You follow up a bad analogy about obesity another bad anology about healthcare.
The analogy you are looking for is what the poster said. If you use slashdot 15 hours a day then everyone on the planet gets a little fatter. Also, the analogy needs to include the fact that the Slashdotters have been using the Internet for about 150 years and have been making everyone fat for all that time while everyone else was not using the Internet at all.
Basically, the parties over. Time to get responsible and settle down.
The point is that "We the people" are supposed to be the boss since we are the ones paying the bills for this "service" called "government". Bush is not the boss of America, he is an, erm, elected official, not a CEO.
The administration can disagree with the findings but they should not be gagging them. They need to make a case in a public court as to why they believe global warming is not the problem these scientists say it is. But that would start to look like democracy.
"Do you mean limited by the amount of Uranium 235 we can get our hands on?"
Yes.
"I suppose it is limited but the supply of available uranium is very large. I think the going price is about $26 a kilogram. Supposedly it is much more plentiful than gold, mercury, or tungsten. And doesn't a little bit go a very long ways?"
Consider that fossil oil is going to have lasted about, lets say, 200 years. And that we will have consumed a planetary resource to the point where it will not be available easily in the future should we want or need some. By the time we transition from oil, energy use will have reached unpresedented historical levels, so it is likely that we will consume nuclear materials at a fatser rate. Although we may be able to mine the solar system for nuclear fuel whereas we could not do that for oil.
I agree that nuclear energy needs to be harnessed to some extent. It's just to powerful to "waste". My point is that the "tree huggers" have several valid points and are not the enemy of the environment because they are for investments in renewables rather than nuclear energy.
You see, one of the problems with renewables is that anyone can supply their own power, individually or at the local community level. Investments in these technologies would lead to people providing their own power. What would big business do? Think about it.
I agree with you in so far as the "tree huggers" did not really think nuclear energy through on a mass scale. Mostly the rhetoric stayed at alarmist levels with a veneer of science to provide frightening overtones to the whole concept of nuclear anything.
However, what fundamentally motivated the No Nukes crowed was the shoddy corpratism that drove the early nuclear industry. The private sector was way out ahead of the reasearch that was needed in order to insure the safety of the citizenry. Money was the motivating factor more than anything else, meaning the drive for nukes was focused on the "Cheap" part of "Cheap and Clean".
Nuclear energy is also _not_ clean. Clean would be something like emitting water or cream soda. The chemistry involved in "disposing" of nuclear waste is highly toxic.
Lastly, note that nuclear energy is a limited resource, like oil. The "tree huggers" also understood this and so are pushing for/renewable/ energy sources like solar, wind, biodiesel (which is really solar), etc. America handed billions upon billions of tax dollars to private nuclear companies in order to develop nuclear energy. While it was a ruff start, the technology is now pretty mature (except for waste management). The same type of massive national investment is needed for renewable ebergy as well.
Great post! This post really highlights the differences between people with opinions and people with knowledge.
Americans tend to compare China or other countries to the idealised form of US democracy they are tought via pop-culture. What they don't want to see is that American democracy is really pretty awful. The whole world should be looking for a better form of government because nobody seems to have it right.
" Sancho began investigating the problem after watching the votes come in during the infamous 2000 presidential election. In Volusia County precinct 216, a memory card added more than 200 votes to George W. Bush's total and subtracted 16,000 votes from Al Gore. The mistake was later corrected during a hand count.
After watching his computer expert change vote totals this week, Sancho said that he now believes someone on the inside did the same thing in Volusia County in 2000.
"Someone with access to the vote center in Volusia County put it on a memory card and uploaded it into the main system," Sancho said. "
"What kind of measurement do you use to judge that Western violence/war"
The metrics I'm using are:
1. Body counts 2. Epic cultural destruction 3. Economic terrorism
If you can reference incidents where Jihad has caused death, pain and suffering we can start to tally them up and see how they compare against Western "Protecting National Interests".
"You can never defeat a bully with kindness."
