If you can get 10Mbps down, you can do your homework, access job sites,
I'll throw-in a glib [citation needed] on that. The "homework" I've seen sometimes is poorly-compressed 1080p-only hour-long lecture videos with extremely poor DRM-riddled players that have issues fast-forwarding if you lose your connection. Yes, it's crap, but it's a Problem for a 10Mbps down connection.
Can you point me to an actual example of this or is it a made up scenario? In particular, I'd like to see a real world example of the ill-encoded lecture that just so happens to work ok at 25Mbps (the old minimum threshold) but doesn't on 10Mbps (the new threshold that has you and others up in arms (hint: it probably doesn't work at 25 Mbps either).
For *any* threshold you want to choose, there is always the potential for somebody out there to do something dumb that makes that speed too low - I could just as easily replace your "1080p-only" with "8k-only", right?
I think it's a dangerous game to attempt to define the minimum threshold of how much of the bells and whistles are "needed".
It's at least as dangerous a game as having the government try to mandate min internet speeds. The government is terrible at so many things, what gives you any confidence at all that it will get this one right, that it will keep it up to date quickly enough, etc., etc.?
You joke about the Libertarian way or whatever, but no small part of the current mess is due to abuse of government, like the Comcasts of the world using the government to prevent municipal broadband. This whole minimum threshold nonsense is little more than trying to put a bandaid on a more fundamental problem.
I'm neither for nor against this redefinition of terms, but there's two different issues here: (1) what speeds do you need to get access to all the bells and whistles, and (2) what speeds are so slow that the government needs to step in and prod things along. Those two speeds don't necessarily need to be the same.
If you can get 10Mbps down, you can do your homework, access job sites, and all of the other reasons cited as justification for the government being involved in the first place. You can also watch a heck of a lot of cat videos, waste time on Facebook, etc. I get 100Mbps down where I live, and I'm super grateful for it, but part of that is cuz I still remember the 300 baud modem days.:)
Anyway, I don't know if the redefining of terms is being done out of bad motives or not, but there is some potential upside to it. For example, TFA talked about how a good chunk of the US doesn't have even 10Mbps yet, so lowering the "good enough" bar to 10Mbps could help keep the focus on those parts of the country that are the most underserved.
Sorry, but no. First, there's generally no such thing as a solution that is 'optimal' all on its own. Instead, a solution to a problem is optimal for certain selected variables, i.e. if you value X, Y, and Z over all other variables, then you have a shot at finding a solution that is optimal for X, Y, and Z. But in doing so, that solution will be suboptimal for (probably many) other variables. And guess what? Not everyone agrees on which variables are most important.
And this mentality that you're describing is precisely the problem of today's society (at least here in the US). And the core of that problem is the premise of "if person A is right, and person B is wrong".
FWIW, I *do* believe that there is such a thing as right and wrong, but that doesn't mean that every question or issue has a right side and a wrong side. In fact, relatively few societal decisions boil down to choosing between an option that is right and an option that is wrong. Most of the time, the debates arise over different approaches to solving a problem or a question of competing priorities (which turn into questions of resource allocation, etc.).
In these situations, compromise is absolutely *essential*, and yet the problem is that nowadays too many people latch onto their position as being indisputably right. From there they conclude that the other side is undeniably wrong. And then from there they often slide into demonizing the other side for holding onto their wrong view.
And then in the few cases where it is between right and wrong, compromise is often your best shot at maintaining peace - in theory buying everyone time to continue to debate and to try to get people on the wrong side to come around. The alternative is to immediately rip apart the society or relationship, which is often pretty suboptimal.
While there might be times when it does make sense to immediately sever ties and kill the society/relationship, they are pretty rare. There are times when you should literally fight, but they too are rare. And in the rare case when you are in fact facing a right vs wrong scenario, trying to force your 'rightness' on people will almost certainly backfire. In all these cases, compromise is in fact a tool of the wise.
- cracking down on ISPs that use anti-competitive behavior - ensuring that advertised speeds are generally achievable - forcing providers to be clear and up front about any blocking, throttling, etc. that they do
If somebody wants to provide fast lines or blocking or whatever, then I don't see how it's the government's place to try to force things one way or the other - those are things that some consumers actually want in certain scenarios. Those things aren't inherently good or bad, they just become bad when they aren't disclosed, or when consumers have no alternatives available.
The hysteria plus the hypocrisy really is pathetic. Seeing the US in such a tizzy... the Russians are probably like, "that was the best 60 rubles we ever spent!"
Ah, but that is the whole issue, for something that didn't happen, there seems to be a lot of evidence that it might have.
Ok, I'd like to read up on the evidence that suggests that there might have been an offer of sanction removal/reduction in exchange for rigging the election. Can you share a link please? Outside of a huge amount of conjecture, so far there has been very little evidence that I've seen, so I'm eager to be corrected.
You are confusing us following information coming out of an ongoing investigation with some kind of conclusion.
Not at all. Rather, it seems like the conclusion was drawn from day one, and ever since it's been a hunt for information to support that conclusion. To me this is very much like the Republicans and Benghazi, and in some respects the Clinton email server - settle on a conclusion and look for evidence to support it. In both cases it's wrongheaded and it's the opposite of a data-driven investigation.
Originally you pissed the question of why people were so much more interested in one, rather than the other. Well, here we are.
Well, sorta - you've shifted away from the two things I was talking about when I posted. The first was this notion that "Russia hacked the US election". The second was that people were rigging the Democratic primaries. The first is false, the second one is true. And yet the first one was in the spotlight for months while the second has received very little airtime - it's almost been swept under the rug (although it does get some coverage, e.g. https://www.politico.com/magaz...).
In parallel to, but independent of, the false story that Russia hacked the US election is the story about interaction between the Trump campaign and Russia. That one is interesting too, but I wasn't talking about it.
And so far that one isn't exactly turning up any evidence of anything illegal on the part of Trump either, although it's early in the process still. So far all that's really come to light is that Trump shows poor judgement and either hubris or naivete - but we've known that all along, right? Unfortunately being a jerk isn't illegal.
Once had vastly different consequences if it turns out to be true. I wish i could look at all of this and confidently say it didn't happen, but to my mind at least, there is enough here to keep weighing the evidence.
Awesome, I'd love to see some of the evidence that points to, say, treasonous behavior. And to be clear, hopeful conjecture != evidence, of course. Thanks!
Firstly, when you put the word hack in quotes, you are giving a big pass
Nah, that was just me not being very clear, sorry - I was being disdainful because, literally for months, the headlines were things like "Russia hacked the election", which is false.
That is not something to be minimized. It is a very very big deal. Should we be doing it to other countries, no. It's a bad thing, a very bad thing.
Agreed!
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be outraged when it is done to us. That attitude is just the same as saying "Meh, I am ok with it." I for one am not. Any rational person shouldn't be.
Wait, are you saying that there are exactly two allowed emotional responses? Either total outrage or "meh, I am ok with it" ? There's nothing in between? That doesn't make any sense to me, but I might be misunderstanding you - apologies if that is the case.
