"I don't understand their not wanting to escape from Windows and from the shit they seem to regard as normal. I think it may be due to some form of learned helplessness [wikipedia.org] syndrome."
It's frightening, but to most people Windows IS the computer. Thia ia even the case with many young people. In a generation that IMO should be completely technophilic, many users don't WANT to know how things work and have told me so.
I've given up trying to reach most of them. I just charge them money to fix their problems.
For a lot of them the income is necessary, but there are a great number who do not practice efficiency and thrift. This is because most of MY generation failed to pass on the lessons of our Depression Era parents.
For example, when my parents didn't have money, they didn't go in debt to buy nonessentials. (If you were POOR, you lived cheap and weren't ashamed of it.)
They taught us by example and explanation that if it was not food/clothing/shelter/EDUCATION you didn't need it. They also taught us that if you learned to manage effectively you would eventually have lots of the nice things in life. It worked for them and it worked for me.
They rarely bought anything that was not built to last, even if they waited to buy it. Quality is cheap in the end.
They learned to use their resources. Home Economics and Do It Yourself books were written at a high level, because if you couldn't do it on your own your were screwed.
If where you lived limited your opportunities, you got the fsck out and didn't look back.
People tend to forget that, while being poor in the US sucks, it used to be far shittier. Somehow many of those poor folks rose to the challenge, probably because that was expected of them so they expected it of themselves.
"Throw a couple of kids into the mix, and anyone at or below the "lower-middle-class" income bracket is struggling, big-time."
As they always struggled. The problem now is that many of them don't know how to struggle effectively.
As a mechanic who has worked on many Hondas, I find those numbers absurdly low. Lifetimes well over 200K are common unless the owner races/wrecks/refuses to maintain their car.
A camera to monitor your street, and a switch that cuts power to your router while discharging a HERF weapon concealed in a lawn gnome is a Slashdot solution.
Millions of people die from malaria because they relentlessly choose to live in unsuitable areas and make the whole litany of social and cultural mistakes that leave their countries vulnerable.
Instead of making a GM super'squito to fight malaria (and later carry a worse payload in its robust little body) we should do nothing.
Let the humans adapt their behaviors and make different choices instead. If they won't, nature will continue to take its course.
"On the other hand, why they can't make a small stipulation to sell X% of units raw to folks that are DIY'ers, is beyond me.."
Because the DIY market is too small to matter, and DIYers will tend to build their own machines.
Why would I want a Dell when I can pick the components instead? If you get past the barriers to being an effective 'nix user, building a box is not only trivial, but often, fun. You customize the machine in the way you customize the OS installation, because it's about what YOU want.
"Mostly because what's happened at Walter Reed isn't fiction."
Neither was the poor treatment of Nam vets (like that chronicled in Ron Kovic's autobiography).
Those lessons are conveniently forgotten every few years by an Army establishment that considers grunts expendable, and lacks the balls to confront their incompetent civilian leadership when funding is inadequate. Deity forbid they'd actually do an old-fashioned walk-through inspection!
Google "David Hackworth" for the last senior officer we had with a backbone. The rest daren't jeopardize their lucrative futures as corporate sock puppets.
"The mindshare monopoly of the retarded lethargic users is critical to Microsoft."
Those users are a reality, and that market is a large and profitable one. Linux users decrying the Luser market instead of catering to it, cede that important market to Microsoft. The members of that market make decisions that affect the rest of us.
Many folks who loathe certain companies are quite happy to prod them into continuing a self-defeating strategy that will worsen their customers experience. Others just do not care and want free stuff.
1,000,000 people are freed from previous restraints on their population growth (like death by starvation because they are attempting to live in an area that will not sustain them).
What are the consequences of the "save everyone without regard to the consequences" ethos?
Sometimes the things that are perceived as bad for a local population are better than the alternatives.
Depends on the design goals, which may not include maximum thermodynamic efficiency!
In drag racing, non-OHC engines keep high parts prices from becoming even more expensive because they are simpler to machine and easier to support due to the large installed base of similar engines. Pushrod engines are also a breeze to field-strip between rounds.
Design goals may include inexpensive production, easy field repair, and long life under harsh conditions with indifferent maintenance. The classic Briggs and Stratton flathead, produced by the millions, is an example.The Changfa and Listeroid diesels are in use worldwide.
A notable factor in the long life of designs like the inefficient Harley V-twins is that it was easy for the aftermarket to support them with replacement cylinders, heads, and crankcase halves due to their simple designs. I can easily keep an old H-D on the road, while most of the Japanese machines I grew up with went to the crusher because their high-tech powerplants were not economically repairable when they wore or broke.
"Why is it the government's job to make sure people can still watch TV when the television converts to a new standard, but it wasn't the government's job to buy a new CD player for everybody when the CD took over from Vinyl records?"