We are not fighting "a bully". We are living in a world of social politics, all interlinked. The USA has been involved with Islamic terrorists since before it was a phrase. The USA played a crucial role in developing what are now known as "the terrorist networks". The USA has more sole searching to do than any Muslim. But I have not heard anything from official US representatives that suggests they are going to rethink policies so as to improve the lives of everyone on the planet rather than a select few.
"The only way to defeat a bully is to make him know that his bullying will have harsh, immediate, and consistent negative consequences."
You could say that this is what 9/11 was all about.
"USA/Capitalism"
I do not see "capitalism" as _the problem_. I do see the USA's economic policies as a major part of the problem.
"I think that those who harm others should be held accountable for it"
As do I, but the USA seems to be above accountability.
"My question for you: why are you trying to make Western violence/war look "just as bad" as Islamic jihad?"
Because it is worse, more prevalent and more enduring. Also, because as an American, it is the violence that I should be able to have the greatest influence on. Meaning, if the goal is to create a more peaceful world I should be working in areas where I can have the greatest positive effect. I think that showing a willingness to disarm, listen and adapt would go a lot farther to achieving peace than invading, killing and dictating.
I also argue these points so tenaciously because I find that Americans and the "West" are largely blind to their own violence because they live in a bubble of relative freedom and comfort. That this comfort comes from the violence visited on the rest of the world in the name of "protecting western interests" gets lost. But the numbers are simple and clear.
I appreciate your point concerning the distinction between Islamic violence and "Christian" violence. I just don't think the distinction is useful in terms of solving problems. No one on this planet should be pointing the finger or feeling the victim. We are all in it together and will all need to change if anything is going to improve.
When Christians go to war it is often for "matters of state" or reversing the tide of the evil doers, or spreading democracy. When Muslims go to war it is often for the principals of Islam. Every US soldier fighting in a war has been blessed by a chaplin before going into combat. The "heartland" of America is based on "Christian Values". It is a Christian country, with a Christian president who has claimed repeatedly that he is doing the Christian God's work on this planet. He is not so unlike previous presidents. The further back in history you go the stronger the Christian religious ferver gets. The Muslims see America as Christian, just as we see Iraqi's as Muslim.
If you can accept this, then the body counts fall where I said. Not for lack of trying on the part of Muslims, perhaps. But the ability and the power are with America and so America holds most of the cards and has most of the responsibility when it comes to reducing these body counts. Particularly in light of the fact the Muslims have not been arming and training religious fanatics throughout America and the world. If they were then it would be hypocrictical of them to complain that now they were being attacked by the very forces they armed and trained and used for violent clandestin purposes when it suited them.
If what you are saying is that the meta-data in, say, a PostgreSQL table file, sans data, is not storage, then I agree with you. The problem is that that data alone is meaningless except to clone structure. Once you ad some data, the file is then/storing/ that data. This is true for any file. the XML spec, like the Postgres table spec is all about how to store data.
"I have explicitly stated that I am not denying that people create storage systems based on XML"
You have stated that XML files are not storage. You claim that storage includes the access API, which it most certainly does not.
If you reframed your argument I may agree with parts of it but you have started with a bold and incorect claim rather than focusing on what you really mean to say. There is so much confusion around XML that I decided to hash this out because you have labored to make this point and I don't see it as correct.
Also, I'm writing an application that stores data in XML files, which were the only storage medium that met all of the short term requirements.:^p
Saying Islam is more violent is just a matter of where you live. There are Christian fundamentalists in the USA that are looking to outlaw homosexuality and they have a lot of support. If you live in a coastal Blue State then you live in a liberal bubble, such that it is now days. And even there puritanical fundamentalism is the underlying social current. We just defeated a bill that would have outlawed gay marriage in the State I live. It was defeated something like 53/47, which was considered a huge victory.