I don't like the fact that Russia did this, but it's hard for me to feel outrage because there's no evidence to suggest it actually changed the outcome, it so far seems like a fairly ham-fisted attempt on their part and, above all, it's hard to muster outrage when this seems like a pretty obvious consequence of our own actions. We hack other countries - even our own allies - so of course people are going to do this to us.
Now, as to what the hillary campaign did, it was not right, but you are talking about a party, not a whole political system. There is a serious difference between a primary and a popular vote. Because I am registered independent in my state, I am not even ALLOWED to vote in the primaries for either party. Why? Because parties (the organization) are not part of your government. They are very much private entities.
The Russian hack was perpetuated against the DNC. The primary rigging was perpetuated against the DNC. Both were an attempt to affect the election (and in that respect both failed). That goes back to what I mentioned above - that too often this has been spun as Russia hacking the US election, which is simply not true, at least based on what has come to light so far.
Someone influencing the superdelegates from inside financially is VERY DIFFERENT from someone potentially going to another country and saying, "Hey, help me fix this election, and I will drop your sanctions."
Sure, those two things are very different. For example, one major way in which they are different is that one of them happened and the other did not. What is the point in contrasting something that did happen and conjecture about what could have happened?
Is it more clear now? One is corruption, the other is treason. Are they both bad? Yes. Are they equal? No friggin way. By suggesting otherwise, you are loosing sight of the bigger issue.
But here's the problem: you've gone a couple of steps beyond what has actually happened to arrive at some possible scenario (out of many), and are getting wound up about something that is, as of yet, pure fiction. Based on what we know so far: 1) Someone didn't go to another country to elicit Russian help. 2) Someone didn't ask the Russian government to "fix" (as in, rig the outcome of) the election 3) Someone didn't offer a deal that would result in the removal of sanctions
I mean, I can do that too: Trump throwing Twitter trantrums is VERY DIFFERENT from Hillary potentially going to Russia and saying that if they assassinate him for her she will drop all their sanctions and give them free cookies for life. Are they both bad? Yes. Are they equal? No friggin way.
Most democrats would agree that the DNC and Hilary are corrupt rubbish
Is that really the case though? I'm not disputing it so much as asking. I'm neither a Dem nor a Rep, so I don't really have a feel, but if I called myself a Democrat and supported that party (including, probably, giving money to it), I'd be more than a little pissed to find out the candidate selection process was rigged or that people were trying to rig it.
And to be clear, this has nothing to do with Democrats per se - the same applies equally to Republicans and corruption in their party: isn't that the sort of thing that should be making people rethink their allegiance to that party? Or if not that, at least some massive, overt introspection and damage control. I dunno, looking at things from a historical perspective, this seems like the kind of event that triggers the creation of new political parties. I guess a big part of it could also be less about allegiance to one's party and more about opposition to the other main party.
The problem with the Russian intervention is that they promoted violent nationalism and this is far more damaging to society than which flavour of corporate politician gets elected.
Yeah, good point - I don't disagree, but it's also hard to give Russia too much credit in this respect. The deep divide was already there, including elements of violent nationalism. And no matter how many ads they bought, it's a drop in the bucket compared to all of the extreme anti-other-side stuff that was already floating around online anyway.
To me it seems like you're illustrating the exact point I'm trying to make: you're upset over the Russian meddling. I get that. I don't even disagree with it*. But where's the outrage over what was going on within the DNC itself? The purpoted "hack" wasn't stealing the DNC's money or erasing donor lists or anything like it. Rather it was revealing the nefarious deeds of people who, themselves, were essentially doing *the exact same thing* in that they were disrupting the democratic process. It's possible to be upset about both the Russians and the rigging of the Democratic primary; I just find it interesting that the outrage is so lopsided.
* I feel somewhat upset, but the U.S. has a pretty lousy track record in this department and is equally guilty of trying to influence elections in other nations (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... to get you started, but there's a heck of a lot more in our meddling history than just that).
This post, right here, this is how it starts. With people who are so anxious to be on the winning side that they will justify even the most egregious display of corruption as "just politics" and "false narratives".
I'm not sure how to connect what I said ("I'm neither pro-Russia nor pro-Trump") to your conclusion that I'm somehow anxious to be on the winning side - I'm not even sure the concept of a winning side makes sense here.
To recap my point though: (a) it's quite rich of people in the US to be in an uproar about a foreign nation trying to influence our election since we do that all the time. We've been doing it for decades. It's super hypocritical of us to be all wound up by it - although it'd be really great if this uproar leads to us not doing that to other countries anymore (Golden Rule and all). (b) why is so little attention paid to what they actually exposed? Namely, the rigging of the DNC's primary. This is a huge, huge deal. Any real outrage about subverting the democratic process must also include being just as upset about this. And yet it's getting so little attention. Why is that? Is it because focusing on that will force us to answer difficult questions? Is it just easier to point the finger at some far away adversary? I'm genuinely curious.
The problem is not that they exposed wrong-doing, it's the way they did it.
I think that's a valid point. But it also seems to be part of what has been lost in the noise. And literally it seems like the attention ratio of "how dare Russia do that" to "how dare people try to rig the Dem primary" is 1000:1. I'm not at all against there being a lot of discussion about Russia's actions, but it also seems wrong that the underlying narrative of a semi-rigged primary got so little attention.
They exposed Hilary in a way that caused maximum damage to her campaign, even though in the end it didn't result in any prosecutions.
And, importantly, so far we don't have much evidence to suggest that it affected the outcome of the election either (there are many articles about this, here's one chosen at random and because it's not from Fox News or National Review: https://www.voanews.com/a/ex-u...). So until we see stronger data (or any data for that matter) showing that their influence made Clinton lose the election, it seems crazy that so much ado is made about their actions and that there is so little outcry about what was going on with the Dem primary.
At the same time they kept quiet about Trump and his staff's illegal dealings with Russia, which at least one of them has now admitted and taken a plea bargain for.
Woah, hang on. That's not what has happened yet. Papadopoulos took a plea bargain. His crime was that he lied to FBI investigators when they/asked/ him about stuff. As CNN reported it, "Papadopoulos copped to lying to the FBI about the timing of his contacts with Russians." Is it a crime to lie like that? Yes. Is this the tip of the iceberg? Could be. Has he admitted to illegal dealings with Russia? No.
Are you really so naive as to think that Russia was trying to help the US, rather than get the guy they thought would weaken their biggest rival elected?
I'm trying to have a level-headed conversation here. Instead of making it personal, let's just stick to the discussion itself - I'm sure you can argue a position on its merits alone. Anyway, no, I am not as naive as you suggested - that's what that "Now I don't for a moment believe their motivations were pure or pro-US in any way" part meant.:)
I'm neither pro-Russia nor pro-Trump, but the whole narrative has become so ridiculously twisted. Replace 'Russia' with 'Britain', and the story would be about how an allied whistleblower uncovered the shocking story of the Democratic primary being rigged. Where's the outrage about that?
That Russia has wanted, and has tried to encourage, the breakup of the U.S. for decades is not news (Igor Panarin has very publicly made a career out of it). And buying ads to exacerbate the existing divisions hardly seems like an act of war or anything.
Russia's big "crime" was that they exposed wrongdoing of certain people within the DNC. As in, Russia exposed people circumventing the democratic process. Think about it: for all the brouhaha, by exposing that sort of thing they were actually *helping* strengthen democracy in the US. LOL! Down is up! Up is down!
