But with an MP3 rip, it is identical, and it doesn't cost anything to do it. I guess you don't have very good audio hardware. MP3 rips are a definite drop in quality from the original CD. Listen on a good system and you will definitely notice the difference. Not that it matters much for the Dead Kennedys or Sex Pistols, but still... --Shoeboy
8 hours before story posts? I can't deal with that. I know the/. crew is busy at linuxworld and all - but for those of us who work for a certain company in redmond, that's not considered a good excuse. It's been awful. Around 7:00 PST one of my developers started twitching and muttering 'need slashdot, need slashdot.' By 8:00 he was screaming about being attacked by snakes. Then he went nuts and started attacking us. By this time the rest of us were shaking so badly we couldn't fight him off. We would have been in trouble if my non-techie boss hadn't arrived and beat him senseless with an unsold copy of MS Bob. (see, it is good for something.) Please don't do this again. I need my fix. --Shoeboy
It doesn't matter if your code is under the GPL or under the MS EULA, the problem of detecting whether someone has taken your code is the same. If they swipe your code, parts of the resulting binary might be bit for bit identical. Greater similarity could probably be found in the output of a disassembler. Talk to a lawyer if you find this. If the thief is a large software company, the odds of someone revealing the theft are probably quite high due to the large number of people who will look at the code. In the world of windows shell replacements, it's a lot harder since the teams are small and the software is (lets be honest here) extremely trivial. (not a flame, I've used litestep and it looked cool and all, but it didn't have 1/1000th the impact on my productivity that the cygnus win32 port of bash did.) --Shoeboy
This was beautiful, and totally worth waiting for. If Larry had rushed things, we might have gotten short, coherent answers. Fortunately the man is a perfectionist, and we got a total dodge of the AMD question, a lot of vaugeness and 135 repetitions of the phrase 'open source'. Great. --Shoeboy
So I'm of the opinion that there is no 'one true distro.' Each distro is targeted at a specific group. Debian is for the true blue gnu freaks, turbolinux offers excellent support of pacific rim languages, corel is for newbies etc... So what market is linuxone targeting? I've wrestled with this question and come to a conclusion, it's for people who want the pentium optimized binaries of mandrake, but find the term 'mandrake' to be offensive. If this describes you, then you should check out this distro. If you do not find the term 'mandrake' offensive then you should probably take a sensitivity training course you sexist/speciesist/whatever bastard! Yeah, it's not a serious post, but it's not like linuxone's a serious company/distro. --Shoeboy
If I was the MPAA would be to simply replace the current encryption technology with rot13. It's just as secure and it would massively increase the lawsuit possibility. So many unixen come with rot13 and they could sue them all. Hell, they could probably get MS to bankroll the whole thing. --Shoeboy
Transmeta could then just write a code-morphing layer to "morph" the ISA you coded to into the new one. No? Brilliant! The Meta Morphing Power Processors! Why stop there. Why not have transmeta write code morphing software that emulates their native instruction set and on top of that run code morphing software that emulates their native instruction set and on top of that run code morphing software that emulates their native instruction set and on top of that run... IT'S TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN!!! --Shoeboy
Ahem... IF YOU WANT TO CODE DIRECTLY TO A VLIW CORE BUY A &*$#ING MERCED!!!!!! Sorry about that. You lot just aren't getting it. If you remove the code morphing layer, then you have to put backwards compatibility into the hardware down the road. That means lots o' transistors and high power consumption 2 or 3 years down the road. That also means that compiler complexity goes up dramatically. So you'll wind up having a crippled architecture and low quality compilers 10 years down the road. That's stupid. Additionally, if the compiler is entirely responsible for the optimization, you lose the niftly on-the-fly code tuning based on actual runtime data -- this is the coolest thing about the Crusoe. --Shoeboy
Who cares about Transmeta Beowulf's. With the low transistor count and low temp, this chip could do the same SMP-on-a-chip thing that IBM is planning for the PPC. The only reason to have beowulf at all is that it's more economical than SMP sytems, it's not a better solution than massive SMP IF massive SMP can be made cheaply. Of course, some organizations will have a need for beowulf clusters of massively SMP systems... ...damn it, now I'm horny. --Shoeboy
Patent-pending Method For Transforming Girls Into Granite Statues* You can't patent that you idiot! There's prior art: When you reach the third level of Harkyn's Castle you will find a "Stone Sword." This turns any creature you encounter into stone. I haven't encountered any girls in Bard's Tale I, but I'm stalled on the second level of Mangars' Tower. --Shoeboy
...of the garage revolution. A composer and an actress coming up with a breakthrough in communications technology. Far out. I'm rethinking my whole approach:
Wanted: Hollywood starlets and composers to assist in next generation web development architecture. Must have interest in compression technology, just-in-time compilers and self modifying code. Large, firm breasts and/or appreciation of Irving Berlin a plus. Competitive salaries, call today.
