One of my worst nightmares is that I wake up one day to find that Michael Moore has become the Limbaugh of the left. I don't think he's quite sunk to that level, yet. Personally, I think if our media was more respectable, Michael Moore would never have managed the success he has experienced.
The problem is that the current media seems to appeal to the lowest common demoninator. Either it allows itself to be bullied into printing the type of illogical causality that you mention or it allows it's pursuit of advertising revenue to interfere with it's responsibility to the public. Of course there are also a large number of those in both politics and the media who promote this dishonest causality.
I think that the severe decline of primary education and accessibility to secondary education is contributing to public's willingness to accept such low academic standards for subjects that are so important. If you'll remember, before the advent of Limbaugh, there was a general malaise in the news markets. The rise of talk radio, with it's drudge-like standards for intellectual honesty, managed to appeal to an uninformed populace who easily confuses their culture and religion with the government of the US. In a search for revenue, the increasingly corporate owned media has allowed this yellow-journalism to creep into it's mainstream.
The free market is not friendly to the marketplace of idea's. The free market encourages actors to raise the barriers to entry for competition, which if unchecked, stagnates innovation. The marketplace of idea's is what drives innovation and progress. The goal is to find a balance, which requires an informed and rational populace.
I believe that Moore has been able to rise to fame, by having true talent to communicate, much like Limbaugh. He's a pretty humorous guy, but he sacrifices intellectual honesty in order to cover a lot of ground, to make a point about a larger picture. I also believe that this method emphasizes points that are easily defeated in debate and involve too much speculation. In 9/11, Moore spent way too much time questioning the President's behavior on 9/11 and the links between the Bush and Saud families. 9/11 was a unique situation, it is difficult to effectively question the actions of anyone in that situation, because too many people will be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. The links between the Bush family and the House of Saud goes to motive, which is irrelevent to realpolitik. Motive is only a factor in a criminal court, it helps you to understand a person's goals, but the measure of politics is the outcome. Moore's general point, that the Bush administration is a disaster and the US should keep these people from power as much as possible, could be argued based on the facts. From any measure, this administration appears to be incompetent. They have managed to repeat every mistake of the past 40 years.
The unfortunate thing, is that if Moore had simply presented the case this way, he probably would have lost the majority of the audience. He might have made it to PBS or Sundance's docDay, but that's about it. I can't say that I'm opposed to the extremes on the right and left getting more people interested in politics. It's much easier to rationally argue political points, to someone who has them based on unfounded assumptions, than it is to interest the apathetic.
In my mind, Moore isn't as bad as Limbaugh or O'Reilly, and he has been able to logically defend his criticisms much more effectively. Let's put it this way, the populist right wing media is like Area 51 alien/black UN helicopter documentary films, the left wing populist media (Air America Radio, Moore) is more like Carl Sagan. Sagan was never accepted by academics because he was such a populist and would speculate too much on information that hadn't been truly vetted. For myself, I got interested in science at a very early age due to Sagan on Cosmos. That interest has made it so I can at least discern the difference between actual science and things that pa
Calm down, it was a flippant remark. Besides, have you ever considered what kind of effort will need to be made to bring the people of N Korea out of the psychotic society they are currently in? Have you looked at what Kim Jong Il has done to those people? When that fuel train exploded, there was one grainy ass cameraphone picture and estimates varied between no damage and 3000 dead. Anyone that has actually escaped from N Korea has needed severe psychological help just to adjust to S Korean society.
After looking at what a freaking mess N Korea is in, any sane, rational mind trying to look for a solution would be prone to some very cynical thinking. Given that bombing N Korea back to the Stone Age would slightly upset both the Chinese and S Koreans, and the current prickly issue of credibility behind US military action, not to mention a general malaise for support of genocide in the US, I would think the absurdity of the statement would be obvious.
Yeah, does anyone seriosly care what Kim Jong Il has to say? This is a guy who kidnapped a S. Korean director to make a socialist version of Godzilla. If he's not trying to use his probably bogus nuke capabilities to blackmail the world into helping him prop up his regime, he's threatening Japan or S. Korea. I say screw N. Korea. The only reason we don't just bomb that whole freaking disaster back to the Stone Age is because the S. Koreans still believe they can save what's left of the people of N Korea, oh and the 30,000 pieces of N Korean artillery in range of Seoul. Quite frankly though, reunification there is going to be an order of magnitude more messy than say, the reunification of Germany.
Until then, screw Kim Jong Il and the mess he's leaving this planet with.
Anyone remember their name? I used to make a point of going there every year at ALS. I still have a Tux doll from there. I'm sorry to hear they didn't survive, did anyone in Atlanta pick up the Linux store ball and run with it?
Re:How does this differ from other efforts?
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Linux in Iraq
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Why not the 35% of Iraqi males who are currently unemployed and have nothing better to do than listen to paid propagandists working for Islamic extremists?
Probably would cut down on the numbers of people we'll have to kill there, not to mention the number of American soldiers who don't deserve to die because their civilian leadership was completely incompetent.
Instead of busing over tons of Indian and Egyptian contractors for 'cost plus' via Halibuton, why wouldn't the invading force organize the local people and give them the resources to rebuild their own cities and infrastructure? Oh wait, that wouldn't be as profitable for Haliburton. Crap, it also would have required the administration being honest about the number of troops and money this endeavour was going to take. Oh, and Rummy wouldn't have been able to use his new "light and cheap" reorg of the military, instead he would have had to use his nemisis, Powell's, doctrine of overwhelming force.
I guess your right, war-profiteering, incompetent fools should be wasting our tax dollars and the lives of our soldiers cause those poor Iraqi's can't do anything for themselves. Quit giving these bastards the benefit of the doubt, fire their asses.
Why pose the question as black and white? Just as we evolved on Earth to our environment and continue to do so, why wouldn't we do the same for Mars? We could begin terraforming and our bodies will grow into the changing environment.
It isn't a given that our bodies would change so much that we wouldn't be able to come back to Earth either. By the time we have created a way of life efficient enough to survive on Mars to Terraform it, we should be able control our own evolution with more precision. We could theoretically start modifying ourselves while we send terraforming bots, those that were sent to Mars would be more efficiently suited to the mission and to life on a partially terraformed Mars. I'm sure, this could be accomplished in 100 years. In the meantime, we could send human explorers to research the engineering of this plan and to determine the existance of life. If we find life, it will most likely be simple, and we can engineer it life we do everything from algae to cows on Earth to terraform it for us.
We are under no obligation to preserve simple life in a pristine state, only how to learn to cohabitate with native life, unless it threatens our species, in which case, we have a right to exterminate it.
I don't see how any of this is more complicated than an engineering effort and the financial backing. There are clearly enough people worldwide interested in doing this, that it could be accomplished. Perhaps the Open Source community should develop a collaberative application that would allow the organization of an "Open Source" engineering effort to solve the technical issues, thus reducing the startup cost of the effort.
