Remove any student who is constantly disrupting class
When I went to school, we had this thing called detention. You are separated with the other troublemakers in a room where you just do assignments with a teacher watching you. Some students were always in detention. If you had a constant disrupter they'd presumeably be doing all their work in detention without any interactive instruction. The social isolation of that was enough to make most people try to avoid it. What happens if you talk out or otherwise disrupt the detention room? Suspension I suppose. Expulsion is an even more serious process, and probably got you into a military-style "reform school". There was one kid in our neighborhood who got a year of that. He was lucky the cops didn't shoot him. That was an exception though. Our neighborhood was generally "nice". If 20, 30 or even 40% of the kids were like that, then well... maybe we end up with a lot of kids drilling in uniforms behind barbed wire in conjunction with their studies. Anyway, I digress. There are already procedures for dealing with troublemakers.
While AFK I had time to reflect more on "early adopters". Right now, at this point in history, the early adopters seem to be winning. By winning I mean that if you are the type who picks up new tech, you learn more, get better jobs, end up with 5 years experience in 2 year old technologies required to get the job, etc.
I look at that and think, "I should become an early adopter". The problem with that is that you can't fake it.
Now, this isn't to say I dislike change. It's to say I dislike change for change's sake. For example, when I was in school e-mail was just becoming widely available to students. This was fascinating to me. I could (and did) correspond with students and professors at other universities all over the country, and even the world. This, and the Internet in general were a change that I embraced and delighted in fully. I look back on that and I think it's because I regarded a world where people could communicate freely as being better than one where they couldn't as opposed to meerly different
In fact, at the time I had access to Sun workstations with XWindows. A new Windows machine appeared in one of the other labs. I tried it, and it took 3 minutes just to boot. In retrospect, they had probably attempted to install on a machine with insufficient hardware; but that was my first impression of Windows. I wondered why anybody would want to use it.
When I was out of school though I was forced to buy computing on an underemployed budget. I made less than $10k my first year out of school! I was busted back to connecting to networks through BBSs with a 286 that I picked up from a school for $115. I found out about the sale through a print classified ad. It all seems so quaint now. Somewhere along the line I developed a keen sense not only for what it meant to work under tight economic constraints; but what it meant to be a "common" person as opposed to the world of "privelege" I experienced at the university.
That's at least part of the reason I cling to technologies that are popular with the uneducated masses, as opposed to what's current with other tech-savvy people. I felt concerned that if I started doing everything in Linux (later Mac) I would lose touch with what other people experienced. Flash forward to today, and the idea of buying a hot new device for $600 every year is not exactly working class either. I'm also back to being concerned about my economic circumstances. Priorities. I want to keep my 6 year old Lenovo running as long as possible. What a fine machine it is... all too often destroyed by web devs who think it's a good idea to display dozens of full sized images and all the forum replies on a single page. Can you say "swap"? I think it could handle another stick of RAM; but dammit, I shouldn't have to buy one.
Anyway, Chrome frame sounds like an interesting idea. It's obviously a short-term fix though. We live "in interesting times". When the Lonovo dies I'm not sure which direction I'll go in...
Oh, I've only touched on a few themes here. The subject of change, the dynamic of forced vs. voluntary change, technology's place in society, etc... this could blow up into a much larger essay or even a book. A book based on a Slashdot thread... yay! Not enough hours. That's my last word on this particular thread; but I'm still a regular poster here (after 13 years!), so you'll see me around and I'll mark you as a friend.
It wasn't meant as an insult, it's just I never heard of a programmer that uses Internet Explorer as their default, and surely not as their only browser. And any aspiring programmer surely would JUMP on the opportunity to have a "better, cleaner, faster" viewer of the web, by using a modern browser, when it's just a click and a download away. It's just I kind of associate curiosity and early adoption with the whole coder thing.
