We've been considering both Visual Source Safe (which we've had good luck with, but find it feature-poor) and CVS. I'd love any feedback anyone has comparing the two on a fairly large project, particularily where we have two sets of developers working off-site through slow IP links.
My company recently switched over from VSS to CVS. We several large products, with many files. I don't think any one project has 2100 file but combined we're well over that.
I personally love CVS. Multiple people can edit the same files and merge them back (A HUGE GAIN). You never get files locked by someone.
But the biggest gain is the tools. CVSWeb is great, you can browse your code in a web browser, look at diffs between checkins, annotate those diffs, the whole nine yards. CVS and LXR work together very well. LXR isn't the single greatest coding tool I've ever used. All of your class's, variables, header files are all cross linked, navigating code is easy. Use glimpse and searching is easy. Bonsai makes watching the build easier (but I havn't used it enough to be really pro or con).
We had issues with VSS stability. That may or may not be our fault. On features alone CVS is much better than VSS.
The real story here isn't how the accountants jiggered the numbers, or how much they lost, or how much they didn't lose. The story is that they did better than they forcast. That's the most important thing. Redhat has managed to prove to wall street that they could devise a plan, and execute it.
In financial markets this is a very good thing.
Positive news for a technology company these days is great news for everybody on slashdot. Linux needs a company that can be held up in board meetings and pointed to --> Hey these guys are doing business, the street likes them, linux has some base, let's give it some thought.
I explained linux to my grandfather last night and opensource made him very incredulous. A bunch of random people writing code isn't going to break down conservative barriers. A large successful corporation whose business is linux will break those barriers. Positive news on Redhat is great from this perspective, especially given the present market conditions.
Re:In the end, Infantry rules the battlefield
on
Hacking Biology
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· Score: 1
The entire history of weapons development is predicated on being able to sit your soldier in a particular area and "own it". Witness Vietnam, witness The Battle of Britian.
Read through memiors of any armed conflict and one sentiment that pops up over and over again (besides not wanting to die questioning importance of all this) is how much destruction you can rain down on an enemy and they will still live and fight on.
It's easier to get troops in and win if the enemy has been shelled to the point of exhaustion, but it still has to be done.
Besides, in a civil insurrection bombs are useless. How do you decide what to blow up? Everything you destroy brings people into the fold against you.
A friend of mine has one of the tiny little flat nokias with infrared. His palm pilot use's it as a modem via IR. He can SSH from his palm. Probably the coolest thing I've seen this year.
We can make several guesses based on the fact that it is encrypted. It is encrypted because:
Rabid paranoia aside did you ever think that maybe they want to protect their users privacy, and that's why it's encrypted? Just because something is encrypted doesn't make it evil. Maybe earthlink is being cautious (correctly so, I don't want any data I give them floating around unencrypted).
JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS ENCRYPTED DOESN'T MEAN IT'S EVIL
Thank you for donating to www.baseball-reference.com. I was afraid no one would do it and it would die. I love that site, I waste way too much time comparing players....
If you read the article the gist of it is you can't know vbscript/javascript and expect to get a good job. It takes skills to pay the bills, The days of everybody and their mom getting a programming job because they could run frontpage and read are over....
Linking the net to a political revolution is not a correct match.
The net was built by the government and private interests, it's infrastructure is privatly owned. A social revolution requires belief, hard work (money helps), and a willingness to risk your life. It doesn't require the infrastructure and expertise that only money can buy. Just because the people that built the net decided you could use it for low cost doesn't mean you have a right to it. Because business's want to recoup their investment doesn't make them evil.
Katz has started to believe what he writes, now he really thinks there was a revolution. Wake up, think about it. The net isn't a revolution, it's a piece of technology it will change the world like the phone did. Phone's are useful buy no one will argue it's created social upheavel and great progress...
There were clearly fictional parts of the book's Turing. We can safely assume the bicycle ride was invented. (Am I the only one who noticed the fact that he introduced the bike-chain explanation of why prime numbers are so key to crypto without ever doing anything with it?) The vicar's wife probably never peeked at her bowl full of balls (I think).
