Actually, they've never met a question that they couldn't brush aside. Typically it goes like this...
By "they" I take it you mean "politicians" and not just Bush?
Seriously, watch any politician answer any question nowadays. Pretend that you are an English teacher, and grade the response to the question. At least 80% of the time, I'd give out a flunking grade, as the answer segues into whatever talking point the politician had, and ignores the question. I don't know about the politicians but I've never had a teacher tolerate that.
Witness the Kerry ability to turn any question into a question about Vietnam... not that he does it all the time, mind, but that when he wants to, he can.
Actually, I'm kind of glad the bloggers are getting as powerful as they are; without them, we're about two years or less from a media that can't get a straight answer to a question out of anyone, because they never press the questions like bloggers can; we're almost, but not quite, there already. When is the last time you seriously heard someone repeat a question because it was completely not answered? (Now, I know there are a couple of answers to that lately, but next question: Isn't the fact that you can remember them a vivid demonstration of the fact that those incidents are exceptions, not normal practice?)
Is "suggests how the molecular building blocks necessary for the creation of life could first form in interstellar space." good science, or a showboating quote?
I ask because last I checked, "sugar" is hardly a "building block" of life. Proteins, sure, even amino acids which I think are a bit of a stretch in a way, but mere sugar? Sugar builds nothing and is only slightly more complicated than water, compared to even a simple protein, AFAICS.
I used to 'work from home, programming all day' too. My intelligent, college degreed girlfriend gave me a little friction about it once and I handed her a check for about four thousand dollars and asked her to go deposit it into our joint checking account.
Not quite yet, but hopefully soon.:-)
We're building a product, which is just now coming into demo range, so we haven't got customers yet, but we should be getting close.
Ooh, a typo! You're saved from having to consider my point!...
Which is that if you want to spout off about the dangers of the Space Elevator ideas, it is your responsibility to first learn about the physics involved, not mine. Expect to be brutally corrected in this site. Goodness knows I am.
There, I've spelled it out for you. I really ought to know better then to try subtlety around here.
Two weeks ago I bought FFX-2 from Target for 16.88. I just bought the PC version of Knights of the Old Republic, the only game that makes me want an X-BOX, for 19.99, also at Target, even though I actually don't have a machine for it yet. (Hopefully soon.)
Being behind the curve isn't all bad. Let others sort out the dross and grab only the good stuff at bargain bin, or in this case, "clearance because the stupid gaming industry releases everything for Christmas", prices.
(On that note, this is definately an excellent time to buy high-quality games for said prices, because the stores are definately clearing out space. My Target no longer has any FFX-2, for instance. Keep your eyes peeled.)
The opposite of "lying" is not "saying a true statement". You can truthfully tell a falsehood, and you can lie but tell the truth (accidentally).
Your definition fails to account for pathological liars who think what they are saying isn't true but they aren't misleading for any particular "goal".
Of the things you list, the only correct criticism is "belief"; yes, if someone honestly believes a falsehood and says it they are not "lying". We get that all the time around here; they aren't "lying", they are simply wrong, which, while still bad, is nowhere near as morally offensive.
Why do you think your daughter needs to understand what you do? By "understand", based on your message, I'm assuming that you mean "programmer vs. farmer" type of understanding, and not just an understanding that people need to work for a living.
I am a computer geek trying to start my own business. I stay home and program all day, for the most part. My intelligent, college-degreed wife, has no clue what I do, which sometimes causes friction. How do you expect to explain anything meaningful to your daughter?
For that matter, I don't recall understanding what my father did until I was well into high school. Why would that matter?
I'd also like to echo a couple of comments to the effect of "you are the book". What can a book, a child's book of perhaps 500 child-level words no less, hope to explain?
Why not just show her, and answer damn near every question with "You might understand when you're older"? Most kids I know will accept that, and at this point, it is the literal truth. There are oh-so-many ways that a child at that age can't understand programming; learn about child developmental psychology. Children are not little adults. She's several cognitive frameworks short of understanding your job, and pushing the issue can only hurt your relationship and her interest.
