[Sussex] Microsoft fails to comply

[Steve Dobson]

Geoff

On Sat, Mar 19, 2005 at 12:41:22AM +0000, Geoffrey J Teale wrote:
> > True - and that is most of the problem with our politicians today - in
> > fact, that is the underlying problem behind democracy in general - if
> > you have a fixed term of office, then the people who try and achieve
> > power are only interested in short term goals.  The things we should
> > all be concerned about (planet death, etc) are long term things that
> > politicians couldn't give a shit about.  Mind you, its always human
> > nature to put it off until another day.
> 
> Yup.  Human nature pretty much defeats humanity at every turn, and yet
> we still seem to succeed (at least at the species level).  Just
> waiting for the day the cockroaches finally take over (or maybe they
> already have.... ewwww).

I have to disagree.  The collective group view is the most powerful
there is, and this appears to be true across nature.

1). Collectives of insects show a group intelligence that is greater
    than the sum of the members.  If intelligence is a survival
    advantages (a reasonable assumption given the place of man, dolphins
    and hunters generally in the food chain) then the hive mind should
    given those insects that use it greater control over their 
    environment that those that do no.  Isn't that what we see?

2). The hyena pack is the most feared hunter on the planes of Africa.
    A pack can take a kill from a lioness, despite the fact that the
    lioness is 3 - 4 times the size of any one hyena.

3). In the fifties or sixties the US lost a nuclear submarine.  A
    collective of experts and layman was formed to try and predicted
    the final resting place of the lost boat.  The collective view,
    one which took into account all members view, and didn't just let
    a "few experts" ride ruff-shot, predicted the location to within a
    few hundred yards, and much, much closer (my miles) of any of 
    the experts alone.  The search radius was some two hundred miles.

4). The F/OSS movement, despite (or maybe I should say "because of") it
    having no leader, is now the most powerful software process on 
    the planet.  It has been proved that it can produced code which is
    much more stable, bug free, and well designed code.  It betters 
    all formal design methods!!!

Maybe there are lessons to be learned here.  Maybe we should take a 
leaf out of the cockroaches book.  We need government by a collectives.
Not a committee, a collective.  A collective that is made up of most 
of the people of this country, were we all get a say in all the issues:
health care, taxation, ...

If, as has been shown, that the collective is greater than an expert,
they why not use it to rule ourselves.  It has to be better than our
current system of government where we "democraticly" elect a dictator.
Sure, we limit his powers to five years so he can't do much harm, by
then her can't do much good either.

Steve