You can't even just use netscape on windows, because IE's javascript is different from the specs, etc.
The only time I've noticed a difference was with yahoo mail; for a while in a new job I couldn't figure out (duh) how to configure Netscape for their proxy thing, so I used IE -- and IE kept fucking up trying to cope with the javascript in the yahoo mail site. After a few days I figured out the proxy thing and went back to Netscape, because I found IE to be just kinda generally annoying, in addition to their broken javascript. I suppose it's a matter of taste.
Netscape 4.x is bloated and goofy, God knows. It's certainly not perfect software. Nevertheless, let's at least be accurate in criticizing it. I don't seem ever to have seen a single one of the "LOT" of sites that I'm apparently "shut out of". Some examples?
So, tell me - if everything were driven by the almighty dollar as some of you are suggesting, then who would have insisted that black people had a right to be served at a white-owned diner just outside of Montgomery?
I'm willing to bet that most of the Rand-ranters here would nobly and courageously stand up for the owner of the diner and his precious, unalienable right to refuse to serve black people.
They have no grasp of the consequences of that kind of crap, but they're young and naive and they worship absolutes: "If government interference can, in one single case in one single area, be demonstrated to be bad, then all government interference in absolutely anything must necessarily be a pure, unmitigated evil."
If "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds", then IMHO libertarians are the proof . . .
Most of us "nerds" (many of whom glory in that term!) had to put up with being shut out of the mainstream. Does that mean we have to keep up the idiocy?
Uh, you do read Slashdot, don't you?
Regardless of the fact that "geeks" should have learned from their experiences that gratuitously shutting people out of the mainstream is idiotic, they mostly haven't. Instead, all they've "learned" is that they want to take their own turn screwing somebody else. Hence the attitude toward newbies and end-users, and the cocky "fuck you, I'm all right" nonsense that we're seeing here.
I've worked at corporations that neglected requirements documents, and those that required them. The difference is night and day.
I used to live this delusion too. When you're old enough to look back, you'll realize that over emphasis on requirements and design cost more than they save.
"Over emphasis" on anything is a mistake. Magical silver bullets won't do your job for you, and this industry certainly has suffered through plague after plague of the damn things. So what? Your arguments sound like those of opponents of structured programming (I had a bitter argument with my uncle about goto's last year -- it was like those stories about Japanese troops in caves in the Pacific who didn't know the war was over!) and the more recent opponents of OOP. Well, sure, you can draw a cartoon, reduce something to absurdity, and make it look silly. So? Meanwhile, somebody else takes the time to learn and understand it, and to get a grasp of what it offers and what its limitations are. OOP and structured programming have both turned out to be very valuable tools. They don't do your job for you, no, of course not. They're good damn tools, but like any tool, you have to learn how to use them, when to use them, and when they're irrelevant, inappropriate, or inadequate. A screwdriver is a good tool for driving screws. You can "prove" that it's worthless by trying to use it to cut wood, but you haven't proven anything that's of any interest.
I realize I've struck a nerve in the youthful programmers who need a conversion of consciousness.
It sounds to me more like somebody growling about how "these damn college kids think they're so smart". Well, at least you didn't tell us about coding uphill in the snow both ways . . .:)
I've done large programs your way, and my way. My way has worked a lot better in practice. Basically, all we're saying is that neither of us would hire the other.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
The art of integration and maintenance requires a focus on the problem at hand, not wasting time understanding how the whole thing works.
Adding significant features absolutely requires an "understanding of how the whole thing works". For ordinary bug-fixing, it's a big help too. Nose-to-the-code maintainers who don't give a shit about the whole system are a menace. They end up creating something incoherent, contradictory, and ultimately unmaintainable.
Your comments might apply to a consultant who shows up for six weeks and moves on, but the number of practicing programmers doing their jobs that way is in direct proportion to the amount of crap software out there.
Comments are often irrelevant: they were placed their during initial coding,
That's true only if the maintainers have been grossly incompetent. On the other hand, most maintainers are exactly that . . .
. . . and over integration hacking will lead you astray. The code is the relevant information.
In a really complex system, learning the architecture by grovelling over the code is crazy. You can do it, but it takes months and by the time you've got a clear picture, you've generated months worth of lousy code that you'll have to rip out and rewrite.
There's always a starting point available; it inflates your ego to think you're doing something unique, but don't be a prima donna!
"Always"? Did you prove this inductively or deductively? For all your rhetorical devotion to "practicality", you're really quite an idealist. Anyhow, free [speech] software is generally free of time and budget constraints, so you may as well do it the fun way and start with a clean slate. Proprietary software can't use GPL'd code anyway -- though unfortunately much of it is afflicted with crap like MFC, which is the worst of both worlds.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
The other comments forgot an important point. Yes, a spec can help maintainers understand the architecture one's it's been implemented, and that's very valuable, but it's more valuable to start with a clean, coherent, consistent, and adequate architecture. This is CS105/Free Brooks[1] stuff, but nobody ever seems to believe it until they learn it the hard way. God knows I didn't. Some people never learn it at all.
IMHO most programmers have no business initiating projects. Architecture is not the same as coding. It's a lot harder, and most of us just don't find it "fun" enough to do it well. It also requires a lot of painful experience to know how far to go, when to stop, what to leave vague, what to allow for, etc. "When to stop" is crucial.
The way to develop software is to find some open source code that does most of what you need, modify it to do the rest!
Yeah, but most really interesting projects have to start from scratch, and not all projects will benefit from repeating old mistakes ad infinitum. Furthermore, have you ever wondered where that magical free code came from? Somebody wrote it. It's not turtles all the way down. Somewhere, at some point, somebody started with an empty text file. If the code is worth reusing, odds are good that your mysterious benefactor spent some time thinking before s/he started hammering out for( ) loops. The alternative is to spend your days grafting a heterogeneous flock of kludges and patches onto an inadequate foundation.
Another academic approach for rocket scientist wanabees! Nothing to do with practical programming.
I'm left wondering if you've ever done any practical programming that was of any worth. If you want a good example of a program that grew by accretion rather than by design, try Windows. "Design" may seem like "eating your vegetables", but you can't blow it off if you're doing something non-trivial. IIRC there's been at least one major shake-up in the Linux kernel tree to correct for early short-sightedness.
Programs don't exist. They're soap bubbles made out of zeroes and ones. In hardware engineering, the blueprint describes a thing that has an independent existence. With software, the code is the blueprint, and the blueprint is the thing. Software is the Word made Flesh. It exists entirely in the Platonic realm, so there is very little meaningful distinction to be made between "theory" and "practice".
-------------------------------------- [1] Read The Mythical Man-Month by Fred P. Brooks. It does for software "engineering" and software project management what K'n'R does for coding per se.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Um, I'm not sure you're right about that. I think it would depend on whether Ptolmaic astronomy was actual doctrine, or just, like, strongly encouraged by the Church. Even if he wasn't, strictly defined, a heretic, he disagreed with the Church and got his ass kicked, for what it's worth.
He was a lousy example anyway, because my point was that even idiotic beliefs cannot reasonably be criminalized, and Galileo wasn't saying anything idiotic. Any number of well known heresiarchs would have done better, but I couldn't think of any that I was sure had been tortured and/or executed (in fact, the only name that comes to mind is Arius), and nobody on Slashdot would have heard of those guys anyway so I wouldn't have been communicating very effectively.
and the Inquisition didn't torture him.
They didn't? I could swear he was tortured by the Church, and since it was sometime around the Counter-Reformation, maybe I made a bad connection there. That's what I get for not looking it up.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
I did. I eat mostly Danish and German marzipan and chocolate, British marmalade (I do like American English muffins, though:), etc. The difference is that in, for example, Germany, I walked into grocery stores and found stuff of a quality that I have to search around for here. Yes, there was a leavening of crap there, too. My point was never that everything American is crap, though; merely that if you don't want crap here, you generally have to go out searching. If I strayed from that point in a fit of rhetorical exuberance, I apologize.
