Criminals are both responsible for their own actions and they are often victims of a society that doesn't know how to regulate the behavior of their citizens more effectively. There is no need to go for one extreme only.
Remember criminals are not born that way, a government creates criminals because it thinks it is the best way to eradicate certain behavior. Sometimes this is a wise decision and sometimes there are better alternatives. --
Crime statistics (imprisonment, victimization) for White Americans are very much the same as for White Europeans.
Interesting, where are these numbers? If you make a claim like this, which is against 'common wisdom' you better show us some proof. And you are aware of the fact that the prison population in European countries isn't all white either? In the Netherlands 45% of the current prison population was born in the Netherlands. That should be an indication.
It is these "other" folks who make up all the difference between Europe and US.
Sounds racist? Perhaps, but unless you want to dispute official US crime stats, it is very much true.
So far I haven't seen any official US crime stats, show us some. But even if your numbers are right then you are still blaming some of the poorest and least influential people in your country for some of it's biggest problems. That makes no sense. --
The nature of Government is to accumulate power at the expense of the freedom of its citizens
Yes state elites tend to go for more funds/power.
As such, the time must come when you either accept your servitude to the State, or reclaim your freedom through force of arms.
There is no need to fight the state when you control it. Democracy was designed for exactly that purpose. If you think that you have lost the control over the government to state elites, then ask yourself why you lost that battle. Maybe strategic mistakes where made?
The right to bear arms hasn't prevented the centralising of power in the american state in the past century. Perhaps guns give you power versus your fellow citizens (criminal or not) but hardly versus the state.
Remember in a democracy you (& the rest of the citizens) are the boss and the state is your tool. --
Nope, wealth isn't created out of thin air (or "reputation"): new wealth is always the result of work. Efficiency determines how much wealth is created by how much work.
In the potato examples you are working (thinking, storing, transporting) and thereby doing a service to the community. --
To widen the market and to narrow the competition is always the interest of the
dealers. The proposal of any new law that comes from this order, ought never be
adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.
And he is right. The people who run corporations are certainly remarkable like you and I but they differ in this essential aspect: they have different interests. The same argument can be made for government officials
The discussion about which is worse, big business or big government isn't going to bring anything, just as fighting either of them isn't going to solve much. Instead of fighting them we should control them, and make sure that neither of them have more power than they need for efficiently doing their task.
In a democracy we are the boss and big business and government are our tools to get the things we want. If they get too powerfull we should apply the traditional strategy of a souvereign: divide and conquer, a.k.a. seperation of powers.
Stopping corperations from influencing & financing goverment officials would be a good first step in that direction.
The cheat is already published. That is not the issue. Your argument is a strawman.
Now try telling us why Asus should publish tools to help cheaters. --
I really like this idea. Of course it is good to be careful about the privacy issues involved (and you can leave that to the dutch citizens, they are not only fiercely independant but also have a strong memory of how the germans in 1940/5 misused the available population data).
Two features I am specially looking forward to:
A log of every single access to my box (if the police wants secret access they should have special permission, like now for a phone tap.)
Even stronger privacy acts so that companies have to rely heavily on this database, instead of on there own secret internal databases.
If this is done right, it could be used to invade the 'privacy' of companies & state agencies instead of the privacy of citizens.
I think the fundamental difference here is that the Linux directory structure makes a lot of sense for command-line users, [...] But Windows directory structure is better for GUI users, because the names are longer and more descriptive [...]
Nope, the fundamental difference is that Linux is a multi-user OS and Windows single user. And therefore your descriptive directory structure should be in your home directory and not in root as there is only one root. Nice piece though. --
But even if $1500 is a problem, what makes you think that commercial or non-commercial alternative toolkits can't compete with QT?
Nothing makes me think that "they can't compete" technically. In fact, I think there are better toolkits than Qt. But the fact is that lots of people develop for KDE/Qt, and that's why I think it's worth pointing out to people who do that there are problems with the Qt license and that that is one of the many reasons they should look at other toolkits.
But there are no problems. Having to pay when developing closed source software is hardly a problem and you don't need to point that out as Trolltech is doing it already.