As for "Christian" killings, Post WWII:
Korea Vietnam Cambodia Laos Guatemala Costa Rica Indonesia The Congo Afghanistan Libya El Salvador Nicaragua Panama Haiti Iraq
There is really no place left on earth where Christians have not drawn blood. Vietnam alone is over 2 million casualties. The others, in total, add up to millions more. That's just a drop in the bucket and only lists conflicts with US involvement, let alone "European Christians".
The reality is that "Christian" nations are immensly violent. They spend the majority of their resources on perfecting the tools of war.
I'm not saying that "Christians" are worse as people, only that they are the ones doing the majority of killing in our time. They are by no means "innocent".
"For example, you may have an application that performs a website search by looking through XML files for a list of names. It will open the file, find the tags, and then test the stored data against the criteria, contining until it finds what it needs. This is a waste, as the task could be performed much better by a RDBMS."
Would you please explain where the data in your example is "stored" if not in the XML file that you just plainly stated is being searched by the web application. It does not matter one wit what is better, RDBs or XML. RDBs "store" there data in files on a file system. The file system allows them to "open" these files and, guess what, _look inside them_ and interigate their contents for _all sorts of metadata_ that _describes the actual data_! If I export the data in an RDB to a comma seperated file, then that is where the data is stored there too. I could open that data with an application that understands the file format and manipulate it but I would not say that the data is stored in the application. As it happens, I could also export the data as XML and store it there, too.
XML is a container for data. XML has markers that make the data meaningful. DTD's are what "describe" the data, or at least provide domain specific constraints. XML is no different than RDB data files that reside, lifeless, on the file system until some application that understands them gets a pointer and starts to use them.
XML is data storage. I hope that it is now clear. It also happens to be very useful as a container in certain situations.
"...I think we should start with Islam since its adherents seem, by far, most prone to violence, threats, intimidation, car burnings, suicide bombings, and general religious psychosis."
If you want to start with the one with the greatest pentiant for killing, then we should start with Christianity as Christian nations have been responsible for several magnitudes more deaths than any other religion this past century. But then you would prabobly have to take a long hard look at yourself, whcih is far less appealing than pointing fingers.
You are starting to sound like you just want the world to work exactly the way that would be convienient for you. If the world obliged then of course things would work well, for you. I don't expect the world to work only for me. There are good reasons the UNIX CLI is designed the way it is, as people have mentioned here. What I have found is that investing the time to learn the system has made me about 1,000 times more efficient and less error prone than people who relly on the GUI to get things done. This is what proffessinals do, they invest time to learn the powerful tools. If you want easy, stick with your GUI, they come in all flavors.
Also, your retort to the modern machine shop floor is flawed. I'm not sure how many shop floors you have seen but depending on what you are doing you can not just walk up to, say, an industrial lathe and use the nice GUI to make a lamp stand. Modern machines _are_ safer but they are much more complex than what they replaced. For example, a local wood shop has a robot that can take a block of wood and use a series of about 20 tools to produce almost any shape you have created a template for. But to use it effectively you need to have a lot of specialized knowledge. i.e. _you_ have to learn the context.
Which is sort of what UNIX is all about, a context to automate other contexts:). There is no reason you could not write a CLI that does everything you are asking for. It would just be rigid and limited. Apple actually did something like this when they had A/UX. It was cool if you were a newbie but pretty useless once you got passed the basics.
If you want an completely integrated environment that understands context you might really like the new Microsoft.NET enabled CLI. But now I'm just being mean.
Of course it's an opinion. There are enough "facts" out there for anyone to have any opinion they choose. The trick is to use several different faculties of your brain to sort through all these "facts" and arrive at a reasonable interpretation of reality. One that when tested, tests positive.
RMS tests positive in all my studies. Head and shoulders above others. Do you have findings of your own that might sway me differently?
I get tired of seeing people bash RMS for whatever reason they pull out of the grab bag. The guy is simply the bedrock of everything Free and (allegedly) Open Source software stand for. There is nothing remotely wrong with the GPLv3. It just has peoples fur up because it looks like it might make it hard to coin money off of Free software. But thats what they were saying throughout the 90's about GPLv2. Appariently it takes industry about 10 years to catch up with RMS.
