While I agree with you that many of these comparisons go too far into the foil cap realm, I have to disagree with you on your statement that "to seriously compare anything that's going on right now to the Chinese under Mao, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Russia under Stalin, or Germany under Hitler, is not only to show your own ignorance and lack of appreciation of scale and perspective, but also to do a disservice to those historical events." Many, although not all, of these dictators rose to power in political environments not dissimilar to those present in the US today. It doesn't take fancy new flags, songs, "official" statements and the like for a political transition to be valid. While we don't currently have a psychopathic head of state in the ilk of those mentioned above, we DO see a burgeoning imbalance in a system that is supposed to self-correct. Imbalances in "democracies" are dangerous as a charismatic leader who appeals to the mob (a la Hitler) can gain a great deal of power that may be difficult to revoke once it becomes apparent. Don't don your tinfoil hat, but do keep a wary eye on the officials who nominally represent you and are capable of causing great harm in your name. The trick will be to check the power imbalance in its nascent state without resorting to the extremes that are inevitable if we wait too long.
The description above describes my time in school perfectly, and there was a great deal of pressure put upon my parents by counselors, psychologists, and doctors to dose me with ADD. Fortunately, my parents paid more attention and realized that my "inability to pay attention" didn't extend to other things like leisure reading, playing with legos, tinkering with electronics, or roaming around the woods memorizing the latin names and of wild herbs. I could do these things for hours at a time, but was unable to complete a worksheet that required me to write complete sentences despite having tested well above average both in terms of intelligence and emotional maturity. So I wasn't "attention deficit" in anything but an educational system that values blind conformity over any style of learning. Sure, my GPA suffered, but I learned far more than most of my fellow students. Maybe this has hurt me in finding work, but I find I'm now capable of working in just about any field. While I'm sure ADD and ADHD exist and are real disabilities, I think the tests to determine diagnosis are nowhere near reliable. Further, as a former premed, I had to compete with many students who openly used these drugs to help concentrate for exams. This definitely led to an alteration of the curve to the disadvantage of those who would not or could not take the drugs, especially in classes that prided themselves on rote memorization and other "dry" styles of learning. The result? Tons of students with 4.0 GPAs who haven't learned a thing, and a bunch of students with 3.5s who learned and could apply their knowledge, but were shifted artificially down the curve. Guess my point is that there is abuse on both sides of the educational fence.
While I don't share your credentials, I have shared some of your perspective as a Roman history buff. While I agree that Bush is no Caesar, I see him more as a Sulla - setting extroardinarily dangerous precedents that upset the balance of power and leave the door open for Caesar. Sulla, like Bush, believed in his nation to such a degree that he placed himself "above the law" to "protect" it. In the end, he stepped down, but the Roman government was never the same and the rise of a supreme executive power (this time imperator rather than rex) was made inevitable. Yes, we've had these arguements for a long time, but so did the Romans. Discussions eventually become so internally distorted rhetorically that they lose all effectiveness. These discussions increase in complexity until they lose touch with reality by taking on a life of their own, at which point a simpleton with a sword can do a great deal of damage. I agree that it's more complex than grade school, but it is also a good deal simpler than historico-legal academic microanalysis would like it to be. Both perspectives are right......and wrong.
unlike Hitler who wasn't bothered by electoral process.
Not entirely accurate....Hitler did have to contend with elections, although his position as chancellor was appointed. He was a deft political manipulator, and managed to coerce other parties into voting him legislative as well as executive privileges. Elections were bungled, rigged, and spun (remember the burning of the Reichstag?). Comparisons with an American executive authority who has a history of questionable election tactics, control with only nominal oversight over the military/intel community, and a message of fear and blame are therefore valid. The point is that an executive authority legally placed in his position and abusing his authority for personal gain is not outside the realm of possibility or even probability.
With all this having been said, I agree that we probably don't have to worry about a cancelling of elections or the formation of a fascist state. There's a fine line between caution and paranoia. We don't want to go the way of the Roman republic either. They all KNEW that there was no way they'd revert to a monarchy. Julius Caesar was killed because the word on the street was that he'd take the title of "King of Rome". That would be analagous to Bush taking the title of Fuhrer. Octavius knew better than to call a rose a rose, however, and swore he'd never be a "king". Instead he "settled" for the title of "first person" a.k.a. "imperator". So instead of a monarchy, they got a heredetary imperialism.....but they didn't have a king! I'm not worried about Bush mirroring the rise of Hitler or Napoleon, but I am cautious about the consolidation of power in too few hands. People are immensely creative and it is definitely possible that a charismatic politician could manipulate the system in a way that he holds all the strings - whether officially or not. Remembering history and making these comparisons is the only way to gauge whether the balance of power has been upset. The best we can do is watch, wait, and make up our own minds as to our actions in any possible future.
was somebody's pride. This "form over function" thing is starting to get out of hand both in the gov't and in the private sectors. True story: I once took a military medical course that was teaching information many years out of date. Using the appropriate forms, I submitted detailed critiques complete with sources and references. Rather than fix the problem, I was called on the carpet and ordered to stop submitting critiques because they "questioned the integrity of the course." This strikes me as very similar to "They even claimed the integrity of the system was impaired..." Yes Virginia, that's exactly what we're doing! You can't fix it if you don't admit it's broken.