Just because bad food products are sold doesn't mean good ones are not sold as well.
I agree.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Some socialist countries may have high taxes, and some communists may have murdered 10.5 million innocent people.
Some communists have murdered a hell of a lot more than 10.5 million people, indeed. And some capitalists have financed death squads. And some libertarians are alcoholics. And some ministers consort with women of ill repute. The thing that all of these "some"'s have in common is: Some do, but most don't. Why not? Well, for example, capitalism is not all about death squads. It may coincide with them, and in fact it sometimes finds them usefull -- but they are not an integral part of the mechanism or principles of capitalism, any more than a democracy is required in principle or in practice to invent moronic cartoon characters like Smokey the Bear.
But you can't say that about Nazism.
It was a fundamental tenet of Nazism that "useless" and/or "inferior" people should be liquidated. It is a fundamental tenet of most forms of socialism that "useless" and/or "inferior" people should be treated with the same respect as everybody else. That's a big difference there. If I had to choose between the two, it wouldn't be tough.
I would hope that you don't mean to characterize those respective schools of political thought on the basis of context-free historical events.
I'm not sure precisely what you mean here, but historical context was very much my point. The oft-expressed libertarian view is something like, "socialism does stuff I don't like and so did the Nazis, so they're the same". Well, they're not the same. It doesn't matter in the slightest whether you object to socialism or not, or even whether you object to Nazism or not (though I hope you'll forgive me if I prefer that you do object). They're just not the same damn thing, that's all. You can go on a reductionism rampage and equate just about anything to anything else at all, simply by ignoring details until what's left is sufficiently vague that it resembles everything on Earth. But what does it prove? Nothing. You can prove that an oven is an icebox by that method. Who cares? (Note to self: Go into business marketing ovens to libertarians: Describe them as iceboxes, and prove by irrefutable logic that the two are morally equivalent. Retire young.)
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
the government uses its "income" money, to fund wars that we have no business being in the FIRST place. INDIRECTLY you're income is being used to kill people. THAT'S the point.
No, that wasn't Raymond's point at all. His point appears to have been some nonsense about how taxing people excessively is equivalent to killing them -- or else some equally absurd nonsense about holding every single socialist on earth responsible for the acts of every single other socialist on earth (which is not only loony (see other posts about the absurdity of the same principle if applied to capitalism), but also contrary to libertarian principles of individual responsibility.)
I'm not at all sure where you're getting this from. I don't live in a socialist country, and the wars that my country (the USA) does get involved in are more often than not instigated by the right wing "capitalist" contingent. Why? Damned if I know, but it may have something to do with who profits from wars around here, namely something that Dwight D. Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex". That term has been thrown around so often and so carelessly in the intervening years since Ike coined it, that it has begun to sound a bit silly. Still, regardless of what it sounds like, he had a very strong point and it's worth thinking about, whether you agree with his views or not.
Apparently you've never heard the old axiom: "No man has the right to be taxed without his consent."
Just becaue it's an "old axiom" doesn't make it true, and anyway I think you mean "Every man [and women too, I presume] has a right not to be taxed without his consent". (Sorry, but I've been coding all day and I have a weird compulsion to clarify boolean expressions at the moment:)
Uh, oh, yeah. That principle of yours is on mighty shaky ground. How safe would you have felt, say, twenty years ago, if our armed forces (including NORAD) had been supported by voluntary donations? Not so damned safe at all, I suspect. Most people simply wouldn't have paid, for the same reason so many people don't vote: Their little bit really doesn't make that much difference, as far as they can tell. And when money is involved, then they look at the stack of bills on the table and the kid's worn-out shoes, and they say "to hell with it, I'll kick a few bucks for some warheads next month". Seriously, that's how it would go. I'm not condoning the obscene waste that happens in the defense industry, nor the pork-barrel crap that Congress spends its time on. What I'm saying is that there are, IMHO inarguably, certain expenses which we as a nation must meet. In many cases everybody benefits, whether they like it or not, there is no way to deny the benefits to those who don't help foot the bill. There are some respects in which we are all in this together, and we haev no choice in the matter. NORAD defends tax evaders just like they defend me (and believe me, I do take a hit on the old paycheck every month). This annoys me, up to a point, but it would annoy me a great deal more if tax evaders were treated just the same as people like me who pull their weight. You don't like it? Tough. Leave. Most of us in this country aren't all that thrilled with it either, but we're grown-ups and, as I said, we pull our weight.
Since you seem to be in a mood for axioms, here's another: William F. Buckley once wrote that "as idealism approaches reality, the cost becomes prohibitive." He was talking about how glamorous, simple, one-size-fits-all solutions always end in grief. I don't agree with much that Buckley has to say, and I suspect that he'd never face up to the fact that his own idealism falls into the same category as all the others, but he said a damned shrewd thing there. It's catchy, too.
Your ideal of perfect independence from your society is not practical, because such independence is not possible. It's not even rational. As a vague notion, it makes a fine rhetorical device on Slashdot, but it begins to look crazier and crazier when you start to work out the details of how it would be implemented.
Instead of wasting money killing people, why don't address the issues in our OWN country first.
I couldn't agree more, though I suspect that we'd disagree very bitterly about what's wrong and what, if anything, is to be done about it.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
I never said it was easy, I just said anyone who works hard. And it's true.
I said that it's not as easy as just working hard, and that is true. Lots of people work hard and don't get rich. Most Americans work hard, and very few of them are rich. I work quite hard and I've got a nice apartment, a decent car, a fun job, no debt (and no complaints, mind you) -- and damned little likelihood of ever ending up "independently wealthy". I'm not complaining, I just take issue with your assertion that anybody who works hard is going to get rich. I may be splitting hairs here.
Of course, maybe you mean not just working hard, but working really, really, really hard. Still, farmers work harder than you and I can probably imagine, and lots of companies with maniacally hard-working CEO's never quite get anywhere. I've worked at a couple. "Hard work" is important, but it's not the only term in the equation.
I don't know about your supermarkets, but mine carry fresh baked bread every day that is wonderful.
Wow. Not everyone in the US is so fortunate.
Food in the US is so far superior [to Europe] it's not even comparable, and to top it off, it's 1/2 to 1/3 the price.
Have you tried American candy lately? Ugh. It's awful. It's only in the last five or ten years that American coffee and beer have begun to show signs of potability, but most Americans still drink instant coffee and Coors. One of the nice things about Boston is the thriving local brewing culture, but you go to NYC (not exactly Podunk, supposedly, right?) and it's a beerless, dreary place indeed.
My experience in Germany was that the food was cheaper and better than in the US. In France, it was better but more expensive. In Israel, it was wonderful and the prices varied. Look, Americans are willing to eat pasteurized cheese, to the point where AFAIK it's not legal to sell cheese that hasn't been ruined. There's something very wrong there.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Yeah, there were some Communists in Hollywood, and I'm sure that McCarthy found a few, but most of the people McCarthy persecuted had been Party members in their youth, and had long since grown out of it. Their careers were destroyed anyway, for absolutely no reason at all other than to further McCarthy's political ambitions.
The only events in US history which bear a close resemblance to Stalin's purges and show trials are, you guessed it, the antics of Tail-Gunner Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. The accused "communists" weren't conducting ideological purges, but the alleged "defenders of democracy" were conducting ideological purges. So who's the Stalinist, here? Who's "un-american"? Who's the threat to democracy? Ultimately, the American public concluded that McCarthyism itself was grossly un-American, and McCarthy sank back into obscurity where he belonged. McCarthy's big mistake was that he imitated Stalinism so openly and obviously. People figured it out.
