There is currently no gas driven car with emissions so low that they are long term viable in large cities.
I don't get this at all, in what way? Viable according to whose standards? in what way? I mean, cars nowadays pretty much only output CO2, which is the same thing we output.
Also, cars are bigger than people, we won't be able to fit enough cars into a dense enough city space to make them unviable in that sense.
We also have to start manufacturing new oil soon, do you have a solution for that?
You can manufacture as much oil as you like, we've done it for a long time, the problem is that it is expensive compared to what you can get out of the ground, that it is limited to specialty areas (e.g. synthetic car oil). For Fuel we can manufacture hydrocarbons, although not (yet) in the amounts necessary to totally replace what is drilled out world wide.
In Europe, fuel costs are so high (due to taxes) that they are almost reaching parity with manufactured fuel in cost, which I suspect may well be the long term politicians goal (i.e. they can switch us all over and it would not cause a massive price shock).
In fact, from the point of view of alternatives, I still think *biofuels are better than EV, at least in the short/medium term. Batteries wear out quickly, are expensive, and have no reached density parity with chemical fuels.
Of course, you don't have to burn said fuels, perhaps fuel cells with electric traction would be the most efficient.
*I don't mean the ass-backwards thing in the US where you use corn to make fuel, but sugar cane, algae, grasses, hemp and others, which are far better suited to this without affecting the food supply.
They will probably charge you per mile driven. There is already talk of this in Europe, because the European governments relied on taxing how much people drove via fuel tax (this is why our fuel is ~$12 a gallon here). However the rise of Hybrid and electric cars is threatening that income stream, so the idea now is mandatory tracking boxes in each car, and you are charged a variable rate per mile depending on where you drove, how far you drove, and at what time.
The optimist would say that this would mean the abolition of fuel duty, but since when did a politician remove a tax stream? Most likely it would be re-labeled as a "green tax" and it would be in addition to the per-mile charging. With the benefit of total knowledge of where you've been, for how long and at what time!
Still, they are thinking ahead for more creative ways of taxing you, don't you worry, they will find a way:-)
I find it hard to believe that a segment of a population over a 50 year period has the ability to act in a coordinated manner, as you describe.
You don't need the entire segment to co-ordinate for this to work, just the power-hungry minority at the top. In fact I'm pretty sure most of the population didn't care either way, as long as they could live in peace and prosper. For example, the same can be said for Syria. I really doubt that the majority want a civil war, or want to split the country up, etc... but you only need well armed minorities (usually backed by foreign proxies) at the top to fight and the rest either follows, runs away or gets caught in the crossfire.
I think you might be a little bit biased by your experiences. That is of course the point of experience, but I'm concerned that it won't translate very well.
Of course I am biased by my experiences, it would be foolish not to be, just like you are biased (I presume) by yours. As long as you are aware of your bias and are willing to reason with those who disagree, I see no problem with it.
After all, once upon a time I was a left-winger (remember, my entire country was communist, so everyone was pretty much a party member), but experiences of life made me realise some fundamental truths about the human condition, and why communism will never succeed (unless we evolve/develop into it). As a result I ended up swinging to the right (but not as far as the rest of my country, which has swung so far right that they seem to live in some xenophobic paranoia that any immigrant we let in will eventually demand succession on whichever hunk of land they decide to live on. For a country of many nationalities and races, this makes life somewhat difficult for everyone.)
It may translate really well, it may not. The point is not to say "This will 100% happen to you", but to illustrate that the best of intentions can backfire spectacularly, sometimes with catastrophic results for all involved. It seems too high a risk to mess with naturally evolved systems like this, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and all that.
In any case, I wasn't talking about immigration when I mentioned brown people, I was poking at the right wing slackjaws who seem to pull out the fear of anyone different as an argument to why we need to isolate ourselves more.
Ah, well, misunderstood then, I saw it in the context of immigration. Well, people will fear the unknown, and that will always be the case. The solution is fostering interaction and communication.
I find that kind of attitude to be inhumane, and that is why it feels to me like we are failing as humans. What truly separates us from them is a line on a piece of paper, and sometimes the color of our skin - the rest is learned.
Yes, and genetic traits that may predominate in certain areas. However, what is learned is what defines a country, a people, and their history is their legacy of their ancestors. To dilute/suppress/remove all that in the interest of "eliminating separation" is a travesty in my opinion, to be resisted at all costs.
That is why I believe it to be possible to co-exist, regardless of race and culture. And yes that is hugely idealistic, but I see no problem with that at all, and I certainly see no problem working towards that goal.
That is fine and all, but I don't see why countries can't co-exist. If they are well enough integrated in trade, and foster communication, I see no reason things would change.
My initial take on it was not to open our borders and let anybody in, but to expand the EU to include people where they live now. Subtle difference I fear might have gotten a little lost in all my other ramblings:)
Yes, yes it was:) However the more you expand the EU, the more unwieldy and ungovernable it becomes, the more ave
... while in its current form it is slow and in need to be tethered, I see no reason for that to stay that way as technology advances.
Imagining that one day tech improves to the point when these things are as fast and nimble as a cat, and can last at least a few days in power, you could stick explosives on them and have them track targets. Or have them stay hidden then lunge at high speed when someone gets too close.
Like a mine that will chase after you before it explodes. Considering how fast my cat can run, and how nimble it is, in future these things could be quite terrifying, especially if they are released in large batches. Probably the only weapon that may save you is a shotgun (short of some futuristic, directed, hand held, EMP cannon).
Makes me imagine of the head crabs in half life, or the replicators in stargate.
An angle I had not fully considered, so thank you for providing a new point of view.
You're very welcome, it is always nice to consider different points of vew. Far too many people are stuck in their narrow minded views, so it is nice to find people with open minds to discuss with:)
I think the problems you descibe have very little to do with the fact that people immigrated to your country. They we invited in and left to their own devices, that is a failure of integration not of "brown people" or any other kind of people.