Thank-your for an intelligent reply that turned down the volume on argument. It's pleasant and all too rare. That said, let me just focus on the one point emphasized above, as it's the most interesting one to me and I can fit in the reply while my friend is showering before we go out to dinner.
Yes, I realiize I might be an anomoly in this regard. FWIW, I'm 44 years old. That might have something to do with it. When smartphones came on the market, my first reaction was "I already have a prescription. I don't want to make my eyes any worse".
I don't see myself as a techno Luddite though. Rather the opposite, I see myself as a connoiseur and a critic. My priorties are different than those of many others. I like IE because it has an interface that I'm used to. Take tabbed browsing, for example. Hate it. Why? Not because it's new; but because it's an old thing that's been displaced into a new space where it doesn't belong. I already have what ammounts to "tabbing" for all my applications--not just the browser. It's called the task bar. I'm used to doing this for everything from DOS windows to text files, and switching between one thing or another regardless of what the application is. Tabbed browsing is just a nuisance because I have a deeply ingrained pattern that says, "when you want to get away from that page, click the X". Now when you do that in Chrome which, encourages you to use tabs... you lose all your pages. I have to slow down and think when I'm in Chrome. Maybe this is more expensive when you're middle aged.
Early adoption? I understand that many associate that with technical people; but on the flip side you have guys like RMS who will probably give up EMACS when you pry it from his cold dead fingers. Strangely, I'm the philosophical opposite of RMS in a lot of ways; but oh crap... my friend showers fast, and I need to shower too...
Anyway, thanks again for being an interesting correspondant; and maybe I'll find the time to bang out some more thoughts later...
1. #! (Shebang). Google uses it for some AJAX purpose. I've had people post links with shebangs in them, thinking it would take me to a page. Instead, it took me to the homepage becasue IE is using # for its intended purpose--to take you to a subsection within a page. Since there is no ! section, it just takes you to the base URL. AFAIK, Google is out of compliance, didn't run this by any kind of standards committee, and just hacked it in. Feel free to correct me on that if I'm wrong.
2. I don't know what you mean by "no programmer lost on me". "shit browser" is a subjective term. Becoming a platform bigot is facile. Writing cross-platform code is what real programmers do. I couldn't live with myself as a programmer if I lost 50% of potential users because my code was insufficiently portable. One of the biggest inspirations for me was opening up the libjpeg sources and seeing that it was possible (in C!) to write code that not only ran on *NIX and Windows, but obscure systems like Amigas, and various RISC archs I'd never heard of. Ironicly, the web is supposed to be platform neutral, and it is now, IMHO, less platform neutral in practice than C which is supposed to be just one step above assembly.
3. Competition is good. One less competitor is not good, especially when it created an ecosystem where anybody could write applications without having to put them in the Jerk Store.
Why yes, yes it is. First, it's bad because the web is so sadly broken that you actually have to think about browser compatability. Next, it's bad because MS is losing the browser war and doesn't even realize it. The fact this is MS's fault is beside the point. A majority of people on Slashdot hate MS for breaking web standards, but they don't call out other people for doing the same thing. Yes, MS was bad at standards compliance to say the least; but never had the gaul to break something as fundamental as URLs! Google does this shebang travesty, and... where is the outcry?
Finally, it's bad because we're dividing the web into two worlds. The "your father's web" and "we're too kewl for IE" worlds. I like my Oldsmobile. It's comfortable. Yeah, I can pretend to be kewl, and fire up Chrome to make your stupid site work; but most of the time I don't want to.
Yeah, I know a lot of people on Slashdot have been wanting MS to go down in flames. There's a saying where I'm from: Watch out what you ask for. You might get it.
I fear the community will have to experience a web without MS being a major player before they realize what this means.
Really though, I just wish IE would fix their scripting engine. That seems to be the biggest problem. There's a broker site I use. They're not known for playing the "kewl" game, and yet IE has become unreliable there. You may or may not get a listing of all strike prices on options if you ask for it. It's as if a variable has been unitialized or something. Do it in Chrome, and it just works.