In all seriousness, I like this story in that is provides a (admittedly anecdotal) refutation to the frequently expressed opinion that only stereotypical geeks can contribute to technology. Some geeks have bulging biceps or a knack for (american) football. Some geeks are cute. Too many of us on/. tend to assume that the beautiful people are lusers. --Shoeboy
lawyers are evil, bottom-dwelling filth. Exactly, but remember that open source can fix almost anything. We need to open source the lawyers! It's a simple process really, first you need to reverse engineer them to find out how the internals work. This can be done with an axe or chainsaw. Then you need to redistribute the parts -- for packaging I recommend a shallow grave. CAUTION: This may not be legal, consult a lawyer first. --Shoeboy
It's pretty well documented that Linus wrote linux to replace with a shitty OS, but the shitty os in question was Minix.
I doubt too many of the early kernel hackers cited "hatred of windows" as their prime motivation. They most likely considered dos/windows irrelevant and were motivate by dislike of the high price and unfree nature of commercial *nixen.
I'm on an MS campus right now, and it's an odd hearing about this from/.
It's easy to understand why bill stepped down if you've played sim city. Once the city gets to a certain size, the effort required to run it begins to outweigh the fun of making it bigger.
Running MS has probably been similar. I bet it was fun launching windows 1.0. Likewise it was no doubt a blast watching OS2 nose dive while windows picked up speed. And the success of MS's internet strategy after nearly missing the boat completely had to have been thrilling.
What next? 10 years of slow, expensive court appeals? That's not fun - that's like trying to build enough police stations to handle the population of your 700 arcologies.
There comes a point in sim city where you either quit or click on the disasters menu and select all of them. I'm glad bill decided to step back instead of building a flying robotic monster and having it lay waste to the campus -- that's what I would have done.
--Shoeboy I'm not a microsoft employee, and I'm certainly not speaking for them.
MCSE (back when I got it at any rate) costs $100 per test for 6 tests. I picked a 4pack of Sybex books covering the core for ~$138. Got the microsoft SQL 6.5 training books for ~170. Total cost ~$908. Not anywhere close to $6k. --Shoeboy
As an MCSE, I'd like to take this opportunity to express my hope that the new linux certification process is as good as Microsoft's.
These are IMHO the most important MCSE tests.
70-215 Summoning He Who Shall Not Be Named 4.0 70-38 Demonic possesion essentials. 70-75 Implementing non-euclidean madness caused by manifestations of the dread Cthulhu 2000 in the enterprise. 70-134 Advanced programming with Yog Sothoth
LinuxOne isn't the only company trying to cash in on the IPO craze with a half assed buisness plan. I'm doing it too. Here's my press release:
Shoeboy: The Next Open Source, eCommerce IPO Seattle, WA Shoeboy, a producer of gametes used in meiotic reproduction, hopes to be one of the next individuals to benefit from the Open Source and eCommerce surges on Wall Street as he readies himself for an IPO.
Shoeboy, based in Seattle, Washington, sells packages of DNA called gametes (or more specifically sperm) that, in conjunction with other gametes known as eggs can produce an embryo that can eventually learn to play the piano and perform integral calculus. The sperm delivery market has traditionally been highly competitive, with even market leaders like Wilt Chamberlain only able to service 20,000 customers. Part of this is due to the primitive and inefficient delivery system know as sex. According to Shoeboy, this is the main reason for Wall Street's dismissal of reproduction as a "hobbyist market."