So what if they were Communists, even if they were gung-ho, paid-up, practicing Communists? Would the witch trials at Salem have been justified if one of those old ladies really had kept a black cat around the house? No. Galileo really was a heretic -- was the Inquisition therefore justified in torturing him? No. Whatever McCarthy's victims were accused of was not a crime, so it doesn't make any damn difference whether they were "guilty" or not. I am "guilty", at this moment, of posting on Slashdot. So what? My right to post on Slashdot is guaranteed by the US Constitution, which also guarantees a screenwriter's right to believe in the ideals of Communism. The Constitution wisely doesn't address the issue of whether those ideals are idiotic or not, any more than it cares whether Slashdot is idiotic or not. Lots of people believe idiotic stuff. So what? A free country is one where you don't criminalize unpopular beliefs.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
There is the seen -- the dead people produced by Nazism -- and the unseen -- the lack of wealth and opportunity produced by socialism.
I am saying that I would rather lack wealth than be worked within an inch of death, and then gassed. Now that I've seen a few posts claiming that those two fates are, after all, identical, it has ocurred to me that those who were sent to concentration camps by the Nazis were robbed blind beforehand. That seems like a relatively trivial matter, but if "wealth" is worth as much to you as human life, there it is. They took that, too.
I will also aver that most other people feel the same way I do, and I will finally assert that mainstream Western morality is predicated on the assumption that human life is worth more than property. That assumption may be dead wrong, but it's gotten us this far at least. The Soviets, by valuing property (be it public or private) more than human life, didn't get much of anywhere.
As so often happens, you are not seeing what is not there, and then thinking that its absence is of no matter.
Well, "absence" is a darn tough thing to quantify, you know, and the unpleasant fact of the matter is that most of the wealthiest nations in the world have at least partially socialist economies. Look at most of Europe, for example.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
In the United States, literally anyone who works hard can become independantly wealthy.
Have you ever been to the US? It's not that easy. Lots of people do it, but this "literally anyone" thing is nonsense.
. . . in most European countries that is not true (although it happens, rarely). But what's amazing is that apologists such as yourself think that's a *good* thing! No one should be able to rise above anyone else... everyone should stay at the same level of mediocrity (except for the people in control, of course).
Visit Europe some time. On the whole, it's a great place. It bears absolutely no resemblance to your description. One of the really nice things about Europe is that they lack the American worship of mediocrity. You can get edible bread in a supermarket, for example, which in the US is virtually unknown. In general, Europeans tend to be far less apt than we to settle for the kind of shoddy garbage with which we surround ourselves. The fact that most Americans don't know any better is hardly an argument in favor of our system. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind living here, but that's because I get to live in the Boston area. The rest of the country is mostly an uninhabitable wasteland.
haven't you noticed the huge disparity between the number of people who want to come to the US, versus the number of people who want to leave?
Try to emigrate to a European country some time. They're not likely to let you in. Everybody wants to go there, too.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . forcing Raymond to surrender his property against his will for policies he does not support is by nature evil.
Maybe so. I happen to agree -- but it's a lot less evil than murdering him.
Actually, Socialism has killed vastly more than 10.5 million.
Actually, in reality, there have been a couple of socialist governments which went in for mass murder in a big way (worse than the Nazis, I'll grant), but many more that didn't commit any genocides at all. My point is that mass murder and Naziism correlate 100%, while mass murder and socialism correlate very poorly. Some capitalist countries (quite a few, actually) have had repressive authoritarian governments and death squads. Does that mean that these things are inseparable from capitalism? No. It means that General Pinochet, for example, is a thug.
The entire ideology of socialism leads to both a loss of basic moral tenets and the loss of the sanctity of life.
Uh, I hate to tell you this, but what you call "moral tenets" are what I call "ideology", and no doubt vice versa. All you're saying is that you don't agree. Anyhow, socialism is not one single set of moral tenets (or "ideology", if you prefer:); rather, there has been a very great variety of socialist thought over the years, and most of it excludes much of the rest. The really important thing that a great many forms of socialism do have in common is, in fact, a very firm notion of the sanctity of, uh, life. They just have the bizarre (and, I gather, "evil") notion that a respect for the sanctity of life precludes letting people starve to death. It's a fact that the primary impetus behind socialism is, and always has been, a rejection of the callous disregard for human life that has always been demonstrated by free market capitalism.
It shows a complete lack of interest in the inherent rights of man.
No, it shows at least a partial lack of interest in your conception of the rights of man.
Seizure of property by the state stems from the same convoluted logic as murdering innocents.
No, it doesn't. Not at all. "Seizure of property by the state" can include, for example, taxes that pay for roads. I live in a city. It would be insanely impractical to maintain the streets here on a pay-as-you-go basis. If I don't pay, do they lock me in my apartment? Do they make me take a helicopter to work? Who enforces this? Who pays for the enforcement? You can invoke whatever god-given principles you like, but the present solution to that problem is the least burdensome for me and for the other taxpayers. It's not perfect, but it works well enough for our purposes. And, yes, if I don't pay my taxes, they'll eventually come after me, blah blah blah, armed force and all that. That's life. Adults have responsibilities. On a farm, you work or you starve. Cambridge, MA, is an artificial environment, so we enforce these things artificially.
There is a vast difference between murdering arbitrarily chosen law-abiding citizens on the one hand, and on the other hand forcing (yes, forcing, when you come right down to it) people to share the necessary costs of maintaining a complicated society. That comparison doesn't change at all if you add "feeding the poor" to your list of "necessary costs".
Denial of the right of the individual is the worst crime possible, and comes in many forms.
Not all of those forms are equal. Since you apparently didn't read my post, I'd like to invite you to choose between being taxed, and being gassed. If you honestly can't see any difference between those two options, then there's not much I can do for you. I'm not talking about rhetoric and word games here. I'm not asking you whether in some ill-defined way those two options are rhetorically "equivalent"; I'm asking you which one you would choose in real life if you were presented with the choice. This is because we don't live inside an Ayn Rand novel. We live in reality, where things have consequences.
Regardless of the limit of socialism in particular situations, it is inherently evil.
You're offering a personal and very emotional opinion as if it were demonstrably factual. First, explain what you mean by "evil", from what it derives, and why I should care. We can move on from there.
Socialism is a tool. It's not good or evil. In a modern industrial society, it doesn't seem to work very well except in small doses. However, there have been times and places and environments over the last few tens of thousands of years where socialism was the only thing that stood between mankind and extinction. A hammer is the wrong tool to drive a screw. Does that make a hammer "inherently evil"? No. It makes it a damn poor screwdriver, and that's all. And it's still handy to have a hammer around when it comes time to drive nails. You sound like one of those people who think we should write operating system kernels in perl, because it's a "better" language than C.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . and the only self-described Marxist I know also calls himself an anarchist. He's dead serious on both counts. I happen to think he's kidding himself, but Marxist anarchy is no more ridiculous or impractical than free-market anarchy: Anarchy in general is a short road to totalitarianism, and that's that. It really doesn't matter whether people share the potatoes or not.
. . . if one is looking for a political parallel, it isn't in socialism . ..
"Socialism", "capitalism", and a "free market" are three different ideas about how to structure an economy. They're not political systems. The system in the Soviet Union was, quite accurately, described by its architects as "state capitalism". Capital is surplus wealth, that's all. They decided to hand theirs over to the government. When they decided not to let people vote, then they were getting into politics. (But bear in mind that Russia under the czars differed from Russia under the Soviets in very few ways -- the only really signficant one being that the Soviets succeeded in industrializing (albeit at a horrible cost) a country which the previous system had kept trapped in the Middle Ages. Nobody got to vote much before 1917, either. Mainly they just changed the titles of the guys in charge. And for all we know, the czars would have industrialized the place anyway, had they been given a chance.)