What do fake users gain by Like-ing a fake business page?
If by "fake user", you mean "the person behind the fake account", then there could be any number of reasons. First, they might not know the business is fake. In that case, they could just be liking *everything*, hoping that something good will come of that. There's no penalty for liking something other than your time, which is meaningless if they're doing this with bots and some kind of intelligent filter. The upside is that they might get free offers or some other benefit.
This is the essence of speculation.
If they know the business is fake, it's still speculation. Perhaps they are hoping to gain access to a criminal syndicate, or insight into other scams on FB. Maybe they are even researchers!
An alternative interpretation of your question is that you really do mean "fake user" in the sense of the account itself, not the person behind it. AFAIK, user accounts don't just start randomly liking things; but if they did then perhaps there might be a reason for that. Maybe FB will gain self awareness. Time to loot the vending machines again.
I'm looting the vending machines at work as soon as my shift ends
Sigh... we just finished cleaning up from yesterday. The European central bank says something. Loot the vending machines. The Fed says something. Loot the vending machines. Your team loses. Loot the vending machines. Your team wins. Loot the vending machines. Some whack job on the radio says the world is ending. You guessed it. Loot the vending machines. I'm beginning to think that you guys will use any excue just to... what? They're looting the vending machines again? What is it this time? Somebody installed Linux on the desktop? Holy crap. Fuck posting on Slashdot. I'm going to LOOT THE VENDING MACHINE.
You're right. If you can't localize the bug to a source file, then you need bugs.txt as the other poster mentioned. Sometimes you can localize it to a file, but not a function. I put those at the top of the file.
This is enough for the cathedral, which doesn't even have source control. Anything sold in the bazaar should have source control and some kind of bug tracking. Just pick whatever integrates well with the repository. Free sites will probably have a "most popular" bug tracking or integrated tracking. Just use it. A company will impose something. Use that, duh!
Add to this the hidden cost of maintaining the vacuum (presumably by constantly pumping air particles out of thousands upon thousands of miles of vacuum tube)
Apparently, the author hasn't heard of airlocks. I just skimmed the article. This was enough to make me not want to read it in detail.
Almost nobody on either side reads the papers. There are a handfull of people in the world qualified and dedicated to the issue. For everybody else it really is nothing more than "my priest is better than yours".
99.9% of the people you meet who affirm AGW are just doing so because of herd mentality. Ditto for deniers.
FWIW, I myself am skeptical of AGW; but I'm also cognizant of the fact that my beliefs prove NOTHING. I'm not as strongly opinionated as some people. I'm open to the idea of AGW; I'm just not convinced. Just as in religion though, labeling oneself as an atheist has more appeal than being an agnostic. Attending GOP functions and lambasting liberal-leaning scientists funded by grant money from Democratic old money is politic. What you think when quietly reflecting over a cup of coffee is closer to the truth; but nobody knows it except you. Raise your hand if you ever sat in chruch wondering if God even exists.
Anyway, of course nobody reads the paper. Even most of the priests don't read the paper. They just recite the liturgy.
Wikipedia supports both points of view. It's one of those common cases where a single term is used to mean several things. A Conservative might use the phrase to argue for dissolving Federal authority and passing control to the States, and then in turn to local authorities. This is the definition to which I refer. A Libertarian might level the epithet at a wide range of government activity, regardless of the size of the authority, as you describe.
I think you've nailed down an important aspect of what ails us. It's a country of incumbents. It's not just incumbent politicians; but incumbent businesses and incumbent unions. They have learned to grab government and swing it like a club against their would-be challengers.
I have to ask myself what happened to the pioneering entrepreneurial spirit that made America into the most prosperous country in the world
Hard to say, although the problem is not Big Government, although it's somewhat of a factor. Most of the shit that businesses get comes from Small Government. You will spend a lot more time wrestling with local restrictions than the Feds. The Fed stuff is usually pretty cut and dry. State is harder, and cities can be truly obnoxious. In general, the smaller the government entity the more of a hassle it is to deal with, which is why I always find the complaints about Big Government ironic.