Re:Some artists just want to be heard...
on
CRIA Falling Apart?
·
· Score: 1
The 5 years should apply to copyright not patents. These are two distinct areas of law and are applied for completely different reasons. Patents IMHO should be abolished. Drug companies would still research drugs, be first on the market, etc and they would still make money, albeit not hand over fist. They would not be able to patent amino acid combinations or sections of the human genome and charge license fees for research on them. Progress is not being furthered by such practices. Further, the R&D would be performed on drugs that are actually NEEDED rather than on small "improvements" to drugs that have generic counterparts with near-equal efficacy. Of course, this all implies that the majority of research funding for drugs comes from the private sector. In reality, the government pays for or subsidizes much of the new research work in drugs geared toward diseases, leaving the pharm companies to do R&D on the latest anti-aging or sexual enhancement formula (accounts for 90% of all new drugs). Social medicine is a whole different arguement that I won't get into now although I agree it's not the panacea that it's portrayed to be.
Re:Some artists just want to be heard...
on
CRIA Falling Apart?
·
· Score: 1
A service can have perpetual "value" as well. We all want to be healthy, so the value of the service provided by the physician can last indefinitely as would be readily seen if physicians were in short supply here as in other places of the world. I would argue for a 5 year copyright to prevent the same abuses we currently see in the pharmaceutical industry you reference. Because of these copyrights (and patents, since we're talking about drugs) useful new meds are prohibitively expensive to the people who need them most (cf. AIDS in Africa) as the drug companies try to maximize their profits. Value is an intangible concept that can only obliquely and inconstantly be quantified. In a sense, it's in the eye of the beholder. To mandate a value, therefore, is to remove the very flexibility that maintains moderation. Supply and demand work best in an open market, regulated only to ensure safety and ethical practice. To an individual, the ownership of an idea may seem wise. On a social scale, however, copyright constricts innovation within the whole and is therefore undesireable. Some happy-medium is desirable, and the open debate required to reach it is only possible if all interests are represented equally. Currently, this is not the case, and only corporate interests are adequately represented to the detriment of all.
Re:Some artists just want to be heard...
on
CRIA Falling Apart?
·
· Score: 1
A service only has value as a service
Possibly, but by arguing the inverse (the value of what is lost if the service is not rendered) we determine the value (distinguished from price) of the "service". The service then has the value of the potential loss and is much more valuable than the act of service itself.
A creation has perpetual value.
Nothing outside the fantasy realm of copyright maintains its original value in perpetuity. A creation can appreciate or depreciate as easily as anything else. Similarly, the performer is not always the "creator". RIAA and the labels aren't creators. If, for the sake of arguement, I subscribe to the idea that a creation deserves extended compensation, then that compensation should devolve solely on the creator, not intermediaries and distributors. By your analogy, the designer/constructor of a house or piece of furniture is a creator and we should pay their family in perpetuity for the right to use a chair or a building. Is the designer of a public bridge creating or servicing? The line between service and creation blurs rapidly. Perhaps short term copyrights are warranted to protect a creation until it reaches the market, but it certainly shouldn't be protected past the life of the creator.
Whew! It's getting a little warm in here! Let's take a collective breath here and realize that none of us are (personally) under attack. Then let's reread the article (RTFM). Okay, now that we're done hyperventilating, we can respond in an educated, enlightened fashion. The article makes a valid arguement that snobbish and impatient linux users can frighten off potential converts with unduly harsh responses. As mentioned ad nauseum in the replies above, newbies ask questions - often repetatively, and this can grate on the nerves of otherwise sane individuals who are just trying to help. This article isn't attacking us, it's pointing out that enough people have been scared off by poor attitudes that it's worth writing an article about (and apparently hits home enough to inspire some heated conversation here on slashdot.) None of us want to deter potential Linux users from trying our favorite OS, so let's look at some things we can do to mitigate a very real problem.
Remember the old axiom "there are no stupid questions." A t-shirt I once saw added a disclaimer to this: "but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots". Both comments have elements of truth. Remember that most computer users don't know a CPU from a GUI and when you tell them to RTFM they glaze over and dream of a BLT on rye. Lesson number 1 is talk to newbies in newbie terms. We all hope that newbies will take time to learn the linux lexicon, but we have to keep in mind that most non-geeks only look for support when things go wrong. Even the geeks among us don't take the time to learn the technical terms for everything we come across. (Otherwise we'd all know how MDRTB differs from MRSA and how neither requires an EEG to assign an ICD9 code.)
So, using language that newbies understand ("monitor?, you mean the lizard?") let's try to answer their questions directly. Sure, mention ways for them to search for solutions to their own problems, but directly answer the question as well. Does it really take more effort to type "127.0.0.1 is the number your computer uses to talk to itself" as opposed to "google TCP/IP and RTFM, hope that helps"? People tend to be more receptive to learning once they have fixed the broken thingamajig. If we find ourselves getting frustrated with the newbies, what makes "RTFM n00b, or SFTU" a better response than "you're asking the same question, please see above" or, better yet, not answering at all!? We are under no obligation to answer any question, so if we CHOOSE to answer, let's try to be a little more civil - else leave the "assistance" to somebody else. For those of you who will insist on protesting that they're annoying you on your #noobhelp irc channel: either place the offender on ignore without answering (leave the question to someone else), or, preferably, go to a different channel to discuss the history of Plan9 and how it's so much cooler than BeOS.