Now I don't for a moment believe their motivations were pure or pro-US in any way, but it's so absurd to talk about all their evil meddling when the main thing they did was reveal the foul play that was already going on. Sheesh.
Agreed. *Especially* since the US doesn't exactly have a very good track record in this department.
People in the U.S. have a choice: (a) stop being so whiny about what Russia did or (b) stopping doing essentially the same thing to a number of other countries. But the current stance of being upset while we do the same to others is nothing more than hypocrisy.
I agree - I'm sad to see them go, but it's really hard to draw the "don't trust the cloud" conclusion from this: I paid them money, they provided a service. They haven't lost my data, and they are committing to continue providing the promised service through the end of my contract with them.
It's not demonizing when you have facts and results that prove their intent. Their words are empty, but their actions show you everything you need to know.
I agree! Oh, wait, are we talking about Republicans or Democrats?? (your statement applies equally to both)
A Republican would rather see a homeless person die than take care of them. They don't deserve any political consideration when their platform is one of control and oppression.
You sound like someone who is living in an echo chamber. Here's a tip: for every news story you read on a liberal website, go find the same or another story on a conservative one. Do the opposite if you tend to get most of your news from a conservative source. I know, it's more work than in the good old days, but that's the nature of things.
Any time you reach the point where you just can't comprehend how the other side can be so dense / cruel / evil / selfish / whatever, then it's a pretty good indicator that you have fallen into the trap of being insulated from reality. Too much of your information is coming from a source that shares your biases. Too many of your social media friends share your political views. If you think the other political side is full of demons, then you've become part of the problem.
The process of confronting your biases is painful but liberating. You should try it.
It's not trying to "change the rules" of the election. Nobody is suggesting installing Hillary. The political term is "mandate" and the Republicans clearly didn't get one. That's why they are struggling so much to govern right now. You don't have a mandate with 49% of the vote.
So the whole concept of a mandate (from the people, I'm assuming is what you mean) is fairly pointless when US elections typically get only 60% of eligible voters to even cast a vote. Let's follow your logic through: from your comment I'm assuming you feel that Obama's 2008 win with 53% of the vote counted as a "mandate"? He won with 69.5 million votes. In 2016 Trump got 63 million. To say that one got a mandate from the people when the other didn't seems like there must be a pretty incredibly thin line between what qualifies as a mandate! Guess what? The reality is that *neither* of them received any sort of mandate. The US has about 200 million eligible voters but about 80 million of them don't cast a vote for either a D or an R in any given election. Obama got about 34% of the eligible voters to vote for him. Trump got about 32%. Those are both quite low and both quite close - either they are both mandates or, much more likely, neither are.
There is no firm definition of what would even count as getting a mandate from the people, but if you can only get about 1 out of 3 people to throw their support behind you, that probably doesn't cut it.
(and BTW, I'm just going to skip over the whole notion that the Republicans are struggling to govern and that the source of that struggle is the lack of a mandate - that seems like quite a stretch and you didn't provide any evidence to support it, so... moving on!)
Do I really, truly, honestly think that's what the Republicans are all about? Certainly not all of them. There may be no good neo-Nazis, but I have no doubt that there are good Republicans as individuals. However, having watched the Republican primary debates, every single candidate would answer each and every question with an inspiring vision of a great society followed by declaring that they would achieve that outcome by cutting taxes for the rich.
You're missing the point: just as you like the D convention and were repulsed by the R convention, there are a similar number of people out there who liked the R convention and were repulsed by the D convention. You don't seem to be even open to the idea that the vast majority of the "others" are rational, caring human beings. Both parties have the nutters on the extreme, and unfortunately those types make for entertaining news coverage, but on neither side are they representative of the vast majority of the people in either party.
I don't believe that cutting taxes for the rich is a panacea and I can't imagine any thinking person actually subscribes to that.
This is a straw man argument. Please show me where any candidate came out and said "the solution to our problems is to cut taxes on the rich" (their position, not your wild interpretation of it). And then show me where that candidate came anywhere close to claiming that such a move would be anything close to a "panacea". You have taken their position and used your own bias to distill it down to something absurdly simplistic and not actually representative of their position.
Again, it seems like you've dreamed up a caricature of the other side and are arguing against that. I know, I know, it's far easier to feel good about a position if you can demonize and/or belittle the opposing point of view, but the reality is that both sides' positions on every single issue are far more nuanced than you seem willing to believe. Defense spending, abortion, gay rights, states vs federal powers, entitlements, budgets, healthcare, and on and on - every single one of those involves tradeoffs and less than perfect choices.
At a very high level, pretty much all sides want prosperity, fairness, the good of the country, e
Look, I don't like the Rs or the Ds, but I think you're being very one-sided here. Both sides govern basically the same way. Both sides, when not in power, are full of fake umbrage when those in power do the same things the losers did the last time they were in power. Both sides have absurdly short memories. Both sides will do or say pretty much anything to win.
I'm all for pointing out the "sins" and hypocrisy of either party, but to try to say one side is even the slightest bit better than the other is a huge stretch - it relies on wearing some seriously rose-colored glasses or willful ignorance. Both parties are more alike than they are different.
Obama won both popular and electoral votes but set out to be "everybody's president."
LOL. The same could be said for every president. As in, every president and their winning party will tell you that's exactly what they've set out to do. Guess what? With each election, the losing side feels less and less like this is true. I thought Obama was an ok president, but his ability to reach out and unify with the "other" side seemed very much on par with all other recent presidents.
When you win an election despite losing the popular vote
I take issue with this because it's trying to change the rules of the election after the fact by implying that it was a false or flawed victory. All candidates knew the electoral votes were the only thing that mattered, and they strategized accordingly. The fact that Hillary won the popular vote does not in any way make Trump's victory less legitimate, but your statement seems to imply exactly that.
I wish Trump had not won, but he did. And guess what? Had he won the popular vote and lost the EC vote, he'd be saying the exact same things you are - trying to undermine a Clinton victory. It'd be B.S. in that case, just as it is now. It's as meaningful to say "Trump won despite losing the left-handed vote" or something - 100% irrelevant.
FWIW, I'm glad the EC exists. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it prevents California from being able to single-handedly choose the president each time, so... yay.
*and* you know your ideas are wrong
Oh, wow. Pause and listen to what you're saying. Do you really, truly, honestly think that's what the Republicans are all about? For the record, I'm not a Republican and I didn't vote for Trump. But if you've conjured up this notion of them being this hateful group of people who actually know they are in the wrong but are just being devious, then you've become part of the problem are as much to blame for the state of things as they are.
All across the political spectrum are people who care deeply for their country, care deeply about issues, have families, are real people, and who are trying to figure out the best solution to complex problems. I don't think very highly of many of the national politicians, and yet I'd wager that most of them - on both sides of the aisle - are sincere in their belief in their platform's positions.
The issues that divide the parties do so because the issues are complex and nuanced - there is not a single major issue that has a black and white, obvious solution, especially once you get into the nuts and bolts of implementing a solution. All actual solutions will be less than ideal, all solutions will involve tradeoffs, and all solutions will require everyone to compromise.
