And yet somehow, even with all the wonderful sunshine'n'balloons'n'puppies which apparently characterize present-day Iraq, lots and lots of people somehow manage to keep dying there. What the hell's wrong with them? Haven't they heard how wonderful things are supposed to be? I tell you, they really need to get with the program!
I used to be one of MySQL's vociferous defenders, arguing that speed, ease of use, quality of documentation, and the size of the community made up for its limitations relative to PostgreSQL. But this is pretty much the end. Sun is clearly determined to destroy whatever's good about it. For small, lightweight projects, SQLite is the way to go, and for anything bigger, PostgreSQL is now the clear choice. I guess it's time to see if PostgreSQL's documentation and tools have managed to get any less user-hostile over the years.
The one remaining question is mindshare. For example, pretty much every ISP offers MySQL as part of a basic hosting package. No one's saying they have to stop doing that, but are they going to start offering other open source DBMSs in the same way now? I sure hope so.
It's 2008. I think the idea that educational institutions are anything but commercial meat-grinders has expired.
No, the idea is very much alive. The existence of these various outrages doesn't mean the idea is dead; it means we should fight against the new outrages that pop up.
Probably very well in the brand new, expensive sleep number bed that they bought with the profits from morons.
You're right, but I have to say, if they shelled out the money for a Sleep Number(tm) bed, then the morons-paying-too-much-for-brand-names cycle is continuing to function nicely.
Even if Blue Jeans is public, if the shareholders have any brains, they'll support his stance. This isn't just a matter of principle (although it is certainly that) but also a matter of cold hard cash. Blue Jeans will in every way do better by standing up to the aptly-named Monster than they would be settling.
A lot of people who seriously consider or attempt suicide are simply going a particularly bad time, and after surviving their brush with death go on to lead productive lives. Saying "just take yourself out of the gene pool" to these people isn't only callous, it's dumb.
That being said, I do believe that people who genuinely want to die and who have carefully worked out their reasons for this desire, after considering and rejecting the alternatives, should be allowed to do so. In particular, if I were dying of something that would inevitably kill me slowly and painfully (or worse, destroy the person I am long before my body dies, like Alzheimer's) then I would very much hope that I could find a sympathetic doctor to hook me up with some, ah, special medications.
It's about time that United States elite academic institutions finally got around to not only using open-source software, but also teaching it.
United States elite academic institutions have been teaching open source for quite some time: computer science departments at good schools teach their students to compile their programs using GCC, statistics departments at good schools teach their students to program in R, etc. If business schools are finally starting to hear about this miraculous new idea called "open source" as something other than a Commie plot, that's great, but the phrases "elite academic" and "business school" really don't go together all that well.
I think what raised GPP's hackles was the assumption in your post that a married person who's downloading porn automatically has a problem. Maybe you're married, you're downloading porn, and your spouse is just fine with that. Maybe the two of you are looking for the good stuff together. Etc.
Now, of course, if you're paying for porn, you've got a problem, but that's true regardless of marital status.;)
The problem you're describing is one of the fundamental reasons to keep law enforcement and military operations separate. In law enforcement (whether criminal or civil) defense is the only reasonable option -- cops can't go around arresting people for the hell of it, and private individuals can't sue people for the hell of it, or the whole system becomes hopelessly overloaded and corrupt. In military operations, on the other hand, attack must be as much a part of the plan as defense; neither works by itself. Unfortunately, the increasing militarization of criminal law enforcement thanks to the "War on Drugs" and now the "War on Terror," and the insane aggressiveness in civil law enforcement of groups like the RIAA, has seriously blurred this line.
It occurs to me that what you're describing is very much like the concept of "sea level." There's no such thing, of course -- at any point on any coast, the water level is constantly changing as waves come in; on a smaller level, the air above the water is always filled with spray while the water near the surface is filled with bubbles. And yet we have no problem averaging all this out and coming up with a measurement for sea level that's precisely defined down to (at least) the level of a foot. So if you think of the Sun's "surface" like an ocean, it all makes sense.
... the site loads instantly. It's easy to navigate. There's just enough information near the top of each page so you know immediately what the page is for. The text is easily readable with default browser settings, even on a small screen.
Modern web developers could take a lesson from this.