The standards that QT/KDE are creating are open standards and therefore anyone can implement them. So if applications don't integrate well with KDE or don't use the latest features you can't blame QT/KDE for it. Those apps just need more work.
Please stop suggesting there are license problems with QT/KDE until you really can point out some problems. --
If people inside corporations had had to pay $1500/developer to get Linux in the door for trying it out on internal development efforts on it, it would have never caught on as a server platform.
$1500 is peanuts for any company doing internal development in C++. And if you only want to try it you can just download a version.
But even if $1500 is a problem, what makes you think that commercial or non-commercial alternative toolkits can't compete with QT? It's not that they own some interface or other standard (like Microsoft).
It seems to me that the Trolltech guys have found an execellent way to contribute to the Open Source movement and make money at the same time. We need more initiatives like this as there is still lots of work to be done. --
Re:Happy birthday and the best is yet to come.
on
Happy Birthday, KDE
·
· Score: 1
This is the equivalent of a webpage which says "UNDER CONSTRUCTION". It's bad practice, and totally pointless.
Your analogy is wrong. People expect a certain standard functionality from apps (unlike webpages) and it is useful to know that this is not yet implemented.
When I click on some link in kde's browser and it doesn't work is it a bug? Or perhaps there is something wrong with my installation? Or is it the webserver? Should I start reading some documentation? Ask questions on the mailing list?
Nope, a nice dialog tells me the javascript function involved isn't implemented yet. --
All this talk about free speech and political correctness doesn't address the fact that we still end up here with only tech savvy young men.
Perhaps people from other social groups don't care about free speech?
Of course not, truth is: free speech and political incorrectness is not in any danger on/. or on the web in general. There are no higher goals at stake here, it is just a case of the strong preying on the weak. Geeks have finally found a place where they are strong and 'idiots' and 'morons' (== the weak) are paying the price. The price of being different because to qualify as a 'moron' or an 'idiot' being different is enough.
Sorry for the previous post, I lost html tags somewhere. THis is how it should be formatted:
I'm not going to spare someone's emotions if they are wrong. I have neither the need nor the desire to pad my posts or e-mails so as not to bruise some pansies tender ego.
Remember that there are other reasons why you might want to avoid flaming, most notably good old self-interest. Flaming isn't very productive when it comes to convincing people. To convince you want to sound reasonable, experienced, wise, sympathic etc... Flaming is not gonna accomplish that.
Being right is overrated. Getting others to agree with you is much more interesting.
I'm not going to spare someone's emotions if they are wrong. I have neither the need nor the desire to pad my posts or e-mails so as not to bruise some pansies tender ego. Remember that there are other reasons why you might want to avoid flaming, most notably good old self-interest. Flaming isn't very productive when it comes to convincing people. To convince you want to sound reasonable, experienced, wise, sympathic etc... Flaming is not gonna accomplish that. Being right is overrated. Getting others to agree with you is much more interesting. --
Slashdot Mirror
Remember criminals are not born that way, a government creates criminals because it thinks it is the best way to eradicate certain behavior. Sometimes this is a wise decision and sometimes there are better alternatives.
--
Interesting, where are these numbers? If you make a claim like this, which is against 'common wisdom' you better show us some proof. And you are aware of the fact that the prison population in European countries isn't all white either? In the Netherlands 45% of the current prison population was born in the Netherlands. That should be an indication.
So far I haven't seen any official US crime stats, show us some. But even if your numbers are right then you are still blaming some of the poorest and least influential people in your country for some of it's biggest problems. That makes no sense.
--
If you have unsafe parts in your town then do something about it. It is not normal.
If you dont like the way the police acts then do something about it. You employ them.
And no, giving out guns to senile old men is not going to make the world a safer place.
--
Yes state elites tend to go for more funds/power.
As such, the time must come when you either accept your servitude to the State, or reclaim your freedom through force of arms.
There is no need to fight the state when you control it. Democracy was designed for exactly that purpose. If you think that you have lost the control over the government to state elites, then ask yourself why you lost that battle. Maybe strategic mistakes where made?
