To you, the other side is taking away your freedom for pointless reasons.
To the other side, you are taking away private companies' rights to their own property.
Neither side is fundamentally correct, here. Your right to free speech, or whatever other rights, do not go so far as to permit you to force private companies to bend to your will. Conversely, the companies' rights to their own property does not go so far as to allow them to damage society as a whole.
Net neutrality is a question of balancing those two sides. It is not as black and white as you make it out to be. You see the other side as fools and tyrants because you are incapable of conceiving why anyone might disagree with you reasonably. This is simply stupid and arrogant. Get over yourself, and realize that just because you think a certain way doesn't mean that everybody must.
It's not your fault that they believe what they believe. What is your fault is that you have no respect for other people's opinions. And thus, people will have no respect for yours. I can only assume that your goal in expounding your position is to convert people; if it's not that, then why bother saying anything at all? But you're not going to convert anyone with such a fundamental attitude of disrespect. You must first respect the other guy's position, then deconstruct it and demonstrate why yours is better, if you want to convince people.
If your goal is to show what an asshole you are and convince the public that your position is without merit, then by all means keep on doing what you're doing.
Yeah, in some cases there are fundamental moral truths. For example, not murdering innocent people.
"Don't regulate the internet (except to prevent companies from controlling the stuff they own)" is, however, not one of them.
A big hint that this is true should be the fact that there are a whole lot of people out there who disagree with you. Sometimes fundamental moral truths are ignored by the majority, but it is quite rare.
The whole of American political discourse is sliding into the toilet because of people like you. Nobody can even fathom the possibility that the other side might have good reasons for believing what they believe, even if they might be wrong. Republicans and Democrats are more alike than they are different, but each believes that the other is scum on Earth and cannot possibly be simply wrong: given what they believe, these people say, the other side must be evil.
Or just stay closer to home. You can do plenty of long rides without ever going more than a few miles away from where you live. If you're a geek (and if you're reading this, you're a geek) then you should be able to handle the concept of planning a trip such that you are less than half tired when you're halfway done.
Obviously you need to prepare ahead of time. This is not the problem. The problem is declaring that you must begin your preparation at the "standard" age, and if you change your mind later on then you're screwed. Obviously if you start on the auto mechanic track and then decide to become an aerospace engineer, it's going to take some extra time to get into it. But there's a huge difference between requiring extra time and effort to get into the program, as happens in the US, and effectively requiring you to start over or simply saying that it's too late, as happens in many other countries.
It's one thing to hold a position and think that the other position is wrong. It's another thing entirely to think that anyone who disagrees with you must be corrupt or an idiot. It is my experience that people in the latter group tend to be the true idiots.
It's like religion. They can't all be right, and it makes little sense to arbitrarily choose one of them. So the natural position is that they're all wrong. Same deal with politics. But at the same time, lots of people hold a lot of religious beliefs and it doesn't make sense to belittle them, just disagree with them. Same deal with politics. You are free to disagree, but when you state that disagreement with your position is indicative of mental problems then you cross the line, and your argument becomes worthless.
Well no, I'm sorry, it isn't as simple as you make it out to be. There are plenty of legitimate reasons:
Preventing the dissemination of child pornography
Preventing the dissemination of nuclear bomb plans
Protecting copyrights
Many others
You may not agree with those (I do not agree with them either) but they are, in fact, perfectly legitimate reasons.
If you refuse to understand that other people can disagree with you but not be whack-jobs, idiots, or evil, then you will be doomed to never be able to participate in any sane debate, talk rationally with anyone other than those who already agree completely with your position, or convince people who disagree with you that your position is right.
I stand corrected. It certainly didn't happen in my school (which had no official "College Prep" class to begin with, although many advanced/AP classes), but that was a decade or so past too.
In that case, the implementation is flawed, not the system itself.
What the heck does this even mean? The implementation is the system.
The American system, at least up to and including B.x. levels, rewards doing your homework and memorizing your stuff. _Very_ little creativity and free thinking required to ace it, just do your work and don't be lazy or sloppy.