Well, I wouldn't go that far. We tried very hard to integrate them, so much time, effort and money went into trying to integrate them that the rest of the country was complaining about the costs of it all (it was driving them to ruin), but they didn't want to integrate. Short of forcing them to integrate at gunpoint, or kicking them out, what were the alternatives? We are talking multiple generations living there, who it turns out had no interest in integrating.
You are working on the assumption that those that immigrate want to become citizens, integrate properly of said country and add to its culture, etc... I think this is a nice idea, but somewhat idealistic.
As I said, lots of other races came, settled and integrated very well in the country, a lot of them of far different skin colour than us natives, with little to no problems at all. So it isn't that we didn't try, it is just that for integration to work, both parties must be willing to work for it, like in any relationship really (from two people, onwards to societies).
My objection is the projection that anyone not like us must be breeding like rabbits
This is as easy to find out via birth records, in our case the select group was having 4x the birth rate of the rest of the country, which actually drove region into poverty, causing unrest and eventual war.
My point is that this is easily provable with facts, so nobody should be able to claim the above unless it is actually happening.
and are to be shunned/shot/denied entrance
Shunned/shot never, that is inhuman. However I don't see a problem with denying entrance. If we had denied entrance unless the immigrants agreed to integrate or assimilate (e.g. the US policy) then maybe we would not have had this mess later on.
- in order to avoid what you describe, we shun the world around us. That is us failing as human beings.
I will admit, I don't quite understand. By not allowing free migration unchecked, we are failing as human beings?
Religion is, as far as I can tell, the cause of pretty much all of the world's troubles. There might be other causes layered on top of it, but at the root we have a tendency to define "our culture" from our shared religion, and cultural differences underlie most of the conflicts on the globe. We can't get rid of religion, but we can push it to the side where it does not have an influence on lives other than those who opt-in. I think education plays a vital role in this.
True, but I would argue that religion is more a symptom than a cause. Ones allegence to a religion is nothing more than allegience to a tribe. Humans are descended from Animals who by their very nature are tribal. This is what has worked for us for tens of thousands of years, it is part of our evolutioniary development, and I don't think education could eradicate it. Simply put, I believe the average human tribal matrix looks like this (in order of strength/importance of loyalty):
* Blood Family + Mate (so your direct family, and partner, kids if you have any) * Extended Famliy/Friends * Your religion * Your local region * Your country * Friendly countries/Alliances/shared cultures * The rest.
I am simplifying this, and I will admit that in liberal western worlds, things like the family unit have brok
All done with the blessing of the government. So we are still stuck with politicians not looking out for us, and serving their own interests.
I was referring more to those who actually worked hard and built businesses that allowed them a comfortable life. Not the ultra ultra rich who control the worlds money supply and otherwise got rich by screwing over others.
That's assuming you lot are sober enough to march in the right direction;-)
Loved Belgium myself, the museums, waffles and beer (wow, especially the beer) were heavenly. I just can't see how anyone is ever sober enough to actually do what they have to, which might explain a lot about the nature of EU functioning:-P
Up until I read that last part I was all set to argue against your post,
Oh come now, debates are good!:)
but we have our Civil War that serves as an example of the bloodletting that can occur when trying to forceably preserve a union of desperate states.
Trust me I know, my country of origin went through a rather bloody civil war, difference is in the US the unionists won, there the confederates did.
Still, it doesn't take much to get people at each others throats. All it takes is one nation that feels it needs more land, more resources, or simply more "living space" to start the shit hitting the fan.
The European solution to this was free trade and free movement of people. Allows the whole thing to grow (and shrink) organically. Based on your logic, a nation will go to war when its demand for resources cannot be met any other way (war itself is very resource intensive, and only a good idea if the winnings are greater than the costs).
The European solution is typically capitalist. You can have all the land/resources you need, but you'll have to pay for it.
Yeah, but they are minor actors. The major power is still with states. I meant a time when non-state actors are more powerful than governments.
The day you can buy off the shelf manufacturing technology that can produce weapons of mass destruction will probably be the tipping point. The ability of anyone in a garage to put together a nuke sure will herald an interesting time for humanity. We'll either quickly learn to be a very responsible and fair race, or we will probably vanish.
Rest assured we are getting there, but I think its a couple of decades off (barring a change in direction, or an acceleration of wealth transfer and/or manufacturing technology).
I guess I'm pretty sick and tired of listening to extremist agendas that has nothing to do with the actual issues at hand. I'm fed up with talk of the dangerous brown people invading, I'm sick of listening to idiots mouth off about things they deep down have no fucking clue about. I'm sick of people forming their opinions from two lines of text on a billboard, or a 5 second spot on whatever news channel reenforces your viewpoint. Generally, I'm sick of uninformed neanderthals setting the agenda. So yeah, I do agree that democracy is the only real way of government, I just wish my fellow voters would use more than 2 seconds making up their minds.
This is a tricky one. I originally hail from a communist country. Our communists had the same opinion, and opened the borders to massive immigration of people (brown or otherwise). Most integrated well (especially Chinese, East Europeans and Africans), however some didn't. Instead they kept to themselves, had multiple wives, and generally bred like crazy. ~50 years down the line they became a demographic majority, and when communism collapsed and the state was weak, they took advantage and kicked off a war of secession, which they won. 25% of my country was annexed, and countless of my people were forced out of land that they lived on for generations, not not mention the lives lost and economic destruction, just because we allowed immigration in the belief that they would integrate and we'd all be better off.
So there is some truth to the "Dangerous foreign people invading", much as I hate to say it. Just that the dangers may not be known for 50+ years. Some groups are happy to integrate and will do so. Others will not. Maybe if we managed to eliminate religion from the equation, even they would be able to, but religion has been with us for thousands of years, I can't think of a way of eliminating it (hell, even the communists couldn't stamp it out, and they were brutally athiest).
As for the rest you said, I agree with you completely. However short of banning television, I can't think of a way of stopping it. That invention has done more to damage critical thinking of an individual than anything else I can think of.