Incorrect! Turing's bicycle did have a broken chain! He did bury silver as a shore against accupation. Read his biography. It was amazing how realistic some of those things were...
Fight, and have your possessions trashed and your body battered, perhaps broken.
Your body heals, you can buy new things, but pride and self respect are difficult to build.
Fight in a school you're required to attend, so that you can get to the classes to which you are entitled. Endure threats or even assault and battery so some coward can feel big.
And this doesn't apply to assault with firearms? You advocate self defense when you have a clear advantage but to take the highground and fight a bully on his/her own terms you feel is wrong?
Employers are required by law to stop behavior like this in their workplace. Failure to do so exposes them to huge liability, and nobody is even required to work at a particular job (or at all)! There is no excuse for schools failing to give the same protection to people who attend schools paid for by tax dollars. There is no excuse for bullies having the run of the school.
That was never in question. I'm not advocating repressive violence, but it exists. As a society we need to deal with it by undoing a few millions years of evolution. As individuals we need to learn to deal with it practically, without waving our arms and saying it should go away. You're mistaking my solution to the problem for approval of the situation.
Crap on that. To all the geeks out there getting pushed around: report the behavior to the administration. Look it up in your state's criminal code and cite the paragraph that the bullies are violating. Tell the administration that they can either stop the bullies with sanctions or you are going to go to the police the next time this occurs, and right after that you are going to go to your lawyer and file suit against the school for failing to control unlawful behavior on their premises which was known to them. Then do it.
That's a solution. Probably a good solution. But it puts your fate in the hands of others. It makes you dependent on authority. Break free from that dependency. Take action on your own, but take that action out of courage. Back to my original argument: By shooting unarmed people your a bully. You have become what you wished to destroy. By fighting those who would bully you on their terms even when you lose you can destroy their power over you.
Isn't it cowardly to bully and harass (as many at the school were described to have done) someone who is small and frail (as the alleged shooter is decribed to be)? It's a lot worse, because the bullies think that nothing will happen to them. Someone who picks up a gun has no expectation of walking away scot-free, like the bullies do.
Cowardess inspired by a cowardly act is still cowardly.
I'd say it's worse than being bullied. If you are bullied you are offered a chance to fight or flee. If he was to afraid to fight and risk getting his ass kicked then he's a coward. If the only way he can approach the problem is to hide behind a gun he's a coward.
To all the geeks out there getting picked on: Quit being such pussy's. Start fighting. If you let yourself get pushed around you will be pushed around. If you fight back, you will get your ass kicked. Once, Twice, probably more, but once you've proved you are willing to fight for your self respect you will find yourself with a lot fewer opprotunities to do so.
then called a coward by lame presidents when they finally snap.
That is cowardice. Shooting unarmed people can never be anything but cowardly. Don't let your persecution fantasy's go to your head. No matter how much someone is picked or ostracized it is still a cowardly wretched act.
I graduated in spring of 99 from Arizona State University with a degree in Computer Systems Engineering. There are two sets of differences: Differences based on the program, and differences based on the degree.
First the Degree: CSE is much harder than CS. You end up taking a lot of math and physics. As a result your study of purely computer based things is less than CS. You generally take the same basic class's (algorithms/datastructures) but CS takes more in depth programming class's. CSE will teach you how a computer works, from the electrons up. CS will teach you all the funky cool things you can do with those computers.
The program diffrences vary from school to school. ASU for example had a CS department that was not clearly led, with no real sense of direction. Each student chose the electives they wanted and went with no real thought from the administration about how the program should be set up. CSE had several excellent teachers (Dr. Pheanis being in the forefront, if you are at ASU take CSE421 it will make you a programmer), and a well laid out plan that brought you through with a comprehensive set of knowledge. You should talk to students and professors and get an idea of how their program works.
I personally am glad I took CSE, the extra math and physics helped shaped my thinking. Plus I learned computers from the silicon up. At the time though I was jealous of my friends who were doing AI and Encryption codeing while I solved Differential Equations.
If you can force yourself to code take CSE, you'll learn a lot. If you don't code much take CS it will force you to learn to code.
Mozilla is A good web browser, not spectacular but decent. It is a spectacular architecture. the ability to write code for many different platforms, to expose that code to scripting languages so relative neophytes can code applications is extremely powerful.
