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The governmental wrong-doing is obvious. They steal money, openly, blatantly, and use it for all manner of evil. The big multi-national corporations are hardly paragons of virtue, but looking narrowly at 'tax avoidance' - using any and all legal means to minimise the loss - it's hard to see how there could possibly be anything wrong with that.
Google glass are likely to be successfully.
Says the AC with no ability to tie the prediction back to them...
You know that in five years you will come off like the Gates quote about 512k RAM.
How extraordinarily douchey. You are most likely recorded by hundreds of video cameras every day.
I agree that spraying someone with something that could blind them is not really acceptable - in fact it's more assault than "douchey".
However you have to remember these people are mostly recording NOT in public. Yes in public video cameras are everywhere. But then you got to a party at someone's house or a booth in a restaurant, now you are not nearly so much "in public" - but there are glasses users there. What if you are on a date with someone wearing them, do you not have a reason to expect your entire date would not be recorded?
That's the real problem, is that Glasses wearers extend the practical notion of what is "public" to anywhere they go. I mean, how long before the auto-recorded segments are subject to subpoena because something happened at a party?
So I wouldn't spraypaint people wearing them, but I don't think it's a good idea to wear them most places you would go.
That is the best summary I have yet seen as to the problems someone who is inherently a technologist can see with the product.
The other aspect of this I find troubling in a consumer product, is that SO MUCH money is spent getting rid of glasses - Lasick, contacts, etc. - that I can't see how they can find much of a market that wants bulky things you have to wear on your head all the time.
Even he watches like Pebble, I can see some appeal to them for normal people even though I don't want one myself (got rid of watches years ago). But Google Glasses, I cannot see the appeal outside of a very tiny minority.
It's an odd choice of words from a man whom the Belize police found suspicious
Police try to frame MCaffe, he escapes.
Next best thing - burn down his house.
I failed to see why this does not greatly support his narrative of what happened. He's not even there to burn it down himself...
I mean, lets say a corrupt government was after you. Why do you think it unlikely they would burn down your house after you crossed them?
That raises a serious issue, the current Google Glasses are in no way properly sized for full-scale rabbit or tiger outfits.
All government entities were new at one point. Your statement would suggest that all all government entities are a bad idea.
The evidence is in; it's more true than not. You sit on the wrong side of this very obvious fence what with the IRS being used as a hammer by the Democrats.
if we accept that there is violence then it should follow that there will be one organization that is capable of more violence than any other.
That sounds like a fucking horrible idea. I'll end this with one word:
Nazis.
It should not follow or be desired that there be one group more able to deal violence than another, the best situation is balanced competing groups.
He was not saying that everybody becomes a plumber, but that those who are not as academically adept should.
Perhaps those who aren't adept at, say, reading comprehension should.
This is like arguing the Wright brothers' first airplane didn't change anything because it could only fly a few dozen feet.
That would only be the case if at the same time people were already flying twin engine cubs around.
People have been crafting guns at home for decades. The 3D printing aspect adds nothing to that truth.
What it does show is how easily people can be led into an irrational fear of technology.
What you don't seem to understand is that laws are meant to keep people safe and secure, not just punish people after the fact.
No, most laws are in fact meant to punish people before the fact.
The speed limit laws are there because some people can't drive well or maintain cars, so they punish those who can with lower speeds than they could drive in perfect safety.
Gun laws exist because people have to "do something" when criminals use guns, even though criminals don't purchase firearms legally and ignore laws. So everyday people who just want to buy and enjoy guns have to jump through pointless hoops and delays.
Public nudity laws exist because some people are prudes and some people don't have a reasonable sense of when clothes are appropriate. So the people who just want a good tan at the beach or in the backyard are punished.
Basically most laws are no different than the stupid warnings you see on every packaged product to not drink a bottle of sunscreen or not to insert canned beans up your anus. They are not really there to protect anything, they are just there because it made someone feel good to pretend they were helping.
Is the end goal of life a high salary?
I understand his advice, if followed, and if you work your way, either through trade school or apprenticeship, to journeyman, and then to master, you can expect a $80K+ a year income.
Is this the end-all, be-all of human existence?
A high salary is not why I went into the sciences - I went in with a passion for knowledge and knowing how things work, and why, and how to build things that, because they were barely within the boundaries of the rules, did amazing and astonishing things. A high salary resulted because I was successful at pursuing this passion.
I would instead advise people to try to find three things for which they feel passion, and are good at, and then find someone willing to pay you to do one of them.
If you can only find one thing for which you have passion, if you can still find someone to pay you to do it, then you are ahead of the game, compared to what Bloomberg suggest, if it happens that none of your objects of passion include plumbing.
There are plenty of people who look at the top end paychecks available in a profession, and choose a profession on that basis. Those who do will never reach the top end of that pay range if they do not posses a passion for the profession; they will always be middle tier, and they will watch the clock until it is time to check out from their job, and "get back to their 'real' life". This is where a lot of unemployed IT "professionals" come from.
For those clock watching 8 hours of their day, they will be miserable, working at something for which they have no passion, having intentionally turned their soul off for those eight hours in exchange for money. They will sell half their waking life into misery to benefit the other half of their waking life. And at the end of the day in their "real life", they will find they can not take joy in their "real life", as they anticipate, after sleeping, returning to their job for the next 8 soulless hours of work.
Do something you love, and for which you have passion; reclaim your soul for those lost 8 hours of your life.
As much as we need competent programmers, DBAs, network administrators, etc., we also need plumbers, carpenters and electricians. Not everyone has the talent or desire for college, and I think we as a society ought to recognize that. Of course, that means less income for colleges and bankers providing student loans, so I'm not surprised that this is being billed as a radical idea.
