Goodbye! Thanks for all the fish! Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!

If you visit http://www.bittorrent.com/ it will become quickly apparent what they mean, I think.

http://bundles.bittorrent.com/torrents/BitTorrent-ArthurNewman.torrent

I imagine they're seeding it.

Merchandising?

If that leads to a series of entertaining films coming out that don't contain any members of the Screen Actors Guild, they're really going to be up shit creek.

I don't really believe democracy is going to survive unless those who are not able bodied members of the work force are forcibly disenfranchised. The elderly dramatically outnumber the young, and they hold most of the wealth. There have been multiple generations of less than replacement level reproduction, and all the politicians and business leaders recognize that the situation is desperate, that we aren't capable of surviving on our own, but if we brought in the number of immigrants necessary to make up for all the babies we didn't have, we couldn't force them to support our aged population once they got here. The nations we would like to poach people from are a) suffering the same problem b) recent converts to our culture who have no reason to flee here c) able to recognize what we're about and actively hostile towards us. When we as a culture decided it was acceptable to entice women to exchange the children a woman would bear for the service she could provide us in the hear and now, we really fucked ourselves. Unless a lot of old people vote to throw themselves on their sword, what's going to happen is we're going to fritter away resources making their end days as comfortable as possible, when they should be used to set the ship aright and ensure a future. We're also going to make enemies of those destined to inherit the world from us, trying to use economic and military force to compel them to serve us.

I think the sensible thing for an able bodied person to do is to attempt to migrate to a young and vibrant culture... I've been considering Brazil.

Oooh, I want to play.

Perhaps there are intelligent entities out there who will interact with 'us' after we assemble ourselves into a higher form of life, just as we have been assembled from lower forms of life.

Flying around the planet for a business meeting would seem pretty outrageous to a single celled organism. On interstellar scales, we are the single celled organisms.

We're going to have to successfully grow our population to levels that boggle the mind before we become significant, and even then, we're going to have as much chance to interact with aliens in their own environment as a human white blood cell has of chatting up a cell from a dogs liver. We're going to be structural components in such a scenario, so most of us will exist our whole lives "inside" the "body", except those that are born to be "skin".

Going further, the intelligences involved would have concerns as far removed from our own that we wouldn't have any chance of recognizing them. Their lifespans would be vastly beyond our own, the way our own lifespan is vastly greater than a skin cell.

When you get right down to it, it's entirely possible this is already going on. How the hell would we recognize such a thing?

And I don't mean this as a neo-luddite "computers are taking our jobs" kind of way, just that the set of skills that are unique to humanity are shrinking. We're running, as fast as we can, at a point where ownership of capital is the only factor for success in a free-market economy.

That's when the blood begins to flow. And rightly so.

No one's going to sue you, cupcake. Just be a dear and make me a sandwich, hmmm?

No, not really. The goal to mislead is the same. The lengths gone to are a matter of degree, and the degree required comes from society, not the individual. If he could have achieved the same goal with less effort, he would have.

Nice!

If it had been a woman, posing as a man, there would be a big discussion about how it was reasonable for her to do that, because it gave her a chance to have her work judged without having to deal with peoples pro-male bias. It used to be pretty common, particularly when you're in a situation where you don't actually meet the people you're doing business with. Writers operating under a pseudonym, for example.

So, he lied, and took advantage of peoples pro-female bias. And, people react with anger, just like people of a previous generation reacted with anger. People genuinely believe that men SHOULD have to work harder to get ahead. That's why they're mad. Because their prejudice is heartfelt.

I don't want the right to hide. I want the right to see. If you prefer hiding to seeing, makes me think you're either a coward or a criminal. Maybe both. I certainly don't see it as sane and wise to participate in a democracy with people who keep secrets.

That's terrible. We really should look into that... death threats are not ok. Who were the people who made the death threats?

Oh, right. We don't know, because they were made anonymously.

Reminds me of a lecture I heard recently, talking about a woman who was being stalked by her ex-boyfriend. They were attempting to make the point that she needed privacy protection to keep her safe.

All I could think is, restricting access to this lady's information isn't going to stop him from sitting in his car and following her. It might make things a little more difficult, but only marginally.

On the other hand, if this lady had access to pervasive surveillance infrastructure, she would KNOW when her creepy ex was following her. She would know that she should stay close to others, not wander off alone, perhaps alert others that she felt in danger, or leave the area entirely if she felt it was justified.

The whole argument is backwards.

I do not value privacy. I would rather you be less ignorant, and the only way to achieve that is to push to have you better informed, systematically.

Unless I'm mistaken, in the UK, they allow the public to view the CCTV feeds. Little old ladies who used to peek out their window can now assist with enforcing a minimum standard of behavior. The problem as you've identified it would be eliminated if there was more transparency.