I've recently started thinking about building a PVR, but have a question about longevity. Supposedly the NTSC cut-off is 2006, and it's HTDV-only from then on. I have no doubt that the 2006 date will be extended. But at the same time, I'm sure that the FCC is chomping at the bit for the revenue that can be gained by auctioning off the old VHF and UHF spectrum. Also, I have no doubt that some folks at the top would like to GIVE away the old spectrum.
So maybe not 2006, but I'm sure UHF/VHF days are numbered. At the same time, I can't get decent broadcast in my area, so the one decent HDTV tuner just won't work for me.
So anyone's best guess on how long before an NTSC PVR is rendered obsolete by VHF/UHF->HDTV migration?
You and your peers playing FPS CTF or Rabbit Hunt is one thing - because I doubt people of your age would be playing real-life CTF or tag, anyway.
I was more thinking/fearing the idea of kids who *should* be outside playing real-life CTF, hide'n'seek, and tag - instead inside playing the very same games on networked computers, and turning into couch potatoes as they do. My pet peeve about battery-powered ride-ons for kids is in the same vein. IMHO, vehicles for kids should be kid-powered. Play has that parents' hidden agenda of exercise, good health, and with some proper supervision, good socialization.
Remember when the graphics mantra was, "Toy Story in realtime on a graphics card?" Did anyone notice when we passed that landmark? I won't even get into the, "There's more to games than graphics quality and speed," since others are covering that area so well.
Years back, I read an article about what happens as you model people better. Once you get to the threshold of recognition, simulated people become "cute." For the most part, improve the simulation, and they get cuter. Then as you get more realistic, you reach a threshold, and they're no longer cute, they're *wrong*, and repulsive. According to the article, the brain has a line between "art" and "real" and as long as you're on the art side you're OK. But once you cross to the real side, you'd better *be* real, or else.
This gap between art and reality forms a chasm that may have to be crossed in the laboratory, because in-chasm games may not be marketable. (Hey, how about a "zombie" single-player FPS game? Zombies are *supposed* to look "wrong", and you can't see yourself in first-person.) Plus, why bother? I predict a resurgence in classic animation in a few years, once the novelty of today's 3D wears off and as we approach the chasm.
One of my pet fantasies as graphics get more realistic is to get into young kids' games. You know, things like "tag", "hide and seek" - the things I really did. Disgusting idea really, worse than battery-powered kid's vehicles. Even worse, I'll bet such a game would sell. I think I'd cry all the way to the bank. I'm happy I don't have time to even try such a thing.
There is the usual disclaimer, Your Mileage May Vary.
You have never had an IE crash. I have no doubt your computer has never caught a sickness through IE, either. Nor would I be surprised to hear that you tried Firefox, and had all sorts of problems.
Good for you.
Actually, it sounds like this guy's father might be in the same boat as you, because he has been happy with IE. I wouldn't extrapolate your luck to the general population, though. At this point, and to keep the arguments reasonably logical, I won't even say anything about statistical likelihood of any given person having better luck with IE or Firefox.
I'll simply say that for you and some others, IE is just fine, and for others, it isn't. For others the opposite is true. Sometimes you just have to try it out for yourself.
To put it in other words, I'm reasonably happy with my 2nd-hand Ford Taurus. I think YOU should buy one too, because mine fits my needs and works well for me.
But isn't returning it to the store better than doing nothing? Maybe Artisan listens to the stores, even if they don't listen to customers.
Ya gotta start somewhere, and IMHO simply pirating doesn't send a precision message.
Maybe if I get one of these bum DVDs I'll try a different tactic - send it to one of my senators - Leahy (D, Vt) one of those who needs to get the message.
If you don't hit them in the sales, they'll NEVER hear your message. If you keep the DVD and gripe online, they won't HEAR your message quite as clearly as if you return it. True, they will see reduced revenue as Slashdotters stay away from the DVD, but it won't be quite as direct.
>There is no way to create a large enough agency to not only collect but also analyze the data that would be collected.