"That is true for most of the world but NOT for the Arctic."
Pssst... were talking about the Antarctic here...
"ERRR again! Whatever kind of whater is on top of some floating ice, it will NOT CHANGE THE SEA LEVEL EVER! And the temparature of the water surrounding the Arctic is NOT 30C."
So a loaded cargo vessel displaces as much water as an uloaded one? What are you saying?!
"ERRR! Floating ice in the Arctic, salt or fresh, melting or freezing, does NOT change the sea level, never!"
I spoke with the project manager for SchoolTool last year when he was at an educational conference in my area. He said that what Mark basicaly learned with the first (Java based) SchoolTool is not to start a project and then go into space. Goo advice for anyone committing to large product development.
The current SchoolTool is being written in Zope3 and is under tighter development control.
This is very old news and does not reflect the current understandings of either SchoolTool or Marc Shuttleworth. This article could also be called "My first babysteps in the universe of Open Source development", file under ancient history.
That is the question of the hour. Not easily answered given the magnitude of the scale of things, like the Iraq war. Incidentally, the Iraq war drew the largest anti-war protests of any war in recorded history. The USA, and the world did not want this war. Yet we are there. So clearly just expressing democratic opinion only goes so far.
I can only answer "What can we do" for myself. First, I study the world. Then I map my studies onto my ethics and morality. Then I try and align my skills and talents with actions I think will be useful in bringing about a world that I would like to live in. Part of this comes from listening to other people and hearing the kind of world they would like, often not so much unlike the one I want.
Action comes in the form of donating time to organizations I support, like one in Boston called Community Change, a non-profit dedicated to eliminating institutional racism. Or REACH, the Rape Education and Crisis Hotline. Or most recently working with cooperatives on workplace democracy, which has been a real eye opener.
My primary focus is on developing cooperatives relationships between like organizations so that they can pool resources and combine efforts to achieve greater goals then they could individually. "The New World Order" is attacking progressive movements at all levels not the least of which is drying up grant dollars for progressive causes. Counteracting that reality is paramount both at the legislative and organizational level.
Ahh, no, he was most definitely not the one to coin that. It's been around for a long time. Although he can't be faulted for having that questioned ringing in his ears. "Why can't we all just get along" is right up there with "I'm not racist, some of my best friends are black". It's representative of the worst kind of pseudo-liberalism in that it's usually uttered by the privileged class that has not done any real work to understand the world from anyone elses point of view. It usually can be swapped one for one with "Why can't everyone just see things as I do"?
My original point is that America is pointing fingers at the "Muslim world" calling it barbaric, ignorant and violent. America created Osama Bin Laden and al-Qeada from the Afghan war in the 70's by funneling money, weapons and training to anti-communist radical Muslim terrorists. The Terrorists did not just spring up out of the fabric of muslim society. It was fermented and nurtured by the "West". The USA is incapable both on a policy level and a cultural level of analysing it's own behavior and the consequences therefore. There are a lot of people in the middle east (and all over the world) that simply want the US out of their politics. You do know that America supported Saddam Hussein in the 80's? Right when he was committing the worst of the atrocities the US now condoms him for. It's completely psychotic. And I am an American. I can only imagine what other cultures must think and feel.
No, it's your fault for being unable to distinguish between what is serious and what is not. The phrase "Why can't we all just get along" is a part of (American) popular culture and is used to denote a certain type of failed liberalism. That you don't get the reference has nothing to do with the seriousness of my post.
Slashdot Mirror
You follow up a bad analogy about obesity another bad anology about healthcare.
The analogy you are looking for is what the poster said. If you use slashdot 15 hours a day then everyone on the planet gets a little fatter. Also, the analogy needs to include the fact that the Slashdotters have been using the Internet for about 150 years and have been making everyone fat for all that time while everyone else was not using the Internet at all.
Basically, the parties over. Time to get responsible and settle down.