One of the worst things that happened to the UK back in the day was the stigmatisation of "trades" and the new idea that to be worth anything you had to get a degree. This had a twofold effect - a lack of people who saw a skilled trade job as a viable option, and a devaluation of the degree as everyone scrambled to offer one that would be suitable for all levels of academic achievement.
It's something we're still suffering from, and we need to get away from this idea that everyone can have every opportunity if they want - some people are not cut out for academia, and there is nothing wrong with that, but they might make an extraordinary skilled tradesman. Until we re-level that playing field and take the stigma away from jobs where you get your hands dirty, we'll be stuck with the fallout.
What, so libertarians now want to be given a place of their own? Is there any part of their philosophy which isn't hypocritical through the core?
Screw that, they should have to defend their claims against a military onslaught, just like countless other countries/peoples have had to do over the years.
Take for example Native Americans, whose land was seized by force. Libertarians are OK with that, but not OK with having to carve out their own land in a similar way?
Gutless hypocritcal cowards, that what libertarians are.
The didn't want to given a place of their own, they wanted to be left in peace as they built a place of their own.
Personally, I agree that they should have defended their sovereignty with force, if necessary.
Their mistake, in the case of Minerva, was that the land that they created would be acknowledged to be theirs, since it was in unclaimed territory in (at the time) international waters. It's no different, in principle, from a volcanic island being formed in international waters; the only difference is that it was immediately habitable.
They thought other nations would act civilly, and in accordance with international law; they were wrong; if there's a next time, they'll know better.
I think you're mixing "what is" and "what could be". Ideally borders would cease existing and we would all work together for the betterment of the human species, and as a side effect perhaps the entire Earth we inhabit. I'll settle for humans first though.
Unless you map a route for "how do you get there from here", you're stuck with the same problem that a lot of Open Source projects face: blind faith that there is some incremental, rather than revolutionary, method of moving from a mediocre saddle point to a revolutionary result. I personally maintain that you can not incrementally achieve a revolution.
This may be because historically I'm tainted by working for companies like IBM, Apple, and Google, and I have seen where incremental gets you, compared to placing a stake in the ground, and just building around the stake, while letting the past wander off into the weeds.
Google X will accomplish revolutionary things. Most of the rest of Google will not. Facebook will not, and Yahoo will not, nor will Blackberry, all of whom are patterning themselves after an existing model.
Whenever the discussion comes up about what we could/should/will/can do, someone goes and mentions economy or money as if they're natural components of the universe. Economy and money are artificial concepts invented to distinguish between have and have-not, simple as that. Do away with money and you have no incentive to do most of the shit humans do to each other. When the money (or the lack of) is not getting in the way of doing the right thing, we will start seeing improvement for everyone. Untill then, I will keep calling out the capitalists on their bullshit.
This is a viewpoint from a post-singularity world; to get there, however, you have to be able to survive the singularity in the first place. There is no clear path from an economy of scarcity (what we have now) to an economy of abundance (a post-singularity world). The closest things we have to guideposts are science fiction stories in which someone implements a technological generational leap, and then gives it away to everyone, whether or not everyone wants it or not.
Barring that, we will have a short term centralization of wealth as automation centralized control of the means of production. The closest thing to a non-singularity bootstrap patch to get us over that divide would be declaring a flat or linear single slope tax, start it at some minimum income, and for people below that minimum income, the government makes up the difference so that everyone below the line hits the line, regardless of their contribution (or outright detriment) to society. That particular patch would have the highest probability, in terms of avoiding outright revolution, for the majority to at least live past the point of singularity.
So you can't discount economics, unless you are willing to accept a large-scale die-off (many malthusian minded environmental groups have already advocated this without advocating it directly (that would be politically suicidal), but the key to recognizing them is any statement that "Earth is nearing/over its carrying capacity", or words to that effect. What you can do is design strategies within the existing economic system.
As for our (as in the first world) motivation for doing anything in the foerign policy arena, I'll call bullshit too. We might be invading countries to keep them from bombing us, but that does not make it anymore right than what these people have been doing to us. Violence breeds violence. If a group feels that they have no venue to speak in, that noone is listening, yes violence will ensue. That does not legitimize responding in kind. Not ever. Provide a venue for people to be heard and feel like they are being heard and I will promise you that the level of violence will drop.
I think you did not read me correctly. My statement was more to the effect that interventionist policies to enforce our idea of correct social, economic, or moral behaviour on external polities have triggered reprisals. This is not to say that we should, as a people, be insular, but we can't dictate policy. The more effective we are in our intervention, the more disenfranchised the people who disagree with these policies become. Eventually, from despair, they believe that they might be better off dead, and, if so, exercise their ability to take as many of the people they perceive as oppressors with them as they possibly can.
I have absolutely no doubt that, had there been no safety valve of "Conscientious Objector" during the Vietnam war, and no safety valve of "escape to Canada/elsewhere", those people who were being forced into a position of violating their moral code would have taken the military training forced on them and excelled: they would have been the best soldiers they possibly could be, the best marksmen, the bess killing machines the training could make them. And then they would have turned that training not on the enemy they, once weaponized, were intended to be pointed at, but upon those that forced them into the position of violating their moral code in the first place. I have anecdotal evidence to this effect in the form of statements from people who used both types of safety valve.
The point being is that it's not possible, nor is it desirable, to legislate morality. Ultimately, the only laws which are effective are those which agree with the fundamental laws of the universe, since the physical universe does not believe in arbitrary enforcement; you step off a cliff, you fall. No exceptions for a senators son.
Beam me up, Scotty!