By the time you drill down to condo associations, it's truly a nightmare.
In general, the smaller the institution, the worse it is. The smallest government institution in our lives is marriage. It drives you crazy, and 50% of the time it ends in divorce. If the Federal Government tried to do half the things your spouse does, there'd be a revolution next Tuesday.
LOL, obviously no. I'm also reminded of all the graphical programming languages. Sooner or later you end up with textboxes in those languages. It's text that got blown to smithereens, scattered all over, and surrounded by pretty colors. It's actually harder to look at than a line of text. Saying that CLI should go away is like saying that English should be replaced with something based on Ikea furniture assembly instructions. No more simple English for pilots. They'll transmit a picture of an airplane angled towards an iconic cloud with lightning coming out of it, and maybe a number underneath. You'll figure out that you're supposed to come to a new heading to avoid weather. Or descend? Or that the cloud server is out again and you're on your own. Or that you're supposed to put a drop of glue on that little dowel and stick it into the console. Something. Oh crap... it's off the RADAR, what happened?
If I wanted an Apple product, I'd buy one. Google copies Bing because of fear. MS copies Apple because of fear. Apple copies everything, adds style, lockdowns, and charges more.
Apple is Apple. Fine; but the disturbing trend of fear-based "innovation" doesn't serve customers. I like the traditional Windows, and the fact that anybody with $2k can build a devbox, throw their stuff on the 'net with a web site and see if anybody likes it.
Yeah. You could get virused; but you're not restricted to what only the gatekeepers allow; and some of the stuff that gatekeepers keep out is where the REAL INNOVATION happens.
Anyway. Enough rant. If I wanted an Apple product I'd buy one. I won't buy MS wannabe stuff.
Take over the pejorative and use it as a badge of honor. It's a proven technique. Hence, self described queers marching down the street, and The Pirate Party.
A cashless society is hell because you can be stripped of all your purchasing power by TPTB (The powers that be) with a mouse-click. Cash, be it paper or coin, can get you by on some level. It's not wise to preserve a huge chunk of your assets that way; but at least you can get through the emergency. It doesn't have to be oppressive government doing it to you either. It can be mere technical glitches.
One of the things they tell you to do is keep some cash for emergencies. When push comes to shove, cash "just works".
As for coins, that's a separate issue. I understand that some people don't like coins. Fine, don't use them. BTW, although it's not as big a deal as the silver-sandwitch transition, there's now some arbitrage in our coinage. Older pennies are worth more than face. Nickels are worth about face now. They were worth almost $0.07 before commodities pulled back. I left this out in my previous post; but a 10X value increase in the coinage would save us all some money. The cost of minting would suddenly become much less than face. The mint would stop losing money on pennies and nickels. It's a tiny slice of the deficit problem; but every little bit helps. It's also a lot nicer than minting steel pennies which is the current proposed solution.
BTW, I use a mix of cash, credit and coin. Unfortunately quarters are the only useful coin at these low values. Everything else has to be deposited back or sold as bullion (note, melting is currently illegal). BTW, keep an eye on your dimes. Because they are tricky to spot, it is said that roughly 1 in 1000 dimes in circulation are 90% silver. When counting about 600 dimes to return to the bank last year, I got lucky and found a 1952.
I only wish I had been thinking ahead about this when I was a kid. Even in the 70s we routinely wrapped 90% silver quarters and returned them to the bank. They were worth $8.00 last time I checked.