With the R&D infrastructure provided, private enterprise might be able to profit enough to make improvements worthwhile. Although, I think we have to ensure that a future extraplanetary society has a similiar ideology of civil rights and freedom that we have, lest we create our future interplanetary enemies. The combination of corporate influence with an unforgiving pioneer world where individuals depend on society to provide, has the danger of giving birth to fascism.
BTW, this was a great Saturday afternoon article.;-)
Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson
They actually agreed to be in a movie about drugs together? Hollywood never ceases to make me laugh. Hopefully this won't be as bad as a Tom Cruise movie.
Seriously man, have you used a cell phone in the last 5 years?
They're still crap and more expensive, but they're vastly more useful to consumers and businesses to the point where no one cares about all the crap parts.
The problem the regional telcos are having (and I worked at one) is that they actually think like this, that the WI-FI/VOIP or 3G networks have to be as good as the landline one. Nope, not true. If it's more useful and practical than the landline network, it will take off. Mobility and convienience look like they're more important than the quality and reliability of MaBell.
The ILEC's have always underestimated people's ability to adapt to technology and overestimated their importance as maintainers of a mature and commoditized piece of infrastructure. Most of this has been motivated by profit margins, rather than any illusory concern for customers.
I've got bills every month from the local telco, the local cable company and a cell company. The local telco gets the least money, because they are the least useful. I often consider whether or not to get rid of that one too, but some people still prefer calling me at that number.
The majority of the dinosaurs were instantly fried, like in a nuke blast that wrapped around the globe. I haven't seen a movie lately, that had those kind of cool FX. How about you?
Think about to all the meteor's crashing into earth movies there are, now think about all the FX. Nothing as impressive as ALL THE DINOSAURS getting fried as a heat wave travelled around the globe.
Why can't Hollywood just pay attention to history and science. It's way cooler than the drek they come up with.
But seriously folks, just think of all the Brontoburgers. I bet Fred and Barney boiled off the surface still salivating at the endless plains of dino ribs.
You assume that the individuals who actually carried out the dirty work acted alone. I've yet to see anyone assail a CEO or government leader because they lacked the ability to be omnipresent or see into the future. What I have seen is criticism that the policies that those leaders or CEO's put in place and the culture they created, led to individuals acting criminally as part of their duties in an organization.
In this sense, the CEO/President is directly to blame. If it's one customer service rep/private trying to screw you, it's a bad apple. If it's a couple of CSR/privates trying to screw you, it's bad management. If all of the CSR/privates are trying to screw you, then it's probably company policy.
When people wear their inhumanity or greed as a badge, then it's a sign of a corrupting influence on the culture. In a healthy culture, such behavior would be shunned and cause one to hide their misdeeds due to shame. If your friend is a salesperson, and gloats about how he screwed his customer, expect the same if you do business with him.
Leaders have a much larger say in the culture of an organization. The more sway they hold, the more responsibility they have to create a culture that is not detrimental to society. The blame is assigned when they fail to live up to that responsibility.
Although I must say, I agree with you're main point that power and responsibility go hand in hand.
No No No! He was talking about her huuuge tracks of land.
Later, he told the two guards to make sure Space Ship One doesn't leave. Unfortunately, the White Knight later showed up and slaughtered the reporters and attempted a rescue, in it's own.... oh... oh... uhm... idiom.
dumber? arrested maturity? I'm not knocking your personal lifestyle choices, but don't assume the rest of us feel this way or want to become undomesticated.
Look if you want to go back to living till age 40 if you're lucky and having to "do it all" yourself, be my guest. Some of us like our computers, space exploration and living 100 years if lucky. By all measurable standards, life is much better domesticated. Why do you think we started living in tribes anyway? Even nomads have social structure. The reason for the state is because tribal structures couldn't deal with the level of complexity we needed to better survive. We have become successful as a species because we domesticated ourselves.
The freaking preamble to the Constitution states:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Domestication is the whole freaking point. Quit drinking Ayn Rand's Kool-Aid, self reliance does not always equal being a hermit and living off the land. Oh, and thank your parents that you depended on for years. Better to be dependent on the state than the defacto fascism of the tribe or dying cause you didn't have penicillin.
BTW, where the hell did you get this incredibly odd definition of maturity?
I'm not whining about it. I'm used to it. If your not hearing the whining, then you haven't been paying attention to the political discourse in the US or you don't recognize it as such.
Listen to the big "L" libertarians sometime and those in the GOP who call themselves small "l" libertarian. Pretty much all they do is whine about the loss of the pioneer world. The less regulation and privatization idealogues act naively and refuse to have an honest debate based on studies and facts. They wind up sounding like religious fundamentalists instead of someone trying to use reason and logic to present a solution.
How exactly did you manage to miss the point and hone in on that sentence anyway?
Very true. I'm tired of this puffing up people in this country do when words like innovation and creativity come up. It's utter BS!
Most of those innovative and creative Americans came from other countries. They came to this country because it was a land of oppurtunity. It was a land of oppurtunity because it was a pioneer country. After the Euro viruses wiped out 95% of the Native American population, there was a lot of resources for a few people. Americans were innovative because they were no longer bound by the social or legal constraints that regulated previous societies.
Well, guess what. America has grown up. The pioneer country has been civilized. The job is done. Now we need to be pioneers in complex societies and cities, so we can support new industries and tools for our betterment on top of the previous ones.
America is now in the same boat that Europe was in when everyone left for this place. From what I've studied, Europe is coming up with ways that will work locally to accomplish this. What works for Europe may not work so well here, especially since our transition from a pioneer country is still comparitively young.
If you build a 1 or 2 story building, you have a lot more design options than if you build a 50 story skyscraper. People who design those big glass boxes have a lot more design constraints than Joe Architect appealing to a flight of fancy for his personal home.
Metaphorically, it's getting harder to find undeveloped land to build 1 or 2 story structures in the US. However, there's a lot of people willing to sell you their 1 or 2 story structure to build a 50 story one. We have to build on top of what we currently have.
If we are going to maintain our innovation and creativity, we need quit whining about the loss of the pioneer world and figure out how to build a better complex society than anyone else. Adapt the pioneer lessons and practicality to this complex world. I guarantee Europe, Japan and India will figure this out and if the US doesn't, we'll wind up falling behind them.
If an old guy in the sky just uses natural laws, there isn't much point to worship the lazy old guy is there?
The point was that old guy created the natural laws as the execution of his will. Much like someone writes a piece of software to execute their will.
But the bible is full of exceptions -- the sun stops in the sky, PI suddenly equals 3 and not 3.1415... funny that none of these things happen when rational people can actually check, no?
I'm not debating the scientific or historical validity of the Bible. It was written by people who are fallible. If the old guy came down and said that it wasn't quite right, I wouldn't be suprised.
Also, how do you know the sun has never stopped in the sky? There may not be a recorded event or any other evidence, but you can't prove that it never happened. How do you know that PI is so universal? Have you personally gone and tested it in every conceivable manner? Are you even capable of conceiving of all the ways it could be tested? Most people simply believe the small amount of evidence presented to them during their education. They trusted their educators and the small amount of problems that supported the value of PI. Until you personally prove PI and that it holds true in every situation in the Universe, you can't rule out that it might change. If you continue on with your daily life without proving this, then you are taking this information as an article of faith.