I simply cannot agree here. High school, sure, but college? No way. At least at my school, I was able to get away with doing very little homework when it wasn't needed, skipping classes when I didn't need the lectures, reading books in class when I only needed bits and pieces, and doing extra work in the areas that really interested me. The whole environment really rewarded creativity and free thinking a great deal. I'm sure that you could also do quite well by plodding along, studying hard, and doing all your homework. But why shouldn't you do well if you're that way?
If you are taking classes appropriate for an auto mechanic (e.g. general math, shop, etc.), and try to switch to classes that support being an aerospace engineer (calculus, physics, etc.) mid-stream, that won't work well in the US either.
It'll work fine if you're still in high school. Most colleges assume their incoming students are essentially a blank slate, with only basic classes. They're not going to require you to have already taken calculus and physics just to be admitted. It will help, and it will accelerate your coursework if you can test out of the introductory college classes, but they won't require it.
Your story about your father shows how good American schools are about this. He spent 2.5 years studying philosophy, then switched to English and took 2.5 more years to finish. In a French school, switching to English like that would take 4 years to finish, period. Wouldn't matter how many prerequisites are the same, you get to take them again.
Taking some extra time in this case makes sense to me. I mean, you need to take the required classes, and unless you choose a course of study where everything you've already taken will still count, you're going to lose time. But in many other countries, it goes far beyond this, and none of what you've already taken will count if you switch.
Let's say you're 18, on the vocational track of your high school, and suddenly you decide that you're actually pretty smart and you want a white-collar job and you want to go to university. Guess what? You are screwed! Forget about it. You already made that choice back when you were 16. There is no mind-changing!
Well, actually, you can, it's just tougher. If you're good, you'll be able to leverage your vocational training to become a sort of middleman between the vocational types and the college types.
That's not what I mean. I mean, what if you've decided that you want to become an automobile mechanic, and then at the age of 18 you suddenly decide you want to become an aerospace engineer. If you have the proven intelligence for it then this is no problem in the US. If you want to try something like this in France then you are essentially doomed. You may be able to pull it off if you are really accomplished, but it's vastly more difficult.
On the other hand, is it fair to run even vocational oriented students through what ends up being a half-assed college prep course? It ends up serving no one well. To better serve 10% of the students you screw over the other 90%? That reeks of 'No child left behind'. One of the problems with that program is that the smart, dedicated kids end up being ignored in order to raise the bottom 10% those critical few points.
Sure, this is stupid, and I never said otherwise. This really doesn't happen in the US. If you don't intend to go to college, you won't take college prep classes. What does happen is that you can change tracks at any time. You'll have to do some extra work to catch up on the new track, but it can be done.
In countries with this sort of education, the split often starts in elementary school - students that excel move up towards the college program, students that perform marginally move down towards the vocational aspects. By the time they reach high school age they're pretty much placed, with the knowledge, consultation, and consent of both the parents and the academic facility.
This just makes no sense to me. Children simply do not work this way. You can't take a child who is 8 years old and say, this child is college material. Many lackluster children mature into really smart people, and many really smart children end up being totally unsuitable for college.
As for the france thing with math - that's just poor rulemaking. Credits for a math course should be credits for the math course.
It's not poor rulemaking, it's a fundamental lack of flexibility in the system. There's no concept of "credits". Your courses are laid out for the entire program ahead of time. You may have certain electives, but otherwise it's totally rigid. You can't skip calculus because you've already taken it and instead take advanced calculus. If you have a really flexible department you may be able to skip calculus and take nothing, but this just gives you more free time, it doesn't accelerate your progress.
Further education should always be an option - that electrician can go in and get his masters if he wants. Maybe he's ready for it at 40 when he wasn't at 20.
Precisely, and in many countries around the world it's simply not a realistic option. If you realize at 40, 30, or even at 20 that you no longer wish to be an electrician then you'll have vastly more difficulty changing to a different career than you generally will in the US.
Net neutrality is to regulation what the GPL is to copyright. It is regulation designed to subvert "regulation" by making the imposition of restrictions on the internet illegal.
Regulation is not the same as restriction. Regulation is something imposed by the government. Net neutrality is a regulation which forces ISPs to remove certain restrictions. There's no subversion taking place here, just government asserting its authority over private companies.
