Actually, I find OpenOffice to work significantly better under Windows than I find it to work under Linux(Mandrake 10) - there are well known bugs involving bidirectional language support in the Linux version of OpenOffice 1.1. Also, its easier to install OpenOffice on Windows than it is on Linux, assuming both options start off without it.
Firefox, OTOH, works great in Linux, especially for installation.
The biggest problem is that for many Windows users, there seems to be a serious bug that prevents them from installing extensions at all- it may be related to the uninstallation between.9 and.9.1. The relevant MozillaZine page is here
They cite it as a bidi issue, which is one of the issues. And fixing it would definitely help the hebrew support. However, it is also that the Arabic letters are all in their "isolated" forms, rather than being connected. Arabic is like cursive- all the letters ought to flow together. For a concise table, see the following URL: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/arabic.htm
I certainly hope that Debian's Arabic support isn't as bad as that in the installer- the letters don't connect! They're typed from left to right! This would be like having the English installer say something like the following: (ASU)hsilgnE ni deecorp ot siht esoohC
Except that its even worse - imagine all the i's seperated from their dots, which are written separately next to them in linear order. And even that would be less ridiculous.
As someone who does use Arabic frequently when computing, it's something less than a stunning endorsement of Debian
My family is using a Canon LBP-4 which has lasted us since 1987 or so(same age as my little brother) with 2 toner cartrige replacements and one repair. In 16 years. That was(is still) a quality printer. It'd be nice if it had more than 256k RAM(it has trouble printing lines and non-text) and greater than 300 DPI, but it's definitely worth whatever we paid for it.
The objection to a war during Ramadan isn't a moral one. Its a tactical issue- if we keep bombing the Taliban during Ramadan, and we move in ground units during that time, we are going to face a much greater number of very, very, very devout foes who will be just fine with dying for their cause because of the eternal rewards that they will reap. If you think that the suicide bombings that were done during the Vietnam war were bad, wait until your up against a population that believes it is a holy act to die in battle.
(Also people can get really pissy when they're haven't eaten since sunrise)
Your additional assertion that if we lay off the bombings for a month, they're "have a chance to regroup and launch another September 11th". This is the kind of painfully stupid idea that fuels misguided wars like this. First, the bombings are probably doing nothing against actual terrorists. Any terrorist with half a brain left the country after September 11th, and all of the "terrorist training camps" we've been pummelling have probably been pretty damn abandoned. Second, the September 11th attacks took years of planning. They didn't happen over the course of a few months. Look at all of the attacks that bin Laden is supposedly responsible for- he is patient, and waits for the American public to become complaicent before he attacks again. And he has a lot of good targets that aren't in the US. Remember the Cole attack, the African Embassy attacks? The US is so far flung that you can attack it in pretty any country in the world.
Might I point out that the function exeunt(actor a,actor b,...,exit_direction c) doesn't accept a single argument. You'd get the compiler error: "Syntax error: Verb-noun agreement incorrect" Exit(actor a, exit_direction b) would be a better function to use for a single person.
Latin, Shakespeare, and programming. What more could a geek want?
This is why it makes significantly more sense these days to pay a much larger fee for a much larger period of time. Instead of paying Slashdot $.01 every time you read an article, you could have an online account. You'd fill it with, say, $10.00 and be able to read 1000 articles without having to worry about further payments. This is how Sluggy Freelance works for paying customers. IIRC, you pay the author $10 or so, and you get a year of sluggy. Thats about $.027 per comic, but you don't end up paying for 300 transaction fees.(Keep in mind that the author also has an ad filled version of the site, and still sells dead trees)
This also answers another posters concern, that they'd have to worry about the tab they were ringing up when they go online- you'd simply have an account that would slowly drain as you used a given service. I don't necessarily endorse the idea of paying for some types of content(ie, MSDN news or something of the sort), but I do like to support independent artists such as Pete Abrams.
As cited in Advanced Renderman(Apodaca and Gritz), Blinn's Law says the following: "An artist is willing to wait a fixed amount of time for an image to render, and that faster hardware simply results in more complex images that take the same amount of time to render"(511).
Thus, even if you could do the scenes that were done in A Bugs Life in real time(holding in mind that the entire world of a bugs life was one big scene), Pixar would simply be rendering much larger, more complex scenes.
Another example- a gamer, much like an artist, is only willing to wait a certain amount of time for a given frame of their game to load(around 1/30th of a second per frame). While hardware grows at astronomical rates, games simply become more complex(eg Wolfenstein->Doom->Quake I->Quake 3) and take the same amount of time on the new hardware. Nobody is going to go to the store and buy Wolfenstein just so that they can run it at 100,000 frames/second on their advanced hardware. So even if somehow games were to achieve Photorealistic Renderman levels of rendering quality in real time(again, holding in mind that many times its the artist, rather than the canvas that makes anything look realistic) they would just get more complex and run at the same speed as Wolfenstein did on your old 386.
While its spiffy that someday you'd be able to look at ABL style scene in real time, its not some wonderful limit that is slowly being reached, but simply the normal progression of technology.