Why is it hard to understand that if someone who believes in god reads about evolution and decides the evidence proves it's existence, that they then believe that since god created the world, evolution must be one of god's creations too?
The question "is there a god?" is exactly analogous to "is there a Santa Claus?"
I agree. It's a matter of faith.
Given that the positive evidence is exactly zero, science certainly can answer to the negative.
Science can't prove that the old guy doesn't exist. If I told you the Universe rested on the back of a giant turtle, you couldn't prove that it didn't without going outside the Universe. Last I checked, no one had done that. The question "is there a god" can't be answered by science. An all powerful deity can always exist in the unknown or unproven areas. Hence, it's irrelavent to discuss the existence of god in the terms of proof and disproof. Until you are an omnipotent being, you won't be able to tell whether or not there was another one.
But really, if one wants to believe in the supernatural, why not believe the mythology of superior people like the Greeks and not the the inane ramblings of smelly shepherds?
That's just being culturally biased. Besides, maybe I think the Sermon on the Mount or the Book of Matthew is superior to little boy-buggering farmers with an affinity for drinking hemlock when the shit hits the fan. After all, if the mythology of the Greeks was so great, how come nobody still practices it? Maybe it doesn't offer the same practical guide to satisfaction in life as some homeless carpenter from the bad side of town, who got executed for sedition.
How do you know I don't just read the Jefferson Bible (red-letter bible with nothing but the red letters)? Jesus never talked about his miracles other than telling his followers he would be with them after his death. Disregarding the use of faith as a tool for humanity is as short-sighted as completely disregarding science in favor of faith.
It's not a misconception. Either the universe is ruled by natural laws or by invisible old guy(s) in the sky. No two ways about it.
Are you really so simple-minded as to not consider that the natural laws are the mechanics by which unknown invisble old guy has his will carried out?
I mean if a supreme being created the universe, then didn't said supreme being also create all these natural laws?
Science is only handing out punches to religiously oriented simple-minded people who can't understand this concept. They will either adapt or die out, as nature will always kick your ass when you try to go head on against it. I'm just hoping that those fools don't take out the rest of us in their futile struggle.
Since a belief in a supreme being (or belief in lack thereof) requires faith and is neither provable or disprovable, science CANNOT answer the question: Is there a God? The question itself is unscientific. It's not religion if there's not faith, and last I looked faith doesn't enter into science. It may be part of the process people use to get scientific results and conclusions, but faith has nothing to do with the outcomes. If it does, then it's not science.
Learn to seperate the two and the world is a lot easier to work with. I personally think that faith is essential to human life. Since our minds are not capable of considering every possible outcome to a situation and we cannot know all the variables to a decision, we rely on faith as a matter of practicality. After all, if the first HomoSapien decided he needed to prove the sun was going to rise the next day before he went to sleep on his first night, he probably would have died of exhaustion and we wouldn't be here.
Is this an internal app? Is it going to sit on an Oracle or DB2 box forever? Then toss the business logic in the database if it can be done more efficiently that way.
If you're going to try to market this as a product, then concentrate on devleoping the business logic, after all, that's what businesses want to buy. They'll pay you to port it to their database or just buy a copy of the database you've written it for, if it's valuable enough to them.
I've been working on apps like this for years. Just stick it in the database. It's so much easier than maintaining a bunch of query engine code or mappings so you can keep your precious business logic in a "programming language". If your using Oracle, you could just write it in Java and install it on the database. PL/SQL or whatever you're writing the business logic in will probably be around longer than any app language like.NET or PHP. People spend more money migrating their data than they ever do migrating their code. If you put the code next to the data on the database, your likely to get yourself a high performance app that will provide you support contracts till the end of days.
All that being said, this approach works best if you're using a database that has support for stored procedures, embedded code and custom types, either one of the commercial biggies (Oracle, DB2) or PostgreSQL. Firebird (or whatever they're calling it this week) might work too. I wouldn't trust MySQL for this type of work yet though, I don't think it supports code in the database all that well yet.
Personally, I think databases are going to wind up absorbing application servers like J2EE containers and will eventually look like a relational/object hybrid with interfaces to various protocols and container environments. After all, those engines are pretty simple to slap on top of a good database. Oracle and IBM are already moving in this direction somewhat. Oracle more than IBM. I think MS is going to move this way with SQL Server as well, but of course it will only be for.NET and MS tech.
When the Calendar Access Protocol gets finished. Of course, now their talking about having to modify iCal and such to deal with inconsistencies caused by the CAP draft. The CAP draft itself is on draft 12 which is 6 years of development.
From what research I've done, everyone seems to think this will be the final draft, sets up a new project. Although, I am hopeful that the UW project will be successful, although I have no clue how tough to integrate with Cyrus or Postfix it will be.
Holy crap! Someone makes a joke about a comment using a pretty well known, 30+ year old Pink Floyd line and it gets modded Insightful instead of Funny. I always thought those guys were great lyricists, and this looks like conclusive proof to me.
This was one of the biggest avenues Sun used to sell Java. Components were the term they used and they have been promoting it heavily since 97 with the JavaBean toolkit.
All of the archive formats for Java (Jar, War, Ear, Rar, etc) are called components. MS has been trying to do the same thing BTW. The problem is that there isn't all that much $$ in the component market. The second something provides value to a large enough segment of the market, someone steps in a writes it and usually there are a couple of dominent vendors for that components' niche. Secondly, if you were to get some great idea for a killer app, and you wrote it using mostly little components you licensed from various vendors, you'd probably owe too much in royalties to sell it competively and still profit.
It's very hard to develop a new market for a component too. It's kind of like trying to sell a #6 hex driver when no one realizes that they are using or might need to use #6 hex bolts.
I think that Open Source has a great advantage in this market. Most of commercial Java developers I've worked with use the Jakarta project like this. They use things like commons, struts, log4j, junit and ant to help them do a lot of the "busy work" so they can focus on the business logic and presentation.
One of the reasons that the Jakarta project and Apache has been so successful is that their projects integrate into any Java development platform out there, commercial or Open Source.
This is why I've always thought that Open Source should do more with Java, regardless of Sun's position, there is a desire in the business and Open Source worlds for the types of Java components that the Open Source community creates and they've been very successful. Part of the reason I landed my current job was my expertise with using Open Source Java tools and projects in commercial projects. I'd like to extend this success to other areas of the Linux environment, and it would be really easy to do so with better Java support in things like Mozilla and Gnome. I still haven't found anyone who can show me how to write an XPCOM object in Java for Mozilla, the subproject for it has been dead for some time.
This is also the reason I'm so cynical about Mono. Why get in bed with MS when we've had so much success already with Java? If this much effort had been put into making Java the premiere Open Source platform, we'd be leaps and bounds ahead of where Mono and.GNU are today. Quite frankly, I think that the cross-platform/language bits of Mono would be better off as part of gcc like the Java stuff is. Make gcc the engine of all this and have the languages like Java and.NET the interfaces. Spend more time writing platforms and API's that enable applications developers to get an idea into production as quickly as possible on a platform that is as clean and stable as possible. That's how you beat MS at their own game.
