Then I propose that those with the time and concern enough to cast votes for and against laws be allowed to do so. And those without the time and concern be allowed to vote for a representative. The representative would then _represent_ the number of votes equal to the number of people who voted for them.
So, you may end up with 100 million popular votes on a law and 110 million represented votes. The total votes would be 210 million. ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE!
Jeff
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
I did not think that the original proposal suggested thatg all politicians should be removed as useless.
The emphasis of my first post was to point out that we do not have a direct democracy, but that it would be nice to have one. My later posts argue that, while I do not expect all politicians to be done away with, direct legislation by the people is possible.
True, not everyone has the time to learn about every new law, and some people just don't care. This has been used as an argument against direct democracy.
I propose that those with the time and concern enough to cast votes for and against laws be allowed to do so. And those without the time and concern be allowed to vote for a representative. The representative would then _represent_ the number of votes equal to the number of people who voted for them.
So, you may end up with 100 million popular votes on a law and 110 million represented votes. The total votes would be 210 million. ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE!
I guess this is something like what you were suggesting, but I couldn't tell with the garbled text:-)
Jeff
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
After posting that comment on why I thought the U.S. ended up a republic, I recalled the writings of some of the nation's founders. John Adams, for one, did not believe the common man was to be trusted with democracy. Much of this 'elitism', as I like to call it, gave us a nation without direct democracy and without suffrage for most.
Jeff
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
It's just that your average person doesn't have TIME to handle this kind of thing directly.
Do we have too many laws, then? Are congressmen trying to justify their earnings by passing frivolous laws? It's a question that can't really be answered. But I'll ask you, after 224 years, does the U.S. still need thousands of laws added to the books each year? And did you know that many laws passed were inacted previously, but no one knew about them?
It was a tough call, causing many of them great anguish- they like you took representation seriously. But the bottom line was this: they knew that their own constituents had been lied to and misled, and they couldn't wait around for 'em to figure that out. They had to act based on the truth.
And do you believe the people of the U.S. to be incapable of such serious thought, anguishing over their decision, and acting based on truth? I'd like to think so. Or do you think that there was just too little time to affect public opinion? Might people have acted more swiftly in the information age?
By the same token, though it's hard to argue that politicians should be trusted, _somebody_ has to get the job of learning up on this stuff and deciding things.
And maybe it's not a bad thing that people have to become EDUCATED about these things.
When you read history it might surprise you, sometimes, how our pols can sometimes rise above all the corruption and politicking and do what we'd want them to do- even eloquently, movingly.
Again, you're saying that the people of the U.S. are incapable of rising above corruption and politicking. I'm dogging you on this, because this is how you keep distinguishing politicians from the common folk. Is there anything else that makes representatives better are passing laws, other than having some elite nature not possessed by everyone else, having more time to pass too many new laws, and being able to respond quicker (which is no longer true thanks to computers)?
Jeff
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
No, you are quite wrong. The United States is a republic, not a democracy- and that is not by accident or mistake.
That's exactly my point. I was trying to debunk the myth that the U.S. is a true democracy. Yes, it is a republic.
What is the official American OS? (Windows/Mac/Linux/Be)
How much taxes should people pay? (twice as much as now/same as now/nobody should pay any taxes)
Should Microsoft be allowed to innovate and help consumers by standardizing the world on its products? (Yes, they have that right/No, they should not be allowed to help consumers if it hurts Sun)
Well, I did end my comment saying that the responsibility that comes with direct democracy is another issue;-) And that's what you bring up here.
Whether or not ANYTHING can come up for vote is a good point. Perhaps there should be a vote on the importance of each law before the law itself is voted on. If we _must_ give these rather silly questions a yes or no vote, we're in trouble.
Also, I think people will realize they're follies very quicky when they vote for things such as the abolition of all taxes. They'll learn.
The problem is, it's well accepted that larger factions _will_ stomp all over smaller factions given the slightest opportunity. That's the way it's always been, and certainly watching the tech industry does _not_ suggest that this tendency has changed with the increase in technology we've seen.