The only votes that truly matter are the middle-aged middle-class votes. Period.
There is an easy workaround for this, next time you are voting. See that box labelled "middle-aged, middle-class"? Check it, even if it isn't true. They can't verify it, after all.
Once you do that, you'll find your vote counted along with all the rest of our votes.
Yeah, the first thing that lept to my mind at that point is "No, young people simply prefer the lies of Kerry over Bush."
(Of course, this is using the latest re-definition of "lie" to mean "anything opposed to the truth" (and we'll just leave "truth" up in the air), as opposed to the rather more reasonable definition of "knowingly telling a falsehood". Under that definition, I don't think either candidate is lying much, although both have lied about their past to one degree or another and both have lied about their positions depending on what people want to hear (though I have to give credit to Kerry here for lying this way much more often; his problem here is that he has to in order to both be nominated and win the election and it is still up in the air whether he can manage it). The problem is that they are wrong, each in their own various ways. It is beyond me to give a full listing, as I am not perfect either.)
I think you, and the thread stretching out from your post, are missing the point. The point is not the with polynomial interpolation, gowen can get "the answer". His point is that you can reasonably get any answer.
The set of functions is uncountably infinite. There are uncountably infinite functions that have f of 1, 2, 3, and 4 set to the values Google gave. The reality is that mathematically speaking, giving four numbers results in exactly no constraint on the next number; you might as well just pick one at random. "Polynomial interpolation" is one reasonable path to this, but remember that functions need not even be continuous and are ultimately just infinite look-up tables. (Note the final "solution" is just a lookup table-type function.)
To counter the obvious next objection ("well obviously it is going to be a human-meaningful number"), I take my objection one meta. Obviously we're not truly drawing from that infinite set of functions. However, there's still an effectively infinite set of "human meaningful functions", too. So the true challenge becomes not a math problem, but in sheer guessing which exact constraints the puzzle writer chose.
This is not a mathematical problem. It tries to pretend to be one, but it is not. Generally, once you know the constraints the solution is trivial.
The correct mathematical answer to all such sequences remains "The next number is whatever the hell it feels like being". I have better things to do with my time then try to second-guess somebody pretending to be clever and plucking some random thing out of the uncountably infinite set and demanding that I guess it. Thus, I don't do these puzzles; they're sophmoric in the literal sense of the term, created by people who think they are clever but don't seem to have a deep understanding of math.
People who "solve" the puzzle may impress Google, but I am not impressed by Google using this as a puzzle.
Funny thing about Carnegie Mellon -- there's a lot of people there who spell Microsoft with a dollar sign and refer to it as the "evil empire," yet every Microsoft presentation is standing-room only.
Damn it, I demand that people keep themselves properly pigeonholed! If you go to Carnegie Mellon, that simply ought to be enough for me to know 100% reliably how you feel about Microsoft, UNIX, and gay marriage!
I shouldn't have to deal with a world where some people who go to Carnegie Mellon love Microsoft, some people hate them, and someone for everything in between. That makes me think. I shouldn't have to think! That is very inconsiderate of the staff and faculty of Carnegie Mellon.
Take Slashdot; that's how it should work. Everyone loves Linux, thinks BSD is dying, hates Microsoft no matter what, and thinks IP should be completely abolished. Nice and comfy like. Slashdot cares about making sure I don't burn out my noggin trying to understand a complicated world.
Stay in your pigeonholes, people. Anything less and I shall be very disappointed in you. Square pegs should go in square holes, and round pegs in round holes, that's what I always say.
Breaking quantum encryption would most likely net you a Nobel Prize in Physics, since it implies breaking QM.
This is indeed a truly new level of encryption. We probably can't say 100%, but breaking quantum encryption is definately a different order of difficulty than breaking conventional encryption.
If your goal is to make money, I submit the market has already shown you what people are willing to pay for an HTML editor.