This is what bothers me about teh article- if this is such an important project, ie saving the earth from celestial destruction, why are we entrusting it to an organization that has just suffered massive budget cuts?
Additionally, NASA is a US organization, and one must question the poltical implications of a governmental organization tracking down and destroying asteroids. Would NASA stop a small asteroid if it were about to run smack dab into Iraq? I know that sounds somewhat hysterical, but it still is a valid question- why isn't this program placed on a slighly higher level of internation, and national importance, instead of being relegated to a national(istic?) group with a shoe string budget. Perhaps we can throw scraps of our other failed space craft at it. Or the plans for the reusable air-to-space vehicle.
First of all, the Declaration of Independence is not a law.
Second of all, for all the second amendment proponents who believe that it exists to prevent the government from becoming too powerful- that is a sham and a lie. There is absolutely no way in hell that even incredibly well armed miltias could oppose the military and political power of the US government. Such an uprising would probably not be terribly large or cohesive. The government has dealt with peaceful protestors before, well trained ones, and has used the media to manipulate their image into one of riotious crowds rather than peaceful marchers.
The government would have a much easier time dealing with violent terrorists(as they would be most assuredly called). They would have an excuse to use all those tanks, planes and automatic weapons they have lying around. The only places where guerrilla warefare could be successfully staged would be in underpopulated regions of little national importance. This isn't like 1777.
Additionally, other nations probably wouldn't offer support for the terrorists. Look at Palestine- they have the support of nearly every middle eastern nation, expertise with weapons and terrorist tactics, and decent staging areas. And still they're getting their asses beaten by the Israeli government, which has helicopters and missles and bulldozers and the consent of the US.
The only way that you can safely oppose government power is through peaceful means. If you use violence, it gives the government all the leeway it wants. If you protest peacefully, they can't do that much to you before they begin to provoke outrage. Why do you think Ghandi said, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"? Because as you escalate violence, you only bring more violence upon yourself. It takes a hell of a long time, but its possible to bring change without shooting anybody. And look what violence does do- it obscures your point,(ie, in the case of McVeigh) and makes you hated.
So, please, if you want to you can dwell in a fantasy world of gunslinging and epic battles on the east coast 3 hundred years ago, but it won't change the government, or boost your cause. It will only give the government more ammunition to hurl at you, real and imaginary.
I'm an average user, I suppose, but I find myself trying to read things in other languages that use non-roman alphabets. Try reading hebrew, arabic, hindi, chinese, or russian on a computer without international text display. Better yet, try typing them. I, for example, have tried to read Arabic newspapers online(I'm taking the language in college and would like to improve my reading. Many, MANY 'average users' would attempt such a thing), but its damn near impossible(at least, on Win98...bleh) due to my OS's lack of international text display.
Um, if this event occured, how could it violate the laws of physics? Obviously, the laws are wrong if they can be violated...therefore, the laws are the problem, not the event.
Just some nitpicking,
Alex Magidow
Indeed, this also fits in with the article in which the author quotes someone as saying, "set theory is a disease from which I hope future generations will recover." Now we can finally start along that long road to recovery.
I would question the basic assumption here that drives your thesis- that humans are inherently greedy. I don't think this is necessarily true, and indeed, I think that this idea is very culturally specific.
Most cultures that haven't yet been westernized DON'T experience the massive levels of greed that plague our society. The collecting of food, for example, is done collectively or individually in many "primitive"(ie, non-industrialized) societies, and it is redistributed to a wide group of people. Among the Netsilik Inuit, families live with several other families. When one hunter catches a seal(their primary food), he shares the liver of the seal with the other hunters in the group. Additionally, they play a game in which every man in the group places a valuable object(like a bowdrill, a harpoon, etc) in a pile, and the winner of the game gets to pick which object they take. This isn't about greed- its about fair handed redistribution.
There are more examples from non-western societies. Aboriginal Australian hunters would get the worst part of the animal that they killed, and give the best parts to the rest of their group. Among Tongans(granted, this is after a great deal of western contact, but they've managed to keep some of their culture), there are savings groups where everyone gives $2-$4(Tongan, 1980 dollars) to a central pot every two weeks, and then the pot is given, in order, to every person who submits the money, until everyone who's given money has received the pot, at which point they start over.
There are millions of examples of societies that cooperate, and do not need monetary recompensation for every action that they perform. Our society believes, however, that personal gain is the be all and end all of human nature because this is a very useful cultural ideal in a capitalist nation. Indeed- it is a cultural value that is probably specific to capitalist society, and it has been making the wheels turn nicely for hundreds of years. Or at least, making it APPEAR like the wheels are turning nicely, whether they have or not.
PS- Your other assumption, that force is less useful that offering a vision of a "life of luxury" is not specific to socialist societies. In capitalist societies, we use force(physical or economic), or the threat of force, as the primary motivating factor in many instances. In fact, not too long ago, it was the main method of dealing with dissidents in the US. The Lodlow massacre is a good example in the US, and there are many, contemporary examples of physical force being used abroad to control capitalist labor.