I think you're thinking of Little Boy. Fat Man was the plutonium-implosion bomb detonated over Nagasaki, and those are hard to get right. Little Boy was the gun-type uranium bomb detonated over Hiroshima, and you're right, those are absurdly easy to build if you can get the refined uranium.
I'm sure Jesse Lawrence, PhD, professor of seismology, hasn't thought of that! You'd better e-mail him right away and tell him how worthless his plan is!
Well, you should. People have been "Godwined" out of calling American fascism what it is for far too long. Any time anyone dares to point out that the current state of the US government, with its collusion between corporate and political interests, is turning into the very definition of fascism, they're greeted with howls of righteous fury and snide comments like, "When we start rounding up all the Jews and throwing them in death camps, let us know." But fascism is essentially an economic philosophy, not a racial or religious one; the anti-Semitism that went along with the German variety was pretty much absent in Italy, where fascism was invented and named.
The funny thing is that the same right-wingers who mock people who call American fascism by its proper name are very quick to label their political opponents "Communists" or "Marxists," even though no mainstream American politician, no matter how leftist, has ever come close to proposing anything like true Communism or even socialism. (People who think the New Deal and its sequelae are socialist have no clue what they're talking about.) But the "moderate" policies praised by centrist Democrats and Republicans alike are straight out of Mussolini's playbook.
Since World of Warcraft is a game where players simulate fighting wars, presumably World of Chorecraft would be a game where players simulate doing chores. Which, now that I think about it, is pretty much what The Sims is... and yet it's weirdly addictive, unlike doing the same things in real life.
I want McCain. He's the only one who's proven his courage and loyalty under fire.
<sarcasm>What, by getting shot down?</sarcasm>
Seriously, whatever young John McCain, fighter pilot, may have done four decades ago, it's clear that old John McCain, politician, has no integrity left today. Look at the way he rolled over and showed his throat for Bush's people after the smear job they did on him in the 2000 campaign. Look at the way he talked tough about banning torture by the US military and intelligence services, then voted for the Military Commissions Act. He's a cowardly, self-serving, party-line Republican, and anyone who falls for his "straight talking maverick" act is a fool.
If McCain had associated with a minister who was a white supremacist and KKK supporter, he would have been kicked out, just like that.
Bullshit. McCain is closely associated with -- in fact, has courted and embraced -- right-wing preachers like John Hagee and Rod Parsley, who are on record with views that are at least as extremist as anything Jeremiah Wright has ever said. And yet somehow, the "liberal media" has failed to pick this up. Just like Bush, McCain is getting damn near a free ride from the press while his Democratic opponents are picked apart.
(snicker) Yeah, you're probably right. With people like that, the more you point out how wrong they are, the more they take it as proof that they're Persecuted Standard-Bearers Of The Truth.
Anyone worth their weight as a programmer doesn't care what language they program in.
This is simply not true. Experienced programmers know full well that (a) one language is very often a better tool than another for a particular task, and (b) some languages are simply better than others, overall. Yes, yes, you can do anything in any Turing-complete language that you can do in any other Turing-complete language, good programming practices are universal, blah blah. But the reality is that plucking a language out of a hat pretty much guarantees that most of your programming tasks will be exercises in wasted time and frustration.
That's ok - he'll still put his life on the line to protect your right to continue to whine.
Yawn. This is the stock answer to any criticism of the military, and it's crap. Yes, the military is important. Yes, military personnel take risks that most civilians don't, and should be honored for their service. But this does not mean that civilians -- you know, the people the military exists for -- shouldn't be able to criticize the military in general, and certainly doesn't mean that they shouldn't criticize individual military personnel when they retreat into bureaucratic doublespeak instead of giving a straight answer to a question. There's a lot that's right with the military. There's also a lot that's wrong. It is the right and duty of the people to call bullshit when they see it, WRT the military or any other part of the government.
There are countries where this isn't the case, of course. I doubt you'd want to live in any of them.
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And yet somehow, even with all the wonderful sunshine'n'balloons'n'puppies which apparently characterize present-day Iraq, lots and lots of people somehow manage to keep dying there. What the hell's wrong with them? Haven't they heard how wonderful things are supposed to be? I tell you, they really need to get with the program!
New York Times
Wall Street Journal
Fox News
CNN
If that's what you consider "full spectrum," you must think visible light stops somewhere around, say, yellow.