Shoeboy hopes to overcome these limitations by abandoning sex and selling his sperm over the internet. " eFertilization makes sense as a way to eliminate complexity for customers who have a hard time finding the time and resources for traditional reproduction," said International Data Corp. analyst Jean Bozman. "There's less need for people at the user site to interact with their reproductive system," she said. "Shoeboy next month plans to file with the Semen Exchange Commission for an initial pubic offering," announced Shoeboy. The IPO itself is scheduled roughly for the end of March. An IPO, in which an individual sells genetic stock to the public, provides an infusion of cash, but historically has also placed the individual at increased risk of syphilis. This is another area in which Shoeboy's internet solution is preferable to sex. "Sex is too risky," says Bozman. "Increasingly, consumers are going to say, 'Why do we want to fool around with other people when we can get something prepackaged, and it's no muss, no fuss?'" Skeptics have argued that Shoeboy's plans reflect desperation rather than innovation. "This is simply a last ditch effort after the catastrophic failure of Shoeboy's 'One Size Disappoints All' marketing campaign," said Technology Business Research analyst Joe Ferlazzo. "Additionally, Shoeboy has a history of dissatisfied customers. He just doesn't have the equipment to do the job well."
Shoeboy admits that his record is not a successful one, but he argues that the problems he encountered do not apply to the internet business model. "First off, equipment isn't an issue. My equipment is the most compact in the industry, and I have extremely low latency - were talking 8 seconds here. Then there's bandwidth - In the last year I've managed to fill 36 pint jars - any more and I'd have to get a bigger freezer. The real obstacle to my sperm distribution has been the unwillingness of my customers to be in the same room with me. With the internet, now they don't even have to be in the same state! What could go wrong?" Shoeboy is also quick to point out that his product is completely open source. "Since all future products based on my DNA source code will (by age 13 or so) feel a nearly uncontrollable urge to redistribute their own DNA source code, I am in compliance with the terms of the GPL - just like Linux." Linux, an open-source operating system that competes with Windows NT, was the basis for several successful IPOs in 1999, including Red Hat, VA Linux Systems and Cobalt Networks. VA Linux, in particular, had a record first trading day last month.
Shoeboy hopes to raise nearly $35 million dollars through the IPO. This money will be used to purchase several jars of Vaseline, a subscription to "Barely Legal" and the Shoeboy.com domain.
The first vibrators were huge, expensive machines sold only to doctor's offices (and came with names like "The Chattanooga"). This was way cooler than Katz's article on sexbots. --Shoeboy
And imagine where those geeks in China and India would be now if the first time they had seen and used a computer was at age 5 rather than at age 15 or 20 or whenever they first had it? I imagine that they'd be sitting in their offices all along this hallway, just like they are now. I'm not willing to accept the theory that the Indian and Chinese programmers have any form of racial superiority in the geek world, yet they're definitely kicking ass computerwise all over the guys I went to school with - most of whom had computers in their houses. So how do I explain it? --Shoeboy
It's about masses of people; the proverbial People. The People have the right to govern themselves, not the individuals.
Someone's been confusing the map with the territory. The people is an abstraction. There is no 'the people'.
I have rights. Your have rights. Even CmdrTaco has rights. 'The people' has no rights. Justifying a government as being of 'the people' makes about as much sense as attempting to save the environment by by scrubbing a world map. --Shoeboy
We talk a lot about kids need to be educated in the ways of the binary. Yeah, but WHY do we talk about that. Is it true? I know and work with a large amount of geeks from India and China. They're really good at geeking, and I'm 99.44% sure that China and India do not have anywhere near the amount of computers in the elementary schools that we have. Wow. How do you explain it then? Well it's simple. The ability to think logically is the only real requirement to write programs that work. You need to have a degree of pride and a sense of style as well in order to write programs that are maintainable. None of this requires a computer to learn. Hell, none of this requires a school for that matter. --Shoeboy
So how would you select someone to lead your town/city/country? Come on now, you can't make a statement like that and not provide an alternative!
You just don't get it. If enough of us ignore it, the government really will go away!
Basically, democracy is the best form of government due to it's belief that all people have the right to govern themselves. The problem is that democracy is also founded on the belief that all (or at least most) of the people also have the wisdom to govern themselves. Since the second proposition is obviously wrong, democracy fans are always having to push for a 'more informed' or 'better educated' citizenry. This is bullshit. No matter how much information and education you give most people, they'll still be idiots.
So you can't have tyranny since it infringes on basic liberties, and you can't have democracy because the majority will usually be wrong. What's left? How about governing yourself and leaving others alone. There's no government like no government. --Shoeboy
Slashdot Mirror
Standard moronic comments:
#1 WooHoo, imagine a beowulf cluster of these!!!!!! It could fit in a shoebox!!!!!
#2 Will it run linux??????
--Shoeboy
But with an MP3 rip, it is identical, and it doesn't cost anything to do it.