The only thing that could counter it is education, but what government would want to do that? An educated populace is one that they can't easily control nor pull the wool over.
Why indeed? I have no fucking clue why, generally it is to support a handful of egomaniacs' personal view of the world, sometimes it happens to kick start the economy. Hell, I bet wars have been started over a girl or a spilled beer. I'm not making any predictions of what will happen if we abandon the EU. I guess we could look at our history as a continent and draw some conclusions. Who knows?
So you have no proof that it would. You just fear that it would. I mean, most of the EU is in NATO, their armies are tiny, they co-operate on so many levels for so many years. If NATO disbanded tomorrow they would just form their own alliance to keep the peace.
Even if you had some nutbag with penis envy want a war, I don't see why the country would follow. We are past the days of kaisers, monarchs and dictators, where one person can go to war and the country will blindingly follow. Democracy by its nature is not a form of government that lends itself to warlike behaviour, as evidenced by the fact that those who can easily go to war have to either not be democracies, or have democracy corrupted to the point where the people don't have a say (e.g. the UK, millions protested against the iraq war, but the army was under direct government control).
The actual problem is that people aren't for or against EU, but are for or against completely unrelated issues, that via spin gets projected onto the debate of whether or not EU is a good idea. And that is what pisses me off.
Now, that is true, but that is very much due to a lack of critical thinking on part of the population. However, it is in the interests of politicians across the spectrum (and the rich) that they stay that way. Let me know when you work out a way of countering that, for I've not found one yet (that didn't involve a bloody revolution).
In 200 years I won't be here (barring some major technological advance in the next 60 years), so I guess that will be something that has to be dealt with by my kids or grandkids.
That is unless we go through the whole civil war like the US, where one side (either the unionists or confederates) basically get removed from the equation completely, leaving the other free to do what they want.
It would be interesting to see, but I can imagine a world when governments lose power with the loss of sovereignity and disappearance of borders, to be replaced with power blocks that hold no real allegiance to geography. Most likely a return to things like city-states, fiefdoms, corporations big enough to have armies and enough population to qualify as states in their own right.
The reason you don't get much say in it is because most of your voters are too fucking dumb/lazy to actually produce an informed opinion on the subject. All they see is oh no, we lost some of our sovereignty, we're less British now. You just know that whenever the subject of EU comes up, right wing fanatics are going to jump on it and declare it a war on eggs & bacon, pubs and football, because national pride buys votes. So moderate politicians keep everything they can out of the referendums, because they know a bunch of hacks are going to screw it all up, for no other reason than personal gain - hey look at me, I oppose this, vote for me so I can continue my fat cat lifestyle.
Wow, what a bitter tirade! In one fell swoop you've shown exactly the problem with the EU and its supporters. You don't want democracy, you don't want people to choose, you want to decide what is good for them, and if they resist, or don't like it, then they are stupid/lazy/far-right-nuts. Democracy means giving people the right to choose, and includes letting them choose the "wrong" option.
You'll be winning hearts and minds with that attitude, I'll tell you.
And if you want to see a fat-cat lifestyle, try and peer into the live of an European Commissioner. At least the non-governmental fat cats got hold of the money themselves, rather than using my tax money to fund their lifestyles.
There is no rational discussion of "will this be good for us and the people around us", it's all just "what do I get?". If you started asking questions like "how can we make this work, so that in 50 years the bombs don't start flying again"
Why on earth would bombs start flying again? Even if the EU was dissolved tomorrow, I don't see why suddenly war would break out. I mean, people have been living together for a while now in peace, intermarriages, etc... Shengen and free trade did more to build peace than any other part of the EU.
I'd argue that war is more likely if the EU is being kept together by force. Forcing things together will work for a while, but increases the chance that when it does collapse, it will do so in a very bloody way.
They're doing pretty much the same thing in Denmark, arguing tooth and nail that this or that issue does not warrant asking the people, for the very reasons I stated above. They're not going to come out and say it, but you don't need many brain cells to figure it out. Especially not if you've been around for the last couple of referendums on EU, and seen the sheer idiocy of propaganda shoveled onto voters.
Again, politicians showing complete disregard for democracy. "The masses aren't voting for my ideas, they must be stupid/brainwashed/fascists, therefore I must not ask them". That will do nothing but breed resentment, regardless of whether what the politicians are doing is better for them in the long term.
No, we didn't know. Originally we signed up to EFTA (European Free Trade Agreement), which morphed into the EEC (European Economic Community), then into the EC (European Community) in 1993, and in 2009 into the EU (as a political entity) officially (with the Lisbon Treaty).
That is the main beef in the UK. The original referendum only asked if they wanted to join EFTA, and free trade with Europe was a good idea. Since then everything else was essentially scope creep, until we ended up with the monstrosity that is the EU.
Nobody in my generation (or indeed my parents generation) actually had a say in any of this. Nobody gave us a referendum on any of the new treaties, or for whether we wanted further integration.
I guess that is why a lot of people in the EU (not just the UK) see the EU as undemocratic. Even the EU leaders are aware of this, as they keep mentioning the issue of "EU legitimacy" or "democratic deficit".
So they are aware of the shortcomings. Of course, their solution is more EU, with the goal of total political union, and I presume representative democracy via voting in your chosen MEP.
Of course, we'll have no say in any of this until it is presented to us as a done deal, at which point we can vote for MEPs (the UK may not have this fate, as its population has been clamoring for a referendum for ages, and all this assumes the EU doesn't collapse).
That would just depress wages further. How can anyone compete with someone who is coerced into doing the work for free?
Then again, globalisation seems to be driving the entire world into "elites" and "wage-slaves", so we are pretty much there already. Just that it isn't as blatant as slavery was back then, and we are still in the process of transformation (if your salary is going down in real terms, while others are making money hand over fist, you can safely assume you will be eventually falling into the "wage-slave" category).
Yes it is, but not for crackers ( the designers have learned from firewire, we now have an IOMMU to prevent any device attached reading/writing the ram of another attached device via DMA).