I used to be one of MySQL's vociferous defenders, arguing that speed, ease of use, quality of documentation, and the size of the community made up for its limitations relative to PostgreSQL. But this is pretty much the end. Sun is clearly determined to destroy whatever's good about it. For small, lightweight projects, SQLite is the way to go, and for anything bigger, PostgreSQL is now the clear choice. I guess it's time to see if PostgreSQL's documentation and tools have managed to get any less user-hostile over the years.
The one remaining question is mindshare. For example, pretty much every ISP offers MySQL as part of a basic hosting package. No one's saying they have to stop doing that, but are they going to start offering other open source DBMSs in the same way now? I sure hope so.
It's 2008. I think the idea that educational institutions are anything but commercial meat-grinders has expired.
No, the idea is very much alive. The existence of these various outrages doesn't mean the idea is dead; it means we should fight against the new outrages that pop up.
Probably very well in the brand new, expensive sleep number bed that they bought with the profits from morons.
You're right, but I have to say, if they shelled out the money for a Sleep Number(tm) bed, then the morons-paying-too-much-for-brand-names cycle is continuing to function nicely.
Even if Blue Jeans is public, if the shareholders have any brains, they'll support his stance. This isn't just a matter of principle (although it is certainly that) but also a matter of cold hard cash. Blue Jeans will in every way do better by standing up to the aptly-named Monster than they would be settling.
Well, in the case we'd have plenty of hydroelectric ...
A lot of people who seriously consider or attempt suicide are simply going a particularly bad time, and after surviving their brush with death go on to lead productive lives. Saying "just take yourself out of the gene pool" to these people isn't only callous, it's dumb.
That being said, I do believe that people who genuinely want to die and who have carefully worked out their reasons for this desire, after considering and rejecting the alternatives, should be allowed to do so. In particular, if I were dying of something that would inevitably kill me slowly and painfully (or worse, destroy the person I am long before my body dies, like Alzheimer's) then I would very much hope that I could find a sympathetic doctor to hook me up with some, ah, special medications.
The first line, in fact:
It's about time that United States elite academic institutions finally got around to not only using open-source software, but also teaching it.
United States elite academic institutions have been teaching open source for quite some time: computer science departments at good schools teach their students to compile their programs using GCC, statistics departments at good schools teach their students to program in R, etc. If business schools are finally starting to hear about this miraculous new idea called "open source" as something other than a Commie plot, that's great, but the phrases "elite academic" and "business school" really don't go together all that well.
I think what raised GPP's hackles was the assumption in your post that a married person who's downloading porn automatically has a problem. Maybe you're married, you're downloading porn, and your spouse is just fine with that. Maybe the two of you are looking for the good stuff together. Etc.
;)
Now, of course, if you're paying for porn, you've got a problem, but that's true regardless of marital status.
The problem you're describing is one of the fundamental reasons to keep law enforcement and military operations separate. In law enforcement (whether criminal or civil) defense is the only reasonable option -- cops can't go around arresting people for the hell of it, and private individuals can't sue people for the hell of it, or the whole system becomes hopelessly overloaded and corrupt. In military operations, on the other hand, attack must be as much a part of the plan as defense; neither works by itself. Unfortunately, the increasing militarization of criminal law enforcement thanks to the "War on Drugs" and now the "War on Terror," and the insane aggressiveness in civil law enforcement of groups like the RIAA, has seriously blurred this line.
It occurs to me that what you're describing is very much like the concept of "sea level." There's no such thing, of course -- at any point on any coast, the water level is constantly changing as waves come in; on a smaller level, the air above the water is always filled with spray while the water near the surface is filled with bubbles. And yet we have no problem averaging all this out and coming up with a measurement for sea level that's precisely defined down to (at least) the level of a foot. So if you think of the Sun's "surface" like an ocean, it all makes sense.
... the site loads instantly. It's easy to navigate. There's just enough information near the top of each page so you know immediately what the page is for. The text is easily readable with default browser settings, even on a small screen.
Modern web developers could take a lesson from this.
I think you're thinking of Little Boy. Fat Man was the plutonium-implosion bomb detonated over Nagasaki, and those are hard to get right. Little Boy was the gun-type uranium bomb detonated over Hiroshima, and you're right, those are absurdly easy to build if you can get the refined uranium.