Because of this, they are hard to solve to begin with. But if both sides start demonizing the other side like you're doing, it pretty much guarantees that nothing will get done because that sort of bitter attitude prevents good faith negotiation and discussion.
Agreed, although those too either remain with you if you use them or generally fade away if you don't use them regularly. I'm pretty sure the volume of a sphere is 4/3 * pi * r^3, but that's something I'd double check before relying on it since it's not something I use often. And it's been years since I've used the quadratic formula so I'd definitely have to Google that one. Those are really basic equations, and some people would be shocked that anyone doesn't just know them, while others would not even know what they are.
We somehow need to make people aware of what's out there so that they can go dig in deeper if the need arises, but it's hard to know what is important enough to cover in the exercise of making people aware.
Yes and yes! This line of questions is something I've wondered about too and... I don't know what the right answer is.:)
On the one hand, memorizing gobs of factoids like I did in grade school seems like a waste. OTOH, without some set of hopefully-common knowledge, you can't really participate in society as well, much less avoiding repeating the mistakes of history. I found this article https://www.nytimes.com/intera... pretty fascinating, for example.
For me personally I seem to do best if I'm aware of stuff on some level and then I can go read up on it if I want to know more, but I don't know what the right level of exposure is needed to give people at least in their formal education. But if I could redo my grade school education, especially things like social studies and history, I think I would have benefited from (and enjoyed) more focus on lessons and learnings from history, principles, and themes and far less focus on being able to say what exact year something happened.
But on the flip side, knowing e.g. dates does matter some too - knowing that something happened right before the US Civil War can be relevant. Or knowing that it was as recent as the mid 1970's that women (at least in the US) had to have a man to co-sign for a bank loan can help in shaping perspective on certain types of progress.
Grey matter loss seems bad, but at the same time I wonder if we're just detecting humans adapting to technology - maybe it's not so much a net loss in brain functionality but more a manifestation of tradeoffs being made.
For example, growing up there was a lot of emphasis on memorizing information (memorize all the countries of the world, memorize all US states and their capitals, memorize these dates in history, memorize these mathematical equations, etc.). These days that seems far less useful.
So, if we offload to technology the storage and recall of trivia, it wouldn't be surprising to find that some part of our brains are less used compared with those of people 50 years ago. But maybe we'd also see that the brains of people today are better at being exposed to more data without being overwhelmed, or better at quickly sifting through mounds of information to find something in particular, or better at distilling lots of info down to its essence.
(1) I don't mind the call for volunteers, but I also don't mind the thought of gedit (or any other project) dying due to lack of interest. I think I used gedit for an entire afternoon once and that was plenty for me, but if it scratches somebody else's itch, good on them.
(2) "The Python code is not compiled, so when doing refactorings in gedit core, good luck to port all the plugins" - this doesn't entirely make sense to me, but my best guess is that he's saying that the preferred approach to refactoring is basically to change stuff like an API declaration and then rely on compiler errors to find all the corresponding callers that need to be updated. Maybe that's not fair, but without more context, that's my only guess.
Anyway, if true, that's a pretty terrible way to do refactoring (if for no other reason than it can't always catch everything), so I hope that's not what he meant. A good regression test suite is the right way to handle refactoring, and is more or less required if you have any sort of public API that you've encouraged people to build against, and so criticizing the plugin language (be it Python or anything else) seems misguided and a red flag (and Python specifically is often a really excellent choice for plugins).
Refactoring a public API or a large codebase is hard and requires great care, and there's only so much you can do to get around that. If you have a compiled language that can catch a few cases you've missed, that's a little added bonus but really should be more or less your last line of defense (i.e. after you've completed your refactoring, if you have a compiled language and the compiler finds anything you missed, that's nice, but it should also kinda freak you out if it's anything more than something like a minor typo, because otherwise it means you probably weren't disciplined enough in your refactoring).
Anyway, I get it - these are OSS projects and people are giving of their free time, etc. But compiler-error-driven refactoring for anything substantial is a big no no.
(3) "(the Python code is also less "greppable" than C)" - in a general sense I'd strongly disagree and categorize this as a false statement, and he didn't offer any additional insight to back it up, at least that I saw. So maybe he meant the Python code specific to gedit or something?
(4) I'm not sure he's really interested in having people take over gedit maintenance per se anyway - his post makes it sound like a mess of a project ("Before I contribute to GtkSourceView, there was 8000 lines of code in gedit for the file loading and saving") and suggests a better route might be to just wait while his own project matures ("Note that I still develop Tepl, so over time it has more and more features. If gedit is not developed during several years, maybe it'll be possible to remove a big amount of code from gedit by porting it to Tepl").
Sorry, by "pulled over for speeding" I meant "you were actually speeding and you got pulled over for it". The idea is that if you clearly do something illegal, then things like intent don't matter when it comes to the question of whether or not you did something illegal. If a cop caught you on the radar doing 80 in a 35, your intent (regardless of whether it was "I was late for work" or "I was carrying a dying man to the hospital") does not alter that fact. It may, however, affect the punishment you receive for doing that illegal thing.
That's where your 10 years of clean driving would come in - it is not in any way, not the tiniest degree, "evidence" that you were not speeding, it's entirely irrelevant to that question. But it might help your argument that, while yes you did break the law, a lesser (or even no) punishment is warranted.
If you want a less ambiguous example but still related to driving, imagine you were caught driving with no license plates, or expired tags, or any number of things. The reason you broke the law (your motivation or intent) is entirely separate from the question of whether or not you did.
Maybe, but intent is really only relevant on the sentencing / punishment side of things; it's not supposed to be a factor in determining if something is legal or constitutional, in part because then the test for constitutionality would become wildly subjective.
If you get pulled over by the police for speeding, all of your pleading and reasoning does not change the fact that your action was illegal - you broke the law.:) If the officer chooses to let you off with a warning, it's not that you've convinced him that you were not in fact breaking the law after all, but that you convinced him to minimize the punishment. Your intentions are not a factor in determining if an action was legal or not.
A more relevant example is that when the courts are hearing challenges to a law, it's pretty common for a law to get struck down because of its unintended consequences, especially in scenarios that weren't really considered when the law was written. The fact that the law might have really excellent intentions behind it is irrelevant; the court will strike it down if it violates the Constitution or conflicts with too much precedent or other laws.
Just as good intentions can't make an unconstitutional law constitutional, bad intentions can't make a constitutional law unconstitutional.
Ok, sure, but neither "how it is written" nor "how it is implemented" try to encompass the nebulous question of whether the authors were being big meanies or religious bigots or whatever when they wrote it. An earlier poster suggested, "It's not a question of what the EO references - it's what Trump's intention is" but that's simply not true, no matter how much some people wish it was.
As in, discerning Trump's intentions matters more in other situations (e.g. that's the sort of thing voters should consider when evaluating a candidate before putting him/her into power, haha) but not so much in the situation of the SCOTUS ruling on the constitutionality of an executive order. The justices may personally feel that the reasoning behind the EO is boneheaded or in poor judgement or even mean, but it can be all of those things and still fall short of being illegal or unconstitutional.