I'm not sure if that little rant stayed on topic or answered the question, but hopefully there's something useful in there somewhere;-)
The current plans for Missile Defense systems that have been pushed since Bush unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty have been insanely expensive with less than spectacular results. Meanwhile, we have real threats that are a problem today, and a half trillion budget deficit which is likely going to grow due to Iraq and Afganistan spending. I'd rather spend that money on real threats now than bleeding cash for something that "might work" against a "possible threat".
Personally, I prefer the plan of action where the rest of the world backs us when we bomb a ballistic test range in someone else's country. When Kennedy brought up the Soviet missiles on Cuba to the French PM, they said they trusted that we were protecting ourselves and the world from a threat and stood by us, as did the rest of the free world.
Unilaterally withdrawing from international treaties designed to keep weapon races from consuming resources was pretty much like giving everyone the finger and acting like a tin-foil hat wearing looney instead of a responsible leader. We can beat terrorism and nuclear proliferation effectively with international cooperation, there is no need waste money like this.
In this case, they are working towards the next war, the rogue nation with a highly limited number of fairly crude ballistic missiles.
If I were a rogue nation or terrorist group, why the hell would I go through all the trouble of developing balistic missiles when I would probably stand a better chance of developing a more covert weapon delivery system.
Balistic missile tests get noticed, much like nuclear tests get noticed. If I were planning to attack the US or Europe with WMD, I'd imagine I'd have a much better chance of success if I assembled smuggled components in the target country. Balistic missiles are only good as a defense and use in the MAD doctrine. No one with balistic missiles would try to launch at us, unless we were already on the brink of war. We'd know where the launch came from and be able to HBomb them back to the stone age.
The parent poster's point is valid. It is Cold War thinking to believe that someone is going to pop up with a balistic missile one day and lob a nuclear device at us without warning. I highly doubt China would up and start shooting at their best customers and the source of much of their growth. Developed and developing nations don't want to go to war. If India and Pakistan are even trying to put past conflicts behind and look towards the future, I think there is a good chance that Nukes and balistic missiles aren't the threat.
That's the reason that people think missile defense is a pork barrel project that should be killed. The return on investment in terms of security sucks. It's expensive and only deals with contingencies that are unlikely in the future. Terrorists turn passenger planes into balistic missiles because it's easier than building one under the radar of the global intelligence community.
We'd be much safer spending that money on intelligence gathering and monitoring entry points into the country. Bush and Co. have been pushing missile defense since before 9/11, which makes sense given the number of accusations that the cabinet hasn't been able to see past a Cold War strategy. Missile defense is dumb because it's a costly, misplaced priority.
We're spending this much on missile defense when so many container ships come into the country big enough to house all the finished parts you need to assemble WMD in the US. I'd rather see those ports secured and our borders protected, and given the current anemic funding for those activities due to the huge freaking budget deficit, I think it's idiotic to support missile defense.
IT is different because the few bright people in the field can automate the work of the people who feel the need to form a union.
If that were true, we'd simply be losing jobs, not losing jobs to cheaper foreign labor markets. Personally, I think organized labor should have less protection from automation than cheap labor. Automation is a natural progression in a maturing industry. Cheap labor is much like using your country's infrastructure as credit. There is a limit, and you will have to pay it off someday or declare bankruptcy.
What makes you think that you will still be in a position to bargain for better terms from here out? If your job is seen as a commodity, how can you differentiate yourself in a way that will allow you to negotiate these terms? Unionization is a reflection of the maturity of an industry. It also does not require that anyone working in the field be a Union member, it simply means that having a Union is in the best interest of the majority of the workers in that industry or with that specific job. Software development has been around for over 30 years as a job. Auto workers saw their job mature in about 50 years. I would argue that the Software industry is simply maturing and the thought of Unions is something US software engineers should research and consider.
It's no different that trying to get a better price by buying in bulk at Sam's Club. Unions help to insure that workers do not take the brunt of volatility in a mature market. I don't recommend Unionizing new industries as soon as they show up. Individualism and laissez faire policies tend to help new industries, but can actually stop the formation of new industries around old ones.
There is no such thing as a free market in reality. There are always going to be factors that make the market non-free, reason says that you should find the best way to work within the system that exists. Unions, like Corporations, are simply a tool to better organize resources within society. Planned economies don't work, but lack of regulation can make a commoditized industry too volatile to build new industries on top of. How could you build a chip fab if there wasn't a stable and relatively inexpensive source of energy and pool of workers to run it?
Does this mean that this country's experience with Unions has been all roses? No, but neither has our experience with Corporations, yet lot's of people join Corporations, although the Corporation's alligiance is more to shareholders than workers. If you think of a Union as a Corporation who's shareholders are the members and who's customers are the Corporations the shareholders work for, it seems much more natural.
I personally think that this country has done a very good job of exploring the capabilities of capitalism and laissez faire policies. I also think that the progress and complexity of the economy and society we have built with these tools may need other tools and new tools to continue it's growth.
I like Roosevelt's VP Henry Wallace's quote: "Freedom in a grown-up world is different from freedom in a pioneer world. As a nation grows and matures, the traffic inevitably gets denser, and you need more traffic lights."
The idea is to strike balances so as to better the country as a whole without stepping on the rights of individuals. If the eletrical and telecom industries had not matured, it would have been much harder to develop the industries that are built on top of them.
Other countries understand these principles, especially India. That's why the rest of the world standardized on GSM (via regulation) in the cell phone world and why there are more applications, more widely available for cell users in the rest of the world. This country lost it's leadership in the cell industry, because it refused to mature the industry and grow new ones on top of it.
If you want to see the US continue the growth it has had, then we must be intelligent and rational about the tools we use to manage it. Capitalism vs. Socialism is a dead argument. Now we must compete with other countries who aren't still bound to the ideological struggles of the last century. Unions and mature industries are just part of the toolbox. If you don't like the way Unions have been run in the past, think about how you would do it in the future. Would an equivelent of the SEC for Unions help? What model of collective bargaining for labor would best reflect the types of jobs that are currently being commoditized?
The problem with docbook isn't the complexity of the markup, but the lack of decent editors. I hate markup languages. They always manage to grow larger than the set of markups you can store in your memory for occasional use.
If I'm concentrated on developing in language X and architecture Y using technologies Q,R and T. I don't want to also have to juggle around markup language Z in order to properly document the project.
My advice would be to use XMLMind to write Docbook. It's much like Lyx in that it's a WYSIWYM editor, but it was written from the ground up to do Docbook XML. It's also not Open Source, but the basic version that handles Docbook well is freely available from the author's site.
It helps to have some knowledge of Docbook to use XMLMind, but it takes most of the work away. You can save and convert the output using the standard docbook tools that come with most Linux distros. It's not a silver bullet to this particular problem, but it sure does help a lot.