Anyone who does not understand this is ignorant, and anyone who opposes it is willfully corrupt.
And this is the kind of idiotic bullshit which has made modern American political discourse the equivalent of a third-grade sand-kicking match. "You're either with us or you're against us" didn't sound reasonable when W said it and it doesn't sound reasonable coming from you. On almost any issue you care to name, it is possible to disagree with you without being ignorant or corrupt. If you do not understand that intelligent people can legitimately disagree with you then you are either an asshole or a moron, or quite probably both.
Lots of public money went into building the stuff that makes your computer run. Therefore I say that your computer is the people's. The people want you to give it to me.
Duh! Of course that's what he means! What part of "not regulating" do you not understand? If they weren't free to do what they please, then they would be regulated. Apply a little thought, here!
"...but they did make it require an external drive instead of using the Internet."
Sure, Apple gets credit where credit is not necessarily due, like everybody else. They also get credit where credit is due. Slashdotters love to think that Apple doesn't do anything really interesting, that they just slap on some useless stuff to sell boxes. Well, this just isn't true. Time Machine, while it may have all been done before, was nevertheless a major innovation. It got me doing convenient regular backups and has done the same for a lot of other people as well.
Flawed for sure, I'm not sure if I would say that it's very badly flawed, at least not at the college level. I never went for a Ph.D. but I experienced broad freedom in what to study and broad acceptance of equivalent classes when I was in college. High school tends to be much worse in this respect, but still way better than other countries.
I once sat next to a man from India on a plane. It sounds like things are vastly worse there. He told me that once you reach the age of 27 or so then it becomes effectively impossible to change careers. Legally you can, of course, but no decent school will accept a new student that old.
I'm still very much behind any effort to improve things in the US, though. They're better than much of the rest of the world but they could certainly be better still.
Oh yeah, that's real smart, Apple's product must suck because it doesn't do exactly what you personally need.
Come on, now! Stop being an idiot! If the thing does what you need then it's great, and there's a lot of value there! If it doesn't, then don't use it!
I'll knock it, in the sense that the grandparent is using it.
Let's say you're 18, on the vocational track of your high school, and suddenly you decide that you're actually pretty smart and you want a white-collar job and you want to go to university. Guess what? You are screwed! Forget about it. You already made that choice back when you were 16. There is no mind-changing!
Let's take France as an example, since I'm most familiar with it. If you're starting your third year of university and you decide that math is not for you and you'd rather go into engineering, guess what? Back to the end of the line! You get to start over from freshman year. Never mind that 90% of your courses would still apply. Never mind that you already know calculus backwards and forwards; take it again! You've just wasted two years of your life?
Let's say you're now 24, finished with your Master's degree and thinking about a Ph.D. You decide that it's not for you, you'd rather work. A few months later you change your mind; a professorship sounds really good! Not to worry, just apply for the Ph.D. next year, right? Wrong! You gave up your one chance, now you are screwed!
The American system is vastly better in this respect, and as a result I think it works a lot better at teaching creativity and free thinking, as well as adapting to each person's individual needs.
Er, I'm not the guy who made Linux out to be hard. The guy with the broken tar command was. My only point is that it is incorrect to make Apple's utility out to only be a useless sheen of GUI on top of something that any "real" computer user could set up anyway. Apple provides real value even for advanced computer users, even though you could theoretically set up the same thing on your own given enough time.
I did a google search for it, hit something that's "commonly called" SBackup, and also found about 15 pages about how to configure and run it. Time Machine is literally about three clicks. The default doesn't back up files over 100MB (wtf?) and even after skimming the whole thing I still have no idea whether it does incremental backups or not, and if it does whether each individual incremental shows the full set of files in the filesystem the way it does with TM. I may be highly knowledgeable about computers but I simply don't want to have to think about all of this stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there even an organization which could officially cancel it? The whole point of the thing is that it's decentralized, after all.
To you, the other side is taking away your freedom for pointless reasons.
To the other side, you are taking away private companies' rights to their own property.