Kind Regards
The point is that "We the people" are supposed to be the boss since we are the ones paying the bills for this "service" called "government". Bush is not the boss of America, he is an, erm, elected official, not a CEO.
The administration can disagree with the findings but they should not be gagging them. They need to make a case in a public court as to why they believe global warming is not the problem these scientists say it is. But that would start to look like democracy.
Kind Regards
"Do you mean limited by the amount of Uranium 235 we can get our hands on?"
Yes.
"I suppose it is limited but the supply of available uranium is very large. I think the going price is about $26 a kilogram. Supposedly it is much more plentiful than gold, mercury, or tungsten. And doesn't a little bit go a very long ways?"
Consider that fossil oil is going to have lasted about, lets say, 200 years. And that we will have consumed a planetary resource to the point where it will not be available easily in the future should we want or need some. By the time we transition from oil, energy use will have reached unpresedented historical levels, so it is likely that we will consume nuclear materials at a fatser rate. Although we may be able to mine the solar system for nuclear fuel whereas we could not do that for oil.
I agree that nuclear energy needs to be harnessed to some extent. It's just to powerful to "waste". My point is that the "tree huggers" have several valid points and are not the enemy of the environment because they are for investments in renewables rather than nuclear energy.
You see, one of the problems with renewables is that anyone can supply their own power, individually or at the local community level. Investments in these technologies would lead to people providing their own power. What would big business do? Think about it.
Kind Regards
I agree with you in so far as the "tree huggers" did not really think nuclear energy through on a mass scale. Mostly the rhetoric stayed at alarmist levels with a veneer of science to provide frightening overtones to the whole concept of nuclear anything.
/renewable/ energy sources like solar, wind, biodiesel (which is really solar), etc. America handed billions upon billions of tax dollars to private nuclear companies in order to develop nuclear energy. While it was a ruff start, the technology is now pretty mature (except for waste management). The same type of massive national investment is needed for renewable ebergy as well.
However, what fundamentally motivated the No Nukes crowed was the shoddy corpratism that drove the early nuclear industry. The private sector was way out ahead of the reasearch that was needed in order to insure the safety of the citizenry. Money was the motivating factor more than anything else, meaning the drive for nukes was focused on the "Cheap" part of "Cheap and Clean".
Nuclear energy is also _not_ clean. Clean would be something like emitting water or cream soda. The chemistry involved in "disposing" of nuclear waste is highly toxic.
Lastly, note that nuclear energy is a limited resource, like oil. The "tree huggers" also understood this and so are pushing for
Kind Regards
Yes indeed. But that does not mean we should cease trying to improve "government", of course.
Great post! This post really highlights the differences between people with opinions and people with knowledge.
Americans tend to compare China or other countries to the idealised form of US democracy they are tought via pop-culture. What they don't want to see is that American democracy is really pretty awful. The whole world should be looking for a better form of government because nobody seems to have it right.
Kind Regards
This is what I found on Google:
"
Sancho began investigating the problem after watching the votes come in during the infamous 2000 presidential election. In Volusia County precinct 216, a memory card added more than 200 votes to George W. Bush's total and subtracted 16,000 votes from Al Gore. The mistake was later corrected during a hand count.
After watching his computer expert change vote totals this week, Sancho said that he now believes someone on the inside did the same thing in Volusia County in 2000.
"Someone with access to the vote center in Volusia County put it on a memory card and uploaded it into the main system," Sancho said.
"
http://www.wesh.com/news/5542983/detail.html
Kind Regards
"I'm done."
Thats fine. You seem to be working both sides of the argument in your own head anyway. What would you need me for?
Kind Regards
"What kind of measurement do you use to judge that Western violence/war"
The metrics I'm using are:
1. Body counts
2. Epic cultural destruction
3. Economic terrorism
If you can reference incidents where Jihad has caused death, pain and suffering we can start to tally them up and see how they compare against Western "Protecting National Interests".
"You can never defeat a bully with kindness."