A brief explanation of XUL/XPCOM/JavaScript:
Most of mozilla's core class's are built in XPCOM objects. Certain methods of these objects can be exported as scriptable, meaning they can be run from javascript code.
XUL is a layout language, similiar to HTML, that uses CSS to define it's appearence. Javascript can be embeded in XUL.
The result is an architecture that allows anyone to creat an application (chrome) as long as they can learn javascript and XUL. Heavy lifting can still be done in C++ behind the scenes and then exposed to Javascript. Dev time (once you get past the sizeable learning curve) is small. The resultant apps are cross platform and fully skinnable (because they're appearance is defined in stylesheets).
Everyone should check out www.mozilla.org and learn about this. It's a much better rapid development enviornment than VB, and it's cross platform, and open source.
I sound like a groupie, but mozilla is a beautiful thing....
Trying to make special laws for the internet is a mistake. Laws should reflect principles that have nothing to do with the medium in which they are expressed.
I disagree. A good example is speed limits. Assuming no technology you don't need speed limits, but when you have cars you do because people driving 80 down residential streets is bad. But there's no way to resolve that with a general "Everybody do safe things" law. Because the enforcement of that law is going to be random and arbitrary.
The internet is different because it allows copying so easily that it becomes in someones interest to copy it. Example, on my desk I have a book (The C Programming language) and a CD (40oz to Freedom). If I want to use the book at home I have to take it home and shuttle it back and forth, or photocopy it. A photocopied version of the book loses utility. It's bigger poorly bound, etc. But the CD is burned at home and at work and I keep it in my car so I can listen to it all three places. If someone wants borrow it though what's stopping me from giving it too them, burning, ripping etc. Nothing. But for my own use it makes perfect sense.
The law needs to come to a point where it can be intelligent. Fair use is a different beast on the internet than on a bookshelf because the second use has the same utility as the first. And fair use is based on the fact that there is a loss of utility when it's excersised (If I lend my book to someone it's useless to me for a while). So the law doesn't quite meet the current need, because currently it is arbitrary and random. Is leaving my music on my server fair use? My friends in the world are sampling it, but they can continue to sample forever.
We need a law. A firm specific law that will prevent abuses of intellectual property from both sides. Otherwise vauge laws will lead us to extremes. Napster on one end and the draconian EULA's on the other. We should stop fighting laws and start fighting for good laws.
whatever great authors today - Stephenson, Clancy, Crichton
Dear God Help Me.
Clancy is a useless hack. His characters are less than one dimensional, they barely deserve names.
Crichton writes interesting books, but again couldn't write a decent character if his life depended on it. Plus his plots are formulaic.
Stephenson is the best of the three, but the man can't end a story. Cryptonomicon was great until the end. Then it just dies. Ditto everything else he's ever written.
I read all three of these people, and enjoy them, but I wouldn't call them great.
This is offtopic, in relation to your sig. On the Fight Club DVD the actual line that was cut out in favor of your sig was something along the lines of, I want to have your abortion. It was cut out for obvious reasons.
No! I want to have your abortion is from the book, when it was made into a movie it was changed. Now it's changed back.
Re:Upper class insulation via internet
on
Kids and Computers
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· Score: 1
I agree with the original AC somewhat so let me ask you this. Why does it seem like the "responsibility to the community" that you are others talk about come mainly from two groups, people like you and people who screwed up and rather that fixing their lives would go after those who are sucessful?
Why do people here bash Microsoft instead of fix Linux?
It's easier to complain. It's easier to destroy than build. That's why it is especially important that the best and brightest overcome that crutch and Build things.
Re:Upper class insulation via internet
on
Kids and Computers
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· Score: 1
I said People not politicians drum up hatred. Plenty of politicans attack the upper class. That is self evident. It won't go as far as they would like since we still hold the ability to finance their campaigns.
It's obviosly not self evident, in fact it's counterintuitive. Every member of bush's cabinet is a milionare. Do you think they'll attack the upperclass? Upper Income people vote more, than lower income people. It would be suicide to attack the upper class. I defy you to give me an example.