This presumes you're concerned about *accuracy*. I suggest that any agency that tries to do this will be more concerned about "apparent effectiveness" and continued funding than they will be about mere accuracy. Just over 3 years later, and there hasn't been another 9/11, so by some measures this can be counted as "success" that that initiatives like TSA, DHS and the Patriot Act are working. By that same token, if there is another incident, it could be taken that TSA, DHS and the Patriot Act were the right steps, but didn't go far enough.
Whether there is *any* correlation between the fact that there hasn't been another 9/11 and the TSA, DHS and Patriot Act is another matter entirely. Have these pieces of legislation worked, was the Afghanistan invasion that disruptive, has the focus moved overseas, or have we just been lucky?
The fact is, if widespread surveillance generates enough positives to drive agency activity, (ie: identify some people to detain and question, and some of those turn out to be breaking some law or other) it will be considered a "success." As no incidents happen, it will be considered more successful. If an incident happens, it will be considered underfunded.
There have been some number of publicly acknowledged terror activities foild, notably the Dirty Bomber, and presumably there are others undisclosed. It would be interesting to rate each piece of anti-terror legislation on its effectiveness: How many real terror plots were stopped? (good) How many real terror plots were missed? (bad) How many legitimate activities were impaired? (bad) This should be able to be evaluated by ordinary scientific and statistical methods. Of course that assums such knowledge is desired.
Don't know that I can give references either, but I have heard the same thing. I'll just clarify it a little...
Some pieces of legislation were delivered from the committee to the Congressional offices less than an hour before the scheduled votes. It's not that someone held a gun to their heads and said, "Don't read this, but vote on it!" It's just that delivery was arranged so that there was no time to read it.
I seem to recall that some very high-profile, "can't vote no without a darned good reason," legislation was passed this way. But at the moment, that factoid is fuzzier than the original topic.
My usual news sources are NPR and BBC, though I've been told that both are flaming liberal puppets, and I should be using Fox News as a more balanced source.
I frequently bounce between email and web. With Mozilla I've got just 1 copy of the runtime in memory. If things were repackaged to separate common runtime components, Firefox and Thunderbird could, too. But right now, they both drag the runtime into memory.
>all that matters in the end is whether you can do the work.
No. All that matters in the end is that you can convince a potential employer that you can do the work. You do have some alternate paths to getting a job besides the classic recruiter campus inteview, I won't deny that. But as the job market gets tighter, even with those alternatives, you'll *still* have to explain away a low GPA + a major-field F, and your alternative connection will have to get that past the personnel department.
I won't say it makes things impossible, just harder. Of course after a while, flunking DJB's class will become "legend" and then a F there will be a plus for getting a job, let alone a passing grade.
>1. Prof says 'I'll fail you if you don't perform a near-impossible test.' >2. Student says 'OK.'
Nope.
Student weighs factors, realizes that if he takes the test, he'll probably fail the course. FAILING THE COURSE MEANS NO CREDIT HOURS, AND LOSS OF THAT TIME TO TAKE A DIFFERENT COURSE. Therefore, with regret, he takes his second choice for that slot.
Yes, Mr. Recruiter. I got an F in a course in my chosen major, but it was in an *impossible* course. Actually, between the presence of that F in the major field, and what it did to his GPA, he probably won't even get to see the recruiters he most wanted to see. He would have been weeded out before then.
The learning is great, sure. The impossible grade is serving absolutely nobody and nothing except DJB's ego.
Never knew there were sequels to Great Machine. I had borrowed it, and hadn't really remembered the author's name, until looking it up for the grandparent post. I did enjoy it, though mostly for the concepts. Some of the characters were a bit overdone.
As for the Dune stuff, they just invoked the Really Smart People clause in the name of avoiding thinking machines. At the same time, they didn't really do that much to make them interesting. For contrast in a short story, Isaac Asimov introduced a person/profession called a "Mnemonic" in a short story. Partly training, partly breeding, (and today's parlance he probably would have used genetic engineering) these people soaked in the knowledge, counting on free association and such for useful information to come out when needed. The person/profession was new, and not fully explored as of the time of the story. The idea was that a machine couldn't know what it knew - in other words, stored information was just bits - but a person could.