Let's sum up today's lesson: 1) Newbies ask questions. 2) Newbies have never heard of man pages and don't know what/etc,/var/log, or man pages are. 3) Newbies know that their doohickey is broken and want it fixed. 4) Linux user/= geek. 5) If you can't contribute (civilly) directly to the noob's problem, STFU. They'll find google on their own if you don't say a word. 6) ANSWER THE QUESTION. If you feel you're being repetetive, post a FAQ on your home page and link to that. 7) If you went on the defensive after reading the article, then you qualify as a linux snob. Leave the "teaching" to those of us who said "oh no! people are being scared off!" and ran to the keyboard to type a calm and helpful response.
Really now - if he insisted on using such an antiquated cipher, he should have replicated other historic details like writing on the messenger's head and waiting for the hair to grow back for concealment - primitive steganography!
I recently purchased an X40 from Lenovo and have had no reason to be sorry about my choice. When I worked at my university's helpdesk, we had HPs, Gateways, Dells, Toshies, and Vaios stacked in heaps in the "to be repaired" cabinet, but I can count on one hand the number of thinkpads brought in with problems (most of these were over 5 years old and still going strong). I personally have owned laptops made by Dell, Gateway, HP, and even a customized Sager, but none of them were able to take much abuse. This thinkpad has survived being smashed by textbooks sans a case in my backpack, it's survived dust storms at 10k feet in the Rockies, it's been dropped countless times, and it still doesn't have a scratch on it! Okay, so it's not a fancy gaming machine, but I have a home built tower for that! It runs linux like a dream without my having to tweak each and every hardware device. I get 8 hours of battery life (dual batts) and the thing still weighs less than 5 lbs. It handles schoolwork, business, coding, and all that can be lumped together as "internet" without ripping my arm off or falling apart in a fresh breeze. Best of all, it didn't come with craploads of "demo" software. It's a pleasure to type on (I have yet to use a mouse with it) and I can't see myself purchasing anything else in the future. Since I don't run windoze, I won't be obligated to buy a new laptop when Vista comes out - same for games. This thing will function just fine for years to come, and I can keep my tower up to date with the money I save. Bottom line, you get what you pay for; this is a great machine.
Wow, what a debate! Allow me to throw in my two cents...
How did ya'll get the idea that our educational system is designed to educate? It is there to teach you to conform - nothing more. Any education you receive is a secondary concern that results from you actually remembering a handful of factoids and (if you're lucky) some principles. Very few students go so far as to learn actual material while at school, and those who do are primarily self taught. Whether they spend hours each night reading textbooks, or skip class and teach themselves, the classroom only serves as an arena in which they compete for grade points and delete information that isn't going to be on the next test. Making students use pen and paper, or permitting laptops will make little difference to those students who are already actively teaching themselves. But it underlines the message of conformity and obedience that is the true message of the system. Oh I know we all think of ourselves as individualists and nonconformists - but look at the avenues our "nonconformity" takes. We protest, petition, and publish, but rarely cause real or lasting change because few of us are willing to make the requisite personal sacrifices. Further, many of us confuse independence with anti-conformity. The latter is a reaction to and is therefore controlled by the perceived influence to conform. The former isn't affected by either influence and can stand on its own two feet without external support. This is just another example of a professor's power trip supported by the university's structure of conformity and justified by a fallacious arguement for equity (which is incorrectly referred to as equality).
Faster than everybody else! Stronger than the weak! Able to leap to conclusions in a single bound! Sworn enemy of the dreaded RIAA! Destroyer of the Gates of hell! I'd have been a superhero if I weren't deathly afraid of lawsuits.....and girls:p
I would consider it a violation of my human rights to abuse my existence without my fully informed consent
So you're saying we should wait until you're completely mentally and legally competent before performing any medical procedure upon you? IANAL, but it is my understanding that a minor (an embryo is definitely under the age of consent) the parents have the sole rights to grant consent for any procedure whether the child understands it or not. Ergo, as an embryo, your parents would have to give consent in order to "harvest" that single cell. This is no different than the parents giving consent to circumcise their son - losing billions of cells for purely religious/asthetic reasons. I doubt you would have given consent at the time. Oh, and I probably should point out that the vast majority of people don't want to be fully informed about anything.....a state that would require them to assume responsibility for their consent. They'd rather have just enough knowledge to feel empowered while leaving enough room open to blame another party if something goes wrong. The few people who really want to be informed don't wait to be "told" by the experts....they go out and do some (gasp) research on their own.
Your second arguement on how this could be abused by the legal system is 100% spot on. This is not a valid reason not to proceed with research however. "I'm not gonna even try to cure AIDS because there could potentially be lawsuits that potentially implicate me based on research that I would potentially perform." Armchair science at its best!
The same network that carries Command & Control data that is vital for operational information.
available bandwidth that lets an alert message come in about an impending attack.
