Whoever flagged this as Flamebait has obviously not read the whole comment or my replies. I'm not baiting. I'm watching a whole country transition to a single party controls all system in the hopes of "fixing problems" rather than working with in the original framework that it was founded under (read: opinions of many during the process). This is a dangerous path because we're setting aside our liberties for expediency.
I think the problem is that this current election is the end result of a prolonged phase out of the perceived choicer that voters had. First third parties got ignored and silenced by the media limiting the attention span of people to selecting one of two parties. Now we have just elected one to take control over everything without giving the only other "dominant" party enough votes for any push back power.
This is what has me freaked and why I'm saying that we just became a dictatorship. People became lazy on selecting based on ideas so it became a horse race and now there isn't any diversity because people just threw up their hands and said let one party solve it all. "Just make us fat and happy" became the cry of the people.
And it's not because the Democrats control everything. It's because one party controls everything. There's a big difference between the two and I feel sorry for those who can't figure it out.
Debates on issues no longer have to occur because bills can go through completely unopposed and be approved regardless of content. We're finished as a country because we elected a dictatorship. We've adopted the political system that Iraq used to have under Saddam. And this is how people receive it: with celebrations. Freedom died to an applause.
I railed against this concept in a letter to the editor of a local newspaper a few months ago. We need more than two parties in this country if debates on ideas are going to occur. Now we don't even have that. Our rights to protest any content that is going to be put through congress in the next 4 years have officially become null and void. If we even have the right to vote in 4 years after this I'm going to be amazed because there's nothing stopping anyone from changing the rules forever now.
As of this moment Iraq now has more freedom than we do. Every freedom loving American now needs to find a new home. Will the last one please bring the flag with you when you leave? Now excuse me while I play Taps.
The problem (if you want to view it as such) is that non-technical people get trained up to use a piece of software in order to complete the job that they were hired to do. Management now has to factor in what's more important: using bleeding edge technology and re-training its entire workforce or just going with what everyone knows allowing life to continue. If people really want a newer software package to come to life then it needs to fit the requirement for familiarity so that existing people don't get lost.
The only approach that I can think of for OS projects to push new boundaries without losing out would be to provide multiple UIs for the product. Every app would, in essence, need to be coded as a three (or more) tier application so that the UI would be interchangeable. One UI would be for what everyone is familiar with and then the others could be for testing new ideas. Themes and bigger/deeper menus simply do not work and cause confusion for people. This approach will obviously cause headaches for developers as well as religious wars (see KDE vs. Gnome), but it's the only thing that I can think of.
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Whoever flagged this as Flamebait has obviously not read the whole comment or my replies. I'm not baiting. I'm watching a whole country transition to a single party controls all system in the hopes of "fixing problems" rather than working with in the original framework that it was founded under (read: opinions of many during the process). This is a dangerous path because we're setting aside our liberties for expediency.
I think the problem is that this current election is the end result of a prolonged phase out of the perceived choicer that voters had. First third parties got ignored and silenced by the media limiting the attention span of people to selecting one of two parties. Now we have just elected one to take control over everything without giving the only other "dominant" party enough votes for any push back power.
This is what has me freaked and why I'm saying that we just became a dictatorship. People became lazy on selecting based on ideas so it became a horse race and now there isn't any diversity because people just threw up their hands and said let one party solve it all. "Just make us fat and happy" became the cry of the people.
Not even close. Try seeing: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/results/ Now compare to: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/main.results/#S and http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/main.results/#val=H The avalanche that just happened is way bigger than the 2000 election.
And it's not because the Democrats control everything. It's because one party controls everything. There's a big difference between the two and I feel sorry for those who can't figure it out.
Debates on issues no longer have to occur because bills can go through completely unopposed and be approved regardless of content. We're finished as a country because we elected a dictatorship. We've adopted the political system that Iraq used to have under Saddam. And this is how people receive it: with celebrations. Freedom died to an applause.
I railed against this concept in a letter to the editor of a local newspaper a few months ago. We need more than two parties in this country if debates on ideas are going to occur. Now we don't even have that. Our rights to protest any content that is going to be put through congress in the next 4 years have officially become null and void. If we even have the right to vote in 4 years after this I'm going to be amazed because there's nothing stopping anyone from changing the rules forever now.
As of this moment Iraq now has more freedom than we do. Every freedom loving American now needs to find a new home. Will the last one please bring the flag with you when you leave? Now excuse me while I play Taps.
The problem (if you want to view it as such) is that non-technical people get trained up to use a piece of software in order to complete the job that they were hired to do. Management now has to factor in what's more important: using bleeding edge technology and re-training its entire workforce or just going with what everyone knows allowing life to continue. If people really want a newer software package to come to life then it needs to fit the requirement for familiarity so that existing people don't get lost. The only approach that I can think of for OS projects to push new boundaries without losing out would be to provide multiple UIs for the product. Every app would, in essence, need to be coded as a three (or more) tier application so that the UI would be interchangeable. One UI would be for what everyone is familiar with and then the others could be for testing new ideas. Themes and bigger/deeper menus simply do not work and cause confusion for people. This approach will obviously cause headaches for developers as well as religious wars (see KDE vs. Gnome), but it's the only thing that I can think of.