Your decision, of course, but it is possible you are running on sheer inertia. Have you stopped for a moment and asked yourself if you really want to be doing this?
I think that local republicans still look to the loony christian right for support. It may not be a prominent part national platform but it's still there.
Yes. It is the prominence, not the presense, that has changed. As my linked article points out, they are never going to disappear because they have nowhere else to go.
My argument is "full of holes" because you are so certain you know what I was going to say that you simply assumed that was my point. As a result, the accusation that I failed to prove the point you leaped to the conclusion that I was going to try to prove fails to move me.
For instance, you assumed I was calling you a loony. That is empirically wrong. I provided a definition of the term loony, one which, for what it is worth, is unassailable because I get to tell you what I mean by my words. Read the definition (for the first time, I think; you clearly read it but I don't think you really read it because you rapidly went off onto a tangent based on your own definition that doesn't match mine), and tell yourself whether you meet my criteria for looniness. I explicitly pointed out looniness on both sides, especially as it is defined in terms of "inability to change based on new facts" and not any particular ideology.
I'd hazard a yes based on your message, on the grounds that you are unable to read messages for what they are without projecting them into a worldview where all debates and all topics are reduced (brutally!) to a very small set of topics. In this case, you read a defense of the current electoral system as a defense of Bush, because Bush is one the The Topics People Discuss. Since my message wasn't about Bush at all, I think rather accounts for the fact it wasn't a very good defense of Bush, no?
As a result, you can't be swayed by contrary facts because you seem intellectually incapable of percieving them. That seems to be one of the more common causes of looniness, in my experience. If I were you, I would wonder what else I am missing.
The conventional accusation to make at this point is that you see the world in black and white, but that's not really right. You see the world in a reduced dimensionality, like Mr. A Square of Flatland trying to understand a cube. Since your accusations are orthogonal to my point, I see no point in addressing them.
Perhaps this will help shock you out of your rut: I agree with some of your points, although not all. Why not try to figure out how that squares with your original assessment of my point? When you figure out why your reply was disconnected from mine to the point that it was a non-sequitor, we might actually be able to talk to each other. But if you continue to read everything as about Bush, and see all topics as an opportunity to rattle off every political position you hold (how the hell did you get to Global Warming from a discussion about the effectiveness of the electoral college?), you're never going to understand what I was saying enough to even be able to disagree with me; you'll think you disagree, but you won't understand my position in the first place.
maybe you'll find something new and interesting.
You've got entire new dimensions of discourse to explore.
Sorry, it was meant to lead to the "Bi-partisan note", which was meant to show I think there are "loonies" on both sides, or at least were in the recent past. (Of course the Republicans haven't 100% removed them, but they no longer set the agenda.)
I define "loonies" as I did, as I also define "liberal" and "conservative" damn near everytime I use them, because there are so many definitions of the words that when you see them in isolation, they are worse than meaningless. On my blog, I have alternately used "liberal" to mean "conventional, vaguely left people", "classical liberal of the 19-th century (where we get the term "liberal arts")", "economic liberal", and "person who tends to concentrate on individual effects vs. social effects" (one of my faves). That last one in particular has no apparent connection to the literal meaning of the words, but don't blame me for starting down that road, I'm just following other's usage.:-)
I particularly define "loonies" as the ones who won't change their minds, even when shown facts, particularly when they do spectacular mental gymnastics to convert the plain facts into something that supports their views, because they are the dangerous ones. The democrats are currently way too controlled by people seriously running around claiming Bush is worse than Hitler; while I'm personally not impressed with some of the authoritarian actions his administrations has taken, he's a far cry from Hitler.
The reason they are so dangerous to the Democrats is that just like the Loonie Christian Right (and bear in mind as I say this that I consider myself a Christian), they are so disconnected from the mainstream that they don't realize how crazy their accusations sound to the mainstream, and how they marginalize the mainstream. Off the top of my head I can't think of any equivalent for the Christian Right, but I suppose watching the 700 Club for a week will fill you in adequately; I wasn't politically active during the height of their power.
