It's not an opinion, and it's only a partisan analysis in the US, and that's the point. The question isn't whether Israel is in the right, as that's a ridiculous question to begin with in a 50-year conflict - both sides have done many reprehensible things to each other, and are going to have to deal with that before there will be peace. But it's completely objective that the standards by which the UN judges other nations would put Israel firmly in the category of rogue state. It's objective that there are over 200 UN resolutions regarding Israel, and that over 80% of the UN recognizes the West Bank as occupied territory, and that Israel's settlements are illegal under that definition, etc. What should be done about Israel in light of that is a separate question that the US has played a huge role in shaping the discussion about, but from a factual standpoint it's not really possible to dispute that Israel does not cooperate with the rest of the world the way non-rogue states are generally expected to.
This article is poorly thought out and has little-to-no conception of the difference between theory and reality. For example, many things cannot be made in smaller pieces and then assembled, so size could become a huge barrier to adopting 3D printing for something like, say, construction. Not to mention the energy that such a machine would use. 3D printing will lead to lots of changes in design and democratization of production, I'm sure, but there's still a bigger picture that's completely absent from this article's consideration.
There are a lot of good tidbits in here, but I think perhaps this is the opposite side of the message than what most hackers need to hear right now. Hackers have gotten very good at challenging the mainstream of society and "disrupting" industries - sometimes without adequate regard for the consequences. There's a very delicate balance that needs to be struck between ridding ourselves of inconveniences and considering the legitimate reasons why those inconveniences still exist in many aspects of life. It's not as though humanity hasn't learned something from the last few thousand years of trying to understand the world.
Of course, I suppose that balancing act could be considered going against the grain of the subculture. It's all relative to your environment, I guess...
This is the key. Too many times as saw alternative lifestyle promoted without any thought given to what will happen if substantial part of the society would go down that path.
Well, until the Credit Card Act of 2009. Now you have to be 21 to get a credit card unless you can demonstrate significant means to pay it off or have a cosigner. I managed to sneak through the last year before this went into effect, but considering all the issues my friends have just with their student loans, I'm sure it's saved people a lot of misery, even if the nanny-state aspect of it still rankles me a little...
It's pushed the limit out 3 years, but I wonder if it's really changed anything? They're 3 years older, but are they 3 years wiser? Wisdom tends to come from experience, and since they don't have any experience with credit cards... Well, I doubt they're wiser about them.
At least they're closer to having the means to pay it off. At 21 (as a college senior) you might have a part-time job, you might have an internship, or you might be full-time somewhere. As a college freshman or incoming freshman, chances are you won't have that income. As a senior, theoretically you should be done burying yourself in debt, and beginning to have the means to pay it off.
While I agree that this ruling in favor of EA is correct, I find it telling that this is the only time I've heard recently of a court reversing the trend of granting outrageous intellectual property rights, and it's in favor of the massive company in the entertainment industry. But I'm probably just being paranoid; it's not like the US is a plutocracy in disguise...
That's the exact opposite position from what Kay said:
"...what you definitely don't want in a Web browser is any features.... You want to get those from the objects. You want it to be a mini-operating system..."
Essentially he's saying that the way we think of browsers is holding the web back. We could have collaborative WYSIWYG editing of Wikipedia or blogs, for example, but instead we're stuck with just reading documents.
Perhaps it would be correct to say that the web was designed for reading documents, but it shouldn't have been (at least according to Kay).
Indeed, and that might result in better relations with the other members of the group, in turn resulting in more productivity, leading to greater accomplishments and benefits later on. It's been thousands of years since short-term greed was the ideal way to do things, basically since humans organized into real civilizations, but it's hard to get people not to be greedy, so we just design our economy around it instead (i.e. capitalism).
Just because something takes focus, passion, and effort doesn't mean there's not luck involved. Basically every major success story comes out of the intersection of those qualities; either one, on its own, typically just gives moderate "success" (e.g. comfortable middle class life), which is really not worth discussing in this context since it's more just the norm in life (at least in the modern western world).
It's really even deeper than that, though. Even having the chance to apply yourself involves a lot of luck. Many people simply don't have the mental capacity to go to Princeton, through nothing they ever did except being born to parents with certain genetics. Many others are born with outstanding abilities that no one ever knows about because they had the misfortune to be born in sub-Saharan Africa.
By all means, be proud of the work you put in to your success. But acting like the rest of the world had nothing to do with it won't make you many friends.
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