So what? I'm willing to pay more if it makes the manufacturers more responsible. Not necessarily by forcing a payment for dumping things to landfills, but making recycling a temptating option (cost wise).
So you haven't been to Scandinavia lately. Here the estimated number of cell-phones in use soon surpasses the population figures, having long ago passed the number of land-lines (and we *do have* one of the most wired regions of the world). I have two. Every grandma has one. All the kids have them too - and everytime a new model comes from Nokia, they switch for it, of cource.
And no, you don't pay for incoming calls. In fact, you can turn it off when you don't want to be bothered. I do it a lot.
LOL! Actually I was just going to install OpenBSD as my new gateway (using FreeBSD as of now, but the change to SPARC platform makes changing the OS convenient, too). Debian is a super dandy workstation or server OS (I have four machines running it; 2xwoody, 2xpotato), but I came to same conclusion as the author regarding some of the issues and won't bother using it connected straight to public networks any more.
Not that Debian couldn't be secured with a little extra work, but I prefer to be a _little_ lazy with my installs.
Increase taxing!? Support public transportation!? Point the consumers into any direction by governmental incentives!? Shh! Man, be quiet. That's called communism - they don't like it in the US.
Disclaimer: while I have visited both the US and Canada, and lived in the UK, I am a treehugging leftist greenie from Scandinavia, so YMMV.
We believe in Common Sense (tm) up here. There are cops that are assholes here like anywhere else, but for the most part, they're reasonable, as are the judges. Reasonable people that expect to be treated reasonably, I think is a good summary.
Common sense is something that seems to be lacking in most of the modern societies, moreso in the hard-wing capitalistic societies like US (or UK in Europe). This is demonstrated by the total lack of vision in the legistlation and its use to make reasonal decicions about this kind of things. Democraticly elected governmental bodies have to be able to pass judgements on behalf of the citizens on situations where it seems that the public is unable to do it themselves.
And while this approach doesn't always (eh,most of the time) produce final products to my exact liking, it still creates more balanced line than any of the optional ways. Look at the US: thinking is bad, any hint of nudity is bad, atheism is bad, common sense in enviromental issues is bad, anything but white middle-class money-loving hypocritical christianity is bad - but violence is ok. We see the results.
If this kind of legistlations do make adults to think - even once - what to bring home for the kids, call it success.
Uh, atleast my wife did a lot of hacking (all kinds of sound handling with C++, formerly they had used all Object C) with the NeXTs at the Department of Musicology (University of Helsinki) - great hardware for that purpose I was told.
Uh, ever been abroad? Like, in Europe or so?
Most of the Western Europe / Scandinavia is way more wired than US, that's how eg. the building of Minitel in France was possible. The situation in the Eastern Europe (eg. the Baltic countries) sounds more like what you described.
And yes, I have visited the US, so I know the differences.
The right to bare arms is all about protecting yourself from the government. I don't see how you can do this if the government knows how well you are armed.
Protecting yourself from a nuclear power with handguns (or semiautomatic assault rifles or whatever)? Any common sense ever applied to the thinking of gun fanatics? That may have been the case in the 1700's but not anymore. Few thousand gallons of mustard gas (or any other modern battle gas or virus developed for biological warfare) should do ok if your govenment really wanted to oppress you.
All there is to support NRA etc. is the same old macho bravado that gets you wife beaten every friday night. Please stop kidding yourself and finally grow up.
Simple advice: move the business away from the reach of braindead American legistlation like DMCA. To some place where human rights and common sense still apply.
Come to Europe. (Cut to a still shot of a beatiful sunset somewhere in Southern France.)
Oh, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki (of all places) does have a distro of its own too. Aptly named CS Linux, based on Debian (of course), and in every way _very conservative_ and secure.
Oh, as shameful as it sounds, I still got to admit having been a DOS user... During the days when most of the CPU time was devoted to gaming, all my friends used to have DR DOS 6.0 as their gaming OS instead of the horrendous competitor. All the functionality was, and still is, way ahead of what Micro$oft had to offer, for example quite excellent (for DOS, mind you) memory management and all the great tools offered in the package.