By contrast, "anarchism" is a political system (if you can call it a "system":), much like "democracy", "fascism", "monarchism", and several others. There is absolutely no reason at all why you can't have a democratic socialist country; it's been done, over and over again. It works a lot better than an authoritarian socialist country, but it's not ideal.
As an American, I realize that we've all been fed horse-doctor's doses of propaganda which denies all of the above, but it's just propaganda and you shouldn't take it too seriously.
Personally, I am rather tired of the arguments for "Open Source" based on "economy" and "practicality". Listen to RMS. It's about FREEDOM.
Sing it, brother. That's where it's at. I couldn't agree more. The yap about socialism and capitalism is just a red herring anyway.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . a discussion/critique only of ideas that do not appear in CatB is absolutely useless in an eassy that purports to be a disucssion/critique of CatB.
Actually, Raymond had to "refute" the analysis by drawing on his other essays, because it was a largely relevant and valid analysis of CatB. And he went downhill from there. He even wandered off and claimed that the OSS development model couldn't possibly be, in essense, socialistic -- because he has said in public that he doesn't like socialism! That, for me, was the major laugh-line in Raymond's response. I really don't give a rat's ass what Raymond said anywhere about socialism. It's completely irrelevant. He describes a development model which, in fact, has certain features in common with socialism. It just does. And it has them for the same reasons, too; it just happens that software development and distribution happens to be one of the rare special cases where that model really works very well. But Raymond claims that that can't be true, because he, Eric Raymond, has a childishly emotional negative reaction to the word "socialism"! So what? We're supposed to ignore what's right in front of our faces, just because Eric's feelings will be hurt if we make him face reality? This is sheer childishness. It appears as if we've happened on a special case of socialism where, in a limited area, it functions very well (the traditional American nuclear family is another, by the way). If so, then let's be honest with ourselves and admit that the word "socialism" is not a magic spell that makes things evil. Rather, it's an idea which generally doesn't work, but when it does work, it does. Getting religious about which word we use is infantile.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Marxism and socialism (which I regard as coequal in evil with Naziism).
Well, gee. So making Raymond pay some extra taxes on his precious income is equivalent to murdering 10.5 million innocent people? Really. What an interesting notion.
I always thought this guy was a moron, but that's the least of it; he's a vicious lunatic as well as a moron.
Tell ya what, Raymond: Talk to some people who survived Auschwitz and then lived in Israel in the following couple of decades, when Israel was pretty solidly socialist. Explain to them how the high taxes and bureaucracy they put up with in Israel were just as bad as being used as slave labor and then gassed. Explain that, Eric. I'm sure they'll understand. I'm sure they'll be very pleased that some arrogant jackass has finally explained it all to them.
Hey, I'm not a socialist either, but there are such things as proportion and accuracy. If you're going to shoot your mouth off about something and present yourself as an authority, get it right.
This is just another tedious example of Raymond taking criticism too personally and flying off the handle.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
On Windows, the VCL is a native widget library (among other things), so I guess they'll be native on Linux too. . . .
The VCL wraps a few Windows common controls, like file and print dialogs.
The last time I used the VCL was C++ Builder 1.0, but at that time they didn't replace any windows common controls at all. Edits, trees, lists, whatever. They were all subclassed; go over a VCL program with spy++ or whatever and all the window class names are the VCL class names like TEdit and whatnot, but subclassing controls isn't the same as replacing them. MFC subclasses a lot of things too, though not everything. The only things in the VCL that Borland coded themselves were stuff like grids and panels that don't exist in the common control library. Of course their classes add stuff to the common controls, like the layout manager thing. I can't really see any reason not to use the common controls, in most normal cases. Of course all the windows common controls have silly arbitrary limitations and many have bugs, but that stuff doesn't cause trouble every day.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
the sentiment is out there - keep our kids safe by marking them perminantly with something that identifies them as *ours*.
It's scary in a way, but most of the public discourse about child-rearing in the USA these days starts with the unquestioned assumption that people have a right to do as they please with their property -- be it their children or whatever. Yes, of course, limits are observed when the "property" is a child (e.g. sexual abuse is not acceptable), but one really does hear a hell of a lot of talk about everybody's right, for example, to impose arbitrary limits on their kids' education. Never a word is said about whether it's in the child's best interests; until the kid is 18, the only relevant rights are those of the child's owners . . . (and according to most conservatives, if the child is a she, her body at least should be the joint property of her husband and the government for the rest of her life -- but that's another rant). Ugh. No, I'm not suggesting that the government is likely to do a better job than the kid's parents. I'm not making any suggestions at all about social policy, law, or anything else.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
You didn't expect anything ethical from Israelis did you?
Having worked with Israelis and spent some time there, I'd expect about the same ethics as I expect from most Americans -- and considerably better than what I've seen from the sort of Americans who are paranoid about Israelis.
Make of that what you will.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . the author really can write. It's way cool, and the tone is right, but not the language. He's missing a lot of alliteration, and those weird circumlocutions like "wave-walker" for ship and "whale-road" for ocean. Hey, it's damn nice anyway, and to be perfectly frank, Beowulf often reads more like a tongue-twister than poetry. It's rough going if you're not in the right mood. Tuxowulf definitely flows a lot more smoothly. See below.
This is in translation, obviously:
. . . This heard in his home Hygelac's thane, great among Geats, of Grendel's doings. He was the mightiest man of valor in that same day of this our life, stalwart and stately. A stout wave-walker he bade make ready. Yon battle-king, said he, far o'er the swan-road he fain would seek, the noble monarch who needed men!
If you think that Christian religious observance -- be it coerced or voluntary -- is likely to have any affect on "public morality", read some history, particularly Medieval Europe, the Reformation, etc. Compared with fourteenth-century Italy, the US is now a very moral place by absolutely any standards at all, yours and mine both included.
Or is knowledge of history now considered just as sinful by Christians as knowledge of science?
It wouldn't surprise me.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . when there wasn't such a mad rush to quell Christian beliefs
What you describe as an attempt to "quell Christian beliefs" is in fact a merely refusal by some of us to take orders from you people. You're perfectly free to believe any crazy nonsense you like, but that doesn't mean that I have to believe it too. You do not have a right to force my children to worship your god in the public schools. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. You seem to think you're being "persecuted" because you don't have quite as many special privileges as you want. Heh. You can teach my kids about Jesus when I get to teach yours about Buddha. Is it a deal?
Meanwhile, Christians have a tremendous amount of power and influence in this country, and it's constantly growing.
i understand that Christians don't hold the corner on morals; it just seems that way when the rest of the world wants to make up the rules as they go along.
Heh. This is a glorious example of the kind of "logic" that Christians indulge in. You're assuming A) that anybody not a Christian must have no religion at all, and B) that anybody lacking a religion must necessarily "make up the rules as they go along". Crap, crap, crap. Christianity is just one religion out of many, and atheists are in my experience generally a lot more "moral" than Christians. This is because we can't unload responsibility for our crimes onto God. We can't pretend that "accepting Jesus" (or confessing, or whatever) will make everything okay. The buck stops here. With you, it never stops at all. We also don't have the wide range of excuses for "good" bad behavior that religious people have. We never get to claim that "god is on our side" and that he wants us to murder people, or imprison them for "crimes" which harm no one, or any of the other sick abuses of power that Christians are so fond of. Christianity is an ink blot. People project whatever they want onto it. Christians are people who do exactly as they please, and then claim that god told them to do it -- and that god told them to force the rest of us to do it, too. Then they say that if we want to think for ourselves, we're "sinners" who must be coerced "for our own good". All dissent is defined as a crime. This is called a "self-reinforcing delusional system". Hey, it's all yours and you're welcome to it, but don't expect rational, honest people to join in.
