I am upset that people are associating the Patriot Act with conservatism. Violation of my rights isn't conservative, its facism.
Welcome to the dismay that the communists must have felt when they saw their lofty ideals put into actual practice by autocratic regimes. The problem is that modern conservatism is a contradictory jumble of ideas, a mix thrown together to bind a diverse constituency. How else do you get, say, religious fundamentalists to sign on to the economic priorities of the corporate elite? And so you get this strange juxtaposition of lip-service for "individual rights" with attitudes of cultural intolerance, xenophobia, and enforced conformity. Intolerance is the antithesis of individual rights, unless by the latter you mean the "right" to exercise intolerance itself, or perhaps the right of corporations to use air and water resources as free public sewers without government interference.
Maybe that's why conservatives out of power talk about freedom, peace, and a smaller role for government (in addition to Bill Clinton's sexual escapades), but once in power they deliver political and cultural repression, endless war, the police state, privilege for the wealthy, and massive deficits to shift the costs of all of this onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.
I, for one, miss the Good Old Days when getting his cock sucked was the biggest offense a President of the United States could commit, worth paralyzing the government for several years.
Enter the Repubs (and Dems who are afraid to stand up to them), and now we have the Patriot Act, secret courts with secret evidence, Total Information Awareness, detentions without trial or charge, endless war on behalf of the petroleum industry, and a "Bush Doctrine" that basically says he'll attack anyone he wants "pre-emptively" whenever he wants.
The Bush administration badly wanted that trail to lead to Iran or Iraq, but that's not what happened, at least as far as we're allowed to know. I'm not suggesting that the anthrax attack was some sort of government conspiracy, but rather that it's possible that whoever did it had access to the army lab.
The present administration has practically announced in public that (a) government will increasingly be done in secret, right down to its judicial function, and (b) we will be freely lied to for "national security" reasons. Taking official pronouncements as gospel is just foolish under those conditions, but I guess it does explain the recent emphasis on "faith-based" initiatives...
But don't forget that the anthrax spores that were being sent through the mail after 9/11 were traced to an Army lab in Maryland. I can see how these measures will screw up research by making it harder to replicate results and by making protocols untrustworthy, but it's hard to see how they will make us safer from terrorists. But that's the deal, isn't it? We're told we're trading liberty for security, but it's never quite clear how not being free will make us safe...
Heh, let's give 'em all Linux kernels to play with, and sendmail.cf files and procmail filters too while we're about it, and watch their eyes shine with joy as they appreciate the wonders of the non-commercial world...
That may have been the case 6 or 7 years ago, but it's hardly the case now. Over the years I've gone from WinNT to a WinNT/Linux dual-boot to exclusively Linux, and I have no nostalgia at all for the old days...
I think part of the problem is fear or lack of real desire to learn in or something pyschological that prohibits them from picking it up quickly. But there is a fundamental difference and that has created a divived between those that can and those that cannot.
You're absolutely right. Fear and apprehension leads to immediate frustration, and many people become refractory to learning under those conditions. Most techies, on the other hand, treat new software more as a game or adventure - well, maybe a pain-in-the-butt kind of adventure - and don't assume from the beginning that they're going to be humiliated. At least, I hope they don't...
You lost me. What in holy hell does the electrolysis of water have to do with the belief that government is unnecessary to society?
Well it's really rather metaphorical. Does the hydrogen need the oxygen? Does the oxygen need the hydrogen? To the water molecule it has always been thus, until the power of the electric charge tears it asunder...
Listen, and listen closely: I am probably somewhere to the right of Rush Limbaugh, politically speaking, but I hate the despicable way that recording studios treat their signed artists. Liberals do not, repeat not have a monopoly on an inate sense of justice.
Maybe you're not as conservative as you think you are...
Couldn't agree more. Here in southeastern Michigan I can receive about half a dozen public stations - mostly NPR - that cover a broad range of formats including blues, jazz (and NOT the insipid "smooth" stuff), classical, worldbeat, alternative, etc. But I travel often and am constantly amazed at what a radio wasteland most of the country is, even many large and culturally hip cities where you'd expect much better. There's often nothing at all that I'd want to listen to anyplace but my car, where I can change stations on a dime.
So toss your favorite non-commercial station $50 or so every year. It's cheaper than the subscription services, and it'll help to keep good locally-originated programming in your community.
The media talks about terrorists or criminals so much that people think they're everywhere.