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One of my worst nightmares is that I wake up one day to find that Michael Moore has become the Limbaugh of the left. I don't think he's quite sunk to that level, yet. Personally, I think if our media was more respectable, Michael Moore would never have managed the success he has experienced.
The problem is that the current media seems to appeal to the lowest common demoninator. Either it allows itself to be bullied into printing the type of illogical causality that you mention or it allows it's pursuit of advertising revenue to interfere with it's responsibility to the public. Of course there are also a large number of those in both politics and the media who promote this dishonest causality.
I think that the severe decline of primary education and accessibility to secondary education is contributing to public's willingness to accept such low academic standards for subjects that are so important. If you'll remember, before the advent of Limbaugh, there was a general malaise in the news markets. The rise of talk radio, with it's drudge-like standards for intellectual honesty, managed to appeal to an uninformed populace who easily confuses their culture and religion with the government of the US. In a search for revenue, the increasingly corporate owned media has allowed this yellow-journalism to creep into it's mainstream.
The free market is not friendly to the marketplace of idea's. The free market encourages actors to raise the barriers to entry for competition, which if unchecked, stagnates innovation. The marketplace of idea's is what drives innovation and progress. The goal is to find a balance, which requires an informed and rational populace.
I believe that Moore has been able to rise to fame, by having true talent to communicate, much like Limbaugh. He's a pretty humorous guy, but he sacrifices intellectual honesty in order to cover a lot of ground, to make a point about a larger picture. I also believe that this method emphasizes points that are easily defeated in debate and involve too much speculation. In 9/11, Moore spent way too much time questioning the President's behavior on 9/11 and the links between the Bush and Saud families. 9/11 was a unique situation, it is difficult to effectively question the actions of anyone in that situation, because too many people will be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. The links between the Bush family and the House of Saud goes to motive, which is irrelevent to realpolitik. Motive is only a factor in a criminal court, it helps you to understand a person's goals, but the measure of politics is the outcome. Moore's general point, that the Bush administration is a disaster and the US should keep these people from power as much as possible, could be argued based on the facts. From any measure, this administration appears to be incompetent. They have managed to repeat every mistake of the past 40 years.
The unfortunate thing, is that if Moore had simply presented the case this way, he probably would have lost the majority of the audience. He might have made it to PBS or Sundance's docDay, but that's about it. I can't say that I'm opposed to the extremes on the right and left getting more people interested in politics. It's much easier to rationally argue political points, to someone who has them based on unfounded assumptions, than it is to interest the apathetic.
In my mind, Moore isn't as bad as Limbaugh or O'Reilly, and he has been able to logically defend his criticisms much more effectively. Let's put it this way, the populist right wing media is like Area 51 alien/black UN helicopter documentary films, the left wing populist media (Air America Radio, Moore) is more like Carl Sagan. Sagan was never accepted by academics because he was such a populist and would speculate too much on information that hadn't been truly vetted. For myself, I got interested in science at a very early age due to Sagan on Cosmos. That interest has made it so I can at least discern the difference between actual science and things that pa
Calm down, it was a flippant remark. Besides, have you ever considered what kind of effort will need to be made to bring the people of N Korea out of the psychotic society they are currently in? Have you looked at what Kim Jong Il has done to those people? When that fuel train exploded, there was one grainy ass cameraphone picture and estimates varied between no damage and 3000 dead. Anyone that has actually escaped from N Korea has needed severe psychological help just to adjust to S Korean society.
After looking at what a freaking mess N Korea is in, any sane, rational mind trying to look for a solution would be prone to some very cynical thinking. Given that bombing N Korea back to the Stone Age would slightly upset both the Chinese and S Koreans, and the current prickly issue of credibility behind US military action, not to mention a general malaise for support of genocide in the US, I would think the absurdity of the statement would be obvious.
Yeah, does anyone seriosly care what Kim Jong Il has to say?
This is a guy who kidnapped a S. Korean director to make a socialist version of Godzilla.
If he's not trying to use his probably bogus nuke capabilities to blackmail the world into helping him prop up his regime, he's threatening Japan or S. Korea. I say screw N. Korea. The only reason we don't just bomb that whole freaking disaster back to the Stone Age is because the S. Koreans still believe they can save what's left of the people of N Korea, oh and the 30,000 pieces of N Korean artillery in range of Seoul. Quite frankly though, reunification there is going to be an order of magnitude more messy than say, the reunification of Germany.
Until then, screw Kim Jong Il and the mess he's leaving this planet with.
Anyone remember their name?
I used to make a point of going there every year at ALS. I still have a Tux doll from there. I'm sorry to hear they didn't survive, did anyone in Atlanta pick up the Linux store ball and run with it?
Why not the 35% of Iraqi males who are currently unemployed and have nothing better to do than listen to paid propagandists working for Islamic extremists?
Probably would cut down on the numbers of people we'll have to kill there, not to mention the number of American soldiers who don't deserve to die because their civilian leadership was completely incompetent.
Instead of busing over tons of Indian and Egyptian contractors for 'cost plus' via Halibuton, why wouldn't the invading force organize the local people and give them the resources to rebuild their own cities and infrastructure? Oh wait, that wouldn't be as profitable for Haliburton. Crap, it also would have required the administration being honest about the number of troops and money this endeavour was going to take. Oh, and Rummy wouldn't have been able to use his new "light and cheap" reorg of the military, instead he would have had to use his nemisis, Powell's, doctrine of overwhelming force.
I guess your right, war-profiteering, incompetent fools should be wasting our tax dollars and the lives of our soldiers cause those poor Iraqi's can't do anything for themselves. Quit giving these bastards the benefit of the doubt, fire their asses.
Why pose the question as black and white? Just as we evolved on Earth to our environment and continue to do so, why wouldn't we do the same for Mars? We could begin terraforming and our bodies will grow into the changing environment.
;-)
It isn't a given that our bodies would change so much that we wouldn't be able to come back to Earth either. By the time we have created a way of life efficient enough to survive on Mars to Terraform it, we should be able control our own evolution with more precision. We could theoretically start modifying ourselves while we send terraforming bots, those that were sent to Mars would be more efficiently suited to the mission and to life on a partially terraformed Mars. I'm sure, this could be accomplished in 100 years. In the meantime, we could send human explorers to research the engineering of this plan and to determine the existance of life. If we find life, it will most likely be simple, and we can engineer it life we do everything from algae to cows on Earth to terraform it for us.
We are under no obligation to preserve simple life in a pristine state, only how to learn to cohabitate with native life, unless it threatens our species, in which case, we have a right to exterminate it.
I don't see how any of this is more complicated than an engineering effort and the financial backing. There are clearly enough people worldwide interested in doing this, that it could be accomplished. Perhaps the Open Source community should develop a collaberative application that would allow the organization of an "Open Source" engineering effort to solve the technical issues, thus reducing the startup cost of the effort.
With the R&D infrastructure provided, private enterprise might be able to profit enough to make improvements worthwhile. Although, I think we have to ensure that a future extraplanetary society has a similiar ideology of civil rights and freedom that we have, lest we create our future interplanetary enemies. The combination of corporate influence with an unforgiving pioneer world where individuals depend on society to provide, has the danger of giving birth to fascism.
