Slashdot Mirror

When a two year old or even a five year old asks you "Why?", it makes sense to explain the reason to them because they're still learning basic skills. When someone older than 13 asks you why and the answer is simple enough to be within their grasp (as opposed to being based on quantum field theory), it makes more sense to tell them "Look it up!". There probably shouldn't be too many 5 year olds on /. So giving someone a lmgtfy link is basically telling them, "You're older than 5 years and this is now a basic skill." If someone has enough interest to ask the question, then it will be faster for them to look it up than waste someone else's time. Also see this link.

You do not provide any sort of answer, and you assume that the person did not already google it.

If they had googled it, their question would show that they had at least read the first article (or even the google excerpt) returned by the search. They would ask for some sort of clarification if they hadn't understood. Expecting someone else to digest it for you is an intellectual laziness that is at the root of many ills in modern society. The real dipshits are the ones who expect the world to cater to their every minor whim.

Barring monopolistic practices, the mining companies would no more be in charge of our economy than the banks are now.

You're missing the point. A central bank controls the money supply deliberately with an eye toward the effect of that money supply on the overall economy. Mining companies produce gold, and industrial users consume gold, for their own purposes, with no regard for the effect of the gold supply on the economy.

Exactly, the duration may have gotten shorter, but the effect when reality finally hits is worse.

Any evidence for this claim?

This is why we had the Great Depression, and why we are heading into another major downturn now.

Good luck finding anyone who isn't a crank who believes that the Great Depression was caused by insufficient goldbuggery. If anything, gold standard contributed to the Depression.

There's an old quote that goes something like this. Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime. Computer science is a lot like that fish. If all you learn in school is how to use the current crop of Microsoft developer tools, then the shelf life of your degree will be about five years. However, if you learn the fundamental basics of computer science, then you will have developed the cognitive framework in your mind for easily, almost effortlessly, learning the long list of new programming languages and tools that you will inevitably encounter in your career. That is why universities should focus on the basics and not on the toolset du jour in the workplace.

There's another reason why universities should avoid Microsoft developer tools. Those tools are focused on productivity and not on learning. So, there are all these code wizards that generate tons of boilerplate for you. This may jump start your project but you end up not really developing any understanding of what the wizard generates for you. The typical OSS approach is to avoid wizards and put the productivity boosting features in the software architecture itself.

Yeah... it's all propaganda... well, and economic theory based on math... but don't let that get in the way. Freaking read a book on economics, preferrably by this guy.

[Better formatting]

No, World War 2 helped end that cycle early, NOT FDR. Cycles are part of nature, they will happen one way or another. This one was just exacerbated by the relatively recently formed Fed Reserve and their decision to shrink the money supply so drastically.

http://www.amatecon.com/gd/gdoverview.html
"What caused the Great Depression? To get a handle on that, it's necessary to look at previous depressions and compare. The Great Depression was by no means the first depression this country ever had, but it was clearly the worst. What made it different than the rest? At the time of the Great Depression, government intervention in the economy was higher than it had ever been and a special government agency had been set up specifically to prevent depressions and their associated problems, such as bank panics."

http://www.libertyhaven.com/theoreticalorphilosoph icalissues/economichistory/mysteries.shtml
"Many free-market economists had attempted to answer the first question, including Benjamin M. Anderson and Murray N. Rothbard,2 but none had the impact equal to Milton Friedman's empirical studies on money in the early 1960s. His was the first effective effort to destroy the argument that the Great Depression was the handiwork of an inherently unstable capitalistic system. Friedman (and his co-author, Anna J. Schwartz) demonstrated forcefully that it was not free enterprise, but rather government - specifically the Federal Reserve System - that caused the Great Depression."

Your belief that the GD was caused by a Free Market has been misproven many times. It's still a common fallacy, but it's not true. But, I find it hard to believe that anyone can actually think that FDR saved us from it. He didn't. HITLER and HIROHITO brought us out of that slump.

http://www.policyreview.org/aug01/roberts.html
"A country that doesn't understand its own history is not well equipped to deal with its future. The Great Depression was not a failure of the old order. It was the failure of the new order that had just begun.
The Federal Reserve is the most powerful institution of a new order that believed in the efficacy of government and its ability to do good. The same Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression when its wise men made a series of cumulative mistakes that contracted the money supply by one-third and wiped out purchasing power in an unprecedented fashion."

No, World War 2 helped end that cycle early. Cycles are part of nature, they will happen one way or another. http://www.amatecon.com/gd/gdoverview.html "What caused the Great Depression? To get a handle on that, it's necessary to look at previous depressions and compare. The Great Depression was by no means the first depression this country ever had, but it was clearly the worst. What made it different than the rest? At the time of the Great Depression, government intervention in the economy was higher than it had ever been and a special government agency had been set up specifically to prevent depressions and their associated problems, such as bank panics." http://www.libertyhaven.com/theoreticalorphilosoph icalissues/economichistory/mysteries.shtml "Many free-market economists had attempted to answer the first question, including Benjamin M. Anderson and Murray N. Rothbard,2 but none had the impact equal to Milton Friedman's empirical studies on money in the early 1960s. His was the first effective effort to destroy the argument that the Great Depression was the handiwork of an inherently unstable capitalistic system. Friedman (and his co-author, Anna J. Schwartz) demonstrated forcefully that it was not free enterprise, but rather government - specifically the Federal Reserve System - that caused the Great Depression." Your belief that the GD was caused by a Free Market has been misproven many times. It's still a common fallacy, but it's not true. But, I find it hard to believe that anyone can actually think that FDR saved us from it. He didn't. HITLER and HIROHITO brought us out of that slump. http://www.policyreview.org/aug01/roberts.html "A country that doesn't understand its own history is not well equipped to deal with its future. The Great Depression was not a failure of the old order. It was the failure of the new order that had just begun. The Federal Reserve is the most powerful institution of a new order that believed in the efficacy of government and its ability to do good. The same Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression when its wise men made a series of cumulative mistakes that contracted the money supply by one-third and wiped out purchasing power in an unprecedented fashion."

There are federal laws that prohibit interstate transport of automatic knives, however in most states they are legal to purchase in buy, and in many they are legal to carry with some restrictions. Here's a list by state: http://www.amatecon.com/switchblade.html