Here's a thought experiment: Suppose there was only one homicide every month in the entire United States, rather than thousands upon thousands. Would we feel safe even then? I don't think so! In that case the media would treat each one like the OJ Simpson case, and we would still be cowering in fear of the murders happening all around us.
I was watching the local news on a Detroit television station a few years back on the day before Halloween. With great alarm, the reporter was urging parents to bring their kid's haul of candy to the nearest police station to be x-rayed for all of the nasty metallic objects that had surely been inserted by the depraved people that we all know are out there. The police had been doing this for years, but when the reporter asked one of the officers how many objects had been found this way, he had to admit that none had ever been found, and furthermore (if I remember correctly) that he couldn't recall any case of booby-trapped candy ever having been reported!
I have to agree. I was heavily into chemistry as a hobby as a kid (back in the 60s, but totally legit stuff), and got into many interesting situations as a result. These days, though, things are a lot stricter and more monitored, and the presumption will be that anyone interested in synthetic chemistry has some kind of criminal or nefarious intent. It's a real tragedy, IMHO.
So analytical chem is the way to go. Used equipment (like spectrophotometers, HPLC, GC, etc.) is cheap and easy to find, since "real" labs upgrade frequently. Using an HPLC rig to measure just how much caffeine is in that morning cup of coffee (or Mountain Dew) is a blast if there ever was one. Plus, you won't blow yourself up or get arrested (although these days you can't even be sure of that)...
The home-brewing of technology is inherently good. Were it not so, Linux and most Open Source ware wouldn't even exist, because it's always cheaper to buy than to build. But as with software, building your own gives you a level of control that you'd never get in a commercial solution. And it's not work - it's a hobby.
Yeah, it's gotten so that the real challenge isn't so much in finding the tools that will do the job, but rather in choosing between the many that are available...
Couldn't agree with you more. Natural selection is value-free, no matter how much we'd like to impose our own values and morality on it. I guess somebody's actually thinking around here...
As much as I hate to say it, I think this is a good idea. Better yet, maybe the first 50 messages or so per day could be free, and then a cent or two a pop after that...
This is a great peeve of mine. The question isn't so much whether the techies or the MBAs should be "in charge", but whether the group in charge should be monolithically one or the other. I've learned to be very wary of tech companies whose upper management is dominated by the finance function. These guys (and they are usually that) seem to see business as a game with the sole objective of enriching themselves as much and as quickly as possible, regardless of the longer-term consequences to their companies, employees, and customers. Their training and experience is in wheeling and dealing rather than operations, organization, marketing, development, and manufacturing, and their companies reflect this.
customers will not do business with you to spite you if they get ten unsolicitated e-mails from people about your business than if you just put on advertisement on television
If we weren't already so accustomed to television ads, I'll bet they would bother us a lot more than spam. It's the equivalent of pop-up advertising on the web...
Slashdot Mirror
How do you define a "terror threat"?
However Ashcroft wants to define it, I think is the point...
Well, Ken Starr was interested in what books Monica Lewinski was reading. Didn't he subpeona Border's for the complete list?
Welcome to the dismay that the communists must have felt when they saw their lofty ideals put into actual practice by autocratic regimes. The problem is that modern conservatism is a contradictory jumble of ideas, a mix thrown together to bind a diverse constituency. How else do you get, say, religious fundamentalists to sign on to the economic priorities of the corporate elite? And so you get this strange juxtaposition of lip-service for "individual rights" with attitudes of cultural intolerance, xenophobia, and enforced conformity. Intolerance is the antithesis of individual rights, unless by the latter you mean the "right" to exercise intolerance itself, or perhaps the right of corporations to use air and water resources as free public sewers without government interference.
Maybe that's why conservatives out of power talk about freedom, peace, and a smaller role for government (in addition to Bill Clinton's sexual escapades), but once in power they deliver political and cultural repression, endless war, the police state, privilege for the wealthy, and massive deficits to shift the costs of all of this onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.
I, for one, miss the Good Old Days when getting his cock sucked was the biggest offense a President of the United States could commit, worth paralyzing the government for several years.
Enter the Repubs (and Dems who are afraid to stand
up to them), and now we have the Patriot Act, secret courts with secret evidence, Total Information Awareness, detentions without trial or charge, endless war on behalf of the petroleum industry, and a "Bush Doctrine" that basically says he'll attack anyone he wants "pre-emptively" whenever he wants.
Where is Kevin Starr when we really need him?