An example of the leftist loonies are most of the protestors at the RNC (though presumably not all of them).
(Generally, though this is necessarily vague, I'm looking at political, social, and academic "leftness", not economic leftness (socialism/communism), and I tend to think of anarchists on the libertarian/populist axis because I've seen both left and right anarchists, arguing against government for almost entirely opposing reasons, but ending in the same place. Yeah, there's overlap; if only the world were so simple.)
It is a two party system because of emergent effects from the voting system (about 1/3rd of the way in to that piece). I also think that link is the best defense of the current system. I used to think our voting system was flawed for the usual reasons trotted out on Slashdot but now I think not many people understand how well our system works; voting between "two evils" is actually something of a feature.
Also note that today's Republican Party is a third party. They killed off the Whig party a long time ago. It is not impossible for that to happen again. If the Democrats don't shed their radical leftists*, it may happen again really soon.
(Bi-Partisan note: Part of the reason the Republicans are doing so well is that they analysed their failures during the Clinton era and marginalized some groups like the Christian Right that were detrimental to them. (Criticisms that the Republicans are controlled by them are now out of date.) Hopefully, after Kerry tanks the Democrats will do some housecleaning and re-align with the center a little better. I could never vote for Kerry, but if they put forth someone who doesn't have to pander to the loony left, I might consider it. (Bi-Partison note the second: Yes, I would say the Republicans shook off their loony right. "Loonies" here are people who consider a person or position 100% evil with no chance of facts changing their mind.))
You don't program big programs, do you? Because what you're spouting off is so stupid one doesn't even know where to begin correcting you. I wouldn't have bothered except you took in a moderator or two also.
You obviously have no clue about what modules are, and what the alternative (spaghetti code) is. The proof of this is your cited evidence that applies to non-modular code, only more so by a full polynomial factor. (How the hell do you test a non-modular sub-system on its own? Again, you're showing no comprehension of the very meaning of modular!)
Why don't you hold spouting off about programming practices until you understand them? Because the reality is that I'm not "asking" you to agree, I'm not debating, I'm explaining how modules work. If you don't agree, fine, but that just means you're wrong. (I get to say this because this isn't a political discussion or whatever where everybody is entitled to an opinion; this is a matter of simple vocabulary.)
More modules means more edges, thus more opportunities to break.
The entire point of modularity is that modules decrease edges. I'm going to have to say that if you don't get that, you don't get modularity.
(Remember to compare it correctly to the alternative, the N^2 complexity "everything connects directly to everything else"; I think you're mentally comparing it to a "nothing connects to anything else" model, which isn't even possible, since that is the only model simpler, albeit impossible, than good modularity, at a constant 0 interconnect instead of "as-close-to-linear-as-possible" modular system.)
I think you missed the point. OP is aware that X servers are installed all the time so you can access X clients remotely. (It is not clear to me whether you realize that you set up a tunnel for X clients remotely; SSH does not allow access to the remote machine's X-Server. The rest of your message seems to get it right, but that's an important point.)
OP's (correct) point is that it is hard to install said clients without the server. In source, it is effectively impossible (though I think an "rm" on the final server binaries would be effective and harmless). It would be nice to be able to compile/install Mozilla by downloading just the necessary headers and protocol code without the rest of the server. Right now that's hard. It is a good and even necessary seperation.
Slashdot Mirror
Locating SCO IP within CTSS.
zcat ctss.src.tar.gz
It's in there somewhere... you find it.
(We here at SCO don't put any stock in the new-fangled "burden of proof" stuff.)
Actually, they've never met a question that they couldn't brush aside. Typically it goes like this...
By "they" I take it you mean "politicians" and not just Bush?