I'm surprised that nobody has been looking at these developments and decrying the fact that corporations are doing one of the things Mcarthiests were so worried about- destroying private property. While this isn't exactly the same thing, its similar. Many of the things we own these days are not really our possessions. Companies have started(Through EULA's, exploding GPS devices, etc) to make consumer purchases seem more like they're loaning the object to the consumer rather than the consumer gaining the right to the object that they purchasd. This means that when you buy something, you aren't gaining possession of private property- you are gaining possession of property collectively owned by yourself and by the corporation. Which, if you replace the word "corporation" with state, you have almost the situation that Mcarthiests so decried.
"I recommend that you investigate the actual history of child labor laws. They were first implemented at the behest of English factory owners who wanted to end the practice but could not do so voluntarily as long as it remained legal for their competition to exploit child labor."
These business owners, as is probably pretty obvious, weren't doing this for the good of the children- they were doing it to improve their own public images. Also, they got a hell of a bargain- instead of children working in factories, they became some of the most avid consumers in the world. Children's consumerism is currently almost central to the economy. Take for example the article that started this entire thread- NIKE. The largest consumers of Nike's shoes are children, and just about every product on the market has an analogous product designed especially for children. So, from a business standpoint, having children consuming rather than working is just one hell of a good idea.
I don't see exactly why people keep programming countless raytracing programs. No offense, but there are innumerable programs already out there, many of which are at the very least freeware, and many that are open source. However, people continue to program non-standardized raytracers that have varying levels of functionality. Few of these are specifically designed to fill a nich, either- it would make sense if this were specifically for macintosh, which seems to be getting the short end of the 3D graphics stick.
The second most frustrating thing about the glut of rendering apps is that they're almost all RAYTRACERS. Raytracing is one of the slowest rendering processes(though, faster than reverse raytracing, and some forms of radiosity), and there are numerous other rendering methods that are oodles faster. Please- if you're going to make yet another rendering app, at least make it REYES, or scanline, or some algorithm that will set it apart from the rest of the college programming final project crowd.
Also, if you're going to make a new renderer, make it adheare to some standard- I personally find the Renderman standard(check out http://www.pixar.com) to be very helpful, and to promote the production of fully featured renderers with a standard file format(ie RIB).
Sorry if this seems to be a personal attack- it isn't. Its just that there are millions of renderers out there, and unless you can somehow offer compatability with other, highly popular modelers(BMRT and POV-Ray.), you'll have a hell of a hard time aquiring a large user base.
If you want to truly help the opensource renderer movement, I suggest you cruise over to http://gman-toolkit.sourceforge.net/ and see if they need your expertise.
"Public schools are not so much centers of learning as they are centers of indoctrination into all sorts of unsavory things that concerned parents do not want their children exposed to (sex education, evolution, etc.)"
I think that one should be more afraid of children being indoctrinated into more subtle and innocuous seeming things. Children are indoctrinated into believing in our economic system(for better or for worse), in believing in false versions of American history(which is one of the most heavily AND inaccurately covered subjects in school. For more info on that, read _Lies My Teacher Told Me_ by Lowen) and indoctrinated into our republican system of government. Indeed, that is one of the primary and explicit purposes of school. Jefferson was quite adamant on the subject, believing that schools main purposes were to propogandize children into supporting our government.
Additionally, the examples of "unsavory things" that you list are HIGHLY controversial, and primarily so because of the strong tradition of judaeo-christian religious influence on schools and government. It makes very little sense to not teach evolution as a working(though flawed) theory- every time you use an antibiotic, you're causing evolution by natural selection. Whereas its silly to teach creationism because it is not useful for predicting outcomes of future events(or shedding much light on the past), and because it can neither be proven nor disproven.
"Children are better served by sending them to parochial/religious schools or independent private schools run by competent education professionals. Corporate America does nearly everything better than the federal government; there is no reason to assume that education would be any different."
First and foremost is the question of who exactly pays for these schools. If the burden of providing an education falls directly on parents, we will quickly revert to the days before public education existed. The only people who could afford schooling would be the already educated elite, and this would soon concentrate all education into the hands of the rich. Not only would this be disastrous from a human suffering point of view, but it would mean the death of almost all industries that require a large, educated proletariot.
Even if parents could somehow, magically pay for these schools across that board, the problems would not disappear. According to the NEA(http://ftp.nea.org/vouchers.htm), "Private schools are very selective. Religious schools already reject as many as two out of every three applicants...Private schools generally reserves the right to refuse students on the basis of income, academic achievement, disability, or discipline problems." In keeping with the profit motive, its more than likely that private schools would refuse the most expensive to educate students, mostly those with physical or neurological disorders. Additionally, many schools would then have the right to discriminate on the basis of race, sending us to the pre- Brown v. Board of Education days of 'seperate but equal'. Factor into account that medium income for African Americans is significantly lower than for European-Americans, and your plan would make for vast inequality.
I think it is absolutely ridiculous to assert that since public schools are doing poorly, we should yank their funding and only allow the richest kids access to schools.
According to part (C) of the definition of Harmful to Minors,
"any picture, image, graphic image file, or other visual depiction that--...