I think you're suggesting anarchy is the inevitable result of direct democracy. I don't agree. I think with the right system of weights and balances, as seen elsewhere in the U.S. gov., it can work. On the other hand, we _now_ have a _closed_ boy's club of a system where government is done under the table in smoke-filled rooms. The more power politicians have, the more corrupt they'll be: POWER CORRUPTS!
It's a powerful homogenizing force that only begins to really kick in when people sense that they have the power to use this 'direct democracy'.
Again, you're assuming that _everything_ is up for vote. Would we really see a national vote for or against Slashdot? Or anything as harmless?
These associations have media resources that would blow your mind
Why do you think these associations have more power to influence millions than they have to influence a few hundred congressmen?
and sure as 'hacker' is spun to sound like a terrorist, you'll get the issues presented in such a way that Orwell would drill through his grave, and The People will cheerfully vote to have to taken out and shot if you reverse engineer software programs.
Are citizens more naive than congressmen? Those in Washington would sure like to believe they are the 'elite', fit to rule the huddled masses of ignoramises. You're playing into that mentality.
and imagine them without the DoJ or any government.
I never suggested the whole government be eliminated, just the legislative branch.
The trouble is you can't expect people to take an interest in everything: at least the representatives can be expected to read 4000 page bills and the like, as that is their job.
That's true, but I've watched many sessions of congress on C-SPAN, and most admit that they haven't read the whole bill before them. Now, do you seriously think they'd all read a 4,000 page bill?
Plus, you're implying the media will have the biggest role, spinning things however they like. You may have a point there, but polls drive politicians too;-)
Jeff
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Despite popular belief, the U.S. government is not run "by the people." There have always been layers of abstraction between the people and Uncle Sam. For example, you want to vote for your man or woman of your choosing for president. Not so fast! He or she has to first submit a petition to some state office before they can even go on the primary ballot. If and only if your guy has the right number of signatures will they _consider_ him or her. And put an emphasis on consider. In many U.S. states, the political party the candidate wants to run under may just decide they won't accept the person. This happens every election year in New York State with one candidate or another.
And then there is the primary. You think the person with the most votes wins, right? Wrong! Delegates from each state can throw the popular vote any way they choose. For example, let's say you voted for John McCain in the New Hampshire primary, and indeed McCain won New Hampshire. But the good ol' boys in the Republican convention may be in a George W. Bush mood, which is more than likely. They may very well say, "New Hampshire casts all of its votes to Bush." The delegates can do that!
Okay, so now your guy won the primaries and is in the general election. Hey, he or she wins! Nope, not quite. There's a little known group called the "electoral college" that can do whatever they want, and _legally_. Just as with the delegates in the primary, they can decide the people are off their collective rocker and then elect THE OTHER GUY!
Okay, well what about laws. Did you think that the president makes the laws? Nope. He or she can do nothing but veto a law, providing less than 2/3rds of the congress voted for it. Laws are passed by the congress, a relatively small group of people.
So, you want UCITA to be rejected? Where can you go and vote against it? NOWHERE. You have to vote for someone to get into congress first, and then maybe they'll vote against it. But good luck there. It could take 6 years to get a new person into office. By then UCITA could be law.
"But, can't I vote on a ballot for or against a law?" NOT FOR FEDERAL LAWS! This can only be done for _some_ state laws. First you need to get it on the ballot: not an easy task. Then, even if it passes, the state legislature can nullify it the next day. This happened in my state, where the legislature passed a seatbelt law. The _people_ said no and voted to remove it via ballot. Well, I guess we didn't know what we wanted, at least according to the legislature, because right after the _people_ shot the law down, the legislature VOTED IT RIGHT BACK IN AGAIN!
It's frustrating, because the only way a person can support or oppose a law is to vote for a representative that feels the same way. BUT THE REPRESENTATIVE MAY VOTE AGAINST YOUR IDEALS ON EVERY OTHER ISSUE.