We are not fighting "a bully". We are living in a world of social politics, all interlinked. The USA has been involved with Islamic terrorists since before it was a phrase. The USA played a crucial role in developing what are now known as "the terrorist networks". The USA has more sole searching to do than any Muslim. But I have not heard anything from official US representatives that suggests they are going to rethink policies so as to improve the lives of everyone on the planet rather than a select few.
"The only way to defeat a bully is to make him know that his bullying will have harsh, immediate, and consistent negative consequences."
You could say that this is what 9/11 was all about.
"USA/Capitalism"
I do not see "capitalism" as _the problem_. I do see the USA's economic policies as a major part of the problem.
"I think that those who harm others should be held accountable for it"
As do I, but the USA seems to be above accountability.
Kind Regards
but I know what you mean :)
"My question for you: why are you trying to make Western violence/war look "just as bad" as Islamic jihad?"
Because it is worse, more prevalent and more enduring. Also, because as an American, it is the violence that I should be able to have the greatest influence on. Meaning, if the goal is to create a more peaceful world I should be working in areas where I can have the greatest positive effect. I think that showing a willingness to disarm, listen and adapt would go a lot farther to achieving peace than invading, killing and dictating.
I also argue these points so tenaciously because I find that Americans and the "West" are largely blind to their own violence because they live in a bubble of relative freedom and comfort. That this comfort comes from the violence visited on the rest of the world in the name of "protecting western interests" gets lost. But the numbers are simple and clear.
I appreciate your point concerning the distinction between Islamic violence and "Christian" violence. I just don't think the distinction is useful in terms of solving problems. No one on this planet should be pointing the finger or feeling the victim. We are all in it together and will all need to change if anything is going to improve.
peace
When Christians go to war it is often for "matters of state" or reversing the tide of the evil doers, or spreading democracy. When Muslims go to war it is often for the principals of Islam. Every US soldier fighting in a war has been blessed by a chaplin before going into combat. The "heartland" of America is based on "Christian Values". It is a Christian country, with a Christian president who has claimed repeatedly that he is doing the Christian God's work on this planet. He is not so unlike previous presidents. The further back in history you go the stronger the Christian religious ferver gets. The Muslims see America as Christian, just as we see Iraqi's as Muslim.
If you can accept this, then the body counts fall where I said. Not for lack of trying on the part of Muslims, perhaps. But the ability and the power are with America and so America holds most of the cards and has most of the responsibility when it comes to reducing these body counts. Particularly in light of the fact the Muslims have not been arming and training religious fanatics throughout America and the world. If they were then it would be hypocrictical of them to complain that now they were being attacked by the very forces they armed and trained and used for violent clandestin purposes when it suited them.
Kind Regards
If what you are saying is that the meta-data in, say, a PostgreSQL table file, sans data, is not storage, then I agree with you. The problem is that that data alone is meaningless except to clone structure. Once you ad some data, the file is then /storing/ that data. This is true for any file. the XML spec, like the Postgres table spec is all about how to store data.
:^p
"I have explicitly stated that I am not denying that people create storage systems based on XML"
You have stated that XML files are not storage. You claim that storage includes the access API, which it most certainly does not.
If you reframed your argument I may agree with parts of it but you have started with a bold and incorect claim rather than focusing on what you really mean to say. There is so much confusion around XML that I decided to hash this out because you have labored to make this point and I don't see it as correct.
Also, I'm writing an application that stores data in XML files, which were the only storage medium that met all of the short term requirements.
Kind Regards
Saying Islam is more violent is just a matter of where you live. There are Christian fundamentalists in the USA that are looking to outlaw homosexuality and they have a lot of support. If you live in a coastal Blue State then you live in a liberal bubble, such that it is now days. And even there puritanical fundamentalism is the underlying social current. We just defeated a bill that would have outlawed gay marriage in the State I live. It was defeated something like 53/47, which was considered a huge victory.