I'm not a telepath so I can't say this with 100% certainty (only about 99% certainty), but yest my entire school was against me. This included the teachers and the administration, even though I nearly always got A's. That made it state sponsered terrorism.
Please. People giving you a hard time in highschool is not state sponsored terrorism. Did state sponsored terrorism give you the great job you have now? Have you ever stopped to consider what real oppression is? Real oppression is Cambodia, where they killed intellectuals. None of this I was ostracized in high school, pity me crap. State sponsered terrorism?
And what responsibility? These people got away with criminal activity, and now they are being punished. It didn't happen in a court of law, but so what?
Criminal? Not being nice is criminal? Did I miss a fucking meeting? That's incredibly self centered and egotistical. You were not a victim of a state sponsored terrorism. Go to Columbia, Seirra Leone, Timor, etc. Then come back and tell me about oppression and terrorism. Read a good long book about Pre World War 2 Germany and then look back at your life. It wasn't fun, but it wasn't that bad.
I do that by opposing public education, not by investing in a "community" that has proven it doesn't deserve it.
Your "community" can't deserve anything. It is not a person, or an object. It is your surroundings. You can only run to newer and newer suburbs for so long.
The act of opting out of your community shapes it. You cannot isolate yourself from it, no matter how hard you try. You can waste time trying or you can begin the process of rebuilding.
Re:Upper class insulation via internet
on
Kids and Computers
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· Score: 2
Well, let's see here. We have politicians who continually attack the upper class. We have people who drum up hatred of the upper class.
To wit: Bullshit. Show me a politician who drums up hatred against the upperclass. We lionize our rich. We lionize the powerful. That's pure rhetoric with no defensible position whatsoever.
Let's take what happened to myself and other slashdot readers in school. We were abused, assaulted, slandered by people who now have low paying jobs while we have high paying jobs and are generally sucessful because we worked hard.
What is comes down to is why should we get back into our real communities if we are hated so much simply for being ourselves? If they can't accept us why should we accept them?
That sucks. I'm sorry anybody is abused/assaulted, as a person it galls me. But that does not excuse you from the responsibilties of a citizen. Think back to high school, was your entire school against you? Or was it a small vocal group? They are not your community. Your community is vast and rich and if it makes you feel good to gloat on those who hated you then do it. Enjoy it. But recognize that your experiences during a traditionally traumatic time in peoples lives does not excuse you from your responsibility.
If anything it should make you want to invest in the community and make sure that it changes, so that the geeks/nerds/losers/outcasts of tomorrow are at least tolerated. As a succesful member of society you have the ability to do that. And by abondoning your community you sentence the children of tomorrow to the same fate that you held.
Many inner city schools are failing to even provide a basic level of literacy, let alone properly prepare students for advanced education.
While in four black men are going to prison, drug laws jail crack users longer than powdered cocaine users. (The only real difference between rocks and poweder: powder is the popular choice of white addicts, while the rocks are mostly used by blacks.)
Roughly one in five prgnancies in America are terminated, most of which are abortions of convenience, many of the women having these abortions are having more than one. Pro-choice or not, this should offend your sensibilies from a moral perspective.
Amen.
As a society we need to realize that computers are tools. They are useful, shiny, powerful tools, but tools none the less. As a society we need to buckle down and invest in our children at a fundamental level before we start giving them toys. A kid who can't read can play video games till his eyes fail and it won't have helped him at all.
I would like to flip the question around: Why have we created an upper class that insulates itself via the internet from reality? How can we get people out of their virtual communities and back into their real ones?
Slashdot Mirror
My company recently switched over from VSS to CVS. We several large products, with many files. I don't think any one project has 2100 file but combined we're well over that.
I personally love CVS. Multiple people can edit the same files and merge them back (A HUGE GAIN). You never get files locked by someone.
But the biggest gain is the tools. CVSWeb is great, you can browse your code in a web browser, look at diffs between checkins, annotate those diffs, the whole nine yards. CVS and LXR work together very well. LXR isn't the single greatest coding tool I've ever used. All of your class's, variables, header files are all cross linked, navigating code is easy. Use glimpse and searching is easy. Bonsai makes watching the build easier (but I havn't used it enough to be really pro or con).