Much of the way the U.S. government works is due the difficulties in communication and travel when the U.S. was established in the 18th century. It would be pretty pathetic trying to get everyone in the country to mail in a vote on every issue when the letter could take a few weeks to get across the country. It was therefore considered more pragmatic to have representatives at every step in the process.
The communications or information age should change all this, however. The speed at which people can now educate themselves and share ideas cannot be compared to the way things were in great grandpa's days.
I hope that computers will put an end to the delegate and electoral college system, and even the representative system. And I hope people can be trusted with the responsibility of direct democracy. But that's another issue.
Jeff
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Bohr was a greater thinker than Einstein, without a doubt
This is your opinion, as I have some doubt about the statement. I never liked this desire people have to say one person is smarter than the other. And Einstein's place and importance in society has been exaggerated, largely due to the social phenomenon of celebrity. (He is certainly a better choice than a rock star, actress or politician, and I was almost expecting one of these to be picked by Time.) But Neils Bohr was so often wrong himself. The "Bohr model of the atom," for example, shows electrons in elliptical orbitals, like planets orbiting a star. It's well known in physics and chemistry to be completely false, and it is only valued today as an appoximation for hydrogen-like atoms.
In any case, I am thrilled to see a fellow scientist chosen for person of the century. It almost restores my respect for the media. This is a much better choice than the runners-up would have been, which (I haven't checked but I bet) are Elvis, John Lennon, JFK, Princess Diana, James Dean, etc. Yuck.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Instead of it being as if the pilgrims brought all the food they needed from europe, its like them growing their own food
If the Pilgrims (and the Puritans of the Mass Bay Colony) had brought all the food they needed, nearly half of the population would not have died the first winter. Something to think about, if the colonization of America is to be compared with that of Mars;-)
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
The Loci Project is a GNU GPL'd graphical shell to an extent. It does graphical pipelining and much more. Loci works with Gnome, but is not meant to be a complete desktop or window manager on its own. (It's under heavy development, so contributers are needed more than users right now;-))
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
That's why menus are tree like structures (i.e. you don't put your zillion options in one big menu but you use multiple menus and submenus to organize your menuoptions). The same should apply to windowmanagers. I want to be able to organize my windows in a hierarchy.
The Loci Project has its own window manager and desktop system which place icons and application windows into a tree structure...literally.
This screenshot shows program icons connected or 'piped' according to their hierarchy. Double clicking on an icon reveals or hides the program's window (shown as a 'label' widget in the screenshot). And the desktop can be scrolled around in all directions.
Now imagine having dozens of programs running. With traditional window managers, you would have them all open on the desktop and/or represented by buttons on a taskbar or by icons. How do the programs relate to each other in a hierarchy??? You have no idea: that information is never shown anywhere! With Loci, you always know the hierarchy, because the windows are attached to the icons, and the icons are connected with lines.
Note: Loci is a combination of a desktop and a graphical programming language for the management of data processing projects. It is not a general purpose desktop.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) has/had been of great interest to me and everyone around me most of my life, having lived near headquarters: Maynard, MA. I must say that in the latter years of DEC's life I was disappointed to see them desperately try to ditch (IMHO) some very powerful and unique technology (VAX/VMS, Digital UNIX and Alpha) for the mainstream Windows on Intel. They in fact made a concerted effort to migrate VMS customers to Windows. I am very pleased to see Compaq is now renewing support for VMS, Digital UNIX (Tru64) and Alpha. One might have assumed that Compaq, being a WinTel company, would continue DEC's migration to that platform. It's good to see the Compaq marketeers have more brains than the DEC marketeers had.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Dang straight, Mat:-) Grad school teaches you a bit more about politics than anything else.
I opted for a Master's over a Ph.D. partly because I want to switch topics (and get a Ph.D. elsewhere) but also because of the politics in the environment--I just want to get of there for a while.