I don't know about interstates (I live in Europe), but you sure could not do that here. For one thing, the highways twist and turn (even the autobahns). Secondly the slow lane is also the merging and leaving lane with off-ramps, and you will find yourself either having to slow down, speed up, or switch lanes to allow new traffic in.
However I admit an autopilot could deal with the above. I believe
Saab have built such an autopilot (it will follow the traffic in front and keep a set distance), essentially making convoys on the highway.
Also, all planes have some at least 2 highly trained professionals sitting in the cabin overseeing everything. People who have to log a minimum number of flight hours in order to keep their skills sharp. In the event of a pre "burning wreckage" moment, they can take control if necessary.
I can't see your average car driver (who probably is not paying attention on the road) do the same, especially if they have gotten a bit rusty from constantly allowing the car to drive for them.
Autopilots for cars and planes are a world apart, and not due to a technical reason (unless you expect to train drivers like we train pilots now). That is why I don't think we will see driving cars soon, at least ones that carry passengers. I possibly can image autonomous delivery trucks, etc... in the future. Especially if they work at night when traffic is light to non existant.
Which ones? Like I said, I had a nice apple keyboard, spent good money on it, worked on my Nokia's. Doesn't work on my Android phone. It is detected as a keyboard and paired, etc... but the phone doesn't respond to keypresses beyond turning the screen on if it has gone to sleep.
Then I went and got a cheap generic keyboard, thinking that perhaps the Apple ones are doing something funky with the BT standard, and that didn't work either.
Both keyboards worked on my BT Nokias, and when paired to my laptop. Now I have two keyboards collecting dust. I will not throw away any more money until I can be sure that it would work.
I am not sure what intelligent sound management is
On the Nokia, it remembers what volume is set on things like speaker, headset, handsfree, bluetooth (even per device!) and automatically changes it depending on what is in use. It can even redirect audio sources and sounds.
It was basically gstreamer, using stream tagging. A very elegant solution, that worked seamlessly. Apps didn't have to care about sound management, they just piped their output to gstream and the OS took care of it.
On android, it seems it is up to the App developer to implement things like pause on headphone remove, and different volume settings.
This means that some apps will pause when the headphones are unplugged, some won't. Others have their own seperate volume control, and some just have no control at all over it (and then you fall back to the OS). Others will blare out of the speaker even if put the phone on silent and have headphones plugged in (this is the worst, because I could not hear the speaker noises as I was wearing earphones, but everyone on the train could). It is a complete mess...
The stupidest thing I came across is the fact when you plug headphones in, by default everything, including the phone ringing and my alarm clock, gets piped in there. So if I leave me headphones plugged in accidentally overnight, I don't hear the alarm in the morning! The Nokia was smart enough, that if I put it on loud, even with headphones in, it would ring. And the alarm would go off no matter what, even if I left it on vibrate with the headphones plugged in.
The N900 is an excellent model of how to handle sounds/audio on a phone.
but total user control exists in the android world. I have built my own OS and booted it before, can't get much more control than that.
Can you boot a standard linux system on it? Or do you have to use the Android Libraries, complete with all their quirks/limitations?
Many smartphones these days have infrared and either USB host or USB on the GO.
I've not seen any with infrared, USB on the go is about, but I've not seen the flexibility offered by my N900.
FM transmitters are going away as bluetooth is getting to be darn near everywhere. If you really want one you can get a cigarette outlet one cheap.
True, but I do like the fact I can just tune in on an old car radio or at a friends hifi just like that. So much simpler, especially if they don't have BT (Apart from one friends car stereo, nobody else has bluetooth enabled radios).
There are lots of not locked down appliances out there. Get a Nexus.
Maybe, I bought the S2 because it was cheap, and was flashable, so running cyanogenmod. Still, the fact I had to install apps for things I consider basic on the phone (like a caldav compatible calendar), and more so, have to pay for apps that I could get for free on the N900 (unless I want apps that really suck).
I could not even find a decent file structure based media player (they all insist on "media libraries"). I ended up with playerpro, which is decent, but I had to pay for it.
I guess what I miss most, was that the N900 was a full linux system underneith. I could jump from developi
Which bluetooth keyboard do you use? I used to use an apple bluetooth keyboard on my n900 and n810 (I loved the keys, and it was thin and well built), but for the life of me I can't get it to work with a single android phone.
Even mini-bluetooth keyboards have proven to be hit and miss with android. I have to say even when I switched to the Samsung S2 (later running cyanogenmod) the n900 was a far more polished and functional system.
Even now, simple things like working bluetooth keyboards, intelligent sound management, coherency between apps and total user control is something that Android just can't do, but my n900 can.
Additionally, the N900 can do some cool geeky things that (I admit) normal people don't care about, like RDS FM transmitter, infrared, serial ports, usb host mode.
For example, I can control my DSLR via infrared or via USB, which allows for far more features (like long exposures, exposure bracketing, triggered exposure due to movement detected by the phone camera). All sorts of things.
The N900 was built as a tool to get jobs done. It is the closest we've come to a computer in a pocket. I can script anything, even calling and sending SMS messages, in just about any language available on Linux. It even has a C compiler!
It is just a shame that things went the other way, to locked down "appliances" that are now sold.
To this day, I still carry the N900 about (with a backup SIM). The S2 is my primary phone primarily due to its thinness and up to date hardware. In all other aspects the N900 blows it out of the water.
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There is currently no gas driven car with emissions so low that they are long term viable in large cities.
I don't get this at all, in what way? Viable according to whose standards? in what way? I mean, cars nowadays pretty much only output CO2, which is the same thing we output.
Also, cars are bigger than people, we won't be able to fit enough cars into a dense enough city space to make them unviable in that sense.
We also have to start manufacturing new oil soon, do you have a solution for that?
You can manufacture as much oil as you like, we've done it for a long time, the problem is that it is expensive compared to what you can get out of the ground, that it is limited to specialty areas (e.g. synthetic car oil). For Fuel we can manufacture hydrocarbons, although not (yet) in the amounts necessary to totally replace what is drilled out world wide.