On the interesting side, these people thus trained would up being minux-6-sigma social incompetents as a side effect of their breeding/training. It lent an interesting flavor - what good is it to know so much if nobody wants to listen to you when you "do your job?"
And of course, if we're going to talk about computing with human elements, how can we leave out the Drummers, from "The Diamond Age."
Brings to mind the book, "Souls in the New Machine" by Sean McMullen. (http://www.sfsite.com/08a/soul62.htm) Don't want to say more without SPOILERS, but it envisions a computer in the future where processing elements are slaves, and there's a darned good reason why it's not electronic.
Also on the fringe, one story from "Tales of the Flying Mountains" by Poul Anderson. The computering technology on a warship is TEMM - Thermionic Emission Micro Miniaturized, selected for its radiation hardness. It turns out that when you microminiaturize, you don't even need thermionic emission. Take a look at FEDs - Field Emission Devices.
I looked into gschem a few years back, and haven't had time, since. At the time, it didn't have what it took for VLSI schematic capture, since it really didn't work well with circuit hierarchy. It really seems to be oriented toward schematic capture for printed circuit boards.
On the other hand, on any given design I'll have many layers of hierarchy, circuits in circuits in circuits, etc. I need the ability to take any arbitrary circuit and create a symbol for it, so it can be used in another circuit. Further, I'd really like to parameterize some of those symbols, so I can tell an inverter or nand gate what the device sizes of the FETs inside will be. I mentioned this type of thing on the list at the time, and though they were interested in the VLSI problem, they were more focused on PCBs.
I can accept the VLSI design is a very small market, and that PCB is an appropriate focus. But looking at the page, I see that they may well support hierarchy.
Shy of emerging gschem (and dependencies) to try it out has anyone used it with hierarchical designs, and can comment? (anything about translators for mainstream tools?)
Even funnier will be the idea of a battle over an orbital position. ie: nothing at all. This isn't quite as funny as it sounds, when you consider Lagrange points. The Lagrange points are mathematical fictions, but can be nifty places indeed for many purposes, possibly worth fighting over.
For the obligatory science fiction reference, read Poul Anderson's "Tales of the Flying Mountains," a series of short stories framed in the setting of the first interstellar flight. The officers are trying to build their history to help educate their young and prevent the culture loss that seems to plague just about every "generation ship" in fiction. One story is about some orbital shenanigans around the Trojan asteroids. To say any more would be a spoiler.
We've made the decision for my wife to stay at home with the kids.
It hurts, but we consider it to be worth it.
I agree with your point. If I were wearing a tinfoil hat, I would think that the government LIKES two-income households. Instead of one taxpayer, it gives them 3 - both parents and the day care provider.
My wife has subbed, I know full-time teachers. Good education requires good support in the home. If the kids come to school preconditioned with a bad attitude, there's only so much even an excellent teacher can do to change that.
Personally, I believe a large part of this is that we have adopted Day Care as "the standard model" for the family in this country, and there's a larger-than-ever number of single-parent households. I won't say that single-parents can't do a good job raising kids. Nor will I say that you can't raise good kids where both parents work. And finally, I won't say that a full-time stay-at-home Mom (or Dad) is a guarantee of raising good kids.
But IMHO, it's a matter of statistics. Being a parent is HARDER if there's just one of you. Imbuing kids with proper values is HARDER if you have surrendered control of your child to the low-cost day care provider for the work day. (Actually, that "low-cost" may be part of the problem.) Not that these things can't be done, but they're HARDER.
As long as you have more capable people taking on these extra challenges, things work. But once it becomes the general model for society, things start breaking down. Schools are the canaries for this class of problem.
BTW, I won't disagree that "more money != better public education," but I disagree with the corollary that many like to make, that better public education doesn't need more money. More money might be part of the solution, but only part. IMHO the more important part is better parenting.