Umm...I know that NIPRNET recently got it's "weapons system" classification, but that doesn't mean it's used for vital C2 info or FLASH messages. It's primarily used to send out email and supplementary directives from the C2 element, coupled with keeping the "good ol boys" in contact. So no, Virginia, it's not vital.... which is a good thing, considering how often it breaks and how kludged up the network design is on most military installations. Bandwith is an excuse, since I can watch streaming vids of military recruiting commercials (unblocked). To be fair, news sites are rarely blocked by some conspiracy to keep troops from getting news. They usually get sucked into the filter when some fresh-from-the-academy butterbar decides to keep troops from surfing by blocking all commonly used IPs that he doesn't recognize. (The sites listed above aren't all well-known sites to non-geeks). Usually, a simple call to the NCC people will clear things up - especially if you can relate it to "mission-essential" needs, which is a fairly broad definition. I've seen the drudgereport blocked on occasion, along with msnbc, cnn, slashdot, fark, nasog, the bbc, and just about every other site I've ever visited at one point or another. The military isn't censoring here....it's just SNAFU.
only 10 had the balls to stand up to this piece of filth and vote no.
And how many Americans had the balls to vote for a third party? Hell, how many Americans had the balls to vote at all?!
As far as the revolution goes....step back and take a long term view. If this government is overthrown, what would you replace it with? Another "ideal" piece of paper that could be corrupted by rhetorical manipulation a century later? I suppose the ruling "elite" will be slashdot editors. Change will last for a generation or so, and then revert to the same deal we have now unless we find a way to involve ALL our citizens in the government in their areas of interest/expertise. This means 1 vote actually counts for something. I submit that the revolution is already underway, but through a different mechanism than has been tried before. "We the people" have started simply ignoring the gov't. How many people here have pirated music, "stolen" proprietary codecs, etc? How many of us boycott the products of at least one corporation? How many of us have reverse-engineered proprietary software? We the people (who give a damn) are, one by one, turning our backs and giving the gov't and the market-economy it utilizes to justify its abuses the silent treatment.
Now before y'all flame me for including our economic system as a "bad guy", allow me to explain.... "Governments" were initially formed (in the tribal days) to share resources and protect the group from others who might desire those resources. This mutated as "civilization" grew. Governments became more complex as they managed ever larger areas, populations, and resources. They created money to better distribute these resources over more diverse areas. A gold coin was the same on both ends of the empire. Religion grew out of a desire to understand nature along with a search for social "morality". Eventually, technology allowed science to split from religion and the "moral" side of religion became mired in its own traditions and rituals, obscuring the original message of cooperation. Just as religion was perverted from a cooperative influence to a divisive amplification of difference, money began to be perverted by those who controlled its production. Soon, a coin wasn't the same to those two distant strangers. To one, it meant he could eat for a week - the price of a loaf of bread. To the other, it wouldn't even buy the crust because others in his area had more coins, and the laws of supply and demand drove the prices in his area up. The idea of money as a universal alternative to barter was destroyed. What initially served as a tool for distribution turned on itself and became a tool for exploitation. Remnants of the original purposes of religion, government, and currency remain to this day, and were essential in the development of today's technology. From the guy who dug up the sand, to the guy who soldered the chips, to the programmers, distributors, consumers, auxiliary industries, etc....the world as we know it would not exist without the ability to safely communicate (provided by the govt), share resources (provided by the monetary system), and the will to cooperate (initially encouraged by religion, supplanted by the monetary system). All of this brought us to where we are today, but as we see every day, this system is falling apart. Why?.
To answer this, let's look at what the three systems (govt, rel, and $$) have become. Government long ago transitioned from a management system agreed upon (in action if not in name) to an entity that exists only for its own glorification and expansion. The actions of it's constituents no longer play a critical role in a government's legitimacy because the govt structure has become so large that it is impossible for it to truly represent a true majority on any given issue. Religion, as mentioned above, sacrificed its unifying messages of cooperation, humanity, compassion, etc for "technicalities" of procedure, ritual, interpretation, and more that now are used to divide what they
Looks like a nice little toy. It'll certainly help smaller hospitals and clinics where they may not have a multilingual staff. Using pre-selected sentences allows for a small amount of "cultural competency" in the translation since I doubt each translation is 100% literal. It's still no substitute for a multilingual and culturally aware medical staff, however. For those who are curious about this cultural competency thing....read "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down", by Anne Fadiman to see how more than just language barriers can separate doctors and patients.
If Linux were the "default" would Windows be "easy enough" to warrant a switch in the other direction? I think both OSs have their problems - neither is "easier" or "harder" in all aspects.
You raise a more valid point than you know..... Julius Caesar was assassinated because (or at least with the excuse that) he was about to name himself "King" which was a dirty word in the time of the Republic. Octavius (Augustus) got around this by swearing he would never try to be the "King" of Rome, and took the title "Imperator" (from which we get emperor) instead. While the TIA program had a logo and a nasty public image, it was protested by the masses, but call it something else....and suddenly it's not so bad. We see this a lot lately. What's frightening is that changing terminology seems to be a viable method to subvert the constitution. As far as incompetence in the gov't goes....I'm not scared of the 90% of politicians who don't know what's going on.....I'm scared to death of the 10% that do. Looking at the fall of past democracies and republics.....the shift of power away from the senate/congress and into the hands of fewer and fewer people is generally a bad thing for all concerned.