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If you can get 10Mbps down, you can do your homework, access job sites,
I'll throw-in a glib [citation needed] on that. The "homework" I've seen sometimes is poorly-compressed 1080p-only hour-long lecture videos with extremely poor DRM-riddled players that have issues fast-forwarding if you lose your connection. Yes, it's crap, but it's a Problem for a 10Mbps down connection.
Can you point me to an actual example of this or is it a made up scenario? In particular, I'd like to see a real world example of the ill-encoded lecture that just so happens to work ok at 25Mbps (the old minimum threshold) but doesn't on 10Mbps (the new threshold that has you and others up in arms (hint: it probably doesn't work at 25 Mbps either).
For *any* threshold you want to choose, there is always the potential for somebody out there to do something dumb that makes that speed too low - I could just as easily replace your "1080p-only" with "8k-only", right?
I think it's a dangerous game to attempt to define the minimum threshold of how much of the bells and whistles are "needed".
It's at least as dangerous a game as having the government try to mandate min internet speeds. The government is terrible at so many things, what gives you any confidence at all that it will get this one right, that it will keep it up to date quickly enough, etc., etc.?
You joke about the Libertarian way or whatever, but no small part of the current mess is due to abuse of government, like the Comcasts of the world using the government to prevent municipal broadband. This whole minimum threshold nonsense is little more than trying to put a bandaid on a more fundamental problem.
I'm neither for nor against this redefinition of terms, but there's two different issues here: (1) what speeds do you need to get access to all the bells and whistles, and (2) what speeds are so slow that the government needs to step in and prod things along. Those two speeds don't necessarily need to be the same.
If you can get 10Mbps down, you can do your homework, access job sites, and all of the other reasons cited as justification for the government being involved in the first place. You can also watch a heck of a lot of cat videos, waste time on Facebook, etc. I get 100Mbps down where I live, and I'm super grateful for it, but part of that is cuz I still remember the 300 baud modem days. :)
Anyway, I don't know if the redefining of terms is being done out of bad motives or not, but there is some potential upside to it. For example, TFA talked about how a good chunk of the US doesn't have even 10Mbps yet, so lowering the "good enough" bar to 10Mbps could help keep the focus on those parts of the country that are the most underserved.
Sorry, but no. First, there's generally no such thing as a solution that is 'optimal' all on its own. Instead, a solution to a problem is optimal for certain selected variables, i.e. if you value X, Y, and Z over all other variables, then you have a shot at finding a solution that is optimal for X, Y, and Z. But in doing so, that solution will be suboptimal for (probably many) other variables. And guess what? Not everyone agrees on which variables are most important.
And this mentality that you're describing is precisely the problem of today's society (at least here in the US). And the core of that problem is the premise of "if person A is right, and person B is wrong".
FWIW, I *do* believe that there is such a thing as right and wrong, but that doesn't mean that every question or issue has a right side and a wrong side. In fact, relatively few societal decisions boil down to choosing between an option that is right and an option that is wrong. Most of the time, the debates arise over different approaches to solving a problem or a question of competing priorities (which turn into questions of resource allocation, etc.).
In these situations, compromise is absolutely *essential*, and yet the problem is that nowadays too many people latch onto their position as being indisputably right. From there they conclude that the other side is undeniably wrong. And then from there they often slide into demonizing the other side for holding onto their wrong view.
And then in the few cases where it is between right and wrong, compromise is often your best shot at maintaining peace - in theory buying everyone time to continue to debate and to try to get people on the wrong side to come around. The alternative is to immediately rip apart the society or relationship, which is often pretty suboptimal.
While there might be times when it does make sense to immediately sever ties and kill the society/relationship, they are pretty rare. There are times when you should literally fight, but they too are rare. And in the rare case when you are in fact facing a right vs wrong scenario, trying to force your 'rightness' on people will almost certainly backfire. In all these cases, compromise is in fact a tool of the wise.
I'd much rather see the focus be on:
- cracking down on ISPs that use anti-competitive behavior
- ensuring that advertised speeds are generally achievable
- forcing providers to be clear and up front about any blocking, throttling, etc. that they do
If somebody wants to provide fast lines or blocking or whatever, then I don't see how it's the government's place to try to force things one way or the other - those are things that some consumers actually want in certain scenarios. Those things aren't inherently good or bad, they just become bad when they aren't disclosed, or when consumers have no alternatives available.
Amen! (great quote, BTW)
The hysteria plus the hypocrisy really is pathetic. Seeing the US in such a tizzy... the Russians are probably like, "that was the best 60 rubles we ever spent!"
Ah, but that is the whole issue, for something that didn't happen, there seems to be a lot of evidence that it might have.
Ok, I'd like to read up on the evidence that suggests that there might have been an offer of sanction removal/reduction in exchange for rigging the election. Can you share a link please? Outside of a huge amount of conjecture, so far there has been very little evidence that I've seen, so I'm eager to be corrected.
You are confusing us following information coming out of an ongoing investigation with some kind of conclusion.
Not at all. Rather, it seems like the conclusion was drawn from day one, and ever since it's been a hunt for information to support that conclusion. To me this is very much like the Republicans and Benghazi, and in some respects the Clinton email server - settle on a conclusion and look for evidence to support it. In both cases it's wrongheaded and it's the opposite of a data-driven investigation.
Originally you pissed the question of why people were so much more interested in one, rather than the other. Well, here we are.
Well, sorta - you've shifted away from the two things I was talking about when I posted. The first was this notion that "Russia hacked the US election". The second was that people were rigging the Democratic primaries. The first is false, the second one is true. And yet the first one was in the spotlight for months while the second has received very little airtime - it's almost been swept under the rug (although it does get some coverage, e.g. https://www.politico.com/magaz...).
In parallel to, but independent of, the false story that Russia hacked the US election is the story about interaction between the Trump campaign and Russia. That one is interesting too, but I wasn't talking about it.
And so far that one isn't exactly turning up any evidence of anything illegal on the part of Trump either, although it's early in the process still. So far all that's really come to light is that Trump shows poor judgement and either hubris or naivete - but we've known that all along, right? Unfortunately being a jerk isn't illegal.
Once had vastly different consequences if it turns out to be true. I wish i could look at all of this and confidently say it didn't happen, but to my mind at least, there is enough here to keep weighing the evidence.
Awesome, I'd love to see some of the evidence that points to, say, treasonous behavior. And to be clear, hopeful conjecture != evidence, of course. Thanks!
Firstly, when you put the word hack in quotes, you are giving a big pass
Nah, that was just me not being very clear, sorry - I was being disdainful because, literally for months, the headlines were things like "Russia hacked the election", which is false.
That is not something to be minimized. It is a very very big deal. Should we be doing it to other countries, no. It's a bad thing, a very bad thing.
Agreed!
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be outraged when it is done to us. That attitude is just the same as saying "Meh, I am ok with it." I for one am not. Any rational person shouldn't be.
Wait, are you saying that there are exactly two allowed emotional responses? Either total outrage or "meh, I am ok with it" ? There's nothing in between? That doesn't make any sense to me, but I might be misunderstanding you - apologies if that is the case.
I don't like the fact that Russia did this, but it's hard for me to feel outrage because there's no evidence to suggest it actually changed the outcome, it so far seems like a fairly ham-fisted attempt on their part and, above all, it's hard to muster outrage when this seems like a pretty obvious consequence of our own actions. We hack other countries - even our own allies - so of course people are going to do this to us.