I'm not sure I really want "liberal values." I want "I'm hurting nobody, short or long term, what I do is NONE of your business!"
I tend to differ with Libertarians as Trepidity says, but I have another difference. From what I've heard from Libertarians, they don't think much of environmentalism - it's your property and you can decide what to do with it. I believe in the long term you pass on that property, and if you've just turned it into a gaping hole in the ground or a toxic swill, you've just decreased its long-term value. Mineral rights are an issue, but with this I'm talking more about suitability for general use. (like residence or business)
Don't forget that today's codemonkey from India is tomorrow's experienced programmer. But I agree with what you say about Open Source projects. In some ways, it allows you to leapfrog past "corporate noise" portions of early programmer experience.
Thank you for listing the reasons simply and succintly. There has been a growing "Why do you keep senselessly bashing Microsoft?" voice on Slashdot, lately. Your post highlights that much (though I can grant not all) of the Microsoft bashing is NOT senseless, and IS based on their past corporate conduct.
You know, we think of early 20's as being a "perfect" physical age, but what about mental age? I know that physicists and mathmaticians peak in their 20's, and can believe that physically the brain is on the slow downhill slope from then. But somehow I'd like to believe that I've learned something from the last 20+ years, and that while the physical substrate of my brain may be less capable, I've made better use of what's there, learned valuable life lessons. So I'd like to think my peak mental age, in some respects, still may not be here, yet.
So imagine a 20's physical brain with longer life experience. But is an essential part of that life experience coping with your own diminution and mortality - your limitations? If someone hit their mid-20's and stopped aging, would they acquire the same sorts of wisdom? Might it be best to get into your 60's (or later) and then get the clock turned back?
Slashdot Mirror
I've recently started thinking about building a PVR, but have a question about longevity. Supposedly the NTSC cut-off is 2006, and it's HTDV-only from then on. I have no doubt that the 2006 date will be extended. But at the same time, I'm sure that the FCC is chomping at the bit for the revenue that can be gained by auctioning off the old VHF and UHF spectrum. Also, I have no doubt that some folks at the top would like to GIVE away the old spectrum.
So maybe not 2006, but I'm sure UHF/VHF days are numbered. At the same time, I can't get decent broadcast in my area, so the one decent HDTV tuner just won't work for me.
So anyone's best guess on how long before an NTSC PVR is rendered obsolete by VHF/UHF->HDTV migration?
You and your peers playing FPS CTF or Rabbit Hunt is one thing - because I doubt people of your age would be playing real-life CTF or tag, anyway.
I was more thinking/fearing the idea of kids who *should* be outside playing real-life CTF, hide'n'seek, and tag - instead inside playing the very same games on networked computers, and turning into couch potatoes as they do. My pet peeve about battery-powered ride-ons for kids is in the same vein. IMHO, vehicles for kids should be kid-powered. Play has that parents' hidden agenda of exercise, good health, and with some proper supervision, good socialization.
That was the same article I read.
Remember when the graphics mantra was, "Toy Story in realtime on a graphics card?" Did anyone notice when we passed that landmark? I won't even get into the, "There's more to games than graphics quality and speed," since others are covering that area so well.
Years back, I read an article about what happens as you model people better. Once you get to the threshold of recognition, simulated people become "cute." For the most part, improve the simulation, and they get cuter. Then as you get more realistic, you reach a threshold, and they're no longer cute, they're *wrong*, and repulsive. According to the article, the brain has a line between "art" and "real" and as long as you're on the art side you're OK. But once you cross to the real side, you'd better *be* real, or else.
This gap between art and reality forms a chasm that may have to be crossed in the laboratory, because in-chasm games may not be marketable. (Hey, how about a "zombie" single-player FPS game? Zombies are *supposed* to look "wrong", and you can't see yourself in first-person.) Plus, why bother? I predict a resurgence in classic animation in a few years, once the novelty of today's 3D wears off and as we approach the chasm.