In Europe, fuel costs are so high (due to taxes) that they are almost reaching parity with manufactured fuel in cost, which I suspect may well be the long term politicians goal (i.e. they can switch us all over and it would not cause a massive price shock).
In fact, from the point of view of alternatives, I still think *biofuels are better than EV, at least in the short/medium term. Batteries wear out quickly, are expensive, and have no reached density parity with chemical fuels.
Of course, you don't have to burn said fuels, perhaps fuel cells with electric traction would be the most efficient.
*I don't mean the ass-backwards thing in the US where you use corn to make fuel, but sugar cane, algae, grasses, hemp and others, which are far better suited to this without affecting the food supply.
OOooh! You must be from the UK :D
(Only place I've ever heard of that happening)
They will probably charge you per mile driven. There is already talk of this in Europe, because the European governments relied on taxing how much people drove via fuel tax (this is why our fuel is ~$12 a gallon here). However the rise of Hybrid and electric cars is threatening that income stream, so the idea now is mandatory tracking boxes in each car, and you are charged a variable rate per mile depending on where you drove, how far you drove, and at what time.
The optimist would say that this would mean the abolition of fuel duty, but since when did a politician remove a tax stream? Most likely it would be re-labeled as a "green tax" and it would be in addition to the per-mile charging. With the benefit of total knowledge of where you've been, for how long and at what time!
Still, they are thinking ahead for more creative ways of taxing you, don't you worry, they will find a way :-)
I find it hard to believe that a segment of a population over a 50 year period has the ability to act in a coordinated manner, as you describe.
You don't need the entire segment to co-ordinate for this to work, just the power-hungry minority at the top. In fact I'm pretty sure most of the population didn't care either way, as long as they could live in peace and prosper. For example, the same can be said for Syria. I really doubt that the majority want a civil war, or want to split the country up, etc... but you only need well armed minorities (usually backed by foreign proxies) at the top to fight and the rest either follows, runs away or gets caught in the crossfire.
I think you might be a little bit biased by your experiences. That is of course the point of experience, but I'm concerned that it won't translate very well.
Of course I am biased by my experiences, it would be foolish not to be, just like you are biased (I presume) by yours. As long as you are aware of your bias and are willing to reason with those who disagree, I see no problem with it.
After all, once upon a time I was a left-winger (remember, my entire country was communist, so everyone was pretty much a party member), but experiences of life made me realise some fundamental truths about the human condition, and why communism will never succeed (unless we evolve/develop into it). As a result I ended up swinging to the right (but not as far as the rest of my country, which has swung so far right that they seem to live in some xenophobic paranoia that any immigrant we let in will eventually demand succession on whichever hunk of land they decide to live on. For a country of many nationalities and races, this makes life somewhat difficult for everyone.)
It may translate really well, it may not. The point is not to say "This will 100% happen to you", but to illustrate that the best of intentions can backfire spectacularly, sometimes with catastrophic results for all involved. It seems too high a risk to mess with naturally evolved systems like this, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and all that.
In any case, I wasn't talking about immigration when I mentioned brown people, I was poking at the right wing slackjaws who seem to pull out the fear of anyone different as an argument to why we need to isolate ourselves more.
Ah, well, misunderstood then, I saw it in the context of immigration. Well, people will fear the unknown, and that will always be the case. The solution is fostering interaction and communication.
I find that kind of attitude to be inhumane, and that is why it feels to me like we are failing as humans. What truly separates us from them is a line on a piece of paper, and sometimes the color of our skin - the rest is learned.
Yes, and genetic traits that may predominate in certain areas. However, what is learned is what defines a country, a people, and their history is their legacy of their ancestors. To dilute/suppress/remove all that in the interest of "eliminating separation" is a travesty in my opinion, to be resisted at all costs.
That is why I believe it to be possible to co-exist, regardless of race and culture. And yes that is hugely idealistic, but I see no problem with that at all, and I certainly see no problem working towards that goal.
That is fine and all, but I don't see why countries can't co-exist. If they are well enough integrated in trade, and foster communication, I see no reason things would change.
My initial take on it was not to open our borders and let anybody in, but to expand the EU to include people where they live now. Subtle difference I fear might have gotten a little lost in all my other ramblings :)
Yes, yes it was :) However the more you expand the EU, the more unwieldy and ungovernable it becomes, the more ave
... while in its current form it is slow and in need to be tethered, I see no reason for that to stay that way as technology advances.
Imagining that one day tech improves to the point when these things are as fast and nimble as a cat, and can last at least a few days in power, you could stick explosives on them and have them track targets. Or have them stay hidden then lunge at high speed when someone gets too close.
Like a mine that will chase after you before it explodes. Considering how fast my cat can run, and how nimble it is, in future these things could be quite terrifying, especially if they are released in large batches. Probably the only weapon that may save you is a shotgun (short of some futuristic, directed, hand held, EMP cannon).
Makes me imagine of the head crabs in half life, or the replicators in stargate.
An angle I had not fully considered, so thank you for providing a new point of view.
You're very welcome, it is always nice to consider different points of vew. Far too many people are stuck in their narrow minded views, so it is nice to find people with open minds to discuss with :)
I think the problems you descibe have very little to do with the fact that people immigrated to your country. They we invited in and left to their own devices, that is a failure of integration not of "brown people" or any other kind of people.
Well, I wouldn't go that far. We tried very hard to integrate them, so much time, effort and money went into trying to integrate them that the rest of the country was complaining about the costs of it all (it was driving them to ruin), but they didn't want to integrate. Short of forcing them to integrate at gunpoint, or kicking them out, what were the alternatives? We are talking multiple generations living there, who it turns out had no interest in integrating.
You are working on the assumption that those that immigrate want to become citizens, integrate properly of said country and add to its culture, etc... I think this is a nice idea, but somewhat idealistic.