Getting a Ph.D. puts you in the heart of highly political academia, and since some fields are pretty much Ph.D.-only, like science, the subjugates can't avoid it.
In my frustration with the political nature of science, I started "The Open Lab", which applies the Open Source Software model to science (the former was modeled after the ideal of the latter; but we ought to strive for that ideal):
The TpmC report you quoted for the AlphaServer is dated 05/05/98, and the system uses the 21164 Alpha, which is the older model. The newest Alpha is the 21264 and is substantially faster.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Eating insects is very common in some Asian cultures. I don't mean this to sound derogatory. They consider it to be as normal as eating chicken. The U.S. and U.K. are actually among the very few cultures that consider insects to be unedible.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Just from my own experiences and observations, I would have to give the whole "men are wired differently" notion some serious consideration.
To make it through the drudgery of a life in the "dry", technical fields like CS and engineering, you need some motivation. From a very young age, with no encouragement from anyone, I have found computer harwardware and programming to be so enthralling that I could lie awake at night for hours fantasizing about buying some new system or writing a program. It makes me wonder if there are some neurotransmitters involved akin to those that runners get (a "runner's high" is caused by endorphines, natural pain-killers similar to morphine, both of which are addictive).
Do other men feel this way? Having many close male friends with similar interests, I am certain they do. We can talk for hours about computers with a great deal of enthusiam...and pleasure, I suppose. I know men aren't known to talk as much as women about some things, but when it comes to computers, (some) guys just can't get enough.
Do women feel the same way? I wondered that for a long time, and so I thought I'd ask them. I asked a number of women that work around and with computers (so, they've already "made it") (1) if they have any computing projects they work on in their own spare time and (2) what they thought of a certain new technology. The response is typically (1) "No way! Are you kidding? I can't wait to get home and away from those things" and (2) "I don't know. I really don't care".
But how do women get by in some very technical and "dry" fields if they are so apathetic about the technology? Well, I'm not a woman, so I don't know. But I would dare to guess that women are motivated and even get "mental pleasure" from the prospect of "nurturing" a "career" (to use some womanisms) and making money. In contrast, most men I know tend to be less concerned with the idea of a perfect career.
Maybe women here can enlighten us. (1) Do you have computer projects that are totally unrelated to work? How much time do you spend? (2) Do you find yourself talking about the latest technology with your friends on your own time? And (3) would you say you get pleasure from the technology?
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
I found it interesting that when asked what desktop they were using, 50% replied KDE, while only 27% replied GNOME.
Look at the demographics:
3. The particular development tool I would most like to see for Linux is
#1 Delphi (44.5%)
12. The Component / Class framework I use should be based on?
#1 Object Pascal (!) (31.2%)
22. Currently, the main platform I develop for is...
#1 Windows (!) (59.8%)
All other UNIXes combined don't make up 5%!
28. The primary development tool I/we currently use is...
#1 Delphi (39.9%)
29. All the development tools I/we currently use are...
#1 Delphi (50.9%)
Conclusion: The vast majority of respondents are Windows users who currently develop with Delphi and want to see it ported to (x86) Linux. It makes sense then that they would use the most Windows-like desktop: KDE.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
If the widget set was the big problem that caused the creation of a new project, GNOME, I'm disappointed in that decision. It would have been much faster and simpler to write a free version of Qt, in other words help the Harmony project, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
I think it's pretty obvious that GNOME + Harmony frightened Troll into changing the Qt license. If they did not, they would have lost all the KDE developers to the Harmony toolset and many others to GTK+.
The file manager never worked and now the GNOME team decided to rewrite completely. Not a good sign.
GMC did "work", and I think it is a GOOD sign that the GNOME developers recognized that something needed to be improved. It shows that the project is still alive and growing.
Excuse me but I believed that one of the strong points of of OSS was to promote code reuse, with GNOME we keep rewriting code over and over.
This is a broad accusation you just made about all of GNOME, but you're basing it on one program. Don't tell me KDE never scrapped an idea.