We had issues with VSS stability. That may or may not be our fault. On features alone CVS is much better than VSS.
In financial markets this is a very good thing.
Positive news for a technology company these days is great news for everybody on slashdot. Linux needs a company that can be held up in board meetings and pointed to --> Hey these guys are doing business, the street likes them, linux has some base, let's give it some thought.
I explained linux to my grandfather last night and opensource made him very incredulous. A bunch of random people writing code isn't going to break down conservative barriers. A large successful corporation whose business is linux will break those barriers. Positive news on Redhat is great from this perspective, especially given the present market conditions.
Read through memiors of any armed conflict and one sentiment that pops up over and over again (besides not wanting to die questioning importance of all this) is how much destruction you can rain down on an enemy and they will still live and fight on.
It's easier to get troops in and win if the enemy has been shelled to the point of exhaustion, but it still has to be done.
Besides, in a civil insurrection bombs are useless. How do you decide what to blow up? Everything you destroy brings people into the fold against you.
A friend of mine has one of the tiny little flat nokias with infrared. His palm pilot use's it as a modem via IR. He can SSH from his palm. Probably the coolest thing I've seen this year.
Rabid paranoia aside did you ever think that maybe they want to protect their users privacy, and that's why it's encrypted? Just because something is encrypted doesn't make it evil. Maybe earthlink is being cautious (correctly so, I don't want any data I give them floating around unencrypted).
JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS ENCRYPTED DOESN'T MEAN IT'S EVIL
Could somebody mod this parent up? That's a really good point. It seems like congress behind the curve a bit.
Anyway, I hope it stays around a long time..
ps. Go Cardinals.
If you read the article the gist of it is you can't know vbscript/javascript and expect to get a good job. It takes skills to pay the bills, The days of everybody and their mom getting a programming job because they could run frontpage and read are over....
The net was built by the government and private interests, it's infrastructure is privatly owned. A social revolution requires belief, hard work (money helps), and a willingness to risk your life. It doesn't require the infrastructure and expertise that only money can buy. Just because the people that built the net decided you could use it for low cost doesn't mean you have a right to it. Because business's want to recoup their investment doesn't make them evil.
Katz has started to believe what he writes, now he really thinks there was a revolution. Wake up, think about it. The net isn't a revolution, it's a piece of technology it will change the world like the phone did. Phone's are useful buy no one will argue it's created social upheavel and great progress...
Incorrect! Turing's bicycle did have a broken chain! He did bury silver as a shore against accupation. Read his biography. It was amazing how realistic some of those things were...
Your body heals, you can buy new things, but pride and self respect are difficult to build.
Fight in a school you're required to attend, so that you can get to the classes to which you are entitled. Endure threats or even assault and battery so some coward can feel big.
And this doesn't apply to assault with firearms? You advocate self defense when you have a clear advantage but to take the highground and fight a bully on his/her own terms you feel is wrong?
Employers are required by law to stop behavior like this in their workplace. Failure to do so exposes them to huge liability, and nobody is even required to work at a particular job (or at all)! There is no excuse for schools failing to give the same protection to people who attend schools paid for by tax dollars. There is no excuse for bullies having the run of the school.
That was never in question. I'm not advocating repressive violence, but it exists. As a society we need to deal with it by undoing a few millions years of evolution. As individuals we need to learn to deal with it practically, without waving our arms and saying it should go away. You're mistaking my solution to the problem for approval of the situation.
Crap on that. To all the geeks out there getting pushed around: report the behavior to the administration. Look it up in your state's criminal code and cite the paragraph that the bullies are violating. Tell the administration that they can either stop the bullies with sanctions or you are going to go to the police the next time this occurs, and right after that you are going to go to your lawyer and file suit against the school for failing to control unlawful behavior on their premises which was known to them. Then do it.
That's a solution. Probably a good solution. But it puts your fate in the hands of others. It makes you dependent on authority. Break free from that dependency. Take action on your own, but take that action out of courage. Back to my original argument: By shooting unarmed people your a bully. You have become what you wished to destroy. By fighting those who would bully you on their terms even when you lose you can destroy their power over you.