And no matter if it runs Linux or not, that spyhardware will never prevent or predict an earthquake
... what, exactly?
And your basis for this sweeping statement is
I'm sure Jesse Lawrence, PhD, professor of seismology, hasn't thought of that! You'd better e-mail him right away and tell him how worthless his plan is!
Dare I use the word fascist?
Well, you should. People have been "Godwined" out of calling American fascism what it is for far too long. Any time anyone dares to point out that the current state of the US government, with its collusion between corporate and political interests, is turning into the very definition of fascism, they're greeted with howls of righteous fury and snide comments like, "When we start rounding up all the Jews and throwing them in death camps, let us know." But fascism is essentially an economic philosophy, not a racial or religious one; the anti-Semitism that went along with the German variety was pretty much absent in Italy, where fascism was invented and named.
The funny thing is that the same right-wingers who mock people who call American fascism by its proper name are very quick to label their political opponents "Communists" or "Marxists," even though no mainstream American politician, no matter how leftist, has ever come close to proposing anything like true Communism or even socialism. (People who think the New Deal and its sequelae are socialist have no clue what they're talking about.) But the "moderate" policies praised by centrist Democrats and Republicans alike are straight out of Mussolini's playbook.
Since World of Warcraft is a game where players simulate fighting wars, presumably World of Chorecraft would be a game where players simulate doing chores. Which, now that I think about it, is pretty much what The Sims is ... and yet it's weirdly addictive, unlike doing the same things in real life.
McCain might help the economy if he is true to his word about reducing government spending.
I really wouldn't count on Mr. "Hundred Years in Iraq" to do that if I were you.
I want McCain. He's the only one who's proven his courage and loyalty under fire.
<sarcasm>What, by getting shot down?</sarcasm>
Seriously, whatever young John McCain, fighter pilot, may have done four decades ago, it's clear that old John McCain, politician, has no integrity left today. Look at the way he rolled over and showed his throat for Bush's people after the smear job they did on him in the 2000 campaign. Look at the way he talked tough about banning torture by the US military and intelligence services, then voted for the Military Commissions Act. He's a cowardly, self-serving, party-line Republican, and anyone who falls for his "straight talking maverick" act is a fool.
If McCain had associated with a minister who was a white supremacist and KKK supporter, he would have been kicked out, just like that.
Bullshit. McCain is closely associated with -- in fact, has courted and embraced -- right-wing preachers like John Hagee and Rod Parsley, who are on record with views that are at least as extremist as anything Jeremiah Wright has ever said. And yet somehow, the "liberal media" has failed to pick this up. Just like Bush, McCain is getting damn near a free ride from the press while his Democratic opponents are picked apart.
the way he would have had to if this were a Muslim story
Or, you know, a Jewish or Christian one. The penalty of death by stoning for adultery is straight out of the Old Testament.
(snicker) Yeah, you're probably right. With people like that, the more you point out how wrong they are, the more they take it as proof that they're Persecuted Standard-Bearers Of The Truth.
Flamebait me now for my insurrection.
Oh, you're so tough. So daring. Such a rebel, speaking truth to power.
GMAFB. If you've got something to say (even if it's something which, like your post, is BS) just say it. Don't brag about it.
Anyone worth their weight as a programmer doesn't care what language they program in.
This is simply not true. Experienced programmers know full well that (a) one language is very often a better tool than another for a particular task, and (b) some languages are simply better than others, overall. Yes, yes, you can do anything in any Turing-complete language that you can do in any other Turing-complete language, good programming practices are universal, blah blah. But the reality is that plucking a language out of a hat pretty much guarantees that most of your programming tasks will be exercises in wasted time and frustration.
That's ok - he'll still put his life on the line to protect your right to continue to whine.
Yawn. This is the stock answer to any criticism of the military, and it's crap. Yes, the military is important. Yes, military personnel take risks that most civilians don't, and should be honored for their service. But this does not mean that civilians -- you know, the people the military exists for -- shouldn't be able to criticize the military in general, and certainly doesn't mean that they shouldn't criticize individual military personnel when they retreat into bureaucratic doublespeak instead of giving a straight answer to a question. There's a lot that's right with the military. There's also a lot that's wrong. It is the right and duty of the people to call bullshit when they see it, WRT the military or any other part of the government.
There are countries where this isn't the case, of course. I doubt you'd want to live in any of them.