Well M$ is a General pain in the @$$. Guess that's why it wants us all to salute, follow orders, and shut up and color. The (linux) colonel can stick around to fetch coffee.
I do not try to prevent my son from entering the "real world" -- but I DO try to teach him how to deal with it.
Bravo! I wish more parents shared this sentiment rather than imbuing their own children and trying to force everybody else's children to live in a state of denial.
Slashdot Mirror
While I agree with you that many of these comparisons go too far into the foil cap realm, I have to disagree with you on your statement that "to seriously compare anything that's going on right now to the Chinese under Mao, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Russia under Stalin, or Germany under Hitler, is not only to show your own ignorance and lack of appreciation of scale and perspective, but also to do a disservice to those historical events." Many, although not all, of these dictators rose to power in political environments not dissimilar to those present in the US today. It doesn't take fancy new flags, songs, "official" statements and the like for a political transition to be valid. While we don't currently have a psychopathic head of state in the ilk of those mentioned above, we DO see a burgeoning imbalance in a system that is supposed to self-correct. Imbalances in "democracies" are dangerous as a charismatic leader who appeals to the mob (a la Hitler) can gain a great deal of power that may be difficult to revoke once it becomes apparent. Don't don your tinfoil hat, but do keep a wary eye on the officials who nominally represent you and are capable of causing great harm in your name. The trick will be to check the power imbalance in its nascent state without resorting to the extremes that are inevitable if we wait too long.
The description above describes my time in school perfectly, and there was a great deal of pressure put upon my parents by counselors, psychologists, and doctors to dose me with ADD. Fortunately, my parents paid more attention and realized that my "inability to pay attention" didn't extend to other things like leisure reading, playing with legos, tinkering with electronics, or roaming around the woods memorizing the latin names and of wild herbs. I could do these things for hours at a time, but was unable to complete a worksheet that required me to write complete sentences despite having tested well above average both in terms of intelligence and emotional maturity. So I wasn't "attention deficit" in anything but an educational system that values blind conformity over any style of learning. Sure, my GPA suffered, but I learned far more than most of my fellow students. Maybe this has hurt me in finding work, but I find I'm now capable of working in just about any field. While I'm sure ADD and ADHD exist and are real disabilities, I think the tests to determine diagnosis are nowhere near reliable. Further, as a former premed, I had to compete with many students who openly used these drugs to help concentrate for exams. This definitely led to an alteration of the curve to the disadvantage of those who would not or could not take the drugs, especially in classes that prided themselves on rote memorization and other "dry" styles of learning. The result? Tons of students with 4.0 GPAs who haven't learned a thing, and a bunch of students with 3.5s who learned and could apply their knowledge, but were shifted artificially down the curve. Guess my point is that there is abuse on both sides of the educational fence.
While I don't share your credentials, I have shared some of your perspective as a Roman history buff. While I agree that Bush is no Caesar, I see him more as a Sulla - setting extroardinarily dangerous precedents that upset the balance of power and leave the door open for Caesar. Sulla, like Bush, believed in his nation to such a degree that he placed himself "above the law" to "protect" it. In the end, he stepped down, but the Roman government was never the same and the rise of a supreme executive power (this time imperator rather than rex) was made inevitable. Yes, we've had these arguements for a long time, but so did the Romans. Discussions eventually become so internally distorted rhetorically that they lose all effectiveness. These discussions increase in complexity until they lose touch with reality by taking on a life of their own, at which point a simpleton with a sword can do a great deal of damage. I agree that it's more complex than grade school, but it is also a good deal simpler than historico-legal academic microanalysis would like it to be. Both perspectives are right......and wrong.
Not entirely accurate....Hitler did have to contend with elections, although his position as chancellor was appointed. He was a deft political manipulator, and managed to coerce other parties into voting him legislative as well as executive privileges. Elections were bungled, rigged, and spun (remember the burning of the Reichstag?). Comparisons with an American executive authority who has a history of questionable election tactics, control with only nominal oversight over the military/intel community, and a message of fear and blame are therefore valid. The point is that an executive authority legally placed in his position and abusing his authority for personal gain is not outside the realm of possibility or even probability.
With all this having been said, I agree that we probably don't have to worry about a cancelling of elections or the formation of a fascist state. There's a fine line between caution and paranoia. We don't want to go the way of the Roman republic either. They all KNEW that there was no way they'd revert to a monarchy. Julius Caesar was killed because the word on the street was that he'd take the title of "King of Rome". That would be analagous to Bush taking the title of Fuhrer. Octavius knew better than to call a rose a rose, however, and swore he'd never be a "king". Instead he "settled" for the title of "first person" a.k.a. "imperator". So instead of a monarchy, they got a heredetary imperialism.....but they didn't have a king! I'm not worried about Bush mirroring the rise of Hitler or Napoleon, but I am cautious about the consolidation of power in too few hands. People are immensely creative and it is definitely possible that a charismatic politician could manipulate the system in a way that he holds all the strings - whether officially or not. Remembering history and making these comparisons is the only way to gauge whether the balance of power has been upset. The best we can do is watch, wait, and make up our own minds as to our actions in any possible future.