(C) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value as to
minors."
So, other than the fact that these are highly subjective(ie, is, say, sluggy freelance(http://www.sluggy.com) banned by this law? Does it have "serious literary or artistic value?"), it only covers images. Thus, highly erotic stories are NOT banned by this measure, nor are plans to build bombs(wasn't columbine one of the catalysts for bills like this?), or a myriad of other concerns broached by right wing politicians.
Additionally, part (B) says,
"(B) depicts, describes, or represents, in a patently offensive way with respect to what is
suitable for minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, actual or
simulated normal or perverted sexual acts, or a lewd exhibition of the genitals;"
It requires that this be "patently offensive" but again, that is an entirely subjective measure. Things that some people are extremely offended by(pr0n, for example) I find quite amusing. Also, you have to wonder whether this includes images that can be used for educational purposes, such as images often displayed in sexual education material.
I think the funniest passage is included in part (A), though:
"...appeals to a prurient interest in
nudity, sex, or excretion;"
How many children's books are there, and childish jokes, etc, that do appeal to their "prurient interest...in excretion".
Anyway, while some of the wording is vauge, I'm somewhat afraid that this law could live on. It is possible, of course, to attack it on a variety of grounds- ie, the fact that no software yet exists that is this exacting, the vaugeness of the bill, or as the poster of the article noted, the Brown v. Board argument. The biggest problem with the final argument, though, is that Brown v. Board doesn't apply to money, as evidenced by teh Rodriguez(sp? I don't know who it was against, either) that established that wealth is not a suspect class in terms of educational discrimination.
10 trillion times denser than steel, 100 times faster than a supersonic jet.
Scientist 1: "Look, its a bird"
Scientist 2: "No, its a plane"
Scientist 1: "No, its SUPERNOVA!"
Scientist 2: "And they wonder why we haven't found the higg's boson yet..."
Does anyone else think that one major way we could reform out party heavy system would be to repeal the twelth amendment? Back, before it was passed, voters would vote for their favorite candidate, and the one who got the most votes got the presidency, and the one who got the second most got the vice presidency.
It'd be at least something of a reform. Unfortunately, our law makers on this issue are the same ones who have the greatest stake in it. Ugh. Time to move to a deserted island somewhere...
"productivity determines wage levels. American (and west European and Japanese) workers are paid better than those in most of the rest of the world because their labor creates more value than other workers."
This is, sorry to say, complete and utter bullshit. The reason American, Western European, and Japanese workers are payed well is because their countries protect their rights as workers to bargain for pay, form unions, as well as having an enforced minimum wage.
It has been empiraclly proven throughout history, and even today, that companies will only pay workers enough to get them coming through their doors every morning, and to keep the government from jumping on them. When the government and worker solidarity aren't a problem, the workers are paid terribly, and its not linked to their productivity. Look at the millions of workers in factories and mines in the 1900's. They were paid awfully, rarely even enough to live comfortably. I'm sure that they produced quite a large amount of product, or else the companies wouldn't have had the money to send hucksters to convince more people back in Lithuania that America was a hunky dorry place.
Even today, the same sort of pattern continues. Many American companies who are insanely rich(ahem... Nike, Reebok, Gap, Old Navy,the list goes on) export their business overseas to where they can pay workers abysmal wages without worrying about the conditions at factories. They employ minors, they pay the workers barely enough to survive, then they take the product and sell it over in America where people have lots of money to buy silly things. I certainly don't see any shortages of nike shoes- so why don't they pay their workers according to their productivity? Would you argue that these workers are unproductive? Then why aren't they being paid enough to feed a family?
From the article(Bush's response to WTO question):
"To fuel continued economic growth, we need to tear down barriers abroad - and keep markets open at home"
In 1907, Woodrow Wilson said:
"Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers
of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process.... the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down."
If you think back on your American History, Wilson
just so happened to be the president who sent hundreds of thousands of American's to the trenches of WWI to defend these foreign markets. Will bush do the same?
Ok, this has probably been posted, but I ran a sort of Anti-DARE case(well, actually, Student Problem Solving, but we bashed dare for much of the harms) last year, and there was a piece of evidence that said the following:
Someone had conducted a study of students in dare, and had discovered, using a 10[maybe 20? can't recall] year follow up study to a class of students who had attended DARE(as well as a control class of students who hadn't attended DARE), and found that those who had taken DARE in school were no less likely to have used drugs, and indeed most of the former students noted that DARE hadn't influenced their behaviour in the least. Additionally, the conductor of the study found slightly lower average self esteem among those who had participated in DARE compared with those who had not.
As for personal experiences on the matter, I know INCREDIBLY smart people who smoke, use drugs and alcohol, will admit the disadvantages, and have been taught endlessly about how evil drugs and how how they will turn you into a baby eating hippy monster from hell, but don't care. It's their personal choice, and though they know the dangers, they choose it nonetheless. Making them sit through 300 more hours of DARE will not change anything.