I guess you don't have very good audio hardware. MP3 rips are a definite drop in quality from the original CD. Listen on a good system and you will definitely notice the difference. Not that it matters much for the Dead Kennedys or Sex Pistols, but still...
--Shoeboy
8 hours before story posts? I can't deal with that. I know the /. crew is busy at linuxworld and all - but for those of us who work for a certain company in redmond, that's not considered a good excuse.
It's been awful. Around 7:00 PST one of my developers started twitching and muttering 'need slashdot, need slashdot.' By 8:00 he was screaming about being attacked by snakes. Then he went nuts and started attacking us. By this time the rest of us were shaking so badly we couldn't fight him off. We would have been in trouble if my non-techie boss hadn't arrived and beat him senseless with an unsold copy of MS Bob. (see, it is good for something.)
Please don't do this again.
I need my fix.
--Shoeboy
It doesn't matter if your code is under the GPL or under the MS EULA, the problem of detecting whether someone has taken your code is the same. If they swipe your code, parts of the resulting binary might be bit for bit identical. Greater similarity could probably be found in the output of a disassembler. Talk to a lawyer if you find this.
If the thief is a large software company, the odds of someone revealing the theft are probably quite high due to the large number of people who will look at the code. In the world of windows shell replacements, it's a lot harder since the teams are small and the software is (lets be honest here) extremely trivial. (not a flame, I've used litestep and it looked cool and all, but it didn't have 1/1000th the impact on my productivity that the cygnus win32 port of bash did.)
--Shoeboy
This was beautiful, and totally worth waiting for. If Larry had rushed things, we might have gotten short, coherent answers. Fortunately the man is a perfectionist, and we got a total dodge of the AMD question, a lot of vaugeness and 135 repetitions of the phrase 'open source'.
Great.
--Shoeboy
So I'm of the opinion that there is no 'one true distro.' Each distro is targeted at a specific group. Debian is for the true blue gnu freaks, turbolinux offers excellent support of pacific rim languages, corel is for newbies etc...
So what market is linuxone targeting? I've wrestled with this question and come to a conclusion, it's for people who want the pentium optimized binaries of mandrake, but find the term 'mandrake' to be offensive. If this describes you, then you should check out this distro. If you do not find the term 'mandrake' offensive then you should probably take a sensitivity training course you sexist/speciesist/whatever bastard!
Yeah, it's not a serious post, but it's not like linuxone's a serious company/distro.
--Shoeboy
If I was the MPAA would be to simply replace the current encryption technology with rot13. It's just as secure and it would massively increase the lawsuit possibility. So many unixen come with rot13 and they could sue them all. Hell, they could probably get MS to bankroll the whole thing.
--Shoeboy
Transmeta could then just write a code-morphing layer to "morph" the ISA you coded to into the new one. No?
Brilliant! The Meta Morphing Power Processors! Why stop there. Why not have transmeta write code morphing software that emulates their native instruction set and on top of that run code morphing software that emulates their native instruction set and on top of that run code morphing software that emulates their native instruction set and on top of that run...
IT'S TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN!!!
--Shoeboy
Ahem...
IF YOU WANT TO CODE DIRECTLY TO A VLIW CORE BUY A &*$#ING MERCED!!!!!!
Sorry about that. You lot just aren't getting it. If you remove the code morphing layer, then you have to put backwards compatibility into the hardware down the road. That means lots o' transistors and high power consumption 2 or 3 years down the road. That also means that compiler complexity goes up dramatically. So you'll wind up having a crippled architecture and low quality compilers 10 years down the road. That's stupid. Additionally, if the compiler is entirely responsible for the optimization, you lose the niftly on-the-fly code tuning based on actual runtime data -- this is the coolest thing about the Crusoe.
--Shoeboy
Who cares about Transmeta Beowulf's. With the low transistor count and low temp, this chip could do the same SMP-on-a-chip thing that IBM is planning for the PPC. The only reason to have beowulf at all is that it's more economical than SMP sytems, it's not a better solution than massive SMP IF massive SMP can be made cheaply. Of course, some organizations will have a need for beowulf clusters of massively SMP systems...
...damn it, now I'm horny.
--Shoeboy
Patent-pending Method For Transforming Girls Into Granite Statues*
You can't patent that you idiot! There's prior art:
When you reach the third level of Harkyn's Castle you will find a "Stone Sword." This turns any creature you encounter into stone. I haven't encountered any girls in Bard's Tale I, but I'm stalled on the second level of Mangars' Tower.