Spectrum is perceived as public infrastructure. The public bought equipment with a reasonable expectation of access. That to which they have access will be changed so they are being compensated. The government will turn a vast profit, so there are no net losers.
Personally owned media are a personal choice and not a matter of public property or infrastructure.
"You can still find push-rod engines being built today..."
Within the right rpm range, they are perfectly suitable for many installations. OHC engines are nice for high rpm use, and a dandy martketing feature, but pushrod engines can do the job from industrial equipment to Top Fuel drag racing.
(OT) "It is the reaon you see those semi-cars" Must be a European thing. The US equivalents are "hot shot" rigs where a large "dually" pickup pulls "gooseneck" or fifth-wheel trailers. Our Department of Transportation is getting wise to this and ticketing appropriately when the rigs aren't permitted for interstate commerce.
Offering Works could be to gently coerce consumers into buying Office. OpenOffice does none of that. The question is simply, what does OpenOffice to for Dell that will make more money than their current scheme?
That's a global business plan (France makes a mint doing it), and since only children and fools admire ethical examples (no one else bothers to heed them) we might as well have some of the pie ourselves.
What do you think actually built the US? Paying lip service to ideals while Manifest Destiny excused displacing the locals for a start.
All empires are built on competition and war. "Our side" in the Cold War played some rather dirty pool (destabilization, proxy wars, etc) to win. Some of that did not work, but such is life. Now, instead of Communism, the enemy is Islam.
"Reagan praised as freedom fighters the same mujahideen that Osama bin Laden helped finance." The results were key to the collapse of the Soviet Empire.Let's not forget the Cold War so soon. Compared to that the blowback is a reasonable price to pay. The Muj were the ones choosing to die by the thousands against the Soviet Army in an area where we dared not directly project force. Success justified the means. The Afghans can go back to plinking each other when they quit hosting factions that act outside their country.
BTW the vast majority of our customers for war material do not use them against us. Billions in sales are to "good guys" like NATO, Israel, South Korea, Taiwan, etc.
"Donald Rumsfeld shook hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983." So what? He was useful against Iran. Keeping both dogs in the fight was a good investment. No Caliphate should be allowed to emerge, and if they bleed each other to death in ethnic and schismatic war they won't have energy to attack targets like Israel. Saddam should have copied Qaddafi. He was the last person capable of stabilizing Iraq. Too bad these loons think they are Saladin reincarnate. If they would stay in their boxes they could have great lives and pass their countries on to their families in the manner of Hafez Assad.
Ideals are very pretty, but the results of destabilization and brinksmanship often pay out. Obviously, we can't invade the whole Middle East, but a "Yugoslav outcome" where the wreckage seperates into weaker, manageable chunks is acceptable there as it is in the FRY area.So is an African outcome. Africa still exports resources.
We would have the same enemies with or without the MIC. Being "good" or "moral" has nothing to do with victory or defeat, though it is nice to invoke that stuff for propaganda.
"In the interest of national security, no company based outside the US should be given any US defense contracts. Period. I bet the Democrats could get that passed as a law."
Way to destroy the overseas sales we depend on to support our defense industrial base! If we don't buy overseas, cut technology offset deals, and in general do business like the rest of the world our defense industry and aviation industry will suffer. We sell billions of dollars of gear worldwide for which there is no domestic market. Imagine if US sales were all that were keeping our aircraft production lines open. Systems like the F-16 would cost far more to support since we aren't buying any more, but will be flying them for many years. Smaller parts and equipment suppliers would cease production (already a problem) or go out of business altogether.
"So now where do I go to avoid the draft" You don't need to "go" anywhere. Grow a pair and resist. You declare yourself homosexual and have a gay friend testify to it. You can also declare you have used LSD, or just show up tripping (or with your eyes dilated, since there is no practical way to tell if you had a few mikes of acid or not). You can become an anti-draft activist, and get a blog going so there is a track record. There is a large counterculture community in the US, even after the "hippies" mostly sold out. Join it. You'll have fun, besides not stopping lead for people who despise you.
Check out the supporting material/documents for some "conveniently forgotten" history: http://www.sirnosir.com/
"Hey, doesn't the US have minimum sanity standards for officers in the armed services?"
Problem being, psych tests only catch people too stupid or uneducated to lie their way through them. They are basically the equivalent of asking "Are you nuts?".
Slashdot Mirror
"I don't understand their not wanting to escape from Windows and from the shit they seem to regard as normal. I think it may be due to some form of learned helplessness [wikipedia.org] syndrome."
It's frightening, but to most people Windows IS the computer. Thia ia even the case with many young people. In a generation that IMO should be completely technophilic, many users don't WANT to know how things work and have told me so.
I've given up trying to reach most of them. I just charge them money to fix their problems.
"We masturbate. Say what you want, but masturbation is a GOOD THING. The way to become a more effective lover is PRACTICE."