Just my thoughts on the matter,
Alex Magidow
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I find OpenOffice to work significantly better under Windows than I find it to work under Linux(Mandrake 10) - there are well known bugs involving bidirectional language support in the Linux version of OpenOffice 1.1. Also, its easier to install OpenOffice on Windows than it is on Linux, assuming both options start off without it.
Firefox, OTOH, works great in Linux, especially for installation.
The biggest problem is that for many Windows users, there seems to be a serious bug that prevents them from installing extensions at all- it may be related to the uninstallation between .9 and .9.1. The relevant MozillaZine page is here
They cite it as a bidi issue, which is one of the issues. And fixing it would definitely help the hebrew support. However, it is also that the Arabic letters are all in their "isolated" forms, rather than being connected. Arabic is like cursive- all the letters ought to flow together. For a concise table, see the following URL:
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/arabic.htm
I certainly hope that Debian's Arabic support isn't as bad as that in the installer- the letters don't connect! They're typed from left to right! This would be like having the English installer say something like the following:
(ASU)hsilgnE ni deecorp ot siht esoohC
Except that its even worse - imagine all the i's seperated from their dots, which are written separately next to them in linear order. And even that would be less ridiculous.
As someone who does use Arabic frequently when computing, it's something less than a stunning endorsement of Debian
My family is using a Canon LBP-4 which has lasted us since 1987 or so(same age as my little brother) with 2 toner cartrige replacements and one repair. In 16 years. That was(is still) a quality printer. It'd be nice if it had more than 256k RAM(it has trouble printing lines and non-text) and greater than 300 DPI, but it's definitely worth whatever we paid for it.
The objection to a war during Ramadan isn't a moral one. Its a tactical issue- if we keep bombing the Taliban during Ramadan, and we move in ground units during that time, we are going to face a much greater number of very, very, very devout foes who will be just fine with dying for their cause because of the eternal rewards that they will reap. If you think that the suicide bombings that were done during the Vietnam war were bad, wait until your up against a population that believes it is a holy act to die in battle.
(Also people can get really pissy when they're haven't eaten since sunrise)
Your additional assertion that if we lay off the bombings for a month, they're "have a chance to regroup and launch another September 11th". This is the kind of painfully stupid idea that fuels misguided wars like this. First, the bombings are probably doing nothing against actual terrorists. Any terrorist with half a brain left the country after September 11th, and all of the "terrorist training camps" we've been pummelling have probably been pretty damn abandoned. Second, the September 11th attacks took years of planning. They didn't happen over the course of a few months. Look at all of the attacks that bin Laden is supposedly responsible for- he is patient, and waits for the American public to become complaicent before he attacks again. And he has a lot of good targets that aren't in the US. Remember the Cole attack, the African Embassy attacks? The US is so far flung that you can attack it in pretty any country in the world.
Might I point out that the function exeunt(actor a,actor b,...,exit_direction c) doesn't accept a single argument. You'd get the compiler error: "Syntax error: Verb-noun agreement incorrect" Exit(actor a, exit_direction b) would be a better function to use for a single person.
Latin, Shakespeare, and programming. What more could a geek want?
This is why it makes significantly more sense these days to pay a much larger fee for a much larger period of time. Instead of paying Slashdot $.01 every time you read an article, you could have an online account. You'd fill it with, say, $10.00 and be able to read 1000 articles without having to worry about further payments. This is how Sluggy Freelance works for paying customers. IIRC, you pay the author $10 or so, and you get a year of sluggy. Thats about $.027 per comic, but you don't end up paying for 300 transaction fees.(Keep in mind that the author also has an ad filled version of the site, and still sells dead trees)
This also answers another posters concern, that they'd have to worry about the tab they were ringing up when they go online- you'd simply have an account that would slowly drain as you used a given service. I don't necessarily endorse the idea of paying for some types of content(ie, MSDN news or something of the sort), but I do like to support independent artists such as Pete Abrams.
Alex Magidow
As cited in Advanced Renderman(Apodaca and Gritz), Blinn's Law says the following: "An artist is willing to wait a fixed amount of time for an image to render, and that faster hardware simply results in more complex images that take the same amount of time to render"(511).
Thus, even if you could do the scenes that were done in A Bugs Life in real time(holding in mind that the entire world of a bugs life was one big scene), Pixar would simply be rendering much larger, more complex scenes.
Another example- a gamer, much like an artist, is only willing to wait a certain amount of time for a given frame of their game to load(around 1/30th of a second per frame). While hardware grows at astronomical rates, games simply become more complex(eg Wolfenstein->Doom->Quake I->Quake 3) and take the same amount of time on the new hardware. Nobody is going to go to the store and buy Wolfenstein just so that they can run it at 100,000 frames/second on their advanced hardware. So even if somehow games were to achieve Photorealistic Renderman levels of rendering quality in real time(again, holding in mind that many times its the artist, rather than the canvas that makes anything look realistic) they would just get more complex and run at the same speed as Wolfenstein did on your old 386.
While its spiffy that someday you'd be able to look at ABL style scene in real time, its not some wonderful limit that is slowly being reached, but simply the normal progression of technology.
Alex Magidow
This is what bothers me about teh article- if this is such an important project, ie saving the earth from celestial destruction, why are we entrusting it to an organization that has just suffered massive budget cuts?