Slashdot Mirror
Remove any student who is constantly disrupting class
When I went to school, we had this thing called detention. You are separated with the other troublemakers in a room where you just do assignments with a teacher watching you. Some students were always in detention. If you had a constant disrupter they'd presumeably be doing all their work in detention without any interactive instruction. The social isolation of that was enough to make most people try to avoid it. What happens if you talk out or otherwise disrupt the detention room? Suspension I suppose. Expulsion is an even more serious process, and probably got you into a military-style "reform school". There was one kid in our neighborhood who got a year of that. He was lucky the cops didn't shoot him. That was an exception though. Our neighborhood was generally "nice". If 20, 30 or even 40% of the kids were like that, then well... maybe we end up with a lot of kids drilling in uniforms behind barbed wire in conjunction with their studies. Anyway, I digress. There are already procedures for dealing with troublemakers.
LOL, I wasn't going to make the shower joke.
While AFK I had time to reflect more on "early adopters". Right now, at this point in history, the early adopters seem to be winning. By winning I mean that if you are the type who picks up new tech, you learn more, get better jobs, end up with 5 years experience in 2 year old technologies required to get the job, etc.
I look at that and think, "I should become an early adopter". The problem with that is that you can't fake it.
Now, this isn't to say I dislike change. It's to say I dislike change for change's sake. For example, when I was in school e-mail was just becoming widely available to students. This was fascinating to me. I could (and did) correspond with students and professors at other universities all over the country, and even the world. This, and the Internet in general were a change that I embraced and delighted in fully. I look back on that and I think it's because I regarded a world where people could communicate freely as being better than one where they couldn't as opposed to meerly different
In fact, at the time I had access to Sun workstations with XWindows. A new Windows machine appeared in one of the other labs. I tried it, and it took 3 minutes just to boot. In retrospect, they had probably attempted to install on a machine with insufficient hardware; but that was my first impression of Windows. I wondered why anybody would want to use it.
When I was out of school though I was forced to buy computing on an underemployed budget. I made less than $10k my first year out of school! I was busted back to connecting to networks through BBSs with a 286 that I picked up from a school for $115. I found out about the sale through a print classified ad. It all seems so quaint now. Somewhere along the line I developed a keen sense not only for what it meant to work under tight economic constraints; but what it meant to be a "common" person as opposed to the world of "privelege" I experienced at the university.
That's at least part of the reason I cling to technologies that are popular with the uneducated masses, as opposed to what's current with other tech-savvy people. I felt concerned that if I started doing everything in Linux (later Mac) I would lose touch with what other people experienced. Flash forward to today, and the idea of buying a hot new device for $600 every year is not exactly working class either. I'm also back to being concerned about my economic circumstances. Priorities. I want to keep my 6 year old Lenovo running as long as possible. What a fine machine it is... all too often destroyed by web devs who think it's a good idea to display dozens of full sized images and all the forum replies on a single page. Can you say "swap"? I think it could handle another stick of RAM; but dammit, I shouldn't have to buy one.
Anyway, Chrome frame sounds like an interesting idea. It's obviously a short-term fix though. We live "in interesting times". When the Lonovo dies I'm not sure which direction I'll go in...
Oh, I've only touched on a few themes here. The subject of change, the dynamic of forced vs. voluntary change, technology's place in society, etc... this could blow up into a much larger essay or even a book. A book based on a Slashdot thread... yay! Not enough hours. That's my last word on this particular thread; but I'm still a regular poster here (after 13 years!), so you'll see me around and I'll mark you as a friend.
It wasn't meant as an insult, it's just I never heard of a programmer that uses Internet Explorer as their default, and surely not as their only browser. And any aspiring programmer surely would JUMP on the opportunity to have a "better, cleaner, faster" viewer of the web, by using a modern browser, when it's just a click and a download away. It's just I kind of associate curiosity and early adoption with the whole coder thing.
Thank-your for an intelligent reply that turned down the volume on argument. It's pleasant and all too rare. That said, let me just focus on the one point emphasized above, as it's the most interesting one to me and I can fit in the reply while my friend is showering before we go out to dinner.
Yes, I realiize I might be an anomoly in this regard. FWIW, I'm 44 years old. That might have something to do with it. When smartphones came on the market, my first reaction was "I already have a prescription. I don't want to make my eyes any worse".