I pointed it out with similar results to those already mentioned. Some people take "ignorance is bliss" a little far.
was somebody's pride. This "form over function" thing is starting to get out of hand both in the gov't and in the private sectors. True story: I once took a military medical course that was teaching information many years out of date. Using the appropriate forms, I submitted detailed critiques complete with sources and references. Rather than fix the problem, I was called on the carpet and ordered to stop submitting critiques because they "questioned the integrity of the course." This strikes me as very similar to "They even claimed the integrity of the system was impaired..." Yes Virginia, that's exactly what we're doing! You can't fix it if you don't admit it's broken.
They turned it into a newt!
The 5 years should apply to copyright not patents. These are two distinct areas of law and are applied for completely different reasons. Patents IMHO should be abolished. Drug companies would still research drugs, be first on the market, etc and they would still make money, albeit not hand over fist. They would not be able to patent amino acid combinations or sections of the human genome and charge license fees for research on them. Progress is not being furthered by such practices. Further, the R&D would be performed on drugs that are actually NEEDED rather than on small "improvements" to drugs that have generic counterparts with near-equal efficacy. Of course, this all implies that the majority of research funding for drugs comes from the private sector. In reality, the government pays for or subsidizes much of the new research work in drugs geared toward diseases, leaving the pharm companies to do R&D on the latest anti-aging or sexual enhancement formula (accounts for 90% of all new drugs). Social medicine is a whole different arguement that I won't get into now although I agree it's not the panacea that it's portrayed to be.
A service can have perpetual "value" as well. We all want to be healthy, so the value of the service provided by the physician can last indefinitely as would be readily seen if physicians were in short supply here as in other places of the world. I would argue for a 5 year copyright to prevent the same abuses we currently see in the pharmaceutical industry you reference. Because of these copyrights (and patents, since we're talking about drugs) useful new meds are prohibitively expensive to the people who need them most (cf. AIDS in Africa) as the drug companies try to maximize their profits. Value is an intangible concept that can only obliquely and inconstantly be quantified. In a sense, it's in the eye of the beholder. To mandate a value, therefore, is to remove the very flexibility that maintains moderation. Supply and demand work best in an open market, regulated only to ensure safety and ethical practice. To an individual, the ownership of an idea may seem wise. On a social scale, however, copyright constricts innovation within the whole and is therefore undesireable. Some happy-medium is desirable, and the open debate required to reach it is only possible if all interests are represented equally. Currently, this is not the case, and only corporate interests are adequately represented to the detriment of all.
Possibly, but by arguing the inverse (the value of what is lost if the service is not rendered) we determine the value (distinguished from price) of the "service". The service then has the value of the potential loss and is much more valuable than the act of service itself.
A creation has perpetual value.
Nothing outside the fantasy realm of copyright maintains its original value in perpetuity. A creation can appreciate or depreciate as easily as anything else. Similarly, the performer is not always the "creator". RIAA and the labels aren't creators. If, for the sake of arguement, I subscribe to the idea that a creation deserves extended compensation, then that compensation should devolve solely on the creator, not intermediaries and distributors. By your analogy, the designer/constructor of a house or piece of furniture is a creator and we should pay their family in perpetuity for the right to use a chair or a building. Is the designer of a public bridge creating or servicing? The line between service and creation blurs rapidly. Perhaps short term copyrights are warranted to protect a creation until it reaches the market, but it certainly shouldn't be protected past the life of the creator.
Remember the old axiom "there are no stupid questions." A t-shirt I once saw added a disclaimer to this: "but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots". Both comments have elements of truth. Remember that most computer users don't know a CPU from a GUI and when you tell them to RTFM they glaze over and dream of a BLT on rye. Lesson number 1 is talk to newbies in newbie terms. We all hope that newbies will take time to learn the linux lexicon, but we have to keep in mind that most non-geeks only look for support when things go wrong. Even the geeks among us don't take the time to learn the technical terms for everything we come across. (Otherwise we'd all know how MDRTB differs from MRSA and how neither requires an EEG to assign an ICD9 code.)
So, using language that newbies understand ("monitor?, you mean the lizard?") let's try to answer their questions directly. Sure, mention ways for them to search for solutions to their own problems, but directly answer the question as well. Does it really take more effort to type "127.0.0.1 is the number your computer uses to talk to itself" as opposed to "google TCP/IP and RTFM, hope that helps"? People tend to be more receptive to learning once they have fixed the broken thingamajig. If we find ourselves getting frustrated with the newbies, what makes "RTFM n00b, or SFTU" a better response than "you're asking the same question, please see above" or, better yet, not answering at all!? We are under no obligation to answer any question, so if we CHOOSE to answer, let's try to be a little more civil - else leave the "assistance" to somebody else. For those of you who will insist on protesting that they're annoying you on your #noobhelp irc channel: either place the offender on ignore without answering (leave the question to someone else), or, preferably, go to a different channel to discuss the history of Plan9 and how it's so much cooler than BeOS.