The right to bear arms hasn't prevented the centralising of power in the american state in the past century. Perhaps guns give you power versus your fellow citizens (criminal or not) but hardly versus the state.
Remember in a democracy you (& the rest of the citizens) are the boss and the state is your tool.
--
In the potato examples you are working (thinking, storing, transporting) and thereby doing a service to the community.
--
And he is right. The people who run corporations are certainly remarkable like you and I but they differ in this essential aspect: they have different interests. The same argument can be made for government officials
The discussion about which is worse, big business or big government isn't going to bring anything, just as fighting either of them isn't going to solve much. Instead of fighting them we should control them, and make sure that neither of them have more power than they need for efficiently doing their task.
In a democracy we are the boss and big business and government are our tools to get the things we want. If they get too powerfull we should apply the traditional strategy of a souvereign: divide and conquer, a.k.a. seperation of powers. Stopping corperations from influencing & financing goverment officials would be a good first step in that direction.
--
The cheat is already published. That is not the issue. Your argument is a strawman. Now try telling us why Asus should publish tools to help cheaters.
--
I really like this idea. Of course it is good to be careful about the privacy issues involved (and you can leave that to the dutch citizens, they are not only fiercely independant but also have a strong memory of how the germans in 1940/5 misused the available population data).
Two features I am specially looking forward to:
A log of every single access to my box (if the police wants secret access they should have special permission, like now for a phone tap.)
Even stronger privacy acts so that companies have to rely heavily on this database, instead of on there own secret internal databases.
If this is done right, it could be used to invade the 'privacy' of companies & state agencies instead of the privacy of citizens.
--
Nope, the fundamental difference is that Linux is a multi-user OS and Windows single user. And therefore your descriptive directory structure should be in your home directory and not in root as there is only one root. Nice piece though.
--
The standards that QT/KDE are creating are open standards and therefore anyone can implement them. So if applications don't integrate well with KDE or don't use the latest features you can't blame QT/KDE for it. Those apps just need more work.
Please stop suggesting there are license problems with QT/KDE until you really can point out some problems.
--
But even if $1500 is a problem, what makes you think that commercial or non-commercial alternative toolkits can't compete with QT? It's not that they own some interface or other standard (like Microsoft).
It seems to me that the Trolltech guys have found an execellent way to contribute to the Open Source movement and make money at the same time. We need more initiatives like this as there is still lots of work to be done.
--
When I click on some link in kde's browser and it doesn't work is it a bug? Or perhaps there is something wrong with my installation? Or is it the webserver? Should I start reading some documentation? Ask questions on the mailing list?
Nope, a nice dialog tells me the javascript function involved isn't implemented yet.
--
Perhaps people from other social groups don't care about free speech?
Of course not, truth is: free speech and political incorrectness is not in any danger on /. or on the web in general. There are no higher goals at stake here, it is just a case of the strong preying on the weak. Geeks have finally found a place where they are strong and 'idiots' and 'morons' (== the weak) are paying the price. The price of being different because to qualify as a 'moron' or an 'idiot' being different is enough.
Perhaps we geeks aren't that special after all.
--
set your prefs to -1 for short postings and your threshold on 0 and most of these comments disappear.
Another way is to limit the comments per page and to sort on importance.
--
Remember that there are other reasons why you might want to avoid flaming, most notably good old self-interest. Flaming isn't very productive when it comes to convincing people. To convince you want to sound reasonable, experienced, wise, sympathic etc... Flaming is not gonna accomplish that.
Being right is overrated. Getting others to agree with you is much more interesting.
--
I'm not going to spare someone's emotions if they are wrong. I have neither the need nor the desire to pad my posts or e-mails so as not to bruise some pansies tender ego. Remember that there are other reasons why you might want to avoid flaming, most notably good old self-interest. Flaming isn't very productive when it comes to convincing people. To convince you want to sound reasonable, experienced, wise, sympathic etc... Flaming is not gonna accomplish that. Being right is overrated. Getting others to agree with you is much more interesting.
--