--Shoeboy
...of the garage revolution. A composer and an actress coming up with a breakthrough in communications technology. Far out. I'm rethinking my whole approach:
/. tend to assume that the beautiful people are lusers.
Wanted: Hollywood starlets and composers to assist in next generation web development architecture. Must have interest in compression technology, just-in-time compilers and self modifying code. Large, firm breasts and/or
appreciation of Irving Berlin a plus. Competitive salaries, call today.
In all seriousness, I like this story in that is provides a (admittedly anecdotal) refutation to the frequently expressed opinion that only stereotypical geeks can contribute to technology. Some geeks have bulging biceps or a knack for (american) football. Some geeks are cute. Too many of us on
--Shoeboy
lawyers are evil, bottom-dwelling filth.
Exactly, but remember that open source can fix almost anything.
We need to open source the lawyers!
It's a simple process really, first you need to reverse engineer them to find out how the internals work. This can be done with an axe or chainsaw. Then you need to redistribute the parts -- for packaging I recommend a shallow grave.
CAUTION: This may not be legal, consult a lawyer first.
--Shoeboy
It's pretty well documented that Linus wrote linux to replace with a shitty OS, but the shitty os in question was Minix.
I doubt too many of the early kernel hackers cited "hatred of windows" as their prime motivation. They most likely considered dos/windows irrelevant and were motivate by dislike of the high price and unfree nature of commercial *nixen.
--Shoeboy
It would be awesome to have billg hacking Linux kernel! He's a smart guy, and I am sure he would add a lot :)
;)
I can see bill's first post to linux-kernel now:
You^H^H^HWE are all thieves...
Why not?
--Shoeboy
I'm on an MS campus right now, and it's an odd hearing about this from /.
It's easy to understand why bill stepped down if you've played sim city. Once the city gets to a certain size, the effort required to run it begins to outweigh the fun of making it bigger.
Running MS has probably been similar. I bet it was fun launching windows 1.0. Likewise it was no doubt a blast watching OS2 nose dive while windows picked up speed. And the success of MS's internet strategy after nearly missing the boat completely had to have been thrilling.
What next? 10 years of slow, expensive court appeals? That's not fun - that's like trying to build enough police stations to handle the population of your 700 arcologies.
There comes a point in sim city where you either quit or click on the disasters menu and select all of them. I'm glad bill decided to step back instead of building a flying robotic monster and having it lay waste to the campus -- that's what I would have done.
--Shoeboy
I'm not a microsoft employee, and I'm certainly not speaking for them.
MCSE (back when I got it at any rate) costs $100 per test for 6 tests. I picked a 4pack of Sybex books covering the core for ~$138. Got the microsoft SQL 6.5 training books for ~170. Total cost ~$908. Not anywhere close to $6k.
--Shoeboy
As an MCSE, I'd like to take this opportunity to express my hope that the new linux certification process is as good as Microsoft's.
These are IMHO the most important MCSE tests.
70-215 Summoning He Who Shall Not Be Named 4.0
70-38 Demonic possesion essentials.
70-75 Implementing non-euclidean madness caused by manifestations of the dread Cthulhu 2000 in the enterprise.
70-134 Advanced programming with Yog Sothoth
Does the linux community have anything similar?
--Shoeboy the MCSE
LinuxOne isn't the only company trying to cash in on the IPO craze with a half assed buisness plan. I'm doing it too. Here's my press release:
Shoeboy: The Next Open Source, eCommerce IPO
Seattle, WA Shoeboy, a producer of gametes used in meiotic reproduction, hopes to be one of the next individuals to benefit from the Open Source and eCommerce surges on Wall Street as he readies himself for an IPO.
Shoeboy, based in Seattle, Washington, sells packages of DNA called gametes (or more specifically sperm) that, in conjunction with other gametes known as eggs can produce an embryo that can eventually learn to play the piano and perform integral calculus. The sperm delivery market has traditionally been highly competitive, with even market leaders like Wilt Chamberlain only able to service 20,000 customers. Part of this is due to the primitive and inefficient delivery system know as sex. According to Shoeboy, this is the main reason for Wall Street's dismissal of reproduction as a "hobbyist market."
Shoeboy hopes to overcome these limitations by abandoning sex and selling his sperm over the internet. " eFertilization makes sense as a way to eliminate complexity for customers who have a hard time finding the time and resources for traditional reproduction," said International Data Corp. analyst Jean Bozman. "There's less need for people at the user site to interact with their reproductive system," she said.