Seriously, watch any politician answer any question nowadays. Pretend that you are an English teacher, and grade the response to the question. At least 80% of the time, I'd give out a flunking grade, as the answer segues into whatever talking point the politician had, and ignores the question. I don't know about the politicians but I've never had a teacher tolerate that.
Witness the Kerry ability to turn any question into a question about Vietnam... not that he does it all the time, mind, but that when he wants to, he can.
Actually, I'm kind of glad the bloggers are getting as powerful as they are; without them, we're about two years or less from a media that can't get a straight answer to a question out of anyone, because they never press the questions like bloggers can; we're almost, but not quite, there already. When is the last time you seriously heard someone repeat a question because it was completely not answered? (Now, I know there are a couple of answers to that lately, but next question: Isn't the fact that you can remember them a vivid demonstration of the fact that those incidents are exceptions, not normal practice?)
Is "suggests how the molecular building blocks necessary for the creation of life could first form in interstellar space." good science, or a showboating quote?
I ask because last I checked, "sugar" is hardly a "building block" of life. Proteins, sure, even amino acids which I think are a bit of a stretch in a way, but mere sugar? Sugar builds nothing and is only slightly more complicated than water, compared to even a simple protein, AFAICS.
I used to 'work from home, programming all day' too. My intelligent, college degreed girlfriend gave me a little friction about it once and I handed her a check for about four thousand dollars and asked her to go deposit it into our joint checking account.
:-)
Not quite yet, but hopefully soon.
We're building a product, which is just now coming into demo range, so we haven't got customers yet, but we should be getting close.
Ooh, a typo! You're saved from having to consider my point!...
Which is that if you want to spout off about the dangers of the Space Elevator ideas, it is your responsibility to first learn about the physics involved, not mine. Expect to be brutally corrected in this site. Goodness knows I am.
There, I've spelled it out for you. I really ought to know better then to try subtlety around here.
There has to be a way to "cut the cord" at this and and hope it flies out into space.
" Hope "?!? Not a big believer in physics, are we?
I sure hope you don't aren't flung into space today by the centripetal acceleration of the Earth's rotation today. Good luck with that.
There are upsides, too.
Two weeks ago I bought FFX-2 from Target for 16.88. I just bought the PC version of Knights of the Old Republic, the only game that makes me want an X-BOX, for 19.99, also at Target, even though I actually don't have a machine for it yet. (Hopefully soon.)
Being behind the curve isn't all bad. Let others sort out the dross and grab only the good stuff at bargain bin, or in this case, "clearance because the stupid gaming industry releases everything for Christmas", prices.
(On that note, this is definately an excellent time to buy high-quality games for said prices, because the stores are definately clearing out space. My Target no longer has any FFX-2, for instance. Keep your eyes peeled.)
all "true" in that they aren't "lies".
The opposite of "lying" is not "saying a true statement". You can truthfully tell a falsehood, and you can lie but tell the truth (accidentally).
Your definition fails to account for pathological liars who think what they are saying isn't true but they aren't misleading for any particular "goal".
Of the things you list, the only correct criticism is "belief"; yes, if someone honestly believes a falsehood and says it they are not "lying". We get that all the time around here; they aren't "lying", they are simply wrong, which, while still bad, is nowhere near as morally offensive.
Why do you think your daughter needs to understand what you do? By "understand", based on your message, I'm assuming that you mean "programmer vs. farmer" type of understanding, and not just an understanding that people need to work for a living.
I am a computer geek trying to start my own business. I stay home and program all day, for the most part. My intelligent, college-degreed wife, has no clue what I do, which sometimes causes friction. How do you expect to explain anything meaningful to your daughter?
For that matter, I don't recall understanding what my father did until I was well into high school. Why would that matter?
I'd also like to echo a couple of comments to the effect of "you are the book". What can a book, a child's book of perhaps 500 child-level words no less, hope to explain?