In fact, I have never had any computer with MS-DOS installed in my premises. Still got the OpenDOS 7.02 on some long forgotten partition, though;-)
Would these people still be there if they knew that the alternative to what the WTO stands for is (for example) a 200% increase in the cost of gasoline? Do they really want to HAVE TO grow their own vegetables, pluck their own chickens and ride a bike for transportation rather than cheeseburger-burning exercise?
Sounds fine to me, except that chicken thing, of course. And the price of gasoline should rise some 1500% anyway in order to stop all the morons from using private cars...
It's encouraging to see that more people have come to their senses and are realising that globalization in the WTO way is a bad idea. Keep on rioting.
Parents can't do their jobs because American parents work longer hours than any other Western Country.
Well, that's really the fault of the US educational system which makes you pay for higher education. In Finland and other Scandinavian countries the University (and other high level) teaching is free for all, so parents don't have the burden to work long hours to gather money for 20 something years in order to get any sort of higher education for their children. Everyone has an equal chance to get in (if they are bright enough, that is).
And oh yes, the free school system, like the excellent public health care network etc., is mostly paid by high income tax (up to over 50%), which is fine for me, thank you.
High income tax is good if spent accordingly, sadly you just haven't got the idea yet.
Reminiscent of an old Arthur C. Clarke short story, The Nine Billion Names of God, in which a group of Tibetan monks who believe the purpose of the universe is to name God in all possible ways - and buy a computer to speed up the process. The British techs who install the machine are skeptical, but when the program finishes its run they look up at the sky - and see the stars going out, one by one.
Now that's really an excellent piece of literature. Just last week or so I had an in-depth discussion about the very same Clarke story with my father (a serious biblio-freek with a huge library of his own, including a pretty complete take on classic sfi-fi). We came to a conclusion that there is some deep philosophy in those words, indeed.
Ok, this was off-topic, but I just had to add a note because of the deja-vu feeling I got from Roblimo's comment.
Excellent commentary, and I agree whole-heartedly. Although all this libertarian stuff still gives me creeps...;)
With the rising awareness of the pros coming with community-based free software, we might be actually going into the right direction, which in my eyes is some sort of a ecologically sound anarcho-socialistic geek society. As more and more official instances come to their senses and hop into the OSS-bandwagon, things are starting to look somewhat optimistic for that anarcho-sosialistic geek -part. No more senseless rip offs by absurd software license fees, gibberishly EULAs and capitalistic proprietary "solutions" to restrict end-users from fixing broken things (instead of buying that be-all-end-all solution for the problems they call Version Update), or tying people into just one (bad) solution. Real freedom to innovate voluntarily (according to ability) and share the innovations (according to needs).
Here's hoping that EU, US and pretty much everyone else follows the Chinese example. There's no sense to go with anything but the most open standards and customisable solutions, least on the national level. We should let the best software development model (not the economical pressure) dictate the winner in this one.
And the with the cover art (and background information - you all read that, right?) of O'Reilly's, the fore-mentioned ecological part has a good start as well (it still needs much more attention). See Linux Ecology HOWTO.
A citizen of the US doesn't just eat and breathe, he produces products, or knowledge, or food, or whatever his job is. Since we export knowledge and technology, our net consumption is probably negative.
You Americans just don't get it. Producing non-disposable goods (read: toxic or slowly decomposing waste like diapers or plutonium) or generally products from non-regenerating sources (like oil) or food from animal by-products is just making things worse for the environment. In addition, by UN sources, 75% of the consumption of natural resources on earth is done by US citizens. Even with that highly materialistic doctrine of yours you don't produce that much.
This is not a flamebait, just another point of view.
The whole concept of overdue abortion is not so unique idea as it might sound. The only viable solution left to protect the environment seems to be getting rid of some (or most) of the undue load. That meaning humans. In contrast to the thought of euthanazing people based on disabilities, it might be more productive to do the selection based of statistics instead. Ie. 95% of the human population should be a good start, preferring citizens of highly civilized countries, as they tend to consume more (oh yes, yours truly included). Unless, of course, someone comes up with a more appropriate critearia (like, say, the use of OO-methods to recycle the code...?).