Now, as to what the hillary campaign did, it was not right, but you are talking about a party, not a whole political system. There is a serious difference between a primary and a popular vote. Because I am registered independent in my state, I am not even ALLOWED to vote in the primaries for either party. Why? Because parties (the organization) are not part of your government. They are very much private entities.
The Russian hack was perpetuated against the DNC. The primary rigging was perpetuated against the DNC. Both were an attempt to affect the election (and in that respect both failed). That goes back to what I mentioned above - that too often this has been spun as Russia hacking the US election, which is simply not true, at least based on what has come to light so far.
Someone influencing the superdelegates from inside financially is VERY DIFFERENT from someone potentially going to another country and saying, "Hey, help me fix this election, and I will drop your sanctions."
Sure, those two things are very different. For example, one major way in which they are different is that one of them happened and the other did not. What is the point in contrasting something that did happen and conjecture about what could have happened?
Is it more clear now? One is corruption, the other is treason. Are they both bad? Yes. Are they equal? No friggin way. By suggesting otherwise, you are loosing sight of the bigger issue.
But here's the problem: you've gone a couple of steps beyond what has actually happened to arrive at some possible scenario (out of many), and are getting wound up about something that is, as of yet, pure fiction. Based on what we know so far:
1) Someone didn't go to another country to elicit Russian help.
2) Someone didn't ask the Russian government to "fix" (as in, rig the outcome of) the election
3) Someone didn't offer a deal that would result in the removal of sanctions
I mean, I can do that too: Trump throwing Twitter trantrums is VERY DIFFERENT from Hillary potentially going to Russia and saying that if they assassinate him for her she will drop all their sanctions and give them free cookies for life. Are they both bad? Yes. Are they equal? No friggin way.
Most democrats would agree that the DNC and Hilary are corrupt rubbish
Is that really the case though? I'm not disputing it so much as asking. I'm neither a Dem nor a Rep, so I don't really have a feel, but if I called myself a Democrat and supported that party (including, probably, giving money to it), I'd be more than a little pissed to find out the candidate selection process was rigged or that people were trying to rig it.
And to be clear, this has nothing to do with Democrats per se - the same applies equally to Republicans and corruption in their party: isn't that the sort of thing that should be making people rethink their allegiance to that party? Or if not that, at least some massive, overt introspection and damage control. I dunno, looking at things from a historical perspective, this seems like the kind of event that triggers the creation of new political parties. I guess a big part of it could also be less about allegiance to one's party and more about opposition to the other main party.
The problem with the Russian intervention is that they promoted violent nationalism and this is far more damaging to society than which flavour of corporate politician gets elected.
Yeah, good point - I don't disagree, but it's also hard to give Russia too much credit in this respect. The deep divide was already there, including elements of violent nationalism. And no matter how many ads they bought, it's a drop in the bucket compared to all of the extreme anti-other-side stuff that was already floating around online anyway.
To me it seems like you're illustrating the exact point I'm trying to make: you're upset over the Russian meddling. I get that. I don't even disagree with it*. But where's the outrage over what was going on within the DNC itself? The purpoted "hack" wasn't stealing the DNC's money or erasing donor lists or anything like it. Rather it was revealing the nefarious deeds of people who, themselves, were essentially doing *the exact same thing* in that they were disrupting the democratic process. It's possible to be upset about both the Russians and the rigging of the Democratic primary; I just find it interesting that the outrage is so lopsided.
* I feel somewhat upset, but the U.S. has a pretty lousy track record in this department and is equally guilty of trying to influence elections in other nations (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... to get you started, but there's a heck of a lot more in our meddling history than just that).
This post, right here, this is how it starts. With people who are so anxious to be on the winning side that they will justify even the most egregious display of corruption as "just politics" and "false narratives".
I'm not sure how to connect what I said ("I'm neither pro-Russia nor pro-Trump") to your conclusion that I'm somehow anxious to be on the winning side - I'm not even sure the concept of a winning side makes sense here.
To recap my point though:
(a) it's quite rich of people in the US to be in an uproar about a foreign nation trying to influence our election since we do that all the time. We've been doing it for decades. It's super hypocritical of us to be all wound up by it - although it'd be really great if this uproar leads to us not doing that to other countries anymore (Golden Rule and all).
(b) why is so little attention paid to what they actually exposed? Namely, the rigging of the DNC's primary. This is a huge, huge deal. Any real outrage about subverting the democratic process must also include being just as upset about this. And yet it's getting so little attention. Why is that? Is it because focusing on that will force us to answer difficult questions? Is it just easier to point the finger at some far away adversary? I'm genuinely curious.
The problem is not that they exposed wrong-doing, it's the way they did it.
I think that's a valid point. But it also seems to be part of what has been lost in the noise. And literally it seems like the attention ratio of "how dare Russia do that" to "how dare people try to rig the Dem primary" is 1000:1. I'm not at all against there being a lot of discussion about Russia's actions, but it also seems wrong that the underlying narrative of a semi-rigged primary got so little attention.
They exposed Hilary in a way that caused maximum damage to her campaign, even though in the end it didn't result in any prosecutions.
And, importantly, so far we don't have much evidence to suggest that it affected the outcome of the election either (there are many articles about this, here's one chosen at random and because it's not from Fox News or National Review: https://www.voanews.com/a/ex-u...). So until we see stronger data (or any data for that matter) showing that their influence made Clinton lose the election, it seems crazy that so much ado is made about their actions and that there is so little outcry about what was going on with the Dem primary.
At the same time they kept quiet about Trump and his staff's illegal dealings with Russia, which at least one of them has now admitted and taken a plea bargain for.
Woah, hang on. That's not what has happened yet. Papadopoulos took a plea bargain. His crime was that he lied to FBI investigators when they /asked/ him about stuff. As CNN reported it, "Papadopoulos copped to lying to the FBI about the timing of his contacts with Russians." Is it a crime to lie like that? Yes. Is this the tip of the iceberg? Could be. Has he admitted to illegal dealings with Russia? No.
Are you really so naive as to think that Russia was trying to help the US, rather than get the guy they thought would weaken their biggest rival elected?
I'm trying to have a level-headed conversation here. Instead of making it personal, let's just stick to the discussion itself - I'm sure you can argue a position on its merits alone. Anyway, no, I am not as naive as you suggested - that's what that "Now I don't for a moment believe their motivations were pure or pro-US in any way" part meant. :)
Thanks for the reply!
I'm neither pro-Russia nor pro-Trump, but the whole narrative has become so ridiculously twisted. Replace 'Russia' with 'Britain', and the story would be about how an allied whistleblower uncovered the shocking story of the Democratic primary being rigged. Where's the outrage about that?
That Russia has wanted, and has tried to encourage, the breakup of the U.S. for decades is not news (Igor Panarin has very publicly made a career out of it). And buying ads to exacerbate the existing divisions hardly seems like an act of war or anything.
Russia's big "crime" was that they exposed wrongdoing of certain people within the DNC. As in, Russia exposed people circumventing the democratic process. Think about it: for all the brouhaha, by exposing that sort of thing they were actually *helping* strengthen democracy in the US. LOL! Down is up! Up is down!