One of my pet fantasies as graphics get more realistic is to get into young kids' games. You know, things like "tag", "hide and seek" - the things I really did. Disgusting idea really, worse than battery-powered kid's vehicles. Even worse, I'll bet such a game would sell. I think I'd cry all the way to the bank. I'm happy I don't have time to even try such a thing.
There is the usual disclaimer, Your Mileage May Vary.
You have never had an IE crash. I have no doubt your computer has never caught a sickness through IE, either. Nor would I be surprised to hear that you tried Firefox, and had all sorts of problems.
Good for you.
Actually, it sounds like this guy's father might be in the same boat as you, because he has been happy with IE. I wouldn't extrapolate your luck to the general population, though. At this point, and to keep the arguments reasonably logical, I won't even say anything about statistical likelihood of any given person having better luck with IE or Firefox.
I'll simply say that for you and some others, IE is just fine, and for others, it isn't. For others the opposite is true. Sometimes you just have to try it out for yourself.
To put it in other words, I'm reasonably happy with my 2nd-hand Ford Taurus. I think YOU should buy one too, because mine fits my needs and works well for me.
But isn't returning it to the store better than doing nothing? Maybe Artisan listens to the stores, even if they don't listen to customers.
Ya gotta start somewhere, and IMHO simply pirating doesn't send a precision message.
Maybe if I get one of these bum DVDs I'll try a different tactic - send it to one of my senators - Leahy (D, Vt) one of those who needs to get the message.
in the ONLY language they understand - revenue!
Return the DVD to the store for a refund.
If you don't hit them in the sales, they'll NEVER hear your message. If you keep the DVD and gripe online, they won't HEAR your message quite as clearly as if you return it. True, they will see reduced revenue as Slashdotters stay away from the DVD, but it won't be quite as direct.
>There is no way to create a large enough agency to not only collect but also analyze the data that would be collected.
This presumes you're concerned about *accuracy*. I suggest that any agency that tries to do this will be more concerned about "apparent effectiveness" and continued funding than they will be about mere accuracy. Just over 3 years later, and there hasn't been another 9/11, so by some measures this can be counted as "success" that that initiatives like TSA, DHS and the Patriot Act are working. By that same token, if there is another incident, it could be taken that TSA, DHS and the Patriot Act were the right steps, but didn't go far enough.
Whether there is *any* correlation between the fact that there hasn't been another 9/11 and the TSA, DHS and Patriot Act is another matter entirely. Have these pieces of legislation worked, was the Afghanistan invasion that disruptive, has the focus moved overseas, or have we just been lucky?
The fact is, if widespread surveillance generates enough positives to drive agency activity, (ie: identify some people to detain and question, and some of those turn out to be breaking some law or other) it will be considered a "success." As no incidents happen, it will be considered more successful. If an incident happens, it will be considered underfunded.
There have been some number of publicly acknowledged terror activities foild, notably the Dirty Bomber, and presumably there are others undisclosed. It would be interesting to rate each piece of anti-terror legislation on its effectiveness:
How many real terror plots were stopped? (good)
How many real terror plots were missed? (bad)
How many legitimate activities were impaired? (bad)
This should be able to be evaluated by ordinary scientific and statistical methods. Of course that assums such knowledge is desired.
Don't know that I can give references either, but I have heard the same thing. I'll just clarify it a little...
Some pieces of legislation were delivered from the committee to the Congressional offices less than an hour before the scheduled votes. It's not that someone held a gun to their heads and said, "Don't read this, but vote on it!" It's just that delivery was arranged so that there was no time to read it.
I seem to recall that some very high-profile, "can't vote no without a darned good reason," legislation was passed this way. But at the moment, that factoid is fuzzier than the original topic.
My usual news sources are NPR and BBC, though I've been told that both are flaming liberal puppets, and I should be using Fox News as a more balanced source.
Memory footprint?
I frequently bounce between email and web. With Mozilla I've got just 1 copy of the runtime in memory. If things were repackaged to separate common runtime components, Firefox and Thunderbird could, too. But right now, they both drag the runtime into memory.