Why not just show her, and answer damn near every question with "You might understand when you're older"? Most kids I know will accept that, and at this point, it is the literal truth. There are oh-so-many ways that a child at that age can't understand programming; learn about child developmental psychology. Children are not little adults. She's several cognitive frameworks short of understanding your job, and pushing the issue can only hurt your relationship and her interest.
And Your Honor, there are an infinite number of zero-byte files embedded in every single compiled Linux kernel!
We demand justice. Nay, we demand infinite justice! We demand infinite damages against IBM!
The only votes that truly matter are the middle-aged middle-class votes. Period.
There is an easy workaround for this, next time you are voting. See that box labelled "middle-aged, middle-class"? Check it, even if it isn't true. They can't verify it, after all.
Once you do that, you'll find your vote counted along with all the rest of our votes.
Yeah, the first thing that lept to my mind at that point is "No, young people simply prefer the lies of Kerry over Bush."
(Of course, this is using the latest re-definition of "lie" to mean "anything opposed to the truth" (and we'll just leave "truth" up in the air), as opposed to the rather more reasonable definition of "knowingly telling a falsehood". Under that definition, I don't think either candidate is lying much, although both have lied about their past to one degree or another and both have lied about their positions depending on what people want to hear (though I have to give credit to Kerry here for lying this way much more often; his problem here is that he has to in order to both be nominated and win the election and it is still up in the air whether he can manage it). The problem is that they are wrong, each in their own various ways. It is beyond me to give a full listing, as I am not perfect either.)
"Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money"? Typo?
I think you, and the thread stretching out from your post, are missing the point. The point is not the with polynomial interpolation, gowen can get "the answer". His point is that you can reasonably get any answer.
The set of functions is uncountably infinite. There are uncountably infinite functions that have f of 1, 2, 3, and 4 set to the values Google gave. The reality is that mathematically speaking, giving four numbers results in exactly no constraint on the next number; you might as well just pick one at random. "Polynomial interpolation" is one reasonable path to this, but remember that functions need not even be continuous and are ultimately just infinite look-up tables. (Note the final "solution" is just a lookup table-type function.)
To counter the obvious next objection ("well obviously it is going to be a human-meaningful number"), I take my objection one meta. Obviously we're not truly drawing from that infinite set of functions. However, there's still an effectively infinite set of "human meaningful functions", too. So the true challenge becomes not a math problem, but in sheer guessing which exact constraints the puzzle writer chose.
This is not a mathematical problem. It tries to pretend to be one, but it is not. Generally, once you know the constraints the solution is trivial.
The correct mathematical answer to all such sequences remains "The next number is whatever the hell it feels like being". I have better things to do with my time then try to second-guess somebody pretending to be clever and plucking some random thing out of the uncountably infinite set and demanding that I guess it. Thus, I don't do these puzzles; they're sophmoric in the literal sense of the term, created by people who think they are clever but don't seem to have a deep understanding of math.
People who "solve" the puzzle may impress Google, but I am not impressed by Google using this as a puzzle.
Funny thing about Carnegie Mellon -- there's a lot of people there who spell Microsoft with a dollar sign and refer to it as the "evil empire," yet every Microsoft presentation is standing-room only.
Damn it, I demand that people keep themselves properly pigeonholed! If you go to Carnegie Mellon, that simply ought to be enough for me to know 100% reliably how you feel about Microsoft, UNIX, and gay marriage!
I shouldn't have to deal with a world where some people who go to Carnegie Mellon love Microsoft, some people hate them, and someone for everything in between. That makes me think. I shouldn't have to think! That is very inconsiderate of the staff and faculty of Carnegie Mellon.
Take Slashdot; that's how it should work. Everyone loves Linux, thinks BSD is dying, hates Microsoft no matter what, and thinks IP should be completely abolished. Nice and comfy like. Slashdot cares about making sure I don't burn out my noggin trying to understand a complicated world.
Stay in your pigeonholes, people. Anything less and I shall be very disappointed in you. Square pegs should go in square holes, and round pegs in round holes, that's what I always say.