BTW, this was a great Saturday afternoon article.
Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson
They actually agreed to be in a movie about drugs together? Hollywood never ceases to make me laugh. Hopefully this won't be as bad as a Tom Cruise movie.
Seriously man, have you used a cell phone in the last 5 years?
They're still crap and more expensive, but they're vastly more useful to consumers and businesses to the point where no one cares about all the crap parts.
The problem the regional telcos are having (and I worked at one) is that they actually think like this, that the WI-FI/VOIP or 3G networks have to be as good as the landline one. Nope, not true. If it's more useful and practical than the landline network, it will take off. Mobility and convienience look like they're more important than the quality and reliability of MaBell.
The ILEC's have always underestimated people's ability to adapt to technology and overestimated their importance as maintainers of a mature and commoditized piece of infrastructure. Most of this has been motivated by profit margins, rather than any illusory concern for customers.
I've got bills every month from the local telco, the local cable company and a cell company. The local telco gets the least money, because they are the least useful. I often consider whether or not to get rid of that one too, but some people still prefer calling me at that number.
The majority of the dinosaurs were instantly fried, like in a nuke blast that wrapped around the globe. I haven't seen a movie lately, that had those kind of cool FX. How about you?
Think about to all the meteor's crashing into earth movies there are, now think about all the FX. Nothing as impressive as ALL THE DINOSAURS getting fried as a heat wave travelled around the globe.
Why can't Hollywood just pay attention to history and science. It's way cooler than the drek they come up with.
But seriously folks, just think of all the Brontoburgers. I bet Fred and Barney boiled off the surface still salivating at the endless plains of dino ribs.
You assume that the individuals who actually carried out the dirty work acted alone. I've yet to see anyone assail a CEO or government leader because they lacked the ability to be omnipresent or see into the future. What I have seen is criticism that the policies that those leaders or CEO's put in place and the culture they created, led to individuals acting criminally as part of their duties in an organization.
In this sense, the CEO/President is directly to blame. If it's one customer service rep/private trying to screw you, it's a bad apple. If it's a couple of CSR/privates trying to screw you, it's bad management. If all of the CSR/privates are trying to screw you, then it's probably company policy.
When people wear their inhumanity or greed as a badge, then it's a sign of a corrupting influence on the culture. In a healthy culture, such behavior would be shunned and cause one to hide their misdeeds due to shame. If your friend is a salesperson, and gloats about how he screwed his customer, expect the same if you do business with him.
Leaders have a much larger say in the culture of an organization. The more sway they hold, the more responsibility they have to create a culture that is not detrimental to society. The blame is assigned when they fail to live up to that responsibility.
Although I must say, I agree with you're main point that power and responsibility go hand in hand.
No No No! He was talking about her huuuge tracks of land.
Later, he told the two guards to make sure Space Ship One doesn't leave. Unfortunately, the White Knight later showed up and slaughtered the reporters and attempted a rescue, in it's own.... oh... oh... uhm... idiom.
WTF?!
dumber? arrested maturity? I'm not knocking your personal lifestyle choices, but don't assume the rest of us feel this way or want to become undomesticated.
Look if you want to go back to living till age 40 if you're lucky and having to "do it all" yourself, be my guest. Some of us like our computers, space exploration and living 100 years if lucky. By all measurable standards, life is much better domesticated. Why do you think we started living in tribes anyway? Even nomads have social structure. The reason for the state is because tribal structures couldn't deal with the level of complexity we needed to better survive. We have become successful as a species because we domesticated ourselves.
The freaking preamble to the Constitution states:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Domestication is the whole freaking point. Quit drinking Ayn Rand's Kool-Aid, self reliance does not always equal being a hermit and living off the land. Oh, and thank your parents that you depended on for years. Better to be dependent on the state than the defacto fascism of the tribe or dying cause you didn't have penicillin.
BTW, where the hell did you get this incredibly odd definition of maturity?
I'm not whining about it. I'm used to it.
If your not hearing the whining, then you haven't been paying attention to the political discourse in the US or you don't recognize it as such.
Listen to the big "L" libertarians sometime and those in the GOP who call themselves small "l" libertarian. Pretty much all they do is whine about the loss of the pioneer world. The less regulation and privatization idealogues act naively and refuse to have an honest debate based on studies and facts. They wind up sounding like religious fundamentalists instead of someone trying to use reason and logic to present a solution.
How exactly did you manage to miss the point and hone in on that sentence anyway?
Very true. I'm tired of this puffing up people in this country do when words like innovation and creativity come up. It's utter BS!
Most of those innovative and creative Americans came from other countries. They came to this country because it was a land of oppurtunity. It was a land of oppurtunity because it was a pioneer country. After the Euro viruses wiped out 95% of the Native American population, there was a lot of resources for a few people. Americans were innovative because they were no longer bound by the social or legal constraints that regulated previous societies.
Well, guess what. America has grown up. The pioneer country has been civilized. The job is done. Now we need to be pioneers in complex societies and cities, so we can support new industries and tools for our betterment on top of the previous ones.
America is now in the same boat that Europe was in when everyone left for this place. From what I've studied, Europe is coming up with ways that will work locally to accomplish this. What works for Europe may not work so well here, especially since our transition from a pioneer country is still comparitively young.
If you build a 1 or 2 story building, you have a lot more design options than if you build a 50 story skyscraper. People who design those big glass boxes have a lot more design constraints than Joe Architect appealing to a flight of fancy for his personal home.
Metaphorically, it's getting harder to find undeveloped land to build 1 or 2 story structures in the US. However, there's a lot of people willing to sell you their 1 or 2 story structure to build a 50 story one. We have to build on top of what we currently have.
If we are going to maintain our innovation and creativity, we need quit whining about the loss of the pioneer world and figure out how to build a better complex society than anyone else. Adapt the pioneer lessons and practicality to this complex world. I guarantee Europe, Japan and India will figure this out and if the US doesn't, we'll wind up falling behind them.
If an old guy in the sky just uses natural laws, there isn't much point to worship the lazy old guy is there?
The point was that old guy created the natural laws as the execution of his will. Much like someone writes a piece of software to execute their will.
But the bible is full of exceptions -- the sun stops in the sky, PI suddenly equals 3 and not 3.1415... funny that none of these things happen when rational people can actually check, no?
I'm not debating the scientific or historical validity of the Bible. It was written by people who are fallible. If the old guy came down and said that it wasn't quite right, I wouldn't be suprised.
Also, how do you know the sun has never stopped in the sky? There may not be a recorded event or any other evidence, but you can't prove that it never happened. How do you know that PI is so universal? Have you personally gone and tested it in every conceivable manner? Are you even capable of conceiving of all the ways it could be tested? Most people simply believe the small amount of evidence presented to them during their education. They trusted their educators and the small amount of problems that supported the value of PI. Until you personally prove PI and that it holds true in every situation in the Universe, you can't rule out that it might change. If you continue on with your daily life without proving this, then you are taking this information as an article of faith.