Additionally, NASA is a US organization, and one must question the poltical implications of a governmental organization tracking down and destroying asteroids. Would NASA stop a small asteroid if it were about to run smack dab into Iraq? I know that sounds somewhat hysterical, but it still is a valid question- why isn't this program placed on a slighly higher level of internation, and national importance, instead of being relegated to a national(istic?) group with a shoe string budget. Perhaps we can throw scraps of our other failed space craft at it. Or the plans for the reusable air-to-space vehicle.
First of all, the Declaration of Independence is not a law.
Second of all, for all the second amendment proponents who believe that it exists to prevent the government from becoming too powerful- that is a sham and a lie. There is absolutely no way in hell that even incredibly well armed miltias could oppose the military and political power of the US government. Such an uprising would probably not be terribly large or cohesive. The government has dealt with peaceful protestors before, well trained ones, and has used the media to manipulate their image into one of riotious crowds rather than peaceful marchers.
The government would have a much easier time dealing with violent terrorists(as they would be most assuredly called). They would have an excuse to use all those tanks, planes and automatic weapons they have lying around. The only places where guerrilla warefare could be successfully staged would be in underpopulated regions of little national importance. This isn't like 1777.
Additionally, other nations probably wouldn't offer support for the terrorists. Look at Palestine- they have the support of nearly every middle eastern nation, expertise with weapons and terrorist tactics, and decent staging areas. And still they're getting their asses beaten by the Israeli government, which has helicopters and missles and bulldozers and the consent of the US.
The only way that you can safely oppose government power is through peaceful means. If you use violence, it gives the government all the leeway it wants. If you protest peacefully, they can't do that much to you before they begin to provoke outrage. Why do you think Ghandi said, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"? Because as you escalate violence, you only bring more violence upon yourself. It takes a hell of a long time, but its possible to bring change without shooting anybody. And look what violence does do- it obscures your point,(ie, in the case of McVeigh) and makes you hated.
So, please, if you want to you can dwell in a fantasy world of gunslinging and epic battles on the east coast 3 hundred years ago, but it won't change the government, or boost your cause. It will only give the government more ammunition to hurl at you, real and imaginary.
I'm an average user, I suppose, but I find myself trying to read things in other languages that use non-roman alphabets. Try reading hebrew, arabic, hindi, chinese, or russian on a computer without international text display. Better yet, try typing them. I, for example, have tried to read Arabic newspapers online(I'm taking the language in college and would like to improve my reading. Many, MANY 'average users' would attempt such a thing), but its damn near impossible(at least, on Win98...bleh) due to my OS's lack of international text display.
Um, if this event occured, how could it violate the laws of physics? Obviously, the laws are wrong if they can be violated...therefore, the laws are the problem, not the event. Just some nitpicking, Alex Magidow
Indeed, this also fits in with the article in which the author quotes someone as saying, "set theory is a disease from which I hope future generations will recover." Now we can finally start along that long road to recovery.
I would question the basic assumption here that drives your thesis- that humans are inherently greedy. I don't think this is necessarily true, and indeed, I think that this idea is very culturally specific.
Most cultures that haven't yet been westernized DON'T experience the massive levels of greed that plague our society. The collecting of food, for example, is done collectively or individually in many "primitive"(ie, non-industrialized) societies, and it is redistributed to a wide group of people. Among the Netsilik Inuit, families live with several other families. When one hunter catches a seal(their primary food), he shares the liver of the seal with the other hunters in the group. Additionally, they play a game in which every man in the group places a valuable object(like a bowdrill, a harpoon, etc) in a pile, and the winner of the game gets to pick which object they take. This isn't about greed- its about fair handed redistribution.
There are more examples from non-western societies. Aboriginal Australian hunters would get the worst part of the animal that they killed, and give the best parts to the rest of their group. Among Tongans(granted, this is after a great deal of western contact, but they've managed to keep some of their culture), there are savings groups where everyone gives $2-$4(Tongan, 1980 dollars) to a central pot every two weeks, and then the pot is given, in order, to every person who submits the money, until everyone who's given money has received the pot, at which point they start over.
There are millions of examples of societies that cooperate, and do not need monetary recompensation for every action that they perform. Our society believes, however, that personal gain is the be all and end all of human nature because this is a very useful cultural ideal in a capitalist nation. Indeed- it is a cultural value that is probably specific to capitalist society, and it has been making the wheels turn nicely for hundreds of years. Or at least, making it APPEAR like the wheels are turning nicely, whether they have or not.
PS- Your other assumption, that force is less useful that offering a vision of a "life of luxury" is not specific to socialist societies. In capitalist societies, we use force(physical or economic), or the threat of force, as the primary motivating factor in many instances. In fact, not too long ago, it was the main method of dealing with dissidents in the US. The Lodlow massacre is a good example in the US, and there are many, contemporary examples of physical force being used abroad to control capitalist labor.