Cowardess inspired by a cowardly act is still cowardly.
I'd say it's worse than being bullied. If you are bullied you are offered a chance to fight or flee. If he was to afraid to fight and risk getting his ass kicked then he's a coward. If the only way he can approach the problem is to hide behind a gun he's a coward.
To all the geeks out there getting picked on: Quit being such pussy's. Start fighting. If you let yourself get pushed around you will be pushed around. If you fight back, you will get your ass kicked. Once, Twice, probably more, but once you've proved you are willing to fight for your self respect you will find yourself with a lot fewer opprotunities to do so.
That is cowardice. Shooting unarmed people can never be anything but cowardly. Don't let your persecution fantasy's go to your head. No matter how much someone is picked or ostracized it is still a cowardly wretched act.
1. Learn to Read
2. Build up some reading comprehension skills.
3. Reread my post.
You are moron.
First the Degree: CSE is much harder than CS. You end up taking a lot of math and physics. As a result your study of purely computer based things is less than CS. You generally take the same basic class's (algorithms/datastructures) but CS takes more in depth programming class's. CSE will teach you how a computer works, from the electrons up. CS will teach you all the funky cool things you can do with those computers.
The program diffrences vary from school to school. ASU for example had a CS department that was not clearly led, with no real sense of direction. Each student chose the electives they wanted and went with no real thought from the administration about how the program should be set up. CSE had several excellent teachers (Dr. Pheanis being in the forefront, if you are at ASU take CSE421 it will make you a programmer), and a well laid out plan that brought you through with a comprehensive set of knowledge. You should talk to students and professors and get an idea of how their program works.
I personally am glad I took CSE, the extra math and physics helped shaped my thinking. Plus I learned computers from the silicon up. At the time though I was jealous of my friends who were doing AI and Encryption codeing while I solved Differential Equations.
If you can force yourself to code take CSE, you'll learn a lot. If you don't code much take CS it will force you to learn to code.
Hope that helps.
Mozilla is A good web browser, not spectacular but decent. It is a spectacular architecture. the ability to write code for many different platforms, to expose that code to scripting languages so relative neophytes can code applications is extremely powerful.
A brief explanation of XUL/XPCOM/JavaScript:
Most of mozilla's core class's are built in XPCOM objects. Certain methods of these objects can be exported as scriptable, meaning they can be run from javascript code.
XUL is a layout language, similiar to HTML, that uses CSS to define it's appearence. Javascript can be embeded in XUL.
The result is an architecture that allows anyone to creat an application (chrome) as long as they can learn javascript and XUL. Heavy lifting can still be done in C++ behind the scenes and then exposed to Javascript. Dev time (once you get past the sizeable learning curve) is small. The resultant apps are cross platform and fully skinnable (because they're appearance is defined in stylesheets).
Everyone should check out www.mozilla.org and learn about this. It's a much better rapid development enviornment than VB, and it's cross platform, and open source.
I sound like a groupie, but mozilla is a beautiful thing....
I disagree. A good example is speed limits. Assuming no technology you don't need speed limits, but when you have cars you do because people driving 80 down residential streets is bad. But there's no way to resolve that with a general "Everybody do safe things" law. Because the enforcement of that law is going to be random and arbitrary.
The internet is different because it allows copying so easily that it becomes in someones interest to copy it. Example, on my desk I have a book (The C Programming language) and a CD (40oz to Freedom). If I want to use the book at home I have to take it home and shuttle it back and forth, or photocopy it. A photocopied version of the book loses utility. It's bigger poorly bound, etc. But the CD is burned at home and at work and I keep it in my car so I can listen to it all three places. If someone wants borrow it though what's stopping me from giving it too them, burning, ripping etc. Nothing. But for my own use it makes perfect sense.
The law needs to come to a point where it can be intelligent. Fair use is a different beast on the internet than on a bookshelf because the second use has the same utility as the first. And fair use is based on the fact that there is a loss of utility when it's excersised (If I lend my book to someone it's useless to me for a while). So the law doesn't quite meet the current need, because currently it is arbitrary and random. Is leaving my music on my server fair use? My friends in the world are sampling it, but they can continue to sample forever.