. . . this country wasn't so bad off
Now that we've disposed of the "mad rush" myth, we can dispose of the rest of this nonsense. Since the war, America has changed in a lot of ways. One of these ways is that a lot of people have given up on all that superstitious Christian nonsense. (Coincidentally, the US began to lead the world in science and technology. Funny, that. I guess it has to do with teaching fact in schools rather than superstition). Sadly, a lot of Americans have in recent years pulled the wool back over their eyes. A shocking number have returned to the tired old lies of Christianity, but many have fallen for equally childish and destructive New Age lies. Oh, well. So it goes. This, too, shall pass.
before beliefs are thrown out because they HAPPEN to be Christian, they should be examined for value on their own right.
In stark, hilarious contrast to the violently amoral Christian Right, us atheistic liberals and "Secular Humanists" generally base our morality on the teachings of Christ. We're very much into stuff like loving one's neighbor, doing unto others as we'd like them to do unto us, tolerance, generosity, equality, and all the rest.
"What would Jesus do?" He'd call you a bunch of damned hypocrites and Pharisees, pal.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Slashdot Mirror
Like, zero.
You can't even just use netscape on windows, because IE's javascript is different from the specs, etc.
The only time I've noticed a difference was with yahoo mail; for a while in a new job I couldn't figure out (duh) how to configure Netscape for their proxy thing, so I used IE -- and IE kept fucking up trying to cope with the javascript in the yahoo mail site. After a few days I figured out the proxy thing and went back to Netscape, because I found IE to be just kinda generally annoying, in addition to their broken javascript. I suppose it's a matter of taste.
Netscape 4.x is bloated and goofy, God knows. It's certainly not perfect software. Nevertheless, let's at least be accurate in criticizing it. I don't seem ever to have seen a single one of the "LOT" of sites that I'm apparently "shut out of". Some examples?
So, tell me - if everything were driven by the almighty dollar as some of you are suggesting, then who would have insisted that black people had a right to be served at a white-owned diner just outside of Montgomery?
I'm willing to bet that most of the Rand-ranters here would nobly and courageously stand up for the owner of the diner and his precious, unalienable right to refuse to serve black people.
They have no grasp of the consequences of that kind of crap, but they're young and naive and they worship absolutes: "If government interference can, in one single case in one single area, be demonstrated to be bad, then all government interference in absolutely anything must necessarily be a pure, unmitigated evil."
If "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds", then IMHO libertarians are the proof . . .
Most of us "nerds" (many of whom glory in that term!) had to put up with being shut out of the mainstream. Does that mean we have to keep up the idiocy?
Uh, you do read Slashdot, don't you?
Regardless of the fact that "geeks" should have learned from their experiences that gratuitously shutting people out of the mainstream is idiotic, they mostly haven't. Instead, all they've "learned" is that they want to take their own turn screwing somebody else. Hence the attitude toward newbies and end-users, and the cocky "fuck you, I'm all right" nonsense that we're seeing here.
Grow up, people.
Don't hold your breath.
I've worked at corporations that neglected requirements documents, and those that required them. The difference is night and day.
I used to live this delusion too. When you're old enough to look back, you'll realize that over emphasis on requirements and design cost more than they save.
"Over emphasis" on anything is a mistake. Magical silver bullets won't do your job for you, and this industry certainly has suffered through plague after plague of the damn things. So what? Your arguments sound like those of opponents of structured programming (I had a bitter argument with my uncle about goto's last year -- it was like those stories about Japanese troops in caves in the Pacific who didn't know the war was over!) and the more recent opponents of OOP. Well, sure, you can draw a cartoon, reduce something to absurdity, and make it look silly. So? Meanwhile, somebody else takes the time to learn and understand it, and to get a grasp of what it offers and what its limitations are. OOP and structured programming have both turned out to be very valuable tools. They don't do your job for you, no, of course not. They're good damn tools, but like any tool, you have to learn how to use them, when to use them, and when they're irrelevant, inappropriate, or inadequate. A screwdriver is a good tool for driving screws. You can "prove" that it's worthless by trying to use it to cut wood, but you haven't proven anything that's of any interest.
I realize I've struck a nerve in the youthful programmers who need a conversion of consciousness.
It sounds to me more like somebody growling about how "these damn college kids think they're so smart". Well, at least you didn't tell us about coding uphill in the snow both ways . . .
I've done large programs your way, and my way. My way has worked a lot better in practice. Basically, all we're saying is that neither of us would hire the other.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
The art of integration and maintenance requires a focus on the problem at hand, not wasting time understanding how the whole thing works.
Adding significant features absolutely requires an "understanding of how the whole thing works". For ordinary bug-fixing, it's a big help too. Nose-to-the-code maintainers who don't give a shit about the whole system are a menace. They end up creating something incoherent, contradictory, and ultimately unmaintainable.
Your comments might apply to a consultant who shows up for six weeks and moves on, but the number of practicing programmers doing their jobs that way is in direct proportion to the amount of crap software out there.
Comments are often irrelevant: they were placed their during initial coding,
That's true only if the maintainers have been grossly incompetent. On the other hand, most maintainers are exactly that . . .
. . . and over integration hacking will lead you astray. The code is the relevant information.
In a really complex system, learning the architecture by grovelling over the code is crazy. You can do it, but it takes months and by the time you've got a clear picture, you've generated months worth of lousy code that you'll have to rip out and rewrite.
There's always a starting point available; it inflates your ego to think you're doing something unique, but don't be a prima donna!
"Always"? Did you prove this inductively or deductively? For all your rhetorical devotion to "practicality", you're really quite an idealist. Anyhow, free [speech] software is generally free of time and budget constraints, so you may as well do it the fun way and start with a clean slate. Proprietary software can't use GPL'd code anyway -- though unfortunately much of it is afflicted with crap like MFC, which is the worst of both worlds.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
The other comments forgot an important point. Yes, a spec can help maintainers understand the architecture one's it's been implemented, and that's very valuable, but it's more valuable to start with a clean, coherent, consistent, and adequate architecture. This is CS105/Free Brooks[1] stuff, but nobody ever seems to believe it until they learn it the hard way. God knows I didn't. Some people never learn it at all.
IMHO most programmers have no business initiating projects. Architecture is not the same as coding. It's a lot harder, and most of us just don't find it "fun" enough to do it well. It also requires a lot of painful experience to know how far to go, when to stop, what to leave vague, what to allow for, etc. "When to stop" is crucial.
The way to develop software is to find some open source code that does most of what you need, modify it to do the rest!
Yeah, but most really interesting projects have to start from scratch, and not all projects will benefit from repeating old mistakes ad infinitum. Furthermore, have you ever wondered where that magical free code came from? Somebody wrote it. It's not turtles all the way down. Somewhere, at some point, somebody started with an empty text file. If the code is worth reusing, odds are good that your mysterious benefactor spent some time thinking before s/he started hammering out for( ) loops. The alternative is to spend your days grafting a heterogeneous flock of kludges and patches onto an inadequate foundation.
Another academic approach for rocket scientist wanabees! Nothing to do with practical programming.
I'm left wondering if you've ever done any practical programming that was of any worth. If you want a good example of a program that grew by accretion rather than by design, try Windows. "Design" may seem like "eating your vegetables", but you can't blow it off if you're doing something non-trivial. IIRC there's been at least one major shake-up in the Linux kernel tree to correct for early short-sightedness.
Programs don't exist. They're soap bubbles made out of zeroes and ones. In hardware engineering, the blueprint describes a thing that has an independent existence. With software, the code is the blueprint, and the blueprint is the thing. Software is the Word made Flesh. It exists entirely in the Platonic realm, so there is very little meaningful distinction to be made between "theory" and "practice".