Breaking quantum encryption would most likely net you a Nobel Prize in Physics, since it implies breaking QM.
This is indeed a truly new level of encryption. We probably can't say 100%, but breaking quantum encryption is definately a different order of difficulty than breaking conventional encryption.
zero registrations... I'm working on a 2.0
Why?
If your goal is to make money, I submit the market has already shown you what people are willing to pay for an HTML editor.
Your decision, of course, but it is possible you are running on sheer inertia. Have you stopped for a moment and asked yourself if you really want to be doing this?
I think that local republicans still look to the loony christian right for support. It may not be a prominent part national platform but it's still there.
Yes. It is the prominence, not the presense, that has changed. As my linked article points out, they are never going to disappear because they have nowhere else to go.
My argument is "full of holes" because you are so certain you know what I was going to say that you simply assumed that was my point. As a result, the accusation that I failed to prove the point you leaped to the conclusion that I was going to try to prove fails to move me.
For instance, you assumed I was calling you a loony. That is empirically wrong. I provided a definition of the term loony, one which, for what it is worth, is unassailable because I get to tell you what I mean by my words. Read the definition (for the first time, I think; you clearly read it but I don't think you really read it because you rapidly went off onto a tangent based on your own definition that doesn't match mine), and tell yourself whether you meet my criteria for looniness. I explicitly pointed out looniness on both sides, especially as it is defined in terms of "inability to change based on new facts" and not any particular ideology.
I'd hazard a yes based on your message, on the grounds that you are unable to read messages for what they are without projecting them into a worldview where all debates and all topics are reduced (brutally!) to a very small set of topics. In this case, you read a defense of the current electoral system as a defense of Bush, because Bush is one the The Topics People Discuss. Since my message wasn't about Bush at all, I think rather accounts for the fact it wasn't a very good defense of Bush, no?
As a result, you can't be swayed by contrary facts because you seem intellectually incapable of percieving them. That seems to be one of the more common causes of looniness, in my experience. If I were you, I would wonder what else I am missing.
The conventional accusation to make at this point is that you see the world in black and white, but that's not really right. You see the world in a reduced dimensionality, like Mr. A Square of Flatland trying to understand a cube. Since your accusations are orthogonal to my point, I see no point in addressing them.
Perhaps this will help shock you out of your rut: I agree with some of your points, although not all. Why not try to figure out how that squares with your original assessment of my point? When you figure out why your reply was disconnected from mine to the point that it was a non-sequitor, we might actually be able to talk to each other. But if you continue to read everything as about Bush, and see all topics as an opportunity to rattle off every political position you hold (how the hell did you get to Global Warming from a discussion about the effectiveness of the electoral college?), you're never going to understand what I was saying enough to even be able to disagree with me; you'll think you disagree, but you won't understand my position in the first place.
maybe you'll find something new and interesting.
You've got entire new dimensions of discourse to explore.
Sorry, it was meant to lead to the "Bi-partisan note", which was meant to show I think there are "loonies" on both sides, or at least were in the recent past. (Of course the Republicans haven't 100% removed them, but they no longer set the agenda.)
:-)
I define "loonies" as I did, as I also define "liberal" and "conservative" damn near everytime I use them, because there are so many definitions of the words that when you see them in isolation, they are worse than meaningless. On my blog, I have alternately used "liberal" to mean "conventional, vaguely left people", "classical liberal of the 19-th century (where we get the term "liberal arts")", "economic liberal", and "person who tends to concentrate on individual effects vs. social effects" (one of my faves). That last one in particular has no apparent connection to the literal meaning of the words, but don't blame me for starting down that road, I'm just following other's usage.
I particularly define "loonies" as the ones who won't change their minds, even when shown facts, particularly when they do spectacular mental gymnastics to convert the plain facts into something that supports their views, because they are the dangerous ones. The democrats are currently way too controlled by people seriously running around claiming Bush is worse than Hitler; while I'm personally not impressed with some of the authoritarian actions his administrations has taken, he's a far cry from Hitler.