The present administration has practically announced in public that (a) government will increasingly be done in secret, right down to its judicial function, and (b) we will be freely lied to for "national security" reasons. Taking official pronouncements as gospel is just foolish under those conditions, but I guess it does explain the recent emphasis on "faith-based" initiatives...
But don't forget that the anthrax spores that were being sent through the mail after 9/11 were traced to an Army lab in Maryland. I can see how these measures will screw up research by making it harder to replicate results and by making protocols untrustworthy, but it's hard to see how they will make us safer from terrorists. But that's the deal, isn't it? We're told we're trading liberty for security, but it's never quite clear how not being free will make us safe...
That may have been the case 6 or 7 years ago, but it's hardly the case now. Over the years I've gone from WinNT to a WinNT/Linux dual-boot to exclusively Linux, and I have no nostalgia at all for the old days...
You're absolutely right. Fear and apprehension leads to immediate frustration, and many people become refractory to learning under those conditions. Most techies, on the other hand, treat new software more as a game or adventure - well, maybe a pain-in-the-butt kind of adventure - and don't assume from the beginning that they're going to be humiliated. At least, I hope they don't...
Well it's really rather metaphorical. Does the hydrogen need the oxygen? Does the oxygen need the hydrogen? To the water molecule it has always been thus, until the power of the electric charge tears it asunder...
Can anyone spell "feudalism"?
Maybe you're not as conservative as you think you are...
So toss your favorite non-commercial station $50 or so every year. It's cheaper than the subscription services, and it'll help to keep good locally-originated programming in your community.
The media talks about terrorists or criminals so much that people think they're everywhere.
Here's a thought experiment: Suppose there was only one homicide every month in the entire United States, rather than thousands upon thousands. Would we feel safe even then? I don't think so! In that case the media would treat each one like the OJ Simpson case, and we would still be cowering in fear of the murders happening all around us.
I was watching the local news on a Detroit television station a few years back on the day before Halloween. With great alarm, the reporter was urging parents to bring their kid's haul of candy to the nearest police station to be x-rayed for all of the nasty metallic objects that had surely been inserted by the depraved people that we all know are out there. The police had been doing this for years, but when the reporter asked one of the officers how many objects had been found this way, he had to admit that none had ever been found, and furthermore (if I remember correctly) that he couldn't recall any case of booby-trapped candy ever having been reported!
So analytical chem is the way to go. Used equipment (like spectrophotometers, HPLC, GC, etc.) is cheap and easy to find, since "real" labs upgrade frequently. Using an HPLC rig to measure just how much caffeine is in that morning cup of coffee (or Mountain Dew) is a blast if there ever was one. Plus, you won't blow yourself up or get arrested (although these days you can't even be sure of that)...
Well, thanks for the example. Eiffel's superiority to C++ and Java should now be evident even to the complete imbicile...
The home-brewing of technology is inherently good. Were it not so, Linux and most Open Source ware wouldn't even exist, because it's always cheaper to buy than to build. But as with software, building your own gives you a level of control that you'd never get in a commercial solution. And it's not work - it's a hobby.
Yeah, it's gotten so that the real challenge isn't so much in finding the tools that will do the job, but rather in choosing between the many that are available...
Ahhhh... Coding ability is purely genetic! All those years of schooling, a total waste...
Couldn't agree with you more. Natural selection is value-free, no matter how much we'd like to impose our own values and morality on it. I guess somebody's actually thinking around here...
Quick rule of thumb: Always assume that everything anyone offers you via phone or e-mail is a scam. You'll be right most of the time.
As much as I hate to say it, I think this is a good idea. Better yet, maybe the first 50 messages or so per day could be free, and then a cent or two a pop after that...
Yeah, but RIAA's real beef is with MP3s. That's a lossy compression algorithm, and hence not bit-for-bit perfect, either...
And this is a Good Thing... Why?
This is a great peeve of mine. The question isn't so much whether the techies or the MBAs should be "in charge", but whether the group in charge should be monolithically one or the other. I've learned to be very wary of tech companies whose upper management is dominated by the finance function. These guys (and they are usually that) seem to see business as a game with the sole objective of enriching themselves as much and as quickly as possible, regardless of the longer-term consequences to their companies, employees, and customers. Their training and experience is in wheeling and dealing rather than operations, organization, marketing, development, and manufacturing, and their companies reflect this.
If we weren't already so accustomed to television ads, I'll bet they would bother us a lot more than spam. It's the equivalent of pop-up advertising on the web...