--------------------------------------
[1] Read The Mythical Man-Month by Fred P. Brooks. It does for software "engineering" and software project management what K'n'R does for coding per se.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Galileo wasn't a heretic,
Um, I'm not sure you're right about that. I think it would depend on whether Ptolmaic astronomy was actual doctrine, or just, like, strongly encouraged by the Church. Even if he wasn't, strictly defined, a heretic, he disagreed with the Church and got his ass kicked, for what it's worth.
He was a lousy example anyway, because my point was that even idiotic beliefs cannot reasonably be criminalized, and Galileo wasn't saying anything idiotic. Any number of well known heresiarchs would have done better, but I couldn't think of any that I was sure had been tortured and/or executed (in fact, the only name that comes to mind is Arius), and nobody on Slashdot would have heard of those guys anyway so I wouldn't have been communicating very effectively.
and the Inquisition didn't torture him.
They didn't? I could swear he was tortured by the Church, and since it was sometime around the Counter-Reformation, maybe I made a bad connection there. That's what I get for not looking it up.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Well, quit buying the cheap stuff!
I did. I eat mostly Danish and German marzipan and chocolate, British marmalade (I do like American English muffins, though
Just because bad food products are sold doesn't mean good ones are not sold as well.
I agree.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
I think you're terribly confused.
I am indeed, but not about this
Some socialist countries may have high taxes, and some communists may have murdered 10.5 million innocent people.
Some communists have murdered a hell of a lot more than 10.5 million people, indeed. And some capitalists have financed death squads. And some libertarians are alcoholics. And some ministers consort with women of ill repute. The thing that all of these "some"'s have in common is: Some do, but most don't. Why not? Well, for example, capitalism is not all about death squads. It may coincide with them, and in fact it sometimes finds them usefull -- but they are not an integral part of the mechanism or principles of capitalism, any more than a democracy is required in principle or in practice to invent moronic cartoon characters like Smokey the Bear.
But you can't say that about Nazism.
It was a fundamental tenet of Nazism that "useless" and/or "inferior" people should be liquidated. It is a fundamental tenet of most forms of socialism that "useless" and/or "inferior" people should be treated with the same respect as everybody else. That's a big difference there. If I had to choose between the two, it wouldn't be tough.
I would hope that you don't mean to characterize those respective schools of political thought on the basis of context-free historical events.
I'm not sure precisely what you mean here, but historical context was very much my point. The oft-expressed libertarian view is something like, "socialism does stuff I don't like and so did the Nazis, so they're the same". Well, they're not the same. It doesn't matter in the slightest whether you object to socialism or not, or even whether you object to Nazism or not (though I hope you'll forgive me if I prefer that you do object). They're just not the same damn thing, that's all. You can go on a reductionism rampage and equate just about anything to anything else at all, simply by ignoring details until what's left is sufficiently vague that it resembles everything on Earth. But what does it prove? Nothing. You can prove that an oven is an icebox by that method. Who cares? (Note to self: Go into business marketing ovens to libertarians: Describe them as iceboxes, and prove by irrefutable logic that the two are morally equivalent. Retire young.)
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
the government uses its "income" money, to fund wars that we have no business being in the FIRST place. INDIRECTLY you're income is being used to kill people. THAT'S the point.
No, that wasn't Raymond's point at all. His point appears to have been some nonsense about how taxing people excessively is equivalent to killing them -- or else some equally absurd nonsense about holding every single socialist on earth responsible for the acts of every single other socialist on earth (which is not only loony (see other posts about the absurdity of the same principle if applied to capitalism), but also contrary to libertarian principles of individual responsibility.)
I'm not at all sure where you're getting this from. I don't live in a socialist country, and the wars that my country (the USA) does get involved in are more often than not instigated by the right wing "capitalist" contingent. Why? Damned if I know, but it may have something to do with who profits from wars around here, namely something that Dwight D. Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex". That term has been thrown around so often and so carelessly in the intervening years since Ike coined it, that it has begun to sound a bit silly. Still, regardless of what it sounds like, he had a very strong point and it's worth thinking about, whether you agree with his views or not.
Apparently you've never heard the old axiom: "No man has the right to be taxed without his consent."
Just becaue it's an "old axiom" doesn't make it true, and anyway I think you mean "Every man [and women too, I presume] has a right not to be taxed without his consent". (Sorry, but I've been coding all day and I have a weird compulsion to clarify boolean expressions at the moment
Uh, oh, yeah. That principle of yours is on mighty shaky ground. How safe would you have felt, say, twenty years ago, if our armed forces (including NORAD) had been supported by voluntary donations? Not so damned safe at all, I suspect. Most people simply wouldn't have paid, for the same reason so many people don't vote: Their little bit really doesn't make that much difference, as far as they can tell. And when money is involved, then they look at the stack of bills on the table and the kid's worn-out shoes, and they say "to hell with it, I'll kick a few bucks for some warheads next month". Seriously, that's how it would go. I'm not condoning the obscene waste that happens in the defense industry, nor the pork-barrel crap that Congress spends its time on. What I'm saying is that there are, IMHO inarguably, certain expenses which we as a nation must meet. In many cases everybody benefits, whether they like it or not, there is no way to deny the benefits to those who don't help foot the bill. There are some respects in which we are all in this together, and we haev no choice in the matter. NORAD defends tax evaders just like they defend me (and believe me, I do take a hit on the old paycheck every month). This annoys me, up to a point, but it would annoy me a great deal more if tax evaders were treated just the same as people like me who pull their weight. You don't like it? Tough. Leave. Most of us in this country aren't all that thrilled with it either, but we're grown-ups and, as I said, we pull our weight.
Since you seem to be in a mood for axioms, here's another: William F. Buckley once wrote that "as idealism approaches reality, the cost becomes prohibitive." He was talking about how glamorous, simple, one-size-fits-all solutions always end in grief. I don't agree with much that Buckley has to say, and I suspect that he'd never face up to the fact that his own idealism falls into the same category as all the others, but he said a damned shrewd thing there. It's catchy, too.
Your ideal of perfect independence from your society is not practical, because such independence is not possible. It's not even rational. As a vague notion, it makes a fine rhetorical device on Slashdot, but it begins to look crazier and crazier when you start to work out the details of how it would be implemented.
Instead of wasting money killing people, why don't address the issues in our OWN country first.
I couldn't agree more, though I suspect that we'd disagree very bitterly about what's wrong and what, if anything, is to be done about it.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
damnit, there's only one 'I' in Nazism !!!!!!!!!
Urgh. You're right. I goofed. Damn, that's shameful.
But there's two 'm's in "dammit", dammit! Hahahahaha!
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
I never said it was easy, I just said anyone who works hard. And it's true.
I said that it's not as easy as just working hard, and that is true. Lots of people work hard and don't get rich. Most Americans work hard, and very few of them are rich. I work quite hard and I've got a nice apartment, a decent car, a fun job, no debt (and no complaints, mind you) -- and damned little likelihood of ever ending up "independently wealthy". I'm not complaining, I just take issue with your assertion that anybody who works hard is going to get rich. I may be splitting hairs here.
Of course, maybe you mean not just working hard, but working really, really, really hard. Still, farmers work harder than you and I can probably imagine, and lots of companies with maniacally hard-working CEO's never quite get anywhere. I've worked at a couple. "Hard work" is important, but it's not the only term in the equation.
I don't know about your supermarkets, but mine carry fresh baked bread every day that is wonderful.
Wow. Not everyone in the US is so fortunate.
Food in the US is so far superior [to Europe] it's not even comparable, and to top it off, it's 1/2 to 1/3 the price.
Have you tried American candy lately? Ugh. It's awful. It's only in the last five or ten years that American coffee and beer have begun to show signs of potability, but most Americans still drink instant coffee and Coors. One of the nice things about Boston is the thriving local brewing culture, but you go to NYC (not exactly Podunk, supposedly, right?) and it's a beerless, dreary place indeed.