Neither side is fundamentally correct, here. Your right to free speech, or whatever other rights, do not go so far as to permit you to force private companies to bend to your will. Conversely, the companies' rights to their own property does not go so far as to allow them to damage society as a whole.
Net neutrality is a question of balancing those two sides. It is not as black and white as you make it out to be. You see the other side as fools and tyrants because you are incapable of conceiving why anyone might disagree with you reasonably. This is simply stupid and arrogant. Get over yourself, and realize that just because you think a certain way doesn't mean that everybody must.
It's not your fault that they believe what they believe. What is your fault is that you have no respect for other people's opinions. And thus, people will have no respect for yours. I can only assume that your goal in expounding your position is to convert people; if it's not that, then why bother saying anything at all? But you're not going to convert anyone with such a fundamental attitude of disrespect. You must first respect the other guy's position, then deconstruct it and demonstrate why yours is better, if you want to convince people.
If your goal is to show what an asshole you are and convince the public that your position is without merit, then by all means keep on doing what you're doing.
Yeah, in some cases there are fundamental moral truths. For example, not murdering innocent people.
"Don't regulate the internet (except to prevent companies from controlling the stuff they own)" is, however, not one of them.
A big hint that this is true should be the fact that there are a whole lot of people out there who disagree with you. Sometimes fundamental moral truths are ignored by the majority, but it is quite rare.
The whole of American political discourse is sliding into the toilet because of people like you. Nobody can even fathom the possibility that the other side might have good reasons for believing what they believe, even if they might be wrong. Republicans and Democrats are more alike than they are different, but each believes that the other is scum on Earth and cannot possibly be simply wrong: given what they believe, these people say, the other side must be evil.
Or just stay closer to home. You can do plenty of long rides without ever going more than a few miles away from where you live. If you're a geek (and if you're reading this, you're a geek) then you should be able to handle the concept of planning a trip such that you are less than half tired when you're halfway done.
Put your neuroses to the back of your head, buy a bicycle, and start riding it. It's fun, and really, what do you care what other people think?
Pilots' wives think that their husbands treat flying as a sort of substitute for sex.
The big secret, what we really don't want our wives to know, is that sex is really just a substitute for flying.
I don't think it says anything particularly bad about her husband.
Obviously you need to prepare ahead of time. This is not the problem. The problem is declaring that you must begin your preparation at the "standard" age, and if you change your mind later on then you're screwed. Obviously if you start on the auto mechanic track and then decide to become an aerospace engineer, it's going to take some extra time to get into it. But there's a huge difference between requiring extra time and effort to get into the program, as happens in the US, and effectively requiring you to start over or simply saying that it's too late, as happens in many other countries.
Well then, you're just unreasonable and a moron.
It's one thing to hold a position and think that the other position is wrong. It's another thing entirely to think that anyone who disagrees with you must be corrupt or an idiot. It is my experience that people in the latter group tend to be the true idiots.
It's like religion. They can't all be right, and it makes little sense to arbitrarily choose one of them. So the natural position is that they're all wrong. Same deal with politics. But at the same time, lots of people hold a lot of religious beliefs and it doesn't make sense to belittle them, just disagree with them. Same deal with politics. You are free to disagree, but when you state that disagreement with your position is indicative of mental problems then you cross the line, and your argument becomes worthless.
Well no, I'm sorry, it isn't as simple as you make it out to be. There are plenty of legitimate reasons:
You may not agree with those (I do not agree with them either) but they are, in fact, perfectly legitimate reasons.
If you refuse to understand that other people can disagree with you but not be whack-jobs, idiots, or evil, then you will be doomed to never be able to participate in any sane debate, talk rationally with anyone other than those who already agree completely with your position, or convince people who disagree with you that your position is right.
I stand corrected. It certainly didn't happen in my school (which had no official "College Prep" class to begin with, although many advanced/AP classes), but that was a decade or so past too.
In that case, the implementation is flawed, not the system itself.
What the heck does this even mean? The implementation is the system.
The American system, at least up to and including B.x. levels, rewards doing your homework and memorizing your stuff. _Very_ little creativity and free thinking required to ace it, just do your work and don't be lazy or sloppy.
