The main problem with your conclusions is that there are only 2 major parties in the country, yet 3 economic ideals.
What does that have to do with my conclusions?
My conclusions, if you want to call them that, are that even if everyone in the voting population votes for consistent policies, the result can be a set of policies which are internally inconsistent.
The specific case that was being discussed as an example of the above is California, where news reports say that ballot initiatives passed in the last few years require the legislature to simultaneously increase (or maintain, I don't remember) spending, decrease revenue (ie, taxes), and balance the budget. Someone pointed out that "this doesn't mean that direct democracy is bad -- I'm a Californian and I voted for a consistent policy!" I was pointing out that even if all the individual voters vote for consistent policies, the result can be inconsistent.
(this is actually still a problem for legislatures -- what we hope is that legislatures are small enough that they can negotiate their way around things like this. Whether this is true in practice is left as an exercise to the reader;-) )
Your post goes off on a tangent about economics and political parties -- the only real thing I can get out of it is that you believe that lowering taxes will magically stimulate the economy, which may or may not be true in some cases, but is not particularly relevant to the point I was making (except that it would mean that the example raised earlier is a bad one).
Wrong, some voters want lower taxes, some voters want more spending.
Yes, that's the problem. The voters (plural) can want mutually contradictory things, even if no individual voter wants them. This is probably what happened in California, although there may also be some confused individuals who think they can have their cake and eat it too. (I'm hypothesizing: does anyone know if there are any facts that indicate what individuals voted for on the various initiatives?)
Lowering taxes and spending more isn't contradictory if you're willing to go into debt. Spending more and decreasing the debt is not contradictory, if you're willing to raise taxes. Lowering taxes and decreasing the debt is not contradictory, if you're willing to decrease spending.
However, if 1/3 of the populace desires each combination of two choices, you end up with all three options selected (by a 2:1 majority, even).
There's a reason I always fill my tank at the PA or Connecticut borders.
You can spot me on I80 -- I'll be the guy running on empty 10 miles east of the Deleware Water Gap, clutching the steering wheel with both hands and muttering "please God please God don't make me stop for gas here, let me make it to Stroudsburg..."
New Jersey's gas laws: promoting [temporary] religious conversion on the highway!
The only thing they added is a Web-based GUI for administration, and that can hardly be considered a trade secret...
...not to mention that this is probably not covered under the GPL, since it isn't a modification (I hope!) to kernel code. Some comments elsewhere on this page suggest that the dispute is over a hardware driver for the network card that the router uses.
I've often suspected it's because they were using a stock Windows installer program which has a slot to drop a "license" into. Or maybe just because they figure Windows users would be confused if they didn't have to click through a license.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that Linus has a PhD (in addition, I presume, to a master's) -- that's what he was doing at Helsinki for all those years prior to getting hired by Transmeta. You even see him addressed as "Dr. Torvalds" by the media from time to time.
Not everyone is acting on their own best interest. Its this flaw that prevents us from using "logic" to understand and predict actions.
[snip the rest]
That has nothing to do with logic. Logic just tells you that your conclusions follow from your premises. If your premises include "survival of the country is more important than survival of the individual", you get the "good soldier". If your premises are "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and other such ideals, you get Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, etc. If your premises are "I want to be safe, I want to have enough stuff, I want things to not change in scary ways", you get the average American. If your premises are "I want to spout off about a lot of stuff I don't know much about in front of other people who don't know much about it either in order to look smart", you get the average Slashdotter.
Most sane people actually (in my opinion) behave fairly logically given the assumptions they start from. I have seen people do apparently illogical things, but it's often hard to tell for sure if they're logical, or just invoking an axiom I wasn't aware of. That isn't to say that I always think the foundation of their reasoning is particularly good, but at least they apply it consistently:-)
Of course its NOT a joke.. many people really don't understand what we take for granted, and take things they are told literally..
Just to be pendantic, this would not be a problem if people would take things literally. "Press any key to continue" means exactly that -- press ANY key. The problem is that some people read too much into it, and think it is telegraphic notation for "press *the* any key".
Actually, it seems they are. Or at least Penn State thinks they are. The article says that Penn State "remains committed to working closely with the RIAA and other law enforcement entities". (emphasis mine)
the config file is written in a simple text format, whereas the Sawfish config stuff looks like lisp and has almost no comments except a warning "do not edit by hand!".