My experience in Germany was that the food was cheaper and better than in the US. In France, it was better but more expensive. In Israel, it was wonderful and the prices varied. Look, Americans are willing to eat pasteurized cheese, to the point where AFAIK it's not legal to sell cheese that hasn't been ruined. There's something very wrong there.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
There is the seen -- the dead people produced by Nazism -- and the unseen -- the lack of wealth and opportunity produced by socialism.
I am saying that I would rather lack wealth than be worked within an inch of death, and then gassed. Now that I've seen a few posts claiming that those two fates are, after all, identical, it has ocurred to me that those who were sent to concentration camps by the Nazis were robbed blind beforehand. That seems like a relatively trivial matter, but if "wealth" is worth as much to you as human life, there it is. They took that, too.
I will also aver that most other people feel the same way I do, and I will finally assert that mainstream Western morality is predicated on the assumption that human life is worth more than property. That assumption may be dead wrong, but it's gotten us this far at least. The Soviets, by valuing property (be it public or private) more than human life, didn't get much of anywhere.
As so often happens, you are not seeing what is not there, and then thinking that its absence is of no matter.
Well, "absence" is a darn tough thing to quantify, you know, and the unpleasant fact of the matter is that most of the wealthiest nations in the world have at least partially socialist economies. Look at most of Europe, for example.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
In the United States, literally anyone who works hard can become independantly wealthy.
Have you ever been to the US? It's not that easy. Lots of people do it, but this "literally anyone" thing is nonsense.
. . . in most European countries that is not true (although it happens, rarely). But what's amazing is that apologists such as yourself think that's a *good* thing! No one should be able to rise above anyone else... everyone should stay at the same level of mediocrity (except for the people in control, of course).
Visit Europe some time. On the whole, it's a great place. It bears absolutely no resemblance to your description. One of the really nice things about Europe is that they lack the American worship of mediocrity. You can get edible bread in a supermarket, for example, which in the US is virtually unknown. In general, Europeans tend to be far less apt than we to settle for the kind of shoddy garbage with which we surround ourselves. The fact that most Americans don't know any better is hardly an argument in favor of our system. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind living here, but that's because I get to live in the Boston area. The rest of the country is mostly an uninhabitable wasteland.
haven't you noticed the huge disparity between the number of people who want to come to the US, versus the number of people who want to leave?
Try to emigrate to a European country some time. They're not likely to let you in. Everybody wants to go there, too.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . forcing Raymond to surrender his property against his will for policies he does not support is by nature evil.
Maybe so. I happen to agree -- but it's a lot less evil than murdering him.
Actually, Socialism has killed vastly more than 10.5 million.
Actually, in reality, there have been a couple of socialist governments which went in for mass murder in a big way (worse than the Nazis, I'll grant), but many more that didn't commit any genocides at all. My point is that mass murder and Naziism correlate 100%, while mass murder and socialism correlate very poorly. Some capitalist countries (quite a few, actually) have had repressive authoritarian governments and death squads. Does that mean that these things are inseparable from capitalism? No. It means that General Pinochet, for example, is a thug.
The entire ideology of socialism leads to both a loss of basic moral tenets and the loss of the sanctity of life.
Uh, I hate to tell you this, but what you call "moral tenets" are what I call "ideology", and no doubt vice versa. All you're saying is that you don't agree. Anyhow, socialism is not one single set of moral tenets (or "ideology", if you prefer
It shows a complete lack of interest in the inherent rights of man.
No, it shows at least a partial lack of interest in your conception of the rights of man.
Seizure of property by the state stems from the same convoluted logic as murdering innocents.
No, it doesn't. Not at all. "Seizure of property by the state" can include, for example, taxes that pay for roads. I live in a city. It would be insanely impractical to maintain the streets here on a pay-as-you-go basis. If I don't pay, do they lock me in my apartment? Do they make me take a helicopter to work? Who enforces this? Who pays for the enforcement? You can invoke whatever god-given principles you like, but the present solution to that problem is the least burdensome for me and for the other taxpayers. It's not perfect, but it works well enough for our purposes. And, yes, if I don't pay my taxes, they'll eventually come after me, blah blah blah, armed force and all that. That's life. Adults have responsibilities. On a farm, you work or you starve. Cambridge, MA, is an artificial environment, so we enforce these things artificially.
There is a vast difference between murdering arbitrarily chosen law-abiding citizens on the one hand, and on the other hand forcing (yes, forcing, when you come right down to it) people to share the necessary costs of maintaining a complicated society. That comparison doesn't change at all if you add "feeding the poor" to your list of "necessary costs".
Denial of the right of the individual is the worst crime possible, and comes in many forms.
Not all of those forms are equal. Since you apparently didn't read my post, I'd like to invite you to choose between being taxed, and being gassed. If you honestly can't see any difference between those two options, then there's not much I can do for you. I'm not talking about rhetoric and word games here. I'm not asking you whether in some ill-defined way those two options are rhetorically "equivalent"; I'm asking you which one you would choose in real life if you were presented with the choice. This is because we don't live inside an Ayn Rand novel. We live in reality, where things have consequences.
Regardless of the limit of socialism in particular situations, it is inherently evil.
You're offering a personal and very emotional opinion as if it were demonstrably factual. First, explain what you mean by "evil", from what it derives, and why I should care. We can move on from there.
Socialism is a tool. It's not good or evil. In a modern industrial society, it doesn't seem to work very well except in small doses. However, there have been times and places and environments over the last few tens of thousands of years where socialism was the only thing that stood between mankind and extinction. A hammer is the wrong tool to drive a screw. Does that make a hammer "inherently evil"? No. It makes it a damn poor screwdriver, and that's all. And it's still handy to have a hammer around when it comes time to drive nails. You sound like one of those people who think we should write operating system kernels in perl, because it's a "better" language than C.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . and the only self-described Marxist I know also calls himself an anarchist. He's dead serious on both counts. I happen to think he's kidding himself, but Marxist anarchy is no more ridiculous or impractical than free-market anarchy: Anarchy in general is a short road to totalitarianism, and that's that. It really doesn't matter whether people share the potatoes or not.
. . . if one is looking for a political parallel, it isn't in socialism . .
"Socialism", "capitalism", and a "free market" are three different ideas about how to structure an economy. They're not political systems. The system in the Soviet Union was, quite accurately, described by its architects as "state capitalism". Capital is surplus wealth, that's all. They decided to hand theirs over to the government. When they decided not to let people vote, then they were getting into politics. (But bear in mind that Russia under the czars differed from Russia under the Soviets in very few ways -- the only really signficant one being that the Soviets succeeded in industrializing (albeit at a horrible cost) a country which the previous system had kept trapped in the Middle Ages. Nobody got to vote much before 1917, either. Mainly they just changed the titles of the guys in charge. And for all we know, the czars would have industrialized the place anyway, had they been given a chance.)
By contrast, "anarchism" is a political system (if you can call it a "system"
As an American, I realize that we've all been fed horse-doctor's doses of propaganda which denies all of the above, but it's just propaganda and you shouldn't take it too seriously.
Personally, I am rather tired of the arguments for "Open Source" based on "economy" and "practicality". Listen to RMS. It's about FREEDOM.
Sing it, brother. That's where it's at. I couldn't agree more. The yap about socialism and capitalism is just a red herring anyway.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . a discussion/critique only of ideas that do not appear in CatB is absolutely useless in an eassy that purports to be a disucssion/critique of CatB.