I simply cannot agree here. High school, sure, but college? No way. At least at my school, I was able to get away with doing very little homework when it wasn't needed, skipping classes when I didn't need the lectures, reading books in class when I only needed bits and pieces, and doing extra work in the areas that really interested me. The whole environment really rewarded creativity and free thinking a great deal. I'm sure that you could also do quite well by plodding along, studying hard, and doing all your homework. But why shouldn't you do well if you're that way?
I was born in the US. I live in the US. I've lived in the US for over 20 years. Moron.
If you are taking classes appropriate for an auto mechanic (e.g. general math, shop, etc.), and try to switch to classes that support being an aerospace engineer (calculus, physics, etc.) mid-stream, that won't work well in the US either.
It'll work fine if you're still in high school. Most colleges assume their incoming students are essentially a blank slate, with only basic classes. They're not going to require you to have already taken calculus and physics just to be admitted. It will help, and it will accelerate your coursework if you can test out of the introductory college classes, but they won't require it.
Your story about your father shows how good American schools are about this. He spent 2.5 years studying philosophy, then switched to English and took 2.5 more years to finish. In a French school, switching to English like that would take 4 years to finish, period. Wouldn't matter how many prerequisites are the same, you get to take them again.
Taking some extra time in this case makes sense to me. I mean, you need to take the required classes, and unless you choose a course of study where everything you've already taken will still count, you're going to lose time. But in many other countries, it goes far beyond this, and none of what you've already taken will count if you switch.
Let's say you're 18, on the vocational track of your high school, and suddenly you decide that you're actually pretty smart and you want a white-collar job and you want to go to university. Guess what? You are screwed! Forget about it. You already made that choice back when you were 16. There is no mind-changing!
Well, actually, you can, it's just tougher. If you're good, you'll be able to leverage your vocational training to become a sort of middleman between the vocational types and the college types.
That's not what I mean. I mean, what if you've decided that you want to become an automobile mechanic, and then at the age of 18 you suddenly decide you want to become an aerospace engineer. If you have the proven intelligence for it then this is no problem in the US. If you want to try something like this in France then you are essentially doomed. You may be able to pull it off if you are really accomplished, but it's vastly more difficult.
On the other hand, is it fair to run even vocational oriented students through what ends up being a half-assed college prep course? It ends up serving no one well. To better serve 10% of the students you screw over the other 90%? That reeks of 'No child left behind'. One of the problems with that program is that the smart, dedicated kids end up being ignored in order to raise the bottom 10% those critical few points.
Sure, this is stupid, and I never said otherwise. This really doesn't happen in the US. If you don't intend to go to college, you won't take college prep classes. What does happen is that you can change tracks at any time. You'll have to do some extra work to catch up on the new track, but it can be done.
In countries with this sort of education, the split often starts in elementary school - students that excel move up towards the college program, students that perform marginally move down towards the vocational aspects. By the time they reach high school age they're pretty much placed, with the knowledge, consultation, and consent of both the parents and the academic facility.
This just makes no sense to me. Children simply do not work this way. You can't take a child who is 8 years old and say, this child is college material. Many lackluster children mature into really smart people, and many really smart children end up being totally unsuitable for college.
As for the france thing with math - that's just poor rulemaking. Credits for a math course should be credits for the math course.
It's not poor rulemaking, it's a fundamental lack of flexibility in the system. There's no concept of "credits". Your courses are laid out for the entire program ahead of time. You may have certain electives, but otherwise it's totally rigid. You can't skip calculus because you've already taken it and instead take advanced calculus. If you have a really flexible department you may be able to skip calculus and take nothing, but this just gives you more free time, it doesn't accelerate your progress.
Further education should always be an option - that electrician can go in and get his masters if he wants. Maybe he's ready for it at 40 when he wasn't at 20.
Precisely, and in many countries around the world it's simply not a realistic option. If you realize at 40, 30, or even at 20 that you no longer wish to be an electrician then you'll have vastly more difficulty changing to a different career than you generally will in the US.
Net neutrality is to regulation what the GPL is to copyright. It is regulation designed to subvert "regulation" by making the imposition of restrictions on the internet illegal.
