How do you get your SO to leave you alone for long enough to get stuff like this done? I'm not even being rhetorical...do you not have an arm's-length list of domestic tasks that needs addressing whenever you're not actually at work?
I composed a lengthy reply and then decided that it wasn't worth my while. So I'll settle for pointing this out:
I was here for the G20, it went perfectly.
[...]
I didn't die in the g20, I don't think anyone did, but that big of an event can't ever go perfectly.
and saying that your post makes clear that you're a fairly egocentric person who doesn't care for the welfare of his or her fellow Canadian.
In the end, at the end of the year, my taxes sumto roughly the same amount plus or minus 5%, the roads have roughly the same number of holes, there's about the same amount of construction, public transit still begs for money that I don't think it should have, the same number of hookers are on the same corners, and the same rocket-powered homeless person manages to get from the theatre performance to the stadium faster than I can.
Hm. Non-voter; significant complainer...Somebody call the WAH-mbulance.
(would you vote if a party came along that promised something significantly worse?)
I believe what you're looking for are The Fly Papers; research by Bill Bialek and various co-authors which date back almost a decade. For a great overview, check his book, Spikes.
On the third(?!) hand [...]
I believe it's called The Gripping Hand.
Not quite true. If I don't like the way "big business" is regulating the Internet, I'm free to start my own business to compete with "big business," one which is less expensive and provides more features to customers. This is still possible even in today's heavily regulated free market economy.
On the other hand, I am not free to start a competing government and remain an American citizen. This is the fundamental flaw in most government regulatory arguments: bad companies tend to go away, but bad government regulations tend to stick around for a LONG LONG time.
Huh!? I'm not seeing the analogy you're trying to make here...you ARE perfectly free to start up a new (state or federal) political party, one which "provides more features" to its clients. In fact, it's probably EASIER to do that than it would be to start up a new telco and try to gain any traction.
I think that
I don't think that Assange would have the high ground in this hypothetical case [...] Clearly, it can't just be that transparency is always a morally superior end state [...]
is conjectural, and probably unproveable. I may well be that transparency always gives one the moral high ground. Of course, that's more or less orthogonal to the degree of umbrage taken (is umbrage taken in degrees?) by John Q. Public. Nobody likes their laundry aired by other people, regardless of how clean it is...even as people put more and more of their lives online for all to see, I suspect that we all want to be the people who control the flow on our personal information pipes.
I wonder whether there isn't a threshold to be (admittedly, somewhat arbitrarily) drawn in terms of "degree of influence". What an average member of the public chooses to divulge or keep secret affects a (comparatively) small group of people. Conversely, the machinery of international diplomacy, or the military, or corporate greed/corruption, etc. are---rightly or wrongly---perceived to affect a much wider group of people...potentially spanning multiple nations. It seems to me that this is the yardstick by which we (implicitly) judge the rightness/wrongness of divulging information. The greater the number of people affected, the more we want transparency (subject to my earlier caveat that agents seek to retain control over their information pipes, where e.g. the military, or Mega-Company Inc. can plausibly be construed as agents).
Hmm. That reads a bit ranty and disorganized. Just fired this off without much thought...
Method for dissipation of influenza symptoms through prolong dietary restriction versus current methods of hypercaloric intake treatment of cold virus carriers.
Best. Starve-a-fever-feed-a-cold. Evar.
I'm totally stealing this...
I'm skeptical of the notion that he no longer has Harper's ear, given his role in the Conservatives' rise to power. Moreover, I suspect a goodly chunk of the Canadian voting public (mostly West of Ontario) don't think what he says is really that outrageous.
Given the often controversial/incendiary nature of some of Flanagan's comments (not to mention the content of some of his books), I'd bet the truth is closer to formley publicly aknowledged advisor...
I would like to think that he recanted because enough Canadians, like me, e-mailed him directly to express outrage and make clear that he---as a [former?] close advisor to PM Harper---made it clear just how out of alignment the Conservative Party is with the Canadian moral compass.
Of course, given the following:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tom_Flanagan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Flanagan_(political_scientist)
I recognize that that's pretty much a fantasy on my part, and that parent is closer to the truth.
*sigh* I'm not super-proud of being a Canuck lately...
Funniest thing I've read on Slashdot in a while...thanks!
If this becomes the norm we might as well start actually stealing from stores, since the penalty is so much smaller.
THIS. I recently moved to the US from Canada...the law is much clearer here about what kinds of penalties await. I won't be downloading anymore...but I may just turn to petty theft.
(j/k DHS...I'll be a good J-1, I promise!)
any potential buyer is essentially spending an assloadde of money for a fairy tale.
FTFY.
Thank you, Zeno.
Q: why do people who either never took, or failed, Cal I get modded Insightful?
I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"