Since KDE is an Open Source project, if you don't like something about it just grab the code and change it. Last time I checked the KDE folks where more than happy to see more people helping them and they showed good attitude and realist goals
Ummmm. And this isn't true about GNOME? Last time I checked, there were many many welcomed contributions to GNOME. You have to watch these baseless accusations you're making.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Quite a bit of work had gone into turning Midnight Commander (MC) into GNOME Midnight Commander (GMC), which is/was the default GNOME file manager.
I now hear talk about a "new" file manager, one that uses GNOME VFS. What's the reasoning behind the switch? Why not continue with GMC? Does anyone know?
BTW, I have to respond to all the "GNOME sucks as a desktop flamebait". GNOME stands for "GNU Network Object Model Environment". The innovations are largely to provide GNU-licensed protocols for object sharing between GUI applications. GNOME IS NOT A GUI, GTK+ IS THE GUI GNOME USES! GNOME does come with some basic applications that make a fairly basal desktop. For the most part, all you see when you start GNOME is a little panel and some icons. If that's how you judge GNOME, then you're judging the book by the cover.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
What exactly are you comparing here? X to a windoze desktop?
What people will prefer to work with: a 1980's desktop from The Open Group (all of their products: X, Motif, CDE) or the latest bells and whistles from MICROS~1. I'm criticizing The Open Group, not X technology.
Man that really sounds familiar to something called embrace and extend. Looks like this kid did his last internship in Redmond...
Well, by that logic, I guess you'd say Linus Torvalds did his last internship at Redmond for embracing and extending UNIX.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Slashdot Mirror
So, you may end up with 100 million popular votes on a law and 110 million represented votes. The total votes would be 210 million. ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE!
Jeff
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
The emphasis of my first post was to point out that we do not have a direct democracy, but that it would be nice to have one. My later posts argue that, while I do not expect all politicians to be done away with, direct legislation by the people is possible.
True, not everyone has the time to learn about every new law, and some people just don't care. This has been used as an argument against direct democracy.
I propose that those with the time and concern enough to cast votes for and against laws be allowed to do so. And those without the time and concern be allowed to vote for a representative. The representative would then _represent_ the number of votes equal to the number of people who voted for them.
So, you may end up with 100 million popular votes on a law and 110 million represented votes. The total votes would be 210 million. ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE!
I guess this is something like what you were suggesting, but I couldn't tell with the garbled text :-)
Jeff
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Jeff
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Do we have too many laws, then? Are congressmen trying to justify their earnings by passing frivolous laws? It's a question that can't really be answered. But I'll ask you, after 224 years, does the U.S. still need thousands of laws added to the books each year? And did you know that many laws passed were inacted previously, but no one knew about them?
It was a tough call, causing many of them great anguish- they like you took representation seriously. But the bottom line was this: they knew that their own constituents had been lied to and misled, and they couldn't wait around for 'em to figure that out. They had to act based on the truth.
And do you believe the people of the U.S. to be incapable of such serious thought, anguishing over their decision, and acting based on truth? I'd like to think so. Or do you think that there was just too little time to affect public opinion? Might people have acted more swiftly in the information age?
By the same token, though it's hard to argue that politicians should be trusted, _somebody_ has to get the job of learning up on this stuff and deciding things.
And maybe it's not a bad thing that people have to become EDUCATED about these things.
When you read history it might surprise you, sometimes, how our pols can sometimes rise above all the corruption and politicking and do what we'd want them to do- even eloquently, movingly.
Again, you're saying that the people of the U.S. are incapable of rising above corruption and politicking. I'm dogging you on this, because this is how you keep distinguishing politicians from the common folk. Is there anything else that makes representatives better are passing laws, other than having some elite nature not possessed by everyone else, having more time to pass too many new laws, and being able to respond quicker (which is no longer true thanks to computers)?
Jeff
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
That's exactly my point. I was trying to debunk the myth that the U.S. is a true democracy. Yes, it is a republic.