Regulation is not the same as restriction. Regulation is something imposed by the government. Net neutrality is a regulation which forces ISPs to remove certain restrictions. There's no subversion taking place here, just government asserting its authority over private companies.
Anyone who does not understand this is ignorant, and anyone who opposes it is willfully corrupt.
And this is the kind of idiotic bullshit which has made modern American political discourse the equivalent of a third-grade sand-kicking match. "You're either with us or you're against us" didn't sound reasonable when W said it and it doesn't sound reasonable coming from you. On almost any issue you care to name, it is possible to disagree with you without being ignorant or corrupt. If you do not understand that intelligent people can legitimately disagree with you then you are either an asshole or a moron, or quite probably both.
Lots of public money went into building the stuff that makes your computer run. Therefore I say that your computer is the people's. The people want you to give it to me.
Duh! Of course that's what he means! What part of "not regulating" do you not understand? If they weren't free to do what they please, then they would be regulated. Apply a little thought, here!
Yeah, you didn't say it, you just implied it:
"...but they did make it require an external drive instead of using the Internet."
Sure, Apple gets credit where credit is not necessarily due, like everybody else. They also get credit where credit is due. Slashdotters love to think that Apple doesn't do anything really interesting, that they just slap on some useless stuff to sell boxes. Well, this just isn't true. Time Machine, while it may have all been done before, was nevertheless a major innovation. It got me doing convenient regular backups and has done the same for a lot of other people as well.
Flawed for sure, I'm not sure if I would say that it's very badly flawed, at least not at the college level. I never went for a Ph.D. but I experienced broad freedom in what to study and broad acceptance of equivalent classes when I was in college. High school tends to be much worse in this respect, but still way better than other countries.
I once sat next to a man from India on a plane. It sounds like things are vastly worse there. He told me that once you reach the age of 27 or so then it becomes effectively impossible to change careers. Legally you can, of course, but no decent school will accept a new student that old.
I'm still very much behind any effort to improve things in the US, though. They're better than much of the rest of the world but they could certainly be better still.
Oh yeah, that's real smart, Apple's product must suck because it doesn't do exactly what you personally need.
Come on, now! Stop being an idiot! If the thing does what you need then it's great, and there's a lot of value there! If it doesn't, then don't use it!
I'll knock it, in the sense that the grandparent is using it.
Let's say you're 18, on the vocational track of your high school, and suddenly you decide that you're actually pretty smart and you want a white-collar job and you want to go to university. Guess what? You are screwed! Forget about it. You already made that choice back when you were 16. There is no mind-changing!
Let's take France as an example, since I'm most familiar with it. If you're starting your third year of university and you decide that math is not for you and you'd rather go into engineering, guess what? Back to the end of the line! You get to start over from freshman year. Never mind that 90% of your courses would still apply. Never mind that you already know calculus backwards and forwards; take it again! You've just wasted two years of your life?
Let's say you're now 24, finished with your Master's degree and thinking about a Ph.D. You decide that it's not for you, you'd rather work. A few months later you change your mind; a professorship sounds really good! Not to worry, just apply for the Ph.D. next year, right? Wrong! You gave up your one chance, now you are screwed!
The American system is vastly better in this respect, and as a result I think it works a lot better at teaching creativity and free thinking, as well as adapting to each person's individual needs.
Er, I'm not the guy who made Linux out to be hard. The guy with the broken tar command was. My only point is that it is incorrect to make Apple's utility out to only be a useless sheen of GUI on top of something that any "real" computer user could set up anyway. Apple provides real value even for advanced computer users, even though you could theoretically set up the same thing on your own given enough time.
I did a google search for it, hit something that's "commonly called" SBackup, and also found about 15 pages about how to configure and run it. Time Machine is literally about three clicks. The default doesn't back up files over 100MB (wtf?) and even after skimming the whole thing I still have no idea whether it does incremental backups or not, and if it does whether each individual incremental shows the full set of files in the filesystem the way it does with TM. I may be highly knowledgeable about computers but I simply don't want to have to think about all of this stuff.
What is SpaceShipTwo if not a custom airplane?