Alex Magidow
I'm surprised that nobody has been looking at these developments and decrying the fact that corporations are doing one of the things Mcarthiests were so worried about- destroying private property. While this isn't exactly the same thing, its similar. Many of the things we own these days are not really our possessions. Companies have started(Through EULA's, exploding GPS devices, etc) to make consumer purchases seem more like they're loaning the object to the consumer rather than the consumer gaining the right to the object that they purchasd. This means that when you buy something, you aren't gaining possession of private property- you are gaining possession of property collectively owned by yourself and by the corporation. Which, if you replace the word "corporation" with state, you have almost the situation that Mcarthiests so decried.
My $.02,
Alex Magidow
"I recommend that you investigate the actual history of child labor laws. They were first implemented at the behest of English factory owners who wanted to end the practice but could not do so voluntarily as long as it remained legal for their competition to exploit child labor."
These business owners, as is probably pretty obvious, weren't doing this for the good of the children- they were doing it to improve their own public images. Also, they got a hell of a bargain- instead of children working in factories, they became some of the most avid consumers in the world. Children's consumerism is currently almost central to the economy. Take for example the article that started this entire thread- NIKE. The largest consumers of Nike's shoes are children, and just about every product on the market has an analogous product designed especially for children. So, from a business standpoint, having children consuming rather than working is just one hell of a good idea.
This is a bit of a rant, sorry:
I don't see exactly why people keep programming countless raytracing programs. No offense, but there are innumerable programs already out there, many of which are at the very least freeware, and many that are open source. However, people continue to program non-standardized raytracers that have varying levels of functionality. Few of these are specifically designed to fill a nich, either- it would make sense if this were specifically for macintosh, which seems to be getting the short end of the 3D graphics stick.
The second most frustrating thing about the glut of rendering apps is that they're almost all RAYTRACERS. Raytracing is one of the slowest rendering processes(though, faster than reverse raytracing, and some forms of radiosity), and there are numerous other rendering methods that are oodles faster. Please- if you're going to make yet another rendering app, at least make it REYES, or scanline, or some algorithm that will set it apart from the rest of the college programming final project crowd.
Also, if you're going to make a new renderer, make it adheare to some standard- I personally find the Renderman standard(check out http://www.pixar.com) to be very helpful, and to promote the production of fully featured renderers with a standard file format(ie RIB).
Sorry if this seems to be a personal attack- it isn't. Its just that there are millions of renderers out there, and unless you can somehow offer compatability with other, highly popular modelers(BMRT and POV-Ray.), you'll have a hell of a hard time aquiring a large user base.
If you want to truly help the opensource renderer movement, I suggest you cruise over to http://gman-toolkit.sourceforge.net/ and see if they need your expertise.
Again, excuse me for the rant,
Alex Magidow
"Public schools are not so much centers of learning as they are centers of indoctrination into all sorts of unsavory things that concerned parents do not want their children exposed to (sex education, evolution, etc.)"
I think that one should be more afraid of children being indoctrinated into more subtle and innocuous seeming things. Children are indoctrinated into believing in our economic system(for better or for worse), in believing in false versions of American history(which is one of the most heavily AND inaccurately covered subjects in school. For more info on that, read _Lies My Teacher Told Me_ by Lowen) and indoctrinated into our republican system of government. Indeed, that is one of the primary and explicit purposes of school. Jefferson was quite adamant on the subject, believing that schools main purposes were to propogandize children into supporting our government.
Additionally, the examples of "unsavory things" that you list are HIGHLY controversial, and primarily so because of the strong tradition of judaeo-christian religious influence on schools and government. It makes very little sense to not teach evolution as a working(though flawed) theory- every time you use an antibiotic, you're causing evolution by natural selection. Whereas its silly to teach creationism because it is not useful for predicting outcomes of future events(or shedding much light on the past), and because it can neither be proven nor disproven.
"Children are better served by sending them to parochial/religious schools or independent private schools run by competent education professionals. Corporate America does nearly everything better than the federal government; there is no reason to assume that education would be any different."
First and foremost is the question of who exactly pays for these schools. If the burden of providing an education falls directly on parents, we will quickly revert to the days before public education existed. The only people who could afford schooling would be the already educated elite, and this would soon concentrate all education into the hands of the rich. Not only would this be disastrous from a human suffering point of view, but it would mean the death of almost all industries that require a large, educated proletariot.
Even if parents could somehow, magically pay for these schools across that board, the problems would not disappear. According to the NEA(http://ftp.nea.org/vouchers.htm), "Private schools are very selective. Religious schools already reject as many as two out of every three applicants...Private schools generally reserves the right to refuse students on the basis of income, academic achievement, disability, or discipline problems." In keeping with the profit motive, its more than likely that private schools would refuse the most expensive to educate students, mostly those with physical or neurological disorders. Additionally, many schools would then have the right to discriminate on the basis of race, sending us to the pre- Brown v. Board of Education days of 'seperate but equal'. Factor into account that medium income for African Americans is significantly lower than for European-Americans, and your plan would make for vast inequality.
I think it is absolutely ridiculous to assert that since public schools are doing poorly, we should yank their funding and only allow the richest kids access to schools.
Alex Magidow
According to part (C) of the definition of Harmful to Minors, ...