What is the official American OS? (Windows/Mac/Linux/Be)
How much taxes should people pay? (twice as much as now/same as now/nobody should pay any taxes)
Should Microsoft be allowed to innovate and help consumers by standardizing the world on its products? (Yes, they have that right/No, they should not be allowed to help consumers if it hurts Sun)
Well, I did end my comment saying that the responsibility that comes with direct democracy is another issue ;-) And that's what you bring up here.
Whether or not ANYTHING can come up for vote is a good point. Perhaps there should be a vote on the importance of each law before the law itself is voted on. If we _must_ give these rather silly questions a yes or no vote, we're in trouble.
Also, I think people will realize they're follies very quicky when they vote for things such as the abolition of all taxes. They'll learn.
The problem is, it's well accepted that larger factions _will_ stomp all over smaller factions given the slightest opportunity. That's the way it's always been, and certainly watching the tech industry does _not_ suggest that this tendency has changed with the increase in technology we've seen.
I think you're suggesting anarchy is the inevitable result of direct democracy. I don't agree. I think with the right system of weights and balances, as seen elsewhere in the U.S. gov., it can work. On the other hand, we _now_ have a _closed_ boy's club of a system where government is done under the table in smoke-filled rooms. The more power politicians have, the more corrupt they'll be: POWER CORRUPTS!
It's a powerful homogenizing force that only begins to really kick in when people sense that they have the power to use this 'direct democracy'.
Again, you're assuming that _everything_ is up for vote. Would we really see a national vote for or against Slashdot? Or anything as harmless?
These associations have media resources that would blow your mind
Why do you think these associations have more power to influence millions than they have to influence a few hundred congressmen?
and sure as 'hacker' is spun to sound like a terrorist, you'll get the issues presented in such a way that Orwell would drill through his grave, and The People will cheerfully vote to have to taken out and shot if you reverse engineer software programs.
Are citizens more naive than congressmen? Those in Washington would sure like to believe they are the 'elite', fit to rule the huddled masses of ignoramises. You're playing into that mentality.
and imagine them without the DoJ or any government.
I never suggested the whole government be eliminated, just the legislative branch.
The trouble is you can't expect people to take an interest in everything: at least the representatives can be expected to read 4000 page bills and the like, as that is their job.
That's true, but I've watched many sessions of congress on C-SPAN, and most admit that they haven't read the whole bill before them. Now, do you seriously think they'd all read a 4,000 page bill?
Plus, you're implying the media will have the biggest role, spinning things however they like. You may have a point there, but polls drive politicians too ;-)
Jeff
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
And then there is the primary. You think the person with the most votes wins, right? Wrong! Delegates from each state can throw the popular vote any way they choose. For example, let's say you voted for John McCain in the New Hampshire primary, and indeed McCain won New Hampshire. But the good ol' boys in the Republican convention may be in a George W. Bush mood, which is more than likely. They may very well say, "New Hampshire casts all of its votes to Bush." The delegates can do that!
Okay, so now your guy won the primaries and is in the general election. Hey, he or she wins! Nope, not quite. There's a little known group called the "electoral college" that can do whatever they want, and _legally_. Just as with the delegates in the primary, they can decide the people are off their collective rocker and then elect THE OTHER GUY!
Okay, well what about laws. Did you think that the president makes the laws? Nope. He or she can do nothing but veto a law, providing less than 2/3rds of the congress voted for it. Laws are passed by the congress, a relatively small group of people.
So, you want UCITA to be rejected? Where can you go and vote against it? NOWHERE. You have to vote for someone to get into congress first, and then maybe they'll vote against it. But good luck there. It could take 6 years to get a new person into office. By then UCITA could be law.
"But, can't I vote on a ballot for or against a law?" NOT FOR FEDERAL LAWS! This can only be done for _some_ state laws. First you need to get it on the ballot: not an easy task. Then, even if it passes, the state legislature can nullify it the next day. This happened in my state, where the legislature passed a seatbelt law. The _people_ said no and voted to remove it via ballot. Well, I guess we didn't know what we wanted, at least according to the legislature, because right after the _people_ shot the law down, the legislature VOTED IT RIGHT BACK IN AGAIN!