As for "Christian" killings, Post WWII:
Korea
Vietnam
Cambodia
Laos
Guatemala
Costa Rica
Indonesia
The Congo
Afghanistan
Libya
El Salvador
Nicaragua
Panama
Haiti
Iraq
There is really no place left on earth where Christians have not drawn blood. Vietnam alone is over 2 million casualties. The others, in total, add up to millions more. That's just a drop in the bucket and only lists conflicts with US involvement, let alone "European Christians".
The reality is that "Christian" nations are immensly violent. They spend the majority of their resources on perfecting the tools of war.
I'm not saying that "Christians" are worse as people, only that they are the ones doing the majority of killing in our time. They are by no means "innocent".
Kind Regards
"For example, you may have an application that performs a website search by looking through XML files for a list of names. It will open the file, find the tags, and then test the stored data against the criteria, contining until it finds what it needs. This is a waste, as the task could be performed much better by a RDBMS."
Would you please explain where the data in your example is "stored" if not in the XML file that you just plainly stated is being searched by the web application. It does not matter one wit what is better, RDBs or XML. RDBs "store" there data in files on a file system. The file system allows them to "open" these files and, guess what, _look inside them_ and interigate their contents for _all sorts of metadata_ that _describes the actual data_! If I export the data in an RDB to a comma seperated file, then that is where the data is stored there too. I could open that data with an application that understands the file format and manipulate it but I would not say that the data is stored in the application. As it happens, I could also export the data as XML and store it there, too.
XML is a container for data. XML has markers that make the data meaningful. DTD's are what "describe" the data, or at least provide domain specific constraints. XML is no different than RDB data files that reside, lifeless, on the file system until some application that understands them gets a pointer and starts to use them.
XML is data storage. I hope that it is now clear. It also happens to be very useful as a container in certain situations.
Kind Regards
"...I think we should start with Islam since its adherents seem, by far, most prone to violence, threats, intimidation, car burnings, suicide bombings, and general religious psychosis."
If you want to start with the one with the greatest pentiant for killing, then we should start with Christianity as Christian nations have been responsible for several magnitudes more deaths than any other religion this past century. But then you would prabobly have to take a long hard look at yourself, whcih is far less appealing than pointing fingers.
Kind Regards
You are starting to sound like you just want the world to work exactly the way that would be convienient for you. If the world obliged then of course things would work well, for you. I don't expect the world to work only for me. There are good reasons the UNIX CLI is designed the way it is, as people have mentioned here. What I have found is that investing the time to learn the system has made me about 1,000 times more efficient and less error prone than people who relly on the GUI to get things done. This is what proffessinals do, they invest time to learn the powerful tools. If you want easy, stick with your GUI, they come in all flavors.
:). There is no reason you could not write a CLI that does everything you are asking for. It would just be rigid and limited. Apple actually did something like this when they had A/UX. It was cool if you were a newbie but pretty useless once you got passed the basics.
.NET enabled CLI. But now I'm just being mean.
Also, your retort to the modern machine shop floor is flawed. I'm not sure how many shop floors you have seen but depending on what you are doing you can not just walk up to, say, an industrial lathe and use the nice GUI to make a lamp stand. Modern machines _are_ safer but they are much more complex than what they replaced. For example, a local wood shop has a robot that can take a block of wood and use a series of about 20 tools to produce almost any shape you have created a template for. But to use it effectively you need to have a lot of specialized knowledge. i.e. _you_ have to learn the context.
Which is sort of what UNIX is all about, a context to automate other contexts
If you want an completely integrated environment that understands context you might really like the new Microsoft
Kind Regards
Of course it's an opinion. There are enough "facts" out there for anyone to have any opinion they choose. The trick is to use several different faculties of your brain to sort through all these "facts" and arrive at a reasonable interpretation of reality. One that when tested, tests positive.
RMS tests positive in all my studies. Head and shoulders above others. Do you have findings of your own that might sway me differently?
Kind Regards
*applause*
I get tired of seeing people bash RMS for whatever reason they pull out of the grab bag. The guy is simply the bedrock of everything Free and (allegedly) Open Source software stand for. There is nothing remotely wrong with the GPLv3. It just has peoples fur up because it looks like it might make it hard to coin money off of Free software. But thats what they were saying throughout the 90's about GPLv2. Appariently it takes industry about 10 years to catch up with RMS.