"any picture, image, graphic image file, or other visual depiction that--
(C) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value as to
minors."
So, other than the fact that these are highly subjective(ie, is, say, sluggy freelance(http://www.sluggy.com) banned by this law? Does it have "serious literary or artistic value?"), it only covers images. Thus, highly erotic stories are NOT banned by this measure, nor are plans to build bombs(wasn't columbine one of the catalysts for bills like this?), or a myriad of other concerns broached by right wing politicians.
Additionally, part (B) says,
"(B) depicts, describes, or represents, in a patently offensive way with respect to what is
suitable for minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, actual or
simulated normal or perverted sexual acts, or a lewd exhibition of the genitals;"
It requires that this be "patently offensive" but again, that is an entirely subjective measure. Things that some people are extremely offended by(pr0n, for example) I find quite amusing. Also, you have to wonder whether this includes images that can be used for educational purposes, such as images often displayed in sexual education material.
I think the funniest passage is included in part (A), though:
"...appeals to a prurient interest in
nudity, sex, or excretion;"
How many children's books are there, and childish jokes, etc, that do appeal to their "prurient interest...in excretion".
Anyway, while some of the wording is vauge, I'm somewhat afraid that this law could live on. It is possible, of course, to attack it on a variety of grounds- ie, the fact that no software yet exists that is this exacting, the vaugeness of the bill, or as the poster of the article noted, the Brown v. Board argument. The biggest problem with the final argument, though, is that Brown v. Board doesn't apply to money, as evidenced by teh Rodriguez(sp? I don't know who it was against, either) that established that wealth is not a suspect class in terms of educational discrimination.
My $.02
Alex Magidow
10 trillion times denser than steel, 100 times faster than a supersonic jet.
Scientist 1: "Look, its a bird"
Scientist 2: "No, its a plane"
Scientist 1: "No, its SUPERNOVA!"
Scientist 2: "And they wonder why we haven't found the higg's boson yet..."
Does anyone else think that one major way we could reform out party heavy system would be to repeal the twelth amendment? Back, before it was passed, voters would vote for their favorite candidate, and the one who got the most votes got the presidency, and the one who got the second most got the vice presidency.
It'd be at least something of a reform. Unfortunately, our law makers on this issue are the same ones who have the greatest stake in it. Ugh. Time to move to a deserted island somewhere...
"productivity determines wage levels. American (and west European and Japanese) workers are paid better than those in most of the rest of the world because their labor creates more value than other workers."
This is, sorry to say, complete and utter bullshit. The reason American, Western European, and Japanese workers are payed well is because their countries protect their rights as workers to bargain for pay, form unions, as well as having an enforced minimum wage.
It has been empiraclly proven throughout history, and even today, that companies will only pay workers enough to get them coming through their doors every morning, and to keep the government from jumping on them. When the government and worker solidarity aren't a problem, the workers are paid terribly, and its not linked to their productivity. Look at the millions of workers in factories and mines in the 1900's. They were paid awfully, rarely even enough to live comfortably. I'm sure that they produced quite a large amount of product, or else the companies wouldn't have had the money to send hucksters to convince more people back in Lithuania that America was a hunky dorry place.
Even today, the same sort of pattern continues. Many American companies who are insanely rich(ahem... Nike, Reebok, Gap, Old Navy,the list goes on) export their business overseas to where they can pay workers abysmal wages without worrying about the conditions at factories. They employ minors, they pay the workers barely enough to survive, then they take the product and sell it over in America where people have lots of money to buy silly things. I certainly don't see any shortages of nike shoes- so why don't they pay their workers according to their productivity? Would you argue that these workers are unproductive? Then why aren't they being paid enough to feed a family?
From the article(Bush's response to WTO question):
"To fuel continued economic growth, we need to tear down barriers abroad - and keep markets open at home"
In 1907, Woodrow Wilson said:
"Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers
of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process.... the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down."
If you think back on your American History, Wilson
just so happened to be the president who sent hundreds of thousands of American's to the trenches of WWI to defend these foreign markets. Will bush do the same?
Ok, this has probably been posted, but I ran a sort of Anti-DARE case(well, actually, Student Problem Solving, but we bashed dare for much of the harms) last year, and there was a piece of evidence that said the following: Someone had conducted a study of students in dare, and had discovered, using a 10[maybe 20? can't recall] year follow up study to a class of students who had attended DARE(as well as a control class of students who hadn't attended DARE), and found that those who had taken DARE in school were no less likely to have used drugs, and indeed most of the former students noted that DARE hadn't influenced their behaviour in the least. Additionally, the conductor of the study found slightly lower average self esteem among those who had participated in DARE compared with those who had not. As for personal experiences on the matter, I know INCREDIBLY smart people who smoke, use drugs and alcohol, will admit the disadvantages, and have been taught endlessly about how evil drugs and how how they will turn you into a baby eating hippy monster from hell, but don't care. It's their personal choice, and though they know the dangers, they choose it nonetheless. Making them sit through 300 more hours of DARE will not change anything. Just my thoughts on the matter, Alex Magidow