Indeed.
Now if I could find a place to mack on disembodied hands, I'd be da Man!
For a lot of them the income is necessary, but there are a great number who do not practice efficiency and thrift. This is because most of MY generation failed to pass on the lessons of our Depression Era parents.
For example, when my parents didn't have money, they didn't go in debt to buy nonessentials. (If you were POOR, you lived cheap and weren't ashamed of it.)
They taught us by example and explanation that if it was not food/clothing/shelter/EDUCATION you didn't need it. They also taught us that if you learned to manage effectively you would eventually have lots of the nice things in life. It worked for them and it worked for me.
They rarely bought anything that was not built to last, even if they waited to buy it. Quality is cheap in the end.
They learned to use their resources. Home Economics and Do It Yourself books were written at a high level, because if you couldn't do it on your own your were screwed.
If where you lived limited your opportunities, you got the fsck out and didn't look back.
People tend to forget that, while being poor in the US sucks, it used to be far shittier. Somehow many of those poor folks rose to the challenge, probably because that was expected of them so they expected it of themselves.
"Throw a couple of kids into the mix, and anyone at or below the "lower-middle-class" income bracket is struggling, big-time."
As they always struggled. The problem now is that many of them don't know how to struggle effectively.
"Any? Any apart from the smarties who boot from a live CD (or USB stick) and don't touch the hard drive for their "late night browsing"."
In other news, IIT Bombay has suddenly become a world player in virtual machine development.
As a mechanic who has worked on many Hondas, I find those numbers absurdly low. Lifetimes well over 200K are common unless the owner races/wrecks/refuses to maintain their car.
That's not a Slashdot solution.
A camera to monitor your street, and a switch that cuts power to your router while discharging a HERF weapon concealed in a lawn gnome is a Slashdot solution.
Millions of people die from malaria because they relentlessly choose to live in unsuitable areas and make the whole litany of social and cultural mistakes that leave their countries vulnerable.
Instead of making a GM super'squito to fight malaria (and later carry a worse payload in its robust little body) we should do nothing.
Let the humans adapt their behaviors and make different choices instead. If they won't, nature will continue to take its course.
"On the other hand, why they can't make a small stipulation to sell X% of units raw to folks that are DIY'ers, is beyond me.."
Because the DIY market is too small to matter, and DIYers will tend to build their own machines.
Why would I want a Dell when I can pick the components instead? If you get past the barriers to being an effective 'nix user, building a box is not only trivial, but often, fun. You customize the machine in the way you customize the OS installation, because it's about what YOU want.
"Mostly because what's happened at Walter Reed isn't fiction."
Neither was the poor treatment of Nam vets (like that chronicled in Ron Kovic's autobiography).
Those lessons are conveniently forgotten every few years by an Army establishment that considers grunts expendable, and lacks the balls to confront their incompetent civilian leadership when funding is inadequate. Deity forbid they'd actually do an old-fashioned walk-through inspection!
Google "David Hackworth" for the last senior officer we had with a backbone. The rest daren't jeopardize their lucrative futures as corporate sock puppets.
"The mindshare monopoly of the retarded lethargic users is critical to Microsoft."
Those users are a reality, and that market is a large and profitable one.
Linux users decrying the Luser market instead of catering to it, cede that important market to Microsoft.
The members of that market make decisions that affect the rest of us.
Many folks who loathe certain companies are quite happy to prod them into continuing a self-defeating strategy that will worsen their customers experience.
Others just do not care and want free stuff.
1,000,000 people are freed from previous restraints on their population growth (like death by starvation because they are attempting to live in an area that will not sustain them).
What are the consequences of the "save everyone without regard to the consequences" ethos?
Sometimes the things that are perceived as bad for a local population are better than the alternatives.
The original settlement may not have qualified as punishment.
Some folks like that stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Pinyan
Depends on the design goals, which may not include maximum thermodynamic efficiency!
e l-engines.html
In drag racing, non-OHC engines keep high parts prices from becoming even more expensive because they are simpler to machine and easier to support due to the large installed base of similar engines. Pushrod engines are also a breeze to field-strip between rounds.
Design goals may include inexpensive production, easy field repair, and long life under harsh conditions with indifferent maintenance.
The classic Briggs and Stratton flathead, produced by the millions, is an example.The Changfa and Listeroid diesels are in use worldwide.
http://www.utterpower.com/changfa.htm
http://www.lovson.com/lister-type-slow-speed-dies
A notable factor in the long life of designs like the inefficient Harley V-twins is that it was easy for the aftermarket to support them with replacement cylinders, heads, and crankcase halves due to their simple designs. I can easily keep an old H-D on the road, while most of the Japanese machines I grew up with went to the crusher because their high-tech powerplants were not economically repairable when they wore or broke.