Now I don't for a moment believe their motivations were pure or pro-US in any way, but it's so absurd to talk about all their evil meddling when the main thing they did was reveal the foul play that was already going on. Sheesh.
Agreed. *Especially* since the US doesn't exactly have a very good track record in this department.
People in the U.S. have a choice: (a) stop being so whiny about what Russia did or (b) stopping doing essentially the same thing to a number of other countries. But the current stance of being upset while we do the same to others is nothing more than hypocrisy.
So does Kelsier punching Preservation speed that up or what??
I agree - I'm sad to see them go, but it's really hard to draw the "don't trust the cloud" conclusion from this: I paid them money, they provided a service. They haven't lost my data, and they are committing to continue providing the promised service through the end of my contract with them.
It's not demonizing when you have facts and results that prove their intent. Their words are empty, but their actions show you everything you need to know.
I agree! Oh, wait, are we talking about Republicans or Democrats?? (your statement applies equally to both)
A Republican would rather see a homeless person die than take care of them. They don't deserve any political consideration when their platform is one of control and oppression.
You sound like someone who is living in an echo chamber. Here's a tip: for every news story you read on a liberal website, go find the same or another story on a conservative one. Do the opposite if you tend to get most of your news from a conservative source. I know, it's more work than in the good old days, but that's the nature of things.
Any time you reach the point where you just can't comprehend how the other side can be so dense / cruel / evil / selfish / whatever, then it's a pretty good indicator that you have fallen into the trap of being insulated from reality. Too much of your information is coming from a source that shares your biases. Too many of your social media friends share your political views. If you think the other political side is full of demons, then you've become part of the problem.
The process of confronting your biases is painful but liberating. You should try it.
It's not trying to "change the rules" of the election. Nobody is suggesting installing Hillary. The political term is "mandate" and the Republicans clearly didn't get one. That's why they are struggling so much to govern right now. You don't have a mandate with 49% of the vote.
So the whole concept of a mandate (from the people, I'm assuming is what you mean) is fairly pointless when US elections typically get only 60% of eligible voters to even cast a vote. Let's follow your logic through: from your comment I'm assuming you feel that Obama's 2008 win with 53% of the vote counted as a "mandate"? He won with 69.5 million votes. In 2016 Trump got 63 million. To say that one got a mandate from the people when the other didn't seems like there must be a pretty incredibly thin line between what qualifies as a mandate! Guess what? The reality is that *neither* of them received any sort of mandate. The US has about 200 million eligible voters but about 80 million of them don't cast a vote for either a D or an R in any given election. Obama got about 34% of the eligible voters to vote for him. Trump got about 32%. Those are both quite low and both quite close - either they are both mandates or, much more likely, neither are.
There is no firm definition of what would even count as getting a mandate from the people, but if you can only get about 1 out of 3 people to throw their support behind you, that probably doesn't cut it.
(and BTW, I'm just going to skip over the whole notion that the Republicans are struggling to govern and that the source of that struggle is the lack of a mandate - that seems like quite a stretch and you didn't provide any evidence to support it, so... moving on!)
Do I really, truly, honestly think that's what the Republicans are all about? Certainly not all of them. There may be no good neo-Nazis, but I have no doubt that there are good Republicans as individuals. However, having watched the Republican primary debates, every single candidate would answer each and every question with an inspiring vision of a great society followed by declaring that they would achieve that outcome by cutting taxes for the rich.
You're missing the point: just as you like the D convention and were repulsed by the R convention, there are a similar number of people out there who liked the R convention and were repulsed by the D convention. You don't seem to be even open to the idea that the vast majority of the "others" are rational, caring human beings. Both parties have the nutters on the extreme, and unfortunately those types make for entertaining news coverage, but on neither side are they representative of the vast majority of the people in either party.
I don't believe that cutting taxes for the rich is a panacea and I can't imagine any thinking person actually subscribes to that.
This is a straw man argument. Please show me where any candidate came out and said "the solution to our problems is to cut taxes on the rich" (their position, not your wild interpretation of it). And then show me where that candidate came anywhere close to claiming that such a move would be anything close to a "panacea". You have taken their position and used your own bias to distill it down to something absurdly simplistic and not actually representative of their position.
Again, it seems like you've dreamed up a caricature of the other side and are arguing against that. I know, I know, it's far easier to feel good about a position if you can demonize and/or belittle the opposing point of view, but the reality is that both sides' positions on every single issue are far more nuanced than you seem willing to believe. Defense spending, abortion, gay rights, states vs federal powers, entitlements, budgets, healthcare, and on and on - every single one of those involves tradeoffs and less than perfect choices.
At a very high level, pretty much all sides want prosperity, fairness, the good of the country, e
Look, I don't like the Rs or the Ds, but I think you're being very one-sided here. Both sides govern basically the same way. Both sides, when not in power, are full of fake umbrage when those in power do the same things the losers did the last time they were in power. Both sides have absurdly short memories. Both sides will do or say pretty much anything to win.
I'm all for pointing out the "sins" and hypocrisy of either party, but to try to say one side is even the slightest bit better than the other is a huge stretch - it relies on wearing some seriously rose-colored glasses or willful ignorance. Both parties are more alike than they are different.
Obama won both popular and electoral votes but set out to be "everybody's president."
LOL. The same could be said for every president. As in, every president and their winning party will tell you that's exactly what they've set out to do. Guess what? With each election, the losing side feels less and less like this is true. I thought Obama was an ok president, but his ability to reach out and unify with the "other" side seemed very much on par with all other recent presidents.
When you win an election despite losing the popular vote
I take issue with this because it's trying to change the rules of the election after the fact by implying that it was a false or flawed victory. All candidates knew the electoral votes were the only thing that mattered, and they strategized accordingly. The fact that Hillary won the popular vote does not in any way make Trump's victory less legitimate, but your statement seems to imply exactly that.
I wish Trump had not won, but he did. And guess what? Had he won the popular vote and lost the EC vote, he'd be saying the exact same things you are - trying to undermine a Clinton victory. It'd be B.S. in that case, just as it is now. It's as meaningful to say "Trump won despite losing the left-handed vote" or something - 100% irrelevant.
FWIW, I'm glad the EC exists. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it prevents California from being able to single-handedly choose the president each time, so... yay.
*and* you know your ideas are wrong
Oh, wow. Pause and listen to what you're saying. Do you really, truly, honestly think that's what the Republicans are all about? For the record, I'm not a Republican and I didn't vote for Trump. But if you've conjured up this notion of them being this hateful group of people who actually know they are in the wrong but are just being devious, then you've become part of the problem are as much to blame for the state of things as they are.
All across the political spectrum are people who care deeply for their country, care deeply about issues, have families, are real people, and who are trying to figure out the best solution to complex problems. I don't think very highly of many of the national politicians, and yet I'd wager that most of them - on both sides of the aisle - are sincere in their belief in their platform's positions.
The issues that divide the parties do so because the issues are complex and nuanced - there is not a single major issue that has a black and white, obvious solution, especially once you get into the nuts and bolts of implementing a solution. All actual solutions will be less than ideal, all solutions will involve tradeoffs, and all solutions will require everyone to compromise.