As I said, lots of other races came, settled and integrated very well in the country, a lot of them of far different skin colour than us natives, with little to no problems at all. So it isn't that we didn't try, it is just that for integration to work, both parties must be willing to work for it, like in any relationship really (from two people, onwards to societies).
My objection is the projection that anyone not like us must be breeding like rabbits
This is as easy to find out via birth records, in our case the select group was having 4x the birth rate of the rest of the country, which actually drove region into poverty, causing unrest and eventual war.
My point is that this is easily provable with facts, so nobody should be able to claim the above unless it is actually happening.
and are to be shunned/shot/denied entrance
Shunned/shot never, that is inhuman. However I don't see a problem with denying entrance. If we had denied entrance unless the immigrants agreed to integrate or assimilate (e.g. the US policy) then maybe we would not have had this mess later on.
- in order to avoid what you describe, we shun the world around us. That is us failing as human beings.
I will admit, I don't quite understand. By not allowing free migration unchecked, we are failing as human beings?
Religion is, as far as I can tell, the cause of pretty much all of the world's troubles. There might be other causes layered on top of it, but at the root we have a tendency to define "our culture" from our shared religion, and cultural differences underlie most of the conflicts on the globe. We can't get rid of religion, but we can push it to the side where it does not have an influence on lives other than those who opt-in. I think education plays a vital role in this.
True, but I would argue that religion is more a symptom than a cause. Ones allegence to a religion is nothing more than allegience to a tribe. Humans are descended from Animals who by their very nature are tribal. This is what has worked for us for tens of thousands of years, it is part of our evolutioniary development, and I don't think education could eradicate it. Simply put, I believe the average human tribal matrix looks like this (in order of strength/importance of loyalty):
* Blood Family + Mate (so your direct family, and partner, kids if you have any)
* Extended Famliy/Friends
* Your religion
* Your local region
* Your country
* Friendly countries/Alliances/shared cultures
* The rest.
I am simplifying this, and I will admit that in liberal western worlds, things like the family unit have brok
All done with the blessing of the government. So we are still stuck with politicians not looking out for us, and serving their own interests.
I was referring more to those who actually worked hard and built businesses that allowed them a comfortable life. Not the ultra ultra rich who control the worlds money supply and otherwise got rich by screwing over others.
That's assuming you lot are sober enough to march in the right direction ;-)
Loved Belgium myself, the museums, waffles and beer (wow, especially the beer) were heavenly. I just can't see how anyone is ever sober enough to actually do what they have to, which might explain a lot about the nature of EU functioning :-P
Up until I read that last part I was all set to argue against your post,
Oh come now, debates are good! :)
but we have our Civil War that serves as an example of the bloodletting that can occur when trying to forceably preserve a union of desperate states.
Trust me I know, my country of origin went through a rather bloody civil war, difference is in the US the unionists won, there the confederates did.
Still, it doesn't take much to get people at each others throats. All it takes is one nation that feels it needs more land, more resources, or simply more "living space" to start the shit hitting the fan.
The European solution to this was free trade and free movement of people. Allows the whole thing to grow (and shrink) organically. Based on your logic, a nation will go to war when its demand for resources cannot be met any other way (war itself is very resource intensive, and only a good idea if the winnings are greater than the costs).
The European solution is typically capitalist. You can have all the land/resources you need, but you'll have to pay for it.
Thanks to the EU crisis, so many French, Italians and Greeks have come here, that the quality of food round my local areas has improved dramatically.
And new cars and motorcycles don't leak oil, primarily because the British aren't allowed to make the engines anymore :o)
Yeah, but they are minor actors. The major power is still with states. I meant a time when non-state actors are more powerful than governments.
The day you can buy off the shelf manufacturing technology that can produce weapons of mass destruction will probably be the tipping point. The ability of anyone in a garage to put together a nuke sure will herald an interesting time for humanity. We'll either quickly learn to be a very responsible and fair race, or we will probably vanish.
Rest assured we are getting there, but I think its a couple of decades off (barring a change in direction, or an acceleration of wealth transfer and/or manufacturing technology).
I guess I'm pretty sick and tired of listening to extremist agendas that has nothing to do with the actual issues at hand. I'm fed up with talk of the dangerous brown people invading, I'm sick of listening to idiots mouth off about things they deep down have no fucking clue about. I'm sick of people forming their opinions from two lines of text on a billboard, or a 5 second spot on whatever news channel reenforces your viewpoint. Generally, I'm sick of uninformed neanderthals setting the agenda. So yeah, I do agree that democracy is the only real way of government, I just wish my fellow voters would use more than 2 seconds making up their minds.
This is a tricky one. I originally hail from a communist country. Our communists had the same opinion, and opened the borders to massive immigration of people (brown or otherwise). Most integrated well (especially Chinese, East Europeans and Africans), however some didn't. Instead they kept to themselves, had multiple wives, and generally bred like crazy. ~50 years down the line they became a demographic majority, and when communism collapsed and the state was weak, they took advantage and kicked off a war of secession, which they won. 25% of my country was annexed, and countless of my people were forced out of land that they lived on for generations, not not mention the lives lost and economic destruction, just because we allowed immigration in the belief that they would integrate and we'd all be better off.
So there is some truth to the "Dangerous foreign people invading", much as I hate to say it. Just that the dangers may not be known for 50+ years. Some groups are happy to integrate and will do so. Others will not. Maybe if we managed to eliminate religion from the equation, even they would be able to, but religion has been with us for thousands of years, I can't think of a way of eliminating it (hell, even the communists couldn't stamp it out, and they were brutally athiest).
As for the rest you said, I agree with you completely. However short of banning television, I can't think of a way of stopping it. That invention has done more to damage critical thinking of an individual than anything else I can think of.
The only thing that could counter it is education, but what government would want to do that? An educated populace is one that they can't easily control nor pull the wool over.
