[Sussex] Microsoft fails to comply

[Richie Jarvis]

Steve Dobson wrote:

>Richie
>
>On Sat, Mar 19, 2005 at 11:31:31AM +0000, Richie Jarvis wrote:
>  
>
>>Steve Dobson wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>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.
>>>      
>>>
>>A good and interesting thought Steve, however, the downside of this 
>>approach is time
>>that it would take to make large decisions - not that I actually 
>>disagree with the
>>method, I just think it would need a very clever decision making 
>>paradigm to make it work.
>>    
>>
>
>How long does it take to make a large decision these days anyway?
>And you don't need a "clever" decision making paradigm at all, that's
>the point.  You may place some weight to the votes so that people who
>are experts carry slightly more weight than those that don't, but that's
>about it - and those methods have around for ages, and were used have
>shown to be better than other ways of coming to a decision.
>  
>
My point was that to simply that to ask a small number of people (i.e. a 
cabinet or elected government) is alot quicker than polling the entire 
populace each time a decision needs to be made.  However, I do see your 
point.

>  
>
>>I think we all agree with TeaLeg's point that something is very wrong 
>>with the way in which we are governed, taxed and receive our services. 
>>I also think Steve should really be living in a commune ;)
>>    
>>
>
>Not a commune, a collective (or I would like to).  In a commune everyone
>shares the same goals.  I want diversity.
>
>In the hive a bees leaving at the start of the day pick directions to 
>travel at random.  Those that find the most plentiful food source return
>and communicate it more vigorously that those that find poorer sources.
>The next wave of workers leaving the hive tend to head for the better
>sources of food.  This has been shown to be the most efficient way of
>extracting the maximum amount of food from an area.
>
>Don't we do the same think on this (and other) maillists?  Someone
>posts a question, and often a number of different answers are posted in
>reply.  The more a replier knows how to do the think in question the
>more confident he will sound in is reply (maybe even submitting a 
>chuck of config file or code).  The question asker then gets to try 
>out one (or more) of the possible solutions.  More questions are asked,
>more is learnt, and the collective (the members of the maillist) move
>closer to the better answer.
>
>So why do you not believe that this same principle can not be applied to
>government?  Doesn't the Internet provide the means, all we have to do
>is find the way.
>
>Steve
>
>  
>
Well, I think it would be nice - however, I don't think it would be 
practical, and would die a death very quickly due to another of those 
human nature items - laziness.  I think that people would start of 
thinking it was great, but would quickly become too lazy to actually 
vote - apart from those who felt passionately about an issue, in which 
case the view of the populace would be skewed towards whoever gave a 
shit most - not a good thing.

I find myself sat here in this discussion in a very interesting 
position.  My upbringing sends me down the conservative route (a very 
hard habit to break!), and my political awareness since I started caring 
(about 10 years, all told) violently agrees with that - the conservative 
government got kicked out (slease was the big vote loser I seem to 
remember - funny that, considering the state of New Labour on that front). 

All I can really remember of the thatcher years was Argentina, and an 
ugly woman on the news ;)  I remember that people were not happy under 
conservative, and that they still aren't under New Labour.  The 
hospitals aren't any better, the policing is worse (can anyone say speed 
cameras?), civil rights are worse - I can now be under house arrest 
because the government wants it (alright, so a Judge has to agree it, 
big deal.)  The Liberals just confuse the issue further in that they 
don't actually stand a chance, and just dilute the 'change' vote - about 
the only policy they shouted about (which I happened to agree with) was 
to add 1p on income tax for all to pay for it all.

I think the basic premise for our democracy is out the window.  We all 
vote for someone to run the country, we are supposed to trust them to do 
so.  How many of us actually do?  Hell, I would trust any of our 
politicals further than I could comfortably spit out a rat.

Anyway, time to go and get some dinner........

Ta-Ta all

Richie