Kind Regards
"That is true for most of the world but NOT for the Arctic."
:^)
Pssst... were talking about the Antarctic here...
"ERRR again! Whatever kind of whater is on top of some floating ice, it will NOT CHANGE THE SEA LEVEL EVER! And the temparature of the water surrounding the Arctic is NOT 30C."
So a loaded cargo vessel displaces as much water as an uloaded one? What are you saying?!
"ERRR! Floating ice in the Arctic, salt or fresh, melting or freezing, does NOT change the sea level, never!"
Never! NEVER! NEVERRRRRRrrrrr....!!!!!
I spoke with the project manager for SchoolTool last year when he was at an educational conference in my area. He said that what Mark basicaly learned with the first (Java based) SchoolTool is not to start a project and then go into space. Goo advice for anyone committing to large product development.
The current SchoolTool is being written in Zope3 and is under tighter development control.
This is very old news and does not reflect the current understandings of either SchoolTool or Marc Shuttleworth. This article could also be called "My first babysteps in the universe of Open Source development", file under ancient history.
Kind Regards
"What can we as private citizens do about this?"
:)
That is the question of the hour. Not easily answered given the magnitude of the scale of things, like the Iraq war. Incidentally, the Iraq war drew the largest anti-war protests of any war in recorded history. The USA, and the world did not want this war. Yet we are there. So clearly just expressing democratic opinion only goes so far.
I can only answer "What can we do" for myself. First, I study the world. Then I map my studies onto my ethics and morality. Then I try and align my skills and talents with actions I think will be useful in bringing about a world that I would like to live in. Part of this comes from listening to other people and hearing the kind of world they would like, often not so much unlike the one I want.
Action comes in the form of donating time to organizations I support, like one in Boston called Community Change, a non-profit dedicated to eliminating institutional racism. Or REACH, the Rape Education and Crisis Hotline. Or most recently working with cooperatives on workplace democracy, which has been a real eye opener.
My primary focus is on developing cooperatives relationships between like organizations so that they can pool resources and combine efforts to achieve greater goals then they could individually. "The New World Order" is attacking progressive movements at all levels not the least of which is drying up grant dollars for progressive causes. Counteracting that reality is paramount both at the legislative and organizational level.
I guess, do what you can as quickly as you can
Kind Regards
Ahh, no, he was most definitely not the one to coin that. It's been around for a long time. Although he can't be faulted for having that questioned ringing in his ears. "Why can't we all just get along" is right up there with "I'm not racist, some of my best friends are black". It's representative of the worst kind of pseudo-liberalism in that it's usually uttered by the privileged class that has not done any real work to understand the world from anyone elses point of view. It usually can be swapped one for one with "Why can't everyone just see things as I do"?
My original point is that America is pointing fingers at the "Muslim world" calling it barbaric, ignorant and violent. America created Osama Bin Laden and al-Qeada from the Afghan war in the 70's by funneling money, weapons and training to anti-communist radical Muslim terrorists. The Terrorists did not just spring up out of the fabric of muslim society. It was fermented and nurtured by the "West". The USA is incapable both on a policy level and a cultural level of analysing it's own behavior and the consequences therefore. There are a lot of people in the middle east (and all over the world) that simply want the US out of their politics. You do know that America supported Saddam Hussein in the 80's? Right when he was committing the worst of the atrocities the US now condoms him for. It's completely psychotic. And I am an American. I can only imagine what other cultures must think and feel.
Kind Regards
Perhaps not. I didn't know Rodney King uttered those words. I also have no idea what your talking about at this point. Care to explain?
No, it's your fault for being unable to distinguish between what is serious and what is not. The phrase "Why can't we all just get along" is a part of (American) popular culture and is used to denote a certain type of failed liberalism. That you don't get the reference has nothing to do with the seriousness of my post.
Kind Regards