're interested in winning arguments. The sooner realizes that characterizing "environmentalists" as a homogeneous group of illogical, dishonest, extremists is simply a way of justifying one's own indifference or reinforcing an identity as a hard-bitten realist, the better. The snarky apathetic Slashdotter isn't about reasoned debate. It's about avoiding the need to discuss actual facts and complicated realities by dismissing those who disagree with you as irrational zealots.
This is incorrect. It will take a while for it to be politically and economically convenient for government and business leaders to provide a substantial fraction of our energy needs sustainably.
That's primarily because people accept the energy status quo as a given, and are willing to tolerate the glacially slow transition which is required to keep said leaders comfortable. They're willing to confine themselves and their ideas to the framework which leaders have outline about which options are "on the table" and which aren't.
On a technical level, we can transition to sustainable energy in a few years. All that's missing is the political and economic will to do it.
Don't let them con you into being "realistic" within the framework of convenience they've laid out. If we all demand what we know can be done, it will happen. Otherwise it'll never happen, no matter how possible it is.