I don't see myself as a techno Luddite though. Rather the opposite, I see myself as a connoiseur and a critic. My priorties are different than those of many others. I like IE because it has an interface that I'm used to. Take tabbed browsing, for example. Hate it. Why? Not because it's new; but because it's an old thing that's been displaced into a new space where it doesn't belong. I already have what ammounts to "tabbing" for all my applications--not just the browser. It's called the task bar. I'm used to doing this for everything from DOS windows to text files, and switching between one thing or another regardless of what the application is. Tabbed browsing is just a nuisance because I have a deeply ingrained pattern that says, "when you want to get away from that page, click the X". Now when you do that in Chrome which, encourages you to use tabs... you lose all your pages. I have to slow down and think when I'm in Chrome. Maybe this is more expensive when you're middle aged.
Early adoption? I understand that many associate that with technical people; but on the flip side you have guys like RMS who will probably give up EMACS when you pry it from his cold dead fingers. Strangely, I'm the philosophical opposite of RMS in a lot of ways; but oh crap... my friend showers fast, and I need to shower too...
Anyway, thanks again for being an interesting correspondant; and maybe I'll find the time to bang out some more thoughts later...
1. #! (Shebang). Google uses it for some AJAX purpose. I've had people post links with shebangs in them, thinking it would take me to a page. Instead, it took me to the homepage becasue IE is using # for its intended purpose--to take you to a subsection within a page. Since there is no ! section, it just takes you to the base URL. AFAIK, Google is out of compliance, didn't run this by any kind of standards committee, and just hacked it in. Feel free to correct me on that if I'm wrong.
2. I don't know what you mean by "no programmer lost on me". "shit browser" is a subjective term. Becoming a platform bigot is facile. Writing cross-platform code is what real programmers do. I couldn't live with myself as a programmer if I lost 50% of potential users because my code was insufficiently portable. One of the biggest inspirations for me was opening up the libjpeg sources and seeing that it was possible (in C!) to write code that not only ran on *NIX and Windows, but obscure systems like Amigas, and various RISC archs I'd never heard of. Ironicly, the web is supposed to be platform neutral, and it is now, IMHO, less platform neutral in practice than C which is supposed to be just one step above assembly.
3. Competition is good. One less competitor is not good, especially when it created an ecosystem where anybody could write applications without having to put them in the Jerk Store.
Why yes, yes it is. First, it's bad because the web is so sadly broken that you actually have to think about browser compatability. Next, it's bad because MS is losing the browser war and doesn't even realize it. The fact this is MS's fault is beside the point. A majority of people on Slashdot hate MS for breaking web standards, but they don't call out other people for doing the same thing. Yes, MS was bad at standards compliance to say the least; but never had the gaul to break something as fundamental as URLs! Google does this shebang travesty, and... where is the outcry?
Finally, it's bad because we're dividing the web into two worlds. The "your father's web" and "we're too kewl for IE" worlds. I like my Oldsmobile. It's comfortable. Yeah, I can pretend to be kewl, and fire up Chrome to make your stupid site work; but most of the time I don't want to.
Yeah, I know a lot of people on Slashdot have been wanting MS to go down in flames. There's a saying where I'm from: Watch out what you ask for. You might get it.
I fear the community will have to experience a web without MS being a major player before they realize what this means.
Really though, I just wish IE would fix their scripting engine. That seems to be the biggest problem. There's a broker site I use. They're not known for playing the "kewl" game, and yet IE has become unreliable there. You may or may not get a listing of all strike prices on options if you ask for it. It's as if a variable has been unitialized or something. Do it in Chrome, and it just works.
war is peace and slavery is freedom
And selfishness is sharing.
No, it's not OK to pirate GPL'd works. You forget. Some pigs are more equal than others.
What do fake users gain by Like-ing a fake business page?