Let's sum up today's lesson: 1) Newbies ask questions. 2) Newbies have never heard of man pages and don't know what /etc, /var/log, or man pages are. 3) Newbies know that their doohickey is broken and want it fixed. 4) Linux user /= geek. 5) If you can't contribute (civilly) directly to the noob's problem, STFU. They'll find google on their own if you don't say a word. 6) ANSWER THE QUESTION. If you feel you're being repetetive, post a FAQ on your home page and link to that. 7) If you went on the defensive after reading the article, then you qualify as a linux snob. Leave the "teaching" to those of us who said "oh no! people are being scared off!" and ran to the keyboard to type a calm and helpful response.
Really now - if he insisted on using such an antiquated cipher, he should have replicated other historic details like writing on the messenger's head and waiting for the hair to grow back for concealment - primitive steganography!
I recently purchased an X40 from Lenovo and have had no reason to be sorry about my choice. When I worked at my university's helpdesk, we had HPs, Gateways, Dells, Toshies, and Vaios stacked in heaps in the "to be repaired" cabinet, but I can count on one hand the number of thinkpads brought in with problems (most of these were over 5 years old and still going strong). I personally have owned laptops made by Dell, Gateway, HP, and even a customized Sager, but none of them were able to take much abuse. This thinkpad has survived being smashed by textbooks sans a case in my backpack, it's survived dust storms at 10k feet in the Rockies, it's been dropped countless times, and it still doesn't have a scratch on it! Okay, so it's not a fancy gaming machine, but I have a home built tower for that! It runs linux like a dream without my having to tweak each and every hardware device. I get 8 hours of battery life (dual batts) and the thing still weighs less than 5 lbs. It handles schoolwork, business, coding, and all that can be lumped together as "internet" without ripping my arm off or falling apart in a fresh breeze. Best of all, it didn't come with craploads of "demo" software. It's a pleasure to type on (I have yet to use a mouse with it) and I can't see myself purchasing anything else in the future. Since I don't run windoze, I won't be obligated to buy a new laptop when Vista comes out - same for games. This thing will function just fine for years to come, and I can keep my tower up to date with the money I save. Bottom line, you get what you pay for; this is a great machine.
How did ya'll get the idea that our educational system is designed to educate? It is there to teach you to conform - nothing more. Any education you receive is a secondary concern that results from you actually remembering a handful of factoids and (if you're lucky) some principles. Very few students go so far as to learn actual material while at school, and those who do are primarily self taught. Whether they spend hours each night reading textbooks, or skip class and teach themselves, the classroom only serves as an arena in which they compete for grade points and delete information that isn't going to be on the next test. Making students use pen and paper, or permitting laptops will make little difference to those students who are already actively teaching themselves. But it underlines the message of conformity and obedience that is the true message of the system. Oh I know we all think of ourselves as individualists and nonconformists - but look at the avenues our "nonconformity" takes. We protest, petition, and publish, but rarely cause real or lasting change because few of us are willing to make the requisite personal sacrifices. Further, many of us confuse independence with anti-conformity. The latter is a reaction to and is therefore controlled by the perceived influence to conform. The former isn't affected by either influence and can stand on its own two feet without external support. This is just another example of a professor's power trip supported by the university's structure of conformity and justified by a fallacious arguement for equity (which is incorrectly referred to as equality).
Umm...did I mention the leaping to conclusions part?
Faster than everybody else! Stronger than the weak! Able to leap to conclusions in a single bound! Sworn enemy of the dreaded RIAA! Destroyer of the Gates of hell! I'd have been a superhero if I weren't deathly afraid of lawsuits.....and girls :p
Peer review? Yeah....shame the software industry is so slow to catch on......
So you're saying we should wait until you're completely mentally and legally competent before performing any medical procedure upon you? IANAL, but it is my understanding that a minor (an embryo is definitely under the age of consent) the parents have the sole rights to grant consent for any procedure whether the child understands it or not. Ergo, as an embryo, your parents would have to give consent in order to "harvest" that single cell. This is no different than the parents giving consent to circumcise their son - losing billions of cells for purely religious/asthetic reasons. I doubt you would have given consent at the time. Oh, and I probably should point out that the vast majority of people don't want to be fully informed about anything.....a state that would require them to assume responsibility for their consent. They'd rather have just enough knowledge to feel empowered while leaving enough room open to blame another party if something goes wrong. The few people who really want to be informed don't wait to be "told" by the experts....they go out and do some (gasp) research on their own.
Your second arguement on how this could be abused by the legal system is 100% spot on. This is not a valid reason not to proceed with research however. "I'm not gonna even try to cure AIDS because there could potentially be lawsuits that potentially implicate me based on research that I would potentially perform." Armchair science at its best!
available bandwidth that lets an alert message come in about an impending attack.