We need a law. A firm specific law that will prevent abuses of intellectual property from both sides. Otherwise vauge laws will lead us to extremes. Napster on one end and the draconian EULA's on the other. We should stop fighting laws and start fighting for good laws.
Dear God Help Me.
Clancy is a useless hack. His characters are less than one dimensional, they barely deserve names.
Crichton writes interesting books, but again couldn't write a decent character if his life depended on it. Plus his plots are formulaic.
Stephenson is the best of the three, but the man can't end a story. Cryptonomicon was great until the end. Then it just dies. Ditto everything else he's ever written.
I read all three of these people, and enjoy them, but I wouldn't call them great.
No! I want to have your abortion is from the book, when it was made into a movie it was changed. Now it's changed back.
It's from high school/college when everybody said what up dogg
Why do people here bash Microsoft instead of fix Linux?
It's easier to complain. It's easier to destroy than build. That's why it is especially important that the best and brightest overcome that crutch and Build things.
It's obviosly not self evident, in fact it's counterintuitive. Every member of bush's cabinet is a milionare. Do you think they'll attack the upperclass? Upper Income people vote more, than lower income people. It would be suicide to attack the upper class. I defy you to give me an example.
I'm not a telepath so I can't say this with 100% certainty (only about 99% certainty), but yest my entire school was against me. This included the teachers and the administration, even though I nearly always got A's. That made it state sponsered terrorism. Please. People giving you a hard time in highschool is not state sponsored terrorism. Did state sponsored terrorism give you the great job you have now? Have you ever stopped to consider what real oppression is? Real oppression is Cambodia, where they killed intellectuals. None of this I was ostracized in high school, pity me crap. State sponsered terrorism?
And what responsibility? These people got away with criminal activity, and now they are being punished. It didn't happen in a court of law, but so what?
Criminal? Not being nice is criminal? Did I miss a fucking meeting? That's incredibly self centered and egotistical. You were not a victim of a state sponsored terrorism. Go to Columbia, Seirra Leone, Timor, etc. Then come back and tell me about oppression and terrorism. Read a good long book about Pre World War 2 Germany and then look back at your life. It wasn't fun, but it wasn't that bad.
I do that by opposing public education, not by investing in a "community" that has proven it doesn't deserve it.
Your "community" can't deserve anything. It is not a person, or an object. It is your surroundings. You can only run to newer and newer suburbs for so long.
The act of opting out of your community shapes it. You cannot isolate yourself from it, no matter how hard you try. You can waste time trying or you can begin the process of rebuilding.
To wit: Bullshit. Show me a politician who drums up hatred against the upperclass. We lionize our rich. We lionize the powerful. That's pure rhetoric with no defensible position whatsoever.
Let's take what happened to myself and other slashdot readers in school. We were abused, assaulted, slandered by people who now have low paying jobs while we have high paying jobs and are generally sucessful because we worked hard.
What is comes down to is why should we get back into our real communities if we are hated so much simply for being ourselves? If they can't accept us why should we accept them?
That sucks. I'm sorry anybody is abused/assaulted, as a person it galls me. But that does not excuse you from the responsibilties of a citizen. Think back to high school, was your entire school against you? Or was it a small vocal group? They are not your community. Your community is vast and rich and if it makes you feel good to gloat on those who hated you then do it. Enjoy it. But recognize that your experiences during a traditionally traumatic time in peoples lives does not excuse you from your responsibility.
If anything it should make you want to invest in the community and make sure that it changes, so that the geeks/nerds/losers/outcasts of tomorrow are at least tolerated. As a succesful member of society you have the ability to do that. And by abondoning your community you sentence the children of tomorrow to the same fate that you held.
Amen.
As a society we need to realize that computers are tools. They are useful, shiny, powerful tools, but tools none the less. As a society we need to buckle down and invest in our children at a fundamental level before we start giving them toys. A kid who can't read can play video games till his eyes fail and it won't have helped him at all.
I would like to flip the question around: Why have we created an upper class that insulates itself via the internet from reality? How can we get people out of their virtual communities and back into their real ones?