The file ~/.sawfish/custom is automatically generated by a GUI configurator and should not be hand-edited unless you know what you're doing.
I've noticed that this is true of a lot of people (computer users) who lead very busy and productive lives. In my case, I'm particularly thinking of university professors. Most of the profs I know are still using whatever software they learned to use when they started using UNIX [0]. This almost always means fvwm (or even olvwm -- that is, Openwindows), with mailx (or maybe pine or even emacs if they want to be fancy) to read email.
I suspect the reason is that they don't have time to try the latest k00l desktop environment every 3 months -- if what you have works for you, why change it?
Daniel
[0] I'm thinking of professors in technical fields (particularly CS, but other scientific/engineering areas count too), who would have been introduced to computers several decades ago and are likely still using UNIX. Of course, people in the humanities are probably using Windows.
Copyrights are merely an extension of the old idea that plagarism is wrong.
Plagiarism is the act of taking someone else's words (or by extension art, music, etc) and representing them as your own. Copyright violation is the act of creating a copy of another person's words (etc) without their permission. You probably can't plagarise without also committing a copyright violation, but many copyright violations do not involve plagarism (how many people who copy a song on KaZaa claim that they wrote it?)
You forgot to run this through the filter of game-industry logic:
No-one is becoming fabulously rich by charging exorbitant prices for Tetris. Therefore, it does not exist. Any evidence to the contrary is merely a hallucination produced by your fevered brain.
Slashdot Mirror
The main problem with your conclusions is that there are only 2 major parties in the country, yet 3 economic ideals.
;-) )
What does that have to do with my conclusions?
My conclusions, if you want to call them that, are that even if everyone in the voting population votes for consistent policies, the result can be a set of policies which are internally inconsistent.
The specific case that was being discussed as an example of the above is California, where news reports say that ballot initiatives passed in the last few years require the legislature to simultaneously increase (or maintain, I don't remember) spending, decrease revenue (ie, taxes), and balance the budget. Someone pointed out that "this doesn't mean that direct democracy is bad -- I'm a Californian and I voted for a consistent policy!" I was pointing out that even if all the individual voters vote for consistent policies, the result can be inconsistent.
(this is actually still a problem for legislatures -- what we hope is that legislatures are small enough that they can negotiate their way around things like this. Whether this is true in practice is left as an exercise to the reader
Your post goes off on a tangent about economics and political parties -- the only real thing I can get out of it is that you believe that lowering taxes will magically stimulate the economy, which may or may not be true in some cases, but is not particularly relevant to the point I was making (except that it would mean that the example raised earlier is a bad one).
Daniel
Wrong, some voters want lower taxes, some voters want more spending.
Yes, that's the problem. The voters (plural) can want mutually contradictory things, even if no individual voter wants them. This is probably what happened in California, although there may also be some confused individuals who think they can have their cake and eat it too. (I'm hypothesizing: does anyone know if there are any facts that indicate what individuals voted for on the various initiatives?)
Lowering taxes and spending more isn't contradictory if you're willing to go into debt. Spending more and decreasing the debt is not contradictory, if you're willing to raise taxes. Lowering taxes and decreasing the debt is not contradictory, if you're willing to decrease spending.
However, if 1/3 of the populace desires each combination of two choices, you end up with all three options selected (by a 2:1 majority, even).
Daniel
Actually, I think the third one is AURCHES.
Daniel
There's a reason I always fill my tank at the PA or Connecticut borders.
You can spot me on I80 -- I'll be the guy running on empty 10 miles east of the Deleware Water Gap, clutching the steering wheel with both hands and muttering "please God please God don't make me stop for gas here, let me make it to Stroudsburg..."
New Jersey's gas laws: promoting [temporary] religious conversion on the highway!
Daniel
Daniel
I've often suspected it's because they were using a stock Windows installer program which has a slot to drop a "license" into. Or maybe just because they figure Windows users would be confused if they didn't have to click through a license.
Daniel
Actually, I'm pretty sure that Linus has a PhD (in addition, I presume, to a master's) -- that's what he was doing at Helsinki for all those years prior to getting hired by Transmeta. You even see him addressed as "Dr. Torvalds" by the media from time to time.
Daniel
So you are not allowed to copy software that allows you to sail around the world?
:-)
Of course. Only pirates would need circumnavigation software
Daniel
Not everyone is acting on their own best interest. Its this flaw that prevents us from using "logic" to understand and predict actions.