It's frustrating, because the only way a person can support or oppose a law is to vote for a representative that feels the same way. BUT THE REPRESENTATIVE MAY VOTE AGAINST YOUR IDEALS ON EVERY OTHER ISSUE.
Much of the way the U.S. government works is due the difficulties in communication and travel when the U.S. was established in the 18th century. It would be pretty pathetic trying to get everyone in the country to mail in a vote on every issue when the letter could take a few weeks to get across the country. It was therefore considered more pragmatic to have representatives at every step in the process.
The communications or information age should change all this, however. The speed at which people can now educate themselves and share ideas cannot be compared to the way things were in great grandpa's days.
I hope that computers will put an end to the delegate and electoral college system, and even the representative system. And I hope people can be trusted with the responsibility of direct democracy. But that's another issue.
Jeff
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
This is your opinion, as I have some doubt about the statement. I never liked this desire people have to say one person is smarter than the other. And Einstein's place and importance in society has been exaggerated, largely due to the social phenomenon of celebrity. (He is certainly a better choice than a rock star, actress or politician, and I was almost expecting one of these to be picked by Time.) But Neils Bohr was so often wrong himself. The "Bohr model of the atom," for example, shows electrons in elliptical orbitals, like planets orbiting a star. It's well known in physics and chemistry to be completely false, and it is only valued today as an appoximation for hydrogen-like atoms.
In any case, I am thrilled to see a fellow scientist chosen for person of the century. It almost restores my respect for the media. This is a much better choice than the runners-up would have been, which (I haven't checked but I bet) are Elvis, John Lennon, JFK, Princess Diana, James Dean, etc. Yuck.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
If the Pilgrims (and the Puritans of the Mass Bay Colony) had brought all the food they needed, nearly half of the population would not have died the first winter. Something to think about, if the colonization of America is to be compared with that of Mars ;-)
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
The Loci Project has its own window manager and desktop system which place icons and application windows into a tree structure...literally.
This screenshot shows program icons connected or 'piped' according to their hierarchy. Double clicking on an icon reveals or hides the program's window (shown as a 'label' widget in the screenshot). And the desktop can be scrolled around in all directions.
Now imagine having dozens of programs running. With traditional window managers, you would have them all open on the desktop and/or represented by buttons on a taskbar or by icons. How do the programs relate to each other in a hierarchy??? You have no idea: that information is never shown anywhere! With Loci, you always know the hierarchy, because the windows are attached to the icons, and the icons are connected with lines.
Note: Loci is a combination of a desktop and a graphical programming language for the management of data processing projects. It is not a general purpose desktop.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Are they the same chips with different names or are they really different chips? If they are different, what are the differences?
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This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Jane Curtin: Damn it! It's not just for x86 anymore!
(You may be too young to catch the Saturday Night Live reference.)
And what happens when everyone starts using 'IA32' and 'IA64'?
Maybe version 4.0 should be called, 'XF4'.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
I opted for a Master's over a Ph.D. partly because I want to switch topics (and get a Ph.D. elsewhere) but also because of the politics in the environment--I just want to get of there for a while.
Getting a Ph.D. puts you in the heart of highly political academia, and since some fields are pretty much Ph.D.-only, like science, the subjugates can't avoid it.
In my frustration with the political nature of science, I started "The Open Lab", which applies the Open Source Software model to science (the former was modeled after the ideal of the latter; but we ought to strive for that ideal):
http://theopenlab.uml.edu/
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Yeah, baby!
<shameless_promotion>
http://theopenlab.uml.edu/pygtools/
</shameless_promotion>
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
To make it through the drudgery of a life in the "dry", technical fields like CS and engineering, you need some motivation. From a very young age, with no encouragement from anyone, I have found computer harwardware and programming to be so enthralling that I could lie awake at night for hours fantasizing about buying some new system or writing a program. It makes me wonder if there are some neurotransmitters involved akin to those that runners get (a "runner's high" is caused by endorphines, natural pain-killers similar to morphine, both of which are addictive).