>all that matters in the end is whether you can do the work.
No. All that matters in the end is that you can convince a potential employer that you can do the work. You do have some alternate paths to getting a job besides the classic recruiter campus inteview, I won't deny that. But as the job market gets tighter, even with those alternatives, you'll *still* have to explain away a low GPA + a major-field F, and your alternative connection will have to get that past the personnel department.
I won't say it makes things impossible, just harder. Of course after a while, flunking DJB's class will become "legend" and then a F there will be a plus for getting a job, let alone a passing grade.
>1. Prof says 'I'll fail you if you don't perform a near-impossible test.'
>2. Student says 'OK.'
Nope.
Student weighs factors, realizes that if he takes the test, he'll probably fail the course. FAILING THE COURSE MEANS NO CREDIT HOURS, AND LOSS OF THAT TIME TO TAKE A DIFFERENT COURSE. Therefore, with regret, he takes his second choice for that slot.
Yes, Mr. Recruiter. I got an F in a course in my chosen major, but it was in an *impossible* course. Actually, between the presence of that F in the major field, and what it did to his GPA, he probably won't even get to see the recruiters he most wanted to see. He would have been weeded out before then.
The learning is great, sure. The impossible grade is serving absolutely nobody and nothing except DJB's ego.
Never knew there were sequels to Great Machine. I had borrowed it, and hadn't really remembered the author's name, until looking it up for the grandparent post. I did enjoy it, though mostly for the concepts. Some of the characters were a bit overdone.
As for the Dune stuff, they just invoked the Really Smart People clause in the name of avoiding thinking machines. At the same time, they didn't really do that much to make them interesting. For contrast in a short story, Isaac Asimov introduced a person/profession called a "Mnemonic" in a short story. Partly training, partly breeding, (and today's parlance he probably would have used genetic engineering) these people soaked in the knowledge, counting on free association and such for useful information to come out when needed. The person/profession was new, and not fully explored as of the time of the story. The idea was that a machine couldn't know what it knew - in other words, stored information was just bits - but a person could.
On the interesting side, these people thus trained would up being minux-6-sigma social incompetents as a side effect of their breeding/training. It lent an interesting flavor - what good is it to know so much if nobody wants to listen to you when you "do your job?"
And of course, if we're going to talk about computing with human elements, how can we leave out the Drummers, from "The Diamond Age."
Brings to mind the book, "Souls in the New Machine" by Sean McMullen. (http://www.sfsite.com/08a/soul62.htm) Don't want to say more without SPOILERS, but it envisions a computer in the future where processing elements are slaves, and there's a darned good reason why it's not electronic.
Also on the fringe, one story from "Tales of the Flying Mountains" by Poul Anderson. The computering technology on a warship is TEMM - Thermionic Emission Micro Miniaturized, selected for its radiation hardness. It turns out that when you microminiaturize, you don't even need thermionic emission. Take a look at FEDs - Field Emission Devices.
I looked into gschem a few years back, and haven't had time, since. At the time, it didn't have what it took for VLSI schematic capture, since it really didn't work well with circuit hierarchy. It really seems to be oriented toward schematic capture for printed circuit boards.
On the other hand, on any given design I'll have many layers of hierarchy, circuits in circuits in circuits, etc. I need the ability to take any arbitrary circuit and create a symbol for it, so it can be used in another circuit. Further, I'd really like to parameterize some of those symbols, so I can tell an inverter or nand gate what the device sizes of the FETs inside will be. I mentioned this type of thing on the list at the time, and though they were interested in the VLSI problem, they were more focused on PCBs.
I can accept the VLSI design is a very small market, and that PCB is an appropriate focus. But looking at the page, I see that they may well support hierarchy.
Shy of emerging gschem (and dependencies) to try it out has anyone used it with hierarchical designs, and can comment?
(anything about translators for mainstream tools?)
Ooops. It's been quite a while since I read Cryptonomicon. Sorry about that.