:-)
[snip the rest]
That has nothing to do with logic. Logic just tells you that your conclusions follow from your premises. If your premises include "survival of the country is more important than survival of the individual", you get the "good soldier". If your premises are "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and other such ideals, you get Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, etc. If your premises are "I want to be safe, I want to have enough stuff, I want things to not change in scary ways", you get the average American. If your premises are "I want to spout off about a lot of stuff I don't know much about in front of other people who don't know much about it either in order to look smart", you get the average Slashdotter.
Most sane people actually (in my opinion) behave fairly logically given the assumptions they start from. I have seen people do apparently illogical things, but it's often hard to tell for sure if they're logical, or just invoking an axiom I wasn't aware of. That isn't to say that I always think the foundation of their reasoning is particularly good, but at least they apply it consistently
Daniel
Sometimes I wonder why people describe Slashdot as the most intelligent community on the 'net.
Who does a silly thing like that?
Daniel
Of course its NOT a joke.. many people really don't understand what we take for granted, and take things they are told literally..
Just to be pendantic, this would not be a problem if people would take things literally. "Press any key to continue" means exactly that -- press ANY key. The problem is that some people read too much into it, and think it is telegraphic notation for "press *the* any key".
Daniel
The fact that the NYT and WSJ picked up the stories imply that they (likely) passed the watchful eyes of editors... they're likely legit.
Um.
Daniel
"Lisp is very much the lambda calculus"
I suspect he was thinking of Scheme there. Even better is the bit a few lines down:
I prefer dynamic typing and don't care much for the strong static typing found in C and its descendants.
I'd have trouble calling C's type system "strong", personally.
Daniel
equal?: expects 2 arguments, given 1: scheme
Daniel
They are not law enforcement
Actually, it seems they are. Or at least Penn State thinks they are. The article says that Penn State "remains committed to working closely with the RIAA and other law enforcement entities". (emphasis mine)
Daniel
Uh, I am quite sure that the invalid syllogism was the joke. Note the "RIAA Institute of Critical Thinking and Logic" at the end...
Daniel
the config file is written in a simple text format, whereas the Sawfish config stuff looks like lisp and has almost no comments except a warning "do not edit by hand!".
The file ~/.sawfish/custom is automatically generated by a GUI configurator and should not be hand-edited unless you know what you're doing.
Hand-edited configuration goes in ~/.sawfishrc.
Daniel
I've noticed that this is true of a lot of people (computer users) who lead very busy and productive lives. In my case, I'm particularly thinking of university professors. Most of the profs I know are still using whatever software they learned to use when they started using UNIX [0]. This almost always means fvwm (or even olvwm -- that is, Openwindows), with mailx (or maybe pine or even emacs if they want to be fancy) to read email.
I suspect the reason is that they don't have time to try the latest k00l desktop environment every 3 months -- if what you have works for you, why change it?
Daniel
[0] I'm thinking of professors in technical fields (particularly CS, but other scientific/engineering areas count too), who would have been introduced to computers several decades ago and are likely still using UNIX. Of course, people in the humanities are probably using Windows.
Can anyone suggest to me what Sawfish or Metacity offers that fvwm2 doesn't?
If you speak Lisp, sawfish is much nicer to configure than fvwm. I shudder ever time I have to touch an fvwmrc...
Daniel
It's the beginning of May, not the beginning of April. Please recalibrate your calendar.
Daniel
Copyrights are merely an extension of the old idea that plagarism is wrong.
Plagiarism is the act of taking someone else's words (or by extension art, music, etc) and representing them as your own. Copyright violation is the act of creating a copy of another person's words (etc) without their permission. You probably can't plagarise without also committing a copyright violation, but many copyright violations do not involve plagarism (how many people who copy a song on KaZaa claim that they wrote it?)
Daniel
I'm sure this discussion relates to desktop-oriented software, there's not alot of Enterprise-class free software floating around that I know of :)
I could swear I've seen Star Trek themes for Mozilla and various window managers.
Daniel
Thanks, my head just exploded.
You forgot to run this through the filter of game-industry logic:
No-one is becoming fabulously rich by charging exorbitant prices for Tetris. Therefore, it does not exist. Any evidence to the contrary is merely a hallucination produced by your fevered brain.
Daniel
Ah, but that's not a problem. Just outlaw high-quality recording devices, unless they're owned by a registered record label!
So many problems become so much easier when you own a shelf full of Congresscritters..
Daniel