Umph, I never learned my CS through writing virii. Seriously, CS stands for computer science, not hacking without any scientifically interesting goals. Virii, demos and C00l waR3Z are something you write when you're 13 year old grease-haired loser in comprehensive school playing with your dad's Dell.
...or when I was in that age, it was VIC-20 or C-64 you co-owned with your equally grease-haired brother;-)
Work hard? Nah, not me;-) Tax money is the answer, and even though most of the Finns seem to be holding a grudge against the high-tax policy, it seems to be the only way for tiny economies (like Scandinavian countries) to compete in the fields of modern technology (ie. using tax money to support high-tech startups and innovations). Besides that, high tax rate is generally a good thing, but we don't want to go into that conversation again, do we?;-P
I personally don't use alcohol, so the high price of beer doesn't bother me (and to be honest, I like the idea of taxing it (and gasoline) really hard). After those, everything here seems priced around the same level as in any other European countries I have lived in (or been to any longer periods of time). Rents and alike, for example, are much lower here than in the UK or Italy.
High-tech is relatively cheap, network infastructure is fine, and as a geek you can make a pretty good living, plus the environment in Scandinavia is still in decent condition when compared to fellow industrial countries, so the most important issues are OK.
Slashdot Mirror
Then again, when has anyone in the US did anything to raise even their own children? Or, for that matter, look after large corporations?
Your track record speaks a lot. You really need the guidance and control.
And besides, without Nader, you'd still be dying in your precious cars a lot more often.
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So what? I'm willing to pay more if it makes the manufacturers more responsible. Not necessarily by forcing a payment for dumping things to landfills, but making recycling a temptating option (cost wise).
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And no, you don't pay for incoming calls. In fact, you can turn it off when you don't want to be bothered. I do it a lot.
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Not that Debian couldn't be secured with a little extra work, but I prefer to be a _little_ lazy with my installs.
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Increase taxing!? Support public transportation!? Point the consumers into any direction by governmental incentives!? Shh! Man, be quiet. That's called communism - they don't like it in the US.
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We believe in Common Sense (tm) up here. There are cops that are assholes here like anywhere else, but for the most part, they're reasonable, as are the judges. Reasonable people that expect to be treated reasonably, I think is a good summary.
Common sense is something that seems to be lacking in most of the modern societies, moreso in the hard-wing capitalistic societies like US (or UK in Europe). This is demonstrated by the total lack of vision in the legistlation and its use to make reasonal decicions about this kind of things. Democraticly elected governmental bodies have to be able to pass judgements on behalf of the citizens on situations where it seems that the public is unable to do it themselves.
And while this approach doesn't always (eh,most of the time) produce final products to my exact liking, it still creates more balanced line than any of the optional ways. Look at the US: thinking is bad, any hint of nudity is bad, atheism is bad, common sense in enviromental issues is bad, anything but white middle-class money-loving hypocritical christianity is bad - but violence is ok. We see the results.
If this kind of legistlations do make adults to think - even once - what to bring home for the kids, call it success.
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Uh, atleast my wife did a lot of hacking (all kinds of sound handling with C++, formerly they had used all Object C) with the NeXTs at the Department of Musicology (University of Helsinki) - great hardware for that purpose I was told.
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And yes, I have visited the US, so I know the differences.
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At least my FreeBSD server has been running Apache/JServ for a while now, thank you very much. Though only w/ JDK 1.1.8 at the moment.
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Protecting yourself from a nuclear power with handguns (or semiautomatic assault rifles or whatever)? Any common sense ever applied to the thinking of gun fanatics? That may have been the case in the 1700's but not anymore. Few thousand gallons of mustard gas (or any other modern battle gas or virus developed for biological warfare) should do ok if your govenment really wanted to oppress you.
All there is to support NRA etc. is the same old macho bravado that gets you wife beaten every friday night. Please stop kidding yourself and finally grow up.
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Come to Europe. (Cut to a still shot of a beatiful sunset somewhere in Southern France.)
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You mean ethically top-notch like Shell in Nigeria?
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Right?
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Go Jello go!
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Oh, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki (of all places) does have a distro of its own too. Aptly named CS Linux, based on Debian (of course), and in every way _very conservative_ and secure.