If by "fake user", you mean "the person behind the fake account", then there could be any number of reasons. First, they might not know the business is fake. In that case, they could just be liking *everything*, hoping that something good will come of that. There's no penalty for liking something other than your time, which is meaningless if they're doing this with bots and some kind of intelligent filter. The upside is that they might get free offers or some other benefit.
This is the essence of speculation.
If they know the business is fake, it's still speculation. Perhaps they are hoping to gain access to a criminal syndicate, or insight into other scams on FB. Maybe they are even researchers!
An alternative interpretation of your question is that you really do mean "fake user" in the sense of the account itself, not the person behind it. AFAIK, user accounts don't just start randomly liking things; but if they did then perhaps there might be a reason for that. Maybe FB will gain self awareness. Time to loot the vending machines again.
This is the 2nd time I've seen a link to that site, and I get a kick out of the fact that it doesn't work right in IE8.
Testing, motherfuckers!
I must admit that I hardly ever think of Wikipedia's appearance
See that? That's called good design.
I'm looting the vending machines at work as soon as my shift ends
Sigh... we just finished cleaning up from yesterday. The European central bank says something. Loot the vending machines. The Fed says something. Loot the vending machines. Your team loses. Loot the vending machines. Your team wins. Loot the vending machines. Some whack job on the radio says the world is ending. You guessed it. Loot the vending machines. I'm beginning to think that you guys will use any excue just to... what? They're looting the vending machines again? What is it this time? Somebody installed Linux on the desktop? Holy crap. Fuck posting on Slashdot. I'm going to LOOT THE VENDING MACHINE.
You're right. If you can't localize the bug to a source file, then you need bugs.txt as the other poster mentioned. Sometimes you can localize it to a file, but not a function. I put those at the top of the file.
I haven't even seen Metro, and I've heard nothing but complaints about it.
Metro sounds like a... wait for it... train wreck.
//TODO -- fix fix this
grep TODO *.c
This is enough for the cathedral, which doesn't even have source control. Anything sold in the bazaar should have source control and some kind of bug tracking. Just pick whatever integrates well with the repository. Free sites will probably have a "most popular" bug tracking or integrated tracking. Just use it. A company will impose something. Use that, duh!
Add to this the hidden cost of maintaining the vacuum (presumably by constantly pumping air particles out of thousands upon thousands of miles of vacuum tube)
Apparently, the author hasn't heard of airlocks. I just skimmed the article. This was enough to make me not want to read it in detail.
Did you even read the paper?
Almost nobody on either side reads the papers. There are a handfull of people in the world qualified and dedicated to the issue. For everybody else it really is nothing more than "my priest is better than yours".
99.9% of the people you meet who affirm AGW are just doing so because of herd mentality. Ditto for deniers.
FWIW, I myself am skeptical of AGW; but I'm also cognizant of the fact that my beliefs prove NOTHING. I'm not as strongly opinionated as some people. I'm open to the idea of AGW; I'm just not convinced. Just as in religion though, labeling oneself as an atheist has more appeal than being an agnostic. Attending GOP functions and lambasting liberal-leaning scientists funded by grant money from Democratic old money is politic. What you think when quietly reflecting over a cup of coffee is closer to the truth; but nobody knows it except you. Raise your hand if you ever sat in chruch wondering if God even exists.
Anyway, of course nobody reads the paper. Even most of the priests don't read the paper. They just recite the liturgy.
It would be like the All Drug Olypmics
Wikipedia supports both points of view. It's one of those common cases where a single term is used to mean several things. A Conservative might use the phrase to argue for dissolving Federal authority and passing control to the States, and then in turn to local authorities. This is the definition to which I refer. A Libertarian might level the epithet at a wide range of government activity, regardless of the size of the authority, as you describe.
I think you've nailed down an important aspect of what ails us. It's a country of incumbents. It's not just incumbent politicians; but incumbent businesses and incumbent unions. They have learned to grab government and swing it like a club against their would-be challengers.
It's actually a critique of the Big Government meme. I think most people got that.