Why indeed? I have no fucking clue why, generally it is to support a handful of egomaniacs' personal view of the world, sometimes it happens to kick start the economy. Hell, I bet wars have been started over a girl or a spilled beer. I'm not making any predictions of what will happen if we abandon the EU. I guess we could look at our history as a continent and draw some conclusions. Who knows?
So you have no proof that it would. You just fear that it would. I mean, most of the EU is in NATO, their armies are tiny, they co-operate on so many levels for so many years. If NATO disbanded tomorrow they would just form their own alliance to keep the peace.
Even if you had some nutbag with penis envy want a war, I don't see why the country would follow. We are past the days of kaisers, monarchs and dictators, where one person can go to war and the country will blindingly follow. Democracy by its nature is not a form of government that lends itself to warlike behaviour, as evidenced by the fact that those who can easily go to war have to either not be democracies, or have democracy corrupted to the point where the people don't have a say (e.g. the UK, millions protested against the iraq war, but the army was under direct government control).
The actual problem is that people aren't for or against EU, but are for or against completely unrelated issues, that via spin gets projected onto the debate of whether or not EU is a good idea. And that is what pisses me off.
Now, that is true, but that is very much due to a lack of critical thinking on part of the population. However, it is in the interests of politicians across the spectrum (and the rich) that they stay that way. Let me know when you work out a way of countering that, for I've not found one yet (that didn't involve a bloody revolution).
In 200 years I won't be here (barring some major technological advance in the next 60 years), so I guess that will be something that has to be dealt with by my kids or grandkids.
That is unless we go through the whole civil war like the US, where one side (either the unionists or confederates) basically get removed from the equation completely, leaving the other free to do what they want.
It would be interesting to see, but I can imagine a world when governments lose power with the loss of sovereignity and disappearance of borders, to be replaced with power blocks that hold no real allegiance to geography. Most likely a return to things like city-states, fiefdoms, corporations big enough to have armies and enough population to qualify as states in their own right.
Hmm, interesting. Thanks for the information. I was under the impression that EFTA was the precursor to the EEC.
Still, AFAIK the UK only ever had a referendum on joining EFTA, so my point still stands w.r.t. on not having a democratic choice in the matter.
The reason you don't get much say in it is because most of your voters are too fucking dumb/lazy to actually produce an informed opinion on the subject. All they see is oh no, we lost some of our sovereignty, we're less British now. You just know that whenever the subject of EU comes up, right wing fanatics are going to jump on it and declare it a war on eggs & bacon, pubs and football, because national pride buys votes. So moderate politicians keep everything they can out of the referendums, because they know a bunch of hacks are going to screw it all up, for no other reason than personal gain - hey look at me, I oppose this, vote for me so I can continue my fat cat lifestyle.
Wow, what a bitter tirade! In one fell swoop you've shown exactly the problem with the EU and its supporters. You don't want democracy, you don't want people to choose, you want to decide what is good for them, and if they resist, or don't like it, then they are stupid/lazy/far-right-nuts. Democracy means giving people the right to choose, and includes letting them choose the "wrong" option.
You'll be winning hearts and minds with that attitude, I'll tell you.
And if you want to see a fat-cat lifestyle, try and peer into the live of an European Commissioner. At least the non-governmental fat cats got hold of the money themselves, rather than using my tax money to fund their lifestyles.
There is no rational discussion of "will this be good for us and the people around us", it's all just "what do I get?". If you started asking questions like "how can we make this work, so that in 50 years the bombs don't start flying again"
Why on earth would bombs start flying again? Even if the EU was dissolved tomorrow, I don't see why suddenly war would break out. I mean, people have been living together for a while now in peace, intermarriages, etc... Shengen and free trade did more to build peace than any other part of the EU.
I'd argue that war is more likely if the EU is being kept together by force. Forcing things together will work for a while, but increases the chance that when it does collapse, it will do so in a very bloody way.
They're doing pretty much the same thing in Denmark, arguing tooth and nail that this or that issue does not warrant asking the people, for the very reasons I stated above. They're not going to come out and say it, but you don't need many brain cells to figure it out. Especially not if you've been around for the last couple of referendums on EU, and seen the sheer idiocy of propaganda shoveled onto voters.
Again, politicians showing complete disregard for democracy. "The masses aren't voting for my ideas, they must be stupid/brainwashed/fascists, therefore I must not ask them". That will do nothing but breed resentment, regardless of whether what the politicians are doing is better for them in the long term.
No, we didn't know. Originally we signed up to EFTA (European Free Trade Agreement), which morphed into the EEC (European Economic Community), then into the EC (European Community) in 1993, and in 2009 into the EU (as a political entity) officially (with the Lisbon Treaty).
That is the main beef in the UK. The original referendum only asked if they wanted to join EFTA, and free trade with Europe was a good idea. Since then everything else was essentially scope creep, until we ended up with the monstrosity that is the EU.
Nobody in my generation (or indeed my parents generation) actually had a say in any of this. Nobody gave us a referendum on any of the new treaties, or for whether we wanted further integration.
I guess that is why a lot of people in the EU (not just the UK) see the EU as undemocratic. Even the EU leaders are aware of this, as they keep mentioning the issue of "EU legitimacy" or "democratic deficit".
So they are aware of the shortcomings. Of course, their solution is more EU, with the goal of total political union, and I presume representative democracy via voting in your chosen MEP.
Of course, we'll have no say in any of this until it is presented to us as a done deal, at which point we can vote for MEPs (the UK may not have this fate, as its population has been clamoring for a referendum for ages, and all this assumes the EU doesn't collapse).
There is Debian, with its GNU/BSD version:
http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/
And Gentoo has their variant:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/bsd/fbsd/
Those are the only two I know about :)
That would just depress wages further. How can anyone compete with someone who is coerced into doing the work for free?
Then again, globalisation seems to be driving the entire world into "elites" and "wage-slaves", so we are pretty much there already. Just that it isn't as blatant as slavery was back then, and we are still in the process of transformation (if your salary is going down in real terms, while others are making money hand over fist, you can safely assume you will be eventually falling into the "wage-slave" category).