Umm...I know that NIPRNET recently got it's "weapons system" classification, but that doesn't mean it's used for vital C2 info or FLASH messages. It's primarily used to send out email and supplementary directives from the C2 element, coupled with keeping the "good ol boys" in contact. So no, Virginia, it's not vital.... which is a good thing, considering how often it breaks and how kludged up the network design is on most military installations. Bandwith is an excuse, since I can watch streaming vids of military recruiting commercials (unblocked). To be fair, news sites are rarely blocked by some conspiracy to keep troops from getting news. They usually get sucked into the filter when some fresh-from-the-academy butterbar decides to keep troops from surfing by blocking all commonly used IPs that he doesn't recognize. (The sites listed above aren't all well-known sites to non-geeks). Usually, a simple call to the NCC people will clear things up - especially if you can relate it to "mission-essential" needs, which is a fairly broad definition. I've seen the drudgereport blocked on occasion, along with msnbc, cnn, slashdot, fark, nasog, the bbc, and just about every other site I've ever visited at one point or another. The military isn't censoring here....it's just SNAFU.
And how many Americans had the balls to vote for a third party? Hell, how many Americans had the balls to vote at all?!
As far as the revolution goes....step back and take a long term view. If this government is overthrown, what would you replace it with? Another "ideal" piece of paper that could be corrupted by rhetorical manipulation a century later? I suppose the ruling "elite" will be slashdot editors. Change will last for a generation or so, and then revert to the same deal we have now unless we find a way to involve ALL our citizens in the government in their areas of interest/expertise. This means 1 vote actually counts for something. I submit that the revolution is already underway, but through a different mechanism than has been tried before. "We the people" have started simply ignoring the gov't. How many people here have pirated music, "stolen" proprietary codecs, etc? How many of us boycott the products of at least one corporation? How many of us have reverse-engineered proprietary software? We the people (who give a damn) are, one by one, turning our backs and giving the gov't and the market-economy it utilizes to justify its abuses the silent treatment.
Now before y'all flame me for including our economic system as a "bad guy", allow me to explain.... "Governments" were initially formed (in the tribal days) to share resources and protect the group from others who might desire those resources. This mutated as "civilization" grew. Governments became more complex as they managed ever larger areas, populations, and resources. They created money to better distribute these resources over more diverse areas. A gold coin was the same on both ends of the empire. Religion grew out of a desire to understand nature along with a search for social "morality". Eventually, technology allowed science to split from religion and the "moral" side of religion became mired in its own traditions and rituals, obscuring the original message of cooperation. Just as religion was perverted from a cooperative influence to a divisive amplification of difference, money began to be perverted by those who controlled its production. Soon, a coin wasn't the same to those two distant strangers. To one, it meant he could eat for a week - the price of a loaf of bread. To the other, it wouldn't even buy the crust because others in his area had more coins, and the laws of supply and demand drove the prices in his area up. The idea of money as a universal alternative to barter was destroyed. What initially served as a tool for distribution turned on itself and became a tool for exploitation. Remnants of the original purposes of religion, government, and currency remain to this day, and were essential in the development of today's technology. From the guy who dug up the sand, to the guy who soldered the chips, to the programmers, distributors, consumers, auxiliary industries, etc....the world as we know it would not exist without the ability to safely communicate (provided by the govt), share resources (provided by the monetary system), and the will to cooperate (initially encouraged by religion, supplanted by the monetary system). All of this brought us to where we are today, but as we see every day, this system is falling apart. Why?.
To answer this, let's look at what the three systems (govt, rel, and $$) have become. Government long ago transitioned from a management system agreed upon (in action if not in name) to an entity that exists only for its own glorification and expansion. The actions of it's constituents no longer play a critical role in a government's legitimacy because the govt structure has become so large that it is impossible for it to truly represent a true majority on any given issue. Religion, as mentioned above, sacrificed its unifying messages of cooperation, humanity, compassion, etc for "technicalities" of procedure, ritual, interpretation, and more that now are used to divide what they
Looks like a nice little toy. It'll certainly help smaller hospitals and clinics where they may not have a multilingual staff. Using pre-selected sentences allows for a small amount of "cultural competency" in the translation since I doubt each translation is 100% literal. It's still no substitute for a multilingual and culturally aware medical staff, however. For those who are curious about this cultural competency thing....read "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down", by Anne Fadiman to see how more than just language barriers can separate doctors and patients.
If Linux were the "default" would Windows be "easy enough" to warrant a switch in the other direction? I think both OSs have their problems - neither is "easier" or "harder" in all aspects.
You raise a more valid point than you know..... Julius Caesar was assassinated because (or at least with the excuse that) he was about to name himself "King" which was a dirty word in the time of the Republic. Octavius (Augustus) got around this by swearing he would never try to be the "King" of Rome, and took the title "Imperator" (from which we get emperor) instead. While the TIA program had a logo and a nasty public image, it was protested by the masses, but call it something else....and suddenly it's not so bad. We see this a lot lately. What's frightening is that changing terminology seems to be a viable method to subvert the constitution. As far as incompetence in the gov't goes....I'm not scared of the 90% of politicians who don't know what's going on.....I'm scared to death of the 10% that do. Looking at the fall of past democracies and republics.....the shift of power away from the senate/congress and into the hands of fewer and fewer people is generally a bad thing for all concerned.
Well M$ is a General pain in the @$$. Guess that's why it wants us all to salute, follow orders, and shut up and color. The (linux) colonel can stick around to fetch coffee.
Bravo! I wish more parents shared this sentiment rather than imbuing their own children and trying to force everybody else's children to live in a state of denial.