"Shoeboy next month plans to file with the Semen Exchange Commission for an initial pubic offering," announced Shoeboy. The IPO itself is scheduled roughly for the end of March.
An IPO, in which an individual sells genetic stock to the public, provides an infusion of cash, but historically has also placed the individual at increased risk of syphilis. This is another area in which Shoeboy's internet solution is preferable to sex. "Sex is too risky," says Bozman. "Increasingly, consumers are going to say, 'Why do we want to fool around with other people when we can get something prepackaged, and it's no muss, no fuss?'"
Skeptics have argued that Shoeboy's plans reflect desperation rather than innovation. "This is simply a last ditch effort after the catastrophic failure of Shoeboy's 'One Size Disappoints All' marketing campaign," said Technology Business Research analyst Joe Ferlazzo. "Additionally, Shoeboy has a history of dissatisfied customers. He just doesn't have the equipment to do the job well."
Shoeboy admits that his record is not a successful one, but he argues that the problems he encountered do not apply to the internet business model. "First off, equipment isn't an issue. My equipment is the most compact in the industry, and I have extremely low latency - were talking 8 seconds here. Then there's bandwidth - In the last year I've managed to fill 36 pint jars - any more and I'd have to get a bigger freezer. The real obstacle to my sperm distribution has been the unwillingness of my customers to be in the same room with me. With the internet, now they don't even have to be in the same state! What could go wrong?"
Shoeboy is also quick to point out that his product is completely open source. "Since all future products based on my DNA source code will (by age 13 or so) feel a nearly uncontrollable urge to redistribute their own DNA source code, I am in compliance with the terms of the GPL - just like Linux." Linux, an open-source operating system that competes with Windows NT, was the basis for several successful IPOs in 1999, including Red Hat, VA Linux Systems and Cobalt Networks. VA Linux, in particular, had a record first trading day last month.
Shoeboy hopes to raise nearly $35 million dollars through the IPO. This money will be used to purchase several jars of Vaseline, a subscription to "Barely Legal" and the Shoeboy.com domain.
--Shoeboy
The first vibrators were huge, expensive machines sold only to doctor's offices (and came with names like "The Chattanooga").
This was way cooler than Katz's article on sexbots.
--Shoeboy
Every time I turn on the radio, within 5 minutes I'm listening to an old navy ad.
--Shoeboy
And imagine where those geeks in China and India would be now if the first time they had seen and used a computer was at age 5 rather than at age 15 or 20 or whenever they first had it? I imagine that they'd be sitting in their offices all along this hallway, just like they are now. I'm not willing to accept the theory that the Indian and Chinese programmers have any form of racial superiority in the geek world, yet they're definitely kicking ass computerwise all over the guys I went to school with - most of whom had computers in their houses. So how do I explain it?
--Shoeboy
It's about masses of people; the proverbial People. The People have the right to govern themselves, not the individuals.
Someone's been confusing the map with the territory. The people is an abstraction. There is no 'the people'.
I have rights. Your have rights. Even CmdrTaco has rights. 'The people' has no rights. Justifying a government as being of 'the people' makes about as much sense as attempting to save the environment by by scrubbing a world map.
--Shoeboy
We talk a lot about kids need to be educated in the ways of the binary.
Yeah, but WHY do we talk about that. Is it true? I know and work with a large amount of geeks from India and China. They're really good at geeking, and I'm 99.44% sure that China and India do not have anywhere near the amount of computers in the elementary schools that we have. Wow. How do you explain it then? Well it's simple. The ability to think logically is the only real requirement to write programs that work. You need to have a degree of pride and a sense of style as well in order to write programs that are maintainable. None of this requires a computer to learn. Hell, none of this requires a school for that matter.
--Shoeboy
So how would you select someone to lead your town/city/country? Come on now, you can't make a statement like that and not provide an alternative!
You just don't get it. If enough of us ignore it, the government really will go away!
Basically, democracy is the best form of government due to it's belief that all people have the right to govern themselves. The problem is that democracy is also founded on the belief that all (or at least most) of the people also have the wisdom to govern themselves. Since the second proposition is obviously wrong, democracy fans are always having to push for a 'more informed' or 'better educated' citizenry. This is bullshit. No matter how much information and education you give most people, they'll still be idiots.
So you can't have tyranny since it infringes on basic liberties, and you can't have democracy because the majority will usually be wrong. What's left? How about governing yourself and leaving others alone. There's no government like no government.
--Shoeboy