"Why is it the government's job to make sure people can still watch TV when the television converts to a new standard, but it wasn't the government's job to buy a new CD player for everybody when the CD took over from Vinyl records?"
Spectrum is perceived as public infrastructure. The public bought equipment with a reasonable expectation of access. That to which they have access will be changed so they are being compensated. The government will turn a vast profit, so there are no net losers.
Personally owned media are a personal choice and not a matter of public property or infrastructure.
"You can still find push-rod engines being built today..."
Within the right rpm range, they are perfectly suitable for many installations.
OHC engines are nice for high rpm use, and a dandy martketing feature, but pushrod engines can do the job from industrial equipment to Top Fuel drag racing.
It's an MIT research product.
Anyone with knowledge of how they handle IP produced by their researchers care to comment?
(OT)
"It is the reaon you see those semi-cars"
Must be a European thing.
The US equivalents are "hot shot" rigs where a large "dually" pickup pulls "gooseneck" or fifth-wheel trailers.
Our Department of Transportation is getting wise to this and ticketing appropriately when the rigs aren't permitted for interstate commerce.
Offering Works could be to gently coerce consumers into buying Office. OpenOffice does none of that.
The question is simply, what does OpenOffice to for Dell that will make more money than their current scheme?
That's a global business plan (France makes a mint doing it), and since only children and fools admire ethical examples (no one else bothers to heed them) we might as well have some of the pie ourselves.
What do you think actually built the US? Paying lip service to ideals while Manifest Destiny excused displacing the locals for a start.
All empires are built on competition and war. "Our side" in the Cold War played some rather dirty pool (destabilization, proxy wars, etc) to win. Some of that did not work, but such is life. Now, instead of Communism, the enemy is Islam.
"Reagan praised as freedom fighters the same mujahideen that Osama bin Laden helped finance."
The results were key to the collapse of the Soviet Empire.Let's not forget the Cold War so soon. Compared to that the blowback is a reasonable price to pay. The Muj were the ones choosing to die by the thousands against the Soviet Army in an area where we dared not directly project force.
Success justified the means. The Afghans can go back to plinking each other when they quit hosting factions that act outside their country.
BTW the vast majority of our customers for war material do not use them against us. Billions in sales are to "good guys" like NATO, Israel, South Korea, Taiwan, etc.
"Donald Rumsfeld shook hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983."
So what? He was useful against Iran. Keeping both dogs in the fight was a good investment. No Caliphate should be allowed to emerge, and if they bleed each other to death in ethnic and schismatic war they won't have energy to attack targets like Israel. Saddam should have copied Qaddafi. He was the last person capable of stabilizing Iraq. Too bad these loons think they are Saladin reincarnate. If they would stay in their boxes they could have great lives and pass their countries on to their families in the manner of Hafez Assad.
Ideals are very pretty, but the results of destabilization and brinksmanship often pay out. Obviously, we can't invade the whole Middle East, but a "Yugoslav outcome" where the wreckage seperates into weaker, manageable chunks is acceptable there as it is in the FRY area.So is an African outcome. Africa still exports resources.
We would have the same enemies with or without the MIC. Being "good" or "moral" has nothing to do with victory or defeat, though it is nice to invoke that stuff for propaganda.
"In the interest of national security, no company based outside the US should be given any US defense contracts. Period. I bet the Democrats could get that passed as a law."
Way to destroy the overseas sales we depend on to support our defense industrial base!
If we don't buy overseas, cut technology offset deals, and in general do business like the rest of the world our defense industry and aviation industry will suffer. We sell billions of dollars of gear worldwide for which there is no domestic market.
Imagine if US sales were all that were keeping our aircraft production lines open. Systems like the F-16 would cost far more to support since we aren't buying any more, but will be flying them for many years. Smaller parts and equipment suppliers would cease production (already a problem) or go out of business altogether.
This issue of global warming as scientific theory is separate from the ideological issues involved.
BOTH sides have social agendas into which their beliefs regarding global climate change fit.
"So now where do I go to avoid the draft"
You don't need to "go" anywhere. Grow a pair and resist.
You declare yourself homosexual and have a gay friend testify to it.
You can also declare you have used LSD, or just show up tripping (or with your eyes dilated, since there is no practical way to tell if you had a few mikes of acid or not). You can become an anti-draft activist, and get a blog going so there is a track record. There is a large counterculture community in the US, even after the "hippies" mostly sold out. Join it. You'll have fun, besides not stopping lead for people who despise you.
Check out the supporting material/documents for some "conveniently forgotten" history:
http://www.sirnosir.com/
For that price you can get CF/IDE adapters and CF cards that will work nicely. Damn Small Linux and some other distros will install to CF easily.
"Hey, doesn't the US have minimum sanity standards for officers in the armed services?"
Problem being, psych tests only catch people too stupid or uneducated to lie their way through them. They are basically the equivalent of asking "Are you nuts?".