Why is it hard to understand that if someone who believes in god reads about evolution and decides the evidence proves it's existence, that they then believe that since god created the world, evolution must be one of god's creations too?
The question "is there a god?" is exactly analogous to "is there a Santa Claus?"
I agree. It's a matter of faith.
Given that the positive evidence is exactly zero, science certainly can answer to the negative.
Science can't prove that the old guy doesn't exist. If I told you the Universe rested on the back of a giant turtle, you couldn't prove that it didn't without going outside the Universe. Last I checked, no one had done that. The question "is there a god" can't be answered by science. An all powerful deity can always exist in the unknown or unproven areas. Hence, it's irrelavent to discuss the existence of god in the terms of proof and disproof. Until you are an omnipotent being, you won't be able to tell whether or not there was another one.
But really, if one wants to believe in the supernatural, why not believe the mythology of superior people like the Greeks and not the the inane ramblings of smelly shepherds?
That's just being culturally biased. Besides, maybe I think the Sermon on the Mount or the Book of Matthew is superior to little boy-buggering farmers with an affinity for drinking hemlock when the shit hits the fan. After all, if the mythology of the Greeks was so great, how come nobody still practices it? Maybe it doesn't offer the same practical guide to satisfaction in life as some homeless carpenter from the bad side of town, who got executed for sedition.
How do you know I don't just read the Jefferson Bible (red-letter bible with nothing but the red letters)? Jesus never talked about his miracles other than telling his followers he would be with them after his death. Disregarding the use of faith as a tool for humanity is as short-sighted as completely disregarding science in favor of faith.
How is this insightful?
It's not a misconception. Either the universe is ruled by natural laws or by invisible old guy(s) in the sky. No two ways about it.
Are you really so simple-minded as to not consider that the natural laws are the mechanics by which unknown invisble old guy has his will carried out?
I mean if a supreme being created the universe, then didn't said supreme being also create all these natural laws?
Science is only handing out punches to religiously oriented simple-minded people who can't understand this concept. They will either adapt or die out, as nature will always kick your ass when you try to go head on against it. I'm just hoping that those fools don't take out the rest of us in their futile struggle.
Since a belief in a supreme being (or belief in lack thereof) requires faith and is neither provable or disprovable, science CANNOT answer the question: Is there a God? The question itself is unscientific. It's not religion if there's not faith, and last I looked faith doesn't enter into science. It may be part of the process people use to get scientific results and conclusions, but faith has nothing to do with the outcomes. If it does, then it's not science.
Learn to seperate the two and the world is a lot easier to work with. I personally think that faith is essential to human life. Since our minds are not capable of considering every possible outcome to a situation and we cannot know all the variables to a decision, we rely on faith as a matter of practicality. After all, if the first HomoSapien decided he needed to prove the sun was going to rise the next day before he went to sleep on his first night, he probably would have died of exhaustion and we wouldn't be here.
Is this an internal app? Is it going to sit on an Oracle or DB2 box forever? Then toss the business logic in the database if it can be done more efficiently that way.
.NET or PHP. People spend more money migrating their data than they ever do migrating their code. If you put the code next to the data on the database, your likely to get yourself a high performance app that will provide you support contracts till the end of days.
.NET and MS tech.
If you're going to try to market this as a product, then concentrate on devleoping the business logic, after all, that's what businesses want to buy. They'll pay you to port it to their database or just buy a copy of the database you've written it for, if it's valuable enough to them.
I've been working on apps like this for years. Just stick it in the database. It's so much easier than maintaining a bunch of query engine code or mappings so you can keep your precious business logic in a "programming language". If your using Oracle, you could just write it in Java and install it on the database. PL/SQL or whatever you're writing the business logic in will probably be around longer than any app language like
All that being said, this approach works best if you're using a database that has support for stored procedures, embedded code and custom types, either one of the commercial biggies (Oracle, DB2) or PostgreSQL. Firebird (or whatever they're calling it this week) might work too. I wouldn't trust MySQL for this type of work yet though, I don't think it supports code in the database all that well yet.
Personally, I think databases are going to wind up absorbing application servers like J2EE containers and will eventually look like a relational/object hybrid with interfaces to various protocols and container environments. After all, those engines are pretty simple to slap on top of a good database. Oracle and IBM are already moving in this direction somewhat. Oracle more than IBM. I think MS is going to move this way with SQL Server as well, but of course it will only be for
Does that help?
When the Calendar Access Protocol gets finished. Of course, now their talking about having to modify iCal and such to deal with inconsistencies caused by the CAP draft. The CAP draft itself is on draft 12 which is 6 years of development.
If you want a server, see if you can help get CAP out the door: IETF Calendaring & Scheduling group
From what research I've done, everyone seems to think this will be the final draft, sets up a new project. Although, I am hopeful that the UW project will be successful, although I have no clue how tough to integrate with Cyrus or Postfix it will be.
Is this really an "US and them" issue ?
After all, we're only ordinary men.
Holy crap! Someone makes a joke about a comment using a pretty well known, 30+ year old Pink Floyd line and it gets modded Insightful instead of Funny. I always thought those guys were great lyricists, and this looks like conclusive proof to me.
Rock on all you Floyd fans!
This was one of the biggest avenues Sun used to sell Java. Components were the term they used and they have been promoting it heavily since 97 with the JavaBean toolkit.
.GNU are today. Quite frankly, I think that the cross-platform/language bits of Mono would be better off as part of gcc like the Java stuff is. Make gcc the engine of all this and have the languages like Java and .NET the interfaces. Spend more time writing platforms and API's that enable applications developers to get an idea into production as quickly as possible on a platform that is as clean and stable as possible. That's how you beat MS at their own game.
;-)
All of the archive formats for Java (Jar, War, Ear, Rar, etc) are called components. MS has been trying to do the same thing BTW. The problem is that there isn't all that much $$ in the component market. The second something provides value to a large enough segment of the market, someone steps in a writes it and usually there are a couple of dominent vendors for that components' niche. Secondly, if you were to get some great idea for a killer app, and you wrote it using mostly little components you licensed from various vendors, you'd probably owe too much in royalties to sell it competively and still profit.
It's very hard to develop a new market for a component too. It's kind of like trying to sell a #6 hex driver when no one realizes that they are using or might need to use #6 hex bolts.
I think that Open Source has a great advantage in this market. Most of commercial Java developers I've worked with use the Jakarta project like this. They use things like commons, struts, log4j, junit and ant to help them do a lot of the "busy work" so they can focus on the business logic and presentation.
One of the reasons that the Jakarta project and Apache has been so successful is that their projects integrate into any Java development platform out there, commercial or Open Source.
This is why I've always thought that Open Source should do more with Java, regardless of Sun's position, there is a desire in the business and Open Source worlds for the types of Java components that the Open Source community creates and they've been very successful. Part of the reason I landed my current job was my expertise with using Open Source Java tools and projects in commercial projects. I'd like to extend this success to other areas of the Linux environment, and it would be really easy to do so with better Java support in things like Mozilla and Gnome. I still haven't found anyone who can show me how to write an XPCOM object in Java for Mozilla, the subproject for it has been dead for some time.