Yes it is, but not for crackers ( the designers have learned from firewire, we now have an IOMMU to prevent any device attached reading/writing the ram of another attached device via DMA).
Heh, funny. I can't stand Brian Cox. I just find his manner irritating, and as a result I don't watch any of the shows he is on.
Just goes to show the variety in peoples tastes, eh? :)
I've not imagined Neil DeGrasse Tyson as a host, but I am willing to give it a shot and see how it goes. Who knows, he might actually be good at it.
I don't know about interstates (I live in Europe), but you sure could not do that here. For one thing, the highways twist and turn (even the autobahns). Secondly the slow lane is also the merging and leaving lane with off-ramps, and you will find yourself either having to slow down, speed up, or switch lanes to allow new traffic in. However I admit an autopilot could deal with the above. I believe Saab have built such an autopilot (it will follow the traffic in front and keep a set distance), essentially making convoys on the highway.
Also, all planes have some at least 2 highly trained professionals sitting in the cabin overseeing everything. People who have to log a minimum number of flight hours in order to keep their skills sharp. In the event of a pre "burning wreckage" moment, they can take control if necessary.
I can't see your average car driver (who probably is not paying attention on the road) do the same, especially if they have gotten a bit rusty from constantly allowing the car to drive for them.
Autopilots for cars and planes are a world apart, and not due to a technical reason (unless you expect to train drivers like we train pilots now). That is why I don't think we will see driving cars soon, at least ones that carry passengers. I possibly can image autonomous delivery trucks, etc... in the future. Especially if they work at night when traffic is light to non existant.
Bluetooth keyboards work with android.
Which ones? Like I said, I had a nice apple keyboard, spent good money on it, worked on my Nokia's. Doesn't work on my Android phone. It is detected as a keyboard and paired, etc... but the phone doesn't respond to keypresses beyond turning the screen on if it has gone to sleep.
Then I went and got a cheap generic keyboard, thinking that perhaps the Apple ones are doing something funky with the BT standard, and that didn't work either.
Both keyboards worked on my BT Nokias, and when paired to my laptop. Now I have two keyboards collecting dust. I will not throw away any more money until I can be sure that it would work.
I am not sure what intelligent sound management is
On the Nokia, it remembers what volume is set on things like speaker, headset, handsfree, bluetooth (even per device!) and automatically changes it depending on what is in use. It can even redirect audio sources and sounds.
It was basically gstreamer, using stream tagging. A very elegant solution, that worked seamlessly. Apps didn't have to care about sound management, they just piped their output to gstream and the OS took care of it.
On android, it seems it is up to the App developer to implement things like pause on headphone remove, and different volume settings.
This means that some apps will pause when the headphones are unplugged, some won't. Others have their own seperate volume control, and some just have no control at all over it (and then you fall back to the OS). Others will blare out of the speaker even if put the phone on silent and have headphones plugged in (this is the worst, because I could not hear the speaker noises as I was wearing earphones, but everyone on the train could). It is a complete mess...
The stupidest thing I came across is the fact when you plug headphones in, by default everything, including the phone ringing and my alarm clock, gets piped in there. So if I leave me headphones plugged in accidentally overnight, I don't hear the alarm in the morning! The Nokia was smart enough, that if I put it on loud, even with headphones in, it would ring. And the alarm would go off no matter what, even if I left it on vibrate with the headphones plugged in.
The N900 is an excellent model of how to handle sounds/audio on a phone.
but total user control exists in the android world. I have built my own OS and booted it before, can't get much more control than that.
Can you boot a standard linux system on it? Or do you have to use the Android Libraries, complete with all their quirks/limitations?
Many smartphones these days have infrared and either USB host or USB on the GO.
I've not seen any with infrared, USB on the go is about, but I've not seen the flexibility offered by my N900.
FM transmitters are going away as bluetooth is getting to be darn near everywhere. If you really want one you can get a cigarette outlet one cheap.
True, but I do like the fact I can just tune in on an old car radio or at a friends hifi just like that. So much simpler, especially if they don't have BT (Apart from one friends car stereo, nobody else has bluetooth enabled radios).
There are lots of not locked down appliances out there. Get a Nexus.
Maybe, I bought the S2 because it was cheap, and was flashable, so running cyanogenmod. Still, the fact I had to install apps for things I consider basic on the phone (like a caldav compatible calendar), and more so, have to pay for apps that I could get for free on the N900 (unless I want apps that really suck).
I could not even find a decent file structure based media player (they all insist on "media libraries"). I ended up with playerpro, which is decent, but I had to pay for it.
I guess what I miss most, was that the N900 was a full linux system underneith. I could jump from developi
Which bluetooth keyboard do you use? I used to use an apple bluetooth keyboard on my n900 and n810 (I loved the keys, and it was thin and well built), but for the life of me I can't get it to work with a single android phone.
Even mini-bluetooth keyboards have proven to be hit and miss with android. I have to say even when I switched to the Samsung S2 (later running cyanogenmod) the n900 was a far more polished and functional system.
Even now, simple things like working bluetooth keyboards, intelligent sound management, coherency between apps and total user control is something that Android just can't do, but my n900 can.
Additionally, the N900 can do some cool geeky things that (I admit) normal people don't care about, like RDS FM transmitter, infrared, serial ports, usb host mode.
For example, I can control my DSLR via infrared or via USB, which allows for far more features (like long exposures, exposure bracketing, triggered exposure due to movement detected by the phone camera). All sorts of things.
The N900 was built as a tool to get jobs done. It is the closest we've come to a computer in a pocket. I can script anything, even calling and sending SMS messages, in just about any language available on Linux. It even has a C compiler!
It is just a shame that things went the other way, to locked down "appliances" that are now sold.
To this day, I still carry the N900 about (with a backup SIM). The S2 is my primary phone primarily due to its thinness and up to date hardware. In all other aspects the N900 blows it out of the water.
...and come back some other day?
Hey, I tried :)