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In fact, I have never had any computer with MS-DOS installed in my premises. Still got the OpenDOS 7.02 on some long forgotten partition, though ;-)
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Sounds fine to me, except that chicken thing, of course. And the price of gasoline should rise some 1500% anyway in order to stop all the morons from using private cars...
It's encouraging to see that more people have come to their senses and are realising that globalization in the WTO way is a bad idea. Keep on rioting.
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Well, that's really the fault of the US educational system which makes you pay for higher education. In Finland and other Scandinavian countries the University (and other high level) teaching is free for all, so parents don't have the burden to work long hours to gather money for 20 something years in order to get any sort of higher education for their children. Everyone has an equal chance to get in (if they are bright enough, that is).
And oh yes, the free school system, like the excellent public health care network etc., is mostly paid by high income tax (up to over 50%), which is fine for me, thank you.
High income tax is good if spent accordingly, sadly you just haven't got the idea yet.
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The British techs who install the machine are skeptical, but when the program finishes its run they look up at the sky - and see the stars going out, one by one.
Now that's really an excellent piece of literature. Just last week or so I had an in-depth discussion about the very same Clarke story with my father (a serious biblio-freek with a huge library of his own, including a pretty complete take on classic sfi-fi). We came to a conclusion that there is some deep philosophy in those words, indeed.
Ok, this was off-topic, but I just had to add a note because of the deja-vu feeling I got from Roblimo's comment.
______________
With the rising awareness of the pros coming with community-based free software, we might be actually going into the right direction, which in my eyes is some sort of a ecologically sound anarcho-socialistic geek society. As more and more official instances come to their senses and hop into the OSS-bandwagon, things are starting to look somewhat optimistic for that anarcho-sosialistic geek -part. No more senseless rip offs by absurd software license fees, gibberishly EULAs and capitalistic proprietary "solutions" to restrict end-users from fixing broken things (instead of buying that be-all-end-all solution for the problems they call Version Update), or tying people into just one (bad) solution. Real freedom to innovate voluntarily (according to ability) and share the innovations (according to needs).
Here's hoping that EU, US and pretty much everyone else follows the Chinese example. There's no sense to go with anything but the most open standards and customisable solutions, least on the national level. We should let the best software development model (not the economical pressure) dictate the winner in this one.
And the with the cover art (and background information - you all read that, right?) of O'Reilly's, the fore-mentioned ecological part has a good start as well (it still needs much more attention). See Linux Ecology HOWTO.
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You Americans just don't get it. Producing non-disposable goods (read: toxic or slowly decomposing waste like diapers or plutonium) or generally products from non-regenerating sources (like oil) or food from animal by-products is just making things worse for the environment. In addition, by UN sources, 75% of the consumption of natural resources on earth is done by US citizens. Even with that highly materialistic doctrine of yours you don't produce that much.
Read more cold facts.
In addition, your number of 95% looks made up.
Sure it is, it could have been 100% as well. Precise numbers are for humour impaired.
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This is not a flamebait, just another point of view.
The whole concept of overdue abortion is not so unique idea as it might sound. The only viable solution left to protect the environment seems to be getting rid of some (or most) of the undue load. That meaning humans. In contrast to the thought of euthanazing people based on disabilities, it might be more productive to do the selection based of statistics instead. Ie. 95% of the human population should be a good start, preferring citizens of highly civilized countries, as they tend to consume more (oh yes, yours truly included). Unless, of course, someone comes up with a more appropriate critearia (like, say, the use of OO-methods to recycle the code...?).
See also some interesting references related to the topic.
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I personally don't use alcohol, so the high price of beer doesn't bother me (and to be honest, I like the idea of taxing it (and gasoline) really hard). After those, everything here seems priced around the same level as in any other European countries I have lived in (or been to any longer periods of time). Rents and alike, for example, are much lower here than in the UK or Italy.
High-tech is relatively cheap, network infastructure is fine, and as a geek you can make a pretty good living, plus the environment in Scandinavia is still in decent condition when compared to fellow industrial countries, so the most important issues are OK.
Oh, the weather sucks most of the time, though ;-)
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