The reason they are so dangerous to the Democrats is that just like the Loonie Christian Right (and bear in mind as I say this that I consider myself a Christian), they are so disconnected from the mainstream that they don't realize how crazy their accusations sound to the mainstream, and how they marginalize the mainstream. Off the top of my head I can't think of any equivalent for the Christian Right, but I suppose watching the 700 Club for a week will fill you in adequately; I wasn't politically active during the height of their power.
An example of the leftist loonies are most of the protestors at the RNC (though presumably not all of them).
(Generally, though this is necessarily vague, I'm looking at political, social, and academic "leftness", not economic leftness (socialism/communism), and I tend to think of anarchists on the libertarian/populist axis because I've seen both left and right anarchists, arguing against government for almost entirely opposing reasons, but ending in the same place. Yeah, there's overlap; if only the world were so simple.)
It is a two party system because of emergent effects from the voting system (about 1/3rd of the way in to that piece). I also think that link is the best defense of the current system. I used to think our voting system was flawed for the usual reasons trotted out on Slashdot but now I think not many people understand how well our system works; voting between "two evils" is actually something of a feature.
Also note that today's Republican Party is a third party. They killed off the Whig party a long time ago. It is not impossible for that to happen again. If the Democrats don't shed their radical leftists*, it may happen again really soon.
(Bi-Partisan note: Part of the reason the Republicans are doing so well is that they analysed their failures during the Clinton era and marginalized some groups like the Christian Right that were detrimental to them. (Criticisms that the Republicans are controlled by them are now out of date.) Hopefully, after Kerry tanks the Democrats will do some housecleaning and re-align with the center a little better. I could never vote for Kerry, but if they put forth someone who doesn't have to pander to the loony left, I might consider it. (Bi-Partison note the second: Yes, I would say the Republicans shook off their loony right. "Loonies" here are people who consider a person or position 100% evil with no chance of facts changing their mind.))
I tried that. I'm still getting them. I'm also getting the book reviews I banned.
I've been too lazy to report this as a bug; are others seeing this? I'd really like it better if the feature worked.
You don't program big programs, do you? Because what you're spouting off is so stupid one doesn't even know where to begin correcting you. I wouldn't have bothered except you took in a moderator or two also.
You obviously have no clue about what modules are, and what the alternative (spaghetti code) is. The proof of this is your cited evidence that applies to non-modular code, only more so by a full polynomial factor. (How the hell do you test a non-modular sub-system on its own? Again, you're showing no comprehension of the very meaning of modular!)
Why don't you hold spouting off about programming practices until you understand them? Because the reality is that I'm not "asking" you to agree, I'm not debating, I'm explaining how modules work. If you don't agree, fine, but that just means you're wrong. (I get to say this because this isn't a political discussion or whatever where everybody is entitled to an opinion; this is a matter of simple vocabulary.)
More modules means more edges, thus more opportunities to break.
The entire point of modularity is that modules decrease edges. I'm going to have to say that if you don't get that, you don't get modularity.
(Remember to compare it correctly to the alternative, the N^2 complexity "everything connects directly to everything else"; I think you're mentally comparing it to a "nothing connects to anything else" model, which isn't even possible, since that is the only model simpler, albeit impossible, than good modularity, at a constant 0 interconnect instead of "as-close-to-linear-as-possible" modular system.)
I think you missed the point. OP is aware that X servers are installed all the time so you can access X clients remotely. (It is not clear to me whether you realize that you set up a tunnel for X clients remotely; SSH does not allow access to the remote machine's X-Server. The rest of your message seems to get it right, but that's an important point.)
OP's (correct) point is that it is hard to install said clients without the server. In source, it is effectively impossible (though I think an "rm" on the final server binaries would be effective and harmless). It would be nice to be able to compile/install Mozilla by downloading just the necessary headers and protocol code without the rest of the server. Right now that's hard. It is a good and even necessary seperation.