You mean someone modded that silly post up?!?
They missed Randy Waterhouse, too. After all, he invented one of the early computers, complete with accoustic delay lines.
Even funnier will be the idea of a battle over an orbital position. ie: nothing at all. This isn't quite as funny as it sounds, when you consider Lagrange points. The Lagrange points are mathematical fictions, but can be nifty places indeed for many purposes, possibly worth fighting over.
For the obligatory science fiction reference, read Poul Anderson's "Tales of the Flying Mountains," a series of short stories framed in the setting of the first interstellar flight. The officers are trying to build their history to help educate their young and prevent the culture loss that seems to plague just about every "generation ship" in fiction. One story is about some orbital shenanigans around the Trojan asteroids. To say any more would be a spoiler.
We've made the decision for my wife to stay at home with the kids.
It hurts, but we consider it to be worth it.
I agree with your point. If I were wearing a tinfoil hat, I would think that the government LIKES two-income households. Instead of one taxpayer, it gives them 3 - both parents and the day care provider.
My wife has subbed, I know full-time teachers. Good education requires good support in the home. If the kids come to school preconditioned with a bad attitude, there's only so much even an excellent teacher can do to change that.
Personally, I believe a large part of this is that we have adopted Day Care as "the standard model" for the family in this country, and there's a larger-than-ever number of single-parent households. I won't say that single-parents can't do a good job raising kids. Nor will I say that you can't raise good kids where both parents work. And finally, I won't say that a full-time stay-at-home Mom (or Dad) is a guarantee of raising good kids.
But IMHO, it's a matter of statistics. Being a parent is HARDER if there's just one of you. Imbuing kids with proper values is HARDER if you have surrendered control of your child to the low-cost day care provider for the work day. (Actually, that "low-cost" may be part of the problem.) Not that these things can't be done, but they're HARDER.
As long as you have more capable people taking on these extra challenges, things work. But once it becomes the general model for society, things start breaking down. Schools are the canaries for this class of problem.
BTW, I won't disagree that "more money != better public education," but I disagree with the corollary that many like to make, that better public education doesn't need more money. More money might be part of the solution, but only part. IMHO the more important part is better parenting.
IMHO, the particular dominant party isn't what's important - it's that the dominant party be different than that of the President.
Gridlock can be good.
I'm not sure I really want "liberal values." I want "I'm hurting nobody, short or long term, what I do is NONE of your business!"
I tend to differ with Libertarians as Trepidity says, but I have another difference. From what I've heard from Libertarians, they don't think much of environmentalism - it's your property and you can decide what to do with it. I believe in the long term you pass on that property, and if you've just turned it into a gaping hole in the ground or a toxic swill, you've just decreased its long-term value. Mineral rights are an issue, but with this I'm talking more about suitability for general use. (like residence or business)
Don't forget that today's codemonkey from India is tomorrow's experienced programmer. But I agree with what you say about Open Source projects. In some ways, it allows you to leapfrog past "corporate noise" portions of early programmer experience.
Thank you for listing the reasons simply and succintly. There has been a growing "Why do you keep senselessly bashing Microsoft?" voice on Slashdot, lately. Your post highlights that much (though I can grant not all) of the Microsoft bashing is NOT senseless, and IS based on their past corporate conduct.
You know, we think of early 20's as being a "perfect" physical age, but what about mental age? I know that physicists and mathmaticians peak in their 20's, and can believe that physically the brain is on the slow downhill slope from then. But somehow I'd like to believe that I've learned something from the last 20+ years, and that while the physical substrate of my brain may be less capable, I've made better use of what's there, learned valuable life lessons. So I'd like to think my peak mental age, in some respects, still may not be here, yet.
So imagine a 20's physical brain with longer life experience. But is an essential part of that life experience coping with your own diminution and mortality - your limitations? If someone hit their mid-20's and stopped aging, would they acquire the same sorts of wisdom? Might it be best to get into your 60's (or later) and then get the clock turned back?
Enquiring minds would like the chance to know.