Actually, Raymond had to "refute" the analysis by drawing on his other essays, because it was a largely relevant and valid analysis of CatB. And he went downhill from there. He even wandered off and claimed that the OSS development model couldn't possibly be, in essense, socialistic -- because he has said in public that he doesn't like socialism! That, for me, was the major laugh-line in Raymond's response. I really don't give a rat's ass what Raymond said anywhere about socialism. It's completely irrelevant. He describes a development model which, in fact, has certain features in common with socialism. It just does. And it has them for the same reasons, too; it just happens that software development and distribution happens to be one of the rare special cases where that model really works very well. But Raymond claims that that can't be true, because he, Eric Raymond, has a childishly emotional negative reaction to the word "socialism"! So what? We're supposed to ignore what's right in front of our faces, just because Eric's feelings will be hurt if we make him face reality? This is sheer childishness. It appears as if we've happened on a special case of socialism where, in a limited area, it functions very well (the traditional American nuclear family is another, by the way). If so, then let's be honest with ourselves and admit that the word "socialism" is not a magic spell that makes things evil. Rather, it's an idea which generally doesn't work, but when it does work, it does. Getting religious about which word we use is infantile.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
Marxism and socialism (which I regard as coequal in evil with Naziism).
Well, gee. So making Raymond pay some extra taxes on his precious income is equivalent to murdering 10.5 million innocent people? Really. What an interesting notion.
I always thought this guy was a moron, but that's the least of it; he's a vicious lunatic as well as a moron.
Tell ya what, Raymond: Talk to some people who survived Auschwitz and then lived in Israel in the following couple of decades, when Israel was pretty solidly socialist. Explain to them how the high taxes and bureaucracy they put up with in Israel were just as bad as being used as slave labor and then gassed. Explain that, Eric. I'm sure they'll understand. I'm sure they'll be very pleased that some arrogant jackass has finally explained it all to them.
Hey, I'm not a socialist either, but there are such things as proportion and accuracy. If you're going to shoot your mouth off about something and present yourself as an authority, get it right.
This is just another tedious example of Raymond taking criticism too personally and flying off the handle.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
On Windows, the VCL is a native widget library (among other things), so I guess they'll be native on Linux too. . . .
The VCL wraps a few Windows common controls, like file and print dialogs.
The last time I used the VCL was C++ Builder 1.0, but at that time they didn't replace any windows common controls at all. Edits, trees, lists, whatever. They were all subclassed; go over a VCL program with spy++ or whatever and all the window class names are the VCL class names like TEdit and whatnot, but subclassing controls isn't the same as replacing them. MFC subclasses a lot of things too, though not everything. The only things in the VCL that Borland coded themselves were stuff like grids and panels that don't exist in the common control library. Of course their classes add stuff to the common controls, like the layout manager thing. I can't really see any reason not to use the common controls, in most normal cases. Of course all the windows common controls have silly arbitrary limitations and many have bugs, but that stuff doesn't cause trouble every day.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
the sentiment is out there - keep our kids safe by marking them perminantly with something that identifies them as *ours*.
It's scary in a way, but most of the public discourse about child-rearing in the USA these days starts with the unquestioned assumption that people have a right to do as they please with their property -- be it their children or whatever. Yes, of course, limits are observed when the "property" is a child (e.g. sexual abuse is not acceptable), but one really does hear a hell of a lot of talk about everybody's right, for example, to impose arbitrary limits on their kids' education. Never a word is said about whether it's in the child's best interests; until the kid is 18, the only relevant rights are those of the child's owners . . . (and according to most conservatives, if the child is a she, her body at least should be the joint property of her husband and the government for the rest of her life -- but that's another rant). Ugh. No, I'm not suggesting that the government is likely to do a better job than the kid's parents. I'm not making any suggestions at all about social policy, law, or anything else.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
You didn't expect anything ethical from Israelis did you?
Having worked with Israelis and spent some time there, I'd expect about the same ethics as I expect from most Americans -- and considerably better than what I've seen from the sort of Americans who are paranoid about Israelis.
Make of that what you will.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . the author really can write. It's way cool, and the tone is right, but not the language. He's missing a lot of alliteration, and those weird circumlocutions like "wave-walker" for ship and "whale-road" for ocean. Hey, it's damn nice anyway, and to be perfectly frank, Beowulf often reads more like a tongue-twister than poetry. It's rough going if you're not in the right mood. Tuxowulf definitely flows a lot more smoothly. See below.
This is in translation, obviously:
. . .
This heard in his home Hygelac's thane,
great among Geats, of Grendel's doings.
He was the mightiest man of valor
in that same day of this our life,
stalwart and stately. A stout wave-walker
he bade make ready. Yon battle-king, said he,
far o'er the swan-road he fain would seek,
the noble monarch who needed men!
See Beowulf at the Gutenberg Project.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
If you think that Christian religious observance -- be it coerced or voluntary -- is likely to have any affect on "public morality", read some history, particularly Medieval Europe, the Reformation, etc. Compared with fourteenth-century Italy, the US is now a very moral place by absolutely any standards at all, yours and mine both included.
Or is knowledge of history now considered just as sinful by Christians as knowledge of science?
It wouldn't surprise me.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
. . . when there wasn't such a mad rush to quell Christian beliefs
What you describe as an attempt to "quell Christian beliefs" is in fact a merely refusal by some of us to take orders from you people. You're perfectly free to believe any crazy nonsense you like, but that doesn't mean that I have to believe it too. You do not have a right to force my children to worship your god in the public schools. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. You seem to think you're being "persecuted" because you don't have quite as many special privileges as you want. Heh. You can teach my kids about Jesus when I get to teach yours about Buddha. Is it a deal?
Meanwhile, Christians have a tremendous amount of power and influence in this country, and it's constantly growing.
i understand that Christians don't hold the corner on morals; it just seems that way when the rest of the world wants to make up the rules as they go along.
Heh. This is a glorious example of the kind of "logic" that Christians indulge in. You're assuming A) that anybody not a Christian must have no religion at all, and B) that anybody lacking a religion must necessarily "make up the rules as they go along". Crap, crap, crap. Christianity is just one religion out of many, and atheists are in my experience generally a lot more "moral" than Christians. This is because we can't unload responsibility for our crimes onto God. We can't pretend that "accepting Jesus" (or confessing, or whatever) will make everything okay. The buck stops here. With you, it never stops at all. We also don't have the wide range of excuses for "good" bad behavior that religious people have. We never get to claim that "god is on our side" and that he wants us to murder people, or imprison them for "crimes" which harm no one, or any of the other sick abuses of power that Christians are so fond of. Christianity is an ink blot. People project whatever they want onto it. Christians are people who do exactly as they please, and then claim that god told them to do it -- and that god told them to force the rest of us to do it, too. Then they say that if we want to think for ourselves, we're "sinners" who must be coerced "for our own good". All dissent is defined as a crime. This is called a "self-reinforcing delusional system". Hey, it's all yours and you're welcome to it, but don't expect rational, honest people to join in.
. . . this country wasn't so bad off
Now that we've disposed of the "mad rush" myth, we can dispose of the rest of this nonsense. Since the war, America has changed in a lot of ways. One of these ways is that a lot of people have given up on all that superstitious Christian nonsense. (Coincidentally, the US began to lead the world in science and technology. Funny, that. I guess it has to do with teaching fact in schools rather than superstition). Sadly, a lot of Americans have in recent years pulled the wool back over their eyes. A shocking number have returned to the tired old lies of Christianity, but many have fallen for equally childish and destructive New Age lies. Oh, well. So it goes. This, too, shall pass.
before beliefs are thrown out because they HAPPEN to be Christian, they should be examined for value on their own right.
In stark, hilarious contrast to the violently amoral Christian Right, us atheistic liberals and "Secular Humanists" generally base our morality on the teachings of Christ. We're very much into stuff like loving one's neighbor, doing unto others as we'd like them to do unto us, tolerance, generosity, equality, and all the rest.
"What would Jesus do?" He'd call you a bunch of damned hypocrites and Pharisees, pal.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"