I have to ask myself what happened to the pioneering entrepreneurial spirit that made America into the most prosperous country in the world
Hard to say, although the problem is not Big Government, although it's somewhat of a factor. Most of the shit that businesses get comes from Small Government. You will spend a lot more time wrestling with local restrictions than the Feds. The Fed stuff is usually pretty cut and dry. State is harder, and cities can be truly obnoxious. In general, the smaller the government entity the more of a hassle it is to deal with, which is why I always find the complaints about Big Government ironic.
By the time you drill down to condo associations, it's truly a nightmare.
In general, the smaller the institution, the worse it is. The smallest government institution in our lives is marriage. It drives you crazy, and 50% of the time it ends in divorce. If the Federal Government tried to do half the things your spouse does, there'd be a revolution next Tuesday.
LOL, obviously no. I'm also reminded of all the graphical programming languages. Sooner or later you end up with textboxes in those languages. It's text that got blown to smithereens, scattered all over, and surrounded by pretty colors. It's actually harder to look at than a line of text. Saying that CLI should go away is like saying that English should be replaced with something based on Ikea furniture assembly instructions. No more simple English for pilots. They'll transmit a picture of an airplane angled towards an iconic cloud with lightning coming out of it, and maybe a number underneath. You'll figure out that you're supposed to come to a new heading to avoid weather. Or descend? Or that the cloud server is out again and you're on your own. Or that you're supposed to put a drop of glue on that little dowel and stick it into the console. Something. Oh crap... it's off the RADAR, what happened?
If I wanted an Apple product, I'd buy one. Google copies Bing because of fear. MS copies Apple because of fear. Apple copies everything, adds style, lockdowns, and charges more.
Apple is Apple. Fine; but the disturbing trend of fear-based "innovation" doesn't serve customers. I like the traditional Windows, and the fact that anybody with $2k can build a devbox, throw their stuff on the 'net with a web site and see if anybody likes it.
Yeah. You could get virused; but you're not restricted to what only the gatekeepers allow; and some of the stuff that gatekeepers keep out is where the REAL INNOVATION happens.
Anyway. Enough rant. If I wanted an Apple product I'd buy one. I won't buy MS wannabe stuff.
Take over the pejorative and use it as a badge of honor. It's a proven technique. Hence, self described queers marching down the street, and The Pirate Party.
A cashless society is hell because you can be stripped of all your purchasing power by TPTB (The powers that be) with a mouse-click. Cash, be it paper or coin, can get you by on some level. It's not wise to preserve a huge chunk of your assets that way; but at least you can get through the emergency. It doesn't have to be oppressive government doing it to you either. It can be mere technical glitches.
One of the things they tell you to do is keep some cash for emergencies. When push comes to shove, cash "just works".
As for coins, that's a separate issue. I understand that some people don't like coins. Fine, don't use them. BTW, although it's not as big a deal as the silver-sandwitch transition, there's now some arbitrage in our coinage. Older pennies are worth more than face. Nickels are worth about face now. They were worth almost $0.07 before commodities pulled back. I left this out in my previous post; but a 10X value increase in the coinage would save us all some money. The cost of minting would suddenly become much less than face. The mint would stop losing money on pennies and nickels. It's a tiny slice of the deficit problem; but every little bit helps. It's also a lot nicer than minting steel pennies which is the current proposed solution.
BTW, I use a mix of cash, credit and coin. Unfortunately quarters are the only useful coin at these low values. Everything else has to be deposited back or sold as bullion (note, melting is currently illegal). BTW, keep an eye on your dimes. Because they are tricky to spot, it is said that roughly 1 in 1000 dimes in circulation are 90% silver. When counting about 600 dimes to return to the bank last year, I got lucky and found a 1952.
I only wish I had been thinking ahead about this when I was a kid. Even in the 70s we routinely wrapped 90% silver quarters and returned them to the bank. They were worth $8.00 last time I checked.