Do other men feel this way? Having many close male friends with similar interests, I am certain they do. We can talk for hours about computers with a great deal of enthusiam...and pleasure, I suppose. I know men aren't known to talk as much as women about some things, but when it comes to computers, (some) guys just can't get enough.
Do women feel the same way? I wondered that for a long time, and so I thought I'd ask them. I asked a number of women that work around and with computers (so, they've already "made it") (1) if they have any computing projects they work on in their own spare time and (2) what they thought of a certain new technology. The response is typically (1) "No way! Are you kidding? I can't wait to get home and away from those things" and (2) "I don't know. I really don't care".
But how do women get by in some very technical and "dry" fields if they are so apathetic about the technology? Well, I'm not a woman, so I don't know. But I would dare to guess that women are motivated and even get "mental pleasure" from the prospect of "nurturing" a "career" (to use some womanisms) and making money. In contrast, most men I know tend to be less concerned with the idea of a perfect career.
Maybe women here can enlighten us. (1) Do you have computer projects that are totally unrelated to work? How much time do you spend? (2) Do you find yourself talking about the latest technology with your friends on your own time? And (3) would you say you get pleasure from the technology?
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
Look at the demographics:
3. The particular development tool I would most like to see for Linux is
12. The Component / Class framework I use should be based on?
22. Currently, the main platform I develop for is...
28. The primary development tool I/we currently use is...
29. All the development tools I/we currently use are...
Conclusion: The vast majority of respondents are Windows users who currently develop with Delphi and want to see it ported to (x86) Linux. It makes sense then that they would use the most Windows-like desktop: KDE.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
I think it's pretty obvious that GNOME + Harmony frightened Troll into changing the Qt license. If they did not, they would have lost all the KDE developers to the Harmony toolset and many others to GTK+.
The file manager never worked and now the GNOME team decided to rewrite completely. Not a good sign.
GMC did "work", and I think it is a GOOD sign that the GNOME developers recognized that something needed to be improved. It shows that the project is still alive and growing.
Excuse me but I believed that one of the strong points of of OSS was to promote code reuse, with GNOME we keep rewriting code over and over.
This is a broad accusation you just made about all of GNOME, but you're basing it on one program. Don't tell me KDE never scrapped an idea.
Since KDE is an Open Source project, if you don't like something about it just grab the code and change it. Last time I checked the KDE folks where more than happy to see more people helping them and they showed good attitude and realist goals
Ummmm. And this isn't true about GNOME? Last time I checked, there were many many welcomed contributions to GNOME. You have to watch these baseless accusations you're making.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
And the anti-GNOME/pro-KDE posters can be called trolltrolls :-)
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
I now hear talk about a "new" file manager, one that uses GNOME VFS. What's the reasoning behind the switch? Why not continue with GMC? Does anyone know?
BTW, I have to respond to all the "GNOME sucks as a desktop flamebait". GNOME stands for "GNU Network Object Model Environment". The innovations are largely to provide GNU-licensed protocols for object sharing between GUI applications. GNOME IS NOT A GUI, GTK+ IS THE GUI GNOME USES! GNOME does come with some basic applications that make a fairly basal desktop. For the most part, all you see when you start GNOME is a little panel and some icons. If that's how you judge GNOME, then you're judging the book by the cover.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
What people will prefer to work with: a 1980's desktop from The Open Group (all of their products: X, Motif, CDE) or the latest bells and whistles from MICROS~1. I'm criticizing The Open Group, not X technology.
Man that really sounds familiar to something called embrace and extend. Looks like this kid did his last internship in Redmond...
Well, by that logic, I guess you'd say Linus Torvalds did his last internship at Redmond for embracing and extending UNIX.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.