Because of this, they are hard to solve to begin with. But if both sides start demonizing the other side like you're doing, it pretty much guarantees that nothing will get done because that sort of bitter attitude prevents good faith negotiation and discussion.
Agreed, although those too either remain with you if you use them or generally fade away if you don't use them regularly. I'm pretty sure the volume of a sphere is 4/3 * pi * r^3, but that's something I'd double check before relying on it since it's not something I use often. And it's been years since I've used the quadratic formula so I'd definitely have to Google that one. Those are really basic equations, and some people would be shocked that anyone doesn't just know them, while others would not even know what they are.
We somehow need to make people aware of what's out there so that they can go dig in deeper if the need arises, but it's hard to know what is important enough to cover in the exercise of making people aware.
Yes and yes! This line of questions is something I've wondered about too and ... I don't know what the right answer is. :)
On the one hand, memorizing gobs of factoids like I did in grade school seems like a waste. OTOH, without some set of hopefully-common knowledge, you can't really participate in society as well, much less avoiding repeating the mistakes of history. I found this article https://www.nytimes.com/intera... pretty fascinating, for example.
For me personally I seem to do best if I'm aware of stuff on some level and then I can go read up on it if I want to know more, but I don't know what the right level of exposure is needed to give people at least in their formal education. But if I could redo my grade school education, especially things like social studies and history, I think I would have benefited from (and enjoyed) more focus on lessons and learnings from history, principles, and themes and far less focus on being able to say what exact year something happened.
But on the flip side, knowing e.g. dates does matter some too - knowing that something happened right before the US Civil War can be relevant. Or knowing that it was as recent as the mid 1970's that women (at least in the US) had to have a man to co-sign for a bank loan can help in shaping perspective on certain types of progress.
Grey matter loss seems bad, but at the same time I wonder if we're just detecting humans adapting to technology - maybe it's not so much a net loss in brain functionality but more a manifestation of tradeoffs being made.
For example, growing up there was a lot of emphasis on memorizing information (memorize all the countries of the world, memorize all US states and their capitals, memorize these dates in history, memorize these mathematical equations, etc.). These days that seems far less useful.
So, if we offload to technology the storage and recall of trivia, it wouldn't be surprising to find that some part of our brains are less used compared with those of people 50 years ago. But maybe we'd also see that the brains of people today are better at being exposed to more data without being overwhelmed, or better at quickly sifting through mounds of information to find something in particular, or better at distilling lots of info down to its essence.
(1) I don't mind the call for volunteers, but I also don't mind the thought of gedit (or any other project) dying due to lack of interest. I think I used gedit for an entire afternoon once and that was plenty for me, but if it scratches somebody else's itch, good on them.
(2) "The Python code is not compiled, so when doing refactorings in gedit core, good luck to port all the plugins" - this doesn't entirely make sense to me, but my best guess is that he's saying that the preferred approach to refactoring is basically to change stuff like an API declaration and then rely on compiler errors to find all the corresponding callers that need to be updated. Maybe that's not fair, but without more context, that's my only guess.
Anyway, if true, that's a pretty terrible way to do refactoring (if for no other reason than it can't always catch everything), so I hope that's not what he meant. A good regression test suite is the right way to handle refactoring, and is more or less required if you have any sort of public API that you've encouraged people to build against, and so criticizing the plugin language (be it Python or anything else) seems misguided and a red flag (and Python specifically is often a really excellent choice for plugins).
Refactoring a public API or a large codebase is hard and requires great care, and there's only so much you can do to get around that. If you have a compiled language that can catch a few cases you've missed, that's a little added bonus but really should be more or less your last line of defense (i.e. after you've completed your refactoring, if you have a compiled language and the compiler finds anything you missed, that's nice, but it should also kinda freak you out if it's anything more than something like a minor typo, because otherwise it means you probably weren't disciplined enough in your refactoring).
Anyway, I get it - these are OSS projects and people are giving of their free time, etc. But compiler-error-driven refactoring for anything substantial is a big no no.
(3) "(the Python code is also less "greppable" than C)" - in a general sense I'd strongly disagree and categorize this as a false statement, and he didn't offer any additional insight to back it up, at least that I saw. So maybe he meant the Python code specific to gedit or something?
(4) I'm not sure he's really interested in having people take over gedit maintenance per se anyway - his post makes it sound like a mess of a project ("Before I contribute to GtkSourceView, there was 8000 lines of code in gedit for the file loading and saving") and suggests a better route might be to just wait while his own project matures ("Note that I still develop Tepl, so over time it has more and more features. If gedit is not developed during several years, maybe it'll be possible to remove a big amount of code from gedit by porting it to Tepl").
LOL. The best case scenario here is that you are trolling.
Sorry, by "pulled over for speeding" I meant "you were actually speeding and you got pulled over for it". The idea is that if you clearly do something illegal, then things like intent don't matter when it comes to the question of whether or not you did something illegal. If a cop caught you on the radar doing 80 in a 35, your intent (regardless of whether it was "I was late for work" or "I was carrying a dying man to the hospital") does not alter that fact. It may, however, affect the punishment you receive for doing that illegal thing.
That's where your 10 years of clean driving would come in - it is not in any way, not the tiniest degree, "evidence" that you were not speeding, it's entirely irrelevant to that question. But it might help your argument that, while yes you did break the law, a lesser (or even no) punishment is warranted.
If you want a less ambiguous example but still related to driving, imagine you were caught driving with no license plates, or expired tags, or any number of things. The reason you broke the law (your motivation or intent) is entirely separate from the question of whether or not you did.
Maybe, but intent is really only relevant on the sentencing / punishment side of things; it's not supposed to be a factor in determining if something is legal or constitutional, in part because then the test for constitutionality would become wildly subjective.
If you get pulled over by the police for speeding, all of your pleading and reasoning does not change the fact that your action was illegal - you broke the law. :) If the officer chooses to let you off with a warning, it's not that you've convinced him that you were not in fact breaking the law after all, but that you convinced him to minimize the punishment. Your intentions are not a factor in determining if an action was legal or not.
A more relevant example is that when the courts are hearing challenges to a law, it's pretty common for a law to get struck down because of its unintended consequences, especially in scenarios that weren't really considered when the law was written. The fact that the law might have really excellent intentions behind it is irrelevant; the court will strike it down if it violates the Constitution or conflicts with too much precedent or other laws.
Just as good intentions can't make an unconstitutional law constitutional, bad intentions can't make a constitutional law unconstitutional.
Ok, sure, but neither "how it is written" nor "how it is implemented" try to encompass the nebulous question of whether the authors were being big meanies or religious bigots or whatever when they wrote it. An earlier poster suggested, "It's not a question of what the EO references - it's what Trump's intention is" but that's simply not true, no matter how much some people wish it was.
As in, discerning Trump's intentions matters more in other situations (e.g. that's the sort of thing voters should consider when evaluating a candidate before putting him/her into power, haha) but not so much in the situation of the SCOTUS ruling on the constitutionality of an executive order. The justices may personally feel that the reasoning behind the EO is boneheaded or in poor judgement or even mean, but it can be all of those things and still fall short of being illegal or unconstitutional.