This is also the reason I'm so cynical about Mono. Why get in bed with MS when we've had so much success already with Java? If this much effort had been put into making Java the premiere Open Source platform, we'd be leaps and bounds ahead of where Mono and
I'm not sure if that little rant stayed on topic or answered the question, but hopefully there's something useful in there somewhere
The current plans for Missile Defense systems that have been pushed since Bush unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty have been insanely expensive with less than spectacular results. Meanwhile, we have real threats that are a problem today, and a half trillion budget deficit which is likely going to grow due to Iraq and Afganistan spending. I'd rather spend that money on real threats now than bleeding cash for something that "might work" against a "possible threat".
Personally, I prefer the plan of action where the rest of the world backs us when we bomb a ballistic test range in someone else's country. When Kennedy brought up the Soviet missiles on Cuba to the French PM, they said they trusted that we were protecting ourselves and the world from a threat and stood by us, as did the rest of the free world.
Unilaterally withdrawing from international treaties designed to keep weapon races from consuming resources was pretty much like giving everyone the finger and acting like a tin-foil hat wearing looney instead of a responsible leader. We can beat terrorism and nuclear proliferation effectively with international cooperation, there is no need waste money like this.
In this case, they are working towards the next war, the rogue nation with a highly limited number of fairly crude ballistic missiles.
If I were a rogue nation or terrorist group, why the hell would I go through all the trouble of developing balistic missiles when I would probably stand a better chance of developing a more covert weapon delivery system.
Balistic missile tests get noticed, much like nuclear tests get noticed. If I were planning to attack the US or Europe with WMD, I'd imagine I'd have a much better chance of success if I assembled smuggled components in the target country. Balistic missiles are only good as a defense and use in the MAD doctrine. No one with balistic missiles would try to launch at us, unless we were already on the brink of war. We'd know where the launch came from and be able to HBomb them back to the stone age.
The parent poster's point is valid. It is Cold War thinking to believe that someone is going to pop up with a balistic missile one day and lob a nuclear device at us without warning. I highly doubt China would up and start shooting at their best customers and the source of much of their growth. Developed and developing nations don't want to go to war. If India and Pakistan are even trying to put past conflicts behind and look towards the future, I think there is a good chance that Nukes and balistic missiles aren't the threat.
That's the reason that people think missile defense is a pork barrel project that should be killed. The return on investment in terms of security sucks. It's expensive and only deals with contingencies that are unlikely in the future. Terrorists turn passenger planes into balistic missiles because it's easier than building one under the radar of the global intelligence community.
We'd be much safer spending that money on intelligence gathering and monitoring entry points into the country. Bush and Co. have been pushing missile defense since before 9/11, which makes sense given the number of accusations that the cabinet hasn't been able to see past a Cold War strategy. Missile defense is dumb because it's a costly, misplaced priority.
We're spending this much on missile defense when so many container ships come into the country big enough to house all the finished parts you need to assemble WMD in the US. I'd rather see those ports secured and our borders protected, and given the current anemic funding for those activities due to the huge freaking budget deficit, I think it's idiotic to support missile defense.
Just my US$.02.
IT is different because the few bright people in the field can automate the work of the people who feel the need to form a union.
If that were true, we'd simply be losing jobs, not losing jobs to cheaper foreign labor markets. Personally, I think organized labor should have less protection from automation than cheap labor. Automation is a natural progression in a maturing industry. Cheap labor is much like using your country's infrastructure as credit. There is a limit, and you will have to pay it off someday or declare bankruptcy.
What makes you think that you will still be in a position to bargain for better terms from here out? If your job is seen as a commodity, how can you differentiate yourself in a way that will allow you to negotiate these terms? Unionization is a reflection of the maturity of an industry. It also does not require that anyone working in the field be a Union member, it simply means that having a Union is in the best interest of the majority of the workers in that industry or with that specific job. Software development has been around for over 30 years as a job. Auto workers saw their job mature in about 50 years. I would argue that the Software industry is simply maturing and the thought of Unions is something US software engineers should research and consider.
It's no different that trying to get a better price by buying in bulk at Sam's Club. Unions help to insure that workers do not take the brunt of volatility in a mature market. I don't recommend Unionizing new industries as soon as they show up. Individualism and laissez faire policies tend to help new industries, but can actually stop the formation of new industries around old ones.
There is no such thing as a free market in reality. There are always going to be factors that make the market non-free, reason says that you should find the best way to work within the system that exists. Unions, like Corporations, are simply a tool to better organize resources within society. Planned economies don't work, but lack of regulation can make a commoditized industry too volatile to build new industries on top of. How could you build a chip fab if there wasn't a stable and relatively inexpensive source of energy and pool of workers to run it?
Does this mean that this country's experience with Unions has been all roses? No, but neither has our experience with Corporations, yet lot's of people join Corporations, although the Corporation's alligiance is more to shareholders than workers. If you think of a Union as a Corporation who's shareholders are the members and who's customers are the Corporations the shareholders work for, it seems much more natural.
I personally think that this country has done a very good job of exploring the capabilities of capitalism and laissez faire policies. I also think that the progress and complexity of the economy and society we have built with these tools may need other tools and new tools to continue it's growth.
I like Roosevelt's VP Henry Wallace's quote: "Freedom in a grown-up world is different from freedom in a pioneer world. As a nation grows and matures, the traffic inevitably gets denser, and you need more traffic lights."
The idea is to strike balances so as to better the country as a whole without stepping on the rights of individuals. If the eletrical and telecom industries had not matured, it would have been much harder to develop the industries that are built on top of them.
Other countries understand these principles, especially India. That's why the rest of the world standardized on GSM (via regulation) in the cell phone world and why there are more applications, more widely available for cell users in the rest of the world. This country lost it's leadership in the cell industry, because it refused to mature the industry and grow new ones on top of it.
If you want to see the US continue the growth it has had, then we must be intelligent and rational about the tools we use to manage it. Capitalism vs. Socialism is a dead argument. Now we must compete with other countries who aren't still bound to the ideological struggles of the last century. Unions and mature industries are just part of the toolbox. If you don't like the way Unions have been run in the past, think about how you would do it in the future. Would an equivelent of the SEC for Unions help? What model of collective bargaining for labor would best reflect the types of jobs that are currently being commoditized?
The problem with docbook isn't the complexity of the markup, but the lack of decent editors. I hate markup languages. They always manage to grow larger than the set of markups you can store in your memory for occasional use.
If I'm concentrated on developing in language X and architecture Y using technologies Q,R and T. I don't want to also have to juggle around markup language Z in order to properly document the project.
My advice would be to use XMLMind to write Docbook. It's much like Lyx in that it's a WYSIWYM editor, but it was written from the ground up to do Docbook XML. It's also not Open Source, but the basic version that handles Docbook well is freely available from the author's site.
It helps to have some knowledge of Docbook to use XMLMind, but it takes most of the work away. You can save and convert the output using the standard docbook tools that come with most Linux distros. It's not a silver bullet to this particular problem, but it sure does help a lot.